Permits? We Don't need no stinkin? permits!

Buildings permits? Why would you want a building permit? That'll just cost me money and then the government will raise my property taxes.

Have you been told this lie? it's not true. Typically unless you are adding square footage to your building, your tax appraisal won't go up... and even if you are adding square footage your taxes won't go up until your next appraisal, which is typically every few years. I've never seen a tax appraisal as part of a permit or inspection process.

So why the myth? The myth was started by unscrupulous contractors trying hard not to have anyone check their shoddy work. Why? Because they are taking short cuts in their work... short cuts that the city inspectors would never allow. They won't allow short cuts for YOUR PROTECTION!

Permits are just a way for the government to maximize revenue. Right?

WRONG. it's been my experience that the permit fees usually Don't even cover the ammount of time inspectors spend reviewing plans and visiting job sit's. In other words the salary's of city inspectors and the building departments are subsidized by our taxes. This means the building department actually costs the government money to run, not a revenue generating source.

Permits are necessary to protect you. Permits are to ensure your contractor is properly licensed and insured to take on the type of work you've hired them to do. Permits are to ensure that the proposed work of your contractor is safe and to building code.

Don't skip out on the permit. If you are thinking of having any work done first contact the building department and ask if a permit is required. Ask what the permits fees are, or the permit formula. Permit price is often based on contract value.

Then ask your contractors who will be securing the permit. If the contractor tells you a permit isn't necessary or doesn't want to work with one this person is probably hiding something, or too novice to know any better. In either case you do you'really want to hire someone who doesn't play by the rules? If they take this short cut, think of all the other short cuts they may take on your job.

Also ask up front if the contractor is to get the permit, are the fees included or will they be added to the invoice? it's good to know this upfront. For example I calculate my permit fees upfront and total them into my project values. I run a turn key operation and Don't like submitting a low bid then adding on all the hidden fees to the invoice. Are the permit fees included or will they be additional?

Get those building permits! Get the job done right the first time so you Don't have to pay to fix it later. Pay twice? No thank you. Do it right the first time.

Planning for the slooow times in your business.

We've all hit those bumps in the road where business slows down and it leaves us scrambling to find work. After the total uncomfort of the situation I?ve really decided not to let it happen again.

Planning for the slow times revolves around anticipating those times. This can be done by examining historic data. For example a company who?s work is seasonal would certainly experience a slow time. There are factors, other than seasonality, which can be used to predict upcoming slow periods.

Other factors that contribute to slow periods are often times due to economic variables which may have a direct impact on your business model. For example if your specialty has to do directly with home sales, perhaps you are a new construction sub contractor, and those home sales start to slip you can be sure that your work will start to slip. On the flip side if your target market is the end customer, often times called the consumer, there are economic variables such as vacation and holiday season which tend to slow spending on home improvements.

Planning for the predictable slow periods is an easy enough task. If you examine your historic data and see that on average you only work 200 days out of a 365 day year, then you know you need to earn enough in those 200 days to cover 365 days worth of expenses. Historic data will also show you when you tend to do the bulk of your business and when your business drops off. Budget reserves for your overhead expenses for these slow periods based on your historic data.

So what can a business manager do to make sure that revenues Don't ever drop off? This comes with the anticipation of your slow times and knowing your sales cycle. If your typical sales cycle is 1 month (time from estimate to approval), and your production cycle is 2 weeks (time from approval to work begins); Also you know that in June your business dries up this all means your sales staff needs to work extra hard during the April and May months to build a back log so June doesn?t drop off.

You might need to increase your advertising budget so that you can increase sales, but all of this should be figured out and planned before the year begins. It can be compared to taking a larger bite of a smaller pie.

Let?s also face facts that no matter how hard you try, you will never be able to predict all slow periods. There are simply too many variables to take into account and sometimes surprises are thrown at you from left and right. However that does not mean that a savvy business manager can?t plan for these unpredictable slow times.

A smart business manager will have contingency plans and contingency funds set aside to boost sales when an unpredictable slow period hits. What can a contingency plan consist of? The answer is really anything. Incentives can be given to the sales staff to increase sales. Production employees can be used to canvas neighborhoods with flyers and/or door hangers. Diversification of services can be offered, temporarily adding on services that you do not normally call your specialty. Referrals can be solicited from satisfied customers and past customers may be contacted for additional work.

