Building a Billion-Dollar Septic Business

Summary

---

Podcast Summary

Owned and Operated – "Building a Billion-Dollar Septic Business"

Date: March 19, 2026
Host: John Wilson (Owner, multi-state plumbing, HVAC, and electrical business)
Guests: Chad & Kyle (Founders, Epic Septic & Service)

---

Episode Overview

This episode is a lively, candid deep-dive into the world of the septic industry—a sector often overlooked but brimming with opportunity. John, joined by Septic entrepreneurs Chad and Kyle of Epic Septic & Service, unpacks what it takes to build a billion-dollar septic business, the unique culture and economics underpinning "brown collar" trades, tackling brand strategy, franchise scaling, and the lifestyle potential for owner-operators. The trio delivers real talk about business growth, acquiring and scaling operations, marketing and brand, and the paradoxical appeal of working in an industry “everyone loves to talk about but nobody wants to try.”

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Septic is the “Brown Collar” Gold Mine

• Industry Appeal: There’s a curious, steady fascination with septic content online—people are drawn to the raw, honest side of the profession. ("People love poop." [02:02] — Kyle)
• Untapped Niche: Septic is largely ignored by traditional media, giving savvy operators a chance to dominate both brand and market.
• Fragmented Market: Most competitors are small, often unsophisticated operators. Simply answering the phone and being professional wins business. ("90% of them didn’t answer…All we got to do is answer the phone, make money." [00:40] — Kyle & Chad)
• Economic Opportunity: Septic is “AI-proof,” highly resistant to technology disruption, and provides generational wealth opportunities.

Go-to-Market: Answer the Phone, Own the Market

• Lead Generation & Sales: Success has been driven by rapid response and basic professionalism, in a landscape where many operators lack even the most fundamental business systems.
• Sales Close Rates: With strong phone skills and a one-call-close mindset, close rates of 80–90% are common. ([14:55] — Chad)
• Marketing ROI: Google Ads for septic services deliver exceptional ROI, with low cost per click relative to high ticket values compared to other home services. ([13:29] — John Wilson)

The Brand Play: From Energy Drinks to Truck Wraps

• Lifestyle Branding: Epic Septic has gone as far as creating an “energy drink,” leveraging humor and pop culture to build a brand customers talk about (and even collect).
  • “We have our own energy drink that we created…the beginnings of a lifestyle brand around the septic world, which is like the weirdest thing you could possibly conceive of.” [00:10] — Kyle
  • “Does not contain poop.” [23:44] — Chad & John Wilson
• Truck Wrap ROI: By investing in unique, eye-catching truck wraps (not cookie-cutter brand packages), much of their inbound business is generated by visibility on the road or in neighborhoods.
  • “20 to 25% of our inbound traffic comes from people seeing our truck in the neighborhood.” [28:52] — Chad
• Brand Differentiation: Don’t waste money (e.g., $30–$50k) on generic branding packages that make you look like every other plumber; focus on what truly stands out in your community.

Scaling to $100 Million–and a Billion Dollar Valuation

• National Potential: Septic is everywhere—1 out of 3 homes in the US is on septic. A national brand could command a 20x EBITDA multiple.
  • “If you could truly build a national brand in this industry, you’re looking at probably a 20x multiple…$50 million of EBITDA.” [01:01] — Kyle
• Franchising Pathway: Epic is scaling via franchise, aiming for 16 states by year-end, leveraging systems, brand, and back-office support for rapid territory expansion. ([50:57])
• Operational Model: Focus on route density, centralized overhead for scale, expanding service lines (pumping, repairs, installations, inspections), and diversifying revenue (e.g., energy drinks, branded merch).
• Business Fundamentals: At any stage, the core is marketing (finding leads) and sales (closing them). Don’t overcomplicate growth: “You just need 30 branches at $3M apiece, and centralize as much as possible.” ([44:44] — John Wilson)

Professionalization & Talent: Recruiting “A Players” and Empowering Operators

• Vet & Franchisee Recruitment: The franchise model targets three main groups: displaced high-level white-collar workers (tech layoffs, AI proofing), military veterans ready to serve communities, and established franchise operators seeking new verticals. ([56:54] — Chad & Kyle)
• Veteran Initiative: Epic has a strong focus on recruiting and empowering veterans (Epic Veterans Initiative) as a path to generational wealth (“I want to give that freedom to every single person that wants an opportunity to have a vehicle to make generational wealth. And I found it in septic.” [65:32] — Chad)
• Education Challenge: Knowledge transfer is a major hurdle in septic, as many legacy operators are not passing their know-how to the next generation. Franchises/systemized training help solve this.

---

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Industry Appeal

  • “Septic is like wild.” [02:21] — John Wilson
  • “People love it. They really do.” [02:04] — John Wilson

• On the Simplicity of Winning

  • “In septic, just answer your phone...” [13:22] — Chad
  • “We have these agreements with some of these commercial clients where it’s like five grand every Friday. It is kind of a crazy lifestyle business.” [00:42, 22:03] — John Wilson

• On Brand and Standing Out

  • “Paying $30 to $50k for a branding package that looks exactly like every other competitor’s, I think is ridiculous.” [26:58] — John Wilson

• On Franchise Scaling

  • “If you could truly build a national brand in this industry, you’re looking at probably a 20x multiple.” [01:01] — Kyle
  • “Just do it a hundred times.” [82:06] — John Wilson

• On Sales Mentality

  • “At the end of the day, we’re a marketing and sales business.” [75:00] — John Wilson

• On Legacy & Family Sacrifice

  • “When I think about my life...each year has its own story, and the story is professional. I don’t think about my son being born…” [78:45] — John Wilson
  • “What is enough? You know, when…do you become…Because for me, I could have $100 million in the bank, I’d still find something to do.” [80:26] — Chad

---

Important Timestamps

• Septic Industry’s Quirky Appeal: 00:00–02:30
• Answering the Phone and Market Fragmentation: 00:31–01:03 & 13:13–14:33
• Brand/Lifestyle Strategy (Energy Drinks, Truck Wraps, etc.): 20:47–29:58
• Scaling the Business & Branch Economics: 34:20–37:30, 44:56–45:57
• Route Density, Regional Pricing Challenges, Professionalism: 38:09–41:34
• Service Model – Install, Repair, Jetting: 41:47–44:22
• Franchising Push & Talent Development: 50:50–56:54, 62:01–66:37
• Business & Personal Life Balance: 78:05–83:58
• Training, Culture, Long-Term Vision: 84:54–88:24

---

Additional Highlights

• Memorable Brand Swag: Epic Septic’s “Septic Shock” energy drinks, LEGO truck toys, and plans for wearable merch (Wilson Athletics, Wrangler tie-ins).
• Wild Industry Initiation Stories:
  • “Being baptized” in McDonald’s drain water (John) — [59:01]
  • “100 gallons of poop” in the face at the dump station (Chad) — [60:20]
• Franchise Insight: The time and regulatory hurdle to become a licensed septic operator varies wildly by state (1 year Texas, open book test Ohio, 1200 hours in Wisconsin).

---

Closing Takeaways

This episode underscores the surprising power and scalability of “dirty jobs”—and just how much room there is to professionalize, brand, and ultimately create life-changing opportunities for owner-operators in the septic space. If you crave a business that’s almost immune to automation, provides generational wealth, and allows you to stand out just by being professional and responsive, “brown collar” may be your green flag. As John remarks, “I want to empower a veteran who wants to get an entrepreneurship and show them that it is possible to do something different than just being a grunt in the Marine Corps.” [66:33] — Chad

Franchising, differentiation, operational rigor, and a little swagger (and humor) just might be the formula for building the world’s first billion-dollar septic brand.

---

Resources & Links

• Epic Septic: http://epicseptic.com
• Owned and Operated Podcast: https://ownedandoperated.com
• For franchise inquiries: Visit Epic Septic’s site and fill out their form.

---

Summary by AI Podcast Summarizer. Compiled for listeners who need the substance, solutions, and laughs—without the (literal) mess.

Transcript

[John Wilson]

I don't know what it is about septic that fascinates people that love shit

[Kyle]

and we call it a brown collar industry.

[John Wilson]

We are currently trying to figure out how we can make a billion dollar septic company.

[Kyle]

We'll be out with the franchise. So we've been like working on this thing for months and months and months and months. So we have our own energy drink that we created. Brand is something that we've started to build the beginnings of a lifestyle brand around the septic world, which is like the weirdest thing you could possibly conceive of.

[John Wilson]

Septic is like wild.

[Chad]

It's how no advertising.

[Kyle]

We're paying $10 roughly a click.

[Chad]

Our region, 60 mile radius. There's probably 100 independent operators out there. I called all 100 of them. 90% of them didn't answer on the first, the first time I called. All we got to do is answer

[Kyle]

the phone to the phone, make money.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, yeah. You know, we have these agreements with some of these like commercial clients where it's like five grand every Friday. Like it is kind of a crazy lifestyle business.

[Kyle]

Yes. When we're talking a billion, we're talking enterprise value. If you could truly build a national brand in this industry, you're looking at probably a 20x multiple. We're talking like $50 million of EBITDA.

[John Wilson]

That doesn't feel that crazy to me.

[Kyle]

It does.

[Chad]

I want to give that freedom to every single person that wants an opportunity of a vehicle to make generational wealth. And I found it in septic.

[John Wilson]

People are concerned about their jobs and then we have AI proof businesses. Septic is obviously a great one.

[Chad]

Just from your experience, you've been doing this a long time. What advice do you have for us?

[John Wilson]

I think. Welcome back to owned and operated. I am your host, John Wilson. During the day we run a two going on three state plumbing, H VAC and electric operation. And for fun, I talk to my friends on this podcast about how to grow home service companies. Today I'm joined by the founders of Epic Septic and Service and we're deep diving into the septic industry and trying to figure out how we can make a billion dollar septic company. Thanks for tuning in. Welcome guys to the show.

[Chad]

Thanks for having us.

[Kyle]

Thank you, John.

[John Wilson]

It's going to be fun.

[Kyle]

Yeah, we're excited.

[John Wilson]

My, I don't know what it is about septic that fascinates.

[Kyle]

People love poop.

[John Wilson]

They love, they really do. They love it first like time after time. Our best performing content is septic. People just absolutely love it. And we're not even doing, like, the. The ick. Like, we're not like, here's us pumping, you know, it's just like us talking about. Us talking about.

[Chad]

Well, you have kids, Right. It comes. It starts at an early age.

[John Wilson]

Yeah. The Freudian anal stage is like three to five, I think. Anal fix. Yeah.

[Chad]

And the kids love pooping. Like. Oh, the poopy diaper, like.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, yeah. Starts really early.

[Chad]

And it doesn't go away, apparently.

[John Wilson]

It doesn't. Yeah, it doesn't.

[Kyle]

Well, we call it a brown collar industry. Like, there's the blue collar and we're like the dirtiest of the blue collar. So we bring it into the brown collar.

[John Wilson]

That's pretty good.

[Kyle]

One of the. I mean, I really look up to you, honestly, as like one of the luminaries for media creation around. Septic is such a forgotten niche.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

And you perform your videos, perform like top of the stack. And so the fact that you actually know the business is something that was super exciting for us.

[Chad]

And also it's really hard to find peers that know the business in our industry. A lot of the industry is owner operators from the 60s. Right. And also that generational knowledge isn't transferring or is it attractive for somebody who's in their 30s to get into the. Into the business. So it's nice to finally meet a peer that actually gets.

[Kyle]

Yes.

[John Wilson]

And I think it's a good time for the industry. You know, we started, we bought our company that has septic in it back in 2021. And even then, people were, like, very fascinated by the septic component.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

I still don't totally know why, but, I mean, there's a lot of interest around it. And I agree with you. There's not. There's not that much content about it, but this feels like the right time. What some of the content we're starting to look at because we're on Twitter, probably on Twitter too much, but like, hey, AI, layoffs. And like, what are the jobs that are protected 100%? And I'm like, yes. Come on. Like, what? Robots going to pump shit.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

In Cleveland, Ohio. Yeah. No one.

[Kyle]

Yeah, literally no one.

[John Wilson]

Literally not one. Not a one.

[Chad]

Well, that's a. That's a really great talking point. And, you know, there's. There's companies that want to grow through acquisition. You look at, like yourself, for example, or there's a huge septic conglomerate. I don't know if you ever heard of Wind River.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Chad]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

Well, they're the big. The.

