Hidden Profits in Plain Sight – Bobby Giurintano on Auditing the Auditors

Rishi Srivastava (00:00)
Welcome to Finance at the JobSite, the podcast where construction finance meets the field. I’m your host Rishi Srivastava, founder of Being Human. In each episode, I sit down with construction CFOs, controllers, owners, project managers, IT leaders, ERP consultants, and industry experts to uncover how they connect the back office with the field, choose and implement technology, manage cash flow, and drive profitable projects.

Whether you are running the numbers, leading the team, or designing the systems that keep projects moving, this is your place to learn what’s working, what’s broken, and what’s next in construction finance.

Rishi Srivastava (00:41)
Hello everyone, today our guest is Bobby Giurintano Bobby, welcome.

Bobby (00:44)
Hello Rishi, how are you sir?

Rishi Srivastava (00:46)
Okay. First section here, Bobby, is on your personal and entrepreneurial journey. Bobby, you had a fascinating career path from hockey aspirations to founding premium recovery experts. What motivated you to pivot into the world of profit recovery and business consulting?

Bobby (01:05)
Yeah, well, I my dream was always to be a professional hockey player, but I lacked the key ingredient, which was talent. So I could have practiced 24 hours a day, it wouldn’t have made a difference. But anyway, I’m still a huge hockey fan. I just don’t play professionally, obviously. So.

Rishi Srivastava (01:12)
Okay.

Bobby (01:18)
Now I spent 20 years in corporate sales from the same company in the office equipment business. And as much as I loved the company and the people that I worked for, it was very unrewarding. You really weren’t really helping people. mean, yeah, you help some people solve some problems, but I wanted to do something way more rewarding. So I always found expense and cost reduction a great outlet because that’s really supporting companies in a positive way, helping them reduce some of their expenses that tend to be very high to help them create a better company.

and ultimately, he reached their goals a little bit faster. So yeah, I wanted to find things that were more niche that weren’t being talked about by everyone out there. And I landed on a few and yeah, and that’s kind of how I got things going. And it has been absolutely awesome and very enjoyable.

Rishi Srivastava (02:02)
Yeah, hockey is a very competitive sport.

Bobby (02:06)
Yes, incredibly competitive.

Rishi Srivastava (02:07)
You spent nearly 20 years in sales and account management before launching your own firm. What lessons from that time most shaped how you run your business today?

Bobby (02:17)
⁓ yes.

Failure is just part of the business. Okay, you’re going to fail a lot and you use the baseball reference a lot. mean, nowadays guys don’t even bat 300 anymore, but you’ll be back 250 and hit whatever home runs and RBIs and then making 20, 30, $40 million a year, but they failed way more than they succeed. you have to understand no matter how good you are at business or good at sales or whatever, there’s gonna be a learning curve and there’s gonna be a failure for a while. It just comes part of the territory. And obviously you as a business owner yourself and with a startup, I mean, you understand exactly how it

So you just have to understand that it’s gonna take time effort and just keep going So I said there’s four things four ingredients that make anyone successful. I call it epic Its effort patience improvement and consistency So those are the four things that I feel like if you stick to those principles, you will eventually hit your goal

Rishi Srivastava (02:58)
Thanks.

I really like that acronym effort patience

Bobby (03:08)
Yes, I gotta give a

shout out to my buddy Raj, the car. I had him in different order and he goes, wait a minute, that’s epic. And I was like, oh yeah, it is.

Rishi Srivastava (03:17)
Yeah, yeah, these acronyms are so important, you we as humans, we can’t remember a lot of things, you know, you put that acronym there, suddenly it’s memorable.

Bobby (03:26)
True.

Rishi Srivastava (03:27)
What was the aha moment that made you realize there was a major opportunity in recovering overpayments for companies?

Bobby (03:33)
Oh, yeah, I mean, you know, for one of my offerings, which is workers comp premium recovery, I had met a friend at an event, you know, years prior, and he had mentioned to me, these are industries that are really good for what I do. So I had referred him a couple of my clients and he got them back, you know, nice sums of money as a refund. So I said, you know, I’m like, there’s gotta be other opportunity here for this. So I reached out to him and I said, hey, man, if I was to, you know, leave my current company and start my own business and work together with you, is that something that you’d be interested in? And he was like, absolutely.

