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If you're struggling to grow your home service business to $3 million in annual revenue, this video is for you.
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I'm talking to five different entrepreneurs ranging from $900,000 in annual revenue to $1.7 million in annual revenue.
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And they're all trying to get to $3 million in annual revenue.
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So I'll give you the exact strategies you need and we're gonna use their five questions to guide us along the way.
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Let's get started.
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Number one.
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Hey Mike, it's Connor.
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I'm with Augusta Lawn Care.
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We'll do about 1.6, 1.7 million this year.
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We had 20 employees a peak.
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And my question is, as we are breaking our locations up into multiple satellite locations versus the one large GM Plus model,
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What are your thoughts on the office controlling the schedule versus the local working GM, GM, or GM Plus?
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Like having them control the schedule regularly?
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in-house versus the office doing, uh, putting the jobs on the schedule, uh, assigning team members and crews, actually scheduling the crews, making sure time off is in all of that stuff.
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Just another thing, uh, to take off, uh,
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the plate of the general manager.
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I know it will get complicated with late call-offs, people know showing different things like that.
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However, assuming you have a pretty consistent team, I think this is something that the office can do to fill those valleys between, you know, high demand hours and low demand hours.
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I'm curious on your thoughts.
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Thanks.
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Fantastic.
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All right.
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For all the haters out there that commented on Connor's video about, what, eight, nine months ago, saying he was going to fail and everything, I'm very happy to tell you he's doing great.
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And so Creshing out there, they worked through a lot of restructuring, and I think the skill that Connor has learned this year and is continuing to learn is the part we talked about earlier in the live stream, that is managing managers.
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And so what they did, as he recognized that that was his skill gap, what he actually did is he brought all his locations under his control and used all under one spot.
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That shop space that he was renting, or I think he's still there, was something like $10,000 to $12,000 a month in rent.
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Very difficult to make money.
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So what now he's doing is he took this year, reconsolidated these general managers, get everyone in one building.
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It's easier to manage when you don't have that skill yet.
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You get your skills.
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You get your great team that is used to view now.
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and you start to learn that skill.
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And now he's trying to figure out, okay, how can we get out of this $10,000, $12,000 a month?
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How can we break this up a little bit more?
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How can we actually make sure that we're not driving as far?
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We have a general manager that manages 500,000, 600,000 of that revenue and breaks things out over time.
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The question though is, should the office be handling the scheduling or should this be on the general manager?
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Okay, I think this is much more of a
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a continuum than a dichotomy.
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What I mean by that is it's not like, yes, they should or no, they shouldn't.
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It is a sliding scale based upon recurring revenue.
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The higher the percentage of recurring revenue, the easier it is to do scheduling.
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Also, another sliding scale is the continuity and the longevity of the team.
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So location and growth mode, very difficult to do scheduling because your budget hours are going up every week.
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If your team has stayed with you in profit mode for two, three years on average, they have the same routes, the same customers, people have been here for a long time, the same trucks, all the trucks are standardized, all the mowers are standardized, a whole lot easier to do scheduling.
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So when I moved out of daily operations, one of the first things I did once I was in profit mode for a few years and I had enough money is I just bought new trucks for the whole team.
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Mostly, not because I think I wanted new trucks.
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Well, it was also because COVID made use prices go way up to the roof.
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So I got new trucks.
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But it was mostly to make scheduling easier for the general manager.
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Because ultimately, I would rather the general manager take on scheduling because it is such a key component of profitability that if I'm going to give them a piece of profit sharing or owner's distributions and then handicap them by saying, I control your scheduling, it's hard for them to take accountability fully for the position.
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That being said, if you're in growth mode, it's much more challenging when you're adding jobs every day.
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You got projects coming in to fill in the gaps, but now you got to think about the fact that you're adding jobs every single day.
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So in four weeks, when you're booked out, your schedule looks totally different than it does today.
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That's very hard to schedule.
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So this is my recommendation, Connor.
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If you're in growth mode, I would have your office do your scheduling.
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If you're in profit mode,
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And you hit all the benchmarks of profit mode, which means very high rate of recurring revenue, simplified services.
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You're in profit mode, meaning we're not marketing or advertising and getting a whole bunch of new customers.
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Meaning we aren't jamming like every single week, hiring more people, getting more trucks, getting more equipment, expanding capacity all the time.
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We're not doing that.
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Then I would try my very best to get the general manager to do the scheduling.
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Because it's such a key component to profitability.
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Because if I'm going to give them a piece of revenue, like a consent of onset in revenue, well, if they're close to the end of the month and the office doesn't put quite enough budget hours to get the jobs or get enough revenue to push them over the threshold, guess who they're going to blame?
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They're going to blame the office.
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And the last thing I want to do is ever have any mid-level manager reappoint each other and cast blame.
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Ruined your culture so fast.
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And so your admin person is potentially incentivized or wants to make sure everyone's schedule is within capacity and jobs go smoothly.
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Your GM, on the other hand, is like, I know if I just made $300 more this month, I would have unlocked a $500 bonus.
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And so I need them to have power over the schedule.
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Now, if it's profitability, same thing.
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If they know that one of their crews, because now if you now have this other location and then office over here, office doesn't know the crew.
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The general manager does.
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And he knows that this one crew is very money motivated and can complete 10 to 12 budget hours a day during peak season.
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And yet they're only getting six or seven because that's what everyone's supposed to get because that's what the office is trained to do.
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That's why the power of scheduling in the general manager's hand is so important because they know their team.
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And their team also is...
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I need the general manager to have full accountability for the schedule.
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Because when the team has a problem, they're going to come to the general manager.
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If the general manager becomes an in-between simply of like, oh, well, the office, I'm sorry, the office messed it up, or the office didn't put enough on your route, or like, sorry, they only put six budget hours.
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I know you asked for nine or ten.
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I know you're super efficient.
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Like, I'll talk to them.
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I'll try to figure it out.
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Like, they can't, they're handicapped.
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They're, like, you just took out their leg.
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They can't manage their team effectively.
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But I would say 100%, if you're in growth mode, it's way harder to schedule.
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If you're doing projects, way harder to schedule effectively.
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And the growth mode thing is the real kicker because you're adding things to the schedule continually and adding new team members.
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So you're putting pressure on them on sales
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like getting all these customers, upselling, managing all that.
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Then you go from operational perspective, like put them on the schedule, fit them on the routes, fit in the budget hours, make sure you're under capacity.
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And then they're also from an operational perspective, having to hire new people to take on this new demand.
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And you could very easily add 30 budget hours of new recurring revenue every month.
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That's like one or two jobs a day during spring rush.
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That's a new team member likely every two weeks.
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That's very difficult for a GM that has a team of six to eight people.
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Like they're adding a huge amount of operational drag because there's now more yellow slips and callbacks and people make mistakes and they start making mistakes on scheduling because there's so many moving parts.
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So I would agree that in growth mode, it might be a good idea to take on scheduling in the office.
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I would heavily push towards if your general manager is incentivized on profit sharing, that you need them to be fully accountable to their team for the schedule and to be
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And they have the best pulse on where the team is at, especially if they're distributed workforce, i.e.
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away from the hub, i.e.
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the command center.
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And so then I want as much as possible that GM to do scheduling, but it's very difficult for them.
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If I have different types of trucks, different types of equipment, all my team has been here for like a month or two, um, all of my, my trucks break down, um, um, um, um, um, um,
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my, I'm constantly marketing and driving tons of work.
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I'm expecting them to do a whole bunch of door hangers, but also train new team members that are coming in every week.
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That's chaos.
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And that's when the balls will drop on scheduling.
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Number two on the docket.
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Hey, Mike.
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My name's Jacob.
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I own a lawn care business up in upstate New York.
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We actually just got done a snowstorm.
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My business this year will do just under $900,000, and I currently have an admin person, an operations person, and I do sales.
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Full-time GM.
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Let's go.
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A lot of people are stepping on each other's toes.
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I still do a lot of the admin and the operations work.
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Good chapter.
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So I know I need to...
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separate the roles and assign roles to people, which I'm working on, especially this winter while it's slow.
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But my question was, what KPIs should I be using to monitor each role?
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Like just a few of the most important ones.
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And how do I actually monitor them?
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Like for admin, I'm guessing it's, you know, calls answered, accounts receivable.
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A lot of the stuff I use, homeworks.
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So,
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I know a lot of that I can monitor in there.
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I also use like Ring Central for answering phones.
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So should I just run a report out of there?
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Or are those not even important things to be monitoring?
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I appreciate it.
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Thank you for answering the question.
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Let's go.
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Congratulations, 900K.
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Jacob, thank you for being a member of HomeWorks.
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Okay, a couple things.
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KPIs, very important for sales, operations, and admin.
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You are in the full-time GM role, which means you have delegated admin, you have delegated operations, and you're mostly focused on sales.
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This is an exciting part of the business because you can grow very quickly because all of your time is focused on sales, i.e.
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getting more work, i.e.
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growing the business.
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Fun and exciting for entrepreneurial types.
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Also usually a tight spot from a profitability perspective because you're having to afford two full-time employees
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uh, overhead positions.
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And that could be very hurtful from a profitability perspective.
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So let's get through it as fast as possible.
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Sales.
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We got to make sure that we have certain metrics.
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This goes, all the book goes over all of these.
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I'm going to give you the highlights.
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It is very common during the full-time GM phase.
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This is why I, I actually don't like going to the GM, the full-time GM, like going past in like 1.2, 1.3.
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I don't like going there.
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And I like the copy base is because when I have mid-level managers, uh,
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and they get to work together.
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We have drama, drama.
