Jim Olsztynski served as the editorial director of Plumbing and Mechanical from 1984 to 2011. A prominent writer in the industry with years of experience under his belt, he recently came out with a book titled Bumps On The Road To Riches: How to Avoid the Big Mistakes that Kill Small Businesses.
In this episode, we talked about leadership, recruitment, customer service…
Show notes
- Introducing Jim Olsztynski. [0:54]
- How he started writing plumbing and HVAC service providers, and why he wrote the book. [1:40]
- How to avoid the big mistakes that kill small businesses. [4:50]
- His insights on “working on the business and not in it.” [7:47]
- The biggest advice he can give about hiring the right people. [18:49]
- Techniques in hiring from the military. [26:15]
- His thoughts on “the customer is always right.” [32:27]
- His thoughts on customer service. [45:54]
- His thoughts on excuses not to travel, and who really stands to gain the most from attending conferences. [52:50]
- His perspectives on what really blew his mind throughout his career, and some of the things that he felt should have been done before. [54:59]
- How to get more information about Jim. [59:57]
- Three books on Jim’s reading list. [1:01:28]
- Jim’s most important piece of advice to home service business owners. [1:03:45]
Resources And People Mentioned:
- Bumps On The Road To Riches: How to Avoid the Big Mistakes that Kill Small Businesses by Jim Olsztynski
- The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace: Empowering Organizations by Encouraging People by Gary Chapman
- Topgrading by Bradford Smart
- Frank Blau
- Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard
- Amazon
- Amazon Home Services
- Domino’s
- Yelp
- Merchant Circle
- Angie’s List
- Home Advisor
- Al Levi
- Built to Last by Jim Collins
- Jim Abrams
- Terry Nicholson
- ServiceTitan
- Service Roundtable
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