#214 How Great Leaders Scale Service Businesses Fast

Summary

Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC Business Growth Podcast
Episode #214: How Great Leaders Scale Service Businesses Fast
Release Date: June 24, 2025
Hosts: John Wilson and Jack Carr
Guest: Brandon Nairo

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Introduction and Guest Background

In Episode #214 of Owned and Operated, host John Wilson welcomes back a familiar face, Brandon Nairo, a seasoned leader in the home service industry. Brandon shares his journey from initially resisting Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to recognizing their critical role in business scalability. The episode delves deep into the traits essential for effective leadership within rapidly growing service businesses.

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Evolution of Leadership Style

Brandon reflects on his early leadership approach, emphasizing his initial disdain for SOPs. However, as the business expanded, he realized that SOPs were indispensable for maintaining consistency and efficiency.

Brandon [00:05]: "I had an urge and a tendency to hate SOPs. And we know now that SOPs are our life."

John underscores the importance of execution speed and the ability to delegate effectively as businesses scale.

John [00:11]: "I think the ability to execute fast is really important and like speed is really important."

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Managing Rapid Growth and Acquisitions

The conversation transitions to the company's significant growth phases, highlighting key acquisitions that transformed the business from a modest operation with around 30 employees to a robust enterprise with over 160 staff members.

Brandon [02:32]: "I think the biggest benefit for me was implementing Certain Path. It forced me to understand everything because I was building the train as we went through the process."

The hosts discuss the challenges of managing multiple locations and the necessity of transitioning from hands-on management to overseeing managers who can handle operations independently.

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Implementing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

Brandon details the pivotal role that SOPs played in stabilizing the business post-acquisitions. Initially perceived as time-consuming, SOPs became the backbone of the company's operational framework, ensuring that processes were standardized across all departments.

Brandon [06:17]: "I spent a substantial amount of time in the field not only implementing the process but just understanding what was plumbing, what was HVAC."

This structured approach allowed for smoother integrations and reduced the dependency on any single individual, including Brandon himself.

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Delegation and Overcoming Bottlenecks

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the pitfalls of organic growth, where the business owner's involvement becomes a bottleneck. Brandon emphasizes the importance of delegating responsibilities to prevent stagnation and facilitate sustained growth.

Brandon [14:06]: "Any person who has been operationally tactical... you'll have that urge and desire to go back to that as soon as you see something starting to go awry."

John concurs, highlighting the necessity of balancing delegation with effective oversight to avoid operational bottlenecks.

John [56:00]: "But then how do you effectively delegate? And you do that by giving someone tasks, talking to them often about it and giving them a scorecard so they know if they won or did a bad job."

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Financial Management and Open Book P&L

The episode delves into the transition from tactical to strategic financial management. Brandon shares his initial inclination to control finances personally but acknowledges the shift towards an open-book P&L system, empowering team members to make informed financial decisions.

Brandon [17:03]: "My urge was to manage via the finances, but it didn't make sense at the time because it was... there's no finances."

John adds that implementing an open-book system has been instrumental in fostering transparency and accountability within the team.

John [49:05]: "We are diving into P&L. We've been open book P&L for... Like we're going on a year of like here's the P&L."

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Developing Internal Leaders

A cornerstone of the podcast is the emphasis on cultivating leadership from within the organization. Brandon discusses the importance of empowering frontline employees to take on leadership roles, ensuring that the company has a robust pipeline of capable leaders ready to manage new challenges.

Brandon [42:32]: "Developing leaders internally, teaching them how to diagnose issues and build action plans, is the most important thing over the next 12 months."

John highlights the success of promoting internal talent, noting that these leaders are already demonstrating competence in their new roles.

John [55:18]: "I'm trying to move to coach, which you are too. And I think that's the right move for where we are..."

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Future Leadership Strategies and Challenges

Looking ahead, Brandon and John discuss the ongoing challenges of scaling a sizable business. They explore strategies to maintain efficiency without sacrificing the speed of execution, ensuring that growth remains sustainable and manageable.

Brandon [45:30]: "It's more challenging and there's more theory, I guess you say, behind it. We're having to really kind of think through and strategize versus when we're small."

John introduces the concept of a "hitman style team" for executing rapid projects without disrupting the organization's slower, more stable operations.

John [46:45]: "I think there’s room for like this hitman style team. We're like in an organization that moves slowly... but there is no lethal team currently."

Brandon agrees, emphasizing the need for specialized teams to handle integrations and major projects, ensuring that the core business remains unaffected.

Brandon [47:43]: "The integrations team... their job was just fight the fire that was there, get it done, put it out, set it up and leave."

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Key Takeaways and Insights

1. Adaptability in Leadership: Effective leaders must evolve from hands-on managers to strategic mentors, fostering autonomy within their teams.

2. Importance of SOPs: Standard Operating Procedures are essential for maintaining consistency and efficiency, especially during rapid growth phases.

3. Delegation to Prevent Bottlenecks: Empowering team members by delegating responsibilities prevents the business owner's involvement from stalling growth.

4. Open-Book Financials: Transparency in financial management through open-book P&L systems enhances accountability and informed decision-making.

5. Internal Leadership Development: Cultivating leaders from within ensures a strong, capable leadership pipeline, ready to handle future challenges.

6. Specialized Teams for Scalability: Implementing specialized teams for major projects or integrations allows the core business to remain stable and efficient.

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Conclusion

Episode #214 provides a comprehensive exploration of the traits and strategies required to scale service businesses effectively. Through Brandon Nairo's experiences and insights, listeners gain valuable lessons on leadership evolution, strategic delegation, and the critical role of internal leadership development. The discussion underscores that sustainable growth is a balance between maintaining operational efficiency and fostering a culture of autonomy and accountability.

For more insights and to stay updated with future episodes, visit www.ownedandoperated.com.

Transcript

[John]

What we're talking about today is traits needed to lead inside a business.

[Brandon]

I had a urge and a tendency to hate SOPs. And we know now that SOPs are our life.

[John]

I think the ability to execute fast is really important and like speed is really important. Sort of hand out, distribute, give access.

[Brandon]

We have learned very fast that the best possible chance for success is growth within our own team.

[John]

Welcome back to Owned and Operated. Today we have a very special guest, very special Brandon Nairo. Welcome to the show.

[Brandon]

It's good to be.

[John]

Yeah, it was a long walk from the building across the parking lot.

[Brandon]

When.

[John]

We launched the show back in 2021, like four years ago. A little over four years ago. I think your episode number two, your story is amazing. I think it's really cool. Everybody make sure you check out episode number two. And we ran it for a while, then we got super busy because we.

