$1M Gutter Cleaning Company in 36 Months

All right, welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Phil Risher. And on today's episode, we have Adam Sylvester joining us. And Adam and I actually met out in Las Vegas on the Jobber Podcast. Aside from running two awesome companies, Adam's actually the podcast host for Jobber Masters of Home Services. So, Adam, you're the owner of Charlottesville Lawn Care, Charlottesville Gutter Pros. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?

Yeah. So I started Charlottesville lawn care about 2013 and mowing, blow, cutting grass, you know, doing all that kind of stuff. And it's a business that I did in when I was younger, and then I doubled down and became, like, a legit business owner of a lawn care company and did that for about 10 years, cut grass myself, hired some people, built that up to, you know, five, six hundred thousand dollars. Nothing. Nothing major. And then I discovered that there's a big demand in my town for gutter cleaning services. Gutter cleaning, gutter repair. And there just wasn't really anyone doing that. And so I decided to take advantage of that gap in the marketplace and hired a couple people to do that, started fart time with them, and basically now it's a much larger company than my lawn care company with a higher potential. And I have a great brand in town. We're on tv. We have great vans. People know us, people recognize us. It's. It's a fun company to run because it's so recognizable and the brand is so strong. And so that's what I spend most of my time doing, is. Is running Charlottesville Gutter Pros. And Charlottesville Lawn Care doesn't require as much of my time anymore, which is nice. And so that's. That's basically what I do. I manage Gutter pros most of the time and then do a little bit of lawn care stuff on the side.

Okay, that makes sense. And so I heard you on another podcast, you were referencing that once you learned about gutters, well, you didn't really know anything about gutters. So how did you. And you end up going down to North Carolina or something like that? Can you tell us a little about how you learned about gutters and how you kind of started a whole nother business with something that you didn't really know too much about?

I guess. So in the summer of 2019, I did a test and some research, which just means I looked at Google Analytics for about 15 minutes, and I determined at that time that there is no market for gutter cleaning in Charlottesville. That's the conclusion I came up with at the time. And then I met up with a guy named Donovan Quesenberry who is on the Jobber podcast, and he's a great guy. He's a friend of mine now, thankfully, and he's down in North Carolina, and he was doing big money in gutters. I was like, really? So I. Long story short, I went down and visited him because he was doing things I liked, and I wanted to see what he was doing. So I was blown away at what he. He cleaned 10 homes. He power washed the home. He did gutter brightening. He did underground drain flush. He did the whole nine yards. And I just was watching him do all this stuff all day, and I was like, oh, my gosh, what am I. What am I doing? So I came home and started business the next day. There's no question. Wow.

And.

And that's when I discovered that my initial research that I did was wrong, that there's a huge market for gutter cleaning in my city. And. And so I took full advantage. The phone really hasn't stopped ringing since then, thankfully. And so there's a huge jump in Covid, but my phone still rings plenty. And really thankful. It's been. It's been a great ride, and I've had some really good people along the way who've made it possible. And so with Todd. Todd's my main guy. With him, without him, it wouldn't have worked. He needed me, and I needed him, so it was a great match. And, yeah, things are. Things are going great. So Donovan taught me everything I need to know about the other industry. Gotten some Facebook groups to learn more, and here we are.

That's awesome. So Todd, is he, like a COO or something for you or your operations?

Yeah, more or less. Like, we're going to define his role more this year. But, yeah, he. He's our lead technician, which is. We have. We have a. A ladder, so to speak, of advancement levels in our company. So you start as an apprentice, and then you graduate to become a junior technician, and then you go to a technician and then a senior technician, and then a lead technician, and then like an area manager. And so he's, you know, he's gone all the way up to lead technician at this point, but we have some other. We have junior techs, we have some apprentices and whatnot. But, yeah, he's. He's our. We work really well together.

Yeah. That's awesome. So when you started it the next day, were you able to take your lawn care customer base and retarget them to bring them into gutters. Or how did you kind of get the ball rolling with that?

