The General Contractor TRAP No One Warns You About | Jason Pignagrande (Ep. 258)

Do you really want a $10 million business just for the sake of a $10 million business? Or do you want a business that makes $1 million a year or $2 million a year? It doesn't matter.

I have learned the hard way previously where it was, oh, at all costs, and then you find out that is not generally the best.

We are naturally wired as entrepreneurs to grow, grow, grow, grow, revenue, revenue, revenue. But what they don't teach us is they don't teach us how to make money. They teach us how to sell. But at some point, we got to get good at recognizing how profitability works in this business. All right, everybody, welcome to another episode of the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. This is Brian Kaskavalciyan, and with me today is Jason Piña Grande. Jason is one of the newest members of Success Society. And at the last meeting in July, we got to chat quite a bit. Jason really has a great business, has done some really cool stuff over the last few years. This is all about implementation. It's about learning, growing, and executing, implementing, getting shit done. And here's a guy that's been getting a lot done the last 2 or 3 years. So Jason, welcome. Let's give everybody the 2-minute backstory on you and your your business.

So this is a special year for us. It's our 20th year in business. My background is I went to college, finance, accounting background, interned at a financial institution while I was in college, took a job doing financial stuff, got my licensing out of college and hated what I was doing and playing in a men's soccer league with we met up after the game and I was complaining about my job and they owned a home improvement company and told me to come in. And I never thought I would end up selling home improvements. Wasn't even on my radar. But I left, quit my job doing the financial stuff and took that job and fell in love with it. Started making really good money, loved what I did, and ultimately did that for a couple of years for them and started my started my own thing.

Wait, what did your parents say when you said, hey, Mom and Dad, I'm leaving finance on Wall Street and I'm going to sell windows?

I don't think that they thought I would be where I'm at when I made that decision.

Tell us about your business today.

So when I first started, we were roofing, siding, windows only. And then about 3 or 4 years into it, I made the unbrilliant decision of adding full remodeling additions, kitchens, baths. We started doing commercial work, multifamily roofing and siding. If the dollar value sounded appealing or high, I chased it. And so we did that for actually up until I started listening to your podcast, probably like in, I would say around 2017, we started to lean up and get back to our roots of roofing, siding, windows, doors only. Not that it was bad. I don't think it's necessarily bad to do remodeling, full remodeling jobs or commercial work, but you have to be, I think you're, in my opinion, you're either set up to do one or the other. And I believe we're set up to do single-phase work where we're getting in and out quicker. In 2022, we started doing the one-day baths as well. We're a Jacuzzi dealer. So now it's roof, siding, windows, doors. And one day best.

You know, when you add in remodeling, and look, I've said it here before, and I don't mean to disparage anybody. We're here to help people grow, make money, experience success, experience wealth, and experience freedom. It's really tough in the general remodeling business. The GC business is like, I think it's one of the worst businesses out there just because there's so many moving parts. There are so many things that can go wrong. The jobs last long. Your profit per day is low. And then when you start mixing that in with the super profitable, you know, one call close, finance 60% of the jobs, get in, get out at a 60% gross margin. I mean, it's like, why, why would you do that? And now some people do it successfully. We have somebody in Success Society that's been doing it very successfully for years. But it's a grind. He has not been able to step away from the business. It's really smart to narrow things down and get to, okay, this is what we're good at, this is what we understand, and this is a business model that works.

It was all of that. It was that, you know, moving parts, revenue per day and profit per day were much lower. And I think the worst part for us is you've got all this money out there, expenses, labor, material costs, And, you know, sometimes people are holding back a lot of money because sometimes your payment terms are 30, 60, 90 days, and then they do retainage. So I think in our peak, we did a $6 million roofing job and siding job, which sounds very good. But if you're not getting paid for 90 days and they hold 10 to 15% retainage for a year until all the other trades are done, it can really affect your cash flow. So we're at the point where I'd rather go out and get 15 or 20 one-day baths in a week and offset a whole house remodel that would take 4 months to do.

How many salespeople do you have?

So we're currently at 15. For 2026, we want to have 20 sales reps.

20 sales reps. Okay, good. So you're looking at growth for next year.

