He Made $27K Last Month Connecting Contractors - Ep. #338

Meet Aaron. Not long ago, he was a part-time receptionist for a siding company in Denver until he noticed something interesting. There was a much bigger siding company right down the road sending his boss hundreds of leads every year for free. So he thought, huh, maybe there's something to this. So what did he do? He started making connections himself for $150 apiece, simply connecting one business owner to another using publicly available data. Today, he charges $6,000 for 10 intros doing something that any of us could do without any specialized skills, with no employees, and did $27,000 last month. He sent one text that got one painter 4 bids worth $64,000. And by the end of this episode, you are going to know exactly how to copy everything he does down to the exact text messages he sends word for word. Please enjoy. So why don't you start by telling me who you are and what you do?

Yeah, my name is Aaron Fuchs and I am with Hytros. We build referral pipelines for home service businesses, so general contractors, painters, siding companies, businesses like that where they have a different business that sends them referrals. Think like In a customer journey, especially around home remodels, home fixing, there's usually the first point of contact, and then there's more services that happen afterwards. So if you're doing a full house remodel, eventually you're going to need paint. So our clients are those that, like a painter, would want to connect with a general contractor, luxury home builder that can be included in that same service to get the full job done.

Okay. Okay, so these are business owners referring jobs to other business owners.

Yeah.

So could this look like I hire a pressure washer to clean my driveway, he shows up, he does a good job, and I'm like, hey man, do you do windows? He's like, I don't, but I know a guy.

Yeah.

So you kind of help facilitate conversations like that.

Exactly.

You operationalize them, if you will.

Exactly, exactly.

Okay, and how long have you been doing this?

A few years. I started as a receptionist, kind of virtual receptionist. At a siding repair company. A friend from our church asked if I could help out part-time, and I realized that his business relied on a larger siding repair company to send referrals.

Okay.

And they had the relationship for a decade plus. And so there was a long-lasting relationship, and he got hundreds of leads every year. So I saw like huge value in those relationships.

Yeah. So tell me about the bigger business. Like, why were they giving away all these leads?

Yeah.

In this case.

In this case, it was because they wanted to continue to see their reputation increase, right? So if you go to a business and they have a service advertised that's, you know, a big service like a full roof repair, but you only have one shingle that fell off, most of the time they're gonna maybe point you in a different direction.

It's not worth it to them.

It's not worth it. Right.

'Cause they don't specialize in it. But if a business only did that, it'd be a good business.

Yeah, exactly. And that's what my friend was doing. He was doing like, and still is, you know, the vinyl melts behind a gas grill, right? Just a couple square feet.

Okay.

And so the big business, not gonna touch it.

They're doing like full installs, full siding installs?

Exactly.

Okay.

And then they offer it as a referral to my client. Everybody wins. The homeowner wins. The big business wins because their reputation of being a trusted source in the community is still high. And my client wins because he gets leads and is specialized to do just that.

Free business for life?

Exactly. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So it clicked, right?

Yeah.

It's this thing that everybody wants. The customer definitely wants it. You know, the homeowner definitely wants it. The big business wants it because they want to continue to have their reputation in the community increase. And the business that specialized in the smaller service.

Okay.

So I'd spend like almost 8 hours a day on the phone. And so I was very comfortable calling a stranger. And—

And now remind me, who were you calling in for what? For the siding company?

As a coach, I was calling customers.

But now for this?

For this, it's the new siding company that was sending small leads. I offered, I'll go call for you. And see if I can get you partners.

Okay.

Their partners were roofers.

Okay. So let me make sure I have this straight.

Yeah.

You're working for the siding company as a receptionist. You notice that they have this bigger company sending them hundreds of leads per year, right? Then you get a call from another big company that says, can we start sending you a bunch of leads per year?

Yeah.

And you say yes. And then you say, hmm, maybe I want to work for this bigger company so I can get them referrals. Like, go up the food chain a little more.

Exactly. And so we can Call, text thousands of companies, get either a sales guy or a product, a project manager or a business owner on the phone and then connect them with our client.

Okay, so you kind of started building a website, like putting out feelers for this referral network business, right?

Yeah, yeah.

You're like, shoot, I've got this guy, maybe he can be our first customer.

Yeah.

