In the zone: business coach Clay Nelson helps custom builders find their own sweet spot

Custom Home, Sept-Oct, 2002 by Bruce D. Snider

Custom builder Brace Giffin had only just met Clay Nelson, a business coach who specializes in the custom building and remodeling industries, and already Nelson was changing his life. Over dinner with a mutual friend, Giffin described a recent trip to Vietnam, where he had helped excavate the plane-crash site of his uncle, an American pilot shot down over that country in 1965. "Clay asked, 'What are you going to do with your power about this?'" remembers Giffin, who replied that he was planning to write a book. Nelson asked, "When are you going to finish it by?" The question provided just the push Giffin needed to get serious about the project. Six months later, he says, "Guess what I'm doing for an hour each day? I'm working on my book." And guess who, for four months, has been his business coach?

In many ways, Nelson's coaching work with Giffin has been an extension of that first conversation over dinner. With all his clients, Nelson begins with pointed questions about their goals--in personal life, family life, and business--and helps them create a plan to achieve those goals. "He asks, 'What's the next big thing you want to accomplish?' He's very big on 'By when?'" Giffin says. Then he follows through, with weekly one-hour phone calls, to ensure that the client sticks with the plan.

Stephen Hann, a Stafford, Texas, custom builder, likens Nelson's coaching to the help he has received from other mentors in his career--with one important difference: "I wouldn't feel comfortable calling on them weekly." The coach/ client relationship also gives Nelson permission to push Hann harder than a mentor might. As a result, Hann says, "I have better tools today to be direct with people, to he a more effective leader, manager, friend, dad." After a year of coaching, Hann remains so enthusiastic that he has put his entire management team through at least one of Nelson's seminars.

Defining goals, making a plan, following through: Anyone who has read a few self-help books will find the principles familiar, but that doesn't make them any less effective. And decades of involvement in residential construction have given Nelson special insight into the paradox that every custom builder must grapple with. As Giffin explains it, "You're responsible for everything that happens, yet you have to give up so much responsibility to make it all happen" As a result, "A lot of builders tend to be control monsters." The remedy lies in teaching others and delegating responsibility. But, Giffin admits, "For a lot of us, including myself, that's really hard to do."

That is where the coach steps in. Unlike a business consultant, Nelson explains, "I don't tell people anything. I ask them what they want, and I ask them if they know how to get there. And they all want the same thing. They want more time to have a better life." Whether that means more time for family, for personal pursuits, or to grow their business, the path to the goal is usually the same: "They have to start replacing themselves." Hoarding control can work in a young business, Nelson says, "But going from $2 million to $8 million it doesn't work. And going from $8 million to $20 million, you'd better be a master team builder or the company is going to own you."

Before he met Nelson, Giffin was headed down that road. In only four years, with an aggressive mission statement, his company, Giffin & Crane in Santa Barbara, Calif., had grown from $2.5 million in annual volume to $10 million. But something important was lacking. With Nelson s coaching, Giffin zeroed in on the missing ingredient and began to rethink his mission statement: "What if it were that Giffin & Crane should be the custom builder having the most fun in Santa Barbara?"

That new course has required staff development, improved communication, and resisting old patterns, but the results have been rewarding. "One of the things Clay is good at is showing custom builders how we fill up our lives taking care of others," says Giffin. Breaking the habit is difficult, he says, but when you do, "All of a sudden there's a lot more room to do more for your community, for yourself, to make your business more successful."

Thanks, coach.