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In this episode of Owned and Operated, hosts John Wilson and Jack Carr share insights from running a home service business specializing in residential plumbing, HVAC, and electric growth, in podcast form. This week, the two talk strategies for managing capacity and fulfillment to keep up with sales, with the importance of focusing on core services for optimization, and setting up efficient business models to drive growth. Don’t let May whiplash get you into a bottleneck!
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John Wilson: @WilsonCompanies on Twitter
Jack Carr: @TheHVACJack on Twitter
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The Owned and Operated Weekly Insights Newsletter
John Wilson, CEO of Wilson Companies
https://www.wilsonplumbingandheating.com
Jack Carr, CEO of Rapid HVAC
https://rapidhvactn.com
Owned and Operated Episode #123 Transcript
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John: com promo code OWNED.
John: Welcome
Jack: back to Owned and Operated. With your host, John Wilson and Jack are also known as the HVAC Jack. Sorry. This is like my dream. My actual dream job is like Bruce buffer on the announcement in like, yeah. And for anybody who's on the edited team, listening to this and sees all my terrible, terrible outtakes, just ignore.
John: Yeah, I'm ignoring him. No, great delivery. I liked that a lot. That was good. What's going on, John? Dude, whiplash. I got some whiplash. So, you know, we, yeah, yeah. So, we you know, April, I think we talked about this. We had some weird options stuff. We had some whatever. And one of my. One of my favorite things about my team, and this is like a big plug.
John: So for those of you that listen know that I love you, you are wonderful. But one of my, one of my favorite things about my team and especially Brandon and my senior leaders is that when we have a problem, we hit it. And over, you know, that's, that sounds, that sounds easy, but you go through these phases where you don't know how fast you can attack something like, okay, if I attack this super fast, am I going to break the company?
John: Like if I'm driving a yacht, can I turn that thing like a rowboat? That's the, that's the phrase that Brandon's use if I try to move something too fast. Yeah. So if you're driving a cruise ship, you can't turn that thing like a rowboat, like it can't turn on a dime. But in the face of highly urgent and important my team really stood up to the plate in the past couple of weeks, which was awesome.
John: So we had an issue in April where options dropped off the map and all, you know, all this stuff. And, and we, we took a hard look at ourselves top to bottom and found where we were failing, developed a plan in two days and we executed on it. And now this started with, how are you doing? Like April was a tough month.
John: Revenue was down like 20 some percent. We're in May, and we will pass all of April's revenue, like, next Monday. And we still have, like, half a month left to go. That's awesome. So, we have whiplash, because, like, we just had a really tough month. It was our lo April was our lowest revenue month in, like, eight months.
John: And May looks like it's on track to be a record of all time month. Ayo! So, like, Yeah, so we're just sort of like, what the fuck? But the team really executed Along the way because because the like it didn't just happen. Yeah, like we got there because april was so bad We reacted so fast and so hard and we solved the issues that caused it Which was training and focus and accountability And we hit those motherfuckers hard
Jack: That's what i was gonna ask is like I mean, I think that's, that's a huge one, right?
Jack: You're, you're having a greatest month because you fixed the problem that made you have the lowest month. What was like the biggest driver? What was the, the switch? Like that sounds like a silver bullet for a lot of people out there.
Jack: Yeah. Like you said, options dropped off. So somehow you got options back. Like what was the accountability factor? What was, what did all that look like? Well,
John: it's this
Jack: like,
John: yeah, yeah, I can. Yeah. So it was. We had a great quarter one and the focus of quarter one, there's, there's probably a better place to start here.
John: We took our eye
Jack: off the ball. We got complacent, right? If you have a really good quarter, you just kind of get lax. Is that what you're thinking?
John: No, not even that. So like the business gets bigger. We start doing things better. We start figuring out pieces, right? So like right now, and I've been documenting the journey, folks.
John: Like if you want to know what it's like to grow 70 percent when you started at 17 million, listen to the last six months of the show. Like we talk about it every week, but like, We are actively every week figuring out like big chunks of the next step. So in, and sometimes failing in the previous steps that we already solved.
