Harmony of Hustle
Jump into the World of Justin Shoemaker aka "The Waterboy" . From Business, to music, this is the inside look of the world of the hyper-driven and their Harmony of Hustle.
Harmony of Hustle
Episode #23: Growth Lessons without the scars!
What if you could sidestep the headaches of rapid business growth? Join me in this revealing episode as I share crucial lessons learned from scaling my home service business to 80-90k months. From employees bringing animals to work sites to arriving unprepared, I discuss the pitfalls of having vague Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and how they can lead to avoidable issues. If you're navigating the early stages of your business or looking to tighten your operational standards, this episode offers invaluable insights to save you time and stress.
Learn practical steps to refine your SOPs down to a second-grade reading level and discover the benefits of routine job site checks. By engaging your sales team in monitoring installations, you can gather quick feedback and maintain high standards. Whether you're managing a small team or aiming to scale, these strategies will help you keep customer satisfaction high and avoid common growing pains. Don't miss out on these tips to set your business up for success!
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So this little mini episode is, oh my God, it's gonna be an in the moment realization, and I hope for any of you small business owners, especially doing home service, that you listen to this episode so you can avoid the scars of the lesson that I am learning today and, ironically, this is only happening because of the fact that we are growing so fast. So I am learning today and, ironically, this is only happening because of the fact that we are growing so fast. So I apologize in advance. I know I haven't posted a lot of episodes every week like I wanted to, but we have been growing rapidly. We have been hitting 80, 90k months now consistently. We've been growing by 10% month over month, which means a lot of jobs, a lot of 20 hour drives back and forth to Delaware for equipment, um, and a lot more uh, logistical, uh, planning and organization and, honestly, starting to see the cracks in the organizational structure. So I know what I'm probably going to bring up may seem like common sense, but especially if you are in your first 12 months, in your first 18 months of business, or maybe if you are, you know, a little bit more experienced and you don't have some of these things dialed in. I can tell you this singular thing will save you so much time, and that is having very, very detailed SOPs down to second grade reading level, that you have all of your installation team and all of your I would say service side sign, because I have just realized that, as we have done a ton of volume, um, we are relying on our installation side to basically have a little bit of common sense and rely on you know, looking at their CRM and looking at their jobs for the day and actually being able to do that stuff effectively and not bring animals into the work site and things like that. Unfortunately, some of these things about not bringing animals around and what have you have not been specifically listed on our SOPs. Right, our SOPs as it sits right now is basically just job functionality you must do this, this and this, don't do X, y and Z as far as being late and kind of the common boilerplate stuff. Let me tell you, when you make these SOPs for your team, you need to make them literally second grade reading level, like you need to think of the wildest things that you can think of that can happen on the job site and just put them in the SOPs. So that way you are covered, as well as create some sort of a system where you can have your reps go out and basically get a finger on the pulse on what's going on on some of these job sites.
Speaker 1:Because, to be fair, my company we've got five star reviews and my installation team they do a very good job. They are always getting praise. Whenever I do callbacks with my clients clients they're always getting good reviews. Everyone says that they're doing great work. Everyone loves them when they're in the homes.
Speaker 1:But there are things that, just because the customer likes them, that can become a problem, like bringing animals to the workspace or not having the equipment that you need when you show up to a job and as you scale and get more volume, that becomes a bigger and bigger problem as you deal with more people. And the only reason I found out about it is because today this was a very complicated job. I had to go in person and help out with it. So how do you avoid that in the future? Well, you need to make sure that you have those standards set. You need to do the callbacks with the clients and then you just got to enforce those standards and you need to have someone do routine checks on jobs, whether that's an installation manager or it's yourself.
Speaker 1:Now, obviously, as you become a bigger enterprise, it becomes easier to manage these things and, unfortunately for small business owners, a lot of times you have limited resources so you really have to use what, what you got and, to be honest, you got to use your team. So I always have my sales guys go back and try to get referrals, have them start going back during installs, because if they see stuff that's out of whack, that they wouldn't want their clients having to experience, they can relay. Relay that to you and then you can actually make those adjustments a lot faster because, as the business owner odds are, you have a ton of things on your plate that are taking you a million different directions. So it can be hard to go out to every single job site individually, but once at least once or twice a month, you should do some site visits on the jobs just to make sure your standards are being met. Because, as I've just learned, even though you may be getting good reviews or when you call, the clients are saying good things, there may be things happening on the job site that you would not want to have happen and just because some clients are okay with those lower standards doesn't mean they're all going to be, and I always had the firm belief, like it doesn't really matter if the customer is okay with the low standards, that will occur. If the customer is okay with the low standards, that will occur. The organization cannot tolerate that because as you scale and as you try to grow, that will become a massive bottleneck in the business and it'll catch up on you very quickly. The only saving grace for us is obviously we've been doing about one job a day. This has been the first week we started doing multiple jobs a day and now we're starting to see the cracks in the organization.
Speaker 1:I share this to hope help some of you guys, um, who aren't maybe at this point yet, and maybe you are. You know you finally got a couple good installation guys in and they're doing good work. But even when you have, especially when you have someone that you've shadowed for a while and they get comfortable, you gotta, you gotta stay on them. You gotta make sure those standards are being set, because, especially when you know for me at least, when I have someone that's delivering good work I tend to let my not the gas off on them, but I trust that they're going to continue to do the standard I expect of them and, to be fair, the job itself, the work itself is great. The installation itself is great, the you know no leaks, no issues with the plumbing. Customers love the fact that. You know all of my installers are very friendly and they go the extra mile to help them understand things.
Speaker 1:But there are other things that maybe aren't directly work related that can impact and even if customers don't care about, let's say, having an animal on the property, liability is a massive thing and that can cause a lot of issues. So make sure you guys are just keeping on the pulse. Make sure you guys you know, create really, really, really detailed sops and make sure that all your installers sign them and that they agree to the terms within those sops. I would not necessarily have a firing cadence on there if they don't do everything, but definitely docking pay um, I have found threat of firing. You know that's never really a good way to run things. But you know, go towards the thing that incentivizes them, which is their money, and reward them if they do good things, if they get a lot of five-star reviews, give them pay bumps, give them bonuses. If they don't do what's on the SOP, you take money away, and obviously, if you notice you're taking money away from them all the time, then maybe it's time to do a replacement, but I hope this can be somewhat helpful to you guys.
Speaker 1:I'm actually on the road right now to solve an issue we had on a job site, which is going to add an extra four hours out of my day that was not scheduled for, and again, as an entrepreneur, especially in a small business, your time is so valuable. You want to be able to dedicate blocks to things that push the business forward and, unfortunately, picking up on an installer's mistakes is not a high leverage use of my time or your time if you're a business owner. So I hope this helps. I'm going through it right now. I try to vlog these things as they happen in real time. Sometimes it's I'm not able to do it, but, uh, I hope this stuff is helpful and insightful for you guys and, uh, I hope this will help you avoid some mistakes and maybe, uh, get the jumpstart from things that I've been doing. So peace out, guys. Thanks for listening. I love you guys forever. Bye-bye.