Episode 24: Using Story Telling To Grow A Building Company With Jimmy McKinney

In episode 24 of the Professional Builders Secrets podcast, we’re joined by Jimmy McKinney, owner of J&R Construction Services, based in Kentucky, United States. Throughout this episode, Jimmy shares how to use storytelling to grow a building company.

J&R Construction is an award-winning remodelling company serving Lexington, KY, Owensboro, KY and parts of Central KY. The building company has been operating since 2003, specialising in residential design/build home remodelling projects, helping everyone to enjoy the process.

Jimmy’s building company utilises multiple digital channels to engage with their customers and online audience. One of the ways that Jimmy engages with his audience is through a podcast called Skinny On The Home.

Jimmy “Skinny” McKinney uses his podcast to answer questions on home improvement, remodelling, design, and building. Through his podcast, Jimmy is able to educate consumers and builders on the latest products, trends and techniques in the building industry.

Tune in to episode 24 now to hear Jimmy’s story!

Jimmy McKinney - Owner of J&R Construction 

Jimmy McKinney is the President and Owner of J&R Construction Services. Jimmy has had a love for woodwork since a very young age. Jimmy entered the U.S. Army Reserves and from there went to work at a lumber company and other construction/home building companies. After several years of working and learning, Jimmy started his own company, McKinney Deck Builders. In 2003, McKinney Deck Builders was rebranded and launched as J&R Construction Services.

Connect with Jimmy

Timeline

1:04 About Jimmy and how he started J&R Construction.

6:44 How Jimmy evolved his company to what it is today.

9:34 The key to Jimmy’s success growing his business. 

12:23 How Jimmy uses digital story telling to grow his brand.

15:55 How builders can leverage digital channels.

18:59 The highs and lows of being a builder.

23:55 A pivotal realisation that’s helped Jimmy succeed.

26:03 Jimmy’s focus for the future.

28:39 Jimmy’s proudest achievements.

30:07 Preparing for the future.

32:35 Jimmy’s advice to his younger self and other builders. 

Links, Resources & More

J&R Construction Website
Skinny On The Home Podcast
APB Website
APB on Instagram
APB on Facebook
APB on YouTube

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Bosco Anthony:

Hello and welcome to the Professional Builders Secrets podcast, a podcast by the Association of Professional Builders (APB) for building company owners, general managers, VPs and emerging leaders. Here, we discuss all things running a professional building company, from sales processes, financials, operations and marketing. I'm joined today by Jimmy McKinney, President of J&R Construction, based out of Lexington, Kentucky. Jimmy, welcome and thank you for being here today.

Jimmy McKinney:

Thanks Bosco. Thanks for having me and thanks for all those listening out there.

Bosco Anthony:

We're so excited to have you. Tell us a little bit about you. How did you get started and how did J&R Construction come to life?

Jimmy McKinney:

My grandfather and great-grandfather owned some sawmills in Eastern Kentucky. In the United States, we're right almost in the centre, to the east a little bit. They owned sawmills in the eastern part of the state and started doing a lot of handcraft and furniture and things like that. My father worked for an oil company, but he also did a lot of building projects and things, when I was growing up. He actually built our house when I was born, the house that we lived in.

Jimmy McKinney:

So through that, building became a love of mine. I remember being 10 years old and building a clubhouse in our backyard, and I was just proud that the roof didn't leak. I put some pallets together and some walls. But I remember the shingles, I lined up all the lines so it wasn't staggered like it's supposed to be. I remember that was one thing that got pointed out to me early on in my building career.

Jimmy McKinney:

I took a lot of woodworking and drafting classes in high school and then went off to college. I went off into the military, and when I got back I started with a local lumber company, which was actually a national lumber company. I started transferring around, got promoted, and transferred to assistant manager and I was in Raleigh, North Carolina, for a year and a half. Then I was in Atlanta, Georgia, for over a year.

Jimmy McKinney:

But it was really in Raleigh in the mid-nineties, in 1996, when I was a meta superintendent with a large home builder down there. We became good friends. We started building a lot of decks and screening porches together. So that's where it started. The business started as McKinney Deck Builders back then, and then as I moved back to Kentucky and worked for another local contractor, I started J&R. It was 2003.

