Buying & Scaling 4 Service Businesses with Keith Sklarsky | Ep 92

Welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Phil Risher. And on today's episode, we're diving into how to grow your business and portfolio through strategic acquisitions with Keith Sklarsky. Thanks so much for joining us today, Keith.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Absolutely. So Keith transitioned from 10 years in corporate sales management at a major package delivery company to building a multi business empire in Prescott, Arizona. He successfully acquired and scaled four businesses across pet services, pest control, and landscaping, developing expertise in business acquisitions, SBA financing, and operational scaling. Keith partners with Luke and Colton to systematically acquire and improve service businesses, focusing on reoccurring revenue models and strong local market presence. All of those things. Every single person that just heard that is like, okay, I need to know more. So we're going to be diving into that on this episode. So, Keith, can you tell us a little bit, you were at this corporate job and how did you end up getting into home services?

Yeah, well, the first thing that I did, I moved to Prescott from Southern California, and my employer at the time didn't like that. And I was gonna be let go at some point. It was a matter of time anyways. So there was a business for sale here that I had been talking with the owner about for a while, and it was our first dog location. So it's a hotel and doggy daycare. And so I bought that building and business from the previous owner. And that was kind of my first realization of the way that people operate a lot of these businesses. You don't have to start these things, but you could come in and bring a skill set and improve on a business that somebody's already started. And still there's a lot of room in these, in a lot of these mom and pop operations to be able to do something like that and have it work out great for you.

Yeah. So I want to dive into that a little bit because, like, most people listen to this, have a business and they're, you know, you want a couple million dollars or something, and they see these mom and pop shops that are a little smaller and they don't have all their stuff together. Not on a CRM. There's pen and paper type stuff. How did you approach this person or, like, come up with this relationship? So that. And I don't think you did. You did.

Did you?

I don't know if you did SBA or not, but, like, how did you come up with that? And then the structure and then like, get this business. How did that go about?

Sure. For the first one, it was sba and yeah, it was listed on biz by sell, and I just reached out to the guy. The second and third acquisitions were a little bit different. The second one, I was just cold calling customers. So I had bought this dog place. Prescott's a relatively small market. There's only a few other options in town. And after realizing I can make these things successful, I was like, I may as well just reach out to somebody and see if they're willing to sell. They. The owner of the other dog location in town was willing to sell it. So we went through that with. That was my first partnership with Luke, my. One of my business partners, and we did that through just regular financing. He did a 1031 exchange for the building, and we purchased the business.

So, okay, so a lot of people, you know, they have an H VAC company, and they're like, okay, I want to do plumbing or electrical. So they're trying to find these companies to kind of bolt onto their business. They do gutter cleaning. They want a roofing contractor, vice versa. So you would go on biz, buy, sell, and just like to start. You have never go to biz by selling. You know, try to find some other businesses on there and then kind of reach out to them, like, hey, I saw your business was for sale. Let's have a conversation and see how this would go.

Yeah. Or that was the way that we. We did the first one, for sure. I think that's a great way to approach it, though. I mean, you're gonna. Because those people are, you know, that they're willing to sell. Right. So you have. You don't have the first barrier if you're cold calling somebody is, do. Do I. Do they even want to sell? Or am I just calling them and I'm gonna annoy them? And that's something that sometimes is hard to get over for people. So I would still recommend calling people that have shown interest in selling something. But on the cold calling side, I mean, we took a look at the data, a lot of data you can find online about who the owner is, where are they at in their career, how long have they been doing this? And if you see these things, you see that they're on the smaller side, and they're somewhere in the age where if they've been doing pretty good, they could probably retire. But, you know, you can scale this business. If you could come in and put some of these processes in place, invest some money in technology or in new equipment or whatever it is, or just training the crews properly when you can look at that and see that there's opportunity there. You can have a pretty good idea that if the current owner wanted to do something like that, they would have already done it. Right. So they're probably at a point of frustration with their business, too, because they're in there every day. They don't want to take out, you know, $200,000 of their monthly or annual cash flows to invest into this place because it's still going good for them and they don't really need to do those changes. But the upside is when you do those things, you come out of it a lot stronger. The business is a lot more appealing to a lot of people. The customers get a better experience out of working with you. So I would still. I would start with call in people that have shown interest in it, but then once you're through that, it's not going to be a huge list of people that are in the market ready to sell cold. Calling people is a great way, and finding out a little bit about them on the front end gives you a great in on knowing who to call and how to reach out to them and how to structure that conversation with them.

