Speaker 0What's the password?
Speaker 3Don't talk about it. Be about it.
Speaker 0Welcome in to the two-of-the-point home services VIP room. Where we invite you, the listeners in to hang alongside some of the biggest, baddest and most successful VIPs of the home services industries. You never know, it surprised guests will show up next. So let's get this party started.
Speaker 2Hey, what's up, home service VIPs. It's your boy Chris Lomico, host, chatty P&AG. And we got a special VIP in the house tonight. I think it's one of the nicest guys. Definitely got it. Oh, it has a lot of a really great energy around them. We got how many of them fly on here, two from guaranteed service over in Jay-Z. You don't quite look like a Jay-Z boy, though. How many of them got going to be honest?
Speaker 5Yes, I'm not. I'm born in the raising Africa.
Speaker 2Well, that probably be why I wouldn't guess that either if I'm being honest.
Speaker 5Now, I'm from North Africa, a small country called Tunisia.
Speaker 2Okay, I've actually heard of that.
Speaker 5Yeah, they're lost every game in the World Cup. That's right.
Speaker 2But all of that. Okay, well, they were there. That's what matters. They were there.
Speaker 5They get participation trophy.
Speaker 2purple ribbon at special. Well, hey, we're excited to have you on here too. It's always fun to bring new guests and you're even healing the other them one podcast prior. So we're going to make this when you're best one so far, but you've got a fun little business and what's interesting to our listeners is how many to start this business back in 2018. He has multi trade, each fact plumbing electrical. Um, but what's interested me most about, uh, about just about your journey, particularly how many is, um, your software engineer, right? And then you said, hey, let's go be a contractor. Um, and so you made the, the change, and, and then it's the actual volume of growth and the consistency of the, of the growth that I'm the most impressed with since 2018. And then you recently, I think it was last year, right?
Speaker 5Yes, that's correct.
Speaker 2Even since bringing them on board you had some like monster Gross in this past like yeah, so you're just doing a lot of great stuff. I think it was it's an interview We're having so welcome to the show my friend.
Speaker 5Well, thank you so much for having me again. How me a band flow from North Africa to New Is here. I moved I moved to the United States in August 28, 1998. I did not speak a wording in English and And I really just came over for vacation. I have a master's in the formation system I'm a computer programmer. And I met this beautiful smart woman in my first two weeks and we've been married since then. So we have three kids that have been here now for 20, 80 years and I'm proud to be an American and I love the country.
Speaker 2I love that. By the way, two weeks, she didn't give it much time, everybody.
Speaker 5And you know you know. I told my brother, I'm like, I'm not coming back. I'm staying a little bit longer. And that was never.
Speaker 4That was never.
Speaker 5Yeah. I'm going to show you a couple days to visit. Yeah.
Speaker 2So, um, Well, hey, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm interviewing you, okay? Yeah, I don't want to blow past us who they get support. I was mentioned to listeners, you know, some of your numbers and I asked for permission. So I could appreciate you letting me share these. You know, I mentioned that you started in 2018 and your HVAC HVAC and plumbing boat. You started both right out the gate.
Speaker 5Yes.
Speaker 2Okay. And then you did that. You had an electrical in 2020, right?
Speaker 5Yes, the end of the 20 money.
Speaker 2Okay, so in 2018, you're a 4.6 million, 2019, 6.1, 2020, you hit 8 million, 2020, 2020, excuse me, 2020, you hit 8 million, 2021, 9 million, 2022, nice little leap to 14 million, 23, 19 million, 24, 23 million, in 25, you're a 24 million, and this year, you are pacing, 38 million, all while running a 56% gross margin of 21% EBDA, not too shabby, dude.
Speaker 5Yeah. All right. I got some questions about this.
Speaker 4We're changing this whole, like, we're changing around. Yeah. We're, we're definitely got questions for you.
Speaker 1Yeah. My favorite question. All right. Yeah. Alright, let's dive into this. I think we can all probably point to kind of the COVID boom looks like you wrote that wave however, at least in my business. I saw it the back end of 23 and 24 like those were tough. like tell me now you navigated like the back end of like hey the covid like kind of everybody's calling i just got a higher more people sawing and so forth like what did you see shift did you hit it like did you see it early and then you were able to shift like what was that back in that 2023 2024 like what what were the things that you look back upon and like oh Yep, we saw this or hey, even if we got lucky, who cares? We've all got lucky. Like what were some of those things that you were that propelled you guys even through that piece of it?
