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Looking to scale, need advice
Hello, I am just seeking advice, I am a one man crew (with 1-2 helpers when available) for Lawn care, Parging & Snow removal (all insured). I am getting a large quantity of calls, bookings & deposits. But how can a sole proprietor scale up from me, to a crew of 5 and pay $25 an hour and be able to keep them working for months, or years to come? I cant see the "vision" of how to achieve that, sure I can get more clients. But its definitely tough with the massive undercuts of prices. Just some friendly advice will do, thanks all! MattCould you pick up and move to a new city start your company up again?
I keep thinking about the cost of living increase, and it just keeps slowly creeping up on me each trip tp Home Depot, grocery store or getting fuel. Our bosses aren't giving us a raise each year! I like the idea of small town living and keeping a lower overhead, and it made me think.... Could you pack up, throw a dart at a map, and start your business over again in a new spot?How many long weekends do you actually get?
First off, Happy Thanksgiving to all my Canadian friends out there! I am wondering how many of us are going to be working tomorrow? How many long weekends do you usually take in a year? Is there a weekend or holiday that you will always take off each year? For me, Canada Day and Remberance Day are the only two days in a year that I would ABSOLUTELY say no to taking a call. No amount of money could get me out those days.At what point did you realize you needed more systems instead of just working harder?
At what point did you realize you needed more systems instead of just working harder? One thing I've noticed over the years is that almost every problem in a growing business gets solved the same way at first: the owner works longer hours. Need estimates out faster? Stay up later. Need to keep jobs moving? Spend more time on site. Need to answer clients? Reply at night. It works... until it doesn't. Eventually you hit a point where putting in more hours barely moves the needle. The bottleneck isn't effort anymore. It's the lack of systems. For us, that meant standardizing things like estimating, handoffs to production, material ordering, site documentation, and communication with clients. I'm curious if anyone else had a moment where they realized they couldn't outwork the problem anymore. What system had the biggest impact on your business?Curious what everyone has changed this year that made the business feel better, not just bigger?
The best change I made this year was getting more intentional about what I wasn’t going to do anymore. For a long time, growth in my cleaning company meant adding more residential clients, adding more employees, filling more routes, repeat. And that worked — until I realized that scaling more of the same thing wasn’t necessarily the direction I wanted for the next chapter. This year, we got much more intentional about commercial growth. We built dedicated commercial pages, started tracking that pipeline separately, and are now restructuring one of our team members’ role so she can spend dedicated time managing commercial work instead of squeezing it in around residential production. The biggest lesson for me has been that sometimes growth isn’t “do more.” It’s deciding what deserves its own lane.“We didn't have time to train. We had no systems in place.”
Beau Batcheller (Five Stones Landscape) learned this when his business grew from $1M to $7M in under a year. He kept hiring, but without time to train people or a clear way to get things done, more hands didn’t make the work easier. 🌱 What’s been the biggest challenge as your business grew? Vote in the poll below. If there’s something you weren’t prepared for, share it in the comments. In this Masters of Home Service episode, Beau shares how he went from a borrowed mower to a $7M business, what he learned about pricing and hiring, and how better systems and marketing helped him keep up with growth. Never miss an episode of Masters of Home Service. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
When Was the Last Time You Checked In With Yourself?
Someone recently asked me a very simple question: "How are you doing?" It made me realize how rarely we seem to ask entrepreneurs that question. We're constantly checking on the business. Revenue, leads, clients, schedules, marketing, employees, expenses, growth. There's always another task, another problem to solve, another person to connect with, or something new to create. But how often do we pause long enough to check in on the person building the business? Not just whether we're tired or stressed, but whether we're still enjoying what we're building. Whether we're proud of how far we've come. What's working for us personally, what's wearing us down, and whether the business we're creating still aligns with why we started it in the first place. Sometimes I think we get so focused on where we're trying to go that we forget to acknowledge where we are. So I'm curious: How are you doing? Not your revenue. Not your pipeline. Not your team. You. And when was the last time you actually stopped long enough to answer that question?
