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Host Scott Lollar is a 35-year veteran of the painting industry and founder of Consulting4Contractors. The 'Success Beyond The Brush' Podcast serves as a touchpoint to painting contractors who have hustled, sacrificed, and worked hard to get their business to where it is today. Now, you need the guidance, expertise, experience, and team to make it into the multi-million-dollar company of your dreams. You'll hear stories and interviews from "Brothers of the Brush" and "Sisters of the Sprayer" who have been where you are and are charting a new course for their company's success. Listen in and go beyond $1,000,000!
SBTB Ep. 19 | Why Goals, Budgets, and Projections Separate Growing Contractors from Struggling Ones
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[00:00:00]
Team Goal Wall Chart
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Rick: This was a really different concept for my team was I was like, well, what is our goal going to be for March?
Rick: And they're like, well, what's our budget? And I said, I don't care what the budget is. What do you think y'all can do as a team? What do you feel like you can do? You know the projects you got going on, you know the ones coming up. so they set a goal. So I wrote it on a, a flip chart, post it and put it on the wall where they work.
Rick: And they stared at it every day and every time we billed jobs, I made the line go up so they could see how they were doing on a daily basis, every day. Did we bill a job today? Did we get towards our goal? And we beat the goal. We beat their goal. We beat their goal by I think it was like almost 70K almost $70,000 we made up.
Scott: And that was a big impact for your quarter as well,
Rick: It was a big impact for the quarter because then it caused our quarter not to be a loss.
Welcome to Success Beyond The Brush
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Welcome to Success Beyond the Brush of the podcast, where we're helping contractors grow profitable businesses, build strong teams, [00:01:00] and create the freedom they started their businesses for in the first place. Today's episode, we got Scott Lollar sitting down with Rick Holtz of Holtz and Son Painting in Richmond, Virginia.
He's also a Consulting4Contractors coach, and they're going to be talking about the real power behind business growth. Those three things are goals, projections, and budgets. There are too many contractors out there that say they want to hit a revenue number, but they never really build a roadmap to actually get them there.
And so Rick is going to share how his company evolved from operating year to year without a clear plan to really building a culture where his entire team understands their numbers, they contribute to their goals, and track their progress throughout the year. So if you've ever wondered how to create realistic growth targets or involve more than just yourself, you know, involve your team in planning, what KPIs are and what those key performance indicators actually tell you about your business, which ones actually matter, and when to adjust your plan during the year, this episode is going to give you some [00:02:00] practical frameworks for how to make your goals achievable instead of aspirational. Let's jump into this episode with Rick and Scott.
Scott: Welcome to another edition of Success Beyond the Brush. I'm here with Rick Holtz today. Rick Holtz and Son painting, and also a C4C coach. Hey, Rick.
Rick: Hey Scott, how are you?
Scott: Doing great. I'm playing host today. Mark is playing hooky. So I thought it'd give us a chance to talk about some things that are near and dear to my heart and yours as well.
Why Plans Matter
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Scott: The power of goals, projections, and budgets. We have always heard people have these grandiose ideas and statements, you know, I want to be 2 million, 5 million, 1 million, whatever the number is.
Scott: And the reality is you and I both know there's a big difference between saying that and doing that.
Rick: Absolutely.
Scott: Nobody knows that better than you. And so I thought today we could talk a little bit about why do projections, budgets, and plans matter? How do we make them?
Scott: How do we track them, adjust them? [00:03:00] How do we communicate them to our team so that they become reality on December 31st? How about that?
Rick: Sure. Sounds great. Sounds great.
Building Annual Plan
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Scott: So how do you think people, or how do you create a plan, a vision for a new year?
Scott: How do you begin that process?
Rick: I'm going to go back for a minute just real quick. So I've been in business for 30 years, okay? In the paint business. First 15 years, I, we did no planning. We really didn't. We found out how well we did when the accountant gave us our P&L and our financial reports, which would normally be in February of the following year, you know, and so we never knew how we did.
Rick: We just went out and looked for jobs, got jobs, did them, finished them. Knew if we made money on individual jobs, and I guess we sort of had a feel for it. But we didn't really plan. So then fast forward 2011 we start planning and I think the way it looks with us, you know, the first [00:04:00] thing you got to do is you got to look at your history.
Rick: You got to look at what your capability is, right? What did we do? What are we capable of doing with the resources we have? Okay. That's sort of where we start. That's where you start your plan and what does that look like? Do we have inefficiencies? Do we have opportunities for growth? can we be more efficient with the resources we have or are we going to add a whole bunch of new resources, like a new service or a new sub crew or a bunch of new employees? Because then you can take what your history was with what you had, and then add more to it. typically what we do, like I said, look at our history, look at where we ended a year.
