From the Ground Up: Chad Prinkey's Guide to Construction Excellence

[00:00:01] [SPEAKER_00]: You're listening to Scaling Up Services, where we speak with entrepreneurs, authors, business experts and thought leaders to give you the knowledge and insights you need to scale your service-based business faster and easier.

[00:00:15] [SPEAKER_00]: And now, here is your host, Business Coach Bruce Eckfeldt.

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[00:01:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome everyone. This is Scaling Up Services. I'm Bruce Eckfeld. I'm your host.

[00:01:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Our guest today is Chad Prinke. He is CEO and founder of Well Built Consulting.

[00:01:32] [SPEAKER_01]: We're going to talk to him about the work that they do in construction. We're going to talk about his book called Well Built.

[00:01:37] [SPEAKER_01]: We're going to learn more about that. Really fascinating story.

[00:01:40] [SPEAKER_01]: And I love talking with folks that take these industries that are really kind of complicated and I guess, you know, have been around for a while and really kind of rethinking them, thinking about how do we be more strategic, more efficient, more systematic, more methodical about it.

[00:01:58] [SPEAKER_01]: And Chad has really done this in construction, which is a pretty rough and tumble area to be doing this in.

[00:02:04] [SPEAKER_01]: And he's done a really kind of interesting story and some interesting work that he's been doing and how he's approaching the market and building a practice around them.

[00:02:10] [SPEAKER_01]: So excited for the conversation, excited to hear the stories, excited to get the insight.

[00:02:14] [SPEAKER_01]: So with all that, Chad, welcome to the program.

[00:02:16] [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much, Bruce. Appreciate you having me.

[00:02:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, it's fun to have you on.

[00:02:21] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, this one is obviously generally interesting when it comes to service companies and the service profession.

[00:02:28] [SPEAKER_01]: For me personally, I started as an architect before I got into software and stuff.

[00:02:31] [SPEAKER_01]: So I have some personal affiliation here.

[00:02:33] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm excited for this just knowing kind of the complexities of the built environment and construction, the whole process around that contracting.

[00:02:42] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm really curious to see how you've kind of approached this and how you've kind of pivoted or changed the industry or change how you're approaching some of these things.

[00:02:50] [SPEAKER_01]: So before we get into everything you're doing today, would love to get background.

[00:02:53] [SPEAKER_01]: Tell us a little bit about professional background.

[00:02:56] [SPEAKER_01]: How did you get in construction?

[00:02:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Give us the story.

[00:02:58] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so I guess for me it all started back in high school.

[00:03:06] [SPEAKER_02]: So my brother owns a remodeling contracting business.

[00:03:10] [SPEAKER_02]: He started it when I was a sophomore in high school and I immediately became employee number one and was a job site clean up guy and a laborer.

[00:03:28] [SPEAKER_02]: He primarily focused on masonry initially and then that sort of expanded.

[00:03:33] [SPEAKER_02]: So I worked in the field all through high school and college to pay the bills.

[00:03:37] [SPEAKER_02]: I got to tell you, I had more money than most of my friends on that part-time gig.

[00:03:41] [SPEAKER_02]: It pays pretty well if you're willing to work hard.

[00:03:43] [SPEAKER_02]: I also learned that I really was not cut out for the field on a day in, day out basis long term.

[00:03:55] [SPEAKER_02]: This is all a long-winded way of saying I'm not very good at any of the things that I learned.

[00:04:01] [SPEAKER_02]: I became a poor to average mason and worse everything else.

[00:04:08] [SPEAKER_02]: Interesting.

[00:04:08] [SPEAKER_02]: I can carry two packs of shingles up a roof, up a ladder onto a roof and that was serviceable.

[00:04:18] [SPEAKER_02]: So that was kind of my entree into it and I ended up becoming a sales trainer.

[00:04:29] [SPEAKER_02]: That was a business to business sales training environment.

[00:04:32] [SPEAKER_02]: I went to school and learned a ton about presenting and being in front of audiences.

