Yo, hello and welcome to the Builders Business Success podcast, episode 96. In this episode, we're going to be unpacking why successful builders, the small amount of successful builders make it look easy.

So how some builders make success look easy. It's not, but how do they make it look easy? And we're also gonna talk about why most other builders still struggle year after year.

So we're gonna unpack the differences. And if you feel like you're struggling in some area where it's too much work, so you haven't got the time or not enough work, you haven't got the money or you're struggling with team, or whatever, you know, we're going to unpack all of those areas in today's podcast.

The idea of the week also is going to be a simple productivity hack that can save hours a day. It's a simple thing and it can save hours a day.

The New Book!

"The Successful Builders Tool Kit," our second book, just being published. You can get a copy of that by scanning the QR code here:

And the retail price includes postage and everything. So, we'll deliver it to you for that price of the book. If you wanted to get a free copy of this, as I've done in the past couple of episodes, I'm gonna show you how you can get a free copy at the end of the podcast.

Transcription of the show!

Speaking with Katie Crismale-Marshall and Steph Campanella. And we have decided to get together to put some thoughts together for builders and trades-based businesses about some fairly critical ideas on how to improve their business and help you to understand the common and often costly mistakes that happen that are completely unnecessary in a trades-based business.

So I'll talk about what I do in just a little while, but I just wanna introduce, firstly, Katie, tell us a little bit about yourself. I know that you're a published author, you've written the Profit First for Tradies, which we give out to all of our member builders and they absolutely love it.

- Yeah. So my name's Katie Crismale-Marshall and as Mick said, I wrote Profit First for Tradies here. And I work specifically with tradies to help them, what I call become permanently profitable.

So no matter what crisis is happening at any point in time, that their business can weather that storm. And we do that in and one of the main parts of that puzzle is by implementing profit first in their business.

- Yeah. And the cool thing, and I encourage everybody to get a copy of that book. The cool thing about it is, because I didn't know Katie a long while ago, I met Mike Michalowics it's her right "Profit First" first, became good mates with him and it just changed everything.

Profit First changed everything for us and our members. But the biggest struggle that we had was massaging it and modifying it so it worked for a trades-based business, because it's just in its pure form, it doesn't seem to work as well.

So Katie's done an amazing job at modifying it and helping trades-based businesses be able to enjoy the benefits of it. It's fantastic.

Steph Campanella, tell us about yourself. What do you do? How do you help the trades businesses?

- Hey, I'm Steph Campanella and we run Tradies Go and we have a system that we implement so that we can fix the foundations, we can fix the positioning and the automation.

So that means that the foundation is secure and solid and we can actually build off it.

How a builder might think of a foundation, we fix the positioning, so obviously ranking, paid ranking or organic ranking, but then also automation so that once you do get those great positions in Google, you actually attract the best customers with bait pieces and calls to action, and make sure that your website's being held accountable, and actually, keeping all those leads and keeping you organized. So, it's the triangle.

- Yeah, absolutely. And that's what we were talking about in our pre-conversations.

And I guess we'll talk about that in a minute. From what I do, for the people who don't know me, we have an organization called Builders Business Blackbelt, specifically for custom home builders, and we just help them change their business so it gives them what they wanted when they started, which was sort of more financial freedom, more time freedom, enjoy themselves a whole lot more.

You speak to most builders, in fact, most trades people, pretty much anyone who started a business with that thought process, it very rarely comes to fruition. It's never their life.

So we work really hard to give our builders a lot more profit, a lot more freedom, a lot more fun and meaning, and we have a great time doing it.

And as I said, use Katie's Profit First for Tradies for our team, for our members because it just makes such a difference.

And Steph also has started looking after our search engine optimization and the website because we were in the bush somewhere, we were in the jungle, we were in the dark forest somewhere where we had a website, thought it was a pretty good website, but no one else could see it.

So what we tend to do in this conversation is talk about the three major parts of a business.

