7. Do You Own a Job or Do You Own a Business? How Local Service Business Owners Break Free | Business Strategy

If your business stops making money the moment you stop showing up, you do not own a business yet. You own a job. And that is not a failure. It is a decision point.

In this episode, Ginny Seeley gets honest about the difference between owning a job and owning a business, and what it actually takes to cross that line. She shares the real story of how Cavalry Appliance Service went from Joe running every service call himself to a team that kept the business running and produced their strongest January ever, all while Joe was away from work for two full weeks dealing with a family emergency. You will learn the four stages of business growth from starting to selling, the five practical steps to begin getting your business out of your head and into systems, and why training people to make decisions rather than just complete tasks is the shift that changes everything. Ginny also walks through how to build an org chart even when your name is still on every single role.

This episode is for the HVAC owner, appliance repair technician, plumber, or any local service business owner who knows they need to build something that can run without them but is not sure where to start.

Start building for the version of you that cannot always be there.

Thanks for listening to The Business Mountain Podcast.

If you enjoyed this episode and want to keep learning how to work ON your business with systems, strategy, and practical tools, here are a few ways to stay connected:

Website: https://www.outcomeacademy.com/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ginny.outcomeacademy 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ginny.outcomeacademy/ 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@outcomeacademy 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/outcome-academy

If this episode was helpful, be sure to follow the show or subscribe on YouTube so you don't miss future conversations. If you know a local service business owner who could use this, it would mean the world to us if you'd share it with them.

Your outcome isn't a wish. It's a decision.

Transcript

So I have a question for you. 

Do you own a job or do you own a business? Because there is a difference, and you really, really don't understand that difference until life forces you to find out.

Welcome to the Outcome Academy podcast. I am Ginny Sealey. I'm a business strategist and longtime process improvement expert, and I also co-own an appliance service business and a co-working space with my husband Joe, so I understand what it looks like to juggle growth, leadership, family, and big dreams all at once.

If you're a service-based entrepreneur or executive who wants to stop putting out fires and work on your business and build momentum with systems, smart marketing, and practical tech, you are in exactly the right place.

So, do you own a job or do you own a business? Over the last few months, our family has walked through some things that weren't easy—things that pulled Joe away from work, things that pulled me away from work, things that required us to be present for family instead of present in our businesses. And during that time, something happened that kind of stopped me in my tracks.

I recently looked at our January financials—this January, last January, the January before that, and the two Januarys before that. And guess what? This January is the best January we've ever had in the history of Cavalry Appliance Service. Let me say that again because it matters. This January that just ended has been our strongest January ever.

And Joe was not physically at work for most of the month. That moment is when you find out really what you own. Because if your presence is the only thing holding the business together, then you don't own a business. You own a job—one that just happens to be harder to take off from. Let me take you back to the beginning.

When we first started Cavalry Appliance Service, it was just Joe and me. Logan helped answer the phone some too, so we'll give her credit for that. But basically, we were doing everything. I was writing blogs, building the website, posting on social, doing all the bookkeeping, paying the bills—whatever the odds and ends needed to be done. And Joe was doing the hard work.

He was running service calls, answering the phone in between service calls and during service calls, trying to remember all the messages, writing things down on scraps of paper. And sometimes, sadly, those scraps of paper kind of disappeared, which means he missed a few calls—his absolute worst nightmare.

He missed messages, and sometimes customers got frustrated. And if you know me, you know I'm really particular about our financials. So every single customer got a ticket in QuickBooks. Every single deposit was matched to every single ticket, and every single transaction was documented. At the same time, Joe was helping me with some of the bookkeeping when things he entered into the technical part of the system didn't really match what I was trying to enter into QuickBooks.

We were butting heads. We were exhausted, and it got to the point where we were both really overwhelmed. And one day, I remember saying, "Joe, I'd rather you punch me in the face right now than make me do one more QuickBooks transaction." That was our signal. We were at our limit. We were at our breaking point. Because above every single thing, our marriage came first. And our marriage was kind of like—I wouldn't say it was falling apart or it was on the rocks—but definitely we weren't communicating.

We were frustrated. I was on the edge of tears all the time. We were short with each other. It just wasn't working. Either something had to change or we were going to close up shop. Because we told each other from the very beginning—our marriage came first. And if it came down to it, then the business was toast, not our marriage.

Around the same time, I attended a local business women's retreat in town. It was put on by Emily Saunders, who's a local photographer right here in New Bern. In fact, she did Logan’s senior pictures, and she does some of the most beautiful bridal photography I've ever seen. During that weekend, I met Shelby.

She was positive, smart, put together, fun—and something in my gut told me that she would be a really great first hire. I tucked the thought away, came home from the retreat, and talked to Joe about it. He wasn't sure we were ready. He's always worried about whether we can afford something. But it kind of felt like whether we could afford it or not, we had to at least try.

