Gus Antos’ Milestone in DFW will generate $80M in 2020; he shares insights & struggles he had to overcome when adding HVAC and plumbing to his already successful electrical company.

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What I would tell people is, first of all, you need to feel like in your one trade that, that generally things are going pretty well, right? It's smooth. Your average ticket is where it should be. Your technicians are happy. Your turnover isn't very high. your win rate with your customer is high, and it's never going to be where the owner just can't come into the business, probably, right? But where you feel like, man, most days this is pretty smooth. And we were definitely there for electrical. We've probably been there for a couple of years at that point. And so that's what I would tell people. I mean, because it is really all one and the same thing, right? But it is different, right?

Right.

And so if you're kind of If things are not squared away on your first trade, adding another trade is not going to help that. It's just going to make it— it's just going to take a little fire and make a bigger fire.

Welcome to the Successful Contractor Podcast, powered by Success Group International, a show for residential contractors about residential contractors. We chronicle business journeys, share insights, and celebrate successes in this wonderful industry. I'm your host, Bob Houchin. Today you're going to listen to a conversation I had with Gus Antos, owner of Milestone in Dallas, Texas. Gus is also a member and part owner of SGI. And as you'll hear, Gus shares a bit of his personal journey in contracting, but the bulk of our conversation centers on the topic of the right and wrong ways to adding a trade to your service business. Now, Milestone is going to generate over $80 million in 2020. It's a huge company, and much of that is thanks to the company's diversification into HVAC and plumbing. But that growth came with a lot of bumps along the way, as you'll hear. So I hope you enjoy our talk, and I'm confident you'll find a few quality nuggets of information along the way. Well, Gus, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. I know you are a super busy man. Hey, for those who have never had the opportunity to meet you, could you please introduce yourself? Uh, your company name and where you're located.

Hey, yeah, it's Gus Antos, uh, one of the owners of Milestone, uh, down here in Dallas, Texas. And we do, uh, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, um, primarily those are the things that we do. Dabbled in a couple other things.

Very good. How many employees do you guys have now?

Man, I don't know the exact count, but Gotta be right around 500.

Very good. And what do you guys think you'll end up doing in revenue this year?

You know, pre-COVID and all that mess, I think we were targeting right around, uh, $83 million, uh, but we're gonna come up a little bit shy of that, it looks like.

Okay, well, that's still a pretty good year. I'll give you— I'll give you credit for that. So, uh, for those who have— again, those who haven't really met you or heard your story, could you just kind of Reader's Digest explain, you know, how you got into the trades, then how you got Hooked up with SGI?

Yeah, so that's a great question. My story is probably pretty similar to a lot of people that I find in the trades. I was 21, actually in between jobs, and I met a guy at church and he hired me, asked me to come work at, at the time was an electrical contracting company doing new construction.

Okay.

And I was 21, I went over there and started helping him. And a couple of years into it, we decided that we would stop doing construction And we would start a new service-based company. And right at that exact same time, a friend of ours that was in Airtime said, you know, they have this thing for electricians coming out. You guys should definitely go see it. And so we went to SGI and learned about ESI and came back and we joined and we became 50/50 partners. And that was probably in 2004.

Mm-hmm.

Maybe 2005. It all gets a little fuzzy there.

Right, right. And you guys were, were not nearly what you are today in terms of size, so people understand.

Yeah, no, uh, we probably once again have the same story as a lot of the people that I meet in the industry. We were, uh, heavily in debt. We were trying to figure out how to make it all work, and we started, uh, started off with 2, 2 trucks. And 2 technicians, right? And, uh, in reality, probably the equivalent of like 1 technician, right, between those, right?

A little different, a little different these days. Um, well, good. Well, thank you for sharing that. Uh, we're talking today because thankfully, um, you know, there are lots of members despite this crazy world we're in right now that are doing really well and they're growing and they're thinking of expanding into other trades. And I know there's people listening that maybe, uh, You know, they're not going to do it right now because things are interesting, but they had planned on doing it at some point. Um, you started initially, like you said, in the electrical space. Uh, when did you add HVAC?