Absolutely. I mean, there's a. There's a saying out there. If you see a turtle on a fence post, you know, he didn't get there by himself and I literally. Someone helped him. Right. And so the Charlottesville lawn care company definitely helped me launch my second company 100%. Yeah, it was huge. In order to be able to swivel our or pivot our client base from lawn care to together. So lots of cross marketing, mailchimp calls, flyers, a lot of cross promotion. And now it turned out that we do have a very different target market audience. Our lawn care business is more like middle America, probably. Yeah, middle America in the city of Charlottesville, where it's like a little more yuppie and hipster and then our gutter company is more high end. So there's. The gap is becoming greater and greater as we build the company. But in the beginning, yeah, we did lots of cross promotion and it really helped me not. It was really helpful to have a book of business already. Tremendous. It was so much easier. I told people. I was like, man, must have been so hard starting Charlesville Lawn Care. I forget how hard it was. But having a first business to springboard off of really made a difference in those early years.

Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. In the research for this podcast I saw on Charlottesville Lawn Care, you do work with property managers, or is it mostly B2C or do you do B2B work? Or how does that work?

Yeah, we do some. We definitely are a good fit for property. Here's the thing. Property managers, they just want to. They don't want to babysit their vendors. They just want you to show up when you promise and send an invoice and just. They want to have low drama, which is really how everybody is, but especially property managers. And so that bit on our website is to. To captivate those people and it works. But most of our clients are residential homeowners and who just want their grass cut. You know, it's. It's a very simple, very simple business. And. And then. And we have. So we don't really have any property managers in the gutter side.

Okay. The gutter side is mostly like cleaning. Do you do gutter guards and that kind of stuff or what's it.

So start off with just cleaning. And that will always remain the backbone of our company. Just simply because that's our marketing edge. Because there's tons of companies out there that do roofing that, do a power washing that will repair gutters and install gutters. There's a lot of. The competition is high there, but when just cleaning, there's very little competition. And so we can say, hey, we've. Over the last three years, we've created a company that people think about. If I need my gutters clean, I call the Gutter Pros. There's no question. Now, obviously there's room for improvement there, but we've gotten to that point now where the majority of our people in this town know us and recognize our vans and they think that logo is seared into their brain. Yeah. And so once we get in the door to clean their gutters, it's not a loss leader. I do not want to confuse. It's not a loss leader. We're not like using gutter cleaning just to get other business. And it's cheap, it's high end, it costs a lot of money to get your gutters cleaned. But then that opens the door where. Which now we know is an expensive door because they've already paid a big ticket for the gutters. That means they have money to pay for other stuff. And so now we can have a conversation about gutter screens or new gutters, or replacement or repair or underground drain flush, whatever the. What are they. Whatever they need we can do.

Okay. Yeah, that's, that's very interesting. It actually leads. I have a question from one of our YouTube subscribers and it's a, it's a cleaning company, but they asked how to bundle services or offer packages of services to maximize profits. So it sounds like kind of what you're saying, like the gutter cleaning, the screens and that kind of stuff. Do you have any packages that you sell for gutter?

Yeah, I think that, I think the key about packaging is making sure that you're barking up the right tree. I think that really matters. I think that if you're going to try to bundle with cheapskates, it doesn't work. And so I think you first need to make sure that you're qualifying your clients before you ever even get there to their house so that you know that, you know that they're, that there are qualified leads to even upsell with. For example, if you earlier I mentioned an expensive door, if someone's willing to pay our gutter cleaning rate, then that means they're going to be willing to pay for other services. But if they're not, then they're not going to be willing to pay for other services. And so we don't want to even go there. We're just not a good fit. And so that. So your listeners need to know that, like, packaging is huge and critical. I'll get into that in a second. But first, you need to make sure that you're barking up the right tree. And having really, really cheap, like in sometimes can backfire, because they're just looking for cheap, and they're not going to. And you're like, well, bundling doesn't work. Well, it does work. You just were barking up the wrong tree. So with that said. Yeah, I mean, you can use jobber. I'm a huge fan of using jobber to package. You know, someone says, I want you to wash my house, wash my windows. Great. Well, we also do the sidewalk and the garage, and we will do the roof, and we'll do the garage, the driveway, and all this other things. And you turn a $500 window cleaning job or power washing job into a $2,000 job. It happens. Oh, but, Adam, that's not why they called you Adam. Let me tell you a story. Every time you've ever shopped for a car, you say, I'm gonna spend 10 grand. I'm not gonna spend a dime more than $10,000 on a new car. And then what happens? You walk into the dealer, you see what you can get for $10,000. You like what you see for 12 to 13,000. You get in the car, you're like, I can stretch a little bit. And then you spend 13,000. It happens every day in every industry and on the planet. You always spend more than you want, than you could or you wanted to. We're no different. You should go in there and give them. Give them what they wanted, which is a $500 housewash. And then you say, and if you approve this, we can do this, this, this, and this.