Speaker 5It's mostly accountability and management team and training and keep training and the book division was very huge for us. It was a really, you know, We, our average ticket is higher than anybody I have seen before, conversion rate is great and it's all about training and You know, this year we bought 20 more trucks and there is 20 more to come more to come and my philosophy is always one of my trucks I want to see him on the parking lots. I would give me more aggravation to get him in the road and one thing in the road is that's by more wants and keep going I did some little talkings like some acquisition small acquisition, you know, like a million dollars in the revenue and last or I work that database very very well We do a lot, we are like more of an outbound company. We are related in outbound machines. We don't have no demand calls. We don't rely on the vocabulary that's called or it's hard. It's, you know, that's icing in the cake. It's just better processes, better execution. Most importantly, it's the executions, you know. I told Chris, I'm a big fifth man. I used to rob and duplicate. I don't, all right. Whatever works for someone, it works for Chad, works for Aaron, you know, learned a lot from Tommy. You know, I was mentored by Joe's Brazil for God knows how many years I lived in his ways. And And it's all about execution and will execute to like the highest degree. I mean, we have a leadership team that they fight with each other because somebody, you know, didn't execute, right? So to answer your question, it's added more trucks, added some more customers, increased marketing. We spend about 11% of our revenue in marketing. we have a really good brand. When I started the business in 2018, the best decision is I bought guaranteed service.com as a domain and I tied it in with one 800 guaranteed as phone number and it's all for brand. It's in the trucks in the radio, it's in TV ads, you know, retargetting ads,
Speaker 1Perfect. Well, I appreciate you robbing and duplicating. What I don't appreciate is you robbing duplicating and then doing it better. So we're going to share backwards here on on how you're you're executing on this. So Tell me a little bit of more because I think this is one of those things where we've all heard it. This like outbound strategy like we need to be outbounding. I feel like we're in like a space where we just keep marketing. And then we're like well, we're so busy answering the phone that we don't have to outbound like what what do tell me a little bit more about your outbound strategy.
Speaker 5So there is two ways how to get increased the call counts for us. A and the inbound count and the inbound and the inbound bounce. So the inbound call if somebody calls in for a facet leaking, we don't just stop by booking the call for the faucet. We're going to ask how old is the air conditioning, how is the heat? Do you have a generator, do you have a water softener? we do a complete inventory of the house. And then if someone has a 17 year old, 15 year old air conditioning, we're going to do a tune out for new charge. It costs us more than not just to advertise for it to get that call. So our booking rate, we typically want to look at the hand of 20 percent, hand of 23 percent of our calls. We don't accept anything less than a hand of percent. All right. So that's the side, how do we track it, we have different tracking system when we book a second column on in bound calls. The outbound calls, we use AI's that retrieve data from service titan and based on that, we set parameters. So, You know, I don't want to if I call someone that I visit him two and a half years ago, most likely he doesn't remember me if I call someone that he visited him six months ago, most likely he remembers me if I did the good good job in the first time. So if I want to get a list that. So our goal chart is to have 15% contact rate. So when I call 100 people or 15 of them, they're going to answer the phone. And my goal is to book 30% of the 15 that they answer the phone. And the shorter the amount that I left the customer, so I'd visit him six months, I'm going to have a much better success rate, versus the one is two months. So we use a lot of AIs, for example, we have the script that would say, Give me every customer that we service either for plumbing or electrical and the last six months and spends over X amount of money but we never had any service for HVAC in the last six months. So that's a unique customer that in those who we are, we know that he loves us, he spent money with us, and it would be a great opportunity to go for HVAC since we never been there. The other ones is like high-oppers ticket and a different trade that we never did the same trade. So we do outbound course for the plumbing, for the same thing, electrical, the same thing, is based on customer history, And we have like a recurring report that goes in every single day at six o'clock goes to the customer service manager and sends her here is for outbound sheets one for plumbing one for electric one for aged equipment and one for service. and based on the capacity that's where we make the calls for need. You know, the big shift, literally, and this is all from redwood. It's more a big company that we will rely on more of. leading indicators versus the lagging indicators, right? We don't come here the next day and we say, oh, we suck last day because we didn't get the revenue and why? Because we didn't, we don't have enough cars. And the cars are the leading indicator. We need to get into the cars before we talk about the lagging indicator. So every time we, we, we, You know, we have like a three day call reports against email daily to our marketing agency with breads and yellows and greens. They know where to book the calls, where, where, where, how you shift the money. And we focus on our bounce calls. We do daily harder than daily, harder to really talk more about nothing, but the leading indicator. All right, and then when we focus on that, you know, there is what might, what, what, what, there's an answer of execution, yeah. Yeah, so this is what we live by. Yeah, one of the shelves somewhere. Yeah, so so there is a culture shift to create that You know, we have to help each other as a team. We can let the installation manager down because the CSR manager didn't do her job. We can let the HVC sales manager down because the guys did not turn, you know, tech generated leaves and opportunity calls. So the whole team works together. We are big believer in, have you, have you read the book a question behind the question? like the QQ, we don't blame, we don't ask who dropped the ball, we always say what can I do, how can I help, we always have the eye and every conversation we start. It's more of a culture, but only we got everybody aligned in the same focus, same goal as, you know, make money,
Speaker 2Well, I just want to say that you guys seem to have picked their interests, right? So there must be some good stuff going on over there, especially at that gross margin and EBITDA percentage, I'm sure it's a number of these things, right, that are all kind of working in tandem with each other, you know, like, yeah, yeah, we measured everything.
Speaker 5literally we measure everything. How many contact touches per hour for the CSR, the inside sales rep, how many touches per hour. We measure how many hours in shop time, yesterday, how many idle time, how many hours, you know, what's your billable hours for the day and we get all of that every day in the morning and we talk about it and we take actions. And the other way around, if the inbound and the inbound, the outbound did not give us enough calls, we're relying on the text on the field. So if I need an HVAC calls, then I get plumber in the row, then I don't have enough HVAC. I'm relying on those flowers on the row to turn multi-trade referrals to other trades.