Rick: then start thinking about, well, what are we going to do differently this year? And we look at those things, what are our priorities going to be? Is it going to be a year where we don't really want a lot of growth because we're going to work on processes and procedures and really trying to get better? [00:05:00] Or are we going to add another service, like I said before, and we're going to increase our revenue a lot. And then we set our goals.
Management Team Buy In
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Rick: And the way we do it is we have a management team, which is, you know, our project managers, our operations manager, our estimator, our CFO, all that kind of stuff. All of us are going to meet and we're all going to look at this together. And everybody's going to have input, everybody's going to have input.
Rick: This is not Rick Holtz's goals, this is the company's goals.
Scott: Interesting. But you're part of the team, so you bring your voice to that conversation,
Rick: Absolutely. It's key.
Scott: Yeah. So
Rick: It's key, and I think it's really important to let everybody have a voice.
Scott: yeah. What's the difference then between what you want versus what they want, or how would those things differ?
Rick: Well, I think for me, I see the business at a higher level I don't, I'm not involved in the minutia of the day-to-day. So I have a different vision. It's not a better vision. It's not a superior vision, it's just a [00:06:00] different vision. So sometimes I can see blind spots or I can see opportunities that they don't see or they haven't realized because they're looking at things at a day-to-day or even a week to week cadence and I think it's important for an owner or somebody who's not involved in that to kind of offset. And that way we can kind of have a back and forth discussion and sometimes they can convince me to agree with them and sometimes I can kind of get them to, to raise their bar, so to speak.
Raising The Bar
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Scott: So how do you guide that discussion if you think, like you just said that they might be playing it just a little bit safe, or if they're off the mark, do you guide that conversation or
Rick: Absolutely because I think what you do is you got to look at opportunities, you got to look at areas of improvement. You know, like we did this last year, but we still didn't have a really great scheduling process down. If we could nail our scheduling process down, or if we could limit our go backs, or if we could have better job close [00:07:00] out.
Rick: I think we could avoid crews going back, so therefore it's going to free him up to stay on new jobs longer so we can increase our revenue next year. Like if we do three or four things that I think are opportunities, we could increase our revenue by X each month. If we do it each month times 12 months, look where we could be. You know? And I think it's those types of conversations of trying to lead them to what their potential really is. Because I think as humans, Scott, you and I both know we want to be comfortable. We don't want to stretch. I don't want to stretch, do you? It's not fun. I want to be comfortable. I don't want to exert myself too much, but we see potential in others so much easier than we do in ourselves.
Scott: Yeah, so this is great.
Beyond Revenue KPIs
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Scott: Now, one of the easiest units of measurement is money, right? That, I mean, so many people talk about money, revenue. And yet the easiest one to kind of establish or talk about. But the [00:08:00] fact is it might be one of the weakest motivators or one of the poorest KPIs to look at when we're talking about planning.
Scott: Is that correct?
Rick: I mean, I agree and I disagree. I think you've got to use something you can measure. It's got to be something that's unbiased that you can measure, but you can also add to that a feeling, right? You could have a killer year on the books, but if your team is stressed and stretched and everybody's ready to quit, then is that really a successful year?
Rick: So I feel like you really have to balance numbers with other measures. But I don't think you could just use other measures and not have numbers. Not in the game of business. I mean, the goal of all of us being in business is to make a profit, right? Grow and make a profit, or stay healthy and make a profit.
Rick: I mean, it doesn't always have to be grow, but you've got to make a profit to continue to exist. [00:09:00] So you've got to measure that.
Non Money Targets
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Scott: So someone that's and would like some examples, give us some examples of some targets, goals or something that your company back November, December, even maybe before that discussed and came up with as a team, as things that you wanted to improve in 2026 that weren't money.
Rick: Well, I mean, I think all of it probably could go back a little bit to money, but a few of the things that we're working on is labor efficiency. Do we have the right person doing the right job? And labor efficiency, I mean, we're still working on different ways to measure that.
Rick: But maximizing your hourly expenditure per hour of revenue right, is basically, I guess what it is. You want to maximize that where you can. But it could be real simple. I mean, you don't want a high paid person footing a ladder for a lower paid person. It just doesn't make sense. So it's those sorts of things we're looking for.
Rick: Measuring go backs is a huge [00:10:00] thing for us. We're trying to track go backs, because every time that we have to pull resources off of a current job to go back to a job that we thought we finished, that's costing us money, you know? And so what we're doing now is we're just tracking them for the first quarter, and then see if we can find some trends to then see if we can take some actions or see if we see some patterns and see if there's something we can do differently to eliminate or avoid or cut them back. So those are just two examples of some goals that we have for this year that I guess I would say are non-monetary goals. Another one is just kind of defining the roles of crew leaders in our business. And actually the role of just a field, a team member, like, what is your role? Because we've never really done a good job of sitting down with them as a group and then as individuals and say, you know, this is how you affect the success of this business.
