How could you become instantly and permanently profitable?

The progressive p-h-c contractors attending PHCC’s Quality Service Contractors’ (QSC) Power Meeting: Special Edition learned the secrets from entrepreneur and author Mike Michalowicz, whose “Profit First Formula” approach flips the script on the traditional profit formula.

Held during the Oct. 3-6 CONNECT 2017 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, QSC’s Power Meeting: Special Edition featured a comprehensive line-up of results-focused education and networking emphasizing effective strategies, processes and measurements to improve your business.

The meeting’s peer-to-peer environment kicked off with “Coaching Corner: The Answer is the Question,” led by QSC business coaches Beth Dobkin, Rebecca Gold and Les Hanks. Roundtable discussions examined three critical topics that can make or break your business:

• Turning Your Technicians into Sales Champions
• Developing a Culture through Strong Leadership
• Organizational Health: Free, Plain and Simple.

Business management and growth expert Ryan Doerr shared how using a top-to-bottom business “operating system” can help business owners get more out of staff and themselves. By strategically and intentionally limiting the number of initiatives they try to tackle at any one time, leaders can more effectively align everyone’s daily activities with those goals. Establishing better meeting and communication patterns ties it all together by making everyone accountable and focused on getting your company where you want it to be.

In his “Change Management and Innovation” presentation, Steve Bobowski revealed how businesses can implement simple processes and small changes in thinking to spark creativity. The key change Bobowski demonstrated was to shift the way teams think and flip “the order of thinking.” Many businesses typically employ “red light thinking,” which prioritizes finding reasons an idea can’t work as soon as someone thinks of it. That focus on negating ideas shuts down creativity. Bobowski suggests changing this to first focus on only generating ideas (as many as possible and wild they may seem) and then asking probing questions that isolate the most valuable ones. Even leaders who don’t feel like creative types themselves can use this approach to totally transform the way they develop innovative products, processes and approaches.

Closing the educational sessions with his “Profit Mastery: Making Metrics Matter” presentation, Steve LeFever offered a lively and entertaining session that helped attendees better understand the most important accounting and financial concepts owners must understand to run a profitable and sustainable business. LeFever broke down the “accounting talk” and presented accessible ways to understand how accountants, bankers and other financial analysts look at your business.

A highlight of the meeting was the announcement by QSC Executive Director Lawrence Leonard of a number of new QSC products and services available now and in the coming months. QSC’s popular training courses will be revised and expanded, and a new eLearning site will be introduced. Also in development are designation programs for service technicians and CSRs. A new podcast, “Plumbing and HVAC Success,” appeared in November, offering a lively way to learn and stay informed. QSC’s business coaching program will be augmented by new peer-to-peer groups and Pillars of Success, a comprehensive system for operating and developing a service business.

“Our goal with the Power Meeting: Special Edition at CONNECT was to help QSC members and other contractors run their businesses better and be more successful, and we exceeded our expectations,” said QSC Chair Lawrence Snow. “We believe everyone got education and information that will help them think about their businesses differently and take things to the next level.”

Added Executive Director Leonard: “We continue to raise the bar on our content at CONNECT, and attendees loved what we offered this year.  We’ve reached a level where our CONNECT program is valuable to all owners and managers, regardless of the type of contracting business they run.”

Be sure to mark your calendars for Power Meeting 2018, March 6-8, at the Hotel DeSoto in Savannah, Georgia. The theme will be “Future Proofing Your Business,” and its education, networking and proven solutions will enable you to define what’s ahead for your business.

For more information about QSC, visit www.phccweb.org/qsc, or contact qsc@naphcc.org.