Look For Like-Minded Drywall Business Owners

mseneker

Hello. I'm new to this forum. We are a five person drywall contractor in the Kansas City area. We hire an additional five to six part-time or contractors during the summer.

Looking to talk with those of you whom have advice for growing and managing a drywall business.

One issue is the accounting needs. We use Quick Books Contractor but have been keeping our job cost tracking in a spread sheet.

Our company email is alliancedrywall@hotmail.com. Our company web site is alliancedrywallservices.com.

I would appreciate your advice as we grow.

Mark Seneker

mrp

A few comments on the site:

E-Mail: Alliancedrywall@hotmail.com. Lose the hotmail address and use your own domain for email.

"Well, metal sucks and they used it in your basement."
"Conventional drywall tape and other products are used by our competitors because they cost less."
Or they may think other products perform better, or hit a price/performace point which makes sense for that particular situation. Don't try to market yourself by badmouthing the competition.

"No Coat benefit is labor savings which offset the material price." You sound like a No Coat sales rep selling to a drywall contractor, not a drywall contractor selling to a customer. No Coat's benefit is that (you believe) it is superior to other products. That, along with the number at the bottom of your bid is what the customer is looking for.

"We also found the shelf life of Magnum to be excellent. Shelf life is important because drywall mud spoils and molds if left to sit in the box past the shelf life."
If I were a potential customer, I'd be left thinking that you are in the practice of using old mud and/or have problems with moldy mud. Does the client need to know your opinion on the shelf lives of the various joint compounds? Does your supplier regularly fail to rotate stock? Do you fail to store your materials properly? Do you leave mud sitting around for months before using it? If the answer to any of these is yes, then you're the problem. If the answer is no, then shelf life isn't an issue.

"There are pours in the paper"
"hire poor frammers"
You need to have someone proofread your content.

You write 350+ words giving your opinion on painting and end with "I find that most painting contractors have their own opinion which is more qualified than my own." OK, if you're not a painting contractor then shut up about painting. Give them the basics (Drywall must be properly primed, we use and recommend BrandX primer.) and leave the rest to the professionals.

"Sometimes we are the best sub-contractor on the job. Builders hire poor frammers, painters and trim people and then hire us to make it all look good."
So, if you're on the job there's a good chance that the contractor and other subs suck? What is the point of all this rambling and bad mouthing contractors, other trades, and competitors? It's unprofessional and counter-productive.

I'd recommend a rewrite of the site. Remove all deragatory/negative content and aim for a very narrow focus on information your clients need to know. If you want to rant and rave, do it here, like me.

painterman

BLA BLA BLA a little long winded

Tim0282

I agree with you. Is it me or is that guy a little stuck on himself?
The Seneker guy

mseneker

Thanks for the reply MRP. All great points. Appreciate an outside view and you taking the time for specifics. I'll make those changes as soon as I leave the forum. Any good suggestions as to what to avoid or to go after as we grow the company?

Tim and Painterman. I'm just looking for advice from others on how to become a better contractor. These forums seem like a great place to share ideas. I hope I have experience to offer in return for the help.

I edited my first post. Point taken!

Appreciate any help you have to offer me.

mseneker

Made the changes MRP. Will have to wait on the suggestion to change the email to our URL due to the amount of advertising we have out with the current email. Also, I'm a little slow at learning about email account with our web provider.

We have been talking about using the same web provider for an internal internet with password protection as well.

Thanks again for the advise. I'll be checking the entire site for similar issues you found in the one section.

Tim0282

Sorry, MSENEKER
A chance to pick on someone (other than my wife who bites) and I jumped on it. I won't do that to you again. Just a tacky way of saying welcome.
Tim

mseneker

No problem. Man I love drywall. It is one of the most challenging things I've ever done. The guys in it are one of the most highest skilled I've ever met! This is one trade where the learning process never stops.

dryrocker27

mseneker -
Growing your company,
1. Control all aspects of the drywall job.- If your not already supplying the drywall and materials,start doing so. Control the hanging and the finishing. this has provided me with great results.
2. Start moving up the food chain. - get out of the spec.house market. The spec.builders in my area are only interested in value. Contract builders are interested in repeat business. I work for 15 different contract builders and all are happy to pay a premium price for a premium job.
3. Ask some local painters if they are happy with the drywall work that they paint, if they start complaining, ask for the names of the builders that they work for and contact them, maybe they will give you a shot.
4. Call your compeditors and pretend to have a job for them to bid. ask them what services they provide, who supplies what, what about the waste and clean-up. what extra charges do they have? so on and so on- then supply what they don't to your customers and this will set you apart.
5. Tell your contractors to call you when they dig the footers. this will give the impression that you are busy and they need to get in line. This also tells them that you are in demand. this will tell them that you are doing very good work.
6. Do not be afaid to travel - their are alot of GC's looking for great drywall work.
7. Hire the best men/women you can get - you are only as good as your worst finisher.

Accounting-
1. we use quickbooks also and manually do spread sheets also. However, i will be switching to Quickbooks Premier to do the cost tracking within the program.
2. you should have a good working knowledge already as to the cost of the job to you. Take your fixed monthly expenses and divide that number by the number of hours you work a month. this will tell you the cost per hour, add your profit and you have the minimum that you must cover per hour.
3. Hire a good tax accountant. this is differant from a CPA or Bookkeeper

When i started my business in 2003, i was given this advise by my drywall mentor, a man in his mid 70's. I started with just myself and a couple remodelers willing to give me a shot. With in the first month and 3 basements later, i needed to hire my first man. Doing the best work i could got my name spread by the painters. I tried different hangers and soon decided to hire my own crew to go ahead of me. 1 year later i had a two man hanging crew and 2 men finishing. I now had 5 men with me included. I have maintained a slow steady growth and now have 10 full time employees and looking to add two more. I currently have 4 hangers and 6 finishers. We maintain 14-16 months of work lined up ahead and the men love the security. this is possible because the contract builders have a backlog of homes to build. One builder i work for has a 3 year waiting list.

Hope this helps.

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Robert

mseneker

Robert, that really helps. Thanks for the detail. Sounds like you are one step in front of me. Will keep touch. How do you handle hourly vers. footage workers. Are all your employees hourly? I'll try and post what I'm doing to convert to quick books job cost tracking.

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http://www.alliancedrywallservices.com
email: Alliancedrywall@hotmail.com

Brockster

It's not only me and you but on other area forums too.

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Tim0282

You'd think it was Christmas or something.