ICS October2010 : Page 10

An Offline Look at What’s Happening Online ICS eMedia For more go to www.icsmag.com Things Are Unfair Alright… In Our Favor! The ICSmag.com Hopefully by now you have come to realize that life can have its surprises and sometimes seem downright unfair. Being in the carpet cleaning / restoration industry, you might have already come to the conclusion that our industry has a number of elements to it that are ridiculously unfair. Do you know how much training it takes to be a licensed electrician, plumber,HVACserviceman? A lot! There was a young man at our church who was part of a two-year program to be trained asa HVACservice tech. He was going to school for three hours a day for well over a year and guess what? A carpet cleaning technician can charge about the same per hour as someone in his industry, $125 per hour. — From the Web Exclusive Feature “Life is Not Fair” by Dave DeBlander Why Blog? Here’sWhy Your clients are online. Many of them search the Internet to find a cleaning company instead of picking up the old Yellow Pages. Blogging is an important way to make sure it’s your company they connect with. Google absolutely loves blogs, forums, and anything else with constantly updated information. The reason behind this is because Google won’t stay the top dog in search engines if they don’t keep current information. When you search Google, you’re looking for the latest information on the keywords you’ve typed, right? That’s why Google is always looking for fresh, new content. And they know blogs are one of the best ways to get this fresh content. Google is constantly checking content on blogs with their little search engine robots. — From the Web Exclusive Feature “Blogging is Easy InternetMarketing” by John Braun Avoid Getting Taken For a Ride I was lucky enough years ago when I moved to Phoenix to tour George Brazil’s amazing shop. Even better was spending time talking to George about business. Our conversation over lunch focused on the need for powerful repeatable systems for running a company. And we both agreed that the cornerstone is having written policies and procedures. Then George leaned in and said, “Policies and procedures are great. But…don’t expect what you’re unwilling to inspect.” The message was clear. If you want to think your team is performing the right way, don’t check on them because you may not like what you see and hear. — Al Levi, “Power of Riding Along” on the ICS Blog Spot, 9/5/2010 10 Cleaning Specialist | October 2010 Web Poll: The ongoing dispute over the Carpet and Rug Institute’s Seal of Approval Program is: 10% Of great interest and concern to me 40% An issue I pay some attention to 20% Of little to no interest to me 30% What’s the Seal of Approval Program? An Up Close Look at the Last week I drove to Nashville f lle for the r the birth of my first grandchild. While there I visited an area next to the Cumberland River, which flooded on May 2, killing 30 people and causing at $1 billion in damage. As Newsweek Magazine pointed out, this was perhaps one of the most underreported disasters in recent U.S. history. Because the flood overlapped with the Gulf Coast oil spill and the Times Square bombing attempt, it was largely ignored. Another reason you might not have heard much about his flood is that it took place in Tennessee, which, as my Nashville-based cousin reminded me, is called The Volunteer State. According to her and my daughter and son-in-law, the residents of Nashville responded with incredible self-reliance and support for each other. — Tim Fausch, “Floods of Opportunity for Construction Pros” on the ICS Blog Spot, 8/13/2010 by John Braun

ICS eMedia

An Offline Look at What’s Happening Online Are Unfair Alright… In Our Favor! Hopefully by now you have come to realize that life can have its surprises and sometimes seem downright unfair. Being in the carpet cleaning / restoration industry, you might have already come to the conclusion that our industry has a number of elements to it that are ridiculously unfair. Do you know how much training it takes to be a licensed electrician, plumber, HVAC serviceman? A lot! There was a young man at our church who was part of a two-year program to be trained as a HVAC service tech. He was going to school for three hours a day for well over a year and guess what? A carpet cleaning technician can charge about the same per hour as someone in his industry, $125 per hour. — From the Web Exclusive Feature “Life is Not Fair” by Dave DeBlander Why Blog? Here’s Why Your clients are online. Many of them search the Internet to find a cleaning company instead of picking up the old Yellow Pages. Blogging is an important way to make sure it’s your company they connect with. Google absolutely loves blogs, forums, and anything else with constantly updated information. The reason behind this is because Google won’t stay the top dog in search engines if they don’t keep current information. When you search Google, you’re looking for the latest information on the keywords you’ve typed, right? That’s why Google is always looking for fresh, new content. And they know blogs are one of the best ways to get this fresh content. Google is constantly checking content on blogs with their little search engine robots. — From the Web Exclusive Feature “Blogging is Easy Internet Marketing” by John Braun Avoid Getting Taken For a Ride I was lucky enough years ago when I moved to Phoenix to tour George Brazil’s amazing shop. Even better was spending time talking to George about business. Our conversation over lunch focused on the need for powerful repeatable systems for running a company. And we both agreed that the cornerstone is having written policies and procedures. Then George leaned in and said, “Policies and procedures are great. But…don’t expect what you’re unwilling to inspect.” The message was clear. If you want to think your team is performing the right way, don’t check on them because you may not like what you see and hear. — Al Levi, “Power of Riding Along” on the ICS Blog Spot, 9/5/2010

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