Howard Partridge is an internationally recognized business coach, bestselling author, and experienced business owner. He continues his discussion on how to build a scalable, turnkey home services business by focusing on systems, leadership, and vision.

Scaling Requires Systems and Strong Leadership

Howard emphasizes that in order to scale, you need to have the right systems and processes in place that you can duplicate. You can’t grow if you are trying to do everything yourself. Over the years, he has been able to grow his service company into a multi-million dollar turnkey business by prioritizing:

1. Systems that will move you off of the organization chart so that you can work on the business instead of in it.
2. People who will do the work the way it needs to be done. 
3. A leadership team that will help these people and systems work together synergistically.

Build Your Framework

For Howard, his dream to spend as much time on his favorite beach and build a house there while helping other people build a phenomenal business. This vision is what kept him committed to building a turnkey business. He identifies defining your vision as the first step to building your business framework.

“My definition of leadership is leadership effectively communicating the vision. You have to have a vision. People who are on your team want to know ‘Where are we going, and why are we going there?’… So that’s the first piece of the framework.”

1. Define your vision.
2. Fill in the organization chart to see how all of the levels and departments should fit together.
3. Develop your Performance Results Description (PRD): how your employees need to perform in order to reach your business goals. 
4. Create policies and procedures for every role in the company. These need to be updated consistently as your business evolves. 

Howard also emphasizes the importance of meeting with your leadership team weekly and monthly to review the numbers, address any issues, and adapt any processes to make your workflow more effective. 

Get Off the Truck

Howard says that in order to get yourself off of the truck, you need to want it and know why you want it. This is why having a vision is so important.

“You’re so in love with the technical, you know you feel like you can do it better than anybody and that’s probably true, but you’re going to be stuck there forever as long as you have that mentality. You have to want to. You have to have a vision - a life off the truck. You have to fall out of love with the technical part and understand that if someone else can do it 85% as good as you can, you’re able to scale.”

Howard outlines this process to systematically replace yourself in every role at every level of your business in a few steps.

1. Train your technicians in the classroom and do ride-alongs. Once they can do the job to your satisfaction with your supervision, you’re ready to get off the truck. 
2. Next, encourage them to utilize the manual instead of calling you with every question. 
3. Now that you’re off the truck, use this time to develop the rest of your organization and remove yourself from the administration work to become the manager. 
4. Finally, help develop your employees into great managers and leaders so that you can move from the manager role into the director role. Now, you’re ready to work on your business instead of in it. 

Howard’s Advice

Howard recommends investing in a coach, someone who has scaled before, in order to do this because building systems and seeing this process through will be one of the hardest things you’ll ever do. Finally, stay focused on your vision and let that drive you to build a phenomenal business and a phenomenal life.