Franchisees Who Are Winning Big—and the Strategies You Need! | Homefront Brands Panel of the Pros

Starting lineup for the panel of the pros. Hailing from the rolling green hills of New Zealand. A couple of kiwis transplanted to Fort Worth, Texas. Voted most valuable poster on LinkedIn. Playing temporary walls with an annual run rate of $1 million. Steve and Helen oh. Next up, a real cowboy from the Front Range who takes his boofs off one at a time in Denver, Colorado. He's not horsing around. Playing top rail fence with an annual run rate of $5 million. Sean Raft. Next up, a rising star over Atlanta, a networking ninja who finds her way into big homes through the closet. Playing Designery with a $1.3 million annual run rate. Rookie of the year, Ali Aar. Hailing from historic Greensboro, North Carolina. He's the boss of bni, the champ of the chamber, and he knows how to throw a party. Playing designery with an annual run rate over $1 million. A brand new grandpa, Steve Moore. And from North Carolina, he's the king of clean in the Queen City. Playing window hero in Charlotte with an annual run rate of $3 million. Our founder, Tyler Kirk. All right, ready to go?

Let's go.

All right, all right, all right, all right.

There you go.

Okay. Out of my car. All right. Hell of the pros. Very exciting. So we are going to hear from these people on the fourth thing we wanted to get specific about is business development. So these are all people that have demonstrated excellence in that they're going to share their tips, tricks, tactics with all of us. All right. And we're going to Sean first. Sean, you bought the market straight digital, Tommy Mello style. Share a little bit about your strategy to enter the Denver market. And now how are you intentionally incorporating business development in 2026?

Yeah. Thanks, Jeff. So we came into this. I'd never run my own business before. We came from a tech company where I had hundreds of marketing people and salespeople and so didn't really know what we didn't know. But when we started this and we laid out a plan of where we wanted to go, Todd and Nelson, Hallie and the team and Adam and Brad and basically just laid out a plan saying, hey, the more money you spend on marketing, the more return on ad spend you'll get and the more revenue you'll sell and the more money you'll make. So we went out and just signed up with all the digital vendors. It was digital dive, right? I mean, we didn't have a community of home builders or pool builders or anybody. So we just went digital leads and went max budget. Angie's thumbtack networks, Google and spent as much money as we possibly could, knowing that every dollar we spent, we would get that return on investment. So that's kind of how we got started, right? We're 18 months into this. We know our numbers. So all the metrics that Tommy Mello laid, I know that for every 12 leads I get, I get nine appointments and I sell three fences. I know my average sales ticket is $7,000. And I know that my average lead spend, my cost per lead is about a hundred dollars a lead. So I know that every job cost me about $400 in marketing. And we just blend that into our margins. We sell at 36 points of margin. And the math, maths, right, that's a big term for us, right? Does the math, math, does it make sense? So that's kind of how we got started, spending more money. Our problem is how do we get more leads? So that's a big part of our focus going into 2026 is how do we, how do we double our leads From I think 3,000 this year? I think our goal is to go from 5 million to $10 million next year. And the math, the math, we got to go from 3,000 leads to 6,000 leads. And we're going to do that by doubling down on our marketing spend and then spending a lot more time networking. Right. So we want to go and attack home builders, land developers, and get more on the commercial side of the business, which is something that I don't think we could have done a year ago because we really didn't know what we were doing. So now we can have much better conversations. And you know, outside of the marketing though, Jeff, the one thing I will tell you is it's the people.

Right.

I think that Tommy Mello brought that up too. We brought our whole team here, Nancy and Sarah and Steven and Kristen and Tanner, and we just put together a really good group of humans that do the ground level marketing too. Right? So yard signs and door hangers and flyers and home shows and if we can spend a dollar on marketing, we know we get $2 back. So we go and spend as much money as we possibly can.

Awesome. Next question is for Steve and Helen. So I've got two questions since there's two of you. First, what are some of the advantages to working as a team? And how do you divide and conquer the roles and responsibilities? And the second question will be, you have a LinkedIn, then lean in approach, mining contacts on LinkedIn, transitioning to an in person relationship. Can you walk us through that process, from that very first message to getting to a quote.

Well, first off, working together, the partnership part, we learned very quickly. Well, I learned very quickly there can only be one boss. So a little bit of jiggling around there.

Who is?

It.

Depends on the day. But honestly, being in partnership is great. As entrepreneurials, you can often be. It can be very lonely, but we don't experience that because we have each other to bounce off ideas. So we're having a lot of fun with it as well. It can be stressful, but at the end of the day, we remember to have fun with it was the other part of that question.

So specifically, you have a LinkedIn then lean in approach. You've done an excellent job mining context on LinkedIn. I think every business that we have could benefit from that strategy. So we'd love to hear what your approach has been and how it's worked for you.

Yeah, well, right from the start, we've focused very heavily on getting a followership out there on LinkedIn. I think we're up to over 1100 followers at the moment and we know that works. Every time we meet up with general contractors or people on a job site, they're saying you guys are really busy. We saw your post last week on LinkedIn about the job that you did. You post every job, but also making those contacts to begin with. We've put a real focus on reaching out to the general contractors or facility managers, connecting with them on LinkedIn as soon as they connect. Thank you very much for connecting. Have a great day. Not trying to do any selling or anything like that, but then, you know, when something does crop up where you need to contact them, then, you know, we're messaging. A good example. We made a push into, you know, getting into restoration companies. We struggled a lot. We made one connection meet within a week or so. Later he put us in touch with two other of his connections. We met with those people. That's turned into, well, one of those connections turned into three jobs in the DFW area. Another connection has turned into several jobs as well. So it's, you know, it's low cost, a bit of effort to root out who you need to connect with, but then making those connections has been really good.

