00:01
mike calling here wanted to make a quick
00:02
video about
00:03
your areas of genius in your business
00:05
what i mean by this is
00:06
there’s certain things that um you as a
00:09
business owner the people in your
00:10
business
00:11
is their specific uh skill set or genius
00:14
so
00:15
what we see a lot of times is business
00:16
owners wearing multiple hats
00:18
and not really specific specifically
00:20
focusing on what they’re good at or
00:22
their area of
00:23
being um skill set as as basically a
00:26
genius so
00:27
there’s several areas in the business
00:28
that i recommend looking at especially
00:30
in the service business and
00:32
the first one is financials and
00:35
production and basically budgeting so
00:36
the financials and how do we actually
00:38
price stuff
00:39
so if that’s not your area of genius
00:41
then i suggest going out and hiring
00:43
someone and if it’s
00:44
not in the budget or the scale of your
00:45
business quite yet actually going out
00:48
and hiring a consultant or professional
00:49
to help you there next part is going to
00:52
be your internal systems and processes
00:54
as far as your equipment if you’re in
00:55
the lawn care
00:56
or landscape industry uh this definitely
00:58
was not my area of genius for sure in my
01:00
lawn care company but preventative
01:01
maintenance
01:02
and working on the equipment things like
01:04
that that’s an area
01:05
that we need to be able to uh manage and
01:07
be able to effectively take care of
01:08
because that’s a major
01:10
pain point if the equipment’s not
01:11
working properly or engines are being
01:14
blown in multiple things
01:15
that are going wrong so we’re looking at
01:18
our financials
01:19
and production rates we’re looking at
01:21
equipment and preventative maintenance
01:23
and then the big one right now
01:24
is employee systems and training
01:28
so along with that i would probably
01:30
encompass recruiting so
01:32
this is another area of genius that i
01:33
would go out and hire for specifically
01:35
hr recruiting training
01:39
now depending on the size of your
01:40
organization it may be two separate
01:41
positions but the idea is we’ve got to
01:43
have somebody that
01:44
their native geniuses going out and
01:46
recruiting
01:47
and making sure your new applicants
01:49
align with your mission vision values
01:51
it’s a cultural
01:52
fit in addition in the field whether
01:55
it’s lawn care home cleaning pest
01:56
control
01:57
we also have need to have a native
01:59
genius
02:00
or a skill set to actually be able to
02:02
train and a lot of things that we really
02:04
miss in the service industry is we don’t
02:06
actually go out and train our trainer to
02:07
train
02:08
so your guy or girl in the field might
02:10
be the best lawn mowing crew leader
02:12
there is
02:13
but unfortunately they don’t have the
02:16
native genius to actually go out and
02:18
train
02:18
and actually replicate a standardized
02:21
operating procedure
02:22
so what we really want to do is go in
02:24
and tackle the financial production rate
02:26
estimating
02:27
uh equipment preventative maintenance
02:29
systems around that and then employee
02:31
system as far as recruiting training
02:33
and onboarding that’s gonna be another
02:35
area and then
02:37
the last area of there’s several more
02:38
but the main areas that i want to talk
02:40
about today is going to be
02:42
your sales and marketing systems um and
02:45
that is going to be another native
02:46
genius area that we probably should hire
02:48
specifically for
02:50
um to go out and re get those leads
02:53
qualify and close sales and then
02:55
upsell to raise that client lifetime
02:57
value as well as
02:58
creating a marketing system to drive
03:00
qualified leads in
03:02
so as you’re looking at the financial
03:04
productions uh the equipment
03:05
preventative maintenance
03:07
and systems around maintenance
03:10
employee systems and now sales and
03:13
marketing systems you got four distinct
03:15
areas and
03:15
what you traditionally see is in an
03:18
organization starting the scale
03:20
the business owner should really be
03:21
ahead of the strategy
03:23
and the mission and the vision in
03:24
leading the charge but what we find in
03:27
most service businesses is that
03:28
owner um native genius is traditionally
03:32
not going to help the business scale
03:35
quickly so a lot of times a a lawn care
03:39
business owner
03:39
may be really good at sales or equipment
03:42
and preventative maintenance
03:43
but they’re not really good at the
03:45
operational part of getting employees
03:47
recruiting training and onboarding and
03:48
training those trainers
03:50
and they’re maybe not really strong on
03:51
the financial and production rate area
03:53
to actually go out and bid jobs
03:55
profitably to be able to scale and
03:57
create budgeted time and profitability
03:59
so
04:00
really the point of the video today is i
04:01
think we as business owners we need to
04:03
take a look
04:04
inward and see exactly
04:07
what our native genius is our strength
04:11
and we probably should also make sure
04:13
that that native genius that we’re
04:14
providing for the business
04:16
is those hundred to two hundred dollar
04:18
value things um
04:19
if your native genius is preventative
04:21
maintenance and equipment maintenance
04:22
that’s great maybe that’s your passion
04:24
but we need to go out and hire people to
04:26
plug those other holes
04:28
but at the end of the day maybe that is
04:30
your passion but once you’re starting to
04:31
scale that business
04:33
working a wrench and working equipment
04:35
and changing oil
04:36
is probably not the 100 to 200 dollar
04:39
jobs that you need to be doing to scale
04:41
the business and create a system around
04:43
it so
04:43
it’s not only that your native genius
04:45
needs to be focused on
04:47
um where you bring the best value but
04:50
it’s got to be those hundred to two
04:51
hundred dollar an hour jobs now
04:53
as the business scales and i know a few
04:54
business owners actually their native
04:55
genius is preventative maintenance
04:57
equipment and they really enjoy
