It took the stillbirth of one of his children 13 years ago to make Tom DiBenedetto slow down. “The priest was saying prayers, and my cell phone would not stop ringing,” he says. “I realized that my family has to come first. I knew what I needed to do but I never did it, and I didn’t necessarily know how to do it.”
Difficult as it was, DiBenedetto, owner of TDB Construction, in West Nyack, N.Y., created a new vision for his home life and restructured a business that had been “growing fast but not smart.”
Not every remodeling business owner faces such a dramatic and life-altering event. But, says Clay Nelson, veteran remodeler and president of Clay Nelson Life Balance, “I haven’t yet met a remodeler who’s in his 50s who didn’t say, ‘I missed my kids. I ruined my health. My marriage is struggling.’”
None of this is surprising. American life moves at a fast clip, and a recent Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index found that 57% of small-business owners work six days a week (20% work all seven days). Stress-related medical issues are high, and despite recent declines in the rate, nearly 50% of U.S. marriages end in divorce.
With the economy in flux, many remodelers are working harder to sell more jobs. They’re laying off employees and taking on more responsibilities. While finding a balance between work, family, and self — “work-life balance” — is being taken more seriously by employers and employees; in a down market, it may also be the first thing to take a hit.
It needn’t — and shouldn’t — be that way. What follows are profiles of two remodelers who recognize the importance of work-life balance: one who has found a happy medium and one who is still figuring out a way to manage.
Baseball First
“I worked just to survive,” says DiBenedetto who was 22 years old in 1990 when his parents passed away and he decided to start a business to support himself and his brother. “I was hiring subs and had three employees. The office was the front seat of my truck,” he says.
Eventually he got a commercial contract, which lasted two years, renovating a hospital. Then his first child was born. DiBenedetto worked 70 hours a week in what he calls “survival mentality.” “I wasn’t thinking [about] quality of life,” he says. “I figured things would work themselves out.” He took every job he could just to get his name out. “I was making great money, but it wasn’t worth it. I never got to school functions, never saw my son. I wouldn’t say the company was first, but it was in the forefront.”
His “aha” moment came in 1997 when his daughter Brianna died during his wife’s labor. “Her death was much harder for me than losing my parents,” DiBenedetto says. It made him open his eyes to what was important. “My wife and I spent hours discussing what we wanted to do: work closer to home, go to school functions, coach baseball games. We needed proper life insurance and better health insurance benefits. We realized that we weren’t going to be rich monetarily but in other ways.”
DiBenedetto decided to write a business plan. He put down goals and how he thought he could reach them. He also wrote down “the little goals in between that tell me I’m going in the right direction.” He says, “Was that first business plan the type you’d bring to a bank? No. But it was a business plan I could understand. It was what was important to me. I followed it and didn’t veer from it.”
DiBenedetto realized that he needed to hire and delegate. “You can never get someone to replace you, but you can get people who share the same values,” he says. “Everyone who works for me has had the epiphany about how important family is.”
DiBenedetto’s plan called for a 40-hour workweek and no weekend work. The first day of school is an official company holiday. He believes in helping co-workers accomplish personal goals. “If they’re personally happy, they’ll be happy in business. They’re not here for a job; they’re here to make a living at something they feel a part of.”
Once he began hiring, he made a chart of boxes, each of which represents responsibilities that different positions are held accountable for. “I manage the boxes; for example, I don’t go into QuickBooks or interfere with [off-site project manager] Glenn [Maier’s] RFPs. I just manage how Glenn’s ordering affects production, make sure things are tied together and move freely.”
DiBenedetto and his wife, Dawn, now have five children, one of whom is adopted. After Brianna’s death, Dawn, an early childhood educator, decided to stay home, and the couple make every effort to live within their means. Instead of taking all seven family members out to the movies, they hold movie nights at home. DiBenedetto writes family appointments into his date book. All his children play baseball, and he coaches several of their teams. He and Dawn make sure to have a date night at least once a month.
Calls have been down nearly 70% this year for DiBenedetto, and he says he’s hitting the pavement more and attending more builder and committee meetings. “I’m spending more time in business development. Things are strained, but I’m still maintaining the rules for separating work and family.”
Case Study
A full plate does not begin to describe Phil Herzegovitch’s current situation. Owner of Daedalus Design, in Danbury, Conn., for the past eight years, Herzegovitch is married with a six-year old daughter. His wife, Michel, a full-time receptionist, is pregnant with twins due in September. His parents — his mother is 74 and his father 88 — live with the Herzegovitches. Neither parent drives a car. The Daedalus Design office is in Herzegovitch’s home. In December 2007 his only employee, a carpenter, left the job. Now Herzegovitch is on his own.
With Herzegovitch’s permission, Remodeling spoke with Nelson, the life-balance consultant and former “nailbelt wearing contractor.” “This guy is unstoppable,” Nelson says, “but he’s got more things going on than any one human can delegate.”
Herzegovitch has an eclectic background: He was a graphic designer who had gone to art school but also had studied aeronautical engineering. For a time, he was an automotive technician and managed a body shop. Then he owned a repair shop. He did renovation projects for family and friends and got into the remodeling business because it “blended the design with hands-on aspects.”