And.

And then that's how you upsell. So let me tell you another story. I was. My. My buddies are plumbers. They're awesome. We meet once a month. I encourage them, they encourage me. They're sharp. They're sharp guys, sharp company. And. But they're not salespeople. They're operationally kings. They're like savants when it comes to operations, but they're not strong on the sales upselling side, and I am, and I'm not good on operations. And so they came to my house and I need a new hot water heater. And so they gave me a bid for a new hot water heater, and I signed it and moved on. And my mom, a couple days later, was like, well, did you consider a tankless water heater system? And I said, well, I don't know what that is. They didn't give me that option. And she was like, oh, they should have. You know, So I called them and I was like, hey, why don't you give me the option? And they said, well, we just didn't really think about it. You know, it's. You just. I don't know. We just didn't. I was like, well, well, you should have. Well, you probably wouldn't have said yes. That's not your decision.

That's right.

That's not. That's my decision. Give me the options. Let me choose. And so when you give your clients options and let them choose, you'll be amazed at what happens.

Yeah. And I bet you want that tankless with four kids.

Yeah. I mean, like, who knows? I might have said no. But that's not their decision. It's my decision, not theirs.

Right? That's right. Yeah. No, that makes sense. Yeah. I think packaging for a lot of people, it can seem a little intimidating because the price point for some people can get like, oh, my gosh. Well, do I offer all this stuff or not? But to your point is, like, that's not your decision to make. If it's going to add value to them, then put it together and offer.

It and then let them choose. Yeah, yeah, let them choose. So you can use Jobber for that. You can. You can even do it verbally. So, like, if. If your listeners are wanting to just dip their toe in the water when they show up to a house or they book over the phone, either one, as soon as they say yes, you should offer them something else, even verbally. Okay. Hey, ma', am, it's gonna be 500 bucks to clean your house. Great. When can you start? Okay, we'll come next Thursday. When we come, do you also want us to do X, Y, and Z?

That's great.

Maybe tell me more. What's gonna. You know, we do this and this, and it's gonna be about this price. No, that's too much. Okay. Yeah, but they say, well, yeah, then you give them an actual bid. But you get them in, you get their wheels turning first. You get them engaged, you get them leaning forward and listening harder because you don't want to. You don't want to just throw spaghetti against the wall and hope it sticks. You want them. You want. Because you all spend all your time just doing quotes and no. And get no approvals. But they say, yeah, I'm interested In that? My neighbor had that done last week. Great. Then it's gonna be about $1,000. Okay, yeah, sounds good. Then you give them an actual bid with the actual numbers and then get the approval with the signature. But you can have this just conversation. These are human beings just like you. They're not robots. You don't have to be a robot. You don't have to be all this formal. Like, I don't call it your residence. It's your home because no one calls it a residence. Right. It's your home. And so you could have this casual conversation with your clients and say, yeah, we'll be here next Thursday. Joe's going to come. You'll love Joe. He's friendly, he's professional. He knows what he's doing. You're going to love Joe. Give him a five star review. We'll celebrate. Okay, great. Yeah, we'll see then. Awesome. Before I go, do you want to do X, Y and Z? Yeah. There is. Out of 100 clients, not one of them will be mad that you asked them that. Not one of them. They will all. Yeah, no problem. No, no, thanks. Or yes. Because people are afraid that, like, well, I don't want them to think I'm selling. You are selling. That's why you're there. Just embrace it. Just embrace it.

I really believe, like, sales is service and when you made a really good point is like when you ask the questions and create a conversation, not only are you building rapport and giving great service, but you're also trying to uncover, hey, you guys actually have this issue or this need, and then you can make a recommendation on that, you know, right?

100%. Yes. So. Because what you're doing is you're just turning over rocks to see there's worms under there, but you don't know which rocks have the worms, so you have to turn them all over. So you have to ask every client if they want your upsell. Because here's the money in business is in the upsell. The money in business is not in the core service, it's in the upsell. That. That's where you make your money is in the upsell. That's very important.

Yeah, I agree. So you started this, the gutter Pros, in 2021, did you say? Or 2019.

Yes, officially January 1, 2021. We ran about six months before that, unofficially.

Okay. And so in that time, we're now in 2024. It's been about three years. Well, it has been literally three years.

Yeah.

So. And you've Scaled this business to you said like, you know, a good amount of people, decent size business.

