Dear entrepreneur, 

Flat Rate won't work in my town. I can't charge this much; I'll go out of business. I'm not ready to implement it yet. My community is too small. I don't have the time to learn something new.

Henry Ford said, "Whether you think you can or think you can't. You are right!

I first came across this message in 2006. No truer words have been spoken. The above list is just a few excuses I have seen in the last six years.

In all walks of life, in all types of businesses, people will find every excuse in the world not to do something and find a reason why something won't work.

It's no wonder why 80% of businesses go under in the first five years, and only 5% will remain in the coming five. The general thinking of the masses are the same. Are you traveling the well-trodden path of mediocrity?

As mentioned in the last email, success is a science, and there are many steps that must be taken in order to get the desired results.

In any given town, there will be two contractors with the same mechanical skillset, yet one will be struggling, and the other will be flourishing.

Why is that? Is the other contractor better? The answer is no! No one is better than anyone. The difference lies in the results, and the results are different because the successful contractor is operating at a higher level of awareness in that particular part of life.

Everyone can find reasons not to do something. It's easy. It takes a much smarter person, one with greater awareness, to understand if there're reasons not to do something, there has to be reasons to do it.

I can personally tell you that I too had the "I can't attitude" and it took a good kick in the pants from one of my mentors back in 2007 for me to see the light.

Again, I will ask these questions:
1. What are the three biggest challenges getting in your way of success?

2. What are your top three goals in the next 3-6 months?

To your success ~ James Brush

Good morning fellow entrepreneurs,

We all know the importance of feeding our minds with the good stuff. And what is this good stuff? Good books, audios, podcasts, good people, etc.

Once our minds are fed, the other key ingredient is implementation. The staggering truth when it comes to self-help is that only 1% implement consistently after they finish the book or course. Then after that, they dismiss what they learned as Hodge Podge. 

That said, I had a member reach out to me last week that had a request for one of the articles that he wanted to see me write about this week and the subject at hand is our health.

Paul wrote, “It's about making all the guys aware of their physical well-being, we are spending time trying to get better mentally but without good health we can do nothing.” 

Paul has a very good point, and it is worth writing about!
Not all of us but many of us put our bodies through hell. Stating some of the obvious:
 

• Lack of exercise
• No exercise
• Excessive drinking
• Smoking 
• The food/junk that we put in our bodies

We can get away with this for a while because the human body is tough and unfortunately, we don’t see immediate results from the activities we partake in. However, over a course of time we will definitely see the results. 

If our life style choices are not good, then the results will not be in our favor. Remember we are the cause of the effect in all aspects of our lives. We are 100% percent responsible.

A good analogy is that of investing your money in an account that has compounding interest. If you invest a few hundred dollars in your account and view your account in five years from now, or even ten years from now, you are not going to see any significant difference. But if you look at that same account in thirty years from now, you are going to have a large sum of money.

Another example is eating a cheeseburger from a fast food restaurant. Eating one today won’t kill you. But what would the implications be if you ate a cheeseburger three to four times a week over a course of 30 years?

If you are eating correctly, exercising correctly and feeding your mind intellectually and spiritually, then I commend you. Personally, I have some things to work on. So I ask you. Are there areas in your life you could improve?

Today is a new day. Change can be made if you want it. We’re not alone in this journey of life. Make today count.

Be well my friends ~ James Brush

Good afternoon fellow entrepreneurs, I hope you are having a fantastic day so far.

Today I will be discussing the power of the tongue and the power of the pen.  If you watched the video that I sent you about the power of thoughts and how it affects water, then you know already how powerful your thoughts are and how they will form and shape your life.

A quick thought about the power of the tongue. It has been said that two powerful words that we use on a daily basis are, "I Am". 
We say things like:
I am broke
I am sick
I am poor
I am this or that. Most people speak into all of the negative things and it becomes a part of their belief system. 

Instead, we should say things like:
I am rich
I am successful
I am blessed
I am healthy

Regardless of what you say, you are declaring your truth into your life; you are painting your life's picture. Start today to be consciously aware of what you are saying. 

When you wake in the mornings and before you go to bed, declare in your life all the good things you are. What I can tell you is this, you will see a shift, you will notice that your life will change.