John: So that's what happened here. So late quarter four, we start, we really like in the past year have, have dialed in lead flow. I don't think we're 10 out of 10. I don't think we're the best in the country. I do think we're seven out of 10. I think we're really close. I think we're doing things that I've heard of very few other companies doing, and the ones that are doing it are like a billion dollars.
John: So I feel like pretty confident. So we really focused on that and we really focused on raw sale output. And somehow we lost sight of the basic KPIs that guide us. And those KPIs could be training. They could be options. Like we were still focusing on average ticket. We were still focusing on conversion rate, but we weren't focusing on the upstream of that, which is training and options.
John: So we sort of focused on like the middle part. So we lost track of it and Which is, which is shocking for a number of reasons. Like one, what else could we be thinking about except for that, right? Like that, that's the determiner of our success. Two, we've made massive investments, like more than most people listening to the show into making sure that this never happens, like we have management layers whose jobs is to make sure that this never happens.
John: And it happened. So then we take a look at like, what the heck happened here? Like where, where did we fail in the chain of accountability? And so we did a training on the chain of accountability and how it works. Like what, if you don't do your job, the next person can't do their job. They can't do their job on and on.
John: And it's, it's a top to bottom problem. Like this isn't me throwing stones at anyone on my team. Like if we lost track of options and I made those investments, then I lost track of options. Yeah. I didn't hold people accountable, they didn't hold their people accountable, and so on. Like, this is a top down problem.
John: Starts with me. So, we were in a training a couple weeks ago, and we were like, what is going on? Like, the schedule is busy, it's April, and we are literally booked out. Like, cause we've been, you know, March was really tough for leads. For the, that was the March was the only month for about two weeks.
John: That was actually difficult for leads. Like we haven't struggled with leads in almost a year since I in house marketing. March was tough. And then. We get really busy again in April and we're just like literally what is happening, like our salespeople schedules are full, like more appointments than in months, our plumbers are full.
John: Our electricians are full. Our drain guys are full and revenue is down from two weeks ago. This doesn't make sense. And we, and like, we're in a training, like clicking around on this big TV and we accidentally look at average options. Like we glance at it and I was, and I think it was Brandon. And he was like, hold on, hold on.
John: That says one that doesn't make sense. We couldn't possibly just be doing one option. It like the, the idea that we were only offering one option, Was so preposterous to us that we never even looked at it. It just, it couldn't have possibly been the case that we slipped that badly. And that's exactly what happened.
John: We slipped that badly. Just where our average options was under one.
Jack: And so to fix that, you just. We got everyone back in to training, focused on one, techs need to get the training to offer good options, and two, you guys, like, the chain of command needs to be this, this, and this to review that, or, like, just in simple terms.
John: It's, I mean, the last month of our life has been dominated by this problem. Okay, so not that simple. So, and solution. No, I mean, the thing that turned like a cruise ship was we immediately re onboarded every single service technician in the company. Because if we were missing options, then we are literally not living up to our core values.
John: Like we're not. One of our core values is transparency, which is selling through education. Like the definition of selling through education is educating consumers on their options. So like my entire company was missing core value, which that's a big deal to me. That's a pillar. So we immediately Onboarded everybody.
John: We did the same thing with our managers and explained what the issue, like what we found the issue was. And we set, we reset the chain of accountability and we gave clearer expectations for what I expect, what they should expect and what everyone should be expecting going forward. That was the first week.
Jack: We've talked, real quick before you jump off that one, first week, we've talked about, in the past, the carrot and the stick, was that more of a carrot talk or more of a stick talk? That's a carrot. A carrot is what's in it for you. Yeah, yeah, no I, I just like how you phrase it. We've talked about it on the
John: podcast before.
John: Jack's referencing my carrot and the stick. I'm a carrot and the stick person. So like I'm going to start with how this is good for you, how this is good for me, how this is good for the company. And I'm going to set you up with a structure to win. It's going to be a comp structure. It's going to be a bonus plan.
John: It's going to be something like. It's a carrot, right? If that doesn't work, then what will follow is the stick. Like you're, like, you're either going to conform and do what the business needs, or we're going to find someone to conform and do what the business needs. But business needs what it needs.
