The Formula Home Improvement Companies Use to Scale Profitably (From Day 1) | Megan Curry

Traditionally speaking, our sales and marketing departments are the most high maintenance. They require the most recruiting and the most training. But as you grow to be able to fulfill that service and product and maintain those promises that those people are out there making, that production side becomes really, really important. So, as we grew, that planning turned into not just leads and people on the sales and marketing side, but also how do we, you know, work our installation crews? How many installers do I need? How many service techs do I now need that our volume has increased, and all of that has to be thought through from a profitability standpoint.

Have you ever felt like there's a secret club of successful contractors and you're left outside? Want in? Well, you just found the entry door. Welcome to the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. Each episode, we pull back the curtain, revealing the stories, strategies, and secrets that top leaders use to grow their home improvement business and enjoy more success, more wealth, and more freedom. Discover more at thewealthycontractor.com. Wealthycontractor.com. Now let's get into today's episode. All right, everybody, welcome to another episode of the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. This is Brian Kaskavalciyan, and with me today is Megan Curry. What's up, Megan?

How you doing, Brian?

Hi, good to see you.

Great to be here.

One of my favorite people, one of my absolute favorite people. Megan, this is your second time here. Um, you love doing public speaking and being out in front of everybody and, uh, sharing your wisdom. I'm, I'm just, for all of you listening, I'm Portia. I'm like, what do they call that? Projecting. So, you know, I'm doing Jedi mind tricks on her. Yes, this is not her favorite thing. What her favorite thing is, I think, is like running companies and people and developing teams and all of that. So, but thank you. Thanks for being here.

Yeah, it's good to be here.

Let's do this. Let's remind everybody kind of of what you do, who you are, give everybody kind of the quick backstory on Revelaire Home, and then we can get into it 'cause I got some good stuff I wanna ask you about.

Yeah, awesome. So, my name's Megan, Megan Curry. I work with a company primarily called Revelaire Home. I am the COO handling pretty much all the operations on a day-to-day basis, sales, marketing, production, everything from start to finish. I am third generation in the home improvement industry, so been around for a long time. Managed to keep myself off of too many podcasts and speaking events unless they're with Brian, so. But been around for a long time in this industry, love this industry and getting to be a part of just all the success that there is to be had in it. So, yeah, on a day-to-day basis, I primarily run Revelaire Home in the background of, you know, making sure that my teams are built out. As you mentioned, Brian, my focus on a day-to-day basis, what I do is I recruit, hire, train, develop other leaders and build teams and work to really scale businesses for growth. The way I look at it is, you know, I have a lot of people that, that I work for in my business, less so that work for me. It's my job to support them and continue to help them develop and grow and just be able to expand into new products, new territories. We're a kitchen and bath company. So to really just kind of tackle the market primarily in the Northeast, all the way from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, up to the state of Maine is where we, we cover. Wow.

How many offices are you up to?

So we have 2 larger, like, corporate locations, one in Pennsylvania, one up in Boston, Massachusetts. And then we've got— we're up to, I think, 8 or 9 other, like, small office/logistics warehousing kind of space throughout all of the territories that we cover.

How many salespeople?

We're close to 40. 40 salespeople.

Yeah. So this is no small business that Miss Megan here runs, and, um, you do it very profitably, which we will talk about a little bit. But, um, I, I wanted to ask you specifically about forecasting. You know, we're doing this now, uh, middle of November-ish. Um, it's really kind of too late for a lot of people to get started thinking about budgets and forecasts for next year. However, um, I always think that this is a good topic regardless of the time of year. I always find it kind of funny that, especially lately as I get older, that we have this like cutoff December 31st to January 1st, as if it's like some magical thing happens.

Yeah.

But any day of the year could be New Year's Day. You know, you could start, you know, a new life and new goals and new, you know, become a new person. Like, make the decision today and have tomorrow be New Year's Day. But regardless of all of that crazy crap that runs through my head, we do have this thing called New Year's and we plan for the next year. So I'm always curious about how do you kind of plan for next year. And I understand that today it's much more sophisticated than it was a few years back. So if you can kind of think about maybe how you did it when you were a smaller company, maybe a few million bucks, and maybe what's kind of changed between then and kind of where you're at now.

