209 Transcript
John Wilson: [00:00:00] We're trying to build a hundred million dollar business, like the people that are on your bus now are probably not the people that are on your bus when you're much larger. Us
Jack Carr: as individuals are capped by a mental horsepower that we innately have, or we at some point give up trying to increase.
John Wilson: One of the biggest wins that we've had for our core business is having a podcast.
We are able to connect with almost anybody that we want and do site visits. We can get the smartest people in the industry on this show and like ask them almost anything that we want. That has helped accelerate Brandon, myself, and all of our leaders, because we're able to be in the room. I. With people that would normally, we would not be in the room with
Jack Carr: welcome back, welcome back to Owned and Operated. I have missed saying that for the last couple weeks, to be honest with you. Yeah. Jack Acquisitions, when I say welcome back to [00:01:00] Jack acquisition, it just doesn't have the same feel. I, I love it, but it,
John Wilson: it doesn't, but I mean, people are loving it dude. People are loving it.
Um. I've got, we've gotten a lot of great, uh, comments. We've gotten a lot of great responses to the newsletter, forge acquisitions and, uh, listens are great. So people are really vibing on the acquisition talk.
Jack Carr: Yeah, that's good stuff. And uh, I know I've said it before, o off like the main thing, but like Chris is getting super close to his, um, like acquisition, like actually closing on his deal.
Yeah. Yeah.
John Wilson: Yeah,
Jack Carr: and I'm just like, why can't we just release all of them at once? Everyone can hear like this super incredible journey, but not what we came here to talk about today.
John Wilson: Yeah. Well make sure everyone should just make sure they're listening, uh, because we, we went from two podcasts a week to three and our Friday episode is Jack Acquisitions, where Jack is talking to acquisition entrepreneurs that are actively buying, buying companies or just bought companies.
Um, and it's been a lot [00:02:00] of fun. It's been, yeah, it's been a good time.
Jack Carr: It's a fun subject. Yeah, no it is sweet man. Uh,
John Wilson: people on my team, I actually got feedback from people on my team and because this came up the other day, I never expect anyone to actually listen. And I had a few people come up and they're like, you know, I really like Jack Jack's Friday session.
And I'm like, I'm like, first off. Where, where's my positive praise? Yeah. Uh, secondly, yeah. But, but yeah, people on the team thought it was really interesting, so I thought that was cool.
Jack Carr: Yeah. Always fun. It, it's a, it's a fun time. Just answer the phone. It's one of those phrases that's always easier said than done.
I know It was hard for me and my business 'cause the phone. Always rings while you're out in the field trying to get something done, or it's 8:00 PM and you're trying to get your kids to bed. Well, I have the solution for you. I'm extremely excited today to announce Quick Staffers, your Go-to solution for building a high performing cost effective customer service team.
We are placing CSRs who have been pre-trained on proven home [00:03:00] service SOPs and scripts, the same ones that Wilson and I use in our business for a limited time. We're offering $500 off. Your initial placement costs for the first 10 signups. See link in the description below, or head over to quick staffers.com for more information.
Sweet man. We haven't talked in a while. How have you been? Good.
John Wilson: Good. Uh, we're mid May. End of May. What? What's the date? Third week of May 23rd. Yeah, 23rd. Um, good. Like, good. Uh, yeah, like Wilson's been kicking. Um, April was really strong. Which we were super excited about, like 55% growth and like strong earnings.
Uh, may is strong. Uh, I don't think we'll hit budget last May. I'm curious what it, what it's like where you are, but last May, it was like summer weather in May, so our revenue ramped really hard in May. Um. I think we had a 50 [00:04:00] 50% month over month growth from April to May last year in 2024? Yeah. This year I think it's like 20 is what we're looking like.
Maybe like 25. So it's good. But like it's 40 degrees outside right now and it's the end of May 40. Like Memorial Day is 40.
Jack Carr: Oh.
John Wilson: It's been like that all week. And we're still selling 50 grand a day of hvac. But you know, last year we were. It was just, it was already 80 degrees. Yeah. So yeah, for like, I'm in a sweater and it's the end of May.
I'm sweating down here,
Jack Carr: down in Nashville. Yeah. But we did get a little cold spell. We've had two kinda weeks where we got two to three days above 85, which is our threshold kicker, where like it really starts ramping. But yeah, this is going to be, there's, there's a chance that this may is better than our best month last year.
Nice. So we have ramped really hard. We have scaled really hard. We bought three new vehicles. We hired two [00:05:00] new all-star technicians. We're ramping plumbing. Nice. Uh, we started, you know, getting everything in line. We put on another three headcount for our call center. We, we had Avoca on our background. So like we are capturing every lead possible, every aggregator possible.
We're calling out immediately, like we have just like streamlined everything and we actually get to see. It play out, which is the fun part. Like, it, it's actually, I, I'm, I'm at risk of becoming disconnected with our audience here. John, when I say this, let's, I'm actually having some fun. Let's go. Okay. This is the first time.
Yeah. You're definitely
John Wilson: at risk. You're definitely at risk is this is the
Jack Carr: first time in three years where I'm having some fun. Um, it's cool. Yeah. We're getting to do branding activities, so we're spending mm-hmm. A couple hundred bucks to, uh, sticker the trucks. We're not doing full wraps, but we're doing some really nice stuff with, uh.
Some stickers, like half wraps or quarter wraps. Um, but really cool graphics. Um, we got some new uniforms. Like it feels [00:06:00] good when you can spend money on new uniforms and not like, hurt. Yeah, that's a, it's a good day.
John Wilson: Yeah. That sounds like you guys are winning.
Jack Carr: Yeah, we're doing really well. The team is is doing amazing.