Yeah, we're like, like 1.2 million this year. 2023. We just, just closed out 1.2. My goal is 1.3, but we hit 1.2. And the reason that for that is because we went like six months without, with, with, with too few attacks. So I need to fix that this year we need, we need more technicians. But yeah, we have, we have five now. I want to have 10 by the end of the year. And we have some. We have an office staff and, and then, you know. Yeah. So it's, it's a small company, but in the term, in the gutter cleaning world, it's a big, It's a big company.

Yeah. And especially in three years to get to that point, that's, I mean, that's pretty good stuff. You got a lot of stuff going. Good sounds.

Yeah, you know, it's. Yeah, like I said, it really. I had some really good people along the way. And I also built it on the shoulders of Charlottesville Lawn Care, which helped a lot of. And also Strawsville Lawn Care was my first business. Gutter Pros is kind of my do over. It was an opportunity to take what I learned and apply it to the second company, which was way bigger deal than I expected. I didn't realize how much I learned until you started doing it over again. And then you realize, wow, I know how to do this now.

Yeah. So you mentioned hires. Is there a specific. Could you pinpoint kind of like those game changer moments of like maybe a new system, a new hire management process or something that you implemented that was like, wow, this is a game changer that took us to the next level.

Yeah. So my mindset had to change. So here's the biggest thing for me. I feel like mindset is kind of a buzzword. I hate to make people just think that I'm just throwing out words, but really was a big change for me. So I used to think that if I wasn't out cutting grass and I wasn't like setting the speed for my team and leading from example and charging from the front, then no one would follow me and I'd be an inauthentic, bogus leader who no one wanted to work for. And that just is not true. It isn't true. Here's the truth. If I am out there cutting grass or if I'm out there cleaning gutters, then I can't grow the company. That's right. Because technician work is something that I can hire someone to do, but I can't hire anyone else to grow the company. And so I had to be comfortable with saying, hey, you guys can go out and clean gutters today. Hey, hey, boss, are you coming with us today? No, that's not my job. And laugh it off and completely move on. That would made me so uncomfortable. Three years ago, that question, are you coming out with us today, boss? And I would have looked down and been all ashamed and embarrassed. Now I don't. I fully embrace, hey, guys, I'll watch you from a lawn chair. That's not my job. And we all laugh. But I had to change my mindset because if I want to grow the company to 5, $10 million, I can't do the work anymore. And that. That was really hard for me. Really hard for me. But now that I'm past that, I think the other thing I had changed was like, I had to actually hold people accountable. So, like, I used to just, you know, I hired somebody who, who weighed 400 pounds. He was 5, 8. He would never have passed any kind of military test or fitness test whatsoever. I only hired him because he had a driver's license. That's the only reason I hired him. That's not a good reason to hire somebody.

Right?

That's a terrible reason to hire somebody. And so, and, and if someone messed up, I would just kind of like, gloss around it and, and hope it didn't happen again. I don't do that anymore. Now I say, hey, whoa, whoa. Why did you do it that way? You're supposed to do it this way. Well, hold on. There's a problem there. And so now I'm way more. I'm way more. I'm not a jerk about it. I'm just. I'm professional about it. And I. I'm a good, good leader. As good as I can be right now. I'm getting better. But, like, I don't let that kind of stuff slide anymore. If someone's late, I said, well, hold on. Why are you late? Like, everyone else is here. You're supposed to be on time. Can you be on time next time, please? And so I'm not a jerk about it, but I do have these, like, I do make these little adjustments as we go. If someone does something that I don't like or that I know client won't like or just isn't good for the company, I address it immediately and say, hey, so big deal. But when you say X, Y, and Z, it makes you sound like a jerk. So how about you, you shouldn't say that kind of thing anymore. Okay. Thanks, boss. Hey, when you, when you did this and that the other day, it was awesome. Everyone loved it. Do that more, please.

Yes.

And so this constant feedback loop I found to be very difficult for me. But one of the biggest changes I made, like mid to late 2022 is when I had this like, aha moment. And so 2023 was just a great year of growth and great team teamwork and camaraderie. Because. Because. Because I wasn't waiting for people to swerve off the road before I gave them correction. I was giving them like small corrections as they drive down the road. So they never actually veered off very far. Just these, these itty bitty adjustments. Yeah, that was huge for me. That might have not. Not answered your question the way you meant it, but for those two things, those were big. Those are big improvements for me.