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And so, yeah, you're gonna get a little bit of this.
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I try to avoid it by just not getting to the point where I need multiple layers of management or multiple managers that are overhead.
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Honestly, that's the truth.
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So to prevent that, you need clarity.
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You need clarity of the roles, you need clarity of what metrics they're responsible for, and you wanna make sure you don't perverse incentives.
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So for example, if you track in close rate like you should for sales, don't incent them on close rate.
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Because if they do, if you do, they will increase their close rate, but they'll put pressure on budget hours and make the operations manager really brutal.
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And if you make the operations person incentivize like efficiency, they're going to get in the business of the admin person time and time again when there's complaints.
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Or when someone calls back and they want you to come back to the job, they're like, no, no, no, no.
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Like they'll give way too many excuses and customer support will go down because they're incentivized on budget hours and capacity and efficiency scores.
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Which I think you should do for operations.
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Agreed.
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But if it comes at the cost of someone else's paycheck or their incentives, we have a big problem.
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So that's why we want to be very, very, very careful of incentivizing specific metrics.
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Your focus on metrics will change as the business grows.
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So at the beginning, close rate is really important.
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As you move away from the business and you're in profit mode, you just care about distributable cash, money in your pocket.
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So be careful about that because you have to change their incentives, which can get a little hairy.
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Secondly, don't have perverse incentives between managers.
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And third, have very clear metrics of success.
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So if your close rate is something that you measure in sales, like you should, use the speedometer that we talk about in the book.
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We'll go over this later in the training, even in today's live stream.
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Use the speedometer to know, okay, this is when you're good.
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This is when you're bad.
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This is when you're great.
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Okay.
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Um, and those are like red, yellow, green of what those metrics should be looking like.
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So this is what good looks like.
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This is what bad looks like.
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This is what I'm going to get in your business.
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This is when I will not get in your business.
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I'll let you do your thing.
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So very clear metrics is the first point.
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Um, yeah.
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what it looks like in each of those metrics.
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So I'll give you the basics.
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For sales, I need customer acquisition costs, I need close rate.
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Because that's going to be number of leads coming in.
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I'm sorry.
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Yeah, customer acquisition costs.
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Like how much does it cost me to get someone in?
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And what percentage, how efficient am I at getting new customers?
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Because if I get a whole bunch of leads, but I have a horrible close rate,
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Like, you're like, oh, well, we're getting $10 per lead.
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But if I'm only closing one out of 10, that's my constraint, not more leads.
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Like, oh, you're not pouring more money on marketing.
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It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
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Like, let's look at sales process, not marketing and getting more leads.
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So I'm looking at customer acquisition costs and close rate for sales.
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For operations, I'm looking at efficiency score.
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And then, like, honestly, I have a whole bunch of them in the book, like of metrics.
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But the ones that are most important to me is efficiency score and probably...
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Most important to Michael.
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I just want efficiency score.
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That's it.
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Because if my efficiency score is high, my team's making a bunch of money on P4P.
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And if they're making a bunch of money on P4P, the culture takes care of itself.
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And quality goes up because now there's real money on the line for yellow slips.
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No, efficiency score is really all I care about.
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You could also think about capacity for an operations manager in terms of are they doing the schedule correctly?
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Are you near capacity or it's an 80%, et cetera.
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For admin, like you said, there's a whole box of them.
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I have a whole bunch of them in here.
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Things like answer time, how long it takes to answer the phone, what percentage of calls are missed.
225
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The bigger thing, in my opinion, is estimate lead time.
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So inside of homeworks,
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Copilot, at the top there, make them actually put in when the estimate was requested correctly according to like when it came in from the website or they called.
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If you're doing over the phone estimates, that's now, which shrinks your lead time massively.
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Instant quotes.
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Also, immediate.
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You're getting the price immediately from when you asked for the estimate.
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So that makes your estimate lead time go, or sorry, your lead response time way down.
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But something like that would be tracked, especially if you're doing any sort of project work or in-person or drive-by estimates, I would be trying to shrink that time and I'd probably monitor that with the admin team.
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I give a list of like 10 to 15 metrics for all three inside the book and then when you need to be focused on them at certain times.
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So for full-time GMs,
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you are handling sales still.
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And usually the biggest thing that you have to manage is operations because it's the thing you just recently let go of.
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You delegated it.
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So once you've delegated operations and you move into sales, you are still in the business as the operator and the owner doing sales.
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You will create systems down the road as you get to 1.5.
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At $900,000, what I would recommend doing is making sure there's really good systems for your operations person to be successful so you can actually focus on sales.
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and not just be the spare tire of your operations manager.
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That's where efficiency scores are really important, making sure you have a really good red tagging system for your equipment.
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We go over all this.
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Like broken equipment, how to do scheduling, how to make sure your budget hour capacity is on target, how to train crews, how to have an onboarding process, have a training checklist.
246
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These are the type of things you went and nailed so that they can really do their job well
247
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Um, and almost always that aligns with efficiency score.
248
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Like the end output is what I'm always trying to incentivize or monitor because if something is broke with efficiency score, I can usually track backwards and find pretty quickly what will happen wrong.
249
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So if my efficiency score is 50%, I know immediately people are, are not getting enough budget hours done.
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First thing I'm looking at is, are we misquoting jobs?
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So if efficiency score is low, are we misquoting jobs?
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You're doing the estimates.
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You would know, and I'm going to guess you're not misquoting it.
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Assuming your estimates are accurate, we can cross that off the list.
255
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Okay, estimates are accurate.
256
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I'm putting them in the correct amount of budget hours, and they're still at 50% efficiency score.
257
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Okay, we know a 50% efficiency score is not good because we talk about what is good in the book, and we'll talk about it more later today.
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And so then the next thing I'm going to be like, okay, well, the estimates are accurate, but our efficiency score is low.
259
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Are people slacking off?
260
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And like, oh, well, no, we have pay for performance.
261
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Well, is anyone above base pay?
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Not at 50%?
263
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Probably not.
264
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So no one's actually incentivized by P4P.
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That's why people do P4P and they're like, oh, no, it didn't change behavior.
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Like, no, everyone's efficiency at 30 to 50%.
267
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Of course they're not.
268
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They think you're a scam by doing P4P because they've never seen a dollar of bonus on P4P.
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Um, and then, okay, well, no, we, you know, we, you know, of course no one's hitting base pain.
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Now what?
271
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Okay.
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Efficiency score.
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What's your service area?
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Are you driving 30 to 40 minutes for your first job?
275
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Okay.
276
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How long is it taking for your team meetings every morning?
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Are those stand up?
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Are they sit down?
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Cause all that wasted time is going to bring down your efficiency score.
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So that's what a great operations person starts doing is tweaking all the little knobs.
281
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Okay, we're not going to have a daily stand-up.
282
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We're going to do it three times a week.
283
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Okay, it's going to be a stand-up, not a sit-down, because I know that just standing up, everyone halves the time that the meeting takes, and no one's getting paid for that.
284
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It's not labor revenue.
285
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It's not being produced during that meeting.
286
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So an operations manager starts to fanatically think about efficiency, how we park the trucks, how we do the blades, how we do the equipment, how we do repairs, how we do maintenance on the equipment, all that thing they start to dial in because they start seeing it affects the efficiency score.
287
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So that was a long, long answer to a very short question.
288
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But yeah, sales, operations, admin, you need metrics for all of them.
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Hopefully that gives you a starting point.
290
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In the book, I talk about the ones to focus on in your current stage.
291
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Jacob, operations is the KPI you're going to nail.
292
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And it's going to usually trickle down to your efficiency score, budget hours divided by clocked hours.
293
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And then you can work backwards with things like number of yellow slips, operations.
294
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Okay.
295
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I got to make sure the work has been done to a high quality.
296
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And then efficiency is the other side.
297
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So efficiency and quality, that would be like the first thing I'd be thinking about.
298
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And then you have more trickle downs, like breakdowns, number of equipment breakdowns, how many people are above base pay on P4P.
299
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Those are things I'm starting to go down on, but like it all usually bundles up to efficiency score.
300
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And that's why I got a GM level.
301
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It all bundles down to profitability.
302
00:19:13.116 --> 00:19:14.797
That's why I'm going to give them a piece of that action.
303
00:19:15.303 --> 00:19:22.891
Hey everyone, real quick, given the fact that we are just headed now into 2026, this is really the perfect time to switch your CRM software.
304
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And if you're considering joining Copilot, soon to be Homeworks, I highly recommend joining now at the beginning of the year.
305
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That way you have all of your previous books and your old CRM, and then everything new in 2026,
306
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is with inside of copilot so we will help you do all of your onboarding moving your customers across into the new system and we can even move stripe tokens from your existing customers and their credit cards inside of copilot so go check it out go to copilotcrm.com and we'll see you there number three on the docket hi mike my name is daniel my company is ramos lawn care and this season we did about 1.1 million in revenue next season uh my goal is to do about 2 million
307
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We have about 10 to 12 employees working full time.
308
00:20:11.631 --> 00:20:21.873
My question for you is in your experience, what's the main bottom leg that holds most lawn care companies back from scaling past 1 million to 2 million?
309
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And how do I eliminate that so I can hit my goal for next season?
310
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The skill of managing managers is usually the biggest constraint because if you've gotten to a million, it means you're very good at selling and managing technicians.
311
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The difference between a million and two and three million is you now need mid-level management or managers of some sort, either through distributed multiple locations, GMs, or mid-level managers, sales, operations, admin.
312
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And so your ability to manage those people and not micromanage them and them feel like they actually...
