← Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC Business Growth Podcast
Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC Business Growth Podcast
#150 - LEGENDS: From Bankruptcy to $75 Million with EcoPlumber and Aaron Gaynor
00:59:10
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- [00:00]
Aaron Gaynor
Lost jobs, lost my house, I lost my car. I mean, I lost everything. I could blame the economy, but the reality was I didn't understand business. It was just taking action and believing in the idea that you could do something major. Goal I had was get more reviews than everybody else, pick a number, set a deadline, and go to work. And I just picked 100 million.
- [00:29]
Tommy
A few months ago, we got our call center on a Evoca. And Evoca is a AI call center solution for home service companies just like me and probably just like you. They have a couple different products, but the one that we like the most is their Coach product, which listens to every single phone call and runs it through a rubric to help our call takers improve. And this is a really big deal because we take hundreds, sometimes thousands of phone calls every single day. And it's just too much for our trainers and managers and leads to keep up with and effectively train. So it lets us do ride alongs on almost every single call every day. Click on the link below to go to Evoca and make sure you use the promo code Owned for a special discount. Welcome back to Owned and Operated. Today we've got a special guest on a new addition to our Legend series. Welcome Aaron Gaynor from EcoPlumbers.
- [01:17]
Aaron Gaynor
Thanks for having me today. Appreciate it, guys.
- [01:19]
Tommy
Yeah, dude, this is gonna be. It's gonna be a lot of fun.
- [01:22]
Chris
Very excited.
- [01:23]
Tommy
Yeah, yeah, this, this is also fun because, like, it, man, we're Ohio brothers. Like, we, we get.
- [01:31]
Aaron Gaynor
You've been doing great stuff up north, man.
- [01:33]
Tommy
So, yeah, we're trying. We. We want to get. There's only a couple, like, big Ohio companies. I think you guys are the, the biggest that, that I know. But we got to get Logan on at some point too. That'd be. That'd be kind of fun. But it's. Yeah, it's fun. The Midwest companies, man. Midwest companies. Well, before we start diving in, I'm sure most of the folks in the industry know who you are, but I love a backstory on ego because you guys have had some wild success.
- [02:02]
Aaron Gaynor
Yeah, for sure. I know I've been fortunate enough to be on decent amount of podcasts, been around the industry for a while, and I really grateful to have a lot of people help me and getting the opportunity to share some of my story that hopefully helps other people. But I am a plumber by trade. I'll start all the way back to. I started in the trades in 1997 out of high school. I am a plumber by trade. I was loading Semi trucks at Value City Furniture for you Midwest people that know Value City Furniture.
- [02:30]
Tommy
Yeah.
- [02:32]
Aaron Gaynor
At night, second shift. Throughout my senior year of high school. Graduated high school, had a buddy, his brother in law worked for Ferguson Enterprises and he said hey, I know somebody wants to get some young guys into plumbing, into the trades. Right. I had really no clue what plumbers were really doing. I mean I knew what plumbing was but I didn't really know what they did, what was going on. So I took that job. It was a first shift job making about $7.50 an hour as a helper. Right. And can you imagine that? Can you can't even get a plumber to start for $7. But you know, I took it and I started as a helper and I never left. I ended up really enjoying it. It was new construction, light commercial. I picked up on the, on the, on the code pretty quickly. I understood the work. I liked, I like the physical work too, you know, just I like, I like digging surprisingly and I like, you know, I like the undergrounds. I did undergrounds for a couple of years, so, so I learned to trade and I ended up getting my master's called a master's plumber's license in Ohio back in the day, around the age 23 or so, my, my buddy and I started a plumbing company, New Construction in the early 2000s when, you know, when all the, when everything was really booming.
- [03:50]
Tommy
Yeah.
- [03:50]
Aaron Gaynor
So right. It was one of those times where it felt like they were going to build houses forever and ever. We grew that business to about three and a half million dollars and then 06 to 07 we ended up losing that company in the downturn, went bankrupt. That company ended up going bankrupt. We were main businesses were some, some builders like Syntex Homes, Dominion Homes, you know, some other builders mi. Some other people that are still around but they started pulling back. We started losing contracts and frankly we just, we didn't really. We tried to fight to try to hold onto that business but we're really sure how to because we were very dependent on new build construction. And I'll get into it maybe a little bit as we talk here today. I didn't really understand how to run a business. We were just contractors doing a lot of plumbing work for new construction and then building that. Right.
- [04:35]
Tommy
Yeah.
- [04:35]
Aaron Gaynor
And as we started to lose that business, we didn't really have a fallback or plan. So lost that business in 06 to 07 and 07. Had bankruptcy, lost jobs, lost my house, I lost my car. I mean I lost everything I Mean, I just complete bankruptcy to zero. Ground zero. I was actually even on check systems, if anybody's ever heard of that, where basically it won't even give you a bank account because you owed money.
- [04:59]
Tommy
Oh, interesting.
- [05:00]
Aaron Gaynor
To the irs. Yeah, too. So like all of that happened. So now here I am, 28 years old, single dad with my three year old son and I'm at my mom's house at her two bedroom apartment, sleeping on the couch. And you know, I lay in there one night with my son on the couch and I hold him up and I just remember looking right at him and I said, I promise this won't be your life. I'm gonna figure this out, man. I'm gonna get to work and we'll make something. And next day got up and got to work. And 17 years later, going on set. Yeah, this is end of 17 years. We should finish off around $75 million. Plumbing, electrical and H vac.
- [05:43]
Chris
Yeah, yeah, that's a, that's an absolutely amazing story. To go and then lose it all and then come back is just absolutely incredible. And so what, what was the big decision when you said getting back to work? Did you go work for another plumber? Did you just start up another company right out the gate? And then how did you move from that into service work?
