He Hit $1M… Then Got Stuck. These 4 Fixes Took Him to $1.8M
Adam Sylvester scaled his gutter company from $1M to $1.8M by building a sales machine, creating a recurring gutter protection plan, and restructuring his CSR team. He learned that referrals alone hit a ceiling, and a month-long sabbatical exposed the operational gaps holding him back.
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Welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Phil Risher. And on today's episode, we're diving into the big shift to unlock growth in your home service business once you cross a million dollars in revenue. With Adam Sylvester. Thanks so much for joining us today, Adam.
Yeah, thanks for having me. It's always a pleasure being on with Phil the Great Phil.
So Adam's owner, Charlottesville Gutter Pros. They're a client of ours. We also have done stuff together. Adam's the host of the Jobber podcast, Masters of Home Service. He, he was on our podcast before probably two years ago, and we talked about building the million dollar business in 36 months. And I thought it'd be good to have him come back on and talk about what has shifted in the business once you cross that million dollar threshold. But with that, Adam, can you give someone like a quick background, you know, the CLC side, like how you got to this point?
Yeah, definitely. So I started shorts of lawn care when I was a kid. And then in 2013 I became like full time lawn care basically. And then in 2020, I was hanging out with my, my friend, now friend, Donovan Questenberry down in North Raleigh, North Carolina, and he was doing big things in the gutter world. So I went down visit him, followed his guys around, and he made a fortune one day. And I was like, well, I want to make fortunes every day too. So I opened up a gutter company basically the next day. Still have my lawn care business. I'm actually actively, I don't think you know this. I'm. Well, you actually do. I'm actively growing. That business I put on the door on the back burner for a couple years while I grew Gutter Pros. But now I want to do big money in grass and in gutters. So I have two companies and got five kids, happily married and glad to be here. That's pretty much, pretty much my background. I host the Jobber podcast too. I was driving around town a few weeks ago and I stopped. This lawn care guy was pulled over on the side of the road fixing his lug nut on his truck or something. He was broken down. I felt bad for him, so I said he looked young. I was like, hey, man. And we started talking. He's a lawn care guy. Even though no one walks around with a smile on their face, they're always frowning. I still talk to him because they're always nice. Yeah. And he was like, do I know you? I was like, well, we just met. He goes, no, no, no, you're You're. You're the. You're the podcast. You're the Jobber podcast guy.
Oh, my God.
I was like, that's a. You know, four years later, that's the first time I ever got that.
So I love it.
I'm the podcast guy. Go to Vegas, meet people like you, and that's a good gig.
Yeah, dude, I. I never get recognized, but this is so random. I was taking my daughter to daycare, and I went while I was picking her up, and a guy came out of his truck. You know, he had, like, the neon hoodie on. Like, definitely, like a. A tech guy. Technician.
Yeah, yeah.
And he looked at me, and then he did the double take. Like, I know this guy. Where do I know this guy? And, like, you know him. You get that double take. It was from Jobber. It was from the Jobber podcast.
Ah, yeah.
He's like, I've heard you on Jobber podcast. And like, it was just like, really? That's my own one and only, so.
Well, you have been on about 100 times, so I'm not surprised.
Yeah. All right, so you hit a million dollars in your business. What shifted? Because from what I know a little bit about your story, you hit a million dollars. But then maybe there was like a period or two where it was like, how do I get over this next hump?
Was there.
Was there something that you faced, or what was the crux of it?
