It’s hard to admit when we’ve make a mistake. We often think that by doing so, we’re admitting that we’re not good enough, not smart enough, or not strong enough. And we couldn’t be more wrong. In Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink & Leif Babin, the authors explain “Taking ownership for mistakes and …

It’s easy to be average. Everyone’s doing it (or at least a whole lot of, well, average people). Do just a little bit more than what’s required, and there you are: average. It’s not that difficult. You don’t have to try too hard. It doesn’t take much extra effort. Now we’re just like everyone else. Average. Regular. Mediocre. Run of …

Knowledge is power. Attributed to Sir Francis Bacon I don’t read my own reviews… I read other people’s reviews, though. Kevin Bacon Keeping better records is the key to keeping our business. Knowing where our business is coming from allows us to make better decisions regarding where to invest our marketing dollars. It doesn’t make any sense to spend money …

Marketing. Rarely is it someone’s favorite thing about running a business, but it’s a necessary evil if we’re to run a successful one. To make matters even worse, marketing isn’t really there to book us any business. Marketing has one primary goal: to create an awareness of our company. It’s there to help us develop a relationship with our potential …

Looking back at it now, it’s simply amazing that I was able to get my business off the ground. Everything is stacked against us when we first start out. We have no idea what we’re doing, how we’re supposed to do it, or who we’re doing it for. When we’re reminiscing many years later, with all that uncertainty far behind …

For years, we all threw away our trash without even thinking about where it went. The world’s a big place, we reasoned; it’ll go somewhere else. Now we’re almost completely covered in trash. Plastic everywhere, washing up on the shores, ending up inside the things we eat, ending up inside us. We forget that it’s really a small world, and …

We all ask questions. It’s one of the main ways that humans exchange information with each other, and our customers are no different. (And yes, our customers are human.) For better or worse, we’ve got to be able to answer our clients’ questions. It’s one of the requirements to running a successful business. And the sooner we know what questions …

Hundreds of dollars. That’s how much money most of our clients are paying us to do their home inspection. And most of them are never going to even read their inspection report. Sure seems like a waste. A waste of money (for them) and a wasted opportunity (for us). We lose a chance to inform them, helping them understand what’s …

24 hours. That’s it. We’ve all got the same amount of time in a day. How we choose to allocate that time is what’s different about us, as we all have our own priorities. While countless studies and research shows us that it’s always best to have balance in our lives, we’re the ones who ultimately decide where our focus …

Growing up, we all probably had something with wheels that we rode around the neighborhood, likely either a bike, a scooter, or a skateboard. It took effort to make it move, and most of the time we were the ones providing the power to get from point A to point B, pushing or pedaling our way around town. Sometimes we …