Why Peer Groups Accelerate Success  ## Metadata - Author: [[The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast]] - Full Title: Why Peer Groups Accelerate Success - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/979cd977-f8b9-41d2-a469-34a42c035d04 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Business As A Life-Building Tool** - Victoria defines a business as a tool to build the life you want for yourself and employees. - Aligning business design with personal and employee life goals drives long-term decisions and culture. Transcript: Victoria Downing 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. And we deliver that in a lot of different ways. John Jantsch You know, I think I led in the bio there talking about making companies more profitable, but you kind of led with work-life balance. Do you feel like those two are very intrinsically connected? Absolutely. Victoria Downing 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 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, OK, now how can we modify, manipulate this business to get you the funds you need? ([Time 0:01:48](https://share.snipd.com/snip/369b09d1-b5b1-48f2-bc92-8b19c35874cc)) - **Decades Of Peer Group Growth** - Victoria started peer groups in 1990 and expanded them over 35 years into a network of over 200 companies. - Those member companies together produce over a billion dollars in annual revenue. Transcript: Victoria Downing I actually realized I have to update my bio because I've actually been doing this since 1990. So for 35 years, I've been doing this. 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. Have over 200 companies across the U.S. And Canada that all together produce over a billion dollars in revenue annually. So that's they're representing a lot of renovations, a lot of remodeling. ([Time 0:03:14](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b8f871d0-ec95-48cc-9dd4-798844a23753)) - **Long-Term Membership Keeps Compounding** - Mentor-level members tend to be larger, more profitable, and stay in groups for 15–20 years. - Long-term participation yields continuous incremental gains even after the initial rapid improvements. Transcript: Victoria Downing It certainly is the case that we have a number of people. So let me back up a step. We have two different sort of levels of our roundtable peer groups. And 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. But in roundtables, 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. And yes, is there some diminishing returns from the first fire hose, those first five years to 20 years in? ([Time 0:04:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/908dc84e-328c-4e30-b9fd-cd395296239b)) - **Invest In Tactical Peer Groups** - Invest in tactical peer groups for key staff like production, design, and finance to unify language and retention. - Use membership credits to fund team training and accelerate company-wide adoption. Transcript: John Jantsch Have you found that if nothing else is an amazing retention strategy as well? Yeah, yeah. Victoria Downing You know, I mean, most of the people that are in those, what we call tactical groups, they're 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 have found that the companies that are the most successful, and again, I got to 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 training. They can use it for production manager roundtable membership dues. That we're encouraging them to follow the lead of the best and invest in their people with dollars that they have in their pocket from us. ([Time 0:05:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/aaf1e1b6-0563-4572-9e0e-4d685d6efd9a)) - **Financial Reports Tell The Story** - Many remodeler owners are technicians whose financial reporting is messy and unreadable. - Clear, accurate reports are essential to treat a business like a tool and make the right strategic moves. Transcript: Victoria Downing It does in a couple of ways. One of the things I've 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 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. ([Time 0:07:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0b1dbe72-1c47-424a-b7cb-2d3a362ffbdc)) - **Remove Owner Bottlenecks** - Delegate decision authority to remove owner bottlenecks and enable growth. - If the owner controls every decision, growth stalls because the owner becomes the bottleneck. Transcript: Victoria Downing 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. ([Time 0:08:43](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f71e7b76-3085-4c07-b3e8-3620c5eab28b)) - **Leverage Peer Accountability** - Present transparent financials and commitments in peer groups and set two or three written commitments to report back. - Use peer accountability and community resources to solve implementation gaps quickly. Transcript: John Jantsch How does that kind of peer pressure, if for lack of a better term, actually help them grow? Victoria Downing Well, it's that there are nine other company representatives of nine other companies sitting there and 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 who's 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 one's 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 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. ([Time 0:09:35](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fb0b4817-8317-475b-8f90-6e665de12248)) - **Be Tech-Agnostic But Member-Led** - Stay technology-agnostic but listen to members about what works in practice and compile best practices. - Share member-tested tools and host webinars on AI and CRM adoption to spread practical innovation. Transcript: Victoria Downing One of the things that happens is we try to stay a little bit agnostic on what technology they want to use. 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 relax. I mean, 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. John Jantsch Yeah. Victoria Downing 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. ([Time 0:12:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/75d5b5cd-ab1a-438e-ba94-e617cd3ee532)) - **Match Groups By Metrics And Personality** - Place members carefully using competition checks, volume, job size, labor model, and DISC personality profiles. - Move members when personality conflicts arise and use facilitators to maintain group effectiveness. Transcript: 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. 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. Right. 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 have 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 DISC at all? John Jantsch Oh, yeah, sure. 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 flippin' quiet. So we got to throw an D in there to ramp it up or throw an I in there to give it some jazz, you know? Monitoring that and our members, first of all, this is, it's not a class. It's not, we're not hablim feeding them. 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 We like 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 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. ([Time 0:14:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0e492ad5-b0a5-4cb9-8da9-de3c0083a587)) - **Member Achieves Rapid Financial Gains** - A Canadian member reported 30% revenue growth and 36% gross profit growth within a year after joining. - They overhauled departments, implemented WIP processes, and now review key financials monthly. Transcript: Victoria Downing So as a matter of fact, I got an email this week and I printed it out so that I can 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 100% better understanding of the financials, WIP, budgeting, etc. 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. ([Time 0:17:07](https://share.snipd.com/snip/99f7fbfe-3428-4471-a3f0-43bd06566d1e)) - **Peer Groups Learn From Peer Groups** - Remodeler's Advantage participates in a meta peer group for peer-group operators to exchange ideas. - Business management ideas translate across industries and fuel continual improvement. Transcript: Victoria Downing Funny you should ask. I belong to something called the Council of Masterminds, which is a peer group for companies that do peer groups. We 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. ([Time 0:18:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/939625e6-d591-4d8d-84b4-1111eeda16d9))