Yeah, I mean, gosh, starting the second business was so much easier than starting the first. There's a. There's an old saying that if you see a turtle on a fence post, you know, it didn't get there by itself. And I feel like gutter pros just rode the knowledge and wisdom and understanding that I gained from running shorts of lawn care. And I just. It just. It just. Just took off. So the first year, we did, like, 300,000. Back in 2020. 2020. Like, the first half. Second half, 2020. And then we did 800,000. And then we did 1.1, and then we did 1.3, and I was like. And then this past year, we did 1.8, 1.85, which was. I'm was happy with. My goal was 1.8. And there is a. There. There are some things that you have to, like, change a little bit when you start to grow. You can't just rely on referrals. Not that I ever did, but I talk to people all the time. They're like, oh, yeah, just referrals. Referrals. No one's Running a. No one's running a large organization off referrals. Yeah. If they are, they're unicorns. And you shouldn't try to be like them because there's only one Walmart and you're not gonna be it. You have to actually create like a, A sales and marketing machine. You can't just rely on, like your website anymore. You can't, you can't just rely on one channel. That's the, that's the thing I like. What got you to a million won't get you to two or three or four. You have to cast the net so much wider. You have to increase the number of leads. You get by a lot. And especially for people like me, high, high volume, low average job size. We need a lot of leads. Yeah, we need a lot of leads. And so we can't just rely on the old stuff. We have to, like, innovate and create more demand.
Yeah. So in your business, can you talk about how the sales structure has shifted? Because in your business, you weren't like, running out doing all the sales calls or anything, but could you talk about even like in the CSR inside sales rep role, how that has shifted and what you had to put out?
Phil, I just hire a bunch of VAs from the Philippines, and they just run my business, and it's amazing. And they cost $2 an hour, and it's, it's. I don't do that kind of stuff. And I know there's a lot of people out there, you know? You know, it drives you crazy, Phil, when like someone in a group setting, maybe it's like a WhatsApp chat or wherever around a dinner table and someone asks a pretty, like, legit question. It's well thought out, it's deep. It's not just. And. And some guy. And we all know who that guy is. Oh, well, you just need a VA from the Philippines. Yeah, that'll solve your problem. No, you're like, I'm. I'm just so tired of the get a VA from Philippines answer. I've had VAs from overseas for certain things, but never customer facing ever, ever, ever. Okay, now, my Gutter Pros company, we have remote staff who are CSRs. One's a semi, semi retired woman who's like 65. Her husband's a musician. They travel around their country in rv and she has Starlink. She's amazing. She's American and she knows houses and she knows. She knows stuff. Right?
Yeah.
What I'm not going to do is put the most important touch point my Entire business in the hands of someone who doesn't even know what a gutter is. Mm.
Yeah.
Hello.
Yeah, that's a good one.
Hello.
What's. What's a.
What's a lawnmower? Yeah, we don't have those in our. You know, whatever. Whatever the case may be. And so all these people who are like, oh, Yeah, I got VAs. They're good. I don't care how good they are. They're not American to, like, no gutters or lawn care or window cleaning or pressure washing or painting or home remodeling, none of that stuff. So no shade to them. It's just a different culture.
Yeah.
So I'm pretty. I'm pretty passionate about that. I think that we. So I built my business on CSRs who live and reside in America, who know our trade. I paid them a lot more.
Yeah.
But it's worth it.
Yeah. So how has your sales. When you talk about the sales structure that had to shift from a million, I'm just guessing this. Maybe it was. Hey, just call us. This is our pricing. Let's have someone come out. Did you start tracking booking rate? Did you start giving them some type of incentive?
It.
Was there something.
Yeah, I think two things changed. One, we got you guys in place. Two year. You got. We're coming up on two years next month with you guys.
Yeah.
