Building Financial Visibility in Your Elevator Business

As elevator business owners, most of us receive financial reports every month. We see and discuss the revenue numbers and expenses during our regular meetings and we know whether cash feels tight or healthy. We may even have a budget in place that we try to stick with.

But receiving that financial information and understanding what it's telling you are two very different things.

I learned that lesson firsthand during my years building Madden Elevator.

There were times where work was coming in and projects were moving. From the outside things looked like they were headed in the right direction and we were growing exponentially. But over time, I realized that just seeing the numbers and trusting that things were being handled wasn't enough. I needed to understand how we got there and where the business was headed next.

At the time I didn't realize financial visibility in an elevator business is so much more than knowing how much money came in last month.

Financial visibility means understanding where your business is creating profit, where pressure is building, and which areas need attention before they become even larger problems.

Looking Beyond Revenue

One of the biggest mistakes my clients make, regardless of where they're at in their business journey, is looking at their business as one large bucket.

Money comes in the door and then money goes out. You review the totals for the month and move on.

But elevator businesses don't operate that way. They can't.

And that's because maintenance behaves differently than billable service and repairs behave differently than modernization projects.

Labor and margins behave differently in each area as well.

If everything gets lumped together, it becomes difficult to understand the driving factor determining performance inside the business.

You may have one department carrying the entire company while another area quietly takes on more financial burden underneath the surface.

Without financial visibility, those things can remain hidden for a long time.

Financials Should Help You Make Decisions

Financials should help operators answer the most important questions:

• Which product lines are producing the strongest margins?

• Where is labor becoming inefficient?

• What should we be investing right now?

• Is it time to tighten things up?

• What area needs attention first?

You don't have to have a degree in finance or be a certified CPA to answer these questions.

But you should understand your business well enough to make proactive decisions instead of reactive ones.

It took a lot of time, patience, and me asking a billion questions to my finance guy before I could really absorb what I was looking at.

And then it took a lot of trial and error to understand how the decisions we were making right now would affect the business financially next week, next month, and even years down the road.

Understand What Your Numbers Are Trying to Tell You

I didn't realize at the time that the decisions we were making right then in Madden Elevator would determine where we would be years from now.

Money has a trickle-down effect and if we were to ever reach the goals we set for the company, I had to gain more visibility and insight into our financials.

Chances are, you already have more than enough information in your elevator business to make these same inferences and answer the questions I mentioned above.

But your biggest challenge lies with understanding what the data is telling you.

Your numbers are constantly leaving clues and showing you where you're winning and where money is leaking.

They're helping you understand which levers to pull and when for the business like your next hire, investment, or the next company truck you've been thinking about pulling the trigger on for the last few months.

But the companies bringing on (and keeping) those employees and that have the cash flow to bank roll that next truck already know how to create visibility and use that visibility to lead the business forward.

What if You Knew Exactly What Needed Attention First?

These kinds of conversations often leave owners realizing they don't necessarily have a revenue problem, a hiring problem, or even a growth problem.

Many times, they simply have a visibility problem.

Something feels off or inconsistent and now margins feel tighter than they should.

But they aren't always sure where the pressure is coming from or which lever needs pulled first.

I created The Elevator Business Diagnostic for exactly this scenario.

Together, we'll take a deeper look into your business to identify where the constraint is, where profitability may be getting lost, and what area deserves your attention first so you're no longer making decisions based on assumptions.

Understanding what your numbers are revealing about your business specifically is the first step in gaining the clarity needed to move the business forward.

Schedule Your Elevator Business Diagnostic