5 Mistakes Most Handymen Make (Don't do this)

hey friends my name is Alan Lee and I've been doing handyman work almost my whole life I first started out doing it for a lot of neighbors a lot of friends a lot of family members and then I actually started my own business here about six and a half years ago been doing the handyman industry ever since and it has been absolutely awesome but with that I have made a lot of mistakes I've done a lot of things wrong and I suspect that other handyman out there have done these same things incorrectly or people that are just starting out are maybe possibly on the track to do these things incorrectly so my hope for this video is to talk about the five mistakes that most handyman make and how you can avoid those things now the first mistake that is something that most people struggle with is simply not charging enough now not charging enough for handyman work is is very impactful for yourself and also your family because if you're not charging enough you're not making enough and you can't possibly pay the bills I've seen throughout the year is a lot of people start this industry and start in the handyman business and just simply not charging enough so therefore they kind of went back to their old line of employment it's it's a very simple thing but it's also very complicated as well on the other end the biggest thing that you need to remember is that you are out there to do this for a living we're not just out there to help people out we're not out there to give to charity if you are that's great but the majority of handymen are out there to secure some sort of Freedom right entrepreneurship is all about Freedom a lot of that freedom is Financial Freedom and also freedom to do things with the time that we want to do that with and we can't possibly do that if we're not charging enough money for the jobs that we need to be charging for a lot of this comes from just self-doubt kind of a a fear mindset not really feeling like you can charge what you are worth charging a lot of people when they're talking about charging and pricing handyman jobs they really struggle with it because they think about what they would what they would pay someone to come to their house and do that line of work that's not what it's about um I love I got the majority of of this content I kind of got the idea to make this video from Essentials Craftsman which is absolutely an awesome he's a contractor that I follow and he talks about that that that thought is irrelevant what what you would pay someone to do that same work is irrelevant because what what really matters and what it comes down to when you're talking about charging for the work that you do is how much are your clients willing to pay to get that work done that's ultimately what it comes down to that's supply and demand if people are willing to pay a certain amount for the work that needs to be done you can charge that amount to get that work done and to do that work well one huge thing to focus on though is to always make sure that you are doing a quality job make sure you do a quality job and and charge a good price um you know that is a very important thing that you that you need to think about we actually have a fairly easy equation to figure out what you need to charge for handyman for handyman services and that's really just figuring out what your expenses are this is probably where the the first place that most people go wrong is they don't even know what their expenses are so you need to figure out what your fixed costs are in your business and your variable costs figure out how much it costs you to run your business that's keep the lights on that's pay insurance that's um you know pay payroll you know know pay to you know keep your truck going put put fuel in your truck put tires on your truck things like that figure out all your hard costs and actually take that number and multiply it by a certain equation so what I typically do is is ADD 20 to that for like a break even number and add another 20 to that number for profit and then you divide that by how many working hours there are in a month and then you get you figure out how much you need to be charging per hour now I know a lot of people they say well Alan you know I heard it's not good to charge by the hour it's definitely not good to charge by the hour this is kind of an unspoken hourly rate that you don't that you don't mention to your client but it's only for your head knowledge because at the end of the day when you're talking about charging and you know really charging for the services that you do everything comes down to an hourly rate and what you need to operate per hour how much profit you need to make per hour and it's also important when you're when you're factoring um pricing and things like that is to think about efficiency rule right because you might be out there for eight hours a day but it's kind of Impractical to think that you're going to be 100 efficient and get eight hours worth work done in an eight hour day because you have to do things you have to you have to stop and eat lunch you have to stop and go to the bathroom um you have to stop and get gas in your vehicle you have to run to the hardware store um there's you have to talk to the client you have to answer phone calls there's all kinds of things that you're doing in any typical eight hour day rather than you know being on you know on the roof nailing something down so you have to factor in efficiency typically what we see is about a 70 to 80 percent efficiency rate so if you on any eight hour given day you know you can roughly figure you're going to get five and a half to six hours worth work done that's actually build hours so you're going to want to factor that into what you charge per hour to make sure you're covering those full eight hours in that five and a half to six hour working day that's a that's a very important aspect because again if you're not charging enough you can't keep going out there and doing work um one huge thing is as a business owner you need to take care of yourself first it's great to take care of clients it's great to give them good prices it's great to do quality work but at the end of the day if you're not taking care of yourself and your own your own personal needs you're not going to be around to offer those good services to those clients so that's a very important aspect about charging enough number two is communication communication is key I always tell my employees that communication is key and error on the side of over communication especially when you're talking with clients a lot of times things get misunderstood or you know miscontrued or just don't get heard in the midst of a conversation so you want to make sure that you're airing on the side of over over communication so that what you're trying to say especially if it's an important thing that is getting across sometimes we may say things but the way that people understand things is not the way that they don't understand what we're saying the way that we mean it so it's very important to sometimes you might have to rephrase a certain thing a certain topic Maybe two or three different ways and then make sure that the that the client or the other person that you're talking to fully understands what your accurately communicating to them one huge thing about communication is uh one thing that I think is very important is under promising