0212: Construction Industry Marketing: 5 Strategies for Doubling Your Profitable Growth with Co-Founder of the Association of Professional Builders Sky Stephens

EA interviews episode 212 inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round. Seven days a week, join Mario Ficcini for today's expert Authority Effect interview. Have you ever wanted to help your customers more? Have you seen that they were struggling in certain areas and they were good at their expertise, but just didn't know? Maybe it's marketing, maybe it's lead generation, maybe it's just ancillary things that are so vital to business, but it's not in their wheelhouse. Have you ever thought about starting your own association? I know I have and that's why I'm excited to have Sky Stevens here. We're going to be talking about the association of Professional Builders and why she founded it. Right after we thank our sponsor. Every business needs a book, including yours. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that's free businessbook publishingcourse.com Here she is, ladies and gentlemen, the lovely Sky Stevens. How are you feeling today, Sky?

I am so good. Thank you so much for having me. Mario, how are you?

I'm feeling great. I'm excited to dive in and ask you some questions about what you're doing and all the people you're helping because it's impressive and I want to know how you got started.

Yeah. So, well, obviously our company is called the association of Professional Builders and that only started about five odd years ago. But the story actually starts about 10 years ago because it's actually my father and I that created the association of Professional Builders. So his name is Russ Stevens.

But our whole journey actually started about 10 years ago, but we started another company and it was actually a marketing agency specifically so, specifically a marketing agency for rent residential home builders. And it was, it was just so much fun because we were just spending all day doing marketing and generating leads for our builders.

And why is that important? Because I know there's a lot of people in expert authority world listening and they have the skill set, they have the expertise. But why are leads and marketing and all this so vitally important?

Well, I mean, at the end of the day you can't eat, you can't, you can't do anything in the business. You can't help many people if you can't generate leads because that's what gets your sales. That's how you pay your staff. That's, that's just how it happens. So that's, that's why we started Generating leads for builders because so many people are great in their own business, but lead generation and marketing, it's, it's different but it's just that important that we needed to, to actually do it for our builders.

Did you see a big need in the market when you started it 10 years ago or was it something people were asking you about?

So.

Essentially what happened was Russ Stevens, he had a safety documentation business. So he was already dealing with builders and he was essentially like selling completed like safety documents. So you know, like workplace health and safety once you're on a construction site, those documentation that everyone needs. And basically it was, it was a sale that the builders like had to buy. So there wasn't like a really happy, exciting sale. It was like they just had to get this documentation. But after that sale was made, he just end up like carried on talking to these builders and that's how they then got onto the topic of marketing. And you know, what do you guys do? Like, you know, what are you doing here? And you know, he just gives some bits of advice based on how he was growing his business.

And then, you know, Russ and I were chatting one day, we realized there was clearly a need. So that's when we set up a marketing agency for the builders. And there was definitely a need from the builder side because they just, they wanted the leads because they knew how to build, they knew how to walk them through the whole process. But what we figured out after a while is we could generate all the leads in the world for some builders and they still weren't growing or they still weren't selling or whatever it may be. So that's when we realized how is one builder so successful with these leads and growing their building company and signing more contracts? But one builder is complaining that the leads are quite rubbish. And after a lot of analysis we worked out there was nothing wrong with the leads, it was actually the sales process. So then it led us down a different path. We had to do a lot of training in the sales process for these building companies.

And we actually launched a sales training company to do that. So, like how to qualify on the phone, how to close move them through your sales process. And that again helped to an extent, the builders we were working with. But then other areas would fall down in operations or pricing and margins and financials. And that's when we realized it's full blown business coaching at that point. And that's actually what led us to create the association of Professional Builders. Because it's not just one avenue like marketing, it's Marketing, sales, financials, operations and then even like self development, like leadership training, because you've got to cover all areas to really have that successful business and building company.

Well that's impressive that you built all that out. And I'm familiar with it. Not in the construction industry so much, I've helped some people. But in businesses in general there's so many steps to it. I mean the leads and gener, the lead generation is one part of it. Like you said the marketing, you know, the sales, there's so many things. And then you said the self development, that's what hooks everyone, doesn't it? That's just what everyone in the world can't wait to do is just change everything about themselves and be better, right?

