Greg Joyce - Ep. 32 - How to Increase Your Profit 900% in 4 Years!

This is the Wealthy Contractor Podcast brought to you by G4 Marketing. Interviews with today's top home improvement entrepreneurs about marketing, sales, money, mindset, and lifestyle. Now here's your host, Brian Kaskavalciyan. How would you like to increase your profitability by 900% over the next 4 years? Sounds pretty damn good, doesn't it? Well, in this episode of The Wealthy Contractor Podcast, I'm going to talk to one of my favorite clients, Greg Joyce from Shuler Service. Now, just a few years ago, Greg bought a business that was doing okay, was making money, but in the last 4 years, he's grown revenue by 75%, but more importantly, he's increased profitability by 900%. What did he do to make it happen? We focused on two important things, and we'll talk about those things in this episode. Greg is one of the, the coolest and just nicest people you could do business with. That's not to say that sometimes he's not a big pain in the butt too. But that's for another day. Anyway, I love Greg and this is a really good interview. He lays out some things that are really critical to success in any business, whether you're in home improvement, home services, doesn't matter. Just real-world stuff that you can use to grow your business. So let's get to it. All right, everybody. So I've got Greg Joyce here. With us from Shuler Service. And, you know, when we were— when Greg and I were talking before turning on the recording here, and there's a lot Greg and I can talk about, we love talking, we love talking business. But what I really wanted to focus on with Greg is he bought the business 4 years ago and he's grown revenue by 75%. But more importantly, He's grown his profitability by 900%, and I thought, let's talk about that. Let's talk about how, you know, what are some of the things that you did to grow revenue by 900%? So with that setup, Greg, let's talk about, you know, what are, what are a couple of things? What did you start with? You know, what was when you, when you bought the business and you looked at the business, what was kind of the first thing you looked at and said, you know, I've got to start working on that so I can improve the performance of my business?

Great, great question, Brian. Um, yeah, thanks for having me. Um, yeah, you know, I'll be honest with you, uh, just a real quick, uh, background— 20 years in— almost 20 years in the truck. So basically, I had no business background. I was buying a business that was well established. So when I purchased the business, I knew I needed to get some kind of support because I knew I couldn't do it on my own. I was a service manager for the 8 years prior to purchasing the business. And again, 19 years prior to that, I was in the truck. So I did have a little bit of sales experience because as a service manager, I would be out looking at jobs and selling. But I knew right away that the first thing I needed to do was get support. And I joined a group, which we were members of the PHCC, but I joined a group called QSC, which is Quality Service Contractors. And basically surrounded myself with a lot of people that knew a lot more than I did about running a successful plumbing business. And, you know, that led me to your question, to answer your question, what did I do? And when I joined this group, I found out that right away that one of the most important things is marketing your business and how you market it. And, you know, obviously in the digital age, that was, we were full stream in 2013 when I purchased it, we, you know, at that point everybody was finding you on the web, but we didn't really have a website that was prominent. It wasn't showing up. So I knew right away at that point I needed to change my website, develop a new website, and hook up with a company that would be able to handle that, and then do the SEO, the search engine optimization, along with later coming to PPC and those types of things, the digital marketing. So that was a big, that was the big boost that really kicked off after ownership took over because the gross sales just went through the roof. That's how I had that large growth my first year by just having a website that would show up, which is, I thought was one of the most important things. And then the other thing is marketing in general. I mean, if you were to say one or two things, one would be the marketing. Which is there's a couple phases that I did. I did some rebranding that really helped. And the other thing is, Brian, and you're well aware of this, is the importance of customer retention. And, you know, we work so hard and we spend so much money to gain customers that why wouldn't we spend money to retain them? And that's what I learned through through you, Brian, through G4, and that's— you do a wonderful job where we basically send thank you cards out to all our customers and thank you again cards if we work again. So there's never a time somebody does not get a thank you card from us with a little gift card in it, which has been extremely successful. The numbers are outstanding. I could just shoot you even a number today. The revenue to date for this year, the thank you again cards and thank you cards have generated over a quarter million dollars in revenue alone. So customer retention was huge. So to answer your question, marketing, which is, is basically some of the things I went over there, the rebranding, retention, new website. And then secondly, I think that what I learned most important is to build a good culture within your company. Having employees that are basically company of owners, they feel like they have ownership, they feel like they're part of the team, they feel like they want to come into work every day, they want to work for you, they want to be part of the team. And that doesn't come overnight. That's something that I would say right now at this point, 4 years into it, going on 5 years coming up in the spring, would be exactly 5 years. I really feel we have the strongest team that we've ever had. We just— you weed out some of the people that aren't team players, basically. And that culture just grows and it's sort of contagious. It's sort of like the opposite effect if you have a, you know, the old cancer in the clubhouse, so to speak. And we've had that. And, you know, that could tear down— it's amazing how negativity could just tear down a team. But really what we build here at Schuler Service is like the culture of the team is everybody just helps each other out. We enjoy our team meetings once a week for an hour. We have a good time. We do tons of events, even with families. You know, if it's not to a hockey game or a trip to a racetrack or just a customer— I mean, employee recognition night that I have annually to give out awards and benchmarks that they hit. We just do a lot of that kind of stuff. So to answer your question in a very long way, marketing, number one. And I don't think it's in any particular order here, but the two things marketing and building a team that you have a great culture and a great attitude around the shop. Again, it's sort of like a company of owners, so to speak. And again, the marketing. So hopefully that answers your question.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I wanna talk to you a little bit more about culture, but one of the things that I think, to your credit, the first thing that you said was, you joined a group, you realized, and it takes a big person to do this because a lot of us when we go into business, we feel like we have to do everything ourselves. We feel like, okay, this is on me now. And you don't have to, it doesn't have to be that way. There are other people that have come before us that have made mistakes, that have tested things, have refined things, have tweaked things. So why not go and be part of that? Why not learn from the people that have come before us? And I think that, that for you, um, and, and for anybody else that's in business, I think we can't minimize that. I think that that's So a big part of it is being open and not having such a big ego and not being so wrapped up in yourself that you're not willing to go out and ask for help.

