I created these videos below using the new “auto awesome” feature in Google+ Pictures. Each took less than 10 minutes to create. They’re not perfect, but they didn’t take thousands of dollars to pay a third party to produce, or require a lot of time. It’s a great way to get new content onto your website or social media profiles … Read more
Tech Insights for Contractors
Helping old-economy businesses with new-economy tools.
Archive for January 2015
Are you wondering what the whole cloud this is about and trying to figure out how it can help your specialty contracting operation? Chances are you’re already in the cloud. There is a spectrum of definitions for the cloud but I prefer the broadest: When your data is stored or processed at a big data center instead of on your … Read more
In October 2006, I traveled from Seattle to Indianapolis to visit my mom’s cousin. He owns one of the largest home building firms in that market, Arbor Homes. My contracting business was still in its infancy and I was searching for some inspiration about “how to become a real company.”
I spent three days shadowing him and some of … Read more
I was at an industry trade group association convention in 2009 and went to a seminar taught by CEO coach Kraig Kramers. He introduced me to a concept called the Trailing 12 Month Report (T12M). They have transformed the way I think about my business.
Most charts, graphs and report simply bundle totals into weekly or monthly totals. But … Read more
I always find it amusing when someone calls our office and asks, “do you guys do free bids?” Are there actually any contractors that charge to perform bids?
The whole “free bid” thing is a curse on our industry that will probably never go away. Nevertheless, although this is what consumers expect and demand, we should always be analyzing who … Read more
Getting paid and managing cash flow can be an ongoing struggle for contractors. While chasing down certain customers to collect payment is a struggle that will never go away, one priority we established at our contracting business was that we must have our own clerical house in order.
More specifically, although we perform over 1,000 separate jobs each year, we … Read more
We use to have paper time cards. Employees would fill out their start time, stops time, break time and which project they worked on (for job costing).
Before running payroll every two weeks, our General Manager would sit down after dinner and enter all this information into the computer. During our peak employment in the summer — when we have … Read more
We have a saying that’s developed around the office in the last few years: “sometimes the easiest decisions are the hardest ones to make.” When faced with these types of issues, being able to pull powerful and relevant data can be the best thing to make rationale, rather than emotional, decisions.
When it comes to sales, it’s difficult to fight … Read more
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