Top 3 Systems That Will Make You The Most Money
>>> 🎧 Listen / Watch the full episode
Does it make you money? No?? Cut it.
Liz Chism joins The Quit Getting Screwed Podcast to reveal how simple, profit-driven systems can transform your construction business from chaos to clarity.
On this episode of The Quit Getting Screwed Podcast, business operations expert Liz Chism breaks down the Top 3 Systems That Will Make You the Most Money.
Liz built her first multimillion-dollar company by turning 100-hour workweeks into a streamlined, self-sustaining business, and now she helps contractors do the same. In this conversation, she shares how to evaluate every system in your business through one simple lens: “Does it make you money? If not, cut it.”
She dives into the foundational systems that drive real results: clarity in operations, accountability among your team, and tracking the numbers that actually matter. These aren’t theoretical concepts; they’re the same systems that have helped her clients double profits, step out of day-to-day chaos, and finally scale sustainably.
If you’re tired of spinning your wheels, this episode is a must-listen. You’ll walk away with practical steps to simplify, strategize, and systemize your contracting business so it runs like a well-oiled machine, without you doing it all.
🎧 Listen / Watch the full episode: Top 3 Systems That Will Make You the Most Money on The Quit Getting Screwed Podcast.
Ready to stop burning money?
Key takeaways from the episode
[6:12] Liz says she always starts with cutting. Like pruning a fruit tree, the business has to drop what no longer serves growth.
[6:48] Example: a kitchen-and-bath contractor who focused on baths doubled the business in three months because he was no longer stretched thin.
[9:17] She rejects giant SOP binders. She mentions an 89-page SOP as ridiculous and wants employees involved in building short, outcome-based processes.
[12:44] She uses live Google Docs with clients, reviewing the same questions repeatedly so the process stays alive instead of collecting dust.
[1:22] She used to wear burnout hours like a badge of honor, then changed how she saw growth after leaving the brewery path.
Questions answered in this episode
Where does Liz start with a stuck contractor?
With cutting and pruning. Remove what is not making money so the business can grow.
Can focusing on fewer job types grow revenue?
Yes. She describes a baths-focused remodeler whose business doubled in three months after dropping stretch work.
What is wrong with long SOP manuals?
Nobody reads them. She prefers short, outcome-based processes built with the team, not 89-page binders.
How does she keep processes alive?
Shared live Google Docs and repeated review questions with clients, not one-time documentation dumps.
Full episode transcript
Transcript cleaned from YouTube captions. Speaker labels only where clear. Bracketed [unclear] marks uncertain words. Liz Chism's wording is kept as spoken.
[0:04] hey guys it's Carolyn welcome back to the podcast where we talk about all the ways to run a better construction business I'm excited about our guest today we're talking about all things construction coaching have Liz Chism from Liz Chism coaching who's going to talk to us about processes and other ways to improve your business good morning Liz how are you good morning how are you it's a beautiful morning good thank you so much for taking on taking time to be on the show so before we jump into all the things you offer coaching tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into the this kind of business so yeah it started way back when I was 9 years old my dad is a third generation Floor Covering contractor and then when I he was when I was nine he started building Custom Homes starting with our own and then he started doing all sorts of custom homes and as a
[0:49] homeschooler I could grow to work with him and so I started working right alongside him I could Plum a bathroom tile a floor and roof a house by the time I was 16 so that's kind of where the construction side came into play uh met my husband and we got into the Brewing industry and we started a Craft brewery and obviously it has nothing to do with construction but it does have a lot to do with how to run a business and I was one of those business owners in the brew house so I was the master Brewer and I worked 100 hour weeks I
[1:22] wore it like a badge of honor I thought that that was how you grew a business you know you got to put in your time you got to pay your do you know debt to society so that you could be a successful business owner and reaching burnout uh realized that there had to be a better way and so I started putting systems and processes into place that didn't really help a whole lot uh what I needed was an operating system and that's what I ended up up doing and putting into the brewery is an operating system on how things actually ran which got me down to about 30 hours a week we were able to start a family we traveled a lot we were able to expand and grow our business to multi-millions so we've definitely were able to see this success while working less which most people dream of but
[2:08] never actually get there and so once we decided to get out of the beer industry and close down our Brewery contractors started coming to me and like okay you know construction and you know how to run a business and you know how to go from 100 hour weeks to 30 hour weeks how do you do it and so I started coaching contractors on how to put in an operating system as well so that they could get their life back and grow their