Well, you'd be so surprised. So we do a lot of marketing ourselves. When anyone comes onto our database we go through a ton of different questions and one of them is essentially that we try and work out their perceived priority. What do they think their biggest problem is right now and what do they want to solve? Is it sales, marketing, margins, whatever? And self development is actually at the bottom of that list. The irony is though, once anyone joins us as our association and becomes a member and they get access to all different trainings, that almost always goes to the top of the list because it's mindset training, it's leadership training and that's what actually helps you implement the rest of the other tactical side of it. So it's really ironic. It's I suppose given first what they want, then what they need and then it all works out. But it is interesting.

That's a great expert authority insight that you're making there because as much as I was joking about it and maybe I really should go to Australia sooner than later because.

I mean most people I've noticed here in the us it's like if they can just buy it and not do any work, they're all for it. But the reality is you're not going to figure it out until you have the competency. Even if you do outsource it after that, I believe you do need to have some knowledge. You can't just go in blind. I mean that's kind of crazy. But self development is not what people.

Everyone needs it and it is so beneficial. And I've done tons of self development, leadership training, I enjoy it, but even myself, it wasn't the first thing I wanted to do. I just want to go out there and sell and help people. But when you look at the tip of the iceberg, it's interesting. The resistance where some people don't like the leads, some people don't like the self development, some love the leads, but they hate the selling process. Have you encountered that?

Oh yeah. Oh yeah, there's. And I think that's got a lot to do with personalities as well. Right. Because the dream is to be able to just sell things automatically. I really want to talk to people all the time, especially for introverts like certainly myself. But that's when a lot of the self development training comes in because it's a. Just changing up your mindset. Because what do you not like about the selling? Well, a, A big part of selling is dealing with rejection because people can say no and you know, you're, you're not moving them to the next step. So if we can work on ourselves and our mindset, we're not taking that rejection so personally. We can actually learn how to learn anything and understand that anything is learnable. We can do anything.

Yeah, that, that rejection component is. I got enough of that in high school, didn't like it afterward, didn't like it then, don't like it now. But I don't let it stop me because yeah.

I think people have a fear of it. And I tell my own clients, I go, you're gonna let the one and a half. And those are my actual numbers out of 100 people, there's usually one to one and a half that are really adamant and it's a strong no. The rest just need more information and timing. And when you fill the hopper and you have quality leads consistently, you don't put that pressure on yourself. To have to force everyone, I think is the worst thing you can do, doesn't mean, you know, you don't want to just jump to the end and everything. I think that's natural for anyone. But what have you found works best, especially with construction? Is there a certain order you take them in? I mean, what if someone's averse to leads versus averse to sales versus self development? I mean, do you. Do you just bounce around and start them at points 3, 4 and 5 if they don't want to do 1 and 2? Or do you have a systematic process that you take everyone through no matter what?

So I suppose to explain that we have a couple of levels with what we do at the association. So the first tier, I suppose you could say is like our membership and it's like a Netflix for builders. It's an on demand training portal so they can go to whatever they feel more most drawn to, which is Great in that perspective because they can skip over what they don't want to do and just warm themselves up on the training they do want to complete and get excited by it.

But what all that does is expose a bigger gap on what they're not learning. We have another TR and it's like private mentoring, it's like advanced mentoring and we actually have it all laid out in a roadmap and we have like levels that we want to push our clients through, push our builders through, and it really ensures that, I mean, they could be a level 10 on so many areas, but because they didn't do this one thing, they're still on level one and it really pushes them through so that they're building a really strong, strong foundations in their building company, in their business, so that by the time they get to playing a much bigger game, they're very secure because they've done all of the groundwork prior. So it's very different. It's people. Right. You can't push people to do something that they're not comfortable doing. Always. You can't always do that. Push people to do something that they're not comfortable doing at the start because it just means they're never going to do anything. So give them a little bit of what they want first and then what they need because they getting those small wins and achieving what they wanted to do will make them feel more comfortable to do. Okay, maybe I do need to do some leadership training. That's probably what's falling down. I've learned XYZ in these trainings. I can see my gap a lot clearer now.

