Al Writes

Lessons Learned from Two Years as a Contractor in a COVID World

By Al Levi | August 1, 2022August 1, 2022

When COVID first hit in March of 2020, many of my 1-1 contractor clients had to adjust the way they worked—and fast.

The good news is that because they had operating manuals and staffing programs in place, it was just a matter of some tweaking of procedures and training which enabled their businesses to continue on pretty well, especially compared to their competitors who were lacking systems to lean on.

Yes, even though it was far from business as usual they actually continued to grow their business in those crazy times and they were able to switch to remote work as seamlessly as possible.

Reasons to Change Your Company Name and Some Tips to Do it Right (Part 2)

By Al Levi | July 5, 2022July 5, 2022

As I had promised at the end of Part 1, I’m going to share a sample of the letter you should send to customers announcing your company name change plus a bunch of great tips for executing the name change the right way. This is the also the same letter you will need to reformat a little to do an email blast to your customers.

Remember I said that all the great marketing knowledge I learned from my marketing guru, Leo, is still working great for my 1-1 clients to this day, and I’m going to share more of it with you here!

Here’s a sample of a letter I wrote for a client of mine who was changing the company name to end some confusion in his market and to launch his rebrand as well as some additional tips for doing a name change the right way.

Reasons to Change Your Company Name and Some Tips to Do it Right (Part 1)

By Al Levi | June 7, 2022June 30, 2022

What makes me an expert on when and how to change your company name and/or rebrand?

My family business was originally in just fuel oil heating (think propane heating), and my dad and my uncle were always doing acquisitions because urban renewal had chased our customers out of our service area. When they acquired a new company, they thought people wanted to do business with a company name they were familiar with.

Well, skip many years ahead and my brothers and I are at work alongside my dad (as my uncle had passed away). Anyway, one cold day in February, I went to a Super Bowl party, and I heard a couple of people getting into a heated argument, so naturally I got closer so I could hear what a couple of fellow New Yorkers were arguing about.

One of them said to the other, “I have the best heating company there is.”

The other replied, “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I have the best heating company!”

I asked them both which company they used, and they told me the names. I gulped. Both were using me, but they had no idea we were all one company! Worse, there were four other companies we also owned that were in the same situation!

If I Gave You a $100,000 – What Should You Do?

By Al Levi | May 9, 2022May 10, 2022

Let’s say I gave you $100,000 to grow your business. You go to dinner to celebrate your great windfall and then the next morning you’re at your desk, admiring the check.

Here’s my question: Would you know what to do with it, first, second, and third for the greatest impact? $100,000 sounds like a lot of money especially if you’re the typical contracting company which is at $2 million a year or less, and sometimes way less. But it’s also an amount that can disappear remarkably quickly unless you have a plan and use the money to execute that plan.

The other thing I know is that some problems aren’t really money problems. The problem is some people would only have fallen deeper down the hole if they had gotten a hundred thousand dollars.

Why?

They were lacking Planning Power, which means a plan on which projects to work on. They didn’t have systems like Operating Power (today it’s my Signature Operating Manuals System program) so they threw people at the problem hoping they’d magically make everything work right.

If I did give you 100,000 dollars, you would need systems to help you know how to spend money on the right things in the right way.

Harder to Get Great or to Stay Great?

By Al Levi | April 5, 2022March 31, 2022

The original location of my family’s plumbing, heating, cooling and electrical company was in Rockaway, Queens. My dad, Irving, and my uncle, Morty, started it out of my grandfather’s gas station.

When my two older brothers and I showed up full-time in the business, it was in the 1970s, and crime in the area was rampant. Why did we stay there so long? Inertia.

Well, the decision to move came down and my brothers and I knew we had one chance to get this right, and so when we finally found a place that would be more centrally located to where our client base had moved from the wreckage of where we had been. We also heeded the great advice from our industry guru and great friend, Dan Holohan, when he suggested we use our building to showcase what we do and make it a destination other companies wanted to visit.

The place was spotless and bright and the envy of the industry. I stood in the doorway with Dan admiring our great work when he said, “Al, remember it’s easy to be great one day. The trick is to continue to stay great, day after day.”

Ouch!

What Dan meant was that I had to make maintaining that high standard a priority or it would deteriorate over time. And if it did, I’d have to have a way to get myself back on track, and that way for me was leveraging my systems and checklists. I’ve always remembered this conversation and have seen it play out over and over with my clients during the past 20 years.

Mastering the Dispatcher Role from Beginning to End

By Al Levi | March 1, 2022February 25, 2022

One of the questions I get asked all the time by clients and customers is, “Why can’t my CSR also be the Dispatcher?”

