In this episode, Jack and John sit down with Andrew Morrell, who took his HVAC business from zero to $6 million—without a massive budget or a big head start. We dive into his journey, what worked (and what didn’t), and how smart marketing helped him scale fast.

SPECIAL THANKS TO SERVICE SCALERS

In a year where many in the industry faced challenges, we’re thrilled to have hit the low 20s, outperforming expectations and driving serious growth. A huge part of that success is thanks to Service Scalers.

The team have been invaluable partners, helping us achieve awesome results with out SEO, PPC, LSA and GMB marketing.

If you’re in the trades and ready to level up your marketing, do yourself a favor and check out ServiceScalers.com. Sam and his team are killing it right now.

SPECIAL THANKS TO AVOCA

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Episode Hosts: 🎤
John Wilson: @WilsonCompanies on X
Jack Carr: @TheHVACJack on X

Episode Guest:
Andrew Morrell on LinkedIn

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Owned and Operated Episode #169 Transcript

Andrew Morrell: I was answering phones. I was running service. I was running install.

I'm trying to make a place I always wanted to work at. If I've learned anything over the past year, I can't be the guy out there doing it all. You take people's homes in your own hands and treat it like it was yours.

John Wilson: Wilson just wrapped up the year. In the low 20s, and we were pumped. most of the industry did not have that same level of success. And when I think about who was a huge partner for us, like top of the list was Service Scalers. We've been working with Service Scalers for a couple of years now, and they've helped us drive best in class SEO, best in class PPC, and dominate LSA and GMB marketing.

They've been a huge partner for us, and we're really grateful for that partnership because it's helped us to take down. 46 percent year over year growth. As we think about our budget next year, we're aiming for the low thirties. And one of our most strategic partners is going to be service scalers.

They're going to help us stay ahead of AI. They're going to help us keep our SEO relevant. They're going to help keep us on the top, exactly where we want to be. So make sure you check out service scalers. com. Sam and his team over there is just a bunch of killers. So thank you service scalers for your partnership.

Jack Carr: Welcome back to owned and operated. We got your host, John the Maniac Wilson. We, really need to get you like a, bullhorn.

I think I missed my calling. you missed your call. Or one of those drop down mics. Yeah, there you go from the ceiling. Yes. And that other person you're hearing today is Andrew Morrell.

How you doing, Andrew? Thanks for being on the pod.

Andrew Morrell: Yeah, absolutely. I'm excited to be a part of it. Thank you.

Jack Carr: I don't know about you, John. I'm super excited to have Andrew here today. Andrew was in our last workshop in September of last year.

And, I think Andrew had one of the coolest stories, to be honest. And also, you're from my wife's hometown. We know a lot of the same people.

John Wilson: We're pumped to have you on. I'd love it if you just started rolling through your story a little bit, behind Mountain West HVC.

Andrew Morrell: Sure, yeah, I'll give you the, I guess the two minute version of it. I went to college in Vegas, which actually is not Northern Nevada, it's seven hours south. Most people are like, Oh, you're in Nevada. You must be right next to Las Vegas. We're, totally different. I went to UNLV, graduated college, had, big plans to become a law enforcement officer that, ended up not working out. But in the meantime, I had a friend down there that worked in heating and air conditioning. so started installing units in the hot attics of Las Vegas.

And after five or six years of that, I had enough of that and it was like, I'm going to go to a little bit more mild climate and enjoy, enjoy myself a little more. So I moved to Northern Nevada. Worked for a couple companies up here, worked for the state of Nevada, taught at the career college up here a bit, and then just decided I wanted to do my own thing.

Fortunately, I was working at the state at the time, so I was able to have a side hustle HVAC business. As I worked for the state, it was, no competing with the state is, typical state job. but I got my contractor's license 2018 started the business myself. I already owned a truck.

I had a shed in my backyard. it was like an old lean to that used to be for a horse and I didn't have horses. So I started parking a bunch of stuff under there and had a crib in there. All the dust would be blown in the ductwork. I have to shake it off every time I get out. But Yeah, started myself eventually got some employees and then now to the point where we are Worked out, I was able to, come across a commercial property up the road from my house.

Got some good people in place. got a great situation going, great employees, recently added backup generators dealer here. So yeah, heating air conditioning, we do have a full blown electrical contracting license, but currently focusing on EV chargers, main panels and, backup home generators.

Yeah, ground up. I own the business 100%. Don't have any investors or anything like that. That's all been income in, put it back in the business, put it back in the business, put it back in the business and, kind of cash flowed myself to here. And, here we are trying to figure it out still. But yeah, it's great.

John Wilson: And what size is the business now? You started in 2018. Do you remember annual revenue?

Andrew Morrell: Yeah. So actually, I should be able to remember pretty specifically, but, 2018, I remember 185, 000 in gross, profit. and then, 2019, I believe I stepped up to 685, 000.

Now, 2018, I was a hundred percent by myself. 2019, I did have, my first employee come on board and I did the occasional go down to the hardware store. Hey, which one of you guys wants to make a hundred bucks to help me lift this oil burner into place or whatever it was, and, might've had three, two or three total employees, 2019, 685, 000.

