Have you ever studies sales?
I have been there myself, and after 7 years of scratching and pawing for work, I finally started to realize what my problem was. My problem had nothing to do with whether or not I liked sports, hunting, fishing, or even whether or not my face turned people off. My problem was that I didn't have the necessary tools to do that job. It wasn't until I figured out that if I was going to try and "sell" my business, then I needed to get the necessary tools for that, and that meant learning how to sell and what tools and techniques I needed to "sell".
I spent years accumulating micrometers, special fixtures, jigs, and learning tricks to do the work faster. I bought thousands of dollars worth of tools and machines. I read everything I could about machining of any kind. All that time spent focused on improving my skills was wasted time, it was time I could have spent doing the routine work that has always been there, the farmer who needs his tractor fixed, the factory that needs the holes drilled in the plate, the cabinet maker who need his planer fixed, the guy down the street who need his engine heads milled flat.
I spent hours upon hours worrying about how I could afford that next big machine, meanwhile the machines I had were sitting empty gathering dust. I made excuses for not making sales calls, like having to clean the dust off of those machiens in case a customer walked through my door.
Bottom line is I was not trained to sell, I was trained to machine. I had to make a decision, do I want to machine parts or run a business? If I just wanted to make parts, then I could go to work for someone else and do that. But if I wanted to run a business and build it up into something I dreamed about for years, that meant I had to take steps to learn how to do that.
I started by getting a book about selling, it was called "Secrets of closing the sale." by Zig Ziglar. I started learning how I could help my customers get what they want so that I could get what I want. Instead of reading more and more about machining I am reading more and more about selling, besides, the machining comes so natural to me that I don't need to spend so much time trying to master every new and exciting technique there is.
Just my $0.02 worth, maybe it will help. Let us know what happens though.
Jim
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