Scaling a Construction Business From $5M to $10M Without Losing Control: Delegation, SOPs, and Accountability
Most construction owners think scaling from $5M to $10M is a software problem, or a hiring problem. This episode of Construction Hot Takes pushes back on that: Adam Cooper, Jeff Robertson, and Greg Gorman answer a viewer question from Dominic Erb about scaling a smaller general contractor, and the first fix they land on isn’t a tool at all: it’s getting the owner out of the center of the business.
Greg Gorman, a former CFO who scaled his own construction company, frames the core problem: at the $5M–$10M size, one or two people become “the center of the wheel,” and every decision routes through them. Adam Cooper walks through how he personally broke that pattern by documenting standard operating procedures before handing work off: “I delegated; I didn’t abdicate,” as he puts it, and Jeff Robertson pressure-tests when it’s actually worth hiring an estimator, a PM, or a controller instead of running longer on spreadsheets.
The conversation also covers why moving off QuickBooks and into a real ERP like Procore slows a team down before it speeds them up, why cash flow forecasting gets more dangerous as payroll and overhead grow, and why a written growth plan, even an imperfect one, beats no plan at all.
Watch the Episode
In This Episode
Why staying “the center of the wheel” caps how big a construction company can get
The order Adam, Jeff, and Greg recommend for hiring an estimator, a PM, or a general manager
Why documenting a process is a different skill than knowing how to do the work
What breaks, temporarily, when you move off spreadsheets and QuickBooks into a real ERP like Procore
Why a written growth plan matters more than the plan being right
Episode Chapters
00:00 — Responding to a viewer’s question about scaling smaller businesses
01:41 — Why getting out of ‘the center of the wheel’ comes first
06:36 — Documenting processes without abdicating control
08:22 — Building process is a skill, not something owners are born with
12:45 — When spreadsheets and QuickBooks stop being enough
17:36 — Moving from a bookkeeper to a controller and real ERP data
How do you scale a construction business from $5 million to $10 million?
Scaling from $5M to $10M comes down to three things: getting the owner out of the center of every decision, documenting and standardizing processes, and investing in construction-specific software instead of spreadsheets. A written growth plan ties the three together and keeps the business on track.
What’s the first step to scaling a small construction company?
Before adding software or new hires, stop being the single point of contact for every decision. Owners typically have to give up half the business, either the sales and estimating side or the operations side, and let someone else fully own that half.
When should a construction company hire a project manager or estimator?
There’s no fixed revenue threshold, it depends on how much of the owner’s time is tied up in that role and whether cash flow supports the salary. Many owners start hiring once they need to step back from day-to-day project management to focus on selling or estimating more work.
Why do growing construction companies need to move off spreadsheets and QuickBooks?
Spreadsheets and basic accounting software can’t handle the reporting, job costing, and forecasting a growing contractor needs. Moving to construction-specific software like Procore or a real ERP slows a team down at first, but produces the data needed to make good growth decisions.
How important is cash flow forecasting when scaling a construction business?
It’s critical. As payroll and overhead grow, misjudging cash flow can leave a scaling contractor cash-poor and forced to borrow to bridge the gap. Revenue and profit aren’t the same as cash, and forecasting has to keep pace as the business scales up.
Do you need a written growth plan to scale a construction company?
Yes. Without a documented plan for revenue targets, hiring, and infrastructure, there’s no way to know if you’re on track or adjust when milestones change. A plan gives owners something concrete to amend; without one, there’s nothing to edit against.
About the Hosts
Adam Cooper: President & CEO of Ascent Consulting. Adam is the primary host of Construction Hot Takes and works directly with construction company owners on operations, growth, and leadership systems.
Jeff Robertson: Vice President at Ascent Consulting. A former project manager, Jeff brings the operator’s math to the show: ERP execution, labor economics, and the real cost of moving off spreadsheets.
Greg Gorman: Principal Senior Consultant at Ascent Consulting. A former CFO who scaled his own construction company, Greg leads the show’s conversations on job costing, WIP, and financial discipline.
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Episode Transcript
[00:00] Adam Cooper: All right, welcome to Construction Hot Takes. We’re going to do responding to YouTube comments today, and I’ve got one that they teed up for us. Okay, great. So I’m going to read this. So, Dominic Erb on YouTube says, “Interesting episode.” Let me—let me back up. This was about the episode about scaling up that we did, about things that companies could use to scale.
