Craig Clark –
Clark Building Services

Doing everything, winning the wrong work, and not making enough margin. Here’s how Craig fixed all three.

Where things were at

Craig had work. He had demand. On paper, things looked okay.

But underneath that, he was stretched thin and losing direction. He was taking on everything — every job, every client, every request — trying to be the guy who fixes it all. The workload was piling up, the standards were slipping, and Craig was doing as much as one person physically could. To grow, he knew something had to change.

The margins weren’t where they should have been either. He wasn’t charging himself or his crew out properly. The work was there but the money wasn’t reflecting it.

He’d been watching Jon’s videos for about six months before reaching out, and kept asking himself why someone was putting out that much useful content for free. Then he realised the videos were only part of it. The real work was in the implementation.

What we worked on

The first conversation made one thing clear: Craig was doing too much. Trying to serve everyone and take on every job wasn’t a strength — it was holding him back.

We started with the niche. Craig made the decision to focus exclusively on high-end architecturally designed homes at $500,000 and above. That meant letting go of the smaller jobs he’d been holding onto as ‘bread and butter’ — which, once he did, freed up his attention for the clients and projects worth winning.

• Marketing machine — building relationships with architects, directing all marketing effort toward that specific audience
• Sales process — a proper quoting process, a detailed printed and bound client proposal, and in-person meetings to walk clients through it
• Pricing confidence — charging proper margins and backing himself when up against cheaper competition
• Team systems — replacing verbal instructions with documented processes so the crew knew exactly what was expected
• Mindset shift — chunking everything down, simplifying, and focusing on managed growth rather than reacting to whatever came in

What happened

Craig won a job where he was the most expensive quote on the table. His margin was 20%. He was charging himself and his guys out at proper rates. And he got it.

That’s what a good sales process does. When you sit down with a client, walk them through a proper proposal, and show them the value — price stops being the only thing they’re looking at.

The team side changed too. Documented processes replaced the verbal instructions that used to get lost or misunderstood. Jobs started coming in to the standard Craig expected, without him having to be everywhere at once.

“I won a job where I was the most expensive… my margins were at 20% and I was charging both myself and my guys out at more.”

— Craig Clark, Clark Building Services

What made the difference

Niching down felt like a risk. Letting go of smaller jobs when you’re not sure the bigger ones will come — that’s uncomfortable. But trying to be everything to everyone is a race to the bottom on price and a guaranteed path to burnout.

When you focus on one type of work, your marketing gets sharper, your reputation builds faster, and the clients you want start finding you instead of the other way around.

The other shift was getting the team out of his head and onto paper. Written processes take time to build but they pay back every single day — fewer mistakes, less frustration, and a crew that knows what good looks like without needing Craig to show them every time.