Episode Details

Why does my P&L tell me I’m making money but I don’t have any cash in the bank? I hear this from contractors all the time. Where did the money go? Today, we are going to answer that question and others in my interview with Business Coach Shawn Van Dyke. We’ll also get into Shawn’s new book, Profit First For Contractors, and learn how you can transform your construction business from a cash-eating monster to a money-making machine.

Show Highlights:

• One of the first things that Dave did as a young business owner after he bought out his dad’s roofing business was to hire a business coach, which he feels is the best thing he could have done to help him develop a business plan.
• Shawn often sees business owners that do not understand the financial reports and statements and how to actually use those as tools to drive and grow the direction of their business.
• It’s just math, it never changes, and once you learn how this works in your business, you never have to learn it again. You only need to apply it to your changing
• This makes all the difference!
• If you underprice your work you’re going to get work simply because you’re underpriced and you’ll most likely be working for the wrong type of client, who will drain more time, energy, and money from you. You’ll have to produce work and this is when you’ll find that money starts leaving you faster than you could have imagined, then you’ll be at the phase to start finding more work again because you’re running out of cash and you don’t have enough money to pay for the job that you’re on. Shawn explains this cycle as the four phases of the “Craftsmen Cycle”:

1. Price work
2. Get work
3. Produce work
4. Find work

• You have to sell your value because there are customers out there who have a problem and will pay what your work is worth so that you can make a profit. Avoid the customers who tell you that they will never pay your prices.
• At first, it may seem that a lot of money is coming in because you’re charging more money than perhaps you ever have before, but this is deceptive! You must understand the difference between margin and markup.
• “The $100 Example” is a great way to remember the difference between margin and markup, as Shawn relates.
• If you buy something for $100 and you mark it up 20%, the price you’re selling at is $120.
• The gross profit if you buy something at $100 and sell it at $120 is $20.
• Now here’s the mistake people make: Many think if they marked something up by 20% and they have a 20% profit and they spent $100 to get it, that $20 profit divided by $100 = 20%, and that’s their margin. Therefore, they think their margin and their markup is the same. WRONG!!
• The $100 isn’t what you sell, it’s your cost.
• You don’t sell your cost, you sell your price. The $20 profit needs to be divided by your price ($120), which would equal 16.7%. This 16.7% is your margin.
• A 20% markup will ALWAYS produce a 16.7% margin.
• It gets worse the bigger the numbers need to be.
• A 50% markup will ALWAYS produce a 33% margin.
• You have to start charging where you want to be so that you can generate the cash to get there.
• Profit is not an event, profit is a habit.
• The earlier on you can sell value, the more profitable you will be. Lower volume, higher margin.
• Learn how your CPA could be giving you wrong “business” advice, although their “tax” advice is correct.
• Your income is 100% of your budget. If you spend more than 100% of the money that comes in to your business, you will have problems.
• Pay yourself what you’re worth. How much would you have to pay another person, or multiple people, to come in and do what you do?
• Don’t forget your taxes! That has to come from the income that comes from your business. If you get a $10,000 chec