Rishi Srivastava (03:57)
Okay.

Bobby (04:03)
Absolutely,

so Yeah, we just got the conversation and learned that there are lots of companies out there that you know They’re great at what they do, but they can’t keep an eye on everything and there’s you know There’s always money to be found somewhere So you just need an expert to get involved to find that money because they’re great at what they do But they’re not always the best they’re just knowing where you know the money is leaking and certain things that are just out of their expertise so Yeah, it was kind of just talking with my buddy Chris and just learning more about his business that inspired me to kind of keep pushing for

and figure out how I could help companies save money.

Rishi Srivastava (04:35)
Yeah, I mean having those early people help you take the plunge is so important.

Bobby (04:41)
Yes, yes. Well, luckily I had a good relationship with them and they had success with some of the accounts I referred to them before I even got involved. So I knew it worked and I knew they did a great job because the clients I referred them to were super happy. So it’s kind of like, you you work with someone, you got the reviews firsthand, like, wait a minute, maybe there’s something here. And then after having a more lengthy conversations, I realized it’s a great opportunity to go out there and help companies.

Rishi Srivastava (05:03)
The next section here, is on profit recovery and workers comp. Can you walk us through the most common mistakes you find in workers comp audit that lead to overpayments?

Bobby (05:15)
Sure, sure, sure. mean, there’s a lot of areas that my team reviews and we review the last seven years policy audits that are performed by the carrier. But I would say the three biggest culprits that we find are the employee classification codes, the experience reading mod calculations, and then the claims. Those are the three areas that we find the most. Construction is a little unique because there are more areas for us to look at. There are annual construction credits that a lot of companies don’t even know about that they can actually

receive ⁓ annually so those are the three biggest culprits but I always tell folks and like the devil’s in the details you have no idea what we’ll find everything could look good on the surface you could have no claims you could have you know everything could look you know great and we could still find someone a significant amount of money

Rishi Srivastava (06:00)
What were those annual credits you were talking about?

Bobby (06:02)
Yes, so they’re called construction premium adjustment program credits. it applies only to construction and it’s in believe it’s either 35 or 38 states. forgot the exact number but basically it’s an annual reimbursement based upon the wages you pay your employees and your safety records and that type of thing where a majority of contractors do apply for it or I should say you know can receive it but a lot of them don’t even know it exists which is unfortunate because that’s something you can

keep filing year after year after year and keep receiving it year after year give you a great example we work with a small plumbing and heating company not too long ago and we got them ⁓ you ten thousand dollars back and then we back to their previous year and were able to you know get a previous no credit for the previous year so they got a nice refund of 20 grand they would have never have gotten and then we showed them how to do it so going forward they can get that ten thousand dollar credit annually on their own

Rishi Srivastava (06:55)
Yeah, you know attention is limited commodity and someone like you who knows the stuff inside out you guys Do contribute significantly to the you know ⁓ stressed? labor force and our construction CFOs

Bobby (07:08)
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. mean most of them I speak them for the first time they’ve never heard of what I do because Heavily promoted. It’s a very very very niche business. There aren’t many people that do it but when I let them know hey listen, it’s completely risk-free and we’re gonna review your past stuff past you know seven years on it to see if the order may have made any mistakes and There’s a very very very strong chance you get some money back and hopefully save money going forward and it’s not gonna acquire much effort in your teams in we look at all those things the most common response I get from CFS

Rishi Srivastava (07:14)
Mm-hmm.

Bobby (07:38)
or owners is why wouldn’t we do this or this is an absolute no-brainer. And they usually go forward because there’s nothing to lose. We’re not gonna irritate your insurance carrier. We’re not gonna do anything that’s gonna make your broker look bad. It’s really auditing the audits that are performed by the carrier. So there are mistakes that we’re correcting.

Rishi Srivastava (07:43)
Yeah.

Yeah, auditing the auditors. like that term. For CFOs listening, what are the key warning signs that their company might be overpaying on workers comp premiums?

