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Owned and Operated #184 - From Survive to Thrive: Scaling Your Home Service Business for Maximum Growth.
As the busy summer season approaches, scaling your home service business requires the right strategy. In this episode, we break down how to set and achieve ambitious revenue goals, optimize operations, and staff up for success. From improving workflows to leveraging AI and overseas labor, we’re sharing the growth strategies you need to scale efficiently without skyrocketing overhead costs.
💼 Shoutout to Quick Staffers LLC
Need trained HVAC & plumbing CSRs at a fraction of the cost? Quick Staffers LLC specializes in placing top-tier global talent with the best SOPs and scripts.
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💡 Special Thanks to Hatch!
Hatch has been an incredible partner in our outbound journey. Since starting with them, we’ve ramped up with powerful automations that keep every lead engaged and every invoice followed up. Hatch’s AI Agents, ready to handle follow-ups, reminders, email blasts, have saved us hours.
Get started here
Episode Hosts: 🎤
John Wilson: @WilsonCompanies on X
Jack Carr: @TheHVACJack on X
Owned and Operated #184 - From Survive to Thrive: Scaling Your Home Service Business for Maximum Growth
John Wilson: [00:00:00] Every year we achieve this new thing. So like our first $3 million a month, like, that's as much revenue as I did in 2019, and we're gonna do that in July.
Do our processes make sense? And will they work at double our volume? Hey, are you good? Are you good at 50% more volume?
Jack Carr: I only have to jump into their 15 million in two years. Let's do it.
John Wilson: You'll honestly, you'll probably do it. So a big goal for this year. As we prep for busy season is
Jack Carr: just answer the phone. It's one of those phrases that's always easier said than done. I know it was hard for me and my business 'cause the phone always rings while you're out in the field trying to get something done. Or it's 8:00 PM and you're trying to get your kids to bed. Well, I have the solution for you.
I'm extremely excited today to announce Quick Staffers your go-to solution for building a high performing. Cost-effective customer service team. We are placing CSRs who have been pre-trained on proven home service SOPs and scripts, the [00:01:00] same ones that Wilson and I use in our business. For a limited time, we're offering $500 off your initial placement costs for the first 10 signups.
See link in the description below or head over to quick staffers.com for more information.
John Wilson: Welcome back.
Jack Carr: Welcome back to Owned and Operated. I'm, I'm taking over, John. You, you, you can own the welcome back. I've had a good run. Yeah. When I've had a good run. When we're, we're dealing with, uh, Roger and, uh Yeah.
Other legends, but it's my time now.
John Wilson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's going on, man, dude. Uh, like Wednesday, March 26th.
Jack Carr: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: You know what that means, Jack?
Jack Carr: I have no idea.
John Wilson: We're at the tail end. Of my least favorite part of the year. Oh
Jack Carr: yeah. Q one's almost over.
John Wilson: Yeah, dude, we are five days out. We're almost there.
Almost there. So, yeah. No, we're, um, we're feeling really good. We're feeling really good. Quarter one's wrapping. Uh, I mean, April technically is our hardest month really. But our six [00:02:00] Oh yeah, yeah. By, by kind of a long shot, but, but we're going into April stronger than we've ever gone into April. So. We feel great.
Jack Carr: Why? Why is a, I feel like April wouldn't be your hardest month because you can actually lean on maintenances. No, that's surprising for me to hear. We,
John Wilson: yeah. I mean, we might be better at it this year. Last year was our first year, like getting decent at it. Um, and we have a way better, like, sales mechanism this year.
Mm-hmm. So actually I really don't know how April's gonna go. It could be because we broke most of our rules this quarter, one with how we, how we've managed so far.
Jack Carr: What, what do you mean by that?
John Wilson: Like, gross margin was actually good. Yeah, like we're finishing up Q1 at 50% gross margin, which like typically I'm in the high thirties, like last year I was in the high thirties.
Yeah, yeah. And it's 'cause we had some HVAC guys that didn't know how to sell the margin, so that basically dragged the whole company down.
Jack Carr: Yeah. I mean I think it's also, right, your team has graduated from and, and it's mostly your focus, right? By focusing on gross margin, you inherently don't [00:03:00] sell by discount just naturally.
And you're working on pricing to get gross margin down. You're working on labor Well, we discount.
John Wilson: We do sell a lot by discount. It's just we built the system to still hit margin with discount.
Jack Carr: Yes. That makes sense. Yeah. So when, when I say sell, by discount, I mean like over discount. Yeah. If you're planning in a 10% discount Right.
That's not really a discount.
John Wilson: Yeah. Um, or, or like, like we talked about a couple episodes ago, how do you give a huge discount but be able to plan the rest of your organization around giving that discount? Yeah. Like how can you give it and protect margin by buying better or having labor that makes, you know, works within that.
Jack Carr: Yeah, definitely agree. Um. The nice, I, I mean maybe it's geographical, but April, actually the month always is like a little spike for us. 'cause we start our maintenances. Nice, nice. We get our first 80 degree days of spring and like that's when Yeah. We catch all the leaking coils and compressors out and all like the big jobs.
