The Contractor Fight with Tom Reber

Build a contracting business that's less dependent on you. Join the Battleground Priority List: https://bit.ly/Battleground_wec1

You've got crews in the field, but you're still chasing materials, answering every question, and going back to jobs everybody told you were finished.

Tom Reber had a $7,000 exterior job that was supposed to take three days. His project manager said the customer was happy. The customer had paid. The job was checked off.

Four months later, the company's review automation was still asking that customer for a review. She replied that after four months, the job still wasn't done.

That's how Tom found out.

He fired the project manager for lying. But he also had to own the bigger problem: his process let somebody call a job complete without proof.

In this episode, Tom Reber breaks down the four Own the Field disciplines from The Fight OS: Set the Job Up, Own the Schedule, Protect the Profit, and Finish Strong.

He explains what a real handoff to production needs to cover, what to do when a job is burning through its labor hours, how to handle added work without giving it away, and how to prove a job is actually done.

In this episode:

* Why every crew still needing you is a process problem you have to own

* How a three-day job went unfinished for four months without Tom knowing

* What needs to be handed off before the crew starts

* How before photos protect you from paying for damage you didn't cause

* Why you should never hide from a customer until you have good news

* How to track labor hours against progress while you can still save the margin

* How to get added work priced and approved instead of giving it away

* Why the final walkthrough should be scheduled on day one

* Why every open item needs an owner and a completion date

* Why "they said everything's good" isn't proof the job is done

Chapters:

00:00 — The $7,000 job everybody thought was finished

00:42 — The four Own the Field disciplines

01:23 — When your process lets a job be "complete" without proof

02:09 — Set the Job Up: The handoff your crew needs

02:31 — Why you need before photos and documented damage

03:18 — Own the Schedule and the customer updates

04:05 — Protect the Profit: Give your project lead the numbers

05:27 — Finish Strong: Run the final walkthrough

06:25 — Punch lists, sign-offs, and proof the job is done

07:30 — What it takes for every problem to stop landing on you

Your challenge:

Pull your last three jobs marked complete and find out whether you can prove they were finished.

1. Check the setup: Was there a real handoff? Do you have the scope, the labor budget, what was promised, what was excluded, and before photos?

2. Check the schedule: Who owned the customer updates? Did the customer hear from you when something changed?

3. Check the profit: Compare the hours and materials you estimated with what actually happened. Watch the game tape.

4. Check the finish: Was there a documented walkthrough and a customer sign-off? Did every open item have a person responsible and a completion date?

Then find the first place the process depended on somebody's word or on you personally, and decide who owns that step and how you'll verify it got done.

A checked box isn't proof. Neither is a customer who paid.

You don't have to personally handle every detail in your company. But you do need clear responsibilities, trained people, and a way to verify whether the work actually happened.

That's what Battleground helps you build. It helps contractors install The Fight OS across their company, from the numbers, marketing, and sales to the field, leadership, and execution, so the business doesn't depend on the owner for everything.

Battleground is for established contractors doing $500K+ who are willing to be coached, challenged, and held accountable.

It only opens a few times each year. Join the Priority List to get first access when applications reopen. You can also book a call through the page if you have questions.

https://bit.ly/Battleground_wec1

Stop being the only person who knows whether the job is really done. Build the process, train your people, and verify the work.

#ContractorBusiness #ProjectManagement #ContractorCoaching

See if you've built a business worth having: https://bit.ly/BuildABusinessWorthHaving_itf1

Three years ago, Rocky was 57, owed over half a million dollars, and thought this was as good as it was ever going to get.

He had already helped grow an oil field company from $5 million to $20 million a year. Then he got into contracting and did everything wrong.

For six or seven years, he listened to Tom Reber's advice without ever joining, because he told himself he didn't have the money.

Then he hit the bottom of the barrel and decided he had nothing left to lose.

In this episode of Inside The Fight, Tim and Derek sit down with Rocky, owner of GH Construction in Rockport, Texas.

