When your furnace, dryer or garbage disposal stops working, your first instinct may be to call a professional. In some cases, however, all it takes is a little troubleshooting to avoid an expensive service call. We asked five Diamond Certified Expert Contributors to share their home troubleshooting tips. Read more

The Bay Area has already seen numerous destructive wildfires in 2020, and there are still several weeks of hot, dry weather ahead of us. As wildfires become an increasingly common threat to the region, many homeowners are turning to “firescaping,” which is the coordinated use of fire-resistant plants and building materials around the home. With the right plants and hardscaping features, you can make it harder for wildfire to take hold and spread. Firescaping is a type of landscaping, which means you still have many options to create a garden that reflects your personal style. Aside from improving safety and adding beauty, firescaping can increase the value of your home. Read more

Your team is competing for the hearts, minds and budgets of local families. You’ve done well so far. If you qualify for Diamond Certified, your award will be proof. Most companies can’t qualify, and even some that do can’t maintain the standard of Highest in Quality and Helpful Expertise®. In these stressful times of COVID-19 and wildfires, people want reassurance. They genuinely want helpful expertise—help that’s customized to their situation and personality. Once the job begins, they want an empathetic relationship and a quality outcome. Read more

Feeling like you belong. Belonging. It’s a sense of acceptance in a group. Your self-identity is derived from being a member in many groups. You have a role, sometimes several, in each group—a position. You may be a parent in a family group, a business manager in a company group, a friend in a bowling group and so on. As your activities and thoughts change during a single day, you jump from group to group, filling different roles in each. You’re inclined to think about and engage more often in groups where you feel a greater sense of belonging.

You have status within each group. Status is our position relative to others. Read more

Your company is engaged in a battle of suppliers. It doesn’t create demand; it competes locally to supply demand that already exists. Many of your competitors are striving to win a bigger share of this demand or trying to capture its most profitable segments. What happens when market demand is suddenly changed by the shelter-in-place (SIP) order and gradual reopening?

Playing for a bigger piece of a (sometimes) smaller pie.
As your neighbors come out of hibernation, in some industries total demand will lag behind pre-SIP levels while others will be strong due to pent-up demand. If you’re in a lagging industry, you’re competing for your share of a smaller pie…for now. Read more

What’s going to happen after our local economy mostly reopens? Everybody has a prediction, but nobody knows for sure. We can only guess how things will play out during the rest of this year and the next. Your guesses are actually valuable. Organize them to help you think through high, medium and low future scenarios. Then, create strategies for each scenario so you’re well prepared for an uncertain future. Here’s how to do it.

Think in three time periods—we’ll use Red Phase for the time we’re in Shelter-in-Place (SIP), Yellow Phase for an Assessment period and Green Phase for the New Future. Think about each of these time periods and plan your company’s actions based on an Optimistic, Read more