#227 How Small HVAC Businesses Are Disrupting the Industry

How HVAC Leaders Stay Ahead: Overcoming Growth Challenges and Innovation Fatigue

In this episode, we unpack key growth and leadership lessons from the HVAC industry. From innovation fatigue and stalled marketing efforts to navigating leadership challenges and sustainable scaling — this one's for owners serious about building a high-performance business.

🔑 What You’ll Learn:
Why summer slowdowns kill momentum (and how to avoid it)
How innovation fatigue creeps in — even with the best tools
What strong senior leadership really looks like in HVAC
Why smaller HVAC companies are often better at innovating
Upcoming workshops and peer groups you won’t want to miss


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 Jack Carr

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John Wilson, CEO of Wilson Companies
Jack Carr, CEO of Rapid HVAC

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Chapters

• 0:00 The Struggles of Innovation and AI Fatigue
• 3:26 Growth Metrics and Industry Insights
• 28:16 Understanding Growth Rates and Market Changes
• 34:32 Workshops, Peer Groups, and Future Plans

Transcript

Ep 227 Transcript

John Wilson: [00:00:00] The small contractor that's doing $3 million with five people is someone that I should be afraid of. They're innovating better than I am. 

Jack Carr: I know innovation generally indicates that you're gonna be early on in something, but why be the test dummy? 

John Wilson: We're drowning in all these different like bullshit tools because people keep coming up with new things, and I want.

To stay at the forefront, but I don't know how to stay at the forefront 'cause I keep buying these expensive tools that aren't actually moving us forward. There is like just genuine AI fatigue. People are starting to hate it very quickly. 

Jack Carr: That's where we're getting all of our good leads on. Innovation is not through going and trialing and testing it selves.

Yeah, it's Pierce. It's Pierce.

John Wilson: Oh, that's nice. For those of you watching, uh, Jack Drew a nice little heart on his whiteboard. Make sure you watch it on YouTube. He like art. You created pretty good at drawing hearts. You created 

Jack Carr: art, dude. What's up? [00:01:00] Uh, summer. Summer is up and it is all the joys that you can expect in summer. 

John Wilson: Yeah. 

Jack Carr: So 

John Wilson: like how, how's your July going?

We're mid-July. 

Jack Carr: We are. I don't wanna say far behind, but we are definitely behind decently behind budget. 

John Wilson: Okay. Like sales or like We are too. We're not. We're not like both. 

Jack Carr: Yeah. Yeah. So what happened is we lost our two best technicians. Yep. And so we just onboarded a new technician, but that always takes like six weeks to even start producing fruit.

And we have another technician coming back, so like we'll be good, but we had to turn off all marketing, which. Helps to like, Hey, we're not overspending. But also it cuts off momentum. I think actually, Jesse, your, uh, you know, Jesse from Will Wilson did a huge post on it. Like, do you shut off marketing in summer?

And he is like, no. 'cause you kill momentum, you kill new deal [00:02:00] flow, you kill new customers coming in. Mm-hmm. And what you find is you get a lot of garbage that you have to deal with, but somebody has to deal with the garbage. You can't just say, Hey, these 40 customers kick rocks. You're not 

John Wilson: Yeah. 

Jack Carr: You know?

Low value. So we just, we just have taken, taken the blow. We're, we're tightening ship, uh, and expecting a, we're gonna try to finish off the month strong and then start a solid August. Nice. But yeah, it's weird. This year is weird because it's the opposite of every, the last three previous years, like this year is we have all the leads.

Yeah. We have all of the leads. Uh, we just don't have labor. So. We were bringing on a full-time recruiter. Like the whole, the whole thing. Yep. That we've talked about. 

John Wilson: Yeah. We, uh, we've been strong on leads. Where we've been struggling is like closing average tickets way up though. And I'm talking specifically about hvac.

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Just clean, consistent growth owned and operated. Listeners get 10% off of all contracts. Just book time with Don or the team through the custom link in the description. Vuca. Automated referral programs for home service companies. HVAC's been like a big project for us over the past 12 months. Where we've rebuilt the sales system, we changed a lot.

Like we changed a lot, like we rebuilt hvac, uh, we're hoping short term pain, long-term, big gain. We're coming out of the short term pain. Like last month we did a million, uh, or like just under, so that felt pretty good this month, like probably less than that, but not much. Like eight 50 ish, uh, is probably what'll happen, maybe nine.[00:04:00] 

Um, but you know, before that, and that's like budget's 1.1, 1.2 for that department. But before that we were doing like four or 500. While we were still like working through like sales training, but it's been good. We brought on a new sales manager, uh, and he's been doing great. He's two or three weeks in, but we're starting to get a lot of traction there.

And then we brought on like, I think four, like two selling techs to comfort advisors. So. We we're expecting, and it sort of sucks. Same thing as to what you just said, like it's July. That would've been nice a month ago, but like better late than never. We'll be good for October, I guess, you know? 'cause for us it's like July, October.

Those are the two peak months. But right now we're basically just chasing June's revenue. Hoping we don't get behind it. 

Jack Carr: So, I mean, sounds like similar boats. It sounds like it's probably generally what you're gonna deal with in HVAC every single year. So, 

John Wilson: yeah. I mean, turnover in H, you know, we've always had turnover in hvac.

I think a, I think it's [00:05:00] common. I think it's like very common. Everyone I talk to has the same problem. They just like dress it up a little bit differently. But seasonality iss hard. A lot of people leave industry 'cause seasonality is so hard and it's just a seemingly a tougher, you know? 

Jack Carr: Yeah. It's a feast or famine world.

And so if you can't handle those swings, then you're working 12 hours a day in summer, and then in, in the fall you're working, hoping for three calls. Um, at most companies, not my company, you give three calls no matter what. But most companies you're hoping for three calls. Yeah. So. Yeah, it's definitely a thing 

John Wilson: besides that, um, I'm just absolutely reeling from the backlash.

I'm just kidding. My least popular take on the internet to date. Has been, 

Jack Carr: I'm so happy right now. 

John Wilson: I'm so happy right now. Oh my God, people, uh, it what? See it de what was kind of funny about it? So the take, wait, wait, wait. The take [00:06:00] was, I'm not gonna say you were right. The take was, I think that like, so we're $30 million this year.