Like most small-business owners, Herzegovitch began as a sole proprietor, but four years ago he restructured as a limited liability company (LLC). He’s working on his Certified Graduate Remodeler (CGR) designation from the National Association of Home Builders Remodelers and is a member of the National Association of the Remodeling Industry and the National Kitchen & Bath Association. He reads trade publications and attends trade shows and seminars. In other words, he’s working hard to be professional.
He has no written business plan. His 2007 volume was $245,000, and he’d like to increase that by 25%. He does seven to 10 jobs a year, mostly kitchens, baths, and decks — usually one major project over $100,000; the rest are smaller jobs from $10,000 to $30,000.
His day begins by driving his parents wherever they may need to go. Then he gets to work between 8:30 and 9 a.m. By 5 p.m. he’s back at his home-based office doing paperwork and returning phone calls. His parents watch his daughter while Herzegovitch finishes up contracts and bids. His wife takes their daughter when she gets home and Herzegovitch cooks dinner. Afterward, there’s family time and then he’s back to office work.
Two years ago he took the extended family to Greece — his parents’ homeland — for several weeks, but for him it was a working vacation. Despite a busy schedule, Herzegovitch is not unhappy, although he wishes he had time to tinker on his 1967 Camaro.
Work-life balance is different for everyone and doesn’t mean that each portion of one’s life has to be given equal time. The way you manage your work and personal life just has to be right for you.
But clearly, Herzegovitch — who loves what he does and says he is glad to be able to care for his elderly parents — is frustrated. “I feel like I’m chasing my tail a lot, especially lately since I’m putting out so much more paper and am up against more contractors [for jobs],” he says. “Every prospective client wants an estimate and then they may not get back to you, so I’m putting together lots of proposals. That affects [the time I can spend with my wife]. By the time I’m done, my wife is asleep. You don’t wake a sleeping wife.”
Something’s Gotta Give
“Herzegovitch needs to know what to ask for, and ask for it,” Nelson says. “Train a workforce instead of being the workforce.” Nelson, a twin himself, says, “Having twins in his life is a blessing, but if he thinks he’s not getting sleep now — watch out.”
Nelson outlines the following suggestions for Herzegovitch:
- Get clear on how much money he needs to have every month, including the reserves he’ll need for when his wife is home with the new babies. People have to know the monthly net and how that amount will pay the bills.
- He should write down everything he does in 15-minute increments — except for bathroom and sleeping — for seven days. Even what he eats, where he eats, and how he eats because that’s the nutritional side of work-life balance. From that list he can figure out what part of what he does can be done by another person. He should design a job description to tell him who he needs to hire.
- A business plan will show what you don’t know about your business. Writing that plan will also give you 60% of your marketing plan. He’ll discover his hot points, what he does best. He needs to know the competition’s strengths and weaknesses. Then he can figure out his niche, and market that.
- He absolutely must get a Web site up. That’s where nearly 70% of remodeling work is found by clients. He should also use technology so he can be more efficient.
- He’ll need to recharge his batteries. If he wants to spend two hours a week doing something for himself, he’ll have put that into his calendar. The next three or four years will be about time on a clock. Every move he makes should be planned or the circumstances of his life will take over. He shouldn’t go anywhere without a watch or PDA.
- Finally, [Herzegovitch] has to take care of himself physically — go to the gym, eat right, get enough sleep. He has to be able to shut off his brain. And when his brain is on, he has to be present. The only way he’ll be able to do this is if he can meet his financial needs through others. He’s good, but no one is that good to go it alone.
Herzegovitch wants to hire someone but wonders how he can afford to do so in the current economic climate. And, he admits, he’s very particular. “If [a carpenter] doesn’t meet my standards, I get a bit anal about it,” he says. “Every project I do is a reflection of me personally.”
Nelson believes that there are good people looking for work and that Herzegovitch can hire effectively by “selling his tenacity, desire, and willingness to get the job done.”
As for the costs of hiring, Victoria Downing, president of the peer review group Remodelers Advantage, offers a simple calculation: salary plus labor burden (typically 35% to 50% of salary) equals the cost of an employee. Divide that cost by your targeted gross profit percentage. “The result will be the additional amount you have to sell and produce to pay for the employee and to maintain the gross profit margin.”
For example, if an office manager is paid $40,000 and has an additional $20,000 in burden, the total cost is $60,000. Divide that by your 35% gross profit target and you’ll find that you need to sell and produce an additional $170,000. “If you could get rid of all the administrative functions that you now cover, do you think you could sell and produce this much more?” Downing says. “The time you need to work would probably be cut down by 25% because you’ve reduced your tasks and taken off an entire hat.”
Downing usually suggests hiring a field worker first. “You can make more money with brains than brawn,” she says. “After that an office manager would be my next hire.” Don’t discount the idea of a part-timer or a “virtual” employee for office work.
Whether your business is large or a one-person operation, whether you’re single or have a family, you’re balancing work, family, and self. Each component needs to be fed in order to survive. “Work-life balance is very important,” Downing says. “A rested owner is an owner who works at the top of his or her productivity and is someone who can be more creative at problem-solving.”
