The Handyman’s Guide To Profit: Using Your Skills To Make Money In Any Economy

by A. William Benitez

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BLURB:

If You Are Making Repairs to Your Home, You Could Be Using Those Skills To Make Money.

With Millions of Jobs Lost, This Economy Is Ideal For Self Employment

Start Right Now Using Proven Financially Successful Methods

Years ago I had a profitable consulting and publishing business assisting federally funded housing programs across the country to succeed. My reputation was established and I was selling books, a monthly newsletter, and traveling around the country to help communities leverage the housing funds received from the federal government. Unfortunately, after a national election, everything changed and all the housing funds disappeared and so did my business. If not for my handyman and carpenter skills I would have been in real trouble.

Instead I quickly purchased and outfitted a small trailer with all the handyman tools I needed and hit the ground running. After just a few ads in local weekly papers I was working every day and making a decent living. At first most of the jobs were small and could have easily been handled by someone with limited experience and that was good because money flowed promptly.

As time passed I started taking larger jobs and gradually moved from just handyman work to small remodeling jobs and finally, after renting a small shop, to woodworking which I continued for over twenty five years.

Like losing a good job, a business failure can be traumatic and impose a serious financial hardship but with a few handyman skills anyone can quickly start making money. I know that first hand and my book The Handyman’s Guide To Profit: Using Your Skills To Make Money In Any Economy can help you do the same on a full time or part time basis.

Based on more than 25 years of personal, hands on, self employment experience, my book can help you start immediately making money with your home repair skills because it is a complete course on succeeding in the home repair business. I cover every step from getting started to the day-to-day operation of the business using methods that worked for many years.

This is no pie in the sky romancing about self employment. It takes good home repair and business skills to operate a business successfully and now you can learn exactly how to use your present skills to succeed financially in the handyman business.

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Excerpt:

The first step is to always treat your customers in ways that shows you value their business. This has two fold benefits because in addition to the continued business from the customer, he or she will recommend your services to others. This second part is just as critical to your financial success and for it to happen you need a firm reputation for quality work and excellent customer service. People will only recommend you to others if you have made an impression. Mediocrity seldom merits mention to anyone.

It’s important to remember that excellence doesn’t mean that you never make mistakes. There is an old saying that goes, “Showing me a person who makes no mistakes and I’ll show you a person who isn’t doing anything.” If you do a lot of jobs, mistakes will occur and you will have to deal with it. How you deal with these mistakes will determine whether a customer recognizes your excellence. Mistakes should be seen as an opportunity to truly impress customers with your excellence. Correct the mistake and make certain that your customer is not penalized in any way because it occurred. If you do this and do it promptly, your mistake will turn into a plus that will bring you much more work.

Part of dealing with mistakes involves a prompt apology for the incident. Don’t make excuses, apologize and correct the problem immediately as no cost to your customer and then move on. Many people seem to find it difficult to admit mistakes and almost impossible to apologize for them. Think about the last time you received inadequate or even awful customer service at any location. Did you hear an apology? Was the problem corrected the first time you mentioned it or even beforehand? If your experiences are like mine, hearing an apology sounds so strange that you would definitely remember. Take advantage of this situation.

Start promptly taking steps to correct mistakes even if the customer has not noticed them. Don’t wait to be pressured to do it. Your customer will be so surprised by the way the incident is handled that they will tell all of their friends. I know this is the case because on those rare occasions when it happens to me I mention it to all my friends.

Dr. Wayne Dyer has a way to describe this kind of service. He describes those who give him this kind of service as eagles. And those who care less about customer service as ducks. So when I get excellent service I tell my friends about it and tell them I found an eagle to help me when I was there. Eagles are rare and you have the opportunity to be one in your business so your customers will tell everyone about you.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

From age twelve I spent my summers and weekends working with my dad, a general contractor, building homes and buildings. I contracted my first home at age nineteen and built my own home by age twenty. For more than 30 years I have operated one-person businesses. Twelve years of my life were spent working for local government managing federally-assisted housing programs. I started as an inspector with a three month assignment and was Director of Community Improvement with 78 employees when I resigned to do writing and consulting.

Writing, Publishing and Consulting

During the 80’s I established Rehab Notes Library, a publishing company that published a monthly newsletter (Rehab Notes) with subscribers in all 50 states, Canada and England. I also did consulting and public speaking on housing related topics for agencies and organizations in cities across the country and testified before the U.S. Congress on housing issues.

