Elvis is making $45 an hour working for Ringo's Plumbing, Heating & Air. You're making a whopping $125 per hour working for yourself. Yet Elvis has a new jet-ski, goes to a health spa on weekends, and gets his hair styled professionally while you work 24/7 tryin' to figure out how to make ends meet.
What the heck is wrong with this picture? Uh, you for starters, because you do not understand the difference between income and earnings. Except for taxes, Elvis' money is “clear” — that is, he gets paid for every hour he works — while yours is taxed and burdened with so much overhead that you'll be lucky if you make half of what Elvis does.
Don't believe me? Keep a time card. Do something as simple as this and you'll be amazed at how little that $125 charge per hour actually covers. Let's make a short list just for the sheer fun-of-it:
- Travel time
- Paperwork
- Shopping (No, not groceries.)
- I.T. work
- Phone calls
- Stocking
- Planning/dispatching ... you do plan don't you?
- Filling out divorce papers
- Advertising/marketing
- Then, of course, after you're done with all the above ... tada(!), actual time spent fixing faucets, repairing heat exchangers, puttin' in new electrical services.
I'll make a prediction: You won't keep a time card. You just won't do it. Why? Because you don't want to know. You're too scared. You're trembling. You're petrified of what you'll find out. Meanwhile, Elvis is takin' his latest and greatest jet ski out for a spin on Lake Lucky ... or wherever.
If you won't track, you won't know, and, if you won't know, you're in denial ... and De Nile is not a river in Egypt. All I'm asking is for you to know. If you know you can choose; if you choose, you can change; and no matter what you've been told, no matter how much you fear it, change is good because change is inevitable. CHANGE IS INEVITABLE!
No person swims in the same river twice. Think about that. You are not the same person right now that just read, “No person swims in the same river twice.” Heavy. Hurts my head just thinkin' about it, but son-of-a-gun it's true. So, second to second, minute-to-minute, day-to-day, I have the capacity to change for the better because I am not the same person I was then, just a moment ago.
Your first change? Keep a time card for every business-related chore you do. I’m still predicting that you won't, but that's how you'll get out of the mire. Keeping track is one of the “golden eggs.” A hundred golden eggs can be placed in front of a hundred people but only a very, very few will actually make the effort to bend down, pick it up, and take it to the bank. I guess it's just too danged difficult to bend down.
I hope one of you new owner-types decides to keep a time card this coming week. I'll guarantee it to be a first step to success.—Ed O'Connell
Will you keep that time card? Be cool to read about it on CONTRACTOR's Plumbing Talk Forum, but I'll bet my old Uncle Willy's flea-bitten hairpiece no one goes there to discuss it.
It matters to me, and I hope one of you new owner-types decides to keep a time card this coming week. I'll guarantee it to be a first step to success. My passion will remain if only one person does this, or even no one, because all I ask is to help give others the opportunity to avoid the mistakes I made.
"This search for what you want is like tracking something that doesn't want to be tracked. It takes time to get a dance right, to create something memorable." — Fred Astaire.
Enjoy,
Ol’ Ed
Ed O'Connell is the founder emeritus of O'Connell Plumbing Inc. He is the subcontracting business coach for smaller contractors and a Service Round Table Coach. He can be reached in Auburn, California, at home/office: 530/878-5273 or at [email protected].