So we started in 2004, and I think we added HVAC in 2013.

'13.

2013. So we're Almost 10 years into our one trade before we did that. Okay.

And then plumbing was just a couple, couple years ago, wasn't it?

Plumbing, I think, was 3 years ago.

3 years ago. All goes by so fast.

Goes by fast.

Yeah. How big was, uh, again, so people, you said 10 years you were in electrical before you did, uh, HVAC expansion. How big was Milestone at that point?

Uh, I want to say we had Maybe 45 electricians, and we were roughly right at $20 million. And we all— we were just doing electrical sales at that point.

Right, right. Um, and, and how did you decide you were finally ready at that point? Why did you wait till then? Why didn't you do it sooner?

Well, I'm going to tell people what they should do, not what we did.

That's what— right. A little mix of both wouldn't hurt.

I'll say, I'll retract that. I'm gonna say what I wish I, I would have known or done, not what I did do.

Sure. We—

there was never a conscious thought of waiting to a certain time to do another trade, which there should have been, right? Uh, we were just kind of opportunistic and, uh, we were using subcontractor HVAC for thermostats and different stuff that for some of the home automation stuff we were doing.

Got it.

That guy came to us and said, you know, why don't you guys buy my company? And, and it was a very small company. I think we paid $30,000 for it. And I'll partner with you and help grow your HVAC brand, which was not a bad plan.

Right.

It's just not intentional.

Right.

And in hindsight, I probably I probably would have started HVAC a little bit sooner than we did.

Right.

That just wasn't on our radar. I didn't really understand what having 2 trades meant. And so that— what I, what I would tell people is, first of all, you need to feel like in your one trade that, that generally things are going pretty well.

Right. It's smooth.

Your average ticket is where it should be. Your technicians are happy. Your turnover isn't very high. Your win rate with your customer is high. And it's never gonna be where the owner just can't come into the business, probably.

Right.

But where you feel like, man, most days this is pretty smooth. And we were definitely there for electrical. We had probably been there for a couple of years at that point. And so that's what I would tell people. I mean, because it is really all one and the same thing, right? But it is different, right? And so if you— if things are not squared away on your first trade, adding another trade is not going to help that. It's just going to make it— it's just going to take a little fire and make a bigger fire.

I'm sure you talked to a lot of other big players though too, you know, to try and get some insights as to what what hurdles may exist? Even though you were a big operator, it's still a little different. Did you talk to a lot of different members, a lot of other big contractors in, you know, residential service to understand what you were stepping into?

Yeah, one of the things that, uh, and I can't say this about everything that we've done, but one of the things that we've done right from the beginning is ask a lot of questions, seek counsel, talk to people that have already done it. Let's not make the same mistake, uh, that somebody else has if they'll teach us to do different, right? So we were definitely doing that as we were getting into HVAC, right?

And when you're planning things out, did you, did you, uh, did you know, did you grow as quickly with it as you expected? Did it grow, uh, faster than anticipated and it create issues, or, or did you properly plan for it?

No, we did not properly plan for it. I don't know that we have ever properly planned for anything. Somewhere between properly planning for things and just doing it, somewhere between those 2 things is probably the right answer. 'Cause sometimes you properly plan and you just plan so much you never actually do it.

Right.

And then sometimes you should have planned a little bit more. But for us, it went, I think our first year budget was to do $1.5 million in HVAC. And I think the first year, We did almost $4 million.

Yeah.

So that was, you know, 3 times more than what we were even expecting.

Right.

And, you know, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, uh, I'll, I'll tell everybody in the group this. The first 10 years of electrical, we were always growing electrical. Never had a year where we didn't grow it.

Right.

Ever since we started HVAC, the electrical has never grown. It's almost stayed in the same spot.

Interesting.

