If your goal has always been to become an independent contractor, the independent part might be one of the most appealing aspects. You get to set your own hours and run your business in your own way. In an economic downturn where the whole industry has been turned on its head, you may need to collaborate. Here are five factors that can help you decide if forming a partnership would be a better path forward.

Related Fields
In order to form a partnership, you need to have someone whose skills and services relate closely to yours. If you’re finding that there are too many contractors and not enough jobs in your own field, you may want to find someone whose services and products are in an adjacent field. For example, if you find that you’re hiring the same subcontractor every single time you have a project, this might be an indicator that you have two businesses that could work well together. Be wary of duplicating your own skills, though. Unless you have more work than you can handle, doubling the paycheck obligations may not be enough.

Working Relationships
As a general rule, business partners get together as a result of a long-term professional relationship or other type of relationship. This means that you have to have somebody in mind before you can form a partnership. Advertising that you’re looking for a partner may take a lot longer, and it would be harder to tell if the people who are interested would make a good candidate to partner in your business. Think about the people that you have a good working relationship with, who aren’t employees. If you don’t know of anyone who meets this requirement, it might be time to beef up your networking skills.

Financial Stability
In the middle of an economic downturn, no one may truly believe that they are financially stable. But the last thing that you want when you start a partnership is for one person to be on great financial footing while the other is inches from disaster. This kind of imbalance can create a lot of conflict in the partnership, that may ultimately cause it to fail. Make sure that you are forming a partnership so that you can both help each other, instead of one person providing financial support to keep the other one going. A slight imbalance is manageable. But unless you have so much work and stable funding guarantees, you’re probably going to struggle to support two on the money that used to support one.

Balance of Skills and Services
Similarly, you want to confirm that both professionals have at least a moderate wealth of skills and services that they can provide. This depends greatly on the field you’re working in, and the nature of the industry at large. But typically, you both should have a variety of advantages that you can bring to the table. Don’t forget soft skills and other needs for business administration like sales and marketing. Ensuring that you can split tasks in a way that feels even to both of you will help to guarantee that everyone remains satisfied with the partnership going forward.

Collaboration
Ultimately, not everyone is cut out to be in a partnership. Sometimes, you can end up in a partnership with someone that is simply unsuited to work with you or vice versa. In other cases, you are just better off working by yourself. Think about the way you collaborate. If you can set aside your individual ambitions and work together to reach a consensus almost all of the time, then you will have a much higher chance of a successful partnership. By comparison, if you have a difficult time conceding the point to others, that may be a sign that you will have a lot of conflict in a partnership.

Forming a partnership is one way to run a contracting business, but you need to be sure you can do it right. To start on your career path in construction, contact CSLS today!

When you read about consumer or business confidence, it feels like it could mean a variety of things. What does it mean to be confident in a particular aspect of the economy? How does this data change the way that you make decisions for your contracting business? And what if people turn out to be wrong? With this information, you’ll understand what confidence means in finance and how it may affect your contracting business.

What Is Confidence?
If confidence feels like a somewhat nebulous standard of measurement, that’s because it is. Confidence is the way that people feel about themselves or some aspect of their world. It is not always an indicator of the way things actually are. However, finance experts use confidence as a way of determining what may happen in the future. People make decisions based on the confidence they have in certain aspects of the economy. For example, contractors look at their existing and expected sales and profit margins as a way of determining how confident they are in their own fields for the next several months or longer. It’s not a certain way of predicting the future, but it helps complete a more robust picture.

What’s the Difference Between Consumer, Investor and Contractor Confidence?
Now that you have a general idea of what contractor confidence means, you should know that there are indexes meant to measure confidence in other aspects of the economy. For example, you may read about increases in investor confidence in a thriving stock market, or decreases in consumer confidence based on rising housing prices. While you must keep in mind that confidence is highly subjective and heavily dependent on specific measurements, it can still give you an idea of what people plan to do with their own money. Specifically, if confidence in the economy starts to drop, you’ll notice that people will become more reserved in the types of financial risks they are willing to take.