That's,
John Wilson: that's may for us. Yeah. Typically. [00:04:00] But we, we might be able to see it happen in April. Uh, I mean the big wins this year. Uh, I'll give some Q1 wins. Mm-hmm. Because we're sitting here just like we're, oh my God, we made it. This is the first year ever that we have never even had to bring up the topic of a layoff of any type.
Jack Carr: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: Like, didn't even come up. Yeah. I mean, we dialed in our lead gen, we dialed in our install, we dialed in our sale. Like we've, we have next leveled on all of those three things, which is, you know, we've talked about that a ton on the show, but huge win. And it, it's honestly been a huge cultural win.
Because around the office, like everyone in electric was like, dude, last year we were doing nothing like last year. Like they had to lay four guys off this year. Like we're, we're ramping up hiring in March because to keep up with what we're selling. So just huge win And, and plumbing's the same thing.
Plumbing's just like, oh my God. Usually we're dead in the water. Like. We have 12 installers, we need to jump to 14. Like we do not have enough [00:05:00] really big win there. We also didn't have to talk about reducing overhead salaries. I think the reason is, and we, we should dive into this again, 'cause somebody, someone in the owned and operated pro community just asked me about this.
Mm-hmm.
Jack Carr: But
John Wilson: like, hey, walk me through like hiring remote again. Like the reason we didn't have to reduce overhead salaries is because we aggressively moved more positions
Jack Carr: remote to remote. Yeah.
John Wilson: Like that's it. That was a huge win for us. We were able to. It like made the business more defensible.
Jack Carr: You, you know what's interesting, and I, and I don't, I mean, I don't want this episode to be honestly talking about.
Remote hire and all that. Yeah. But what I noticed, which is super weird and, and makes me feel uncomfortable about having so many remote employees overseas Yeah. Is my expectation and understanding of the actual square footage I need now is so much vastly different and than I imagined. So when I saw your shop the first time, you guys were still using local.
CSRs dispatchers, local everything. Yeah. And your bullpen was stacked, [00:06:00] like there was desks everywhere. Yeah. And I was expecting, oh, I'm gonna need to do that too. Yeah. And then like if you watch that video on the Facebook group where I walk through my office, it's mostly empty 'cause I have a few managers.
John Wilson: Mm-hmm.
Jack Carr: And that's it. Like all the CSRs never be answers. Well I think you change what you
John Wilson: use it for. Yeah. Because what you'll end up using it for is conference rooms, train. We have three conference rooms and they are used. Oh yeah. Like it's sometimes it's really hard to find a room, training rooms, a technical training room.
I think you just maximize it. It like gives you more options.
Jack Carr: Yeah. I just mean like the, from a point of view of like just expectation to reality. Yeah. Is I was expecting needing at this point in Yeah. In my journey. An additional, you know, seven to eight desks here. Yeah. With people sitting in them full time.
Yeah. And is really like, oh. No, they're just at home. Yeah. Yeah. So super weird. Um, but yeah, I mean that, that's, those are some big wins. Any others?
John Wilson: I mean, net profit was huge.
Jack Carr: Yeah. That's, that's our biggest win is Yeah. Just [00:07:00] we saw, we actually were able to realistically and accurately capture financials and know if we were winning or losing.
Yeah. And we know we won every month in Q1. Yeah. As a business and as hvac. We also know that we lost a few months in plumbing, which, yeah, I like That's the first step though, to changing it.
John Wilson: First off, how dare you like plumbing is, it doesn't lose, it doesn't lose plumbing is the golden cow, like, I don't understand what you did wrong.
Jack Carr: Well, you know it. That's a good question and it has a lot to do with, for us personally, with training. Training, and we weren't doing full evaluations, so we were showing up and doing, I. You know, half-assed, Hey, we change out the cartridge for 200 bucks and you can't run a business changing out $200 cartridges.
Like it's just never going to work. You're never gonna sell anything. Our excavator didn't move for like three weeks and I about kicked a hole. Yeah. Drink a [00:08:00] Monster Energy and pulled a Kyle and just put a hole in our wall somewhere. Uh, sorry, Kyles, um, but yeah, like. A real, real, but the realization came from actually knowing our financials, which is the first time in three years that we've been able to do it accurately and consistently.
John Wilson: Yeah, so
Jack Carr: super big,
John Wilson: dude. That's, that's awesome. That sounds like a huge, that sounds like a huge one.
Jack Carr: Yeah. And then it's the first time to, and I know like complete understanding and transparency that we've only been in business three years, but it's our first time coming outta Q1 positive from a net perspective.
Yeah. Yeah. So, um, really excited about that because normally. Negative. And then summer hits become positive. Yeah. You have to yourself outta the hole. Yeah. You dig out. Yeah. By like June, July you're out. Yeah. And then August you make some money and then you try not to lose that money the rest of the year.
This year we're like going in up. I know. Which is awesome. Yeah.
John Wilson: I, I had the same conversation with my controller like an hour ago and yeah, it, it's sweet. I think we're exiting, uh, Q1 at 10%. Which, which like, [00:09:00]
Jack Carr: yeah. Huge, huge, huge. Especially at your size. 'cause I mean, realistically right. Well, the smaller you get, the easier it is.
I can imagine like the, the bigger you get, it
John Wilson: takes a lot. Well, it takes a lot. Yeah. And, and that's why, that's why I think like the biggest wins were like sales process, keeping the board full. Just like how do you sell properly? Yeah. Um, and then overseas hiring, like those were the wins. I obviously like.