And then, the 2020. I think it was 1.2 million, 21 stepped up to, I think it was 1.9 to 2.2 ish range, and then, 22 was 2.7 and then 23 was 2.7. 23 to 20, sorry. 22 to 23 was a not a growth year. in the gross profit standpoint, but that was a year where I was definitely struggling. I was at that point, I was answering phones. I was running service. I was running install. I was answered. It was typical. Anybody that started a, it seems like anybody that started, yeah, it's a hundred percent.

And then in 2023, to 2024, I made some good hires, great, great people in the office, great employees in the field, began the vision of me delegating my jobs to other people, and, here we are and, still working on that.

last year we were, right at 4 million with, half of the year with six employees, seven employees, and then, ended the year with 13 employees. And, one of the reasons behind that was, going to the workshop, you guys are like, what are you doing? And I'm like. That is a great question. That's actually what we just do at the workshop.

That's how I, that's how I learned. Hey, tell me how bad I'm doing something. That's what you said then too. Look, tell me what I'm doing the worst at, and then I know where to go fix it. And, there's a lot of that.
And, but yeah, after the workshop, I hired four people. so three apprentices, two are more in the install side of things. Now they're actually, they can leave their own jobs. and then, another service tech. And then another, multifaceted, service tech install generator, technician, yeah, we're working on, officializing the CSR position here.

We still have the combo office manager, Bones combo. We are, actively going to be hiring here shortly to fill that position moving into the summer. We know we've got to have somebody on the phones full time. I know you guys talk about your call centers and your, your workflow of those different positions.
Yeah, it's a huge, Peace. So working on that amongst all the other, odds and ends.

John Wilson: So you guys, you talked a little bit about launching. I don't even know that you said electrical. It was really. to me, that's obviously sounds electrical, but in your mind, that seems to be a little bit different.

Like you're not going to do switch replacements or that's probably what you're saying.

Andrew Morrell: Correct. So currently, we are, my electrician, who's a great friend of mine, he is the qualifying, employee of the electrical contracting set of things comes from a very industrial background and it's actually more so electrical testing, he was involved with, testing main switch gear. If you know anything about Northern Nevada, there's a lot of industry coming in, Google, Tesla, switch, all the big companies. And he was involved with making sure all that was good. he's, involved with huge switch gear and breaker testing and stuff. So little residential stuff to him is a piece of cake.

But at the same time, he's not really wanting to go crawl in your attic and string a wire across to a light bulb necessarily. so that's coming down the road once we find that, proper fit for electrical services. But currently Stuff that tags along, generators from a maintenance standpoint, tie in fantastically with our heating and air conditioning, maintenance program that we offer.

It's good for the customer. It's good for us. Our region, as Jack knows, we're out a little bit more rural. There's definitely some rural areas up here that have, a hundred year old, power lines and transform, transformer blue last night in our neighborhood powering out last night.

I'm like, all right, let's sell some generators today. But yeah, so not full blown electrical, but definitely full blown heating and air conditioning service, install maintenance, residential light commercial. The commercial is always a little bit of a struggle because while very similar, there are those differences that's a challenge and that's communicating not with the owner directly.

There's some intricacies with three phase power versus single phase power and all that kind of stuff. It's never evolving.

Jack Carr: And so where do you think that you said that you did four last year where are you trending for what's your goal this year? So 2025?

Andrew Morrell: Yeah, so our big goal is six, I'll be super happy with five and a half to six, five Seems like a fall in, seems like there's no way we're not going to hit five.
but it's just a matter of, how do we tweak and how do we maximize and, make things efficient to hit that extra half, half a million to a million? part of that involves some more hires. Part of that involves some of a dotting our I's and crossing our T's and, organization that as a small company just takes time, to be able to fill that with manpower.

John Wilson: When I think about, I just had this conversation with a friend of mine  two days ago and we were talking about annual planning and this isn't meant to put you on the spot. I'm just like curious how you're thinking about it. But we were talking about annual planning and he said, roughly the same size.

He said Oh, I did five last year and I'll do six this year and I was like that one that's amazing. That's awesome And then to how are you backing into that? How are you getting there? And his approach to planning was to add a percentage which is what we used to do to all the way up until a year or two ago But are you using Are you tracking like number of leads or are you doing anything like analytical or how are you? I guess how are you backing into yes, we can achieve a one to two million dollar jump.

Andrew Morrell: Basically for us what that comes down to is knowing what we need to do on a monthly basis Weekly basis and a daily average of where we need to be.

Now we use Service Titan. I don't use it to its potential. I tend to have issues where a small fish, they don't tend to give me great support with it. but we use it to what we can. but, the, tracking, the dashboard's pretty cool. That allows us to compare you every year. Now, last year was our first year with those metrics.
And we know we took from those metrics. we actually have our own version of a spreadsheet where it shows. Hey, last January, there are daily average was X. Our weekly average was X for each month and then we basically have calculated a percentage of that and did it in reverse. How do we hit 6, 000, 000? As the end goal.

And it gives us our daily, And how do we do that? And part of that comes from, like another thing that I learned in the workshop was, three day call board. sounds basic, from a business standpoint, yeah, you got to pay attention to what's on the board and make sure you got work, but, it wasn't, it was really driven in, how important that is.

