If you’ve been in business for a while, you’ll eventually approach a “glass ceiling” with your income, where no matter how hard you work, growing your income seems impossible.
This usually happens when your schedule is as full as you can handle, and you’re pretty sure your pricing is as high as it can go.
You may start to think that the only way to make more money is to work longer hours or hire employees. And if you’re like many pro handymen, you don’t want the headache of managing employees.
When you get to this point, you may even be bored with your business and feel stagnated. Sure, you’re making great money and have control of your time, but you’re missing the excitement that comes with growth.
This is not a fun place to be because it doesn’t matter if you’re a billionaire or living on food stamps; we all need a sense of progress to feel happy. And when your business is stuck, even in a good place, progress is non-existent.
So in this article, I’m going to share a few ways you can break through that glass ceiling, start enjoying the process again, and grow your handyman business income – WITHOUT having to put in more hours, work harder, or hire employees.
Let’s jump right in.
Handyman Business Growth Strategy #1 – Refine your pricing
Pricing is the first place to look for growth because just a little effort here can dramatically increase your profits, even if you think you’re pricing is optimized.
Like I’ve said before, if you increase your hourly income from $40 to $68, your profit will DOUBLE. You’ll be making twice as much money with the same level of effort.
Whether your charge by the hour, by the job, or some other method, one of the best metrics to track is your income generated per billable hour. This will provide all sorts of useful insights, such as how profitable each job you complete is.
It may seem like a big ask to go from $40 to $68 per hour, but it’s not. I’ve helped thousands of others do much better, often approaching $100 per hour on average or more. (Also, please note that this doesn’t mean they are charging by the hour.)
But let’s say you can only raise your income by $5 per hour. That slight increase will lead to an additional $8,400 per year in profit for a full-time handyman.
That’s not trivial.
The truth is that most handymen are undercharging for their services and leaving loads of money on the table. The interesting part is that many of these business owners think they are already charging as much as the market will bear.
I get e-mails all the time from guys saying they’re charging $35 per hour and don’t think they can charge anymore. But the truth is that YES, they can, and they should.
So, how do you know if your pricing strategy needs some work? If you’re unsure, then you will likely benefit significantly from some effort here. However, here are a few other questions to ask yourself.
Do you know exactly how much revenue you need to generate per hour, day, and week to hit your desired income?
Do you know how many billable hours you need to work on average to hit those numbers?
Are you aware of how different methods of pricing your services (flat-rate vs. hourly vs. quoting) can impact your income?
Do you know how much profit you actually generate monthly?
If you answer no to any of these questions, then good news. You probably have a LOT of room to grow by making a few simple adjustments to your pricing strategy. I recommend you take a serious look at my course on handyman pricing if that’s the case.
Handyman Busines Growth Strategy #2 – Optimize your marketing
If your schedule is already packed, why would you want to focus on marketing?
Good question.
But the real question is, “is your schedule filled with your ideal customers and jobs?”
Or, are you driving too far for jobs, working for customers who drain your soul, or taking on jobs that aren’t that profitable or that you hate doing?
Often, I see a handyman taking on jobs that require him to drive 30 miles or more, sometimes for a one or two-hour job. That’s a long way to go when you could be driving just five or, at most, ten miles to a job. Optimizing your marketing can attract customers closer to you, reducing travel time and expenses. How would that affect your business?
Or, maybe you are dealing with jobs you hate or customers that don’t respect your work. This may not impact your income directly, but it significantly impacts your enjoyment which eventually impacts your income. Better marketing will help you attract your ideal customers and jobs so you can turn down jobs you don’t want. This will make your business more enjoyable, and studies show that happy people are more productive.
And, worst of all, maybe you are afraid to increase your prices out of fear of losing customers. I see this a lot when people get most of their jobs through word of mouth. Sure, your schedule may be full, but what’s the point if you aren’t charging enough for the work to be worth it?
By doing some work on your marketing, you will begin to generate more leads, which inevitably boosts confidence, allowing you to test higher prices comfortably.
By improving your marketing, you can break out of these bad habits. As I’ve written about before, good marketing makes everything in your business easier and more profitable.
Handyman Business Growth Strategy #3 – Develop a specialty (or two)
The handyman business is awesome because you work on a new project every day, solving a different problem with each customer. Nearly every job has a level of novelty to it.