[Brandon]

Bought a bunch of businesses and things started getting busy.

[John]

Things started getting busy. So today we're having you back on, which is fun. You're our third leader from Wilson on the show. We had Jesse, we had Lori and I think it's been fun each time. And what we're talking about today is traits needed to lead to, you know, be a leader inside a business. And maybe that's moving from a manager to a leader or like what's the difference there and then. I've shared a lot, you know, my own side of this. But what's the. What stages have you gone through? So that's not really a question. That's more just like topical. What we'll be covering today.

[Brandon]

Sounds like fun.

[Alan]

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[John]

Well, how about we just sort of hit the the story side of it, which is, hey, the business has grown a lot. Like you and I started working together in 2019 and the business was like in the threes, like 3.8 or 5 or something.

[Brandon]

I think it was three and a half, roughly. Yeah, three and a half. Just under 30 total employees.

[John]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is funny now, like, for a lot of reasons, but, like, one of the big reasons is, like, I'll talk to people. Like, I had somebody on the show a couple weeks ago and. And he's a new, like, new business. He's also very productive, but still, like, per employee revenue is like $800,000. It's crazy. Like, it's totally crazy. And I just. I just, like, I remember running like 2 million bucks with like, 20 people.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

Like, and now like, 2 million bucks is like 4.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

Like. Yeah, yeah. It's. It's just crazy. Yeah.

[Brandon]

I. I wanna.

[John]

I think I wanna just dive into, like, how you've seen your leadership change as we've gone From, I mean, 30 people to 160ish now. And, you know, the different levels you saw throughout.

[Brandon]

That sounds like fun.

[Lori]

Yeah, let's do it.

[John]

I mean, where do you want to start there?

[Brandon]

I guess we could start back at the beginning, right when I came on. Right. That's kind of lays the framework for it.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

I guess it was interesting. Right. When we. So when we first started, it was. Right. When you brought on Certain Path. Sgi. Right, Right. So we go through that whole.

[John]

Give them a shout out. Yeah, they were great. Certain Path. Yeah. What used to be sgi. Yeah, they were something else before that, too. Airtime or something.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

And now Certain Paths, that was a, you know, the first major thing. So it was very hands on, very into the weeds on things. I had been familiar with implementing a best practice kind of book. Right.

[John]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

Per se.

[John]

Yeah. Because you had implemented Franchise.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

I think you called it like, it's a business in a box. Right. It's like, it's.

[John]

That's how I think of Certain Path franchise. That's honestly, like, this isn't the point of this. But I never really got like, the hate on franchises because, like, nextar in Certain Path, like, are basically franchises. Like, they don't rip percentages out of your pocket, but, like, it's all the tools. That's the same as well. Like, it's the same. It's the same.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

Yeah. And it's. It felt very similar. Right. Because it was the same. Same thing as just how you pay your guys.

[John]

Here's how you charge, here's how they should dress, here's how you walk into a house.

[Brandon]

It was just nicer because you didn't have to then it's not pay a big percentage at the end for it. But that was a you know, obviously very different form right now. It was a very hands on. It was in the field. It was daily ride alongs technician based. Right. I didn't. I had direct reports in the field. I did not have direct reports that were managers.

[Lori]

Right.

[Brandon]

So not the very beginning. No because I, I the install manager at the time, I grabbed that think about six months in. But it was after certain path. I think I was being over courageous at the time and you had to tell me to stop a couple of times when I wanted to take over install like hey how about you implement this first.

[John]

We were young once.

[Brandon]

Oh yes. Good times. But it was, it was nice because it felt familiar to me. Right. It was. I understood the process.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

It made sense. I could get behind the sales process. I'm the price book was probably the hardest thing frankly I struggled with because I didn't understand the industry yet. So trying to understand what plumbing was. Right.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

Spent a substantial amount of the time in the field not only implementing the process but just understanding what was plumbing, what was H Vac.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

That I think SGI was probably the biggest benefit for me frankly because of implementing that. It was kind of like you know at Stevenson guardrails. Yeah, it was. It forced me to understand everything because I was implementing and learning as I went versus trying to jump on a train that was already doing 60 miles an hour. We were building the train as we went through that process. So it just made it very easy to get up to speed in that though was also John and his. John acquiring.

[John]

I do this.

[Brandon]

Yeah. So the, the acquisition started obviously that process which. That's when things really I feel like started to kind of speed up through there.

[John]

Six months in we acquired or three months in we acquired Nathan's father.

[Lori]

Yep.

[Brandon]

And that was the kind of the first thankfully small but it was a good taste of like okay what does this look like the big one then obviously afterwards downs.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

And that was probably the first like shock to the system of okay this is. It's multi location at that point. Now there's a few managers that I'm working with still very heavily direct in the field at that point. Again still felt comfortable to me because I had been in that style of a role before managing a manager still working directly with technicians. The multi location was a new factor. So. Right. Thankfully it was very close. It was over 15 minutes down the street. So it wasn't like a two hour drive had to fully manage something remote. But it gave kind of a good sense of you can't always be in both locations. So you have to start figuring out how to manage through people truly and how to depend on others to do things. And that was.

[John]

That was. That was like 30 to 45. I think that was the jump of employees because I think they had 12 to 13.

[Brandon]

Yeah, yeah, that one. I don't know that throughout every one of this. Probably hear me say this like a broken record. I don't know if I would have successfully made through that if I didn't have you on the backside pushing. Because I think any. Any person who has been operationally tactical being working directly with people in the field, you're going to have that want, that urge and desire to go back to that as soon as you see something starting to go awry. Of which I know I felt perpetually, I still feel to this day. Right. You see something happening, you just want to put hands on it.

[John]

You're a wrapper.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

Which is great in some cases and other sides it's a detriment. But I think that's kind of what I rely on you till still to this day is to tell me, hey, if you see me doing that just out of instinct to stop. But that was one of the first times I really had to start to experience that was downs because it was a fisher. We have a management team. They need to have freedom to do so messed up many times and overstepping those. Right. And kind of what we say is, you know, cutting them at the knees type of deal. So definitely a learning trial by fire type of situation. And that kept growing fast. I mean, it was back to back. I don't remember what the total length of time was between Nathan and then apt and well, I guess fair was the last one. But that was what, two years?

