You should've gotten out of that phase 2 years after you started.
Businesses everywhere are plagued by flawed thinking and lazy systems which make the owners falsely believe they HAVE to stay small.
"I can't find good help"
"It's not profitable enough for me to stop doing the work yet"
"It became too much of a headache"
"Growing has become a nightmare. Better to stay small"
Those things are not the problem. The problems are other things.
The below problems are the case for most businesses.
1. The business says yes to the wrong types of work.
2. The business has shit marketing and sales.
3. The business has too high of a standard for their employees to reasonably perform.
I'll use my home services company as an example since I know it the best.
Saying yes to the wrong type of work
Our company offers lawn maintenance services. Could I personally do other work such as installing retaining walls, building fountains, installing sprinkler systems, etc? Yes I could learn those skills. But can I easily hire someone for a low wage to perform those services? No.
Those things are one-time jobs, which require someone to give a quote, enter them into our software/system, put them on the schedule, etc. All for a single visit? If I were to scale, my scheduling system would be a shit show. It would be a nightmare. I would need much more administrative support, which cuts into profit margins. It's just not scalable.
Saying yes to that kind of work would create massive headaches for us if we were to try and scale. Yet I have been told hundreds of times by well intentioned idiots to say yes to all sorts of specialized types of services and I always smile and say "someday". (never lol)
Saying yes to these types of things would mean I could never hire anyone good since they would have to be INCREDIBLE at what they do. If your business requires employees to be incredible, you are doomed.
Say yes to easy, small, highly profitable, predictable, regularly scheduled work and you will have 50% profit margins and few headaches. I could manage 10 employees and 400 customers without much problem and my days would be spent going golfing and tanning out on my dock making 40 grand a month. We aren't there yet but it's coming. I wouldn't be able to do that if we were doing one time jobs.
The business has shit marketing and sales
I ask business owners how they find new customers and most of them proudly exclaim "word of mouth". That's why they have a tiny a$$ bush-league business after 15 years.
When you don't have a constant stream of leads and new customers, you have to say yes to more things. You have to charge less money. You have to be at their beck and call for everything. When you have options, you have leverage, options, and profit. Even if you don't need to, upgrade your marketing and sales. It opens up the ability to fix the other problems in your business.
The business has too high of a standard for their employees to reasonably perform
We do basic services only. We keep it simple and all employees have to do is show up and follow the directions on our easy to use dispatching software. Training only needs to take a day or two. The jobs take 25 minutes at a time and I round up their hours if they get done early. Most work days are only 6-7 hours long and they are always paid for 8. We pay an average of $19 an hour to push lawn mowers and the guys love their work. It's low stress, broken up in little short visits, and I'm not breathing down their neck. Their friends hear about the job and try to come work with us. It is always hard to find reliable employees but I have much less of a problem than other companies because I have purposely built positions that are enjoyable and competitive. I have reasonable expectations which is why we do well. I don't expect them to give a fraction of the effort I would give as the owner. If your business requires employees to bust their a$$ and work long hours for $14 an hour, expect them to not give a single F*ck, or they will leave to come work for me. I am nice to them. I ask them for their input. I listen to them and know details about each of them and get to know them. My job as an employer is to create a good experience and a good job for my employees to work at and that's what I have done.
Today, everyone showed up to work. They are out taking care of the jobs and I am getting dressed to go work on my golf swing at the range. I'll answer a call or two and if there's any disasters I will have to take care of them, but things are going well and the hard work I did at first (mental and physical) is paying off.
The entire point is that if you are struggling to grow, you have problems. And those problems are PROBABLY not the problems you THINK you have. You need to have good systems that can scale, say yes to the right kind of work and no to the wrong type of work, charge enough money to hire good employees that enjoy their jobs, market and sell well enough in order to command those high prices, etc. All of those things grouped together equals a happy and profitable business that allows you more freedom and a lot less work.
Businesses everywhere are plagued by flawed thinking and lazy systems which make the owners falsely believe they HAVE to stay small.
"I can't find good help"
"It's not profitable enough for me to stop doing the work yet"
"It became too much of a headache"
"Growing has become a nightmare. Better to stay small"
Those things are not the problem. The problems are other things.
The below problems are the case for most businesses.
1. The business says yes to the wrong types of work.
2. The business has shit marketing and sales.
3. The business has too high of a standard for their employees to reasonably perform.
I'll use my home services company as an example since I know it the best.
Saying yes to the wrong type of work
Our company offers lawn maintenance services. Could I personally do other work such as installing retaining walls, building fountains, installing sprinkler systems, etc? Yes I could learn those skills. But can I easily hire someone for a low wage to perform those services? No.
Those things are one-time jobs, which require someone to give a quote, enter them into our software/system, put them on the schedule, etc. All for a single visit? If I were to scale, my scheduling system would be a shit show. It would be a nightmare. I would need much more administrative support, which cuts into profit margins. It's just not scalable.
Saying yes to that kind of work would create massive headaches for us if we were to try and scale. Yet I have been told hundreds of times by well intentioned idiots to say yes to all sorts of specialized types of services and I always smile and say "someday". (never lol)
Saying yes to these types of things would mean I could never hire anyone good since they would have to be INCREDIBLE at what they do. If your business requires employees to be incredible, you are doomed.
Say yes to easy, small, highly profitable, predictable, regularly scheduled work and you will have 50% profit margins and few headaches. I could manage 10 employees and 400 customers without much problem and my days would be spent going golfing and tanning out on my dock making 40 grand a month. We aren't there yet but it's coming. I wouldn't be able to do that if we were doing one time jobs.
The business has shit marketing and sales
I ask business owners how they find new customers and most of them proudly exclaim "word of mouth". That's why they have a tiny a$$ bush-league business after 15 years.
When you don't have a constant stream of leads and new customers, you have to say yes to more things. You have to charge less money. You have to be at their beck and call for everything. When you have options, you have leverage, options, and profit. Even if you don't need to, upgrade your marketing and sales. It opens up the ability to fix the other problems in your business.
The business has too high of a standard for their employees to reasonably perform
We do basic services only. We keep it simple and all employees have to do is show up and follow the directions on our easy to use dispatching software. Training only needs to take a day or two. The jobs take 25 minutes at a time and I round up their hours if they get done early. Most work days are only 6-7 hours long and they are always paid for 8. We pay an average of $19 an hour to push lawn mowers and the guys love their work. It's low stress, broken up in little short visits, and I'm not breathing down their neck. Their friends hear about the job and try to come work with us. It is always hard to find reliable employees but I have much less of a problem than other companies because I have purposely built positions that are enjoyable and competitive. I have reasonable expectations which is why we do well. I don't expect them to give a fraction of the effort I would give as the owner. If your business requires employees to bust their a$$ and work long hours for $14 an hour, expect them to not give a single F*ck, or they will leave to come work for me. I am nice to them. I ask them for their input. I listen to them and know details about each of them and get to know them. My job as an employer is to create a good experience and a good job for my employees to work at and that's what I have done.
Today, everyone showed up to work. They are out taking care of the jobs and I am getting dressed to go work on my golf swing at the range. I'll answer a call or two and if there's any disasters I will have to take care of them, but things are going well and the hard work I did at first (mental and physical) is paying off.
The entire point is that if you are struggling to grow, you have problems. And those problems are PROBABLY not the problems you THINK you have. You need to have good systems that can scale, say yes to the right kind of work and no to the wrong type of work, charge enough money to hire good employees that enjoy their jobs, market and sell well enough in order to command those high prices, etc. All of those things grouped together equals a happy and profitable business that allows you more freedom and a lot less work.
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