Recruiting and keeping good employees, especially service techs, is the most difficult thing I know of in the PHC service business. I’m sure that Blau Sudden Services has a better track record than most firms in the industry, simply because we offer one of the best compensation and benefits packages to be found anywhere. Our service technicians have been here an average of seven years, with two at the 23-year mark in tenure. Office personnel average five years of service, with a couple in the 10-year range.

But our track record of employee retention is hardly ideal. Several months ago we lost a service tech that had been with us for close to 20 years. This was an eye-opener to me…

Frank J. Blau and Associates came up with the valve tag idea many years ago as a way for service technicians to market their company to the homeowner more effectively. These valve tags are distributed through solely through ShuBee (877.974.8233 | www.shubee.com).

Here’s how it works – at the end of the service tech’s visit, he asks the customer if he or she knows where the main water shutoff is to the home. Most people do not know, and those that do usually cannot tell where the shutoffs are to various appliances around the home. This gives the technician a chance to perform a valuable service for the homeowner by offering to identify and tag each shutoff.

What do we get out of it? Plenty.

As you can see from the sample attached, the flip side of the valve tag is a company business card. They end up hanging at a half dozen or more locations around the home as permanent advertisements for your company. Whenever something goes wrong, guess who will be the first company these people are likely to think of calling! It gets them away from the Yellow Pages and all of your competitors’ ads.

Here’s a pic of me and Jerod, elbow deep in a furnace. Jerod is everything you look for in a technician…nice, polite, skilled, ethical and ambitious. He deeply cares about his customers and fellow team members. Jerod just graduated from his company’s field supervisor training course and is determined to make a powerful, positive impact. It was great to spend time with him on a ride along.
Jerod has lots of cool tools to help him. In addition to the required hand tools and …

What do you consider to be a “fair” profit for the goods and services you offer? Judging by the way many contractors do business, I get the impression that they feel guilty accepting any money at all!

I’m all for charity and philanthropy, and am proud to say that I share some of my good fortune with various worthy causes. But if I had not run my business with sound financial and pricing policies over several decades, I might be receiving charity rather than giving it.

Nothing breaks my heart more than to see old plumbers doing backbreaking work at a time when they should be devoting their days to enjoying the grandkids and favorite pastimes. The physical work of plumbing is a young man’s occupation, and even the business of contracting takes its toll on failing senses and nerves.

More than 90% of the contractors in our industry don’t have the knowledge and/or the will to crunch the numbers in a way that results in adequate compensation for themselves and their faithful, hard-working employees, and healthy bottom line. It will remain true for all eternity, until this industry changes its way of thinking about itself…

People ask me where I get my ideas for this column. That’s easy. I look around. As I travel the country meeting with contractors, I observe solutions they have developed to common problems. I also observe the mistakes that afflict our fellow trade professionals.

I’ve bemoaned for years the sad statistics showing that PHC contractors are woefully underpaid, earning on average around $45,000 a year based on industry statistics. But you know the old adage about averages – one foot in a bucket of ice, the other in boiling water, and on average you feel quite comfortable.

You’ve heard me refer many times to “blind leading the blind” in our industry. I’m referring to the same mistakes that get passed on generation after generation, pertaining both to trade practices and the business of contracting. Those of us who go into business for ourselves tend to learn how to do things from our old bosses, and those bosses learned from their old bosses.

You are sick and tired of being a slave to that disaster you call a business. The one that pays slave wages and lousy benefits to employees and little or nothing to yourself and your spouse. The business that is sustained only by the patience of your vendors, who don’t get paid for 90 days or more when times slow down.

Finally, you are ready to make a change for the better. You purchase the Frank Blau “Business of Contracting Kit”- from ShuBee. You have become a numbers cruncher. For the first time in your life you’ve learned what it really costs to run a business, and what you and your employees are worth in the way of compensation. You make the decision to run a business as it should be run – in a way that takes care of you, your spouse, your employees and your customers the way they deserve.