From DoorDash to $81K/M With This Overlooked Business - Ep. #332

So in August, we did $81,000 in revenue.

Holy crap. Your third month. And how long have you been at it?

85 days. And the crazier part is, as we're sitting here, September has just begun. We have $54,000 on the calendar for September.

That's wild.

I never had an internship. I never got my degree. I had no work experience. I had really nothing. I was driving DoorDash, and I don't want to be in that situation. $500 of setup, and we were ready to go. That was a one-man show. The thing I get personally most excited about, we are in a time period right now where there is an ever-diminishing amount of skilled laborers. Way more people are retiring than there are people that are starting. You have so many service types that have a market rate that is just completely made up by whoever the 5 people that offer the service are. There's no reason—

Yeah.

That, that costs $10,000.

And no one's thinking about it.

No. And it will always be overlooked because people, they don't understand it. They think that it is harder or more complicated than it really is.

Yeah.

The way I wanted to run this, I'm not licensed. Just have them handle the install part of it. Right. And when you do the math on what they're gonna make, then they do 16 jobs each and they make an average of $500 a job. I mean, that's a really good setup for them as well. They're gonna make an extra $8,000 a month.

Do you need to ever go there or touch it or do you—

I go there. Twice a month.

My guest today, as a 25-year-old, went from delivering for DoorDash to making $80,000 a month, and he started this business less than 3 months ago with less than $500. He subcontracts out all the work, and in this video we cover everything you need to know to launch this business. And at the end, we talk very specifically about how to find customers for cheap. Also, how to find the right subcontractors on the right platforms, because that's the whole business here. You don't need experience, you don't need a college degree, you don't need much money. You just need to watch this episode and actually do what Parker talks about doing. This is legitimately one of the best episodes I have ever filmed. Please enjoy. So, what's your background?

So, I am originally from Chicago, was a Division 1 soccer player. And then was a professional soccer player.

Wow, what school?

Northern Illinois.

Oh, nice.

I played semi-professionally in Michigan with a team called Kalamazoo FC.

Okay.

And we lost in the national championship, and I was ranked like the number 4 player to watch under 21 in the league. And I got an opportunity to go pro, and I was like, this is my chance. So left, went and played pro soccer for one season. At the end of that season, had a small knee injury that really just got worse and worse and worse. And then kind of decided that I had really scratched the itch of playing soccer, and that I was ready to just wrap it up. You know, I had the goal of being a pro soccer player my whole life. And I got there, and it really wasn't as glamorous as I had hoped for.

Yeah.

And so I decided I was done. That was right as my girlfriend at the time was graduating college, gave us a chance to finally move in together. We got engaged. And then that was kind of like my, my point where it was like sink or swim. You know, I never had a Internship. I never got my degree. I had no work experience. I had really nothing. I was driving DoorDash and just trying to do something. Ended up taking a loan from my girlfriend for $3,000 to start a cleaning company in 2023.

So your girlfriend graduates college. What puts you onto a cleaning business?

Yeah, so it was not my first choice. I mean, it was like my 10th choice, right? You know, I had tried a dozen other things. I tried to be a fitness content creator. I tried to launch a white label supplement brand. I did everything right. And at some point, I was really just— I had exhausted my runway. You know, it'd been like 6 months since I had worked. Now I'm engaged. I've got my fiancée who's working as a civil engineer on construction sites, like in the 100-degree heat, working 10, 11-hour days. And she's coming home and I'm like sitting at my laptop trying to edit a fitness TikTok and hope that it goes viral. And I'm like, all right, I need to— I need to do something.

And even if she doesn't say anything, you're just like, And her mom was saying stuff, you know? So— That stings even more, man.

Yeah. And, you know, I didn't know at the time, honestly, but you get the feeling.

Yeah, yeah.

And you just also like, I'm a prideful enough person where I don't wanna be in that situation, you know? And I actually saw a TikTok video of a guy talking about he had a cleaning business, a remote cleaning business. And I was like, this is cool. This is tangible. Makes sense to me. I went to my girlfriend and I said, I don't have any money. You know, you're the one paying the bills right now. Like, can we do this? And she said, yeah, I'll loan it to you. The guy let me pay like in installments and we started the business and I started cleaning myself. Like I would sell jobs. I went to Walmart and spent $100 on a vacuum and a Swiffer and a bottle of multipurpose and went and cleaned college apartments. I was billing myself out at like $40 an hour, which was way better than DoorDash. And then slowly learned the business, like how to actually delegate and how to not be the means of production, but rather be the person running the business. That was end of '23. And I ran that business for just, just, just about 2 years. That kind of skillset was what helped me start my holiday lighting business, which I still own and still run. At the end of '24, similar type of thing. I started just putting the lights up myself, you know, found some installers pretty shortly thereafter. And once I knew the business, we, we, we ended up kind of taking off with that. And I sold the cleaning business at the end of '25. That was my first real, like, giving myself a little buffer. You know, honestly, probably it was undervalued when I sold it. But to me, you know, as someone who had $0 to their name 18 months prior, it was like I could get multiple 6 figures for it. And that was life-changing money at the time. It really just bought me the flexibility.

Yeah.

And then, it was January of 2020 or February of 2026, we finished the holiday lighting takedowns. Cleaning business was sold. I was like, what am I going to do now? You know, like now I've got 9 months until we're looking at holiday lighting again here. So, I kind of went back to scrolling and looking for other things that people were doing and stumbled across, you know, several people in like a 3-day period talking about water filtration and never heard anything about it.

Where did you come across people talking about it?

Just Instagram, TikTok, you know, there's a guy Anthony Jory. There's Rob the Bank. He made a— and he's like a— doesn't— never talks about blue collars. And it was a— I never see his content, super obscure video. He's like, the most underserved business model in 2026 is a water— and I was like, what is this guy talking about?

Right.

And then a good friend of mine posted that he was starting something on an Instagram story he made. He's like, I'm starting a water business. Like, let me know if you guys want a water system. And I was like, wow, this, this can't be coincidence that I've never heard of this. And now in 5 days, I'm seeing 3 people online all talking about this. So I was like, let's just jump right away on it.

And sorry, you always see waves on different home service industries.

Oh, yeah.

Pressure washing, bounce house. I mean, house painting, home cleaning.

Yeah.

Windows, gutter cleaning, gutter install.

Absolutely.

And so you were just seeing all those signals for water filtration.

Yes. Same thing. I was like, people that don't talk about blue-collar stuff are talking about this.

Yeah.

You know, it's like when your barber starts talking about Bitcoin with you and you're like, alright.

We're at the top.

Yeah.

Yep.

You're like, I need to start selling. Well, this was kind of the opposite where it's like, When people that know nothing about this start to talk about it, yeah, and it's just the quiet murmurings, then you're like, all right, we're early. Like there's something here, and we we just moved really quick. Thankfully, this was my third time doing it now, so I knew like really quick how to pop up a website, set up a scheduling platform, set up a payment processor.

What did you do specifically? Like what did you use to build a website?

Yeah, so website we had. I actually used Claude.

Okay.

Yeah, and that was my first time doing that, which was very fun. I'm a big Claude fan.

Yeah.

And getting to, like, actually do end-to-end, like, development, you know, it's kinda funny to call it that as—

Because we don't know what we're doing.

Yeah. You're just kinda watching and clicking allow and, you know, going from there. But built the website on Claude, classic, like, Google Workspace domain, GHL white label snapshot for a CRM, Jobber for a scheduling platform. And I was like, alright. That's my tech stack. Right? Email, phone, scheduling, CRM. And then—

Sorry. Did you use GoHighLevel for phone as well? Yes.

Okay. Yep. Lead connector.

So go high level for your CRM, customer relationship management, lead connector, and then Jobber for scheduling specifically. Claude for the website. What did I miss?

Google Workspace for the email and domain email. Yeah.

Okay. And exactly what I would have used, basically.

Yeah. And and I mean that whole tech stack is three hundred bucks a month, maybe. I mean depending on what you pay for the snapshot, maybe even less.

Yeah.

