Hammer & Grind : Built For Contractors

Episode•December 29, 2025•49 min

EP251: 5 Moves Contractors Need To Take In 2026

The majority of contractors are falling behind because they continue to operate their businesses in the same manner while everything around them changes, rather than because they are poor at what they do. In this episode, Brad breaks down: Why most contractors undercharge and how to fix your pricing without losing good clients What a real sales process looks like (and why winging it is costing you deals) How to put systems in place that reduce daily chaos and free up your time Simple ways to build visibility and credibility online so customers trust you before you even show up Where AI actually makes sense in your business and how to use it to work smarter, not harder Link to Resources: Work Smarter in 2026 Get my FREE ChatGPT Tools Text #2026 to 812-405-4610 This episode is sponsored by NEXT Insurance — the smart, simple insurance designed for contractors and small business owners. Protect your business with fast, affordable coverage you can set up in minutes. Learn more at NEXTinsurance.com/hammer Grab Brad's tell-all book: The Contractor Profit Blueprint https://thecontractorprofitblueprint.com Help us get the word out to other contractors by leaving us a review or sharing our podcast! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Transcript

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the five actions contractors must take in 2026 if they want to dominate the competition. And make sure you stick around for number five because this is changing the industry as we speak. Hey, it's Brad here. And before we get into the show, I want to tell you about today's sponsor, Next Insurance. You know, this time of year, a lot of us contractors are looking back at the jobs we did, the good ones, the never again ones. and trying to tighten up things for the new year. And one thing that nobody likes thinking about is insurance until the day you wish you had it. A customer slips on a wet floor, a tool breaks right in the middle of a job, a supplier screws up, and you're left eating the cost. You can lose thousands overnight. And most folks only realize they need insurance when something already went sideways. That's why I really like what Next Insurance is doing. They've made business insurance so simple it almost feels wrong. You just answer a few quick questions online and boom, they tell you exactly what coverage your business needs and you're insured in minutes. No sitting on hold, no paperwork, no I'll get back to you nonsense. Next is built for builders, contractors, tradespeople, or anyone running their own shop. And policies start as low as $29 a month, and you can get your certificate of insurance instantly, which means no more waiting to start the job. End the year with some peace of mind and roll into 2026 knowing you're protected. Get covered in minutes at nextinsurance. com forward slash hammer. Now let's get back to the show. Hey, welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Brad. And on today's episode, we're going to talk about the five actions contractors must take in 2026 if they want to dominate the competition. And make sure you stick around for number five, because this is changing the industry as we speak. And at the very end, I'm going to show you how you can get some free tools that I've created to help you with these things. So let's get right into it. Number one. We need to raise prices with intention. We cannot be passive with the price game. We have to raise prices. We have to understand that successful businesses put profit before volume. You're not going to be the Walmarts of the world and beat out your competition. You have to have a... massive, massive infrastructure to be able to be a low cost, low cost provider in any industry. And that's why Walmart's able to do that is because they have massive, massive infrastructure. You can't do that as a contractor. You need to stop guessing on your prices, guys. I can't stress enough how important it is for you to know your prices. This is also a reason why we can argue about niching down because it makes it very easy to know your price if you only do one service. If you're doing multiple services, you have to have multiple prices and price lists and material costs and all of that. But we have to stop guessing on pricing. We have to stop matching competitors. You are not competing with your competitors. I know that may sound counterintuitive, but it's true. You do not compete with your competition. When I had my construction business, I didn't give a crap what everyone else was doing. I didn't care because I was playing my game and I was setting the standard as much as I could and everyone else was trying to catch up to me. That's the game you need to play. You can't play the, I got to do a match what my competition does. Stop trying and worrying about what your competition is doing. Stop undercharging so that you can feel busy. Busy is a buzzword that I hear. Whenever I talk to a contractor and I say, how's work going? How's business going? And they say, man, we're super busy. That is not a word that invokes a positive response. or a positive outcome for your business. If you're busy, it usually means that you're underpriced. That is the symptom for a lot of other problems in your business. So being busy is not the catalyst for having a successful business. It's not. It's usually indicator of low prices. So stop trying to be busy. Start being profitable first. So here's some actions we can take. We need to review our pricing. So beginning of the year, sit down, review your pricing. Most of us know the material costs go up at the beginning of the year. Some of you are already receiving letters and emails from suppliers saying that costs are going to go up. That happens almost every year, right? So we have to look at our prices and go back and evaluate what our current pricing structure is. And you should be reviewing your pricing quarterly, especially your material costs. You know, you shouldn't be looking at material costs on every job you do. It's too time consuming. But you should be reviewing material costs at least on a quarterly basis to make sure that, you know, the price of two by fours didn't go from $350 to $450 and you didn't catch that, right? If it goes from $350 to $355, it's not