Be All That You Can Be
The shift from employee to owner — becoming more professional — comes up time and again in conversations with business consultants about milestones.
“At some point nobody wants to work out of your second bedroom, or your kids keep dropping in and it just doesn’t work anymore,” Case says. That’s when “you begin to put on some of the trappings of professionalism” — moving to commercial office space, perhaps, joining an association, or creating slicker marketing tools.
It may not be so much that you have the drive to be more professional; sometimes you’re thrown into it out of necessity.
More than 25 years ago, Charlie Graves, owner of the full-service Graves Bros. Home Improvement in Rochester, N.Y., knew he had to move from a home office to commercial space, which included an office and a warehouse, simply because he needed more storage for the equipment he had accumulated.
Kerry Miller, of Kerry Miller Designs, who relocated his business from New Mexico to Ojai, Calif., after 20 years, realized that he had to “make his business more professional” for his new, upscale market. “I came up with a logo that fit me and the area,” he says. Miller, who sees himself as an artist, always had a laid-back style. But now, he says, “I’m more conscious of the way I dress. I look more professional,” when meeting with clients. After nearly five years in Ojai, Miller is turning away work.
But there’s more to it than just getting new desks and a phone system. “Hiring new employees and moving to legitimate office space have to be initiated and supported by underlying attitude shifts,” says Melanie Hodgdon, president of Business Systems Management in Bristol, Maine. Otherwise, “the business may not be truly maturing. Like kids playing dress-up in adult clothing, having an office, office personnel, and salespeople won’t necessarily guarantee a mature and successful business.”
For John Keohane, a $1.2 million remodeler from Dedham, Mass., the conditions under which he decided to be more professional came a decade after he began working as a carpenter. Out on his own, he became overwhelmed with the amount of work he faced but feared that no one could do his job as well as he. Keohane finally let go and “spent the money necessary to find [and hire] a talented person” to take over his job in the field, he says.
Only as he took that leap did he admit to himself that he was a remodeler, not someone doing this “on the way to something else.” At the same time he hired that first carpenter, he says, “I hired a graphic artist to put together a logo” to better the company’s image. Up until then “I never really had letterhead or anything. My home phone was my phone.”
Keohane believes that many remodelers undervalue their businesses and even lack self-esteem, which stops them from becoming more professional. “When I first started, I thought I couldn’t get 33% margin. But I did. Then I thought I couldn’t get 50%, but I did. Remodelers don’t think they can do it. They’re the opposite of salesmen, who think they can conquer the world.” Keohane credits joining a peer review group with boosting his confidence and helping him make these changes.
Part of professionalism is seeing your business as a piece in a larger industry —recognizing that knowledge, standards, and best practices are important.
“As long as a remodeler sees him or herself as a person who remodels instead of a person running a business that delivers the service of remodeling, he or she will tend to consider his or her business situation to be so unique that best practices can’t be instituted,” Hodgdon says.
Jeff Seidel, owner of J.B. Sterling Company in Fairport, N.Y, says he learned early to see himself as part of something larger. “In the beginning, of course, it’s survival; you think about your little circle. As time goes on and you start to make money, you start looking at the entire remodeling industry and the building industry and ask yourself, ‘Where do I fit into that and how much of a market can we get and what is our little niche?’ You start applying business fundamentals, planning and projecting budgets” as you try to fit into the industry.
The process feeds on itself in positive ways. Raising standards and seeing your business as part of a larger whole helps boost self-esteem and confidence.
Boosting those helps you better your business in more professional ways.