Contractors Summit 2023

CONTRACTORS SUMMIT – FABULOUS DAY 2

Cycle CPA

Friday we kicked it off with Joe and Carla Policastro from Cycle CPA, and they did a session on “The 5 stages of business in accounting.” Kind of feeding off of the theme from Frank’s talk earlier.

Steve and Matt Martin

Then Steve and Matt Martin, the two owners of Tussey Landscaping, who co-founded SynkedUP with me, took the stage to speak on culture and leadership.

It’s no secret that they’ve managed to build an incredible team over the years, not to mention an awesome shop operation. Which everyone had just gotten to see the night before.

Now we were ready to hear from them on the principles they lead with, which leads to this mature team and operation.

Derek Matthews

Derek Matthews, Tussey’s lead designer and sales person joined them on stage and talked about his sales process. He had sold $5.5m just last year. Definitely a master of his craft.

Tussey Formen

Finally, all the Tussey foremen joined them up on stage, and we then opened it up for Q&A. (Another chance to throw the football mic around 😅)

Before they ended their talk, I asked the foreman to answer “What does it take to want to stay at your job for 10+ years?” Each one took their turn to answer that question.

Watch out for the video of their talk getting dropped on our YouTube.

Also, I just wrote a pretty in-depth article last month on what it takes to keep employees for 10+ years, which covered a lot of the same things the Tussey foreman talked about. I actually had some of the Tussey foremen help contribute to that article.

Next – My Turn at the Contractors Summit

I had a talk titled The SynkedUP Mission.

I kicked it off with a quick review of what we had delivered as updates in the past year. Then I went deep.

We’ve been on this SynkedUP journey since 2016 and launched in 2020. This summer, after being on the market for 3 years now, I have done a lot of reflection and work on answering the question of “What are we trying to do?” And “What is our mission and vision?”

I shared my story, and how and why I started this SynkedUP thing, with the Tussey team.

As I had been preparing for this talk, certain things kept bubbling to the surface for me.

When a lot of our customers came to us, they were

• Not paying themselves
• Working hard all year, with no profit to show for it
• Burning hours on building quotes
• Missing dinners with family

And more.

But now…

they were experiencing a true 180.

Actually making money, getting to have a pizza with their family, etc.

So I shared some of our customers’ stories, regarding those exact points.

And…. That’s why we do what we do.

Our vision at SynkedUP is to end entrepreneurial poverty for blue-collar contractors and their teams.

We’ll do that through our mission of making contractors profitable, by helping them know their numbers and make data-driven decisions.

Helping them understand their business and what to base decisions on better than even their CPA does.

The irony of this all is that I myself am in the same struggle, with running SynkedUP. It’s not like I am somehow exempt from the same challenges.

I shared a photo of a pizza on our dinner table in my slides and asked if anyone knew why I put it in there.

There were a few guesses. None were right.

I finally said, “It’s a dinner I missed. That pizza is cold”