Have you found that there are certain areas people gravitate towards more in the construction field that they want to start learning first?

Yeah.

Like in terms of what they want to start learning, the biggest perceived priority, when anyone first gets in touch with us, the biggest one is generating more leads, ironically enough. And what we actually do is we have really detailed KPI spreadsheets for all of our builders. Bit dorky in that sense, but it's mainly so that when we're coaching our builders, we're not listening to what they think the problem is. You're looking at data and you can actually tell them what the problem is because so many. And I think we're all guilty of this. We'll think we know, we're like, oh, you know, it's lead gen. You know, I need to create a new lead magnet or a new offer for my website. And if you look at all of the data they're generating Tons of leads. So the problem is keep going down the funnel. Okay, well you're not signing enough contracts, you're bad at closing. That's what we need to work on. Forget generating more leads, let's look at where it's falling over and you can look at the data and the numbers and actually make data driven decisions based on all that.

Yeah, that's always interesting when you're like, well, I think this is working, but I think that's working. It's like, well, what's the conversion rate? What do you mean? You know, that's step one. And I don't know about you, but there's a lot of times where I'm like, this is going to be awesome. That's going to be eh, completely the opposite.

You know what's sad? I'm not sure if you experienced this, but we certainly have. Ugly always wins. We can get the best design of anything and put it out there and then we'll just do a split test with something else that's quick. In the ugly version, we'll always win in everything we do. So that's why you got to test everything.

That's funny. I can relate to that. There was actually something I drew out in crayon as a joke and I'm like, you've got to be kidding me.

It's just always the way our poor team, we try so hard to make it all look as clean and as gorgeous and professional and it's always the sloppier version that tends to win, unfortunately. But if it works, it works.

Yeah, that's the thing. If it's reaching more and helping more people.

I found I just have to just be fine with it, be cool with it, whatever. Because I have a tendency to want to make things look better and.

That was a hurdle for me years ago. I was like, you've got to be kidding me. You know what I mean? Because it's like, I think you're just trained to want stuff to be nice, but when the reality is if a is converting 88% higher than the other one, just roll with it and focus on something else because you clearly found the winner. And that in itself is a win because it's not always the easiest thing.

Yeah, it's so, it's so true. And I mean if you don't listen to your data, why are you even looking at it? Why are you reporting on it at the end of the day or just wasting everyone's time if we're not going to listen to it? So actually look at it, listen to it, verify it. We always will, always trust. But verify everything, especially if you don't want it to win. You'll just find what could possibly be broken here. But if it is actually winning, great. The only time we'll ever change things, and I'm not sure if you do this, is when you've clearly outgrown it and it's not actually relevant for your audience anymore. It might still be working, but, for example, certain images, that's not what your avatar looks like anymore. And sometimes you just have to move on. So we've had to make those calls a few times, but more often than not, if you've got a winner, stick with it.

It's interesting. I feel like you're reading my mind to an extent. I was just about to ask you, how long do you keep using something with the caveat of whether it's working or not? Actually, if it's not working, how long do you keep trying? Like, if you're really passionate about it and you're just like, it's gotta work, it's gotta work, and it's just not working, how long do you keep that up for? Like, two weeks, a month, six months?

No more than two weeks. Because you can just tell, right? Especially when you're spending money on it, you're not gonna burn too much more money. Unfortunately, it is what it is. What we have done is tested. Tested it again, like a month or two later. Timing's such a big thing, right? It can influence so much. So there was this one offer, and we were all like, yes, everyone's gonna love this. Our audience are gonna love it. And we launched it and it didn't work. So we had to turn it off after two weeks. And the next month we were like, let's just try it. Launched it again, and it didn't work. So to turn it off after, like, I think about a week that time, because it was really bad. And then, like, the third time, we were like, let's just try it one more time. It's perfect this time of year. And it still didn't work. So it's just still on the back burner. But it's not as if it was up for three consecutive months.

I gotcha.

It was a week and a half to two weeks each time before we just called it.

Have you ever had anything that doesn't work? You turn it back on at some point and then it just skyrockets?