And then we got a general liability plumbing insurance policy, which I think was about. $180 a month, something like that. And that was it. We were live, you know, $500 of kinda setup and, and we were ready to go. But the thing people overlook is actually because of the nature of like the way I wanted to run this, I'm not a licensed plumber. I, I don't really know this stuff that well. I wanted to partner with private plumbers and just have them handle the install part of it. Right? And, you gotta know enough to really be able to hold a conversation with those guys.

Yeah.

It's actually easier with the customers than it is with the plumbers.

Yeah. Because they don't know anything about water filters.

No. Most customers Customers are very, very naive to it. They, they basically just know whatever they got in a pamphlet, or I can always tell when a customer's just regurgitating like ChatGPT.

Yeah.

You know, and, and they're asking me a follow-up question. I'm like, you don't even really know what you're asking me.

Yeah.

But the plumbers, you get on the phone with them and they're like, well, what, what type of pipe are we using? And what's the fitting? And what's the bypass size? And what do you do about this? And in this case, and in this area of town, all these people have crawl spaces, but they're only And you're very quickly like over my— I'm in over my head.

And your business lives or dies on the plumbers.

Yes.

They're doing all the physical work, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

The customers, that's sales.

Yes.

Right? That's marketing and sales, which you've done before. But the plumbers is like, I, I have to know enough about this industry to not sound like an idiot. 'Cause if I don't have good plumbers on my team, I don't have a team.

Yes, absolutely. And then the second thing was I just old-fashioned way went, took the plumbers out for coffee or a lunch, sat down man-to-man, face-to-face. And just had a conversation.

Yeah.

Hey, this is what I'm aiming to do. This is what I've done in the past. I don't know everything about water softeners and plumbing and water filtration right now, but I'm a quick learner. And 30 days ago, I didn't know, like, I didn't even know what a softener was.

Yeah. So why don't you explain to people what it is? Because it's kind of regional specific.

Yes, a little bit.

In Texas, like, I have under my sink, uh, reverse osmosis filter just for taste, but that's it. I have friends in other places that have a whole house. Like, what is it exactly? What are you selling?

Absolutely. So the, the main kind of bundle that we sell, it's, it's a 3-part. So the first part is a resin softener that removes hardness or GPG, grains per gallon, from your water, which the easiest way to think about that is there are mini rocks, not visible, but very, very tiny rocks that float around in the water depending on where the water comes from. That just beats up your pipes, your appliances, your, your hair feels dry, your skin feels dry. Some areas have super hard water, some areas have no hardness at all. So that's the first component is a resin softener.

Hard water equals more rocks.

Yes.

Okay.

Harder water, more rocks, more damage, more dryness, you know, more bad.

Okay.

Now then you look at the second component and that's a whole home or what we call POE, point of entry, which just means the water gets filtered at the point that it enters the whole home.

Main.

Yep, exactly. Right at the main. Yep. And it's on the private property, but it's like right where your central shutoff valve would be for where your water comes into your house. Okay. Now, then the second element is carbon filtration. Carbon filtration, again, is a point of entry system. So it's for the whole house. And that is what removes the contaminants, we'll call it the stuff that you don't want in your water. Not rocks, but things like chlorine, chloramine, chloroforms, haloacetic acids. Those are all just buzzwords for stuff I don't want to be drinking. Yeah, right.

Or on my body.

Yeah, or on my body. Exactly the stuff that I, you know, imagine in your home showering in pool water every day. You get out of the pool and you want to shower because you've got chlorine all over you. And then you go take a shower and you're in just as much chlorine in your, in your shower water.

Yeah.

So that is what a carbon block or carbon filter does. So we— our flagship system is resin and carbon to soften and filter all of the home's water. And then we also couple that with what you have, which is a point-of-use system, reverse osmosis. And that is a Either a tank or a tankless system that just goes under the sink, draws water through it through a reverse osmosis membrane, which is the best form of filtration, and then pushes it out a small dedicated faucet directly for drinking water.

And that's like an upsell?

Yeah, we, we like to sell it as a bundle and it kind of becomes our, our unique value proposition is like, hey, we charge the same or less than other people for a whole home system and we include the drinking water system. And that's just, that's just part of our bundle.

Yeah.

So that's kind of how we sell.

Makes your close rate go up.

Definitely.

Okay.

Yep.

What are your price points for these packages?

So we sell our flagship, which is a single tank, a 10 by 54 tank. So 10-inch diameter, 54 inches tall, a single tank that has both resin and carbon in it. It's a mixed bed system, which just means it has both. That tank with the RO or reverse osmosis drinking water We sell that at $2,699 installed.

Okay.

Taxes included, install included, everything included.

Now, is that, is that in the ground, like at the main?

It is most often installed in the garage and tied directly just into the water line.

Okay.

So, like, we can bury them. We can do, you know, whatever.

So the water main at the street comes in right where the shutoff would be. It comes to the garage or whatever, and it goes there first?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

It looks like a tall skinny Water heater?

Yes.

Okay.

Exactly.

Okay.

It's just a tall black cylinder. And then there's a small little like almost garbage can looking black tank that's called a brine tank.

Okay.

And you put salt in that. That helps the resin softener function properly.

Okay. But $2,700?

Yep.

Okay. How much of that goes to hardware, plumber, profit, etc.?

So, at a $2,700 install, we will pay about $950 for all of the— we'll call it heavy machinery. So, the brine tank, the control valve, the actual tank that has the carbon and resin in it, and then the RO system. So, those are all your main components, about $950. From there, we'll probably spend about $100 per job on miscellaneous stuff like just pipe fittings, you know, salt, insulation if you're in a cold climate where you need to insulate the pipes, things like that. So, that puts us to what? $1,050, and then we'll pay on average, I would say, about $500 an install. So—

To the plumber?

To the plumber, yep. And that, that could be as low as $400, that could be as high as $600, $650. And sometimes we'll add a little bit of markup on top if the install is very difficult or we need to bury a system underground. Like, that's a lot of labor. So, but on that, that classic system, I would say probably $450 to $500 to a plumber, $1,050 for all materials.

And how long does it take him to do?

About 4 hours. Okay.

And so, you're shooting for like 40 to 50% gross margin, give or take?

Yeah, yeah. I would say, you know, about 40% gross margin.

Okay. So, let's say you said $2,700, right?

Yeah. So, $2,700 minus $1,500.

So, call it $1,000 in profit. Gross profit. How much of that is like marketing costs or sales costs?

Yeah. I mean, we're right now acquiring clients for like $175 a client. Which is really, really cheap. I don't expect it to stay like that, quite frankly. It's, it's, that's uncommon from what I've seen. But I mean, I even feel that a client acquisition cost of $300 or $350 is very justifiable. Yeah. I mean, you're still running 3x return on whatever you're spending.

Yeah. Because that puts your net margins closer to 30%.

Yeah.

Which is amazing for any business, especially home service.

Yeah.

Okay. So what are your, well, before I ask that, what else What are the geographical areas that need this the most? And where, where physically is your business? Because I know you've been South Florida, Chicago, Wisconsin, Raleigh.

Yeah. Yeah. So the business is in Raleigh. I did wanna be able to have a hands-on element to it. I think there's a, there's something nice for a business like this of just having the option to step into the field. Yeah. Shake hands with a plumber, a customer. So that's in Raleigh, North Carolina. And To your first question, I, I've, I've had a little bit of a mixed experience with this. I would've thought that, you know, the areas that have the worst water would have the most demand, but they also have the most people that have already been doing this, right?

Yeah.

So, you know, you go to an area like, let's say, I mean, here, right? Dallas-Fort Worth, like this area, this is going to be— there's, there's hard water here. Like there, there, there, there's absolutely a need. You look at maybe Salt Lake City, absolutely super hard water, huge need, right? But there's a ton of companies that have been selling softeners and filtration for a super long time, which isn't necessarily a problem. But I think what— like a market like mine, Raleigh, we don't really have hard water. You know, we sell— people buy the softener because it kind of comes with the combo, but there's not a lot of need.

Yeah.

Um, there's a lot of need for the carbon filtration because they dump so much chlorine and chloramine and other stuff like that into our water. So, what my market might lack in demand, it also lacks in competitors. So, there's, there's a lot fewer businesses that are selling this type of service. Mainly, it's plumbers that are like, yeah, I could also do a softener if you want me to do a softener.