He shares how he went from less than nothing in savings to a company on track to finish this year at more than $3 million, holding a 58.3% gross profit margin.

But the biggest change isn't the number.

At 61, Rocky says he has more energy than ever, and he's just getting started.

They break down:

• Why Rocky spent years telling himself he couldn't afford help while his business kept him stuck

• How learning his numbers first gave him the clarity to make every decision that came after

• Why he decided to run a marketing company first and a construction company second

• How his wife, Melinda, raised their margins behind his back, and why they never lost a sale

• How going to a 50% gross profit margin helped him pay off several hundred thousand dollars of debt in about three or four months

• Why he was confusing ambition with clarity, and how he built a plan to reach $10 million by 2029

• How he got rid of the head trash around charging what his work is worth

• How he created a company people want to work for and built a team of nine

• The three things Rocky would tell any contractor who's stuck right now

Chapters

00:00 From Less Than Nothing to Millionaire

03:03 What Wasn't Working Before The Fight

05:12 What It Was Costing Him Personally

09:50 How Melinda Saved His Life

12:02 Just Getting Started at 61

16:20 Confusing Ambition With Clarity

18:55 $3 Million in Revenue. What's the Net?

25:02 Raising Prices Behind His Back

33:07 The Moment With His Stepdaughter

37:47 Three Things to Do If You're Stuck

Rocky's story isn't just about getting out of debt.

It's about stopping long enough to get clear, knowing your numbers, charging what your work is worth, and doing the work when nobody can do it for you.

As Rocky puts it, he credits Melinda for saving his life and The Contractor Fight for giving him a life worth living.

It's never too late to build a business worth having.

Tom Reber is the founder of The Contractor Fight. He is the host of Contractor Fight TV, an entrepreneur, speaker, podcaster, and former HGTV host.

For over 20 years, Tom has helped hundreds of thousands of contractors build businesses worth having by helping them become the kind of people capable of building them.

On this channel, you'll find straight-talk training on sales, pricing, profit, leadership, and mindset for contractors who want to build a Strong You, a Strong Home, and a Strong Business.

The first fight is always with yourself.

Join The Fight. 👊

Train your salespeople to turn more opportunities into profitable jobs with The Command: https://bit.ly/Command_yeb1

Your salespeople are running appointments, sending estimates, and telling you how busy they are.

But when Friday comes and you look at what they actually sold, the numbers aren't adding up.

You're paying for leads. You're paying salespeople. Your team is staying busy.

So why aren't your sales numbers growing?

Before you spend another dollar generating more leads or decide you hired the wrong people, there's something you need to look at.

Are you actually training your salespeople to sell?

Too many contractors hire salespeople, hand them a company shirt and a login, and expect them to figure out how to close deals on their own.

Then they wonder why their close rates are low, their margins are disappearing, and they're still getting called in to rescue difficult sales conversations.

In this episode, Tom Reber explains why busy salespeople don't necessarily produce profitable sales, how to identify where your team is losing opportunities, and what contractors need to do to develop a sales team that can perform without the owner stepping in to close every deal.

Tom walks through how to evaluate your salespeople's performance by looking at qualified appointments, closed jobs, selling prices, gross profit margins, and discounts.

He also demonstrates a practical role-playing exercise for handling price objections, including what to do when a homeowner says your estimate is $5,000 higher than a competitor's.

You'll learn why sales training needs to cover the entire customer relationship, from prequalification and the initial appointment to follow-up, repeat business, and referrals.

And most importantly, Tom explains why consistent practice, coaching, and accountability are essential if you want your salespeople to improve.