a big deal. But when we have those major jumps, we need to be able to catch those. So review your pricing quarterly. Make sure, guys, make sure you're installing job costing. You absolutely must, must be job costing every one of your jobs. This is not optional. I don't care how busy you are. This is absolutely crucial to your business because when you install job costing, there's so many benefits that come from that and you'll learn that you're actually making less money than you think you are. Nine times out of 10, when someone starts job costing, their initial response to me is I wasn't making as much money as I thought. Because you can't just sell a job, complete it, look at money in the account and be like, oh, I made some money. No, you need to know the numbers of your business. And job costing will reveal that for you. So make sure we're job costing. We need to price for profit plus capacity. not desperation. Okay. We're not pricing because I got to quote, keep my guys busy. Now I'm not saying that that's a bad thing, but if you actually do what you're supposed to be doing in business, you won't have very much downtime. Downtime, especially in the winter is an indicator that you have not. done a good job in the summer and fall of marketing your business. Now, some people are seasonal and I understand that you actually have an off period. I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about those of you that can operate year round, but you just slow down in the winter time. That's because you were not prepared. You didn't do what you were supposed to, to make sure you stay busy all year round. And then you get desperate. And then you're taking jobs at a much lower profit margin just to keep your guys busy. You need to stop doing that. Also need to have minimum thresholds for jobs. You can't do any job that comes your way. Recently, I did a video on TikTok and we were talking about, you know, charging prices. I don't remember what the video was about, but somebody commented and they said, well, you're going to charge me, you know, if I listen to you, you're going to charge me $150 to come change a light bulb. And I responded to the comment. I said, no, actually, I charged $250 to come change the light bulb because that was the minimum charge that I could do any job, even if it was a five minute job, like changing a light bulb. I could not charge less than $250 to roll a truck out there to do that. It was not financially feasible for me to do that. And you guys have to understand. It's not your job to be a charity and help everyone who can't quite afford to pay things like that. I once charged a lady $350 to change a light bulb. And that's because it was in a 20 foot ceilings in her kitchen. And we had to get scaffolding in there to do the light bulb and all this stuff. But she was happily paying that because the money was less important than having light in her kitchen. Right. So it's not about. trying to match money to the customer's budget. It's about you need to know your minimums and you have to stick to it. You have to, okay? Don't get trapped with the sweet old lady that can't afford and she's on social security. If you want to do that, go do that for free, but don't discount your price, okay? There's a difference between doing things for free because you want to give back and discounting your price because you think it's going to help. Discounting your price is never a good option for charity work. Never. All right. Now, listen, here's the truth. If you don't raise your prices, inflation will eat your profits and you will stay stressed out in 2026. Okay. You have to raise your prices if you're not even meeting or matching the rates of inflation. All right. Number two, let's get into it. You need to build a real sales process. You cannot do this ad hoc, you know, a sales process where You're just answering the phone when you're on the job site and you got a saw and you stop or you're hammering and people are, you know, making noise in the background and you're answering the phone trying to sell a job. That's not a sales process. That's just a reaction. Once you install an actual sales process from start to finish, one, it actually makes your life easier because you know exactly what to expect and what to do. And two, it raises your value to the customer. People like it when there is a process to follow. Whether you like it or not, most of us are rule followers. We want to have a system that we follow. We do it every day when we're driving down the road. There are rules that we follow. We like to stop at a stoplight because we know that if we don't, we might get into an accident. Those rules enable us to drive down the highways and the roads without really thinking about what's going on because the rules are there for everyone. You need to set rules and processes for your customers on how to do business with you. If you're just reacting and doing whatever the customer wants, you don't have a real sales process. So we're not going to wing estimates anymore, okay? We're not going to ramble at the kitchen table and try to, quote, sell them on our value, right? You've heard the term, you know, you got to sell them on yourself. You're selling you, the person. That's not quite true. You are selling yourself. If you know how to communicate, the person will end up liking you, right? But that's not the same as saying, here are my accolades and here's why I'm the best. That's not the same thing at all. They're not even remotely close. And so sometimes contractors hear, you know, you got to sell yourself and they think that means you have to brag about how awesome you are. That can't be further from the truth. You will have a negative consequence if you do that, okay? So you have to, you can't be rambling when you're at the kitchen table or on the phone. No more, I'll email you a number, okay? You can't do this. I'll get back to you eventually. I'll send over a number when I get a chance. What's the process? What is your process? Is it you're going to have an estimate within three days? Is it, you know, we're going to, I'm going to call you, we're going to have a discovery call. What is the process? And you have to make that repeatable for every single customer that contacts you. So here's some actions you can take. You need to script out your discovery calls. I have a book you can, or a PDF you