Building & Selling a Home Service Business That Does Not Rely On You with David Moerman

Welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Phil Risher. And on today's episode, we're going to be diving into building and selling a home service business that does not rely on you with Dave Moorman. Thanks so much for joining us today, man.

Yeah, man, thanks for having me on. This is going to be lots of fun.

Definitely. So Dave Moorman is the CEO and founder of Home Service Business Coach, which He launched in 2020 and has helped hundreds of home service business owners grow a business that does not rely on them. He's also the prior owner of Revive Services, which he recently exited, which we're going to be talking about today on the episode. So I know you've been on the show before, you're returning guest. Not to go too much into the whole revive story, but could you give us a quick synopsis of how you got to revive and built it?

You bet, absolutely. So I, I guess it started a bit before that, Phil. I was studying my business degree in school, running a student painting company. So I had some success with that and I kind of saw that I don't want to, you know, get a normal corporate job. So I did some backpacking through Southeast Asia. I learned about a lot of our world still doesn't have access to clean water. I came back from my backpacking and I thought, I live in a pretty affluent area. What if I started a business that we could clean people's homes and donate 3% of our revenue to fund water projects, specifically in Cambodia. So I got running with that idea and started a business. Revive literally means to bring life to. So I thought we'll bring life to the home, bring life to people with water. And we sponsored like over 45 hand dug water wells over eight years. And you know, we washed 5,500 homes and just like had a lot of fun doing it. And yeah, just recently was able to exit that business. It was unique in that we grew without debt. We grew with a stable team. And the last four years, Phil, I would say confidently say the business was running largely without Dave, which was very attractive to the new buyer that came in. They came in as a, as a hands on investor, but also the entire team stayed on in the transition too, which was very exciting to me because I'm not saying it's bad to sell to private equity, but sometimes when people do, the team kind of gets thrown by the wayside and the owner gets a huge payout. So I feel like how I started the business humbly scaled it up and had a really good baton pass Off. I couldn't have been, like, more thrilled with the whole story. So thanks for having me on to. You know, I'll dive as deep as you want to in this, Chapman.

Definitely. Okay, so the first thing you mentioned is scaling with no debt. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because our audience, you know, 1 to 10 million home service business, or people that are scaling up through debt, seems to be something like, I need new trucks. You know, I need to float payroll. Like, I'm sure you have all those things. How did. How were you able to do that?

Yeah, like, honestly, man, I would say to the companies we're working with today, I would say about half of them are. Are getting access to capital. So it's not like. It's like, oh, you have to follow this proven model. But for me, I. It was just drilled in my head, man, from running, student painting, that you get profitable with your first job. And, you know, I've bought 13 just writing this in my book. I bought 13 used vehicles through my career, and just like, I just always found a way to bootstrap the thing and make money really quickly. So I think it's just ingrained in my mentality coming up. And I kind of live by the Dave Ramsey principle. Like, if you don't have the money to. To buy something, you don't do it. And I'm not saying your listeners. People might sign off now. I'm not saying it doesn't work. I'm just saying it's a core value thing that, for me, I don't buy stuff with money I don't have in my business or my personal life. So that's just a decision that I made. And, you know, when the pandemic came into Canada, Phil, and people leased everything up to their eyeballs, and people were freaking out. Like, I didn't have vehicle payments. You know, we didn't have huge, crazy overhead. So it was one that I felt we could weather through the storm. So that's just part of my story in growth.

Yeah, I think I'm a Dave Ramsey guy, too. But I think a lot of people, they hear no debt, and they're like, oh, my gosh, that's not gonna work for me. We're not saying it has to work for you. I'm just curious specifically with your story, how you did that. So it sounds like each job's profitable. You put money into retained earnings, and then instead of taking distributions or you take a certain amount of distributions and a certain amount of allocation, how did you make that decision about how much to allocate to certain things.

So my mentor, early man is an OG from the pressure washing world. His name is Josh Latimer and I was one of his coaching clients. You know, he, he got it drilled in me too that this is a very profitable recurring business and there's no reason to go crazy on the spend. So my first year of revenue like we did 89 grand, but I pumped out $40,000 of profit that, that then fueled the next growth year and then we did 155 grand, pumped that in, then I did 582 grand and that, that was the year we got four trucks, wrapped them like went for it. But I didn't pay myself until just starting my third season and I was only taking out a few grand a month. So this is the thing I want to say too, man. Today I'm married, I'm family man. I'm living on like more of a monthly burn than I was back when I was, you know, 27 year old single Dave. So that plays into the equation as well. So I think I was, I was coming up, had a lot of energy and time and some know how and I didn't have dependents or a spouse at the time, so I could, you know, a 60 hour workweek was, was just kind of normal. So it, it all. We got to take this story all in context as well. But that just, you know, brutal, honest facts.