Um, like we're at a point where we're thinking about bringing on a second comfort advisor. Like it's okay. It's that, like that's the area of we spent the money to get past 5 million and now we have the extra that Yeah. It's like, Hey, do you take it outta the business for yourself or do you put it back in and grow?
And so we, we were putting it all back in for growth. We're finally getting to do those like really small branding activities. Mm-hmm. Um, like wrap trucks, which is crazy to think about, but everybody always is. You have to wrap your trucks, you have to have stickers on your trucks. We, we, we got to 5 million without 'em, like not a single.
So like were they white trucks? They're just white trucks.
John Wilson: Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. Yeah. I mean, I
Jack Carr: think, um, we had magnets on, on like two of them. Yeah, but the magnets fall off once you go on the [00:07:00] freeway. Yeah. So we stopped doing that. Um, but like really low branding. I got some flack
John Wilson: for this on Twitter a couple weeks ago because I was like, Hey, I, I don't think you need to do brand until like six, 7 million.
And people were like, well, you need to wrap your trucks. And uh, and like that was one of the responses. I'm like, I, I guess I don't know that you do. Um, like we didn't wrap our trucks like wrap rap. Like we had our names Decaled on it. But we didn't wrap our trucks until probably five or 6 million either.
Jack Carr: Yeah. Yeah. So that, that was the conversations like, Hey, do we just sticker with one big sticker on the side and call it a day for a hundred bucks a truck? Yeah. Or do we like, go up to the $400 a truck range, put the sticker, put it on the back, put some like cool swishy swishes on the side to make it look.
Mm-hmm. Somewhat artistic. And, um, we, we have enough in the bank to come back from. Winter. 'cause we didn't lose any of Q1. We were up 40%, all of Q1, which allowed us to nice go into Q2 when we started [00:08:00] actually making money to say, Hey, we can actually spend some now. So it's, it's been, yeah. Heck yeah. I mean, like really implementing what we talk about on this show has finally, um, paid off to a point where it feels good.
That's all. Not to rub it into anybody. Yeah. But
John Wilson: no, I mean, I, I, I think that's, I think that's great. Uh, we, we had a similar experience. Right now we're, we're in this, like Jesse on my team said it best and I think he took it from somebody else too. So I'm not even sure who to give this credit to, but it's definitely not me.
Um, but we're in dial phase, not lever phase. That was me, which is kind of interesting. That's
Jack Carr: acquisitions.
John Wilson: Was that you? That was me. Dude. Okay. I get to give you credit, but like, I, I saw from Jesse, Jesse talked about it on Yeah. LinkedIn. And I was like, that's a great quote.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: Oh my God. That's funny.
Jack Carr: That was my, I'm quoting you, Jack.
That was, I know that's the full circle. I didn't think this day would come, John.
John Wilson: This is it. We're here,
Jack Carr: but,
John Wilson: um, but yeah, we're in this dials not levers phase where, uh, [00:09:00] like each team is pretty self sufficient. It, it's, honestly, it's kind of an odd place for me to be. And I'm having to like, you know, this is my, you know, I'm gonna describe my career journey really quick, but, um, the, the team is big now, and I remember talking to somebody maybe a couple years ago and they said like, Hey, between 160 and 200 people, it gets kind of weird because every single job, like anything that could happen inside a company.
Someone has that job now.
Jack Carr: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: So like me getting the mail, like that's someone's job. Me depositing checks, that's someone's job. Me looking at numbers and making sure people are performing as someone's job now. And, um, like including our remote like over offshore team. Uh, we're in the one 70, uh, to 180 range now of like total head count.
We have 152 in Ohio and then another 20 something, uh, remote. So, so. [00:10:00] Um, yeah, it's been kind of interesting because we're, we're starting to, like, the changes that are being made are the things that I'm not super great at doing. I have to get good at doing it, but my whole career so far has been these levers like, oh, I'm gonna go do an acquisition.
I'm gonna go gra, you know, jump into this new market. We're gonna go launch this new department. Um, so like. Big moves. And now what we're doing is we're like, each team is dials. So our plumbing team is about to add a second service manager.
Jack Carr: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: So that's, that's different. Like it's a step change, but it's not the same as launching plumbing.
Um, so we're just like getting a little bit better. And our HVAC is dividing into a couple teams too. So we're adding new managers into each of these teams. So plumbing's getting a new service manager, plumbing's, also getting a new install manager. 'cause the teams have grown so much, we have to divide them.
Now the [00:11:00] HVAC is splitting off. We're bringing out a new HVAC sales manager. And, um, we have another, uh, leadership position opening up too. And it's all these like incremental changes and I'm having to get used to. It's a very like, background position. I think just for the moment I have to sit on my hands a lot because the, the company is just like progressing towards the next step.
And like if I go and do a big thing right now, I'm gonna actually end up damaging the momentum that we have. So if I went and did an acquisition right now, like every day, we get 1% better right now, which is amazing. And that compounds so fast and I'm like. Afraid of damaging that.
Jack Carr: Yeah. Um, that makes total sense.
So it's kind of an interesting spot. Yeah. I mean, you, I think we, you feel it throughout the journey, right? Just not to that extent. But you do feel pieces of it. I post on Twitter the other day and Stephanie Biles actually wrote a great think. [00:12:00] Um, yeah, in response, but the idea that, right, you as you start your business, you're in the field, and then you move to like the manager role where you're no longer in the field.
And then yeah, you move to a part where you're not even doing management anymore. Now you're doing background like HR and you're managing your managers, and then you go to another level and then another level, and it's, it's always a weird progression trying to find your role as an owner during those step changes.
John Wilson: A hundred percent.
