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I think we all know what financial conservatism is in construction or the general world. Let me define it in a couple of different ways for contracting. This may be of interest to you because there is some difference between the traditional model of financial conservatism. Financial conservatism to me and I think to most people is that we’re all able to squeeze a nickel, we’re all able to buy services, to buy products cheaper because we shop around, because we are very attentive to the price, you know, we’re very careful with this resource that we call money. If money is that oxygen for most businesses, we can’t be, in our vocabulary, we have to be something close to conservative with it. But one of the things that I would tell younger people in this day and age is that financial conservatism also applies to the revenues side, that is, when you charge somebody a price, you beat somebody. You don’t give everybody a discount on the revenue, it’s always the market price. And certainly, if you have a stellar construction firm, you’re going to charge them something more than the average contractor. That’s true financial conservatism. And so, financially conservative people in our industry certainly do both. And what that means is margin. They buy something a little bit less, they get a great value out of that service that they purchased but they’re charging others a reasonable market price or a premium market price so that margin leads to their financial security.

A third part to financial conservatism which is very important to remember is terms and conditions of the sale. If you’re financially conservative, you actually pay a lot of attention to the terms and conditions of the sale, that is, when you’re going to get paid, what denominations do you get paid, what dollar value, all of those things, the terms and conditions. If things have a warranty or not, if things are guaranteed by the factory or by the distributor, if there is a penalty for over shipment or short shipment, those kinds of things are examples of terms and conditions of the sale. You know, the homebuilders of the world have shown us all the power of paying by purchase order, and that’s terms and conditions by definition using that model. So if you look at financial conservatism, it’s not just about being frugal. It is certainly being more wholistic about revenue, the terms and conditions and cost.