Electical Contractor

Electrical contractors are realists. While you may long for a Utopian world in which your employees whistle happily as they create perfect work for delighted customers who pay you on time, earning you a healthy profit, you don’t expect this outcome.

Gen. Colin Powell said, “Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.” Would this philosophy improve financial decision-making in an electrical contracting business? It worked in my family’s contracting business, though I didn’t realize it at the time.

By now, most New Year’s resolutions have been forgotten, but the ability to “re-solve” and respond to changing conditions is imperative for your business in these uncertain times. For the remainder of 2011, these columns will form a 10-part series using the acronym RESOLUTION.

I am writing this column on the 25th anniversary of the day my father died. At the time, I had spent a little less than two years as his protegee in the family construction business, which was never part of my original career plan.

What is “TIFORP,” and how does it affect your financial planning? The acronym TIFORP contains six components that are seldom prioritized to serve the best interests of business owners. T is for taxes Business owners want to minimize taxes to keep more of the money they earn.

A disaster on the scale of the BP oil spill is unlikely to happen to the average electrical contractor and, therefore, provides little reason to perform catastrophe analysis. Even the experts know that the existing models are imperfect. After all, how can we predict the unpredictable?

The Fiscal year 2011 budget President Barack Obama released in February contains more than 100 potential tax changes, many of which may affect your business.

Nineteenth-century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli is often credited with the statement, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” This column has discussed the lies and the damn lies.

When pundits offer statistics in support of their opinions, it is hard to know whether to trust the numbers; economics and finance are difficult enough to navigate without suspecting that someone with an agenda is deliberately misleading you.