So we're part of the EOS. We have a 1-year plan, 3-year plan, and a 10-year plan. So that wasn't— so we are in growth mode. We were the past 3 years in more of a process profit mode. Let's really make sure that each one of our divisions are a well-oiled machine and then we'll go back to growth mode.

I'm starting to hear it more and more. Companies are going out of business. COVID boom's been over. People have been trying to figure it out for the last year or two. People thought that, okay, this is just going to keep going. So, you know, I did $4 million this year. I didn't make money, but we got some momentum. So let's go to $7 million next year. Yeah, okay. But that's if you haven't fixed your business at whatever, $4 million, $10 million, $20 million, $100 million. I know a company, I know a company right now that last year did like $150 or $160 million. Made less than 2% profit. They got approached, of course, by private equity. Private equity looked at the profit and said, what the hell? You know, I don't care if you're doing $150 million, you're making $1.5 million on $150 million. That's not a good business model. So, the owner finally woke up and said, whoa, wait a minute. Maybe all this revenue is not all that it's cracked up to be. And so, now they've got to figure out how do I right-size the business? How do I do $75 million and net $10 million rather than doing $150 million and net $2 million. We're recording this in early October. So a lot of companies are starting planning for next year. And the decision that they have to make is, do I grow? Do I grow at 10%, 20%? Or do I grow at 100%? Do I grow at 50%? And the answer, I think, is depends. Depends on how solid that foundation is. And I think that what you did is the smartest thing that you could do. So what if you maintain your same revenue level for 3 years in a row? But if you improved your profitability, if you went from 5% to 15%, you just went from making $1 million net to making $3 million net on the same amount of revenue, but while at the same time shoring up your foundation. And once, like you said, it's a well-oiled machine. Now you could look at next year and say, all right, we're ready. We've got the foundation in place. We have the cash. We have the profit model. We understand our gross margin. And now we can say, okay, let's grow by 30% next year. I think that now is a really critical time for a lot of people to really do some soul searching and really look at and try and understand, okay, what am I in this for? You know, my whole thing is, what do you really want? Do you really want a $10 million business just for the sake of a $10 million business? Or do you want a business that makes $1 million a year? Or half a million a year or $2 million a year. It doesn't matter. What do you want?

I have learned the hard way previously where it was grow at all costs.

I did the same thing because when you're isolated, when you're on your own, your head naturally goes— we are naturally wired as entrepreneurs, grow, grow, grow, grow, revenue, revenue, revenue. But what they don't teach us is they don't teach us how to make money. They teach us how to sell, and you could sell. That's obvious. You know, you did that way, way back 20 years ago. But at some point, we got to get good at making money. At some point, we got to get good at recognizing how profitability works in this business. And then once we understand that, then it's about applying the fundamentals. I need a selling system. I need to drive leads for my sales reps every day. We need to make sure we're getting the work installed and we're doing, and we're getting 5-star reviews. On and on, you know, it's a formula. There's a formula to it. And I think you've got it pretty well dialed in.

Yeah, so that's exactly it. It is a formula and we're following that formula to a T now. So we've joined the Profit Masters. It's been right after your profit workshop, And so it's been about a year. Probably that's the best thing for that we've done as a company as a whole, because I used to do monthly P&L meetings. They're good. I did. I think every business owner should be doing that. But what we've done is we've brought in our leadership team into our monthly P&L meetings with, with Profit Masters. And it's been great because you kind of get a little healthy competition between our sales manager and our production manager because we break it down by produce revenue a month, sold revenue a month. And we also have a profit goal that we're trying to hit. So now my production manager can see on a monthly basis, I need to do this much in revenue so that we can hit our profit number a month. And it's gone. And ever since he started participating in this meeting, we've had 3 consecutive months of an increase in profit. And up last month we were— or August, we were at 15% profit.

Nice. Congratulations.

I'm convinced if he wasn't sitting in that meeting that it wouldn't be at 15%, because I think the mentality sometimes is we've got all this backlog, so we're good. It's there. The problem with backlog is if you're not producing it right away, you're not going to see a profit on a monthly basis. And so he's super motivated now. He knows he's got to do X amount a week and he's making it happen. And then like in August, production outperformed sales by like 20%. So now Abby, our sales manager, is fired up and trying to sell more than we produce. I mean, it's just a healthy competition that I love, and it's just breeding success by everyone seeing the numbers on a monthly basis.

