Ep 80 – The Revenue Trap With Paul Atherton

More revenue sounds great, right? But if you’re still working 70–80 hours a week, are you really winning?

In this episode of Trades Secrets: Contractor Marketing, Amanda Joyce and Devon Hayes sit down with Paul Atherton, Co-Founder and CEO of HighSpire, to talk about why a bigger construction company doesn’t always mean a bigger payday or more freedom.

Follow the conversation as they dig into the numbers, people, and systems that help contractors build a more profitable business without being the person who has to make every decision.

Amanda Joyce (00:00)
Hello and welcome to another episode. We are so excited today to have Paul Atherton with us. He is the co-founder and CEO of HiSpire, an incredible organization. Over the span of his career, he has helped hundreds, if not thousands, of contractors and GCs take their businesses to the next level. So this is going to be a really insightful conversation around profitability.

Devon Hayes (00:23)
You don’t want to miss it. Stay tuned.

PART 2 – FULL INTERVIEW

Amanda Joyce (00:00)
Hello and welcome to today’s podcast. We are so excited to have Paul Atherton here with us from HighSpire. And Paul, before we hop in and really start talking about going through all of our questions and everything we want to speak about today, will you just give us a quick intro about HighSpire and everything you guys do?

Paul (00:14)
Sure, Amanda and Devon, thanks so much for having us. we’re excited to be here. I know I’ve been friends with you for a long time and it’s nice to be involved on your podcasting. This is awesome. so what HighSpire does, so we help general contractors specifically build wealth. That’s it. And we do it two ways. We help build self managed companies. There’s various levels to becoming a self managed company and that’s formula

exists in every single contractor we work with. So we help them move through those levels to becoming self managed and somewhere along that trajectory and it’s different for every organization, we help them become their own customers and develop real estate, frankly. Because con general contractors make amazing real estate developers. The two careers are actually very, very similar. And what we found is those companies that do

their own projects very, very well tend to see significant gains over their peers in the industry who haven’t pursued similar endeavors. So that’s what HighSpire does.

Devon Hayes (01:09)
it makes total sense. I have not seen anything else like it, but it it it really is. It’s genius. It’s like get your company refined, make that successful, and then most entrepreneurs I feel like they’re like, Okay, what’s next? And that development piece and kind of bridging that gap between one business and the other, I I think is brilliant. So good work in finding that little niche in the marketplace. Yeah. Fantastic. So

Paul (01:30)
Yeah, thanks. Yeah. Yeah.

Amanda Joyce (01:32)
Yeah.

Paul (01:34)
Thank you.

Devon Hayes (01:34)
Amanda

and I are so excited to talk to you. So this this whole the theme of today’s podcast is built around when building a bigger construction company stops making you wealthier. And high s before HighSpire, I know that you’ve been you’ve done a lot of business coaching at Breakthrough Academy and you were kind of niched down two GCs. And so you’ve seen lots of companies looked at lots of numbers, and you kind of have you’re you’re a genius in this area. So we thought,

we would go through and kind of build on this topic. And the first question we have for you is, you know, why do contractors tend to, you know, measure their success by revenue?

Or do they? Or am I off base? Maybe.

Paul (02:14)
No, no,

Amanda Joyce (02:14)
Mm.

Paul (02:14)
that no most of them most of them do. I think there’s like there’s a few reasons. One is just an obvious reason. They just need money. And that’s based

Devon Hayes (02:22)
Yeah.

Paul (02:23)
on probably the stress and trauma they went through going and starting their organizations to begin with. like all of a sudden when you go and start your own company, a few people hire you and you s you see, you know

fifty thousand dollars comes to the door and then it’s a hundred and you’re thinking, Well, I’m crushing it and then you look at your bank account at the end of the year and and th for some reason like your personal wealth didn’t go up and you know, maybe things are even worse than when you started your company and then now you have to make a sp a very significant decision in your life if you’re gonna keep going. Many do and they just get so focused on driving revenue and that’s it.

And you hear this all the time from companies. I do this much revenue, I do this much revenue, I do this much revenue. and I think it’s just based on lack of education around what makes a company successful, one, and two, just the trauma and stress they went through in the first five or six years and they’re building their organizations and they’re just focused on revenue and survival. And the lifeblood of an organization is revenue. So I can see why people would think that, but

the great entrepreneurs, the ones who built up these extremely resilient ecosystems, these organizations, tend to look at things a little differently.

Amanda Joyce (03:31)
Yeah. So along that road, as people are chasing that revenue, what are some of the major traps you see a lot of them fall into or some of the things that fall by the wayside w when they’re just so focused that maybe the company’s in chaos but the revenue keeps going up?

