When we talk about a nook, we are merely focusing on a specific area of a service or product sector. Think of nooks and crannies in a room. A simple, but clear, example of a nook would be Lasik eye surgery. It is a nook within the larger field of eye care and much larger field of medical services. The key to making money in your particular area is to focus on a specific nook that provides either a large volume of business or small volume with lucrative profit margins. One of the biggest nook advantages is the ability to quickly become a dominant player in the area in question. By definition, there is almost always a limited pool of competitors in the market area, either for the area itself or the geographic limitation. Assume you are offering Lasik eye services. There are a limited number of medical professionals in your area offering the same thing. This means you have an outstanding opportunity to become the dominant personality. You can go get appearances on the local television and radio shows, publish articles in the paper and so on. News outlets are desperate for such quality content. On the web, the same concept applies with a slightly different orientation. You want to focus on your nook to the exclusion of everything else. This sounds simple, but can be difficult to implement. There is an incredible temptation to expand a site beyond the nook in question. The motivation, of course, is greed. We all tend to think that if we offer tour services to London, our clientele would obviously be interested in buying soccer shirts for the professional teams in London. Wrong. Define your nook and stick to it. Even if you sell a few shirts, you risk distracting your prospects from purchasing a tour. The web also provides unique advantages found in no other business medium. One of the dominant ways to market any business is to write content for periodicals. I am talking about informative articles, not advertisements. If you wrote an article for the local paper and they included it in their Sunday edition, how would you be viewed? It would be a lot more effective than an advertisement and, over time, you would become a trusted source for most readers. Whenever they thought of your area of expertise, they would come to you or your business. Talk about a goldmine!On the web, you can take this example to the extreme. There are numerous sites known as article directories. These sites collect articles for an interesting audience. Websites, blogs and online newsletters need content all of the time. They use article directories to find the content. You should submit articles to the directories under the category applicable to your business. If you make the articles informative, you will quickly become a credible source and they will use your articles again and again. It is like being published in your local paper and a few hundred papers in other cities. In summary, find your nook or cranny and stick to it.

How to Find the Right Builder

 Are you planning to build yourself a house, barn or any other structure and not quite sure how to find the RIGHT builder for the job?  I agree, it can be so confusing and time consuming to find that perfect Builder among all the different builders out there.  If you take any construction company and either look at their website or talk to them, you’ll be under impression that this company is simply the best and most experienced for your job.  So, the question is, how do you choose the right company out of so many so-called “Best” companies that exist?  The answer – ask the right questions.

 Here are the five questions & suggestions that will help to make up your mind

 1. How long has your company been in business?  It’s best to go with the company that has been in business for at least 5 years.  The study suggests that most of the new start-up companies go out of business during the first year.  It’s also known that if a new business survives first 5 years, it’s considered to be an established company that will have less chance to go bankrupt.  The bottom line, you don’t want to hire a start-up company that gives you 1-5 year warranty and find out later that this company is no longer in business (good luck with your warranty).

 2. How much experience do you have in building this structure?  What I’m trying to say here is, don’t hire a home builder do build yourself a horse barn or a pole barn, and don’t hire a horse barn or pole barn builder to build yourself a home.  It just makes sense.

If you had a good experience with your home builder, it does not mean that you should hire him to build the horse barn.  In most cases, hiring the barn builder will be cheaper anyway, since the barn builder can get all the materials needed to build your barn for less and will have significantly more experience than the home builder.

 3. Do you have any references?  Don’t forget to ask for some references, make some phone calls, go visit and talk to previous customers.  In fact, this step is probably the most important step you can take, since talking to other customer and looking at their building helps most people to finally make up their minds as to what for company to hire.  I always say this and will say it again, don’t forget to compare construction and materials used when looking at different buildings from different companies.

 4. During construction, will you be using any subcontractors?  These days, to find a home builder or a barn builder that does not use any sub-contractors is almost impossible.  So, don’t even try, you’ll waste your time.  Never the less, I think it’s still important to find the company that does most of the work themselves, without the use of sub-contractors.  I personally believe that any reputable barn company should be able to do the foundation and build the barn without subcontracting any of the work.  Other things such as electric, plumbing, painting, etc. is not as important and in my opinion may be done by the sub-contractors.

 5. What kind of warranty do you offer?  I believe (this is my personal opinion) that any structure that’s build on site (horse barn, garage, home, etc.) needs to carry at least (3) years of craftsmanship warranty.  If no warranty is offered, forget about this company and go find someone else.

 The last suggestion – These days, with the help of the internet and thanks to the search engines such as Google & Yahoo, you can always type the name of the company into a search engine and see if you can find what other people are saying about this company on different forums and blogs.  Also, check with BBB to see the rating, number of complaints, etc.