Okay, so is it, was he working like a hailstorm comes through, Tears up a bunch of roofs. He comes in and inspects them and they're like, well, my siding got torn up too. And roofing companies would send those siding leads to him.

Yeah.

And he wanted more of those.

Exactly.

Okay.

Yeah. And I saw the value all the way around at the very beginning, right? Because this guy was not just wanting more business, he was providing more business too. So he came to me as the receptionist saying, I have hundreds of leads a year. Can you take them?

Yeah.

And then he said, I do this upstream as well. I said, do you want more of those? He said, well, yeah, obviously.

Yeah.

Right? And so it's a win-win-win. It's like one of the perfect storm wins.

'Cause if you don't, if you have enough referral partners, you don't need customers. You don't need to go direct to customers.

Exactly.

Right? Is that kind of the, not that you would ever turn them away if some, if a homeowner called you directly, but the hope and the goal is to work towards you just getting leads coming in inbound all the time.

Yeah.

You don't need a sales team. You don't need to market necessarily.

If you're not, as a business owner, active in pursuing more referral partners, more referral bases, you can't necessarily rely on something to scale, right? You have something that sustains you, but to scale, you need an outbound strategy to get more and more.

Yeah. An outbound strategy to get more inbound.

Yeah. Right? Yeah. Okay.

What did you say that you would charge him for this service?

At the beginning, it was a per invite or a per appointment, per appointment fee.

Okay. What was the fee?

At first it was like $150.

Okay. So every time you cold called someone that says, yeah, I'll talk to the owner of this siding business, you hand it off, you make $150. That was the original deal?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. And as I realized that every person that he talked to could bring him $10,000, $20,000, $50,000 jobs, Multiple times a year where he's making, you know, 40, 50% profits, I'm realizing, wow, this is kind of really valuable.

Yeah, it's a lot more than $150. But I think it is smart to price it low to start because his close rate could be 2%, it could be 20%, could be 100%, and that's a big part of it. He might tell you how these conversations go, he might not. Like, you're still trying to feel it out.

Yeah.

But in general, when with a relationship Like this, like if they're kind of bugging you, like you hand over a couple appointments, he's like, hey, you got any more? We got any more? Like he's telling you everything you need to know. Yeah, these are good leads. Yeah, even if he's not closing them, he sees, wow, this guy's legit and I have his ear.

Yeah, and not only that, he asked for volume. Like he wanted 20, 30 appointments a month. Wow. And so we're sitting on something where we're like, man, this guy really wants to talk to everybody in the state almost.

Yeah. Okay. All right. So what do you start doing? Are you just opening up Google Maps, typing in roofer and just calling? Like, what is your plan?

That was—

At this stage?

Yeah, that was it at first.

Okay.

Yeah, that was it at first.

And what was your pitch?

We took his pitch. Thankfully, he'd been doing it right. And so it was partnership, specialized insurance stuff. You know, he gave us, hey, say this, make sure I'm available, set the appointment.

Okay. So tell me, give me the numbers of what this would look like, like an average job.

Yeah.

And how the split would look like between both companies.

Yeah, let's say it's an insurance job that a roofing company brings to our siding client. It might look like, you know, $40,000 to $50,000 roofing and siding. The siding is maybe $15,000 to $20,000.

Okay.

And so it's, it's kind of split. So you, if you're talking to a sales guy, he just doubled his ticket, doubled his commission, right? And then on our siding client's side, It's, let's say it's the $20,000. And so they do a kickback of maybe 5% back to the business. You know, 5% of our bid goes back to you, something like that.

Okay. Back to the roofing business. So they get $1,000 for kicking the siding over to the siding company. And then the roofing business is done with the siding. They just worry about the roof.

Yep. And the siding company will go, will inspect everything, will Create a bid, submit it to insurance, take care of it all.

Okay. Do you remember, like, what your pickup rate was, your, your close rate, as in, like, got an appointment, what those numbers were?

Yeah. Yeah. Early on, we were, we were calling 20 to 40 a day.

Okay.

And setting 2 appointments.

Okay. That's not bad at all. Yeah. 5 to 10% close rate. So you're making $300 a day. And he wants he wants one to two a day, so that works.

Yeah.

And how long did it take you to make those calls?

Twenty minutes. It's mostly because we're calling business owners.

Yeah.

So they're really incentivized to pick up the phone.

Yeah.