I wrote and published nine guidebooks on the subject of housing rehabilitation. After 1980 when most federal funding was pulled from housing activities, I took advantage of my construction and business experience and started a handyman and woodworking business.

Over Twenty Five Years of Handyman and Woodworking

For over twenty five years, first in Tampa, Florida and then in Austin, Texas, I did handyman and repair jobs and built hundreds of small and large cabinet and furniture projects for individuals, companies and government agencies. During these years I began writing books about my woodworking business experiences.

Positive Publishing

In 2007 I established Positive Imaging, LLC, to publish a children’s book for my wife and then begin publishing my own books on the handyman and woodworking business and also books written by others using methods I call positive publishing. To date we have published twelve paperback books, a half dozen ebooks, and presently have several books in various levels of completion.

Computer Experience

My computer experience dates back more than fifteen years and began in response to poor technical support for our computers.   I used home study to acquire A+ and Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer Certifications.

I was born and raised in Tampa, Florida and moved to Austin, Texas in 1986, where I now live with my wife, Barbara Frances. We have three adult children, eight grand-children, and two great grandchildren.

Book Sales Page: https://www.createspace.com/3400416

Createspace Estore: https://www.createspace.com/3400416

Amazon.com Page: amzn.to/18WwYJ6

Handyman Blog: http://starting-a-handyman-business.com/

Home Repair Web Site: http://home-repair-business.com/

How I Write Non-Fiction

By: A. William Benitez
Author of: The Handyman’s Guide To Profit

For me non-fiction means how-to and if anyone asks why I want to write books the answer is easy. I do it for three reasons the most important being that I love to write. The second is that I enjoy teaching others the things I have learned by doing. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I do it for the money. I enjoy selling my books and when people are willing to pay for the information I write about it seems to add value.

Would I continue to write even if my books didn’t sell? I have no doubt that I would. Perhaps it wouldn’t be as much fun but I would still do it. Sitting at a computer and putting down your thoughts and ideas for others to read is too much fun to stop just because the money doesn’t come. Anyway, that’s just me.

What about you? Why do you write? Is it about profit or do you just write for the enjoyment. Or, are you like me and both are important to you. I believe that just wanting to write is reason enough. There is no need to justify writing a book or anything else if it is what you want to do.

Every book starts with an idea, perhaps a great idea. From the idea it’s time to develop a plan. This is an important step and varies depending on your reasons for writing a book. If your objective when writing a book is to make a profit, then the first step in the plan should always be to find who will be reading your book. It’s called knowing your market. The only way to make certain your book will be purchased is to know who is going to purchase it before you write the first sentence.

Once you know the buyer it’s much easier to determine the information they want and need and then you are ready to beginning planning the actual writing of the book. The first step in this process is compiling all the information you have on the topic. I prefer to compile all my data in a word processor software because once I’m ready to organize it, the task is much easier. Don’t worry about organizing all the information initially because it will cause you to overlook important things. Just compile every piece of information that could potentially contribute to your book.

Once I have the information compiled, organize it using an outline. I begin by creating the outline at the beginning of all my compiled information. I list the headings and cut and paste the information that fits in that heading. I don’t attempt to put it in order at this point but just organize the data under the appropriate headings. Usually during this process I come up with headings that I had not considered because of all the loose information I have gathered.

Once I have all the headings I copy and paste them to form a well-organized outline of everything that I want to write. During this process I add even more information to each heading and I wind up with an organized outline for my book and I can begin writing.

Working from the outline, I go through making certain it’s organized so each section is complete, flows well into the next section, and follows a sensible order. Everything should fit together, proceed through the entire book, divide the manuscript into chapters, and end logically. Make it as easy as possible for your reader to understand the material.

After this step I save the file with another name that includes the word finalm and the date. Then I delete all of the outline features and am left with the actual manuscript that is ready for editing.

From this point you can go the ebook or the paperback publishing procedure and beginning promotion for your book. Don’t wait until you publish to begin the promotions.

New handyman how-to book available now. The Handyman’s Guide To Profit: Using Your Skills To Make Money In Any Economy

The author will be awarding a $5 Amazon GC to a randomly drawn commenter at each stop and a Grand Prize of a $50 Amazon GC will be awarded to one randomly drawn commenter during the tour.

Follow the tour and comment; the more you comment, the better your chances of winning. The tour dates can be found here:

http://goddessfishpromotions.blogspot.com/2014/02/virtual-book-tour-handymans-guide-to.html

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