[00:04:42] [SPEAKER_02]: My expertise is in entertainment and public speaking really.

[00:04:45] [SPEAKER_02]: My dad was like, hey man what are you going to do with those skills?

[00:04:49] [SPEAKER_02]: I was like, I don't know.

[00:04:51] [SPEAKER_02]: He said, you should try selling stuff.

[00:04:52] [SPEAKER_02]: It turned out I was really good at that and then I was recruited by a sales training company.

[00:04:55] [SPEAKER_02]: He was like, cool, now you're here.

[00:04:59] [SPEAKER_02]: You've got to bring in business because it's a hundred percent commission.

[00:05:02] [SPEAKER_02]: You get zero dollars unless you bring in a customer.

[00:05:04] [SPEAKER_02]: That's the way to do it.

[00:05:06] [SPEAKER_02]: I was like, well the only business I feel comfortable with is construction.

[00:05:12] [SPEAKER_02]: So here we go.

[00:05:13] [SPEAKER_02]: The truth is, while I've worked construction, I worked construction for seven years or something along those lines on and off in the field.

[00:05:23] [SPEAKER_02]: My real experience in the construction industry is as a consultant for it for the past 16 years.

[00:05:30] [SPEAKER_02]: That's really the story.

[00:05:32] [SPEAKER_02]: I started doing sales training for construction companies and then very quickly I was very successful at that.

[00:05:37] [SPEAKER_02]: I was helping them to grow very quickly and then all of a sudden all kinds of other problems appeared.

[00:05:42] [SPEAKER_02]: Turns out bringing in a bunch of business into a service company means you have to service it.

[00:05:47] [SPEAKER_02]: That stuff gets hard.

[00:05:50] [SPEAKER_02]: The next thing I know, I'm going to courses and getting certifications and yada yada and operations and different aspects of business.

[00:06:02] [SPEAKER_02]: Fast forward to 2021, which is when I left this sales training company that I had built this super complex construction industry consulting practice inside this very simple sales training business.

[00:06:16] [SPEAKER_02]: I was like, this doesn't make sense anymore.

[00:06:18] [SPEAKER_02]: And I started a fully dedicated construction consulting business in 21 and we have 10 employees today.

[00:06:29] [SPEAKER_02]: Everybody that we hire has way more extensive construction industry experience than I do, but I have way more extensive consulting industry experience than they do.

[00:06:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah. Sounds perfect.

[00:06:40] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm curious, what did you realize that you could do well in terms of sales that the average construction company couldn't do nearly as well?

[00:06:52] [SPEAKER_01]: What was your secret capability or superpower in terms of selling construction services?

[00:06:57] [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's not being trapped in the self-limiting mindsets that the industry enforces on contractors.

[00:07:09] [SPEAKER_02]: And this is the same case, whether you're an accounting firm or a law firm.

[00:07:15] [SPEAKER_02]: There is this perception that it is a very commoditized space and so attorneys are always talking about what's my hourly rate and same thing with accounting firms.

[00:07:28] [SPEAKER_02]: They're under pressure with that a lot of time.

[00:07:30] [SPEAKER_02]: With contractors, they're all convinced that they have to be the low bid otherwise they won't get the job.

[00:07:35] [SPEAKER_02]: And fundamentally when I heard that for the first time, I laughed.

[00:07:41] [SPEAKER_02]: I was like, come on man, that's just bullsh- it's not true.

[00:07:45] [SPEAKER_02]: And so that naturally led me to challenging a lot of norms very successfully because it turns out it is BS.

[00:08:00] [SPEAKER_02]: You can sell value, you can build relationships and get paid more for having those relationships and so on and so on.

[00:08:10] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's really it.

[00:08:12] [SPEAKER_02]: It's just that there's no brainwashing in my, probably my audacity to believe that just because the whole industry says it's true doesn't mean it's real.

[00:08:30] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.

[00:08:31] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I want to dig into this one because I think this is true for so many professions where the way that the profession has sort of set up the buying process, engagement process ends up commoditizing the work.

