The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – From Wall Street to Gutters: Aleks Krylov’s Entrepreneurial Journey

Episode Date: June 16, 2025

From Wall Street to Gutters: Aleks Krylov's Entrepreneurial Journey Sternguttersnj.com About the Guest(s): Aleks Krylov is a seasoned serial entrepreneur who began his career on Wall Street, spending over 12 years managing portfolios with family offices. He is the founder of a fractional CFO consulting company and has been involved in taking a company public on NASDAQ through a reverse merger. Aleks Krylov has successfully started and sold a clean energy company to an international utility. He currently serves as the CEO of Stern Exteriors, a home services business in New Jersey, focusing on rainwater management and providing solutions for roofing, gutters, and underground drains. Episode Summary: In this episode of The Chris Voss Show, Chris hosts Aleks Krylov, the CEO of Stern Exteriors, and delves into the world of serial entrepreneurship. With a career stemming from Wall Street to becoming a prominent figure in home services, Aleks Krylov shares his vast experiences that culminated in the creation of Stern Exteriors. The journey from clean energy innovations to practical solutions in rainwater management is explored, detailing the evolution of his business acumen and visionary leadership. Through an insightful discussion, Aleks Krylov unveils the unique challenges and opportunities in the home services industry. He shares how he identified a gap in the market for trustworthy and technologically advanced gutter services and how Stern Exteriors capitalizes on this need. Emphasizing service excellence, transparency, and community connection, Aleks Krylov's vision includes expanding Stern Exteriors into roofing and other sectors, showcasing the potential for innovation and significant growth within the home services ecosystem. Key Takeaways: Entrepreneurial Initiative: Aleks Krylov's success stems from identifying and addressing underserved market needs, particularly in the home services sector. Innovative Solutions: Emphasis on technology to improve customer interaction, increase transparency, and ensure high-quality service delivery. Business Values: Stern Exteriors is built on core principles such as integrity, communication, urgency, community, ownership, and professionalism, which differentiate it in the market. Market Expansion: Aleks Krylov discusses plans for growth in the New Jersey gutter market and expansion into related areas like roofing and drainage systems. Client-Centric Approach: The importance of building long-term client relationships by providing exceptional service and fostering trust and peace of mind. Notable Quotes: "The philosophy around Stern Gutters has become…to improve communication and transparency in service delivery." "We call our set of values ICU Cop: Integrity, Communication, Urgency, Community, Ownership, and Professionalism." "We do not service customers; we service clients." "The learning curve for new ventures becomes shorter as you gain experience in similar business areas." "We are not the cheapest, but we provide value through trust, transparency, and peace of mind."

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Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hello, this is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show! Ladies and gentlemen, that makes it official. Welcome to the show. For over 16 years and almost 2500 episodes. We bring in the Chris Voss show because you know, we're just kind of, we had, we needed something to do with our lives.

Hey, we needed a purpose. Hey, we're like, what should we do? And we're like, Hey, we'll inspire people to be smarter and have more knowledge and do things better with their lives. And we're like, uh, that seems like too much. Maybe we just inspire people to not do anything, but then we're like, no, no one wants that. Or maybe some people do. Anyway, guys, go to good reads.com for chest, Chris Foss, linkedin.com for test Chris Foss, Chris Foss, one of the tick tockety and all those crazy places in

the internet. And you can help us spread the inspiration knowledge and the way to make the world smarter and better, because that's what you want to do. You want to leave the world a better place than when you came there. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Voss show. Some guests to the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. Today we're going to be talking about serial entrepreneurism. You may have heard of it.