Rick: That's what we're doing. And we started doing that. I mean, they had two, two [00:11:00] crew leaders in today that they had a 35 minute review with. And that process I think is really important because you're being more efficient. They understand what they have control over and what they don't. And like I said before, the whole point of us being in business is to make a profit.
Scott: Yeah, so in your management team.
Inclusive Planning Culture
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Scott: You know, bringing the management team, as you call them, the senior leadership of your company together, do you find that there's some people that are, don't have really the, they don't think in the way that might be common as far as senior leadership or they're or they're nervous to speak out or they don't participate as much as other...
Scott: how do you bring everyone into this conversation and nurture them along even when they're, may be a little bit more on the introverted side or don't feel the confidence to, speak at this level as a junior member coming in, you know, how do you bring everyone into this conversation?
Rick: I think what we do is just try to call them individually. I mean, we stress over and over, this is a safe place and your input is important as my input. [00:12:00] Because at the end of the day, if you can't get everybody to voice how they feel, how can they be successful? You know, I just feel like if you don't have a voice and you can't encourage them to have a voice and give you input, then they're not going to be successful.
Scott: Yeah. And do you find that there's typically a pretty much a consensus after you guys spend sufficient time together and hash this over, or is there sometimes not?
Rick: I mean, you know, there's been years where it hasn't been. But our team has been around and been together for long enough now that we are pretty solid, you know? And that's the wonderful thing. We're in a really good spot right now. I'm probably going to jinx something, but we're in a pretty good spot now. You know, we're close.
Rick: When I say close, if we're talking about goals of millions, we might be off by a couple hundred thousand dollars on what we think we can do and say like a revenue goal. Or we might be two or three percentages off on a gross profit percentage goal for the year or [00:13:00] something like that. But it's not anything drastic like, y'all are crazy, you know, y'all are being too aggressive.
Rick: I'm going to walk out, you know what I'm saying? You don't see that, and I don't see people in our team that are like a deer in headlights, kind of like shocked or intimidated by the conversation. We've done a good job of working together as a team, improving as a team, continuing to try to educate ourselves to get better.
Rick: So
Scott: Yeah.
Rick: Yeah, we're pretty strong.
Scott: So do you find yourself ever walking in to these moments or these, you know, timeframes that we're talking about you know, the planning of the year with some kind of a crazy idea that you're going to try to introduce and get across the finish line, or are you really working these ideas way in advance of that so that it's not new?
Rick: I'm not the kind of guy that, likes all these crazy new ideas. You know, I guess I'm a little bit different than a lot of entrepreneurs. You know, [00:14:00] some entrepreneurs aren't happy unless they're constantly building something new, and I'm the kind of guy that would tinker on the same thing forever until they got it to a point maybe of perfection.
Rick: But for me, I think it's so important, like I don't still feel like I'm good enough at this to really do anything crazy, like add power washing or add window washing or add gutters to my business. You know what I mean? Because I'm trying to be the best painting, wallpaper and carpentry company that I can be, and I feel like as soon as I solve one thing or we solve one thing as a team, there's two or three other new things that pop up within that core that we need to work on. So I, I just don't get bored with it. So I don't really come up with these crazy, like, I'm going to do epoxy floors now. You know what I mean?
Scott: yeah.
Saying No To Services
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Scott: Well, and, but now let's, there are some times [00:15:00] appropriately that you evaluate a service, and you've talked about that. Are we going to add a new service? And I can think of two. One that you have really gone after this year, I believe is your first year and one that you took a pass on about a year ago.
Scott: That was a hard decision, right? Because that was something that was a, a, an additional service, not really painted related, but in line with your designer work. And um, you looked hard and I would suggest from my, in my words, you were pretty close to maybe making a go of that maybe. And then you opted to take a pass.
Scott: And then on the other side is your carpentry division, like making that a little bit more official, like, we can do more, here's, you know, we are going to actually employ carpenters for these things. So you have, those are two examples of services. One that you took a pass on and one that you said, let's go.
Scott: Could you speak to that process a little bit and how did you evolve your team? Or was this more a decision you [00:16:00] decided to make?
Rick: Well, part of it, the one I said no on was really more on me. Because I knew to get that service launched, it was going to take my time and my energy, and I knew that if I took my time and energy, it would take my time and energy away from the core of our business, which is what I make a living off of. And, you know, we support so many families, right?
Rick: And we had just moved to a new location and we just had a lot of balls in the air and it just wasn't a good time. I still think that it's a good business opportunity. You know, it's dealing with a clientele that we deal with. It's a high end service, white glove service, which I feel like we're good at.
Rick: All those things. But it got to be an ego thing too. I was like, am I doing this because it's something I really want to do, or am I doing this because people think I'm going to be good at it? And I'm like, you know, people think I'm going to be good at it. Multiple people have told me I must be great. And then uh, you know, I got all wrapped up into that, oh, look at me.
