The DYOJO offers Seven Questions to assist you as a manager or business owners to determine whether a strategy or service option is right for your business. These simple questions will assist you to be better prepared to articulate questions in alignment with where you are in your development and where you are trying to go. I believe these questions will help you better determine who can help you on your journey as well as how much credence to give to various sources of input.
- Is this legal?
- Is this ethical?
- Is this the right thing for me?
- Do I understand the upsides and downsides of pursuing this strategy?
- Do I have the resources to pursue this and/or can I afford not to try (i.e. am I willing to allow someone else to fill the void)?
- Who can help me shorten my DANG learning curve on this topic?
- If I have sought counsel, does my chosen counsel have real experience with executing on the particular aspect of business that I am considering?
- Illegal: Contrary to or forbidden by law, especially criminal law
- Unethical: Not morally correct
- Controversial: Giving rise or likely to give rise to public disagreement
- Safe: Cautious and unenterprising
In business, many prognosticators want to make controversial items into grandiose arguments over morals or ethics when what drives many of them is their own fears, lack of experience, and failures. I do not promote the idea that anyone should blur the lines with something that is illegal. Business persons should seek out hearty discussions about ethics with their qualified peers. Yet, in the guise of sound business advice, usually for self promotion, the responses to something controversial are too often in the extreme. Pundits within the restoration industry follow the tactics of politicians in making a battle of good versus evil where no deep moral dilemmas exist.
Recently there have been some discussions, written and in video, regarding direct to consumer fire damage service offerings. You may have heard it by another name, fire damage chasing. Most of the responses that I have observed veer into the realm of indoctrination as opposed to an earnest discussion of the facts related to the topic. While fire chasing can be controversial, I am not hearing disciplined thought leading to the leaps [over logic] taken to reach these predetermined conclusions. Hearsay is not helpful in business or life and should not be promulgated as a diagnostic methodology when advising peers or clients towards a determination for their business.
If you would like to read more on how I applied these seven questions to the topic of direct to consumer fire damage service offerings (“chasing”), please read the article published with C&R Magazine, Industry High Horses: Fire Chasing.
Jon Isaacson, The Intentional Restorer, is a general contractor based in Tacoma, Washington. He is the author of several moderately selling books and the host of the info-taining 