can download. It's a no BS guide to eliminating tire kickers. You're welcome to get a copy of that. It has some scripts in there to help you, some questions. That's going to help you kind of orientate the sales process for you. You need to standardize the estimate process. What does that look like, right? Is it... You can't, you know, one customer you meet in person, the next customer you email over, another customer you're going to do it in person on the job site. Like what is the process? You need to standardize that process, the estimating process. You need to implement paid estimates or qualification filters. You need to have a solid qualification process to make sure you're not wasting time on people that are never going to hire you in the first place. That is the biggest time suck you can have as an owner, especially if you're doing the sales. You can't afford to go do 5,6,10,15 estimates a week and only land 30% of those. It's too much of a waste of time. Most of my clients that work with me, they end up spending anywhere from 10 or saving anywhere from 10 to 15 hours per week by implementing this sales process. When you have a solid sales process, it will make your life easier. I promise you, it will make your life 10 times easier. And then lastly, you need to define a clear closing process. What does that look like? Too many times we say, I'll email you over the estimate. We email the estimate to them and then crickets. We never hear back. Anytime you're talking to a client, you should have a clear and precise contact point or a next, you know, communicating the next. point of contact hey i'm going to email this over to you tonight when i get home and then let's schedule a call for friday morning to go over the estimate at 8 a. m right so you never leave it open to the customer you always have a next point of contact scheduled that will eliminate a lot of these ghosting things now Just because you've scheduled an appointment doesn't mean they're going to show up for it. But they're definitely going to be more likely if you have a scheduled appointment versus I'm just going to reach out or you reach out to me whenever you want to. And then they're left hanging in the wind. You don't know what's going on. You know, did they hire someone else? You just don't know because you didn't set the next, you know, the next point, the next point of contact. You have to make sure you're doing that. The reason why this matters in 2026, homeowners have never been as educated as they are today. In the past, contractors could hide some of the process. They could hide some of the things that maybe they didn't want customers to know. But today, customers are very educated. So there's no more like slimy sales tactics or you're going to, you know, low bid it and then change order then to def later on to make up your money. Your customers already know this. They know the tactics. They are very skeptical. So you cannot just, you know, wing it. They'll see right through that. They'll know that you're not that organized, okay? And here's the thing. Price shoppers are always louder. The price shoppers are always gonna be the one complaining the most. The ones that are the good customers, they're the easiest to work with. So why not go after them and actually have a process that works for them, okay? And then lastly, Trust and clarity wins deals. This is what I was talking about. They're very educated now and skeptical. When you establish trust and you have lots of details, that's what wins deals. This is what we call providing value. Providing value is not saying we're the best. Providing value is saying, I'm going to call you at eight o 'clock and then I call you at eight o 'clock. Providing value is I'm going to email you the estimate tomorrow morning and then email in the estimate tomorrow morning, not two days later. When you say something, your word has all the power. And so when you haphazardly throw stuff out there, like, oh, I should have this estimate done for you the next couple of days. You're trying to generalize it and give you as much padding as you want. What the customer hears is, I'm going to have your estimate in two days. That's the difference. And so for you, I should have it in two days really means. I'll probably have it done in like, you know, between two, three, maybe four days, possibly next week. And that right there will destroy all the trust that you have built with the customer. Okay. If you say you're going to do something, make sure you actually do it. And when you have a sales process, it makes this 10 times easier so that you're not trying to remember this and that and this and that, right? You just know what's going to happen. So if you don't control the sales process, your customer will control it for you. And that's when you get in the most trouble. All right, number three, we need to systematize our operations. And we do that so we can eliminate the chaos, right? I've talked about, you know, you're the arson and the firefighter in your business. Well, the way that you're the arson is that you don't have a clear process for people to follow. And so it's just you telling them every day what to do. Hey, boss, what do you want us to do now? Hey, boss, what should we do? We got this problem. Hey, boss, you know, where do you want us to go? This job's over with. And then you're reacting to that. That's not a process. That's not even a business. Okay. That's just chaos. This is you living on the crazy cycle, right? This is you running a circus. That's what's happening. When you create systems, the systems will give you freedom. And it does take some effort. I'm not going to lie. You've got to put some effort into this. But once you do this, it's going to create freedom for you and your business. So, you know, this includes disorganized trucks, poor schedules, constant material runs. I've lost tens of thousands, if not more, on constant material runs. Scope Creek, right? Those are all indicators that you don't have a solid process. for your business and what you're doing. These are all symptoms of no systems. When you have these things happening, it means you have no systems in place in your business. So here's some actions you can take right now. You need to start with just a simple job checkoff list, a job kickoff checklist. I mean, what does that look like? You know, one of the things