#205 How Premier Home Pros Scaled to Millions: Talent, Strategy & Explosive Growth

Summary

Owned and Operated - Episode #205: How Premier Home Pros Scaled to Millions: Talent, Strategy & Explosive Growth

Release Date: June 3, 2025

In this enlightening episode of "Owned and Operated," hosts John Wilson and Jack Carr delve deep into the remarkable growth journey of Premier Home Pros, a leading player in the electrical, HVAC, and plumbing sectors. Joined by AJ and Vince from Premier Home Pros, the conversation covers crucial strategies in talent acquisition, marketing, sales training, and overcoming operational challenges that propelled the company to multi-million-dollar revenues.

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1. Introduction to Premier Home Pros' Growth Journey

The episode kicks off with AJ emphasizing the pivotal role of talent in organizational success. He states, “Never stop bringing in new talent to replace the bottom of your organization and help push up the middle. You need to be able to identify very quickly who is and is not a fit and fire quickly” (00:00). This philosophy underpins Premier Home Pros' approach to maintaining a high-performing team and a strong company culture.

2. Scaling to Multiple Markets

Premier Home Pros embarked on an aggressive expansion strategy, opening multiple Greenfield locations annually. Vince outlines their initial market entries, starting with Cleveland and Philadelphia, followed by Pittsburgh.

Key Points:

• Market Selection: The choice of Philadelphia was strategic due to Vince's existing network from his previous role (06:07).
• Rapid Expansion: Within a year, Premier expanded to 20 markets, leveraging successful models from initial locations.

AJ highlights the challenges faced during early expansion, noting, “It wasn't until our 10th location that it started to feel easier” (12:25). This indicates the learning curve and adjustments needed as the company scaled.

3. Marketing Strategies: Lead Generation and SEO

Noah shares Premier Home Pros' impressive marketing achievements, including a 55% year-over-year organic growth attributed to strategic SEO and paid advertising efforts executed with their partner, Service Scalers (01:38).

Insights:

• SEO Success: A year and a half of concentrated SEO work began yielding substantial revenue growth, reaching multiple six-figure figures.
• Lead Management: Vince explains the meticulous process of vetting and scaling marketing partners, initially starting with five and expanding to twenty as efficiency was proven (03:40).

Vince emphasizes the importance of maintaining marketing costs below 15% of revenue, achieving this even as the business grew to $15 million (04:41). This disciplined approach to marketing expenditure ensured sustainable growth.

4. Sales Team Management and Training

A significant portion of the discussion centers on building and refining a high-performing sales team. AJ and Vince reveal their transition from traditional in-person training to leveraging Zoom for scalable sales training sessions.

Key Developments:

• Zoom Training Implementation: Vince recounts, “We ran our first sales training class on Zoom with 15 people, and the results were outstanding” (19:04). This innovation allowed Premier to onboard more sales reps efficiently.
• Continuous Development: The introduction of progressive development training and regular ride-alongs has significantly improved conversion rates and sales performance (25:55).

AJ underscores the necessity of hiring driven, charismatic, and competitive salespeople, stating, “You have to be hungry. You have to be driven” (34:43). This focus on high-caliber talent has fostered a culture of excellence and continuous improvement.

5. Talent Acquisition and Organizational Culture

AJ stresses the importance of preserving company culture through selective hiring and swift performance management. He advises, “Never become a wood chipper because that's your culture and you protect your culture” (17:05).

Strategies Employed:

• Coach Up or Coach Out: This philosophy ensures that only top performers remain, constantly elevating the overall team performance (25:36).
• Internal Promotion Pathways: Vince discusses the creation of assistant sales manager roles to promote from within, fostering loyalty and leadership continuity (36:32).

6. Overcoming Challenges: Supply Chain and Operational Hurdles

Despite the robust growth, Premier Home Pros faced significant challenges, particularly in supply chain management. Vince candidly shares, “We struggled with supply chain and getting the product at a timely fashion” (47:35), highlighting the complexities of scaling operations swiftly.

Solutions Implemented:

• Enhanced Forecasting: Improved communication and forecasting with suppliers to better align with sales projections.
• Operational Flexibility: Adapted processes to handle sudden increases in demand, ensuring installation capacities matched lead generation efforts.

7. Incentive Structures and Performance Bonuses

To motivate the sales team, Premier Home Pros introduced a dynamic bonus structure. AJ explains, “We've got reps making 5, 6, $7,000 a week every single week” (40:09), thanks to a sliding scale commission system and performance bonuses, including doubled bonuses for hitting revenue thresholds (41:00).

Impact:

• Increased Motivation: The bonus system incentivizes reps to exceed sales targets, fostering a competitive yet supportive environment.
• Sustained Growth: As a result, the company witnessed a spike in sales volume and overall revenue, with projections aiming for $13 million in a single month (41:08).

8. Future Plans and Organizational Development

Looking ahead, Premier Home Pros plans to continue expanding into additional markets while refining their organizational structure. Vince outlines their strategy to develop a farm system for leadership roles, ensuring scalable and sustainable growth (36:32).

Key Initiatives:

• Assistant Sales Managers: Each market will have an assistant sales manager responsible for training and supporting sales reps, fostering local leadership.
• Promoting from Within: Emphasizing internal promotions to maintain cultural integrity and employee loyalty.

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Conclusion

Episode #205 of "Owned and Operated" offers a comprehensive look into Premier Home Pros' strategies for scaling a home services business. From meticulous talent management and innovative sales training to disciplined marketing expenditure and overcoming operational challenges, AJ and Vince provide actionable insights for entrepreneurs aiming for explosive growth in the industry. Their emphasis on company culture, continuous development, and adaptive strategies serves as a valuable blueprint for sustained success.

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Notable Quotes:

• AJ (00:00): “Never stop bringing in new talent to replace the bottom of your organization and help push up the middle.”
• Vince (04:41): “We kept the marketing costs at 15% even as we scaled to 15 million.”
• AJ (17:05): “Never become a wood chipper because that's your culture and you protect your culture.”
• Vince (25:36): “Coach up or coach out. That's the mentality.”
• AJ (34:43): “You have to be hungry. You have to be driven.”
• AJ (40:09): “We've got reps making 5, 6, $7,000 a week every single week.”
• Vince (36:32): “We are creating this farm system… that's what the model is going towards for us.”

For more insights and actionable advice on growing your home service business, visit www.ownedandoperated.com.

Transcript

[AJ]

If there's any sales managers, listen to me right now. I'm going to give you the best advice of your life. Never stop bringing in new talent to replace the bottom of your organization and help push up the middle. You need to be able to identify very quickly who is and is not a fit and fire quickly. Don't ever become a wood chipper because that's your culture and you protect your culture.

[Noah]

Right.

[AJ]

We noticed the difference on the bottom line immediately between having good people or not having good people.

[Vince]

It's a win or learn mentality. It's not a win or lose mentality for us. It's like if we lose, we learn from it and that that loss is so short span.

[Noah]

Welcome back to owned and operated. Today I have AJ And Noah again from Premier Home Pros. Welcome back.

[Vince]

Thanks for having us.

