There’s a moment I’ll never forget from 2018.
My daughter Harper was born with a few different medical issues — one of them being club feet. She spent about a month in the NICU after she was born, and during that time I had nothing. No employees. No systems. No backup. I had to push every single job back and watch the revenue completely disappear for an entire month.
I wasn’t present as a dad. I wasn’t present as a husband. I was stressed, scrambling, and drowning — not because I didn’t care, but because I had built myself a job, not a business. If I wasn’t working, nothing worked. And that hit me hard.
That was the moment everything changed.
The Wake-Up Call
Near the end of 2018 I made a decision. I was done being self-employed in the worst way — where you own a job instead of a business. I picked up a copy of The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber and it rearranged the way I thought about everything.
One of the first things I realized was that my reputation was quietly getting destroyed. I was so busy doing the actual work — out in the field every single day — that I couldn’t answer my phone. Calls were going unanswered. Customers were frustrated. Word was getting around. And I didn’t even have the bandwidth to fix it because I was buried.
So I hired my first employee — a CSR — just to answer the phones.
That one hire changed everything. Every call got answered. Every lead got captured. My reputation started to recover. And for the first time, I felt like I wasn’t completely alone in the business.
Then I hired my first technician, and that was the second game changer. Because now the income wasn’t 100% dependent on me physically showing up and doing the work. The business could generate revenue without me in it every day.
I wasn’t fully systemized. I wasn’t where I wanted to be. But I had started building something real.
2021 — The Moment That Proved It All
Fast forward to 2021. Harper was three years old and her club feet had relapsed. She needed her third surgery — and this one required us to travel to Florida for a month and a half for the surgery itself plus multiple castings and follow-up care.
A month and a half. Out of state. Away from the business.
Here’s what happened to the business while I was gone: it kept running. The CSR was answering every call, responding to every email, booking every job. My technician was going out, estimating the work, and getting it done. The business brought in around $20,000 that month — without me touching a single job.
But more importantly than the revenue? I was present.
I was there with my wife. I was there with my daughter. I wasn’t on the phone stressing about missed calls or jobs falling through the cracks. I wasn’t watching revenue disappear the way it did in 2018. I was just a dad, being there for his little girl during one of the hardest things our family had been through.
That’s the freedom a handyman business can give you — when you build it the right way.
The Difference Between a Job and a Business
If you’re out there grinding every single day and the thought of taking a week off — let alone six weeks — makes your stomach turn, I want you to hear this:
That’s not a business. That’s a job with your name on it.
And I’m not saying that to be harsh. I’m saying it because I lived it. I know exactly what it feels like to be the guy who can’t answer his phone because he’s on a job. To be the guy who loses income the second he steps away. To feel like the whole thing falls apart without you.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
It starts with systems. It starts with your first hire. It starts with reading the right books, asking the right questions, and deciding that you’re building something bigger than yourself.
I had a CSR and one technician — that’s it — and that was enough to keep $20,000 a month coming in while I was in another state taking care of my family. Imagine what’s possible when you keep building from there.
This Post Is for You
If you’re the newer guy still figuring it out, or the guy who’s been at it for years and still feels stuck — this is for you. You don’t have to stay stuck in that cycle. There is a path forward.
I spent over 10 years starting, growing, running, and eventually selling my handyman business. I learned a lot — some of it the hard way. And I put the most important lessons into a free eBook: The Top 10 Lessons I Learned Over 10 Years in the Handyman Business.
You can download it free right now at handymanjourney.com
If you’re serious about growing a handyman business that gives you real freedom — not just more work — start there. It might just change the way you see everything.
Allen Lee is a handyman business coach and founder of Handyman Journey, a virtual trades business coaching brand helping handymen and tradespeople start, grow, and scale businesses that work without them.