that we did early on when I was doing, we started out doing handyman and then eventually switched to remodeling is that whenever you're doing certain tasks, There were always tools or materials that you needed to complete that task. And because we didn't stock every tool on our vehicles, we would have them in the warehouse. And so a lot of times, and I know you guys can relate to this, you're going to do a job, you show up at the job, you get an hour into the job and you realize, crap, we needed to grab the hammer drill that's sitting on the shelf. And so somebody's got to run back to the shop, you know,45 minutes away. to get the hammer drill, and then come back and do that job. Or maybe it's something as simple as caulking. You had a case of, you know, exterior clear caulking that you needed for a door install, and you didn't put it in the van or the truck. And so now what do you do? You go to the store and buy another case or buy extra, and that's another run, it's another waste of time, right? So if you create a checklist that simply says, these are all the things that we need to do this type of job. And you have it. So whenever you're doing, let's say you're doing a door installation, you have a checklist of everything you need for doing the door installation, including tools and materials. That way, before you leave the shop or the house or wherever it is, right, you get out your checklist and you literally go down it. You know, saw, nailers, screws, caulking, drills, whatever it is, you have that list and you just check it off. And that ensures that you don't have these extra runs to go get those forgotten tools. That is a system. It's a very simple system, but it's still a system. When you create these systems, it's going to make your life easier. So starting with a simple job kickoff checklist, that may eliminate two or three problems that you constantly have over and over with jobs. And because of that, it's going to save you a little bit of money and it's going to save you a little bit of sanity because now you don't have to worry about people forgetting stuff. And then you got to stop what you're doing and run it out to them, right? That's freedom. That one system creates freedom for you. What else can you take? Weekly schedule planning. Don't wait till Monday morning to figure out what the schedule for the week is going to look like, right? Spend some time each week planning the schedule for next week. And we all know there's things that happen. There's weather, material delays, employee subs, sick, whatever. There's always things that happen. And so the schedule is always a constant moving target. But if you wait until the last minute, you're going to end up losing money because you're going to have people sitting around waiting two, three, four hours for stuff to get there while you figure it out. That's not freedom. Okay. So when you create a weekly schedule planning where you're planning the week ahead, that will save you time. Okay. truck and tool organization standards. Now we have a checklist, a vehicle supply checklist, inventory checklist. And every Monday morning, we would come in and the guys would go through their vehicles and restock all the consumables that we would normally use, screws, anchors, caulking, tape, things like that, that we would use on a regular basis. They would restock them. And then if we were missing things from the warehouse, Then they would check that and we would know that, hey, we need to go buy some more silicone because we're out of it in the shop, right? And then we can go make those purchases. It's just a one-page checklist. That's it. And it has all the things that we use. And then once a month, at the beginning of the month, we would do a separate little PM where we would check the oils, tire pressure, stuff like that. It's a checklist. I hand it to the guys. They go and they check it. It's a no-brainer, right? They can't screw it up. They put, they sign it, they date it. So we know who did what on what truck, and then we can go back and hold them accountable if they didn't do it, right? If they do the checklist and they're supposed to fill their truck with screws, they get to the job the next day and they're out of screws, but they filled it. I'm like, what's going on here? You just filled your truck yesterday and now you're out of screws. Well, you know, I didn't really, I didn't really fill it. I just checked it off. I thought we had some in there. That's an accountability point, right? I had a system. They didn't follow it. Now I can hold them accountable. It's a very simple process. It's still a system. A lot of you think systems is like this entire system that comes in a box and you can just plug it into your business and then everything works perfectly. That's called a franchise. And if you didn't buy a franchise, then you have to create the franchise. There is no plug and play thing that's going to save you and do everything in your business. It does not exist. Now, there are things you can... buy and add and do stuff, yes. Like our sales system will help you set up that sales process, but it's not going to help you with inventory. It's not going to help you with scheduling, right? It's just a sales process. So there is no create this ultimate system that fixes everything. A system in your business and SOPs and procedures is hundreds and thousands of little systems that are added together to create the one big business running system. It's not one system. It's made up of hundreds and thousands of little systems. Also, clear scope and change orders. Guys, I cannot stress how much a clear scope and detailed planning for your employees and subs will save you so much time and money. Hey, just a quick time out

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from the show. If you're a frustrated contractor who's dealing with low profit margins, stuck working on the tools every day, or doing free estimates for people who are never going to hire you in the first place, I invite you to my private contractor community, The Profit Club, where contractors just like

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you are adding

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two to three times more profit each year without producing any more jobs and finally getting completely off the tools to never do another free estimate again.