I'd say there's dozens of other things I did last year to make sure that this exact thing happened. And if you listen to like April to December episodes all of last year, just crazy. Like, you will listen to me solving this problem so that I can sit here today and say, here's what happened. But like, yeah, negotiating the fuck up, uh, expense lists the every monthly renegotiations SaaS reductions, sending C things overseas, keeping the board full, like.
In my mind, nine months of my year. Are set, like is [00:10:00] me spending time figuring out January through
Jack Carr: Yeah. Uh, may. And I mean, honestly, it wasn't an overly rough from a temperature standpoint either. It wasn't like a super terrible winter. Yeah. That blizzards and destroying home, like it was a moderate winter, to be honest, at least for us.
Um, for,
John Wilson: for, for us it was cold. Um,
Jack Carr: that's good. You guys got some negatives for a while. Yeah. Because you were out in the field. Yeah. Yeah. So now though, as we're moving, right, and I, I kind of want attack this from a holistic point of view, a 32,000 foot level. Okay. As you're moving into summer or out, just generally out of a season into another season.
Yeah. Because I know, you know, I, I don't think electrical has the same issues that plumbing or HVAC d do as you move out Q1. It does.
John Wilson: Yeah,
Jack Carr: it does, does it?
John Wilson: It's the exact, it's the exact same cycle. You know, it's super
Jack Carr: interesting you say that because I was talking to roofers. Roofers said the same thing.
Guys who do fencing, guys who do fencing said the same thing. Landscaping, trees, irrigation, landscaping, they all say the same thing. Like Q1 is hard. Just Home [00:11:00] Services Q1 stops.
John Wilson: Yeah. Q1 stuff for home service. Yeah.
Jack Carr: Yeah. And so as you're moving into Q2, like how are you thinking about trainings and Yeah. Um, like the changes in business from a systematic point of view, how are you viewing those changes to like.
Ramp and to kick gear into play. Yeah. So that it's no longer about survival, it's about thriving. I'll start, you know, 'cause it's easy, it's probably easier for me to start. Yeah.
John Wilson: Our, our answer is actually probably simple too, but go ahead.
Jack Carr: Yeah. I mean, so realistically from, from our point of view, all we are doing to ramp for summer is a, we're hiring, we're picking up, you know, two head count each, each department, which we have needed them.
At the end of last year, and we, yeah, our budget shows that we're going to definitely need them this year. We just didn't wanna bring them on in Q1 when we didn't have the leads, right? And so now are, all of our guys are packed. Like they're doing maintenances. We're packed, we're over full. We're losing jobs 'cause we can't get there fast enough.
And so we're ready to hire again. Um, we've actually been [00:12:00] posted for a while, so that's a big change is just start the hiring process before you need it. And then the second bit is training. It. It's, we are flipping everybody's mentality because they've been training or they've been training for the winter sales, and now we're getting them ready for the summer sales process and, and giving them their, yeah.
Revamp on why you have to explain certain things and, and go yeah. Back into that refresher course. So, I mean, I don't know if I'm missing something or if we should be looking at something else as well, but really for us it's two categories. It's hiring and training, hiring, training. Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: I would only add one more category, uh, on there.
I guess maybe two. I would add two. So for us, and we've been doing this, we're on our fifth or sixth year of doing this discipline. We use what's we call a staff planning worksheet where, uh, it, it details out roughly the budget by month of hey, in April. And, and [00:13:00] I, I guess I'll go into the why. So like, if I have 10 sales plumbers right now, come May 1st, I will have enough demand for 13.
Jack Carr: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: Uh, now you can measure this in a few different ways. One, how many leads are we buying? What percentage of leads are you buying? So for us, if we're buying 40% of our leads for a team. That's tough to hire for. Like, there's a lot going on there. Like what happens if I have a shortfall of leads? You know, you're more likely to see like feast or famine.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: Uh, 'cause if I add a guy on there, suddenly it'll be 50%. And if there's a slow day, it's a whole thing. If I, I'm buying 10. Yeah. You can't turn a dial set up by leads. You can't turn the dialogue.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: Can't turn it up. Yeah, you can't turn it up. So like you are already at like. 30, 40% like you are stretched on the available leads in that market, most likely for our size at least.
The other thing we think about is literally the more simplistic one. How many days outta my booked? Mm-hmm. Like if I'm booked four days out, like booked, a hundred percent booked. Dude, you [00:14:00] need to hire two people, just like go hire two people. So you can use either one, either one of those to measure, but like come, come may.
Like our demand for all of our service departments will jump up by three or four per team. And there's six teams, so that's 18 people. And then we will need to then add installers to support, uh, what they sell. So right now we're in big time hiring mode and we. We started earlier than ever this year again.
'cause we talked about how strong quarter one was. Yeah. Like we actually ran up against our staffing limits in Q1, which we did not expect. Like electrical install is understaffed. Whereas, you know, a year ago we were doing layoffs mm-hmm. Of that team. So like we didn't, we just didn't really Didn't expect
Jack Carr: it.
Yeah.
