Have you ever had a business in one state and live in another? Well, thats me! I live in Florida and have this business here South of Houston Texas. As you’ve read, it is a construction business that is helping clean up and reconstruction efforts after the damages brought on by Hurricane Ike. Well, let me tell you. Like any other business, referrals are the key. To date,we have received 5 leads from one insurance broker and 5 more from a very happy customer. That tells me we are doing something right but how can we build upon just being a referral based business?

We are not only doing that the old fashioned way of marketing, (hanging door hangers, passing out flyers, direct mail etc…) but we have also instituted other methods like post its. yes, post its. We had stacks of 50 made up (for less then 5$ per stack) and hire people to walk around and place them on doors, walls, super markets, etc…. These are great. Go to Vistaprint.comand search for postits and you can design your own message and have them delivered within a few days. 250 post its cost about $25. Give it a shot. Visit my other blog at http://tomdalyjr.wordpress.com to learn about how we capitalize upon Internet marketing.

I hope you are having a great day. If you’re not, hopefully you do something about it.

Tom

Tom Daly
tomdalymail@gmail.com
http://www.sfcs-tx.com
http://www.money-dynamics.com
http://www.growth-coaching.com

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My brother and I were at lunch with one of our major referral sources, an insurance agent, and I innocently mentioned that I felt we were leaving money on the table because all of our bids were coming in below the insurance adjusters estimate. Our friend stated we need to stop giving bids and start doing work for the insurance proceeds. This would allow us to not only capture recoverable depreciation but also allow us to place a supplemental claim if need be.

To facilitate that, we have brought someone in who is very experienced in this arena to help show us how we can improve.

Tom Daly

tomdalymail@gmail.com
http://www.sfcs-tx.com
http://www.money-dynamics.com
http://www.growth-coaching.com

Well, with two clients behind us since we began this company, our hard work seems to be bearing fruit. This week we will be wrapping up clients 3, 4 and 5. In addition, we have contracted another nice size job and are giving bids on three more jobs this week. As I’ve mentioned before, even though we are profitable, it will be important for us to now put some of the profits aside for quarterly taxes that the business has to pay, as well as additional funds set aside in order to have three months of operating capital in reserve. As much as I’d love to take more profit at this time, it is more important that we take this opportunity to use the funds we have earned to provide a solid foundation in case things slow down. Additionally, one of my brothers has since been laid off from his job so he is now available to work full time. This coupled with the hiring of a commission only sales rep has greatly expanded our capacity to get jobs done more efficiently. make sure you visit my other blog at: http://tomdalyjr.wordpress.com as well as my other websites at: http://www.sfcs-tx.com http://money-dynamics.com http://www.growth-coaching.com

That’s right. We will finish client #2 next week and client #3 the following week and probably client #4 right after that. Additionally, we have signed up client #5 as well. A smaller job, about 20k, but still a good one. We have received most of our clients through referrals. A great insurance agent as well as a very happy customer. We also have 3 additional bids that we are currently working on and believe it or not but this week we began the hiring process of our first “employee”. Actually, he will be a 1099 vice employee. We really are not in a position to provide benefits and pay employee taxes. Additionally, he will work out of his house. He will handle our marketing needs as well as be the face of our company as he goes out and conducts estimates for us. This will take a HUGE load off my brother who is still working full time as a construction supervisor until he gets a certain amount saved up. I think he can have 2 months of income saved up by the end of February. That’s what were hoping for anyway. Anyway, I will go back out to Houston next week to meet the new “hire” and will stay for 2 1/2 days. I will take the cheapest flight Southwest has for $99 on Wed am and will arrive at 8am, rent a car and go all out until departure at 3pm on Friday – flight home will be forn$129. Prior to my arrival, we will have several thousand door hangers put on doors so hopefully, I will meet a lot of prospective clients. Additionally, we will continue to build out our process.

Ok. Until next week. keep up the hard work but work smart.

