The smartest people aren't necessarily the book smart people or the financial nerds. It's the people who can learn a concept, change their behavior and get better results. And that's what you can do in your business as well.

If you're a contractor, there are two levers you can pull to increase your company's revenue, pricing and volume. And I'm going to break down both of these for you so you can get more work that is profitable and you can pursue projects that will help you to build a portfolio that will allow you to scale in a sustainable manner. What I'm going to share with you comes from my direct experience running a specialty contracting business as a landscape design build firm.

And I'm going to share with you how I got sucker punched and how that led to a complete transformation in my business. And it made our business so much more profitable. We won all these awards and everything changed because of this one thing that I'm going to teach you today.

If you want to put more money in your business, if you want more financial freedom, it's going to come from reinventing your sales process and everything related to it. That's what we're going to get into right now. Years ago, I was running a landscape design build company.

When I first started out, I was 16 years old. I was doing it out of my sister's garage. I didn't know what I was doing.

I was just going out there and doing jobs and I was basing all my pricing on number one, a clunky spreadsheet and this misconception that my money, okay, what was relative to me was the same for my customers. So for example, I'd go out on a job. I kid you not.

I would measure out this backyard, right? I'd have my wheel. I'd measure it all out. I'd add up all the square footage.

I'd put it into my calculator and it would spit out a number like $12,000. And then I was like, wow, that's a lot of money. And it's because I have like a thousand dollars myself in my bank account.

So I was like, that's like 12 times what I even have saved up. And keep in mind, I was young. I was coming from nothing.

I was starting out of my sister's garage. So yeah, as a scrappy, it didn't have a lot. And therefore what I would do is I would reduce my price.

Even though my calculator would say $12,000, I was like, ah, something's got to be wrong. I'm going to price it at $10,000. And I was like, I can't do it at $10,000.

So I'll make it $9,995, $9,995, right? And then I would go back to the customer. They'd look at it. They would sign it.

And I was like, yes, I won the work. And then I'd go out there and do the job. And guess what? It still cost me what I calculated it to be.

It probably actually cost me more than I thought because my estimating was so janky at the time. But nonetheless, I wasn't making money. And this continued to happen for years.

I was underselling myself and I was doing cost-based pricing instead of value-based pricing. That's a whole nother subject for another video, another day. So time goes on, fast forward a few years, and I get a call from this guy who lives up in Genesee.

So I live in the Denver metro area. That's where my business was. And it's in the foothills, right? Genesee is in the foothills of Denver.

So I get this call and I'm like, wow, this guy has a lot of money and he wants to do a lot of cool things. This is my break. This is what I've been working so hard for.

And finally, my chance is here. So I drive up to the guy's house. I'm really excited.

I get to his gate. His gate probably cost more than my house at the time. I go through the gate and I make it to his front door.

I get out of my truck. I go to his front door. He opens it.

He's like, let's start outside. Let's walk around the property. I want to show you what I want.

He's like, great. We walk around. He's like, I want to do a water feature over here.

I want it to cascade down the hill. I want to do a fire pit over here and outdoor kitchen with a little seating wall. I want to do like all these boulders.

Let's do a hundred tons of boulders. Let's do a flagstone walkway, trees, shrubs, everything. And I was like, wow, this is going to be a lot of money.

And I was like, great. So then we go inside his house and he's like, sit down at the table. I said, okay.

And he's like, let me see your portfolio. Now keep in mind at the time I was young and all the feedback that I was getting was from my mom and my sisters and my friends, et cetera. And I had this little portfolio book is this little binder that I got at target and inside were all these pictures.

Now keep in mind, this is back in the day, like early two thousands. And I had all these pictures printed out from my camera. And I think some of them were from a disposable camera.

I kid you not. Some of them might've been from a digital camera. Nonetheless, let's just say the photos were terrible.

They're very amateur. And some of them had the garden hose like off in the corner. All right.

They're terrible. But my family, they would always give me praises. They're like, Steve, we're so proud of you.

We can't believe you built this company. And they just showered me with praise. And guess what? I mistakenly believed it.

So I showed this guy my portfolio and I was excited as, you know, flipping through the pages. And then finally he grabbed it and he starts going through it. And then everything changed.

He like looks at it. He shakes his head. He's like, he's like sighing, making all these noises.

And then he said to me, are you serious? And I was like, I serious about what? And he's like, are you serious? And I was like, totally confused. It's like, this is something that a home builder, like a track builder would be doing. He's like, this is terrible.

And I was like, okay. He's like, I can't believe this. And he just tore me apart.

And he stood up and he started walking towards his front door. And I followed after him and he ushered me right out the front door. And he's like, here you go.

Thanks. Have a good day. And I was like, wow, that was a terrible experience.

I got in my truck and I think my eyes started to leak. Maybe I had something in my eyes. No, I'm just kidding.

It was like a full blown, ugly cry. I was devastated. I was like, like just breaking down in tears.

I drove all the way back from the mountains, like crying. All right. Just crying.

I would have cried myself to sleep, but I was driving my truck and I was devastated. I don't even think I returned back to work that day. And I think I took the next day off.

I was just crushed. But then after I got over wallowing in my self pity, I told myself never again, why ever put myself in that situation is embarrassing. It was humiliating.