- [06:03]
Aaron Gaynor
So answer the question here this way. One is, I didn't end up going to work for anybody else. Obviously I crossed my mind. Good plumber, had a lot of background, I could have done that. I just felt internally there was still. I don't really had this question asked before. It's like, I don't know really know what it was just something told me I could still do this and that I wanted to pursue something that was grant bigger and better than just. I'm not saying better than working for somebody, but for myself, my own ambition. Right. Is what I wanted to pursue. So there was some fire that I can't really answer that, you know, it just was there. It's like one of those things you just knew that you could do more. And I wasn't done fighting for that yet. So that was one of the things just got up and was like, I know I can do this. I know that this industry has a lot of opportunity. The trades have really helped me out in my life. Made some mistakes. I didn't really understand business. Once I reflected on said I could blame the economy, but the reality was I didn't understand business. I didn't know business enough. I didn't know marketing. I didn't know Financing, finance. I didn't know anything. All I knew was to run plumbing projects and bid jobs for plumbing. Right? That's really what I knew. So I had to take full responsibility. Once I took full responsibility, I knew that there was another whole opportunity in the service industry that I had never tapped into as I started to do some research. So yeah, to answer the question, I woke up that next day, I called pretty much the, the next day I woke up, called my sister, asked her if she'd help me get something started. What I just shared with you is pretty much what I said to her. I know there's an opportunity, I know I can do something. She borrowed, we borrowed 50, I borrowed 50 bucks from her, open up a bank account. And then her and her ex husband now, but at that time really helped me get up off the ground. I called up my buddy Braun, who still works here today that I've also known since we were 15 years old and worked at the other company. We said, hey man, I'm going to try to get this going again. Will you help me out? He said, yes. I called up some old builders that I had some relationships with and said, hey, can I do some work for you guys? You know what happened? I knew what happened, right? I said, but I'll, I'll warranty the work after hours that, you know, from the, from my previous company I was a part of on my own time, whenever you need it. If you guys can give me some work to get up off my feet again. And I had good relationship with a lot of the builders, custom builders that did work for. They didn't really have a problem with anything he did. Just the production business just collapsed, right. And they started some work. So, and you know, I didn't need to re, I wasn't required to do that work. Obviously after a bankruptcy kind of, you know, goes away. But, but it was the right thing to do to get the work right and, and it showed integrity to, to them. So they gave me some work. And then I called my son's mom up and said, hey, this is where I'm at, you know, financially, I don't have any work. You know, this already. I'm trying to survive. I called child support and asked them if I could get a child support reduction. They basically told me, too bad you need three years of new, new employment history to be able to change child support. I said, well, I mean, I'm unemployed, I have no job, I'm bankrupt. They basically, you know, told me, good luck. So I called her up, I called her up. And I said, hey, this is where I'm at. I'm making a deal with you. I'm going to figure out how to pay child support so nothing goes off. I'm a little behind right now, but I'll get caught up. I'll figure it out and get some work. I'll get it paid as long as we can make an agreement that you never come back after me again later on. But I'll make you a deal. I'll make sure I buy our son's first truck or first vehicle when he turns 16. And I'll pay for all of his college, which I am happy to say I'm doing today. So, you know, I was able to buy his vehicle, take care of him, and I'm paying. He's going to Asuk for finances in a senior year, and I'm paying for all of that. And she believed in me and she said, yeah, sure. And I've known her since we were younger. We knew each other younger. We didn't date till later, but, you know, she's like, sure, let's. Let's do it. And she never did. She. She held her word. She never came back for anything ever again. Never did. And I fulfilled my promise. So those pieces kind of laid in, you know, you went and asked people for some help and you got to work and it's action. So I think to your point, what big decisions, it was just taking action and believing in the idea that you could do something. So it was actions, immediate actions. Of course I felt done. I felt like a loser, and I felt like an absolute loser. But I also knew that if I didn't do something, I'd be a bigger loser. And it was like. And so, And I wanted. And I promised my son that this wouldn't be the life he'd have. And I'm going to get to work and figure it out and, you know, getting back out into the workforce, in the community and around the people that you just had a business that went bankrupt, you know, is embarrassing. I mean, it was embarrassing, but also knew that I could show that I could get back on my feet and do something.
- [10:33]
Tommy
Yeah. When, when you, you know, for the listener, a little bit of extra nuances. Columbus has been in. I don't know when the new construction sort of boom happened again, but it's, it's in a new construction boom again, seemingly from the outside looking in for the last decade. So when you, when you started working again, was. Was most of the work still this new stuff or when did you start breaking into service and that become the primary thing.
- [11:04]
Aaron Gaynor
So it was definitely construction. Now it sounds like, well, that just would cost you your business. But it's also the only thing I knew, right? I knew how to do construction. I knew how to do that. But that wasn't the plan anymore. The plan was to build a service business. I'd watch, you know, Roto Rooter and, you know, service trucks. Other companies, you know, name. I can name a few of them. But regardless, you all know, like, there's decent service companies in Columbus. And I saw them driving around, they were doing work, they seemed to be fine during the economy, during the stuff, I was like, that's what I want to do. They had a brand. I was like, I want to build a brand. Yeah, I need to build a brand. I need to build something that has value for me, for the people that work here and for the community, right? So that was my goal. So I knew from that point forward, everything I was doing was to build a service brand. And part of that was getting to work and what I knew to build, to start to create money. Because I was bankrupt, I had no credit to be able to start building towards building a brand. And then thinking about that, and then I got online and I found an organization called Green Plumbers out of Australia. And they were doing stuff for droughts and water conservation. I was like, this is pretty cool. This is new. This is innovative in our space. I was trying to find new, innovative things. And I signed up with them and said, hey, when you guys are coming? And then randomly, they're like, hey, we'll be in the States in like next 12 months or something. I can't remember exactly, but somewhere in that time frame to do training, I was like, sign me up. So I was like one of the 26 people, or first 26 people to go through that training that they had back then and learned a lot about energy, water conservation, water sense, solar systems, you know, tankless. All these things that were really becoming popular around 08 09, 2010, right?
- [12:48]
Tommy
Yeah.
- [12:48]
Aaron Gaynor
So that was a great play. Just when I say play, was looking for innovation in the space that I could do in plumbing that wasn't existing to help me build a service business. And that's what I went out and looked for and I found that and. And started to integrate that in and then eventually rename the company to Eco Plumbers. At that time, originally when we restarted, it was called Phoenix for all the reasons. Real creative, right? But. But I needed a name to get started, right? And name to inspire me, but. And then it became Phoenix. I'm sorry, Eco Plumbers as I really look to say what would be something if I looked in 20 years from now that could be a brand name in the marketplace that's different than Roto or Rooter or Rotor or whatever. And no hit at that. It's just thinking about what the industry would evolve to. And when I saw this energy conservation and new technology for plumbing, I was like, that's what we need to do. We need to be Eco Plumbers. Right? Yeah. And that's what happened.
- [13:44]
Tommy
It makes sense. I mean we've, we've never, I'd never directly competed against you obviously, but you know, I remember hearing of your brand for the first time. It was probably about a decade ago maybe it was like Service Titan was just coming out. I don't really remember how but it came up.
- [14:00]
Aaron Gaynor
We were on Service Titan 10 years ago.
- [14:01]
Tommy
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember it was like, it was, it was about a decade ago and I remember seeing Eco Plumbers and like I think the focus at the time was like everything you just said, I remember that being a thing a decade ago for you guys. And I was like, oh, that's a good idea.
- [14:18]
Chris
That's a good thesis.
- [14:20]
Tommy
It turned out to be true because it. Well one, people are thinking about it but two, it's prominently placing yourself at the forefront of modern high ticket plumbing. So yeah, it makes sense. It was a good idea.
- [14:34]
Aaron Gaynor
That's what we did. So we had. The idea was like, okay, well WaterSense hadn't been pushed through yet through the government as a mandate. Right. So we're offering WaterSense. Tankless was building that. A lot of people, a lot of plumbers were scared of Tankless, didn't want anything to do with us. Like just give them to me, I'll do them. Yeah, figure it out. And you know, scared you might word. But maybe just not feeling that they wanted to be involved or do it, but maybe scared. Yeah, yeah.
- [14:56]
Tommy
People don't like change. It was the same thing with like mini splits and it's the same thing. Pro press and it's, I mean lead free valves. I remember when that was a thing 15 years ago. Yeah, everything man.
- [15:09]
Aaron Gaynor
Yeah, everything right. Change. Change is always different.
- [15:12]
Tommy
Yeah, it's always.