Yeah, I think that's really important. And I think the other thing is, like, you're not, you know, some private equity guy that's calling and, like, you get these emails all the time from people, you know, they're trying to, like you're another business owner who's like, hey, maybe there's an opportunity here. We could work together and, you know, I could buy your company or bolt it onto my business. I think goes a long way that you're like a local person that is like, yeah, community. Right. People probably resonate a lot more with that.

Yeah. And, you know, you can. There's a bunch of different ways to make that first approach, but I really love having somebody in the community that knows me and just trusted in the community make a soft introduction for us. You know, it's just a quick hello. Usually people are willing to do that for you. And then you come in. The first one is going to be the hardest because you don't have a history of doing it. But once you've done it once and you can show people, hey, look, this is what we do. We come in, we're going to honor what we say, we're going to be good stewards of your business, and we're going to move it forward in these ways, and you're going to get to see the outcome of it and know that you started this and we kept the business at its Core what you were looking to do. And we've made the improvements that we saw fit to grow it and make these customers happy and grow and just move it forward.

Yeah, it's very cool. So we're going to get into like how you scale these and that kind of stuff. And I have a couple other questions about bringing these people on. But I want to know the other businesses that you did. I think it was pest control and then landscaping, lawn care.

Yeah. So we bought the two dog hotels and then the next business we connected with a business broker here in town and it was great. He's the biggest broker in the Prescott area and he's a phenomenal guy and he has a lot of connections. But he had a business that was going to be listed and he was like, well, before I list it, I think you guys should meet the owner and talk with them. He's like, I think you guys are just going to get along. So we did. That went great. The owners were phenomenal people. And they ended up not even listing the business. We just went forward with purchasing it. So that was a commercial landscape company and a weed spraying and pest control company. The pest control company was like never really part of their strategy to grow. It was just an existing part of the business. They kept it. They really purchased the business for the commercial weed spraying capabilities, which is something that a commercial landscape company needs. And so those two just. Those were the same purchase but two separate entities that we purchased. Yeah.

Okay, that's awesome. Okay, so now we have a little understanding of the businesses. Can you talk about if someone wants to bolt on these businesses or acquire them? Do you give these people an earn out? Like, how do you run four businesses? You know, some people are like, I can barely run business alone. Like, how do you run four? Do you put a GM in there? And then you, you know, they were doing 400000 in profit. So I hire a GM for 200 and then or so what does that look like? Like, how does.

Yeah, the biggest part we try to get. We try to buy businesses that have existing employees that are promising because it's hard to purchase a new business. The team's already going through, the owner leaving and you coming in and then bringing in an outside hire just adds another layer of uncertainty to the employees. And you want to keep all the good employees that you can. So we try to find places that have existing employees that are really good layers of management that are taking some responsibility from the owners and can we can put more onto them and increase their earning Potentials, and they have to have the willingness to do that. But so that's what we try to do. And then we. When I come into an operation, I replace the owner and I see, okay, here's all the stuff that the owner is doing. Which of these things can be delegated to an employee who's already doing some stuff or showing promise, and we want to give them that opportunity. So we just start to work through it. And it's not a quick thing. Like, you can't just come in and say, oh, I don't want to do this anymore. So I'm going to assign it to this person. Like, you need to understand the full impact of what the owner was doing, you know, why they were doing it, why were they communicating with these people, what was their approach to these things. And then if you want to tweak it, you can. But I wouldn't recommend just coming in saying, I don't want to do this part of this job. I'm going to give it to somebody else. So we tried. Yeah, I try to come in and understand fully as best I can what they were doing and why they were doing it. And then we try to delegate that work to somebody that can step into that role.

Yeah, I think it's great. And you know, people that listen to our content or hear anything, I'm always talking about buying back your time, the book. Dan Martell, Buy back your. And I think a lot of people, owners, me included, you kind of get stuck in like, oh, that only takes me five minutes to do. Or, you know, oh, I know how to do that the best. But it's like, what is your unique ability and the one main one, two or three things that's like, really good for you and then who can you give that to? And I think it's encouraging to hear you say, like, when you come in from an outside perspective, it's very analytical. You don't have the emotions tied up in, like, the hero syndrome or being able to do these things. And I think people listening to have one business, hopefully this is liberating for you that, like, you can do this with your own business, just one person, and give, you know, scale your business while also getting things off your plate that you're just running around doing that you probably shouldn't be doing.