Now to get even better results, start writing it down and review it often. When you write things down, things start happening. 

For example, I had a few ideas to create some products for you guys. It wasn't until I wrote it down that I started taking action and making it happen. So today I can proudly announce the new panel schedule software is ready.

I hope you will enjoy it as much as I do, and I know it will make writing panel schedules easier and put you one step ahead of your competitors.

Check out my new software by clicking this link. http://www.panelscheduler.com/front

To see how it works click this link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxEJc_D674Q&feature=youtu.be

To your success ~ James Brush.

Good morning fellow entrepreneurs, 

Happy Monday, today is a new day and the start of what can be a great, successful week or a week of dismal results and mediocrity. Which one will it be for you?
You may be asking yourself, how do I know what my day or week is going to be like? It's just now unfolding and the rest of the week is not even here yet.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Your day and week are going to be what you intend it to be. We are all 100% responsible for the current results that we see in our lives today.

Until we change our thinking and raise our awareness, we will see the same results.

To change your results and to have a great week. Start with intending it to be great. Start with the thought. Then write it down. Visualize what you expect. 

I'm going to digress for one minute but I promise I will come back full circle.

Our mind works in pictures. Let me give you an example. If I ask you to think about your first car. You will hold a picture in your mind of that car. Perhaps it was red, had a small dent on the side. It may have had black cloth interior. A picture was formed in your mind. You didn't see the word C.A.R. spelled out in your mind or B.L.A.C.K C.L.O.T.H.

That said, we need visualize a picture in our mind of what we want our day, week and our whole lives to be. That vision, that statement that you write out, your intentions needs to be viewed a few times a day, so it becomes so interwoven in your subconscious mind, that it will produce the behavior that will manifest the results. 

It was said Proverbs 29:18 "Where there is no vision; the people perish."

In closing, remember you are the Michael Angelo of your life. Today is a new canvas. What are you going to paint?

To your success ~ James Brush.

Dear entrepreneur,

Today I want to discuss the strength of having a flat rate system in place and how to capitalize every opportunity that comes your way on service calls and emergency calls.

The strength of using one of CS2’s systems is that when you arrive at the clients house, you will be able to evaluate, price and do all the work in one trip.  I really want to emphasize on the last statement: do all the work in one trip.

I can’t begin to tell you how important it is when it comes to service work that you need to strike when the iron is hot.

Service companies lose tens of thousands of dollars every year by not following this one service law “strike when the iron is hot”!

This law is a very simple law: it simply means that you show up, sell the job, and start the work THEN AND THERE.  It has to become part of your culture with everyone in your team. More importantly, that means you need to train your techs this philosophy.  That there is no other way and no other way will be acceptable.

80% of success is just showing up. ~ Woody Allen

You need to train your techs.  Then you need to train them some more.  If you don’t train your techs that they must do the job then and there, it equals lost revenues.  Many techs unfortunately get in the habit of selling a job and scheduling the job or having the CSR schedule the job at another time that is more convenient for them and not what is convenient for the customer.

Here is a perfect example, you send a tech on an emergency call, he arrives at the job at 4:00 on a Friday afternoon and after evaluating the job, he believes it will take 3.5 hours to complete.  He tells the client that the job needs to be rescheduled and calls the CSR to put it on the schedule for next week.

To be continued... On Wednesday we will discuss how this should be handled and your company culture.

To your success ~ James Brush.

Dear entrepreneur,

Here's a quote that's worth thinking about.
The quality of your life will be in direct proportion to the questions you ask.

My business coach has said on many occasions, that so many people, will read the book, go to the seminar, take the occasional class and it stops there. The good books, training events, and classes will have powerful questions at the end or in the implementation guide.

Significant growth happens when you take the time to answer these questions. Most entrepreneurs don’t spend any real time asking quality questions, reflecting and thinking into their unique situation.

The classes, the mentoring, and coaching is only the catalyst to get you started. What you do after the fact, is what makes the difference.

What are the special needs of the people you serve?
With whom are you competing?
What makes you different from your competitors?
What unique benefits do your potential clients get from the service you offer?
If the customer asks you why should I buy from you, what would you say?

Can you and the staff you employ, list at least six reasons and benefits of why someone should do business with you?