Speaker 4So we're in a little conversation about, I guess, I call him TTOs, but in here, but are you outbound calls like by the way calls like by the way, we have a plumber that's already doing this by the way, I guess that we call him by the way calls is by the way, we're a plumber on the way, we'll send an h-back guy over at no charge. Is that what you're doing or are you doing?
Speaker 5Yeah, the plumber when he gets there, he will make the phone call to the dispatch and he sends the HVAC guy.
Speaker 4But how does that, that always sounds good in theory. I was like, oh, I'll get my plumbers to do it, right? Like, okay, I know plumbers, at least majority of them. And they don't always listen that great. I love you plumbers, please. I'm a plumbers. I could say these names. I must say anything about each bad guys or anything about plumbers. We don't listen that good. So how are they actually spreading that up like how are they going in and saying is this already a member and they're falling up is this a non member is this a new demand call is this a free maintenance is it a free what what what what's the I guess what's the re why would the customer accept this other person to come to the house like what is that I guess I don't need to call the hook because I don't want to I don't even want to use that why would the customer be like okay send Jimmy over here that's your age back to me why why why why why what why what are they doing What is it setting? Like how do you do that?
Speaker 5Yeah, so, you know, we, we, we follow a process in, in the, in the sales callers, you know, what any service call is we, we, we, we talked to the homeowner about his previous experience, you know, or say, hey, you know, I don't want to step in any tool is do you have any heating in our conditioning company that you, or, or, I think, in this case of plumbing, yeah, You know, we know we have a plumber that he didn't show up anymore and so we feel that I've pulled while we are better than anybody else was the value that and then we ask how long how many how long you've been and in the home, you know, 20 years when the last time you had your system check never did and then we'll offer whatever specialties. So we, we, we use Faraday the software that it gets the equipment age, all right?
Speaker 4And so far I'm sorry, just so we can all hear it again, I apologize.
Speaker 5I mean, Faraday, F-A-R-A-D-I-O. Yeah, that, you know, but you take a picture of the equipment it is what the age and the, you know, the second answer.
Speaker 4Yeah.
Speaker 5And if the equipment is in needs, you know, if there is a service opportunity, that's where we go. So we start by the conversation with the homeowner, we find out what his history in the home, his service history, and then we offer this special that we don't. You know, sometimes we walk away with him, you know, if you're not just one year old, you can
Speaker 4I think for us to just in this area, because I know we, I know this is something that Chad, you were talking about another day on a call to rise your team doing this, and this is something historical, we just haven't really been good at to be honest, like we're just not that good at it. Um, is that when we, What do they bring this up on the call? Is that at the very end, is it in the middle? Is it during the call? Or is it when they discover it? Is it like, because a lot of times like, hey, you're already trying to sell me another service before you've done the service, right? So where do they do this just from, like, a tactical standpoint?
Speaker 5So it's up front and when we're knocking the door, we ask if the truck is parked together for the show cover, then we say how can help you tell us what's going on and it depends if we're going for a plumbing course or you want to solve that plumbing issue. and during that conversation of the explorer will find other needs we find what their service history, and then that point we offer them before we even do the work, before we even start doing the plumbing work, before we even give options in the plumbing work, okay? Now that is when the service manager makes that call, sometimes we don't have the capacity for service capitals,
Speaker 2But the trigger is when you're asking the questions and finding the answer.
Speaker 5So, remember, it's two steps, right? The step number one is the customer service took all that information before the plumber sold out that for the faucet. So, if there is an opportunity to trust me, the sales are already booked. If there is not an opportunity, CSR did not book it or if she tried to book an opportunity and they said now and not today, then the plumber will do it again. When you hear twice, most likely you will end up there.
Speaker 4I guess maybe on this... Like how many of those calls are being like outbound calls are your percentage calls are your booking is it 20% 30% like how many calls are you getting from outbound and I guess I'll lack of better turn I'll just do a TTO Multi-trade turnover in the house like is there You guys have a goal that you're setting every week, or is there percentage or kind of like organically, it just kind of happens.
Speaker 5Just, it's, it's, so we do the daily huddle a theory in the morning and nine a.m. goes calls to the dispute the technicians by the manager if, if we need calls for a different trade. Anytime that they turn the lead, they get 25 dollars for turning the lead doesn't matter if it turned, if, you know, turning a service call if it's zero or a million dollars, they still get 25 bucks. Okay. And the, and, and the Rela is listening to the call as well. And so if there is any potential, you know, homeowner is, you know, think about an air conditioning, we'll get an automatic email as well that the homeowner is interested in different trade.
Speaker 4So just because I want to understand this, so because if you guys don't mind to review.
Speaker 1I would like to understand as well, please ask.
Speaker 4All right, are you turning this off and on every day? And that's always the challenge because like, oh, we need calls today to chat to point like, over, over one, we got all the calls like we don't do it. Then we're not, then the guys don't do TTOs, right? That's the language I'm using, right? And then you ask them to do it today and then they don't do it, then they do it. And then just turn it on and it's off and on and off, right? And I think we all try to do this. Oh, now we need everybody to be really good at doing this today because we don't have enough calls. right and then but don't do it three days from now and back so what is the plan on that is it is it literally from your daily when the day huddle or whatever you guys call your daily huddle every day is a set there and pushed out and then you you kind of push it to the text then or is it really just a cultural thing that happens every day no matter what and you look at those now it happens only after the day huddle when when he's needed Okay, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no Chad maybe you feel the same. I don't know. I'm assuming similar is like we try to turn them on and off on and off and it's like culturally wise that's always hard to get guys to commit to something Only do sometimes and then you need them and then you don't need them to do it, right? So it's like how do you really get that like tell me a little bit about how do you train that in and why does your team committed to it?
