Mike Andes breaks down four owner roles as a business grows: laborer, office manager, sales, and CEO. Build your systems from day one so you can eventually step away from daily work, like designing a house foundation to support a heavy roof.
I know a lot of you know this. The four aspects of your stages in the business, your role as the owner in the business changes as the business grows. There's actually about eight of them, but I've simplified them down to four. You all have heard this before. Number one, you're a laborer, you're out in the field, you're doing the things, getting your business done, jobs, mowing, etc. Then you kind of start growing your business. You become kind of the office manager. You're answering phones, you're doing emails, you're in your truck, you're doing everything above that, like hiring and higher level stuff. But you're mostly like emails, communication, billing, scheduling, etc. And as your business grows, you actually step into the sales and estimates side of things. Because now you hire someone for the office, right? Sometimes this gets jumbled up if you have a family member and you get them in sooner and the office person right from the get. But third spot using for notice would be sales and estimates. Especially if that's their forte as an owner, their personality. Number four is you become CEO at that level. You've now hired an estimator. So you're gonna hear from Lee with our estimator, Augusta, locally later today when we stop talking about that role of an estimator.
But we're really talking about right now is number four. How do we get to number four where you're CEO, where you don't have to be in the day to day operations, you have the estimates taken care of, you have the operational side taken care of in the office, and you have laborers out in the field. All right, so how do we get there? The analogy that I use, excuse me, because a lot of you are at one and two. So here when I talk about those four stages, who feels like they, as the owner are still in number one in some part way or fashion? You're a laborer, this is raise nighttime. There's no shame. Cool. Who thinks they're a number two in terms of being like office manager? You're really not in the field very much anymore. Okay. And then who's feeling like, hey, I'm an office person, I'm really focused on sales, estimate and growing the business. Raise your hand. And then who feels like they're kind of in a CEO level position? You have a laborers, estimators, everything. Fantastic. All right, so the analogy that I use, because a lot of you are one, twos and threes, and you're like, ah, four doesn't really apply to me. If you're in three. This is like the most important part of this whole weekend because you need to switch from 3 to 4. But if you're even 1 and 2, this is not a time to tune out because this is my analogy that I use. The sooner you start thinking about becoming a number four and building your business accordingly, the better. The analogy I use is like when you build a house, when you build a house, if you're planning on putting a steel shingle roof on that house. Excuse me, on top of the roof. I don't mean like steel in terms of the big sheets. I'm talking like the steel shingles that are like half inch thick and just like super duper heavy. They come in truck, trucks and pallets and they're super, super heavy. If you're gonna put that much weight on the top of that building, you have to build the structure differently from the ground up. Alright? So if I started doing my foundation and then I started building my framing and I'm like, oh, I'm actually gonna put a roof on that's like 10,000 pounds heavier. Guess what? Bad time to think about that because your foundation might not be ready for it. Your studs are two by fours instead of two by sixes. Like, there's a lot of problems if you slap a massive weight on the top of that building. Does everyone agree? Making sense. And the same thing goes for you as the owner. Stepping out of day to day operations, it's a huge weight on the business. For you to step out of day to day operations is a huge weight on the business. And if you're at 1 and 2 right now in those stages, you need to build the business correctly from the ground up to sustain that weight once it's been put on. So unfortunately, none of us are like out of the business from day one. We leave the business, that is, we put the roof on. But if the business has not been built in a way that supports that happening, it all falls apart. Sometimes when guys start thinking about like, oh, I'm going to work outside the field, I don't need to be in day to day operations. They leave the business, that is, they put the roof on and everything just falls apart. Like, the roof is better. A steel roof is better, it's heavier, it lasts like 50 years. It's the best thing in the world. But it's heavier and it's harder and it's more expensive. Okay? But if you're in that one and two and you're like, I'm just growing my business doing the foundation. I'm still installing the studs. Start building with the roof in mind. That is you leaving the business. What that causes you to do is start thinking about, okay, when I hire an estimator, I know right now I'm the only guy in my business, but when I hire an estimator, I needed to start thinking about the systems and how am I doing my estimates to make that job easy for him. Alright, so the reason I was able to do it fairly quickly is because right from day one, I knew I was not going to be in the business of mowing lawns. Right. I knew from day one we were going to eventually franchise it. And I also could not physically mow because I had allergies to the grass, which is a problem for about three weeks. It was taping eyelids, multiple shirts, rashes, like a lot. So I knew from day one I couldn't be in the field. Right. That would kick me in the office manager pretty fast. But building that foundation, thinking about it early on in the process is going to help you a lot.
