Today I’m going to dialog on a little different topic. It is of concern to all of us as contractors but does not directly relate to marketing. The thing that I think is the greatest threat to our security and wealth is our own government.
If we do not change the direction our government is going and start to downsize it, I think we will have a very difficult environment to do business in the very near future!  I believe that government is out of control.
One of the greatest indicators of that is …

For most of us as contractors, a large part of our business comes from repeat and referral business. The odd thing about this is that we often take these customers for granted and focus instead on attracting new customers.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t try to get new customers, we just need to realize that completely new customers are the hardest to get and they are also the most expensive to get in terms of marketing dollars spent to get a customer.
The other thing about repeat and referral customers is …

In the business environment today, customers are looking for more value than ever before. Last week I wrote about the importance of doing a great job. That is extremely important.
Today, however, doing a great job is just the entrance admission to stay in business. Doing a great job is what is expected. If you want to stand out, you have to offer more than that.
Customers are looking for more than just a great job. They are looking for a great experience along with a great job. Customers want to feel …

I have seen all kinds of quality in contractors work. As I’m sure you have, I’ve seen jobs that you wonder if the contractor who did them had any idea what they were doing. I’ve seen jobs that were so botched up that there was no way to fix them. We just had to take it apart and start over again.
I’ve also seen a lot of jobs that were pretty decent, but if you looked hard, you could find problems with them. It is difficult to do every job perfect. …

Cutting the fat from your business is one of the quickest ways to boost profits and make a business more stable. It might surprise you how much excess can build up in a business that is not necessary for the business to create money. As contractors, we can sometimes spend money on a lot of things that do not make us any extra money.
As an example of cutting expenses, my sister has a tutoring business where she helps school kids learn better and she has a preschool. She wasn’t making …