Toolbox Talk

Today's topic for Cash Flow is a bit exciting and confronting :) We will be talking about how to get paid sooner than never. And I see this crime that people commit often - it is to do work, raise their invoice, and leave it, and let it dragged out and not get paid and be owed a considerable sum of money. If that's what you do, I urge you to stop and try these better solutions instead to keep your money coming in.

It's Episode 2 of our Cash Flow Series! Last week, I shared with you that the first step to improve your cash flow is to have better margins. Have you started doing it? If not, I think you should and I believe you can. The way to get different results is to do something different. So let me continue my topic with this one - It's important to know your numbers.

I asked people joining the 'Tradies Business Toolshed' group on Facebook about what areas in their business they want to improve (if you haven't joined the group yet, click here. And I got this very common answer: CASH FLOW. So I decided that for this whole month of June, I will be talking about 'Cash Flow' because I know it is very important. It is the blood that runs the life of every business. Today, I will start discussing how to have better margins.

Last week I spoke about 'Price vs Risk' or 'Choosing Between Cheap Tradies And Expensive Tradies'. I want to emphasize that sometimes when choosing a cheap builder, the customers expose himself/herself to a lot of risks compared to the expensive ones - those who have included everything in their quote, who they can trust and rely, and all other things. 

But, let me make myself clear, I am not saying expensive is always better than cheap, because it is not always the case. Today, I want to continue exploring this topic and I call it the 'Building Game'.

Today's topic is about Price vs Cost. I know when it comes to pricing tradies can feel a bit pressured, especially when someone else comes in much cheaper than you for the same job. 

So I've made this to explore one of my favorite themes - resisting price pressure, and what you can do to make sure you have enough money to sustain your business. You need to take a risk you know and it's not that hard :)

Today, I've made a short video about what I call "The Marketing Building Blocks for a trades business" and I'm going to - explain the different types of trade business - What the building blocks are - Which type of building blocks should you use for your trades business I hope the video makes sense to you. Or have a chat with me if you have questions :)

It's been a while since I done Jon's Journey episodes for you. For those who are new here, these episodes are about my experience as someone who's bought a house and using tradespeople as a customer, being on the other side of that fence and seeing what I learned so I can share it with you and you can use it to improve your business. 

But today, I cheated... I haven't used the trade but my neighbors have. So I'm going to show you what the trades who worked on their house did.

In today's topic, I'm talking about social media. I know there's so many choices out there you can use to market on social media. There are many people trying to sell a service to do it for you, and often they're biased because they have a preference or an understanding of one platform and not so much the other. But are these platforms good for you? I'll tell you how to use social media based on how a buyer behaves online.

You might be wondering what I mean by my title. 🙂 It's a cute 😊 story but I'm making a point about inertia and taking action - are you sitting on a nail? 🤔 There's no denying that we all experience pain at some point in our lives, even in our business. Sometimes it's obvious what's causing us this pain. 

And sometimes the pain is disguised. Do you know what's causing you pain in your life, particularly in your trades business? What have you done so far about it? 🤷‍♂️

Do you find it hard to let go (of control)? I know most tradies do. In fact, ""Control Issues"" is something most of my clients will identify with. Fair enough - you got this far by being in control but you'll scale by letting go - in a controlled fashion. 

 I'll show you how to: - Let go of your control issues - Delegate the work to your people - Create systems and processes If you want me to show you how, watch the video :)