Paul (03:45)
Yeah, the the big one is is they they don’t learn how to leverage resources and and energy to drive scale and growth in their company. They just look at themselves as the sole engines and they’re they become professional firefighters and and they develop an identity around just being firefighters and being the solution for

all the all the problems that come up and all the customer issues and staff issues and and and issues with their industry collaborators like vendor partners and subtrades. And then the company stops growing and this then the entrepreneur just winds up working 70 or 80 hours a week typically for years on end and they completely speaking quite frankly, we’ve seen this number of times, unfortunately they’ll obliterate their personal lives. And

and what this does is this impacts personal health, impacts the relationships of their loved ones, it impacts team retention, increases friction with the team, increases friction with sub trades, all for the pursuit of just going and making, you know, another five hundred thousand dollars in revenue a year. And the entrepreneur will literally go and sacrifice an extra ten or fifteen hours a week to go and make that happen. The problem is when we see that, the end result isn’t really what I think the

person envisioned if you would have asked a younger version of themselves what they wanted in a business out of a business. And so, you know, we believe

Amanda Joyce (05:03)
Yeah.

Paul (05:04)
our job is and you guys too, your marketing. I mean, marketing is the true lifeblood of a of a construction company, I believe. we believe that there’s definitely a different path and it just takes some small little adjustments and and you can really come change the trajectory of an organization quite quickly. Which is good news for people.

Devon Hayes (05:23)
Yeah, yeah, I think a lot of business owners can can relate to everything you just said, you know, being a firefighter and pouring more into it. And at what point like what point do you think the mindset shifts from like I need to sell more to like how can we get more out of what we’ve already built or how can we be more efficient with I don’t know, our our processes or, you know, what we’ve got in place. Do you when do you see that mindset

shift is it when they’re just completely burned out and they’re they’re now hitting eighty five hours and they’re not coaching little league and they’re not taking vacations. Like when when have you seen that shift?

Paul (05:59)
typically it’s when they put themselves in a room with people who have figured it out already.

Devon Hayes (06:03)
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.

Paul (06:04)
Yeah. Or or and then and they’ll

Amanda Joyce (06:05)
Makes sense?

Paul (06:07)
sit beside somebody who has built up a ten or fifteen or twenty million dollar company from scratch and they’ll look at that person and think, Huh, they’re my age or they’re only ten years older than me. I wanna get there. And then they start asking questions and then they get good advice or you know, they happen to surround themselves with mentorship and coaching and consulting.

people who understand what the path forward looks like and understand what execution looks like. And then they just need to be shown the path. But they also I this is another thing too. They need to be willing to of clap their hands in the morning and say I don’t know everything. And that’s very hard for a lot of entrepreneurs because it feels good. You build this identity around somebody who’s out there crushing it in the world and and

Driving revenue and being the the sole answer person for all the issues. And that becomes your norm and that’s how you see yourself.

Devon Hayes (07:03)
Yeah.

Amanda Joyce (07:03)
Yeah.

Paul (07:03)
And that I that shift in identity, they need to change from being the professional firefighter to being a true business person and an entrepreneur. Because a business

Devon Hayes (07:13)
Yeah.

Paul (07:13)
person and entrepreneur, they’re always thinking about scale. They’re always thinking about leveraging resources and time to

create that utopian future that they envision for their themselves, their loved ones, and the staff and and people that they work with. There’s a there’s a s shift that happens there.

Amanda Joyce (07:29)
Yeah.

Paul (07:29)
Yeah, and that shift happens

differently for some like I’ve spoken at I’m being honest, I’ve spoken at umpteing dozen conferences and I’ve seen twenty-eight-year-olds who’ve figured that out already, and I’ve seen sixty-five-year-olds still with horrible attitudes, and they don’t they you can’t tell them anything they don’t already know, but they’ve got a two million dollar, three million dollar company, or they have a ten million dollar company, but it took them 40 years of grinding to get there. Whereas I’m looking at the 29-year-old saying,

You’re gonna be there in six.

Devon Hayes (07:56)
Yeah.

Paul (07:58)
Just because they have that different

Amanda Joyce (07:57)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul (07:59)
mindset and attitude and focus around what being an entrepreneur actually looks like. Speaking frankly, you know, just

Devon Hayes (08:06)
Yeah.

Paul (08:06)
I said it, right?

Amanda Joyce (08:08)
Ye yeah.

Devon Hayes (08:08)
Yeah.

Amanda Joyce (08:09)
And I that has to just be so rewarding in in your line of work to see these guys, whether they’re twenty-eight and they’re gonna get there in six years, or maybe it’s the grumpy guy that thinks he knows everything that finally has that epiphany and getting to see their their company scale alongside you guys. I just can’t imagine how rewarding that is.

Paul (08:25)
The only time I run into grumpy people is when I’m at conferences. They never call us.

Amanda Joyce (08:30)
Yeah, by the time they get to you they’re not it’s not the grumpy one, it’s the curious one that reaches out.

Devon Hayes (08:34)
Yeah. Which is funny because you think

they go to conferences to like learn and grow their business and educate themselves, but maybe they’re just going for like some confirmation bias and be like, I already knew that and I already got that figured out. Like I’m

Amanda Joyce (08:45)
Ha ha ha.

Devon Hayes (08:47)
I I’m not learning anything new. Yeah.

Paul (08:47)
Okay. All We’re talking about the type of conferences here. Okay. So

one of the things that we do is so people in the province of of British Columbia and some of the other provinces in Canada, we’re Canada based, even though most of our customers are American, but we are a Canadian-based company. We do offer courses in Canada where contractors in Canada get what are called CPD points to keep their licenses.

usually everybody in the room there is like willing to learn and and they’re they’re just vacuums for information and knowledge. So yeah. There’s a subtle difference. Yeah.