[00:25] Adam Cooper: So he wrote: “Interesting episode. Maybe you could do another one of these where you talk about how to scale an even smaller business, about 5 to 10 mil, and maybe more in-depth. What challenges have you faced during those times? How did you overcome them, etc.? Appreciate the work. Keep it up.”
[00:44] Adam Cooper: So we’re going to talk about—yeah,
Greg Gorman: thanks, Dominic. Yeah,
Jeff Robertson: thanks, Dom.
Adam Cooper: Yeah, thank you. Let’s talk about how to scale a smaller business. If you’re a 5 to 10 million dollar a year, let’s use general contractor. Let’s talk about how you might start scaling up. I just got off of a phone call with a prospect not 30 minutes ago. Similar question. And what they’re looking at is how to scale through software.
[01:11] Adam Cooper: They’re saying, you know, it’s time for us to get out of the spreadsheets and out of QuickBooks and get into some more construction-specific software. So we could start there, perhaps, as software… as software is one way to scale and what that might look like.
[01:27] Jeff Robertson: I was going to answer the question with, “It depends.” How to scale 5 to 10 and up—
[01:31] Jeff Robertson: There’s a lot of…
[01:32] Jeff Robertson: Different ways.
[01:33] Adam Cooper: Sure. Well, there’s probably a combination of things you need.
[01:35] Greg Gorman: It and it kind of depends on some things too. It depends on what market sector he’s in, etc.
[01:41] Adam Cooper: Let’s pretend—let’s assume he’s a commercial general contractor. So he’s doing retail, small box, you know, stuff like that. Maybe office tenant fit-outs.
[01:55] Jeff Robertson: Go ahead.
Greg Gorman: No, I’m actually going to take a different tack on this because I read this comment and I think it’s fascinating as you guys both know, and anyone who goes online and reads my bio will probably be able to tell—I, you know, I did this. I did this in my career in construction. So I love this question because I think it’s fascinating because a lot of people in that small size, 1 to 5, 5 to 10, that is generally what they want to do, right?
[02:18] Greg Gorman: It’s not—it’s not a rule. When you’re 50 or 100 million, maybe you’re happy and you just want to stop growing. But that smaller size, a lot of our clients are like, “I want to grow.” So the way I wanted to start this—start the conversation—was to say I think there’s a really important thing you have to do first.
[02:34] Greg Gorman: And we’ve all seen this in our clients at that size, me—me included. At that size, there is usually one person, the owner, or two people or three—a small team—who become the center of that wheel. And we’ve all used that phrase before. So I think almost the first thing you have to do is figure out how to make yourself not the center of the wheel, because if you—if you try to stay the center of the wheel at 30 million or, you know, 60 million, that is a really hard thing to do.
[03:03] Greg Gorman: So I don’t necessarily think it’s only about, you know, systems and process. I think it’s like the structure—what does the business actually look like?
[03:10] Jeff Robertson: So does that—does that look like—so using that GC example, does that look like it’s me, I’m the sole proprietor, I have you maybe out in the field as a superintendent, and maybe I’ve got a—maybe there’s somebody in the office doing some books or whatever.
[03:23] Greg Gorman: I’ve got an office person doing, you know, everything else, and we are—and we are cobbling together 5 million a year or 3 million, whatever the size is, from 3 to 5.
[03:30] Jeff Robertson: So from a pure revenue standpoint, it’s like I got to get myself out of project management. Have you handle more project management because you’re already out in the field, and I train you up to be a PM slash superintendent so I can go sell more work or estimate more work or both.
[03:44] Greg Gorman: Or you have to start—you have to determine when you’re going to start hiring new people and spend some of that hard-earned profit that you have.
[03:52] Jeff Robertson: Who do you hire first? Do you hire an estimator? Do you hire a project manager? Right? Right.
[03:56] Greg Gorman: And as we all know, because we’ve all—we’ve all talked about this and we all have—we’ve all had clients where they call us and say, “I want to get out of the middle of the center of the wheel.” And then we start to help them get out of the center of the wheel, and they—they hold on with their life.
[04:10] Adam Cooper: “I don’t want to lose control.” Control issues
[04:12] Greg Gorman: Exactly.