HVAC has grown like a wildfire. But, but, and I've talked to lots of other people that have, you know, similar experience. You start another trade, the original trade, because it's a mindshare issue. The business that we're in, people get stuff done.

Right.

And the owner or the management team or the leadership team, unless it increases, has the same mindshare capacity that they did prior to adding on the new trade.

Right.

So now they're fixing the problems in HVAC, but they're not adding on and fixing stuff in electrical. And most of our managers, service managers, are just that— they're managers, right? They're not business development leaders, strategic thought. They're not that. If they were, a lot of the time they'll already have their own business, right? And so— and there's nothing wrong with that. Sure. I was frustrated about that. more than I should have been. And to this day, electrical is like the exact same size it was when we, when we got into HVAC. Trying to fix that right now, but that is, you know, a real situation.

Sure, sure. Uh, speaking of managers and such, you know, growing from, you know, a budget $1, $1.5 million to $4 million, you had, you had to hire people quickly, I'm sure. What, what did that look like? Um, I mean, you had— you partnered with someone. How many technicians did you feel like you'd need right away and you hired right away? When did you feel like you needed an additional service manager, team leader, stuff like that? Can you just give an overview for people of what the staffing looked like, uh, when adding a new trade?

Yeah, I'm going to tell them once again what I wish I would have known, right? Uh, we didn't do it the right way. We had one technician the first day, the phone calls are coming in, not enough. Then we went out and reactively hired some of the wrong people, just nightmare, right? And so What we have found to be the case is, you know, that you wanna overstaff right at first, as scary as that can be. Most contractors that I talk to, when they start the new trade, getting the phone calls is not usually the issue.

Right.

Getting the right people trained, getting them going, that's the issue. So as, you know, we brought on plumbing, Right. We were smarter about it and we said, you know what, we're not even gonna start this until we have— we started it, but we didn't tell a soul that we were doing it.

Right.

Like customers or anything. And we started off training 6 plumbers and made sure that they knew the process, they knew the system, they did everything. We trained, we trained, and then we're running calls for friends and family or working out our system.

Right.

So then when we did turn on the switch, Yeah, it took us a couple months to ramp up, but we didn't have the operational issues that we did before. Whereas if plumbing was our first trade, we would've started advertising it and had 1 or 2 trucks. And the next thing you know, we're overrun with calls. The systems aren't good, the guys aren't trained. And so I do think it's important to realize most likely it's gonna grow faster than what you think it is.

Right.

As so long as you have the right people.

Right. I'm interested, you mentioned training, especially coming from like electrical to HVAC where you have, you know, the salesperson or the selling technician model there. And electrical, your electricians are selling the work, they're doing the work. Who handled that initial sales and communication training when you brought on HVAC? Was it somebody on your electrical side that you trusted that you felt, hey, his skills are good enough, he can learn or teach, you know, others how to how to sell equipment, or what was that process like?

Yeah, that's another just— oh man, that's a hard one. What I would tell you, depending on the company, 'cause every company's different, that is something that the owner of the company or whoever's gonna implement it, they need to go to Learning Alliance, go ride at another company. I don't care what you do.

Right.

That is something you almost cannot outsource.

Right.

Or else you're gonna wind up in a situation like I did.

Right.

Where we, within 2 years almost, we had a $10 million HVAC company because I entrusted that to the person that we hired. And they were telling me they were doing everything the right way. And from what I could see, it was happening the right way. But then we had to fire that guy because we had some, you know, moral and ethical concerns and different stuff like that. And I think he's on a great path now. So I'm not speaking bad about him. But we just weren't aligned on some of this stuff. And then we had a $10 million company that I had no idea what to do with.

Right.

And that was a big mistake. And so to answer your question, if you were a plumber or an electrician getting into HVAC specifically, you need to go talk to HVAC companies. You need to go spend time at an HVAC company. You need to go ride in the field, 'cause HVAC is drastically different than electrical and plumbing.

Right.

