It only took fifteen years for Rouse Surveyors to be an overnight success. Yes, fifteen years have literally flown by, but not without its challenges, difficult conversations and a few mistakes thrown in there for good measure. I think we’ve all had those moments looking back over the years, thinking, “If I only knew then what I know now, where would I be today?” Consider me your time travelling surveyor friend, here with you today to share my wisdom, experience and lessons learned so you can avoid any future mistakes as you journey along and build your own successful business.

Lesson #1: Work Less, Delegate More

I used to think that “grinding” in business was admirable and necessary to be successful. Long, tedious hours, no personal life, all work, no play. Today, when I find myself relaxing, sitting at a poker table next to someone who tells me they own their own business and work 60 to 70 hours per week, I just want to shake them! They should not be boasting about that … it doesn’t have to be that way! In five years, my plan is to be at a poker table boasting about being a shareholder of my small business, meeting with my General Manager once per week and spending the rest of my time divided between sitting at a lake playing with my dogs and travelling to poker tournaments. If you haven’t guessed yet, poker is my ‘down-time’ of choice.

I have learned that your life should not be measured by how many hours you put in, but by how much time you’ve allotted yourself to do the things you love – that make you happy.

Things shifted for me during the early days of the COVID pandemic. We had a ‘live/work’ space in Toronto in the massive CityPlace development. I recall it was here that had one of the earliest COVID cases in Toronto. A few years earlier, we had purchased a house about an hour and a half away from the city that we rarely used – thanks to me working so many hours. During the COVID lockdown, we left the city, moved to our house, and never came back. For my business, I embraced virtual meetings, and remote work. Eventually, after three years renting that vacant condo, we finally gave it up. By giving it up, I also feel like I gave up the ‘work, work, work mindset’, and the idea that I had to be in the city, working long arduous hours to be successful. I needed to find a way I could work from my countryside home, and build a bigger, healthier business while working less hours, leaving me more time to do the things I love.

In 2021, eleven years into my business, I found myself reading “The Secrets of Business Mastery” by Mike Agugliaro. I think I had heard him interviewed on one of the podcasts I frequented called “Built to Sell Radio” by Toronto author and businessman, John Warrillow. This book and its “work less, make more” philosophy had a huge influence on me. What spoke to me was the idea to work “on” my business versus “in” it; to hire people I trusted so I could delegate more, freeing myself from the daily tedious tasks, to spend more time thinking strategically about my business.
Thankfully I have a General Manager who is a strong administrator that I trust. She has been able to take on more, running the “day to day”, while I’ve reduced my billable office hours. It is a little counter-intuitive but as my hours decreased, our revenue increased.

The biggest lesson here? Get the right people in the right seats and delegate. Train and empower your leaders to delegate too. Set yourself free to focus more on what’s important for your business and your sanity.

Lesson #2: Google ads keep the phones ringing

As soon as I had a website, I signed up for Google ads. The beauty of Google ads is that it doesn’t cost much, and it places your business front and centre of potential customers who are searching. With Google ads I can also specify where my ad shows up, so if I’m targeting only construction survey business, I can make sure I don’t show up when someone needs a boundary survey for installing a fence. I eventually hired a fractional marketing manager, Liz Da Ponte of Narrative Digital Marketing, to help me get the most from my Google advertising. With this added support I learned more about setting up proper campaigns, using analytics to my advantage and how search engine optimization can help people online find my site. I still believe my phone was ringing from day one thanks to the Google ads, but all this added knowledge has allowed me to think more strategically about how, when and where I spend my marketing dollars.

Lesson #3: Don’t rely on one big client, build a sales pipeline

I recently hired a fractional Sales Consultant, yes, I should have done this ten years ago, but as they say “better late than never.”

I met Elana Palmer through a friend, more than 10 years ago. Although she is experienced in software sales, her skills translate to any field – from finding value propositions, to messaging, to analyzing metrics to developing the structure for a sales pipeline.

A sales pipeline represents the sales process, and all the stages a potential customer moves through – from being a sales lead to becoming a customer. It can help sales teams track and monitor sales, identify opportunities and times to follow up, recognize and resolve challenges and close more deals. A sales pipeline can help you forecast future income, focus your time more strategically and productively and help you to nurture better customer relationships.

Historically I have relied on people finding me through Google ads, our website or word of mouth. Many of those big projects that got us to where we are today were happy accidents. Some from being in the right place at the right time. Others from someone googling “surveyors” because they were new to the city, kicking off a large infrastructure project. Sometimes we just got on the right vendor list and were recommended to someone else. Next thing you know these happy accidents have us working on a multi-million-dollar project! These are great, but it’s not enough. To steadily grow you can’t rely on one big client here and there, you must make outbound sales efforts using a sales pipeline.

