Comfortable Knees

Eliminate Fits & Starts

I met Hakan Engstrom last fall at The Decorative Arts Show. Hakan is a decorative artist based in Sweden. Hakan has designed designed highly functional pants that will actually make you more productive. The reason-they are designed with pockets where you need them. You can carry a lot of the basic tools in all the perfectly placed pockets in various sizes to accomodate all kinds of tools.

All the pockets save you time. You don’t have to break what you are working on to grab a tool, it’s right there. In the course of a day all the little breaks and stopping and starting might add up to an hour or two per day. Think about this-if you pay your workers $25.00 per hour, that could easily be a savings of $125.00 per week, $500.00 per month or $6,000.00 per year per worker!

They also have built in knee pads that move with you and don’t fight back. Knee pads become very uncomfortable as you know. These flow nicely so you can keep on moving with no downtime.

Be Smart. Check out Hakans money making pants at Haken Wear.

Big Opportunities In The Swimming Pool Market

Now that we have a new president maybe the markets will feel a new confidence. With Obama at the helm the liberal press has nothing to complain about.

Despite the gloomy reporting lately there are still plenty of interesting opportunties. In The Wall Street Journal there was an article about new legislation that was passed regarding swimming pool drains. There have been injuries and drownings caused by underwater drains that suck hard enough to prevent people from getting free.

That means that all the approximately 300,000 public pools need to be fixed to comply with the new regulation. That means lots of opportunity for coatings and pool specialists. Contact all the hotels, schools, hospitals to find out their plans. The amount of business could set you up for a few years.

Information is available at National Swimming Pool Foundation.

Residential Foreclosed Properties

I met with a Real Estate Owned (REO) specialist today who focuses on the residential market. His specialty is foreclosed properties. He sees a 36 month window of opportunity. The majority of properties he sells for banks are to real estate investors. The first thing owners neglect before they miss their payments is maintenance. Every bank owned property needs work. In most cases the walkways, patios, pool decks need help. The kitchens, baths garages and basements need work to improve value.

If you are an investor the products manufactured by the companies here area great resource. As a real estate investor I’ve used skim coats, wall plasters and concrete for countertops to rehab properties. The results have been extremely profitable and smoke the competition. Check with brokers in your local area. They will refer new owners and investors to you.

Public Projects

Our new President will be pouring funds into our public infrastructure. Schools, municipal buildings, hospitals are going to be renovated. This is a large opportunity. It might be worth investing in leads from Reed Construction data and other similar services. Reed Construction Data is a database of construction projects. You can sort the data by specialty, geographic area, property type and probably a few more. They provide you with all the contact data you need like project name, architect, general contractor and owner.

The Guide is a much improved version of the system taught by the one of the most successful Real Estate companies in the world. The Guide is perfect for small to mid -sized contractors and construction companies.

What The Guide covers;

• How To define a profitable target market
• How to analyze the economic feasability of products and markets
• How to build your business foundation
• How To Build A network that refers targeted business to you
• Why product and Market specialization is the only path to success
• How to create e-newsletters that drive business to you
• The power of blogs and how to create case Studies of your projects to presell projects
• How to develop long lasting word of mouth business
• How to give client presentations that close sales

The Contractors Guide To Prospering in Niche Markets has numerous case studies of successful small construction companies. It highlights their successes and the downside of deviating from their specific game plan. The Guide provides the system for profiting in any market even the current challenging economic environment. For more information contact Ed Winslow at ejw@creteventures.com