Yeah, yeah.

But they're not running Facebook ads. They're not like really trying to acquire these customers.

Because he does other stuff anyway.

Yes.

So, your plumbers aren't your competitors.

No.

And Raleigh has a good economy. It's got, it's got like good average income. So, I imagine a lot of what you're selling is kind of fear. Like they're just like, yeah, or like they can afford it. They're like, yeah.

Why wouldn't I?

If I've got $2,700 and I want my kids to probably have better drinking water, that's a good investment.

Yes. And that's a lot of what it comes down to is a lot of people, they look at the price and what we do that's unique about our kind of marketing angle is our best performing ad. We closed our first deal on $41 of ad spend, and it was just a static image ad that was a photo of our unit, and it said $2,699 installed. And that was it. That, that was it.

What was the headline or text or—

I mean, everything was just like whole home plus drinking water, $2,699 installed. And the entire angle, the entire thing we try to do is pick up the scraps left behind by the billion-dollar companies like Culligan's, Kinetico, Leaf Home Water, where they come, they do this big in-person sales process. It's a really elaborate thing.

They test the water.

Yes. And the price point is $6,000, $7,000, $8,000 for honestly a very comparable system. And we just kind of were, were like following in their wake, like picking up all the people that just got completely priced out.

Yeah.

You know, because there are plenty of people that can afford that $8,000 system and they'll go with them because they're a 100-year-old company that has been doing this forever and they know they're going to get a certain product and a certain experience.

Yeah.

But there are so many people that just purely cannot afford it.

Or don't want— like, I can afford $8,000. I wouldn't pay that.

No.

To me, it doesn't have that much value.

Nope.

Right? It has to match the value.

Yes. And a lot of people are just— the analogy I always love to use is like, We, we opened up a, a Chevy dealership next to a, a Ferrari dealership.

And it's price anchoring.

Exactly. Yeah.

They're, they're doing your heavy lifting. They're anchoring. So if you put $2,700 in the ad, you don't need a killer sales guy. No. Which is great.

Because you don't at all pay a sales guy 25% commission. Nope. You know, we, we are more like order takers, if anything. You know, we, we, we've set it up so, you know, our, our whole angle is like, imagine you just need to get to work every day. And work is far and you're tired of walking. And the only place in your city that sells cars is Ferrari. And you just— you can't afford a Ferrari. So you've just been walking.

Yeah, the walking sucks.

And you would love to just get a Chevy. You'd love to just get a Honda and just get to work and get home.

You didn't know a Chevy existed until you see a Facebook ad.

Yes. And in a lot of cases, in some markets, Chevy did not exist. There was no Chevy dealership. And I said, wait, why wouldn't we open a Chevy dealership here? There's plenty of people that would buy a Chevy if they could. And, and, you know, now it's just genuinely just getting awareness.

Yeah.

Because once people know about the product and they have a conversation where they can feel confident that this will solve their problems, which again, in my area, they don't have crazy water problems.

Yeah.

It's a pretty easy sale.

So what are the markets where this is an established industry? There is hard water. So you said Salt Lake?

Yeah, I would say Salt Lake. Denver is gonna have really hard water.

Um, out west in general.

Yeah. A lot of the out west, you know, you go closer to the mountains and just in general they do. A lot of markets in Texas do. Florida has notoriously hard water. And, you know, it's a little— it's a catch-22 because you go to a market like, let's say, Orlando, and every single home in Orlando has a water softener. Every single home. So—

Are they built like that?

They're not built like that, but it's just standard practice. Like, the water is so hard that you just— you just thrash your appliances and your skin and your hair and And so, they just don't do it. Nobody doesn't have a water softener. And so, with that in mind, like while those markets are definitely more competitive, they're also— the TAM is 100%. Every home needs it.

Yeah, yeah.

In Raleigh, we have 3 million people, probably less than a million of those people have a water softener.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, if there's a million households, probably less than half of them are even interested in that as a product.

Yeah. Well, how did you land on that price point?

I think, you know, it was 2 things. The first thing was that I always wanted to target— when I made this step up, I said I want to target $1,000 net margin. That's my ideal price point to be at. Can I make $1,000 net? And that gives me a lot of wiggle room for promos, for, you know, bulk discounts, for referral programs, for a lot of things. And then the other thing that I thought is, why wouldn't I just Sell as many as I can at this price point. And my 2 options are either it's working phenomenally and we just keep going, or if it's working well but the margin isn't strong enough, then we can just raise price once we have a reputation that allows us to do it. So I just said, what's the cheapest I can go where I can still target making $1,000 a job? And then I can inch my way up from there as I have a review that— or like a A reputation that allows me to do so.

Yeah. What, what percentage of your customers are you getting from Facebook ads?

95%.

What about the other 5%? Referrals?

Yeah. Referrals and—

Google Business Profile?

Google Business Profile. Yep. We, we, we have 52 5-star reviews.

Wow.

In 80 days. I think today is 85 days since we turned on ads.

Wow.

So we, we, we've been— I am like a psycho about Google reviews. Like, if we do a Google review for— or we do an install for a client, And I've been speaking with Zach. You know, after the job's done, I'm gonna say, Zach, hey, do you mind leaving a review? I'm gonna get Zach to do it. I'm gonna say, hey Zach, I'm gonna be in the area actually later this week. I would love to come by, drop off some extra water softener salt for you guys. Would you mind having your wife leave a review? Would you mind having your brother leave us a review?

Oh, it's reciprocity, right? You're saying like, here's some free salt.

Yes.

Can you do me a favor?

And it's not a, if you do this, then I'll do this.

Right, it's implied though.

Yes.

And that's okay.

Absolutely.

And I feel like the, the higher ticket your home service, the more you have to be a maniac about begging for reviews. Because if I'm a landscaper doing $50 jobs all day, it's like, whatever, I'm doing 100 of these a week. But if it's a $3,000 ticket, a $3,000 item, then you're only going to do so many of those. Yeah, right. A few a week, 10 a week, whatever. So you got to get more reviews.

Absolutely. And we, we are the— on the east side of Raleigh where our GBP pin is located. So I guess like where our physical location is, we are the number 1 ranked water filtration company. Like, if you look up water filtration in Raleigh and you are on the east side of town, we are number 1.

And how long have you been at it?

85 days.

Oh, wow. All right, so let's start. So what day did you start the business?

June 8th.

June 8th. And that's when you, you, or you probably like, you built the website that day or before that?

That was like, that was like go live. That was go live. Exactly.

Told the world that you Yes, that was— Building a website isn't really doing it.

No, no. You know, it's— I could have built the web. I think I filed the LLC maybe on like May 15th or something. And then I spent 3 weeks like just getting everything ready. That was those coffees with my plumbers and getting them onboarded and comfortable. That was building out my website, building my first ad creative, setting up my ads manager, little things like that. June 8th was the day we said we're live. Right? And that was ads on. Plumbers were eagerly awaiting work, you know, and that, and that's kind of what I consider our first day one.

Okay. Who did your Facebook ads?

I did.

Okay.

Yourself.

And you had experience with your other businesses?

Yes.

Okay. What, how many ads did you launch with? Like, one that's still that static image, multiple?

3 static images.

Yep. Okay. No videos?

Nope.

What were, what are, like, your tips and tricks for making Facebook ads successful for this industry?

I think in water filtration specifically, you either have to sell like informationally, like providing a client value as to why they should watch the video or read the text or whatnot, or you just have to compete on, on value. And that's what we did. Everything was just price-oriented. System quality at a low price, and we were again just trying to pick up scraps. We didn't want to go compete with the established companies and try to say our product is better, or, you know, we didn't want any part of that. We wanted all the people that they left behind.

So you— one approach could be, hey, let's educate the market. Hey, if you have hard water, do this. Here's a test. And you're like, listen, we want the people that are already educated. Mr. Algorithm, go find the people that already know that this costs $6,000 to $8,000 from the other guys. We're just going to tell them we exist. This is what we cost.