How Does Confidence Affect Your Business Right Now?
At the moment, contractors are reporting lower levels of confidence in their ability to continue to grow sales and keep their profit margins high for the near future. As a business owner, you can imagine what those kinds of concerns may do for the way that you run your business. If you’re worried that you won’t be able to get enough sales this year, you might limit your overhead as much as you can. You may decide against hiring more workers, and if the trend continues, you may have to consider laying people off. This can affect the way that your business runs. That might mean that you have a simpler workflow, or it could mean that you have fewer services you can offer and more limited selection of projects.

How Can Low Contractor Confidence Change the Construction Industry?
Confidence in one aspect of the economy can change on a dime, but it depends heavily on the pivot point. Once people are worried about the future of their contracting businesses, they may make decisions that affect their ability to continue the business long-term. If these changes happen at the same time as lenders tighten loan requirements, or at the same time that a lot of other industries are noticing a drop in sales, there may be broader effects. Ultimately, part of rebuilding the economy after an economic downturn or recession lies in establishing confidence once again. After the last recession, it took a few years before the construction industry was able to run at levels even close to where they were before the housing crisis.

Contractor confidence may not mean a lot to you yet, but it poses serious long-term effects to your contracting business success. For more information about starting on a construction career path, visit CSLS today!

When the world is operating as usual, you probably spend most of your time on the jobsite. There, it’s easy to set goals and determine if you’ve achieved them. If you’re working from home or trying to manage an ad-hoc workspace, productivity takes on a whole new meaning. Here are some ways you can evaluate your work and set goals that are easier to measure and reach in a different working environment.

Communicate with Employees and Subcontractors
From the very beginning, you should communicate with your employees and subcontractors to get a sense for what they are able to do off the site. At present, lots of people are dealing with interruptions to their time due to trying to work with children or other family members at home. This makes it harder for people to focus, and can make it even more difficult for someone who needs to work on a dangerous task. Although productivity is important, it is also vital to start with goals that people can reasonably achieve.

Re-Evaluate Project Risks
If you are like many business owners, you conduct at least a basic risk management analysis for each project that you do. Some projects that you formulated prior to shelter-in-place orders may need to be re-evaluated. Specifically, you may want to look at timelines, budgetary concerns, and alternatives for components that you planned to assemble or build onsite. This will help you to figure out where you need to put most of your resources, and which areas are best for getting work done off-site.

Set Goals Based on Current Expectations
Businesses in a lot of industries will be finding their way to a new normal over the course of the next year. You can do the same by recognizing that the standards you set for productivity last year probably won’t work this year. Take a look at your current situation, including limits on where you can work and with how many people. Build in some flexibility if you can, to take advantage of changes in restrictions as they happen. Ultimately, be sure to keep your goals realistic not just for your employees, but for you as well. It serves no one if you are constantly setting standards for yourself and others that you simply cannot meet.

Aim for Self-Management
In a new, post COVID-19 world, your management practices will also need to change. If your standard so far has been to keep a close eye on everybody working under you, now is a good time to rethink that. People don’t tend to be more productive if they have the sense that a supervisor is watching them constantly. Micromanaging bosses in all sorts of industries are starting to find out what a productivity-killer this can be. Let this be an opportunity for you to invest in employees and subcontractors you can trust. That way, you can let them do their work and focus their time on productive activities, instead of responding to your monitoring system.

Use Tools to Collaborate
Since people working offsite and individually may keep different hours, being able to standardize your expectations and make them accessible to everyone is crucial. If you haven’t already started using online collaboration tools that allow everyone to look at goals for the project and the individual day, this is your opportunity to start. Collaboration is likely going to look very different for the construction industry in the next few years. Learning how to share visual updates and keep everyone on the same page can make it easier for you to measure progress and ensure that the workflow continues forward.

When you run a contracting business, productivity isn’t just a buzzword. Finding way to stay on top of it during a crisis can make the difference between success and failure. To get started, visit CSLS today!

States set orders to stay at home or shelter in place for a few weeks at a time. By this point, you’ve probably noticed that the dates have been extended more than once. This makes it harder to know when things might get back to normal. If you’ve been reading the news and reports from the rest of the world, you know that it may take some time before COVID-19 is no longer such a big threat and the healthcare system is equipped to manage it. These tips based on current assumptions can help you figure out what’s coming.

