How to Scale to $100M Without Breaking Your Business

How do you keep growing fast without breaking your business?

In this Owned and Operated supercut, John Wilson pulls together his favorite moments from recent conversations on what actually snaps when you scale: cash, leadership bandwidth, and the frontline experience that drives revenue.

You’ll hear why growth is expensive (in trucks, infrastructure, and overhead), how disciplined operators reinvest instead of upgrading their lifestyle too early, and why “the war is won inside the home” no matter how good your dashboards look.

If you’re running HVAC, plumbing, electrical, or roofing and feeling the strain of growth, this episode gives you the frameworks—and the hard truths—to keep momentum without chaos.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why growth consumes cash (and how to plan for it)
• The “overhead body” you must build early: leadership, CX, SG&A, marketing, purchasing
• How owners stall out by pulling cash too early (the lifestyle trap)
• Why playbooks beat ego: don’t reinvent the wheel (Nexstar and more)
• Why frontline obsession matters more than dashboards
• How onboarding + clear pay plans create a culture that performs

Connect:
John Wilson: https://x.com/WilsonCompanies

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

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Business Updates
• 5:03 Leadership and Team Building
• 13:39 Operational Excellence and Culture
• 21:35 Mars and Hourly Backup
• 25:43 Vision and Achieving Big Goals

Transcript

 What's up everybody? It is John Wilson from Owned and Operated. Over the course of January, February, and March, we are acquiring a couple businesses. So we're a few weeks into January. We've already bought two. We're about to, uh, bring on our third. So I'm super busy and because of that we are. Gonna be our recording schedule's a little bit messed up, so we have some super cuts of some of my favorite moments.

Also, stay tuned as we start dropping more information about the deals that we're doing and how we're thinking about acquisitions.

30 plus percent growth is a lot and. So we've been 30 plus percent growth for a long time now, but it's different when you're doing 30, 30% from like, you know, three to 10. And even now we're in the mid twenties and we're at, we're at like, we're probably end the year mid forties. And it is a lot to manage.

And uh, and I think about you often because I'm sitting here like I. Next year, like I want to slow down, but it's almost like how do you slow down? Like, because I think momentum just keeps going. How, I'm sure there's a lot to it, but how did you think about managing that? 

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Yeah, we used to joke all the time, a couple things. One, growth is actually really expensive and to, to do it in a healthy way. That's my first thought 

is like it's capital constraints.

That cons 

consumes cash. Mm-hmm. 

I mean, I think at our peak in a single year, we bought $6 million of trucks. Right? Yeah. After you outfitted, I'm shelving lettering and like it's eating your cash and uh. So not only is it expensive in terms of the the capital outlays you have to put in place, but the other way that it's expensive if you're gonna do it the right way and in a healthy and sustainable way, is you really have to lean into what I'll call some, some of your, your sg and a body, your overhead infrastructure, your people, infrastructure, leadership, infrastructure, whether that's.

Purchasing and customer experience and digital strategy and marketing and all these, all the purchasing supply chain, uh, all these other different functions that if you don't really make some people investments in those areas, uh, they're gonna become pain points in the very near future. Uh, and so as a result, if you're keeping the toggle at this 30 plus percent growth rate.

Uh, you can see some margin compression happen from that because you're intentionally uh, yeah. Continuing to build, uh, the overhead body that your business needs. Yeah. Next year and the following year, and you're building it a little bit earlier just to make that journey a little bit smoother, a little bit less turbulent.

Yeah. A little bit more certain. And so that we, we always joke that, well, maybe this will be the year that we should just slow down and we could, we could have 22% EBITDA margins and just pump the brakes and pause at 130. Uh, but I'll say this culturally, uh, growth and change and challenge, uh, into the opportunity that comes from it for promotions and advancement and new roles.

That's become part of our culture. And at this point, I don't think it, it would be really hard to slow this thing down and, and to culturally say, you know what? We decided not to grow this year. I think everyone would look at me like, I've got, uh, you know, three heads. 

Well, I don't even think you can. I think it'd be the same thing internally for us.

Like, I think it becomes the culture. Like everyone's always looking for the next thing. Yeah. And it's not just you driving. You have a hundred for us, a hundred, whatever you have 400 whatever driving. Yeah, it's uh, I don't know, like what was the biggest growth year percentage. 

