How to Find Customers for Your Home Service Business

I got into commercial power washing. I advocate everyone do this. That commands about $1,800 a stock. We probably do between 400, 500, 600 maybe of coil cleaning.

600 grand?

Yeah.

Dang.

Next year, we'll do $450,000. Crystallite. Get a yard sign. The yard sign is the single best thing you could have. I've done millions of dollars based on that yard sign. He takes a couple rock flyers and goes and throws them in the driveway. That is how to market residential service. I sold the service before I had it.

I say this all the time. Sell it before. Okay, we're picking up where we left off last week with Daniel. If you missed the episode a week ago today, go back and listen to that. Otherwise, just keep listening to this one. You're gonna love it. We're gonna get super specific about how to find customers, how to start home service businesses that are fun and profitable. Enjoy. What's the best way to acquire customers in that line of business?

I would use what's called a rock flyer. I call rock flyer. It's a flyer with a bag of rock. Or the number one, which, if you're in the service industry and you're listening to this podcast, get a yard sign. The amount of people who don't have.

A yard sign, that's stupid. Wasted money.

It's stupid. You're idiots. Like, the yard sign is the single best thing you could have. You put in the yard. They talk to their neighbor. They ask them about it, whatever it might be. They drive past. It costs. I don't care if it costs $10. It's $10.

And they're like $3, aren't they?

What? Yeah, whatever. Yeah.

You ask permission? No, you just put it in there. And how many have complained?

Do not ask permission.

How many have complained?

I don't care.

But, like, it's. I'm. I'm trying to make the point of, like, it's negligible. People don't complain.

A, they don't complain. B, I want to talk about that because too many people care that people complain. I want you to be so mentally strong that you don't even care that they complain.

Yeah, I love it. I love it.

My business. My business. And I've done hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars, actually, based on that yard sign. I want to one up your plaint comment. So you asked me, do people complain? I have a lady who says, hey, the township, like, bust our chops about, you know, this yard sign. I'm like, I'll pay the fine, right. I don't care. Sure. Next time we're back in the area, we'll pick it up for you, right? I have that lady. Yes. And you know what? We put a sign in our house every year.

Even then.

Even then it's Christmas lights. Because guess what? I probably do 14 of the 20 houses in that neighborhood. Yeah, 20 houses. I do 14 of them Christmas lights. But I want to one up your comment about do they complain? I had a lady call me and say, yo, they forgot to put their yard sign out.

She wants that sign.

She wants everyone to know she paid crank lights and green lights are the best. And that's who did my lights.

So that's amazing.

I make sure. Do my guys know they do not get in that truck unless it's full yard signs. Like there's a. I don't care if you forget lights because you can still drive the house. Put a sign out and we're coming back, but you do not forget a yard sign. How we got on that topic, I.

Was asked how you acquire customers.

The yard sign with the rock flyer. They know you put the yard sign out. And then if while one guy's packing the truck up, usually Chris lights a three man crew, the lowest totem pole guy, he takes a couple rock flyers and goes and throws them in the. In the driveway of like the adjacent four or five houses. That is how to market residential service. I don't care who you're. I don't care if it's. You name it, it doesn't matter. That's why I'm confident.

Throw it in the driveway from the car.

If you want to put the mailbox, go ahead. Like, my opinion is, like, you want to cause a ruckus. Like you want people. I've had people literally call me and complain about the rock fire. Yes, that was a scary one. Like, you know, think you're lettering, they're gonna call this on you, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, go ahead, dude, I would love a nice newspaper article. We have fines, right? I literally had someone say, you threw these flyers in our neighborhood, but some of my neighbors need you. I'm complaining. Are you? What do you want to do here? You know, some people just like to complain. And the best thing you can do is let. Okay, here's my advice. And we call carbon bombing. I will literally call it operation carpet bomb. Beginning of springtime. My residential guy knows for power washing, you go out there and you hammer like, you just go out there and throw every neighborhood that has this on it. That needs a roof cleaned or housewashed or whatever. And. And then you don't answer the phone for the next day. You'll be. Or like. Or like three hours later, because, you know, like, three hours after you send these out, you're gonna get about 20 calls. People are just gonna.

Oh.

Yell at you.

The timing of it is key.