Speaker 5So we have like zoom meetings like every day like there is zoom meetings The service technician one is at 715 the other one at 745 and the other one is like at 8AM 315 Meta to zoom meetings right and and we we mix them so you have like a plumber So electrician hvc with some plumbing You know, and then we create that that team together and and during the zoom meeting with now
Speaker 4Uh, so let me, let me recap that real quick. Let me hear that. Just make sure I heard that right. You're actually doing a call with all the trades together and then sharing in that trade meeting with the trade not your manager meter meeting. at whatever 830 or whatever time you do that. You're actually doing it with the text in the morning, all the text multi-trades saying, hey, by the way, your brothers and sisters over and we don't mention it there.
Speaker 5The zoomini is to create the team come out already together. So as one team, like, all wants the brothers together. And then when we need the demand, we typically know that the demand needs it like by 830 in the morning.
Speaker 2And as when the text messages go from service item to whatever department to create a multi-calls or other trades, and you have real quick remind me of your set for staff size your 172 field text, right?
Speaker 5Yes, 172 field text, and other 19 employees.
Speaker 4And yeah, because I'm trying to think like we I mean, like we don't really do we only do one call a week with all trades and usually just kind of update for everybody do it. We don't everything else is all silent, right? You got your meetings. Um, you know, it gets hard at there's a lot of tax now, right? And multi trades, multi city, all the stuff going on. But the idea of like getting them to know each other better, uh, I think is always the challenge. And it sounds like the way that you're doing, you're doing a zoom, you're introducing them. You're getting them to collaborate. They get to kind of know each other better. Because I can tell you right now, they walk in this building today, uh, there's a lot of people in the lecture department that have no idea who the plumber is.
Speaker 5Yeah, we do a technical training or like, you know, a soft skill training for one department that would be in-house training and would be for only that department. When we do this culture, this core card meeting, we put them together. And literally, the plumbers they all like always like to compete against the electricians.
Speaker 4And they do, yeah, that's fair. They do. There's similar kind of activity the way they operate, right? Similar. OK, I'm just wondering, is that because I think it's good for me to reflect on that, because I think as you get bigger, you kind of silo now. We do bring in together when we do like a service system training together, we bring all the trades we try to blend in together, so it's not all plumbers or all electricians or all ever, right? Try to blend them all together, get to know each other. In general, but I would say outside of that, besides that, we have like a gathering or food truck or something else we're doing. We're not doing a lot of that. additional mingling I guess between each other as as a mixer between the between the trades and that that seems to be the thing you're getting them to really understand how important each trade is to each other and how you contribute to this other guy that you know chat right I know chat now he's my electrician buddy. You know. You know anything about.
Speaker 1Aaron, I want to I literally want you to say in front of your field professionals. I want you to say, guys, we're going to have an inter-trade mixer tonight.
Speaker 4No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1I know you just got off and a little mixer we're gonna have.
Speaker 4I have a little mixer, everybody's gonna get together, we have some donuts, a little bit of lemonade, everybody come in here.
Speaker 5Um, let's see what's the, the most, who is this guy?
Speaker 1I do that though, him.
Speaker 5Larry the most proud piece in the business is in the culture, in the company, and Larry is this is like one team like one family and everybody loves each other and say, well, Larry or love each other and do anything for each other to help each other.
Speaker 4So I think the question then, because I can relate to that, I think we all can, and that's awesome, by the way, by the way, congratulations. And we have to tell you congratulations, we're stars, first off, congratulations. The numbers you produce, what you built, a business that's on his way to a 38 million this year, I think, is that what we said, 38 million? Awesome. 35, sorry, be more accurate there. You got with a great group, by the way, those guys over there are awesome guys. For sure, if you're getting training with Scott Brinkley, and all those guys, I mean, Scott used to be my business coach. So I know Scott's fundamental, like, this is how you do it. So I'm trying to go through this again because, you know, he's coming here yell at me and tell me to do these things and do all this stuff and show up here, and tell me how to do outbound calls, and I'm trying to run around to do it.
Speaker 5Yeah. Scott is the best. John Conway. Scott the uncovered.
Speaker 4Yeah. They'll come through the next star day. So you got a great group. And so you built a great culture on your own. You brought a great culture from from their organization that aligns a little bit with the next the whole holistic next our days, right? And I guess the thing I would ask is you think about this is like, Right now you're like everybody loves it, they know each other, well there's this model that once you hit over a hundred people that actually becomes significantly harder as that as that becomes right so you go to 100 to 120 to 150 to 100 to 100 like a vature plan like how do you how do you think about keeping that and how do you think you're going to keep that sustainable. for that type of like tight-knit group, or as your goal to space to say, we're just gonna run this operation what we have today and just do the best we can with this. So what, how do you think about that? Because I think that was the problem. I think we had 70 something to 100 employees, a very much felt like what you said, right? 450 now almost 460 today. It like it gets a lot more challenge. So how are you thinking about that? Because I think that's the pain point. We always want to go back to what we had. I'll tell you this. Like even though guys like can we go back to this? It's like, well, I wish we could. It's just it's just I'm not making excuses. Just harder to do that now because it's just we're not the same business we were at 30 million. Now, you know what I mean? So what do you think about that?
