I have seen that type of light show, but not on my street.
One of the houses down the block does go to an extreme with Christmas lighting, but not programmed. I suppose if you can afford to buy all the display lights, then the gigantic electric bill to run the show would not be a problem. I think we are talking megawatts with some of those displays in the video. One thing that amazed me about our home here in Missouri is how much effort people put into Halloween decorations. It's pretty close to the same as Christmas. The week after Halloween some folks are out there preparing for the Christmas showing. It's truly amazing to watch. Also, quite a few folks take down the lights the day (or week) after Christmas. Back home it can go well into January.
My deck has 8-9 posts with light on top. That should be easily manageable, but do I want to?
The big show they put on here at the park only uses LED lighting now, so they don't need that big generator truck they used to use.
The early light shows they did actually used mechanical relays triggered by long metal bands about like IBM punch cards.
They ran through a machine at a fixed rate of slow speed, but I don't know how they controlled the relays, but they did.
I had bought some mini-light sets that came with programmers as a permanent part of the light set. In the box they really looked neat, because of how they were packed. But once you took them out of the box and put them on a tree, they were not so neat looking, more like just flashing light bulbs.
Then we found the directions, hi hi.
Afterward we learned what the little colored tags on the wires meant.
So the following year, we used one of the patterns in the instructions on how to put them on the tree properly. Then it looked sorta neat. But if you wanted something really cool looking, then you had to buy four sets of lights, and connect the controllers together with a wire for that purpose, and make sure to buy sets with the correct numbers on the controllers.
We never did buy anymore!
Right after we moved down here, we bought a six foot tall by 3 foot wide lighting display, right after Christmas so got it for half price. It still was around 80 bucks, but we loved the display in the store.
It had three colors of lights on it, Red, Green, and White.
In Mode #1 it lit the green strand of lights sequentially which formed a Tree, then it would lite the red lights, about four at a time to look like lights on the tree, then the white lights would come on sequentially like garland draped on the tree.
In Mode #2, the red lights formed the outline of a sleigh, the green filled in a little inside the red, and also formed the shape of a reindeer over the sleigh, then the white would come on forming the sleigh runners, and stack of boxes, and outlined a Santa, then it would flash and go off.
In Mode #3 It started with like a fireworks display, then two reindeer would pass, then the sleigh, with toys falling off the sleigh to the bottom.
Then it cycled back to Mode #1 again.
You could program your own sequences if you had the time to mess with it.
I tried a couple of times but could not get the lights to run in sequential order.
After a closer study, I found the lights are not really running sequentially on the built in display, it is more like an optical illusion. Every fifth bulb on the string lights at the same time. So if you light #1, #6 lights up also.
So what they were doing was lighting #1 on/off, #2 on/off, #3 on/off, etc. which caused all the #1s to light.
You don't catch this while watching the display run in the store, hi hi.
Of course with today's computer driven programs and each controller having it's own ID, well you can do a lot.
I did notice a lot of displays have very simple things also, mixed in with the fancier stuff. So a sleigh moving across the yard just keeps repeating itself and done with a simple cheap set-up not connected to the computer, except for the main power to the whole unit, so it can be turned off, and perhaps lights on bushes come on one after another, but they do nothing but come on and off. Many light sets now come with these cheaper type of controllers, especially the newer LED light sets.
I can't get off this topic without telling you what I did at my dads house for him so he didn't have to put or take down the higher up lights at Christmas.
His house had a hip roof, which means the eave runs all the way around the house. Hi soffit was not closed in.
I bought 3/8 inch thick marine plywood and cut it into 3 inch wide strips.
Holes were drilled to hold the old outdoor size intermediate size lampholders, namely the ones that came on outdoor lights of that era. Remember little light bulbs the size for night lights for inside and the bigger ones for outside.
I had to make sure the spacing for the lampholders did not land where there was a rafter.
Then I installed hinges behind the facia board and the strips of wood holding the lights was held in place by the hinges.
