Some of my best business ideas come from an hour alone in the car, not a meeting. Windows down, no music, just thinking. I’ve started voice messaging myself the second something hits, so I have this whole running text thread of ideas talking to just me. It’s a little strange. It’s also worked every time I’ve had to reinvent how I lead.
I love taking long drives. Like my favorite part of the weekend will be tomorrow. At the end of the day, when I get a drive to the lake for an hou...
If your direct labor is running over 20-23%, you’re leaking profit without even realizing it. That number is companywide, across every trade line you run. Some trades will sit lower, some higher, but the blended total across the whole business is what matters. Get labor and materials right and you land around 50% gross margin, the number that actually tells you if you’re healthy.
Your direct labor is running at over 20 to 23%. You're probably bleeding out. You just don't know it yet. Now when I say 20, 23% if it's running o...
Here’s a stat that looks bad and tells you nothing: $1,000 spent with six leads generated. Cost per lead is the most overrated number in marketing if you stop there. What matters is how many of those leads actually book, how many cancel, and how many turn into a sold job. A pricier lead source can quietly outperform a cheap one once you follow the whole funnel.
When I look at our marketing dashboards in one department, we've spent over a thousand dollars to generate six leads. Here's why that number tells...
$1 million in revenue can hide a real problem if you’re not watching one number: labor. Over 23% and you’re bleeding money quietly, invisible on the top line, very real on the bottom one. Reduce that number and your gross profit finally has room to cover overhead and produce real net profit.
You're looking at your P&L and you did a million dollars, for example, in a month. Here's the number that you need to make sure that you are budge...
I wrote an entire book about business, and it comes down to one bet most owners aren't willing to make: put people before profits. We all know a business needs to be profitable. The real question is how you actually get there. It's through people, how you develop them, empower them, and build the right team to solve the profit puzzle. That's the whole game.
wrote an entire book about business. And really what it comes down to is a bet that most owners aren't willing to make. And that is put people bef...
Price objections aren’t a pricing problem. They’re a trust problem that started way earlier than the price conversation. Marketing, the call center, dispatch, the technician, the salesperson, every one of those steps either builds trust or quietly breaks it. The compliment we chase isn’t “great price.” It’s a customer saying everyone on our team felt trustworthy and spoke the same language.
So many companies are working on price objections and how to handle presenting the price. What they should be working on is what are they doing to...
Cancellation rate isn’t just a number to track. It’s a diagnosis waiting to happen. Why are customers cancelling? No availability, found someone else, bad timing, the problem resolved itself. Every reason tells you something different about your operation. If I had to pick one number to attack first on the dashboard, this is it.
When I look at these dashboards, the number that I would attack first is cancellation rate. Let me tell you why. When we look at cancellation rate...
Your cost per lead can look great and still be lying to you. $50 a lead sounds cheap. But if your booking rate is only 50%, your real cost to actually book that lead just doubled to $100. Marketing spend has to be measured all the way through the funnel, not just at the entry point.
When you're evaluating your lead sources, it is imperative to look at cost all the way through the funnel. Let me explain. The factors we want to ...
When a homeowner says “let me think about it,” they’ve already told you the real problem. Most techs never hear it. It’s not the price. It’s trust. Built or not built in how you talked to them before you arrived, how you walked in, whether you made them feel like the hero for calling the right company. Fix that, and the objection disappears before it ever comes up.
Homeowner who says let me think about it, has already told you the real problem. Most technicians miss it. The real problem is they don't need to ...