And so I'm gonna hand it over to Steph in a sec to talk about the three major things that she sees that can really harm a trades-based business' ability to generate quality leads.

If you can generate quality leads, it can eliminate a whole raft of other problems and sins in your business. If you're dealing with poor quality leads, with horrible people, people who don't wanna pay, they wanna bargain shop and tire kicking, all of that sort of stuff, they waste your time.

So being able to attract quality leads is absolutely essential. For my part, what I wanna share with you today is the qualification process.

And if you haven't got a good qualification process, you can get a good quality lead, and you can miss out on converting that lead into a customer.

So you've got to have a good qualification process to eliminate the time-wasters, the tire kickers, and educate your customer into how to work with you to get the absolute maximum value and the best quality experience.

And then of course, we want Katie to help us to understand, if we've got great leads and we've got great customers and we're making money, how to keep it. Because it's not much point if it's going in one hand and out the other, if it's slipping through your fingers.

You're working really hard, you've potentially got a great business, but you've just gotta keep on that bike and keep pedaling and pedaling because you're not building any sort of wealth in the background. You might be making it, but you're not keeping it.

So we want Katie to give us the secrets of those. And before we got on, we were kind of talking that these three things are like a triangle and each of them are so important to hold the other part of the triangle in place. If one disappears out of the equation, the others collapse. And that's how we see these things.

So we wanna go through each of these things, identify what the major issues are, what the solutions are, and then after that you guys can reach out to any one of us to get some help. So, hope that makes sense.

Steph, let's start with you because at the start we've got to generate leads. What are the three main problems that you see with trades-based businesses in lead generation?

- I mean the big three is visibility, like, you either have no visibility and no one can see you online, so therefore, you're not gonna generate any work. And it's all gonna be word of mouth and you have no control over your lead gen, you're just waiting for someone else to just basically turn up in your business.

Whereas, if you've got visibility and you've got control, it's kind of like having a tap that you can turn on and off depending on how your foreseeable quote, you're six months in advance in terms of projects that are all booked in or actually, you have no idea what's coming up.

So visibility is really important because it's not just about being online and generating word of mouth. I always feel like, when it's just word of mouth leads, it's kind of like, you just got to take them because who knows when the next lead is coming and you have no control.

So the first thing is visibility and actually being seen online and being understood. Your website could have a mess of messages and there's no clarity as to what even you do. Just visibility in general, but it's also, is your message actually clear?

So visibility is really important. And we tend to do that with bait pieces and big calls to action and gosh, making sure that all the functions are all pushing someone to take action and lead them to the path that you want them to go to, not that it'll just let them go.

The second big thing is that, a lot of traders and builders spend a lot of time on social media.

In a time of need, they just post more content and just hope for the best. And again, there's no process to that, you have no idea if it's even working, you're just kind of posting and you are more busy, so it feels like something's gonna happen.

But again, if you actually focus on set my activities, you can drive more interest and drive stronger lead gen. So that's something that I see very often. The last one here too is emailing customers.

So, if you've got and you are not ranked yet and you're not willing to pay for pay per click, which is completely fine, no Google ads or no Facebook ads, then have you got an email database? Because, of all our trades, when they come with us, there is some minute percentage that is actually doing email marketing.

And email is gold. It's like the oldest trick in the book, but no one does it 'cause they think, there's all these new social media things, that's what they're working.

It's like, no, the best marketing tools are the ones that you actually use. So I can't stress that the email is the most undervalued tool in the marketing space there. So yeah, that's kind of my three.

And every call that I have with a client, it's like, we are doing the work, but is it profitable? And there's Katie there that can help with understanding if you're actually pricing correctly.

And then we send all these leads and then the customer might not be answering the phone properly. And it's an onboarding and sales conversation and where Mick comes in. So we're kinda like the partners, I guess you could say. It's like, you kind of need all three to do it properly.