I think a plumber can do electrical, electrical can do plumbing as far as the management. Okay, I was gonna ask about that. HVAC is a different industry altogether. It's still home service.

Sure.

But it's drastically different. And you need to find a friend that's doing it that will let you come camp out in their business for, I mean, as much as you can before you start this thing. Because I was in the middle of it when we started this, 2 years in saying, Okay, how does this work? What's supposed to happen, right? And I know that sounds ridiculous, right? I knew, but I didn't know the benchmarks. I didn't know the process. I didn't know any of that. And so I wish I would have done that different, right?

Was it mostly the processes that you, that you needed to learn and how— because it is drastically different in terms of setting leads and, and how that, that, you know, fluctuates throughout the company.

I mean, was that the biggest issue Yeah, I mean, one of the issues with, I mean, just specifically talking about HVAC, on one call you could have 3 to 4 different technicians touch it and they all have to have operational excellence.

Right.

A customer calls in for a tune-up. Well, you send a guy out there. Well, right off the bat, what kind of tune-up is it? How old is the system?

Right.

You know, which technician should we send to that? You know, he gets out there, is it a repair versus replacement? How does he flip the lead? When he does flip the lead, who do we send it to? Who's managing that process? When your salesperson goes out there, what sales system is he using? Because just going out there isn't enough. You have to have a sales system.

Right.

And then if he does sell it, now the install crew has to come and what does that look like? And oh, we need to be able to do that same day or whatever that looks like. And what do our margins need to be across all these different things? And after the install comes, sometimes we send a quality control person.

Right.

$25,000, probably need to make sure that they did the job right. You know, so you have 4 different opportunities to make a customer upset and each one has to be operationally excellent. And so, you know, in our electrical or plumbing business, I could just rattle off, this is the benchmarks, these are the numbers, these are the win rates, these are this, these are that.

Yeah.

Well, and HVAC, I mean, just, you are, it's just completely different.

Yep.

And so I hope that answers your question. It's every single process, you have to have directives, training, operationally excellent. And what you find is it's not the same people.

Right.

You know, it's the same manager, it can't even necessarily do it.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, you said people. How different is recruiting, say, salespeople for HVAC versus, you know, an electrician or just a service technician? I shouldn't say just, or a service technician in HVAC. What is the person— is there— what are the personality differences? Is there no difference? You're just looking for, I think, as you've quoted to me before, hungry, humble, smart. Or, or are there huge differences?

Yeah, there's huge differences. We use a thing called Culture Index, which helps us understand, uh, the drivers of what makes people tick. Electricians and plumbers generally, if they were really good communicators, did not become an electrician or a plumber. That is a stereotype. There's 100 different, thousands of different exceptions to that, right? I am stereotyping. But generally what you find is an electrician or a plumber, they don't love communication. They do it so they can actually do the work.

Right.

But they a lot of the times enjoy.

Right.

The HVAC salesperson is completely different, you know, and we've actually converted Several, several of our really good electricians over time, and that's one of the reasons that it hasn't grown. But thinking some of our electricians that were— we, we got when they were apprentices.

Interesting.

And we over time taught them how to communicate. Well, they see sales came available, they're like, that's all I ever want to do. And done really good at that.

Interesting.

It is different people. HVAC salespeople are different, uh, You know, you have to manage them completely different, right, than, than you do the other people. And there's not a— I, I hear connotations of, you know, good or bad. It's not. People are just different. We're all not wired the same, so it's not a one-size-fits-all.

Right, right, right, right. Uh, we've only really talked about frontline. How about when you get into a new trade? How about the office? You know, you've got your CCRs. Are you— when you first launched into HVAC, did your— did you just have dedicated a dedicated CCR dispatcher for HVAC, or did you, you know, train, uh, your, your electrical CCRs and dispatchers to do both? Or, you know, what did you learn in that process?

Yeah, I wish I would have, uh, just invested right away that we're going to have dispatchers that just do HVAC, just do plumbing, just do electrical. That's what we have now. That's what works best for us. Doesn't mean it works best for everybody else.

