Choices Create Change: Leadership for Builders

Bobby Mink
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  • Management

Choices Create Change: Leadership for Builders, with Bobby Mink Forty years in homebuilding. Jobsites, sales meetings, boardrooms, and the room where a company had to decide whether it would survive. Bobby Mink started as a finish manager in 1985 and spent twenty years at one builder, finishing as VP of Sales and Marketing for its Northeast Region, where sales grew to $103 million in his first year leading it. Today he runs Choice Consulting and Management in Atlanta and coaches the owners of home building, remodeling and construction companies across the country, mostly on problems he had already solved three times over. Each week he takes one of those problems apart. The superintendent who cannot make a decision without you. Two identical houses that came in $70,000 apart. The team that agrees in the meeting and does nothing after it. A hiring system that keeps producing the same bad hire. Twenty-four houses going and money going out the door. The difference between knowing your numbers and trusting them. No theory you cannot use on Monday, and no jargon. You will also hear from builders, contractors and business owners who have been through it, and from the leadership books worth your time, broken down for somebody who runs a construction company rather than a boardroom. If you own a building company, lead a field or office team, or you are stepping into management for the first time, you are in the right place. New episodes every Wednesday morning. Every episode has chapters and a transcript at ChoiceConsultingMan.com/Podcast

  1. 5d ago

    Everyone Knows Their Job and the Company Is Going Nowhere (Ep 28)

    This is part two. In part one, The Two Seats Every Owner Sits In, Bobby named the seat that quietly goes empty. This episode is about what happens next: a company where everybody knows their job, nothing goes wrong, and three years later it is worth less than it was. Clarity tells everybody what their job is. It does not tell anybody where the company is going. Those are two different documents, and most companies only have one. A flat company is not holding steady. It is losing slowly, and quietly enough that nobody calls a meeting about it. Part one is The Two Seats Every Owner Sits In. Listen to that first if you have not. Chapters: 0:00 Clarity tells everybody what their job is 1:05 What is different than three years ago 3:39 Nobody is calling him at nine at night 5:15 A flat company is not holding steady 7:34 The owner who had not had his best year 11:30 The list with the same four items 13:53 Nothing goes wrong where nothing is at stake 15:27 Where it hides in other businesses 17:45 An efficient machine for repeating last year 18:30 The two documents 22:22 The top performers could go 22:42 Clarity without room produces compliance 23:56 The vacation test 27:02 Somebody outside is moving faster 31:40 You did not decide that, you allowed it 34:00 Pick the single number 40:13 This week: the blank sheet 41:51 Close More at ChoiceConsultingMan.com/Podcast

    Everyone Knows Their Job and the Company Is Going Nowhere (Ep 28)

  2. Oct 21

    The Two Seats Every Owner Sits In (Ep 27)

    Most owners are trying to sit in two seats at once. One is driving the truck. The other is looking at where the truck is going. Both seats are always occupied, and almost nobody notices which one they have quietly stopped sitting in. Bobby spent forty years in homebuilding, including running a region at John Wieland Homes. This episode names the two seats, shows you how to tell which one you are in, and gives you three things to do this week. The present shouts. The future whispers. And guess which one gets your Tuesday. This is part one of a pair. Part two is Everyone Knows Their Job and the Company Is Going Nowhere. Chapters: 0:00 The present shouts, the future whispers 2:03 It is a seating problem 4:27 Both seats are always occupied 6:52 Stop counting revenue, count decisions 8:56 The present shouts, the future whispers, in full 9:32 The February problem 14:42 Three Thursdays, and one decision 17:02 The calendar test: your O's and your V's 21:41 Half a good plan is what you are bad at 25:35 The two seats want opposite things from you 29:32 Answer it once, in writing, with a dollar limit 33:23 Give yourself grace: nine years of being the answer 34:53 Forty calls, and good question go ask her 41:04 You cannot work your way into the vision seat 41:35 This week: run the calendar test 46:28 Why I am telling you this 48:46 Close More at ChoiceConsultingMan.com/Podcast

    The Two Seats Every Owner Sits In (Ep 27)

  3. Oct 14

    Nobody Was Ever Doing Better Than They Thought (Ep 26)