John: So, Carrot and the stick. I don't like to play around. We're going to a hundred million dollars. You're on the bus or not. I don't know. So yeah, so the first week was re onboarding first two weeks really. And then really getting the managers to understand their part of it. After that started happening, we started seeing some really positive results.
John: Obviously sales doubled, like more than doubled. Which has been insane, which has been good, like a good insane. So sales doubled because we're finally doing what we're supposed to be doing. And may for the first time, probably ever, I think we're almost going to completely max out our available capacity.
John: It's never happened. We've always had a little bit of capacity left over. I think we're going to sell every minute that we could have sold. With our current staffing, which is kind of a,
Jack: it
John: is
Jack: crazy.
John: That's really crazy. Like for
Jack: anyone who doesn't understand that is absolutely crazy. That
John: is bonkers.
John: Most companies expect to sell 80%. We will, we will sell a little bit over a hundred percent of our capacity this month. Yeah, so yeah, that is bonkers. But then, yeah, like we started winning, we started, everything started grooving again. And then, you know, things started popping out like, and so we did the same thing.
John: We're like, Oh, we started training on options and HVAC started doing really well. HVAC service, which typically for us, it does not do anything. So we start to unpack that a little bit more. And we realized that we undershot our expectation of HVAC service by 10 grand a day revenue. So. In the past three weeks, we've gained 10 grand of revenue a day.
John: So that's huge. What does that like look like? That's 2. 6 million create out of absolutely thin air that did not exist previously.
Jack: So it's like a give or take a 10%. Yeah, that's wild. That, that, that's also, so we, so we have this.
John: We have this like, I don't know how to describe this because I know I'm going to say this and I'm going to say it wrong.
John: So if I've ever called you at 8. p. m. This is for Rich Jordan. And like just vented about my frustration about this, I'm sorry. So there's this like, there will be a moment in your business where you randomly find millions of dollars of capacity. That you didn't know was there and it could be anywhere. You just find this sort of like bucket of money that you're like, hold on.
John: What the fuck? And it's typically like for, so for HVAC service was one drain service was another excavation. Like it's happened in almost every department that we've had. I think I think a statistic that's going to blow people's mind here. Our plumbing service department has not dramatically grown in size.
John: From four years ago, it's revenue is probably five times because we keep like we find these issues and then we optimize the hell out of it. So like HVAC and to give another example, I just had this conversation with someone earlier. Our company wide average tickets about 2, 900, like company wide average ticket, every invoice ever 2, That's insanity because you take, yes, because you take these little parts of your business and you optimize, you optimize it and you, we just keep like HVAC services.
John: Another one, I have the same size HVAC department by head count, give or take maybe two heads. that I had in 2021 and my revenue is four times that this year because you, you like find these different things and you're like, okay, well suddenly we just gained 2. 6 million in service. That actually broke our projections.
John: Like HVAC was going to do 9 million this year. Now it's going to do 11. So, so we're just like yeah, it's, it's, It's mine. It's mind boggling and it's infuriating because you like you find these things and you're or like weekends was another one. Yeah. We're like, well, that was kind of like a tweak. Yes, but it's adding three to 4 million this year.
John: Like I agree. It makes sense, but it's also insane. Yeah.
Jack: I mean, when I think about this, I think about it more as like the hidden gem and the hidden gem for you, like you're talking about, you're not adding head to make 10 percent more is crazy, but to add six head count to make 10 percent more, isn't that crazy?
Jack: It's like, okay, that makes sense.
John: I think it's a, it's a problem that doesn't go away. Yeah. I was, we were talking with Tommy Mello a couple of like a week ago and he said that he was in 20, 000 homes a month and that's obviously a lot of homes. And he was working on the same problem, obviously just to a larger scale, but he was like, how do I, without increasing match headcount or even marketing dollars or number of customers, how do I take this 20, 000 homes a month that I currently walk into and double my EBITDA?
John: And it's, it's random stuff like this, where you find an extra two and a half million inside one department. What do you say? You,
Jack: you sell them more, you sell them something different, and there's a third one, or you find more customers. Yeah. So, that's neat.
John: Yeah, but but yeah, so, We, we found a couple of different unlocks.