Yes, yes, because timing is important. For example, like your really timely messages, you know, with anyone in coaching or consulting, when you're actually talking about planning, when you're coming up to like a year end, whether it's financial year end or even just calendar year, those timely messages really, really work. And you can actually do them really far out from the next year as well. As long as your messaging is, is correct and you're sort of aware that, you know the new year's coming in several months time.

Don't, don't have next year's messaging with last year's numbers.

Yeah. So I mean, you just gotta launch it and sometimes it won't work, but as it gets closer to that, you can launch it again because the time really has changed and maybe there's a little bit more urgency for your audience, you know.

Yeah, I, you're encouraging me right now because when you said two weeks, I'm like, I'm kind of at 30 days in some instances, which is a lot faster than before because I still see people at 2 months, 3 months, 6 months. It's like it's not working. You need to just drop, just change it. Because like you're saying in three months you could do six variations. And one of those, one of those is bound to be more effective than the first one versus one for three months.

Yeah. And you know, you're spending money as well.

Yeah. Depending on how much you're losing a day might incentivize you also, I think.

As well, depending where you're advertising it. So some, some people might even just be doing it totally free. It's an email campaign. But if you're actually spending money advertising, um, look at how much you're spending on a daily basis on that daily budget. Because if it's high, if you've got a big audience and you're spending a lot, you can turn it off a lot quicker. You know, you've, you've got your data there. It reached, you know, ten thousand, a hundred thousand people. It didn't work. Let's just call it and move on.

That's if you're watching your KPIs though.

Yeah. Data is important.

What's this mean? Ah, no idea. Let's just keep running it.

Painful.

So tell me about the association now, because it's great to hear that, you know, I always love the backstories that you started at 10 years ago and you launched the association even five years ago, which is impressive. But how has it grown over those last five years since you officially launched it?

So we're actually in five countries, so our builders that are members, they're in Australia, New Zealand, the South States, Canada and the uk.

So the main thing that really has propelled our growth is it's all completely online, obviously. So the way we reach all of our builders, it's completely online. We're using channels like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and then really, really heavy on a lot of our emails as well. And it's just providing so much content. And I think that's what's really transformed it. And it's, it's content marketing. It's a slow burn, but it just snowballs year after year after year. And, you know, we've had guys on our database even for 10 years from our marketing agency and, you know, they've said, you know, I've been receiving your emails for like seven, eight, nine years. I've got them all in a folder. I always, I always read them and I just save them. And there's still brand new people coming, like replying to us or like inquiring, but seeing that they've been watching us for years to get to this point and that, that's the big thing that's transformed it from actually giving away all of that content, whether it's written on video, just daily posting.

And. Yeah, so now we've got a few hundred members across those five countries.

That's fantastic. Congratulations. Would you. What percentage of organic outreach are you doing versus paid traffic?

Paid is definitely the bigger percentage for us.

80, 20.

Probably. Yeah, yeah.

And any specific platforms or are you on all of them?

Well, we definitely spend the most on Facebook, obviously, a little bit, then goes to Instagram. But the, the main difference, Facebook and Instagram, there I'd say it's more or less 50. 50, but it's your videos. Remember that in your adverts on Instagram, they've got to be under 60 seconds. And we've got some quite long videos that deliver content. So that's when more of it goes onto Facebook.

You're listening to this.

Something happened here. I want to hear that last part again. What's a great way to advertise video?

Video content on Facebook? So.

It'S that paid social is where most of our leads come from. And even when we're teaching our builders and was doing marketing for our builders, that is the best way to do it as well. Because then you got the flip side, right. You've got your search marketing. So Google search, that's when people have intent, they're actually searching for you. And yes, you know, whether you're running a, a building company or whatever, they're great leads. As well, because they're actively searching for you, but there's only a finite amount of people, so.

And you have to have it really dialed in that they could be searching for 101 different combinations. And you have to make sure you're showing up for them because they could search for A and you're ranking for.

B. Yeah, totally, totally. So, you know, paid search, you definitely want to get in on that, you know, and do it well. But there's such a missed opportunity for certainly like our builders, when we were teaching them to do it, do content on platforms like Facebook, on Instagram, because what do you think keeps people warm? You can only dangle an offer in front of so many, in front of someone so many times. So if you were to deliver content, just a few tips, maybe some proof, talk about a success story.

