Stop watching what everyone else is doing. Lock in on your own business. That level of focus is what actually builds something.
I think the biggest thing that people focus on in this industry is everyone else. And don't get me wrong, our industry is very special because peo...
You can’t scale to a place you haven’t defined. Pick a number. $5 million, $10 million, $100 million. It doesn’t matter which one as long as it’s real and it’s yours. Then work backwards. What does that revenue require in trucks, people, and infrastructure? What does that cost, and when does it need to be in place? Most owners skip this and spend the money as it comes in. New truck here, nice vacation there, and then growth actually arrives and the cash isn’t there to fund it. Know the number before you spend money the next stage of growth is going to need.
you're looking to scale your business. I think the first thing to get in mind is where is it that you want to go? I talked to so many owners that ...
The $1M owner is the best tech, best salesperson, and best manager in the room. That's exactly why they're stuck. The $10M owner on the other hand learned to trust and empower the people around them. That's the key difference.
The difference between a $1 million owner and a $10 million owner, the biggest thing is a lack of trust with a $1 million owner. They're so tied i...
Controversial take: the best lead source in home service is analog, not digital. While your competitors bid Google into the ground, you should be asking for reviews, planting yard signs, and outbounding your own customer base. Those leads are already paid for.
The best way to get leads in home service now is maybe a controversial opinion, but it is more analog, less digital. Google is only getting more e...
Your best technician shouldn’t have a salary cap. Give them a path: clear KPIs, real incentives, and no ceiling on what they can earn. Producers stay where production pays.
I get this question a lot. How much should I pay my best technician? To me, they should earn as much as they can earn. And so the way that we acco...
We tell every manager the same thing: your job is to grow your people. So when someone's not a fit, the first question isn't "how fast can we fire them?" It's "why is this not working out?" If they are they unable, train them. If they are unwilling, find out what went wrong. Ultimately, the underlying causes for underpreformance may start with you.
And we tell all of our managers, it's your job to develop and grow your people. So if that person's not a fit, why is that? Are they unwilling? Ar...
The best review we ever got wasn't about how fast we fixed the furnace. It was that four different people from our team said the exact same thing. That's not an accident. That's what happens when nine people are behind every call and all of them are speaking the same language, the dispatcher who booked it, the tech who showed up, the CSR who followed up after. Same tone, same promise, same standard. The customer doesn't experience your org chart. They experience your consistency. That's what world-class service actually is.
World class service in home services, it's the trickiest thing to do, but when you make it, it's the most satisfying thing in the world. Because i...
Burnout usually isn’t from working too hard. It’s from working on everything at once because you never defined where you’re going. Pick the destination and work backwards. Then build the process and people that run the daily so you can build what’s next.
Your business is rolling along, but you're afraid if you step away and take your eye off the ball, everything will come crumbling down. Let me tel...
The problem isn't the hours you bill. It's the hours you don't. Half the day is windshield time, writing options, and following up. Time and material pricing only captures what happens on site. Your price has to carry the whole operation, including the truck, the overhead, and every hour that doesn't show up on an invoice. That's why so many techs are booked solid and still breaking even. Busy isn't profitable. Priced right is profitable.
but people that charge time and material never factor in is their overhead. It takes a lot of support to run one of these businesses. Obviously, c...
The biggest mistake owners make when hiring their first real leader: finding someone exactly like them. Two people doing the same things isn't leverage. It's overlap. Hire for the gaps, not the mirror. Start with a field supervisor role before the title changes, and train them in that seat long enough to know if they can actually handle it. The title should confirm what's already working, not create pressure to figure it out on the fly. That's how growth compounds. Not by cloning yourself, but by building around what you're not.
One question I get a lot is when should I hire a service manager? When should I hire an ops manager? What does that look like? What I always look ...
You don't need 14 softwares to run an effective business. You need a handful that you actually use, and a team with the bandwidth to use them properly. Before you buy another shiny object, ask two questions: do we have the staff to implement it, and will anyone actually know if it's working?
And today's home service world, there's a ton of software, there's a ton of AI, there's all these shiny objects that are supposedly going to make ...
Doing work to do work isn't a business, that's a hobby with payroll. We price off a formula that carries the entire operation, from overhead to benefits to training and beyond. If your number doesn't account for all of it, your busy season is just expensive exercise.
There is a large percentage of the contractor population who is just doing work to do work. We have to be priced right. Oftentimes I hear, "Wow, y...