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The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast
Why Peer Groups Accelerate Success
00:22:04
Victoria Downing, president of Remodeler’s Advantage, has been leading top-performing peer groups for over three decades, helping business owners across North America achieve greater profits, stronger leadership, and better work-life balance. In...
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- [00:01]
Jon Jantz
You know, over the years, you've heard me talk a lot about marketing systems. Today I get to share something really special. My daughter, Sarah Nay, who also happens to be the CEO of Duct Tape Marketing, just released her first book. It's called Unchained Breaking Free from Broken Marketing Models and How Small Business Can Finally Take Control of Their Marketing. Lead with strategy and scale with AI. I know, a mouthful, right? But it's everything we've learned taken to the next level. In fact, we're even calling it duct tape marketing 3.0. As a dad, I couldn't be prouder. But I want you to check it out at DTM World Unchained and get ready to take your strategy to a whole new level. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. This is Jon Jantz, and my guest today is Victoria Downing. She's the president of Remodelers Advantage. It's a leading peer group and business improvement resource for remodeling companies owners. For more than two decades, Victoria has helped thousands of remodelers improve profitability, leadership and work life balance Remodelers Advantage. It's really been known as probably the leading peer group network in the industry for training and for helping folks grow their businesses. I actually have a couple clients over the years that have been in this group and it really led me to wanting to interview Victoria. So welcome to the show.
- [01:36]
Victoria Downing
Well, thank you for having me.
- [01:38]
Jon Jantz
So I guess let's just start with kind of somebody said. So, Victoria, what is Remodeler's Advantage? Maybe just kind of set the baseline for what?
- [01:46]
Victoria Downing
Let's talk about the vision first. Right. Our vision is to be the company that all remodelers turn to for a better life. We are all about looking at your business as a tool to help you build the life you want for yourself and for your employees while delivering a fantastic product to the community. So that's our focus when we deliver that in a lot of different ways.
- [02:09]
Jon Jantz
You know, I think I led in the bio. They're talking about making companies more profitable, but you kind of led with work life balance. Do you feel like that's those two are very intrinsically connected?
- [02:20]
Victoria Downing
Absolutely. I mean, again, your business is a tool. So I always encourage our members, especially when they first come in. Where are we trying to take you? What's the. What finances do you have to live your life now and into retirement and for your family and for college and all the stuff for your goals? How much money do you need to live that life? Well, then we back into that and say, okay, now how can we modify, manipulate this business to get you the funds you need and you're again, your employees. It's not about just the owner being greedy and taking every penny. It's building a wonderful culture and future and lifestyle for the employees as well.
- [02:59]
Jon Jantz
So the primary tool, I guess, if, and correct me if I'm wrong on that, really is these peer groups talk a little bit about how that structure of bringing, you know, non competing, you know, folks from all over the country together to really form a community.
- [03:14]
Victoria Downing
Well, I actually realized I have to update my bio because I've actually been doing this for. Since. Since 1990. So for 35 years I've been doing this. Yeah, and it was. We started. I started. I had a business partner at the time, Linda Case. She was very big in the industry for years and years, and I joined her then. And we would speak at trade shows and talk to a lot of people, write magazine columns and books and so on. And people started coming up to us saying, we're looking for the next level. We've been coming to trade shows and listening to the speakers for 10, 15 years. We want more. What can we do? So we started a peer group. It was fantastic. And we slowly just added people and added groups over the years till now we have over 200 companies across the US and Canada that altogether produce over $1 billion in revenue annually. So that's. They're representing a lot of renovations, a lot of remodeling.
- [04:12]
Jon Jantz
So. So I'll give you a softball question here because I know the answer to this, but I want to hear you answer it. You know, people that get coaching, that participate in peer groups, that, you know, that, that participate in their community, participate in their industry, tend to be the cream of the crop of an industry. I've just seen that across the board. How have you seen that play out with the RA groups?
- [04:31]
Victoria Downing
Well, it certainly is the case that we have a number of people, so. So let me back up a step. We have two different sort of levels of our roundtable peer groups. The peer groups makes up about a little bit more than half of our business in total, with the others being masterclasses and events and consulting and coaching. So. But in round tables, there's the base membership and then we have the mentor membership. The mentors tend to be larger, more profitable, and they tend to have been members of roundtables for many years. I can't tell you how many people in the mentor levels have been with us for 15, 20 years. And they just keep coming because they know that they're always going to learn something, you know. And yes, is there some diminishing returns from the first fire hose, those first five years to 20 years in? Certainly. But they know that they can still get the bits and pieces and will make the difference between a good year and an exceptional year. So it really does play out that way.
