CONTRACTING SUCCESS

Every year in the United States, thousands of residential contractors fail because success requires more than trade skill, it requires office work; accounting, billing, advertising, estimating/bidding, management, and so on. The Elements of Building (EOB) lays out what is required clearly and succinctly. Many long-time contractors have said of EOB, “I wish I’d had this book when I was starting out.”

The Elements of Building & BUILDER are available at Amazon.com, Bookshop.org, Ingram/Spark, and the National Building Museum Shop.

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HONESTY

Although dishonesty sometimes works—to get what you want, to avoid responsibility, to save money, to fill a short-term need—at best it is temporary, at worst it will cause pain and destroy relationships. In business it will guarantee failure. Being honest requires that you make tough decisions and accept responsibility for your actions, and in the long run, it will bring success in life and business.

The Elements of Building & BUILDER are available at Amazon.com, Ingram/Spark, and the National Building Museum Shop.

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BUSINESS SKILLS

Most residential contractors fail because they act-as-if their trade skills are the entire business. That is, they reluctantly and poorly learn only those business skills which cannot be avoided. But, to succeed, you must learn and apply—with the same persistence and effort required to learn your trade—the business skills needed to be a contractor. In this, there is no choice.

The Elements of Building and BUILDER were written to help in this process. 

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The Elements of Building & BUILDER are available at Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, Ingram/Spark, Garrett Wade, and the National Building Museum Shop.

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JIM FLEMING, cabinet maker, general contractor (BUILDER)

"I’ve made some terrible choices with employees. I’ve hired a lot of friends; that’s seldom worked out. They took advantage of me because I let them get away with too much. At one point I had fourteen men trimming condominiums. I didn’t make any more money than I made working by myself and I had all the headaches and the whining and crying. I don’t like having employees. [Laughter.]" page 20

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The Elements of Building & BUILDER are available at Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, Ingram/Spark, Garrett Wade, and the National Building Museum Shop.

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ESTIMATING

Estimating is not hard, but doing it well requires certain things: undisturbed blocks of time, thoughtful organization of the process, attention to detail, knowledge of the site and construction methods, good job documents, and time to study them thoroughly.  

EOB, estimating section

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The Elements of Building & BUILDER are available at Amazon.com, Ingram/Spark, and the National Building Museum Shop.

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PUT YOUR TOOL BELT ASIDE (another look)

A builder friend and I were talking about this line from one of my posts; “If you want to be a tradesmen work for someone else, if you want to grow your business learn the office skills required and put your tool belt aside as soon as it is practical.” He said he knew a guy who was successfully working at his trade and running his business and, as he said it, I realized that over my forty-odd years as a tradesman/contractor, I had known a few people who had done both successfully. But the vast majority of the tradesmen/contractors I’ve known who were working forty-plus hour weeks in the field and  doing office work evenings and weekends, went out of business (some several times) or existed on the edge of failure for years because they neglected their office work. 

The guy my friend was talking about was strictly dividing field and office work: in the field four days per week and religiously taking Friday and part of Saturday to do his office work. My issue with this idea—and my personal experience—is that because field work is so immediate and demanding, because most of us shy away from learning office skills, and because the payoff from marketing, sales, management, bidding, accounting, and so on, is not as obvious, it takes uncommon discipline to consistently stop, week after week, to give office work its due.  

Despite the outliers, most of those who begin in a trade and open a business are better off learning the business skills while working in the field, and then, when their office skills are good and the business large enough to need them to come out of the field, that they are more likely to succeed long term if they put their tool belt down and focus on business. The Elements of Building and BUILDER were written to help you do just that.    

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The Elements of Building & BUILDER are available at Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, Ingram/Spark, Garrett Wade, and the National Building Museum Shop.

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BIDDING

What can be earned on a job is limited, what can be lost is nearly without limit. I don’t know why so many GC's provide free bids. I do know that the strongest general contracting companies charge for their bids or avoid competitive bidding altogether because in so many ways it is a losing proposition that rewards the unlucky and the ill-prepared. EOB, bidding notes

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The Elements of Building & BUILDER are available at Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, Ingram/Spark, Garrett Wade, and the National Building Museum Shop.

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