I still feel like a very, very small business and I think that I'll feel like a bigger business at 40. So that was the take. And what was kind of funny was all of the people who are like my peers, like also like 25 plus justifications. Yeah. Justifications. All the people that were like 25 plus. Texted me and they were like, dude, I totally agree.

Like I still like you're in a group chat. And Isaac was like, yeah, dude, this like 26 million this year. And I feel like this is kindergarten. So like everyone that is like a peer is like absolutely small business. Like we're super small, like we'll feel big one day and the rest of the internet was like, fuck you.

Jack Carr: Classic John. Yeah. Yeah. It was, yeah, it was, it was pretty funny. It, it's like I said, man, that, that's wonderful. I'm actually happy that you get to see some of that, because[00:07:00] 

I actually got a lot of feedback too. I wasn't gonna say anything about it, but like, now that we're talking about it, I will. Is is the, the real thing is. There's so few companies that are that big and like that are 20 million plus that. When you say that compared to like every company. Yeah, of course there's huge opportunity.

That's why a lot of people got into this. They see that. Um, yeah, but just like on the whole, in HVAC, the number of $20 million, $40 million HVAC companies is so small. There's handfuls in every market. That's it. There's like two in every market. That's it 

John Wilson: again. It was my least popular take. 

Jack Carr: Yeah. On the 

John Wilson: internet.

Well, just if you want more of these, please pop. 

Jack Carr: No, I'm 

John Wilson: just kidding. Yeah, yeah. Just please sub. So yeah, if you were a peer, you agreed. If you weren't a peer, you didn't agree. So, uh, I don't know when everybody else hits 20 in the [00:08:00] next couple years. So tell me how you feel about how big of a business you are.

Jack Carr: Also, feel free to go into the comments inflame John for doubling down on this. I don't take, rather than just like saying, you know, I'm sorry I'm wrong guys. Like, I see the bigger picture here. Just like, he's like, Hey, so 

John Wilson: my, what? I, I, the one who smaller than me doesn't agree with me. What I, what's your answer?

What I see my job as is like, let's get everybody to 2020 is super, it's an approachable number. You can get there. There's a lot of guys in your market doing it. Like in Cleveland alone, there's like 15, like it's not, you know, like most people I compete against are eight figure businesses. It's not like it was a decade ago where everybody was $2 million shop.

Like everybody's a 10 to $20 million shop. Now that I'm directly competing against. 

Jack Carr: Yeah. I think what you're missing though is that, like you said, there's, there's 10, $20 million shops in Cleveland alone. If you're a $3 million contractor right now, you're competing with 10, $20 million shops who have the [00:09:00] sophistication, who have the marketing, who have kind of everything dialed in, or at least kindergarten level dialed in.

John Wilson: I didn't use kindergarten, somebody else said that one. But yes, 

Jack Carr: you, you have, you have the basic time, but like don't, I don't think 

John Wilson: we're a big business yet, but you know, I hopefully in the next couple years we'll feel big. 

Jack Carr: Yeah, I mean, you know, the market changes and fluctuates and once we hit, you know, the first 200, 300, 400, $500 million business in your area, then it's like, yeah, and that makes sense.

But still, to this, to this, we're still dealing with like the majority of, of contractors out there, of the 300,000 contractors, if there's 20 in all major 10 big cities, right? There's like $220 million plus contractors in the nation, and then the other 200. 60,280,000 are all sub. It'd be interesting to see like the hard data on that.

Yeah, I agree. I, I don't know what the data is. Obviously I'm just, this, these are super hypothetical numbers, but I mean, I would assume it's something around there, like all [00:10:00] tier cities have probably 10 or 20 giants. 10, 10 to 50. Mid, mid, mid-size ones. Yeah. In that 20 million range. And then everybody else is like, the next a hundred, 200, 300 are small.

John Wilson: Yeah. What is kind of interesting is like how the dynamics of small businesses have changed where like a $3 million shop today is so different. We've talked to guys doing 3 million bucks with like five employees, and that's just wild. 

Jack Carr: Yeah. There's some real sophistication now. Um, I think there's some, there's some guy on Twitter, um, I forget the two guys.

It's like bull bitcoin Bull or something. And then his friend, um, they, they just started up one in Dallas or Atlanta and in two years they were able to drive like a crazy amount because one of 'em. Was running operations and [00:11:00] the other one was, was an expert marketer. Mm-hmm. He's like, this, this lead gen marketing thing is so easy.

And the other guy's like, oh, well I'm great at hiring and running ops, even though it's not HVAC ops. And so like the sophistication of these local SEO and lead gen guys coming into the business and absolutely dominating when that's all they're doing is has been yeah. A game changer for a lot of people.

John Wilson: So like I, I think a couple things. One, I, I still don't feel big. And two, that's not like a, looking down, that's like, I just don't feel like we're a big business, like we're big compared to some, but like really small compared to the people that I measure myself against. And two, I think, I don't think that's an issue for the small contractor.

And I think that people that took it personally probably like missed the boat because the. The small contractor that's doing $3 million with five people is someone that I should be afraid of. Like, it doesn't matter what their size is, [00:12:00] like they're innovating better than I am. Like that's amazing. And I remember with, uh, I told you about my friend rj.

He, he's in a peer group with me and he's like quadruple my size. Like we're not peers. Like he is a lot bigger than us, but he's in a peer group with me. He flew out to our shop to like see how we were doing things. I think he learned a lot from it. And that's not like a humble thing. I just, I think he did.

And I asked him directly. I asked him why, like what, literally what do you get from this? Because you are four times my size. Like, what answer do I have for you that makes this worth your time to fly from like Vegas to, to see this? Like how could I possibly help you? And he s said, smaller companies have all the innovation, 'cause big companies don't need to innovate anymore.

I I, that kind of resonates with me a little bit. I don't feel like we're that big yet, but I do think the guys, like, I'm seeing a lot more innovation earlier and I know that [00:13:00] like when we were earlier in our journey, we were innovating probably more than we are now because now we're in like wheels on the bus, like keep the train on the tracks phase and like the guy doing 3 million bucks with five, five total employees.

That's crazy. That's amazing. I'm not, I'm nowhere near those economics, right? Like that's crazy. I like in innovation starts at small companies 'cause they have to innovate and larger companies don't have to innovate. And that's potentially me included. Or like the Goliaths that we all compete against.