[00:08:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Right, like the whole RFP process which is in many different industries but particularly construction where you are kind of forced to respond or propose something in such a tightly structured way where the only thing-

[00:09:06] [SPEAKER_01]: Like how, I guess how did you get out of that or where have you seen the opportunities to kind of get out of that because I feel like it's such an industry specific or sort of an industry model that needs to change.

[00:09:20] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean give me your insights on that.

[00:09:22] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so the first thing that I always remind people is that the RFP while that is this very structured process that you do need to cross your T's, dot your I's and follow to the T, you truly do.

[00:09:40] [SPEAKER_02]: The people, there are human beings on the other end of that and one of the things that is wonderful about again most industries but certainly the construction industry is that we're doing business with the same people time and time again.

[00:10:00] [SPEAKER_02]: So if you know that these are the customers that are going to send out RFPs, then why not proactively develop relationships with these same people independent of the RFP process and through developing relationships get an opportunity to build trust, demonstrate value, tell your story.

[00:10:26] [SPEAKER_02]: And then let's be honest, I'll acknowledge again one of the nice things and painful things about the construction industry is that what I'm going to do business with the same people over and over again.

[00:10:36] [SPEAKER_02]: I have to win every job on its own, right? I have to win each one which is both a blessing and a curse but the blessing- one of the blessings about that is that maybe for the first project the way I had to win was to be low.

[00:10:51] [SPEAKER_02]: But once I got that first project and I was building the relationship and I was demonstrating value, they came away from it. We all came away from it and they were like man that was awesome.

[00:11:02] [SPEAKER_02]: These guys are clearly provably better than the other options in the field.

[00:11:08] [SPEAKER_02]: I can build on that and convert it into better pricing, better margins and healthier business as time goes on.

[00:11:20] [SPEAKER_02]: And what's funny with contractors specifically is that while they simultaneously disbelieve what I just said, they have evidence of it in their existing books of business today.

[00:11:36] [SPEAKER_02]: If they look at their existing books of business, they will see that there are people that they're doing business with today that steer them to work, that help them to win and they're like well yeah, well that's Steve.

[00:11:46] [SPEAKER_02]: Steve's different. No, Steve's not different. You just need to create more Steve's.

[00:11:52] [SPEAKER_02]: So if I can create a machine that helps my clients to replicate the success that they already have, that's what turns into the kinds of incredible growth results that we deliver.

[00:12:08] [SPEAKER_02]: That has been wildly successful. But again, like I said to you man, in the service industry, winning the work is only one, maybe one third of the challenge if not half.

[00:12:20] [SPEAKER_01]: I was just going to ask, how much do you see, if you want to increase profits, you either need to increase your pricing or decrease your expenses.

[00:12:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Where do you see most of the challenges for construction firms when it goes to what's really impacting their bottom line profitability?

[00:12:38] [SPEAKER_02]: I'll take and insert something in between those two things. If you've got increasing your pricing on one end and decreasing your expenses on the other end, in the middle of that, I'll just put decreasing your direct cost.

[00:12:52] [SPEAKER_02]: So when I say decreasing expenses, you can decrease overhead, right? Just main cuts and say we're not doing marketing anymore and we're outsourcing HR, right?

[00:13:00] [SPEAKER_02]: And cut a bunch of overhead. But there's decreasing direct cost expenses and that's just by running a better company.

[00:13:10] [SPEAKER_02]: And there's so much money there. There's just so much money sitting there that without increasing prices, you can dramatically increase your profitability just by sucking less.

[00:13:24] [SPEAKER_01]: I guess what has shifted in the construction industry over the last decade, two decades that is really impacting, I mean, I know COVID obviously threw everything in a tailspin in terms of supply chains and being able to get materials and labor issues and things like that.

[00:13:39] [SPEAKER_01]: But what have been the key factors for construction companies in terms of the variables they need to think about, shifts in the market? What does a modern day successful construction company do right that is unique today?