It's own weight held it down for display purposes. Then after Christmas we just pushed it up and held it hidden up behind the facia board and against the rafters with screen door hooks.
You could see it if you were up against the house, but from three feet away from the house you couldn't see them up under the rafters.
We also made sized strings to fit his windows perfectly and used cup hooks at the top and straight pins at the bottom to hold them taught. These he had to take down and put back up each season, but they rolled up on heavy cardboard tubes for storage. Later on we switched the window light to mini-lights, but he used the old big lights around the eaves until he died. Then mom had somebody take them all down, said she couldn't get bulbs for them anymore. Although she knew there was an entire case of those bulbs in storage in the basement.
We took them and used them for target practice, hi hi.
When the kids lived at home we were a lot younger and more willing to decorate the house with Christmas lights. Over the years our enthusiasm has decreased so that we are down to a bare minimum of lighting. In fact the first year we were in this new house we didn't do anything more than a three foot tree inside the house. The year after that my wife of many years strung up some lights around the front porch but they were pretty pathetic compared to the neighbors. The deck was pretty easy to decorate. We got a long strip of pine garland and ty-wraped it to the railings. It had some huge jingle bells with lights inside to add to the decor. Oddly enough, not many of the neighbors put anything up in their back yards. To be honest I can see more houses out back than I can out the front door so that it would make sense if the neighbors lit up the backs of their houses. We did last year and maybe we will start a trend. LOL I doubt it.
The lighting hidden in the rafters is a brilliant idea. The way you described it suggested somebody still had to get up on a ladder to latch those panels with the screen door hooks. I have yet to buy a ladder for this place. A simple 8 footer would do for the front, but the back wall has to be twenty some feet high. Hope I never need to get on the roof back there.
Didn't need a ladder, the two step kitchen stool was plenty high for the right side of the house. All the rest could be reached from a single step footstool.
A house with 8 foot ceilings inside, and an eave that hangs over the exterior walls, is really only about 7 feet from the ground around at least 1/3 of the house.
Basically, everywhere from the front door in the center of the house, clockwise around the house, around the garage and across the back patio, the bottom of the facia board on the eave was only 7 feet off the ground. The rest of the house, because the ground sloped down so the basement windows were at grade level added another 1-1/2 feet up to the eaves, thus the reason for the two-step step stool from the kitchen.
That being said, it was usually my brother or myself who let the lights down when we were there after dad had his heart attack.
We had to tall evergreens in the front against the house, and we had lights on those, but it was done without climbing or much work either. We had a 1-1/4 inch diameter thin wall pipe, thicker than duct work tubing, but thinner than water pipe. I think they were originally used with the grain chutes from the farm.
We had 8 strands of lights about two feet longer than the pipe was long.
Using a three prong rake my brother would hold branches out of the way as we stood the pole up close to the trunk of the tree. The first two strands of lights were pulled from the top front to the sides of the tree close to the back, this held the pipe in place, then the other strands of lights were pulled out away from the pipe and equally spaced around the bottom of the tree, in the front. The lights were not pulled taught in a straight line, but sort of arced from the top forming a long bend so looked better that way than they would straight.
We also strung lights on other things in the yard, and had some decorations.
But like you, as we got older, we did less and less outside.
My mom on the other hand, still had to do up her Christmas tree to the max every year.
She still did this even after she was in a seniors home, just not as elaborate.
My old house was a ranch style and the roof's eaves overhung at least two feet on the long dimension. I had an 8' wooden step ladder that came up to the gutters and worked well for all the maintenance I had to do. When I think back I am amazed I'm still alive and never fell off that rickety ladder. It was heavy and probably made of cypress or something durable like that. But, I had to be careful anchoring it when I opened it because it wasn't stable like most metal or fiberglass ladders would be. I could step onto the roof from the top rung, which I did only on rare occasion to clean out the gutters. That's the problem with a low roof; it attracts leaves and debris from every living thing in the neighborhood. I had screens on the gutters and they worked fairly well for a few years. But even so the willow trees in my back yard had a way of bypassing the screening. Sadly, I had left that ladder for the new homeowner. It probably would be useless here anyway because the roof is too steep for me to crawl on anyway. I need to get a cherry picker for this place. Just can't imaging where I'd store it.