It's not the kind that comes in the Wheaties box. So does anybody know what Wheaties box. So does anybody know what Wheaties is? Or did I just fly one over the millennium? In the breakfast cereal box, the serial entrepreneur box. Today we're talking with Alex Krylov. He is a serial entrepreneur. He started his career on wall street and spent more than 12 years with several family offices investing in

managing and monetizing portfolio businesses. He runs a fractional CFO consulting company and as a CFO he has taken one company public on NASDAQ through reverse merger. He has started and sold a clean energy company to an international utility and now we'll be talking about his business merger. He has started and sold a clean energy company to an international utility and now we'll be talking about his business today. He currently runs as CEO Stern Exteriors, a home services business in New Jersey that focuses on rainwater management and services clients with roofing gutters and underground drain solutions. We're going to find out all the details how he runs a day-to-day business after doing all the different things he's done

as an entrepreneur. So let's get into it. Welcome to the show Alex, how are you? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. It's very exciting to be here. We're excited to have you as well. Give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? We are at stern gutters nj.com and as the new websites come live, we will publish them and make our customers aware of them. But this is our primary asset, Stern Gutters, and people can find us at SternGuttersNJ.com. So you've done a lot of things being a serial entrepreneur in your life. Tell us about this business.

Give us kind of a 30,000 overview of what you guys do there. Yeah. So as the name implies, we are, we started a gutter company in Northern and Central New Jersey. Its focus is on installation of the gutters and we also provide cleaning of the gutters. This is obviously the service element of this. We also provide a cleaning of the gutters. This is a service element of this. We install repair, facials, soffits. And as we continue to sort of pursue those activities, our customers have started asking us to help them out with that roofs and, um, underground drains and French drains.

So we are seriously considering expanding upstream and downstream from the gutter business. Um, yes, indeed. I like the upstream downstream. You got the, you got the whole, uh, you got the whole analogies there. Uh, you know, I suppose people can finally say now the Chris Voss show after 24 and episodes has finally gone into the gutter. Some of my family members, uh, are joking around that joking around that my mind is always in the gutter,

but you know, there is a true business associated with it. And you know, the reason for it is there are several million people living in New Jersey, you know, the vast majority of them live in their personal residences, single family homes. And guess what, every single one of those family homes have some form of a gutter or rainwater management systems. It's the big product, big market and the real need is there and that is sort of the reason that I saw the opportunity in the marketplace and the personal element of this was several years back, I had

issues with the leaking gutter, even, you know, on the dry day, I was just observing that my gutter was leaking, I could not understand why this was happening. And I reached out to a dozen or so contractors to come and visit with me and just help me get to the bottom why this gutter is leaking. visit with me and just help me get to the bottom why this gutter is leaking. And out of a dozen or so only three schedule appointments, you know, two showed up out of the three. And the first one that showed up, look at my roof and said, well, there might be some bigger opportunity here. And it was about hour and a half talking about his speech to sell me a new roof.

Not that what I, what I wanted to have a conversation about. And the second gentleman that showed up, he was actually very self-spoken, but was much more professional. He climbed the roof, took a look at the gutters, attempted to explain to me what my problem was. And ultimately, he was not able to communicate very clearly. He wrote an estimate on a sheet of paper that he literally turn off, turn off out of his notebook. I handed this over to me. And pretty much from that sheet of paper, I was supposed to, you know, supposed to digest that replacement of the gutter is gonna cost me XYZ and that's what's gonna solve the problem

well that was sort of the how I got the quotes for for my gutter project and ultimately I did not hear from either of those two gentlemen that showed up well even though the second one was going to win the business, all he had to do is just to call me back and follow up. None of that happened. To me, this was a signal that there is a gap in the marketplace. We are living in the community that is fairly well off. We arguably pay in one of the higher property tax rates,

not just in the state of New Jersey, but in the entire nation. And the fact is that it takes so, you know, there are no, quote unquote, contractors willing to step in and actually, you know, address this void, was a signal to me that there is perhaps an opportunity here both to improve the opportunities for the communities to help them manage the rainwater a little bit more efficiently. There is also a business opportunity perhaps to pursue.

So the philosophy around Stern gutters has become we are going to put together a little bit of a technology stack technology platform that would number one, improve communication and improve transparency into how people would think about scheduling visits with us, requesting repairs, but also ultimately give people an opportunity to give us Stern an opportunity to follow up with them without creating a significant labor hurdle in following up with the customers. In addition to this technology solution or technology stack, In addition to this technology solution or technology stack, we are actively pursuing and promoting the set of values that we believe truly differentiates us in the marketplace. We call this set of values ICU, CUP. It stands for Integrity, Communication, Urgency, communication, urgency, community, ownership, and professionalism. And if you actually take this acronym, it becomes, it reads like the ICU cup. But it is meant to truly kind of mirror

this acronym, it mirrors the sort of the transparency element that I envision bringing into into this business. So let's talk a little bit about some of these values, because I sense that some of these elements is what is lacking in the in the in the industry. So with respect to integrity, we stand for what we do, and we say what we do, and obviously deliver on what we do with communication, we wanted to make it easy, make it super transparent for the community and for the homeowners. And we also wanted to convey responsiveness. So people want to text us, email us, make a phone call, we're

going to be available. Urgency is another value. And that is something that, you know, kind of, I'm always wearing a hat tomorrow, I may be dead. So let's get stuff done today. And with respect to the value of the community, to me, the important element here is that our clients interest needs to come first. So we're providing the service we're delivering and put in the community first. So that's where the community comes in. The value of ownership, it sort of reflects the Harry Truman's, the buck stops with me, kind of

I as an owner of the business, but also some of the installers and other team members, solutionists within our organization, they need to own them, you know, everything that they touch, own the relationship with the homeowners, you know, owning the problems that they touch, own the relationship with the homeowners, own the problems that they discover, making sure that somebody carries the buck as we are solving problems for the homeowners. Last but not least, the value of professionalism is extremely important to me. Before we came on the air, you Chris asked me to show how did you transition from the white color to the blue color?

And to me, one of the elements here and one of the motivating factors is to bring this sort of white shoe, white color law firm or consulting firm experience to the servicing homeowners in their exteriors. So we wanna pursue excellence in our delivery. Obviously, we want to do quality job and install and repair and clean the gutters. But it also is excellence in how we deliver to them the documents.

We want to make sure that there are no spelling mistakes. We don't want to write our estimates on a sheet of paper and hand this over to them. We want the presentation to be professional. And last but not least, in my definition, professionalism is owning and learning from their own mistakes. And everybody is a human. Everybody makes mistakes. And even our installers, the salespeople, myself, I'll be the first to admit, we make mistakes. We just want to own it.

We'll learn from them and come back and make it right by the customer. That's what professionalism to me is all about. So this is the set of values that we pursue, that we want to emphasize, and that's what Stern gutters and Stern exterior is all about. Well, this is pretty interesting. So you basically went the route that a lot of people, when being an entrepreneur, they

see a need, they see an opening, and they take and go, hey, I see a way where I can make a better widget, where I can provide a better service, where I can provide better communication, like some of the things that you saw. And you see an opportunity for this to take place. So it's amazing how many entrepreneurs will look at something like this and go, Hey, this is the thing, right? Well, indeed. And, you know, I went into this with not knowing what I'm getting into to degree.

You know, I did a lot of research. I met with a bunch of other home service business owners. And, you know, over the past year, I've been learning quite a bit in terms of recruiting, in terms of building relationships with a community, in terms of running the operations. And, you know, it's not as easy as it comes and as it sounds, and the challenges of running the business, they're there, they're daily. You are not working with MBAs and PhDs who are very consistent and following through in a lot of elements. To a degree, managing the team is about finding those people who are going to be relating

to the values that I just described and those people who are not willing to adhere to those values or at least take an effort, that means that they are probably not the right fit. And I remember my very first hire into this organization was something along the lines of, oh, you have a lot of experience installing gutters, you are hired. And the gentleman was installing gutters in North Carolina, he did some work in Florida, he did some work in Florida, he did some work in New Jersey. So he's bringing a material amount of experience in how to install gutters and getting this done. But a lot of the values that I was feeling very passionate about, they're simply not there. He didn't show up on time, the communication was not there. Customers doesn't know what he's doing. I'm right, you're wrong. So this is not how we're building Stern. And it's

not like you can just pick and choose from the list of the values that you feel comfortable or you'd like to apply today. All of them needs to be part of the delivery to the customer. Otherwise, the Stern experience is simply not going to be there. Needless to say that gentlemen did not last. When I went ahead and start recruiting additional folks to work in our organization, much more attention was being paid to the sort of to the way they think about the values and how they, you know, and how they how they work, even to the point that I feel much more comfortable

hiring people without the skills and training them on the skills, as long as they're willing to demonstrate to me through their commitment on the job to adhere to these values. We have a couple of good experiences with the hires that took place in the winter with the folks who are willing to work hard. I can literally observe them working in compliance with some of the values that we described. We just teach them how to run the gutters, how to install the gutters. This becomes a much better fit in the long term as opposed to doing this the other way around. Yeah, definitely, most definitely. And so you've, you know, you

moved from Wall Street and, you know, working kind of in white collar and stuff. Did, was there a transition from you moving to white collar to blue. Did, was there a transition from you, moving to white collar to blue collar? I remember doing that when I started my first big company. And it was kind of, it's kind of an interesting change because I was used to doing white collar things as opposed to, you know, sweat equity sort of business. Yeah. Well, the transition, of course, was there. And I think that, as I mentioned, Well, the transition, of course, was there. And I think, as I mentioned, hiring the people and being super explicit in terms of what I expect of them was one of the more challenging, you know, challenging aspects. And I think I kind of come to realize after the first few months of recruiting

folks is that you cannot be transparent. You cannot expect folks to really fill in the gaps between the lines in terms of your expectations. Be very explicit. And I couple this by taking a lot of time and reading a lot of the Michael Gerber's books and applying them to specifically the gutter space and the roof and space and the exterior rainwater management space. And ultimately it came down to that standardized the business, convert it into a series of standard operating procedures. And if something new occurs, I got to take a step back and think through, can I standardize

this? Can this become an operating procedure that next time the situation like that occurs, I am no longer reinventing the wheel, but I actually have literally a book that I wrote on the operations that it can follow and solve those problems. And in my mind, the great example from the Michael Gruber's books come to mind is that the hotel chain for seasons, right? They train their folks on the standard operating procedures that in most cases handle 80 to 90%

of all the operational situations that employees can encounter. And in 10% of the cases, or 20 to 10% of the cases where the standard operating procedures are not covering the situation, this is where they gotta go and talk and sort of, and refer to the values to find the solution. And in my mind, if my employees are going to integrity,

communication, urgency, professionalism, and community service, if those elements are being put forward in solving the problem for the client, more likely than not, they're going to find the right decision and the customer is going to be satisfied. And the outcome is going to be what we are striving to achieve. To close the loop on this, Chris, is that the transition from being a little bit more, call it the white collar, yes, but more literal and translating everything to the standard operating

procedures. That was the biggest transition for me personally that I've gone over the last year or so. Well, that's awesome, man. You've moved from the white collar business in Wall Street to building your own company. What's the vision that you have? Do you see rolling this out nationwide or it sounds like you're getting integrated with more services in New Jersey with the gutters and the other things, the roofing and the drains and stuff like that? Well, I think you touched on this. I think we are getting the feedback from the marketplace that our values and doing things the way we're doing has a certain resonance and customers enjoy the experience

they have with our teams. We would like to grow this presence in the state of New Jersey. We are currently serving Northern and Southern New Jersey, but there is a potential to move this to sort of southern New York, Pennsylvania area and potentially see if this model would find its place across the larger Northeast here in the United States. But the other element of this is we talked about the upstream and downstream, which the pun is intended in this particular case, and that is we work with the homeowners who sometimes struggle to find contractors that they can trust. It's a challenge in finding interviewing contractors and if they can find one or at least one group of companies

that can address multiple issues related to the exterior rainwater management, I believe there is an opportunity to grow the business here. So stern roofing is going to be the next brand that we're going to be seeking to develop. Again, adherence to the same values and operating procedures is going to be in place. We already got certifications with the largest roofing materials manufacturer, that is also based here in New Jersey. So we are way underway. We installed the first couple of roofs already earlier this year.

And then the other element of this business model is the sort of underground drains are pretty much those elements where the gutters and downspouts connect to some unknown hole in the ground. But it's not just the hole in the ground. It's also a matter of taking that water and either driving it towards the town's storm rainwater management system or the perimeter of the property where this water is not going to be presenting the risk to the homeowners foundation basement or, you know, create the flooding within the lawn or the landscaping system. So that's going to be the sort of the second leg of the expansion story, you know, for the storm. This is great. I mean, this is how entrepreneurs usually work. They see opportunities. They

see a way that they can make a widget better. They experience it usually out in the wild somewhere. You know, it's not like they're sometimes I don't know, were you sitting around when you when you discovered, you know, the sort of experience you had with the, you know, getting bids for your gutters? Did you, did you ever think that you would be in this business when you were first interviewing these folks? No, not at all. And, you know, there was a bit of a gap, quite frankly. I think it was a couple of years when, you know, when I went through this process of interviewing the contractors to, you know, to kind of having a light sort of the moment,

oh, I should actually go and launch a business around it. So there is some lag, if you will, associated with that. But that being said, it just, you know, sometimes this opportunities come or the ideas come from unexpected places. It's a little bit of an element of listening to yourself or listening to kind of, oh, this is an opportunity. Let's go dig a little bit deeper and see if there is first idea has a little bit

of the lags behind them or underneath them because very often good ideas, they're not necessarily, you know, a opportunity that is worth spending time with, even though the promise of the idea appears to be there. So yeah. How do you, and this is really great because this is a very common story. And so a lot of people don't know the business they go into

and that's the beautiful part about entrepreneurs. And they see something they can make better. They see a widget, you know, everything can always be improved. There's always a way to improve everything, whether you, whether it's product innovation, where you make the widget innovative and better, or whether it's service innovation, where, you know, some of the things you had that you were experiencing with really kind of poor customer service, poor salesmanship, poor delivery, you know, you were able to go, Hey, this is kind of the weirdness that's out there in the marketplace. I can make a better service widget.

I can make a better product widget, et cetera, et cetera. Now, a lot of things you're expanding into, you know, is including when you first made this first step into gutters, the gutter business is, you stepped right into the gutter, is basically, the jokes just come with it, is basically, did you get in this business just for the jokes? Because I would have. No, I'm just teasing.

But basically, the joke references, basically, you have to learn something new. And this is the hard part that's like, I don't know, it feels like being birthed again as a human being, only you're aware of what's, what goes into being birthed. And you know, you have to, you know, go 1000% into a business or, you know, an area that you have no clue about, right?

You, you, yeah. And a lot of it, I imagine you're using, I'm going to set you up a little bit here and say, you know, a lot, some of that you may be using because of your entrepreneurism background, right? So you're using a lot of that skills and toolbox that you have, but you're still going kind of blind into a thing. And so you've got to go in there, you've got to adopt, you've got to adapt, you've got to learn, you've got to grow.

And then the growing never stops. You're still solving problems, you're still, you know, now you're trying to grow into other fields, and I imagine that's a learning process as well. How do you handle that learning and assimilating that knowledge and trying to do as seamlessly as you can, you know, where you're, you know, you're going through that birth experience? This is an excellent question. And I want to say this is a huge and comfortable process when you are learning something new, because it's a change that you have to experience. I'm personally a very reluctant changer.

I'm very resistant to changing you know, to changing my context or my environment. And I found that, you know, learning new things is very, very difficult, you are learning the new language, you learn new skills, you are learning how to behave and organize your day differently. So a lot of new things that are kind of coming your way my way, are just simply not easy to handle. But the side observation of all of that is that, yes, it takes a long time to start talking

this new language or the new way of doing things. As you continue doing this, I think the learning curve of learning, all over time, it becomes flatter. And let me perhaps translate this into a little bit clearer sort of analogy. And that is, if it took me when I launched the gutter business to get up to speed on the gutter terminology and the way to install gutters and the operational protocols of running the business. Let's say six months and I'm not using this as a sort of hard rule.

