Your Employees Are Not Your Slaves

Posted on February 9, 2008 by Scott

It is true that the fastest-growing and most lucrative businesses tend to be the ones that operate like a well-oiled machine, but that doesn’t mean you should treat your employees like mere cogs.  They are human beings, after all, not robots.  What this means is that you need to know when to push and when to lay off; when to correct and when to keep quiet; when to ask for more and when to give back.  Your people are the lifeblood of your business, and how you treat them will have an enormous impact on their productivity (and your earnings). There’s nothing wrong with having high employee expectations, as long as you recognize that they’ll have expectations of you, too.

This post shouldn’t be shocking.  After all, if you’re reading this then you’re probably a small business owner, and if you’re a small business owner then at one point in time you probably quit a job partially because you weren’t feeling like your efforts were appreciated.  So you should be keenly aware of your employees’ need to be recognized as a valuable member of the team.  If they screw up accidentally, take them behind closed doors and talk to them about it with a respectful tone and attitude.  If they do something great for your business image, thank them!  I’ve noticed that lots of managers are very good at cracking the whip or chewing people out, but very few take the time to balance it with an appropriate amount of praise or gratitude when it is warranted.  Fail to recognize good workers at your own peril, because they’ll be out the door faster than you can say “two week notice”!

Go that extra mile to get to know your best employees.  If they feel like you truly care about them, they will work hard for you.  Before I started my home improvement business,I worked several years for a small business owner who never even learned my first name.  How sad is that?!  Granted, he wasn’t involved in direct management on a day-to-day basis, but it still irked me that I worked hard to make his wallet fat week after week, year after year, and he didn’t even care to know my freaking name!  This is an extreme example, but my point is that your lack of attention to your best employees will almost certainly encourage them to start looking for a better opportunity.  Your job is to make the work environment as pleasant and rewarding as possible for your most skilled and hard-working people because they are, quite simply, a rarity.  Mediocre employees are a dime a dozen, but the truly exceptional ones are worth bending over backwards for because they will accelerate your business’ growth like you wouldn’t believe, and they will make your life as owner-manager a hell of a lot easier.  Trust me on this one.

One final note.  If one of these star employees decides to call it quits so that they can go start their own business and become a contractor, support their decision and wish them good luck.  Because they’re so valuable to your business, you might be tempted to hold them back by warning them of the risks of business ownership or by saying that their idea will never work, but I encourage you to be gracious and genuinely happy for them.  It will be a loss for you and your company, but the bigger loss would be if that would-be entrepreneur never had the chance or the guts to strike out on his own and go for the American dream, just as you did when you started your fledgling little business.

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Networking Will Fuel Your Business Growth

Posted on February 3, 2008 by Scott

In my post about learning to destroy your competition, I detailed the importance of cutting ties with your direct, local competitors.  It’s vital, however, to recognize that this ONLY applies to them.  In almost every other scenario, it’s in your best interest to seek out and build solid, reciprocal relationships with as many people and business owners as possible.

For example, if you specialize in Las Vegas air conditioning repair, look to establish relationships with Vegas-based appliance repair, plumbing, and painting companies.  Ask for their construction business cards and give them a handful of yours.  You’d be surprised by how often homeowners will group several different home improvement projects together, and when they ask the guy fixing the leaky pipe under the sink if he knows of any good AC repair companies, odds are good that he’ll tell them about you.  He’ll do this not because he’s a nice guy, but because he knows that by sending you business, you’ll probably send him some down the road.

You’d also be wise to join as many local clubs and business organizations as possible to further spread the reach of your contact network.  Become a member of the Better Business Bureau.  Join your area’s chamber of commerce.  Become a sponsor for a fundraiser or youth athletic team.  If the numbers make sense for your business, join a contractor referral network.  The bottom line is that you need to get your name out there and build as many business relationships as you can.   You want the customers that result from networking because they’ll have a certain amount of trust in you right off the bat, they’ll be less likely to balk at your pricing, and, best of all, they’ll come with no acquisition cost.  I don’t know about you, but I’ll take free construction leads any time I can get them!

The relative lowering of your advertising costs is in fact the greatest benefit of building long-term relationships in your city.  You’ll always need to spend money on marketing, but with each successive year the customers will come to you in greater and greater numbers due to your efforts in networking, fostering business relationships, and performing quality work.

