A counterman at the supply house that I frequented as a PHC contractor made the most targeted statement I ever heard regarding the hubris of plumbing contractors: “I have never met the second-best plumber.”

Being a PHC contractor who started as a lowly plumber’s helper and graduated as an apprentice and journeyman plumber, and knowing many other contractors, I knew exactly what he was saying. Every plumber I knew thought he was the best, and many of them were incredibly good at their trade skills. 

However, like all fields of expertise, there are the good, the bad and the downright ugly when it comes to the quality of the workmanship performed and the total performance delivered.

PHC contractors come from different backgrounds. Some follow the natural course of family businesses, while others may prefer to work with their hands and minds in the building trades rather than pursue other types of careers. 

Whichever their origin, they have a commonality in that they have wound up in the business arena. 

Arenas are places where sports, entertainment or public events take place. In ancient Rome, gladiators would do battle in the Colosseum for the pleasure of the spectators. Sometimes, it was a battle to the death.

The gladiators chose their own type of weapons and armor, dependent upon their social ranking. After training in special schools, the gladiators were ready for the games to begin.

The difference between gladiators in their arenas and contractors in the business arena is their training. Gladiators who performed excellently lived life better than those who performed with mediocrity. The same rule applies to the contracting business.

Vince Lombardi, the NFL football coach for whom the Super Bowl trophy was named, was a modern-day gladiator of sorts who said, “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.” If you, as a PHC contractor, want to achieve excellence you, too, must chase perfection. 

Excellence is the ingredient leading you to business success. When you deliver excellence to consumers, they tell others who, in turn, will consider your business when they need or desire what you offer. Deliver excellence to them and they, too, will sing your praises to others — and so on and so on.

Before entering the business arena, you, like the gladiators of old, must choose the right armor and weapons to deliver service excellence. You must seek the special training needed and properly implement procedures that will allow you to succeed. And therein lies the difference between the good, the bad and the downright ugly in the contracting business.

Your Armor: Business Acumen

Knowing the technical aspects of your trade is important to being in the service business. Performing excellently is the path to success in technical services delivered. Knowing how to run a business properly and profitably is the only way to attain your goal: to earn more money than it costs you to perform any service. 

You only have three choices when it comes to your selling prices. You can sell your services at your cost to perform any service, but that doesn’t reach your goal. You can sell your services below your cost, but that takes you in the wrong direction. Or you can sell your services above your cost.

It doesn’t take a genius to know which choice to make. The dilemma is knowing how to make that choice work. You may not get enough work to sustain your business if you charge too much. If you don’t charge enough to cover your true costs and the effects of Murphy’s Law in any fiscal period, you may wind up spending more to perform the task than you bring into your business for the task.

Logic dictates that if you do not know the true cost you incur for any task, you cannot know how to apply a price to it and be certain you charge a proper and profitable price. You optimize the number of deals you can and will, close to sustain your business. 

You also must know how to attract new business — another expense item essential to running your business successfully. 

To run your business properly and profitably, you must have a good grasp of the business acumen needed to accomplish the feat.

You need to know that in addition to paying salaries to your employees, both technical and administrative, you incur certain salary-related expenses that add to your labor costs. And you must understand that to run your business, you must include a salary for yourself. 

I say this because so many contractors, especially one-person businesses, do not include their salary in their cost calculations and take whatever money remains as their compensation after all other business expenses and creditors are paid. 

If you don’t include your salary and salary-related expenses, you won’t be properly calculating your true cost and will have difficulty bringing in the correct amount of dollars, allowing you to earn the reward you deserve for delivering excellence. 

Salary expenses are only one of the factors to consider. You can’t operate a contracting business without vehicles and the vehicular costs associated with using said vehicles. 

There are also a myriad of other business expenses to consider, including administrative costs such as rent, utilities, office supplies and equipment, communications, professional services, customer relations, bad debt, breakage and loss, continuing education, licenses, tools and any legitimate tangible and intangible costs, including Murphy’s Law.

Your Weapons: Technical Ability

All these items are the choices and considerations you must address, just as the gladiators’ decisions regarding weapons and armor. And none of these items are covered by your training in the technical knowledge that you need regarding the services you sell to the public.

Being a plumber or HVAC tech does not give you the wherewithal needed to be a professional business owner of a contracting business. Technicians require the knowledge needed to be a technically proficient technician. Business ownership requires you to be cognizant of what you need to run a business while tending to all the responsibilities, stress and frustration that business owners encounter. 

When you enter the PHC industry business arena, remember the gladiators who entered the field of the Colosseum. They had the weapons and armor to do battle. Your weapon is the prowess of your technical ability. Your armor is your business acumen. 

If you want to be the best, you need both your weapons and your armor. And you must implement both properly while delivering excellence to consumers and earning the reward you deserve for the delivery.