I can always fall back on the point that entropy is always at work on my clients houses and eventually they will have to get fixed, one way or another!

I am working on building up a Twitter following myself and my wife (in the real estate and mortgage biz) is playing with hers as well. Not sure just how useful it is, but it is a great place to vent the random thoughts in your head.

The only wall I ever hit with them is occasionally they will give me a error that my posting limit was exceeded. I usually post once a day though, and over the long haul it has gotten me more business than my Verizon Yellow Pages at ever will (which cost me $2800 and has returned no business - 0!)

Excellent tool, I will have to be trying that out today!

Personally I think everyone should have at least one domain of their own that they run their email through. That way if you move from one ISP to another you never have to worry about notifying everyone that you have a new address.

Plus, I have never had any respect for businesses that use Yahoo or Gmail accounts for their main addresses. Seems just a little too cheesy.

Blogging is definitely a bigger part of the Internet these days. Just talking about business in general will even go a long way towards getting traffic. What never ceases to amaze me is some of the search terms that people find my pages with.

Making the decision to really throw myself into making my business a success is probably the biggest thing.

Networking has become a big part of my life now, and it shows.

Dropping consistent ads on Craigslist has turned out to be a hit for me.

Lastly is hiring crew to get work done so I can focus more on marketing. I still am on the job site, but I can breath a little more now and think farther ahead.

LOL... People....

I have a solution for people like this. I look them squarely in the eye and say "Of course we can do that, and it will cost you this...." after they gulp I follow up with "or we can do it this way and it will cost you half of that." Leaving in of course a substantial PITA fee.

It amazes me how many people forget to put in any contact information. I just saw a print ad in a national builders magazine from a smaller company, that looked interesting, but had no contact info at all! So much for finding out more about them.

As an aside, I actually now don't do business with companies online unless I can find their phone number and how you can unsubscribe easily!

Ummm... Finishing a job on schedule, on budget, getting paid and paying all my bills.

That makes me VERY happy!

It amazes me how many scam artists are out there promising #1 placement. Must be going for #1 in long tailed, misspelled keywords.

I usually figure that they are pretty much all crooks, at least the ones that are spamming my inbox!

Wow... That is a great deal! In case anyone doesn't know, getting head shots done professionally isn't cheap, and having poorly designed business cards is a great way to lose business.

If you haven't had your cards professionally put together before, then I highly recommend you take advantage of this offer!

All I would like to see is the death of the old Yellow Page books that I never see get used.

I do know that services like Echo Sign (http://www.echosign.com/)are going to make life a little better by minimizing paper used and fuel burned running around to get signatures!

One thing people forget that in any market there is money to be made, it is simply a matter of finding it. In my case, business is looking up.

People are staying in their homes instead of moving, which means more painting and remodeling work for me! And even the people that are selling are trying to make their homes look as nice as possible to get top dollar.

It is all a matter of looking for where the business is and tapping into it.

I have to admit just a few years ago, I really hated talking to people and never networked. Now I am working to do it habitually, and as you say, being prepared is essential. I have cursed myself for not having 'elevator speeches' on hand several times when I was in a new group of people.

Good article, I am particularly interested in the EchoSign thing. Might make life easier for getting contracts signed around on my painting gigs.

Great advice, our lives are much too short and precious to be spent on people that aren't adding to our success and happiness.

Running a painting and remodeling company I often times run across people that want too much for too little and of course their emergency is our problem. Needless to say, I have turned down more that a few jobs that wouldn't have been worth my time either because of price, or because of the clients themselves.

If we focus on what we love to do, and doing it with people we like, all our lives will run much more smoothly!

Love to be able to make it to this one! That being said I will be on a job site all day. Sounds like a lot of fun.

Great tips! One thing I get on my wife that is a real estate agent about is letting her phone interrupt her constantly. When you are doing something, stay focused on just that until it is done!

Oh BOTHER! Now you just reminded me that clearing out all the old clothes that don't fit was on my list of things to do this weekend!