I don't know. I'd have to do some math on those.

I would say not, I would say we were remarkably in 2023 and 2024, we were below 30%. They, they were tougher years. They are tougher years. Uh, and there's even a disparity within our, our business this year around, like St. Louis is a large, stable, a hundred million dollar plus operation, uh, is growing at 9% this year.

Right? Yeah. But we're the reason, we're, we're growing at a, a, a consolidated just under 20 19%. Is 'cause of the Nashville market. We're, we're growing at 56 uh percent and because of our roofing acquisition is also experiencing really high organic growth. Uh, but I, so I would say at any point it was really stayed between like 30 and 40% and then 2023 and 2024 have just been.

Uh, more challenging environments. Uh, no doubt about it. And we budgeted this year, our budget was like 34% organic growth. Across, consolidated across all, yeah. All three entities. And, um, uh, and we're off. We're at 19. It's been a tougher year. 

Yeah, that's a, it's a lot of growth. Uh, I know the challenges that I'm sure you've.

Dealt with, but that we're feeling leadership's been a huge one. Cash. I mean, that's a huge one. You know, it just consumes cash growing. And sort of the, how do you create a good process? How do you create something that works when you feel like you're flying so that it doesn't break again? So sort of like taking the time you need while you also don't have time.

Uh, yeah, leadership, I mean, that's been a challenge, uh, persistent challenge every year. And I would say it's only been exacerbated recently because. As you, you know, Nashville was our second market, then we had this roofing acquisition. Yeah, we've got another opportunity that we're looking to close on here in four weeks or so.

Uh, big business, big opportunity, big operation. And uh, and the constraint continues to be within all of our locations and across the different businesses is we need folks who understand our, our process playbook. Who can execute it and ultimately who can take ownership of everything within their span of care without having to reach up the chain to ask for help all the time.

Right. And just that, those caliber of leaders that can, that can do that and exercise sound judgment and make good decisions for the business, for the team, uh, that is hard to find. And yeah, and it continues to be a real challenge. We're trying to solve it a number of ways. Of course, we wanna recruit externally when, when that makes sense.

Uh, but we're also looking internally and saying who are our really high potential rock stars? I mean, one of the, uh, the gentleman who launched Nashville, um, and who's been instrumental in our, our transformation of our roofing business, uh, he started with us and our plumbing underground team is a laborer busting up concrete right in, in basements.

And, and now we, we found him, he was a, a really talented, uh, individual that was working at the frontline in our business, and we were able to develop and pull him up through our organization. I'm sitting here today saying, I have no doubt there's four more of 'em inside of our business. How do I find them and how do I start pouring into them today?

Uh, and so trying to be really thoughtful around how we're building that talent internally. 

When you think about, uh, you know, as a part of this series, what we've been trying to unpack is like, Hey, that's a, that's a hell of a journey, right? A hundred and 

mm-hmm. 

Uh, 10 to or 130 from, from 10. That's, that's wild.

Uh, when you think about some of the pivotal decisions through any point. But I would say especially those early Next Star obviously would be one of the, one of the big ones. Um. How, what do you think those were? Sort of that 20 mark, the 30, the 40. 

I'll make a few comments on that score. Where I see a lot of operators, a lot of business owners go off the rails is as soon as they reach what I'll call like a, a moderate level of success, you know, you get to $10 million and you made a million dollars in a year.

Yeah. 

Or a million and a half or whatever you end up making. And then you get comfortable and then you, you make substantial shifts in your lifestyle spend and all suddenly, uh, you're sucking cash out of the business that it needs to continue to, to march down that that high growth path that you had originally thought you wanted to go down.

And I can say for the first four years in the business for. I don't think I changed my salary. I was at like 85 or $90,000 a year. That's all I paid myself. Right. Even as we passed like $30 million mm-hmm. Uh, paid myself that same salary and that was at, that was in there. I had a truck from the business, but, but it was financial discipline and commitment to reinvesting in the organization and putting your money where your mouth is.

And going all in. 'cause to scale quickly, it, it does suck up capital, particularly in those early years. Uh, and in those early years are also when banks would be hesitant to lend you anyways. Banks get a little skittish around a $5 million HVAC business or even a $10 million HVAC business. Uh, and so it can be hard to access, uh, bank, uh, financing to support your growth.