John Wilson: We didn't expect it. And it's the same thing with plumbing. So like we're, we have a shortfall of two for each of each of those teams. And then we're gonna add another net to, uh, also to each of those teams. So. Right now the biggest thing is hiring and we try to forecast a year out for hiring. [00:15:00] Really, it's obviously not always correct, but that staff planning worksheet gives us something to work on.
So, hey, I know that in next April I'm probably gonna need two more people. In trucks in HVAC service. So I wanna start recruiting for them in February when other companies are doing layoffs.
Jack Carr: Yeah, I mean, you talked about it, I know, I remember talking about in January, February is you were saying people were actually knocking on your door asking if you were hiring walk-ins.
Yeah, they had walk-ins. Tremendous amount of walk-ins. Yeah. Just crazy. So is this, is this forecast sheet that you, is this something you created internally? Is this something that you've received? Yeah, we made from Nexstar or I made it when
John Wilson: I was. I made it when I was $3 million. So it is sweet, very unsophisticated.
Like the best number of people I need. Yeah. Yeah. It's the number of people I need. And then like a red light green stoplight system for like, Hey, you have 60 days to hire this role. 'cause our average time to fill, I think is 35 days. So if, so we give like an [00:16:00] extra month, basically an average time to fill is I, I need this position to, this hire has started.
Jack Carr: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: Uh, it's 35 days, so it's something to track as you're, as you're measuring. 'cause the, the bigger you get, the more you need to know, like, okay, if I need people in May for busy season, I need to start recruiting in March. Yeah. But honestly, the biggest mistake that I see really is just ramping up hiring because it's really hard to unc unclenched yourself out of Q1, like feast or famine type of mentality.
And our April to March is whiplash.
Jack Carr: Yeah. Like
John Wilson: it is a 40 to 50% revenue jump in 30 days. So it is just like, you go from like struggling to keep people busy to holy shit what's happening.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: Um,
Jack Carr: the other, I think, so it's hard to like
John Wilson: unclench it and hire.
Jack Carr: Well, and then I think what you get on the back end of that, right, is like, what's the quality of text that you're picking up in February, March versus June?
Like, you're [00:17:00] not getting any good technicians in June, in my opinion, because they're all busy, they're all working, they're all making money, they're all happy. Yeah. When the technicians aren't happy is when, you know the, the giant private equity company can't keep them busy. Yeah. They're not making money in February.
And then that's when you get attrition and you pick up the killer tech, not in the middle of June.
John Wilson: Yeah. Well, I agree. And I also think it puts you behind the eight ball. 'cause what we used to experience is we did not start recruiting early enough because we were so nervous because Q1 was bad, we didn't wanna bring on the payroll.
Mm-hmm. We didn't feel like we could support it. But then, oh my God, it's July. I'm booked out for two weeks on this team. I can't keep up. And we make bad hires 'cause we're in a rush to get someone in a truck and then we lose them anyways.
Jack Carr: And you can't train them either. So that's what we've.
John Wilson: Can't train him.
You can't do anything. Yeah. So most of our bad hiring decisions are because we hired too late into the busy season and we needed someone. Uh, the other thing, I'll, I'll put a plug in, and this is a way that we, like really, [00:18:00] we are being extra conscious about this, this year, like communicating with leadership, but a big temptation where we have lost a lot of net profit over the years.
How about that? That's a better way to put it. Is we get really busy in the summer and we start hiring administrative payroll to backlog the summer busyness as full-time positions. And then they get laid off in the slow season because suddenly it doesn't make sense. And they didn't do that good of a job anyways, so, 'cause we couldn't train, 'cause we hired him in peak season when everyone was frazzled.
So a big goal for this year as we prep for busy season is over. Like, Hey, let's check our, do our processes make sense? And will they work at double our volume? Does our staffing make sense? And will it work at double our volume? And if it doesn't, how can we support those functions with an overseas hire or a software?
Like how can we, how can 'cause what? What'll typically happen for us historically, but [00:19:00] we're gonna beat it this year. Is our summer net profit will jump up to like 15, 16, 17% because we add more overhead to support the additional revenue. And our big focus this year is how do we add no overhead and how do we drive 25 to 30% months?
No, I think that's a great, yeah,
Jack Carr: I think that's definitely possible. Especially as you outgrow your expenses. Yeah, I have
John Wilson: peers doing it. Yeah, I have, I have peers doing it. So now we're really focused on, okay, if we're short staffed here and we're already feeling it in March, we're definitely gonna feel it in June.
Let's handle that now and let's absolutely do it overseas or with ai.
Jack Carr: I mean, it makes sense. Yeah, completely, right? Yeah. Why, why wouldn't you? And so, okay, so I think. That that all makes sense. So that was the extra category is like, hey, hiring and hiring properly in administration and not only tech roles administration as well.
Well, my fourth,
John Wilson: my fourth final category was materials. Like, okay, are you, so I'm gonna give, I'm gonna give like real revenue dollars here. [00:20:00] That way people can understand the difference for us. Mm-hmm. Right now, in March, I'm running four HVAC crews full-time. We'll maybe do half a million to $600,000 this month in hvac.
Yeah, in July, we'll probably do 1.3 million in hvac. It's a lot of money.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: Like company-wide revenue this month is a hair under 2 million bucks. We're expecting to hit $3 million in July. Like that's the level of difference, like it is a million dollars of difference. Mm-hmm. Of jobs completed, invoices, parts out the door, equipment, and how do you have that stuff?