Yeah, I completely agree with that. The other thing that you mentioned was a stable team, which I think a lot of people, they want to have teammates that they trust, but they also turn into the bottleneck or the key man. How are you able to kind of pull away from that and build out a team that you could trust, that was stable, that could run things for four years without you?

Yeah, it's a great question. There's if there's only one good thing I do, Phil, as a business owner, I would say is attracting and retaining like good people. And I think people vibe with me. Maybe you're five minutes into this show. I just keep it super real and down to earth and I think people are attracted to that. And so, you know, over the course of eight years, I hired 54 team members in that business. So of course there was some seasonality and we'd have some students come in and help us. And you know, I'm not the best at hiring by any means, but once I kind of cracked the code in 2019, I got really serious about the core values that I live by. And my, and this is like A business buzzword, but really identifying what values do people need to have to kind of, it's almost like this exclusive like club, like a bit like a small business especially. And so how do I, you know, see people's values in not just an interview, but how they actually behave in my organization and because that's why I chose window cleaning in the first place and pressure washing because it's a low barrier to entry. So I didn't want to be held hostage by my team members that, you know, you get sometimes. These mavericks are really high skill and they're not committed to the business. So I really shifted my hiring years ago to looking for core values that fit with me and also with my, my business. So I think that was a really key thing. And then just how I run my business is kind of again, a business buzzword. But servant leadership is really how I, how I roll and, and even so much that if I, if I'm not willing to do it myself as the owner, I'm not going to ask someone on my team to do it. So I think those two things and the last thing I think I'm really, I'm not a perfectionist in that like I just know crap's going to happen and I would rather deal with the crap happening than deal with everything on Dave's shoulder every day. So I just personally enjoy working with people. That's why I like growing businesses and running tenanted properties. Because I just, I don't freak out when bad stuff happens. And if anyone's watched the show the Ozarks, I just try and be like Marty Bird when everything's wrong. I'm just cool and like, okay, let's just figure it out. So I think those things has helped too in, in building and it's mostly retaining the team. I think that I did really good with.

Yeah. And I think this kind of fits in with that debt free side of things because when you don't have these compounding expenses and there is a storm going on around you, you can have peace and calm in the storm. Because I, nothing is going, nothing's going to kill you if you, if, if you have your financial and a good foundation, I think that's probably a part of it as well, I would say.

Yeah, definitely. And we just went like, you know, we really did a good job I think building a local brand too, which we can chat about. And that just helped a lot from like a client acquisition standpoint. Like I kind of saw both sides of the track. Phil. Like I ran a painting business for 10 years. And it gets difficult to retain your painting clients because you're kind of one and done. You can sell inside, outside, but with cleaning, you're just building this snowball every year. We had 45% of our clients come back annually that was just locked in. And like when you only got it when Your Cup's already 45% full on January 1st, it's like we just got to close the gap now with new business. So that was kind of a sweet thing of that business. It was on recurring. And if anyone's listening, that has that recurring element. It becomes very attractive to getting some stability in your business as well.

Yeah, I completely agree. I want to hit on one thing before we move on to this, which is core values. And then how to know because like core values is a buzzword but like for home service businesses it's like you have your core values but then how do you know if the person that you're hiring has those same core values? How were you, how were you able to uncover that or pull that out?

Yeah, we dove deep in this man in like behavioral based interviewing. Again, that's a big word. But I really wrote out like it took me like almost a month to come up with these values when I was really serious about it. And a few of the big ones, man, was like, one was excellence. And that was a high bar for me that we would ask them specific questions. For example, tell me about a time in your personal life of a project that you believe you completed in an excellent manner to be of high quality. You know, we would ask these types of questions to gauge for people's how high level of service was another core value. So tell me about a time at a past job that you demonstrated a really high level of service or when you took care of a customer, you went above and beyond. Like that's the kind of questions we're asking in a 45 minute interview for a simple entry level job like a field technician. But I wanted to drill down on those because if a 20 year old kid is coming to me and has a track record where they've proven that, you know, they were the captain of the soccer team and they won this. And then they did and they did. And I want those examples. And then man, we're going to call a reference to verify that. Then we're going to do a working interview and by about three weeks in, we have a pretty good like vibe check on, like are they sticking or not? And again, it's not like this is like, oh, perfect. But you know, when I exited, we had an eight person team. And when you pass off eight people that are all rowing in generally the same direction, like, it's a pretty cool thing, especially today how difficult hiring gets. So that was kind of a way that we did it. But I think you can't make core values until the owner actually looks in the mirror and lives by those core values. So I believe everything I do. This podcast with you, man, we're both on time. We're like, boom. We want to bring value. Like, you want to live that excellence out in your personal life and then like, it'll cascade into the business.