313
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are accountable for their job and you have clear metrics and you have systems in place for them to see and you have a great compensation plan like a lot of this we cover in the book by the way um if they have those things that's the determining factor so definitely i would be looking at the full-time gm and the gm plus uh chapters of the book and it goes over a lot of these leadership aspects but leadership is a skill it can be taught it can be learned and you will
314
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set you will likely fail in this area it is uncommon to have natural characteristics of leadership that you just breeze through 1 million to 3 million because you have to change your leadership style
315
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Managing technicians where they're like, hey, I want to show up, get my job notes, my video, get my truck for the day, and head out.
316
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That's very different than managing someone who is responsible for scheduling, training, hiring, firing, team culture, one-on-ones, equipment maintenance, complaints.
317
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That's a very different skill.
318
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Managing that person and keeping them and retaining them and keeping them motivated to keep winning.
319
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So that would be my two cents.
320
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Number four on the docket.
321
00:22:05.235 --> 00:22:05.595
Hey, Mike.
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Matt here with Augusta Delta and White Rock.
323
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And my question is primarily about Augusta Delta.
324
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So we're going to do about $1.5 million this year and likely to hit $1.82 million next year.
325
00:22:18.757 --> 00:22:22.218
Pretty much in profit mode, we're not adding trucks or employee count.
326
00:22:22.298 --> 00:22:25.699
We're just going to grow into our capacities and raise prices heading into next year.
327
00:22:25.719 --> 00:22:26.079
So yeah.
328
00:22:27.299 --> 00:22:37.523
My question is, as far as our org structure, org chart, we've got kind of Andrew as the GM and he's kind of like a sales manager in charge of that division.
329
00:22:37.583 --> 00:22:47.727
But we were thinking of having a couple of different departments within ops, one of them being lawn care and fertilization, one of them being small projects, soft scapes, no multi-day stuff.
330
00:22:48.027 --> 00:22:51.909
And then another one being our strata and HOA and kind of having a crew leader at each of those levels.
331
00:22:52.569 --> 00:22:57.131
Would it make sense for those guys in each of those departments to do the sales for their division?
332
00:22:58.111 --> 00:23:05.813
Or do you think it would be better to have a separate sales manager, you know, whether it's Andrew or we promote one of those guys to that role?
333
00:23:05.833 --> 00:23:09.835
Would that make more sense than that person would be doing sales for all of the work that we do?
334
00:23:09.915 --> 00:23:16.377
Or does it make sense to have kind of like a mini working GM or department leader, you know, where the strata guy would do quotes?
335
00:23:16.980 --> 00:23:19.502
for that division and the project I would do quotes for that division.
336
00:23:19.582 --> 00:23:23.285
And you know, lawn care fertilization guy would do so good quotes and essence for that division.
337
00:23:23.345 --> 00:23:24.586
So just curious what you think about that.
338
00:23:24.886 --> 00:23:25.206
Thank you.
339
00:23:25.827 --> 00:23:27.268
Oh, it makes me so proud.
340
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Augusta nation count strong.
341
00:23:29.530 --> 00:23:30.090
Great question.
342
00:23:30.110 --> 00:23:31.871
That's a fantastic, that's in the weeds folks.
343
00:23:32.232 --> 00:23:34.513
This will not get clicks on YouTube, but that's a great question.
344
00:23:34.954 --> 00:23:37.696
So they're, they're, they're running a GM plus model, 1.5 to 1.8 million.
345
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Um, they're starting a second location and up there, they do a lot of what's called strata in down the U S that we like HOAs, et cetera.
346
00:23:47.404 --> 00:23:52.546
And so the question is, should I have my crew leaders of these three different kind of like segments of the business do sales?
347
00:23:53.146 --> 00:23:54.087
In my opinion, um,
348
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The person to be a great crew leader.
349
00:23:57.229 --> 00:24:00.873
If I expect them to also do sales, very expensive and very hard to find.
350
00:24:01.634 --> 00:24:03.075
I would rather have a salesperson.
351
00:24:03.536 --> 00:24:06.559
They don't need to be as good at operations and doing the work, but they need to be able to sell.
352
00:24:06.739 --> 00:24:10.642
And that's a very different skill and harder to find than someone who couldn't do the work.
353
00:24:11.303 --> 00:24:14.726
I would take your technicians out in the field on the seven stages of success, Matt.
354
00:24:15.106 --> 00:24:23.052
I would channel that into, hey, you can become a GM and then you can just put a slash, or a crew leader in one of these three departments.
355
00:24:23.072 --> 00:24:25.714
You could make that the same exact track.
356
00:24:26.554 --> 00:24:27.335
You could make the segment.
357
00:24:27.355 --> 00:24:28.696
So I'm a big fan of the segmentation.
358
00:24:29.336 --> 00:24:31.258
If you look at the GM plus...
359
00:24:32.947 --> 00:24:41.373
chart here for the org chart, you'll notice as you begin to grow past 1.5, you're going to need these green parts.
360
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You're going to need the assistance.
361
00:24:42.534 --> 00:24:44.035
You're going to need the crew leaders.
362
00:24:44.055 --> 00:24:46.116
You'll see down here, the crew leaders start popping up.
363
00:24:46.536 --> 00:24:49.679
That's when it starts to make sense to do what you're talking about.
364
00:24:50.479 --> 00:24:55.705
And it would be okay to have a crew leader for your maintenance, a crew leader for your strata, etc.
365
00:24:55.845 --> 00:24:57.748
But keep them all in operations.
366
00:24:58.348 --> 00:25:07.198
It would be very hard to find a salesperson for your strata, a salesperson for your chemicals, a salesperson for your maintenance.
367
00:25:07.218 --> 00:25:09.040
It's going to be very difficult.
368
00:25:09.761 --> 00:25:14.642
It is much harder and more expensive to find someone who has sales and operation experience than just operations.
369
00:25:14.862 --> 00:25:17.323
And then go find one unicorn that's going to be your sales manager.
370
00:25:17.343 --> 00:25:20.104
So if you're going to stay in the GM Plus model, which is totally fine.
371
00:25:20.424 --> 00:25:22.325
I think you guys have made the decision to keep this one the big one.
372
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And then your second location is going to start a little bit smaller and do more recurring revenue stuff.
373
00:25:26.966 --> 00:25:27.186
Great.
374
00:25:27.306 --> 00:25:27.546
Awesome.
375
00:25:27.586 --> 00:25:27.846
Fine.
376
00:25:28.586 --> 00:25:29.747
You're in the GM Plus model.
377
00:25:29.767 --> 00:25:30.687
You'll need a sales manager.
378
00:25:31.558 --> 00:25:34.339
And then inside of operations, you can create crew leaders.
379
00:25:35.039 --> 00:25:41.341
So that would make sure the team is good, they're trained up, they're onboarded correctly, they have quality standards, do quality control.
380
00:25:41.641 --> 00:25:41.861
Good.
381
00:25:42.321 --> 00:25:47.122
I would not recommend mixing sales with operations at all three of those divisions.
382
00:25:47.222 --> 00:25:48.443
I'd get one sales manager.
383
00:25:48.763 --> 00:25:54.745
And then you can benchmark their metrics, perhaps kind of segmented out by those three if you really wanted to for the sales manager.
384
00:25:55.165 --> 00:25:55.745
But I would...
385
00:25:57.057 --> 00:26:03.081
really recommend to not try to go find a bunch of salespeople that also know the operations.
386
00:26:03.321 --> 00:26:04.502
It's very hard to find.
387
00:26:04.842 --> 00:26:06.623
And I'm usually trying to find one per location.
388
00:26:06.643 --> 00:26:07.544
That's my general manager.
389
00:26:08.104 --> 00:26:09.585
And that's the person that can do the operation.
390
00:26:09.625 --> 00:26:11.246
They can step in, they can help everyone out.
391
00:26:11.446 --> 00:26:12.187
They know what's going on.
392
00:26:12.207 --> 00:26:14.668
They can run the whole place, but they're good at sales.
393
00:26:15.449 --> 00:26:16.369
Hard to find that person.
394
00:26:16.389 --> 00:26:19.391
They're typically going to be an entrepreneur and they're going to start their own business.
395
00:26:20.212 --> 00:26:21.993
Fifth and final on the docket for today.
396
00:26:22.133 --> 00:26:23.794
Hey Mike, recording from the gym right now.
397
00:26:24.054 --> 00:26:25.035
I love your content.
398
00:26:25.335 --> 00:26:25.455
Um,
399
00:26:26.071 --> 00:26:26.411
Stoked.
400
00:26:26.531 --> 00:26:28.272
Anyways, what is the name of your business?
401
00:26:29.153 --> 00:26:31.114
My business name is MLC Martins Lawn Care.
402
00:26:31.614 --> 00:26:37.698
Our expected revenue this year is 1.475, a little bit shy of 1.5 million.
403
00:26:38.458 --> 00:26:39.699
How many employees do I have?
404
00:26:40.299 --> 00:26:49.725
We have around, we have seven to eight employees, had 10 earlier in the year, but we're right around seven to eight, rocking three crews.
405
00:26:51.125 --> 00:26:55.308
My question for you is right now kind of in a position where I'm
406
00:26:56.308 --> 00:26:57.569
I'm over leveraging myself.
407
00:26:57.589 --> 00:27:02.051
I'm wearing a lot of different hats and I don't have a whole lot of high talent labor.
408
00:27:02.951 --> 00:27:03.732
So I'm doing a lot of that.
409
00:27:03.812 --> 00:27:09.374
I'm doing managing all the operations, managing all the sales, material deliveries.
410
00:27:10.035 --> 00:27:13.836
And we do mostly landscape installs and cleanups.