Speaker 5Yeah, so, so I mean, going from $10 million to $30 million to getting everybody in the same group, and the same room is tough, all right? So we, we assume we do a Zoom meeting like crazy. I can get 30 people in the Zoom meeting versus I can get 30 people in the class, or it is more is, you know, like us, we start that four o'clock, it's going to end at five o'clock. Meeting starts at seven a.m. in the morning, it starts at seven a.m. in the morning. There is no pre me, pre BS meeting at six thirty and there is no BS after, you know, when the meeting is over. And you can get a lot more people in the Zoom now. Look, I don't have the pain that you have now with 450 people, right? So for me, it's easier to manage it now. And when I get there, we'll figure out my goal is to do a million dollars a day. Or see you when we get there.
Speaker 4Yeah. Awesome. I'm just curious, you know, just great business. You build great margin model. Like, what are you thinking about to sustain that? Because I think that's always the evolution on there.
Speaker 5But, um, here. I, I, I, I, Larry, I did not build it. My team build it. I got, I got my, I got my, my manager really do a fantastic job. Honestly, they, these guys, they, I don't know, when they sleep, most likely, they don't. You know, when I, when I think I'd be, everybody shows up here at six and the building is light up.
Speaker 2It let me ask you a question and and I think it's awesome that you have both Scott and John who worked with both of these guys as a part of rugby services, which are part of that family, which we love those guys. We just did interview with them not to go with both Jean and Richard Lewis. Great, great. Organization, I feel like I said it did do it right. You talked about them bringing like leading indicators versus lagging indicators into your business model. Yes, I mean, you were kind of doing your thing before you even brought them on board and doing well at it. Like, do you, um, what, like, what else did they bring to the table for you? Or, and I don't understand, like, if I, if I remember correctly, the way the redwood does this is, they want you, they want the operators that want to keep going. Like, they want to keep operating and running their businesses on their own doing their own thing and then they come back and support it and like, which is what we all hear, but they like they legit do it. But what else did they give you that's helping you kind of like expedite this or that you didn't have moving moving forward to help you, you know, because now you have in a like I was like 40 plus percent growth happening, it's like some big number can't reach never we like at 52% year over year in 26 compared to 25 and and and and and big.
Speaker 5We did not know what Scott and John is pitched us in the last year, all right? We did not think about lagging and leading and decay. We always have a dash, you know, a daily harder than we say, we did good yesterday, we sucked out it, all right? You know, and now we, I know at three o'clock in the afternoon, how tomorrow is going to look like? Right, and that's based on, you know, call counts for each division with separation of the HVAC department between service and opportunity guys, I learned from Ashmal Valdez, he taught me how to, you know, run the plumbing division and the electrical division, the same as you're having HVAC division, all right. Hey, let's have a look at that.
Speaker 4Absolutely, he's elected. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no Okay, and then you start his business, but then you were not next to our when you were growing his business, and then you get all these other things on your own by recent out learning from all everybody else, and then Joe and Redwood, which basically has a similar, I don't want to keep calling them next to our, they have a lot of like their own thing, but from our, our experience, they have a lot of similarities of how they operate.
Speaker 5Yeah, yeah, I guess we'll print from them. Yeah, okay. And as if literally, I just literally, I did not do anything, but the execution part. Okay.
Speaker 4Which is usually, that's, well, that's the hardest part. Most people learn all the stuff and then they can't execute. That's usually the biggest thing. All the information is, that's the truth though. The biggest thing is all the information is available to anybody. But there's not the one thing I think we have to understand in this tray, like I just talked about this too. I love the get Chad to jump it on this one too. It's like, my business goes Jim Hamilton, who was a legend to me, I was always like, I just tell you something you just go do it. I was like, well, yeah, because, I don't know any better. People always want to argue about things. I've never done it. I don't have anything to do it, but then everybody wants to debate how to do something before they've ever done it themselves. Like, I always always a big believer in the idea coming up, especially early on growing this business. Like, I haven't earned the right to change anything or challenge anything that's been more successful than me. If next star said this my business goes set it you know I'm gonna do I'm gonna do it And then I just remember guys I love that you said that because I think it's important to do that And then I go meet with guys in next started great guys have been successful and some haven't something You go back and they want to like debate and argue all these things that this process Chad you can probably speak this too, right? Or you as like what why are you arguing this thing you haven't you still you've been in this thing longer than me and you still haven't done it I just did what they said And now you want to think that you don't have to do it better, but what you've done better still hasn't surpassed what they said. So like that mindset, I think is super important is like you didn't like you might have tried to ask questions, but you didn't debate it and then say, I know a better way you just said, if this is the way I'm just going to do it.