Yeah, Brian, I couldn't agree with you more. And, you know, I preface the two things that I, you know, certainly attribute to the growth, but, you know, I preface it with the QHC group and that's what I learned. And you're exactly right. Why not? Why reinvent the wheel? Deal when you could basically learn from a whole bunch of contractors that you could network with? In this case, even be on an email, which we call the cue list, and just learn from everybody else's mistakes. Why, why would anybody in business not want to do that? Except for the answer is, and I think you, you said it, is, um, if the ego gets involved. That's all, because I don't see any other reason why you wouldn't want to join a group It's almost like to me, I never understand why companies don't want to train their employees. I mean, a big part of my growth is simply we do a ton of training, but we do CSR training. You know, when you're in a home service business, the first impression somebody's going to get is when they pick up that phone and your CSR is going to answer it. Are they answering it, you know, and they can feel the smile coming through the phone, or are they answering and say, 'Geez, this person doesn't want to be at work today.' And so when we track all that, we have CSRs that started at 65%, and I have a CSR right now that's booking at 91%. Do you know how much extra revenue that is for a minimum amount of training that it costs? If it's $800 a month in CSR training and I'm generating between, you know, 65% to 90% more booked calls, it's the return The ROI is astronomical. So that's another thing. I mean, we could go on and on. You say 2 things. I mean, the 3rd thing is training too. I mean, just education within your own business, no matter what business it is. And I think training has become more and more— I think a lot of companies, the good companies out there, do a lot of training with their employees. I know we do. We do it every week. We just had training this morning for an hour from 7:30 to 8:30, and we do some fun things and keep it light. But it's, you know, everybody preaches customer service, Brian, we know that, right?

Yeah.

But who practices it? You know, it's that you can preach it all day long, but if you're, if you're not really doing it, then the preaching about it doesn't, doesn't matter. So we, we just try— we, we're very redundant, so to speak, with customer service skills. Constantly remind them, you know, it's not just the booties anymore. Everybody wears booties in homes. It's the extra stuff we do through our software, you know, the bio that goes out with the email, the picture of the technician coming to the house, you know, that kind of stuff. So in this day and age with the technology, sky's the limit when it comes to customer service, the follow-up emails to capture that review, The thank you card that you guys and your team does, Brian, so well. It just goes on and on. And I learn all this from other people, from other people that have done it and failed even, you know? Not that I haven't failed, because I've tried things that didn't work out, but I'm certainly taking the majority of the stuff that I know from other people. And that's why my whole theory in business is to surround myself with people that are smarter than me. That's the reason why my office staff is, here today because my office staff that I have now, they are all smarter than I am, and I'm proud of it to say it because it's great to know that if I go away, I know this business is going to run without me and it's going to run like a well-oiled machine because, uh, I have a great staff.