Rick: And then I was like, you know, in [00:17:00] the grand scheme of things, I think it could hurt me in the long run. At this point in time, it's not, I'm not saying it's not something I may do years down the road. Let's talk about carpentry that we've kind of gotten into more. Carpentry is a different situation because we were able to hire people that I feel like can run it at a higher level than I could. So it's not taking my time. I mean, I have to manage it. I have to have check-ins to make sure that the way we perform carpentry is consistent with how we treat people. But as far as the technical part of carpentry and how that business works, it was a no-brainer because we were able to hire some key people that really are good at what they do. Does that make sense?
Scott: It does, and also I think you have very clear parameters about what you do and what you don't do.
Rick: I am still a work in progress, but I am trying to be more disciplined with where my energy should go and where it [00:18:00] shouldn't go. And I think for business owners, the harder part is what we need to say no to.
Scott: Yeah, and I think what Rick just said about ego is something that we should put a pin in for people listening, because we all have ego. Ego can be very healthy. it's necessary and needed, but it needs to be held in check. And I personally am driven by that reflection as well in a lot of reactions I have to certain external things.
Scott: Immediately, and this is what my coach talks to me about, is that response ego driven is, are you responding from a place of ego? And if you are, then that's probably where you start and go, yeah, that's not where I want to respond from. And you know, just that idea of you addressing the fact is a lot of people were saying, Hey, do this
Scott: because it would help them, first of all, and hey you're amazing at running a painting company, so surely you'd be amazing at doing this. And for a time that felt good and you started feeling like, Hey, maybe they're right. And then you processed through [00:19:00] what you just said, which is, I think this might distract me from what I'm really need to do for my company, and therefore the answer became no for the time.
Rick: the thing that got me was like when I finally like put the ego aside, I was like, if there's such a need for this in this community, and it's that easy to do, why isn't there somebody already doing it well, right? There must be more to it. So then when you start digging a little deeper, you're like, Ooh, the liability of doing this type of business is pretty strong. Finding good and, you know, good experienced help is hard to find because it's not always consistent work. It's, peaks and valleys, and you know, you start digging a little bit more when you put your ego aside and you start seeing more clarity.
Scott: Yeah.
Companywide Goal Rollout
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Scott: Well, so let's move on. I want to just talk a little bit about, once you have this plan on, at your senior level and you guys have committed or, you know, have at least a consensus, do you then roll that out to deeper levels into your [00:20:00] company? Or, how do you cast this vision now that these are.
Scott: You know, I'm going to use KPIs and even though it's not all numbers, but these are our KPIs, these are our 2026 focus goals we want, you know, efficiency this, and management talk. Is it necessary to disseminate this down or do you water it down or do you talk differently?
Scott: How do you really cast vision to everybody that this is the race we're going to run for 2026.
Rick: Well, we set the goals with the management team, like we talked about, and the management team's responsible for evaluating our performance the year before and then setting the goals of where we want to go. But it's critical after that to have a meeting and it's a kickoff meeting, and we have a kickoff meeting with everybody in the company, because everybody needs to understand. Everybody needs to be told, and I. hope everyone understands, we explain it so that everybody would understand. But I, think it's critical that from me all the way down to the [00:21:00] newest hire needs to understand what our goals are for the year. And like I said, how everybody can affect that goal and how they contribute to the goals.
Rick: So, you know, we just talk about revenue goals for the year. Gross profit goals for the year, what our expense goal is for the year where we think our expenses, fixed expenses are going to land, and then what our net profit goal is going to be. And then we have a profit sharing program within the company.
Rick: So it's key that they know this and it's key that they are then told how we're doing on a monthly basis. Because, you know, it's a, it's the game of business and I want everybody to be engaged as much as we can get them engaged, and if we never tell them again, if we have a kickoff meeting in January and never tell them how we're doing, how are they going to, how are they going to be able to help?
Scott: Very difficult to stay motivated. Plus they don't really understand how good things happened or how they didn't happen because they're just [00:22:00] going, I don't know, they said something in January and in December. They announced I got nothing because, and I don't understand what happened in between.
Rick: Yeah. What happened did Rick Holtz keep all the money that we made? Because we worked just as hard and I don't understand how I worked hard and got nothing. You know, you want to, you want people to leave your company and stop trusting you, do something like that.
Coaching With Consulting4Contractors
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We want to take a quick break here in the middle of this episode, and if you are listening and realizing that maybe your business could benefit from some clearer goals. Maybe some better forecasting or just somebody to hold you accountable. Consulting4Contractors is here to help people just like you.
Rick and Scott are both C4C coaches and C4C works with contractors like you every day to develop real world growth plans, build financial clarity for your business, even create systems that are going to turn your vision into measurable results. They're here not just for painting companies too, they're also here for any company [00:23:00] operating in the service industry space.