And then if they don't pick up the phone, we don't leave a message or anything. We'll catch them on the next time around.

Okay.

So it's just dialing, waiting fifteen seconds. They don't pick up. Move on.

You don't text. You don't leave a. Okay. Were you using like software to call or?

Yeah, we're using GoHighLevel.

Okay.

It has a built-in like power dialer thing.

Yep.

And so we set the outbound setting to 15 seconds.

Okay.

And custom disposition so we can track, did they pick up? Did we pitch?

Were they angry?

Yep.

Yeah.

Yep.

Okay. Okay. So you're making, what did you make like that first month or 2?

So good days it was like $300, bad days was nothing. So let's say $150 a day, 4 days a week. That's $600 a week.

Working 20 minutes, 60 minutes a day?

Mm-hmm.

OK. And what is your guy saying, your customer? He's loving it?

Yeah, it's— that first one, that first month was like a 50% to 60% appointment show rate on his end.

OK. And he pays you whether they show or not?

Yeah.

OK, so was he happy this first month?

Yeah.

Was he telling you specifically how it was going?

Yeah, every week we'd have a— a 20-minute call and look through the— we look through who showed up, who didn't, who was qualified, who wasn't, and get better every day, you know?

I mean, you're talking to a bunch of clients, right?

Yeah.

How does that— do you start going down that rabbit hole?

We did. Yeah. Every person that showed up, we would mark in GoHighLevel, call them, and then—

After the appointment?

Mm-hmm.

Like, hey, how did it go? We're just checking in.

Yeah.

By the way—

Exactly.

Sales pitch number 2.

Exactly. Exactly. Which was the excitement that I had. It was like, wow, every person that I call, whether they show up to the appointment or not, I can call them again to check in on that appointment and pitch them.

Because that guy, over the course of a week, goes from ice cold lead to very hot lead. He's already spoken with you before. You're old pals. He's spoken with that guy. I'm assuming the conversation went well. What was your close rate on those, like, callbacks?

It was kind of low.

Really?

Yeah. Yeah. What happened was we would get a project manager and he'd say, oh, you got to talk to the The office.

More. There was more gatekeepers.

Okay.

So it wasn't the owner of the roofing business talking to the owner of the siding company typically?

Sometimes it was, and those were definitely hotter. Yeah, those are definitely went better.

Okay. Because the incentives always have to align in business, in life, right? Yeah. Incentives always must align.

Yeah.

With project manager, it he's probably going to make the same whether you make this connection or not, right? Like. He's not as incentivized to make something work with you than the owner might be.

But the specific referral pipeline was something that I believed in.

Okay.

And so I tried to think about how do we get the right— how do we get the right person on the phone? And what kind of questions would I be able to ask a project manager to get the business owner on the phone? And so what we did was we pivoted from calling the business owners that we'd already talked to or the project managers we'd already talked to. to doing a, let me get some projects first for these potential referral partners, bring them a project, and then they believe in the value.

Earn their trust.

Absolutely. Both earn their trust and earn the person that's gonna make the decision, earn their attention.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

And so we went from calling to doing some texting, and now we do like multiple channels, but that was a huge pivot. And so we started doing mass texts around partnerships, and if somebody needed a bid, Now, what do you mean by that? So let's keep on this roofer.

Yeah.

Siding company. We pulled a huge list of all the roofers in our area and we sent a text to every single one of them asking if they needed a specialized service like an insurance bid on siding and explained that we only do siding, we don't do roofs. So we're a great partner.

We're not competing with you.

Exactly. And that allowed us to both deliver on our clients need and deliver specific value. Not only are we getting the partners, we're getting the partner that has a bid now. And then we have proof that we can bring to business owners.

Okay. So you started just doing cold outreach, in this case to roofers, just saying like, do you have a project right now that needs siding? Okay. And then if, if yes, then you connected them with the siding business?

Then we use that as proof to then text siding companies. And ask, do you do insurance? We have a roofer that needs an insurance bid now. And as soon as they reply yes, we call them.

Why would they not? Like, it's like, do you want free money?

Yeah, exactly.

And it's like cold calling is hard, but it's only as hard as your offer, right? If your offer is, I have $20,000, would you like to claim it? Yeah, right. Surprisingly, most people still say no because oftentimes, I'm guessing it's like, who is this guy? This bad number. Is it a scam? Like, I've had a business where the offer was so good, my big hurdle to overcome was convincing customers that it was not a scam.

