Everything we have written, free.

Why the busiest truck in town still goes broke

The money side of a trades business, in the order it actually matters — pricing, markup, deposits, and the four numbers that tell you the truth.

Going out on your own

What to have in place before you hand in notice — the money, the work, the paperwork, and the mistakes that catch almost everybody in the first year.

What your hour actually costs

Most people in the trades set their rate the same way: they find out what the guy down the road charges, take a little off, and hope the work comes. It

Paying yourself when you are the one who owns the place

Most people in the trades pay themselves last and pay themselves

Deposits: the one change that fixes cash flow

There is a particular kind of broke that only happens to busy contractors. The schedule is full, the phone rings, the work is good — and there is no money

Change orders: charging for scope creep without losing the customer

Nobody in the trades loses money on the job they quoted. They lose it on the work that got added afterward, one small favor at a time, by a person who was

Licensing, insurance and the paperwork that actually matters

There are about forty pieces of paper people will tell you a trades business needs. Maybe six of them will ever affect your

Walking a site without missing the thing that kills the job

Almost every job that goes badly wrong was decided in the first twenty minutes, standing in somebody's house, before anybody wrote a number

Your first hire: when to do it, and what it really costs

There are two ways people in the trades hire their first person, and only one of them

The quote that wins without being the cheapest

Two contractors look at the same job. Both are competent. Both quote within a couple hundred dollars of each other. One gets the work most of the

Where your first ten jobs come from

New contractors almost always plan their first ten jobs backwards. They build a website, order shirts, set up a business page, and wait for the

Getting paid faster, without becoming the guy who chases

Most late payments are not refusals. The customer is not avoiding you and they are not broke. They got the invoice on a Thursday, meant to deal with it on

The five numbers to know every Friday

Most people in the trades check one number: what's in the bank. It's the easiest number to see and one of the least useful. It tells you about last week,

Before you quit: what to have in place

Most people go out on their own the same way — they get angry on a Tuesday, quit on a Wednesday, and figure the rest out from the

How to tell whether a job actually made money

Ask most contractors which of last month's jobs made the most money and you will get an answer in about two seconds. Ask how they know and the answer gets

One block per square foot runs every wall short

The block calculator uses 1.125 blocks per square foot, not 1, and the gap between those two numbers is bigger than it looks.

One ton of asphalt covers about 83 sq ft at 2 inches compacted

How the asphalt calculator's 145 lb per cubic foot constant turns square footage and thickness into a tonnage order, waste included.

Your gravel order is bigger than the hole you dug

A 12 by 20 pad at 4 inches finishes at 2.96 yards but orders at 3.41. Here is where the difference comes from.

A yard of concrete is 45 bags, and that changes how you order

The concrete calculator turns length, width and thickness into yards or bags, and shows why those two numbers are not the same decision.

Why the extra quarter yard is the cheap one

Running short on a pour costs more than the concrete you did not use. The math on waste, short loads, and why the calculator rounds up.

Getting paid faster starts before the job does

Late payment is usually a terms problem, not a chasing problem. Here is how the trades who get paid on time set it up before the first swing.

A trade school for the business of the trades

ToolHut Trade School opens with the first intake — three courses on pricing, getting paid, and winning work, with a coach in your own private channel.

The hourly rate you copied is lying to you

Most trades rates are copied from the shop across town — a number built out of their costs, not yours. Here is the arithmetic that shows what an hour really costs.