Where are the self-employed?

There are fewer people working for themselves. Is it just too hard? There is definitely enough work to do!

A bit about public relations

Embrace the discipline of limited resources

When you can make something from nothing, or almost nothing, making a profit is much easier. But when you need large investments to have the best of everything, just getting that investment back can be difficult.

Sure, I can understand the old saying that it takes money to make money, but I am wary of using it to go on a shopping spree as part of a small business startup. It can establish a dangerous precedent of throwing money at problems instead of thinking them through and solving them.

I’ve spent a bit of money on advertising over the years, but it has done me very little good. There is no replacing the humble business card combined with your willingness to meet people and hand them out. You can spend a lot of money on direct mail to get your name inside that gated community, or you can spend some quality time with other services that already work there and give your cards to them. I say quality time, which means enough for them to get to know you so they can give your name with confidence.

How I spent the day before Christmas

Why I don’t fear robots

Once in a while I hear about some new technology that is supposed to put me out of business. I always check it out, but it is usually what I think it is: too specialized and expensive or inconvenient to use. So, I bit on this product and thought I’d explain why I took the Mayan Apocalypse more seriously.

1. It really does only one thing. It does not remove screens, wipe out tracks, scrape paint or frog stickum or bird poop, apply hard water stain remover, or periodically call and remind you to get your windows cleaned.
2. It has to be maintained. There are pads to clean and some sort of cleaning fluid reservoir to refill. I see window cleaning tools in my customers’ garages all the time. This will be found by archeologists in an junk drawer in 2513.
3. It’s probably going to be expensive. There is no price given at this time, but I can remember buying tools that require specialized parts and refills that were hard to get and/or costly. It really put me off buying things like that.

So there you have it. This will one day go the way of the Chia Pet, and clean about as many windows.

A house I did yesterday

Too small to fail

Yes, I was bummed out after this election, but I quickly got over it because I was too busy to wallow in despair. These things have never had much of an effect on me personally because I am willing to do anything to stay in business. I am not waiting for things to get better. I am not waiting for favorable circumstances. I am not waiting for better opportunities. I want to work, and I never fail to find it.

I  have never received unemployment benefits. I have never even filed for them. Thought about it once, but it was going to take a few weeks for them to kick in, so I thought I might as well double down on trying to find a job. And I did find a job, one after another after another.

My persistence and lack of fear of doing hard work may come from the experience of my first job. During the summer of 1973 I worked with a pickaxe, busting sod, in clay soil, for $1.50 per hour. I mention the clay because busting sod on this sand bar called Florida is pansy work by comparison. I went home at the end of the day exhausted and severely dehydrated and in a great deal of pain. Every job after that one was a piece of cake.

Today I heard a news story about the horror of extended unemployment benefits running out after Christmas. According to this article, some of these people will have been on unemployment for 54 weeks, or just over a year. How is this possible? Have these people really been filing applications and waiting by the phone for almost a year? Seriously? Or did some of them receive benefits while working at something that paid under the table? How badly do these people want to work? Is there work that is just beneath them, that they will not do?

I’m sure I’m making some people mad right now, but I have met many people over the years who cringe at every obstacle. Unless some big company, big agency, or other big boss is there to tell them what to do, and insure their comfort while they do it, they really cannot function. So when the big boss fails, or decides to wait for better tax circumstances, he sets everyone free to be their own boss. But they don’t know how to do that. They can only vote for the big boss they think will take care of them.

The big boss has to find million dollar contracts to hire the little people. Or he at least needs a stream of hundreds of thousands coming in regularly, or it is not worth his while to set the big machine in motion. But the little boss, the self-employed person, who really wants to work, can always find his hundreds and even his thousands lying around. Even when he has to make them ten or twenty dollars at a time, he or she can find them. But you have to really want to work. You cannot fear the discomfort and inconvenience and the pressure that comes with an empty calendar every day. You have to show up, and you have to be willing to do anything to find that job.

In a world where there are more helpless, lazy, timid, and clueless people than I can ever remember, I have no competition. In fact, I am overwhelmed by demand. There is work. There always will be, and I am not too big to do it.

Why I’m making more money

Throughout this recession, my business has continued to attract new customers. It’s just a reality of the window cleaning business: people with nice homes eventually want to have clean windows bad enough to pay for it. And if they don’t feel like they got burned on the price, they will continue to do so again and again.

Since I don’t want to hire people anymore, I am having to deal with the fact that I am in limited supply. Not only is there just one of me, but I now work fewer hours per week. And I am actually making more money. That is because I am charging the new customers more, and they are taking up the time I used to spend on the old customers, who I have already raised in the past couple of years, and I am slow to do so again.

