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More than half of all new businesses fail within the first few years. I believe that this is due in part to the fact that these businesses never seek out their target audience and ideal clients. If you try to serve everyone you most likely will end up serving no one, so it is better to find a niche that you can market to directly. By marketing exclusively to these ideal clients you will end up with more work than you could ever have dreamed of getting.

I have a client who runs a handyman business. Linden works alone and does excellent work at a fair price. When I first began to work with him he told me that he could help anybody so everyone was his target audience. He was getting work but he was driving over three hours a day and having difficulty with many of the jobs he did. We sat down together and talked about his work. I asked him to tell me about some of the jobs he had done recently.He told me about a job that he had recently done installing tile flooring in a bathroom of a condominium that was on the second floor. It had been difficult to park inside of the complex and impossible to get his tile cutting machine upstairs so he spent many hours over a two day period going up and down the stairs to cut each tile. After some discussion he agreed that it was not in the best interest of his business to work in condominium or apartment complexes or to do tile work upstairs. He then told me about some work he had done for some very nice people about 40 miles from his home. They had been very accommodating with their time, purchased all of the materials in advance, and paid promptly when the work was complete that day. It took him over an hour to get home because there was so much traffic in the area where he lives. He told me a third story about a woman who lived alone and needed odd jobs done at her house from time to time. She lived about 5 miles from him and needed someone who could work on Saturday or in the evenings, which he was glad to do.

After working with this handyman we came up with his ideal client: It is a woman living alone in a home that she owns, or a couple where the man is unable or unwilling to do needed work around the home. They earn more than $50,000 per year and make repairs and upgrades on a regular basis. They live no more than 10-15 miles from his home. They live in a home that is at least five years old.The handyman told me that he did not believe that he could get enough work from this group of people alone and that he didn't know how to reach them. I showed him a simple marketing plan, both online and offline, that he could use to target only this group of people. After just two months he has almost doubled his income and is happier about his work. He only works for people who fall into his target audience and are ideal clients. He now turns down work from everyone else, allowing him to focus only on the customers that meet his criteria.

Defining you ideal client and target audience works. It will enable you to maximize your time and efforts for greater profits and a better working experience.

Connie Ragen Green is a small business marketer and consultant. For more ways to increase your business visit href="SmallBusinessUnMarketing.com">SmallBusinessUnMarketing.com

# posted by hieej : 1:32 PM  0 comments

So a traditional tract home is not for you. You would like to have a custom home built just for you. The first step in being able to have and build a custom home is to find a suitable lot to build your home on. Lots for your home could be a large portion of the cost. Depending on how close to the city you want to be will also be a variable on the cost of the lot.

In Arizona land closer in is either very rare or if it is available to build on it is very expensive. You won't find a empty lot ready to buy in very many areas. For instance, Tempe is pretty much land locked and no available land to build to suite. The cities surrounding Phoenix like Scottsdale, Chandler, and Gilbert have available land for purchase of building your custom home. The cost will depend on many different things. Some of these variable will be how close utilities are to the lot, does it have paved streets, is it a high end Mountain View lot or on a county island.

Financing for land is still available today but usually you will need a minimum of 30% down with the stiffer lending rules after all the fallout of recent years from the laxity in lending rules. Another way to go is to wrap the lot in a construction loan which is basically purchasing the lot along with funding to build the home. The builder then takes draws on the loan at various stages of building the home in order to pay for the building costs. You will generally be paying interest on the loan shortly after taking out the loan which means you are paying on the home before it is even finished.

Once you have the lot you desire you must next consider the floor plan and the builder to build the home. You may have considered this before you even went shopping for your lot but most find the lot first and then look for the builder and the plan they desire. There are hundreds of custom homes that already have approved plans that can be somewhat modified to meet your needs.

Be sure and find a reputable builder. Get referrals as well as look closely at their previous work and quality and check with the registrar of contractors for reports of violations or complaints. Anyone can call themselves a custom builder and when the housing market was booming a lot of builders came out of the woodwork calling themselves custom home builders but had very little or no experience.

Believe it or not, some actually build the home themselves. Maybe not each and every step on their own; but bid out the specific subcontractors such as plumbing, concrete, roofing and electrical. If you are serious about taking this project out on your own be sure you know what you are doing or risk spending a lot of time and donate car charity re-doing the work or end up with a lower quality build.

The cost to building a custom home will depend on the upgrade you choose; generally from $125-$215 per square foot. As costs for copper and cement as well as various other materials go up so does the total cost of building your dream home.

Nancy Niblett is a highly successful Real Estate Agent specializing in the Chandler area. She credits her success to hard work, integrity and honesty. Clients continue to refer her over and over again. Nancy is one of the most successful award-winning agents with Keller Williams Realty, East Valley. If you are not ready to take this step, you may want to check out href="homesgilbertaz.com/28429-Gilbert-AZ-Equestrian-RESCity.aspx">Gilbert horse property. For a low maintenance homes, check out href="ocotillolakesaz.com/28774-Chandler-Ocotillo-AZ-Condo-RESCmty.aspx">Ocotillo condos for sale in Chandler, AZ.

# posted by hieej : 1:27 PM  0 comments