04:58
wrenching on the equipment
04:59
nothing wrong with that um but
05:02
what they’ve done is gone out and hired
05:04
people to fill the other gaps to
05:05
basically run the business
05:07
and they focus on the equipment and set
05:08
up so they’ve got 20 30 crews
05:10
with all the equipment and that’s that’s
05:12
where they want to be um there’s nothing
05:13
wrong with that but you’ve got to have a
05:15
look inward to be able to say
05:16
okay this is where my skill set is this
05:18
is where i can provide the most value
05:20
but now at scale i can afford to bring
05:22
these other people in to continue to
05:23
scale
05:24
this business so um today’s challenge is
05:26
kind of go out and take a look at it
05:27
where is your native genius where are
05:28
you bringing the most value to the
05:30
business
05:31
is it the financial estimating product
05:33
or financial and production rate
05:35
set up for estimating is it the
05:38
recruiting and training and onboarding
05:40
piece is it the equipment and asset
05:42
management
05:44
or is it the sales and marketing and i
05:45
suggest that we build and go out and
05:47
hire around this and if we’re not at the
05:48
point where we can afford to hire for it
05:50
we go out and hire experts where it’s a
05:52
virtual assistant
05:53
a consultant uh going into a masterminds
05:56
group and kind of working together on
05:57
those things but those are the things we
05:58
need to focus on in my opinion
06:00
to go out and scale at business quickly
06:02
i did that exactly in my
06:04
seven-figure business now with simple
06:05
growth outside of the lawn care company
06:07
but i went out and
06:08
um got bill and laurie as expert
06:11
developers
06:12
and as bill and lori continue to grow
06:15
they’ve brought chad in as a
06:16
junior developer and almost basically a
06:18
developer at this point we’re building a
06:20
bench that can continue to scale and
06:21
retrain
06:22
we brought dylan and virginia in who
06:25
both have owned seven figure lawn care
06:27
businesses and snow removal
06:28
they’ve lived in the trenches that
06:29
everybody has already lived in that
06:31
we’re working with they
06:32
understand the needs of our clients and
06:34
they also understand how to scale a
06:36
business
06:37
and they have native genius in helping
06:39
people
06:40
um achieve that they’ve already done it
06:42
and they understand those pitfalls but
06:44
um in its simple growth you know
06:46
obviously my native genes is kind of
06:48
setting the strategy and the vision
06:50
but in addition um i do have a passion
06:52
for helping business owners create
06:54
production rate-based estimating systems
06:56
that are scalable and they can be
06:58
delegated so
06:59
those are the different ideas that i’ve
07:00
kind of taken into simple growth and
07:02
it’s allowed us to scale the seven
07:03
figures and beyond
07:04
significantly quicker than we did in the
07:06
lawn care company because
07:08
going at it the second time they say
07:09
it’s easier to break a million dollars
07:11
i don’t want to say it’s necessary
07:13
easier but it is a little bit easier
07:15
because you already understand
07:17
that you can’t do everything and it’s
07:19
better to surround yourself and go out
07:21
and get
07:21
the experts or the geniuses in each part
07:23
and build and scale a team around that
07:25
and with the labor market how tight it
07:27
is
07:28
we may have to pay some more and charge
07:30
some more but i’m going to recommend
07:32
that you go out and find
07:33
people that have the native genius in
07:36
the gaps in your business
07:37
and look at that finance and estimating
07:40
systems to make sure
07:41
it’s hitting your financial goals we
07:43
look at someone to recruit train and
07:45
onboard and train your trainers
07:47
which is probably the most important
07:48
right now given the labor market
07:50
we’re going to go in and do sales and
07:51
marketing and then if you’re in the lawn
07:53
care and landscape industry we need
07:55
somebody
07:55
that has a native genius for equipment
07:57
and managing the fleet because that can
07:59
get out of control and get extremely
08:01
costly especially with downtime or
08:02
replacing engines so
08:04
we’ve made all the mistakes possible in
08:06
my business not plugging these holes
08:07
with the right people but i will tell
08:08
you
08:09
the second time at it and as we continue
08:12
to grow my lawn care company
08:14
after learning these lessons um it went
08:17
significantly smoother and faster
08:18
so uh homework today is go in and figure
08:21
out what is your native genius is it at
08:22
least 100 to 200
08:23
an hour job and where is the biggest gap
08:25
the pain point in your business that you
08:27
could go out and hire someone on your
08:28
team to fill the gap of that native
08:30
genius that’s missing
08:31
or if you’re not at scale to have a
08:33
full-time person is there a consultant
08:35
is there a business coach or something
08:37
or a virtual assistant
08:38
or part-time agency that can do that for
08:41
you until you can actually bring it
08:43
in-house and sometimes it may be easier
08:44
to not even bring it in-house
08:46
build it in the budget with a fixed cost
08:48
and that is a quicker way to scale
08:50
occasionally
08:51
so comments questions drop them below
08:53
what’s your native genius and how are
08:55
you going to go fill the gaps
08:56
probably around your employee recruiting
08:59
training and onboarding process to
09:00
overcome
09:01
this labor crunch and a big surprise
09:03
coming up here
09:04
in the next month or so we are going to
09:08
unveil a new employee recruiting uh
09:11
process that we’ve been working on for
09:12
the last five or six months at simple
09:13
growth that should
09:14
be able to help everybody and we’ll
09:15
provide provides more information about
09:17
that and how you can do it yourself
09:19
and a big magazine article coming up i
09:21
just wrote for snow magazine
09:23
this september from gie media so
09:26
hopefully see you at
09:26
gien expo and mike callahan with
09:29
callahan’s corner you ask questions we
09:30
had some