And we almost withheld information on the ads because we only wanted an educated customer. I didn't want the ad to attempt to educate someone. I wanted somebody that would see the graphic and immediately know, oh, that's a softener, $2,699.

Yeah.

I just got quoted last month, $8,000. I better call these guys. And that was like, no, no one calls us and says they don't know what we sell.

Yeah.

No one calls us and says, that they need an explanation. They call us, and the only thing we have to be prepared to handle is one, a comparison to the other system they've been quoted on, a genuine, honest comparison, and how that is relevant to their water. And then we have to be ready to, if like, use the discounted rate as our crutch without leaning on it entirely. Because you, you can't say, yeah, pick us over Conetico, because, you know, We're gonna do something better. We're not. We're gonna do something— we have a better system. We won't. We don't. It's really just, we're gonna do the same. As far as you're concerned, you will get the same and you'll get it at a lower price.

Yeah.

And, and that was just our whole angle, and it really sold quite well.

So do you use Advantage Plus for targeting?

No, we, we, we— I turn most of that stuff off. In the beginning, we actually started with just a broad targeting, just geo-targeting. That was it.

Like zip code or, or cities?

Yeah, we did kind of—

Radius?

Yeah, more, more like radius. And the way that Raleigh is laid out is it's, it's very sprawling, kind of similar to a DFW where it's all one metro, but it, it's, it's big.

Yeah.

So we kind of expanded out that way. We set a couple focal points and then expanded radiuses around those focal points. And then over time, we've just now actually trained a pixel, and now we can actually do a little bit of retargeting. targeting, and we can, you know, create lookalike audiences and things like that.

But before, were you saying Facebook, you know, we want 30 to 60-year-old homeowners, or did you just say, this is the radius, you go?

Raleigh, 30 to 60.

Age?

Yep, that's it.

Not male or female?

Nope.

Just not homeowner?

Nope.

Okay. And now you're still doing that, but with the pixel that's trained, but with a lookalike audience of people that have clicked or called or purchased?

Correct. Exactly.

Okay. Um, well, it's interesting that you're, you're, are you still using static images only?

Well, not only, we have, uh, we have videos, but I'll tell you, statics are the best performers.

Absolutely.

It's, it's almost frustrating for me to like carve out a day to shoot a bunch of video ads.

Yeah.

And then the statics just take all the spend because we'll put 'em on, you know, a, a campaign where effectively Meta just decides how to spend and it always picks the statics.

Yeah.

Always.

Are you, are you using AI to make the static images or not?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

We—

What tools?

I'm, I'm a huge fan of DALL-E, ChatGPT. You know, I think that—

It's the best for images.

For images, I really do think it is.

The only thing I use it for.

Yeah.

Images.

And if, if I want to put myself like a person, then I'll go for like a Nano Banana or something that can do a little higher level. But if it's just product on backdrop with price and text, Dolly every time.

And what type of conversion are you optimizing for?

We're optimizing for leads. So lead, and then we just go direct instant form.

Instant form.

And then it just drops it right in our CRM, and we're we're on them right away.

Interesting. So you don't send them to your website at all? Nope. Interesting. Nope. I've heard the opposite for like higher ticket home service because they need to get more educated. But you said right?

It's our thing. We don't.

That's so interesting because. You're telling the algorithm without telling them, I only want people that are interested.

Yeah.

And I'm gonna optimize for people that give me a lead. So if I don't tell them too much information and they fill out their lead, then they are interested.

And they're educated.

Yep. Yeah. They're already educated and they're interested.

And so we're, we're just kind of taking out a lot of the, it's, it, it's low skill advertising. Yeah. Is really what it is. We're taking out a lot of the skill and, you know, probably I would say by October we will be rolling out like a VSL, like a class funnel, they go to a sales video of me explaining the product and all of that stuff. I think we will probably sprinkle that in, but my objective is to use that on Google because Google, we can't train the same way. Google, we can pick our keywords like lowest cost softener, or, you know, we can, we can target to sell for certain keywords. And then when they click, dump them right into a funnel with a VSL of me explaining the product. Because I'm gonna assume that the buying intent is gonna be lower and the education is gonna be lower on Google than it will be on Meta with the way that we're advertising.

So you're not running Google Ads at all right now?

Not at all.

What about not LSA either?

No. So for LSA, it's very hard to target water filtration specifically. So you'd almost have to do plumbing general, which then you're just gonna, I'm gonna get a lot of stuff we just don't want.

Yeah.

And I think the cost per lead is too high to justify.

LSA is still relatively new.

Yeah.

And there's 1,000 categories that could be on there, but there's only hundreds. Right?

Yeah.

They're just kind of rolling out more over time.

Yeah. And they don't have water filtration or water softeners. They don't have those as categories.

Okay. So that's just still, like, blue ocean for you. Like, no Angie, Thumbtack, HomeAdvisor, none of that. We just—

we honestly, we haven't been operationally ready for it.

Yeah.

We're selling already the maximum amount of jobs that we can fulfill. So I just partnered with a third plumber who's now ready to start taking jobs. He's actually doing his first job right now. I was like, good luck, because I'm going to be unavailable for a little while, but I'm sure he'll be fine. And really, the constraint for us has been having product in hand and being able to fulfill it. And really, that's been it. Or people not knowing their homes very well, which is kind of something I didn't expect to deal with. But I asked someone, do you have a power supply In your crawl space so we can install in the crawl space? Yes. No, they don't. And because we don't do an in-person sales appointment, my plumber shows up and says, Parker, there's no power in the crawl space here.

Yeah.

So we've been running into a little bit of that, and then we have to push out 3 weeks because they have to get an electrician in and add the outlet, and then we come back. And so, you know, we, we, we really— client acquisition has not been our bottleneck at all.

Yeah.

So I, I'm not too excited about I just need to add more client acquisition channels because we don't really need it.

Well, every business has 1 or 2 bottlenecks. Fulfillment, sales.

Yep.

And in my experience, sales is usually the bottleneck, right? So I would rather solve for sales and figure out fulfillment, because to me, it's a lot easier to figure out fulfillment.

Absolutely.

So June 8th, first day, what do you do in sales and profits in June?

So in June, we did about, I think it was 5 installs.

Okay.

We sold our first job on June 8th. Second lead we ever got, we installed on June 10th. Yes, on the phone. Super nice guy, David was his name, and he was like, yeah, I want, uh, your classic flagship system in my garage, easy install. I just moved in yesterday, I just want the system in. And I said $2,699. He said, great, when can you come? And we said, you know, 2 days. So we came out, we installed on Wednesday. We ended up selling, I believe, fulfilling 4 more jobs that That month.

So, $10,000-ish?

$15,000.

Okay.

Yeah, because I think we had one that was about $4,000. It was like a well system. And then the rest were all around $2,700. So, I think it got us right around $15,000.

So, $15,000 in sales your first month. How much profit?

Well, I mean, if you're looking at operating profit, it was probably about $800 a job. But if you're looking at real profit, it was zero because I front-loaded inventory and, you know, reinvested everything. So, but I'd say operating profit, probably, probably about $3,000.

Okay. And then July?

July, we did just under $50,000 of installs. So we did, it was 16 jobs. Um, it ended up being like $49,800, like just shy of $50,000. And again, our, I would say our operating profit would've been slightly lower than that, that first month because We were kind of figuring out some of the sales side, and I was struggling because I was a one-man show. I was struggling to follow up with leads. And the big thing that, that was different about this industry was, I mean, we have a 25% true closing rate, which is very high.

Once you get them on the phone?

No, or true closing rate, like 25% lead to close. 25%, super high. Yeah, but the problem is we don't get a client on the phone normally within the first like 4 or 5 touchpoints. So we've got to call them for a week before we even get to speak to them. Once we speak to them, we close at an extremely high percentage. Like, we're closing probably 35% of the people we actually speak to.

Wow.

But I was only speaking to a very small percentage because I had to call them when they opted in and they didn't answer, and then the next morning, and then the next evening, and then the next morning and the next evening. And we had automation running, but I was just getting inundated with leads. Too many leads. I didn't have the time to call everyone. So our CAC went up because we were overspending. We had too many leads in the pipeline and people weren't dealing with them. But still, probably, let's say $650,000, I would say is probably a pretty good—

$12,000 in profit? Yeah.

