What mistake forced you to completely change how you ran your business?
One of the biggest mistakes I made happened during my second year in business. I landed a commercial account that included 5 different properties. At the time, it felt huge.
The contract was worth around $5,000/month, which was a massive opportunity for where my business was at back then. I wanted badly to prove we could handle it.
The problem was:
I agreed to expectations and operational demands that I was not fully prepared to deliver consistently.
A lot of it was my fault.
I was so focused on landing the account that I did not slow down enough to think through:
- route logistics
- communication expectations
- quality control
- reporting updates to the property manager
- scheduling conflicts with my current clients
- what happens when issues come up across multiple locations at once
Eventually, things started slipping. And once trust starts slipping on commercial accounts, it usually compounds fast.
We ended up losing the account. At the time, it felt devastating.
But honestly, losing that contract forced me to fix a lot of weaknesses in the business that I probably would have ignored much longer otherwise.
That experience changed how we handle commercial work completely.
We started implementing:
- clearer onboarding expectations
- documented scopes of work
- completion verification per visit
- better communication with stakeholders
- clearer escalation procedures when problems happen
It also changed how I look at growth. More revenue only helps if the operation underneath it can actually support it consistently. I still think about that account sometimes because I know we could handle it much differently today than we did back then.
I'm interested to hear what mistakes ended up forcing positive operational changes for other owners.
What failure exposed a weakness in your business that you eventually fixed?