Bobby (07:59)
Exactly what it is. That’s best way to describe it.

Cool, great question. what the work I do doesn’t necessarily look at their premiums terms of are they getting the best deal in town. We don’t price out insurance policies. We don’t sell insurance. We look at it from an order perspective, except from the past audit. So we can’t guarantee they’re getting the best rate or from the best carrier. That’s not what we’re about. We’re looking at the past ⁓ audits.

but I would say warning signs. mean, definitely if you have an experience rating or a mod that’s above one in construction, that’s a very big problem because not only do you get penalized, but a lot of times you cannot go on major GC bids with a high experience rating. So an experience rating is basically your risk score. Just like we have credit scores as individuals, companies have a risk score when it comes to workers comp and you wanna be below 1.0. Otherwise, not only are you paying a higher premium, but you’re also likely

being left out of potentially larger contracts. I would say if you’ve had auditors in the past that did the audits via Zoom or by phone and did them super quick, that’s definitely a warning sign. But ⁓ also too, mean, there’s a lot of times where it looks like there’s no warning signs, where things look absolutely clean on the surface until we dive in and find out that something was just done wrong in the past. And that same error was repeated several years ongoing, which results in a nice size refund.

Yeah, and plus there’s sometimes I mean have owners and CFOs that just don’t feel confident that the insurance carrier has their best interest and may have, you know, put employees in a class code that they just know for a fact is wrong, but you’re, they’re not experts in the field. So they really have no idea how to go after it. So that’s where we come into play, but, um, you know, whether it was a red flag or not, uh, you know, our service in particular is risk free. why not have a look? The worst case scenario, we’re to give you a peace of mind, knowing that there were no mistakes made that will cause you to pay more than you should. is the worst case scenario.

from working with us.

Rishi Srivastava (09:55)
Yeah, I like that worst case scenario. Just for the people who don’t know how the experience score is calculated, could you elaborate more?

Bobby (10:03)
All I said the experience rating

Rishi Srivastava (10:05)
Yeah.

Bobby (10:05)
Yeah, it’s a very long explanation that I wouldn’t be the best at. My team, who are the actual audit experts, can probably explain it to you a lot better. But basically, it’s a risk score based upon your peers. So you’re stacked up against companies that have similar sizes and similar class codes. basically, those risk scores tend to go up when you have claims. I that’s really the main driver of them is when you have issues. And one thing that companies should keep an eye on is it’s not so much the severity of a claim, it is a frequency.

of smaller claims and you know shorter period of time the insurance carriers are gonna look at that and say wait a minute maybe they have an unsafe work environment that’s why they’ve had so many claims in that short period of time as opposed to just maybe a one-off incident so

Rishi Srivastava (10:31)
Mmm.

Bobby (10:44)
Yeah, I mean it’s tough, it’s one of those things you want to have safety programs in place and you want to do whatever you can just to making sure the employees are doing their best to just really be safe on the work side and on the job to try to prevent any potential things from happening. And I’ll tell you this too, if an employee calls out injured on a Monday, it’s likely BS. The majority of workers’ comm claimed or placed on a Monday where an employee gets hurt playing basketball on or they were lifting weights and pulled their back out or whatever.

Rishi Srivastava (11:09)
Even.

Bobby (11:13)
and then all of sudden they come in Monday and now they’re injured when on Friday they were perfectly fine doing backflips and lifting up bricks and all kinds of stuff so that’s one thing to keep an eye on is if employees start placing claims on Mondays that’s usually a warning sign.

Rishi Srivastava (11:27)
That’s a great point right there. You’ve recovered over $2 million for your clients. What’s one of your favorite success stories where you delivered an immediate financial impact?

