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It’s Breaking $5M Workshop week, and Jack and John are together in the studio together for the first time! What happens when you get these two together? They talk about call centers, that’s what. They break down organizational changes driven by artificial intelligence, adjustments to call center compensation and the broader implications for business efficiency.
They’ll also stress the importance of continuously negotiating with vendors to reduce costs and increase profitability. Networking and learning from industry peers is also highlighted as a vital resource for business growth and uncovering new strategies.
Turn communication into conversion with Hatch and its AI Agents, ready to handle follow-ups, reminders, email blasts, and more for your home service business. Save employee hours and book more leads with the power of Hatch.
Learn More About Hatch Here
Learn more about Service Scalers:
Get your own home services business website, and dominate the SEO and Google Ads game, then check them out today.
Episode Hosts: 🎤John Wilson:@WilsonCompanies on X
Jack Carr:@TheHVACJack on X
John Wilson, CEO of Wilson Companies
Jack Carr, CEO of Rapid HVAC
Owned and Operated Episode 144 Transcript
Jack Carr: But like, what if the industry-wide KPIs are wrong? I was Pulling out my non-existent hair. Welcome back to Owned and Operated. What's going on, John?
John Wilson: Super pumped to be here. If you're good at sales, it's because you know how to talk to
John Wilson: people, not because you're pushy. But I also think that's the benefit of talking to people is you find out what's possible that you just don't know.
John Wilson: For going on two years, I've partnered with service scalers. to do our Google ads, PPC and SEO, and the results have been huge. It's been really exciting to watch as our website consistently jumps up rank as we're using more technology and we're moving faster than our peers who are all using legacy home service marketing companies.
John Wilson: We use service scalers for PPC, our local SEO. Our on page website, SEO and our LSA. So give him a call if you're looking for leads.
Jack Carr: Welcome back to owned and operated. What's going on, John? Super pumped to be here. This is workshop week. Tomorrow is actually the big day. Yeah. A big group coming in really excited.
Jack Carr: Um, how are you doing? Are you ready? Good.
John Wilson: Yeah, good. This will be our second workshop. Um, I think we started talking about doing these like a year ago. And so, yeah, this is fun. This is our second workshop. And we had one in the summer, but everyone's vacation plans got sort of weird. But I, I think I like this April, September.
John Wilson: Yeah. I think, I think I like
Jack Carr: that. I agree. Cause in summer too, it's, it's like everything is booming for HVAC and predominantly we have a lot of HVAC people that come to this. And so when you're smaller, like the one, two millions, you might not have the ability to step away where is in September. You do.
John Wilson: So. Well, and like family vacations. We learned that with Holdco Conf too, of like, it was really complicated to do it. The first year we did it in July, and that was much more complicated than September.
Jack Carr (3): Yeah.
John Wilson: So it's sort of like people like need this, uh, Shoulder season or like basically non summer conference.
John Wilson: But yeah, this is fun. I think we have 20 some people, um, at this workshop. So this is really cool. It starts tonight in like a couple of hours. I'm S I'm so
Jack Carr: excited. So the, it's super cool to meet everybody. Like that part is really neat. There's so many interesting people doing so many, I don't
John Wilson: know anybody.
John Wilson: I know like two people from a
Jack Carr: bunch of people in the last, the
John Wilson: last one, I knew like 10.
Jack Carr: Yeah. So this is going to be like new friends. I think one of the coolest parts is actually. People reaching out, talking to me saying, Hey, you know, I'm having this issue, this issue, this issue. And I go, Hey, we are, we'll talk about this like in depth.
Jack Carr: I'll give you the overview. I'll give you the juice if you, you reach out to me. But at these things, like we really can dig in for two days and every single little bit.
John Wilson (2): Yeah.
Jack Carr: And then on top of that, the other cool part that's crazy is how much a change has happened in five months. Yeah. So I'm just thinking like
John Wilson: LSA alone.
John Wilson: So yeah, that was, LSA was a big part of our marketing and now it's like, LSAs are weird. They're on, they're on the rocks
Jack Carr: again. And what Google said that they're going to start taking out reviews and so that changes LSA strategy. Yeah. So like, this is such a dynamic. Space with AI market. Yeah. Our content's updated
John Wilson: from like five months ago.
John Wilson: Strategy.
Jack Carr: Strategy has, my
John Wilson: strategy has changed totally. And we spent a bunch of time on like org chart and it's like how we think about org chart, it's gonna be different. 'cause of OCA is different and
Jack Carr: Exactly. Yeah. You don't need as much because AI's now stepping into help coach and now maybe less managers are leads and yeah.
Jack Carr: So this is such a dynamic. Yeah, flowing kind of work environment that I'm really excited. Um, I mean, I, I think I, I said this, uh, publicly, but I took a lot away from the last conference as well and implemented. And now I'm coming back with receipts. Like these are five month receipts of, Hey, I've done this strategy.
Jack Carr: I told you guys I was doing this strategy. But now here's the results of the strategy, which is really fun.
John Wilson: That is fun. We should, um, one of my, one of my like goals, I wanted to start working on it for next spring, but I just. We just couldn't get there is like, I, I like, I like these events. I think they're fun.
John Wilson: Um, like this is our second one of, for home service, but before that we're on like, we're going on our third year of Holko conf and we had a few Holko bootcamps. So this is like my seventh or eighth event. Um, but I really want, like, the big ones are fun.
Jack Carr (2): Yeah.
John Wilson: Uh, like Holko conf, we had like a hundred to 130 people each time.
John Wilson: Like That was awesome. So I'm, I'm pretty, I'm pretty sure like, yeah, I think next year
Jack Carr: we got to do a conference. This is live. John talking about this, but in private, John has talked about this about 10 times. I want to do that. I want to do a big event. They're just
John Wilson: so much fun. Yeah. It's fun. Cause you get to like, you get to be like, all right, how do I throw?
