#228 How this NEW Service Owner is doing $80k/month

In this episode of Owned and Operated, John sits down with Ethan from New York to explore his rapid journey into the world of home services and franchising. From cold calls to private equity to launching a local newsletter — Ethan shares the real story behind building momentum as a new business owner.

🔑 What You’ll Learn:

• How Ethan used cold calling and emailing to win early leads
• Why franchising became the right fit for his growth goals
• How local newsletters create real business opportunities
• What it takes to raise private equity in home services
• Juggling multiple ventures — without losing your mind
• Advice for new entrepreneurs on risk-taking and mindset

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Shout Out to FieldPulse 🚀

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Host:
John Wilson

Guest:
Ethan Realander 

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

📌 Disclaimer:
Some links may include UTM parameters for tracking. Episodes may feature paid sponsors, but all opinions are our own. Always do your own research before making business decisions.

Chapters

• 0:00 Getting Leads and Initial Business Strategies
• 1:55 Franchising and Operational Challenges
• 30:00 Navigating Early Business Challenges
• 33:40 The Power of Local Newsletters
• 52:45 Future Plans and Entrepreneurial Advice

Transcript

Ep 228 Transcript

John Wilson: [00:00:00] How do you get leads 

Ethan Realander: on the board week one, calling people, emailing people. You gotta do it and it works. 

John Wilson: There's a few other like solutions that are just like extremely premium and this might be like 80 grand a year of a, of a subscription. Okay. It's a lot 

Ethan Realander: of fucking money. Can you just like knock some doors and get away higher?

ROI in three hours? And of your listeners are thinking about doing your f. They've never owned or run a business before. Totally a shortcut. It's crazy. Obviously had to be pretty bullish. Yeah. To invest a, a bunch of my net worth in it to start. If you just dump some money into ads for right six months, you can get mid seven figures.

John Wilson: So what's stopping you from doing that?

Welcome back to Owned and Operated today. I have Ethan from New York. Welcome to the show. Stoked to be here. Great to meet you, John. Yeah, this was good. I, I appreciate you. Coming out. 

Ethan Realander: Yeah, absolutely. Like I was just telling you before this, like obviously, we'll, we'll get into this, but I'm a relatively new business owner mm-hmm.

And I'm still running [00:01:00] my business with duct tape. And, uh, one thing that was, was really cool was to be able to see, you know, what a real company looks like and what the sort of the North Star is. So I sort of know what I'm shooting for as I grow over time. So it's, it's awesome to be here. 

John Wilson: Yeah. No, this is, this is awesome.

We, uh, we brought you up. I heard you on a podcast. TJ Larkin's podcast. I wanna plug it, I just don't remember the name. Newsletter Operator. I think it's 

Ethan Realander: local. Local Newsletter Insider 

John Wilson: maybe. Yeah. And I just thought your story was interesting and I think Jack and I talked about it a couple weeks ago.

'cause I was, 'cause we were talking about owning a lead source. Yeah. And I think there's a lot of different ways to do that, but a local newsletter is like a thing right now on X. Totally. Uh, so I thought it was interesting. And then you're also a new franchisee and you launched that franchise with Rolling Suds in March.

Yep. Then I think immediately launched a local newsletter. 

Ethan Realander: Yeah. Like a, a month after it was, it was pretty, pretty quick succession. 

John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. How about you just like, walk us through like a, a little bit of background, but like, let's focus [00:02:00] on the entrepreneurship part. Field Pulse is the all-in-one field management solution for growing home service companies.

Field Pulse is designed to simplify your day-to-day operations by combining everything you need into one platform. It also includes integrations to help you save time. Like QuickBooks Desktop and online. It has a bunch of advanced tools and features like A CRM estimates and invoicing. Good, better, best options, maintenance plans, a robust price book and scheduling dispatching field pulse will transform the way that you manage your field teams altogether.

It will save you time and find revenue that you didn't even know existed, whether you're a small company that's looking to grow or a larger company looking to optimize. Field Pulse has the tools that you need to do it. And don't just take our word for it. Field Pulse has earned over 580 glow reviews with an average rating of 4.8 stars.

That's Field E-U-L-S-E. Head to their website to learn more. Field pulse.com. 

Ethan Realander: I spent the first five or six years of my professional life. In finance [00:03:00] raising private equity and venture funds. Mm-hmm. It was a great job. Wasn't wanting to do what I wanted to do forever. I wanted to, you know, own my thing.

Long story short, ended up sort of focusing on home services space. A lot of my clients at my old job, um, were investing in that area, so I had a lot of familiarity with that segment of the economy. Um, 

John Wilson: like the funds you were raising for were buying inside home service, like plumbing, hvac, roofing. Exactly.

Ethan Realander: Roofing, yeah. All that stuff. Um, who's the fund? A lot, probably like a couple dozen different funds. All like lower middle market. Yeah, middle market, upper middle market, all sorts of stuff. And I wanted to do something in that space, but I knew I was gonna be a solo operator, didn't have any partners and didn't want to.

Raise outside capital. I want it to be my thing. Yeah. But wasn't fully, you know, didn't feel fully equipped to start a brand completely from scratch, having never run a business, having never, you know, managed a blue collar workforce, having never done home services sales. So that's a lot of [00:04:00] levers that I'd never had to figure out how to pull on my own before, which is sort of what set me down the franchise path.

Yeah. Um, what attracted me to that, um, to that path. Was some of the levers come sort of preset for you and you can focus on how to, how to, how to pull some of the levers. Yeah. Um, but you get some support for some of the others and then, you know, over time or 5, 10, 15 years, whatever it is, um, maybe at that point I'll feel prepared to either buy a business myself or start something else.

From scratch, now that I've got the experience or when I have the experience, um, with, with pulling some of those levers that I'm, I'm pulling for the first time still now. Um, and then I discovered Rolling suds, and we can get into that story if you want, but I'd love to. Yeah. Um, 

John Wilson: yeah, so y you're, I've talked to, I'm good friends with Aaron.

I've talked to one other franchisee, uh, from Rolling Suds and I'm, I'm just, I'm curious. 

Ethan Realander: Yeah. So I met with a lot of different home service franchises. 

John Wilson: Like, what, what are the other ones even out there? Like what's the landscape 

Ethan Realander: for? Oh my God. I mean there's like, probably [00:05:00] I, I, some, someone could correct me, but it's at least hundreds.

Like yeah, there are hundreds and hundreds of these brands out there in every service you can think of. 

John Wilson: Is it a lot of emerging ones? Because I would imagine most of the, like the Mr. Routers, the rotor, those have to be sold out. 

Ethan Realander: Yeah, exactly. And, and that's part of what, um, drew me to a brand like Rolling Suds was, you know.

Lots inventory, the painting franchises, the fencing franchises, the roofing franchises. Um, most of those are sold out. Yeah. So if you want to get into an established brand like that, you are buying someone else's business. Yeah. So for someone who, you know. Didn't want to raise outside capital. 

John Wilson: Yeah. 

Ethan Realander: And had enough capital to get an SBA loan.

Yeah. But didn't have enough to buy a 10 million revenue business. That math didn't really math. 

John Wilson: Mm-hmm. 

Ethan Realander: So finding an emerging franchise who I felt comfortable betting on, while I bet on myself to build my own business, was sort of the path that made sense to me where I could. [00:06:00] Open de novo territories.

Mm-hmm. Um, but have a, a corporate team who, you know, I felt comfortable with, uh, was gonna be able to grow their franchisor business while I grew my franchisee business. 

