Task Force Entrepreneur

There's MASSIVE opportunity being wasted in the service industry

Mike Ghazaleh Season 1 Episode 4

Early in my entrepreneurial journey, I looked down on the service industry - more specifically, I viewed those types of businesses as poor investments of my time or money. The reality is, though, that there's a TON of opportunity in this space. In this show, we'll dive into where that opportunity is, and how to spot it - so hopefully you can be the next to profit from it! Episode originally aired on July 31st, 2023.

Speaker 1:

There's a lot of businesses out there using old technology, using poor management practices, providing subpar service that are overpriced, just waiting for someone to come in and just smash them.

Speaker 2:

Hey everybody, Mike here and welcome to Task Force Entrepreneur. The podcast I started went from being a tech engineer to starting a house cleaning business. Yep, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. I hope you enjoy the show.

Speaker 1:

Hey, what's up everybody, mike, here In today's show we're going to talk about this massive opportunity for new businesses that pretty much everybody is just missing. Well, not everybody. There are some people that are getting it, and I just want to ask you to have an open mind when you think about this. So let me lay out the problem first. The problem and the opportunity are both the same. It's the service industry, and this isn't limited to just household services like pest control, pet grooming, painting companies, landscaping companies. Right, it's not just limited to those. It's also things like the food service industry restaurants, food trucks, whatever. I want to get into this and I want to talk about and lay out the problem here.

Speaker 1:

For me personally, if I went out to a restaurant right now, I would venture to bet that the experience will be, at best, average, and that's not a good sign. Right, and I know a lot of people at this point will say well, mike, after COVID, companies were short staffed, restaurants were short staffed, they couldn't find enough people, they couldn't find the right people. Everything was hard to do right. Years and years ago, when I was younger, I ran a restaurant, so I'm well aware of that. But I think that's a cop out, because for anybody that's gone to a restaurant in the last 10 years, tell me that the quality has not gone down, and I'm not just talking about the food, that's part of it. Tell me the service itself hasn't gone down. And again, there are exceptions. There are some excellent places, there are some excellent servers. That's absolutely true. But just as a generalization, tell me that the general service that you've experienced in a restaurant has gone up or stayed the same for the last 10 years. And if we move closer to home, right to our homes, I mean look at service companies that you've hired in your home Again pressure washing, landscaping, tree trimming, dog grooming, interior, exterior painting, whatever it is right. We hired a pest control company. True Story.

Speaker 1:

The first couple of visits they came, they knocked, they came inside, they did their treatment inside, they went outside, they did their treatment outside, and I was blown away because I think it was the first or second visit. The guy grabbed a broom and started wiping off the porch and getting rid of spider webs. Now I figured that would be my job. I would never expect a pest control guy to do that right. But I was very impressed. I mean, I was really impressed. I'm like, wow, that's really good service right there.

Speaker 1:

As time went on, the service got a little bit quicker and the quality went down. And now at this point, previously they would kind of hang out for probably about five minutes and do their treatment right, because now they will show up, spray one spot, leave right, without even telling us, without anything, right, and I don't expect them to come notify us every single time. I actually kind of like that they don't always have to tell us right, they can just do their thing. But it's pretty apparent that the quality has gone down right. In our case, it's been nine months since they asked would you like us to treat inside right, even though we could definitely use it. So the point is, with all of this right that businesses that provide a service, the quality has gone down, which means there is opportunity to fill that gap right. There's cracks in these service businesses waiting for someone like you to take advantage of them.

Speaker 1:

Now, if I'm being completely honest with you guys, I traditionally, as an entrepreneur, was against service businesses. I viewed them as a what's the best word I could put this? I viewed them as a good way to waste a lot of your time and get stuck in them for the rest of your life, just working in the business and not working on the business to grow it. I didn't view them as strategic. That's probably a better way to put it. For me, things that were good were creating software, creating courses, training material, anything that was digital, essentially, that you could create and then put out there in the world and it would sell while you were sleeping. That was good to me, and I still, you know, I definitely appreciate those kinds of businesses.

Speaker 1:

But the reality is, when you create software, you're competing with Stanford graduates, you're competing with brilliant minds from around the world. When you offer pest control services, you're competing with a handful of people in your neighborhood, right, perverbably speaking, I'm talking about your community as a whole, right, but you get the idea. I don't know about you. I would rather you know. If I had to bet on my success against someone in my community, my city, versus someone in the entire world, I would rather compete against the easy way that I would be a easier opponent, in my opinion. So that's it To me.

Speaker 1:

That's the opportunity is to have an open mind when it comes to these service businesses, and the reason I said at the beginning of the show that I said the same thing right is because I previously was completely against them and over time I kind of did a U-turn and I started seeing, you know, sort of seeing the benefit and the opportunity, and I think it's something that if you really consider, you'll start to see the same. There's a lot of businesses out there using old technology, using poor management practices, providing subpar service that are overpriced, just waiting for someone to come in and just smash them. Hey, if you enjoyed this podcast or found it useful or maybe just entertaining, then do me a big favor and leave me a review Reviews aren't everything for a new podcast and it will really help this thing get bigger. So, that said, I'll see you next time.

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