[2:37] business so you know when when you give contractor extra time do they actually know what to do with it or they still overwork no they'll they'll still [Laughter] overwork you know I just kind of you know talk about wanting all this extra time and and then you have extra time and you're like H what do I do with this extra time so I actually just had that same conversation with one of my guys he's hiring a project manager and I'm like okay so what are you going to do to grow your business now that you got a project manager he's like uh like okay let's go through this and figure out the next things that you need to be doing in your business that are high value high impact High leverage activities so that way your project manager can be on the job site you can
[3:23] stay off the job site because if you're not busy doing something else you'll go back right into that job site and start meddling with everything and then you know go from there absolutely so we talked talked about systems and processes what does that look like in a construction business you know what is that standard operating procedures yeah so I always go back to like a vehicle because everybody kind of understands that a little bit easier so if you think about a vehicle you have your brake system you have your transmission which is a system you have your engine which is a system and what
[4:00] happens is all these systems need to work together to make the car run to stop when it needs to stop to go when it needs to go and even with putting in
[4:11] Sops or standard operating procedures or even putting in a software program some type of system there's still the operations on where does that puzzle piece fit to make your business move in the direction you want it to move similar to like you can't just put a transmission in a car and expect it to go it also needs an engine and braks and all you know all the other systems with that and so if you think about your business like that you have your Marketing System this is getting more clients this is your or getting more leads you have your Sales Systems which includes your estimating and that's turning those leads into clients and then you've got your fulfillment and your fulfillment needs to continue the loop to create raving fans to create
[4:54] those repeat business and those referrals so that way your marketing is running smoothly and your sales are running smoothly and so on and so forth and so what ends up happening is you may put in some systems or you may put in some software programs but it's only one little part of your business and your operations are a mess so then what happens is the owner ends up plugging themselves as these like solve problem solvers into all these black holes between all the systems and that's how they end up getting stretch too thin because they're manually following up with leads or trying to follow up with their employees to follow up with leads and they're manually trying to get some more estimates out or micromanaging how to get estimates out so that way it can run faster and they can get more estimates out and those types of things
[5:40] and so when you think about your business and how it runs you need to understand how the operations runs and pull the owner out of it and have the systems run the business by the people
[5:53] running the business instead of the um owner being the I call them the CEO the chief everything
[6:05] officer absolutely so as a business owner systems and processes sounds like a very overwhelming project where do you
[6:12] start I always start with cutting like
[6:16] if you think about you know a fruit tree outside what do you do in Spring to make it grow you prune that thing or even in Fall depending on what it is uh in your business you've got to do a lot of pruning in order to allow growth to happen so that could happen on the bank statement side you know go through your bank statement see exactly what needs to be cut you know look at a line item it's like is this a nice to have thing or is this generating me revenue is this making me more money uh you can do it on the jobs you know what types of jobs are
[6:48] actually making me money you know for a guy who does kitchen and baths maybe focusing on baths is what you need to do you know one of my guys did that and his business doubled in three months because he didn't he wasn't stretched so thin on all these things and he made way more money on baths he barely broke even on kitchens so we just stopped the kitchens focused on baths and his business went out um and he always laughs because he's like Liz was right you know like I did less work and I got more money like how is that possible but it's really cutting out all the extra fat you know cutting out the employees that are not going to get you to that Next Level A lot of times people hire everyone to you know thinking that they're going to grow and then they
[7:34] don't grow but they never scale back their overhead and so really going in and saying okay what do I need to cut that's going to get me to that next level what needs to be pruned what's served me for a while and then now needs to be let go and so that's where a lot of contractors can get that freed up bandwidth to be able to focus on their operations and focus a little bit more on their business instead of just constantly working in their business and you know if you free up two to three hours a week and focus those two to three hours on growing your business you'll see massive tra change versus if you try to add two to three hours to your already full list then you're just going to be overwhelmed yeah so so we go and we start we by getting things that aren't serving us that take too much time or doing what aren't making us money then
