If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.
We posted this quote from the venerable Maya Angelou yesterday and it really speaks to me. Maybe it speaks to you, too. I mean, the quote can refer to anything in life – your marriage, politics, you name it – but let’s try to put it in the context of window cleaning.
What is it about window cleaning that you do not like? Are you a one-man show who wants to grow? Do you think you should be paid more per house, per hour, per window? Change it. Write down what you want on a piece of paper and then jot down everything you can think of that needs to be done in order to get there. As employees, we have a tendency to complain about the hours or our wage, but we never actually take the steps to start our own business. As business owners, we complain about all the paperwork and headaches that come with owning a business, but we never take it to the next step and hire an admin. Why is that? Why do so many people not take that first step? Are they scared? Too busy? Do you really want to go through your whole career, your whole life thinking, “If only I had just __________.”
Like the saying goes, be careful what you wish for. With our window cleaning business, we spent years working to get to the top, to be the best. Once we got there we realized that we hated it. A lot. So, we took action. We scaled back, raised the prices and kept the cream of the crop customers. We were happy because we changed it.
What would you change about your window cleaning career or your business? Why don’t you?