Yeah.

And that was a real— it was a real hurdle to overcome. But once I could, like in this case, we did onsite visits. Once they came onsite, I had 100% close rate because it was, it was basically like, do you want free money? You give me 1 and I give you 10, right? So that's kind of what you're saying. It's much, much better than what you were doing. But there are still people that are dubious. They think you're a scam or, you know what I'm saying?

Yeah, and so when we get a real person on the phone, we're both qualifying that they do this service, that they have other people referring them business, that they work as a subcontractor, you know, all this shortlist that allows us to know, yeah, they probably want this long-term.

Mm-hmm.

And then we ask like, do you want more of these partners? Because partners equate to not just one job, right? They equate to 10. 20, 40, in one case, 305 jobs a year.

Wow. Okay. So was this like a big inflection point, this new style of outreach?

Yeah, absolutely.

And of course, it's not just roofers and siding companies. What other kind of matches did you find worked well together?

Yeah, electricians and custom builders, luxury remodelers, etc. So for instance, on that one, we did this outreach. Right before talking to potential new customer and brought him one, one who had 5 jobs, one of which was a 10,000 square foot home, which in electrician stance in his area was like $100,000, $110,000 job that he could bid on that he had no idea was happening 3 days before.

Yeah, he never would've got that otherwise.

Right.

Okay.

So electrician, great fit. Painter. And then also the Interior designers and remodelers, also great fit.

Okay.

And then we had a landscaping company that wanted to move from doing residential front yards, backyards, mulch, et cetera, to commercial and work with developers. And so we called custom builders, we called developers, we called property management companies. And with that one landscaping client, He found a development that was gonna be 80 homes in a subdivision. All the homes were $1 million to $3.5 million, like depending on the size and plus the HOA. So it was an upfront bid on a contract of a quarter million dollars and an intro to every homeowner that was buying homes in that 80-lot subdivision.

Wow. You're like, man, we're not charging enough.

Exactly.

And you're just, you're just, you're being a super connector here.

Yeah.

So were you using like snapshots to do this or like, On the backend, how are you tying all this stuff together?

Yeah, we have an internal side that we're tracking the contacts that we're making, the clients that we're connecting with. So we have our own like sub-account for our business in GoHighLevel. And then depending on the services that our clients want, we may make them a sub-account and, you know, do all the formatting and everything with a snapshot. Or if they want like short-term outreach, we have a short-term outreach sub, sub-account. So it's kind of layered, but the most important part is the ability to text and call. And so GoHighLevel was a great fit for that, both for the fact that we can make automation, plug in, you know, a tag or a business name and it just sends all of the texts. We tend to drip it so that we don't get you know, 40 calls that we need to make in a day.

Yeah.

Just to keep us on a good pace. But it allows that to take care of itself and allows the bids that need to happen now, that value that we can provide immediately, to be raised to the surface.

Okay. What did your second customer look like?

We went upfront costs and 4x'd our price.

So was it still per appointment?

We went package.

Okay, so what, what was your price?

Yeah, so like $6,000 for 10 appointments.

Okay, in a certain amount of time, or—

Yeah, we— so sometimes it's busy season and the business owner's like, well, you got to give me those like, you know, 3 a month or something, right? So we can work within that, but we love delivering value as fast as possible.

And time to value is everything.

Yeah, and if we can come to the meeting saying, hey, we have this custom builder that has 5 jobs for you to bid on, it's like so easy.

Yeah. So you 4x your price. Did you add in all those guarantees? Like we guarantee they'll qualify, they'll show up. What else?

Yeah, we have a guarantee like 2 bids in the first 20 appointments. So 2 real bids that you can, you can do.

Okay.

And then we tagged on some management of the relationships and nurturing of the relationships, which is all built through like automations and everything in GoHighLevel. And that's a, A monthly fee. With that, we guarantee that the partners we bring deliver a bid to, or, you know, a quote to our client within a certain amount of time, or we replace them with a new one. Okay.

Yeah. Not, or you refund them, you replace them with a new one.

Yeah. So maybe they buy 10 partnerships and 5 of them give them a bid. First of all, that's most likely 10x what they paid.

Yeah.