They're innovating much slower if they have an idea. It might take them like literally a year, 18 months to fully implement and execute on that idea. If you are a smaller contractor, like you could run faster and turn sharper. 

Jack Carr: Yeah, no, that makes sense. Like the, the ability for you to turn on weekends was much more difficult than the ability for me to turn on weekends.

Um, that being said, it's more valuable to you. You had more calls coming in if you mess it up. Yeah. It really takes the train off the tracks, whereas we just kind of. It's like we're gonna run it, turn it on and [00:14:00] go. Mm-hmm. And it allows us to innovate much faster and do those kind of changes. I mean, it's not really an innovation, but just any kind of, uh, operational changes to the business.

Yeah. It's much harder to turn, turn a ship that's a cruise ship versus a 

John Wilson: Yeah. Tug boat. Yeah. And, and I think it's like, uh, dangerous. I think it's like a danger, like I think it's, there's an existential risk there. Something that I always thought was really interesting when we were, when we were growing, like, when we were like really early.

And we, we passed people. We passed these companies that I've been chasing my whole career. We passed 'em a couple years ago and I always felt like that was really weird. Like how did they not know they were the big dog? And now they are not the big dog. Like they're just not, and we don't even feel like they're a threat because they're not innovating at all.

They're growing at like 5% and we're still growing at 25 to 30. Like when we were doing a million dollars, they were doing 15. That was a decade ago, right? Like $15 million a decade ago was [00:15:00] a big freaking number. 

Jack Carr: Huge. Yeah. 

John Wilson: That's crazy. And, and I always felt like, it was so weird, the, the way I thought about it at the time was, oh, how did they let this happen?

Like, how did they let us win in a market that they literally owned? What happened? And then you get a little bit bigger and you're like, oh, they just couldn't. Innovate. They couldn't like hold on to the advantage that they had. And I think that that's a risk for any business. The guy doing 3 million with five employees still just blows my mind and I wanna figure out how he's doing it because like how Yeah.

I'm still 

Jack Carr: trying to figure that out. We, we, when we were doing 3 million, we had a lot more than five employees. Totally. Totally. I had like 20 something. 

John Wilson: Yeah. So all that to say, I don't think that being small. Like early on in the journey is necessarily a bad thing because like I was early on in the journey once too, and we passed the big dog and someone's gonna pass me one day and they're like, innovating faster than I am.

And like, that's just what's gonna happen. So I, I think like, how do you like, continue to incubate good ideas? How do you stay entrepreneurial? How [00:16:00] do you like, protect a moat once you built it? But if you don't have a moat, like you can still win. 

Jack Carr: Yeah. I mean, I think there's a, there's a huge thing to unpack there.

There's a lot to impact on, you know. Age demographic of the owners that were hitting 15 million. Yep. Like for, for example, I mean, they were in their fifties, so Yeah. 

John Wilson: Yeah. In a tech heavy world, 

Jack Carr: pretty easy because that's what I was gonna say is a lot of the innovators now that we're seeing that are actually generating these, these rapidly expanding home service companies are tech focused and not like the tech focused.

Like we hear, Hey, I'm gonna come, I, I'm gonna create a tech focused business. It's gonna go off to the races. Like, you know who, who was that? There was a group that came out that raised like $2 million pipe train to people from next, next door. Yeah. And they came out and they're like, yeah, we're tech first.

And it's like, no shit. Everybody's tech first. Yeah, the whole industry 

John Wilson: at this point is tech first. It's like, yeah, no shit. And 

Jack Carr: that, and that was the thing is like that's gonna be the nex is, is continuing to stay tech first, continuing to stay at the forefront of any kind of revolution such [00:17:00] as AI and things like that.

And they're just pushing the boundaries to, to win. 

John Wilson: Now the downside of exactly that sentence, something that I am noticing in a lot of like the Facebook groups I'm in is like, offer fatigue. There are so many tools in every single one of them. Pitches that they can grow your business by a hundred percent in the first 12 months.

Yeah, you just, I think just be careful who you're buying from. Check the track record. But like this has come up in our group. This came up in a few other groups that I'm just like a part of it just keeps coming up. Just like we're drowning in all these different like bullshit tools because people keep coming up with new things and I want to stay at the forefront.

But I don't know how to stay at the forefront 'cause I keep buying these expensive tools that aren't actually moving us forward. 

Jack Carr: You, we are in the same industry. We get the same kind of crap every day. I mean, for the most part, I think really it's, you don't have to be first. Like, you don't have to be the first I, I know innovation generally indicates that you're gonna be [00:18:00] early on in something.

But why be the test dummy? Just wait till something works and then jump on it. So a, a great ga great one that, that, uh, is really interesting to me right now is like contractor commerce. Yeah. Like I'm not the first one on contractor commerce, but there's someone in our market Did Market Con, did you I we're going to, 

John Wilson: yeah.

Jack Carr: Because there's someone in our market where it's proven, they've received like six or seven leads in the last two months that closed. I'm like, that's. Pretty dang good. I gotta find out how many closed. I know you're on contractor. We get commerce. 

John Wilson: Yeah, we get four or five leads a a day. I got smaller. My last one was 1108.

The, uh, yesterday I got six. 

Jack Carr: So I mean, like, it's a lot. You guys are driving a lot more PPC though, and driving people to the website with high intent, I think, uh, from a smaller version in a market that PPC doesn't work like. You could start again. You could potentially start to try to drive people back to the website for different reasons.

I mean, most people 

John Wilson: [00:19:00] that I know we're, we're running a pretty unique strategy with, uh, contract commerce. I don't know anybody else that's doing it exactly the way that we're doing it. So, hey, we're attempting to innovate, so we're, we're doing something a little bit different, but most people that I know, they just literally put it on their website and like they don't do anything.

They put the button on there, they put the widget and, and that's it. But there is, uh, I saw on Twitter that, uh, Demetrio guy. He, he said there was 450 contractors that had that widget on their site. If that gives like perspective. 

Jack Carr: And so like out of, once again, out of 300,000, if we're gonna keep, continue to use that number that I randomly saw on the internet at one point in time when I looked up how many HVAC contractors are in the United States.

Nice. If we use, there's more electrical contractors than hvac. Have you seen that? I, I have not seen that. 

