Blueprint for Millions: Ryan Davis' Secrets to Elevating Home Service Businesses

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As a national speaker , consultant , founder of Service Legend Summit , host of the acclaimed Service Legend podcast and his favorite roles as husband , father and follower of Jesus Christ , ryan's journey to success is marked by unyielding dedication and a remarkable entrepreneurial spirit .

He also established Cardinal Concrete Coatings in August of 2020 , a premier brand that achieved 1.5 million in revenue within its first year , and Cardinal's top-line revenue was 2 million in 2022 .

Residing in captivating landscapes of Arizona with his beloved family wife first , and two daughters , penelope and Presley Ryan's life has been a testament to his passion for excellence , mentorship and his life living . One of Service Legend's core values always be learning , and to continuous growth . I'd like to welcome you to the podcast , ryan . How are you doing ?

You know , I've got a lot of experience in home service and in construction that has nothing to do with marketing and I feel like that really helped me early on to relate with the industry and not just being a marketer .

You know , I feel like there's a lot of marketers out there that have no idea of a home service business , how it operates , the finances , the technicians , the painters , etc .

And I feel like that was , you know , just looking back , it was a really cool thing that I want to touch on was you know , my first experience in home service or construction was , you know , it was about seven or eight years ago and I'm 30 now , I just turned 30 in May and so I was pretty young and prior to that I did all sales and marketing jobs .

It was just sales and marketing and this was my first experience in home service and construction and I got my first job . I was a commercial estimator for an eight figure flooring company . So they did , you know , vinyl , carpet , vct , things like that , and I sat in an office kind of like this , just an empty office , big old screen .

I had a you know a finished schedule like blueprint table and I would just look at finished schedules all day , bid on big projects , and I would talk to you know project managers , architects , general contractors , things like that .

What was interesting is that is that company added concrete coatings and so I started bidding on these FedEx jobs and colleges that were , you know , $100,000 , $500,000 up to $1.5 million in bids for urethane cements and flake floors and epoxy and things like this . And that's where I was like whoa , you know , I kind of like this stuff .

You know this , this , this concrete coating world . It was kind of interesting for me . But I learned a . But I learned a lot in that role around production rates , labor rates , job costing .

When you're bidding a job that's $150,000 to FedEx through a GC and you don't get that right , I mean , man , you know it's it's it's not just your job at stake , it's , it's , it's a lot at stake .

So you really have to know your numbers and you really have to know people , relationships , communication , you know suppliers and job rates and there was a lot of public wages that I had to bid on . So you had to understand that , and so I hated the job . At the time . You know , I was like man , I just hate this job .

I'm a talker , I'm an extrovert , I'm in this office . I'm like what does this have to do with anything I'm going to do in my life ? Like this is just , this is just boring , you know . And so I sought out a company that was local . It was a successful painting company that I knew was successful . They had been in business for 37 years .

You know , I liked their brand , I liked the owner . So I just , you know , I just walked in there and said , hey , I want to . You know , I want to be the sales and marketing manager here . You know , I think I can help your business grow . Xyz got hired and I became the sales and marketing manager for that multimillion dollar painting company in California .

And then , just three months before I got there , they started a concrete coding division . It just worked out perfectly . I'm like , oh man , I have so much experience with this from a sales relationships networking . I know the space and suppliers , and so it worked out perfect .

And but that role , yes , I was doing sales and marketing , but again , that business wasn't business for 37 years and so you know I got to see a lot . You know about production , the office scheduling , finances and proposals and job costing .

And you know it was a small business and they started that concrete coding division just right before I got there and so I got to help take that division from just starting and by the time I left they were starting their fifth crew and each trailer does about 680 to 730 grand a year .

So I got to see kind of like startup division to a multimillion dollar division in just a short period of time and you got to see a lot of operations . You know a lot of expenses and financial conversations and so that's kind of , you know , one of the biggest kind of components .

I think in my career that if I would not have gone through a lot of those experiences I would not have been able to start Cardinal or really , you know , consult or serve our clients in the way that you know just being a marketer you know would have done .

