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Are you focused on business leads in your home service company when the seasons change? This week, Jack and John talk about weak months during peak HVAC season, big victories coming from major talent hires, and the power of specialty equipment paying for itself almost immediately. However, the big topic of conversation covers home service business leads, generating those leads when times get quiet, and the various avenues an owners has available to source customers.
Episode Hosts: 🎤
John Wilson: @WilsonCompanies on Twitter
Jack Carr: @TheHVACJack on Twitter
More Ways To Connect
John Wilson, CEO of Wilson Companies
https://www.wilsonplumbingandheating.com
Jack Carr, CEO of Rapid HVAC
https://rapidhvactn.com
Owned and Operated Episode 136 Transcript
John Wilson: I'm John Wilson. Welcome to Owned and Operated. Twice a week we talk about home service businesses and if you're a home service entrepreneur then this is going to be the show for you. We talk about our own business in residential, plumbing, HVAC and electric and we also talk about business models that we just find interesting.
John Wilson: Let's get into it. If you like what we talk about on our social media, on Twitter, on this podcast, then you should be signed up for our newsletter. Go to ownedandoperated. com where every Friday we break down our business, we break down insights, things we're learning, things we're working on, and it's good stuff.
John Wilson: Check it out, ownedandoperated. com. Welcome back to Owned and Operated. What's going on, John? Dude, back from the mish. Last time we talked, I was michiganing it up. And I'm back at it now. So Wednesday, end of July, John is back. Feeling okay in high death. Everyone feeling okay? The hd? Yeah, hd. hd.
John Wilson: But yeah. No, I'm doing good. We've got some wins and we've got some bummers. I'll do the bummers first. Yeah. July started insane and ended week. Hey, so that's a bummer. It started so insane that we still set an all time revenue record. But like it ended like it, it didn't end depressing. It's just like it didn't end strong.
John Wilson: So like we're doing fine. We're doing fine. It's just aggravating
Jack Carr: because July is usually like peak of peak. John, you're so fun to talk to on these podcasts because I think that you ride this high wave quite often. And so you're low wave. Your bummers are still other people's like dreams.
Jack Carr: Where they're made of.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Jack Carr: Yeah. So I get that you have a moral and stuff, but. Like
John Wilson: July was still above 2 million. Yeah,
Jack Carr: exactly.
John Wilson: For perspective, but like we had expected. We missed budget, right? So like we expected 2. 3 and we're going to land at 2. 1. So we're still excited, but like we thought we would do better.
Jack Carr: Yeah. That's always hard.
John Wilson: Bunch of different things that add into that. Was there
Jack Carr: any, not to call anybody out, but was there any department that led or lagged that?
John Wilson: Not really.
Jack Carr: Cause HVAC, and
John Wilson: that was a part of the frustrating part is it wasn't across the board, a little bit of a, dropped. So eight, HVAC got a little cooler.
John Wilson: This week is hot again, so we're starting to mix a few smoothies.
Jack Carr: We hit that same lag in HVAC, but we were backwards. We had a really slow start to July, and then our end of July, even with that colder weather, just completely So interesting.
John Wilson: Yeah. No, we're we're definitely working hard right now.
John Wilson: Whereas like in the first part of July, we didn't feel like we were working hard at all to throw some pretty big numbers up on the board right now, or we feel like we're working pretty hard. So we're dropping we have the inside sales team doing rehash and they're, keeping our guys busy.
John Wilson: We're in code red some days, which means there's availability tomorrow. For an install crew. So what that means is we start doing discounts varying degrees, depending on how far unbooked we are, but HVAC still been really steady. It's still July. So where we've actually seen the weakness has been plumbing.
John Wilson: So HVAC's been like doing fine.
Jack Carr: Yeah. And so that's your lows. What are the big wins? Where,
John Wilson: where are the highs at? I have two big wins. The first big one, we've been talking to the internet for four years now and sharing our journey from 3 million to 26 this year over the past 36 months.
John Wilson: Obviously a lot going on there. And a lot of people have asked, why do you do this? And
Jack Carr: yeah,
John Wilson: I really don't know. And my first actual good use case for all of this time, except for the fun stuff, like I love getting to meet people and I think it's fun, like the first actual use case for how this benefits my core business happened in the last week.