Bobby (11:38)
Sure, yeah, two great success stories about recoveries we’ve gotten.

was a lovely CFO. was fantastic, super sweet. And she’s like, listen, it’s risk free. So yeah, I don’t mind signing up to have you guys do the work, but I’m pretty sure you’re to be wasting your time. And I said, sure, we’ve wasted our time. Hey, listen, it’s our time, right? Well, we did not waste our time. And she truthfully had very few claims, very good safety history. Everything, like I said, looked great on the surface, but those mod and EMR calculations were done wrong for four years in a row, which resulted in a refund that was basically about

40 % of her annual premium. So she ended up being ecstatic and which was a great story. then there was another one earlier this year. Actually, we were able to secure about a $70,000 refund for a company which also will carry forward and get them about 18 to $20,000 a year in savings. And we don’t collect in that future savings. That is all the companies to keep. We only collect them the initial recovery. So when I called the CFO and told him, say, hey, listen, you’re going to be sending you all the documentation and the refund.

is roughly gonna be around this amount. The guy’s like, my God, this is great. He goes, I barely did anything.

And I said, yes, that was my promise to you is that it’s a very, very light lift because ⁓ when I first had a call with them, all I kept saying was how busy was his other time is other time. said, listen, let us do our thing. It’s very hands off process. And we were right. It was very hands off and he was very happy. Obviously with the results after four years or so, he’s going to net around a hundred thousand dollars in his pocket. So if you do the math and he has a 10 % profit margin, that’s a $1 million contract that he signed, so to speak. So it was a great win.

Rishi Srivastava (12:52)
So thank you.

Bobby (13:12)
was a very, very fun phone call.

Rishi Srivastava (13:14)
Yeah, you’re saving right there at the bottom line. It’s not like you’re, you know, cutting cost or you’re actually increasing the revenue. You’re impacting the net income itself.

Bobby (13:24)
Yeah, and it’s in an area they’re likely not to be looking at.

Rishi Srivastava (13:27)
Next section here is on financial strategy for contractors. Many contractors run lean AP and finance teams. What low-hanging fruit should they focus on first to uncover hidden profit opportunities?

Bobby (13:41)
Sure, mean being that all the things I do kind of tie into insurance even though I don’t sell insurance I mean, you know, I would say for those types of folks You definitely want to shop out your insurance every single year

even if you stay with the same broker company, support staff, whatever it may be, you always want to shop it around every single year. You never want to be complacent with the same provider. And that really goes for everything else, not just insurance. Always shop it out. Every single year, keep everyone on their toes. Unless you can stay with the same provider for many, many years to come, but keep them on their toes so they know that they just can’t get comfortable, that you’re always going to be looking out for other opportunities and that’ll keep the pricing tight. That’ll keep the service.

at a premium because you know that that client and that that service provider knows they can lose you at any minute or any year so it’s always always important to shop around like I said you can taste stay totally loyal but it never hurts to gather other pricing and other features because you might be something better from someone else

Rishi Srivastava (14:38)
How about the switching cost? know, sometimes it can be painful or maybe even tough.

Bobby (14:44)
Yeah, I mean, especially with insurance, right? It’s, you know, it’s one of those things where their annual renewals, right? To go through that whole process and change and all this stuff can be very cumbersome, but oftentimes it could be, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars hidden that you can, you know, you can get back through your company just by, you know, looking into other vendors. So it is tough. is tough. But listen, as a company, I mean, especially in today’s day and age where everything is just going up in cost, it’s just very, very important to stay on top of everything and not just your insurance. I mean, all of your line items.

from

your wireless telecom, internet expenses to your auto insurance, your auto leases, whatever the case may be, your equipment, mean pretty much everything. I would say it pays to have an employee dedicated to making sure they’re constantly reaching out to people in the cost reduction business or just providers to making sure they’re always getting, and not just the best deal, but the best value for their money. Because it’s not always about the amount of money if you’re getting something really crappy. If you get something pretty good, we can get at

really good prize and hey everybody wins right

Rishi Srivastava (15:43)
Yeah. What do you recommend CFOs balance reducing operating expenses with retaining talent and supporting employee benefits?

Bobby (15:52)
Yeah, so actually, you kind of funny you said that because I have a second solution, which ⁓ I started offering this year and it actually does help with employee retention and reducing the cost of employee benefits. You know, companies today, I mean, they’re all getting hit with, know, sometimes double digit increases. I’ve heard as much as 40 % when it comes to health insurance. So, so they tend to scale back, you know, what they’re offering their employees, which is unfortunate. And then sometimes employees, you know, want to look elsewhere for better, better benefits. So losing a good employee is

probably one of the worst things you can do. want to make sure you value people and keep them on board because your product and service create your business, your people drive it. So one of the things I now offer for companies is a government sponsored program in the form of preventative health plans, which actually adds onto your additional health insurance. It does not replace it. It adds an additional layer to it that offers about 40 plus mental and physical health features for the employees at no additional cost. They have all these features via a mobile app. So everything’s at their fingertips to be used.

