Note: This article is part 3 of a 3 part series. Click here to read part 1. Every hour of every day, someone new decides they would like to be a professional home inspector. The lure of working for yourself, running your own business, controlling your schedule and being your own boss can be hard to resist. While different people …
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 …
6 Tactics to Increase Success
While we all come into the inspection business with different goals (making more money, becoming our own boss, having more control over our schedule, etc.), the overriding goal of everyone is to be successful. Success in the home inspection industry is dependent on many factors. Some of these elements, like the quality of the homes in our area, are (for …
Is This Really Working?
It’s often said that in order for someone to have success in their business, they must know two important things. They must know who their target audience is (who their work is for) and what it is they’re providing to their target audience (what their work is doing for their clients). Equally important, but often overlooked, is figuring out if …
Imitation and Mediocrity
It’s kind of funny, if we stop and think about it, but most people are surprised when they find out how hard it is to break into the world of small business. Common sense should tell us that. I guess that it’s the blinders that we all come into the business with that do it, but we would think that …
The Value of Providing Value
While I’m certainly not an attorney, it’s fairly easy for the average person to learn almost everything they need to know about the law from a small amount of quality internet research. While doing a bit of investigation to see if there were any ways that I could improve my current home inspection contract, I came across a site where …
Am I Doing My Job or Am I Working?
It can be said that what we do for a living can be described in two different ways: what our job is and the work that we do. While those two words can, and often are, used interchangeably, that doesn’t mean they represent the exact same thing. Being a home inspector may be our job, we identify deficiencies and potential …
That’s Just How It Works
Humans are wired for comfort. Almost everyone enjoys it when things in their life are predictable, when what’s going on around us follows a well-worn path. That’s not to say that we don’t enjoy the occasional surprise, but we’re quite content when our lives play out exactly like we expect. There’s comfort in familiarity. We know what’s going to happen …
Working on Your People Skills
Think about the last time you spent an evening at a restaurant with some good friends. Was it an enjoyable experience? Can you remember all the details? How nicely 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 will you …
Can We Live With Constant Change?
Unless you’re brand new at this small business thing (and if you are, good luck to you), we’ve all made it through the dreaded start-up phase. We’ve soldiered on, taken our lumps, run the gauntlet, learned our lessons and come out of the other end. We mourn for those who weren’t as lucky as us; the 75% of start-ups that …