Phil Risher outlines a five-step ladder for home-service business owners to stop being the bottleneck. Hire people to handle bookings, then technicians, then marketing, then sales, then step back and coach. The owner who makes every decision kills their own growth.
As a home service business owner, if you are the one making decisions, then you are the bottleneck. There's this 5-rung replacement ladder. First, you hire an admin, a CSR. You shouldn't be making decisions on who to book or who not to book. Two, you hire technicians. You should not be the one making decisions about should I go out and clean this thing and how should I do this. Three, marketing. You should not be the one making all the decisions on what marketing's happening. You can still have a feel of what's going on, but you should not be the decision maker on every single thing. 4, sales. You should not be the decision maker on how do things get sold, who gets sold. You can be the manager of it, but you don't need to be the actual doer at the bottleneck. The 5th thing is the manager. This is where you're managing all of these things and coaching your team to get them to the point that you want. If you're the bottleneck on any one of these, then you're stalling your growth.
