Fear. The word itself strikes (ahem) fear in our hearts. Fear is often defined as an important psychological response to a physical or emotional danger. For our ancestors, fear was incredibly important. It’s what kept them safe and allowed them to survive. They would be afraid of an erupting volcano, and head to safety. Hungry predators would strike fear in …
It Was Just a Mistake
Mistakes are inevitable. We’re all human. None of us are perfect, and that means that, sometimes, we’re going to make mistakes. In our jobs, in our business, in our personal lives. Mistakes are going to happen. Making mistakes is part of life. We learn our most important lessons from the errors that we’ve make along the way. There is no …
Is it Time For a Change?
No one likes to change. It’s difficult. It’s time-consuming. It makes us step outside our comfort zone, forces us to learn something new, to do something different, to take a chance that this might not turn out exactly like we want it to. But isn’t that the whole point of changing? In our state (Louisiana), we’ve been having a “lively” …
Processing Feedback
Running a small business can be hard. Most of us were not very good at it when we started, but (hopefully) we kept going anyway. We tried to do our best with the skills we had. We worked hard, made mistakes, and (hopefully) learned from those mistakes. Lather, rinse, repeat. It’s really amazing that we made it this far, isn’t …
Never (Having to) Say You’re Sorry
As I recently celebrated my 54th birthday, I was surprised to receive a gift that I had not been expecting. Responding to a knock at the front door, my daughter was shocked to find a sheriff’s deputy standing there, waiting to serve me with a lawsuit. While it wasn’t on my wish-list, that was one birthday surprise that will be …
6 Tactics to Increase Success – Part 2
Note: This article is part 2 of a 3 part series. Click here to read part 1. We each come to the home inspection business from different backgrounds, different thoughts and different ideals, but we all share one common goal: becoming a successful small business owner. It’s hard to start a successful small business in today’s dog-eat-dog environment. It seems …
Networking 101
Networking is a term that’s often thrown around in today’s interconnected business world. According to investopedia.com, networking is the exchange of information and ideas among people with a common profession or special interest, usually in an informal social setting, and often begins with a single point of common ground. We can easily reason that networking is something that we participate in, …
Lessons Learned
We all know that exercise is good for us. It helps to keep our bodies (and our minds) healthy as we age. Unfortunately, for many of us, making a conscious decision to exercise is difficult. It’s easy to reason that, instead of exercising, we could be working and making money, or relaxing from all the work we’ve already done (and …
Don’t Be Afraid to Try, Try Again
Growth should be the overriding goal of our business. Without (at least some) continued growth, our businesses will stagnate and die. We will be passed up by all our competitors that are growing and expanding the reach of their businesses. Without growth, without trying new things and making advancements in our knowledge and our methods, we fall behind everyone else. …
The Four-Letter Word
Code. It’s considered a “four-letter word” by some home inspectors, and the reason why we have building codes is often misunderstood. Code refers to the set of rules that specify the standards intended to (hopefully) guide the contractors who built the structure that you are now inspecting. The main purpose of codes is to provide construction guidelines that help to …