So you really need to make sure that you've got a commitment to reinvesting in growth. The other thing I would say is, is don't think you have to reinvent the wheel and don't think you're smarter than the thousands of peers who've gone before you. Uh, I preach a lot about nexstar and say how great it is.

Uh, there, there's a lot of other organizations like nexstar, but the point is, uh, go learn from those who have gone before you and don't think that you're gonna go figure it out on your own, and you're somehow gonna do better than the collective wisdom of these thousands of contractors who've contributed their knowledge to these playbooks that exist out there.

So. Uh, financial discipline and commitment to the business and focus on the operational basics that those, those playbooks that already exist in our space today. Get your hands on one of 'em and just start executing. 

That's great advice, John. Actually, we, we have an episode on that, specifically on reinvesting in your business, and you said something incredibly similar to what Chris is saying right now.

It's, it's wild from a third party to actually hear both of you, uh, fairly successful in the space. The cash has to go 

from somewhere 

to the exact same thing. 

Yeah. I mean. Yeah, my salary was a little bit more modest, but I, I think we start, we were a little bit smaller when, when I started, but I paid myself $65,000 until we crossed 15 million.

Like, uh, and then I upped it slightly. 

Yeah. 

But yeah, it's a, yeah, modest house. Don't have a lake house. 'cause I think, uh, the thing that mattered. What I, what I joke when I tell my wife is like, I'm a, I'm a simple man. I don't need a boat. I don't need a Lamborghini. I need to build a hundred million dollar business.

And that is literally it. Simple. 

Yeah. 

I'm a simple guy. Yeah. But yeah, I think I, I agree. I mean, we, I usually see it. Like earlier on, not even that, like million of cash flow to the owner. I feel like I see it a lot at the three to five. Like they make their first 200 grand and they were a technician in a truck once and now they've got a boat and a lake house and a $90,000 pickup, and they're like, I'm good.

I'm good now. 

Yeah. Not to mention, uh, the time you're spending on that boat and at the lake house, uh, that's, I can tell you in those first four years in particular, thankfully I didn't have kids at the time too, but there wasn't a lot of time for, for other hobbies. Right. If you're, if you're really leaning in to, to executing on that high growth plan, 

what's your time look like now?

Like what do you, what does, what does your day to day. 

You know, it's, it shifted in February when, uh, a gentleman, Matt Wyatt came off of our board. He'd been on a board for two years. Uh, a phenomenal leader. He spent 20 years in the Air Force, uh, before retiring as a colonel, and he led the first Department of Defense, TEDx speaking series when it was at Scott Air Force Base.

A local CEO happened to be there who at the time was running a $700 million manufacturing technology business, and he recruited Matt. This was in 2014, uh, 2013 to join, uh, his company here in town called Perry Waymiller. Uh, Matt joined in a, a, a role that wasn't quite defined, but, uh, uh, this leader, Bob Chapman, knew that he needed somebody to really help him lean into this leadership development piece mm-hmm.

To make sure they could, they could scale their organization in a healthy way. And, uh, so Matt spent 10 years there really as they went from 700 million to three and a half billion and acquired another 150 companies over that period of time. And Matt was at the tip of the spear with respect to how they were leaning into their people strategy, leadership development, integration work.

Um, so I asked him to join our board as we were entering this next stage of growth. And he's been just a really impactful contributor. And when I thought. In 2000 or in February, 2024, this year, I was saying, man, I need, I, I, I think, uh, one of the things I take pride in is, is I wanna be able to recognize when I'm no longer, when I become the constraint, when I think there's someone that could do my job better than me, I want to get out of the way, right?

Mm-hmm. I joke about firing myself seven times over the last eight years, uh, because I'm firing people who are going to do a far better job and have a, a far greater business impact on the span of care that I give them, that I take from me and give to them. And this was an example where I thought, uh, Matt's experience, what he's bringing to the table, uh, uh, is gonna allow him to, to propel our business forward as we think about this next stage of growth, uh, which will include, uh, uh, a much more, uh, acquisitive growth.

