Complete the Process
Becoming a licensed contractor starts with an idea. But for years afterward, you’ll be spending your time picking up the skills you need and building experience in order to pass the exam and get your contractor license. Once you become a licensed contractor, you have a lot of flexibility in the way that you work or run your business. But all of those benefits aren’t available to you until you pass the exam. Taking the exam and getting a passing score are some of the last steps of a years-long process, something that you may have been working toward for more than a decade.

Know What to Expect
If you have the right knowledge, and you take advantage of exam preparation experts, you have a better chance of passing the exam. But for some people, a good chance isn’t enough to quiet those test-taking nerves. Sometimes, there’s no replacement for the real thing. In this case, taking the contractor licensing exam may tell you more than all the online research you can perform. Having taken the exam before, you’ll know what to anticipate in the format and the types of questions that you can expect. Taking the exam also helps you build a foundation of knowledge and experience that you can use to take other exams when you’re ready to add to your license.

Make Yourself More Competitive
Although many people who become licensed contractors decide to run their own businesses, you’re not required to take this path. In fact, becoming a licensed contractor gives you a lot more options than you may have had otherwise. It makes sense if you think about it. If you were hiring for your business, and you had to choose between someone who is a licensed contractor and someone who isn’t, who do you think you are more likely to choose? Having taken the exam and passed it gives you a bargaining chip that you can use to secure higher wages and other benefits.

Achieve Your Goals
When you start to get really close to achieving a goal, you may get nervous about the last few steps. After all, if you invest all this time and you’re not able to achieve it, that may seem like a waste. This kind of thinking comes up for a lot of people, but you don’t have to let it derail your progress. Being this near to achieving your goal doesn’t mean that the next few steps will be the hardest of all. You’ve already put in the time to build your skills and experience that you need to become a licensed contractor. For many people, taking the exam itself is simply a small, partial-day commitment on the road to their new careers.

Be Ready to Start Your Own Business
In a lot of cases, passing the exam and getting your contractor license are tools to help you do the thing that you really want to do: start your own business. All of the benefits of being your own boss are sitting right on the other side of this exam. Do you want to specialize in the services that interest you? Are you looking forward to making your own decisions about the running of the company? By the time you’re ready to take the exam, you’ve already got a lot of the skills you need to make your business a success. Taking the exam and passing it lets you cross to the side of building your business for real.

Are you getting ready to take the contractor licensing exam? Exam preparation from the experts can help. For more information, visit CSLS today!

Ask anyone who runs a business, and they will tell you that managing their overhead is one of the most difficult parts. Keeping your expenses under control is vital to ensuring that your business can even survive, much less make profits. Consider these tips to help you save money on your contracting business expenses.

Plan Your Budget
In many ways, running a business is a lot like handling your own personal finances. If you don’t have a budget, then you won’t know if you’re spending too much. Creating a budget requires an analysis of your income and the expenses that you can expect. It’s an investment of time, but it pays off. By knowing what your expenses are at any given point in time, you can tailor your purchases to your available funds. That way, you’re more likely to have the money that you need when you need it. In the first year or two, you may need to revisit your budgeting on a regular basis, so that it’s always current.

Skip the Excess Fees
You know how gym companies make so much money? They persuade people to sign up for memberships that they won’t use. Then when you go to cancel it, you find that it’s complicated, so you let it run for a few months. You might be surprised to learn that there are lots of businesses that keep their finances up this way. Rental companies charge late fees or refill fees if you fail to return the equipment in the same condition. You can avoid all of these by investing the time to fill it up and return it on time. You can also do the same for other services that you need for your business. Sticking to a schedule makes all the difference.

Minimize Debt
When you were a kid, your parents probably had a lot of discussions with you about the difference between needs and wants. When you run your own contracting business, you might end up blurring those lines more than you should. And then in a lot of cases, that means you’ll have extra debt. Incurring debt for your business isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but you should be strategic about it. It’s easy to spend a loan or line of credit on equipment and supplies that are nice to have but not particularly necessary. It’s only when you’re paying interest on the debt that you realize it’s more than a convenience. Create a list of conditions under which you’ll be fine with going into debt, and you’ll save yourself a lot of money.

Shop Around for Services
Finance experts often say that people would save a significant amount of money if they were only willing to shop around for services. There are some industries that have made this clear. For example, if you wanted to save money on your car insurance, you could get quotes from different companies, and see which one gives you the best value. This practice also applies to the running of your business. If you need insurance or a rental workspace, it makes sense to consider a variety of options to figure out which one fits best. It won’t always be the one that charges you the least, but at least you will know that you’re making the best decision.

