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Owned and Operated continues its new Legends series, focusing on the stories of the home service industry’s most successful entrepreneurs, this time joined by Aaron Gaynor.
The founder of Eco Plumbers, Aaron shares his incredible journey from losing everything to building a $75 million service business. He discusses the importance of setting a bold vision, focusing on one trade in one location, and the power of building relationships in the industry, as well as creating a reputable brand, leveraging marketing consistency, and making significant investments to ensure business growth. This is a LEGENDS episode you’ll want to take notes on!
Special Thanks to Avoca AI Coaching and Training
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Episode Hosts: 🎤
John Wilson: @WilsonCompanies on X
Jack Carr: @TheHVACJack on X
Episode Guest:
Aaron Gaynor: On LinkedInLearn More About EcoPlumbers, Electricians, and HVAC Technicians
Owned and Operated #150 LEGENDS Transcript
Aaron Gaynor: Lost jobs, lost my house. I lost my car. I lost everything. I couldn't blame the economy, but the reality was I didn't understand business.
Aaron Gaynor: It was just taking action and believing in the idea that you could do something. Major goal I had was. Get more reviews than everybody else. Pick a number, set a deadline, and go to work. And I just picked 100 million.
John Wilson: A few months ago, we got our call center on Avoca. And Avoca is a AI call center solution for home service companies just like me, and probably just like you. They have a couple different products, but the one that we like the most is their Coach product, which listens to every single phone call and runs it through a rubric.
John Wilson: to help our call takers improve and this is a really big deal because we take hundreds, sometimes thousands of phone calls every single day and it's just too much for our trainers and managers and leads to keep up with and effectively train. So it lets us do ride alongs on almost every single call every day.
John Wilson: Click on the link below to go to Avoca and make sure you use the promo code OWNED for a special discount. Welcome back to Owned and Operated. Today we've got a special guest on a new addition to our legend series. Welcome Aaron Gaynor from Eco Plumbers. Thanks for
Aaron Gaynor: having me today. Appreciate it guys.
John Wilson: Yeah dude, this is going to be it's going to be a lot of fun.
Aaron Gaynor: Very exciting.
John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. This is also fun. Cause man, we're Ohio brothers. Like
Aaron Gaynor: we, we get, you've been doing great stuff up north, man. So we're
John Wilson: trying we want to get there's only a couple like big Ohio companies. I think you guys are the biggest.
John Wilson: The biggest that, that I know, but we got to get Logan on at some point too. That'd be fun, but it's, yeah, it's fun to the Midwest companies, man, Midwest companies. Before we start diving in I'm sure most of the folks in the industry know who you are, but I love a little bit of a backstory on ego.
John Wilson: Cause you guys have had some wild success.
Aaron Gaynor: Yeah, for sure. I know I've been fortunate enough to be on a podcasts been around the industry for a while, and I'm really grateful to have a lot of people. Help me and get an opportunity to share some of my story that hopefully helps other people. But I am a plumber by trade.
Aaron Gaynor: I'll start all the way back to, I started in the trades in 1997 out of high school. I am a plumber by trade. I was loading semi trucks at value city furniture for you. Midwest people know value city furniture. At night, second shift throughout my senior year of high school. I graduated high school, had a buddy, his brother in law worked for Ferguson Enterprises and he said, Hey, I know somebody that wants to get some young guys into plumbing, into the trades, right?
Aaron Gaynor: I had really no clue what plumbers were really doing. I knew what plumbing was, but I didn't really know what they did, what was going on. So I took that job. It was a first shift job, making about 7. 50 an hour as a helper, right? And can you imagine that can you can't even get a plumber to start for 7 I took it and I started as a helper and I never left.
Aaron Gaynor: I ended up really enjoying it. It was new construction, light commercial. I picked up the code pretty quickly. I understood the work. I liked the physical work too. Just, I liked digging surprisingly. And I liked, I liked the undergrounds. I did undergrounds for a couple of years.
Aaron Gaynor: So I learned to trade and then I ended up getting my master's called a master's plumbers license in Ohio. Back in the day around the age of 23 or so, my my buddy and I started a plumbing company. New construction in the early 2000s when, you know, when all the, when everything was really booming.
Aaron Gaynor: Yeah. It was 1 of those times where I felt like they were going to build houses forever and ever. We grew that business to about 3 and a half million dollars and then 06 to 07 we ended up losing that company in the downturn went bankrupt. That company ended up going bankrupt. We were main businesses where some builders like syntax homes, Dominion homes some other builders, M I some other people that are still around, but they started pulling back, we started losing contracts and frankly, we just, we didn't really, we tried to fight to try to hold onto that business, but we're really sure how to, because we were very dependent on new build construction and I'll get into it maybe a little bit as we talk here today.
Aaron Gaynor: I didn't really understand or run a business. We were just contractors doing a lot of plumbing work for new construction. And then Billy, right? Yeah. And as we lose that business, we didn't really have a fallback or plan. So lost that business. And those 6 to 07 and 07 had bankruptcy lost jobs, lost my house.
Aaron Gaynor: I lost my car. I lost everything. I just played bankruptcy to zero crown zero. I was actually even on check systems. If anybody's ever heard of that, we're basically won't even give you a bank account because you owe money. Oh, interesting to the IRS. So all of that happened. So now here I am 28 years old, a single dad with my three year old son, and I'm at my mom's house and her two bedroom apartments sleeping on the couch.
Aaron Gaynor: And I lay in there one night with my son on the couch and I hold him up and I just remember looking right at him and I said, I promise this won't be your life, I'm gonna figure this out, man, I'm gonna get to work and we'll make something. And next day got up. And got to work and 17 years later going on set.
Aaron Gaynor: Yeah. This is in the 17 years finish off around 75 million plumbing, electrical, and HVAC.
Jack Carr: Yeah. Yeah. That's a, that's an absolutely amazing story. To go and then lose it all and then come back is just absolutely incredible. And so what was the big? Decision when you said getting back to work did you go work for another plumber?
Jack Carr: Did you just start up another company right out the gate? And then how did you move from that into service work?
Aaron Gaynor: Answer the question here this way one is I didn't end up going to work for anybody else Obviously across my mind good plumber had a lot of background. I could have done that I just felt internally there was still I don't really Had this question asked before.
Aaron Gaynor: It's I don't really know what it was. Just something told me I could still do this and that I wanted to pursue something that was grant bigger and better than just, I'm not saying better than working for somebody, but for myself, my own ambition, is what I wanted to pursue. So there was some fire that I can't really answer that.
Aaron Gaynor: It just was there. It's like one of those things that you just knew that you could do more. And I wasn't done fighting for that yet. So that was one of the things just got up and I was like, I know I can do this. I know that this industry has a lot of opportunity. The trades have really helped me out in my life made some mistakes.