[00:13:52] [SPEAKER_02]: I think they are very dialed in to what's happening in their markets. There's a lot of information available and what construction companies have always kind of known is that if I can build X, I can probably build Y.

[00:14:13] [SPEAKER_02]: And so technically that tends to be true. I mean, you've got to be careful not to take that to extremes just because you can build an apartment complex doesn't mean you can build a nuclear power plant.

[00:14:25] [SPEAKER_02]: But if you can build an apartment complex, you can build senior living and you can probably build dormitories and you could probably build town homes and you can probably write all these different things. If you can build X, you can probably build Y.

[00:14:36] [SPEAKER_02]: I share that to say that again, operationally and technically they have the ability to be much more nimble and move with market trends because if there is one thing that's happened in the past four or five years, it's that the market has been a total schizophrenic mess.

[00:14:54] [SPEAKER_02]: And it can't decide what's hot and what's cold and apartments are on fire, interest rates go up, they're dead. Office is dead and never coming back unless it's Class A and trophy office in key markets.

[00:15:09] [SPEAKER_02]: And so like there's everything has its it's very it's a very up and down, very strange market. My point is if you want to be really, really successful in navigating today's market, you need to be excellent at identifying where you actually have good technical overlap and the ability to do work.

[00:15:28] [SPEAKER_02]: And then being able being very capable at messaging that and doing marketing and business development to get you in front of relationships that can open new doors for you.

[00:15:40] [SPEAKER_02]: So like, for example, just to play on what I've already laid out, if you're if you're a consistent market rate, which would mean which simply put means like normal apartment buildings, market rate apartment buildings, the ones where the developers are building them because they're trying to make money from rents.

[00:15:57] [SPEAKER_02]: And interest rates have gone up in this environment and it's just collapse. Yeah, I've seen that depending on the market you're in. Do you have the flexibility to recognize that like you know what's not collapsing a student housing?

[00:16:08] [SPEAKER_02]: It's on fire. And it's the same basic product, but it's a totally different customer.

[00:16:13] [SPEAKER_01]: And different network. I mean, the people that buy are very different people than that we're buying apartment buildings. That's exactly right.

[00:16:20] [SPEAKER_02]: And so what I need to be able to do is know my market well enough to know who are those people. How can and then come up with a good strategy for getting you know for creating those connections and for most construction companies.

[00:16:33] [SPEAKER_02]: Let's be honest man like the average construction company America's got 25 employees, which is not unlike most service businesses.

[00:16:39] [SPEAKER_02]: Most service businesses are, you know, these small to mid-sized companies scattered throughout the United States that are hyper local to regional and they don't need a thousand new relationships man.

[00:16:51] [SPEAKER_02]: It's not a software company right there. They don't need they're not doing business on on selling you know a thousand licenses a month.

[00:16:57] [SPEAKER_02]: They're doing business on like one key relationship that keeps them moving and keeps them from suffering during a down market cycle. And that one relationship will absolutely be the difference between layoffs and growth.

[00:17:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Give me a sense of how kind of the construction market is kind of structured at this point. Like what are the typical sizes? I mean, I know there's some you know massively huge construction companies out there but like in terms of the general market.

[00:17:25] [SPEAKER_01]: How big are construction companies typically and how many people do they employ? I mean, what's the typical construction company look like?

[00:17:32] [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, so there's I tossed out that statistic that the average construction business in the United States has 25 employees. That's probably even high probably 18 at this point or something like that if you include residential single family residential construction companies and there's a huge difference.

[00:17:49] [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, let's be clear there's a huge difference between the general contractor slash construction manager which is going to employ by and large only professionals meaning only white collar jobs plus a few field oversight roles that are still white collar oversight roles.

[00:18:06] [SPEAKER_02]: Those guys don't think of themselves as they were they were hard hat and right they were hard at right.

[00:18:11] [SPEAKER_02]: The people who play that role are still managers not doers if that makes sense. And those companies are much smaller on the average so for example a client of ours that might have might be $100 million general contractor might have 25 to 40 employees.