- [05:34]
Jon Jantz
And one of the things I've seen you do that, that I think, of course, I'm sure evolved or people asked you for, was that, you know, these are owners initially in a lot of the peer groups, but then you've started to put together all of your marketing people are in a peer group, you know, with them, or all of your finance people are in a peer group. And how, I've got to believe that that gets everybody talking the same language, you know, pulling the same direction. Have you found that, if nothing else, is an amazing retention strategy as well?
- [06:01]
Victoria Downing
Yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, most of the people that are in those, what we call tactical groups, there are people in positions in the companies. Most of those people are from member groups. But we do have some that are from outside the community. Right now we have nine groups for production managers, two groups for design managers, a group for CFOs, and then we also have a variety of what we call power meetings. We'll bring administrators and office managers together for two days of intensiveness. And that's another way they pick up the language. But we, we have found that the companies that are the most successful, and again, I gotta go back to some of our longer term members, they invest in their team. Right. We can see it. The people who were buying masterclasses, investing in consulting and coaching and all this stuff had better returns than the rest. So what we did about four years ago, I guess it was right around Covid time, we changed our membership to include what we call professional service credits. So people get, I don't know, $5,000 worth of credits that they can use for all sorts of other trade. They can use it for production manager roundtable membership dues. So that we're encouraging them to follow the lead of the best and invest in their people with, you know, dollars that they have in their pocket from us.
- [07:24]
Jon Jantz
I've worked with a lot of remodeling contractors and every business to some extent it has a lot of this where people got into business because they knew how to do something. Yeah, I think remodeling contractors in some cases are the ultimate technicians. I mean, they were the ones building the walls and, you know, putting in windows and things, and then also had to try to build a business. Do you find that in many cases, that kind of technician mentality holds them back a little bit? It's like, I know how to do all this stuff.
- [07:50]
Victoria Downing
Well, it does in a couple of ways. One of the things I found is that when people come to us at the beginning of their relationship with us, that one of the things that is almost 100% true is that their financial reporting is a mess. You can't tell what's going on. So if I'm telling them your business is a tool, well, I got to be able to read the story in that tool. Right? I got to be able to tell what's going on. So we have to start by helping them organize and learn how to read and understand the information that's in those reports. So then we can say, I always tell people the numbers, tell the story, and if they are clear and accurate, the reports can almost tell you what your next move is going to be. But you got to be have them in a format that we can read and that their peers can read and understand. So that's one way that being a technician holds them back because they haven't had that business training. But another way happens a lot with the area of control. The companies that grow, and you know this as well as I do, it's nothing new under the sun, but those companies that are able to delegate tend to be able to grow. If one of these owners has their fists around every decision that's made in the company, it makes it very difficult to grow beyond yourself.
- [09:09]
Jon Jantz
Yeah, they become the. They become actually the bottleneck for growth, even though they claim that that's what. What they ultimately want. How have you seen. Also, I know one of the things that you do. I have a little advantage of hearing a little bit more about what you do from a very tactical standpoint. You know, you make people bring their numbers. You know, they, you know, in front of their peers, have to say, here's where we're winning, here's where we're losing. How does that kind of peer pressure, if for lack of a better term, actually help them grow?
- [09:41]
Victoria Downing
Well, it's the. It's that there are nine other company representative or company representatives or nine other companies sitting there looking at them, and they're saying, well, here's where you're down. But look at this guy over here. He's really high in that. Let's get you two together. Or this guy was doing really well in that area, gives advice. So it not Only helps them get ideas and strategies for improving the lower levels, but it also helps these owners figure out what to work on first. You know, there's that whole saying about just picking the things that are the most important things to work on. And a lot of business owners get confused. They get. They see the next shiny object, they take their eye off the ball. They're not watching their pipeline, they're not monitoring the financial statements to know what carpenter's producing, profitable jobs, and which ones are losing jobs, all of that stuff. These groups help them pinpoint. Every time a member leaves their peer group, they have two or three written commitments that they have to report back to their group who hold them accountable for achieving those commitments and not. And then they've got the whole team of the peer group as well as the support staff of us. If they're having challenges and meeting those commitments, we've got resources. One of the beauties, as you know, in being in the business for as long as we've been in the business is you have a pretty good network of people and resources that you can share and you can help. So we've got a lot of that at hand.