Yeah. A couple things on that. The first, just to kind of parlay off of what you said, there's, it's like, it's too late, but it's never too late. You know, it's, there's no better time than the present to get into it. And because it does really define and shape what you do next. There's, as we talk about like the end of the year, one of my mentors taught me years ago, he, I'm going to butcher the concept, but something about being in like the 1% 1%ers. And especially in sales organizations where we are performance-driven, it's a grind, it's a mountain to climb every day. There tends to, there's a huge tendency that, that right around this time of year, right around Thanksgiving, towards the end of the year, we just glide, we just coast, we don't do too much. We, if we sold it already, it's sold, the year's kind of over. And I think what sets good companies and great companies apart is that 1 percentile that doesn't stop. They do not let their foot off the gas pedal. They just keep plugging away. And part of that is being relentless in your planning for the following year. And so, one of the things, you know, we've always been very systems and process oriented with, you know, just kind of an engineering background from Mark, our CEO and president. And so, when we were smaller, it's all the same equation. The difference as you get bigger is there's just more to plan for. And more that can go wrong. But when, when you're small, even to start out, it's really working backwards. It's really defining what are my, my goals for the year. And we start with really simply, and there's many different techniques to this, but we quite simply just start with what's the revenue that we want to do. And as a small company, if you say, you know what, next year I want to do $5 million, I want to go from $3 to $5 million. Then from there it's just working all of your math backwards. It is math heavy. It's some, it's a concept that you talk a lot about, Brian, with that money math and being quick with it and being good with it. And it's wiring your brain to think, even if it doesn't come naturally, if I want to do $5 million, how many net sales do I have to have? What's my average sale price? How many contracts is that to install and to sell? And then from there, you know, what's my retention rate? Do I lose, you know, 20% of business between bank rejections from the lenders to cancellations? So putting that factor, how much business do I have to write? If I have to write that much business, what's my closing percent? How many leads do I have to run? How many doors do I have to knock on and get a sales rep into that house? And it's working all that math backwards from the leads that you're running, the closing percents, the confirmations in the call center that are needed, the raw leads to be set that are coming in, and then the marketing spend from there in terms of figuring out the raw leads and the budget from a marketing perspective. From there, one of the things that I always recommend too is it's great to, you know, say I wanna go from 3 to 5, but if you did that, you know, if, if on January 1st you started to budget your business as a $5 million business, and, and for the record, I'm a big advocate of if you wanna be a, go from a 3 to a $10 million company, you should start acting like a $10 million company. But that doesn't mean go spend all your money like you're a $10 million company right away. It's more in your behaviors and your actionable items. And so one of the things that we do that I think helps streamline it a little bit better is we break our year up into 4 quarters. Normal, right? That's not groundbreaking, but each quarter has a different, like, pace. And by the 4th quarter, that's when I want to be pacing that $5 million, right? So maybe quarter 1, I'm pacing $3.5 to $4 million. It's a little bit more palatable. It's a little bit easier to, to eat that elephant one bite at a time. So that's, that's where we kind of tend to break it up, but it's just working all that math backwards and then digging in and, and it starts really with marketing, but you have to get there through backwards equations. As we grew, you know, when you expand into different territory locations and different branches, logistics, we always talk about it's, it's interesting. My, my background tends to be more on the ops side with production. As well as on the marketing side with call centers and, and some digital marketing and everything. And we always talk about how the easy part to fulfill is the operations, the production and all of that. But as you grow, that can become a little stressful sometimes as well. Traditionally speaking, our sales and marketing departments are the most high maintenance. They require the most recruiting, the most training, the most head sessions, right? But as you grow to be able to fulfill that service and product and, and maintain those promises that those people are out there making, that production side becomes really, really important. So, as we grew, that planning turned into not just leads and people on the sales and marketing side, but also how do we, you know, work our installation crews? How many installers do I need? How many service techs do I now need that our volume has increased? Measure technicians, Having the warehouse locations in areas that made sense. And all of that has to be thought through from a profitability standpoint. Otherwise, you're just spending money, whether it's in customer settlements because you can't fulfill the promises that you're making and selling, or you're robbing Peter to pay Paul to pay for some of the things you just didn't think about. So, we call it our one integrated plan, and that outlines pretty much everything that we need. Go into the year thinking about the real estate that we're going to need to, to invest in. We go into the year thinking about once we hit this certain net volume on a, a period or monthly basis, we're going to need another administrator, ops manager, maybe build out a whole new department even. So, um, so it can become very complex, but it also— I'm a big believer in, um, I tend to keep things simple. It's easy for, for my staff to understand, um, if it can be clearly communicated down to like, like if you walked into my call center, they know exactly how many leads they have to set every single day, what their hours per appointment is. It's so clearly communicated because that plan is defined around this time every year. So helps us just achieve those goals and then course correct as well. You know, if the first quarter comes and goes and we're not where we need to be, then we're going to adjust things for the second quarter to, to be appropriate to where we are.

