Is Your Business Strategy For 2025 The Right One?

As predicted, 2024 turned out to be a year of mixed results, says industry advisor Mark Richardson. Overall, it was a decent year but there were periods where phones rang off the hook and other times when nary a ringtone was heard. 

Heading into 2025, remodelers should have a growth mindset because the year is expected to be stronger than 2024, especially during the third and fourth quarters.

In this episode of the Remodeling Mastery podcast, you can hear Mark reflect on the past year and talk about how remodelers can plan and position themselves for a strong 2025. 

PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT

Hi, I'm Mark Richardson, and welcome to remodeling mastery. Remodeling mastery is a podcast series that's really designed to help you reflect and think about your business, not just do your business. What I try to do is I take different topics that are not only relevant but also thought provoking to help you take your business to the next level.

This podcast series is supported by my friends in the industry, strategic alliances. And certainly you who's listening to this, and certainly I encourage you to pass along with your team. I want to talk about a topic that's obviously extremely relevant to this time of the year, this time of the year being the final leg of 2024 and that's the topic of positioning and preparing for 2025.

You know, I want to break this discussion down really into three parts. One is going to be focused on 2024 looking at the rear-view mirror, reflecting a little bit on 2024 and all the good, bad and ugly about this last year that we're about to wrap up. I'm going to talk a little bit about 2025 a little bit in terms of what some of the pundits are talking about, as far as forecasts and kind of the tail winds, as well as the headwinds out there. And last and foremost, I will talk about the focus on, how do you develop strategies? How do you think about, how do you plan for 2025 as you're making an integral part of your thinking moving forward?

So let's talk about 2024 you know, going in and 2024 my headline, that I certainly talked quite a bit about into podcasts if you go back and listen to it early in the year was 2024. Was going to be a year of uncertainty. Now, as I said at the time, uncertainty is not good or bad, it's just uncertain. Uncertainty is, I don't know whether it's going to rain outside tomorrow. Uncertainty is I don't know whether it's going to be easier or more difficult than I thought it was going to be. Uncertainty was uncertainty, and I think for many out there it did, in fact, prove out to be the case. It tended to be a little bit more of a different kind of year. There were periods of time that the phone literally was ringing off the hook, sales were flowing in, and there were a period of times that it was like crickets, that it was very, very quiet, and certainly created a lot of anxiety and fear, for the most part, for most companies out there. However, 2024 was a relatively good, relatively decent. Year, one of the thought leader groups that I lead looked at 2024 in terms of their success and failure. And about 10% of this group was struggled in 2024 about 50% of the group felt that 2024 was about at as predicted, or it was fine in about 40% of the group, it exceeded what they thought it would be. So for the most part, we got through the year we we adjusted some of the things that were going on in terms of the the economy we pass through, certainly the election, and we've made it to the end of the year, and I think it's been, you know, for the most part, a relatively solid year. You know, one of the things I oftentimes ask groups that I facilitate, you know, what is a word or phrase that kind of describes what you think is going on out there. My friend Allison said, you know, the use the word it's kind of wonky. You know, wonky, if you think about it, it's almost like it's a little bit out of kilter. Maybe there's one spoke that's broken. Maybe there's an element, but it's a little bit wonky. You know, Pam Tory with engage used the term about two years ago, that I think also is accurate, is that homeowners have become feral. And in using that term, and you think about, what does feral mean? Escape from captivity. So you have the homeowners out there that are you're competing against the Taylor Swift concerts and the travel and their schedules, and they're overwhelmed. So you're competing events, very different things, but for the most part, you're competing against the client who wants to control the process. So in 2024 I think we saw a lot of things fall through the cracks, quite frankly, not because there wasn't real business out there was we weren't that good. It's not an order taker kind of environment that's out there, and therefore we weren't that good at closing deals and more things kind of fell through the cracks. I remember my friends at Google described kind of the environment in the last couple of years, like an Escher painting. We didn't really know what was around the corner. If you go back and look at one of their paintings, and I think that kind of describes it. It was very, again, very consistent with wonky and unpredictable and all of that. What I do know, and one of the bits of advice from my my friend Jay and jelsky was, you know, when all said and done, just don't panic. And I think those people that while they adjusted, they pivoted in 24 but they didn't panic, kind of came through the year a little bit more solidly. Many of the folks I've worked with, they front loaded some of the marketing and the PR efforts in the front end of the year. So they had a little bit more fuel in throughout the year to be able to generate the right number, number of leads. But one of the indicators that I think, that we really have, have really learned through COVID in the less in the last year or two, is this whole theme of, you know how proficient at we are. We at predicting things. And I really encourage you know, if we really focus on the right interval of time moving forward, then we don't have to necessarily predict what 2020 25 is going to hold. But for the most part, you know, 2024 was really a year very much of of a little bit of wonkiness and strangeness that's out there, and thankfully, we've gotten through it. I led a group last week in Florida that was really focused on trying to understand, I think, and some of the things that I think I heard from them. One of the comments that was made by one of the thought leaders was, I feel like the dust has settled. Now that the dust has settled, we're ready, really, to kind of hit it and do it in a really sensible and controlled way. Someone else said, you know, 2024 was a year that we were able to stabilize. You know, some again, some of the pundits out there, some of the people out there that speak about about things, also talk about, you know, this whole theme that Jay jealousy talked about from Google, that I'm okay. Think about this as a homeowner, I'm okay, but it's not okay. I was reading some data recently that 80% of the homeowners that fell into the higher income bracket. Higher income bracket is what folks that do a lot of major remodeling. 80% of them felt they're much better off today than they were two or three years ago. We certainly haven't heard that from the media. Everyone says with inflation and cost escalation that they're not better off, but 80% say that they are better off. Another interesting kind of little stat out there that also comes from some of the economists and some of the folks that look at some of the consumer data. 40% of the homeowners today are only only speaking to one contractor, one remodeler. 60% are only speaking to to one or two. So you really think about that you're competing not against other remodelers. You're competing against the homeowner themselves, their fears, their anxieties, and certainly they're, they're overwhelmed...