John: So drain service revenue about doubled and HVAC service revenue quadrupled or something like that. Like we really basically never drove a dollar ever in HVAC service. So that was net new dollars where our technicians now drive about two grand a day. They used to drive a hundred dollars a day. And you're
Jack: seeing that without any kind of drop off and flips without any drop off in right units.
Jack: Oh my God.
John: Actually more flips because we got better options. We literally just got better options. So we're flipping more than we've ever flipped. Revenue has gone up. Sales have gone up. Yeah, so the worst part of this is, so then what, so then what happened after that is we added in a new comp structure for managers and we added in a new comp structure for techs and they matched so that way we could keep those results going and better.
John: So we set minimum sold hour requirements by tech. per day per month. And then we had their call by calls on the same setup. So now we're starting to see that performance very regularly, which is awesome. Yeah. I mean, good, good. Well, yeah. I mean, it's everybody's winning. So like, you know, we took, we took a disastrous month in my mind and it turned into a, like a insane springboard where You know, 30 days later, we're going to have a, yeah, we're going to do as much revenue in two weeks in may that we did in the entirety of the month of April.
John: Like that's insane. That's insane.
Jack: Yeah. Are you less stressed though?
John: No, I'm still dealing with all the bullshit from April in June. I'm going to feel great.
Jack: Good times. This will be the fun moments we look back at. If
John: you like what we talk about on our social media, on Twitter, on this podcast, that you should be signed up for our newsletter, go to owned and operated.
John: com where every Friday we break down our business. We break down insights, things we're learning, things we're working on. And it's good stuff. Check it out. Owns and operated. com. Yeah. Well, that was a long description of how I'm doing. But, and like the interesting, yeah, that's how we started that. So the interesting thing that ended up happening, which is what you and I were actually going to talk about in this episode is we outsold Our capacity,
Jack: especially like capacity.
Jack: That's what I was going to ask you. So you're you and may hit sold a hundred percent of capacity. And now you're going into June, July, which
John: are, this is actually a big issue. This is a pretty serious issue. Yeah. So in April, we oversold our, our, we didn't even saw our overseller capacity. We oversold our fulfillment.
John: So, okay. There are, there are sales and there's fulfillment. Sales is like what you sell and fulfillment is when the revenue is actually booked. You complete the job for some departments. That's the same day, the same moment I sell it and I do it. 90 percent of our revenue. Yeah. Is sold fulfilled. So fulfillment matters a lot because I could sell 200 grand today, but if it takes me a month to fulfill 200 grand, then I didn't, I gained nothing from that.
John: Like I will eventually get 200 grand. As the business gets bigger, this is the number that we have to watch like crazy. And it became, it got on our radar last August because we're like, what the heck is happening? We sold all this work. Why is my bank account empty? Like why is the cash? Why is revenue terrible?
John: Yeah. It's a huge cashflow issue. Why is revenue terrible? And then we find out that we have a half a million dollar backlog. In residential service, like we're not doing new construction. We're not, this is residential service. Like that's a half million dollar backlog to replace your sewer. You can't have a half million dollar backlog.
John: So we got, we got like fanatical about managing that. And it's mainly like, how many installers do you have? What is your available capacity? So we dropped the ball on that in April. And we outsold our, our fulfillment by 250, 000, which is not good. Like a dream scenario, you're within a couple of percent.
John: I sold 1. 5. I fulfilled 1. 5. But we oversold our capacity by quarter of a million dollars in April. So we went into a May with a backlog. We have since May also outsold our fulfillment. Now we're only about a hundred grand ahead of fulfillment right now, but it's enough to be a problem because we now have a 350, 000 backlog.
John: On top of that, we're adding in, we just brought on some rock stars. So that problem is only going to get worse cause they're going into sales and they're going to win. So the problem only gets worse from here out. So. I mean, and like Jack said, this is a busy season problem. And my, my quick take here is this is, this is one of the reasons that you should never be a new construction and service business.
John: I was
Jack: actually going to say that is, could you imagine having that And they are at the same time, like, no, aside from cash,
John: like you're, yeah, I mean, cash is definitely a big part of the problem here, but like, in that, like, it's just capacity. Yeah, like, if all your, if you, if you have someone sell something today, they should be able to do it today or tomorrow.
