12 Exact Steps to Scale Your Landscaping Business – Interview with “Home Service CFO” Dan Platta
Staying small as a business has its own pros and cons. Most of the time, it’s all about the absence of the need to worry about paying employees, for it is only you that’s running the business. But if we’re going to think further, scaling is far more beneficial long term. Not only would you be able to grow the business, but the business’ progression would also help you live life better.
However, people in the first phases of scaling usually tend to get cold feet and lose the drive to continue. Some get overwhelmed because they don’t even know their where-to’s. Their mindset is not in good condition. There’s no clarity on purpose. So for this episode, I invited Dan Platta over to share the 12 exact steps to successfully scale our business towards the growth we’ve always dreamt of! Sit back and relax. You’re in for a treat today!
Dan Platta, commonly known as the “The Service CFO,” runs the Blue Skies Admin Services, where he and his team help small businesses get that on-demand scale in the service industry.
“We didn’t get into business as a charity. All of our businesses are profit businesses. We are here to make money. We want to do a lot of good, we want to help a lot of people, but at the end of the day, for us to do that, we need to be profitable, we need to be successful.”
– Dan Platta
Why do you have to listen to today’s episode.
00:54 – #1: Whatever you’re doing, as long as you’re in business, you’re playing a math game. Here, you’ll learn how to set up your business financially in five steps.
13:23 – Mindset is everything. Clarity and commitment play a huge role in your progress. Work on being able to separate your personal stuff from your business.
17:54 – #2: Why tax yourself as an S Corp and not as a sole proprietor? Understand why for two reasons.
23:54 – #3: What is bookkeeping really for? When do you need to get a bookkeeper involved in your business?
33:44 – #4: You’d never want to lose both your clients and your employees for the unequal surge of work to be done. Here’s the Magic Formula: Capacity = Demand
43:09 – #5: Let’s talk about the inflection point of scaling and why it’s a good plus for you to scale.
56:52 – #6: What’s the first thing you got to do after scaling? Do marketing. Keep in mind the importance of ROI.
1:10:45 – #7: Find more employees and invest in them. It’s just like marketing in reverse.
1:29:35 – #8: Start investing in infrastructures, in new software. Continue to upscale.
1:37:23 – #9: Receiving pay keeps employees motivated. Which suits you best – commission pay or hourly pay?
1:50:45 – #10: Why is commission pay more apt for smaller crews than bigger ones? Find the answer here.
1:59:43 – #11: Buying assets the right way is a vital move. No one wants to lose money for other business purposes over assets that aren’t properly serving the business.
2:08:03 – #12: Everybody believes that we ought to be spending lots of money at the end of the year to avoid the IRS. Legally minimize your taxes.
Key Takeaways
“If it’s just a hobby and you’re not going to scale it, or you’re not counting on it to make a living, then it’s fine to keep it smashed together because it’s not something that your livelihood is dependent on. But once it starts becoming that career in a business and something that you’re passionate about and trying to grow, you’re only doing yourself a disservice if you keep it structured like it’s a hobby, still. You got to really get serious about keeping business stuff separate from personal stuff, even if you’re the only one that owns the business and you’re the only one working in the business.”
“The point of bookkeeping is that you have good clarity on your data as you build the business, so you know where your money is coming, you know where it’s going, and you know that you’re operating it profitably; or if you’re not, you know what you need to change so that you can operate it profitably. It’s not about paying taxes. It’s about seeing where your money is going if you’re in line with your business bottle and if you’re making good decisions.”
“Capacity = Demand is the magic formula to grow a business that doesn’t suck because if you grow a business and you have too much capacity and not enough demand, or too much demand and not enough capacity, the farther those things deviate from one another; the more your life sucks.”
“It’s a mindset thing. You got to find the right mindset when it comes to finding employees, that they are the thing that unleashes your business and allows you to scale.”
“I’m not saying it’s the right solution for everybody, but our math clearly shows that commission pay leads to higher production rates, leads to more revenue, which allows you to do more cool stuff, and your business grows faster.”
“When we can minimize our taxes legally, that makes a shit ton of sense. Why not invest in growing our business? Because the minute we have to pay taxes, that’s money that we don’t get to invest in the growth of our business. So we might as well spend the money on the growth of the business than pay it to the government, for the government will make more money too if we grow the business because then, they’re going to have more taxes than they can get from us for that business. We all win.”
Connect with Dan Platta
Connect with Keith
Resources/People Mentioned:
My Website: Official Site Keith Kalfas
My Podcast Page: The UNTRAPPED Podcast
My FREE Marketing Guide: Seven Steps to Marketing Your Business
Dan’s Home Cleaning Business: Blue Skies Admin Services
Hiring software: CareerPlug
Hiring software: HireWho
Payroll software: Gusto
Answering service: Jill’s Office
If you’re looking for someone to help you get your books done, go to https://yourblueskies.com/kalfas/ and save half off your setup fees with Blue Skies.
If you’re looking for probably the greatest software ever to run your business, go to www.getjobber.com/keith and receive 20% off your first six months once you use Keith’s link to sign up.
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