@TheRealEstateG6 Having smart people run small businesses is better for society IMO
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mahoooooo
346 posts
Completely correct
Only reason this made sense was because of the prestige. And the prestige is now gone too, it's higher status to run your own business than it is to work in finance
Hence the flood of finance guys buying SMBs. Better pay + lower tax rate + more prestige
bedouin@bedouincap
The “prestige” professions of finance, tech, law etc are only available in high cost metros where you barely keep up with neighbors. The real arb is being a doctor or SMB owner in a random suburb where you can be the richest guy in the Costco parking lot
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Because I’m learning common tradesman logic is apparently not common. I’m probably going to spend the entire weekend building a training called “you’re in the big leagues now, don’t ask stupid questions” 101.
This isn’t a joke. If you want a copy of it DM me.
Actually working on one now internally for upskilling tradesman into supervisor roles for medium ($1mm-$10mm) projects. Will share that one too when it’s done.
No newsletter, no product to sell, no mailing list. Just trying to be helpful.
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@BigDemoPrez Isn't Demo the first trade in? These projects must take a couple of years.
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After a big sales wave, the projected retainage sum in my WIP report is nearing $1M 🙃
This makes me look dumb, but I literally didn't know what retainage was when I acquired my business. Hurts, man.
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@shawngorham Concrete in California is probably great, no rain, no cold (outside of doing business in California)
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My boomer friend this morning - btw, he ran a 400 man concrete company for 50 years.
He said he had 3 estimators who made over $200k a year each
He said, if I was still in business today I could eliminate all 3 of those roles with AI
He said, If I was in the trades again today I would be all in on AI while my competition was behind the curve.
Shawn Gorham@shawngorham
Just got off the phone with my 74 year old (very post economic) boomer friend and he told me he spent the last week taking a google AI certification course and is now certified He is 74 and "moved" out of CA to save on taxes learning AI
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@1JoeSpringsteen @blueprintsmb22 @MikeBotkin_ I think Twitter complains about receivables too much lol (Unless you're in construction)
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@blueprintsmb22 @MikeBotkin_ Nearly all of my clients are inside 60 days and mostly inside 30 days on commercial. So I could see it being sketch if a big customer slow pays.
But those resi jobs are just bite sized little M&Ms. Gotta do real volume to get enough green ones.
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Unpopular opinion: home services sucks.
20% of my biz is home svc and it’s a grind, the marketing is obscenely expensive, and it could just drop in days without the right spend and daily focus.
Commercial - relationship based, budgeted, schedules out for mo’s.
Am I right?
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Curious what’s actually working for B2B leads in local service businesses outside of SEO.
I want to land more commercial jobs this year and expand my skillset beyond SEO/ads.
For those doing this well, what’s the move right now?
Cold email?
Cold calling?
Networking groups?
Partnerships?
(Enjoy this photo of our Popeye's paint job)
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I’ve been stressing a bit about slow season.
Up until 5 hours ago I had $2575 scheduled for the rest of December.
My guys were aware and we had already discussed me laying them off for two weeks essentially.
Tree work is more difficult around the holidays. The phone just stops ringing as much and competition gets much stiffer because we are all hungry.
I’ve been plugging away at networking and getting in front of as many customers as possible.
I just closed on another $10,300 worth of work for the remainder of December.
This is not going to be a record month but I’m going to have enough work to keep my guys full time and pay all of the bills.
That is going to have to be good enough.
First year in business has been a whirlwind of emotion and learning experiences.
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2 jobs into another big stump day
3 residential jobs and then 8 small stumps for a city.
Should do $2k again today.
Also, check out this cool picture I got yesterday!!
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When I tell you I’m shorting a restaurant, you should probably listen. $CMG
Gawd this one felt good. Officially flat now
Ben Little@TRUmav
Ah you know, just two dudes hanging out & beating every portfolio managers returns
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A breaker went out in the panel.
Electrician came by and replaced the broken breaker with a new breaker in under 5 minutes.
The part cost $80.
How much should the electrician charge for labor?
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often hear from people in the trades/looking at the trades “there’s so much work!”
infinite work if you’re willing to work for free, not as much work at prices that will actually pay your bills
Bob Knakal | NYC Investment Sales@BobKnakal
Open listings may feel productive, but they rarely produce consistent results. Owners who aren’t ready to commit often aren’t ready to sell. Protect your time by prioritizing sellers who are truly serious.
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@joshkadkins An even better you would get paid 120 days after you are done.
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@hoytcrouch Maybe I am just naive, but I feel like the percentage of invoices uncollectable feels higher in residential than commercial.
Commercial might take 6th months to pay though.
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Residential customer: I don’t like the shade of wood on this picket. Can you replace half the fence?
Commercial customer: “email some pics and submit invoice when you’re done”
I’d rather deal with large AR problems than deal with constant people problems
Alex B@bprintco
We actively avoid commercial work. We don’t market for it. We’re never eager to do it. In fact, we dodge almost any B2B job we can. Why? Because getting paid is a nightmare. You’ll spend a ridiculous amount of time chasing invoices instead of running equipment. And for us, it’s just not worth it. Homeowners? Zero issues. They pay right away. Businesses? Almost every single time, it turns into a fiasco. I’ve met plenty of land clearing companies that only do commercial. Every single one of them tells me they lose sleep over hundreds of thousands of dollars owed to them. One day we might climb that mountain. But not today. We’re still a young business, and we value reliable cash flow, something you won’t get from commercial clients.
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@jamesonhaslam Is capital even a constraint? I feel like operations / hiring people is way more of a challenge
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entertaining the idea of a (gulp) capital partner to accelerate our northward expansion
should I do it?
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@alex_borkin Could you text with dial pad and then connect the API to add updates to your CRM?
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The biggest challenge that I cannot figure out how to solve is this:
We have multiple in field employees and sub-contractors.
They do not care to use our team slack channel. Nor will they log in to update a CRM.
So often questions or updates about a project will be communicated directly via text. They text one of the few people working our back office.
Too often does this information get lost in these personal communications until something urgent comes up and we are trying to solve a problem with missing information and then needing to track down personal tasks.
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If I wasn’t mormon I would definitely be jewish they seem pretty great
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@bonapartay Well you are growing so fast makes sense you are short on cash !
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Up $663k vs YTD last yr on revenue. Will hit $4m in the H1 this year. We are a back half weighted business. 2024 revenue had a noncore sale of $900k so we are really up almost $1.5m on sales vs comp period last year
Gross margins up 1100 bps YTD
Alas we are still cash starved
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If I had a dime for every property management company that didn’t pay us after a job, I’d be a rich man.
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