The time is key. Yeah. Just don't answer the phone for, like, three hours. And then the next day, it's gonna be the. No one calls the next day to complain. They called, right? And they pick it up right there.

Yep.

They're walking back to their house like, I hate these guys. They throw this trash in my, you know, yard. And then guess what? The next week, they see us across the street at the neighbor's house who called me. Go wash their house. Just. That's just how it works.

That's so good.

No, the best is the person who asked for the sign. That was my favorite.

Give me a rough guesstimate. How many rock flyers have you thrown and how many complaints have you gotten? Like, I know it's. It's almost impossible, but, like, it's.

It's almost impossible. Yeah, I mean, I've definitely. Because we've been doing for 12 years, and every season, we throw lock flyers. We always do the Christmas lights, too. I. So best thing to do there, have a. Either a younger sibling or like a high school kid. They make the flyers in the basement. People have their own kids make these flyers up. Yeah, I can have my kids. You do it. It's flyer, bag, rock staple. That's it on repeat. 20, 30, 40,000 flyers, you know, maybe more. I mean, I. I've ordered 20,000 in one year before, you know, but I might still have some of those, you know, And I. And first thing I said, my manager, I said, dude, no one sees this flyer. If it's in our basement, get it out, launch it, you know, toss that thing. And so that's, like, really important to. To me is, like, making sure, like, people know who. Who we are.

Right. My dad used to say, you can't catch a fish if your hook's out of the water, because every five minutes. Let's try this lure. Let's try that lure. Let's.

Yep.

Nope.

Yeah, exactly. But yeah, I get lure in. In the water. And that's. That's a really good analogy. So I actually just talked to a friend before our call. Here I was on the phone, and he's, like, starting a new business. I said, the best advice I give you is that no one knows who you are. So look at yourself in the mirror. Because the only person who knows right now that you're starting a business and you need to be everybody.

Yeah.

And the more people who know, the better you're going to be. I mean, that's really like on a daily basis. Like, that's what I do is make sure people know who. Our coil cleaning business, because it's my favorite thing to do is our best margins. I just make more and more people know this is what we offer. But yeah, Crystal Lights is. Is great. I really added that on to the employees. To be able to have a something to do for like from November to.

Yeah, it's kind of like. It's kind of like a home builder, like always needing something contractors to do. Like, yeah, we'll take this con. This carpet job. Yeah, we'll do this drywall job. It keeps my guys busy. It's the kind of that equivalent.

Well, exactly. But then it actually turned into a really great business and we're like, oh, wow. Like, you know, I'll put 90 grand in my pocket at the end of the Crystal Lights. He's my brother, he's my partner in Crystal lights. He puts 90 grand in his pocket. And like, we kind of know it's like guaranteed after, you know, from. We were working like three quarter days from September, October 1st, until about December 10th, 12th. And because the calls die off and then we do take them down. But you could put up like three or four houses, five houses in a day. Like, your crew is skilled. We could take it down about 15 in a day. Great.

500 a pop.

How much per job? Yeah, no, our minimum is 800.

A lot cheaper than your customers. I pay 5. I beat them up with the price.

We won't. That's a perfect example of like, hey, that's great. You pay 5 because there's someone else who wants to pay 8. And we tell them, like, look, we only have an eight week window. Like, if you want to be on our schedule, like, this is it.

We're full.

Yeah, see you later.

We don't need you. And that's like the best sales pitch ever is like, we don't care if we're. Fine.

Okay, fine.

All right. 800. Fine.

Yeah, I. And you know, we. We have a couple of people who've like switched from previous. From other companies now they're like, yeah, we just. That guy just rubs us the wrong way. You know, we'll. We'll pay him to not come back. Right, you guys. So we don't have to deal with him.

You know what's hilarious about all this? I'm bragging about paying 510ft away from me outside, my lights are still up because my cheap guy has still not taken them down. And it's January 23rd right now.

See that? You're getting. You're getting. That's. That's exactly. And we had people, like, switch to us because, like, he didn't put my lights up till, like, December 10th. I'm like, well, if you were our customer, like, we'd have you ready to go. October, November, whenever you want to plug them in, just fire them up. So, yeah, like, there's. There's. You can pay for some professionalism there. But our most expensive 5, $6,000 lights.