Devon Hayes (09:15)
Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. That makes sense. Yeah, that makes a lot more sense.

Amanda Joyce (09:16)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Devon Hayes (09:22)
they take the leap, they’ve been in the room, now their mindset is shifting and they’re trying to figure out how to be more efficient, run the business better, and kind of fire themselves, hire someone to replace themselves. Is there I mean, what is the first step? Is it like, all right, what’s your like put together a scorecard and then at some point that scorecard’s gonna indicate where you can fire yourself? Like this is I guess yeah, I I’d

Would I would love to know what’s step one? You’ve decided you’re gonna fire yourself. Where do you go? gosh, okay.

Paul (09:51)
this is easy. Yeah. Yeah.

Amanda Joyce (09:53)
Huh?

Paul (09:55)
Just just whatever minute we’re at, like t like whatever minute we’re at, just just tell

Devon Hayes (09:59)
Yeah.

Paul (09:59)
people just go to this this part, do that,

Devon Hayes (10:02)
Yeah.

Paul (10:02)
and they don’t have to listen to me talk anymore.

Devon Hayes (10:04)
Ha ha ha.

Paul (10:06)
yeah, for every the first major step in every construction company’s that arc to entrepreneurship from chucking the truck to like full

Beautiful, like self-managed level five company. The

Devon Hayes (10:19)
Yeah.

Paul (10:20)
first step is this. They have to hire a great project manager that can keep them out of the field. This is somebody that can manage a budget, manage a schedule, manage trades, and manage relationships with customers. You gotta like you’re you as soon as you have the working capital, you go find this person. That’s it. That it that the if you ask anybody who’s built up a great company.

They can all trace it back to that one key higher. For some people, it takes them ten years to find this person. Other people, they figure it out in two.

Devon Hayes (10:47)
So how do you so okay, to find that that golden goose, that unicorn, that PM that’s gonna change everything, s we

We’ve had some false starts here, which makes me wonder if other construction companies have had false starts. How d how do you know like you’re you’re ready to go all in, like because that person I would imagine comes with like a hefty price tag? Is there something, like is there some number, some something in their math and their spreadsheets and their forecasting that can indicate like this is kind of the salary range, like this is where you should be ready, like or you know, something that

Math wise they can point to and look at to say, Okay, n I know I need to hire this person. I’m ready.

Amanda Joyce (11:22)
I’m ready. Yeah.

Paul (11:24)
i it’s just balance sheet ratios. Yeah. There’s

Devon Hayes (11:27)
just simply

put, for math people who are

Amanda Joyce (11:30)
Mm-hmm.

Devon Hayes (11:30)
so good at that. Okay, so balance sheet ratios, go on, go on.

Paul (11:34)
there’s they just have to have the working capital to sustain like three to six months.

Devon Hayes (11:40)
Okay.

Paul (11:40)
so that’s and there’s gonna be some people on here that are saying, no, no, no, it’s gotta be over a year, and other people on here that are going, I don’t even know what mine is. Here’s the thing if you have the working capital to sustain no work for three to six months, but you do have work in your pipeline.

the where you’re like, okay, I’m bit busy, you’re

Devon Hayes (11:57)
Yeah.

Paul (11:58)
gonna be okay. Like you’re you’re always gonna have be generating cash flow and if if you understand your numbers and you understand, okay, I sold a job at say 22% margin and you have the tracking mechanisms in place to verify that the job is actually running at twenty two percent margin, then that’s a good indicator that you can probably go find somebody to keep you out of the field.

The reason why you want this person is because every single time we’ve seen a situation where an owner has freed up their schedule to focus solely on like working on marketing, like working with like eleph people like you guys, like elevation marketing, and then focus on closing those leads that you send them, the company grows. And and that is just a that is the formula we always see. Project manager bolts in, they get trained on on on how to do their job effectively.

owner stops spending forty hours a week in the field and start spending ten. Now they have thirty, forty hours a week to spend just on sales and marketing and managing the financial controls, company grows.

Devon Hayes (12:56)
Yeah. So

Paul (12:57)
Like that that’s that that’s it. And then there’s other

there’s other levels after that, but that’s the hardest one to punch through. Yeah.

Amanda Joyce (13:02)
Yeah. I wasn’t saying

as marketers that’s a dream to us. We love when we can actually collaborate with with the owner and really start telling their story better. But a lot of times guys are so busy out there in the field. So that’s that’s great. That’s a great first step for anyone and it’s it’s attainable.

Paul (13:16)
Yeah, and this is like a a quick plug for like anyone anyone working with you guys, like y you have to spend time with your marketing agency. You can’t just assume that they know everything about your target audience. They can’t just assume

Devon Hayes (13:26)
Yes. Please. Please.

Paul (13:31)
that that their V1 of whatever ads you’re they’re putting out there is is gonna be perfect. Like you have to spend time with them and and work with them for six months if they figure out the way that you do things and the way that your marketplace responds to things.

