Becoming an entrepreneur is a dream a lot of people have especially after getting passed over for a promotion or being laid off from their job.
However not many actually take the next necessary steps to realize that dream.
One profession that sees fewer people wanting to enter is that of becoming a new home builder. There are so many financial and legal hurdles to jump over that a lot of people settle for simply much easier businesses to open like a Second Hand store or a Food Truck.
Today there are very few young people waking up in the morning thinking ‘today is the day I start building houses’ and that is the crux of the problem. Very few sons or daughters of home builders are neither encouraged to take over the family business nor actually want to take it over after watching their parents struggle with the ups and downs of homebuilding.
Even if you did want to become a new builder there is still no easy entry in becoming a custom home site or modular home builder.
As a site builder, the new business person has to learn everything on their own, even if they had worked for another builder at one time. Understanding how to market their business, work with customers, design homes, get contracts signed, hire subcontractors, have inspections completed, obtain permits, etc are lessons most site builders learn on the job.
New modular home builders have to know exactly the same things as their site builder siblings but with a twist. Since 65-80% of the house is built offsite in a modular home factory they must learn which steps affect them more than others.
For example, working with subs is really different for modular builders as there is less work to do at the jobsite. They also have to learn about delivery, crane sets and set crews. It’s a twist not for the faint of heart.
If site builders get OJT (on the job training) through self imposed lessons simply because there is nobody training them on the proper processes you would think that new modular home builders would be blessed with tons of training from the modular home factories.
But alas, that is rarely the case.
Related Article: Five Reasons Why New Modular Home Builders Aren’t Entering the Business
However, there are some great new ways for young people that want to become modular home builders succeed.
One is a new program being designed by the team at Modcoach that will insure every new modular builder gets the training they need directly from their factory.
Another way is for a franchiser to begin offering new modular builders a different way to enter the business.
Both ways will give the new modular home builder a step up on their site-built competitors.
Once either or both of these pathways to success are ready for the new modular home builder, the modular home industry itself must embrace them and promote it. Target Marketing to young people and others to become modular home builders is a rare commodity but what an opportunity our industry will have it we begin doing it.
Watch for future announcements about the Modcoach “Gate to Great” training system.
Gary Fleisher (the Modcoach) is a housing veteran, editor/writer of Modular Home Builder blog and industry speaker/consultant. [email protected]