John Wilson: So a lot of comments were like, why are you sharing this on the internet? What is your competitors listen to read? And I'm here to tell you that they do listen and they do read, like I see their emails on our newsletter and I think that's great and I'm not bothered by it at all. I think it's funny.
John Wilson: But my first actual use case was. Through our media and through all of our sharing of content, we put up a director of sales position last Thursday at 4 p. m. And within about 48 hours, we had 250 applicants, a huge majority coming through our media channels of my personal LinkedIn, my Twitter, our newsletter responses, it was absolutely insane.
John Wilson: The quality of candidate was like out of a dream where you get people that know exactly how to solve. The exact problems that we have. And it was incredible. So it was like, that was a big win for me because we talked about this literally last week on the podcast
Jack Carr: and like we filled the seat.
Jack Carr: Dude that's really cool. I'm not surprised because I know we took,
John Wilson: We thought it would take two months to recruit that position. So when we got in the first two days, over a dozen this person actually could perform this role at a high level. Yeah, we really didn't even know what to think, because, we were preparing to engage recruiters.
John Wilson: We were, like, going through a this is going to be a journey, and
Jack Carr: it wasn't. Yeah, but I'm not surprised only because when we talked to Tommy Mello, that was his same kind of reaction was most of the people already subscribed to me who we hire And same with reliant air down in austin, texas Their pool is always full and why because of their media arm and so they're like media Seems to be a great avenue for Generating talent, but that is cool that it's actually come to fruition.
John Wilson: Yeah, like we made a director level higher and we had You I mean, obviously hundreds of applications, but we had a large number of them were eligible hires. That's really cool. Like any of them could have done a great job. You're really just crazy. So that's obviously a huge win. Big step for the business.
John Wilson: And we're really excited about that. My second big win is we talked about sewer lining and we just bought this equipment and we sold four. Yeah. We sold, yeah, we sold four linings in the first week and a half, basically. And pretty much covered the retail cost of the equipment. So that was cool. That's awesome.
John Wilson: Loved that.
Jack Carr: I love that because I love new toys and new equipment. So that's super cool. And I want one. I was showing everybody in the office what it is and why I want one, but not going to do it yet. Going to do it soon. Do it. I know it looks so fun. It looks so cool. Man, that is awesome that you were able to hire that quickly, like especially a really talented candidate.
Jack Carr: I was talking with a bunch of other podcasters and social media influencers the other day through a different group and different means. Nobody was very impressed with my resume here, so It makes me feel better that I could live vicariously through you since the, all the YouTube kids weren't impressed with our podcast, mostly me.
Jack Carr: The fact that you are actually getting value from it makes me feel good.
John Wilson: I think what I found that people liked, anytime I'm interviewing someone who's basically non technical, sometimes it happens with technicians as well. People do research in the company, they find my socials. They find the podcast and they listen.
John Wilson: So it is very normal for a candidate to walk in and have questions about what they heard on the show. Now, what that has also added, is people highly value the transparency.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: They get it. They know, it's not a mystery of how John thinks. It's not a mystery of where we're going. We're pretty out there.
John Wilson: But people like that a lot.
Jack Carr: My problem is when people they look up my name, it happens to be a world famous actor who's been on Joe Rogan slash Babass. Hold on,
John Wilson: that isn't you. That's not you that wrote that book. It's
Jack Carr: not me that wrote the terminal. This whole time. Yeah, I didn't. This whole time I thought it Navy Seal, Green Beret, whatever the guy is, but Bald hair, I thought it was you, man.
Jack Carr: I still get LinkedIn messages, people thinking that I'm him, and I can tell you I'm not. You should lean into it. Start a consulting business, how to write a book. If you are not following, Our Facebook group, you should definitely join our Facebook group. We get a lot of good conversation in there. And the question, boy, just crossed 400 members for, I think
John Wilson: we're only 90 days into it.
John Wilson: Maybe we started in. March or April and we're 400 and I think the thing that I like the most about it versus a lot of these other groups I'm in it is some of these groups. I didn't even know like Facebook groups can really be a cesspool Exactly. It's a bunch of whatever but yeah, these are everyone owns something everyone owns a plumbing company HVAC company and it's
Jack Carr: There's no, like I've been reading through it, we have very little, I shouldn't say no, but very little kind of that self solicitation or anything like that.
