Audio Transcription

Mark Lamberth
Hello and welcome to the Contractor Grow Show. My name is Mark Lamberth and I’m your host. And in this first episode, I want to talk about the Contractor Grow Show, why we’re here, who we’re going to be talking with, and what you’re going to learn from listening to the show here. So a little bit about my background. I came from a construction background. I’ve built many houses. I’ve done many, many remodels, additions, kitchen bath, remodels. I’ve also done a lot of work in real estate. I’ve bought and sold many, many houses, done a lot of construction and contracting work inside of those houses. We did a lot of remodels, flipping houses back in the day. And in the last 10 years or so, I’ve also had a career in marketing, mainly digital marketing. So building websites, doing pay-per-click advertising for builders, contractors, also search engine optimization, SEO, email campaigns, database reactivation.

Mark Lamberth
We’ve also been involved in radio billboards, many, many tens and hundreds of thousands of letters of direct mail sent. And what I’ve seen over and over again is that there are many builders out there doing great work, but most of them don’t understand, and in many cases don’t really care to understand marketing or getting the word out there about their services. Most contractors that I talk with, depending on the size of the business that they’re at, have grown by word of mouth and referrals, and that says all the right things about the business. However, growing the business by referrals is not scalable. So when we talk with new business owners, one of the first questions that we ask is, how have you grown the business so far? And there’s almost a big dividing line between types of businesses. One is the business that they’ve only ever grown by referrals or word of mouth.

Mark Lamberth
And another is businesses that have gone beyond that and have also got their digital marketing dialed in. So their website looks great and they’re tracking everything they’re doing Pay-per-click. They’re doing SEO as well. They’ve got someone who’s answering the phones, right? The sales process is critical to getting this right. So they’ve got someone who’s answering the phones every time that it rings or they’re getting back to folks within just a few minutes. And those second types of businesses, the ones that have got their digital marketing working right, firing right. Those companies inevitably are larger, they’re systemized better, and they’ve got a better growth path. And so we know that when we talk with a business that has only grown by referrals, that we actually have got a lot more work to do. And part of that work is literally just convincing them the way to grow the business is to do it with strangers, to going out to the marketplace and talking to strangers who have never heard of you before.

Mark Lamberth
And with the way that things are set up and your marketing and your case studies and testimonials, that does a lot of the selling for you, those types of businesses are able to expand kind of geometrically and much more rapidly and scale much better. So in terms of the guests that we’re going to have on the show, they are in most cases, businesses that are already at that seven figure mark that are doing a million dollars in top line revenue. In many cases, they’ll be at the mid seven figure mark doing four or 5 million a year, or even up at that eight figure mark doing $10 million and beyond. What we’ve found is that the business really starts to change when it gets up to a million dollars in top line revenues. And that the owner’s life really starts to change when it gets into multiple seven figures.

Mark Lamberth
So that two, $3 million mark, the owner of the business can kind of have a different life. They can have more significance, they’ve got more ability to step back and take a look at the direction of the business. Inevitably, you’re going to have office staff, you’re going to have people that are answering the phones. It’s not just the owner on a roof entering the phone every day still. And so they’ve got more freedom along those lines. In many cases, they’re not going on job sites anymore, and they’re able to really steer the business such they can continue to grow and continue to provide jobs in their community and create impact in their community as well. Okay, so we’re going to be talking with folks mainly at the seven figures and beyond. In some cases six figures, mid six figures, trying to get up to that seven figure mark.

Mark Lamberth
And we’re going to be talking about what is working in the marketplace now. So whether it be online marketing efforts, some of those other offline strategies, we’re going to be talking about what’s working right now. Another thing that that construction business owners often want to know is how to grow their team sustainably. So there’s a shortage of talented labor in the marketplace, and oftentimes the business owners are more passionate about the work that they do than their employees or their team that they bring on. And so they’re trying to figure out how to motivate team members to show up and do the work every day to take on that learning. So maybe they’re providing learning or continuing education, how to have your employees take that and run with it. How to retain the team, right? So a team, I mean, it can take six or nine months before a team member is really up to speed.

Mark Lamberth
Well, if they leave after they’ve been with you for a year, you’re really not getting that benefit of them creating profit in the company. They’re really more of an expense. So how can we recruit, hire, and train and retain our team so that they stay with us over the long term and really create that solid culture that we want? Okay, so how to make more money, how to retain your team. If you have any questions about the show, of course, get in touch. And if you have any suggestions for folks that should be on the show or if you yourself would like to be on the show, please get in touch and the questions for guests that you’d like us to ask, please let us know. And I think this is going to be really fun. I love talking with folks about their story, and I think it’s going to be really fun ride. So stay tuned and we’ll talk with you soon.