I have the same problem with leaves here.
As an experiment, I replaced the west side gutter with a commercial size instead of the residential size, including the downspouts. Now that gutter never gets clogged up with leaves, and the downspouts are big enough they don't clog, not even from the huge leaves on the Poplar Trees we have around here.
The little gutters still clog up if only a few leaves get in them, annoying as all get out.
So I don't have to get up on a ladder to clean them out. I made two things, both almost identical in shape, but not size.
I made a J shaped wand, one is out of schedule 80 PVC, under sink size extension and trap which fits over the end of my blower wand.
The other is a J shape made by bending a chrome metal water supply tubing, and adding a faucet connector at one end. This J is super long, and the end of the J is twisted outward a wee bit so water don't splash back at me. The outlet end is crimped partway shut, flat, so it sprays a flat stream down the gutter. It is also long enough at the outlet end of the J I can push it down into the downspout area which helps force some of the leaves down and out of the downspout. Leaves always get hung up in those bends, but with a little persistence you can get them forced through and the downspout free running again.
All that being said, getting to it after the leaves fall and before a rain with the blower is the best bet. Much faster and less work. I have a backpack style leaf blower but it doesn't run exactly right and no adjusting seems to help it. Have to run it at 1/4 choke all the time, at 1/2 choke until it is warmed up. But it never speeds up to the speed it did the first year I owned it.
I couldn't afford to do the whole house in commercial size gutters or I would have.
I've seen ads for something like you made to clean out your gutters. They were selling some kind of J-type tubing that can be used to clean out gutters, and I had considered buying something like that. But, it was just as easy to haul out the ladder and shoot a stream of water down the gutters with the garden hose. I already had the hose.
When it came time to replace gutters the sales person said pretty much what you did. The larger sized downspouts would improve the flow and reduce any clogging. So, mistakenly, I did that. The downspouts were larger than the gutter so that the installer had to crimp the downspout to fit the smaller gutter. They had no way to make the hole in the gutter the same size as the downspout, making the whole system ineffectual. I ranted and raved but they claimed it was unfixable. The sales person obviously didn't know what he was talking about. At least the problem didn't get worse. I just had to pay extra for nothing.
I saw a guy use a power drill with a long worm drive connected to it.
He ended up getting the spinning end full of flaps caught under the brace that holds the gutter, and knocked a good section of his gutter down, hi hi.
Instead of crimping your downspout to fit the gutter outlet on the small gutter, he should have trimmed and spread it open and connected it to the gutter itself so it would work more like a funnel. Leaves will usually go down the small hole, but then they would be inside the big downspout. At as a worst case scenario, you may need a J-hook to poke around the small opening if leaves are covering it, but that should do the trick.
When I raised a ruckus the owner of the installing company came out to talk to me. I had already taken pictures and sent them to the sales guy, but I suppose he wanted to see for himself what was going on. He looked it over and basically said it could not be done any other way. Of course not. He's been doing this all his life and knows all there is to know about the trade. It never occurred to him that making his customers happy was important. Then, too, I'd bet he doesn't even own a pair of tin snips to do anything custom. If his forming machine can't do it, then it can't be done.
About two or three years later that sales guy who misled me called. He wanted to sell me something else, which I don't recall what at the moment. I recognized his name and reminded him how disappointed I was with the last thing I bought from him. His response was that he works for a different company now. Can't imagine why. Anyway, if I redo the gutters on this house, and I see no reason to do it at this point in time, I will do it the right way. I've not found a really good handyman down here. Not sure they exist. Then again, I've only been here three years.
I'm going all the way back to the BBS days here in my comment, and for a time after we had the Internet.
During my years of owning and running Handymenders, and latter SCSHandymenders, I got tons of questions from folks who were looking on ways to find a reputable handyman that could do the types of jobs they needed.
