Nick Svaik

Nick Svaik Helping contractors scale to $1M/year with smart systems, clear strategy & powerful mindset shifts.

08/01/2025

🧠 Sometimes you don’t need a new market — you just need a new mindset.

I was talking to someone who felt stuck in their business.
They were convinced there just wasn’t enough opportunity in their area.

So I asked:

“How many golf courses are within a two-hour drive of you?”
“About 300.”

“How many companies offer the same service as you?”
“Maybe 500.”

That’s when the lightbulb went off.

There’s plenty of demand — they just hadn’t looked at it the right way.

This is the power of a mental reframe.
Most of the time, we’re not limited by our market… we’re limited by our assumptions.

And those assumptions often go unchallenged — until someone on the outside helps us see things differently.

🚨 Reminder: If you’re feeling stuck, don’t rush to pivot your product.
Check your perspective first.

Growth starts when you stop asking, “Is it possible?”
And start asking, “What am I not seeing?”

08/01/2025

🧠 Stop working in your business — start working on it.

At some point, every founder hits a fork in the road:
Keep being the technician… or become the strategist.

The moment I found myself back “doing the work,” I knew something was broken.

Your role changes as your company grows.
It becomes about:
• Strategy
• Team building
• Optimization
• Leadership

And if you’re doing it right, your time is spent building systems, not operating them.

One story that always stuck with me was a machinist who built his business one contract at a time — grinding for every deal. After he sold, he met another shop owner who scaled faster by doing the opposite.

He wasn’t even a machinist — he was an accountant.

But he bought shops with existing customers, good teams, and solid contracts — and grew by acquisition, not cold sales.

He didn’t need to know the work. He needed to know the model.

Lesson?

You don’t have to be the expert.
You just have to know how to build, buy, and lead strategically.

That’s when the real growth begins.

08/01/2025

🧩 Not enough leads? That might not be the real problem.

When business isn’t growing, the first instinct is usually:

“We just need more leads.”

But before you pour more money into ads or outreach — pause.

What if the real issue isn’t traffic…
It’s that your offer isn’t converting, or your product isn’t delivering?

This is where the Theory of Constraints comes in:
Find the bottleneck — the one thing choking your growth — and fix that.

Start by asking:
• Are we getting leads but not closing them?
• Are we closing sales but seeing no repeat customers?
• Is our fulfillment or product quality causing drop-off?

📌 Don’t chase more inputs until you’re confident your system is working.

Diagnose before you scale.
Because more leads won’t solve a broken business model — they’ll just expose it faster.

08/01/2025

💰 Want to grow faster? Pay for talent that outperforms you.

One of the most game-changing moments in business?

Hiring someone who’s better and faster than you — and realizing you never need to touch that task again.

That’s what happened to me.
And it changed the way I hire forever.

Instead of obsessing over saving money, I started asking:
• Can this person outperform me?
• Can I fully step out of this role?

And then I stopped hesitating to pay more.

If I pay someone 25% more, but they deliver like three people —
That’s not a cost. That’s a steal.

Over and over, I’ve seen it pay off.
Paying for talent isn’t an expense — it’s a growth strategy.

📌 Want to scale?
Hire people who make you irrelevant in the best way possible.

08/01/2025

🔑 Want to level up? Borrow wisdom, not just experience.

You don’t have enough time in your life to make every mistake yourself — and you shouldn’t try to.

If you want to grow past where you’ve always been, you have to be open:
Open to learning.
Open to changing your approach.
Open to realizing you might’ve been solving the wrong problem with the wrong mindset.

Sometimes, the breakthrough isn’t about working harder — it’s about seeing things differently.

And the fastest way to do that?
Learn from someone who’s already done what you’re trying to do.

Reading the right book, taking the right course, or listening to the right mentor can reveal truths you’d never discover on your own.

Stop trying to reinvent the wheel.
Start studying the people who’ve already built it.

07/31/2025

The Tool That Gave Me My Time Back
-
I used to lose 10 hours a week chasing clients.

Texts. Missed calls. Lost email threads.

I thought being “on top of everything” meant working harder — until I realized I was doing the same thing over and over with no system.

That’s when I switched to a CRM that could actually support a contractor business:

✅ Automated follow-ups
✅ Text and email integration
✅ Call tracking

Now? My team follows up without me. Nothing slips through the cracks. And I got my evenings back.