Jimmy McKinney:

I had just got married in August 2002 and about six months later, I started J&R. I think a couple months after that, we found out we were pregnant with our first daughter. Ever since then, my wife's been a stay at home mum and we’ve been through the ups and downs of owning a business from the start. I think I had almost $700 when I started.

Bosco Anthony:

It sounds like you discovered your purpose at a very young age, and that this was something you wanted to do. Is it fair to say that there were moments when you second guessed whether this was the purpose you wanted to go after or pursue?

Jimmy McKinney:

Starting J&R, everybody has their different beliefs, but I thought, “All right, Lord, if you want me to start this full time, you're going to have to give me a stupid sign.” And He did twice. I thought, “Okay, it's time to start.”

Jimmy McKinney:

Ever since then – and I would hope that there are other business owners like me – there's a handful of times that I’ve wanted to just wad it up and throw it out the door. “I’ll go work for somebody and I don't have to think of this stuff,” but that's rare. I can count on my hands and not use all my fingers that I've done that over the years. So, it's been a journey of ups and downs, times I haven't paid myself. There have been times we've been on medical cards and food stamps as a family. You have that vision and that calling early on.

Jimmy McKinney:

In my DNA, my blood knows, I don't quit. I did a lot of sports and was very competitive growing up and I still am competitive. I think that's the key thing for business owners and especially entrepreneurs. A lot of them will tell you it's like you get to the island, you get off the ship, you start up the hill and you turn around, the ships are on fire, burn those ships, there's no going back. That's what you've got to have to make it a lot of times. Especially in this industry, sometimes it can be very challenging.

Bosco Anthony:

Let's go down memory lane for a second. Let's think about that pivotal moment when you said, “I'm going to now transform this deck company to a building company.” There was a moment in time when, like you said, you started off in the deck business. So tell me a little bit about what those moments were, where you gave yourself permission to succeed and think, “Hey, I'm going to actually build a professional building company.”

Jimmy McKinney:

There were probably two years when I was working for another remodelling company and I was just doing a lot of other work. The decks became other projects, I started laying some tiles and doing just general remodelling projects. That's what we are as a company. We're a full-service design, build and home remodelling company. I have built houses in the past. I've done commercial projects in the past. We've done insurance work in the past. But some of the advice I got early on was to focus on our niche early on. So, we just stay in our lane of residential; we're remodelling now.

Jimmy McKinney:

I remember laying a tile in a guy's house at one o'clock in the morning. I worked lots of weekends and evenings and it just got to a point to where I started having to take extra days off from my day job to do my projects. That's when I asked myself, “Is it time to make that move?”

Jimmy McKinney:

Like I said, I didn't have much money saved up to have a cushion for a year if I didn't make any money. It just started. That was that moment that really, I was on my knees and said that prayer. Then hearing two different people in the span of two weeks say the same verbatim sentence word for word, I just knew in my spirit, that second time, that it was a sign. I remember my wife picked me up that afternoon and when I got in the car, I said, “We're going to start full time here in about a week.” She said, “Okay.”

Bosco Anthony:

You're paying attention to the signs from the universe, I guess, is what they say. But when you were starting out, did you have that long-term vision that you would be where you are today? I was looking up your company and you've grown so much that you’ve got multiple locations now as well. Did you have that DNA and mindset that this is where you were going to be or did that long-term goal evolve over time?

Jimmy McKinney:

I think it evolves over time. I had a vision of a large company, having multiple staff, and the multiple locations came about after I'd been in business. That wasn't really a vision of mine until probably seven or eight years ago. That's in our vision statement as a company, to grow into other locations, when the timing is right and we can find the right people to partner with.

Jimmy McKinney:

But we don't just go into a location just to go into the location. Our core value is relationships. We have to have a relationship in a community or in a state or in a market with local people who we're connected to. It starts with key people. This the whole industry is about people. There has to be a key person as a general manager to start in a location. So, we've got some future locations that are in the works, but those may be another year or two coming online. But we're excited about those.

