I see this all the time in the snow business. We win a big account, look at the contract value and immediately think we landed a great job. But did we? Let's say it's a $100,000 snow account. You know what you're spending on labor. You have a pretty good idea what you're going to use for deicing product. Maybe the equipment is already sitting in the yard. On the surface, it looks profitable. But what about the rest of it? Equipment recovery. Repairs. Insurance. Supervision. Mobilization. Standby time. Overhead. Replacement cost. And the biggest wildcard of all — weather. If there is one thing I learned working commercial zero-tolerance properties, it's that WINTER WILL EXPOSE BAD MATH! FAST. You can have trucks moving all night, employees getting hours, invoices going out and a customer who thinks you're doing a great job... …and still not be making enough money. That's the Snow Business Truth: Revenue isn't profit, and being busy doesn't mean you're making money. Before I worry about what somebody else is charging for a property, I want to know what it costs my company to service that property correctly. Not halfway. Not during the easy storms. Correctly — when it's 2:00 AM, conditions are changing, the customer expects bare pavement, and you've got equipment, people and deicing product deployed across the site. Know that number. Because once you know it, you stop guessing. You stop chasing work just because it's available. And you get a whole lot more comfortable walking away from accounts that don't make sense. Sometimes losing the bid is the best financial decision you make all winter. I'm curious — how many of you have had an account that looked great when you sold it, but after the season was over you realized you should never have taken it?

I wanted to take a few minutes and share one of my biggest takeaways from the Alex Hormozi Scaling Workshop. Great event. More than anything, it really made me step back and look at our business differently. One of the biggest questions we worked through was: What does it actually take to become a great CEO? A big part of it comes down to how you look at the business. Are you looking at it as the owner/employee working inside it? Or are you looking at it as an investor? An investor looks at: - Return on capital - Profitability - Where time and money are being wasted - What creates the most value - What the business should stop doing - What decisions make the company stronger 3–5 years from now An owner/operator can get much more emotionally attached to certain jobs, employees, equipment, customers, or even parts of the business that may not make sense anymore. That doesn’t mean emotion is bad. It means emotion cannot be the only thing driving the decision. One thing private equity firms generally understand very well is FOCUS. They want to know: What does this business do REALLY well? Who is the right customer? What services generate the best return? What distractions should be eliminated? What can be systemized? What can be delegated? How do we make the company less dependent on the owner? That really hit home for me. A business can easily become an HVAC company that also cleans carpets, pressure washes houses, plows snow, sells firewood and does whatever else comes through the door. Revenue goes up. Focus goes down. Complexity goes through the roof. The better question is: What are we exceptionally good at, who do we serve best, and how do we build more of THAT? Then build the systems, processes, training and team around it. The goal is eventually getting the owner out of the day-to-day work so their time can move toward bigger decisions: New locations. New equipment. Acquisitions. New markets. Better people. Better systems. And yes, the business needs to make money.

You did the site walk, measured the property, figured production and built the price. Don’t finish all of that work by simply emailing a PDF and hoping they call you back. An in-person conversation is GOLD. Taking the time to better understand them and what they are looking to achieve then testing that fitment with your business model, pricing, and team. If it is an account you actually want, have a conversation. Not a hard sales pitch. Ask questions. - Did we capture the scope correctly? - What is most important to you during a storm? - What problems did you have with your last contractor? - Are there hard completion times? - How do you want larger storms handled? - Who makes the final decision? - Is there anything in our proposal that doesn’t fit what you need? You are still determining fitment. There have been plenty of properties I could have sold that I didn’t necessarily want. The goal is not to close every account. The goal is to close the RIGHT accounts. Once you know it fits, though, don’t be afraid to firmly ask for the work. Something as simple as: “It sounds like what we have laid out fits what you are looking for. Is there anything keeping us from getting this wrapped up?” And be clear about your capacity. Our routes fill up. Priority and availability can be affected by: - Trigger/callout requirements - When the agreement is signed - Where the property fits into the route - How much capacity remains in that area That isn’t a sales gimmick. You only have so many trucks, equipment, operators, and hours during a storm. A property that fits the route today may not fit after three more accounts are added across town. OR if you get a larger, better paying account that requires more attention next week. Decisions in snow and ice must be based on route density, Price - Value ratio, and capacity of your team. Help the client make a good decision, answer their questions, determine whether you are a good fit for each other...

I will break down what I learned. Spent 4 days in Vegas, 2 traveling and 2 at the workshop, great experience, learned a lot and excited to share some insights and takeaways about how we can all benefit from looking at our business in a different way. 1. Start looking at your business like an investor would. Are you making decisions on pricing, equipment efficiency, team selection, etc as an investor or as a business owner? There is a mindset shift when you look at it from a value view point. The goal is to make decisions that raise the bar for your team and your business. Investors want the right clients, risk spread over multiple streams, and consistency in implementation, processes, standards, etc. when you build like this, your business gives you more freedom and flexibility as you can afford to fix problems for clients, make better purchases, and grow more rapidly. 2. Work to become a great CEO, think about your end result, the desired outcome and redefine what it will require for you to get there and share that vision with your team. 3. Make sure you understand your avatar. Review your client list, determine who is the best fit, what the return is on those clients and work to find more of those. More to come!

Here is a small detail that can save you a lot of headaches this Winter. Make sure you know exactly who at the property has the authority to approve additional work. This could be a table on your contract with blanks they can fill in for "Contract Administrator" (property manager/ owner) or "Authorized Agents" (anyone approved to authorize additional work to be completed outside the standard plowing and de-icing items already covered in your per push/ per time/ seasonal contract. It sounds simple, but think about how often this happens: -Store manager wants another deicing application -Tenant asks you to clean an area again -Someone onsite wants a snow pile moved -Employee asks you to “just take care of this while you’re here” Your operator wants to provide good service, so they do it. Then the invoice gets sent and you hear: “Who approved this?” Handle this BEFORE Winter. Ask the client: - Who can authorize additional work? (Ideally, you should have a list of who can give your team orders onsite. Give your team this list in their plow books, if they aren't on the list, they can't give orders) - How do they approve it? Text, email, phone? (preferred methods are always those in writing: text, email, etc.) - How are we documenting it? If a verbal confirmation is given, who gave the order, when and what time. Full name, phone number, and position with the organization are super important. Then make sure your operators know the process too. This should be a 10+ minute conversation with your team, help them understand why it is so critical and the effect it has on your ability to invoice, get paid, and pay them. You need buy in on this from the team. This isn’t about making it harder to take care of the client. It is actually the opposite. Good service means being responsive, communicating clearly, getting approval, documenting it and getting the work done. You don’t want to be arguing over a $500 invoice in February because nobody took 5 minutes to answer this question in September.