{{first_name}} Whenever I ask a construction company owner, where their business will be in 30 days, I get a full rundown; every job site, every pending quote, every material order. And when I ask where it'll be in three years, I usually get a blank stare, followed by some version of, “Man, I'm just trying to make payroll this Friday.”
That's completely understandable. When you're buried in scope changes, supply delays, and a sub who didn't show, surviving the month feels like winning. But surviving the month, on repeat, isn't the same as building something.
“A business without a real three-year target isn't growing. It's running Year 1 over and over again, just with different job numbers on the invoices.”
Over last 20 years, I've sat with owners doing $1.5 million revenue and owners doing $15 million, and the ones who plateau share the same habits. They take the bad-fit client because cash flow's tight this month. They underprice a job just to keep the crew busy. They keep putting off a hire because they're not sure where next quarter's revenue is coming from. Every one of those is a reasonable call in isolation. Add them up over three years and they're the whole reason the business never gets bigger, just busier.
THE FOUR-NUMBER TEST
Number 1. Revenue and the job mix that gets you there.
You need to plan what your revenue mix is going to look like in 3-years from now. Not a round number picked because it sounds impressive. You need to know a number backed by a real job mix; how many jobs, what size, what margin. If you don't know the mix, the revenue number is just a wish wearing a dollar sign.
Number 2. Your role; specifically, not generally.
“Less stressful” isn't a role. What do you want your week to actually look like in three years, how many hours, which tasks are still yours, which ones belong to someone else? If you're still the one answering every call and running every job in three years, that's not a bigger business. That's the same job with more zeros on it.
Number 3. Team; who will be running what, and who will report to whom.
Not “I'll hire some good people.” Which role will exist in three years that doesn't exist today? Who owns estimating, who owns the field, who owns the books? A business that scales without this answered doesn't get bigger, it gets more chaotic at a larger size.
Number 4. What you'll stop doing.
Growth isn't only what you add. It's what you have the discipline to cut. Maybe it's the small service calls that eat a full day for a few hundred dollars. Maybe it's a sub-market forty minutes away that's never once been worth the drive. Decide it now, in writing or the market will decide it for you, one bad-fit job at a time.
(And if your three-year vision still has you in a hard hat 65 hours a week, that's not a business you built. That's just a very expensive cage with your name painted on the door.)
THE NUMBER THIS WEEK
10%. That’s how much you need to move toward your three-year target each quarter to get you there. Break three years into 12 quarters and the whole thing stops being overwhelming.
Quarter one might be putting a real job-costing system in place, if you've been reading my newsletter along, you already know why that matters.
Quarter two might be the admin hire that gets your evenings back.
Quarter three might be turning down the next few jobs that are smaller than your target size. None of those are dramatic on their own.
“Stacked over twelve quarters, you will have a different company.”
THE QUESTION THIS WEEK
If you only had to make one 10% move this quarter toward your three-year number, what would it be and are you actually doing it, or still just trying to make payroll?
None of this needs a 50-page plan or a consultant with a whiteboard. It needs sixty minutes this weekend, a notepad, and enough honesty to write down the real number instead of the comfortable one. Then start Monday morning like that's the company you're actually building.
Build deliberately.
Why am I writing this? I've spent over 20 years working alongside construction and trade business owners across Canada. My firm, N3 Business Advisors Inc., has helped hundreds of contractors buy, grow, value, and sell their businesses. I started my career as a teacher, and that part of me never left. So once a week, I put one lesson in your inbox, for free, to help you build a business that buyers line up for. If this was useful, pass it to one owner who needs it. If it wasn't, reply and tell me what you'd rather read about.
Nitin Khanna, CFA · Founder, N3 Business Advisors · Mastering the Business of Construction