You should have ONE priority when your business is doing less than $1 million a year in revenue.
The only thing that matters is building your skills.
Specifically, skills in 3 categories: sales, hiring, and operations.
These are the foundations of every business. And yet I constantly see owners at this stage creating org charts, mapping out expansion plans, and drafting SOPs for systems that don’t even exist yet.
It’s the same story of the person who designs a business card, builds a website, and picks out office furniture before they’ve made a single sale.
You don’t need any of that crap yet. And the sequence matters more than the list.
Start with sales. If money isn’t coming in, nothing else matters.
That means mapping out your entire sales process and understanding how every dollar flows from marketing → lead → sale → execution.
Role-play it word by word until your close rate clears 40%.
Build a response for every objection you hear twice. Offer payment plans on high-ticket so price stops being the reason you lose deals.
Once money’s flowing consistently, then hiring.
The first move is to choose the right next role, not to hire fast.
From there, you run an actual process: job ads that attract the right candidates, interviews that screen out the wrong ones, and offers that land the talent you want.
Skip this step and you’ll spend the next 12 months managing the wrong people.
Finally, operations.
Your delivery has to be consistent so customers leave happy.
Pick the 2-3 things that, if you get them right, the experience holds together. For my shops it’s the inbound phone process, workflow management, and vehicle inspections.
Train the basics until you can’t get them wrong.
Skip this step and you get chaos: dropped balls, complaints, and finger-pointing.
Once you break $1M, the focus shifts from building skills to building systems. That’s a different game with its own sequence.
There are 5 stages to a $10M+ business. Each one has a specific focus. Get them out of order and growth stalls.
Watch this video for the full breakdown
Cheers!
Brian
P.S. Want my help jumping to the next level? 6 spots remain in June for new clients.
Must be doing at least $1M/year in revenue.
Reply here if interested.