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So if you're ready to

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increase your profits, stop doing free estimates and get off the tools, then all you have to do is click the link in the show notes to learn more about The Profit Club and see how I can easily two to three times the cash in your pocket. give you a proven sales process that will convert more jobs with ease and get you off the tools once and for all. And the best part is you can do all of this without having to produce more jobs than you currently are. Click the link to learn more. Now let's get back to the show.

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I had on the last few podcasts ago, I was interviewing a gentleman talking about leadership and stuff and planning. If you would just spend an hour of planning the job, I mean, really thinking through the job and planning it. in creating detailed scope of work and action plan for your team, you will solve a lot of your problems. Like most of those things that come up won't come up. But what happens is you're, quote, too busy to actually sit down for an hour or two and create a detailed scope of work and plan, you know, work orders, things like that. You just won't do it. Oh, I'll just tell them Monday when we get there. I'll tell them what to do. That is not a system, okay? That is not a system. that requires you to be present. If you can't hand your team or subs a folder or a digital, you know, inventory or digital software that they can just look at it and know exactly what to do, then you have not put enough effort into your planning. If I can't hand you a folder and then you can read that folder and know what to do without contacting me, the owner, then I have not done a good job of planning. It doesn't matter if it's a foreman, a project manager, an apprentice. It does not matter what the position they're at. If I can't give them information that's clear and precise of what to do, then I have failed in the planning process. You have to have a system to help you with the planning process. It will make your life so, so, so much easier. Okay? Let me tell you, let me drop a truth bomb on you. Hustling. will not save a disorganized business. Some of you have gotten to where you're at in your business,300,500, a million in revenue, simply by hustling, by working 70,80,100 hours a week, okay? That is not a sustainable and scalable business. It's not. I don't care how awesome you think you are. It's not scalable. And if you ever wanted to exit your business, it's not sellable. People don't want to buy a job, right? They want to buy a system and a business that works without you being there. So hustling is not the answer. And I see it all over social media. People posting about how they work so hard and they're, you know, working till nine o 'clock at night and they work seven days a week because they want to succeed. And most of that is because they don't have systems in their business and they're the ones that have to do everything. So it's a requirement for them to work that many hours, not because they want to, but they'll sell it to you like they're hustling because the hustle culture is the cancer of new business. Let's hustle, hustle, hustle, be a hustler. That's a cancer. It's a lie. It's bullshit. Businesses that are systematized and repeatable processes that you can hire people, plug them into the system, and it runs without you. That is what a real business is. You doing everything is not a real business. It's a job. You basically created a job for yourself. All right. So hustling is not going to save your disorganization. It will to a certain point, but then beyond that point, it's not scalable. All right. Number four, I know this is going to, I know some of you are not going to like this one. Number four, you have to build visibility and authority for your business. And what that means is like when you're top of mind, then you are the top choice. Okay, so referrals alone are not enough. I'm just going to fight you until my last breath. You cannot grow a business on referrals, period, full stop. I don't care what you think you've done and what you've done in the past. Referral-only business is not scalable, okay? So it's not enough. Homeowners will always reach out or they will, I'm sorry, they will always research before they contact you. They're always going to research you. Most homeowners will go on Facebook and see if you have a personal profile as an owner of a business. And if there's a picture of you in your profile pic as you flicking off the camera or drinking a bong or doing some stupid crap, that instantly is going to cause them to not even want to call you. See, there's no way to track how many people that were interested in you that never actually reached out to you because there was something out there in the world that... made them not want to call you in the first place. And there's no way to track that. There could be hundreds, it could be thousands of people, it could be tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, it could be millions of dollars worth of lost opportunity costs, simply because you have some stupid profile pic because you're like, well, that's my personal life, Brad. You know, I separate business and personal from everything. In my business life, I'm a professional. In my personal lives, I'm a jackass. They're going to find out, guys. They're going to find out about you. They will do the research. In previous podcasts, I said I was hiring an operations assistant. That actually fell through. I'm now rehiring. You know the first thing I do when I look at their resume application? I go to Facebook and I try to find them on Facebook and I go through their profile. If there's anything on there that I think is not going to be a culture fit for my business, they don't even get an interview. And that's a lot of people are ruled out because of that. People are researching you. This is why you need to have a website. You need to have an about you section on your website that has pictures of you and your family and what you're into. I can't tell you how many times people would, you know, I've talked to a potential client and they go, oh, I saw that you go to