Jack Carr: Like it legitimately is a good group where you could ask questions and get actual answers from people. business owners who are your size, smaller, bigger.
John Wilson: It's been super helpful. Yeah, it's been super helpful.
Jack Carr: We get this question a lot. And I want to dive back into it. We touch base with it. Yeah. In the workshop.
Jack Carr: We spend a whole day talking about this in the workshop, guys. That's our, our big point right here. Shameless plug. The shameless plug. Thank you. And the question came, you guys can go look up who it's from if you're in the group, but I'm not going to blast him. It was just saying, Hey, I'm a one man operation.
Jack Carr: And my biggest issue right now is getting the phones touring and we all run into it. It's, at some point in our career, whether it's, Hey, we hired too many people. Now we don't have enough jobs. It's shoulder season dah. So I want to talk today about leads and how and when and where we should really be focusing marketing.
Jack Carr: And how to drive just making the phone ring. Do you have anywhere specifically you want to start John, or at least the zero to 1 million, what you think?
John Wilson: I think I'll give like a quick philosophy on one hand, it's easier to drive leads for a one man business than a bigger business, because all you need is two or three leads.
John Wilson: So that is a manageable number. So one of the things that we care about the most in our business is capacity. And we think about. A lot of our time is spent trying to resolve capacity constraints, and that capacity constraint could be number of call takers for our inbound calls, or number of installers for our sold work, or, it's almost every different part of the business has like this new constraint that prevents it from, Growing and having too few people is a big constraint.
John Wilson: We find it, I personally find it much more difficult to drive leads for one person than three, because the issue is like, what happens if someone's sick? What happens if on their, if they're on vacation, like you need capacity. Like you need to be able to overflow. And if you're just one guy, then if you sell a job, then you don't need leads tomorrow.
John Wilson: But then the next day you need leads and then you sell something. So then you don't need leads the next day. And it's the on off switch of leads that makes it complicated. Because if you just needed three leads a day, that's actually an easy problem to solve the different things to do there.
John Wilson: It's the ebb and flow of Oh, I sold something now I'm busy. Now I don't need leads. I think that's a great point to start.
Jack Carr: Because especially in hvac right? You naturally have that ebb and flow, but people aren't waiting two to three days. If you have an install, they're not waiting. Yep. Two days for you to get out there to do service work.
Jack Carr: Yeah. Which then leads to another install. So you're actually, yeah. We had this issue before we, we separated our crews, is that we were shooting ourself in the foot tomorrow. To solve today's capacity, which is something you naturally do, I think as your business progresses. I think that's the first problem to solve even before you have leads is.
Jack Carr: Making sure, I've said this before, that you have that capacity resolving plan, whether that be subs for install, you're going to send out all package unit installs, you find that person, they're going to do all the ductwork sub install etc. Or you hire out for that position, because you can't do both at the same time.
John Wilson: Or like, how you think about the type of work you accept. And this is where I see people make the most mistakes. We are actively
Jack Carr: making this mistake, by the way. Yeah. I get it. We have a commercial job that we are actively, I know we shouldn't be taking. But we are doing it because it's going to hit in November or late October, which is our Oh my god, yeah.
Jack Carr: So You're gonna, this is the worst. You guys are gonna hear about this, we'll refer back. This is
John Wilson: the worst, I hate this. You guys are gonna
Jack Carr: be so mad, I'm gonna be mad at me. But sorry, side track.
John Wilson: The idea here is what I usually see happen in these smaller companies is the owner doesn't have leads for a day or he's concerned about his shoulder season like you just said.
John Wilson: So they grab a new construction project. They grab a month long, whatever. And then they, that project ends and suddenly they're desperate for leads again. I think the point that I'm trying to make here, let's determine if you actually have a leads problem or if the way you're running your business sucks, because those are two different problems
Jack Carr: or there's a sales problem, which we have sometimes in our business is that you don't have a leads problem.
Jack Carr: You have a closing problem, right? You get three calls a day. But you're not closing those businesses. You're not flipping those leads. You're not elongating that work cycle, if you will. Yep. So it could be a sales issue. You don't have your sales right here. You actually have a leads issue or you have a capacity issue and it's an on and off switch.