But you need the time to do that. And what’s gonna help you do that is get yourself out of the field. Like if

Devon Hayes (13:47)
Yeah.

Paul (13:48)
and you know what? Like an another thing that I’ll say is we have a lot of material online on our YouTube channel on exactly how to hire that project manager. Just please go download it. It’s free. I don’t want I didn’t need anything from this. Just go download

Devon Hayes (13:59)
Yeah, we will we’ll put it in the show notes.

Amanda Joyce (14:00)
Yeah.

Paul (14:03)
it, you guys. Like it’s free. Just

Amanda Joyce (14:04)
Yeah.

Paul (14:04)
how you interview these people, how you how you hire them, how you onboard them, how you professionally develop them, how do you how do you

to gauge whether or not this person is actually gonna do what you need them to do before you make this hundred and forty thousand dollar year commitment to them or whatever it’s gonna cost. It

Amanda Joyce (14:19)
Yeah.

Paul (14:20)
might not even be

Devon Hayes (14:20)
Yes.

Paul (14:20)
that much. It might be a hundred and ten, but it depends on what area.

Devon Hayes (14:23)
And if you’re a contractor listening to like your experience, I mean you have helped hundreds of contractors do this. So it’s not like I AI’d how to hire a PM. Like this is like this is real boots on the ground like knowledge pulling from your own like data set. This is not just, you know, garbage. So yeah, it’s free. Go download it. We’ll put it in the show notes too. So we’ll have links to

kind of some of these things we’re referencing directly about hiring the PM so we’ll make sure and and link those and make it nice and easy. So step one,

Paul (14:53)
Yeah, cool.

Devon Hayes (14:53)
hire a PM. Step two,

Fire yourself as a PM, hire yourself in sales and marketing, but

Paul (14:59)
Yeah.

Devon Hayes (15:00)
understand that like when you work with your agency, it’s a partnership. That’s we we definitely could like you know nerd out on talking about how our most successful clients are the ones that understand, like number one, we’re trying to educate them as well, like top, mid, bottom of the funnel, like especially as a GC. It’s not the same as a trades lead because those are fast. You need like 60 a month versus maybe someone builds five houses a year, and the way you have to like you know, nurse.

those leads is a lot different for a G C but you you know this

Paul (15:28)
And and another

thing quick thing too, and contractors must, general contractors must recognize that even though they’re good at building a product, they kind of suck at marketing. I suck at marketing. I I admit it, I

Devon Hayes (15:41)
Yeah.

Amanda Joyce (15:41)
Ha ha ha.

Paul (15:42)
suck at marketing, but the people that do our marketing are absolute experts and they educate us all the time on on

Devon Hayes (15:50)
Yeah.

Paul (15:50)
how to how to do our craft, but they’re very good at optimizing things.

Amanda Joyce (15:53)
Mm-hmm.

Paul (15:54)
So y y you guys you have to rely on your your marketing agency if they’re good and they have dozens of iterations of success with contractors like like you two do. Many don’t. So

Devon Hayes (16:05)
Yeah.

Paul (16:06)
keep that in mind. Not many know how to work with general contractors. you absolutely must allow them to take the reins and and do their jobs.

Devon Hayes (16:13)
Do do it yeah, do our jobs trust but confirm though. Like we, you know, it’s it’s hard ’cause marketing can be expensive. And so I know, I don’t know, with us we always are consistently asking, did this job close, did it not, when we’re doing, you know, looking at their leads and the ones we’re trying to take credit for. We’re like, We drove this one on organic, we drove this one on paid, did it convert so that you can look at that ROI? So so you don’t feel like you’re blindly just trusting someone with a with a blank

check every month. So that is, I mean it is it is I think partnering with the right agency is a good thing. We didn’t mean for this to be such a self-promotional podcast, but here we are.

Amanda Joyce (16:48)
Hehehe

Paul (16:48)
Yeah.

Devon Hayes (16:49)
okay so we’ve talked

Amanda Joyce (16:49)
Yeah.

Devon Hayes (16:50)
about okay so now you’re hired in sales and marketing as the owner. what what do the best owners do

differently. Like you you’ve worked with so many contractors over the years and you’ve probably seen the light bulb moment. You’ve seen when they’ve got the PM in place and now they are in sales and marketing. Like what are what are some like juicy like good nuggets that you’ve seen on your path working with all these companies that it’s it’s different the way these owners operate and they maybe you you can weave a common thread between them and something that you’ve just noticed in your experience with like the the best owners.

Paul (17:20)
Yeah, a few things that come to mind. one is they have really good life balance. Like they just say I won’t

Devon Hayes (17:25)
Interesting.

Paul (17:26)
pursue business goals if it means I can’t go on a you know date night with my spouse once a week or I can’t coach my kids little league game or I can’t take four weeks’ holidays a year. Like they’re they’re just very good at at understanding that business and life work together.

You don’t sacrifice your life in pursuit of some crazy business goal. Cause at the end of the day, one thing I’ll say emphatically is the most successful owners we know are militant about protecting their schedules, but they also let their families or their loved ones know that the business works in unison with all the other stuff. The two go hand in hand. That’s that’s

Devon Hayes (18:06)
Yeah.