Lesson #4: Hire slowly, fire quickly

Over the years I hired a business coach, Doug Kerr, Executive Coach at GTA Business Coach, who has had a lot of experience working in Human Resources for a large Canadian business for most of his career. His advice to me has been to “hire slowly and fire quickly”. He didn’t make this up.

The phrase “hire slowly, fire quickly” is a popular business adage and has been touted by many influential business leaders and authors, however it has often been credited to Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz and author of “The Hard Thing About Hard Things.”

In his book, Horowitz speaks to the importance of taking your time to ensure you hire the right people but being very quick and decisive when firing those who don’t meet your expectations or fit in with your team and your vision. Keeping poor performers too long can damage your company’s reputation and your team’s dynamics.

You don’t want to hear about a staff’s poor performance from a client.

Lesson #5: Use behavioural interview questions to find the right match for your company’s values and vision

When I first started interviewing potential employees for my business 15 years ago, I found I was the one doing all the talking, trying to make them feel at ease!

Another valuable lesson Doug Kerr taught me was the power of behavioural interview questions. With this approach not only did I find myself listening more and talking less, but I was learning so much more about each person. Behavioural questions can help weed out any candidates that are not aligned with your company’s values and standards.

Behavioural questions can provide insights to many factors including:

• Personal accountability. Do they take ownership of their mistakes and learn from them, or do they point a finger and blame others?
• Reliability. Can they handle pressure, deadlines and competing priorities?
• Values. Do they share the same views on customer service, work ethics, and team collaboration as your company?

I have strived to hire people aligned with our company’s values and vision, ranking this higher than education or experience. It’s also important to determine “fit” in the first 90 days. If they are disruptive or not a good fit with our team, we don’t mess around – we let them go before their probationary period is over.

Another piece of hiring advice that may seem obvious is to check those references. You should never skip this step. I’ve been caught a few times where I’ve run into a colleague at an event, who said, “I heard ‘Bob’ was working for you… you really should have called me first.” And yeah, they were right! It would have saved some headaches. I feel the same way when I find out a less than stellar former employee is working for a friendly competitor …. Why the heck didn’t they call me first!? Live and learn.

Lesson #6: Trust your gut

Many times, after we fired someone that wasn’t a good fit, or didn’t meet our expectations, my General Manager and I have discussed how our “spidey senses” had gone off earlier, but we just ignored it. We either had doubts at the outset, or just a bad feeling in the pit of our stomachs – but when their resume looks great, and they answer all the questions sufficiently it’s hard to reconcile when it’s just your gut telling you otherwise with no real evidence. However, after fifteen years of experience and several experts stating the same advice, like Malcolm Gladwell (you just need to read “Blink” and you’ll totally understand) – we have finally learned to trust our guts.  It’s like a first date. If you had a negative reaction, bad gut feeling on a first date, chances are you wouldn’t be going on a second date, let alone basically moving in together the next day. Intuition, instinct, first impressions, gut feelings, whatever you want to call it – when the gut knows, the gut knows!

Lesson #7: A solid business has a solid structure and chain of command

My brother-in-law was given a book by his employer called “Extreme Ownership” by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. I decided to give it a read too. In hindsight I’m not sure what his boss’s intentions were with this book. I personally found it had too many military references, but one thing we do know about the military is that they are highly disciplined and structured with a clear chain of command. So, what did I take from this book? Essentially, don’t run your business like a collective … I don’t think I was ever completely unstructured, but I am probably guilty of being a little too soft.

There needs to be some structure. A clear and defined chain of command, where everyone knows the reporting structure with their roles, responsibilities and levels of authority well defined. When you surround yourself with competent, reliable leaders, the decisions don’t always have to come from the top either. Leaders are empowered to make decisions and are also accountable for those decisions.

With this structure it’s important to note that the number of direct reports each leader has needs to be reasonable. The number may vary by type of business or organization, but I am currently working with a range of 3 to 6 direct reports per leader in my company.

With great structure comes great clarity and focus.

Lesson #8: Level up your leadership

I started reading the classic business book, “Good to Great” by Jim Collins, while I was on vacation last year. Collins and his team of researchers studied why some businesses take the leap from being good to great, while others do not. I was heartened to learn that you don’t need to be a charismatic leader to be great. Check! A modest, self-deprecating one works just as well, thank you very much!

Great companies are often led by quiet, humble, yet fiercely determined leaders – and greatness comes from disciplined people guided by rigorous thinking and focus.