[John]

Yeah. Total. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because we. Fair was in 20, 23. So like three years.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

So essentially, you know, back to back acquisitions, which was a rapid expansion of team, also added different trades. We had the drains team. Didn't really have it. We added downs. Now suddenly, okay, we have a drains team, we have a septic team. We kind of did excavation, but we subbed it out. Now there's this whole other feature to the company. APT with electric. It's a whole other trade to add in. It's not even ancillary. It's kind of a whole other thing to figure out re implementing certain path through every one of those steps. My leadership at that point had to Change to managing the process, managing the people. Right. I think that's where for me, again, another trial by firepoint was starting to come into play of. I had a urge and a tendency to hate sops. I felt like sops were the bane because you want it meant to slow things down. Right. You have to document everything. People have to follow the specific process. And we know now that SOPs are our life. But back then I was like, man, if I. If I spend the time writing these, nothing's actually going to get done because I'm spending more time documented than I am actually doing the process. Through that, I ended up learning, obviously, that becomes my job. Right. Is to help standardize those processes so somebody else can implement them so I can continue to standardize more. And then other people could continue to follow those. And the process just became repetitive. So that was kind of, I think, another one of the next curves that I had to go through, which is kind of understanding what that looks like.

[John]

Just to give like a frame of reference. Like, we were at five locations.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

At that. At that point, four.

[Lori]

Four, Four. Yeah.

[Brandon]

In that point, it took almost an entire day to hit every location. If you wanted to stop in, everyone, you essentially spent your day driving, say hi for 30 minutes and move on to the next.

[John]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

Uh, so. And I did. I think I fell victim. Deaths for probably year. Good. Good year. I felt like it was in the name of, you know, retention. Right. Bunch of different acquisitions. They weren't the home office. So the thought was, you know, help them feel welcome, feel nurtured. But in that we broke a lot of process. Right. A lot of things didn't get up to speed. So we came into that growth or knowing, but growth phase came out of that growth and acquisitions phase into, let's stabilize, let's streamline process. That one was the doozy because then it was, all right, so we aren't going to acquire. We can't just like, burn things down and wait for the next acquisition and cool new project to come up. It's like, okay, but we have a thing.

[John]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

And we have to really actually hone this thing in and make it work, make it efficient.

[John]

Actually, you know what I kind of think is funny about that? I was having this discussion with. I don't know, I don't remember who it was on the show, but so we were having this discussion and like, I have. There's a lot of. There's people that we compete with, and they're not private equity backed. They're like these dudes, like Us and they like acquisitions same. It's like the same thing, right. So like from 2 million or 3 million or whatever, they acquired their way up to 8 to 10. But that's like the only lever that they know how to pull. And what I think is kind of funny is like if I look back at that, like on one hand, like it sounds super wise, it sounds super planned out all that stuff. Like it wasn't like it was chaos. Well, well that and like our balance sheet literally couldn't take on more.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

Like we just couldn't. Like yo, we bought a bunch of businesses really fast. Like, and we're privately funded. Like where, where are we going to take on the cash? And so like if I could have kept acquiring at that time, I probably would have because that was the mode that we were in. And I think people just get stuck in this mode. But like, I think because we couldn't, we actually built something of value. Whereas like back then it was not valuable. It was four brands smashed together doing a bunch of different random.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

Now it's one.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

So I, I think it's kind of funny because like I, I look at these other people that are sort of doing, doing the acquisition train and I think acquisitions come in this. Like you do them to get to 10 or like 5, like you do them to get to some level of scale, then figure out how to actually run a business and like grow a business.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

And then maybe start acquiring again. But like you gotta actually figure out the middle part.

[Brandon]

Yeah. But I think that's the danger side though too is for people who don't acquire. Right. So let's say their pure play is organic growth.

[John]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

And maybe they're not even intentional about it. It just kind of happens over time. Like we run into these companies semi often to where they grew organically and they perpetually were their own bottleneck. They didn't have to be forced to grow. It just happened over time. And suddenly the owner is the single biggest bottleneck in the entire company and they will never grow past him because he is the perpetual bottleneck for, for, for everything. Right. It's nothing can get approved unless it's by the owner. How do you do that at 20 million? 15 million.

[John]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brandon]

10 million. Frankly, you start to get to these things where it's, you're inhibiting your own growth. But because you weren't forced by a shock to the system, like an acquisition where you know, you had 30 employees out of nowhere, you weren't forced to think through that. It just Happens. And then before you know it, it's suddenly you become an acquisition target for us because you're stalling out on growth.

[John]

Yeah, right. Yeah, 100%.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

And I think. I think there's a misconception that organic growth is expensive.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

But, like, compared to what? Maybe, like, if you do it badly.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

But yeah, I'm grateful that we got stopped. Not. I didn't, like, you know, I wasn't wise. Like, I would have kept going.

[Brandon]

Ambitious. Well.

[John]

And like, I did. Like, two years later, like, we bought another company in 22.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

Allied. And then we bought another company in 23. And then it was like, okay, you're done. Hands are full. Yeah, hands are full.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

But those, even then, they were, I guess, from my viewpoint. Right. They were small enough that it didn't take a shock to the system, like a downs or an apt DID operation.

[John]

Yeah. Operationally, no.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

I think one of the challenges that we've consistently had, and I'm excited because we're like, we're moving past it. But, like, when we. We had, like, there was a. We were a double turnaround for a second because. Because of acquisition, because of integration, but we go buy a bunch of businesses. So then the balance sheets just.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

Like, there's no cash and there's a lot of debt. Okay.

[Brandon]

Not real great start.

[John]

Not a great position to be in. And then, like, not long after, they started struggling because it was 2022, inflation was going crazy, and the new construction side of the business, like, erupted basically, and, like, started dragging down the rest of it. So then suddenly you're in this, like, okay, I have a balance sheet to turn around. No cash, a lot of debt. Also have a P L to turn around because, like, it's no longer making money. So what do you do? And I feel like managing through that is, like, hard. So how did you think. I know it's hard for me, but how do you think about it?

[Brandon]

For me, it was. It was an interesting point. Right. Because at the very beginning, like, way back before the acquisitions.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

My urge was to manage via the finances, but it didn't make sense at the time because it was.

[John]

There was no finances.

[Brandon]

Yeah, there's no finances.

[John]

We can now, which. That's, like, kind of fun, actually. I like that.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

I was thinking about that the other day. I was like, this is kind of. I think what I actually thought this is, you know, me being vulnerable in front of 1500 people. But what I actually thought was I was like, I was made to run a. I Was born to run a business this size where, like, I have enough that I can, like, actually maneuver.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

Like, okay, I.

[Brandon]

We can do with.

[John]

This is a million dollar commitment. We can do that. Or this is a $50,000, you know, so I think that's, like, enough to be interesting. Whereas, like, yes, at two or three million dollars, it was boring. There's nothing there.

[Brandon]

Well, the scary part for the moment. Right. Was. So you get out of that, navigating via numbers. And it was tactical navigation to. Okay, we're coming back to numbers. We have to, because the balance sheets up creek.

