Anxiety is experiencing failure in advance. Seth Godin Why do we do it to ourselves? Why do we constantly undermine our efforts? Why do we keep beating ourselves up over something that may never happen? We likely won’t ever experience the horrible things we’re worried about. We may never have to worry about all those bad things happening. Things likely …

We hear about them all the time: the businesses that become an overnight success. We all want that: to be one of those overnight success stories. We want to start something new and be the talk of the town the very next day. Instant gratification. It’s how we do things now. At least that’s what we think. The reality is …

We all start our new ventures (be it personal or professional) as a failure. We don’t know what we’re doing. We don’t know how to do it, and we don’t know who we’re supposed to be doing it for. So we try to figure it out. Over and over again, we try new things. And over and over again, we …

The only lasting truth is change. Octavia E. Butler The market we work in is constantly changing. The businesses that can’t change with it fall by the wayside. We’ve got to keep up with the times or we risk becoming yesterday’s news. We’re now living in what some people call the Experience Economy. Simply stated, this means that the experience …

The longer we work at something, like our jobs, the more proficient we become. We learn all the ins and outs, and it’s often said that people like this could do their job in their sleep. We’re knowledgeable, and can spout off the jargon of our industry with the best of them. We speak the language of our business. But, …

A foundation is something, like a fact or an idea, upon which something is built. The sooner we develop a foundation for our business… The sooner we figure out who it is we’re supposed to be serving… The sooner we figure out what problems we’re trying to solve… The sooner we figure out exactly what it is that we’re offering …

We all want to be successful. It’s the reason we got into business in the first place. But success can have a downside too: it can cause us to lose our humility. When we start out in our new career, we’re often overwhelmed by a feeling of incompetence: we have no idea what we’re supposed to be doing. Once we …

It seems that much of our life is spent jockeying for position, trying to figure out who’s more important than the other person in our daily interactions; struggling to determine our status roles in each one of our relationships. We all like to think that things would be better if we were in charge of every situation. But the reality …

Many jobs in the new economy are jobs for creators. Creators are different from normal employees in the workplace. A teller gets paid for the number of hours that they’re at the bank, doing their job. Our job is different. We’re creating something out of thin air. Creating something for our clients. We don’t get paid an hourly wage, and …

Marketing our business can be a rough proposition. Throw in the fact that home inspectors are generally marketing to two different audiences, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. Well, maybe not disaster, but at least a big headache. Or maybe a pain in the backside. We’re trying to get the attention of the gatekeeper (the real estate agent) while …