Yeah, I think the hardest thing with core values is like business owners want the core values, but really when you look at your business, it's going to tell you kind of what your core values are as a business owner or business. You can't just like invent them and try to like, you know, ram this thing into your business. You have to like, look at like, what are our company's values?

Yep, 100%. Another key one man was like, ownership. That was another big one. I was so stressed out. Like, we'd hire these people and they'd go out and do a sloppy job and they'd leave the gate open and Spot would run out and almost get hit by a car. I'm just like, yeah, we need ownership. Like, I want to set up these mini autonomous businesses all across the town that don't tell me if you're running late or this or like, you call Mrs. Smith, you let her know. So we drilled that into. We had these crews all over town that they were accountable first to the homeowner. We were mostly a resi based customer business. And you tell us second. So that took time. But that was another really key one as well. That helped us.

Yeah, I think that's really good for anybody that's out there that has technicians call the customer first, tell us second. Opposed to you, man. We had four CSRs when I was in the home service space, 28 technicians. Every single time the tech would be calling the csr, CSR would try to then call the homeowner and play this whole phone tag, where's this guy at? Text all this stuff. It's a mess. If you just call the homeowner first, then call the CSR and let them know that you already took care of it. I think that's extreme ownership from what you're saying. I think that's, that's a great. And a little nugget there.

Totally.

Let's Talk about the selling of the company, because a lot of people listen to this. Eventually, even if you don't want to sell, this is going to be very poignant. But let's say you wanted to sell. You know, how long did it, it takes a long time. Did you get multiple Lois or multiple. Anything falls through the cracks, like, tell me about this process, the journey.

Yeah, man, we just did it on my YouTube channel. It's like a 75 minute and I felt even it was going to run longer. But yeah, I'll break it in a nutshell for the listeners. So where I am, I'm in, in British Columbia in Canada. So generally here it takes an average small business about 14 months to actually transact from like business owner getting serious and going through it. So for me it, I think it was a bit less. It was around, I don't know, 10 months maybe that I was having the thoughts and chatting about it with my wife. And then finally last summer, I listed the business up online on a couple different sites. I chose to not go the broker route. I did have some conversations, but I thought, you know what, I'll, I'll go first on my own and see what the interest is. And if I, you know, if it doesn't become worth my time, I'll look to, to hire someone to help me. So got the, the, the listing up online. Phil. One of my skills is, is recruiting and gauging people. So I'm like, man, literally in the first two months I had 112 hits on the business of people that. Because it's like a great, it's not like this business you're making, you know, millions of dollars from. So it was like a, it was a specific buyer that a lot of like corporate refugees, someone who would like almost buy a franchise was like, yes, okay, this is super cool because I'm not stuck to the royalty fees. So I had a lot of those conversations. So I was on conversion calls for, for a few months, you know, and man, I recorded. I'm a systems guy like you are. I recorded this like 10 minute audio message that I had so many messages. People were like, send me the, the NDA. I'll sign it, whatever. I'm like, I'm not going to send you everything. I don't even know who you are. So I had them go through this funnel. You listen to this audio message and then you text into my number for more info. So I then was dealing with text messages. I probably had 15 or so NDAs sent out. I had four LOIs. I had four written offers and I had one successful buyer. So that went up in like June last year. And we closed in in March this last year. So it was like, I don't know what that is. Eight, nine, ten months, something like that.

Okay, so I want to hit on something here.

Sure.

You had a business that people were lining up and trying to buy, like actively because you had built it to not rely on you.

Yep.

And I think a lot of people get stuck because they get into burnout mode and then they want to sell.

Yep.

So can, can you talk about, like, what made it attractive to these people? I know you said, you know, no debt, no systems. But like, what were they saying when they were talking to you? Like, what were they telling you?