[00:18:33] [SPEAKER_02]: It sounds like a huge company it's not it's really a relatively small company because all they're doing is the professional services over top of it and what they're doing is hiring the 25 to 40 trade contractors who are actually performing the work and each one of those trade contractors.

[00:18:52] [SPEAKER_02]: They have field employees and those field employee the companies that self perform and have field employees. Those are the ones that are going to be you know a 25 employee for example taking the analogous size, a 25 employee plumbing contractor may only be doing 6 million or 8 million.

[00:19:13] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so that so that these general contractors are I mean it'd be $100 million company and you may have a $20 million construction project, but they're outsourcing 18 million of that to subs to do the work and they're keeping the two for administration and profit.

[00:19:28] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I'm not exactly right. Yeah, perfectly said. That's exactly right. And while that plumbing contractor on the same $20 million project may have a plumbing contract value of 4 million or 3 million on that job.

[00:19:41] [SPEAKER_02]: And and that may make up half of their business right that that six may that may make up half of their business this year is that one single $3 million project that they have all 25 of their resources committed to over the course of a six month period, you know, and obviously way oversimplifying but but that's.

[00:20:00] [SPEAKER_02]: That kind of gives it kind of gives you a sense of it and so I should be very clear. I don't have personally I don't spend much if any time in the in the single family residential world which is a huge sector in the in the construction market but one that like you just can't know everything man and and so what I focus on is the

[00:20:19] [SPEAKER_02]: Pardon me the commercial governmental the the non single family construction sector and what I definitely am finding a trend toward consolidation and acquisition there are definitely fewer and fewer five to 25 person operations, you know, opening compared to those that are closing or selling.

[00:20:45] [SPEAKER_02]: And what why is that what is this is the natural market maturation or something or I have a theory, I think I think the biggest drivers of that are two things one is the.

[00:20:59] [SPEAKER_02]: You know the aging out of the baby boomer generation combined with their kids the the Xers and Millennials that either got into different industries because they watch dad killing himself in the construction industry for 40 years.

[00:21:16] [SPEAKER_02]: Or or frankly like you know they grew up going to private schools and are driving a Porsche and they're you know they're in there and they're in a you know they went to law school.

[00:21:25] [SPEAKER_02]: Like they were, you know, meeting, you know, success I gave my kids a better life than I had oh crap now I have no succession plan.

[00:21:34] [SPEAKER_02]: So so there's a there's a lot of aging out of boomers and not a lot of places, not a lot of people directly coming up behind them that are hungry to take the business.

[00:21:43] [SPEAKER_02]: I've been doing this like I said for 16 years and and you know 16 years ago to baby eight years ago it was so much more common that I'd be having conversations with and I'm sorry to generalize stereotype here but this is just kind of true demographically.

[00:21:59] [SPEAKER_02]: I would have so many more conversations with dad who was talking about getting his son to take over for him and today I'm having a lot more conversations with dad who's like my kids aren't getting into the business.

[00:22:11] [SPEAKER_02]: I can tell they're not interested. I'm not seeing that path. I'm going to need to figure out a different exit strategy and and the ones that don't figure out a tangible exit strategy.

[00:22:22] [SPEAKER_02]: They end up just kind of winding down which is a really that's tough. It's it's certainly an option. I it's just it's tough for employees. I just feel bad for the human cost associated with that from an employee standpoint.

[00:22:34] [SPEAKER_02]: But so that's one theory and then the other theory is that with all the advances in construction and technologies that are required and prefabrication is a big thing.

[00:22:42] [SPEAKER_02]: For example prefabrication requires that you become not just a construction company but a manufacturing company which means you need a warehouse.

[00:22:48] [SPEAKER_02]: You need facilities. You need you know you need to become much more complex and you need to sink a whole bunch of money more money in the business.

[00:22:54] [SPEAKER_02]: And I just think when people do that math they look at it and they say man to be competitive. I've got to spend eight million dollars on a on a manufacturing facility and I have a net profit of one point two million dollars a year.