Take some time today and think into these questions that I'm asking you. Write them down and look at them often. Make changes, when changes are needed. Send me an e-mail with your answers and I'll go over them with you. I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

To your success ~ James Brush.

Dear Entrepreneur, 
How to handle price complaints about the dispatch fee after the fact.

Every once in a while we will be blessed with the customer that bitches about the dispatch fee after the fact and call your office threatening you how he is going to go on every review site there is and tell all his neighbors that your a ripoff con artist.

Perhaps you go to someone’s house and only the wife is there. The husband gets home and sees that she had to pay $49 to have a professional, licensed technician in a company van that came to the house to pay for an estimate.

I mean, “how dare that contractor, he doesn’t have a right to make a living?” Because we all know that it doesn’t cost us anything to put a service technician in a truck right?
Here is what people don’t know about your company and pricing: 

How the pricing structure works, and all that is covered by it. Warranties, drug testing, 24-hour service, background checks, gas, insurance, office wages, etc., etc.

You can't control what the competition is willing to charge, all you can do is justify your charges. Who knows, the competition may be a desperate one-man outfit working out of his truck with zero overhead, zero warranty, zero office staff, etc. ( Little overhead is a farce by the way.)

As scary as it may seem, you have to talk to him because if you don't, he will for sure talk to everyone he knows about you!

So how do we handle this? The answer is in the next email.

To your success ~ James Brush.

Do you understand your technician’s performance?

If you are a one man band do you understand your performance?

These two questions lead into even more questions:

1. Who is your best technician?
2. Who is your worst?
3. How many calls are you running a day?
4. What is your average service technician’s ticket?
5. What is your average service ticket?

I can bet my bottom dollar that every successful business owner knows the answer of these questions and is reviewing it on a daily and weekly basis? The implications of not doing it will be detrimental to your business. If you don’t agree, I bet my other last dollar that your business is nothing more than mediocre.

All owners should know where their business stands. You must keep score. How do you know if you are winning or losing if you don’t keep score? This is why we have created the score board report in your software.

Keeping score will enable you to know who needs more training or let go. It will also allow you to award your top producers.

Answering these questions only takes a couple of minutes. If you don’t know, then start today. I guarantee once you do, you will see a change in your business.

To your success ~ James Brush
 

Have you ever had anybody tell you how you should be running your business?

I bet you my bottom dollar you have. Everybody you know probably has at one point in time given you advice on how you should run your business or what you should do next. Even when you didn't ask for advice.

I love advice when I have not asked for it. I especially love it when it's not coming from an entrepreneur. I'm kidding... However I do love advice, and I invest heavily in it but I invest in people who bring out the best in me and who already have reached a significant amount of success themselves. The point is you have to be careful where you are getting your advice from.

If you remember in past emails, I mention the law of association. It's worth reminding from time to time because of the sheer power of influence. 

It seems once a week I get a call from a contractor telling me how I should be running CS2. "My pricing structure is not right. How dare I charge what I'm charging. I have not thought my business through enough." They can be quite offensive about it too!

It reminds me of contracting too. Customers try telling us how much we should be charging.  If you get just one thing out of this, let it be this. Don't let customers tell you, how much you should be charging. Don't cave on your price. 98% of contractors do. As Greer said "contractors don't have a backbone."

Stay strong to your convictions. It's your business. Take advice from whom have already been down the road of success.

To your success  ~ James Brush.

Have you ever had one of those ah-ha moments in your life that resonated with you and then the very next day, someone, something you see or something you pick up gives you the exact same message but in a different light?

This could be about life, business, friendship, relationships, it could be about anything. For this discussion, it will be about business.

That said, I believe this to be God speaking to you and there are two very important keys here. One is awareness. Being aware when you are being spoken to. Two is acting on what you are receiving.  It is my belief that the more you act upon those messages, the more aware you become of those messages coming in. You will also see and hear them more often.

The other day my business coach was saying it was a shame that so many people try so very hard at something only to fail. Some will try their whole lives doing something they are not good at and not become a success at it. One reason for this is, is they don’t know their strengths or their weaknesses.

