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A new episode of 'Owned and Operated' is here, with the incomparable Ellen Rohr joining Jack and John as they talk about her expensive journey through the world of plumbing, what leadership means, and why open book management leads to success.
They talk about Ellen’s journey from plumbing to business success, strategic approaches to overcoming debt through proper pricing, and the personal evolution of founding successful ventures like Benjamin Franklin, the Punctual Plumber, and Zoom Drain. Now working with ServiceTitan, Ellen has seen a lot–don’t miss this masterclass episode of the show.
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Episode Hosts: 🎤
John Wilson: @WilsonCompanies on X
Jack Carr: @TheHVACJack on X
Episode Guest:
Ellen Rohr: @ellenrohr on X
More about Ellen Here
Ellen on LinkedIn
Owned and Operated Episode 149 Transcript
Ellen Rohr: You got to charge more than it costs. And you don't even know what it costs. Why am I doing this? What is it worth? How much money do I need?
Ellen Rohr: The simpler you make everything, the further you can take your business. I fight fancy all day long. Negligence is it's downright criminal. Sometimes it's day to day decision making. That's going to affect sales and cost of goods sold.
John Wilson: We had a couple of major pain points. 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? 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?
John Wilson: When looking around for solutions we saw a couple great 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. It directly tied into ServiceTitan. It automated the workflow of five or six employees a day.
John Wilson: 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. Welcome back to Owned and Operated.
John Wilson: Today on the show we have Ellen Rohr. Welcome to the show. Hi. Thanks for having me. Yeah, we're excited to have you. I've been a long time admirer. I feel like you've really been a spokesperson for the trades, obviously did a lot of amazing work with Zoom Drain. Before we start diving into what we're going to talk about today, could you give your perspective on how you entered the trades and what your work's been looking like?
Ellen Rohr: Once upon a time, I married a plumber. I met a guy, his name was Hot Rod. I did not grow up. the trades. My dad wasn't handy. We called people. I didn't know anything about what happened. I thought you flushed the toilet. It's a mirror. All of it was new to me, but it was so interesting to me. I'm hanging out with hot rod and his cool friends, electricians and contractors.
Ellen Rohr: And I'm seeing like this work being done and understanding like drains and fence and the whole, it like absolutely blew my mind. And I fell in love with the trades. For all the reasons I love my husband, they're capable people in the trades. And I'm really not, if I were on survivor, I would die.
Ellen Rohr: I just die. They were, nothing left. So I really I really got a taste for it, but then my husband's partner died at age 33. It was absolutely horrible. And I did something really dumb. I said listen, I've had a million jobs. I have a degree in business administration. I'm going to quit my real job, come work for you.
Ellen Rohr: And. You turn wrenches, I'll count the money. It'll be easy. And it was none of that. It was absolutely horrible. And I sometimes forget to say this. I'm still married 40 years later, but it's because we don't work together. This journey that I'm about to describe was so traumatic. I figured out a lot of things and it still makes me emotional because I had the help of great mentors.
Ellen Rohr: And back in the day, I started reading trade magazines and I wrote a letter to Frank Blau. You may have heard of him. He's an old OG, do you know Frank or of Frank? He's he's almost a hundred years old and he's still bossing everybody around. But he's, he wrote a column. He called me up and he told me I had my head up my, you know what?
Ellen Rohr: Like he just he just was the first one to say, you're a knucklehead. We were talking right before we got on the air, you're a knucklehead. You don't know what you're doing. You think you do, you got to charge more than it costs and you don't even know what it costs. So why don't you shut it down?
Ellen Rohr: Those are the first words he said to me. When I was reaching out for some help because we weren't making any money and we were fighting all the time. Just to cut to the chase, I've had these great mentors and once upon a time you met them just in the trade magazines, but now we have podcasts and so many resources and seminars that were just not available.
Ellen Rohr: Going back 40 years, it's so exciting, but I feel honor bound to share, how I figured some of these things out because so many people were generous with me, but Frank was the first one who just taught me. You've got to charge more than it costs. And he has this simple formula, which I use to this day, add up your costs of doing business, your desired costs, like with a real salary for you and nice benefits and nice trucks and all this stuff, add all those costs up, divide by your hoped for.
Ellen Rohr: Number of billable hours and charge more than that to your desired amount of profit. And that works. That 100 percent works. Now back in the day, everybody charged time and material and Frank and George Brazil were really the pioneers of flat rate back in the day. Converting the flat rate was the biggest, scariest thing you were going to do as a contractor.
Ellen Rohr: And now, thanks to them, it's not even a, Conversation anymore, right? You're going to charge with a menu. You're going to have enough in those selling prices that you can make a lot of money and make a lot of mistakes. But that's, that goes back to the beginning, but it was scary, back in the day, but as we were doing this, Okay, we're charging like 35 an hour and my competitors are charging 40 because I want to get the job.
Ellen Rohr: I do every stupid thing. And so now we're going to raise our prices to 150 and I call this the sphincter tightening over 100 an hour moment for me. It was scary, but I didn't know how to get. My team, we had four trucks. Okay. I didn't know how to get them to understand what we were doing unless I showed them the math and I had a green column or pad piece of paper with a pencil tears on it.
Ellen Rohr: So emotional about the whole thing, but I was just showing them, I, we have to do this. We're losing money. We're not paying you enough. I'm not getting paid anything. Hot Rod's not making very much money as a master plumber. This has got to change. I showed them the numbers. And the sky didn't fall. It was what they needed to go.
Ellen Rohr: Okay. We can do that. That plus sales training that plus improving our operating systems before we raised our prices and raised our standards. Our guys wore anything to work. One of my guys wore a t shirt that said, kill them all. Let God sort them out to work.
John Wilson: Wow.
Ellen Rohr: So what did we do? We By much, you're already probably doing a really good job by your customers, but as you raise your prices, you raise your standards and it goes on like that.
Ellen Rohr: Another really influential person in this journey was Jack Stack, who wrote the book, I think he wrote it with Bo Birlingham, The Great Game of Business. And that put a name to what I was doing, which is open book management. So Jack Stack, John Case, there were a couple of these pioneers who were like, you should really show your team the score because they're in charge of things and their decisions make the difference.
Ellen Rohr: It was, it seemed obvious, but this put a name and a construct on it. And Jack Stack has become a friend. I heartily recommend that book. I think it was written like 35 years ago. It's just, it's classic and fantastic. And they do seminars, great game of business is a really great resource for people.
