Just took a look at my stats for July over June. Just better than DOUBLE!!!!! Thanks everyone, I enjoy writing on here and I’m glad you guys take time to stop by and give it a little read!!!!
AND I just looked at the stats for our website. There’s easily 5 times more visitors to the blog than there are to the website. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad, but I like it!!!
My buddy Doug Burns at the Power of Two – Coaching sent this over to cool me off. I thought everyone would appreciated it!!!
Your Weather: rain in gp – The Weather Network
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I don’t smoke. I used to smoke all through high-school. At the end of grade 12, it was about a pack a day. That’s expensive, and what lead me to quit was that I got a pretty horrific cough and I was scarred (literally) into seeking out the patch. Quitting was TOUGH! But I haven’t smoked in over 10 years.
One of the things that I most dislike about smoking is the littering that’s associated with it. How often does the person in front of you in traffic throw his butt out the window? OFTEN! Why? Because they know their cigarette butts are gross? Because they don’t want them in their car? They don’t want to empty the ashtray? Well… I don’t want them on my street! Good people that wouldn’t litter under normal circumstances feel compelled to chuck butts out of car windows. You don’t unwrap your sandwich and throw that on the ground. You don’t just hurl pop cans into the road. The theory behind and the physical act are one and the same, why for cigarette butts is it any different? Why? STOP IT!
Driving to work this morning, and the impetus of this post, was that I saw a woman in the vestibule of her building finishing a cigarette. She walked 2 meters towards the road and threw the butt into the street. Well, Miss, IT’S STILL LITTERING! I guess she did it because next to the door it’s garbage and she doesn’t want to mess up the entrance way. Well…. Nothing has changed except the location of said detritus.
It obviously bothers me a bit and because of that I started poking about the net this morning and responding to blog posts and one link lead to another, and another, and then I found this site called “How Can I Reuse This” and the topic of cigarette butts. They didn’t really have very many good suggestions, but they did come up with “fabric” because “fibre is fibre”. Still, does anyone have any real suggestions? I couldn’t begin to guess how they could be recycled, but maybe you all have some ideas.
Anything? Anything at all? I know what we shouldn’t be doing with them: throwing them into the street!!
Jodi @ Breathing Space Consulting likes us!!! Not that it surprises me 
but I sure do like hearing it!!!
Hi Thomas,
I just wanted to say thank you to you. Your guys did a great job at my clients on Wednesday.
They were very helpful, nice and accommodating.
Jodi
Breathing Space Consulting 604.805.4902
I don’t know. I’m a signatory to the Twitter craze, but I’ve yet to get my groove on with it. I know I like to follow Lance Armstrong, but for business… ?
I’m open to new suggestions though should anyone have them. Here’s an articl by http://www.inc.com/ which I thought was actually pretty cool.
Do people here use twitter for their businesses? For anything? What do you think?
So, today I receive a call from a customer that is looking to have a stacking washer and dryer hauled away and recycled and she wants a price. Regularly our price for 1 time items like a washer or dryer is $75, but she’s both, and that’s about 2 yards, and we’re $45 per yard and so I say, “We do that. $90 to have it recycled” or something to that effect.
She’s unimpressed with the price, so I suggest she phone around and see what she likes and she’s free to call us back at the end of the day. I’m paraphrasing, but this is the gist of our conversation. Her retort is that she’s found a guy that can do it for $60. ”Well” I say. “It sounds like you’ve found a great deal! You should shake his hand and take him up on that”. Again, a paraphrase, but you get what I’m trying to say. I can’t do it for $60, I’ll lose money. He says he can. Hold him to it and solve the problem.
And so off I went about my morning. Phillips Lighting is downsizing a warehouse in Burnaby, and I have to pick up a cheque from a contractor in North Van and we have $10 off cards at Dunbar Lumber that need restocking and I go off to rip around on my scooter and enjoy the weather and all of that. But as I’m out tootling around I get to thinking, “Maybe I gave her bad advice”. ”Maybe she didn’t get a good deal!”
Maybe the people you hire to come into your house and remove appliances SHOULDN’T go to the lowest bidder. What if, as I suggest on my website, that when you pay peanuts you get monkeys? What if, as I suspect, for the price of $60 it’s actually not profitable. What if, the other company (if it was a company) loses money. After all, there can only be 1 least expensive guy. Right? And, he probably hires the least expensive employees, and they probably demonstrate the least level of care in the owners home. Right? Am I out to lunch here? If we think it through, isn’t this the logical conclusion?
Sure you can compare prices when you buy Tide for instance. Here’s it’s $12, there it’s $8. Same Tide package. Same Tide soap. Who cares? Save the money.
But….
John, although a new employee, is also a professional mover. Shouldn’t that account for something? Isn’t it worth the $30 difference to not hire a painter/drywaller/handy person to repair the dings in your wall? Or to not have to drive to Rona and buy a new can of paint after you source a sample that you can have matched? Don’t you want to be guaranteed that your items go for recycling and not (as I saw on my trip out to Philips dumped on the side of the road like the pile of carpet and renovation debris)?