Many times they are too close to the idea, the project or the business. It’s understandable because they own it. They can’t see if it’s a good or bad. Remember, you can’t see the picture if you are the one that is in the frame.

The point my mentor was making yesterday was recognize your weaknesses and find your strengths. Once you do this, play into your strengths. If you don’t know what your strengths and weaknesses are, sit down, take some time and start thinking. Start writing them down as they come to you. You will find that it won’t take long until your mind starts racing and you won’t be able to write down your thoughts fast enough.

Back to my story. So yesterday I spoke with my coach. Did some deep thinking into his message. Went to bed, woke up this morning and meditated. I got up and as my coffee was brewing, I walked straight to my bookcase with not a thought in my mind and picked up a book. The book is Quantum Leap Thinking by James Mapes.

I opened the book to chapter 16, which is Taking Inventory. This is what it said:

An acorn dreamed of being a beautiful pine tree when he grew up. The acorn was given a book on positive thinking and he diligently read it, following all the advice on using positive thinking to achieve your dreams. But as the acorn grew, he felt himself changing into something very different from a pine tree.

The acorn accumulated every book on visualization and change that he could find. He followed the exercises faithfully. The acorn spent hours visualizing himself as a pine tree. But despite all his efforts, the acorn grew into a massive, elegant oak tree.

The metaphor is simple. You are who you are. You have certain God-given traits that are unique to you. There is no one else walking the face of this earth with your mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical makeup.

To jump-start your self-inventory process, take a realistic, honest look at yourself and list your strengths and weaknesses on paper. Look them over and cross out what you consider the negative aspects of your makeup. Then play your strengths.

It’s pretty neat how things work. This was one of those moments where the universe was telling me something and I wanted to share.

So if there are things in your life that are not going great, then perhaps it’s time to look at what your strengths and weaknesses are, and take a mental note and see if something is nudging you, if something is speaking to you.

To your success ~ James Brush.

Are you good at making decisions?

Do not be fooled by the simplicity of the writing below. The power of it, is in its simplicity.

If we could encapsulate your life as being a picture and if you were to view that picture of your life today. The picture that you would view would be painted by the decisions you have made up to this point.

It stands to reason, the life experiences or picture that you will see tomorrow and the next day will be based on the decisions you make today. So your business will thrive, survive or fail based on the decisions you make.

I have said it on this forum a few times, which I'm a very strong advocate of the book Think and Grow Rich. Something he writes about and many coaches speak into, is the power of effective decision making. Highly successful business owners make decisions very quickly and change them very slowly if they change them at all.

The less successful business owner, which is the majority of all businesses, make decisions very slow and change them frequently.

So ask yourself, are you an effective decision-maker? Can you improve your decision-making?

Many entrepreneurs can't make decisions at all. They rely on other people to make decisions for them. In fact, they don't like thinking either. They would much rather have somebody do their thinking for them.

That is why Henry Ford said, thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.

If you don't like your life's picture, change your results by changing your thinking and become an effective decision-maker.

To your success ~ James Brush.

Understanding ROI

So what is ROI? ROI means Return on Investment and what does ROI mean when it comes to your marketing and business? Everything!

Having a complete understanding of ROI when it comes to your marketing is crucial to running a successful business. Simply put, you need to know where your marketing dollars are working and where they are not. This is done by measuring and testing. Your marketing can be tracked by various means depending on the type of advert you’re running. You should be able to keep track of this in your CRM as well.

Once you have this data, you can invest in the areas that are giving you a return and dump the ones that are a loss. Remember, you need data to back this up. You just can’t say “this doesn’t work.” Do you have the numbers to back it up?

Why do I bring this up? Because some business owners will say that certain marketing does not work and they give up on it too quickly. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes that is the case but many times, they don’t have a full grasp on ROI. Let me give you an example.

Let’s say you invested $2000 in advertising this month and it only produced $1000 in revenue. Not so good right? You lost money, right? Well it depends on how you look at ROI.

In terms of money lost right now, yes you would be correct. But we need to ask what is the ROI when it comes to the long-term customer?

For this example let’s say we are in the HVAC business and let us say that our average client brings in $1000 in revenue a year. For averages sake, we will say this customer stays with you for five years. That said, your customer over five years has brought in $5000.