[Chad]

The big one. Right. $100 million of $200 million.

[John Wilson]

I have a friend that I think is deep. 20.

[Chad]

Deep in what? Acquisitions and septic.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, I don't remember that. He, he has like 10 funds, but it's LP First Capital and they're doing something.

[Chad]

Oh, we know LP. Yeah, we know LP very well. Yeah.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, I think there are 20. I actually, I. He sent me a letter and I was like, Thomas, come on, Doug.

[Chad]

Like, yeah, so we're, we're anti that.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

Private equity is not our game. Like, that's been something that we've intentionally stayed away from.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

The owned and operated ethos is something that we have a lot of, a lot of respect for and you embody that. And I think that's where you get a private equity mindset brought to any trade. And it starts to. You create a risk profile that's super different. It's like, how do you invest in brand when you can't see the bottom line? Like, that's something that, you know, there's like long term value that you can accrue from brand, but if it's not going to show up in the next two, three, four, five years and you can't flip it into whatever and you take something that's, you know, a couple little guys and you make one big guy with a better EBITDA multiple and that's your game that you're playing. Like, it's just turtles all the way on down.

[John Wilson]

I was talking to a friend about that last night because we were, we, we had a really big Eida win in February, which was awesome.

[Chad]

Congratulations.

[Kyle]

Congratulation.

[John Wilson]

I'm actively feeling. It was awesome.

[Chad]

February's a short month too.

[Kyle]

So. It's a short month.

[John Wilson]

It's February. We did like 575 in February.

[Kyle]

Damn.

[John Wilson]

And so last year's February was 90. So, you know. Okay, okay.

[Kyle]

Little sex.

[John Wilson]

Little sex.

[Kyle]

Dude, let's go.

[John Wilson]

So, and February is typically our worst month. Like if we're going to lose money in one month is February. Five, seven, five.

[Chad]

Was like. It's funny. It's funny he said that. Yeah, I know.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

But, but what was interesting, I was talking to a friend about this Y. Because we were just like talking about like we're in like, we're like really focused on net right now. We're focused on even though we're really trying to drive. And, and last year we went from a million to like three and a half, four. So like, good. This year we were trying to get to like 7, 8 this year.

[Kyle]

Yep.

[John Wilson]

And I had the Same comment. So I'm driving home and I'm talking to my friend Jack, who's one. He's like co host for the show. Yeah. And we're. It's like the moment you start focusing on ebitda, like really focusing on ebitda, it does get hard because you sort of set your, you pick your own growth path. It has to be acquisition because nothing in an acquisition counts.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

Like it's all integration costs. The legal fake. It's all like, it's all like fake money. And it, it does prevent like sort of real building.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

If you're focused on for too long. I was letting the wrong marketing agencies set my money on fire. And their marketing looked pretty good. On paper, the reporting was attractive, but at the end of the day it just wasn't driving leads. That's why I started using service scalers at Wilson. Service Killers is a marketing agency built specifically for home service companies. They focus on the channels that actually drive leads like targeted ppc, local service ads, SEO, Google business profile. So that you're showing up in front of your customers that are actively searching. They'll help you see exactly what's working so you stop wasting ad dollars on low quality leads. Right now they're doing something crazy and they're giving the opportunity for one entrepreneur to get up to 12 months of marketing on them. So that's up to $100,000 in services for the right operator. If you are serious about tightening up your marketing in 2026 and want to see what this could look like for your business, go to service scalers.com and book a free strategy call and let them know that I sent you.

[Chad]

So after the Marine Corps, I did 10 years of Marine Corps. My first job, everybody. So coming out of the Marine Corps I had different pals and officer.

[Kyle]

Right.

[Chad]

So everybody's like, go get your mba, do this. Go white collar. Go become a lawyer.

[Kyle]

Played football professionally prior to the Marine Corps. So he had ego coming into.

[Chad]

No, no, that was the first, first big transition after football. You know, went into tech sales. Hated it. And then I was like, you know, I've always had this affinity toward the Marine Corps. Yeah, you know to my best friends were re Raiders. Right. Our, our equivalent Navy seals. And I kind of followed that path and did that for 10 years. Got off, got off active duty. And the first job I got, I got my MBA from Bryce Jones School Business in Houston was knocking doors for a roofing company. And because I, I did a white collar job, I hated it. My buddy was running A roofing company in Austin at the time. I was like, dude, help me integrate back to society. Like, let's go. Like, what's the hardest job I can possibly do? He's like, dude, go knock doors for roofing company. 110 degree, 10 degree heat. Go get spit on and go get humble. It's exactly what I needed. I ended up becoming very good at it. And this is kind of like a roll how we got into the septic industry. So. So literally, I noticed really quick getting the roofing. I made a lot of money in roofing. Right. Did really well there. But I noticed a trend. Private equity was rolling up roofing. They were on a H vac, rolling up electric.

[John Wilson]

What year was this?

[Chad]

Oh, when do we. When did I get out of roofing? I mean, this was a couple years ago.

[John Wilson]

Yeah. Because I'm like, P.E. roofing is like, that's new. 2022.

[Chad]

So I, I was a, I was like, I was a, you know, independent consultant. I sold for a couple of roofing companies. I'm on sales staff, my own business, you know, sales process. Right. Every, every roof company wants sales guys. And that's kind of where my niche was. But our company got acquired. It literally got chopped up and cover parts. They put it in a big pool and promised to buy out three years down the line. But I was like, do I want to bet the next 20 years in industry that's not, that's. That's dependent on the weather. But insurance companies are always fighting against you.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Chad]

And the second a storm hits in Texas, you're not just competing against one or two companies, you're competing against all 10,000 in the state because say there's, say there's no H storms in Texas. Then you got to drive to Mississippi, you got to drive to Florida, you know, and you got to find work. I was like, well, I don't want to bet my family's generational wealth bet on an industry that's fragmented and not. Not secure. So ironically, this is how we got accepted. Just a God honest story. Got on a story. Okay. My neighbor at the time, her name was Janice, she's like 72 years old. A truck rolls around because the house we were renting at the time, me and my wife was on septic and we were new to it. I never had to touch the septic because it was. It worked.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Chad]

And she, she was a intercepted tank pump. The truck that was rolling in looked like something out of a horror movie. It was all rusted. It was called Country Fresh. Septic. It was like, with a K. Fresh is rusted, paint everywhere. The guy got out, very unprofessional, had no teeth, looked like he just like. I don't know where this guy was coming from. Very rude. He know what I know now. He just pumped the pump tank like 300 gallons, charged her 1200 bucks, and left. And I went over there and I was watching some YouTube videos. I mean, this doesn't look right, you know? So we tried to call him back, try to call him back. Couldn't find him. Ironically, I was driving a couple days later, and I found him at a gas station. I'm like, hey, dude, like, you didn't do it right. Let's go back there and make it right. He's like, I got other jobs. Like, here's 500 bucks. Go make it right. You know, it's just like, I can't. I can't let that happen. And I was like, well, at least I can fix that part of the industry, you know, having a trustworthy company where people trust you to show up to the house, you answer your phone, you educate the homeowner, what right looks like because you have a septic system. The majority of the homeowners we. We talk to don't have no idea how it works.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Chad]

You know, so education is really big for us. And then we went under. It was like, well, I'm like, chad, why don't we buy a septic company? And we went under loi with like four of them. I got all the way to the end. And we both made the judgment calls, like, well, there's not really anything worth buying. They're very profitable on paper, but it's like, I'm buying a phone number for a lot of money. Why don't we just do it ourselves? So, literally, I bought a septic truck, Brand new septic truck. I was watching YouTube videos on the way to the jobs, figuring out how to do it by myself. And. And we could talk. You could talk about the revenue ramp, But I was literally figuring out the job. I was building the plane as. As it was, was taking off.

[Kyle]

And I'll talk about the revenue ramp.

[Chad]

Yeah, go ahead.

[Kyle]

John's a numbers guy.

[John Wilson]

Yes. Yeah.

[Kyle]

And we have to disclose for the franchise stuff.

[Chad]

And this is the first three months we'll discuss. First three months and off. Off camera, I'll tell you where we're at now.

[Kyle]

Yeah, yeah. So 22, 000. This is Kyle driving.

[Chad]

Just me.

[Kyle]

22,000.

[John Wilson]

Yeah. 50.

[Kyle]

The margins. Yeah.

[Chad]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

Well, we can't Say that technically, but we. Sure, whatever. And then next month we went up to 50 and 57 I think is what the number was of revenue. Yep. Brought in a guy to replace Kyle to the truck.

[John Wilson]

Is that one driver?

[Kyle]

Just me, yeah. Well Kyle month one we brought in driver month two and started. He started subbing some things out for the repair side. And then month three we made it over 90. It was 91 for month three I believe is the exact number drivers or one driver that was still one driver at that point. And just really getting into like the bigger jobs because in Texas it's a different market out here because we shadow shopped your business out here and it's like 260. How are these guys like surviving on this? We're 750 on the pump side. But when it comes into the pump, with the right YouTube education and not like having tech that's you know, competent, you're able to identify other systemic issues with the system. For example, this drain field is compromised. Like do you know, kind of do a test to see how low Test.

[Chad]

Yeah, yeah.

[Kyle]

And those jobs will range from well you. What were you selling back and then.

[Chad]

So back then I was like no knowing anything. I found a subcontractor in my area. Very competent guys. Third generation septic. A lot of, A lot of the guys like I gotta have all the talent in house. And septic, not so much because a lot of these guys are freelancers and they're always looking for more work. Even if they work for a company that company is not the best. Elite generation. And septic, you know that. I've watched all your episodes.

[John Wilson]

Septic is like wild.

[Chad]

It's how no advertising it is how

[John Wilson]

it's like unbelievably easy.

[Kyle]

Especially when compared to plumbing and H vac.

[Chad]

And answer your phone.

[Kyle]

You're playing in the big. I know that it's disgusting.

[Chad]

Literally in septic. Just answer your phone.

[Kyle]

It's.

[John Wilson]

It's so annoying. I shadow highest roi.

[Chad]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

For Google Ads ever has been septic freaking service.

[Kyle]

Amen.

[John Wilson]

Like it's just. It's so dumb. It's so annoying.

[Kyle]

We're paying $10 roughly a click in our region. We're in Austin. We're selling these high ticket items.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

And then if you compare that to roofing industry, you're like 5x plus on, on that side plumbing h vac. But then the other thing is this is an emergency response. A lot of times it's like red light. Who's going to be the first to answer the call? And when you were your shadow shopping, what percentage of people even answered the phone on the first time that you're.

[Chad]

So I did a 60 mile radius. I put a spot on the map in Austin. I do a 60 mile radius. There's probably 100 independent operators out there. Right.

[John Wilson]

It is pretty wild how fragmented.

[Chad]

Yeah, but it's fragmented. Right. And then you have anything ranging from super professional companies, like 300 five star reviews to like a company with like seven five star views. But like those guys do really well on revenue side. But I called all 100 of them. Yeah, every single one of them. I recorded most all their calls. 90% of them close to 90 didn't answer on the first, the first time I called. Oh yeah, the same. I would say 80% of them didn't call me back until the next day. Day. And then 50% of them didn't call me back until three days later.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Chad]

And I was like, all we got to do is answer the phone to

[Kyle]

the phone, make money.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Chad]

And, and the key to our success is obviously I have a sales background. Chad has a sales background. We have a general manager now who's a killer on the phone. This is a one call close. You have, you have one chance to make a first impression on the phone in septic for, for our thing. And can we disclose closing percentage numbers and ranges?

[Kyle]

Ranges.

[Chad]

Yeah, ranges.

[Kyle]

Kyle is an assassin, so he's like an anomaly.

[Chad]

If you grow, you can selling them

[John Wilson]

on the phone on the first ring

[Chad]

and getting that septic truck out there the same day. Your speed to revenue is less than a day and you can accept payment

[John Wilson]

right there at the door.

[Kyle]

And 80% close rate is what we've 80 to 90. Yeah, I mean Kyle hits the 90 plus when he talks, but he's also like you, just a gregarious person on the phone. I will compliment your organization because what we did coming into here, it's like let's shadow shop John's company and see how it is. And Pam asked me like, how can I make you smile today? And like I kind of smiled just in hearing that, which took a conversation which was you typically a robotic conversation. And then now my body language is changing physically and I come in happier as a customer and I've created like this emotional, positive connection with your brand. And so it's like small little things that your organization's doing well and we get a tour from, you know, the other John over here, assistant at the door and the tour you have your brand values. Is it, is it what Is the acronym again?

