Episode 74: Transitioning From Home Builder To Business Builder With Daniel Troncoso
Professional Builders Secrets brings you an exclusive episode with Daniel Troncoso, owner of Ocean Avenue Custom Builders based in New Jersey, USA. Throughout this episode, Daniel goes over his journey from being a labourer, tradesmen, and home builder to becoming a successful business builder with the help of APB coaching.
Episode 74: Transitioning From Home Builder To Business Builder With Daniel Troncoso
Professional Builders Secrets brings you an exclusive episode with Daniel Troncoso, owner of Ocean Avenue Custom Builders based in New Jersey, USA. Throughout this episode, Daniel goes over his journey from being a labourer, tradesmen, and home builder to becoming a successful business builder with the help of APB coaching.
Show Notes
Transcript
Professional Builders Secrets brings you an exclusive episode with Daniel Troncoso, owner of Ocean Avenue Custom Builders based in New Jersey, USA. Throughout this episode, Daniel goes over his journey from being a labourer, tradesmen, and home builder to becoming a successful business builder with the help of APB coaching.
Inside episode 74 you will discover
- How Daniel got started on his journey and his ambitions for his business
- The challenges Daniel faced before discovering APB
- The importance of having the right mindset when thinking about change and transitioning to a business builder
- The systems Daniel is implementing in his business with the help of APB coaching
- Daniel's advice for builders thinking about building their business
- And much, much more.
Listen to the full episode to uncover valuable insights and advice for builders looking to take their business to the next level with the help of coaching and a growth mindset.
Daniel Troncoso - Owner of Ocean Avenue Custom Builders
Daniel Troncoso is the owner of Ocean Avenue Custom Builders. He’s walked many paths in the building industry from labour work, framing, commercial roofing, opening his own carpentry business to now owning and operating his own building company.
Timeline
1:44 Daniel's journey as a builder
5:36 Daniel's ambitious goals for his business
8:57 The biggest challenges Daniel faced before joining APB
18:41 New systems and technologies Daniel implemented with the help of coaching
19:31 The mindset a builder needs to have when thinking about change
23:42 The biggest factor in Daniel's success and growth
27:19 Advice for other builders wanting to transition into a business builder
Links, Resources & More
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Daniel Troncoso:
I had to make a decision. Am I going to go look at other builders? Or is it time for me to step up and become the builder?
Daniel Troncoso:
We want to do it the right way, get the leads in, and have a sales process, and that's what APB is helping us with. We just had nothing in order for the business to be able to flow by itself without me or Juan.
Daniel Troncoso:
You take on so much pain. It's because you're learning something. When you're learning something and failing, it's painful. There are many days when you want to quit.
Daniel Troncoso:
I’m so excited. I feel like we’ve finally got the partner we needed, the people who talk our language.
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 to financials, operations and marketing.
Bosco Anthony:
We have another exciting episode from the Professional Builders Secrets podcast. Joining us today is Daniel Troncoso, partner from Ocean Avenue Custom Builders. Daniel, welcome and thanks for being on the show.
Daniel Troncoso:
Hey, Bosco, thank you so much for having me.
Daniel Troncoso:
I really appreciate it.
Bosco Anthony:
Well listen, my man, tell me a little bit about you. How did you get started on your journey as a builder?
Daniel Troncoso:
Well, it's been a long journey. I'm 45 years old now, but I was a college athlete. I played baseball and one of my coaches owned a contracting company. In the summer of my junior year, I didn't have the means to get back home and wanted to stay back and work, and he gave me a job. I started doing labouring work and framing work, and I just fell in love with working with my hands. I guess it goes hand in hand with the sports and baseball and it was just natural for me to work with my hands. I just loved to see things come together, so that was the very beginning. It was just a long climb from there after college. I played some professional baseball for a couple of years, and then I got into the commercial roofing world. Again, it was still hands-on.