- [11:12]
Jon Jantz
You know, over the years, you've heard me talk a lot about marketing systems. Today I get to share something really special. My daughter, Sarah Nay, who also happens to be the CEO of Duct Tape Marketing, just released her first book. It's called Unchained Breaking Free from Broken Marketing Models and How Small Business Can Finally Take Control of Their Marketing. Lead with strategy and scale with AI. I know, a mouthful, right? But it's everything we've learned taken to the next level. In fact, we're even calling it duct tape marketing 3.0. As a dad, I couldn't be prouder. But I want you to check it out at DTM World, slash Unchained, and get ready to take your strategy to a whole new level. Let's talk about technology a little bit. I know. I mean, when I started my business, you've been in business as long as I have the, you know, we didn't have the web.
- [12:03]
Victoria Downing
Yeah, I know. I can remember those days.
- [12:05]
Jon Jantz
Yeah, exactly. And so obviously, not only that kind of technology has changed, but even how you run their businesses. I mean, everything from, you know, quoting to tracking, you know, some of the things that they do, inventorying. So I mean, it's all kind of technology driven. How have you been able to kind of keep up with that? And not just keep up with it, but probably be seen as a leader in helping people adopt new technologies?
- [12:31]
Victoria Downing
Well, one of the things that happens is we try to stay a little bit agnostic on what technology they want to use. Like there are some outstanding project management softwares focused on the industry. There's two major ones in our space right now. I listen to our members, I'm constantly reading. We receive information from them all day, every day. I get emails from. Every group has their own email thread and I get all those emails all the time. So I'm constantly reading about what's working, what's not working. Then I can reach out and ask questions and use that information to compile suggestions and share that information with the rest of the community. So I really like me, I don't do estimates. Right. But I pay attention to those who do and what's working and what new things they're finding. Yeah, now you know, so there's. That's a big one. The whole CRM sales management thing is a big one. Recently we had a members only webinar where we featured three of our members and how they use AI in their business. Yeah, that was pretty fascinating. Now AI has taken over how marketing works and how all those searches and all that works. So we're getting information on that and sharing it with our community as well. It's just everywhere.
- [13:45]
Jon Jantz
Yeah, it is, it is evolving. You know, not obviously all my listeners are modeling contractors or in the home services business, but so I really, again, it's this peer group idea that I think is really fascinating. I'm curious, how do you manage some of the dynamics? I mean, I'm sure you've had times where like people just weren't getting along in the group or somebody shouldn't be in that group or you know, somebody's dominating that group or so again, I'm sure you've seen it all. How do you kind of manage some of the dynamics of making sure that you've got a really gelled group?
- [14:18]
Victoria Downing
Well, right. For the last probably six years, my colleague Steve Wheeler has been managing the roundtable groups and he is excellent at first of all placement. We, you know, when we're placing someone in a group, we have to start out by making sure there's nothing competitive in the match.
- [14:36]
Jon Jantz
Right.
- [14:36]
Victoria Downing
Then we try to match them up with similar volume levels and similar job sizes and similar business models. Like are they using all subs or do they add their own in house labor, that sort of thing. And then we also look at a personality profile of each of the members that tells us how they like to give and receive information. We use disc all of our Members take it. We use it internally. We use it for hiring. It's all over the place. So that helps us also determine where to place people. So are you familiar with disk at all?
- [15:10]
Jon Jantz
Oh, yeah, sure.
- [15:11]
Victoria Downing
Okay. So, you know, for example, it's D, I, S and C. The S people are slower to make decisions. They're a little bit less outgoing. They like to do more one thing at a time. You get a whole group of S people, it's pretty flipping quiet. So we gotta throw a D in there to ramp it up or throw an I in there to give it some jazz, you know?
- [15:32]
Jon Jantz
Yeah.
- [15:32]
Victoria Downing
But we're constantly monitoring that and our members. First of all, this is. It's not a class. It's not. We're not hablum feeding them.
- [15:41]
Jon Jantz
Yeah.
- [15:41]
Victoria Downing
We're setting up an environment for them to use the resources we make available. Our mission statement is to light the path of greater success for motivated remodeling professionals. We don't do it for them. We show them the way. We give them the resources. We light the path. They have to do the work to get where they want to go. So we talk a lot about that, and that's part of the, you know, the process. They're making a commitment. So anyway, so this is a group of peers that need to be holding one another accountable. And overall, for things like commitments, they do a pretty good job. Like, hey, dude, you made the commitment. We didn't hear from you. You didn't ask for an extension. Why are you coming here without your commitment done? That works pretty well. It's when they don't like someone or there's a personality conflict that then it gets a little bit dicey. It's awkward oftentimes to address that within the group. So they'll go to their facilitator, or they'll come to the staff and we'll help fix it or move somebody to a group that's a better fit. So we do that when, you know, because we have 25 owner groups, we can do that.