I myself was classified as a Predication Worker, in essence this is the highest level one can achieve as a Handyman.
But I was also a licensed Plumber at the time, and within four months would be a licensed Electrician, and later on down the road I became a licensed General Contractor.
When most Realtors find top notch Handymen, they hold onto them. But they too had trouble finding good ones who could do almost everything they needed done, and who's work would be passed by the building inspectors without call backs.
Although the word Predication has a meaning not associated with construction or real estate, this is the title Realtors give to those of us who they can call with the entire work list and we do it all without fail and without call backs, and our work is normally approved by the inspectors.
A group of four to six of us would meet once a month at a joint Realtor's meeting, during a period set aside to talk about getting repairs done promptly. So we more or less got to know each other, and would teach each other some tricks of the trade, which were basically how to appease the Realtors themselves, hi hi.
Four of us began meeting at my house on Sunday afternoon to put together a list of Handyman classifications. Pretty soon one of them dropped out because he thought we were there to get more workers to do certain things we didn't want to do, to work for us for cheaper prices. Then another dropped out, only because he didn't want to hand his work off to anyone else, when that isn't even why we were meeting together.
This left the two of us to come up with a simple classification for each type of Handyman job, everything from gutter cleaning to licensed electrical and plumbing work. Just because someone knows how to clean out a gutter, doesn't mean they know how to install or repair a lamp post.
Once we had the list put together, we sent it out to the Realtors we worked for, so they knew what questions to ask the folks they hired for certain jobs. This didn't pan out to well since they really only wanted what they called Predication Workers.
I decided to carry it one step further on my own. I ran a few ads in our local small newspapers for Handymen to call and get listed in a free Advertisement, the ad would show what types of work they did, and in what areas.
I had several who responded, which led to my using a questionnaire for each to fill out.
I did have trouble finding Handymen for the harder jobs that needed done, but did put my listing up on the BBS. So then I had more newspaper advertising pointing folks to the BBS to look up Handymen for the type of work they needed done.
It wasn't too long before I had over 75 folks listed on the BBS, what projects they covered, etc. But the list was getting unwieldy in the format I was using.
I came out with a whole new way of doing the list, by job topics, and this worked out really well. I also kept the old list up also, this went on for about three years, and the Internet was getting more popular too, but our BBS had not yet gone to providing Internet yet. So I got a website at Inlink. I think it was Netscape that made it possible to create an html page from documents. So long ago I don't remember for sure. But now I could make a page for each person on the list, a page for each topic, and sub-pages that broke down the topics to individual jobs, etc.
It was much simpler to use than a BBS of course, so our list of visitors kept growing and growing.
Now with so many new Handymen signing up, I had to come up with a way of classifying them so people hunting for all around Handymen with the skills they needed was easier.
This led to my creating a way to Certify each Handyman for the skills they wanted to provide.
I must have used a couple dozen different ways to certify each of them, a lot of that was by references back then too.
At that time, I only covered certain municipalities in Saint Louis County. Plus I was doing all of this for free. Albeit a few did donate to the cause. For liability reasons I formed an incorporation, which cost even more money, hi hi.
Jumping ahead to after I took on several counties in Missouri and Illinois, and had a few others interested in doing the same thing for their areas, plus we started charging a small fee of two dollars a year to be listed, provided they returned all the forms.
Those who wanted to do what I was doing, we all got together over in Caseyville, or was it Collinsville, Illinois to meet. We thought only six to eight would show up. Surprise, surprise, surprise, almost thirty folks showed up, some already with systems similar to mine in place for their county.
At this time, after a four hour long meeting, we formed NAH, National Association of Handymen.
Then we shared a bunch of stuff via e-mails back and forth putting together a new classification schedule and a lot of other things associated with the industry.
Once all the paperwork for nearly everything was completed, and each of us had our websites all in agreement, we added a membership fee to the NAH of five dollars a year, plus kept the two dollar to be listed, however now it was two dollars per main sub-topic, and another two dollars if they wanted a whole page for themselves that listed everything they did.
