From Technician to CEO: Transforming Your Service Business for Success
Service businesses often face unique challenges: balancing day-to-day tasks, managing client expectations, and ensuring profitability. For this week’s Workergenix Mastermind Episode, we’re joined by Dylan Jones, a seasoned entrepreneur with over a decade of experience.
Dylan has spent over 12 years building businesses from the ground up. As a recent dad of two young boys under 2.5, his current focus is on creating more time to spend with his family. However, this wasn’t always the case. For nearly nine years, Dylan worked relentlessly, eventually reaching the point of severe burnout in 2019, which led to the closure of one of his businesses. At just 32 years old, a doctor warned him that his intense work habits were life-threatening, telling him “You need to stop or you’re going to die”.
Dylan faced a turning point.
With a deep passion for entrepreneurship, Dylan founded Profit Launchpad—a hybrid consultancy and agency designed to help service businesses address foundational challenges as they scale past their first million in revenue, countering the common practice of overworking and under-earning.
Let’s dive into the key takeaways from our conversation with Dylan, where we explored strategies for growth, overcoming common challenges, and optimizing marketing and operations.
1. Understanding the Technician-to-CEO Transition
Many service business owners start as technicians—masters of their craft. But running a business requires a completely different skill set. According to Dylan, the first step is embracing the mindset shift: recognizing that being a great technician is not the same as being a great business leader.
The CEO mindset involves stepping back from daily tasks, delegating effectively, and focusing on long-term strategy. It’s about learning to trust your team, train them well, and create systems that allow your business to thrive without you being involved in every detail.
2. Building Confidence Through Structure
Dylan’s Confidence, Efficiency, Optimization (CEO) framework offers a clear roadmap for growth:
- Confidence: Understand your business numbers, such as cost per lead and customer acquisition costs. These insights give you the clarity to make informed decisions.
- Efficiency: Streamline operations to save time and reduce waste. This might involve automating lead generation or implementing better training for your staff.
- Optimization: Fine-tune your processes to maximize profitability, whether through improving your sales system or ensuring your marketing dollars are well spent.
For many business owners, confidence in their numbers is the most transformative element. It’s hard to scale a business when you don’t know what’s working and what isn’t. Tools like a CEO dashboard—tracking key metrics weekly—help make this process manageable.
3. The Role of Marketing in Scaling Your Business
Marketing can feel overwhelming for service business owners, but Dylan emphasized that it doesn’t have to be a mystery. At Profit Launchpad, he helps clients implement a straightforward local marketing system that focuses on key platforms like Google, Instagram, and Facebook.
Rather than relying entirely on external agencies, Dylan advocates for educating business owners on how marketing works. Understanding metrics like cost per lead allows you to evaluate campaigns effectively and set realistic growth goals.
A major takeaway: responding to leads within five minutes increases your chances of closing a deal by 100 times. Speed and customer service are critical in today’s competitive landscape, especially for home service businesses where potential clients often contact multiple providers.
4. Overcoming Common Challenges
One recurring issue Dylan encounters is resistance to delegation. Many technicians-turned-business-owners hesitate to hire help, fearing a loss of control or financial strain. However, this mindset can cap your business’s growth.
Dylan recommends starting small: hiring an executive assistant or marketing coordinator to handle basic tasks. This frees you up to focus on scaling the business rather than being consumed by day-to-day operations. By investing in the right people and tools, you can create a business that operates efficiently and profitably without requiring your constant involvement.
5. Knowing Your Numbers: The Key to Smart Decisions
Many service business owners operate without a clear understanding of their financials, relying instead on instinct or outdated pricing models. Dylan stressed the importance of knowing metrics like:
- Cost per lead (CPL): The amount spent to acquire each new lead.
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC): The total cost of converting a lead into a paying customer.
- Profit margins: Ensuring your pricing aligns with your true costs and growth goals.
Without these numbers, it’s nearly impossible to scale effectively. Dylan offers a simple calculation for determining cost per lead, which forms the foundation for developing a robust marketing strategy.
6. Investing in Long-Term Growth
Scaling a service business requires a combination of mindset, strategy, and investment. Whether you aim to build a $1M business or a $10M empire, Dylan emphasized the importance of aligning your goals with the resources you’re willing to dedicate—both financial and personal.
For those considering selling their business, optimization is key. A well-structured, profitable business not only commands a higher price but also gives owners the flexibility to step back and enjoy more passive income, whether they sell or keep the company.
Conclusion
Transforming your service business isn’t just about working harder—it’s about working smarter. By embracing the technician-to-CEO transition, mastering your numbers, and implementing systems for efficiency and growth, you can create a business that thrives for years to come.
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Check out Dylan’s website for more resources and information!
And as a bonus for our readers, Dylan is offering a 1 hour free strategy call to anyone who books using this link to help you grow your business – https://api.leadconnectorhq.com/widget/bookings/1-hour-free-strategy-call
If you’re ready to take the next step, listen to the full podcast episode with Harley Green & Dylan Jones to learn more about his proven framework and create actionable strategies for scaling your service business with confidence. 🚀
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Harley Green:
Hey everybody. Welcome to the Workergenix Mastermind podcast. Today we have special guest Dylan Jones with Profit Launchpad. He helps service businesses go from technician to CEO with confidence, efficiency, and optimization. So if you are looking to avoid overworking and under-earning, Dylan’s going to be the guy to talk to. Thanks for joining us today, Dylan. How are you?