Yeah, yeah. My focus as much as I can is culture and growing the organization and anything that distracts from that. I need to find a way to bring somebody in, they can do it or delegate it to one of our existing employees because it Although the other stuff is important, it's not more important than where my focus needs to be. So, yeah, even though it's like, okay, this is just gonna take a couple minutes, I'll just do it. Not only are you robbing the organization of that time that you should be putting towards something else, you're taking opportunity away from your employees like they want. They're there because they, most of them want a career and they want an opportunity to grow. And the more you shield them from being able to be involved in these conversations, you know you're going to frustrate them, they're going to feel stuck, and then you're feeling stressed because you have these things that aren't that meaningful at the end of the day, but you feel you're the only one that can do it. Right. You have to have the expectation that maybe they're not going to do it exactly the way that I want it, maybe that a couple of times they're going to mess it up. Right. That's part of growing through somebody, becoming more responsible, responsible partner in your organization, and you need to take them through that. But as long as you don't expect them to do it exactly the way you would do it every single time and do it perfect every single time, be open to someone messing up, and the outcome of it is still good. I think that a lot of times when we hold that information from people or try not to include them in things, we end up doing a disservice to our organization, too. Because sometimes, you know, people don't always want to deal with just the owner on every single thing. Sometimes they're gonna. They're gonna not tell you something or they're gonna not bring an issue to you because, oh, well, it's the owner. And I know they're busy, and I don't even want to bother them with this, but it's, you know, part of the customer's experience with you. And the more people that they can reach out to and know that those things will still get addressed, the better off they end up feeling about the. Their partnership with you. Like, they want to know that they can reach out to you, but they also don't want to be a bother to you.

Yeah, man. I think the shielding piece is just like a very good reframe for a lot of people. That's like, you got to let your team fly, good or bad. It's like a kid, right? You got to let them go for it. And to see what happens, I want to talk about. So you bought the commercial landscaping and then there was a pest control component, and you kind of split it off. Is, is the pest control, Is it commercial and residential? That's kind of the. You kind of built that up as a separate site.

Yeah, we've grown it a little bit. And we just recently did a complete rebrand of our pest control company. Because we bought it. The old owner hadn't put effort towards. He didn't need to. It was there, it was doing fine, and he had other stuff that was on his plate. Right. So we came in, we, you know, redid all the trucks, we redid the logo, and then we started doing video content for the local Prescott area. And that video content is me talking about, hey, I'm a, we're a family owned business. I live here locally. If we screw up, you're gonna see me in town and I'm not gonna be able to run away from this. Like, we're not here to screw you. We want to provide you guys the best service. And so that's where we are at right now is scaling that pest control side. And there's a bunch of different things. You know, we, we have the pest control, but we also will do commercial and residential weed spraying and pre emergence, you know, we do any type of pest removal. So if you got rodents or raccoons or bees or whatever, we can come in and handle those things. And our, that's our goal is to like, just provide the best value for, for pest control services in town and make sure that customers are happy with us. And that's part of the reason we, we're one of the only places in town that don't offer contracts or don't require contracts to work, you know, to work with us. A lot of people make you sign up for a year and you know, I say in our ads, like, I'm going to earn your business every single time. If we screw up, we're going to make it right or you can leave. You're not stuck with us. We're gonna make sure that we come out and do right by you and treat your home like it's our home. We're gonna do the best we can.

Yeah, very good. So it sounds like you did the rebrand, rewrapped the trucks, then creating local content. And I guess you're creating organic content and then you're running ads on that organic content.

Yeah, yeah. So we're, we, we're running Google Ads, Instagram, Facebook, I think some YouTube stuff as well. But yeah, we're just trying to reach as many people as we can. Because that's the benefit of buying a business that maybe hasn't done that before is like, it's all untapped. You can do whatever you want with the marketing side of it, the branding side of it. With the existing customers, you want to keep them around so you try to stay in line with what their expectations are. But for new customers, you can offer whatever it is that you want your new customers to be. You know, maybe your ideal customer isn't the customers that you bought that business with, but you don't need to dump them all out and try to restart. Like, you can build through and bring on new customers that are your ideal client and that are. You're happy to work with. And I think that's a important thing too, is like, there's so many customers out there. The limit isn't on the customers. Limit is on our ability and willingness to go out and find those customers and, and clearly communicate to them what our goal is and then they can make the decision on, okay, is this the type of business that I want to work with? And if both of those things come together, you're going to have a great client that isn't going to leave because you have to increase 5% because costs have gone up, or isn't going to leave because your tech was late one day or didn't do something and made a mistake. Those things happen. People understand it if all the other things are aligned and they're. You're a business that they want to be working with in the first place.