Speaker 5Yeah, I know who I am to debate, I mean, this guys are very successful out and they they follow the process. and it makes it easy for me to just take the process and implement. So we focus on the most important goals for each division. We take four, five goals. We're going to work on it. Each one of them we're going to create as smart goals, specific, measurable, achievable. you know relevant and and and timeline or time time about and and then we act on the lead measures and in those smart goals they have to have actions and we just have a scoreboard scoreboard tells us how what's the score for the game and we create accountability to win. That's really as easy as a guess. Like you just figure out what the four things that you want to work on it. You could create some smart goals with them with timelines and action items, not a dream, not action items, and when the due date of each one, and you measure each one of them, and you put them in a scoreboard when everybody can't see them, and you hold everybody accountable to his goals. That's life.
Speaker 2of the company, I know you told me what was the name of your software company.
Speaker 5Now, Ergo's. A RGOS. That's like C2000.
Speaker 2Ergo. Okay, got it. Well, listen, we're already pushing 40 minutes into this episode, which is great. Great conversation back and forth. I think that we've established a built-in really great business. You kind of run it. Sounds like you got a really great system and a really great operators running the system and a lot of accountability. And that's kind of how you're scaling and then you brought on your record friends and you just keep going. And I know that, You know, Chad, I heard him say the same thing about just what he would learn from next time from from John Conway is like, John says, do this. I do this thing. I didn't like question. I didn't change things. I just did what they told me to do to to grow the business. And here in both these guys say this and you say this, it sounds like maybe even he broke don't fix it.
Speaker 5Yeah. I think most of the people felt Chris Chad and Aaron is they want to perfect the process before they execute it and there is nothing perfect in life, right? They want to know this process. It's this to tweak and this to tweak and this to tweak. We're not going to send it out on the road till we fix it. We make sure it's a 100% complete and it's perfect and never be perfect. It takes time or will never be perfect. I don't do that. When it's all good enough, we're going to execute it and go and fix it as it goes.
Speaker 2Hey, I think this is the perfect time guys to make a quick transition and I didn't know that was going to go down this route today, but I think that we I think we go for it and I think that means it's time for The home service VIP top three questions. I'm actually going to be really curious. Help me. You have no idea what I'm about to ask you. I'll take the first one, boys, because you guys have done most of the talking, which by the way has been fantastic. I love this. Um, okay, I want to ask you a question to help me, all right, and I want you to, it seems like you're a pretty straight shooter. I think you're going to give a good straight shooting answer on this, but from your experience, right? Now coming from the software industry, but in this things 2018, good success, you're kind of still on the come up, but you've been around some great people. What's broken in home services that nobody wants to admit? From your experience, what's proven in these services that nobody wants to admit?
Speaker 5Uh, retention's, uh, retention's of anchor ways. Um, I made a decision day one that I'm going to be the highest paid employer in the state.
Speaker 2You learned that one for Mishmal, right?
Speaker 5Yeah. All right. And we still have some retention problems. All right. The retention is people that like it easy. They don't like the father of the process. They don't like to be accountable. The accountability. It's not there. I think that's what the, I think the door knocking is like the worst. And after that, count as the home service.
Speaker 2Say, do we're knocking?
Speaker 5Yeah, you know, people they hire for doing nothing for a week and then they quit.
Speaker 2Yeah. Oh, I see. That's where your retention is is complicated.
Speaker 5Yeah, I get it. I believe that's the retention and we have the problem. The technical skills is the second part, but the retention is is typically is what what what the home service company lacked the most.
Speaker 2Hey, isn't that what Boach and John and Richard said to him from when we were going to read them? And they said the same thing.
Speaker 1Thanks, though.
Speaker 2I guess you guys are in, I guess you guys are alive there.
Speaker 4Yeah, that's good. And he's just up and down alignment between where that is culturally wise or what you need to do. I would agree, though. I think there's been a lot, I don't know, Chad, what you feel, but I think that the retention of the industry has changed a lot in my time for sure. And it feels like, you know, People are almost willing to walk faster than ever at times. It feels like it times. I don't know, it seems like in general, maybe that's a cultural thing from a society standpoint, but it does feel like that. Sometimes you're going to even, you used to feel like you kind of knew if somebody was going to go, there's like a lot more kind of indicators and just have no of a sudden somebody's just kind of like, now I do this anymore, I'm going to go get a warehouse job or something. Like it's just kind of wild a little bit of times. I don't, I don't know, I don't know. Chad, you got something on that, too?
Speaker 1No, I would say the same thing. It's like, I don't, and it's also like, I don't understand what you're looking for. Like, what is so drastic? What do you think is going to be so drastic? Especially the people that go from one company to another. Like I don't understand like what are we, I know we have stuff to work on and we're not perfect and there's stuff that's broken, but like what do you feel that you're going to get that is so like earth shattering different at this other place and I think it's a lot to help me to your point is like I think a lot of them are running from the accountability. Like, it's like, oh, well, maybe if I go over here, no one will see that I don't really want to try that hard. And I think it's like, I honestly think that is because like, I can't think of a good reason as to like, like, oh, yeah, this place over here, they do inventory a lot different, really like that. Like, that's That is where I want to be. It's like, What you're running, I think they run plumbing calls, pretty sure. I think that's what it looks like over there. I mean, unless they run some call that I don't know about, and they send plumbers out to fix it, you're doing the same thing. So that's the part that I can't get, but I'm with you Aaron. It's like, hold on, what happened to Billy? Like, I get to, you know, hey, Billy left. I'm like, what happened? Like, I don't know. It's told us he's done. Okay, sounds good.