Even if you already know how to become a contractor, you’ll also need to learn how to be a good communicator.  If you’re naturally shy and don’t like to talk to people, now is the time to try to improve yourself in this area, because your more gregarious, talkative, and assertive competitor could quickly leave you in the dust when it comes to establishing a network of lucrative relationships.

Posted in Business Marketing / Advertising, Growing Your Business, Running Your Business | Tagged | Leave a comment

Hang Around Long Enough To Win

Posted on January 17, 2008 by Scott

Once you’ve learned how to become a contractor and then put in a few months of hard work you might start to have a few doubts or frustrations, so I present to you an analogy that might help.  I think we’ve all had that favorite sports team that was short on talent but positively brimming over with persistence and tenacity.  A few Duke basketball clubs come to mind.  It’s the kind of group that will drive other teams nuts because while they might fall behind by a few points they refuse to roll over and die.  They hang around and keep fighting, just waiting for that opportunity to spring when the more talented team gets lazy or frustrated or allows an open window.  As soon as the other team starts to crack, they’ll take advantage and bust the game wide open, usually leaving their more talented opponents in the dust.  More often than not these kinds of teams are highly successful, and occasionally, with a little luck, they are champions.

Your fledgling business needs to be just as tenacious, just as persistent, and just as patient.  In the early stages you’re sure to have setbacks.  Startup costs will be more than you’d planned, getting systems in place will be a hassle, you’ll have few references and contacts, and there could be added stress on your home life with you pulling 60-hour weeks on your business.  The novelty of owning your own business will quickly wear off and you might even occasionally doubt your ability to pull it off, but the trick is in finding a way to weather all the storms and tough it out.

It might take six months or it might take a year, but eventually that rickety vehicle that is your business will start to run smoother, the wheels will begin to turn more easily, and the competition will come into view directly ahead of you.  As time goes by it will generally get easier as you learn the business, start to build a customer base, and work on solidifying a reputation in your city.  And if you stick with it long enough you’ll start to be given huge opportunities to propel your business past the competition.  It could be a large contract from the city, or a big write-up in the local paper, or a scandal in your competitor’s business, but eventually that day will come when your persistence will be rewarded by a huge leap forward for your business.  Often times you won’t see them coming, but they WILL come, and only if you’re still in the game can you take advantage of them.

Most people will fall behind early and give up like a team of undisciplined punks, but if you have the fire in your belly to keep pushing forward you’ll eventually come across big opportunities to exploit and destroy your competition.  You don’t have to be super-talented or a genius to go big with your business.  You just have to stick around long enough to see your competitors throw in the towel.

Posted in Motivation To Succeed, Running Your Business | 2 Comments

Keep The Customer For Life

Posted on January 12, 2008 by Scott

So you just finished a job for a very nice customer who treated you graciously, paid you promptly, and raved about the quality of your work.  He or she is the kind of person that you’d like to do business with again, but the great work you performed is just about all you can do to assure they’ll call you back next time they have a need, right?  Wrongo, buddy!

For starters, you should promptly send them a thank you letter, no matter how many times you said “thank you” to their face.  It amazes me how few contractors actually do this.  People LOVE getting thank you letters in the mail!  It makes them feel like you truly appreciated them because you took the extra time to express your gratitude on paper.  Some people will feel slighted if you DON’T send a thank you card, especially if it was a major remodel or project.  How would you feel if you spent $35,000 on something and received absolutely no kind of thank you in the mail whatsoever?  It may sound petty, but the fact that they didn’t receive a card or note from you might make them feel unappreciated enough to take their business someplace else the next time they need major work done around their house.  Are you willing to lose a several thousand dollar job down the road from a great customer just because you were too cheap or busy to print out and mail a simple “thank you”?  If you’re not the articulate type, have your wife/husband or secretary type it up for you and just sign it at the bottom; it’s better than nothing at all!  Included with the letter should be a few more construction business cards that they can hand out to friends.  Some contractors will even send a gift to big-project customers, and I’ll leave that up to your personal preferences, but it should be self-evident that the “louder” your thank you, the better your chances of repeat business.