Bosco Anthony:

Jimmy, tell me a little bit about your love for this industry. You obviously have to have a lot of love to be in this. Like you said, there were some questionable evenings where you were pondering whether this was the right move for you, but what do you love most about your role today? What did you love the most about your role when you got into this business, and how did you bridge that gap?

Jimmy McKinney:

I'll start with the second part of that question. I think the love in the beginning is just like a lot of us in this industry. We like working with our hands. We like seeing a project come together, something being built. When I first started, I was on the tool belt during the day, office manager at night. It was just me, and now we've grown to a staff of, I think we're at 22, is how many staff we have now.

Jimmy McKinney:

The love is because there’s always something different. Every single day, it's something different. Every client is different. Every personality is different. Every project is different. I can go back over 19 years and I don't think I've got this same dollar amount to the penny project that I've done ever. There's always something that's a little bit different about each project.

Jimmy McKinney:

That's what I like about this industry; it's ever changing. The products are getting better, longer lasting. For me, this industry is opposite of some mechanical industry. Maybe like the car industry where we're putting in things that last longer, we're actually giving longer warranties now as a company than we used to early on because products are lasting longer.

Bosco Anthony:

Our builders out there are probably going to be curious to ask, “Well, what was the X-factor that led to this growth?” You alluded to the fact that you build relationships and communities, and you've got 22 people working for you now. But what was that magic factor that allowed you to multiply your business 10 times to the point now that you are at this place today? What would you contribute your growing factors to?

Jimmy McKinney:

Focus is a key word. I've got a sticky note here on my screen here that’s a quote from a book I read a long time ago. It says, "If everything is important, then nothing is." Early on, if you wanted me to build you a doghouse, I was going to build a doghouse. I was taking anything that I could take. But then over the years, you can start to narrow that focus, you can start to say no to the things you don't want to do and yes to the things you want to do. Within this industry, there's a lot of people I know who are just kitchen remodellers, or they're just bathroom remodellers and they say no to those other projects. 

Jimmy McKinney:

I think for us, those relationships are important. We also have partnerships with other contractors who we refer people to, who we know are going to do a good job. We might even compete with them on certain projects, but not certain other ones. Anytime somebody calls us, we're going to be able to either help them or refer them to someone who can help them. I think keeping that focus on relationships is important.

Jimmy McKinney:

The key moment was when we moved to this office in Lexington in December of 2013. I think I still hadn't broken a million dollars in sales at that point. I think it was the next year when we did. Getting into a new space, we started doing more design work at that point. I think when we started focusing more on the design build aspect and that grew, that's when the shift happened for us and we've been able to focus on that and really handhold our clients through the whole process. Remodelling still has ups and downs: you're living in the house while it's being torn up. It's very challenging as a client and I’m sure other remodellers can call to mind those five clients that they’re having difficulties with right now.

Jimmy McKinney:

I think that was the key moment when we started focusing on that handholding, that design process, where we can take our clients from design to drawing to handholding of shopping, helping them make selections all the way through the construction, all in-house. Whether we offered the design or not or it came from an architect outside, we're that one-stop shop for that. I think that's catching on around the globe with the design build movement, and the design build movement is not that old. In the residential world it's not that old. It's pretty exciting.

Bosco Anthony:

Now, tell us a little bit about digital storytelling. When I was getting ready for this interview, I was pretty impressed with the visual storytelling that you've embraced, but you also have a podcast as well. I was looking it up and it's called the Skinny on the Home. Tell me a little bit about the inspiration behind this and what propelled you to embrace digital media to be part of your brand.

Jimmy McKinney:

You can see from my picture on our website that I'm a pretty slender guy. Back in high school I got the nickname 'Skinny’. It all rhymes: Jimmy Skinny McKinney. I was a track runner and a pole vaulter and all those things. That name stuck over the years and then, coming into the industry I'm in now, getting the skinny on home improvement, our model has been whether you're going to hire a professional, you're going to do it yourself or you're going to have a family member do it, we want to just give general information to our listening audience and tell that story. 