Because I think Mick put this together perfectly, like, you can have great finance and a great sales system, but you've got no leads or you can have great lead gen and pricing is great, but you don't know how to talk to a customer.

So really good sort of little triangle thoughts we've got here.

- Yep. You gotta have all three. It's just the way the structure works. And to me, it's like, to bore down into a little bit more depth about what you just talked about, I think what you'll see is, many trades-based businesses do random acts of marketing rather than it being structured.

So there are all of these things, links to the chain, but none of them are connected together.

So in and of themselves, there are probably good marketing pieces, but they don't lead anywhere because the chain is broken. So it's great to have someone like Steph to look after that.

Also, I think what you're saying with that email database is, many businesses tend to have their database on a social platform.

So they got all the people on their Facebook page, liking them or in a Facebook group as a member or whatever. Facebook change the rules quite quickly if you hadn't noticed. Anything could happen at any tick of the clock.

You've got to have your people in your database, so no matter what the flavor of the month with the social platforms is, you've still got contact and you can go, hey, let's jump over onto this other platform now and that sort of stuff.

So great things to watch out from Steph. And while you're listening to this video, think for yourself as to what of any of those things are you doing correctly or not?

And do you wanna reach out to get some help with that? Now, I've been in and around marketing for a long time and I had to engage Steph to help me get my shit together.

The owners of trades-based business, you've already got a bloody job. You don't need another one and you haven't got the time or the bandwidth.

I consider myself fairly tech savvy, but when it comes to the changing landscape of Facebook and search engine optimization and Google and what have you, it's a full time job. You've gotta engage somebody who knows your industry and can help look after you.

So that's Steph, she's helping you with that front end. How to become visible and how to attract the right type of people for your business. Once the lead has been attracted, one of the things that I do is, for our guys, is we create what's called the quality client pathway. It's a qualified process.

And its primary function is to educate the customer on how to work with you, how to behave to get the best possible outcome for themselves as far as quality, value and for the, well, the quality of the experience and the value for their investment.

And the mistakes that I see builders and other trades-based businesses, because we've got some electricians and we've even got a building designer and shed builder and a few things outside building in the membership, so we get to look peer inside their businesses as well.

So the common mistakes generally are, somebody who calls up on the phone or sends an email message and they're instantly seen as an opportunity, as a lead. And off we go, we'll jump on the phone and we'll go out to see the site and we'll gather all of the information. And in some cases spend 30, 40, 50 hours putting together a quote for a customer who had no intention of giving you the job.

Because they've already got a builder and they've just pretended to be a lead for you so they could get you to go and basically price check the quote that they've already got.

It just grinds my gears that the people out there think that little of trades and builders that they ask them to put hours and hours and hours, not only their time, but their expertise, their experience, their knowledge into something and expect to pay absolutely nothing for it. So in Builders Business Blackbelt, free quotes are outlawed.

We just do not allow our members to do it. They get paid for their proposals. And there is a process that you need to learn to be able to position yourself to get paid for your proposals.

And every single builder who's done it, wonders why they didn't ever do it before and will never go back. But the key to this folks is that, you've got to flip the script.

And this is the sort of thing that we teach our guys is, instead of you being up on stage juggling the balls and eating fire and the customer is down behind the judges' bench there, they're sitting there with their hands on the bench saying, well, show us what you've got.

And you're juggling and doing all of this sort of thing. And then they'll go, maybe we'll put you through to the next round or maybe not. We've gotta flip that script. You put your prospects up on the stage and you ask them, show me what you've got.

Because it's your business, you can decide whether you're gonna let them into your business, if they're appropriate to work with or not. But there's a couple of things you need to do. So some of the mistake people make is, anybody who could fog up a mirror is a prospect.

Well, no, they're not. Just because they're breathing isn't qualification enough. You need to make sure that they're in the right place in the process, they are the right type of person for you.