John: Yeah. I mean, new construction means you can't do it for a month or whenever there's a slow period. So you get totally bogged down. And with
Jack: this, that's also hence our conversation offline in, in my headache, in reference to my headaches is for people who don't know, we shut down our residential remodel for plumbing.
Jack: Which was a very large, I mean, probably half a million dollar, probably half a million dollar a year plus, I mean, I, I don't even want to look at how much it was. Point being though, is we're shutting it down. We shut it down because capacity was such an issue and our, we had to pull and we, we've already run into this issue, right?
Jack: We ran into this issue with HVAC and we split them up. Yeah. Yeah. Got more installers said, Hey, this is an issue. And then now we're trying to do it in plumbing. Cause it'll eat you alive. I mean, it really is bad review. Like it's not only like, I know some people are listening to this thinking cause it's kind of, I don't want to solve a good problem, but it's like, Hey, you have so much work problem or Hey, you have the wrong kind of work problem and people are out there scraping for work.
Jack: So first off, we recognize that. But this is an issue like this is actually no, no,
John: I, I think, I think it's because people take on new construction that they can't take on the good work.
Jack: Yeah, no, no, I'm with you on that one. I'm just saying like your thing. I oversold 300, 000. It's a problem. And people are like, yeah, well, screw you john.
Jack: But, but yeah, what ends up happening
John: is like, it gives you
Jack: bad
John: reviews. 10 percent of that will cancel. Yep. The sales will cancel. They'll call and say, Hey, I chose somebody else. They're not a week out. They're not three days out. So like I had, I had 10 or 15 grand canceled today. So that's something that we paid for the lead.
John: I sent somebody out, they sold it. We ordered materials. The materials are in my warehouse. They canceled because we were too slow.
Jack: I just want to be abundantly clear. Like it. It's actually an issue. It's not just us complaining about selling too many things. Like a, no,
John: no, it, it, it's a, it is a, it can be an existential issue.
John: Yeah. And it's a, it's a, it's reputational harm. It's real cashflow potential to lose texts because what happens is your salespeople, they, they, no one can fulfill their work. And all their jobs get canceled. So can you imagine your best texts like, Hey, I sold 10 grand, five of it canceled because you guys are a week out.
John: Cause you can't get it installed. I'm going to quit and go somewhere else. Yeah. Cause they're not getting, that is real. They're not getting the performance paid. Yep. Yep.
Jack: And so that's exactly what we ran into. So like, what's your, your, like, Line item by line item going through is the exact reason why we're shutting down a half a million dollar division is because we totally don't have the capacity.
Jack: We don't have the installers to handle it. Too many headaches, not enough cash flow. We're pulling service guys to go to go finish up work. Now we have,
John: yeah, they're
Jack: pulling them off for water heaters and it's, it's a shit show. And we're trying to hire, I mean like we're on, we're on there moving and getting hires and getting installers.
Jack: But point being is like capacity is a real thing. It's a real thing.
John: Yeah. Yeah. So gearing up for busy season, this is the problem that we run into most and we're, and we caught it this year early. Cause like the reality is the reason that we could go from April being bad and made it being good is because we had available capacity.
John: And so now we're going to outsell our capacity again. So let's say I sell 2 million in May. And honestly, that probably is the number we're going to sell. That's going to be amazing because we have never had a 2 million month. This would be the first one ever. And we're on pace for it. I won't be able to fulfill 2 million, which is going to drive me up a fucking wall.
John: And then we're going to have technician problems where, you know, we're going to have all these issues. So hiring more people and new construction. Or really anything long term gets in the way of it. It messes with your capacity. I think the other thing that, you know, this is back to like I don't think of myself as like a min maxer, but it turns out I, I am where you, like you find these little things.
John: So like I have teams on my, I have teams that are smaller than they were two years ago and produce multiples more revenue and it's, it's because of the exact decision that you're making right now, like you're shutting down bathroom models. I shut down bathroom models once and, I did like, and it used to be three to five hundred thousand dollars a year for us.