John Wilson: An epic three day party spend as much because you don't need to make any money. Like how do I spend as much as humanly possible to have like 200 friends have an awesome time?
Jack Carr (2): Yeah.
John Wilson: It's sweet. And then like the, like, you know, ticket sales pay for it. So like, there's no like cost to it and you just like, everybody learns, they make new friends.
John Wilson: It's awesome. Yeah. It's a great
Jack Carr: networking event. And I mean, everybody who listens to this probably resonates with that because it's very difficult as a, as a. Small business owner, even medium sized business or a large business owner to have friends who understand what you're going through at the moment.
Jack Carr: Because my, all my friends from, from high school and from college, they're all great friends, love them to death, you know, no, no shade to them, but they don't understand what making payrolls like on, on, you know, the next week, or they don't understand, you know, somebody on workers comp or any of these kinds of situational things that we go through.
Jack Carr: And so having a good group of people around you, um, Plus I can tell my wife that we got 200 people to show up at an event, that these aren't all just Twitter internet friends. These are real people. And, uh, she probably still won't care and still make fun of
John Wilson: me. She probably still won't. Uh, but yeah, yeah.
John Wilson: I think, I think a conference conference would be, that'd be fun. That'd be fun. I'd love that. I think it's too, like, it's too late for April. Um, but I think September and
Jack Carr: one year from today, mark it on your calendars, guys. Yeah. Yeah. You heard it here first.
John Wilson (2): Yeah.
Jack Carr: So what's new in your business? Oh my goodness.
Jack Carr: So business has been going really, really steady. Um, plumbing is up and running. We, we like a couple of weeks ago or a couple last week, we talked to Chris Hoffman. I didn't want to tell him on the podcast that we stole two of his plumbers, but his plumbers, The training that the Hoffman bros has given these guys.
Jack Carr: They're absolutely killers. They are such good plumbers are such good selling texts. I'm very happy with them. We had to convert that model. And this is like the last month we saw it this month is where it's Jay curving. Like, it was like, Hey, this, this, this plumber is getting his feet under him. He's got the new truck.
Jack Carr: He's got all the processes down at our business. And like, he's starting to sell. And now this month they're coming out the gate, just fire and re pipe, re pipe. Uh, dig job, water heater, water heater, water heater. And like, we're going into the water heater season. So I'm so excited. I got great copy. I got great creative.
Jack Carr: Um, also kind of stolen from Hoffman brothers, but like the part where you, you cut the water heater part and look inside of it. So we're doing some fun stuff. Copy wise with that. Um, but yeah, like plumbing is, is doing really well. We have too much work and we're trying to figure out how to prioritize and capacity issues, even though we are two selling techs to three installers.
Jack Carr: We're solving, keeping up with install issues.
John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. What are you, are you guys one to one? No, no. We're actually, it looks a bit like that. Yeah. Yeah. We've been more installers than. Texts for a long time. Yeah. But when we first started, you just get better and better at doing it.
Jack Carr: And that, that's what we're trying to like, we're, we're working on all those SOPs and like, Hey, what happens in this situation or this situation?
Jack Carr: But overall, I'm really happy. Our team has stepped up from some issues that we kind of had recently in the past and we're going all in the right direction. We're going to finish out this year really strong. Um, We're starting to understand how to give opportunities better. Like, like all the playbook feels like it's starting to come together.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson (2): Yeah.
Jack Carr: Um, I mean, we're still dealing with some of the, you know, the headaches that every small business has, but yeah.
John Wilson: What about you? That's awesome, man. Uh, it's been a, it's been a really interesting past month that we're wrapping. So, uh, a couple like big changes that we've had. Um, you know, we interviewed Tommy.
John Wilson: Mellow like two months ago at this point. Yeah. And when I, I'm the, I think everyone's probably like this. I know you like when I've said stuff about like what we do, you'd like keeps you up at night. A
Jack Carr: hundred
John Wilson: percent. Yeah. But I also think that's the benefit of talking to people. Is you find out what's possible that you just don't know.
John Wilson: So like what Tommy, and I think that's important. I'm going to say this now, give the big changes for us. But like, I think that's important because you start growing this business and you rely on like industry wide KPIs. Yeah. But like, what if the industry wide KPIs are wrong? Yeah. And like, what if everyone's aiming at the wrong target?
John Wilson: So like so it was so some of the big things that have like popped out to us recently is What should your HVAC equipment pricing be? and Every industry metric is 30 percent That's what everyone has said for years Yep But then you talk to the highest performing companies in the industry and their equipment is 21 to 23 percent
Jack Carr: Mm hmm.
John Wilson: That's Like that's a lot. That's a third. Yep. That's a third. So then we start working. So we found that out. Um, Maybe a month ago drove us nuts. So we've been renegotiating vendor contracts. We've been dialing our HVAC pricing We've been like we we now did it our like it took about a month But our equipment dropped from 33 percent of sale to low 20s, like, which is now best in class industry, but we would known that without talking to people.
Jack Carr: I love that you said that because I have this argument with people and legitimate argument is I just say, why? Well, the industry standards 30%. Why, why does it have to be 30%? Yeah, you know, what's the reasoning behind that? And if they can't give me an answer, I push because I'm not like you've been in plumbing your whole life.
Jack Carr: I haven't. And so I want to understand the world a little bit better that I'm in. And so when I find that I asked these questions and I can't get the why answer, like there's opportunity there to go lower or to figure it out. Yeah.
Jack Carr: Well, I…
John Wilson: think a lot of it, for us, it became a bit, not yet, but like, existential.
John Wilson: Where, hey, everyone that I compete against is private equity. Like, every single one. So, if they're all paying 22 percent for equipment, and I'm the only sucker paying 30, I'm gonna lose. Every September. Every April and in peak season because they just have more flexibility. Like they can do things that I can't do.