Aaron Gaynor: I didn't really understand business. Once I reflected on said I could blame the economy, but the reality was I didn't understand business. I didn't know business enough. I didn't know marketing. I didn't know financing. Finance. I didn't know anything. All I knew is to run plumbing projects and bid jobs for plumbing, right?
Aaron Gaynor: That's really what I knew. So I had to take full responsibility. Once I took full responsibility, I knew that there was another whole opportunity in the service industry that I had never tapped into as I started to do some research. So yeah, to answer the question, I woke up that next day. I called pretty much the next day.
Aaron Gaynor: I woke up, called my sister, asked her if she'd help me get something started. What I just shared with you is pretty much what I said to her. I know there's an opportunity. I know they can do something. She borrowed, I borrowed, we borrowed 50, I borrowed 50 bucks from her open up a bank account and then her and her ex husband now, but at that time really helped me get up off the ground.
Aaron Gaynor: I called up my buddy, a Braun who still works here today that I've also known since we were 15 years old and worked at the other company and said, Hey man, I'm going to try to get this going again. Will you help me out? He said, yes. I called up some old builders that I had some relationships with and said, Hey, can I do some work for you guys?
Aaron Gaynor: You know what happened? I knew what happened, right? I said, but I'll I'll warranty the work after hours that, from the, from my previous company I was a part of, on my own time, whenever you need it, if you guys can give me some work to get up off my feet again. And I had a good relationship with a lot of the builders, custom builders I did work for, they didn't really have a problem with anything you did, just the production business just collapsed, right?
Aaron Gaynor: And they still had some work. And, I didn't need to, I wasn't required to, Do that work. Obviously after a bankruptcy, it goes away but it was the right thing to do to get the work right. And it showed integrity to, to them. So they gave me some work and then I called my son's mom up and said, Hey, this is where I'm at financially.
Aaron Gaynor: I don't have any work. This already I'm trying to survive. I called child support and asked them if I could get a child support reduction. They basically told me too bad. You need three years of new employment. History to be able to change child sports as well. I'm unemployed.
Aaron Gaynor: I have no job. I'm bankrupt. They basically told me good luck. So I called her up I called her up and I said, Hey this is where I'm at I'm gonna make a deal with you. I'm going to figure out a paid child sports and nothing goes off. I'm a little behind right now, but I'll get caught up. I'll figure it out.
Aaron Gaynor: I'm gonna get some work. I'll get it paid. As long as we can make an agreement that you never come back after me again later on, but I'll make you a deal. I'll make sure I buy our son's first truck or first vehicle when he turns 16 and I'll pay for all of his college, which I am happy to say I'm doing today.
Aaron Gaynor: So I was able to buy his vehicle, take care of him and I'm paying him. He's going to ASU for finance. He's in a senior year and I'm paying for all of that. And she believed in me and she said, yeah, sure. And I've known her since we were younger. We knew each other younger. We didn't date until later. But, she's sure let's do it.
Aaron Gaynor: And she never did. She held her word. She never came back for anything ever again, never did. And I fulfilled my promise. So those pieces laid in, you went and asked people for some help and you got to work and it's action. So it's your point. Big decisions, it was just taking action and believing in the idea that you could do something.
Aaron Gaynor: So it was absence, immediate actions. Of course I felt down. I felt like a loser and I felt like an absolute loser, but I also knew that if I didn't do something. I'd be a bigger loser. And it was like, and and I wanted it. Then I promised my son that this wouldn't be the life you'd have, and I'm going to get to work and figure it out.
Aaron Gaynor: And, getting back out into the workforce and the community and around the people that you just had a business that went bankrupt, is embarrassing. It was embarrassing, but also knew that I could show that I could get back on my feet and do something.
John Wilson: Yeah. When you, I, for the listener, a little bit of extra nuances, Columbus has been in, I don't know when the new construction boom happened again, but it's in a new construction boom again, seemingly from the outside looking in for the last decade.
John Wilson: So when you started working again was most of the work still this new stuff, or when did you start breaking into service and that become the primary thing? Yeah.
Aaron Gaynor: So it was definitely construction. I know it sounds like that just would cost you your business, but it's also the only thing I knew how to do construction.
Aaron Gaynor: I knew how to do that, but that wasn't the plan anymore. The plan was to build a service business. I'd watch, Roto Rooter and, service trucks, other companies that, name, I can name a few of them, but regardless, you all know, there's decent service companies in Columbus. And I saw them driving around, they were doing work.
Aaron Gaynor: They seemed to be fine during the economy, during the stuff. I was like, that's what I want to do. And they had a brand. I was like, I want to build a brand. I need to build a brand. I need to build something that has value for me, for the people that work here and for the community. So that was my goal.
Aaron Gaynor: So I knew from that point forward, everything I was doing was to build a service brand. And part of that was getting to work in what I knew to build, to start to create money. Because I was bankrupt, but I had no credit to be able to start building towards building a brand and then thinking about that.
Aaron Gaynor: And then I got online and I found an organization called Green Plumbers out of Australia, and they were doing stuff for droughts and water conservation. I was like, this is pretty cool. This is new. This is innovative in our space. I was trying to find new, innovative things. And I signed up with them and said, Hey, when you guys are coming, and then.
Aaron Gaynor: Randomly, they're like, hey, we'll be in the states and like next 12 months or something. I can't remember exactly, but somewhere in that time frame to do training. I was like, sign me up. So I was like, 1 of the 26 people or 1st, 26 people to go through with that training that they had back then and learned a lot about energy, water, conservation, water, sense, solar systems, tankless, all these things that were really becoming popular around.
Aaron Gaynor: Oh, eight. Oh, nine. 2010. Yeah. So that was a great play. Just when I say play was looking for innovation in the space that I could do in plumbing that wasn't existing to help me build a service business.
And
Aaron Gaynor: that's what I went out and looked for. And I found that and started to integrate that in and then eventually renamed the company to eco plumbers.
Aaron Gaynor: At that time, originally when we restarted, it was called Phoenix for all the real, real creative. But I needed a name to get started. And that was the name to inspire me. But, and then it became Phoenix I'm sorry, eco plumbers, as I really look to say, what would be something if I looked in 20 years from now, that could be a brand name in the marketplace that's different than Roto or router or whatever.
Aaron Gaynor: And no hit at that. Thinking about what the industry would evolve to. And when I saw all this energy conservation and new technology for plumbing, I was like, that's what we need to do. We need to be eco plumbers. And that's what happened.
John Wilson: It makes sense. We've never I'd never directly competed against you, obviously, but, I remember hearing of your brand for the first time.
John Wilson: It was probably about a decade ago. Maybe it was like Service Titan was just coming out. I don't really remember how, but it came up. We were on
Aaron Gaynor: Service Titan 10 years ago. Yeah.
