TradeFlow: HVAC Solo-to-Team Operations Automator

Family business growth insight

Family business growth insight

Hey man, pretty tough journey you have had. Kudos to that first of all. You and your family has done well for themselves. You guys deserve a small pat on the back. All of you! And I am also glad your wife is now well. **In terms of the issues you are facing, I have a few thoughts on them** (if you dont mind)*(sorry for the thought dump, feels like you need all the improvements you can get right now)***:** \- firstly, dont worry about the business feeling like a job. the amount of small business owners feeling this way is way more than you think. And I have talked and worked with quite a few of them to know everyone is like that for a long period of time. its not the nature of the business or the lack of people you have hired (this might be the indirect reason but hear me out). its actually the way you are thinking and operating the business. and it only changes when you change your perspective to look at your business as some machine that might be needing a well deserved oiling. \- while I am not well versed in the legal perspectives of business handoffs and what all goes into it but I know quite a bunch about small business and the owner mindset you tell you a Tldr. You need to streamline the operations (oiling the machine) so that (and you wont believe how many times I have stated this in this sub, it feels like a post about this could help the community, will think about this later) you can focus on growing the business, not operating or maintaining it. And I have a few suggestions for you from the top of my head: \- your goal of being "in front of our customers more frequently" is a right call. do that. build relations rather than clientele. significantly reduce the "managing" of your business and improve the "growing", "spreading word" about it by networking, etc. \- analyse everything you do in the "admin side of the job" and find ways to automate the repetitive part of the job. I've done a few such tasks for a few local businesses to know theres always something there even if you feel there isn't \- you don't lack calls is a very very VERY good sign. Now its time to utilise that. You shouldn't be running calls all day and neither should you be missing out on any opportunities (you gotta get that loan finished asap). You could either have a system where people can book slots to talk to you with explicit mention of their urgency and purpose. That way you can manage your time efficiently, cater to people properly, and filter out the unnecessary calls that might be taking up your time \- if maintenance programs are working amazingly, that means your work is worth rethinking about whenever theres anything HVAC. it means systems like referral programs could work a lot in your favor. think about those. \- good that you're rethinking your position on the pricing. work on that. \- have a proper internal system to help you track, notify, manage everything in one place so that you aren't handling everything manually, going through everything just to get one answer, etc etc. have the system notify you when stuff goes in a certain direction. i remember when i helped brainstorm and work on such a system for a local business, it resulted in a significant increase in efficieny and reduction in mental stress. **On your thoughts about Hiring others:** \- Hiring more people feels like a good escape and a proper solution to your problems but if you don't mind me saying, I'm glad that you didn't go with that route. Hiring people at a stage where you are struggling with these many issues comes with additional issues, sometimes more than it was meant to solve: \- you need to dedicate separate time to find, interview, decide, etc the right people for the job. with the current job market, many people are faking themselves and with AI, its been harder and harder to judge who is genuine and who is not \- lets say you find them, now you assign them the work. now, you have the additional responsibility to manage them. their payslips, salaries, the legal matters related to that. thats just related to the employment. you need to manage them in terms of work. what they did, what they are doing (and whether they are doing it right), what they will need to do, sometimes moments come where "the business is slow, but the employee still needs to be paid", with an additional disadvantage of less business visibility (assuming you are not micro-managing them, which itself takes a bit of your time and energy) \- Hiring is like a fueling your gas tank fully for a car that runs with a proper mileage. For a car that has erratic behaviour in terms of working, mileage, etc, that fuel will try to keep it running but you're burning the fuel unnecessarily, also wasting the money you invested in it. The best solution is to first fix the erratic behaviour by a proper servicing before completely filling up the tank again. If you feel like you need to get anything done and want my further help, feel free to DM me and lets brainstorm these in more detail. All the best man!