Do you use the LinkedIn Navigator or paid? Any specific tips around LinkedIn or just straight up sign up and show up?

Straight up sign up and show up. No spend there at all. Whenever we find a new general contractor in the area, I search through and I just connect with as many of the sort of Estimators, project managers in that. In that general contract company. And that. That seems to work well for us. Every month you get 100, you know, free follower requests. The first of every month I go through and I use up that hundred straight away. So, yeah.

Outstanding. All right, let's hear from Steve Moore. Steve, you've had over 100 people attend a beer and brisket event and are visibly engaged. I see it all the time with BNI and other similar groups. So is the brisket really that good? Or if not, what's the secret sauce?

Well, so I guess the brisket's really the bait, right? How to get them in.

Right.

Works for me.

And you've got to have a hook. So for me, you know, what I really try to focus on is networking, being out in the community. Every community is different. Maybe I'm big into BNI. I think I've closed 250, $300,000 in referrals just from that network. It's a lot of commitment, but the payback is certainly there. There's other organizations. I'm in the chamber of commerce. I'm in a couple of builders associations, merchants associations, anywhere that I think I can meet someone that can help advance the Designer Greensboro's cause, if you will. And I think that'd be pretty simple. You need to basically show up at the events. It's not hard. They're usually fun. You need to enjoy it, have a good time. Right. You need to engage with people. The winners in networking, they're not sitting back. They're out actively talking to people, seeing what kind of work they're doing, what kind of jobs are there, connections, people they can introduce you to. And then finally, you've got to nurture those relationships. You're not going to get a referral after just one visit. And a perfect example of the barbecue thing that we did six months after that, I sponsored a golf hole for the same association. And we were sitting out at this hole. Everybody that comes through is like, oh, yeah, I was in your showroom. I remember. That was great. Hadn't talked to him much since then. I've seen them. But then this was a Thursday. Well, then Friday I had two referrals from folks that saw me at the golf tournament. And Monday I had two new jobs. I mean, it's just if you put the effort in, if you're out there, and like I said, every community has different organizations that are strong. So you kind of got to weed your way through it and find out what's really worth putting your effort into. But at the end of the day, if I get a referral, I close it 90% of the time.

Awesome.

All right, let's hear from Ali. Ali, you've gotten very creative in designing partnerships, unique partnerships, and you're very specific about the way you do it with suppliers, with builders, remodelers, but a very creative partnership with a home magazine that you've executed on. So can you walk through each of those groups and tell us what's in it for them? So that specifically, you know, anytime that I look to go build a referral relationship or a partnership, if there's not money involved. Right. Because you can always pay somebody a referral fee. Like in restoration, we would pay plumbers. And you know that what happens is it's a transactional relationship. It's not a relationship relationship. So if we're paying them 200, somebody comes along and pays them 300, somebody comes along and pays them 500. They're here today, they're gone tomorrow. Ali, how do you think about not only creating these partnerships, but making them something that will last?

So I view every partnership as a relationship. Right. So as long as you nurture that relationship, it'll continue to give back to you twofold, and then you're helping them with the things that they need. So my first partnership was with AG Madison, an appliance company. We can sell appliances. I don't want to. They're just too many things go wrong with them. So I send all of my appliances to AJ Madison. They are absolutely fantastic, and they will bend over backwards if anything happens wrong with any of my installs. In return, they send me cabinet work, so I get referrals from then. They've also helped me build relationships with different magazines. So they put me in touch with Brad Hanner at Atlanta Home and Lifestyle magazine, and we were promoted as the up and coming Cabinet Company for 2025 in their magazine. So we were. We had a featured kitchen in one of their magazines. So that was a really great lead. And then he's put me in contact with a bunch of other builders and sourcing places like cabinets, countertops, whatever we need. I call Brad, and within 30 minutes, I have the contact for the person who owns that company. I mean, it's really incredible.

So.

Right. And then that's kind of a symbiotic relationship that we have there. We also partnered with City Lifestyles magazine. It's in a bunch of different states. They do the Buckhaven magazine, and they also do the Alpharetta magazine. And what's awesome about them is it's a print magazine that goes to people's houses, which I wasn't a huge fan of just print, but they actually, for $500 a month, they will guarantee me 15 impressions. So it already gives me the credibility because I get sponsored ads from City Lifestyle magazine, you know, for all the people that are interested in it. And then with that, I did an advertisers event where I had about 40 advertisers for the local area come into the showroom. And then I got to build partnerships with all of them. So now I have a flooring company that refers me cabinetry, a plumber, an H VAC guy. So they're all kind of referring me business, and I refer them business. So we built this really awesome network that goes along with it. And then actually I just found out we did a photo shoot on Thursday of our kitchen in the back for Fieldstone, and I think we are going to be featured on their cover for the December magazine. So super exciting. So it's just really like, how can we give back? What can we do? And how can we partner and make your business grow and our business grow and make it all happen?