- [15:15]
Aaron Gaynor
But I was like, I'm going all in on it. And then from there I was like, well what I went and was like, I need some type of software that could out, that could really be advanced. And so I started looking around and I found Service Titan just online I reached out and Ara actually called me back and he's the one that actually was my sales rep. He was my sales rep and he called me on a Sunday night. I think it was like 7:00. He did like a, A present on, like, I guess what you would maybe call Zoom today, some other platform, I don't even know what it was 10 years ago. And he'd walk me through it and I was like, I'm signing up now, like tomorrow. Like, I'm in. Like, this is exactly what I'm looking for. So all of those things kind of found the right time. And then when iPads came out, I was like, I need to get iPads to be able to show this. And that was even before Service Titan, but iPads. And I remember people would be like, my plumber has iPad. And I don't. This is crazy, right? And so just all of those things I think were, you know, some of it's the right time at the right. And you kind of make those decisions. And we did, and they worked out for us, right? And they could have maybe never worked out, I don't know, but they did.
- [16:16]
Tommy
This is probably a tactical question. And it was, you know, 15, 17 years ago at this point. I'm, I'm trying. I'm imagining that vendors would have been a struggle coming back in and relaunching the company. Like, how did you actually do that?
- [16:33]
Aaron Gaynor
Yeah, well, for sure. So obviously I had my, my sister help me out with some credit stuff and her ex husband. But honestly, Car Supply, the old owner of Car Supply, before they sold Bud, he knew me and he and Rick a. Rick, a vendor that worked with me through my other plumbing company that were there. And that's a Car supplies. I don't know if you guys know, you might know who Car Supply is. But, but he was, he was, he was great to me. He was, he was just genuinely nice guy. And yeah, he helped me out. I don't know what else to really say. He. He gave me credit and I'd come back and count fittings and bring them back. And he didn't like, give me a lot, but he gave me enough, right? And he helped me out and he let me bring fittings back every night. I'd be counting fittings back out, returning them to get credit. So I had enough to buy for the next job and, and he was okay with it, even though it wasn't something they typically did. But he knew what happened and his business actually lost money in that bankruptcy because of that too. But he knew what happened, and I think he saw the work ethic I had and the ability to try to bounce back. And we spent a lot of money with that company today. Now he sold that company, has moved on, and Wind Supply did it. But Rick, who's been there and some other people and just, you know, that relationship of time is, you know, it's. I think they've made that money back, plus.
- [17:50]
Tommy
Yeah.
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Chris
Yeah, just a little.
- [17:53]
Tommy
Yeah.
- [17:54]
Aaron Gaynor
But, you know, you didn't have to do that. Yeah, you didn't have to, and you did. So we.
- [17:59]
Tommy
We bought a company in 2018, and they had. They had a similar story to what you just described, and they didn't bounce back, really. They tried to, but they weren't able to. But a lot of the. It was a humbling because I was young when I was hearing these stories, but it was like, it was shocking. The difference between vendor relationships were like, that's a great story. That's a vendor partner that has paid off, you know, a thousand times over for. For that vendor. And then there's other vendors that just didn't do that. And like, you know, we have a vendor up here that was. They were pretty tough about the whole thing with. With the company we bought and that, that. That vendor actually ended up forcing the plumbing company into bankruptcy. Like, they missed a couple bills and the vendor pulled all the vans. It was kind of. So they. They actually effectively shut that business down. And I was like, that's wild. Like, how do you win in this scenario? You got some vans, like, you got some old Chevys, like, I don't know.
- [19:04]
Aaron Gaynor
Well, that happened to us. Actually. Part of the reason we ended up getting enforced in the bankruptcy was because of some of the vendors. And a large vendor did it. We'll get into it. But they were one of the reasons why they. They were able to pull that lever, which was the personal rights, and write off things on. Pull that lever and shut it. Now, the reason why is because eventually they have to. Because they need to put it on the books and then clear their books. Right. So there's many reasons why doesn't feel like the right thing to do in some sense, but it is the right thing to do. The way some of the system. Once you start to understand why and how. But, you know, you hope that people bet on you, trying to give you, you know, to fight back. But also there's times where people take advantage of and totally run people into dirt. So, you know, I can't judge anybody for the decisions they made because they Made the decisions they felt were the right ones for them. And, you know, and honestly, I probably should be thanking them at some point that this happened and it went down. And I do. I do. At one point, I felt like bankruptcy was the worst that ever happened to me. But it might have been one of the best things. Actually probably is one of the best things that ever happened to me because it really humbled me and really made me rethink my. Everything I thought about plumbing and H Vac and electrical and myself and reinvent myself and rethink how I operate and show up and the things I needed to learn as a person. Because I was just plumber. Right. Really, I'm just a plumber running a business. Nothing wrong with that. I think everybody should feel proud to be whatever trade they are. I'm just saying I was applying. Wasn't really understand how to operate a business. You know, the old e Myth book, if you guys have read.
- [20:30]
Tommy
Yeah.
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Aaron Gaynor
So very much technician manager, the entrepreneurial myth. Right. But really was just technician trying to run a business and didn't really know what I was doing.
- [20:38]
Chris
Aaron, with. With that. You talk a lot about your history as a plumber and that growth trajectory. At what point did it make sense in your business to add those additional verticals?
- [20:49]
Aaron Gaynor
Right.
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Chris
You went from, I'm a plumber. It's what I know. I know service. Now my business is growing, and now we're going to do H Vac and electrical. What. What did that transition look like for you?
- [20:59]
Aaron Gaynor
You know, for the longest time, I was like, man, I see these guys trying to do multiple trades way too early in this business and floundering. But. But it sounded cool that I had all three trades, to be candid. Right. And I saw him and I talked to guys like, we're doing 5 million. They're all three trades. I'm like, what? Just pick one. Like, we.
- [21:18]
Chris
We have that conversation a lot.