Paul (18:07)
so important for people to recognize the business exists.

Just to work as one ecosystem with your life. And if it doesn’t, make some quick changes. Okay. And and you’ll thank yourself for it. as I I’ve the and before I move on to the next thing I want to say, I’ve I’ve just met way too many people in their 60s that might have built up an okay construction company, but if you look back at the wake of their life, they they don’t really have the richness and the experiences.

And the relationships that I think they probably would have wanted had you talked to them back when they were 35. So we always tell people, like, it doesn’t matter where you’re at in life, just go deal with all that stuff first, because the business will, doesn’t matter how big it is, it will steal all those important things from you unless you’re extremely intentional about not allowing it to do that. And one thing we find is the people who do focus on that balance tend to wind up building much more successful organizations as a result.

Why? Well, they’re typically nicer to be around. They’re they’re like they’re calm

Devon Hayes (19:06)
Yeah, they’re happier. They’ve made friends and like Yeah.

Amanda Joyce (19:07)
Haha they liked their life.

Paul (19:10)
leaders with poise.

Devon Hayes (19:12)
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.

Amanda Joyce (19:12)
Yeah.

Paul (19:12)
They’re not in panic mode all

the time. They’re okay just trusting their staff and saying we’re gonna work through these problems together and they’re relaxed. And people tend to gravitate towards those kind of environments. So that’s the one f thread that we’ve seen. kind of nerding out on tech as far as construction goes. Super important that companies track GP per week on their jobs. And that’s just your gross profit that you’re forecasting in a project divided by the number of weeks where you’re doing substantial billing.

so just compare the ratio of expected gross profit divided by expected number of weeks to forecasted gross profit divided by forecasted number of weeks that you’re doing substantial billing. If you start seeing a drop, what that means is the project is going off the rails, and that’s a le the only leading indicator KPI that tells you you gotta start putting focus and energy into getting that project back on track.

So whatever everything I just said, stick that into whatever large language model you’re using and get your system to print out a standard operating procedure, or you can go to our YouTube channel and we have a full free SOP and a and a like probably a seven or eight minute video on just how to do this for your company. Really important that you bolt that in. We’ve seen this so many times. Companies who aren’t tracking that one KPI GP per week, as soon as they bolt it in.

net profit goes up. Because it’s a leading indicator

Amanda Joyce (20:29)
Amazing.

Paul (20:30)
KPI to tell you, okay, we gotta write this ship. There’s a reef ahead. So many companies just crash into the reef and then go, what what happened? Okay, well let’s not crash into any more reefs. And meanwhile they just completely obliterated fifty thousand dollars in profit on a job.

Devon Hayes (20:44)
Yeah, bec they go back to firefighting

and damage control instead of

Paul (20:48)
Yeah.

Devon Hayes (20:49)
being able to like focus on like kinda yeah, patching holes to try to write the ship. so all right, I’m hearing they have that owners have really good boundaries kind of around like what they will and won’t sacrifice in their personal lives and then they’re they have their they know their numbers and they’re tracking that weekly.

on on their big projects, looking at that number and making sure they’re staying ahead. I kinda like in talking to you, I mean I don’t even think you meant to, but it really sounds like what a high spire does. It really is like about getting owners their time back, but a quality of life, like yes, it’s it’s building wealth and it’s like what’s next after you’ve gotten your construction company as this like, you know, streamlined, well running, you know, well oiled machine. But really it it is about

Building something more beautiful, like it getting out of the stress and enjoying what you’ve taken all this time to build and that’s kind of what high spire like that’s the path to get there is like it sounds like that’s what you build. It’s it’s not like it’s not about wealth, that’s what happens, but wealth helps you be more comfortable taking those four weeks off or like living the life you want to live. I don’t know, it’s it’s d does this exist for agencies? ‘Cause it sounds fantastic. Yeah.

Amanda Joyce (21:56)
‘Cause we need it. Yeah.

Paul (22:00)
Yeah, I know I try to find something like this for for our company. one other thing, most of the time because of the stress that people have gone through in building their companies initially, they f they’re focused solely on money and they just keep that focus until they retire. And that’s sad. We wanna we wanna

Money’s last. You want to put staff first, customers second, and then money. Typically, if you look at what people place value on, it’s money, customers, staff.

Devon Hayes (22:26)
Mm.

Amanda Joyce (22:26)
Mm.

Paul (22:26)
And you absolutely must invert that formula.

Devon Hayes (22:29)
How quickly

Amanda Joyce (22:29)
Yeah.

Devon Hayes (22:30)
do you think someone can invert that? Like if they’re listening to this and they’re like, that resonates, that makes so much sense. I have no idea how how do I f like where do I start? Like

Paul (22:41)
I have a

funny story about this. I heard a I was talking to somebody who was was involved with a private equity group this summer and they were purchasing a company and I I was just listening and I went and I it just then i things didn’t make sense and I and I I and I said, How are you guys gonna retain your team? And this and the person who is executing the agreement said, We’re gonna just show them how much we care. And they said it with so much enthusiasm and I said, Okay, well what processes do you have?