John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. I remember it was like, it was about a decade ago. And I remember, seeing eco plumbers and I think the focus at the time was like, why everything you just said, I remember that being a thing a decade ago for you guys.
John Wilson: And I was like, Oh, that's a good idea.
Jack Carr: That's a good thesis. It turned out to be true.
John Wilson: Cause it one people are thinking about it, but two, it's it, yeah, prominently placing yourself at the forefront of, modern high ticket plumbing. So yeah, it makes sense. It was a good idea.
Aaron Gaynor: That's what we did.
Aaron Gaynor: So we had the idea was like, okay WaterSense hadn't been pushed through yet through the government as a mandate, right? So we're offering WaterSense. Tankless was building that. A lot of people, a lot of plumbers were scared of tankless. Didn't want anything to do with us. I'd just give them to me.
Aaron Gaynor: I'll do them. Yeah. Figure it out. And and you don't know, scared is my word, but maybe just not feeling that they wanted to be involved or do it, but maybe scared. Yeah. Yeah. People don't like change. It was
John Wilson: the same thing with like mini splits and it's the same thing. Pro press. And it's, lead free valves.
John Wilson: I remember when that was a thing 15 years ago Yeah, everything, man.
Aaron Gaynor: Yeah, everything, right? Change is over. Your frustrations. Yeah, it's always and I was like, I'm going all in on it. And then from there I was like what? I went and was like, I need some type of software that could out, that could really be advanced.
Aaron Gaynor: And I, so I started looking around and I found service Titan just online. I reached out and Ara actually called me back and he's the one that actually was my sales rep. He was my sales rep and he called me on a Sunday night, I think it was like seven o'clock. He did like a On I guess what you would maybe call zoom today, some other platform.
Aaron Gaynor: I don't even know what it was 10 years ago. And he'd walk me through it. And I was like, I'm signing up now, like tomorrow, like I'm in this is exactly what I'm looking for. So all of those things found the right time. And then when iPads came out, I was like, I need to get iPads to be able to show this.
Aaron Gaynor: And that was even before service Titan. But iPads, I remember people would be like, my plumber has iPad and I don't, this is crazy. And so just all of those things, I think we're, someone's the right time at the right place and you make those decisions. And we did, and they worked out for us.
Aaron Gaynor: And they could have maybe never worked out. I don't
John Wilson: know, but they did. This is probably a tactical question. And it was, 15, 17 years ago at this point I'm trying, I'm imagining that vendors would have been a struggle coming back in and relaunching the company. Like how did you actually do that?
Aaron Gaynor: Yeah, for sure. Obviously I had my sister help me out with some credit stuff and her ex husband but honestly car supply, the old owner of car supply before they sold Bud. He knew me and he and Rick Rick, a vendor that worked with me through my other plumbing company that were there and that's what car supplies.
Aaron Gaynor: So I don't know if you guys know, you might know who car supply is, but great to me. He was he was just genuinely. Nice guy. And he helped me out. I don't know what else to really say. He gave me credit and I'd come back and count fittings and bring them back. And he didn't give me a lot, but he gave me enough.
Aaron Gaynor: And he helped me out and he let me bring fittings back every night. I'd be counting fittings back out and returning them to get credit. So I had enough to buy for the next job. And and he was okay with it, even though it wasn't something they typically did, but he knew what happened and his business actually lost money in that bankruptcy because of that too.
Aaron Gaynor: But he knew what happened. And I think he saw the work ethic I had and the ability to try to bounce back. And we spent a lot of money with that company today. Now he sold that company has moved on and when supply did it, but Rick, who's been there and some other people and just, that relationship of time is just, it's I think they've made that money back.
Aaron Gaynor: Yeah.
Jack Carr: Yeah. This is a little,
Aaron Gaynor: yeah, but
John Wilson: you
Aaron Gaynor: don't have to
John Wilson: do that. Yeah, so we bought a company in 2018 and they had a similar story to what you just described and they didn't bounce back really. They tried to, but they weren't able to. But a lot of the it was a humbling because I was young when I was hearing these stories, but it was like, it was shocking.
John Wilson: The difference between vendor relationships were like, that's a great story. That's a vendor partner that has paid off, a thousand times over for that vendor. And then there's other vendors that just didn't do that. And we have a vendor up here that was, they were pretty tough about the whole thing with the company we bought.
John Wilson: And that, that, that vendor actually ended up forcing the plumbing company into bankruptcy. Like they missed a couple bills and the vendor pulled all the vans. It was so they actually effectively shut that business down. And I was like, that's wild. How do you win in this scenario? You got some vans, like you got some old Chevys I don't know.
Aaron Gaynor: That happened to us. Actually, part of the reason we ended up getting enforcement bankruptcy was because of some of the vendors and a large vendor did it and get into it. But they were one of the reasons why they were able to pull that lever, which was the personal rights and write off things on pull that lever and shut it.
Aaron Gaynor: Now, the reason why is because eventually they have to, because they need to put it on the books and they clear their books. So there's many reasons why it doesn't feel like the right thing to do in some sense, but it is the right thing to do the way some of the system, once you start to understand why and how, but, it's you hope that people bet on you trying to give you, to fight back.
Aaron Gaynor: But also there's times where people take advantage of and totally run people into dirt. , I can't judge anybody for the decisions they made because they made the decisions they felt were the right ones for them. And, and honestly, I probably should be thanking them at some point that this happened and it went down.
Aaron Gaynor: And I do I, I do. At one point I felt like bankruptcy was the worst thing that ever happened to me, but it might've been one of the best things. Actually. It probably is one of the best things that ever happened to me. 'cause it really humbled me. And really made me rethink my, everything I thought about plumbing and HVAC and electrical and myself and reinvent myself and rethink how I operated and show up and the things I needed to learn as a person because I was just a plumber, right?
Aaron Gaynor: Really? I'm just a plumber running a business. Nothing wrong with that. No I think everybody should be. Feel proud to be whatever trade they are. I'm just saying I was applying. Wasn't really understand how to operate a business. The old e myth book, if you guys have read e myth, right?
Yeah.
Aaron Gaynor: So very much technician, manager, entrepreneur. The entrepreneurial myth, right? But really was just technician trying to run a business and didn't really know what I was doing.
Jack Carr: Aaron with that you talk a lot about your history as a plumber and that growth trajectory. At what point did it make sense in your business to add those additional verticals, right?
Jack Carr: You went from, I'm a plumber. It's what I know. I know service now. My business is growing. And now we're going to do HVAC and electrical. What did that transition look like for you?
Aaron Gaynor: For the longest time, I was like, man, I see these guys trying to do multiple trades way too early in this business and floundering, but it sounded cool that I had all three trades to be candid, right?