You should also make a constant effort to stay on previous customers’ minds, because you’ll find that doing so is much cheaper than acquiring new ones.  The cheapest method is to keep a database of client email addresses so that you can send them a quarterly newsletter via the internet.  Each “e-newsletter” should contain updates about new services you might offer, new skills or equipment you might have acquired, and/or special coupons or discounts for repeat customers.  What matters most is not what is in the newsletter, but simply that you send it.  Staying on your customer’s mind is vitally important, and might help to accelerate that home improvement job that they really want to do but keep putting off.  For those that don’t want to give their email out, just mail the newsletter to them.  Yes, it’s an added cost for you, but it’s a heckuva lot cheaper than trying to win a brand new customer.  And keep in mind that even though they might not need your services again down the road, your diligence in staying on their radar will encourage them to talk up your business to their friends and family who do have a need, resulting in lots of free construction leads.  Say it with me: “referrals, referrals, referrals”.  Becoming a contractor that makes real money involves marketing savvy and tenaciousness.  You must learn to be aggressive.

Of course all of this is meaningless if you perform lousy workmanship, but even fast-growing and successful businesses that provide a quality product can substantially accelerate their growth and profits by simply taking these few extra steps to show appreciation and to occasionally remind the customer just how happy they were with your work.

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No Mercy For Your Competitors

Posted on January 8, 2008 by Scott

Sometimes I see a scenario where a small business owner in the home service industry feels that he or she must maintain good relationships with their local competitors so that they can help each other grow, share trade information, and pass off extra work.  If you want a business that is stagnant or grows only as fast as the market expands, then I guess this is the way to go.  But if your goal is to grow rapidly and to take market share (as your goal should be), then you must learn to be more ruthless.  After all, did you become a contractor to make friends or to make money?

Your competitor is the enemy.  They should be treated as such.  I’m not saying to bad-mouth them or lie about them to potential customers.  I’m not saying to sabotage their business with unscrupulous methods.  I AM saying that the quality of your work, the excellency of your customer service, and the effectiveness of your marketing must all be so overwhelming that they are tools to rocket your business and bury your rivals.  Do you really think they would shed a tear if you went out of business?  They are plotting against you every day, and if they are not then someday their business will die.

We live in a capitalist society, and business is war.  The sooner you can learn to embrace this concept, the better.  By all means, be a nice guy “off the field”.  Character is important.  But when you “step between the lines” that guy in the other jersey is the only obstacle to your ultimate success and domination.  You have a duty to yourself and your employees to crush him, to decimate him, to run up the score on him.  Otherwise your business is an exercise in futility, and your future could be one of uncertainty.  Cut your ties with your competitors.  They are holding you back, or worse yet, they are preparing to take your down while you sleep.

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Lowballing Will Destroy Your Business

Posted on January 3, 2008 by Scott

One common mistake that new business owners make is to price their service too low – also known as “lowballing” in the construction and home services industry.  Your motive in doing so might be to generate enough business to keep the business afloat in its early stages, but it’s a flawed strategy that will almost certainly lead to your company’s demise.  Learning how to become a contractor also means dedicating yourself to understanding business fundamentals, and a big part of this is learning to price appropriately.

For one thing, you’ll find that most quality-minded, upper-class homeowners (whom you’d be wise to target most aggressively) view low bids as a warning sign that your company must be cutting corners somewhere in order to stay in business.  In their mind a super-low bid equals crap work and even crappier service.  I must admit that I, too, nearly fell into the lowballing trap in the early days of my business.  I was scrapping for business any way I could get it, and to assure a constant stream of cash my bids started to drift lower and lower.  The middle-class customers hired me consistently at the lower prices, but I was working harder and harder for less and less money per job.

But soon arrived one particularly puzzling day when I gave a low bid for a large job at a huge home, and instead of getting the usual gleeful response of “when can you start?!”, I got a marathon of questions about why my price was so low compared to the competition’s, if I was going to do quality work, and what kinds of references I had to prove my abilities.  It threw me for a loop, and though my newly honed salesman skills eventually won me the job anyway, it opened my eyes to to the fact that I could actually be losing business because my prices were so low!  And I was losing it in the demographic that I most needed: wealthy, time-challenged, highly-networked homeowners.

It is true that many middle-class customers are more concerned with price than anything else, so you have to price competitively to them, but they do not represent the segment of the population that will give you your most profitable jobs.  Focus on targeting higher-end homes, charge what you’re worth, and you’ll wonder why you ever used to be one of the dreaded “lowballers” that works more but makes less.