[John]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[John]

So someone bought a lot of businesses.

[Brandon]

But the first time you turn back to numbers, they're not pretty.

[John]

Oh, yeah.

[Brandon]

It's like, oh, shit. Okay. This is a thing we have to figure out, which I would say was.

[John]

About a year after it was in, like, late 22 or early 23.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

So we had bought all these businesses, and really, it was like 18 months of just.

[Brandon]

Hell.

[John]

Yeah. I mean, hell. Like, but like, getting our arms around, like, integration. Like, we're running three integrations at the same time.

[Brandon]

Yeah, it was. Because I think the acquisitions, too, they weren't specifically targeting. Right. It wasn't just plumbing. It was across the board. So we were touching every single department. And the issues weren't just like, hey, holistically, it's a labor issue. There was labor, there was material, there was overhead issues across every department in every facet of the company. So, like, as those numbers started to become available and we started to actually monitor them and start to act off of them, it felt very shotgun.

[Lori]

Right.

[Brandon]

Because, like, you're trying to tackle whatever the. The dumpster fire. Yeah. And every time we open something, I think, you know, to this day, you say that too. It's like, I can pull up anything, pull up one department. I can pull up one subset of a piano and just be like, hey, I'll find five issues here.

[Lori]

And.

[Brandon]

Yeah, yeah, and you will. And I think that's just, you know, nature of the business.

[John]

Yeah, well. And you've been looking at the P L for, like. I. I had this conversation with Patrick the other day. He was like. He's like, something doesn't feel right about this. And I was like, oh, this is exactly what happened.

[Brandon]

This is it. Yeah.

[John]

Like, that was quick. I was like, dude, I've been looking at this P and L for a decade.

[Brandon]

Something's gonna feel off.

[John]

Yeah. I know exactly where to find these problems.

[Brandon]

That's like the. Not to kind of bounce all over the place. Right? But that's the, the fun part I'm having right now with not only the leadership development class in our existing leadership team, their development is teaching the feeling side of the piano.

[John]

Right.

[Brandon]

Because like you can see the numbers and the numbers are great and you can balance them against KPIs, but if you're already routinely off of them.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

If you're just saying, yeah, we're off, it's really kind of hard to actually measure what's going on there. But if you start to understand the trends of them and the feeling of okay, this. Yeah, something seems off. Comparative to the last six months I've been paying attention to this. Now you can start to investigate something and it is off of a feeling. If you get, you know, product good at understand the vibe. Right.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

Suddenly you're starting to get into some meat potatoes.

[John]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

That was one thing, you know, very interesting from this past month. It is another change in how we're doing as we're coaching now, managers of managers. So they are very much involved in the P L talk, but every month with the entire team, they get full access to it. So it's starting to get them beyond the KPIs and understand, yes, this is the target. You're not there. So what do you need to do beyond that? There's levers you can pull. Right. But how do you investigate that to decide what lever to P. It is a little bit of a feelings at the beginning. Right. It's what doesn't seem right. Okay, let's dig into that. Because if everything's off by the KPI mark, you can't just kind of shotgun the top line of gross margin and hope for something to, you know, shake out. It's what just seems off. Let's dig into it. We'll find the issue or we'll find a issue and we can just start solving through it. That to me is fun. Right. Because it's. It's teaching them to get into a comfort zone that they're not used to and then starting to play around with that. And it's. They know it so much more than even you and I do right now because they're so integral inside of their department.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

You know, Allie, for example, in install, I could ask her and she'll have probably 10 times better of an insight into it just because she's looking at it. She's in it.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

Yeah. I think something that. I think something that would be interesting that we don't have locked in, but it would be fun to. It'd Be fun to figure it out. But I have, you know, friends in accounting or law or whatever and they have these individual P Ls or like I'd say more dialed in piano. And I think we have, I think we have been trying to do that. We have been trying to like here's your P L. Here's the performance from the week. Here's how you contributed, but we're just not there yet. And I think it would be kind. I think it would be really cool to get. Dial that in like a departmental P. L. Yeah, but like a P L. Like a true. Like here's your contribution margin. I think that's actually the right term for a contribution margin. Here's your contribution to the business. And I don't know, I don't know how to do it, but I think it'd be kind of fun. We've done a good job of it on cost centers. Like hey, we know marketing, we know exactly what happens. Warehouse, fleet, call center. Like we get it, we review it weekly. But I don't think we have like sales for instance or install for instance. I don't think our frontline leaders have an individual P and L. And they probably should.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

So you're saying beyond just a gross margin portion.

[John]

Yeah, I think like, like impact. How do you have like the maximum impact and like what is the most within your control fair. And if they're like. I think results should be pushed to whoever has the most access to like determine the results. Right. So yeah, frontline leaders or director level talent should have like panels that they really understand. They definitely see what's happening as a company.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

But like okay, what, what did I do? Which we, we obviously provide KPIs and all that stuff. But I just don't think it's like here's a P L of your performance. I think it'd be kind of interesting.

[Brandon]

Yeah, I think it would be. Especially because we have a team at this point that is genuinely interested in it. They. They understand the basics of the working of a piano. Right. They understand how cash flows through it.

[John]

So I think that's like a ba hire, like a business analog. It's higher.

[Brandon]

Yeah. Well, access would probably be the second thing. Right. Is not physical access, but yeah. Access to the numbers and ease of the data.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

Would be interesting.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

All right, we'll workshop that. All right. So you've definitely. I'm just going to sort of repeat back, man. Maybe it's like the styles of leadership. So like pretty tactical, hands on leader to sort of A reactive wartime leader. Like same same with me during that time period.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

And I think what you've done just an excellent job of. And I've given, I think I've given you a lot of praise on here, just not your, you know, definitely to your face, but not on the show to your face. So now, you know, nice. But like what I think what you've done a really excellent job of recently is like stepping into probably a going from that manager TR to a true leader position which like, I think you're doing a better job of it than I am. I think you're like really taking a step back. You're really working on like the vastly important stuff. And I still am like a little like hustly probably where I like, you know, get squirreled or whatever. And I just think you're doing a great job of it. But like some just quick examples and then we can talk about what that looks like. But. Well, maybe the latest stage is like senior leader leader because now you are leading a team of directors, which is different than leading a team of service managers. And you know, it's just a broader scope. But you've also added leadership development to our frontliners and our current leadership team and emerging leaders like tech technicians or frontline folks that will become leaders. What, what else do you think this current stage of leadership has sort of brought out?

[Brandon]

Well, one, it's obviously forced me to, to really like remove the tactical sense of it. Right. I'm, I'm trying still on a day to day basis, frankly, to force myself to work through them and not directly.