So they loved. They loved the owner. Removed like no word of a lie, man. Five hours a week for me. Like, might even be exaggerating. Like, I was in our office every second Wednesday and I was at Starbucks every second Monday to do team stuff. Now, full disclosure, man, like, my coaching business was growing so fast that I could have been in revive a bit more, but I felt I was super pulled. So it was running with the team. So that was number one, they love. Number two. We had an active client base of about 4,000 customers that had given us money. And we had all of. We had 8,000 records in our jobber, like dialed in organized. So we had this like operating system that was set up as well. The third thing, we had over 500 Google reviews and like we owned a lot of digital real estate. I'll call it like GMVs and good backlinks, strong website. And so I put all this man in an eight slide deck, like pitch deck. And I didn't say the company name, but I said, you know, we got this many clients and I had people reach out like, are you selling your business? Because this sounds like a lot like, like revive. Right. So that's how I had it set up. And then I also like showed the front of all our playbooks. We had six playbooks to run our whole company. Everything was systematized. So yeah, I, I package it up very nicely that the buyer that actually was successful buying the business, he said he had been looking for a business for almost three years. Phil, he said the fact how down to earth you were and how you add all your crap together, he's like, it was so refreshing. So again, you're looking for that, right? Technician people are looking for that, right. Like purchase of a business as well. And it's like such a big decision for These people. So, yeah, I felt I approached it very systematically, very fairly, and I had a process in place like anything. And I think that's why it. Why it did as good as it did.

Yeah, for sure. When you were evaluating those, Lois, was. Could you explain a little bit like, the LOI and then the due diligence process, did anything come up in that that was an issue or like, what watch people do? You know, just like, yeah, if you could share a little bit about that process.

Yeah, for sure. So after a few zoom calls, you know, we. We kind of did the LOI pretty quickly with the successful buyer. And then we went into. When I was. I had basically two offers that I was really considering. And when I became really firm on going the one way, I signed off on that one and did exclusivity with that buyer and said, hey, for 60 days, I'm not going to talk to anyone, and we're going to deep dive this. He was very motivated, as was I. And so we did due diligence in three main areas. One financial, one in operations, and one legal. The legal was pretty quick. We did that one really fast. The accounting one, man, was a little bit annoying in that the. Just the, like, we had clean books. But, you know, the, The. The questions for the accountant of like, can you go back three years? What happened? This, this, that, the other thing. So that was definitely one that took a little bit more time. And then the operations one was just like, I literally showed our playbooks. Like, I went in with good faith of like, I'm. I'm confident this guy's gonna go all the way, albeit something huge comes up. And so, yeah, due diligence. We did it in like 60 days from LOI to assign deal. And the last thing I did, a lot of people asked this man, did you tell your team, etc. I didn't go public with my team until I had a check in hand for a deposit. So I asked for just like, it was like a five. I just wanted five grand in good faith. He tied it up in his trust with his lawyer, sent me a picture, and once I saw that, I said, all right, let's go shake hands, meet the team, etc. So I only told the team eight days prior to closing, like, hey, we're gonna do a tour day. This is happening. So that was kind of that whole process, but the loi for me, man, it was like, I don't know, maybe six or seven pages. It wasn't like this crazy, huge long thing. I didn't keep any secrets. There was no debt. And the other thing too, with the payment structure, this was like a cash payment. So there wasn't a reliant on third party financing, which like sped things up as well.

Yeah, I think that's so good. So I was at a $3 million home service business and we ended up building it to about $5 million. Then the owner sold to a search fund who like a guy who just graduated from MBA wanted to buy. And I literally like ran point through the entire process of due diligence and like, try, like trying to get this thing across finish line. So I learned a lot of that stuff in the due diligence, man. It's like getting punished, like pulling bodies out of graves and stuff. It's like so uncomfortable.

Yeah, man, it was crazy. Like, you're looking at fuel bills from, you know, three, four years ago. You're looking at, you know, why was this higher? Why was this lawyer lower? You're analyzing marketing spends. How are you getting your job, man? The other thing, you're a marketer, man. We had our GMB suspended for 65 days during this process too. So, like, that was a huge pain of like, we're literally getting this started. I'm out for dinner with my wife. She goes to the bathroom. I check my phone, email from Google. You're shut down. I'm like, this is so crazy. So, yeah, we had that. And it just shows, like, there's no perfect path. There's just business. There's always. There's always some problems to. To deal with. But I felt, man, on our. I was telling the buyer this the other day. Our initial zoom call was like an hour ish. And I went upstairs and told my wife. I'm like, I think I got the guy. Like, just the values fit of like, we're both down to earth. I. It's just like when you kind of click and connect with someone. I just like had that really strong feeling. And I was already a few months into this process, so I felt like, I'm gonna bet on this, going on this path. And I was like, worst case, it blows up and I keep running the business. It wasn't like this, like, I'm moving to Australia, we have to do this. But I was like, if I get the right buyer with the right values, you know, a good exit on it. And I felt good, then I was gonna proceed with it.

