29. Camp 1 Trail Map: 16 Things Every New Service Business Has to Get Right

Have you ever sat at the kitchen table at eight o'clock on a Thursday night, writing quotes and answering messages, quietly wondering if it's supposed to feel this hard? If you own a local service business and every single thing still runs through you, this episode was made for you. Because you're not behind. You're at Camp 1, the starting phase, and Camp 1 has its own work.

In this episode, Ginny continues the Business Mountain Framework™ series by walking through all 16 categories of a business at Camp 1 altitude, organized under the three pillars of Team, Trajectory, and Tracking. At this stage, the team is you, so team development means training yourself, and team engagement means finding your rope team, the peers who climb alongside you. On the trajectory side, Ginny covers your space, your market, your offers, and your operations, including why marking your vehicle matters more than an expensive wrap right now. And on the tracking side, she gets practical about knowing whether each job actually makes you money.

Three takeaways you can act on this week. First, open a business bank account if you haven't, because running business money through your personal account puts your LLC at risk; it's called piercing the corporate veil, which just means a court could treat your business and personal assets as one and the same. Second, if you work from home, set your Google Business Profile up as a service area business, not a map location, so you don't risk getting shut down. Third, put a weekly meeting with yourself on the calendar to work on your business, not just in it, and hold that time like an appointment with your best customer.

The Camp 1 Rope Team is now open, with three ways to join:

• In person in New Bern on Monday evenings at 6 pm, 
• On Zoom Tuesday mornings at 9:30 am Eastern, or 
• On Zoom Wednesday mornings at 6:30 am Eastern. 

Head to https://www.outcomeacademy.com/summit to grab your spot, and if you're not sure where you are on the mountain, take the Find Your Camp quiz at outcomeacademy.com/findmycamp. 

And if this episode helped you, follow the show and subscribe on YouTube so you don't miss Camp 2 next week!

Mentioned in This Episode:
Episode 18: Base Camp Business Killers
Episode 13: Google Business Profile
Brand Builder Blueprint™
Eight Thousander™ Expedition
Find Your Camp quiz

Thanks for listening to The Outcome Academy 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 so you don't miss future conversations. If you know a local service business owner who could use this, share it with them.

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

Transcript

Nobody warns you that the hardest part of starting a business isn't the paperwork or the licensing or even landing that first customer. It's the season right after the doors open, when every single thing in the business still runs through you. Today, we're talking about Camp One, what the starting phase actually demands, and why the work you're doing right now matters more than you think.

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the Outcome Academy podcast. I want you to picture something with me. It's eight o'clock on Thursday night. You've been in the field all day, or in the truck, or on job sites, actually doing the work your business exists to do. Dinner's over, the house is quieting down, and instead of resting, you're sitting at the kitchen table writing up quotes, answering messages, trying to remember if you invoiced the Hendersons, wondering if you should be posting more on Facebook, wondering if you should be doing literally everything more.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, a thought creeps in. Is it supposed to feel like this? Carrying this quiet sense that you're behind. If that's you tonight or this morning on your commute, I want you to hear me clearly. You're not behind. You're at Camp One, and Camp One has its own work.

Now, if you've been with me through this Business Mountain Framework, you know we've spent the last few episodes building the map. Episode twenty-six laid out the whole mountain, episode twenty-seven covered the hazards that can knock you off of it, and episode twenty-eight got really honest about cash flow. Today, we're gonna start climbing camp by camp, and we're starting where every business starts. Most owners treat the starting phase like a waiting room.

It's the uncomfortable part you rush through on your way to the real business. So they grab advice meant completely for somebody at a different altitude and they feel overwhelmed because none of it fits.

They burn precious time and money on tools for businesses three camps ahead of them. And let me be clear about who I'm talking to. At Outcome Academy, we work with usually local service-based businesses like HVAC, plumbing, appliance repair, electrical, cleaning, bookkeeping. There's business licenses, there's insurance, there's equipment, real infrastructure.

And if that's you, the starting phase is not a formality. It's a genuine stage of the climb with genuine work attached to it. The problem isn't that you're doing too little. The problem is no one ever told you what the right work at this altitude actually is. So I'm here to fix that today.