The other 5, At the end of around 6 months, because it gives a busy season and slow season, we'll go get 5 more. So they bought 10, they get 15.

Okay. And what type of a business did you sell this to first? This with this new pricing? Yeah.

Interior designer, electrician, general contractor. And we're working on our own referral pipeline too. And so we're working with like marketing agencies to offer it to like all of their people.

Okay. How did you find these next customers? Just cold calling?

It was that original or that next pivot of get their results first.

I have a lead for you.

And then mass text a, you know, a city area of that particular business and then immediately call them when they respond.

Okay. When they text back, you just pick up the phone and call them?

Yeah.

An actual human?

Yep.

Okay. How long— what did your revenue numbers look like the first 6 months? Once you made this pivot?

Our revenues jumped from that around $14,000. And in the last, last 30 days, we closed another $15,000.

$15,000? Wow. And is that $15,000 of like appointments or is there other type of types of revenue mixed in with that?

It's appointments and then our management and nurturing.

Okay. So how much is the monthly fee on that?

Between $250 and $500.

So what is your, your monthly recurring revenue today, give or take?

Yeah, about $16,000.

Awesome. From up from 14?

Yeah.

July?

Yeah.

Amazing.

Yeah.

And does that include the nurturing and the one-time stuff or?

Not including one-time stuff.

Okay.

The one-time, that's where it got a little confusing for me.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So the one-time is because we're delivering relationships on a one-time basis, we are seeing like significant increases, but the monthly recurring is like small steps.

What about your total monthly revenue? Including the one-time stuff? Yeah.

So September, 27, I think.

Amazing. And then what was it in June?

14.

Like one-time and recurring?

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, the pivot has been in the past like 9 months.

Yeah. So almost doubled in a few months because of this pivot. Yeah. How many people are you having to reach out to? Like, what does your funnel look like?

Yeah, we start with The getting the partners first, and we'll mass text a few hundred partners at a time. Usually our response rate to that project request or bid request is between 2% and 5%.

Okay.

And so we aim to have 2 or 3 that we can bring a new customer, a new client of ours.

So gimme an example of one of the more recent campaigns you've done, like 200 or 300. What type of business did you text and what did you say to them?

Yeah. Let's take the electrician.

Okay.

We texted around 200 people, 200 business owners that were all custom home builders and luxury remodelers. And of those 200—

And what, sorry, what'd you say to 'em?

Great question. We said, hey, we specialize in new builds, installs, and remodel installs for all the electrician services.

Okay.

Right? And wondering if you have any projects on your radar. And if we can, you know, give you a bid, can I call you?

So you're texting them as an electrician saying, you know, like, I know you're a builder, do you have any work for guys like me right now?

Exactly.

Okay, and of 300, you're hoping you get 10 replies, 10 to 15 replies, and of those, like 2 to 3, like solid leads?

Yeah, if someone replies that they have a bid, they're typically a solid lead.

Okay.

We're looking at more like 200 texts, 2 to 4 replies that are saying, yes, I have a bid, maybe 10 to 20 others that are like, I'm outta business or something like that.

Yeah.

We immediately call those 2 to 4 to qualify that it's an actual bid, you know, ask about the project, et cetera, get the details so that we know what we are bringing to a new customer of ours. And so we say, hey, do you want these connections? And usually what happens is in that message outright, I'll say something like, hey, I have some connections that are looking to get a bid from an electrician and wondering if we can partner in any way long-term. Let me know if I can call you. So both messages are about partnering. So it establishes that relationship as the primary means of communication.

Mm-hmm.

And allows me to then say, you know, yeah, I do this. I connect businesses and we can connect you to more. We have this many that are interested. Do you want to hear about what we do? Would you like to, you know, be one of our clients?

Yeah. Okay. So you get the lead for a big house. Let's say you don't already have someone lined up. You text 300 electricians saying, or what does that funnel look like?

Yeah, usually when, when we're going towards our customers and clients, it's a little bit higher response rate because we're bringing some value.

Yeah. Because the first one you're saying like, I'm selling you something. I want money. I want money. Yeah. The next one you're saying, I'm giving you something.

Yeah.

So what does that response rate look like and how many people do you typically text?

Yeah. So we'll have that. So we'll do about 100 messages out and our response rate is anywhere from 10 to 15%.