No, I think that's great. And I think holding people accountable for a lot of people is very. Those hard conversations and it's like, oh, I don't want to upset this guy because then he's going to leave and then I'm stuck with no text. And it's like that fine line of like, holding people accountable so that they actually do their job and are effective in helping you grow the company, but also like, you know, making sure that you have that rapport and relationship with them, that you can hold them accountable and they know it's for their good. Which I think is the hard.

Our default belief system is. Is inverse. If I give them feedback, they'll leave. It's actually not true. If I don't give them feedback, they will leave. Yes. So what I realize is like, at least the people that I hire, they want feedback. You and I, we all want feedback. We all want our boss to tell us how we're doing, if we're doing a good job or not. Like that. We all want that. Why would you think your people don't want that? That's crazy. It's looney tunes. Oh, they don't want. They do want that. Unless they're at the very, very bottom of the barrel and they're just. They're terrible employees. Maybe so, but most people want their boss to give them feedback. Good and bad feedback. Quick, brief, no emotion, just hey, this, this and this. You know, and so to be really specific on this, if so, when someone says something that was unprofessional, I don't say, well, you know, you. When you say a bunch of unprofessional things. That wasn't unprofessional. Well, now we're arm wrestling. Right? But if I, if I say, hey, when you said and then I, I literally insert the exact wording they said, that's unprofessional. They can't argue with that because that's exactly what they said. So I try to be as precise and exact as I can be so that they can't arm wrestle with me. Because if I, because if I say, hey, when you come in and your face looks, looks like you just hit, you know, it looks like you just rolled up, rolled out of bed. You look angry, your face is. And, and you, and you don't talk and you put your head down like this and you, and you roll your eyes. That's not good body language. And we need better. Yep. And they can't argue with that because everyone sees it. They see it. But if I just say, well, you look like you're in a bad mood. No, I'm not. I'm in a great mood. So. Okay, well, we're not getting anywhere. Right. So you gotta be specific, you gotta be strategic on how you use do feedback. But that, that's what this podcast is about. But that, that is something that I've learned over time. So. Yeah.

Okay. Well, yeah, thank you for sharing that. So several times through the conversation, you mentioned Jobber. So you run both companies on Jobber?

Both companies on Jobber, separate accounts, obviously different companies. But yeah, both are both on Jobber.

Okay. And for Jobber, obviously you use a lot of the features and you're the host of the podcast for Jobber.

Yeah.

What would you say? Obviously you've grown a seven figure business on Jobber. What would you say are things that maybe people that are using Jobber are not using, like features that you've used that are like, hey, these have been game changer pinpoints. And even if they have a different platform or CRM.

Yeah. So Jobber is a really good, it's a really good software. It gets the job done. Is it perfect? No, there's not perfect software out there. For different, for different companies, Jabra might not be the very best thing for them, but I think for the majority of your listeners, yeah, I think Jabra really is a good, good choice for them. I love the automatic invoicing. So quick story, for my lawn care company, we would cut grass all, all summer long and then we would invoice and I won't get, I won't get into what it was like before we had Jobber. But when I first started using Jobber, they didn't have automatic invoicing. So I would tell my clients, hey, we'll automatically invoice you every. Every month, the last day of the month. Well, it wasn't automatic. It was me going in every. Every end of the day, Whether it was Friday night or Saturday night or Sunday night or Monday night, it didn't matter. I would go in there and spend hours creating all these invoices and then charging every single one automatically. Right? And one time I did it driving up to Pennsylvania on a trip with my family, and I feel like a loser. I was like, in the. In the passenger seat, like, on my phone, I was like, I don't want to be doing this. So Jobber came out with automatic invoicing and actually helped Jordan Yao. I don't take any credit for this, but I had a conversation with him and we were talking about automatic invoicing, and he was like, well, what if. Adam, what if you didn't even have to click anything? What if it just happened? And I was like. I was like, really? Like, just happens? He goes, yeah. And that's what they have. They have automatic invoicing. And it saves me so much time, so, so much time, so much frustration. And it just. It's redundancy to the max. And so every Wednesday night at 7 o', clock, all my lawn mowing clients get charged at 7pm every Wednesday night with.

And I don't.

I don't have. I don't have anything to do with it. And so I love that. I mean, it just. That was a total game changer. And it's. One of the reasons that I have remained with Jobber for so long is because. Because of that. I. I like. I like enough for other reasons, too, but that's the main one, is automatic invoicing. I love it. I like online booking. I like. I like all of it. But I do love the automatic invoicing. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, that's awesome. I think for anyone, regardless of platform, is if you can have something that will streamline or automate a lot of your processes or some of your process, especially when it comes to cash flow management, I think that's. That's huge for the business.