[Noah]

Yeah, this is going to be fun. It's going to be a continuation. What I'm looking forward to, hopefully deep diving into is like, hey, we set the platform, we talked about the history. I want to understand the scale and the, the path to scale. Like six Greenfield locations in a year is a lot. How are we thinking about launch? How are we thinking about zip? You know, we're talking about zip codes. We like in our next 30 markets. So I feel like there's a lot to unpack there. How do you guys want to start?

[AJ]

You.

[Vince]

You do the roadmap and we'll deal the questions.

[Noah]

Well. So first two, like, first two markets, it was Pittsburgh and Cleveland.

[Vince]

Yeah, Cleveland and Phil. Cleveland and Philly were the first two markets.

[Noah]

Oh, Cleveland.

[Vince]

Pittsburgh was third.

[Noah]

Oh, interesting. Okay. Okay. And like your current one, do you consider that Cleveland or is headquarters like its own thing?

[AJ]

Headquarters is its own thing.

[Noah]

Okay.

[AJ]

And then we have a Cleveland service. Cleveland market within.

[Noah]

Cleveland's going to cover Canton.

[Vince]

It's really in North Canton. The office.

[AJ]

Yeah, Youngstown.

[Noah]

Oh, really?

[Vince]

But it covers northeast Ohio.

[Noah]

Okay. Okay, Interesting. We just are finishing the best April we've ever had. 55% year over year organic growth. Really just a huge thanks to service scalers for being our marketing partner in that a ton of that growth came from both paid and organic SEO efforts. We did a ton of work on our SEO with service scalers really strategizing and working on that about a year and a half ago. And the results have been creeping up over the past about year. Really started to go crazy over the last few months as we're starting to see multiple six figures of revenue attributed to our website. And that's from their work on our SEO on top of that, the management of paid has just been absolutely huge year to date, we're up 30 something percent. April alone was 55. And we're just super grateful for service scalers and that partnership. So if you want to learn more about how they helped us, make sure you check out service scalers.com. okay, so first couple, first couple markets, like, what did that look like? How did we start driving leads? How did we nail down marketing strategy? You guys are figuring this out and you don't have Vince yet who's driving leads?

[Vince]

Me and Noah. Yeah, like smacking Home Advisor that amongst other ones. Yeah. We had, I think, you know, there's about five partners.

[Noah]

Like marketing partners.

[Vince]

Correct. You're in the industry long enough. You know, like I said, I've been in the industry since 2009. He was in it since 18. You start to see the same marketing partner start to pop up on lead sheets. Like, you get an idea that this company amongst everyone else is going to the same companies for leads. So that's where we started. Like, we just started with, hey, these are the companies that we know for sure. And then we started fielding calls to other companies that we started finding online and just saying, hey, do you guys do bathrooms? Hey, you do bathrooms? What's your set percentage average? You know what, what's your cost of marketing across all your partners, on average? And from there we started kind of vetting that all out and just started buying leads and setting budgets for each lead provider and then just monitor them really closely because your, your room for error and margin is so small when you're, when you're new.

[Noah]

Like.

[Vince]

Yeah, you can't afford to spend $50,000 on a marketing partner and not get nothing back. So everything's in sample sizes. Right. Give me a hundred leads. Let me see what we do with a hundred leads from there. If we see a return on a hundred leads, we'll up that. And that's exactly what we did. We made like very small, gradual changes and increases in budgets. And then from there we started adding more partners.

[AJ]

And.

[Noah]

And you know, there's five now.

[Vince]

Oh, now there's 20. Yeah, 20 markets.

[Noah]

Yeah, because five. I was like, wow, okay.

[Vince]

Yeah.

[Noah]

But for year one ship over there.

[Vince]

Yeah, yeah. No, year one was like five.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Vince]

You know, to get us to 15 million. So. And like I said, it was just.

[Noah]

And that's going to like, just to reiterate, that's like an Angie's List. That's maybe a modern.

[Vince]

A modern.

[Noah]

Yeah. Okay.

[Vince]

Home Advisor.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Vince]

Yeah. You know, A social partner for Facebook advertising, retargeting, banner ads, things of those things, nature. So, yeah, it was like five partners we monitored closely. We landed at under 15 in year one for marketing costs.

[Noah]

Just 15? Yeah, you've said that. 15. That, like, is. That's industry.

[Vince]

That is. That is like your golden handcuff right there. Like, that's where you want to be.

[Noah]

15.

[Vince]

You're sub 15 doing. Unbelievable.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Vince]

But when you climb 15, like. And it all depends on what your. What your margins are and what your cogs are.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Vince]

In every industry. Right.

[Noah]

What. What is gross margin? I didn't ask that last.

[Vince]

It varies. I would say it's even more than that.

[AJ]

Was it gross margin?

[Noah]

Gross margin, yeah.

[AJ]

We try to aim for about 55, 60%.

[Noah]

Okay.

[Vince]

But you know, that depends on your market. It depends on your product that you're, you know, like Leaf was. Their cost of marketing was up into the high 20s of 30%.

[Noah]

Really?

[Vince]

Because their cogs are so small. So they could afford.

[Noah]

You can, right?

[Vince]

You can afford to do that. But bathrooms are a little tighter. Yeah, same with roofing and windows and kitchens and all those things. Because your cost per lead increases based on your product category. So you just got to be mindful of those things. And, you know, that's what we did. We, me and him monitor really tight and, you know, we scaled a business to 15 million and kept the marketing costs at 15% under 15. And we're like, hey, like, time to add more partners. But like, we don't really know. Yeah, add more partners. Like, we want to get into, like, you know, you know, paid ads, and we want to get into, you know, different avenues that we weren't really, you know, inclined to do. So that's where Vince, sort of. Vince came in.

[Noah]

Yeah. And first location was Cleveland. Second was Philly. How far after.

[Vince]

Oh, within like two months, really. We had Philadelphia open.

[Noah]

And why Philadelphia?

[Vince]

I was rooted in Philly. That's where I worked in my previous job.

[Noah]

Okay.

[Vince]

So I had a huge network of people in Philly.

[Noah]

Okay.

[AJ]

And it's a massive market, man.

[Noah]

Yeah. Yes, it's.

[Vince]

So I knew the market.

[Noah]

So that's actually, I think, where Horizon is based out of. So that. I think that's their headquarters. 850 million before we got it was like in the other building. But they have a. It's 850 million 34 locations along the East coast and they have a one day bath that they've deployed into a few of the locations. But I don't, I don't Know how many? Yeah, but I think they're based out of Philly.

[Vince]

Yeah, we're actually like right outside of Philly and New Jersey. South Jersey. We cover all greater Philly and all the South Jersey and top of Delaware. But, you know, looking at that in 20 and 24, you know, I would say let's say 23. In 23, Philly was a $4.7 million office. In 24, it was a $21 million office.

[Noah]

Wow.

[Vince]

So that's what marketing hyper growth, that office location just by adding more partners, more lead flow, better conversion. Yeah, those things. So, yeah, we've seen considerable increases in markets since. Since 2023-24.

[Noah]

But yeah. So like same store sales.

[Vince]

Yeah. I mean, just diversifying your portfolio of partners.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Vince]

Right. And scaling with more budget and getting.

[AJ]

Better at what you're doing.

[Vince]

Correct.

[Noah]

So the. So we start off with five. We add Philly pretty quick. Sounds like we drew talent from our network.

