Most days I feel like I am not doing enough. Yesterday I did a walkthrough at a property we are selling and then walked a dog. The rest of the day there was nothing on my schedule. I fielded phone calls and talked with a couple potential clients but other than that my day was clear.
Tuesday and Thursday have become my days off as time has progressed, but I’ve never liked having days off, and as I was driving from the property to the dog walk I remembered when this was my life. Driving from house to house and walking dogs.
There are a lot of people that will tell you that the goal of owning a business is to be able to work on the business and not in the business, but every since I have achieved that goal I have been a little bored. If I were in the field a lot of the phone calls would be missed, the marketing wouldn’t get done, and the interviewing and hiring wouldn’t happen. But at the end of the day I’d rather walk a dog.
We also haven’t gotten a lot of phone calls for people looking for dog walking in the oceanfront area of Virginia Beach. We got one yesterday and then the person moving into a $500K condo told me my prices were too high. Unfortunately they are below the national average.
That has always been a problem in this business. We aren’t competing with only businesses. When hamburgers start creeping up over $15 there isn’t some guy with a grill on his front lawn selling them for $0.50.
I used to hate the dead leads. I’d get upset at advertising bringing in too many dead leads and I’d struggle to figure out how to refine it to get it to bring me only good leads, and in that effort I’d lose all leads. You have to get the dead leads to get the good ones, but it saps motivation.
That is where I am today. Ready to get to work, but not sure what I should be working on. Too much of my job is waiting for previously done work to pay dividends, and that can get real boring.
David Huzzard Writes 