Author: Gary

What do you know how to do?   What do you enjoy doing and wish you could do exclusively to meet your success goals?  Make note, write it down and then think for a few minutes how great that would feel.  Others and your thinking may have devalued that thing you would do, the one thing that you enjoy doing the most.

Change that thinking, start believing what you do has value.  Maybe not to everyone but does that matter?  Do you need everyone to understand the value you bring in the work you do?  That could be an impossible goal, and impossible goals die hard.

There would never have been an Aston Martin, a Bugatti, the Ferrari, a Lamborghini or even a Voltswagon if the creators of those cars devalued their ideas based on others lack of value thinking.  Those creators knew it would have great value for someone.  It is very likely that what you do has value too.

How much market share do you need to make it a viable business?  When I asked myself this question and realized how few clients I would need each month, it was a wow feeling.  You too may have a wow moment when you understand how easy it could be if you would do it.

The key to your success is to find a way or ways for those who will see great value in your product or service to do so.

You must know that What You Do Has Value.

Life is short, and today is a blink of the eye.  Narrow the focus on what you want to achieve.  That’s the best way to get it done.

Know what you want to achieve.  The world of YouTube, television, and mixed content will take you so many directions your efforts will be like dust scattered in the wind.   Narrow your focus.

Eliminate outrageous goals that eat away your precious hours.  Clarify your goals and line them with the life you want to live.  Clean out your mind’s closet, get rid of the clutter.

Hone in on the things you need to do to draw close to your life’s goals.  Push away all others and say no to misguided opportunities.  The most significant accomplishments are usually achieved by those who practice their trade, craft, or sport.

Narrow your focus!

In our quest to build the best roofs we need leaders who get it, people who question assumptions instead of following them.  The dramatic growth in and near Austin has created new demand, and the need to push the front edge of what’s possible within our industry to accommodate the demanding request of a more discriminating clientele.

With every project, we believe in doing the right thing the right way and never stop improving.  One of the ways we do this is to solve complex constructability challenges through our design/build method of approaching roofing.  This approach allows us to address issues and provide solutions to them as a part of our original bid process.

Another way we get it right is by hiring purpose driven artisans.  Our roofs happen to be on some of Austin and the surrounding area’s most distinctive homes.  We are in search of individuals who are thirsty for a challenge.  People who gain satisfaction from solving puzzles on a daily basis.  Technicians who are self-motivated and have the drive to be the best.

Integrity / Collaboration / Craft

We are unique in the roofing industry.  We are a small business serving a sophisticated and particular clientele who have a taste for perfection and appreciate the art of fine craftsmanship.

Our specialty is the architectural design of residential roofs, engineered and built to last.  What we offer is essential to lifestyle, a choice of high-quality roofing, the best-built roofs, from the most beautiful & durable roofing materials in the world.

Out of the box.  What does it mean?  When we take something out of the box, it no longer has borders.  Thinking out of the box means thinking without restrictions.

As a business owner, it’s easy to restrict our thinking based on our perception and understanding and the way we learned to do things.  In other words, we stay in the box.  It’s natural, and it’s safe, but it is not productive.

The area I’m amazed by the most that so many business owners including myself restrict their business growth is in marketing.  We do this because it’s the way others do it and we do it by listening to those who say they can help build a website or help with SEO and may even write content for us but look at the results.  The online presence for 95% of small businesses does not represent those businesses well at all.

It’s time for us to get out, break the borders of the box and move on.  It’s more of a scam than marketing. It’s not that difficult to build an enjoyable online shopping experience, and no one can create content better than those who know what they do and how they do it.

Take a look for yourself.  How do you look when people do a Google Search and find your business?  Be careful not to get back in the box.  Don’t compare your business with your competition.  Your competition is not much better, there in the same box.  That box full of hype, hot air, and poorly written content is the box we need to escape.

Give it a try you have nothing to lose and much to gain.  Most will experience a small amount of decline for a month or two, but if you do it well and continue to move it forward, your business could double in six months.