Update Your Inventory and Price Research
Quite a few of your business expenses relate to knowing what you have and understanding what you’ll need to pay to buy more. If your services require you to keep a regular inventory of supplies, you should research a reasonable inventory system that you can update regularly. That way, you know what you have and are less likely to order more than you need. When it comes time to order supplies, make sure that you have the most current price lists. Use this pricing in your estimates, where applicable. With the right information, you’re less likely to quote a price on a project that cuts into your profit margins.

Saving money while you run a business is a good way to keep it afloat for another year. To learn more about running your own contracting business, contact CSLS today!

On occasion, you’ll have an urgent or unexpected situation come up on the jobsite. Some concerns are related to safety, but others simply require you to address them promptly. Having a plan in place can help you avoid the worst complications. Here are a few tips to ensure that you always know exactly what you need to do.

Plan Ahead
You may have heard people say that a failure to plan is a plan to fail. To a large degree, this is true. If you want less guessing or panicked reactions in the event of something unexpected, you should create a plan to handle it in the first place. In the beginning, your plan may not be particularly accurate. It may raise concerns that you will have to address later. But having a plan gives you a set of instructions to follow, which can be particularly useful if you are having difficulty focusing in the moment.

Keep Reference Guides Handy
As a general rule, plans to handle unanticipated or dangerous situations may require you to follow certain protocol. Organizations like OSHA often have guides that you can use to help you figure out what you’ll need to do. However, it’s not reasonable to expect that either you or your employees will have that information memorized. It’s also not reasonable to assume that you will have internalized it so completely that you can remember it while stressed out or distracted. Keep those reference guides in a handy place so that you can grab them whenever you need them.

Duplicate Knowledge
On the one hand, it’s nice to know that you are the only person in the company who has certain knowledge. On the other hand, duplicating some of your experience is crucial to solving problems. If you are out of the office or away from the jobsite and something happens, you want the people working there to be able to manage it at least partially in your absence. Make sure that everyone working for you knows the general rules for dealing with any situation that is likely to come up. It’s wise to have anyone functioning as a supervisor or team lead in a position of knowledge about the right protocol to follow.

Practice Addressing Problems
Whenever you see a team of paramedics or firefighters on the scene of an accident, you can see that they don’t spend a lot of time figuring out what they need to do. They have practiced a variety of different scenarios to the point that they know what to do in the moment. They don’t have to think about it as much. In your contracting business, you can do the same. Each month, devote some time to learning, testing and reviewing standard practices for dealing with emergencies and other urgent situations. The more you practice, the faster you will be able to reach a satisfactory conclusion.

Revisit Past Problems
Having a plan in place and practicing it regularly are crucial to success of the plan, but so is the ability to revise it as needed. It’s possible that your original plan may not work exactly as you expected once you have to carry it out for real. It’s also likely that you will, in retrospect, come up with ideas for ways that you could make it more effective or efficient. After the problem is under control, give yourself a day or two to think about it and take a few notes. If you need to revise the plan, you should do so and notify everyone related to the situation.

Dealing with the unexpected is just part of running a contracting business. Getting your contractor license is another. For expert exam preparation tailored to the California state licensing requirements, visit CSLS today!

Interest in the Company
Ideally, you would hire people who enjoy what they do and like to see the company succeed. As you interview prospective employees, it’s worth gauging their sense of interest in your business as well as the field in general. Although working provides more benefits than simply full-time entertainment, it’s good to know that your employees can feel fulfilled by the work you’re hiring them to do. Ask them how they got interested in the field and why they continue with it. Their answers will give you a sense of how invested they feel in the job that they could do for you.

Attention to Detail
The construction industry is full of responsibilities and tasks that are crucial to the health and safety of the people who will work or live in the buildings. Employees who have higher attention to detail are more likely to do the work correctly the first time. They’ll also be able to identify errors that could be harmful if they aren’t caught early enough. Although it’s tempting to test an applicant’s ability by quizzing them or giving them a bunch of information to sort through, you might not get the results you’re looking for. Instead, ask them to give examples of times that their attention to detail saved them time or solved problems on the job site.

Communication Skills
The ability to communicate is a soft skill that many employees need in order to function within a company. For example, you need an employee who will let you know if they need to take time off or give you important details about a task they’re working on. The skill to get the message across and do so in a timely manner can save you a lot of hassle and confusion. Ask applicants about their communication preferences, and inquire about their willingness to interact with you across multiple platforms. Someone who depends mostly on phone calls and doesn’t feel comfortable texting might not be a problem unless texting is the way that you prefer to communicate.

