#211 What Growing Home Service Companies Get Right About Sales

I think HVAC is kind of funny because it goes through these like different stages of growth. You can't get good at marketed leads if all you're served is tech flip leads. It is a different game and the biggest companies in the industry know it. So they run just different sales teams.

We have different minimums for marketed leads and tech generated leads.

All the companies that we see that are running HVAC at like very real scale, That's how they all work.

Welcome back to Owned and Operated. Today we have Jack and John in the house. Wow! Hopefully that didn't hurt your ears too much.

We love you. We subscribed.

If you can't tell, I'm excited. We haven't done one of these episodes in a few weeks now.

No. Yeah. Well, I'm pumped to have you up. You're gonna be up in.

Mm-hmm.

2 weeks.

Like a week and a half. Yeah.

Week and a half.

Whatever. Either way. Either way. Either way. Uh, yeah, man. There's lots going on.

Yeah. How's your— well, how was your May? It's, it's June 10th, 11th today. How was your May?

So HVAC, so HVAC doubled, over doubled, over 100% over our best month of last year.

Okay.

So we had our best month ever in the history of the company in May.

Nice.

Which was about almost 100% over last August.

That's crazy.

Yeah. So we're trying to continue that momentum, keep it rolling.

What are like temperatures like? How's weather?

What's, what's super weird is that May was moderate for us. Yeah, I think people had just started turning on units though, so that's why we got some of it. But we should be pushing into the 90s this week and next week.

Okay.

Which add a lot of humidity. So it's going to be— it's going to be a wild week is what our expectations are.

One of the things that's helped our business grow the most has been peer groups, and that's been for both myself and our leaders. Being able to talk to other companies about exactly how they've solved the problems that I'm dealing with today has just been instrumental, whether it's how to acquire companies or how to add new locations. How to hire directors or service managers, or what should compensation look like? All of those things are things that can be solved by just asking people a little bit ahead of you. Inside that group, we have fireside chats, weekly peer conversations by business size, resources to help you grow your business, and a lot more. Make sure you check out ownedandoperated.com and click on Join Pro. This has been a really weird summer for us. So May, like, we still grew. Most of the departments grew 20-ish percent. But HVAC was down, which like we actually haven't had a down month in HVAC for a while, like year over year down. But last May was 90 degrees in May and this May was 45 degrees in May. So just like zero urgency. So really like May was our April this year, which was kind of funky. Now June is like ripping. We're pretty much selling to budget every day. So, that's been great. Obviously loving that. But yeah, May was kind of a funky month for us. Funky.

Yeah, that's definitely interesting. I remember seeing that because we talked once in May and you were wearing a sweater and I was like, why are you wearing a sweater? It's 85 down here. And you were still in sweaters. So, that makes sense.

I mean, it was literally like 45 degrees most mornings. Until the— until June. It was, uh, to put this in perspective so people don't think I'm exaggerating, the pools didn't open on Memorial Day. Oh yeah, it was that cold. The pools literally just didn't open. So they actually didn't open Memorial Day, and they also didn't open the next weekend either. So in June, outside pools opened, and I've— that's— I've never had that my whole life.

Yeah, the interesting part though is it really, you know, I know we, we talk about this a lot, but Yeah, it to some extent it doesn't matter, right? Because you're going to have that opening rush at some point when you get your first high week. It's just the hope that you, as long as you get a few high weeks in the beginning of the year or in the beginning of summer, I think is what it comes down to.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we've been, we've been still cooking HVAC for us. We've done a ton of work over the past like year in order to basically hit it to scale. So I think HVAC is kind of funny because it goes through these like different stages of growth where like the first stage is like you have a technician or the owner is selling, and then the second stage is you bring on comfort advisors and the techs no longer sell. And then the third stage is you go back to selling techs with comfort advisors and you separate the sales teams. And all the companies that we see that are running HVAC at like very real scale, that's how they all work, is the technicians run some leads. Like they, they basically, they're running their own tech flips. They're, you know, techs no longer flip to CAs. They flip to either inside sales or the technician sells it on site. And then CAs actually just run marketed leads. So that's what I mean, four seasons in Chicago, Logan and Cincinnati, Peterman, Eco—that's like the model. So it's so we're just it took us like maybe six seven months to finish that transition into stage three from like every tech flip and every marketed lead went to a CA to now you separate them. And the reason is. Quantity.

Yeah. So the reason makes sense too from the logical standpoint.

