To Do Lists

 

A ‘To Do List’ typically consists of all the small jobs that need doing around the house. But all too often, they get neglected.

 

Well not any more – To do lists are what Handyman Assist does best.

 

Tackling To Do Lists is a service that I didn’t expect to be hired for very often but it has ended up being one of the top income generating services that I provide. It’s also what most of my ‘super-customers’ usually hire me for.

 

More an American terminology, the ‘honey do’ list would be a list of jobs that usually the wife would have saved up for her husband to tackle. To Do Lists are also a list of jobs that rarely ever get completed.

Statistics have shown that the average household has as many as 22.74 such jobs awaiting completion at any given time.

 

So, a To Do List can often get neglected then.

Things like wall mountings, fixing doors, touching up paint, fence repairs, cleaning gutters, and several other really simple repairs just never seem to get done.

These jobs take no real effort to complete, they just take time. And in a time starved world, it’s easy to see why they are often left uncompleted. I would have never thought that people would actually pay somebody else to go around and hang pictures and the like for them but trust me, they really do.

 

Completing To Do Lists is a good service for me to provide for a few reasons.

 

First off, there are people who cannot physically tackle a to do list. The elderly and infirm or disabled may indeed struggle for example.

And then there’s the wide scope of skills needed to complete an average to do list. Not to mention the need for the right tools at the right time. Anything goes, on a to do list and trust me, some of the lists I come across utilise nearly all of the services I offer individually.

But there is a plus side…

 

Quality clients.

Most clients that hire me for this type of service are willing to pay me to do the things they just DON’T WANT to do. Can they do it? Sure they can.

But unlike the majority of customers who hire me to repair something they wouldn’t know how to repair or build, these customers either don’t have the sufficient time, tools or even the right inclination to tackle a to do list of their own.

Either that or they just have enough money to pay someone else to do it for them. So either way, they don’t have to.

And not only do these customers prefer me to do their bidding for them, but they will typically call me back again and again. Because there are always things to be fixed, installed, or built around their ever evolving homes for them.

 

It’s easy work too.

Hanging pictures, touching up some paint, and fixing little dinky things around the house is pretty easy going compared to the larger remodelling or fencing type projects I undertake. And since the majority of this work is generally low risk and not very complicated, just about anybody could do it, especially me.

But customer service still counts.

Whenever a customer (be it an individual, business or real estate) is looking for this type of work, I charge hourly or daily plus materials. This is purely because trying to sit there and estimate how long everything will take and quote for each little aspect of a ‘To Do’ list would be a ridiculous task. It could also take longer than the work itself.

It’s notoriously difficult to estimate these kind of jobs properly and I certainly don’t want to be ripping anybody off.

 

MY TIPS FOR SUCCESS:

• I always charge hourly or daily to give you the best value for your money.
• Working efficiently is a must. No, I don’t have to be running around like a lunatic, but a too leisurely working pace and taking a ton of breaks would most certainly lose me my customers fast.
• Prioritise. I always ask the customer what are the most important things they want done first. I do this in case I might ever run out of allocated time to complete.

 

There is a downside to this type of service though.

And that is that I can’t realistically know how long it is going to take to get through a typical to do list. And this could end up leaving gaping holes in people’s schedules.

If for example, a customer says they have enough work for me to be there all day and I end up finishing in only 3 hours, that’s a lot of wasted time I could have scheduled in for somebody else. At the same time, it would be unfair to charge the extra.

This is something that has often happened to me and I still haven’t settled on a good solution for it. But it’s a small price I’m willing to pay for your complete satisfaction.

And for me, a happy customer is quite often, a repeat customer.

 

 

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