Speaker 4Yeah, so I don't know what you do there. And I know culture matters in that stuff too. Like you're having the one-on-one conversation do stuff. But we do that, guys, do that. Maybe we need to be better at it. But there is an opportunity, sometimes, like, I just feel like sometimes people just don't share as much as they used to about what's going on. So then you just now descend as just like they're gone. So I agree, I guess what we're saying is we actually some agree with what you're saying, without beaten on it. I guess Chris, everybody has another question. But it does seem interesting, because I don't think We all are seeing this and understand this like so now what do we do right how do we how do we tackle it as an industry even better together to work together to make this industry keep having good retention and people.
Speaker 5I don't have the answer to that. Larry, I thought I did everything possible to create the best course. I mean, the guys are here to love it. And it's so funny, man. Everybody leaves. They always text back the manager two weeks later. It says, what can you think? All right. Yeah. I guess the grass is not green around there. But again, some people, they, you know, For some reason, they don't like to put their ID badge and then shoot covers. All right, and then it become problem for them and eventually they're not here. All right, we could do much better, you know, a job in the hiring process. But again, that's my problem and everybody I talk to is recruiting is typically is where retention is the problem.
Speaker 2Well, I don't believe I'm going to get to three questions. So we're going to just keep this one at two. And I'm going to actually ask a different one than normal, gentlemen, if that's OK with you, boys.
Speaker 1I can't remember the other two. So yeah, go for it.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1At least Aaron knows that I do know I do the one that you said. Like if he would have called on me, I could have, I could have, but I can't remember the other one.
Speaker 4That one actually probably is the most impactful because I think that does it. Yeah.
Speaker 2So I'll share that right now just for the sneak of this conversation and then I'll ask the other one. I'm going to ask it's not part of the three. The other one is what he'll do dial in as an operator. I'm not asking that question. Help me. I'm just sharing it. And then one is what's one thing every every owner should stop doing immediately. So I'm not going to ask you those questions. I'm actually going to ask you really cheesy one. But it's the one I'm interested to ask you specifically. And you know, 2018 is what nine years ago at this point, right?
Speaker 3Is that kind of a math, right?
Speaker 2Well, suit that. What is a 26 or 27? What the hell are you six? It's okay, everyone. Yeah, eight years ago. Me. You know, I just had a radiation treatment record for it. Did this, I got a little brain fog. Okay, last time someone asked you, then we'll go ahead and close out.
Speaker 4And you used to count all the, and the Google, all the, all the, all the rhythm numbers, right? To make sure you get the right amount of leads and the math. And okay, I got it.
Speaker 2Yeah. Yeah, see, that's exactly it. Thank you. And all the other members, I had to count to, okay, so super simple easy question, okay, you're eight years into the steel. If you had to start over tomorrow, okay, first question is, would you rather have money or would you rather have a network? Which one of those two would you rather have money or the network? Okay, and then what would be the, what would be the first thing that you do?
Speaker 5Higher the top management team in the country. That's what you do every day, right? Yeah. I did, I hired the best to in the state right of the gate. I took a loan for them to pay for them. Right. But if I would do it all over again, I will hire a bigger team right of the gate.
Speaker 2Okay, great. Well, I guess that was pretty straightforward. I guess for you, if you since you chose network that also helps have this little segment. I'm going to add this thing to Chad Marin that I thought about and it was like a higher fire and there's like a truck like a, would you rather question. I think I'm going to add this into one of these segments. It was going to be pretty fun.
Speaker 4I'm sure you're collaborating with us on that.
Speaker 2Yeah. Yeah, you want to be great.
Speaker 4You always see all this goes.
Speaker 2Yeah, I like to surprise you guys.
Speaker 4It's so much more fun than I had a lot more fun that way by the way.
Speaker 2Hey, hell, we're real quick before we close out here. Is there any questions that you want to ask you to one of these boys? I know you can already go back and forth a little bit, but you mean, obviously these guys are, you know, behemoths and the industry to you. And so you want to ask them before we close you guys out of like five times my size.
Speaker 5Well, what's Well, how you get from $50 million to a $70 million or a hundred? What did you make? What's the difference? Processes setup you did when you are below 50 to over 50.