Dylan Jones:
Great, Harley. Thanks for having me on.
Harley Green:
So tell us a little bit about your background. You’ve got many years of entrepreneurial experience working in service industries. How did you come to Profit Launchpad?
Dylan Jones:
I’ve been working around trades or blue-collar businesses for a lot of my career. In 2021, I co-founded a consulting firm focused on due diligence for private equity teams, both pre-sale and post-sale. We would evaluate businesses to identify areas for improvement. This came from my experience of building, selling, and occasionally crashing businesses—lessons on what works and what doesn’t.
In early 2023, I decided to go out on my own after seeing too many service business owners sell prematurely without optimizing their operations. This inspired Profit Launchpad, where our mission is to help owners optimize and automate for better outcomes. Whether it’s selling for more or creating a self-sustaining, cash-flowing business managed by someone else, we guide owners from being technicians to business leaders—and eventually CEOs.
Some clients reach the business owner level and are content to extract cash from the business. Others want to go to the next level. We’ve built an Ascension Program with group courses, one-on-one coaching, and a recently launched lead generation and local marketing system. We teach business owners how to manage marketing internally for a much higher ROI, rather than relying solely on agencies with lackluster returns.
Harley Green:
You hit on a lot of great topics that resonate with me, especially about creating saleable assets. When you have a business that’s ready to sell, it’s often a great business to own as well. You might effectively “sell” it to yourself by hiring an operator to run it, turning it into a passive income source. What challenges do you see with technicians who are trying to grow from six figures to seven?
Dylan Jones:
The biggest challenge is accepting that they don’t yet know how to run a business. For instance, an HVAC technician may have mastered their trade over 10-15 years, but business is a whole different skillset. It requires understanding marketing, sales, delivery processes, cash flow, and leadership. Most business owners micromanage, overwork, and don’t trust their team.
A huge hurdle is the lack of proper training. That’s why the first part of our program focuses on mindset and vision. Owners need to decide what they want from their business and who they want to become as leaders. Once they embrace the need to learn and grow, the path to seven figures becomes clearer.
The time to reach seven figures depends on the industry. For example, commercial service providers with large contracts may get there faster than B2C service providers. But scaling to seven figures always involves costs—usually six figures upfront. Our framework emphasizes confidence, efficiency, and optimization, helping owners map out their goals and the steps to achieve them.
Harley Green:
We often see business owners hesitate to hire their first employee, especially when it comes to administrative help. They want to do everything themselves, which limits their growth. Tell us about your marketing framework and how it helps owners.
Dylan Jones:
Our marketing framework is straightforward but powerful. We help owners understand why platforms like Google, Facebook, and Instagram matter, how ads work, and the importance of service pages and websites. It’s a mix of one-on-one training and self-paced learning.
We focus on building a system rooted in math. For example, we determine the ideal cost per lead and build a strategy backward from the owner’s vision. If someone aims to build a $10 million business, we calculate the necessary marketing budget and ROI to achieve that goal.
Many agencies promise a certain number of leads, but they don’t address whether the owner can handle that volume or afford the cost. Our approach ensures the entire system—sales, delivery, and marketing—is aligned. Owners learn to manage small lead volumes initially and scale as they hire staff and refine processes.
Harley Green:
We see similar issues in home service businesses, where leads are lost because the owner is too busy to answer calls. Those leads often go to competitors. Hiring someone to handle calls and marketing can pay for itself almost immediately.
Dylan Jones:
Absolutely. Responding to leads within five minutes increases your chances of closing by 100 times. Automation tools can also help route calls, send follow-ups, and ensure leads are handled promptly. In today’s market, top-notch customer service at lightning speed is non-negotiable.
Harley Green:
Many business owners struggle with understanding their finances, which affects their ability to set an appropriate marketing budget. How do you help them figure out their cost per lead?
Dylan Jones:
It’s critical to know your cost per lead (CPL). If you don’t, you’re guessing with your pricing and strategy. Calculating CPL is straightforward—it’s the total cost of a marketing channel divided by the leads it generates.
For example, if you spend $1,000 on Google ads and get 10 leads, your CPL is $100. Knowing this helps you make informed decisions. If those leads generate $1,000 each, you should increase your ad spend.
We train owners to understand these numbers and set up systems to track key metrics weekly. This allows them to identify issues and grow their business strategically. You can’t outwork your business—it will always demand more. Knowing your numbers gives you the confidence to scale sustainably.
Harley Green:
Dylan, you’ve shared so many valuable insights today. For listeners looking to gain confidence, build efficient systems, and grow their business, get in touch with Dylan. We’ll link his Instagram in the description. Reach out for tools like his CPL calculator to get started.
Dylan Jones:
Thanks, Harley. This was a lot of fun. I appreciate the opportunity to share!