[04:12] Jeff Robertson: Who doesn’t? Who doesn’t have control issues?
[04:14] Greg Gorman: But I think when you’re talking about scaling a construction company, that’s the whole point. It’s—it’s not just getting yourself out of the center. You have to learn to give up control in order to scale. That’s just…
[04:24] Adam Cooper: So I have a couple of thoughts on that. I love that tack that you’re taking. So I wrote an article years ago that talked about: as a construction business grows, the owner typically has to choose a side. He has to choose to be on the business development, sales, estimating, precon side, or he has to be on the operations, project delivery side.
[04:48] Adam Cooper: You cannot straddle. That’s—that’s being the center of the wheel where all spokes lead to you. If you can at least get out of half of the spokes—
Greg Gorman: Yeah.
Adam Cooper: Now you’re starting to create a smaller wheel that you’re a center of, and somebody else is over on the other side. So you hire a head of estimating and business development and precon, and you can focus on the ops.
[05:05] Adam Cooper: Or you take that role over and you hire somebody to be like a general manager, right? So that’s a beginning of separating.
[05:12] Greg Gorman: Getting out of half would be great, actually. That’s a good point.
[05:14] Adam Cooper: Right. And then you can just—then you can start to hand off pieces of that and slowly get out of the center of all… like you keep shrinking your wheel until eventually you’re not the center of anything. And that’s kind of that—how you scale up. But I don’t know if you can do that at 5 to 10 million, because there’s a—as a CFO would know—there’s—there’s only so much cash to go around.
[05:36] Adam Cooper: You can only afford so many salaries. So you have to start choosing.
[05:39] Greg Gorman: That—and that’s why I think it’s so hard. So I think I don’t know if Dom’s question was based—I guess…
[05:46] Adam Cooper: If he’s 5 to 10 million and he wants to scale from there.
[05:49] Greg Gorman: From there, or I was going to say I guess we don’t know the reason that he asked the question, if he’s trying to do that or he, you know…
[05:56] Jeff Robertson: But that’s why I said before, there’s a lot of, “It depends.”
[05:59] Greg Gorman: It depends. But—but I think if you think about it even—because he, you know, he said “small,” right? Think even smaller. Think 1 to 3 first. Right? Getting—if you’re a 1 million dollar GC and you’re just starting out and you’re really kind of like, you know, guy with the shingle, man with the van type thing—even getting to two.
[06:16] Greg Gorman: Right? Doubling revenue. You’re already scaling. Going to three when you were one. Going to five when you started out as one is a huge change, right? It is really difficult. All the things we’re talking about—trying to make your wheel smaller, trying to hire people, trusting someone to come into your baby that you’ve built, and that’s how you’re feeding your family.
[06:35] Greg Gorman: That’s hard to do.
[06:36] Adam Cooper: Yeah. And, you know, I think Dom asked for some details. So, as—as somebody who has done this, as people who have done this, one of the ways personally that I was able to scale was that not only did I have to hire somebody to do some of those things so I could get out of doing them, I had to—I had to understand how I wanted them done.
[06:56] Adam Cooper: I had to document it. I had to create standard operating procedures so that they got done the way I wanted them done when it wasn’t me doing them anymore. So I had to take some time out to document the processes, to document how do we set up new jobs, you know, how do we run our Google Ads, how do we maintain our website.
[07:15] Adam Cooper: What is our social media posting frequency? To have somebody take over that type of stuff. Or, “Hey, this is how I expect projects to be run. This is how I want budgets built. This is the reporting structure I want. This is how we’re going to structure our buyout process.” Like all the things that I would do as a project manager, I now had to document and train somebody to take over for me.
[07:35] Adam Cooper: Not only did that make—make it scalable, but it also gave me that system of checks and balances so that I could—I could quickly check in and make sure that it was being done the way I wanted it. I didn’t—we often say, “I delegated; I didn’t abdicate,” right? Right.
[07:51] Greg Gorman: I was going to say that I think there’s a—it’s a—I came into this conversation with three things, right? The center of the wheel—that was one. Number two was going to be systems. And that, you know, we all know that because this is what we do at Ascent Consulting all the time—we help clients build process.