I, I would say something, something around there, probably $11,000 to $12,000.

And what, what were you paying per lead to Meta?

It's always ranged between $30 and $40.

Per lead.

Yeah.

Okay. It is crazy because I have a, like, a backyard sport court business and then a tree trimming business, and those Instant Form leads can be so weak.

Oh yeah.

Like, sometimes you call them and like, who are you? What? I don't know what you're talking about.

Yes. Yes.

Bro, this was— you submitted this 45 seconds ago.

Yes.

Speed to lead is everything, right? What do you do about that? You just keep calling?

Yep. Yep.

Remind them?

We, we, we live by a mantra in my business, and my, my, uh, operations manager Jack could attest to this. Until the lead Either opts out of conversation or says, leave me alone.

Yeah.

It's, it's incessant. Like, we, we are, we are ruthless with follow-up because if you filled out my form and you tell me that you didn't fill out my form, fine, whatever. We'll, we'll remove you from the CRM. There's 10% of Meta Leads. That's just how they are.

Yeah.

I, I don't understand it. It's gotta be an algorithm problem, but we get that all the time. We call and they're like, why are you calling me? I'm like, you filled out a form yesterday and I've just been trying to get ahold of you. I never filled out a form. I don't know what you're talking about. That's not even my name. I'm like, okay, sorry. And have a nice day. You know, but everyone else, it's a yes or a no. We don't take not answers. That's, that's not an option.

But there is a correlation between how many times it takes you to follow up with someone and the chance that they'll ever actually answer. Right?

Of course, a month from now, the likelihood drops way off. But what we saw And I looked at my numbers before coming on here so I could be well educated as we talked about it. When I brought my operations manager in, I brought him in on like the 3rd of July or of August because July got overrun. I was like, I need to bring somebody in. Originally brought him in just as a sales guy. I was like, just follow up with the leads, call the leads, and, and sell jobs. It didn't really work very well in that regard because there was too much disconnect because he had to also, you know, have conversations with the the plumbers about special installs and scheduling and, you know, get service agreements or things like that. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna have— you're gonna be the operations manager and you're gonna just own it end to end.

Mm-hmm.

Right? Lead to job completed. You need to own that process. And that's worked much better for us. So I gave him the first 2 weeks. He basically just called old leads. We didn't really spend anything the first half of August because we had so many old leads in the pipeline and I, I wanted him to get his feet underneath him. August 15th, we go back to $200 a day of spend.

I meant to ask, what were you spending per day in June and July?

June, it was probably $100 a day on average.

You spent $2,000-ish?

Yeah, something like that. And then in July, it was probably $300 a day for the first 10 days, then $400 a day for the middle 10 days, and then like nothing for the back half because I was just overrun with leads.

It worked too well.

Yes, exactly. And so, I bring in Jack and he starts August 15th is when I consider his first real like he's in the big leagues now. Leads are flying, everything is— we're going and we're at full steam ahead. $200 a day of ad spend. He just sent me the readout from August 15th to August 31st. So, about 17 days. We got 89 leads.

Those are fresh leads, not old ones?

Yes. Not old ones. New leads, 89 leads.

All right. So we're talking like 4 leads a day or 3, 3 to 4.

Yeah, something like that.

Yeah.

4, even 5 some days, you know, and you know how Meta is. Some days it's 2 and then it's 8 and some I'm sure were duplicates. But let's say 89 was the actual number on the Meta Ads Manager. We actually connected with 70% of those leads. So 30% of them we never got a hold of.

Not texting, phone.

Do you count a text You know, we actually prefer text.

Are they as effective?

I think that text is just as effective because so many buyers are so averse to calling that our intro is not speed delete immediately call.

Okay.

It's speed delete immediately text. When is a good time for us to talk?

Okay. So you're setting up a call but texting first.

Yes. And so always they opt in and it'll be, hey, Kevin, this is Jack with Raleigh Water Pros. I got your form. When's a good time for us to chat for 5 minutes so I can get you a quote on a, on a whole home system?

And is that automated?

Yes.

DHL?

Yes.

Okay.

So as soon as the new lead's created, that, that message gets automated sent out. And then the majority of our customers will text and respond and say, prob— let's say 50% of our customers will text and respond and either say now or in a week or Monday or who is this? I don't even know what you're talking about. Right? And then we'll schedule the calls from there. Then we have another flex, 20-25%, that don't respond to the text, and then they just go into the call cycle. We're just calling and texting them, trying to get some form of life from them.

So on your follow-ups, are you texting them over and over until they respond to get them on a call, or do you text them once and then you start calling?

Then we start calling. Yep. So we text them and we'll give them about an hour to respond to that first text, and then they get called and texted. Texted after that.

The call is manual?

Yes.

Okay, you're getting a trigger in GHL or whatever, then a human's picking up the phone?

Yes, correct. So we're doing that. And then, so we had about 70% connection rate. So 30% of leads we never got a response from.

Text or phone?

Text or phone. They, they were— or they just opted out immediately, right? Of that 70%, we closed 20% of the full 90 of them. So I think that would be Yeah, it was 18 leads out of, what would that be, 60? So, you know, it, it was a good percent, about 30% of the leads that we actually closed.

Okay.

That we got on the phone with.

Let's say hypothetically between August 15th and 31st, you got 100 leads. Of those, you connected with 70. And then what was the next step down the funnel there?

So the best way would be we got 90 leads, we connected with 60 of them, and then we closed 20 of them.

Wow. Okay. So, you close, yeah, I mean, 20— a quarter of all of your leads, which is what you said a few minutes ago.

Yep.

At an average ticket of $3,000?

$3,300.

Okay.

Yeah, because we sell a lot of— a lot of people are eager to buy the upsell when they see how valuable the main is.

Yeah.

They're like, wow, I was really about to pay $5,000 for this. So, now that it's $2,700, sure, I'll buy the $500 upsell thing. No problem.

So, what were your August sales then?

So in August we did $81,000 in revenue.

Holy crap.

Yep.

Your, your second full month?

Yes.

Or your third month?

$81,000. And the crazier part is as we're sitting here, you know, and, and we're— September has just begun. We have $54,000 of installs on the calendar for September.

That's wild.

And that's all from August ad spend.

Yeah.

Yeah. Right.

So of the 80, Wait, 81,000? How much was profit?

So 81 installs was generated by about 25 jobs roughly, and 25 jobs, our net margin, it went up because we did better with the CAC, but it went down because now I pay Jack for every closed job.

Sure.

So Jack gets $200 per closed job, not a percentage of sales, because I don't want him selling product that people don't need, right? So he gets $200 flat plus his base salary. So, the gross profit per job kind of ended up back around like $750, $800.

Yeah. Beautiful.

Yep. So, so, 27 jobs.

$15,000?

Yeah.

Give or take?

Something like that.

Man.

Yep.

Your third— your second full month.

But again, we didn't take any profit. I haven't taken a dime out.

Because you're growing it. Like, you want to build.

And we're buying so much inventory. Because one of the biggest bottlenecks that we really faced in the, the 3rd week of July and in the 2nd week of August. And that $81 grand that we did was with zero installs in the 2nd week of August because we didn't have product. We were waiting for inventory to come in. And with that, that has been a, a recurring issue for us. And so I finally was just like, I'm done with that. I'm done with that game. I wanna have way more than I'm gonna need of every system that we're gonna sell so that—

It's too expensive.

It's way too expensive to not be able to install it.

Where do you store it all?

I have a 10 by 20 storage unit. And it's—

$150 a month? $200 a month?

Uh, $125. Yep.

Geez.

And it is remote access. So my plumbers, I have a smart lock on it. Every plumber has their own access code. And then they all have the gate code. And, uh, and my delivery driver has his own access code. We do all of our freight LTL, and it's— we have the same driver. And, um—

So you don't need to ever go there or touch it, or do you?

I go there twice a month.

Yeah.

And I just, and honestly, the only time I go there is to break down deliveries cuz they come in pallets and they're shrink wrapped and all that. So I go spend a couple hours sweating out in the sun and breaking everything down, getting it organized, clearing out all the trash that the plumbers are leaving behind. Um, but other than that, there's really not much.