[8:20] where do we start on creating the processes and the systems so I actually
[8:26] don't like Sops as much as I may for
[8:30] people I don't like them I don't think they work I don't think that they serve
[8:35] the business the way they're going to you know they should serve the business and that's because most Sops are done in statements and they're snapshots of what you're currently doing well if what you're currently doing is going to grow your business then you don't need Sops but most of the time what people are currently doing is not serving them and it's keeping them stuck where they are and it's just more of what they've been doing and it's not going to help them grow and so I switch all of my Sops to
[9:02] question-based Sops which means that the
[9:05] outcome or the target is in the question
[9:09] and it takes a few minutes to switch your brain around this but when you do it actually creates the ability to have
[9:17] your employees be involved in creating the processes and having clear outcomes for them to actually achieve so for instance I read somebody's sop I don't know it was months ago and and one of it was like 89 pages long it was ridiculous and one of the things was you know this long laundry list of stuff that they needed to do and one of the items said put cones outside um by trailer when
[9:44] parked on the street or something to that effect I'm like okay cool that's great how many of your guys are actually remembering to do that from reading an 89 page paper they're not and then guess
[9:55] who's who's enforcing that 89 page paper who's inserting themselves into that black hole of it not getting done the owner so now the owner is the SOP they
[10:06] become the person making sure everybody's doing what they should be doing because nobody's reading the Sops that you've spent hours creating but if you flip this to a question such as how do we create safe job sites and you have
[10:22] your employees answer that question they now remember because your goal is to not put cones out by the trailer the goal is to have a safe work environment and so when you flip it to questions and you have the outcome in the questions you can now have any question you want that's going to solve any problem in your business and your employees buy into that process because now you're saying I want a safe work site what does that look like and then they come up with the answers and it works and then how does that work when you're training training new people because you know I run a law and I have sop and um I deal with lawyers who are supposed to read things that don't right and they're like how do I do this I'm like I have this great manual here that
[11:07] tells you that nobody reads
[11:14] exactly so okay so you get invited but then how do you get other people that are coming under them to do the same so I do document those questions and a lot of times I work with the owner so I have libraries of questions and so I'll pull like oh we're working on you know a project manager so I have my project manager questions and I have you know best practices in there too so it's like guiding them on how things should be done or you know things that I've learned from working with clients and
[11:40] when you switch it to questions and you can put it on there now it's searchable how do you go and ask Chad GPT something how do I do X Y and Z it's in a question how do you do Google how do I do the XY and z h how do I do this how do I grow my business like YouTube how do I it's all questions that you're asking the search engine so I just flip it to questions and it's much easier to search a Google doc when it's in a question form because you now have the outcome you want and that's what you're searching for you know if I were to go to an sop that has cones by the trailer
[12:14] I'm not going to search should I put three cones by a trailer or should I put four cones by a trailer like you're not going to go search that so it's very difficult to go retrieve that information and find that information versus safety oh there's a whole list of
[12:29] all the safety things about our job site and one of them is putting cones by the trailer gotcha so like onboarding would you like ask them the question have them answer and then like insert the things that you do so I since everything's in
[12:44] Google Docs I actually just share the Google Doc with them and then we go through it together but then it also creates a live working document so we review those questions you know I've asked the same questions to my clients almost every quarter sometimes every month and I'm like okay now that you've got new information now that you've learned something what's different about this you know like your ideal client may
[13:10] change slightly as you're growing your business your you know values may change
[13:16] slightly not that your values have changed but how you're defining your values have changed um you know how you
[13:23] have a safe job site could slightly change depending on the type of work you're getting into you know for for my guy who does um you know the insulation in houses he has different equipment that they have to wear when they do the spray foam versus if they're just putting in the insulation and so your
[13:42] answers could change and so when you have everybody collaborating on the same document you can actually create notes and everybody can access it from their phone and so you can just add comments