- [16:52]
Jon Jantz
Yeah. Do you have. And you don't need to name names here at all, but do you have some examples of businesses that you've just really seen grow and flourish? You know, by. Directly. By being a part of a peer group.
- [17:06]
Victoria Downing
Absolutely. So, as a matter of fact, I got an email this week and I printed it out so that I could read you some of the things that they said every year, or as somebody's been with us a year, I will reach out to them and ask them, what are the changes, improvements that they have made since their time with roundtables. So I did that with this particular company, which is a Canadian company. We have a number of Canadians in our community. They sent me a list of 18 items that they have improved upon since they joined in one year. You know, I always tell people like in our mission statement, we talk about greater success. I'll tell people, we know you're going to be successful, but this will cut your time in half. So just to give you a couple of things. Revenue growth of 30% on our rolling 12 month report. Gross profit growth of 36%. Complete company overhaul. We rebuilt every department in the company. We implemented the work in progress process and we meet monthly to review all key financials. We have a hundred percent better understanding of the financials, WIP, budgeting, et cetera. We've created department scorecards to track and manage KPIs and on and on. So then the owner goes on and he says, the RA remodeler's advantage has certainly opened my mind as to what's possible in this business. I feel we have a strong foundation to continue to build upon and our potential is just starting to be realized. We have a long way to go and RA is going to be an integral part in making that happen. That we get dozens of letters like that all the time, you know, because.
- [18:47]
Jon Jantz
You'Ve been a pioneer in this particular business model. Are you familiar? And it's okay if you're not, but are you familiar with other industries or other groups similar to RA that you run across?
- [18:56]
Victoria Downing
Well, it's funny you should ask. I belong to something called the Council of Masterminds, which is a peer group for companies that do peer groups.
- [19:05]
Jon Jantz
Okay.
- [19:05]
Victoria Downing
I think it's kind of meta, you know, so in that we're all different industry verticals. And we just came back from our meeting. We have peer groups for dentists, optometrists, computer service companies, insurance brokerages and on. And there's about 12 of us that come to this. And I've been going to that meeting twice a year for 20 years. So I am walking the talk and I come back with pages of notes just like I do even from our peer groups. It's a different industry, but business management is business management. So many ideas fit.
- [19:42]
Jon Jantz
Yeah, I was thinking that, I'm sure that a lot of your members kind of keep you, you know, like what's going on in the industry? What's the future look like? What's the technology changes? I'm sure you hear a lot of that from your members. And that probably helps keep you abreast of things because you're hearing from kind of the cream of the crop.
- [19:59]
Victoria Downing
Yes, that does too. But again, we also, you know, follow all of the studies, like the leading indicator of remodeling activity in Harvard and all of those things to try to stay on top. You know, House just did a survey talking about what the future looks like for remodeling. We're having a session at the summit on looking forward, how to deal with the uncertainty now and what to expect as we go through the next several years. So we try to compile all that information for our members and make it readily available.
- [20:28]
Jon Jantz
Yeah. Well, Victoria, I appreciate you spending a few moments to share with my audience. Is there someplace you'd invite somebody to, whether they're in the industry or not, to learn more about what you do and connect with you?
- [20:42]
Victoria Downing
Well, I'd love them to visit our website, which is remodelers advantage.com I'd love for them to come to the summit. Remodelerssummit.com and they can always write to me for more information. I'll steer them in the right direction. And my email is Victoria Modelers advantage.com awesome.
- [21:02]
Jon Jantz
Well, again, I appreciate you spending a few minutes with us and hopefully we'll see you one of these days out there on the road.
- [21:08]
Victoria Downing
Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
- [21:21]
Jon Jantz
Hey, small business owners, let me ask you a quick question. Is your marketing actually working for you or just working you over? If you're tired of chasing random tactics and want real clarity, it's time for a strategy first approach. At Duct Tape Marketing, we help you build a marketing system you own, one that fits your business and finally puts you in control. No more chaos, no more guesswork. Just a roadmap you trust powered by smart strategy. And let's face it, a little help from AI today. You ready to shift from overwhelm to confidence? Head on over to DTM World. Own it. DTM World. Sl Ownit.