What, uh, where do you get your hardware from?

So we have 2 different distributors that we buy from. One is actually here and then one is, uh, based in Indianapolis, but they're just, Like, uh, OEMs, they're just manufacturers of systems. I mean, the really, the important thing to the end customer is the valve, which there are 2 main brands of valve that we install. One is Hankscraft and then one is Clack. And then the actual material or the media is what we call it inside of the tanks, which that's the resin and the carbon and the gravel. And cuz that's really it. Otherwise it's just a fiberglass holding tank. And you just screw a valve on top and you fill it up with media. So what matters is where did the media come from and what brand is, is the valve?

Yeah.

It doesn't really matter who assembled the tank. We could buy the, the product from anywhere.

Commodity.

Yeah.

So that's why my reverse osmosis tank tastes like resin the first time.

Yes.

Because I needed to flush it out more.

Yes.

Okay. Absolutely.

And it, it definitely had, uh, most of the, most RO systems are either 5 or 7 stage.

Okay.

And one of them is Resin softener. One's a— there's normally 2 carbon blocks. And then for taste, you definitely have one that does something called remineralizing, which means this is a little bit of—

I'm a water snob. Like, I can taste it, so it's delicious.

Yes. And a little bit nerdy science for you on it. Let's say the average, what we call TDS, or total dissolvable solids— these are the micro, micro, micro particles in the water, right? There are some that are good, like electrolytes, right? Those could be deemed TDS— calcium, magnesium, things like that. And then there are some that are bad, like PFAS or forever chemicals, and that micro, microplastics, that type of stuff. So that's unfortunately— that's— it's indiscriminate in an RO filter. The RO just says, hey, if the TDS is 100, it means there's 100 mini particles floating around in this unit of water. I'm going to try to get that to zero.

Yeah.

What ends up happening then is your water tastes flat, it tastes off, it tastes wrong, because it doesn't have the stuff you're used to, which is trace sodium, calcium, magnesium, these minerals that you, you are used to having in your water. So the good RO systems will then remineralize the water, and the last stage before it comes out your faucet is it actually passes back through a membrane that adds the minerals back in, but only the ones that you want after the ones that you don't have already been removed.

Gotcha. Okay, when it comes to plumbers, how does Someone find a good plumber?

This is, uh, you know, my experience has been more straightforward than I think most people would. What I did, I went to Indeed, I made a sponsored job post. I said, hey, I'm looking for a plumber. I'm looking to pay between $75 and $125 an hour, and I need you to be licensed independently, have all your own supplies, and be ready and willing to take at least 2 jobs a week. And this is what you're going to do. You are only doing whole home softener, carbon infiltration and point-of-use drinking water. That's it. And I ran that as a sponsored Indeed post, $90 a day budget for 4 days. I got 4 qualified leads. I hired 3 of them and I was done.

So, not a lot of leads but good leads.

Yes.

What types of people are these? Are they business owners? Are they employees?

They're all private business owners. They all own—

Like Chuck in a truck.

Yes. All of them. They're all, you know, Kevin's Plumbing Company. And maybe they have a website, maybe they have a— Van with a cool decal on it. And, you know, but they just can't stay busy enough.

Yeah.

And we— I personally am not a fan of hiring people that are in a place of struggle. And I know that could sound insensitive, but it's just the reality. I don't want to hire the plumber who is like, hey, man, I'm like about to get evicted. I can't get any work. Um, yeah, but I don't— you also can't hire a plumber that is busy 7 days a week.

3,000 5-star reviews.

Yeah, it's never gonna happen.

A bunch of wrapped trucks, a bunch of crews.

No, I need a guy who's really good at what he does, and he's busy 30 hours a week, but he'd love to be busy 40, 50 hours a week. And the way that I view it, I mean, we, we'll do— in September, we better do $150,000 plus, which will be, call it, 47 installs. That's, I think, the number we've set out for. 47 installs, that's 2.5 plumbers. I mean, that's not even full capacity for 3 plumbers.

Yeah.

And when you do the math on what they're gonna make, then let's say it's 3 plumbers, they do 16 jobs each, and they make an average of $500 a job. I mean, that's a really good setup for them as well. They're gonna make an extra $8,000 a month.

Yeah.

No, nothing impeding on their schedule. You know, they don't have to do anything outside of a comfort zone. They don't have to buy new They don't have to stock inventory. They don't have to run ads, sell jobs, do estimates, none of it.

I mean, if I'm a plumber, I'm gonna do this exclusively. Right?

And, and many of our guys come in and they start to trend towards that.

Yeah.

We, the first guy that we hired, he was like, yeah, you know, I could maybe take 2 or 3 a week. He does like 9 a week for us now.

Yeah. Because it's better than fixing a toilet.

Yes.

Right?

Like, he can't get better work.

Yeah.

I mean, he makes on average $100 an hour working for us. And I keep his schedule as full as he'll let me.

Yeah. How many competitors do you have there?

It doesn't seem like really any at this point. I know we do have them.

Google, you have them.

Yeah, yeah. It's strange because I think I almost don't consider like an EcoWater or a Culligan or a Kinetico or Leaf. I don't even really consider them to be a competitor because they just run such a different business. It's opt-in form. We need to come to your house. Elaborate sales process. Like, it's all that, right? And they sell to a very specific high-income demographic. Or like EcoWater, for example, they do— I would guess 80% of their revenue is from Costco, right? So they're a competitor of ours, but they're just sitting in Costco and people just— it's just laydowns.

Yeah.

And, and that's the nature of their business. So the people that do what we do in my area, there's probably, probably 5 legitimate businesses that aren't a Chuck in a truck and that aren't a Culligan, Connecticut billion-dollar company.

And of those 5, are they on Facebook ads?

Some of them are. I honestly am not the type to really go sleuth around.

You don't need to.

Yeah. If my, if my cost per acquisition went way up, then maybe I would start looking and say, hey, are these guys running my same ads or what's going on?

Yeah.

Um, but in the, in the meantime, I'm just honestly trying to get ahead on reputation because that's the biggest biggest thing is everyone in my area, they're all pretty similar newness. Maybe they were started in '25, maybe, but nobody that's selling at $2,700 price point has been around for 5 years.

Yeah.

So it's completely up for grabs in terms of who becomes the gold standard at our price point.

Yeah.

And that's what our sole focus has been. How quickly can we get to 500 reviews?

I almost think this could do even better in In a market where everyone has hard water, right? Because like, I had a name for it, I can't remember what it is, but like, if I wanted to start an amazing 5-star barbecue restaurant, I would go to Austin where all the best barbecue restaurants are. If I wanted to start a dessert shop, I would go to Provo, Utah where all the dessert shops are. Because that's, that's the culture, that's understood. People want to try the new thing and they're already educated, right? Back to education. Like, I feel like the ads could do even better there. But it's encouraging to me that you in— you're in what might be a harder market and crushing it, right? So this is— this really could be done in any market.

I 100% agree. I think the only thing that you have to be aware of is, um, it's, it's labor availability and it's the number of, you know, people that are, are advertising, right? When, when I do a competitor analysis, I don't look at how many companies sell the service that I I look at how many people are actively legitimately advertising because those are my only competitors. If you're not advertising, you're not my competitor.

Yeah.

You will get your market share and mine will be totally different. Nobody that was gonna buy from me is gonna buy from you instead, and and nobody that was gonna buy from you is gonna buy from me instead.

Yeah.

You know the the referral-based legacy companies they will have their market share forever and they'll slowly. Bleed it out, you know, from a pinprick, but they'll be fine. I'm looking at the new school companies that are doing something similar to what I am at a similar price point with a similar customer experience. Yeah.

What are you seeing in the industry of how people are acquiring customers that are not called Facebook ads? Like, what are some other good acquisition channels for this industry?

I think Google Ads will be phenomenal. I think it's really just all about not fighting for the dense densest keywords because that is where your big billion-dollar companies, that's where they pump all their money. You know, if you look up water filtration Raleigh, like, it's gonna be Culligan, Kinetico, Leaf, EcoWater. It's gonna be all the big boys.