Now, your boss, this guy named Mark, he is known for, um, partly because of me, it's my fault, uh, for profitability. And so I know how important maintaining profitability is, that there were— there are no real compromises when it comes to profitability. And this is how he has done business for the last, what, 4 decades. So, you know, some people will compromise their profitability for growth. You guys— and when I say compromise, I mean like they're willing to not make any money. Well, you know, Mark, I'm kidding around here, you know, a little bit, but Mark doesn't mess around when it comes to profitability, nor do you. And so what do you say to people that believe that they've gotta give up 10 points of their bottom line just because they've gotta, you know, they want to grow, they want to go to this next level.

Yeah. If somebody really dies on that hill, you know, I try to seek some understanding. I do think that there's two schools of thought on it and, you know, there's not necessarily a wrong answer, I guess, if you don't mind not making any money. I definitely, there are definitely people in our industry that they're revenue kings, top line revenue, That's, that's where their energy is. That's what they believe in. But we've always talked about it. I'd rather be a little bit smaller possibly and maintain that profitability. And my response to somebody that just doesn't see how that's possible is it's just talk to me about why. Why do you think you have to cut your profits? You know, the way that this industry is so beautiful because it's not heavily inventory driven, we're able to control our gross margins, our pricing. We're at— we're able to add unique selling propositions to justify different kinds of pricing strategies with warranties and price match guarantees and anything. You know, it's, it's, that's what we do in this industry. We're very creative. And I think where a lot of companies lose sight of that isn't necessarily on the gross margin, or it could be, you know, I see a lot of companies to your point, they'll throw away all profits because they're taking price cuts. So yeah, they're, they're cornering the market because they're basically, you know, giving the product away for free. I don't think that's a sustainable model. It certainly isn't if business owners, if their objective and goal is to sell their business, you know, flip it someday, nobody's going to bite at those models. And that's where I wish more business owners would think is, what's my plan here? Why do I have this business? Do I have it because I have an heir apparent, you know, in my business or in my family that's going to take it over and buy it someday? Or am I going to sell it out to private equity or, or another business and acquisition. But regardless, I can't see any of those avenues, you know, where it is acceptable, I guess, to just sacrifice profits. There's a way to do it. I just think a lot of companies either sacrifice it by throwing away their pricing, which to me, I'm very proud of the product that I sell and our team sells and the service we deliver. And I believe in my price. You know, I believe in that. My staff believes in it. There's, there's no such thing as being price sensitive. In fact, I'll get calls sometimes that'll say, I think we need to raise our price from, from a sales manager because we do build that value and we believe in what we have. So I think sacrificing your prices is sometimes it's like an insult to your, to your own business. Why would you do that if you, if you— what's your time worth? What's the value of your company worth? So believe in that price. But the second area where I see companies kind of falter is they, they think that they need this huge build out in terms of their overheads. Um, and they don't necessarily, you know, they might be spending money and time on things that, that are a little unnecessary, but that's something that they have to take into account and, um, you know, value. I, I value a really lean, um, kind of business on my overheads. Um, what I mean by that is, is nobody on my staff is sitting around twiddling their thumbs, but I also surround myself with people that don't want to. They, they work at at high capacity, it's not atypical that if I go to bring on another admin, I got 3 other admins that are saying, hey, whoa, wait, wait, why are we bringing on somebody else? We're good. You know, I can handle the increase in volume. So it's a, it's an interesting culture that we kind of drive with that profit first. But, but yeah, it's, it's to maintain that profitability. I'm not saying that you can't spend money to make money. That's, that's a given. But, but not compromising your margins and making sure your overheads are built out. It's really that marketing cost is the only thing any business owner, Brian, could say to me and say, yeah, but, but what about those marketing dollars? But when you look at your marketing dollars, I don't look at— I do look at my P&L, my marketing P&L, right? But I take that up against my net sales. So even though my P&L might show a slightly a couple points of a less of a percentage than I'm used to seeing, I know that it increased my sales by 15% this month. and that's gonna increase my profitability 2 months down the line as I install those contracts. So, you know, there's a balance with that and it's just understanding the time value of that money and the impact it has at different points in time on your business. And yeah, to grow profitably is, it's not that hard and it's responsible. It gives your people job security, it gives your business a purpose and it's totally, totally doable if you just understand that, the mathematics behind it.