Ellen Rohr: That's when I started thinking, Oh, this is a thing and just stuck with it. And then, like you guys, it was like Emperor's New Clothes. Am I the only one who's just figuring this out? Does, is everybody else a knucklehead like me? I started talking to friends and saying let's talk about we should charge more.
Ellen Rohr: And I'll tell you that I talked to a lot of people who yeah, you're right, we need to raise prices. And then behind my back, Called me a gouger, called me a rip off artist I was not embraced in the spirit with which giving this information, I was not received. In a powerful positive way so that along the line I started thinking i'm going to magnetize not Terrorize the people in my life, you know There's going to be people who want to follow this path with me and i'm going to find them and that's really been The journey so we turned our company around but here's another really important thing.
Ellen Rohr: It was hot rods business It was Hot Rod's business. I came into his business as I started to like, get the fever of Oh my God, now we're making money. We went into debt so deep and we got out of it within a year and we're stockpiling money just by raising our prices. Like I was like, Oh my God, this is so great.
Ellen Rohr: So this is when I said to Hot Rod, and this is the conversation for you too and any owners, right? I said to him, okay, now we have options. Money buys options. What do you want? Why are we doing this? And Hot Rod said, I like working all by myself. And a lot of that is his personality, but also it was so traumatic working together.
Ellen Rohr: And there can only be one person at the top at the end of the day, even with a partnership, even with a 50 50 partnership, you have to agree that somebody's going to be the guy. And it was his business, not mine. Like he started it. I came into it and it was very emotional. But now it was the best thing because we had different ideas of what we wanted to do.
Ellen Rohr: And I bring this up because as you make money, what will happen is probably happening to you is you finally have time to ask yourself big questions. Like, why am I doing this? What is it worth? How much money do I need? What do I want to do with my time? What's my gift that I have to share? Hot Rod is happy.
Ellen Rohr: And the most actualized guy I know, he ended up working, he had bought and sold a couple of other companies, ended up working for this manufacturer of these beautiful, Components works for Kalefi and they make hydronic and solar heating components in hot rods world I'm hot rods wife like he's a thing But it all came from us allowing each other to do what we wanted to do.
Ellen Rohr: Does this make sense? I know it like money plays a part because until you have enough money, you can't even ask those questions All right, so I ended up starting Benjamin Franklin the punctual plumber. I did a lot of consulting I worked with Jim Abrams and that group now called It was called Clockworks, and now it's part of Authority Brands.
Ellen Rohr: And that was a big win. And then I started Zoom Drain with my best friends, Jim Cronitti and Al Levy. And we have great venture capital partners over there, MPK Equity. And now I work at Service Titan. So I just I just keep finding more and more fun ways to play, but almost all of it is focused on how do you make money?
Ellen Rohr: And how do you get your team in on the game? So I'm glad we're having this combo. So end of my story, but not the end of my story.
John Wilson: I think it was funny because the reason we started this in the new generation of owners, I am old. Which is funny. I'm a young human being, but I've been in the industry my whole life.
John Wilson: We started this show a couple of years ago because of exactly what you described 40 years ago or 30 years ago. They're like, hey, the resources didn't exist. They're still newer, but even 10 years ago when I started, the resources weren't there. Yeah. And if they were they were out of reach.
Jack Carr: That's the big one.
Jack Carr: Yeah. The resources are tiered towards really, the high grossing companies already. And so there was nothing for the one to 5 million range that was really affordable and out there to really help out the people like me. I've grown from 800, 000 to almost 5 million in two years. And there's it, there's a giant void.
Jack Carr: Whereas if I didn't have a wonderful Twitter community, John, some friends, I would be. I don't know where I'd be today. I'd be very, I'd be a very sad human being, I'm sure.
John Wilson: There's more resources than there were, and we wanted to be able to stick our voice in there, because I wish, same as you wrote a book, I wish that I would have had my podcast a decade ago.
John Wilson: Yeah. It would have shortened a lot.
Ellen Rohr: When I was like first figuring this out, I crossed the country to find a 5, 000, 000 shop. A 5, 000, 000 shop was iconic. A 5, 000, 000 shop is what a 200, 000, 000 shop is today. People don't understand what
John Wilson: it used to look like. No, it's so fragmented. They just don't understand.
John Wilson: The idea that a company could be over 10 million was unfathomable. No one had a tech stack. No one had software yet. It was all like, we had a whiteboard. I also remember moving over a hundred dollars for flat rate. That was a really big moment in my career. I also had to do that. I also had to do that. So when I first started, this was only 10 or 12 years ago, but when, when I first started.
John Wilson: Everyone was a million to 3 million. And now that's just not the case.
Ellen Rohr: Now that's a Tuesday for some companies. It's just amazing what's happening and how much how much opportunity. What a golden age of home services. It makes me so happy and really proud to have been in it for so long now, too.
Ellen Rohr: How did you guys get a clue? The reason why I started to reach out is because I would say to my husband, we don't have any money. And he would hear I'm not good enough. I'm not working hard enough. Like we just, It was so emotionally charged. There's an expression that when the pain of the current condition becomes greater than the fear of change, you'll change.
Ellen Rohr: And so I was willing to do anything. I'm certainly willing to walk away from this business. I thought, fine, it doesn't work. I don't get it. I'll go get another job. It's what made me reach out and write that letter to Frank Blau. He wrote an article in 1989 called how much should a contractor charge?
Ellen Rohr: Where he went through this. Simple, a math and I'm like, that makes sense. So I wrote him a letter that said he was full of, you know what? And my customers wouldn't pay it. My guys wouldn't do it. And that's why he called and gave me a hard time. But what was the, that was like the moment where everything started to shift for me.
Ellen Rohr: How did you figure out your asset from your elbow? Did you know how to read a balance sheet and that profit loss growing up is cause I didn't. And I went to college for it.
John Wilson: I'm sure Jack has his story to share and mine is relatively straightforward. So I graduated, it's a third generation family business.
John Wilson: I joined the company full time at 18, but I'd worked in it since I was 10 throughout the summers and really learned the trade itself. So at 18, I was already at a competent Plumber which was fun in my early 20s I felt like I wasn't using my brain the way I would have liked. I like puzzles.
John Wilson: I like being challenged I like to figure stuff out. So I went to school at night for accounting at a local community college It was like a hundred dollars a credit hour and I spent six thousand dollars over the course of two years and I getting basically a 101 on how accounting worked.
John Wilson: Nice. I was maybe 23 when I exited that program, and that gave me enough information to feel like I understood what was happening inside the business. Understanding what happened is different than understanding how to change. So that was the next decade of my life was figuring that part out. But yeah, that community college really put it together.
John Wilson: So were they generous right
Ellen Rohr: from the get go?
John Wilson: My dad and I have a very large age difference. It's in mid 40 years apart. And so as I was entering. My adulthood in my early twenties, my dad was looking for an exit for his business, which is obviously very unusual. And even more unusual he was willing to sell it to me at 23.
John Wilson: So through a few years of negotiations, I ended up buying it at 25, but I started running the business at 23. With this associate, not even an associate. A few years of classes. So I had open access because I was at that time I was running the business.
Ellen Rohr: I'm embarrassed after all the preaching I've doing and magnetizing.
Ellen Rohr: And most of the time, when I look at somebody's books, they're a mess. They're still a mess. Even big, nice companies. There's so much. It's like the back of the truck. It just gets messy and nobody bothers to clean it up or knows how. And, we just live with it. It's challenging.
John Wilson: Yeah. Like ours are not perfectly clean.
John Wilson: Oh, I can point to all the reasons why. Yeah. Most of them are. It's challenging. And when a, no one comes out of Picking on your point earlier, did you know how to do this growing up? And the answer is no. And I definitely didn't know how to build an accounting department. I just described how I was a plumber that happened to go to community college.
John Wilson: I don't know how to build an accounting department for a, going on 30 million organization. And I learn new stuff every day in my process of attempting to build that department. So it's a real, I think it's a real challenge and I think understanding who are the key players. Who are the peoples that need to be involved?
John Wilson: Like what's a staff accountant and when do you have one? What's a senior accountant? Do you need a controller? Do you need a CFO? Like those are all different things that people just don't know. And I'm still learning, right? Like we're still actively figuring it out. We're still work in process here. So I think a lot of that is just a part of the journey.
John Wilson: So I think, We still have messes that we're cleaning up.
Ellen Rohr: Yeah. And I'm still at the same thing. Like Ben's humbled so many times, so many days, I worked with the company, went through the whole thing with a recruiter, found this like top drawer CFO who was going to come in and really. And then one day I finally said to him, show me that you can get into the accounting program.
Ellen Rohr: Just, I'm going to sit right here and I want you to. And he couldn't do it. He'd never been in. And I'm like, how did we not know? There's just a lot of bamboozling and neglect. Yeah, it's just negligence. It's downright criminal sometimes. The accounting professionals, like you might have to kiss a few frogs to find some folks.
Ellen Rohr: And I don't know anyone who doesn't have a story like yours as they've grown their business, John, that it works for a while and then you upgrade and then you downgrade and then you upgrade and you're so grateful and you're just trying different things out. But it is a team. I'll tell you one thing that I would give as a piece of advice.
Ellen Rohr: I was talking to a really big company. Payroll is usually a sticky wicket. When you're trying to clean up your financials and get them right, I call this a known financial position or KFP. That means the balance sheet profit and loss are right, they're current, and you understand them. The first standard is at the end of the month to tighten up the month, but then the better standard is once a week to be able to look at those reports.
Ellen Rohr: It might be a little down and dirty because they're not closed yet, but you have access to the balance sheet and the profit loss on a weekly basis. That's a good standard. But what makes it difficult is often payroll because the owners Come up with these harebrained contests and spiffs and bonuses. And if you're out of town, we do, Oh, and profit sharing.
Ellen Rohr: Sure. And they're making all these promises that now the accounting team is going. Hold up.
Yeah.
Ellen Rohr: We have to go figure that out now. And that if you could before you create a way to pay, talk to your accounting team and tell them, tell me how complicated this would be to keep track of what apps could we use to put the onus on the team members to give you good information.
Ellen Rohr: That kind of thing could save y'all from small to big. A lot of hassle. So that goes to you, Jack, cause you're not so big yet. that this is going to become a big hairy mess.
Jack Carr: Actually that's the exact reason my knucklehead moment is what you're talking about right now. So we were going through our employment line items on the P& L and we started digging into it.
Jack Carr: And so when it's two or three employees, it's not that big of a deal. It's very easy to watch. Hey, where's this biff going. And Did they get paid and why and where? And we finally, now that we have maybe 10 employees or so we're not able to track it as we were. Before at least at that very high level.
Jack Carr: So we simplified all of our payroll, the structures, everything behind it. And then we started digging into, wait, why is this going to this line in the P and L above when it should be going below, how do we split up the time of people who run both sides, leads or managers who run out in the field.
Jack Carr: And so we started having these questions around. How does this work? And what is our actual gross profit now? Because our gross profit might have been a little bit inflated due to the fact that we didn't have employees inside Topline. And so we think we're making money, but are we making as much money as we think we are?
Jack Carr: Which we're making huge decisions on company wide. And so we, right before this call, I was late because I was getting off the phone with a potential accountant, a new accountant, because our old accountant was a third party. And so we're finally bringing somebody in house to help us out with this bookkeeping and accounting.
Jack Carr: But very timely conversation. Okay, so let me share this, because
Ellen Rohr: we were talking before and you just had a guest on that was talking about gross margin. And I have not listened to the episode. I don't think it's posted yet.
John Wilson: I don't think it's aired yet. Yeah.
Ellen Rohr: What it triggered for me was that anywhere I go to all the conventions and everybody's talking about margin and there's almost this mine's bigger than yours feel about these conversations.
Ellen Rohr: And in my head, I'm knowing you guys are not talking apples to oranges, gross margin. When you're just meeting at the bar or at the back of the room or it isn't it. Ridiculous conversation to have for what you just said Jack and there are some choices it's not necessarily wrong to split up a service tax pay for instance where we would put the Field wages up top and then maybe training or something else below the line That's a choice, but it I don't do it that way I put all of their gross wages in cost of goods sold why because it's easier Cause it's easier, but see, unless you and I are doing it the same way and neither of us is wrong, we're not going to have the same parameters for that gross margin conversation.
Ellen Rohr: And so that's where it can get a little just, be aware as you're talking to other guys. And I've got strong opinions about this just from being on the accountant's side so many times. So we all make these knuckleheaded decisions. And then I sit down with the accountant who tells me, I wish you hadn't done that because for us to figure out that SPF requires like six additional, we've got service Titan and then we get the report and then we massage the report and then we have to put it into Paylocity and now we've got to get that back over these are real challenges for everybody.
Ellen Rohr: I don't know a company that isn't. Struggling in some way with this. And if they're not, they don't know about the mess. That's where we were though,
Jack Carr: Six months ago is we didn't, we don't know what we don't know. And to answer your question of why people don't do this is a, you don't know what you don't No, I'm degree, I have a business minor still, like I understand a PNL, but to the depth of, Hey, this is industry wide, you should be doing this and this best practices.
Jack Carr: It's really it's really on the owner to a, go out and learn that. And then B, if they want to find somebody who's going to come in, like you said, find somebody who's good and who understands that work. But one of the great things that we've. We've been working on is the ability for global talent who understands that this kind of information is absolutely growing.
Jack Carr: So we're able to go to other places and we're not, we don't have to pay a CFO, 200, 000 a year or some ridiculous amount to be able to learn this. We can get that help here. with our bookkeeper who can then, get information from other locations, which is I'll tell you
Ellen Rohr: I'm loathe to hire a CFO.
Ellen Rohr: I would be really cautious about it unless you're pretty big cause I don't know what they do all day.
John Wilson: I don't think, I don't think there's room for it.
Ellen Rohr: This is for the listeners like, yeah, oh, we need a, you need a great CFO. Maybe, or maybe you could get a fractional one or maybe you could share one.
Ellen Rohr: With one of your business building buddies, someone who has a clue. And then you and the friend that you're talking to on the regular, if you have the same CFO, that could, you could start to create some patterns that are consistent between your, your cadre, the people you hang out with and you're growing businesses together.
Ellen Rohr: And that, I can tell by the guys you've had on your podcast There, there are groups, people that are at the same level or just above where you are that you want to hang out with and talk to and talk real with and you probably don't compete with because you're in different areas or you don't care and bring it, but to have that kind of pattern.
Ellen Rohr: Now, a couple of just guiding principles. And this will lead into like how much should you share with your team too, but overall the balance sheet is very particular assets liabilities and equity and assets can all be verified by a third party source like your There's going to be a bank statement and the bank statement's probably right.
Ellen Rohr: And you're probably wrong. So use theirs and adjust it. Debits and credits, to clean up once upon, do that once like the back of the truck, you just go line by line accounts receivable in any shop. There's probably a stack of papers that have invoices. People owe you that money. That stack should match, or service Titans AR should match.
Ellen Rohr: QuickBooks or Intax AR, like there's verifiable sources and it's a bit of, it's a bit of work to go through and do it. And if you have a, someone who likes Sudokus and puzzles on your team as a call taker, that person could be a crackerjack. Bookkeeper and bookkeeping skills are very valuable because at some point, somebody just has to actually take highlighters and go through and figure that this one's right.
Ellen Rohr: This one's right. That's wrong. We've got to fix that one. It's a cleanup. So as you go through and you verify your assets, liabilities, and then the difference is equity and you do need an accountant or someone who understands tax law to help you properly allocate equity. You can't do that on your own.
Ellen Rohr: You're going to need some help right there. The balance sheet does not have a lot of room for creativity. I always vote for simple. I like one line that says vehicles. And then another spreadsheet or something inside the accounting program that details the vehicles. We don't need every vehicle listed on the balance sheet.
Ellen Rohr: Are you with me? These, the balance sheet and the profit and loss are your main reports. Details can be found elsewhere. So the simpler you make your financials, this I learned from Jim Abrams, the simpler you make everything, the further you can take your business. I fight fancy all day long. Do we need it?
Ellen Rohr: Does anybody look at this? Who cares about that? Will that change the value of the enterprise? Is that going to help make a decision? It's like, why do payroll taxes go in gross margin? Technically they are up in the cost of goods sold section. Technically they are, but there's no decision to be made, get them out of the way and put them down in operating expenses and lump them all together.
Ellen Rohr: So I'm like, that's my mentality from having done this for so long. Like the details, clean them up and then you can go find the information elsewhere. Just one little thing. This is not for everybody, but have you guys heard of. Touchless journal entry integration at ServiceTitan.
No.
Ellen Rohr: Okay.
Ellen Rohr: I'm just going to say this is for your benefit or dear listener. If you're using ServiceTitan, ask about this and talk to your accountant. Cause what it does is it assumes that ServiceTitan and your accounting program are just one big program. And instead of sending all of the transactions over to QuickBooks, just the numbers come over through a JE.
Ellen Rohr: So it's cleaner.
John Wilson: How many of you have export errors? A lot of them. We asked Service Titan about this a few months ago, because the bigger the company gets, the more complicated that daily sync gets. And they said that nothing existed, so we had to make our own. Yeah, we had to switch from syncing to daily summary journal entries, because the entries, they were thousands of lines a day.
John Wilson: So complicated. And it would take us six hours a day to fix it. It was almost a full time person's job just to fix ServiceTitan's sync.
Ellen Rohr: There are people and apps that will help you do what you did, but now ServiceTitan does have that capacity. What can happen though, and this is something to talk to your prospect accountant, Jack.
Ellen Rohr: Are they willing to go to ServiceTitan? They just learn it well enough learn the connection points Not everything is going to be coming from service titan to quickbooks Anyway, sales ar sales tax, maybe if you use po's and you're doing some kind of inventory connections There's not that many touch points.
Ellen Rohr: They should be able to go to service titan and not say That's, everything has to come to the accounting program and then I'll fix it there. That's not how these programs work. So that would be a good test of their willingness and they don't have to know it now, but they should be able to learn it.
Ellen Rohr: And anyone who's listening, if as it, maybe you're not an owner, as a team member, if you're willing to learn accounting and service Titan, you have such a bright career. You have a limitless career, right? Are you with me? Yeah, I am. If you're interested at all, impose yourself on your boss and say, I'm going to learn it.
Ellen Rohr: I'm going to get this center of excellence about service Titan here. I'm going to understand the accounting program. That skill set is just yeah. Going to have opportunities forever, just saying. So anyway getting back to the, the cleanup, then over on the profit and loss, I like to see certain patterns.
Ellen Rohr: So I like to see a department clear to the gross profit level, and we're going to use business units and service Titan who, and they speak to the classes or departments over in your accounting program, but this is the pattern that I. You don't have to do this, but I'm the guest today. So I want to share this.
Ellen Rohr: If you haven't, I like to see the pattern sales and cost of goods sold by trade by small job, little job. And then potentially by location. And if you're, if you do all that, then residential versus commercial, but let's leave that aside because that's a lot of work to get it down to that level. But if you do by trade, so if we do plumbing and HVAC, what do you do, John?
Ellen Rohr: At your company,
John Wilson: plumbing, HVAC, electric. And then we split those trades up a little bit deeper because the teams are large. So we need to know, Hey, what's plumbing service for us? Install HVC service, tune up. They all have different payroll. So we basically just follow the payroll for going on two years.
John Wilson: 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 them a call if you're looking for leads.
Ellen Rohr: Okay that's my next point. What we want to be able to do is align that pattern with your org chart. So if you have a department, so let's say at Zoom Drain, we have three departments because each of those departments are different vehicles.
Ellen Rohr: Different skill sets and then, different people are going to be, there's a different operating basis in those departments. Otherwise I wouldn't do it. But if there is, so at zoom, we have drain cleaning service, drain cleaning, install small job, big job, and then we have pumping and pumping is neither.
Ellen Rohr: Pumping is, it's got a different truck. It's got a different setup. So when the org chart changes, you know That's the conversation. Do we need another department? But for instance, and this is going to sound like sacrilege I don't bother Classifying the maintenance department separate from the service. Oh my god Why not because the maintenance should turn into something more like maintenance in and of itself If a guy just went and did A maintenance job.
Ellen Rohr: It's a loser We know it's a loser. I don't need any more data. And if I just wanted to see how many maintenance agreements I had There's another report for that. I could even see the sales of maintenance separate from the sales of service, but I would flow both of those into HVAC service for the sake of the department.
Ellen Rohr: And I think also the maintenance departments could be so much better. If they were thought of like that, sometimes we take a junior guy to do maintenance and I'm thinking We should send a senior guy to do a mate. Okay, you're with me on that let's go fix that system Not just put new filters in or whatever so So some of those things but again, this is style and on the profit and loss you have The freedom to reflect your department's, my encouragement for you, John, for you, Jack, and for you, dear listener, is to keep it really simple so that you can get clear information so that you could say to the HBAC service manager, here's your sales, that's offense, and then here's defense, labor, materials, and subs.
Ellen Rohr: And one more thing, and I'll stop talking for a minute, on the labor side, the reason I put all gross wages, vacation, training shop time, all of it, and, turning wrenches time, I put it in one bucket is, The service manager should manage that, and still have that line item come in at the dollar and percentage that we're budgeting.
Ellen Rohr: Because if it goes below, the responsibility dilutes, and we're only lucky to see where I'm going. Again, you don't have to do it that way, but that's why I do it that way. So now the service manager is in charge of the labor material and the subs. That's really all I care about in the gross. In that cost of goods sold section, because on the daily, that's what the service manager is managing sales, offense, defense, labor materials, and subs.
Ellen Rohr: And now he's got a scorecard for the whole, and that's where we go with open book management. I know a lot of big companies who are sales dogs, offense, bam, huge numbers, but there isn't any real responsibility or game being played On defense, which is going to be your cost of goods sold section, labor material subs.
John Wilson: How often are you able to deliver the score? This has been something that we, I'm going to go back to your comment a second ago. These guys are sales dogs, but their defense is bad. My quick take is I've been there and it's because sales is very easy to measure. And it takes almost no work to measure sales, but you have to really put in energy to measure anything else.
John Wilson: The same way that we can measure sales. It takes a ton of work to get daily payroll, like a wild amount of work. It takes a crazy amount of work and tech stack to get your daily material costs Like timely and in there every day.
Jack Carr: And that's what John with VMI.
John Wilson: And that, yeah, that's with me with every advantage, all like all the resources and the tech stack to do it.
John Wilson: And it still takes work. So we, we started producing what we call the daily gross margin tracker, which is a daily updated Excel with by department, here's the gross margin. Here's your revenue. Here's your labor. But that takes a full time person has to do daily payroll every day to deliver that report.
Ellen Rohr: Once a week is a great standard. Daily's a lot, to get it all the way down to that level. Except for if you're doing it. But I like it. I think once a week will give you a chance. But here's a couple of reasons why it's so hard. One, we talked about payroll. I like paying guys by the hour at zoom drain.
Ellen Rohr: And with a lot of my clients, we've done this again, not the only way to do it. There's some really good ways to pay out there, but I like paying them by the hour and then in exchange for their minimum acceptable level of sales. And then if they go beyond that we share generously sales above goal. So the house wins first That's how I do it and it's still some work to do that Here's another thing only have three spiffs or contests going at any one time And maybe make them a level one level two and level three spiffs and leave the dollar amount.
Ellen Rohr: Maybe one's a Turnover is 100. Selling a bio clean or we use ZoomDrainBio, we have some kind of cool stuff you put in the drains. Maybe that's 50. And then maybe there's a 20. See, then accounting doesn't have to do the percentages and that don't share sales. I don't, I only I believe one person makes the sale.
Ellen Rohr: You get two people in it, customers confused, they're not going to buy. One person makes the sale, the junior guy who there's helping, he gets the next at bat, but only don't split sales. Like we make it so complicated. And then we've got these manager's bonuses based on this, based on, don't base anything on net because it's too, you have too much baloney going on right here.
Ellen Rohr: Keep it high level. So just really work with your accounting team. But if you change the way you pay caution, you better take six months to do it with a lot of transparency. This is how we pay now. We're considering going here. Here's how you make as much as more with the new program.
Ellen Rohr: Maybe even you grandfather your old guys in and don't change them. And we just get the new team going. There's, you could lose your whole team. I once consulted with the team that was paying way weight. They were paying 45 percent of sales to their frontline team. And it was painful. And I said, you can't do it.
Ellen Rohr: Nine guys quit that day. We could have done it better. You know what I mean? So be really cautious about how you do it, but work that out and try and simplify it, but that's why payroll gets behind and then materials. Now I like drain cleaning cause we have 2 percent materials. Yeah,
John Wilson: it's beautiful.
Ellen Rohr: Okay. But if you do remodeling, if you do. Just general plumbing. I mean there's just a lot Even if you do real time inventory where you're buying it and you're barcoding it and then as you create an invoice it changes From inventory to cost of goods sold i've never personally never seen that number, right?
Ellen Rohr: For all the time and energy that goes into it. So also you do ours
John Wilson: is right. So I might have to show you ours.
Ellen Rohr: Maybe, but overall,
John Wilson: but it's because we don't inventory. We have a, we have VMI, so we cheat. That's a
Ellen Rohr: win. No. So your vendor manages it.
John Wilson: Yeah. So it's, Yeah, managing daily cost of goods sold, this was one of the inspirations for it, is it is so much easier if you don't have to actually manage the inventory.
John Wilson: 100%.
Ellen Rohr: 100 percent
John Wilson: on that. So an invoice crosses the desk, we're good to go.
Ellen Rohr: Because you're just expensing everything that comes across your desk. You're not trying to maintain that inventory number on the balance sheet. That's what I'm talking about. I love that. Have your vendor do it. Have them compete to do it.
Ellen Rohr: Especially as you get bigger, you get a little more power. That's a delicious thing. I heartily recommend that. So yes, that's the best way to do it. And otherwise I would just expense it. But here's the ticket. The biggest control you've got is to close the gate.
Yeah.
Ellen Rohr: So once upon a time, Al Levy and I went to visit Tommy Bello.
Ellen Rohr: And at the time. He won't mind me sharing this. At the time he was like 20 million, which is like a big milestone. And a lot of people would love to be that big, but losing millions a year. So it's offense. He was playing offense, man. He wasn't playing defense and Al's comment as we toured his location was, I could use your forklift, Tommy, to load up my truck and rip off all your inventory.
Ellen Rohr: You could just walk in the yard, get in his forklift and load your truck. From Tommy's inventory. Just the old school stuff is really important. Like even with the app stack, lock the gate, a whiteboard. Now let's talk about open book management and how, so once we got to clean up our own financials, we've got to create some meaningful patterns.
Ellen Rohr: You're going to put a budget in place. So now we have where we are compared to where we want to be. We have a game. And now we have games for different managers at the organization. This is getting pretty sexy, right? So where are you in your journeys with sharing information with your team members?
John Wilson: We have always when I say always, six or seven years, we've been sharing down to gross margin. The, where we have struggled a lot is what is the target because and this is a known gap. So if I refer back to earlier in this conversation, the I didn't come out of the womb knowing how to build an accounting department and I sure as heck didn't know how to build a budget.
John Wilson: So that's still an active project for us. Even now we're running budget light until the end of this month. We're really excited. We're going to a budgeting class and we're going to get into it. Where are you going to the budgeting class? We're going to, it's through Nextar. It's called business planning workshop.
John Wilson: Excellent. Yep. So we're going to exit with a budget for 25. First time we've ever had a real budget. The rest of it's us just putting it together. Really knowing the goal has been a challenge. And even as I say that it's shocking because I think every owner thinks that they communicate the goal.
John Wilson: I know. I think I communicate the goal. And despite the amount of times, I think I communicated the goal. Everyone else does not think I communicate the goal. So budgeting, I think solves that, Brandon, my president went to a training held by next star maybe a month ago. And one of it was a leadership development training and he came back with a lot of really great tools.
John Wilson: Most of them. Or how do you train people to read the financials? How do they understand the impact that their daily decisions have on our gross margin? Great. Where does the money come from if we miss on materials? What comes from net profit? Because we're not going to do layoffs in the call center. So figuring out how to explain that to our frontline leaders, and our senior leaders, but most of them understand it at this point, has been really big for us.
John Wilson: And one of the big challenges that he came back with Was are you showing them the whole picture which we have never shown down to net? I think when you're a much smaller business, it might be challenging because you're fighting some Maybe you do take a large portion of the earnings whereas for a business our size Like no one has the expectation that I'm walking off with a large portion of our earnings.
John Wilson: They see the hundred trucks, they see the building. I think it's a little bit more self explanatory. So just over the last month, Brandon's challenge after coming to that training was, Hey, I think we need to show down the net to our entire leadership team. Like they really need to know the score.
John Wilson: And I let that sit for a second. And the I got more and more into it because as I think about it, I am paying these human beings to deliver these results and me hiding what they've done for me. It doesn't help me or them. Because the only reason that they have jobs is to do this, is to provide these results for the business and they have to know what we're doing.
John Wilson: So today was our very first Hey, down the net, here's what's happens in September. Let's explain what's going on. Let's walk through it. Let's like, and then we did the trainings that Brandon came back with of, okay, we missed on materials in this department. Here's what that impacted. And it seemed to really start clicking for people for the first time.
John Wilson: So it was really exciting.
Ellen Rohr: A hundred percent of what you say about that. Just again, just to prove my how long I've lived. I went to the first super meeting of Contractors 2000, which then became Nexstar. I used to sell for them. I sold memberships and I was one of the trainers and started with the stuff that's you know, Here's your asset.
Ellen Rohr: Here's your elbow kind of stuff and Nexstar has always that as a core value that understanding your financials and open book management is you can count on them to teach you the right thing there.
John Wilson: I think it's accountability. Like I think that's what ultimately we're all wanting, right? Like we're wanting, we want our team members to take ownership of their portion of the business that we're entrusting to them.
John Wilson: And they can't take ownership if they don't know the score. I'm just going back to, and I'm trying to say this in a least asshole ish way as possible, but that literally is their jobs, is to deliver the results that we expect. And they have to know if they did it.
Ellen Rohr: Yeah, like you said, they may not be clear on what the game is.
Ellen Rohr: Did you ever see the very best management film After office space with Jennifer Aniston and Ron Livingston. Did you see this movie? Okay. And Jennifer Aniston is saying, how much flair do you want me to wear? I was that guy. What is good enough for you people? When do we get a win? Why is it always more and more at it just is exhausting unless what's good enough.
Ellen Rohr: And that's what they're asking is this number good enough. Can I get a win? Yeah. Here and if I do above and beyond do I get extra for it? You know that those are reasonable questions. Let me share this too what you did It's going to take a minute. Some guys aren't interested. Some guys aren't interested Are interested but it's going to be some repetition do this every month do it every week See what I think once a week looking at that dashboard get it on one page, on the overhead line once a month I would do every line Once a week, I do overhead, maybe overhead broken down into marketing and vehicles or some, a couple other big rocks, but you don't have to go every line every week.
Ellen Rohr: Does that make sense? Do the big numbers, the main KPIs once a week, and then once a month drill down on every line. But here's the, here's something to keep in mind. It's day to day decision making that's going to affect sales and cost of goods sold. It's procedure below the gross profit, gross margin line.
Ellen Rohr: Are they using the gas card? Right now, marketing is separate. Let's take marketing into its own weird world. Okay. Marketing is making decisions with weirdo data and always will be right. But marketing overall, they have a percentage or a dollar amount and dollar amount that they get to play with for X number of calls, et cetera.
Ellen Rohr: But marketing is a little more complicated, but all the other things, insurance, is there an insurance? Policy that people follow uniforms or just can people willy nilly. It's all about procedure below the line with the exception of marketing, which is its own crazy game to play. And only the brave can play that one.
Ellen Rohr: Know that too. So sometimes like I don't put things up in gross profit or I keep saying that up in the cost of goods sold section that they can't control the vehicles, like if you use the cards. Your vehicle cards, you're going to fill the truck when you're out of fuel. There's no decisions to be made.
Ellen Rohr: Just follow process. Use the card. Don't let your family fill their cars on the card, or you're in danger of getting fired. That's procedure all the way down the line and those become mini games. So as you. Oh, this is going to get so good. I'm so excited. I'm leaning in now. As you and your team, as you and your team look at this, what happens is what will change the numbers?
Ellen Rohr: So suppose you're behind on budget, which by the way, be very candid with them. You made it up. You had some good input from next door guys and they're smart, but it's all a guess. We don't know if the storm's going to hit, if a pandemic's going to come, this may change, but this is the game. Are you in? This is what we're going to do.
Ellen Rohr: Okay, you pinky swear, yes, we'll play. Then for each of these, if we're behind, then the question goes how do we make up the gap? So for sales, it could be sales training increase in prices. You're going to ask them, you don't have to figure this out anymore. They know more than you let them do it.
Ellen Rohr: And then for cost of goods sold. We could close the warehouse gate. Great idea. Okay. Maybe we need a procedure for how you restock your trucks. That's tighter than the one we have. So what happens is you create a laundry list of projects. And as you do this, if somebody comes up with a wine.
Ellen Rohr: I was 50, 50 miles away from the shop, and I didn't have the pump, it was supposed to be That's a real thing! So listen to the wine, and then let's turn that into a project. We need a better restock system. Yeah, okay, put it on the list, are you with me? So now you're gonna get a list of projects.
Ellen Rohr: We need a better gas card. We need a better uniform policy. These things are going to come up in the meetings and listen to them and write it down. Then they're not whining all the time. Whining is repeating yourself and stating the obvious because you think no one's listening. So jot it down and then pick five top projects and use EOS or use a whiteboard.
Ellen Rohr: This is Al Levy 101. Al Levy still recommends whiteboards. Because they are easy and they're going to get done. Do you guys use EOS? Entrepreneurial operating systems. This is traction, Whitman. Yeah. Okay. It's great that's where the projects those rocks come from are from looking at the financials and going We could move that if we did better and that's going to be a project.
Ellen Rohr: Start, change, stop, new procedure, updated procedure. Are you connecting the dots? Is this just
John Wilson: terrific? Let's assume that we're working with, okay, coach me, Ellen, right? I just presented my team down to net profit, our September results. I'm concerned as the owner. That, hey, I had buy in for an hour from 930 to 1030 this morning, we deep dove, we did a training, we saw light bulbs, right?
John Wilson: And I get the project thing. I hear that. I get the presenting results. What do you think the next 90 days of my life looks like as the owner so that I can help continue to drive understanding and results out of open book management?
Ellen Rohr: One I believe in the ride along. If there's somebody like this, if there's the meeting you're not invited to outside after the meeting, they happen.
Ellen Rohr: Like who are the opinion leaders, who are your missionaries within your group? Ride along with them. How's this landing? Is this making any sense to you? Do you think this is a waste of time? What were your thoughts about it? What would you do if I were, if you were me? Here's my intention.
Ellen Rohr: Here's what I'm trying to get across. Here's the game I'm trying to play. Is this, am I on target? Am I way off? And listen to them. Ride along so that when, don't look at your phone, don't meet them on the job. Get in the, Shotgun seat and spend some time or sit elbow to elbow with the accounting team, this dispatchers, the CSR says, am I missing the mark?
Ellen Rohr: Like you are a very vulnerable, humble guy, John. And Jack too, the way you guys have shared today, a lot of guys would not. They would pretend everything is just fine. And I can tell already that you're okay.
John Wilson: Oh, everything's totally fine here. Shoes.
Ellen Rohr: You can take it. In other words, if someone had a criticism or someone had some advice Keith material, I love his line.
Ellen Rohr: What advice do you have for me? Not like feedback, not like criticism. What advice would you give me? It's such a great question. So ask team members and try and find those guys whose. Who are influencers within your team? Keep doing it. Do it. This is a great expression. Do it shitty at first because then you'll get better at it, but it's the discipline of doing it.
Ellen Rohr: It's like playing golf. It's like going for a run. It's it's just the consistency that adds up. So some meetings are going to go well, some won't. I would do the weekly meeting with field supervisors or like your junior managers, those guys in charge of a crew. The main manager's HVAC install HVAC service.
Ellen Rohr: Those guys the accounting team the dispatchers at zoom train. We have 13 people and We have a random guy. Does he want to come to the fqc meeting this week? Oh, okay So that he can go to the meeting outside after the meeting and tell him what I talked about Like just to rotate in anybody from the who's interested in going the fqc I'll go and just bring them in and let them
what's fqc.
Ellen Rohr: it stands for financial quick check So that's a one page dashboard report that has Month to date. Compare to the budget, compare to year to date, compare to the budget for where we should be by the end of the month this year. And then sales, cost of goods sold to the gross profit, gross margin line, dollars and percentages.
Ellen Rohr: And then one bucket for overhead on the weekly. Just is that overall number in percent, maybe have another bucket for marketing or even better have another dashboard for marketing, do a separate marketing meeting with the same basic idea. You're laughing, Jack. I mark marketing intimidates me.
Jack Carr: I was getting the feeling you don't like marketing all that much. It just island them.
Ellen Rohr: I know how to go make a sale. There's some old school things that I can do. I could make, if it was me and one guy left on the planet, would be selling each other something. Like I get that. But there's a lot to do with marketing anymore and I am not the expert on it.
Ellen Rohr: I am tipping my hat to people who are brave enough to deal with what we're dealing with these days. It's a lot and it's exciting, just it's not my strength at all. Anyway, then once a month you could go line by line and maybe once a quarter bring the whole team in to do the full deep dive, right?