Yeah. I mean, we take. We take payments through Jobber. We do all of our scheduling, we do all of our lead intake. I mean, everything is through Jobber. I talk to people who like, yeah, I use Stripe for payments. I use Google Calendar for the Calendar thing, and I use Jobber. But I'm like, why are you doing. Why don't you just use Jobber for everything? If you're paying for it, just max it out. Use it for its full potential. That's the power move. And so I've persuaded some, but not most, in order to switch over. But I find that Jobber is. If I max out Jobber and use every feature the way it's intended to, that's really the best way to do it. It's the best, yeah.

Okay, so you are looking to scale your business in 2024 to try to get to $2 million. What do you think it's going to take? You mentioned getting more technicians on board. Is there anything else that you're going to need to do to get to that point?

Yeah, so there's a couple things. Okay, so if I want to. If you want to increase revenue by a lot, which what I want to do, then you have to do it two ways. There's two. There's two things here. You have to increase the number of bodies, in this case, number of technicians to do to do the work. Right. You also have to increase the number of leads because you have to have more leads to do more work. Now, those are the two main ways. There's some secondary ways to grow your company, which is you can squeeze more juice out of the lemon that you already have. So maybe we can even make. We can train our people to be better at upselling so we squeeze more juice out of the leaves that we already have. That's one. We're not gonna get 2 million, but we will make some incremental change there. We can also try to squeeze more out of the technicians that we have. Maybe they work Saturdays, maybe they work, who knows, longer days, or maybe they just get better at their craft. They're more efficient. So they just. That should happen for sure. In any company, that should happen. They should be getting better and getting more efficient. But in order to make big change, we have to raise both number of technicians and number of leads. And so I'm in the. I'm going to talk to Jody over at a higher Rapid. Rapid hire pro in a couple weeks that talk about his. He's a. He's a big name in that. In that space of hiring. So we'll talk about that. Getting more leads in the door in terms of hiring leads, indeed, obviously. But, but, but then you can't just. You can't just hire them. They have to train them. You have to onboard and you have to get them like their tools and have them sign employment agreements. You have to have all these little steps in place. And so this January is, is the, is the month are. Sorry, it's not really slow for us, but it's the slowest month we have in February is like getting all those steps just completely ironed out so that someone could just say okay, step one, step two, step three. And then suddenly step 56 is like they're on board and they're trained and they're radio. And then I'm also. I need to look at getting my website redone for better leads. I need to get in this for some Facebook ads. I haven't touched Facebook ads yet. I know a guy who's doing millions of dollars a year just on Facebook ads. So. Wow. Need to get into that. And I also, I probably need to start doing some more in person sales. We don't do a whole lot in person sales. We do a lot of, we do a lot of like our business model is book over the phone and then upsell when we get there. But I need to have a salesperson who goes. Because not everybody needs their gutters cleaned. Not everyone want, not everyone knows what they need. Right. In window cleaning or pressure washing or whatever it is. They don't. Well my. They don't know. So they need someone to come out and like walk them through the process. And we're leaving a lot of money on at the, at the door just by not doing that as often. We do it some, but not as. Not consistently. So we need to introduce like having a full time salesperson who just goes and just meets with, meets with clients all day and squeezes the, the, the juice completely dry. Like the orange completely dry. So those are some initial thoughts. It won't be easy, but I actually think like I think getting a 2 million would be easier than getting a 1 million. Getting into 1 million was really hard and I think getting a 2 will be a little bit easier.

Yeah, I agree. I think once you get the infrastructure in place to that 1 million mark, then you can just scale those processes instead. Building the processes literally.

Yeah, yeah, 100%. I also think that like if you're sloppy small, you'll be sloppy big. And so I think anyone listening, if they have, no matter what size they are most. I don't know what size they are, but if, if you are sloppy now, if you want to grow, you're just building your house on a weak foundation. And that's what I was, that's what we were in 2022. Our, our company was a weak foundation in 2020. Two, we had a lot of people who didn't belong here. We had. We were doing services that we shouldn't be doing a lot. We got through it, but it was hard, and I. I almost lost some really important people because I was allowing a lot of jafoolery to go on. And so 2023 was a year of, like, strong improvements. So we made a lot of improvements to our operation side. We implemented Company Cam, which Company Cam is amazing. I don't know if you guys know what Company Cam is, but companycam is a. Is an app that you take photos of, but you take photos in, and then you can comment and you can tag, and it's kind of like. It's kind of like a project management software for the trades. It's like Trello. All those. Monday. All those things. They're not really for trades, but Company Cam is like that for trades. Because. Because I know people who are using Trello and. And I forget what they're called now. Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, yeah, there's.

