Shawn McCadden, a well-known remodeling coach known for such business classics as “Yellow Pad Estimating for Contractors” and his eminently readable Design-Builder’s Blog, was recently profiled in The New York Times as part of an article by Tammy LaGorce. The article, “Plight of the ‘Physical Worker’: Worn-Out Bodies and Little Savings” is, in my estimation, an important read for anyone in the building trades, whether they are looking to retire soon, just getting started or somewhere in between. The article draws attention to what many of us don’t like to acknowledge – the physical toll that comes with work in the building trades.
Of both Shawn and his father, who also worked in the trades, Ms. LaGorce writes: “The McCaddens, both retired, each accepted physical wear and tear as a side effect of earning a living when they entered the home remodeling field. But what the younger Mr. McCadden refused to accept by the time he turned over day-to-day operations of his business, Custom Contracting, to a manager in 1996 was financial pressure to keep toiling past his body’s breaking point. And in that, he may be unusual.”
The issue, LaGorce explains is “the lack of a safety net once stiffening joints and other normal signs of aging kick in. The toll taken on the body by strenuous occupations leaves workers at risk of aging out of a paycheck before they are financially ready to retire.”
Shawn has focused on the risk of aging out of a paycheck a lot, although he never seemed to expect a social safety net as much as he insisted on creating his own, and urged the rest of us to do the same by how we ran the business. In “Seven Reasons Why Most Contractors Will Never Be Able To Retire On Their Own Earnings,” he paints a bleak picture for the state of small construction business owners: “Most contractors don’t charge enough to properly run their businesses and pay themselves for their efforts” … “A good number of construction business owners don’t make enough money to support their families” … “Only about 20% of construction business owners know the true cost of being in business.” These statements stem from working over the years with a wide range of remodeling business owners. “The majority of the people in the industry are good craftsmen,” Shawn is quoted saying by LaGorce. “They know how to work hard, but they don’t know how to manage the future.”
I would boldly venture to say that the “plight” of construction business owners and workers, physical workers they may be, is to some degree, self-inflicted. That’s not very generous or entirely true, because in many ways participants in our industry have been nudged towards misfortune by the social environment they work in. Construction service workers, whether employees or business owners, have not been well supported by government, financial corporations, or social institutions. Blue collar bias is deeply ingrained; we as a country and a society tend to undervalue not just physical workers, but have a particular indifference verging on aversion towards the construction trades in particular. Popular references to contractors as scam artists abound. It’s not a subtle or rare tone in news reports following natural disasters, or in Yelp or HomeAdvisor or other internet reviews. But what Shawn McCadden offers in his work (the most recent of which can be found on Qualified Remodeler) is an end-run around all the injustice to physical workers, if that’s how you want to label it. Contractors have the means to overcome it by how they choose to run their business.
Change starts with charging what you are worth, and that starts with running the business rather than letting it run you. These are concepts we as an industry first learned from Walt Stoeppelwerth, which Shawn, like so many other leaders in our industry have built on to help us rise above our “plight.” And, as Shawn reminds us, it goes beyond the business itself:
“Set your priorities by deciding what you want most for your business, your life, and even for our industry,” Shawn advises in “The Future: Yours and the Remodeling Industry’s.” “Then organize your time and efforts so just about everything you do is the most valuable use of your time in achieving what you want. None of us has enough time to do everything on our list, but there’s always enough time to do the most important things if we identify what they are and keep them top of mind.”
That may be easy to say; it’s much harder to live by it, as Shawn has done. Still it remains absolutely critical to recognize what you want. Above all, let’s dwell on that.