Track State Numbers
Although a state as large as California may have rates of COVID-19 that radically differ from one county to the next, keeping track of numbers at the state level is useful. At the moment, it seems that California may have hit the peak in cases reported each day. This could change, but it indicates that the existing stay-at-home orders are proving effective at slowing the spread. If you see a significant jump in numbers, you may need to prepare for a scaling back of the services that are currently considered essential. This could include construction, although it is unlikely that such a variable industry would be shut down at a statewide level.

Monitor National and International Concerns
If you were watching countries like China in January, you might have had a sense of what was on the horizon. Since the threat posed by COVID-19 is unlikely to be mitigated entirely without a vaccine, this means that you should pay attention to what is going on in the country as a whole and also elsewhere in the world. It’s reasonable to expect that if the western states lift restrictions and see a sudden rise in cases, they may choose to shut down again or restrict their services even further. The only way that you will know that this may be coming is if you are also watching what is happening outside of the state.

Anticipate Several Extensions
If your business is already teetering on the brink of insolvency because of the current situation, it’s tempting to think that you could start planning for the state to reopen. But it’s worth noting that the initial closures anticipated that they may be able to reopen at the end of March. Of course, now we know that would have been far too early. At present, experts say that re-opening much earlier than June or July is unrealistic. Still, you can expect government officials to extend stay-at-home orders by a few weeks at a time. This allows them the space to consider how the current limitations are working.

Expect a Slow, Regional Reintroduction
Just like other parts the world are beginning to re-introduce normal operations of society, you can expect that there will eventually be similar actions taken here. How it rolls out and when depends as much on the county that you live in as the state. Some counties with a higher population, or other reasons to believe they may be at higher risk for a resurgence, may choose to continue stay-at-home orders for longer. It’s important to balance the limitations set by the county as well as the state. For example, if the state lifts restrictions on how you can complete projects but the county doesn’t, you should plan to continue to practice social distancing on the jobsite.

Plan for a Resurgence
To protect yourself and your employees, it may make sense to keep up with many of the safety guidelines implemented as a result of COVID-19. Experts believe the COVID-19 is less likely to spread in hot weather. And while this means that summer might give a brief reprieve, it could also mean that the virus will come back in the fall. Do what you can to minimize the spread even if you think the threat is generally over. This will help to keep you in practice in the event that the state needs to place restrictions again later.

Stay-at-home orders will eventually be lifted, and you’ll need to be ready. To prepare your contracting business for whatever lies ahead, visit CSLS today!

Learning to answer questions may feel like a skill you picked up in preschool, but it’s more complicated than you think. Within a question, even a short one, may be assumptions and details that you miss if you’re not paying attention. Knowing how to break down a question can help you figure out how to answer it in ways that your clients, employees, and other people will understand. Here are five tips you can use to clarify your communication.

Listen Carefully
You’ve probably had many experiences where you needed clarification on something, and the person was so quick to answer that they didn’t actually listen to the question. When you know much more about the status of a project and its unique needs than the client, it’s tempting to assume you know whatever they are going to ask and can save time by answering quickly. But sometimes this means that you miss a crucial component to the question. This can lead you to giving an incomplete answer. Instead, listen carefully to the entire question and give yourself time to think about how you want to answer. Make sure to minimize distractions so you can pay close attention.

Get Clarification Before Crafting an Answer
In some cases, clients may be in such a rush or so worried about wasting your time that they don’t give you all the information you need to answer the question. For example, they might ask you about your expectations on the delivery of a particular project, but you’re not sure which aspect they need to focus on. In this case, it is perfectly acceptable to respond to a question with more questions. This allows you to make sure that you are getting all the details before you craft a reply.

Avoid Answering a Different Question
Many politicians and others prominent in public affairs are very good at listening to a question and turning it into something completely different. But if clients are to understand the details of the project, as well as your needs and expectations, you must answer their questions as they have asked them. Sometimes clients ask questions that indicate a concern about something else. For example, someone might ask you about when you expect to be done with the project because they are worried about when they will have to pay for it. But as a general rule, you should assume that you need to answer the question as the client indicates.