Ability to Collaborate
When your contracting business is large enough that you are starting to think of it as a team, everyone needs to be able to function like they are on a team. The ability to collaborate is important because you won’t always be the one making all the decisions. Sometimes you need a qualified partner who can help you brainstorm ideas to solve a particular problem. An employee who likes to collaborate will be happy to help you. They won’t let minor conflicts get in the way of finding a successful and efficient conclusion. In many cases, an employee who works hard to learn and works well with others may be a better fit than a person with tons of experience who doesn’t know how to take direction.

Self-Driven Work Ethic
Ultimately, you’re hiring employees so that they can perform the tasks that you cannot necessarily do on your own. If you have to stand over them the entire time to keep them working, you’re not going to be able to complete your own parts of the project. That’s why being self-driven is such a useful attribute. A self-driven employee knows what they are supposed to do, and they will ask questions if they are not sure. They have a plan in mind for where they want to go, and they can get the job done with the right amount of support and encouragement.

When you hire employees for your contracting business, you want to be sure that you find the ones that work best. For detailed advice about how you can meet the requirements to become a licensed contractor, visit CSLS today!

Early to bed, early to rise, they say. Except it doesn’t work out for everyone. When you’re in a field that prizes being awake with the roosters, being a night owl can feel like an occupational hazard. But it doesn’t have to be. If you like to burn the midnight oil, here are five things you can do to take advantage of your focus in preparation for the contractor licensing exam.

Embrace Your Sleep Schedule
One problem with living in a world that starts early is that you may end up running a longer clock than most people do. If you have the flexibility, embrace your sleep schedule. Allow yourself to sleep in when it makes sense to do so, as much as you can. The best thing that you can do for your routine is to find a schedule that you can keep. If you’re consistently waking up at nine or 10 and staying up until midnight or later, your body will adjust to it. This will give you the advantage of a full night’s sleep, which can make those later nights more productive.

Prepare in Advance
On the upside, staying up late to do your studying gives you the advantage of a quiet house in a generally quiet world. As people pack it in for the day, you’re less likely to be bothered. However, this might also mean that you have less access to people to ask questions or get help setting up your study environment. Take time earlier in the day to figure out what you’re going to need, so you can have it ready to go once the late evening hits. This removes potential obstacles to your studying, with the added benefit of outlining your objectives for the evening.

Find a Rhythm
Everyone has times when they feel like they can generally be more productive than others. Doing it a different way doesn’t make it incorrect or ineffective. In fact, by identifying the times of day when you are most likely to achieve your goals, you can target your most important work for those times. People who try to live on someone else’s schedule often find that they don’t thrive in it. By comparison, finding your own rhythm gives you the greatest chance of success. Just make sure that you build a habit in the first place, so that it feels more natural to start working late, even as everyone else is winding down.

Snack for Learning
There are tons of advice guides telling people what they should be eating when they first wake up in order to have a productive day. There isn’t as much for people who get their most productive periods 10 hours after they wake up. Fortunately, the foods that get people going in the morning will usually work at night as well. It’s tempting to go for mindless snacking on carbs after dinner. But if you want to focus, try to give yourself a combination of protein, fat and complex carbohydrates. This balance can help you feel satisfied without giving you a huge boost of energy and a crash shortly after.

Avoid Burning Out During the Day
The thing about trying to study at night is that you’ll probably still have commitments that you have to meet during the day. People who do well staying up late are still at risk for burning out as the day wears on. Unless you’re a person who thrives on six or seven hours of sleep, and most people aren’t, it’s best to pick your battles. Set a schedule that doesn’t require you to do as much first thing in the morning, if you can. Take a break for an hour or two in the afternoon, to help you switch gears. That way, you get to the evening feeling reasonably refreshed and ready to hit the books.

Studying what you learn is the best way to prepare for the contractor licensing exam. To find out how our classes can help, visit CSLS today!

When you get some experience running a business, you realize that there’s a big difference between a lead and a sale. You might have lots of leads but only some of them will convert into actual business for you. At first, you might struggle to get people who are interested to commit to hiring your services. Here are a few things to look at to help you figure out what is going wrong.

Targeting the Wrong Customers
You have a service or a product to sell. There are customers who need the product or service and may be interested in buying it. The trick is to make sure that your sales and marketing attempts are reaching the right customers. For example, if you are focusing your business on business clients, residential property owners are probably not the right fit. Similarly, offering a luxury service may not land well with prospective customers on tight budgets. Consider clarifying your available services so that when customers see an advertisement or visit your website, they can identify quickly if you can do what they’re looking for.

Reaching Leads Too Early or Late in the Purchase Cycle
Anyone who is looking for a contractor will go through a cycle as they make a decision. Securing a customer’s commitment depends on where they are at in the cycle once they find you. If they are in the early stages of research, still determining what they want, you should provide detail about your available services and other information. If they are just about to make a decision, you should be giving them information that helps them feel comfortable choosing you. Meeting them where they are is the key to giving them what they need.

Failing at Follow-Up
Failing to follow up on a lead is one of the biggest reasons that businesses lose out on conversions. Sometimes, you’ll get a call or an email from a prospective customer that you can’t address at the moment. Within a day or two, you’ve forgotten all about it. And by the time you get to it, they have concluded that you weren’t interested and moved on to someone else. It may seem ridiculous that contractors would leave possible clients on the table this easily, but it happens more often than you think. Set a reasonable response interval for new leads, usually one or two days, and make sure that you follow up on them.

Sales Tactics Are Too Pushy or Lukewarm
As a general rule, customers don’t like feeling pressured to buy something. They may need to have you sell them on your services, but there’s a right balance in approach. You’ve probably experienced it yourself many times. Trying to buy something when a salesperson is so pushy and doesn’t seem to care what you want feels exhausting. On the other hand, trying to get a salesperson to respond to your questions when they seem disinterested can be just as frustrating. Aim for a balance between pushing people to commit and acting like you don’t care about getting their business. Responding attentively to their needs is the best path to securing a commitment.

Price Doesn’t Fit the Service
Anyone who works in sales can tell you that there is the price that you want to charge for something, and there is the amount the people are willing to pay. If you’re offering a service based on low cost to customers, then the price should reflect that. If you’re emphasizing custom work or high-end materials, you need to make sure that the customers looking for that service can find you. Sometimes, customers are hoping to get the gold standard but they aren’t willing to pay for it. If all of your customers seem to fit this category, then you probably need to change your pricing structure or your services to suit.

The future of your business lies in your ability to turn potential leads into paid work. With these tips, you can solve possible problems and make your sales efforts more effective. For more information about building your own contracting business, contact CSLS today!

When you’re trying to establish or run a business in the middle of a crisis, you’ll hear a lot about protecting cash flow. In truth, cash flow is important, but flexibility is too. You want the ability to make decisions just in time, so you have the benefit of as many facts as possible. Here are five things to do to protect your business’s income during a crisis.

Stay Put
If you’re living or working in an area where the cost of living is high, it might seem to make sense to move somewhere that is cheaper. After all, housing and workspace rentals can be some of the highest single expenses for independent contractors. However, by moving, you’re cutting off at least part of your income and adding a ton of immediate expenses to the list. Moving to a smaller or cheaper area also limits the number of clients to replace your income. If it is possible for you to remain where you are and stay current on your bills, that’s probably the easiest way to keep more of your liquid assets.

Avoid Diving Into Expensive Markets and Luxury Services
If you were planning to move to an area that’s more expensive or start offering high-end services, it might be a good time to rethink these measures. While a lot of people will move from a lower cost-of-living area to a higher one because there are more jobs there, this doesn’t always mean you’ll be able to land them. During a crisis, when there are many more contractors seeking work than clients creating projects, it’s best to stick with the essentials. And in most cases, that involves sticking with the area you know and the work you can do with the least amount of complication.

Consider Multiple Viable Income Streams
When the immediate future feels highly variable, it is hard to tell how work is going to pan out in three months, six months or a year. If you’re only offering one service and it’s not in demand, or you suddenly have tons of other contractors to compete with for a limited set of jobs, it might be time to branch out. An economic downturn isn’t a good situation to leap into a market in which you have limited experience or ability. However, if you have services that you know how to do and you’ve already got the skills and credibility, it may not be difficult to add them to your business. Keep an eye on overhead and the supply chain, as those might have changed since you did these services before.

Keep Funds in Multiple Places
As a contractor, most of your assets are probably related to equipment and inventory. When you’re worried about future income and cash flow, you want to keep an eye on where you’re putting your money right now. Sure, you need to upgrade equipment so you can keep working on projects. Switching to rentals, minimizing your stock of inventory, or repairing equipment that you already own outright can help to keep your assets as liquid as possible.