Yeah, with this guy, I guess it sounds like maybe he's coming in, he's gonna run it. Did you have any. And you don't have to say too much or whatever but like any earn out or were you staying on and like making sure that it happens or like what does that look like?

Yeah, absolutely. So a couple. I was sticky on a few criteria. I'll see if I can nail them. One, in Canada you can exit a business up to 1.2 million tax free if you structure it as a share sale. So I personally own the shares of Revive and so the, the exit I got, I didn't pay, don't have to legally pay a dime of tax. So that was very advantageous for one.

I heard in Canada it's like some 60% tax rate or something.

Oh, it's crazy. Yeah. Once you make over I think 220 grand, you're at 53% tax or something. That's it's absolutely crazy. So that's a story for another day. So that was number one. Two was there was no, no earn out. It was 90% up. And then the 10% is, is due a few like three months later, something like that.

Great.

And then the last criteria for me was the other group I was talking to was much more hands off. They were actually from out of area. And I just was like again I just, there's something in me. I'm like, I don't know if they're going to like do a great job in the pass off because for me, man, it's almost like this, like in my coaching role too, I want to make sure we can go back and search that business in a few years and be like they're still rocking it. And so I'm like, I need the right person. So this guy, without sharing too much, his dad actually built a 50 truck operation in home services and exited three years ago. So the son is nine years younger than me and I was just like, I feel like I've met like Dave 2.0 here. He's younger, he's better looking and a bit smarter. I'm like, dude, this guy is going to be set up to, to rock with him. His dad is a coach and I'm on till the end of the year. We wrote that into the deal that he gets X amount of hours with me a month just for consulting. And you know, we grabbed coffee last week and we both live locally. So those are kind of setups that I had with the deal. That was like really important to me because I've had a buddy exit a business and he's ended up in litigation, man, forgetting payments because they like it just anything can happen. So I was just like it wasn't like I so needed this money for my day to day. It's definitely nice. But for me, I wanted my, my time back and my capacity back. So I didn't want to be tied up in this earn out over the next like two or three years or whatever.

Yeah, exactly. We had an H Vac contractor. They went 3 million, 6 million, 8 million, then sold a private equity which was a roll up deal that were rolling up all these H Vac contractors. And in the first year the owner had earnouts and he just didn't get along with the new GM that they brought in. He was out. So he lost out on some money and in two years the business was out of business.

Yeah, I know. And I'm surprised. It's crazy.

It's really crazy. And then looking at his like legacy that he just built this whole company and then it's gone. And for you as a coach, it's like, yeah, I have this solid business. It's almost like you're giving it to someone else that now like you got to make it, take it to the next level so I can focus on something else.

It sounds exactly. And the other thing too, I think as the business grew and I started running two things and became a dad, I think I just, my appetite for growth and risk I think pivoted like a little bit too that I was like, you know, we had three, four trucks going and it was running great. But I'm like to grow this thing to five, six trucks and grow this to multi seven figures. I, I felt like I brought it like version 1.0 and I built it. But I felt with like where I wanted to go. This new buyer coming in, like he has a three year plan to get over 2 million bucks and I think he'll do it quicker. But yeah, he's very growth oriented and he's like, dude, I love this business. I'm up at 5 and I work till midnight. I'm like, I got no doubts you're gonna do it, man. Because I know what it's gonna take to do that next initial lift. So he was just looking like, do I buy a franchise? Do I buy a different business? Because he didn't want to go and start one up and he had some, some, some money. So. Yeah, exactly. You just want to find, I think that, that right buyer for the right business. And so I felt like I was able to do that.

Yeah. So can you talk a little bit about the coaching? Because you obviously sold this company. Now you're, now you're full time in your coaching business. Can you tell us a little about that? Like yeah, what's up on the horizon for that?

Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's been lots of fun, man. I think I originally started it in 2020 and I was just gonna coach on Fridays and I like started doing eight one to one calls every Friday and I kept that up for like six months till I was almost like burning out. I'm like, this is just crazy. And so I built in early 21 this kind of group model that I've been kind of perfecting and now we run like a hybrid of like group with some, some one to one support. But yeah, it's really grown man. We have like over 160 companies now we're working with all across North America and Australia. You know, about 70% are tied to exterior cleaning, but we work with painters, junk removal. So. And yeah, we're teaching them over our 12 month run rate effectively how to systematize your business. So you know, our, our avatars come into us at a few hundred grand and we help scale them up. And it's been kind of like you're doing man, helping companies. Like I don't know what it is with home services, but it's like these people are blessed with hard working natures but not a lot of like business chops for whatever reason. And so a guy like me who can't even hang blinds up in his own bedroom, I'm like, I'm not handy but I know the business of it and we just make this like great match. So yeah, I've structured this whole program with I call it the three Cs, the coaching, the community. And then I'm thousands of hours into building out a curriculum and like we white labeled all the systems for our, for our guys. So it's just been, been a lot of fun for me so much that I'm like, where could this business go if I just like focused on this? And that focus for me man, has always been something I've struggled with in business. So I want to, I want to go all in on one thing for the foreseeable and see where we end up.