If you’re still running your biz off sticky notes and inbox chaos, comment “CRM” and I’ll send you the exact SOP that changed everything for me.

07/31/2025

💡 Hustle doesn’t start with money — it starts with mindset.

I didn’t grow up with much.
When I heard, “We can’t afford that,” I didn’t get mad — I got creative.

If I couldn’t buy what I wanted, I was going to figure out how to earn it myself.

I was in elementary school selling “chill pills” at recess — little icing sugar balls I made in the kitchen.
Later, I was stocking my locker with Coke from the grocery store and flipping them one by one.
$2 in, $12 out.

That mindset never left.

Entrepreneurship isn’t about having resources — it’s about being resourceful.
It’s that drive to create value, solve problems, and see opportunities others overlook.

🧠 If you’re willing to figure it out, you’re already halfway there.

07/31/2025

High-End ≠ High-Friction
-
“Custom” sounds premium. But here’s the hard truth: it’s killing your scale.

Every time you build something custom, you’re also:
• Rebuilding your scope
• Guessing your price
• Resetting your timeline

That’s not luxury. That’s chaos.

The businesses that scale? They productize what works.

Think like McDonald’s — not because you want to be fast food,
but because you want:
✅ Predictable work
✅ Repeatable delivery
✅ Clear pricing

Your clients don’t want complexity.
They want confidence, speed, and results.

Simplicity scales. Custom work drains.

Save this for the next time you’re buried under quote chaos. Or better yet — build your signature package and scale with clarity.

07/30/2025

📚 One book can save you 40 years of mistakes.

Why is reading so powerful for entrepreneurs?

Because every book is a shortcut.

Someone spent 30–40 years gaining hard-won wisdom. Then they spent 2–4 more years condensing it into a few hundred pages.
You can absorb it in a few hours.

Whether it’s leadership, marketing, branding, or systems — the answers you’re looking for are already out there.

You don’t need to learn everything through trial and error.
You don’t need to waste years making the same avoidable mistakes.

Read more. Learn faster.
Grow bigger, sooner.

?

07/30/2025

When I started my business, I was the business. Every job, every invoice, every mistake — it all felt like a personal reflection of my worth.

But the real breakthrough came when I made this shift:

💡 “I am not the business. I’m the one building it.”

That mindset changed everything. I stopped tying my identity to every task and started acting like a business builder — someone who builds systems, develops people, and lets go of the day-to-day.

The truth? Your business will never grow if you’re stuck in it. It should run without you. That’s not ego. That’s leadership.

If you’re feeling stuck, burned out, or like it all depends on you — this might be the shift you need.

07/30/2025

🚀 From $80K to $1M: Start With the Right Strategy, Not Just Passion

So many entrepreneurs believe they need to reinvent the wheel.

They’re creative, full of ideas, and tired of working under someone else’s vision — which is exactly what makes them powerful… but also vulnerable.

“You don’t have to do anything new.”

That’s one of the biggest mindset shifts when going from $80K to $1M a year in business.

Yes, you need drive.
Yes, you need vision.
But the first step is strategy — not just passion. Not hustle. A clear, proven business model that works.

You don’t need to invent something revolutionary to succeed. What you need is:
✅ Product-market fit
✅ Simplicity over novelty
✅ A profitable model that gets your foot in the door

Before you scale, validate. Before you build, test.
The road to $1M starts with the right foundation — not just a good idea.

07/29/2025

📈 Want to scale from $80K to $1M? Read this.

“The owner of a million-dollar-a-year flooring company does not install floors.”
That line hit me hard when I first heard it.

Welcome to Lesson 2: one of the most important mindset shifts you’ll ever make as a business owner.

So many of us start out doing the work — technicians, installers, craftspeople — and we do it well. But when you decide to grow, truly grow, it’s not just your revenue that needs to change. You do.

Your identity, your role, and your daily actions have to evolve.
You can’t stay the technician and expect million-dollar results.

To scale, your main responsibility becomes developing people and solving problems, not doing the job yourself. You go from doing to leading.

And here’s the truth:
Your business can only grow as much as you do.

Ask yourself:
“Am I really ready to take on the role and responsibility of the business I say I want?”

Because that is where the transformation begins.

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Calgary, AB

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