Like I know you care, fine. But like what processes do you have in your organization to actually show it? This

Devon Hayes (23:16)
Yeah.

Paul (23:16)
is like blank stare. So this is a lesson, everybody. I get

Devon Hayes (23:20)
Yeah.

Paul (23:20)
it. Yes, okay, we’re gonna focus on staff and we see that. Like okay, but like, okay,

Devon Hayes (23:23)
I mean and culture.

Paul (23:25)
what what is this does it mean you’re just gonna go pay them more money? ‘Cause that doesn’t work. Right? So you

Devon Hayes (23:29)
Yeah, that’s true.

Amanda Joyce (23:30)
Yeah.

Paul (23:31)
have to have processes in place that

decrease friction in people’s roles. And again, we have a lot of

Amanda Joyce (23:36)
Mm-hmm.

Paul (23:37)
free SOPs on our YouTube channel that follow the 80-20 role because pi typically 20% of what people do drives 80% of the results. And when a staff

Devon Hayes (23:45)
Mm.

Paul (23:45)
member knows what good looks like and they know a very simple, clear way to achieve that outcome, you’ve now relaxed them in your company. And so that’s a way that you are putting them first. another thing is having very strong

commitment to hiring based on core values. And if you aren’t clear on what your core values are, there’s a really good test people can take for about $30 on a site by a fellow I know, Dr. Ken Keyes. He has a site called CRG Leaders. Devon, I think you know him. They can take

Devon Hayes (24:13)
Yeah. Yes.

Paul (24:16)
that test, get a clear picture of what their core values are, and then make sure they’re interviewing based on their core values and they’re completely filling their company up with people that are in alignment with their core values.

Here’s the thing, as I’m saying this, people who have never done this are going to be thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah. People who have done this are going, I’m so glad he’s talking about this. And one of the commonalities

Devon Hayes (24:34)
Yes.

Amanda Joyce (24:34)
Yeah.

Paul (24:36)
of people who have, and I should have said this earlier, have built up great organizations, is they have an absolute commitment to hiring based on their core values. And that’s another way that you put staff first. And then finally, there’s an arc to staff development from hiring.

to or sorry, recruitment to hiring to onboarding and to professional development. That absolutely must be followed. and and there’s like very simple and clear systems that people can deploy into their company to for every role to ensure that happens. And it actually makes things easier in the company. It’s you’re not adding more paperwork, you’re actually making things a lot easier if you can if you can just follow that formula for your team. Yeah.

Amanda Joyce (25:13)
Yeah.

do you I mean I know plenty of guys come and are probably close to that self sustainability already, but do you get to see a lot of people kind of go through this, taking you know, working through a lot of the materials you guys provide and getting to go from maybe that chaotic work environment to the reduced friction and the the the staff that’s more excited to come to work every day?

Paul (25:31)
Yep,

for sure. and and you know, we work with people that come in and they’re like, I my culture’s a mess. How do I fix this? And you’re Okay, well let’s roll up our sleeves. And then we also have people like you know, one of the you know, one one guy I remember who came in, he’s a good friend of mine now, Sean Sullivan. He’s a top builder in America and he joined and they had a whole bunch of stuff to work on. But this is like a

huge organization that operates in five areas with tons of staff and they bolted all this stuff in and their net profit increased too. So it doesn’t matter what level they’re at, there’s always there’s there’s a lot of like very simple tried tested and true methods and processes and and and sorry mindset practices that you can deploy into an organization to just make it more fun for everyone involved. Yeah.

Devon Hayes (26:15)
Yeah.

Imagine that work being fun again. so I guess I when we kinda set out on this episode we were gonna talk about how, you know, bigging those building those bigger companies the way Sean your friend Sean has, but he still was like, okay, he came because did he notice something organizationally was broken or was it they kept having they had more sales and they were doing more builds and more construction, but

he wasn’t getting wealthier, nobody else was making more money. Was it something like that or or ’cause that’s the part where we’re I think we’re trying to crack that that nut on when does building a bigger construction company stop making you wealthier?

Paul (26:52)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. that well, I there’s different levels. So so yeah, there’s there’s kind of two

Devon Hayes (26:55)
Loaded question.

Paul (26:57)
ways to answer this question. so the first question I believe you asked was, okay, what why did Sean join if he already has this like huge organization operating in five areas? It’s because

Devon Hayes (27:07)
Yeah.

Paul (27:08)
with people at that level, and we have many of them that come to us.

we go an inch wide and a mile deep on specific topics with them. So with people like that, when as soon as they talk to us, we’re talking about like like year four university level differential equations and calculus already, like out of the gate, because they’re extremely advanced. And we just find specific areas in marketing and sales and operations and financial controls and just go like really deep with them and take them further. But then you find

people also that aren’t as advanced in their careers as business people and we will just give them like grade ten math or grade eight math because they’re not ready yet. but it’s

Devon Hayes (27:44)
Yeah.

Amanda Joyce (27:46)
Yeah.