Here are the new design trends for this year or whatever it may be. That content keeps people warm. Plus you can repurpose it, you can put it in your emails, you can then break it up into social captions. You can do a Facebook Live on it. You can do, you can do a blog post and then share it around. You've got a lot of longevity there.

Maybe talk about it on a podcast.

Yeah, it's just all there. So, yeah, paid social is the biggest game changer. Obviously you want to make sure that you've got all of your back end stuff working as well. So there is no point in spending any of this money or doing any of this promotion if you don't have a proper system to follow up in the background automatically, like your email system and your database, like your CRM to do all of that automation for you. Because again, it's just reusing a lot of your content, keeping them warm, ready for the sales process, ready to enter them.

That is a huge expert authority insight right there. I've been preaching CRMs for years and it's why I actually partnered with Pipedrive and use them for the show. Because even before I launched the show, I had 400 people on the list out of 4,000 in my phone that I was like, I guess these can be the first hundred. You know, I was brand new and I had 405 in the list. And if you're trying to keep track of that on paper and pencil, you're gonna drive yourself nuts. Because even if you have all these areas ironed out, you still need to be personable, follow up, do sales help people and then actually deliver on it. This alone is a full time job and that's with all of it ironed out. So I'm glad you're teaching that. But more importantly, you're focusing on the back end because there's a lot of people talking about leads and all that. And I do too. It's required, you need it. But most people don't realize there's like a hundred other steps in the process.

Oh yeah. And actually going back to one of your previous questions, like if we really lay it out in a roadmap, what we have is like a big core training for our builders to go through. We call it the sales blueprint per builders. And it's basically the proven sales process for a building company. And what we've done is we've made an entire blueprint there, like legs and bubbles and everything. And you just follow this chain going down. And it starts all the way at the top from all different kinds of content marketing and paid social. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google. And it all funnels into like an offer and it funnels down to your CRM. What you send in your CRM from that point to then get them to your first phone call to then a meeting, you know, and then the rest of the sales process. And that's like such a core training. We really do ensure anyone that anyone knew that comes on board, we direct them to that pretty much first because it sets you up with so much context for how to lay it out in your building company. As soon as you go through that, you can self diagnose and be like, well, I'm missing that component, I'm going to do a training on that bit.

Next, you know, and that's good because not only are you doing it, but you're tracking it so you know what they're, what's going to be best to respond to because there's so many opportunities and things you can talk about. But what should you be talking about?

Totally, totally. Like even from a marketing perspective, like what they should be putting out to their marketplace.

Yeah, yeah.

Because it's going to vary also in what you're talking about being in five different countries. Again, impressive. Congrats. But I think there's some different messaging in the US versus Australia versus New Zealand versus the uk.

That is such a good point. So the topics, yes. Like you want to make it specific to your local community in your area and there's going to be different things that you can talk about where exactly you are, but the overall strategy and the tactic of doing it doesn't change. It works wherever you are. It's just what you're saying you know and the information and tips that you're giving out, that's what you've got to customize and pivot and be very specific on. So it actually cuts through the noise in your local area. But the overarching tactics and strategies, they're the same and they work. And we know that because we've been able to test it with our builders in Australia versus a small town in the US versus a small town in Australia versus a bigger city versus, you know, a brand new development area. They're working in all of those areas and we can prove it because we track the data for all of our.

Members as well, which is so impressive because most people don't. And one of the my favorite things to help my author clients with is the messaging. I mean I've used in many real life presentations. I pull out a hundred dollar bill from my pocket and a $1 bill and it's like what's the difference? The message on the front.

Yeah, it's great. I love that.

I mean it's the same. It's not paper. For anyone listening that thinks it's printed on paper. It's not. It's a cotton blend with some other stuff. I'm not going to get into it. But it's really, I mean you could say what's the difference from bronze, silver and gold. And there is some intrinsic value. But if you're saying Apple A versus Apple B, what's the difference if one says organic on it and the other one doesn't?

