Say “Yes” and Figure It Out: How to Turn Customer Needs Into Recurring Revenue

Five times bigger. Ten times better positioned financially. And, for the first time in fifteen years, actually in control of his own schedule.

That's the payoff after a decade of near-misses, hard lessons, and one uncomfortable meeting with a customer who almost walked.

It wasn't inherited. It wasn't luck. It was rebuilt, piece by piece, from a landscaping and snow-removal outfit into a full property-services company.

Tony Lisa, CEO of CAM Partners in New England, has spent over a decade turning a small landscape maintenance business into a multi-service operation serving apartment complexes, grocery chains, and gas stations across the region.

"Our business has a low barrier to entry. It's not hard to get the work. It's hard to sustain the work over time. It's hard to make money doing it, right?"

Growth came from saying yes to requests that had nothing to do with landscaping — a storage cage here, a fence repair there — until those favors became entire service lines.

"Say yes and figure it out 'cause they're desperate to have somebody to help them to do this stuff."

By 2020, that momentum turned into a partnership, a debt-free balance sheet, and a new name: CAM Partners.

"Partnerships are marriages, and it's very important to make sure you have the right teammate, and I'm incredibly lucky on that front."

The acquisition strategy that followed is deliberately unsentimental — geography first, then whether an owner is ready to grow instead of cash out.

"We want to basically acquire entrepreneurs and turn them into bigger entrepreneurs."

None of it meant stepping back completely — just stepping out of being the only hand on everything.

"Don't be afraid to be big, and the key piece to doing that is investing in your team when that happens."

Tony Lisa recently joined Amanda Salvatore on the "Toolbox for the Trades" podcast to discuss:

• [5:01] Why you’re only as good as the job you’re doing right now

• [14:52] Why a functional business partnership is like a marriage

• [21:59] When you lose a customer’s trust and first steps to recovery 

• [27:16] Inside CAM Partners' acquisition strategy and advice for owners scaling from $5M to $10M 

Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:

• Aspire

To hear more stories from the trades, subscribe to Toolbox for the Trades on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or here.

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