Yeah. So good. I think a lot of people, you know, the business that they have built or that they are bought and come into, it's like, this is the customers that you have and this is what you do. But there's also like, no. As business owners, you know, we have the creative mindset, like, we can change this tomorrow. Like, we can go do something else that's going to make me more aligned with our values and what we want. It's not just, oh, this is what we have to do. And a case in point is like creating content. A lot of people are so worried about, oh, well, we don't do that. We don't just like, just do it and see what happens and try to talk a different way and target a different audience. I think it's so good. I want to ask you about, like, scaling. Is it just, you know, when you look at it, are you looking at, okay, obviously we need to increase our leads and our new customers, but are there things internal like, okay, we didn't have a performance pay, and then we're implementing a performance pay. We weren't tracking how many jobs we were booking. So, like, maybe it's all of it, but like, what are those things that you're sure it's all of it, but I'm curious, like, is there a specific thing you're like, okay, we got to knock this one out first and then we move on to that.

Yeah. I mean, on the pest control company specifically, it was all of it. I mean, like the system that we bought for billing, when we bought the business, the system that was in place was. I don't even know what it's called, but it's the green letters on the old computers, like DOS or something. Like a DOS system. Yeah. And so we, that was our technology at the time. But yeah, I mean, for scaling, I think, you know, we invested in getting in new technology. Right. Which is new to us, but the industry standard probably really something that tracks chemicals, that tracks time, that notifies customers when you, you're going to be there, that gives you the opportunity to create notes, or the customer can create notes, you can take pictures. Like, all that stuff we had to invest in because it just wasn't part of like, it was, it was the DOS system and then handwritten tickets and the guys would write where they went, how many chemicals they thought they used and drop it on a desk, you know, so. Yeah, but you know, the. One of the. I think the two biggest things are the technology side of it, right? Like just providing the customer certainty on when you're going to be there for a recurring business like this. And then the communication piece is huge. Like customers knowing, hey, I got an email that you're coming and now I'm expecting a bill versus, I had no idea you were coming. I don't even know if you really showed up. And now I get a bill and I'm trying to figure out, was I home that day that they're supposed to be here. Does this, is this correct? Or do they just bill me? And like, those types of things cause uncertainty and those are the things that cause churn. But if a customer knows when you're going to be here, if a customer knows that you've done the job, if they trust it and then you send them a bill, they're not going to think twice about that. They're going to pay the bill and move on because they don't want to spend time on it either. But if they don't feel like they're getting what they what? Their expectations or their expectations aren't being met. That's when they're going to start calling the office every day. You know, it just creates so much more work that communication at the front end fixes. And so that's one of the things that I think is also very important. Just the communication. Just over communicate with your customers and you know, they could tell you to shut up and that's fine, but at least you're not saying, well, I just assumed that they knew we'd be there. I just assumed that they expected a bill to be coming. It was like they have other stuff that they're doing. Of course, same thing with your employees. Like, you might tell them something one time and then you move on. Like, man, I told them that. Like, yeah, but you told them one time and you're busy and they're busy. And over communicating is the way that you make sure that customers are happy, employees are happy. It's just such an important pillar in making an organization successful.

Yeah, the customer journey aspect of it. I, so I used to be director of business development at a $3 million home service business. Yeah, When I came in there, I'm like, okay, so a lead comes in, what happens right then? Like, okay, they don't answer the phone. What happens? We send them an estimate. What happens? They approve the estimate, what happens? And then it continues through the journey of like recurring customers. How do we stay top of mind? Are we texting them, are we emailing them? And when we started to make these changes, the business started to grow and a lot of companies, they're like, oh, well, yeah, we know we should be doing that, but we don't do it. And to your point, it's like if you just install these things and look at your actual customer journey. So someone listening to this is like, think about where are the leak points and where do you feel like your communication is off because you're going to lose customers, you're not going to attract the right customers. Because the right customers want good communication. They want to feel they're willing to spend more money by having someone that's respectful and responsible. Is that what you found?

Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah, Yeah, I think, I mean, I think one of the barriers that I see a lot for business owners who are like, maybe stuck in that 250 to million dollar range is like, they don't want to increase the price because they're worried that the price is what's keeping the customers. And it's like, no, if the price is the only thing that's keeping your customers there, something's broken somewhere else. And once you fix that, like customers are more than willing to pay, it's not worth the hassle for them to change over you having to, you know, increase your prices. When they love what you do, they love your tech, they love whoever's coming out to do it. You always are communicating with them. They're going to pay because, yeah, they don't want to go and say, okay, well, I can change, but is this guy going to be any better or is it going to be worse, or is it going to cost me more money or less? Like, those are decisions that completely go out the window when that customer is happy with you and when you're communicating with them, that's a great way to know because if you're communicating with them now, they feel free to communicate with you too. And so you're going to get the feedback like, hey, this keeps happening when your guy shows up, or really not happy about XYZ that's been going on. But if you don't have a line of communication for them, it's like in one ear, out the other. Next thing you know, they're gone. They're never going to tell you why they left. And. And you've just lost a customer. Now you've got to go try to replace that customer. And it costs you a lot more money to try and find that new customer, you know, so. But yeah, I think it's a mental barrier that, you know, I have it too. I still go through it and at the end it's like what I always tell my buddies. And it's like, your customers, if you're doing a good job, they would rather pay more and have you still exist than have you not charge what you need to. And then you go out of business and you're no longer an option for them. Right. So they're willing to pay what you need. You just need to communicate with them. And, you know, a lot of people are really reasonable, A lot of people that your, your customers have been business owners or they, you know, they've worked somewhere and they understand, like, things change. Sometimes prices need to change. And if you give them a clear reason of why, like, hey, I've done a bad job over the last five years. I haven't raised your price at all. And I'm sorry for that. We're going to have to do something here. Most people are going to understand that. And you just can't be scared to have those conversations with them.

Yeah. So good. I Think a lot of people shy away from their pricing. There's a really good book on this called Marketing to the Affluent from Dan Kennedy, and he says that as you charge more money, people work with you because of who you are, not what you do. And, and a lot of times businesses, they have, they don't do a good job of telling the story of who they are. Like, did you know we have a thousand five star Google reviews? Did you know that I'm a local guy, that you're going to see me around town? Look at these beautiful trucks that we have. The affluent people want to tell the story. They want to, they want to spend more money on something that's even better because they want to tell the story. And I think a lot of times people want the affluent people, but they don't want to, they don't want to build their business so that it attracts them.

Yeah, no, for sure. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, affluent people are people who have been successful. They're. They want to see other people be successful. I've never met somebody who's been successful and is like, man, this, this guy sucks. I hope he just doesn't do well at all. Right. Like, if you're doing a good job, they're going to want to see you be successful. And that's where like a customer referral comes in. Like, if you're doing a good job and in an affluent customer where you want to grow, they're going to share their experience with others. They're going to talk about how great you are. They're not going to talk about that you're more expensive. Because at the end of the day, really, it doesn't matter. Like, we're talking about the difference of, you know, in most of these services, a couple of bucks, you know, like a recurring business like that, like, it's not at the end of the day going to shape their decision, but their expectations and their willingness to work with you. And if they like you, those are the things that are going to move you forward with the customer base. Like that.

Yeah, completely agree. I want to also ask you about like performance pay or structuring the team as far as, like, okay, it's great on the community, on the, on the, you know, bringing new customers in. But internally, like, what I faced was there was no goals, right? Our CSRs didn't have any goals for bookings. The techs didn't have any goals for upselling. There was no goals in place. And then no one had any performance pay. And I would imagine that's A big part of the lever where a lot of the traditional businesses is just like, not that aspect. Is that something that you've been putting into your business, like burden rate and analyzing route density and that kind of stuff, or what does that look like as far as the changes that you're making?