24-7 so these features are just great for the employees that might be having you know mental health struggles Which is very big in the construction world or having you know something wrong the middle of the night and you can contact someone 24-7 virtual urgent care is available as well as 24-7 mental health access so I think providing this better benefits and really just being out there on the look For you know things that can just enhance your employees productivity make them happy make them more loyal and overall make them feel like they’re cared about because so many

employees just don’t feel they’re cared about by their employer. yes, I think those things are incredibly important for young employer retention, creating a good environment, giving the best benefits possible. And like I said, I do offer something in the form of preventative health plans, which is making a huge impact for companies all over the place.

Rishi Srivastava (17:34)
Preventative health plan. Is this like a health insurance or supplemental to health insurance?

Bobby (17:40)
Yeah, it’s a voluntary benefit so it’s not health insurance at all It’s definitely not insurance basically these are you know all types of virtual things that they can do from 24 7 I said virtual urgent care virtual mental health support for behavioral and emotional things whether it’s you your family up to seven family members even 24 7 veterinary support so something’s wrong with your

Rishi Srivastava (18:04)
See you

there.

Bobby (18:04)
the

night because think about it I mean I have a dog and if something happens to that dog I’m losing sleep over it so it’s no different than a child or you know I mean a difference between a child and a dog but you know nowadays pets are still your family so you know virtual musculoskeletal support which is injury prevention virtual physical therapy right so if you think about a lot of things a lot of reasons why people don’t take extra care of themselves it’s because the time the money and the effort right going to the doctors going to the physical therapy once a week paying the co-pay

You know, doing all these things just are a big reason why people aren’t keeping themselves as healthy as they can be. And with preventative health plans, literally everything you can do, you can do it from your house and get a professional on the phone and be able to work through those services. they’re all, except there’s no copay at all. Everything is included for free. So they don’t have to pay any additional money to have access to these services, which ultimately keeps them healthier, happier, and reduces the use of health insurance, which ultimately save a company a lot of money, but also helps their employees to stay healthier because they have access to all of these

Rishi Srivastava (18:50)
Okay.

Bobby (19:03)
that they can log on to in a matter of minutes.

Rishi Srivastava (19:06)
Yeah, prevention is so much better than care. What role do you think technology and automation will play in identifying and preventing audit errors going forward?

Bobby (19:09)
Yes, so true.

⁓ yeah, in terms of Worker’s Comp audits, know, it’s…

That’s a good question because it’s a very very niche industry and there’s really not much out there in terms of automation and AI stuff. Yes there are software that help with the calculations of certain things but there really isn’t much out there and I don’t anticipate there being developed much stuff just because it is such a niche industry. There’s not a huge market for it for someone that would develop that. But in terms of the preventative health plans AI is driving a ton of the technology behind it. mean we’re actually launching something in Q4, well very soon actually.

recognition technology where an employee can literally scan their face in this app and it’s going to read their blood flow and various biometric points on their face within two minutes it can give that employee diagnosis to say hey listen this is what’s wrong with you this is what you want to do immediately which is incredibly powerful right because no one else will be able to do that without going to various doctors and various

you know, various medical exams to get that information. So to be able to do that in a matter of minutes is just incredible. So, and they’re developing more and more technologies using AI to identify health risk and potential issues before they happen.

Rishi Srivastava (20:28)
So in terms of worker comp comp comp audit error is not much there, right? Yeah.

Bobby (20:35)
I mean, I’m not I mean I’m gonna look out for it cuz anything to make my life easier I’d be a bill but there’s really not much out there Because you said there’s not a ton of folks that do it because it’s such a niche industry So I doubt that you folks are gonna want to spend tons of time developing something because there’s really not many people to sell it to so I’m certainly not capable of developing that stuff Call might be like hey Rishi we need some help here

Rishi Srivastava (20:39)
Yeah.