Well, you can't get good at marketed leads if all you're served is tech flip leads. It's a different sales process. Like in a tech flip, you were given a lead that the homeowner already is bought into the business. They're already bought into the tech. They already believed the recommendation. Like it is a different sales experience. than, hey, I have to walk in and create value in the first 30 minutes. I have to explain the company.

When I'm up against competition.

When I'm up against competition. It is a different game. And the biggest companies in the industry know it. So they run just different sales teams. And some companies take it as far, like Four Seasons in Chicago, they actually have like different sales price books. Which we have not done that, but that's pretty common because on the CA side, it's a more competitive process, whereas the tech flip side is not. You have a bought-in 80% likelihood to close.

We have different minimums for marketed leads and tech-generated leads.

Oh, what do you mean? Closing rates?

No, our comfort advisor runs both and she has a different Technically, she has the bottom that we we can't go under for anything, but then she has her minimum goal for tech-generated leads and her minimum goal for marketing links. So like marketing leads, she can go down. Her goal is like at minimum 45% gross margin, and then at on tech-generated leads, we want to see that to be 55% in the summer months, and then it goes down again in the. offseason. But point being is that it is a dynamic—

Oh, yeah.

Pricing. And that's because we understand, like, if we come in and hit somebody with a 65% gross margin on a marketing lead that they've had 3 other people out, we're not even going to get a shot at the second opportunity to price match or whatever because we're just out of the range. So, like, we understand that going in. So they're handled completely differently. I think, though, a big part of that, which is really interesting that you put it that way, that the third iteration is that, Because the—

everyone's going through it and like you get stuck. Like these HVAC companies, just like they break when you hit a certain size and you're still flipping everything over to CAs because the, the way, the way anybody gets better is repetition, right? Like if I wanted to be the best baseball pitcher in the world, I'm going to go pitch a million fucking times, like the 10,000-hour thing. So you need reps. And when you're served up 2 totally different types of leads, it's really hard to get good at one or the other, especially when one of them is so easy and one of them takes actual work. You will just never try to get good at the one that takes actual work.

Well, the problem though, right, for everyone listening and for myself versus you— not everyone listening because there's some big listeners out there— but is, uh, there's a few things that have to happen as a prerequisite prior. A, you have to have, you know, enough leads for marketing alone to be able to hold a person full-time, right? And that comes with scale. Yeah, I don't know. So you're, you're living in, uh, John world here, and I'm gonna call you out on it because I guarantee 99% of people—

But you can just go get the leads though.

Not direct marketing leads. That's very, very difficult. And like, so you, for example, here, let me give you examples. Is like a $100 million company like Peterman or all, all these people that you're talking about in my market, Hoffman, Hiller, Lee, they can pay that $1,000 for a PPC HVAC installation lead. Right.

Well, anybody can. No, you just have to close it.

Yeah. You're right. Anybody can in a magic world where you have to close it, but inevitably you are going up against other people. Your sales process has to be amazingly tight, but just based on numbers, like you are going to close at a lesser rate than you would tech-generated. That's why tech-generated are easy.

I guess it's like, I'm not being sarcastic. Walk me through it. 'Cause like from my perspective, Okay, I'm using your words. Size is irrelevant because using your words—

well, it's not irrelevant because I think it's relevant.

It does— it doesn't have anything to do with it.

Well, you have a branding that allows— your brand is so large in your location that it allows you to generate more.

No, we're full buying these leads. Full buy.

Yes, but at a cheaper PPC because you have branding. People hear you on the radio.

These are typically Angie's List Leads or Modernize or like— They're paid-for leads.

Yeah. No, I'm with you on that. I'm following.

Okay.

I'm just still saying, if you're on Angie's List or on Thumbtack or you're on an aggregator or you're on Modernize or you're on PPC or LSA, Wilson Co. in your area has branding and that branding drives PPC, all those costs lower. Or it drives people there easier for you. You have a higher click-through rate on that because they've seen your branding before versus Joe's Crab Shack HVAC that nobody knows about. It's a single guy in a truck that has 2 reviews because they don't have that many people, whereas Wilson has the ethos of 30 reviews or 130 or 500 reviews on their Angie's profile because because they're running so many calls. So you're so far ahead, there's a moat there for specifically marketing leads. So we try really hard to run marketing leads, obviously, because we're buying a great lead. Like, I would love to pay the $100, $200 for the great lead, don't get me wrong. What I'm just saying is that when they have additional optionality, your branding plays a large portion, which drives more click-through. I, I think it's probably the best Way to describe it to you. Yeah. But like, we see that with Hiller.