Wow. Good day today getting our site up to speed. When we initially put the website up, we made a number of grammatical errors on it. Today, we were able to edit the grammatical errors as well as modify the pictures of past jobs I’ve done as well as add a video that I have posted on Youtube.com. Tomorrow I’ll visit a few of the jobs we are currently working on and get some additional pictures and video clips to add credibility to our site and business.

Today, my brother and I also took a major center of influence to lunch. When I told him that I felt like we were leaving money on the table because all of our bids are below what the insurance companies are willing to pay, he explained how we need to modify our approach and pay what the insurance companies are willing to pay. He will school my brother on how to correctly work with the insurance companies.

 Today, I also made up some post cards and mailed them to other insurance agents in surrounding towns. We don’t want to send them to any other agents in our main location due to not wanting to hurt relations with our major referral agent.  for For less then $10, you can buy 30 post cards from the post office (with postage already on them) and print off your message on the back and return address on the front and hand write your prospective addresses on the front. We get the prospects just from googling different terms (ie. insurance agent tampa florida) then pop, you have the names and addressed of prospects and then just hand address the post card.

Oh well, need to go market on craigslist

Tom Daly
http://www.semper-fi-construction.com/ (Houston)1-281-840-2332
http://www.bhot.biz (Tampa real estate site) 813 274 4911
http://www.ThomasPatrickOnline.com
http://www.growth-coaching.com

Well, we are at about the 4 month mark and the business is going well. We have completed one job so far and currently have three more under way. each job is in the range of $33k to $45k in size which means these are NOT small jobs (pictures and videos to follow). I am back out to Texas on Sunday to check on the jobs. The major hold up has been on the part of the insurance companies as well as the lenders. it is hard to believe that there are still so many people out of their homes for four months now and many of those haven’t even been able to move forward with their insurers due to the insures being overwhelmed. This credit crisis has not made it easier either. On average it has taken the insurance company 2 months to process the claim for flood or wind/storm damage. When our client receives the check to get the work done, then they have to sign it and send it off to the lender who then processes it and puts it in escrow for disbursements as the work proceeds. It can take the lender a month to process the check.  It is sad to see how the red tape really can hold up progress but it feels good to be helping people that have such a need. Tom

Tom Daly
http://www.semper-fi-construction.com/
1-281-840-2332

This blog was posted on october 9, 2008 but was mistakenly deleted and is therefore reposted.

Well, we are a business. The Secretary of State in the great state of Texas has approved our request to form an LLC. Additionally, we have then purchased liability insurance from a very reputable local insurance company and have also been approved to operate as a builder by the TRCC. The TRCC is the state organization that approves or denies registration as a builder within the state. We received our approval yesterday. We are now allowed to operate as a builder and get clients. To top it off, our insurance agent has referred us to four of his clients for hurricane repair. More to follow later.

Tom Daly
http://www.semper-fi-construction.com/
www.growth-coaching.com
www.ThomasPatrickOnline.com
www.bhot.biz (real estate site)
281-840-2332

It is Friday and I’m getting ready to hop into the car and drive to Texas. We have gotten a lot done this week. To recap, seeing I wasn’t going to be there until Sunday, we decided for this week to be a planning and administrative set up week. In the past three days we have;

1. Formed our LLC with the Texas Secretary of State

2. Applied for and received a Federal Tax ID (EIN) for the company

3. Applied for and received a Texas tax ID #.

4. Sent in our registration with the Texas Residential Construction Commission (TRCC) so that we will be recognized as an accepted construction company.

5. Opened a business account with a local credit union as well as a savings account to put funds aside to pay taxes (my brother actually wanted to use Washington Mutual b/c of their free checking but I had heard they were in dire straits. Good thing we didn’t go to them, they collapsed a few hours after our discussion and were bought this morning by JP Morgan Chase. These are crazy times in this country.

6. Applied for a general liability policy this morning. Once we have that, we will then apply for a bond (hopefully this afternoon).

7. As I type this, our initial marketing has begun. My brother is putting out bandit signs with our new # on them announcing our services for hurricane cleanup, repair and rebuilding (forgot to mention we also got a new cell phone and # for all business calls).

8. Next week, once we are bonded and insured, we will register with both the GreaterHouston Builders Association and the Bay Area Builders Association.

On Sunday, after I get up and say hello to everyone, we will go to my brothers office and put together our business plan.

More to post after that meeting.

Have a great weekend.

Tom

Tom Daly
buysell@bhot.biz
www.growth-coaching.com
www.ThomasPatrickOnline.net
1-800-691-4228

Received a call from my brother over the weekend. He and another younger brother live just south of Houston about half way down to Galveston. They received a lot of damage from Ike down in that neck of the woods. One brother (a construction supervisor for a local builder) and my step mother, each received significant damage. If you were to look at my brothers house before the storm from a satellite view, it would have looked like a forest. If you were to look at it today, it would look more like a farm pasture. He had close to 30 trees (up to 100″ tall)  which have either been knocked down or will need to be taken down due to being uplifted by Hurricane Ike’s winds. My step mother didn’t fare any better. Her house flooded with 2-3′ of sewage and they are now considering whether the house needs to be demolished or just repaired. My other brothers best friend is a local contractor and picked up 4 jobs on Saturday (each for about $150k to repair). He made the comment that if you’re going to start a construction business is Houston, now is the time to do it. So, here we are. starting a new business in Houston. I will be departing my home to go stay with them for a while and our new business will focus on three areas – clean up, minor repair/replacement, and larger repair/renovation. The smaller jobs will be for cash flow purposes with the larger ones for business sustainment.

My other brother who is an attorney in that area is currently in the process of forming a Limited Liability Company (LLC). There will be two managers and my attorney brother will act as our registered agent. We will also form a board of directors which will encompass other builders and businessmen. This is important so we may receive highly qualified advice and networking assistance. Once we have the LLC formed, we will get liability insurance for the company and then get bonded. We will not be like many others running to the area just looking to make a quick buck. We will run a professional business and will have most bases covered judging by the qualifications each one of us has. I am a rehabber, been doing so full time for 4 years and part time for several years prior to that. I will focus on business development and job supervision. My attorney brother will perform all legal functions/representations to ensure we are structured and organized properly. He will also deal with the insurance companies and will supervise some jobs as needed. My brother with the construction supervision experience is very knowledgeable in state code and will perform all inspections to make sure everything is done according to code.

Marketing should not be too difficult. We already have several jobs lined up from local networking and will also pay referral fees to others who have too much to handle. We will put out bandit signs announcing our services of clean up, repair and renovate. The signs will have a local # and will also inform the readers that we are bonded and insured. We also contact insurance companies directly informing them of our services and attempting to get work right from them.

Check in tomorrow to learn more.

Tom Daly
www.growth-coaching.com
www.ThomasPatrickOnline.net
www.bhot.biz (real estate site)
800-691-4228

Welcome to my blog! This blog is for all business professionals (employed and self employed) who are looking for ways to improve their efficiency, income and quality of life. Please feel free to post on this blog any legitimate ways of helping others achieve their goals and improve their ways.

I am a retired Marine Corps officer, past president of a small business services company, founder of The Celtic Group (a recruiting company that placed prior military professionals into quality employment opportunities nationwide) as well as an ex financial advisor at Merrill Lynch. I left Merrill 4+ years ago to enter the world of self employment specializing in real estate investment.

Today, I am still heavily invloved in real estate opportunities (primarily large volume short sales – my associates are currently working 250 shorts covering 5 states and looking to continue expansion). I am also heavily involved in personal, professional and leadership development. I consult one on one with individuals as well as directly with business owners who are looking to improve their leadership team. I am also experienced at recruiting quality leaders for a billion dollar company. 

Feel free to contact me to discuss any of the above as well as visit my websites (listed below).

Again, welcome to my blog and please feel free to post.

Tom Daly
www.growth-coaching.com
www.ThomasPatrickOnline.net
www.bhot.biz (real estate site)
800-691-4228

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