And so we create this qualified process that has a series of ever increasing hurdles, behavioral hurdles we call them, to get your prospect in the hurdles of design so the right type of person for you will have no problem stepping over that hurdle. They will perform the action that you've asked them to perform and they go to the next step.

And then there's a slightly higher hurdle. And that goes three or four times before you open the door to your business. The people who aren't appropriate for your business, they will be like the horse that runs up to the jump and it stops.

And they won't go any further, which is fantastic for you because you don't have to say no for a start and they have behaved their way out of your process.

So it saves you a whole lot of time plus you don't end up with a nightmare client. And anyone who's been in the trades-based businesses for any more than five minutes will have had a nightmare client.

Thought that it was a good idea at the time and wished they'd never laid eyes on them. And so this process can eliminate all of those people and even get a seemingly average prospect to turn into a really, really high quality customer for you, for your business.

So we've got Steph to create the lead. They come knocking on the door, through the email, on the phone, into the office, however they do it and then we put them through this process so they become a good quality customer. We do the build for them, they pay us and guess what? We've got some profit left over.

This is when we hand pass everything. Katie, and I don't wanna steal your thunder at all Katie, but I just quickly want to say, because coming from a place where I was a business coach, and before we were called Builders Business Blackbelt, we were called uncoverhiddenprofits.com. That was the name of the business. And we used to have a podcast and all of that sort of stuff.

So I had a big backdrop with Uncover Hidden Profits in two foot high letters on the wall. And it was just near my desk.

And it was the weekend that I was reading Mike Michalowics' "Profit First," I'd been in business for about 18 or 20 years at that stage. And I read Profit First, and I looked up at the wall and it turns out I didn't even know what a profit was.

I felt sick to the point where I thought I was gonna lose my lunch.

I was so disgusted in what I had done in the last 18 to 20 years with our financial decisions. Fortunately, I went pretty quick from disgust to excitement once I started to understand there was a pathway forward. And we started to implement it straight away and it has changed everything.

I can't tell you and I don't wanna tell you 'cause it sounds like it'd be boasting if I said, "This is where we were, this is where we are now." You'd get sort of slashed down with the old, tall poppy syndrome thing. But I can't recommend to anyone, "Profit First," I can't recommend it enough.

And particularly with Katie because that's been the biggest challenge we've had is, massaging and modifying Profit First so it works for a trade-based business. So let's hear from Katie. Please tell us what are the mistakes that you see trades-based businesses make that keeps them poor?

- And that's a good point about having those consistent numbers coming in with your referrals, being paid to get the right client so that you do make money. Because one of the things I see is, the tradies think if they just get another job, if they just get a bigger job, the profit side of things will take care of themselves.

And they won't. And like we said, coming back to that triangle, if you don't get all three sides right, it's not going to work. So I always explain profit first in the way of, we don't go to site and build a house unless we've got a plan, we don't go and do a Reno unless we have a plan and we all know who is doing which part and at which time.

And what I think, as business owners, what has failed to be taught to us is a plan to manage our money. And that's exactly what Profit First is. It's just a framework that we use to manage our money properly, to pay ourself first and to pay ourself a profit.

And the things I see happen time and time again, and everybody thinks that they're the only one, they think that everybody else is doing amazing, they see everybody else, their mates with the cars and the boats and the bikes and so on and they think, ugh!

There's a lot of shame I guess around thinking that they're not doing as well as the next person. I have had the fortune to look into hundreds of trades businesses and majority of them are suffering the same as everybody else.

They just look like they've got it on, but like you, you think you're at a certain spot and then all of a sudden one day you're actually like, no, no, it's not right, I'm not making any profit. So the three things I see go wrong...

- Can you just say what profit is first? And the reason I want you to explain that is because I didn't know what it was. And I thought I was reasonably intelligent, but still didn't understand what real profit was.