[Lori]

Right.

[Brandon]

Because it just, I don't want to strip them of that ability to solve the problem.

[John]

I think that's hard because just, just a year ago. Yeah, like if I think about it, we got some stuff dialed and locked in and then we shut down four locations, five locations and merged into one. And like that was hands on.

[Lori]

Yes.

[John]

Like in the first month. I don't remember if you were, but I definitely was a call taker.

[Lori]

Yes.

[Brandon]

We sat in cubicles next to each other for a good minute there.

[John]

Yeah, it was a trip because it was like. And that was a, that was a $14 million that, you know, that was like, you know, we were a business.

[Brandon]

It was, it was an interesting time.

[John]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

But yeah, that, that, that was a challenge, I think for a couple points. Because of, because of the consolidation there. Right.

[John]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

I still, to this day I can tell you a name of every employee here. I can tell you probably too much about them because it Was a very. We had to focus on the culture. We had to focus on maximizing retention through this move because we knew we were going to have turnover. Turnover.

[John]

Which we did.

[Brandon]

We did. But that made it hard then when starting to exit out of that because everyone still has a Nature, a tendency to want to come to me instead of their direct manager who's now supposed to be working with them.

[John]

I think in that line we also hired, like we just in the last year.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

Started building a senior leadership team. Like we had a slt. But this is a sort of a different. In my mind's caliber of team. Like a real leader of our sales department. A real leader of our Install. A real leader of our real leader marketing, inside Ops, HR. Like really all of those in the last 12 months have been placed.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

And team feels great.

[Brandon]

It does.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

It's been a wild change to see it. I ended just the ability to grab stuff. It's kind of cool to see that. I. Sometimes it's challenging.

[John]

Right.

[Brandon]

Because I'll have to. I'll purposely let something burn that's hard to watch. But it's in the nature of someone's going to pick it up because it's. That's their. That's the role now. So it's forcing people into that role. But frankly, like, our team has done a really good job of doing that.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

And identifying. Okay. Yeah, this is. This is mine now. Right. Those lines, I think started blurry and day by day just get more and more clear as, okay, this is. This is my boat.

[John]

This is not my boat.

[Brandon]

Now part of that still becomes like my. I'm becoming the mentor side, which is, I think, an interesting point for me. I have a running joke with Ali. My emotional intelligence side sometimes is my weak point. I tend to be maybe too blunt to the point sometimes. So trying to become better at that and more in tune with that because the things that I'm now having to coach and guide them through do require that substantial. Right. It's yes, we have to guide the numbers, but it's also teaching them. How do you focus on retention? How do you focus on team management, not just the numbers. Because at our size now, retention is just as important. Doesn't matter if we can hit the budget or not, if we don't have the team for it.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

So trying to guide through that has been. What I'm actively learning to do is I've gotten decent at allowing people to do their thing and remove myself as a bottleneck. But now it's taking that Next step of not only teaching people the basics of leadership, but also the EQ side that frankly to me I'm still learning. So it's kind of like a two step portion to it.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

Yeah, I think we're definitely in. It's easier to identify now that we've sort of gone through it and, and maybe are still going through in some ways, but like the senior leadership moment and you know, a lot of this year we've. I feel momentum on like on that to the point where I'm bored and I.

[Brandon]

Never a good thing. It's.

[John]

It is literally never a good thing. But you know, Rich, Rich talks, talked about this and he and I have spoken a lot about it and he's even tweeted about it. Like he's very passionate about the subject and, and it was like, hey, if you're bored, like then you're doing it right probably. And I'm like, yeah, like I'm definitely, you know, bored. But I what I think the stage that I'm currently in that I'm, you know, working on and is. I'm, I'm trying to move to coach, which you are too. And I, I think that's the right move for where we are because we're. Our, our ability to impact results is, I mean for me five layers down and you is, is four and like that's just a lot. And so I think being able to coach and like train in like that next line of leaders and I think our leadership team has shown it like they've all, you know, stepped up, which has been awesome.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

So I think coaching, I think trying to really enable, which is something that I'm working on, that's kind of like hard because you know, Suddenly Marketing's budget, two and a half million dollars and you know, 20 grand disappears really fast and you're like, oh my God. But like trying to enable with within guardrails and trying to have like I'm focused a lot more on why, which I think is coaching too. Or like, like hey, here's this thing, but also here's why. So we had a discussion with Lori the other day because she wants to hire another team member. And I'm cautious because of P and L, but it's much easier to have kind of a instructive and coaching conversation about it because we're open. P and L. Yeah. So it's like, hey, this, this line is why I'm concerned about this decision which I felt like one helped her grow and she came up with a better plan that like fits while still accomplishing what she's trying to do. And two, like, I, I think keeps me out of it because four or five years ago, even a year ago, probably I would have gone in and resolved it.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

And I'm trying. So I'm trying to, you know, coach and like separate.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

I guess that to me is like the autonomy side. Right. Is allowing them to. You give the guidance for it, work them through, but at the end of the day, they have some autonomy to be able to decide how they're going to resolve it. Right.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

Yeah. I think at times, you know, you gave the example, like really early on and I'm just genuinely curious, like non canned answer. Your example was. Oh, yeah, they grew organically and the owner is the bottleneck and all things. I feel like I can be that now. Like, I guess. What's your take?

[Brandon]

Yes. I think it depends on what it is, whether it's good or not. Right. There are still things. For example, it's almost always money. It's money related. Right.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

It's going to be that. In some cases it's good. Like, you know, probably should have discussions on capital allocation before you go buy 14 vehicles or, you know, a $200,000 jet truck or something.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

In that. Right. Some of the things that get below those thresholds still tend to get stuck there.

[John]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

But I think those are things that you me tend to actively work through. And then once we solve them, I can recognize, oh, hey, this, this should not be stuck at.

[John]

John.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

How do we stop it from happening at that point? It's too late for the first one, but now we've solved it for going forward.

[Lori]

Right.

[Brandon]

I think for the longest time, like just a funny example of it. Cause you had really tight control over the marketing. Budget was uniform. Right. So like every time a new onboarding class would come through.

[John]

You're welcome, Ally.

[Brandon]

Every time a new orientation class would come through, we know we need to get them shirts. Like that budget had to be approved.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

By you. Because at one point somebody decided, let's go buy six months worth of shirts.

[John]

Yeah. It was like $14,000.

[Lori]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Brandon]

So now I reacted. Exactly.

[John]

And I, you know, locked down, locked it up.