So for example, Hiller in our area, we're paying like $400 a lead. So we're, we're not like, sometimes we might get a discount, but that's— I, so my perspective, you're paying $400, but so is Joe's Crack Shack, right?

You guys are both paying that $400. What I'm saying is the volume of clicks that you are getting is more than Joe's.

Right.

So for example, the volume of your LSA—

Go buy a lead. So I bought a lead from Modernize and it was $400. So I'm going to go out and I'm going to sell 38% of the marketing leads that I get and my average ticket's going to be $10,000. So I paid $900 to get that job, which that's math that is irrelevant to the size. Like, to me, all that we're talking about is like, what's your CAC to LTV? Which like, that has nothing to do with how big our budget is. That's just like, we, now it does have to do with we have a sales process, so maybe that's a part of it.

I think that's a huge part of it.

I do think CAC to LTV is irrelevant to how large the total company is.

I'm just saying. So on Angie's and Thumbtack, yeah, as the consumer, you go through, you are buying a central air HVAC installation lead for $250. Yes, you are buying that lead. But the way that that process works is the customer goes on to there, they fill out what they're looking for, and then they click 3 companies. They click Wilson, they click Company B and Company C. Company Wilson has 500 reviews, 5 stars. They've been killing the game.

Yeah.

Company B also pays that same price, but they have 2 stars, 2 reviews, and they suck. Company C is a middle, middle size, maybe 160 reviews.

Yeah.

Now, the 160-review company doesn't have a speed-to-lead person in place that is focused solely on answering these as quick as possible. So the minute that they enter, you hit—

I think my point is like, yes, we're more mature, but that stuff can be put in place at any size. Well, not any size, but like if you're a $5 million business, like you have the similar type of resources to put towards that process because you gotta be able to buy leads. Gotta be. So yeah, if we're talking about like a one-man shop, sure. But If you close 38% of marketing leads, then like, that's just a, that's just a math problem.

I think we'll have to agree. I will agree. But I think that there's more to that on the back end. And I will accept— well, we are going to probably somewhat disagree on this.

What will probably happen is they won't close at 38%. So maybe they'll close at 30%. The leads are there, but if you go get the reps, you'll, you will close at maybe a lesser percent. So that I would, that I would concede that you would close less leads potentially.

Yeah.

But like you could still make up for that on average ticket or you could just have less overhead so you can take a slightly reduced margin to what we could withstand.

Mm-hmm. So that, that's the first one is either whatever way you cook it, you need to have enough marketing leads somehow. And if that process is in place, you need to put those processes in place. Overcome the lift, spend the money to have those processes to be able to handle the volume.

Well, some of it's process, but some of it, I'm just gonna encourage people to do their math. So like—

Yeah, I agree. I don't, I don't disagree with you.

What does it cost for a lead? Mm-hmm. How many of those leads do you close and what's your average sale? And if, if you have your numbers, this is just a math problem. Like it has nothing to do with us being big or not. Like maybe we close a higher percentage cuz we're bigger and we're more branded or whatever, but Like, leads to LT— like, CAC to LTV is literally the math that every single business has to work off of. So how much does it cost me to get a customer? What's my average order value?

So Hiller, for example, okay, our market is a $100 million company. Yeah, they don't actually— I was looking through, um, one of the, the— I forget, the Home Service Pro, whatever, um, the how do you look at your competitors. Yeah, and I was looking at them They don't own any map pack. They're almost on zero map packs across. They have a lot of, hey, high first page stuff, but they bring in all their leads through paying, but they're able to drive those paid leads through the Google platform because they have the branding that everybody knows, Hiller.

Yeah.

So I think that what you're discounting here is the amount of leads that you're able to bring in Through subconscious people clicking on your PPC link versus they wouldn't click on other people's PPC. My PPC, when I, when I run it, I pay, I'll pay the same thing as Hiller, but I will drive 2 calls on PPC a month if I were to bid the same price.

I think that's a marketing funnel problem then, because like Topline proves my point, right? Have you followed their story?

No, I don't know who Topline is.

So, so Topline came out of nowhere like 4 years ago and they went from 0 to $40 million in 4 years. And all like, I think it's 100% HVAC. So like obviously fast growth and they don't have a brand, like they're not branded. And it's all, it's all service replacement. It's actually, I think, all replacement. They, they're doing this thing where they don't service equipment that they don't install. So it's basically fully replacement. So the, they're, they're on like, they're far, they're deeper in it than I am where they're even more optimized as a $0 brand, now $40 million, but they started 4 years ago where it started with just the math. Like, this is what it costs me to get a customer. This is my close rate. This is my average job. You can ramp that to infinity. And they, they literally just did. Like, they're in their 4th year. So they started from nothing. They're not Hiller, and Hiller's been around forever.