John Wilson: Do you feel like you've found a good partner? Yeah. Like you're three, four months in, but like, how's it gone? 

Ethan Realander: Yeah. I mean, it's still super early.

We're growing really fast. Rolling uds as a, a business, like as a brand is still growing really fast and the network that of franchisees that they've built is incredible. Like the amount of learning I've gotten yeah. From the network is so valuable, has been extremely helpful for me. Mm-hmm. Um, I think just the idea that I have access to.

75 or 80 other people trying to build the exact same business. But in a, in like a definitionally, non-competitive way. Mm-hmm. We all have our territories, so there's no incentive to compete. There's only [00:07:00] incentive to be collaborative. Yeah. Has been an amazing way Oh yeah. To like speed run the learning process where we can all just share ideas, share wins, share losses, and we don't all have to make the same mistakes ourselves.

Yeah. We can share those mistakes and the learnings, you know, with each other. 

John Wilson: I feel like that's like the best. Part, uh, you know, I totally, I've always been a big, we've never done a franchise, but we tried to do a few, like earlier on, we tried to bring on a Mr. Handyman mm-hmm. As like a department. But I think franchises make a ton of sense for like basically everything you've said.

Yeah. I think it makes sense. And I don't know why they don't have, like, there seems to be like a stigma on franchises. Yeah. Some of the wealthiest dudes I know run a bunch of franchises. Yeah. 

Ethan Realander: So I feel, I think, I think, I feel like if 

John Wilson: you're against franchises, you should just talk to more people. 

Ethan Realander: I think there's so, I think there's definitely merit to.

A lot of the criticism or hate or whatever that you see, um, [00:08:00] about franchises and, you know, franchising is a very different business than the original business. So running the original rolling suds, power washing location Yeah. Is not the same business as running a rolling SUDS franchisor. Yeah. And I think what you find is that a lot of brands underestimate.

The challenge that they're taking on in transitioning from being a roofing business to a roofing franchisor. Oh yeah. And then, you know, if they're not ready for that challenge, that can have a negative impact on the early franchisees. Um, and one thing that Rolling says has done really well is they've built out a leadership team, um, and like I said, a really good network of franchisees who have been able to help support the growth of.

The brand and the growth of each franchisees own business because ultimately both of those things need to grow with each other. Yeah, for the whole thing to work. If the franchisor doesn't work, it's gonna make it really hard for the franchisees business to work. The franchisees aren't profitable.

Franchisor [00:09:00] business isn't gonna work either. So. That's been, that's been the biggest thing, um, that's been, you know, positive for me, but I think it's totally valid If, you know any of your listeners are thinking about doing a franchise they've never owned or run a business before, I think in my personal experience.

It's a shortcut. It's very positive. It's totally a shortcut. It's crazy. 

John Wilson: It's a, it's a hack 

Ethan Realander: like it is. I'm going to, if I had started a power washing business myself, I would not be doing the revenue four months in that I'm gonna do this month. No question about it at like 100%. Yeah. Would not have been the case.

However, I think, you know, if you're looking at a franchise, like, just make sure you understand, you know, how much experience the franchisor has. Mm-hmm. What their vision is. Whether their service works in your particular market. I happen to be fortunate in that, you know, my territories are pretty good.

Yeah. For home service businesses, just for, you know, lots of different factors. High walls, 

John Wilson: lots population, 

Ethan Realander: mostly pretty dense, [00:10:00] densely populated. Yeah. So that's all stuff that works for me. Um, but, you know, not every service works equally well in every market. So it's about doing your research. You can find, you know, a not great brand in a not great market.

And you can find a really promising brand in a really promising market. Mm-hmm. And it's just about being thoughtful about how you do it. So far it's been a really good experience for me as someone who's, you know, growing my first business ever. It's totally been a shortcut. 

John Wilson: Yeah, no, that makes total sense.

How, how much does it cost to launch a franchise? 

Ethan Realander: So it, it completely runs the gamut. It totally depends on. How much CapEx there is in your particular service? 

John Wilson: Well, I mean for you specifically, what did it take to get a rolling SOS off the ground? 

Ethan Realander: So for me, um, each territory, I think this is, I think this is publicly available.

I assume FDD ISS out. Ftd, yeah. Yeah. So I think each territory, I still don't remember. It costs something in the range of $50,000 and that provides 

John Wilson: quarter million. 

Ethan Realander: Yeah. Quarter million [00:11:00] people, a hundred thousand households. Something along those lines, which for me. Corresponds to. You know, like one and a half counties just north of the city.

Yeah. So like I said, these are really densely populated areas. Westchester County, Fairfield County, and I share those counties with another franchisee, which, you know, one might think is, you know, really competitive and we bump bubbles all the time, but that's not the case at all. We share lots of relationships with property managers.

Um, which has been super helpful because we can each build relationships. Yeah. And then, you know, the business has to be passed to each other because I can't do business in, in his territory. He can't do it in mine, so we only benefit from each other's relationships. But to answer your question, each territory is something like $50,000 and the trucks 

John Wilson: are like 150.

Yeah. 

Ethan Realander: The new, the trucks are like somewhere between one 30 and one 50, depending on what sort of add-ons you get. They're a suzu box trucks, and those are, if you just bought the truck from a dealer, those would be something like 75 or 80, I think. Yeah, yeah, [00:12:00] yeah. And then the build out and the equipment.

Yeah. Um, is where you get, is it 

John Wilson: a box? 

Ethan Realander: Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's a box. They come with either two or three machines on them, um, with a big water tank mm-hmm. And with a big chemical tank and some other equipment on them. So this really, really nice machinery and. Most of the customers, commercial and residential I come across have never seen power washing company with equipment like that.

Nice. They're used to a pickup truck. Yeah. Yeah. Which is great because from a branding Totally. You standpoint off the rip, you look really, really good. Uh, when you're building that initial relationship. Are we the only power washing company that has a box truck? No. There, there are other companies out there like it's not, you know.

You can buy this equipment, but are you willing to invest in the equipment to win $50,000 commercial projects that, like, that's up to the operator. Mm-hmm. And rolling SUDS model is built around winning business like that. And I think one of the attractive things that I've continued [00:13:00] to, uh, like to see over time, uh, since I launched, is how much commercial opportunity.

There is in this service that's just ripe for the taking where there's commercial property managers, so, so that's like 

John Wilson: true. Then 

Ethan Realander: in my experience, I can't speak for every market. Yeah. In my experience, I come across property managers all the time who do not have a power washing guy. They bid out every project for all their 50 60 HOAs.

Every single time. Huh? They don't have anyone reliable. And we'll come in. Yeah. And we'll get like three bids in a row immediately, once we do a good job, once we build a real relationship. So for me it's totally been a ripe commercial opportunity. And you know, part of the bet in going into this brand was that that is real.

Mm-hmm. And in my experience. It has been real. So I'm, I'm only more bullish on the whole thing than I was when I launched and I obviously had to be pretty bullish. Yeah. To invest a bunch of my net worth in it to start 

John Wilson: You launched a [00:14:00] local newsletter and like if I, we we're gonna dive pretty deep into that.

Yeah. But like before we do, the reason is to get leads, right? Like, we're here to get leads. We, aside from that, what el Like I have never launched a franchise before, so I have no concept of like, how do you get leads on the board? 

Ethan Realander: Week one. Like, so how did you 

John Wilson: get lead? Like how did you do it? 

Ethan Realander: Yeah, so that's an excellent question.