John Wilson: Yeah. There's, there's, that's, that's surprising. That's what I said too, too. 

Jack Carr: I bet it's one man shops, though. There's like a lot more one 

John Wilson: man shops that feels like what it is. 'cause I was really surprised when I saw that more fragmented.

It was like multiples more. It was like 150,000 [00:20:00] electricians and like 70,000 hvac. 

Jack Carr: Is it 70,000 nationwide? So I stop using 300,000. 

John Wilson: Uh, I, I, the numbers are confusing to me. Every time I look, it's a different number. I used to use a million because the data I saw was like plumbing, hvac, electric, and then trir.

Like a million, 

Jack Carr: but okay. 

John Wilson: I mean, maybe 

Jack Carr: I'm wrong. I have no idea. 300,000 each. So that's where, where I was, I was looking at, it said 300,000, um, or maybe it was 300,000 total, but that feels small between the trir. 

John Wilson: I feel like overall it has shrunk over the last decade. I mean, the trend that I continue to see is the middle class of the trades is going away.

You're either big or you're tiny, 

Jack Carr: like true. And long story short though, to it is like out of, if there's a hundred thousand HVAC contractors, just to make it an even small number, 450 in the nation that utilize it is still extremely early, but. You can see it proven right. I can see, listen to this podcast, I can hear John Wilson talk about it.

You can say, Hey, I'm getting [00:21:00] four leads a day. And you hear Jack say, Hey, somebody in Jack's market's getting, yep, four leads a week. Like that's something that's working. That's it's something. And so getting a hold of somebody say, Hey, like, how are you doing this? Is it good? Is it bad? Tell me about it. Um, early, but not.

The innovator, it's not the Guinea pig. And I think that there's some optionality there as you go through the thousands of CRMs and 

John Wilson: yeah, 

Jack Carr: the per the person who dms me weekly saying, I got this idea for a phone, uh, agent that can answer all your calls for you. Yeah, that's that ai. 

John Wilson: And I'm like, that's a tough, I mean, that got crowded.

Quick, quick. Crazy. Crazy. Yeah. Crazy. I feel like, um, you know, something that we started doing is we stopped ref, we're trying to stop referring to it as ai and we try to refer to it as automation because there is like just genuine AI fatigue. Like people are starting to hate it very quickly. [00:22:00] Yeah. And it's becoming, it's becoming like, uh, almost like a negative word.

Layoffs and like the more tech layoffs, the more like AI enabled efficiencies. It's starting to become like, yeah, people don't like it. 

Jack Carr: Yeah. I asked, given this group is a little bit different, but I asked in that one man, in a van chat group what they're doing for their phone systems and there was a lot of very, very unhappy people talking about ai.

And these are just like one, one guy shows that are 

John Wilson: like, they were using AI and they, and they didn't like it, or they were just mad about AI in general. Just mad about AI in 

Jack Carr: general. Yeah. Never used it. Never tried it. Never heard of it. They just, I'm never gonna talk to somebody. A robot ever. And what surprised me was not that that was there and prevalent, like I expect some level of that, but the outspokenness and the people who are diehard never AI people.

Yeah. Are never AI people. But I [00:23:00] mean, like, so back to it though. I think that the, the key, uh, one of the big keys is to immerse yourself in industry, which everybody listening to this is doing. So Yeah, I mean, you're doing it by 

John Wilson: listening, like reading, participating Facebook groups. 

Jack Carr: Yeah. So I mean that's, that's where we're getting all of our like good leads on innovation is not through going and trialing and testing it ourselves.

Yeah. It's peers. It's peers. So it's like, oh, it's like the owned and operated pro is a great one. The Facebook group's a great one. Like, that's where I'm, well, I heard 

John Wilson: one, I heard one the other day and it was in a peer group and it solved the problem I was looking for in accounting. I'm not gonna name it, but like, it, it, 'cause I, I haven't tested it to know if it's worked, so I don't want people to like think I'm, I, I don't know if I'm recommending it.

Other people recommended it to me and it was like, oh shit. Like, I saw that a year ago, but I didn't really trust it. But like I now, three people recommended it to me on a call last week. And I was like, all right, like, let's go. Like it's, it's basically an ai here, here I go again. [00:24:00] Yeah. Yeah. It's uh, it's an automation, so it's a, uh, it's like a bookkeeping automation and it helps reduce workload in accounting.

And like our accounting department, like bigger, we've gotten like, there's a lot, it's just like thousands and thousands of transactions. It is so much just busy work. So like. They would welcome automation. Like it would make everyone's life easier. 

Jack Carr: That's, that's the best way, in my opinion, to yeah. To get those innovations is, is like, that's where you're finding them, that's where you're testing 'em out.

I mean, if you wanted to test 'em out. We've done some stuff where like we've, we've built tools and, and we're more than happy to share 'em with people's, people in those groups, things like that. Just because it's, it's. 

John Wilson: Yeah, we should share like our apps, like we built a fleet management app and we built like a bunch of these apps now 

Jack Carr: that are just like, yeah, I saw a dashboard when I was at your office.

It was pretty badass. 

John Wilson: Yeah, it's awesome. Like, I also have like, just fatigue. Like every single day I get dmd or emailed or something on some [00:25:00] platform with, Hey, I just have this new startup for this new thing. Some of them are good, like we've done it, but like it is five to 10 a day. Like it's, it's a bit much.

And, uh, so I, I don't read them anymore, but. I'm just really tired of paying for sas. Like, I'm, I'm, I'm bored of it. I'm tired of it. I like, I already pay ServiceTitan like 30 grand a month. Like I am tired and like, I'm really tired of seeing like ServiceTitan pricing for random fucking tools. Like, Hey, I've got this like.

Job calculator. Uh, it's $400 per user per month. And I'm like, like, shut the fuck up. Like, what are you doing? Like I dude, so 

Jack Carr: annoying. The downside to being in a hot industry, the hot, ugly, dirty industry is, uh, the fun. The fun comes when people, uh, from every other industry try to make money in the gold rush.

John Wilson: Yeah, man. What were we talking about? Like fatigue? 

Jack Carr: [00:26:00] Networking groups, how to write your shit. Most of this was just around how you had a terrible take and you won't admit it. Like just that part. I will admit that I might not have delivered it. Well, I'm still making shirts. I'm just trying to figure out, I'm getting AI to getting, it was my 

John Wilson: least popular take four and a half years of doing a podcast.