So if you are interested in any of that, and you want to hear more what Scott has to say about your specific situation, feel free to book a discovery call with him. It's totally free. Just log on to www.consulting4contractors.com. You're going to see a big button there that says book a discovery call.
There you can learn how coaching from Scott can help you create a plan, you can actually execute. Also be sure always to check our notes or a video description for links and resources that they may have mentioned in this episode. Let's hop back in for the rest of this awesome episode with Rick and Scott.
Transparency Builds Culture
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Scott: So, you know, I love so much of what you're talking about here and you know, Rick is a larger company. He's also an employee based model company, so, you know, running whatever, he's 70 plus W2 employees. So a lot of our of people these days are running subs. But [00:24:00] high level, I still think there's tons of value, which is we're going to define our targets and our goals, and we're going to, be specific about them and then put them into measurable increments or statements and so that we can know if we're doing well or not. And then we're going to communicate this, everybody. And I think one of the things that happen in companies is we don't talk to people about the things that they need to be familiar with and know. They're just treated like, well, you couldn't understand this, or, this is private, or this is secret, or you can't be privy to my number.
Scott: You know? So we have all these silos and the reality is, I think by. opening up this information and treating people with, Hey, your opinion matters and you're part of this team, so I'm going to treat you that way, I think goes a long way. Now, this doesn't happen in just one meeting. It happens over years and years of cultivating this
Rick: Well, yeah. It becomes a culture, right? It becomes a culture.
Scott: Yeah.
Tracking And Adjusting
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Scott: So let's turn the corner a bit and let's talk a little bit about [00:25:00] how do we look at this information then as we're marching forward and how do we analyze data? How do we determine the success of our initiatives and when is it time to pedal harder? Or sometimes may be correct.
Scott: Sometimes we need to come off of some of these things. How do you know when it's time to, you know, press. And not press.
Business Rhythm Checks
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Scott: And how do you know when it's time to adjust and how do you monitor the success of these KPIs that have been established now?
Rick: Well, I think a lot of it is, it's the rhythm of your business and you know, for a newer company, even newer companies, I feel like if you really look at your business, you can figure out the rhythm of your business. You look at your performance over past years you, you know, like for us in Virginia, we know that we have, there's seasonality to our business because we can't work exteriors.
Rick: And you know, what, December, January, February and maybe some of March. So you know that the winter's going to be lean months. And you expect [00:26:00] that and you plan for it. You put it in your budget. And if you see that you're even worse off than you thought, then you know that you need to push harder when March comes, right when you can get outside.
Rick: So a lot of it, I feel like is the rhythm of your business and keeping accurate financials. I mean, that's the key. And I know you preach that till you're blue in the face, Scott. But if you don't know how you're doing, you would never know when to adjust, right? And by the time you adjust, it's too late.
Scott: Yep. Yeah.
Rick: Yeah.
Rick: I mean, it's kind of like being dehydrated. If you think you're dehydrated, it's already too late.
Scott: Yeah.
Monthly And Job KPIs
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Rick: You know, so I mean, you know, you're constantly, we're looking at things on a monthly basis. We're looking at revenue, we're looking at GP on a monthly basis. We're also looking at it on the individual job basis.
Rick: You know, I don't, we don't look and analyze every job, but we'll take top five winners, top five losers on a two week basis, and look at them [00:27:00] to see if there's trends, see if there's things we're doing wrong, things we need to adjust, and then, of course we have monthly goals. And monthly goals are what's going to help you a lot.
Rick: Like if you're coming out a winner and your April is really slow, you might want to adjust. Because April should be a really strong month for all of us that are in seasonal areas, right? Because we can get outside, you know, you can fire up all your crews or your sub crews or whatever. But I, think you really need to be looking at different things on a biweekly or monthly basis for sure, but you got to keep those numbers and know them. That's the key.
Scott: Yeah. And like you said understanding your numbers give you peace of mind through the winter, if you're in a seasonal area that, hey, you planned for this, like you said, I mean, it's a large company. It's not uncommon that a large company may have an actual loss in the first quarter because they have, they, they've built overhead that's built for their top. speed, not their bottom speed. Right. [00:28:00] And I think that's the case for you.
Rick: absolutely. But the thing is like if you're slow in February. There's only so much you can do about worrying about it because you're typically going to be slow, right? So that's what I say. You need to know these things so that you can like you said, when to push and when not to push.
Rick: like I said, in April, May, June when you're really humming along or a lot of contractors in our industry, I feel like, you know, their second and third quarters are where they make all their money. Don't you agree?
Scott: Absolutely.
Rick: And if you're not doing well then maybe you need to make some adjustments and you need to look inward and you need to say, what are we not doing well?
Rick: Because this is when we really should be successful.
Avoiding Catastrophic Q1
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Scott: Yeah, you're absolutely right and so most people make or break their year, well, there's two, two issues. One is how deep into the fourth quarter do they get decent weather and keep going? Right? So sometimes, you know, you, yeah, it's really key. But I do tell people that you're never going to dig your way out of a.
