While some company owners will always know more than others, all the remodelers interviewed see that as a great asset for everyone. Chuck Russell’s R20 “Parrot Heads” are “fairly diverse,” he says, and with 30 years in the business, his company, Westhill Inc., outside Seattle, is one of the oldest in the group. “We have a lot of systems” already in place, Russell says, yet he believes he has received as much as he’s given. There’s always someone in the group who has tried something and learned from it and can share the experience.
But there’s more than business going on. Getting feedback from several other people who understand you is why so many remodelers say they feel right at home at the first meeting. “One of the great things about a peer group for participants is that they form a kind of community,” says Shawn McCadden, who ran a peer review called the Pinnacle Group through his Residential Design Build Institute. (As of January 2004, the program disbanded.) “It’s a comfortable, safe place for them to share [joys and sorrows], interact with fellow peer group members, just call up and vent.”
Bill Medina of Salina, Kan., credits Les Cunningham, BN president, for saving his marriage. Fourteen years ago, he and his wife, Peggy, “were struggling.” Bill worked 60 to 70 hours a week. They had no formal business education and, he says, “no sense of priorities.” Peggy eventually left the business to pursue her own interests. At BN “there were some hard meetings and personal discoveries,” says Medina.
Different Strokes Each group — R20, BN, and RAR — has its supporters and critics. For some, R20 is too loosely organized, BN is too focused on the nuts and bolts, RAR is too soft. As with everything in life, each person finds a method that feels right for him or her. Yet, at some point in the process, despite the closeness and camaraderie, you may feel you’re ready to move on.
Carnemark, now at the RAR mentor level, felt that he had gotten what he could from his BN group. He says Cunningham “brought an insightful focus on learning the numbers.” Carnemark saw change right away and “started making money. I learned to understand the impact business changes make on a balance sheet and P and L statement and was able to follow through with those changes with my accountant,” he says.
After six years, Carnemark felt he had outgrown BN’s model and moved to RAR. As owner of a 17-year-old $3.6 million design/ build company, Carnemark and his mentor group focus on issues particular to their niche, like “how do you grow a design/build [firm] where design is a profit center?”
Leon Noel, president of Lehach Inc., in Roseburg, Ore., started a remodeling company in 1988, after 32 years with a wholesale distribution company servicing the kitchen and bath industry. He joined RAR five years ago but only attended two meetings. He felt it wasn’t teaching him anything new. But he clicked with Les [Cunningham] and says “I haven’t looked back.”
Are You Ready? Peer review tends to be for the basically healthy company. “If your company is drowning,” Remodelers Advantage owner Linda Case says, peer review won’t “throw enough customized information [your] way fast enough.” She suggests hiring a consultant. (As a side note: Many people in peer groups have separate consultants who help them implement the goals determined at the peer review sessions.)
You also have to be prepared to “hear the news,” as Les Cunningham would say. “Some people, especially entrepreneurs, don’t want to hear the bad news, and they don’t take it well.”
Because everyone in the group undergoes the same sort of scrutiny, it makes it easier to accept what BN terms “suggestions and perceptions.” Says Cunningham, “We try to offer a positive way to bring accountability. We don’t slash and burn.”