The Home Service Expert Podcast - How to Create A Long-Term Business Plan That Can Stand the Test of Time

Episode Date: November 13, 2020

Aaron Gaynor is the owner and CEO of Eco Plumbers, a residential plumbing company with a full range of eco-friendly products and services. With a decade’s worth of experience, Aaron has grown his business to a team of 87 strong, even through a recession-battered economy. He has won multiple awards and recognition for his work, including the 2013 National Green Plumber of the Year award from Green Plumbers USA. In this episode, we talked about contract negotiation, team building, plumbing, strategic planning...

You have an obligation to your team to build a company that can be sold. Absolutely. You have an obligation to them. That is your job as the CEO of your company and the owner of your company is to build a business that can be sold. Not because you're going to sell it. It's because it's your responsibility to build a company that is that strong and that powerful that it could be sold for your team and for the opportunity for your team to survive, grow, and take care of their families. If you don't get up to do that every

single day, you don't earn the right to be the CEO of your company. That's my personal opinion. You have not earned the right to be the CEO of the company. If you're not building something that allows to be sold, even if you're not going to sell it, that it can be sold and create opportunity, grow for people, give people opportunities to advance their income, their life, make them better people, help them pay mortgages, send their kids to college, do all these things. That's what needs to happen. And that's your job. And I think sometimes we think that all these people work for us. We work for them. Absolutely. We work for them. And when we work for them, they work for us. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs

and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. My name is Tommy Mello. Today, I got a guest, Aaron Gaynor. You're an expert in contract negotiation, small business, team building, plumbing, obviously, and strategic planning. The Eco Plumbers owner and CEO, you started in 2007. It's a residential plumbing company that prides itself on its full range of eco-friendly products and services. He rebranded and powered through a recession-battered economy. Now he has over a decade's worth of experience as a licensed green plumber, and his business has grown to a team of 87 strong, continuing to help clients save water

and energy while providing top service quality. He's won awards and recognition for his work, including the 2013 National Green Plumber of the Year Award from Green Plumbers USA. And just this year, a special award for leadership from Columbus CEO Magazine. How are you doing, brother? I'm good, man. I'm fantastic. Thank you for having me on here. Look forward to sharing a little of my story and hopefully helping inspire anybody else that's been through some rough times and have an opportunity to grow. Love helping out contractors, man. Part of my mission too.

Hey, man, that's what it's all about. We share these stories and there's enough water in the ocean for everybody. That's what I look at. So you've had a pretty strong career. 2007 is about the time that I started. stories and there's enough water in the ocean for everybody. That's what I look at. You've had a pretty strong career. 2007 is about the time that I started. You've been on the top end right now. You're kicking butt and you struggled a little bit like me and like every other business, especially in the home service space. Tell us a little bit about your journey and how you decided to go green and what your ambitions are going forward from today. Yeah, sure. Absolutely. So I started in the trades in 1997, straight out of high school.

I had no idea I'd get in the trades. I have no family, nothing, and nobody that I knew was in the trades. My best friend, John Beerhoff, who owns a plumbing company down in Southwest Florida now, but him and I grew up together and his brother-in-law worked for Ferguson Enterprises. And he said, hey, I know a guy that wants to hire some young guys to get into trades. I worked over at Value City Furniture, working second shift throughout my senior year of high school. And out of high school, I was making about $14 an hour loading semi trucks. So that was actually pretty good in 1997. And to a job about $7.25, first shift being a plumber's helper, and I never left. So it came pretty quick to me. It was mostly construction as my background, light residential and light commercial. I got my master's plumber's license. They called it then, I guess now it's just licensed plumber when I was 23 years old.

So I got that pretty young. And my buddy, John and I decided because we knew how to plumb so good, we should start a plumbing company. And we did, right? The old e-myth story. So we thought we were the great technicians at plumbing. So we would start a plumbing company and we did that. And we grew a plumbing company to around a little over 3 million in that early 2000 timeframe. And around 2006 is when we started to feel that downturn. And Syntex Homes was one of our biggest, 60% of our revenue came through Syntex Homes here in Columbus. And they started closing down and pulled out of Columbus. And I don't even think Syntex exists anymore. Maybe Pulte Bottom or something happened. It forced me to a bankruptcy during that time. I had, unfortunately, just lost everything. I had to start from the beginning. It was a rough time. We tried to make it work,

but at some point, you get forced into it. I lost everything. I lost my house, my car. I lost jobs for people. I just reflected afterwards for a little bit. And I said, man, I never really owned a plumbing company. I mean, I had to take full responsibility, man. I think that was the biggest moment in my life. I thought, man, this is the worst thing that ever happened to me. But now I feel like it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Maybe really reflect and say, man, I knew how to plumb really well, but man, I don't know how to manage. I didn't know how to run. I'm not an entrepreneur, like I have it as some of that level in me, but I really needed to learn these skills and these traits, these skills, man, I really needed to do it. So I just took full ownership of that and said, yeah, I owned a

plumbing business, but I was really just a tax ID. And I was only as good as the contractors I worked at business for. I did not have control over my own destiny. And I had to sit down and be serious about that. So just give you a quick area of this. Really, it changed my life as I'm sitting there. My son's three years old and I'm living at my mom's house now because I have nothing. And I hold him up. I just remember sleeping on the couch because that's where I had to sleep at my mom's two bedroom apartment. And I was holding him up. I said, I promise you, man, this will not be your life. I promise you this will not be your life. Got up and got to work. Borrowed $50, had my sister, who still works with us today, co-signed to start the business. I borrowed 50 bucks,

opened up a bank account and got to work, man, and never looked back. This is you now. This is solely you or did you get back in business with a partner? Nope, solely me. And my sister has a small percentage ownership in it for her time, but it's me. I run this organization. I've been very fortunate and my team helps make it happen, right? So that's what we did. I went to work and told the other people I did go into construction at first because that's what I knew, but I knew my goal was to get to service. When I'm sitting around during the economy and I'm still watching service trucks drive around and do work, I'm thinking, man,

that's where I need to be. So I just asked some of the old people we did construction for, I said, I have a company I was a partner with. If I warranty all that work on my own time, which I know I'm not obligated to after a bankruptcy, but if you give me that, I'll warranty all the work on my own time after hours a night, if you give me an opportunity to do some more of your work again. And I had pretty good relationships with some of those guys and they helped me out big time. They really did. So did our local supply house here, Car Supply, which now we're their biggest single purchaser of plumbing products in the city now. Yeah, you're paying it back. That's awesome.

