BINDER #005 - Something Else - The Challenges are the Opportunities.
When I was 20, I took a job as a maintenance assistant at the local shopping mall.
Locals often commented on the mall's age, condition, or lack of options. However, at the time of my joining, the 30-year-old building had a wide assortment of options and no shortage of maintenance-related activities for me to sink my teeth into. The 25,000 interior square feet gave me new challenges, not to mention the 500,000 square feet of asphalt outside.
The property management company I worked for had the responsibility of hiring and managing a snow removal contractor. Being in a town that received an average of well above 80 inches of snow annually, I saw firsthand the difficulties and chaos of commercial snow removal.
And believe me, commercial snow removal has no shortage of chaos.
The entire goal of snow removal is to drastically reduce the chance of people visiting your property being injured or involved in some sort of accident from the brutally cold and icy conditions. In a perfect world, a snow contractor eliminates the liability dangers of snow removal, keeping their clients happy and the patrons who frequent these locations of the clients safe.
However, commercial snow removal is no cakewalk. Here are some of the big challenges for contractors AND clients:
Snow is unpredictable in both short term and long term scenarios. Sometimes, it snows for 30 hours straight, requiring constant work. Other times, it goes 4 weeks without a plowing event.
The equipment needed to clear snow is expensive. (Think large diesel truck, skid steers, and wheel loaders).
The specialty snow attachments that go ON that equipment are also expensive. Some attachments can cost as much as $25,000 per unit.
If someone slips and falls on a job site, you will be named in the lawsuit.
People in the province of BC (my home province) have TWO YEARS to file said lawsuit. (This can vary from 30 days to 3 years… most are around 1 year.)
Because of those potential lawsuits, insurance to become a snow contractor is crazy (Good luck getting it less than $10,000 for a SMALL company.)
The contractor market is flooded with small owner/operators who do snow removal to “keep busy” - often grossly undercharging and/or not carrying insurance to save costs.
Often, contracts are invoiced hourly to clients, which means a lot of checks and balances to make sure what is being billed actually happened. (If I am at your business from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m., it is hard for you to dispute my invoicing from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. unless you have cameras, which is annoying to check every snow event.)
Sidewalk shoveling is often a part of commercial snow contracts. This creates a unique staffing issue - who wants to go shovel sidewalks at 4am so they can be done by the time the grocery store opens?
Well, those are my favorite ones, anyway.
One of my Earliest Business Lessons
When my business coach first told me way back in 2020:
“Cam, your current business model doesn’t generate any revenue in the winter besides a few interior line painting jobs. You live in a place where it snows an unhealthy amount. Why don’t you get into snow removal?”
I had no issues rattling off all the reasons to him why I would never do it.
His advice?
“If you have market challenges that are not unique to you, that means every contractor has the same challenges. All you have to do is solve them faster and better, and you’ll win. The challenges are the opportunities.”