WARNING – WARNING – WARNING!

We are going to be changing a few of our website addresses.

Thought a little heads-up would help you keep track of us. Please make a note of the new URLs which will go into effect when we launch the private club.

We will end up with have four sites, all cross-linked through the header. Newsletter sign-up will be available on all. {If you haven’t signed up yet, do yourself a favor and do so. It’s loaded with how-to tips.}

We are bringing this to your attention because our site monitoring stats indicate that 3 times the readers enter our site via the blog versus entering via the home page. If you do so, we’d hate to have you suddenly reach a dead end when we change over.

Here is what we plan to be doing where (may change slightly at first if we struggle pulling it off):

www.ContractorsBusinessCoach.com/blog/

Our new location for this blog.

If one of our new sites causes us headaches, it will be this one. Moving the blog out from under our main site puts us in unexplored territory.  It’s an HTML programming thing.

If you or someone you know has moved a WordPress blog out from under an existing site please encourage them to call one of us (913-961-1790 or 708-774-6500).

www.FilthyRichContrator.com

The location of our Private Club.

This URL comes up #1 or #2 on Google’s search. About the same on Yahoo and Windows Live.

We want to take maximum advantage of that FREE placement. It took me two years to perfect the SEO.

This site’s  sole purpose will be to promote the Private Club and host the Club’s extensive library of business building systems and solutions.

www.ContractorsBusinessCoach.com

This site will be dedicated to promoting our newsletter and fee-based contractor support services.

As you hopefully know, those services are business coaching, public seminars, special projects, and private training. All geared towards commercial contractors.

For the most part, the way the current www.filthyrichcontractor.com site looks is EXACTLY how this site will look. Pretty much just moving the HTML over to the new URL, doing a little clean-up, splitting out the blog, and reconnecting some links.

www.GrowConsulting.net

This site is and will be dedicated to promoting our non-contractor fee based services.

That covers construction manufacturers and distributors and all-non construction businesses and organizations. 90% of the solutions and systems we deliver to contractors work perfectly for all organizations.

Okay. That gets you up-to-date. A couple of days before we make the switch, we’ll post a blog entry and to let you know.
Now, get off your computer and go get some work!

Your friends in arms,

Guy & Ron

Recently I have experienced more frustration with companies that I do business with.

Both Ron and I had recent flights on Northwest Airlines. We both had separate and deplorable customer service experiences. Ron can tell you about his if you ask him to, I think it is even worse than mine.

Let me share with you what happened on a recent trip back from visiting a client in Minneapolis. I needed to leave a little earlier than expected to tend to some work at our Chicago office. So I called Northwest’s call center and the agent told me that if she did the flight change it would add fifty dollars to the cost of my ticket. She advised that if I went to the airport and flew standby (she assured me their were plenty of open seats) their wouldn’t be any additional charge.

Guess what happened! When I got to the airport the agent told me I still had to pay the $50 per seat. Oh, I forgot to tell you I was traveling with my significant other and soon to be wife Sandy. Now for those of you who know me I wasn’t going to the electric charge chair without a fight. So I went to talk to a supervisor who hit a bunch of buttons on a computer with no better results except a rude explanation that the phone agent stated an incorrect policy.

Simultaneously I was on the phone trying to get a hold of the agent who gave out the bad information. Again to no avail. So I paid the extra one hundred dollars for the ticket changes and the extra thirty dollars for the two bags that needed to be checked.

The ticket agent assigned Sandy and I different seats at opposite ends of the airplane and when I nicely requested for the gate agent that we be able to sit together they put us in those two seats in the last row of the plane that don’t recline. I guess they think they were punishing me for complaining. Since I travel over 200 days a year I wonder how much business they will loose from me alone in the next several years, not to mention Ron and everyone else I tell. Remember bad news travels fast!

It is no secret that Southwest Airlines will soon be serving the Minneapolis market. Much better prices and friendlier service. No charge for extra bags or switching flights. Guess who will get my business? Not honoring a promise would force me to drive an extra fifty miles in the future to another airport just not to have to fly Northwest again! In matter of fact I hope they rename the whole terminal. They only have to eliminate the name North and add the word South instead.

In these tough economic times it is important to keep or raise your level of customer service. Strengthen your customer relationships so clients fly your contracting company. Bend over backwards to keep your word, honesty and trust are huge deciding factors today. Continually ask clients what you can do to serve them better and implement reasonable suggestions. Communicate this to everyone in your organization from field to office personnel. This will separate you from the rest of the pack

And by the way if you haven’t guessed it please don’t fly Northwest Airlines, If you must, the first person that asks can have my never fly that airline miles.

Just had to share this one with you. It so captures the essence of the people who do your books and calculate your taxes.

My lovely daughter, her husband, her sister and her sister’s date went out to dinner last night to celebrate a friend’s birthday. Dinner party of 12.

When they stopped by the house after dinner, my eldest, a staff accountant with a global manufacturer, started complaining that their dinner party had to split their bill by hand since the restaurant refused to do it for 12 people. She was really annoyed about having to figure their individual bills by hand.

Let’s put this in perspective.

At least four of the 12 in attendance were accountants. And here they were being put out about having to do a little simple math. (Hey, I’m an engineer. Simple math is something I did in my sleep in grade school)

Not willing to miss a grand opportunity to tease my daughter, I offered that after paying for 4 years of accounting school, the least I would expect would be an ability split up a check.

Her reply?

“That’s what Excel is for!”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Let’s have a little fun. Post your best joke for:

You might be a contractor if…

Winner gets a free year membership to our private club of tips and tricks for contractors. Guy and I are the judges.

We will transfer the clean ones to our site.

Post your jokes as comments. We will approve all non-spam and acceptably clean responses.

Good luck.