They would not appear on all the websites, only the one or two in their servicing area.
Doing all of this was taking way too much time for me, and I had to turn down way too many jobs. Plus my son and I were now doing home renovations ourselves. More to it than that. Most of my workers for Handymenders were retired electricians, a few plumbers, and a dozen or so really good Handymen. We were doing work for senior citizens really cheap and sometimes no charge at all.
But along came the Unions and told my retired union workers they could not be working out there after they retired, it was hurting the union employee, and driving prices down. So they all had to quit.
I basically closed down Handymenders, but changed it to SCSHandymenders as a sole worker for the few personal clients I had I still did work for. Turned over the website to another person to take care of and dropped out of anything to do with NAH. Sadly, after I dropped out, within a short time it apparently went belly up. I guess because I was the one doing most of the work and keeping all the other groups informed of changes we all agreed on.
As the Internet grew, many like kind websites began to appear also, so I guess our days were numbered anyhow.
You certainly must have been the inspiration for places such as Angie's List. In fact you probably could have dropped your other activities and made a living doing only the referrals. Obviously you were ahead of your time with Handymenders. Then again, I see you as a hands-on kind of guy who would not be happy sitting behind a computer all day telling the world about other people who could do the work you wanted to do yourself.
One of the great disappointments I've had here in Missouri is the difficulty finding tradesmen who work on their own and are good at it. I'm not certain it's the people because I've not looked too hard too often. It seems hit-and-miss to find an electrician for example. I have found some who do it in addition to their "other" job. The guys who build my deck apparently were working on two or three other jobs instead of sticking to my deck and finishing it up in a timely manner. Maybe that's just how things are done here in O'Fallon. But there are 70,000+ people here. I'd think that would be enough to keep at least one plumber employed full time in his own business. He would be too busy to work for me, I suppose.
I only took on one client at a time, except for short emergency calls.
Here's the thing about finding folks. When we get good at what we do, we are snatched up by the Realtor's real fast. They pay us to be on-call, so even if we do take other jobs, we have to run when they call. Most of these calls are because certain things have to be fixed before they do the closing, and sometimes closing is that day or the next day.
During the time I was doing work for Realtors I would only take on one perhaps two other customers with big jobs. I still would go run short calls, like fix a light switch, repair a leak, but sometimes that too took longer than expected, because I did the whole job of replacing the drywall, jointing, and painting, plus the clean-up of course.
I usually tried to do all the work in a single call so as to not annoy my customers by having to shift their schedule for me to finish the next day.
I actually had many more electrician jobs before I got my license than afterward. But this was partly due to my working on houses I bought for renovations. I never did like emergency style plumbing calls so never told many folks I was also a licensed plumber, unless I needed to do a larger job that included plumbing, so they knew they didn't have to call an expensive licensed plumber and have to wait for them to show up and do their work, then call me back to finish the job.
Also there is the headache of dealing with inspectors. You can't just pop-in and do all the work in a day on many jobs. You have to do the work and leave it open for inspection, then after it passes, you go back to button up the job. Same with electric work, you pull the wires to a box and wait, install the outlets without the covers, and wait, then go back and install all the covers. If you work in an area where the inspectors get to know you, and know your work, they'll write off on it and tell you to go ahead and finish the job. They may pull one cover off to look to make sure they were not suckered, hi hi. Even so, they always plug in their test boxes to make sure. Then they sign the final.
The work you and your company did was recognized to be of high quality. That put you into a position to recognize others who did similar things. You took that knowledge and tried to make it easy for potential customers to find the expertise they were looking for. Finding that special someone is a trial and error exercise that could be very costly if you make the wrong choice. Your rating system addressed that problem. As it happens, that kind of rating service is valuable, and that's where places like Angies List and Task Easy come into play. They picked up the ball you started rolling and made it into an industry. I can see why people in the trades would benefit as well in they get a lot of referrals from the listing service. However, if you are good enough, word of mouth referrals will keep you busy until you retire. It's THAT kind of tradesman I find difficult to locate here in Missouri. I know they exist because I've seen some of their work - and I can tell from your writing that you were in that category. The rating business, however, is a desk job. You wanted to be out there doing things which I suspect is why you kept in touch with the real estate folks and did business with them. I don't know if you were the first to get involved with a rating and referral service, but you certainly were there early in the game.
