Chuck Violand
Chuck Violand is the founder of Violand Management Associates (VMA), a highly respected consulting company in the restoration and cleaning industries. Through VMA, he works with business owners and companies to develop their people and profits. For more information, visit www.violand.com.
In Praise of Janitors
When I was in my mid-thirties, I was working with Butch Balaun, a customer who owned several successful restaurants in our area. On one occasion,...
Looking Beyond Our Own Con
When thinking of con artists, famous ones probably come to mind, like Bernie Madoff, the American financier who bilked billions of dollars from unsuspecting investors...
Rookie Mistakes
My wife and I had spent a beautiful late-summer weekend removing planks from our deck and paneling from our family room to prepare for a...
Itâs All About Timing
The weekend had been a busy one. My wife and I had lots of family in town and staying with us. Among them were six...
Leaders Wear Carhartt
Itâs baffling to me that so many great small-business leaders donât think of themselves as such because they donât wear suits and ties to work....
The Plunger
Invented in 1874 by New York confectioner John S. Hawley, the common household plunger was initially patented as a âvent-clearer.â Now this basic yet indispensable...
Complacency
The online Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word âcomplacencyâ as self-satisfaction, especially when accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies. They must have had business...
Driver Education
In most trade industries, and especially within restoration and cleaning, there is a significant amount of training geared toward helping new frontline hires gain the...
Distance Running
By Chuck Violand As hard as it may be to believe, there was a time in my life when this body looked like a chiseled...
On Second Thought: Taking Care of Business
By Chuck Violand Years ago, an older colleague of mine joked, âIf I had known I was going to live this long, Iâd have taken...
