Why Some Contractors Are Thriving in This Market While Others Are Fighting to Survive w/ Financial Expert, Greg Crabtree

If a homeowner is hiring one of three contractors, they all come out and give the basic contractor speech. At the end, what have you given them if nothing looks different or sounds different? You're giving them an option to look at the lowest number because why would they pay

more for the same thing? Welcome to the Sales Made Simple podcast.

This podcast is dedicated to helping overwhelmed outdoor living professionals, landscapers, and hardscapers just like you increase your closing rate to over 75% without doubling your workload so you can build a seven-figure business that doesn't need you. I'm your host, Joshua Gillow. Let's dig in. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. This is your host, Joshua Gilliland. This week, I have Greg Crabtree back on the show. He comes in every quarter or so to give us an idea of what he's seeing from the data, from the numbers. He runs a huge business model or like a large company model where he sees a lot of data coming in from all different kinds of industries. And he also has a lot of contractors in there, too, across many different industries. many different parts of the industry. So I love bringing him in so he can take a look and give us a sense of what he's seeing right now and what he sees coming down the line given the economic conditions in the world that we're in right now. So Greg, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having

me in, Josh. And I always love to talk to your group and share with them what we're seeing in the economy that is actual real what's happening rather than made up news that we get from the government sometimes.

Absolutely. And, you know, I have guys that I talk to on a daily basis. Some are extremely busy. They've got so much work, but they're not sure they're actually going to make any money this year. And you have other guys that are have that they look at their schedule and it's there's not a lot like they're having a hard time closing projects. They're like one week out at times. I mean, it's across the board. So I'd love for you to talk into exactly what you're seeing in the industry that could help shed light to that. Yeah,

it's extremely uneven, but there's a reason for the unevenness of the outcomes. So. Set the context, the last 20, 25 years is what we refer to as the participation trophy economy. You didn't have to be good to be profitable. You didn't have to be good to grow. You just had to be available. And that really set about a malaise in businesses achieving excellence in operation and really doing all of the little things that makes a business great. And you had passionate entrepreneurs that ran businesses that were passionate about it, and they would be in business groups that kind of promoted that. But I can tell you from a person that looks at the data objectively, I couldn't tell you that there were any difference in profitability for running a good business from running a fly by the seat of your pants and just go grab the next sale business. Until... about this last year, it started about two years ago, but really in the last 12 months, we're seeing the first time that I can remember in a long time, a separation of the excellent businesses are getting