We started before the Internet existed. And if you think it is hard to get someone to look at a website, try to get them to dial into a BBS service sometime, hi hi. Modems were only like 1200 Baud, and you literally set your telephone handset in a cradle to connect to BBS services. Of course, things soon started moving real fast and wired modems came into play, then internal modems of what 22.6 before 56k modems.
I don't expect you to read all of the following, but this was one of the index of the first booklet style directory we put on our BBS. BBS's did not have LINKS like html has. But we did have a box you could put a page number in and it would take you directly to that page.
If we did not have a person doing a particular job, those lines and page numbers were not listed on the BBS.
The Below Directory is actually the whole list we used to add or remove lines on the BBS from.
It changed considerably when we moved over to a web site and early html.
I found a bunch of other things, but most of them are too lengthy and not really worth reading anymore.
But for me it was like Nostalgia, hi hi.
M A S T E R D I R E C T O R Y
PROFESSIONAL HANDYMAN SERVICES ----------------------------------------------------------- 100
Specialists in Predication & Codes, which include Electrical Branch Circuit
Installation, Repair & Upgrades, Plumbing Installations, Finish Carpentry,
General Construction, Drywall, Painting, and most Home Services not
requiring specialized service equipment or specific service licenses.
GENERAL HANDYMAN SERVICES -------------------------------------------------------------------- 110
Includes Minor Electrical Repairs, Upgrades & Fixtures, Faucet & Toilet Repair,
Inside Sewer Service, Light Carpentry, Drywall Repair, Painting, Yard Work, etc.
Rates normally lower than Professional Handyman Services.
BASIC HANDYMAN SERVICES ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 120
Construction Laborer, Rough-In Carpentry, Minor Repairs, Fence Repair,
Yard Clean-Up, Gutter Cleaning, Garage or Basement Cleaning, etc.
Most Basic Handymen are quite knowledgeable in specific fields, lacking
only extensive experience in all of the construction trades.
I N T E R I O R S E R V I C E S
ELECTRICAL: 200
Minor Repairs, upgrades and fixtures
(Garage Door Openers, Fans, Etc.) 210
Branch Circuit Installations 220
Main Service Upgrade 230
Telephone Service & Installation 240
Video Cable Service & Installation 250
PLUMBING 300
SUPPLY 310
WATER SERVICE 310
Faucet Repair & Replacement 311
Branch Supply Installation 312
Water Heater Replacement 313
GAS SERVICE 320
Valve Repair & Replacement 321
Branch Supply Installation 322
WASTE 350
SEWER SERVICE 350
Sewer Cleaning 351
Under-sink & Toilet Repairs 352
Stack Repairs 353
Major Plumbing Services 360
CARPENTRY 400
Construction & Rough-Ins 410
Finishers 420
Custom Moldings Installation 430
Door & Window Casing Repairs 440
DRYWALL 500
Installation 501
Repair 502
Jointing & Taping Only Services 503
Plastering 504
PAINTING 510
Painters 511
Faux Finishing 512
Acoustical & Textured Ceilings 513
FLOORING 520
Hardwood 521
Carpet & Vinyl 522
Sanding & Finishing 523
Marble & Terrazzo 524
Stripping, Sealing & Waxing 527
WALLPAPER 530
Steam Removal 531
Installers 535
TILE & CERAMIC 540
REFINISHING 550
Tub & Tile Re-glazing 551
Appliance Enameling 552
Cabinet Refacing 555
FURNISHINGS 560
Venetian Blinds Installation & Repair 561
Draperies & Curtains Installation 562
Picture Hanging 565
APPLIANCES 600
REPAIR & INSTALLATION 610
Furnace & A/C 611
Refrigeration 612
All Major Except Furnace & AC 620
Washer/Dryer 621
Whole House Vacuum 622
Dishwashers 623
TV Antenna & Cable TV Connections 624
Computer LAN Equipment 625
Air Pollution Control 626
Security Systems 627
Microwave Repair 628
MAINTENANCE 630
Home Cleaning 631
Duct Cleaning (Including Dryer Vent) 632
Carpet & Upholstery Cleaning 633
Fire & Water Cleanup 634
Window Cleaning Interior & Exterior 635
MISCELLANEOUS 650
Breakdown Products Assembly 652
House & Pet Sitting Services 653
Aquarium Maintenance 654
Radon Testing 658
Interior Decorators 659
Piano Tuners 661
HTML tags are not recognized in these forums due to security considerations. Sometimes that's a pain in the drain because a few of the things we talk about would benefit from at least some elementary outline formatting.
