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Hello! I'm President Yasui, running a one-person company specializing in the inspection of high-pressure gas equipment.
Starting tomorrow, the Obon holidays begin here in Japan. For those of us in the industry, it also marks the start of the summer shutdown maintenance work.
Thankfully, we’ve gained some new job sites this year.
If our service is well-received and we’re asked to continue with inspections going forward, that would truly make me happy.
The sun is still blazing hot, so let’s stay alert and prevent heatstroke as we power through the season!
Running a business solo often makes people assume it’s “free and easy.”
While I won’t deny the freedom part, I definitely wouldn’t call it easy, haha.
In my circle, I rarely hear of people completely unable to work—but the risk of having to stop work due to injury or illness, and instantly losing all income, is always looming over us.
Just like no one with a regular job wants to get hurt or fall ill, we solo operators are also doing our best to stay healthy and cautious.
In the maintenance business, if no jobs come in, revenue becomes zero.
If we sit back and wait, we remain passive.
Honestly, the days when work would just come to you even if you waited—they’re long gone.
Here’s a real conversation I had recently after meeting someone I hadn’t seen in a while:
“You must be super busy, right? Huh? You actually have time? No way—I figured you’d be fully booked!”
…So they’d assumed I was too busy to ask. Just like that, you can be silently excluded from opportunities.
Even if you don’t have a “product” to go out and actively pitch, I think it’s perfectly fine—actually, essential—to drop by and show your face to clients from time to time.
In our line of work, if we want to increase sales and profit, the key is improving our utilization rate.
Frankly, our industry still doesn’t align well with today’s trend of “let’s take more breaks.”
Many companies are still stuck in the old model of surviving on the number of physical job sites.
Unless we improve this structure, simply increasing time off will only shrink both sales and profit.
That said, avoiding unprofitable jobs altogether is also misguided.
I believe it’s by doing both—the small, low-profit jobs and the big, profitable ones—that the valuable, rewarding work ends up coming to us.
There’s no such thing as a “small” job or a “big” job.
If we only look at things in terms of money, or if we let greed drive how we do business, one day we may just lose our footing entirely…
Thanks for reading all the way to the end!
See you next time!
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