[Vince]

Most of this business came from that.

[Noah]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that got us to 15. And what. What's 15? Is that $2 million first year's budget was $2 million revenue. Does that sound right for marketing?

[Vince]

Oh, yeah, probably. Probably close 15%.

[Noah]

And all of it leads.

[Vince]

All of it buying leads.

[Noah]

Yeah. Buying this.

[Vince]

Yeah. At that point. Yes.

[Noah]

Yes.

[AJ]

Okay. You're not, you're. You're going to go out of business if you do it otherwise the way we try to do it.

[Noah]

Yeah. Were you guys doing door knocking or events or events yet here in Cleveland?

[AJ]

We did some events.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[AJ]

Great big home garden show.

[Vince]

Great Q1's amazing.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[AJ]

And the rest of the year is just a battle.

[Noah]

Yeah. A losing battle in events.

[AJ]

Yeah. It's you, you, you go from being at a great big home and garden show and Cleveland home show and all this good stuff. High intent homeowners that are buying a 15 ticket for the husband and wife and they've been in their house for 30 years and it's time to get that bathroom done. They have a cash set aside. They're going to buy. It's a matter of who, who to then go into rib fests in July.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[AJ]

People that are there to see a concert or mafia fairs, county fairs, and you're trying to draw people to take an in home message.

[Noah]

Yeah. So are you guys doing that?

[Vince]

We are, yeah.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[AJ]

Just harder team continuity for when it's time to make hay in Q1 obviously, is a big thing. And then, you know, just try to diversify your. Your lead flow as well.

[Noah]

Yeah, yeah, we did. We have an events and canvassing team. And this was our, we started last April. This was our first like full Q1 with it. And we're, we've been messing with it to hopefully, you know, drive into new markets.

[Vince]

But how's your canvassing going?

[Noah]

Canvassing's good. Like it's a eight and a half times roas, which like that feel for me, I'm like, that feels good. That feels really good.

[Vince]

And you guys do like proximity marketing where you're like from a job that you did, you just canvas, you know, three mile radius.

[Noah]

Yeah. They're doing proximity and they're doing like.

[AJ]

Target and that being on interiors isn't a concern for you guys. Like you're still able to make it happen.

[Noah]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Biggest, biggest months were events. Right. Like, and so like the great big show is a really, that was a great, big help.

[AJ]

Sure. It's a great start. It's a great shut it down from that point. It's like the greatest program of all time. Right.

[Noah]

It was awesome. I mean it was great. But like we, we broke even on like return in December.

[AJ]

Sure.

[Noah]

And then now it's 10% of revenue comes from that team.

[Vince]

What's your, what's a good month in canvassing for you in terms of revenue?

[Noah]

200 now.

[Vince]

That's good.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Vince]

And what's your team account? How many canvassers?

[AJ]

Eight.

[Noah]

Seven. Well, we just got up to eight.

[Vince]

Oh, hourly or variable based or what?

[Noah]

Hourly with a, with a spiff on top.

[Vince]

And then they're all required to do street sheets and stuff like that.

[Noah]

Yeah, well, for us it's just like there's no plumber out there. Is door knocking?

[AJ]

Sure.

[Vince]

So no. Yeah. So it's sort of like carbon on the market there.

[Noah]

Yeah, it's different and it works. Even events were kind of big and helpful. Okay, so two locations did you have dialed in like the 46 day pay? What did payback look like in Philly? Second location. It couldn't have been as fast.

[AJ]

Listen, it was harder at that time to get a, get another location going because you just don't have the army that you have now. And you're asking people. Like when he said something earlier, he said, you know, you're asking people to kind of take a bet on you. And in the beginning days of this, asking people to take a bet on us was a ridiculous proposition. Ridiculous ask. Like we didn't have anything. They're betting on us personally. That will make it happen. And so, you know, open that office. It's a lot of trial and error. And I don't know what our payback period was at that time, but I'll say It wasn't probably 46 days because you got to get a sales. So you got to get leads going.

[Noah]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean you're. You're figuring it out.

[Vince]

Budgets were a lot less, though.

[AJ]

There were a lot less. Yeah.

[Noah]

As in like what you needed, what.

[Vince]

We spent per market on each budget.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Vince]

You know, like I said, Philly did 4.7 and 23. He did 21 million last year.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Vince]

So he spent a lot of money there. Yeah, I would agree with. No, it was a lot. It was a lot tougher.

[AJ]

Possible.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[AJ]

It was impossible.

[Noah]

What, at what point, like maybe number of locations did it start to feel like easier. We got this.

[Vince]

I would say Atlanta. Let's see. Atlanta was a turning point.

[AJ]

I wouldn't say.

[Noah]

Which number was Atlanta?

[AJ]

6, 5 or 6. I literally don't feel like it got easier until our 10th location.

[Noah]

Really?

[AJ]

I didn't notice it. I noticed every other location before that.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[AJ]

Stressed out. Infrastructure. Stressed out.

[Noah]

Sure, sure.

[AJ]

Added too much to people's plates. And conversions from the very beginning aren't what they. And this, this most recent one In Daytona, the 10th, I think we opened the beginning of March. Is that right?

[Vince]

February, February 13th.

[AJ]

Yep. It's a Mary, Cincinnati, Columbus market together. And that's been rather smooth. And then we just opened North Jersey last week and unbelievable first week. Smoothest smooth can get. And it's literally because we did a business deep dive at the end of 2024 and kind of did an org chart reimagination where we decided to go really heavy with senior sales leaders running regions. People that are like just proven motivated.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[AJ]

Experienced problem solvers, high level achievers would pay them a little bit more and divide them a few less offices each and hire more of them and let them manage the managers in those offices. And our conversion rates and our problem solving has just gone up. It was a monetary bet, but it was one that made sense. So for me, it wasn't until this year that I felt like it's starting to autopilot.

[Noah]

He's out. Yeah. A.J. why do you think. Why did you think five, like what was to. What turned for you?

[Vince]

Oh, we were in a position to keep. We opened all, you know, we went from January and 24. We opened Detroit and then February and then February. We opened Atlanta and then March. We opened at beginning of end of March, early April. We opened Chicago and then it kind of just continued to Go. So it's like the business. Yeah. It felt the pressure of like needing support in those markets. But we continue to just keep opening. So I would say we figured out the recipe at that point. We knew what to do, how to do it. But where the lag is is in two areas. We never had lag in sales. We'll go to any. We'll go to Alaska and sell people bathrooms. Right. It's getting the marketing dialed into where we're not returning these high reject ratings because we're buying leads that are not high intent or affluent people that can afford the product.

[Noah]

Right. Yeah.

[Vince]

Filtering that out and getting the data back to be able to make the decisions and kind of refine the process and dial it in with the right partners to get the market going the right direction and then getting the time for installation to get their feet under them and installing the business cleanly. Because you got to assume when installers are new, they're going to make some mistakes. There's going to be some service and callbacks. So it's like. And then do they have the temperature to stay when they're knowing they have to go back and fix their own problems? People just want to worry about the next dollar. They don't want to go back and fix the ones that got paid on. So that. That's part of it. But I would say that we definitely figure out the recipe in 24. Just my opinion. As far as a profitability standpoint and a smooth transition. We reorganize the org structure dramatically. We got rid of.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Vince]

Walk me through it. No more VP of sales. Gone.