On hand so you can be efficient during your busy season. Yeah. How do you have the generators you need? So a one day job doesn't turn into two, or how do you have all the HVAC equipment and consignment and are your VMI set up or your inventory set up so that you can just continue to ramp out parts? So that's the stuff we spend a lot of time thinking on.
Now, do we have enough packouts to go from four crews to eight crews, [00:21:00] or are we gonna be trying to figure that out in June? Earlier this year, we started an outbounding campaign and we really didn't know where to begin. So we were using dialing on the phones, we were sending text messages, we were trying emails, tried a couple different softwares, and ultimately we ended up with Hatch.
Hatch has been an. Awesome partner for us. We started with them about five or six months ago, and we've just continued to ramp. Every month we add three or four more automations, and my personal favorite thing about working with Hatch is Hatch comes out of the box ready to go. With Hatch, you get automated Multitouch outreach across text, voicemail, drop, email, and a ton more.
So every single lead that you have gets worked. Every invoice that you leave gets retouched and rehashed, and it's freaking awesome. Check out. Use Hatch app.com/. OAO.
Jack Carr: Yeah. Parts constraints a real thing too. I mean, especially when you're Yeah. When you're moving that kind of volume. I can imagine. Yeah.
'cause it's, it's a constraint for us and we're not moving that kind of volume
John Wilson: Well, and I think the challenge is it's on a dime.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: Like you [00:22:00] go from like April where we'll do half a million in HVAC to May we'll do 1.1. Yeah. Like it's on a dime. Like you have to be able to double your volume. Within a few days and be able to withstand the shock of that in order to like fully capitalize on the season.
Jack Carr: Well, I think a big part of it too, right, especially for a lot of us who don't have VMI or don't have vendors just in general that work inside our warehouse is we're reliant on a singular vendor. To be able to give us whatever parts and pieces and everything that we need. Yeah. But they're, they like their problem is the same as yours, where they're running this, this distribution warehouse at 15, 20, 30, a hundred million dollars.
Yeah. And like, they have the same, same issues. And so making sure that as you
John Wilson: can stem that off though,
Jack Carr: a hundred percent Right. There's ways, 'cause what's you should be doing
John Wilson: and what we're already doing is like. We're communicating, Hey, we're prepping for our busy season. You can do this. [00:23:00] Sophisticated or not sophisticated.
Sophisticated is, here is exactly the number of furnaces that I'm going to move between these dates.
Jack Carr: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: And like we can guess that within three to five unsophisticated is, Hey, my volume jumps up a lot. Do you have the parts on hand to support me? These are the job types. I tend to do I to do a lot of sum pumps in April.
Yeah. So like, hey, do you have 500 sum pumps ready to go, or am I gonna be held up by you? Do you have 50 generators sitting around? Yeah. Or am I gonna be held up?
Jack Carr: Well, that, that's, I'm more focused on those bigger ticket items. Right? Because that, that's where they actually run out, is making sure we have the conversations early with our sales rep.
Like, Hey, we sell, we sold X amount of 17. Year inverters. Last year we sold this many dual fuels last year, specifically for hvac. But I mean, it really, it, it transcends industry. Whatever your large ticket item is, making sure that they're going to hold it. Because what we've seen between, you know, [00:24:00] the SEER one to C two changes and mm-hmm.
The big changes in, um, now in, in refrigeration. We wanna make sure that they're holding. The 15 and 17 seer. Yeah.
John Wilson: Can they, can they support you?
Jack Carr: Can you support us? Yeah. 'cause if you can't, we're gonna go somewhere else. And so that, that's what we do. Yeah. And then
John Wilson: that's perfect March, april conversation.
Jack Carr: Yep.
John Wilson: Do you, and, and days of inventory on hand and roughly the number of boxes you're gonna move. And like for you it's, it's, it's not that hard. It's like, how many, how many water heaters did I put in of June last year? Yeah. Okay. Add, add 10. You know how many air conditioners did I put in of June last year?
So it's not hard to get that number 'cause you could just go off of number of jobs. Yeah. So maybe you did like 20 jobs or 15 jobs in June.
Jack Carr: Well, I mean, we, we work with the same distributor, so they, they have the actual number of X Yeah. You know, skew that we moved last year. Yeah. And so it's just reiterating with them like, Hey, make sure [00:25:00] we're gonna do this again.
Yeah. At 35%. More. So you need to be able to supply this at 35% more. 'cause we're going to do it again. Um, yeah. At least that's our plan, to budget, to get to where we need to go. And so you, you need to make sure to have this, 'cause I don't wanna buy it from a different distributor. And they don't wanna sell.
Yeah. They don't want us to buy it from a different distributor, so they'll hold it. Um, but I do think it's an important conversation to remind them because Right. They're dealing with. 6, 10, 12 contractors. And so the squeaky wheel really does, I mean, in your case, you, you kind of are the, the big shot. So they're going to definitely make sure that, well, it's, I mean, they're gonna make sure that you're happy, but that, that
John Wilson: definitely helps.
But for a smaller s contractor, wheel it too.