Tailor Answers to the Listener
The way that you answer a question depends heavily on the person who asks. You may be able to anticipate a much higher degree of understanding from one of your employees or a subcontractor than you would a homeowner with limited experience in the services you offer. Most people appreciate avoiding the use of jargon or making answers to questions unnecessarily complicated. Sometimes, people already think they know the answer and they just want to confirm it. If you can do so, you may be able to save a lot of time and hassle.

Follow Up to Confirm Understanding
It’s customary, after you have answered a few questions, to ask a client if they understand or if they have any other questions. But you should also know that it is customary for people to say that they understand or that they don’t have any other questions, even if they didn’t know how to interpret your answer. This is where you can ask them questions about their expectations and concerns. It may provide an excellent opportunity to confirm that they were asking the right question, and help to assure them that you are ready to clarify any aspect of the project as needed.

Working in construction means meeting with people from all walks of life, and learning to interact with them in ways that get both parties what they need. When you know how to answer questions efficiently, you can clear up confusion and make projects run more smoothly. To learn how to build a successful contracting business, contact CSLS today!

One big concern coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic is the sheer number of people in the United States who have no sick leave. If they contract the virus, many of them worry they would have to choose between staying home sick and paying the bills. The federal government recently passed legislation to provide some assistance to people working for certain kinds of businesses. But since paid leave by the federal government is a new concept, there are a lot of details you need to know. Here’s how the new law could affect your contracting business.

What Are the Basics of the New Paid Leave Law?
The fact that the federal government has never mandated paid leave before creates a lot of questions. Prior to this point, the closest available has been unpaid leave based on the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993. There may be adaptations or updates to the new paid leave law over the course of the COVID-19 crisis, but here are the basics:

• Employees of qualified businesses with fewer than 500 workers may be eligible.
• Workers who must stay home due to a coronavirus-related sickness or mandated shutdown may be able to get up to 80 hours of paid leave.
• The amount is based on their regular income and the reason for leave, e.g. sickness or need to care for another family member.
• Employers are expected to pay for the leave and then request tax credits.
• The law applies to leave taken after April 1st, 2020 and by December 31st, 2020.

There are some exceptions, so it’s important to check on your eligibility and consult with an accountant, as needed.

How Does This Law Relate to FMLA?
FMLA has been around for 27 years, and the new paid leave laws are being administered as a part of it. For decades, FMLA has provided up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for qualified employees without worry that they will lose their jobs. Traditionally, they’ve needed to work in the job for about a year to qualify. The new leave law makes a few changes tied specifically to the COVID-19 pandemic:

• The law expands eligibility to employees who have worked with a company for 30 days.
• It requires qualified employers to paid for up to two weeks paid leave for virus-related healthcare needs and closures.
• Employers may also be required to pay up to 10 weeks paid leave for parents who can’t work due to school and childcare center closures.

Many of the ways that employers can administer these policies are tied to FMLA. Companies that already have leave policies under this guideline, such as requiring employees to use all their accrued sick pay or vacation time first, may be able to apply them to this law.

How Does This Law Relate to Contractors?
This rule, and the tax credits, apply to most companies with fewer than 500 employees. This means that even if you have only a few employees, you probably are not exempt from these requirements. Many contractors may be surprised to learn that there are provisions for self-employed workers. This means that if you are out of work due to COVID-19, you might be able to claim the credits on your 2020 taxes or adjust your contributions to your quarterly estimated tax payments.

Where Can Contractors Get More Information?
Given that the requirements come right now and tax credits usually come later, it’s not surprising that people are confused and have a lot of questions. The IRS maintains a section on its website with frequently asked questions about the policy. Contractors can also check the U.S. Department of Labor’s website for updates to the policy and clarifications.

Keeping a business going during COVID-19 is a struggle. The paid leave laws may help, but contractors need to pay close attention to the details. For more information about starting your own contracting business, visit CSLS today!