Yeah. So we don't hold the guys to like a route density thing because with us doing all the investing that we've done in our best control company, we brought on more guys than we needed because we are anticipating the growth and we don't want our failure to have guys that can do the work be the reason that this campaign isn't successful. So to me, it's not fair to bring on additional guys and have them waiting for us to grow and then say, well, yeah, you're only getting three things done today, what's going on? But we do have a performance pay and we will, as we grow in those routes do become. Because route density and pest control is such an important part of it. Like the difference between you being able to walk to the next customer and drive to the next customer can be the difference between you being profitable or not. Right. So the closer that we can get. So density is super important. But we do pay our guys, like commissions on bringing on new clients. And part of that was to help with them filling their time while we're going through acquiring these new customers is like you, you know, we have these things going on, but you can also go out and make, I think we pay them like 50% of the first year for pest control. So you can go out and do these things and grow your own book of business and get paid from us for doing it. So just incentivizing them to, to talk with new customers, just go out there and be seen. You know, that's part of our marketing strategy was like, we just want. We. Our trucks look different now than all the other pest control companies in town. And that was, you know, by design. It's like, just get out there and be seen. Just, just being seen is going to give customer a reason to think, like, oh, I wonder what that is. Are they new? You know, something like that. And that was part of the reason we did that is because the reviews from the past, you know, 15 years of two different owners going through it, our reviews weren't that great. Right. So people who did work with us and thought, you know, the only reviews, people who leave are upset unless you go out and find a way to incentivize them to reach out when there's a Good review that they want to leave. Most of the time it's just going to be bad stuff. And if you've never done anything to foster people reaching out for the compliments, it's all going to be bad. And that's kind of where we were is like, okay, this is, this is bad. We need to figure something out.

So yeah, exactly. I face that same thing. 30. They had 36 Google reviews at a 3 million dollar business when I started and it was all like, yeah, bad stuff. And so then we incentivize the technicians and we're running routes like, hey, if you get a review then we'll give you, we'll compensate you for the review and then kind of built it into the customer journey on the job site of what that looks like. And I think a lot of people, they default to, oh, we'll just have an automated text go out and it's like, no, that's, that's like a catch all. But if you build it into your actual process with your team to build that relationship, you're going to get more reviews, not just relying on the automation piece to it.

Yeah, and I definitely recommend an automation piece piece to it. Like our system allows the email that goes out. The customer can leave a review right there in the email. If it's five star, you know, we can, we can post that. And if it's less than that, it's still just an internal email. So we reach out to those customers like, hey, what could we have done different? What was, what caused the you to not want to give us five stars? Because that's not our goal. Our goal is to get five stars. I mean there's something that's actionable on our side. You know, we'd love to know and be able to fix that for you. But yeah, it, I think it's easy for customers to assume when things are going good, like, oh, other people are going to notice this or other people are going to leave a review. So if you're not the one bringing it to them, it's not top of mind for them, but they probably would leave you a good review if you ask them. And so just, just asking them and having it be part of like you said, that sales process or after a service is completed, like giving that customer a little bit of a reason to go make that because it's, it's an investment on their part, they're taking time out of their day. You know, we got to make sure that it's something that we bring to them and it's not just, well, I hope they leave a five star review for us. Like, you got to, you got to be a little bit more proactive than that.

Yeah. Something that we do is in the actual customer journey process, we'll have the owner record like two videos. The first one will just say like, hey, I'm a local guy. You know, my family goes to this thing. Thanks so much for choosing us for your service. Just want to say how much I appreciate it. If you ever have any issues, reach out and we'll make it right. Then after the invoice or like for you, like once, you know, a year or something, just have a video of you that goes out and says like, hey, local guy here. You know, appreciate you working with us. The number one way that we grow our business is through word of mouth from referrals and the best way you could help us with that is by leaving us a five star review. If you have never done that before, do you mind clicking the link in this email and helping us with that? And we usually do that at the end of an invoice or in this reoccurring stage. But it's like what you're saying, it's like you got to make it them aware of why this is important to you. And nine times out of them, like, yeah, I should leave this guy review. Like, they do such a great job, right?

Yeah, yeah. And I think people want. There's also, you know, the, I guess community side of it is people want to leave reviews and be seen as somebody that's helping out their, their neighbors or like they want to be trusted in their community too. So you give them the opportunity to say, hey, here's here was my experience with XYZ company and then somebody else is going to see that and experience it too. But it's like there's more to it than just like convincing somebody to give a review. Right. It's not just about, okay, I like this company. It's like, I like these people. I love what they did for us. They were fair in the way that they treated me. I need to tell people about this and I want to be, you know, I want to be on the front end of letting people know, like, hey, this is a great spot to be if you're looking for something in town, you know, go with these guys.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So my dad is actually a service manager at a pest control company. Uh, he's been in pest control for 30 years. Like I did ride alongs when I was a kid. He used to work at a Local company. Then they got bought by Orin. Now he's back at a local company. But he's been telling me that there's. This has been a while, but there's like a shift, I guess, from like CSR customer service person to inside sales reps. Like, basically like lead flow comes in and then they. It's just a shift. And in home service, people are getting to this, right? The traditional CSR just answering a call for, hey, you need an H Vac guy out there, it's shifting to these inside sales reps. Have you guys experienced that or how have you shifted kind of the internal piece of it? I know you mentioned the text can get compensated, but what about the internal pieces?