And so what happened was we were just helping that painting company grow tremendously I mean the lead flow , the sales systems I was putting in place , the customer service systems , the follow up systems , rehash systems , the marketing systems and I was thinking to myself I was like you know , my first thought , daniel , was I was like dude , I could start my own

painting company . I was like I could do this , like I could do this , and then I realized how much that would have cost versus the marketing company was a little bit lower , lower barrier to entry .

And so it kind of shifted to you know what maybe I can't start this company now , but I could probably help other companies with marketing and sales and all the stuff I'm doing right now , because that company didn't even have a CRM , that painting company . So , you know , just implementing a CRM was like was , you know , was a big deal .

And I started to realize I'm like man , you know , there's a lot of painting companies that need this help . And then I have this experience and then . So I came home one day and I'm like you know , I told my wife . I said , hey , I , you know , I think I think we could do this for others , other people .

And it wasn't , you know , maybe a couple of weeks , and I went and told Steve , who was the owner of that company , steve Holloway Painting in Bakersfield and I said , hey , you know , this is what I'm doing , and would you be my first client ? And I gave him a proposal , right , right , right then .

And there I was like , hey , this is what I could do for you , here's how much it would cost , signed him up , so it was my first client , boom . And we just kept crushing it for him . And and then , but yeah , so that's . You know , that's how it kind of started . I guess , if you will , was kind of that , that little bug of for me .

You know , I had never felt like fulfilled or I had a real purpose with my life from a business standpoint or professional standpoint , until that .

That that time I went into the home service space , I was like , man , this is , I kind of think that I could do this for the rest of my life , like I think I could be in this space and do these things for this industry and provide for myself . And that's where it kind of started . And then I just fell in love with the industry .

I fell in love with marketing for home service and sales , and the first kind of thought was like I want to be able to help other people here , you know . So that's kind of how it started . If you will , yeah that's awesome .

So from my , from my perspective and I have a very like bold perspective or honest one , because I have a home service company and we'll do multiple seven figures this year again and I've spent maybe five hours in that business this year , so I've got a very real experience opinion of like what I think is going on with a lot of companies .

And then I also have the insight of those clients reaching out , like you mentioned .

So , to give you an example , we just signed up on a client yesterday and they've been in business for 17 years , they're gonna do $3 million this year and they wanna do $6 million next year and I was like interesting , and they just finally signed up yesterday , the paperwork and things like that , and here in a lot of stories so there's like the stories of

like their current marketing company and challenges there , and then there's also just the challenges I see within the business in general . So I think to talk about , you know , the companies that usually come up with , come and sign up with service legend that you know we hear some horror stories around . It's usually around account management .

So like experience where they're not getting good communication , you don't know what's going on exactly like the data and account manager in a marketing company or a coaching company or just in general , should be the person that is the you know , the middle man , if you will , from the production , the operations , the team to the client , and I'm here to serve you

and be your point of contact and make sure things are executed and things like that , but also making sure that things are communicated to to the client . So , like , what's going on , what's working , what's not working , here's what we're doing .

So that's a big challenge I see in the space is there's a lot of disconnect from the painting company to the , to the , the marketing company , and just from a communication standpoint of like , what do we do next ? What's not working , it seemed .

You know there's a lot of painting companies that want to just hire the marketing company and say , hey , here's , here's two grand a month , three grand a month , whatever it is , here's another five grand a month and ad spend . You guys figure this out , get me the leads , figure things out .

When there's a partnership involved and there's communication and we're meeting every week by a weekly , we're going over the lead to sell cycle numbers , not just lead cost or like lead or cost per lead . But we're going over here's how many leads you had . How many of those leads turn into an appointment ? Okay , that's your appointment cost .

How many appointments cancel ? Okay , here's your estimate cancel rate . Like that's important . What is your sales closing rate on your ran appointments , not booked appointments ? Okay , got it . What's your average ticket ? And then let's talk about your cost per acquisition . Like

what is that ? Is that being reduced ? Can we pull some of these levers ? And so , talking about those things versus just how many leads did I get ? And you guys figured out ? So that's a big thing is communication ?

And then on , like the company side , some of the things I've seen , just in general , and I will talk about this one until it's completely solved and eradicated , if you will . But lead conversion , like I can't tell you .

I think one of the biggest ways to reduce your cost per acquisition is obviously sales , right , but it's before that there's a lead that gets generated right , and I think most companies think about lead customer , not lead estimate customer , and I think there's a lot of data in there that if it's measured , it'll get improved .

You know , I believe that most business owners that if made aware of a problem , they will wanna fix it , and so sometimes it's just our job to just make them aware and say , hey , man , your lead to estimate rate is 32% . You know it could be 50% or 60% or this or that .

So I see a lot of really low lead to estimate conversion rates and just improper lead management and lead nurturing .

And I believe that that's the number one thing that a painting company could do next year is improve their lead to appointment ratio right , but also that experience in the sales there so not just the number , but ran appointments out of their marketing could lower their cost per acquisition and make them more money .

Then , if they got lower cost leads or did better in sales or raised their average take , I think the number one thing they could do is increase their ability to convert more leads into estimates that are highly qualified , that have expectations , that are price conditioned for the sales person .

So you're saying if they can fix that one issue , that would really increase their numbers overall . Because that's kind of the trying to think of the word . It's not coming to me .

It's a office manager , right , it's a lead appointment setter role , it's a customer service representative , it's a CSR . It's someone like that , right , like for a bigger company .

If you called Gettle , for example , here in Phoenix , worth hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars , they're gonna answer and say , hey , this is Ryan with Gettle , how can I make you happy today ?

And they're smiling , right , and they bring into this amazing process , right Before the sales person even gets there , like there's this whole experience versus hey , this is Ryan with Ryan's Painting , how can I help you ? Like just that one , like , just just like little things like that Customer experience right .

If you're selling a product that's kind of a want product , right , and even if it's a need a little bit , but if , but , if it's slightly a want , right , slightly a want . Cabinets , for example . People don't normally need to refinish their cabinets . They want to do this right Normally , unless it's like a real estate agent deal or something like that .

But normally they want to do this right , and whenever there's a want product or people want to do something where they don't need to , they expect even subconsciously , they expect a better experience versus . So you know , for example , if you're buying a Honda Civic versus buying a Bentley , wouldn't you expect a better experience ?

Of course , of course we would , because you're , because you know you're going to spend some money , you know you might spend more money than you want to or need to or have to or should like . That's in there , and so you just naturally expect a better experience .

And so I think I think when we talk about sales , we talk about leads , we talk about everything else . When we don't talk about the experience , the customer service and the first impressions and things like that , we miss , like a lot of opportunity .

A lot of opportunity and so more appointments mean more revenue , because we do not make money from leads , we make money from appointments , so we should always be trying and solving . For if I got 100 leads this month , in my opinion like this is my opinion , but I believe that 10 to 15% of all leads from any source on any given month are just trash .

For whatever reason , like it's just , it's just going to happen , right ? Wrong phone number , on accident or on purpose , they're looking for a job , they're out of the service area , out of scope , whatever , right , or I'm not ready for three months . 10 to 15% of everything like all of your leads are just going to be in that bucket of what I call trash .

So if you get 100 leads , even if it's 10% , you have 90 leads to convert into an appointment , right ? Most companies , if you think about it , are converting 20 , 30% of those appointments into highly qualified sales appointments , whereas the more successful companies , right , are converting minimum 50 , 60 , 70% of their leads into appointments .

And then , if you can have a 10% or less appointment cancel rate or estimate cancel rate , well then you have a lot of appointments to make money with . Right , because , again , we don't make money from leads , we make money from appointments . So I think it's just a big , big blind spot in a lot of people's you know situation , yeah .

This is a very fun time for somebody , right ? Like it's like buying a new car . It's like , oh man , like I'm going to probably pay more than I should , like I kind of know I'm going to spend 50 bucks more a month than I should , but you know what ?

I'm going to do it because I got the promotion and I always wanted that car and I couldn't get it last time and so , like you know , that's there . So , but just some tips and basic tips here . So , number one , the companies , that and so there's two components here . There's calling the lead and then there's people calling you .

Right , but we want to get them to the same exact place , right , but there's different starting points , if you will different on ramps , but you get them to the same exact place at some point during the call , but , like , if you reach out to somebody , it's got to be five minutes or less .

It's got to be five minutes or less when it for an inbound or inquiry during the day . If it's after hours , obviously you can't reach out into the morning from a phone perspective . But you want to get in touch with companies in five minutes or less , ideally three minutes or less .

And you might be hearing this and thinking there's no way I'm going to be able to do this and I would challenge you and say figure it out right . Figure it out because this is where that revenue started . This is where sales starts . I think a lot of people get confused .

Where this is like a customer service reception , like just answer the phone , this is where sales starts , right here . Now I can beg to differ that sales starts way earlier on in marketing , which I think it does . But this is really where it starts from a communications standpoint .

And so our person that answers the phone we call them our director of first impressions . They have a real title .

Now , back in the day the 80s , the 90s , even the 70s , home service companies and even other companies it used to be prestigious to be like the person that answered the phone , like the person that said hey , this is Ryan with Cardinal Concrete Codings . How are you doing today ? How can I make you happy today ?

It was an honor and a privilege to be the face of the company , to make first impressions and to live the core values and things like that . These days it's like can I just find somebody like a VA , or can I just find somebody for $19 an hour , just answer the phone and just convert people and be amazing ? Go figure it out , right .

So I think , just from a basic standpoint , like as a painting business owner or concrete coding business owner or other home service company , this is an important role . This is probably the most important role at your company . I would beg to differ . It's more important than your salesperson .

It's more important than anybody , because this is the person that is going to have the opportunity to make a first impression with people that are going to pay you thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars , and not just one time , but maybe over the next 10 years .

So this person , I want them to make an amazing impression and also be in contact really , really quickly , because there's a lot of competition , right . And so if it's a Facebook ad and they click opt in , where do you think they're going ? No-transcript . You know they're going back to Facebook , back to Instagram , over to Google , going to YouTube .

They will see ads from other painting companies . That's just a fact . The last time that you had a lead that was generated , that you got in contact with them and they never , ever , talked to another painting company during that buying cycle .

That was maybe 20 years ago , but right now they're just assumed that they're in contact with another painting company , talking about a bid right now . So when we think about it like that , I'd be like all over you , right , like , hey , daniel , like man , thank you so much for this opportunity to just help transform your home and make this a reality .

Hey , how long have you been thinking about this amazing transformation and investment into your home ? Right , like ? Think about it like that . This is a friend , this is someone that you want to serve . Now , on that first call keep in mind let's go to the next part is we are booking an appointment here , an estimate .

We are not trying to sell the company entirely right now . We're not trying to sell all the services . We're not talking about SDS sheets and TDS sheets and we're not talking about every single thing ever .

We are going through a systematic process to get them to an appointment , so that way a salesperson can go actually serve them and solve some problems with them . So I would say that's really important is speed to lead , but also the way that we choose to communicate with them , the tone , the words , the pauses , everything .

It's super , super important and it's much different , keep in mind , than any other company that they will ever talk to in your market .

And so now we sprinkle on price conditioning right , because when they answered and talked to us it was like this professional experience , even subconsciously if it's not conscious at this point , even subconsciously they're going to assume this will probably cost more money than that guy how he answered .

So there's price conditioning in there , there's expectations in there when you act professional and you talk professional and you are professional .

So it's not about just converting more leads , it's also about maybe higher closing rates for the salesperson because they know like and trust us better , they have better price conditioning , they have better expectations , there's more clarity .

So that will not only produce more estimates and a higher lead to estimate rate , which is a lower appointment cost and less canceled on an estimate , but it'll also increase the sales closing rate because you have better people that your sales guy is going to meet with . So there's all these different benefits .

And then , in addition to that , if you go all the way through , higher likelihood of a review , repeat business , referral business , you name it better experience for all the employees going through when you do it like that . But it takes a lot of effort . So that's a couple of tips there .

Some other ones that I would sprinkle on just real quick before we move on is having the automations in place .

So having something like drip jobs in place shout out to Tanner , having that in place and I feel like having something like drip jobs in place is not a replacement for lead conversion or follow up , but it's there to assist a really good lead conversion person or system .

It'll come right alongside that and just be right in alignment and your customers are going to feel really , really taken care of . So just a couple of tips .

, basically .

So I'm like man , if you're calling leads in six minutes , no , but if you're calling leads in an hour , four hours , the next day , just know that they are giving their money to somebody else . It's the fact , the fact .

Do you have a different service line there for them ?

Ever Now , there was probably some companies like Scorpion , reach , local things like that that were taken on some coding companies , but the first ever company that serves the concrete coding industry , and that was in 2019 when we started it , and so we've actually taken 56 companies from six figures to seven figures .

That's been documented , and we've worked with hundreds of companies at this point , and so what we decided is so I would say it was about last summer is when I started to work on this project and I was looking back at all the companies that we originally worked with the first five , 10 , 15 , 20 companies and what I noticed is there was some really fast growth

, some really , really , really fast growth , and so I started to kind of analyze , like well , how did that happen exactly ? How come some of these companies are growing way faster than maybe the companies we have now ? Is it the economy and companies are still growing , but it was just astronomical .

Like there was companies that we would bring in at 20 grand a month and they were doing 120 , 150 in like four months and five months and six months and eight months , and I'm like man , what is going on ?

So , anyway , so I analyzed that and I realized that I had spent a lot of time with those companies early on from a coaching perspective , and I didn't , I didn't charge for coaching , I didn't , I didn't know it was coaching , I didn't really know what coaching was like that four years ago and but it was just sitting on a zoom like this , and you know , every

week , I did it literally every week , or sometimes twice a week , and we would just literally go over lead conversion , lead management , sales production , all types of offline marketing strategies , you name it . Like we talked about anything , you know , because we only had , you know , think about it .

You know , you got eight clients , you got a lot of time on your hands . So I was like all I did was spend more time with them , and I spent so much time as I looked back and I didn't realize . And so I thought to myself you know , how can we , how can we serve the market ? You know ?

You know I feel like there's a place for agencies , but I also feel there's a place for coaching programs or even training programs . I also see or felt the contracting world going to a place where I saw a lot of contractors in power washing , concrete coatings , painting that were very intelligent .

You know they were not your traditional blue collar guys that were like I don't want to look at a computer ever , right , and if you're listening and that's you , there's no knock on you but it's just a reality , right , and there's a lot of home servers , business owners that want nothing to do with tech and figure it out and whatever .

But there's this new wave of contractors that are very tech savvy . You know they're . They're very , you know , tech intelligent and they're they . They grew up with cell phones . You know that were iPhones and things like that , like that's . That's a reality now .

And I really do feel like there's a place for a coaching , training company to teach some of these companies , especially when they're doing , you know , startup to . You know 30 , 40 , 50 grand a month where it doesn't make sense to , you know , pay an agency two grand , three grand a month , spend another two , three grand , four grand a month in ad spend .

It doesn't make sense to do that right now .

What does make sense is for them to learn how to generate their own leads , and there's a couple of platforms where that can be done Facebook ad to it , I would say the majority of painting contractors had to run their own Facebook ads , had to run their own Google ads , had to do their own a reactivation campaigns in their CRM , how to do local SEO , which is

just how to optimize your Google business profile listing , and that would probably be it , you know , because I don't want to teach them how to run , build websites and do technical SEO and citations and backlinks , and I don't think that that's very productive A few things that literally they could generate unlimited leads for themselves .

And I'm like sitting here thinking let's just , let's just piss off every marketing company ever and let's just teach them how to do it , you know . And then not just that , teach them how to do the sales systems right In-home sales , lead conversion , lead management , rehash , follow up , taking notes , all of those things .

And then not just like that , but how to actually do it in the home , like how do you like , how do you actually dress , how do you like , what equipment do you have , like teach them everything . And then the business systems .

So we're , you know , had a coaching client last week where we completely wrote up their business statement , mission statement , core values .

We're doing recruiting for them , so offer letters , job descriptions , job posting on Indeed , teaching them how to use Indeed , how to post on Facebook , how to how to actually run the business side of it as well , in addition to the sales and marketing .

And so that's been really fun because I feel like we can actually help and help execute , implement a little bit more than just the agency , where it's just like you know , a lot of times it's like , hey , here's some money , get the leads figured out , and I'm like , wait , wait , hold on a second . Like your Serium is not being managed properly .

Hey you , I'm not great at sales . Like , hey , you don't answer the phone . I've listened to all your calls Like you don't answer the phone . Well , so you know , I feel like it's just an opportunity to add more value and I personally get a lot of personal fulfillment out of it because it reminds me of the impact that we made when we first started .

It kind of brings me back to that feeling .

You know , two grand a month , whatever for a marketing agency , but there's a lot of low hanging fruit that they could be doing if they just have the tools available to them . So that sounds like that's a great solution for someone in that situation .

Like they didn't even , they did not even have a CRM . There was no proposals , it was written . It was like the old style proposals where it was like a two-sided cheat .

They were not doing employer reviews , like quarterly reviews , they weren't doing financial meetings monthly , they were not building a culture and they had no core values , like all of these things . I'm like man , like how , like how were you in business for 40 years ?

The reason why is because they do great work , they do amazing work , and so that's the only thing they did well , right , you know , for the most part when it comes to building or growing the business , right , they weren't strategically thinking about everything like what we're talking about here .

They were just amazing at painting houses and they could paint it better than anybody in that entire area . But I think back and , like man , that business was doing $2 million a year . When I got there , like if they implemented some of these things that we're talking about now , like they could have easily doubled , triple that business in that area .

I think a lot of you know trades folks , they're focused on the product , which that definitely needs to be the central focus , because if you know that will sell itself , you know if you provide a good product you'll get good referrals and that's definitely needs to be the focus , but not to the point where you're just ignoring everything else , because that just is

like rocket fuel for your business . So , yeah , that's a great point . One of the things you mentioned was cardinal concrete coatings .

When I was a business you started , you know , right after COVID , which is kind of crazy , but you basically took what you had been learning after starting service legend and then you kind of applied that to starting the concrete coatings business . Could you talk about , like , what made you do that and then ? And then , how did you so quickly hit $1.5 million ?

But I wanted to do it and so when the opportunity presented itself which was a lot quicker than I thought , but our agency when we started the agency too , we grew to a seven figure run rate in like five months , six months or something like that , or like , yeah , like six months .

So the agency grew really quick and so , you know , we had some resources available there . But then my dad was already retired at the time and my mom had just retired like right after I started the agency . So

they wanted to be a part of it . You know , they wanted to be a part of the home service company , and so those conversations were had . So , you know , I had the opportunity , I would say , to have some partners in place .

So my mom , my dad and my older brother early on , which allowed me to still run service legend while they were running the Cardinal and I saw an opportunity to where , like my , my piece of the puzzle was to train them on the business . And so that's what I did , is they moved to Arizona with me or they followed .

My wife will say that you know , they followed us , you know so , since we're thinking about moving to Dallas , and my wife was like , yeah , they're going to follow us there too , you know , and so we'll see what happens . But but they moved out here with us and so it made a lot of sense and we were growing these companies .

You know there was , there was quite a few companies early on . I mean , we were in business for six months and there was probably at least seven companies that had come in doing 20 , 30 , 40 grand a month and then , out of nowhere , it's like 100 grand , 80 grand , 120 . And I was like and so that fueled that more .

And I'm like man , like we could do this , like we could be doing this right now , like what are we talking about ? And so we just started it and all we did , man , it was super simple , literally . So there's a couple of things , but number one all we did from a marketing standpoint was Facebook ads , google ads , and it was specifically PPC and display .

So just some display for some retargeting , but it was mainly it was just Facebook ads and Google ads . I built the website , the same website I have now . I just updated it a little bit from a design perspective and then we did SEO on that site immediately . That's all we did from a marketing perspective and all we spent was $5,000 a month in spend .

That's it . And now obviously we increased that spend about four months in , because four months in we started our second crew . So we spent , we increased the spend , but the first four months we spent at 5K a month between Facebook and Google , the lead cost was a little bit lower than it is now .

Inflation has taken its toll and competition there's a lot more competition . But that's what we did and from a practical perspective , I knew what I needed to do , which was I handled the marketing from the marketing company . I taught my mom how to run the office . So my mom was our first office manager .

So I taught her how to run the office , how to answer the phone , how to convert leads , how to follow up with leads , how to set up the quick books , like , and all those things . Now she's very intelligent , but I didn't have to like teach her from the ground level , but just from a strategy perspective . I taught her the business and the office .

I taught my dad in-home sales . He was a teacher growing up , but when he was in his 20s he worked for ZEP and sold chemicals , so he knew about sales . And then he was a teacher and he had to tell stories and persuade and things like this , and serve and communicate , and so I taught him how to do in-home sales .

And then we hired some installers and I set up the business . Basically , I set it up and then they ran it and I only probably ran sales calls with my dad for the first month , something like that .

Now , the key and I would recommend this for every home service company , like if you can do this one thing , it can help you out so much in the beginning is we started the business in July 2020 . We started selling in July 2020 , the first week . Our first install was August 12th of 2020 .

So you're talking about a month , roughly a month or so after we started selling to when our first install was , and so that was strategic , and so what we did is we told everybody that you know , like this is when our first install was available , right , and started booking after that , and so what we were able to do is I believe it was about $47,000 that we

were able to sell . Now , this was not cash collected at the time , right , it was because we collected about 50% of those . So you're probably talking , you know , we sold about 47 grand , so just over 20 grand in cash collected in the first month . But when we started our first install in August 12th , there was like three and a half weeks of book jobs .

I think it was more than that because we couldn't do the jobs as fast as we do them now . So some of the jobs that would have been one day were two days and so in the beginning .

So it was longer than it should have been , but it was about three and a half weeks or four and a half weeks of installs , projects on the books that were paid before we even started our first install , and so that allowed us to , you know , recruit some guys in the door and give them like , look like this is , yes , it's a new company .

However , look at my experience , look at it was XYZ , and then also look at the jobs in the books here at the calendar . Like we've already done the , you know the work and we kept selling and we've never , ever really been out . You know , I think there was one time where we were like one week booked out .

It was very scary time , but for the most part we're always booked out three , four weeks you know , since then so that's awesome , so it's .

There were some companies that were , you know , I think it was just this conversation around who can get to seven figures faster , like , or a run rate , and I was just like , like once I heard that I'm like , I'm like , I'm gonna , I'm gonna figure that out and do it the fastest .

So I think there was just an excitement of like , seeing all these companies grow that we were helping . I had a lot of friends that were had successful companies , seven , eight figures . Now I've got some nine figure friends , but no , then it was seven , eight , you know . And like the eight figure guy was like I was like , oh my gosh .

Like you know , in your stories of like , oh yeah , we did 800 grand our first year , I'm like , you know , being competitive , I'm like I wonder if I can do a million , you know . And so , you know , at first it kind of started with that and so if I could go back , I wouldn't really be as concerned at doing that .

You know , as much as I would be focused on , okay , setting up the foundations correctly , you know , and maybe growing slower with more experience , right .

