For many service businesses, marketing is broken. Service business owners should be in the business of marketing, but they often barely give their marketing enough thought. They should be strategic about their marketing, but, instead, they spend more time putting out staffing fires or dealing with less important issues.

Each day, my goal is to help owners. I do this by speaking to audiences and publishing as many articles as possible to protect them from making the same costly mistakes we did — even though my team was one of the lucky ones that cashed out and successfully passed the baton to our fourth-generation management team.

When a promise is made, the path starts out and you have a choice. Is your customer going to wander down the desperately hoped-for path of relaxation and ease, or are they headed for a white-knuckle roller coaster ride? 

Those who have a passion for continual improvement find answers to their problems, ongoing success, and grow their businesses. Those who are satisfied with their current levels of knowledge, expertise, and performance limit themselves, their future and the people they’re leading.

How does one deliver consistency and personality? The answer lies in mastery. Only when we become an expert of a sales and service system do we find true freedom to be ourselves. 

Your company, branch, or department will achieve much more if you lead that group rather than act as its boss. A great New Year’s resolution would be to resolve to be a leader and not a boss.

You’ve heard the saying, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” Well, I say, “Even if you do know what road to be on; if you’re standing still, you’re going to get run over.”

So, despite all the techie methods for communicating and staying in touch with customers and vendors, the old-fashioned pressing of the flesh is still the best way to network, develop relationships, build up existing relationships, and learn a lot, all in one setting.

Just like being thankful should be more important than Black Friday, planning for the New Year should be much more important to you than partying on New Year’s Eve. Happy holidays, everyone!

You’ve taken a lot of risks and worked very hard to get to where you are today — make sure your relationship with your supplier is working for you. I’ve seen many companies that have gone from the red to the black simply by making sure they were fully leveraging their relationship with their suppliers, or by changing suppliers for a much better value proposition.