I am definitely interested in the group calls. My preference would not be a Saturday morning though.

Stick with DOPE marketing on yard signs. Can’t beat their pricing and service

@Tim Leary, I'd love to know what types of jobs you're focusing on to drive that revenue. What are your B&B jobs, and what are your favorite jobs? We have had a ton of remodel calls lately, and we just do not want to do that work. It is too time-consuming and hard to make margins.

You know, cash flow forecasting—and just cash flow in general—has always been my number one struggle. I wasn’t born wealthy, and I’ve never started a company with more than $30,000 in the bank. I have always been an open book and speak freely so... When I was in Commercial roofing, cash flow was very different. The sales cycle was 4–12 months. From the day we look at a project to the day revenue is actually produced, it could be up to a year. That forced us to focus heavily on repairs just to keep money moving. But once the money flows in roofing, it flows in large chunks. There’s usually a steady stream of significant deposits and final payments, so there was almost always money in the bank once things got rolling. Now in the handyman business, jobs are much smaller, cash flow feels completely different—and honestly, it’s been a constant challenge. We did $885,000 in revenue last year, but our gross profit was around 35%, and our net was only 3%. Those numbers are too low. We have a lot to fix this year. We’re transitioning technicians to a job-based pay system, and naturally, there’s pushback. They don’t like the idea that they’re not “getting paid” to stop at the gas station in the morning for their energy drinks and breakfast, or to make multiple Home Depot runs. But when they were hourly, I was paying for all of that inefficiency. We had way too many labor dollars spent walking around Home Depot last year. Job staging, prep, and planning have to improve. Not inventory necessarily—but execution. I completely understand why cash flow stresses people out. Every week—especially coming out of winter—I look at what’s sitting in Housecall Pro and think, “How am I making payroll in four days?” It’s stressful. I’m a Christian man, and I truly believe God has taken care of me. In 30 years, I’ve never missed a payroll. Somehow, money always shows up in time to cover payroll, shop rent, truck payments, and everything else. But by the end of the week, the accounts are usually looking pretty thin, and we start the next week doing it all over again.

Adding to my post: Clarification on Sales Commission vs. Production Pay if sold and produced by a salesman I would like to add to my post regarding the sales commissions. If a technician who also does sales sells a job and then goes out to perform the installation work himself, I’ve heard some companies say the tech gets an additional percentage of that job. However, I don’t understand that structure. If the technician is classified as a Tier 3 technician making $40 per hour for handyman installation work, and he spends 2 hours on a job he sold, performing the work, wouldn’t he simply get paid the normal job production pay for those 2 hours? So $80 pay plus the commission for selling it. Keep in mind, he is on a salary of $579/week for the sales. I don’t see why that would turn into an additional percentage of the job on top of the sales commission. In my opinion, production and sales should be completely separate. If you sell it, you earn the commission and your base pay. If you install it, you earn the production pay. But stacking a percentage on top of both doesn’t make sense to me. Let’s think this through and determine what structure is clean, fair, and sustainable in the long term.