A lot of contractors are buried. 50 or 60 hours a week, missing dinner with the kids, building a business that's really just a cage with a steering wheel. It doesn't have to be like that.
A few years ago my wife and I decided we wanted a business that worked for us, not the other way round. Today it turns over about $200K a year and we each work about 20 hours a week. No weekends, no impossibly long days.
It isn't magic. It's a blueprint I call the high-density route generator. Three steps to stop doing busywork and start building a profitable, sellable asset.
If you rely only on word of mouth, your business gains clients at about the same speed it loses them. To build a real machine you need three things:
Ads are fuel. If you want to grow, and especially if you want to move off busywork and up to high-paying clients, you pump fuel into the engine.
What if the fuel didn't cost you anything? When the engine is running you'll get leads outside your area or that don't fit your route. Sell them to other guys in town. Recently I got a Facebook lead for $1.47 that I didn't want. I sold it to another local contractor for $20. Selling the leads you don't need covers your marketing. I never pay for ads out of my own pocket.
I talk to a lot of contractors who've mowed the same lawns for years without ever putting the price up. With rising costs, that's a business going backwards, and it's hard to sell. Use your tracking spreadsheet to find your worst lawns, the lowest margins and longest drives. Then:
Rinse and repeat. Your route gets tighter, your hourly rate climbs, and your income keeps growing. Get the traffic light spreadsheet here.
I build the website first. You see it live before you pay anything. Keep it and it's $59 USD a month, Google profile included.
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