John Wilson: I would actually say the big challenge that I would put out there nine out of 10 times, you do not have a leads problem. My guess is that you, you don't, or the way you run your sales process or the way you fill your time. creates a capacity constraint so you have an ebb and flow because if all you have to do every day is get three leads, that is an achievable problem.
John Wilson: Like you can do that. The issue is when you need three on Monday, one on Tuesday, one on Thursday. Four on Wednesday. That is hard. For this though, I think that
Jack Carr: for this episode and for the listeners, I think we should dig into, Hey, you have your capacities constraint covered, right? You cause everyone's going to listen to this.
Jack Carr: And then my feeling is that you're still going to believe
John Wilson: they're going to go take a month long new construction job and be mad in a month that there's no, there's still going to say they have a leap. So
Jack Carr: I think that, it solves Not an ebb and flow issue, though. Fixing the problem actually solves the problem, John.
Jack Carr: You know what else solves the problem? Just getting way too many leads.
John Wilson: If you don't stop the behavior that got you into the situation in the first place, if you're still taking a month long new construction job because you can't get your head out of your butt and just think for a second that, hey, this is a problem, more leads will break you, because you aren't solving the problem, which is The underlying issue, yeah.
John Wilson: Yeah, and the underlying issue is your scheduling. That's it. Because any, anyone can find four leads a day. And the answer is honestly really easy. If you have four slots a day, you go on Facebook, you join every Facebook group, you go on Nextdoor, you join every group, there's even softwares that aggregate it for you, you just get four leads a day.
John Wilson: You can hire someone in the Philippines to comment back, send your schedule, I'll be there in an hour. You don't even need Google. It is so easy to get four leads a day. As long as that's what you actually need.
Jack Carr: Are you currently dumping money into the PPC pit of despair? That's how I used to feel before I started working with service scalers.
Jack Carr: I would waste money with two, three, four other agencies. Then I started working with service scalers and they were able to drive meaningful leads in my business. And now it's one of our cheapest paid lead generation platforms. They specialize in PPC, SEO, and LSA management. So if you're looking to increase meaningful leads in any of those areas, I would give them a shout out and see what they can do for you.
Jack Carr: I think it's best to focus on that just for this scenario. No. Because, I'm gonna be stubborn.
John Wilson: No,
Jack Carr: yeah, we'll do it. No, I know. I know that's the right answer. I just think that this would be more valuable talking about actually driving leads. What would you do at the 0 1 and then 1 3, 3 5?
Jack Carr: Yeah. And so I think that you hit the nail on the head for the one to three for anyone listening who's below 1 million like the actual answer and what I answered in that Facebook post was pound pavement start hitting all of the groups all the Facebook groups and you'll see new construction wherever you're from Los Angeles or contractors Los Angeles or Need work, Los Angeles, household work, new to Los Angeles.
Jack Carr: You can even find people who are new to the area. I think that's a great place to start next door. Hey, we have an opening today. We're doing this special group of people who are homeowners in one that we like is HOAs. So one of our big strategies of which we're happy to talk about next year is next summer.
Jack Carr: Like the opening pool parties, we are actively planning on sponsoring every neighborhood pool party in the area. And it costs like 300 in drinks and food. It's nothing. And you get 15 minutes to talk and say, and we use like two. We say, hey, this is who we are. This is what we do. We love your neighborhood.
Jack Carr: Here's have a party on us. And we drive five to six leads from that in the short term. And then in the longterm, who knows how many, but point being is really hitting all of these groups. Online groups are the best. And then actually going and making sure you're part of your BNI or your local networking groups.
Jack Carr: Having them put out blasts for you or email blasts. Asking. Do you think I'm missing anything there, John? Door to door. That's some balls right there. Excuse the terminology, but whatever. We do it. Whatever the, that's Bravery, if you will, that's bravery or bankruptcy, which would you prefer?
Jack Carr: No, I fully agree. I've told the people I will stand on the corner with a sign that says need service work today. Here's my sign. Call this number. Like I'll, I'm not above it. I just, I, the people who will actually do that, they have burned. That's the true sign of actually burning the ships is if you will go personally door to door knock for business.
