by Michael Dey | Nov 4, 2014 | Uncategorized
Are you an Approved Professional Remodeler? Have you thought it would be helpful to network with other remodelers that are not competitors and learn more about how other professionals run their companies?
The 20 Club program is forming the first new Remodeler 20 Club since 2006. It will be the second remodelers’ club established in the program’s 20-year history.
A two-day meeting focused on the club’s formation will be held at NAHB headquarters in Washington, D.C. later this year. A working agenda for the new club includes team building exercises and discussions like sales and marketing, customer service, company financials, and presentations from some of the most knowledgeable and well respected consultants in the construction industry.
The remodelers who are forming the new club are excited about being able to exchange ideas and best practices with their peers – a dynamic often referred to among existing 20 Club members as their own personal “board of directors.”
Statistics show that this high level of interaction and connectivity with peers helps 20 Club members double their net profits by the third year of membership.
Knowing that help for any situation is just an email or phone call away is one of the greatest benefits of being a member of a 20 Club. For more information on how you can join the club, visit nahb.org/20clubs.
by Michael Dey | Oct 6, 2014 | Uncategorized
One of the biggest benefits of a NAHB 20 Club membership is the annual company-to-company financial comparisons. The analyses commonly show that most builders who join a
20 Club double their net profits by their third year of membership. This most recent year was no different.
Kim Bailey, NAHB executive director of networking programs, said that the Overall Financial Analysis, which is conducted exclusively for 20 Club members each year, showed that the top 10% of production builders made 24.1% gross profits, the top 10% of custom home builders made 20.5% gross profits and the top 25% of remodelers made 38% gross profits.
In broad comparison, three years ago, single-family builders across the industry made 15.3% gross profits, while remodelers made 26.8%, according to the
NAHB Cost of Doing Business Study. This most recent survey was conducted in 2012 and based on income statements and balance sheets for fiscal 2011. The study is conducted every two years.
“As a group, the members of the 20 Clubs are back to profitability,” said Builder 20 Club member Chris Nelson, of
Nelson Construction located in Farmington, Conn. “We’re not quite back to pre-recession highs, but we’re operating very well now.”
Nelson, who has been a member of Club 3, “The Saws,” for nearly 14 years and a member of NAHB since 1991, said that his participation in the 20 Clubs has been invaluable to the growth of his business.
As a young builder, the club helped him by simply exposing him to what other builders were doing to become and remain profitable.
“It challenged me to look deeper and harder for places where we could be more efficient,” he said. “And by doing so, we increased our margins significantly in the first few years.”
Being a member also helped him develop critical business skills, like managing his contracts better, finding efficiencies in general administrative overhead, and refining sales, purchasing and scheduling processes, which allowed him to stay out of trouble and manage the market downturn in a fairly organized way.
Each time he meets with his club members, he comes away with a number of ideas he wants to try and/or refine for his own business. For instance, learning how to track variances especially helped boost his company’s return on investment, he said.
“By just knowing how to track variances, we can react. Once we discover and learn why we have variances, we can fix things before we repeat the same mistake three and four times,” he said.
Nelson said there’s no question that the 20 Clubs has helped his company grow and prosper. Without it, he says, he might still be trying—and struggling—to figure things out on his own.
by Michael Dey | Jun 15, 2012 | Uncategorized
Builder Review Daily is highlighting the top 12 actions taken on behalf of Home Builders so far this Spring.
Accomplishment number 10: 20 Clubs
More than two dozen meetings of NAHB’s “20 Clubs” have been convened so far this spring, providing a unique networking and educational opportunity for participants who value the chance to learn from fellow NAHB members across the country about what’s working, and what’s not, in their markets at the present time.
20 Clubs are comprised of similar type builders or remodelers from non-competing markets who meet several times a year to share their wisdom and learn from each other ways to improve their operations and increase their bottom lines. Members share and compare financial information, look for trouble spots, and offer each other advice on how to increase their profit ratios and improve their performance. These offerings are consistently rated among the most effective networking options that NAHB provides and can be especially useful amidst today’s volatile marketplace.