Aaron Gaynor: And I saw him and I talked to guys like, we're doing 5 million. They're all three trades. I'm like, what? Just pick one We have that conversation a lot. Three of them. You're all over the place and you're not really sure. And you're not really winning at one of them and they're dragging it down. So to me, and I could see that when I was doing the business and I remember, I was very fortunate.
Aaron Gaynor: I joined next star Jack Tester. I got, got testers on our team today was a mentor of mine, Jim Hamilton. One of the legends in home service coaching and next star. And I really got a chance to talk to him more. And I was like, I just want to figure this one thing out first. Cause I've already, I dabbled around and before and tried to mess around with doing these other things. And finally I said, I just have to pick one thing and do it. Just one thing and give it all. And it was plumbing, right? Plumbing and drain came along. And then, so I was like, I'm just going to do this one thing.
Aaron Gaynor: I'm not going to worry about multi tray. Cause I go to these seminars or go to this fence or go to the things and talk to guys doing it. It just seemed. They weren't getting anywhere because they couldn't get traction on it because they're trying to do all of them because they felt like they should.
Aaron Gaynor: And there's some ego felt cool, right? Honestly, let's just say what it is. It just felt cool. I felt like what really seemed cool was a good plumbing business at first. So it was like, and then I didn't feel like I had to earn. I used to say this all the time, even when we did our very first prayer group back when we were around 12 million, I told the seat when people brought it up again, I said, I don't think I've earned the right to own another, to do another trade line yet.
Aaron Gaynor: I haven't earned the right to do it. We haven't earned the right to, we have mastered this in some capacity that we'll never master it. But like within mastery of it. Yeah, definitely. We've earned market saturation to a point where we feel like we're the best in the market of central Ohio, Columbus, and we do more plumbing than anybody else.
Aaron Gaynor: Then we've earned the right to add in multi trades. And that was my approach. I don't judge anybody for their own. They do whatever they want. I'm just sharing my experience. And then from there, once we started feeling like we were hitting saturation in the plumbing business and the lead counselor starting to level out and the train business would level it out.
Aaron Gaynor: I was like, now, what do you do? So then we did, then we expanded into Dayton, Ohio with plumbing only because that was our line. And then we did the, exactly the thing that I said that made you look cool was that then we decided to do that thing, which then we added HVAC, then we added electrical, and then we went vertical and horizontal because, to be frank, we got caught up in the arrogance of ourselves and the, Industry of grow market expansion, add to service lines.
Aaron Gaynor: Everybody's doing it. So trendy, you want to be cool like everybody else. So you should do it. And we did it and we did it. Some of that, I would say, played into it a little bit as you're watching, people do it in the marketplace and do stuff. And then some of us are realistically.
Aaron Gaynor: Hey, we need to add more service. You start thinking about how do you grow your business? It's either vertical or horizontal growth, right? And you've got to pick one or pick both. And so we picked both there for a minute. And some challenges, I'm not gonna lie.
Aaron Gaynor: It's not all, it's, it might look from the outside I'll look at Eco's pretty big business. Their brand's big. They do a lot of revenue, but there's a lot of challenges in that. One thing was, is we felt that we wanted to bring our plumbing service experience to the HVAC industry.
Aaron Gaynor: We felt like we had grown a giant plumbing business base and we felt because of our plumbing demand call business, we should be able to scale an HVAC business pretty quickly because we see so many people, right already. And we started to look at saturation, look at average sale at HVAC, and then look for longevity of membership growth.
Aaron Gaynor: And what does this mean as a brand and as a business? Proposition for our own employees, growth opportunity and market value. So hopefully I may, I might've said a lot there, but hopefully there's answer some of it. And honestly, electrical was a last second decision. We were actually into rebrand with Dan Antonelli.
Aaron Gaynor: We were going to do only plumbing in HVAC. And then we were at the next star event right before they were getting ready to pass the new energy laws. for electrical. I talked to a couple of electricians that own electrical businesses, and they were going on about how great this is going to be, the electrical with the HVAC, how electrical is going to have a lot of growth opportunity in the next decade because of some of the energy laws that are being passed and some of the I don't know they went into other technical things that I'm not an electrician about.
Aaron Gaynor: And I was like, Mike and my partner, Mike, who's a partner now in the business, my CFO, Mike is partner in business now. We both were sitting there and I just said, we just looked at each other and said, They sold us. We got to do if we're going to do, we have to do it now. So I literally picked up the phone, called my marketing team, said, we're going to do electrical, make sure it gets on the logo because the logo is supposed to be redone and ready to go in a couple of weeks at electrical.
Aaron Gaynor: Let's just do it. If we're going to do it, let's just do them all call it a day. That one was not very thought out. So not all decisions are always as strategic as everybody thinks they are in life, right? Some are you just make a decision to go with it and frankly, it's been a very good decision to do electrical We have more electrical calls than we can even run it.
Jack Carr: I bet. Yeah. I love that answer though We get the question all the time from people in our group and that write us from the newsletter They say hey, when do we do this? And even myself has fallen into the trap of running plumbing and hvac at a Yeah. And it becomes more of a burden we found in the long run just because you're running two separate businesses under one brand name when you don't have the capital to actually really own the market in one or the other.
Jack Carr: Very interesting.
Yeah.
Jack Carr: Yeah. I love that, that you need to earn the right to get a second vertical, but, really interesting.
Aaron Gaynor: Yeah. And that was, again, that was my approach and I'd heard that through, some of my next Nexstar coaches, but it was also my own approach to keep it off from myself and from my team.
Aaron Gaynor: To say, we haven't earned the right. You tell me once we earn the right, then we can
John Wilson: get a vertical. Taking this back maybe a few years, can you walk us through, I don't know if it helps year by year or how you want to think about this, but bankruptcy to 75 millions, obviously that's a big leap.
John Wilson: Can you walk us through some of the steps there? 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 them a call if you're looking for leads.
Aaron Gaynor: Let's call first seven years. We're basically nothing. It was just trying to actually just grind. I, we weren't making money. We didn't have money to advertise. I was saved putting every dollar I could in the bank account, trying to build up capital, trying to get back, bankruptcy stays under credit for seven years.
Aaron Gaynor: So I had some time to try to figure out some of that. Some We're still growing. We're doing stuff, but we weren't doing anything significant. They're still trying to figure out how do I build a brand strategy? What does it look like? Joining, end up, finding all these things.
Aaron Gaynor: So the first seven years is basically, it was just every day, sun up to sundown, just still working in the field, doing anything. If I got a random service call, I'd go do it right. Slowly, surely I didn't understand pricing. So one of the ways that I did to figure out even how to build a price book, cause I didn't have any money to go find an organization to buy.
Aaron Gaynor: Teach me a price book. So Andrew's list was big in our area years and years ago. And Angela still exists, but it was pretty big. It was probably the real first platform for reviews before Google kind of took that over.
Yeah.