And it's also allowed us to plan not only from a pricing standpoint. but from a, Hey, do we need to give out some deals to fill the schedule? Or do we need to do a break even install? or can we make some more money? we take all the data and numbers that we have to figure out what we need from a daily basis.

And we give ourselves a goal and how do we hit that? like I said, I think before we were, went live here, January, we were up 36 percent over 2020, for January. we're on track. but mostly just what do we need to do to get there and let's figure out how to do it. It's there's not a huge grand strategy other than just rolling with it.

John Wilson: It was funny, we're members of Nexstar and I think Nexstar's just awesome, honestly. if you're big enough, you should be a part, it's great. but we did this workshop with them last December, and before then like we've run a Quarterly and annual planning process for years and like one of my like big wins is that it always gets better Like we always get a little bit better at it and I think it's embarrassing how far we've gotten without knowing how to do what's fundamental, like I'll talk to some people and they're like, dude, we've been doing that since we were like 5 million.

And I'm like, I don't know, bro. Like we don't know how to budget. I don't know what to tell you.

Andrew Morrell: I won't tell you what we do wrong. Cause it's so embarrassing, but it's I literally like literally this past week, I'm like, all right guys, we need to collect everybody's receipts and track them.

That's how like little things like that, where it's just I like. It's a lot. You don't do that.

And I'm like, Oh, so I feel, there's just, there's just so many things, but the thing that we learned this past October that we're like, I'm like, Oh my God. like once somebody tells you, you're like, yeah, duh.

John Wilson: Instead of just measuring the output, which is revenue. measuring the input to achieve that, which like, all that, means is okay, how many leads did I run last January? How many leads did I run this January? Did we net grow? Did I increase the number of leads? that's it. cause then once you, and like now we're like hyper focused on this, right?

Cause we're like 90 days into learning this, Thing that I should have learned 20 million something ago, But but that was hugely helpful so I don't know for February maybe just hey how many leads did our guys run and then from there like breaking out? How many did how many turned into revenue and then what was that average revenue?

Basically all I'm saying is number of leads. What's your conversion rate? And what's your average ticket? And then that's how you can continually Improve which we were focused on The average ticket and the conversion rate like crazy. We were not really paying attention to just. Hey, raw leads. Did they grow? are we running more leads or is the reason we're growing because of price increases or efficiency? And those are two totally different like growths, right?

Andrew Morrell: Yeah. Heck yeah. No, that's, that's ultimately our goal is to be able to get to a point somewhere where we have some more data like that.
Hey, how do we get there is a great question. great thing to pay attention to. And, we're, I'm in a much smaller position than that. And, we don't tend to track our leads like the, we don't monetize our leads cause it's, not something we have really started doing yet.

I, I was telling Jack before we started here, I played around with, PPC, Google ads, and man, if you want to light 5, 000 on fire, just do it out in the backyard rather than trying to do some yourself.

John Wilson: When I first started trying to do PPC, I tried myself and this was 20. I think everybody tries it. It was a 2016. I', pretty sure I started with it was like six grand a month and just, don't do it.

Andrew Morrell: Yeah, I was like, cool. I need to start spending some marketing, dollars and. Try and drum up some business. So I was like, that is definitely not the way to do it.

Jack Carr: That's one of the coolest parts about your story though, Andrew, that I find extremely interesting is you have gotten here pretty much on word of mouth and guerrilla marketing, you really haven't done the typical LSA, PPC, SEO. path that we see most companies getting to this point. Can you talk a little bit about that and what's, what has been your strategy to grow, to be, essentially almost a 6 million company this year without any of that.

Andrew Morrell: Sure. yeah, it's not that, we haven't done any marketing. It's that we have not necessarily spent money on that marketing in the traditional sense. our marketing from the basic standpoint. Obviously we have business cards.

Everybody has matching uniforms. We've got a website which is being revamped, which I'm sure we'll talk about in a little bit here. But, from the paying for lead standpoint, I've played with some Angie's and, home advisor stuff, but, we just actually restarted doing that. to see how it's going. That's going pretty well. It's, fair. but yeah, the way that we've drummed up our business to this point is, Hey, make that connection with the customer, anytime, you're out and about.

Talk to people, be like, you get into that conversation of, Oh, what do you do? Be like, Oh, I do heating and air conditioning. If you ever need anything, here's a card. from that standpoint of, I, I'm not much of a drinker anymore, but I used to go to the bar and everybody's your best friend at the bar.

And you just hand cards out or, you go to, different events, and just communicate and network. And, Reno is, they call it the biggest little city in the world. And it is. It is the case. you treat people, right? you take people's, homes in your own hands and treat it like it was yours.

They're going to refer you. They're going to call you back. And a lot of these people, they have their own business and then now if you treat them right, they You know, communicate with all their customers or, realtors are great avenues. anybody that is also in a networking position, you treat them, fairly and, stick to your word and do a good job.