Mm-hmm. And really excited at, at some of the things that we're working on there. Uh, and hopefully we'll be able to announce soon, but. Uh, it's been been a ton of fun. So my, my day looks a little different. I've been, been spending a lot of time helping with our pipeline building efforts, uh, in there. Uh, re we were resetting our board now to bring in some different perspectives based on what, what we think, uh, the voices we think we need to help us execute on this next, next four or five years.

Uh, but I now have two folks in my span of care where I used to have seven or eight. Uh, so Matt and our CFO are, are the two folks in my span of care and I, I try and, uh, work through them and, and allows me to focus externally on how we're, uh, we're guiding our organizations, how we're allocating capital across our, uh, our sort of global balance sheet and business and, uh, be a little bit more strategic and a little less tactical in my approach.

But I, I will say, and then I'll shut up. Is, whether you're in my seat or Matt's seat or any one of our leaders, like we have this mantra around having a frontline obsession in our business. And, uh, that shows up. That means that, that I'm spending time doing ride alongs, uh, staying connected to what the people are, do, what our people are doing, who are serving our customers.

Right there where the rubber meets the road. And so I think no matter how, how sort of deep our, our structure gets and how many layers there are to it, I hope to always remain, uh, really, really focused on, on what's happening at the front line and making sure that I'm spending time there, uh, to see it with my own eyes.

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Yeah. We, uh, I really think we just had a conversation about this with our last, uh, guest and it was earning the right to know your gross margin every day because it, it, I, I think the reason that we all hone in on revenue is 'cause it's easy. A pop open ServiceTitan, and there it is. 

Yep. 

But gross margin or gross daily gross profit takes.

That takes a lot to get right. Um, but we've spent, we've spent a lot of time on it and it did, it did move the needle. 'cause we now have daily dashboards everywhere. Where month to date, I can tell you our gross margin, gross profit dollars any day of the month, which has been like, that's been a really pretty big unlock.

For us as we've been moving 

and, and look before, before we get into the next one, little guys, um, the numbers are cool and the KPIs are cool and the countings cool and all that. Don't fucking forget that the war is, is spot inside the home. Mm-hmm. Right? Don't fucking forget that. The, that the battles are won inside the home.

Having a dope as customer experience being able to. Turn a phone call to revenue is where the fucking magic's at. Yeah. Yes. The numbers and the gross profit and the gross margin and all these sales, like all that is dope guys and you need to pay attention to it. And what makes us solid operators and fucking dope ass operators is that we are able to, to see everything, not just, Hey, let me just focus on marketing and hopefully that fixes the operation.

Mm-hmm. Let me just focus on sales and hopefully like the being a dope pass operator. Requires you to focus on every aspect of the, of the of, of the operation. Don't forget that the fucking war is won inside the home, and making sure that we are providing these customers more value than what they see on a piece of paper is the name of the game when you are in there.

Providing the value, providing the options. Mm-hmm. Making sure that the customers are, are, are trusting you. That's where the fucking money's at, not, yes. The KPIs are cool and, you know, having a badass accounting team and knowing your numbers of dope. At the end of the day, whoever, whoever provides the best customer experience is who's gonna win the war.

Okay. And Ishmael, how did you, how did you design, or how did you cultivate that culture within NextGen? Because that, that's one of the, the key pieces that I keep coming back to with your story and trying to understand how to get that. Not, not the experience for the customer, but how do you find and attract the people that can give that experience 

being a look at?

I don't think I've ever told this to anybody that, so guys, our employees aren't fucking stupid, okay? They're not retarded. They know what they know we're making money. They know that how much we're charging. They see the contracts, they see the repairs, they see the cost of the parts. They see how we're running the operation like.

Why we created a such a fucking dope ass culture at action is because I, I'm number one. I am the most fucking unselfish person in the world if I'm making fucking money. Everybody's making money. And that creates a fucking whole culture of like, Hey man, if this guy's gonna take care of us, you guys gotta understand how many times have you had, have you guys heard your employees?

I was at this fucking company and this fucking guy grinding me on my commission and he wouldn't pay me sometimes. And sometimes this and sometimes that and right, and like these were disgruntled employees that weren't treated properly, right. Why, why we were so successful at action is because part of the, part of the most, the, the, the key, the the, the, the key, um, elements in operation is the onboarding process.

And this is where you fuckers miss it. Okay? Onboarding people properly, setting the expectations properly, making sure that when you hire somebody, okay, when you hire somebody, you let them know exactly what's gonna happen, and being confident enough that you fucking step in there and you go like, Hey, look it.