[Noah]

Yeah. Because you. And you're. You are now VP of sales.

[Vince]

I'm. I mean I'm the CEO but I just run our sales team.

[Noah]

Right, Right. But as in like you took that seat.

[Vince]

I've always been the guy that they went to.

[Noah]

Okay.

[Vince]

But I had a guy that I thought could run the team and there was just too many holes in the below him to. To be able to get things done at the pace that we need to get things done. So I said why are we spending this money on this crazy expensive person that we didn't feel like was bringing back the value.

[Noah]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Vince]

And why don't we just take that money and let's get a bunch of people that we know can do the job very well. Put them in regional roles and just give them one or two markets and then we build from there and we. I mean our net volume went up 800 hours.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Vince]

In one month of putting that team in yeah, it's increase $800.

[Noah]

That's interesting.

[AJ]

When I said earlier that like people, you better have good people.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[AJ]

We noticed the difference on the bottom line immediately between having good people or not having good people and spending the money in that on, on those people is, is worth it in my opinion, if you have it.

[Noah]

Yeah. We just transitioned our director, like our head of sales. Like we went from one to another and this was his first 30 days like April and like absolute blowout. Like crazy. Like we 20% over budget and 55% year over year. Like crazy. So yeah, like, yeah, I don't totally get it because we're looking at the results now as we're like prepping for this. We're like holy shit.

[AJ]

Yeah, I'm sure you've seen this too. It's like, you know, the thing that a lot of business owners don't want to talk about, but it's the absolute truth. And I've heard a few like mercubing some people that have been very successful talking about it is you need to be able to identify very quickly who is and is not a fit.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[AJ]

You know, hire over a little bit longer term and fire quickly. Don't ever become a wood chipper because that's your culture and you protect your culture.

[Vince]

Right.

[Noah]

You don't ever want to be known.

[AJ]

As a wood chipper. But yeah, like don't negotiate on the type of people and, and, and the pace that they will push within your organization. Like you need to find the right people. Don't negotiate on what you will or won't accept and let those people kind of drive the boat. Like you need to empower them. So, so it's, it's really all about people for us.

[Vince]

Yeah, it's, it's a win or learn mentality. It's not a win or lose mentality for us. It's like if we lose, we learn from it and that that loss is so short span because we're going to turn into it when in the calm, really quickly by taking those mistakes we made, rectifying it, putting a better process in place and fixing it. That's what we did. We got rid of top end leadership that was really, really expensive and made some changes that, that fit the business model. It fit the business model. We were like man the values and the people of the doers. Right. It's the people that's in the field doing it. It's not the finger pointers saying get this done, get this done, get this done.

[AJ]

Right.

[Vince]

That's great. To have that visionary mindset. But like, really what we realized is we were the visionaries and we were just telling an extra person to do, to do what we could just tell them to do on our own.

[AJ]

Right. Telephone.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Vince]

And the doers are the value. Like, let's get these people out here that are doing the business and like making the changes and executing the dream like that. That's what we were looking for. So we've seen. And then Noah came up a great idea this beginning of this year with sales training. Because our struggle was we, our sales system is elite. I'd say it's the best sales system in the country. And I would, I would put my money against it. Right.

[Noah]

But how many people can get actually fun anecdote? I believe we have someone that used to sell at Premier Home Pros and he has been great. But yeah, he worked with you guys for like short period of time. I think he went through the training, but like, it has been great. His closing rate is the highest team.

[Vince]

We spend a crazy amount of time on sales development. It's, it's just what we believe in. Like I'm to the core. That's, that's, that's my thing. Right?

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Vince]

But what we've realized is that to get these people into training and spend eight consistent days in training.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Vince]

Develop them, get them in the field, have the leaders cultivate them, build the mentality proper, and then get them on the streets themselves to do their own job is a long term. Right?

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Vince]

And we were realizing that at most we were getting 10 people a month, new employees, sales reps, into the field a month company wide. I was like, let's think about maybe doing a zoom, dude. Zoom. Like the amount of vibes, just the amount of detail that goes into our training, it was just. There's no way. So I'm like, I'm gonna try it. If I'm gonna try, we're gonna try this. I'm going to run our first sales training class. Zoom. We put 15 people in it. Out of 15, 10 of them are here. We did the next one. We had another 17 in it. Out of those 17, 13 are here in a month's time. In the month of February, we put 22 new representatives into our business that are in the field. That has immediately spiked this new sales talent.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Vince]

And the change of mentality of someone being fresh, motivated, ready to run our net volume push lead has went through the roof. Our talent in each office has went through the roof. All those new people, they raised the floor yeah. So now all of a sudden these people that are been in these office locations that are stagnant, now all of a sudden they're really at the bottom because these new people have climbed to the top.

[Noah]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Vince]

So it's just changed the culture in the business. And it was just off of a crazy idea of me and him sitting there and he's like, why don't we just try it? Zoom?

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Vince]

I'm like, it's easy for you to say, you don't got to do it. And he's like, just try. Let's try it. Let's see. Let's see if we can do it. And it was awesome. It worked. And it's working. We're doing two zoom trainings a month.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Vince]

Right now. Two classes a month.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[AJ]

You battle stagnation of mindset with, with.

[Noah]

Employees and, and sorry, just to re hit this. Two classes a month, like that's the onboarding or that's like, I'm going to do a refresher.

[Vince]

No, no, no. New, new hires.

[Noah]

New hires. Okay. Every twice a month, cohorts a month.

[Vince]

Two massive company wide classes.

[AJ]

Training sales. Training classes for new sales reps.

[Noah]

Okay.

[Vince]

So if you wanted to come into the business.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Vince]

I'd say, hey, I got a class on May 8th for you. You're going to be in that class for eight days. You amongst maybe another 12 people across the country.

[Noah]

Yep.

[Vince]

And then they go back to the respective locations and then they run with their managers. You know, understood.

[AJ]

It's helped us battle the stagnation of talent in the company. It's. You can bring talent into your organization, but six months from now, are they going to be pushing hard and it's really about what you're doing to push them. Right.

[Noah]

And how does this help push? I don't know that I understand that.

[AJ]

You bring new, new, new talent in that's hungry. Makes your existing talent base realize somebody's coming for them if that makes sense for their opportunities. Essentially, like, I've got to perform because there's somebody coming right behind me that's a killer that's going to push me to be my absolute best. So it's a lot of the same thing with, with football when, when you draft a player on the, you know.

[Vince]

It'S like, you know, next year's class is better.

[AJ]

You know, we, we just drafted a guy in this first, second round and he's my position. I've got to pick it up. Like, yeah, I'm going to be the same thing. Exact thing.

[Noah]

Understood. So, but I mean, with how new you guys are, it's hard to imagine stagnation.