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Top 10 Ways To Kill Your Spirit

Posted on January 1, 2008 by Scott

UPDATE:  Obviously I had not expected it, but in looking at my site stat logs it seems that this post is coming up in some internet search results for those researching suicide.  If you are feeling hopeless or suicidal, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK or visit their site at www.Save.org.  Please call them now.  Help is available.

Welcome to 2008!  The beginning of a new year is the perfect time to take a brutally honest look at your life or your business so that you can correct mistakes, refocus on what’s important, and rekindle the passion that may have been lost along the way.  If you feel like your energy for life is worn out, but you aren’t sure why, please take a minute to read this list.  It could make all the difference!  So, without further ado, I give you the Top 10 Ways To Kill Your Spirit:

  1. Finally let go of those juvenile notions to have an occupation that you enjoy.  You’ve got to stay at that job that you hate and suppress your desire for a career change because, well, that’s what everybody else does.  After all, you’ve got several more lives after this one to do that thing that you’ve always wanted to do.  No need to have a sense of urgency.
  2. Stay committed to that significant other that doesn’t believe in your dreams.  So what that they ridicule you for wanting to become a contractor, or that they call your hobbies a selfish waste of time.  They know you better than anyone else, and therefore know what’s in your best interest.  And who knows, maybe with time those feelings of resentment and bitterness that you harbor will just fade into a mind-numbing, soul-sucking disconnectedness that you so admired about your now-divorced parents’ relationship.
  3. Don’t show too much enthusiasm or emotion.  People might think you’re weak.  Worse yet, they might gain a glimpse of the real you, and the real you might make them wish that they were leading more authentic lives.
  4. Ignore and suppress the talents you were born with.  Never mind that you were put on this planet with the express purpose of writing that Pulitzer Prize-winning book that would help sway public opinion in such a profound way that it resulted in the election of a President who’s revolutionary ideas would end world hunger and the AIDS epidemic.  You’ve got more important things to do, like spend 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, for the next 30 years writing cheese-ball, one-liner greeting cards that will end up in the garbage anyway.
  5. Don’t stand up for yourself.  Self-respect is overrated, and your boss is probably right: you are a worthless idiot.
  6. Don’t rock the boat.  The way things have always been done is the way things should always be done, period.  Malcontents like George Washington, Thomas Edison, the Wright brothers, and Rosa Parks just made the world more complicated.  Who needs air travel, anyway?
  7. Refuse to apologize for mistakes you’ve made.  After all, it was a long time ago and they probably don’t remember, just like you don’t remember that time 39 years ago when your best friend in high school borrowed your car and then wrecked it before skipping town.
  8. Refuse to accept apologies because, well, you’ve never made a mistake in your entire life, and holding onto that anger is doing wonders for your blood pressure.
  9. Don’t take risks.  Whatever is out there beyond the horizon might hurt or frighten you or, God forbid, allow you to learn something new.  Besides, everybody knows that the greatest, most influential figures in history preferred to play it safe and take the easy bets.
  10. Read something like this and tell yourself that idealism is for the young, the naive, and the stupid.                


Posted in Motivation To Succeed | 5 Comments

Your Niche Service Business Will Have Naysayers

Posted on December 28, 2007 by Scott

When my brother and I made it through the process of learning how to become a contractor and then finally started our niche business, most of the people in our lives supported what we were doing (thank goodness), but there were plenty of critics, too, as there always are.  It’s hard enough to convince these types that business ownership is a worthwhile endeavor to begin with.  So when they hear that your business is ultra-specialized it’s just that much more ammunition for them.  The naysayers could be friends, family, former co-workers, you name it.  Listen quietly to their speech and say little, but allow it to fuel the entrepreneurial fire within you.  If you’ve done your research and know that a market exists for your service (especially an emerging one), you must learn to ignore those buzzing flies in your ear.

These days our business is on fire, and suffice it to say that most of the criticism has been silenced.  The key is specific, targeted advertising.  Google Adwords, for example, has been huge for our business.  Internet advertising is still a confusing concept for many contractors and small business owners, but I can almost guarantee that if you give it a chance, you’ll be astounded by the results.  By the way, if you don’t have a website for your business yet, what are you waiting for?  More and more consumers are opting for Google and Yahoo and throwing away their phone books, so it’s high time you developed an internet presence – you won’t regret it!  By leveraging the internet you can score huge numbers of free construction leads.  We also send postcards to upscale homes that are obviously in need of our services, and this has proven to be effective as well.   Be aggressive in targeting those that have a need for your service, even if the concept is a relatively obscure one.