Right.

We have the same call takers. We've had a lot of success with, they can take any type of call from the customer, 'cause you want it to be easy.

Right.

When the customer calls in and they wanna schedule an HVAC appointment and you have to transfer 'em, that's just, I don't like the way that feels for the customer.

Sure.

I just want it to be easy. Whoever picks up the phone, Oh great, we'll get you taken care of. Da da da da da.

Right.

So yes, we just trained our call takers, you know, on that. I wish we would have had dedicated dispatchers. The accounting team didn't change. Same people doing the same stuff. As the business grows, it's like anything. You create new positions. Right. And so, you know, that the the it's it's equally. Different and hard.

Yeah.

In different ways. If you're an HVAC company and you wanna add on plumbing, or if you're a plumbing and electrician, you wanna add on HVAC, they're just different.

Right.

But I think they're all great.

Yeah.

I would urge almost every single company, figure out a way to do all 3. May not be this year, may not be 5 years, may not be 10 years.

Right.

Do leverage Your marketing, you, you leverage your relationships, you leverage a lot of stuff and it increases revenue and makes your company more profitable.

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Welcome back to the show. In the first half of my conversation with Gus Santos of Milestone, we learned a bit of his story. He also talked about some of the hard lessons learned when he launched his HVAC division and how he avoided those mistakes when entering plumbing. And for the remainder of our, our chat, Gus will talk about the importance Regulating your cash flow as you manage new trades, how to market those new business verticals, how to tweak your club membership plan when you bring them on, and a few other great pieces of advice. So let's jump back in. I hope you enjoy it. When you started, obviously, as you mentioned, you were larger when you started into HVAC. I think there's a lot of people at SGI that obviously are not nearly that size that decide to get into a different trade. How important is it for someone getting into something like HVAC with— you mentioned the value of overstaffing. You've got equipment that is far more expensive. How important is cash flow and being good at managing your cash flow before getting into that?

Yeah, that's a great question. Um, you know, HVAC is different. Uh, the obvious things are there's shoulder seasons and there's peak seasons, and I try to look at our business as an entirety, as, as a year. And so what helps me psychologically always is At the end of the year, if you told me we did $5 million in sales and we made 15%, would I say that's successful? And I would say yes. Well, don't get irritated, you know, when you have a bad month. Don't also, if you have a great month, don't pull all the cash out because you don't know what's coming. You know what I mean?

Right.

And so if you manage it on its entirety, you just look at the end of the year and let's just say it's January 1st, but I put a piece of paper at the end of the year and said, this is what the end result's gonna be.

Right.

And I would say, you know what, I'm happy with that. And then accept the journey between those 2 things.

Right.

Because you're gonna have peaks, you're gonna have valleys, you're gonna have all types of stuff, but the end result's fine. You know, that's what I generally find for most contractors that are priced right, that are doing the SGI stuff.

Yep.

The end result is fine, but we're emotional humans, we're emotional creatures. And so when everything's, you know, when it's feast, We're— this is the best decision that we ever made in our entire life. We love it. And when it's famine, it's, why did I ever get into this?

Right.

So you have to separate those emotions. On cash flow for HVAC, yes, it's completely different. It is feast or famine. One day your bank account has more money than you've ever seen. You're like, oh my gosh, I'm buying my beach house. And the next money, the next, you know, not too long from then, you're calling the bank being like, hey, I need a credit line.

Right.

So, um, it is different, 100% different. And you need— in any of this, if I could give one piece of advice to any contractor in any of this, you have to have relationships with other contractors that are a little bit further down the road.

Right.

And you need to listen to them because the, the trades are an amazing group of people that are willing to help each other. And just listen and they'll help you.

Right.

Because you're not going to have all the answers. If you're listening to this, that means you're already doing stuff like that. Good for you.

