A lot of new faces, welcome ! Hey guys 👋🏻 As the winter is coming closer to the end ( hopefully 🤞🏼) , I am gonna plan getting involved more with the group and start uploading more stuff and will try to keep you all up to date on what's going on, the direction we will take and updates on my personal journey ... As you may or may not know, I am just a starting out entrepreneur , who is trying to get away from working for someone else and do mostly work for myself. It's easier said than done though. I'm sure a lot of us can relate juggling multiple aspects of life and trying to learn new things, all while raising kids ,spending time with loved ones and trying to balance it. Just a little recap from last year that gave me a substantial boost in self confidence and confidence in working in this trade in general. Last year, around May, I gave my notice to my boss, who I was employed with for over 15 years. At the time I had a company already registered, but no work coming in and a local contractor reached out to me and said that he wants to retire. I took it as a sign and said ok, let's work together for a bit and see what we can come up with. Long story longer...I figured that I didn't want to take on responsibility for the work that wasn't done by me and by taking over a company I would automatically be obligated to take care of the customers that had any sort of problems with their garage floors. We had a pretty good influx of work coming in. About 2 garage floors per week was a normal steady pace, being a one crew team we handled it as best as we could while trying to fix older equipment and making it work with whatever other means we had. That's when I got a real good perspective on things, old vs new equipment, 15$ / hour guys vs 25$ an hour labor and not to mention all the call backs from the previous jobs, but that's a different story. I made a lot of mental notes , put the blinders on and kept breathing all that cement dust and after a while I realized that a small service based business like that is only worth as much as a person who is running it , plus maybe the equipment .

Just recently seen a post on Facebook in a different group that pushed me to write this and see what your thoughts are. The guy was asking if there would be an extra 25-30 leads a month would you be able to handle it? Then I asked him if he's talking about those kind of leads that are asking how much do you charge per sq/f and then you never hear back from. Then he made a remark, mentioning "qualified leads" ...and it stroke me. The jargon that is often used doesn't really represent the actual problem. I'll try to explain. I noticed one thing, that most guys ( including myself ) when staring out in this trade without experience of running a business, they don't know how to sell. We try to put all of our attention into the quality of work, which is the most important part. Attention to detail and proper systems in place make a night and day difference in the final outcome of a finished product. But to scale above the point where you run a business or just work for yourself we need to wear a hat of a salesman , besides all the others and have a reliable team with you that can back you up when you are not on site. A team might be even just one guy who you can trust and don't have to double check the work while you can concentrate on getting more customers. I'll be honest I have no clue how to run ads. One thing I learnt so far is that trying to run an ad campaign for a week or a month and not getting results from it is normal. Having people inquiring about your service without intention of immediate purchase is normal. Sometimes I catch myself on a thought , if I was asked / reminded about purchasing something I probably would have gotten it ( doesn't matter what it is, I'm just being general ) , but life sometimes gets busy and we get sidetracked to other things. Running ads is not about getting a customer immediately , it's a long term game of getting attention and following through with providing information and maintaining relationship. We can get 100 leads ( qualified or not ) and close 5% if we are not good at selling, but someone who is a very good sales person who would sell ice to an Eskimo might do 30 or 40%, maybe even more... that would be the difference between being able to handle the work or not, but most of us who are not "business people" , we see catchy phrase " more work " and we are all over it as if it's a magic pill, but it's not. That being said all of those people who are "helping" to get leads are using the naiveness of others , offering to setup ad campaigns ,which don't get me wrong is a certain skill , but they see it as easy money and marketing agencies are popping up like flowers it seems like.

“Merry Christmas everyone 🎄 Hope you’re slowing down a bit, recharging, and enjoying time with your people. Grateful for this community — back to building soon.”

Hey guys, a small build on the side line https://youtu.be/C9AIp4j8hwM