Below are 13 popular presentations and workshop topics we can customize to fit your needs. Our comprehensive and fast-paced events are polished, entertaining, and always receive rave reviews.
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“I would really like to thank you for the great presentation you put on yesterday. I was amazed at the way you made things easy to understand and equally amazed at the amount of information you presented in the two hours. I am just starting out in the wiring business and your advice will help me greatly.” – Greg Stinson, Wiring Solutions
1: Managing for Success: Striking a Balance Between Doing and Managing
Just because you are really good at doing your job, doesn’t mean you are automatically good at managing others. You’ve mastered your craft and now you have staff. As you grow, you must understand how to delegate and spend more energy managing instead of doing the actual work. Process makes profit a repeatable event and it is only through good management skills that the process can be created, organized, delegated and followed.
This session will help you learn to successfully manage employees and become better manager to avoid growing beyond the owner’s level of competence. By evaluating management skills and recognizing limitations, you can find the balance between doing and managing. Learn the steps of successful delegation and how to develop a plan to avoid micromanaging staff and become a better manager.
2: Growing Your Business Without Growing Out Of Business: Making Major Steps While Maintaining Your Margins
Why is it that when you suddenly double your sales, your profit is cut in half? The industry today is tiered with builders of specific sizes, but there are wide gaps between growth stages. This session will discuss why, as a contractor, you can’t grow slowly and steadily, but have to make incremental jumps.
3: What is Overhead & Where is Profit?
This session will help you understand the components that make up overhead and affect your profit. We will work through practical examples to help define your own overhead to be used for both estimating as well as pricing purposes. We will learn how to determine your break-even point to improve profitability. Discover how you can make more money by understanding the nature of your costs. Leslie makes it both interesting and fun!
4: Five Financial Horror Stories – Don’t Let These Happen to You
Five different contractors thought their businesses were profitable… until they learned the terrible truth. From real-life case studies, you will learn how to prevent potential financial disasters such as fraud, insurance liability, bills, assigning job costs and completing lien waivers. Contractors are often not aware of the potential pitfalls in their businesses. And while you may have heard horror stories of others, or even suffered from some issues yourself, this session will help you focus on ways to prevent these disasters.
5: A Project Manager’s Guide to the Financial Stuff
Construction is a complex business, both in the actual completion of projects and “running the books” behind the scenes. This session will help participants better understand and utilize basic accounting concepts, especially those specific to the construction industry. The construction business owner who understands key financial data and reports will be more likely to generate higher profits, avoid “boom and bust” times, and make better financial and business decisions.
6: 5 Key Ways to Know Your Numbers Are Correct
Ever wonder if your Profit number is correct? Can you trust your financials without redoing them? This session will show the five key ways to determine that your financial information is correct. Learn how to quickly spot mistakes on your Profit and Loss statement as well as your Balance Sheet. This session will help you better understand and utilize basic accounting concepts. Gain the confidence to know that your numbers are correct, understand key financial data to generate higher profits, and make better financial and business decisions.
7: Creating an Exit Strategy
Most contractors are an independent sort—they start their own business, begin small, and then over time grow to a certain success level. But at some point every business owner faces an inevitable (and extremely important) question—How do I leave my business, on my own terms, and in my best financial interests? Creating an Exit Strategy explores the almost-never-mentioned topic of how a construction owner can successfully retire. The two primary exit strategies will be discussed, along with the important questions each owner must answer to make the best decision based on his unique needs and wants.
8: Managing and Mitigating Risk in the Estimating Process
All it takes is one or two bad jobs to destroy years of profits. To prevent risks from sinking your business, you must identify, understand and quantify the risks that you face—financial, contractual and operational. Managing risk starts with the estimating process and runs through your entire workflow, including the effects on your relationships with clients, subcontractors and employees. This session will equip you with the tools to manage risk by teaching you how to assess, measure and mitigate risk and then be able to proceed on your jobs with confidence. Attendees will leave with several worksheets to learn how to quantify risk.
9: 10 Steps to Becoming a More Profitable Construction Business
Construction industry success is rarely a question of working harder; more often greater success comes from creating appropriate business management systems that will help a contractor manage the office and his jobs more profitably. “Appropriate” is the key term—each contractor’s needs vary. In this session, contractors will be given a roadmap—10 steps—to help them evaluate, implement, and utilize key construction management systems that, if used correctly, almost always lead to higher profitability and greater peace of mind.
10: Equipment Management for Profitability – Understanding the True Cost of Your Equipment
Contractors know that there are better accounting and project management systems available. As a contractor, you own and utilize an astounding variety of small and large tools and equipment to facilitate your jobs. By defining and tracking the various costs of ownership and operation, you will gain a better understanding of the proper way to job cost these items and get a better insight of your true job costs. Find ways to allocate costs and turn equipment into a profit center instead of a drain on profits.
11: Utilizing Technology to Increase Profit
The old computer adage “Garbage In, Garbage Out” is true. While computers should streamline work, they sometimes cause more work, particularly in an industry as complex as construction. Work is done off-site; estimators, accounting personnel, and project managers may all use separate systems; multiple projects must be managed/updated daily. Utilizing Computers to Increase Profit will show contractors how to avoid possible computer pitfalls and also better manage computers to generate more profit.
12: Building Your Business with Training
Training field and office employees is no longer a luxury, it’s a necessity in today’s complex, quickly-changing construction environment. Smart business owners and managers know that the return-on-investment from staff training will be many times their investment. This session will show how to jump-start a successful employee training culture within an organization.
13: Choosing ‘Best Fit’ Construction Management Software
Contractors know that there are better accounting and project management systems available than what they are currently using, but few have the time or energy to research, compare, purchase, and implement new software.