Jobs that people do, that's amazing. What kind of bags do you use for your Rock Flyers? Like, Ziploc.

I had a company out of Orlando. They. They make this fly. They make this plastic bag that fits my fly well.

And it's, like, branded.

No, the flyer is the brand.

Okay.

It's just. It's just nice and neat.

Just, like, clear plastic.

Yeah, Clear plastic bag. You know, thin. It just keeps it from getting wet and, you know, stable over the top. But, yeah, I have it specked out.

Okay. Where do you get the rocks from? Like, a bag at Home Depot.

Buy Home Depot's fine. The driveway, Whatever. You know, whatever rock you want. You know, you want it to be a good weight. You. You're throwing that thing, you don't want to be, like, too heavy where it blows out. You don't want to be too light where it flies into the yard. Like, kind of want the ideal.

Okay.

I recommend giving a few tosses to see how many rocks you want.

Yeah, okay.

That's actually a funnier phone call. People. Like, what do I do with this rock? Yeah, whatever you want. I don't care.

Throw it in the yard with a rock. You need.

You need more to do if you clean their house.

That's what I do. Oh, all right. So you used the Rock Flyers to find any home service job, residential, anyone?

Yes. Yeah. And the yard sign. Those two combinations of those things. The third secret there is you having a wrap vehicle. But yes. Like, you have a yard sign. The initial contact. Right. Like, what is the initial contact? Is it a Google click? Is it a postcard? Is it a Rock Flyer? Like, what does the initial contact like, you know, for your customer? And then there's other forms of contact where the initial one is that. That Rock Flyer, the second Contact is they, you know, see your wrapped truck. The third contact is that yard sign in the yard. Right. There's all those things going to your next customer.

What would you say, roughly your conversion rate is on these rock flyers? You get two customers, three throw a hundred.

So it's probably between five and ten, I would say. Yeah.

Crazy.

Once again, it's highly targeted. It's the customer because you're choosing the customer. Right. Like, you know, the house you're throwing it to. Right? Yeah. I'm not throwing these in center City W. Right. I'm throwing them to the outskirts, where I'm throwing them to a golf course community. Right. Where the people have somebody. I'm. I'm selecting it. That's why I honestly hate AdWords and that stuff, because it's such a blanket coverage that it's just picking so much garbage. You know, I just trash customers who are not my customer. And I've done such a good job of, like, identifying my customer, which I think a lot of people have to do that, like, identify who is your customer, and knowing that is leads to a lot more success.

Yeah, dude, I. I've said this quote, like, a dozen times over the last month, sometimes on this podcast, because I'm obsessed with it. And it's. The harder way is usually the better way. AdWords are easy. Facebook ads are easy. Right? It's. You just, oh, I just want to sit in my office and put up some AdWords and do it. But it's not as effective, actually. Stuffing these bags with rocks, stapling them, getting in the truck, driving around. Maybe it's hot, maybe it's cold, maybe it's raining. Going to the strategic neighborhoods, throwing them, it just. It's so much more fruitful. Going to the networking meetings where. Where you find the guy that has a $12,000 water tower contract. Like, not finding him with AdWords, you're just not. You got to get outside of your house.

Yeah, that was a wrestling pizza party. I coached my kids wrestling.

Dude, I'm a wrestler. I'm a wrestler.

I'm not good, but I wrestle. Yeah. Yeah.

I coached as well.

I was standing next to. Yes.

My.

My. My daughter. She's 7, and I have a son who's 5. And I was at their. Years ago, their. Their wrestling party, and the dude next to me was wearing a shirt that said, you know, one of the companies I was trying to get into. I'm like, yo, what's with this? He's like, I knew that. I'm like, oh, I coach with you and. Which is kind of how I. I was. I was taught that, like, I never asked people what they do. It was just funny how, like, we knew each other all year. From wrestling.

Yeah.

He was the other coach, but we never talked about what we did. And I'm like, well, I can do this for you. And he's like, great. Send me some prices.

So that's amazing.

I did. Like, it's close to 100 grand worth of water towers.

Jeez. All right, so wrap truck, rock flyers, yard signs. That's the recipe for finding customers in any home service niche.