It is so important to understand the numbers of this business. And what happens is, historically, is again, nobody teaches us how to be profitable. In this business. And so people will have these crazy P&Ls that are all over the place that they can't understand, that they can't make decisions from. To compound matters, they're doing cash accounting. So they're taking their customers' money and they're mixing it in with their money. And some months they're killing it and other months they're not killing it. The opposite, they're getting killed and they cannot seem to balance out and get to a point where they understand how the numbers work in this business. And the, the method that we use at Profit Masters makes the P&L simple to understand. If you want to make 15% net in this business, okay, how do you do that? Well, you only spend 85%. And so how do you divvy up the 85%?

Where does it go?

How much gross margin do you need in order for you to put 15 points to the bottom line? And the margin is your pricing formula. How do you price jobs? And that's another area where people don't understand how to price jobs. And so, yeah, I'm happy to hear that. That's amazing because at the end of the day, why are we doing this if we're not making any money?

We've started another meeting. With sales and production that's been super helpful. We get the job costing for every job through ProfitMaster. So we'll then go through and have a job costing meeting once a week and we can determine, did we leave anything on the table? Was it sold right? Are we— did material prices go up and did we not catch it? So we're looking essentially in that meeting, we're looking at material budgeted, to actual, labor budgeted, gross profit projected to actual. And we're really trying to get it to the dollar. Like Sarah in our level 10 meeting, her responsibility for the week was to try to cut some software costs. And she's like, well, I only saved a little bit. And I was like, well, what's a little bit? She's like, well, I saved $100 a month on our, our internet bill. So if the goal was to cut money, you did it. We're really trying to be cognizant about trying to track every single dollar that goes in and out of the company. And now that everyone I think that's the biggest shift. Everybody on the leadership team is working together to do it versus me just having a meeting with my accountant once a year reviewing the P&L.

Well, and what the Profit Masters also teaches, because it's based on Mark Curry's system that he has used for the last 4 decades, and what he does is that every line item on the P&L somebody is responsible for, accountable to. And so the leadership team gets redacted P&L so that they can see their portion. This is what you were responsible for, and here's how we did last month. And it sounds complicated, and it sounds like a lot of work, but I think if you're really serious about being in this business, any business and using your business to create freedom for your family, for you, whatever that means for the individual. And you create the freedom through wealth. And how do you create wealth? Well, your business throws off a lot of cash. And so it's a skill that you must possess. At Success Society, at our next intensive, we're going to talk, we're going to go deep on planning. Profitability. My goal would be to get everybody in Success Society on the same chart of accounts, on the same P&L, so that when we meet and we go break up into our mastermind groups, we're all speaking the same language. Now, it's going to be tough, you know, with some people, it's going to be really tough. But I think the ones that get it, even if they're not working with Profit Masters or somebody that does the accounting the right way for home improvements, I think that just by understanding how those numbers papers work and being able to discuss them in their mastermind group with their team and with their facilitator could be game-changing, I think, because nobody else— they're not talking about it with anybody else.

I would say game-changing would be the right word. I mean, from the last intensive we had in July, we've just taken away so much from it. Our focus had been on the call center improvement. I think just having that peer network— in your book, you talk about success leaving clues. I would call myself the biggest copycat out there because if I'm always talking to people and when I see that people have things working, I'm copying you. You just had Brian Kaskavalciyan on. His call center's phenomenal. And the fact that people are just so willing to help you out. He was so willing to help me. I mean, I literally got his whole playbook for his call center. So since July, We've totally changed how we're setting appointments, how quickly we're getting to appointments, and how we're compensating our call center team. We've seen an improvement, but we know that we're going to continue to see a huge improvement. We were having an issue with cancellation. Our raw leads have been very good this year. We are setting a good amount of appointments, but people were canceling before we were getting to them. And the biggest issue was we were not doing a good job of getting to them same day, next day, or even within a day. Some of our— sometimes people were waiting a week before we can get to them. It was killing us. So we implemented a couple strategies. The biggest thing was changing the bonus structure for the call center team. So same day, next day appointments get bonused much higher than even a 2 or 3 day appointment. And we also did it— actually, we also did it on demos. Now, the quality of the phone calls is important as well. The customer's not loving the experience on the phone call, they may cancel. So we want them to have a wonderful experience on the phone so that they're excited to see us and minimize our cancellations and get to them quickly. That's been our biggest thing. So that was the last thing I wanted to master before we get into growth mode. And we've got it dialed in now. It's just great having a peer network of successful people that you can bounce ideas off of.