So out of that $5000, how much money could you spend to acquire one new customer and still make a great profit? You could spend up to a couple thousand dollars to acquire just one customer and still do great. So always look and ask yourself what is the value of the long-term customer?

Many contractors are only looking at what they can do today. What sales can they get today? Once they get the customer, do the job, they move on to the next. They completely forget about them. Turn that customer into a client. Create a lifetime relationship with the client and your profits will soar.

In the relation of marketing, they view it the same way. What can I get today? Instead of looking at it as, what can I get tomorrow, the next day and so on. Think long-term and maximize your investment. I can tell you most of your competition is not thinking this way. It’s one way you can be one step ahead of your competition. To win the race, you only have to win by one step.

More on this later.

To your success ~ James Brush

How to make a small fortune by selling Service Agreements!

I wrote this article five years ago, it’s just as important and relevant today.

There are many benefits for you and your customers from selling Service Agreements.

One of the most important reasons, for you, is the income generated from the sale of

Service Agreements. Some other benefits are: 

1. Customer loyalty.
2. Your clients are truly your customers and no longer just a name in your database.
3. You will have monthly cash flow coming in.
4. Priority service.
5. 15% discount on all services.
6. Never any after-hour or holiday fees.

From service agreements alone, you could possibly make one million dollars extra revenue in 10 years.

For example, we will use a very modest scenario. Suppose a technician can only sell service agreements to 30% of your customers. And let's say the average technician has three service calls a day. That's 15 calls per week. 30% of 15 calls equals 4.5 customers that he has sold a service agreement to.

The service agreements can be sold on a monthly or annual fee basis. For this example, we will sell service agreements at $150 for one year's service. 4.5 agreements selling for $150 equals $675 for a week's sales.

If your technician works 50 weeks a year, he or she will bring in a total of $675 x 50 weeks which will equal $33,750 in sales. This equates to 225 service agreements a year totaling $2812.50 each month in extra income.

Let's suppose that over the next ten years, your technician still only closes 30% of sales for service agreements. Ten years x 225 agreements a year equals 2250 agreements sold by one technician over a ten year period. 2250 x $150 per agreement equals $337,500 in total sales for the ten-year time-frame, equating to $28,125 a month in extra income.

If you have five technicians with a closure rate of 30% on service agreement sales, 5 x $28,125 equals $140,625 extra income a month or $1,687,500 a year.

As you can see, there is great potential for extra income from the sale of service agreements. You have the potential and means for your company to profit and raise its net worth. These attributes are what entrepreneurs or investors look for when they want to buy your business.

So what's the alternative? Not to sell service agreements and miss out on the opportunity to achieve additional financial stability solely through the sale of these agreements?

There is great potential here. Doors will open for you when the time is right! Just as this door has opened for you now.

I just shared one scenario with you on how you can change your business and your future. Don't wait a week or a month or years to start. Start right away. Make a difference in your life and your company. The choice is yours.

Contractor Success Systems can assist you in your quest for a successful, profitable future!

To your success ~ James Brush

Hello friends, I received great feedback on Monday’s email, so let's get started with part two.

Before we get started with our magic words, I want to emphasize how important it is to relay the benefits of what you're selling.

Sometimes the product or service sells itself, other times you have to do a little persuading or leading if you will. You do this by explaining the benefits of your products and services to your customers.

Remember, customers are going to buy. Why not give them reasons to buy from you and not your competitors. One trick is to state a benefit, then listen to your customer... As Charlie Greer says, “you listen yourself into sales not talk yourself into sales.”

Again, state a benefit and listen. If you listen carefully, you will notice that the customer will tell you what they want from you, to be able for you to close the sale. If they don't, tell them another benefit and listen again.

One last point, benefits tie into value. Jeffrey Gitomer said, “if the customer perceives a difference in you and perceives a reassuring value in terms of how he or she wins, then the sale is yours.”

In the next e-mail that we send out we will discuss the benefits and values as a company versus the products or service that we sell.

Since we got a good response from our last email, I'm going to go ahead and give you ten new magical words:

• At last
• Boosts
• Incredible
• Proven
• Quickly
• Recommended
• Save
• Stop
• Warning
• You

Be sure to use the same exercise that we gave you on Monday’s email with your new ten words. You'll be amazed from the results you receive.