Amazing. Okay, we're going to go to Tyler. Before we do, I want to challenge the audience to come up with some specific questions. We're going to have some mics running around here in just a few minutes, and we'd love to hear some questions from you, direct them at the panel in general or at any specific panelists. So your tasked come up with five between you, 400 people. All right, so Tyler, I want you to really dig in here. You know, Tyler built his business and it was 95% residential at some point. $2 million business, very profitable. Tyler goes to some island out on the coast with his family where you're only allowed to have golf carts and deers eat from your hand. And, you know, that's. Well, his business is running. So he's built a beautiful business, beautiful family, beautiful, you know, just that, that balance of life building. Very profitable, 27% profitable business, making 5 or $600,000 a year. And now last year, Tyler decided to move into the commercial space and he grew his top line. $1 million just in the commercial space. And he's doubling down into that space going forward. So I don't know where Tyler's going to end up. But if he continues to push, I mean, he could be a five or $10 million business. They do exist in this space in cities just like Charlotte. So very excited to hear, but One of the strategies that you employed with great specificity was around the apartment communities. And this is something that I've always talked about is if you're going to join an association, and I want to know which associations each of you have joined and how they've worked for you. If there's something specific and if you think it might work for one of the other brands, they would want to hear that too. But when you join an association, you should show up every month at the monthly meeting, because if you show up two or three times, people are not going to talk to you. Because lots of people show up two or three times and then they never come back. So until you start to come back, four, five, six, seven times, people are not going to take you seriously and they're just going to think you're a drive by. Okay? So you got to show up. The second thing you could do is join a committee. The membership committee is huge because you're meeting everybody on the way in. So I think it's big to join a committee. And the third thing is as you sponsor an event, so put your, put your name on the golf hole, like we had sponsors, longest drive, all that stuff at our golf tournament, show up regularly, join a committee, which means you're volunteering your time, you're gaining credibility, and then sponsor an event. And Tyler has taken that strategy to an even deeper. A deeper thing, but it's led to incredible, incredible automated, recurring work from the apartment community. So talk about that.

Okay, so thank you. There's a mentality that I had to learn about how apartment managers run, property managers run. They get bombarded by salespeople every day. They have salespeople handing pamphlets to them, walking in, hey, how can I help you? How can I do this? Here, here's a. I can do junk for you. I can clean windows. They see that and they say, yeah, I'm interested in. But they take that pamphlet and I've seen this happen, and they put it in the trash after that person leaves. And I did that. I tried doing that. When I started learning, getting into this industry, I started first with retirement communities. I didn't know anybody. I went into maybe 50 doors, 50 different retirement community, big communities. I got one job, maybe $5,000. Well, the amount of time I spent, that took a lot of time. So I really didn't build trust with these people. And that is the number one thing, that's the number one barrier that I have, we all have between having a profitable relationship with them is trust. And how do you, how do you get that? Is there's a way that we've been doing it is is called extrinsic going after their extrinsic value. I probably say that wrong because I'm hearing impaired but what that means is what do they really care about personally? What do they like? It's not. They don't care about some drone flying. That's neat. That's an attention grab. They don't care about us cleaning. We got these good looking guys. It's not that they have these million dollar properties that they need someone they can trust. Most of these people already have a client that they're using and have a vendor that they're using. How do I get in the door? That's, that's a tough thing. It's not like a footy pamper. So I need to get to know that have genuine influence on who they are personally. Do they like Spanish wine? Do they. I mean do they like Clemson football? Do they like golf? Do you like, do you like bass fishing? These are all like clients of mine. What do I do? I go buy them stuff. I take them to go play garden. If they like Spanish wine, I use that as a thank you and just give it to them. Just thanks for meeting me with no, no expectations whatsoever. I hope you use this in the future. I don't even say that. I say hey thanks for even letting me have a chance to meet with you and just really to get no. 1. When you're dealing with $10,000 project, that's how much average line item we get like $10,000 a pop. They want someone they can trust to clean their hundred million dollar building. They don't. They're under the gun by the building owner tenants. They want no headaches. They need trust. So if you can find out what they like and develop a relationship. If you don't know how to cook, know how to cook, learn and do something with them. Take them to a cooking class. If they love that stuff. Get to really know them because these are long term relationship bigger the project is you know more you need to know them. And so that's, that's that. That is one of our strategies mindset.

It's.

It's our job to be. A friend of mine says it's our job to be unforgettable. Like it's not their job to remember you. How can you do that is to actually get to genuinely know that. Like if they have a LinkedIn they post something great on LinkedIn. What I'll do is I'll congratulate them. Not on LinkedIn. I'll send them a letter like a small, hey, I saw you on LinkedIn. That's amazing. No one does that. Find ways. That's what we try to do. We just find ways to get in front of them, get them to know me and who I am. That's the main strategy. What I do.

Can you share which associations specifically that you join in Charlotte? The different associations, how the apartment associations are organized, how you get into them and then what you do. Because when we talked and we deconstructed this and we're going to be doing a video and an SOP around this specific playbook and I know that in the Window Hero they've got it, but you know, I don't think there's a brand that we have. Maybe temporary walls wouldn't apply in apartments and things like that. But you know, everybody else, this is a great strategy. So starting from the associations, working your way into how you participate and then what happens when you show because of your participation.

Okay, okay. So. So the associations that I try to join in this HOA association, that's a building association, is an apartment association. There's a property management association. Irene Bauma CAI National Park Association. They have a lot of regions this narp. There's a bunch of. These are learning associations. These are association that helps the property managers be better property managers and they want vendors to help these associations.

Help.