Okay. And you're saying, hey, I have a homebuilder that has a 10,000 square foot house that needs done. Are you interested? Is that kind of what you're saying?

Yeah, it's usually That's the start.

So let's say you get 10 people to reply of the 100 and they say, I want it now bad. Yes. What do I need to do? What do you do?

Call them immediately.

All 10?

Typically is the first one, right?

Sure.

The faster.

But you're going to get all 10 of them on the phone.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And a lot of times because we do majority exclusive area networks, the first few, I'll explain it, they'll say yes or no. And by the end of that, we're kind of, we're kind of done. So that first We usually get somebody.

You're setting up an appointment.

Yep.

Assume that goes well. How does the appointment go?

Usually it's send our information, send our website, send our blueprint. So we have, here's what we do from start to finish in a, you know, PDF. And then the conversation starts with, does this make sense? Do you want it? How much do you want? And the close is usually kind of a menu conversation, meaning, okay, do you want 20, 40, 120.

Appointments?

Yeah.

Okay.

And they'll start with, well, like, how do I know this is going to be good? Or how do I know they're going to bring jobs? And first, I just brought you some, right? Which is great. Builds trust up front.

Are you telling them like, this is a real job?

Yeah.

Yeah. Like, this has an address, this has a builder, but you're not giving them all the info because you don't want them to go around you.

Yeah, generally. And also, I'm not selling the job. I'm selling the relationship.

Yeah.

Right. And so many times that's the pivot that I have to make in the conversation because there's so many, there's so many small businesses that have had cold calls from lead gen companies that it doesn't go well. They feel like it's a bad experience. And so talking to them, their first question might be, is this lead gen? And I'll say no, because while I'm bringing a lead, what we're doing is generating relationships that those leads come through.

Yeah.

Right? And so it— I can honestly say, no, I'm not a lead gen company.

Yeah.

Right?

Okay.

Yeah.

Don't you kind of put yourself out of business in a sense? Like, if you give someone so many partnerships and they're busy, they don't need any more appointments? Like, you've done too good of a job? Does that ever happen? Or do you just sell them additional things?

Yeah, the additional thing is the nurturing and management of the relationships.

Okay.

So great point, though, because when they get busy, what's the problem? Well, all of these people that they talked to 6 months ago aren't hearing from them again.

Yeah.

You know, there are those things, those relationships that they started. How do I keep track of everybody? And so we, with GoHighLevel, we track everybody's submissions of referrals so we know who sent what and who needs to hear from 'em again. And we have a few different automations for, let's say it's the roof and the painter or the roof and the siding. If a storm comes by, they can send a text to everybody in their network Things like that that allow them to leverage technology that we've, you know, offered them to get in front of their network fast.

Yeah.

And so the out of business for us is like our ideal is that we maintain their network long term.

Okay. So you live in Denver. Are you doing this with Denver-based businesses?

Mostly. And because we have our own referral network of marketing agencies, we're Going all across the nation.

I just imagine it's an easier close if you're a local guy.

Sometimes, yeah.

How do you get around like TCPA and HTTP verification with text messages?

Yeah, we haven't really hit that because we'll get the response rate so high and opt-out is so low that we're obviously sending business messages, but it's business to business and many business owners are just too busy to reply stop.

You know, so it's it's it's a more lenient like there's more lenient laws around cold texting businesses than consumers.

They're yeah, their phone numbers on Google Maps.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah. What was the story you're gonna tell me?

I have a few.

Yeah, let's hear them.

Yeah.

And what are your what are your profit margins?

We are so our profit because we're also doing the service is fairly high. I mean, our let's see. Our software cost is a couple hundred bucks a month. Texting and calling is maybe $100, $150 a month. And so you're looking at maybe $500 to $600 in software and texting.

No employees?

One who helps out on the calls. He does commission per appointment. And so when he's running that and when he's doing that, he'll take about 30% of those.

As a commission, but no base or anything? Okay, so like 90% profit?

Right around there. Yeah.

Wow. Okay. Yeah. What were your stories?

Yeah, I think I told the commercial landscaping, 80-lot, and electrician. Yeah. So one of them is about— we have a painting client and they love to work with interior designers, custom builders, because those are right, right up the customer journey. Right. They're working with a customer to make sure everything looks perfect. And paint is all about looks, right? So we started this campaign, text campaign, to custom home builders and interior designers. And within 48 hours, we got 4 bids ranging from $17,000 to $64,000.