I'm just trying to make an analogy. The critical mass learning about the roofing business, asphalt, shingleingle roof installations, in my mind, it has been closer to four months and my anticipation that the drains and fringe draining installation and kind of the rainwater management once the water kind of exits the roof or exits the gutters.

I anticipate that the learning curve around that business is going to be shorter. So it's never easy, in my opinion. You got to program yourself for experience and a lot of discomfort and becomes even, you know, cognitive pain. But there is also something that one can promise oneself and that is the learning curve when the next things that you got to learn from scratch, as long as you sort of stay within the quote unquote, the same zip code of businesses is going to be much shorter. And then you can get is, is gonna be much shorter.

And then you can get up to speed of things much quicker and those experiences of starting a launch in the business from scratch, they're not gonna be sort of as painful as it was with the very first one. And like you say, I remember when I was first going into business, man, it was hard. It was hard to learn everything. It was hard to learn everything. It was hard to, you know, I didn't have that toolbox is what I like to call it of, of,

you know, that kind of experience where you're like, Hey, I've done this before a million times, you know, as you age and you get, you kind of get that, you've, you've put some businesses underneath your belt. You know, you can kind of, you can kind of, you have that toolbox to rely on, but the first time you do it, it's, it's daunting. I mean, you know, you can kind of, you can kind of, you have that toolbox to rely on, but the first time you do it, it's daunting. I mean, it's really overwhelming. It will hone you into being self-actualized, self-accountable. It hones you in a way, being an entrepreneur, to go through this gauntlet of rebirth, of having to learn everything. And, you know, and you've got, you've got to understand your business.

If you're going to innovate it, you can't, you can't innovate something you don't fully understand. You know, Steve Jobs couldn't make the iPhone without the thing. In fact, that kind of reminds me of something that's kind of funny. I remember when Palm, Palm, the Palm phone came out and Palm came out after the iPhone had come out and it was trying to, you know, become the new iPhone. And at least one of my friends had been on the iPhone team, went to the Palm team,

which did not make Steve Jobs happy, but that's a different story. Anyway, so he was there at the launch. What was interesting was there was a lot of innovation that was missing from the Palm Palm. And they asked the Palm CEO, I think at the launch, this went down, it was really controversial at the time. But they asked him, they go, you know, hey, iPhones got this stuff and you don't have

this stuff. And have you ever used an iPhone? And they're like, because, you know, they were bragging that, you know, we built something better than the iPhone and like, you know, have you ever used an iPhone? Cause, uh, what you're putting forth isn't quite better than iPhone. And the guy said, no, I never used it. I've never used an iPhone. And it just became obvious at that point in time that they had an innovative enough

because they hadn't used the most innovative product on the marketplace that put BlackBerry out of business. Not out of business, I suppose you could say, but basically, I mean, they did file a bankruptcy, I believe, didn't they? And they're still around today in a different sort of format or similar format. I don't know what they do actually nowadays, but you know, the fact that he hadn't used this technology, that he had immersed himself in the iPhone and then said, let's build a better iPhone as a Palm phone was just, it just made my head spin.

So I don't know if whatever thought you want to throw into that, I guess, as we round out the show. I think you are hidden. Um, the nail in the hat is that head is that home services industry in the United States, in North America in general, is ripe for some technology innovation. And there are pockets of innovation that have been adopted. Lead generation has been very active in adopting new technology.

Communications such as texts and automated emails, innovation have been introduced into select verticals of the home services industry. My observation at least initial one was that none of these elements have been widely introduced into the gutter services space. And my idea is to not necessarily go and spam the customers with this new innovative technology capability, but rather understand the customer a little bit better and engage in a friendly and more sort of solutions oriented matter with the customer where

we are creating value solving problems for the homeowners as opposed to just going and trying to as opposed to just going and trying to extract value from them simply because they experience on the problem. So this element of the technology, I think, is yet to be introduced. And ultimately, it's going to come down to understanding where the customer's needs are. And we are all probably inundated with a whole AI revolution that is taking place in so many verticals. Some of it is already starting to find the spillage into the home services industry. But I think on the actual execution side,

it makes sure that the customers are comfortable with the service providers, make sure that the customers are comfortable with the service providers, make sure that they are aware where in the life cycle of the service delivery they are, quote unquote, just to prove the quote, where my materials are, where, you know, when my scheduling takes place, where the truck is relative, you know relative to in their geographic location on the way to the homeowner to do the installation. How is the installation progressing day over day if it's a multi-day type of project? So these are the elements that I think the technology has not yet come to

work listed not widely adopted. And we're hoping to bring this innovation to the to the space and give this additional transparency and value add to the homeowners where when they think of and like I'm going to be very self promotional here. When they think of Stern gutters, right? We want the homeowners to think of peace of mind. We're not ever going to be the cheapest or the lowest bidder. We don't want to be. Because if we are, we're probably not going to be able to deliver that peace of mind or the transparency experiences that, at least in my understanding, the vast majority of the market desires.

The way I read the tea leaves here in New Jersey is that people are willing to pay for, for this elements of transparency and reliability and trust. And perhaps those customers who want the lowest bidder should not be coming to Stern gutters, but we are striving to deliver value. And that means, you know, we're gonna go extra mile to make sure that the homeowner has that peace of mind.

All our projects are coming with, you know, three-year workmanship warranty. So if something is not working right with our gutters, underground drains, roofing, we're gonna to be there in the matter of 48 hours and working to address the problems. And we're not going to ask any extra questions. We're not going to do any qualifiers. We're, you know, we're there to stand by our work. I suspect that the lowest bidder is probably not going to be anywhere around to send my network when that happens. So it's a little bit of a balancing act. But again, at the end of the day, if I had to reiterate what Stern is all about,

it's about technology enabled solutions for the homeowners and adherence to the values that I outlined earlier, and that is integrity, communication, urgency, professionalism, service to the community. These are the values that are very important to us and those customers that want to be serviced with these values in mind, we certainly would love to build a deeper relationship with and continue to deliver the service over a period of time. And that's a good lesson too for entrepreneurs out there that are listening, and that's why we do this show, folks, is to inspire entrepreneurs and give them data on how to become one and be successful at it. And so, you know, I imagine one of the things that you, uh, you have as a vision

is as you move into these two other sort of, uh, verticals, uh, with roofing and, you know, the other thing you're, you're kind of all inclusive. So if you pick up jobs on roofing, you might get some gutter work, drainage work. Uh, if you did gutter work, you might go out and say, hey, you also need a roof. This is all kind of working in an ecosystem now, if you will, kind of like with what iTunes did with their ecosystem of services and brands that surround the iPhone, if you will. I agree. And there is a lot of value in my experience and in my instinct in not having to spend or spend less in acquiring a new customer, right? It just boils down to the sort of unit economics. When you are able to provide a comprehensive set of services

to the homeowners, starting from the roof, going to the gutters, going to the underground race, siting or perhaps other solutions around their properties, the cost of acquisitions on the per transaction basis tend to transition, if not to zero, but it goes downward sloping. And that's what we want to see with each customer that comes on board. That being said, from the values perspective that we build the business with, it is important to see that each installation that we do is not the end of the relationship.

It's the beginning. This internal distinction that we try to make very clearly is like, we do not serve as customers, we serve as clients. And this distinction is subtle, but at the same time, we can install the gutters and technically this is the installation for the next 20 years. If they don't do gutter guards, they will probably call us back for the cleanings. That's a potential two or three touch points per year that we're going to be having the interaction with. If ultimately they need a roof installation, we're going to be there to service that.

That's a big ticket item. Underground drains, sometimes it's just a big installation, pretty expensive one, but once you install it, you absolutely have to clean it and maintain it. So there are opportunities for repeat service. And then some vendors in the home services industry have been very, very strategic in capitalizing on this whole notion of the peace of mind, where you literally convert the relationship into the monthly subscription type of arrangements.

