You’re Leaving Thousands on the Table With Every Quote

So cool.

And so you've been in the industry longer than I have.

And I'm interested to know, I mean, the short time I've been in the industry, I feel like there are so many people out there that are really trying to help builders grow.

Obviously, you're a testament to that, but how have you seen that changed over the years? Do you agree that in more recent years, there's just a lot more available to help deck builders grow their business?

Yeah, I believe that.

When I first started, and my gosh, I turned 60 this year, so I think I've been at it about 40 years now, and I've been in all parts of the remodeling industry.

uh we used to bump the back of houses out and do big additions with kitchens and baths and and we got had our hands in a lot of things and what we learned pretty quickly is focus really helps follow one course until successful right that's the acronym follow one course until successful my buddy charlie gundell who lives right up the street from april in uh California he taught us that and and so I think back when I started there wasn't a lot of mentorship there wasn't there wasn't a lot of code for deck there wasn't a whole lot of anything and it was sort of the wild wild west and and if you fast forward to today not only do we have better requirements and and better learning and development around the industry But the major manufacturers, local dealers and even some of us who have been contractors for a long time have really jumped in to serve the industry and offer training and development and mentorship and programs and opportunities to learn and conferences you know nadra has stepped up and chris breen over at legacy decks and legacy academy has jumped in and is really giving back to the community and so you know it's it's nice to see there's a ton of guys that are really well known in the industry whether it's just by socials or just by being around other guys at deck expo and other places like that who who are also helping and lots of sites on Facebook and other things where you can go to to learn.

But if you're looking for something really more directed toward growth and not just an area where you can get in and have a conversation, but if you really want someone to come alongside and work with you, then there's only a few of us in the industry who are doing that.

Right.

But But that's okay.

There's plenty of opportunity for anybody who wants to grow as a person and grow their company to get connected and that's something that didn't exist 35, 40 years ago.

yeah i don't i don't know that a lot of people there's still a lot of folks that i talk to that don't realize that you know and so i'd like to be an advocate to you know connect or conduit to you know connect people to those resources but it's insane how many facebook groups there are alone you know that you can plug into and get advice and stuff yeah and there's

you know there there's a lot of good stuff going on in there i think the challenging part about a face group is if you get couple thousand people going on something you know you can get into some negativity and a spiral and and you know you got to have somebody monitoring and all that kind of stuff I think in our kinds of communities I know in Chris's community and in our community we monitor that stuff pretty closely and you know for us It's about making a positive impact.

And so we sort of have a, hey, it's okay to share if you're struggling, but we really have sort of the no negativity, no bashing.

You know, we're not here to gossip.

We're not here, we're here to help and learn and grow as individuals and that kind of stuff.

doesn't really help us.

So we're sort of pretty quick to go to people and say, hey, if that's really what you want to do here, we'd prefer that you would take that elsewhere.

This is a group that is here to encourage one another and hold each other up and really move our businesses forward in a positive way.

We'll take those things on head on and not shrink back from Hey, what's good for the individual is also good for the group and vice versa.

And we need to make sure we have some guardrails around that so that people get help when they come and not discouragement, right?

So you have a Facebook group?

I don't.

We don't have a Facebook group.

We have the Contractor Classroom group.