Question #2 on the Self-analysis Questionnnaire for Personal Inventory asks if I have delivered service of the best possible quality of which I was capable, or was there room for improvement.

Even when you work for yourself you work for others. In the work that I do from day to day, I work for clients in maintaining their websites, and I work for the people who use the websites I maintain; that includes the people who use the websites that are owned by me.

Even in this capacity, maintaing these blogs on ephosting.com, I work for the potential reader.

Almost everything a person does in life, even in the case of a mother preparing dinner for her loved ones, has the potential to either benefit or injure another person.

I manage and maintain approximately fourteen [14] websites, a number of which have an active membership base from 1000 - over 15000 members; and I would have to say, based on a number of factors, that by comparison to previous years, my quality of service provided in a number of areas was not excellent.

There have been more than a few occasions when depression surmounted my will to defeat it. On those occasions I either could not manage to get any work done, or worked without a degree of enthusiasm or interest in what I was doing. There were times when I felt tempted to be rude to difficult members of particular websites for which I provide the service of handling member support. While I have never succumbed to that temptation, to have felt strongly tempted is an indication that I was taking things personally; and it’s not good business ethic to respond to difficult customers by being insulting, condescending or otherwise rude.

Although my clients express satisfaction with my work, there were still times when clients had to send reminders to me to complete certain tasks. And there were business emails that went too long unanswered, a few not answered at all.

So over all I would have to say that I did not deliver service of the best possible quality, despite generally good feedback from clients and website users. There was without question room for improvement.

Not as a matter of self-defense, but when you are self-employed and you are your only employee it becomes more difficult to excel in every capacity in which you provide service. However, when you are self-employed, it becomes even more important that you provide the best possible quality of service in every area of your business, because the consequence of delivering shoddy service can be harsh, particularly where you do not have the protection of being a limited liability company.