According to Collins you need “Level 5 Leadership” and discipline. What is “Level 5 Leadership” you may ask? It’s a leader who exhibits these key traits:

• Humility. It’s not about being in the spotlight for these leaders. They are content working in the shadows.
• Professional Will. These leaders can also be described as tenacious, committed, and determined. Doing whatever it takes to see their visions come to fruition.
• Ambition (for the company, not themselves). They have big dreams for their company. Again, it’s not about them or the accolades that come with success. They simply want to see their company succeed.
• Forward-thinking. Have you ever worked for a boss who said, “That will be your problem to deal with in ten years. I’ll be long gone.” Well, that’s not a Level 5 Leader. Level 5 Leaders plan far out well beyond their years with the company. They mentor and set up successors for success to continue the dream long after they are gone.
• Accountability. Great leaders don’t throw people under the bus. They own their mistakes. They take full responsibility for their actions and the actions of their team.

Collins also talks about hiring the right people, disciplined people, who don’t need to be micromanaged. He advises to hire for character and fit, not just skills and education. Wait!! I think we’ve heard that before, right? Yes, it’s a very important lesson that bears repeating! Hire the right people that fit in well with your organizational culture.

Lesson #9: Family matters – tread carefully with nepotism

I can easily argue both sides with hiring friends and family. As with most things there are pros and cons. It can be a slippery slope, but only you know your friends, family, and yourself well enough to decide if this is the right move for you.

For me, I’ve been extremely lucky. It has worked out rather well to hire family and friends.

I initially had my wife working for me, but when she needed a leave of absence for health reasons, I turned to my older sister. She happened to be between jobs, and I knew she would be a good fit (there’s that word again!). My first step was to set some clear parameters. Work is work and family is family and never the twain shall meet! Well, sort of, but I let her know upfront that she would be taking on a lot – and she would need to do whatever her bossy little sister asked. She agreed and became my Executive Assistant, and I have been forever grateful. Since then, my younger sister has also joined the team, and I have brought in friends to fill fractional roles in marketing, communications and sales. People I’ve met through friends, in kindergarten, and even over a poker table.

There are many things to consider when hiring friends and family. How will the rest of your team react? Is this family member truly qualified for the job you’re giving them? Are you hiring a position someone else on your team is qualified for and deserves? Negative reactions and feelings can eat away at your company’s morale and culture.

It’s important that those you hire meet the role’s expectations and qualifications.

What has worked well for me is having a good sense of who I can trust and rely on. Needless to say, I haven’t hired every friend and family member I know for good reason! It’s another ‘trust your gut’ moment. Thankfully, those I have hired support me and my vision and truly want to help me succeed.

Lesson #10: IT support + cyber insurance = peace of mind

I have a friend who always seems to “know a guy”. I think everyone needs to have a friend like that. You need a carpenter? He knows a guy. You need a plumber? He knows a guy. You need a graphic designer? He knows a guy. Actually … the guy he knew designed my company logo way back in 2010.

Early on I also needed an IT professional, and low and behold he knew a guy!

Back before I even heard the word “fractional” he recommended a fractional IT guy to oversee all my needs. This has made our operations run so much smoother. His “guy” has looked after our servers, stations, clouds and VOIP all this time. Thanks to his expertise we have never had a serious issue.

However, hearing about all the cyber threats taking place everywhere it seems, and even with us feeling very secure, I recently decided to purchase cyber insurance as a safety net. Cyber insurance gives you that added peace of mind that you are financially protected if a cyber attack were to occur.

Lesson #11: Treat your clients like they are “the one”

Back when I was working for another company, my employer at the time had a motto of “your lack of planning is not my emergency.” While I was here, working under that tutelage, I worked with one client, Tracey Smith, who then worked for Toronto Economic Development Corporation (now known as CreateTO). At that time, Tracey taught me a very important lesson. She taught me how to properly treat a client and the importance of good customer service. Looking back, she was definitely tough on me, but I needed it.

When I started my own business, I knew customer service was one way I could easily differentiate myself. As a service provider your emergency “IS” my emergency. You need a surveyor yesterday? Okay, I haven’t figured out time travel yet, but how about tomorrow morning instead?

Tracey’s lesson of delivering priority service has paid off. She demanded it – I delivered it – and she has been a loyal client ever since. In fact, she has been a true supporter of our company, recommending us to anyone who needs a surveyor. The power of word of mouth is incredible.

I will always do my best to provide the best service possible – within reason of course. You don’t want to be taken advantage of – so know your boundaries. The ideal client gives clear instructions and realistic timelines, doesn’t expect a discount, pays quickly and gives repeat business. When you find that ideal client, keep them and make them feel like they’re “the one.”

