John Claborn

Re-introduction to who I am and what I do for any new followers! I've been on the Ops side of business for the last 12 years. Systems, processes, EOS, accountability, etc. I love operations. I also love helping small businesses between $1M - $10M alleviate the pressure owners face being responsible for everything. As a Fractional COO, I purposefully design business operating systems that remove the bottleneck and create accountability and ownership of outcomes so that owners can do what they're supposed to do. -Cast vision -Lead people -Work ON the business -Trust their team and their systems I created the Frontier Business Blueprint to help you diagnose where your biz is leaking. 👇 It's free. Get it here. 👇 frontierbusinessdesign.com/frontier-busin…

I worked for a landscaping company for 3 years as COO. These are the 3 numbers we began tracking that changed how we viewed our performance in the field... 1. Labor + Material Variance: The difference between estimated hours and materials costs and actual labor and material costs. 2. First-Time Fix Rate: How many jobs required us to go back and fix something? Not only does this suck margins, you're not doing revenue-producing work. It's a double killer. 3. Drive-time: This was the big one. Prior to my start, the company didn't take drive time into consideration on estimates. Every job was profitable on paper, but lost money on most. Why? No one considered the time it took to drive to, from and between properties. Starting here will reveal so much about why you're losing money ob jobs.

@DonHickmanLFG Haha, you can’t run 2:30 minute miles??

@FrontierBDesign That wasn’t no 31 mins. It shut down at 10 miles and it restarts the clock. I ain’t running no 13 miles in 31 minutes!!

Treadmill half marathon today. “But doesn’t that get boring?!” Yeah. But we can do boring shit; same as we can do hard shit. You’re talking about a guy that can go more than 10 minutes without checking his phone. Shit, anymore that’s ELITE status.😆

@kyrinahlis I switched to Claude in Feb. immediately upgraded to Pro. CoWork has been a gamechanger

Never thought I'd cancel ChatGPT but honestly it's so far behind Claude and Gemini and other LLMs right now it feels like using an ancient technology. When I first bought Chat GPT Paid I thought I would be a forever customer but it's so bad compared to the others.

This week's newsletter covers the accountability system I build inside service businesses. Every person gets weekly targets that trace directly back to your quarterly plan, which traces back to your 1-year target. Every major outcome has one owner. One name, not a committee. Every owner has a scoreboard of 3 to 5 numbers that tells them weekly whether they're winning or losing. And every owner has one person asking them three questions: Are you on track? If not, why? What's your plan to get back on track this week? When that's running, you begin to see how accountability and ownership of outcomes transforms both you and your business. Full breakdown in Issue 005. 👇 subscribepage.io/fridayswithfro…

@TannerBuilds Never a truer statement said!

@FrontierBDesign Praying that doesn’t happen to me 😂 I can’t afford to swim anymore than I already have to

Training for my first triathlon. I’ve never swam laps in my life. Jesus Christ the swimming is hard

@bradsmith @ryanraysr Helping service-based business owners create a functional and scalable business through operational design.

I get asked for referrals constantly. I'm compiling a list of 100 trusted businesses that I can confidently recommend. Want to be added to the list? 1. Comment your service specialty below. 2. DM me your links to include.

@Emarky Same with “write me a process for _________.” Give it your voice, your methods and your preferences.

Most people ask AI: "write me an ad." That's the slow way. Document your actual process first. The steps you follow without thinking. Then give AI the steps, not the task. Night and day difference.

@juliusmarchi Learning sales when you’re too naive to care about what people think will be a goldmine later on.

Either start a business or learn sales. Or learn sales, then start a business. That's the advice I'd give to my younger self.

@_scrappystartup How many meetings that could have been emails have you cancelled 🤣 That coaching/development role takes a long time to get to. Glad you enjoy that part. Not everyone gets there!

The fun part of the incredible growth we have experienced… Is that most of my time gets to be spent now on systems, processes, and coaching/development for team leaders, and key performers. The downside… I often spend more than 80% of my day in meetings and conversations and feeling more like an HR manager lol

There is no such thing as a perfect business. We all have our problems. We just don't know what they are most of the time. Let me help you with that. The Owner Dependency Assessment gives you a 30-question diagnostic that covers every major area of your business. From there you get a comprehensive written report on what it found, prioritized action steps for every issue, and a "What I Would Do" and "How I Would Do It" section written for your specific situation. I read every answer personally. Get it here. 👇 frontierbusiness.gumroad.com/l/audit

@BuySellSMB I’m finding reviews are even more important now than they’ve ever been. 100 reviews doesn’t cut it anymore. People want to see 1,000+

How customers find contractors is changing. How customers choose contractors is not. It still comes down to reviews, responsiveness, & price.