But when you don't have the experience , you know , my experience was mainly in sales and marketing , right , I mean , I had never really ran a business for that that long or managed people and fruited and things like that . So I probably slowed down a little bit and focus on on the people more . You know , we turned some people

quite a bit because we're moving fast and so , yeah , I would slow down a little bit and not be as concerned with the top line revenue as much as I would be with the bottom line , you know .

Also , in addition to that , like from a system standpoint , I think we were a little bit late to the party with the production or operational like systems and documenting things , because , again , we were so good at sales and marketing that it was really easy to look past the other things .

Right and that's a downfall of being really good at sales and marketing is , if there is one right is usually impulsive , usually you look over details , right .

So I would say that that , like , I would frown upon that , you know , if only focused on top line revenue and not focusing on the other important things , because you know , I was sitting here thinking about the first year in business , not thinking about year four and five and six and seven and those things .

Now , everything's worked out now , but if I could go back , I would do those things Also . We used a lot of cash to buy stuff like liquid cash , like you know . So like the grinder that we first bought was like a $22,000 grinder cash right . A vacuum six grand cash , a generator four grand cash .

The trailer $7,500 cash and everything was just cash , cash cash where we probably could have leveraged debt more and kept some of that cash for other things , whether it's reserves or operating capital or use it for marketing or whatever . I think we could have used more debt in the beginning .

Now , I'm not saying that people should just go out and get debt , but I'm just saying like , if you know how to leverage it , like and you're going to pay your bills and you're going to make some money , like it's probably should have financed half of the . You know the stuff that we paid cash for . So I think that's a big deal .

And then also credit cards . We I feel like my wife got really , really good at leveraging credit card strategy like really good at it , but it took us some time and so you know , I wish we'd have established our credit card and just our history and just our , our relationship with bank early on for easy access for other things you know .

So you know I would definitely change a few things and what I have rather have done 800 grand with 25% net versus 1.5 with 8% net , 7% net yeah , I might , I might have been open to that .

I think a lot of folks are kind of hesitant to use credit , which because there's you know folks like Dave Ramsey talking about personal side .

You know that's which I would generally agree with what Dave Ramsey says with personal debt , not on every point , but when you talk about business , that I think it's a little bit different discussion and I think people are unnecessarily afraid of using you know debt to your advantage . That's an old one right here , oh yeah .

I mean , there's definitely something to be said of Dave Ramsey's advice , but I think when you're running your business you kind of have to look at it a little bit different .

We could have five crews , but now we have two subs as well that we use . But let's say we wanted to start another crew , right . It's like , well , how much does that cost from a equipment perspective and things like that , that labor ? But just how much would it cost us to get the trailer and the grinders and all these different things like set it up ?

Okay , let's just say , for example , it's going to be $30,000 . It's like , okay , let's say you got 150 grand in your bank account . It's like , well , do you just want to take 30 grand out of your operating account and say new crew ? Or let's say you have a credit card that has an $80,000 limit and there's $60,000 of available credit .

It's like , why not put that 30K on the credit card and pay it off with the money that's generated from that new crew ? But you've got to be disciplined , you got to have some information , you got to have clarity , you got to know your numbers and you can't . Just .

It's not just free money out there , right , but if you can strategically use the debt , have discipline and have a plan in place , man , it could be much more lucrative than taking that cash out of the bank . Yeah .

You could fill out some information , but where I would recommend that you go first is , well , come to me if you'd like , but if you have some questions , but where I'd recommend you go first is we have free , available content , which is the service legends Facebook group . It's completely free Facebook group .

There's podcasts and trainings and different things that are in there , and so I'd recommend just going into the Facebook group checking out our podcasts , getting familiar with what we're doing right now .

And , yeah , if you guys have any questions or want any help with marketing or sales systems or just want to talk shop about the industry , and super happy to do that as well , and yeah .

and ask to join the private group to get access , and we'll definitely love to hear your comments and thoughts and with that , we'll see you next week .