Webinar Replay: How Capital City HVAC leveraged HR to accelerate their growth

We had a fantastic webinar recently where Misty Elmore, CEO at People Rock HR, and I dove into how a business can unlock significant growth by strategically thinking about their approach to HR. To make it more engaging, we used a fictitious company, Capital City HVAC, as a case study.

Capital City HVAC, founded by Mike and Lisa Carter in 2014, is a solid regional player with eight trucks and 14 employees, and they've built a great foundation with recurring revenue. But like many business owners I talk to every day, they were hitting a ceiling and wanted to figure out how to expand, develop their team, and build for the future.

What stood out were a couple of key bottlenecks. First, the business was very dependent on Mike and Lisa. Mike, the visionary CEO, was still heavily involved in all aspects, especially those big commercial accounts, and Lisa was juggling customer service and finances.

They were becoming the constraints on growth. Second, they had key employees like Adriana, their crew lead with GM aspirations, and Sam, their business development manager looking to build a sales team. If either of them left, it would create a huge void.

That's where the Value Builder Assessment comes in. It's a tool I use with business owners to understand their organization in-depth and assign metrics to key areas.

It's been completed by over 80,000 businesses, and it gives us a benchmark valuation specific to their industry – in Capital City HVAC's case, HVAC/plumbing/heating/air conditioning. Their current estimated value was around $1.9 million, but the assessment showed a potential value of over $4 million.

We focused on two key value drivers in our discussion:

Hub and Spoke: Capital City HVAC scored a 51 here, highlighting their strong dependency on Mike and Lisa. As Misty pointed out, this puts the business' stability at risk if they step away and limits growth due to their direct involvement.

Key Employees: The potential impact of the crew lead Adriana or business development lead Sam leaving was significant.

The whole point of looking at these areas is to identify what we can optimize to make the company more valuable. And that's where Misty's HR expertise came in. She emphasized that HR isn't just about compliance – it's a strategic function that can drive efficiency, performance, and valuation.

Here's a breakdown of the strategies we discussed for Mike, Adriana, Sam, and Lisa:

For Mike: We talked about shifting his mindset from seeing compliance as a burden to understanding it as protecting the business he's built. Key areas included reviewing wage and hour practices, improving their recruiting and onboarding with better interview questions and integration strategies, clearly defining their purpose, mission, vision, and core values. We also discussed developing a leadership development strategy so he can elevate his team and focus on the bigger picture of the company. This is important for reducing that "Hub and Spoke" dependency.

For Adriana: The focus was on building clarity in reporting structures and decision making. We discussed creating clear job descriptions so she can hold her team accountable and confidently delegate. We also touched on developing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and training programs to ensure consistency as she grows into that potential General Manager.

For Sam: Our strategy involved defining his role clearly and working with Mike on a plan for him to start building and fostering relationships with those key commercial clients. It's not about Mike completely stepping away immediately but gradually transitioning those relationships. We also talked about helping Sam design a plan to build a sales team, which included hiring, commission structures, and onboarding.

For Lisa: We saw her as the natural HR liaison within the company, given her organizational skills and understanding of the business. We discussed partnering with her to develop policies and procedures, especially a robust employee handbook that's used and evolves with the company. We also discussed her role in driving employee engagement and helping transfer her knowledge to Adriana.

The beauty of strategically implementing these HR practices is that the benefits go beyond just ticking compliance boxes. You start to see limited liability exposure, repeatable practices that build trust, enhanced employee engagement, and a more satisfied workforce and customer base.

And here's the part that gets business owners' attention: by focusing on things like reducing owner dependency and strengthening your key employees – just the two areas we focused on with Capital City HVAC – our scenario planner based on the Value Builder Assessment showed a potential $200,000 increase in the value of their business without even changing their core financials! That's a significant return on investing in your people and processes.

If any of this resonates with you and you want to break through your growth ceilings, I encourage you to reach out.

I offer a one-on-one Value Builder Assessment where we can benchmark your business and identify those key areas for improvement.

And if you need help implementing these HR strategies, Misty at People Rock HR Services is fantastic. She's even offering a free 30-minute consultation to anyone who attended or is hearing about this webinar.

Don't wait until you're completely slammed or facing legal issues – let's proactively build a more valuable and sustainable business together.