That's quite a list of specialties. Some of the categories seem to overlap or are redundant. A few I would not know at all. Be that as it may, your listing is the foundation of what is going on today with web referrals. The difference is that the maintainer of the list is paid by the customers. All the tradesmen essentially work for the referral service and get paid by the referral service. You were indeed ahead of your time when you came up with the idea to compile such a listing.
A Referral Service like ours is slightly different than a Job Broker Service.
When Ruth was so sick, I signed up with a Broker, and on days when someone would be with her, I would call the Broker and ask if he had a 2 or 4 hour job he could toss my way. Almost always the answer was yes, even if he pulled it from someone else's list of jobs to do. Although I did good work, he had a lot of problems with the IRS breathing down his neck at every turn in the road. So, he treated all of the Independent Contractors as Employees for tax purposes. I was my own company with liability insurance and had more than a dozen active customers. So got a card from the IRS for his files that proved I was an IRS approved Independent Contractor. Without that card he would take out all the things an employer is required to take out, such as FICA, Income Taxes, etc. We had a major battle for a while until I learned I could get approved by the IRS so he would not get called on the carpet for treating me like an Independent. The card was to save his neck, not mine, hi hi. What is funny, most of the jobs he sent me on were to fix something another person did not do right the first time.
I had that happen with my employees as well, they sometimes did a lot of damage while doing their job.
Some of it could not be helped, like the guy who wanted his old wide shutters replaced with narrow modern shutter.
The old once functional hinged shutters were glued open with adhesive to his siding on the outbound edge, then a few laters the hinges were removed and the hinged end screwed to the window casing.
Looked like crap so I don't blame him for wanting to replace them. However, the adhesive pulled the facing off the cheap press-board siding, and the guy doing the work just put up the new shutters and left the damage.
Needless to say, the owner of the house was fuming. So I went over there myself and refaced the siding, and painted the entire front of his house. It looked great, he was happy, and I was out about a grand on that job.
From the headaches I had with employees messing up, and knowing about the problems with the IRS, I chose not to be a Broker, but only offer a Referral Service.
You bring up an interesting point about brokers. The last time we used Angies List they gave us a list of people they figured were suited to do the job. It was mostly up to us to call them, but a few on the list would call us first. The prices were negotiated but the check was sent to Angies List. So, I can't say if they are simply referrers or brokers. They probably do a little bit of both.
The fellow I had cut my grass last year worked for Task Easy, which is something like a competitor of Angies List. I was happy with his work and this last spring called him to hire him for a landscaping project. He said he was under contract with Task Easy and could not work independently. That suggests he is an actual employee and not an independent contractor.
We subscribe to a neighborhood newsletter that is delivered by e-mail. It's mostly comments about lost animals or noisy neighbors, but there are also quite a few folks looking for the kind of services we've been talking about here. I like to read what experience the neighbors had with a particular company because many are unsolicited reviews that can be priceless. Then, too, a lot of the folks around here are in business for themselves and offer their services through that newsletter. I found a good optometrist because several people spoke up about them. My feelings about this newsletter are mixed. I like the random reviews and comments from people who had first hand experience, but there are getting to be too many paid and unpaid ads mixed in with the gossip.