Daniel Troncoso:
I just love being in different places, new sites, and again, I just love seeing things come together. I'm always curious on how things come together. I did that for a while and became a union journeyman in the city and did that for a few years. I always had a love for wood and carpentry, so I would always do that on the side and did tons of side projects doing that. One day, it was time to take the jump and go on my own, and I was able to open my carpentry business. My business is Troncoso & Toro Contracting, which I still run till today. Again, that was more hands on the tools, building beautiful things. I was totally blessed to start building on the Jersey Shore over here, building high-end homes, so I learnt things at a high level. It's basically where I always wanted to build – these beautiful homes along the ocean.
Daniel Troncoso:
That was like a dream come true in doing these custom ceilings, trim, and I finally made it at that point from remodelling little apartments to actually remodelling million-dollar homes. Shortly after that, after about four or five years, it came to a point where I had to make a decision. A mentor of mine, Doug Kitchell, was a great builder here on the shore. He passed away about four and a half years ago, which was the beginning of Ocean Avenue Custom Builders. At that moment, I had a six-man crew under my contracting business and I had to make a decision. Am I going to go look at other builders? Or is it time for me to step up and become the builder?
Daniel Troncoso:
That was always a goal of mine, even during the carpentry years. I always wanted to be the builder because I just paid attention to every trade and I knew the whole thing from the ground up. It was time, and it was like I was almost forced and pushed into the moment to either do it or not, and that's when I took the jump and started the company, Ocean Avenue Custom Builders. It's been a ride these past four years.
Bosco Anthony:
What does Ocean Avenue Custom Builders specialise in today? It sounds like you've had this journey that's come full circle, but if you have to look at your company today and you met someone who said, "Hey, what do you guys do?" What would your answer be?
Daniel Troncoso:
We specialise in custom home renovations. We do ground up construction as well. I would say 85% of our work is high-end additions, add-ons to these beautiful homes here along the ocean. We've got a couple of ground up constructions under our belt as well, but we seem to have a knack for finding these hundred-year-old homes that people want to bring back to life and remodelling those. Those are fun for us and that's definitely a specialty of ours at this moment. We hope to become design-builders and that's kind of where we're at. Through APB, with the training and the coaching we're having, it's been amazing and we're hoping to grow to that design-build level and hopefully get into the new homes one day and stay consistent with that.
Bosco Anthony:
Now, I'm told that you also have transitioned from home building to business building as well, but I'll ask you a little bit about that shortly. I guess the first question that I have for you is what were some of those ambitions for you when you were building your business? You're looking at transitioning from home building to business building. What are some of those ambitions? Tell me a little bit about why you chose that path.
Daniel Troncoso:
The transition just to become a builder was tough, just to remove the tools and entrusting your carpenters to take over, take the reins and become foremen and trust them with the work when I was so hands-on. That alone was tough. I got through that shift to the point I'm at now in the transition of becoming a business builder; it was kind of the same thing. I was always in what I call the war zone. I'm always in the smoke, in the build. I'm always with the client, with the carpenters, with the plumbers, with the roofers. I'm always on-site. I've always just been around the construction and I've never been able to step out of the smoke to learn how to control this thing from afar.
Daniel Troncoso:
That's been a big shift for me. It's been tough. It's been almost as tough as taking the tool belt off. I would say equally as tough. It's hard for me to sit at a desk and look at numbers and plan, and so that's been a hard shift. I'm still in that shift. We have a great coach in Eric and he's guiding us through that process. I'm very grateful, very grateful for that, and I’ve got an amazing business partner in Juan Vasquez. He's awesome; he has amazing experience and he’s like a brother. We're on it. We're just letting Eric hold our hands and we're following.
Bosco Anthony:
What inspired you to choose that path and make that decision? Was it the fact that you needed to be working on the business? Was there something that happened that made you say, "Okay, this is the time for me to give up my trade to some degree and now focus on a redirect"?
