In business, as in life, we all have to make choices about how far we plan on going to satisfy our clients (and ourselves). There will be times when meeting spec is sufficient. Deliver exactly what’s needed and move on to something more important. There will also be times, often important occasions and potential turning points in our careers/lives, when …

Our goal, as home inspectors, is to deliver important information. Unfortunately for us, an in-person discussion is often the worst way to do it. Presenting important information digitally (written in a report, recorded on a video, or archived on a website) is a much more effective way to get our point across. If we’re going to interact with someone in …

The only thing that good business owners have in common is that they’re good business owners. There is no specific list of traits or things that you absolutely must do to be a good business owner. Yes, if we look close enough, we will be able to see some similarities in what they’re doing; some patterns may start to emerge. …

We seem to be fascinated by trying to make sure that we create, format, run, and grow our business (and our personal lives) the right way. It can be hard for us to grasp, but there really is no “one right way” that works for everyone. We can try to copy, duplicate, and emulate the success of someone else, but …

The best way to get our business where we want it is to make sure that we’re building a certain type of product that’s tailored for a specific audience. Then we can easily communicate what it is we’re doing and exactly who we’re doing it for. And once we figure out who it is we’re serving, we need to make …

It’s an old and overused adage, but people do business with people they know, like, and trust. For new business owners, we’ve got to remember that the process of developing trust is exactly that: a process. We need to know that this is not something that happens overnight. It takes a while to develop a quality relationship. With this in …

Success in business originates from the same place that supplies success in our personal lives: it’s all about how we deal with our problems. We’re all saddled with problems; it’s how we deal with those problems that dictates how our personal life (and our business life) is going to play out. There are no shortage of problems for us; wait …

As new business owners, we can’t help ourselves; we’re always trying to find out the secret to becoming successful. Unfortunately, there’s no shortage of opportunists who are happy to sell us those secrets, for a price. Over and over, we keep falling for their sales pitch. We’re hopelessly optimistic, praying that there really is one secret, that, once we know …

It’s hard not to get sucked into all the knowledge that we accumulate as a professional home inspector. We learn so much stuff, about so many different things, that we’re often able to pick out the smallest deficiency in the middle of the biggest, most complicated picture. But even more impressive than our amazing powers of deduction is our ability …

There are three problems that we often encounter when starting a new business. The first is that when we start, we’re really not that good at what we’re supposed to be doing. No matter what our job is, this is an inescapable fact. There’s no sense in pretending otherwise. We’re really not that good, and it’s doesn’t make sense for …