[08:06] Greg Gorman: Building process. I totally agree with you. Building it, documenting it, and then standing by it. Because what you said—you don’t want to abdicate everything, but you do have to be able to actually turn something over to someone and know that it’s being done a certain way so you can then check in on it and see the tangible output of that. That, you know, that’s important too.
[08:22] Jeff Robertson: I find—I find just in our client work and working to help build processes and helping people kind of get out of their own head and put it on paper—there’s actually a skill involved in that. I didn’t really quite appreciate that earlier in my career until we do what we do.
[08:43] Jeff Robertson: Talented people that have, you know, natural-given talent to go sell work, build—start to build the company, have that entrepreneurial spirit—
[08:55] Jeff Robertson: Have a difficult time sometimes explaining how I do… “How do you do that?” How did Ted Williams hit a baseball so well? It was… or any—pick a—pick an athlete that you know that… Can they teach it or do they just do it?
Greg Gorman: Time.
Jeff Robertson: I think there’s something to that. And having the time to do that.
[09:11] Greg Gorman: Time, I think, you know, building on that—I, you know, I agree. There’s a secret sauce to it and some people have it, some people don’t. But what everyone has to have to be able to do it is time. Because we all know in this small size you’re doing a lot. Even if you’re only 3 or 4 people, or even if maybe you’re a little more than 3 or 4 people—maybe you’re six people—but those six people running a 5 million dollar company are busy all the time.
[09:33] Greg Gorman: And time to build process is, like we say, you have a day job and maybe you have an—a night job, and the night job is building process and the day job is running the business.
[09:43] Jeff Robertson: Well, you said something important about—Adam said something important about, you know, documenting and think about how do you want it done and so you can check-in. That’s often missed as well. Inspect what you expect. That’s so true. If you have the ability to translate how you do it and how you want it done and you get that on paper and you figure all that out…
[10:06] Jeff Robertson: If you didn’t abdicate at the first attempt of hiring somebody, you actually processed—you mapped it out and gave them a process—the strong urge to abdicate happens after that sometimes, too. It’s like, “Well, I wrote it down. There it is.”
Greg Gorman: Yeah. “Just go do it.”
Jeff Robertson: “Just do that.”
[10:20] Jeff Robertson: Yeah, I had a conversation with a client literally yesterday about this. It was—they had set up a standard meeting, a monthly meeting—a safety meeting in this case. And uh, I was led to believe for a day and a half that they have this monthly meeting and it’s great and we do it and it’s awesome.
[10:42] Jeff Robertson: Awesome. Then I find out through subsequent conversations that they don’t actually do it every month. They only did it for three months and they haven’t done it for the last three, and they don’t know if they’re going to do it again because it just kind of fell away.
Greg Gorman: And they stopped inspecting what they expected.
Jeff Robertson: And the comment I got back—I made—I made ownership aware of that.
[11:05] Jeff Robertson: And he goes, “Well, they’re the—they’re the—the safety guy or the superintendent or whatever who set it up. Shouldn’t they bear responsibility? Like it’s their meeting.” I’m like, “But you stopped asking them about it.” I mean, it doesn’t—it makes you both kind of wrong, doesn’t it? You—you want this to happen. Follow up.
[11:27] Jeff Robertson: So it’s not—it’s not easy. I mean, you do—you get busy doing something else.
Greg Gorman: It’s not easy.
Jeff Robertson: So coming up with how you want it done, writing it down… step one, step two. Step three is then not walking away and assuming that everybody’s going to keep doing it that way.
[11:42] Greg Gorman: And holding people accountable. I just left a client earlier today and I was with them for a few days and we were closing out a project where we were building process. They’re—they’re bigger than this size we’re talking about, but at one point they were this size, right? If you—it’s very rare that you go from 1 million to 25 million overnight, right?
[12:01] Greg Gorman: That’s not how you, you know, you cross through that 5 million dollar threshold. And we literally had the same conversation about: it’s not just documenting it, it’s not just writing it down, it’s not just implementing it—it’s holding people accountable for doing it the way that now you’ve built. And that, to me, can be a very—I think a really important part of how you scale up.
[12:21] Greg Gorman: It doesn’t always feel nice to hold people accountable, but if you’ve taken the time to build process and build the structure of your business, you have to make sure people are doing it. I think it’s a great point. You get busy, you ignore it, or you let someone slide, and all of a sudden all that work you did and all that time you took to build process to help grow your business is now kind of wasted.