Answer: They can and often do especially if you’re a small company. But if I ask more questions, usually I discover they’re struggling to be really good with one or the other. Maybe even struggling just to be okay.

The reason for this is that being a customer service rep and being able to do dispatching are two totally different skills sets, and the best people to fill each of those roles have different personalities. In fact, every time I’ve separated the CSR and Dispatcher roles, clients always report there is more money and more profit coming in.

Why is that?

Here’s why…

Systems Freed Me Up to Help My Daughter

By Al Levi | February 1, 2022February 1, 2022

Every winter, my daughter, Pam, her husband and my grand dogs come to visit my wife and me in Phoenix. Now I’d like to think it’s because she misses us… and… she does, but it does help that she lives on the east coast where it gets just a LITTLE colder than here.

While she and her husband are RVing across the great USA (she wasn’t new to the club as she’s been RVing for years now), they still have to work. Her work is at a summer camp in the Poconos in Pennsylvania. For those who don’t live in the northeast, there are summer camps that kids go to for 7 weeks! That’s right 7 weeks!

So, when I say to people when they ask what she does and I tell them she’s a camp director at a summer camp, the next thing they ask is, “What does she do the rest of the year?” I reply, “She works full time, and she has navigated the globe to find staff.”

Hmmm… finding staff… sound familiar to you?

Anyway, when she was here in January 2021, she was working from my home and said that she’s never had so much of a problem recruiting and hiring people like college kids, staff for the kitchen, people for the pool and lake and more.

My wife, Natalie, Pam and her husband were at the dinner table one night, and she looked at us across the table and said solemnly: “If I call you, will you come and help?” To which I said, “You want me to come and be a camp counselor again for the first time in 50 years?” She replied, “Yes… Possibly.”

Two weeks into the start of camp, I hadn’t heard anything from Pam, that is until I got “the” phone call. It was Pam. She said, “I don’t want your advice. I don’t want your opinion. I want you on an airplane to come here to help me and I need you… now.”

Will They All Quit if You Put in Operating Manuals?

By Al Levi | January 4, 2022January 4, 2022

Will they all quit if you put in Operating Manuals?

The short answer is, “No!”

The reason I say that is I did it at my own plumbing, heating, cooling and electrical company decades ago. We were a NYC Union shop and, we didn’t lose anyone.

And I know this is a fear of some contractors as I have done so many free 30-minute calls with prospective clients who would share this fear with me. To help, I’d share this following story.

One of my many different jobs at my very busy shop was being the Install Manager where I was running five Install Crews a day. Each morning, I’d setup the job files and debrief each Lead Installer on what to expect and let them know I’d make the rounds to check in on how things were going.

One day…

5 Signs Your Business is Growing Too Fast

By Al Levi | December 7, 2021December 21, 2021

Can a contracting business really grow too fast? You bet it can.

I remember waking up at 6 a.m. for the second day in a row after working until 2 a.m. the night before at my family’s 70-person plumbing, heating, cooling and now electrical company only to face another day of massive stress and thinking, “At this growth pace, something’s got to change, or I’ll be a rich dead guy.”

That was not my goal and I bet it’s not yours either!

You were handling it—somehow—until you one day you just couldn’t and that’s when the wheels started to fall off or at the very least began to wobble. It’s like you’re in a batting cage and the pitches you used to be able to hit are now coming so fast you can’t even get the bat off your shoulder. That’s how it feels when you’re growing out of control and can’t keep up anymore. Sound familiar?

Here are five clear signs your business is growing too fast and you need to act—now.

Two Roles You Can Never Leave as an Owner

By Al Levi | November 2, 2021October 29, 2021

“I fired all of them,” said the Canada-based condominium developer I was helping to optimize his business. “Wow,” I said. “What happened?”

The developer continued. “You said you wouldn’t work through a bunch of layers, and so I fired all my vice presidents. And you know what I found out? They were keeping things from me. If I hadn’t done that, my business would have been out of working capital within six months. Now you just have to help me navigate out of this.”

I told him in a nice but direct way, “I blame you… not them. It was your job to know for yourself what was and wasn’t happening at your company, and we’re going to fix that starting with getting you to a much better designed Box Org Chart.”

And we went on to do just that.

Unfortunately, this is a story I’ve heard all too many times over nearly 20 years of 1-to-1 consulting with contracting clients. The owner would delegate responsibility for their financial position to someone only to discover all kinds of impropriety once that person went on vacation, departed — or the bank or creditors started calling!

The Financial Manager role is one of two roles you can never give up. The other is Marketing Manager.