Choosing the right clients for your business is such an important business decision a business owner gets to make, however, if you have ever felt guilty about turning away potential clients due to one reason or another, this conversation is going to change the way you think about that.
Gary Heusted is the owner of G2 Home Services, a Tampa Bay-based contracting company specialising in kitchen and bathroom remodelling, room additions, and whole-home renovations; he recently expanded into commercial buildouts after upgrading his license.
Gary has a very interesting story to share about what happened when he decided to stop trying to be everything to everyone, and what that decision cost him before it started to pay off.
Gary sat down with James Durkin on the Premier Edge Podcast and gave one of the most honest conversations about business growth that this show has featured. So, let’s learn together.
Fifteen years of evolution, not a straight line to the top.
G2 Home Services did not start where it is today, and Gary is refreshingly clear about that.
The business has moved through multiple phases over the past fifteen years, including home inspection, property maintenance, and property preservation work.
Each phase of his business was a response to what the market needed at the time, and each one added a layer to Gary’s understanding of the industry he was operating in.
A quick lesson here for every business owner is to learn to serve the market they are in; your product/service is only as useful as the target audience appreciates it. If you choose to neglect what the market is saying in your industry, you’ll likely struggle with sales.
Gary’s fifteen years in business took an intentional evolving and adapting to the market needs, even when it looked different from what he originally planned.
The results of that evolution are visible in his numbers; an average project size has grown from around $50,000 to well over $250,000 to $300,000. That is absolutely remarkable!
Filtering out 70 to 80 percent of your leads can actually be a growth strategy
Gary, at some point in his business journey, made the decision to implement a pre-qualification process for new clients. Before anyone gets a proposal, they go through a filtering conversation that determines whether they are actually a fit for the way G2 Home Services works, and by Gary’s own estimate, somewhere between 70 and 80 percent of incoming leads do not make it through that filter.
He admits openly that this transition was terrifying at first, because when you are running a business and someone is standing at the door with money in their hand, every instinct tells you to let them in. Walking away from that, deliberately and repeatedly, requires a level of confidence in your own model that takes real time to develop.
But here is what Gary found on the other side of that fear that we can all learn from: when you stop trying to serve clients who are not the right fit, you free up the time, the energy, and the capacity to serve your actual clients at a genuinely higher level.
Your actual clients who align with the way you work, who understand the value of what you offer, and who are willing to engage with your process properly, are the ones who become long-term relationships, and contribute positively to your growing reputation.
The clients who were never the right fit would just cost you more time in stress, endless arguments, and taking up the time due for better work for your actual clients.
Every business owner reading this knows exactly which type of client Gary is describing. The question is whether you have given yourself permission to say no to them yet.
Gary’s Pricing Model
One of the most practical things Gary shared in this conversation was his philosophy around pricing and transparency; he does not give estimates, instead he gives fixed-price proposals.
This difference matters enormously, both for the client and for the business, because an estimate is a starting point that leaves the door open for the number to change, and in contracting, that change almost always goes in one direction.
Fixed-price proposals though eliminate the possibility of mid-project surprise costs, what the industry calls change orders, which are one of the fastest ways to destroy a client relationship regardless of how good the actual work is.
Gary’s reasoning is straightforward: if you want your clients to trust you, they need to know what they are agreeing to before they agree to it. Transparency at the front end of a project is not just good customer service; it is a business practice that protects both parties and sets a professional tone for the entire relationship.
Think about this principle, and how it applies to your business. The moment a client feels like the number they were given at the start of a project or conversation is not the number they are paying at the end, trust erodes, and this applies to any kind of business. Whether you are a designer, a marketer, an accountant, or a builder, the discipline of telling people exactly what they are buying before they buy it is a competitive advantage that most businesses underestimate.
Feel free to rebrand, evolving is permitted
Gary mentioned something about G2 Home Services getting a new name, and the reason is practical. The current name, with the words “Home Services” in it, is costing the company commercial clients, that is, potential commercial clients who see the name and assume the company was strictly residential, so they never picked up the phone. The name that served the business perfectly during one phase of its growth had become a barrier to the next phase.
This is a reminder that your brand, including your name, your positioning, and the story you tell about what you do, needs to be evaluated against where your business is going, not just where it has been. A name that fit you perfectly when you started may be the thing quietly limiting you now. Gary recognised that and is making the change, which is a sign of a business owner who pays attention.
Gary’s story is not about dramatic overnight success. It is about fifteen years of showing up, adapting, making hard decisions, and building something that gets better every year because the person running it keeps getting better too.
If you want to reach Gary and his team directly, you can call G2 Home Services at 727-478-5279.
Also, subscribe to the Premier Edge Podcast and catch every new episode as it drops. Each conversation brings you into the room with a business owner who has done the work and is willing to talk honestly about what it actually took.