If you own a business, you’re constantly bombarded with spam promising you wonderous results for your bottom line if you just buy their list of industry contacts. For my business, it’s a list of all the real estate agents located in my state. The spammers promise me that by buying their list (and using it to send a bunch of …

All too often we find ourselves in a rut. Complacently following the same well-worn script. Indifferently repeating identical steps that we’ve traversed thousands of times. Desperately clinging to our worn out routines, so we don’t have to think about anything new. Until one day it happens and we find ourselves becoming that old dinosaur we used to make fun of …

Some people stubbornly resist any type of criticism. They can’t stomach even the smallest amount of negative commentary on their work, and move quickly to cut off any perceived challenge to their supremacy. We should welcome all criticism with open arms. Legitimate criticism provides an avenue for us to examine what it is we’re doing and gives us an opportunity …

Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared. Buddha When I came across this quote, it got me thinking about sharing our skills. Some people are hesitant to share their knowledge with others, as they believe that by teaching others they’ll somehow …

Our customers have many choices, so it’s not always a given that they’re going to pick us. The more we know about their mindset (and the more we act on that knowledge) the better our chances. For home inspectors, our clients are often woefully uninformed. They’ve likely got more questions than that flip house has code violations! Knowing what they …

We think we know exactly who we’re doing things for, both in our business and personal lives: our target audience, we call it. It seems pretty straightforward. But like most things in life, nothing is ever as simple as it seems. There are always other forces at work, unknown variables that come into play, other people involved that can be …

Sometimes it’s hard to do the right thing, and it doesn’t help that everyone seems to have their own version of what’s right. How do we know if we’re on sound footing with our “right” or if we’re simply looking out for our own “rights”? If it’s something that feels good, that’s acceptable to everyone involved, that (from our own …

When things go wrong, what’s our default reply? It wasn’t me. Do we try to push it off on someone or something else? Do we instinctively attempt to pass the buck? Do we quickly move to the next thing, leaving the fallout for someone else to clean up? I’ve got this. We don’t hear (or speak) those words often enough. …

If our job is to provide our customers with information, we face a dilemma: transferring knowledge from our mind into the mind of someone else. It’s quite likely that our customer doesn’t have the same understanding of our industry that we do. If they did, they wouldn’t be paying us, now would they? It can be difficult to communicate important …

We see it everywhere, in every facet of our lives. Increasingly, more of our interactions are being dictated by price. Online, we can even sort by price. Show me which one is the cheapest and that’s the one I’ll get. It’s strikingly ironic that when all we’re measuring is the fee charged for something, we end up with very little …