Here's the thing about Camp One. At this altitude, the business works because you work. You're the technician, the scheduler, the marketer, the bookkeeper, the customer service agent. And listen, that's not a design flaw. That's what Camp One looks like for almost everyone. The goal of Camp One is not to escape it as fast as humanly possible.

The goal of Camp One is to build the habits and the foundations that make Camp Two possible. You don't skip acclimatization on a real mountain, and you don't skip it here either. Inside the Business Mountain Framework, we look at every camp through these three pillars: team, trajectory, and tracking. So I'm gonna talk through each of the sixteen different categories in your business, all from the perspective of a Camp One business owner. So if this is you, fantastic. If this is not you, if you're not a Camp One business owner, and you know that you're further along on the mountain or you haven't even started your business yet, this is a great opportunity to make sure that you're thinking about all of the Camp One milestones.

And the reason that that's so important is because if you happen to be a Camp Three business owner and you missed a step in Camp One, it's kind of the same as missing some of those Base Camp business killers we talked about in a previous episode. I'll link that episode in the show notes today just so that you can see those as well.

But I wanna make sure that we're all thinking through everything in each piece of the mountain journey, and that is one of the things we do in the Eight Thousander Expedition. We walk together through everything. We have our camp audit documents. We have an altitude map that tells us the main focus of each camp and the sixteen different categories of your business at each camp.

So today, we're just gonna take a few minutes, and we're gonna walk through Camp One and what each of those different pieces of your business look like at Camp One and what we wanna be focused on. So first, if we think about the team pillar, we have three parts. We have team growth, we have team development, and we have team engagement.

The teamwork at this altitude isn't hiring. It's leading yourself well, protecting your energy, protecting your work hours so that you can sustain them, carving out time to work on your business, not just in it. And that one is the single biggest thing, so I'm gonna come back to it.

So at Camp One, your team is really yourself. And the important part about that is that you get to experience every piece of the business from the perspective of you.

And so you get to work out what your core processes are and what's working for your customers. You get to think about how you want all of the functions of your business to operate by trial and error before you have somebody in that spot. So this is an opportunity to really try things out and capture your best way of doing things for just you.

Now, I know and you know that things are gonna change once you have a team and you have other people trying these things out. But for now, you're gonna find the best way to do things by yourself so that you can capture these processes. And then you're gonna write them down if you can, because that's an important part when you start to expand your team later in Camp Two.

So what about team development? Well, this looks like making sure that you're trained properly on all the things you need to do for your business. This could be sending yourself to a conference for your industry. In the appliance world, that looks like a couple of the main conferences, like UASA's ASTI Conference and then the Professional Servicers Association, PSA Conference.

So we went to those conferences when we were still at Camp One because this was a fantastic way to expose ourselves to all of the industry greats in our fields and learn from them and learn some business strategies. So team development is what you're gonna do to help yourself learn how to be a better business owner.

Now, the team engagement piece is absolutely crucial, especially at Camp One. If you can surround yourself with people that are building their businesses along with you at Camp One, you will be so far ahead of the other people in your industry and really every other business owner.

Because the thing that set us apart when we were growing Cavalry is our willingness to set aside time for connecting with other people and building our business alongside our peers. At UASA, they have peer groups that form every year at every conference. We also connected in a mastermind group with other appliance business owners.

And in Outcome Academy, we have our own Eight Thousander Expedition here in New Bern that we are a part of as Cavalry Appliance. So we have surrounded ourselves from day one with other people. And I think Camp One is probably the most important time to surround yourself with other people and grow with other people. In climbing a mountain, that's called your rope team.

So I want you to think about that. When somebody's climbing an eight-thousander, they do not climb alone. They have a team of people that are there with them to help pick them up when they stumble, to make sure they're healthy, to support them, to literally hang onto the rope and climb up the mountain together.

So I want you to think about the engagement piece of the team pillar the most today as you go through the rest of this episode.

Okay. The next pillar is trajectory, and trajectory is basically all the other operational pieces of your business. This is where your business is headed and how it operates and everything like that. Trajectory means that you have a clear offer you can explain in one breath, steady cash flow, one marketing channel done consistently instead of five done haphazardly. It means simple, repeatable ways of doing your work, even if right now those ways only live in your head and a little notebook in the truck.

