I talk with a lot of remodelers, and most of them believe they’re doing effective training within their business. Most of them are wrong.

The military trains constantly during peacetime, so it performs under pressure. Professional athletes spend far more hours practicing than playing. Firefighters I’ve watched train one to two hours a day, every day, so the job becomes automatic when it matters. Remodeling companies rarely come close to that level of commitment, and the ones that do separate themselves fast.

I saw this play out after the 2008 crash. I was leading a group of 14 top remodelers, and by 2010, nine of them had seen sales stall or drop while five had grown. The difference wasn’t luck. The five that grew had increased their training investment during the downturn.

Where Training Breaks Down

Companies make the same mistakes over and over, and a few stand out as the most costly.

The first is treating training as optional. I’ve watched an organization thrive under leadership that made practice mandatory, then watch results slide the moment a new leader made it voluntary. If training matters, it can’t be the first thing cut when a schedule gets tight, or a client visit comes up.

The second is leaders trying to do all the training themselves. That’s usually less effective, not more. Your team tunes out one voice repeating the same material. A better model is to act as the choreographer of training rather than the sole performer, pulling in different voices from your team to teach different skills.

Another is assuming training is only for new hires. Veterans need it just as much, maybe more, since they’re often driving the bulk of your production or sales. Skipping training for your top performers because they’re already good is how they stop getting better.

How to Actually Get Better

Once the culture problem is solved, the tactics matter. Three practices make the biggest difference.

Start with a practice plan, not a vague intention to improve. Pick a 30-day window and commit to something every day, even if it’s only 
30-45 minutes.

Do role practice, not passive learning. Listening to a podcast or attending a seminar counts as input, not practice. Real improvement 
comes from reps, whether that’s role-playing client objections, running simulations of a first home visit, or recording yourself and reviewing it afterward. If your team resists the term “role play,” call it something else. One company I know rebranded it as simulations and saw people engage with it far more willingly.

Get a coach. This doesn’t require an expensive consultant. It can be a peer in your business who agrees to hold you accountable. Every professional athlete, from tennis to golf, has multiple people in their corner giving feedback. There’s no version of mastery that happens in isolation.

Training that works isn’t complicated. It’s mandatory, shared across your team, it includes your veterans, and it’s built around a real plan with real 
accountability. Companies that treat practice as an investment come out of hard stretches ahead of those treating it as an afterthought.