Jack Carr: So, yeah.
John Wilson: And what, and the, the spot that I'm in now that I'm, I'm good with. 'cause we've gotten here gradually. I'm just having to, like, it's a lot of sitting on my hands. Mm-hmm. Um, and uh, Andrew Wilkinson describes this as like operator energy, where like, oh, I have this energy that I want to go, like, do something with.
Yeah. Uh, because like, we're, we're operators and I can't really go do something with it without, like, causing damage. Um, but we're in the stage right now where our senior leaders are truly developing [00:13:00] and building excellence inside each of their teams, and we're, we're not quite at the stage where we're building out executives, but we're also not far off.
Yeah. Like a lot of our senior leaders are like developing themselves and obviously we're providing a ton of resources and support and coaching, but they're like becoming. Uh, like our platform leaders.
Jack Carr: So I know we, we've kind of touched on this in the past, but I think it's an incredibly important thing to touch on, and I know it's a question that we get in the workshop, and I get regularly, I have two people in my inbox right now from our workshops that are coming to Nashville to see our setup, but also want just to talk about it.
And you, you kind of touched on it here, is hiring your first like p and l leader. Right. Yeah. We hired ours extremely early. Like I, I couldn't afford it. We took the risk. I took the hit personally. Yeah. To hire Tommy. If you're listening, man, you're the all, you're a rockstar. I [00:14:00] know. Brandon is yours. Love you.
Um, yeah. But like your first right hand man who ends up growing with the company who's on the bus in the right direction. Yeah. Like what does that first hire look like? I think, and not for you. 'cause I think you had a kind of a unique situation, but for other operators that you've seen.
John Wilson: I don't know that our situation was that unique.
I mean, I think that, um, I mean maybe the thing that was unique was like, we found the right person and he has stuck. Uh, and that's my partner Brandon. Um, whereas like I think a lot of people, um, what, what's the. The something effect where like you grow the, the stage of your, that's phrase
Jack Carr: where Yeah. They, they get promoted to a point where, where you're, um, yeah.
Yeah. Peter,
John Wilson: principal. Yeah. Yeah. So like Peter, principal's very real. Um, and we've had to experience it a lot as the team has grown. Um, like the people that are on your bus [00:15:00] now are probably not the people that are on your bus when you're much larger. Um. Do you feel, especially when you're in the like sub 10 range?
Jack Carr: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: That entire leadership team will change over
Jack Carr: maybe, right? Yours didn't. I did specifically Brandon, I'm, I'm sorry. I'm, I'm,
John Wilson: yeah. No. Yeah. So yeah, specifically Brandon, what I wanted to, well, so we have, we have two leaders that have really gone for the ride. Mm-hmm. Uh, and one is Brandon and one is Ally, and Ally's our director of, I've heard of Ally a few times.
Uh, fulfillment. Yeah. Yeah. She's awesome. She's been here for five years and she's like, uh, she's one of the best of us. And, but that is like even having two that have gone mm-hmm. Over the $15 million hump. Is so uncommon.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: Um, because the, like the bottleneck always is the leaders, like it's the leader like me, you the owner, but it's [00:16:00] also the leaders.
Like who are the people like really driving. Um, and I, I'm sure I've shared this with you on or off camera, but one of the biggest changes that's happening in my life over the past six, seven months is our leaders have gone from solving these like very surface level problems. Like out tier one problems.
So like tier three, four problems? Yeah. Like they're driving like real p and l changes. They're driving real business moving decisions. Yeah. Um, like, but like service manager, those leaders didn't start
Jack Carr: Yeah. Right. Like they, they were starting fixing tech issues. Like the technician went out to a job, it was bad.
Right. There's issues there. Or like, Hey, we're missing calls. These are all tier one issues of how do we keep the business running from day to day. Right. And then now they're at a spot where they're going through the same things. They're s that we talked about. Yeah, they're, they're strategic. What kind of strategic leadership position roles do we need to do for training and motivation and culture?
Yeah. Hires and things like that. And so that, [00:17:00] I think that's a big question that I keep coming back to is how did you, I mean, yes, it's a personality thing. Yes. It's a horsepower thing. They have to have the horsepower to get there and make those changes internally to them. Mm-hmm. Um, I mean, maybe you got lucky in finding Brandon.
Maybe it was, you know, just, Hey, this is a good person. They understood the vision and that's why they're still here. Um, which I think is probably part of it. But what, what. What choices did you make working with Brandon? Um, yeah, to train, help get him training and help get him to a point may, and maybe the answer is no.
Like maybe Brandon is the all star, but, but my, my curiosity is like how do you facilitate that person to be, to be better? Yeah.
John Wilson: Yeah. Uh, I would actually be really curious to hear what his perspective is on this too. Yeah. We should talk to him. Um, yeah, I think that'd be kind of interesting, but. When we brought Brandon on, uh, so I brought Brandon on originally as our ops manager back in late [00:18:00] 2019.
Mm-hmm. And the business was about $3 million. And what I was looking for at the time is we had just joined certain path and I needed someone that had, IM implemented a business in a box type system. Um, so like very operational, very heads down at the TI at that time. I did not feel confident in my own operational chops.
I even thought that I was like, bad at it. Um, I've since learned that I'm not, I was just being lazy, I think. But, um, I was looking for someone that like really could like, dive deep into that. Mm-hmm. Which that is not as much my strength. Um, but so what, what, uh, I was looking for was, hey, who's implemented a franchise before?
Who has led a team before, who's been in blue collar before? Um. And, and that was Brandon. So, and Brandon's story's incredible. Like I think that, uh, obviously I'm a lot more outspoken to the industry than he is, but his story's incredible. Like he launched a l his, he's our [00:19:00] second episode on this podcast if somebody wants to listen to it.
But he launched a landscaping company at 16, ran it full-time while in high school, like great grades the whole time he joined college, still ran that landscaping business while in college he sold that business to a competitor. I. That was four times his size, and he took over as operations manager of the competitor while still going to school full time.
Like he's a beast. That's wild. Yeah.
Jack Carr: And
John Wilson: when we hired him to run our three something million dollar company, he was 23 years old.
Jack Carr: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: Like, and he came in as our ops leader and he killed it. Obviously. Like there was a learning curve and we could talk about what that looked like, but, um, he was real.
Yeah. He was young. Like, he's not even 30 now. And, um, just a great part of the team. Just a great part of the team. But that's what I was looking for was like this very, like, how do we implement change and how do we get ourselves into a business in the box, [00:20:00] um, type of model. Which certain path was that for us?
Jack Carr: You know what I find to be a, and this is kind of off topic, a weird secret sauce that I can't crack, but I know there's something to it is like there, there is this. Because my, my ops manager, we brought him in the same reason I was looking for somebody who had ops experience in hvac. This person had ran, you know, service department for plumbing, large, large plumbing, like the a hundred million dollar plumbing, uh, a hundred million dollar companies with the large plumbing division.
Moved into ops manager, ran a $7 million ops net, nexstar ops, um, program left there for personal reasons and then. Perfect timing. Um, so all the same stuff, but like there's this weird secret sauce for these extremely successful people, and I think you fit in that category. I fit in that category. Brandon fits in that category.
Tommy fits in that category. Uh, a lot of people that Christian rough the, um, executive. Yeah. [00:21:00] Uh, like ex-military placement placement firm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Uh, it's like the, it's these young leaders who get put into situations when they're like 22, 23, 24 years old. Yeah. And they have to manage large teams of elderly gentlemen.
Yeah. It's, you know, so when, when you get put in a situation where you're 24, you have to manage a business or a p and l. Mm-hmm. And there's someone above you that inevitably says, boy, I've been doing this longer than you've been alive. And you're like, yeah. Mm-hmm. But you're still not. Running the business, so there's something there.
Yeah. Um, but the
John Wilson: point being, I think so, I mean, I, I think you learned humility,
Jack Carr: like Yeah. The point being is like, yeah, you have to make quickly started running at 23. Yeah, yeah. I was running Yeah. You know, large maintenance programs at Frito-Lay at 24, um, with guys who were doing it longer than I've been alive, and they made sure to let me know that.
Yeah. But there's a, I think what happens is early on in that journey, like there is a. Uh, monkey on your back. Like you [00:22:00] have to do good and you have to show yeah. People, you know what you're talking about, to earn respect of the individuals who are working for you. Um, yeah. And so like that, that, um, process of doing that I think drives this, this weird growth in a young man or woman.
Yeah. Um, yeah. To, to become a strong leader. Mm-hmm. Um, interesting. I it's just like one of these like tiny pinpoints that I see and I keep trying to look for that. Yeah. And find somebody, um, who has that experience. 'cause they tend to just do really well from what I've, what I've seen.
John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. We've um, we've had a few hires and I won't name them, but we've had a few hires that have had similar experience where in their early twenties, like they went and did something that was interesting.
And they have always tended to outperform.
Jack Carr: Yeah. Yeah. I like, I don't know what it is. I, I just think that that as like a [00:23:00] key metric in like finding someone good if you're looking for some talented individuals, um, my, what I'm trying to figure out is how to find that person before they have that first job.
Because if you can implement a 23-year-old who's gonna be a rock star? Um, they're generally high achievers. You have to,
John Wilson: yeah.
Jack Carr: But like, how do you find that person before they get their first role? I, yeah.
John Wilson: See, I don't, I don't think so. 'cause what, and this is, um,
I'm gonna show my age as I answer this, uh, age. I looked in the mirror this morning. I had gray hairs in my beer. I'm to do. Yeah. Uh, but early career, early career professionals I find very challenging to work with. Yeah. On, on, on average, um, because they haven't yet done it, but they believe that they have done it.
And that makes it hard. Um, that makes it hard to like communicate and coach, and mentor and build. When, and [00:24:00] like my brother's like this. Yeah. I, I love him dearly, but like early stage professional and he still believes he's right about everything. 'cause he hasn't been wrong enough and told that in order to understand that, hey, we're all just learning and that's okay.
And, uh, yeah, I, so I feel like you, they need that first experience, like Brandon needed that experience of running that landscaping company. In order to learn enough to know what he's good at and what he's bad at, so that that way he can just be really strong at what he's good at.
Jack Carr: That makes sense. And then how, how much do you attribute like his growth personally, to stay on?
Because this is a big, big topic for me, right? I want my mm-hmm. Person to stay with me and grow with the company until we are huge. Yeah. What kind of, and I don't want him to hit that, that horsepower cap, right? Yeah. So what kind of trainings. Were you, are, are, were you having him or was he soliciting you to do Um, yeah.
To make him a better [00:25:00] leader and to make sure that he can go the distance? Yeah.
John Wilson: We've gotten a lot better at this over time. Um, we now have like a functioning leadership program mm-hmm. For both current and future leaders. So like I know that that's a, like, that was hard earned. We've been working on that for a really long time.
So now for our current leaders and potential leaders coming up in like their techs or people in administrative that want to figure out how to become a super or a manager one day, um, we have programs to, to facilitate that, which is cool. Uh, but for him, yeah, but early on a lot of it was like, yeah, ear early on we obviously did not have that.
Um mm-hmm. So it was a lot of like one-on-one. It was a lot of self-development. We did facilitate like peer groups. Um, we helped honestly this, like one of the biggest wins, and I know that you're experiencing it too. One of the biggest wins that we've had for our core [00:26:00] business is having a podcast. Uh, we are able to connect with almost anybody that we want and do site visits.
We can get the smartest people in the industry on this show and like ask them almost anything that we want.
Jack Carr: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: And we're able to punch really far above our weight as far as like industry influence. So that has helped accelerate Brandon, myself, and all of our leaders, because we're able to be in the room with people that would normally, we would not be in the room with.
Um, like we had a site visit two weeks ago from someone who's now a good friend of ours and he runs a $200 million plumbing HVAC company. And like he came and site visited us and spent a day and a half and he got a lot from us because he was trying to understand remote staffing and we got a lot from him.
'cause we're trying to figure out how to scale our service teams, which he's already done this.
Jack Carr: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: Um, and like that is a huge development for Brandon, for myself, for our other leaders. Uh, so the, the peer groups, the. Um, I'm not trying to like [00:27:00] talk our own sauce here, but like that really was a very big part of it was how do we get our team into the room with other people doing this?
How do we facilitate site visits like our, it's May and almost every exec, almost every senior leader in our business has done two or three site visits so far this year. Interesting. Like other companies? Yeah. We've sent people to Vegas, we've sent people to Texas, we've sent people to Salt Lake. Mm-hmm.
Chicago. Virginia, like we're sending 'em all over the place to continue to draw inspiration from people that are farther ahead than us. So site visits have been huge for us. Connecting with other people in the industry has been huge for us. Um, we did join like a COO Alliance type thing for him. That was really good.
Um, and I think our, I think that my continued push. And my, like, this is what I think I bring to the, to the partnership. Brandon brings a lot and I, I think I bring like one or two things, [00:28:00] but like I continue to push and be ever curious And that gives him something to chase.
Jack Carr: Yeah. Because he
John Wilson: has to continue developing in order to keep up.
Jack Carr: I think you also brought right, a really strong EOS background, which is important. Um, I don't know if he came with the EOS background as well.
John Wilson: We, we launched that together. Yeah. Back in 2020. One.
Jack Carr: Okay. Yeah. 'cause that's an interesting one that, you know, I, I think about a lot is really driving leadership through EOS and yeah.
Actively taking a participant role in setting that up, which we're, we're not very far away from having like a real program. Yeah. But I really do like that. That's a good idea. I should, I should get him to, to run a few of those. He'd like it 'cause he's, yeah. You know, HVAC nerd. Well, site visits are incredible.
So I,
John Wilson: I think something else that we, that we, uh, we're just starting to notice now, um, because the team is getting to be so good. Uh, but like Brandon, I would say, um, I think he agrees too. I'll, I'll check in with him, but like, he's [00:29:00] probably the best. Like we're always, we're, we're always improving, right?
Like our first core values, betterment, like we are here to improve and win.
Jack Carr: We sold that from me.
John Wilson: And yeah, it's good. Like it's, it's good. Like it's, it's who we are at our core and um, but he really has stepped into his element and I've seen it personally, like his leadership style, his ability. To drive change his ability to coach and mentor his team.
And I think like that's only happened in like the last six months, seven months at the level that he's currently at, which is like a totally like excellent level, um, which I'm super excited about. And that's only happened because the team that directs to him has gotten better themselves. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Because he has a team of great leaders who are also developing in tandem just as fast as he is. But they're developing in their own discipline and learning more and getting better at their own role. He's able to now get better at his 'cause. I think two years ago, he and I were both just absolutely [00:30:00] drowning and it was because our leadership team at the time was very weak.
Jack Carr: Yeah. I mean, that makes sense, right? You can only lead to the horse. I keep using the word horsepower, but I really like that. Yeah. 'cause I do think that us as individuals are capped by a mental horsepower that. We innately have, or we at some point give up trying to increase.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Jack Carr: Yeah. And I think that finding individuals that may, I mean, we hear it all the time that that may not be from the industry, but they have the horsepower to learn and to grow and to be part of the industry.
And they generally do so very fast. Our, our
John Wilson: last three senior leaders have been out of industry hires. Yeah,
Jack Carr: exactly. And so, and we're
John Wilson: cooking Field Pulse is the all-in-one field management solution for growing home service companies. Field Pulse is designed to simplify your day-to-day operations by combining everything you need into one platform.
It also includes integrations to help you save time. Like QuickBooks Desktop and online. It has a bunch of advanced tools and features like A CRM estimates and [00:31:00] invoicing. Good, better, best options, maintenance plans, a robust price book and scheduling dispatching field pulse will transform the way that you manage your field teams altogether.
It will save you time and find revenue that you didn't even know existed, whether you're a small company that's looking to grow or a larger company looking to optimize. Field Pulse has the tools that you need to do it. And don't just take our word for it. Field Pulse has earned over 580 glow reviews with an average rating of 4.8 stars.
That's field, E-U-L-S-E head to their website to learn more. Field pulse.com. I, I think as we, as we all continue to grow, um, we get better and better and I think I've gotten, I've gotten better at distributing resources to make sure that our leaders are not overwhelmed.
Jack Carr: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: Like we did not use to care.
About number of direct reports for our leaders because it's like we have to save overhead.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: But now I do care a lot about number of direct reports because if you have eight and you're a senior leader, [00:32:00] like that's a lot. That's a lot of stuff. If I'm also expecting you to engage meaningfully and strategic decisions, like if I want you to think about how do we make our sales process better?
Mm-hmm. Or how do we improve our like time to delivery and fulfillment. Or how do we gain access to a new market and marketing? Like if I wanna do anything remotely strategic, I have to care about the number of direct reports.
Jack Carr: Yeah, no, that, that completely makes sense, right? It's the same thing of as we generalist to specialist to experts.
Like that's the specialist to expert portion. Um, right. Speaking of, of, uh, those two things, if anybody can connect us with what, do you remember that company I told you about Woodland? No. Woodson up in Virginia or West Virginia. That does, I think it's Virginia. They're an HVAC company and they have a really unique model for how they, uh, do fulfillment of HVAC equipment installation and how they, they run all their guys in, in Mavericks, uh, for install.
Oh, [00:33:00] interesting. And then they back. They have another team that runs around in box trucks and delivers and picks up Yeah. Delivery. Mm-hmm. So that their installers a, they're running around in cheap trucks with everything they need. Right. They still do pack and pick, but like they're able to just pull the equipment to the edge, then put the new equipment in.
That's all they have to do, and then they're onto their next job so they can do two to three installs a day. Could you imagine having a team that could do three installs a day?
John Wilson: Well, so yeah. My friend that was just out here a couple weeks ago, their teams are doing three a day.
Jack Carr: Yeah. And I'm like,
John Wilson: what are you talking about?
That's, and it's, it's really similar. It was, um, and we're actually about to do this, so we're, uh, so our team is like actively starting to roll at least two a day out. But the idea is if you're flat rate, you can, like, if they make 800 bucks, if the crew makes 800 bucks for the first system. Then the second system, they would make 800 plus two, $250.
[00:34:00] So if they do two that day, like that crew just did two grand. Like they just made two grand. Um, and so the company that was out here a couple weeks ago, uh, $200 million, they're doing three a day. So their, their crews are taking home $3,000 a day.
Jack Carr: Yeah. Like talk about a huge win. It's unreal. Like that's a, like for an installer,
John Wilson: that's huge.
It's a huge win. And the way they're strategically doing it is, um, it, I, there's definitely a drop off system going on. Mm-hmm. And it is very like, we're gonna slam this system in. And there's actually a cleanup crew that comes the next day called, okay, qa. It's like quality assurance. And they come in and like tighten up the job.
So they're gonna top off refrigerant, they're gonna make sure the thermostat works, they're gonna like show the homeowner how to do this and this. So it's, so it's a, it's a pretty hands-on. Um, pretty hands-on. It's interesting the larger the companies we go to, they [00:35:00] have like. Like, I'll go to a hundred million dollar companies and they only have like 12 crews.
Yeah. It's just that those crews are doubling our output. So, you know, we just got up to eight crews and now we're really working on, okay, how do we, how do we maximize this investment on these eight crews instead of just like piling on more crews?
Jack Carr: Can we pile out more installs? Because if you have like a, a cleanup crew or a drop off crew and you have technically like three to four people Yeah.
Like one of the hardest things on a package unit. You guys don't have many package units, but we got a ton of them. Yeah. Like they're heavy. They're big and heavy. Yes. Yeah. So like if you have four guys to man manhandle that in and like that, like it's quick. You, we could lift it out, put it in. Yeah, no problem.
And they're there for just like 30 minutes. Like that would, that would take two guys. Yeah. Probably double to triple that time. Probably. Triple, yeah. Just because it, it just takes so much more work. Uh, getting it from A to B where the install Yeah. Uh, location is so, [00:36:00] I mean that. I love it. Yeah. We're, we're
John Wilson: chasing this now.
Yeah. I, I'll, I'll let you know how it goes. We're trying to go from one to two. Like it's, we, we actually just brought on a new leader for HVAC install, and we've gotten our time to install down a ton. So we're finishing full systems at like two o'clock. Uh, which is great. Mm-hmm. It used to be like six or seven.
So like, they would work late 'cause we had bad material ordering or bad staging or, you know, bad whatever. Uh, so we've, we've gotten a lot tighter with that, which is awesome. So we are just now trying to figure out, okay, how do we go from one to two systems?
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: And that is gonna be a huge unlock for us.
And we really wanna, like, we wanna stay at eight crews. 'cause I feel like that's a, that's a good number for us. Um. And that could be $20 million if we're able to run, you know, if we're able to run two installs a day.
Jack Carr: Which I mean, goes along with everything else that you've been doing recently in the sense of, right.
Not increasing headcount, but increasing, uh, right. Productivity output. Yeah.
John Wilson: Yeah, yeah. It's, [00:37:00] yeah. Our headcount, um, it was pretty interesting. Our headcount did not increase at all for basically 12 straight months. Um, it was like 1 35, 1 35, 1 35. It's only in the past. 60 days that our head count has meaningfully increased, um, and it's all field.
Mm-hmm. Like, I think we brought on one or two people administratively, but it's, it's pretty much been like 20 net new heads. That's huge though, in
Jack Carr: the field. You said two months ago or like a month ago that your goal going through this summer wasn't to do the, the, uh, pendulum of like hire a bunch in the summer because you're behind.
Yeah. And then 5% after or lay the off like you mean
John Wilson: administratively? Yeah.
Jack Carr: Like that was one of your goals. Yeah. I think we talked about in February it was, it was one
John Wilson: of our goals. Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. We, like, we communicated that's with our team. Cool. Like, we're not hiring anybody administratively.
We basically have not, we, we brought on a few people offshore
Jack Carr: mm-hmm.
John Wilson: That have helped support our existing teams. Uh, so we brought on some folks in the purchasing team. We brought on some folks in accounting, uh, and we beefed up our install coordination team, [00:38:00] but no, in-office Yeah. Hires and, and we're.
Like, we should be good. Like we, we don't see the need and we're like, obviously ramping towards peak season.