The exciting thing to me is that we’re staking a local claim to an emerging type of service, and the pool of potential clients only grows larger with each passing year!  The critics will never get it, but that’s just fine.  The more numerous the cynics, the fewer the number of potential competitors you’re likely to encounter.  The end result is that you could be positioning your company to be the dominant local player in a niche service that is about to explode.

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Find A Niche And Focus On Speed

Posted on December 26, 2007 by Scott

Now many of you no doubt have big plans to build a full-service remodeling company, and perhaps you’re already knee-deep in the process of learning how to become a general contractor, but I’d ask you to put on the brakes for one second and hear me out on this one.  I would contend that for many people, a simpler, more streamlined service business might be the better way to go.  Let me explain.

I’m always impressed by the speed and efficiency that characterize the most successful local carpet cleaning companies.  They’ll arrive in a basic, lettered van, zip through a few rooms of carpet like it’s nobody’s business, and less than 30 minutes later be out the door with $100 in hand.  Those that repeat the process an average of eight times a day have quite a cash machine working for them.  Furthermore, those that can accumulate 5-10 vans and workers, each visiting eight homes per day, can start counting the days to early retirement and seven-figure wealth.  They’ve figured out how to perfect a system that fulfills a very specific consumer need, and then expanded the business without straying from their specialty.

There are several factors that contribute to the success of this kind of service business:

  • By specializing in one service, systems and procedures become easier to replicate and perform.  You can hire less-skilled laborers (who therefore don’t expect to make a lot of money) because they don’t have to juggle varied tasks or responsibilities.  Simply spend a few days training them on their main task (in this case carpet cleaning), and then with every carpet they clean thereafter they’ll become faster and more skilled, to the point that they hopefully need little or no oversight.  By contrast, a more complex business that requires the laborer to have or accumulate a multitude of different skills will almost always struggle to find qualified personnel that will stick around for any period of time, and the ones that do are more likely to command a premium wage.
  • Material and equipment costs are lower and more predictable with a niche business.  Businesses that try to do too much or provide too many services are often burdened with all sorts of equipment that may or may not be utilized on a consistent basis.  That’s extra equipment that needs to be purchased, maintained, repaired, and stored.  And all that upkeep means extra manpower, less productivity, and more money out of your pocket.  Keeping your service and equipment setup as predictable and simple as possible will serve you well as you look to expand.
  • A one-service company can more easily claim to be an “authority” in their local market.  Most quality-minded homeowners today want to know that they are hiring an “expert” in a specific trade or field, not a jack-of-all-trades or handyman type of service.
  • Speed, and therefore profit, is more easily achieved with a single-service business because it often avoids the pitfalls of a more complicated, custom-design type of business.  Ask any full-service remodeler what his pet peeves are, and one of them is sure to be customer indecision when it comes to design and color schemes.  Enormous amounts of time are lost when a customer changes their mind on what type of cabinets should be installed, what color the walls should be, whether the tile should be in a subway or diagonal pattern, etc.  Lost time equals lost profits.  Pursuing a niche, non-custom service business like carpet cleaning or gutter-guard installation allows you to bypass these kinds of problems and focus more of your energies on perfecting your system and achieving speed and productivity.

Of course there are exceptions to every rule, and the multitudes of successful and wealthy full-service remodeling business owners in every American city would surely take offense to many of this post’s precepts.  Just be aware that the more varied and complex your services, the more focused and organized you (and your employees) must be; the greater the number of moving parts, the higher the chance of a system breakdown.  Full-service remodelers and builders also must be keenly aware of margins and cost projections, lest one bad job send your whole quarter down the tubes.  The nice thing about something like carpet cleaning is that if you have one pain-in-the-butt job that you lose money on, it’s over in less than an hour and you can move on to the next one.  Not so with a more complex service.

My personal preference is for a specialized company that is more able to focus on systems, speed, and productivity.   A few add-on services could be justified from time to time, but only if they won’t interfere with your core business and its mechanisms.  A good example would be the carpet cleaner that adds upholstery cleaning to his list of services because it often utilizes the same equipment and materials and only adds a small amount of time to the job.  Just remember that simplicity is conducive to quickness which is conducive to profits.