John Wilson: Uh, which for our size of a business that, that shouldn't be a thing. Like if I'm larger than your portcote here, I should be able to nail down whatever it is that you're getting. So with basically every vendor in the world, we're finding out what P is paying and we're demanding it. And if you don't want it, then we'll go somewhere else because we just don't care.
Jack Carr: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and then besides for a few really specific instances to like the, the amount that HVAC equipment changes in terms of like, do customers really care if they're getting this or that? Yeah. Besides for a very few instances with certain branding, like train versus a Goodman or something. You know, there's very few people that A, either care or B, um, want something specific.
Jack Carr: They just want cool air or hot air. Like, they just want to be comfortable and they want reliability. And if you can promise those things, if you can switch branding, get them a lower price and compete better,
John Wilson: why not? Well, switch branding or like get your key brands to drop pricing. Yeah. So, so that was one, that was a big, uh, that was a big thing, and I've, I'd say we've taken that same philosophy to basically everywhere.
John Wilson: So with a lot of our softwares, we're finding out what PE's paying and we're demanding it. Because we know that they've given that deal somewhere else. Uh, the deal, that's often 50 percent or more savings.
Jack Carr: You would be surprised, not you, the audience I'm sure, would be surprised. Go to all your vendors. And ask, like, just ask, take the opportunity.
Jack Carr: I've I've driven this home since day one. Cause I got absolutely screwed over my first year. I've told you that story like 10 times I was paying the vendor. We were buying 400, 000 in equipment with them, which isn't a lot, but it's, it's something. And we were paying the same amount as people who were buying one piece of equipment from them.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Jack Carr: And. We've never used that vendor again. I refuse to work with any other sales people, but like there's opportunity there But you'll never know unless you ask. Yeah, so yeah,
John Wilson: and then stay on top
Jack Carr: of
John Wilson: it But like finding out what other people are doing. So that's the that's the other thing We're like, hey, we talked with Tommy Mello and he has this conversation with us that he's like, oh, yeah this company down in Texas Each call taker books 80 a day that has been rent free in my head for like months.
John Wilson: So what, so a lot of it's like, how do they do that? Because right now, like we're picking up 80 calls a day each. We're not booking you like booking 80 is crazy. And then if you start working backwards, you're like, Oh, they have an incentive program that drives books, which is like, that's important. So we ended up doing the same thing.
John Wilson: So now, um, our call takers are
Jack Carr: A week. Okay. So not really long enough to get any results, but I'm curious on that.
John Wilson: So far results are better. Yeah.
Jack Carr: Yeah. Cause I mean, we just actually went through the
John Wilson: same
Jack Carr: thing is I was asking, I was pulling out my non existent hair because I was going, why are we're missing six, eight, 10 LSA calls a day.
Jack Carr: I'm paying for these things. Like, why aren't these getting booked? Yeah. And the answer was like, uh, they're worried about the, the Price or there's this issue or this like these small issues that didn't matter and I'm going. Book them like your main priority is to book everything and on the back end, we'll, we'll deal with like, if, if somebody has to call or, you know, move something around, but we should be booking every call we're paying for, like, and then booking went up to like 90 percent on LSA specifically, that's the one I worry about because organic, for example, yeah, you still are technically paying for something, but not directly.
Jack Carr: Right. So that's awesome. I mean, so are, are you able to say like what that looks like or what you guys are thinking it's going to look like?
John Wilson: Uh, yeah, we dropped base comp in half and we added a 10 per booked commission. 10 what? 10 per booked call commission. Holy cow. Yeah. I'm going to come. I mean, eventually I could see, I could see a future where there's no base comp at all.
John Wilson: Yeah. Well, if you're booking 30 to 40 calls a day, yeah, like you don't need base camp. Yeah. I'm like, you're good to go.
Jack Carr: There's a few, few companies that do that. I think the other one is, I want to say it's like AirServe out of Memphis. Does they have like a bullpen of call takers? Nothing goes to you directly.
Jack Carr: Like you have to grab it. Don't yeah, that's what,
John Wilson: yeah, that's what we're doing now. Yeah. And so you have to, and like they started, it changed the attitude. I think in a good way where they. People want to take call. They're fighting for 'em.
Jack Carr: Yeah. Yeah. And that, that changes the culture, that changes everything around it so that you want to answer calls and welcome 'em.
John Wilson: Yeah. It's been something that we've been ar fighting with forever and like people have different perspectives on this. I've asked a a lot of people like, Hey, where do you sit on this? 'cause I think, and, and it is, you have to find the balance.
Jack Carr (2): Mm-Hmm. .
John Wilson: And we're obviously still trying to find it, but if you go too far on one way, you have a call center that never books anything.
John Wilson: Yeah, because you're hiring people that are customer service and customer service doesn't book appointments customer service talks to people so You have like if you're recruiting customer service agents your booking rates gonna be terrible. Yeah But you obviously have to treat your customer as well and you want them to call you back and you want it to be a good Experience so it's hard to hire that hard nosed Inside salesperson to book the call But a good salesperson should know how to, like, if you're good at sales, it's because you know how to talk to people, not because you're pushy.
John Wilson: So, um, so I've had a lot of conversations with people, and most everyone that I know leans towards the customer service. And I just can, the problem, it, this, it reminds me of VMI, where like, the best way to manage inventory is to not have inventory. And it's like, everyone gets so frustrated and annoyed that their call center won't just book the call.
John Wilson: But it's like, the answer is you hire salespeople and you pay a commission to book the call. Like, that is it. It's the same as VMI is the answer for this thing. Like, maybe you can build this, like, culture of accountability, but like, the best way is you just pay them. Like, hey, your job is this, like, you get paid by this.
John Wilson: Go do it. And if you don't You won't make money. You won't make money and we'll fire you.
Jack Carr: Yeah. Like it's not comfy yourself. You leave. Cause you're saying, Hey, my salary is minimal. It's less, it's minimum wage because I'm not booking calls fast enough.