And they use, like, 5% of the software. Companycam is that 5% on steroids? And so we. In fact, last week, I was just talking to Todd, my. My main guy, and he was like, dude, I. Honestly, we were pulling a Company cam for something, and he said, I don't know how we ever use. I don't know how we ever ran our business without Company Cam. Like, I was like, yeah, I mean, those are the old days. I have no idea how we got by without it. We. It's. It's. It's. It's by far the most important thing we use. In some ways, it's like, it rivals jobber and how important it is. But anyway, Company Game is awesome. We implemented that, and so we can. We. That's a strong foundation. We also implemented, like, better job prep. You know, the worst thing is, like, when you get to a job, get to work on a Tuesday morning, it's like, all right, you guys have X, Y, and Z job today. Well, who sold this job? Oh, so. And so he's not here today. Well, what are we supposed to be doing? I don't know. Let's try to figure out what we're supposed to be doing. There's this big conversation on what we're supposed to be doing today, and that's not how it's supposed to be. Yep. You're supposed to be able to come to work and continue smiling all the way through the day. Your smile shouldn't go away 30 minutes after you arrive because you have to fulfill this job that someone else sold, who isn't here, who didn't give any instruction. It's just a big fiasco. Right. So what we've done is, we have. Our quoting process is way more thorough. So if a job gets approved or quote, gets approved, then we know what we're supposed to do. There's company proof. There's, there's drawings, there's sketches, there's instructions, there's. There's evidence, there's proof, there's a, There's, There's a whole basis of, like, what we're supposed to be doing. And so ideally, when your technicians arrive at the day, in the morning, they should be able to pull up the job in Jobber, for example, read the instructions, and then go do it. They shouldn't have to call the guy who's on vacation to ask him any clarifying questions. They shouldn't ask, hey, hey, what gutter are we doing this to? Hey, what windows are we cleaning? Hey, what, what, like, what landscape beds are we pulling weeds in? They shouldn't have to do any of that. It should all be there. Yep. Because, because worst case scenario, the guy quits or leaves or gets fired, and then, and then you're really stuck. So, so that was all gosh, I just wasn't good at that. And so. But now we're much better at it. We're going to get a lot even, even stronger at it in 2024. But those are, again, if you're sloppy small, you'll be sloppy big. We were sloppy in the beginning, and now we had to, like, we had to change some things that we weren't supposed to slop anymore. But if you're, you should, like, if you're, if you're 500,000 and below, even a million below in revenue, you should be focusing on building that strong foundation.

Yeah, I agree. One thing that, and I don't know if you do this in your company, but like SOPs and training, is that something that you've been implementing in your business? Do you have a system or something that you could speak on for that?

