How to get rich without getting lucky: Find a way to make $100 an hour doing something simple IN YOUR TOWN. Do it until you have $10k+ in the bank and you’re too busy to sell new customers. Hire employee for $25 / hr to do what you do so you can sell new customers. Repeat.
Be willing to work and sweat and even maybe scrub toilets for 3-6 months. Look at the market unemotionally. It’s not about you and what you love doing. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Look at competition as a sign there is money to be made.
Compete with folks who run their business like its 1985 with secretaries, yellow pages, and cash. Wrap in technology. Never take cash. Outsource accounting and get software for all other admin. Turn quotes in 10 mins or less without site visits. Book in 30 secs or less.
Stop blaming the labor market for your inability to hire good people. Market to them just as you would market to customers. Stop looking for unicorns who will treat your business like you do. They don’t exist. Build a business that can thrive with perfectly normal people.
Simplify their job and understand the golden rule: If you ask them to be competent at more than 5 things they’ll be incompetent at all of them. Employees want clear, simple direction so they can succeed. Autonomy is overrated and makes for good unicorn books.
Keep spending your time selling. That means hiring ahead of revenue sometimes. Do the things that are important but not urgent. Every week analyze the fires that distracted you from selling. Make it a priority to prevent all of them next week with better systems.
Do the marketing that doesn’t scale. Everybody yells at digital marketing to spend more on AdWords. Dont. Hire an outside sales rep on commission. Cold call 500 people per quarter who could potentially refer you biz. Get a marketing intern to put out bandit signs.
Follow up with your past customers. They are golden opportunities for referrals and more work rarely tapped by service companies. Send hand written thank you notes 4 wks after service. Get reviews on Google May Biz. With photos. Spend $500-1000/mo with a good SEO shop.
When you run out of new work in your town step back and take a look. Make the decision to hire a a manager to replace yourself and do whatever the hell you want with your life or go to another town and do it all again. What are your goals?
Or use your cash and experience to shift into bigger and bigger opportunities. For me it was moving boxes->student storage->self storage. For you it might be cleaning toilets-> managing Airbnb’s -> owning short term rentals. Whatever.
Need a place to start? Check out this list: https://t.co/xjB9BEIoC5 Want a list of tools and a step by step? https://t.co/f1GwwhCqg5 Need to figure out if there is room for you to compete? Check out this process:
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