People stay where they grow. Seth Godin As I was driving home from an inspection the other day, I heard this quote in a podcast featuring marketing guru Seth Godin. During the conversation, the host asked Seth his opinion on the current situation in employment, where it seems almost impossible for businesses to retain employees. While managing employees is a …
How Are We Perceived?
Don’t fight perceptions with facts. Perceptions will always win. Authors Al Ries & Jack Trout, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind Perceptions. While defined as a belief or opinion based on how things seem, for our purposes, perceptions can be described as how our clients (and potential clients) view us and our company. It’s the end result of the image …
Why We Should Keep Asking
Starting up any new small business is a difficult task, and running a home inspection company is no exception. Far too often, people trying to get a new business off the ground end up going under. They eventually close their business, the very thing they believed was going to rescue them from a life of mediocrity. They tried their hardest, …
High Dollar Clients
When we finally get the call, from that heavy hitter agent we’ve been hoping to get, things start to get a little bit crazy. We pay more attention to the details, making sure that we’ve got all the information we need to get the inspection scheduled. We double-check things the night before, verifying that we’re primed and ready to go. …
Buffet, Munger, and Home Inspections
It is intriguing, the various places we can find inspiration, even when we’re not searching for it. I was recently reading a book detailing the lessons put forth by Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger at 30 years of the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meetings and discovered that their wealth of advice is applicable not only to investors but inspectors as …
I Want It Now
In today’s digital, interconnected, always on, instant gratification society, we are all pushed to look for immediate results. We’re wired for short-term benefits. We want it all and we want it now. This can pose a significant problem when we’re striving to achieve something that’s more akin to a long-term goal. Becoming a successful home inspector is not something that …
That Is Something
Even though other people may try and convince us otherwise, we are all very good at something. It may not be exactly what we think we need most to succeed in our business, but it’s something. With enough imagination, its quite possible that we can use that something to our advantage. It only takes one thing for us to stand …
Changing Fear
Change. It’s all around us. Permeating everything in our modern world. Fate favors those who are able to keep up with the changing times. Yet, change is uncomfortable. Wouldn’t it be so much easier if we just kept doing things the same way? We wouldn’t have to learn new things. We wouldn’t have to modify our behavior. We wouldn’t have …
Calling Us Bad Names
As professional home inspectors, our job is to let buyers know what’s wrong with the home they’re considering buying, as well as what might go wrong in the not-too-distant future. The very nature of our job, to be the bearer of bad news, puts us in a precarious position. If a purchase agreement falls apart after the buyers hear the …
A Bird in the Hand
We spend a lot of time marketing our business. AdWords, social posts, videos, cards, brochures, promotional events, sponsorships; you name it, we’re trying it. We spend every bit of our time and resources trying to get another client through the door. Top of the funnel, they call it. If we look at our business prospects in terms of a funnel, …