The New Way Smart Contractors Are Scaling Their Businesses
The New Way Smart Contractors Are Scaling Their Businesses
Most of the work that keeps a home service business running doesn’t need to happen in your office. It needs to happen reliably, by someone who understands your business and feels like part of your team.
That’s a hard idea to accept if you grew up in the trades. I know, because I did. Before I founded Phlash, I worked at a home service company where four CSRs, a bookkeeper and 28 technicians all showed up at 6:30 a.m. every day. Suggesting that someone could work from somewhere else got blank stares.
On my recent episode, I sat down with Angela Chanowsky, founder of Unique Genius. Her company places full-time virtual team members, based in the Philippines, with home service businesses. Angela has been an entrepreneur for over 25 years and runs two home service companies of her own: a pressure washing business and a lighting company.
Here’s what we covered: which roles to hire remotely first, how to make remote staff part of your culture, how virtual estimating is changing the speed game, and the objections owners raise most often.
Hire admin before you hire another technician
When owners decide to grow, their first instinct is usually to add another tech. I see this mistake constantly. Another truck means more jobs, but it also means more scheduling, more invoices and more bookkeeping landing on a desk that’s already buried.
The better sequence is to remove the admin layer first. Once someone else is answering the phones and keeping the books, the owner is free to serve customers better and sell more. Then you build up from there.
Angela calls a remote admin the most economical hire a growing business can make. By her estimate, a full-time virtual team member through Unique Genius runs about $2,000 a month. Compare that to what an owner could earn with 40 extra hours a week spent selling instead of doing paperwork at 10 p.m.
Her advice to the owner-operator still answering every call is blunt: stop. Get out of your own way, work in your genius and let someone else be the first voice your customers hear.
Which roles work remotely
Angela’s rule of thumb: anything on the back end of the business can be done by a remote team member. What that looks like depends on where you are.
| Business stage | What the remote hire handles |
|---|---|
| Owner-operator, still on the truck | One generalist: answering calls as the CSR, bookkeeping, organic social posts, email marketing, and happy calls that turn into add-on services |
| $1M–$10M, systems in place | Dedicated roles by department: accounting, full-time marketing (social, paid ads, email), overflow or second-line CSRs |
At the first stage, Angela’s team often has to help an owner with few SOPs learn to let go. At the second, the remote team becomes what she calls the “easy button.” When the business is ready for a new accountant or a full-time marketer, it adds one without restarting the hiring process.
There’s a second payoff owners often miss. Many say they couldn’t fill 40 hours for a new hire. But a remote team member isn’t just there to absorb tasks you already have. They can take on the growth work you know you should be doing and never get to.
The underused play: remote outbound
The growth work most owners neglect is outbound. One I recommend all the time is B2B partnerships with other businesses in your area. Building those relationships takes steady calling and follow-up, and nobody in the office has time for it. A remote inside sales rep can do it all day.
Angela’s favorite version is commercial outreach. A remote team member researches commercial properties and cold calls the decision-makers. They gather what’s needed to prepare estimates, then hand the owner warm, teed-up opportunities to close.
She frames it as a better use of $2,000 than “throwing spaghetti” at ads. According to Angela, clients in the $1M–$10M range are winning commercial work they had never pursued before, after years of focusing only on residential.
My take: you don’t need to hire a $200,000 salesperson to go after commercial. You need someone to do the legwork so your closes come easy.
Culture doesn’t happen by accident
The first question most owners ask isn’t about software. It’s “How do I get this person into our culture?” How do they learn the way we talk to customers, the way we joke around, the way we win together?
I learned this one the hard way. At my old home service company, I was the culture guy, showing up at 6:30 with breakfast burritos for 28 techs. When Phlash grew to about six remote people, a team member suggested we start doing culture activities. My first reaction: “I’m a culture guy. Everyone loves me.”
The lesson was that culture with a remote team has to be built on purpose. Being a nice guy who’s around isn’t enough. You need systems: team huddles, shared wins, virtual events.
Angela’s own companies show what that looks like in practice:
- Put them on the wall. Her Philippines-based team is on a screen in the office every day, so everyone knows their names and faces.
- Include them in the wins. When the office has a team breakfast, the remote team joins on screen, and the company sends breakfast to them too.
- Onboard through your existing staff. If you already have an in-office admin, Unique Genius works directly with that person to bring the new hire in. Angela says that’s even easier, because it feels like the admin is getting a teammate.
It’s worth the effort. In my experience, team members in the Philippines want an employer who cares about them, not one who treats them as a task list. Give them a real career, company and culture, and they do outstanding work.
You already manage people you don’t see
The second big hang-up is day-to-day communication. We worked with a $7 million client, 30 years in business, who found a great applicant on Indeed. The catch: the applicant lived in Arizona. The owner was stumped about how he’d even work with them.
The reframe I gave him was simple. You already manage people you don’t see. Your technicians are in the field all day. If you have a second location 30 miles away, you don’t see that team every day either. As Angela puts it, you probably have family who don’t live next door, and you still talk to them.
Angela and I agree on three habits that make remote work feel like working together:
- A daily huddle. At Phlash, we run a 15-minute huddle at 9:30 every morning, by pod. Angela calls hers the “same page” meeting. Do it face to face over video, even if that’s just FaceTime on your phone.
