Ryan Paul Adams - Featured On

daily5-remodelHanley WoodRemodeling Magazine

The Old Ways of Doing Business Are Dead…and Why You Need to Shift to Survive

The opportunity to absolutely dominate your local remodeling market is still wide open in every major geographic area across the US and Canada, yet so many remodeling businesses struggle immensely each and every year. This is partly due to the fact that up until this point, most of the sales and marketing "gurus" have completely ignored this industry and have focused primarily on other markets. It is partly due to the fact that most remodeling businesses focus (or get lost in) on production and largely ignore marketing.

Is this a result of a lack of good information or is it a result of poor mindset? 

After spending over 15 years in this industry and meeting countless remodelers, home builders, and contractors, I think I know why so many other consultants have ignored this industry. Somewhere around 95% (my estimate) of remodeling and home improvement oriented businesses refuse to focus on marketing and instead focus on production. Therefore, the vast majority of smart marketing and sales experts have given up on this industry or didn't even attempt to help. Is the remodeling industry too stubborn to change? Or is it something else that is leading to a bottom heavy industry?  

It starts with every remodeling business shifting from a production related mindset (getting the jobs done) to a client generation and business building mindset. A shift needs to happen NOW and this will begin with focusing on marketing first, instead of on selling and production. You can't sell a job that you don't have a lead for, and you can't produce the work if you don't have the job. It all leads back to getting your marketing strategy and marketing funnel in place first. This does not mean you ignore your existing clients and jobs; however, you must free up some of your time, effort, and money to focus on marketing moving forward or you put your business at risk.

Seems backwards huh? I thought so too and struggled with this for years and years in both my marketing business and my remodeling and home building business. I spent so much time being the technician and worrying about production that my sales revenue had serious ups and downs. This type of business was not a business at all - it was a frustrating "job" disguised as a business. 

Every time I focused my efforts on marketing and being more entrepreneurial, I could increase sales 25%, 50%, and even more in a very short period of time. Something had to change and that change had to come from a better mindset. You MUST shift to focusing on marketing with everything else being secondary if you want to survive and grow a real business. When you have a marketing funnel and sytem that produces real jobs, you have cash, and when you have cash you can hire good people to solve other problems. 

Big Players Are Entering the Remodeling Market and Are Gobbling Up Market Share

My biggest concern for the small-medium sized remodeling and home improvement business is that there are bigger and better companies entering the remodeling space each and every year who are marketing focused and go after each market very aggressively. They are entrepreneurial and marketing focused companies that can quickly put you out of business if you do not make some changes. And you can't sell a prospect that doesn't exist so focusing on selling ahead of marketing doesn't make any sense either.

Scott DeGarmo said it best in an issue of "Success Magazine"

"The big money goes to those companies with superior marketing operations. Entrepreneurial companies of today must evolve from being sales oriented to being marketing oriented in order to now win the consumer."

Now, I don't want to be all doom and gloom here and this isn't meant to scare you, but you really do need to put a plan into action sooner than later and shift your focus now. The days of being the only one in town that does what you do is over. More choices exist than ever before and with search engines making it so easy to research, qualify, and validate a business faster than ever before, you must have exceptional marketing above all else. Relying solely on architects, designers, and referrals for business is extremely dangerous for the future of your business, but this should be part of an overall marketing system.

Most remodeling businesses do not have exceptional marketing. Most remodelers don't have anything that even resembles a marketing message or a plan of attack. I get it...they are busy. Busy putting out fires every day and sixty and seventy hour work weeks are the norm. They wonder why they do what they do each and every day and pray for an easier way. There are answers to these problems and the only viable way to get real freedom in your business and survive is to grow. Or make the business so simple that it can run and thrive without the owner, and the service is such high demand that people constantly seek you out every day for those services. 

Billions in remodeling and home improvement services and products are sold each year and growing a very steady rate. If you honestly believe in yourself and the service you are offering, shouldn't you be looking to get as many of the "right" NEW clients as you can possibly handle? And if you cannot afford $1,000, $3,000, $5,000 or more to invest in marketing and to make people aware of your business each month to acquire new remodeling clients, isn't that a problem you need to solve sooner than later?