There's a few channels that I've had a lot of success with on the commercial side, honestly, like my far and away highest ROI channel has been me cold calling, cold emailing, you know, commercial prospects. 

John Wilson: Hmm. 

Ethan Realander: I've generated a, a lot of revenue from that. Nobody. No agency, no sales person I can hire is gonna sell my, my service and my business as well as I am.

So as an early business owner. [00:15:00] Lean pretty heavily into that. Yeah. 

John Wilson: Hidden the pavement. 

Ethan Realander: You just have to, and, and I come from, you know, my, my job in finance previously was something like, it, like raising capital is sales. Just sales for private equity. Yeah. And so I have experience doing, you know, B2B sales in a way.

Um, so I was comfortable coming in and doing that. But you gotta do it and it works. Calling people, emailing people. Leading with value. Like it just does work. You just have to be willing to do it. Um, and I've had a lot of success doing that and I continue to have success with that channel. Obviously I'm now running a business and I've got a crew and a second crew coming, and my attention is pulled in lots of different directions, so I don't wanna have as much time as I did.

You know, a month before I launched to do that stuff. Mm-hmm. But I still am reaping benefits, you know, every month from that work. So that's, that's one channel. On the residential side, filling the calendar. A lot of the rolling sets franchisees use an offshore agency that does cold [00:16:00] calling. They'll, I don't know exactly.

Full call 

John Wilson: people. 

Ethan Realander: Yeah. Like residential customers. Interesting. I don't know where they scrape their. Um, data from, it's probably something like White Pages. I don't know exactly what they use, but something like that. 

John Wilson: They run the area. 

Ethan Realander: Exactly, yeah. And it, in my service area, I, I know in lots of different parts of the country, it's really, really effective.

It's just a numbers game. They dial 500,000 calls, they'll get to 

John Wilson: appointments or whatever. Yeah, 

Ethan Realander: it makes sense. It works. And it, and you know, the ROI that you can get, if you can sell well and close and, you know, upsell on the patio or the walkway or whatever. The ROI can be really, really high. So that's how I filled my book of business initially.

I still use them. I got a second caller with them on the commercial side, so they're sort of supplementing with the B2B sales for me. Um, those have been the biggest channels for me. I also do some, you know, cold email agency stuff. Mm-hmm. I've experimented with Facebook ads. I really haven't cracked [00:17:00] that.

Yet, and I haven't even started with Google ads, which is, you know, you gotta, it's a capital allocation game, so you need to figure out the highest ROI things to do. And then once you generate the cashflow from that, then you put into the next higher, highest ROI thing. I'm still kind of like climbing that ladder of capital allocation.

So I'll hit all the thing, all the levers eventually, I just haven't gotten to them all. Uh, but the cold outreach, whether it's from me or from an agency, has been extremely effective. 

John Wilson: I mean for the commercial stuff, I mean, that makes sense. Yeah. Like calling, emailing for the residential. That's interesting.

We, we tried to do that and it wasn't as successful for us. It could have been the agency we used because I think it did book appointments, but they set really poor expectations. Okay, interesting. And the customers. Like thought we were there to do something that we were not there to do. Interesting. So like, they thought we were the city.

Huh. Okay. And, and maybe that's like, again, like how we, uh, [00:18:00] like, like introduce the service? Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Ethan Realander: Well we can, we can trade notes on that afterwards. Yeah. And, and see if, you know, there's something to do there. But I think I probably get like single digit percent of the leads Yeah. Are like, what is this?

But the rest of the leads are good enough that it's, it's like a really solid marketing channel. 

John Wilson: Interesting. How many leads a week do you get from it? 

Ethan Realander: Ooh, that's a good question. It fluctuates based on the time, like spring and from what I've heard, like August, September, yeah. Are when this channel does the best, but I'm still getting like three or four a day, five days a week.

Wow. That feels good. Which for one truck Yeah. Is plenty. Like I'm, yeah. I'm booking a ways out, which is why I'm getting another truck. Um, so they're still like definitely keeping the lights on. Mm-hmm. Um, aside from the commercial stuff that I sort of spend my time focusing on more. Yeah. 

John Wilson: And then the commercial, I think the idea there is the off season, like that [00:19:00] protects you during, 'cause that's the big danger here is 

Ethan Realander: Yeah.

I mean, it's still season six months on, it's, I, it's a little bit more than six months I would say like. Peak season is like April to OC or mid-October. Yeah. But you do work in March. Yeah. And you do some work in November. So it's, there's like a short shoulder season. Mm-hmm. But you do some work, um, you just can't really do.

Power washing with bleach. Yeah. If it's under 38 degrees, it just like doesn't really work that well. So there's some stuff you can do in the winter. Mm-hmm. Some commercial stuff that, you know, maybe you give a discount and you book it out in the winter and you say, when we have a warm week, we'll come out and do it in January or whatever.

And you know that that keeps the cash flow moving, but it's totally a seasonal business. Yeah, yeah. And there's some stuff you can do to manage that, but. You're never gonna have a completely full calendar in January, February. It's just not gonna happen. Mm-hmm. So part of the math is like, you know, how [00:20:00] much cost can you cut or are there, you know, complimentary.

Services that you can run in the off season so that you can keep your guys employed. Yeah. And keep running some cash flow to keep the lights on and make the winter a little bit less brutal. So whether that's, you know, a Christmas lighting thing or something like that, that pairs from a seasonality standpoint nicely with P Power washing.

You know, we're exploring that and we'll see if maybe that makes sense. But I know that other people in this business have done something like that in the winter. Yeah. And it's, from what I've heard, and, you know, talked to people about it Sounds like really interesting. Yeah, I haven't done that much work on it though.

John Wilson: Yeah. I've, uh, I have a friend, uh, locally and I, I can't remember the name of his company, which is kind of embarrassing, but they're huge power washing. I think it's like 35 million. 

Ethan Realander: Wow. Nine locations. And that's probably one of the bigger companies in the whole country. I think it is. There aren't [00:21:00] that many that are doing that much.

I think 

John Wilson: it's the largest. Yeah. If not, but she big. Yeah. And their onboarding is, they don't do anything in the winter and it's all residential. 

Ethan Realander: So they don't do any commercial work at all. At all. 

John Wilson: Wow. Yeah. So like I was talking to them in, uh, I think March, and I don't, I don't even remember what we were talking about, but they had hired 500 people in March.

Ethan Realander: That is so, so absurd. 

John Wilson: I know. And they, so they went from like, I. Because a 35 million, you know, dollar business. So like, I think they had like 20 or 30 like full-timers all year round. Sure, 

Ethan Realander: yeah. 

John Wilson: Uh, accounting and hr, some salespeople. 

Ethan Realander: Yeah. 

John Wilson: And then like. 500 people and they expected, I, I think they expected 250 to quit in the first month.

Ethan Realander: Right. Yeah. I mean that, we can get into that too, but Yeah, this is crazy. 

John Wilson: So they didn't even expect him to get through onboarding and then you hit Yeah. You hit the summer and you just go, 

Ethan Realander: yeah, it's crazy. 

John Wilson: It is crazy [00:22:00] business. 

Ethan Realander: I mean, that's, that's outrageous. I, I can't imagine. Yeah, because he probably doesn't have that many.

Techs who come back. I mean, he probably has like, maybe half the techs will take the winter off and come. Yeah. I would imagine. Come back. 

John Wilson: I would imagine they don't, but, and the way they structure their sales is different. It's all over the phone. Are you guys doing that? 

Ethan Realander: I have not really experimented with virtual.