Jack Carr (3): Yeah.
Jack Carr: So, and then you're managing that on the back end with AI in terms of making sure that they're still Now they want the
John Wilson: feedback now.
John Wilson: They want to understand how to do better because their compensation is tied to it But yeah, most people like there's the spectrum of like, okay We want call takers and we want sales people to book the calls and those are two totally different people And obviously there's a spectrum of in between. Yeah, and what it's like every owner that I know is just like man We just can't just book, you know, you just can't do it and i'm like we'll hire sales people Yeah, and then when I bring that up Because that's something we've been talking about for a while, like a year now, is like, okay, maybe we should just put maybe the inside your inside sales team on
Jack Carr: it, right?
John Wilson: Yeah. Like, cause they care. Yeah. Like they'll care about booking it. Like our outbounders two weeks ago booked more calls than our inbounders. And we're just like, we have a culture. That's exactly, we have a cultural problem of like, we literally don't want to book the call. So we just don't want to book the call.
John Wilson: This is our solution.
Jack Carr: Yeah. No, that makes sense. Um, I'm excited to, to see some numbers here in a month and see what it looks like. But I imagine just based on theory alone, that that works.
John Wilson: They are excited.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: Because the guys like, I mean, some of their comp doubled overall. I was
Jack Carr: going to say, you have the opportunity to make more money.
Jack Carr: Way more. Um, and then on top of it, it increases the, the company wide culture that, Hey, we're all moving in the same direction towards revenue.
John Wilson (2): Yeah.
Jack Carr: And then we're willing to pay for that. Like if we can increase revenue because we're all moving in that way, we'll definitely split off a little bit of the pot for you.
John Wilson: Well, and I think it opens up, um, like people will be willing to do more. So like, Hey. Want to outbound? Great. Like now they want to outbound and it's not me forcing it. It's like, okay Why I want to make I want to make my money. Yeah, or like scouring Facebook groups scouring next door
Jack Carr (2): Texting
John Wilson: customers like there's a lot you could do and I think this makes this this takes this from this like Us working against each other to collaborating.
Jack Carr: That's cool Yeah, that's, that's a very interesting take on it. Um, I mean, I, I see the path that's neat. Now I have to process it. Cause
John Wilson: well, yeah. Tommy Mel like two months ago, he's like, yeah, dude, they're booking 80 a day. And I'm just like, how, like, like, yeah, how, what am I missing? And then what I'm missing is just like this culture of that's what has to happen.
John Wilson: And the only way that I know how to drive cultural change. Is compensation like you make it a game and you pay them well when they win. We had a couple major pain points Uh earlier this year and those pain points were how do we contact our unsold estimates more frequently? How do we book our membership appointments faster?
John Wilson: How do we stay in contact with customers and let them know that we have promotions and how do we run a? Speed to lead process for Angie's Leads. When looking around for solutions, we saw a couple great, uh, softwares on the market, but our favorite one was Hatch. So when we started using Hatch, we had just switched over from another vendor, and Hatch's user interface was so easy.
John Wilson: It directly tied into Service Titan. It automated the workflow of five or six employees a day. We're now in contact with hundreds of additional customers. We're selling a ton of our unsold estimates, and it's easier than ever to book our membership follow up. Appointments so hatch has been a really big win for us in order to book a demo with hatch click the link below
Jack Carr: Let me ask you the question though that we've ran into this actually pretty recently is is how do you make sure that you're finding?
Jack Carr: People because a lot of people I think just general large general term They say they're they're motivated by money But how are you hiring for that specific thing? Because we get that all the time. Hey, yeah, I'm motivated to make a lot of money. They love their commission structure. They love that. And then they get into the actual position and then they won't do it.
Jack Carr: Like what, what in your eyes, whether it's CSR dispatcher, inside sales, outside sales, whatever the case may be tech, what is, is there a silver bullet to finding somebody who actually is. Driven by money because those are game changers. When you find those people that say, Hey, I love this commission structure.
Jack Carr: Like I'm going to bust it to make my money. I want to make a million dollars a year. Like I'm going to try, I'm going to shoot to make as much as I can. And then there's people who say that and they tend to be like at the very bottom, they just will not sell for life of them. Or book or yeah do what they're supposed to
John Wilson: do.
John Wilson: I wish we had a magic answer for this. Yeah, that's fair Yeah, we don't I mean I think um The best answer I have is the difference between a low performer and a high performer Should be high for compensation and I think like you said they should weed themselves out Like if they're not making what they're supposed to make that's sort of the point of the system Like oh great because I think what?
John Wilson: You So maybe the only tip is like, don't adapt. Because in the past we've adapted and we've, call center is a great example. Like we dropped base comp in half and we gave them a commission. Yeah. If that was three years ago, we would have soft rolled that.
Jack Carr: So that, that's where I think my, the actual, the answer is, is where I've been.
Jack Carr: Cause that's, what's been keeping me up late at night is like, how do you make sure that what you set? As their commission versus base is motivating enough to either keep them in or keep them out. And that's where I think that we've made a mistake is our motivation isn't strong enough that they're happy on making bare minimum commission
John Wilson: based salary.
John Wilson: Some of it's maybe happy and non motivated, but some of it is like the difference has to be there. So like, so in this call center example, if someone only books a few calls, And somebody books 20 calls, like the person who books 20 calls and like, does their job will double the compensation of the other person, but they should double the compensation of the other person.
Jack Carr: I guess we're on this question. I'm leading you is so the person who doesn't book, yeah. Is there a compensation that they would have made now half essentially of what they were on base only.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Jack Carr: Okay.
John Wilson: Like there should be shared pain. There should be. But also like they should be removed.
John Wilson (2): Yeah.
John Wilson: Like from my perspective and we, like, I would tell this to anyone underperforming internally too, like, look, our first core values betterment, which means we want to win.