- [21:20]
Aaron Gaynor
Three of them. You're all over the place and you're not really sure and you're not really winning at one of them. And they're Dr. Down. So to me. And I could see that when I was growing the business and I. And I remember, you know, I. I was very fortunate. I joined nexar. Jack Tester. I got, you know, got Chester's. On our team today was a mentor of mine, Jim Hamilton, one of the legends in home service, coaching and nestar. And, you know, I really got a chance to talk to him more. And I was like, I. I just want to figure this one thing out. First, right? Because I've already. I dabbled around and before and tried to mess around with like doing these other things and finally I just gotta pick one thing and do it, just one thing and give it all. And it was plumbing, right? Plumbing and drain kind of came along and then so I was like, I'm just going to do this one thing. I'm not going to worry about multi trade because I go to these seminars or go to those events or go to the things and talk to guys doing it. They just seemed. They weren't getting anywhere because they couldn't get traction on it because they're trying to do all of them because they felt like they should. And it. And. And there's some ego. Felt cool, right? Honestly, let's just say what it is. It just felt cool. I felt like what really seemed cool was a good plumbing business at first, right. So it was like. And then I didn't feel like I had earned. I used to say this all the time. Even when we did our very first prayer group back when we were around $12 million. I told this when people brought it up again. I said, I don't think I've earned the right to own another. To do another trade line yet. I haven't earned the right to do it. We haven't earned the right till we have mastered this in some capacity. They'll never master it, but you know what I mean, like within mastery of it. Yeah, definitely return market saturation. We're to a point where we. We feel like we're the best in the market of central Ohio, Columbus, and we do more plumbing than anybody else. Then we've earned the right to add in multi trades. Right? So. And that was my approach. I don't judge anybody for their own. They do whatever they want. I'm just sharing my experience. So. And then from there, once we started feeling like we were hitting saturation in the plumbing business and the. And the lead counts were starting to level out and the drain business was at a level I was like, now what do you do? So then we did. Then we expanded into Dayton, Ohio with plumbing only because that was our line. And then, and then, and then we did the. Exactly. The thing that I said that made you look cool was then we decided to do that thing which. Then we added H Vac, then we added electrical, and then we went vertical and horizontal because to be frank, we got kind of caught up in the arrogance of ourselves and the industry of grow market expansion add to service lines. Everybody's doing it so trendy you know, you know, you want to be cool like everybody else, so you should do it. And we did it. And you know we did it. Some of that, I would say played into it a little bit as you're watching, you know, people do it in the marketplace and do stuff. And then some of it was a realistically, hey, we need to add more service line. You start thinking about how do you grow your, your business? Well, you know, it's either vertical or horizontal growth. Right. You gotta pick one or pick both. And so we kind of picked both there for a minute. Right. And you know, some, some challenges. I mean, I'm not gonna lie, it's not all. It's, you know, it might look from the outside like, oh, look at Eco's pretty big business. Their brand's big, they do a lot of revenue. But I mean there's, there's a lot of challenges in that. Yeah, the one thing was, is we felt that we wanted to bring our plumbing service experience to the H Vac industry. We felt like we had grown a giant plumbing business base. And we felt like because of our plumbing demand call business, we should be able to scale the H Vac business pretty quickly because we see so many people right already. And we started to look at saturation, look at average sale H Vac and then look for longevity of membership growth. And what does this mean as a brand and as a business proposition for our own employees, Growth opportunity and market value. So hopefully, I mean, I might have said a lot there, but hopefully there's answer some of it. And honestly, electrical was a last second decision. We were actually into rebrand with Dan Antonelli. We were going to do only plumbing in H Vac. And then we were at the nexstar event right before they were getting ready to pass the new energy laws for electrical. I talked to a couple electricians that own electrical businesses and they were going on about how great this is going to be, the electrical with the H Vac, how electrical is going to have a lot of growth opportunity in the next decade because of some of the energy laws that are being passed and some of the, I don't know, they, they went into other technical things that I'm not an electrician about. And I was like, I might been. My partner Mike, who's a partner now in the business, my CFO Mike, a partner in business. Now we both were sitting there and I just said, we just looked at each other, said, they sold us, we gotta do it if we're gonna do, we have to do it now. So I literally picked up the phone, called, my marketing team said, we're gonna do electrical. Make sure it gets on the logo because the logo is supposed to be redone and ready to go in a couple weeks. Add electrical. Let's just do it. If we're going to do it, let's just do them all, call it a day. That one was not very thought out. So not all decisions are always as strategic as everybody thinks they are in life. Right. Some are. You got to just make a decision and go with it. And frankly, it's been a very good decision to do electrical. We have more electrical calls than we can even run in a week.
- [26:14]
Chris
I bet. Yeah. I mean, I love that answer though. We get the question all the time from people in our group and that write us from the newsletter that say, hey, when do we do this? And even myself has fallen into the trap of running plumbing and H vac at a too low of a level and it becomes more of a burden. We found in the long run, just because you're running two separate businesses under one brand name, when you don't have the capital to actually really own the market in one or the other.
- [26:42]
Tommy
So very, very interesting.
- [26:45]
Chris
Yeah, yeah, I, I love that, that you need to earn the right to, to get a second vertical, but really, really interesting.
- [26:52]
Aaron Gaynor
Yeah. And that was, again, that was my approach and I'd heard that through some of my nexcar coaches, but it was also my own approach to keep, to keep it off for myself and for my team. To say we haven't earned the right. You tell me once we earn the right, then we can get a vertical.
- [27:06]
Tommy
Taking this back maybe a few years. Can you walk us through? I don't know if it helps year by year or how you want to think about this, but I mean, bankruptcy to 75 million is obviously that's a big leap. Can you walk us through some of the steps there? For going on two years, I've partnered with service scalers to do our Google Ads, ppa, PC and SEO and the results have been huge. It's been really exciting to watch as our website consistently jumps up rank as we're using more technology and we're moving faster than our peers who are all using legacy home service marketing companies. We use service scalers for ppc, our local SEO, our on page website SEO and our lsa. So give them a call if you're looking for leads.
- [27:48]
Aaron Gaynor
Let's call it for seven years. We're basically nothing. Nothing like it was just trying to actually just grind. I mean, I We weren't making money, we didn't have money to advertise. I was saved putting every dollar I could in the bank account, trying to build up capital, you know, trying to get back, you know, bankruptcy stays on your credit for seven years. Right. So I had some time to try to figure out some of that. Some. We're still growing, we're doing stuff, but we weren't doing anything significant. They're still trying to figure out, how do I build a brand strategy, what does it look like, you know, joining, you know, end up, you know, finding all these things. So the first seven years is basically, I mean, it was just every day, sun up to sundown, just still working in the field, doing anything. If I got a random service call, I go do it right slowly. Surely I didn't understand pricing. So one of the ways that I did to figure out even how to build a price book, because I didn't have any money to go find an organization to teach me a price book. So Angie's List was big in our area years and years ago. And I mean, Angela still exists, but it was pretty big. Right? It was probably the real first platform for reviews before Google kind of took that over. Yeah, I got on Angie's List and I signed up for Angie's List and I read through all the reviews on Angie's List and the price that any, any person said was the price they paid for a water heater, a drain. Interesting. And I wrote them all down. You know, this is. I'm not savvy enough for an Excel sheet. So I wrote them all down and then I went through them all and I said, okay, this is how much people are saying they're buying from this company, this company, this company. And I started building my price book off of what consumers said in there. Then I obviously went back and looked at my prices and built it from there. And I signed up for Angie's List. Angel's List was my first actual marketing, like, platform besides having just a website. And I signed up for Angie's List, which, you know, at that time was like, it's free to be on Angelus now. It cost $15,000. So it's like, it's free to have your name somewhere but nobody will sue you. So I was like, well, I was like, I don't have any money. But they're like, guess what? We'll finance.
- [29:48]
Tommy
Oh, interesting.
- [29:49]
Aaron Gaynor
Finance, right? So basically they said, it's 15 grand, we'll let you pay payments on it. And I said, you know what? Screw it, let's do it. So that's where I started off at is on Angie's List. And the major, major goal I had was get more reviews than everybody else. That's why I told the five people on our team. We branded our. We had wrapped our trucks with the Eco Eco Plumbers so people thought we were kind of a franchise. They're like, you guys a franchise? Like, no. There's like four of us trying to make it happen. And all we did was get reviews. I said, get reviews, get reviews, get reviews, get reviews. I said, I don't care what we do the job for at this price. At some point to the price a little bit. Get reviews, get reviews. We want to make. We want to look bigger than we are and we want to get social validation. I said, so social validation will be our play to build our brand. Get more people to think that that. Not think, but. No, but think we're bigger than we are and that we have the most reviews. And we did that and we started passing people on Angie's List within probably a year or two years with more reviews than people have been on it forever. And then we took that same approach into Google immediately when Google started driving us NASA. Get reviews, get reviews, get reviews. And that was before everybody was really. At least in my world, before everybody's like really focused on reviews. Yeah. Today our reviews on Google, there's only three people that three places have more reviews than us in Ohio. You know who they are? I'll tell you, it's.