Yeah.

Right? But discount water softener, right? I think there are backdoor keywords that are still 100% up for grabs.

Make hard water soft.

Yes. Yes.

Like, I had a guy that does forestry mulching, and his competitors were bidding on forestry mulching. But what consumer knows that phrase? They want their kudzu removed. Yep. Right? Because in that part of Ohio, everyone had kudzu. So he started bidding on kudzu removal. You need forestry mulching for that. He, he crushed.

Yeah.

So a lot of, a lot of it is like, what would people actually search for? Not what is my industry called? Yeah.

You could do chlorine removal, PFAS removal, Microplastic removal. Yes, microplastic removal, like whatever somebody might think of, or, you know, drinking water system, you know, that could be one that's bid up, but there's a lot of different backdoor angles with AdWords.

Yeah.

So I think that's definitely one. I think a huge one is the referral game. You know, we, uh, in, it's interesting, but because we are a discount service line, we sell to a lot of Asian and Indian customers, right? And that's just— it just is. They're, they're looking for a good discount rate, right? I think we can all agree on that. And they're also huge referral communities. I mean, Yeah. I have had a singular customer come in and they, they, they might haggle me for a good price, but when we do it and we nail it for them and we gave them a great price that they couldn't get anywhere, they are itching to tell everyone on their street.

The guy for the community.

Yes, absolutely.

And oftentimes they all live in the same neighborhood.

We did 3 on the same street. Yeah, in, in July we did 3 on the same street. 2 in one day, one the day after, and it was literally boom, boom, boom. We got— I got a Facebook ad from one of them, haggled me, we went back and forth for forever. I finally gave him a great deal on it and he was like, all right, both of my neighbors want the same thing. And I was like, all right, great, now you made it worth my while. Yeah, um, but referrals I think are huge. We have also started, and this is something I'm toying with the idea of, um, we have started to do like little, uh, freebie packages when we do an install. I think it's a high enough ticket to justify it, but I'm looking at maybe a nice like insulated cup or mug that has our logo on it. When you get your drinking water, when you get— when you make your beverage and you think of us. Because the other thing people forget is while this feels like a one-time service, it's really not. It's an every 5 to 10 year service. Which young people like myself, they think 10 years from now, that's basically a one-time service. It's really not.

Yeah.

If you do good work and you stay in business, you will get a lot of customers. And once you hit year 11, you will now have an endless supply of reinstalls based on the work you did over the first 10 years.

So you just need to swap it out every 10 years?

Yeah. A lot of the systems just— they, they just don't last forever. And it really depends on how hard the water is. It really depends on how much wear and tear on the system it makes, but they don't last forever. The valves go, the media just gets used up, right? And, and over time, they need to be swapped.

Can you not just swap the filter on these?

So it's, it's not a filter in the traditional sense. There are filters that need to be swapped, right? It's the tank itself is filled with resin and carbon, and the water flows down through it and then back up and out of the tank. Eventually, every, every gallon of water that goes through the tank uses up 0.001% of the carbon. And so over 10 years, you will use up 90% of the carbon, and now your chlorine levels are gonna start to rise and they need more carbon put in the tank. So either that's a tank refill, or in a lot of cases, we're so— we have such a good price, you know, point that they'll just get a whole new system.

Yeah.

Because if you just do a carbon refill, your valve could be super old and that could be close to a mechanical failure. So why wouldn't we just do a refill or do it, do a whole tank swap for you?

Yeah. I know what you're doing is working brilliantly. I would be so curious to see what would happen if you A/B tested ads where one of the ads advertised like a free in-home test and you actually sent someone in there to do a test just because that the visual of like your water sucks. Look at this little strip is so powerful, and I absolutely you could offset that cost more than that cost with a higher price as well.

We we we 100% could. I think for me it just becomes an operational weight.

Sure.

It's like how many guys do I want to manage?

Right.

How many people do I have to train and babysit and fire? And you know things like that.

A lever you need to pull now, but eventually all markets get more saturated.

Absolutely. And in time when once again it's of the reason why I love our advertising strategy. Over half of our customers already had that experience.

Yeah.

Kinetico already came in their home, showed them the test.

You didn't have to pay them.

And I didn't have to pay anyone, you know. And they already know they have a water test, and they're like, look, I saw how bad it is, I need this fixed, but I can't afford it from them.

Do you have any data on specifically what percentage of your previous paid— paying customers had someone in their home?

I don't have the exact number, but I could have very confidently say it is over, over 35%.

Wow, that's wild. Yeah, just anecdotally, what— based on what people are saying?

Well, just based on the pure number of people that send us a water test, which you don't just have a water test laying around, right? That means somebody came and did a water test for you. And we always say on the call, do you have a water test? Did you get one done? And then if they say yes, we say great, send that over. And then now we're on even terms with EcoWater or whatever it is because we have the same information in front of them.

Price.

They already had the shop. They— we, we can— even if we don't see their pricing, but we know exactly what EcoWater knows.

Yeah.

So there's no knowledge gap. And now the in-home visit has no value.

Yeah.

They already had the shock value, which we can piggyback off of, and we have the test results. So there you go. Now we're on even terms with whoever already quoted them, and our price is cheaper. Or if they say no, we didn't have a water test done. Can you come and do a water test? If it's a private well, we will do a water test or send them to someone else to do a water test, like a third party, the county, whatever, because wells are a little bit more intricate and you don't want to prescribe the wrong well system. But the majority of our customers are city water systems, in which case I can say, you know what, you might have been told by someone that they need to come out and test your water. That's really just kind of a sales gimmick. I'm not a fan of that personally. I'd rather save you your Saturday afternoon and save you the cost of a sales rep, just pass that savings on to you. I can pull up the EWG water report, public government database, and I can tell you exactly what's in your tap from the second that it left the water filter, the water treatment center. Yeah, and people love that. They eat that up.

So it's a great sales tool, but can you do anything with pre- Like, what does it change about your operations? Like, is it— are you putting a different system in there based on what it shows?

It's just system prescription.

Okay.

It's just me being able to say with absolute certainty, I see the numbers in front of me and I know with 100% certainty this system will solve your problem.

Yeah.

Versus if there's no test, I can say based on publicly available data, it's just not as strong. It's just not quite as strong. And if you already got the test, why would I not Yeah. What have you done wrong in this business that you could have done differently? I wish I had more inventory. You know, that's been a bottleneck for us endlessly. And it's a good growing pain, but it's still a growing pain. That's definitely the first one. The second one, I would say, I probably would have focused a little bit more on the backend and the recurring side of the business. Up to this point, we haven't sold a single recurring a single backend client. And this one I'm in—

What do you mean by that?

Filter swaps annually, salt services, a— if you get a UV disinfection, which is like a light bulb, that bulb needs to be changed annually. Pre-sediment filters need to be changed every 6 months. There are small, low-ticket things. And this one I'm a, I'm a in a bit of a rock and a hard place with because I think it's part of what causes us to sell at such a high clip is that we advertise not just as the cheapest frontend system, Or one of them, but also the lowest cost to maintain because we are not going to nickel and dime you. You can change your own filters. We're not going to pretend that you can't.

Yeah.

Right? You can do your own salt. We're not going to pretend that you can't. Whereas so many custom companies will also sell, hey, it's $5,000, but it's also $500 a year for us to come out and do all your filter changes and flush the system, even though the system flushes itself. So, you, you know, and, and I, that was a big selling point for us is, yeah, we're cheaper on the front end, but we also have a system that you can totally self-maintain.

Mhmm.

You don't need me involved at all. And I'm not gonna charge you anything unless you call me and you tell me you wanna add something on or you no longer want to handle a service. Now we're at a point where we've sold 100 jobs, you know, we're closing in on 100 jobs sold. And We don't have a single penny of recurring.

Yeah.

Where maybe if I would have pushed filters a little bit harder, we probably could have sold on just upfront price and then matched competitor recurring pricing and built a little bit more value in our book. But that's really probably the only other thing.

What, have you ever had an install that just went completely off the rails?