Jack Carr: Yeah,
John Wilson: I mean, like I, I personally, yesterday I met with our primary HVAC supplier. We meet once a month. Yeah. To go over exactly this. I don't even think that's a size thing. I think that's just important. Like, Hey, here's our projections for next month. Are you guys, you guys good?
Today? I meet with our secondary HVAC [00:26:00] supplier. I meet pretty consistently with our plumbing. I. And electrical. We're getting used to it, but it's sometimes it's literally once a week. Like we meet once a week with our plumbing supplier to make sure that they're good and to make sure that we're good.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
I think you're, you're, you're going to my point as I'm saying, if, if you are a one $1 million plumbing shop Yeah. If you tried to meet with your supplier once a week, they'd be like, dude, shut up.
John Wilson: No. Our ours did at 1 million. We got in that habit. Yes.
Jack Carr: Oh my gosh. We actually
John Wilson: got in that habit because we had.
Uh, we had a few vendors that sent their salespeople to call on us once a week. Mm-hmm. And at the time I thought it was annoying. I was like, oh, this is just trying to sell me stuff. And later I was like, oh no, this is actually really kind of important. And them having a pulse on my business every week is genuinely helpful.
So that's where I
Jack Carr: was going with it though, was like, if, if you are not talking with your distributor once a month Yeah. Frequently because they think you're too small. Yeah. Pull a John and TA and call him once a week and say, Hey, we're gonna do this once a week. Do it. I [00:27:00] mean we, let's have,
John Wilson: yeah. Pop on over on your route.
Just tell me what day you'll be here. Tell me what time. Yeah. But that's what we tell our vendors like, and it's just because other people set the precedent like, Hey, I'll be here every Tuesday at 11:00 AM and then every Tuesday at 11:00 AM till the end of time that person showed up.
Jack Carr: Yeah. And they bring food.
Sometimes still does
John Wilson: eight, eight years later. Still does.
Jack Carr: Do they bring food?
John Wilson: Uh, I don't know about food. I mean, sometimes,
Jack Carr: sometimes,
John Wilson: sometimes.
Jack Carr: That's how you tell 'em. Yeah. No, but I need that grub. I think that's an important thing though. As you start moving into summer, you're making sure that they're ready.
Yeah. Just e any way that you're doing it. Emails, calls, making them stop by that you're prepping yourself and prepping them for the amount of volume you're gonna do of whatever product that you want to sell. Um, or you're going to sell. Super important. Super important.
John Wilson: Yeah, a hundred percent. But no. Yeah, we're, we're pumped.
I'm really excited for,
Jack Carr: um, I didn't think of that one though. I need to, I need to reach out to them and give 'em our summer prep stuff.
John Wilson: Yeah. I mean, limiting, limiting overhead and like communicating with the team of [00:28:00] like, Hey, are you good? Are you good at 50% more volume? And like, and even better, like, what's gonna break if I added 50% to your workload?
And then how do we, how do we just solve that now with an overseas hire? Uh, so we don't actually add that much overhead. Because like our goal this year, we had a few positions we wanted to add net new positions and we decided on them, this is our first year we're doing this. So like, I dunno if it'll work, but we're trying to be like extremely disciplined about it because this is just our, it's our habit.
Every summer we expand our opex salaries and we're, we don't wanna do that this year. We feel like we've outgrown our overhead, so we should be able to accomplish new records with the same overhead salaries. Um. Through automation, software, ai, or overseas hires. We'll add some of that in. But yeah, I mean,
Jack Carr: that's your people leverage and your technology leverage.
Like you have to utilize that so that you're not Yeah. Doing exactly what you're saying. Um, I could see that becoming a massive issue. It [00:29:00] adds
John Wilson: hundreds of thousands of dollars a month of overhead. Yeah. When we've done it wrong, like it's like a hundred grand. So we're trying to figure out this year, like, Hey, how do we.
How do we deliberately, we have two positions that we wanna hire this year, American in office. And one of 'em we already hired, we hired a dedicated sales trainer, which like, that's gonna be awesome. And I'm real, I'm like super excited about that. Yeah. Um, and then we have a sales coordinator, so like our two, uh, two and we just hired them and those are our two only positions.
We're gonna be hiring American in office this year, so like. We will find out.
Jack Carr: Yeah. No, but
John Wilson: dude, I, I wanna be able to say, get on here and say that we clipped a 30% month in July.
Jack Carr: That'd be super cool.
John Wilson: Yeah. That would, especially, that would be like thousand. I was just gonna say
Jack Carr: like, that's stupid amounts of money that I can't even comprehend.
Like it's 900 when we, when we're like, ah, yeah, we got a 10% month and we close like 20 K. Yeah. And it's like, [00:30:00] wow. Great job. But 900. Ugh. Yeah, it's a lot. Ugh. Well, the
John Wilson: bigger the business gets, like, we'll, we'll cross a million EBITDA a year to date in April.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: Like in like the first week of April. And it's like, holy smokes.
This is crazy. That's crazy.
Jack Carr: Yeah. That is crazy. That is
John Wilson: crazy. That is crazy.
Jack Carr: That's cool though. Yeah. I mean, what, what people, what I talk to people a lot about too, and, and this is sidebar, is Yeah. Y you, yeah. You've been doing this for a while, but you haven't been doing it that long. Like the business wasn't, isn't a 15, 18 year in the making business to get to the size you are, like realistically, for most people out there like myself, right?