Yeah, I started Success Society because I know from my own personal experience, I know that when you are outside of your office and you are around other people, the advantage to Success Society is everybody's in the same business. I had never been in a mastermind group before, and I've been in many. Where everybody was in the same business. And even then it was powerful. We had a great facilitator. We had a couple people in the group that we resonated with that maybe the businesses were similar and we can copy some stuff from. But Success Society, everybody's in the same business. So you meet a guy like Ryan and he's got a piece of the business that he's killing it on. You have a piece that you're killing it on. And you guys now say, wait a minute, why am I going to go try and reinvent this thing? Let me go learn what he's doing and implement it into my business. And then I'm going to teach him how I'm doing this. And then you grow together and it's speed. What you're buying is speed. And we don't have time to figure all this crap out on our own. And it's shocking to me how many people are just isolated and they're on their own and they're trying to figure all this stuff out. It's like, wait a minute, there are places you can go. You can come and listen to a podcast. You can go watch this on YouTube. Although on YouTube, this is not going to look very good because Brian moved to a new office and I already apologized to Jason. Like, We're kind of a mess here, but we'll fix that in the next week or two. But anyway, you can go to YouTube and you can watch this stuff. You can go to events, you know, and you can hear people talking from the stage. As valuable as like Accelerate is, or Top 500 is coming up, you know, next month, as powerful as this stuff is, there is nothing, nothing that beats having a peer group, having a mastermind group that you meet with on a regular basis. I mean, when I used to do just the mastermind groups, the precursor to Success Society, it was incredible to me to watch our members light up and become like their businesses started to really take off because why? Because they didn't have to figure everything out on their own. They would go to an accelerate and they would get their notes. They would hear stuff one way, they would go execute it. And then it's like, well, But somebody else heard it a different way. They executed, then they'd share notes. And then boom, they would take the best of each. They would both tweak their systems. And now, boom, now they're faster. And so I'm glad you brought that up because, you know, we talk about that stuff a lot and whether it's Success Society or you find some other peer group to be a part of, I happen to think ours is the best because it's designed for this industry. There's absolutely nothing like it.

I was in a different group called EO. For others that don't know, Entrepreneur Organization was very good for me in learning about being an entrepreneur and other practices. But the thing about Success Society, which I left EO to be in Success Society, is because it's specific to our industry. And while, you know, I could share an experience that I was having with my group in EO, they're just totally different industries where like, didn't get it all center and set rate and success aside, this team there knows it. I mean, they're, we're living and breathing in the same environment and we've all had the same issues and learn from other successes has been phenomenal. Yeah. And I just joined brand new. I'm looking forward to the next intensive in Miami. I believe it's in Miami, right?

Miami.

Yeah.

