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Being a family man and a pool guy for the past twelve years and running, I understand the difficulty of balancing your business and personal life. When I am busy and forget the balance, priorities become sketchy and everything suffers. From my own experience, some of the common results of focusing on the business over home life are:
If you’re like me, you may have started your business for a few very important reasons. You wanted more freedom, more Income, and more time to do what you are passionate about in life spending time with family, working on hobbies, even just sitting on the couch! Most of the time pool guys will resort to focusing on the income portion of why we started a company and forget about the rest of the reasons. Let’s face it, money is a nice thing to have, and it allows us to do more with our personal time. However, the income needs to go hand-in-hand with the freedoms and passions we truly care about. Our businesses need to be efficient in order to keep as much income as possible, while preserving our personal time. I’d rather work to live than live to work. To be more efficient in your business, you need to identify what part of your operations can be improved and try out new solutions. Here are a few areas that can be improved:
* Driving Route – This is a crucial part of time management that can help you save a little money and a ton of time. When setting up your route, or adding a new customer, be firm about the day of the week you will put them on EVEN WHEN THEY ASK FOR FRIDAY! Explain to them that you keep your pools close together to keep your prices reasonable, and to provide them with better service. If they won’t work with you, do not take the account. As alarming as it sounds, it can be a sign that they are not willing to work with you on other issues in the future.
* Complete Repairs Immediately – Putting off a repair is the easiest way to lose time, additional chemical cost, and possibly even the repair job to another pool company. When you do not complete a repair on a pool you service, you have to deal with the additional labor during maintenance- brushing, additional steps when servicing, and skyrocketing chemical costs. Additionally, you will get customer phone calls and emails to answer regarding scheduling and prices from other pool companies. Complete your repairs right away for great customer service.
* Clean by Routine – When servicing your pools, follow the same steps at each stop in order. Following a routine will shave minutes off each stop and keep you from wandering back and forth in the back yard. Invest in proper tooling that will allow you to make the least amount of trips to your truck. How many of us have had those service stops where we walked to our truck four or five times?! Routine makes us more efficient.
* Billing Billing Billing – This has been a source of huge frustration and time over the years. When you are busy, you run out of time to actually bill for the work you have done. Work gets done, but logging payments, keeping track of estimates, extra work, new customers, late customers, and even customers that are avoiding you can become so overwhelming! Often, you end up losing that income you’re working so hard for! My billing has gone from hours to minutes by using paythepoolman.com. I have tried Quickbooks, Wise, and a few online services to keep me out of my office chair after a ten-hour work day, and none of them helped me. I created a billing program, specifically for pool companies, with those frustrations in mind. Paythepoolman.com was built for speed, mobility, ease of use, and efficiency. It has so many features that go beyond a simple billing program, and that makes us the first SOLUTION for pool companies. The program lives in the cloud, but is accessible on any device (phone/tablet/pc). There is no need to download anything at any time. If you want to access your accounts and customers on the job, everything is at your fingertips. When you need to add a new customer, extra work, even create estimates and invoices, all you need is your phone. Check customer balances and payments with a few clicks! Online payments are also part of the system. Text late customers to bring their account current and give them the ability to pay right then and there. Your company can have a professional online presence without any additional work on your end. Complete your billing on your couch! Customers are making payments while you’re spending time with your family or enjoying your favorite hobbies. To help you get started, we have detailed step-by-step videos explaining how to make paythepoolman.com work for you. Unrivaled customer support is guaranteed. We are giving all CPA members a Two Month Free Trial by using the code first2free. Try it out today! Get the time and money you work hard to keep!