Lesson #12: Find your niche

Have you ever been in a restaurant with what seems to be a 30-page menu and wonder how the heck they can prepare and serve that many dishes? Gordon Ramsay would probably frown upon that, questioning the quality and suggest a leaner more focused menu. No, Rouse Surveyors is not about to go on Kitchen Nightmares, but we do believe in focusing on what we do best.

I started this company in downtown Toronto when other surveying companies were moving out of the city. Our downtown location meant we were faced with complex surveying legal fabric, tight sites, heavy traffic, obstructions and lack of available free parking.

The value of the land we work on also means higher stakes are involved, with more pressure, and scrutiny. Through this we have developed the agility, technical savvy and experience to deal with any obstacles that we encounter. Challenges include:

• Heavy traffic. With packed streets and sidewalks, it can be challenging setting up equipment
• Obstructions. Buildings, trees and people can all be obstacles to our line of sight
• Underground utilities. Hidden or buried utilities can make surveying more difficult
• Safety risks. We’re often at construction sites, high traffic roadways and public spaces where proper safety protocols are paramount

With 15 years of experience working in high traffic, urban settings we have become experts in urban redevelopment, commercial land development, construction, heavy civil and infrastructure projects.

Companies seek us out for surveying jobs in other cities that the local surveyors won’t touch because of its complexity, risk level or liability concerns. For example, we were hired to ensure the steel columns were plumb for the OLG Stage at Fallsview Casino Complex, a two-hour drive from our office. We have since opened additional offices in the GTA to help us better serve the surrounding cities within the golden horseshoe. I think we’ve found our niche!

Lesson #13: Hire a bookkeeper sooner than later

I did not learn this lesson soon enough. Before I started my business, I was already pretty obsessive about tracking my personal financials. This made it easy for me to teach myself Quickbooks. I set up all the forms, did my own estimates, invoices, payables, receivables and eventually payroll. I couldn’t go on vacation without first mapping out all the Starbucks locations so I knew where I could go to set up shop and run payroll. Or I would be in my hotel room, driving my wife crazy while she waited for me to set up the payroll direct deposit. I was spending almost a week every month doing invoicing. Eventually as the business grew, I gave in and hired a friend who luckily was also a bookkeeper. I must admit she does a much better job managing our accounts than I ever did. Don’t wait as long as I did. Don’t exhaust yourself. Hire a bookkeeper as soon as you are able.

Lesson #14: You can’t improve what you don’t measure

My first tax accountant was rather impressed with the way I was running my personal finances and how I had set up my accounts in Quickbooks, so I thought things were pretty good.

It turns out it was good for tax accounting, but it wasn’t good enough to produce anything beyond a Profit and Loss (P&L) statement and a Balance Sheet. I was tracking my job costs, but as a “contracting” business, there was so much more I should have been tracking, watching, forecasting – like breaking down my overhead expenses to clearly see how we were spending our unproductive time.

I’ve recently hired Belynda DeBeurs, a CPA and Profit Coach who owns Roadmap to Profit. We now have some valuable data to measure progress. We properly set up our Chart of Accounts and are using Classifications, Customer Types, and Representatives to help us determine which projects and customers are the most profitable for our business. Since we’ve been properly tracking our gross margin, it has grown by 5 points. It’s true – you can’t improve what you don’t measure!

Bottom line: get a CPA/financial coach to help you set up your accounting system. If you don’t you’re missing out on important financial data that goes beyond your taxes.

Lesson #15: Don’t whine about your competitors not charging enough. Let them!

Focus and concentrate on what you do well and what is most profitable for you.

I have been attending industry events for roughly 30 years now and I have heard countless land surveyors complaining that they can’t increase their rates because their competitors aren’t charging what they’re worth. I do believe surveyors undervalue what they do. They should charge a significant professional fee like other regulated professionals do.

I’m borrowing from Mel Robbins here, but I say “let them!” Let them charge what they want. You can’t control what others are doing, but you can control your narrative and how you respond to this challenge. You can educate your potential clients on your value, what your company has to offer and why they should choose you over the cheaper option.

Although the part of land surveying I love the most is solving a boundary puzzle, after our recent financial analysis I realize I can’t make a living from that alone. Once we determined the most profitable type of work to be engaged in, and the client types we should target, we hired staff that love that kind of work, and now I solve puzzles on my iPad for fun. It’s a trade-off that’s paid off!

15 years wrapped in a bow

So, after 15 years running Rouse Surveyors, I’ve learned that success doesn’t come from working long, exhausting hours, with no personal life — it comes from staying focused on what matters most, surrounding yourself with the right people, and being strategic, working on the business, not in the business. Creating a sales pipeline, building client relationships, and measuring what you want to improve can help steer your business to a higher level. By hiring the right people, delegating to those you trust, and leading by example, your shared values and vision can carry you so much farther than surrendering to the grind ever could.