And it's been awesome. You know, obviously, we went from 1.1 to 1.3 to 1.8. So big, big. But we just weren't nurturing our clients. We just weren't. We would send them a quote, follow up a couple days later from Jobber. That's cool, but that's not nurture. And so the nurture had a huge impact on our ability just, like, wrap our tentacles around our clients in a way that we couldn't before. So that's number one. And that plays out in a lot of different ways. That plays out with Yalls software. That plays out with how our. Our csrs follow up on a regular basis. We're doing happy calls now, which we never did before, and to make sure that people are happy and whatnot. The second thing we've done, and this is a big Hormosi thing, but we've. We've really nailed. Nailed down what our true. What our offer is, you know, really. What is. What is our offer? Yesterday I was at the gym, and the chick here that does Valpak. You know what Valpak is? The blue envelope, the coupons. Yeah. I used to think I was stupid, and then I did it because she saw me at the gym one day, and she was like, are you the gutter guy? I was like, no, it's not. It's not me. It's somebody else. Because I knew she was some kind of salesperson. Yeah, I heard her pitch. I did three months, and it was. It was like 10x return. It was awesome. So I did it for a while. Anyway, the point is, yesterday she saw me at the gym. She's like, adam, your competitor? I won't say who it was. He's offering to beat any quote they get by 100 bucks. You better look out. He's coming for you. I said, she literally changed her name, her last name, to Valpak. Her name is Michelle Valpak. Okay.
Whoa. So she.
She's sold out.
Yeah.
Michelle, I'm not worried. Neither should you. Okay? The reason I'm not worried is because we're selling apples and they're selling oranges.
Yeah.
You can't. Someone can't be like, well, here's their quote. He's like, well, we don't offer that. They can't compare the quote to anything because our offer is so good and so robust.
Yeah. What's the offer? What's the offer?
It's. So our offer was. It's evolved, but now it's finally. I got it. The offer is, okay, here's the deal. We have 400 people who have us come to their house every six months. Cleaner gutters. 400 people in Charleston. Okay. The vast majority of those people have us do that for years. So once we realized that, we just made a plan for it. We called it something really fancy, the gutter protection plan. And so all they do is they use them for two years. You get four cleanings, and one of them's free. Four for the price of three. Three cleanings. You get one for. You pay for three, get one for a fourth one clean.
What?
However you want to say it. We're still working out the message on exactly how to say it, right? Yeah. They're gonna sign up for two years anyways. Might as well give them a free cleaning. Yeah, that free cleaning cost is 100 bucks. We get 1500 dollars up front from them. That's pretty darn good. And we can use that to keep reinvesting in Valpak and all the things you want to spend money on.
Yeah, I think about an H vac. It's like, hey, so you could pay, you know, 800 bucks today, or you could get this cleaning for free, and you're going to need us every six months anyway. So we have this thing where you get this first cleaning free, and then you get the next three paid for, and you pay now.
And our technicians, once they finish cleaning somebody's house who didn't sign up for the plan, can say, hey, ma', am, were you happy today? Yeah. You guys are great. Great. Do you want today to be free?
Yeah.
Oh, you know what? I forgot about that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's do that. Yeah.
So it totally sets the technicians up for easy sales. We're. We're. We're going into the first full year that we roll out the deal or the.
The.
The offer. So, you know, you had me back on the podcast, and you. And I'll report back on how it went, but so far, it's going well, because, people, I had a woman who. I never thought that she would do it just based on her demographic and all that, and she was like, so how much is it? I was like, It's $2,700. She was like, yeah, I'll do that. And she paid right then. And that was, I think, the second or third one that I closed. And I was like, okay, I like this. I could get used to this. So having a really compelling offer, because then I feel more confident now I feel confident that all my marketing is actually pointing to something. Mm. It's not just like, yay, us. We're your favorite gutter company. Yay, me, me, me, me, me, and you, party. It's like, this is what I want you to buy every time. Every time you turn around, it's gonna be on tv, it's gonna be on radio. It's gonna be on billboards, yard signs, flyers, door hangers, mailers everywhere you go. It's gonna be, get our production plan, buy four, get a free one. I love it. And I think that is a very consistent message that people can really sink their teeth into.
Yeah, I love it. The csrs, have you incentivized them on booking jobs or selling these things or anything like that to turn them into inside sales reps? Because I see this shifting in home service.
Yeah, they. They do get a percentage of. Of sales of whatever they book. Yeah. And, you know, on a. That's the other. That's the other benefit of the offer is because, you know, they get. They get whatever their percentage is.2% on, like, a much larger number.
Yeah. Yeah, 27.
So instead of them getting 2% on, like, 500 bucks, which is, you know, fine, now they're getting it on about 1500 bucks. What's three times more?
Yeah.
But, yeah, we definitely incentivize our CSRs that. I mean, that's definitely an area of growth. Growth for me for 2020, for this year is like, I could definitely be better at, like, training our CSRs to say the exact thing, but honestly, I've just. You know, there's like. There's, like, fires that are burning your house down, and then there's fires in the kitchen. They're kind of like just over in their. Their cute little fires. Yeah, that one is more of a cute little fire for me where I'm trying to. Trying to tackle some bigger things this year than that. Yeah. But I could see once, like, Once, like, the. The true spring rolls around, I'm gonna do more role play. I've done role play with them before, like, tested them and stuff. But yeah, I mean, csrs, there's. There's no more important. It's just so important.
Yeah, I agree.
There's some cheap person in there. You just can't do it.
Yeah. We see, like, the booking rate. Piece of it for especially, like, in your business. This is what, like, happened at my. I was duck cleaning, so it was average ticket, you know, five, six hundred bucks. That booking rate. If we were booking at 50% and we got it to 60%, that's 10% more jobs.
Right.
And we don't have to spend any more on marketing just by fixing our script and having some goals.
Yeah.
So huge opportunity there. What would you say as far as, like, a leadership? So I know, you know, you took a whole month off from your business while you were growing, you know, to 1.8 million or the beginning.
Yeah.
What was that decision like? And then maybe walk people through what that helped you out, unlocking your business and coming up to that decision point.
Well, first of all, anyone who's like, oh, Adam, I wouldn't. I just love working so much, I wouldn't want to take a month off. You're lying. And you have no idea what you're talking about. It was the best thing ever. Yeah. We were gone for, like, five weeks, and I was completely unplugged. I deleted every app off my phone that would ever even think. Make me think about work. Banking, apps. I mean, every app. Wow. I told my technicians every. Every single possible way. Don't call me, don't text me, ever. Even if you get a car wreck, I don't care, because I can't do anything. Like, I told them, I don't want to hear from you ever. And it worked. It Was awesome. And what I came. What I learned from that was I came. When I came back, there was just some. Some tension in the air and just some. Some bad feelies. Right. And what that was, was they didn't. Adam, we missed you. Whatever. They didn't miss me. What they missed was my communication, my effective communication. What they missed there was. There was a vacuum. What they missed was Adam listening more than he talks. They missed that fact that, like, I don't interrupt them when they're speaking. I let them finish their whole thought, and then I say anything else. You know, they. They miss that I, like, actually look them in the eye instead of, like, playing on my phone while they're talking. And then as soon as they're done talking, I put my phone down, then I start talking. I don't do that. And so what I realized when I was gone is there was just. There was just poor communication. And I preach this stuff every Monday morning in our meetings because I think that organizations rise and fall on the level of their communication, how effective their communication is. So I preach this stuff, but it still didn't really matter. You know, while I was gone for five weeks, it all kind of crumbled. But what I came away knowing, which was good, was that, like, that's all teachable. I don't have to have, like, Adam around all the time. They don't really care about me. They just care about my behaviors, and those are teachable. So guys, like, how about you just, like, give each other the benefit of the doubt instead of jump jumping to conclusions.
Yeah.
And all these things. And so from a leadership perspective, one, I can always do better at that. And then, two, I can also expect my team to be better at that as well.
Yeah. I think having the vision articulated every single Monday, like, what you're doing, and then giving them a voice and a platform to be able to speak their piece and feel like they got it off their chest or it's out there.
Right.
