Mike Andes tells home-service owners to stop obsessing over trucks and mowers and start selling. Wait until you hit $1 million in revenue to optimize equipment, because a 5% efficiency gain means $50k then, not $1,500 now. Customers first, gear later.
The type of trucks and equipment you have matters, but they don't matter when you're at zero, when you're just getting started. I see so many home service business owners have analysis by paralysis and figure out the type of equipment they're gonna have, the type of trucks and where they're gonna park and all this crazy stuff. When in reality they just need to focus on getting more customers. In my opinion, optimize after making a million dollars. If you're unsure if like, well, I'm not sure if I should have a Chevy or Ford, I'm not sure if I have a 60 inch mower or 52 inch mower. I honestly go get so many customers to the point where you grow the business past a million dollars and now optimization actually moves the needle because you're able to increase your efficiency by 5% on a million dollar business, that's $50,000. However, if you just started mowing grass on the weekend and you're making $30,000, a 5% increase is meaningless to the success of your business. Focus on getting more customers, not on the paralysis analysis and getting all the type of equipment and trucks and how am I going to put my uniforms and what kind of shop space and how am I going to put the racks up on the side of the trailer? These are all the minutiae that bogs people down from getting customers. Because at the end of the day, customers and contracts are the thing that make a business, not more metal sitting inside of your warehouse.