Jack Carr: I was gonna say, and that's, that's saying something because you have a lot of hot takes. 

John Wilson: Saying something. Yeah, I was, uh, I thought that was kind of funny. Um, but ultimately I do think like small businesses can grow big. You and I are both like really good examples of that. If you don't like the current size of your business, get bigger and like you are capable of innovating really fast if you're small and you are a threat to the larger companies in your market, and you and I have both shown that.

So like, I don't think, I think if people took it personally, like I think you're missing the bigger plot here and you should listen to other episodes we've been working with. We supply trades.com for the past 10 years, but most importantly for [00:27:00] the past six months as our primary vendor. For HVAC supplies, and that's gonna be generic, as well as some OEM.

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Jack Carr: I do have a quick question for you on the back of that.

It's like, so as a smaller company's, like for myself, I struggle with this quite a bit and I'm gonna be vulnerable to the, to the masses here. Like how do you think about [00:28:00] growth metrics in terms of how fast you grow? So we've been doing that a hundred percent year over year growth. Oh sure. Yeah. Of course.

We're trying to keep that, but like that is super. Super difficult and there's a lot of strain on the business and on me personally at a hundred percent. And so, you know, you know, Chris Hoffman's has been 30%. Like, how do you think about, well, 30% compounded. 

John Wilson: And I think that that's a really important distinction.

Jack Carr: Yeah. Also, I mean, the important distinction right, is a $2 million business grows much easier to $4 million. A hundred percent, yeah. Million versus a million. I think we have a few things to unpack 

John Wilson: there. Million 

Jack Carr: to 120 million, like you just grew $20 million. Like that's more than Yeah. The, the small business 

John Wilson: times 10.

Yeah, so I, I think there's a lot to unpack. So one growth rate slows. Two, this is 2025. This is not 2020, this is not 2019. And the rules that worked in 2019 and 2020 do not work today. It is a different [00:29:00] playbook. There, there was a group on, uh, Twitter like a couple weeks ago, uh, Viton and a couple other guys, and, and they were sort of like calling this out of like, Hey, I'm really tired of like getting feedback from people with a billion dollars of enterprise value.

It was like a joke. I don't think it was actually targeted to anyone specific. But like, yeah, like the biggest companies in the industry grew, like from 2020 to 2023. Like they got fucking huge in that time period. And that was before pe, like early on PE days, like really early, like PE was like kind of a thing in like the late teens, but nowhere near to what it became in 20 21, 22, 23.

Uh, leads were totally different. I could, when we first got on LSA in like 20 19, 20 20. Electrical leads were literally $11 a lead. 11. And they're like 95 now. Yeah. And LSA worked like, it just [00:30:00] worked better. There was way more demand, there was money sloshing around all over the place. It was just different.

So I, I think like it's really, a lot of these guys built great businesses and they're bigger businesses than me, so I have like, no, I have no rocks to throw here. I just think if, if you are looking at someone and saying, how did they grow? How, how did they do that? Like how did they build a $80 million business in three years or four years or five years, like they were playing a different game than you're playing today?

It is a totally different game and like they have good advice, they have really good perspective. They built a bigger business than me. I can't throw any rocks here, but like you just can't follow the same playbook. So just be cautious of like who you're comparing yourself to. 'cause I do think it's an unfair comparison.

So that's like my overarching like theme. It's a good starting point. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like we've grown 30% year over year for years now. Mm-hmm. But like it's been lumpy. Like some years [00:31:00] that's a hundred percent. Some years that's 10. And I think the bigger we've gotten, like growth is just different. Like this year is probably like a high teens, low twenties growth year.

And that's a little bit discouraging for us. Same as whatever you were thinking, that like, I'm gonna go from a hundred to something that's a little bit discouraging for us, but like, if I look at the context of the year, I'm, I'm like, I'm at peace with, I'm discouraged, but I'm trying to get at peace with it because we're making the right decisions at the time for where we are in the business.

We have to focus on are we stable? Are we profitable? Like really, really profitable? Like are we driving 17% plus ebitda? Are we driving positive cash flow? Is our balance sheet healthy? Which like it was not healthy after years of growing 30%. Like it was not healthy. We did not have great cash [00:32:00] position. We had debt from these ac, we still have debt, but like we had debt from these acquisitions.

So like our debt to EBITDA wasn't healthy. So. Over the last, like, you know, I've talked about a lot on this show. Like the goal was 12 months straight, profitable. We're on month, like 15 or 16 now. Like we are, we're just a profitable company now, which like, that's totally new to us. Like that just happened.

Jack Carr: Uh, I'm, uh, derail the conversation for, uh, second to shout out to our sponsors Apple Tree, who we use personally in our business. I'm not gonna lie, John, I almost freaking cried when I saw, when they presented me. The first good financial books I've had in three years. Yes. It's a, it is. It changes the game.

I, it does. I got emotional. It does. I'm a like, I'm a big man. That was like, yeah, yeah. This is gorgeous. Yeah. 'cause it was a game changer. I was like, I was able to see and he's like, Hey, also, I, I took it, I took all the ServiceTitan. Dollars and I put it in its own bucket so that you could see actually how much you're spending on ServiceTitan.

'cause I know some other owners like to see that. Yeah, we can [00:33:00] change it back if you want. I was like, no, no, no, no. That's exactly what I wanted. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't even have to ask him, but point being is like, you know, I, I don't generally like go into sponsor that, sponsor that, but like they are amazing and yeah.

John Wilson: Well Patrick runs a good shit. We've been friends for years. He runs a great, yeah, he runs a great company. 

Jack Carr: He runs a really good ship and his team is solid. Yeah, very, very happy. First time I've had good financials and I, I think I said on the show that our whole Q1 was positive. I was wrong. 

John Wilson: Oh man, 

Jack Carr: we had one.

We, so a Q1 on the hole was positive. Okay. But not every month. We missed in March by, I think like $10,000. Oh, that's close. But all the rest of the month, every other month has been positive. And I was like, ah, that's awesome. I also have a good net. I know my net is, that's awesome. Oh. Like actual what it actually looks like.

