FPR

Thanks for the comment, Michael the Mobile Guy. I appreciate your insight that businesses difficulties often mirror personal ones,change is always a challenge and we are reluctant to submit.

Yes indeed, user-256540, you're correct, and stay tuned, because this is precisely the direction we will follow in the next three chapters of the business plan discussion. Please do add your comments, as it is obvious you are knowledgeable and will have valuable advice. Thank you!

Thanks Ktkcad! point taken and error corrected.Blogs, unlike articles, don't go through an editing process, mixed blessing. Appreciate you reading and taking the time to write a comment.

Do check out David's latest book,The Considerate House, while not about business, it is a business book in that David shares the highly personal experience of a culminating opus, the project that sums up and expresses through the medium of concrete and lumber, one builder's lifetime in business, craft and personal development. Your business is more than money, it's you and the way you live.

Indeed, Gorilla Marketing, actually "Guerilla Marketing," by Jay Conrad Levinson has become a classic, and I have applied its methods promoting in my work. The word "guerilla" in the title is Spanish, and means "small war," referring to the tactics of guerilleros, or the efforts of the informal, small bands of fighters typical of an armed insurrection.

Yes indeed, figuring out how to have a business AND a life can be a formidable challenge. I should confess, that although I know the answer, I never managed to put it in practice. Namely, this requires two things: delegating and training. You have to be willing to give up some hands-on management to others, while making sure whomever you entrust is qualified and understands your business philosophy. My mistake was always hiring helpers instead of executives, a bookkeeper instead of a CFO, so even with many employees I had to get involved in running practically all the daily operations. For one, it's more difficult to hire qualified people during boom times because they come with a heavy price tag. It's easier now.

I do know several effective businesses owners personally, who live for, through, and just about consumed by their business. I will try to find a few that have a full, personal life supported by their enterprise, and ask, "How do you do it?

Lead once poisoned nearly 2 million kids a year in the late 1980s, now it’s down to about 450,000, still too many. It's not fear of fines that should motivate the remodeler to comply with lead safety rules any more than you should drive sober this season simply to avoid fines and incarceration. It's the human lives on the receiving end of lead paint dust and the victims of DUI--my son having been one last year. Drive safely this holiday, don't get behind the wheal with a buzz, or worst--and make it your New Year's resolution to never scrape, cut or sand windows and trim (and sometimes walls) in any home built before 1978 without using appropriate lead testing and dust mitigation strategies, even if a candidate like Newt won and scrapped the EPA entirely, the lead-safe approach is the right approach. Sober and lead safe, always.

I hope you will all weigh in, especially Penny, who comes to homebuilding with an MBA in her nail pouch. Later today I have a conversation scheduled with David Gerstel, I will ask him what has changed since the latest iteration of book in 2002, and how much has stayed the same. You will get eavesdrop on this parley very soon.
FPR

I the PATH Concept House I built in 2007 we were working with the EPA on indoor airquality. We won the 2008 Green Demonstration Home of the year with NHAB. We installed two fans in the attached garage, they exhausted the garage to the outdoors for about 20 minutes each time the garage doors opened.

Fernando Pages Ruiz

Let me think... something original, but truly reflective. I got it: WoW!

Love to see a special edition on nothing but this higher level of inspirational project. Beats the usual Niemen Marcus type ooooo... and ahhhhh.., definitely prefer the more uncontrollable, WoW! As in what? Or watt?

It's really nice to see your photo and read your words. I am glad you did not disappear. You're the best editor in cheese I even knew. And Brian has remained appropriately humble in stepping into your shoes, although I can already tell he's slowly making the job is own and the magazine will be better for letting the younger men take the helm, and even the oars.

Tough years here on the reader side of the table, really tough.

Would love to hear about your life AFH.

Fernando Pagés
402 610-0589