Nah.

Yeah, I mean the market has

The market has to be big enough, know, for anybody to go after and develop technology. It’s like you alluded. So the next section is on leadership and growth. You’ve been recognized as a top 20 under 40 and sales excellence award winner. How do you build and maintain a high performance culture on your team?

Bobby (21:18)
goals. If you always have a goal to chase, you’ll always be motivated. Everyone’s goals are totally different. could be family, could be a big house, or vacations, or whatever it may be. It’s really just having serious goals. If the goal isn’t strong enough that you’ll get out of bed extra early, or stay up late, or go to an event at this time you don’t want to go, that’s really the biggest motivator. It’s having goals that will push you through those hard days, or those days you don’t want to do it, or you’re tired, or just not feeling up to it.

You really have to have strong goals like that beautiful car you want to buy that’s very easy. Say, I don’t feel like getting up today. I don’t really need that car, right? But you know have you know a relative or friends or whatever that are struggling financially and that’s more important to you or your children providing a better future for them. That’s a good reason. It’s going to get you up in that morning or you get your butt moving when you you get head kicked in three or four days in a row because it’s going to happen. So I think that’s really the biggest thing is just having really really solid goals that drive you through the tough times and keep you motivated every single day.

Rishi Srivastava (22:15)
I remember a few good motivational things that you sent me. You know, it got my ass moving.

Bobby (22:21)
Good, I’m glad, I’m glad. One of my favorite ones is, and I mentioned this earlier about failure, because so many people look at failure and think, ah, I stink, I suck. failure just teaches what’s not gonna work or what you can do better. So one of the lines I love, as failure is not final, it’s formative. You fail, I mean, you think about cooking. How many times you make a recipe at home? Ah, next time I’m add more salt, next time I’m gonna add more of this, more of that. Well guess what? The first time you made it, you failed. It wasn’t as good as it could be, and then all of a sudden, by the fourth or fifth time,

Rishi Srivastava (22:22)
Thank

Thank

Bobby (22:47)
got it down and now it’s absolutely

perfect. So people don’t think about that sometimes, that failure in business and in life, just think about cooking, right? Cause you fail all the time cooking. Cooking is one of the most failed things you do, right? Or baking for that matter, you know, and just make a couple of tweaks to it. And then eventually you get it going to where it’s it’s a perfect fit. And then you just, you know, take off from there.

Rishi Srivastava (23:04)
Yeah, actually one more example that occurs to me is think about a toddler. You know, they’re trying to they’re just let’s say crawling right now and they’re trying to walk. How many times they fall? It’s not that they say that, hey, I’m not going to try and walk. They keep trying and they eventually figure it out, you know.

Bobby (23:20)
Yeah.

Difference is with a kid is they haven’t been in the real world yet So they don’t understand what failure is is when you’re an adult and you know It’s very easy just to talk down to yourself and so many people literally quit and give up just before they’re about to succeed That to me is one of the most biggest disappointments You know in any type of business or sales or whatnot or anything for that matter personally is when people just are Work so hard to get to a certain point and they just give up It’s a give you just would have stuck with it and just stayed on it You would have you would have hit your goal or you would have reached whatever was you had

set forth in mind so just don’t give up and just keep pushing forward and that’s it and just understand that failure is just part of the process.

Rishi Srivastava (23:56)
Yeah Bobby at the end of my year one of running the business I was at a bad place and you did help me a lot thank you

Bobby (24:04)
My pleasure man, I know we had some very serious talks and you know, and I told you there’s gonna be better days coming and now fast forward what, two or three years, a lot of things are happening for you, you a lot more traction, a lot more, I mean and things are starting to happen, now you’re to yourself, you know this stuff is working, this wasn’t a crazy idea, this wasn’t a crazy mistake, you know, but sometimes it just takes a while to get there and another analogy I give is, especially in business when you’re just going through that failure period is you think about yourself being a kid sitting at the window and it’s just pouring rain.

every single day and you just sit at that window like I just want to go out and play and eventually that rain eventually stops and you can go out and play so it’s like yeah when you’re in it it’s hard to see that because all you see is the rain but at some point that rain stops and you can see some light

Rishi Srivastava (24:37)
you

Yes, certainly. Running a business means constant prospecting and operations. How do you keep yourself motivated and avoid burnout?