A contingency fund is simply a sum of money set aside for the primary use of funding the contingency plan. Knowing which contingency plan to follow will determine how much you need to set aside.

Credit. Is it a bad word? It can be when it is abused, but a ?line of credit? can really help you out in a bind. A line of credit is very similar to a credit card, however usually your minimum payments are interest only and you are not paying down on your principal. This is great for when things are slow, and as revenues pick up you can start to pay back the principal which was loaned to you. Credit'should really be a last resort and only used when you are sure it can be paid back.

If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail. Take note of your normal cycles and plan for the worst using the above strategies. Doing so will ease the pains of the slow times by minimizing their effect. We might not be able to stop them, but we can slow them down!

Alot has changed since my first post here at ContractorTalk. Back then it was the contractor chat room. This guy, Nate was his name, sent me an email after reading one of my posts on another forum suggesting this cool new website. How could I resist but take a look? I've been hooked ever since.

I was one of the first to sign up, actually I believe I was the 25th member of Contractor Chat Room. I was a punk kid know it all. I had been working in the construction industry 5 years. I rose to a position of responsibility rather quickly. I worked first as an installer for some hack outfit a friend of mine ran. I left him because of the shady business practices, I did not want to be involved in. I went to work for one of the largest residential roofing companies in Chicago, and after only 2 months as an administrative assistant, got promoted to scheduling manager. I worked there for a year and went to work for one of their subcontractors as a sales rep and after our first winter I began doing all the marketing and office management in addition to most of the sales and customer service. Needless to say my success had gone to my head.

I was still an employee at that time, I was 26 years old then and had ALL the answers. After all in my mind, why not, I had achieved in only a few years What'some couldn't figure out in an entire career. Then I decided the logical step was to go out on my own and start my own company, I figured my boss was holding me back. I figured I would be making double, if not triple what I was making working for him making him rich.

So I did it. I went out on my own, registered a domain name, incorporated December 12th 2003. By September 2004, I was full time on my own... And then everything changed!

I write alot of articles or blog posts giving advice. Most of what I write is about my own failures. I wrote about buying your first insurance policy because of the mistakes I made when I bought mine. I wrote about renting office space because of the mistakes I made when I rented my first office. I write ALOT about checks and balances and employee oversight because it damned near broke me to let the monkeys run the zoo.

This is why I say I am a man of many failures. I Don't think I have ever met another person as proud of their failures as I am of mine. I would like to think that for the most part I have learned from my failures. I try to do everything in my power to ensure that others can learn from my mistakes as well.

So how bad can it be? Well it WAS bad, very very bad. For awhile I stopped coming to this forum. I thought, who am I to give advice and be answering questions? My first mistake about the insurance, cost me $19,000.00 at audit time. What, what? Audit? Nobody told me about no stinking audit. I was quoted $1,000 a year why did I get a bill for $19,000.00?! Who's got $19,000 laying around? I fired that insurance broker because he didn't give me the information I needed to make an educated buying decision and it cost me $19,000.000 in my mind. I'd still like tp punch him in the face, but really the mistake was my own. I didn't know what I didn't know and it cost me big.

By 2005 I had a revolving door of sales reps that I hired and fired for various reasons. I had a production manager overseeing the production side of things and part of his job was to make sure the sales reps didn't mess up their measurements. Little did I know their tape mesures worked very well, but their calculators did not. Having 2 full times sales reps plus myself, and the ONLY jobs we made money on were the ones I sold? After three years of that, I was in the hole, and BIG time. How Much? I'm proud to say $250,000.00 in debt. Yes a quarter of a million dollars. I went home and cried on my new bride's shoulder that night. Yes I cried, got a problem with it?

So how can I be proud of the fact that I was basically bankrupt, had little to no more credit and stress out the wazoo? Today I have got that $1/4 mil down to a very manageable $40k. I made the decision that I was NOT going to be like everyone else, I was not going to go out of business, I was going to honor my commitments, I was going to do the right thing and pay my bills... and I have done just that.

