Building the first system is where all the excitement is.
Keeping it running every week after is where all the hours come back.
It's never been easier to add another app to your shop.
It's also never been easier to have one customer get three texts from three different apps about the same job.
If you're adding guys and payroll still eats your Sunday night, it means the hours live in texts and paper sheets and you're the one stitching them together. Hiring more just makes Sunday longer.
You don't need a whole new system to start, you just need the review request to go out the day the job closes without anybody having to remember it.
As a customer, you can tell which shops have a system. They answer "where's my quote?" without putting you on hold.
I'd take one system built around how your shop already runs over the six apps everyone told you to buy.
Your shop will get more done from fixing the one thing your office retypes every day than from adding another app to the stack.
Run a shop long enough and you realize the most expensive person on payroll is the one whose real job is moving info between apps that don't talk.
A hill I'll die on: a small shop's first custom system should be the one chore the crew complains about out loud every week.
Nobody wants to hear this, but most late jobs lose their days in the office, waiting on the next handoff.
Every small shop already has a tech department. It's whoever the crew calls when something won't sync.
How we start a custom system for a small shop:
1. Pick the one task the office complains about every week
2. Build only that
3. Let it run a month
4. Then add the next piece
Step 1 takes longest. Everyone names a different task.
Stronger. Better. Faster. Longer.
Tomorrow marks 30 days since acquiring our 2nd HVAC company.
The results so far:
MoM Revenue: +285%
YoY Revenue: +200%
YoY Sales: +362% (almost 4x)
How we did it:
• Ditched paper files & migrated to Service Titan
• Merged call centers
• Grew GMB reviews by 30% by asking for reviews
• Launched outbound SMS campaigns (sellers voicemail announcing retirement and partnership with my company)
• Brought in proven techs from company #1 (already hired high producing techs to backfill)
• Added dedicated sales support
Simple playbooks, executed well.
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