[John Wilson]

Is it Build Bad Betterment, Accountability to Work Transparency. Okay.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[Chad]

And then just. Just how your floor is laid out too. Like you have a review wall.

[Kyle]

The reviews all is legit.

[Chad]

You have your.

[John Wilson]

You have 110ft. There's three review walls.

[Kyle]

Oh, really?

[John Wilson]

110ft?

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

Next one's like 60, 70. But it is kind of fun. I think we're at 6,000 reviews or something. Yeah, it's kind of crazy.

[Kyle]

Yeah, you have.

[Chad]

You guys are killing.

[Kyle]

You're crushing.

[John Wilson]

You're crushing, man.

[Chad]

So kudos to you. Yeah.

[Kyle]

I can go briefly into my background because the other thing that Kyle and I have is the fact that we're brother in laws and so.

[John Wilson]

Okay.

[Kyle]

Well, sometimes we accidentally say our wives are mar. They're like, this is the most polygamous business I've ever come across.

[John Wilson]

Texas.

[Kyle]

Contemplated compounds. I've known his wife like five times longer than he has. She was 13. Yeah. So my wife and I have been together for 18 years. Not married all of those. But yeah, so they're. They're sisters. And then he's just doing all these, like, you know, unique things, getting brought into the family. We have. We have Latina wives. And so, like, there's an initiation process. And so I'm like, sure, all right, white boy, you're on your own from this process. Like, I'm not going to be able to help you too much and that. And. And he passed all the tests. And then we're like, okay, let's start like talking shop. And he started going down this acquisition process and rewinded my career.

[John Wilson]

I came out of college for Septic.

[Kyle]

For. For. Yeah, for septic. And so he went down. And so I was kind of brought in through barbecue conversation at the outset because I worked investment banking out of school. I was a minion analyst. I was. Was dumb enough to do my third year as an analyst, though, which kind of like gave me the ability to start skipping the MBA programs and looking at private equity, venture capital. So I went really far down the process with Andreessen Horowitz, which is like in my world, it's like, you know, technology luminaire. And this is very beginning of when they were getting started. And so I had that as an option. I had Dollar Shave Club that was moonlighting. One of my VPs, my bosses at that point in time, her husband's coming out as a number two guy there. Dollar Shave Club. They ended up getting acquired four years after that for a billion dollars by Unilever. Been employee number Three. My dad, Midwestern gentleman, conservative gentleman. I was talking about this razor blade of a month subscription, commerce. He goes, that's ridiculous. And I'm like, all right, fine. So I parlayed that into option number three, because I get down this path with Andreessen Horowitz. Andreessen Horowitz, the guy who was going to be the person I was replacing. He was like, hey, man, you sound like really entrepreneurial into this whole thing with Dollar shave Club. And you got all these ideas and all like, go now, because you don't have kids yet. You're not one of those crazy 25 year olds who has started their family already, but you're going to be in a very different risk profile a couple years down the road when you're actually looking. Because there is no partner path here. Partner path is go out and start a billion dollar empire and then you get to come back and you know you've earned your seat at that table. And so that was where I decided to take door number three, which was kind of an entrepreneurial path by way of really just doing marketing. Because I had done the investment banking thing. I kind of done this go to market strategy with Dollar Shave Club. And so started off with a slew of companies that were coming out of the shark tank. We were polishing up for beyond the Tank. That went into a book that I

[John Wilson]

wrote called Literally Shark Tank.

[Kyle]

Literally Shark Tank. Okay. The way in which I encounter this. My wife worked at a building. There was some signs across the road about they were filming for something. It was in L. A. And they're always filming for something. And so ask the mailman who just delivered mail there, what are they filming for? Like the shark tank. Cold emailed them, said, I'll do a bunch of work for free. Some guy from the university of spoiled children, usc, which in that neck of the woods is like a good notable, notable school. And they're like, we'll take your free labor. And the kind of. It's a mutually understood exchange that if I don't suck, they get to promote me to their little Facebook group of people been on the show. And so that worked well. Turned into a half dozen clients that started paying me. It ended up being super dramatic and like, crazy. Like, there's people who are filtered for television. So, like, people are like, oh, yeah, kind of crazy. I can say this now a little bit. But, like, I got like taken to this, like, dark corner in a back office between the husband and the wife. The husband's like, we're getting a Divorce. And how much do you think this company is worth? Because my wife and I'm like, wait a second. Like, why are you pulling me dark corner and tell me this? And why should I have, like, anything that's going to be related to this? So, long story short, we get into this path, wrote a book, worked with, you know, grew this company called Deviate Labs. Now I have clients like. Like Harvard University, GoDaddy, big, big entities. And so as Kyle got down this acquisition process, I get brought on board with an understanding of brand finance. And then he just like, full send on a. On a truck.

[Chad]

I bought it before we even had the conversation, what's this truck?

[Kyle]

And. And it worked out fabulously well. We talked about that revenue ramp. And then during that, we just landed brand. And, you know, having something that gave confidence to the endeavor that we were going down, this brand, we come bearing gifts for you.

[John Wilson]

Oh, really? We've created, like, crank that real quick.

[Kyle]

This is septic shock. Epic septic shocks.

[John Wilson]

That's funny.

[Kyle]

So we have our own energy drink that we created.

[Chad]

Why not open it? Here you go.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

The flavor is green.

[John Wilson]

Yeah. Cheers.

[Kyle]

Cheers. From one septic entrepreneur to another. Yeah, but, oh, mine's fizzing like crazy here. It might sound pretty good. It might be room temperature.

[John Wilson]

I'm good. I'm good with it.

[Chad]

The flavor is green. I still don't know what the flavor is.

[Kyle]

It's inspired by OG Surge is kind of like. I don't know if you're a little bit younger than I. I don't know if you had Surge back in the day, but I may need to drink some.

[John Wilson]

Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely frothy, but I'm having a good time.

[Kyle]

And so brand is something that we've started to build the beginnings of a lifestyle brand around the septic world, which is, like, the weirdest thing you could possibly conceive of, but I actually feel

[John Wilson]

like it kind of resonates 100% well with that, like, my joke. I've said this probably a hundred times on the show, and this is why I'm profane on Apple podcast. This is why I'm explicit content. I'm a plumber. But. But. So I've said that, like, so many times on the show where we, you know, we have these agreements with some of these, like, commercial clients.

[Kyle]

Yep.

[John Wilson]

Where it's like five grand every Friday. And I'm like, you could just retire. Like, that could just be your life. 105 grand every week is a good business.

[Kyle]

Yes.

[John Wilson]

And that is two Hours a week.

[Kyle]

Yes.

[John Wilson]

Like it is kind of a crazy lifestyle business.

[Kyle]

Yes.

[John Wilson]

But yeah, my joke, and I'm sure I've said on the show a million times is like if I ever retire, I'm probably just gonna like pump subjects and just like one client because it's like kind of ridiculous. Yeah.

[Kyle]

And you got to like, you know, work hard to get lucky and you've now created your own luck and opportunity.

[John Wilson]

I did buy that business for like seven figures.

[Kyle]

Okay. Yeah.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

I mean you're an empire builder, John. I think the things that you've accomplished at a very young age, like to be 34, to be able to do what you've done and then build a media company. Yeah. Good team. Yeah. And like the team that is able to bring media into the world. I have a lot of appreciation for what you've built. And this is where we talked about the smile and this visceral feeling. Like this is something for us. Now we have a flavor of our company. And if you look at like brand like being able to grab onto this different surface areas. The lifestyle brand as I was mentioning, like we have the ability to go in as a franchise organization which we haven't even talked about all that much.

[Chad]

Which I was going to say like I know this, this episode is about franchise. I know you probably have a lot of questions for us. I have to answer room. But.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

Yeah. But this is where we can make money oddly from energy drinks which becomes an accretive marketing channel for us. Like we're monetizing our brand and sell these. We've start. We got inbound inquiries from our conference.

[Chad]

We'll send you a bunch of free boxes for your office.

[John Wilson]

That's hilarious. How much do you sell these?

[Kyle]

Well, is it four bucks is what we're doing.

[John Wilson]

Where. Where do you.

[Kyle]

Online is what we're. Yeah.

[John Wilson]

Oh my God. We joke.

[Kyle]

It's not officially a drink in California. We actually. It's white labeled. You can totally drink it there. But we have.

[Chad]

But it's not contained. Keto paleo, 5 calories, 12 electrolytes. Does not contain poop.

[John Wilson]

Does not contain poop.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

I'm dying.

[Kyle]

Talk about your. Your raw power story with like this is where we realize like this could actually be a thing.

[Chad]

Yeah. So. So Seneca is my personal trainer. He's a two time world champion Olympic lifter. Seneca yoked as fuck.

[John Wilson]

Yes. He's.

[Chad]

He's like. He's so big. That sound of weird. Cut that out. He's so big. Oh my God. No, he's hey, he's like, dude, like, I love your brand. Whatever's like, hey, funny story. You're the first person that's gonna taste this. Let me know, because he. He has like, you know, those bro gems, like the powerlifting gyms? Like, yeah, I went to the.

[John Wilson]

There's one like a thousand feet.

[Chad]

The kettlebell gym. Oh, yeah, whatever. It was like, bro gym, whatever. But he has all these, like, Jack 3D, you know, type energy drinks. I'm like, dude, try this. I gave him a whole box, like 24. Sold out in three hours. Everybody bought it.

[John Wilson]

I was like, oh, hilarious.

[Kyle]

It's hilarious.

[John Wilson]

Yeah. And.

[Chad]

And. But we took it to the Wet show, which is our industry's biggest trade show, and that we bought 500.

[John Wilson]

If anybody wants to Google, it's WWET.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Chad]

WWET. Yeah. Which is the wet show. And we bought 500 of them and they're all gone.

[Kyle]

Which. The wet show. Again, like, I'm. I'm. I'm being self promotional here, but I'm proud of this particular. So this is Pumper magazine, which is the guys that put on the Wet Show. Yeah. That photo is smoke grenades that we put at Twilight with us holding hoses and brand new suits. My first time wearing a cowboy hat to be able. Because I'm from Minnesota originally.

[John Wilson]

We'll put this onto the YouTube.

[Kyle]

Okay.

[John Wilson]

Yeah. This is like YouTube.

[Kyle]

The YouTubes. Yeah. So like the. The brand has legs. And I think that's where.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

You know, I look at owned and operated now. You have Jack is another property under your umbrella here, which I didn't realize. Like the Jack connect. I don't know why I didn't realize that immediately, but you've done a good job of brand, and it's hard to quantify brand, but we've quantified it, and that's something that I know I've talked too much and I'll be. Turn the floor back over to Kyle. There's a comment that you have in your video. You're anti truck rap. And I think that's something that there's probably more perspective. Okay.

[John Wilson]

But.

[Kyle]

But actually give your perspective on the anti traffic.

[Chad]

I want to hear it.

[John Wilson]

Okay.

[Chad]

I really want to hear it.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

All right.

[Kyle]

Here's this opportunity.

[John Wilson]

Here's. Here's my beef.

[Kyle]

Yes.

[John Wilson]

And there's a whole episode. And really, I. You know, if you're listening to this and you listen to that episode, I want to apologize for everything that I say. People agree with you in that episode. Yeah, there's a few episodes not A month, but like a quarter probably where, like, I'm like, I shouldn't. You should do.

[Chad]

You should do once a month a public apology for all the stuff that you said.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, it's pretty. It's pretty rough.

[Kyle]

John's reparation podcast episode, it's pretty rough.

[John Wilson]

So. So this one, the issue that I had is someone told me so, like, brand in general, very pro.

[Kyle]

Sure.

[John Wilson]

I'm excited about brand. I think it makes sense. I think it adds a ton of value. It's added a ton of value for us.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

So, like, no argument on brand at all. I have an issue with the way that our industry goes about brand and the exact thing I say. And you know, I'm gonna distill 30 minutes ranting down into like one minute. I. Paying 30 to 50 grand for a branding package that looks exactly like every other competitors. I think is ridiculous.

[Kyle]

Agreed.