[Vince]

And let me tell you what happens. We've realized that the peak of most people's career in sales is in their first 30 to 40 days. Their peak. Why? They learn the premier process. They don't know any other way at that point. They know the premier process, they're fresh, they go out and execute the X's and O's that we've taught them our 12 step selling system, they go out and execute it and they see the success, right? But then when they get past the 30 day mark, they realize they go to appointment, the customer's tempo's fast, they don't have a lot of time to sit. They cut out a couple steps and they still get a sale, right? And they go, oh, that worked like I didn't have to do, I didn't have to go through as much of a needs assessment in the inspection. So then they do it again and then the next customer, they get rushed again and then they cut some of their product demo down. Before you know it, they've, they've morphed this sales system of their own with the foundation that we had. But it's, it's their own sales system. They're missing the tie downs, they're missing the gradual steps, they're missing the closing time. So now they're in this rut in day 45 and they're like, I'm doing everything I'm supposed to be doing. We get a field trainer in the field with them and they're like, you're not hitting any of the tie downs, you're not spending the amount of time on your warmup, your agenda's not proper. So it's like redirecting them back on the right road, right? So this new talent coming in constantly, these people are fresh, these people are breathing the sales system and they are out knocking out of the park. Three weeks in a row. We celebrate rep of the week every week. We have a conference call Mondays, we celebrate all the wins for offices, individuals. Three weeks in a row, the top three reps in a company, brand new reps in their first 30 days. I have 25 new sales reps this month that are going to do over quarter million dollars in revenue and their first month. Yeah, it's unbelievable.

[Noah]

Yeah, that is interesting. So do you think the sounds like you're ramping new talent. What do you do about re engaging.

[AJ]

The old talent that has a habit.

[Noah]

Of so just bringing in the new talent? Yeah, reengage.

[AJ]

It's the, you know, because we ran some of the most successful sales teams for Lee Filter and he brought me in Winnow Nation. I ran leads for him at Winonation. And you, you essentially at the end of the day, like you have your 20% or maybe 10% of top performers that are always going to be your top performers and then you will have your 10 to 20% of low performers that are never going to make it and then you have your 80% or 70% in the middle that you can push up or eventually they can live in the middle and be happy being a C plus, B minus player, make a solid amount of money and be a contributor. Never really go up or they can flame out in the end and go down. Your job as a sales leader or a sales manager, if there's any sales managers, listen to me right now. I'm going to give you the best advice of your life. Never stop bringing in new talent to help take out the bottom of your. To replace the bottom of your organization and help push up the middle. The very worst thing that can happen is they push up the middle to be better. The best thing that they can happen is they push the middle down because they jump them and they. When they push the middle down, the bottom leaves and at the end of the day you're left with a couple better players than you had before. Never stop bringing in new hungry talent. The worst thing you can ever do.

[Vince]

Coach up or coach out. That's the mentality. Right. We either take people, we cannot put them to the next level. Average performance become elite or average forms don't be. They don't. They don't stay long because the new floor is raised. Right. It just continues to raise. Is speaking to what you were saying with the existing talent. We do a lot more development training now.

[Noah]

Yeah. So yeah. What's that team look like? Sounds like there's one.

[Vince]

So we have got to be a lot. We have a national sales trainer that does zoom trainings twice a month. Then each regional now is doing in their region. They're doing once a week. They're doing a progressive development training. They're taking the KPIs and they're saying here's the bottom performers in each of my regions markets and they're required to be on training for, you know, 30 minutes to an hour and basically go through our lead audit sheets and we'll say what is the, what is the common denominator here of what's the reason, you know, all these people are Failing. And we'll find that it's. Maybe it's sit, no sale, other estimates, or it's no snap decision or no urgency. Customer wasn't ready to buy. And we dial that down with all these struggling reps, and we realize that here's the main objection that we're struggling with, right? Then we don't just say, how do we conquer the objection. What stems the objection? Where's the objection coming from? What either comes from lack of rapport. We didn't move, want to need. They just wanted the bathroom. They didn't need it. We didn't make them need it in the inspection. We didn't price condition the homeowner enough to understand what the cost of the services in the industry. They had no idea when we got to the close, like they should have, what the cost of the product or service was, and they were shocked. And at that time, we spent all that time trying to build it, and we didn't do enough of it. So the clothes got rushed, the tempo of the clothes got rushed, and the customer didn't spend the appropriate amount of time to have those tough conversations to walk them into a sale. So we have to deal with all those things in this progressive development training that we do weekly. And we continue to give different. Different viewpoints. We'll also bring in some of our top performers and say, tell the team what you're doing. That's working. Because what's better than a person that says, hey, Noah's in the field every day. He wrote $420,000 last month. Let's listen to what this guy's saying. Right? This guy does. He's our trainer. He's great. He's. That's why he's our trainer. But he's not run. He's not doing 420,000amonth. What's this guy doing? So we've got a lot more out of that, too. Yeah, it's like, don't give me the vanilla response. Well, I'm just talking to customers. No, we're. What are you doing?

[Noah]

What are you doing?

[Vince]

You're doing something right.

[Noah]

Are you guys using, like, any of the AI software?

[Vince]

We're not using the Rilla and all that stuff. We feel like for our sales team that the cost, the return is not there.

[AJ]

I mean, it's like we're already so high performing as it is. What we've had to almost engineer our closing percentage down over time because you just have too many jobs. So it's like, what.

[Noah]

And that's why, like, price increases or.

[AJ]

Yeah, I mean, and then also, you know, the thing that we can do to best support our sales team, we've decided instead of, you know, you buy an orilla and hoping our closing percentage goes up is instead on the business that we are writing. How can we help our sales team understand how to do it more profitably so they can make more money, Support them on their existing books of business that they're writing.

[Noah]

So the. There's a director of training. Was that the title?

[Vince]

He's the national sales trainer.

[Noah]

Okay, sorry, national sales trainer. And then all the regionals. You guys have talked about that a lot. They have two branches each and then they.

[Vince]

Some have three, but two to three.

[Noah]

Branches and they're really like driving the bus with the location sales leaders.

[Vince]

Yeah.

[Noah]

Okay. Okay. And then are there who's doing like ride alongs or you know.

[Vince]

So ops managers do two to three ride alongs a week.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Vince]

And then every region, regional that's in the market, whatever market they're in, they'll, they'll get on ride alongs every week.

[AJ]

To just answer the phone is one of those phrases that's always easier said than done. I know it was hard for me in my business because the, the phone always rings while you're out in the field trying to get something done or it's 8pm and you're trying to get your kids to bed. Well, I have the solution for you. I'm extremely excited today to announce quick staffers your go to solution for building a high performing cost effective customer service team. We are placing CSRs who have been pre trained on proven home service SOPs and scripts. The same ones that Wilson and I use in our business. For a limited time, we're offering $500 off your initial placement costs for the first 10 signups. See link in the description below or head over to quickstaffers.com for more information.

[Noah]

Can you describe the ideal location manager? Like the sales operations leader?

[Vince]

Like there's, there's a few facets that.

[AJ]

They have to have.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Vince]

Okay. One, they have to be a steward of the system. Like they have to be able to perform.

[Noah]

They have to believe in it.

[Vince]

They have to be able to perform the sales system at an elite level. Okay. So they need to be.

[Noah]

So are these former salespeople typically, most.

[Vince]

Of them are all a salesperson at one point in time for premier. Some of them are. Some of them. Other people have been leaders at other organizations that I've worked at or that we've worked at together. We've brought Them all. Okay. And then we taught them the premier way. So they need to be able to hire, train, motivate and recruit. And then they gotta be able to develop leader, develop sales talent.