Yeah, that's, yeah, and it's good. That's awesome, dude. That's been much happier too. Like we're running, yeah, we're running like a 12.9% net on the year and I'm like, yes, yes. I knew we were between 10 and 15, but like. The other, the other [00:34:00] really cool part too is we were ballparking everything, like really manually, like going and taking our yeah, weekly payroll and, and against our weekly invoices and fig and revenue and figuring it out all ourselves.

We were within 3% on almost everything. All right. It's like that felt good too, so that we could continue doing the processes that we have in place to move quickly and then get our monthly gross margins in, in check. And then like double check our work, essentially. 

John Wilson: Yeah. 

Jack Carr: But sorry to derail. No, you're good.

You're good. Really, really excited about that. That is exciting. Um, but yes, with growth, do you think that your, your perspective has changed on growth as from, from a smaller company and just like heavy, heavy growth moving into. Like a bigger company, still a small company, still a baby company, but like, but a bigger baby company.

It, it was literally 

John Wilson: on this show, like we got a good dressing down from Tommy Meow on like [00:35:00] EBITDA and I, I took that to heart and I started like trying to understand, like I was starting to focus on it. But like we brought on Tommy, we brought on Luke and we do, we dove into EBITDA and like Luke's running like 25 to 30% net margin on a 20 plus million dollar HVAC business.

Like he's a machine. And, and then I talk to other people and like, fast top line growth is really cool. It's great, but it is, there is, it's not valuable. Like it's, it's, it's not actually valuable and, and that's like hard. To stomach that reality is that, Hey, am I, what am I doing all this for? Like why am I working this hard?

Why am I like away from my family? Why am I stressed? And if I'm not building something that's actually like a valuable asset, then what am I doing? So yeah, I gotta dressing down. And then I started really like taking a hard look [00:36:00] at like how we're approaching EBITDA and how we're approaching growth and.

We could have kept going and we could have, have kept growing at the pace we were, but we basically decided to take the year and like, Hey, are our processes tight? Are we running 17% ebitda? Are we running positive cash flow? Can we create a strong balance sheet? Like I, my take now after we're like six months into this year and I'm looking, the progress we've made is like incredible.

Like I frankly wish I would've done this years ago. And I think that this is like a fast as smooth and smooth as fast because I think that we're gonna take, this year we're still growing 20%, but we're gonna go into 2026 with the best balance sheet that I've ever had in my career. With the lowest debt, millions of cash on hand, [00:37:00] great gross margins and great net margins.

Like I would not wanna be in my way in six months because we're gonna be stronger than we've ever been and, and that was Tommy's story too. The same size that I'm at now. It like, the story was like palpable. It was, oh yeah. 20 to 30. I had to slow down. It drove me fricking nuts. I remember that. I hated it.

We had to write down every process we had to do, and it's like, that's the year that we're in right now. We're writing down every process. We're making sure that, well, I wonder though, is 

Jack Carr: did you have seen yourself doing that earlier? Because No. And, and I'm gonna preface it. Yeah. And so that, like, I, that's where my wonder is do you's like just 

John Wilson: me personally, like.

Other people have done it earlier, like Luke has a smaller company and has more ebitda, like his company is literally more valuable than mine with half of the staff and a third less revenue. 

Jack Carr: Yeah, but that's like comparing and, and hear me out, that's like comparing a chuck and a truck doing a million who has 40% EBITDA [00:38:00] because he has no overhead and no processes and blah, blah, blah.

To somebody doing 3 million with half of his ebitda because they're trying to grow the business. And so that, that's like where the question comes into play is for me is like, do you run hard for three years growth, one year stabilization, three years hard growth, one year stabilization? Or do you just continue pushing growth until you get really big?

And it actually matters because you, even though you have great ebitda, EBITDA doesn't. EBITDA is not cashflow. I, I know. But even though you have good ebitda, you still are gonna eventually be somewhat capped on how high, like, like Luke can't run a 50% EBITDA company. He's gonna be capped at where he's at.

No, there's definitely too 

John Wilson: much. But I think 17 to 20 is sustainably. Yeah, but what I'm thinking is like sustainable. 

Jack Carr: My, my thought process is, you know. Yes. Okay. So he continues to [00:39:00] run very efficiently, very lean at say 20 million top line to in ebitda, 10%. I'm just, I know that's not it. Or four, 4 million, whatever.

Ebitda, 20 million top line. So he's running 20% margins. Mm-hmm. Or ebitda. He's doing great. He's running 20% ebitda. But if you put. Half of that, three quarters of that back into like heavy growth and it's, you know, CapEx and debt. You're, you're missing and you're losing. Yeah. And you're kind of, you know, doing stuff.

'cause you're trying huge growth initiatives, but you get to 40 at 10, like yeah, you're at the 40. At 10%. He's at 20 at at. And so you're worth the same amount from an enterprise value, but if you leaned out at 40, kept everything the same. Yeah. From a top line. Like now you jump up. To double his company, but he would have a hard time growing at 20% to jump up at Europe.

You know what I mean? He would, and 

John Wilson: like that's obviously the decision that we made internally. What uhhuh, the phrase that I used to say, and I still, I think it makes sense, is bloat, then optimize. [00:40:00] Like, Hey, let's get really big, let's run really fast and let's optimize the shit out of it. And that's what we did.

Jack Carr: So from a bloat and optimized perspective, and, and this is kind of where the origin of the question was, is like what was your expectation early on, on growth from, from bloat before optimization? And then when did you start thinking about optimization? 

John Wilson: It's most people that I talk to, so this is myself, but like I'm saying this is like, this is a sentiment that I notice for once people cross into the twenties.

Optimization, like managing EBITDA is, is a bigger conversation. Well, like in the teens. It's all growth, growth, growth, growth, growth. It's still growth for us too. But like you do have to run a healthy business and if payroll's 400 grand every two weeks, you do have to run a healthy business. 

Jack Carr: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense.

John Wilson: But it, it seems to be that everyone including us, starts really honing in on it in the twenties. Yeah. Because I mean, we, for us, we outgrew our overhead. I think that's a really important, like we started [00:41:00] focusing on it overhead, started shrinking margin, started increasing. Yeah, we built a lot of value, which was awesome.

Like the, the value of the, you know, we're not doing anything with it, but the value of the business went up. EBITDA went up. 