Paul (27:47)
about really understand being situational about where they’re at in their journey and then just helping them take the next step up the mountain. now about pe to answer your question about like what what w like where does growing the company stop

become more of a burden rather than a benefit. And it’s different in every contractor’s journey. I would say the first and foremost is to go and look at like how your how you feel about running your business and your life. Get that in line first. like it’s different for everybody. this is where

Devon Hayes (28:16)
Yeah.

Paul (28:18)
high level coaching tactics need to be deployed. And by by the way, we don’t go

We go an inch wide and a mile deep on coaching because we’re dealing with life. But when it comes to consultancy on a business, we’re very selective about the type of consultancy we give people. but yeah, step one, just get your personal life in order. That’s important. and then and then

Devon Hayes (28:34)
Yeah.

Paul (28:35)
and then step two, we need to have an action bias to g generating leads and protecting the owner’s time, first and foremost. So and and throughout that arc.

To building a self-managed company, there’s so many times where the owner has to say, that is not a thing that I do anymore. And they have to go and hire that project manager. And then after they have the field sorted out and they have someone managing the field and the project managers reporting to that person, somewhere along that trajectory, they have to build out a sales team. They have to say, This is not a thing that I do anymore. And there’s ways to do that successfully as well, that are very formulaic.

And they just have to follow that trajectory. And they absolutely must focus on market wind. It’s so much easier to run a company when you’re being obliterated with leads relative to the rest of the marketplace. It’s so

Devon Hayes (29:24)
True.

Paul (29:24)
much easier to run a company in that kind of an environment than one

Amanda Joyce (29:26)
Yeah.

Paul (29:28)
that that where you like you’re looking at like a valley of dry bones in front of you. Okay, because cause a company

Amanda Joyce (29:33)
Ha ha ha

Devon Hayes (29:33)
Yeah.

Paul (29:35)
that is popular with its target odd target clientele.

i i is is gonna have like a lot of shock absorbers to help them weather future storms because they will still arise. So yeah.

Amanda Joyce (29:45)
Yeah. And

some of the we listened to you on several podcasts before this and I really enjoyed some of the podcasts we listened to where you spoke to like how critical branding is for these contractors and how critical it is for them to build a brand that will make them popular like that. Is that a a big part of what you guys are also talking about in the program as people are coming in and kind of evaluating where the I mean I’m assuming if you’re going an inch wide and a mile deep, that’s probably definitely one of the areas that you guys really dive in on.

Paul (30:10)
yeah. Yeah. Even this morning I was talking to a f fifty million dollar company and they’re asking why they weren’t getting this is a dialed company and they were asking why they weren’t getting engagement with realtors because one of the things that construction companies that are successful in marketing and referrals do really well is they have a good outreach program to architects and realtors and that’s a huge component of what we work on. but they’re framing everything in the negative.

And

so we had to go through their messaging and frame it in the positive because who wants to sign up to a program that says, what realtors get wrong about X? And because if you sign up to that, you’re admitting that you get something wrong and our ego doesn’t want to do that. So every that’s to be spun in the

Devon Hayes (30:52)
No.

Amanda Joyce (30:50)
Yeah.

Paul (30:55)
positive, right? But that was like one example. This person still is able to build up a $50 million organization, but that’s like

one thing that’s just gonna reduce friction for them and their brand messaging.

Amanda Joyce (31:04)
Yeah.

Devon Hayes (31:06)
I know it’s

Amanda Joyce (31:06)
Yeah, and and

yeah, I was gonna say opening up that too. If they can get that right and start actually bringing in that additional referral partner, that’s enormous. So it’s crazy how just

Paul (31:14)
huge, yeah.

Amanda Joyce (31:14)
just a small change in your messaging can the profitability that can come out of that is insane.

Paul (31:19)
And they’ve

been doing it like that for a decade. Like

Devon Hayes (31:23)
my gosh. I wondered if it was an AI spun thing ’cause they’ll tell you like negative, you know, or fear based messaging drives action faster. And so that negative like you’re not this, you’re not that and you’re like, no, no.

Paul (31:35)
I’m

so glad you’re bringing this up. I AI is so bad for this. It is always framing things in the negative.

Devon Hayes (31:41)
Yeah, it’s and that’s why ’cause ’cause

Paul (31:42)
It makes no sense.

Devon Hayes (31:44)
there’s all these like studies that say, it drives action and so I think ’cause we’re seeing it too with our clients, we’re like, please we what we tell on our side of life is, you know, do you have

like a messaging alignment and key differentiators document. That document should be ran against any type of marketing that you do. What are your what are your five pillars or however many pillars, hopefully not more than five. And then under each of those pillars there’s two to three key differentiators.

What is that document and please, whatever you’re thinking of posting to social or in a newsletter or a downloadable, does it align with your core values and your key differentiators before you post it? You’re not trying to scare people into working with you.

Paul (32:28)
yeah. You’re completely right. I’m so glad you brought that up. Yeah.

Devon Hayes (32:31)
Yeah. gosh. That’s funny that you’re seeing it. I wonder I I

wonder if that’s if that’s why but if they’ve been doing it for a decade, that’s they just that’s how they’ve been doing it, so this is

Paul (32:41)
Well, I

Amanda Joyce (32:41)
Yeah.