Jack Carr: That's so exciting.
John Wilson: It's just cool. Yeah. We, it just cool. I remember the conversation. We, we literally outgrew our overhead. Yeah. We, we literally did outgrow our overhead. It is wild. Now we are about to, like, as I'm saying that we are about to add new managers in plumbing and hvac, so that that is Yeah.
Those are net new leadership hires. Um. But you know, like that's 20 grand a month basically, or $25,000 a month. Um, so I don't know. I, it, it is a 10% overhead increase, uh, and we've the, it should provide much more than 10% revenue. Yeah. So, but, so those hires, we did end up moving on. Really, the problem there was we didn't have a good model for, Hey, [00:39:00] when do you, how many people do you have until you divide the team in two?
We just didn't really know how to think about that. And then we had two teams that crossed, we had two teams that crossed 10 direct reports each in the field. Plumbing is at 11. Uh, we actually have three teams. Uh, plumbing service is at 11. Plumbing installs at like 17 and HVAC services at 12. Mm-hmm. So we're like, all right, this is a lot.
You know, these managers are starting to run out of bandwidth. Like performance is suffering like. I, I think small business, John would've just like held on. I am now trying to figure out how do I get to four service managers? So I'm not trying to overstretch my current ones. I have to keep building the flywheel of like, okay, well once you get to 10, um, directs on one manager, I'm gonna peel off four and make a team of six and four, and then build them both up to seven or eight.
So that's how we're, that's how we're currently thinking about it. That's interesting. I think we're about to do that with [00:40:00] two teams. Yeah. I
Jack Carr: think that's, that's a, that's a good metric to tell people because I don't know, I'm, I'm small business John at the moment where it's just like, ah, like you didn't have to
John Wilson: do it.
Well, and and the goal is to save overhead. Yeah. Whereas like, my goal now is how do I get to a hundred million? Which if like, we have room in the budget, so let's just like smooth it out. Like smooth is fast, right? So how do we just smooth it out? How do we make sure our managers can go the distance? Um, and how do we like, help train the next, how do we build like density inside these leadership positions?
Jack Carr: Such a weird, you, you know, this is, this is such a cool topic. I, I know that. Um, I wouldn't have gotten this two years ago. Yeah. Like, I, I just, it, it wouldn't have clicked. It's a, it's a really cool topic though, because, um, I think that nobody gets it early on, right? Everybody who, unless excluding like the ETA folks who come from a large business and kind of understand this concept, right.
I mean, 95% of the business owners in the home service spaces, like they never thought they were gonna have to deal with [00:41:00] something like this. Like your dad never had this conversation with anybody at any point in time.
John Wilson: Well, it, it was, it was honestly kinda weird. 'cause when we, when we realized what was happening, it, it made, it made total sense.
Right. So we're like, okay, our managers, we have two managers that are feeling like very overwhelmed, like frontline leaders. And I'm like, why? Like, why are you guys overwhelmed? Like what? Like what's going on? And then I start diving into it and I'm like, oh, they have 11 direct reports.
Jack Carr: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: Well, okay, that, I mean, that's, that doesn't, that doesn't sound like crazy.
I've heard people with 15 and you know, I sort, you sort of go through that mental gyration and then you start digging into it and you're like, okay, the people that have 15 direct reports are the businesses that aren't growing or they're optimizing for ebitda. No, they're optimizing for something differently than what I'm trying to do.
Yeah. We're trying to build a hundred million dollar business. That's what we're here to do every day and. If I have a man, like eventually you have to do it right? That manager can't lead 40. Yeah. Service plumbers like, so, like he, [00:42:00] he just literally can't. And it's sort of like a nonsensical idea once you start trying to realize what it looks like at scale if you continue to go down the path that you're going.
Um, so it was kind of funny because there's actually not that many people that I know, and I know a lot of people in the industry now. I don't know that many people that have solved this problem. 'cause this is a $40 million problem.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: This is a problem that you have when you have teams that start to cross 10 15 each.
Um, so there, there wasn't that many people that I could call
Jack Carr: and ask. How many, just outta curiosity, uh, I know this is super left field, but how many $50 million plus home service businesses are actually out there? Like you have a better grip on it than I do. I, I,
John Wilson: I really? Yeah. I really don't know. I mean, maybe like a lot of 'em were PE backed.
Yeah. Um, as far as privately held, I know, uh, like two, I'm sure there's more, but I know [00:43:00] two between 50 and a hundred.
Jack Carr: Yeah. So it's such a, it's such a, the other
John Wilson: ones are all backed.
Jack Carr: Yeah. It's just somebody, it's such an interesting, uh. Kind of, yeah. We talked about this when you were hiring your sales manager too.
It's like how this is such a small
John Wilson: Well, it, it gets even, it gets even more, it gets even more niche. Yeah. Because it's a, it's a 40,000,001 location problem. Mm-hmm. Because you only have this problem if you're driving enough revenue in one singular location. Yeah, because it's team dependent. So then it's like, okay, my Rolodex of people that I can call and ask this question is kind of shrinking.
Mm-hmm. Because how many people do I know that are gonna have solved this problem that are doing 40 to 70 million in one location? 'cause if you're doing, like if your main branch is 20 and you have a satellite for 10, you haven't solved this problem.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: Like geography made, you have two managers, not scale.
Jack Carr: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: Uh, so yeah, I was able to, I was able to call like four people, Hoffman, and they all gave me. Right. Yeah. [00:44:00] Uh, they all gave me roughly the same answer, which is you divide the teams at seven to eight.
Jack Carr: Okay. Um, that's good. That's good for listen guys. So like I have a friend
John Wilson: who Yeah, I, I thought it was interesting.