Inside Your Business vs Outside Your Business

You can't spend all of your time developing the inside of your business (production, sales, and systems) and neglect the outside (marketing). At some point the inside and outside of your business have to match up and preferably the outside will grow larger than you can handle. And when it does, watch out! But right now you are probably all lopsided and bottom heavy when you need to be top heavy, working towards figuring out the bottom as you go. You can have the greatest service in the world but if no one knows about it, you are in BIG TROUBLE

Most remodeling businesses deliver a great service but struggle to delegate to others on the production end. You cannot do everything yourself and there are plenty of smart, skilled people out there that can help you get projects done. If you are making lots of mistakes and finding it difficult to hire, simplify your services so that you can succeed now. If you are struggling on the production end, your services are too complicated and you will continue to struggle. That will not change over night. Stop doing what you are doing and start making some changes.

In the meantime, get a marketing system in place that can start moving you towards steady growth and profits so that you can hire better people to help you through your problems. You cannot grow if you do not have new projects and you cannot hire the next project manager or "internal" staff unless you have steady revenue flowing in all the time. The answer is Marketing Marketing Marketing! 

You are losing over a million dollars per year or more from bad marketing or NO marketing. Let me help you figure out what to do next with my Free Marketing Strategy Session. I also have a couple of additional bonuses I want to put in your hands as well. I am not sure how long we can offer this so sign up today to get on my schedule.
Click here to find out more....

Get Control and Grow Your Remodeling Business

Ever feel like your business and life is out of control?

Does your average day feel like you are putting one fire out after another?

Are you left wondering where the next lead is going to come from? 

My grandfather once told me that "you need to be in control at all times and the best way to do that is to never give it away." I think I was 14 at the time and had just started my first business. That stuck with me until this day. He went on to say "Don't make excuses. Ever! You need to find your way through every situation and look for the opportunity that is right under your nose." Every time you make an excuse about your situation or blame something else, you give away control. My wife calls it "giving away your mancard." Same could be said for a woman and a "womancard" phrase should be developed. 

So lets talk about control and what that really means for your remodeling business and for your life and the lesson I learned from my grandfather when I was 14. He was a masterful entrepreneur and understood a few key concepts about getting control that all the great successes understand. Our society is filled with excuse makers, doubters, and negativity runs rampant. I don't read the newspaper or watch the news on television because its mostly all fear and negativity. My success depends on those 2 things never creeping into my consciousness, so I don't partake. How about you?

Stop blaming external forces like the economy or a recession. Everytime you blame the economy or the recession on the core reason you are failing you are giving away your control. When you blame something or someone else for your failure you aren't taking responsibility for your situation. 

When I hear someone complaining about the economy as to why they are "slow" I ask them one simple question. "If I am a potential client, what is the #1 reason I should hire you vs another company?" They don't have an answer because they haven't even thought about it, which means they aren't differentiating themselves in the market. If they aren't differentiating, I know right then and there that they aren't marketing themselves well, or at all. I am speaking with someone who has no control. 

And if they had an answer, the next question would be, "how are you going about "attracting" new business vs chasing it?." Most remodelers chase the next deal but if you are positioned correctly, you should be in the drivers seat with full control over your own destiny. And most of the time, what that looks like is a steady stream of qualified people lining up to do business with you. You are in control. You aren't chasing. 

Money Doesn't Disappear. It Moves. 

Money rarely just completely stops flowing out of a remodeling sector, nor does it disappear. It simply changes hands or moves. In a recession, the middle class might cut back on remodeling their kitchen, but the affluent rarely do. Is that a market opportunity or should we just go back to complaining? You need to see opportunity in everything.

The best year I ever had in the remodeling business was the year that real estate and the economy took a nose dive. Competitors went out of business or sat idoly...but we kept marketing and positioning our uniqueness and had a really strong year. I had just discovered the power of building a killer USP and guarantee that crushed anything my competitors were offering. I was looking for opportunity when everyone else was watching the news and feeling sorry for themselves. 

And if the middle class cuts back on installing their dream kitchen, they still might go for something a step below their dream, especially if you can make it easy on them by lining up the financing or providing attractive payment terms. Can you create a targeted marketing campaign to the middle class market offering a streamlined kitchen package with easy terms that make them say YES? You bet you can. Control and Action. 

Very few people have control in their business (and life) and even less take action. There is a lot of money to be made in every remodeling market, but people need to know you exist and what you can do for them that is different from every other contractor. If you can't guarantee anything and don't do anything special or unique, its probably time you did something else. 

Need more help growing your remodeling business? Take advantage of all the FREE resources I have on www.RyanPaulAdams.com and my download my "3 Killer Ways to Grow Your Remodeling Business" today.