Aaron Gaynor: I got on Angie's list and I signed up for Angie's list and I read through all the reviews on Angie's list and the price that any person said was the price they paid for a water heater, a drain, and I wrote them all down.
Aaron Gaynor: This is, I'm not savvy enough for an Excel sheet, so I wrote them all down and then I went through them all and I said, okay, this is how much people are saying they're buying from this company. And I started building my price book off of. What consumers said in there.
Aaron Gaynor: Then I obviously went back and looked at my prices and build it from there. Then I signed up for Angie's list. Angie's list was my first actual marketing like platform. Besides having just a website. And I signed up for AngelList, which, at that time was like, it's free to be on AngelList. Now, it costs 15, 000.
Aaron Gaynor: And it's it's free to have your name somewhere, but nobody will see you.
Aaron Gaynor: So I was like I don't have any money. And they're like, guess what? We'll finance you. Oh, interesting. We'll finance you, right? So basically they said, this 15 grand, we'll let you pay payments on it. And I said, you know what?
Aaron Gaynor: Screw it. Let's do it. So that's where I started off at is on Angie's list. And the major goal I had was get more reviews and everybody else. That's what I told the five people on our team. We branded our, we had wrapped our trucks with the eco plumbers. So people thought we were a franchise or like you guys franchise.
Aaron Gaynor: No, there's four of us trying to make it happen. And all we did was get reviews. I said, get reviews. I said, I don't care what we do the job for at this price point. At some point to the price a little bit get reviews We want to make we want to look bigger than we are and we want to get social validation I said so social validation will be our play to build our brand get more people to think that not think but no But think we're bigger than we are And that we have the most reviews and we did that and we started passing people on angie's list Within probably a year or two years With more reviews and people have been on it forever.
Aaron Gaynor: And then we took that same approach into Google immediately. When Google started driving us there, I said, get reviews, and that was before everybody was really, at least in my world, before everybody's like really focused on reviews today are reviews on Google. There's only three people that three places have more reviews than us in Ohio.
Aaron Gaynor: No, they are. I'll tell you. It's Cedar Point,
John Wilson: Kings Island, and the Columbus Zoo. That's funny, dude. I'm looking this up right now. Oh yeah, 13, 000, that is chunky. That's a lot. That's just in one
Aaron Gaynor: location. Yeah. You start adding up all of our Google reviews between all of our locations.
Aaron Gaynor: Yeah. So it's pretty crazy that, and that, that's, that was definitely it. And I know reviews at some point, it doesn't matter if you have 13, 000 or 5, 000 reviews, but the idea was build social validation through, through the platforms of reviews. And I started with Angie's list and then we carried it over to Google fast.
Aaron Gaynor: Yeah. Yeah. You had, I don't know if that answers your question, talk through, but I'm saying that was how we started the service business was, I went to Angie's List, I really put a platform on Angie's List, started driving reviews and driving more reviews. And then from there, we obviously started digging into more marketing strategies.
Aaron Gaynor: Yeah. Branding, et cetera, et cetera.
John Wilson: Yeah, no it did. It was helpful. Who was the big player a decade ago in Columbus?
Aaron Gaynor: Waterworks has been, is big. They're still decent size here. Waterworks was big here. Roto Rooter's here. Is Atlas Butler Columbus? Atlas Butler? Yeah, Atlas Butler's here. Atlas Butler's a big HVAC.
Aaron Gaynor: Big HVAC. They have a plumbing division, but they're HVAC. Yeah. They're a big HVAC business. Okay. Big one was really, mostly was Waterworks was the bigger plumbing business here in Roto Rooter. Yeah. And then there's a handful of other companies, but those are really who we were, thinking about who we would beat, for lack of a better term.
John Wilson: Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Yeah, I think when did you cross that first 10 million or 20 million? Because it sounds like it was slow and then all at once, from what you've described so far.
Aaron Gaynor: Yeah, I think that's it, right? I truly believe in the idea that the world really tests you if you really want it.
Aaron Gaynor: Yeah, and just the universe does in some level really test you, right? Do you really want it and once you break through the idea that you're really done everything that there is it's like It comes so fast that you yeah, like what happened all this time. It felt like there was nothing And then all of a sudden it's everything, right?
Aaron Gaynor: And you're like whoa. And, but it was all these things that we were doing to build up to that. And it takes time to build a brand. Everybody thinks you're going to go out and flip the switch and have a brand and a marketplace, everybody's going to know who you are, like, yeah, you can run a lot of ads and get some marketing messaging ads, but it also takes time to get the reviews.
Aaron Gaynor: It takes time for people to know and trust you. It takes time. These things didn't happen overnight. Yeah. Yeah.
Jack Carr: Especially bootstrap too.
Aaron Gaynor: Yeah, that a lot of it is word of mouth. Beginning, right? Because I couldn't have the money to run a TV ad or anything. Today we spent a lot of money on TV and radio and buildings.
Aaron Gaynor: But but so I guess I'd say the first seven years were very much struggling.
Aaron Gaynor: About 10 years ago, I met Mike, our CFO now partner in the business. And we were at a party that neither one of us really wanted to be at, but we were chatting and he was like, what do you do? I was like, I'm a plumber. I'm a plumbing business.
Aaron Gaynor: He's what do you, I'm like, what do you do? And he's I just, I'm in finance. We just got graduated this master's of finance from Fisher is working at Victoria's Secret and he's I was like, I want to learn more about finance and projections and other stuff. So we get into a little bit there and then he's I said, he's like, why?
Aaron Gaynor: I said I own a business and I want to grow it. And he's what do you want to grow it to? It's like a hundred million. And he was like, Oh, he's Oh, okay. He caught his attention. He's where are you at today? I was like a million. Okay. Okay. We've got some work.
Aaron Gaynor: But then he was like, okay. Let's get together and start building some modeling. And then we got together and build out 100, 000, 000 plan to build 100, 000, 000 business. And then eventually he ended up coming on and now has become a partner in the business. So that's played a big part in that. That was a part of knowing that I needed this and sometimes fate.
Aaron Gaynor: Find this way. But the reason why I say this is you have to have something big out in front of you to get people on board with what you're doing. Vision. I think vision is very important in organization and I had vision. So even when I reset, I knew I was going to grow something. I had vision and the vision was to grow 100 million service business.
Aaron Gaynor: I don't even know 100 million service business even existed back there. And I know that's the I don't know if I'll use the right word trendy, but it's the trendy benchmark to use today, right? Get to 100 million. And that's fine because that's a, it's a hell of an achievement to get that right.
Aaron Gaynor: Building a hundred million dollar business. Trust me when I first joined Nexstar, I was like 20 million. Have you got the 20 million? You were the, you were on, you were the. The king of the world. Yeah. Obviously business evolved, things have got bigger acquisitions and gold.
