compete or die

Today I Will be installing the teak top. Yesterday I went to the job and prepared the site, when I was doing so I found a new hammer and pry bar up on the top of the cabinet behind the crown molding, left there by my employees when they did the initial install. A classic, leaving behind the tools up on top of the cabinet, it's not the first time I have found my own tools left on a job and I am sure it won't be the last.
My progress with the fantastic 12 is going well. I'm pretty confident that one of them Will turn into a job with-in a week. I am finding myself doing three times the estimating and prospecting that I was doing a year ago, and barely keeping the same production. But this new sluggish economy has some advantages. First it sort of cleans out the market place and gets rid of all those people who do shotty work, second it makes us all appreciate the work that we do have, and thirdly it has forced me to focus on prospecting. Prospecting has been something that I have been fortunate enough not had to do over the course of my ten years in business, we have always survived on word of mouth. But not anymore, the regular customers that I have had are no longer bringing in work. It is an important lesson to learn and I am thankful for it. The past few months have been financially very difficult with the lack of sales, and I feel like it is my fault for not having the work lined up. One thing that I have learned with all my prospecting lately is that there is plenty of work out there for me it is just harder to find and secure. I still think that there is more opportunity in business in the world than there has ever been, it is all just about finding it. May the best man win, this is America and with that comes the expression "compete or die". this is the society in which we dwell. That explains why we are always redefining what we do and trying to get better at it.