Yeah.

I don't know, dude.

This is awkward silence.

I like—

No, I, I, I mean, I'd like— so part of me doesn't disagree with that. I, I just think that there's a discount, and maybe it's me justifying why I don't do PPC, but, um, you know, it is what it is. We have enough that we, we do run quite a few marketing leads through aggregators. I think it's a great source. Um, it's just making sure that you are able to put systems in place, have enough, and then receive enough leads maybe through math. Maybe through a little bit of branding. I don't know. We'll find out. And then secondly, the other side to this is having enough good systems in place that your technicians are can close because that's why you moved them to CAs in the first place. At number two was because yeah, you know, it's recruitment's a huge issue and then training and making sure you can build a training program. I mean, I like the model. I think the model works because. your, your technician's already building that rapport with the customer. Like, that's going to be the easiest sale. But the reason in phase 2 you moved it to a comfort advisor and flipped everything was because the technicians that you had were not good at sales. And so like, how do you get them up to par so that they can still have that same close rate and that same average ticket?

So companies are doing it a few different ways. Uh, one, you can just train the tech directly, uh, which that's like the old school way of doing it, but it does work. Like, you can You can have selling techs, like you can have selling techs do— our selling techs average ticket is considerably higher than our comfort advisors, like thousands of dollars higher. So it's not a guarantee. I think what people get confused by is they say, which I thought the same thing, but hey, our CA's average ticket is higher than our selling tech average ticket. Like maybe I think most of it's like, is there a process there? Yes, no. Because the reality is a tech flip average ticket is higher than a marketed lead average ticket. And I think that's the real distinction as long as both follow a process. But yeah, so we— so one, are you training them? Or two, a lot of companies use some version of a call-by-call like Joe Cressera's like, hey, I'm going to call into my coach and we're going to talk through this option and we're going to try to sell it together or Like we have an inside sales process that we run and that's how we do our, our tech sales. So there's a lot of different ways to do it. I think the benefit, you know, when the team gets large enough, what the friction you start seeing is like speed to sale. And like if a tech just spent an hour or 2 hours building rapport, why are we willing to lose that rapport? Yep. And why are we, why are we also willing to like inconvenience the homeowner Waste more of their time for a second appointment just for someone to have to come in and restart the rapport building process. It just doesn't make sense. So, and like, as a homeowner, I would be really inconvenienced and annoyed, but I'd be like, okay, well, if it's another appointment, like, you'll be meeting my assistant next time you come out here. Like, I'm here right now. I don't have a lot of time. We just are finishing the best April we've ever had, 55% year over year. Organic growth. Really just a huge thanks to ServiceScalers for being our marketing partner in that. A ton of that growth came from both paid and organic SEO efforts. We did a ton of work on our SEO with ServiceScalers, really strategizing and working on that about a year and a half ago, and the results have been creeping up over the past about year. Really started to go crazy over the last few months as we're starting to see multiple 6 figures of revenue attributed to our website, and that's from their work on our SEO. On top of that, the management of paid has just been absolutely huge. Year to date, we're up 30-something percent. April alone was 55%, and we're just super grateful for ServiceScalers and that partnership. So if you want to learn more about how they helped us, make sure you check out servicescalers.com.

I mean, that— so that's actually one of the issues that we're having right now is we've had a slew recently of cancellations or reschedules. And I said, you know, we're trying to lock down the process on how to do the flip in the easiest way possible to customers. Because here's what happens if in that flip process is you open yourself up and your team up to friction, which then opens you up to losing the sale.

Yep.

So it gives the customer time to hire or call or look around. It gives the customer time to do this.

It gives the customer time to do that.

Cancel. They could talk to their cousin who says, hey, no, you could buy a unit for $1,500 and I'll come install it. Yeah, you know, there's about 17,000 ways that they— you could lose a customer at that transactional point or the, the junction point right there. So I mean, I like it. My thing is just like, how do you get— how do you get the techs to that level? Um, because our— well, it's a lot of training.

It— one, it's a lot of training, but two, yeah, there are a lot of techs out there. Like, over the years, we've had plenty of techs cross a million dollars of equipment sold. Now they do need a lot of help with like, here's how to offer options. Here's how you, like, you do have to work through that a lot, but like you can have 7-figure selling techs. Like we just hired 2 and like one of them does a couple million bucks a year.