this church or I saw you did some mission trips or I saw that you do competitive shooting because they read it on my website. That's the only place they could have got it or potentially on my Facebook page. People are researching you. Okay. They do research before they call. Almost always. Trust is built before the first communication or the first conversation. This is why, you know, sell them, you know, sell them you. You got to sell yourself. Doesn't work if your profile pic is you being a jackass. You can't sell them on the back end because they're not going to call you. You don't even get to lead. This matters. Your visibility and your authority in your local market matters, whether you like it or not. Well, I don't like to be on social media, Brad. I don't want people to know who I am. I suck on camera. Well, get over it. Find a way to learn, to get better at it. You can't use that as an excuse. It's not an excuse. When I started coaching four plus years ago, I was not that great on camera. I mean, I didn't have a problem being on camera, but I wasn't very good at it. You know what I did? I hired a coach. I hired two coaches actually who were actors, like Hollywood actors and screenwriters. They had a program that I joined that actually allowed me to be better on camera. Talking points, things like that. How to, you know, show energy. I paid money. I paid lots of money, thousands of dollars to learn how to be good on camera. So if you're like, I don't know what to say. I don't know why I want to be on camera. Then go get education. Go learn. figure out how to be good at it. You can't use it as an excuse anymore. You have to be online. The younger generations that grew up with cell phones, you know, sucking on cell phones from when they were two years old, that's all they do is go online and research. They don't even ask for referrals. And if you want to get those people, you're going to have to be online. You have to have an image online. So what are some actions you can take for this? Weekly short form content. If you follow me on TikTok, I'm dropping anywhere from four to eight videos a week, just on TikTok. Some of them are me recording videos about a topic. Some of them are just chopped up videos from our podcast. Doesn't matter. I'm dropping content over and over and over. I'm building authority. I'm showing that I'm the expert in this area. You should be doing the same thing. One of my clients just dropped a video this morning and it was phenomenal. It was amazing. They're a remodeler slash home builder, but they do basically remodeling now and ADUs. And the video that was done was absolutely fantastic. And I told him that, I'm like, this should be the poster child of what to do. I'm sure it took a lot of time and effort to create that video, but that video is going to make people want to contact them because it was so well done. But even if it's not well done, even if you're just grabbing your phone while you're sitting in the truck and saying, hey, I just got to the job site. I'm going to go check on the guys, see what's going on. We're doing a bathroom remodel here. One thing that's cool about this job is that we're doing this, this, this, and this. If you want to follow along for updates, make sure you follow us so you can see the progress. That's it. You can do that. It's very simple. You can't say, I don't want to. And if you truly, truly, truly can't, then find someone in your business that can. I don't care if it's the apprentice, you know, the 20-year-old apprentice or your wife or your daughter or whoever who knows how to do it, then put them in charge of doing that. But you can't simply say, I don't want to do that. Okay? So you have to build visibility and authority. So weekly short-form content, review automation, like create some automations on how to collect reviews to make sure you're getting those Google reviews because they are important. That's authority building. Monthly customer follow-ups. If you're not calling your customers after the job's done and asking how everything went or seeing if there's any problems and then doing like an 11-month follow-up before the warranty period is over, if you do a one-year warranty, you should be calling your customers at 11 months and checking in with them to see how things are going. Those are things that you can automate to make your life easier, but it provides a ton of value. And then before and after documentation. Like having really good records, if you're using software like CompanyCam or JobTread or whatever, where you can take pictures and do documentation, that's really important so that you can eliminate problems on jobs. But it also builds authority because they're going to go tell their friends, like, yeah, man, it was great. They took pictures every day at the end of the job and sent them to us so we knew what was going on. And they had all this stuff and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That helps build authority when they do refer you. Right. And then you can take that information and make videos out of it and put it online and put it on your website. This is what sets us apart from everyone else. We take pictures every day and we send them to you so you know exactly what's going on in your job. Meanwhile, the other contractor is just like, I don't ever take pictures. You know, I don't know. Hey, did you guys install that, you know, low voltage line for the speaker in the ceiling? I don't know. They're supposed to, you know, I don't know. I didn't take any pictures. Well, I mean, a simple picture would have told you whether or not they did it or not. Taking pictures of the framing before you put drywall on, super important. Documenting that process. That provides value. So those are all things that you can market as well. You can use as marketing. So why does this matter in 2026? Social proof has replaced word of mouth. Now, I'm not saying word of mouth is not great. Those referrals are great. It's just not the standard anymore. Social proof is the standard. And contractors who hide get underpaid. So when you have no visibility or authority online, you are going to be treated as the low price contractor, irregardless if you're the best contractor in your town. It's not optional. It's a