Yeah. So tell me a little bit about that. So you had to do a rebrand and you decided to focus on green. I'm curious how I need something different. I need to be doing something different. I have my plumbing license. I understand plumbing. And the main part here for me was like, I need something that just is different out there. Water conservation, energy, solar systems. And then I found an organization at that time was out of Australia and I sent them an email and I said, hey, this is 2007 to eight. And I said, hey, what are you guys going to do? Is there anything opportunities coming up? Cause Australia is going through a drought. So they got the organizations together and really started training them. And they were bringing the

program to the United States. And I think I was one of the first like 26 people in the state to go through that program. I think it was very educational for me to maybe really think about water conservation, energy, recovered water, gray water, and just a whole different light than I probably would ever have before. It made me just think more creative, maybe think about paperless, maybe think about things I really typically wouldn't have been thinking about in our industry, our space. So that really helped stimulate the idea and the concept. And then that's when I created the name Eco Plumbers and federally trademarked that and started moving forward with that brand. That's an important topic. When did you get the federal trademark? 2009 to 10. So that takes five years to become

uncontestable to the guy. Yeah. I did that right away because I felt like that was a new opportunity of our economy in the future and a brand that I felt like could be meaningful to the next generation. Yeah. I, uh, I'm going to have a podcast with a trademark attorney that I really like. And, uh, it's amazing how important that stuff is. I'm going through some stuff right now. So tell me, you started a little bit more with builders. So that's more of a B2B type. And then you knew you wanted to work on the consumers, more of the end users. Where are you today? What would you say your split is

as far as new construction versus new installation versus just repair work as far as revenue? So we're 100% customer. Yeah, so you don't deal with any new install anymore no no no no construction at all zero construction okay well and to give you an idea that we're a plumbing company only plumbing and what we do sewer you don't drain with our plumbing and we're going to finish this year probably around 21 million. That's awesome. So if you could go back and tell yourself some things about what you did, and there's a lot of earlier in their career entrepreneurs here in the

home service space, what were some of the things you found? There's two things I seem to hear a lot. I need more customers or I need more workers. Let's talk about both of those. So let's start with more customers on the marketing. What have you found to acquire customers works the best? What are some of the channels you go through as far as marketing? Well, I think one thing we really did really well a couple of years back was really put together a three-year marketing plan. You really have to be committed to a marketing plan. And when you go in, you got to go all in, right? You can't just be like, well, I'm going to dabble a little here, dabble a little there, dabble a little here and think that you're going to get somewhere. When we committed to TV, we committed to billboard, we committed to radio,

and we knew it was a long haul for the three-year plan to actually see the outcome of it. And it was just being able to stay the course with the messaging. I think people want to change their messaging so much and try to be too fancy and make things change over and over and over. It was just staying with the same message for a long period of time, to the point where your accountant would be bored of it. But that means it's getting pounded into people's heads because there's such a small percentage of people that are needing our services every single day. So I think for us, it was just really staying focused, staying disciplined and executing that strategy for three years to actually see a massive change in the volumes. I mean, today, I mean, honestly, if we had enough technicians, as you talk about,

I just said we'd be around 21 million. We have enough calls probably to be 28 to 30 million. We literally just can't get to them all today. I mean, that's not from a bragging standpoint, just telling you that the marketing messages work. It actually was better than we thought it was going to outcome was going to be the long-term and delivering the service too, right? You got to execute the high level of service at the same time or else, I mean, you can market all you want, but you know, marketing wins, man. They can win if you do it right and then deliver the service. Okay. So you've got the brand recognition, TV, radio billboards, and then you've got the website,

you've got pay-per-click and you've got the vehicle wraps. It's all that kind of symbiotic relationship. It all kind of speaks the same language. Absolutely. I mean, I hired on a marketing lady, Eva, who just came on and her job was, I said, look, all I really need you to do is just make sure our brand message is very clear. It's identifiable. People can see it easily. And it's messaging is very easy to comprehend between all channels. And that's what we focused on. Just cleaning that all up for two years, making sure it was easy for everybody to hear what we have to say, to see it on billboards, trucks, and it's all the same. Nothing is confusing anybody. And I think that's a challenge sometimes for us contractors because we kind of want to change stuff. We want to fix things

because of who we are by nature, right? So the three-year plan, did it kind of scale up in this? So it scaled up. Now, what were you looking at internally? Because obviously you've got different guys qualified for different things that are able to find more things wrong when they enter a house. Was there anything you looked at and said, once I hit this threshold of an average ticket or once I, what was your monitor to say, let's spend more, we're doing good rather than going broke again. I mean, how did you know what were some of the KPIs you looked at to say, let's increase, let's increase?

Because that's a hard one. You said I was 100% committed to three years and to scale up, but also that meant conversion rate, booking rate, average ticket, all that stuff was good. Yeah, of course. I mean, we're constantly trying to find ways. First off, how many opportunities do we have? That's the first metric. Do you have calls? Language, I guess you want to use. Opportunity is what we say. And the conversion, what are you doing with those opportunities? And then what are you doing to improve your average ticket? And paying attention to those three things. If you do those three things, those create sales, right? So those are

your sales, which create your revenue. And then from there, we flip it around. And once you create the sale, the revenue, we went to production, right? And then we went to efficiency and then cost, which then create and then control your profit, right? Which create cash, which then you can pump back into the company. So, I mean, I know those are pretty basic stuff to understand, but if you have those three across the top, opportunities, conversion, average ticket equals your sale, which then creates sales, create your revenue, which then turns into production. Are you producing enough? Is your team making enough production hours or revenue? And then from there, how efficient are we at doing those projects? And then how good are we at controlling the cost of all those projects all around? And then obviously it gets to a net profit. I mean,

I can break that up through direct costs. So there's a lot of ways, but I guess we kind of looked at it that way and just really paying attention to KPIs every single day. I mean, we have boards here, visual scoreboards up with KPI reports, but also we really train a lot. I mean, we've made a commitment a couple of years ago. We spend more thanPI reports, but also we really train a lot. I mean, we've made a commitment a couple of years ago. We spend more than this now, but the real big one we brought out three years ago is we're going to spend a quarter million dollars on training. We're Nexstar members. We just brought Nexstar in. We send people away. We really committed to service system, install system, management training, dispatch system, call center system, all the stuff,

all the fundamentals, and really trained our team and invest in our people. And that's part of our mission is really to develop and retain top home service talent. That's what we're trying to do. That's our first line of our mission. Nextar really kind of teaches people that HVAC, plumbing and electrical could work as one business because of the off season, you know, summer gets packed with HVAC. You stayed at a hundred percent plumbing. Why is that? Did you ever have any ambitions to grow outside of just plumbing? So we stayed plumbing because I think people get into multi-trades are probably too fast. And sometimes I don't think we've earned the right to own multiple trades because we haven't actually executed the one trade that we started with. And we think getting other trades is going

to solve our problems or grow our thing. Yeah, it might grow revenue, but it causes other problems. They're very similar, but there's so many things that are different about them. And for us, it's just keeping our team directionally down one path and keep finding ways to improve what we do right now. And once we've earned the right to start another trade, then we'll tackle that. What I mean by that is over 15% market share in a market, I believe, needs to exist before you start thinking about multi-trades. I can understand if you're in a smaller market or city where you might need multi-trades to allow you to grow and add different value. But I mean, if you're in a major market city, I just think people sometimes get too fast

at thinking multi-trade lines are gonna like solve their problems. Yeah, yeah, I agree with that wholeheartedly. Where do you think the profitability percentage of revenue should land? Where do you like to be and where do you- 20% plus EBITDA, 20%. 20%, okay.