Greg, I'll tell you what, every smart, successful business owner I know says the same thing, is they don't want to be the smartest person in the room. They want a room full of of really smart people.

Absolutely.

Look, I wanted to— I want to ask you about something because you really hit on culture. And I know this is something you do really well. You said that every week you have a 1-hour meeting. Can you tell us a little bit about what goes on in those meetings?

Sure. I'm going to— I'm going to— Brian, if you at my fingertips, I'm gonna pull out of my file here. I think the best way for me to do this is just go back in the meeting minutes and just sort of look at what we do. So I'm just going, I just picked one out from October 11th. If you don't mind, I'll basically go over what we do in a meeting. And this is basically the standard. So the bullet points that I'm gonna go over here is basically what we do week in and week out. This happened to be a meeting on October 11th, which was 2 Wednesdays ago. I just picked out of the file here. We talked about Green Sky financing, and we did some conference calls with the finance people and how, you know, to sell the financing and when to pull the trigger, when to offer it, those types of things. A reminder came out that November 17th, employee recognition night at 3501 Grill, a great restaurant where I hand out all my awards. It's always the Friday before Thanksgiving. I announced the Christmas party December 23rd. We're missing a Bosch rotary hammer, so I was trying to track that down. We talked about our reviews. So every week we read the reviews on our website and we do review spiffs or we do review skins. Right now I'm doing review skins. So basically each month we tally up all the reviews. Typically they get $10 cash for each review that gets put up on our website, but we're keeping that money and holding it, and then that's the skin pot for the next month. So the first place wins 50% of the pot, and then the second and the third. So it's sort of a game we play, we call it review skins, and we read the reviews out loud in front of everybody up on our big, we have a big flat screen in our training room. We remodel the offices, we have a nice training room. And we basically sit there and I think that's talking about building culture, Brian, that you brought up. And I think that's where you're going with this, with these meetings. It is great morale when you're in front of your peers and, you know, whoever it is, the service manager or myself is reading that review and saying how great, you know, 5-star review, how great John or Joe did on this job. And it's Mrs. Jones calling it, you know, posting this review. On top of it, they're getting a cash reward for it. That just builds great morale and a great culture within a company. So we also do a little segment called Safety Corner each week where one technician is responsible for bringing one safety topic up. So basically, it's not like they have to do it every week. We share that responsibility. So every couple months, they have to bring a safety topic with them, and then we talk about that briefly. So that's another thing we do. And then just some housekeeping stuff. And, you know, we leave it, try to leave it open and light at the end of the meeting to any concerns. So, you know, we're very transparent. But the one thing I did forget, Brian, I just want to point out, we, after I say good morning to everybody at 7:30 on a Wednesday morning, we stand up and we pledge allegiance to the flag. I know you probably don't want to get political here, but it's, If one of my employees would not stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, they wouldn't be working for me. So we all stand up and pledge our allegiance to the flag. It's the first thing we do, and then we carry on our weekly meeting.

That's awesome. You know, our— yeah, I'll break even my own rules of no politics and no religion, but the kids— but my kids, the school that they went to when they were when they were little, every morning was— it was the Armenian school— and every morning was Pledge of Allegiance, and then they would say the Lord's Prayer in Armenian. And then there was one other thing that they did too.

That was a private school, Brian, so they allowed that, is that correct? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

All right. So that's cool. I love that. You know, that's great. You know what's kind of cool about the QSC meetings is that's how the QSC meetings start too, is they start with allegiance.

They do, they do. Now that you say it, and again, I know we talked about this before. I hope we could meet up in Savannah, Georgia in March. We'll see what goes on. You plan on— you're a QSC member, of course, right? And yeah, good stuff. So always great to see at those meetings, Brian. And I'll tell you what, it's always great to see everybody. What a great group of people.