Residential. That is the way to go. And I don't care who you are, I will battle you to the death on that one. I mean, it doesn't. It doesn't matter.

Like, yes, specifically, yard signs after you do a job at that house. Or, like, yard signs anywhere. Like, neighborhood entrances.

I would use them for both, actually. Yeah. I like a yard sign at the neighborhood entrance as well. If you're not getting yelled at by, like, zoning or somebody, you're not putting enough out. That's also factual. But if the guy is showing up, I don't care if it's plumbing. Right. It's very simple math. It's. It's. If I'm going to your house, the house next to you is probably built the exact same time. So if your water here is going bad, guess whose water here is going bad next? Everyone around you. So the plumber. Even though, like, mine is a little easier because it's outside. Like, you could see the house being cleaned, right? Blacktop asphalt. You can see the asphalt being done. You want that yard sign? You know, never ask a. As soon as the guys get out of the truck, I want the yard sign out before the job is done, I want out. Like, yeah, the first minute they get, like, my guys know, like, as soon as one guy gets out of the truck, goes, hook up water, next I get to the truck to put a yard sign out. It's a very simple recipe for success for residential business, no matter which business it is. It's. It's.

That's. Say, do you do anything specific with your copywriting, like, with the signage, like. Because when I put out yard signs, I want it to be as obvious as possible. The letters need to be as big as possible. If the logo doesn't add value, there's no logo. Phone number, name. Like, what do you do on your copywriting on both your flyers and your yard signs? That has proven to be effective.

So flyers are different. So. And one of the things someone said to me, which I thought I was a really great is like always get them to the website, right? Like, because I could give you like this much information on a flyer, but I can give you this much information, like massive amounts of information on a website. So you always want to get them to a website, ideally through a postcard or a flyer. But on a flyer for Christmas lights we break down like the process of like, hey, we're going to design it, we're going to install it, we're going to maintain it, we're going to take it down, right. Like those, those are four bullet points right on the flyer so they know what they're getting. And then a picture of a house that's done with a yard sign. It is company name. Because people I think make the mistakes so much they don't put their company name on it. Like, yeah, Gutter cleaning. It's like, well, who, who, who cleaned gutters?

It. Trust me, I'm a wall that tells me that it's Chuck in a truck.

Yes.

Right.

Yes. Yep. So you want. First thing to do is put our name on top, right? It's Kringle Lights. Who did it? It's Apex Software. She did it. That's, that's number one. And then the second thing would be the service done, right. And a phone number. So like what was, what do we do? I actually, it's funny, I don't even think Kringleites has a service because like it's kind of self applied but for Apex off wash, you know, roof cleaning or house wash, like that, like that. That's the main, the biggest ticket item that got done, I would have on the outside. But let's say it's a plumber and you can't put it on there. Then just put the name of the business and the phone number. That's it. Because they're gonna, they're gonna talk to the neighbor, they're gonna find out what was done. You are a.

So video is cool. But you know what's better? Long form audio via podcast and my newsletter tkop. Go there to subscribe for free to my newsletter. It's one email a week. Very tactical. And then go to my audio podcast. Three episodes a week. Stuff like this. You're going to love it. All free. No sleazy sales pitch. Tkopod.com if I did a bad job.

How long you leave that yard sign in the yard for?

Yeah, you're.

You're ripped out in three seconds.

That's the implied message, right?

Message is that like, this person was a trusted person. Came my house. They did good. They didn't rob me. You didn't assault my wife or dog or whoever's in the house. Like, this is this. They're a reputable.

Yeah. And the same principles. You know, if you sell a house, you got a yard sign out there for the realtor. Why do you leave the sign out there and put sold on it? The house is already sold. You're doing the realtor a solid. They did a good job. Right. If they did a crap job, they wouldn't leave it up.

Yeah, exactly. So that's. That's a. To me, there's not even a topic or discussion to be had that is just yes and move on to the next, which is whatever. As far as my. My journey goes. Not that I never have enough. I'm definitely a person. Like, I'm always, like, trying to. I'm always hungry for. For. For more. But I like to work out. So this is kind of a funny story. My. My brother and I, or actually, probably just me in the beginning, there's a local college, King's College. Actually, a lot of people from Utah ended up coming to Kings College because of their PA program. We had no gym, so Hometown had no gym. And it really drove me nuts. I didn't drive downtown. I live on top of a mountain. So, like, there's a physical barrier called the mountain. That bad weather just in general, like, no one wants to drive down the mountain. It adds an extra five minutes to your trip that you don't want to do.