- [31:11]
Tommy
I don't.
- [31:12]
Aaron Gaynor
Cedar Point, Kings island and the Columbus Zoo.
- [31:18]
Tommy
That's funny, dude. I'm looking, I'm looking this up right now. Oh, yeah, yeah. 13,000. That is chunky. That's a lot.
- [31:25]
Aaron Gaynor
That's just in one location.
- [31:26]
Tommy
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [31:28]
Aaron Gaynor
You start adding up all of our, all of our Google reviews between all of our locations.
- [31:32]
Tommy
Yeah.
- [31:34]
Aaron Gaynor
So it's pretty crazy.
- [31:36]
Tommy
Yeah.
- [31:36]
Aaron Gaynor
That, that, you know. And that, that's, that was definitely it. And I know reviews at some point. It doesn't matter if you have 13 review,000 or 5,000 reviews, you know, but the idea was build, build social validation through, through, through the platforms of reviews. And I started with Angie's List and then we carried it over to Google fast.
- [31:52]
Tommy
Yeah, yeah. You had.
- [31:54]
Aaron Gaynor
I guess, I don't know if that answers your question. Talk through. But I'm telling you that was how we started the service business was I went to Angie's List. I really put a platform on Angie's List, started driving reviews and driving more reviews and Then from there, we obviously started digging into more. More marketing strategies.
- [32:10]
Tommy
Yeah.
- [32:10]
Aaron Gaynor
Branding, et cetera, et cetera.
- [32:13]
Tommy
Yeah, no, it. It did. It was helpful. Who was the big player a decade ago in Columbus?
- [32:22]
Aaron Gaynor
So Waterworks has been. Was big. They're still decent size here. Waterworks was big here. Rotor Rooters.
- [32:27]
Tommy
Here is Atlas Butler Columbus.
- [32:31]
Aaron Gaynor
Atlas Butler. Yeah, Atlas Butler's here. Atlas Butler's big H Vac. Big H. They have a plumbing division, but they're H Vac. Yeah, they're big Hvac business. Okay. So, I mean, big one was really mostly was Waterworks was the bigger plumbing business here. And Roto Rooter.
- [32:45]
Tommy
Yeah.
- [32:45]
Aaron Gaynor
And then there's a handful of other, you know, companies, but those are really who we were, you know, thinking about who we would beat, I guess, for lack of a term.
- [32:55]
Tommy
Yeah. Yeah. That's a good way to put it.
- [32:56]
Aaron Gaynor
Yeah.
- [32:57]
Tommy
I think we. When did you cross that first 10 million or 20 million? Because it sounds like it was slow. And then all at once, from sort of what you've described so far.
- [33:11]
Aaron Gaynor
Yeah, I mean, I think that's it, right. I. I truly believe in the idea that the world really tests you if you really want it. Yeah. Just the universe does, in some level, it really tests you. Right. Do you really want it? And once, once you kind of break through the idea that you're really done, everything that there is, it's like, it comes so fast that, you know, like, what happened all this time, it felt like there was nothing, and then all of a sudden, it's everything. Right. And you're like, whoa, whoa. But it was all these things that we were doing to build up to that. Right. And yeah, it takes time to build a brand. Like, everybody thinks you're gonna go out and flip the switch and have a brand in a marketplace. Everybody's gonna know who you are. Like, yeah, you can run a lot of ads and get some marketing, messaging, ads, but it also takes time to get the reviews. It takes time for people to know, like, and trust you. It takes time. These things didn't happen overnight, right?
- [33:56]
Tommy
Yeah.
- [33:56]
Aaron Gaynor
Yeah.
- [33:57]
Chris
Especially Bootstrap, too. I mean.
- [33:59]
Aaron Gaynor
Yeah. That a lot of it was word of mouth beginning. Right. Because I didn't. I couldn't have any money to run a TV ad today. We spent a lot of money on TV and radio and buildings. But. But. So I guess I'd say the first seven years were very much struggling. About 10 years ago, I met Mike, our CFO, now partner in the business, and we were at a party that neither one of us really Wanted to be at. But we were chatting and he was like, what do you do? I was like, I'm a plumber, I own a plumbing business. He's like, what do you. I'm like, what do you do? He's like, I just, you know, I'm in finance. He just got graduated with his master's in finance from Fisher. He's working at Victoria's Secret. And he's like, what? I was like, I want to learn more about finance and projections and other stuff. Right? So we got into a little bit there and then he's like. I said, he's like, why? I said, well, I own a business and I want to, I want to grow it. And he's like, what do you want to grow it to? I was like, 100 million. And he was like, oh. He's like, oh, okay. Caught his attention, right? He's like, well, where are you at today? I was like, a million. Okay, okay, we got some work. But then he was like, let's get together and start building some modeling. And then we got together and built out a hundred million dollar plan to build 100 million dollar business. And then eventually he ended up coming on and now has become a partner in the business. So that's played a big part in that. So you know, that was a, a part of like knowing that I needed this. And sometimes fate finds its way. But the reason, the reason why I say this is you have to have something big out in front of you to get people on board with what you're doing. Vision. I think vision is very important in organization. And I had vision. So even when I reset, I knew I was going to grow something. I had vision and the vision was to grow $100 million service business. I didn't even know $100 million server business even existed back then. Yeah, and I know that's the, I don't know if I'll use the right word, trendy, but it's kind of the trendy benchmark to use today, right? Get to 100 million. And that's fine because that's a hell of an achievement to get that right. Building 100 million dollar business. Trust me, when I first joined Next Car, it was like 20 million. If you got to 20 million, you were the, you were, you were on, you know, you were the, the king of the world. Yeah. But you know, obviously business evolved. Things have got bigger acquisitions and goals. When I first came up with 100 million, I'm driving around in my truck by myself and it's one of those Things that you know, just come to you. I don't know why. It's like I need a goal. 100 million sounds big and bold. Sounds ridiculous in some sense. But I think I just got done. I read Think and Grow Rich, greatest book ever in my life, changed my life. And then I also had read, I listened to Good to great and they know that Bigotaria is cool. So they all kind of found their way together and eventually Think and Grow Rich is really is like pick a number, set a deadline and go to work. And I just picked 100 million because it felt, felt like big number. So my point is like that has helped attract people to growing because they knew I'm going somewhere and wanting to build something that helped bring that conversation because I had that goal. Yeah, I had that conversation which created that relationship which he's here today. So that was a big movement for us. And then from there just, we just started building plans, joining service titan Nextar, learning more about the industry and the business. And you know, then you started going, you know, 1 million, you know, 2 something, 3, 4, 5. And then it was like then finally started jumping hold me exactly to these numbers. Top of my head. But it's like then it went to like 8 and then it was 12 and then 21, 33, 44, 60, 75.
