Learning From Someone Else is a Better Plan
For the past few weeks, we’ve talked over a cup of coffee about the struggles of owning and operating a construction business. The second thoughts about being in business. The expensive mistake when a project ran $51,000 over the estimate. And how expensive it can be to build a business.
That expensive mistake was made by a contractor who was early in his business and teaching himself as he went.
I know because I was working for him when it happened.
He had been in manufacturing before moving into construction. He decided to build his own home, and a friend he worked with helped him. After finishing his house, he started his own construction business, and that friend went to work for him.
This isn’t to say they were terrible at construction. But learning on the fly isn’t the most reliable way to build anything and I saw that firsthand. They were learning from their mistakes as they went.
Before working for him, I had worked for a couple of other builders. These builders had years, even generations, of experience behind them. The difference in the construction was evident.
DIY construction is pretty popular nowadays, with the internet and social media at our fingertips 24/7. I’m not saying that kind of learning is all bad. What I am saying is that it’s not all good either.
The experienced builders I worked for had learned from others who had learned from others. That reduced the likelihood of costly construction mistakes. Working for them gave me the opportunity to learn from their experience instead of only from my own.
The construction methods and processes I learned from those builders saved me a lot of time in the long run and prevented mistakes I would have made if I had tried to figure everything out myself or relied solely on the internet.
DIY business building is even more common than DIY construction.
Of all the people I worked for in construction, none of them ever taught me anything about owning and operating a business. I picked up a few things by watching, but not much.
After more than forty years of being self-employed, I’ve learned a lot of business lessons and some of them were very expensive (though not quite as expensive as the example above).
I wish I had asked more questions. If I had learned business the way I learned construction—from experienced builders—it would have saved me a lot of time and money in the long run.
That’s what I’m doing with Solution Building.
I’m offering my years of business experience to other construction business owners to help them save time and money in the long run.
I know it’s hard to find time as a business owner to learn how to build a business. But in the end, the time invested pays dividends. It’s just like learning construction from an experienced builder instead of trying to do it all on your own.
If you’d like to learn more about how we can help you build your business, you can schedule a free 30-minute meeting or join us at Builders Coffee this Wednesday at 10:00 AM CT.
There’s no need to learn every lesson the expensive way.