[Brandon]

But then, you know, it's like, hey, you know, we need 20 shirts for this onboarding class.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

That would get tied up. Right. So we start to work through that, figure it out. And in the end we ended up solving a better solution. We now have a contract for it. Great. Solves the whole problem. But I don't know that we would have actually addressed that issue if we didn't hit the bottleneck. So it's a good thing. Painful in the moment, but I think it's actually forcing us to. In that we negotiated a really good contract with our vendor. Now we have a established thing for it. Now we're finally going to have a uniform. That's good. Good.

[John]

Yeah, I think, I think, I think that's on. I think what's kind of funny is everything comes in waves and, you know, you sort of recognize these patterns. And one of the patterns I'm recognizing right now is I feel a lot. So fact. Not feeling that fact, but I feel a lot like, like mid-2020.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

So, like, first off, look out, brace. Yeah. But I remember the actively sort of pull. Pulling myself back and like, okay, do you guys got this? Because I'm pretty sure I'm gonna, you know, go buy a bunch of businesses and. Which I did do that, so. But I'm, I, I again, feeling. I feel like that's where I'm at again, where it's like, okay, hey, that was a. That was a four years, huh? And now, like, the team is starting to grasp it, and I'm starting to, like, like, separate and just trying to coach. And now what I did wrong last time early on was didn't provide good enough guardrails for sure. Which I think I was obviously still working on that. I. I am very tight on cash. Like, very, like, locked in on cash.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

So I didn't provide good enough guardrails. And I think that I tried. There's a really hard balance between delegation and application.

[Brandon]

Okay.

[John]

And I think I got closer to abdication than delegation. And, like, abdication is like, you guys got this. I'm gonna piss off to Florida, which I actually did do. I can make fun of it because it's me. Yeah. So abdication is just like. I think that's what a lot of owners do it. Like 3 million boxes. Like, they abdicate.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

Their responsibility. But delegation is like. Which I think I've gotten a lot better at. I'm just bored. Maybe you give me the feedback if I got better at it. But I, We. I give scorecards. We give guidelines. We meet regularly and talk about it. Like, where do you think I can improve on delegation? Or, like, my leadership in general?

[Brandon]

Yeah, I think the. What you do. For example, like, our Monday meetings where you meet with each department, we review that. I think that's great. That's a great version of that. Your pushing the information and forcing the delegation of the action through it.

[John]

Awesome.

[Brandon]

I think where it will actually. Let's say you were to just run off to Florida again.

[John]

Whoa, whoa.

[Brandon]

You know, or wherever. Skiing maybe. I don't know. You know, you tell me. That'd be awesome. I think there's still those points that we would see. Right. That would fail because you are the single point for it. Those would be the ones that I would be. Okay. You know, how do we solve? Like if we do have a vehicle issue, if we do have an admin staff issue that requires a replacement or a net add, those are all dead stops. Recruitment say dead stop to you?

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

So those would be things of like, hey, okay, you know, if you are going to go off grid for a week, two weeks, whatever it is. They'd be breakpoints.

[Lori]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Brandon]

That I think we'd have to solve so we don't stop the machine from moving.

[Lori]

Yeah.

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[John]

On top of all that.

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It consistently makes our team better. We get post call analytics, auto tagging and coaching tools so that no matter who's on shift, we deliver for our customers. If you're curious, go to Evoca AI, Avoca AI. Book a demo and tell them owned and operated Senshu.

[John]

Yeah, I think, I think like if I'm going to put this sort of problem in words, I think that I'm currently nothing. I am currently holding the CFO title, the CMO title, the CH title Chief People. What is it? Chief people and obviously like CEO title.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

And because when I think about the like crux breakpoint decisions that are still coming to me it's because I'm still wearing cfo which I I think is still the right decision for right now. I do think in the next 12 months that will have like it's just too much and I. And I'm not doing a good job of it. All I'm stopping is money from being spent and that's not doing a great job. Like.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[John]

I'm not like building processes or anything like that. I'm just being cheap.

[Brandon]

I mean you know CFO makes like that to me makes more sense than you know, people side or marketing.

[John]

I think marketing only gets complicated because the budget.

[Brandon]

Everybody think that's a delegation side. Right.

[John]

You break a five million dollar budget like that's freaking nuts.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

But I think there's a certain level of delegation that are concur with that that you don't lose visual of it. But someone else can operate on the day to day. Right. Because like if something goes down right now it's. There's a reliance on you to say yes or no and what you. How you want to proceed with that versus if there was a. At least a. Some level of delegation that like we know Jesse is wildly competent to do that he could easily manage at a deeper level on that just with tighter like you said guardrails.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

Or that wouldn't have dead stops at you. But you still have the visibility to check in on it. Same thing with like people side. Like the last thing we want is you get somebody great on the hook. And then because you're at Michigan here for the next couple weeks if something stops at you, we might lose a great candidate just because it needs a approval.

[Lori]

Right on that.

[Brandon]

Those are things I think that we could further delegate that you still have visibility to and you could veto if you want to. But it's not a hard line style there.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

I think I. Yeah. That's good feedback. I think I've pulled out of that a lot. I have but. But definitely like opex. I still care a lot about.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

Technicians. I pretty much that machine. Yeah.

[Brandon]

I think you've kind of drilled it in my head well enough too that I would. I'm g. Speak up for myself on this one there. I feel like I would trust myself enough to make the same decision.

[John]

You would?

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

In like the OPEX side of you know Lori came to me for that hire.

[John]

I'd have the same yeah, we had the same opinion. Right. So like budget. Budget.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

So got that drill.

[John]

I think budget helped too.

[Lori]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Brandon]

Of just like, hey, it is just a yes or no. It's like, do the numbers make sense or not?

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

Yeah, I think that's good. So your leadership style, like what do you think next? Like, what do you think happens next? The next year? What does. How do you, how do you continue.

[Brandon]

To develop the big one? I see. And we're already kind of going into it is deeper into the teacher side of it. Right. Like we're talking about new locations, we're talking about potentially more acquisitions as that restarts getting fun.

[John]

I mean, I am bored again.

[Brandon]

I know. That's exactly why. That's why we're. We're talking about it. Yeah. We've learned very fast that the best possible chance for success is growth within our own team. Developing leaders internally.

[John]

Yeah, that's been awesome. Yeah, it's been like the coolest ever.

[Brandon]

Honestly. It's been fun to, to teach with them, like to go through this stuff.

[John]

Sweet.

[Brandon]

The one we're talking about, you know, this week is they actually get to get hands on with a RPNL from last month and put a real life play.

[John]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

To work. So it's like interesting. This would be fun to do, but.

[John]

Because last month wasn't great.