Yeah, so, I mean, we have our back office that we try to make sure is like the first point of contact for that. Right. And yeah, we don't. We haven't gone through and actually trained them in selling, but I. It's definitely something that we're going to do because there's a huge difference between somebody who's just there to answer a call and get something booked and somebody who has knowledge of what's going on, can ask the right questions and then get an upsell for something that, you know, I, I feel like people are kind of like worried about doing upsells sometimes. But if it's. If it's in the best interest of that customer and you don't mention that to them, that's another reason that they're going to leave. Somebody else is going to come in and say, hey, they should have been telling you that you need this too. And nobody's ever mentioned that to you. So it's not like upselling is not. I don't think it should be like a scary word for anybody. Like, you're trying to align what you provide to the customer to reach the goals that they have. Right. And sometimes they don't know all the things that they're going to need. And an inside salesperson is a great way to get that done because you can have them communicate, have them ask the right questions, and then provide the solutions that you can give that customer. And yeah, sometimes it's going to cost a little bit extra money. But like with pest control, if you just. If somebody calls, says they want pest control, you know, they're not always thinking, okay, well, does that include rodents? Does that include bees? Like, I'm just assuming pest control is pest control, you're going to come out and you're going to handle it. And so if we don't have somebody that says, oh, do you ever have problems with this? Do you have problems with this? When our tech's out, we're gonna have them take a look and they can give you some information. If you guys want some pricing for that, we can do that down the line, whatever it is. But just being able to talk to that customer and fully understand what their goal is, like, they're, they're calling you for one thing, and that's top of mind. But there's other stuff that you can help them with, and it's in your best interest and their best interest for you to talk about those things.

Yeah, it's so good. We have a saying like sales is service, that it's not sales, it's. You're actually serving the client by offering everything, asking them about their stuff and then giving them option. A big issue that we see a lot in home service is that we don't have these checklists, like the technician will go into the home or the csr. We get a call, but there's no checklist to like ask the right questions. So then you don't open up the opportunity to, to serve them. You just have like technician blinders on or your CSR blinders on. And you never actually open up the door for more conversations. So then you're just running, you know, $200 jobs, but you don't, you're not building the opportunity for bigger jobs, and it's just way out of alignment. So I think what you're saying is right, that it does take a different person, but it also, you shouldn't shy away from it. With this, the service side, is there anything else that you're like, hey, this has been a game changer for us or something? I know the rebrand. So with the rebrand, this can be a big undertaking for a lot of people. And making the decision, rebrand or no rebrand, was that a hard decision for you or was it just like they had nothing, so we just said, let's rebrand?

Yeah, no, it was still hard. I mean, the, the name stayed the same, so that was an easy call. It's a lot tougher if you're going to look at, okay, am I changing the name? Right. Because the name is where a lot of the value of your businesses as far as the customer, like knowing you, right, like, you're still gonna operate. If you got a good sales team in place, you're still gonna grow. But those existing customers know you for the name, right? So, yeah, not changing the name, it was just the logo and to me, it was a no brainer because the old logo was probably made in the 90s. It was a little box and like, it looked like somebody drew it on the, on the computer when the early versions of drawing were available on computers. And so it was like, this doesn't represent, like, I don't want to wear this logo. It doesn't represent what I want this to be. It doesn't represent what we're trying to tell the customers that we are. So it was an easy choice for us. It was still a, you know, it took it an investment. It wasn't cheap to do, but it was worth it to get the logo and my brand to be what I'm promising these customers because there's a disconnect in those things. You know, the perceived value of your business is different and perceived value plays into the customer's experience. You know, they're, they're going to pay more if all the things are aligned in their mind and they can make a great connection. Like, okay, I see this logo, I don't really think about it, but that logo looks like what they're trying to tell me, their businesses versus the opposite of like, well, they told me that they're really high end and they told me that they're going to provide this great service. And then I see their truck and it looks not that great. And the logo kind of, something's off about it. I don't know. Those things customers aren't going to tell you, but they play into it. So I think for me it was just, you know, am I proud to wear this logo and are my techs going to be proud to wear this logo? And does it represent what we're trying to tell the customers? And it didn't. So we changed it. And it was a pretty easy decision for us. But we've, we've done other rebrands, like the Dog Hotel rebrand. That was a lot tougher of a decision because, you know, we didn't make that big of a change to it for one of them. And it was like, man, is this, is this even worth doing it? Do I, do I really want to invest in doing this and having to buy new uniforms and having to buy new logos and stickers and all the stuff that goes into it. And we ended up doing it after that because I just felt like it would be good to have a new, you know, kind of turn over a new leaf on that one. But if the, if the pest control company had a logo that I was happy with and I was Just trying to do a rebrand. I. That would be a lot tougher decision for us to make because, you know, then it's more of a personal decision than a business decision. And yeah, you don't want to. Cause there, if your business is operating well, customers like you, you like the logo. The customers like the logo. The customers like the look of the trucks. Like, it's not something that you just need to change. Because I feel like this is getting old and I want to redo it. Like, I wouldn't recommend doing that.