Posted in Growing Your Business, Starting Your Business | Tagged | Leave a comment

20 Seconds That Will Make Or Break You

Posted on December 20, 2007 by Scott

You’ve heard that first impressions are everything.  Well, in the world of contracting it’s often the ONLY THING.  When you go to a potential customer’s home to give a bid, quite often they’ll be watching you from the moment you pull in the driveway.  Believe it or not, that 20 seconds or so that elapses between getting out of your truck and shaking their hand at the front door will very often determine whether you get the job or not.  It’s got everything to do with how you look, walk, and talk.  The packaging and presentation of a product is often perceived as more important than the product itself, and if you think this doesn’t apply to home improvement services then you’re delusional.  You ARE the product in this scenario, and the sooner you come to grips with that reality the better.  Part of learning how to become a contractor involves paying more attention to your image and creating a sort of persona for the customer.

For starters, drive to the estimate in a nice truck.  Pull up in a Ford Escort and you can kiss the job goodbye (what are you, a contractor or a 16 year-old scooting over to your job at McDonald’s?).  Whip into the drive with that old beat-up piece-of-crap truck and you’re just wasting your time (homeowner will think that if you drive junk, then you’ll do junk work).  I’m not saying you need to go out and buy a $40,000 behemoth F-250 with tinted windows and a helicopter landing pad in the bed, but at least find yourself a truck that is a newer model and looks clean and well-maintained.  I recently bought a nice, used F-150 from a dealer for under 10 grand.  No, it doesn’t have a “pimped out” stereo system or even power locks for that matter, but it looks clean and new, and that’s what really matters for your image.

Now, as you step out of your truck, the real scrutiny of you as a person begins.  Homeowners want to see the following traits, in no particular order:

    • A relatively in-shape person.  It’s a sad but true fact that lean people tend to get hired more often than their overweight counterparts.  Subconsciously, people think that if you don’t have enough discipline to master your own body, how will you ever find the motivation to complete a home remodeling job that may involve difficult and often frustrating phases of work.

 

    • Clean, professional, wrinkle-free attire.  Ideally you’d be wearing long khaki pants (no cargo pants) and a tucked-in polo shirt with your company’s logo emblazoned on the front.  Absolutely no gym shoes.  Any tattoos should be covered up if possible.  Skip the ball-cap, or if you’re going to wear it at least make sure it’s clean and subtle.

 

    • Short, well-groomed hair and beard, if applicable.  A lot of contractors have a problem with this one, but it is what it is.  People see long hair and the first word that comes to mind is “punk”.  It’s obviously a totally bogus and unwarranted assumption, but it’s reality.  For the love of pete, if you’re going to keep the hair at least tie it back out of your face.

 

    • A confident walk.  No slouching or moping on your walk up to the door.  You should look like you want to be there and that you’re excited to meet this person.  Who would you rather hire: a guy that looks genuinely excited about his work and business or somebody that looks like they’d rather be at the dentist?

 

    • A person that looks old enough to be experienced.  If you’re 32 but look 18, you need to take measures to make yourself look older.  Wear glasses, switch the Casio watch out for the Movado, comb your hair in a different way – whatever you have to do to age yourself.  I once posted a photo of myself on our company website so that potential customers could see how clean-cut I look, but it backfired because it made me look like a teenager, even though I’m in my 30′s.  The phone calls suddenly stopped.  I removed the photo and it started ringing again.  Crazy but true.

 

    • A wide, clean, odor-free smile.  Self-explanatory.

 

    • A confident, firm handshake.  When that front door opens you absolutely MUST give a friendly “hello” (no matter how bad your day has been), introduce yourself, shake their hand like you mean it, and look them in the eye.

 

If you can meet all or most of these standards then there’s a good chance that the homeowner has already made up their mind that they like you and that they want to work with you, or at the very least that you’re on their short list.  This assumes, of course, that you know your business and don’t completely blow it during the rest of the meeting, but getting off to a good start will put the customer at ease and make the sale that much easier.  Those first 20 seconds are paramount to the success of your business.  Fail to prepare for and master them, and your company will struggle to survive.  These tips may seem shallow or mean-spirited, but it’s reflective of our society, like it or not.  If you want to succeed you have to learn the rules and play by them.  If you’re the stubborn kind that refuses to change for anyone or anything, I applaud you.  Just don’t expect to ever become a rich contractor.

 

Posted in Customer Skills | Tagged | 2 Comments