Their property managers be better. So there's. They have events and places where you can help them be successful at it. These are committees like membership committees. And that's a. Membership committee is where you encourage new property managers to join the association. That's gold. Like you, you're. You can be a representative of the apartment association to recruit a member. You know, someone that just joined or someone that hasn't joined their farm association. Bring them on. They have a list. They ask you to go out and see them. You're trying to provide an education. Has nothing to do with Window Hero. You're not even doing a. Doing a sales pitch. There's. There's outreach committee and the thing about these committees is there's regional managers and sometimes directors. They are over multiple apartments. Like eight. Eight apartments it might be over that I ran into in a golf event of a director of Graystar. He was over 150 apartments. What, what did I do? I took him out for barbecue and sent him a thank you letter. Thank you for letting me have barbecue. We didn't talk about business. I even bring it up. It just. He has he has two kids, likes Clemson football. Now, I might dig him a little bit, like, you know, Clemson football. But he, he is, he had become a great friend. I would take him to go play golf. I keep asking, hey, can we go to Pinehurst? Man, why are you doing this? It's like you, you've been, you're so nice. So what do you, what do you do? How can I help you? He said, how can I help you grow the business? I didn't ask for help. And I said, well, can you, can you just email everybody and let them know that what we do? Said, yeah, I'm going to email every single person. It wasn't a blast email. That's, that's what happens when you have influence and you really genuinely see someone. Okay. That's where in the associations you rubbing shoulders next to regional people that are in play and they have influence over their property company managers. And that's where you want to be. You want to volunteer. Once when you volunteer and you live their life around you and they see you as one of them, you win. Like that's, that's where you want to be. So the volunteering is hands down the best way to grow because we've done sponsorships that doesn't really do all that much without the volunteering. The. They have reverse trade shows where the property manager are intentional in wanting to get to know you. There is there that. There's golf, golf events, play events. There's a lot of these places where you can have a lot of fusion points where you can meet these people over and over again. And so Cai has similar concept. Boma Irene, all the apartments, they all have that and so dive into those, have that relationship with them.

So yeah, fantastic. Sean, let's come back to you. You have a belief that to get to $10 million commercial is going to play a big aspect of it. So you've been a digital warrior, by the way. I, you know, I hesitate to even say this, but when Tommy Mello goes into a new market, one of the things that he does is he specifically looks at the Google my business situation to determine the best place to place his office. Like that's how particular. That's one thing I learned from him this year is where you place your physical location is going to impact Google. So new learning for us, you know, going forward or if you move a location or you get a new location or you're getting another designer, you're opening up something like that. Let's have that conversation around it. But man, he goes into a market. And he bought, he pays 100, he buys, he spends 120% of his anticipated forecasted revenue on digital. Not 12%, 120%, because he knows that he needs to get to scale. And then once he gets to scale, it backs down to 35%, then it comes down to 15 to 20%, and then it gets down into the 8 to 12%. Normalizes maybe in the third year, and now he's running his play, but he's won the marketplace and he puts people out of business and buys their customer lists and puts them to work and all of that. So you don't, you don't grow straight organically from, you know, zero to $300 billion. But, you know, you went with a similar, not 120%, but like you spent a lot as a percentage of your revenue and you committed to it. And, you know, there's this, there's some laws of manufacturing. One is you can't fix anything until you have volume running through it. You can theorize about what you're going to do, you can theorize about how you're going to get efficient, you can theorize how good your salespeople are going to be, but you really don't know anything until you get the game running. Like, what we've done here is we've stood up in a couple of years, $106 million worth of business running through it. And now we're opening the hood and we're saying, okay, how do we make this a Ferrari from here? We've got volume running through it to work with now. So now we can very quickly make it efficient. You just said you, you've got, you've, you bought your way into the market with a, with a courageous lead spend. You've executed on the sales teams, you've executed on the residential business model. Now how are you going to build on that foundation and take your business to $10 million next year? Specifically, going after the commercial work, is it going to be digital or is it going to be something else?

That's a great question. It's going to be all the above, right? I don't think we're going to lay off of anywhere. We're going to continue to invest in digital. I mean, again, it goes back to the math. Maths, right? There's a direct return on investment for every dollar we spend on digital. But to the point that you were just making with the associations, I think that's, that's where we're going next. Not what I think we signed up for. The Apartment association of Metro Denver. So they manage the properties for over 300,000 multifamily units across the state of Colorado. We, we got hooked up with one of the board members. We, I got hooked up with one of the board members. Been courting him, right? Just like you'd said. We're about to close our fifth deal with the fifth. Different property with their organization. He's on the board. So he actually sent out that email to the other larger members of the Apartment Association, Metro Denver. He didn't put me on it, but he forwarded me the email afterwards, right, where he just introduced me to five of his colleagues recommending us, just saying responsiveness, quality of work, competitive pricing, not the cheapest, but you're going to get done what you need to get done, which I think is more important on the commercial side than it is on the residential side, where you're competing for a $60. Angie's lead, right? We signed up with the National Home Builders association, the National Home Builders association of Metro Denver. We've learned a lot there. I spent the last 18 months trying to get the contracts with the largest home builders. You learn very quickly that home builders don't actually build homes. They just buy land and then they subcontract out all the work, just like what we do. And they don't buy fences. They may buy wing fences when they sell them with the house, but it's other organizations that they subcontract land developers. And so part of getting into the Home Builders Association Metro Denver is learning, you know, who's who in the zoo, right? Who actually develops the land, who actually puts out contracts for fences. So that's going to be a big focus of ours going next year. We signed up for the masquerade ball, which is coming up in a couple of weeks. We bought two tables so our entire team and spouses will be there. We sponsored it, so we'll be on stage talking at that same thing with the Apartment Association. We did a chili cook off, we got a booth, my wife made a bunch of chili and we went and served it to a couple hundred people. Just meeting these contacts of people that could be influential to what we're doing. So for us, we're going to continue down the digital side. You know what? Excuse me. I just don't think we could double the business year over year by going down $7,000 residential jobs plus, I don't want to. I'd much rather go sell a million dollar fence around a community than I don't even know how many that'd be 135, $7,000 fences. So we're going to just kind of pivot, but not really pivot. That's the wrong word. We're going to do both.

