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.

Dave