and over delivering a lot of people that you see that they might come out with with a big ego or something like that and and kind of over promise something you know and then when things go wrong or you know maybe you know you you're you're replacing a toilet and you turn the angle stop valve off and you realize that the angle stop valve is leaking like at that point you know that's when you you're gonna have to go to the client and upsell an angle stop because it's leaking if you've over promised that job you know they have expectations where this is this is it this is what it's going to cost this is you know like and you're going to get it done flat like there's gonna be no problems whatsoever which is not that's not a real world in the real world there's always problems there's always variables there's always things that happen so if you under promise and over liver because if you've under promised and and told someone that you know like a central Craftsman he gives the example of doing you know a job that might take a month right he says well this job you know you know in theory might take a month but I'm at The Graces of my painters I'm at The Graces of the weather um you know I'm at The Graces of can I get Lumber or not so if you tell the client you know this may take up to three months you know depending on how these things go um and then say you knock it out in three weeks or a month you're you are a hero to that client right but if if the opposite happens they actually get very frustrated and they will never forget that you weren't able to deliver that project when you told them you would deliver that project so communication is very important I love one example he gives is you know what is when you when you go into the house and you do a drywall repair what's the damage to that house going to look like right is there going to be dust everywhere and also some of that is on to you to how to mitigate some of that but also so be you know be up front be forward with the with the things that the client needs to know so that they are prepared for the job at hand right are you gonna need to set up you know a zip wall or you need to you know set up a fan are are you gonna need to spray texture and then come back another day to paint like be up front with these type of things so that that the client is not caught off guard when these things happen because there's always variables there's always things that happen so in the line of communication we always want to try and be um you know as upfront as we can with some of the variables that may happen and if the variables don't happen that's that's fantastic that's great but that is a very important thing is you want to focus on Communication number three is something that we have all encountered we get those people that they give us a call and they say hey hey can can you do this job super cheap for me right now just give me a really good deal because I got a lot more work down the road like you better believe it I got a lot more work and you are the person I'm going to call if you give me a good quote right now I want to make sure that you know you give me a good quote we've worked together well and then you know down the road I'm going to have a bunch of work coming to you yeah so that that is really that that could be a red flag for sure um I have I have encountered this a lot of times where you have given someone a good deal based on the the thought that they're going to have future work for you and nine times out of ten it usually never happens nine times out of ten you as the handyman are the person that's losing out on that Transaction what you actually want to do is you want to quote that job that first job at a good honorable price that you need to charge like we talked about at the first one you need to charge the rate that you need to charge and make sure that it works with that client because if you charge less now they're going to expect lesser charges down the road and if you don't deliver those lesser charges down the road they're not going to keep hiring you believe me I've I've been around I've I've encountered this type of of client many times over and it never never ever works out so very important to not negotiate down your prices just for the hope of future jobs you need to stick to your guns you need to charge what you need to charge and if a person's not willing to uh you know pay you what you need in order to make a living in order to put food on the table in order to feed your kids then at the end of the day they're not your ideal client and you can go move on I love the saying there's plenty of fish in the sea there are plenty of clients out there for everyone and in reality there is a handyman out there that will suit that client there's a handyman out there that will you know charge what the client needs to charge and if you are charging more than what that client is charged that's fine you just go on and you find the client that works best for you because at the end of the day it's really all about the reputation that you create in this industry and if you have a reputation of being the cheap guy you know someone who who comes in gets it done and is cheap then you are are going to have that reputation for the rest of your business it's going to take you a long time to get rid of that reputation so what the reputation that you want to have is someone that creates a good product and sells it at a good price that's ultimately what you need to be and if that good price for you is overpriced for some people that's fine because at the end of the day every single client is different and every single area is different and what you need to charge is different than what I need to charge and it's different than you know what bill in Oklahoma needs to charge these are all different circumstances and it's important for you to charge what you need to charge and find the client that's willing to pay you what you need to be paid in order to do their work so that's an important aspect to not negotiate just to get work you know and lessen your price stick to your guns and charge what you need to charge okay number four this is something that has been huge this is something that I have struggled with for uh well it's pretty much a struggle you know throughout the whole the whole nature of my business and it's something that's progressively improving which is good it's important to see trajectory and things like that but there's always Improvement and that is keeping accurate books in this business it's very very very important in just like in every every business it's very very very important to keep accurate books and keep accurate expenses and income of your business so in the handyman industry you have a lot of expenses you have materials that you're buying for clients you have things that you're buying you know we had to buy a radiator cap for one of our trucks today right that's an expense there's always expenses and there's always income hopefully there's income and these are things that you need to keep track of not only for tax purposes but also for growth purposes so that you can you can do trajectory and kpis and things like that that you get more into kind of as you get a little bit more advanced into the business but I remember my first year in business uh we were talking to a tax lady and and she's like Hey we're ready to pay taxes and I had absolutely no clue even how