Right.

So we're going to go hire people to go after residential, and then we're going to build a process around commercial.

Awesome. And Shawna, follow up for you. How many salespeople do you have?

There's six of us.

Okay, six salespeople. So I learned this from a friend of mine who ran a $30 million waterproofing company. Well, two things I'll share. Number one, his number one metric was average dollar per lead ADL. And the way you calculate that is basically very simple. For leads that are run, that means any time that a salesperson would actually get onto a property to present, and that is a. That is a lead that's run. How much money do they bring back on average per lead run? And their numbers were. I mean, their average ticket was probably $20,000. And if they closed one in three, between one and six, the one in six guy was around $3,300 a lead. The one in three was around, you know, six, $6,000 a lead. So you can very quickly rate your salespeople in addition to using RILLA or fieldspark in addition to the other things. But, you know, and then you give the best leads to the best closer. Right. And that's. And by the way, he posted average dollar to run Monday morning, they would do a sales meeting and they would do some training and they would do their review. So they wouldn't start running appointments Monday morning till maybe 10, and they'd run appointments and then maybe Wednesday afternoon and Friday afternoon. That would be booked off on their calendar to only make calls on referral development partners. So you go to the home Builders association, you get a project manager who's a specifier for your product. They would have on their calendar that they would be need to be running referral appointments, not sales appointments on that. Because what happens is you get busy with the work and the referral relationship. Selling stops immediately because salespeople, they're not gonna do it because they want to go out and they want to make the commission and they want to get paid on that. So have you thought about how you're going to incorporate your salespeople into the referral relationship building aspect of it, or is that something that you're going to take on yourself?

Both. I mean, there's just not enough hours in the day to get to where we want to Go for just myself to do it. But, I mean, I'm looking at Sarah and Nancy. I think there were a couple months we added in the calendar. Every Tuesday afternoon was go to New Home Community and figure out who's there and hand off flyers. And you know what happened, Jeff? We got really busy. Yeah, we got really busy. And it fell out the calendar. I mean, Stephen was great at it, too. We've gotten so many leads from that by doing it. And as things kind of tail off here going into the winter months, we'll put it back on the calendar. All that means is we need more people, Right. So much opportunity to go after. And I'd rather not pay for all of it if I don't have to.

Right.

So I'd rather pay great people than pay thumbtack. And Angie, the one other thing that I did want to bring up is we talked a lot about cost per leads, and not all leads are equal. Right. And I think Tommy Mello said it about cost per lead. And if that's your metric, it's a shitty metric. And I couldn't agree more.

Right.

When I look at an angie's lead, it's 60 bucks, right. But my booking rate on an angie's lead is 18%, right. So then I look at a thumbtack lead and I spend $180 in every thumbtack lead, but my booking rate is 89%, right. So my cost per lead, my cost per booking is much lower on a thumbtack. And I know at thumbtack, I set the bar at minimum 100 linear feet for a project. So I know it's a qualified project that's going to hit my minimum spend and my minimum effort, and I know that that's going to be a quality lead, and I know that I'm going to get the estimate. So I'd much rather spend $200 on a thumbtack lead than $60 on an angel. Right. So if you're just looking at a cost per lead as your metric for your marketing, that's really not a great way to do it.

Awesome. I'm going to go back to Steve and Helen, and I want to focus on the thing that you do successfully right. Before you get your first business opportunity with somebody and is it a lunch and learn. So, so you have a LinkedIn message and you start this conversation and you do it. You kind of go in, you know, hands up, no guns. I'm not trying to sell you anything. And then you somehow work that into a conversation and maybe a Meeting and then you work that into maybe a lunch and learn. How do you exit? How do you get that to a lunch and learn? What do you ask the people to do to get other people involved? Where do you do them, what do you bring? What's been effective in that particular setting?

Yeah, well, a good question. We know that the success comes from the face to face meetings, but the face to face meetings don't come until they trust you someone. So we do a lot of work going out to site walks, bid walks, meeting with the right people there. When we can get a lunch and learn, you know, it's meeting with as many people there as we can. We take along some food, we take along some more panels, we show a presentation. We're very lucky. In the DFW area, we've got three owner groups that all work very well together, sharing those lunch and learns because all of those clients work all across the the region. And even then it's not necessarily about selling something, it's asking for the opportunity to get on their bit board. Send us the details of that project that you're working on. We'd love to take a look and see if we can share an estimate for it. And then it's constant follower, you know, and our sales cycle is a long time. I mean, we're doing installs, you know, last week that have taken a year to build a relationship. And one was for a company that, I mean, they've got over a thousand feet of edge guard in their warehouse that they could deploy at any time. And now they're saying we're just going to use temporary wall systems use to do our instruments. So, you know, but that's taken a year to sort of nurture that relationship. So you gotta, you gotta keep at it, gotta keep doing the thing. And sometimes it's, it's hard, right, because you know, you're going down a path that you think this is just not gonna show any results. And then next thing you've got that, that call or that email and it's like a breath of oxygen and kicks you back into life.