As you know, from time to time we write useful information here on our blog. But if you want to stay connected and receive emails that will help you and add value to your business, please be sure to sign up to become a member of our inner circle. You can do this by signing up for our success newsletter. Your information will never be sold or shared.

To your success! ~ James Brush

Do you remember what it was like being on your first large job? It was new, it probably felt exciting, perhaps you felt a sense of being overwhelmed.  However, after getting in there and getting your hands dirty, you found that it wasn’t as bad as you thought it would be.

So you move on to the next job. And you find that this job goes a little smoother. It's just the natural progression of things. So over a course of time you do more jobs and become more proficient.

So let's fast-forward.

The next phase in your life is that you decide you want to go in business for yourself. You do little jobs here and there, and then you land your first big job. All of a sudden for some strange reason you get that feeling of being overwhelmed again, perhaps you feel a little bit scared of the prospect of having such a large job. But why? You have done many jobs like this in the past, so why should this one bother you?

Then it occurs to you. This job is nothing more than a process. It is a system of small steps or tasks that need to be completed in a certain order to give you a final result. It is nothing more than a bunch of small jobs that are intertwined together that makes up one large job.

The same is true when it comes to the business side of your business. It is nothing more than a systemized process. Now the question at hand is, do you have a good system or a bad system?

So ask yourself these questions and really think about the answers.

Do you have a system in place or a definite process that leads you to more success? Or are you just winging it?

What could you do right now that would greatly increase your revenue streams?

What can you do to overcome your business struggles?

I have found over the years that many business owners are great technicians but lousy entrepreneurs. It is not their fault; they trained for many years to become a master of their trade, not an entrepreneur. Being a successful entrepreneur is a trade all within itself. So to become wealthy and to become a successful entrepreneur we must now focus on how we can master the entrepreneur.

More to come.              

To your success! ~ James Brush

Hello friends, today's webinar will be rescheduled. The new time will be 6:00 Pm Est.

We apologize about the inconvience.

To your success ~ James Brush

The other day I was talking with a good friend of mine about option pricing. Before I get into that, I will give you a brief background in what my friend did for a living.

He retired from contracting but like a lot of people after some time passed, he got bored. So he decided to get a job as a maintenance supervisor. After about six months of working, he was promoted and was responsible for 150 schools, and I believe he had 100 to 150 employees he had to manage. So much for retirement.

The men and women that he had to manage were made up from all the trades. Plumbing, HVAC, Chiller Techs, Electricians, Painters etc. But his previous life as a successful contractor gave him the tools that he needed to be successful running his men.

So here we are at a restaurant at 8:30AM drinking coffee talking about our careers. I began to tell him about option pricing.  I was telling him that it was my belief you shouldn’t offer your customers too many options. If you give them too many options, it will give them what I call “sales overload” and they won’t be able to make a decision.

So John joins in and says “absolutely. When I was in the contracting business, we did the same but it’s not just for contracting. I dealt with this in the school board as well.” So I asked John to give me a little more details.

So he said, “well James, anytime I had to work with a principle or higher-ups, and they wanted some services such as painting or new blinds for the windows. They would get three choices of paint or three of choices of window treatments.

I learned a long time ago if I gave them any more than that, they couldn’t make a decision either, or if they did make a decision, it would take months. If I gave them three choices, they would choose one of the options the same day or the next day.”

With that said, I’m not saying there are times that you can't offer more than three options. However, I do not recommend going past five or six. Keep this in mind when you’re building options for your customers.

So today’s assignment. If you offer option pricing. Take a good look at it. See what’s working and what’s not working. If you find that there are tasks with too many options, reflect on this story and see what you can do to simplify your pricing.

To your success, ~ James Brush.

Introducing the new Contractor Success Blog!
Hello, everyone. My name is James Brush, and I’m the founder of Contractor Success Systems, Inc. Our team has decided to open a success blog for our members and visitors.

So a big welcome and thank you for stopping by.

Every week or so we will share new information, stories and tips that will help you with your business. So be sure to bookmark this page and come here often. You won’t regret it, and your business will thank you.
I will see you next week. To your success! ~ James Brush.