Action COACH St Louis West

Action COACH St Louis West Helping business owners in St. Louis, MO grow profits, build better teams, and reclaim time. Let's turn your dreams into measurable success! 🚀

06/14/2026

A lot of owners in home services are talking about adding AI instead of adding employees, and I'd be very careful with that.

The first question to ask: is the work repetitive and rules-based?

If it's capturing a name, address, phone number, and what the customer needs, that's probably something AI can handle.

Then when it's sent over to your live person, they can call back and get it scheduled.

Judgment stays with the human. Repetitive work goes with AI.

Nobody gets madder than a customer hitting zero, zero, zero trying to reach a person.

Position AI as your team's companion, not their replacement, and you'll see satisfaction and productivity climb.

The line between what AI handles and what your people handle is a systems decision, and the free ebook "25 Practical Tips for Implementing Great Systems in Your Business" at https://go.stlouiswest.actioncoachlp.com/ebook-25-management-funnel-v2 walks you through it.

06/12/2026

Repair revenue is climbing while installs slow down, and a lot of trades owners are treating it like a problem. It's actually a champagne problem.

Plenty of companies can install a new roof, new gutters, or new siding. Very few have the customer service skills to say, "Ms. Jones, what's your problem? Let me come take a look and repair it for you, and we'll handle the install when your insurance clears."

Here's the uncomfortable truth: the majority of people who don't become clients don't become clients because nobody called them back. That's it. Just returning the call puts you in the top tier of your market.

Seniors don't want the job done yesterday. They want a commitment on when you'll be there, and then they want you to actually be there.

Show up, do the repair, charge them fairly, and ask for referrals from the neighbors, because seniors talk to everyone in their network about pricing, quality, and reliability.

Balance installs with repairs and your business becomes recession-proof. When the economy gets bad and a $30,000 roof is out of reach, repair work keeps the lights on.

Eighty percent of your profits come from twenty percent of your clients. And most owners are still spending their time o...
06/10/2026

Eighty percent of your profits come from twenty percent of your clients. And most owners are still spending their time on the wrong end of that equation.

Here's what I see with a lot of the clients I work with:

🔹 Your top 20% are usually the newer clients you've onboarded after you learned what good looks like. They're efficient, loyal, and high margin. That's where you focus your effort.

🔹 Your bottom 80% include accounts that take three times more time and three times more cost. They call constantly, they push back on every line item, and they generate only 20% of your profit. That's where you re-evaluate value.

This isn't about being ruthless. It's about being honest with yourself about where the cash is hiding in your operations.

The data is already in your CRM or ERP system. Job Nimbus, your accounting software, your call logs, your time tracking. Pull it and run the numbers per customer.

Then make a call. Some of those high-cost accounts need a rate increase to match the profitability you actually need. If they hit those new rates, great, the margin works. If they leave, they go become someone else's star customer, and that's still a win for your business.

This is the kind of margin check I have clients run during every 90-day planning session, because until the rate of pain is greater than the rate of change, nobody really does anything.

The free ebook "25 Practical Tips for Implementing Great Systems in Your Business" at https://go.stlouiswest.actioncoachlp.com/ebook-25-management-funnel-v2 walks through how to build the system around it.

06/08/2026

Great delegators don't just hand off work. They build decision rules first.

That's why the five whys matter.

Should your next hire be AI or a human?A lot of owners are trying to add AI instead of adding employees, and the decisio...
06/06/2026

Should your next hire be AI or a human?

A lot of owners are trying to add AI instead of adding employees, and the decision comes down to one question: is the work repetitive and rules-based?

If it's capturing a name, address, phone number, and what the customer needs, AI can handle it.

Real-time judgment and interaction stay with your people, because nothing makes customers madder than hitting zero trying to reach a human.

Position AI as your team's companion, not their replacement, and satisfaction climbs on both sides.

The framework for drawing that line is in the free ebook "25 Practical Tips for Implementing Great Systems in Your Business" at https://go.stlouiswest.actioncoachlp.com/ebook-25-management-funnel-v2.

06/04/2026

Trades and home services companies keep telling me repair revenue is climbing while installs slow down, and they call it a problem.

I call it a champagne problem.

Plenty of companies can install a new roof or new gutters. Very few have the customer service skills to say, "Ms. Jones, what's the issue?

Let me come take a look and repair it for you, and we'll handle the install when your insurance clears."

Most owners don't even call people back, so just showing up becomes your edge

🔹 Call them back
🔹 Commit to a time and keep it
🔹 Charge fairly and ask for referrals

Seniors talk to everyone in their network.

Balance installs with repairs and you'll stay in business when the economy tightens and nobody can afford a $30,000 roof.

The difference between businesses that win this and businesses that don't comes down to systems, and the free ebook "25 Practical Tips for Implementing Great Systems in Your Business" at https://go.stlouiswest.actioncoachlp.com/ebook-25-management-funnel-v2 walks through how to build them.

06/02/2026

A lot of founders think they're delegating. What they're actually doing is dumping.

The difference comes down to decision rules. When you hand something off without the logic, the context, or the criteria for a good outcome, every decision boomerangs back to your desk. You end up being the bottleneck you were trying to eliminate.

Good delegation starts with three roles: creator, reviewer, and approver. Someone builds it. Someone reviews it. Someone gives the final green light.

Here's what that looked like for one of my clients. He used to write proposals until nine or ten at night. Now someone offshore pulls the hard data from his system, creates the proposal, and reviews it.

He opens it, confirms the pricing and the details are right, and hits send. He went from an hour of work to 90 seconds of approval.

It took 30 days of corrections to get there. "Next time, handle this differently." "Next time, check for that." That's the review process doing its job, and within a month the team was double-checking the work for him.

The final pricing still goes through him. That's judgment. Everything before it is process.

Most owners don't make meaningful changes until the discomfort of staying the same finally outweighs the effort of chang...
05/31/2026

Most owners don't make meaningful changes until the discomfort of staying the same finally outweighs the effort of changing.

By then, the decision is reactive, not strategic.

With stagflation talk building into 2026 and pressure mounting on margins, the founders who act early will be the ones still standing strong when others are scrambling.

Review your customer base. Run your margin check.

Price for profitability, not just revenue.

If you want a structured way to move before the pain hits, the free ebook "25 Practical Tips for Implementing Great Systems in Your Business" at https://go.stlouiswest.actioncoachlp.com/ebook-25-management-funnel-v2 walks you through it.

05/29/2026

Around 45% of owners plan to implement AI before the end of the year, and the one thing I'd tell you to do is stop.

Think about your strategy: the now, the next, the future.

The biggest website and domain companies took a hatchet to their support teams, replaced everyone with AI agents, and now customers can't reach a human.

That makes real people matter more than anything else.

With one client, we built an AI intake that captures name, context, and need when the team is on other calls, so when a human calls back, they already know the customer and can move straight to scheduling.

AI should make your people more proactive, not invisible.

The work of implementing it well comes down to systems, and the free ebook "25 Practical Tips for Implementing Great Systems in Your Business" at https://go.stlouiswest.actioncoachlp.com/ebook-25-management-funnel-v2 walks you through how to do that.

05/27/2026

Seniors rarely complain about price.

They complain about broken promises.

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O'Fallon, MO
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