They're gonna, refer you. And it's just been a good success for us. We just, if we say we're going to do something, we do it. If we do something, if we put a system in your house and you're like, man, I don't like this, I'm going to come pull it out. Be like, Hey, what do you want? And I'm going to put it in and you're not going to pay anything.

Stuff like that. It's just, accountability, customer service, call them before you leave, to go to a customer's house, following up with them. just being professional. it's hard to find a service where somebody calls you to say, Hey, I'm on the way they're there when they say they're going to be there.

And then they do a good job. ultimately at the end of the day, we try and fix reasonable issues. we don't feel that everybody needs a brand new system right then and there. we've got a large customer base of people that we've fixed their furnace. And, in five, 10 years, we'll probably change it out.

And I've seen that from customers from 2018, they're like, Hey, I remember when you came out and you fix this thing. Everybody else said you had to replace it. And now we're out there giving them an estimate and we're changing their system out. So it's just a, it's a diversification of, lead generating customers.

It's how I view it. So that being said, it's not perfect, right? It's February. We're looking for work. I'd like, love to have that dial to turn and be like, cool, check this out. I got some, more jobs coming in.

Jack Carr: It sounds like you have that dial to turn because most people's dials are already turned up as much as they can.

John Wilson: You basically have all the leverage in the world. I think Chris has tweeted about this a few times, but, when a business is spending 10 to 12 percent on marketing, where else can you go? Like you're already eating into your, cashflow.

Andrew Morrell: We do have two billboards, that are paid through our co op program. but it's in and out of the shop. Our trucks drive right by it. Our trucks look like the billboards. They see the billboard. They see our trucks. They, it's like a brand recognition strategy. But yeah, other than that, like I said, it's, one last year was less than 1%.

John Wilson: We are signed up with service scalers, this coming year for some SEO, website, building the base of that pyramid to, implement in the future, possibly some PPC LSA. I don't know what any of that looks like at the moment, but, the guys over at service scalers are doing a great job.

They're helping us build our website, maximize it. we're going to go live with them next week. So we'll have a new website next week and start that SEO. So check that out.

What do you think the percentage of marketing is going to be this year? It was 1 percent last year. So are you guys like, let's jump to four or three or?

Andrew Morrell: Based on the scale of, the growth there, it's probably still going to be, I don't anticipate us being more than a hundred thousand dollars spent towards marketing this year. 5 million or 6 million. That's still two percent.

Jack Carr: This is such a awesome place to be. I'm going to spend three or 400, 000 and we only we're only like five or 6%, like four, four or 5%. And I know. That, we pay about 55 a lead if you're to add, or 50 a lead if you're to add 100, 000 in just, lead generation spend.

Oh, yeah. You could bring in 2, 000 leads. And, you could do the math if your average ticket is, I don't know, a hundred bucks. there's just easy money that I, I see that for you. And I'm like, this is so awesome. It's such a cool spot to have. Yeah, it's a good spot. It's a very good spot to be.

Andrew Morrell: Yeah. I'm definitely excited. Like I say, I'm, I don't know anything about that side of things. definitely relying on the service scalers and we're going to be working with them and see how the website and everything goes, but. I'm excited for it. I love to be able to have another thing to pull from the generate that to work for the guys.

And, my goal is to keep everybody 40 or more, every week, and we work really hard to make that happen. And, having those extra levers to pull definitely would help, keep our guys going. And we've done a. Done a great job, over the past year, keeping everybody 40 or more, here, there, we've got some little bit less, but nobody's complaining and drive around town and look at some of the bigger guys, eight, 10, 20 trucks sitting there.

I'm like, I don't want to deal with that.

John Wilson: We're about eight months into using Avoca and Avoca has been an awesome partner for us in our call center. So what Avoca does for us is they do two different things. One, they have their coach product and coach has been helping us do what it says. Coach our CSRs every single day.

It listens to every call and uses AI technology to basically pick apart that call and tell us where we can improve. And for the last eight months, we've been consistently improving our scores, which has been awesome. The other product they have is just conventional booking, and it's an AI tool that books over the phone, a customer calls in and it either handles overflow as in our phones are full, or it does nights and weekends for us, and a customer will call in and actually deal with an Ai Agent all the way through booking and the savings inside call center has allowed us to ramp up our marketing to continue to grow Even more.

Thank you Avoca and thank you Tyson for your partnership.

John Wilson: I think the advantage here is you have all the low hanging fruit still left to pull so yeah, like the you'll hear Jack and I talk pretty, I'm going to pick on Jack and I'll pick on me to do it.

I'm going to pick on Jack first, but like Jack doesn't, he doesn't have the low hanging fruit to pull anymore. Like you've added more GMBs. You've, you're probably full spending on LSA. if you're getting leads, like you're getting them through thumb tack or like lead aggregators or Tik Tok still, or like you're having to put into real energy.

So I think the thing that's exciting, I'm just reiterating for the audience, You still have every single one of the lowest hanging fruit, primarily LSA, NGMBs, PPC's good, but PPC, you only start using PPC once LSA is, once you're rolling on LSAs, cause LSA is like the gold standard for lead generation.