Scott: Catastrophic Q1. I mean, you have to [00:29:00] do your minimum in Q1 and keep that at least you know your boat afloat. A lot of people just have catastrophic Q1s and they go, well, we'll make it up. I'm like that, that numbers are hard to make up, you know, so you already have fat Q2 and Q3 numbers, and then you're going to pile in another whatever on top of that, it's going to be hard. So, you know, keeping those numbers as true as possible. And I think the other thing that these types of concepts, these plans, these budgets is it helps you know where your staffing is, going to get to so that you can ramp up. It's very hard to go, I'm going to go from 10 painters to 20 painters overnight.
Scott: Well, you're not. So
Rick: Yeah. You can't even vet subs that fast a lot of times.
Scott: No. So you got to have your stable full, you got to have them ready to go. But I'm going to analyze that plan.
March Goalboard Turnaround
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Scott: Now, let's talk a little bit about you know, maybe the emotional state. But I know in your case you had a really. February, I think it was, had a quite a ice storm and snow that really [00:30:00] shut down your area because you're not used to that.
Scott: So that was a real big problem. I think you guys lost over a week of production maybe, if I'm not mistaken or
Rick: We did, you know, we lost quite a bit of production. January and February was hard on us. We didn't have a great year and it, I mean, a great couple months because we had a harder winter than we've had in a long time. So, we didn't have the production in February that we needed. We were behind by almost a hundred grand.
Rick: So we fast forward to March and I knew that it was busier. I could feel it, I could just feel it. After this many years, I have, I talk about my feelings all the time. My people are looking at me like, what? Like, you feel it? And I'm like, yeah, I feel it. The energy's building. It's going to get busy. And I said, you know what?
Rick: What's your goal for this month? What's our goal? We're going to talk about our goal all month. Because what we were doing is we were treating a month just like I used to treat a year when I first started. We'd wait till the end of the month to see how we did.
Scott: Yeah.
Rick: And it's like, if we're waiting till the end of the month [00:31:00] to see how we did, it's too late.
Rick: And, you know, we could bring that all the way down to the project level. Right, Scott? Like, if we were just waiting until we finished the job to see how we did, it's too late for us to even try to make it better. So this was a really different concept for my team was I was like, well, what is our goal going to be for March?
Rick: And they're like, well, what's our budget? And I said, I don't care what the budget is. What do you think y'all can do as a team? What do you feel like you can do? You know the projects you got going on, you know the ones coming up. And so they set a goal. So I wrote it on a flip chart, post it and put it on the wall where they work.
Rick: And they stared at it every day and every time we billed jobs, I made the line go up so they could see how they were doing on a daily basis, every day. Did we bill a job today? Did we get towards our goal? And we beat the goal. We beat their goal. We beat their goal by I think it was like almost 70K, almost $70,000 we made up.
Scott: And that was a big impact for your quarter as well,
Rick: It was a big impact for [00:32:00] the quarter because then it caused our quarter not to be a loss. It caused, well, it's a little bit of a loss, but for all intents purposes, we broke even. And you know, a lot of people are being like, well, a big company like that breaking even, that's not that good, is it? And I'm like, you know, anytime you don't have a catastrophic loss, like Scott just said, you know, you have the opportunity to do really well.
Scott: Yeah.
Rick: But to have them, you know, these are folks that are looking at job by job basis. Sometimes a day at a time, sometimes a week at a time, to ask them to tell you or tell me where they're going to end up in 30 days. That's a stretch for them. It was a huge opportunity for growth and they killed it.
Scott: Yeah. Yeah. I love it.
Visual Goals And Buy In
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Scott: And there's a lot of neuroscience about what Rick just said, and I think a lot of companies miss the opportunity to talk more and put visually up goals, whether it's a production goal, a sales goal, whatever the language is. Back at PPD, [00:33:00] I've told this story many times, we had this really long hallway between the offices with these glass walls, so we put that clear white dry erase on one wall, and we would put that goal right up there and we would subtract every time we sold something, we had a big gong there, a sales gong. when you heard that gong go off, you knew someone.
Scott: sold something and I wanted that number to go down to zero, this was on the sales side. That meant we sold everything that we needed to sell for the month. And what I loved is if it was a week left then I started the next month.
Scott: Because you know what that meant? I had a head start and I, I remember sitting there making dials in the last few days of the month because I wanted to hit that because there was a visual reminder that's what we stated collectively. That's what we're headed. That's what you're talking about.
Scott: You're like, this isn't Rick's goal. This is our goal. And the reason it's important is because how, it's how we all get, paid, feed our families buy our vehicles and blah, blah, blah. Plus there's retirement and health benefits and all this stuff that comes with being a, [00:34:00] team member at HJ Holtz & Son's. But also there's another piece which is, and, it's, it gets us to profit sharing. Actually, if we hit this, if we can do what we all set up to do, we're going to share some of the spoils with you more than your paycheck.
