Week one – Business meetings

Week one – Business meetings

I don’t typically blog about life because I don’t think anyone would be interested in most of what I have to say. I’m not trying to be self-deprecating or down on myself – I just know that there are a billion blogs out there and up to this point I haven’t felt the desire or need to add another unnecessary one – especially from someone like me who is just a normal working man. But, after I joined this small group of businessmen who happen to be super friendly and very smart at what they do, I decided to chronicle how a group of men can come together and form a tight bond that goes beyond entrepreneurial capitalism. If you think it is interesting, please feel free to comment.

By the way, my name is Joe and I work in the area of plumbing, heating and air conditioning. I started my business about twelve years ago and it has grown from a two-person team to a thirty-person crack team of skilled workers who drive around in trucks with our company name on it – constant advertisement that I think has made us into a force in our regional industry.

My best friend in the group is the head of a company that does really cool landscaping in Lubbock. His name is Josh and Josh is in the midst of growing his business by carefully hiring hard workers who also have some sense of creativity to add to their work. Josh’s company has just added holiday light installation to their biz and from what I hear they have some experts on the team who can do this skill masterfully. Anyway, Josh is a good guy who has used his entrepreneurialism to tackle an industry that has a lot of local competitors. I asked him the other day how he uses marketing to promote his lawn care company and he told me that beyond mail-outs and flyers, he has moved to web exposure. He has hired a professional web design company that also does Search Engine Optimization to get them to the top of the web rankings. His reasoning is that if he is the first company that appears as people search for a Lubbock landscaping company, there will be an organic trust. People (potential clients) tend to trust what Google ranks highly. I agree with his thinking and might just follow in his footsteps.

Anyway, as a group we usually meet for coffee at this shop inside of a local sports company. We all agree that caffeine is a necessary part of all of our businesses. During our times together we talk about what each individual leader is doing to increase business and become more profitable. Not everyone is able to speak on this every meeting, but the information that comes out is typically invaluable. Most of us ask pointed questions of the speaker about Returns on Investment and when it seems like it will work, most of us give it a shot and report on how it affected our businesses in the next meeting. So, right there it is worth the time.

So, that’s my introduction of the group. Who knows if and when I will blog about our group again but at least I did the hardest part of beginning.