Bobby (24:58)
you know I mean you building relationships is so important obviously that’s how we met through networking and I think that you know networking and really creating great great people around you you know not only just for opportunities but for resources it really can and just sometimes right just just having good advice from someone right we’ve had a hard talk so sometimes it’s just that maybe me that person will never refer you business but they can you know give you some great advice I think it’s surrounding yourself with great people and I think that there are three really good characteristics to a great networker some people are just great connectors meaning they

know a ton of people they can put you in touch with some great people. Some people just full of knowledge where they might never refer you anything or connect you with anyone but they can give you a great knowledge that’ll help you out. And then you have people that are just referral partners people that can actually you know bring you potential clients that can help grow your business. So I think just surrounding yourself with really good people continue to meet good people and build relationships which is such a cliche thing to say but it’s just the truth. When you surround yourself with great individuals you’re gonna learn from them and just you know once again going back to being a kid.

If you surround yourself with a bunch of thugs or a of jerks, mean likely you’re gonna stop molding to them. But if you go into a room and you surround yourself with successful business people, millionaires, billionaires, whatever it may be, whatever you want to become, you’re gonna start learning from how they did things and you’re gonna start, you know, learning from them. So I think that’s really, really important. Just surround yourself with great people because they will help you get to the finish line a lot faster than anything else.

Want say again?

Rishi Srivastava (26:20)
You are an average of five people you most hang out with.

Bobby (26:23)
Yeah,

huh, yeah.

Rishi Srivastava (26:26)
What advice would you give to other entrepreneurs or CFOs about building strong networks that actually drive business results?

Bobby (26:35)
Yes, I think listen as the old sales saying goes, you have two ears and one mouth for a reason. Listen twice as much as you talk. Learn as much as you can about that person, not just, you know, not just profession, but personally about their business, who they need, who they are, how you can help them and how you can support them. Cause ultimately if you genuinely care and know a lot of great things about someone, not just like very general information, you can go above and beyond to help in a way that other people won’t be able to. mean, I’ve had some…

I was on a phone with a friend of mine the other day until like 8.30 at night. We’re talking about back pain. She’s had serious back pain. So I was telling her some of the things that I’ve researched and discovered and she looked into it too. And one of the things really helped her, you know, so it’s just, it’s sometimes just doing things that are really, really understand the people that, you know, you want to be around and how you can help them and help support them. I think just having a great support and Eric and great connections. And you can reach out to those folks when you need help with something. If you have a need for your business, you can reach out to those great people and say, Hey, listen, I need something, something.

this is this, do you know if someone does this or hey how can you help me here and you know if you’re taking the time to help them and support them they’re gonna be more than willing to go above and beyond for you.

Rishi Srivastava (27:38)
Just focusing a little bit more on the building part. Let’s say I am a new entrepreneur or CFO and I don’t know many people. How would I go about building those connections?

Bobby (27:48)
Great question. First thing I would avoid, because I made this mistake, is just random networking and just meeting completely random people, depending on what the nature of your business is and the markets you’re serving. So we’ll just use obviously construction for this example. If you’re doing things and doing business with companies in construction, you want to go to various construction events. mean, there’s a million associations and you can look them up. Just stop going to meetings and just meeting people in that industry and ask them, what events do you go to? What groups are you a part of? Because if they’re doing business with people

people

that you want to do business with, well guess what? You start going to those events and showing up and you know, kind of connecting with those people, things are going to happen. So, you some people will take the approach of just meeting anyone and everybody. I mean, not to say that someone totally randomly can’t bring you a great client or introduce you to a great professional, a great connection and whatnot, but you want to try to stay within the other focused industries that you’re serving. So whatever that may be, just go out and go to events. Don’t be shy. Just do it. mean, you guys had, everyone had a day one, right? Everyone went to that first event at one

point or you know had their first networking call and they were probably nervous as hell but then after that you just keep doing and doing it’s just like you know your first day at the gym right you go there you’re out of shape you’re intimidated everyone’s so jacked and in shape like man look at these people you know and but guess what everybody has a day one so you just can’t be intimidated and once again that goes back to having your goals right your comfort zone you have those goals that are strong we’ll do anything you can to make them happen

Rishi Srivastava (28:45)
And.