- Regular one-to-ones. Thirty minutes weekly or every other week to talk goals, current work, blockers and how you can help. Angela notes that in many companies, people only get one-on-one time with a leader when they’re in trouble. Flip that.
- Normal channels the rest of the day. Text, voice memos and quick updates, the same as you’d use with anyone else. If being in the office matters to you, put them in the office virtually with a screen and a webcam.
One-to-ones matter for every employee, but they matter most for remote staff. They keep people from feeling like they’re out on an island and connect their daily work to their own goals.
Speed wins: virtual estimating and the “race to face”
Customers now expect to decide the same day they call. Angela credits Amazon’s same-day delivery with retraining how everyone buys. A year or two ago, answering the phone was enough, and customers would wait a few days for an estimate. Now they choose whoever gets them a price first.
Virtual estimating is how a remote team member closes that gap. Unique Genius pairs its staff with LiveSwitch, a video tool built for remote estimates. Here’s how Angela describes a typical call:
- The customer calls, and a remote CSR answers on a headset.
- The CSR texts the customer a link. The customer walks outside and shows their house on video while they talk.
- While building rapport on the call, the CSR builds the estimate in the background.
- The customer gets a rendering and a price on the call, or within 15 to 30 minutes.
- The CSR closes the sale, or hands a warm, ready-to-sign lead to the owner or a salesperson.
Angela’s example is holiday lighting, but I think this will spread to every trade within two to three years. Picture a water heater call: the customer walks the phone down to the unit, the CSR captures the model and venting, and the estimate is ready almost immediately.
Speed to lead used to mean answering fast. James from LiveSwitch has a name for what comes next: the “race to face.” How fast can you get your face in front of the customer’s?
Why not just hire on Upwork?
You can find virtual help yourself on Upwork, OnlineJobs and similar sites. Angela’s point is that if you’ve never hired remotely, you don’t yet know what to look for or how to vet it. That search eats the time you should be spending on growth.
I’ve lived both sides. When I started Phlash seven years ago, fresh off reading The 4-Hour Workweek, I hired a virtual assistant on Upwork. She turned out to be great, left Upwork to join me full-time, and still works with me today. But she was one success out of six or seven tries, and the others were abysmal.
Here’s what Angela says a specialized partner adds:
- Vetting against a benchmark. Unique Genius uses assessments to profile how top home service CSRs score, then only presents candidates who match.
- Access to top talent. Strong candidates don’t want to gamble their careers on unknown clients. A partner with a solid local reputation, benefits and an annual in-person summit can attract them.
- Industry and software training. The company works with ServiceTitan, Jobber, Housecall Pro and LMN to certify placements on each platform. Specialized roles bring real credentials; Angela notes their accountants hold accounting degrees.
- Ongoing upskilling. Placements join masterminds with peers in the same trades and software. As CRMs roll out new features and AI tools, your team member keeps up so you don’t have to.
The biggest difference, Angela says, is who drives the process. With a DIY hire, you need every SOP written before they can start. With an experienced placement, you can say “I want commercial work” and they map out how to get it.
The objections owners raise most
“Will they sound like they’re across the world?” Banks and credit card companies gave outsourcing a bad reputation, first with call centers that were hard to understand and now with clumsy AI on the phones. Angela’s answer is to let owners decide for themselves. Candidates are selected for clear American English, and owners interview them on Zoom first. If you aren’t proud of how they’d represent your company, voice and energy included, you don’t hire them.
“How do I handle payroll, taxes and benefits?” With Unique Genius, you don’t. You pay a single monthly fee, the way you’d pay your accountant or another vendor. Unique Genius handles payroll and benefits behind the scenes, with its leadership team based in the Philippines.
“Are they really mine?” Angela only does full-time placements, not part-time or freelance contracts. Your team member works for you and only you, as a career professional on your team.
“How does the pricing work?” There are no upfront or placement fees. Angela says those are common in the industry, but she wants to take that risk off home service owners. The monthly fee covers the team member’s salary, benefits and costs like the annual summit, plus a margin for Unique Genius.
Something U.S. owners may not realize about benefits: in many countries, they aren’t a given. A company that provides them, along with professional development and a real community, earns loyalty. Angela says that’s why her placements don’t jump ship the moment someone offers them a little more money.
Your first remote hire: a starter checklist
- List every admin task you personally do each week: phones, books, social, follow-ups. That’s your first job description.
- Add the growth work you keep putting off, such as B2B partnerships, commercial outreach and review requests.
- Decide whether you’ll recruit yourself or use a specialized partner. Be honest about the time you have to vet candidates.
- Interview on video, and only hire someone you’d be proud to have answer your phone.
- Confirm they’ll be trained on your CRM before day one.
- Set up a daily video huddle and a recurring one-to-one before they start.
- Plan how they’ll be visible in your office and included in team wins.
- Once things are steady, test virtual estimating on your most common job type.
Stop being the bottleneck
The thread through this whole conversation is that owners hold onto work they shouldn’t be doing. They answer phones, do the books at night and never get to the outbound calls that would grow the business. A remote team, built on purpose and managed with real rhythm, gives that time back.