Rick: Yeah. We're going to make more.
Scott: Yeah. So this idea of having the conversation and keeping this alive versus going, yeah, we had an offsite planning meeting for a half a day or a day, and we came back and we shoved it in the drawer and here we go.
Scott: You know, analyzing stuff at the end of the year, like Rick was talking about, you know, that's a that's an autopsy. I mean, they're the patient's dead. You can't do anything about it. But keeping this dynamic and so, you know, keeping it a live discussion with your management team and like Rick's saying, force them to make it their own.
Scott: Hey, what are you going to do about this? How are you contributing?
Scott: Is really important. And it's a, it's just a dynamic environment to be part of.
Rick: Well, I just think human, we as humans, we want to contribute. We want to do [00:35:00] well. And if we don't know what doing well looks like, how can we do it? You know, there's got to be intentionality in our life. You know, I've had plenty of days, and I'm sure you can relate.
Rick: You wake up in the morning, you say, today's going to be a bad day. Guess what?
Scott: It's.
Rick: It's a bad freaking day, right? But if you say, gosh, the sun's out today. I hear the birds chirping. I slept well. I have good energy. I'm going to have a great day today. All of a sudden, everything is great, right? So if you don't say how you're going to perform. How do you know if you've done well?
Scott: Yep.
Rick: So you've got, I love the idea of getting them to commit to what they can do.
Scott: Yeah.
When To Hire Leaders
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Scott: Last thing I want to just talk about before we roll out of here today is big hiring moves. I'm talking about management type positions. When do you know it's time to add another project manager, another sales person, or you know, something big like that? Like how do you make that [00:36:00] decision ahead of time?
Scott: Because what I'm hearing from Rick here and what I really love in our coaching we really talk about this with people that are never satisfied. And that's one of the things that Rick, I love, what Rick's sort of interweaving in here is working towards the plan. And a lot of these young, younger people are just never happy.
Scott: They're like, let's just, we want to do more. I was like, why don't we just work the plan to start, right? Because their past is a path of destruction, right? They all this crazy stuff and debt and all this stuff. And, but they just always want to do more and more. I said, why don't we make a plan and work the plan, and if you achieve the plan, then we'll disrupt it a little bit.
Scott: But this idea of, when do you know it is time to go to the next level? Because we all know Rick, that businesses are built for capacity. And so you overbuild it, right? You overbuild your team to a point so that it can hit a number, and then they hit that number and then they surpass that number.
Scott: And then they start, you start seeing a little bit of fracturing [00:37:00] where they're, and then so then you add something more, so that's more capacity. And then, so how are you managing that? Like, Hey, I think, you know, we need something here or there. Is this something you would do at any time or is this something that you would do more strategically, like
Rick: No, definitely more strategic because, you know, we're mainly talking about an overhead position.
Scott: Yes.
Rick: right? And overhead positions are not something that you just post, you know, you need to think it through. You need to try to do some forecasting and, say, you know, we have a lot of new opportunities we could really take advantage of if we had X.
Rick: Right. Or maybe you look at your team and you say, this team of managers like, take my project managers for instance. I've got two in paint. And I know that they're doing the best job they can do. But they're missing stuff or clients aren't seeing them, or they're not quite as happy. And then I'm like, wait a minute, how many projects are they managing? And I find out that they're [00:38:00] managing, say, seven to eight projects each. And I said, that's too many. It's not that they're not performing well, it's that they have too much on their plate. And that's when we say we need another project manager
Scott: Yeah.
Rick: Or, from a sales standpoint I'm the owner of the company, of a large company, really, and I'm spending 50% of my time doing sales.
Rick: I, I don't want to do that much sales. I don't. Now, maybe if I wanted to, that would be a different situation. If I said, Scott, that's my goal is to do a lot of sales in my company, but that's not my goal. I need to hire a salesperson.
Scott: Yeah.
Rick: Right? And maybe I can't when by the time I realize it, you know, I can't do anything about it today, but I can say, I'm going to continue on this path for.
Rick: A certain time period during that time period, I'm going to put together a ad I'm going to put together, you know, I'm going to plan on hiring and that sort of thing because these types of positions take [00:39:00] time. It's not something you can fill immediately like, skilled crafts person's going to walk in your, you know, your office and you can hire them that day.
Rick: It just doesn't work that way. But I mean, I think you got to look at indicators in your business and you know when you need it, you know.
Strategic Timing For Hires
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Rick: But I feel like so many of us make the mistake and I get nervous about it too, like adding another project manager. Well, if I add another overhead position, yeah, we're busy now because we're coming out of winter, but what's going to happen in nine months when we start slowing back down again?
Rick: Am I going to have the work to keep that person going and keep that person busy.