Yeah. I'm at the point in the business where like I need my close rate to be optimized. Yeah. And that means I go out Yeah. In person. I shake the hands, kiss the babies, whatever it takes to close the business. 

John Wilson: Yeah. 

Ethan Realander: But from a scalability standpoint, like virtual quoting. Makes so much sense from an like, yes, from an efficiency standpoint, I'm just like, not there.

Yeah. But I, I think 

John Wilson: their software's built for, I know Roofing has it really, I think. Okay. Interesting. I mean, these guys are on a software where it's like they just put in the address, okay, here's what happens. Oh, okay. You know, it's XI should look into that per foot. Yeah. Yeah, I don't remember. I'll try to find out what it's called.

Wow. 

Ethan Realander: But 500 

John Wilson: Texas. Crazy, crazy, crazy. I mean, they'd like what, 20 times the staff in like 30 days. Yeah. And like, I don't even [00:23:00] know how you recruit that many bodies. Like 

Ethan Realander: I know. Or, or like how do you train that many people? Yeah, that fat because it ramps up so quickly. Oh yeah. I'm sure you know this too.

Yeah. Um, it just, it gets so hot so quickly. Yeah. That I don't know how you get people. I don't even, you clearly figured out. Well, it's, hell, it's a hell of a lift. It's, yeah. Yeah. That's super impressive. Yeah, it's crazy. But yeah, the off season is, you know, I would like the being able to keep around really good people.

Yeah. It's, I want to do it, but I need to figure out a way. Yeah. It's tough to make sense. It just has to make sense. That's tough. What's, what is your guys', um, training or I guess his or yours, what is your, your onboarding process like? How, what does it involve? Because right now, like for me, I take a day on the calendar, I go on the truck with the guys.

Mm-hmm. I like teach the guy how to do it, walk 'em through what we do, what we don't do. Mm-hmm. And then I'm like, sounds good. And he is like, sounds good. You're hired and that's [00:24:00] kind of it, which I know is not sophisticated, but I'm curious what, like what is a real company, but 

John Wilson: like for hiring you mean?

Ethan Realander: Yeah, like onboarding, like whether it's like a trial day or like how do you figure out people are a good fit and then get them up to speed on the truck? 

John Wilson: Yeah. Uh, I mean, good fit. We're going in homes, which is maybe a little bit different. So like, you know, no one can have a criminal background. Yeah. Which I don't know if that matters as much 

Ethan Realander: for exterior work.

Probably not, but I would like, I still prefer not. Yeah. 

John Wilson: Yeah. Like our reference is good. Do you have any past experience with power washing? Like you're probably not going to have past car washing? No, it's 

Ethan Realander: not important. 'cause you can, you can learn it pretty fast. 

John Wilson: Yeah. So then, um, it'd be like, hey, critical thinking, like.

I think that would be super important for you, especially like. Are you gonna be thoughtful about like the pressure you run this thing at or Yeah. Are you going to like go blow out windows or Yeah. 

Ethan Realander: Like are the windows open? Like are you spraying bleach into the house? Yeah. Like stuff like that. 

John Wilson: Yeah. So I think like is there some critical thinking there?

[00:25:00] Definitely the ride along. Yeah. Like we do that too. It makes a ton of sense. It weeds out a lot. 

Ethan Realander: Yeah. Is that, does it, do you find that it most often. Weeds people out on your end or on their end, like on the ride. Along our end you're like, ah, it's not gonna work. 

John Wilson: It typically attitude. 

Ethan Realander: Yeah, 

John Wilson: like we had someone, we had someone do a, I heard about this yesterday.

We had someone do a shadow and they got like pissy at three. Like, like mad, like wow. Cussing in the home. It was like, really? It was like, all right. Hey. This is why we do this. Yeah. Like is Thank you for your time, but it's not gonna work. We'll drop you off. Like No, it was awesome. Like it's saved us solve a lot of time.

Wow. So, uh, so no, definitely us weeding them out. Uh, it's, yeah, it's very helpful. So that's like prepping for, are they a good fit? Come up with some questions. Do they have critical thinking? How do we test for that? How do we ask about that? And, uh, some version of a ride along. That helps a lot. Then onboarding, I mean, especially with you, because next year you will have to figure out a way to onboard three crews, right?

At the same time, how do we just codify what we [00:26:00] do? And it could be as easy as like videoing it. Like yeah, that's where it can start, you know, like set up a tripod and. Video a house getting done. Yeah. Or like make somebody wear a GoPro for a couple days. 

Ethan Realander: Right. And then like talk, talk over it and just be like, watch this.

This is your manual. 

John Wilson: Yeah. Well I think you could probably do better than that. 'cause it would be like, um, I, I don't remember the name of the software, but we do this for looms. So like Loom is when you screen record your computer and you, you know, do something with it. So we do a lot of trainings that way.

But you can also, you can loom, uh, what we've started doing to try to like. We're in the stage of the business where we're trying to standard operate, standard operating process, everything. And like any minuscule thing. So what we've started doing is looming people's computers for eight hours a day. Wow.

And then we put that loom into this software and I don't remember the name of it, and it's spits out exactly what they did all [00:27:00] day, and then it puts it in steps. Wow. So it makes it a somp. So super easy. So you could do the same thing with the GoPro. We're just like, Hey, here's the video. Like, give me a sob.

That's amazing. I I It's something attached to perplexity, like it's an AI driven tool. 

Ethan Realander: Yeah. I mean, that's in, that's an incredible use case. 

John Wilson: Oh, yeah. It, it was sweet. So I think for you, it would be like, all right, how do we, how do we record like 10 jobs, right? And then like, Hey, here's how we do this commercial job.

And you dump the video in there. Tell me what we did. Tell me what was good, what was bad. Yep. And then like, codify 

Ethan Realander: it. This is how we do a brick building. This is how we do this or that, or whatever. Yeah. And then if I'm going to hire a salesperson later this year Oh yeah. Or something like that. Same thing.

I just, you know, screen record me sending emails all day. Mm-hmm. It, you know, it learns or like, however the ride along 

John Wilson: stuff, uh, like we started working with, uh, craft and it's like a sales ride along software and it listens. Everything cool. So you can just take that and you can do the same thing like, all right, here's the, here's where we noticed inflection, [00:28:00] here's the how.

I broke that objection. Here's how I thought about pricing it. Here's the discount you're capable of giving. 'cause I gave it. Wow. 

Ethan Realander: That is super cool. 

John Wilson: So you can like, yeah, you can codify all this stuff. Wow. And just videos looms. So in your voice recordings. 

Ethan Realander: Yeah. In your experience having grown the business over the past, I think you said nine years, like mm-hmm.

Looking back, if this technology had been available the whole time at, this is a totally different 

John Wilson: game now. It's 

Ethan Realander: much, at what point would you have implemented it if you had this like in year one or year three, year four. Yeah. When was the right time to Yeah. Really like hammer this? 

John Wilson: Yeah. I think, um, I mean, I think that what you're doing right now is what you should be doing.

Ethan Realander: Yeah. 

John Wilson: I like you're focusing on leads, you're focusing on sales. Yeah. Like, that's what matters, right. I think over the winter, like when you're not in peak season. You should probably build an onboarding program. Right. And you should figure out a way to do it. Ideally, there's some videos like the GoPro thing, but like you, especially, you have seven months of on, [00:29:00] like, I would not be wasting any of that time unlike building April's process.