You don't have to worry about money here. You don't have to worry about leads. You don't have to worry about getting paid, right. You don't have to worry about, am I gonna have a job tomorrow? That is 90% of the fucking battle. Mm-hmm. Okay. Making sure that you have a hundred percent employee to work every day instead of a half-ass employee that's worried about their pay, that's worried about making money with you.

That's worried if they have leads, that's worried about their bills, that's worth. Part of the dope ass fucking culture that we built was being able to bring our employees in and be like, look, I'm gonna take all your fucking worries away. All I need you to do is make sure that when you get inside that house, you take care of our clients.

No matter fucking what. I don't care if we're wrong. I don't care if we did something wrong. I don't care if we fucked up there. Whatever it is that we need to do to take care of that client has to be done. And we took, and we had that message from day ones. Of always taking care of the clients and whoever took care of more clients, the most clients would make the most money.

Right. That's how simple I, I got it to, to, to, to everybody that went to a client action is making sure guys, that guys, you've gotta fucking onboard property. You've gotta set the expectations properly. You gotta make sure that you set your boundaries for employees and clients and you don't fucking violate.

Okay. This is how you are gonna get paid being black and white. Look it. I'm gonna give you guys a fucking tip and write this shit down if you're listening to it. When you're onboarding people, you guys gotta have a pay plan right in front of them that is so fucking simple and so retarded that they look at it and they go like, okay, cool.

I know how I'm gonna get paid, right? Mm-hmm. You guys gotta be able to do that on every single employee. You ask anybody on action. You go to any technician, any sales guy, any installer, any customer service rep, any accounting, any production, any, any department in that operation. Okay. You ask them how they're getting paid, I guarantee you they'll, they'll describe it with less than fucking 10 words.

This is how I get paid. That's how simple my pay plans. And that's half of the battle guys, is making sure that they understand their pay so they could, they can in return, focus on the client and taking care of the client every single time. That's what you guys need to do. 

Can you give me an example of that for HVC service or call taking?

They, they ready? Technicians, technicians get paid on. Hourly backup, but then we pay them on performance pay. Okay. Performance per hourly backup. Meaning California is the strictest fucking state in the universe. Not the, not the country. Not the world. The universe. Universe. Okay. If you, if you, if you can pay people property in California, my pay plans work across the universe.

It works in Mexico, Japan. Mm-hmm. It works in fucking, its everywhere. Mars. Mars, baby 

Elon's gonna use it in 

60 days. It works in Mars. So. Hourly backup. So we would pay everybody $20 an hour backup. So they would get, you know, double time overtime, eight hours, all that right? And then we would show them what their performance pay was based on what they were doing.

So repairs, we would pay 'em 30% on a sliding scale all the way to 15%. Okay, 30% SL and scale. 30 15%, meaning, hey, if I went out there and did a motor for a thousand dollars and that was the full book price for the motor, a thousand bucks to install it, to take care of the client, that's what they need. And I didn't discount anything.

They would get a full 30% If they discounted 5%, we would dig them 5% on their commission. If they discounted 10%, we di hit them up to 10% on their, on their repairs. Turnovers. Okay. Meaning when a technician goes in there, provides the, the service for the client, and it has, you know, three, four different options for it.

They're ranging from $500 all the way to $2,500, whatever you guys wanna fucking come up with. Mm-hmm. And, and, and the consumer then it returns, says, Hey, look it. It's a 10-year-old unit. I don't wanna invest 2200 or $2,500 into this unit. How much is a new one? When those magic words come out of that customer's house, that means we provided so much fucking value to them Now, now they wanna explore permanent solutions.

That is called a turnover. That turnover to that type, that turnover gets paid. Uh, and, and we were paying 5% on action. And again, what I was paying at action, the 30% sliding scale to to, to 15 and the 5% on turnover is because we had a high average ticket. We had high closing percentage, we were priced out property.

Okay? So I'm not saying go ahead and do this to your, to your companies right now because you, 99% of your fuckers are not priced out properly. So first, price yourself property in order to pay your, your, your, your employees properly. Mm-hmm. Okay. So turnovers, they would get paid 5%. I've seen companies pay two and a half, three, three and a half percent.

