Transcript excerpt of a conversation (Mike Andes and another speaker) about scaling a service business without hiring office staff. They discuss targets (e.g., reaching $500k revenue and adding a second truck), the trade-offs of in-person vs phone estimates, efficiency of one-man crews, and concerns about the time cost of training office staff undermining profitability.
Of your estimates, how many of our in person versus just over the phone? I'd like to do in person if I can, but I just don't have the time. So what if the goal was we get the second truck? Assuming we're having these leads still coming in and we're pumping these out, could you essentially get to 5, 600,000, be full time doing sales and admin like throughout the day, doing the phone throughout the day, going and visiting customers? Could that be the goal this year, you think?
Without office.
If we get to 500,000 without having an office staff, you'll be profitable? If you see an office staff, I start to get very concerned about you spending time training them. You're going to turn there too. I think the biggest thing right now.
Is I need to see what it looks like when the guys are working in one man crews and how efficient we can get that. Because if.
They can.
Do that, then.
I think I could.
But if it gets to the point where they're not really that efficient, I need to bring someone else on, then scheduling gets harder and I might need to bring someone on.