In this episode:

• Why busy estimators aren't necessarily producing more sales or profit
• Why contractors need to evaluate their leadership before blaming their salespeople
• How to measure qualified appointments, close rates, selling prices, and margins
• How to use role-playing to train your team to handle price objections without immediately discounting
• Why constantly rescuing salespeople from difficult conversations keeps them dependent on you
• How Command the Gate helps your team qualify prospects before wasting time on appointments
• How Command the Meeting prepares salespeople to lead better customer conversations
• Why Command the Follow-Up can recover opportunities that appeared lost
• How Command the Lifetime Value of the Client creates opportunities for repeat business and referrals
• Why weekly sales training, practice, and accountability produce better results than simply reviewing sales targets

Chapters:

00:00 — Why busy salespeople aren't producing more sales

00:54 — Are you leading and training your salespeople?

01:33 — How to evaluate your sales team's actual performance

02:58 — Role-play: Handling a $5,000 price objection

04:23 — Stop rescuing your salespeople from every difficult deal

05:05 — Building a complete contractor sales system

06:35 — Command the Follow-Up: Recovering lost opportunities

07:18 — Command the Lifetime Value of the Client

08:42 — Sales is a skill that requires practice and accountability

09:24 — The Command: Live sales training and role-playing

Your challenge:

Before you spend more money on leads or start looking for new salespeople, find out where your current team needs training.

Pull your last few weeks of sales appointments and review each salesperson's performance.

1. Review their numbers: How many qualified appointments did they run? How many became jobs? What did they sell for? What margins did they produce? Did they discount to get the signature?
2. Investigate a lost opportunity: Choose a job that didn't close and ask your salesperson to walk you through the conversation. What did the homeowner want? Why did they want it? What was their budget? What happened when the price came up?
3. Role-play a difficult objection: Play the homeowner and tell your salesperson, "We really like you guys, but you're $5,000 higher than the other estimate." Watch how they respond. Do they ask questions, defend the company, or immediately offer a discount?
4. Coach the weak spot: If they struggle, practice that exact moment. Have them ask better questions, listen to the customer's response, and work through the conversation without immediately sacrificing margin.
5. Make training a weekly commitment: Put sales practice on the calendar. Bring real customer situations into the room, role-play them, provide feedback, and review what happens when your salespeople apply what they've learned.

Don't just ask your salespeople what they expect to close this week.

Find out whether they have the skills to close those opportunities profitably.

And don't confuse activity with performance.

A salesperson can run appointments all week, send dozens of estimates, and still fail to produce the results your business needs.

You also can't measure success by signed contracts alone.

If your salesperson closes a job by giving away the margin your company needs, that sale may be creating another problem.

The goal is to build a team that knows how to qualify opportunities, lead customer conversations, handle objections, follow up consistently, and maintain relationships after the job is complete.

But that doesn't happen by accident.

Sales is a skill. And skills require practice.

You wouldn't expect your field employees to perform their jobs without training. Your salespeople shouldn't be any different.

You can build a sales training system inside your own company. Document your process, schedule weekly practice, review actual sales conversations, and hold your people accountable for applying what they learn.

But if you want help building those skills and developing a team that sells with confidence, that's exactly why we created The Command.

The Command is a sales gym for contractors and their salespeople.

Every Wednesday, members participate in live sales training.

Every Friday, they practice through role-playing, work through real objections, receive coaching, and develop the skills they need to perform in actual customer conversations.

It's not just about watching more sales videos.

It's about doing the reps.

If you're ready to invest in getting yourself and your sales team better, join The Command.

You can also book a call through the page if you have questions about enrolling your salespeople.

https://bit.ly/Command_yeb1

Your salespeople don't need more opportunities to practice on unsuspecting customers. They need the training and confidence to make the most of the opportunities they're already getting.

Stop confusing busy with productive. Train your people, protect your margins, and build a sales team that can perform without you rescuing every deal.

#ContractorSales #SalesTraining #ContractorBusiness

Find out what's costing your contracting business jobs and profit: https://bit.ly/ContractorFightScorecard_mvm1

Are you adding 50% markup to your jobs and assuming you're making 50% gross profit?

You might be making a lot less than you think.