[John Wilson]

And you know, like, I feel like. And it was awful because we. I. We do this, like, I do this episode where I just like, rip and for the Internet, like, and then like, immediately after that, we're hosting an event next door with like 15 people.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

And somebody walks over like, hey, man, I heard you have an opinion on truck reps. I. I just paid 30 grand for mine. I'm like,

[Chad]

van Wrap. So you like, like Rooter Heroes. Like, you have like a guy on the side of your truck.

[John Wilson]

Yeah. It's always the same. There, There's a guy, there's a dog.

[Chad]

But we. We did the exact opposite.

[John Wilson]

Yeah. No, you just. From what I saw, that. That looks pretty good. But that's my issue with the brand. The truck wraps is like, there's a guy in my market. And I use this as an example. He probably paid 50 grand for his branding package. It looks exactly like mine, and it was by the same company. So I'm like, you paid the same company that I paid for a decade ago and you Pa grand.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

To match my colors and have a little mini guy that looks like mine. Yeah. Like, what. What was the point of all.

[Chad]

Have you. Have you ever quantified?

[Kyle]

Can you.

[Chad]

So can you. Have.

[Kyle]

You do.

[Chad]

So that you track metrics, right?

[John Wilson]

Like, yeah, quantifiable. I know.

[Chad]

So how often do people say, I saw your van in the neighborhood. I want you to come out

[John Wilson]

that. I don't know. We measure it by organic search.

[Kyle]

Okay, got it. And he's a monster entity. And that's where. But we have these numbers. Give him the number.

[Chad]

So, so, okay, we're like, okay, we're looking at all the septic trucks in our. In our neighborhood. All of them are tin can. Right. Plane or they have a sticker on the side or something. Basic lettering. Which is totally fine. When you have a. When you have a brand like Wilson, you don't. You don't need to. You don't need to flex. Right. But we're like, look at this Lamar Advertisement Sign.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Chad]

$3,000 a month just to put a big billboard that everybody drives by. Nobody looks at it. How do we. So, but then we have this $250,000 septic truck. That's massive. Yeah, let's turn that into a rolling billboard.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Chad]

I pass tens of thousands of people on the road every single day. 20 to 25% of our inbound traffic comes from. And we quantify this every single time we ask comes from people seeing our truck in the neighborhood on the road.

[John Wilson]

That's interesting.

[Chad]

20 to 25.

[Kyle]

We have children that will run down after the septic because it looks like something out of a marble. We were playing

[Chad]

our pumper. So when I started, I would gain a neighborhood.

[John Wilson]

That's actually a. A funny idea.

[Kyle]

Fart noise on our far noise.

[Chad]

So I would. I would drive the truck in the neighborhood and I'd pump a neighbor and the other neighbor would come over, be like, hey, can you pump me?

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[Chad]

Or the kid would come. I was like, daddy, look at that truck. He was like, hey man, how much do you charge? Like one day I know this isn't a lie. I did a pump and then literally went to go dump. And I sold two more while I was out there at the same thing. I turned that 750 job to a 2,400 day.

[Kyle]

You're without even have to knock.

[John Wilson]

That's pretty solid.

[Kyle]

So 20, 25% is what we've observed in interest in the truck itself. And so those numbers change when you get to scale and you have other channels and then it's a whole measuring game. But we had a microcosm where we were able to actually quantify brand.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, that's interesting. So what do you think? How much does a wrap cost on a.4 grand? Yeah, that's not that bad.

[Kyle]

It's not bad.

[Chad]

We. We have, we have. We use graphics guys. Shout out graphics guys. And Austin, they do a really great job. And 50 grand, I was gonna say is ridiculous.

[Kyle]

Well, that's the brand package. But also that's, you know. Yeah, that's a non trivial.

[John Wilson]

Is unique. Yeah. I have no issue.

[Chad]

Sure.

[John Wilson]

It's. It's the. There's Copy. There's literally a Wilson Plumbing heating and cooling in Texas. I might be Austin or I found. Yeah, same branding package from this like it is literally what I paid for.

[Kyle]

Cease and desist what I built. Yeah.

[John Wilson]

And they're fucking in Texas. We met them at a conference and they have like my logo on their hat and we're like with like the little plumbing. Did you trademark who are you?

[Kyle]

I am, I am your God shop.

[John Wilson]

No, it was, it was ridiculous. So yeah, that's the beef I have is.

[Chad]

Okay, that makes sense. That's fair.

[Kyle]

It. Yeah. So what we understand and understand because. But the thing is you're the incumbent. You're the 800 pound gorilla and people are trying to emulate success. But if you're the upstart who's coming in to disrupt, you have to take the road less traveled. And that's where if you're going to embrace brand like we have a competitor. They were really into the environmental and everyone thinks dolphins and clover leaves and rainbows, it's the environment. But this is really just like a, you know, a sanitary way of talking about the sepic industry. But instead of trying to be sanitary and polite, like let's embrace it. A bumper of our truck says we ain't hauling chocolate milk. That's like what people have left.

[John Wilson]

I've seen a lot of memes on the back.

[Kyle]

Oh, it's so good. Good.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Chad]

But I, I, I want to, I want to get in. So every single episode that I've.

[John Wilson]

I think a septic Pumper owns poop.com.

[Kyle]

poop.com.

[John Wilson]

I saw that on Expensive Domain.

[Chad]

Oh, he's probably. You can retire if he just sells it. I've watched a lot of your episodes, John. You know, I know, I know you probably have a lot of questions for us.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[Chad]

Like getting to the numbers and you know, you preface this video of billion dollar septic industry.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[Chad]

I'm sure you have a lot of questions for us on how we plan to get there. Maybe, maybe not. The $100 million. Our show was really enticing to us. I still think that's like a very attainable number if you just do the numbers. Yeah.

[John Wilson]

Do you know how big Wind river is? I actually don't know.

[Chad]

1 to 300 million is what Chad DBT says. But they have 50. Well, I think there's 75 roll ups.

[Kyle]

No, it's 80 is what I heard.

[Chad]

80.

[Kyle]

Yeah, yeah. And they include some dumpster piece or

[John Wilson]

3 million a piece.

[Kyle]

I think they have like a handful or maybe 2 handfuls of dump stations that they've included infrastructure now. Yeah.

[Chad]

On the back of it.

[Kyle]

But to your comment, like it's not. If you have 80 plus, like it's. It's 2 million. Yeah. You get there really quick. Quickly. But the specific comp comment in one of the videos that you talked that you have septic, someone says, nice intro. This is Patrick Sears 163. But you never actually talk about how to scale to 100 million. What did that look like? These are good questions. How many trucks, how many employees? Back office requirements, how big of a service area? Since septics are mostly rural, that's a lot of square miles. Like maybe the last comment is everyone thinks rural when they think septic. But there's also lift stations, there's also grease traps. Traps and all these things that can happen in the suburb.

[John Wilson]

And we're not at all.

[Kyle]

Yeah. And the infrastructure is not going to be. You're not going to run city sewer anymore. And it gets expensive even to hook it up. Like septic is septic to septic. And it's like one of every three homes in America.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

So it's like a significant quantity. But to get to that, a hundred million. I think in, in our instance, we're talking about getting to 1 billion. Do you want to unpack the billion?

[Chad]

You can do that.

[Kyle]

Okay, so you're a numbers guy. Yeah. So I mean like when we're talking a billion, we're talking enterprise value. So if we're going to back into what is a million dollars worth of enterprise value, if you could truly build a national brand in this industry, you're looking at probably a 20x multiple on this. And so this is something where that would be an EBITDA multiple, like profit, let's just call it. And so out of that, you're looking at how do, how do I get to like a number that's not insane. We're talking like $50 million of EBITDA. And when you do you have your videos, you're talking about after all the admin, like so your gross margins, like you can run 70% on the pumping side and then you have your big repairs or maybe you know, the lower margin work that you're doing on like the install. Oh, let's just say you're running 20% net profit. So you're going to say 20%. Okay, I'm going to multiply my 50 million by five. So I need to get to a quarter billion dollars, 250 million in revenue. Now how are we going to do

[John Wilson]

that you actually think you need that much.

[Kyle]

I don't think you need that much. We know some people in their multiples and what they're going to get. Like you're. If you would ever. Not that you would ever sell Wilson, you're going to command a super premium multiple because you're an institution and when you go to Google you're a thousand and you're number one. And your Google is informing all the generative answer engine AI you know, voice like. Like you have a behemoth. People will pay a premium for that. So if. If we're looking at each location, I

[John Wilson]

just mean like sorry. Just to unpack the P a little bit more.

[Kyle]

Yep.

[John Wilson]

I don't think you need that much revenue.

[Kyle]

Oh and revenue.

[John Wilson]

So. So something we've learned this year and that's been kind of interesting. So we went from one. We had. We ran multiple locations back in like four or five years ago and then we merged them all into this one. And then this year we're like hold my beer. Yeah, hold my. Hold my. So so we went from one to. We'll have. Have four locations at the end of.

[Chad]

Congratulations.

[John Wilson]

But like that start. The first one was January 1st.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

So we. And what has been wild is the. It I guess depends on how much you guys centralize because you're a franchise. So maybe you can't centralize as much.

[Kyle]

We can do a lot of back office for folks.

[John Wilson]

Okay. And so because the centralizing like I think 20% probably ends up being like 40% I would imagine.

[Kyle]

Yeah. After centralized from your mouth to God's ear is like we got to be careful on the multiple like the profit that we. We talk about just because we're regulated by ftc.

[John Wilson]

So like I'll give like just my quick how it worked for us because I would imagine it would work the same.

[Kyle]

Yep.

[John Wilson]

So we went from one location to again we're about to close on our fourth one and it's three states and then we've centralized most of their. We basically deleted their overhead which I know like, obviously it's going to be independent operators. So like a different thing for you guys. But net double and like overhead as a percentage of revenue went from like 34, which is like already pretty tight.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

So like we're in the high twenties inclusive of marketing.

[Chad]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

And like that's 5% swing is millions of dollars.

[Chad]

What was the biggest number like of that. Of that 5%. What was the things that you cut? What was. What was the makeup?

[John Wilson]

Well, part of it was like A big focus on gross profit. So our gross profit went like, raise your prices. We raised prices, but we also focused on higher profit, like jobs units. So like rest. We have a restoration department and that's a 75, 80 gross margin.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

So like. Okay, well, can we do more of that septic? Can we do more of that? Can we go bring on the next driver? Can we add another shift? What was the other ones like? Sewer replacement, which is a little bit tangential here.

[Kyle]

Jetting and all the other things associated and then.

[John Wilson]

But like less on H Vac, because H Vac, like if you're best in class H Vac, you're like 51. 52% gross profit.

[Kyle]

Yeah, yeah.

[John Wilson]

If you're best in class septic, you're 80. So like it's like, okay, well how do we just maximize gross margin and hit harder? So that was a big part of what happened. And then we centralized call center dispatch. Yeah. Accounting marketing. I mean we centralized a lot in a very short amount of time. So these branches, they're like 2 to $3 million revenue branches. Wow. They went from having a 45% cost structure to a 10% cost structure, like overnight.

[Kyle]

Phenomenal.

[John Wilson]

It was. Is wild.

[Kyle]

Can I ask a question about your operation? Are you running these 24 by sevens or how does your work hours for septic? Yeah, well, let's say septic. Yeah. Or broader, but yeah.

[John Wilson]

No, not 24. Seven. Like we have like AI phones picking up. We have. Yeah.

[Kyle]

Well, the one thing that we observed when Kyle was getting behind the wheel is the nights and weekends. Your comp. Your competitive landscape is already a bunch of hooligans that are out there. But if you're going to do the nights and the weekends, your competitive landscape is like nothing because no one is willing to work.

[Chad]

And you can rotate drivers every alternate nights and weekends. Weekends. So you have a roster of drivers and we command. We. I mean we charge 350 for an emergency fee. Weekend fee. So that 750 ticket turns into a thousand. I mean, should we talk about average ticket price?

[Kyle]

So yeah, for Austin.

[Chad]

So. So for pump outs. Right. So the goal for every time we step on the house is $1,000 or more.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

Okay. The average. A thousand and change. Average customer value for our, you know, stub. Stub year of 2025.

