How You Got Here...

...is not how you get there

John Wilson
November 14, 2025

Hello home service operators,

Senior leaders are the people in your business who move it forward, and there’s a painful truth you must understand.

The people who are with you at $1M may not be there at $10M and beyond.

Below, I share my advice on hiring senior leaders who can help drive your business to new heights.

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And a super-quick request…could you review the OAO podcast on Spotify or Apple? It goes a long way in helping us reach more people.

Get Better Home Service Leads

Most contractors think lead quality drops when volume goes up. Modernize proves the opposite.

Grow Predictably: Your conversion rate stays steady whether you buy 100 leads or 5,000. That means you can plan with confidence and know exactly what your marketing dollars will produce.

Lower Acquisition Costs: Modernize delivers high-quality leads at a lower cost than most contractors can generate on their own. You spend less to land each new customer.

Drive More Revenue: Modernize leads generate more revenue per job than typical in-house leads. You reach your goals faster and go beyond them.

It’s simple. Better home service leads increase the likelihood of sales.

When Systems Aren’t Enough

Systems fix chaos. But once they are working, something new becomes the limiter: leadership.

At a certain point, clean job files and solid workflows stop being the problem. The business hits a wall not because tools are broken, but because the people running them have reached their limit.

That is when you need to start thinking about senior leaders.

The Reality of Growth

You have probably heard the phrase, “How you got here isn’t how you get there.” It is true.

The team that helped you reach one million is rarely the same team that gets you to ten. It is not about loyalty or effort. The business simply changes faster than people can grow.

New structure. Real accountability. Processes instead of hustle. You have to do things you never had to do before.

It hurts to lose people who were with you from the start, but that is part of growing up as a company.

The Peter Principle in Action

There is a name for this. It is called the Peter Principle. It means people get promoted to the level of their own incompetence.

In other words, we keep giving our best performers more responsibility until they reach a role they cannot handle. Not because they are bad, but because they hit their ceiling.

If you want to grow past that point, you need a team that can go further than you or your early hires ever could.

The Leadership Phase

When we were between ten and twenty million, I did not realize what stage we were in. I was hiring, integrating, and making payroll. We were working hard but not strategically.

That was the leadership-building phase. The people I hired then determined how far we could go.

Nobody told me that at the time. So I will tell you now. This is the moment when you start building the team that can take you from ten to thirty, forty, or fifty million.

The Six Seats That Drive Growth

If you are in late seven figures or early eight figures, these are the roles that move the business forward.

Finance (Controller)

You need someone who owns reporting, forecasting, and budgeting. Clean, accurate numbers give you control and visibility.

Once you pass fifty people, HR gets complicated. FMLA, compliance, benefits, recruiting, and retention all matter. You sell time and expertise, so managing people well drives revenue.

Call Center or Inside Operations

This is where revenue begins. The manager owns scripting, booking rates, and outbound strategy. Inside operations may also include dispatch, permitting, and warehouse. A strong leader here turns inbound chaos into predictable work.

Sales

In the trades, sales can feel reactive. Something breaks, and you fix it. But real growth requires a defined process. Training, tracking, and accountability turn random wins into consistent performance.

Fulfillment or Install

No callbacks. No confusion. No wasted labor. You need a leader who owns quality and execution. A solid install process creates fewer problems and happier customers.

Marketing

Most companies outgrow their marketing without realizing it. Lead flow slows down, and no one owns it. You need someone responsible for driving the board daily, even if you still use outside agencies.

When to Hire

Start building these roles in the late seven figures. By ten to fifteen million, they should be in place.

It took us two years to build our leadership team. I wish I had done it sooner. Once those people were in place, growth accelerated across every department.

The Lesson

Systems create capacity.
Leaders create leverage.

If you feel stuck, it is not because you are not working hard enough. It is because you are still doing work that should be delegated.

The businesses that scale are not just good at the trade. They are good at building teams that can think, lead, and execute.

Stop trying to carry it alone. Build the leadership team that carries the business with you.

Grow Faster With Connected Tools Built For Home Service Pros

Running a service business is hard enough without lost calls, messy follow-ups, and slow follow-ups getting in the way.

Join Quo (formerly OpenPhone) on November 20 @ 12 PM ET for a power-packed session for home-service leaders and operators who want to scale smarter.

You’ll learn how to:

Document processes your team will actually follow
Hire and lead with confidence (and data)
Connect your tools so every lead, call, and text lives in one place with Quo and your CRM

There’s no way around it. The future growth of your company is in the hands of your senior leadership team.

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👊 John

Disclosure: Some of the content and links in this newsletter are sponsored or affiliate links, which means we may receive payment or earn a commission if you click through or purchase. However, all opinions expressed are entirely my own.