[00:23:04] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to be playing this game for the next 30 screw it. I'm selling. Yeah. I mean do you find you know in the work that you've done in this space do you find that there are kind of sizes of companies that work particularly well and those that don't like you kind of need to get to a certain level or certain number of people or certain number of projects to kind of create sort of stability and profitability.

[00:23:26] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean what's your kind of target for some of these groups that you're working with. That is the first time I've ever had to think about that question. That is such a an interesting and useful question Bruce.

[00:23:38] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to go this is obviously very much off the hit. Yeah go for it. But my my my reaction to that is that there is a difference between running a practice and running a company and every industry every service business.

[00:23:56] [SPEAKER_02]: Has its own form of what I've heard called and I like the term the Valley of Death and the and the Valley of Death is that spot where you have your you are pressing hard to make the jump from being a practice and a practice is like think about like a doctor's office something that is mostly predicated on one human beings relationships and skills and they may have a supporting cast of people around them.

[00:24:26] [SPEAKER_02]: But it's mostly them and if they left there would be no business. So making the leap from being a practice practice to becoming a true company where it's not dependent on that one individual but in fact that one individual becomes essentially irrelevant to the business and and that individual typically being the owner founder.

[00:24:45] [SPEAKER_02]: There is a Valley of Death and in the construction industry I think that Valley is somewhere in between 25 and 100 employees and sorry for self-performed contractors because I'm considering this field component to it as well for the general contractor and construction manager.

[00:25:06] [SPEAKER_02]: You know what it's probably more like 25 to 50 for them but either way there's this there's this gap where you are not really viable yet and you're working your butt off to try to become viable without the owner being the end all be all center of the company.

[00:25:28] [SPEAKER_02]: That doesn't mean that the owner can't do some things inside the business on the other side of the Valley of Death but that Valley of Death is the reason they call it that is because when you're small.

[00:25:42] [SPEAKER_02]: It's very manageable you've got it under control. You're not hitting grand slams but you're paying yourself well. It's not uncommon for an owner of a business on the small end of the Valley of Death to be paying themselves in between 300 and a million dollars a year 300k that is in a million dollars a year.

[00:25:58] [SPEAKER_02]: Not uncommon for them to be paying themselves that's a lot of money. It's great. So fantastic living. But what they come to realize is they don't really have anything to sell or hand off. It's not really a thing. It's really they are the thing.

[00:26:09] [SPEAKER_02]: And when they and a certain group of people should never go beyond that right. A certain group of people should stay there and there's no money put it in the bank. Yes. Make money put it in the bank when you're done you're done close the door.

[00:26:22] [SPEAKER_02]: Another group of people should and wants to is inspired to push through that phase and scale up and you know.

[00:26:32] [SPEAKER_02]: So when you're making the decision to scale up your business that's expensive. And if you're an owner who's used to paying himself or herself you know a million dollars a year being this small business you might need to get really comfortable with the idea you're going to put yourself on a salary of 150 grand for five seven eight years while you make it through this Valley and that sucks a lot of people aren't willing to do it but that's the truth where you're rolling all of your profits right back into the business just constantly

[00:27:01] [SPEAKER_02]: slugging it right back into the business to make better investments to hire more staff to get more training to put all the things in place to be the now if you get on the other side it's beautiful. And if you thought a million dollars a year was a lot wait until you start seeing these checks right. And by the way you can go hang out on a boat somewhere for the majority of the day and all that works out but that's that would be my sorry that was great.

[00:27:25] [SPEAKER_01]: But I think that that encapsulates the challenge right is that it takes it takes some good strategy it takes some patient take some significant investment and time right like you need to you need to make some changes that take a while and get to the next phase but hanging out in the middle is painful.

