You Don't Have to Learn It the Hard Way

There are some lessons in business you can learn from a book, a podcast, or plain old trial and error. And then there are lessons that can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I've been in business for 25 years, and if there's one thing I wish I had done differently earlier in my career, it would have been finding a coach or a mentor sooner. Not because I wasn't capable, and not because I wasn't willing to work hard. The problem was that I didn't know what I didn't know, and that turned out to be an incredibly expensive problem for a business owner to have.

Why You Need a Business Coach

A good coach doesn't necessarily tell you what to do. A good coach helps you see what you can't see yourself. When you're inside your own business every single day, it's incredibly difficult to step back and look at it objectively. You're too close to it, you're emotionally invested, and you're making decisions based only on what you know and what you've personally experienced.

A coach brings a completely different perspective. They can challenge your thinking, ask questions you haven't considered, and point out risks before they become problems. They can help you make decisions faster, and perhaps most importantly, they can share experiences they've already lived through so you don't have to live through them yourself.

That's the real value of coaching. You don't have to make every mistake on your own. You can learn from someone else's mistakes instead. I learned that lesson the hard way.

The $800,000 Lesson

The year was 2016. We were 16 years into business, and things were going well. Like any business, we'd had our challenging seasons, but overall we were happy with where the company stood. Then we were given an opportunity to bid on a $2.5 million school project, which would be the largest contract we had ever taken on. I was pumped. In my mind, this was the project that was going to put us on the map. Looking back now, I can see the red flags. At the time, I only saw opportunity.

The contractor was adamant that we provide bonding for the project, and he even introduced us to his bonding company and offered to pay all of the bonding costs. At the time I thought, "Wow, what a great contractor." We spent several weeks working with the bonding company and ultimately decided bonding wasn't something we wanted to do. The contractor wasn't happy about it, but he eventually agreed to sign the contract without it. We thought we'd solved the problem. We hadn't.

Then the payment problems started. Month after month, we'd invoice around $300,000 and the contractor would pay us $100,000. By month four, we had billed approximately $1.2 million and been paid roughly $400,000, leaving $800,000 owing to us. Cash was getting tight, payroll was becoming a real concern, our suppliers were getting nervous, and everyone was on edge. So we did what we thought was the logical thing: we placed a lien on the building and walked off the project. We figured the contractor couldn't get financing from the bank with a lien in place, so surely we'd be paid within a week. We didn't understand the game we were playing.

The contractor pulled out something I didn't even know existed: a lien bond. He posted a bond for the exact amount we'd liened the project for, and just like that our lien was removed from the property. Then he put us in default of contract for having left the site and cancelled our agreement. We had just walked away from an $800,000 receivable, two weeks before Christmas, with no money for payroll and no money for rent. And perhaps the worst part was that we had nobody to call. Subcontractors tend to keep their cards close to their chest, and I experienced that firsthand. I reached out to suppliers I'd worked with for years, and when I needed help, many of them turned their backs.

So I called a lawyer, and one lawyer led to another until I found the right one, someone who stood beside me through the entire process. Fast forward five years, and we survived, barely, with some pretty deep scars. Did we win? Technically, yes. The case was resolved through mediation, and we walked away with $250,000. Our legal fees were approximately $100,000, and we were told that if we hadn't settled and the case had gone to trial, we could have spent another $500,000 in legal fees. After five years, we walked away with roughly $150,000 on a project where we'd been owed $800,000. It was the biggest loss I had ever taken, and it was also the biggest learning experience of my life.

Here's Why I'm Telling You This

If I'd had a coach or mentor back in 2016, I'm convinced this never would have happened. Not because a coach could have magically fixed the contractor or predicted everything that was going to unfold, but because someone who had already played at that level would have seen things I couldn't. They could have told me not to take the contract without bonding, warned me about walking off a project without understanding exactly what happens next, explained what a lien bond even was, and laid out my cash flow exposure before I ever signed the contract.

I didn't know what I didn't know, and it cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars. That's why I believe coaching is one of the best investments a business owner can make. You're not paying someone to tell you things you already know. You're paying them to help you see the things you don't. You're paying for experience, for perspective, and to compress the learning curve. Sometimes you're paying to avoid a mistake that could cost you years of your life and hundreds of thousands of dollars.

You Don't Have to Learn Everything the Hard Way

If I could go back to 2016 and pay someone every month to teach me the things they'd already learned through experience, I'd do it in a heartbeat, and I'd have paid a lot more than the cost of coaching to do it. Because the return wouldn't have been measured in knowledge. It would have been measured in mistakes avoided. That's the power of having someone in your corner who can challenge you, hold you accountable, tell you when you're making a bad decision, and who genuinely wants to see you succeed.

This is especially true if you're a subcontractor. Construction can be an incredibly isolating industry. You can be surrounded by people all day long, from employees to customers to general contractors, and still feel like you're running the business entirely alone. You're making decisions about cash flow, estimating, sales, contracts, and growth, often with nobody to talk to who truly understands what you're going through. You don't have to do it alone, and that's one of the biggest reasons I believe so strongly in coaching today.

I've made the mistakes. I've learned the lessons. I've built companies, lost money, recovered, and started over. I've spent 25 years learning what works, what doesn't, and what I wish someone had told me sooner, and now my goal is to help other business owners avoid some of those same mistakes. If I can help you avoid even one of the mistakes I've made over the past 25 years, the investment in coaching can pay for itself many times over.

You don't need another person telling you what you want to hear. You need someone who will tell you what you need to hear. Someone who has been there, made the mistakes, and can help you see around the corner. You don't need to learn every lesson the hard way. That's why you need a coach.