Every Service Business Owner Needs This Important Skill

(To Give Their Business a Massive Boost)

Do you want to boost your service business to the next level?

You can’t do it unless you master this one critical service business skill.

What’s the most important skill you need to have as a service business owner?

It’s a more difficult question to answer than you might think.

Perhaps it’s marketing. After all, you need to get eyes on you if you want to boost your service business to the next level.

Or maybe it’s all about service. Your technical skills ensure you give your clients what they want even if something else isn’t working in the business.

Now, I’m not going to say those aren’t important service business skills.

They absolutely are.

However, there’s one skill that trumps them all. It’s a skill that relates to something that every service business owner does. And yet, only two in every 10 of you create a process around it.

It’s All About Decision-Making

Every single one of you has this process. But you don’t really talk about it because you don’t understand it.

And if you’re not talking about it, there’s a good chance that you’re not using it to boost your service business.

You’re definitely not using it to improve your life.

Do you have a decision-making process in your service business?

It’s a trick question because you all do. The problem is that it probably isn’t written down anywhere. There’s where the two out of every 10 figure comes from. Only 20% of service business owners actually record their processes.

For the rest of you, it’s all in your heads.

There’s nothing defined about it. You’re not going through a sequence of steps or questions when you’re preparing to make a decision. Instead, you’re just confronting the issues that come immediately to mind. You’re asking yourself “should I invest in this?” or “should I deploy this strategy?” but there’s no standard way of understanding whether it makes sense to take action or not.

That means you might end up missing something important.

You don’t want the decisions that you make in your service business to have a negative impact on your life. That’s why I’m going to share a little nugget of wisdom with you.

CEO Warrior has a six-step service business decision-making system that you can start using today.

Step #1 – Figure Out the Return on Investment

I want to know what I’m getting for the money I spend.

Say you’re buying a boat. For the first month, it’s this awesome thing that you spend all of your time with. You’re out fishing for crab and you’re loving it.

Then six months later, that same boat’s just sitting there. It’s full of cobwebs and it’s got grass growing around it.

Your emotional investment wilts away and you’re left with this thing that you don’t really want.

Let me tell you about a guy who got a great return on his investment.

Craig Marklein became a Warrior back in 2018 at a time when his business really struggled. He says that he’d spent forever searching for someone to act as a service business mentor.
And he’s made some bad investments because of it. Craig threw money at all of these people who told him they could help. But nothing changed in the business and he kept getting the same mediocre results.
Then, he came to CEO Warrior. Our proven track record showed him that we could give him a return on his investment. And in just a few months, he went from earning $270,000 in revenue per year to $375,000.

And that’s only going to grow more over time as he scales the business.

That’s what a good return on investment looks like. Take the emotion out of the process and think about the future.

Does the thing you want right now still offer value six months down the line?

Step #2 – Work Out the Return on Time

The next thing you want to know is if there’s a return on your time.

How quickly will this new thing make you happy? How long do you have to wait before it starts to boost your service business?

And if it’s not serving you, how quickly will it serve someone else?

Remember that you’re making a time investment as well as a monetary one. For example, you may have a decision to make about a training or coaching program. You and your team have to spend time learning as part of that program.

Is that time well-spent learning stuff that will help your service business? Or are you just going over stuff that you already know without any new insight?

These are all really important questions to ask yourself.

Step #3 – Determine the Return on Life

Is this thing going to enhance your life or take away from it?

That’s the key question you’re looking to answer in this part of the process. Remember that every decision that you make for your service business affects your personal life. If you’re deciding to put more work on your own plate, you’re also deciding to spend less time with the family.

Are you sure that decision’s going to offer a good return on life?

Maybe it’s going to leave you feeling burned out instead. And when you get home, you don’t have the time to spend doing what you love to do with your family.

I find that these first three steps are super important in service business decision-making. If you skip them, you end up making an impulse decision without really thinking it through.

Step #4 – Find Out What It Does for Your People

So you’ve thought about yourself enough now.

It’s time to consider what the decision does for your people. Start with your employees. Does the thing you’re thinking about getting enhance your employees today?

This is a step that Aaron Woodhouse might have skipped before he came to CEO Warrior

Aaron Woodhouse bought his service business from his father. And in the 20 years that his dad owned the business, he’d never made more than $500,000 in one year. Aaron wanted growth but he had a problem with his employees.
They had no incentive to develop personally or professionally. Instead, they just turned up, did the job, and collected a paycheck.
Aaron made the decision to work with CEO Warrior. And he’ll be the first to tell you that it wasn’t easy. But now, he’s making decisions with his employees in mind. He’s lost a few people who wouldn’t come on board along the way. But his decision ultimately benefitted his people.

As for Aaron, he broke the $500,000 barrier with a $791,000 year.

You’ve got to keep your people happy as well as yourself, and build a company culture that helps you achieve your targets.

Let’s say I’m thinking about moving my business to a shop with no air conditioning. That might fit my return on investment but it’s not going to make my people happy. It’s not a good fit for them.

And that means it’s a bad decision for my service business.

Step #5 – Figure Out if it’s Good for Your Clients

When I made the decision to make a 10,000 square foot building for CEO Warrior, I ran through the process I’ve described so far.

I knew it would take a long time to get a return on my investment and time. But I also knew this building would make my people and me very happy.

Then I thought about my clients. What would they think about coming to this huge professional building?

They love it. They’re not coming to some dingy place that they don’t want to spend time in. Everything’s clean and professional, which helps them to see that we’re the people they want to work with.

If something’s good for your clients, you might be able to forgive it for taking a little more time to give you some personal returns.

Step #6 – Conduct the Sanity Check

So the decision’s checking all of the boxes and it looks like it’ll boost your service business.

The final step of the process is to run the sanity check. Will this new thing cost you your sanity?

And sometimes, the thing you want will make you go nuts. You’ll put yourself under so much pressure that you can’t even take it. Your relationships start to suffer and your head starts going in all sorts of directions.

My go-to example is when I did restoration. We made $1 million in our first year of doing it but I forgot about one thing.

Insurance companies.

They always owed us money and I always had to chase them.

They’d started driving me insane so I decided to nix that part of the business. It just didn’t work for me.

Run the sanity check even if the decision ticks all of the other boxes.

Create Your Decision-Making Process

We’re all decision makers. Every single service business owner has to make choices almost every day.

The skill lies in creating a process that leads to you making the right choice more often than not.

That’s what my process does for you. Start using it today or get your own written down.

I’m going to leave you with a final question:

Tag: ROI