Just make, 

Ethan Realander: just make, yeah. You gotta make them, 

John Wilson: you gotta make the money. Yeah. Yeah. And then you've got four months to, you know, build, right? Yeah. Uh, but yeah, it's definitely like this, this was in a, our Facebook group. This conversation came up earlier today or yesterday or something. But that exact question came up of the prompt was, what's the thing, the biggest mistake you've made with Fi, like financially or something like that.

And there was like a bunch of responses and most of them were like, I overbought tools. Hmm. Too early in the business, which that is a real. Like thing craft is great. There's a few other like solutions like that, that, that are just like extremely premium. Most people that buy 'em, and this might be like 80 grand a year of a, of a subscription.

Okay. It's a lot of fucking money. Right, right. And, and like most people would buy 'em and then just like not do [00:30:00] anything with it. 

Ethan Realander: Yeah. I mean, I think that's one, one of the interesting things about like the ETA Yeah. Sort of vibe now is there's like one segment of that. World that I see is like, has all the right intentions Yeah.

But is trying to like over intellectualize. Yeah. The business. In the early stages a little bit too much. And 

John Wilson: what's work? Well, I think we're guilty of like, we share what works for us. Right. But you're a 30 million business. Yeah. It's a, it is a totally different thing, right? So like I've learned to be a lot more cautious on now I do think craft flow could probably work, right?

But we've learned to be a lot more, more cautious with like, hey, before I give a wreck. Yeah. I don't know if you have the, like the operating bandwidth to put this a hundred thousand dollars thing that I casually mentioned to work. 

Ethan Realander: Right. And are there like much lower cost, higher R oi, like totally. Is Is is the software like a marginal Yeah.

Like margin boost? Yeah. Can [00:31:00] you just like go out and knock some doors and get away Higher ROI in three hours. You should probably do that, even if it's Yeah, a hundred percent. Even if it's not fun and you don't like it. Yeah, and it's like not as sexy as being on the computer, but I mean, well, I 

John Wilson: loved that you basically weren't doing Google ads.

I feel like. One that's hilarious. And two, they honestly, the, the group ads, it scare me so much. They totally scare me. I, I think that, like, that, to me, that totally tracks. It's like, okay, this is gonna take some real energy. 

Ethan Realander: Right. 

John Wilson: Uh, but it's gonna work. Like you're, you're at, what, 80,000 or something and you're, or you're about to hit 80,000.

Ethan Realander: This, I mean, we're tracking towards that, this book. Yeah. So if, if we do everything we do, then. We should hit that. And the Google ads, like I know they'll work at the right moment, but right now, like I know if I can get, get myself in front of a homeowner Yeah, I will. I will sell a lot of them. Yeah. And that's like, I can put that in my hands and I can control Yeah.

That destiny. Yeah. But the, I don't know right now where every dollar invested in marketing Yes. Is so important. Like just putting that into a black box like this might be [00:32:00] irrational, but no, you're, you are correct. It scares me to just burn like. Two grand a month that I could, like, I could get a cold caller for.

John Wilson: Well, in the, and the management fee, like we, we had, uh, we did, we had this conversation on a podcast with, we have a, uh. We have an agency that sponsors us, service scalers. And we talked about exactly this. It's like, Hey, when should you add Google Ads? And it's like not till like a million dollars or more.

Really? Maybe. Yeah. 'cause there's like, Hey, yeah, if you only have $2,000 a month or $4,000 a month, like a management fee for an agency eats up a pretty good portion of that. Right? And you're not even spending yet. Like, 

Ethan Realander: yeah. And it takes time to work and like all the like No, for sure. The algorithms figured out like you should just go 

John Wilson: knock doors.

Like Totally. Yeah, 

Ethan Realander: for sure. Yeah. But it sucks and like most people don't want, don't like to do it and I don't like to, like, knocking doors is not fun. I don't like that either. But it 

John Wilson: does 

Ethan Realander: work. 

John Wilson: We've been working with we supply trades.com for the past 10 years, but most importantly for the past six months as our primary vendor.

For HVAC supplies, and that's gonna be [00:33:00] generic, as well as some OEM. They have been a huge partner for us in our HVAC for restocking trucks, for getting packouts done on time and getting quick deliveries when we need it. Their free pro membership is gonna give better pricing. It's free shipping for orders over $99.

And you get access to a team of world class experts that know plumbing, hydronics, and HVAC like the back of their hands. Like these guys are incredible as a savings to our audience. They offered 20% off your first order if you use the code owned 20 O-W-N-E-D two zero. So click the link below or go to we supply trades.com/owned and operated to find out a little bit more.

So you launched. It, it was Westchester Weekly. Yeah. 

Ethan Realander: Westchester 

John Wilson: Weekly. Okay. How, like, how'd it go? 

Ethan Realander: Westchester Weekly was, I, I sort of like started learning about mm-hmm. The local newsletter stuff. It's super hot on X right now. Yeah. Yeah. And, and TJ's and others have done a really, really awesome job. Yeah.

Bringing that into the fore and, [00:34:00] you know, making that. That business concept a lot less opaque than it was before when there weren't that many people doing it. So, you know, props to him and all those other guys who have been talking a lot about it. Mm-hmm. And bring a lot of transparency to it. But I basically discovered the concept through him and a couple other guys online.

Mm-hmm. And I thought it was super interesting and cool and I liked the idea of a modern media brand that. Doesn't focus on news as much, doesn't focus on politics at all, and meets readers and local residents where they spend their time. 

John Wilson: Yeah. 

Ethan Realander: One of the things that Legacy Media, um, doesn't do very well is exactly that print publications, like, that's not where people are putting their eyeballs anymore.

Yeah, yeah. People do put their eyeballs on social media. Yeah. The problem with running a media brand through social media exclusively is that. The, [00:35:00] the, the economics suck. Economics suck. Yeah. And the format itself makes providing curated, yeah. And aggregated content really hard because of the feed format.

John Wilson: Yeah. 

Ethan Realander: That medium just like doesn't work for curated content that isn't driven by the algorithm. So when I came across the new local newsletter thing, um, you know. It made a lot of sense to me that people are still spending lots of time in their emails. Mm-hmm. They still open emails from people they know, people they trust, brands they trust, and that that could be a really interesting medium to, for, you know, local media to replace the legacy and the social media.

Channels. I hadn't really given it that much thought, but I sort of started poking around my rolling suds businesses service area to see, um, you know, does something like that exist? Yep. And it turns out that in the Connecticut portion of my service area, there are a couple people who are actually doing that.

One of them is based in the town where I grew up. [00:36:00] And there are a couple others throughout the state that do essentially, it's 

John Wilson: similar to like how it's currently hot on X. Like Yeah, 

Ethan Realander: it, it actually is. And they were, a couple of these things were founded, like the one in my hometown was founded like over 10 years ago, like probably like 10 or 15 years ago.

Before local newsletters were like, before that was a phrase. 

John Wilson: Yeah. 

Ethan Realander: And they just sort of like. Invented that. Yeah. You know, spontaneously, and they did a really good job. But in the New York part of my territory, my service area in Westchester County, I didn't see anything like that. Mm-hmm. There's a guy on x, I think his name is Michael Kaufman.

He owns one in the Catskills, which is a little bit further north. Okay. Um, and he does an amazing, like his design is beautiful. He's found some really cool ways of monetizing the brand. He's done a really, really good job. And we're like, not even in the same stratosphere, but, so I saw someone like that.

Mm-hmm. But I didn't see anything in my, in my rolling subs businesses service area. Yeah. So then it became, you know, I sort of had the idea that, [00:37:00] is there like a good way to pair. My primary business rolling suds with a local media brand. Obviously there's a potential, you know, advertising channel there where if you own the media brand and you own the local service business, yeah, it's free advertising.