Jack Carr: It works. So have you ever done it
John Wilson: like personally? Yeah no, I haven't. I haven't either. I get
Jack Carr: too nervous.
John Wilson: So yeah, we have a team. We have a team of canvassers. The way I would be thinking about this, I'm going to, I'm going to hit behavior. And then I'm going to go to leads. Okay. Okay. Deal.
John Wilson: Cause I feel like I really need to drive this point home. It would be better to be not busy at all and available to take a good call, then locked up on a big new construction project that takes a week, two weeks a month. And not have the ability to drive the business forward. It would be better. And because if you can be available when the water heater calls, you will make more doing one job a week than you will make in two weeks on a new construction project.
Jack Carr: And for everyone out there who thinks that we're just talking like this is actually how business is conducted in the sense that, for example, we had a opportunity to do some new construction. At 900 a drop in slab. And to keep our plumbers busy, two plumbers, ten days. At making, I think it was like 500 a day for the company each, we turned it down.
Jack Carr: We said, no, because I can't lock up two of my install plumbers for 10 days. It's just not going to happen because that's a water heater. We'll cover that, they should be installing six to 7, 000 a day and work a tankless would almost, take that whole week for one plumber. So you can't like it's guaranteed work and it's guaranteed work from an aspect of.
Jack Carr: Hey, this is, this is great. This is work. This is a call. The phones are ringing, but realistically, if you can get the phones to ring for a better call, it's worth it.
John Wilson: Yeah. You'll really move the needle. So stop thinking in terms of busy and start thinking in terms of maximized. Because if you're thinking busy Oh man, I got to keep busy.
John Wilson: Then you're going to take those crappy projects. But if you're thinking about how do I actually make the most or how do I maximize the day or the week or whatever, you're going to focus on the right stuff. And the reason that's especially important, that behavior and like thinking about, Oh, I can take two calls a day or three calls a day at all time.
John Wilson: And I'll never go below that because if you nail that, then lead flow gets really easy because if you're only being busy, then you're not going to do the activities that you need to do. to get the leads that are easy to get. You actually can just go door to door. Our door to door people do book calls.
John Wilson: They book like four calls a day each. So if all you need is four calls, then you could do that. You could book four or five calls a day from Facebook groups. But you need the time to do it. And if all your time is going into bad paying projects or long term projects, then it's not gonna work.
John Wilson: One of the rules that we use is one day projects only. And that's a really important rule for us. Now, sometimes we break it. We'll do some multi head mini split systems and those will take a couple days, but we don't want to be booked out being booked out as a bad thing, because that means we don't have available capacity to take demand calls and all of our profit is made in demand calls just, and that, that doesn't change if you're a one man show or, a hundred man show, all your profits made in demand calls.
John Wilson: So you have to be available for when those demand calls come in. So you don't take on projects that are more than a day. And then what that lets you do is that lets you maximize your capacity. So you can always have room for two or three calls, plus whatever you sell. Maybe you're bringing a sub, you're bringing another guy.
John Wilson: So yeah, the behavior is to me the most important thing because after you nailed on behavior and scheduling, it's not complicated. You just go door to door. Like how fast of an impact do you need to make? If the schedule is empty today. Then you have time. Go knock on the door. If your schedule's empty tomorrow, do Facebook groups, cause that probably takes 24 hours.
John Wilson: If it's next week let's work on Google. But those three things should be enough to keep a one man show going. I don't even think it's worth doing paid advertising at all until you figure out your behavior, scheduling, and capacity problems. Because all you're going to do is you're going to pay for LSA leads and you're not going to have the openings to run them because you're going to be on some two week project.
Jack Carr: Also, I don't think that you'll get those LSA calls. I think my advice in this post specifically was don't focus on LSA and GMB paid strategy until you reach a certain threshold of reviews. Because Here's the, yeah, it's a hundred reviews usually, I put about 50, 60 is when we start to see calls show up for LSA on our GMBs.
Jack Carr: But realistically, if you're, newer at this, you're at 26, 30 reviews. It's just, it's not going to pan out the PPC is not going to work, that LSA isn't going to be put in front of enough customers. Because you're juxtaposed against another company who has 2. 6 thousand and from a, you might get the occasional person who wants to use a small company, but most of the time people have the same psychological patterns of picking You know above a certain threshold.