So, um, something interesting happened at Top 500 a couple weeks ago. Um, last year in '23, after my, um, my thing on stage, I was part of a panel, and in the audience there were these two brothers that run a fast-growing, uh, home improvement company. And one of the brothers gets the mic and he asks, basically asks a question like, when can we— we're in, we're in high growth mode. I gotta go back and listen to the recording and see if I can capture this because the question— I want to get the question right. What? Okay, yeah, go ahead, guess it.

What's the acceptable amount of time until I— we start to become profitable?

Exactly. That was, it was something along those lines. And their excuse was growth. That we're really, we're growing, growing, growing the top line. And so that's what they wanted to know. I grabbed the microphone and I said, from the panel, whoever had it, I said, 15 minutes. I said, 14 minutes for you to go through all the mental gymnastics that you're gonna need to go through to change that dumb thinking. I didn't say that way, but I'll say it now. To change that thinking and one minute to implement, make the decision that we're gonna grow, but we're gonna, we're gonna grow profitably. I saw them two weeks ago and I asked them, so how's it going? Oh man, we're, hey, they, they're up to, I don't know, like $15 million, I think, $12, $15, somewhere. Anyway, a lot of A lot of revenue. Did you make any money? Brian, we're making the most money we've ever made.

Awesome.

It's like, okay, so you can grow and you can maintain your profitability. You just have to have the right mindset.

It's a, like a myth. It's a paradox that I think people get. And because look, like it's, it's what we're taught, I think, as a society with like corporate America that, you know, all these budgets and we've got, you know, a 15-month plan to become profitable. And with what we do in small business, you don't have to go buy a brand new multimillion dollar building and hire, you know, a new general manager making beaucoup bucks before you sell your first window contract, you know? So I always say day one you can be profitable, right? If you're an established company and you're going into a new market and you are investing in relocating some people, then, then okay, but it's still in month 1 or 2. It's, it doesn't, it's not a huge turnaround time to be profitable. There's, there's, and on that note is just being aware of it. You know, something that I think, again, a lot of companies don't do is, you know, I'm gonna track on my P&L, my different branch locations, my different offices, my different territories and regions, even if they don't have a brick and mortar corporate office, they have their own P&L and my sales management, my production management in that area, They're invested in that. They're tied to that. They're held to those metrics and, and it's all tied to the profitability. But, um, but yeah, it's this huge myth that you can't be profitable from day one.

Well, and also the worst, the, the, the worst version of that is, well, when we get to whatever, $10 million, $20 million, that's when we'll really start to make money. But you and I both know that if you don't know how to make money when you're small, $2 million, $1 million, $5 million, whatever, what makes you think you're gonna be all of a sudden be profitable when you're at $20 million?

Yeah, there's no, it's not a magic light bulb. It's not a magic pill. It's not a magic number. And to further that point, I'm such a big believer in terms of the culture of your business. If that's your culture, like, oh, once we get to this point, we'll be profitable. Once you get to that point, you won't be profitable because your people aren't a profit-first culture. They'll think, oh, well, now that we're doing this, we need more, more, more, more overheads, more of this, more of that. And it's just, you know, that has to come from the leadership, the executive leadership, just like an uncompromising, relentless attitude that this is possible. It's not a bridge too far or a gap too far to bridge there.