It was terrible all around. And I took that portfolio and I was like, put it on the shelf. I still have it right.

For safe keepings for this funny story, right. That I share. I put it to the side though.

And I said, I'll never show that portfolio again to my clients. I told myself, even if I only had two pictures of jobs that are presentable, that are really, really good, I'm only going to show two pictures. No longer am I going to show pictures that are crappy and no longer am I going to pursue jobs that don't belong in an award winning portfolio.

Up to this point, we had never won an award through our association. They used to hand out awards. They're very selective is very tough to win an award.

We never did. And I said, everything's going to change. I changed my mindset.

I changed my brand. I redid my website, all the messaging, how I carried myself, how I dressed. I said goodbye to the polo shirts with like the flip up colors.

Cause they were iron with the little stain from my Taco Bell sauce from lunch the other day. You know, I got rid of all those and I started to dress the part. I started to carry myself well.

And I redid just our whole brand presence. I got a professional photographer to photograph our jobs and then my go-to-market strategy changed. So when I talk about strategy and market focus and position, that's part of like the blueprint.

I changed our target market. I started going upstream. I started reaching out to builders, architects, interior designers, remodelers, et cetera, to build these partnerships with these high-end producers.

And that's how I changed our positioning in the market. Now it wasn't overnight. Trust me.

There are some jobs that we had to take on just to cover overhead, but I was much more selective with projects. I started saying no more. And in fact, I can't stand red mulch.

There's like this red mulch that used to be used. It was a lot more pervasive back in the day, but it was two by four shredded up and then it's dyed, right? It's dyed red, totally unnatural, look terrible. And just as one example, I made a commitment to myself.

If customers ever asked for this mulch, I would say, no, I'm not going to do it because it's going to erode my brand. I don't want it in my portfolio. So we're not going to do it.

And some customers would look at me sideways when I said that, like, wow, okay. He's really passionate about this. But the point is, is I decided to elevate my game.

So when I'm talking to contractors out there, I talk to a lot of you, I know it's time to elevate your game. I look at your websites and sorry, some of them are terrible. I look at your marketing material and some of the pictures are embarrassing.

You know, maybe you do have a garden hose in your picture like I did back in the day. So it's time to change your market focus and position. If you want to make money, right? It's so hard to make money in the lower end of the market because consumers are going to be much more price sensitive.

It's going to be a volume game. And unless you're really efficient and you have access to really great resources like talent, it's hard to get ahead. So this is what changed my whole trajectory, but it started with getting punched in the gut and then transforming my business.

So when I'm talking to business owners in this state, oftentimes they're in a profitability or liquidity crisis. There are three stages of crises. I've talked about this before, but let me just rehash these again.

First, you have a strategic crisis. That's how it begins. You don't have a good strategy.

You're not going after the right jobs. You're not positioned well in the market, which leads to a profitability crisis because you're not getting the right jobs. Your jobs are unprofitable.

You're not executing correctly. And when you have a profitability crisis, it leads to liquidity crisis. And if you don't fix it, you go bust.

82% of small businesses go bankrupt because of cashflow. So I created this guide. It's free.

It's a cashflow blueprint. It's on the Coltivar website. I'll provide the link down below in the show notes.

And I break down the components of cashflow. I give you the eight levers of cashflow. I even created a checklist and a plan for you and your business.

So be sure to get that. And the reason why it's such an important guide is because if you can fix your cashflow in your business, then you can free up money to reinvest in this transformation that I'm talking about, because it's going to take some money to put in place a strategy, to rebrand your company, to create a better website, to have a better sales process, to change your offer, to have a KPI dashboard, to have a financial forecast. All of these things require cash.

If you free up cash, then you'll have the cash to pay for this transformation. If you don't free up cash and you just continue as is eventually you're going to be out of business. Okay.

I can tell you that. So I'm so grateful for this transformation and this hard experience. So maybe you're going through hard things in your business and trust me, I know I'm preaching the choir.

Construction's a super tough business to be in. And if this is the case, just hold on, but don't keep repeating the same mistakes, learn from your mistakes and your business will start to change. So hard is good.

If you're learning and you're changing your behavior based on those learnings, that's the whole definition of intelligence. It's the rate at which you change your behavior based on what you're learning. If it takes you 10 years to learn a lesson, that means your intelligence is probably pretty low.

So the smartest people aren't necessarily the book smart people or the financial nerds. It's the people who can learn a concept, change their behavior and get better results. And that's what you could do in your business as well.

So I know some of you struggle with sales and marketing and the top of the funnel in your business because you've reached out to me and hopefully this video is helpful for you. Like I said, be sure to grab that cashflow blueprint. It's free.

It's on the Coltivar website and there's a link in the notes as well down below. But this is what I wanted to leave you with. The two levers pricing and volume will have a radical impact on your business.

If you can execute well, you're going to get a higher price when you have a strong brand. When you say yes to the right jobs, you say no to the wrong jobs. When you have a market focus in strategy for your business, when everything comes together, you're going to be able to get higher pricing because you're going to be able to deliver based on value, not a cost.

And number two, that will lead to more volume because you're going to get more referrals, more testimonials, and that word of mouth will spread and it will allow you to put more money in your pocket. All right. Until next time, take care of yourself. Cheers.