And I'd just like to add too, once you do get that job and you get the opportunity to really solidify and formulate that relationship, we don't take that lightly. We take that really seriously. And you know, we're there and we nurture that and feel privileged to be in that position, to be able to do that especially it takes so long to get there. So when you get there you're like, wow, I'm going to Hang onto this.

All right. I have a question. Sometimes you ask a question and you're afraid you're going to get nothing. So here's this one. In my experience, somehow I gravitated to get in very healthy working relationships with direct competitors. Now, I know maybe in temporary walls, it's hard to figure out who's a direct competitor to what we do with this service and install, but it certainly, we have them in our other businesses. This early in your careers or Tyler, if any of you created relationships with direct competitors and found a way to collaborate, Because I will tell my experience was is that the good companies always know that there's room for good companies. And if you're an honorable company and you would rather keep your. Keep your enemies closer, you know, per se, and sometimes there's jobs that they can't do, or they have overflow or things like that, or there's a way to work together on something. So have any of you experienced working with a competitor? Steve?

I am. Good. So, again, when you're out networking, you're always going to run into people that you're going to compete with. You know, everybody wants to sell cabinets, do installs, all that kind of stuff. And I've taken the approach that we're not really competing, that it's more we're trying to build a market, you know, in the, in the Greensboro area. And at the end of the day, if, if I'm working with the client, the relationship is really what matters. And, and having those conversations with people that are doing similar things to us from. I'm not from cabinet industry, you know, so it helps me to learn from people that probably have more expertise than I do. And I think it's, I think if you take the approach that, hey, we're going to have friendly competition when we're trying to get orders, but what can we learn from each other? Because at the end of the day, they're just, you know, a guy or a girl trying to make a living or run a business.

So that's been my. Yeah, if I look back at my early mentors in franchising, it was Charlie Chase, who owns First Service Corporation, who owns Baldavis Systems, was John Rachi, who owned Ducks at the time, which is direct competitor to advantaclean, was Rory O'Dwyer, the owner of Puroclean. And for whatever reason, they were all very open and welcoming, and they just, they just helped. I mean, it's. And, and I think many people get into business and you sure it's good to have an adversary or an antagonist that you're getting to, you're chasing, and you want to beat. But at the end of the day, we all have a real. A real dog in the fight to make sure that the work's done well and that good people are getting the work and. And that people that are not quite so good, you know, we. That are. That we're not helping. So I found that to be real interesting. Do you have.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, I'm sorry. Was I talking too much?

No.

Okay. 2005 to 2000, I started business 2005. So I franchise in 2013, and in 2017, I joined a mastermind group, and it had multiple window cleaners in it. My business blew up because I was able to pick their brains. It was. There was nothing like it. Now I wish I had done it. Cerner. This is why franchising is amazing, is you get to be around other people that can move you.

Yeah. Be the first one to reach out to somebody. I mean, be intentional. Don't just wait till you run into them at the supply house. Like, reach out to somebody and say, hey, I own this business. I know that you're in a similar line of business. I'd love to grab a cup of coffee with you. And if they're the right kind of owner, they'll do it. They'll be honored that you were that mature and that confident in yourself to be able to reach out and have that conversation. Okay, we're going to come. Coming to you, Ali. Ready? Closets, closets, closets. Jay Pritchett, Jay Pritchett's company. Right. But look, we all have. There's a thing called a monkey paw, and it's a Sandler sales thing. And a monkey paw is when a big cruise ship comes into the dock, and you can't throw that big cruise ship rope over, so they have a little ball with a string on it that they throw. And you start pulling that rope, that string, and it gets to a bigger rope and gets to another rope and gets to another. And finally, now you can tie the big cruise ship up, and that's called the monkey paw. And in business, it's like, what thing can I get. Get in the door with that? Then I can pull that customer in and tie them down and get all of their business. So then we all have things that we do that we can offer as a. Let me help you get in the door. With Advantaclean. What we would do is if I was on a job that I wanted, it didn't even matter. If it was a water damage job or a smoke job or a fire job, if they didn't sign up with me immediately, I would say. I'll tell you what. I know you're not going to make a decision until you talk to your adjuster, but this air is not good to breathe. I know you're going to stay in the house. Your kids are here. Let me put an air scrubber in here. It's got HEPA filtration. It's 99.97% hospital clean air. It'll keep your family safe overnight until whenever you decide there's no charge to you. Now, if you end up signing with us and doing the job, I will charge it to the insurance company. But if not, then it's just, you know, to keep you guys safe, and then I can come back and pick it up whenever. And that was our little monkey paw. Right. And not only were, you know, was our branded equipment now sitting in their living room, they could, you know, making incredible amounts of noise and disruption, but also, we had to come back. They knew we had to come back, and they were going to have to see us again. So that was our little monkey paw to get a job that we wanted. And I think, Allie, you use closets as a way to get into the homes.