[Noah]

We hire, train, motivate and recruit. Yep.

[Vince]

And develop. So those are the five facets we look for. Right. Most of those people are alpha mentality people. They're A plus personality people. They just are. Right. We have some people in our organization that are not as dominant personalities as others. But we find that the people that can command the room and 100% designate that they are the leader are the ones that to get the best out of their team.

[Noah]

Right.

[Vince]

Those facets are non negotiables. They gotta be able to do those things. We, we give them a strict process of what we want them to do. What does a morning routine look like? Well, get in the office by 8am what do you do then? Look at your book of business. What did you sell yesterday? Okay, go over all your sales, take those sales, go through the contracts, scrub those contracts. Is there everything filled out properly? Is anything missing? Yes, yes, yes. No, no, no. Track down the down payments. Every one of those jobs do they get ran through financing for the down payment or they go check or credit card. Track down those down payments. From that point, visit all your sentinel sales, the leads that you did not sell. Look at the notes, make sure the notes match the report from your call center leader. They sent out a report the end of night. And then go through those reports and start writing down on the lead audit sheet the common denominator of what the misses are.

[Noah]

And they have that information because the sales rep did like a debrief.

[Vince]

It's in our CRM. It just tells you every note.

[AJ]

So what when they resolve it?

[Vince]

So, so at that point we start following trends. We're creating a playbook of what training is going to be later in the week. And then from there at that point they're going to go and they're going to spend some time with. They're going to first put all their leads that they have today on their board and they're going to say where is my availability for same days and did I put the right leads in the right person's hands? There's an art to that. It's not just issue lead to issue name, it's. We have leads categorize as what's a gold lead, what's a silver lead, what's a bronze lead? What are those categorized by home value, debt to income, poverty, percentage, credit, FICA score, all those Things. So gold leads go to gold reps, silver leads go to silver reps, and then bronze leads are fill ins. Right. So then we look at it. Where's the same day capabilities? If Noah's call center gets the same day in Philadelphia, who can take it? And does it hurt the office by having to give this person the same day because he's in that area or do I need to revert the leads to make sure that the best person's taken the same day? Right. So that's the first part of mapping it out. And we go and we spend some time with our project manager. We go over all yesterday's sales. Hey, I went through the deals. These are clean, no problem to go and push through ordering. And then I say, what does your schedule look like that you have installed this week? Is there any jobs that you're not able to get a hold of that you need me to try to call to get on this schedule this week? Let's go over the whole business. What jobs are in a stagnant position? Customer holder, management hold. Customer hold means the customer is not allowing us to install for a particular reason. Management holders, we're holding it for our own reasons. Right. Clear those up daily from that point on. The next hour for a sales manager is to spend time on recruiting. He was telling you, never be stagnant. They're constantly taking those interviews that they have and they're spending time in that time slot of fielding interviews for recruiting. And then the back half of their day is an hour of development training, bringing people into the office to train and then be in a field a couple times a day. By 2 o' clock, their day's open. Now they're taking phone calls, fielding any drop call that they need to take. Reps in a house, can't close it. Phone line goes to the sales manager, sales manager's talking to customer, trying to walk them into a deal. So that's the process, you know, and that process we don't want to deviate from. That's what creates a process to open time in their day to be a manager.

[AJ]

And then when it comes to the sales reps themselves, a lot of people that we want those alpha leaders to bring in, we really, we really kind of look for like three main things. You got to be competitive. I like people that want to, they hate to lose more than they like to win because they will just refuse to lose. Right. You have to be charismatic, you got to be able to talk to people, make a friend, make people like you, be, be magnetic.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[AJ]

Then you gotta be hungry. Gotta be perpetually hungry. You gotta be driven. Not big on motivation. Motivation is fleeting. Driven is, is kind of the engine that takes you every single day. You don't have to.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[AJ]

You know, get started to go somewhere and then it dies. So really look for those three things and from there we can work with those types of people. And very often we will find that our best performers are people from kind of outside the industry who are just desperate for an opportunity to make a lot of money.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[AJ]

And not, you know, somebody that, I hate to use the term old dog. Because we've, we've taken many veterans and been successful with them and we're thankful for them. But maybe not somebody that hasn't worked out several other places they, they've sold bathrooms for 20 years. I can't win with you. You have, you have your way of doing it. I, I'm not necessarily asking to do it my way, but I'm asking to do it the premier way because that's how we can kind of recruit, hire, trained, develop people, duplicate, have a culture. Yeah.

[Vince]

And then me and him have been, you know, we've officially put this into motion. This is something new for Premier is we've looked at this landscape of like all these new greenfield markets. We still have dc, we're open this year, we still have Minnesota, we're opening this year and we're still open in Boston. That's three more markets. Right. And then next year probably ends up being like 6 to 8 more markets depending on how fast we keep implementing the process. So we're looking at this and we're like, there is going to be a point in time with this biggest premiere is at this point that we can't continue to pick from the vine and go into a network that I've had and just keep taking a sales leader from somewhere and hoping that they become a premier person. Like we need to develop that person. Right. Because at some point companies gain strength when they can promote from within. That's a reason to be here. It's a, it's a way to create buy in it's good culture.

[Noah]

We're just getting to that point now and it's been a really big win.

[AJ]

For us, so massive win.

[Vince]

So what we're going to do is we are going to create assistant sales managers in every market and that's getting rolled out now as we speak, where a great sales performer, maybe not the best rep in that office, not the top generating sales rep, but maybe the one that is above average. Or really good, but does it to a T. He does our sales system to a T. And that person's gonna be responsible for field rides every day with a, with a new rep or a struggling rep. They get paid extra to do that. They get an office bonus. You know, there's, there's a lot of different things that we're doing comp wise to make it worth the time. And then that person all of a sudden gets some of the back end work from the GM and we start cultivating this person, getting groomed and ready. So when the next market opens, I go, hey, you know, Pittsburgh's assistant manager again, I got an opportunity. And Buffalo, you want to go. It's an opportunity to make 3, $400,000. Are you relocatable? Yes. Plug and play now, right. You're creating this farm system. And now there's a vacancy in the assistant sales manager position in Pittsburgh. And now another person has a path to grow in the company. So that's what the model is, is going towards for us. That's the next big jump.

[Noah]

Yeah. Yeah. Like emerging leader. Do you think, like, how does training look like? Aside from being attached to that person's hip, Are they bouncing between locations? Is there as a sales manager? Right.

[Vince]

They'll be stuck in. If Cleveland's manager will only be a Cleveland assistant manager.

[Noah]

Okay.

[Vince]

He'll be working hand in hand with his gm. He'll know his reps. He is literally, if I'm the GM and he's my assistant, he is my ears to the field. Because when a rep is out in the car with that person every day.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Vince]

They're way more liable to tell him what's going on inside the, inside their, their ears than what they're going to tell the gm. That's the actual boss.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Vince]

That person then can relay information to the gm. We can get a temperature in everybody and we can just continue to build on all the deficiencies that every person has and start grooming and making them stronger. Those new reps, they're not so hungry to make money now we have someone out there helping them make money, developing them, letting them let them develop at a proper pace. So we see a huge upside to that. That's, that's really an eerie model. Erie did that from the existence. And they're strong at that. They build seasoned leaders by doing that. And when you come in it, most people that are ambitious, they go, what's my path to grow? I don't know. You're just a sales rep. I don't want to just be a sales rep. Well, what else can I be? I don't know. You have to wait for another market. No, you can be an assistant sales manager. You can grow a gm. Your GM might go to be a regional. There's. There's pathway for growth. Right. And I think that's huge for culture.

[Noah]

Yeah. Yeah, I agree with you. Are they still running active leads while being an assistant manager?

[Vince]

Sounds like they are every day.

[Noah]

Yeah, so. So it's like an override.

[Vince]

So our reps get paid. No. Implemented a new bonus program for them to make it more. Make it more advantageous. They didn't talk about it.

[Noah]

Yeah, I want to hear about it.

[AJ]

Yeah. So basically it's a ladder system where the more revenue. Rev. Net revenue that they do in a month, they'll get increasingly more compensation. And it keeps them fighting for all the deals. And I say people that hate to lose, it helps them not ever want to lose and write a deal wherever they can write it within parameters if that makes sense and helps helps reps stay around and keep chasing, kind of chasing the, the carrot every single month. So we've got reps making. My goodness. With, with, with bonuses and with commissions.

[Noah]

We've.

[AJ]

We've got reps making 5, 6, $7,000 a week every single week. And you know, it's a sliding scale based on where you sell. You can make as little as 250 for a job you shouldn't have sold because it didn't come into parameters. And then 5% all the way up to 12% with kickers on top of that. And then we pay extra for Sunday sales. And so we've kind of created an environment where there's all these different kickers left and right, where reps can really just stack and stack and stack and they're, they're starting to make some, some really insane money. And then when we throw training on top of that, when I was talking earlier about showing them how to take the deals that they're currently writing and then make more money on top of that. Yeah, they're just, they're starting to see, they're starting to see some, some serious gains. And then, um, to the point where our last three manager placements, I believe, are. Yeah, that's, that's insane.

[Vince]

So we doubled the bonus this month.

[AJ]

So double the bonus this month. We just basically said beginning of April, hey, we're going to, we're going to.

[Noah]

Do a push for your sales managers, for sales reps.

[AJ]

So whatever you would make this month a normal sales bonus, we're going to double it.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[AJ]

And so we've got. Oh my gosh.

[Noah]

One, two, say good idea.

[AJ]

One, two, three, four. And we're going to set a monthly record. This month we're going to do over 12 and a half million sales. 1, 2, 3.

[Noah]

How does the cost structure absorb that?

[Vince]

It's all variable. It's all variable.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Vince]

There's. We have no fix over it on a sales rep. 0.

[AJ]

So would will your got 20, 24 reps doing over a hundred thousand in net volume this month so far across the company.

[Noah]

It's good. Like what's good for.

[AJ]

So that's pretty.

[Noah]

So 100. 100 is good.

[AJ]

That's okay. That's fine.

[Noah]

Six deals.

[AJ]

What's that?

[Noah]

That's six deals.

[AJ]

Net deals.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[AJ]

So you know, really for us it's the bonus starts at 150,000 in that revenue and then goes up to 200,000 is the next marker. 250 is the next marker. So your great Reps are doing 250. Your really good reps are doing 200. And your solid reps are given 150.

[Vince]

Top rep. Did 4.7 million last year.

[Noah]

Yeah. So that gives perspective. Yeah.

[Vince]

But you know, me and Noah were talking, we're like, we want the sales position to be like very advantageous of. Some people just have the vision that they don't. They don't want the problems of being a manager. So I make a great living being a sales performer. Be a lead at that job. Go home their family and shut off. Right. And we wanted to create a carve out that that bonus was enough to be like I have to hit bonus this month. Like it's, it's an extra 2 to 4,000amonth for me. I got to hit it. Like if I can make an extra 50 grand a year just by doing my job well that I already do, I'm chasing it. Right?

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Vince]

Yeah. So we, we doubled it and we've seen that the.

[Noah]

That is that permanent.

[Vince]

So we're probably. That was a nice.

[Noah]

So it's nice, is it? And it's only if you hit a certain threshold.

[AJ]

Sure. And you asked where the extra margin comes from. It. Well, it's almost, you know, our marketing budget per month is fixed on a dollars basis. Like this is what we're going to spend this month and you get really close to it. So what's the worst thing that happens? You sell more and then your net cost of marketing is lower because you sold more. You paid more in commission. But it came almost directly from Your net cost of marketing at end of the month. So it just balances out because you're capitalizing on more sales that maybe you wouldn't have capitalized on last month.

[Vince]

And there's a balance there, because here's what you realize with reps, they do one or two things. You have represented. You have representatives that don't care as much. Now, you're gonna say, this is sounds crazy, but I'm just being honest. You have reps that don't care as much about what their commission percentage is versus getting the win because they're fighting for the bonus.

[Noah]

Oh, yeah.

[Vince]

Okay.

[Noah]

We have that. Like, guys are just like, yeah, I'll take the two. I just need this to close. Even if it's 200 bucks, because I'm.

[Vince]

Fighting for my bonus at the end of the month. Right. And then you have other people that say, I'm fighting for every single ounce of commission on every deal, and I want to make the most amount of money working the least. And what we find is that even the people that chase the volume and not the commission percent as much, they end up making great money at the end of the month because they get the bonus. So that's the kind of. We don't want to promote people to sell jobs at the floor, but we want to also reward people for taking the effort of saying it's either walk the deal or get to get contract signed. Yeah, let's get the contract signed.

[Noah]

Right? Yeah.

[Vince]

So. So there's a. There's a. There's a. There's a common ground.

[Noah]

Yeah. Yeah. So what is the threshold for the double?

[AJ]

This is all. Anybody who makes bonus is getting double what they normally.

[Noah]

And bonus is like a threshold is.

[AJ]

A minimum of $150,000.

[Noah]

Okay. Okay. Okay. So if it was $2,000, if I hit 50, it's four.

[AJ]

Correct.

[Noah]

All right. Yeah, I'm super into that. That's a good idea.

[AJ]

And we've seen that our net volume press release exploded.

[Noah]

Yeah, yeah.

[AJ]

We have metrics. I. I think we have as good of, if not better, analytics on the back end than anybody I've ever seen. And we have metrics that will dial down, for a given time period, what's the average commission percentage or.

[Vince]

And.

[AJ]

Or discount percentage that a sales rep will sell at. And we can. We can dial it down and kind of. Kind of tailor what we're looking to do based on what the reps are doing recently based on this promotion. So after today, which is the last day a month, we'll do a. We'll do a deep dive, kind of go back and see how effective it was month over month. I think it's going to be pretty, pretty darn effective.

[Noah]

Yeah. Yeah. What do you guys day to day look like individually?

[Vince]

Yeah, we're in the business to the waist up. It's, I mean, there's never, never really a dull moment. We get in there. I mean all of us are probably in there by the latest at 9:00am I'd say nine, 9:30. And you know, us three are all, we all have kids.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Vince]

And, and wives. Right. And, and all our kids are fairly young.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Vince]

Vince has two daughters that are under.