Aaron Gaynor: When I first came up with a hundred million, I'm driving around in my truck by myself. And it's one of those things that, just come to you. I don't know why it's I need to go a hundred million sounds big and bold. Sounds ridiculous in some sense, but I think I just got done. I read think and grow rich, greatest book ever in my life changed my life.
Aaron Gaynor: And then I also had read, I listened to good to great and then know that big, a various goal. So they all found their way together and eventually thinking grow rich was really, it's pick a number. Set a deadline and go to work. And I just picked a hundred million because it felt like big numbers.
Aaron Gaynor: So my point is like that has helped attract people to growing because they knew I'm going somewhere and wanting to build something that helped bring that conversation because I had that goal. Yeah. I had that conversation, which created that relationship, which he's here today. So that was a big movement for us.
Aaron Gaynor: And then from there, just, we just started building plans, joining service, Titan, next star, learning more about the industry and the business. And, then it started going, 1 million, 2 something, 3, 4, 5, and then it was like, and then finally it started jumping, I don't know exactly to these numbers off the top of my head, but it's then it went to 8, and then it was 12, and then 21, 33, 44.
Jack Carr: 6075 super inspirational. So I only got five years left of grinding before I hit that J curve.
Aaron Gaynor: And it's but all the things you're doing, but that's fine. It's yeah, it feels like it, but it's a long time. And in the last five years, people have heard more about our business, but we've also, we've hit the curve, right?
Aaron Gaynor: And it's gone. And we've made some good decisions, some bad decisions, and we put in the 1 thing. I think that we did really well. That wasn't happening right away that found its way to us right around that 12, 000, 000 to 22 is well, Coby came, which I'll help to. We grew big then. But right before then, we had put together a 3 year marketing plan.
Aaron Gaynor: Three year marketing plan and we said this is what we're going to do for three years We're going to have our radio plan We're going to have our tv plan our billboard plan our correct messaging for our brand And we're going to plant and we're going to commit for three years to this plan And it went it the third year 12 to 21 million.
John Wilson: That's a love. Yeah, that's a strong level Of commitment. I don't know if we've talked
Jack Carr: about That on the show we've talked about branding in general and when you should start and how much you should put in and it's that's,
John Wilson: yeah, I think the message here though is like the consistency and push because I know what we notice, times get tight.
John Wilson: So marketing, yeah, people want to cut, which like we've always had any, I always remember the day COVID shut down the world. I tripled my budget. Like that day, like I, we are 2 million or 3 million or whatever, but it was like, okay. And we've consistently kept that, but I've never done a three year.
John Wilson: I like that. That's like a good, yeah. Everybody wants to cut. And yeah, that's great.
Aaron Gaynor: We went in the same thing. COVID when everybody's pulling back, radio TV, we're like, Hey, we got, someone gave free spots cause we wouldn't cut and some of them were given. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy spots
John Wilson: from radio. Yeah.
Aaron Gaynor: And they're like, people are dropping billboards. Yeah, but the thing was, as I put, I always I was bankrupt once before, so I knew one thing was winter would come again. And I remember I went to a Tony Robbins event when, about at that time, it might have been about 7 years before.
Aaron Gaynor: And he goes, yeah. Winter will come. Something will happen. Always be in a position that you save enough cash to be able to be in a strong position when something happens. And you hear a lot of people use the word, dry powder today in the market today. But back then it was like, just have enough cash that when the storm hits, you can weather it.
Aaron Gaynor: And then you're in a position to win, right? So I never played in the small business. Cause I learned a lesson bankrupt that I didn't use the company as my piggy bank. I use the company as the opportunity to build a business and a brand that I knew I wanted to. And when the storms hit, I had the cash to do something with it.
John Wilson: When you I'd like to dive into the tactical of you launched into Dayton. I think you're in Cincinnati as well now. So you guys are three, three markets. When did that coffee were four markets technically, but yeah. Okay. We where's Chilcot is that's Tennessee, Southern Ohio,
Aaron Gaynor: It's our, it's a location that covers the whole Southern Ohio area.
Aaron Gaynor: Okay. So
Jack Carr: yeah, you don't want to move. Interesting. It's terrible down here.
Aaron Gaynor: We don't need a lot of good stuff going on down there. Don't you? The Nashville's got enough people, don't it? You don't need any more. Yeah.
John Wilson: Our last interview was was Chris Hoffman for the legend series. And it's funny cause Chris and Jack directly compete in Nashville.
John Wilson: So it was it was a funny, it was a funny conversation.
Aaron Gaynor: Chris is an amazing
John Wilson: guy.
Jack Carr: He is. And I have a lot of respect for him, even though we compete regularly.
John Wilson: I think if you compete. If you compete against guys you want to compete against, I think it's easy. Like Ohio is becoming interesting because people are just starting to compete against each other, but as long as we're all priced well, and as long as we're all doing good service, like that's a competitor that I would want to go against.
John Wilson: I don't want to go against the, like one day I'm sure we'll run into each other. And I know Chad, like I'm seeing Chad's ads up in Cleveland. I know you are too in Columbus. So but yeah, like he's a good competitor. It's the guys that are doing systems for two, two thousand bucks.
John Wilson: I'm like, I know what
Aaron Gaynor: Chad's going to do. He knows what we're going to do in a sense. Not like sharing everything, but we understand our brands. We understand what we want to do. We understand how we want to serve our people. What we know where we're trying to stay in the marketplace. I agree.
Aaron Gaynor: I think those things are great. Yeah. Learned a lot from Chad and I imagine Chad's learned a lot from me. And I've been very blessed to have a relationship with Chad. Yeah, that's for sure.
John Wilson: So when you went to go multi market when was the year, when was the first year Dayton when did you drop Dayton?
Aaron Gaynor: Four years ago now, four years ago going, this is the fourth, this is the fourth year, I think we'll do about 15 million. Okay. Yeah. So that was a Greenfield from zero to there. Yeah. Two years in Cincinnati now in Cincinnati is finally getting up and growing. That was a struggle. That was a struggle going in Greenfield.
Aaron Gaynor: Very competitive market. Lots of people, lots of established brands. Yeah. So we really had to hit that hard. We came into that market probably spending maybe about 1. 5 million in marketing in a year. Really? From a Greenfield and did a million dollars in revenue. Whoa.
John Wilson: Yeah. That's. Yeah.
Aaron Gaynor: Cincinnati does feel like a different, but again we knew that was going to be it.
Aaron Gaynor: Cause he had to start having enough voice and noise. If you got a long road to building, going in old school Greenfield and just one call at a time, six time, it's a, it's a model, but you have to go in and out now we're two years in and we're. We just did, we just finished the second year.
Aaron Gaynor: We've already done 2 million already in the market already, which is now starting to build that momentum. And by year three, we'll probably be doing, I'm going to, we'll project, we'll probably be doing like 8 million next year due to the volume that's already picking up and the multi trades and all the stuff that's happening.