You know, you bring up EO. So I was in EO in California when we moved to Miami. Addie said, well, why don't you join EO again? That was you know, you liked it, you had fun. I said, why don't you join EO? I think it would be good for you to be around other entrepreneurs. And so she joined and it's good. You know, we've made a few really good friends out of it. I was in EO probably too for like 4 or 5 years. The guy whose office we always went to, who was kind of the, the leader of our group, if you will, owned a big insurance company. I owned a franchise company and a home improvement, you know, small home improvement company. There was a printer in there. There was a guy that had a big food delivery company. There was a guy that had electronics, like he would buy electronics from China. His father owned the company. It was like this big-ass company in China. He was a super rich guy, you know, and then somebody had like a swag business and anyway, But yeah, it was all different businesses. And, you know, it was cool because you would talk about how you were feeling and about your personal life. And but it wasn't like a true, like, mastermind where you would go around the table and say, okay, I've got this issue, tell me how to deal with this, how you guys have dealt with this, or what you would do in my place. And they could give advice, But not like you sitting with Ryan Keene and saying, oh man, my call center, we're booking a week out. Oh, and then Ryan will jump in and say, wait a minute, dude, you're killing yourself. You're paying for all these leads. And if you're booking them more than 48 hours out or 72 hours out, you're dead in the water, you know? And so here's how to do it. Here's how I'm doing it. And we're booking within same day, 24 hours. I always say to people when they join Success Society that you've given yourself the gift of being surrounded by people rooting for your success. I believe, and I've said this here 1,000 times, I believe we need to work on ourselves as much as we need to work on our businesses. And so just out of curiosity, what are some of the things you do to work on yourself so that you could be the leader and drive this company to wherever you're going to take it.

If you look at my calendar from 11 until 2 every day, Monday through Friday, I go to the gym and I'll do a workout, clear my mind, I'll do a sauna. I believe in having total mental health. I didn't have anything that drove me to— I think going to see a therapist has a negative persona, but it's something that I do. And so I'll go see a mental health coach.

Me too.

I call it just keeping my house in order. If I can't keep my house in order, and I certainly can't keep my team's house in order. For me, it's just focusing on the whole thing— mental health, physical health, emotional health, and spiritual health. And that's one thing we did in EO. We actually monthly, we would report, we would rate it 1 through 10 because it fluctuates. You know, maybe my fitness wasn't where it should be. I've got a lot going on and maybe my mental health wasn't where it should be. And that's something that we can talk about throughout the forum. But I think it's just good to be cognizant of all of those because there's certainly every one of those components can help help you be a better person. And I guess just making a point to always trying to get better within the company. I also want to have that focus. I want to be a better father. I want to be a better husband. It's just the mentality of being better. I never— I don't think I'll ever be where I want to be, but I could always work at being better.

Thanks for sharing that, because as entrepreneurs, we put ourselves out there every day. And, you know, in my book, Secret number 2 is taking responsibility, 100% responsibility. The majority of people out there do not take responsibility for their lives. They make excuses and they place blame. We can't do that. We can't afford to do that. And by the way, the minute you start to do that, you will start to see it show up in your business in a very negative way. The minute you show excuses and blame. Now you're opening the door for your people to excuse and blame. And so where does that start? It starts with us. And whatever it takes, whether it's a mental health professional, which I actually hadn't for a while, and I just was introduced to somebody last week and I had a conversation with her and I'm actually going to go on Friday and I'm going to do a little bit of mental health work because it's not easy to be us because we're constantly, like you said, better. I just want to be better. I just want to be better. Well, to what end? There's no end.

Right. Yeah.

And so that's hard to live with and then throw in having goals and saying, okay, well, next year we want to do this. Well, that's scary. And when that fear shows up, how do you deal with it? When emotion gets involved, when feelings get involved, when you bring the past— I'm going way deep in here, especially as we're getting to the end of the year. And again, this is planning season for next year. So when you plan and you look at numbers, look, if you've only ever made $200,000 before and you've I've created a plan to make $500,000. Okay, yeah, I could put that plan on paper. But if I don't believe in my heart and soul and my mind that I deserve to make $500,000 a year, that I can make that money, that it's there for me, you're not going to get there. And so whatever you have to do, whether it's reading, having a coach, a mental health professional as a coach, going to Success Society, being around other entrepreneurs, whatever it takes. Because when you take control of your mind, that's when you take control of your life. Every single successful person I know, not a single one is just, you know, it just happens just because. It takes work. And they work on themselves more, almost more than they work on their businesses. So thank you for sharing that. What do you do after work?