Jack Carr: I think what's cool with that too is like you have to build processes to do that. Like that's a, a huge drive. Yeah. We're running a much tighter ship 

John Wilson: than we were here. And so, yeah, exactly.

Jack Carr: Yes. So like, dude, we we're looking at numbers, people better processes, easier business to run. Also on top of it, you just happen to get better ebitda. Like, oh, 

John Wilson: whatever. Well some of the numbers are funny and I'm like, am I gonna slow down for net? Right? Like that's the big question. I think people like nobody wants to slow down growth.

I've talked to a lot of people that wish they would've slowed down earlier and like really focused on it. 'cause they're trying to do it at like. 70, 80, a hundred plus and it's harder. But, uh, you know, Gettel ran at 17% margins and grew 30% year over year for like 10 straight years. And that was before all the 2020 stuff.

So like, we know it's possible, but yeah, I, I think it's a hard, I think it [00:42:00] can be a hard decision, uh, but ultimately. We realized we weren't building something of value and we wanted to be sustainable and we weren't as sustainable as we would've liked. 

Jack Carr: No, that makes sense. That, that's actually really helpful.

'cause Yeah, we're, we're, I mean, obviously we are much smaller than you, but there, there's some days where it would feel, but my quick take 

John Wilson: is not really like, you know, I, I don't think so. 

Jack Carr: What's that? 

John Wilson: Like both of us as a category are single location, plumbing, hvac, electric businesses, like we're not. I feel like it, and that was sort of my point is like, I think we're the same.

We just have a few more people.

Jack Carr: John, is this you trying to be relatable now? 

John Wilson: I don't know what I'm trying to do. 

Jack Carr: Well, John. You mean a lot to me too, if that's what you were trying to tell me. Thank, 

John Wilson: thank you. Thank you. 

Jack Carr: No, it, it just, it it, there's some days where it just feels like, are we sacrificing for growth? Like, am I burning the candle at [00:43:00] both ends so that we could grow as fast as we can, as hard as we can.

But I think the answer is probably you have to do that until you get to a certain size where then you can slow down. 

John Wilson: Yeah. I think you're gonna get stopped by something. So like, are you gonna get stopped because of balance sheet? Are you gonna get stopped because of cash? Like something is probably gonna stop you.

From continuing to grow aggressively. And some people don't hit that for a while. Like I know people in their, in the forties that are still growing like more aggressively and happier to take single digit nets. Yeah. Like that's great. And maybe their funding source is different. Maybe they're better innovators than I am.

Like could be any number of reasons they could just be better and like I'm okay with that, but I think something's probably gonna stop you. At some point you're gonna want to start imagining like, you know, how how do we, how do we like make this sustainable? I see a lot of people get stopped in the teens, like a lot.

That seems to be [00:44:00] the big Yeah, and I, I, you know, I used to think 

Jack Carr: it's like seven to 12 is where we know we have a few in our market that just Yeah. Cannot. 15 to get through. It's 

John Wilson: 15 here in Cleveland. Like people just, they can't get through 12, 10 to 15, 12. They just can't get past 15. Yeah. So what, what I've, what I'm noticing now, like we're on the other side of that and at first I thought it was like only a teens thing.

So that's how I described it was like 15 to 20. So if you listen to the show for a while, like that's the problem I'm talking about is the 15 to 20. Like how do we build up a, uh, like a frontline leaders is how I was thinking about it. Think about it a little bit differently now. Uh, 'cause that was like half of our size ago.

I still think it was still ongoing and I just didn't really realize that it was still ongoing. What I see the problem as now and how I would approach it differently if I like had to start from scratch. Uh, is the senior leader problem, like who are the senior leaders and when do you bring them into the organization?[00:45:00] 

I brought some senior leaders in at the perfect time and I brought some in too early, which is probably good and some in too late, which is obviously bad, but it's the senior leader problem. 'cause what, what you end up doing is you like, we feel healthier than ever because we have like six amazing senior leaders that are like really driving initiatives forward.

And I am helping coach and I'm helping mentor and I'm helping, I'm helping do all that stuff, but like. They are doing it now. And that seems to be, that's really hard first off, like, 'cause if you get the wrong one, it is a very real impact to your business. And we've done that a few times now. Like very real, tangible, you know?

Yeah. Financial impact. Uh, so that's important. And then two, there is a financial investment, not just in those people for their salaries, but also the teams that you build under them. So [00:46:00] that's why now, now that I'm on, like just just past, 'cause it's really, it's like it's 15 to 25. If I had known that, I would've done it all upfront, earlier if I had understood the problem, which was mm-hmm.

Hey John, you have to build this incredible team of senior leaders in these six disciplines. Like do it right now and then save yourself two years of pain. I would've just done it, but I didn't understand that that was the problem that I was solving do now. So, uh, so it got a lot easier. But the financial impact of building teams underneath them is pretty real too.

Jack Carr: We destroyed that topic on the last episode. So if you haven't listened to that senior leader episode, I think that was the last one that maybe dropped. Yeah, that one It covers it. 

John Wilson: Yeah. It 

Jack Carr: it covers it. Yeah. We talked about that, but I think people 

John Wilson: get stuck there 'cause they don't, they don't know how to like invest into that.

Speaking 

Jack Carr: of 10 million, I saw something interesting. Not, not the breaking 5 million, but the breaking [00:47:00] 10 million. We wanna 

John Wilson: do a, we wanna do another workshop. Question mark. We wanna do another workshop. We wanna do another workshop. The, frankly, the workshops are fun, so I'll give, um, I'll give everyone What's the, is this called Breaking the fourth Wall?

Jack Carr: The one we're doing in in August is breaking five. No, 

John Wilson: no. I'm gonna break the fourth wall. Well, I wanna give everyone, I want to, I wanna give everyone some, like some, here's the, here's the state of the owned and operated. That way people can State of the union. State of the union. Yeah. So like, we've had some fun, we've had some fun things that we have going, Jack acquisitions has been a ton of fun.

And if you're not like checking out that show, we officially spun it off some brand. So make sure you sub to that, uh, pod channel. Uh, YouTube and then it has its own newsletter. So like, we're super pumped about that. The OAO team has grown a lot, which has been like, really exciting. Uh, like something that is, um, like this, you know, this podcast, like I've, I've loved doing [00:48:00] it.