Paul (32:42)
I mean when you’re growing a company it’s not about doing one thing perfectly, it’s about doing a lot of little things better than the rest of the marketplace and eventually that flywheel effect just starts happening. And yeah,

Devon Hayes (32:52)
Yeah.

Paul (32:53)
there’s opportunities for improvement, but I mean they do so many other things very, very well it like it didn’t matter, but this is another area where they’re gonna see massive benefit.

Devon Hayes (33:01)
That’s awesome. I know

Amanda Joyce (33:01)
Yeah.

Devon Hayes (33:02)
we’re Amanda and I kind of our our pain point is a lot of our clients are starting to like we’re not a social media agency. We we’ll post for what it does for the machines, but we don’t pretend to make anybody go viral on organic. But what we’re seeing is everybody’s posting like their office humor and it’s and it and you’re like, can you tell me

Who your audience is and why they care about like you making fun of like not working until the boss comes in. Like what tell me why that wants tell me as as a consumer why I now want to work with this electrician or plumber or roofing company, whoever it might be. I’m like, why are we doing all this office humor? It is, it is killing me. We’ve got my

Amanda Joyce (33:39)
Painful.

Devon Hayes (33:41)
gosh, we’ve got one client where it’s like

It just looks like a flirt fest and where we’re like where’s where are we talking about our core values or our key differentiators or like why someone would choose us? It’s just we’re like borderline, like we feel uncomfortable watching it. We’re like, why is everyone doing this? So yeah, when it

Paul (33:57)
I know.

Devon Hayes (33:57)
when it comes to branding, like please remember your your your core pillars and your and your key differentiators and maybe don’t stray from those and all that messaging, even though like trends are fun.

Amanda Joyce (34:07)
Yeah, forget about the latest trend.

Paul (34:09)
man, I’m so glad you

brought that up too. Yeah. we’ve been just we’ve been trying to stop so many companies from doing that. It’s just what what is what is like the tar what is the message that it appeals to your target audience? Overcommunicate that to the point where you’re sick of hearing it and then triple what you’re doing.

Devon Hayes (34:26)
Yeah, yeah.

Amanda Joyce (34:27)
That’s great advice.

Paul (34:28)
Like like ’cause here’s the thing,

Amanda Joyce (34:28)
Yes. Yeah.

Paul (34:30)
people aren’t thinking about you. They’re thinking about themselves. Overcommunicate your message. Same with training

Devon Hayes (34:35)
Yeah. That’s it.

Paul (34:37)
staff. Overcommunicate that because they’re they’re not gonna remember what you said. You do. No one’s thinking about you. Like you gotta shout

Devon Hayes (34:42)
There you go. That’s gold. That’s yeah. That’s true.

Paul (34:46)
from the rooftops why they should hire your company. And having

Amanda Joyce (34:49)
Yeah.

Paul (34:49)
a cutesy story about yeah, the the

you know, water cooler talk or and I’m not gonna give any examples here, but we get after people for it. But

Devon Hayes (34:56)
You’ve seen him too. Yeah.

Amanda Joyce (34:57)
Yeah.

Paul (34:59)
yeah, it just doesn’t work. Like you you have to just keep keep sniper firing your your message to the people that are buying your product again and again and again and keep figuring out ways to tweak that and go an inch wide and again a mile deep on how to craft that message perfectly in

Devon Hayes (35:15)
Yes.

Amanda Joyce (35:15)
Yeah.

Paul (35:15)
a number of different ways and test the heck out of it.

Devon Hayes (35:18)
Yeah,

Amanda Joyce (35:18)
Yeah.

Devon Hayes (35:18)
yeah. It ’cause th it’s some of those are can be fun for branding if you can tie the messaging back to, you know, the value in your unique selling proposition. Like it ca you you can try to ride the train but

Amanda Joyce (35:30)
Few and far between when it really hits. And I like what you said, Paul, too, about just just continuing to repeat your message. It’s not unlike raising children. I just have to keep saying the same thing over and over again and one day that it’s actually gonna connect. And I just have to assume every time that they just need to hear it one more time. Like this is the one that’s gonna hit.

Paul (35:46)
Ha ha ha.

Devon Hayes (35:51)
I

Amanda Joyce (35:54)
Ha ha ha

Devon Hayes (35:56)
been awesome, Paul. Thank you so much for all of your insights. where can people find you? How can they connect with you? What’s the best way to get in touch?

Paul (36:04)
yeah, so just www highspire dot com H I G H S P I R E all one word dot com. and then our YouTube channel. We have a lot of free stuff available there. They can go and and and download it and d deploy it into their organizations. I’m on LinkedIn. so yeah. All the usual sp all the usual places.

Devon Hayes (36:20)
Awesome, we’ll put all of those links.

Yeah, the the best places. We’ll put all those links in the show notes and even have some more to the YouTube videos you were referring to specifically on hiring a PM and some of that good stuff that you talked about throughout the episode. So thank you so much for joining us. We would love to have you back. All right, thanks, Paul.

Paul (36:37)
this was a lot of fun. Thanks you two. Take care.