[00:27:43] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah well you can't live if you live in the middle you make it's the worst of all scenarios right. You don't make enough money and your business can't operate without you. And again there's going to be a period of time where that is like you just have to power through it. The secret is you know shortening that span as quickly as possible and I think it's essential to one essential ingredient is that the owner has to have a self concept that is not a

[00:28:13] [SPEAKER_02]: predicated on being the the be all and all inside the business. In other words they need to check their ego and make sure that they're that they're not trying to do this for their emotional needs they're doing this for their financial needs. Yeah it's all attachment right exactly.

[00:28:28] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm curious do you find that most of these companies take kind of an organic growth mode or they go through acquisitions and M&A like what do you find as being kind of the best strategies for most of these groups.

[00:28:39] [SPEAKER_02]: So OK it comes in all shapes and sizes and you certainly can be successful in any way but the way that I would recommend pushing through would be through organic growth and mastering your business process because here's the deal when you when you when you try to get there through

[00:28:56] [SPEAKER_02]: acquisition unless you have an operating system for running your business that's extremely well honed in other words you have processes defined in each of your departments and you've got great training so the people are great at those processes and you've got systems in place

[00:29:11] [SPEAKER_02]: so that the processes are followed consistently and you've got good leadership and the list of all the things that I would talk about it and then I talk about my book all the time is you know is it's going to be really difficult to have a successful acquisition.

[00:29:28] [SPEAKER_02]: What's more common is that it's essentially like okay we're pretending like we're one company but we're totally not exactly.

[00:29:33] [SPEAKER_02]: And this company is actually operating over here and you're so what I would recommend doing is organic growth to master your to really to nail the ABC company way right with the ACME Co way and then from there acquisitions can make a ton of sense.

[00:29:52] [SPEAKER_02]: And then and then you know really the ones that are wildly profitable are really really good at making value buys.

[00:30:07] [SPEAKER_02]: In other words buying companies that that are very strategically lacking the things that you have but they have unbelievable talent and maybe even great reputations and then rolling them right onto your operating system and they're like oh my god this is how we could be doing business yeah wish you if you'd have known that before we wouldn't have bought you for fire sale.

[00:30:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly yeah no it's an immediate value creation right if you can plug plug their capabilities into your platform and generate you know profits quickly like that's a that's a that's a money making machine.

[00:30:38] [SPEAKER_01]: This been a pleasure if people want to find out more about you more about well built what's the best way to get that information.

[00:30:42] [SPEAKER_02]: So go to well built consulting.com definitely jump on Amazon and buy the book it's called well built how the top 2% of construction contractors create superior value profits and excellence I've had a bunch of people tell me that the book translates beyond the construction industry I'm kind of dumb so I don't know if they're right.

[00:31:03] [SPEAKER_02]: I just don't have I don't have much experience beyond the commercial construction industry so I'm like I'll just trust you yeah that it's translational but yeah so well built is the name of the books on Amazon and then among other places I'm sure it's just the Amazon tends to be the giant in the in the story right so yeah exactly.

[00:31:21] [SPEAKER_02]: And then I pump out a lot of content and not just be my team our team puts out a ton of awesome content on LinkedIn we have a great newsletter reel we put out three or four different newsletters a week consistently that are just great reads there you know obviously there's options for people to click here and do stuff but they're just really useful reads when it comes to leadership and sales and organizational structure and things like that so those are the different ways that and certainly

[00:31:51] [SPEAKER_02]: connect with me on LinkedIn follow me on LinkedIn and reach out through our website wellbuiltconsulting.com sign up for our newsletter awesome Chad thank you so much for taking the time today it's been a pleasure thank you Bruce yeah was awesome.

[00:32:05] [SPEAKER_00]: You've been listening to scaling up services with business coach Bruce Ekfeld to find a full list of podcast episodes download the tools and worksheets and access other great content visit the website at scaling up services.com and don't forget to sign up for the free newsletter at scaling up

[00:32:20] [SPEAKER_00]: services.com slash newsletter.

[00:32:34] [SPEAKER_01]: This podcast is a part of the C suite radio network for more top business podcasts visit C dash sweet radio dot com.