much money we brought in our first year as a handyman I I didn't even keep track of anything I didn't have an invoicing and estimating software everything was basically I wrote invoices on you know Google Docs and I didn't have any type of order or anything like that so each year I've been getting progressively better at keeping my books and keeping track of one how much money is coming in and then number two how much money is going out and then you know the the integration of things like like QuickBooks Online has been super helpful for my business because we've actually been able to log those those connect with your credit cards your bank accounts things like that and they create things after they're reconciled of things like profit and loss statements and things like that so you can actually know where your business is standing so that for one you can pay taxes correctly and you know how much money you made and you know how much money you lost if you lost any money so it's very very important to keep accurate books for bookkeeping purposes and for growth as well and then number four I think is a very interesting topic um it's it's kind of a it has two schools of thoughts right it's kind of on managing growth and there's two schools of thoughts you can either when you're growing a business you can either be technician heavy or you could be admin heavy we personally have chosen the admin heavy side of business for now and I'll explain a little bit to you why but I want to explain the technician heavy side first when most people are out there doing work they're like wow I can make a whole lot more money if I hired another technician if I brought on another guy to help me out on these projects yeah some projects do require two people but what I'm talking about is having two technicians where one guy's going and doing one job one guy's going to do another job that's great you're making a lot more money but at the end of the day there's still the headache the other side of the business which is the actual admin side of the business where you you're the person as the business owner who's answering all the phone calls writing all the estimates sending all the invoices creating all the work orders telling people what to do you know and and that's just that's just the half of it right and then paying taxes and figuring out uniforms and all this kind of stuff pulling their hair out it's that is particularly why we chose to go the admin side when growing a business is we are pretty admin heavy which I'll tell you up front it does cost a lot more money there's a lot less money to go around at this point in stage but we have it where our first hire was a CSR a customer relations representative in the office someone to answer all the phones answer the emails answer the Yelp requests the Google requests things like that our second uh and then so at that point after we hired the CSR I became basically the estimator and the technician and then I hired a new estimator so someone to do estimates and things like that and then I hired a technician assistant and then after that I hired another technician so now I have a CSR an estimator a technician assistant and technician so now at this point we have a total of five employees that's including me right CSR estimator Tech assistant and technician and then me so now at this point now it's just it's just a multiplication game so you need more Vans more people so you get a van a technician van technician and you keep plugging them in and then at that point you're really in a stage of growth and you have all the admin stuff already figured out so you have all of the the phones being answered you have all the estimates being written you have all the invoices being created things like that and you have different systems and processes and the technician assistant is actually a really cool rule role the technician assistance role is basically to pick up materials from the local hardware store and deliver those to to the client's house before the technician comes and does the work and his second job is to pick up all the debris from the job and take those to the dump so it's actually really cool everyone has their own process and things like that so I wanted to make a contrast between when you're talking about managing business growth you can either go the heavy on the admin side or heavy on the technician side I personally like the heavy on the admin side because you're you're getting all that stuff off your plate as the business owner so that you can have more freedom whereas in the technician side you may be making a little bit more money it's probably a little bit more money um but you're not able to you know clock out at five you're not able to go home and enjoy the night with your family because you have to answer calls you have to return calls you have to write estimates you have to write invoices you get the picture whereas over here on the admin heavy side I get the clock out at 4 30 which is really cool and I don't have to work Saturday and Sunday because all of that admin stuff is taken care of so it's very important to manage business growth as you as you uh grow in this business and that that will happen inevitably as you get more clients as you get busier uh in this business and it's also very very important to take care of your take care of your employees because employees are really hard to come by and good ones that really believe in the mission that you have are really hard to find so it's very important to take care of those employees and make sure that they feel nurtured and just complete in this business so very important to do that very important to create processes and systems for each and every one of them one thing I wanted to talk about that is very helpful for new handyman business owners is we are having a handyman growth convention where each year we're starting it for the first time here in October of 2023 but we're going to be having it yearly hopefully up to two maybe three times a year you can find more information over at handymanjourney.com but handyman growth convention is going to be absolutely phenomenal we are going to have it's a networking event from handyman all around the world are going to be coming together and we're going to be talking about things like pricing mark Marketing sales and systematizing your business it's going to be absolutely phenomenal so that that's something that I wanted to recommend you can find more information like I said at handymanjourney.com but this has been uh just a quick little video of five mistakes that most handyman make I would love to hear your guys's uh opinion on some of these things leave me a comment in the comment section below also like this video And subscribe to this Channel and we'll catch you guys on the next one

Channel: The Handyman Journey

Views: 119,098

Keywords: handyman, business, startup, mistakes, jobs, handyman business, handyman university, home improvement, 5 mistakes most handymen make, don't make these handyman mistakes, the problem with handymen, Make sure you don't make these mistakes, why handyman businesses fail, failed handyman because i made a mistake, common handyman business mistakes, avoid these handyman business mistakes, don't do these mistakes, learn from my failures, Don't do this, learn from me

Id: 69Qg7yQ14cU

Length: 19min 56sec (1196 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 28 2022