Although I sold the company about year after I started it. I came up with an idea that several of our area hardware stores felt worthy of setting up a display, or keep an inventory behind their counter. It was called "Fair Trade Saw" and we had several types of circular saws we cleaned, sharpened and printed the Fair Trade Saw logo on.
A saw blade can only be sharpened about three or four times and still sold at it's designed size.
When we first started, folks would bring in new, but dull saws, and get back a resharpened saw.
Sometimes they would bring one back that was sharpened four times already so was under the size for a trade-in for that same size they needed. If that customer had turned in a new saw, and got one back that was on it's third or fourth sharpening, they would complain, of course I would too.
We decided to end this problem by having the saw blades marked with a 1, 2, 3, or 4. This also correlated with a measuring tape on the rack they kept the blades in also. So when someone brought in a saw to get a resharpened one, they measured the saw which gave them a number one higher than the one being turned in, so if you were bringing in a 2, the stick would show a #3 as what you would get back.
Then there was the problem of mandrel size and shape. What size mandrel did the saw use, or was it a diamond mandrel and what size diamond, etc.
I bought a machine that would make every saw the large diamond mandrel size, and we supplied a little kit that held the large diamond, a small diamond, and the round inserts, so all saw blades would fit any saw. This was yet another added expense to the final product.
Although we were making money, I had a fellow who wanted to buy my operation, and client list of hardware stores.
After he bought it, he want back to having the stores stock both large round and large diamond and only provided the round insert to make the round hole smaller. So he saved a little bit there.
But then some company came out with machine punched new saw blades for a cheaper price than a resharpened sawblade, so he switched to only doing certain types of circular saw blades and basically stopped the Fair Trade Saw exchange system, after he convinced the hardware stores to only take in certain blades for sharpening.
The lucky stiff ended up becoming the supplier of these cheaper saws to over 100 hardware stores and made a killing.
The whole reason I brought that business up was because of your mention of the new online places like Angies List and Task Easy. When I first started my saw and tool sharpening business, which was named "The Saw and Saber Shop" I did not work directly for contractors. Where I lived I could not have walk-in customers, so I came up with the idea of having several sub-contractors who were already going around to all the job sites, become independent contractors for me. They would advertise saw and tool sharpening on their vehicles with a small magnetic sign, and they would take in the saws and tools for sharpening, the customers would get back their own saws and tools after they were sharpened when the sub-contractors made their rounds. I actually paid them more than what I made from each saw or tool, but it was worth it to me to have a steady supply of work rolling in each day, and I didn't have to go out and about doing that myself.
I had amassed a lot of saw blades over time, my guys picking up the ones contractors threw away, I would sharpen them and give them back to the guys to carry with them for an instant exchange, and this is basically how Fair Trade Saw got started in the first place. At that time, most of those who wanted a saw sharpened would be glad to get one back right away, because they didn't know when they would run across the sub-contractor again. They might move to another job and just have to wait to run across the person they gave their saw to again.
It wasn't until I started dealing with the hardware stores that the other problems started showing up. At least my sub-contractor guys all knew what type of saw each person needed for their tool. Hardware store workers are not all that bright. I can't count the number of times I got a 7-1/4 inch saw blade back for someone who checked out an 8-1/2 inch saw blade, or an 8-1/2 when someone got a 10 inch. Some of the hardware stores didn't care, all they wanted was a trade in to sell a resharpened one.
The hardware saw swap was great for sales in the hardware stores. Customer service was obviously a secondary consideration. Your company and your clients had different ideas about how to run a business. The tradesmen you dealt were just interested in getting the right tool for their work so that there was little problem with them. Sales dollars was not an issue.
Real estate brokers, and their agents, work the same as the hardware store. They are all interested in a quick sale and will set the selling price to accomplish that. The value or the quality of the house doesn't matter as much as the curb appeal. I suppose that's a great way to keep the cash flowing, but what ever happened to the concept of customer care? I think you had it and were successful because of it. It's just so last-century now.
