“We win a lot of our smaller jobs and basement projects with our fun, flexible innovative designs,” says Adam Rossi, who owns Blue Sky Remodeling with his wife, Julie.
Despite its small size, Blue Sky provides full remodeling services, handling construction management and some of the design while relying on architects for projects that involve structural engineering.
“Because we are small, we have to really focus on what we’re good at,” Julie says. “For example, our director of marketing works for us 40 hours a month.” Another small business provides IT support, and Blue Sky is starting to outsource more of its bookkeeping so that the office manager can focus on sales.
Adam learned from his nine years in the Army that to be efficient, those working in the field must have access to information. To that end, Blue Sky’s employees have iPhones and laptops, and the company uses BuilderTrend’s scheduling and communication tools to keep in touch with clients and with one another.
The Rossis set a goal to grow the company’s dollar volume by more than one-third in 2014, and they have a plan to get there. “We’ve got marketing and advertising campaigns working right now, and we’re already right on track or slightly ahead of [our goal],” Adam says.
Takeaways
- The Rossis benchmark their company against the Remodeling Big50 and the Remodeling 550, comparing characteristics such as the number of employees against their own numbers.
- They worked with a business coach for a few years to gain some of the business know-how they needed but hadn’t learned while studying engineering in college.