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HOW
I DID IT…
Day
and Night
Troy Clogg diversified his portfolio to keep his people and
equipment busy.
We hit the $1 million mark about 10 years ago.
About that time we did almost everything in-house. We used no
subcontractors, and those we did were just a couple of pick-up
trucks and a couple of guys to drive my existing trucks
I
had a great staff of people and I wanted to keep them busy all
year long with full-time employment. Snow was something to stay
busy during the winter and it wasn’t a huge profit center for
us.
To overcome this hurdle I went after a portfolio of snow removal
work that made each even last longer. What that meant was we
needed work to do during the day and not just at night. That was
the goal at that time, to maximize the equipment and make sure
our people were working.
So we built our snow removing portfolio around a lot of
churches, apartment complexes and self storage units that needed
to be plowed during the day and didn’t need to be handled in the
middle of the night. That way we could stretch the hours,
stretch the equipment and keep the guys busy during the day.
Essentially, if the equipment isn’t running, then it’s not
making money.
But the risk in my business model has always been in the people.
Anyone can buy equipment and sell a contract at a competitive
price, but the real risk is surrounding yourself with the right
people and knowing how far you can push them in the right way.
That time period was very challenging because those hours could
be excessively long, especially when the storms came
back-to-back.
We’ve since moved away from that business model because it was
too hard on the human factor. But it’s really got us over the
top, a combination of portfolio diversification and taking on
larger site.
I
continue to learn with these people. My average tenure with
these people is now over 15 years. We’re a family at this point.
The biggest thing I’ve learned is to continue to work with
people’s business strengths and focus on that. That goes for me
too.
Shortly after reaching that $1 million mark I realized I had to
slowly let go of the operational side and become more of a
traditional business owner. Before that point I was a much
smaller business and I was doing everything – sales and the
majority of the operations. Reaching the $1 million mark was the
point where I realized doing all of those things had become too
much for me. |