The longer you develop your business, the more opportunities you have to build relationships with business partners. Your contractors, subcontractors, supply chain and other companies help to keep you running smoothly. When you do it right, it’s a win-win for everyone involved. The trick is that you have to maintain the relationship so that it’s always there when you need it. Here’s a few ways to make it a priority.

Get on a First-Name Basis
You hear a lot about business success not being so much what you know, as who you know. In a competitive industry with a lot of small contracting businesses, this is certainly true. The better someone knows you and your work, the more likely they are to call you first when they need something. This is where all those networking skills come in handy. Whether you’re a B2B or a B2C, selling your services is paramount. You need to make sure that people with the right connection in the industry not just know your name, but can remember it. You can do this by communicating with them on a regular basis and remembering who they are, as well.

Keep Tabs on Your Contractors and Subcontractors
Businesses change names or switch owners all the time. Your job is to know who you need to talk to and how best to reach them. Once you get this information, write it down in a place where your employees can get easy access to it. At least once every six months, follow up with your most important business partners and confirm that your contact information is correct. The last thing you want to do is end up with a dead phone number or an email address that now goes into a black hole, right when you need it most.

Give as Much as You Take
Everyone has a friend who only comes around when they want something. Not surprisingly, there are plenty of businesses that run on the same premise. If you’re always asking for favors and not offering something in exchange, you may find that businesses are less interested in maintaining the relationship. Instead, make sure that you reciprocate on a regular basis. If you’re at the point where you might consider someone a colleague or a friend, get together for lunch or coffee on occasion. This little effort can remind someone that you’re a valuable part of their own business success.

Keep Your Promises
A lot of making sure you have a smooth workflow involves keeping up with your business partners, but there’s another step. You need to be a person they want to continue working with. When you first get started, it is really tempting to overpromise as a way to secure a bid or contract. The trouble is that if you underdeliver, you’ve given a cast-iron reason not to work with you again. Sure, completing a project late and over budget is practically part of the job description, but that doesn’t mean people will be happy about it. Set realistic goals you know you can achieve, and let your reliability secure your reputation.

Build Redundancy Into the System
In a field like construction, turnover is as predictable as the Santa Ana winds. The difficulty with cultivating long-term relationships with your subcontractors or supply chain is that you’ll develop relationships that break from time to time. This is where you want to build some redundancy into the system. If you have an employee who always talks to a particular company, make it a point to call them yourself on occasion. This helps them remain familiar with you, as you are with them. It makes for a more seamless transition, when one of your employees needs to move on.

Running a successful contracting business requires help from other businesses. To get their regular assistance, you need to develop a relationship that you can maintain for years to come. To learn how you can become your own boss in construction, contact CSLS today!

As a contractor, you know that prices for materials fluctuate regularly. Most of the time, you can anticipate what’s likely to happen and plan ahead. At other times, you get hit with a surprise new tariff that dramatically increases costs. When you’re bidding on projects that won’t be completed for a year or two (or longer), it’s hard to predict now what you’ll pay for the things you need. Here are a few ways you can manage it without losing your profit margins.

Keep an Eye on Rising Prices
Prices don’t always go up with inflation. Sometimes they go down. On occasion, they’ll fluctuate, especially if there is some event like a disaster that forces everyone in the supply chain to accommodate. Sometimes, price increases mean that certain businesses will struggle to keep up. If you want to avoid being one of them, you should keep tabs on the news and regional prices for all materials you use regularly. Update your estimates as prices change so you don’t accidentally use last year’s numbers.

Round Up, Not Down
A good rule of thumb for many construction materials is to estimate how much you’ll need and add an extra 10 percent. You might want to do something similar for material prices, as well. You can’t predict when the federal government will institute a tariff that increases the cost of materials you bring overseas by a margin as large as 25 percent. But you can guess that prices will go up year after year. Look at price averages in your region and how they’ve changed over the past five years. Use that data to inform your estimates, and always round up. Underbidding on materials may make your bid more appealing to clients looking for a bargain. But you’ll pay for it with less money to keep your business going.