411
00:27:14.177 --> 00:27:15.217
So one time projects.
412
00:27:16.198 --> 00:27:25.042
Not only am I trying to get a continuity program like Harmosi has suggested, but really what I'm trying to do is scale out either the operation side of the sales side.
413
00:27:25.643 --> 00:27:32.995
curious which one would be easier, which one would be better for the business and which one you think is going to be the biggest constraint going forward.
414
00:27:34.395 --> 00:27:35.515
Really curious on your insight.
415
00:27:36.236 --> 00:27:36.876
Thank you very much.
416
00:27:36.936 --> 00:27:38.176
Appreciate it.
417
00:27:38.296 --> 00:27:38.676
1.5 million.
418
00:27:38.696 --> 00:27:39.417
Good job, Christian.
419
00:27:39.457 --> 00:27:39.837
Let's go.
420
00:27:39.857 --> 00:27:41.137
Okay.
421
00:27:41.778 --> 00:27:44.839
So you said one word there that I want to, you said over leverage.
422
00:27:44.879 --> 00:27:48.680
I think you mostly meant like you're spread thin, not like actually have a whole bunch of debt.
423
00:27:49.000 --> 00:27:51.521
Because if you actually had a whole bunch of debt, I'd probably say something slightly different.
424
00:27:52.101 --> 00:27:54.442
But I'm going to spread, you're just spread thin.
425
00:27:54.802 --> 00:27:55.542
This is the problem.
426
00:27:56.422 --> 00:27:57.743
When you do big projects.
427
00:27:58.937 --> 00:28:00.117
Ultimately, this is what happens.
428
00:28:00.297 --> 00:28:08.600
You hit this 1.5, you grow in a big business, but you're doing everything inside the business and it's hard to replace yourself because it's complex and custom services.
429
00:28:09.580 --> 00:28:12.101
So inside the book, we talk about simple systems.
430
00:28:12.181 --> 00:28:13.241
How do you build the systems?
431
00:28:13.301 --> 00:28:14.662
You use the framework right here.
432
00:28:15.782 --> 00:28:18.403
So we have the simple systems framework.
433
00:28:19.839 --> 00:28:20.119
Boom.
434
00:28:20.739 --> 00:28:21.059
Right here.
435
00:28:21.079 --> 00:28:23.200
You can't really see it.
436
00:28:24.080 --> 00:28:24.460
Hide me.
437
00:28:24.540 --> 00:28:26.321
There you go.
438
00:28:26.761 --> 00:28:29.482
Right now, you're doing complex and custom work.
439
00:28:29.922 --> 00:28:31.523
This is what we call the treadmill junkie.
440
00:28:32.563 --> 00:28:33.583
It leads to burnout.
441
00:28:34.243 --> 00:28:43.566
So what I would recommend is slowly move up to the master juggler, which is where you still do complex jobs, one-time big projects, but you're going to standardize everything.
442
00:28:44.166 --> 00:28:45.367
So I'd first move you there.
443
00:28:46.047 --> 00:28:46.707
That's where you're going to go.
444
00:28:46.727 --> 00:28:48.488
Top left-hand corner, the master juggler.
445
00:28:49.308 --> 00:28:53.810
And to do that, you're going to say, these are the type of pavers, these are the type of blocks that we install and nothing else.
446
00:28:54.410 --> 00:29:00.772
Take standard kind of materials that you know will work for 95% of people and use those.
447
00:29:01.273 --> 00:29:04.014
You will not have a drop off in sales like everyone wants you to believe.
448
00:29:04.334 --> 00:29:06.755
Your bell guard is like, oh, no, you don't have a thousand options.
449
00:29:06.795 --> 00:29:07.135
No, you don't.
450
00:29:07.882 --> 00:29:17.334
Okay, then as time goes on, I want you to move towards built to scale, which is the top right-hand corner, which is simple and standardized, which means you're still standard, but you simplify.
451
00:29:17.354 --> 00:29:18.996
You're going to cut some of those services out.
452
00:29:19.576 --> 00:29:23.862
Ideally, the ones that you know every single time you touch, you're on the project all the time.
453
00:29:24.865 --> 00:29:27.986
Anytime, anytime there's a service and you're like, yeah, I'll end up being there.
454
00:29:28.966 --> 00:29:30.026
Something's going to happen bad.
455
00:29:30.486 --> 00:29:31.506
It might be irrigation.
456
00:29:31.566 --> 00:29:32.666
It might be excavation.
457
00:29:32.947 --> 00:29:33.627
It might be something.
458
00:29:33.807 --> 00:29:36.067
For me, it was like hydro seating jobs.
459
00:29:36.587 --> 00:29:37.527
It was irrigation.
460
00:29:37.667 --> 00:29:38.788
We did, we did irrigation.
461
00:29:38.808 --> 00:29:39.488
I can't even believe it.
462
00:29:39.508 --> 00:29:40.028
Mercy goodness.
463
00:29:40.308 --> 00:29:42.228
We did irrigation, excavation jobs.
464
00:29:42.288 --> 00:29:43.329
I usually ended up being on.
465
00:29:43.449 --> 00:29:44.789
It's like, I ended up just having to cut them out.
466
00:29:44.869 --> 00:29:46.829
So that's simplification, like just cutting those things out.
467
00:29:47.349 --> 00:29:50.650
But I would start with standardization because then that way you can maintain your revenue.
468
00:29:50.670 --> 00:29:51.050
Yeah.
469
00:29:51.230 --> 00:29:57.073
So next year, instead of trying to like, we're going to do 3 million, just be like, hey, we're just going to focus on standardizing what we're currently doing.
470
00:29:57.414 --> 00:30:03.157
I happen to believe you'll actually make more revenue and more profit doing just the standardization because you're not going to actually cut any services out yet.
471
00:30:03.937 --> 00:30:04.878
Then you'll simplify.
472
00:30:05.942 --> 00:30:09.424
Once you do that, then you have simplified and standardized the business.
473
00:30:10.085 --> 00:30:11.526
And that's just the services we talked about.
474
00:30:11.586 --> 00:30:16.529
Then you're also going to do the same thing for equipment, the way you answer the phone, your website, everything gets simplified and standardized.
475
00:30:17.209 --> 00:30:18.950
Then you have the opportunity to hand things off.
476
00:30:19.631 --> 00:30:22.353
Until you do that, if you start handing things off, you're going to create chaos.
477
00:30:24.274 --> 00:30:26.876
If you start handing off your operations, it's going to be chaos.
478
00:30:28.537 --> 00:30:30.818
Because no one knows how to do all the projects like you do.
479
00:30:31.278 --> 00:30:33.580
If you start handing off sales, no one knows how to do sales like you do.
480
00:30:34.836 --> 00:30:43.180
And if you're trying to determine which one do I hand off first, we always are going to move in the direction of I first delegate admin, then I delegate operations, then I delegate sales.
481
00:30:43.540 --> 00:30:45.501
So right now you're at that 1.5 million size.
482
00:30:45.862 --> 00:30:52.505
You're exactly at the point where you're feeling the pressure based upon the book where it's like I got to hire an operations manager.
483
00:30:53.986 --> 00:30:57.908
It's the reason I do that is because it's easier to find the operations manager than is finding a sales manager.
484
00:30:58.838 --> 00:31:05.226
If there is someone that's going to be able to produce $2 million worth of sales for one-time projects, they're going to go start their own business.
485
00:31:05.647 --> 00:31:08.911
Or they're going to be extremely expensive and hard to find.
486
00:31:09.952 --> 00:31:18.423
It's easier to take one of your technicians that worked with you for five years or has worked in another business for 10 years and has some resemblance of training around leadership to step in.
487
00:31:18.643 --> 00:31:19.925
It's cheaper and easier to find them.
1
00:00:00.271 --> 00:00:07.259
If you're struggling to grow your home service business to $3 million in annual revenue, this video is for you.
2
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I'm talking to five different entrepreneurs ranging from $900,000 in annual revenue to $1.7 million in annual revenue.
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And they're all trying to get to $3 million in annual revenue.
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So I'll give you the exact strategies you need and we're gonna use their five questions to guide us along the way.
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Let's get started.
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Number one.
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Hey Mike, it's Connor.
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I'm with Augusta Lawn Care.
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We'll do about 1.6, 1.7 million this year.
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We had 20 employees a peak.
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And my question is, as we are breaking our locations up into multiple satellite locations versus the one large GM Plus model,
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What are your thoughts on the office controlling the schedule versus the local working GM, GM, or GM Plus?
13
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Like having them control the schedule regularly?
14
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in-house versus the office doing, uh, putting the jobs on the schedule, uh, assigning team members and crews, actually scheduling the crews, making sure time off is in all of that stuff.
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Just another thing, uh, to take off, uh,
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the plate of the general manager.
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I know it will get complicated with late call-offs, people know showing different things like that.
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However, assuming you have a pretty consistent team, I think this is something that the office can do to fill those valleys between, you know, high demand hours and low demand hours.
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I'm curious on your thoughts.
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Thanks.
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Fantastic.
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All right.
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For all the haters out there that commented on Connor's video about, what, eight, nine months ago, saying he was going to fail and everything, I'm very happy to tell you he's doing great.
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And so Creshing out there, they worked through a lot of restructuring, and I think the skill that Connor has learned this year and is continuing to learn is the part we talked about earlier in the live stream, that is managing managers.
25
00:02:12.555 --> 00:02:22.308
And so what they did, as he recognized that that was his skill gap, what he actually did is he brought all his locations under his control and used all under one spot.
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00:02:23.393 --> 00:02:30.955
That shop space that he was renting, or I think he's still there, was something like $10,000 to $12,000 a month in rent.
