Blogs

Actionable original content written specifically for you: The residential construction professional.

Bryan Kaplan Bryan Kaplan

Change Orders: Stop Leaving Money on the Table

Construction change orders happen for a multitude of reasons. And all these situations can impact the original contract price and, in turn, your bottom line if you're not managing them properly. That means using change orders to capture project changes and add them to the overall project cost.

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Bryan Kaplan Bryan Kaplan

Social Media: Why it Should be Part of Your Marketing Plan

Remodelers often tell me they rely on “word-of-mouth” referrals to get new business, so they don’t need social media. But using word-of-mouth referrals alone isn't a predictable method of filling your pipeline, which is why you should be using social media as a part of your overall marketing strategy to reach new clients.

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Bryan Kaplan Bryan Kaplan

Should You Hire More Full Time Staff or Use a Subcontractor

Aligning the work in your pipeline with the internal team you have on hand is a balancing act that's tricky to manage because the answer depends on so many factors. So how do you determine whether to hire more full-time staff – and assume that overhead burden, or subcontract out work to trade partners?

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Bryan Kaplan Bryan Kaplan

Competitive Bidding: Why You Should Sell Your Value Instead

Running a profitable remodeling or custom home-building business means taking the right jobs at the right price and not selling yourself (or your company) short by engaging in competitive bidding. Learn to charge the right amount for all your work based on your years of knowledge and experience.

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Bryan Kaplan Bryan Kaplan

Explaining Contingencies, Variances, and Change Orders

Unexpected things will always happen in any building project, no matter how much planning you do upfront. And that often results in additional project time and costs. Figuring out where the money comes from to fund those costs – and explaining them to clients can be a tricky conversation.

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Bryan Kaplan Bryan Kaplan

Performance Reviews: Drive the Right Results from Your Teams

Giving (or receiving) constructive feedback doesn't come naturally to many of us, and it's not something we've been taught to do correctly. But if you're looking to foster a positive growth environment and enhance team performance, you need to rethink everything you know about performance reviews.

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Bryan Kaplan Bryan Kaplan

Eating Costs: Why You Feel You Need to Pay for Errors

As professional remodelers, we often feel the burden to take financial responsibility for anything that goes wrong on a jobsite rather than having a conversation with the client about it. Learn where to draw the line when it comes to rework and additional costs to avoid constantly bleeding profit.

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Bryan Kaplan Bryan Kaplan

The Economy: How to Encourage Clients to Spend Right Now

Recent interest rate hikes, brought on as a measure to try and stave off higher inflation, have some homeowners re-thinking their plans to remodel or custom-build houses right now. We need to lead homeowners through the messy headspace about borrowing and spending money on home renovation projects right now.

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Bryan Kaplan Bryan Kaplan

Materials and Finishes: When the Client Wants to Supply Them

As a remodeler, it's your job to ensure that construction projects run smoothly from start to finish. That means controlling everything from procurement to scheduling, construction, and budget to fulfill your client's dream - and managing client expectations when they want to supply the materials themselves.

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Bryan Kaplan Bryan Kaplan

Using Deposits in Residential Construction

As a professional remodeler, you know that the single most significant risk you face is not getting paid for your work. Taking deposits for remodeling projects in residential construction mitigates your financial risk and ensures that even if the project goes south, you aren’t responsible for absorbing any project costs.

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Bryan Kaplan Bryan Kaplan

Why You Should Charge Clients for Construction Estimates

Clients are conditioned to see contractors as a commodity. You need to shift your mindset away from giving free estimates and focus on explaining to clients why your time to create that estimate is a cost of work, because you’re a valued partner – not just an hourly rate handyman.

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Bryan Kaplan Bryan Kaplan

How to Manage Cash Flow in Your Remodeling Business

Maintaining a healthy cash flow on construction projects is critical for your business. That means ensuring money flows into the business as evenly as it’s flowing out to pay for materials, labor, and trades. Learn how to manage it so you don’t end up in a constant cash crunch.

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Bryan Kaplan Bryan Kaplan

Markup and Margin Explained for Remodeling Contractors

Both mark-up and margin play a role in making your business profitable, so it’s important to understand the differences between them. If you aren’t charging the right mark-up, you won’t hit the correct profit margin, choking your company’s cash flow, and selling work at a loss.

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Bryan Kaplan Bryan Kaplan

Understanding Work in Progress (WIP) and How to Track it.

Running a profitable remodeling business is a constant juggling act of balancing the money coming in on each project versus the money going out to ensure that each job is properly funded – with profit leftover for you. Learn how to track project spending and avoid the cash-crunch highway.

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Bryan Kaplan Bryan Kaplan

How To Estimate Labor for Your Remodeling Projects

Anyone who has experienced life on a job site knows that it’s never free from distraction, and tasks will always take longer than you planned. Learn how to recognize the pitfalls of estimating on a ‘best-case scenario’ and ensure you’re using the right tools to estimate jobs accurately.

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Bryan Kaplan Bryan Kaplan

Five Reasons Why You’re Bleeding Money

Clients think that because they’ve hired you to complete one project, they can ask you to do other tasks “because you’re already there.” But your time is valuable, and you need to ensure you’re being paid for all the work you do so that your business remains profitable.

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Bryan Kaplan Bryan Kaplan

Five Steps to Stop Eating Costs on Remodeling Projects

During remodeling projects, clients will change their minds about fixtures and finishes, material prices might increase, and you're bound to run into site conditions that impact costs. If you don't want to eat these costs and dilute your profits, you need to start using change orders.

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Bryan Kaplan Bryan Kaplan

Should I Charge Cost-Plus or Fixed-Cost?

It's a great question and is one that many remodelers and custom home builders must consider for their business. You need to weigh the pros and cons of both these two pricing structures and then decide which type of contract makes sense for your remodeling or construction business.

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Bryan Kaplan Bryan Kaplan

Why You Need a Construction Coach

To build a profitable business, you need to focus ON it. This means developing the skill sets needed to run a successful construction business instead of just managing traffic. That’s where a coach comes in. Learn why this is the best thing you can do for your remodeling business.

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Bryan Kaplan Bryan Kaplan

It’s Time to Stop Estimating for Free

The pressure to give free estimates is something that remodelers and custom home builders feel daily. Homeowners have this "built-in" notion that you should provide free detailed estimates because 'it's the cost of doing business.' Learn why that’s the worst thing you can do.

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