[John Wilson]

Do you have now you said that's Austin. Have you looked into like. Like my example here is 260 is a lot.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

For like where we're pumping. Which to me is hard to believe because everyone else I talk to anywhere else in the US it's like five

[Kyle]

might be the lowest in the US

[Chad]

So a lot of. A lot of, A lot of. So what we've observed is in certain regions, because we've done a lot of national research, obviously we have a compliance team that goes into these different markets, does a lot of research, reverse engineers it, licensure. Hey, what do we need to break into that market? What we found is that there's. It's a good old boys network and a lot of them are price fix. They'll say, hey, they agree on price. Agree on price. Not price. That's a bad word. Yeah, they agree on price. Like, hey man, like we all need to make more money. There's plenty of work out there. Hey, you're here. Let's all be here and let the best man win. If that hasn't happened here, it probably should because like no, it definitely does. Okay.

[John Wilson]

Landed on 260.

[Kyle]

That's.

[Chad]

That's crazy.

[Kyle]

Lead the charge, John. You're like you.

[John Wilson]

We do.

[Chad]

You do? Yeah.

[John Wilson]

We're the most expensive. Time out.

[Chad]

It's 260. 260 up to.

[John Wilson]

We were competing against 180.

[Chad]

Yeah. So but if you look at the economics, if you look at the. So I've watched your video and 260, it blows my mind.

[Kyle]

Still 70 gross margin.

[Chad]

That's insane to me. Let me.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[Chad]

Wow. Yeah.

[Kyle]

Well, and then how. You have systems that are also well over a thousand. So you get that 1500 aerobic system. I don't know how big aerobic is in your particular service area.

[John Wilson]

Pump ticket is probably in the fours. Yeah, yeah. Because like 2000 gallons or 1500 and you do.

[Chad]

So it's a high volume game for you.

[John Wilson]

For us, it has to be.

[Chad]

It has to be.

[John Wilson]

It has to be volume.

[Kyle]

And you get route density.

[John Wilson]

And you get route density. We have to like map it. And that's why, you know, someone commented on the same video like, hey, you know who's getting eight? Yeah, it's like, well, we kind of have to get it.

[Kyle]

Yeah, we get three to four.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, yeah. And if we could do 700, that'd be awesome. Yeah. But yeah, no, we, we are Currently, I think 15 ahead because we're always like, yeah, there is a good old boys club. I don't know that, like, I don't know if it's price fixing or what, what you call. But everyone knows what they all charge. Like we're all kind of friends with each other.

[Chad]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

Yeah. And then we just be 15 bucks more expensive. Yeah.

[Chad]

Well, you, you have the brand to command a higher price. That's the thing. So when, if I'm a homeowner and this is something that we've observed, like I1, I want to feel that the job's getting done right and if I have like, you know, a brand that does, it's not as polished online or they don't answer the phone or they show up, they're super unprofessional.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[Chad]

I think I'm getting taken advantage of. Just put, I'm putting myself in the customer.

[Kyle]

Going to someone's home. Personal experience.

[Chad]

That so, so we can, we can command a higher price. Because number one, again, education is so important. We every single one. Sales reps, every single one of our technicians have a process. They, they show up to the home. The first thing they do when they go to the house, they knock on the door and they introduce themselves. Hi, my name is Thomas. I'm going to be taking care of you today. Do you mind walking over to the septic tank with me? I'm going to give you a crash course on what type of system you have and what I'm going to do today. I'm going to tell you, I'm going to take before and after photos and after we're done, it puts a better PDF, send it to them and I have for the records and people love that. And they'll pay a premium for professionalism. And also just like you being awesome

[Kyle]

at what you do and your emergency response business in many ways where it's

[John Wilson]

like people are coming run septic that way. I don't think we optimize septic. And I've, I've said this a lot. Like there's probably so much more doing.

[Kyle]

Yes.

[John Wilson]

And the problem is it's like if it ain't broken a month, so it just gets overlooked. Yeah. Because the rest of the business, like it's higher.

[Chad]

Way higher.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[Chad]

It's a small. But I really do think, like, if you got into the week, we know

[John Wilson]

there's so much to. And it's almost like annoying. You look at it, you're like, God, we could do.

[Chad]

Well, let me, let me ask this on the septic side because I'm very curious. Right.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Chad]

Do you just do pumping?

[John Wilson]

We stopped doing replacements.

[Kyle]

Okay.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Chad]

So no installs.

[John Wilson]

No. Now it would be an easy we. So we stopped doing it a couple years ago. I think for like the independent operator, they should be doing installs.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

I think that we ended up up not doing Them for like a variety of reasons.

[Chad]

It's general construction. It's a, it's time and it's time.

[John Wilson]

It takes like our business permitting, our business is built to do like we're going to do $40 million this year of like same day next day.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

And septic is like 30 to 45 days of permitting and approvals and we are just not designed.

[Chad]

So let me.

[John Wilson]

So but like the independent operators year on a million of pumping, you can probably do a million to 2 million of replacements. Like it is real.

[Chad]

So replacements. Replacements is okay. So you know there's, there's like three or like sometimes four buckets. I say you have pumping, maintenance, repairs, installs and then real estate for resale inspections is. He's where we're at.

[Kyle]

Totally.

[Chad]

Yeah. The majority of our income outside of pumping comes from same day repairs and maintenance.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[Chad]

So you asked me a question. So like with LPD systems, low pressure dosage systems, I don't know if they're out here. It's sometimes a regional but, but the lines get clogged. So if you don't maintenance your pump, all that sludge gets sucked up into your pump out to the drain and you have to, you have to jet it. We start at $5,000 a jet and people pay it because if you don't do it, your whole system's going to get told you now you're going to pay 30 grand for a new system

[Kyle]

or God forbid it backs up into your house. Very, very expensive.

[Chad]

But those, those jobs are super quick to do. So in and out in a day. Honestly, like we're building on the install side. It's kind of like its own business. It's like very project management install. It's like. But the day to day is emergency response. Pumping is lead generation for maintenance and repair. Maintenance, repairs, lead generation for pumping. There they go hand in hand. And if you're not. So for us, I'm saying you're not doing this but your technician. We train all our technicians to do a diagnostic inspection and identify and a lot of them are trained to do pump replacements same day we have, we stock our trucks. We have a big storage compartment on them with two or three grinder pumps and 1600 grinder pump at 1550 margin. It takes 20 minutes to replace.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Chad]

That's super easy money. And you being a plumber, you probably know that. Yeah.

[Kyle]

But just to summarize that one thing that I'll talk about as a revenue secret is jetting. That's been a significant driver all our

[Chad]

Trucks have jetters on.

[Kyle]

Because you're not. This is a high margin, low labor. Like, this is a. It's. It's all the beautiful things that you would want. Yeah.

[John Wilson]

Well, I think in general, like drains is sort of this incredible. Yeah. Section of.

[Chad]

Of.

[Kyle]

Yeah. Sewer lines.

[Chad]

So that's where the franchise.

[Kyle]

Zoom.

[Chad]

Drain or Ruderman.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[Chad]

That's their whole business model is jetting out.

[Kyle]

Yeah. You can build a monster in that region.

[Chad]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

On the subject of. I want to make sure that we still answer the question from our man.

[John Wilson]

Well, there was this, I think 100 million revenues. It's.

[Kyle]

I think could derive that enterprise value of a billion from your vantage point and acknowledge a multiple.

[John Wilson]

I. I don't know about that, but I do. I think if the question was like, how do you get to 100 million in revenue? Like, okay, that's 30 branches at 3 million a piece. And you centralize as much as possible. Like. Yep. That doesn't feel that crazy to me.

[Kyle]

It does not. Yeah.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

And you would be the guy to be able to say that because you're doing that with. Congrats on the third. Third state, right? Yeah. Which third is this? Which state is the new one? Are you allowed to disclose? Okay. It's a future episode.

[Chad]

It's actually Wilson. Yeah.

[John Wilson]

Let's get. Yeah. I. I actually have tried to pitch and in a like a rollup idea I had. Yeah. That never went anywhere. But I did try to reach. Reach out to a few people. Was literally just buying other Wilson plumbings.

[Chad]

How many?

[John Wilson]

There's a lot of them. Oh, wow. Oh, yeah. There's one in Columbus, there's one in Michigan. And I was like, let's just. I won't even have to change the brand.

[Chad]

This is gonna be awesome.

[Kyle]

You should put that out into the universe. Cuz some guys are gonna come back at.

[John Wilson]

Hey, I'm actually looking to sell. If you own a Wilson Plumber, I would love to buy.

[Kyle]

Well, can I pitch you another Wilson idea? I was pitching your colleague over here, the other John on. So for us, like we talked about this lifestyle brand that we're oddly building. You're drinking the brand right now. We use Wrangler for jeans. So we're in conversation with Wrangler Wrangler. You can buy them at Walmart. We. These are kind of a stretchy little thing. We can get them for like $34. But when we get into big brand mode, we're buying like thousands of these things.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

Why not Wilson Athletics? Could your merch be Wilson? And you Kind of. You could create aura off of this Wilson Association. Has that been a conversation or a thought or anything?

[John Wilson]

It was like a. It was a fake thought for a minute. So like 10 years ago when we didn't have enough money to invest in like brand, we, I was like, babe, here's what we do. Yes, yes. We all need logoed hats.

[Kyle]

Yes.

[John Wilson]

Let's just go get the ones with the W, dude.

[Kyle]

Yes.

[John Wilson]

We did do that for like three years. That was our like logoed hat. Oh really?

[Kyle]

That's so great.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

Because your cost on. That's very.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, it was 10 bucks. It's time again for our breaking fire five workshop. This is the fifth time we've done it and we've had over 130 contractors go through this cohort. If you're hovering between 1 and 5 million of revenue and you're feeling stuck, then you're not alone. I know the hesitation. Can I really step away from my business for three days? Is the workshop actually going to be worth it? Is it too h vac specific? Well, here's the truth. Breaking five isn't a big conference. It's 25 to 30 operators in a small room. It's highly taxable, practical. There's no rah rah nonsense. You'll be alongside myself and Jack Carr at my home service business in Akron seeing the actual systems behind accounting call center dispatch service. Install the real bottlenecks. You're going to work alongside other operators at your exact stage to build a plan that you implement the second you get home. The networking alone is worth it and the clarity is game changing. 3 days limited to 36 seats. If you're serious about breaking through the 5 million dollar wall, grab your ticket for 500 off at owned and operated.com with code breaking early bird or click the link below.

[Kyle]

These brands out there, like that brand association, they're going to put some media out there for you. And not that you need more media because you already have such a thing, but like it's aura. Like that you can be in the game at your scale, that third state of deriving aura and that's where these bigger brand endeavors and it's going to be. It's a cost, it's a line item that you're already spending. But to have that typ association. Or maybe it's Russell Wilson who you're co doing charity with. But your Wilson name has legs. Whether you put out the Universe acquisition,

[Chad]

all you need to do is tell the Cleveland Browns to bring Russell Wilson.

[Kyle]

Here we go. Yeah.

[Chad]

And you guys can have a brand deal.

[Kyle]

I had a client and this, this is another way you could drive media from it. Tiny little business it's called Scotty Vest was the business. It wasn't Scotty Best. Yeah, Scotty Vest, he was on the Shark Tank Tank. Great entrepreneur, just a master of stunt marketing. This guy put. Do you remember the Sky Mall magazine that you would see when you go flying? Yeah, yeah. There's a audience here on Tick Tock that's never heard of a magazine. But Sky Mall, they were in bankruptcy and this guy out went out there and issued a press release talking about how he's acquiring SkyMall. Yeah, SkyMall went for like, you know, it was a big, big organization, even though it was. But, but every single media outlet picked up this. Every guy everyone's talking about, who's this Scott Jordan guy who's going to be buying Scotty Vest. And it became this thing. And so it was in 24 hours, 40 media placements that he got there. And it was all because he was gonna. And so if you're to go, go out there and talk about bringing Russell Wilson for his hero tour here to like, there's, there's something that's provocative and interesting. And we talked about like, you're talking in SEO and you're talking about truck wraps and all these different things. The next frontier is like, how am I gonna look good in AI engine? Like, how do I show up first? First, the best proxy is what you're already doing on Google is going to be translated over there, but it also is factoring in these other breadcrumbs on the Internet that don't have that backlink style value. And what that is, is your podcast, like all the things that you're doing on YouTube and this media that you're going to get, even if it's just a conversation, you know, no longer have to be stressing about the backlink and AI. And this is like a winner takes all, because a lot of this is a voice response that you're getting from people. It's like, who am I going to get while talking to Siri? It's going to be the number one thing that shows up. And so. So you're going into an industry where a thousand winner take all markets are going to be existing and you're already winning and taking all. And that will continue, you know, to. Anyways, that's my high horse on brand and brand ideas. And I wanted to pitch you on the Wilson thing.

