Here's how you can find tradespeople that really are willing to go the extra mile to do a good job for you.
What do you do with your old yellow pages phone directory when you get a new one every year?
Most people just chuck the old one in the paper recycling bin, and that's a waste of valuable information.
When a baby electrician or plumber gets out of trade school, he doesn't start his own company. Instead, he gets hired by one of the local plumbing or electrical contractors and learns the practical aspects of the trade he's chosen. It's not until that plumber is fully trained and practiced in all the aspects of his work that he'll have enough confidence to start thinking about starting his own company. After all, leaving the security of a regular pay cheque and gambling on having a better life as your own boss is a big step, but it's one that a lot of tradespeople do make.
Obviously, for any start-up company, it's important to get their name in the yellow pages because that's where 90 percent of their business is going to come from.
So, by keeping your old copy of the yellow pages phone directory from one year to the next, you can simply compare the alphabetical order of the names to find out who's started his own new company. But, compare the phone numbers as well because a business that merely changes it's name may be worth avoiding. No company that feels it has a good reputation in the community is going to change it's name.
By hiring new upstart companies, it's the President and CEO of the new company that'll be coming out to your house to give you an estimate on what needs to be done, and how much it will cost. The cost he quotes you won't be significantly less than any other company, because he knows what other companies charge for that same work, but the difference is that this guy has a vested interest in doing the best job he possibly can for you because he knows that his business is going to benefit from any word-of-mouth advertising that comes his way as a result. So, the motivation is there on his part to do a better job and provide better service than the guys that are working for a monthly salary for the well established companies.
See, he's not stupid either. He knows that it's possible to overcharge for shoddy work and make some money fast on unsuspecting customers, but that's not how you grow a business for the long term. So, he's going take this gamble by playing it as safe as he can, and that's by doing the best job he can for each customer he gets. Then, if the business still doesn't fly, he can go back to salaried employment knowing that he gave it his best shot, but it just wasn't in the cards he was dealt. And, that's exactly what you'd do too if you were in his shoes.
So, when you get a new yellow pages business directory each year, don't throw out the old one. Keep it for at least a year so that you have two year by year listings of who's doing each kind of work in your city or town. That way, when you need to hire someone to clear a sewer or build a fence or reshingle your house, you can tell who's just started their own company, and you're likely to do better than by simply hiring any company that's listed in the book; especially if everyone on the crew that company sends to your house gets paid the same regardless of how good a job they do.
PS: In medieval times, a master of a craft or trade would take in an apprentice to train in his trade. For seven years that apprentice would live in his master's house and work in his master's shop and his only pay would be in the form of room and board at his master's table. After seven years, the apprentice would become a "journeyman" which comes from the French word "jour", which means "a 24 hour day". That meant that the apprentice, now a "jour man", was entitled to be paid a wage for each day that he worked. After honing his skills working for his daily salary in his master's shop, the journeyman could then apply to the guild to become a master of the trade in his own right. In a time when only the clergy and the very rich could afford the luxury of time away from work to learn to read and write, the "test" to become a master was for the journeyman to submit an example of his best work to the "guild", which was a collection of the local masters in that trade, much like the "Roofing Contractors Association of Ontario", but put in your own trade for "Roofing". Stone mason, cooper, milner, thatcher or tanner, perhaps. The local guild would assess the quality of the piece submitted and decide whether or not that journeyman should be acknowledged as a master.
And, it is this medieval practice that is the origin of our word "masterpiece".
It was a journeyman's "master piece" that he would work on and submit to the guild for consideration in his bid to become a master. Becoming a master was very much like going into business for yourself nowadays. It meant you could open your own shop if you wanted to, charge whatever you wanted for your own work, and take in an apprentice to train if you so chose.
Even at a time when there was no such thing as taxpayer funded "public schools", people were just as intelligent as they are today and organized an educational system of sorts that was well suited to both the needs of their children and the needs of the community.