For over a dozen years,
NSPG has been providing the tools that allow contractors to
increase profits and minimize business hassles. With our
simple-to-use-tools, you can make being a business owner
what you always wanted to it be -
successful, profitable and rewarding.
The Right Balance
Now that the
summer vacation season is in full swing, we'd like to
take a look at how businesses manage the balance
between personal and work time. Just as all
businesses need to Crunch their Numbers regularly, we
need to examine how our work affects the other aspects
of our lives. After all, working is not just about
the work.
 This weekend
one of our employees attended a high school graduation for
his
niece. His brother (a safety sprinkler contractor)
and a long time friend (a roofing & siding contractor)
were there. Over their years in business they have
each achieved a balance between their home ands work
lives, but in wildly different ways.
Since most of his brother's fire sprinkler business is
commercial, he has been able to tailor his work schedule
to fit his family life. He makes time to coach his
son's baseball team by using technology to shift some of his office work
to to the evening at home. The keys to his
solution is to
avoid competing on price alone so he can afford to
bypass marginally profitable jobs. The quality of
your
work can matter even in a competitive bidding situation.
Of course, reaching a balance has not been quick or
easy, and is never perfect. When his brother has a
lot of work, the job can eat into his personal time.
Over the course of many years, he has reached a balance
that works for him and his family. He even takes
vacations every year now. He can easily afford to
send his daughter to college next year.
 The roofing & siding contractor has also reached a
balance, but he has followed a completely different
path. After fifteen "successful" years, he closed
his business and moved to a lower cost area. He
has built up a business as a free lance "employee for
hire." He does work for other companies and
individuals who hire him when they need high quality
work done. His years of networking and quality
work have paid off.
He told me that all of his friends envied him when he
ran his own company. They all wanted the freedom
that comes with working for yourself. Of course,
anyone who has worked on his own business knows that
that freedom does not exist for most business owners.
When the customer wants something done, it has to get
done. The customer sets your schedule. Where's the freedom in that?
Even when his business had grown enough that he could
reach a balance between business and personal time, the
needs of the customer always seemed to intrude into his
personal life. There was always the big job that
he could not pass up, or the emergency that had to be
dealt with. Being a strong personality, delegation
was hard.
So, he took the best aspects of the business he had
created over the years, and he eliminated the worst.
Now he gets to pick and choose the work he does without
the worries of overhead and employees. He can work
on interesting, high end jobs that use the technical and
business skills he has developed over the years.
Unsolicited calls from clients seeking high quality (and
high paying) work are a large portion of his
professional life now.
The key for these two men was to find the business model
that worked for them. It involves high quality
work with appropriate pricing to match the quality.
That combination allowed them to reach their goal of a
good, balanced life.
 The bottom line for anyone in business is to find the
balance that works for you. It can be as simple as
time shifting some of the work to make room for your
real life. Or, it can be as radical as giving up
the standard business model, and doing it your own way.
Either way, you need to build your business on the
balance of price and quality. Know the cost of
doing the quality of work you want to offer, and charge
the right amount to be able to live the life you want.
If you need a hand setting your
business numbers and getting paid for the quality work
you produce, email
Mike Conroy.
He can help you combine your current numbers with your
goals so you can set measurable
benchmarks and build your own right-sized profitable company.
Measure Monthly, Adjust Quarterly
& Achieve Annual Profit Goals
On-Line
Resources
Here's a
Radiant Heating Comfort Calculator from the
non-profit Healthy Heating web site.
The Department of Energy has a web site explaining the
issues involved in sizing heating and cooling systems.
This site contains information that could easily be
incorporated into your sales process to explain why a
prospective customer should upgrade now.
 Now
that the Shuttle is back in space, here's how to watch
NASA TV broadcasts on the Internet.
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