Well the main one and obviously its not as severe as the above example… Was back around 2008 we were strongly working towards becoming a store front only company… When 2008 hit and we lost hundreds of store front accounts, we pivoted completely to a Residential model.
But its more important on a smaller scale… With a million dollar company there are a lot of moving parts / factors and personalities to deal with. On any given day you should expect to go into work and have all the hard work you did the previous day with your schedule to be completely destroyed. You need to be able to adapt to anything that comes up an deal with it as smoothly as possible.
IE:
Today we might have a great day planned for the guys to work tomorrow . But well come in tomm morning, someone will have called out sick, customers will have left messages at midnight needing to move there appointment the next day… Uh oh the guys are already here and punched in with no where to go, You better have some plans in place to keep those guys working. Uh oh we are 2 guys down, how are we going to make today work…
Basically change will happen every single day, dont fight it… Accept it… and deal with it as quickly and smoothly as possible. Your ability to do that well and not breakdown because something didn’t go right or as planned with make you really stand out and succeed.
-Building a customer base of well paying jobs. Not saying every job has to be top dollar, but good hourly rate and never lowball any jobs.
-Equally strong residential and commercial sides to the business. This is going to be a challenge because my background is almost exclusively residential. I think residential can get you only so far, you need a strong commercial side to get over the $1M mark.
-Having a strong system to consistently hire and retain good employees.
-Extreme organization throughout the entire company. Another struggle for me as I am naturally a bit of a slob.
-Very high customer retention rate, so that you’re not constantly having to replace old customers as well as find new ones.
-Solid referral generating system. Referrals are easier to close and less price conscious.
-Building solid relationships in the local business community. Often it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.
-Constantly learning organization. Never becoming complacent; always looking for better ways of doing things. When implementing new systems (software, etc) choose something that will grow with the company.
Goals and vision. Everybody in the organization knows what the objectives are and are all pulling in the same direction.
I can say from experience (with growing, not with a million dollars) that getting software that can grow with the company is very important and if you find a way to think ahead to 10 years then that is where you should be. I started with a really basic customer database that is now totally obsolete and now I am onto my third different database program which can finally keep up with my business for the forseeable future. Nothing like typing in all of your customer info 3 different times to make you think about the future and how to avoid doing it again.
This is kind of like the idea of buying the largest WFP that you can afford because you might not need it now but you may need it in the future. Good luck Larry.
Prior to 2008 we had 11 trucks on the road daily. Fortunately we had shifted gears prior to the commercial collapse and had a more efficient model we were running from. The power washing division of the company had not been pushed forward strongly prior to that year. As we were in position to quickly transition to grow this division we saw another strong year. 2008 was a crucial year for a lot of businesses. I think the IWCA saw this as well and formulated a change to host a more comprehensive exterior building maintenance perspective, representing more fully the transition that occurred with the larger players in the industry. Knowledge and continual learning is fundamental to survival. If your competitor operates from a stronger more accurate paradigm they will overtake your market share. No company is exempt from internal or external pressures.
I have to say that from shadowing is that the incredible amount of hustle is what sets a $1M company apart. And the sad thing is that, that is something that everyone has the ability to do…It doesn’t matter your budget…it doesn’t matter your market…nothing matters when it comes to your personal hustle, accept YOU.
When I realized this it actually made me sad, because I always thought that there was something I could eventually work to and things would blow up…but in reality it is something that everyone has the capability to do now, right now. And all my years of thinking I was as awesome as I could be, I wasn’t and thats why I didn’t hit $1M in my first 5 years.
so youve found an equilibrium point you are comfortable with I take it
“Drive” is definitely a common denominator
Personality of course, not everyone is a “field marshall” as one book labels it
then it comes to reasons and goals - why is one driving relentlessly toward a goal? (which impacts greatly the intensity of the drive)
depending on which goals/results one is looking for, many times they become instead ever more elusive the closer one seems to get, like looking for the end of a rainbow, or a mirage in the desert
Heard similar to this line of thought first hand the other day from an owner of a huge business with hundreds of employees, very interesting to hear the perspective of those “far over on that side” of size/revenue/success/etc
I’ve also seen more than a few clients who were sooooo relieved when they sold their (quite large) businesses. (Which was the goal from the beginning for some)
always interesting to hear and evaluate what can be learned and applied from other people’s experiences
Just as Jared and Chris state we had a slight drop off of commercial work after 2008 but residential picked up a lot. I had the feeling that more people were staying home and staring out their dirty windows rather than taking vacations. It seemed to me that people still had an urge to spend money and just did it a different way. Overall our business kept growing (although it was and is basically residential based). Does anyone else feel like overall their business was not greatly impacted by the recession?
I would agree that the idea of an absentee owner leads to all kinds of issues, but certainly the idea of an owner who can focus exclusively on the “business” side of business and what it takes to get to that point is an interesting topic for those of us who are not ready to focus on making a million.