And the reason I want you to share that is because through Builders Business Blackbelt, when we get a new member on, we put them through a profit-first financial health check. And the shocking, shocking result of that is, we've been doing this for a long time now, we have not had one builder go through that financial health check, not one of them has been profitable.

And I mean, not $1 of profit. They thought they had profit because the profit and loss sheet said they had profit. But when you read Profit First and measure it that way, none of them were profitable. And that's at least one of the big reasons why we go into business. So explain profit.

- So as Mick was just saying, so there's profit from an accounting perspective on your profit and loss, and when the accountant gives you those at the end of the year when he tells you you've made a profit. That's a paper profit.

Everybody's first thought is, shit where is that money? 'Cause it's not in the account. And then they continue on doing the same thing year in and year out, and they've still got no money left over.

When we talk about profit first and profit from that perspective, we're talking about setting a specific amount aside for your profit as your reward for being the business owner and taking all the risks that there are to being the business owner, which is different to our wages. Our wages is our wages for the job we do in the business.

You might be on site, you might be in the office, whatever that may be. So we have to make sure that we set a specific amount aside for profit first.

What the formula is from an accounting perspective is, sales minus expenses equals profit. So it's a leftover afterthought. What profit first does, it says, sales minus profit equal expenses.

And just that small shift means that we are putting our focus and our importance on actually planning for a profit in our business rather than seeing what we've got left over at the end. Because when we see what we've got left over at the end, we are not profitable.

- The hope strategy.

- Yeah.

- I hope something's left.

- It'll be different next year, and the next year rolls around. It'll be different next year. Here's some tip, it's not. And so the reason why it's not different is because businesses don't prepare their business to be profitable.

I often hear, I wasn't very good at maths, it's not my thing, my bookkeeper takes care of that, I'm a bit behind, these reasons. As the business owner, we need to take responsibility for every part of our business.

It doesn't mean that we have to do every step in our business. And what I find particularly when it comes to the numbers is that, we don't put it first, we put it last.

- Is that calling.

- That's me, sorry.

- We put it last and then it doesn't happen. So we need to make sure that we have our bookkeeping under control, that we are using, I only carry my bookkeeping clients.

So whichever system is fine, but that you are using zero to its most efficient way. There is, again, when we take on new bookkeeping clients, we do a full review of their zero.

And I'm yet to have zero file where we haven't been able to implement so many different automations and efficiencies that make such a difference in their business because we know the numbers are right. So we have to prepare for that.

We can, again, just hope that our accountant is gonna do our bookkeeping every quarter or that the bookkeeper is gonna keep it up to date or that, whoever's job it is, it's just gonna happen. We need to make sure that we plan to put checks in place to make sure that those things happen.

The second thing we need to do, we need to plan for our profit. So we need to know what our goals are, how we're gonna get those goals. So like Steph was saying, word of mouth is great, but we can't plan for that.

And if you can't plan the leads coming in, it makes it really difficult to plan for your profit because it's gonna be lumpy, it's gonna be up and down and you're going to not stick to the plan because you haven't started at step one and got those consistencies in there.

So you have to plan for your profit with things like your marketing, with things like your proposals. You have to get those things in place.

And then the final thing we do is we actually have to make and take our profit. What profit first will do in your business, it will show you very quickly, in most instances that you're not profitable, and it will show you where.

And for many people that is not fun and not super exciting because many of them have been in business for so long and they've managed to get by and they've managed to get by and they've to get by, but they're actually not profitable.

And by following the profit first framework, it makes it really easy to see which areas of your business you need help in first, so that you have a plan. Rather than going, I'm gonna go over here and fix my sales problem, oh hang on, no, it's a marketing problem, oh hang on, no, it's a this problem.

Profit first will show you exactly where the problem is and then you can go in and fix that problem or have that specialist fix that problem for you so then you are consistently and permanently profitable.

- Yeah. And I think one of the important things that you've just mentioned right there at the end was, you might know what you need to fix, and then you sort of said, you could fix it or you could get an expert to go fix it.