    Bobby sits down with Mark Whitmire, a CFO with more than 35 years in finance and accounting, to close out the Know Your Numbers series. Part one was the mindset. Part two was the math. This is the practitioner. Mark's father was a CPA and president of the Georgia Society of CPAs, and Mark grew up watching him drop tax returns at the post office at midnight. He has the accounting gene and deliberately did not become an accountant. What he has instead is 35 years of being the person who finds the financial problem in somebody else's business. His verdict, after decades of counselling owners: there has never been an instance where somebody was doing better than they thought. Not once. The conversation covers why a builder reading a tax return may be looking at a business eighteen months old, the spec house that did not sell and why nothing in an income statement will ever reveal what it cost, the warranty money that leaves after the closing, and why you should raise three times what you think you need and raise it while you still do not need it. Then it turns, as these conversations do, from money to people. Hiring to your weakness, the way Charles Schwab and Richard Branson both did. Why effective partners tend not to be friends. Why most business plans are simply "more," and what a finish line should look like instead. "Engineers will build something nobody wants. Salespeople will sell something they can't produce." "My to-do list tends to be one item." Chapters: 0:00 The house you didn't sell 1:13 Why owners struggle with the numbers 3:29 Mark's father, and the adding machine 7:19 Advice for a new owner: triple it 9:57 Raise money before you need it 11:28 Your tax return is 18 months old 13:13 Regular reporting, and the discipline it takes 16:45 Warranty, and the cash that leaves after closing 17:47 Nobody was ever doing better than they thought 19:02 Hire to your weakness 21:00 Most business plans are simply more 23:34 Don't hire your best buddy 29:09 Go think 31:39 Your to-do list is one item 38:16 Homes where families create memories 41:02 Write your eulogy 42:01 Close Learn more: ChoiceConsultingMan.com/Podcast Bobby's books, Choices and Clarity: ChoiceConsultingMan.com/books A video version of this episode is on YouTube. Search Choices Create Change.

    Nobody Was Ever Doing Better Than They Thought (Ep 26)

  4. Oct 7

    Two Identical Houses, $70,000 Apart (Ep 25)

    Last week was why to measure. This week is how to read what you are measuring. Bobby opens with two houses: same plan, same community, sold for the same price. On paper, at the moment they sold, they were the same job. One closed at 31% gross margin and the other at 17%. On a $500,000 house that is $70,000, and it was not created at the closing table. It was created in a hundred small decisions across six months, and not one of them felt like a $70,000 decision at the time. From there it is a profit and loss statement in plain English, section by section, with the one test that tells you where a cost belongs: would this cost exist if you had not built that job? Then the part that is quietly costing people money right now. Markup and margin are not the same number. Add 25% to a $100,000 cost and you sell at $125,000, which is a 20% margin, not 25%. To actually earn 30% you have to mark up almost 43%. A leader who confuses the two is not making an occasional error, they are underpricing every job by the same amount forever, and there is no bad month that makes them go look. Also in this episode: the six places margin leaks and why not one of them is a market condition, why growing companies are the ones that run out of cash, and break-even, which is your annual overhead divided by your gross margin percentage. Drop five points of margin and a company with $1,200,000 of overhead has to build an extra $800,000 of work to end up exactly where it was. "A number without a target is trivia. A number with a target is a decision waiting to be made." This is part two of three. Next week a longtime CFO joins the show. Chapters: 0:00 Two houses, identical on paper 0:33 Welcome 1:32 You were never taught this 2:26 Reading a profit and loss statement 5:45 The targets: 30, 18 and 12 6:54 Gross margin, where the money is won and lost 8:16 Two houses that look identical 9:25 The six places margin leaks 11:50 Not one of them is the market 12:15 Markup versus margin 13:52 Now do it the right way 15:07 To get 30 you have to mark up 43 16:03 Budget versus actual 17:25 How forecasting actually works 18:15 The monthly review: three columns 18:41 Variance analysis: get to why 20:09 Cash flow, the one that ends companies 20:40 Why growing companies are the ones at risk 21:38 Draws, inventory, receivables, payables 23:28 Break-even, and what a slow month costs 24:40 What five points of margin does to break-even 26:03 Leading versus lagging indicators 28:07 Building your weekly dashboard 29:39 The four questions 32:50 This week's challenge 34:33 Call your CPA and ask 35:49 Close Learn more: ChoiceConsultingMan.com/Podcast Bobby's books, Choices and Clarity: ChoiceConsultingMan.com/books A video version of this episode is on YouTube. Search Choices Create Change.

