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Q2 Update on New Acquisition

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Hey there entrepreneurs,

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Welcome to the Better Business Brief, where I share takeaways from:

• running businesses I’m building to sell for millions
• My advisory with other business owners building to sell for millions
• tips and tricks you can use to do the same

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We just hit a record Q2 for the new company in our portfolio, but here’s the catch..

I believe it’s not just because of one thing, but rather the cumulative results of many small things improved.

So today, in less than 5 minutes, I’ll give you: ​ 🔧 How we cleaned up roles and workflows 📋 Which small tweaks are resulting in big savings 🚫 What we’re taking off our plate and why

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First, it’s important for you to understand the context of the business so you understand what levers we’re pulling and why.

It’s a commercial and residential air duct cleaning company.

Let’s get into it…

LEVELING UP THE TEAM

One of the first things we cleaned up was job confusion.

In our commercial air duct cleaning jobs, the range of job complexity is wide.

But we had no real system to decide who should go where.

That led to newer techs getting sent to more complicated jobs, and us having lower profit margins on those ones because we had to do so much on the job training to get anywhere.

So we rolled out a tiered tech system:
Every tech now has a “level” based on their skill, certifications, and reliability.

Each level has:

• A pay range
• Promotion criteria
• Types of jobs they’re qualified to run

And we paired that with a 1–5 job complexity rating that gets assigned during the estimate.
Now our ops manager and dispatcher can match people to jobs with way more precision.

People also perform better when they know exactly what’s expected, and what’s next for them.

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HONING IN ON PROFIT

To figure out that this was going on, a while back we started tracking profitability per job, not just by month or quarter.

That uncovered a few things that were subtle but costly:
​Training these new techs on out-of-town jobs was also wrecking our margin.

Oversight was tough.

And extra travel costs were high, as the techs get some bonus pay for being out of town.

Jobs took longer than they should’ve.

Now?
We’re focusing on making early training happen in-town as much as possible - closer to our leads, admin, and oversight.

We’re also updating our job assessment forms to include:

• Required safety gear (we lost a lot of profit due to unforseen safety requirements needing to be met before we could start jobs)
• Any unusual access issues (equipment or special badges needed, etc.)
• The job complexity score

It sounds small.

But these changes will touch every single job we run so that we are making more profit bit by bit.

Tiny process tweaks, done consistently, beat big overhauls.

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THE ADS NOW RUN THEMSELVES (ALMOST)

One of the best recent wins:
We brought on an AI-driven ad managed software to handle our Google ads using all our past job data.

Instead of us tweaking copy and watching dashboards every week, their system:

• Ingests our data
• Learns from real job outcomes
• Adjusts bids and creative in real time

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We will see how this goes, but the idea is that if we can take our hands out of the ads management here, we will be able to focus on consistently building the team so we can take on more and more work.

What this all adds up to is a business with real legs...​

A company that doesn’t rely on the owners having to show up every day to move the ball forward.

When you stack systems like these - role clarity, smarter job prep, disciplined growth decisions, and AI driven marketing, you can build something you enjoy owning…

My partner Grant and I help a lot of small businesses like this implement these changes. if you own one and want help tackling some of these things, check out some options we offer.​

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If you like these ideas or found this informative, stick around and subscribe. I do this newsletter every week.

If you did, share it with a friend who may too, as this is the best way for me to grow it and make this better.

They can even sign up here :)
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Happy value-building to you!

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See you next time for Better Business Brief,

-Brody