Grow A Small Business Podcast · Troy Trewin

From Disney to Deliver Service Now: How Vance Morris Built a High-Growth Service Empire, Mastered Customer Experience, and Scaled Multiple Home Service Businesses While Working Just 90 Minutes a Week. (Episode 756 - Vance Morris)

·36 min·2 clips

Vance defines success as "coming and going as I please" without affecting any of his businesses.

Vance Morris talks through a career path that starts with 10 years at Disney in the 90s. After that came two jobs that ended in being fired. He used that stretch to push into his own carpet cleaning business in 2007. Over the next 12 years or so, he expanded into mold work and oriental rug cleaning. The company grew from solo labor into a team effort. It now has 11 full-time equivalents. Recent growth has been around 7% per year. A general manager now handles the day-to-day management. That change leaves Vance working about 90 minutes a week on the business. He says there are two things he does not hand over to his general manager: marketing and the checkbook. Those are the levers he keeps closest because they tell him how the business is really doing. He says much of the marketing runs on autopilot through systems. Even so, he wants no one changing those systems without a conversation. Funding the business was not elegant. He cashed out a 401(k). Credit cards helped carry the load too. The plan was to live on his wife's salary while the business was built up. He says the hardest stretch was paying all that money back, and that the company declared bankruptcy during that period. On AI, he argues that a live person on the phone still matters more than a bot. He believes the first option should connect callers to a real human right away. He thinks that kind of access will be a competitive advantage for the next few years. Looking back, he says he would still go into the same industry if he were starting again with more funding. He believes he can do a better job than most competitors in the space. Much of his current work is helping other service business owners improve customer experience.

As heard by us

A grounded service-business story about systems, cash control, and staying close to the customer.

It frames a practical rise from being fired to building a service business, with the emphasis on systems, customer experience, and tight control of marketing and the checkbook.

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Why you'd press play

A service founder who kept the phones, the marketing, and the checkbook.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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