I mean that's a positioning and a profit thing right there. And different investment cost.

Totally, totally. And it's something I don't think as many.

Businesses so builders as well. But businesses in general really pay enough attention to it's you want to. You're drawn to all the sexy stuff like Facebook ads and YouTube and Google Ads, but you're sort of forgetting your core component which is your messaging and who's your avatar? What are you niching on? What's unique about you? If we're not nailing that, your tactics are not going to work on Facebook.

All you're doing is amplifying the problem.

Yeah, yeah, totally. And you're wasting money.

I want 10,000 new leads. Your process sucks. You're going to lose 9,990. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Eight of them.

And that's a big thing. Right. So the purpose of us creating the association of professional builders is really just to improve the experience of both builders and consumers in the industry. Because I'M sure anyone listening, but even you, Mario, you know that this industry has a pretty bad reputation. Everyone has had a horror story or had that horrible building experience, building their new home or renovating their new home or at least there, you know, two degrees of separation away from it. It's got a horrible reputation, this industry. And there are two very different kinds of builders. You have professional builders and you have some cowboys. And it's the cowboys that don't care about the experience or undercut other builders and try and do it a lot cheaper that are really damaging the reputation of this industry. And likewise, you've got some incredible builders, incredible what they can schedule and bring together and build. But there's not so much in the way of training of business processes or other systems that they can just deploy into their business and that in turn can deliver a little bit more of a rocky experience for their clients, their consumers as well. So at the end of the day, builders can't, and businesses can't deliver world class experiences to their clients when they're working on tiny margins. So we step in, we're here to primarily help we service builders, but then it in turn is going to help the consumers in this industry. Because if we can transform as many builders as possible into professional businessmen, business owners and really transform the way they're doing business and they actually deliver a world class service to their clients, this whole industry is going to change, it's going to level up, it's going to be a lot more professional. The cowboys are going to leave.

And in turn.

They'Re taking care of the client from the very first inquiry to getting back to them instantly because they have a CRM system to educating them about the building process. What you know, some builders jargon you may not know xyz then here's the contract signing. It's not a pushy hard sale. It's a really, really consultative approach. Then they're delivering an exceptional service, building the home because they're, they're doing milestone meetings and all different things. They deliver an exceptional handover experience that is transformative and they're the systems that we've gone out of our way to provide our builders because a, they are 10 times better in the service that they can deliver the consumers and then consumers, they're happy with this industry and then it's going to be much more expected that you pay for a quote from a custom home builder because it's a lot of work that goes into producing one. It's like law medicine. You expect to be billed in 15 minute increments just to talk to a lawyer on their break. But it's just not expected in this industry and that's what we're here to do. We want them to improve that experience from start to finish, not just building from the first inquiry.

That's so great. You're transforming the industry as a whole because it is so needed. You know, it's a great industry, I love it. But you're absolutely right because someone can show up with a truck and a hammer and it's like there's someone else that's got a eight figure business that's been doing it for 50 years and no one might be able to tell the difference because the cowboy like you're talking about, he knows how to build a website and do the marketing quicker or better or whatever the case may be. And.

I love it because it levels the playing field. But I don't love it because there's a lot of people who need it and don't realize it.

And that's where our content marketing steps in. Because we're producing a lot of content. Just I think the big thing that we noticed certainly with our business is a lot of like our market, they're not actively searching on Google search for coaching and you know, help specifically with their business. Some are and that's brilliant, that's great. But a lot aren't. So we have to use content marketing as a way to make them problem aware.

Get that foot in the door.

Yeah. And actually show like do you experience this? Do you feel like this? There is a better way. Did you know it doesn't have to be like that and actually give them some tips of what they can do to manage their clients expectations better or you know, qualify a lead on the very first phone call. We can give them those systems and give them some free information so they can actually realize, oh like there actually is a better way and then they're more open to it and then they look for more solutions.

So speaking of that better way, tell me about your biggest success story and the transformation you've been able to give someone who's been your biggest mess beforehand that had the biggest turnaround from joining and working with you.