[13:54] add extra pieces and stuff so it's a live working document so anybody coming in doesn't have to start from scratch answering those questions but they see all the questions there that they would have asked anyways or you've rattled off in a 10-minute orientation with them and they don't remember half of what you said and now they have a place that they can go to and be like how do I create safe job sites here's 10 things you know what do I need to wear to show up at the job site what does it mean to be on time what does punctuality mean you know those types of things now there's the
[14:28] answers to that and it makes it very important on what that goal is or what that outcome is and that's really all it is is when you have that clear outcome you now can create the process to reach that but most people don't have the clear outcome they just have a lot of busy work because that's what they've
[14:46] naturally done you know oh yeah I throw the cones out by the thing and I do this and I do that and all of a sudden it's like but why oh the why is in the
[14:54] question now I know that I'm doing this because of x y and z
[14:59] gotcha so then how how does that work with like onboarding existing team members that are already there to these new systems these new ideas that's where I just ask them questions you know because I just in fact I usually don't take notes like when I'm with my clients I take notes but when I'm facilitating with contractors and their team I'm like okay who's taking notes today okay there's the document okay what's the question and a lot of times I'll have them do like five minutes you know I have like five questions and I'll do five minutes and then we discuss it and we you know come up with we end up finding the issues that happen um the other way to collaborate with you know employees is
[15:41] what I call the Curiosity game and that
[15:45] is where you just ask your employees and I always set a timer I don't just make it hey let's just like think about this for 30 minutes because that's not going to work but I'm like hey five minutes and I want you to write down as many things as you can to to finish the phrase I wonder if we could do X Y and Z
[16:04] or I wonder how we could put in this process and it would have these results or I'm curious about this you'd be surprised at the ideas and things that
[16:16] your employees have seen but they have no way to share it with you in a way that's going to help improve the business and so by playing the Curiosity game you're actually asking them questions about what needs to go on in the business you know if you want to you know improve a hotel going to the board of directors is the last thing that you want to do you go to the Bellboy who's doing it all day long who's seeing everything all day long and then asking them for their input and so really just being curious and being like okay so what if we sto doing kitchens what would that look like I don't know maybe it'd be a bad idea maybe it'd be a good idea let's talk about this you know and so really engaging with your team in a
[16:57] collaborative way versus just okay do
[17:01] this now do this now this is the job show up on time do this I mean they get yelled at all day long and they just don't they just check out they show up when they feel like showing up or maybe not at all they kind of do their job they take a extra long lunch that hopefully you don't you know notice that they've clocked out you know in and out late and G they go home tired and exhausted and they're starting to look for another job and you wonder why there's no workers out there that want to work they may not want to work for
[17:34] you so in this Pro how long should this process take like when you where so you
[17:40] like start in sales and move through the rest of it how long should it take and what does that look like so I usually like to hit every point in your business and there's actually seven points in your business so there's sales and and I include estimating in that there's marketing fulfillment I even put in your customer Journey cuz really crafting what that looks like from your customers perspective your team your numbers and
[18:03] then your leadership which is also including your culture and so I like to hit every single one of those every single month so in seven months you're really focusing on something else in your business and what a lot of people do is they you know okay I want Sops I need systems and they go and systemize
[18:23] something that's easy to systemize they go and put in processes or me with
[18:29] something that's already working because there's four types of systems in your business there's the systems that are working and they're doing great and then there's systems that you're like this is really frustrating this is not working something's got to change but you're aware of it you're cognitively aware that something's got to change and then where most people are is the systems that are all stuck in their head and they don't know how to communicate it it's well I just do it this way I I don't know why well just do it this way this and they don't really know how to communicate it because it's all stuck in their head and then you have I call the fourth quadrant because I have a systems quadrant is I call it the dumpster fires like you don't know what you don't know and then all of a sudden you open up the can of worms you're like oh boy I didn't realize that we weren't gonna do this you know and so when
[19:17] you so when you look at your business
[19:20] you want to find either the things that are in your head that you need to communicate and delegate so you can free yourself up or you need to fix the problems that you're currently aware Ware of and you always want to go to that most immediate constraint so like
