I don’t know about you, but there’s something unsettling about all the information that’s available online. We do our banking, bill-paying, and purchasing online, all using account #’s, PINS, and personal information that is, well, personal. Talk about trusting the system.
Even this blog is just open to all who want to see it and read it. That means anyone. Not only that, but anyone is free to leave a comment, too. So I am opening myself up here, for all the world to see.
Forums are the same way. We go on, we share our thoughts, our ideas, and sometimes our methods and trade secrets, forgetting that anyone and their mother can read what we are writing. Sometimes they don’t even have to sign up, either.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all about the free exchange of ideas and information. This is, after all, the Information Age. (Or not long after it, anyway. I think the new era is called Life After Investment Banks, but that’s for a different post.) But sometimes we need to be a little more careful about what we say and to whom.
For example, I was hanging out with a good friend of mine a month or two ago, watching his wife play in Women’s League soccer game (don’t ask). Now his wife’s father, who is also at the game, happens to be a good friend of mine, but he also happens to be my car mechanic. He runs his own business, and I’ve been going to him for years because I trust him. He makes some good money on the side selling used cars that’s he bought for nothing and fixed up, and he’s telling his son-in-law (my buddy) about the last sale he did, and he jokingly mentions a few little “trade secrets” that he used in the process to ensure that he’d be making a few extra bucks on the sale and down the road.
This is all good, except that I’m also a client of his, and I probably shouldn’t have been privy to his little tricks and such.
Forums are like that. Particularly ones meant just for certain professionals, like contractors. You go on, start yapping about all your practices, methods, ways of securing sales, and so on, and little do you know the Average Joe is also on there poking around. It’s not that he’s not allowed, but does he really need to be reading all this? Is it his business? Do you want it to be his business?
The beauty of a member-only site like contractorblab.com is that there is some PRIVACY. That’s right, you’re only going to find contractors in there. Not only will there be a ton of information on marketing your business and growing it successfully, there will be a private setting where contractors can ask business-related questions and get confidential answers. Like we say, for contractors, by contractors. And you’re only going to have contractors in there with you.
www.contractorblab.com goes live in mid-October. Get on board! Membership will be limited…
Good luck,
Ben
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