Um, I mean, uh, as a company that started out in that direction, one of the guys that left that first week that when I started my business, he wasn't a million dollar, but he was $750,000 in a Small company in a 2-person, 2, 3-truck company. So like, I know it's definitely possible and we've tried to buy other companies that are 2 guys and those 2 guys are techs, owners, everything. Their wives are on the phones.

$1.5 million, $2 million each.

Yeah. Yeah. And they're doing about $1 million each because it was a $2 million top line company and then sub out the install. Yeah. So like, it's definitely possible to find those guys. The hard part is just, in my opinion, it's finding those guys and having a recruiting process and then a systems process to be able to make it so that they win.

Yeah. Yeah. It gets— and I think it just comes later. I think it comes at the point where, hey, the team is big now, it's at scale, and we need to be able to— it's no longer 1 or 2 comfort advisors. Like, how do you run 17 comfort advisors? Like, that's the question. How do you run 17 or how do you run 8? You know, not like onesie-twosie, But the companies that we're drawing inspiration from for this process are literally running 20 comfort advisors. Like, that's it. And all they're doing is marketed leads all day long. And in order to get really good at it, you just need to be doing marketed leads.

Generalist to specialist. The specialist is—

100%.

Specializing at comfort or marketing leads.

Yeah.

Hmm. I don't like this conversation, John. It feels like a lot of lift that I just don't wanna think about for a long time.

I don't think you have to worry about it. I don't think you have to worry about it. And it's kind of messy. Like it was really messy. Like we, you know, we had some, we had obviously some turnover in the process, but like long-term it's the right decision. Like it's the businesses that are like the businesses that are twice our size. This is the process. So, and we wanna be twice our size. So, okay, that's what we're gonna do.

That's sweet. That's sweet. And it's cool that their industry allows you to see that, like they're, they're really open to the conversations even though, right, Peterman's potentially moving into your market.

Like— We compete. Yeah.

Yeah. So like it, it, it's so interesting how this, this industry is so friendly and so nice across the strategy and model. Um, too cool. And, um, Where, how do we even get started on that? Just like new thing you were doing?

Uh, no, I, well, uh, well, we just, we're in the process of dividing our HVAC team and we just brought our sales manager on. So we're really excited about that. We've, we've never had a sales manager before. Uh, so we have a few teams right now actually that it, it's, it's, it's cool. It's like different. It's a new thing. So each of these teams are getting big enough that we have to actually split them in half. And we have 3 teams all doing this right now. Like, okay, what do you do once you have 12 sales plumbers? Well, probably 4 sales plumbers ago, we should have hired a second manager and then had 2 teams of 8 and gotten up to 16. Same thing with HVAC. Like, we were having our service and sales managed by the same guy. It's a lot of people, 17 people, right? Like, what are you gonna do with that? So we're dividing those off. Um, and then I think we'll divide HVAC service again pretty soon into like some version of 6 and 6. The problem is like, obviously HVAC service like doesn't produce revenue really. So it's hard to like, you know, it's hard to give overhead cuz like the HVAC service doesn't really support itself, you know? Unfortunately, that's just, We've tried over the years to like get more out of it, but, um, it, it just doesn't.

HVAC causing problems like usual. Sexy, but then causes a bunch of issues.

Yeah. I mean, I, I think it feeds install. Like it just, it feeds install. Like that's what it does. We talked about the business, but that's what it does is install. The business is install. Like the business, you know, like, uh, most companies try to run an 80/20. of like 80% of your revenue in HVAC should be install and 20% service.

Mm-hmm.

We're typically like an 85, 85/15.

Yeah.

Frankly, we're comfortable with that. And I actually, I wouldn't even mind getting up into the 90s because now that we know how to get leads and we understand our math, we can just go buy more leads. Like, I don't need to go through this whole like, let's get a tech out there, let's diagnose it. No, I'm like, let's get up to 10 CAs and run some freaking leads. Like, let's scale a sales team. That's, that, that gives me a lot of energy.

Yeah. I mean, you see it in other industries, right? Like, um, water filter only companies. They're just only running, they're just only running, uh, comfort advisors or roofing.

Bathrooms. Yep. Exteriors. Like, yeah, HVAC is the only one that has like a feeder system. And I think the smaller you are, the more you're like, oh, I have to do that. But like Logan has a 3-location, $70 million HVAC business. And they have 17 Comfort Advisors and they're just running Comfort Advisors. And I think that's freaking great.