Yeah. When I try to, to pat, to, to, to encourage myself to keep going. Some days, yeah. I'm like, oh, I'm three years in John's, what, nine years? In? 10 years? In
John Wilson: nine, yeah.
Jack Carr: Nine years in, so like in another six years, like. I That's not that far away or in another three years, or it's not, that's not that far away.
It would even,
John Wilson: I would even [00:31:00] like another way to measure it. I had two stages of ownership and the second stage is the more important stage. So like, yeah, I bought, I bought the business 2016, but I technically bought about half the business. Um, and I co-ran it with my dad who was very growth, uh, like allergic.
Old school and I bought, so it was actually 2019 that I took full ownership of the business. Uh, and that was $3 million.
Jack Carr: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: So it's been six years since $3 million. And actually 2019 I think was like two point, might have been 3.1, but yeah. Like,
Jack Carr: yeah,
John Wilson: 100.0% or whatever.
Jack Carr: Point being is in the five years stringing enough of these, these good decisions together.
Yeah. In in the same time it's taken me to buy this business to here in another three years. Like the potential to be in the 10 to 15 million range really. Well, you probably will be unrealistic. Exactly.
John Wilson: Probably be, yeah, like in 2020 we did [00:32:00] four some million dollars. Mm-hmm. Which is where you are at like mid to high.
Four millions. And this year we're gonna do 31.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: So like, it really is a couple years. It's not that, it's, it's amazing how fast it goes.
Jack Carr: Yeah. Time in, in the seat and time kind of on the train. Yeah. Or on the bus is um, yeah. It's a long time, don't get me wrong, like multiple years of giving up your life and stress.
Yeah. And I don't think it ever stops, I'm sure. Yes. But like in, in like the grand scheme of things, not that long. Really not that long.
John Wilson: Yeah. Well, and and I, I was reflecting on this this morning. I, I get caught up in this a lot 'cause I think sometimes you, I ruminate a lot. I've always been like a reflector.
Mm-hmm. So like, I'll just like, and I've been in the, I have only owned the business since 2016, and. All that, but I've been in the business for like yeah. My entire adult life. Like I'm, I'm on 16 years in the industry. And, um, like we're you, you just look back at the journey and you're like, [00:33:00] in January we, we did like hundreds of thousands in net.
Mm-hmm. In just January. And that used to be an entire quarter of revenue. It was actually more than a quarter of revenue from when I bought the business. It was like four months of revenue, and I did that in one month of net.
Jack Carr: Yeah,
John Wilson: and you just, you're just like, holy shit.
Jack Carr: Yeah. We passed this month. Sorry to cut you off.
We passed this month, our first year's gross revenue in the first quarter of, yeah, my third year. And so it's crazy. Same thing.
John Wilson: It's crazy. Yeah. You just look back and you're like, oh my. God. Oh my God. You know, and, and I'm, I'm looking forward to it being like, ev, every year we achieve this new thing, so like our first $3 million year, or our first $3 million month, like, that's as much revenue as I did in 2019.
Yeah. And we're gonna do that in July. And it's just like, wow. And, and it, I get caught up in it. 'cause you just like sit there and you're like, I. Oh my God. But I can't, I [00:34:00] can't wait till we're a hundred and I'll be like, holy shit. Like I remember when I crossed $7 million, it was 2021 and that was like, I can't believe I'm, we're over $7 million.
And we'll probably do that in a month.
Jack Carr: So in couple years, the point of this, John, was I was trying to stay positive for everyone listening, coming outta Q1 that like you are only a few years away. From Yes.
John Wilson: Yes.
Jack Carr: A better, better situation. I'm relatable. I'm relatable. No one's relating to your a hundred million dollar story right now.
Okay. Okay. If, if, if, uh, you know, Roger Wakefield listens or something, maybe he will, he'll relate to you. But
John Wilson: yeah, guys, I am relatable. But it was like only a couple years ago, I was running a $4 million business. Yeah. Like, it's only a few years, so it, it does happen fast.
Jack Carr: That, that, that's the point. And it's like, hey.
Yeah. Out of a garage to 7,000 square feet. Yeah. 7,000 square feet to needing a 15 to 20 soon. Yeah. Square feet. It's like three. Yeah. You're probably two years away. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. So that, that's the exciting part is realization that, you know, you're tr you're, you're in the trenches every [00:35:00] day. Yeah. But when you actually stop to ruminate and look back, like it really isn't that far.
The timeline is much shorter Yeah. Than a lot of people actually realize.
John Wilson: Yeah. I think if you can continue to compound mm-hmm. The right decisions, you know, rich Jordan's another great example. He's super inspirational. He did 900,000 of revenue when he first bought his business, like five years ago, 2019, I think.
Or 2020. Mm-hmm. Like they're gonna do 24 this year.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: Like, that's insane. It's just insane. Uh, so yeah, if you can continue to compound the right decisions, you can move.
Jack Carr: Yeah, he was a similar situation. He's another one of the people I look at and go. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Sub million, like what we were and then I think it was 2020, in five years he's gotten to the 20 million work.
He'll be 24. Yeah. Yeah. So it's my goal. Un unreal. I I only have to, I only have to jump another 15 million in two years. Let's do it.