Yeah, I think your home service company should run over 20% net profit. I like that number. That's a really, really good number. So 20% is where you want to be. What about service agreements? How many of those do you feel like you should be selling as a percentage of your total customer base?

We're not a huge service contract because we're a plumbing company. We do have care plans. I don't know if I have an answer for you. That's like, I could give you a valid percentage. I'm not an HVAC expert there. So I don't want to tell people a number, you know, what we think. We think every tankless water heater we sell should have a care plan. Every water heater we sell should have a care plan attached to it and a service thing. So I guess it just depends on what your model is in that area. HVAC would be easier percentage for care plans. I definitely think there's an opportunity for service contracts, care plans for the plumbing industry that we probably haven't capitalized on as much. And we're trying to get better at that too. Sure. Yeah. I tell people whether you're a

million, 20 million, a hundred million, there's still problems, Yeah. It's always, there's, I tell people whether you're a million, 20 million, a hundred million, there's still problems, right? There's always ways to get better and take more market share. So what was the toughest decision you had to make as a leader in the face? You know, there's so many challenges. Can you think back of just some really, really important decisions you made as a leader? Yeah, I've had this question before. And I mean, I think when you think about it, it's just like, you're just getting up and you're just, you're working, man, you're grinding. You don't really always know what those decisions are. You're just doing what you think is best in the moment. You try to educate yourself.

I think one decision from maybe a leadership standpoint was really just always taking full responsibility for everything that happens, like everything really just always taking full responsibility for everything that happens, like everything in your company. Full responsibility, I think, is just an important thing. We all have our moments where we still slide back a little bit and be like, man, if they would have done this, they would have done that. Well, they did these things because of something we probably did, right? So full responsibility. I think another interesting one for me was when I was trying to grow the company that I didn't get a chance to answer, I think, earlier in your thing. It was like, what are some of the things you did? It was actually recognizing your company in many

fashions. So what I mean by this, most of us say, oh, I'm a plumbing contractor. Okay. So what do I do? I try to just get really good at plumbing. Oh, no, no, no. You're also a call center. You're a marketing company. You're a distribution company, you're a dispatching company, you're all these other layers as a company too. And it's like really saying, hey, Aaron, you know what? You need to think about what does a really great call center look like? Not just a really great plumbing company. What does a really great dispatch center look like? What does a really good logistics operation look like? What does a fleet management company look like? All these are inside of our businesses, but we spend so much time only focusing on how can

we just be better at plumbing, garage door, HVAC, electrical, which is great. You need to do that. But those things only get you so far. There's a lot of hardworking people that work really hard at being really great at those things, spend their whole life doing that and don't actually reap the benefits long-term. Yeah, I agree. There's enough work for me for 10 more years without getting into another industry. I mean, not even commercial. I don't want to do commercial. I don't want to do Home Depot. I don't want to do Costco. I don't want to do a warranty crap. The United States is big too. And I've decided to just plant seeds in a lot more spots, but would it be easier for you to take plumbing into another market, say Cincinnati, or would it be easier to take on

another industry like plumbing or HVAC or electrical? I think it would be easier for me to add plumbing into another market. I think so too. So if you had to pick one, or you're going down this next five years and you really feel comfortable, like you've got to where you, where you should be in Columbus, what's the next steps you think? It's already acquisition of another area. Yeah. Acquisition of other area. And possibly an acquisition of where you're at. If there's somebody selling. Yeah. If there was, I mean, there is, I mean, I don't think we actually need to acquire anybody in our market. I just think that we can just beat them, to be honest.

I just think we don't need to acquire somebody else. I mean, we have enough calls. Our marketing power is strong enough. I just think the only reason why I would consider acquiring another company in this market is because I wanted to buy a chunk of technicians all at one time, not because I need their calls. Most of the time, I not because I need their calls. Most of the time I might be looking for their calls. I actually think we fill our bucket up so much right now that the overflow

calls are actually going more to our competition. And we want to do it probably be to acquire actual team members to our team, techs, right? I do think that acquisition into another market is probably our best, is our option. I mean, that's what we're doing. So it's interesting because plumbing is quite a bit different because you got to have an apprenticeship and there's a lot more stuff governing plumbers than there is probably any other industry. I mean, electricians are strong in that governing agencies too. But see, for me, if someone's getting 30 calls a day, I want to buy that company because, especially if they're not doing marketing. If they've just been around a long time, they've got a lot of stickers, they've got a lot of word of mouth, they've been around 30 years.

Because to me, I can make technicians really, really fast that do amazing work. I've got to the point now where I've always tried to do lead generation. Now I'm like, the great technicians, they make it possible for me to do marketing because they get a good conversion rate, a good average ticket. If I'm taking a percentage of revenue, I could pay more by doing TV, radio billboards,

and also doing the Google and different relationships. So it's, everybody has different needs to buy a company. I would agree. Interesting. So, go ahead. I mean, ours is like, we, I mean, we just want to own Ohio, like to be straight up. Like we want to own Ohio. We want to create

opportunity for our team. You know, we promoted all of our frontline managers and our company have been promoted within. We promote significantly within the company. I mean, we're not a perfect company. Obviously we've got a lot to learn and challenges. I mean, as we're growing pretty fast the last couple of years, I mean, we've had a run into our bumps, but we really want to create opportunity for our team and our people. And I want to build a legacy. I mean, frankly, I think you do too, right? That's why you do what you do. I mean, I want to build a legacy that lasts and I want to build a company that's big enough that's not going to be acquired or taken apart by somebody. If one day I decide that it's time to go, I want to leave something that my team can work and grow and be part of forever.

And if we own the state of Ohio and beyond, I think we've done a pretty good job of that. I mean, our goal right now is a hundred million. So what's your timeline for a hundred million? I'd like to say in the next eight years. So a hundred million, and that's not crazy. That's a five, five times growth. Well, you said it's just, we've got enough work where we could handle more people. What are you doing right now? As far as recruiting, do you have a structure in place? Do you have a plan to get people all the time? Not just when you need them? Yeah. I mean, we're constantly recruiting. I mean, we run TV recruiting ads, radio ads. I mean, most of our guys that we hire now don't even have experience in the trades at all. I mean,

we're bringing them on and training them with some of our senior guys, our management team, starting to use Nextar's Next Tech program. That's an online platform for training. We use bring in trainers for things. So yeah, we have a pipeline. We definitely have a pipeline. We have a lot of people in our pipeline that are in the training process that once they're ready, trucks. I mean, also one of the reasons why I said that too

is we actually just due to the economy in the market right now, it's been very hard to get trucks, back orders, shutdowns. I mean, Hackney trucks, transits. I mean, we've been on the hunt for them. I just, I honestly can very hard to get trucks, back orders, shutdowns. I mean, hackney trucks, transits. I mean, we've been on the hunt for them. I just, I honestly can't even get to trucks. It's not even so much the techs anymore right now. I got guys, I don't even have trucks for them right now. So trying to get trucks, right? So trucks, techs, leads, like we should have bought more trucks and then got the techs and then got the leads. We've been backwards. We've been

literally leads, techs, and then trucks. We're literally flipped around the model. It's interesting because I look at the bottlenecks, what I said to be able to get to thousands of technicians and I've identified where are they going to stay when they come train? So I got the apartments all handled now, bought another one.

I said, the trucks are a huge issue. So I'm working very, very close to the company we buy them through. And we're like on the phone with them once a week. And now I've got a new outfitting team that could keep up with 20 a week. They can outfit them the way I want. And then I've got my internal wrap company. So then I said, these iPads are a pain in the butt because sometimes they get good reception, sometimes not. So now we're identified another company that they can switch signals. They go to any tower, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, whatever tower they need to be. So they come in, they teach the techs how to use them. We pay a little bit more, but the more I take away and just focus

on garage doors, which is get the great guys, have them do what they do. And that's the powerhouse of it is I'm not in the inventory business anymore. I'm not in the iPad business. I'm not in the vehicle business. As long as I have a plan B and a plan C. So part of my role now is to identify these bottlenecks and continue to hit the gas and find them before they happen. And I would love to hear what your day looks like now. I mean, talking about today, this next month, this next year, obviously before you were out there, probably doing a lot different things. You got to work hard. You're putting sweat equity in,

you're taking calls. You're the night guy. You're helping text on the phone. And that still happens. Trust me. We all go through that, but it's a lot less. What's your day? And I don't want to know what time you wake up necessarily, but when you come in and you're working, what are the meetings like? What are the meetings you're having? What's the difference between now and 10 years ago? I can tell you what time I wake up. I wake up around 4.30 every day. Oh, good. I'm an early guy. So I love the mornings. They're big for me. But look, my day is really around.

We have L10 meeting with our frontline senior leadership meeting. So we have an L10. I do one-on-ones every week with all my direct reports and look at that as an opportunity to grow and develop people. I carry out any fierce conversations that need to exist with people.

We have good rapport and we're able to have that. So So have a fierce conversation. I think fierce conversations help build relationships. So fierce conversations go on. I meet with my CFO once a week. We have a one-on-one too. We go through financials, any other things going on. I spend a lot of time still working directly with a lot of our frontline managers on processes and things that are happening inside the company. I mean, this year to last year, we're at 70% growth. So it's a lot of changes for us right now. So I work a lot of time with frontline there. Still work out very much on the vision of the company, still directing us for our vision, having those meetings, prepare for those. I work with the marketing team a lot more these days.

As we've grown, I've always been involved with them. But I think more, I do the radio shot, the radios, I do some of the TV stuff now, some of the branding, personal branding, but branding it towards eco plumbers still. I don't want it to be about myself, Aaron Gaynor. I want it to be about the company and the team. And then just be the face. I show up in huddles every day. If I pretty much just pop in here or there, let them know I'm involved, engaged here. That's the area I'm around, I guess, just presence, let them know I'm here. I'm here every single day. I come in here every day. I'm here. I'm part of this team. But I still let my team do their job though too, by the way. But I'm very

invested in their personal growth and development. And I think it's really helped me grow too. Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, I can already tell why the things you're saying is you're letting everything happen. I mean, ultimately the job of a CEO morphs into something greater eventually. That's almost like you're dealing with banks, investors, acquisition. It's that next level that I'm most excited about.

And I don't think I'm going to be there for a year and a half because at the growth I want, which is hundreds of percent a year, I think it's really, really, really important that I can identify some of the roadblocks. If you're in it all the time, you can't. That's why I'm not in it, but I've identified a lot. I just fix all the bottlenecks and the speed bumps and then do what I love. And marketing is getting great people. It's getting great customers. It has everything to do with everything in the company. Marketing has to do with acquisitions. You're marketing to other companies that you want to buy them. So really,

marketing is almost a necessity to become affluent with as a CEO or business owner, right? I agree. I spent a lot of time marketing. I mean, we used our, for our acquisition campaign, we used our own brand to start our acquisition campaign right now in Ohio. So, you know, we've used our own branding, our own messaging to send letters, to talk to people. We've got responses from people all across the state that we didn't even know that they knew we even existed, but they did from our branding. They've heard of our growth through networks, through other people popping up out of Columbus fast, pretty fast. I mean, been around 13 years, but really we've kind of became something faster in the last five years in most places. So yeah, for sure. I mean, it's marketing and sales. Marketing and sales to me

drive operations and then they force you to become operationally more sound as, it's marketing and sales. Marketing and sales to me drive operations. And then they force you to become operationally more sound as your team's marketing, selling, and then your operational part has to pick it up and become sound. I'm not saying don't put operations up, but it seems like that drives your operational bottlenecks, as you say. As your marketing is growing, your sales are growing, which is forcing you to find ways to improve your operations, which limit bottlenecking. So I work with the marketing. We have an acquisition firm company that I work with. So we'll talk with them for that.

And I agree, the next level is really bankers, accountants, and attorneys, right? So you need those three and then maybe throw the fourth one in there, depending on what kind of game you're playing as a politician. So, you know. Yeah, no, that's true. So you decided to get an acquisition specialist group. Obviously, I think that's a good decision. A lot of people will sell to private equity

with that being their specialty or whatever it might be. So you got this company. I'm sure they're writing letters, sending voicemails, sending emails. What other tactics are you guys using to let the state of Ohio know that you're in the market? Oh, exactly that. We just tell them we want to own the state and we want to have your team be part of that. If you're done, you're retiring. It's not, you've put your life work into this. The sad thing is a lot of times in the trades, a lot of guys and families put their life work into this. And the sad thing is a lot of times in the trades, a lot of guys and families put their life work into it. And at the end, it becomes nothing but pennies on the dollar at best, or trying to leave it to maybe a family member if they're interested. And I think there's opportunity out there to really help people that are in the trades,

have done this a long time, have never been able to grow their business maybe where they wanted to, but not let them walk away without their life work meaning nothing. That's important to me at the core to really see people not lose everything they've ever tried to put into it. The bigger companies that have grown into that 15, 20 million and 30 or 40 million, they're going to sell off to acquisitional firms and bigger corporation stuff. I'm talking about the guys that may have been somewhere between five and 12 million at best, and they're still looking for a path. And I think using our brand story and my own story of being a plumber by trade, a trades guy that started from nothing and worked his way up to start trying to become something. I still have a long way to go, by the way, man. I mean, I still

got a long way to go. I think you know, I've listened to your story. You still have a long way to go, by the way, man. I mean, I still got a long way to go. I think, you know, I've listened to your story. You still probably have, you got a long way you want to go too. So I got a lot of work here still to do to become a better man and a better person and grow a better company. I'm 42. I feel like I got a lot ahead of me. I think that's kind of our plan is just telling them. And I know it's an emotional thing for people. Like it's emotional. I mean, they've worked their whole life and these people are part of their lives. Well, that's what I was going to ask you is one of the things I ran into is I haven't met a business owner that doesn't think their business is worth way more than it is. I haven't experienced it yet. Like, and the deal is I'm very real about how much mine is worth because I've studied it. I look at what businesses sell for. I've talked to at least five

dozen private equity firms. I've literally talked to business owners who have sold. I understand what they need. I've actually been in the diligence period several times. I've bought companies. I've seen what it's like for background checks, for quality of earnings. There's so much stuff when you get into the next level. But how do you bring people back down to earth and say, listen, you've been paying yourself 120 grand. The business has been making nothing. How do you work a deal out with them? I mean, obviously that's probably not the size you're going for as a plumber with two guys. You're probably going for that 5 million minimum, something like that. So when I talked to Ken Goodrich, he's like, look, you got to praise

them. Tell them how proud you are of what they accomplished and tell them it's in good hands. And do you ever see part of my mentality and I'm just running something by you is let me buy 70%. Let me fix you for a year. I'll pay you another 10%. Let me fix you another year. That way you're still involved. You're connected. You're the living, breathing, like testimonialial for me so i'll pay you on every other deal we get because you're going out there your whole job now is to go out there and help me find more since you're living breathing testimonial and i'll give you some of the upside i'll give you some cash now but here's what we're going to do we're going to come fix your stuff we're going to retrain your guys we're going to give you a better brand we're going to give you a better

image we're going to increase this that and the other and we're going to pull out all these expenses like your huge warehouse and your gm that's making way too much money that we don't need right now. Or your uncle that's worked here for 30 years, who's an amazing guy, but maybe you could give him a nice little service package out of the money we're going to pay you because that'll free up a lot of cash. We'll make the tough decisions. So how do you go about that? What is your plan on that? Oh, I mean, I mean, I think similar ideas there for that plan is it's really about starting the conversation as a partnership and then asking them what they want. I mean, to me, it's really just, what do you want? That's my first opening conversation so far I've had with everybody's

like, what are you thinking? What do you want? Like, what are you looking for? What's best for you and your family and the team that's been working with you just lay it out there just like what's up like what's up and i even sometimes straight up ask like what do you think it's worth before we even get into anything here's what i hear every day every time i talk to somebody even if i got the money what even 66 years old i've talked to damn near 70 and they're like this, this is all I know. And like, once it's done, you can't undo it. And they're like, they're almost like, yeah, traveling's great for a while, but then what? And it's, I understand though, because like, can you imagine you started out on a high school, you sell your company. You'd be like, hey, you get an offer,

you can't refuse. And you've got another goal, whatever it is. You'd be like, you get an offer you can't refuse and you've got another goal whatever it is you'd be like man this was my life you know and i understand how people feel like what this is what i've this is what i've done my whole life and it's it's hard because how do you build the vision for them you can't say well you're gonna love alaska when you travel there you're really gonna love golfing every day and fishing or whatever that might be so that's i think the hardest part is is can they be involved to some extent and how do you make it work for them to where when they get lonely, they want to come see the fruits of their labor, you know? Of course. I mean, I think you're, I mean, Tommy, you're a smart guy. I mean, you

obviously are doing this. I mean, you've done more success than I have. So I'm listening to you here. Like, I mean, you get it. And I guess there's challenging conversations. I think most people do want to be part of something for sure. And giving them opportunity. I think we would take the same approach is praise them, obviously, because they've worked hard. I mean, they've worked really hard, sometimes harder than they needed to work. Right.

And praise them, recognize what they did because they have worked hard. Like, not because you're bullshit. No, sorry. But really, they worked hard. Right. But they've worked hard at Like, not because you're bullshit. No, sorry. But really, they worked hard, right? But they've worked hard at only what they've known, what hard work looks like, right? Hard work still works. You just got to do it right.

And recognize that and then give them an opportunity. I mean, I think that's what, how can they contribute? How can they still contribute? People want to be contributing people to society for the most part, especially somebody who's been working this hard their whole time. So, I mean, find a way that they can contribute to the company still. And I think those are some of the goals we want to. Have I got that answer yet? No, I don't.

When I do, I'll be happy to come figure it out. I could let you know. I think we're all trying to figure that out. But let's be honest, this size of companies, if you're looking at similar stuff, it's really an emotional sell or an emotional partnership. And you got to tear through the emotional state of where they are and understand what you can do to connect and rebuild and maybe a new vision for them or connect to a vision that they may have always had. They just never knew how to get there. And if you can do that, I think you have an opportunity to really do something great with some people. Other than that, like the bigger guys that get bigger and do stuff. I mean, it's an emotional decision because you've worked your whole life, but then at some point it comes down to a number, a number and that your team is going to be somewhat taken care of.

At least that's what I've kind of seen when I've talked to people and done this stuff, right? I've talked to acquisition companies and firms and do all the same thing you've done to study and learn and the bookshelf you have. I got bookshelves over here full of books and all the things too. And Tony Robbins Business Mastery Programs and UPWs and every Next Star event you can think of and every book and podcast and everything you can dream of, right?

I think it's just getting in there and getting connections with people and finding out what they really want and need deep down and helping them paint their own picture and vision for their future and their family and their team. And if you can do that, I think you can tackle a lot of things. And then follow through on that promise, right? Don't sell people a bunch of nothings. Follow through on the promise.

You know, it is about sales. We talk about this as you're selling them on the future of what their life's work will look like. And if you think about the employees they have, what the future looks like and how they win, I'm thinking about a roll-up. It's something that I've been talking to a lot of people about that are specialists at roll-ups. And how do you give them a lot of upside? How can you make a lot of millionaires? And the good news is no one's better than boots on the ground. The reason that Phoenix will do well over 15 million this year, and I think it'll double next year, is because it's easy. I know so many people.

It's easy for me to walk in the door and just referrals up the yin and yang. We've been here a long time. So when you get boots on the ground there, these people, they built these relationships over time and they could keep those relationships. And I just feel like there's a strategy to give them money up front, have them, and then say, we're going to come in and we're going to fix you. And because we know our KPIs, we could put them right over yours. We could increase this or that. I think the biggest thing I've seen over the last few years that I've noticed is it's not necessarily that a lot of

things need to be fixed. There is the call bookings and open weekends and nights, but it's pull out these big ass expenses that they don't even realize. A lot of them are paying their wife. A lot of them are paying all these bills that they reduce the profitability to single digits. And I think that's first you, you clean out all the crap and you find five, 10% sometimes, then you just raise the KPIs a little bit. And then all of a sudden, man, you've got a 15, 20% Hummer and it's nice. Absolutely. I mean, there's the big five metrics, right? Go in and hit the big five, big five items, make up about 75% of the business, find out where the fat is in those, clean that up,

find the other 25% mixed up and stuff. And then, you know, go in there and just improve conversion and average ticket through stuff. Some of it is most guys are probably pretty under much under price. You probably just go in and raise the prices by 10 or 15%. And next thing you know, you're back in line to where you needed to be while still delivering and then coach your team up and higher, provide a higher level of service. So if you're looking at the fact like rolling up, I don't disagree with you. I mean, I would think it'd be great to give a guy some, or I want to say a guy should say a family or whoever, right? The company and give them some money up front to be involved and engaged. And then as the company grew over the next three or

four years of the valuation of the company grew, they get a little more and they get a little more. And I think that that's a great win for everybody if it's done and modeled properly. So, I mean, I haven't done this, so I don't have those answers, but from a theory standpoint and the conversation I've had and the direction we're going, we believe that that's going to allow us to help us own Ohio, either through the EcoPlumber brand by rebranding companies or taking companies that already have a pretty solid name and recognition and just keeping them moving by advancing who they are and getting some key people in place. And like you said, remove some fat, some nonsense stuff that they've used. And a lot of companies that think of that size really do overpay themselves,

have people on their payroll, family members that aren't probably ideal. And they like to try to run their profitability down to nothing because they're not thinking bigger picture so you're you're on service tight what year did you get on your crm as service and what year did you do that i mean i think it's i want to say six years ago now 27 yeah i mean i think when i met Ara, his whole office might have been as big as my office right now. Like, it wasn't very big. It still is, actually. He's a very frugal person. Yeah, I mean, my quick story with Service Titan.

First off, I love Service Titan and Ara Vahe are awesome people. I got a chance to meet them a long, long time ago and just talked to Ara not that long ago again. But I remember sending an email in over the weekend. I think it was on a Sunday. I was like, oh man, this is it. I've been looking for something like this. Got a phone call from Aura on Sunday. He did a presentation for me Sunday night at like,

I mean, I think it was like 7 p.m. Eastern time. So I was like, oh, this is sweet. I was like right there on the phone. I just said, well, I'm just signing up. And this is when I was still a smaller company, right? And then I was blown away. I was like, man, this is awesome. This guy like literally called me back on a Sunday, set up, did a presentation, went through his software, said I'm on game. I'm game. Let's do this. I mean, the relationship with Service Titan has

been great. Obviously we all know where Service Titan has gone in the last six years. So I went to California and met him. I said, all I want to do, man, as I meet you, if this software works the way it is, I just want to give you a big hug right now. Showed up there, literally didn't know the guy at all besides conversation, gave him a hug, and I truly believe we've had a great friendship and I've known him, and I know he knows a lot of guys,

especially you, out there, and he's just done a great job of connecting with people and being a solid person, man. I don't know what else to really say. The combination of Service Titan and the Nextar. Nextar really is everything from soup to nuts for HX, plumbing and electrical. It really gives you the role playing, the processes, how to be a better leader, how to build a culture, how no one should have more than five direct reports, what those direct reports should be presenting to you each week. How important has Nextar been? Huge. I mean, Jim Hamilton, my business coach,

I pretty much talk to him. We have a Monday at one o'clock set for years, right? Unless we're traveling or something's going on. I mean, I use my business coach. Jim Hamilton's been amazing. He's been the same coach I've had for, I think, six years now with Nextar. I mean, I use my business coach. Jim Hamilton's been amazing. He's been the same coach I've had for, I think, six years now with Nextar. I mean, Jack Tester's awesome. I've talked to Jack. I mean, he's taken one-on-one calls with me. I mean, the training's amazing. I mean, they're just good people, man.

They're good people. I mean, they've been huge. They've opened my eyes up to a lot of stuff, coached us on a lot of things, trained us on a lot of things. And I mean, so I give, you know, I give Service Titan the stuff they've had and they've created. I mean, I give them, I'll give them love. I'll give Nextar love and I'll give my team love because honestly, like, that's great. Those are all great tools. But if you don't take action with all the information and knowledge, none of it really matters. Right. So, I mean, I give my team a lot of love for really taking that stuff and getting serious about it and taking action with all of it to allow us to grow. So they've been great resources. I mean, I can't say enough about

what Nextar has done. And I know Nextar, Jack Tester know how I feel about them and the relationship I have with them. And I look forward to that relationship being forever. Same thing with Service Titan and Aura. I hope I look for that relationship to be forever too. Yeah, it's incredible. It's incredible what they've done for companies between both those companies. I did this little speaking thing at the huge convention.

It hasn't come out yet, but I did an hour seminar on make the best of yourself, make the best of your systems and technology and make the best out of your team. And it was hard for me because I was like, I basically, I got this thing on my shelf. It's the, uh, the old DeLorean here. So I said, if I could go back in time and give myself a presentation an hour long, this would be it. So I literally pretended that I was talking to my 21 year old self and basically said, you need to learn to duplicate your time and you need systems to protect your time. And you need to be able to, so I think I'm 10 times more efficient.

I delegate 10 times better. I've hired around my weaknesses. I know where my role is. I know where my strengths are. I talked a lot about that in the beginning. And then I went into technology. And it's not just the technology, but it's a simple technology and processes and standard operating procedures and checklists. So I talk about that. And then the third one is the team, which I find this all the time on the podcast, all the time, especially with COVID and people, I mean, it bumped a lot of either there's losers that kind of fell off or people got busier. And I think that one has to do with the other. And I'm not saying losers, they just ended up

losing because they weren't prepared. They're not losers as people. They just were, no one was prepared for it. And it's unfortunate, but they lost. So they, therefore they lost. And I saw this problem coming and I think we've solved it. We're back. I'm going, okay, I figured out how to get, I've got 40 guys coming on the 24th and everybody's looking at me like, okay, we needed guys, but 40 and we've got 40 here now. And that's a big number. How do you plan on handling this? And I'm like, okay. I'm like, okay. I'm like, we're going to give a minimum and we're going to put it on fire. We're going all in.

I've got lots and lots of millions and millions and millions put away for this. And I'm like, this is it. This is where we do a huge, gigantic, galaxy-wide jump to where we just, we make that next jump because we hit a valley. There's peaks and valleys. And I said, it's about the people. And I think that's where I find, we make that next jump because we hit a valley. There's peaks and valleys. And I said, it's about the people. And I think that's where I find, and you said it, you said, man, I could probably do 30 million if I had more guys and more talent. So what are you going to do? I think talent is by far, I would say one A player equals three B players. I think it's the most

underestimated thing in business. And so many people think, well, if you spend time with them and take the time, you could fix anybody. And that's true. But why not hire the right ones out of the gate? Why not top grade and fix it this month? Then just say, I'm going to work with somebody for the next three years because I've done that too. And it works, but I'm not captain save. It takes a long time. Yeah. Captain save everyone. Right. And I think we all go through that a little bit, depending on who we are. Like if we're investing in our own personal growth, sometimes we get emotionally invested in other people's personal growth. So I can, I can understand. I've for sure have done that taking too long for me. It's like,

I just want to work with people with good, better, positive people, happy people that also have the will to want to learn. And they're up for the challenges, man. That's kind of where I am now these days. I just want to work with just upbeat people. Life's too short, man. I don't want to fight with people about stuff all the time, man. If you don't want to work, then don't work. I'm not going to argue with you all day long anymore. I'll invest in you. I'll give you the training. I'll give you the tools. We will spend time. I will spend time. But at some point, you just want to work with happy, upbeat going people. And again, not everybody's going to

be the most cheerful, happy person every day. I'm not all the time too. I know I have my days where I was probably a little more aggressive than other days. But at the end of the day, I don't want to fight with people about being at work. I agree. You know what I mean? It's just's just get good talent of people. Like, so blessed my CFO came on five years ago. I mean, he's been amazing, man. He's been changed the game for us a lot. He's just a good attitude, positive. My marketing manager, she's awesome. My marketing assistant, she's awesome. My dispatcher kind of operations manager ladies does a lot of stuff. I mean, just positive people. I mean, there's a lot of other great people. My service manager, Ron's been with me.

I've known him since I was 15, actually. So we've known each other a long time. And, you know, we've grown together a lot. And my sister, all these people, like, I don't know if I'm answering your question right. It's just, it's just like, I just, I just heard the one time before, I think it was Zappos, it goes,

how do you have all these happy people? He's like, people working here. What do you do to make them all happy? He's like, I just hire happy people. Yeah. Like, just hire happy people, people that are somewhat happy. Not like cheerfully, ditzy, happy type of stuff, right? Like, they're optimistic.

They feel like they can solve this. They feel like we can move forward. Not always in everything's the whole world's tumbling down and crashing and burning. Yeah, there are those people. I mean, I don't have any, I'm sure I have some, but overall, I mean, we've done a really, really good job of just making sure, probably spend way more time than we ever have on the hiring and just training. And it's just so important to hire for attitude. There's a good book called Hire for Attitude. One of the things I was going to mention too is I've literally

noticed the people that are athletic, they've played sports, they play games, they need to win, whether that's shooting pool or bowling. I don't care what it is. If they're a CSR, they played a lot of volleyball, whatever it is, they've been competitive in their lives. They've had to practice. They've had to learn. they've had to execute and they're used to keeping score those type of people that that just they have this burning desire to win when they're number two or number three they get mad whereas there's other people that are like oof thank god i'm not last yeah it's a different mentality and i try to find that out i try to figure out do you love games are you competitive Do you aspire to be number one?

And I think that characteristic, if I had to pick one, it's obviously, are you joyful to be around? Can you strike up a conversation? Do you smile? But other than that, it's like, are you a fierce competitor? Do you need to win? Because I've noticed that that is something that there's some people that just say, yeah, I try to have fun. I don't really care if I win or lose. It's just for fun. And I'm like, I hate that because I'm so competitive and I'm not the right person. It's just for fun, right? Yeah.

Not just for fun. I mean, this isn't a fun board game. And this is real life with real people with real money. I agree. I mean, one of our mantras every single day is win the day. I mean, that's one of our core values. You need to be a person that literally wants to win every single day every day Like we have a win the day huddle

Everything is it my question is in the beginning of the huddles with our team every day Our management team is did you win the day yesterday? Yes or no and today? What are you going to do to win the day today? Like it's a win the day mentality our team gets it you know, it's not a jeopardizing customer service or quality or other things like you need to have a win the day mentality. And you also need to be a person that says yesterday, if it didn't go right, we shake it off. Yesterday's yesterday. Today, we're going to figure out how we're going to win today. So yeah, I agree with people that are competitive and they want to win. I want to win.

Yeah. That's built in me. Don't go around aggressively about it every minute, every day, but my team knows I want to win. There's no secret. Yeah, I know. It's important that the leader could continue that. I want to talk about a few more things, but let's get some information. If someone wants to reach out to you, what's the best way to get ahold of you? Hey, I mean, they can email me, Aaron at ecoplumbers.com. And then I always ask the same question. If you had to pick three books that have been influential in your life, what would those three be? I mean, honestly, Think and Grow Rich changed my life.

I've read it six times. That's a- Napoleon Hill, yep. Yeah, Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich. I imagine you probably have read that one. That was a game changer for me. I mean, I enjoyed E-Myth. E-Myth was a great book for the beginning kind of mentality of where I was.

So, I mean, I think E-Myth is another really, really important book. What other ones? I've got a couple other ones in here that have probably been some pretty big game changers. I love a book called the happiness equation i don't it's not really one that people probably read a lot or know of but the happiness equation was a really good book for me so i really enjoyed that book and i think another great book that kind of got me thinking from a sales standpoint was maximum influence i think maximum influence was another solid book I mean, I have some deeper ones too. Yeah, no, Maximum Influence. I got that. I got five copies right there.

Yeah. Okay. So I guess you're reading Maximum Influence back there too. So I think that was a good one. So those are kind of some core books. And then, I mean, I get into some spiritual books and some other stuff too, that kind of keep you in line a little bit with some other things. But I think those ones are really great books. Get you thinking. You know, if you get a chance, I haven't recommended this book in a while, but you can already get up at 4.30. You should listen to the 5am club. It's worth to read. It's a high end book. I mean, I read it out loud and I'm like, wow, this is like, it really develops your reading skills too. Right now for my book club, we're reading Raving Fans,

and that's a really easy on a plain book. So a couple, I'll finish. I've read that book. I like Miracle Morning. Miracle Morning is a good book too. So yeah, probably all, most of us guys that are doing this type of stuff probably have a similar agenda of what we're reading. I mean, I love John Maxwell books too.

Oh yeah. So if you had to go back to yourself, 2007, I'm going to guess you'd say it's striking the relationship with the right CFO is by far probably the COO, the CFO. I mean, it's like, holy cow, big, big, big, big, big, big, big hiring decisions. I love marketing and sales. So I kind of fit into where I wanted to stay. I didn't need to find someone for marketing per se, although I do have an amazing guy that handles a lot of it now. What would you tell yourself? Maybe four or five things, just big lessons here that you've learned since you've got started on your own. So, no, I wish I had some grand silver bullet like answer for you man i mean i think it's just

stay the course man like i just stay the course like realize that if you just stay the course you just grind it out and you work and really just set your plan and work it and just keep working it erin and even though i go back then is realizing like even though you think today like you've made it some level you really haven't crossed the finish line still because there is no just keep working at it. And even though I go back then is realizing, even though you think today, you've made it some level, you really haven't crossed the finish line still because there is no finish line. You just keep going and going. And life's a journey of growth. And realize that years ago, you were thinking about how could you grow and thinking about who I was 10 years ago versus who I am today as a person, like just realizing that those late nights of listening to those books and reading and working all day and going and spending time, they will

pay dividends. And I think it's just reminding myself of that still today. It's like, you still need to do that work. It's not over. And I think, I don't know if that's going back to tell myself something amazing as much as it's reminding myself today that the work is still needs to be put in and recommending books and reading and staying that course. It works out. It just, it works. And you're going to make bad decisions. Sometimes you are, it's just how fast can you shrink those down? Right? I think that's the one thing is like letting the emotional side of you not take over as much and letting emotion exist, but, you know, be a little more logical sometimes and not such emotional. And I think that's helped me grow and

realizing maybe earlier in my life that I should have been a little more of that thinking that way. And then saying, okay, when you make a bad decision, just reconnect, pull it back together faster. Like when something bad happens, don't let it take you for days or hours, you know, days or weeks. Now you close that down to a day, close it down to a couple hours, and now down to maybe five minutes and move on. I think just recognizing your own personal growth, and I think Man's Search for Meaning, that book really helped me think about those types of things a little bit too. I love it.