Most contractors know they need to charge more than a job costs to produce. They calculate their labor, add materials, apply a markup, and assume the difference is their profit.

But there's a problem.

Markup and gross profit margin are NOT the same thing.

If a job costs $1,000 and you add a 50% markup, your selling price is $1,500. That doesn't give you a 50% gross profit margin. It gives you approximately 33%.

And when you're making that mistake on every job, you can stay busy, grow your revenue, and still wonder where all your money went.

In this episode, Tom Reber breaks down the difference between markup and margin, why confusing the two can seriously underprice your contracting jobs, and how to build a pricing system that produces the gross profit your business actually needs.

Tom walks through real pricing examples to show why achieving a 50% gross profit margin requires a 100% markup on your direct job costs.

He also explains how your gross profit margin directly affects how much revenue you need to generate, how many jobs you need to sell, and how many leads your business needs just to break even.

And even when your pricing formula is correct, inaccurate labor, material, and subcontractor costs can destroy the margin you thought you were protecting.

You'll learn how to calculate your actual gross profit, build target margins into your estimating process, stop negotiating against your own numbers, and identify where your pricing might be costing your business money.

In this episode:

• Why a 50% markup only produces approximately 33% gross profit margin
• The difference between markup and margin when pricing contracting jobs
• How incorrect markup calculations can leave contractors busy but unprofitable
• Why achieving 50% gross profit requires a 100% markup on direct job costs
• How gross profit margin affects your break-even revenue
• Why lower margins mean you need more jobs and leads to cover the same overhead
• How inaccurate job costing can turn an expected 50% margin into 35%
• Why your estimating system should use actual costs and target margins instead of guesswork
• How discounting your price can destroy the margin your business needs
• How to audit your last five completed jobs to identify pricing and profitability problems

Chapters:

00:00 — Why 50% markup doesn't mean 50% gross profit

01:01 — The difference between markup and margin

02:06 — What else is costing your contracting business money?

02:35 — Why markup and gross profit margin aren't interchangeable

03:06 — How bad pricing math keeps contractors busy and broke

04:12 — How to price jobs at 50% gross profit

05:02 — How gross profit affects your break-even revenue

06:46 — Why inaccurate job costs destroy your margins

07:57 — Building your target margin into your estimating system

08:47 — Why you need to hold your price

09:36 — Your fight: Audit your last five completed jobs

11:10 — Find out what's holding your contracting business back

Your challenge:

Pull your last five completed jobs and find out how much gross profit you actually made.

For each job:

1. Find your selling price: What did you actually charge the customer?
2. Calculate your actual job costs: Include the real labor, materials, subcontractors, and every other direct cost required to produce the job.
3. Calculate your gross profit margin: Subtract your actual job costs from your selling price, then divide that difference by your selling price.
4. Compare your results: Did you produce the margin you originally intended, or did the job finish at a much lower percentage?
5. Identify the problem: Were your estimated costs inaccurate? Did production take longer than expected? Was your markup formula wrong? Did you discount the price without adjusting your costs?

If you're pricing jobs expecting a 50% gross profit margin but your completed jobs are consistently producing 23%, 31%, or 37%, something needs to change.

The goal isn't just to find out that your numbers are wrong.

It's to understand WHY they're wrong so you can fix the actual problem.

Remember: If a job costs $1,000 to produce and you want a 50% gross profit margin, you need to sell it for $2,000.

That's a 100% markup, not 50%.

And if your job actually costs more than you estimated, your gross profit margin drops even further.

But getting your pricing right is only part of building a profitable contracting business.

Your gross profit still needs to cover company overhead before your business produces net profit. And pricing might not even be the biggest problem holding your business back.

If you're working harder, selling more jobs, and growing revenue without seeing the profit you expected, it's time to stop guessing about what's going wrong.

Take the free Contractor Fight Scorecard to identify your biggest business leak, get a clearer picture of what's holding your contracting business back, and find out what deserves your attention first.