John Wilson: Yeah,
Jack Carr: they'll get to me faster So they'll get to me faster better service, but they probably have a higher price So it's really focusing what you have as a benefit going on for you at the moment is that you have The ability to pound the pavement and be outside and be with your customers and have that personal relationship So I like to look at it from and
John Wilson: you don't have that Unless you leave yourself open to opportunities and don't take jobs that are longer than a day.
Jack Carr: I'd also refrain from paying a bunch of people early on. I know that's a big pitfall that even I fell into is, we love service scalers. I love service scalers. I use them. We just actually doubled our ad spend with them. Okay. Yeah, buddy. And so we're super happy with service scalers.
Jack Carr: That being said, I wouldn't use service scalers at all. One person,
John Wilson: what a one man shop. You really can't because it's exactly like I was just talking to Sam Preston from service dealers the other day. And like his comment was, he's dude, July is a crazy month for us. And I was like, why? He's because all of the small guys paused their ads because they don't have capacity because they took dumb project. When it's off on, off, on, off, on, like we don't turn our advertising off. It just doesn't go off because then we just never have to think about it. Like we know we're going to do it. And if we have leads, then we're going to hire people. But it, and that's why I don't even think people should really touch paid for a while is because you need to nail down scheduling.
Jack Carr: Yeah. And that, that, like you said, reverberates throughout the entire organization. Do you have enough people to take all the calls? Do you have enough people to then do the service? Do you have enough people to do the install? Do you pick up the phone? So making sure with the leads, I think paid is great.
Jack Carr: LSA is great. PPC is great. Making sure you have 50 to a hundred. Reviews prior, and you also need that review kind of continuous lead flow after you hit a hundred reviews. You can't stop there because there's strategies involved with the LSA link, with the GMB link, and so making sure that you have enough.
Jack Carr: Work in enough calls and you have your review strategy down on how are we generating reviews? So there's a lot of nuance behind that, that you really need to get locked in before you start paying for that. What do you think about SEO early on?
John Wilson: I think you should do it like SEO takes time.
Jack Carr: That's where I'm at. So like this sooner, the better. I wouldn't dump a ton into it, but definitely get it's the ball roll. Yeah.
John Wilson: It's a two to four grand a month thing, and it's whatever you've got the capacity to do, and do it as early as you can. Yeah that's good advice. And then don't turn it off.
John Wilson: SEO is just it's a car payment. You don't want to turn it off.
Jack Carr: I was going to say like a snowball, just over time it just generates and generates. That too, but it's,
John Wilson: it's just one of those it's, I don't see that as an expense to mess with. Yeah. And the big advice there is just be really cautious of who you use.
John Wilson: I was just talking to someone the other day, and Scorpion's SEO package is still one or two articles a month for the same price I was paying seven years ago. And I just think that's so insane for the amount of Content you can create more efficiently like one or two posts a month just doesn't do anything like it's wild to me that's still an
Jack Carr: offering.
Jack Carr: It's also the realization that you have to compete with people who are generating Significantly more than that. Yeah, especially with AI and help like that
John Wilson: dozens or hundreds or thousands
Jack Carr: of pages a month So we have initial zero to one really focusing on kind of groups personalization getting your mentality, your behavior, correct.
Jack Carr: Once you get past that one, you can start, mostly based on reviews, but you can start doing some paid LSA is great, right? And forget two to three calls depending on demand a week, whatever it is starting PPC. When do you recommend Starting to push into paid branding advertising. So I view that as like Facebook, TikTok, like TV radio,
John Wilson: late.
John Wilson: So I got a peek under the hood, a small to midsize firm. Last week, 10 percent of revenue on marketing and shrinking. And I was like, that's weird.
Jack Carr: Super weird.
John Wilson: Let's let's dive into that. Bunch of it was like branding activities. Billboards, sure there was some TV in there. What you need is leads. You could argue you don't
Jack Carr: even have a brand below a certain number.
Jack Carr: That your brand identity and the amount that you're out, actually out in the market is so little comparatively that your brand doesn't, it just doesn't exist. It's not an actual thing and so to waste money on branding. Really is low value.
John Wilson: I think so too. I think brand becomes really important north of 10 million.