[John Wilson]

The Wilson thing is good. I like Both of them. I think that's pretty funny. I don't know enough about football, but I'm getting some context clues that he is a football player.

[Chad]

I was a football player. Now I'm just a washed up old dad.

[Kyle]

Oh, Kyle was. Yes.

[John Wilson]

No, no, I meant Rob. Russell.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

Russell Wilson. Oh yeah.

[Kyle]

Russell Wilson. Yeah.

[Chad]

Oh yeah.

[John Wilson]

Two time, literally, don't know.

[Chad]

Married to Sierra.

[Kyle]

Is he married to Sierra? Yeah, he's married Sierra.

[John Wilson]

Oh, okay.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[Chad]

What was that? I don't know what song it was.

[Kyle]

I don't know. Yeah, now we're getting out of our wheelhouse.

[Chad]

No, it's cool.

[John Wilson]

But so how are you like I'm trying to imagine. So how many locations are there now

[Kyle]

we're off to two.

[Chad]

Two corporate locations and again we're new to France but we plan to be off the. I mean we could say it this on the record. Yeah. So we're planning.

[Kyle]

Josh.

[Chad]

Yeah. We plan to be in 16 states by the end of this year.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[Chad]

So that's, that's, that's what's in pipeline right now. And then Josh. So Josh Cohen, who is the founder of Junk Luggers, he's a bigger. So he, he, he grew to 350 locations cross country, sold it for 100 million nine figure exit. 100 million nine figure exit. Yeah, yeah, whatever. Josh, watch.

[Kyle]

Sorry. But you're welcome.

[Chad]

You can text me later. Yeah, you're welcome. Very successful and we're like okay, we're new to franchising. We need somebody who has experience to go try to.

[Kyle]

We have John call poop.

[John Wilson]

That was a franchise.

[Chad]

Junk Luggers just Junk Luggers was his franchise.

[John Wilson]

Any of those non franchise.

[Chad]

Which ones?

[John Wilson]

The 100 franchises.

[Kyle]

Yes. It lends itself so beautifully to that.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Chad]

Because it was 1 800, God. Junk was the pioneer here and then junk Luggers followed and they just kind of carved his out but so he grew it exited. We're like man who understands what we're trying to do? Okay. Solid, solid waste to liquid waste. Okay.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Chad]

We got introduced to Joshua proxy of a franchise consultant and now he's going to be, he's going to be the, he's going to be the CEO of a franchise anyway.

[John Wilson]

Oh nice. Yeah.

[Kyle]

So he's, he's and financier.

[Chad]

Yeah. So he's, he's a big investor in our company and he brings not only just him but his whole team that, that was responsible for bringing junk luggers to that $100 million exit into our organization. So, so we, we're ready to go. We've built out so many systems and processes because here's the deal. You know this. So you know Ohio septic is from regulate regulatory licensure. It's Texas is very different than Ohio. Right. It's different state to state, but even county to county. So you have to have a centralized like compliance team to go to these markets and reverse engineer. Like how do you, how do you start these? Like yeah, some, some. Like all you need is a pump truck and register with a local dump station and a permit to dump and you're up and operational. Like in Alabama for example, you have to wait six months and go through a big licensing thing. With Wisconsin it's 100, it's 1200 hours just to be in the set. Yeah.

[John Wilson]

Being Ohio was a 45 minute open book online online.

[Chad]

So you want to hear Texas Texas is this so like okay, like plumbers, you have to do 10,000 hours to get your journeyman and whatever how many hours get your mask for? In Texas you take one course, it's three days long and then for, for septic for.

[John Wilson]

Okay.

[Chad]

So to get your installer one. So there. Okay, so there's installer calling and there's. So there's no license. So the only thing in, in, in. In pumping in Texas you just need to get your truck CDL permit your truck.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Chad]

And dump. There's no license requirement in Texas for pumping. I mean is it less, less stringent? The, the big regulatory TCEQ Texas Commission environmental quality. You take your level one installer test. Test which is three days and a test and then. But you also simultaneously you could take your basic maintenance provider test, be able to do maintenance. Those are, those are your, those are your bears entry. And then you can go be a license. You can go install, you can go work on pumps and then. But there's certain type of systems that fall under level one. In order to work on a level two system like an aerobic or these different types of systems, you have to be under the supervision of a level 2. But you can become a level 2 within a year if you through a certain path. But that's the highest level of licensure in Texas is. Is a year, year and a half of three day courses.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Chad]

Once every year.

[Kyle]

Way different than plumbing.

[Chad]

Way different than plumbing. And but guess what? The biggest issue that we find which is. Which is the bottleneck which is why we're investing big into education is transferring the knowledge that Uncle Joe's septic had to this generation because there, there, there Are very few legacy operators are giving it to their kids. And that knowledge is.

[Kyle]

Is the kids don't want them.

[Chad]

The kids don't want them.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[Chad]

But if you. It's. It's if. If somebody takes the reins for education to attract people from outside the industry to bring them inside, it gives them a skill set that sets them apart. That's not competing with Wilson Plumbing. They're so and so septic. And we give them a professional brand systems and processes. They're 95 of the way there and they're crushing.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

And there's two topics I want to make sure that we cover on this. One is how to diligence a territory which is. Will dovetail off that. And the other is like, why a franchise? Because I feel like it's a valuable unspoken thing. I've seen you have brokers that have come on before. I don't know if that gentleman was a friend of yours prior. But talking about like when you buy a business, build a business. Franchises is like hidden adjacent category. But diligence in just a dovetail. You're looking at septic density. County records can oftentimes do that. You're going to go and you're going to look at your dump stations. How much they cost? Is there, Are they at capacity already?

[Chad]

Do you have people even have a dump station?

[Kyle]

Yeah. Like proximity.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

And a lot of those people give you information because sometimes the counties are like freedom of information. What act I ain't giving you anything or I'm going to give you one location. I can't give you my entire database.

[John Wilson]

Counties are like the final boss.

[Kyle]

They are the final boss.

[John Wilson]

Most of blue collar.

[Kyle]

I like this.

[John Wilson]

It's kind of like sometimes I hear people like talking about the upcoming disruption and I'm like, honestly, good luck with the final boss. It is going to be Betty sue who requires a paper rented permit.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

And literally a cash in an envelope for that permit. Like pop off.

[Chad]

Yeah, pop off, dude. And guess what? It's. You almost have to politic your way to get the.

[John Wilson]

It's crazy. Yeah. You gotta go, you know, hey, nice. You gotta be on the board. We gotta do this. We have like strategies for specific municipalities because it's so ridiculous.

[Chad]

God.

[Kyle]

And so the dump stations will oftentimes give you that same information. For example, in Austin, how many registered trucks are dumping at the Austin wastewater station? It's 300 trucks every month are read there. And so we got can build a market, you know, model off of that. And then. And then thirdly, it's your competitors, like, you know, shadow shop the daylight, just like we were shadow shopping your Wilson conglomerate here. And that's where you're going to derive a lot of information on pricing. And then you can just figure out like, if there's a lot of competition and I can come in and I grab 5 or 10% market share, I win. Who cares about doing how many septic systems and all the other diligence. All I know is I can beat better than Joe Septic. Let's go. And so that was one topic that I wanted to talk those three stages of diligence. The other is why the eff are you going to want a franchise? Because there's a three types of people that we're typically hearing from. One is someone who works at Google or Facebook or Netflix or whatever. That's like all the bits that I'm pushing all day long. AI is chomping away at these. And I my job.

[John Wilson]

Imagine this becomes a more and more.

[Chad]

You have to move, Adam. Add to the weight that you're going to continue to create wealth. I'm not saying this is like it's going to go extinct. Like, white collar jobs aren't going to go extinct. It's going to change, right?

[John Wilson]

It's going to change.

[Chad]

But you're going to, you're going to, you're going to go from moving bits to having to move atoms. Right. Like actual physical labor is going to be more of what people are going to pay a premium for. Because number one, so if you look at Ford, Ford trucks or Ford Manufacturing, they. They did a recent case study. Ford is attempting to pay 40 more than the average mechanic. Like, they're paying like $150,000.

[John Wilson]

Oh, I saw this. Yeah.

[Chad]

Yeah. And they still can't get anybody. And that's going to continue.

[John Wilson]

Yeah. What's that, what's the guy's name? The CEO's name. But yeah, he did an interview about that that like in last quarter.

[Kyle]

Is he Farley? Is that is Chris Farley's uncle? He's. He's related to Chris Farley?

[John Wilson]

I think so. Yeah. No, I remember that article. And it was. Yeah, he was like paying $120,000 for a mechanic that, you know, like that's. And you can't. And it's sort of like a great mechanic job, you know? Yeah, it's like pinnacle.

[Kyle]

And so you're coming in from those like displaced individuals who are going to come in super high on the scale of like management, good communicators, good planning. But you know, probably haven't stuck their head in a septic tank. Have you ever done a ride along, by the way, on your pump trucks and done all that stuff? Okay.

[John Wilson]

I mean, I'm a licensed plumber. I'm the. I'm the older. Yeah. There is not a lot that's impressive.

[Kyle]

Yeah, well, because we've encountered a lot of people who are like, ooh, like, it's a little bit tough for my tummy here, but like, if you. You're gonna have to. If you're gonna lead from the front, like you're doing being out there.

[John Wilson]

One of my most memorable one, like, I. So I. I learned under a guy named Art who's probably never gonna listen to this pod. Know I have no problem naming. So, like, I was. I was 17 or something because, you know, family business, you're born into it. Yeah, yeah, born into it. Started working at 10. So, like, it. I was 17 and I was doing a ride along with Art and he was like, showing me how to replace a sump pump.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

Not septic, but like, I feel like this gives you a good feel, literally, for the store.

[Kyle]

You're the right size. Let me drop you in here.

[John Wilson]

Pretty much, yeah. I'm. Look, you know, I'm a. Yeah, so. So we're. We're in a McDonald's replacing a septic or a pump.

[Kyle]

Like a grinder pump.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm 17 years old.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

Like, I don't. I don't know. I already know this, so, like, I

[Chad]

already know, so I don't.

[John Wilson]

So I'm like. He's like, all right, so undo the check valve. So I started undoing. I'm doing my thing and. And I'd never done this before. And he didn't tell me to unplug the pump. So I. So I undo this check valve and I'm like, I'm pulling it apart and get blasted in the face with McDonald's drain water.

[Chad]

You know what we call that? Being baptized.

[John Wilson]

It was getting baptized. I still taste it 20 years later.

[Chad]

Can I. Can I tell you a similar story? My first week, I was like, oh, man, it's a great idea. My wife, I'm like, baby, it's going off so well. We're making money. Get to the dump station.

[Kyle]

Meanwhile, she's like, shower in the back. Burn your fire.

[Chad]

She would love me in the house. Yeah, I still have.

[Kyle]

He had a four month old baby.

[John Wilson]

He has a pretty specific smell.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Chad]

But anyway, here's my story to that. I have one for you. So I'm at the dump station. I have this sexy truck, Right. I'm the new kid on the block. Everybody's asking me questions. And I've done it before. And I forgot to put the pump on the truck. Back to vacuum.

[John Wilson]

Oh, yeah.

[Chad]

Okay. It was on pressure, so I go to open the back, right. And I open it. And I mean, I don't know how many PSI those vacuum trucks have, but thousands. Thousands.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Chad]

All over me. Like, I'm talking 100 gallons of poop until I can close it. And I am sitting there, and there's a line of 10 trucks behind me.

[John Wilson]

And they're all, dude, you made their month. You made their month.

[Chad]

Everybody's laughing, and I'm like, man, I'm giving this truck away. I'm gonna sell it. I'm like, how am I gonna tell my wife? Like, I had. I literally came home with just my boxer. She's like, where were you? I'm like, don't ask questions, please. Where's the shower? You know, like, freaking out.

[Kyle]

I had, like, this hand sanitizer, syphilis, gonorrhea.

[Chad]

But I have some street cred. That's all I'm trying to say. Yeah, it was that. That was like my first week. And it really made me second guess. But not saying that's gonna happen to you because we're gonna train you really well.

[John Wilson]

I feel like, look, man. Yeah. Drain stories are drains.

[Kyle]

Wild.