Jimmy McKinney:

We have guests on just like you guys do. We have electricians, plumbers, HVAC [heating, ventilation and air conditioning] and painters. We bring in suppliers; we actually get some of our suppliers and trade contractors who advertised with us in that podcast. The great thing about podcasting is it's free, basically free. Once you get some good equipment, which is not very expensive, you can put a podcast out.

Jimmy McKinney:

Networking and marketing are my strongest suits, I would say. I like to give several touches to a client before we've actually gone out there. They've seen us somewhere, they've looked us up, they call us. When they call us, we actually have several videos that we send to our clients once we've qualified them and we're actually going to go have an appointment with them. We send them who we are and why we do what we do, and that's a video. We send them another video on what to expect, from start to finish – the short and sweet. 

Jimmy McKinney:

Then we do a separate video on the emotional rollercoaster. We send a graph that shows from design all the way through, I think the lowest point is drywall sanding, and we do a visual in that. We want them to understand that the process is not like the 30-minute TV shows that we all watch that; you can't redo your kitchen in 30 minutes. No, it's going to take two or three months.

Jimmy McKinney:

I look at branding and marketing as an 18-piece pie. You can have one or two things or maybe you just get all referrals, which is great. We like to do visual storytelling through multiple avenues and not just the normal ones that you think of. You think of Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, all those, and we've started a TikTok channel. We do a lot on LinkedIn; LinkedIn is where the professionals are. They're going to spend money to build or remodel their houses or build a new house. That's why I look at that piece. 

Jimmy McKinney:

You may advertise in a magazine and you keep track of your leads and you go all year long and nobody ever said, “I found you in a magazine.” Then the next year you decide, “Well, I'm not advertising in that magazine again.” But maybe they saw you in the magazine, then saw a Facebook post, then Googled you. When they called, you asked, “How did you find us?” “Well, I Googled you.” But you still touched them all that way. You've got to be careful. I see a lot of guys who'll just start throwing stuff out because they don't feel it's working, when maybe it is working.

Bosco Anthony:

You're talking about multiple touch points. For our audiences out there, building companies that are considering digital media, digital storytelling or podcasting, how does a builder leverage these digital outlets, including podcasting avenues to position their brands strongly in the market?

Jimmy McKinney:

Good question. I think it starts with consistency. If you're just going to put something on Facebook because you're not busy and then a month later you do it again, if you're not going to be consistent several times a week with it, don't even start it. You're just wasting your time and wasting your resources. I think consistency is the key starting point. Be consistent. 

Jimmy McKinney:

If you're going to do one thing, pick that one thing and be consistent. Post on Facebook three times a week, add Instagram in there, that's an easy one to add on, and those can tie together. There's a lot of different software out there that can post to multiple sites at one time for you. Hootsuite is one that we use as a company and it posts multiple ones. Some of them take a little bit longer. TikTok is a little more challenging; it takes a little bit more time. I'm a Gen X guy, so I have younger people working for me who do some of that stuff.

Jimmy McKinney:

I would pick one or two. YouTube is a great one, especially if you're out on your job sites a lot, you can just post short little videos on it. People like to see that, the rawness of it. It doesn't have to be every beautiful picture of the after in a magazine. You can show the dirty stage of your project and how it's going and why it looks like the way it does and all those things. All those things are good storytelling. It connects your audience with you and your company personally. The difference I see in residential and commercial is residential is more personal, commercial is not as personal as that, because it's a little disconnected.

Bosco Anthony:

It sounds like you’re a believer of this, because most builders will say, “I don't have at the time to do a lot of these things.” But it sounds like you've actually incorporated this as part of your working lifestyle; you have people you mentioned who work on some of the visual stuff. It sounds like you're playing everybody to their strengths as well.

Jimmy McKinney:

You may not have a big staff; I was doing some of that myself. My office manager was doing some posts.

Jimmy McKinney:

I had another designer who was doing some posts. You can have multiple people doing it, as long as you're doing it consistently. If I'm going to be the one to post on Facebook, then that's on me. If we haven't posted on Facebook for a month, that's on me, so it's not on the designer or the office manager. If you’re incorporating people, you can easily add your current staff, or a spouse, or a family member to help out with some of those things. With the media and the resources, especially on podcasts, you can edit those fairly easily and get those out pretty quickly, too.

Bosco Anthony:

Let's talk about the highs and lows of being a builder. I've spoken to enough builders to know that it's not all smooth sailing for sure. But let's start off with some of the biggest challenges you face to date and how do you overcome some of these challenges?

Jimmy McKinney:

I think this is the part of the podcast that everybody turns down everything else, and it's like, all right, now we're going to get to it. This is also the part that all the guests are like, cr*p. No, there's definitely lows with the highs. If there were more lows than there were highs, we wouldn't be doing this. So I think early on, I was several years into it before I knew the difference between markup and margin. I thought the two were the same. And woo, was I wrong! That was a big one. Misquoting things early on when I wasn't getting all the numbers, doing some swags, silly, wild ass guesses on what something might cost, and then trying to sell it and go from there. I had an addition once; I think I paid $10,000 more than the client paid to actually get this project done. I've had a few of those.

Jimmy McKinney:

You don't do too many of those before you learn very quickly not to do those things. Some of the lows have been some of the financials and understanding that. I've learned over the years that having good accounting software early on has helped me understand my numbers. But being involved in trade groups, round tables, APB have all helped. 

Jimmy McKinney:

APB is a good group. Just what you guys do, that will help builders piggyback off the mistakes of others and learn from others so they don't have to repeat all those same mistakes themselves. That's what's helped me over the years as well. But the financials, learning those as quickly as you can, because you can't as an owner of your building company turn your eyes away from the financials and let somebody else worry about that or let your accountant worry about that. You have to know.

Jimmy McKinney:

If you don't know, ask them. “Show me where this number's at. Where do you get this from?” All those things, and I know APB teaches all that stuff too. But I think that some of the lows are to do with misquoting things. We do not swag anything anymore. When we start off with our clients, a lot of them don't know what their budget should be for a project, so we show them examples. We show, “Here's a bathroom we did at $50,000. Here's a bathroom at $100,000. Which one do you see yourself in?” 

Jimmy McKinney:

Then we work off that range to start the design process and then get to the final number. We have trade contractor walkthroughs now, which our trades really appreciate, whereas before maybe we didn't take those guys out there to look at the project. We would say, “The plumber's going to charge me $1,000 a hole,” and we’d put it all together.

Jimmy McKinney:

Well, when the gets out there, he’d look at it and say, “Well, I've got to run the pipes this way, rather than what we normally do.” That helps the client to ask a lot of questions of our trade contractors during those walkthroughs that they may not get answered otherwise. We have the electrician, the plumber, HVAC, the framer, the drywaller, the painter all there for a walkthrough with the client. The client's there asking questions too, so it's great. So I would say those are some of the highs and lows if I look back over the years. Still even now, we have some challenges currently with slippage, just managing the timing of a job. We might plan on a job taking eight weeks, but it takes 10 weeks.

Jimmy McKinney:

You may have hit all your numbers in there with trades and subcontractors, but it took you two weeks longer to manage that. So, you lost two weeks of overhead that you may not see on a profit and loss by job because you hit all the numbers, but you lost two weeks of management time. So that's still money you had to pay out on that. So, keep track of that and keep learning. There's a group that I joined that I actually got work in progress spreadsheets and things that I can use to really keep track of all those. And we have software nowadays that can manage projects and that can talk to your accounting software, which just really helps you as an owner get a good grasp on your financials.

Bosco Anthony:

You become a leader, and you make some classical, either entrepreneurial or leadership mistakes. It's sort of the norm. If you look back and you look at some of the classical mistakes that you may have made, what is that badge of honour that you’re really proud of? Because it’s that defining moment that has changed how you lead and how you run your business as well. Is there one that you’re really familiar with that you can think back on?

Jimmy McKinney:

With staff, or clients, or both?

Bosco Anthony:

Anything that comes to mind.