So first, we wanna think about your space, and this is where you're actually getting your work done.

So if you're a trades person, then you probably need a company vehicle. You either need a van or a truck or some other way to get to your clients' homes, and that vehicle should be marked. Now, at this stage of the game, I don't believe that everybody needs to have their trucks wrapped. Wraps are expensive, and at Camp One, our job is to conserve expenses and make sure that we are building a really solid foundation for our business.

But you do wanna instill confidence in your clients when you pull up to their house, and so you need to have your vehicle marked in a way that lets them know who's showing up in their driveway and who's gonna be knocking on their door, and that can be simple.

We did it for well under $1,000 for our vehicle. You also need to find a place to get your work done that's quiet so that you can focus, and that could be in your home for now. In Camp One, thinking about your offers looks like figuring out exactly what you wanna do for your clients. Do you want to narrow down to a certain piece of your type of business?

Do you want to do everything? Think about exactly what you love to do, what you hate to do, what other people in your market hate to do and maybe you can do and to set yourself apart. So I really want you to think about this piece. In Camp One, you're gonna start experimenting with doing the different types of service that you do and what lights you up and what you can't stand.

This is a fantastic time to nail this down before you hire on a team, and then you're giving them all kinds of confusing signals. So try all the things and determine what offers you like best. Your market at Camp One is really just basically your zip code that you live in. You're gonna target your closest circumference of people with your business first, and then later on you can expand to serve others. For marketing, you really wanna think about making sure that you have a solid brand in place.

The best thing that you can do at this point, other than to join the Eight Thousander Expedition, is to make sure you're enrolled in the Brand Builder Blueprint. And that is a very low-cost course that we have, and you in there decide who you are as a business, you decide your branding, you decide who you wanna serve, you're gonna decide what kind of services you're gonna provide in your business, and you're gonna make some key decisions about who you are, what you do, who you serve, and all of those things at Camp One. So that is gonna be your marketing piece.

Next, we have sales operations, and this is how you get your people that you marketed to, to actually give you money so that you can do for them what your business does for them.

So you need to have a way to convert all of your people to paying customers. Next we have technical operations, and this is what we were talking about a little earlier. This is your way of doing exactly what your business does. So for us, it's appliance service, and we need to find out exactly the system that we use to deliver that service. Conveniently for us, Joe spent over three decades working for a fantastic business in the Baltimore, Maryland area, and so this was not a barrier for us.

He already knew exactly how to deliver amazing service as an appliance technician. But if you're new to the business that you're opening, you're going to want to do some research to find out exactly how to deliver a really high-quality product to your people that you're serving. Next is administrative operations.

In Camp One, that looks like making sure that you have a way to communicate with people and let them know that you're showing up, or when you answer the phone and you're in the middle of something, you have a way to capture that information so you don't forget to go visit somebody that has scheduled an appointment with you.

And you need to have a way to bill people and collect the money after they pay you. So that's your administrative operations at Camp One. Next is your supply chain operations, and for an appliance technician business, that is your parts suppliers. For a plumbing business, HVAC, you also are gonna have parts, and that could look like going to your local plumbing house.

It could look like going to Home Depot or Lowe's, or you could be ordering from somebody online. So you need to figure out in your area the best, most cheapest, most efficient way to get the parts that you need to deliver the service you're doing. If you're somebody that's an attorney or a bookkeeper or a photographer, or you're delivering a service that doesn't really have supply chain, I want you to think about the things that you still need to deliver your service.

So your supply chain could look like special digital products that you use to do your editing or different types of softwares that you sign up for online to be able to do your job. So you still have supplies for your business, but they might not be quite like somebody that has parts coming into their shop to do their job.

We all have all of these sixteen categories, but they look a little different depending on your business. So we've been through now the team pillar and the trajectory pillar. The final pillar is tracking, and tracking at Camp One is really important because you need to know where you stand as a business and whether you're ready to move to Camp Two.

So there are five different categories for tracking. The first one is financial. That's pretty much the one that everybody thinks of when they think of tracking for your business. In this camp, that looks like just basically knowing whether you're making money at your job and whether you're pricing yourself properly.