- [37:22]
Chris
Super inspirational. So I only got five years left of grinding before I hit that J curve.
- [37:28]
Aaron Gaynor
And it's like, but all the things you're doing right, but that's fine, right? It's like, yeah, it feels like it, you know, but it's a long time. In the last five years people have heard more about our business, but we've also, you know, we've hit the curve, right? It's gone. And we've made some good decisions, some bad decisions. And we put in the one thing I think that we did really well that wasn't happening right away. That that found its way to us right around that. 12 million to 22 is what Covid came, which awfully helped too. We grew big then. But right before then we had put together a three year marketing plan, three year marketing plan. And we said this is what we're going to do for three years. We're going to have our radio plan, we're going to have our TV plan, our billboard plan, our correct messaging for our brand and we're going to plan and we're going to commit for three years to this plan. And it went it the third year, 12 to 21 million.
- [38:15]
Tommy
That's a love. Yeah, that's a strong level of commit. I don't know if we've talked about that on the show.
- [38:23]
Chris
Well, we've talked about branding in general and when you should start and how much you should put in. And it's that. That's incredible.
- [38:30]
Tommy
Yeah. I think the. The message here, though, is like, the consistency and push because I know what we notice, you know, times get tight. So marketing.
- [38:38]
Aaron Gaynor
Yeah.
- [38:38]
Tommy
People want to cut, which, like, we've always had a. Any. You know, I always remember the day Covid shut down the world. I tripled my budget like that day. Like, I. We are two or million dollars or $3 million or whatever. But it was like, okay. And we've consistently kept that. But I've. I've never done a three year. I like that. That's like. Because, yeah, everybody wants to cut and. Yeah, that's great.
- [39:02]
Aaron Gaynor
Yeah. We went in the same thing covet. When. When everybody's pulling back radio, tv, we're like, hey, we got. Someone gave free spots because we wouldn't cut. And some of them were given half off.
- [39:10]
Tommy
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We got crazy spots from radio. Yeah.
- [39:14]
Aaron Gaynor
And they're like, people are dropping billboards. Like, buy them.
- [39:16]
Tommy
Yeah.
- [39:17]
Aaron Gaynor
But the thing was, is I put. I always. I always. I was bankrupt once before, so I knew one thing was winter would come again. And I remember I went to a Tony Robbins event when, you know about. At that time, it might have been about seven years before. And he goes, yeah, winter will come. Something will happen. Always be in a position that you save enough cash to be able to be in a strong position when something happens. Right. And you hear a lot of people use the word, you know, dry powder today. Yeah, in the market today. But back then it was like, just have enough cash that when the storm hits, you can. You can weather it, and then you're in a position to win. Right. So I never played in the. In the. In the small business because I learned a lesson bankrupt. That I didn't use the company as my piggy bank. I use the company as the opportunity to build. Build a business in a brand that I knew I wanted to. And when the storms hit, I had the cash to do something with.
- [40:05]
Tommy
When you. I'd like to dive into the tactical of. You launched into Dayton. I think you're in Cincinnati as well now. So you guys are three. Three markets.
- [40:17]
Aaron Gaynor
When did that. We're four markets technically, but yeah.
- [40:21]
Tommy
Okay. Where's chill? Is that. That's Tennessee Southern, Ohio Southern.
- [40:25]
Aaron Gaynor
It's. It's our. It's a location that covers the whole southern Ohio area.
- [40:30]
Tommy
Okay.
- [40:31]
Chris
So, yeah, you don't want to move into Tennessee. It's terror terrible down here. We don't need any more.
- [40:36]
Aaron Gaynor
A lot of good stuff going on down there, don't you. Nashville's got enough people, don't it? You don. Anymore.
- [40:40]
Tommy
Yeah. Yeah. Our last interview was. Was Chris Hoffman for the Legend series. And it's funny because Chris and. And Jack directly compete in Nashville, so. Yes, it was. It was a funny. It was a funny conversation.
- [40:53]
Aaron Gaynor
Chris. Chris is an amazing guy.
- [40:55]
Chris
He is. And I have a lot of respect for him, Even though we compete regularly, so. Well, I think you compete.
- [41:02]
Tommy
If you compete against guys you want to compete against, I. I think it's easy. Like, Ohio is becoming kind of interesting because, like, you know, people are just starting to compete against each other, but, like, as long as we're all priced well and as long as we're all doing good service, like, that's a competitor that I would want to go against. You know, I don't want to go against the. You know, like, one day I'm sure we'll run into each other.
- [41:24]
Aaron Gaynor
Right.
- [41:24]
Tommy
And I know Chad. Like, I'm seeing Chad's ads up in. In Cleveland. I know you are, too, in Columbus. So, like. But, yeah, like, he's a good competitor. It's the guys that are doing Systems for, like, two months, 2,000 bucks.
- [41:36]
Aaron Gaynor
I'm like, I know what Chad's gonna do. He knows what we're gonna do in a sense. Right. Not. Not, like, sharing everything, but we understand our brands, we understand what we want to do. We understand how we want to serve our people. What, you know, where we're trying to stay in the marketplace. So, I mean, I agree. I think those things are. Those things are great. Right?
- [41:53]
Tommy
Yeah.
- [41:54]
Aaron Gaynor
Learned a lot from Chad, and I imagine Chad's learned a lot from me, and I've been. I've been very blessed to have a relationship with Chad.
- [42:00]
Tommy
Yeah.
- [42:00]
Aaron Gaynor
That's for sure.
- [42:01]
Tommy
Yeah. So when you went to go multi market, when. When was the year? When was the first year? Dayton. When did you drop Dayton?
- [42:09]
Aaron Gaynor
Four years ago now. Four years ago, going. This is the fourth. This is the fourth year. I think we'll do about 15 million. Okay.
- [42:17]
Tommy
Yeah.
- [42:17]
Aaron Gaynor
So that's a greenfield from zero to there.
- [42:20]
Tommy
Yeah.
- [42:21]
Aaron Gaynor
Two years in Cincinnati now, and Cincinnati is finally getting up and growing. That was. That was a struggle. That was a struggle going in Greenfield. Very competitive market, lots of people, lots of established brands.
- [42:31]
Tommy
Yeah.
- [42:31]
Aaron Gaynor
So we really had to hit that hard. We came into that market probably spending maybe about 1.5 million in marketing in a year.
- [42:40]
Tommy
Really?
- [42:41]
Aaron Gaynor
From a greenfield and did a million dollars in revenue. Whoa.
- [42:44]
Tommy
Yeah, that's. Yeah. I mean Cincinnati does feel like a different.
- [42:49]
Aaron Gaynor
But again we, we knew that that was going to be it because you had to start having enough voice and noise. If not, you got a long road to building like you know, going old school Greenfield and just one call at a time. That takes time. It's a, you know, it's a model. But yeah, going now. Now we're two years in and we're, you know, we're. We just did. We just finished the second year. We've already done $2 million already in the market already which I think last month. So it's now starting to build that momentum and by year three we'll probably be doing. I'm gonna. We're project. We'll probably be doing like 8 million next year due to the volume that's already picking up.
- [43:26]
Tommy
Yeah.