I have one thing I love to do. I love to cook. So I get home from work every day and I'll make something from scratch and I put my AirPods in. I listen to a podcast or something and I'll kill two birds with one stone. We generally will have dinner as a family. I have two daughters, married and have two daughters because my kids are active and they're 14 and 15 now and they're teenagers. And I think our time doing that is running short. So I used to have a countdown with my daughters, like one, one of them, Ella or Aubrey, was leaving the dinner table a couple of years ago and I just said a number like 1,200. And she's, she's like, what are you talking about? And I'm like, well, we only have 1,200 more days that we can sit down and have a meal together. So then it just became a running joke. We estimate now it's like 800 54 or something. They're going to be going to college soon. So that's what I like to do. We like to cook a dinner, sit, cook dinner, sit down and have, have it together as a family. And in a few years it'll be different.

If I can say as a friend, that is the most beautiful thing that you could spend your time on right now, because my daughters, the older one is soon to be 27 in a couple of weeks and the little one is 23. The older one lives halfway around the world and the little one has a job. She has a boyfriend. She's busy. She lives at home. And thank God during the week, we, you know, we do see her quite a bit during the week, but it changes. And it's the more time that you spend with them now, I think that's the best investment of time that you can make because they will grow up. And they will go lead their own lives because you've probably, and your wife have probably raised two strong, you know, ambitious, tough-willed women or soon-to-be women. Now they're teenagers. They're a pain in the ass, but they're your pains in the ass. And anybody that's listening, that's got young kids. If your business isn't set up for you to be home, to be with them, now, please change, because they will be older one day and they won't be around. And you don't want to look back and say, oh my God, I should have been there, because there's no way to go back. There's just no way. It changes. And so when I hear things like that, it gets me emotional because I can't go back. I've been there, I've done that. I don't know if I would do things differently. I, I joke that I was a horrible father because I took my little one to play golf when, I don't know, maybe she was 10 or 11. Because I wasn't super committed to it— I play once or twice a year— because I wasn't super committed to it, I didn't keep taking her back. And that's one regret I have. I wish I could have I wish I kept taking her. That could have been our thing, you know, we could have gone and played golf together. But anyway, let's end with the best advice you've ever received, heard, or maybe even given.

The best advice I've got, and it's actually one of your secrets. I used to be in, um, the Certified Contractors Network, and Troy— I might have been complaining about something at the time, and he's like, well, it's your fault.

I'm like, what are you talking about?

It's not my fault. This person did this, and you're essentially 100% responsible for everything that happens in your life. That day that we had that conversation, I've really owned that. And when you stop making excuses, when you stop blaming other people and you just own it, really started to see just a change in my overall life because that goes to more than just business. If my kids are arguing with me a lot, that's right. So that was absolutely the best piece of advice I've ever received.

I love that. And there's a reason why it's secret number 2 is because without that, you can't be successful in life. You can't get ahead. You can't have any measure of control over your life because you abdicate control to others. What would you say to somebody that's thinking about, you know, maybe looking into a peer group, mastermind group, being a part of a community? What might you say to them?

There's no reason to not go because you get to experience it. And if you don't like it, I believe that deal was you get your money back. I am a firm believer that if you, if you want to succeed and get better, I'll go back to what I originally said, that success leaves clues. Like, you might go learn from people that have experienced it and are really good at it. I mean, that's the other thing I didn't even talk about. You have the opportunity to learn from— I mean, we have that monthly coaching call with the best people in the business. Like, if I want to talk to Charlie Gindell next month, I can just go on and schedule my call. If I were golfing and I had the opportunity to from Tiger Woods. We literally have the best people in the business at our disposal. And I won't even share names, but one of— there's another person there that I was talking to that is not one of the ones we could have a monthly call with.

A facilitator. Yeah, group facilitator.

And I was just talking to him out at the happy hour. He runs a very big company there. And I was like, well, you know, it's too bad I can't have a call with you monthly. And he's like, well, you could. And then he gave me a cell phone number. So I'm like, all right, well, I promise I won't bother. Everyone's just wanting to help. And I got so much value out of it before I had to make a decision that it was a no-brainer for me.

Every member adds to the group and having people like you, because as much as you are being helped by others, you are helping others as well. And that's the beauty of that. Whole thing is that everybody's helping everybody. So Jason, appreciate you. Thanks for being here. I know for sure you're going to be back next year. So we'll get an update on all of the moves that you're making. And I will see you in a few weeks. Until next time, this is Brian Kaskavalciyan. And this is the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. Thanks for being here.