It’s difficult to run a small business, and even more difficult to start one. New business owners often hope that they can hold on long enough to reach their personal goal line of success. They erroneously think that once they have become well established in their industry, the problems that they experienced when they first started the business will simply go away. Those start-up issues will disappear, and it will all be smooth sailing from here on out.
Unfortunately, that’s not reality. The fact is that the problems don’t simply go away once you become successful. Your competitors aren’t simply skipping their way through the day, impervious to all the issues that plague new inspectors.
The reality is that once you gain experience, you become better at identifying these problems before they even develop. This allows you to be able to take the actions necessary to defuse potential problem situations. You are (often) able to mitigate problems before they escalate.
It’s almost like having a superpower: the ability to see into the future. This superpower, a home inspector’s intuition, is something that can only be learned through experience.
Obviously, learning first-hand, through direct experiences, plays a major role in developing our superpower. Some of the best lessons that you will ever learn in your life will be the ones that caused you great personal pain, the ones where you actually played an integral part in the proceedings. Unfortunately, these are typically the lessons that hurt you, embarrass you, cost you money or some combination of the three. It is vitally important that you are always paying attention as life is teaching, so you don’t repeat the same mistakes again.
Another way to absorb these valuable life lessons is to learn from the mistakes of those who have failed before you. Learning from history, studying the mistakes of others and modifying your behavior in order to avoid making a similar mistake can be the most painless way to learn these business (and life) lessons.
Be sure to take advantage of all the resources available to you in this information age. Read books, listen to podcasts, subscribe to magazines and newsletters, attend CE classes and regulatory meetings, talk with and questions others in your industry. In today’s age of always on, always available information, there is no excuse for not bettering your knowledge on a regular basis.
So, be sure to put an honest effort into bettering yourself and developing your superpowers. But be sure to only use your superpowers for good, never evil!
I welcome all feedback (positive and negative) about my take on this subject. Please leave your comments below. Thank you!
Please Share with Friends!
I thoroughly enjoy creating these posts for you, the reader. Please take a moment to comment, letting me know what you think about the topic, and passing along any of your knowledge to our community. Please feel free to get in touch with me, letting me know if you have any specific topics that you would like to see covered on the site. And please feel free to share this content with your friends. The more people that we can help in their careers, the better!
Thanks, Joe