However, that novelty comes with a cost. It isn’t easy to streamline your business when every project is different. You need more tools, a more complicated pricing strategy, more trips to the store, and it’s hard to add other profit maximizers.
But, this can be solved by simply developing a few specialties that you’re good at. These specialty services could be anything from building custom furniture to installing smart home technology to something simple like garage door repairs. The service you choose to specialize in doesn’t matter. What matters is that you pick a service you are good at (or interested in) that pays well and then take the time to market that service.
Over time, you’ll naturally find ways to generate a higher income from those specialty services.
And, who knows, maybe you’ll eventually change your business model to exclusively offer those services to really streamline things.
Here’s a more in-depth article on the value of specializing.
Handyman Business Growth Strategy #4 – Fix your schedule
After consulting with several other pros, I’ve noticed that most are spending a LOT of time during the day NOT making money.
I’ve seen situations where a handyman spends nine hours per day out “working” but only bills for three or four hours.
What takes up the rest of the time? Driving between jobs, following up with customers, or even just waiting for the next scheduled job to start.
Of course, these things are necessary and will always be there to some degree, but there are ways to dramatically reduce the amount of downtime between jobs. And, as you may have guessed, doing so can lead to a big jump in your income WITHOUT having to work harder.
Another powerful metric to track is your billable hours per week. Increasing your billable hours (by decreasing wasted time in between jobs) is one of the easiest ways to boost your revenue.
In my best-selling course, $100K Handyman Pricing, in addition to focusing on optimizing your pricing, I also dig deep into how to schedule jobs efficiently. I teach a new pricing strategy that I developed, which simplifies quoting and scheduling. This dramatically reduces downtime between jobs, increases billable hours, and reduces the stress of deciding what to charge when quoting jobs. Customers like this pricing method as well.
What should you focus on first?
Whenever I consult with a handyman business owner, I usually find opportunities for growth in all four areas I’ve discussed above.
However, trying to do all of these at once is just plain ineffective. So, choose whichever one seems most interesting, and get after it.
Pricing and scheduling are usually the easiest ways to boost profits because making small tweaks can lead to quick wins.
But for the biggest overall results, optimizing your marketing is the way to go. This is mostly because of the mindset shift it facilitates for the business owner.
When your schedule is booked out two, three, or even six weeks in advance and leads are still coming in consistently, and from multiple sources, it gives you the confidence to make bold moves in your business. Your mindset shifts from feeling the need to bend to every customer’s will and offer discounts, to a feeling of power over your day and which jobs you accept.
Once an abundance of leads comes in, the opportunity cost of taking on low-profit jobs goes up. You start to feel like you are wasting your time on low-profit jobs instead of “just being grateful to have work.”
This mindset shift is powerful, and it’s not something that can be taught or explained. It’s something that must emerge from the experience of being in demand.
What do you think? Which area do you see the most opportunity for growth in your business and why? Please share in the comments below.
Great tips as always Dan! I think stream lining the schedule and giving customers time windows for appointments instead exact times will help provide better customer service and maintain control.
Another service my husband provides that has increased income and has helped a lot of customers without hiring more employees is walking through home improvement enthusiast customers with fixing simple items virtually via phone or video chat. The walk throughs save us and the customers time and money.
He LeToya, thanks for sharing. So is he walking them through repairs on the phone, or teaching them in person?
Great article and advice.
As a handyman, I get lots of calls from folks who seem to want someone to come out immediately, or at least within a day or two. So I got “worried” when my schedule got booked out for weeks or even a couple months with larger (more profitable) jobs… until I realized it was an empowerment month, where I could say “no” and not apologize for it. And, surprisingly, many of those prospects actually say “okay, I can wait 6-8 weeks for you to come out.” And, I’ve also found that when my schedule is full and I push up my hourly rate (or fixed price bids), clients don’t flinch. I’ve often felt that I “over charge” but clearly the market/clients are willing to pay more.
Thanks for all the inspiration, Hans
Hi good advices as always
I do the same with some of my customer
if I know the customer is smart I just expl things over the phone in this way you save time to concentrate on the real jobs and the customer feels good about doing things for them selves and save money in the process.
thanks as alway good to follow your tips
thank you for the article. i have been looking in to fixing my schedule. After following you for a while I was encouraged to start my business in May of 2015. i just hired my first employee due to last summer I had to schedule customers over 1 month out. im working on taking the wast of time out of my schedule by having time windows rather than set appointments. I’am looking in to changing to breezworks. do you know if you can schedule time windows with them?