John Wilson: And like, if you don't want to win, then like, that's the first one. And there's three more all roughly the same.
Jack Carr: So like extreme ownership through winning. Yeah. Like, no, I'm with you. I'm that, that's where, that's where my heads X we're going through probably a restructuring of. Payscale starting like January 1st.
Jack Carr: And that's where we're really diving in is, Hey, have we set it up where Even doing bare minimum is still making more.
John Wilson (2): Yeah.
Jack Carr: Than, you know, have we not set standards high enough that they should have to reach those high standards to actually make money?
John Wilson: We still have departments that, that are that way and like, we're tightening it up.
John Wilson (2): Yeah.
John Wilson: But yeah, I think, um, we used to sort of like, hey, here's what we want. Here's what we know it should be. And then we would go soft because it was hard to recruit or whatever. But that's where it came
Jack Carr: from is hard
John Wilson: to recruit
Jack Carr: was.
John Wilson: But then like, it's hard to recruit. And then you end up with the people that don't work anyways.
Jack Carr (2): Yeah.
John Wilson: So like a best example is like HVAC sales used to be this way where like they would have like a healthy base comp and then like a lower commission. But like now, and that was three years ago, John was like, yeah, that makes sense. Like, okay, I get it. Uh, but now it's like, if, if somebody in HVAC sales wants a base comp, we don't even talk to them.
John Wilson: Like, there's no point in having a conversation because like, I already know that we're not aligned. I'd rather just continue recruiting. Um, cause you are not performance driven. Like I'm just not If you're looking for a safety net, you've already counted yourself out.
Jack Carr: I was going to say, and the really good HVAC salespeople, they know they don't need a base camp.
Jack Carr: They know they're going to clear multiple what on earth would you need that for?
John Wilson: Yeah. Um, so we take that same philosophy, um, pretty much everywhere.
Jack Carr: I mean, that makes a lot of sense. And so that, that's kind of the conclusion that we've came up to was, Hey, before when we were, you know, 1 million, 1. 2, 1. 3 million, it was extremely hard to recruit on, Hey, we'll pay you 10 bucks an hour.
Jack Carr: Plus a heavy compensation or a commission. Now we're realizing. Well, it needs to be that way. And if they don't want to come on because that doesn't fit their ideal of themselves, they're probably not.
John Wilson: Yeah. They're not the right fit. Yeah.
Jack Carr: So
John Wilson: that's really, it's kind of easy. It, it makes it easier I think.
John Wilson: Cause then it's like, Oh, okay. Easy. Well, okay. That's not the person that we want. Okay. Awesome. Yeah. That was super easy.
Jack Carr: I mean, also times have changed too. The labor market has softened, like two years ago. Do you remember? I mean, maybe you're not specifically, but hiring was way more difficult. Yeah.
Jack Carr: Hiring's roughly
John Wilson: felt the same.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: I think I don't think we've noticed a
Jack Carr: difference. Well, you're one of the bigger players in the market, so I think that it's easier. But when you're a small player with no healthcare, no nothing, it's really hard. Though, at the same time Right? Commission should be the one thing that as a small company, you can offer people like, Hey, we can offer you benefits, but if you were able to sell, we can offer you 40, 50, 000 more a year.
Jack Carr: Yeah. But you have to be able to, to actually perform, you got to perform.
John Wilson: Yeah. No, I agree. I think, um, but, uh, sort of rounding this out, it all started with talking to other people and like, Hey, what do you do here? And I think, uh, there's this book that I like to read every like couple of months. It's called how to double your profit in six months or less.
John Wilson: Have you read that by Bob? No. It's a good one. I need to try. It's a good one. I like it a lot. Yeah. And, um, One of them, one of the chapters is like, find out what other people are paying, because if somebody's cut that deal, then you can get that deal. So, if, like, if you're a service titan, like, we're in this group chat, and like, we're sharing what we pay for music.
John Wilson: I wasn't gonna, I wasn't
Jack Carr: gonna bring it up, but yeah. Yeah,
John Wilson: but like, people are paying twice as much as me, and I'm paying more than other people. I know what they pay. Or like, interchange rates for credit cards. Like, I know what this person's paying, and I know what I'm paying, and like, this deal's already been cut.
John Wilson: I should be able to get it. We
Jack Carr: just went back. To service Titan, to get our interchange of deal chain, inner rate deal change because of that conversation. And it's just taking three to four weeks to get the FinTech team on board. They still haven't gotten back to me. I requested, I mean, we will switch like.
Jack Carr: Because we're paying 3. 6 percent on every interaction. And I know that what other people are paying, it's a point plus less than us. And that's crazy. Like we spent almost every one of our, we don't do financing really. We've talked about this before. We're like four or 5 percent financing. So we're, people are paying for units on credit cards more often than not.
John Wilson (2): Yeah.
Jack Carr: And we are like a million dollars on credit. I'm saying 1 percent is significant.
John Wilson (2): Yeah,
Jack Carr: it is like, and it goes straight to the bottom line.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Jack Carr: Well go straight to it.
John Wilson: No, it's a big deal, but I think like finding out what other people are doing. And I think the big encouragement there is just like talk to people.
Jack Carr: Well, it's getting groups, right?
John Wilson: Yeah. Getting Facebook groups and like have an open conversation. Um, we do need to start like a workshop, like text group. Cause we're like, we'll be at 50 total people now after this one. Uh, but it'd be. Like, Hey, what are you doing for this? What are you paying for this? What does your HVAC equipment look like?
John Wilson: What does your plumbing equipment look like? Um, we're having a discussion right now of like how many call takers are in your call center. Um, and I think those are all helpful because I think it lets you get lined up. I
Jack Carr: mean, all, yeah, all the way down to fleet. Like we, we were having this conversations about enterprise fleet and like, what, where are you coming in?
Jack Carr: And, and so we, We know what's out there on the market at any time and what deals are made at what size businesses. It's like we have 20 trucks. And so we are in the process of negotiating fleet. Like, so, so having those conversations is really important. And then I think. Networking, getting into Facebook groups, um, coming to these workshops, just masterminds, anything you can do to get around other owners that are in similar home service industries is, I mean, it's one of the keys.
Jack Carr: I wouldn't be anywhere near where I'm at today without, without the Twitter to masterminds, to Facebook groups, to all these, these things, just cause there's so much out there. It's changing so fast. To fully round it out to the beginning, it's changing so fast.
John Wilson: It's kind of crazy. And I think, um, I know we've talked about this with AI, but it is crazy because it feels like every month, like whatever you were using was now antiquated.
John Wilson: Yep. Um, no, I mean, it doesn't feel like it is that way. Yeah. So be cautious when signing AI contracts, make
Jack Carr: sure that it's not like it's three year deal or something crazy. Like, yeah,
John Wilson: yeah.
Jack Carr: Yeah. Cause it's
John Wilson: just like,
Jack Carr: Yeah. It might be antiquated like really soon. Yeah. Well, and then, I mean, once you start talking with these companies too, you can see the direction I think they're all going.
Jack Carr: And talking with other people who know, you know, the startups that are rolling out, like you can see paths that this can actually take and really, yeah, really
John Wilson: changed the course in like
Jack Carr: two years.
John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. So yeah. Signed short term contracts and also like what, what I was not financial advice, not what I've roughly found out.
John Wilson: And I think this is like a fun thing to like take to different parts of your this is again, just from talking to people is just assume. That private equity pays 50 percent less than you on every single thing on your P& L. 50%. So like, know that that's the deal that you're working with. Like that's it.
John Wilson: Crack open a section of your P& L. Like Verizon, we just saved 80%.
Jack Carr: Yeah, I could. I believe that we need to go back to them. Gosh, it's such a like, that's something that's going to keep me up at night. Cause I know
John Wilson: we went from 20, 000 a month with Verizon to six.
Jack Carr: Yeah. Well, I mean, insurance alone, we went from a hundred thousand to 27, 000 a year.
Jack Carr: How'd you do that? Broker. Yeah, that sounds great. A hundred to 27. That's crazy. And it, but it did require like pulling someone off. Yeah. And so, so there was like moves that had to be made, but it's across the board. Yeah. And legitimately, I think that that is one, like as a small business owner, I think that you should be working on like one or two of those every week.
Jack Carr: Trying to negotiate, talk, move it down.
John Wilson: I agree. Cause like the more you work on it, I could give so many different examples. Like one we're doing right now is our VoIP software. There is a better, and it's just because of how much technologies advance. Like when we signed a two year contract and like in VoIP, that might as well be ancient history.
John Wilson: So like we're now paying two times as much as every other competitor per user with way less features. And we're just like, what are we doing?
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: Like, what are we doing here?
Jack Carr: So I'm breathing heavy. Cause I'm starting to stress out because I know like we needed to switch off of we're using grasshopper, which is like a super old, there's no really features.
Jack Carr: Yeah. It's been on my backlog of lists of things to do forever. And just, but I mean, just based on Moore's law alone, right. You know, that there. Computing power is doubling every two years or whatnot. And
John Wilson: well, and you can just do prices are going down. Our per user price is literally getting cut in half on our board.
John Wilson: And like, we're going to try to go lower than that.
John Wilson: Yeah.
John Wilson: But yeah, it's yeah. Finding out what other people are doing, talking to them, but the, the per call and like what people are paying for HVAC equipment.
Jack Carr: Wild. Let me ask you a question. Do you still, in those meetings, do you still feel like you have to sell your story a little bit?
John Wilson: I would say no. For you personally or just in general? I mean it depends on what it is. It depends on what it is. Like if it's a, if it's our voice over IP, then no. Like I want to go from 40 grand a year to 15. I don't really, they don't need to know, they don't need to know our story. I just need phones with others, maybe because they, they need to see the path to growth, especially if you're asking for PE deals, because like we're asking for PE pricing and they have 4, 000 texts and I have a hundred.
Jack Carr: So that's, that's kind of where I'm coming from. So when you say comparing yourself to PE, um, To try and get the same deal like they definitely see
John Wilson: what
Jack Carr: purchasing
John Wilson: price
Jack Carr: advantage
John Wilson: kind of some kind of what I've also just found out Is that a lot of the PE? Shops are negotiating as themselves so they're getting uh in total credit to ryan our director of sales, but like Uh, they're getting pricing Irregardless of them being private equity owned You know, purely because they're just asking for it better than I am.
Jack Carr: What I was just going to say is I was just talking to a large rollup. They have, I don't know, I think it's like a hundred million in top line right now, and they're still growing. And the joke that we were talking about is he was saying, you know, I thought we had good pricing power until I buy some two, three, 4 million shop and somehow they have a sweetheart deal or that they have the best purchasing power that we have ever seen.
Jack Carr: And we aren't even getting that. Yeah. And so I know it's,
John Wilson: it's a thing. Yeah, it's a thing. Like you can negotiate HVAC pricing as good as PE. And, and I think the, that's why I keep saying, you know, that they struck that deal somewhere so they can give it to you because someone already has it and they'll say some bullshit about like, Oh, it's their scale, but like someone approved that deal.
John Wilson: So they don't have to go back to their boss. They don't have to ask for a custom, whatever that deal is already cemented in as a code inside their ERP. And all you have to do is be like, give me that code. Like it's already there.
Jack Carr: That code's already there.
John Wilson: That code already exists. You don't need to go to the CEO.
John Wilson: That book is right there. Yeah, you don't need to go to the CEO, approve this new code with this different product. It already exists. Yeah. It's like, let's just. Jump, jump,
Jack Carr: jump on that one. Yeah. And then like bid. That, that's really, I mean, I know we've had this conversation before, but it is a really good reminder because.
Jack Carr: Mm hmm.
John Wilson: We've gotten better at this. Yeah. So we, you know, we have, yeah, like this is someone, this is a portion of someone's responsibility is that like every month we go into it with a list of like, here's what we're going to F up this month.
Jack Carr: Um, what a great term for like a, not a CFO, but like a bookkeeper or controller on the side when you got some downtime, just
John Wilson: go fuck it up, go fuck it up.
John Wilson: Yeah. Like the spreadsheet for September is called fuck it up. September. Yeah, but it's funny. Like our projected overhead savings is 20 grand for like a month, a monthly savings, a quarter of a million dollars.
Jack Carr: Yeah. It's kind of wild. That, I mean, that's huge. And so if you think about it, you have six or seven of these big pots of money that are just sitting.
Jack Carr: That's actually what Tommy Miller also said is once you get to a size of scale, he said that
John Wilson: you just keep rant. We keep like randomly finding lots of money, five grand savings. Like almost everywhere we look like dumpsters. Did I tell you about dumpsters? No, so like one day And this is what started this position of like let's fuck it up once a month Is I look at my dumpsters and i'm like i'm paying four thousand dollars a month for dumpsters Like that seems like a really big number.
John Wilson: Yeah, that's kind of wild So then we negotiate dumpsters and now it's like eleven hundred dollars Like that's thirty eight thousand dollars a year Like, that's crazy. Um, Verizon, we went from literally 20, 000 a month to 6, 000. Like, that's insane. You're
Jack Carr: talking about 75 percent cuts on all of these. Yeah, while keeping the exact same level
John Wilson: of service.
Jack Carr: And so, for everyone out there listening, think about all of your reoccurring payments. Everything. And if you can cut them by 70%, 75 percent expenses. Yeah. Like, it solves the
John Wilson: But it's just like continuing to push on. Yeah, because It really, because I think what people think is they're like, oh, that's fine.
John Wilson: Like, nah, I did that last year, whatever. We do this every month and we still find 10 to 20 things a month that we haven't touched yet. Like voice over IP, we haven't even thought about that. And then one day I was like, ah, we should, we should look at that. And then, Boom, 30 grand
Jack Carr: savings. I just need to pull my like reoccurring rev or reoccurring expense list and just like put it onto an excel spreadsheet and just like hit it from the top.
Jack Carr: Anything where like what shows up like,
John Wilson: hey, what's your uniform look like? Yeah. What's your trash look like? What's your cable? What's your cell? And then what are your vendors? Cause like your vendors, you can, you can save a half a million dollars. Like in a day. Yeah, if you switch vendors.
Jack Carr: Well, that's I think that is an important part to this too that we're kind of sidestepping Is you do also have to be willing to switch vendors if it doesn't oh, yeah Yeah, and understanding that you know, there's more vendors out there.
Jack Carr: There's a little bit of hassle.
John Wilson (2): Yeah
Jack Carr: You know, not every vendor is going to be a good vendor.
John Wilson: Yeah,
Jack Carr: so are good. Yeah, you're
John Wilson: ready to switch.
Jack Carr: Yeah
John Wilson: Yeah, and I think you're looking for a partner. What what we do depending on like the level Is we'll either have me get involved like if it's a big enough thing, like i'm gonna personally handle it Um, and if it's not then I get to be the big bad wolf, which is kind of fun
Jack Carr: Yeah, so they refer to you do that before
John Wilson: they refer to me as uh You know Ownership like, so yeah, ownership's not gonna be happening.
Jack Carr: I've seen John just like absolutely destroy vendors in this office. Sorry to other vendors for listening. They weren't actually your vendors, but there was someone that like snuck in and was trying to get your business in insurance, surprisingly, and you just shut them down so hard. I was like, holy cow.
Jack Carr: Just, well, why are you in here? Well, he. It was, uh, insurance vendors that came in, they're asking for your business and you like off the top of the dome, if I remember correctly, you had this wrong, this wrong, this wrong, and you weren't willing to work with me. And so are you willing to work with me now?
Jack Carr: And they're like, well, we'll take a look at these. And he's like, no. Like, are you willing to work with me right now on this and give me a commitment because I'm not going to go back and forth for two months. Well, it's
John Wilson: so easy to waste time, like, and that's what we tell people now. And they
Jack Carr: snuck in.
John Wilson: Yeah, but I'm in a conversation, I was in a conversation now with like, uh, one of our softwares.
John Wilson: And it's expensive. It's 50 grand a year. And I found out what P pays and big surprise. It's half. So I was like, okay, well, Hey, you're going to meet me in half or otherwise here's, here's our cancellation. Like, yeah, I don't care. Uh, there's three other competitors lined up right behind you. And they said they will match that price.
John Wilson: So like, I don't care. And, and everyone wants to get you on the phone and work through their pitch, but like, I don't care. Like, I really don't care. I don't like, yeah, I'm good. Like, will you meet the price? Yes. No. If we get on the phone, I'm just going to say the same thing, which is, will you meet the price?
John Wilson: Yes, no, I don't care about your features. I don't care about your whatever. Like, will you meet the price? Ironically,
Jack Carr: it's the opposite of what we are looking for in customers. We are our own worst customers. Oh, for sure. And last question in on this thread is, do you do this with banking? Um, cause so we, I think there's a path to it.
Jack Carr: Yeah. So we're going through this right now. Where we're looking at like lines of credit and trying to get a banking partner to grow with because we're like our real estate that we're already in is too small. I've talked about that before. And so we don't know what the next step is in terms of like next year, we're going to have to go out and hunt either to lease a large building or to potentially purchase.
Jack Carr: And. Um, with that, we're looking for a banking partner. Is that kind of a similar or like, how do you do that? My
John Wilson: general philosophy, I'd say for everything, like we just did this for accountants. So anything, when the worst decisions that I've made is when I think that there's no other competitors. If you're, if you're getting ready to sign up for something, you should understand the landscape.
John Wilson: That's fair. And like, what else is out there? Because I think like, let's say HVC equipment, you won't know what you're negotiating. Like, if you don't know who the Patsy in the room is, is you and you, if you only talk to one vendor, you don't know what you're negotiating. You don't understand the landscape.
John Wilson: You don't know what you can ask for. You don't know what you can't ask for. You don't know the lines. And because of that, like you'll get, you'll get taken. And my story. Yeah, you know, you will. So I think like bidding. And like talking to everyone you can is just it's as much about learning like how to do it.
John Wilson: So like what, if I'm doing a big stake negotiation, we're like banking or like HVAC, I'm going to save a ton of money or I'm going to do this. Like I'm not going to stop at three. I want to talk to like 10 people. And I don't, I'm going to wheedle it down as fast as I can to like three to four. But when I talk to those three to four, I want to know every possible thing that I can get out of that relationship.
John Wilson: And I want to know exactly what I can and can't ask for. So if I'm, if I'm thinking water heaters, I'm going to talk to 10 people to sell water heaters. I'm going to figure out what, like, okay, what's the size of my rebate? What's this look like? How do terms look? How many will you stock here? I was, so we're going to work through all of the different potential scenarios that I could get.
John Wilson: Um, So if, if you're bidding big stakes, I, my quick stance is like, I like to cast the net very wide, get as much data as possible, and then narrow it down to my top three, four choices, and then negotiate there.
Jack Carr: That's, that's good framework. Cause I think that's what we, I'll probably do then is we were planning on meeting with three local banks, but I think maybe spread the net out wider and try and get and then whittle it down as, as that, uh,
John Wilson: yeah.
John Wilson: Cause you'll quickly, cause I think it's also helpful. Cause like three isn't enough of a sample size yet to know what you hate and don't hate.
Jack Carr: Yeah,
John Wilson: no, that's fair. And you really like, you need to learn the landscape. You need to know the rules and like by probing more questions, you'll get more of the rules.
Jack Carr: Well, yeah, definitely. And what the bank internally has and doesn't have. Are they internal rules or are they state rules? Yeah. So I know there's a lot there and that's, that's kind of the question behind it is, have you done that? But it sounds like you haven't and that's the answer. So I mean, I don't know that we've done it with banking specifically, but
John Wilson: Over the past few years.
Jack Carr: Like if you use the same bank since 3 million,
John Wilson: roughly.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: I think that like my quick take is banking. Doesn't really change to like 5
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: It's like there's small business banking under EBITDA. And then there's real banking after five minutes. So like, I'm still in, I'm still in like small boy banking.
John Wilson: So like when we, when there's a meaningful enough change in the scope of our business, then we would deal with it.
Jack Carr: Yeah. Which is fair. No, it's, it's actually really helpful to know that you've utilized the same person pretty much. As a partnership for the entirety of your growth,
John Wilson: there's a few of them that have like when I, and that's why I think you spread the net really wide because then you will figure out exactly who can I work with for the next five to 10 years?
John Wilson: Cause I don't want to, like, then you call them accountable and you do whatever you need to do. But like, how is this going to work in
Jack Carr: your business? They understand the growth trajectory. They understand kind of, and you know what to ask for intricacies of your business. So they know what they can give you with that and how, what.
Jack Carr: Kind of programs or deals or whatever can help you and that so that's but if you don't
John Wilson: know if you don't have enough data You're gonna make a badly informed decision for the partner and you'll have to reselect again another year. Yeah, which
Jack Carr: would
John Wilson: suck So right so like if you just like deal with it now Mm hmm and work through it then you by spending that extra time up front talking to more You'll end up you'll know all the things you want to negotiate on so in a year You're not like dang.
John Wilson: I should negotiate on that you took the time now You You figured it out and you worked through it. Sweet. That's good advice. But those are the big changes in our business is like. Where we talked to people on the show and it was like, what do you mean? They're doing booking 80 calls a day. Uh, now I can kind of see a path to it.
John Wilson: Like in our first day on the new commission structure, people booked 30, which was an all time record. Like that's crazy. And like, they were like, yeah, like I want to fight for more calls. Right. So, yeah. Uh, and then yeah, HVAC equipment. And we're always like, we always have stuff in the burner of like how we're trying to tighten up margin.
Jack Carr: Well, I mean, I'm just gonna do some basic math here. If the person works 10 hours a day, books, 30 calls. 300 divided by 10 hours is 30 an hour. It's good. Yeah. That's really good. Yeah. And that's, that's great paid by many means and standards. Yeah. So I'm with you on that one. I love it. Awesome.
John Wilson: This was
Jack Carr: cool.
Jack Carr: I liked it. It's a workshop time. Yeah. I'm excited for tomorrow. I'm, I mean, I'm excited to meet everyone tonight. Um, if, uh, Keep an eye, you're out. If, if you guys missed this one, I know there's a few people who couldn't make it. Like,
John Wilson: well, we'll probably have another one, another one
Jack Carr: in April. Yep. We're excited.
Jack Carr: I mean, and
John Wilson: then I'm aiming for a big conference next September.
Jack Carr: Me too. I'm I'm down. That'll be a good time. Yeah, I still have to make some of these big conferences. I, I, like our business hit a big rock as I was going to main street summit and I had to back out and lose all my money on it, but like, I do want to experience some of this.
Jack Carr: It's fun. So I'm excited. Well, thank
John Wilson: you all for listening. Uh, check out owned and operated. com. We got workshop. We got blog stuff. We got newsletters, letter, Facebook pages,
Jack Carr: and we got all the things. We're a trove of information to help you grow your business. Cause it's grown mine. So I appreciate y'all.
Jack Carr: Yeah. Thanks all. Thanks.
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