requirement. And it's the minimum requirement at that. So make sure that you are. documenting and being the authority in your business because authority closes faster and higher. When you're the expert, when you're the best at what you do, people are going to trust you and they're going to hire you and they're going to pay you more before they hire the contractor with no authority, no reviews, no website, no vehicle wrap. It's just a word of mouth thing because you just think that all that matters is building a good product. even though your customer experience sucks. Those are the ones that are currently struggling to get business. You have to have visibility and authority. All right, stop being invisible because you're too scared. And by the way, I get on my clients all the time in the profit club. I'm like, you need to make videos. You need to make videos. You need to make videos. You need to make blog posts. You need to have Q &As. You need to put these things out there. It's not optional. It's a requirement. You need to be doing these things. So let's talk about number five, which is the most important, I think, in 2026 and why it's completely changing everything that's happening. And that is implementing AI. And we do that to streamline our business, to buy back our time, to even help run our business. When you're a small business by yourself or with a few employees, it's very difficult to do everything. You got 50 things you need to do every single day, and you can only accomplish 30 of them. you know, per day. And so there's always 20 things that fall off. Well, with AI, you can now automate some of these things. And that includes editing videos. It includes coming up with video ideas, right? There's lots of things that you can use AI to help. You can even use AI to answer the phone, to send messages. I don't believe it's 100% there yet, although it's very close. Like having someone answer the phone as an AI agent, there are people out there selling it and telling you it works. I'm still not 100% convinced it's there. But for like text messaging, Facebook comment replies, auto review replies, if someone leaves you a review on Google, you can have AI automatically reply to that review. It'd just be like, thank you so much for the review. Really appreciate it. That can be automated. And although that may only, you may only have one review, you know, two a month, it's still something that you don't have to worry about. You put your AI agent in there and then you can forget about it and it's working in the background. Sending out the review request, that can be automated. It's not necessarily AI, but it can be automated with systems. There's lots of things that you can use AI for. There's software out there now that will actually create an estimate for you. And it's pretty accurate. I have one client who's currently using an AI estimator, and he's telling me that it's working out pretty good. It does miss a few things here and there, but 90% of the time it's dead on. So that's something you can do. You can start leveraging AI to build estimates for you, right? Now, you have to understand any tool that you use is only as good as the tool is built to be used. So if there's a thing that requires you to put in input, like you have to put data into it, a lot of AI agents, ChatGPT, Gemini, or whatever you're using, the result is only as good as the prompt. In other words, the information that you put in there is what makes it better. So you can use AI, but if you don't do a good job of putting the correct information in there, you're not going to get great results. And then you're going to be like, this Brad guy told me I needed to use AI and it sucks because it doesn't work. Not that AI sucks. It's that you're not doing a good job of prompting it. Right? So there's, and by the way, you can hire people that are engineer prompts. That's literally what they do. They will help you set up AI systems in your business. Like they will help you prompt it. That can be done. So AI for estimates, AI for marketing, like I was telling you with editing, AI for customer communication. If someone's texting you after hours or they're filling out a form on your website or they're emailing you or they're messaging you on Facebook. You can set up AI agents to automatically reply and even try to set up an appointment or whatever. And then you can even use AI to help create the SOPs and training processes for your business. You don't have to go in and create an entire employee handbook now. Like you can go into a GPT and type in what you want, and then it will spit out an employee handbook for you. So instead of paying someone $1,200, $1,500 to write you a handbook from scratch, you can use AI to spit one out and then just have them review that handbook. And maybe they only charge you $200 to review it. That's a lot easier and cheaper than having it built from scratch, right? You can use AI to augment certain things in your business. So you can use it for SOPs and training. So here's some actions you can take. Use chat GPTs. Now a GPT is not like just the... The prompt, a GPT is a built prompt that is specifically doing one thing. And so a GPT is like a automation per se that's been built by someone else. Okay. So use GPTs for like sales scripts, estimate breakdowns, objection handling, content ideas, job descriptions. You know, you can go in there and say like, hey, I need to have a... a job description for hiring an employee. I want to hire a carpenter. Can you help me create a job description? And here's what's, you know, it's included and not included. And here's the type of people we're looking for. Boom, it spits out the job description for you in five seconds. And it's good. It's really, really good. So you can use AI to really, really, really get ahead of the competition. The guys that are putting their head in the sand and be like, I'm not good with technology. I don't even know how to turn on a computer. That's by choice. That's 100% by choice. You have a choice to learn a new skill or to ignore it. And AI is not going away. It's coming. It's here. And the next iteration is going to be full autonomous robots, right? And that's like, it's coming, guys. So get on the bandwagon, get on the wagon now or