    Two Identical Houses, $70,000 Apart (Ep 25)

  5. Sep 30

    He Had 24 Houses Going and Was Losing Money (Ep 24)

    Most owners can tell you their revenue instantly and have no idea what they kept. This episode is about the eight numbers that tell you the truth about your business, and why smart, hardworking leaders end up flying blind anyway. Bobby opens with a builder who had 24 houses under construction, the most work he had ever had going at one time, and who was putting personal money into the business to make payroll. They costed out his last five closed houses. Two made money, one broke even, two lost real money. He was not having his best year, he was having his busiest year. From there it is the airplane test. A pilot watches altitude, airspeed, fuel against distance, oil pressure, engine temperature, weather, wind, cabin pressure and navigation, and makes corrections so small that nobody in seat 14C ever feels one. Then the question: what is actually on your dashboard, and what did you look at with your own eyes in the last seven days? Bobby walks through eight gauges, one at a time, and what each one warns you about before anybody else notices: cash, gross margin, sales pipeline, backlog, cycle time, warranty, employee turnover and customer satisfaction. The part most business content skips is the second half. If measuring is this obviously valuable, why do so many good leaders not do it? Fear, embarrassment, never having been taught, being too busy, a CPA who was never asked to teach, a report with forty lines on it, and nobody owning the number. "Volume without margin is not growth. It's just a faster way to find out you have a problem." "Companies do not go broke because they lose money. They go broke because they run out of cash." Chapters: 0:00 Two of the last five lost money 0:35 Welcome 1:05 Forty years, and one question 2:17 Why smart people make bad business decisions 2:45 A feeling wearing a business suit 3:02 Activity is not progress 3:44 Busy and profitable are not the same thing 4:04 The builder with 24 houses 4:51 Putting personal money in to make payroll 5:14 Costing out the last five houses 5:36 His busiest year, not his best year 6:07 Volume without margin is not growth 6:24 He had no instruments 6:44 Feelings versus facts 7:31 Your instinct is a hypothesis 7:53 Restaurants, coaches and doctors all measure 8:52 So do Amazon and Chick-fil-A 9:27 Awareness, decisions, results 10:06 The airplane dashboard 10:19 The captain who flies by feel 11:01 A feeling is not knowing 11:28 What a pilot actually watches 13:18 Small corrections, not heroics 14:09 You are the pilot 14:32 What is on your dashboard this week 15:27 That discomfort is information 15:54 Pilots crash because they ignore it 16:28 The reports nobody opens 17:29 Let us build the dashboard 17:52 Gauge 1: Cash 18:27 Growth eats cash 19:09 Gauge 2: Gross margin 20:09 Gauge 3: Sales pipeline 21:11 Gauge 4: Backlog 22:20 Gauge 5: Cycle time 23:12 Gauge 6: Warranty 23:58 Gauge 7: Employee turnover 24:55 Gauge 8: Customer satisfaction 26:02 Why leaders avoid their numbers 26:42 Fear 27:04 Embarrassment, and nobody ever taught you this 27:55 Too busy, and a CPA who was never asked to teach 28:41 Forty lines on a report, and nobody owns it 29:28 What you avoid controls you 29:58 This week's leadership challenge 30:29 Pick five numbers 31:14 Look at them every Monday 32:07 Say them out loud to your team 32:30 Back to the builder with 24 houses 32:57 Fewer houses, more money 33:22 What is coming next week 34:37 Close Learn more: ChoiceConsultingMan.com/Podcast A video version of this episode is on YouTube. Search Choices Create Change.

