Licensed trades, cleaning, facilities and landscaping
Your back office, handled, so you can run the business
We provide operations help for service businesses with licensed or certified crews. We fix hiring, licensing and billing so jobs get staffed, crews stay compliant and cash comes in faster, then leave it running.
Sound familiar?
You’re the HR department, the business office and the compliance officer
- “I’m turning down work because I can’t hire enough licensed people.”
- “Good candidates take another offer before I get back to them.”
- “I found out a tech’s certification had expired when the inspector asked for it.”
- “Invoices go out late, and I spend half the month chasing payments.”
- “I do the paperwork at night because the day is spent on job sites.”
In most service businesses, there’s no operations team at all. The owner does it, around the real work. That’s no failure of effort. It’s a second full-time job nobody signed up for.
Where we start
The offices service businesses ask for most
People Office
Hiring, onboarding, pay and retention for techs, crew leads and licensed staff. We shorten the time from posting to first job and find out why people leave.
Days to hireOffer acceptanceFirst-year turnoverPay position vs. market
Compliance Office
Trade licenses, certifications, background checks and required training, tracked so nothing expires on a job site.
Credentials currentLapses caught before audit
Business Office
Billing and collections, purchasing and vendor contracts, and a monthly close you can actually read.
Days to get paidSpend under contractDays to close
Operations Office
Scheduling, dispatch handoffs, and quality and complaints, so jobs start on time and callbacks drop.
Time to serveReworkRepeat complaints
Buying from us
You decide, and you know the price first
You’re the decision-maker, so we keep it simple. A 30-minute call, then a short written scope with a fixed fee, agreed up front, and a start date. No hourly meter running in the background.
Many owners come to us for a moment: a busy season about to start, a big contract that needs more crews, an insurance or licensing review on the calendar. We’re built for those.
What we bring
The toolkit big companies pay for, sized for your shop
We use Lean Six Sigma (a set of methods for removing waste and errors from a process), design thinking and business analytics, chosen to fit the problem. In a service business, that usually means fewer steps between a signed job and a paid invoice, and between an applicant and a cleared, licensed tech on the truck.
Edwine Michel, our founder, is a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt with 20 years running operations. As Director of Recruitment and Retention in the nation’s 10th-largest school district, he led a Lean Six Sigma hiring project targeting 10 days or less to fill a role. About →
How we’d start
Two weeks to see where your time and cash go
Diagnose takes about two weeks. We use your own hiring, licensing and billing records to show where the work breaks and what it costs in dollars and hours. Fix runs 4 to 12 weeks, and we do the work: clear the backlog, redesign the process, get it running. With Sustain, your office manager carries it with simple procedures, or we match you with a vetted specialist from our network, and we stay on as the quality check with a monthly scorecard.
Every hour of admin work you get back goes straight to margin and capacity.
Common questions
Questions from service business owners
I’ve got a small crew. Is this worth it for a business my size?
Diagnose is scoped to your size, and the fee is fixed before we start.
Are you a staffing agency or a payroll company?
No. We don’t place workers and we don’t run payroll. We fix your hiring, licensing and billing processes so your business runs them better, and we can match you with a vetted specialist if you want ongoing help.
Can you keep track of my crew’s licenses and certifications?
Yes. The Compliance Office pulls every license, certification and required training record into one place and sets up tracking that flags renewals before they lapse. With Sustain, we check it monthly.
Do I need new software?
Usually not. We work from the tools you already use, even if that’s a spreadsheet and a shared inbox. If a tool change would help, we’ll tell you why and let you decide.
How much of my time will this take?
Some up front, so we understand how the work flows and get access to your records. After that, we do the work. You review findings and make the calls that matter.
Tell us what’s keeping you up at night.
In 30 minutes we’ll tell you honestly whether we can help, and what a diagnostic would show.