Speaker 1So I think there's a couple of things, I think the finance side becomes more critical because your overhead will grow and being in the HVAC business, we're primarily HVAC, I don't know what your split is, but I mean, it moves, right? You're in New Jersey, so like you get hot cold, you get mild, you get all that stuff. Being able to have someone who has their pulse on that, that's not my specialty, you know, Aaron has Mike, I have Michael. I'm sure you have someone, but making sure that you've got that person who knows how to manage cash flow and make sure that you've got everything where you need, you know, because I think when you start to get this role, at least if for us like at 50 million, willingness to make dumber decisions like you're you're you're not as tight on that I got hell let's let's bring in this person like so and so said that we ought to do this and it's like then you lose that piece which you said has been so critical to your success of that accountability right and I think that's the hardest part is like how do I like if it's you managing these direct people will then you can hold them accountable. because you know what the outcome needs to be. Well, as you hit 50 and 70, well, all of a sudden, you are sitting in your office and know that it's like, it's harder to affect change, unless you have the right people in place, that know the goal, know the business, are willing to hold the people that they manage accountable. Finance is a key piece of that, but that goes kind of holistically through that. I think the other piece is people like you've got to figure out what we just talked about retention well like in order to do 50 or 70 million like you're going to have to run double the calls. So like where are you getting double the calls? Now I think getting the leads sounds like you've got a lot of great systems you can go get the leads. but you gotta have people to run those leads. And I think that's probably the one piece where we've kind of like almost hit a wall. It's like we wanna grow, but it's like, we've got to build more and more technicians and to get that growth that you wanna get. You gotta have a lot more technicians. Like, definitely double your staff when you got 10, you gotta get to 20. Well, double your staff when you've got 100, you gotta get a hundred more. like where are they coming from and if we know that the pool is such, you know, where are we going to get all these people and then on top of that where are we going to get all these people that want to follow process procedure want to be held accountable want to do all the things that we know have made this successful. HR's another big one like you know you go from a hundred like 400 people like having a tight HR team that's like managing all of the shit that's going to happen with 400 like I was just talking to somebody about this today we had an employee who's you know going to lose a spouse and it's like. I turned to her. She's been with me for like 25 years. I go, what the hell? Like we used to have like one tragic event or one death or one, I feel like we have one every week. Like how we deal with this stuff, but it's like the law of numbers while the same thing with like your HR complaints. of like shit going wrong and people going off the rail and all of this like making sure all of those back office functions you've got the right leader that can take it to the next level and help you scale all that process and procedure that sometimes you don't have to think about when you know you've got a hundred when you have more it it just it just compounds on itself. Did you have your guru in house? So we have a recruiting manager and then we have two recruiters that are recruiting. But one point is not good back, that's one size. I would have got a recruiter a long time before I did. I think that's a great position to add. You don't need like hierarchy, you just need like someone like, you know, kind of intrigue. You just need someone doing it every day, like just reaching out, talking to people, setting up interviews, so on and so forth. But yeah, your size.
Speaker 4Now, right?
Speaker 1Yeah, right now. Get it right now.
Speaker 5Thank you.
Speaker 4Yeah. Just to follow up when I agree with everything Chad said, I think also maybe with your partnership, they might be healthy, but also some of the things that you've done, they break. They just fundamentally break. You don't realize they're going to break, but I can tell you. around 30 to 40, everything kept working fine, 50, 60, 70, everything you thought was what worked, kind of stacked working. And I mean by that, it's like, even your accounting software, you had to go to and end over to the sage intact, right? And then you had to do all that. Maybe you've already done that, right? If you've done that earlier, then you had the aim. But that, and then some of the way you ran your call center, doesn't work the exact same way the way you book it like there's just things that fundamentally have scale, but they will actually break because the business operates so differently. And I think that's just understanding what are those things that are going to break because they will. I don't know how you operate or you step with your certain ways we used to run our call center through next our processes that do not actually work when we got to scale anymore, right. They're great when you're smaller, you can control, you can do stuff. You do these things that just kind of break in those processes. And I think the other thing for me, at least for me, and there's a lot of people I've been on this journey with me too, is that not everybody's going to make it. Right? I think that's a hard reality. Maybe you've got a great team. It sounds like you've done on gunstep. And I've had a great team I've been blessed. There's so many people that have helped me in this organization and grow. But certain people aren't seats that We're not $50 million operators. They were not $75 million operators. And then having to have that conversation later was probably the hardest thing. Is that like, because you have so much, um, yeah, I said, I said, I said, no, I said, yeah, what got you, he didn't want to get you there. Yeah, and that's true, though, but there's some that will find, but the odds of them are as hard because when your business is going this fast, people can only grow so fast, right? So, uh, I think that's one of things that I guess I would answer to. And I think I think that's what Chad was saying there, but for me, that was probably one of the hardest parts for me was the reality of that.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's a hard one.
Speaker 2Yeah, there you go. Well, I know it's it's go time and everybody's got to get me of him, but to help me appreciate you coming on your given us your time. Hopefully this was as enjoyable for you. It has been for me.
Speaker 5Yes, it is. I'm I'm I'm grateful to be part of this group. Absolutely.
Speaker 2Well, and congrats on the success. Like always, it said, I mean, hell of a job, man, you just keep going. I love it. And we'll, you know, hopefully we'll, I'm sure we'll probably see you at, at the freedom or panty.
Speaker 5I'm really saying, yeah, I would be back. I'll be there with hopefully much, say it would be a 50 minute. Okay, oh, yeah, let's go.
Speaker 2All right, Joe, I'm going to go ahead and make this short and sweet. You know, I think one thing that he said that released it out to me too was, you know, progress over perfection and like you're never going to do anything and perfectly. And so I don't want to hang you up from starting anything. So if you follow some of that wise advice, you know, like you know, like Aaron said, you know, why debate something you haven't done, you know, and try to change it before it is work, like just just follow, just follow what's working, right? And you do your own thing, but whatever you do, don't talk about it. be about it until next week when we have our next guest or whoever VIP I guess come up I'm happy to have you VIP listeners come back and hang with us boys so until then we'll see.
Speaker 0What's the password?
Speaker 3Don't talk about it. Be about it.