I do. We are really big into closets, so we probably do more closets than we do kitchens. I'm really grateful to Julie on my team. She came from California closets, and she is brilliant. So she just kind of goes in and she'll work on the master bedroom. And then she's like, let's look at the pantry. Let's go look at this area. And I mean, Curtis, one of our ones that we installed the other week, we only went in for one room, and now we're going into. We went into three. And he's actually like, repeat customer now coming back for another area in his house. And we also use the kitchens and the closets to play off of each other. So if, like, I'm designing the kitchen, Julie's doing the pantry and the laundry room. Right. If we're doing the master closet, we're like, oh, how do you like your bathroom? Like, we should really get in there and make it look better. So we're able to use each of the different product lines to be able to promote future work in each of those homes.

Awesome.

You guys have been amazing. We're going to open it up to the audience for a groundswell of questions. We'll try to sort them all as they Come in because they're so. Okay, get this person a mic.

Hey, I'm Dennis Homer. My brother Rodney and I own the designer in Longmont.

Thank you.

In Northern Colorado. This question is for Sean. The part of this business that we are the least confident in and therefore the most focused on learning about is marketing spend. And you kind of sort of touched on this. The answer a little bit. But what we would love to know or have your input on or anybody that has input on it is the difference between just spending more to generate more leads to get your, your conversion or your, your revenue up versus either spending in a different area to get better leads or changing the process maybe once you are first on the job site to increase your conversion rate. So the difference between just throwing more money at it or trying to throw money in either a better direction or improving the process for conversion.

Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. I think it's both. We kind of went after it with like, let's just spend all the money we can everywhere and figure it out because we really didn't know. So like I said, we maxed out all of the different platforms across whether it was pay per click with Google, lsa, thumbtack, Angie Networks. I mean we went full bore. And then what we learned probably, I don't know, six months in is once we started getting the data, we learned very quickly what our return on investment was per category. Right. And there's tools within Serviceminder that break it down pretty quick. It's a revenue summary report where you can understand the number of leads per lead source. And I think Searchlight's given us a lot of that information around Google and breaking that down. So there's two places you need to go, but you can get that data and then just do the math, right. And figure out where you're getting your best return on ad spend. Google to me is a necessary evil. Like I will like no matter what the data says. I keep investing in there because we want to continue to grow our organic search.

Right.

Because ideally we start bringing down that cost per lead by getting more free leads and referrals. So we max out everything we possibly can to make sure that we show up on the front page of Google. And part of that too is doing the nearby now check ins and we have 500 plus five star Google reviews across the three web websites and just building out that brand. But we learned very quickly that our return on spend with and I don't know how specific I could be, but Andy's and networks was really poor. Right? It was. Our conversion rates were bad, our close rates were bad. And it's the same model. It's just a different clientele putting that lead in. It's not the customer we want to go after. We want to be after higher end. Like we show up in slacks and collared shirts with branded trucks and a very professional organization and we want to be that high end provider. So that lower cost lead is not what we're looking to be. Those people aren't going to pay for the service that they're going to get from us. So it's just doing the math on each of the individual lead sources and figuring out which ones will get you the biggest bang for the buck.

Outstanding.

Okay, so I've got a quick question, sort of for all of you. If we can sort of rapid fire. We've got a lot of new franchisees in here. If you had to tell them one thing after convention to do that would only take them 15 minutes, what would that thing be?

Follow your 90 day plan. Just carry on doing the, doing what needed to be done for your plan to work.

Consistency. Just have a plan and be at it consistently every day.

I'm a big fan. I just go, Sorry, go fast.

Right?

Go fast. Make mistakes early. Make the mistakes on small jobs.

Right.

We didn't dive into commercial, we dove into residential because we didn't know what we're doing. And we're learning and learning quickly. And it's much cheaper to fix a $5,000 fence than it is to fix a $500,000 fence. So, you know, go quick and make mistakes.

I would say write some thank you cards to your clients and really build those relationships in that referral network and give a $50 referral bonus. It'll really help you grow yourself.

I would say a quick and easy thing. If you're already a member of an organization, like Jeff said a minute ago, volunteer, because that gets you out there. That's an easy thing. You know, you don't have to spend money and they want people to help. So that's an easy way for people to start knowing who you are in your, in your networking service.

I think every, every meeting that you have where someone, you take someone out to eat or connect with them, make a point to write a thank you letter. Just a short one. Thank you for your time. Do that every time. No one does it. It'll be a huge influencer.

Awesome. Thank you for the question. Any other questions? I see one hand. We need a mic over up in the front here. Maybe this will be the last one.

Hi there.

Oops. Sarah Kopchinski from designery Hudson Valley. I'm curious how you spend your mornings and what are the three things you're doing every morning that you feel is driving the most success for your business.

Three.

Three things you do every morning that help you drive success.

What do you do every morning?

Well, these people don't wake up early.

Okay, first things that I do in the morning, grab a cup of coffee, I sit down at my computer, I look over the proposals, I start designing, and I kind of go through my entire inbox and make sure that all my clients, everything that I need to worry about is taken care of.

I also start my morning with a cup of coffee. I keep a Keurig in my closet. I get up at about 5, 30, 6 o', clock, I get a cup of coffee and I go back to bed, and I go through my emails and my texts, and I clean out my inbox before I even get to my desk. Guys, it's just something that's an old story about sand, rocks, and pebbles, and you got to get the little things out of the way and make the important things where you want to start the day with things that matter, which are customers and partners and clients. But I have my first cup of coffee in bed. I respond to my texts, my emails, and then I play all the New York Times games, which takes me about 30 minutes. Then I shower and get to my.