What did you do with those?

It's our painting client. And so it made the ROI on what we charge almost infinite, right? And so that allowed us to scale up and get our nurturing sequence solidified. It paid for like 3 years of our nurturing service.

Right. That's one thing I've mentioned this a bunch of times on this podcast, but it's worth mentioning again. People underestimate how much value they need to add to another business or person to justify that relationship.

Yeah.

So like, you know, we pay Amazon Prime, $12 a month, $170 a year, and the amount of value I get from that is a thousandfold.

Yeah.

Right? My MacBook was $3,000, but I added up once how many hours I spend on it over its life, and it's like, it's like $20 a month.

Yeah.

To, to run my entire business from a MacBook.

Yeah.

It's a 1,000x price-to-value difference. And so oftentimes with whatever we're selling, maybe it's a taco, Maybe it's a digital service. Like, it doesn't work if it's like 2 to 3x ROI.

Yeah.

It has to be like 10 to 100 to 1,000x ROI.

Yeah, yeah. And that's honestly, that's what makes it exciting for me in this role, like in this business. It's that value is there. You know, the 100,000x value is there because it's relationship-based, which means, you know, as humans, we love connecting. And as business owners, we love talking about our business. And if we can do both in the same thing and we can, you know, add a bunch of value to the person that we're talking to, everybody wins.

Yeah. What do you think about business owners just buying leads from like Angie's List, Thumbtack, HomeAdvisor?

Yeah, that's where most of the business owners I am interacting with, it leaves a bad taste in their mouth. You know, these are shared leads where the marketplace is trying to send it to as many people, many business owners as possible because That's how they make their money, right? And so the fastest business owner gets the— was it the early bird gets the worm? Like the fastest business owner gets the first connection, gets the bid. And it's not, you know, it's like why subscriptions leave a bad taste in my mouth sometimes because I forget about them and then I pay, pay, pay, pay. I haven't used it in so long that like, why am I— what's going on here, right? And they make a buck 7 times when they send 7, 7, or the lead to 7 different businesses.

Yeah.

And so it leaves a bad taste in the business's mouth. They get burned. They feel like, if I don't respond fast enough, then I can't get this. It's a waste of money. And it's kind of a bad taste in the homeowner's mouth as well. Yeah.

Yeah.

And I was seeing with some of our clients, you know, just responding could cost him $200, $300, $400, just responding to one Thumbtack lead, let's say.

Yeah.

And so that $400 to talk to someone who's talking to 4 to 5, maybe 10 other people—

Yeah.

Shopping around, that's not a good lead.

Yeah.

But if you spend the $400 to talk to a business owner that's gonna send you 10 warm referrals because they've seen that that customer wants the service and the trust triangle is happening, it's like so much better. Yeah.

What advice would you give to people wanting to start this exact business?

Don't be afraid of calling. You know, like this is a business built on relationships. Relationships happen human to human and—

Especially in the age of AI.

Absolutely.

Not no longer, but even more so.

Yeah.

We want that.

Yeah. And in the trades, most of the people I talk to want that human connection.

Mm-hmm.

Right. And so, you know, set a number per day. Of how many people you want to call, call them.

If people want to get in touch with you, how can they find you?

Yeah, our website's the perfect spot, hytros.com.

H-Y-T-R-O-S?

Yeah, hytros.com. And we have a referral pipeline blueprint. So if, you know, a painter wants to do it for themselves, wants some technology to support, we got a whole way for them to start it up and if they want our help, we're happy to help. And then if there's any like marketing agencies that think they can add this on as a service to their offers and want to introduce that—

White label it or?

Yeah, we usually do a partnership.

Yeah. What advice do you have for people wanting to build a business on GoHighLevel?

Find the specific thing that makes you excited to offer and do that. Sometimes distraction Creates procrastination and we never get started.

So something that we're excited about.

Yeah.

Because when you log in to HighLevel, there's hundreds of different businesses you could start on there.

Yeah.

So don't find the shiniest object of the month or whatever.

Yeah.

But whatever gets you excited.

Yeah. And sometimes figure out if your excitement is just because it looks easy or if it's true to something that you care about.

Yeah. Well, Aaron, thank you.

Yeah.

This was great.

Yeah, thank you.