whatever you want to call it. Get on the train now before it gets away from you. Because if someone is using AI, like... for the last two years while it's building and they're here and then you're starting an AI now, you're not really going to catch up to them. It's just they're going to keep getting better and better and you're always going to be playing catch up. Anytime there's a new technology or a new advantage in the marketplace, you need to be on the tip of the spear and learning that technology and implementing it in your business. The reason why this matters in 2026 is what I was just saying is like the gap between early adopters and laggards is widening. By the day, you know, back in the back in the early days when I 2009, when I started, nobody had websites. I built a website. It sucked really bad, but I had a website when no one else did. And so that gave me authority and credibility when people were actually going online looking for a website. I was the only one that popped up. Now, there were still people that weren't doing that, but the early adopters in technology from a consumer standpoint were finding me because I was the first one to have a website. I was the first one to use Google business listings. I was the first one to start collecting reviews. I was the first one to have vehicles wrapped. Like I was always an early adopter in all these new technologies, and it benefited me really, really well. Nobody could catch up to me on reviews. It was impossible for them to catch up. I had like 125 reviews. My next competitor had like seven. So if I'm collecting five,10,15 a month, they can't catch up to me. They never will. So that gap just keeps getting wider and wider. That's the same with AI. Time is the most valuable asset that we have. It's also the single biggest constraint you have in your business. You don't have enough time. You can use AI to leverage that to save you time. So make sure you're using it for that. And here's the thing. Smart contractors will outpace larger corporations. The companies that are used to doing it the old way and then the young disruptor comes in, by the way, that's what a disruptor does. It's somebody that comes out of nowhere and disrupts the entire industry. The people that are using AI now are disruptors. They're disrupting the contracting industry. So the guys that have been doing it this way for 30 years, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. They're getting beat by the guys that say, If it ain't broke, it's outdated. That's a different mindset. You should always be looking for innovation in your business. I don't care if you're 20 years old or 80 years old, you should still be looking for innovation in your business. And AI is where all the attention is right now. Now, AI is not going to replace contractors anytime soon, but contractors using AI will replace contractors not using it. I'm going to say that again. AI is not going to replace contractors. But contractors using AI will replace the ones that aren't because you simply will not be able to keep up. That's just the fact. Okay. That's the five things. These are the five. Must do actions you need to take in 2026. I'm going to review them again real quick. Number one, raise prices and put job costing in place. Number two, build a real sales process, document it and have a process that you follow. Three, systematize operations and eliminate the chaos. Number four, build authority and visibility. Stop being invisible. And number five, implement AI to buy back time and leverage that and to pass the competition. Okay. Those are the five things you must do in 2026. And the sooner you do them, the further ahead you're going to be than everybody else. Okay. So here's what I have for you. This is the giveaway part. I have built some GPTs. I have built some chat GPTs to help with some of these things. And you can have access to them. Some of these are only, I've only given to my Profit Club clients. They have access to them, not for the general public. Some of these I've built for everyone. You may not have heard it or knew about it, but you can have access to the GPTs that I built. And all you have to do is text. You can text me at 812-405-4610.812-405-4610 and text the word hashtag 2026. Okay. Hashtag 2026. That's going to prompt you to send the links to you so you can have access for these GPTs. If that's too complicated, you can just send me a message. Say, hey, Brad, can I get those GPTs that you talked about on the podcast? And I'll be able to help you out. But the easiest way is just text hashtag. Make sure you put the hashtag in there. Hashtag 2026. And then 812-405-4610. I'll put it in the show notes so you have it. 812-405-4610. Hashtag 2026. And I'll send over those GPTs that you can start implementing in your business to help you. get ahead of everyone else. So guys, there's a lot going on. 2026 is going to be a major, major year for businesses with AI and other things that are happening. And, uh, you know, it could be exciting. If you look at it that way, it can be terrifying if you look at it that way, but either way you need to make, make 2026 the year you take action. Stop just getting by, stop waking up on January one. And Last year was the same as the previous year when you said this year is going to be different, but it wasn't. It was the same. Make this year the year where you actually start taking action and getting the results that you're looking for. And if you want help doing that, that's what I help contractors do. Okay, I have multiple programs, the Profit Club, the Profit Accelerator. I do on-site consultations. And if you just want some one-on-one help as well, I can do that. So there's lots of different price points and different options to help you in your business, no matter if you're small or large. And I'm happy to share those with you and figure out what works best for you. But don't let 2026 be another year that got away from you. Be intentional and take action. Thanks for hanging out with me today. You know where to find me on the socials. Just search for the Hammergrind Podcast. And remember, until next time, profit is not a dirty word.

EP251: 5 Moves Contractors Need To Take In 2026

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