Well, I'll tell you about this. One client, one client springs to mind. They're based in Australia actually. So he was running a building company in Australia. It had been going for several years before he even joined us. And you know, he'd even had business coaches prior to joining our private mentoring program and getting assigned one of our coaches and he Actually more than doubled his building company in a year. So suddenly he was up to 9 million in revenue. That's a lot of moving parts, That's a lot of employees. And he doubled it so quickly with this last coach. But it was a bit of a mess behind the scenes. So he came on board with us and we were able to completely clean everything out, look at every single number, and really analyze what state the building company was in right there and there. When he joined us, he had no ability to track his work in progress. He had cash flow problems. With that kind of revenue, why do you have cash flow problems? There's something happening in the back end there that we had to fix. And they weren't doing any online marketing either. This was built from an entire referral model. And if you're relying on referrals, it's a house of cards, you know, like what happens when the referrals dry up. You've got all this stuff, all these expenses. It's so risky. So that's what kind of Shapely was like when he first came on board. And within six months, he solved all those problems. We gave him a system for tracking his work in progress. And ironically, for builders, work in progress is different to workflow. So we're able to establish that with him as well. We set him up on these detailed KPIs so we could track every single number in his business and see where problems were so he could spot them. It's not just for us to be able to spot them for him, but we gave him the tool so that he could manage his business properly and professionally and actually set him up with a strategy so that he, moving forward, could do content marketing to have this perpetual funnel of new leads coming into the building company. And that was a transformation in itself. I remember what he said. And yeah, he's delivered us a lot of success stories, which is amazing. And he Learned more in 6 months with us than 2 years with his previous business coach. Because it was builder specific. I think that's the main thing. You got to look to people who are experts in what you're doing, because there are the black swans that you just don't know about that can get you. And so if you can go to someone that's got all that experience and they've worked with hundreds of other building companies, they know what to look for. Especially as well, the bigger the company, the more spectacular the failure if it all goes belly up. So you need to be able to really ensure that you are got strong foundations. You're a lot more secure. And in construction that means holding a lot of cash because anything can happen. So it's about building those reserves, building up the company's equity so that he was a lot more secure. If anything were to happen in the world, you know, that just blindsides you. So I would definitely say that story comes to mind first mainly because he was very successful on paper and on the outside when he first came to us. But it was restructuring a lot of the back end so it was like completely sound so that like there was, there was no more like sleepless nights or anything like really secure. He was successful on paper before and now it was just like completely backed up after six months to transform, you know, the financial side and all the system side in the back end.

Well, that's exciting to hear and congratulations.

Thank you.

I have one more question for you. It's with the wheel of whatever.

And yours is.

Tell me a country you want to expand to or going to that no one knows about yet. Where are you going next?

Oh, catch me off guard kind of question.

That's exactly right. But I wanted to be nice so it was still kind of easy.

Yeah, yeah, I love it. So to be honest, it would probably be a little bit more in the UK because we only have one or two members there at the moment. So we've got like a few dozen in every other country. But we've only got one or two in the UK and it's definitely a market. Russ and I, obviously from the uk so that's probably going to be the most interesting to try and grow that market a little bit more. His accent is a lot stronger than mine, so you'd probably be able to do much better marketing with his accent over there. But that's probably going to be the most exciting to do because there's more of like an emotional tie there.

Excellent. Well, thank you very much. We're going to thank our sponsor and come back for the imperfect action round. You've heard me say every business needs a book, including yours. And it's true. And that's why you should visit freebusinessbook publishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. But you know what, don't take my word for it. Take it from a few of my authors like Laurie, I went from having.

An idea and a possibility to actually getting my book published.

Or Catherine, thank you for making my.

Mom number one best selling author.

Or Mary Alice, what he got done.

For me in three days. Regarding my book launch.

Unmanageable John Cody I've worked with Mario over the phone and online and he's been very helpful in getting me where I needed to go with promoting my books.

Rocio there's no way in the world I would have been able to do this with somebody else again. I've attempted it in the past. It didn't serve me. As a matter of fact, I ended up more frustrated than anything. So this has been a very seamless process. Adele if you're looking for an amazing business coach, I highly recommend Mario Ficcini or Bill Benner.

I can't make a higher recommendation than to work with Mario Ficini. He has been great for me and right now I won't work with anybody.