Yeah, I think a lot of people, the focus is hard and even like you had, you had two different businesses that you were like, yeah, I think I can help this. But then, then you got to kind of, okay, I'm done with this, move on to the next thing and then who knows what, what comes to that next? I want to ask you about these playbooks. I think you Said you white label, and then you. You give them these playbooks and help them implement them. What are those Playbooks or what is what. What's in them?

Yeah, so there's six different ones on each department of the business. So, you know, example one would be a marketing playbook. So we would basically build out there. A lot of them are like organic marketing systems that we build out. So we build their door hangers, their flyers, their business cards. Like, almost like someone came to me and said, I got it so often, man, is revive a franchise. Could I, you know, potentially look. And I was like, had people ask me that. I thought, like, I had kind of a. Not the best experience as a franchisee, personally.

I remember.

Yeah. And so I'm like, you know what? Let's almost franchise this thing without charging people royalty fees and see where we end up. So that's kind of how I structured HSBC from the start. Originally, we had guys build their own systems. And then about a year ago, my team and I were like, let's just get these guys brand files and build it out for them. So they get like a marketing playbook, a sales and ops, a hiring. Like, the hiring one's like, I think it's like 30 pages, man, of like position agreements, job advertising, all the stuff that we're like. We hear systems and then we like go into a little shell. I'm like, oh, let me, let me do all that. So we build them their playbooks in the first couple months of our program, and then we give them coaching to make sure that they can actually, like, put these systems into place. So it's kind of like without flying to their area and doing it for them, it's kind of like the best thing that I've tried to figure out how to. How to crack the code. But we're still working on, man, we could chat about this, but how do you make these guys less busy? Like, that's just like, I go to bed every night thinking, I want to just get these guys less busy enough. Systems is the buzzword. But it's just like, that's what I. My thoughts always go to in this new digital age. Like, how do we get these guys less busy?

Yeah, the biggest thing that I've seen is that, you know, Dan Martell, buy back your time. They all skip the first step of hiring an admin and they hire a technician and then they get more busy and they're still doing all of the admin work. And it's like, start with the CSR or admin person. To help you with all the other backend stuff. But some reason they always skip CSR and admin and they still hold on to that even into a million dollars. They're still answering the phone.

Yeah. Yeah.

Is that what you see as well?

100 man. Yeah. And I used to structure my training that let's get off the tools and. And I'm like, yeah. With how VAs have exploded and now AI agents like there's just really no excuse man for the owner to be. Unless I'm missing some information that you're this like savant on the phone. I'm just like, let's stop do. And a lot of it, man is not even phone anymore. It's just like processing requests that come in through. You're almost like order taking administrative. So I think as AI comes in our space is going to be a good thing because these owners I think won't really have a choice in five years. Like which. Which route to go. I think it's going to just be normal.

Yeah, I agree. I think I mean use Jobber or. Yeah. So like Jobber, AI answering service and online scheduling and it works together. It's like this is only going to get better over time. And I mean people still want to talk to a human and answer questions and stuff like that. Which maybe you have someone like that. But the process is piece AI is going to be able to do a lot of this stuff. I think the companies that really embrace that are going to be moving ahead. The companies that don't. I am curious about this. AI search is a big thing that a lot of companies ask about from a content perspective. Are you coaching them on creating content? Social media content? Yeah. Okay. What does that look like, man?