Eventually, we met Shelby at a coffee shop. We talked it through. We agreed on a starting salary, and just like that, she became our first employee in February of 2023. About a year and a half after we opened our doors—figuratively—well, after we ran our first service call. We didn't know what we didn't know.

Shelby knew far more about HR, hiring, employee laws, etc. We felt like we were at a disadvantage, except that we trusted Shelby. And there was something really honest about her, and she really genuinely wanted to help us. And I think she was looking for a change in her life too. She wanted to try something new, get out of the restaurant industry for a little bit, and just explore.

We hired some help for payroll, because that was definitely something I didn't want to take on and something I was really afraid of. I didn't know anything about payroll, and I was really worried about making a mistake there. Lord knows we were not perfect employers. We had no policies and procedures. We figured things out as we went.

We documented what we could, and we took advice from trusted peers and mastermind members. But pretty much immediately, something changed. Shelby answered the phone. Joe ran service calls without constant interruption. Customers had a better experience. And that was the first moment we stepped out of pure survival mode.

Then we ran into the next problem. Now we needed a place to work. Hiring someone to work out of your house is kind of not ideal. So we started looking for an office, and that is when Jason found us—the coworking center. And to be honest, it was kind of a disaster at first. One thing after another, one problem after another, and we just kept plugging away.

The space wasn't welcoming. It wasn't finished. It was kind of a mess. But it was something, and it was necessary. Because businesses that are meant to grow—they need a home. Even if that home is imperfect at first. Basically, everything about our first two years was imperfect—imperfect, scrappy, messy—but we kept plugging away, learning, fixing, growing, and hustling.

Now let's fast forward a little bit. A little after Shelby, we hired our first technician, William, that May, and Joe trained him from the ground up. We hired Will for character. Joe had met Will while volunteering with Scouts, and we trained him for skill—a move that has served us and Will very well. And then came the moment—I guess kind of the true test—that changed everything.

About nine months after that, Joe and I went away. I think it was for a conference. Yeah, it was—it was in February of ’24. And while we were gone, guess what? The business kept running. It wasn't perfect. There were questions. Shelby and Will called Joe, ironed things out. But money came in. Will actually ran service calls for customers.

They got their stuff fixed. Work got done. And all that happened while we were away. For the first time ever, the business made money without Joe running a service call. That—that's when we realized.

Eventually, Shelby moved on a few months later. She's now managing a piano bar, which turns out to be a much better fit for her than sitting behind a desk all day.

She was trying something new, but it turned out she wasn't actually wired for a desk job. She's wired for constant motion, crazy hours, and lots of people and noise. But that's a story for another episode when we dig into the DISC profiles and how we hire now.

Towards the end of 2024, we welcomed Maggie to the team.

Maggie is the queen of that role. She loves the desk. She loves answering the phone. She loves the customers. She loves making everything personal. She even loves managing parts. And she really thrives on keeping all the guys in the office in line. Over the past year, our team has morphed and even grown more.

We delegated more bookkeeping responsibilities to Logan, brought on an assistant for Maggie, and after three failed attempts, we found another fabulous technician—Austin. Payroll is still handled by Solid Rock Accounting. We outsource accounts payable bookkeeping to Emerald Coast Bookkeeping. Joe is the GM and takes a salary.

As such, I handle marketing, the website, and act as the CFO. I'm even officially on payroll now for 10 hours a week since I no longer work at the hospital. And yeah, this is the heaviest we've ever been with personnel, which kind of feels a little bit scary. But the business can run without us. And we're still doing our best and learning along the way.

Still messy. Still imperfect. Still evolving as people and as a business. But still with heart, honesty, and according to our mission, vision, and values.

So I wanted to define this really clearly because it can be definitely a slow evolution.

If you own a job, your business cannot function without you. If you step away, everything falls apart. Nothing moves forward. No money is made. Everyone is waiting on you.

But if you own a business, you can step away—maybe not forever, maybe not perfectly—but the business still exists. It still generates revenue. It still serves customers, even if it barely just holds together. That matters. And here's why:

This has been so real for us lately. We had planned to attend SE last week, but we had to cancel our trip. Joe's mom had a health emergency that required him to be absent from work for the better part of a full two weeks. During that time, the business didn't collapse.

In fact, during our mastermind meeting this week, I was curious, and I took that peek at the numbers and found out that January was our strongest January ever. Not because we worked harder, but because of years of systems, people, and structure—mistake after mistake, recovery after recovery, policy after policy, a little bit at a time.

Like I said before, everything happened very imperfectly, but with a constant journey forward. That's not luck. That's intentional business building. And that's my biggest mission here at Outcome Academy—it's to help people continue moving forward, one little tiny system at a time.

At Outcome Academy, we talk about four stages of positive business growth: starting, growing, scaling, and selling.