John Wilson: You'll, honestly, you'll probably do it. I, I think we'll get close, like breaking 5 million. A lot of, you know, obviously we have a workshop. Hey guys, we have a [00:36:00] workshop, but breaking 5 million, a lot of good stuff happens 'cause you get to bring on.
You sort of between five and 10, you get to, hey, bring on full recruiter, bring on full marketing team. Mm-hmm. Or like marketing manager, uh, ops manager. And a lot like that stuff is the big wins in that zone,
Jack Carr: to be honest with you. I think that's changing too. Like, I know you say that because of that's what you did and like that's historically true, but as we.
As we kind of move into an era where the leverage from AI and the leverage from overseas talent is growing at such an exponential rate, like I, I truly think that most people in the 3 million range could probably hire a marketing manager for $2,400 a month and them actually be effective and driving lead generation.
I think
John Wilson: a very tactical one, potentially.
Jack Carr: Well, so if you were to pay Scorpion, how much would you pay Scorpion? From for, yeah. I,
John Wilson: I
Jack Carr: don't know. For, for specifically for management? Yeah. Not even for ad spend.
John Wilson: I think the, you pay two, two, [00:37:00] 3000. We had this discussion in the group chat the other day, and the issue that I have with it is like, you don't know what you're doing yet as a business, and it's hard to outsource a discipline.
Jack Carr: That's true.
John Wilson: Like, I don't know how to hire for that.
Jack Carr: Because you have to have someone build the systems and to Yeah, you gotta build it that they can then, so like if you're
John Wilson: a small company, I don't know, like obviously I think agencies get like a lot of like bad rap, scorpion like being the prime example of that, but up to a certain point.
I, I feel like you have to, and then yeah, you bring on an internal marketing manager and maybe you internalize stuff. Maybe you use an agency. I don't know.
Jack Carr: I, I, I, I view it the same way as I view, um, utilizing, oversee CSRs in conjunction with Avoca, right? You bring on the marketing manager, but the marketing manager at a 3 million or $4 million company isn't doing like full marketing management.
They're not like. They're not owning everything. They're just owning probably [00:38:00] SEO Google Business. Yeah. Aggregators. Yeah. Like maybe Facebook page. But I do think that you could drive meaningful change and have someone building those systems for you if you're not strong in that suit. Yeah. Earlier on now than you historically have ever been able to.
John Wilson: I think so. And I think it's just picking what you bring in house. Yeah. Like we still, we still agency PPC, like we have no desire to bring that discipline in house. Yeah. I wouldn't ever
Jack Carr: do that.
John Wilson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've had, or like, I think paid meta. I think there's a good argument there to mm-hmm. Running that I, it depends on who you're like who are they strong with?
Um, well the other thing
Jack Carr: is like maybe the marketing person that you bring on isn't even doing the traditional digital marketing. Yeah. Maybe they're more focused on like content creation and strategy. Versus that I can agree with. Right. That I can agree with. And so you put someone in charge of, I mean, what Sam Leslie's a great example.
It's like he has done an absolutely amazing job converting a
John Wilson: Yeah.
Jack Carr: Um, [00:39:00] like a channel that not very many home service industry folks use. And that's YouTube. Like he has cracking the YouTube code with a, uh, videographer and overseas talent.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Jack Carr: So I think there's huge opportunity, um, there and it's earlier than ever before.
And whether that's in accounting or Yeah. You know, just the same as like, I wouldn't hire a c like an overseas CFO right now at 3 million. Like that wouldn't make sense, but like you could do overseas. Um, and we've talked about this, so I'm not gonna beat the dead horse, like staff
John Wilson: accountants and stuff, but like
Jack Carr: staff accountant?
Yeah. Or assistants or, yeah, I mean book, ours is like
John Wilson: our controllers in-house, but like the rest of our accounting team is overseas.
Jack Carr: Yeah. So if you started early and got a staff accountant a little bit early to Yeah. To make your books Right. To start prepping and designing. Yeah. And building the systems like, awesome.
But I wouldn't Yeah. Go like, I'm never gonna do anything outsourced again. Too early. Yeah.
John Wilson: Well, that we talked about sweet. Moving from Q1 to Q2. We talked [00:40:00] about prepping for summer. I feel like we covered some good stuff here.
Jack Carr: Yeah, no, this was awesome. I mean, I got some, some value out of it. I'm definitely gonna go reach out to some vendors.
Um, I think we're gonna, you're like, Hey,
John Wilson: up, up your inventory.
Jack Carr: Yeah. Do it. It's more so make sure you have what we need. Yeah, yeah. Because I don't wanna go freaking hunt for, it's always the worst thing in the world. Hundred percent. Um, yeah. Cool. That's awesome.
John Wilson: If you like what you heard. Give us a five star review wherever it is, you listen to shows, make sure you check out our YouTube channel.
It is like starting to clip. We got some good stuff going on over there, which is a lot of fun. Our YouTube podcast episodes are like actively growing, which is a lot of fun compared to like the Spotify apples and stuff. It's growing way faster. So I think, uh, you can start to see us on the tubes.
Jack Carr: Is that what the kids call it?
The tubes? That's what the
John Wilson: kids call it. Yeah, that's what the kids call.
Jack Carr: Awesome guys. Appreciate it.
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