[Brandon]

It wasn't. It wasn't. So. But that's like kind of the cool thing is. Right. So our active leadership team is working alongside these leaders in development to put together a plan. They now understand how P and L works and they understand how to diagnose issues. So they're instead of working through a scenario, they're actually going to help build out an action plan to solve one of those issues and then be the cheerleaders for change in the field to get that across the finish line. They'll get hands on experience. So to me, I view it as like, what's the most important thing over the next, you know, 12 months and going forward, assuming you're going to an acquisition, you're going to start another location zone. Exactly. I have to be prepared to place somebody there in what makes the most sense and what I believe we all firmly believe now is the easiest and most successful way to do that is someone internally 100% that we get to 70, 80 miles an hour. Some of they jump on the autobond with us.

[John]

It's easy. What? Yeah. And I think it's an interesting career accelerator for them too. Like, I think Ali's career really accelerated because she took on weird and deals.

[Brandon]

But that was just a great case in point of that was the only reason she succeeded is because she was just braw to get it.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

There was. She was not going to fail. Wasn't an option for her. But now, like I said, I always use this analogy with the group as well too, is it's. We are doing 100 miles an hour.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

So it became substantially harder for someone who's trying to just jump in to get caught to speed. So the entire intention of these, the class that we're teaching is get them up to speed first so when they jump in, they can succeed. They have the tools. They know it already. They're not trying to learn and grow into the role at the same time.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

Do you think it is easier or harder to lead a business at our current size versus like 20 or 10 or 5?

[Brandon]

What's easier? What's more fun? I would say. Right. Easier is definitely gonna be smaller. Right. Because it's like you. I was. We make the analogy. Right. Of trying to like, adjust.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

You can just go do it.

[Lori]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Brandon]

It's a Jesse or cruise ship. We're definitely cruise ship. So like, it is. It's more challenging and it's more. There's more theory, I guess you say, behind it. Right. Like, we're having to really kind of think through and strategize versus when we're small. It's like counts. Let's give it a try. We'll do it tomorrow. We can do it this afternoon if we want to. Now it's like, hey, let's. Let's get all the people that are going to be affected by this involved. And it turns into a strategic decision. And it's wildly expensive sometimes too. So it's okay. We're having to really think through what it is.

[John]

Which I think is a good muscle. I. I think it's good and bad. I think like, I think the ability to execute fast is really important and like, speed is really important. And in a lot of ways we've lost that.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

What I think would be kind of interesting, but. Sorry, I'll finish that thought. But the. Our execution is better.

[Lori]

Yes.

[John]

Than it was a couple years ago. So, like, there is sort of like, is it fast is slow and slow is smooth. I think that's the. Which I feel like.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

I. I do think what would be kind of interesting and. And I currently operate this way, which could be good or like, could be bad. But I. I think there's room for like this like, hitman style team. We're like in a. In a organization that moves slowly. And. And the reason isn't, like, for. For, I guess, the listener. Like, the reason to move slowly isn't necessarily because we love moving. Moving slowly. It's usually because we have a system that works.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

And when you have something that works, you should be cautious to break it.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

Whereas, like, two years ago, I would say that we did not have a system that worked, so we were much more willing to break it.

[Lori]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brandon]

We were turning things over perpetually. Every SFP we wrote, we just delete.

[John]

I mean, now we are. We have predictable revenue, predictable margin, predictable costs, predictable budget. So that's not like, let's go nuke it. Whereas, like, two years ago, we lived. So I think that's just a change in the business too. But I do think there's room for, like, how do you still get speed in important parts? So, like, if you're launching a new. A new vertical or like an acquisition or whatever, if you brought people in too early, you would over process something that doesn't exist yet.

[Lori]

Yes.

[John]

And I think that's a real danger point. So I don't know. I don't think we're at the point or currently doing any projects that sort of need that, like, lethal team, but I do think there eventually should be this, like, basically like a project team.

[Lori]

Yeah, yeah.

[John]

Where they just go in, like, they go something up for a week and like, it's better when they're done.

[Lori]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brandon]

I agree. It felt to me like the integrations team, Right. When we're doing the acquisitions, like their job was just fight the fire that was there, get it done, put it out, set it up and leave. And then someone else comes in and stabilizes everything else out that they were the agent of change to get it done. I think that makes sense because otherwise. Yeah. If we were to just try and immediately envelop it into a process, it would have failed miserably.

[John]

Yeah, I agree.

[Brandon]

Don't tempt me with that, though, because, you know, I like a good dumpster fire.

[John]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Same.

[Lori]

All right.

[John]

If you have any tips for. I'd say, really, this. This is geared towards owners north of 10, you know, like, larger companies trying to figure out how to, like, what does their life look like now and later?

[Lori]

Like, what would.

[Brandon]

What would it be, barring the budget? Don't become the bottleneck. Right. That's every. Everything I've ever seen just always seems to be that it's the owner. You look at it or yeah.

[John]

Like, because now like you're sort of the bottleneck in a lot of ways that I'm not.

[Brandon]

Which is kind of funny. Yeah.

[John]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

Just I guess maybe the holistically avoid the bottlenecks. Right. If there's something that's being caught up in, someone's angry about it, like it's clearly you're becoming the bottleneck. You're the problem for that specific issue. So figure out how to not become the bottleneck.

[John]

And our solution for that has been long term education.

[Lori]

Yes.

[John]

Like we are diving into pnl. We've been open book P and L for I think this is like our 10th month or 11th month.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

Like we're going on a year of like here's the P and L. Yeah. And I think that really helped.

[Brandon]

And access to the other side too. Right. Like for the longest time I was the, the bottleneck of service time was a great case in point. Only I could touch capacity planning.

[John]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

Well, that's going to limit us when someone onboards and for two straight weeks after they're onboarded, they actually don't have capacity. So they weren't getting calls.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

And then our board was lower staff than it should have been. There's those little things right where it's. I want to keep them because, well, you could break it easily. And if I don't teach them how to do it right or they do it wrong, it's really painful to fix. Just give the access train how to do it and then be prepared to fix it. Someone's going to break it. That's okay. But the reality is is every time we've done that, and you forced me many times to be to do that, it's better because we go through the pain, we mess it up, we fix it, we learn from, we write us up. But then suddenly it's no longer tied to me. And you know, that specific process is now it's easy. It just runs without me. I check in on every once in a while to make sure that it's not like exploding in the background.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

But it's no longer a bottleneck. And that's. I, I firmly believe that's why we've been able to grow past some of those hurdle points that we ran into where it's you or me or Ali or whoever becomes a bottleneck is forcing our way through that and making it.