In the starting stage, most people own a job. It's totally normal. You are the business. You do everything. You learn fast, you get scrappy, and sometimes you're putting out a lot of fires.

In the growing stage, you start documenting. You document the things that went wrong. You document what you want to do differently next time. You kind of capture things. You might not have all the best policies and procedures, but you're starting to write things down and figure out the best way to do something.

You start to hire help. You create basic systems, mostly because you have to in order for your new team members to even know what to do. This is the tipping point—getting things out of your head and onto paper.

This is where people either move forward and keep tweaking systems with patience and persistence, or they get stuck owning a very demanding job because they get afraid to hire again when things fall apart—or they give up and close up shop.

If they make it to the scaling stage—and I hope you do—that's when the business can start operating without you in the room every single day. There are definite roles, processes, decision-making frameworks.

And then ultimately, everybody's goal—if you're in the scaling stage at least—is to get to the selling stage. That's where the business has value beyond you because somebody else can run it. Somebody else can do the work. This is your goal.

No one wants to buy a business where the owner does everything because when the owner leaves, that means the value disappears.

So how do you get out of the job trap?

You start with a few key shifts.

First of all, like I said before, you want to start documenting policies and procedures. And that sounds incredibly boring, but this is something we've learned along the way too.

Policies and procedures are forever on our list of things to do, but we're getting better at capturing things in real time.

You can do things like capture your screen as you go through a process on your screen. You can use something like Loom—it's free. That's L-O-O-M. You can turn that on, record your screen, do a process, and then just use that as your procedure.

You can use ChatGPT. You can go in there, say all the things that you want to do, and then ask it to write a procedure for you.

There are so many shortcuts. When we started our business, we didn't even have ChatGPT. Isn't that crazy? Can you even imagine a time without ChatGPT?

Step one is documenting all of those things—every little tiny thing as you come across it. The more you start documenting, the easier it is to hand off little processes and little procedures to other people.

Number two, create an org chart. Even if it's just names on a piece of paper for now, you're jotting things down with somebody—with your partner, your spouse, your other technician—something. But get it out of your head and create some type of org chart, even if your name is on every single role.

That's how ours started out. Anyway, we wrote down all the things that had to happen in our business, we put our name on every single one, and little by little, we're filling that org chart with other people. It's really cool.

Next, I want you to take a look at your org chart and look at the things that you absolutely love doing. Then you want to think about leaving your name in those spots as long as you possibly can.

And then think about the things that drain you.

For example, me putting in those tickets in QuickBooks was killing me. It was just exhausting. I found no joy in it. It was taking all my time. I absolutely hated it. It made me miserable. It was one of the very first things that I delegated as soon as I could.

Next—speaking of delegating—you want to go ahead and delegate the things that are not worth your time, your skillset, or they just make you miserable, first.

That could look like hiring a contractor like we did with payroll. Or it could be hiring an answering service if you just need somebody to pick up that phone so you can do your technical work. Or you could do what we did and hire one of your kids.

Whatever works for you, remember to delegate so that you can focus on the high-value things that you bring to your business.

Finally, make sure when you're training people that you're training them to make decisions—not just complete tasks.

You want to give them some level of autonomy and ownership over the things that they're responsible for. If you tell somebody that they have to clear every single question with you, then you really, really can't step away.

So I like to tell Maggie that I know she can handle something and empower her to make some decisions. Of course, I want her to come to me with more important things or if she's not sure, but we trust her.

We trust that she cares about our customers. We trust that she's going to make the right choice. And then if something doesn't go your way, it's always an opportunity to come back to your policies and procedures to help it be really clear.

Most importantly, start building the business for the version of you that cannot always be there. Because I promise you, life will test that.

Here's what I want you to think about: where do you want to be in five years?

If you want to own a job, that is totally okay. No judgment here. It's fine. If you want to own a job and you want to plan to let somebody in your neighborhood know to take over for you when you're gone, that is totally fine. I get it.

Not everybody wants to build a team. Not everybody wants to build a sellable business. But that means that you're planning a little bit differently. You have to communicate really clearly to your customers, letting them know that you're not available. And sometimes that means giving calls to a competitor while you're away.

However, if you want to own a business, that looks a little bit different. You plan far ahead. You train people. You take time to build something that can hold you—not depend on you.

If you're listening to this and realizing, "I still own a job," I want you to hear this: that doesn't mean you failed. It means you're at a decision point. And decisions are powerful.

This month reminded me that we've built something that really matters. Not because it makes money, but because it supports our life. It creates meaningful work for people on our team. And it allows us space to be with our loved ones when life gets hard.

As you think about this week, notice where this shows up in your own business. If you want to go deeper into this work, including the Summit Club Mastermind and other ways we support service-based business owners, you can explore everything at outcomeacademy.com.

Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode.