For this month’s column, I offer the following tips:

1. Avoid eating foods with a strong odor, such as garlic and onions before heading into the woods.
2. Store your hunting clothes in unscented bags along with twigs, leaves, grasses or deer scent wafers. Do not use hunting clothes for changing oil or other household chores that might fill them with human scent.
3. Bow and arrow hunters, practice your archery while wearing your hunting clothes and gear.
4. Use a tightly sealed urine bottle for nature’s call.
5. Twigs and branches could deflect an arrow. Double-check your shooting lanes.
6. Big bucks tend to be nocturnal in season. Your best chance to get one is very early or very late in the day.

Oh, wait. I forgot. This article is supposed to be about “Business Tips.” It’s become increasingly easy for me to overlook that during deer hunting season.

Not that I don’t have other important pursuits during the off-season. There’s plenty of fishing to catch up on, for example, plus my sorely neglected golf game. I’m embarrassed to tell you how many handicap strokes I carry these days thanks to my screwed-up priorities.

The Business of Contracting: Top priority for the last five decades has been business. First, it had to do with founding and operating Blau Plumbing & Heating. For the last several decades I’ve turned more and more of it over to my capable sons Jimmy and Bobby, but I still had business on the brain. During much of the 1990s, I was consumed with Contractors 2000, which I co-founded in 1992 and helped shepherd into the industry’s finest organization for PHC service contractors.

I also found myself on the road much of the time teaching “The Business of Contracting” to thousands of PHC contractors throughout the country. I’ve contributed this column to the Buzz newsletter for the last 3 years, based on the knowledge I have gained during my fruitful career as a contractor and consultant.

It seems like almost yesterday when it all started, the financial end of contracting was a subject that nobody else seemed to be addressing. Most articles in the trade magazines focused on plumbing issues, with some attention given to marketing. However, it’s always been my contention that you can be the most talented plumber in the world as well as the world’s best marketer, but you still will fall flat on your face as a plumbing contractor if you don’t have a handle of the financial end of the business.

Unfortunately, more than 90{938cd9e8dae860e800efc538277d4f7684e6f6981618ba70d1c34357a53c2e1f} of the contractors in our industry don’t have the knowledge and/or the will to crunch the numbers in a way that results in adequate compensation for themselves and their faithful, hard-working employees, and healthy bottom line. This was true way back when and remains true today. It will remain true for all eternity, until this industry changes its way of thinking about itself.

Through my columns and seminars, I have reached tens of thousands of plumbing contractors with a twofold message:

1)     They are far more important contributors to our society than they give themselves credit for.

2)     They and their employees ought to be rewarded far more than they are.

Nothing in my professional life has been more gratifying than to have been an instrument of change for the better in the lives of hundreds of contractors and thousands of their employees throughout the industry. I’m referring to the contractors from coast-to-coast that have “taken the medicine” and revamped their business practices to get the selling prices they need to succeed in business, and leave a legacy to their families, employees, and communities at-large. It’s led to numerous friendships so powerful that I’ve neglected the deer, the fish, and the birdies.

Easing Into Retirement: This is something most contractors haven’t planned for and can’t afford. So too many of them keep working long beyond the time when they should be expected to. Next month I will give you a little piece of my mind on the “Four Legs of Financial Security” to help you ease yourself into retirement.

It’s time to practice what I preach. Many years ago I began planning for my retirement, and built up a considerable nest egg to draw from. Well, it’s finally dawned on me that it’s time to start doing that.

In the early 2000s I bought 135 acres of prime wooded land in northern Wisconsin. Since then I’ve spent most of my time there constructing and building and creating two and miles of 9ft. wide trails within the boundary lines of the property, and indulging in my passions for hunting and fishing.

I’ll close with one more piece of advice. I’ve mentioned neglecting my beloved pastimes in what should have been my retirement years. Even more deeply, I regret devoting so much time traveling around this country from one end to the other presenting my seminars that I’ve missed out on so many events in the lives of my nine children and 19 grandchildren. Unlike outdoor sports, it’s impossible to catch up on these activities. They are gone forever.

Don’t let these things pass you by. Make time to attend your kids’ ball games, school plays and whatever other activities they may participate in. Once they grow up, it’s too late to make up for lost time.