[19:34] the other day one of my guys was like I need a marketing system and I'm like yeah okay cool let's let's build one and he's like okay so you know I need a I need a marketing system I'm like well what do you want your Marketing System to do you know I'm asking him all these questions come to find out after you know about five or 10 minutes on a call with him that he didn't need a marketing system he doesn't have one but he's getting so many repeat business and referrals that he's out till next spring he does not need a marketing system what he needs and the bottleneck in his business is that if he were to double his business he doesn't have enough Subs to fill in the gaps and he needs to get a sub list and so that is what he started working on is okay what did what makes a good sub what do I want what are my expectations for a sub how
[20:21] do I work with a sub so that way I don't have to be at the job site 247 and they can kind of self-manage themselves like so we then put in a an sop answering all
[20:31] those questions and we literally typed out those questions and then answered them because you can give that piece of paper to a sub and be like what do I expect of Subs here it is I expect them
[20:42] to show up five minutes early not on time is not 10 minutes late you know like what does that actually mean and outlining it and answering all those questions and now he's like okay I have a sub list a week later he's like I have a sub list four deep I have four subs
[20:58] for every trade for you know to do my jobs now I can go focus on a marketing system now he has the pieces in place to
[21:06] go focus on something else and double his business and so always finding that most
[21:13] immediate constraint that thing that's causing the problems that if you freed that up you'd be able to actually you know leverage your business a little bit more that's where you really want to start and every business is different but playing the Curiosity game will actually help you unlock
[21:34] that so what three systems that you should Implement that would make you the most money as a contractor so there's getting more clients so that's marketing uh there's the charging more
[21:45] or increasing the value of your uh you
[21:49] know business so if you're also being a handyman and throwing in a light switch at people's houses and then building out
[21:58] you know a room addition you want to focus on something that's going to be a higher dollar amount so you want your average jobs to be increased and that
[22:09] system could mean raising your prices most most of the time they're not it could mean job costing and it could mean uh just focusing on different types of jobs um depending on what what you're doing and then the third one is really
[22:24] the Fulfillment side of turning in a job
[22:29] that turns your customers into raving fans because if you can get the repeat business and you can get the referrals from them you'll never need to Market your business again now obviously you will but yeah if you think about your business as relying on referrals and
[22:46] repeat business you will do your jobs differently you'll communicate with your clients differently you'll complete the job on time and not just let it drag out for months and months and months you know you'll show up on time and those types of things and so really focusing on those three things can exponentially grow your business without going and writing an entire Manual of processes nobody's going to
[23:14] read yeah everybody thinks that's the answer until they do it and then it doesn't work so contractors been a business a couple of years is you know overworked overwhelmed and they come to you what does that process look like with you how you work with them so I have something called the contractor operating system and I go through all of the different types of their business but I do it in the five s's so the first one is um you know cut down your stuff so
[23:45] it's really just getting rid of everything that's not serving your business um I call it simplify you know really just honing in on the Simplicity of what you're doing and that's honestly the hardest step for anybody to do um
[24:00] because it means saying no to stuff and we have fomo and then the next one is to
[24:06] strategize and this is to create the plan where is that next immediate constraint in our business what do we need to focus on what's not working the easiest thing to do is to focus on the things that are working to hire the people that do the jobs that we like to do versus hiring people that do the jobs
[24:24] we don't like to do and so really strategizing like how are we going to tackle this you know what is our where are we now where do we want to go and what's the Gap in between um so some of it's goal setting and I love goal setting but a lot of times we have these massive goals and then we don't know how to come bring it down to the micro level of what do we need to do regularly then the next one is systemize and this is where we systemize your marketing systemize your sales systemize your estimating we ask those questions I ask them again all the time and most of the time they change or a lot of times they don't even know the answer to them and this is is where we find the bottlenecks in their business like oh you don't know who your ideal client is because just saying that somebody with a house and they they breathe is not your ideal
[25:10] client um and so we systemize every part
[25:15] and sometimes we have a full manual that they are like cool I've got this manual and sometimes it's creating just Clarity in their business because it's really easy to communicate Clarity you know uh Southwest started on the back of a napkin or so the story goes and it was