[John]

No longer an issue. Yeah. I, this is reminding me a lot. And it's making me feel a little bit better about how bored I am right now. And but, you know, Tommy did this episode or, like, talk wrote about. I don't even remember what it was, but. But he. When. When he was our current. Or a little bit smaller, actually. When he was a little bit smaller. So, like, 10 years ago or whatever, he had to go through this stage where they had to intentionally slow down. And I remember him describing it, and now I'm like, okay, that's exactly how I feel. It was just, like, it drove me nuts because they had to, like, you know, we had to write SOPs. We had to document everything we did. And I'm like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. That's the stage work. But he was probably just as bored as I was Am. And, you know, after that, sort of go, you know, pop off. But, yeah, that. Like, stay bored. Yeah, that hit for a second. Because I do think, like, it's. It. We can feel the momentum.

[Lori]

Yes.

[John]

It's totally different leadership. Like, we're not wartime leaders right now. A year and a half ago, we were. A year ago, probably a year and a half. And. And now we're like tweakers.

[Brandon]

The amount of time I focus on culture alone, comparatively to when it was. Was wartime. Right. It was just fight to keep things moving. And now it's like, okay, we really have to focus on what is the culture of the company.

[John]

What are we trying to do by team.

[Brandon]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, That's. That's what I say. It's easy versus fun. This is. This is fun. It's nothing more challenging, but it's fun.

[John]

It's hard.

[Brandon]

It's.

[John]

Yeah, yeah, it's hard. I think this has been a. This was a public debate on Twitter for a while of like, hey, is it easier to get a business from 1 to 10 million or 10 to 100 million? And we've obviously done the first. We have not done the second so far. North of 10 is a lot harder. It is hard.

[Lori]

Yes.

[John]

Yeah, it is hard because it. Man, It's. It's just a. It's a. It's just like, real challenges. Whereas, like, under 10, you're just getting punched in the face a lot. So. All right. Can you stand up after getting punched in the face?

[Brandon]

To me, it's just math. Like, it was very simple solutions to all of it.

[John]

Yes.

[Brandon]

Oh, okay. We have access to numbers. Our gross margin is 40%. Cool. Let's fix it by adjusting price and negotiating vendors.

[John]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

Now it's the intangibles of culture. Like, you can't just fix a number for culture. It's. We have to change the way we do something hr. Like there's all these different legal nuances that we have to worry about now. Those aren't just flips of switches to get done. They're, they're non tangible impacts that take time and they take something from a top down process. Yeah, yeah, it's hard. It's hard now. It is, it's fun. It feels good when we like get one of those things across the finish line and see it.

[John]

Actually it feels good when the managers are growing and yeah. Like, yeah, I think it's tangible, it's real, but like challenging. Yeah, yeah, it'll be interesting to see. I, I, I'm over the next, you know, couple years, even just the next year, I feel like our sales have gotten dialed in and that seems to be the bottleneck. I was talking with a friend about this yesterday and like sales inside plumbing H VAC and electric is kind of a joke. Like no one has a good sales process and you don't really need a good sales process. And most of the people that think they have a good sales process, don't they have a good flip process. Like they can flip a broken furnace. Yeah, that's not a good sales process. And like I would argue that we don't. Like we're getting there, but we don't. If you compare that to like bathroom models and like premier home pros who was on here, like they have a good sales process. Yeah, that's good. They drove $180 million. But my line that I gave my friend yesterday was just about any can brute force their way to $20 million in plumbing, H vac and electric. Like nearly any, like we did, like, and I'm an asshole. So I think just about anybody can do that. But I think building a sales process is the big bottleneck. Plus the leadership. Like how do you build a big sales process that can run at scale and is really dialed in? Because the only way to scale is more marketing leads. Like that's it. You have to bring out more leads and you have to sell them. And our industry is like, whoa, marketing leads. And then yeah, everyone's so ridiculous. And, and then you have to be able to as you grow, like build leaders.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

So I think we're solving the build leaders. We're like a year into that. I think we're like inside, you know, feedback. I think we're doing a good job mainly because we, we have leaders that have been promoted and are doing good.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

Actively working on the sales process. So it'll be Interesting to see even just like six months from now, like what that looks like because I think the current bottleneck is the sales process. But that will soon, like we are making progress.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

And it's not just quantity of sales too. It's quality. And that's something where it's again becomes that like the challenging part.

[John]

Yes.

[Brandon]

Any could sell, 20 million could go sell.

[John]

Yeah. A bunch of random. But you got to do it, you got to do it profitably.

[Lori]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree.

[John]

Yeah, Very interesting. So the, the advice was sort of hand out, distribute, give access, push, just.

[Brandon]

Keep pushing down, push it out.

[John]

I think mine was like, I totally agree. But then guardrails.

[Brandon]

Yes, yes.

[John]

Like guardrail the hell out of it and constantly communicate. Because, because I think that's where all the books are. Like delegate, delegate, delegate. You gotta delegate. But then how do you effectively delegate? And you do that by giving someone tasks, talking to them often about it and giving them a scorecard so they know if they won or did a bad job.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

There's one cardinal rule and one thing you don't delegate, John.

[John]

Oh, what's that? You know what it is like vibes.

[Brandon]

Oh, check signing.

[John]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The amount of freaking people.

[Brandon]

I don't, don't give a check. Just down.

[John]

Don't give us a stamp. I don't, I don't.

[Brandon]

You hold on to one thing forever.

[John]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

Signing checks.

[John]

I know, it's so dumb. It's so dumb. I, I, yeah, I don't, I have a lot to say about that, but I want to lose a million dollars. You give someone a stand.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[John]

This was great.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[John]

I felt like we covered leadership from small to big where we're currently at some of the, some of the growing pains. Like this was a lot of fun. Brandon. We got to have you on more often.

[Brandon]

I'm down. It sounds like fun. And I always have to plug it too because anybody who's in the OAO group.

[John]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

The leadership classes that I'm teaching. And it's a 52 week class with us.

[John]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Brandon]

I'm recapping them in the community.

[John]

Yes.

[Brandon]

Document it because it's, it's a two part for me. Right. I need to document it so I can replicate it.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

And everybody else gets access to it too.

[John]

So it's, yeah, it's recorded in there. I think it's just as a course or something. I don't know what it is.

[Brandon]

Yeah, it's a weekly thing that we do. It's like a live thing, but it ends up recording. So.

[Lori]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Brandon]

Be cool.

[John]

That's cool. Thanks for coming on.

[Brandon]

Okay.

[John]

If you like what you heard, make sure you like it.

[Lori]

And.

[John]

And subscribe. And check out Ownoperated.com to sign up for the newsletter.