- [43:27]
Aaron Gaynor
And the multi trades and all the stuff that's happening. You know, I know that sounds a big jump. We'll probably finish this year around two and a half, maybe three because it's been like again it was like this, this, this and then the last few months it's just been starting to. Starting to build the volume and go. Right.
- [43:44]
Tommy
Yeah.
- [43:44]
Aaron Gaynor
And that's just hitting the market very hard from a market stand. But not, not everybody can do that. Everybody can go write a check for you know, million something dollars in advertising greenfield. Right.
- [43:55]
Tommy
Yeah. I mean we, that was a lot of our conversation with Chris was, you know, he was sort of describing what was next for Hoffman and the episode will air soon. But it was our question for him was okay, why are you buying a roofing company or why are you now looking to buy these other. Like you. You greenfielded I would say very successfully in Nashville. So why is this not the continued push? And it's like it's a lot of money. It's a lot of money and it's a huge lift. Yeah. I've got a super healthy respect for. It takes a lot of. That takes a lot of work and just like straight off of EBITDA of another. Another branch. Like that's a million and a half dollars advertised. You know, not including the million dollars of infrastructure and people and whatever else went into that. That's straight off bottom line.
- [44:44]
Aaron Gaynor
I'm talking. Yeah. I'm talking straight marketing.
- [44:46]
Tommy
Yeah. Yeah. That's a lot.
- [44:48]
Aaron Gaynor
Including the location, the truck, the material, the, the equipment, the people, all the stuff. Right. To build to Build that up. And you know, that's a different approach. It's again, you know, hard, heavy hit, three year plan. It's going to take enough. You're going to need to invest, you're going to go into a market, you know, you got a choice. You can go in slow and study Bill, which we did a little bit in Dayton, we still hit them with radio and TV and built up and picked it up quickly or you can come in and, and that one comes with the rest too because you spent a lot of money and you got to hold on because there's, there's a couple of times even in our team, it's like, should we pull this back? Should we stop? Should we? Yeah, a lot of money is, money's on. It's like we just got to hold on. We're already in, we're in this far now. Hold on. Just hold on. You know, it's just one of those things. Hold on.
- [45:31]
Tommy
Yeah, one, one of the things that I, I, I wonder, and you sort of said this in our phone call previously, but like Columbus is a big market. Like you could potentially have gotten to 100 in Columbus. And multilocation is hard. So yeah, for sure when you think about, I mean that you had to have done the math or like walked through that. So like when you're thinking about that question, how do you think about it? It'd be easier but maybe longer to do 100 million in one market, but easier.
- [46:09]
Aaron Gaynor
There's a couple of answers to that. I think one is yes, it probably take longer. And I will say that to build anything great takes time. I think people are impatient. So, you know, I think it does take time to build anything great. You know, even us saying we're going in the market, hitting it hard, spend a lot of money. But that, that, that, that's just because we also spent, you know, 15 or 14 years prior to going into, since I had 15 years prior to going to Cincinnati and building infrastructure through call centers, dispatch, all these other things, right? Talk about infrastructure to get a single location center up, right? But yeah, I think, you know, one is that you, you know, you do look at market penetration. There's risk with one market too, right. Of your only one location, brand market. When you talk about evaluations or partnerships or other things, there's it always, it's a, it's, it's on the table. Like, yes, it's great to have a single location, giant single location. But you know, when PE firms, I guess, or evaluations are looking, they want to look for risk. Right. They're also evaluating risk. And if you're in multiple markets, risk is a little less that you prove that you can grow multiple markets. If something was to go wrong in a market, you saw other markets. Yeah. So there's. There's that that had come up in conversations and assessments that we've done, and some of it was really trying to be a state. One of our missions was to actually try to own the state. Right. So that's part of just the overall goal was to start to say, how do we own. As we evolved and became more like, well, why shouldn't we try to own the state? Why shouldn't we be a state brand instead of a. Only a Ohio RA Columbus brand? Right. Let's become a state brand. So some of that was ambition, and someone's getting caught up in the flare of it. All. Right. Too. A little bit. Right. Everybody, you know, again, I mean, to be honest, I hope you guys appreciate this. I think people always think, you know, we all can get caught up in it. Right? We can. It doesn't matter who you are, whether you're me, Tommy, or Chad or you guys or whoever. Right. Like, everybody can get caught up in it. And I think some guys will admit to that today, that we all kind of were getting caught into it. And even some of the other, you know, bigger players can probably say, of course, you get into. You ride the wave. There's a big wave. There's stuff going on. You want to be involved in it. You know, you. You want to feel like you're achieving something really cool and progressive in your space, and you get on the board. And it came with challenges. I don't regret doing any of it. I would say I would maybe change some of the decisions on some of the things that we may have done when and how. But at the end of the day, there are decisions we made. We live with them, we own them, and we got to figure out how to figure fight through them. That's. That's what they are. Right. And those are, you know, however it long it took me to get to where I am today and to work, decisions we made, their decision we made. They're all lessons that I needed to learn and we needed to learn as a business to keep growing our business into the future. Right. And that's. That's the only way I can really, you know, look at it. Am I happy about every one of them? No. But am I excited about the opportunities that are in front of us? Yes.
- [49:10]
Tommy
Yeah.
- [49:10]
Aaron Gaynor
I do believe that we can Fight through and overcome any of the things that we put the right focus and attention into the locations, into the service lines and into the customer experience and our text. We will, we will win the battle that we're out to fight.
- [49:25]
Tommy
Yeah. What do you think is next for Eco? Like, when you guys think about your, your next couple years, what are the opportunities in front of you?
- [49:34]
Aaron Gaynor
Well, well, one thing is right now is I think I. Right now we're really just trying to settle into what we have. Multi location, multi service lines. Make sure we're. We're selling about a thousand memberships a month right now. Yeah. Fulfill membership fulfillments. You know, we need to operate. We need, we need to, we need to, we need to operate a sound business for our team while still creating excitement and growth. Right. But the growth is going to come through the markets that we have today right now. Right. Of course, you know, been open about, you know, Cleveland market areas on our radar and you know, soon Indianapolis, which Chad and I've talked that Chad's here. He knows that too. So those are, those are, those are on the radar as expansions for us that we would like to know. Greenfield or acquire. Yeah, no, depending. You know, looking for opportunities to just keep building relationships with people in this space. Whether that's to help. Help smaller. I don't know. Smaller is right word. But how about guys that are trying to figure their way or come up or whatever? Because I've been there. You don't think I reached out to larger companies doing stuff. I remember meeting Dave Geiger. You know, I was like, this guy's the man.
- [50:45]
Tommy
Right.