Like that's, that's really nice lead gen channel. That was sort of the introduction. But as we've started to grow it more and more and we. Myself and, and one of my buddies. Yeah. Um, who helps me write it. You know, I've become more bullish on the media brand as its own asset. Mm-hmm. Um, to grow. There's lots of different ways you can monetize it with ads and things like Spark Loop, but also like what Michael Coffin has done, or he hosts events, you know, we've talked about doing, like partnering with a restaurant and doing like a murder mystery dinner and having the restaurant host it.

We put it on and we split the revenue and we charge like. A hundred, 150 bucks ahead or something like that. And that could be a really nice way to, yeah. To monetize and continue to build credibility [00:38:00] and brand value in the area where I'm building a service business that is also reliant on credibility and brand value with my customers.

So being able to pair those things has been really fun and you know. We've, we've grown it and it's, it's still growing and we're reinvesting, um, in it. So to try and accelerate the growth, but it's still small, but I think it's a really interesting idea. So it's cool to see lots of other people Yeah. Try different Yeah.

Ideas all around the country. 

John Wilson: Yeah. It's been, it's been a funny like thing to watch I got. Yeah. We obviously like actively run, uh, media. Right property. And um, and it's been a lot of fun. And I went down this rabbit hole of local, just like seemingly everyone. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and it, it is interesting the economics of it.

There. There was a guy in, um, North Carolina, I don't remember his name, but he ended up selling to Axios and it was a $2 million, uh, local, the Charlotte Observer. Hmm. It [00:39:00] was $2 million with 55,000 subs. And from what I'm reading, most people are like, how much are you getting a sub for 

Ethan Realander: like 25, 30 cents?

John Wilson: Yeah. So like $17,000. 

Ethan Realander: Yeah. 

John Wilson: Of that's how much he would've spent to get 55,000 subs. Right. And. It's a $2 million business. Now, obviously there's a lot of like, who's selling the ads? How are you targeting? Like there's a lot going on there. 

Ethan Realander: Totally. But that was interesting. It can be very cheap to acquire customers and you know, people are starting to talk about, you know, how can you.

How can you recoup the cost of acquiring the customer? Like upon acquisition? Yeah, so things like sparks. Yeah. How, yeah, how 

John Wilson: do you think about that? I've, I've been reading the Reddit, it's, I don't, it's sub Reddit. Is that what that's called? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. The like brain just blanked, but like, there's a whole thing on local newsletters.

Ethan Realander: Okay. I haven't even looked at on Reddit for it. 

John Wilson: No, dude. It's, well, it basically, I do have the flight home, so like, obviously like, you know, we run a newsletter and so there's a Reddit, the sub red is like. At [00:40:00] newsletters, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Or there's also a Just Start and e either one of those will will hit local newsletters a lot, huh?

Like way more in depth than Twitter. 

Ethan Realander: Interesting. 

John Wilson: And everyone's problem is revenue. Totally. Like everyone's problem is revenue. 

Ethan Realander: Yeah. 

John Wilson: So like how are you thinking about 

Ethan Realander: that? So we're still really early on in solving that puzzle, but one of the things we've done, I'll cover sort of the two things that we're doing right now.

The first one is we just started experimenting with Spark Loop. And one thing that Spark Loop does essentially like their main product, is when a new subscriber hits subscribe on Westchester Weekly. A short, uh, small little popup will say, Hey, thanks for subscribing. You know, the Westchester Weekly team recommends you check out these other newsletters.

Um, and then it shows like 3, 4, 5 other newsletters that Spark Loop's algorithm has, you know, decided are a potential good fit for my subscriber base. They'll recommend them. They can just click and [00:41:00] say, you know, subscribe to these other ones. And then, are you on Beehive or, and we're on beehive, so, so you can also, so Spark 

John Wilson: Loop runs on, 

Ethan Realander: yeah.

So they have an integration. So it all just, you just set it up for you For some 

John Wilson: reason I thought that would've been competitive. 'cause Beehive sort of has like a recommendation. 

Ethan Realander: Yeah. So they. They also have it, I don't know exact, I haven't actually played around with beehive's recommendations thing. Okay.

We do do some ads through beehive's Ad network. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That will like run above the fold in the newsletter. But as far as their, their recommendations, like post subscribe thing, we use Spark Loop and it's only been like a week of that, but right now it's looking like we are recouping like. 50 to 75% of the cost of acquiring the customer.

Oh, wow. Immediately. That's crazy. Which is amazing, obviously, like if you pair that with another advertisement or another Yeah. Revenue generating channel, you can reinvest back in the growth of the newsletter extremely fast. 

John Wilson: So what's stopping you from doing that? [00:42:00] Why not run a thousand dollars a day of ads?

Ethan Realander: It's just time. It's time. Yeah. I'm just like, you know, I've got a lot of hands in a lot of different pots and I'm trying to keep them in. Only one or two pots at, at a time. But, but that's one channel that I think makes growing rapidly really, really easy is that, you know, you get paid back so fast. Yeah.

From acquiring customers. Yeah. That, you know, the smart thing that I should do is like reinvest really, really quickly, um, immediately, uh, while subscribers are cheap and it's not very competitive Yeah. To, to get them. And then other things we're doing are. Working on some local partnerships. So one thing that is sort of like a dream partnership that we have is to work with a local minor league sports team, talking with them about doing rather than outright selling tickets.

Um, our subscriber base is just not that big. So selling tickets to a sporting event is, you know, the odds that one, that that converts just [00:43:00] not that high with. You know, a subscriber base that just isn't that big. But what we can do is we can run a giveaway with free tickets mm-hmm. And collect emails and have them pay for the emails.

Yep. So they can grow their email list. The LTV of an email for them is probably really, really high. So if we can collect those emails, send it right to them, you know, that's probably really, really good for them. Um, so we're doing stuff like that. We're working on a couple things with folks like that. And then there's, you know, all the other service businesses.

Med spas and the lawyers and the real estate agents that we're just starting to tip our toes into. But you combine all those things. You 

John Wilson: just like cold calling 'em or 

Ethan Realander: cold email. Same thing. Yeah. You just get in front of 'em, tell 'em, you know how many eyeballs you can put them in front of every week. How do you get that list?

Just 

John Wilson: Google. 

Ethan Realander: Google, yeah. It's super manual. You could use a tool like Outs scraper, um, where you will put in the input. So, you know, I wanna find every real estate agent in these zip codes. Yeah. And it just scrapes Google. And then you've [00:44:00] got a list and you could probably even run that through and email software.

Yeah. And, and you could probably, probably automate that pretty well. You could probably even automate a lot of the follow ups pretty well. Yeah. Um, I haven't done that. Just because I haven't. Yeah. Um, but that would be the smart way to do it. And if you combine all of those revenue generating things, like that's a real business.

Yeah. Could be a real business. Yeah. And then you get to the point where you can hire someone to do the biz dev for you. Mm-hmm. You hire another writer to do another one or two publications during the week, so then you're running two or three, it's a lot more ad slots, and you can see how it can be a real thing in addition to the synergies with.

A business like rolling suds in the same service area. 

John Wilson: Yeah. 

Ethan Realander: So it's a really interesting idea, I think. 

John Wilson: Yeah. What, what do you think, I saw something on Twitter yesterday. I think you might have commented on it. It was a guy named Joss or Ja, or, 

Ethan Realander: um, I think he might be in Winnipeg and he, his newsletters big, I don't remember what the numbers are, but big, well he said, uh, 

John Wilson: it was like 35,000 [00:45:00] subs Yeah.