Jack Carr: Yeah, to put it in perspective, I would probably have to go to Facebook or somewhere where I'm not really used to. I'd have to go create a bunch of copy, a bunch of videos, and then try and pay somebody to get those in front of the right people and do look alike audiences and all this kind of crazy stuff to drive.

That many leads or go start putting billboards around and realize, hey, they're not really working, pull them, go put them somewhere else. there's so much I would have to do to get those same 2, 000 leads. So it deserved to be picked on here because I'm, really pumped for you. this is, I think in the next few years, you're in a really, good position.

John Wilson: I think just, stick with the simple stuff first. LSA's is the easiest. And it's also the best. It's not just the easiest, but it is the best when it works.
It'll drive, the highest quality lead. We measure, I actually pulled this up just in case this came up. I had them send this to me, a couple minutes ago. This is our spend. This is, I don't know if this is last week or last month. It's last month. okay. So this is our spend. So for LSA, we spent 37, 000.

We got 997 leads. Our booking rate was, looks like 40%, which is pretty common. once you start really spending on LSA, book rates low. Could be vendors, could be random questions, pick a thing. Cancellation rate was high. We sold 20 percent of them. And still, despite all that, like we felt OK, like seven point seven times return on investment.

We like to see a minimum of eight. but like what you can just see from there is LSA, a thousand leads and 422 book jobs. Like it is the king of lead generation. There's other things that like Angie started really doing good work for us, but like LSA pumps leads. so it's just the lowest hanging fruit. So yeah, that's awesome that you started that up in front of you. All right. That was John's January return on investment.

Jack Carr: If you're watching on YouTube, like Jack's face got really close to it. I'm trying to see all the juice there.

John Wilson: Yeah. I'll, we'll, we'll block out all the names, got to keep some of my secrets all secret.

So you got there mainly with, mainly with, no marketing, which is awesome. Yeah. What do you think, over the past, or over the next year, you're at a size now where, leadership starts to become a big challenge. You brought up office staff and bring on some great people.

What do you think the administrative side of your business? what's changed in the last year and what are you going to do this year?

Andrew Morrell: December 23, hired our office manager. She's come in and done a great job. February, 24, I hired a general manager. and so it's myself and the office manager, general manager in the office.

We meet every day, go over our three day call board. continue to. keep our books, at capacity, recently also added a project manager and he's in charge of, exactly what that sounds like all the projects, whether it's an install, he's learning on the backup home generator side of things, but basically managing the guys in the field, and we're in the office managing the schedule.

So yeah, it went from, and basically most of 2023. Only me in the office when I was in the office and not helping service calls are in the field to Adding those three management positions to help manage the additional hires So moving forward, we definitely need to solidify that csr position To help free up our office manager.

She's wearing too many hats at the moment. she does a fantastic job with it, but we need to get somebody in there to just be that front face customer service intake specialist. and I think that's, going to be our big step for the office. moving into, we're in the new year, but moving towards summer, the big season, and then potentially another, hire for in the field, and then that should.

With that amount of employees with our, our roughly 350, 000 per employee kind of rate, give us where we need to go, or at least close to where we need to go. So that's our, hiring strategy moving forward.

John Wilson: Hiring like first leaders. is a lot. How have they taken the delegation of new duties?

Andrew Morrell: Every time I ask them to take on another, role that I used to know, it's, yep, let's do it. Let's figure out how to make it happen. and it's been very smooth every time. We're just at that point now where they are at max capacity of what they can handle. So we're Looking to add that at that position, but, we got a really great group of guys and going and everybody is not afraid to wear a different hat and similar in any smaller business, started the generators.

Hey, guys, we got to dig a trench today. Nobody wants to dig a trench. They're HVAC techs, but they're willing to and they do it, without hesitation because they understand it's, Hey, we're getting somewhere and we've got to do this to get where we want to go. so yeah, good group of people, not afraid to make changes and I'm learning how to allow them to make those changes and delegate those responsibilities myself.

Jack Carr: So that's what I was going to ask is, how has your role changed? You started. As like a tech doing everything. Then you went into the office doing everything, and now you're moving into managing managers. How has that process been for you?

Andrew Morrell: Good. I actually enjoy it. typically when you're a guy that's a, I'm a service tech, I'm in the field, I don't want to be an office guy, right?

I have actually been finding myself that I enjoy the mind game or puzzle of, managing, the squares on the board, I guess on the dispatch board, making sure they're flowing, and filled and figure out, who's better suited for what position. And, I get to tweak those processes and help the managers tweak the processes, to help the guys in the field.

It's been a lot more fun for me, a lot less stressful. I'm not doing all of that and then having to run six service calls or crawl under a house or go do estimates or anything like that. So I'm finding myself in a good position where, I'm starting to be able to pay attention to our books, more pay attention to those KPIs that we need to pay attention to, to make those tweaks, to allow us to get to that next level.
and my managers have been fantastic. our general manager has got, great ideas for, not only helping get our budget, visuals where we need to go, meaning, he's in charge of creating that, monthly percentage, daily percentage, daily goal. but he's also very keen on making sure, hey, how are we keeping our guys happy?