We all have been coached at some level by Taki Moore. He's my business coach, I know he's yours Katie, Steph knows of Taki as well. Business coaches need business coaches as well.

- And just on that as well, I think people forget that, and I tell clients all the time, I have a business coach, I'm part of Taki's group, I also have a profit-first mentor.

So I teach this to people all day, every day, but I still have a profit-first mentor who helps me keep on track. Because it's the accountability, it's the focus that we all need at no matter what level. And that surprises people. But it's , vital to our businesses.

- I think the important point to take away from that as well is, Taki always teaches us to ask who not how. Because how do I fix the problem?

Well, you've got to learn how to fix the problem. And you normally have to pay to be taught or pay for a bit of software or do, you've got to pay to fix the problem and it takes your time and your mental energy and all of that sort of stuff.

Asking who instead of how, you have to pay, yeah, but it's significantly cheaper because it doesn't take your time, it doesn't take your bandwidth.

They'll do a million times better job than you ever would because you're a builder or a Sparky or a plumber or some other trades, and you're not built to do that stuff.

So always ask who not how. To that point, what I'd love to do is sort of go around the circle again and ask Steph, what's the first step that somebody needs to take to get a hold of you?

What's the go? Like, they reach out to you, and how do they do that? And once they do, what are the steps that happen for them after that?

- Yeah, sure. So tradiesgo.com.au...

- And I'll put all details at the end of the video as well. So once this video is finished, I'll put it all up on the screen so you'll have Steph's, Katie's and myself's websites, contact information, away you go.

- Mick is so smooth, I tell you. So tradiesgo.com.au, there's an apply for a call section there where you can go to the accelerate page, the accelerate system page and read about our program and how it works and success stories and all that sort of stuff. And are you the right fit?

So there'll be a form that you need to fill out that tells us a little bit about your business and what level you're at. Because we aren't for everyone and I'm completely upfront with that. We can't solve everyone's problem depending on where you're at in your business.

So the best thing to do is to obviously apply for a call, we'll go over a 45-minute game plan call and just go through everything that's going on with the business and where you're at, what you've done before or what you've tried and I can sort of, I won't diagnose, but I can see at where you're at and if your core problem is what we solve.

And if it is what we solve, then we can offer you a spot in our program. And again, because we can't take too many trades or builders on in any one area, because that would just be malpractice. How can we take five plumbers on that are all Sydney plumber.

We would know everyone's secrets and be working bids against each other. So that would just be stupid. I guess the cream of the crop or the best client for us to work with that we can actually make an impact with and then off we go, we get into the whole, getting started and taking over and all that sort of stuff.

And there's always lots of amazing stories that happen when that happens. So that's kind of our on-ramp, I guess you could say.

- Yeah, perfect. And just to add to that, if you're thinking, oh, maybe I don't need that sort of stuff, you'd be really wrong, you'd be very, very mistaken. I know that because I thought that.

And I thought it for a long time and I've missed out on so much opportunity because of it. You just need to be visible. You need to have a website that can be found and there needs to be a pathway.

When somebody reaches your website, there needs to be a logical, lubricated, no-friction pathway to your business. And good luck trying to do that by yourself. 'Cause I said I'm fairly good with the tech and I've failed dismally over the last seven or eight...

- There's just too many parts Mick. And this is the thing, you might get a marketing theme and they'll just do that one bit. They'll just do pay per click and they won't fix the website or they'll just do optimization and they won't fix anything.

We just can't do it like that. We do it the whole thing all at once because we just want it done properly. Like, yeah, whole enchilada.

- Yeah, fantastic. As far as we're concerned, you can reach out to us at buildersbusinessblackbelt.com.au, there's a call button there. Just like Steph said, we're not for everyone, it all depends where you are in your building journey.

I suggest that we are aware best place to help with builders who are established, so you've already got somewhat of a team, two, three, four people in your team member, you've been around, you've experienced the majority of problems in the building industry.