In the email and then 70,000 like on like followers. Yeah. Uh, so big. Totally. Yeah. He was like thinking about going backwards with it. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, you've been doing this for four months, like what is your take? So I'm, I guess I'll summarize it better for the listener. Yeah. I think his name's Ja. I'm trying to get a call with him.

It just sounded interesting. Yeah. I mean, he seems, I've 

Ethan Realander: listened to, he seems like a cool guy. He seems really smart, really scrappy. Yeah. He seems. 

John Wilson: So, uh, so he has this like, big local newsletter. I think 35,000 subs is considered big, right? 

Ethan Realander: Definitely. Yeah. 

John Wilson: Okay. So, so big local newsletter, a hundred thousand total, uh, followers.

And that is the business currently. I think he's a real young guy. Like 24. 

Ethan Realander: Yeah, 25, which is, I mean, it's super impressive. Oh, hell yeah. Yeah. He's killing it. 

John Wilson: And uh, that business right now just from his Twitter is like. Low six figures, revenue, something like that. 

Ethan Realander: Probably like I, my guess, and I have to be corrected wrong, I would guess like between one and, and like two 50.

John Wilson: Okay. And he, and [00:46:00] his, his question was, Hey, should I launch an HVAC company? Yeah. On the back of this newsletter? Which like, I don't know, like, 

Ethan Realander: yeah, so like what do you think? I think it's way harder to do it in that order. Like there's, that's what 

John Wilson: it seemed like to me. It seems like he's got a good business.

Ethan Realander: I think he's got a good business. He's like, blow that up. I would, if I were him, I would probably blow that up and do more events. Yeah. Like getting into a service business, it's just so different. Yeah. There's so much more CapEx involved in it. It's way more of a, it's a, it's, it's a people business. Mm-hmm.

And it's a very different kind of people business than hiring like writers and mm-hmm. And newsletter like biz dev people. You just have to throw yourself into that completely if you want it to. Be worth the effort. Yeah. I really don't think you can like half do it. Like could you do like Christmas lights is only a couple months out of the year.

Like Yeah. Like that. He could probably make that work pretty easily. But [00:47:00] if I were starting with a newsletter and jumping into hvac, like I think that'd be really, really hard. Yeah. To do it right. To do it right. Yeah. And to not do a business like that. Right. It doesn't seem like it's that worth it to do it, but there are probably some services, like I said, like that are a little bit lower CapEx, where Christmas lights, you can take like 50% on deposit.

Mm-hmm. Use that to pay for the materials, so you're really not outlaying that much cash and investing it upfront. Mm-hmm. You could probably do that pretty decent, but. Like some of the other stuff that'd be a really heavy lift and I'm not sure, it's like the juice is really worth the squeeze when he is got something.

I don't think so. That's really awesome. 

John Wilson: Don't that That was, that was kind of my take. 

Ethan Realander: Yeah. Yeah. I think he's got really, really great gem, and I don't know where he's generating his revenue from, but I would like Winnipeg's a real city. I think that's where he's from, but Winnipeg's like a big city and.

There's probably like a lot of stuff you could do. Yeah. To grow a media brand in a city like that. Yeah. Um, but I don't know, maybe he says, see something. I [00:48:00] don't. It's totally possible. 

John Wilson: Yeah. I mean it seemed like, um, like my quick take was it was like an EV play. So how can I take this cash flowing thing that has audience and turn it into enterprise value?

Yeah. 'cause I do think that's the danger of local media. Like the act, the Charlotte Observer, $2 million of revenue. It's sold for $5 million. Wow. I don't know if there's that many of those types of transactions. And the way it sold was to Axios, which launched Axios Local. Yep. And then they had a half a billion dollar deal.

Right. So like I, and I think Charlotte Observer was the first of 30 local newsletters. So it was like their bi, it was basically a platform investment. Yep. To launch 29 more, or buy 29 more. I don't know. I don't know what like the bag looks like in local. I could totally be wrong. I don't think anyone 

Ethan Realander: knows really.

It's so like, yeah, they're just not selling yet. They're, they're all grow, they're all so early in their growth trajectory that. I don't think anyone really knows [00:49:00] where the limit is and sort of where growth caps, like where exit value and multiples might cap, because they're just really not trading yet.

They haven't been around that long. Yeah. Uh, for the most part except for the, you know, couple examples that you're talking about. Yeah. Um, but I would think, I mean, like Legacy Media used to be really huge businesses and just because that form of media isn't big anymore Yeah. Doesn't mean that a new version of, yeah.

Local media couldn't be really substantial too, so, 

John Wilson: well, when we were looking at tam, an easy measurement was what's the current distribution of your local print newspaper? 

Ethan Realander: Yeah. 

John Wilson: Like can you just get more subscribers than that? Because like that's the tam. 

Ethan Realander: Yeah. 

John Wilson: So for us locally, like we're, we're in northeast Ohio, but like we're closer to Akron, and Akron has something called the Akron Beacon Journal.

And I think its distribution is like 25,000. 

Ethan Realander: Really. 

John Wilson: Like it's not that big. 

Ethan Realander: No. I feel like you guys could, I mean with like, if you just dumped some money into ads [00:50:00] for Right. Six months, like you guys could probably sniff at that right? Pretty easily. 

John Wilson: Right? 

Ethan Realander: Without trying that hard. 

John Wilson: I think so too. And the product 

Ethan Realander: is, is I think your, your product market fit would be a lot better Yeah.

Than a legacy newspaper. 

John Wilson: Yeah. 

Ethan Realander: So you'll probably have like a higher NPS. Then yeah, the newspaper would 'cause you're just meeting the customers where they want be and giving them the news that they actually want. Not like, oh, like, you know, so and so like political scandal. Yeah. In the like Chamber of Commerce or whatever.

Who cares about that? 

John Wilson: Yeah. No, yeah. I, I agree. But yeah, I, I agree on the, uh, on the Winnipeg thing, I feel like he's got, I, I, I understand wanting to chase enterprise value and like being stuck with like. A cash cow that isn't worth a lot could be a real problem. Yeah. I think like I would find an easier, I would do, I would find easier.

Easier enterprise value. 

Ethan Realander: I mean, I think TJ's doing a really good job with Oh yeah. With his business. 'cause he's helping launch local newsletters and I think that's a really great idea. Yeah. In this moment. And I'm [00:51:00] not, not to suggest that, you know, this guy competes those competes. Yeah. Yeah. But that's like.

He knows how to build a newsletter. It's good. Like other people are demanding help like a service. Yeah. To help do that. So why not do something like that? 

John Wilson: I met a guy that did this like 10 years ago for. I don't remember the, I don't remember the industry segment, but like he helped launch local newsletters.

Really? He did like 50 of them. Wow. And it was for this, I don't remember the, it was like PR or accounting or something like that. But he would launch these like. Local newsletters in Georgia and DC and they were 30 to 40,000. Wow. Yeah, it was, it was wild. 

Ethan Realander: Do, do you know what the structure, like, would he take an equity stake or would it just, would he just charge like a monthly retainer 

John Wilson: charge?

A monthly retainer, but somehow he ended up claiming them back? I 

Ethan Realander: don't, Hmm. 

John Wilson: I really don't remember how 

Ethan Realander: interesting. 