    He Had 24 Houses Going and Was Losing Money (Ep 24)

  6. Sep 23

    Stop Being the Hero in Your Own Company (Ep 23)

    Most owners think their job is to be the one who fixes things. Mitchell Kasselman learned that every time he jumped in to save the day, he was taking the chance to learn away from somebody on his team. Bobby is joined by Mitchell Kasselman, co-founder and CEO of Ressio Software, which builds construction management software for custom home builders and remodelers. They have known each other since 2022, and Bobby was one of the people Mitchell leaned on when Ressio was starting out. Mitchell has gone from two founders to a growing team in four years, and the conversation is about what that took. Moving from what he calls heroics to systems. Hiring for culture so seriously that a ten out of ten candidate still fails if they do not fit. Letting people go sooner, and finding out that the person and the team were both relieved. Setting company goals and deliberately leaving his own name off them. There is also a practical stretch on AI, from somebody building it for builders: why the owners who get value from it are the ones who check its work, and why that is exactly how trust gets built with people too. "What I'm actually doing is preventing an opportunity for a team member to actually learn how to do that themselves." "Even if we had the ten out of ten best technical candidate, we will still fail someone at the cultural stage if they don't exceed in our values." Chapters: 0:00 Stop being the hero 0:29 Welcome 0:55 Meet Mitchell Kasselman 2:23 How he found the contractor 3:30 Why builders' software feels twenty years old 4:13 Building Ressio 5:22 A hundred decisions a day 6:08 Year two: talent and culture 6:38 From heroics to systems 8:11 Your job is the environment 9:31 Building a company is like a marriage 10:30 What AI is actually good for 12:01 From a customer call to working code in days 13:15 AI built for builders 14:51 Getting past "I don't trust it" 17:04 Decide if this is really for you 17:52 Bias for action 18:37 Getting back off the mat 19:24 Do not go it alone 20:04 Keep reinvesting in your team 21:02 Rock stars and superstars 22:42 People are the competitive advantage 24:14 The castaways who thrived 25:02 How they hire for culture 26:53 Hire fast, fire fast 29:02 Two out of three salespeople 30:16 You already have values, write them down 31:42 Let your values evolve 33:13 From doing the work to managing managers 34:01 Four goals, and his name is not on them 34:42 Teach a man to fish 36:21 Stop pointing at the individual 37:25 Seek first to understand 38:18 Curiosity over prescribing 39:03 Ask more than you tell 39:58 What not to do 40:38 Take advice, but think for yourself 41:38 Hallway decisions that become policy 42:37 You cannot be everything to everyone 43:15 Six dimensions, twenty one points 45:11 What to take away 47:02 Close Learn more at ChoiceConsultingMan.com/Podcast Bobby's books, Choices and Clarity, are at ChoiceConsultingMan.com/books A video version of this episode is on YouTube. Search Choices Create Change.

    Stop Being the Hero in Your Own Company (Ep 23)

  7. Sep 16

    You Don't Need a New Website (Ep 22)

    Most business owners think they need a new website. Mickey Mellen has been building them for seventeen years, and a lot of his job is talking people out of it. Bobby is joined by Mickey Mellen, co-founder of GreenMellen in Marietta, Georgia, for a practical conversation about marketing when you run a company and nobody on your team owns marketing. Mickey's argument is that almost everybody overthinks it. He gives five things to focus on, website, email, local, data and social, and says a little bit in each one beats a lot in one and nothing in the other four. Along the way: why your website is now the last place a customer goes rather than the first, what your homepage should say instead of how many years you have been in business, and what he found when he ran fifteen thousand WordPress sites through a scanner he built. The back half is about AI, from somebody who uses it daily and is not entirely happy about it. What it is doing to search, to attribution, to pricing, and to the number of people who will ever see anything you make. And then the part Bobby keeps coming back to, which is numbers. Mickey on running his first five years off the bank balance, and the agency owner whose accountant called three days before Christmas to say there was not enough money for payroll. "Google is the reward for doing all your other marketing right, in all the other places." "If you are at all consistent with your stuff, you are the top five percent of businesses right there. The bar is so low." Chapters: 0:00 Where people actually decide 0:37 Welcome 1:05 Meet Mickey Mellen and GreenMellen 2:47 Do not overthink it 3:28 The five things: website, email, local, data, social 5:31 "I need a new website." "No, you don't." 5:53 Lead with their problem, not your history 6:23 Your website is the last place they go 7:37 Perfect is the enemy of good 8:05 Trying to do too much 11:29 Why you should own your website 12:17 Fifteen thousand sites, four thousand broken 13:28 What is your marketing budget 14:46 Consistency, and the content calendar 16:50 What AI is doing to Google 17:28 Why a link costs you most of your reach 17:57 The CPA he hired ten years later 19:02 Lift versus attribution 19:55 Building your own tools with AI 21:30 What worries him about AI 22:08 A thousand pieces of content a day 23:28 I miss the handcrafted days 23:59 Confidentiality, risk and hallucinations 25:44 The Braves score the AI made up 26:44 Hire for fit over talent 27:13 What AI does to what you can charge 28:26 Cookies, a swing set, and fifty AI videos 29:35 Get your books in order 30:05 Forecasting instead of checking the bank 31:25 Three days before Christmas 32:32 Find somebody gifted differently than you 33:41 What makes a business partnership work 35:13 Trust 36:11 There is no such thing as a done website 37:09 Consistency puts you in the top five percent 37:47 The king of shiny objects 38:54 Kobe at five in the morning 39:47 The fundamentals of a top shelf organization 40:53 Look at your site through your customer's eyes 42:47 How AI search actually works 43:47 Close Learn more at ChoiceConsultingMan.com/Podcast Bobby's books, Choices and Clarity, are at ChoiceConsultingMan.com/books A video version of this episode is on YouTube. Search Choices Create Change.