I wouldn't say completely off the rails. We've had installs that it's taken us 4 tries to do it. We just had one where we went out, we, we planned the install, we went to do everything, and then the outlet wasn't working properly. So we couldn't do it. And the customer was like, well, can you just leave it set up and I'll just plug it in when I get the outlet fixed? No, we can't do that. So we had to pull out a lot of the components, let them get an electrician in, come back. We come back. Oh, it's still not working properly. Now it's shorting when we're plugging it in because they hired some cheap Handyman electrician. Pull our stuff again. They get a real licensed electrician. We come back a third time. So we've had some jobs like that.

Yeah.

That just like get drawn out for weeks and they're just like painful for the plumber and for me. Hurt margin, you know, things like that. But we really haven't had anything go completely sideways. And it's part of the reason why I love the model so much.

Yeah.

And it's because these plumbers, it's not that they just really care about me and really care about my reputation, it's not my reputation, it's their reputation.

Yeah.

It's their license, it's their insurance. And, you know, they understand that a bad install will reflect much more heavily on them than it will on me.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'll get a 1-star review from it, but they're gonna get the insurance claim, they're gonna get the infraction against their license. Like, these guys take this work very, very, very seriously.

How can people avoid the most headache when starting this business or accelerate their success?

I think accelerating your success, if you're going to sell jobs and you're not going to have inventory, take a deposit. It'll stop people from walking if your inventory gets delayed.

Okay. Do you take deposits?

I do not because I have inventory. So I just install right away.

Okay.

Like if you said yes today, I'd say, can we come tomorrow? You know? That's how we operate.

Yeah.

But if you're not going to have inventory on hand and you're going to get a customer to say yes, sign a service agreement, and then you're going to order inventory, wait for it to ship in, all that, which a lot of people want to do if they want to cut costs in the beginning, take a deposit. It stops the customer from just walking because they get bored of waiting or because they're— they got a better offer from someone else, right?

Yeah.

That's the first thing. And then the second thing I would say is do not stress at all about any of your sales or marketing data until you're at least a month in. We actually looked at the numbers of that closing of those 18 jobs that we closed. Only one of the 18 jobs from that 90 leads we talked about earlier, only one of them was closed on the day that they opt in— opted in on their first call.

Yeah.

One.

That doesn't normally happen.

17 of them were closed at least one additional touchpoint.

Okay.

And 10 of the 18 were closed outside of 3 days after their first touchpoint.

Okay, so keep following up. Don't be depressed if they don't pay on the first day because most people won't by nature of how expensive this is.

Yes, and even like getting the first touchpoint actually with them, like understand you might have to contact a lead 8 times before you even get the conversation, and then the timer starts then. Yeah, so it still could be 2 weeks until they pay after that. Our longest lead-to-close cycle so far was 49 days. Wow. And there was probably 2 dozen touch points in there.

Most people are going to quit on them by then.

Most people are 100% quitting on them by then. And when you do the math, quitting on them makes no sense. Even with that customer that we waited 50 days and had 20+ touchpoints, the average touchpoint costs you 60 seconds. You know, a non-answered phone call, a non-answered text costs you 60 seconds.

Yeah.

So, 20 minutes of time plus let's call it 3 real lengthy conversations of 20 minutes. It's an hour and a half of your life to close that one customer. And we made $1,000 Yeah. Like, it still makes a lot of sense. People just get very discouraged. And it's almost why I don't like saying, I one-call closed my second lead on $40 of ad spend. It's not realistic at all.

Yeah.

And we have one-call closed like 5 customers since then.

Yeah.

We have 2, 3, 10, 20-call closed 5 times as many.

Yeah. Before I ask you— before I ask you you where we can find you. Is there anything I, I should have asked you about but I didn't? Anything interesting about this industry?

I think the most interesting thing is the fact that the model has nothing to do with water filtration. That, that's, I think, the thing I get personally most excited about. We are in a time period right now where there is an ever-diminishing amount of skilled laborers and people that are really, really talented at what they do. I mean, way more people are retiring than there are people that are starting. And what's, what's, what's happening is effectively between that and the giant PE entrance into this space, you have so many service types that have a market rate that is just completely made up by whoever the 5 people that offer the service are.

Yeah.

Like, the fact that the going rate for this service was $8,000 Has nothing to do with water filtration. Yeah, I guarantee you if you spent a weekend, you could find 6 to 10 more services. You know, if you went in the electrical, like an MPU, a main panel upgrade, you know, that I guarantee you that has a $10,000 price point. There's no reason that that costs $10,000.

And no one's thinking about it.

No. And there's just a shortage of good electricians and people that can Bring leads in and, and, you know, make it make sense.

Yeah.

For a customer. I think there's so many of these opportunities that exist in the trades, in HVAC, in electrical, in plumbing. And it's not a— this isn't a water filtration business model. Water filtration is the product and the service, but it's not the water filtration that made it special. It's that gap that exists in so many of these high-ticket, very skilled trades. Yeah.

Well, Jeff Bezos used to say, your margin is my opportunity. That's kind of what you're saying.

Yeah.

And I always say on this podcast, there's over 1,000 home service industries. But you're saying like the industry is the product within the industry. So if, if any given industry like plumbing has, let's be conservative and say 5, like higher ticket offerings within that water heater install. I know a guy that only does water heater installs. He's not a plumber. He subs it out to plumbers. Then there's 5 5,000, 10,000, 20,000 sub-industries of just offering one high-ticket service within a bigger industry. Like, and how many entrepreneurs out there even have those on their radar to compete with you?

No one.

You're vibe coding apps.

Yes.

Right? And so, you're saying like, cool. That's cool. I vibe code apps too. But the more people that are doing that, the more opportunity there is for stuff like this.

Yes. And this is— it will always be overlooked because people, they don't understand it. They think that it is harder or more complicated than it really is.

Yeah.

And I think they think that they don't understand how high margin some of this blue-collar stuff is. They think all the margin is in tech. They think all the margin is in, you know, these fancy new-school businesses, SaaS, that has 100% margin. Yes, you're not going to do water heaters at 100% margin, but that $8,000 water heater is 70% margin.

Yeah.

You can come in and not really even be very good at sales or marketing.

Yeah. Just put your price in there.

And just wedge the market on price and deliver a good service with a high quality, especially if you can do a licensed installer.

Yeah.

I mean, and that's a business and it's really not.

Yeah.

It's a website and a ChatGPT ad and a decent sales script and then just enough product knowledge to, you know, hold a conversation with an installer.

Yeah. I think for me personally, one of the biggest takeaways from this is just putting the price in the ad for a high-ticket home service and finding the people that are already educated. I'm sitting here wondering, like, one of the first things I do after you leave my house is I'm gonna log into my Meta Ads Manager and I'm gonna go to my Backyard Funhouse Facebook ads where we sell sport courts and pools, and I'm gonna make an ad that just says it has— it'll have a picture of a sport court painted with pickleball and basketball, and it's going to say $29,000 sport courts. And I'm only going to find those random people that know that that's actually a $40,000 sport court. I'm going to call that guy.

Yes.

Like, why wouldn't the same principle apply? Fewer people that need a sport court than— of course, but there's still people. Meta can find them.

Absolutely. I mean, that, that, that is exactly, I think, the, the thing that was so Mind-boggling to me because I think a lot of people know that home services advertising is either founder-focused or offer-focused.

Mm-hmm.

That's what I've found works, right? It's either about you and the brand and your locality and all of that, or it's about the offer. Buy one, get one free, you know, a great price, etcetera. Why try to force a good offer in an ultra-competitive niche? Just go find a niche that is lacking people with a great offer.

Yeah.

And then that is the sales and marketing.

The whole— it's the offer.

Yeah.

That's brilliant. Parker, this has been amazing. Where can people find you and/or your businesses?

Yeah. Parker Jay Smith on everything. So, that's Parker J-A-Y Smith. Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Twitter, X, whatever. And then @ParkerHomeServices on YouTube. And I upload twice a week on YouTube, post every day on Shortform and everything else. And I help people start home service businesses, grow existing ones, and I love them. I've been constantly building my own for 3 years. I plan to keep doing it for another decade. So—

Beautiful. Thank you, Parker.

Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

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