And you quote unquote, buying yourself standby contractor as a homeowner, you'll buy paying the subscription, you are buying yourself a standby contractor who is committed to you to respond to any issues that you may have with gutters, with siding, with windows, with doors, with everything else that is involved in kind of protecting the home from the exterior elements. And that's where the perhaps even the bigger opportunity is. So we haven't started exploring the issues around windows and siding and doors, but these are the areas that, again, once you are building the relationship with the customers, the market,

in my opinion, will drive these conversations. The customers, the clients will drive the customers. The market, in my opinion, will drive these conversations. The customers, the clients will drive the conversation. What else do they need that we can start helping them with? And because of this relationship with the homeowners, that's where I think the opportunity is. And I like how you've done the math on it. You're like, okay, this is the touch points. We have three touch points a year that we can potentially activate a client into buying something, et cetera, et cetera. You've priced your business so that you can survive in business, a lot of people, as you talked about,

don't do that. So really brilliant points here on entrepreneurship. As we go out, give people a final pitch out to get to know more about you, how things work, any other things that maybe you want us to talk about in the show. Well, to wrap up the story of Stern Gutters, folks can find us at sternguttersnj.com. Our main line is 973-298-0767. We are here to deliver the value to the homeowners.

We're not the cheapest sort of service provider, but at the same time, we want to give our clients that peace of mind in making sure that their gutters worked well and they can count on us to be there if something is not working right with their gutters. For us it's important to start the relationship and continue with the relationship and if you're located in New Jersey, Northern and Central for the time being, we'd love to hear from you and we're happy to come out, conduct inspections for free, share our thoughts on how to optimally manage your arguably largest asset, your home. And perhaps the last point that I wanted to make is

that we actually just delivered a talk in the Montclair Chamber of Commerce here in Northern New Jersey, how homeowners very frequently find themselves in the situation where the home they buy is under maintained, under invested, and it's driven by very high demand on good quality properties in fairly close proximity to the New York City. So, you know, previous owners of the homes cash out, they don't put a lot of capital in their properties. And, you know, sometimes the new buyers, they waive inspections,

so go quote unquote inspections light, just to be able to secure a property, otherwise they get overbid and lose the opportunities. So we are happy to work with new homeowners, come out, visit with them, do the inspection of their gutters, of their roofing, their other exterior elements and share our opinion. And we're not here to, again, drive the business. Oh, you've got to every single home we visit, you've got to do the gutter replacement. No, not at all. The idea here is we want the homeowners to start trusting us.

And once you do, we are here to build a relationship. And we're going to address those problems that require the most attention now, right now, and help homeowners make the decision of what specific capital investment projects they can defer safely without compromising the value of their assets. And at the same time, revisit some of these larger projects, a year or two into the homeownership history. Because I remember when we were buying our home, it was a challenging year because you're spending a lot of money, cash on the down payments, you're paying a lot of fees, and

then being surprised negatively by some repair or maintenance issues that your new home requires. Those are challenging news to take. So we hope to, again, bring value to the homeowners and help make the right decisions to help avoid this type of surprises. Well, that's really good, man. And you've inspired a whole new world of entrepreneurs to listen to the show, hopefully, to take a look at everyday opportunities in their world, because you just never know where you're going to find something. You know, some people find a paperclip, a widget, and they go, hey, I can make this paperclip better. I can paint it.

I can give it colors. I can do different things. You know, that's the greatness about entrepreneurs and everything can always be improved. In fact, anything we make as entrepreneurs, you entrepreneurs, we can look at it and go, I should figure out a way to make this better because if I don't, my competition will. Anyway, thank you very much for coming on the show, Alex. Wonderful lessons and wonderful story

and look forward to the future that you provide and the assistance you give other people. Terrific, thanks for having me, Chris. It's been great honor to be here. And thank you to our audience for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, Chris Foss 1 on the TikTok, and Ian, all those crazy places, the internet. Be good to each other.

Stay safe. We'll see you next time. And that should have us out. Great show.