I think you like doing it, love doing it. So somewhere between like and love. Do I or you? That was you. I love it, man. Yeah, love it. This is a lot of fun. I love it. Yeah. It, it, it is. It's, it's been like a fun part of my life for almost five years. Yeah. But, uh, it's, um, in the background, it, we've been able to like really bring on a great team to support it.

So the team is, um, I think like eight people now, which is really awesome. And, um, we're getting ready to like. Between community and our workshops and like, we've had whole cocom for a few years. So like, we like events and, uh, so we're getting ready to like, bring on an event person to really help like drive community and events a lot better.

So I, I think it's just gonna be fun. So you joked about like a breaking 10 workshop and like we're talking about more workshops because people are literally asking for it, like people have asked for mm-hmm. Call by call workshops they've asked for. What's kind of interesting is nobody cares about breaking 10.

Everyone's like, okay, I want a breaking five. Or a breaking 20, it just sort of like [00:49:00] skip 10, which I think is kind of funny. Well, I 

Jack Carr: think 'cause those are like, those are the really hard numbers, right? Yeah. Those are the biggest step changes. 20, like you said, 15 to 25. Yes. Twenties. Right in the middle. Yeah.

Big step change that five is like, Hey, I'm no longer running in the truck myself. I'm running a business. Yeah. So I think, I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head. The Breaking five is amazing for anybody who's, yeah. If you're early on, on the journey business. Yep. To even up. Like we had people there who were six, seven, 8 million who still got a lot of value, ton of value out of like, Hey, I don't have a full understanding of my processes and what I should be doing and why I am doing them.

And then this was just a huge unlock for them. That was a lot of fun. Yeah, totally. And honestly, our team got a ton out of it too, because it was a really good dynamic with everybody in the room who got to, to see how businesses are run. Yeah. Yeah, so, so on and so forth. So if you haven't signed up, definitely do so.

I think we have a couple, like 10 seats left, seven seats left. I don't even know, like two people sign up the other day. This like 

John Wilson: filled up. 

Jack Carr: Really fast. This one filled up fast. It keeps going faster. 'cause people keep sending their Yes. Word of [00:50:00] mouth is doing really, really well on that. 

John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. That, that was pretty cool.

Uh, but yeah, we're talking about doing more workshops, um, so, uh, potentially a call by call, uh, or potentially a breaking 20, which is kind of fun. I, I, one other thing I'm just gonna like flag if you are out there, we have, we've talked about owned and operated pro on the show. Uh, we've started launching like dedicated peer groups inside pro and that has been really cool.

Like every Friday we have a peer call and it's good like. It's good content. We're talking about like tactical stuff, and it's high trust. Like once a month we open up our books, so we're, we're up to like, it's volunteers, uh, but like six or seven people now submit their p and ls and we open 'em at once a month.

That's this Friday, so we'll be doing financial reviews for last month, talking about the good, the bad, and like people give feedback, which I think is just high value. Like where else do you get that? But we're opening up [00:51:00] dedicated size peer groups. So I tweeted yesterday, it was kind of fun or like two days ago.

And, and we have two spots open for like a 10 to 20 million peer group. And we got like seven submissions. I had two spots, we got seven submissions. Um, so that was really fun. So we're about to launch a 20 and up peer group. Inside owned and operated pro. If you're in that bucket, like this is a peer group for me too.

Like we're gonna be participating in it as peers, not as like leading that. We would love to have you in like, it sounds like a lot of fun. I think we have four people in that group right now. Uh, so we're trying to get to eight. So we have four open spots for 20 and up peer group. 

Jack Carr: Gimme a 

John Wilson: few years. Yeah.

Yeah, you'll get there. 

Jack Carr: But uh, and then the other big one is, uh, we're headed to Pantheon. Are you going? Uh, wasn't planning on it, but then Kristen, our, the person behind the scenes told me that I probably am going 

John Wilson: Yeah, no pan. Yeah, pan. More 

Jack Carr: like a voluntold situation going on there. Yeah. Yeah. She, yeah, 

John Wilson: she's the [00:52:00] boss.

Uh, but no. Yeah, we, yeah. We're gonna pantheon and we're recording a live podcast, so it should be really fun. 

Jack Carr: Yeah. Yeah. That, that, that's like, let's go, let's do it. Yeah. That'll be fun. Cool. Yeah. I've never actually been to Pantheon. I have neither, so that've been an experience. Yeah. This will be my first. 

John Wilson: I have actually never been to an industry specific conference.

Yeah. In my career, I've, I've gone to a bunch of, like the SMB Twitter conferences I have. Yeah. I've never been to any industry specifics. 

Jack Carr: Yeah. Like, I plan on doing Main Street this year too. 'cause that Main Street's always a good one. I haven't, I did s and Bash for the first time, which was good. I have a ton of friends at 

John Wilson: both of 'em.

Yeah. It's just, I, I told myself a few years ago, I have to focus on industry. Which was the right move. Like when I told myself that we were 10 million, now we're 30 something. Yeah, fair enough. It was the right move. But I haven't actually, I've only been doing like workshops. Like I go to a lot of workshops.

Our team goes to a ton of workshops or like site visits. It is a very literal, once a month. My team is at someone else's shop somewhere in the us I, I saw 

Jack Carr: on, on LinkedIn [00:53:00] your team was down, uh, we're 

John Wilson: called at, 

Jack Carr: yeah, we were at Matt's 

John Wilson: place. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. He runs an awesome shop. Uh, so yeah, once a month. I, I think we did three site visits last month in Denver.

Uh, one in Minnesota, like, it's crazy. We're flying people all over the place. We're, we're like, that's cool. How do we get sos? How do we like prep for our next stage of growth? Uh, and they're learning a ton. 

Jack Carr: What you get to do at breaking five at John's shop? Fulls walkthrough. Let's go. Boom. Man, you're 

John Wilson: really keeping us like on task today.

Look 

Jack Carr: at that. I'm good man. Just circling back. Just 

John Wilson: yeah, you're good. No, this is good. Awesome. Alright guys, well make sure you sub for the newsletter. Uh, give us a like, 

Jack Carr: comment to how, how correct John is below about how 40 million just. Baby business. I'm not there either. Little tiny, I'm literally not there either.

Not even a business, baby business. 

John Wilson: I am also not there either. So I feel, uh, personally attacked. I hope so. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks guys. I appreciate.