Right, right. That's good. Um, some other questions here. When you, when you decided to— I mean, you had this mature business that was very successful, um, and then all of a sudden you decide to add the, you know, again, HVAC being the first one. How did you announce that to your current team so not to freak them out? Was it just like, hey, we're doing this, this is exciting? I mean, is there any, any advice you would have so for other people so they understand, you know, to try and sell it the right way to their team, that this is good for the whole company and this is just another opportunity to grow? Or was that just not an issue at Milestone at that point?

That just wasn't an issue. And I would be shocked if it's an issue anywhere if you say the things that you just said, right? New opportunities, companies continuing to grow. We're going to bring in new customers, new team members, new opportunities, uh, new positions. Don't know all that right now. Yeah, we just hope that for our team, we want to continue to develop so you guys can have the opportunities that you want, right? When you say that, generally, if anybody has real big issues with that, there's somebody I'm probably thinking about promoting to customer anyways because they're just finding problems with everything. There's, there's, there's nothing to be upset about.

Customer, I like that. I don't know why, I guess I've never heard that from people.

I like that, I like that a lot.

You mentioned calls wasn't really an issue, but I think it's still something we should talk about a little bit. When you decided to turn the faucet on and announce HVAC and then later announce plumbing, was it just all outbound to your current base? Did you send out postcards, email, or did you just— obviously you're heavy in the media there in the Dallas market— did you just start blasting that out across local TV and radio? What did you do? What do you recommend?

Yeah, that's great. Depends on what your objectives are. I'm a big fan of buying an existing company if that's possible, no matter how small it is.

Right.

Because, A, one, the phone is ringing and now you're just going to increase revenue by being more efficient, being priced right on their existing business. So I'm a big fan of that. If you can't do that, and to be clear, Every trade that we've ever gone into, even outside of those, because we have other entities that do other things, you know, restoration, and that's not even part of Milestone.

Sure.

Uh, garage. We've always bought a company, and that's worked very well for us.

Interesting.

Uh, so I've never started from scratch, so I don't want to mislead people. I don't know that I would be the best person to talk to for that. I think I could now, but have not done that. Um, the— when you get into it, you do— you kind of make a chart and you start with the low-hanging fruit all the way to the non-low-hanging fruit. And generally what I call low-hanging fruit is stuff that doesn't cost me very much money.

Mm-hmm.

So, hey, when the customer calls in for— we're electricians— call in and great, I booked that appointment for you. And guess what, ma'am or sir? Uh, we just started doing air conditioning and we need to do a tune-up on every single home that we go to so we know that, uh, the condition of your system. So if you have— when you do call us for air conditioning, we'll have that information. Well, that generates revenue, right? If you just tell that to every single person that calls in, there's a certain percentage of people that go, you know what, my air conditioning's been bothering me, come out and fix it, right? If you tell all of your technicians, hey, on every single job that you go to, Your job is to see, check the condition of the system, and you pay them a little spiff and refer us.

Right.

Well, then you're gonna get jobs from that.

Right.

You're gonna do email blasts, you're gonna do Facebook, you're gonna make outbound phone calls. HVAC is different because if you're a plumber or electrician, you get into HVAC, you're gonna call every one of your existing customers on outbound.

Right.

And say, hey, this is Milestone. milestone, it's time for us to do your annual tune-up. And they say, what? And you say, yeah, it's time for us to do a tune-up on your home's air conditioning system. Oh, you guys do that? Yes. What day would be good for us to come out? Right. And then you get out there and you try to sign them up into the— to your club membership program. Right. And so then we didn't, you know, Bob, we didn't advertise HVAC for probably close to 3 years.

Wow. I didn't realize that.

Okay. We just worked our system internally over and over and over until we got to the point of saturation. We said, you know what, now we gotta put new customers into the funnel.

Okay, very good.

And some days I wish we would've just stopped there.

You, uh, you mentioned your club. Did you combine, uh, the HVAC club with the electrical club right away? So if you, you know, if I had you out for an electrical call, all of a sudden I was an HVAC club member too? Or did you keep 'em separate at first? Okay, there's always one.