Get prepared.  Get Out of the Box.

The best way to grow a business is to provide a product or service to the smallest possible audience.  An audience who appreciates something unique, outstanding things.

Do something so remarkable that what you do gets people talking.

Find the Smallest Possible Audience and Create a product or service to fulfill a need they didn’t even know they had.

Attracting the right people when you own a small business is no doubt the most challenging task, so how is it possible to do it?

Get creative.  Be different.  Start with who you want or need to attract.  What attributes should they have?  Then take time and meet with people of that quality, people who have those abilities, maybe people who already have jobs for other companies who fit the description and ask, what would attract you to our company?

They may not be the ones you’re looking for, but the answers they give are vital to building an outstanding company by understanding their needs.  These meetings may be something you have to do over lunch or more creative ways to have enough time to meet and discuss this subject well enough to find the answers.  These answers are probably not something they have clearly in mind so it may take considerable discussion and even follow-ups to extract usable responses.

The next step is to clarify what you have or can offer that will attract beyond the answers outsiders could imagine.  What part of daily work activities can be enhanced to entice people to come your way?  Look around at the work you provide, is it attractive?  Would you want to work for you?

If it’s fabrication, how impressive are your facilities?  Can they be improved?  If it’s construction, what projects and job-site conditions do you provide for your employees?  If it’s a restaurant, what working atmosphere do you foster to attract the right people?

Whatever we do, we must ask ourselves, what changes can be made to attract the people we need to build our businesses.  Except for those at the bottom, desperation to just work for pay no longer exists.

It’s time to stop filling a slot and start Building A Team!

Have you ever attempted to learn something new, a new language, to play guitar, learn a new trade, or get physically in shape?  If so, you know how at first the progress feels incredibly slow.  It’s easy to think what’s the use and give up but it’s essential to stay the course with whatever it is because quitting is not the habit you will want to learn.  Repeating the pattern of not staying the course creates a bad habit.

The practice of staying to course is one of the most important lessons we can learn.  Now I will say, it should be something that’s worth your time invested and if you started down a road that’s not something you want to pursue, of course, don’t go there but don’t quit.  Get a good handle on why you don’t want to continue, make sure it’s not just giving up then pivot, change directions and use that time to do something else, something more meaningful and stay the course by putting in the effort and using your time more wisely.

Change is not easy.  Change always has its price, but change is one of the most important and constant musts in life.

Stay the Course!

An opportunity now exists to have a living website.  Never before has it been so easy to create and develop a website yourself.

It’s evident that the primary thing missing from most small business websites is high-quality content.  If Content is King as stated by Bill Gates years ago and repeated by thousands of website gurus sense then, why is content so weak on most websites?

The answer is simple; you can not reach for answers from the outside to explain the inner workings of your business today.  Think about it, let’s say you’re an expert fly fisherman, can you imagine reading an article about fly fishing from someone who’s never been fishing?  That’s what most content today is, articles written by people who don’t know.  They don’t visit your place of business; they don’t interview you or your staff by phone, not even an email is sent your way to help clarify your company story.  Instead, old content is rehashed from various companies in your industry and “keywords” are taken, often out of context, put into vague paragraphs that rarely sound good and never sound right or like your business.

Many of you who are reading this know your website content is not very good.  The wording is all wrong the pictures don’t match the words, and it reads like the script of a play that no one would sit through.  But what can we do about it, we’re already so busy we can’t see straight.  The thought comes forward; if I had an unlimited budget, I could hire a better service to do this for me.  But that thought has been lingering for years, and you’re still stuck with that pathetic website.

Take action and start a Living Website.  It’s so easy to learn to use WordPress, the number one website builder today, so get started and create a website to build your business, the business you know and the business you dreamed.

Imagine updating your website this week with a new product, service or project your team has just completed or made available.  Your living website can lift your business above the average in a short time.  For the first time, you and your customers can visit your website and they for the first time will see your store for what it is.  A colorful place to pick the things they want, a place they tell others about and a place they revisit again and again.

A Living Website?  Why Not?