So we did like a content pretty. We do an annual summit every year in Vancouver. Our guys fly up and we come hang out and we did. I did a bit of an experiment this year, man. I bought this like it's called the Osmo Pocket 3 and I'm not affiliated with these guys at all. But it's like the coolest little gizmo. You can walk around and the camera like spins. And when I was in Dan's program too is like content. You gotta go, you gotta go. And so I really. I'm like, you know what? We're gonna. We're gonna take this seriously. So I had my guys, man, taking my little OSMO for walks around the sea wall and we're. And we got the best content in those few days there. But the guys that are growing right now man, they are running ro. I'll call it Robust Content strategies online Using video. Because I, I me man, I don't think I'm weird in that I'm not really Google searching anymore. Like I'm going on chat GPT or I'm on. I don't even know if I say it right. Grok on x.com yeah. Where I'm running my search and you know it's, it's tying to all. I'm not an AI expert but I, I tend to understand it's tying to all these back end links of like here's your Instagram page and here's your Facebook page and here's this Google blog. So I think it's more important than ever to be hammering on social and, and getting content up there. And even men, people like oh, choose one platform. And with HSBC, man, I've chosen like 11 platforms. And it's not confusing because it's just like there's a lot of crossover from IG to Facebook to LinkedIn and there's a little nuances. Fine, but generally we tell our owners like five hours a week minimum make content. And what I did at Reviveman, we would hire a photographer every year, photos every six months. And that was another thing, man, I like didn't give. But in the deal the owner got thousands of pictures, brand photos. I'm like run ads with this. You got Instagram for days, you got flyers, recruiting, everything. So like I can't say enough about content, repurposing video, getting yourself out there. In my whole book I have a chapter on it, I call it passionately promoting your business. And I think most owners, they're like, I don't want to do video. I'm like, well I guess you don't want to grow your business then that's how important it is.

Yeah, I was, I was just out in Vegas on, on Jobbers podcast and we talked a lot about that. So like in ChatGPT, Grok, perplexity, whatever, if you go there and search for pressure washing in your city or whatever, it's going to give you the results and then ask how did it get these results? And one of the qualifiers is going to say is based off of authority. And one of the ways you build authority, right? These are large language models that get trained on content and if you give it content to get trained on, it's going to recognize you as the authority in the space. And a lot of people, me included as a marketer, I used to think that social media was just foo Foo. But now the game has changed because this is actually contributing to AI search.

Yeah.

And this is how you build a brand digitally that's by the way free and to post things. So I think that it's very important. Have you seen any guys, guys like in your program that have been like really crushing it with social media stuff or doing anything?

Yeah, there's definitely a few. We have like our head coach Jackson now he literally hired like a full time video guy to come in and do, do a bunch of stuff. So they're, they're starting to get some, some good traction. I think it's like, it's not so much, you know, oh, we have 100,000 on Instagram or this or that. It's like even one guy we're working with, Danny, he runs a washing business called Salty Soft Wash. And he will be like taking video, taking selfies, he's putting it in Facebook groups. His own personal profile is like literally like a landing page, man, he's just like doing all kinds of stuff. So yeah, I think the especially small businesses, man, like you got a listener on, you're doing 5 million or I don't know if I want to do that. But when you're coming up and you're looking at marketing getting more expensive, like do the free stuff and put show off your brand in your face and like those are the guys that are going to be getting ahead and then you can, this is what we do. You see your best organic performing stuff that people are clicking that tend to be personal by the way. Then you can take that and put some ad spend behind that. And it's what her mosey says when you get organic with paid, you become a weapon. And so I'm like, do the organic, it's free, you're cash poor, that's fine. Find your best ones and then go work with a pro like you to go and put some money behind it and that's where it gets. And man, we haven't even touched on retargeting your clients on email lists because like another thing in my exit was like I showed our job or email campaign. So the last year the new buyer was like I, I did as a parting gift, his final email, I wrote it up and he, we had coffee the other day. He's like, Dave, that email, I'm at $88,000 now, booked work from one email. I'm like, I used a bit of AI help with that but I'm like.

What was the email? What was the email?

It was so simple, man. It Was like, hey, it's, it's this time of year again. You know, I pushed on all this pain, like your patio's dirty, your gutters. And then I'm like, we have spring promos and a few spots on these services. Reach out here for a quote. And again, when it goes out to. I think we had 8,000 and maybe 6,500 on our email list. 6,500. Really good open rate, I think you said at one point our Sales rep had 118 estimates to go through. Like, it's just like, it's so crazy when you build that snowball because then you can just do wha. Bam. And it's just like that's, that's the power of like, the marketing is not this one trick pony. It's like you hit the social, you have the team, we systematize. And I think the businesses that I work with that get ahead, the guys are just kind of doing it all. And I know that's not a sexy answer, but everything, the more things you do better, it just builds this, like, overall brand. And that's how you get a good business.

That's right. And I'll tell you this, a dream for these private equity guys that are buying companies is someone who's never emailed their past prospects or customers before because they know that they're going to get another two or three million dollars when they actually do what they know that they should be doing. And most business owners know that they should, but they're not doing it. And it's a huge opportunity for people.