John: But what that freed up was like, yes, we were doing thirty thousand dollar projects, but they took a month and it took three people and it was low gross margin. And now with that same crew, maybe I can do eighty. And that's what we continually find is the more we say no to, the more we can maximize what we're doing.
Jack: And the more that you can hold them accountable for that one thing, right. Rather than trying to do remodels and do we talked about this a while back. Like if you could do just one thing and make, do it the best, like you can, the ability to actually optimize that to a, to a level that's. would be ridiculous.
Jack: Like I, we water heater specifically the water heater pros or bros or whatever only do water heaters and they're able to grow crazy because that's all they do. And so to be able to reduce the number of job types and take out that whole section of just remodel work really gives us the option to focus on water heaters service, high margin day of items, emergency services.
Jack: Yeah.
John: Yeah,
Jack: sweet. I agree. So what, what's your plan to try and meet capacity then? Cause mine's easy. Like we're, we're downsizing a whole department. Not easy on my heart. Yeah. Easy. Theoretically you have kind of a,
John: yeah. So it's hiring more installers. It's sort of like you have to pair all these things up as close as you can get it.
John: Like how many leads am I getting? How many CSRs do I have? How many texts are going to run and sell it? How many installers can fulfill it? And you have to like attempt to dial that in within a few points of each other. Otherwise you have exactly this problem. Hey, I have too many leads for the amount of call takers, so we're missing calls.
John: And then I have too many leads for the amount of service techs, so we're booked out three weeks. Or I have too many sales, or I have too few sales. Like it could be any number, you know. They could be either up or down, like, and any of them are problems that have to be solved. So for us, it's almost always recruitment.
John: And then like, are we maxing the day? So like, Dispatch becomes a very real part of the conversation of like, Hey, if I'm expecting four grand a day per installer, why am I getting two out of this one? Well, he had two half day jobs. Why do you have two half day jobs? And if there were two half days, why were they priced at two grand?
John: Like what happened here to be priced so wrong? So like sales efficiency and dispatch efficiency becomes pretty important. So we started really nailing down like the dispatching and install coordination. Because like that's something that makes or just like dispatching and service makes or breaks it like dispatching and install is that's what determines our revenue and us doing it well could mean a 50, 000 day or us or sorry us doing it badly could mean 50 grand us doing it well today we did 120.
John: That was good. That was a good day. Yesterday we did 115. That was good. Monday we did 60. That was bad. We had bad, like, and it, like, the difference is that stark between, like, dispatching well and not dispatching well in install. So, like, are you maximizing the day every day? Or are you maximizing the week?
John: Like, are you, do you have guys working Saturday? Do you have guys working Sunday to make sure you can fulfill as much installs and reduce the backlog? So, that's a lot of what we're doing is, are we dispatching right? We're hiring installers and we're doing more weekend work to basically reduce backlog.
John: Because what we are concerned about is it's May, what happens in June? What if that backlog becomes a million? Like that's a real possibility. I sell half, I'm going to sell half a million dollars this week. So it is not out of the question that we could be behind a million by the time we hit July.
Jack: I love it.
Jack: I mean, it's a problem, but it's, it's like your April May problem. It's a kind of a good problem to have is, Hey, we need to ramp up because we're doing well. So at least at the end of the day, if there's a silver lining to this entire conversation, There's a
John: silver lining to revenue sitting there and not getting done.
Jack: It's a, you, you like something's working to a point. A lot of people can't even get that to work. So, yeah, I agree. How are you prepping for busy season? Same, actually it's, we are training cause we have enough CSRs and dispatchers. We've just redid our whole call center. But still having to train on the job and then.
Jack: how to book, when to book P1, P2, P3 dispatch for dollars. Like all the fun buzzwords we talk about, like we are implementing those programs in our business. And then we are actively hiring, like we have three open job positions for plumbers at the moment, maybe four. And we, we've brought on two sub crews that we know are decent to help us out with any kind of finishing up.
Jack: Remodel work that we currently have on the book so that we can focus on service And so we have a bunch of positions open and then we have a few positions open in hvac too not on the install side. We're pretty good on the install side. We left ourselves a little capacity We're around that 70 percent mark this this month.