Had a client tell me yesterday that an employee left because of me. This is always a fear of mine if I’m being honest. Freaked me out. I was afraid that might have been the case. Met with the team for the first time about 3 weeks ago, employee put in their two weeks notice the next day. Didn’t want to ask, but I did anyways. VP said, “Honestly, you did me a favor. I could have never told him he wasn’t performing. He didn’t want to put in the work anyways.” The reason he left? He had been coasting for a year, cashing a paycheck and doing the minimum. What did I do? I introduced a sales accountability system whereby he would be held accountable to specific metrics each week - by me. That’s all it took for him to self-select out. Now, we get to find the right person for the role and build the system that will scale. Sometimes the best way to weed out the coasters is to hold them to a standard they never were held to.

@lgsguy Might want to check for the question that asks for any final boarding call passengers!

Most underrated feature of AI like Claude or ChatGPT that NO ONE talks about? You can do work that would normally require a computer, keyboard and a monitor… ANYWHERE. All you need is your phone. I made a PDF real estate contract using voice to text while walking through an airport (it was the winning contact btw) I prototype apps in bed, test them out, then deploy them to my site in the morning. I voice to text while I’m in the car and have it generate power points in @GammaApp Productivity is 5x’ed when you don’t have to be at a desk to knock things out

@TheNolanGore That’s the issue I had in landscaping. Former maintenance techs that were much more maintenance than tech. Great workers. Late adopters to say the least.

I have so many tech initiatives right now that the problem has become more about bringing people along than the capabilities of the tech.

@TheApexLeader It’s going to make a lot of naive people business owners who never should have been.

@FrontierBDesign That is what the internet leads people to believe!

Here is my honest assessment of the services business landscape after reviewing 50+ Confidential Information Memorandums in my search for a business to buy. Most business owners lie about their income. Most brokers inflate the numbers with add-backs to sell at a higher multiple. Most business owners make significantly less than their own employees. Most brokers just ghost you and don’t respond to emails, texts, or calls. People are slimy about how they run their companies. Nothing has seemed as good or easy as most people make it sound. My honest take at this point: If you can work for someone else who pays you well, fits your lifestyle, and allows freedom outside of work, that is probably better than owning a shit company.

@TheSystemsDad The hardest part is knowing step 1. Always. I always jump to step 4 because I don’t know what step 1 is.

I remember the day I needed to audit everything that was going on in my life. I was both overstimulated and numb. Overstimulated, because I was listening to my family say "We need to do this, and we need to do that..." Overstimulated, because I'd just had a day at work where a lot of new projects were getting spun up. Numb, because I had no place to start. So I just shut down. Doing a life audit was, and is, one of the more important decisions in my life. I needed to see what was in the box to start refining what was most important.

@therobertbrooks The business does not stop care about us the way we care about it! It will chew you up and spit you out. Your honesty and outlook about the situation is refreshing. This is actually a great time to build out the opps role for the future you see and the vision you have.

Another passive day running a small HVAC company… My Operations Manager of 10 years realized he couldn’t adapt to the pace we’re moving and gave notice. I kept him on for a couple days to transition things, and walked him out today. That’s the reality of growth. Not everyone can go where you’re taking it. Only 2 of the 10 employees from the acquisition are left. At the same time… We hired 2 people today: #1 – A proven selling tech from one of the largest PE-backed HVAC platforms in the country. #2 – A 15-year home services sales pro (roofing + solar) who lives off door knocking, referrals, and relationships. I’ll teach him HVAC. He’ll bring a whole new playbook on generating his own leads. (And yeah… part of me is thinking… do we add roofing? I’ve done roofs in a past life.) Then I spent the evening in the office until 10:30 PM building out inventory + purchasing integrations with our top vendors in ServiceTitan… Automating what used to be half of an operations role. And the kicker — We’re already at 110% of last March’s total revenue… mid-month. With 9 working days still left. Start all over again in 6 hours.