Building a successful HVAC, plumbing, electrical, or other home services business requires more than just you—despite your seemingly superhero powers as a service technician and company owner. Great service companies build success through teamwork, much like a NCAA basketball championship team plays to win by working together toward a shared goal.
“One is way too small a number for greatness,” says Chris Hunter, ServiceTitan’s Director of Customer Relations. “If you want to build something great, it's going to take a team. You're going to have to build a team, and you can't do that if you're still stuck in a truck.”
Hunter found himself “stuck in the truck” after starting Hunter Heat & Air in Oklahoma in 2009, with a majority of customers requesting him personally to respond to their service call or repair. As a result, he quickly learned one of the most important lessons for a business owner in the skilled trades: To work on the business, instead of in the business.
His game plan involved rebranding the company as Hunter Super Techs, developing a solid team of service technicians with great coaching, then selling the business in 2019. He then co-founded GoTime Success Group, a technician training school, with his mentor and trades consultant Ben Stark, before joining ServiceTitan in 2020.
“We need to make the transition from player to coach,” Hunter advises, in the second of ServiceTitan’s Growth Series webinars. “We may be the best technician, we may be the best salesperson, but we're going to have to remove this hat and become a coach if we want to build a team.”
Hunter says creating a successful service company involves the same process coaches follow to develop a winning sports team. Good coaches recruit players, structure practices, and execute a winning game plan. They also monitor performance during the game, give feedback for ways to improve following a win or loss, and huddle with the team’s other coaches to plan a strategy for the next game.
“That's exactly what we're doing as a business owner, as a manager, or as a leader in this business,” Hunter says.
In this webinar, Hunter explains exactly what it takes to transition from player to coach—or how to get out of the truck, build a team, and drive up profits.
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“For me, this was tough, because my first instinct as a technician at heart, anytime something was wrong, I would want to run and get back in that truck,” Hunter says. “Even as the business started growing, that was my first tendency.”
Hunter decided to listen to his mentors instead, and started focusing on his people, systems, and processes. He also removed all of the tools from his truck, so he could be the coach instead of the player when his service techs requested assistance on a job site.
One of his mentors told him, “You can have control or you can have growth, but you can’t have both,” Hunter says. “That really hit home with me, because I wanted to control things. I wanted to control the outcome.
“But if we want to go up, we're going to have to learn how to give up that control for growth,” he adds. “You’ve got to give up ‘me for we.’ It's no longer about you being No. 1, it's about coaching other people to be No. 1.”
For many service company tech-turned-owners, ego may be the hardest thing to get over, especially when you’re the star of the game, with customers and other service techs requesting you by name.
“It feels good, but we’re going to have to give that up,” Hunter explains. “We're going to have to make other people successful. We're going to have to trade our personal accolades for team wins. It's no longer about my average ticket, my closing rate, or my this or my that. It's about how well our team can play, if we all want to win together.”
You also need to give up going fast for going far. It may be easier and quicker to do a job yourself, rather than training someone new, but coaching and training everyone on the team to perform at a higher level pays off in the long run.
“If you want to go fast, you go alone. But if you want to go far, you need to build a team—you need to bring a team with you,” Hunter says.
Working as a team also generates true wealth, rather than simple earnings, as you gain the freedom to spend more time with family, go on vacation, or take on a new job.