Many small home service businesses don’t believe they need to worry about public relations. However, PR professionals do more than put out reputation fires — they help cement your good reputation as an expert within your community before a perceived misstep harms your company.

When homeowners have a plumbing issue, they don’t want plumbers to waste time looking for things in their trucks. Make sure they have 80 percent of what they need for 80 percent of their customers. Al Levi has some tips for doing that.

Business owners need to keep track of many things to keep their entrepreneurial dreams alive. Knowing how tangible and intangible costs affect your pricing and your profit margin is critical for any home services contractor.

For home service contractors, making a service call incurs many costs to the business. What if the customer decides not to have the work done? Charging a minimum service charge fee can alleviate the contractor’s financial burden. 

It seems as if the days of after-hours emergency services are gone for home services businesses. The primary reason is a lack of qualified technicians and business owners wanting to keep existing techs happy. However, what about keeping customers happy?

In Part 1, I posited that innovation is something completely new or different being introduced that changes the marketplace — it’s one and done. 

Strategies to optimize not only each home service call, but improve overall company profitability, customer service and employee satisfaction

Establishing yourself as a plumbing expert, hydronics expert, HVAC expert or solar/geothermal expert requires keeping your company name top of mind for local journalists and trade press editors. Read on to see how to be an expert in your home services field.

The new work normal will likely be a hybrid model where those with certain job positions can work from home sometimes and in the office at other times. Read on for tips to successfully move to this model in your company.

Once you decide to open a business, you become an entrepreneur. You also took on an incredible responsibility to ensure the business stays profitable — whether you stay as a one-person shop or hire employees.