Else except for Mario.

Hey, their words, not mine. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com to get started now. And I look forward to hearing your transformation as the next video success story. Once Again, that's free businessbook publishingcourse.com and we are back with the imperfect action around Sky. Are you ready to take imperfect action?

I am ready. Let's do it.

All right, 60 second answers, three of them. The first question is, what is the fastest path to the profits?

Ooh. For custom home builders, the fastest path. To be honest, it's all in the data. It's all in the numbers. And at the end of the day, if you are not pricing properly, the traditional method is out. It's not about adding a markup to your cost of sales. It's all about looking at your true cost of sale and making sure you've got a net margin on all of your contracts. So to be honest.

I would say that's the fastest a builder could possibly do it because this is a lag indicator in building anyway. It can take months to sign a contract. So as long as you're pricing correctly from the start, that's how you can ensure you can always make a profit.

Excellent. Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it?

The biggest problem we see them making and the fastest way for them to fix it? Probably not qualifying properly, I would say. I think unfortunately, a lot of people end up taking on clients that they don't want because they either didn't realize the flags at the beginning, they didn't ask the right questions, or they were just so desperate they needed a client. At the end of the day, the third reason isn't good enough. You don't want to take on anyone that you don't actually want to work with for a long period of time. So the fastest way to actually fix that would be to make a hard and fast qualifying checklist. So on your very first call with a prospect, you want to probably have about seven questions that you need definitive answers to to work out if they're qualified or not. If you build custom homes, one of the questions is probably going to be, do you have land yet? Because if they don't, well, they're not qualified just yet. You're not going to talk them into a contract anytime soon because they're too early. So you need to be working on other questions and see what are the criteria they can spit out to see if they're actually qualified to spend more time with them throughout your sales process. It saves a lot of time in the long run.

Excellent. And number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

I love this question. The best way a building company can do that is honestly just to deliver a world class experience, but specifically a world class handover experience. I think if a lot of builders can transform the way they have that final meeting with their clients and actually hand over the keys and really make it an experience, it's not a five minute, here's the keys, here's a little walk around your new home, make a day of it. You want to deliver gifts, you want to have a full tour of the home, show them all the cool gadgets. If they can transform the way they do that, they're not only going to have the opportunity to get a ton of referrals from their happy clients, but you've left such a great lasting impression on your clients that you've been working with for so long. If they were to ever think about maybe renovating that home you just built or extending or adding another extension or maybe just building their next one in 5 years time, why wouldn't they call you? So I think handovers are really important for builders.

I like that a lot. That's solid.

What books could you recommend to Expert Authority World that have made a difference in your business or life?

Hands down. I knew the book to say straight off the bat because this is a book every single person on our team has read and we talk about it to all of our members constantly. I'm not sure if you've heard of it. It's a book called Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller. Fantastic book because I got to say the most profound thing in that book is what changed our companies, our builders companies. And if you caught it in the book. It's just basically the customer is the hero. We will get everything we want from us being the guide and showing them the path, but let them be the hero of their story. Hey, we're going to give you systems, but you're implementing them in your successful building company and you're a professional builder now. Go for it. So that anyone who's got a business needs to read that book and truly understand that concept.

Great recommendation. Thank you for that. Well, you've been awesome. Where would you like people to learn more?

Well, yeah, look, thank you so much for having me, Mario. I've got to say, if anyone wanted to learn a little bit more about the association of Professional Builders, you can find us on Facebook at the association of Professional Builders, on Instagram @APB builders.

And of course our website, apbbuilders.com Excellent.

Well, thank you again, Sky. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Really enjoyed it. Thanks so much for having me, Mario.

All right, Expert Authority World. We have another great episode here today. I'll see you tomorrow. Have a great day and God bless. You're already the expert, but have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate and qualify leads while increasing profit for you 24 7? And if so, how well are you promoting it? With the Expert Authority Effect publishing method, it's easier and faster than ever. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com to get started now. Once again, that's free businessbook publishingcourse.com hey, thanks for listening to today's episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven't done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show. Subscribe and also be sure to check out eainterviews.com for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you tomorrow.