Yeah. Well, 4 years ago, I tapped your boss, Mark, who also happens to be your father. And I tapped him because— and I asked him, hey, nobody's teaching anybody how to be profitable in the home improvement space. And he went on this journey with me and we did these profit workshops and you became part of them starting last year. And we came to the realization that people were not doing their books accurately, that no one was really taught how to make money, you know, in this business, that, you know, there's maybe 5%— and this is just across any industry— but 5% of the companies are making all the money. And so we, we went out there and we started teaching people how to do it. And we found it. We quickly found out, like, really, really quickly that bookkeepers gave us pushback, accountants gave us pushback. And so we started a company together, you, me, Mark, and Addie called the Profit Masters. And we work with about 50 companies now. We're growing fast. And we basically help them design their profit blueprint. We do their day-to-day books so that they have accurate data that they can make decisions from. And then we meet with them every month and we review their financials with them and tell them what the financials are telling them and help them, you know, keep focused on their profitability. Now, you have been, you know, eyeballs deep in this for the last year. What are some of the things that you can share? What are some of the things that we've learned? I mean, you and I have both looked at for years, We've looked at financial statements for companies in this business, but now that we're looking at them in our format, our simple format, the right way to do it, the way your father teaches it, what are some of the things that we're learning that, you know, the listeners can use to become more profitable in 2025?

Yeah, I'm gonna keep it pretty top level. Actually, I could talk about this specific topic for hours.

Well, and you will at Accelerate, but we'll talk about that in a minute.

So, there's a couple, I think, primary things that generically that stuck out to me relatively quickly. And, you know, one of the things that you talk about a lot that I relate to, a lot of people relate to is kind of that imposter syndrome sometimes, you know, Am I qualified to be doing what I'm doing? How can I possibly, you know, sit in the same room as some of these other business owners and, and like a Brian Gottlieb and a Brian Elias and some of these other great notorious names. And, and so one of the things that I realized really quickly is that there's a lot of that and it manifests itself really in a lot of people having businesses that they work for. Instead of the business working for them as a business owner. Okay. And I, that's one of the things just like mentally or mindset-wise that, that might not seem like it's related in terms of the P&L and the accounting, but what we do with Profit Masters, what we're able to assist with is in one word, it's, it's, or two words, it's to provide clarity. All of a sudden there's, there's clarity, there's clarification. They see when they're having a bad month, when they're having a good month, and they know why now. So instead of that business now running them into the ground, they have control. They've regained control of their lives, their livelihood, and their business. And they're able to use the, the data and the information, um, that we're able to provide through the P&Ls as well as through the coaching calls to, you know, shape the future of their business and make the necessary changes and, and go where they want to go with that. On that note, you know, the— there's— we talk about it, you and I, and maybe talk about it later, but there's different levers that they can pull then throughout their business. There's, you know, there's all the different departments, you know, the sales and how to throttle that and marketing and how to push and pull in that area intelligently to make calculated decisions. With everything. The second thing that I really realized in, in terms of like the top kind of groundbreaking things for me was the very first topic that you touched on, which is just that forecasting, that planning. Businesses are interesting, and I think I wrongfully assumed that because of the culture that I grew up in, in this industry, that everybody has like a very clear roadmap. Of where they're going, what they're doing. And, and I realize that that doesn't always exist. And, um, and it kind of falters into that first point that I made where there's a lot of business owners that are stuck working in the business and then they can't work on the business. Um, and so we talk about that very openly, uh, with our leadership, even not just business owners, but did you have time to work on the business this week or were you too busy working in the business? And if you don't allocate that time to work on the business, then you'll, you'll be forever in the business essentially. So it's, it's this again, kind of a paradox. But one of the things I realized was that there isn't that proper planning and then executing of that plan along the way, you know, throughout a year or on quarters or biannual basis. And that's an area where if there's any huge takeaway that I think some of the business owners that we work with have, especially that have been with us throughout a lot of 2024, is they're able now to make maybe not the same kind of one integrated plan that, that I have, but they're able to do something very similar to that that works for their business and it's executable next year. And with that, we might fail as business owners perpetually, continuously. It's, we're made up of way more failures than successes. It's just that we're always stumbling forward at least. And even when we lose a little bit of ground, we've made up so much already. So having that clearly defined plan now that you Through Profit Masters, at least with our clients, they're able to have that roadmap, that the clarity to find that plan and say, okay, here's where I want to be and now I know how to get there. And then they can just execute. And so those are some of the things that I realized were kind of a gap. And, you know, there's no handbook, there's nothing that you can buy that teaches you how to do all of this in business. You're kind of left to figure it out on your own. And that's one of the passions through Profit Masters and just through networking is being able to just talk about that with people and make a difference there.