John Wilson: I think up to that point. And even that's a stretch. So if you look at like weight of ad spend, a conventional metric used to be like 50, 50 digital to like traditional, And I think now it should be like 70 percent digital, 30 percent traditional, and that's at 10 million. And like below that, I think it should be like 90 percent digital.
John Wilson: Like we're messing around with mailers, and so far it's broken evens. So we've been like But it's a big investment. It cost me 20 grand a month. I can't imagine someone, and the same as billboards, like the company that I referenced, I see their billboards everywhere. I'm like, what are you what are you doing?
John Wilson: I just couldn't, I can't even fathom what you think you're doing at your size doing billboards instead of just a lead generating activity. Almost every company on billboards that I see, there's only one that's north of 10 million. Everyone else is like four to five or even smaller. And I'm like, what?
John Wilson: Literally, what are you doing? That's 80 grand a year going nowhere.
Jack Carr: No, I fully agree. We, I have done a billboard before not for the business, but for business acquisition. I had one call to that billboard, like it just didn't generate what people think it's going to generate. I also did TV.
Jack Carr: See, I've made these mistakes and that TV, Didn't generate a single call. And you could argue, Hey, anybody who saw that, nobody remembers that ad. It was a good quirky little funny ad. Maybe a few people do, but not to a point where it's actually driving actual revenue to the point that I had to like in return for my spend, because that's the thing, right?
Jack Carr: It's all ROI based and there's just such so little ROI.
John Wilson: And it takes forever and like it needs to be well thought out. We're getting ready to do probably 20 percent of our marketing budget. We'll go towards branded activities, but that's all one continuous campaign. So the billboards are going to say the same thing and steal images from what we're putting on TV.
John Wilson: The radio is like socials. We have a brand of it on mailers. And that's when it starts to make sense when it's one big thing, but you putting your name up on a billboard for a highway of 50, 000 people passing a day, just your name, like that doesn't do anything for anybody, just a big waste of money, figure out how to spend it digitally.
John Wilson: Fully
Jack Carr: agree. Google is king, unfortunately. But what do you think about new owners, smaller companies utilizing like Thumbtack, Angie's. Kind of these aggregators. Yeah, I think it's a good idea. Yeah,
John Wilson: I think that the most important thing you can be doing as a small company is worrying about the leads today and leaving open Capacity.
John Wilson: So like Thumbtack, that's leads today. Angie, maybe. Door knocking, yes. Facebook groups, yes. What can I do today? Because you really can't run a paid campaign when it's just you. Like it's, that's really hard. I think you just need more people to be able to put ads. Awesome.
Jack Carr: I think that hit all my books.
Jack Carr: Any other notes on lead generation that you're willing to share with us? The easier
John Wilson: thing is get bigger. And I'm like barely joking about that because I think that sounds hard, but it's actually easier. It is easier to drive leads for 10 plumbers than one. That's just more money. That's an easy problem as long as it's paying for itself.
Jack Carr: Definitely. Getting bigger is always the option. We have grown so quickly that we have a bunch of different issues, but it's not leads. Thank goodness. We did go into a code red here. We still do. Occasionally, like yourself, we have such a large customer list now that we just call and text and They'll schedule.
Jack Carr: So that's a win. Thank you for listening to this episode. John, you wanna
John Wilson: send us out? Yeah, let's take it home. First off, check out the Facebook group. It is a lot of fun. Having over 400 people that are like home service business owners is pretty cool. I like that a lot. And it's plumbing, hvac, electrical growth.
John Wilson: Hosted by Owned and Operated. Make sure you check out OwnedandOperated. com for all the goings ons. YouTube channels poppin I think we'll cross a thousand subs in the next month, which is wild to me. Tell your friends. That's a lot of fun. Tell your friends! That's a lot of fun, and make sure you check out the workshop.
John Wilson: 10th through the 12th. Awesome, guys. We're gonna have a lot of fun. Thank y'all. Thanks for tuning in to Owned and Operated. The podcast for home service entrepreneurs. If you enjoyed today's episode, please hit the like button and subscribe to the podcast. If you have any questions or topics you'd like us to cover, feel free to reach out.
John Wilson: You can find me on Twitter at Wilson companies. I'll see you next time.
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