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Very difficult to make money.
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So what now he's doing is he took this year, reconsolidated these general managers, get everyone in one building.
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It's easier to manage when you don't have that skill yet.
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You get your skills.
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You get your great team that is used to view now.
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and you start to learn that skill.
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And now he's trying to figure out, okay, how can we get out of this $10,000, $12,000 a month?
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How can we break this up a little bit more?
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How can we actually make sure that we're not driving as far?
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00:02:57.326 --> 00:03:02.589
We have a general manager that manages 500,000, 600,000 of that revenue and breaks things out over time.
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00:03:03.190 --> 00:03:10.494
The question though is, should the office be handling the scheduling or should this be on the general manager?
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00:03:10.895 --> 00:03:13.757
Okay, I think this is much more of a
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00:03:15.709 --> 00:03:17.851
a continuum than a dichotomy.
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00:03:18.351 --> 00:03:21.473
What I mean by that is it's not like, yes, they should or no, they shouldn't.
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00:03:21.573 --> 00:03:24.476
It is a sliding scale based upon recurring revenue.
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00:03:25.216 --> 00:03:28.799
The higher the percentage of recurring revenue, the easier it is to do scheduling.
43
00:03:29.499 --> 00:03:36.865
Also, another sliding scale is the continuity and the longevity of the team.
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00:03:37.265 --> 00:03:41.569
So location and growth mode, very difficult to do scheduling because your budget hours are going up every week.
45
00:03:43.975 --> 00:03:57.426
If your team has stayed with you in profit mode for two, three years on average, they have the same routes, the same customers, people have been here for a long time, the same trucks, all the trucks are standardized, all the mowers are standardized, a whole lot easier to do scheduling.
46
00:03:57.966 --> 00:04:04.271
So when I moved out of daily operations, one of the first things I did once I was in profit mode for a few years and I had enough money is I just bought new trucks for the whole team.
47
00:04:04.811 --> 00:04:06.753
Mostly, not because I think I wanted new trucks.
48
00:04:07.833 --> 00:04:11.035
Well, it was also because COVID made use prices go way up to the roof.
49
00:04:11.055 --> 00:04:12.056
So I got new trucks.
50
00:04:12.376 --> 00:04:15.218
But it was mostly to make scheduling easier for the general manager.
51
00:04:15.598 --> 00:04:31.790
Because ultimately, I would rather the general manager take on scheduling because it is such a key component of profitability that if I'm going to give them a piece of profit sharing or owner's distributions and then handicap them by saying, I control your scheduling, it's hard for them to take accountability fully for the position.
52
00:04:33.250 --> 00:04:38.371
That being said, if you're in growth mode, it's much more challenging when you're adding jobs every day.
53
00:04:39.091 --> 00:04:43.432
You got projects coming in to fill in the gaps, but now you got to think about the fact that you're adding jobs every single day.
54
00:04:43.452 --> 00:04:47.253
So in four weeks, when you're booked out, your schedule looks totally different than it does today.
55
00:04:48.053 --> 00:04:49.333
That's very hard to schedule.
56
00:04:49.373 --> 00:04:50.934
So this is my recommendation, Connor.
57
00:04:51.634 --> 00:04:55.975
If you're in growth mode, I would have your office do your scheduling.
58
00:04:56.895 --> 00:04:57.995
If you're in profit mode,
59
00:04:59.248 --> 00:05:05.050
And you hit all the benchmarks of profit mode, which means very high rate of recurring revenue, simplified services.
60
00:05:05.650 --> 00:05:09.352
You're in profit mode, meaning we're not marketing or advertising and getting a whole bunch of new customers.
61
00:05:09.652 --> 00:05:16.654
Meaning we aren't jamming like every single week, hiring more people, getting more trucks, getting more equipment, expanding capacity all the time.
62
00:05:16.835 --> 00:05:17.835
We're not doing that.
63
00:05:18.055 --> 00:05:23.077
Then I would try my very best to get the general manager to do the scheduling.
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00:05:23.517 --> 00:05:25.779
Because it's such a key component to profitability.
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00:05:26.259 --> 00:05:38.227
Because if I'm going to give them a piece of revenue, like a consent of onset in revenue, well, if they're close to the end of the month and the office doesn't put quite enough budget hours to get the jobs or get enough revenue to push them over the threshold, guess who they're going to blame?
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00:05:39.408 --> 00:05:40.569
They're going to blame the office.
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00:05:41.289 --> 00:05:47.234
And the last thing I want to do is ever have any mid-level manager reappoint each other and cast blame.
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00:05:48.026 --> 00:05:49.786
Ruined your culture so fast.
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00:05:50.526 --> 00:05:58.648
And so your admin person is potentially incentivized or wants to make sure everyone's schedule is within capacity and jobs go smoothly.
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00:05:58.948 --> 00:06:05.249
Your GM, on the other hand, is like, I know if I just made $300 more this month, I would have unlocked a $500 bonus.
71
00:06:05.729 --> 00:06:07.729
And so I need them to have power over the schedule.
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00:06:08.349 --> 00:06:10.050
Now, if it's profitability, same thing.
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00:06:10.470 --> 00:06:16.951
If they know that one of their crews, because now if you now have this other location and then office over here, office doesn't know the crew.
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00:06:17.798 --> 00:06:18.739
The general manager does.
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00:06:19.539 --> 00:06:25.423
And he knows that this one crew is very money motivated and can complete 10 to 12 budget hours a day during peak season.
76
00:06:25.944 --> 00:06:30.887
And yet they're only getting six or seven because that's what everyone's supposed to get because that's what the office is trained to do.
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00:06:31.087 --> 00:06:35.670
That's why the power of scheduling in the general manager's hand is so important because they know their team.
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00:06:36.531 --> 00:06:38.132
And their team also is...
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00:06:39.337 --> 00:06:42.439
I need the general manager to have full accountability for the schedule.
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00:06:42.779 --> 00:06:45.221
Because when the team has a problem, they're going to come to the general manager.
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00:06:45.301 --> 00:06:53.847
If the general manager becomes an in-between simply of like, oh, well, the office, I'm sorry, the office messed it up, or the office didn't put enough on your route, or like, sorry, they only put six budget hours.
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00:06:53.867 --> 00:06:55.188
I know you asked for nine or ten.
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00:06:55.228 --> 00:06:55.988
I know you're super efficient.
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00:06:56.208 --> 00:06:57.129
Like, I'll talk to them.
85
00:06:57.149 --> 00:06:57.709
I'll try to figure it out.
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00:06:57.809 --> 00:06:59.431
Like, they can't, they're handicapped.
87
00:06:59.451 --> 00:07:01.512
They're, like, you just took out their leg.
88
00:07:01.712 --> 00:07:03.293
They can't manage their team effectively.
89
00:07:03.934 --> 00:07:08.517
But I would say 100%, if you're in growth mode, it's way harder to schedule.
90
00:07:09.239 --> 00:07:12.024
If you're doing projects, way harder to schedule effectively.
91
00:07:12.886 --> 00:07:18.556
And the growth mode thing is the real kicker because you're adding things to the schedule continually and adding new team members.
92
00:07:18.737 --> 00:07:20.239
So you're putting pressure on them on sales
93
00:07:21.433 --> 00:07:24.294
like getting all these customers, upselling, managing all that.
94
00:07:24.754 --> 00:07:30.555
Then you go from operational perspective, like put them on the schedule, fit them on the routes, fit in the budget hours, make sure you're under capacity.
95
00:07:30.975 --> 00:07:35.976
And then they're also from an operational perspective, having to hire new people to take on this new demand.
96
00:07:36.437 --> 00:07:42.078
And you could very easily add 30 budget hours of new recurring revenue every month.
97
00:07:42.598 --> 00:07:44.519
That's like one or two jobs a day during spring rush.
98
00:07:44.880 --> 00:07:47.922
That's a new team member likely every two weeks.
99
00:07:48.242 --> 00:07:51.505
That's very difficult for a GM that has a team of six to eight people.
100
00:07:52.382 --> 00:08:01.666
Like they're adding a huge amount of operational drag because there's now more yellow slips and callbacks and people make mistakes and they start making mistakes on scheduling because there's so many moving parts.
101
00:08:02.107 --> 00:08:08.050
So I would agree that in growth mode, it might be a good idea to take on scheduling in the office.
102
00:08:08.670 --> 00:08:17.214
I would heavily push towards if your general manager is incentivized on profit sharing, that you need them to be fully accountable to their team for the schedule and to be
103
00:08:17.454 --> 00:08:22.436
And they have the best pulse on where the team is at, especially if they're distributed workforce, i.e.
104
00:08:22.557 --> 00:08:24.277
away from the hub, i.e.
105
00:08:24.317 --> 00:08:24.938
the command center.
106
00:08:25.638 --> 00:08:30.661
And so then I want as much as possible that GM to do scheduling, but it's very difficult for them.
107
00:08:30.941 --> 00:08:39.685
If I have different types of trucks, different types of equipment, all my team has been here for like a month or two, um, all of my, my trucks break down, um, um, um, um, um, um,
108
00:08:40.005 --> 00:08:42.767
my, I'm constantly marketing and driving tons of work.
109
00:08:42.987 --> 00:08:47.229
I'm expecting them to do a whole bunch of door hangers, but also train new team members that are coming in every week.
110
00:08:47.389 --> 00:08:48.409
That's chaos.
111
00:08:48.890 --> 00:08:51.051
And that's when the balls will drop on scheduling.
112
00:08:51.822 --> 00:08:52.762
Number two on the docket.
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00:08:52.842 --> 00:08:53.183
Hey, Mike.