What is happening for me did not happen overnight, but it could have happened sooner. I’ve just always been reticent about using some of the strategies I have read in some business books, like Book Yourself Solid: The Fastest, Easiest, and Most Reliable System for Getting More Clients Than You Can Handle Even if You Hate Marketing and Selling. I had read this and cringed at the thought of creating higher demand through limiting access, but I am watching it play out in my own life, even though it is by accident.

I was sitting in a man’s office recently, waiting for someone else, and he asked me how I stayed so busy, considering the fact that he’s never even heard of my business. The reason he’s never heard is because he’s not looking for window cleaning for his home. And there are people who are looking! I was parked in front of a client’s home the other day and got a call from her neighbor who saw my phone number displayed prominently on my truck. It is unlikely I can even get to her before Christmas. But some people are waiting for January, which used to be a really dead month. This was the first year in 31 years that I did not have a dead month.

You may remember me telling you this year about a woman who emailed all her friends and asked if they knew a window cleaner. All but one of them mentioned my name. Although it made me wonder who that one guy was that her other friend named, it is a reminder that there is a demographic group out there that wants window cleaning. It seems to run from professional women who are part of two earner homes and wives of doctors, lawyers, and business owners. There are many people in this group who still have unmet window cleaning needs. They are your best customers, and you can afford to lose your worst customers in order to serve them. They will even pay more than the more difficult ones.

In a nutshell, here is what I am doing:

1. Do call backs on my best customers first.
2. Respond rapidly to new customers
3. Increase my rates on new estimates.
4. Make sure all my customers are so happy that they sing my praises.

I think it’s important to leave you with this: I am not overcharging my customers. I am still a lower cost option than many bigger companies. There is a local window cleaning franchise owner who sends me residential jobs because they cannot compete on price. I am efficient, do great work, and do not have to be supervised. Productivity keeps me competitive. And my customers have to find my service more valuable than that of other window cleaners. If they don’t, you won’t get repeat work and you won’t get referrals.

More job creators needed

Look forward to more people entering the workforce the hard way as companies find that it is too expensive to stay in business. I know that many people are sympathetic with the union workers, but I also know that I don’t buy Hostess products already because they are the most expensive ones! All that high union pay and benefits has to come from somewhere.

And this is the era in which we live: a competitive marketplace means that unnecessary expenses must be trimmed. Huge, hulking companies with lots of insurable property and employees and vehicles and utility bills cannot compete with warehouses and fewer employees that ship to your door. Every large organization has a lot of waste because big is harder to manage than small. And this is why small business will always be around.

And we, the self-employed are the leanest businesses. Each one of us has to develop the skills we need to be able to stay small and profitable and…below the radar. Our government, at the federal, state, and local levels are bloated with too many expenses and employees. Rather than downsize these things, they go looking for money from  the taxpayer. This is why a lot of investment is heading overseas to tax havens. And local bureaucrats force extra inspections on small shops that those businesses have to pay for. And occupational license fees are being added and increased.

Big companies are low-hanging fruit for government. Hit them with more fees and higher taxes, and they just pass it along to the consumer, until the consumer stops buying. We are too small to matter, for the most part. But what we do matters to us. This is a good time to start that small service business because there is always some sort of maintenance that needs to be done, and fewer Americans are willing to do it. Everyone wants a job with benefits in air-conditioning with lots of paid days off and a big retirement. And they want to do less for it. A lazy America that is highly dependent on other people running their lives is a good place for motivated, hard-working, self-starters. We are in demand.

So, get on the ball and start your business sooner rather than later. More competitors will be coming after more big businesses close their doors. But it will take awhile for them to get up to speed. You need to take your game up now!

Incorporating your small business

Years ago, while we were still sole proprietors, we got a huge tax bill at the end of the year. I was not making much money at the time, which was the reason we were so far behind on our quarterly estimated tax payments. We brought our books to a tax professional for the first time, and he could not believe we had not incorporated.

When we left his office, we still owed a lot of money and had to pay it back over the next year, but we were also set up to pay less in the future. The biggest savings we realized right away was that I was an employee on salary now, and we only paid social security on my salary. And since we had to match our own contribution, the way YOUR employer does, instead of paying 7.65% we paid 15.3% on what I had been making. But now, we paid that 15.3% on a much smaller number. We now take a lot of our pay as dividend income, which has no social security taxes taken out of it. This is a pretty big deal.

Years later my wife went back to school and got an accounting certificate so she could do a better job on our taxes. If you aren’t married to a talented bookkeeper or accountant, I suggest you secure the services of one. You may not need to pay them monthly, but they can set you up so that you can handle doing it yourself, if you are so inclined.

I am carrying ads for CorpNet® Incorporation Services now because this is a service worth using if you plan on staying in business and staying legal. Go check them out as part of your plan.