Aaron Gaynor: I know that sounds a big jump. We'll probably finish this year around. Yeah. Two and a half maybe. Three. 'cause it's been like, again, it was like this. And then the last few months it's just been starting to get, build the volume and go, yeah. And that's just hitting the market very hard from market stand.
Aaron Gaynor: Not everybody can do it. Not everybody can go write a check for, a million something dollars in advertising. No. A hundred percent to start at Greenfield.
John Wilson: Yeah, we, that was a lot of our conversation with Chris was he was describing what was next for Hoffman and the episode will air soon, but it was our question for him was, okay, why are you buying a roofing company or why are you now looking to buy these other, like you, you greenfielded.
John Wilson: I would say very successfully in Nashville. So why is this not the continued push? And it's it's a lot of money. It's a lot of money and it's a huge lift. Yeah, I've got a super healthy respect for it. It takes a lot of, it takes a lot of work and just like straight off of EBITDA. Of another branch, like that's a million and a half dollars advertise, not including the million dollars of infrastructure and people and whatever else went into that.
John Wilson: That's straight off bottom line. I'm talking. Yeah. I'm talking straight marketing.
Aaron Gaynor: Yeah. Yeah. That's a lot. The location, the truck, the mature the equipment, the people, all the stuff, to build that up. And that's a different approach. It's, Again, hard, heavy hit three year plan.
Aaron Gaynor: It's going to take enough. You're going to need to invest. You're going to go into a market. You got a choice. You can go in slow and steady. We did a little bit in Dayton. We still hit them with radio and TV and built up and picked it up quickly. Or you can come in and that one comes with rest too.
Aaron Gaynor: Cause you spent a lot of money and you got to hold on because there's a couple of times, even in our team, it's like, should we pull this back? Should we stop? Should we have a lot of money? It's money. It's we just got to hold on. We're already at. Yeah, we're in this bar now. Hold on. Just hold on.
Aaron Gaynor: It's just one of those things. Hold on.
John Wilson: Yeah. One, one of the things that I wonder and you said this in our phone call previously, but like Columbus is a big market. Like you could potentially have gotten to a hundred in Columbus. And multi location is hard. So when you think about, I mean that you had to have done the math or walked through that.
John Wilson: So like when you're thinking about that question, how do you think about it? It'd be easier, but maybe longer to do a hundred million in one market, but easier.
Aaron Gaynor: It's a couple of answers to that. I think one is yes, it probably take longer. And I will say that to build anything great takes time. I think people are impatient.
Aaron Gaynor: I think it does take time to build anything great. Even us saying we're going in the market, hitting it hard, spend a lot of money, but that that, that's just because we also spent, 15 or 14 years prior to going into Cincinnati, 15 years prior to going to Cincinnati and building infrastructure through call centers, dispatch, all these other things, right?
Aaron Gaynor: Talk about infrastructure to get a single location center up, right? But yeah, I think 1 is that, you do look at market penetration. There's risk with 1 market 2 of your only 1 location brand market. When you talk about evaluations or partnerships or other things, there is.
Aaron Gaynor: It always, it's a it's on the table. Yes, it's great to have a single location, giant single location, but, when PE firms, or valuations are looking, they want to look for risk, right? They're also evaluating risk of your multiple markets. Risk is a little less that you prove they can grow multiple markets of something.
Aaron Gaynor: Was to go wrong in a market. You saw the other markets. Yeah. So there's that had come up in conversations and assessments that we've done. And some of it was really trying to be a state. One of our missions was to actually try to own the state. So that's part of just the overall goal was to start to say, how do we own as we evolve and became more why shouldn't we try to own the state?
Aaron Gaynor: Why shouldn't we be a state brand instead of a only Ohio or a Columbus brand, right? Let's become a state brand. So some of that was ambition and someone's getting caught up in the flair of it all too, a little bit everybody, again, to be honest, I hope you guys appreciate this.
Aaron Gaynor: I think people always think we all can get caught up in it, right? Again, it doesn't matter who you are, whether you're me. Tommy or Chad or you guys or whoever, right? Like everybody can get caught up in it. And I think some guys will admit to that today that we all were getting caught into it. And even some of the other, bigger players that can probably say, of course you get into, you ride the wave.
Aaron Gaynor: There's a big wave, there's stuff going on. You want to be involved in it. You want to feel like you're achieving something really cool and progressive in your space and you get on the board and it came with challenges. I don't regret doing any of it. I would say I would maybe change some of the decisions on some of the things that we may have done when and how, but at the end of the day, there are decisions we made, we live with them, we own them, and we got to figure out how to figure it, fight through them.
Aaron Gaynor: That's what they are. And those are, however long it took me to get to where I am today and to work decisions we made, their decision we made, they're all lessons that I needed to learn and we needed to learn as a business to keep growing our business into the future. Right.
Aaron Gaynor: That's the only way I can really. Look at it. Am I happy about every one of them? But am I excited about the opportunities that are in front of us? Yes. Yeah. We do believe that we can fight through and overcome any of the things that we put the right focus and attention into the locations, into the service lines and into the customer experience and our techs, we will win the battle that we're out.
John Wilson: Yeah. What do you think is next for eco? Like when you guys think about your next couple years, what are the opportunities in front of you?
Aaron Gaynor: I one thing is right now is I think I, right now we're really just trying to settle into what we have. Multi-location, multi-service lines. Make sure we're selling about a thousand memberships a month right now.
Aaron Gaynor: We've got to fulfill membership fulfillments. We need to operate. We need to operate a sound business for our team while still creating excitement and growth, right? But the growth is going to come through the markets that we have today right now. Of course, I've been open about, Cleveland market area is on our radar and, soon.
Aaron Gaynor: Indianapolis, which Chad and I've talked at chats here. He knows that too. So those are on the radars expansions for us that we would like to no Greenfield or acquire no, depending looking for opportunities to just keep building relationships with people in this space whether that's to help the smaller, I don't know if smaller is the right word, but how about guys that are trying to figure their way or come up or whatever cause I've been there, you don't think I've reached out to larger companies doing stuff.
Aaron Gaynor: I remember meeting Dave Geiger. I was like, this guy's the man, right? I remember picking up stuff and meeting him as he's growing Horizon. And you know what? He was always so kind to me and generous. I don't really, I think his story of being a plumber coming up, his business is similar to me being a plumber, but also I don't even think it's just that.
Aaron Gaynor: I think he's just a great guy and a great person that cares about the industry and has always been generous. And I will. I always just remember any time I saw him, he always do it by text and recall to me, get back to me. Like it just was unbelievable. And I have people like that and many other people I could go through or right.
Aaron Gaynor: People gliding over at halo. I'd always been a great advocate for me. I think it's just, can I find a way to help this space in any way? And some of that may turn into, personal financial benefits and some of it might just turn into personal reward of helping other people. better solid businesses for themselves and their families longterm.