When there wasn't that outlet, they probably felt like it's all just bottled up and then it wasn't there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
100%. I would say. The other thing that's. That's changed for us is that we have to become. Earlier I mentioned that we have to become like a sales and marketing machine. Just crank out leads constantly, but we also have to crank out new hires. We spend so much time, like, thinking about where the next lead's going to come from, and then we just. We don't really spend any time recruiting.
Yeah.
And I think My competitors are missing out because I've. Some of my best hires have come during the quote, slow season. I sit across the table from people all the time who are like, well, technically I have a job, but they laid me off until the spring basically. And so I can't do that. I got to work full time. I'm not a bum. I want to work. And so I hire those people. I might end up paying them, I might hire them to do nothing for six weeks, but then I have a good hire forever. And so it's so short sighted what these competitors are doing. I'd much rather pay, what was that, five, six, seven thousand dollars in wages or not even that much to then have them forever. And so that's, that's been a shift for me is like always be recruiting and always keeping a pipeline. Because here's the thing. Our listeners know it's not easy to recruit and get, get great candidates. And it's even harder when you're in a bind, like big time. Oh, maybe I'll just like really try hard in the next two weeks and get somebody. That's not how it works at all. And, and so we, we've, we've changed our philosophy. Like we're doing interviews basically every, almost every Thursday now. And we're just, we're batching them, we're doing a four or five, six once we did eight in a row. And we're just constantly recruiting. And I like what it does because it one, obviously, for obvious reasons, we need more employees and more staff and more technicians. But then also it just subtly reminds the team that like the something that Hormozi says I like, he said your best talent is in the future. Zing, baby.
It's a zinger.
Cool that one off a little bit. Yeah, it's a zinger.
Yeah.
No, I don't, I don't go, I don't flaunt around my technicians. I'm very appreciative of them. I, I love them, they're great. But I do. There is this healthy mentality, competitive, that we're ever growing, always expanding, and that this company does not hinge on one individual.
Yeah. From what I'm hearing from you, it's like you built a sales and marketing machine that you felt like maybe got you unstuck and is now a scalable approach. But then it unlocks another issue, which is I have the demand, but now I need the supply and I need to start balancing this out and trying to make it come together so that way it can go together. And it shifts. It's interesting because like, similar my business where it like shifts. Like, oh my gosh, I have so many leads. Like, hold on, hold the pipeline. Like, I need to get this person trained up. Yeah, it's that balance is constant balance.
Yeah, it's teetering. Well, then, then you realize whenever I go to podcast, what this is just between you and I, no one else is listening right now. When we go to, when we go to Vegas and I meet with all these business owners, one thing I'm always encouraged by about my business is that we might, we have gaps. We're not great at this, we're not good at that. All that operations is not my thing. But like our, we are a customer experience machine. And when I hear stories, I hear what's going on. Like, you know what? We, we've got that one down.
Yeah.
And I always come back, I always tell the guys, I'm like, guys, I tell this every time I come back. But like, we have, we have the customer experience nailed down. Our customers love our office staff. They love you, they love the work. And it's, it's a system, not just a one off thing where we got it right one time, but we do it over and over again. So, so, so our listeners are thinking, man, like now I need to like, actually provide a duplicatable, predictable, high quality service every single day. That's not easy to do. And then once you do that, you have to become an operations, an efficienc, a machine. You have to like one because you, you know, you, you're basically making the machine, the whole organization fat. And then the operations machine part trims it down and makes it lean and profitable. Because if you don't, then you're just fat and you don't make any money. You don't want that either.
Absolutely. Did you start thinking about that before you took the month off? Because I want to think about like, what were you trimming off of your plate? Because like, you, you know, you had this unlock of growth, but then what were you holding onto? You know, I was like, why am I doing this?
When I was at an event, Mike Michalowicz was like, he was speaking and he said, people often ask me, Mike, what's the number one thing I have to do to make my company better? What's the number one thing I need to do to make my business better? He said, the number one thing you should do is go in your calendar 12 months from now and schedule a one month long vacation where you're totally unplugged and then do it. That will make your business better. And I was like, he's right. I'd heard that before, but I hadn't done it yet, so I did it. And what that did was exposed all along the way, things that I had to fix because, hey, Adam, this problem, this. This happened. Well, that's going to happen while I'm gone, so let's fix it now. And so, for every day, without hyperbole, no exaggeration, every day, not some days, not Sunday, not Saturday, not every day, I thought about how to make the business better for a whole year. Tell me that won't make your business better.
Yeah.
And then here's the kicker. When I got back, it's like a. It's like a heavy truck that drives over a bridge that has tiny little hairline fractures. You can't see the fractures until the heavy truck drives on it. And then you see them. And the month long was. Was a truck. And so I got back, they're like, hey, this happened, this happened, this happened. I was like, oh, you know what? I didn't even realize, Phil. Like, I. I figured out, like, I made sure that I didn't get two set verification codes while I was gone. You know, so. And so is trying to log in. It's pinging me. I. I made sure the credit card company didn't call me. Like, I made sure all that stuff. Okay. And there were still holes that my fingers were plugging all these years that I didn't realize it.
Yeah.
And when I left, the ship started to go down a little bit, to sink a little bit, because those holes weren't plugged. And the only way that those holes would have been exposed was by taking a month off.
Yeah. And I think from what I remember from that time, I think we had talked right before something. There was a big snowstorm that was coming, and then it was like, okay, my. My calendar is not going to be this. And, like, what's gonna happen? And then your trip that you had scheduled ended up canceling and falling through. So then it was like, do I really need to take this time off? Or like, you had that going on or something, Right? All that. Yeah. Yeah.
It was pretty hectic. I'm not sure how much detail you want to get in the hectic. We don't have to go into it.
I'm just curious, because a lot of people say that they want to take time off or they want to do this thing, but then they. There's these things that creep up that are like, O. Well, maybe I'll just push this back a month or something. But, like, you locked in on it, and I think for a lot of business owners, it's like to get over this hump of a million dollars, in my opinion, you have to, like, become the leader and buy back your time and, and, and have these holes plugged elsewhere and, and easy to push that off. And like, I know that there were opportunities for you to push that off, and I'm curious, like, why you still stuck with it.
Well, when I told my wife I got home from that trip and. Or that, that Mike Michalowicz moment. Yeah. Like, babe, we're taking your. We're taking a month off next year. And, you know, she was like, I'll believe it when I see it. You know, she didn't say that exactly, but yeah, a year from now. I mean. And that's a fair response, right? Like a year from now and all that. It didn't, it wasn't until, like, September that she. We really started thinking, like, this is gonna happen now. I knew it was gonna happen all the time, but here's the thing. I also knew, and just realistically, there, There were a couple things that could have derailed the trip. I'll be, I'll be totally honest. I'm not gonna sit here and say, like, no matter what happened, I would have taken the month off. And I don't. I'm not that. But there were a couple things, and I'm thankful that all those things fell into place. But one thing that I had a conversation with my, My csr, she's like, my, she runs my clc. Charles, hold on, Care. She runs it for me. And we were talking one day and I was explaining to explain to her, this comes back to leadership in a minute.
Yeah, Yeah.
I was explaining to her the four quadrants of time management by the famous Stephen Covey. And I'm still. That is the most copyright infringed document on the planet. And I'm still surprised at how many people have never heard of it. And so I was explaining to her how quadrant one is urgent and important. Quadrant two is where you want to camp out. It's. It's, it's important, but it's not urgent. It's changing the oil in your car and spending time with your wife. Those are important things, but they're not urgent things. But if you neglect them, they become urgent and they come important. And then, then, and now your. Your car blew up because you didn't change oil or your marriage blew up, God forbid, because you didn't hang out with her. So I'm explaining all of this to her. And I. And quadrant three is not urgent or. Sorry, it's. It's. It's urgent, but it's not important. Yep. And. And then the fourth one is, like, not important, not urgent. So the quadrant three, I was explaining it to her. I said, giselle, you know, this is quadrant three. Stuff for me is like, email. And. And. And then I. We were on slack at the time. I'm a missive now, but I was on slack at the time. I said, and frankly, this is, like, slack messages for me. And she was like, what? And I basically was telling her that. That all of her stuff to me was urgent but unimportant, because if I let those things dominate my life, I won't. And when she. When I explained it to her and everything, she totally understood it, but at first she was, like, kind of offended. That was only what she. But it's important to her. That's her job.
Yeah.
As the leader of an organization, I have two businesses. You can't just be pulled one way. You can't just drift along. You can't just be pulled by the wind to and fro. Hey, Adam, I need this. Hey, Adam. And I need that. Hey, Adam, I need. No, I have time that I'm not available, and that's okay. Yeah. And I think our listeners just need to really take that to heart, within reason, wherever your business is at, and say, like, no, I need to get five hours of work, legit work done a week, and I need to carve that out. And I can't just, like, respond to slack right away. I can't just respond to email. I can't text. You can't answer the phone. Answer. Hey, hey, guys, I'm gonna be gone for two hours. I don't care what happens. Figure it out. Bye. And you'll be amazed at what happens.
Yeah. Yeah.
Even your people aren't complete buffoons. Yeah, they'll figure it out.
They'll figure it out. I took a week off last year and, like, completely disconnect. I didn't do the full month, but I did a whole. A full week. And it was like, okay. My business ran. Stuff happened. Like, that's great. And. And things happen. Even some of my team members, like, you know how to take a week or two off, and it's like, okay, well, we have all the checks and balances in place. So that way, God forbid, someone gets sick or something happens, like, we have the checks and balances in place.
Yeah. And it really comes down to this. Our listeners have to answer this question for themselves. Do they want to have a line by its tail? Because if you have a line by its tail, what do you do? You can't let go of it. It's going to devour you.
Yeah.
But you also can't keep. Hold on. You can't keep holding onto a lion forever. So what do you do? A lot of us have to do with our businesses. We're just kind of stuck in this in between. So you have to decide, do you want to build what. Do you want to just keep doing whatever you're doing, or do you want to build an asset? Like, build an actual thing that you own? I was talking to a buddy of mine a couple years ago. This really, really changed my perspective on business. And he has no idea, but he was an employee of a property management company doing property maintenance. And, you know, he was managing all these properties. And I asked him casually if whatever his name is, the owner ever jumped in and helped or. Oh, does he help you with that? And he said, he. He looked incredulously at me and said, well, no, he's the owner.
Yeah.
I said, does he. Does he help you with that? He was like, what? No, he's the owner.
Yeah.
And that's when I realized that my perspective was wrong, that I'm the owner of my businesses, but I act like somebody else. I act like an employee in my business.
Yeah.
And so do you want to build an asset that you can actually own and either sell or just get rich off of whatever you want to do, but you got to decide. And once you decide to build an actual thing that you. That you actually own, that doesn't own you, then you'll start making these decisions that actually propel you in that right direction. But until you decide, you're just going to keep, like, holding onto the lion's tail and wondering what's going on.
Yeah. The big unlock for me on that was thinking of it as a sports team. Like, there's a quarterback, running back, wide receiver. Then they're like, you know, technicians or team members. Then you have the coach on the sideline who's like a manager. Then you have the owner in the owner suite, and he's warm, and he's warm. But if they need to run a play, does the owner come down and say, hey, let me just run this fade route real quick. Just throw it up to me?
No. Right.