Daniel Troncoso:
Yeah. I study patterns a lot and we basically have become a pattern. We do two to three big builds every year, and we're three years in. We've been very blessed to be on these projects and it's almost like the same cycle kept happening. We're busy, busy; we can't even breathe; we can't even pick up phone calls. APB was trying to help us for a while. Thank God for Michelle. She was amazing following up with us, but I couldn't even conversate with anyone because of just how inundated we were with the work. Then, the pattern that we kept falling into is we're so busy, we're happy, we're growing, and then three months later, we're on edge, nervous because we don't have the next jobs lined up. It's almost like, "Oh no, what do we do now? Now it's panic time. Okay, let's make phone calls. Let's see who's going to call us in time."
Daniel Troncoso:
We just wanted to break that pattern. We wanted to create a true process, a true marketing process and get our website up. We have great word-of-mouth clientele, thank God. Even what we're running now is from word of mouth, but we want to do it the right way. Get the leads in and have a sales process. That's what APB is helping us with and that's where we want to be so we don't make that same pattern mistake we keep making. It's just getting so busy we forget to estimate and set ourselves up for the next months.
Bosco Anthony:
It sounds like there was a need for you to put down the tools and start to look at this from a business perspective. What were some of the challenges? You talked a little bit about the fact that you were busy and then you weren't and you had trouble keeping up with the calls coming in, but what were some of those big challenges that you were facing before you discovered APB?
Daniel Troncoso:
A true sales process, for number one. One of the wins we call them with Eric was the concept agreement, and we were so proud of that. I basically watched the training on that and I put it into practice. It was almost like two days later it fell in my lap. A client called in who needed to design a build and we've been here before, but we've never charged for it. It's amazing the number of times we refer architects and we basically hand over the money that we should have made just on the concepts. We put it into practice and it was amazing. We closed the deal right away. We got paid for our time and our design.
Daniel Troncoso:
We have various architects we know and we hired one and we basically were able to mark up his fee, and along with our time, we got paid for it, so that was amazing. A sales process for sure we didn't have. It was almost like we were very reactionary. We were just reacting to incoming phone calls. "Okay, we got one. Let's go check it out." If the phone wasn’t ringing, we’d think, "Oh, we’ve got to wait till the phone rings," because we weren't marketing.
Bosco Anthony:
Right.
Daniel Troncoso:
We just had nothing in order for the business to be able to flow by itself without me or Juan jumping on calls and making things happen. We kind of knew we had to make a change.
Bosco Anthony:
Tell me a little bit about how you discovered APB. Were you looking for coaching? Or did it just so happen that the knowledge led to you making that decision that, "Hey, I need to work with Eric?"
Daniel Troncoso:
Number one, I thank my Lord and my Saviour, Jesus Christ. That's my foundation and that's where everything started for me in the growth process, to allow me to have that faith not only in Him, but in the future of what I can build in this building company. That strong faith and that diligence and just getting better every day, that's where it began.
Daniel Troncoso:
For me, developing myself on a daily basis, finding the best in the industries online and through YouTube, finding someone who can help us get to the next level, and I was searching. I was searching really hard. I did pay for coaching, which was more on the business self-development side, but it wasn't specific to building and I spent a lot of money on it. I got a lot of good out of it, but they couldn't talk my language. They were talking as if they knew what we went through but they had no idea.
Daniel Troncoso:
That was the search that was killing me for a couple of years. I really couldn't find a specific coach who could help us to do what we do and help us get better at what we do. No builders around here are sharing their information to help us get better. All of a sudden, APB popped up, and I did hesitate because of the accents and I knew it was from overseas. I said, "Are these guys in the States? Do you know what's going on?" Then I did a little bit of homework and I saw it, and the website's beautiful. The information was spot-on and I said, "We’ve got to sign up with these guys."
Daniel Troncoso:
I told my partner about it and I said, "We’ve got to sign up. These guys are just giving away amazing information.” I could imagine how much more they can help us with. We signed up and before we really got involved and jumped into coaching, Michelle was contacting us, just trying to give us help and value and resources. It was coming in emails and I said, "Oh my God, I can't wait to get into that," but we were so inundated we couldn't even open anything.