[12:45] Adam Cooper: So you standardize the processes; that’s getting out of the center of the wheel. It’s the beginnings of it. And then I’m going to pull it back to where I started which is: okay, some of those—some of those systems that you have may be very cumbersome, like updating a bunch of spreadsheets. And now there’s an opportunity to say, “Well, is there an investment we can make that would simplify the system or unify into one big platform?”
[13:12] Adam Cooper: And that’s typically what I see with our clients that are in that 5 to 10 million space—they’re trying to grow up to the next level—is they have to start making some other investments. People—we talked about people a few minutes ago—that’s people to run the processes that you’ve now delegated. And then maybe some technology to make those processes easier, to give you more bandwidth or to handle more volume.
[13:37] Greg Gorman: Right. So that was my third thing, even, you know—which is how you started. Yeah, there has to be technology. Because at 1 to 3 million or 3 to 5 million when I was that size, it’s a lot of spreadsheets. We all know that. It’s a lot of spreadsheets. It’s—it might be a very rudimentary accounting system. It might be a bookkeeper who is a friend of your—you know, a friend of your family who knows how to do things one way.
[14:05] Greg Gorman: Technology is—is important, but it’s like you said—it’s an investment. So it’s the money to buy a better ERP. It’s the money to spend on, you know, someone—
[14:19] Greg Gorman: Project manager who knows how to use that system. Those are—those are…
[14:24] Adam Cooper: We’re getting the estimating out of a spreadsheet and into an estimating software.
[14:26] Greg Gorman: Into a software. And I remember being—I remember lying in bed at night worried about, “How am I going to write a 20,000 dollar check for that new software that I know we need? We need it.” And when it’s 20,000, that’s fine. But what about when it’s 60,000 dollars? Do you know…
[14:41] Adam Cooper: 100,000 dollars,
Greg Gorman: or 100,000 dollars, or, you know…
Greg Gorman: It’s like we said earlier.
Adam Cooper: It scales up. Scales as the business scales.
[14:47] Greg Gorman: Or—or, you know, you know you need a new person. Let’s say you buy Procore, right? And, you know, you’ve been told that you need Procore, so you pay for Procore. And then you need someone who can actually use Procore. So now you’re talking about spending money on the software and you’re talking about spending money for a new salary.
[15:02] Greg Gorman: You add those two together and you’re like, “I don’t know if we can afford that.” So finding the right system…
[15:08] Adam Cooper: That goes over six figures really, really fast.
[15:09] Greg Gorman: But—but I think it’s so important that that’s one of the legs of the stool if you want to grow and scale at that size—you have to make that commitment.
[15:17] Adam Cooper: You have to leverage software.
[15:19] Greg Gorman: Yeah, absolutely.
[15:20] Adam Cooper: Like you can no longer brute-force your way through it. Because those spreadsheets get out of whack, and then you’re making bad decisions, and then all of a sudden you’re scaling down instead of scaling up.
[15:30] Greg Gorman: And it’s tied back to the other two things we talked about. If you’re—if you’re brute-forcing it, that’s taking all of your time, which keeps you in the center of the wheel, and you’re not building a process for someone else to do it because you’re brute-forcing it. So now you’ve canceled all three of the things that we’ve offered up to people as ways to scale.
[15:47] Greg Gorman: You can’t do that.
[15:48] Jeff Robertson: I think the—I think the software thing is absolutely right. But the challenge with software is—it’s a couple of things. One, it’s finding the one that works for you. That’s really hard to do. Really hard. But even when you do, it’s—you’re actually almost—you’re investing in the future state and you’re—you’re almost taking a step back.
[16:10] Jeff Robertson: It’s like you have to take a step back to take two steps forward, because your software is going to enforce some process on you that you didn’t have to do before, because you had your own spreadsheets and you did it in the order you wanted to do. You could delete things out of QuickBooks or whatever the case may be.
[16:27] Jeff Robertson: It’s going to enforce some stuff on you, so it’s going to make you feel like, “Well, shit, I just went to all this trouble to create these processes, and now, like, I’m starting over.” That’s really—that’s a hard emotional thing to get over. It will get you two steps forward. Absolutely do it.