- [50:46]
Aaron Gaynor
I remember thinking that stuff and meeting him as he's growing Horizon. And you know what? He was, he was always so kind to me and generous. Don't really, you know, I think his, his story of being a plumber coming up his business similar. Maybe being a plumber. But also I don't even think it's just that. I think he's just, he's just a great guy and great person that cares about the industry and has always been generous. And I will always just remember anytime I saw him, he always do. If I text him or call him, he'd get back to me. Like, it just was unbelievable. And, you know, to have people like that and many other people I could go through, array of people. Glenn over at Halo had always been a great, you know, advocate for me. So, you know, I think it's just, can I find a way to help this space in any way? And some of that may turn into, you know, personal financial benefits and some of it might just turn into personal reward of helping other people run better, solid businesses for themselves and their families long term. And you know, and I think if I can do that, I will feel really good about life. One of the things I wrote on my definites of purpose in life was my business will be in the business of saving the day and protecting the future. I'll be in the business of saving dreams and creating futures for people. Right. So I think it's just trying to understand where, who you are and what, what, what you're on the earth to do. And the trades of. Genuinely saved my life in many ways. Maybe not saved it, saved it like I was in some bad place, but it saved it and gave me a place, an opportunity to do something. And I'm grateful for that. And I need to keep that passion going because if I don't, then it's my time to move on. My time.
- [52:25]
Tommy
Yeah, it's incredible when I think about the sort of the, the main points of our conversation over the last hour. The big ones I'm going to, I'm going to grab here are set. Setting a vision, which I know we, we've seen that too to a lesser extent. But it is interesting how, you know, you put this massive thing out there instead of holding it inside your head and people do rally behind it and they, it attracts the right people, which is really cool. Focus, multi. Like just plumbing, I would say just plumbing in just one location for a long time.
- [53:03]
Aaron Gaynor
Very long time.
- [53:04]
Tommy
Yeah. But I think that that is huge. I know, like we're mid-20s and we're flirting with the idea of multi location, but man, it's a lift. And I really feel like 40 to 50 is the right size, if not bigger because. But I'll talk to guys and they're like 2 or 3 million bucks and they're thinking about their next market and I'm like, what are you doing? Like you have like two people like, what, what are you talking about?
- [53:27]
Aaron Gaynor
Because they think that that's what they should do because they hear stories of people like me or other people or whatever doing all these things and they're like, that's what I should be doing. It's like what you should be doing is getting the one thing.
- [53:38]
Tommy
Yeah.
- [53:40]
Aaron Gaynor
First. Right.
- [53:41]
Tommy
Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, strong focus. One market, one trade. I like that a lot. I think that makes a lot of sense. Being ready to change when the facts change. We sort of walked through this lightly. But you said, hey, you know, eventually plumbing slowed down in Number of calls or I don't remember your exact wording. And that's when we started to add another trade and think about new markets or the other way around really. So be ready to change when it changes and continue to push for growth. I mean, those feel like the big things. Did. Did we. Did I miss another core lesson in here?
- [54:18]
Aaron Gaynor
No, I think it's, yeah, knowing when the time is like, to your point, there's like. We knew saturation was starting to come. We owned the one thing. We've earned the right. We felt like at this point, you know, whether it was or wasn't. We felt like we did because we did the one thing. We saw saturation, then we made that. And another thing was like the electrical. I think once you know some information, you feel really right on it and you're in. Your intuition tells you then just make the decision to do it right. Sometimes we get all this information. I've done. I've done this numerous times too. As we get this information and then we want to spend too much time around it. We think about it too much. We ask too many people's opinions instead of just saying, my intuition tells me this is what do I think. We want to be informed from people. But if it's like this feels right, it's the right thing to do at the right time, then just. Then do it. Be sound. Don't be. Don't be ridiculous on some of the things do. But, you know, be sound. And you do have to trust your intuition in your gut a little bit. You. You do, right? With sound information.
- [55:10]
Chris
Yeah.
- [55:10]
Aaron Gaynor
Yeah.
- [55:11]
Chris
I mean, I think my. My takeaway from this episode specifically was how important building those relationships with vendors in industry is. I mean, it's something I think we know inherently is true, but to push ourselves to actually go out there and talk to people in industry and have those conversations and, and reach out to your vendors and build those relationships are all extremely important. It sounds like, Aaron, that's something that you have done over and over and over again and you're continuing to do. I mean, that's why you're here on this podcast for some. Some purpose. And then continuing to build those, I think is. Is a. Is something that I knew, but it's. I'm going to lean into it. That. That's something that's. That's very interesting.
- [55:52]
Aaron Gaynor
I've been. I've been very fortunate through this space as we've grown this business. But even then to have even people that you guys may not know that are on the racket I guess on the bracket of, like, home service companies that have helped me, that I've built great businesses in the past, that I've gone and visited and did stuff by being in networks, by showing up, by reaching out, by being available when they were available, not when I was available. Right. That was the lesson learned too, is like, if you want to talk to somebody's ahead of you, you bet you better make yourself available when they're available, not when you want to be. And I've been very fortunate. I've built a great network of some great friends. I got to meet Tommy years ago. I met Tommy when he's. When he's building his business and he was in a. His little. His apartment and he was telling me all these things he's going to do. And I thought I had dreams. And this dude, this dude was like, going big time on me, and I was like, wow, man, this is. This is amazing. This is who you want to be around. And, you know, I think he saw what I was doing plumbing, and we hit it off very well. And I'm actually, actually as. After this podcast, I'm taking off, getting off flight and flying out to Phoenix to go spend some time with him. Bri. And my, My son goes to college there, so him and Chad and Chris and Ishmael and, you know, Tom Howard and all these people. It's like, so. And I get, I think one thing, I'll say this, and I'll wrap this up here is like, you do need to find your network. Yeah. Your point there is like, you do. And I've had people say, you know, people said, well, I want to be part of your guys's group or whatever. And that's great. I love to meet more people, do stuff. What you should really do is aspire to build a group of people and, and work with that group of people to lift each other up. And I think having a group of people that I've met in the industry, in that group particularly, and other people that I have met have all found ways to lift each other up and do that. I think that's the key here is like, that is so important, is to find that network of communication, be able to put yourself out there. Right. I had to put myself out there. Like, you know, here I am with a bankrupt business, trying to grow, trying to move forward, trying to share my experience. You know, it took me forever to put out. One thing I'll say on this too, is one thing I've really struggled for with longest times I'm dyslexic. I grew up dyslexic. You can't become undislexic because I was very square. So worried that people would knew I was dyslexic that I would do everything I could to work around that until I decided that it didn't matter. I'm putting my whole life, this life out there. I'm putting all the things I have out there and I'm gonna go own them all and I'm gonna create network and be friends, beat people for the things I have and the things I don't. Everything changed.
- [58:17]
Tommy
This was incredible. Aaron, I appreciate you coming on. I appreciate you sharing your story, appreciate you walking through eco. And if, if people want to connect with you or learn more about what you're up to, how do you think they're able to find you?
- [58:32]
Aaron Gaynor
Well, you can always hit me up on LinkedIn. That's the best place, really. Just Aaron Gaynor, LinkedIn. Hit me a message. I think that's how you got in contact with me too.
- [58:40]
Tommy
Right?
- [58:40]
Aaron Gaynor
And they go through that. I usually, I'm very good about responding. It's easy there because if I, if I get out the email, it gets lost. Yes. I have an EA these days, you know, but they still get lost in all that. Hit me up on LinkedIn. I can funnel back and get back to people. So that would be the best way to just contact me is through LinkedIn.
- [58:57]
Tommy
Awesome.
- [58:57]
Chris
Wonderful, Aaron, thank you so much.
- [58:59]
Aaron Gaynor
My pleasure, guys. Thank you. Congrats to all your guys success.