Yeah. It leads to the, the, the company at, once you start getting to a scale, becomes less of an HVAC company. It becomes more of a marketing company that drives to HVAC.

Yeah. We're a marketing and sales company, 100%.

Yeah. Which is super interesting because, uh, it always feels like when we talk about like the 90/10, cuz we, I think we're somewhere like 70, low 70s, like 71, 72.

Oh yeah, Rich is there too.

Yeah, and he's like 60 or something. It's difficult because my— the worry on the back end, right, is like at 90%, the amount of marketing leads you have to drive and close is crazy just because you can't sustain like a 90/10.

And that was my argument earlier. If you know your math and you're a marketing and sales-driven business and like you understand the funnel, then it's not intimidating. Like, that's just like what it is. And, and I think what gives me a lot of like relief around this is roofing is 100%, exteriors is 100%. Like it's, that is just how those businesses work. And our industry is just like, we have this crutch of having service. No other industry with a $10,000 average ticket has this type of thing. Like none of 'em. And they all do just totally fine. Yeah. Uh, so I, I think, Yeah, I, I think the industry is wrong, which is fine with me cuz that means like, I think I'm right. And cuz every other business in the world is just like CAC to LTV, like boom. And, and they're big.

You just wanna own a roofing company, John. Just say it already. Yeah, I do. Just buy a roofing company.

I honestly do. Chad owns one, Chris owns one. Yeah. I'm like, is it my time?

You know, you just wanna own a roofing company. Get real.

I, I think it would be fun to just be marketing and sales driven. Which like, that's what plumbing and electric are for us is plumbing and electric are, they're 100% sales, uh, sales instant, like marketing sales at this point. Like HVAC is 85/15, like plumbing is like 99 sale, 1% service. Like it's same with electric.

Uh, okay. I mean, I think it comes down to it, right? There's no mechanical function to plumbing or HVAC for the most part. I mean, yeah, there's pumps and and stuff that you have to maintain, but not really. They're like, the pumps in plumbing are built as 10-year no-maintenance pumps type things. And so, you know, I view HVAC more as like the auto mechanic industry to some extent in the sense that, yeah, like it is a piece of functioning machine that needs to be maintained regularly or it breaks down. You gotta do your oil changes. So yeah, really interesting.

We have the same thing with generators. So like we are thinking about joining like a the generator Generac program. And if we did, we could, we could access all of the service leads. But like, it's like, why do I want them?

Yeah.

Like, why do I want them? It's like, okay, I can go out and get $500, uh, and I could do that a lot and then have to optimize routes and like all this annoying stuff that would never amount to that much money. Or I could just go get leads. Yeah. And sell generators.

So yeah, I feel like, um, so if I'm taking away anything from this episode, it's, you know, everything that we worry about in the HVAC industry, just don't worry about it anymore. Stop worrying about service and just go install units. Market, install, market, install. Yeah. Just figure that out and you're golden. Don't even worry about the rest.

Marketing and sales. We are, we're a marketing and sales, yeah, consumer brand.

I mean, I wouldn't disagree with that idea though in general, because I think Lyle, um, I forget what company they have. They have—

That's Topline.

Is that Topline? Systemized Leads? Yeah.

Yes. Yeah, that's Topline.

So yeah, also I have heard—

I mean, they're literally doing it. They're literally doing it.

I mean, I will say though, like, he cracked the marketing formula at just the right place in the right time to get on like TikTok when nobody else was on TikTok. And it was super juicy to be able to do that.

But still working. But yeah, it's definitely growing. So it's still— no, it's—

it definitely works. I'm not— I'm not discounting that at all. We used it for a year and a half and we potentially would go back to it. But it's, you know, as a service, it's very expensive compared to what you can do yourself.

Yeah, I haven't even looked at using them as a service, to be honest. But I do think, like, they understand the number.

They definitely understand the number, and they understand, like, the speed delete process.

Just like CAC to LTV, basic math to grow your business.

John and Jack arguing episode. Everyone's like, oh gosh, there's trouble in paradise. No wonder why we haven't seen them together in the last three weeks.

We're arguing about CAC.

Yeah. Don't put that in.

No, no, no. That's the title.

Oh, fun stuff. We'll wrap it up.

Yeah.

Let's do it.

Thanks for tuning in. If you like what you heard, make sure you check out ownedandoperated.com. Sign up for the newsletter. We're officially in the 40,000s. Uh, so we're super pumped about that. And, uh, we're aiming for 100,000. So that'd be fun. Sign up. Make sure you like and subscribe.