Growing And Keeping Quality...

ruskent

So guys, is it possible to grow your business to a decent size and leep quality? Honestly, i think i can grow my business as big as i want. I do not think there is a limit on how big i can get.

But then i go look at my compeitors job who has 50 employees. The quality is no where near mine. Is it the way that company is managed that leads to lower quality work? Or is it no possible to have 50, 100, 500, or 1000 employees and still have the same quality when their was only one crew?

KillerToiletSpider

It can be done, but finding the people to do it with is not an easy task.

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Stone Mountain

Take it from me. It is not impossible, but pretty close to it. There will come times when you are very busy, your schedule is blown to hell, you need to hire bodies to catch up, and if they are warm and breathing, they're in. Sometimes those who come in to an interview, with a great resume, a good attitude during the interview, pictures of their work, references, and such, are clock watchers, prima donnas, egotistical, don't actually have many of their own tools, thier truck is 25 years old and held together with bailing wire, any bad stuff you can imagine.
I've had carpenters do 1 or 2 good jobs, then screw up royally, or have little knowledge of the building code, dissappear off a job when I won't give them an 80% advance on a job 50% done, do their own jobs in between appearing (briefly) on our sites, wreck, drop, or even steal our tools, and on and on.
The more work you get, beleive me, that harder it is to keep the quality.

This summer I have been running 3 offices and 15 crews. I have 5 sales people, 2 drivers, 1 foreman, a receptionist, an office manager, a part time marketer, and a part time bookkeeper. My business is up about 20% over last year, and my profit about 2%. There is point of dimishing returns, which is why being individually big isn't aways so great.

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WNYcarpenter

Everything depends on how YOU decide to run your business. If you have four crews quality is going to lack somewhere unless you set a precedent and have a crew tear out and redo everything you don't feel is accepable at your own cost. You can't be a pushover, and you have to be willing to break some ass when things aren't like they should be.

In my experiences, we go through 5 laborers before we land one that lasts 1 year...1 every 3 years that becomes a carpenter's helper, and 1 every ten years that can run crews. We have six crews and it took 25 years to build a company with 25 employees doing the quality work the owner expects all the time. We've found that it's easier to bring people up from within, than to hire so-called experienced tradesmen because they don't know the system and they fight it.

You can oversell your product and by the time you're 25 you can have 100 men working for you, but the quality won't be there because there's no sustenance to speak of. You can hire five of the best landscape foreman's around, but each will have a different background than the next and given the same drawing you'll have five different interpretations of that.

If your dream is to make money then I think you need to learn to pick and choose when and where you put in 100%. If your dream is to provide 100% of your quality 100% of the time you needn't be thinking about how big you could get, but how big you can get right now.

Barry M

IMO it is possible to grow your business and not only keep quality but even improve on it. Grow your business geometrically by optimizing each sale. Get your customers to spend more or get more work done while you're there and get them to call you back more often. Basically honing your selling skills to be able to sell $10,000 worth of work to one customer is much more profitable than selling 5 different customers a $2,000 job. Spending more of your advertising budget on customer retention will also add to the bottom line. Profits should be the measurement of growth not necessarily how many crews you have. Just my 2 pennies

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Barry Maddox - Midwest Pro Wash
Pressure Washing Indiana
Deck Cleaning

Mike Finley

It all depends upon what your definition of quality is.

Quality can mean - doing things to industry standards - that's certainly possible to do as you grow, quality could mean individually hand picking every grain of gravel that goes into your project, you can do that as a one or two man show, but you won't be able to maintain that level of 'quality' as you grow.

Systemization and a budget item for fixing things that won't be right. You can maintain a high level of quality but it will cost you money to do it, in training, in paying to have things redone. It will become a line item just like shoplifting is an expense figured into all retail.

Oh and one more thing I strongly believe that subs will not be an option unless what you do is based upon just conforming to industry standards. Things like roofing, siding, windows are all good models for subs to grow because the work is repetitve, not creative, not highly skilled, not really very demanding, there are some very standard measurements used to guage whether something is correct or not. If your business is more complex, is unique, is based on intricate detail or craftmanship or highly customer service oriented subs will be a really tough option to manage, you will most likely have to have employees in most if not all key positions highly trained and higly motivated.

theworx

Just grow slowly so you have the time to oversee all the aspects of the work your company is putting out... It's your vision of what quality is that your customers like. You've said in the past how good your work is...

Find the right people and train them to understand what you "require" for a job to be up to your standards... If they can't accomplish it, move on to someone else.

Just don't try to grow too quickly. Have a friend that used to own a millshop (Cabinets etc) he grew really fast and had 50 + employees... Within a year he had to shut down because he had lost control over his quality and couldn't keep up with production. Started on his own again and did well with a small shop. Now he's making the same mistake!!! Getting too big too fast. Had to call him last week and cancel a couple of orders because he's 3 months behind and my clients are pissed off at me... Well, if you can't come through, I'm sorry!!!

Just make sure you keep control!!! Take your time and you will be successful... It is possible....