Implement Practices to Maintain a Steady Income
Crises that trigger large-scale economic problems often bring out the scavengers, and you don’t want to get caught in a bad arrangement. It’s tempting to relax your payment intervals in the hopes that you’ll land more clients that way. And while giving clients all the time they need to make a payment is more likely to appeal to clients, you’re not always securing the right kinds of clients. Someone who is trying to take advantage of your worry to get a lax payment standard is probably going to make you fight for every dime. Following your original billing practices is the best way to ensure that the money keeps coming in.

Ensuring flexibility for your business doesn’t mean that you have to be flexible in your business decisions. In fact, it might mean that you’re less flexible than you were before, so that you protect your ability to make quick decisions later on. For more information on building a successful contracting business, contact CSLS today!

For a couple of years, construction experts predicted that construction would reach a peak in 2019 and then trend slightly downward. Of course, that is not quite what happened. In the wake of the pandemic, as the world is starting to come back to a new normal, construction is surging. Yet, the labor force is not sufficient to meet it. Here are a few things to keep in mind, especially if you’re thinking about starting a career in construction this year.

The Labor Shortage Depends on the Field
In an industry as large as construction, which employs almost 8 million people nationwide, quantifying the labor shortage is complicated. Experts estimate that the shortage approaches 500,000 workers at this point, and could reach 1 million by the end of the year. But you’ll notice differences depending on the region and the type of construction, as well as the individual fields. For example, interest in new construction for residences expanded last year beyond what experts were expecting. This means that construction companies building homes had more demand than commercial construction.

Skill Development Is a Necessity
It’s tempting to think that if there is such a labor shortage in construction, all you need to do is show up. And while it is extremely important that people make the decision to pursue work in the industry, skill development is also a necessity. After all, when all those electricians and engineers from previous generations decide to retire, those positions will become open for people who are coming in with the right training. Certain fields are badly in need of candidates who are willing to put in the time necessary to pick up the expertise.

Experience Is Key
Of course, in order to take advantage of the flood of new construction jobs, you need to build the right kind of experience. If you want to take the contractor licensing exam, you usually need to prove that you have about four years of experience in the field. College degrees may be able to cover a portion of that, as well as additional training. But the good news is that everybody else getting in on the ground floor is going to face the same obligations. The sooner you start, the sooner you can build the qualifications necessary to get your license.

You’ve Got Room to Grow
When you have a growing industry like construction, you should know that the labor shortage often exists vertically and not just at the entry-level. This means that if you are interested in upward mobility, there may be roles that you could get as you build experience and credibility. If you’re looking for a career that allows you to move upward into construction management or executive positions at large construction companies, now may be an ideal time to start showing what you can do.

Now’s the Time to Get Started
The flow of the construction industry can be cyclical at times. People will move into the fields that are the most in-demand. Otherwise, the industry will shrink somewhat without them. There will always be a need for construction, but the number of people in the industry goes up and down with that demand. Right now, you have an excellent opportunity to enter the field just as businesses are desperate to hire people who have the right skills and dedication. This means that you might be able to secure a reliable job and build the foundation for a great career you could have until you retire.

The construction labor shortage isn’t going away anytime soon, and it might even be getting worse. With a contractor license and the right kind of exam preparation from CSLS, you could be setting yourself up for a lifetime. For more information, contact us today!

Some people never stop learning. Others were so glad when they got out of high school that they thought they never wanted to learn anything new again. If you feel like you are closer to the latter category than you want to be, the good news is that you can change. As an adult, learning is often much different from how it was when you were a kid. Here are five ways you can turn it to your advantage.

Embrace the Chase
Young children have a thirst for knowledge that is hard to quench. It might not be too easy to think back to when you were a preschooler, constantly asking questions of your parents. But that kind of drive is still accessible to you as an adult, and it may be easier to find the solution now. If you are driven to achieve a goal, like getting your contractor license, then you may have all the motivation you need to get started. Start figuring out what it is that you want to know, and let that pursuit build momentum that will help take you as far as you want to go.

Shop Around for Learning Opportunities
Although your capacity for learning is dependent heavily on your own personality, the teacher also makes a big difference. As a student, you can probably remember the difference in experiences based on the way that the teacher presented it to you. Teachers who are really engaged with the material and excited to teach will help you feel more excited about it as well. You may also have an easier time picking up new skills and retaining them. The good news is that as an adult, you can shop around for the best learning opportunities. If you take a class with a teacher, and you don’t notice a big result, you can feel free to look elsewhere.