Great advice you have here. The rate adjustment is key! In a market where competition to be the lowest is so high your needing to do twice the work to make ends meet. The hurdle here is people tend to undervalue their services. Either because a lack of confidence, or truly believe it is worth $35hr
Great article, I recently found you site. Reading through your initial revenue reports really helped me. I’m in my first year and it’s almost identical to yours with the ups and downs. I think choosing your customers wisely is very important.
I’ve been doing home repairs and remodeling for 15 years now. What I’ve read here is quite accurate.
I suggest readers take this advice.
I’ve found there are 3 types of buyers:
Bottom-feeders
Value-Conscious
Blue-Chippers
There are 3 components of Good Value:
Quality
Service
Price
You can’t even buy a hamburger and get the best of all three; so there’s no way to buy or sell home repairs or remodeling and get all three either!
The key is identifying who you’re dealing with…
Bottom-feeders (25%) want the cheapest price above all other considerations; so identify them quickly, and move on! They are NOT worth your time.
Blue-Chippers (10%) want high quality, high service…and they want it NOW. Money is not their primary concern. Take them when you are fortunate to find them. But make sure you deliver quality!
Value-Conscious (65%) are prospects worth converting into long-term customers! Be sure to confirm with them that they want “Good Value at a Fair Price”. This is the market you will be able to build the foundation of profitable long term business upon, as well as referral business.
In fact, if you’re not sure who your prospect is, ask THEM to confirm FOR you which of the 3 they are!
Doing so will help you immensely.
Hope this helps!
Hi Dan,
Really Great words. Im considering purchasing your courses. Do you still have an active Handyman Business? If so, do you have a website? If you are not a handyman any longer – why did you stop? Again, really great content. I like to find out as much as possible about a mentor before purchasing products.
Yes, I still do handyman services. It keeps things interesting and keeps my head on straight. But, I spend most of my time creating content and courses to help others grow their businesses.
As a handyman, there are some jobs I won’t do. But as a handyman I feel I have to live up to my title and not turn down most jobs. With a schedule consistently full for 6 weeks, how do I turn down jobs I simply don’t feel like doing or that don’t make much money? How do I turn customers down for jobs I advertise that I do on my website?
It sounds like a good start is to stop advertising jobs you don’t want to do. Then, find other handymen/contractor’s that specialize in the projects you want to turn down and recommend customers hire them for those projects.
OMG I need to put your advice into practice again. I’m consistently booked out 4 months! Time to raise rates AGAIN and say no to even MORE jobs that are not ideal. This processes is getting me closer to specializing without even putting much thought into it. Thanks again Dan. I’m a big fan! If anyone out there is on the fence about signing up for a course from Dan, JUST DO IT! It’s money well spent. And once you start applying the lessons, you’ll make that money back tenfold very quickly.
That’s awesome to hear, Wendy! Good job putting in the work to make it happen.
Hi ,
Great guidelines ,as always !
I wish you talked more on the true cost of hiring employees and should you go this pats or not to grow your income .
Thanks for letting me know what you’d like to learn more about.
Hi Dan…. I love love LOVE your site! I am so glad I found you early in my journey. We have been in business for a little over a month and between two of us have made over $8000! I set our rates at $75/hour if its a by the hour, job and we have not had one complaint. I like to charge by the job because we work pretty quickly, and have made no less than $100/hour in doing so. The mindset is absolutely the key. I was getting this awful feeling in my stomach every time I presented an invoice to a customer, I worked in healthcare for 25 years and never made this much, and I just finally had to get out of my own way realizing that if I didn’t charge enough, we were not going to be successful. Once I started to value the services we were providing more, it became much easier for me. I have gotten over the girl hurdle – can’t tell you how many times I have heard “are you capable of this job?” or “wheres the dude?”. I am really really enjoying this though, and want to encourage other women to give it a try if it is something you are good at and have a passion for, and don’t let anyone tell you it’s only a job for men. Handywomen are awesome! Thanks for the great info! Melissa
That’s so awesome to hear Melissa. You were able to overcome some fears and hurdles and now you are experiencing the fulfillment on the other side. Thanks for sharing this.