Daniel Troncoso:
Again, we fell into that lull of business, the pattern I told you about when we have two months really not knowing where the next job's coming in. That lull was a lot of stress, but it was exactly what we needed to slow down and actually dig deeper into APB. We were able to lock into the coaching and it's been great. I feel we're growing and I'm so excited. I feel like we’ve finally got the partner we needed, the people who talk our language.
Bosco Anthony:
Yeah. I've had Eric on the show before – he’s an amazing coach. They're all really amazing coaches, and the one thing that APB does is to immerse themselves in the brands and the businesses they work with. They're sort of an extension to what you're doing. Tell me a little bit about your time in coaching with Eric. Obviously, there's a lot of trust that has to be established as well. You're getting to know each other. Tell me about some of those critical impacts where you were thinking, "Okay, this is actually working now and we can move forward." What were some of those things that you noticed that were starting to change?
Daniel Troncoso:
Yeah. Well, with Eric, from the initial conversation and just getting to know each other, it just felt very genuine and real. His background and the other industries he was part of within the construction industry made me think, "Wow, this guy has done it all and he's a genuine guy who really wants to see us succeed." We felt it right away. Juan and I sat and we became students. We have a long way to go, don't get me wrong, but the business planning workshop was amazing.
Daniel Troncoso:
I've always seen myself as a planner, I just never knew how to do it. He was able to do this projection for us and it was amazing. He laid it all out. He laid out the revenue, he laid out the path and how many people I’ve got to hire, what trucks I’ve got to buy, what laptop I’ve got to buy, what I would have to do differently in order to reach that goal. Sometimes it's hard for us to see next week!
Bosco Anthony:
Right.
Daniel Troncoso:
He was able to help us project that far ahead and lay it out. Like I said, I'm always in the fire, in the war zone where I can never see that far ahead, and that's been amazing. I still have a lot of work to do on that plan, and we're on it, slowly, taking baby steps, but we're progressing. We're using a couple of partners that APB provides us with on website building and also staffing, and we're in line to hire a couple of guys right now.
Bosco Anthony:
You're part of the APB rewards program, I guess, in some ways as well?
Daniel Troncoso:
Yes, yes. I'm part of APB Rewards. I've met Paul and Justin. It's a staffing company and they've been amazing with us. It’s a contractor staffing source, and we are working with them to try to find candidates to be construction supervisors for us. We’ve been working with those guys for just a couple of days, setting us up. The information is phenomenal and the support on the staffing that they're able to provide us is through the roof. It's amazing, and I know soon enough we'll be working with another one, hopefully helping us build the website and so on.
Bosco Anthony:
Yeah, it sounds like there's a lot of really strong value coming out of the Rewards Program. The partners are really vetted properly for the right usage, and obviously there are the rebates as well, so this sounds like there's a lot of benefits to the builders out there who are utilising the rebates program as well.
Daniel Troncoso:
I agree.
Bosco Anthony:
Tell me a little bit about this transition. Obviously, it must be hard going from the war zone to now being in the war room I guess in some ways, if I can use that analogy.
Daniel Troncoso:
Yeah.
Bosco Anthony:
Did you have trouble letting go? How's your dynamic with the crew? They go from, “Hey, here's a guy who we work with,” to now “He's the boss.” How does that work for you?
Daniel Troncoso:
Yeah. That transition of separating from the men happened in the very beginning of Ocean about four years ago, but I'm always there every day checking up on them and so on, but now at this point, they're seeing me even less and I'm just entrusting them with more, so they get it. They say, "Go, Danny. We know you’ve got to go. You have to continue getting the work for us. We're doing this. Don't worry about it." That transition is definitely a shock to your body, to your mind, to your whole system and you’ve just got to keep going and not give up.
Daniel Troncoso:
Trust me, there are mornings where I don't want to look at my phone or a computer. I just want to put a tool belt on and I can't, so I’ve got to push through that and not give up and just continue to push forward and take the baby steps. The transition is not easy. I'm not going to sit here and give anyone advice that it's easy. It takes some perseverance; it takes some self-work and some faith. You’ve got to trust the process and trust that it’s going to get you to the goal.
Bosco Anthony:
Now, tell me a little bit about your new role. Obviously, you now come to the office. You're probably putting in the same amount of time, I would assume, or if not more, give or take?
Daniel Troncoso:
Yeah, it's pretty much similar time right now, but it is a little less, I would say because I'm really making sure I leave the guys in the field with the majority of the responsibilities. I'm pushing them to be leaders and take decisions and make decisions without me. If they need me, they'll call, but we are in a position where I'm still running back and forth through a couple of jobs. My partner Juan is as well.
Daniel Troncoso:
We have two big jobs going now. He's stationed in one. He's got an office set up. The other one is being demoed right now, so we're not quite set up, so I'm kind of in and out of there. Again, we are still owners, project manager/supers at the moment until we get the right hires under our belt, which we're working on right now. Hopefully we’ll hire two supers, so we're able to keep going.
Bosco Anthony:
It sounds like you're growing with people as well. What are some of the systems and technologies that you're putting into place on the back of the coaching right now? What are some of the areas that you've implemented that have made your life a lot easier?
Daniel Troncoso:
We’re using technologies: our CRM, and we use Buildertrend. I guess we didn't really know the power of technology until we actually started using it the right way. It's been great to organise us and to track spending and keep budgets in line. That's been great. It's got a cool time clock on there where we can actually track certain labour that we need to track on an hourly basis. We use QuickBooks, just like most businesses, and it talks to Buildertrend, so that helps us stay organised for tax purposes as well. That technology has been great for us so far.
Bosco Anthony:
I've got to ask a question about builders and the mindset of builders because sometimes builders have a hard time changing or transitioning or taking that risk as well. Why do you think that is? Is it that prior to APB, there was a lack of resources out in the market? Is it the fact that being a builder can be isolating? What's in the mindset of a builder when they're thinking about change, but they don't end up changing or making those changes?
Daniel Troncoso:
I would definitely say that there's not much in the market to assist you in making that jump and change. It was like jumping into a frozen lake. You’ve got to go in and see how it feels. There was really no class or service besides APB. Later on I found APB, but there was really no resource that can prepare you for that jump. I think for me, my mindset has always been, "I want to see how this thing goes together," whether it's how to frame a house or something else. I always wanted to know, "Okay, why do the plates go down like this? Why is this header that size? Why does it have to be here and not there?" I learnt the whole framing process, and after I got that, my mindset wanted to move on to something else. "Okay, why does the plumber run that pipe through there? Why is the drain there? Why is the water supply there?"
Daniel Troncoso:
Then, I would study that, and once I got it, I’d want to move to the next thing and the next thing. My mind has always been curious to learn a process, and once I learn the process, I’ve got to find the next thing to learn. That kind of goes hand in hand with how I got here. I love carpentry, and at home, I'll still mess around, put my tools on and make things and do things. I still get to a point where I think, "Okay, I’ve got this. I’ve learnt this. What else can I learn?" You’ve got to constantly evolve and constantly want to keep learning, whether it's new techniques on how to make things, new techniques on everything, or how to hire folks, which we're learning now.
Daniel Troncoso:
There are different ways on how to hire folks, I'm learning, and a sales process. There's different ways of getting business besides word of mouth, and there's actually a way that the business will come to you, which I'm learning with APB. I'm just a learner, and I think that's how you have to be to continue to climb. You need to continue to learn new ways of doing things or just seeing new things. I can't see the same thing over and over again. It's just not in my DNA and I think this is the perfect business for that.