We were paying 5% because we wanted to recruit the top talent in the industry. The reason why everybody wanted to work on action, there's two reasons. Okay. We had a dope as fucking competitive culture. We have a dope as competitive culture, right? We have a, we every, everybody wanted to work there because the top technicians, top sales guys, top installers, top, everything was there.

So. Competitive atmosphere. And the number two, and don't fucking forget this because you fucking forget, we pay more than anybody. People go to your job, people go to your contract, people go to your shitty ass shops, people go, are driving your shitty ass vans. Mm-hmm. Because they're, they're getting paid.

Okay? The reason why they were coming to me, it's an action over anybody in Southern California, is because I was paying more than anybody. I was treating 'em better, and I was paying them better. That's the reason why we were, we were growing so fast. So again. Super simple, 30 to 15%. Slight and gone. Anything repair or I aq.

Then anything that had to do with the labor department, which is install insulation, ducting, whatever they wanted the the labor department to do, they would get paid a, a, a flat 5% on 

for too long. I was letting the wrong marketing agencies set my money on fire, and their marketing looked pretty good on paper.

The reporting was attractive, but at the end of the day, it just wasn't driving leads. That's why I started using service scalers at Wilson Service. Scalers is a marketing agency built specifically for home service company. They focus on the channels that actually drive leads, like targeted PPC, local service ads, SEO, Google Business Profile, so that you're showing up in front of your customers that are actively searching.

They'll help you see exactly what's working, so you stop wasting ad dollars on low quality leads. Right now they're doing something crazy and they're giving the opportunity for one entrepreneur to get up to 12 months of marketing on. So that's up to a hundred thousand dollars in services for the right operator.

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take, taking this back, uh, maybe a few years. Can you walk us through, I don't know if it helps year by year or, or how you want to think about this, but, um, I mean, bankruptcy to 75 million is obviously, that's a big leap.

Can you walk us through some of the steps there? 

Let's call it first seven years were basically nothing like, it was just trying to actually just grind. I mean, I, we weren't making money. We didn't have money to advertise. I was say, putting every dollar I could in the bank account, trying to build up.

Capital, you know, um, trying to get back, you know, bankruptcy stays under credit for seven years, right? Mm-hmm. So I had some time to try to figure out some of that. Some we're still growing, we're doing stuff, but we weren't doing anything significant there. Still trying to figure out how do I build a brand strategy?

What does it look like? 

Mm-hmm. 

Uh, you know, joining, you know, end up, you know, finding all these things. So the first seven years is basically, I mean, it was just every day sun up to sundown, just still working in the field, doing anything. If I got a, a random service call, I'd go do it. Right, slowly, surely I didn't understand pricing.

So one of the ways that I did to figure out even how to build a price book, 'cause I didn't have any money to go find an organization to teach me a price book. So Angie's List was big in our area years and years ago. And I mean, Angie's List still exists, but it was pretty big. Right. It was probably the real first platform for reviews before Google kind of took that over.

Yeah. 

Uh, I got on Angie's List and I signed up for Angie's List, and I read through all the reviews on Angie's List and the price that any cons any person said was the price. They paid for a water heater, a drain code. Oh, interesting. And I wrote 'em all down, you know, this is, I'm not savvy enough for an Excel sheet.

So I wrote 'em all down and then I went through 'em all and I said, okay, this is how much people are saying they're buying from this company, this company, and this company. And I started building my price book off of. What consumers said in there. Then I obviously went back and looked at my prices and built it.

Mm-hmm. 

From there, then I signed up for Angie's List. Angie's List was my first actual marketing like platform, uh, besides having just a rent website. And I signed up for Angie's List, which, you know, at that time was like, it's free to be on Angie's List. Mm-hmm. Now it cost $15,000. So, um, it's like, it's free to have your name somewhere, but nobody will see you.

Mm-hmm. 

Uh, so I was like, well, I was like, I don't have any money, but they're like, guess what? We will finance you. 

Oh, interesting. 

In finance, right? So basically they said it's 15 grand, we'll let you pay payments on it. And I said, you know what? Screw it. Let's do it. So that's where I started off at is on Angie's List.