How many people live up on this mountain?

Probably like 12 to 15,000 now. Yeah, maybe.

Oh, wow. Okay. Quite a bit.

Yeah.

So certainly enough to have a gym.

Certainly enough to have a gym. So I would drive downtown, and I'm probably 25 at the time. And so I'm. I'm actually sneaking into this college gym. I'm. I'm. I no longer am in college. Look like I'm in college, but don't go to college. I just like to work out. And it just happens to be the better gym in the area to. To work out. Or I just like this one and it was free. Cause I was sneaking in. So at first I, like, had someone's ID and just scan on the door and go work out. And then you do my thing and leave. And then that person graduated. So I didn't have their ID anymore. But definitely the security guard. Every day, just from walking in, I. I would. I was there more than any student in King's College. History. I didn't go there. So you just wave the security guard and then I time it where, like, it was a glass door. When someone was walking out of the.

Gym, I was kind of hanging in the parking lot.

Yep. Hang right there. Or like, if no one was at the glass door, always go to the bathroom or water fountain. Right. To help your timing out.

Yep.

And then you're there walking out. I'm walking in, I go use the gym. So now it's like, I don't know, like year five, like, just for a while. Like, I mean, like every. Like I would go five times a week and, and use the gym. So now I'm in there working out, and this one kid, like, leaves his weights, like all over the floor. Like they're just in complete disarray. And he leaves. He's like, out on the street and the way you could see, all glass windows, like, which way this kid went. So I walk out of the gym, I open the door, I yell like, yo, buddy. I'm like, you done with your weights? He's like, yeah. I'm like, come clean them up. Right. And security guards made fun of me for like the next year after that. Then I was like the gym police.

Making sure you're like that viral tick tocker that, like, he takes zip ties to the shopping carts and if someone leaves them out there, he ties them to the car.

It's like.

So I like, you're a. You're a vigilante for good.

I. I am. And that's exactly right. So I ended up doing this for probably six years, seven years, I don't know. But I actually, like, was designing. I was getting ideas for the gym I wanted to build. And like, it worked out that the one time I was in there, like, it was all the college students are on break, right? And I'm not sure if they thought I was now like, professor because I've been there for so long. I'm working out. Then I have my. It was great. You could bring your own speaker, play your own music. It was, it was awesome. And security guard walks in. I'm like, oh, no. Like, I'm busted. Like, I'm the only person here. I have no idea. Like, I'm not. And so before he says something to me, I said, what song you want to hear? And, you know, put his song on. He started working out with me.

That's amazing. Yeah, it was great. So.

But it gave me the, the knowledge and, like, I understood. We built a 24 hour gym. And because I knew how to sneak into a gym. I knew how to prevent people from sneaking into our own gym. And so it's cool. So we built a gym.

And how did you build up from scratch? Like, that's. I can't get that out of my head. Like, what did you do?

So something we didn't talk about, but it's like the next level of business is taxes. And we ended up power washing business started. My childhood tree fort and I had a needed place to go because we were growing. So we bought a old carpet building. My dad was able to put his office in the middle floor. Me and my wife moved into the top floor. And the basement area, outside area was our shop for Apex for the polishing business. And with it though came like 2 acres or 3 acres of land right on our main thoroughfare in our hometown. So amount I was talking about, you have to drive past this gym to leave mountaintop. And so we had the land. And actually at my wedding, I believe my. My dad was talking to someone, a family member who knew how to build stuff. And we're like, all right, well, we have some like able bodied men and we don't know what we're doing, but like, let's. Let's do it. So he was using it as like a showpiece to build this like, special building. And we were using it as like a cheaper cost, you know, like we were able to build this thing for 600 grand when our quote was for like 1.2 million to do do it. I understand why now. It took us three years to do it.

So far, my favorite quote from you so far has been, we don't know what we're doing, so let's do it. Like, that's entrepreneurship.