It's nice that there's somebody else. Also doing that. we try and do a great job of that. Take them on fishing trips or, go out on dirt bikes or whatever it is or go to take them out to dinner or whatnot. But, heating and air conditioning is a tough job. if you're not having fun, if you're not making money doing it, it's hard to do it.

And, finally in that position where that's what I get to work on is making sure these guys have a great place to work. I always tell people I'm trying to make a place I want to, I always wanted to work at. and, I feel like we're getting there and it's pretty cool.

John Wilson: Yeah, that is cool. That's fun. I remember, we used to be better about it, like doing what you're saying. And, it's not a good excuse, but it's what happened. We bought these companies, and we got really busy. And, in like running these different locations, and putting it all together, and then like the crises that followed, that stuff dropped.

And it sucks, because we're now, we're just now, like I'd say in the last four months, starting to get good again at driving regular Like workplace enhancement, just like having a great culture, but we've had a good, very performance driven culture, but it's also is it just a good culture and sometimes we missed the boat, it's fun to be able to be there again, but I remember the, I remember when we were good at it and it was fun.

Yeah, that's cool. Now, I think you're getting ready to launch plumbing or you're thinking about launching plumbing. How are you thinking about that? Obviously you just dropped generators, so where's your head at?

Andrew Morrell: Let me use the trade, I know would be a very good bolt on the challenge is finding the person to head that up. Because, if I've learned anything over the past year, I can't be the guy out there doing it all. so plumbing while in the future, is definitely an avenue. We're going to be going down immediately this year, may or may not. Now, a couple of things we want to do it for a little bit quicker for the bolt ons is, water heaters, tankless water heaters, maybe some water filtration. We've got a lot of people on wells, so there's a good market again, picking and choosing like we did on the electrical side to at least get our feet wet and figure out some processes. but to be honest, I've had so many other things I'm working on that adding another trade right now just doesn't realistically seem feasible, but it's definitely a consideration, moving forward.

John Wilson: We, I, inherited. Like, when I bought the business in 2016, we had, we were already plumbing in HVAC, which, now, I'm like, why? cause we were like, one, we were like a I don't even remember. It was like a little over a million dollars. And, to run two trades, and I think the guys, at the time we were all like, I don't think we thought it was weird.

I was still in the field. And, I think it was just like, oh, now I'm gonna run a plumbing call, and next I'm gonna go run a boiler call. that's just is what it is. I don't know. so I just don't think we really thought about it as two totally different trades, but obviously. Now I'm like, that was crazy, and complicated, but yeah, I, think you're right.

I will give a little bit of pushback on the you can't do everything. Something that's been fun, and maybe it's just like where you like to play, but something that's been fun, as your role continues to change, you get to basically do what you like to do, or that's how it should be designed, cause what's gonna give you energy?
Because you need energy. Otherwise, we're just a drain on the business's morale. and one of the things that I have found to be fun, like what I like to do, is, like push. hey, I want to start something brand new that doesn't really exist. And, it's hard to find a place. Exactly what you just described with plumbing.

It's, one of the phrases that helped me, this was Mark Brook, from Permanent Equity, but we talked about it at Holco Conf two years ago. but he's got this phrase that's just like rent free in my head and it's, managers don't grow businesses, owners do. Managers manage the businesses that the owners built.

But a manager's not gonna intentionally break something, right? So they're not gonna run in and be like, Hey, this process that works really well, I'm gonna break it and I'm gonna make this totally brand new one and, put a flyer on my career. It might be in a year. Like you're the one that drives the bus because I know for me and maybe that's fun to you Maybe it's not but I know for me that's become a big part of my role is Hey, what's the thing that we don't do yet that like?

How do I spot the next roadblock and then how do I remove that roadblock? and if a roadblock that you'll encounter soon is like keeping your guys busy or stabilizing down season revenue or Like how do you handle cash flow and balance sheet during February? Plumbing would help, so that becomes this okay, how do we do this, and how do I do it while insulating the rest of my team from John's ideas?

Andrew Morrell: Sure, and, the reason why I say that about plumbing is because I'm currently doing that with the backup generators, Yeah, so you're driving that bus now. Yeah, 100%. That's the fun part. Yeah. Now I'm working with our electrician. He's in the panels setting the panels up, but I'm, I'm running HVAC guys that we know how to get stuff anywhere across the house, right?
So we're in charge of getting, gas pipe or anything. We're leveling the pad. We're setting this, I'm helping the electrician see the vision of how to run things. He's the brains in the panel, on the, I guess the logistic side of the communicating with the customers, scheduling, gas piping, he's designing, the, he's making it happen.
I'm helping figure out how to make it happen. and I'm heading that up and that, that is a bit time consuming right now. So that is why currently I don't have that. I agree with you. That makes total sense.

John Wilson: It was more like, it wasn't even feedback. It was more like, As the business grows, the role changes a lot. And, I'm right now, my role, which is I think I'm just starting to get okay at it. We'd have to actually ask my team. but it's hard, but it's, like I'm now have to be like coach and that we made that my name on slack. And that's like the thing, it's like the coach and yeah, it just changes so much. And like what I want to be often is Hey, let's go run through that brick wall. let's go like figure out this thing. and, I, have to be, and I should be this like, Coach in addition to that, which I find challenging to switch between the guy that wants to run through the wall and Hey, let me be supportive.

