Should You Work With a Business Coach or With a Mentor?
I'd like to offer you something to think about if you are considering a business coach to help you with your business. It’s something I learned by trying out several coaches when I owned my remodeling business. What I learned was that there are completely different reasons and purposes for working with a business coach versus a mentor.
I definitely wish I knew this before I hired my first coach!
A few considerations about choosing a coach for your construction business
Many coaches can help a variety of business types in different industries. For example I worked with a business coach many years back who had never owned or worked in a remodeling business, but that guy sure knew how to help me assess and improve my marketing. With his help we accomplished my goal of changing my business’ customer and job types so I could increase my margins. On the other hand I worked with another coach to help me with improving my business’ financial system. He was a smart guy, and knew his accounting, but I eventually figured out he had no exposure or experience with how a small construction business needs to do accurate job costing. After a lot of lost time and money I found a new coach to work with who had remodeling industry experience and the difference was night and day.
One more consideration when choosing a coach is his or her past experience and level of success. Unfortunately there are many coaches who became coaches after their own businesses failed or after they got let go by the business they worked for due to their poor performance. Some of them may have learned from their mistakes and can still be good coaches. However I suggest that someone who had a successful business and or a successful business leadership history is already a proven entity.
Maybe what you actually need is a mentor
If you want help with your business systems and performance a coach is probably your best solution. The right coach will be supportive and motivational. However if it is you, the person, who needs help, a mentor might be a better option to work with.
First, a mentor should be someone who has already done and was successful at what you are trying to do with your business. Because the mentor has already personally experienced similar challenges and rose above them, the mentor already knows what you are and will be going through. A mentor understands and knows how to anticipate the real emotional impacts the business owner will experience. Having been a contractor as well, a construction industry mentor will probably have the exact experiences needed to help you.
Second, the right mentor will be empathetic, not sympathetic. By that I mean the mentor will not take on your problems for you, rather he or she will help you wrap your head around what you need to think about and do so you can solve them yourself. And, the right mentor will help you anticipate the emotional and personal challenges you might experience making the changes. One example might be helping you figure out how to appropriately tell a long term employee you have to let him go for poor performance, without hurting his feelings more than needed and or triggering a law suit. Another might be how to diplomatically deal with an irate client after your roofing sub’s tarp blew off in a thunderstorm last night and ruined every ceiling in the house (happened to me). Essentially, it’s the mentor’s role is to socialize the mentee into his or her role and help avoid learning from the lumberyard school of hard knocks.
If you’re looking for help from an expert I suggest you consider which would work better for you and your business, a coach or a mentor, before you decide on how to go forward.
One last thought: Maybe you want both in one person
Also, consider that there are some out there who can serve both purposes, at the same time. I recommend you consider a coach who also has real life and successful experience as a construction business owner. A mentor can warn you in advance about what it will be like to live through and implement the changes you want to make, while at the same time help you with actually creating and implementing new ways of doing business. By working with one person who can help you in both areas, the odds for success are much higher, the results will likely happen faster, and you can avoid a lot of sleepless nights worrying about what is happening and how you feel about things.
Hope that helps!
Then identify the functionality you will need behind the scenes. For example things like the Content Management System (CMS) you will use to add and edit pages, smart call to action buttons so you know what pages visitors clicked through from, landing pages, a blogging tool, automated lead nurturing ability, analytics and an email marketing tool. You will need to consider these kinds of things to get a price from a web designer for the work to be done and the CMS you will use.
Now you have a web site!
LBM Dealers and the distributors that supply Gen Y will need to make many changes to their business models and tactics. In order to successfully complete and support those changes they will need to upgrade both their staff and their technology. Here are a few quotes from Gen Y contractors that should help motivate both to get going before it’s already too late:
My Great Uncle's brother was a custom wood worker and built everything from tiny jewelry and cigarette boxes with minute inlay and detail, to a full spectrum of furniture and woodworking. He built his shop in the cavernous basement of an ancient brownstone five blocks from the harbor in Philadelphia. In this shop he had every true carpenter's tool of the day including an entirely leather belt driven coping lathe that he built himself. Every tool had a place and there was a place for every tool, all sharp, oiled and at the ready. From my uncle I learned the necessary task of stone sharpening; honing the edges of every tool, from chisels and planes. I also learned how to sharpen each tooth of a circular blade and the art of "setting" the teeth of each handsaw in the shop, positioned teeth down and stacked front to back in the handmade wooden tool boxes that cuddled every tool.
Eventually the first miter boxes, buck saws and smaller radial arm saws arrived and we started to move away from the hand tools like the Yankee screw driver, the brace and bit and the miter knife. We started to use nail guns, carbide blades and a plethora of modernized tools to save time and money; not knowing that we would forever kill the "Traditional Carpenter". I witnessed men become unwilling to use a hand tool. They were unwilling to know, understand or simply feel the joy of building something you hoped would be there forever, built with your own two hands. Those days are gone.
My experience has shown me that those business owners who think of themselves as contractors will typically be the ones who experience most if not all of these challenges as they grow their produced volume of work. Rather than do things differently they just try to keep up with the growth by doing more hours themselves and hiring more people who will need to be supervised. On the other hand those contractors who seek to become what I refer to as “construction business owners” will be adding to and improving their business systems so they and their team members can share responsibility, work smarter and work together more efficiently.
Why I created the list of article links listed below
Primary costs include the monthly car payment or leasing fee. Secondary costs include insurance, fuel, and maintenance costs. By leasing a vehicle, you can typically avoid maintenance costs, but you may face mileage overage charges or other fees. Crunch the numbers before buying or leasing to ensure that you're getting the best deal possible.
When choosing laptops for your team, consider both cost and functionality. If your team can exist exclusively in the cloud, desktop software may be redundant. Speak with your team about what tools and software they need to complete their jobs effectively. They'll be able to provide the best insight and recommendations, and will be aware of new programs and software that might make the company more efficient and productive.
Be the leader you need to be. Work on your leadership skills and make sure you understand the difference between leadership and management, and when to use one versus the other. Good employees want to be lead, not supervised.
Know your limits. Do what you can yourself but get the professional help you need to do things right; to avoid costly mistakes, increase the likelihood of success and maximize the results for your all your efforts.
When creating a project’s payment schedule use project milestones to determine when payments will become due. If when doing your estimate you list your tasks and related costs for each task in critical path order, you can then add up the marked up cost of each milestone’s tasks to make sure the amount collected for each payment will adequately finance each phase of the project. Then, add a little extra money to create a cushion of safety (front loading).
Also make it company policy that your contractor’s warranty starts at substantial completion of the project. Clarify however that no warranty work will be completed until the final project balance has been paid in full.
One thing that remained fairly constant during this evolution was who the contractors were and how they did business. For decades the majority of contractors operated their businesses as technicians. They thought of themselves as contractors, not construction business owners. The joy of building things and advancing their trade skills where the driving factors that made them who they were. As a result of this mentality, and the fact that there was almost always way more work available than contractors to do it, they could command profitable prices. And unfortunately, at the same time, they could also get by with poor business practices in the areas of sales, marketing and accounting. 