Aaron Gaynor: And, and I think if I can do that we'll feel really good about life. One of the things I wrote on my definition of purpose in life was my business will be in the business of saving the day and protecting the future. I'll be in the business of saving dreams and creating futures for people.
Aaron Gaynor: So I think it's just trying to understand where, who you are and what you're on the earth to do. And the trades of, Genuinely saved my life in many ways. Maybe not saved. It saved it. Like I was in some bad place, but it saved it and gave me a place and an opportunity to do something.
Aaron Gaynor: And I'm grateful for that. And I need to keep that passion going. Because if I don't, then it's my time to move on. Yeah. That's incredible.
John Wilson: When I think about the sort of The main points of our conversation over the last hour, the big ones I'm going to, I'm going to grab here are setting a vision which I know we've seen that too, to a lesser extent, but it is interesting how, you put this massive thing out there instead of holding it inside your head and people do rally behind it.
John Wilson: And they it attracts the right people, which is really cool. Focus, multi just plumbing I would say just plumbing and just one location for a long time. Very long time. Yeah. Yeah. But I think that is huge. I know we're mid twenties and we're flirting with the idea of multi location, but Man, it's a lift.
John Wilson: And I really feel like 40 to 50 is the right size, if not bigger. Cause but I'll talk to guys and they're like two or 3 million bucks and they're thinking about their next market. And I'm like, what are you doing? Like you have two people what are you talking about?
Aaron Gaynor: Cause they think that's what they should do.
Aaron Gaynor: Cause they hear stories of people like me or other people or whatever, doing all these things. And they're like, that's what I should be doing. It's Oh, you shouldn't be doing this. Getting the one thing. Yeah, yeah.
John Wilson: Yeah. So yeah, strong focus. One market, one trade. I like that a lot. I think that makes a lot of sense.
John Wilson: Being ready to change when the facts change, we walked through this lightly, but you said, Hey, eventually plumbing slowed down in number of calls or. I don't remember your exact wording. And that's when we started to add another trade and think about new markets. Or the other way around, really.
John Wilson: So be ready to change when it changes. And continue to push for growth. Those feel like the big things. Did we, did I miss another core lesson in here?
Aaron Gaynor: No, I think it's, yeah, knowing when the time is. To your point, there's we knew saturation was starting to come. We owned the one thing, we earned the right, we felt like at this point.
Aaron Gaynor: Whether it was or wasn't, we felt like we did, because we did the one thing, we saw saturation, and then we made that. And I think it was like the electrical, I think, once you know some information, you feel really right on it, and your intuition tells you, then just make the decision to do it, right?
Aaron Gaynor: Sometimes we get all this information, I've done this numerous times too, is we get this information, And then we wanna spend too much time around it. , we think about it too much. We ask too many people's opinions. . Instead of just saying, my intuition tells me this is, what do I think? We just wanna be informed from people.
Aaron Gaynor: But if it's like, this feels right, it's the right thing to do at the right time, then just then do it. Be sound. Don't be don't be ridiculous on some of the things do, be sound. And you do have to trust your intuition in your gut a little bit. You do right with sound information.
Jack Carr: Yeah, I think my takeaway from this episode was specifically was how important building those relationships with vendors industry is, it's something I think we know inherently is true, but to push ourselves to actually go out there and talk to people in the industry and have those conversations and reach out to your vendors and build those relationships are all extremely important.
Jack Carr: It sounds like Aaron, that's something that you have done over and over again, and you're continuing to do. That's why you're here on this podcast for some purpose, and then continuing. To build those, I think is is something that I knew, but it's I'm going to lean into it.
Jack Carr: That's something that's very interesting.
Aaron Gaynor: I've been very fortunate through this space as we've grown this business. But even then, to have even people you guys may not know that are on the bracket, on the bracket of like home service companies that have helped me that I've built great businesses in the past that I've gone and visited and did stuff.
Aaron Gaynor: By being in networks, by showing up, by reaching out, by being available when they were available, not when I was available. That was the lesson learned, too. It's if you want to talk to somebody that's ahead of you, you better make yourself available when they're available, not when you're not being available.
Aaron Gaynor: And I've been very fortunate. I've built a great network of some great friends. I got to meet Tommy years ago. I met Tommy when he was building his business and he was in his little, his apartment. And he's telling me all these things he's going to do and I thought I had dreams and this dude was like going big time on me and I was like, wow, man, this is amazing.
Aaron Gaynor: This is who you want to be around. And, I think he saw what I was doing plumbing and we hit it off very well. And I'm actually as a, after this podcast, I'm taking off, getting off flight and flying out to Phoenix to spend some time with him and Bree and my son goes to college there. So him and Chad and Chris and Ishmael and, yeah.
Aaron Gaynor: Tom Howard and all these people. It's and I get, I think one thing I'll say this and then I'll wrap this up here is you do need to find your network. Yeah. Your point there is like you do. And I've had people say, where people said I want to be part of your guys's group or whatever.
Aaron Gaynor: And that's great. I love to meet more people do stuff. What you should really do is aspire to build a group of people and work with that group of people to lift each other up. And I think having the group of people that I've met in the industry in that group. Particularly and other people that I have met have all found ways to lift each other up and do that.
Aaron Gaynor: I think that's the key here is that is so important is to find that network of communication, be able to put yourself out there. I had to put myself out there here I am with a bankrupt business, trying to grow, trying to move forward. Trying to share my experience, it took me forever to put out one thing I'll say a lot on this too is one thing that really struggled for with longest times.
Aaron Gaynor: I'm dyslexic. I grew up dyslexic You can't become undyslexic Because I was very squirt so worried that people would knew I was dyslexic that I would do everything I could to work around that until I decided that it didn't matter I'm putting my whole life this life out there and putting all the things I have out there and I'm gonna go You know, I'm going to create network and be friends, beat people for the things I have and the things I don't.
Aaron Gaynor: Everything
John Wilson: changed. This was incredible, Aaron. I appreciate you coming on. I appreciate you sharing your story. Appreciate you walking through Eco. And if people want to connect with you or learn more about what you're up to how do you think they're able to find you?
Aaron Gaynor: You always hit me up on LinkedIn.
Aaron Gaynor: That's the best place really. Just Aaron Gaynor, LinkedIn, hit me a message. Thanks so much. I think that's how you got in contact with me. I usually am very good about responding. It's easy there because if I get out the email, it gets lost. Yes, I have an EA these days, but it still get lost and all that.
Aaron Gaynor: Hit me up on LinkedIn. I can funnel back and get back to people. So that would be the best way to just contact me is through LinkedIn. Awesome. Wonderful, Aaron. Thank you so much. My pleasure. Thank you. Congrats to all your guys success.
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