John Wilson: Yeah, 

Ethan Realander: because I think you could probably structure it. I mean, I don't know. I've never tried, but you could probably structure it as some sort of partnership where you're like. [00:52:00] Have a minority stake in it and you charge some sort of, you know, monthly retainer for whatever ongoing service you're providing.

Yeah. But I think that would be a really interesting business for someone who knows how to launch. Yeah. Local newsletters to do. Yeah. But maybe that's not interesting to him. Maybe he wants to do like a totally different line of business. 

John Wilson: Yeah. I don't know. I agree. Like you've got the easy thing. Stay, probably stay with the easy, but listen, if 

Ethan Realander: he, if he's, if he is like, if he's got the balls to, yeah.

To throw himself into a local service business, like pop off more power to him. Go do, he's clearly scrappy enough and hungry enough that I'm sure he'd be successful at it, but I would just think really hard about whether you want to. Mm-hmm. If that's the kind of business you want to be spending. Your day to day doing.

It's just really different. It's just different. 

John Wilson: Yeah. It is. Yeah. It's what, so what do you think the next couple years looks like for you? 

Ethan Realander: Oh, that's a great question. Uh, I mean, I'm, I'm laser focused on just growing. Mm-hmm. My rolling suds business, I mean, Westchester Weekly too, but Rolling suds business is the main thing.

Mm-hmm. So I'm [00:53:00] keeping the main thing, the main thing, and I want to grow that thing as fast as possible. Get it as big as possible. Is it net profitable 

John Wilson: yet? 

Ethan Realander: Yeah, we're, we're, we're, we're profitable. Um, I think we turned a profit in our second month. That's 

John Wilson: crazy. 

Ethan Realander: Um, which has been great. So, I mean, like I said, I've gotten really lucky.

I'm in a really good market. Um, I've had good success with techs not giving me too many problems. We've had some turnover, but that's solvable. I haven't had any bad people. On the team, which has been really good. Um, so we're able to reinvest in the business. Mm-hmm. We're gonna be getting a second truck here, which will give us a lot of capacity.

And then who knows, maybe we will expand, um, next year or something like that, um, out a little bit. Uh, but I would love to get this business to. The point where I can grow a team around me so that I'm not running 10 residential estimates a day. I can focus on a lot of the commercial stuff, which is much bigger ticket, much higher [00:54:00] margin work, and I can have people around me to support, um, some of the other parts of the business, whether it's, you know, running day-to-day ops and supporting me with sales and things like that.

Um, that I think will be a big milestone for when we. Turn from, you know, like a scrappy startup to like, okay, there's like a real path to build. Like 

John Wilson: Yeah, 

Ethan Realander: a firm, not just Ethan Sales, who's the 

John Wilson: biggest currently, and because Rolling Sales is young, really young. Yeah. So there's probably not like a huge franchisee yet.

Ethan Realander: There's a couple in the network that are pretty consistently doing. Six figure months. I think right now. Really, so here's what I'll say. I would not be surprised if in a couple or a few years there are like several franchisees who are doing mid seven figures. Interesting. I think there's a lot of room to grow.

Yeah. I think the national account sales, you know, the franchisors business. Yeah. I think is, is really promising. Huh. [00:55:00] It makes a lot of sense to me that if you are a national QSR National Hotel brand like. 

John Wilson: You want consistency. You want 

Ethan Realander: consistency. You want one vendor, one point of contact. You don't want a thousand Like chuck in a trucks.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who are providing different pricing, different level of quality, you know, different level of responsiveness. And right now there's no other national provider of this service. So it makes a lot of sense to me that there could be a lot of growth there for the whole network. That makes sense.

John Wilson: So regularly, some regularly hitting a hundred thousand. And the biggest is like four trucks, five trucks. Is that, does that sound right? Oh, that's, I heard they were starting to already see some mergers. 

Ethan Realander: There's have has been some m and a in network. It's kind 

John Wilson: of 

Ethan Realander: wild. It's crazy 

John Wilson: for like a 24 month old.

You know? 

Ethan Realander: Yeah. I mean there's one of the things, like I said earlier, like one of the things that Franchisor has done really well Yeah. Is they found a lot of franchisees who are super hungry. Yeah. Super ambitious and have like [00:56:00] enough capital to build a real business. Yeah. And not just, you know, start with one territory and kind of like pedal along with that forever.

Um, so yeah, there has been. Some m and a within the network, which I think is really healthy and we're gonna see more and more of that over time as some people scale. Mm-hmm. And you know, having liquidity within the network is really good for a brand. Yeah, that's great. Having people move in and out and have people grow and consolidate and exit is, I think, really, really healthy.

But yeah, I think there, there are a couple, a couple franchisees who are growing really fast already running like five plus trucks, um, with. I think there's one franchisee with more than 10 territories who's super bullish on it. There are some like institutionally backed franchisees in the network who've either had success in other franchises in like.

Have, you know, a lot of capital to invest mm-hmm. The opportunities there, or have some, you know, private [00:57:00] equity support, which is amazing. Like I love to be a part of a brand where it's funded, it's funded, and people are trying to do stuff, investing. That's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to grow a real business here, and it's cool to be around people who are similarly ambitious.

John Wilson: Yeah. If you've got any message out there. For like new entrepreneur, they're just starting. Yeah. They're about to get their, you know, punched in the stomach for a year. 

Ethan Realander: What, what do you got? I mean, I would say like, you're gonna get punched not in the stomach. Like you're gonna get, you're gonna get punched in the face over and over and over again, and one of the best things you can do is.

Just take those punches. Mm-hmm. And you know, not take 'em personally. You're gonna have big losses and you're gonna make big mistakes. And if you treat everything like a learning experience, you're gonna get better every single day. And that's gonna be what creates success. Mm-hmm. Down the road. I'd also say like if I was an entrepreneur for two years and I listened [00:58:00] to all the podcasts.

Mm-hmm. I watched all the videos. I read all the books, and. I think that was net net a good use of time because when the con, the time came for me to take the leap, I sort of knew what to look for and yeah, what not to look for. But at the same time, like at a certain point, like you can't just keep listening to more stuff.

You gotta do it and there's no perfect decision. And if you, if you're really meant to be in this game 

John Wilson: mm-hmm. 

Ethan Realander: You just gotta get in the game like. This is not gonna be the last business I ever own. I don't know if this is gonna be, you know, this may or may not be the best business I ever owned. We'll find out in 20, 30, 40 years.

But I'm in it and I'm learning, and I'm making mistakes and getting better every day. And the only way you can figure that stuff out is just by doing it. So be smart, make a good decision with how and when you get into entrepreneurship. But. You gotta do it, and you gotta approach it as like a, from a growth mindset and [00:59:00] just take every punch as a lesson.

John Wilson: Mm-hmm. 

Ethan Realander: That was awesome. That's what I would say. 

John Wilson: No, that's, that's a, that's a great one. Uh, if people want to connect with you. Your story was great. How can they find you? 

Ethan Realander: Yeah, I would, I would find me on X. Um, my handle is at e Relander. Um, so my dms are open. I love chatting with people who are into business mm-hmm.

And, and talking about stuff. So feel free to connect and, and we'll chat sometime. Awesome. 

John Wilson: Well, thanks for coming on, dude. This was fun. Thanks for making the trip. 

Ethan Realander: Yeah, thanks for having me. This 

John Wilson: was a cool story. I, I love that we got to talk about early entrepreneurship. We got to talk about my current latest obsession, which is local media.

Yep. And uh, I love that we were able to pair 'em, so this was awesome. Thank you. Totally. 

Ethan Realander: Yeah, this was great to be here. Thanks, Sean.