Yeah, I have a bit of a soapbox on this, and I won't get into it, but I think that, you know, I feel like I'll try to be as specific as I possibly, as I possibly can be, because I think specificity when it comes to SOPs is something that's lacking in this industry. People just say, oh, Yeah, I have SOPs for that. Well, where, where are they? What do they look like? What do they say? Well, you know, they're just. Is it a video? Is it. Is a. Is it a doc? Is an Excel? Is it on your phone? Is it on paper? Is it laminated? Is in the van? Is it the shop? Where is it a poster? Where is your. Drives me crazy. So I'll be as specific as I can. We are SOP light right now. We need to be better at this, and we will be by the end of this year. But we do have some SOPs. Hours are in the form of checklists, for the most part in CompanyCam. And so at the. So every technician is required to fill out a checklist at each visit. So it'll say, gutters are clean, check. Gutters, downspouts are clean, check. And it takes them through all the specific, like, basic things they must do at each job. Is there a yard sign in this? In the yard? Yes. And you have to. You have to take a photo of the yard sign in the yard in order to complete that task. And so at the end of a visit, all nine or ten items on that checklist are completed. It says who did it. It says the time gps. It's pretty cool mechanic makes it easy. And that is an sop, a standard operating procedure. Now, there's. There's a million different kinds of SOPs. You know, like, there's a lot of SOPs that never leave the shop. Like, is the shop clean? Okay, checklist, bam, bam, bam. So, but, like, not every SOP is a checklist. That's the kind of thing that bugs me a little bit. SOPs aren't just checklists, but checklists are SOPs. So an example of, like, another kind of SOP of standard operating procedure would be, like, training. Like, hey, this is how we do X, Y, and Z every single time. But there's. There's margin. Like, there's. There's, like, you. Some of it's left up to judgment. You can't just make everything. Not everything's perfect in life. So, like, there is some judgment. And so someone told me that, like, one time that SOPs are kind of like. They're kind of like the. The. The bumper walls on bowling lanes, you know, the bumper rails, whatever those are called. Yeah, but you still have to throw the ball, and you still have to, like, throw the ball as well as you can, but at least the rails keep you from going in the gutter. And so in our case, we want to make the SOP as specific as we can while still realizing and being open to the fact that this is still the real world. You're still a human being and you're going to have to make decisions within that sop. And so it should be like you should write it out so that a monkey can do it, but knowing that a human is going to do it, you know, and so that's, that's my best answer for that. We're so growing in that we do not have all that figured out. But ideally one day I want to have a library of videos and like written instructions in either Google Drive or some sort of like maybe, maybe Trainual or something. Trainual. I think Trainual is more for training onboarding. But anyway, in like a Google Doc drive that are really well labeled so they a technician could pull up. How do I invoice when the job changes? Yeah, right. Hey Adam, how do I do it? Well, how do I eliminate that phone call? Hey, Adam, I want to eliminate that phone call. So, okay, so this, this is a screen shot video. It's four minutes long, showing you how to invoice for when the job changes. So now the technician can say, oh, okay, there it is. And, but, but like even then that has to be able to be found. They have to be able to find that just like a tool in the van. They have to know where the tool is so they don't look around for it for 15 minutes. So like, I think SOPs are, I think SOPs for me are one of the hardest things in business. And it's way oversimplified. And people think it's just like the simple, easy little thing, I'll just make SOPs. It's way more than that. And so I get a little annoyed when people say, oh, Yeah, I have SOPs for everything. And then when you get, when you really ask them, they don't, you know, and they're kind of frauds. So anyway, I'm not, I'm not trying to be a fraud. We have some SOPs. I'm trying to get better. That.

No, I completely agree. It's funny that I was that guy that was like, I have SOPs for everything. And then I hired someone to do the stuff and it's like, my SOPs are terrible. What am I doing here? Like, yeah, let's go back through. Like, I thought this was all tight and this is. And then I look at it and like, I'm like, okay, go try and do it. And it's like way off.

And I'm like, exactly 100%. So I think your SOP sucks until someone can actually do the thing with SOP. And yeah.

It'S a work in progress all the time, I think.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah.

Okay, so did you want to say something else about that? Yeah.

There's a whole other side of SOPs in my world for, like, the office staff. And so it's not just for the technician. You know, it's like, hey, how do I. How do I send this. This kind of email? How do I. What do I do if the client says this on the phone? How do I. What do I do if the client Emails. Emails. In this question, there's a whole nother set of SOPs for CSRs and not even getting into dispatchers, like office assistants, all that kind of stuff. So, you know, you have. You know, you have a legit business when you wake up one day and realize you need SOPs, so it's a really great place to be. But then it's a whole. Then you realize, oh, wow, I'm just getting started on this whole business venture thing. If I. Now I need to build out a whole SOP library. Oh, my gosh. And. And so it's. It's fun. I mean, it's. It's. It's. It means your business is growing, and it means that you're. You have employees because you don't need SOPs if you're by yourself. And so it's a good place to be. It's just. It's a little overwhelming. Yeah.

Definitely hit the nail on the head where it's like, I have techs out in the field and I have office staff, so it's almost two different things and two different ways to access things and use things. These people need videos. These people need checklists. So I.

Right.

I totally agree.

Exactly.

So how did you learn how to do all this stuff? Do you listen to books, podcasts, courses, coaching?

I. I started listening to a podcast called Entree Leadership by the Ramsey Group in 2012. Maybe even the late. Maybe. Yeah. 2012. Maybe 2011. Wow. And I think that that podcast alone, not to mention all the other stuff, but I think that podcast alone, I. I think it changed my life. I really do. I think that podcast changed my life because I think ev. I listened. I mean, I listened back when freaking, like, Chris Liquo was the host, you know, like 11 years ago. Yeah. And I think just every week, subtly, because I listened to every single one and multiple times back then.