Yeah, the club for us, I'm not saying it's for everybody, has always just been an entry point to the home.

Right.

And so, uh, had I to do it again, or I tell anybody, is anybody that's ever used your company, you get on the phone and you start telling them, hey, it's Milestone, you're part of our annual club membership, it's time for your tune-up. And the customer goes, oh, well, I've never done that before. Yeah, you know, some of our customers say that. We want to get out there, get you taken care of. Da da da da da da da. And then once we're done with it, we can sign you up into our annual program or whatever that looks like.

Right?

You just want to. You just want your trucks moving. You want to be in the homes, getting the getting everything going. Right, right, right, right.

You you mentioned you know HVAC. You weren't the most precise in in launching it. Plumbing far more so. I know obviously you've gotten into a bunch other stuff like garage doors. As you've done this each time, you've probably— I'm sure you've learned quite a bit along the way. What if you were to go into a new— another new industry, you know, what are some things that you would look for that you, you know, that you have learned along the way that would make it even easier? Some certain little tips or tricks, anything you can add to just for members to think about, or non-members when getting into a new trade. I really, you know, you really should look at this or that, you know, just little things that, that that make a big difference in the long run?

Yeah, the number one thing for me is what I said earlier, is you may really want to get into HVAC, but you can't find a good HVAC company to buy. Maybe a big plumbing company. And what I love is finding a company that's been in business for like since the '70s or '80s or early '90s, and what it was doing good and now it's not. Generally that phone is ringing, just no one's answering it. So I love getting those. Um, it's one of my tips that I would tell people is walk through the doors as they open when that makes sense. You don't, don't be stuck on your plan.

Right.

You know, and, and so I, I, I would say that. Mm-hmm. I would also say, you know, um, make sure internally that you have it figured out how you're gonna communicate that to your customers with your brand. You know, 'cause for us, Milestone Electric was one of the most known names in DFW, not for electrical, just for any brand.

Right.

And I know that that may be an exception for people, but I've gotta get outta people's heads that we're just electricians. I have to help 'em understand that we're air conditioning people.

Right.

You know, that we're also plumbers. And depending on who you are and what you've done, that's a very specific strategy that you need to decide day one what you're gonna do and how you're gonna do that. It's a solvable problem. And the other thing, just the tips, is however long you think that you need to go learn about that trade, double it.

Interesting.

So if you're gonna get into plumbing and you're gonna go spend a month at your friend's company, you know, on and off or whatever, or with your SGI coach, whatever it is, take 2 months.

Mm-hmm.

So that when you get into it, you know what you know when you're talking to the service managers, when you're doing all that. You know, the, the— it's an obvious thing that everyone says, but that new trade will go as well as the leadership that's directly involved with it and their knowledge of that trade.

Mm-hmm.

Their leadership, meaning if you could go find an absolute superstar that wants a job being a service manager, uh, at one of your competitors and he comes over Well, then that's gonna make your life a lot easier. For one, you know, uh, he's gonna bring trade people with him, right? Because people, people follow their, their team leaders, their bosses, right? And so, you know what, say you wanted to pay $85,000, the guy wants $100,000, pay him $100,000 because he may bring 2 or 3 great service people or salespeople with him. That more than makes up for that.

Sure.

And so, uh, I think that's another good point. There's a million things that I hate to just I'll just not tell you what they are. They're not in my head.

Right. No, that's pretty good. That's pretty good, Gus. Well, hey, I, I really appreciate your time. Uh, I know again your time is, uh, valuable. You've got lots going on, but, uh, this was a really enjoyable conversation, Gus, and love to have you on again soon, sometime in the future. So thank you, sir.

Yeah, thanks for, uh, the question. Thanks for listening to me, and good luck to everybody out there.

All right, Gus, have a great rest of your day. I'll talk to you soon.

Hey, buddy.

See ya.

Bye-bye.

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