Ellen Rohr: So not everybody has to know every number every week. It can you can just give them the numbers that are relevant for their position. So for the call takers What are the number of leads that come in? What are their close rates like each and some of those you can get from service tightener your crm Like that's what those dashboards are for.
Ellen Rohr: Create dashboards per position. The tech dashboard's terrific. Customize it to work for you. So those guys should see that information every day, all day long, right? I'm sure you guys are playing the game there. So it's gonna take, it is gonna take consistency. I think the ride alongs, the side by sides, the being willing to, get some feedback or advice.
Ellen Rohr: from your team as you roll this out is going to steer you in the right direction. Your team will fix everything for you if you let them in on the game.
John Wilson: That's what I'm consistently finding is, and that's why we, that's why ultimately what led to the decision of let's just open it up because We started delegating, I would say real problems and we did a reorg so that we could do that.
John Wilson: But then we started Hey, this is now like this section of this, the business, you have 50 people in your vertical, this is your problem. And I'm going to go, I'm going to just go drink coffee over here and talk to people. That's been really good and really successful. And for the first time, I feel we have this momentum of ownership And accountability in our senior leaders, which we just haven't had before which is really exciting.
John Wilson: And let me add this, just
Ellen Rohr: not, I'm not seeing this as advice for you, John, but just in this topic in general, sometimes that kind of delegation turns into abdication and that's why a formal project management system is important. Like once a week, if it's a, if it's a top five project. The others are molding on the list.
Ellen Rohr: They're on the list, we'll get to 'em, but we gotta get one of these done to make room for a new one, right? You can't do it all at once. So you have your top five, and let's say one of your top five is to update the truck restock. That's a biggie that can solve a lot of problems for a lot of companies.
Ellen Rohr: So to, to do a better restock system. So you get, you now have a meeting on the calendar. That you hold to and you go through the steps of delegation. What are we doing? Why are we doing it? So we're not 50 miles away and don't have what we, okay. And then who's going to be in charge? Who's going to help? How much time, energy, and money do we need to get this done?
Ellen Rohr: How will we know it's done? What's the reward or consequence? That's really Al Levy 101. And it always works. EOS is the same thing, but if you don't have those meetings and if you don't really. Meet between the meetings to work on the projects on work time. Like they're not going to do it on Saturday You would have done it on Saturday, but they shouldn't do it on Saturday.
Ellen Rohr: They have lives. So you're gonna give them time during the week so that when they show up at the meeting, there's a report. Here's what you got. And in EOS, there's a moment like you hit a rock, or not a rock is that you hit a sticky point and then you What could we do to help this guy get him off the dime?
Ellen Rohr: But unless you have some formal project management cadence at your company, you're just going to abdicate, be disappointed and end up taking it back again. Have you ever done that? I have. Okay. Yeah.
John Wilson: I think there's a moments and I've seen it and I saw it a lot, whatever. There's a step change. So I'm in the middle of a step change and I've just gone through enough of them now that I know what I'm in.
John Wilson: But but I've, the first couple of step changes that I went through, and I see this a lot with other owners too, is they go, they hire that manager and then suddenly they think that all their time is freed up. There's a problem that only I can focus on because no one else is thinking about this problem.
John Wilson: And that's, that is now my role inside the organization. And I have to slowly move my way into that and make that a part of my rhythm. And but it can really easily turn into abdication, but it always happens at these step changes, right? Hey the business, now we have just a really competent senior leadership team, which has freed me up more, which is good.
John Wilson: That's what they were supposed to do. And if I was irresponsible, I would show up to work less. I don't, it's just now there are a list of things that Okay, no one's thinking about this yet. And here's where I have to live.
Ellen Rohr: That was so well said. I think another reason that happens, one is they finally have a little bit of money.
Ellen Rohr: The only finer, it's like you stop hitting your hand with a hammer. It feels a little bit better. But also I think at that point you're so burnt out. That you just need a minute and that's, it can snowball though. And then you remove yourself too much from the business and it will collapse.
Ellen Rohr: Things are either growing or shrinking. There's no stay in, there's no stay in the same here. So I think that was really nicely said before we wrap up because we're going, so what's your. Your dream now as you have some time and I want you to answer this question too Jack so if you could snap your fingers and look maybe three years in the future What would that look like for you?
Ellen Rohr: What's the next? Because it sounds like you're both growing. So then your goals change and your mission can evolve.
Jack Carr: Yeah
Ellen Rohr: What's next for you?
Jack Carr: We're shooting for 20 million by 2030. So that's our big that's our big goal Hit the 20 million mark
Ellen Rohr: and then maybe to have an even a goal You As well, offense, defense, right?
Ellen Rohr: Cause 20 million losing 2 million a year is a possible scenario. And this is where too, I love how simply you said that. I bet your team knows that goal.
Jack Carr: It's a very well talked about thing. Not to circle back, but we open up our P and L monthly to the management, our service managers and our ops managers, just because, I've followed a lot of what John does.
Jack Carr: And so I get a sneak peek into what the next thing is, which is wonderful. I love it. That's smart. And I actively copy.
Ellen Rohr: Tommy calls it rip off and duplicate. R& D.
John Wilson: R& D department. Yeah,
Ellen Rohr: I see you doing it. How about you, John?
John Wilson: Our goal isn't much more complicated. We want to be a hundred million by 2030.
John Wilson: There's obviously a few steps in between here and there, but we believe most of it's going to be in one market. 60, 70 million in one market, and then we'll start greenfielding other branches. So there's a well trod path before us from other people, much smarter than me. So I'm just robbing and duplicating.
Ellen Rohr: Yep. There you go. I love it. My next phase of my career is all about shining light on traits, people and at service Titan now with this brand ambassador program that we're just kicking off, it's. I think what Red Bull is to extreme athletes, service tightness to the trades. And I love the trade so much and I feel like my life has come full circle that my number one responsibility is just to, to show off cool guys like you.
Ellen Rohr: So thanks for having me on the show and I will share and I gave you a couple of resources if you want to share them with listeners too. Love so much. Thank you.
John Wilson: Yeah, this was really fun. Thank you, Ellen. Yeah. Thanks for coming on today, Ellen. This was a masterclass and I appreciated everything.
Ellen Rohr: I had a ball, so if anybody cancels last minute, call me.
Ellen Rohr: I'll jump on.
John Wilson: All right. Okay. Thanks, man. Thanks for checking out owned and operated. If you like what you heard, check out owned and operated. com.
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