Scott: But the answer to that question goes back to the plan, which is what are we going to do to keep that person busy in nine months? And I think,
Rick: And what can we do today to make sure they're busy in nine months? Exactly. It's about, you know, my coach taught us the same thing. It's, it taught me the same thing. It's about having that vision and working back. Right. Know your destination. And then work backwards with the plan.
Scott: And knowing the industry like we [00:40:00] both do it's getting crazy right now. So if someone asked me that question about a salesperson, I'd be like, I think this is the wrong time of the year to take on that kind of a project that hiring a salesperson is going to take a while because they're not at every turn. So it could take 30 to 60 days to get a candidate and then what, another 60 days maybe to train them your way. So
Rick: God, it,
Scott: Yeah, and you're, and you're doing, you know, x you know, whatever, 60, 70% of your revenue in the next seven months or whatever the number is, and you're going to try to onboard a key person like that.
Scott: I don't think it probably makes a lot of sense but then again, you're going to have the head trust that says, oh, here we are in November. Now's the time I'm going to hire this. Yeah. The answer's yes, because you're going to onboard them and train them when you're slow so that they're ready to go. But that takes a plan and it takes some thought.
Rick: And you have the capacity, because that's the other thing you got to think about is like you said, hiring these key positions at the busiest time of your year is sometimes not the best idea because [00:41:00] it's going to require more of your time and attention to help that new hire really learn and become part of your culture.
Rick: And if you're busy and you're trying to, somebody's going to lose, and it's probably going to be that new hire.
Scott: Yeah.
Rick: Then you've botched up transitioning a new key person into your company and you don't want to do that. So I agree with you. I think, you know, the slower time of year is the time to make some of these key hires and just know with your plan and look at the history, you know you're going to get busy again and you're going to be ready.
Scott: Yeah, what a fantastic conversation. So, just recapping a few things that you know, you might take away from this conversation is just, you know, this idea of spending time creating a plan and creating it with your management team, your senior management, whatever you call them, and using your, data to evaluate, you know, some things that you would want to tackle in the new year.
Scott: Come to a consensus, cast vision, track it, then [00:42:00] regularly, monthly for sure. And uh, adjust as needed if needed. But you're going to get so much more out of your efforts if you would approach it that way then if you just go one off one day at a time and just run like crazy because you're just going to burn out that way.
Rick: Sure. And I know you say it all the time and I'm just going to reemphasize it. You've got to know your numbers. You really need to know your numbers. You can't plan without knowing your numbers. You can't have goals without knowing your numbers, you can't work a plan without knowing your numbers, and we're not talking crazy numbers, right Scott?
Rick: We're talking. Your revenue, your gross profit, your net profit on projects, on a monthly basis, that's all you need. That's really all you need.
Scott: That's all you need is, right? Yeah.
Coaching Invite And Wrap
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Scott: Well, I was glad to have a chance to be the host today instead of Mark. And I just want those listening to know that Rick Holtz is a coach with C4C in addition to running a fabulous company. [00:43:00] And I want you to know that you can work one-on-one with Rick. If Rick says some things and talks about some things that resonate with you, or if you are a business owner that is at a place where you've plateaued or you really need help with how to grow a company into the multimillions, or you're stuck on culture, Rick is fantastic and he's brought this company and evolved himself to a place that he runs just a beautiful company and he has wonderful people.
Scott: Rick is a person that would help you in your journey. We're going to put a link to his calendar, right in the show notes where you could meet with him, talk with him. We have some things coming up where you can sign up for a taste of coaching if you want to just do a three month commitment to learn a little bit more about how this works, who we are, and if it's the right fit for you.
Scott: Take advantage of that. Reach out. Call Rick or call me. We'd love to talk to you. We'd like to work with you if it makes sense.
Rick: Yeah, I would love to, to talk to some business owners that are struggling or that have challenges. [00:44:00] Because that's me. That's been me and I have a lot of experience because I've made a lot of mistakes, but I've, been successful at a lot of things too. So, you know, we learned from those, I don't even call them mistakes anymore.
Rick: We learn from our opportunities and let us help you with them for sure.
Scott: Yeah.
Scott: Beautiful. Hey Rick, thanks for your time. Appreciate your expertise and wisdom and uh, we'll talk to you next time.
Rick: Sounds great. Thanks Scott.
Thanks again for listening to another episode of Success Beyond the Brush. If anything today helped you think differently about planning, goal setting, or building a stronger business, be sure to subscribe to our show so you don't miss future episodes. And if you're ready to stop guessing and start building a clear roadmap for growth,
Rick: visit us online at www.consulting4contractors.com to schedule a free discovery call with Scott or learn more about working with a C4C coach like Rick Holtz. As always, check the show notes or video description for [00:45:00] links, resources, additional information, and we'll see you next time on Success Beyond the Brush.