[16:41] Greg Gorman: Well, and on top of starting over, the other thing it does—it takes longer. So that’s the two steps—one step back, two steps forward. You’ve been doing it in that same spreadsheet at 1 million, at 3 million, at 5 million. You’re the center of the wheel, you own the business, and you are literally—I mean, you can run that spreadsheet in your sleep.
[17:08] Greg Gorman: Bring in a new system that you don’t know very well, that you know is going to help you scale up, but now it’s taking you three times as long to run your reports or track your cash. The learning curve is steep, and you have to get it flat again. And so do you quit and do you give up and go back to the old way, or do you take those, you know, the one step back, two steps forward?
[17:21] Greg Gorman: That’s kind of a dicey proposition for people. But I think you have to do it.
[17:21] Jeff Robertson: Plus the logic doesn’t logic the way you logic. Right?
[17:25] Greg Gorman: Yeah, exactly. It works differently. And that’s, you know, back—back to saying: if you’re going to commit to scale, you have to say, “I’m going to commit to scaling.” And that means A doing B and then doing C.
[17:36] Adam Cooper: Yeah, yeah. It goes from—thinking about that system—it goes from having a bookkeeper who knows QuickBooks to having a controller who understands how a real ERP is designed to work and what the controls are and what the limits are and what are the—the ways you have to do things. And what are all these extra fields I now have to fill out that didn’t even exist in QuickBooks?
[17:57] Adam Cooper: Yeah. And, “Why do I need those and can I turn them off?” “No, you can’t.” And…
[18:01] Jeff Robertson: Well, and in some cases it’s—they’re not required, but because they’re there you suddenly decide, “I guess I have to fill all these out.” Or, “I don’t even know why—”
Greg Gorman: “I don’t know why do I need that?”
Jeff Robertson: “I don’t know why do I need that?”
[18:10] Adam Cooper: Or, “Maybe I should start using these and what could I do with it if I had that data?”
[18:13] Jeff Robertson: “That makes me feel so sophisticated that I have to have a—I have a market sector now. I have cost centers.”
[18:17] Adam Cooper: “I have cost centers and entities.”
Greg Gorman: Exactly.
[18:21] Adam Cooper: And then, “Oh, now I’ve got a structured cost code system with cost types and multiple dimensions and not just, you know, service items and classes.”
[18:29] Greg Gorman: And—and I will add one thing to that last point on—on technology. Yes, I’m a former CFO and that’s how I think. But I do think having good financial data that comes out of that system and having someone who, like you just said, who fully understands the accounting of your business…
[18:50] Greg Gorman: You’ve done it, you look at it, you know what you’re looking at, but are you really getting enough data to grow? Are you really getting enough data that you can use to make decisions to go from 5—you know, million to 10 million, and then to 20 million? You need someone who is actually trained in that.
[19:06] Adam Cooper: And I’m going to piggyback on that and say this in my mind ties back to: you need to be spot-on with your cash flow forecasting. Like you’ve got to be able to forecast cash flow, because people try to scale up and they don’t understand or they get—get sideways in their cash flow forecasting, and all of a sudden they’re cash poor.
[19:30] Adam Cooper: And now you’re borrowing to bridge the gap.
[19:33] Greg Gorman: That—and that’s a lesson you only learn once. Revenue is not—is not profit. Cash is not profit. Revenue is not cash. All of that—all those tropes that you hear online—they’re real.
[19:46] Adam Cooper: At 1 to 2 million, 2 to 3 million, you can get by, you know, with… because the numbers are smaller. But when the numbers get bigger and payroll grows and overhead grows as you scale up, it’s more and more important to be managing and forecasting cash flow and managing to the cash flow that you have and skating to where the puck is and not where it was, and…
[20:06] Adam Cooper: …not where you hope it is. What’s the phrase you live by? Not getting out over your skis.
[20:11] Jeff Robertson: You know, I’m not even a skier, but I do like that saying.
[20:13] Greg Gorman: That’s a great saying. I was just going to add one more thing that I just thought of. I mean, I’ve thought of it before but the kind of three-pronged thing. But I think there’s another one that’s really important too, which is: if you want to scale from 5 to 10 or like I said, I’ll go even smaller—
[20:27] Greg Gorman: If you want to scale from 1 to 3 and you want to scale from 3 to 5, the other thing you need—which is so important—you need a plan. You need to know what you want to become. You can’t sit back and say, “Look, I’m 3 million today and in three years I want to be 50 million dollars of revenue.”