But what else did I do? I implemented processes and procedures to ensure this kind of monkey business would never happen again. I implemented a series of checks and balances in place to ensure that we were profitable on each and every job we installed. I set my levels of expectations with my employees, subs, and suppliers and I let them know what I expect from them or else. I wrote manuals for every procedure within my company no more reinventing the wheel each and every day.

The failures didn't end there though. In 2009 I had record complaints. I pride myself on doing the job right, but we were no longer doing the job right. Sure we all make mistakes but when the trend is growing there is a problem. I identified why mistakes were being made and ensured to prevent them from happening again. Again going back to checks and balances. The #1 procedure I impemented to ensure customer satisfaction was to set the policy that no customer gets billed until the job gets inspected for completion. I made a list of inspection forms for each type of roofing and gutter system that we installed and now no customer is expected to pay until someone of authority, usually myself, has inspected the job and is satisfied with the results. My thinking is that I would rather find the mistakes before the water does, and I do not want my customer to be the quality control. For what it's worth, had we been doing these inspections in the first place I would have had very little complaints in 2009 because most of the problems were simply oversights that had they been inspected would have never passed.

So yes, I am a man of many failures. Chances are you are a person of many failures as well. I am proud now when I speak, I speak of my failures, not of my successes.

Read more here: http://hangupthebelt.com/2011/a-man-of-many-failures/

An Online Presence is Much More Than a Web Site

I sometimes wonder when I see comments made here by remodelers and other contractors, how much the role of a company web site can be misunderstood. For sure, your web site is important, but I often get the distinct impression many contractors expect more than it can deliver on its own.

Think of this from the perspective of a homeowner looking for remodeling or contracting services. we are asking them to invest thousands into a project. That involves a high level of trust. Is our web site going to win them over? Not likely, at least not by itself anyway.

As I listen to my clients to find out why they chose me over another remodeling contractor, my web site only plays a small role in what is really a process. It might begin with them seeing my vehicles in our Eastern Pennsylvania service area and then they check out my site. Or it could be from any number of my advertising methods.

But it doesn't end when they find my site. I am realizing more and more that it is extremely important to build an online presence, not just a web presence. Of course, all of you who use resources like Facebook already have a good idea what I am getting at. But it's more than Facebook too.

The kind of clients we need in order to build a strong home contracting business are pretty smart. They check us out in advance. They view our BBB rating. They look for a "footprint" online to help them determine our credibility. They search to see if anyone has complained about us.

Our names appear in more places than just our web sit's. Our potential clients are watching us. They are checking us out wherever they can find us on the Internet. When they are satisfied with what they are finding, then they call us. That is especially important if their first visit to our site is from a search engine.

When I reflect on what my remodeling clients are telling me, I'm convinced that all of us, myself included, need to do more to build an online presence, not just a web site that ranks well.

Please feel free to share what you are doing to build your credibility online.

It might not seem like it would be all that important, but a fully completed profile page speaks wonders to building your credibility and boosting contractor leads for your contractor marketing business.

When it comes to purchasing products and services, we like to do business with those we can research to find out all relevant information we need to make an informed decision. And with Facebook?s built-in search feature, Facebook is being used to search for businesses more frequently than ever before. This means a fully completed profile page for your business is imperative. After all, when we visit a business? Facebook page and it has incomplete information, it appears They are unprofessional or Don't care enough about how they look to the public eye.

So my advice? If you're not going to complete your Facebook profile page, then you might be better off not creating one at all.

And if you truly understand the benefits of having a Facebook page, then it'shouldn?t be a question why you?d want a page that will fully work for you to boost contractor leads. By completing your Facebook business page profile, you're:

• Increasing your chances of ?findability? via Facebook?s search engine.
• Providing information on how you can be contacted.
• Sharing information about your business and what you do.
• Boosting external SEO when using a strong keyword strategy.
• Boosting your chances of increasing contractor leads with a larger ?Fan? base.

When completing your Facebook profile to boost contractor leads, be sure to:

Remember, consumers like to do business with companies that provide information on what they do, who they are, and how we can benefit from their services. Go to your Facebook business page yesterday and make sure your profile is 100% complete while using the tips provided here to boost contractor leads!