Steve Hunsaker | Home Service Accelerator

Got to listen to a 10 figure home service guy today for about an hour. He built the largest brand in his trade Someone asked him about growth and he said “the worst thing you can do is have 3 techs in one new market and you should focus on getting 50+ in your first one”

Made me think about my lighting business and the HSA community as guys ask questions like this a lot. I don’t feel qualified to answer because I haven’t experience it so take it from him. He’d rather grab WAY more market share in his main market than diversify early. Lesson

@Bobbyvickers Yup lol

@realpaytonm 👍

@jamesonhaslam He would tell you to stick to decks lol

@DrDinduMuffin Do you have a 10 figure business that did it this way?

@DrDinduMuffin Aren’t there PE backed monsters in the hypothetical new markets too?

@BackwellMFG Yes

🧵 Want to build an entire training manual and SOP checklists in a day for your company? 1. But a voice recorder like Plaude Note or anything else that can record audio for hours and clearly picks up who is talking. (AI note takers are better, but Apple voice memos work too)

2. Greet your training employee. 3. Record EVERY SINGLE WORD you say and verbally walk the employee through every part Ex: this is how you load the truck. Toolbox goes here, ladder here, etc. Have the employee ask EVERY possible question they have and record you answering.

4. Take audio file… dump it into Manus with this prompt: “Your job is to make a training SOP for my ___ business. I’m going to upload you the transcripts of a training day with my new hire. His position is ___. I want you to take everything that I said to this employee and

5. Proofread its first document. Then go crazy. I had it build quizzes about our products for our sales teams, PowerPoints using the info, etc.

6. When you get the SOPs and checklists I highly recommend using @CompanyCam’s checklist feature. (I’m not affiliated but they get a lot of $ from me per month because they rock)

7. You’re now running documents that 9/10 of your competitors don’t have or haven’t updated in 3 years. Merry Christmas.

Home service businesses that absolutely crush as a solo op and suck balls at scale: 1. Any sort of custom remodeling (bathrooms, kitchens, etc) 2. Pressure washing 3. Landscape lighting 4. Painting 5. Handyman

@NickRunsAds I have seen owner ops PRINT money doing it. Very few massive guys.

@NickRunsAds Basically impossible to standardize processes when every job is so different. Has that been your experience too?

@ForkMeMaddie @NickRunsAds 😂😂😂

@irentdumpsters Please don’t

@markfzhuk You can dial in deez

@MaxKrakow_ I actually think it’s the exact opposite of what you described and I disagree completely. It’s 100% a fulfillment and quality control problem at scale, not a marketing/lead gen issue. But I’m more than happy to be wrong and I appreciate your opinion

@Alex_li Tell me more

@ghcDrew @MaxKrakow_ My experience via lots of remodeling contractors in HSA as well

@ztyler So that would be when it’s still easy and why it kills as an owner op biz in my opinion

@irentdumpsters 🤣🤣🤣

800+ home service accelerator customers. One ah-ha that will shock you: It’s most people’s systems that suck… not their lead volume/quality

Systems: phone answering, appt setting, sales process, nurture process, etc

@jamesonhaslam I agree. I can vividly remember bitching out a junk removal agency for not getting me quality leads my first year and in hindsight it was likely me 😂

Purrrrrttyyyyy https://t.co/dWmzBl652L

@alaramarketing We have a little shoebox warehouse I think I pay like $1900 a month

@dylthorn @alaramarketing Def can’t leave the trucks in the middle there our neighbors would be upset

I showed Home Service Accelerator members how to use Manus AI to convert live trainings into checklists and SOP’s today and I could see people’s minds being blown in real time. Chat-GPT is actually the worst AI product right now by a large margin

@darynakulya You absolutely did 🤣

How I look at my director of operations when he tells me he over-ordered about $15,000 worth of product this season https://t.co/xXMOJZHiLo

@chris__harvey__ 🤣🤣🤣 oh I’d never make him do that

@mucoucah Chump change I could have used to go to Hawaii in the off season 😭

Flaw in my biz keeping us from $1.5mil+/szn Arduous quoting process.. Quote needs: -roofline measurement -tree measurement -safety check for installers -itemized quote by item in display -visual mockup for customer Takes 10-15 mins to quote full displays. Issue at our scale

@NoRiskNoParty The trees are actually the main pain point. Google maps photos are usually outdated too. So the solution is either: go see them in person or have customer send photos. Both extremely time consuming and clunky.