That's. That's entrepreneurship. Yeah. I mean, my favorite compliment I've ever gotten in my entire life was from this guy who I was. I was building a layout of the gym and I had no idea what I was doing for a layout. I was just only going to the gym that was built previously in my hometown and going off that and he said to me, he's like, you don't know what you don't know. And you're like, okay, admitting that. And I looked at him like, I don't even know what that means. He's like, exactly. And what he meant was like, you're. I have zero fear to tell you I don't know what I'm doing. And one of my biggest complaints is with these people who like pretend to know what they're doing and they don't and like that drives me up a wall. It's like, dude, like why is it your ego, like why are you putting up this front to, to, to know when like eventually gets exposed that you don't know. And I will be the first to admit when I don't know something. And that has really been beneficial like to me because he looked at me, he's like, you don't know what you're doing? I'm like, no, I don't know what I'm doing. He's like, you want to let your gym out this way? I'm like, great. Your self fitness equipment, like you know way more gyms than I do. Like, yeah, okay. What you just said to me, as long as it makes sense, I'll trust it. If what you say to me doesn't make sense and I can't figure it out, then it's probably either you're lying to me or you don't know. I have a pretty good intuition. I'm sure you can relate to that. So this guy like gave me the layout I wanted for the gym and how we should have it and I'm like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And then just using like modern day psychology, like where the first time you walk in is our treadmill. And why is it the treadmill? Because it's the easiest, most comfortable, most recognizable piece of equipment in the gym. And so when anyone walks in that gym, like that's a treadmill. Perfect. I know how to use that. I'm now comfortable. Yeah, right.

I'm not overwhelmed. I want to stay here.

And you want to stay here. The most intricate or like, you know, most skillful piece of equipment is going to be a squat rack. It's all in the back corner. And you know, you keep these high skill people away from the low skill people. And that's a, that's by design. Right.

And it's the same as Planet Fitness's model. Right. Like they want it to be approachable to everyone.

Approachable everybody. And yeah, inviting environment, having all that's really important. And I think it's like year six now, five now. But yeah, yeah, somewhere I, I never really keep track of that stuff. I don't, it doesn't really bother me like when we started or not. I don't, I always have this like philosophy of like I can go to business tomorrow. Like I don't know, like something can happen and, and like we're done. So like does it really matter? I've been here 10 years. Like no, because like the next year might be our last year.

And how's the gym doing? Is it the only gym in town still?

So. No, we had a competitor. I happened to your point. I was at a networking event. This guy did a really great topic. He talked about. It was really interesting. I was really invested in his conversation. I. I was participating in it. And I went up to him afterwards, I said, hey, like, I'm in Mountaintop 2. I'm actually, you know, building a gym. And he took like two steps back from me.

So you just told him that you owned a gym and that's when he was stand up?

Yeah, he owned. He owned two buildings and a manufacturing plant, like, in the same hometown as I did. And we're talking about stuff and I'm like, oh, well, hey, I'm in Mountain Top. I'm gonna actually do this. And he took those two steps back. He's like, I have to tell you something. He's like, I just like emailed a guy at least to sign one of my warehouse spaces to put a gym in.

And he's like, and you were about to open or you'd already opened.

I'm about to start building. Like, I. I have the land. Like, I have the land ready. Like, a permit just got approved. The guy's like, I don't know what to do here because I just met you and you're cool, but, like, I just signed this lease with this guy. Like, so I'm telling you both, like, what's going on? And I said to the guy, I said, look, he just signed. He's like in the process of signing a lease, like, you might save him some money, you know, by telling him, don't do it. And I don't know if that's seen as, like, cocky from my standpoint, but I was like, yo, we just spent 100 grand engineering, like, we're doing.

Yeah, yeah. And yeah.

And the guy's like, your location is better than mine is.

So I was just gonna say that.

You have a killer location is fantastic. He's like an industrial park back. Like, still, I. I've not on purpose. I've never driven past this guy's place just because of where it is. Whereas, like, he has to drive past my place to get to his place. And so the guy, he emailed me said, hey, he's going to move forward. He's going to do it. And this is actually kind of funny. I do like the. Not that I'm purposely competitive, but I'm definitely. I enjoy the game. And he, he built his gym, he was open first. It took us longer because he was just renting a space out. We were building it from scratch. Our first month, we added a thousand members. So from zero. A thousand, like, maybe a month and a half, you know?

