Description

It's 1:20 in the morning and Craig Eubanks couldn't go to sleep without getting this one out — because this conversation is too important to wait.

Every small business owner in this country is feeling the squeeze right now. Material costs are up 40.5% since February 2020. Steel up 13.1%. Aluminum up 22.8%. Lumber at its highest price since 2019. And the Midwest is getting hit harder than anywhere else.

So what do you do when your costs go up but the guy down the street is still charging just over material cost? You can't eat the difference. You can't race him to the bottom. And you can't pretend it isn't happening.

In this episode Craig gets real about what is actually going on in the economy for small contractors right now — no politics, no fluff, just the honest conversation that most people are afraid to have publicly.

Topics covered:

• Why construction material costs are up 40.5% since 2020 and what that means for your bottom line
• The most dangerous thing happening in the fence market right now
• What happens to the customers who go with the cheap guy — and why they always call you to fix it
• Why competing on price is a race nobody wins
• 4 things you can do right now to protect your margins and build something that lasts through any economy

If you have ever lost a job to someone charging just over material cost — and then gotten the call six months later to fix the mess — this episode is for you.

A huge thank you to our sponsors who make the Fence Guy Podcast possible:

🔩 FenceTrac — The smarter way to build fence
🏗️ Brand Builders — Helping contractors build their brand
📋 Contractor Accelerator — Tools to grow your contracting business
🔩 Orlando Hinge — Quality hardware for the fence industry
⚡ ZND — Powering the fence industry
🌟 J.C. Gury — Industry leader in fence products
🤖 FenceGPT — AI built specifically for fence contractors
📱 mySalesman — Smarter sales tools for contractors
🔨 Titan — The gold standard in post drivers