It really is shocking to me that this morning I was interviewed for this guy, this other guy Joshua's podcast, and we were talking about, but he wanted to ask me about profitability. Mindset and mechanics of profitability. And I shared with him one of the, the things that we discovered through our survey that we do before each of the profit workshops is we ask the participating companies, the ones that were coming, hundreds of them, you know, over the last 4 years, we ask them about, uh, do they get an act— do they get a P&L by the 20th of each month or the 15th of each month? 1/3 of the people do not, 1/3 sometimes, and then 1/3 yes. Okay, those were the answers. So for the 2/3 that were no or sometimes, that's shocking. It's like, I didn't think that the number was that big.

Yeah.

But I'm not surprised by it. And it's like, How can you make decisions in your business if you don't get a P&L? And that's where people get really messed up and really stuck. And then it's like, well, but then what plan are you following and what scorecard are you using to know if you're on track or off track?

Yeah.

And so, like, when it comes to sales, you know, in this industry, we have so many metrics we're looking at, you know, demo rate, close rate, NSLI. We're looking at average sale. We're looking at so many things. And if the salesperson goes out, that we issue them 10 leads a week, and they bring back a $1,200 NSLI when it should be at $4,000, what do we do with them, right? When do we know? First of all, we know immediately. We know that week. And what do we do? We stop giving them leads. We retrain them. We make sure that they're going to, you know, not burn our leads anymore. So we do that with sales. We do it with marketing. We do it with installs and productions. But most people don't do it with profit.

Yeah.

And it's like, what's more important than making money?

Yep.

And so they're so focused on, like, I'm going to grow for the sake of growth, just so I can do more revenue. But if you're not getting a P&L, How the hell do you know? And then the other shocking thing is, so the one-third that said yes, we are getting a P&L, well, you and I get those P&Ls when they become clients, and it's like, well, you've been working off of this. Yeah, this is not accurate. You think your marketing cost is 8%, but wait a minute, you've got your call center people under this other category over here called payroll expenses. Uh, your call center people, they need to go under marketing so that we can get an accurate, fully loaded picture of what you're really spending on marketing. And it's just, it's shocking to me how people just don't have this, uh, an accurate picture of, of what's happening, uh, what's going to happen. Um, You know, knowing that, hey, 2 months from now, if we didn't sell enough this month, 2 months from now we could have a cash flow problem. It's like, I'd rather know that now and be able to deal with it now than find out 65 days from now when I got to make payroll and now I'm using customer deposits to pay— make payroll. No, go— that's not a good thing.

Yeah, it's interesting. It's, um, the, the analogy that just kind of popped into my head as you were talking through all of that was it's like gambling without ever looking at any of the odds or stats or anything like that. You're just gonna, because that's what we do in business all day, every day. We're gambling on certain salespeople and marketing campaigns and investments, all of that. And so when you're not looking at the, your return on investment and understanding all of that, you might as well just be driving down the highway with all your windows down and just throwing money out all the way. So it's, uh, why would you, would you bet, would you place a, a couple hundred thousand dollar bet on, you know, on a sport that you don't know anything about? No. So why would you do it in your business? You know, just figuring all that stuff out, it's right there. It's so easy to manage your business profitably. And that's what we do. It's just all decision making. And the beautiful thing about it, once you as a business owner can kind of understand that and harness it, that culture, like I said, bleeds through. You know, your marketing managers are now making decisions based off of the cost per issued lead and how that impacts the marketing percentage and understanding where it needs to be for that return on investment with the sales managers and the NSLIs and how that affects all the profitability and knowing when I need to bring on another manager, another install person or whoever it is. So yeah, it is, It's an interesting topic because it's almost like taboo to talk about, or even when people talk about it, they don't talk about it in terms of looking at your P&L and understanding it. They talk about it in terms of marketing costs or NSLIs. And like you said, we already all know that when the guy has a $1,200 NSLI, what do you do? You stop giving him leads. But what do you do when your profitability is 2% and you are just fighting for your life to stay a little bit above?