Jack: So we're expecting to grow into that. We brought somebody on last month Which helped us hit like the one of our best months that we've ever done. Actually, the best month we've ever done was, and it was solely HVAC install was the driver. Nice. Yeah. Yeah.
John: Yeah. I think,
John: you know, we're talking, I'm trying to figure out how to say this.
Jack: He's trying to say, Jack, I'm proud of you. And like, it's just not coming out. It's just not coming out. Jack,
John: I'm, I'm, I'm really proud of you, bro. Yeah. What I was going to say, was it's average ticket. It's an average ticket problem. It's nine 30, nine 40. So like my brain's slow, but it's, it's. The more stuff you like, the less you do, the more you can optimize, and the more you can optimize, the higher your average ticket goes, and that came to my mind because you were like, oh, it's all it was all HVAC install, and I've been thinking about this a lot over the past couple months, because as we've gotten better at, you know, Options and our sales process and really dialed that in and like dialed in pricing and like across the board, like really just good improvements.
John: Our average ticket as a company has like doubled and that's ridiculous. And like, I don't, I don't think people would believe me if we showed the numbers, but like it is very normal now for our plumbers to do about eight grand of sales a day. That's like a normal day for us for most of our plumbers.
Jack: That is, that doesn't make sense.
Jack: It's like, I'm going to not sleep tonight because of that one single fact right there, that's, that is, you're not, that's a nonsense.
John: I'll screen share you. A few months ago, I, I was sitting there
Jack: looking at this fricking whiteboard. I'm going to text my division manager for plumbing and let him know that so that he can feel bad and not sleep tonight either.
John: I don't. I don't want to tell you that that's their, that's the average tech. I don't want to tell you what the best are doing on it. Send
Jack: me a, so I can send it to them and say, get
John: to
Jack: work. Yeah. But like the
John: more we've dialed it in, the better we've gotten. So that means we sell more softeners. Hey, softeners are 4, 500.
John: Hey, we sell more stacks. They're this. So we've like, the more we've dialed this in, the more we've said, no, the more we've optimized capacity. And it's like, it's this maximizing thing. The more we've like. Honed this in our average ticket used to be like 450 in plumbing and now our plumbing average ticket is I think 2700 and like, I don't know anybody else with a 2, 700
Jack: like 400 450.
Jack: Yeah. And so like, I mean, it makes sense though. Like you get the, the actual like, Hey, here are the big drivers down. You solidify them, lock them in and like, that's what you focus on. You can be really, really good on the sale. It can be really, really good on the install and everybody's happy because they have an expert in there showing them, teaching them, educating them on options and then delivering on those options that they've bought at like a really, really high quality So I love it.
Jack: I mean that that's kind of I believe in it and that's the big thing is like I know that this is the way yeah, and I believe in it and that's why I'm doing it like that's why we shut it down. Yeah, and it hurts.
John: Give me one second and it hurts.
John: All right, so today we covered options being a problem how to turn a cruise ship like a rowboat or a rowboat. And chain of accountability a little bit and prepping for busy season and how all of those things are really the same problem.
Jack: And how Jack wants to be Bruce Buffer.
John: Yes. Yes. Yeah, this was good.
John: Looking forward to the week. Looking forward to the week ahead. We're, we'll close about half a million in sales this week, which should be fun. Can't wait to see what we close next week and move into June. I'm really ready for my 2 million a month. And we are close. Closest we got was like 1. 85 in January.
John: And we're on track to like, it's 1. 9 and I'm like, come on, we can squeeze. We can squeeze a little hundred in there.
Jack: Oh, T we can,
John: we
Jack: can, we're doing O T for, or we're going to blast through capacity with O T just for a vanity metric. Yeah. Solely. Yes. Solely. Awesome. This is great. Cool.
John: Thanks everyone for tuning in to owned and operated.
John: If you like what you heard, owned and operated. com. I actually think we have a new website, so check that out, sign up for the newsletter. And check us out everywhere that we are, which is basically everywhere. Thanks for tuning in to owned and operated the podcast for home service entrepreneurs. If you enjoyed today's episode, please hit the like button and subscribe to the podcast.
John: If you have any questions or topics you'd like us to cover, feel free to reach out. You can find me on Twitter at at Wilson companies. I'll see you next time.
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