[John Wilson]

Funny.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

And like, I think the funny thing about drains is, like, you know, once you sort of get over it, like, it doesn't matter. Like, I, you know, I've walked unfortunately through, like, waist deep before.

[Chad]

Yep.

[John Wilson]

And like. Like, I don't know, like, you go in, you're cleaning a drain. You're like, I don't want to go in that. I kind of have to go in that. So you go in, a turd float floats behind you. Like, God damn.

[Kyle]

But.

[John Wilson]

But guess what?

[Kyle]

You just gotta get it down. And you're getting paid really well to do that.

[John Wilson]

You're getting paid well. Yeah. Yeah.

[Kyle]

So, yeah, the people are coming from displaced big tech AI eating their jobs away. Then you have the people who are the Marines and the other military branch. Our military is growing in size significantly. And that transition into civilian life to be able to go in.

[John Wilson]

And really great episode on this.

[Kyle]

I heard the military veteran. Yeah. And that's a organization that we're getting introduced to. It's something that, for us, that. That translatable skill is super significant. And it's not just all the soft qualities there's tangible hard quality. Someone in motor T like this is big heavy equipment is a very directly transferable. And the last one is someone who knows their way around the franchise industry. There might be multi system, multi unit type people in other organizations and they're looking for a complement to a plumbing side or they're looking to, you know, offset something that might be in the junk side. And so for us, those are the big three that we're seeing as a lot of inbound. But there's also just someone who's a CDL driver and someone who just wants to provide for the family. We have, we have an owner operator bias. John. It's the reason that we were so excited about this podcast is your audience is exactly the type of people that we're trying to reach and those people are going to be successful because one of the comments we. I'm going to my notes again. I know I'm that guy. But there was all the, the great commentary. How do you build a million dollar, in this case, a billion dollar empire on this, which I think we've done a good job of addressing. But there's a nice comment to that comment from Lobster Strange. He says, I don't want $100 million. I just want freedom to do amazing things with my family, put my future kids through university. Shout out to Kent State, where over in that area, which is a really nice area that's adjacent to here or whatever they want to do. I'm just done. Let them kids figure out themselves, like they have to be like 150k a year. Hell yeah, brother. That's what his comment is. And that really summarizes the entire passion that we've created.

[John Wilson]

And most companies that we've like, we've looked under the hood of a lot of septic companies and they all do like way better than that now. It does. Honestly, probably to your point, it makes it very hard to buy them.

[Kyle]

Sure.

[John Wilson]

Because it's like, like I can't buy you for a multiple of 500 and

[Chad]

you're not going to stay on for two years until you're like, yeah.

[John Wilson]

I mean, you see it. It's really interesting. There was a guy, yeah. His kid, you know, typical. His kids didn't want the business. They had two or three trucks and like it was printing like 600,000 of cash.

[Kyle]

And I'm like, what's a neurosurgeon at that point?

[John Wilson]

It's crazy. So, yeah, so, so, so you're pumping. Pumping poop again.

[Chad]

Own and operated. Right. Like so. So this is, again, the military can give the thing for, like. So I created something at EPIC called the EPIC Veterans Initiative, which I think is on your paper there. But the. It's. It's something that's near and dear to my heart too, because when I got off out of the military service, I was. I was show. For all intents and purposes. I did 10 years in the Marine Corps, and when I got. I had no idea what I wanted to do. Yeah, I was an officer, too. Like, you know, not saying officers are any different than enlisted Marines, but, you know, you're expected to go into white collar stuff. So it's like, you're an officer, Go back to Harvard, get your mba, say, go into investment banking, or go be a lawyer. Go back and get a doctor. It's like, none of that sounded appealing to me. Like, I was in combat arms. I want to get my hands dirty. I want to get out. Instead of serving my country, I want to go out and serve my community. I saw this, like, call it being brainwashed from the Marine Corps, but that's kind of like my mindset. And I never found a vehicle until I found entrepreneurship.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Chad]

To. To achieve that fulfillment. Right. So I was like, well, there's a

[John Wilson]

quote from like five years ago on this show.

[Chad]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

One of my best friends, Rich George Jordan, he's a. He's a Marine and Semper fi. Yeah. And he's. And he said roughly the same thing. He's like, hey, the greatest thing I did to serve my country was, like, serving. But then the second greatest thing I did was like, I bought a business and I've created 100 jobs. And it's like, yeah, yeah. Like, that really is like, how. What else can you do that drives that much value to your country?

[Chad]

And that's exactly why. So we're like, okay, well, do. In septic. Like, do we want to be like Wind River Environmental and roll up a bunch of companies and mash them all together and be this big climate exit? No, dude. Like, I want. I want to give that freedom to every single person that wants an opportunity to have a vehicle to make generational wealth. And I found it in septic. Like, like, and if you're a service member coming out or. Or say you're transitioning from Google or whatever, man, Entrepreneurship is the best way to do it. And I wanted to have a vehicle for my brothers in arms to come out, get behind a truck, feel like you're actually making a difference in the community. Like, I don't care if you're doing plumbing, H vac, electrical, school or home inspections. It doesn't even have to be in the service industry. As long as you're in your community, providing value to your community.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Chad]

You can do extremely well.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Chad]

And. And for those service members coming out and if you want to consider septic, it's a great business. And that's exactly why we started the franchise. Because I didn't want to be a big conglomerate. I wanted to empower a veteran who wants to get an entrepreneurship and show them that it is possible to do something different than just being a grunt

[Kyle]

in the Marine Corps.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Chad]

It's something really near and dear to my heart.

[John Wilson]

Hard. Yeah. Sounds awesome.

[Chad]

And yeah, I hope we can get it done.

[John Wilson]

So I think. I think the timing is right for. For this type of industry to sort of come to light, I guess. You know, I don't know if you guys are on Twitter a lot or X. I'm still stuck in Twitter.

[Chad]

Shout out. Elon. He lives in our. He lives in our backyard.

[John Wilson]

All right. But yeah, I think like, obviously AI, AI, AI, like layoffs are a thing. Like in. There's all these different data points and they're all kind of funny, I think, but like, hey, over here, AI layoffs are like, whether overblown or appropriate or whatever. Like, people are concerned about their jobs if they're white collar. So like, doesn't matter like what we think about AI. Like, that is an activity that's happening and like, investors are sort of like looking for the next. Next thing. And I think people are looking for their next thing and like, yeah, more businesses launched inside a recession. So then we've got, you know, we have that sort of like data point of like, hey, things aren't feeling great for most people. Yeah. So I feel like we've got AI. We've got like some recession concerns. Whether overblown or not. Like, that's the vibe. Yeah. And then we have very like AI proof businesses and like septics, obviously a great one on I'm damage mid. I don't know. There's a lot of these, like, hey, they're not quite rolled up. Yep. You can get into them attainably. They're AI like nobody, you know what's AI gonna do to pumping? So like, it. It feels like a good time for this type of thing. Yeah, yeah.

[Kyle]

You're speaking to the choir on that.

[John Wilson]

Like.

[Chad]

Yeah, yeah.

[Kyle]

But there is something to be said. There's other trades, while about equally interesting. They've there. There's a competition that exists there. The like the bigger, as we call plumbers are cut. Yeah. Like the plumbing, the H vac, the roofing, the electrical. Like, then some of these companies.

[John Wilson]

I still see like, comments again on Twitter of like, yeah, just get into plumbing. And I'm like, you have no idea. Yeah. Ten years ago, maybe.

[Kyle]

Exactly.

[John Wilson]

Today, hell no.

[Chad]

Hell, educate me. So obviously I know septic. I, I can't pretend I know roofing, plumbing. How competitive is plumbing become since you've been in the industry, you've been in your whole life. Like, how it's crazy how saturated has it become?

[John Wilson]

The, the, the best way to describe it is like, when I first got into the industry, the average plumber was like three to four people in the business. What that was the normal competitor. Like, you would go and, you know, you knew everybody and like, maybe there's a couple of those now, but like, like, that's not a thing. Like, I think the average might be like $10 million. It used to be the average. Used to be like one or two.

[Kyle]

What's the driver? Is private equity just driving the aggregation?

[John Wilson]

I mean, technology. Okay, so, so I, I, we did a podcast on this. I don't know if it's aired yet, but I. There's been, there's like these three or four different waves that I think are really interesting for the trades. So the first one is, was like early technology. So service type was a big push. Honestly, even just like Google, my business was in, was an actual disruption to the trade. And that's what allowed us to get far ahead, was digital marketing, like, allowed us to push.

[Chad]

How early did you adopt that?

[John Wilson]

Like 2015, 2016.

[Chad]

Really? Yeah.

[John Wilson]

Okay. Yeah, yeah. But like that we passed the incumbents on the back of Google. My business, yeah, you know, it was kind of crazy. So, like, yeah, 2015 to 2020 was like technology. So we've got service titan. We have digital marketing becoming more and more prevalent and like sort of defeating the legacy marketing people that had built really big brands. Brand is still important, but if 80% of your spend goes to brand and 20% to leads, like, you don't survive in 2026 doing that. You did or you used to. So, yeah, that was the first wave. The second wave was, hey, Covid, we are essential. You know their words for it.

[Chad]

Did you see a big spike during COVID Like, everyone did? Everybody did.

[John Wilson]

Well, well, there's the two different reasons for it. One no one will ever admit on air, which is very.

[Chad]

Are we going to do it on air right now?

[John Wilson]

PPP loans, bro. Nobody talks about this.

[Chad]

What?

[Kyle]

Yeah, yeah.

[John Wilson]

Payroll protection was like you got to pull forward a year of profit just handed to you. Yeah. And. And everyone's like, oh, home service boomed. They got handed $3 million. Yeah, they boomed.

[Chad]

Like it's crazy.

[Kyle]

I didn't even think about getting.

[John Wilson]

Because no one talks about it. No one talks about it.

[Kyle]

No one remembers it at this point because it feels like five decades ago.

[John Wilson]

It's crazy. But yeah, you had a bunch of like if you, if you entered covet at 10 million you probably exited like 50 or 60 or even higher. Like people that entered at 20 exited 100. It's like why? What happened? Well, yeah, tons of demand, but also you got funded. Yeah, it was crazy.

[Chad]

Free money basically.

[Kyle]

Well, not to mention inflation over that five year period in America is 20 plus percent. So you, if you were charging 100, now it's 120. And that magically creates growth. Yeah.

[John Wilson]

So technology started creating consolidation because we're what, you know, it's easier to manage 100 trucks in 2020 than it was in 2010 because it was all paper in 2010. Now it's technology. Then leads became the next thing and like demand and how are we collecting demand? And that was like the COVID essential period. So one everyone starts getting acquired by pe. Private guys like me are acquiring everybody. Now we're on to this like third wave which I think is interesting which is like the AI wave and I think we're seeing it in like values of the business. Right. So in 2015-2020 the early roll up started wrench group Heartland. They started collecting plumbing H vac companies at that time and like starting to drive up. Price covet happened. Price went from like 6 times to a 10 times went back down and now we're seeing it again with AI. Like companies are going for absolutely ridiculous numbers again because we're on this like third wave of increased consolidation.

[Kyle]

I'm going to give John a compliment real quick. This is a tactic. I think I can disclose it. It's your tactic. I'll call it the red light district tactic. But as you. Yep. So as you have aggregation of of back office, you're talking about even just your three territories here, bringing it to a centralized location which we did the tour and it was just an extraordinary learning experience. I was like man, it's kind of like it feels like a cave in there too.

[John Wilson]

I don't know why they keep the lights.

[Kyle]

I like it though. Yeah, it like you lose or something. Just like I could work 24 hours for John So like, that's why. That's exactly why. But there's. But what it happens is it illuminates the red light. And the red light. John, do you want to. You can talk about what your red light indicates in this case, it's like available capacity, basically.

[John Wilson]

So like behaviors change as capacity is either, you know, green, yellow, red.

[Kyle]

And so that's. And just to unpack my understanding of fit, there's a green light or a red light, right? Green light is like, we're good today.

[John Wilson]

Like there's a flashing blue. Okay.

[Kyle]

Is that even worse or is that midway or what does blue mean?

[John Wilson]

It's kind of like good.

[Kyle]

Oh, okay.

[John Wilson]

So like it means we hit break even for the month. So like sell whatever you want.

[Kyle]

Okay.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, it's good.