It takes about three minutes.

https://bit.ly/ContractorFightScorecard_mvm1

Staying busy isn't the goal. Building a business that actually keeps enough of what it earns is. Know your costs, protect your margins, and stop letting bad pricing math determine your profitability.

#ContractorPricing #GrossProfit #ContractorBusiness

Find out what's costing your contracting business jobs and profit: https://bit.ly/ContractorFightScorecard_fgp1

Are you bidding jobs at 50% gross profit but still wondering where all your money goes?

Most contractors think they know what a job costs. They estimate labor, add materials, calculate their price, and assume there's enough margin left to make money.

But what about the drive time, material runs, unexpected delays, cleanup, and all the work that happens before and after the actual production?

Those costs don't disappear just because you forgot to include them in your estimate.

In this episode, Tom Reber breaks down how to bid jobs at 50% gross profit using a simple three-phase system he's relied on for over 20 years: Prep, Build, and Finish.

Tom explains why accurate estimating starts with understanding your actual production costs, not guessing how long a job should take or copying what other contractors charge.

He also shares how a $50 million contracting company was losing $12,000 every week simply because it wasn't accounting for crew drive time.

You'll learn how to track production rates, account for overlooked job costs, and use real numbers to build estimates that protect your margins.

And if you've ever thought customers won't pay what you actually need to charge, Tom explains why the problem might not be your price. It could be your production efficiency, your sales process, or the customers your business is attracting.

In this episode:

• Why contractors lose money before a job even begins
• The three-phase estimating system: Prep, Build, and Finish
• How one $50 million company was losing $12,000 a week in unaccounted drive time
• Why tracking actual production rates leads to more accurate estimates
• The difference between the art and science of estimating
• How overlooked cleanup and finishing costs eat into your margins
• How to calculate a selling price at 50% gross profit
• Why a 50% markup is NOT the same as a 50% gross profit margin
• What to do when customers won't pay the price your business needs
• How comparing estimated and actual job costs improves future bids

Chapters:

00:00 — Why contractors struggle to hit 50% gross profit

00:44 — Phase 1: Prep and the hidden costs before production

01:58 — Phase 2: Build and tracking actual production rates

04:25 — The art and science of estimating

05:36 — Phase 3: Finish and the hidden cost of cleanup

06:43 — How to calculate a 50% gross profit selling price

08:22 — Why 50% markup isn't 50% gross profit

09:26 — Why customers might not pay your price

11:40 — How to improve estimates using actual job costs

12:42 — Your fight: Find out what you're giving away

Your challenge:

Take one recently completed job and break it into three phases:

1. Prep: What did it cost to get the job ready? Include material runs, drive time, setup, and everything that happened before production.
2. Build: How long did the actual work take compared to your estimate? Account for your real labor, materials, and equipment costs.
3. Finish: How much time and money went into cleanup, walkthroughs, punch lists, and completing the job?

Compare what you estimated against what actually happened.

Where were you accurate? Where did you underestimate? What costs did you completely overlook?

Use what you learn to improve your next estimate.

Remember: If a job costs $5,000 to produce, you need to sell it for $10,000 to achieve a 50% gross profit margin.

And don't confuse that with a 50% markup. They're not the same thing, and mixing them up can seriously underprice your work.

But even the right gross profit margin doesn't automatically guarantee your business is profitable. Your jobs still need to generate enough revenue to cover company overhead and produce a net profit.

If you're doing plenty of work but still struggling to make money, inaccurate job estimates might be just one part of a bigger problem.

Take the free Contractor Fight Scorecard to identify what's holding your contracting business back, uncover where your biggest opportunities are, and figure out what deserves your attention first.

It takes about three minutes.

https://bit.ly/ContractorFightScorecard_fgp1

The math behind 50% gross profit is simple. The hard part is knowing what your jobs actually cost. Stop guessing, start tracking, and build your prices around the numbers your business needs.

#ContractorPricing #GrossProfit #ContractorBusiness