And the major, major goal I had was get more reviews than everybody else on Angie List. That's what I told the five people on our team. We branded our, we had wrapped our trucks with the eco mm-hmm. Eco plumbers. So people thought we were kind of a franchise. They're like, you guys have franchise? Like, no, there's like four of us, uh, trying to make it happen.

And all we did was get reviews. I said, get reviews, get reviews, get reviews, get reviews. I said, I don't care what we do the job for at this price. At some point to the price a little bit. Get reviews. Get reviews. We wanna make, we wanna look bigger than we are. 

Mm-hmm. 

And we want to get social validation. I said, so social validation will be our play to build our brand.

Get more people to think that, that, not think but know, but think we're bigger than we are and that we have the most reviews. And we did that and we started passing people on Angie's list within probably a year or two years. With more reviews and people have been on it forever. And then we took that same approach into Google immediately when Google started driving us there, I said, get reviews, get reviews, get reviews.

And that was before everybody was really, at least in my world, before everybody's like really focused on reviews. Oh yeah. Today, today our reviews on Google, there's only three people that three places have more reviews than us in Ohio. You know who they are. I'll tell.

Kings Island and the Columbus Zoo. 

That's funny, dude. I'm looking, I'm looking this up right now. Oh, yeah, yeah. 13,000. That is chunky. That's a 

lot. That's in one. That's just in one location. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

You start adding up all of our, all of our Google reviews between all of our locations. 

Yeah. 

So it's pretty crazy.

Yeah. That, that, that, you know, and that, that's, that was definitely it. And I know reviews at some point, it doesn't matter if you have 13,000 or 5,000 reviews 

mm-hmm. 

You know, but the idea was build, build social validation through, through, through the platforms of reviews. And that started with Angie's List and then we carried it over to Google Fast.

Yeah, yeah. You had, 

um, so I guess, I dunno if that answers your question, talk through, but I'm saying that was how we started the service business was, uh, went to Angie's List. I really put a platform on Angie's List, started driving reviews and driving more reviews. And then from there we obviously started digging into more, more marketing strategies.

Yeah. 

Uh, branding, et cetera, et cetera. 

Yeah. And no, it, it did, it was helpful. Do, who was the big player a decade ago in Columbus? 

Um, so Waterworks has been, was big. There's still decent size here. Waterworks was big here. Uh, rotor Rooters here. Um. 

Is Atlas Butler Columbus. 

Atlas Butler. Yeah. Atlas Butler's here.

Atlas Butler's. Big hvac. Big hvac. They have a plumbing division, but they're hvac. 

Yeah, 

they're a big HVAC business. Okay. Um, so I mean, big one was really mostly was Waterworks was the bigger plumbing business here and Rotor Rooter. 

Yeah. 

Um, and then there's a, a handful of other, you know, companies, but those were really who we were, you know, thinking about who we would beat, I guess, for lack of a better term.

Mm-hmm. 

Yeah. Yeah. That's a good way to put it. Yeah, I think, um. When, when did you cross that first 10 million or 20 million? Because it sounds like it was slow and then all at once from sort of what you've described so far. 

Yeah. I mean, I think that's it, right? I, I truly believe in the idea that the world really tests you if you really want it, right?

Yeah. And just the universe does in some level. It really tests you, right? Do you really want it? Once you kind of break through the idea that you're really done, everything that there is, it's like it comes so fast that you don't, yeah, it's like what happened all this time? It felt like there was nothing.

And then all of a sudden it's everything. Right? Yeah. And you're like, whoa, whoa. And, but it was all these things that we were doing to build up to that, right? And yeah, it takes time to build a brand. Like everybody thinks you're gonna go out and flip the switch and have a brand in a marketplace, and everybody's gonna know who you are.

Like, mm-hmm. Yeah. You can run a lot of ads and get some marketing messaging ads, but it also takes time to get the reviews. It takes time for people to know, like, and trust you. It takes time. These, these things didn't happen overnight, right? 

Yeah. Um, yeah, 

especially 

bootstrap too. I mean, 

yeah, 

that, that 

a lot of it's word of mouth.

Mm-hmm. 

Beginning. Right? Because I, I didn't, I couldn't have any money to run a TV ad. Right. Or, um, today we spent a lot of money on TV and radio and billboards. Mm-hmm. But, uh, but, so I guess I'd say the first seven years were very much struggling. 

