If you found a book with the names and phone numbers of everyone who was getting ready to buy a house this week, would it suddenly turn your home inspection business around? If you phoned each person and told them that you’d found their information and wanted to provide them a service, would that make them any more likely to …

It’s easy to believe that we’re the only one. The only one who’s struggling. The only one who’s not sure they made the right decision. The only one who’s not feeling it today. The only one who’s doubting their abilities. The only one who thinks they’re in over their head. It’s easy to get stuck in this mindset, especially if …

All too often in our lives, we’re stubbornly rigid in our thinking. We force the binary choice: this or that. If we really took some time to think about our options, weighing the pros and cons and having a lively debate (within our own consciousness) about an important issue, we may find that there’s a third option to be considered. …

Do something today to make your offering better. It may not work. It may fall on deaf ears. It may really end up stinking. But at least you tried. Then get up and try again tomorrow. Keep trying, over and over again, until eventually you hit on something good. It’s not that we’re short on ideas to make what we …

When something happens, it’s human nature to either jump all over it as quickly as possible or to ignore it and pretend it never happened. And in our businesses, either one of these “normal” responses is going to get us into trouble. Never ignore a problem, as the odds are that it’s going to get bigger and bigger until it …

If everyone knows what’s going to happen before it happens, we’re more likely to be happy with the outcome. If our customers know exactly what it is they’re getting… If we know precisely what’s expected of us… If there’s no confusion about the fee that’s going to be charged… If everyone involved in the process is certain about the specifics: …

All too often, we get mad at other people for things that are entirely our fault. No one likes to accept responsibility; it’s hard, it’s embarrassing, and it means that we’ve failed to meet our goals. It’s much easier to try to blame it on someone else. Like when we accidently drop an expensive steak on the floor and the …

Business owners will do anything for attention. Attention, we’re told, builds brands. The more eyes we can get on our business, the more business we’ll have. Look at me, will you! But there’s a fine line that we’ve got to be aware of; a threshold that we don’t want to cross. We don’t want to be seen as selling out …

Do we have any idea how much time we waste each day? Looking at social media. Browsing the web. Checking our emails. Flipping the channels. Scanning our messages. Watching another cat video… Hours and hours each day. Depending on which study we look at, we waste about 2-3 hours every day doing things that don’t help our bottom line. Figuring …

Too much information. It’s all around us. We can never catch up. Too much to see on social media. Too many series to ever watch. Too much email, too many messages, and countless voicemails in our inbox. It’s all just too much. So, what can we do? We can only do what we can do. Figure out exactly what must …