Um, so I have a friend who's got 15 sales plumbers and he just hired his third service manager, and then they're gonna build a team under him. So they like that seven number. Mm-hmm. Um, so for us, our plan is, I, I think we're gonna try to do eights 'cause that feels good to me. Um, but like we're gonna bring on a new plumbing se service manager.
We're going to divide it up into six and four, or six and five or seven and four or something like that. And then we're gonna grow the second team as rapidly as we can up to seven, and then try to stick at that seven to eight. And then once we cross, like nine each or 10 each, then we'll divide again into the next, uh, service manager.
Jack Carr: I think you could do some fun things too, from a cultural perspective, right? It becomes a. Like an internal competitive, [00:45:00] uh, nature to the business. Oh, yeah. Of like this team versus that team. Um,
John Wilson: yeah, it should be good. We're gonna try to divide it pretty, pretty equal. There's a lot of, people have a lot of thoughts on how to divide it.
Mm-hmm. So this becomes like, okay, hey, if you have two managers and they're both leading plumbing or HVAC or electric or whatever, like the same type of job, like service plumbers, service paycheck, uh, how do you divide 'em? Do you do it equally? Yeah. Or is one like the remediation manager. Because that's, you know, I've talked to people that do both.
Um, do they have the exact same job role or do they have slightly different job roles and why? Mm-hmm. And how do you scale it depending on which one you're going with. So, and then how do you, it was an interesting problem,
Jack Carr: dispatch. Like it's an interesting move to have to It's an interesting
John Wilson: problem.
It's an interesting problem. So
Jack Carr: you
John Wilson: do geographically,
Jack Carr: like even though you're one location, like, hey, anywhere south of Akron, anywhere north of Akron type of deal, you could, or east or west, that's a
John Wilson: way to do it. That's what I don't, that's not what we're gonna do, but you could do it that way.
Jack Carr: Yeah. [00:46:00] Super fun.
I mean,
John Wilson: that's a cool problem. It, it, it's an, it was a fun problem to sort of work through. Mm-hmm. Uh, we like where we landed, but it was a fun problem to work through.
Jack Carr: Sweet. I love it. This is very helpful to me personally, and I hope helpful to other people who are like still trying to make that first Ops manager higher because it's huge.
John Wilson: Well, I, I think the way you should be thinking about this and, and not like, oh, how do I, how do. Like John having to divide his team as we're as 40 is within sight, like 40 is next year for us. So like, so obviously that's not a relatable problem. What is relatable is where we're drawing our new leaders from is internally, and that is the thing that everyone should be thinking about is once you have your ops manager, what's the next line look like?
How am I training my service managers, my install managers to eventually become ops managers? And then one layer deeper, how are we training our leadership oriented field or administrative [00:47:00] folks, how to become frontline leaders so that they can eventually become ops leaders. And that is the stage that we've just gotten to.
But like, we could have done it earlier, I think, but our, our next. Four managers are coming from our emerging leader program, like we're developing them in-house. Yeah. They already understand the culture, they understand the business, they understand the players, and we're building our own leadership cohort internally, and I think that that is something that everyone should be taking is it's how do we always develop the next line?
Of people that could become the next frontline leader or senior leader. Yeah. I think though that happens, you can do
Jack Carr: that at any size, but I think that's a later on issue, like when, what I'm referring to is when people are looking for their first. High level manager at 2 million. Right. You're not, yeah, you're not, I mean,
John Wilson: that's probably an outside hire, elevated attack.
It's definitely cuts us higher. But your service manager could be elevated. Yeah. You know, at that size we,
Jack Carr: we will. So like that's our plan is we are, yeah. You know, that 5 million range and we will elevate one of our [00:48:00] technicians into service manager here shortly. Yeah. With like one or two more hires. Were there, the ops manager moves out.
Yeah. I, I
John Wilson: think like the, the continued leadership development. Yeah. And how you think about throughout of that, throughout the whole organization. Like that has been our big win because we've, I think we've actually, I know it seems like we've grown fast. I think we've actually kind of like, I think we're not growing as fast as we could, but I think that the things that we're doing now of like setting the foundation for how we're gonna funnel leadership like that makes the next five years so much easier.
I
Jack Carr: was gonna say smooth. 'cause we'll
John Wilson: always have. Oh, totally
Jack Carr: supposed to move because like you said, culture's one of the hardest things to learn and so yeah, if they've already fit in the culture, they already understand revenue generation models. They already understand how you operate. They understand
John Wilson: p and l, they understand how to have crucial conversations.
They understand how to talk to their team. Like we're training like 20 people in the field on that right now. Yeah. In our emerging leaders program. So it's huge and we're able to just draw from that. [00:49:00] Which we've already done. We've drawn two leaders out of that program already and we're about to draw two more in the next couple months to turn them into frontline leaders.
Jack Carr: Yeah, I think that also solves like the, what you have to do to make that work. It also solves the, the issue of the gap between leadership and frontline, right? Yeah. There's a huge gap it of understanding of what leadership actually does, and by opening up that p and l and by showing people what you're doing and.
Having those conversations early on, it, it closes the gap for almost everybody. But, um, as you grow it, it closes the gap specifically for those individuals whose makes them very good fit. A hundred percent. I love it. This was a great
John Wilson: conversation.
Jack Carr: Yeah, man. It's good. It's good to be back. I feel good. I was, yeah.
I had a lot of energy coming in today to be, 'cause I was excited. Good to be back. Cool. So sweet man. Well, well
John Wilson: if, if you love what you heard, damn. Hit like, uh, make sure you subscribe and check out owned and operated.com for [00:50:00] more.