Scaling past the owner bottleneck
For businesses doing $1M+ with a team
You didn’t run out of work. You ran out of you.
At some point the thing that got you to $1M becomes the thing stopping you getting to $3M. Every quote, every hire, every complaint, every supplier call still comes through you — so revenue is capped at your attention, and adding people just adds coordination. We know, because we hit exactly this at $2M and had to build our way out of it.
What is your back office costing you?
Recoverable each year
$560,102
158 hrs/week reclaimed · 60% automatedWant to see it actually working? We'll send you a walkthrough of the real system running our $5M landscaping business — quoting a job, rostering the week, capturing receipts on site. No slides.
Six functions. One approval point.
Draw your business honestly and it looks like this. Not a marketing problem, not a sales problem — a single-threaded decision problem.
Six functions · one approval point
1 person
The number of people every decision waits on
+3 hires
And the admin got worse, not better
2×
Output on the same headcount, once the coordination is automated
Three things that only happen at your size
01
You are the approval queue.
Nothing moves without you looking at it. Quotes sit unsent, POs sit unraised, and your team has learned to wait rather than act.
Caller
“Hi, am I still booked in this week? And did that quote ever come through?”
Op3ro AI
“You’re booked Thursday 8am, and there’s an open quote from Tuesday for $4,180. Want me to send it again and confirm the visit?”
Op3ro AI creates, assigns and chases the task the moment it's mentioned — with the rules you set about what needs you and what doesn't.
02
You turned work down last quarter.
Not because you couldn't win it — because you couldn't deliver it without breaking something. That is a capacity problem, and no amount of marketing fixes it.
Thursday · 3 vehicles
7am — 4pmClient names blurred.
Capacity planned against real crews, real vehicles and real hours, so you know what you can take before you quote it.
03
You can't see the business, only the day.
You know this month felt busy. You do not know which jobs made money, which crew is efficient, or which client is quietly costing you.
Labour variance · this month
| Job | Est | Actual | Var |
|---|---|---|---|
| J-10391 | 18h | 26h | +8.0h |
| J-10402 | 12h | 11h | -1.0h |
| J-10417 | 30h | 37.5h | +7.5h |
| J-10428 | 8h | 8h | 0.0h |
| J-10433 | 24h | 21h | -3.0h |
Job margin, crew efficiency and client profitability, live — without anyone building a spreadsheet.
And when you do want to sell it.
A business that only runs when you’re in it isn’t an asset — it’s a job with staff.
Buyers pay a multiple for documented systems, recurring revenue and a team that operates without the owner. They discount heavily for key-person dependency. Most trade businesses at your size are worth far less than the owner assumes, for exactly this reason.
Fixing it takes twelve to eighteen months. It’s worth starting well before you want to exit.
Who built itPatrick Goodyer. Software developer. Not a tradesman.
I've never been on the tools. No trade background, no qualification, never swung a hammer for money. What I do have is six years and 300+ automation projects behind me, and a 100% job success record in the top 0.5% of Upwork's 17 million freelancers.
In July 2025 we bought a small landscaping business that ran on spreadsheets, phone calls and one person's memory. Fourteen months later it's a $5M group, and the back office never grew to match. That's not because I'm a better landscaper than you — I'm not one at all. It's because the admin runs itself.
The walkthrough is the live account, not a demo tenant: quoting a job, rostering the week, capturing receipts on site. 1,003 jobs have gone through it.
300+
projects delivered
100%
job success score
Top 0.5%
of 17 million Upwork freelancers
$200k+
earned on platform
Verified Upwork reviews from automation and software projects. Trades client references available on request.
“Patrick is the best consultant I've worked with so far. He's extremely professional, super knowledgeable and extremely meticulous in his work.”
“A problem I spent weeks trying to figure out, Pat did in a blink of an eye. Truly a wizard in saving time for business owners. Already passed on his details to a few friends. 10/10.”
“He figured out how to do something that was very complex, with lots of moving parts. Probably never been done before. If you are looking for a creative, out of box thinker, I highly recommend Patrick.”
“Pat was sensational. He was able to deliver on everything that he said he would, even when working on a solution for a system that he had no prior experience with.”
“Patrick was always available and was very knowledgeable about Monday.com. Would highly recommend him to anyone needing a hand with process automation.”
“I highly recommend Pat for any automation work involving Pipedrive, Integromat, Zapier, Clickfunnels with emails and SMS marketing. Pat's responsiveness and knowledge was outstanding.”
“Pat and his team are the best in the business and are like having a Swiss army knife of knowledge at your disposal.”
“Patrick was an absolutely brilliant addition to our CRM migration team. He has a deep understanding of both Pipedrive and Monday that helped us deliver a very effective transition.”
“Pat was great to work with. He is super knowledgeable and efficient. He added tremendous value to the project and our small business.”
“He completed the task effectively and efficiently, but also offered to record a video explaining what he'd done so that I didn't run into the same issue again.”
“Patrick is extremely knowledgeable about the Gcal and Zoom APIs, and managed to resolve a range of problems for me within an hour consultation.”
“Patrick is fantastic. His communication is second to none, and the work he completed was exactly as briefed. I couldn't recommend Patrick highly enough!”
“Pat really knows his stuff. He did everything to our specifications, he was reasonable with his rates, and was a real pleasure to work with.”
“Patrick did an amazing job that seemed very complicated to me. He knows automations and SMS like the back of his hand.”
“Patrick was amazing and local to me which was great to call and chat about things. He built what I asked to be built and was always contactable.”
We hit this ceiling ourselves at $2M
Flawless Gardens · Northern Beaches, Sydney — our own business, and where every part of Op3ro was built and tested.
$0 to $5M in 14 months, and the owner isn’t the bottleneck
The full account of what we built, in what order, and what we got wrong on the way.
Before you hire an automation consultant.
Almost every consultant selling AI to trade businesses has never run one. They have never quoted a job at 9pm, never had a crew standing around waiting on a delivery, never chased a progress claim past the cut-off. They have helped clients in the industry. That is not the same thing, and it is why most of these projects quietly fail — they map a process they have only ever been told about.
We own and operate a $5M construction and landscaping group in Sydney. Every process we sell you, we run ourselves, every day.
Ask any other consultant the same question we’d expect from you: what’s your trade business, and can we come and watch it run?
What owners at this size ask
We already have an ops manager.
Good, they'll get the most out of this. The problem usually isn't a missing person, it's that the person is doing coordination a system should do.
We're mid-growth, is this the wrong time?
It's the only time. Systems put in at $1M cost a fraction of systems retrofitted at $5M, because there's less to unpick.
How long until we feel it?
Something works inside a fortnight. The ceiling moves in about a quarter.
What if we're closer to $5M?
Then you have more to gain and more to migrate. Start with the audit so we can scope it honestly.
Twenty minutes. No pitch.
Pick a time and we'll map where every decision currently routes through you, and what it would take to move the ceiling.
Twenty minutes. No pitch.
Intro call
20 minutes · Free · times shown in Sydney
Step 1 · Pick a date