John Wilson, CEO of Wilson Plumbing & Heating, shares his best practices for aggressively scaling a company through marketing, acquisitions and personal growth. 

Overcoming Plateaus In Business

Don’t fear the dreaded business plateau. As an entrepreneur, seeing your business grow and reach milestones is incredibly exciting. Everything looks like you’re on the right track until you hit a plateau.

The first plateau that many businesses hit is at a million to a million and a half dollars in sales, says John. This often happens because the owner is not prepared to hire an operations manager to take care of what is happening in the field. Instead, they spread themselves too thin trying to do it all.

You have to hire help in order to grow. You cannot do everything by yourself.

Play To Your Strengths

Know what you are good at and stick to that. John explains that although he knew he was better on the business side of things rather than being in the field, this isn’t the case for everyone. 

>“If you’re not good at the business side or you don’t want to do it, then you probably shouldn’t and you should hire someone else to do it. Or just stay super small and that’s okay too… You don’t need to get big.”

Understanding your strengths and your weaknesses is half the battle.

Leveraging Social Media

One of the biggest barriers to talent is whether the individual wants to work for your company. John says one way to avoid this is to have people apply to work for you through other mediums. For example, social media and/or podcasts are helpful platforms that can help potential employees understand:

• Who you are
• Who your company is
• What your values are

Showcase what you do on your platforms and put your ideas forward. John has found success building future customer and employee relationships on social media by providing value. He shares his own experiences and failures on Twitter and then interacts with people whenever they ask questions.

>“Audience is king… even with just a few thousand people, you can make an impact, in your business or wherever your goals are. That would be consistently driving traffic towards it (social media), posting on it frequently and making somebody own it so that way you are driving towards the results you want.”

Enhancing Your Team

A solid onboarding process is a major component of employee engagement and retention. It impacts the productivity and success of your new hires. Focusing on developing a strong connection is vital for earning their loyalty and commitment to your home services business.

Creating a hiring process is one of the most important tactics John’s team has implemented.

>“Every company needs the same two people. You have the visionary and you have the integrator… you need someone to figure out the vision and someone to run the company. So figuring out which one you’re best at is important and then hiring your exact opposite who plays the opposite role is important.”

For more information on John’s business and services, visit Wilson Plumbing & Heating.