[AJ]

Four on the three, two and five, I think two and five.

[Vince]

And Noah's got a third one on the way and, and, and two, three boys now. And, and they're young and, and I got, of the three, I had the oldest children 13 and 10. So we're like heavily involved in family, you know, but we get in there, we get in there in the mornings and Noah heads up dealing with the call center and the internal inside center. So like that's a task in itself. Like he's wrapped up in that. And then he's bridging the liaison between sales and inside call center on issues and kinks that we're working on, conference calls and those things. Vince is really wrapped up into marketing, tech, automation, it heavily. And then I'm running the field. I'm running sales, installation, all those things, you know, so we're, we're busy. We're busy for sure. You know, if we're not on calls.

[AJ]

We'Re just talking to employees constantly.

[Vince]

Constantly.

[AJ]

Here's always to the ground.

[Vince]

It's like, where do you wait? You like, you look up, you're looking.

[Noah]

For friction, you're dying.

[Vince]

Lunch. I guess it's 4 o' clock. What happened to us?

[AJ]

They find us. They find us.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Vince]

So there's not really a closed door.

[AJ]

It's not really structured because it can't be. I don't think that we'd be doing the business to a service if we made our days fully structured and everything. It's kind of just get in there and get your hands dirty. And because of that, I think we have elite relationships with our, with our teammates. And because it's not just structured and bland, it's like we're in there helping and fighting and figuring things out.

[Noah]

Yeah. So, yeah, what was the. Just sort of rounding this out. We've gone from zero to, you know, this year, 170, 180174 ZOR track 174. That's, that's pace.

[Vince]

All right.

[Noah]

Yeah, yeah.

[AJ]

Based on our gross plan. Growth plan.

[Noah]

Yeah. Like, what was the biggest friction point? Like, what was the, like the moment where like, hey, this is, this is, this might, this might be it.

[AJ]

Like, this might work or might not work?

[Noah]

Might not work.

[AJ]

Oh, goodness gracious.

[Vince]

All right. Supply chain.

[AJ]

I don't know.

[Vince]

I, I would venture to say supply chain.

[Noah]

You just couldn't get it because who's going to whip that out?

[Vince]

It was a, it was a matter of both sides not communicating the way that a high level business should communicate and forecasting. Right. We didn't think we were going to sell that much and they weren't ready for us to sell that much. So it's a process of balancing that. But we've, we've struggled at times with supply chain and getting the product at a timely fashion and having enough of it and being able to install to our full capacity. That's been a challenge.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Vince]

And that's, There was times where it was really bad, I would say where we were. Like, we better hope that this stuff arrives quickly.

[Noah]

When you, when you just cause canceled jobs, like you start like losing orders.

[Vince]

Just. I mean you need to, when you start building a business of this size, your overheads.

[Noah]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Vince]

Outrageous. You know, try to keep it as low as possible, but it's still spending.

[Noah]

It's a lot.

[Vince]

Nine and a half hours a month of marketing and.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Vince]

And your overhead and you need to install jobs.

[AJ]

So I don't know if there was ever a moment where we were like, this isn't going to work out. I think there was, there were moments where we were going to have to make some hard decisions if things didn't happen.

[Noah]

Yeah. Right.

[AJ]

And that always typically revolves around people or employees. Right. But I don't think there was ever like a do or die, like one moment. It was. It doesn't mean that we haven't gone absolutely clinically insane dozens of times during this process. Like 9:00pm, 11:00pm calls this person, this issue, this problem. And like you're not going to believe. Call me all the time. I call him. You're not gonna wait till you hear this.

[Noah]

What?

[AJ]

Here we go. Right. And that. It's a lot of the totality of that of just like death by a thousand blunt force traumas.

[Noah]

Yeah, yeah.

[AJ]

But unfamiliar with this as you get. And listen. And the fact that my wife has dealt with it. His wife is like, is, is. I try to, you know, Shield her from the details and stuff because, because it just kind of is what it is. But you just keep showing up, you keep solving problems, you keep trying to create self fulfilling systems and processes and let things start to run and trust your people and find talent. Don't negotiate on, on what people are going to do for you. And you know, push your people hard because you care, not because you're just there to push them. And just show up every day, don't quit. And then you end up stacking months and looking back and go, holy crap, we're going to do 13, almost $13 million this month and yeah, that's going to install more than ever. And then it's. I don't know if we really have goals, we have benchmarks we need to hit to be a profitable business. We don't necessarily say we want to do this amount to do this amount. The 174 isn't some short goal or sharpie goal that we want to hit for an ego purpose is. It's basically what can, what do we think the business can do? And let's see if we can't hit it, but just show up every day and get out.

[Vince]

You got to play chess, not checkers. And you got to see things way ahead of the curve. Whether that's people, whether that's economic issues, whatever it may be. You better see it way ahead of the curve. You better have a game plan and a footprint of how you're going to handle it when it gets there. Because people are going to fail you. People you never think will leave, will.

[AJ]

Leave family or friends.

[Vince]

You just never know. You know, and you better have a backup plan. You better have things in place so you're not your pants down. Because every business owner has been there. Yeah, we've all been there. Like, oh, I wasn't expecting it. Now what? You know, yeah, the pivot moments where you're like in crazy stress levels and you're like, what do we do now? And it's like, okay, let's get together three great minds. The benefit of having 300, let's get in this room, let's close the door and let's figure these things out. Let's get ahead of it. So we've done a good job this year getting ahead of things. Yeah, really ahead of things. So, you know, we got the year modeled out and we know where we're going to land mathematically, give or take plus or minus a little bit. But we have the playbook set. I would say at this point now it's just repeating the playbook and continuing to bring and nurture good people into the organization so that you can expand the footprint. That's what it boils down to.

[Noah]

Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you guys coming on and sharing all this with us. This was a lot of fun.

[AJ]

Thank you.

[Vince]

Absolutely.

[Noah]

If people want to contact you, sounds like LinkedIn is probably the best way to get a hold of you.

[Vince]

Yeah.

[AJ]

Write me a message.

[Vince]

Absolutely. Anytime.

[Noah]

Awesome.

[Vince]

Still a lot of. A lot of your left. Yeah, I be.

[AJ]

I'm.

[Vince]

I want to be able to look at this, this, this podcast and go.

[Noah]

Six month and yeah, that's some of the funnest. That is some of the funnest ones is I actually, I have a friend flying in because we did one over Zoom. He's in Chicago and he did one six months ago. He texted me the other day. He's like, hey, do I. I got to get back on, like the last six months, lot changed. And I'm like, yeah, dude, fly on out. So he's coming out here later, later in May. But yeah, like six months, a year. Yeah, it's crazy. Especially in like a high velocity business. Like, hey, this is what we were dealing with at this point, dude. Like, here's, here's what happened. Or here's what happened.

[AJ]

I can't even remember what happened six months ago. Like, what was that? Like November?

[Noah]

Dude, I. I'm right there with you.

[AJ]

Can tell you what headache I was having that day.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[AJ]

Now this has been a blessing, but you know you can never put your feet up.

[Noah]

Yeah. Yeah, you're definitely the ops guy. If you like what you heard, make sure you check out Owned and Operated.com, sign up for the newsletter, check out the YouTube. It is booming. Thank you.