We basically just jump on a call. It's pretty much as simple as that. We learn a little bit about where you are, where do you wanna go, you learn all about how we do things. If that works, we'll talk about what the next step is.

If it's not gonna work, well, at least you know it's not gonna work, no harm, no foul. But let's at least have a conversation and let us point you towards the resources that can make a difference.

Even if it's not working with us, there are a gazillion things we can still help you with and put you in the right direction towards those resources. So that's how we do it. Katie, do we just drop Randy your house, what's the story with you?

- No, you can't do that. If you like, Mick, it's a bit of a trouble for you.

- No, am I allowed to, I'm not sure whether the board is-

- Well, actually no. No, you're not. So my website, profitfirstfortradies.com.au, you can go there, you can purchase a copy of my book, is a good place to start. It's available on audio as well if you prefer to listen. I wrote it specifically for tradies, so it is short, sharp, to the point.

I've had, I've lost count of how many emails I've had from tradies who have said, I haven't picked up a book since primary school and I was able to read. So that's a good start because again, like the others have said, we're not for everybody and we do take a specific type of client on.

So obviously the trades based is where we work, but you need to be ready and willing and open to do something differently because what you've been doing is not working. And we only work with those who are ready to jump in and give profit first a try full on.

We don't work with anyone who's just gonna do this or just gonna do this part of it. All in or as Mick said, there's plenty of other people and other resources I can share and refer you onto because we choose to work with those who are ready to make a difference. You don't have to know how to do everything, you just have to have the right attitude for us.

- And I can add weight to what Katie just said there, because before we met Katie, I'd been doing my best to teach profit first to our members in a fairly poor way. And the one thing that I know for sure uncertain is, you either implement profit first 100% or don't bother.

Like 99% just won't cut it. It's got to be all or nothing. And that doesn't mean that it's hard. When you implemented it, it starts to get easier, a raft of other problems disappear. Just being able to pay the best when it comes up is just one. People go, whoa, I've never felt so good, I've got the money to pay the best.

It's like, really? That's your highlight? Anyway, its been terrific talking to you. I hope this has made sense to you, the viewer, that all of these three things are essential to be successful in your business.

And you may already have one or two of those areas that are successful in your business, but your business overall isn't working the way you want. So, who out of the three parts of the triangle here do you need to talk to?

If you need to talk to all three of us, not sure how that would work, but reach out, do it in alphabetical order or something. Select Katie first. But we're all here to help, we all support each other, we're all trying to help trades-based businesses achieve the same thing, which is to be able to... What's that? The triangle.

- The triangle , the symbol.

- I thought you were doing this to me, that you're sending me love hearts or something.

- That's the triangle.

    • But anyway, once we're finished yabbering, it'll come up on the screen, all of our contact details and you'll be able to reach out to any of us, all of us, ask us questions. We're here to help. I hope this made sense, I hope you can see the value in making sure that these three pillars in your business are as solid as you can make them.

    All the rest is kind of refinement and sexiness, but you've gotta have these three pillars built in a solid fashion in the first place. And I've just realized folks, what we probably should have done is, I had this video sponsored by Specsavers, I just realized. So maybe we'll see if we can put an ad afterwards.

- We can still make that call.

    • So thank you Katie, thank you Steph. I'm Mick Hawes. Its been great talking to the viewer, the listener real soon.

Wrapping Up

So I hope you got some inspiration, I hope you got some reason to start to change your mind about how you approach the marketing of your business and most definitely how you approach the financial management of your business.

One of the things that I believe, in that financial area, get that right and it gets rid of a whole raft of other problems. I just think financial stress is the worst kind of stress because it amplifies the consequences of every other problem that you happen to be dealing with at the same time.

Get rid of the financial stress and the stress of everything else seems to dissipate significantly as well. Doesn't mean you won't have any problems. You'll still have plenty of problems that don't be concerned.