Desk.

Gym just about every morning. I've got to stay fit for these installs. Wall technician is my main job. And then just really going through emails, construct, connect. Just staying ahead of, staying ahead of the curve is really, for us. We're a lean team. It's two of us.

Yeah, definitely coffee. The plan is different every day. It's not a consistent thing each day, but there is a plan. And, you know, be it attending to proposals or planning the next job, drawing up the wall design, you know, there's these things that have to be done, so.

Yeah, yeah.

So for me, first thing I do is figure out what installations do I have going on that day and are there, are there any problems that I need to address? You know, first thing, the quicker you can jump on the problem, the faster you can get it solved. And then I look at our pipeline and see what our leads look like. And then the third thing I'll do is get with my designer and find out where we are on whatever design we're working on. So that's kind of our day.

Morning. The first three Things is I have to take my thyroid medicine, then wait for coffee for 30 minutes. Mean that's, that's new. Then kiss, kiss my wife, then just take care of the kids and get plenty of protein in before I take him to school. I try to. Business can be take over like that could be your fault all day. And I try to do the best I can to focus on my kids and Heather before it starts. That gives me a lot of perspective.

I'll answer this one as well. I also kiss Tyler's wife now. So I start my day with the Alex Icahn five minute journal. And it literally takes five minutes. And this has to do with flow state and it has to do with, you know, if you start your day scrolling your phone, you get the dopamine going. Now you're getting out of flow state and you're just in a different brainwave. So the five minute journal, you start your day with gratitude. What are you thankful for? What would make today great? And there's just. It just takes five minutes to do this five minute journal. It's 29 bucks. It's probably the best $29 I've ever spent and started doing it last December. And then what I will do is I will look at, not my email, but I'll look at my calendar because I want to determine in that moment what are the most important things that I need to do that I need to think about to be ready to show up for. You don't want to run your life by tasks. As you grow as a business, you got to run it by tasks in a scrum when you're starting up. But you want to get to being able to run your. Run your life by a calendar. Dan Martell, Buy back your time. Time blocking. So then I look at my calendar and then from there I'm going to distill out what are the most, three most important things that I need to just be absolutely excellent at that day. And it might be a podcast or it might be a meeting or a franchise advisory council meeting, or it might be brand presidents or something. Something that could be a meet the team day, whatever it is. So, but that's, that's it. I start with the journaling, then I look at the calendaring and then I try to distill the most important things to do from there. And what that does is because I will usually go to a workout at 6 o' clock and followed by a sauna. So when I'm in there, I'm not on my phone. And as I'm doing it. My day is subconsciously starting to formulate and I'm already role playing the way that I'm going to have to show up for people in the day. So that's, that's my routine. So, hey, this has been incredible. Let's have a huge. Oh, no. Let's have a huge moment of this question.

Yeah, yeah, we really built up Jason Simmons. I live in Columbia, South Carolina, with Window Hero. One of the things I've learned is apparently we're all kissing Tyler's wife. It's probably why you're taking your thyroid medication. A lot of what you guys are saying, you know, go fast scale up is kind of what I've been doing the last eight months. You know, throwing as much money towards things to get, to get busy and get the crews or the crew as busy as you can and then go back to measure what's working, things like that. So my question's around working capital. How much more, either on a percentage basis or lump sum, how much more working capital did you need in that first year to 18 months than you thought you did to be able to do the things in scale at the speed that you're.

You're doing?

I was undershot by about 25%, so I had to, you know, with the designer, the lead time can be strung out to get your final payment. So cash flow is definitely a. One of those things that's hard to wrangle right now. As we get more and more jobs and we get more and more closing, then it smooths out. But in the first year, it's been a little bit harder to manage that.

The last year was my first year, like really going after commercial. So the average AR is like 30, 30 days. And I just had to store up 30 days worth of make sure I had 30 days worth of capital in the commercial avenue. And it, it before, like before doing the job I just asked for, hey, what's the payment? Who's the right person? Right procurement or right person that does payment? Sometimes the community manager does not know anything and they're pretending like they. They're going to pay you, but they don't because they just don't know. Right.

Anybody else?

It's not really a fair question for Top Rail. I mean, we don't really get into cash flow issues, which is one of the things that drew me to the business. Every opportunity that we get, if it's a $10,000 job, we get a $5,000 deposit. Our cost of the sales is about 60%. So we are on the hook for about 10% of the job over the course of the process. But jobs are done within two weeks of. Go ahead. Yeah, we went into it pretty healthy. I mean, knowing that we want to be the top provider in the state. So we went into it with, I don't know, we think we started out with about a 3/4 of a million dollar investment, and we probably run about half of that from a cash flow perspective. So that way we don't have to worry about payroll or trucks or insurance or any of that. But even on the lead side, I mean, you pay for a lead, they bill you the next month, you put it on a credit card, you got 30 days to pay that. I mean, you're two months out. Most of those jobs are already done. So even from a cash flow perspective, on the digital side, it's not a. Hasn't been a concern. You know, I hope that I get so many leads that it does become a concern.

Awesome.

Well.

Oh, go ahead, Steve. You got something?

Oh, I was just gonna say we went into it pretty light because it's all about building relationships and that it was us that was building those relationships doing it again. I probably would have spent a couple of thousand a month on a virtual assistant to help with some of those volume calls.

Yeah.

All right, let's get a big hand for our panel of the pro.