Mike AndesFounder, Augusta Lawn Care and Homeworks · Founder of Homeworks and Augusta Lawn Care

The Most Common Way Home Service Owners LOSE Money

22 Jul 2026 · 2 min

Watch on YouTube

1:36

In this conversational YouTube segment, Mike Andes walks through the most frequent financial pitfalls that home‑service business owners encounter. Using a tiered rating system (S, A, B, C, F), he evaluates each mistake’s impact on profitability and explains why it hurts the business. The discussion covers buying equipment before there is demand, mistimed hiring (both hiring too early and hiring managers too late), over‑expanding service areas, opening new locations prematurely, neglecting customer experience, ignoring Google reviews, over‑reliance on a single key employee, and offering an overly broad service menu. For each error, Mike provides a brief rationale—ranging from cash‑flow strain and operational complexity to lost revenue and brand damage—helping owners recognize and prioritize corrective actions.

Chapters

Buying equipment before you have demand. That is an S-tier way to lose money. Growing too fast. A-tier.
Hiring too late.
Honestly, I think most people rush into hiring, so I'll give it an F. Hiring too early. Probably a solid B-tier. I think people hire too early their first couple employees, but they hire too late on managers.
Overexpanding your service area.
I'd give an A-tier because it's so easy to make sense of it because you get gain revenue, but doesn't necessarily mean make more money.
Starting a new location too early.
I would say this is B tier. Most people don't start another location, but some people get too ambitious and start them too soon without first making sure their first location is nailed with good profits and a great general manager.
Not watching customer experience.
Ultimately, if you have bad service, eventually you'll have turned customers and bad reviews, and your service business if you have bad service, will eventually go out of business. So I'd give that a solid S tier. Ignoring Google reviews. I would say that's like a C. It's important for SEO to respond to your reviews, but I don't think it's going to make or break a business.
Depending on one key person.
I think this is very natural for a small business up until you have 10, 15 employees, that one person is going to probably hold the keys to sales or operations or admin. So for a smaller business, I think this is probably C-tier. The bigger the business, the more important this gets.
Offering too many services.
Uh, this is an S-tier way to lose money because it adds complexity. It slows down training. It's hard to have focus around your marketing initiatives. So everyone is guilty of this.