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- Slow Down to Get Ahead
Hello home service operators,
Is it possible that slowing down is the key to getting ahead? It’s something I discussed on a recent podcast episode with Christian Rattin, CEO of Five Star Home Services ($40M/year). All the details are below, but first today’s resouces…
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Slow Down to Professionlize
I recently sat down with Christian Rattin, CEO of Five Star Home Services—a $40M multi-market plumbing, HVAC, and electrical company out of Ohio.
Five Star grew fast, almost by accident. But after a wild 18 months of chaos, Christian made a bold decision: stop chasing growth and start building a company that can actually sustain it.
The conversation was all about what it means to slow down to professionalize. To move from opportunistic growth to deliberate scale.
From Speed to Structure
When Christian joined Five Star, the company was doubling revenue every year but running on adrenaline. They added hundreds of employees, new trades, and new markets without the systems to hold it together.
By 2024, he realized they’d climbed to the fifth floor of the building without finishing the fourth. So they hit pause.
Instead of new markets, they brought in a coach to build leadership, structure, and focus. The goal wasn’t to grow faster. Iit was to grow right.
Five Star’s leadership team now operates on a single-page quarterly plan, with “13-week races” that turn strategy into action. They defined a customer promise (“Call by 7 p.m., we’ll be there today—or it’s free tomorrow”) and built accountability around it. Slowing down gave them clarity and purpose.
Building Leaders Before Locations
Christian realized the company couldn’t keep scaling if leadership wasn’t growing with it. Most of Five Star’s managers came from the field, not from business school. They were great techs, not trained leaders.
So instead of chasing the next acquisition, he started building leaders at every level:
Monthly manager meetings that pull 30 people out of the field for full-day training and problem solving.
Each department reports KPIs—conversion rates, average tickets, and efficiency—and owns results.
Transparent P&Ls help managers understand gross margin and what levers they can pull to improve it.
Every month, the team leaves with real solutions they created together. That buy-in has become a growth engine on its own.
Professionalizing Talent Development
To slow down the chaos, Five Star built systems for developing and retaining top performers. Every quarter, they rate every employee, tracking progress toward a goal of 37% A-players. The last review came in at 26.85%, but C-players dropped close to zero and A-potentials are rising.
Their five-day onboarding process filters out bad fits fast. Christian says the goal is to “either weed you out or create a fanatic.” It worked. One new hire opted out on day five because he “didn’t fit.” Without that structure, he might’ve poisoned the culture for months.
They also launched the Shooting Star program, where emerging leaders meet monthly without executives. Managers lead sessions, passing down lessons and identifying the next generation of leadership.
Redefining Success
Christian’s mantra says it all: Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, and cash is king.
Before he joined, the business tracked two numbers: top-line revenue and how much cash was in the bank. Now, every manager knows their gross margin, understands how to move it, and gets paid accordingly.
They’ve even reframed customer data. Instead of bragging about a database of 100,000 customers, Christian asked: “How many could we text today without losing them?”
That shift—toward engagement, not volume—is the same mindset driving every part of their professionalization.
The Bigger Picture
Five Star’s new focus is simple: be intentional.
Every system, hire, and process feeds a larger goal: profit with purpose. Their long-term mission is to give away $15 million in profit through community initiatives.
To get there, they don’t need more chaos. They need a company that can last.
Slowing down to professionalize isn’t a step backward. It’s how you build a business that outlives the founder, scales sustainably, and gives back along the way.
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Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, and cash is king.
Agree?
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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.
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