[25:32] like we're going to fly here here and here and this is it this is all we're going to do it was very simple and then from there it grew and so sometimes it's
[25:42] just creating that Clarity like what are we doing how are we doing it and how are we communicating that to each other to get that done so sometimes it's written documentation sometimes it's videos I love loom for screen recording um I even
[25:57] coach my guys on how to just do a voice recorder in the car on the way to work and talk about their business and what they do and how they do it because they can take that voice recording and send it to one of your new employees and have them Listen to Your Daily Journal for the last month and now they're caught up to speed on your business and they've had that buy in they believe in what you do and how you do it and you're not sitting there saying the same stories over and over again to every single person that you're you know um like bringing on your business and then uh the next one is sustain or create sustainability and that's where you create the Rhythm you know there's never should be a time in your business where you put all your systems in place and then you ignore them and go back to
[26:44] running your business it needs to be part of the fabric of your business it needs to be how your business you know runs um with some of my guys set up like weekly meetings where they go through questions with their guys like hey what's the answer you know how do we keep J safe job sites and their employees repeat this is how we do safe job sites like you go through the Sops
[27:06] from the question-based standpoint because now they're in questions and it's really easy to have the back and forth with your employees and review those and be have them become part of who you are and how you do things and then the last one is scaling and really when you have the first four s's in place it's just a matter of rinse and repeat you know okay now you're at another level what's serving us what's not serving us what's working what's not working okay how do we put a plan into place what's the obstacles how do we remove the obstacles okay what system do we need in place to fix that and make it sustainable okay how do we make this sustainable okay now our business is growing and then you just rinse and repeat it and so that's basically what I walk my clients through in a coaching level and then you know we also you know
[27:53] I write sop sometimes for them depending on what they need you know and I've even gotten on call with their team and done the Curiosity game with them just to really create that collaboration kind of depending what is needed in their business but for the most part we go through the 5s's and we make a business that actually works for them versus a business that has a nice little stack of papers that nobody reads yeah absolutely so tell me about
[28:20] your favorite client success story um probably one of my most recent ones uh it's a guy he actually build out basement and when he first came to me he
[28:32] was not making a lot of money um didn't understand his numbers and did anything
[28:38] from basements to handyman work and
[28:43] thankfully he got on the very first Mastermind call that I host every single week and I'm constantly asking my guys
[28:51] okay what's our next immediate constraint what is that next thing that we need to do because if we can solve one problem every single week your business will move forward cut the fluff
[29:00] let's solve a problem and so he's just like I I just you know don't have a lot of money I can't really afford this I can't do this and I'm like okay in five minutes we went through his job costing figured out how he could fill in a couple of holes figured out what he wasn't charging for and within a week
[29:21] made 7,500 extra dollars and now that
[29:25] he's focusing on one thing which is basements and not all this other stuff he's building on a team and every single job he's raised his prices and he hasn't gotten a no yet and so it it's honestly
[29:38] partly just the the psychology and the confidence to be able to raise your prices and know that you have somebody supporting you behind you to do that and
[29:48] can help you put in the infrastructure and the operating system to sustain that value that you're giving to the
[29:56] client that's pretty amazing and a lot of it too is like being a business owner and you're in it there there's so many things that you don't see because you see them see them every day and having a coach perspective be like oh what about this or you could fix it this way uh so
[30:13] how often do you meet with your clients typically so we do um I do I call it on
[30:20] demand coaching via email and text and that's where we collaborate on the actual documents and I send them questions and they'll answer them as in typing them out and then I give them feedback and I'm like you're you're not answering this this is like a textbook answer this is not the answer for for your business you know so I give feedback on that and then we meet as a group once a week for a mastermind call
[30:43] got very cool so somebody wanted to find out more about you and more about your coaching where would they go just
[30:59] I'm looking forward to seeing you at Mile High and and hopefully we're not speaking at the same time and I can come see yours I always love to learn about systems and process as a fellow business owner yeah it'll be fine I'm on one of the VIP sessions in the morning so awesome well good deal see you soon
[31:14] thanks yep sounds good