Consider an Escalation Clause
Once you sign a contract, generally you’re committed to doing the work at the price you specified. An escalation clause gives you a way to renegotiate the contract based on price increases. The terms are usually very specific, which means that you’ll have limits on the time you can raise prices, how much you can increase them, and how soon you can get payment for the difference. If you can’t reasonably predict what materials will cost you for the project, the clause may make the difference between safeguarding your profits and shaving them off entirely.

Evaluate the Best Terms
In an industry with fluctuating material prices, using escalation clauses can be a way for contractors to avoid cutting into their profits when prices go up. It’s important to choose the right one based on the project. For example, you might opt to share the risk up to a certain point. If the project is relatively short and you don’t anticipate rapid changes, you can offer to shoulder the increase unless it passes a certain percentage.

During longer projects, it may make more sense to activate an escalation clause past a certain amount of time. That helps to accommodate price changes that happen months or years later. Some escalation clauses allow you to raise the price the day it changes. If you want or need this level of flexibility, expect to show your work in your original price estimate.

Keeping a contracting business above water involves careful attention to the prices of materials you use. By tracking material costs and adding escalation clauses to certain contracts, you can protect your income and profits. To discover more benefits of running your own business, contact CSLS today!

Several states, California included, have shut down what they call “non-essential services” until they can get better control over the rising cases of COVID-19. Although construction is currently proceeding mostly as usual, this may not be the case next week. Dealing with a state-level or city-level shutdown presents a number of possible complications for your business. Here are five things you can do to help keep your business going, if you’re forced to cut hours or shut down for a short period of time.

Assess Status of Current Projects
It is common for contracting businesses to have several jobs going. You might be almost done with one and barely starting with another. The first thing you should do is assess where you are at with every current project. In some cases, you may be able to suspend work for a short period of time or change the nature of the project while you wait for a shutdown to end. In other cases, you might simply need to finish some paperwork, which could be easy to do remotely. There’s a high likelihood that you would have to suspend most work during a shutdown. But there may be other ways to run your business in the meantime.

Check on Your Cash Flow
One of the first rules of running a contracting business is to ensure that your cash flow is sufficient to handle temporary delays in revenue. While a shutdown due to COVID-19 might be longer than temporary, it’s possible that your cash flow may still be able to buy you some time. Invest the time to examine all of your expenses, including:

• Payroll
• Workspace rentals
• Equipment
• Supplies

If you made active orders for projects that are now on hold, you may be able to pause or cancel them until you are ready to make those orders again. Finding ways to limit what you have to pay can help ensure that you save most of your money for important things like keeping your employees on-staff.

Consider Financial Support
While the last thing that you may want to do right now is take out a loan when you’re not bringing money in, there are a variety of ways you can look at getting extra financial support while you wait for the opportunity to open business again. This might come in the form of

• Low-interest business loans
• Lines of credit
• Grant programs

Take a look at federal legislation related to economic stimulus and see how the benefits for businesses may relate to yours in particular. It’s an imperfect solution, but it may help you keep the lights on.

Communicate with Clients and Lenders
In any kind of crisis, most business owners try to plan for the worst but hope for the best. This involves making sure that everybody who relates to your cash flow, from clients to lenders, is aware of what you are dealing with and how you were working to minimize problems. It might mean trying to negotiate a new timeline with a client rather than having to abandon a project altogether. It might also include talking to lenders and creditors and requesting some kind of forbearance that allows you extra time to catch up on payments while your income is lower. In most cases, you are much more likely to reach a satisfactory agreement if you talk to them before you fall into violation of the contract.

Get Updates on Limitations
While some experts are estimating that the threat posed by COVID-19 may last for months or even years, it is unlikely to lead to a long-term shutdown of the construction industry. That said, it is hard to tell when barriers to normal business function will lift. You should plan to spend some time every day looking for news as it relates to your field. This will give you the best opportunity to find out when you’ll be able to start working again.

Running a business in the middle of chaos can lead to a shutdown. With these tips, you’ll know what to do to keep your company as safe as possible. For more information about preparing for your contractor licensing exam from home, contact CSLS today!