@NoRiskNoParty But also, trees quoted wrong is absolutely brutal.

@NoRiskNoParty Pictures are super old. Can misquote trees by 25%+

@carpenterRobOH It’s very slow for a 2 month a year business

@GeorgeWTrumpWon I should clarify, this is just the BUILDING of the quote. The going in person is an entirely different portion but crucial to our process

My install team got so dialed this year that they caught sales before thanksgiving. We’re also 50% ahead on sales YTD than we were last year on this same day for perspective. Everyone talks about sales and marketing, the real challenge is balancing fulfillment/sales properly.

@rathbunholdco New biz we’ve sold a hair under $400k this season. But we upsell a lot of existing customers into more elaborate displays but we also lose people at a rate I don’t love. Example we lost a $31,000 residential client this year. That stung

Hung 52 spheres in a massive tree last week. (Extremely laborsome part of install) Turns out half of them were supposed to be a different color. We have an SOP for confirming colors/minimizing callbacks: -sales rep confirms in company cam product color/etc at quote approval

@tj28283 I can promise you… this is not the case

@spartanmadeit We just run so tight due to seasonality this would realllllly hurt us. I have to install $20k a day to hit numbers.

@sternburger_ It’s funny. We used to do it 2 days in advance and then we had a few customers change after getting confirmation texts the day before so we changed the call to that day. Feel like I’m golfing. Striping the driver one day, no irons. Then I rip the irons, driver in the trees 🤣

@MikeHallYall They change their minds… often. It’s an exciting thing for them

Not a single hour of overtime. Weekly install numbers for Christmas lights. I used to say I was capped on installation bandwidth at about $800,000-$1,000,000 a season. I now am fully convinced it was a skill issue and that was a self limiting belief. https://t.co/kptOmhnFu8

@OggieO 95% residential. 4 crews. Google ads with @irentdumpsters and @andy_wlker Facebook ads in house Postcard mailer campaigns 5-6x to the same houses

@christaylo49247 We did some jobs in September 🤣

We have less service calls at over $1million dollars a year in revenue in a season than we did when I was out doing installs myself and at $350k revenue 3 years ago. A good operator is everything, man

@thedavescience This is so hurtful but so true 😂

One of the best hacks has been creating a SHARED iCloud photo album with all of my sales and operations staff Sales gets visuals for jobs + FAQs get answered via video from the install crews. Sales has an arsenal of selling content + we look incredibly prepared Recommend https://t.co/Oi64FjVeOv

@stevehaag81 @CompanyCam We use CompanyCam a ton but not for this feature! Will look into it. We use it mostly for quality control and job scope between sales -> installers

My first year we got zero referrals from 52 customers. I said to myself “it must just be the industry” Then I renewed less than half of them the next season. Turns out our quality just sucked.

@rampulla_andrew Well for starters my first year I stapled lights on half of the houses eaves….

My ops team and I moved our daily install goal from $16,000 a day to $20,000-$22,000/day to keep up with demand and max out this season. First day implementing and 3 crew members are out sick. Got 6 guys running across 3 crews today installing $22,500. SMB things baby

@rampulla_andrew Lots of them

@jeffharleyFA I haven’t been on a roof in 2 seasons I believe 🤣

Death, taxes, my sales team bidding an install that we can’t safely do and having to give the customer their deposit back + beg for forgiveness

@rathbunholdco 😂 we didn’t do it so no photos

@spencerclaeys Oh it’s absolutely a skill issue on the owner’s part