When starting a new business, you’ve got plenty of things to worry about. There are lots of technical details to work out, from getting your tax id number to starting a bank account. But, often the most difficult thing to tackle is how to actually get the creative part going. Figuring out what you’re going to do, how you’re going …
Emotional Rescue. Caring About Your Clients Can Work Miracles
Think about the last time you shared a dinner with friends at a nice restaurant. Was it an enjoyable experience? Can you remember all the details? How carefully was the food presented? How professional was the service? How clean and comfortable was the restaurant? Was the noise level acceptable, enhancing the meal? Overall, did you have a pleasant experience, and …
Wiggle Room
Give the people what they want. It’s an often-repeated business mantra. It seems like a simple-enough way to run a successful business. Find out what your client is looking for and give it to them. You would think that every businessperson already knows that this is the key to running a business. But you’d be wrong. Just by doing this …
A Shock to the System. How Starting a New Business Can Drive You Crazy
Starting a new business can be a shock to your system. We all think that we’re ready for this new adventure. We’ve read some books, talked to some experts and watched some YouTube videos; how difficult could it be? After all, if (insert name of a despised competitor here) can do it, it must be really simple. The reality is …
How to Fail Faster
Everyone starts out their new business with certain goals. Maybe they want to become successful enough to quit their current job. Maybe they want to make enough money to pay for their family vacation, a new vehicle or their children’s college tuition. Or maybe they are saving for their eventual retirement. Regardless of their long term goals, most business owners …
Jumping Off a Cliff
Unless you have completely given up all hope, which unfortunately happens to some of us, we are all driven to succeed in our lives and in our businesses. And that drive for success pushes us to make improvements in our processes. We usually make those improvements in small, incremental steps. We study the data, looking to see what has served …
Embracing the Challenge of Constant Marketing (part 2)
Note: This post is the second of a two-part article. Click here to read part one. I hope that everyone is doing well and prospering in their business. In the second half of this article, I wanted to expand on the idea of Constant Marketing, and the fact that every move you make has an effect on your business. In part …
Embracing the Challenge of Constant Marketing (part 1)
Depending on how we choose to live, our life may be calm and even-keeled, with little variation in our daily routine, or it may be filled with challenges: new decisions and experiences popping up at every turn. One of the good things about living in an advanced country is that (typically) we get to choose the path we desire: calm …
Late To the Party
I have been extremely fortunate to find myself in a very unique position in the home inspection industry. I was lucky enough to get in on the ground floor of a multi-inspector firm with my friends and business partners. I started doing inspections, growing my business to 40 inspections a month, and then hiring and training my replacement for those …
You Like Me, You Really Like Me!
I hope that today’s post finds everyone happy and healthy. Today’s title is a misquote of a line from Sally Field’s Oscar acceptance speech for Best Actress in her role in the 1985 movie “Places in the Heart.” Obviously this reference is way too old for the majority of readers to be familiar with, but the phrase touches on …