Yeah, don't just create chaos in your business. Say we're rebranding today, like, and come up with a plan. And usually a rebrand is going to be, you know, 20, 30, 40 plus thousand dollars if you do it right with wraps and logos and all the stuff. So it's like, don't just go on fiverr and get someone to make a new logo for you, but, like, you know, spend your time on it.

Oh, yeah, no, for sure. And. And you know, a lot of, like the company that we worked with for the rebrand, like, they test it in audiences to see what do people respond to. Do they like these things? Do they not like these things? Should we make adjustments here? So it can't just be. I mean, unless you're a wizard at logos, that shouldn't be a decision you make on your own. You should bring in a professional to help you with that.

Yep, for sure. While we wrap up here, I'm curious. So obviously now you have three, four acquisitions. Are you like, on the hunt or are you in build mode? Or how do you make that decision and change?

Yeah. So, I mean, with my business partners, Luke and Colton, we set up our entity to try and find other good local businesses that we can continue to buy. And so that is still our goal. And when those things come up, we're going to take a look at them. We evaluate probably, you know, a couple every quarter of businesses that popped up on our radar, we had a connection with and just see, you know, with each one, is it worth pursuing? Because I'm not naive to think I, I can do everything right. Like, I, I will be taking away from the stuff that we're doing now if we acquire something else. But our goal is to continue to acquire in these businesses that have, you know, a great presence, a great opportunity, recurring revenue, and just find ways to fit them into our ecosystem. And, you know, to your point earlier of, you know, are you going to hire somebody for 200 grand? Like, there's going to come a Point where that is the only option. Like, like I don't have the bandwidth to do it. We've got to find somebody that can do it and we're gonna have to pay them and that's totally fine too. But yeah, we're still looking for, for businesses that we can acquire this time.

Nice. Yeah, I think it's good. I'm kind of getting the point in my business where it's like there should be a layer to having that either a bolt on for your business or you're just like, hey, I know this framework. Like I've learned the framework. So like I know I could deploy this in other places and it gets you there a lot faster than starting it from scratch. Yeah, I think, yeah. You get to a point where you're like, okay, I could see how this would all work and you could fit this onto your business or deploy the same game plan somewhere else.

Yeah, yeah. I mean I always, we always look at like our existing customers, right? Like with the pest control specifically, what other businesses are people who are using pest control going to use? Like they're going to get their windows washed, they're going to get their house pressure washed. Yeah. There's so many things that now you've got an existing client base and you figure out what other things that they need. And now you've got an existing client base that you can bring a new product to. And again, back to the communication piece. If they love everything that you're doing and they love you, they're going to give you a shot to do the other stuff. Right. But you got to find those things that are in alignment with your current or ideal customer. Right. Maybe the current customers don't do those things, but the ideal customer that you do want is going to want you to be able to do those things or would go with you if you offered them.

Yeah. So good. Well, Keith, this has been great, man. Where should people go to connect with you or what, what should they do? Leave you a five star review if you like this comment. But as far as like for you, where, what should they go?

I have an Instagram and Facebook. People are more than welcome to reach out to me there. I love connecting with people and helping them. If I can provide any value to what they're trying to do and you can always, people can shoot me an email. It's Keithitan landscape.com awesome.

Well, thanks man. This bigger. I could literally talk to you all day. So I really just appreciate it. I appreciate your openness and just like, I really like what you guys are doing as far as buying companies, building systems and teams and not just getting stuck in the technician mindset, which is just so refreshing to hear that. So really good job and kudos to you guys, man.

It sweet. Yeah, it was a pleasure talking with you, man. I really appreciate it.

Yeah, you got it, bro.

Thanks.