Yeah, I love that quote. Everybody has a day one. The next section here, Bobby, is on trends and future outlook. What trends are you seeing in insurance, payroll taxes, and health care premiums that construction CFOs should be aware of heading into 2026?

Bobby (29:11)
Yep.

Well, I can tell you they’re all definitely aware of the rising cost of all of the above. ⁓ Everything has just been going up. mean, there are the three biggest healthcare consulting firms basically said that 2026 is going to be the highest increase in healthcare premiums in about 20 years. So right now it’s a major pain point for companies. So, you know, those, those three things are rising in cost, but I would just say, listen, just as educating yourself because there’s just so much information out there, especially nowadays with, you know, with video.

as an AI, there’s so much information you can gather. I would say just to have them in their time, whenever they do have time, is to educate themselves so they understand what’s going to be best for their business moving forward. So yeah, that’s the best advice. It’s tough, though. It’s tough out there.

Rishi Srivastava (30:05)
Yeah, yeah, educating yourself. That’s the strategy with economic uncertainty and rising costs. How should contractors be thinking about cost containment this year and maybe even next?

Bobby (30:18)
Yeah, I mean, you know, I would say don’t rely just on your staff to keep an eye on costs because, you know, they’re experts in whatever area. They’re probably not experts in all the other expenses that you guys have. So I would say definitely align with people in the cost reduction world. So for all your line items, whether it be insurance, your wireless bill, your telecom, your lease payments for your office or whatever it may be, have people that are experts in those fields to constantly keep an eye on those things to making sure that you’re getting the actual best possible value, best possible pricing.

whatever it may be. So I would definitely say to keep costs as low as possible to have some really good folks in the expense or cost reduction world in your your Rolodex right. Most people might not know what Rolodex is anymore but I still do. all right so take out Rolodex at every place that we’re in

Rishi Srivastava (31:01)
Right. So the last question here is, if you had one message for construction CFOs about capturing lost profits, what would it be?

Bobby (31:11)
Yeah, kind of the same. It’s just, you know, mean, you know, lost profits, I can only speak for line items, like things that, you know, that are just every day, every month payments. just really…

Having someone on your team, know, whether it’s an employee that’s an expert at this stuff, but most of them are not. So I would have some kind of contract in place with a company that focuses on cost reduction and savings. Cause their job is to fund you money. Cause we make money based upon the savings. So we have a vested interest in saving you the most money and making sure that everything you have is the right pricing for your business. So that’s probably the best advice I can give is just, you know, reaching out to those folks. Cause you know, CFOs and owners, listen, they’re all crazy busy.

a lot of things going on and sometimes they ignore those calls but you know those calls could mean you know sometimes five six or even seven figures and savings back to the business that could go for you know spending money on new equipment or opening a new office or hiring some new key employees or even giving back or giving raises to some of those key employees so I would say just always keep an eye on the expenses the line items and have professionals to kind of constantly view those things and keep them moving.

Rishi Srivastava (32:16)
Bobby, thank you so much for coming to the show. I really enjoyed this conversation.

Bobby (32:21)
I always enjoy talking to you pal, congrats on your success. I hope you have many, many more years and I hope a few years from now we can do one of these podcasts on your yacht. I just want to make sure I get the invite. That’s all I ask.

Rishi Srivastava (32:31)
You will definitely. Thank you so much.

Bobby (32:34)
You’re the best pal. God bless.

Rishi Srivastava (32:35)
Bye.

Rishi Srivastava (32:36)
Thanks for listening to Finance at the Job Site. If you found today’s conversation valuable, share it with a teammate and subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. You can listen on Spotify or watch on YouTube. Just search Finance at the Job Site. Until next time, here’s to building smarter, faster, and more profitable projects.