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00:08:53.323 --> 00:08:54.083
My name's Jacob.
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00:08:54.263 --> 00:08:57.524
I own a lawn care business up in upstate New York.
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00:08:57.584 --> 00:08:59.645
We actually just got done a snowstorm.
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00:09:01.466 --> 00:09:09.189
My business this year will do just under $900,000, and I currently have an admin person, an operations person, and I do sales.
118
00:09:09.789 --> 00:09:10.489
Full-time GM.
119
00:09:10.509 --> 00:09:10.849
Let's go.
120
00:09:10.869 --> 00:09:12.690
A lot of people are stepping on each other's toes.
121
00:09:12.750 --> 00:09:15.031
I still do a lot of the admin and the operations work.
122
00:09:15.051 --> 00:09:15.651
Good chapter.
123
00:09:15.671 --> 00:09:17.452
So I know I need to...
124
00:09:18.452 --> 00:09:23.496
separate the roles and assign roles to people, which I'm working on, especially this winter while it's slow.
125
00:09:24.517 --> 00:09:30.162
But my question was, what KPIs should I be using to monitor each role?
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00:09:31.643 --> 00:09:34.045
Like just a few of the most important ones.
127
00:09:35.526 --> 00:09:37.308
And how do I actually monitor them?
128
00:09:37.348 --> 00:09:42.292
Like for admin, I'm guessing it's, you know, calls answered, accounts receivable.
129
00:09:42.712 --> 00:09:44.994
A lot of the stuff I use, homeworks.
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00:09:45.014 --> 00:09:45.895
So,
131
00:09:48.235 --> 00:09:49.877
I know a lot of that I can monitor in there.
132
00:09:49.897 --> 00:09:52.839
I also use like Ring Central for answering phones.
133
00:09:53.040 --> 00:09:54.881
So should I just run a report out of there?
134
00:09:55.602 --> 00:09:58.285
Or are those not even important things to be monitoring?
135
00:09:59.726 --> 00:10:00.287
I appreciate it.
136
00:10:00.427 --> 00:10:02.128
Thank you for answering the question.
137
00:10:03.009 --> 00:10:03.570
Let's go.
138
00:10:03.730 --> 00:10:05.231
Congratulations, 900K.
139
00:10:05.652 --> 00:10:07.514
Jacob, thank you for being a member of HomeWorks.
140
00:10:08.014 --> 00:10:09.876
Okay, a couple things.
141
00:10:10.858 --> 00:10:13.119
KPIs, very important for sales, operations, and admin.
142
00:10:13.139 --> 00:10:19.862
You are in the full-time GM role, which means you have delegated admin, you have delegated operations, and you're mostly focused on sales.
143
00:10:20.202 --> 00:10:25.485
This is an exciting part of the business because you can grow very quickly because all of your time is focused on sales, i.e.
144
00:10:25.505 --> 00:10:26.545
getting more work, i.e.
145
00:10:26.585 --> 00:10:27.966
growing the business.
146
00:10:28.546 --> 00:10:30.447
Fun and exciting for entrepreneurial types.
147
00:10:30.827 --> 00:10:37.350
Also usually a tight spot from a profitability perspective because you're having to afford two full-time employees
148
00:10:37.850 --> 00:10:38.811
uh, overhead positions.
149
00:10:39.831 --> 00:10:42.873
And that could be very hurtful from a profitability perspective.
150
00:10:43.393 --> 00:10:46.435
So let's get through it as fast as possible.
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Sales.
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We got to make sure that we have certain metrics.
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This goes, all the book goes over all of these.
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I'm going to give you the highlights.
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It is very common during the full-time GM phase.
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This is why I, I actually don't like going to the GM, the full-time GM, like going past in like 1.2, 1.3.
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I don't like going there.
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And I like the copy base is because when I have mid-level managers, uh,
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and they get to work together.
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We have drama, drama.
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And so, yeah, you're gonna get a little bit of this.
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I try to avoid it by just not getting to the point where I need multiple layers of management or multiple managers that are overhead.
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Honestly, that's the truth.
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So to prevent that, you need clarity.
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You need clarity of the roles, you need clarity of what metrics they're responsible for, and you wanna make sure you don't perverse incentives.
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So for example, if you track in close rate like you should for sales, don't incent them on close rate.
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Because if they do, if you do, they will increase their close rate, but they'll put pressure on budget hours and make the operations manager really brutal.
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And if you make the operations person incentivize like efficiency, they're going to get in the business of the admin person time and time again when there's complaints.
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Or when someone calls back and they want you to come back to the job, they're like, no, no, no, no.
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Like they'll give way too many excuses and customer support will go down because they're incentivized on budget hours and capacity and efficiency scores.
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Which I think you should do for operations.
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Agreed.
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But if it comes at the cost of someone else's paycheck or their incentives, we have a big problem.
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So that's why we want to be very, very, very careful of incentivizing specific metrics.
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Your focus on metrics will change as the business grows.
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So at the beginning, close rate is really important.
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As you move away from the business and you're in profit mode, you just care about distributable cash, money in your pocket.
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So be careful about that because you have to change their incentives, which can get a little hairy.
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Secondly, don't have perverse incentives between managers.
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And third, have very clear metrics of success.
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So if your close rate is something that you measure in sales, like you should, use the speedometer that we talk about in the book.
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We'll go over this later in the training, even in today's live stream.
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Use the speedometer to know, okay, this is when you're good.
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This is when you're bad.
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This is when you're great.
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Okay.
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Um, and those are like red, yellow, green of what those metrics should be looking like.
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So this is what good looks like.
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This is what bad looks like.
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This is what I'm going to get in your business.
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This is when I will not get in your business.
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I'll let you do your thing.
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So very clear metrics is the first point.
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Um, yeah.
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what it looks like in each of those metrics.
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So I'll give you the basics.
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For sales, I need customer acquisition costs, I need close rate.
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Because that's going to be number of leads coming in.
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I'm sorry.
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Yeah, customer acquisition costs.
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Like how much does it cost me to get someone in?
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And what percentage, how efficient am I at getting new customers?
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Because if I get a whole bunch of leads, but I have a horrible close rate,
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Like, you're like, oh, well, we're getting $10 per lead.
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But if I'm only closing one out of 10, that's my constraint, not more leads.
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Like, oh, you're not pouring more money on marketing.
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It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
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Like, let's look at sales process, not marketing and getting more leads.
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So I'm looking at customer acquisition costs and close rate for sales.
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For operations, I'm looking at efficiency score.
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And then, like, honestly, I have a whole bunch of them in the book, like of metrics.
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But the ones that are most important to me is efficiency score and probably...
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Most important to Michael.
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I just want efficiency score.
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That's it.
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Because if my efficiency score is high, my team's making a bunch of money on P4P.
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And if they're making a bunch of money on P4P, the culture takes care of itself.
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And quality goes up because now there's real money on the line for yellow slips.
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No, efficiency score is really all I care about.
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You could also think about capacity for an operations manager in terms of are they doing the schedule correctly?
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Are you near capacity or it's an 80%, et cetera.
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For admin, like you said, there's a whole box of them.
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I have a whole bunch of them in here.
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Things like answer time, how long it takes to answer the phone, what percentage of calls are missed.
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The bigger thing, in my opinion, is estimate lead time.
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So inside of homeworks,
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Copilot, at the top there, make them actually put in when the estimate was requested correctly according to like when it came in from the website or they called.
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If you're doing over the phone estimates, that's now, which shrinks your lead time massively.
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Instant quotes.
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Also, immediate.
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You're getting the price immediately from when you asked for the estimate.
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So that makes your estimate lead time go, or sorry, your lead response time way down.
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But something like that would be tracked, especially if you're doing any sort of project work or in-person or drive-by estimates, I would be trying to shrink that time and I'd probably monitor that with the admin team.
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I give a list of like 10 to 15 metrics for all three inside the book and then when you need to be focused on them at certain times.
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So for full-time GMs,
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you are handling sales still.
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And usually the biggest thing that you have to manage is operations because it's the thing you just recently let go of.
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You delegated it.
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So once you've delegated operations and you move into sales, you are still in the business as the operator and the owner doing sales.
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You will create systems down the road as you get to 1.5.
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At $900,000, what I would recommend doing is making sure there's really good systems for your operations person to be successful so you can actually focus on sales.
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and not just be the spare tire of your operations manager.
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That's where efficiency scores are really important, making sure you have a really good red tagging system for your equipment.
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We go over all this.
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Like broken equipment, how to do scheduling, how to make sure your budget hour capacity is on target, how to train crews, how to have an onboarding process, have a training checklist.
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These are the type of things you went and nailed so that they can really do their job well
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Um, and almost always that aligns with efficiency score.
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Like the end output is what I'm always trying to incentivize or monitor because if something is broke with efficiency score, I can usually track backwards and find pretty quickly what will happen wrong.
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So if my efficiency score is 50%, I know immediately people are, are not getting enough budget hours done.
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First thing I'm looking at is, are we misquoting jobs?
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So if efficiency score is low, are we misquoting jobs?
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You're doing the estimates.
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You would know, and I'm going to guess you're not misquoting it.
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Assuming your estimates are accurate, we can cross that off the list.
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Okay, estimates are accurate.
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I'm putting them in the correct amount of budget hours, and they're still at 50% efficiency score.
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Okay, we know a 50% efficiency score is not good because we talk about what is good in the book, and we'll talk about it more later today.
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And so then the next thing I'm going to be like, okay, well, the estimates are accurate, but our efficiency score is low.
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Are people slacking off?
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And like, oh, well, no, we have pay for performance.
