By the way, guys, I'm not normally this serious, but I am passionate about employers treating their employees well, and the customers even better. Here are some of the things we do in my company:
Appearance - no beards, long hair, earrings or visible tatoos. If you show up unshaven in the morning, don't expect me to send you out anywhere.
No smoking in the company vehicle or on the customers' property - inside or out. No cigarettes or chew in the shirt pocket, and no bad odors - body or breath.
My techs attend a mandatory training session every Friday, which is payday. If they show up one minute late, they wait until Monday to get their check. Why? Because if they show up late for the boss's meeting, they think they can show up late at the customer's house, and that is a no-no! Our training is focused on customer service. If that is not your focus, don't expect to grow and be profitable.
Our employees' company supplied vehicles must be kept clean and organized - inside and out. I supply them with 13 sets of uniforms, which are cleaned by our uniform service - Cintas. They must show up at the customer's door in a clean uniform, and therefore must keep at least one fresh set on their vehicle. My vehicles are no older than three years and we have them maintained by Enterprise Fleet Services. There is no rust on our vehicles, and we don't leak oil on customers' driveways.
When our techs go into a customer's home, they must first put on shoe covers (booties, floor savers - whatever you want to call them) even if the customer tells them not to bother.
We offer a 100% money back guarantee if the customer is not completely satisfied for ANY reason.
We pay our employees TOP DOLLAR for their work, and we have the best. We have a waiting list of people wanting to join our company, because word of mouth has gotten around that we are the best company to work for. Every invoice has a postage paid business reply card seeking feedback from our customers. In addition, we guarantee a two hour window in which our tech will show up, then call the customer when the tech is on the way. We are trying to figure out if we can reduce that window to just one hour. Our customer's time is important, and they shouldn't have to wait a long time for us to show up. Furthermore, we call the customer after the work is completed and ask them a few questions to make sure they were (hopefully) more than satisfied with the work we performed.
What has this meant to us? Next month will be our tenth anniversary in business. We started out with one truck and a few employees. We now have 36 trucks and almost 80 employees. Our profits went from negative (too embarrassing to admit) to well into six figures. I moved into a million dollar house on the water, bought my wife the boat she wanted, and in our garage is parked my wife's 2003 BMW 330ci, my 2003 Mercedes SL500, my wife's 2003 Harley Dyna Low Rider, and my 2004 Harley Heritage Softail Classic.
This might sound like I'm bragging, and you're right. But since you really don't know me, I'm not telling you this to impress you, I'm telling you this because I have experienced a success story I could not have imagined ten years ago; and if I can inspire just ONE of you guys to focus on operational excellence the way I did, then you have the opportunity to excel and reach any goal you have set for yourself. By the way, if your goal is not put in writing and referred to on at least a weekly basis, then you really don't have a goal.
One last thing. I did not succeed because I was lucky or because I worked hard (which I did.) I succeeded because I sought out people who were successful and asked their advice. I truly had more than one mentor, and I still have one right now. He is worth over $35 million, and I listen to every word he says. We communicate monthly, and he gives me an assignment every month. If I don't complete it fully and on time, he will no longer mentor me. And those assignments have nothing to do with technical stuff, they are assignments that force me to train my people properly, reward them for a job well done, design new marketing campaigns, and come up with better ways to serve customers. Damn good incentive for me to keep going and not miss an assignment!
This tome of mine was written from the heart. You won't see this again for a long, long time. But I could see in this thread that there are a lot of good souls out there with good advice to give to those who are struggling a bit. I wish the best to all of you.