Use Your Adult Experience
As you get older, you may realize that knowledge is something that builds upon itself. In order to learn how to do basic addition, you first had to learn how to count. It keeps working just like that. Even if you are not actively studying the subject, it’s likely that you are building knowledge and experience that you can apply later on. So feel free to use it. Learning about the best practices of a particular construction task may be a lot easier to master and remember if you can apply it to similar tasks you’ve done in the recent past. You might be surprised how quickly you pick it up, compared to younger students.

Take Advantage of Focus
Learning as an adult is similar in approach to learning as a kid, but it’s significantly different in scope. We teach young students how to learn, as well as a broad range of subjects that they will need in their daily lives as adults. Once you cross that hurdle, learning becomes something that you do as a way to achieve a specific goal. As such, you can limit your studies to the items that you really need in order to get your contractor license. This means that you may be able to get to the finish line much sooner than you could when you were studying to get out of high school.

Rely on Patience
Lifelong learning can earn you a variety of benefits that you may not have been able to use as a kid, and patience is definitely one of them. By now, you probably know that much of adulthood includes waiting: waiting for your paycheck to arrive, waiting until you have accumulated the right amount of experience to take the contractor licensing exam, and more. Patience is a hard skill to learn, and it takes kids years to develop it. As an adult, you’ve had much more practice. That allows you to take the time to master the skills you need to do well on the exam, without worrying that your peers might somehow be able to do it more quickly than you.

Keeping your brain ready to learn will help you adapt your business for the challenging demands of the future. To get started, contact CSLS today!

Once you start your contracting business, you’ll need to come up with a name. If you were planning to just use your own, there are good reasons to try to get a little more creative. Of course, coming up with a great name isn’t as simple as thinking of it and getting a business license. Here are a few things to keep in mind as you brainstorm.

Write Down Your Company Vision
Before you can come up with a great name for your company, it’s worth investigating how you want customers to associate it. A good way to start is by writing down your company vision. Think about what you want to be known for, such as:

• Friendly customer service
• Accurate estimating
• Great value
• Expert detail

Write down a bunch of words that you might be able to include in your company name that help to convey your goals for the business. Keep in mind that some words might have different connotations depending on the person. For example, “value” can sometimes imply discount, rather than return on investment.

Search for Names
At this point, you may have a few names in mind. Remember that in order to establish your business in California, you need to have a unique business name. The good news is that you can search for businesses online, so you can confirm that yours is not already taken by somebody else. Put each of your ideas through the search, and pay attention to names that are very similar but not exactly the same. If you end up choosing a name that is nearly identical or has the same acronym as another business offering similar services in your area, people may get them confused. And if that company doesn’t have a great reputation, you might end up losing business due to that confusion.

Avoid Puns or Inside Jokes
Sometimes it can be good to keep a lighthearted attitude toward your business name, but not always. People might find your business name easier to remember if it’s based on something silly or comical. On the other hand, jokes don’t always stay relevant over time, and many of them don’t cross language barriers very well. The last thing that you want is to establish your business on a pun or an inside joke that nobody is going to get. If you’re struggling to come up with something clever, keep it simple and easy to remember. Your clients will keep coming back for service if you do a good job, not because you made them chuckle at the beginning.

Think About Designs and Logos
Once you’ve narrowed down the list to one or two choices, it’s wise to think about how you will represent them. For example, people in construction often use their own names for their businesses, especially if they are independent contractors. But if you have a particularly long name, you might want to shorten it to just your initials. In our shorthand, abbreviated texting world, it’s good to look at an acronym for your company to make sure that it doesn’t mean something else. After all, naming your company LOL Construction might get more attention, but it could also make you seem ridiculous. Research companies that can help you design a logo that helps to promote what you want from your brand.

Get Feedback
When it comes to choosing a company name and building a brand for your business, a second opinion is an absolute necessity. Get feedback from multiple people. Ask friends and family to look at your company name and any ideas you have for a logo and give their opinions. Be prepared for them to give an answer that isn’t particularly constructive, such as simply not liking the name or how it looks. Be prepared to ask additional questions to drill down the feedback to something that you can use. You’re not required to change your company name because your mother doesn’t like it, but it’s worth figuring out why before you decide.

Your company name is one way of establishing your commitment to excellence. Passing the contractor licensing exam is another. For expert test preparation online, available all across California, visit CSLS today!