So you wanna be able to have at least a spreadsheet to record what's coming into your business and what's going out, and you need to make sure that you have a business bank account, and you're not running everything through your personal bank account. If you're still doing that at Camp One, please stop.

It's really dangerous. It's called piercing the corporate veil. And so if you have an LLC, but you're putting everything in your personal bank account, your LLC doesn't really function the way that it needs to be functioning. So you need to be recording all of your financial stuff from your business separate from your personal stuff.

That's what it looks like in Camp One. For Camp One marketing tracking, this is a great time to start capturing your Google Business reviews and make sure that you're responding to them. Now, setting up your Google Business Profile looks differently if you don't have a corporate location or a commercial location.

So if you're working out of your house at this point, in Camp One, that's totally fine, but on your Google Business Profile, you wanna make sure that it is set up as a service area business and not as an actual map location. If you have your home as a map location and you somehow got through the confirmation and approval process in Google, you're in danger of being shut down as soon as they discover that you're not a commercial location.

So make sure that you have yourself set up as a service area, and we have a very good blog post about that too, and podcast episode, and I will also link that in the show notes for your reference.

For your customer service tracking, you need to have a way to capture whether you performed good service, and you need to be asking people, every single satisfied customer, you need to be asking them for a Google review. And then, really important, respond to your reviews.

For efficiency tracking, I want you to think about tightening your routes, making sure that you're getting back to people in a timely fashion when they call and leave a message or reach out to you online.

For team tracking, this is the final thing in the tracking pillar. You really just want to be tracking how you're doing as a team member. Remember, you're the only one on your team right now, and you wanna be making sure that you're holding meetings with yourself. I want you to make sure that you are nailing down time each week to work on your business and not just in it, and hold yourself accountable for that.

Okay, so that sums up all 16 categories from a Camp One perspective. Now, if that feels overwhelming to you and you're in Camp One, I don't want you to get discouraged. We offer so much support in the Eight Thousander Expedition so that nobody is climbing alone, and you can tackle one thing at a time.

But the important thing is to do all of these pieces before you move on to Camp Two, because if you haven't nailed down all of these parts and you haven't exploited each of these to the fullest extent when you're in Camp One, then when you start hiring people to join your team, it's very confusing for them.

They don't know where they're going because you don't know where you're going. So this is a real gift that you can give to your team before they arrive. Nail down exactly the type of service that you're doing, all of the ways that you do it, and develop yourself as a leader and a business owner before you invite people to come work with you.

Camp One is not the miniature version of a real business. It is a real business, the right altitude. Every summit photo you've ever admired was taken by somebody who once stood exactly where you're standing, doing exactly this kind of work. It's unglamorous, it's foundational. Being the whole team is a season, not an identity.

And I believe with everything in me that the dream God put in your heart when you started this thing did not come with a requirement that you carry it alone forever. Your job in this season is to be faithful with the fundamentals. Lead yourself, serve people well, know your numbers, and the next camp is built out of those bricks and nothing else.

Now, if today's episode felt like I was reading your mail, we are launching a Camp One cohort, a small group of starting phase owners climbing together with real structure and real accountability. You've got three ways to join us: in person here in New Bern on Monday evenings at six PM, or on Zoom either Tuesday mornings at nine thirty Eastern or Wednesday mornings at six thirty Eastern for the early risers.

Head to outcomeacademy.com to grab your spot, and if you're not sure if Camp One is where you are, I want you to do the Find Your Camp quiz at outcomeacademy.com/findmycamp. And then come back next episode where we're gonna be climbing Camp Two, the moment your business stops depending entirely on you.

If today was about where you are, the next frame is where you're headed.

Thank you so much for being here with me today. I hope this episode was super enlightening for you, especially if you're at Camp One. I don't want you to feel like you're alone in this. I'm here to support you. I'm super excited to build our Camp One groups. There's a spot for you. If you're the type of person that is excited to learn, is willing to do the work and show up every week for about an hour, then I want you in this camp.

I want you to join because it will absolutely change the trajectory of your business. It is life-changing to surround yourself with people who are on the same journey as you. And it's kind of fun when they're from different industries because we all have different experiences that we can bring.

Well, that's it for this week. I can't wait to see you next week when we dive in, in the same fashion, into Camp Two.