Yeah, no, it is a great group. Yeah, you know, one other, one other thing that I think is, um, that I've noticed about you that I also know is a success trait for the most successful— let's just say business people. You know, this is called the Wealthy Contractor Podcast, but it's one of the things you cannot become a wealthy contractor or a wealthy business owner without knowing your numbers. Every conversation— now this is for everybody that's listening, Greg— but every single conversation that I have ever had with Greg, every single one, includes exact facts and figures. Exact. Like he just told you, if you guys caught it, he said he got his booking rate from 65% to 91%, right? He knows how important that number is in his business. In fact, it's a profit— it's one of the profit multipliers in a home improvement business, is that, is that number. He knows— not only does he know all of his booking numbers, but he knows his rate per hour, his effective rate per hour, how much each truck needs to do. We could just go all the way down the list, right, Greg? He knows, he knows how much his marketing is costing him. He knows what his marketing is producing. I'll just— I could just— I could keep going on and on and on. The point though is, if you do not know your numbers in your business, there is no way that you can possibly get where you want to go or possibly get the business to a point where you can grow your profitability by 900% in just 4 years.

Yeah, yeah, it's true. You know, I've always been told, and I've heard this from numerous people, and I think Brian, you've been told this before too, as well as a business owner, nobody in this world cares about your bottom line but yourself. I mean, that's the, you know, it's like nobody cares about your golf game, right? It's just, if you're not watching it, nobody will, because usually you don't let, that's sort of, you know, more confidential information anyhow, but you just have to know your numbers. And I don't care what anybody, you could get caught up in numbers, yes, But you just have to— if you don't make an educated decision, you know, we're in business, we're buying and selling all day long. That's what we do. That's what being in business is. We're in trade, right? So if you don't know your numbers and if it's a piece of equipment that I got to buy to upgrade, if it's a camera that cost me $7,000, I better know if I need to make that decision that day, if I'm going to be able to fit it and afford it in the budget. And if you don't, you're right, Brian. You're not making informed decisions. And I think if you're not making informed decisions, you're leaving yourself open to making a bad decision. And at that point, that's when you could fail. So yeah, Brian, I totally agree with you. You've gotta know your numbers. Great, great point. And you know me, Brian, I love my numbers as well as you do.

But you know what? But you know what, Greg? Your numbers love you because what they say, what you focus on expands, what you focus on grows. And obviously you've been focused on how do I make my net profit number better?

Yep.

One of the things, you know, one of the things that, that I see a lot of is especially in times like this, you know, businesses, you know, we, you and I started our conversation by saying, you know, business is great, right? Yeah, but what a lot of people, you know, a lot of people this year and last year are saying, yeah, business is great, but too many people are focused on how much they sold and not enough people are focused on how much did they make, right? You really make— yeah, you sold $5 million or you sold $12 million, but how much did you make? And so people are, you know, more caught up in the How much did we sell versus how much did we make? And I'm hoping that some of what we do with The Wealthy Contractor through, you know, through podcasts and introducing people, the people listening to business owners like you, is let's get people focused on their bottom line. Top line's great. Sure, we sold millions and millions and millions of dollars, but did we make any money?

Right, right. Yeah, growth is— growth can be tricky, you know, and you know that. We all know that as business owners. I mean, you try to grow that top line above the line figures, you know, and, and your gross profit's looking great. However, you know, if your expenses are, are going up with it as well, because in growth, you— of course, you're— if you're going to run a business properly, you're going to— your expenses are going to go up. So you just have to maintain that percentage, whatever your goal may be. If it's 15%, 10%, 20%, 5%, whatever, whatever your goal is. And you just got to keep, you know, the, the bottom line has got to be there. And just because you're— just because your gross sales go up, that doesn't mean that you're— you could drop your percentage in net sales because you're making more money. You think if you start getting into that pattern, you know, gosh, yeah, if you're a $10 million $20 million company working on 5%, you say, well, geez, I'm just making as much money. But the bottom line is you're working harder because you're, you've got to put more effort into the fact that you're selling more and your revenue is higher. So why not keep the percentage rate at where it should be if your bottom line goal is 10% or 12%? Just when you have that growth, you got to make sure that that percentage of your net remains the same. And I think that's probably the single-handedly The most difficult thing in business is during growth to keep that net income, exactly what you're saying, Brian, is keeping that net income at that percentage that should be maintained during growth. But easier said than done, easier said than done, but it can be done.

There's no question. And one last thing, I know we're going a little bit over here, but you and I could keep going. And there's actually 3 other things on my list of things that I know you've done that we're not, we're not even going to be able to handle in this call. Maybe we could do it in another episode, but your focus on profitability, how much has that played into your ability to grow your, to grow your business? Like having that extra, you know, having that cash in the bank, has that helped you to grow the business?