And as far as the marketing is concerned, getting that right, gets rid of a whole raft of problems as well. And it saves so much time getting rid of the people you shouldn't be dealing with, attracting the right people and having, as I said, a lubricated frictionless pathway to speak to you.

And having your marketing doing somewhat of the heavy lifting with the qualification as well is really, really beneficial. The reason that I've asked both Katie and Steph to help out with the podcast and the ToolShed, so there'll be inside the ToolShed, is because, and I've been talking about this a long time and I've got to take my own advice.

And that is, surround yourself with people who are better at things than you are. And I've done it for so long, trying to be the person that helps with the mindset, trying to be the person that helps with the marketing, trying to be the person that helps with the finance and all of these other things.

So, in the ToolShed, we've got Scott Carson who is doing the safe place to land in Blackbelt, and hopefully we'll be doing that in the ToolShed, in the just in future, helping people out that mental side of things, that emotional management, the stress, even mental illness.

We want to have support and we want to have resources for people who are really under the pump emotionally. And then of course having people like Katie and Steph in the ToolShed to be able to reach out to them with guidance for your digital marketing and your financial measurement and management.

So we are trying to add experts and add resources into this ToolShed, so it's going to be the best place for builders to hang out and any trades-based business for that matter. So to that end, in the chat, there's a couple of links.

There's one that I mentioned earlier to get yourself a copy of the book, The Successful Builders Toolkit, but there's another which is the link that I want you to copy, put it in your phone, put it on your computer and share it to anybody in the building industry and invite them into the Builders ToolShed so we can get more people in the industry starting to understand these processes and eliminate the problem so we can have an impact on the industry, not just individual builders. That is our mission.

I also mentioned, if you wanted to get a copy of the Successful Builders Toolkit for free, instead of paying the 29.95, including postage, all you need to do is have a conversation with us.

And the reason we wanna have a conversation with you and we're prepared to give you a book as a gift to do so, is that we want to stay current, we wanna stay relevant, we wanna make sure that we are consistently understanding the current problems, that builders are facing.

For example, how you are dealing with shortages of supply of materials and the price rise of the materials and how you deal with that with your clients. Same with labor. It's very, very difficult to find trades and people to build your team. And that's because of COVID and so on and so forth.

So we wanna stay current and we want you to reach out to us and tell us about your business, your current issues, your current challenges so we can learn from that and look for experts and tools and resources to put into the Builders ToolShed to help everyone.

And if you jump on a call with us, we'll reward you with a copy of this book posted out to you. How you do it is, if I press this button there, if you're in the ToolShed, it says, get personal help. That is just a link that you can click.

It takes you to a form where you can tell us a little bit about your business, then you can book a time that suits you to have this short conversation. Another way of doing it and probably a more simple way of doing it is just reaching out into chat.

So if you go into the ToolShed and find the chat, the two little chatty window, balloony things, click on that, start a chat. You can find me, you can just type my name in, you'll find me, start chat, reach out to me through the chat and we will organize to get on a call to find out where you are, what's in your way and where you wanna go and be able to help point you in the right direction, to the resources you'll need to get you there faster and easier.

So I hope that this was beneficial, I hope you enjoyed meeting both Katie and Steph, and they will be part of the podcast over the next few weeks and obviously part of the ToolShed as well in our attempt to create more value and a better place for builders and trades-based businesses to hang out without all of the distractions and bullshit of Facebook and other social media platforms.

That's the reason that we created the ToolShed. So we'll be back again with another Builders Business Success podcast next week. I know one went a little longer than normal, but I wanted to introduce you to both Katie and Steph and understand the depth of their knowledge and how powerful it can be for your business.

So we'll be talking to you next week at 10:00 AM live for the Builders Business Success podcast. I'm Mick Hawes from Builders Business Blackbelt. That is it. Goodbye, see you next week.