    You Don't Need a New Website (Ep 22)

  8. Sep 9

    Stop Looking for Better Employees, Fix Your Hiring System (Ep 21)

    Everybody asks where to find good people. Bobby thinks that is the wrong question. The right one is less comfortable: why would a great person want to come and work for you? This episode came from a listener who asked how to find people to hire, and the answer turned into forty years of hiring compressed into a system. It covers the part almost everybody skips, which is everything that happens before you post the job. Whether you actually need a person or need a process. The numbers worth looking at before you add payroll. Defining a seat properly instead of writing a list of activities and calling it a job description. Then the seven places great people actually come from, and only one of them is a job posting. Your own employees. Your vendors and trade partners. Competitors. Industry associations. LinkedIn. Colleges, trade schools and the military. And your customers. The last third is the part most hiring advice leaves out: keeping people once you have them. "Technical skills can usually be taught. Character usually cannot." "If good people keep leaving you, the market is not the problem. Look closer to home. That is not an accusation, it is the best news in this episode, because the market is not something you control but your environment is." Chapters: 0:00 Why would a great person want to work for you 0:31 Welcome 3:18 The wrong question 7:17 Before you hire anyone, ask this 7:57 Know your numbers before you add people 10:28 When it is genuinely time 12:31 Define the position before you hire 18:16 Where to actually find great people 24:43 Never interview without a process 32:18 How do you know they are the right person 35:31 Keeping great people 42:25 This week's challenge 44:30 Close Learn more at ChoiceConsultingMan.com/Podcast Bobby's books, Choices and Clarity, are at ChoiceConsultingMan.com/books A video version of this episode is on YouTube. Search Choices Create Change.

    Stop Looking for Better Employees, Fix Your Hiring System (Ep 21)
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Choices Create Change: Leadership for Builders, with Bobby Mink Forty years in homebuilding. Jobsites, sales meetings, boardrooms, and the room where a company had to decide whether it would survive. Bobby Mink started as a finish manager in 1985 and spent twenty years at one builder, finishing as VP of Sales and Marketing for its Northeast Region, where sales grew to $103 million in his first year leading it. Today he runs Choice Consulting and Management in Atlanta and coaches the owners of home building, remodeling and construction companies across the country, mostly on problems he had already solved three times over. Each week he takes one of those problems apart. The superintendent who cannot make a decision without you. Two identical houses that came in $70,000 apart. The team that agrees in the meeting and does nothing after it. A hiring system that keeps producing the same bad hire. Twenty-four houses going and money going out the door. The difference between knowing your numbers and trusting them. No theory you cannot use on Monday, and no jargon. You will also hear from builders, contractors and business owners who have been through it, and from the leadership books worth your time, broken down for somebody who runs a construction company rather than a boardroom. If you own a building company, lead a field or office team, or you are stepping into management for the first time, you are in the right place. New episodes every Wednesday morning. Every episode has chapters and a transcript at ChoiceConsultingMan.com/Podcast

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