Jimmy McKinney:

Anything that comes to mind? I think realising that everybody’s personalities and everybody’s emotional intelligence is different in this industry. We started doing emotional intelligence training as a staff. So we go through EQ, emotional intelligence, I think it’s Emotional Intelligence 2.0, with all of our staff. You can take an online assessment, see where you’re at, and then go through in groups with our staff so that they can understand too and pick up on the emotional intelligence of our clients and of our trades. 

Jimmy McKinney:

I think one moment when I’m proud of my staff and of what they’ve done here recently is we’ve started doing a lot of trade contractor ‘lunch and learn’s. So we bring in our trades, especially new ones. We were talking about marketing and branding; we’ve been in business now for 19 years, but we have trades. I hear that people have hiring issues, can’t find trades in this, that and the other.

Jimmy McKinney:

We have trades call us all the time and want to do business with us because of how we brand and how we do business. Part of focusing on relationships is why we have a lunch and learn. We provide lunch; we bring in seasoned trades that have been with us for a period of time, and we bring the newer trades in. We talk through our expectations, how to use our company software when they’re out in the field, and we ask, “What can we do better to help you?” Because they’re in business also; they’re working for other contractors. But if we can help them be better business owners, be better contractors, better trade partners as well, that just helps the whole industry, but it also helps us with our clients and our projects.

Bosco Anthony:

Take me through what lessons you’re applying today. Obviously, you've been pioneering a few things now and you've been in business for quite some time. It sounds like you're constantly improving yourself as well as you move along. So, what are some of the lessons that you're focusing on today to take you through the next frontier?

Jimmy McKinney:

We focus more now on getting the maximum results from each division of the company and fine tuning that. So, Toyota has coined the process of ‘lean remodelling’. We put up all of our steps and all of our processes, and ask, “Is there anything we can combine, or take out, or do differently?” One thing that we do is have a quarterly all-staff meeting. Actually, I've got one this coming week that I'm getting prepared for. That meeting usually lasts all day and I usually only ask one question, “If there's anything we could do differently or better, what would it be?” That just starts a conversation throughout the whole company of different things and different ideas. That's where a lot of what we do now has come from. We also require each person to set a goal in their position for the company and also a personal goal, in that meeting.

Jimmy McKinney:

If we've achieved 80% of that by the next quarter, then we would call it a win. We re-evaluate those, pull up last quarter’s goals, and things like that too. It’s important to get your whole team involved and have that culture. Even if you have just a couple of people, or you may have a handful of people working for you and you think, “Well, we meet all the time.” But take a strategic quarter, get outside the office. We don't have that meeting at any of our offices. It's at an offsite location, usually, and it's free because one of our trade associations gives us the space that we get to use, but it gets you out of the office, gets you out of your normal environment and just starts the idea juices flowing, when you ask those questions.

Jimmy McKinney:

Another thing that we do is an encouragement and affirmation time in that, meeting too. We do it popcorn style, and one person will encourage or say something affirming another person, they get done, and then it goes to the next person and so forth. That's been really neat over the years of building the team.

Bosco Anthony:

It sounds like you spend a lot of time creating and nurturing your team as well, which is really, really inspiring to see. Talk to me about some of the achievements that you've had that you're really proud of. It sounds like there's a few that have come out, obviously with all the changes throughout the years. But if you look back down this illustrious career of yours, what are some of the things that you're really proud of?

Jimmy McKinney:

I'm proud of the fact that we've grown into a management team that has different departments managing different pieces of the business. We have design managers that manage the design and sales, administration and production. Those are the three main components of a building company. So, developing that, I have twice weekly meetings with my management team where we go over a lot of the high-level stuff and then it filters down from there. 

Jimmy McKinney:

You need that chain of command, just like the military, so that your people know, if you're the person they're always going to, as you build, you're going to have to build a management team in place, because you want to take some of that off your plate as you build. You might be a one, two-man company. Well now you're going to go to three, four, five, six people. You may need to put another manager in there somewhere to have that buffer.

Jimmy McKinney:

I’m also proud that our team has been one of the most awarded home remodelling companies in the state for several years in a row. I’m really proud of that. This past year we got five awards for five different projects. That was pretty neat.

Bosco Anthony:

That's pretty cool. What's the plan for the future? I guess now, obviously there's so much change that's happened in the last few years as well, but the industry's evolving. It's growing. It's turning itself into this professional outlook. How are you preparing for the future?

Jimmy McKinney:

In my world of remodelling, I'm just excited for the future. For the first time in our industry, we'll possibly see remodelling expenditure exceed new construction expenditure. That's exciting, and it’s because there's only so much land to build on and then the average age of housing, at least in America, is about 38 or 39 years old. We're remodelling houses right now that are just about 20 years old. It’s surprising to think that a 20-year-old house is ready for a remodel, but that's what we're doing.

Jimmy McKinney:

The industry is growing. There's always going to be remodelling, building new construction. Even if it's tearing down something and building it back. I've got friends of mine who are big builders in Nashville, Tennessee. They're tearing down houses and building new ones. That's the market now that we're going to because there's no land to build new on so you've got to take the old and redo it.

Jimmy McKinney:

The industry as a whole, you'll see some still dips and things like that. Imagine you’re in a boat, a large ship, but also imagine that you have little speed boats that you can get off and do things if you need to. Don't be so locked in that if something happens, you're saying, “Oh cr*p.” You may have to change!

Jimmy McKinney:

There have been times where we've done home maintenance programs. We're talking about a small projects division, which is "handyman division" but it can still be a $100,000 project in the small projects division.

Jimmy McKinney:

There are many different ways to leverage different parts of this business, depending on what you want to do. I've got another friend of mine in Minnesota who has four companies inside of his building company. They do about $30 million a year and it's restoration, windows, roofing, siding, new construction and remodelling. I think he has a cabinet company as well that builds his own company’s custom cabinets. He's been in business just as long as I have.

Jimmy McKinney:

There's a lot of different ways you can go in this industry. The sky's the limit.

Bosco Anthony:

Knowing what you know now, if you could give a younger version of yourself any advice, when you first started, what would that be and what advice would you give builders who are trying to make it work or struggling or starting out, what advice would you give them beginning as well?

Jimmy McKinney:

If I could go back and tell myself, I would tell myself to take that two to three percent that I'm pulling off from every dollar now and save it back then. If you can take two percent, three percent of every dollar that comes in, put it into an account to build up reserves and have three to six month reserves so if something doesn't come in, it's okay. So that would be one piece of advice.

Jimmy McKinney:

Another thing I would tell myself would be to learn what markup and margin are early on. It'll save a lot of pain. Another would be focus. I got some older guys in the industry together early on in business. I think I was two or three years in business. I got them together just to have a masterminds meeting. “Okay, what should I do? What should I focus on?” They all said focus and niche as quickly as you can. If I was going to go back now, I would say get into the design build earlier than I did. 

Jimmy McKinney:

Advice for builders starting out? I would say get around a group of like-minded individuals. So, whether that's in a round table group association where you're not in non-competing markets, which I think is what APB does. Actually, I had Russ Stephens on my podcast, if you want to listen to that. That was pretty neat to have Russ on there.

Jimmy McKinney:

So, I would get around like-minded individuals. You may be doing it wrong and maybe you're the worst in the group, but at least you can learn from each person and that'll help you grow and get to the next level where you want to be. A lot of people define success differently. Some people define it as your bank account. My definition of success is doing the things you have to do when you don't want to do them.

Bosco Anthony:

Jimmy, I could talk to you for ages because you've got a lot of insights, my friend, but I think this is a great insightful interview. I want to thank you for your time and appreciate you being with us today. We'd love to have you again in the future, but thanks again so much for your time.

Jimmy McKinney:

I appreciate you and the listening audience. Any time any of your listeners want to reach out to me, as long as they're not my next door neighbour in competing markets, I'll be happy to share any information you want to.

Bosco Anthony:

Sounds good. Thanks for being here.

Jimmy McKinney:

Thanks. Have a good day.

Bosco Anthony: 

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