Andrew Morrell: It's really hard. Yeah, I bet. do you get out with the guys in the trucks ever? Or do you go out, strap your tool bags on and get up, get dirty still?

John Wilson: It had been a while, but I started doing ride alongs and I think the cadence is going to be once a week forever, basically.

I think it was fun. And I think, and the bigger the business gets, you build all these, like you build all these processes and you build all these workflows and, Testing is an important part of the scientific process, right? hey, we built this thing, now what? What did it do?

What's it feel like? What's the vibe of this materialist check process? does it take 30 minutes when we thought, on our spreadsheet it was going to take 5? So that's a big part that I'm doing it, now and really all Almost our whole senior leadership team is doing these ride alongs pretty regularly now of Hey, we made this change.
What was the downstream? Was it good? Bad? Did it help culture? Did it hurt culture? Did it kill our productivity or did it increase it? Did it do what we wanted? Cause the, now the changes impact 80 people at a time. and it's really hard to get like a good feedback loop, except for someone walking in and being like, Hey, I hate this. But that's how, that's why I've been getting it, and also just to hang out with guys. it's fun.

Andrew Morrell: Yeah, that's cool. I know when one of your recent podcast, you guys are talking about your training structure and implementing it a little bit differently.

It was like a question answer podcast and somebody was asking about it. And, it's cool to hear that you are still involved in the hands on side of things. I think that's important as well. cause I, I'd like to do the same thing when I can. yesterday, guys are having an issue on. Making an access for an addict.

And I was like, I'm going to go out there. I'll go figure it out. we'll learn something together and it's cool to be able to show face on a job and definitely get some respect from the guys in that manner. so yeah. Yeah.

John Wilson: I, think every like conventional book, is Oh, the owner or president or CEO or whatever, they have to be this like visionary thing.
And I think that's a part of the job, but like the other part of the job is going out and learning something together. And like understanding the real pain point that's happening inside that business. And I think it, it all, it takes more and more deliberate work. Like it already will for you because now you have a layer of leadership in between you and the rest of the organization.

So now it's going to be much more deliberate. And the, like you'll cross 10 million in a couple years and then you'll have even more managers. And then it's even more oh, we got to. I need to set aside time for this and I need to like, push these vendors off or whatever and, go do it.

But, the, it's almost like from 5 to 15 million. I was so focused on, what type of leader the books told me I was supposed to be and I ignored the type of leader that I really just, felt like I should be, which is a hands on, understanding the details, being a part of what our pain points are, and trying to coach when I can, and attempting to just lead through example versus you read all the books and I just don't think that I did a good job of what those books told me I was supposed to be.

Yeah. Yeah. Lead authentically. Even if it's counter to what EOS says.

Andrew Morrell: Take the idea and modify it to what fits you and your business. Even if it's not 100 percent what the other people are saying.

John Wilson: Yeah, the only way that we can like and in lead impactfully is like by leading is whoever we are and I'm a Impatient guy that thinks it's fun to go out in the field and I like to say fuck a lot and there's a lot of high Fives around the office and that's just who I am at my core.

Jack Carr: That, that actually was a big surprise for me, the first time I was at John's office, I was like, Whoa, you said that in front of your team?
You just drop an F bomb in front of your team? He's yeah, fuck it, I don't care. I was like, alright.

John Wilson: I lead as my authentic self. It's true. Perfect. Good and bad.  

Andrew Morrell: There you go. That's awesome.

John Wilson: So you, guys have had a heck of a journey here. So you launched it. You've taken it now to completed 4 million, aiming for six.
You've got some low hanging fruit. You did the workshop. That was awesome. I'm glad you got a lot of value out of that. You've got, some awesome low hanging fruit in front of you. primarily around, driving leads just cause you haven't done it before, man. It feels like you've got a springboard.

Andrew Morrell: Yeah. I just got to figure out how to jump off that springboard and, figure out the first step. like I said, I took the first step or getting some SEO in place and I know that's a longterm game and that's not necessarily. Directly driven to create a lead right then and there. But, like I told Jack before, it's like building the base of our pyramid of marketing. Get the, get your SEO, set up and then start incorporating different things. Like I said, we've started with some Angie and we've actually sold two installs off of Angie. 80 bucks, 80 bucks led to 20 plus thousand, which is great. it's a good start.

John Wilson: It's easy to get an ROI when it's HVAC, like 10, 000, versus like faucet repair. I agree. yeah, you'll probably kill it with Angie.

Andrew Morrell: Yeah. Yeah. So we started that. like I said, I miserably failed with the Google ads, so I'm going to hold off on doing any more of that until somebody that knows what they're doing can help me out with that. but yeah, Yeah, our goal is, even looking into some, direct mailers.

We've got, we've got our zip codes dialed in of, Hey, we know where we do the most revenue by zip code. and we know where we want to work. Hey, we're there. we send some mailers, learning about that process. I know it doesn't happen after the first one or second one.