Yeah, well, you know, it's funny, I always say there's— as business owners, um, there's 3 things that you can do with net profit, um, really. And it really comes down to 3 things. Of course, the number 1, and probably the most popular one by business owners, is, um— and maybe it's not always the wisest decision— um, is to pay yourself. Okay, so basically you could, you could take your bottom line and, and, uh, you know, obviously pay Uncle Sam as well. The second thing you can do is pay down debt. Everybody has debt in business unless you're debt-free, then that's pretty amazing. That's good stuff, maybe someday. And the third thing finally would be to put money back into the business. And that's what I've chosen. And I think, Brian, to answer your question, and hopefully I'm answering your question, is, you know, the old adage saying goes, you gotta spend money to make money. And of course, that is so true. So I have realized just from a standpoint of we have a showroom here and a building and offices and, you know, I redid basically the entire building over the last 2 years here. So to answer your question, that profitability is probably not at its highest that it can be, but if I look at the long term, there's a plan in place. It's another thing you need to do as a— when you ask that question, what did you do, is you've got to have a business plan. But putting money back into the business, if it's not training or physical things, if it's new trucks or boost your marketing budget or whatever it may be, putting money back into the business is, if it's done properly, is money spent well. Again, if the return is there. So hopefully that's answering your question, Brian.

If profit is fuel, profit is fuel. Profit is, you know, you could, you could take it home like you said, um, but profit is also the fuel that, that will, that, that will help you drive your, your business forward.

Right, right. And you know, the other thing with profit too, Brian, is— and I failed to mention this too, and then this is so important— is, you know, again, another cliché, you know, share the wealth, so to speak. So Talking about employee and customer retention, just as important, if not more important, of course, is employee retention. If you're running a successful business, it's very important to also take care of the people that make you successful, and that's your team around you. If you forget about them and you worry about your own needs, you're going to fail as well because the culture is not going to be there. The retention is not going to be there. And we all know as business owners, employee turnover is, for lack of a better word, well, it stinks. We'll say that. So you want to maintain your employees because it costs a lot of money, Brian, to train. And in our industry, in the home service industry, especially as plumbers, they're not just out there waiting to be picked up. You know, it's not like we could just walk down the street to the five and dime and say, hey, I need to get another plumber today. It just doesn't happen. So taking care of your employees with that net is always important, and to make sure that they share the wealth and the success of the business, to make them feel really part of it, not just from a financial standpoint, not just from a culture standpoint and the things that we do as a team, but also at the end of the year, even halfway through the year, or the surprise moment to make them feel financially involved in the business where they are reaping some of the benefits of a successful business.

Beautiful. I'm glad you brought that up. Well, Greg, this has been awesome. Let me just quickly summarize some of the things that Greg did. He joined a group, he wasn't doing it on his own, really focused on marketing both the front end with his internet presence and the back end with his past customers, really has worked hard to develop a winning culture at Shuler Service. And he knows his numbers. I mean, he knows his numbers inside and out and he's focused on profitability. And, you know, the business shows. I mean, if you get a chance, go look at his website. If you're anywhere near him, call Sugar Service and see what kind of experience you have with them. It will be, it will be a very good one. It'll be a very good one. So that wraps this episode of The Wealthy Contractor Podcast. This is Brian Kaskavalciyan with G4 Marketing Group. Until next time, thank you. All right, so that's it for today's episode of The Wealthy Contractor Contractor Podcast. Let me ask you, did it help you look at your business in a new way? Did it spark an idea or ideas you hadn't thought of before? Do you have a list of action items that you can take and implement into your business or your life today? I really hope so. Now, before you go, make sure you subscribe to the Wealthy Contractor Podcast so you get access to the latest episodes as soon as they're available. We're always striving to provide you with great content, so you don't want to miss what's coming up. And a favor, I'd really appreciate it if you'd go to iTunes and post a review of this podcast. Let us know how we're doing. And finally, we started The Wealthy Contractor as a resource to help you, the home improvement entrepreneur, regardless of where you are on the wealthy scale. Get where you want to go. We want to provide you with the motivation, the confidence, the resources, and the tools so you too can live the life of the wealthy contractor. Now, the wealthy contractor is a place where it's okay for you to want it all. In fact, it's not only okay, it's encouraged. So until next time, this is Brian Kaskavalciyan with G4 Marketing Group.