What i wish i knew when i started out: Finance
Bill McHugh
When I was new to running a service business, I underestimated how much small, daily expenses could eat up time, focus, and energy.
At first, I thought the real challenge would be landing jobs and keeping customers happy. And while that’s true, I quickly learned something else: the hidden drain was in the little things—fuel stops, disposal fees, truck washes—each one requiring a phone call, a card handoff, or a back-and-forth about budgets.
What I wish I knew then: your financial systems matter just as much as your operational ones.
Once we gave every team member a Workiz card and put clear budgets around it, the noise disappeared. No more interruptions. No more chasing receipts. Suddenly, the office wasn’t managing chaos—it was managing a system.
That shift taught me something bigger: ️ If you want to grow, you can’t just simplify your jobs in the field—you have to simplify the way money moves through your business.
Looking back, I would have built those systems sooner. It would have saved me countless headaches and freed me up to focus on growth, not paperwork.
If I could give one piece of advice to anyone running a service business, it would be this: never let a call go unanswered. Every missed call is missed revenue—and the cost of those lost opportunities adds up fast.
In the early days, most service businesses rely on hustle—answering phones manually, juggling schedules, and patching together tools that were never really designed for the trades.
But the truth is, no matter how hard you hustle, humans can’t answer 10 calls at once. And every call you miss is another job going to a competitor.
The Lesson
Here’s what I wish I had understood sooner:
- Missed calls are lost jobs. If you don’t answer, someone else will.
- Efficiency drives growth. When scheduling, dispatching, and communication run on autopilot, your team can actually scale.
- AI isn’t the future—it’s already here. The businesses using it today are already miles ahead.
- Scalability matters. AI doesn’t get tired, distracted, or overwhelmed. It can consistently handle demand that people simply can’t.
Why This Matters
AI isn’t about replacing people—it’s about freeing them. Answering, scheduling, dispatching, follow-ups—these are tasks that can run automatically so your team can focus on the work that really matters: serving customers and solving problems in their homes.
The companies that embrace this now will thrive. The ones that wait will fall behind.
So here’s the simple truth I wish I’d embraced earlier: AI isn’t a nice-to-have—it’s the key to growth, consistency, and long-term success in field service.