Bosco Anthony:
You talked about the fact that Eric had drawn out this plan for you and it was what you were looking for. What do you believe your business and you as a person, as a leader, as a founder and a partner, what are you transitioning into now that you have seen the vision?
Daniel Troncoso:
Well, the transition is to be in that war room. You put it perfectly. It's to be in that war room more and more and spend more time in that war room. I'm trying to find that, and like I said, as we hire and trust more in our team members in the field, I'm going to spend more time in that war room because at the end of the day, we're all business owners to gain our freedom, for freedom isn’t free. These transitions are tough, so that's the goal. Once you're in that war room and you can project and you can see all your holes, I can see, "Okay, I need troops there. Oh, I need artillery there. I need equipment here." When I can see that from the Google Earth view, I just think my time's going to be freed up and along with my partners, we're going to be able to do other things in life that we're looking forward to doing.
Daniel Troncoso:
For example, investing. We want to invest in some properties. We're already bidding on some properties just for personal investment for our families. We want to be able to spend more time with our wives and be able to say, "You know what? I'm gone for two weeks and I know the business is going to run on its own." Those are goals, and just in that workshop, Eric has made a plan for that to actually come to life. I've always had the faith. I've always had the mentality of, “If you can do it, I can do it.” It's just that you know how. I’ve still got to figure that out, but Eric is showing me how, so I’ve just got to follow that and get there to have that freedom and watch the machine work and continue to build.
Bosco Anthony:
You talk about curiosity as well, that it has led to you learning new things. If you look at your illustrious career, everything from your origins, your grassroots, carpentry, working for someone and then starting your own business, if you look back, what do you think has been the biggest factor to your overall success and growth?
Daniel Troncoso:
The natural thing that I feel God put in me, that I was born with, is curiosity. You hit it on the head. It's a mind that doesn't stop wanting to figure something out. That's God-given and I think that's what keeps me going on to the next thing and being able to have the courage to go onto this or that. Besides that, obviously we all have to be raised and loved by someone, and I give all that respect to my mother. She ended up being a single mum and the love she gave us and the opportunities she was able to provide for us is really where it started. When you have that encouragement, you can just go. It's priceless.
Daniel Troncoso:
I did that in the sport of baseball and I was able to play four years of college and two years of professional baseball because I knew she had my back. I knew I had that mentality of just the constant climb. I love challenges. I love someone to tell me I can't do it. I'm going to do it. It's just part of me. Yeah, so I would say just thank God for that personality trait that He gave me, and that's I think the most important part of doing what we do.
Bosco Anthony:
Now, Daniel, obviously the years have seen so much change, trends, different things happening around the world. What are you seeing as a trend in the industry right now as a builder? Where do you think the industry is going?
Daniel Troncoso:
The big shift, and it's already happened, is in the subcontracting part of things where it's almost like everyone's trying to be a subcontractor, meaning everyone's trying to sub a sub a sub a sub. That's something that can mess a market up a little bit, and then the quality drops when that happens. We're starting to see a lot of that and we’ve got to be careful with that. With custom building, especially on the ocean, there's only a handful of great carpenters and great plumbers. When you tap into those outside of that group, you find the poor workmanship, so I would say that is getting worse, where you don't have guys who just love their trade and are just all-in for the rest of their lives. It's almost like they want to be a boss and they're just hiring anyone to hire.
Daniel Troncoso:
It's like the labour force is shrinking in quality. The quality is shrinking a little bit. It is concerning. What happens when the old timers move on? Are they setting up the next generation to become great carpenters? Or is it going to die out and we're going to have to babysit subs? That's a concern, but like I said, the good people want to work for good people, so we've been blessed. As long as we continue to do the right thing, the right trades find us and we find them.
Daniel Troncoso:
I think there are too many humans. There are too many of us, and if you're born to do carpentry, I'm going to find you. If you're born to be a plumber, I'm going to find you. The subcontracting game gets a little crazy, but like I said, there are just too many people on this earth who are born to do something and we'll find them to keep it at a high level.
Bosco Anthony:
Now, I could talk to you for hours. You've got a pretty inspiring story, but I'll bring it full circle for you. What have you learnt about yourself during this entire transformation process? What advice do you have for builders out there who are thinking about transitioning from being a builder to moving to the business? What advice do you have for them? What have you learnt about yourself?
Daniel Troncoso:
Well, I learnt how to chew glass and survive. I bring that up because I heard that from an Elon Musk interview. They said, "What does it feel like to run a business?" "It feels like you're chewing on glass." I didn't really get that, but going through the ups and downs as an owner, you take on so much pain, so much emotional pain, so much physical pain because you're learning something.
Daniel Troncoso:
When you're learning something and failing, and I say failing and learning at the same time, it's painful. There are many days when you want to quit. You have people who doubt you. You have long nights. You risk your relationships in growing a business through the hard times. Juan and I have been in this office at 2am, 3am, sometimes 4 in the morning, bidding, when we were growing this thing. There's a lot of sacrifice and it's just having the will to keep going through the pain.
Daniel Troncoso:
I'm not telling anyone to sacrifice their families and things of that nature. We didn't have the help. All we could do is what we knew how to do. I know if I had met APB in the beginning of this business, I wouldn't have had to do what I did and wreck myself with those late nights and sacrificing our relationships because we were just doing what we knew.
Daniel Troncoso:
We didn't know that there were better ways of approaching certain parts of the business. That's what I learnt. I learnt I can take a lot of pain and it's not going to knock me down. I'm going to stick with it. That's with a support system at home with my beautiful wife and my kids, and they have my back. That's more important than anything. I can close the business tomorrow if they tell me to, but they're supportive. They understand I love it. They say, "Go for it, Dad. You’ve got it." That's what I learnt about myself. I could take more pain than I thought.
Bosco Anthony:
Any advice to the builders out there who are in your shoes? This show gets listened to by so many builders from around the world. For the builders out there who are thinking about taking that next step, putting down the tools and being on the business, what advice do you have for them?
Daniel Troncoso:
Sign up with APB and get a coach. Take a loan out. I don't care what you have to do. Get coaching. Trust me, I hesitated in the beginning just to even get any type of coaching because you look at the money, and you think, "Oh, I'm going to spend this." It's all worth it. It pays itself off unbelievably, and you can skip a lot of potholes that I went through by having a coach in our industry. I had two other coaches who had nothing to do with construction, and they shared some good principles, but they didn't know what it took to get paid on the third phase of work and working with clients who want the best but don't want to pay for the best. They don't know the ins and outs of construction.
Daniel Troncoso:
That's the advice I would give. Get the right coaching in our industry and what we do. We are custom builders and APB is for the custom builder. Again, there is no other. I haven't found any, and I've been on a search for a long time and I haven't found a resource dedicated to custom builders the way APB is. That's definitely my advice. Get the coaching as soon as it's possible for you to be able to afford the investment.
Bosco Anthony:
Yeah, I think my first lesson when I first came on as podcast host was learning about the WIPAA [Work in Progress Accounting Adjustment] calculator, so absolutely. I think the financial awareness and awareness about the industry are definitely very strong with APB.
Bosco Anthony:
Daniel, it's been a pleasure talking to you. You have a very inspiring story. I wish you all the best in your transition. I'm sure we'll have you back here again. Perhaps the next time we chat, you'll be telling me stories about chewing glass in the business world, but again, thank you so much for being here today.
Daniel Troncoso:
Bosco, thank you for having me. I’ve got WIPAA calculator homework, actually, so I better get on it.
Bosco Anthony:
Cheers, mate.
Bosco Anthony:
Thank you for listening. Remember to subscribe to Professional Builders Secrets on your favourite podcast platform and leave a review. To learn more about how the systems at APB can help you grow your building company, visit associationofprofessionalbuilders.com. See you next time.