[20:44] Greg Gorman: Great. How? What’s the plan? Write it down. What’s the structure? What’s the infrastructure for how you’re going to build that company? Write it down and make sure that it is a path that you can follow. I think a lot of people think, “Well, I’m going to grow. I’m just going to keep growing until I figure it out.”
[21:04] Greg Gorman: I think it’s really important to have a roadmap ahead of you to know what you want to do and what’s realistic. How do you go from 5 to 10 and then how do you go from 10 to 20?
[21:07] Jeff Robertson: You know, and even if you’re—even if the milestones or whatever you want to call them for that plan are wrong—
[21:12] Greg Gorman: It’s fine.
Jeff Robertson: It’s okay.
[21:13] Jeff Robertson: But they can change when you get there. And go, “Shit, that’s not what I thought it was going to be like when I got here.”
[21:19] Greg Gorman: And if they’re wrong, you can amend them. That’s the thing. If there’s no plan, then there’s nothing to edit. If there is a plan and it doesn’t go that way… look, you know your market, you know your geography, you know your clients, you know your subcontractors. You know better than anyone else what is available to you if… it doesn’t mean you can grow, it means you, you know, you have a plan for growth.
[21:40] Greg Gorman: Yeah. Don’t be afraid to fail at growth either. That’s the thing. Write it down and make a plan and follow it and then amend it if you have to.
[21:48] Jeff Robertson: I’ll do you one better: you could hire Ascent Consulting to help you build that plan.
[21:52] Greg Gorman: I—love it.
Adam Cooper: Shameless plug. I love a shameless plug.
Adam Cooper: Slipped that right in.
[21:58] Greg Gorman: And I’m going to also throw in a shameless plug because this is so timely. Hopefully, you know, when people watch this… I’m involved in a really great LinkedIn conversation right now about almost this exact topic, about when to hire certain roles. Is 10 million too small to hire a certain role? It’s been a fascinating conversation. A lot of people are weighing in online.
[22:18] Jeff Robertson: Interesting.
Greg Gorman: Yeah, it’s really—it’s really been an interesting thing to see both sides of it. “Well, you’re too small for that.” “You are absolutely not too small for that.” And then the two sides are going at it. And I’ve written about 3 or 4 posts so far and they’re getting some good traction to talk about why—why the revenue size is not the only indicator in when you make a decision.
[22:36] Greg Gorman: And that’s kind of what we’re talking about.
[22:38] Adam Cooper: I think a lot of that goes back to: what’s your plan?
[22:40] Greg Gorman: What’s the plan?
[22:41] Adam Cooper: How you—know… and what are you giving up and getting out of your responsibilities as the owner and into somebody else’s responsibilities? That can also guide that hiring conversation. You know, the owner that wants to stay on the operations side needs to hire the other side of the—of the table for the other side of the table. But if he wants to stay on this side, he’s got to hire the operations people.
[23:04] Adam Cooper: Well, that depends. And that—that can be influencing that conversation like: they could both be right because they have a different plan.
[23:12] Jeff Robertson: Yeah. Yeah, that’s a very good point.
[23:14] Greg Gorman: Yeah. Yeah, the plan sells it. And without a plan, like we always say, without a plan…
[23:20] Adam Cooper: Plan to fail.
Greg Gorman: …you plan to fail, right?
[23:23] Jeff Robertson: Failure to plan. What is it?
[23:25] Adam Cooper: Poor planning equals poor performance.
[23:27] Greg Gorman: I love that saying. Proper prior planning prevents p-p-poor performance. It’s so true. And there’s no reason to think that a plan for growth is any different than any other kind of plan. Whatever—whatever you’re going to do, if—if you intend to grow and you want to grow from that 5 to 10 to the next range, write it down and—and make a plan.
[23:49] Adam Cooper: All right. Well, Dom, thanks for the question today. We really appreciate it. If you have follow-ups after watching this episode, send us more direct, distinct questions and we’ll see if we can tackle them on another episode for you. And if anybody else has questions like that to send in, comment on YouTube or email them into info@ascentconsults.com and we will—see if we can answer them on our next episode.