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Well, is anyone above base pay?
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Not at 50%?
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Probably not.
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So no one's actually incentivized by P4P.
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That's why people do P4P and they're like, oh, no, it didn't change behavior.
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Like, no, everyone's efficiency at 30 to 50%.
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Of course they're not.
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They think you're a scam by doing P4P because they've never seen a dollar of bonus on P4P.
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Um, and then, okay, well, no, we, you know, we, you know, of course no one's hitting base pain.
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Now what?
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Okay.
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Efficiency score.
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What's your service area?
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Are you driving 30 to 40 minutes for your first job?
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Okay.
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How long is it taking for your team meetings every morning?
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Are those stand up?
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Are they sit down?
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Cause all that wasted time is going to bring down your efficiency score.
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So that's what a great operations person starts doing is tweaking all the little knobs.
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Okay, we're not going to have a daily stand-up.
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We're going to do it three times a week.
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Okay, it's going to be a stand-up, not a sit-down, because I know that just standing up, everyone halves the time that the meeting takes, and no one's getting paid for that.
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It's not labor revenue.
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It's not being produced during that meeting.
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So an operations manager starts to fanatically think about efficiency, how we park the trucks, how we do the blades, how we do the equipment, how we do repairs, how we do maintenance on the equipment, all that thing they start to dial in because they start seeing it affects the efficiency score.
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So that was a long, long answer to a very short question.
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But yeah, sales, operations, admin, you need metrics for all of them.
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Hopefully that gives you a starting point.
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In the book, I talk about the ones to focus on in your current stage.
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Jacob, operations is the KPI you're going to nail.
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And it's going to usually trickle down to your efficiency score, budget hours divided by clocked hours.
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And then you can work backwards with things like number of yellow slips, operations.
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Okay.
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I got to make sure the work has been done to a high quality.
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And then efficiency is the other side.
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So efficiency and quality, that would be like the first thing I'd be thinking about.
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And then you have more trickle downs, like breakdowns, number of equipment breakdowns, how many people are above base pay on P4P.
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Those are things I'm starting to go down on, but like it all usually bundles up to efficiency score.
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And that's why I got a GM level.
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It all bundles down to profitability.
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That's why I'm going to give them a piece of that action.
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Hey everyone, real quick, given the fact that we are just headed now into 2026, this is really the perfect time to switch your CRM software.
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And if you're considering joining Copilot, soon to be Homeworks, I highly recommend joining now at the beginning of the year.
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That way you have all of your previous books and your old CRM, and then everything new in 2026,
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is with inside of copilot so we will help you do all of your onboarding moving your customers across into the new system and we can even move stripe tokens from your existing customers and their credit cards inside of copilot so go check it out go to copilotcrm.com and we'll see you there number three on the docket hi mike my name is daniel my company is ramos lawn care and this season we did about 1.1 million in revenue next season uh my goal is to do about 2 million
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We have about 10 to 12 employees working full time.
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My question for you is in your experience, what's the main bottom leg that holds most lawn care companies back from scaling past 1 million to 2 million?
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And how do I eliminate that so I can hit my goal for next season?
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The skill of managing managers is usually the biggest constraint because if you've gotten to a million, it means you're very good at selling and managing technicians.
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The difference between a million and two and three million is you now need mid-level management or managers of some sort, either through distributed multiple locations, GMs, or mid-level managers, sales, operations, admin.
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And so your ability to manage those people and not micromanage them and them feel like they actually...
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are accountable for their job and you have clear metrics and you have systems in place for them to see and you have a great compensation plan like a lot of this we cover in the book by the way um if they have those things that's the determining factor so definitely i would be looking at the full-time gm and the gm plus uh chapters of the book and it goes over a lot of these leadership aspects but leadership is a skill it can be taught it can be learned and you will
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set you will likely fail in this area it is uncommon to have natural characteristics of leadership that you just breeze through 1 million to 3 million because you have to change your leadership style
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Managing technicians where they're like, hey, I want to show up, get my job notes, my video, get my truck for the day, and head out.
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That's very different than managing someone who is responsible for scheduling, training, hiring, firing, team culture, one-on-ones, equipment maintenance, complaints.
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That's a very different skill.
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Managing that person and keeping them and retaining them and keeping them motivated to keep winning.
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So that would be my two cents.
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Number four on the docket.
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Hey, Mike.
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Matt here with Augusta Delta and White Rock.
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And my question is primarily about Augusta Delta.
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So we're going to do about $1.5 million this year and likely to hit $1.82 million next year.
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Pretty much in profit mode, we're not adding trucks or employee count.
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We're just going to grow into our capacities and raise prices heading into next year.
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So yeah.
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My question is, as far as our org structure, org chart, we've got kind of Andrew as the GM and he's kind of like a sales manager in charge of that division.
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But we were thinking of having a couple of different departments within ops, one of them being lawn care and fertilization, one of them being small projects, soft scapes, no multi-day stuff.
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And then another one being our strata and HOA and kind of having a crew leader at each of those levels.
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Would it make sense for those guys in each of those departments to do the sales for their division?
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Or do you think it would be better to have a separate sales manager, you know, whether it's Andrew or we promote one of those guys to that role?
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Would that make more sense than that person would be doing sales for all of the work that we do?
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Or does it make sense to have kind of like a mini working GM or department leader, you know, where the strata guy would do quotes?
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for that division and the project I would do quotes for that division.
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And you know, lawn care fertilization guy would do so good quotes and essence for that division.
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So just curious what you think about that.
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Thank you.
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Oh, it makes me so proud.
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Augusta nation count strong.
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Great question.
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That's a fantastic, that's in the weeds folks.
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This will not get clicks on YouTube, but that's a great question.
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So they're, they're, they're running a GM plus model, 1.5 to 1.8 million.
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Um, they're starting a second location and up there, they do a lot of what's called strata in down the U S that we like HOAs, et cetera.
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And so the question is, should I have my crew leaders of these three different kind of like segments of the business do sales?
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In my opinion, um,
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The person to be a great crew leader.
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If I expect them to also do sales, very expensive and very hard to find.
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I would rather have a salesperson.
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They don't need to be as good at operations and doing the work, but they need to be able to sell.
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And that's a very different skill and harder to find than someone who couldn't do the work.
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I would take your technicians out in the field on the seven stages of success, Matt.
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I would channel that into, hey, you can become a GM and then you can just put a slash, or a crew leader in one of these three departments.
355
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You could make that the same exact track.
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You could make the segment.
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So I'm a big fan of the segmentation.
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If you look at the GM plus...
359
00:24:32.947 --> 00:24:41.373
chart here for the org chart, you'll notice as you begin to grow past 1.5, you're going to need these green parts.
360
00:24:41.393 --> 00:24:42.354
You're going to need the assistance.
361
00:24:42.534 --> 00:24:44.035
You're going to need the crew leaders.
362
00:24:44.055 --> 00:24:46.116
You'll see down here, the crew leaders start popping up.
363
00:24:46.536 --> 00:24:49.679
That's when it starts to make sense to do what you're talking about.
364
00:24:50.479 --> 00:24:55.705
And it would be okay to have a crew leader for your maintenance, a crew leader for your strata, etc.
365
00:24:55.845 --> 00:24:57.748
But keep them all in operations.
366
00:24:58.348 --> 00:25:07.198
It would be very hard to find a salesperson for your strata, a salesperson for your chemicals, a salesperson for your maintenance.
367
00:25:07.218 --> 00:25:09.040
It's going to be very difficult.
368
00:25:09.761 --> 00:25:14.642
It is much harder and more expensive to find someone who has sales and operation experience than just operations.
369
00:25:14.862 --> 00:25:17.323
And then go find one unicorn that's going to be your sales manager.
370
00:25:17.343 --> 00:25:20.104
So if you're going to stay in the GM Plus model, which is totally fine.
371
00:25:20.424 --> 00:25:22.325
I think you guys have made the decision to keep this one the big one.
372
00:25:22.345 --> 00:25:26.126
And then your second location is going to start a little bit smaller and do more recurring revenue stuff.
373
00:25:26.966 --> 00:25:27.186
Great.
374
00:25:27.306 --> 00:25:27.546
Awesome.
375
00:25:27.586 --> 00:25:27.846
Fine.
376
00:25:28.586 --> 00:25:29.747
You're in the GM Plus model.
377
00:25:29.767 --> 00:25:30.687
You'll need a sales manager.
378
00:25:31.558 --> 00:25:34.339
And then inside of operations, you can create crew leaders.
379
00:25:35.039 --> 00:25:41.341
So that would make sure the team is good, they're trained up, they're onboarded correctly, they have quality standards, do quality control.
380
00:25:41.641 --> 00:25:41.861
Good.
381
00:25:42.321 --> 00:25:47.122
I would not recommend mixing sales with operations at all three of those divisions.
382
00:25:47.222 --> 00:25:48.443
I'd get one sales manager.
383
00:25:48.763 --> 00:25:54.745
And then you can benchmark their metrics, perhaps kind of segmented out by those three if you really wanted to for the sales manager.
384
00:25:55.165 --> 00:25:55.745
But I would...
385
00:25:57.057 --> 00:26:03.081
really recommend to not try to go find a bunch of salespeople that also know the operations.
386
00:26:03.321 --> 00:26:04.502
It's very hard to find.
387
00:26:04.842 --> 00:26:06.623
And I'm usually trying to find one per location.
388
00:26:06.643 --> 00:26:07.544
That's my general manager.
389
00:26:08.104 --> 00:26:09.585
And that's the person that can do the operation.
390
00:26:09.625 --> 00:26:11.246
They can step in, they can help everyone out.