Yeah, man, it gets me so fired up. Like, I've been like out of the game for like three months and I, I swore an oath to my wife. I'm not starting a home service business in 2025. But I'm just like, it's the first question people ask. They're like, David, what's gonna, what's. What's next? So it's just like I'm disciplining myself to just do one thing. Because I ran home service businesses for 16 years, 12 of those, man. I've ran two companies at the same time. So it's just like, I'm very not familiar just running one business. So I'm, I'm sitting on my. Not sitting on my hands, but I'm just going in on one thing. And who knows what the future will hold. But it's never been as exciting as a time. I think I can see all these, like, hermosi calls that get a double or a triple in A business. And it's just like, it's cool to look in these businesses as you do and be like, let's attack this and this and let's just do that for the next month.

Yeah. Have you ever thought about, like, inside of your program there might be really top performers or guys that you're like, yeah, these guys are going to kill it and then maybe like partner with them or take some type of.

Yeah, man, we. My. Every week our team looks at it. We call it like our partner program. And I just. Yeah, for me, like my. See, here's the thing. I'll be honest. My buddies built a very successful consulting business in a niche not like fairly similar to ours. They went that route originally and they ended up selling the equity back to the companies because they found it be a distraction from their own education business. So I always have that in the back of my head. But yeah, like, there's a few of our shining stars that have even moved on from us that I'm. They almost like turn into like friends where I'm like, I would love to see them exit their company. And for me to try grab, you know, 10 points on that, I'm like, you know what? Just exactly kind of earned it. So that's kind of where I'm at is systematizing with these guys, letting them to build an asset and if they can have that transaction, like, I think they. They earned it. So at this point it's a consideration. But yeah, there's no like formal plans to. To roll something. I'm not saying it wouldn't work, but I think for now just. We're gonna. We're gonna stay doing what we're doing.

Yeah, I'm with you on that. We had an arborist that we started working with a couple months ago, and he was like, have you ever thought about taking equity in the companies that you work with and stuff? I'm like, bro, like, I just want you to win. Like, I'm not trying to take your business and stuff. Like, it's all good.

Yeah, it gets really tough too, man. If you really look at it, you. You gotta get really in the weeds, like legally too, because, man, there's. There's all kinds of issues that happen in business. From property damage to lawsuits to wrongful termination to. Things vary so much place to place that. Yeah. When you're putting your personal name on the line. Because, man, there's. There's all kinds of issues that happen in business, from property damage to lawsuits to wrongful termination to. Things vary so much Place to place that. Yeah. When you're putting your personal name on the line, it just gets difficult. So I'm not opposed to it. But you'd have to grow something really big and over a really long time horizon. And at this point, I just don't know that that's like our avatar. Avatar usually wants to come in. They're generally like anti franchise and want to grow something that they fully own that they could, you know, get it turnkey and then potentially exit it one day.

Yeah, makes sense. Well, dude, this has been a great conversation and I appreciate the transparency because some people don't talk too much about the back end, you know, and you have a whole 75 minutes talking about the exact stuff. So I just appreciate transparency because it's hard to find that, especially as you're trying to grow your business. So where should people go to learn about your program?

Yeah, man, anything like home service. Businesscoach.com is kind of our hub. So that on any channel or just our website is. Is a great spot to, to kind of dig in a little more.

Okay, and is it like they set up a meeting and then they meet with someone or what does it look like for them?

Yeah, so it's kind of cool timing, man. Depends when this goes out. But we've launched like more of a junior program now for smaller guys. So kind of this like affordable opt in coaching model. And then we still have our flagship program we've had for like four and a half years now. So yeah, if they're serious, they just usually linger on our site. Usually we send them down like our rabbit trail of just content because they're just better clients when they listen to. I had a guy come in, man. He's like, I've listened to all your podcast episodes twice. I'm like, man, that's so crazy.

Sign me up, I don't care.

Yeah, exactly. I'm like, oh, you know too much about me. So, yeah, usually we'll just direct them to pod or YouTube's usually good.

Yeah.

But yeah, like, it's not uncommon, man, that someone's like, I've listened to your stuff for a year. I'm ready to go. So yeah, for the serious people booking a call. But other than that, I just say, like, consume all our free stuff because, like, the market's so big, man. Similar to you. Like, we just want like the best 2% of people in our. In our niche. That's really who we're motivated to help. And then another 98 just like take all the free stuff.

Yeah, exactly. All right, brother. Well, it's been great, man. Thanks so much. I'll talk to you soon.

Yeah, brother. Thanks for the time.

You got it.