It typically takes, I think the three, three, views of the direct mailers to drive something. so start implementing that. and just, explore the different avenues. you had mentioned on a previous podcast about there's so many of these lead aggregators that are available and you may be the only one on them.
I'm looking for those. that's my, elementary marketing strategy moving forward is to help. springboard us into that. Yeah. it's, I learned by doing and failing and we're going to see where it takes us,

John Wilson: Yeah. I think all that makes sense. I think SEO, I tried to pull up the report, cause it's still like boggles my mind to this day. but we had worked with Scorpion for a couple of years and it was just awful. And, our website now, trying to find it so I can pull up another report. But it produces like 200, 000 to 300, 000 of revenue a month.

And that's from like our organic SEO. it is insane. and we did that in a year. That's not 10 years of SEO building, that was a year. yeah, just absolutely crazy. so that was a, that's been a huge win for us. And then the other one, and this is just like me giving a quick hit here.

I would do LSA so far before mailers. It's not even, it's not even funny. LSA is you can double or triple with LSA and that's all you have to do. and it's easier.  

Jack Carr: You just turn on the switch on and it goes.

John Wilson: Yeah, it's so easy and it just works. It's a, yeah, it's a money printer go brr. Yeah. Okay. and yeah, I think between SEO and LSA, like you'll be good to 10 to 15 million bucks. It's almost like comical how easy it works between those.

Andrew Morrell: I guess my first step is even figuring out how to turn LSA on. So I guess I'll, look into that. Yeah.

John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. And it takes active, there's stuff you got to do. You can do it yourself. You, I'm sure, I'm sure they can do it too, but Yeah, it takes active, it takes active, work, but I think my main message there was like, marketing does not have to be complicated. And especially with your setup, like you've got the simplest marketing ever.

Whereas you don't have any. So just like adding one or two things like SEO and LSA, it'll just blow you guys up. It's you have an unfair advantage right now. because you're not spending anything, so you're in a sweet spot. Yeah, I'm excited to see how that works. thanks for coming on, man.

Andrew Morrell: I had a great time at the workshop and I love listening to the podcast and, it's been cool to be a part of it and look forward to, continuing on.

Jack Carr: So Andrew, I have one last question for you. We are doing another workshop in April and what, we're always curious, what was the most impactful thing for your business out of that entire workshop? What kind of category helped you the most, you think?

Andrew Morrell: Yeah, the most impactful part of the workshop for me. Simply enough was the three day call board and capacity booking, making sure that, you have to be planning a day out, two days out, which it's easy to lose sight of that as you get caught up in the day that you're working on, making time in the morning to get with your team. which is, another thing I learned at the workshop was you guys had your morning meetings at the Wilson companies, where.

Plumbing came through, HVAC came through and electrical came through and underground came through. And we're like, Hey, this is where we're falling short. This is what we need. And John was sitting there just chilling, drinking his coffee, looking at his team, look at these guys create work. This is awesome.

But we have implemented a four hour time window, which has been phenomenal for us, allowing us to stay within timeframes and meet expectations. So three day call booking has been fantastic, and capacity planning and just generally getting together to go over the information, would be the most impactful.

And in fact, I got two guys come into your, workshop in April, so we're going to see what their takeaways were. yeah, like from your team. Yep. Yep. My office manager and project manager will be there. Yep.

John Wilson: That's fun. Yeah. One of the fun things is, cause we're doing them every six months right now and like a little bit changes every time. So we got other feedback that yeah, explaining call board and explaining sales process was super helpful. So they'll probably get a little bit more of a flavor for that stuff. Because it was people requested that we do more of that. So we're going to add some more of that in.  

Andrew Morrell: I'm really excited to see different views and, I grasped, five things and came back and I sat down and everybody was just like, Oh, you learned a lot.  Came back and I was guns a blazing, we got it sorted out. So that's awesome.
Fantastic time. Appreciate you guys being open with all the information and everything.

John Wilson: Well, thanks for coming on again. This was cool. If people want to connect with you, how can they get ahold of you?

Andrew Morrell: Yeah, I'm, not the best millennial in the world. I have a Facebook and I am on LinkedIn, but I'm not much of a social media guy.

You could either message me on LinkedIn or find me on Facebook. it's just Andrew David on Facebook and I'm on the owned and operated Facebook page. You can find me on there. But, if I can help with anybody for anything. I'm trying to be an open book. The more I can learn and more help I can give other people, the better.
So we're all trying to help each other, I think.

John Wilson: Amen. Yeah, it's one of the best parts about the industry is it is wildly collaborative. and what's, I think what's been fascinating is that PE has not changed that very much. cause I think it's just the culture of the industry is like, Oh, if you like what somebody's doing, you can just ask them.

Jack Carr: Which is like crazy when you think about it. Yeah. What are your GM secrets?

John Wilson: Oh, basically, like we had, we had Radiant up here from Austin, like two, three weeks ago. And they wanted to understand our service install and how we do warehouse. Cause it's just different. And, Woody, their GM, he was just, Hey, can we come out? I'm like, yeah, yeah, that's awesome. But it is fun. It's a collaborative industry. We love it.

Andrew Morrell: Yeah. Thanks for having me guys. Appreciate it.

John Wilson: If you like what you heard, check out ownedandoperated.com

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