The type of customers we LOVE at Fresh Start take all these things into consideration. The $30 doesn’t sound like a big difference to me when I weigh out the hassel of having yahoos bang a 200lb stacking washer and dryer into my wall and door jam after they realize it’s too tall/wide for the exit.
This is turning into a longer post than anticipated but I think this related story is relevant. Recently I went to get a massage from Jen Dobell at Pure Performance Massage Therapy, and I can’t remember what it cost. Truthfully, I don’t care. When I went in there it was because I’d hurt something when I moved, and I couldn’t stand up straight and I was in significant, SIGNIFICANT pain. She spent an hour working on me and the pain went from hurting at a light touch to gradually and slowly working on my problem. I needed the full hour, but she was awesome! Do I care what it cost? No. Would I recommend her to anyone? YES! It was phenomenal.
I’m brand loyal to Jen Dobel and the rest of the gang at Pure Performance, not price loyal. And when I think of the hassle of hiring any old somebody to come into my HOME and take out appliances that were plumbed into the wall, I don’t want that left up to any old somebody.
Similar experiences anyone?
I’ve blogged a bit about Lance Armstrong in the past. I’ve been a fan since before Livestrong, and since his early Tour days. He’s just completed his recent art project as part of Livestrong and here’s a link to it.
I think it’s so neat and inspiring. I really like what he’s turned cancer into: a celebration.
We’ll donate them to a worthy charity!!!!
That’s how we roll! Get it?! Seriously, it costs real live no foolin money for us to get to your house, pick up your unwanted items, responsibly distribute them, run the blog, maintain the website, do things, run a business etc. but THEN we’re solid corporate citizens the whole way through! We promise!
And THIS way, you know the story of what happend to your old cycles! At least for 2 weeks before we took them to a charity.
A buddy of mine (who used to work for Fresh Start actually) is coming for a visit from the UK. He wants a bike or 2 for him and his wife to maneuver about the city. Here’s what he wrote me in Facebook. ”G” is garbage. You gotta be in the know! Annndd you need to say “Word” a lot. It just smooths everything over.
Word.
I’ve been meaning to ask you a favour actually. Remember how Kate and I are coming back to Vancouver in August? We decided that when we get there, rather than take the bus everywhere or rent a car, a cheaper and more fun way to get around the city woud be on bikes. Trouble is, bike rental for two people is almost as much as car rental!
So here’s your chance to be heroic. If you happen to come by any crappy old bikes in the ‘G’, is there any chance you could put them aside for us? Don’t worry if it doesn’t happen, our back up plan is to buy some from Sports Junkies and hope they’ll buy them back two weeks later. But I just thought if you do happen to find any, like I did when I was there before, please don’t throw them out.
I also suggested www.zipcar.com to him. It’s what I use when not aboard my zippy scooter. They’re in the UK as well as all over the US so when I travel to a city with Zipcars (like if I took a train to Seattle for example) I have access to vehicles. Pretty rad!
Recently we were hiring for a new position in the truck, and I put an ad on Craigslist which worked like a charm. I got many resumes, and some from very highly qualified individuals. I’ve hired who I think was the best candidate for the job. But…. Boy oh boy did I get some DISMAL examples of resumes.
My 2 biggest complaints were grammar and spelling – little things like leaving the “s” off a major department store. As IF you didn’t know the ACTUAL name of the department store you worked at. And poor layout. All CAPITAL letters IF you can believe it. Or just painful on the eyes to read – colums not lined up straight etc.
What brought this blog posting on is an article I read this morning in 24hours. http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/Business/2009/07/13/10110906-sun.html
Rest assured if you got an interview, it’s because you can write a resume, and then in the follow up phone call you presented yourself well. But I have to say. Some examples were simply ABYSMAL!
Listen, if the only impression I have is your resume, then it had better stand out for the right reasons. I don’t know you, I’ve never met you, I know nothing about you. What I know is that you can’t spell or write, you phoned me, so you can’t follow instructions (which of course were, “no phone calls”) (and I know you know this because I didn’t leave my phone number I said, “No phone calls, but check out our website to get a decent idea…” where they looked up the phone # to phone), you didn’t tailor your resume to this position (examples: “Objective: A full time position….” It was part time, “I read about your posting on Workopolis”…. no you didn’t) and so on.
Anyway. Enough of my rant.
Kids, listen, if you’re applying for a job, take some time to write your resume carefully. There are loads of templates out there in Word and on the internet. Email a PDF of the file so that anyone can open it. Spell correctly. If English isn’t your first language, ask a friend to proof read it. English not being your first language isn’t the crime. The crime is not being clever enough to have it proofread. When you worked at other jobs in the past, include the months and years when you’re telling me your start and end dates. 2007 to 2008 is not good enough. Is that 23 months or 2 months? It makes a difference!!
Google “Resume writing Vancouver” for a WEALTH of free aid when it comes to shining through. Seriously, spelling is really all you need to set yourself apart from the rest of the clutter on my desk. After that, you’d better ace the interview and have solid references, but you’ll NEVER get to that stage by handing in the rubbish that I recently saw.
Jason’s the new guy BTW. He started yesterday. I think you’ll like him.