Mm-hmm. 

Um, about 10 years ago I met Mike, our CFO. I'm now partner in the business and we were at a party that neither one of us really wanted to be at, but we were chatting.

Mm-hmm. And he is like, what do you do? I was like, I'm a plumber. I'm a plumbing business. He's like, what do you, I'm like, what do you do? And he is like, I just, you know, I'm in finance. Um, he just got, graduated with his master's in finance from Fisher. He is working at Victoria Secret. And he's like, well, what?

I was like, I wanna learn, learn more about finance and projections and other stuff. Right. So we got into a little bit there and then he was like, I said, he's like, why? I said, well, I own a business and I wanted to. You, I wanna grow it. And he's like, well, what do you wanna grow it to? I was like, a hundred million.

Mm-hmm. 

And he was like, oh. He's like, oh, okay. He caught his attention, right? He is like, well, where are you at today? I was like, A million. Okay. Uh, okay, we got some work. But then he was like, um, let's get together and start building some modeling. And then we got together and build out a hundred million dollars plan.

To build a hundred million dollar business. And then eventually he ended up coming on and now has become a partner in the business. Mm-hmm. Um, so that's played a big part in that. So, you know, that was a, a part of like, knowing that I needed this and sometimes fate. Finds its way, but the reason, the reason why I say this is you have to have something big out in front of you to get people on board with what you're doing.

Vision. I think vision is very important in an organization. And I had vision, so even when I reset, I knew I was gonna grow something. I had vision and the vision was to grow a hundred million dollars service business. I didn't even know a hundred million dollars service business even existed back then.

Right. Yeah. And I know that's the, um, I don't know if I'll use the right word, trendy, but it's kind of the trendy benchmark to use today, right? Sure. Get to a hundred million. Um, and, and that's fine because that's a, it's a hell of an achievement to get that right. Building a hundred million dollar business.

Trust me, when I first joined Nexstar, it was like 20 million. If you got to 20 million. Yeah. You were the, you were, you were on, you know, you were the, the king of the world. 

Yeah. 

Um, but you know, obviously business evolved, things have got bigger acquisitions. Mm-hmm. And gold. When I first came up with a hundred million, I'm driving around in my truck by myself and it's one of those things that, you know, just come to you.

I don't know why. It's like, I need a goal. Mm-hmm. A hundred million sounds big and bold. Sounds ridiculous in some sense, but, um, I think I just got done. I read, read, think and Grow Rich greatest book ever in my life. Mm-hmm. Changed my life. And then I also had read, I listened to um, good to Great and they know that Big Is Goal, so they all kind of found their way together and eventually Think and Grow Rich was really, is like pick a number, set a deadline, and go to work and I just picked a hundred million 'cause it felt.

Yeah. Felt like big number. So my point is like, that has helped attract people to growing because they knew I'm going somewhere and wanting to build something that helped bring that conversation because I had that goal. 

Yeah. 

Had that conversation, which created that relationship, which she's here today.

Um, so that was a big movement for us. And then from there, just, we just started building plans, joining ServiceTitan Nexstar, learning more about the industry and the business. And, you know, then he started going, you know, 1 million, you know. Two, two something, 3, 4, 5. And then it was like, and then finally it started jumping, hold me exactly to these numbers at the top of my head, but it's like, then it went to like eight and then it was 12 and then and 21, 33, 44.

60, 75. 

Super inspirational. So I only got five years left of grinding before I, I hit that J curve. 

Yeah. And it's like, but all the things you're doing, but, but that's fine. Right? It's like, 

yeah, 

it feels like it, you know, but it's a long time. And in the last five years people have heard more about our business, but we've also, it, you know, we've hit the curve, right?

And it's gone. Um, and we've made some good decisions, some bad decisions, and we put in the one thing I think that we did really well, that wasn't happening right away. That that found its way to us. Right around that 12 million to 22 is well, COVID came, which awfully helped too. We grew big then. But right before then we had put together a three year marketing plan, three year marketing plan, and we said, this is what we're gonna do for three years.

We're gonna have our radio plan, we're gonna have our TV plan, our billboard plan, our correct messaging for our brand, and we're gonna plan and we're gonna commit for three years to this plan. 

Hmm. 

And it went it the third year, 12 to 21 million.