A homeowner or property owner looking to get work done.

Someone without a construction background wanting to get into the business.

Here are the basic steps that you should take if you are serious about getting into this business:

1. Contact Elite Crete Southeast the Authorized Distributor for the southeast. As an Authorized Distributor, we have extensive training on how to train, educate and provide on-going technical support and business development assistance to installers.

2. Sign up to attend the two day training seminar that will be held at our Gastonia, NC location. These seminars are held monthly and limited to 10 to 20 attendees. At the training seminar, you will receive two full days of hands on training. You will leave with sample boards and will ultimately be ready to begin with smaller less complex projects. But it doesn't end there. We will be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to assist you through every aspect of the business including but not limited to marketing, advertising, estimating, surface preparation, detailed product application process and more. For more detailed information pertaining to what our training seminars entail, go to our Training Seminars page.

3. Stay in contact with us. Again, we are not just here to sell you product. Sure this is a business and we must sell product to maintain business but since we do not have a minimum start up purchase, franchise fees or hidden costs, we need installers to be successful if we are to be successful. You should really consider us you're silent but well educated business partner. We will help guild you to a profitable business sooner than you could without us.

4. Frequent Concretelocator.com. Yes there is a lot of information to absorb there and certainly some of it is a bit on the useless side. However, this discussion forum is designed to help you succeed in business. You can get tips, tricks, ideas and advice on just about any topic pertaining to the decorative concrete industry there.

5. Understand just a few basic rules;

a. If a product or application is not going as well or easy for you as it did in your training seminar, something is wrong. Get us on the phone immediately. There are no tricks or gimmicks in class to make it seem or look easier than it really is out on the job site.
b. If you have been in the business more than a month and aren't making money, something is wrong. Again, call us and get a business/marketing strategy going. The decorative concrete overlay business is unlike 99% of businesses out there in the fact that it only requires a few thousand dollars worth of equipment to get started and those expenses are typically recouped in your first 3 to 5 jobs.

6. Go make money. But understand it is indeed a business. You have to market and sell and promote and properly install and be quality conscious and work harder than your competition or you could possible fail. But if you do all of those things properly, you will do extremely well. In most cases, better than expected...

You have a construction background or even an existing business and want to try something new and more profitable or simply add it to what you are currently doing.
About 40% of the people that want to get started using our products fall into this category. In any case, scroll up a bit and read the "Someone without a construction background wanting to get into the business" section from top to bottom.

Just a few of the types of construction background fields people come from are as follows:

• Concrete finisher: Why, because they can take what they know about concrete finishing and directly relate it to the proper application of our products. That doesn't mean you have to have a concrete finisher background but it might help just a little.
• Stamped concrete contractor: So many stamped concrete contractors inquire about our products because the thin stamped overlay application creates the same look as conventional stamped concrete with less than half the effort. Not to mention the fact that conventional stamped concrete can only be installed where there is no concrete present or where a complete tear out and replace of new concrete is to take place. With thin stamped overlays, you can apply it to existing concrete surfaces which only increased your possibility of work by 1000% or more.
• Acid stain contractor: Wow, has acid stained floor taken off the past 5 years or what? It seems that anyone with a pickup truck and pumps up sprayer is offer acid stained floors these days which makes for a tough market in some regions. The primary problem/limitation with simply acid staining floors is that the concrete must be nearly flawless for the finish to look moderately acceptable. This is where a basic overlay can come into play and create a "new clean palette" of sorts that can then be acid stained to look like a beautiful floor, not something that looks as if rusty water was spilled on it. 

At this point you are probably saying to yourself that all of those construction backgrounds seem a bit related to the decorative concrete overlay industry. That may be true, but listed below are the many other fields that look to our products in increase profitability as well:

• Stucco contractors
• Flooring contractors of many types
• Roofing contractors
• Asphalt sealcoaters
• Commercial and industrial painting contractors
• Faux finishers
• Landscapers
• Sprinkler installers
• Carpenters
• Power washing contractors
• And more...

Are you ready to get started yet?

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