Does the coach come on the field and say, hey, like, let me Take this quarterback option. No, it's the players, and then it's the coach, and they all have different stress levels and different things, but they all have different roles.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Having different roles marked out in your business is so important, you know, because if. If. If the kid. Not kid. If an employee ever says, like, hey, boss, you coming out here to help with. Help us today. I get that. I used to get that a lot. You know, guys kind of mess with me a little bit. Like, hey, boss, you coming out today? Do gutters with us? Yeah. And in my early days, I'd get a little sideways on that. Like, am I a bad leader? I'm not going out with him. I'm not. I'm not saying a good example. No. I'm just inside all day, and. But now I'm like, no, that's not my job. That's your job.
Yeah.
If I do your job, then what are you gonna do?
Yeah.
Who's gonna do my job? Not you.
Yeah.
We all have. We all have a different job. Quarterback, running back, wide receiver. We all have different jobs. And that's the beauty of business. When things get awry is when you try to do everyone else's job. Yeah. And maybe you have a bunch of buffoons and you replace them all. That might be why you have to do their job, but at some point, you have to realize, hey, that's their job. I'm gonna do my job. And we will be happy and just right if we just stay in our own lanes.
Yeah. Cool. Adam, any parting words? Let's say someone. You just crossed a million dollars threshold, and they're, you know, fumbling around trying to figure out how the hustler can die, leader can be born. Would you have, like, if it was a buddy, you know, grabbing a drink or something, like, what would you say to this person that they should do?
I would say that you want your business to serve you and not the other way around. You don't want to serve your business. I know too many people who have lost a lot. Their wife, their kids. You know, their wife doesn't talk to them anymore. Their kids hate them because they just were like, but I'm doing it for you. No, you're not. You say that you're just working all the time. And I feel this way. You know, my wife knows that I have a proneness to working too much, and I do my best to keep that in check, because my businesses ultimately are here to serve me, not the other way around. And so if our listeners are just struggling right now. And maybe they're working too much. Maybe they don't have enough leads. You have to keep it all in perspective, because it's not the end of the world. Your business doesn't define you. It doesn't make or break you as a human being. And then on the other side, if you're having a lot of success, maybe your business is humming, it's going really well. You need to realize that you're not your business, and you might have other responsibilities that are more important. Just because you've been successful in business doesn't mean you're successful. And I love business, but it's a tool. It's not my soul. It's not who I am. And so I think it's amazing. It can benefit a tremendous amount of people. Entrepreneurs are people who create jobs for others. That's what an entrepreneur is, someone who creates a job for somebody else. And that is a big. That's a very high calling. It's very high calling. And so that's you. If you're an entrepreneur and you've created a job for somebody else, that's great. Keep rolling, Keep hustling. Just remember that that business isn't everything. It's a lot of things, but it's not everything.
I love that. There's a really great book on this called the True Measure of a Man. If you have not read it, I highly recommend it. And it's basically like, does your bank account or how much you make define you, good or bad? And no, it doesn't. It doesn't define you as a husband or a father. And it's just like a really good reassessment. Like, we're not inventing oxygen, right? It's like we're cleaning gutters. We're doing some duct cleaning. We're helping people with their H vac. And, like, there's a role for that to help people, but it's not like life or death. And also, you're not defined by your performance.
Yeah, 100% cool, man.
Where should people go to learn more about you? Obviously, if you want to hear Adam and I talk more, we have a bunch of Jobber podcasts where we've talked on this. So masters of home service, Jobber. But for you, Adam, where should they go to get connected or learn about you?
My website's Adam Sylvester dot com. I'm not a huge social media guy, but I'm on Facebook the most. Find me there. I've been listening to Josh Latimer's newest podcast. Have you heard about this? No. The Money Lever podcast.
Oh, yeah.
I've been binging it. He released 25, 26 episodes all at once. And I've always been a big Josh Ladmer fan, so you should go check him out, too. But I'm adamsilvester.com see jobbers podcast there and some other little projects I've been working on, and people can reach out to me. My phone number's on there. Facebook's on there. Love to get in touch.
Cool. Well, thanks, Adam. I appreciate you. Have a great day, man. See you.
Awesome, Thanks.