391
00:26:11.446 --> 00:26:12.187
They know what's going on.
392
00:26:12.207 --> 00:26:14.668
They can run the whole place, but they're good at sales.
393
00:26:15.449 --> 00:26:16.369
Hard to find that person.
394
00:26:16.389 --> 00:26:19.391
They're typically going to be an entrepreneur and they're going to start their own business.
395
00:26:20.212 --> 00:26:21.993
Fifth and final on the docket for today.
396
00:26:22.133 --> 00:26:23.794
Hey Mike, recording from the gym right now.
397
00:26:24.054 --> 00:26:25.035
I love your content.
398
00:26:25.335 --> 00:26:25.455
Um,
399
00:26:26.071 --> 00:26:26.411
Stoked.
400
00:26:26.531 --> 00:26:28.272
Anyways, what is the name of your business?
401
00:26:29.153 --> 00:26:31.114
My business name is MLC Martins Lawn Care.
402
00:26:31.614 --> 00:26:37.698
Our expected revenue this year is 1.475, a little bit shy of 1.5 million.
403
00:26:38.458 --> 00:26:39.699
How many employees do I have?
404
00:26:40.299 --> 00:26:49.725
We have around, we have seven to eight employees, had 10 earlier in the year, but we're right around seven to eight, rocking three crews.
405
00:26:51.125 --> 00:26:55.308
My question for you is right now kind of in a position where I'm
406
00:26:56.308 --> 00:26:57.569
I'm over leveraging myself.
407
00:26:57.589 --> 00:27:02.051
I'm wearing a lot of different hats and I don't have a whole lot of high talent labor.
408
00:27:02.951 --> 00:27:03.732
So I'm doing a lot of that.
409
00:27:03.812 --> 00:27:09.374
I'm doing managing all the operations, managing all the sales, material deliveries.
410
00:27:10.035 --> 00:27:13.836
And we do mostly landscape installs and cleanups.
411
00:27:14.177 --> 00:27:15.217
So one time projects.
412
00:27:16.198 --> 00:27:25.042
Not only am I trying to get a continuity program like Harmosi has suggested, but really what I'm trying to do is scale out either the operation side of the sales side.
413
00:27:25.643 --> 00:27:32.995
curious which one would be easier, which one would be better for the business and which one you think is going to be the biggest constraint going forward.
414
00:27:34.395 --> 00:27:35.515
Really curious on your insight.
415
00:27:36.236 --> 00:27:36.876
Thank you very much.
416
00:27:36.936 --> 00:27:38.176
Appreciate it.
417
00:27:38.296 --> 00:27:38.676
1.5 million.
418
00:27:38.696 --> 00:27:39.417
Good job, Christian.
419
00:27:39.457 --> 00:27:39.837
Let's go.
420
00:27:39.857 --> 00:27:41.137
Okay.
421
00:27:41.778 --> 00:27:44.839
So you said one word there that I want to, you said over leverage.
422
00:27:44.879 --> 00:27:48.680
I think you mostly meant like you're spread thin, not like actually have a whole bunch of debt.
423
00:27:49.000 --> 00:27:51.521
Because if you actually had a whole bunch of debt, I'd probably say something slightly different.
424
00:27:52.101 --> 00:27:54.442
But I'm going to spread, you're just spread thin.
425
00:27:54.802 --> 00:27:55.542
This is the problem.
426
00:27:56.422 --> 00:27:57.743
When you do big projects.
427
00:27:58.937 --> 00:28:00.117
Ultimately, this is what happens.
428
00:28:00.297 --> 00:28:08.600
You hit this 1.5, you grow in a big business, but you're doing everything inside the business and it's hard to replace yourself because it's complex and custom services.
429
00:28:09.580 --> 00:28:12.101
So inside the book, we talk about simple systems.
430
00:28:12.181 --> 00:28:13.241
How do you build the systems?
431
00:28:13.301 --> 00:28:14.662
You use the framework right here.
432
00:28:15.782 --> 00:28:18.403
So we have the simple systems framework.
433
00:28:19.839 --> 00:28:20.119
Boom.
434
00:28:20.739 --> 00:28:21.059
Right here.
435
00:28:21.079 --> 00:28:23.200
You can't really see it.
436
00:28:24.080 --> 00:28:24.460
Hide me.
437
00:28:24.540 --> 00:28:26.321
There you go.
438
00:28:26.761 --> 00:28:29.482
Right now, you're doing complex and custom work.
439
00:28:29.922 --> 00:28:31.523
This is what we call the treadmill junkie.
440
00:28:32.563 --> 00:28:33.583
It leads to burnout.
441
00:28:34.243 --> 00:28:43.566
So what I would recommend is slowly move up to the master juggler, which is where you still do complex jobs, one-time big projects, but you're going to standardize everything.
442
00:28:44.166 --> 00:28:45.367
So I'd first move you there.
443
00:28:46.047 --> 00:28:46.707
That's where you're going to go.
444
00:28:46.727 --> 00:28:48.488
Top left-hand corner, the master juggler.
445
00:28:49.308 --> 00:28:53.810
And to do that, you're going to say, these are the type of pavers, these are the type of blocks that we install and nothing else.
446
00:28:54.410 --> 00:29:00.772
Take standard kind of materials that you know will work for 95% of people and use those.
447
00:29:01.273 --> 00:29:04.014
You will not have a drop off in sales like everyone wants you to believe.
448
00:29:04.334 --> 00:29:06.755
Your bell guard is like, oh, no, you don't have a thousand options.
449
00:29:06.795 --> 00:29:07.135
No, you don't.
450
00:29:07.882 --> 00:29:17.334
Okay, then as time goes on, I want you to move towards built to scale, which is the top right-hand corner, which is simple and standardized, which means you're still standard, but you simplify.
451
00:29:17.354 --> 00:29:18.996
You're going to cut some of those services out.
452
00:29:19.576 --> 00:29:23.862
Ideally, the ones that you know every single time you touch, you're on the project all the time.
453
00:29:24.865 --> 00:29:27.986
Anytime, anytime there's a service and you're like, yeah, I'll end up being there.
454
00:29:28.966 --> 00:29:30.026
Something's going to happen bad.
455
00:29:30.486 --> 00:29:31.506
It might be irrigation.
456
00:29:31.566 --> 00:29:32.666
It might be excavation.
457
00:29:32.947 --> 00:29:33.627
It might be something.
458
00:29:33.807 --> 00:29:36.067
For me, it was like hydro seating jobs.
459
00:29:36.587 --> 00:29:37.527
It was irrigation.
460
00:29:37.667 --> 00:29:38.788
We did, we did irrigation.
461
00:29:38.808 --> 00:29:39.488
I can't even believe it.
462
00:29:39.508 --> 00:29:40.028
Mercy goodness.
463
00:29:40.308 --> 00:29:42.228
We did irrigation, excavation jobs.
464
00:29:42.288 --> 00:29:43.329
I usually ended up being on.
465
00:29:43.449 --> 00:29:44.789
It's like, I ended up just having to cut them out.
466
00:29:44.869 --> 00:29:46.829
So that's simplification, like just cutting those things out.
467
00:29:47.349 --> 00:29:50.650
But I would start with standardization because then that way you can maintain your revenue.
468
00:29:50.670 --> 00:29:51.050
Yeah.
469
00:29:51.230 --> 00:29:57.073
So next year, instead of trying to like, we're going to do 3 million, just be like, hey, we're just going to focus on standardizing what we're currently doing.
470
00:29:57.414 --> 00:30:03.157
I happen to believe you'll actually make more revenue and more profit doing just the standardization because you're not going to actually cut any services out yet.
471
00:30:03.937 --> 00:30:04.878
Then you'll simplify.
472
00:30:05.942 --> 00:30:09.424
Once you do that, then you have simplified and standardized the business.
473
00:30:10.085 --> 00:30:11.526
And that's just the services we talked about.
474
00:30:11.586 --> 00:30:16.529
Then you're also going to do the same thing for equipment, the way you answer the phone, your website, everything gets simplified and standardized.
475
00:30:17.209 --> 00:30:18.950
Then you have the opportunity to hand things off.
476
00:30:19.631 --> 00:30:22.353
Until you do that, if you start handing things off, you're going to create chaos.
477
00:30:24.274 --> 00:30:26.876
If you start handing off your operations, it's going to be chaos.
478
00:30:28.537 --> 00:30:30.818
Because no one knows how to do all the projects like you do.
479
00:30:31.278 --> 00:30:33.580
If you start handing off sales, no one knows how to do sales like you do.
480
00:30:34.836 --> 00:30:43.180
And if you're trying to determine which one do I hand off first, we always are going to move in the direction of I first delegate admin, then I delegate operations, then I delegate sales.
481
00:30:43.540 --> 00:30:45.501
So right now you're at that 1.5 million size.
482
00:30:45.862 --> 00:30:52.505
You're exactly at the point where you're feeling the pressure based upon the book where it's like I got to hire an operations manager.
483
00:30:53.986 --> 00:30:57.908
It's the reason I do that is because it's easier to find the operations manager than is finding a sales manager.
484
00:30:58.838 --> 00:31:05.226
If there is someone that's going to be able to produce $2 million worth of sales for one-time projects, they're going to go start their own business.
485
00:31:05.647 --> 00:31:08.911
Or they're going to be extremely expensive and hard to find.
486
00:31:09.952 --> 00:31:18.423
It's easier to take one of your technicians that worked with you for five years or has worked in another business for 10 years and has some resemblance of training around leadership to step in.
487
00:31:18.643 --> 00:31:19.925
It's cheaper and easier to find them.