Yeah, let's just go sell more. That'll solve our problem. So, um, for everybody listening, I, um, I basically fired Mark from Accelerate and I hired Megan. And, uh, I asked Megan— no, I'm kidding— but I asked Megan if she would come and speak this year on this topic of profitability, because don't let her age fool you. She understands this business and all the levers and the things you pull in order to be profitable better than most anybody I've met. And so I've asked her to come to Accelerate this year and speak on this idea of the levers that you can pull so that you are not compromising profitability, so you're not sacrificing your profitability Um, for growth. And I think that, um, we haven't really talked about this, but I think that the next 4 years, uh, are going to be a pretty incredible time for us entrepreneurs. I think there's going to be a ton of opportunity, but I also think that the contract— or the business people in this industry that don't understand this topic, that don't understand profitability are going to get taken out by people that have a better understanding of profitability and much more money to play with. Because the number one thing you and I both know, the number one thing that you need to grow your business is cash. You need cash. Okay? Yes, you need teams and you need— but in order to get a team, you need cash. In order to have a smart COO like Megan, you need cash. And so what are those levers that we can pull? And so I've asked Megan to come and do that, and she'll be joining us in, in February. I'm excited. You know your stuff, and I'm looking forward to it. Let me just do— I'm going to do a quick plug here to everybody that's listening. If you have not bought your tickets to Accelerate Live yet, What are you waiting for? We're waiting for you. We'll be there. You and, you know, you'll be with hundreds of other like-minded contractors. We also have this year, we've got people bringing their leadership team. So we're going to do some interesting stuff with leadership teams as well. And so bring your staff, bring your team because you need a team to execute and to execute at the highest level levels. So Brian Gottlieb is going to be there. Talk about this and, and, um, we, we've got a really good roster of speakers that are really going to talk about the opportunities that are ahead of us in the next 4 years. So if you guys are interested, go to accelerateevent.com. We'll put it in the show notes. accelerateevent.com. Use the coupon code PODCAST24. You could still save some money. You get, uh, if you're hearing this before December 18th, I want to say. You could still get an early bird seat, but after that, prices will go up. Um, we are, um, more than halfway sold out. Um, and so go to accelerateevent.com and, uh, come and hang out with us. Your profit is 100% guaranteed. You will make money coming to this event. I guarantee it. So, um, okay, Megan, I did my big plug. Um, and I think we can wrap here, uh, because you got to go back to work and then you got to put a killer presentation together. You've got 2 months to do that. So, uh, any parting, parting thoughts here?

I'm excited. Um, I personally— Brian and I haven't talked about this either, but I'm going to be bringing some of my team, which is a new thing for me also, to bring down to Accelerate. 'cause it was fantastic last year and there's a lot of great speakers again this year on that lineup. Really, really great people to just pull some nuggets out. It's the, you know, it's the best event in the industry. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. So between the lineup and the way Brian and Addie do this whole thing with Accelerate, the networking, the people that are there in attendance, you'd be foolish not to miss it. It's a true investment into your business. and to your people as well. So that's my two cents. You didn't tell me to say any of that, but, uh, thank you.

I appreciate it. It means a lot coming from you. But really at the end of the day, look, it's not about me and it's not about Megan. It's entirely about you, the listener. We want to make you, we want to help you do what you need to do to create the business of your dreams, the business that allows you to go live your life however you want to live your life. And the way to do that is to have the right mindset, to have the right tools, and to understand how your business makes money. And that's what Accelerate's always been about. So we hope to see you there. Megan, thank you very much. Uh, we will hear more from you in 2025 for sure. And, um, I appreciate you and to everybody listening. Until next time, this is Brian Kaskavalciyan, and this is The Wealthy Contractor Podcast. Hope you enjoyed this week's episode. For insights on skyrocketing your home improvement business and accelerating your journey to the success, wealth, and freedom you've always dreamed about, be sure to get your free copy of my bestselling book, The 7 Secrets to Becoming a Wealthy Contractor, at www.thewealthycontractor.com. Contractor.com. And don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. See you next time.