I can hear all these, I guess, all these other points like, hey, that decision you made with your CFO was great. Hey, that decision to sign up for Nextar was awesome. Hey, by the way, Aaron, that decision you made to sign up with Service Titan, it paid dividends, right? Hiring this person worked out. All these other things worked out and they have. And I think, again, it's just realizing that you do have to believe in your team. You got to invest in them.

You got to grow and you got to trust them. You got to trust them, man. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, that was one of my hardest part was letting go of the vine. Like it was really can be challenging sometimes, but you got to trust them and let them grow. Yeah. And I do think financial literacy, being able to look at financial statements, learning your CRM is being able to let you identify the bottlenecks and the weaknesses. And that's where I'll jump into anything, but I'm more there to ask questions to get them out in the open. I'm just there saying, explain to this to me how we didn't follow up on these, or I've got a text message from one of my customers I recommended and they haven't heard back. Where

is this broken? And I uncover a lot of stuff because you can't grow. If you're going to grow 10% a year, it's manageable. Everybody in the company could slowly grow to that. But if you're growing, you grow 70% this year. I'm talking about multiple hundreds of percent in like a hockey stick shape. And it's dangerous to grow that fast unless you've got perfect systems. Systematic growth is a key to have checklists, standard operating procedures, manuals. But what I always do here is, and I just kind of did it, but I'm going to do it again, is I'm going to let you go for a couple of minutes. A lot of these companies and business owners listening, they've not hit a couple million dollars yet. And obviously stay the course, be aggressive, have a plan, get help, read books. But I'll give you kind of some final thoughts about how your whole paradigm has shifted

a little bit. I think you've got all the right people on the bus now as far as most of the leaders you need, which is giving you the freedom to really focus on, number one, yourself and kind of step back a little bit and really accept the vision, live and breathe the vision. And that's what I'm seeing from you. So I'll give you a few minutes. And I know you already talked a little bit, but just anything you want to talk about.

It could be about hiring. It could be about marketing. It could be about CRM, whatever you think. And you can close us out. I mean, I think it comes down to this for me as we went along and I was fortunate to be part of Service Titan's first pantheon. And the question they asked me there was, what do you think you need to work on the most? And I said,

me, me. I need to work on me. What will hold your business back the most? Me. I will. What will grow your business the most? Well, me and my team, right? Investing in them. So I think it's really like being a really, really, for me, it's just, you are, the company is going to be as good as you are as the leader, right? There's no bad teams. There's bad leaders. Like if your team isn't performing and they're not doing it, it's not because of them. It's because of you. You have to be okay to take full responsibility. You have to look at yourself and ask yourself, am I the right leader to do this? Am I doing the right things? Am I showing up that way? How do I show up? What am I doing? And am I leading by example or am I telling

people to do something that I don't do it and then get upset about it? Like, I just think that it's really hard for people to be reflective and self-aware. Well, reflection is something that I've really dove into the last few months, and that's a great word. We're not competing against other companies. I stopped competing against competitors 10 years ago. I started competing against myself and said, look, if I let the competitors hold down as far as I could win, that doesn't make sense. They're nowhere in the hemisphere of where I plan on being. Why would I even look at them? Literally, I don't want anything that they're doing. We're changing the game. Everything we're

doing is completely opposite of what they would tell you to do at the associations and the meetings they have about garage door companies about, oh yeah, you could get away with working out of your home to save money, blah, blah, blah. You could get away with this or that. And I'm like, that's not a business. That's not sellable. And honestly, my whole mind goes, how do I make the best company that's sellable? Even though I don't like this data I'm selling, but ultimately every day your company should be sellable. If it's not sellable, you're like, well, if I went to sell, if you've got this answer, and I'm sorry, I'm going off on this, but Aaron, if you were to

tell yourself, well, if I was going to go sell my business, I probably want to wait six months because I changed this, that, this, probably get rid of this person, probably change my inventory system, maybe pick a different CRM, probably upgrade my CFO because it's something I've wanted to do anyway, probably let go of my stepdad. If all that's going through your mind about what you would do if you were going to sell, I'd say do that. I like to think about selling,

you know what I mean? That's why, even though I think you have a obligation to your team to build a company that can be sold. Absolutely. You have an obligation to them. Like that is your job as the CEO of your company and the owner of your company is to build a business that can be sold.

Not because you're going to sell it. It's because it's your responsibility to build a company that is that strong and that powerful that it could be sold for your team and for the opportunity for your team to survive, grow, and take care of their families. If you don't get up to do that every single day, you don't earn the right to be the CEO of your company. That's my personal opinion. You have not earned the right to be the CEO of the company. If you're not building something that allows to be sold, even if you're not going to sell it, that it can be sold and create opportunity, grow for people, give people opportunities to advance their income, their life, make them better people, help them pay mortgages, send their kids to college, do all these things. That's what

needs to happen. And that's your job. And I think sometimes we think that all these people work for us. We work for them. Absolutely. We work for them. And when we work for them, they work for us. And you have to do that. And I'm not sitting here standing on some high moral ground saying that I've got it all figured out and I got it right. I mean, I screw this up still today. I mean, I do, but I think the intention and you know, not just intention because intentions can change the standard of who you are, the core of who you are, the integrity of who you are should be that you're building something that's meaningful for your people and your team. And you said it early, enjoy the journey. It's a journey.

It's a ride. It's not the destination. Next time, when do you come to Phoenix? Do you come out very often? I've actually never been to Phoenix. Been a lot of places in this country, the Phoenix. But I mean, if I got an invite to come see, you know, the famous Tommy,

I'm going to take you up, brother. Hey, listen, why don't we, let's wait till the weather. Tom Howard always talks about how awesome you are. And everybody, I mean, I've heard great stories about you. So, I mean, love to get an opportunity to get to know you a little bit more and share some time together. And I think I can learn a lot from you. We'll kick it.

And we'll talk about some ideas because I'm putting some things in the motion. It'd be perfect for you to get out of the winter and come hang out. Well, Aaron, I really, really appreciate you coming on. I got a lot out of this. You've got a great story and there's some great books to pick up and I really, really appreciate you, brother. Oh man. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity and glad to, just to share something. You've always got good stuff. So appreciate it. Again, if there's anything I can do to help you out or help anybody out, Aaron at ecoplumbers.com. Do the best I can. So thanks, man.

Thanks for this opportunity today. Appreciate it. I just always want to say the last thing, too, is I want to thank my team, as always, Eco Plumbers team, family. Appreciate all of you. Everybody does an amazing job here. So thank you so much. Great work, man.

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