How to Collect Money with a Lien

I got bit in the ass by a customer and this bird reminded me of it I'm going to tell you a story and then we're going to focus on how to keep it from happening to you so we were given this bird right here her name is Gracie and I have two hunting dogs and I told the person that donated the bird to our house that I going to guarantee it's going to live she said it was going to be fine and I wheeled this bird in on her little fancy cage that it bought for her and I told my wife as long as this bird stays up here at the top maybe the dogs will leave it alone but what does this thing do it walks down to the bottom of the cage sits at the very bottom of the cage and then goes come here right to my dogs now the stupider of the two dogs runs over there walks right up to the bird like oh hi welcome how you doing and the bird bites the dog on the nose and then crawls back up to the top of the Cage laughing I couldn't believe what I seen But it reminded me of my own experience with a customer how many times have you been called out to a job done excellent work customer is happy but when it comes time to get paid guess what guess who gets bit in the ass you do I do I've been there if you haven't been there yet you will I'm I'm going to help keep you from that having that happen we're going to talk about a simple way to formulate your proposals on oneoff projects these are landscaping jobs or construction jobs that are just a one-time gig a little different than how you work it into your daily proposal for maintenance so let's get right into it real quick are you ready so the first thing you do on oneoff projects is you get $100 down minimum just for signing the proposal the reason you do that is it commits the customer to your project if you don't get any money down the customer can cancel at any time before I used to get $100 down I'd be driving out to a job site have the equipment loaded and have the customer call me up and go oh you know what I think we're not going to do the job here here now I've got a big opening in my schedule and I'm on the road it's a waste of time for me and it's annoying so you get $100 down it's not refundable so the next thing you're going to do is you're going to ask for half down as soon as you show up on that site so when you pull up to their house or their project you have the equipment in hand or the materials are there the customers should expect that they have to walk out with a check for half of the total project do now you don't want to ask for more than that it sends off kind of a weird vibe but half down is kind of a industry standard that most customers can swallow without too much worry and then you're going to let the customer know that as soon as the the project is done as soon as everything is finished you expect balance in full paid right away another thing that you have to do is you have to put a prean notice on their proposal otherwise you for you forgo all of your lean rights you got to protect yourself customers protect themselves you as the business owner are obligated to make sure that you have all your your uh T's crossed and eyes dotted and in this case a pre- Le notice on the proposal in many States is mandatory or you give up your lean rights and it's nothing more than a little tiny box that you put on the proposals and it has some technical lingo Google that crap you'll find it copy and paste it if you don't have it email me I'll give you mine I'll copy and paste mine and give it right to you so those are the simple ways you can protect yourself so you don't get bit in the ass by a customer money makes people funny and now you know what you can do to protect yourself have a good one