But that's a tenth of the town.

Yeah, yeah. Which is funny because that if you look at the numbers, like, that's how many members, like, the person doing the business plan, doing the math, you have about 10% of people who own gym memberships, like, in the United States. So, like, that was the goal. 10th the town.

We're saturated. We're done.

Yeah. Which is part of a problem I'm having now is that we are at the ceiling. It's like, well, what do you hit a ceiling? Right. I can't do any more. So I spend very little time on.

The gym because Raise prices not to.

But that guy, he was only open. Wasn't open on Sundays. Right. So one of the first things we did was show your ID Sunday. So if you were a member of any other gym in the area, you could show your ID on Sundays and work out our gym for free. So after, like, two months, the guy's like, well, I guess I got to open on Sunday because all my people are, like, leaving to go here. And so you.

Sorry, you let them work out for free if it was on a Sunday? Anyone, Even if they weren't a member. Yeah, brilliant.

Show your ID Sunday. So show your ID and you come into our place and check it out and use it and get familiar with it.

Were you able to track how many you converted from that?

I don't. I'm not a big track convert guy, which, like, my one friend hates that.

Yeah.

I'm like, dude, I just know it works.

Yeah.

Like, I'm not going to waste my time, like, tracking if I already know it's good to go.

Well, like, you're familiar with the midwit meme, right? Like, the distribution curve on one end, it's like, it just works. And then in the middle, it's like, oh, no, we got to track this. We got a conversion rate. What are the attribution metrics? We're using UTM parameters yet. And then on the other end, it's like, it just works.

It just works.

You graduate past all that tracking.

Yeah, I don't think it's that important as long as, like, you have a pulse on it. Right. I was at the gym. I could see faces I didn't recognize. I'm like, yeah, okay, this is working. You know what's going on here. And. And I knew he had a couple hundred members that might even want to work out on Sundays. It was closed, so why not do it? And so it worked out well and enough where in like four months he closed up shop, went out of business. And so I felt kind of bad, but at the same time, like, I don't feel bad. I'm like, dude, you didn't try.

He had the luxury of being warned and he ignored it. How often do people get that? Yeah, not that, like, I mean, if it were you, would you have ignored him? Right? In his defense, I didn't warn him.

I did the right thing and said.

I'm saying you probably would have opened too anyway if. If the roles were reversed. Right.

Based on my location, I don't know. Like, it's really hard to beat our. Our stuff. But to your point, maybe because someone.

Just the confidence, someone moved into his.

Space who already had two gyms in the area. I'm not sure how well they're doing. But so we do have another gym now in the hometown and so there's some competition there, but you know, we're still doing well. And. And I honestly think we're at that, that ceiling where like, yeah, like you said you could raise prices, but then you're changing your model from, you know, high value to like higher cost.

So what's your monthly cost and how many members do you have today?

So we started at 25 and during COVID we raised it like cost of everything kind of went up and cleaning chemicals went up. We changed it to 29. I actually wanted to kind of change it early before like inflation kind of hit. I was more so raising prices just on kind of your principle of like cutting some people out. But also we had more costs with COVID so charging 29 and we're about 1200 members.

Nice.

We were at 1500 before COVID and Covid like killed people or some people had never came back to the gym who like are afraid of. Of COVID so crazy. Like still battling back from that Covid times, which I say if you survived Covid, you can survive like anything ever in the gym business. Especially.

What did you do to get those first thousand customers so quickly brand new, just opening?

You know, like there was. There was that other gym supply. Didn't know the other gym existed. So like it was. Yeah, we bought land. Yeah, I spent 200 grand of land. Like that was. I told people that was my marketing.

Like, yeah, land like you cannot so much pent up demand, no supply, right. Place, right? Time. Yeah. Which is why you open. That was your whole thesis.

That was my thesis. And, like, it's funny because you talk to people. And, like, I usually don't say anything to anybody when it comes to, like, business. I. I'm like a very, like, shut up until it's done right type guy. Because, like, you know, there's people who, like, talk, right? Like, oh, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna have five locations. I'm like, shut up. Like, yeah, do it right, so.