[Kyle]

But what this creates in this cave, in this, you know, casino, like, like people can you. Literally the entire ambiance of the room is changing to red, which now there's this urgency and motivation and, and this feeling. We talk about these visceral feelings and energy which I'm like buzzing from caffeine because I never consume. But that's like an extraordinary tactic that when you are the five person, you know, company, you're not going to have a team that's motivated by lights, that's creating an ambiance. But when you're 100 person company and they're coming in, it changes the script quite literally on how people are selling. So kudos to you on creating that.

[Chad]

I want to, I want to ask you a question. This is more like advice for us too, because to the marina me and just who I am, I'm never going to pass up the opportunity to ask for mentorship from somebody who's very successful. As we're going through this journey, obviously we have big dreams and lofty goals. We think we can build a billion dollar septic company. I think we built something really great so far. Just from your experience, you've been doing this a long time. What advice do you have for us?

[John Wilson]

I mean, I don't really know on the, on the franchise side, the business

[Chad]

side, just business in general. Any tidbits of information?

[John Wilson]

I think you guys are. Sounds like you're already focusing on the right thing. There was a post. I think it's easy to get lost in like what our business is. And our business at the end of the day is a marketing and sales business, which I think is what you guys are focusing on.

[Chad]

Oh, say that again.

[John Wilson]

Who, who was right?

[Kyle]

I've told Kyle, like, we can't Say

[Chad]

that because people want to hear sales solve all.

[Kyle]

I know, I know, I know.

[John Wilson]

Solves a lot of them. But.

[Kyle]

But say it again for the, for the camera.

[John Wilson]

Yeah. Like we're basically we're a marketing salesman because at the end of the day.

[Kyle]

Fine, fine.

[John Wilson]

We have to get the lead and we have to sell the lead.

[Kyle]

Yes, we do.

[John Wilson]

Whatever comes next. Obviously like the execution.

[Kyle]

100% they show up in reviews and that has that. Yeah. Virtuous circle.

[Chad]

But that also has to be backed up with flawless execution. Is which when. Because with sales you have now the capital to build systems and processes just like me like literally driving the truck. Truck make watching YouTube videos going to pump. I was generating revenue that I can hire a driver and then. But anyway I want to. I'm really curious.

[John Wilson]

My second item was which is kind of funny. Is. And it's back to this, this guy. I don't remember his tag but it's like well how are you actually going to do that? And like something that I think is it. It can it. It kind of drives me nuts because as you're building a business and I've said this so many times, like me talking to my former self. You think it's supposed to be complicated so you make it complicated. Well how are you supposed to get to $100 million? Yeah. Okay. It's actually only like, you know, a two to $3 million branch. You just need 30 of them. Like it's not actually that complicated.

[Kyle]

Duplicate.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Chad]

Copy paste.

[John Wilson]

And I think, I think that was something that took me like a really long time to figure out was hey, this is actually kind of like the fundamentals. And the fundamentals, you think they're supposed to change from when you're like 2 or 3 million to like 40 or like in different states or different locations. At the end of the day it's kind of not. Like the fundamentals are I need leads and I have to sell those leads and like there's some downstream. But like that is kind of how you build a hundred million dollar business.

[Kyle]

Some people say there's no fun in the fundamentals, but there is an F, a U and an N. So it can be fun as you see that scale happen.

[John Wilson]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Chad]

Well can you get. So just for me, I'd like to probe deeper. Like is there any specific things like, like any. Because I can share some. Some like really big setbacks. Like is there any like big setbacks you've had in your career that you've

[John Wilson]

got all of them cash related.

[Kyle]

Interesting.

[John Wilson]

Every single.

[Chad]

How how important is it?

[Kyle]

I mean, that's a scorecard, I guess. Yeah.

[Chad]

Okay.

[Kyle]

Yeah, well, I, I'll ask a personal one. And I do want to be conscious of some of our time because like, we're like, we came out here just for you, John. Like we, we flew in, it was midnight when we got in. We stayed next to the campus because we're like, they sell euros at the bar at midnight next to karaoke. As people were belting out.

[John Wilson]

It was a hell of a Tuesday night.

[Chad]

Yeah, that chick was actually legit.

[Kyle]

Yeah. There was one girl who's really good at karaoke. So we came in just for you with diligence. The crib cubby shadow shopped. Like, we really wanted to make this extraordinary. But as you were talking about, like you have a five year old and a seven year old and Kyle and I are new fathers and I imagine a lot of people, people who are looking to get into the trades, especially if you're a guy who's like a long haul trucker, you're in the marines or doing all these things, like you have a young family. How do you contend with the trade off between time spent building an empire and time spent.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

With these precious moments that you get when they're five.

[John Wilson]

Yeah. I have a lot of opinions about this. I think like my personal, Like, I don't think I do this part. I'll talk about the part I don't do well and then I'll like, I'll sandwich it. I'll put in the good part.

[Kyle]

Okay.

[John Wilson]

The part I don't think I do well. And this is like something that like fundamentally bothers me is when I think about years, I think about my career. And just like that, that like philosophy is some. And I don't really know how to break it. But like when I think about 2018, I think about that company that I bought that doubled my business and like how much of a life change that was. And I don't think about my son being born in September.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

And that's like, yeah. And like 2020, my daughter was born. I think about, hey, I prepped to triple the business in 2021. Yeah. So like that's something I don't think I have done very well is as I think about, as I think about my life in this, like I just hit a decade. Like 2016 is a decade of like owning this business. And when I think about that last decade, each year has its own story. And the story is professional.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

And like, yeah, like I'm rich now. And like, that's fucking awesome. Like, that's cool. Right. Like, there's no doubt, like, built a huge fucking thing. And this is crazy.

[Kyle]

Yep.

[John Wilson]

And, but as I think about the years, I am not thinking about the, like, what happened outside of this. So I, I, I don't, like, that part's not good. And like, I would love to, I would love to change that. And I'm, I, I, you know, do my best.

[Chad]

I think, I think me and Chad, we're in that thick of it now, like, balancing family and building a business.

[John Wilson]

Yeah. When you think about 25 and 26, this is probably what you're going to think about.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

And like you just said, you just had a kid and, like, you probably won't think about it. Yeah. Like, you won't remember 2025 is the year that you became a father. I don't remember 2018 is the year I became a father.

[Chad]

What. So I guess, like, obviously you're again, you're rich now. Your words, not mine.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Chad]

Congratulations. It's always like, you know, when is enough? You know, when, when what is the number? That's enough. Right. I think everybody has that in mind. It's like, when do you make so much money? Or when do you become. Because for me, like, the kind of guy I am, I could have 100 million in the bank, I'd still find something to do to keep me busy.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Chad]

You know what I mean? But at what expense? You know, and that's something that me and him talk about quite a bit is like, we can't leave our families in the dust.

[Kyle]

And I, I'm, as you were talking, kind of. I get emotional about it just because, like, we're here, we spent, you know, flying. But I'm watching my kids on, you know, the video app, like, watching them, you know, get a book. That part's hard.

[John Wilson]

I don't think there's a perfect answer because, like, you know, I, as I think about this and, and this is sort of like the bat. So that's the bad part.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

Like, and I, I tell my wife that I'll tell my kids that one day.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

But, like, that's how I remember 2018, and that's how I remember 2020. And unfortunately, I don't seem to be able to do much about that because those were very, like, pivotal years in my life. But professionally, yeah. So what I've done personally, this is

[Kyle]

the end of the sandwich part.

[John Wilson]

Right.

[Kyle]

We've made it through the tough part.

[John Wilson]

As I, as the business grew and I I was really conscious of this. It, I was conscious of it and my wife really like helped. Helped.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

For slash supported me to be conscious.

[Kyle]

Shout out to Mrs. Wilson.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, thank you, Bridget. So something that came up a lot was like, how do you choose to build the business now? In, in some ways you guys don't have the same choice that I had because of the method that you're going to be wanting to grow. But as I look, as I look around like, hey, what have we built and why have we built this? Because like my dream and I've said it before, if I could redo everything thing professionally, ignore the personal side, like the right business decision is the same exact service with like, it's exactly what you guys are doing. It's like 5, 10 SKUs and service titan and just do it a hundred times. Yeah. Like that is the right business decision.

[Chad]

Don't overcomplicate it.

[John Wilson]

Don't overcomplicate it. My life is super complicated. We have electric, we have H vac, we have septic, we have damage mitt, we have plumbing.

[Kyle]

Like you have a podcast.

[John Wilson]

I'm a podcast. My life is complicated. And as, as I was thinking about, I. You could go Back to like 5 year old episodes on this and it was, hey, why did we choose to grow this way? Why really like putting my kids down. Yeah. So I, I think even though like the bad side is, hey, I remember these years, these like pivotal, fundamental years for my personal life as like professional wins. I remember my victories. I've still been able to be present because of the way I designed my life.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[Chad]

So it's like throughout the next temporary sacrifices for more time in the long

[John Wilson]

run, you know, Because I think so. But I also think what else would I be doing? Because you know, it's like, okay, the business sells tomorrow. Well, what would I do?

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

The reality is I would do this again. Yeah, like that. Like I can't stop myself. I can never be satisfied.

[Chad]

Yeah, that's true. Because you're, you're the type, you're just like as you're. I'd say come from a different cloth, but you're, you're a go getter man. And the. Where you find purpose, you're a builder and that's where you find. That's where you find meaning is building cool stuff.

[Kyle]

Well, and I want to make an observation about some. Can I take this photo down for a second here? But your dad is wearing a very particular type of boot in here. These are work boots. And your dad earned this over his whole life. And this is, I imagine for you, for camera, this is how you remember your dad too. And like that's where if you were just to retire and be the guy that does whatever you would do, if you were to retire, like, you wouldn't create the same core memory, you wouldn't instill the same value system. And it's a totally different life trajectory for your future. Chill. You know, your children, your children's children, et cetera. So it is interesting to hear from you. And I think the fact that you get to be down for bedtime at the pivotal moment, it is something that, like building something as a local empire with all these.

[John Wilson]

I think there's a really, I think there's a really good. Understood.

[Kyle]

I mean I want to, I, I want to express gratitude. I think that's the thing where you talk about Wilson and this legacy that's already existed. But for you to like shoulder the mantle of that organization over the last decade and then bring more to it, like you're creating this era of acquisition and you're really building for the future. Like to hear you talk about like these different macro trends that are kind of having confluence in this present day and what you're doing to evolve and adapt and lead and change of which this podcast is like a great version of this. I. I can't imagine you mentioned. Was it Jim or. Who was the gentleman that did the. You did the shadowing. Who's never going to listen to. It was the one that. Art. Art. But like this is now part of this entire empire that you've created and it's phenomenal to see you succeed in a variety of capacities. So I just want to say cheers to you John, and everything that you build.

[John Wilson]

I'm really terrible at my job and I just hired hire like a lot

[Kyle]

of great people, which just means you're very credit job.

[Chad]

We call that, we call that the Marine Corps top down direction, bottom up refinement. So yeah, I tell you what I think it looks like and then I listen to the lowest ranking man tell me what it actually looks like.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[Chad]

And then we refine it from bottom up.

[John Wilson]

So. So what's next for Epic?

[Chad]

Epic.

[John Wilson]

I think we need to rebrand Epic.

[Kyle]

I know Epic. Yeah. What.

[John Wilson]

What's next for Epic? Septic.

[Kyle]

Yeah, so we're, we're franchising literally right now. By the time this is. Is out, will be out with the franchise. So we've been like working on this thing for months and months and months and months and we talk about that Billion dollar Empire. Like that's the dragon that we're slaying where we're looking for people to come on board for that journey where we all win together.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

And then we also have these like fun side quests like with energy drinks where we have this like, and this is, you know, me and Kyle has like we have a cylindrical porta Potty. We've not done much in portable restrooms. Have you done the portable restroom side

[John Wilson]

for your may want to so bad. Okay. But I have not.

[Kyle]

There's a capital cost and it's kind of like it's advertising. Yeah. But we're gonna want to use it as advertising. So there's a great music festivals that roll through the Austin region and we can get the cylindrical aluminum based Porta Potty that looks like an energy drink that we can wrap it and so we can have this hilarity of a vending machine next to a Porta Potty and then build just comedy. And so like there's these little side quests of like fun things. We have a LEGO truck version of our pump truck truck which I'd happy to share with your 5 or 7 year old if you want it funny. We have an, it's unbrickable. Is like the modded brick site for that. Yeah. And so the side quest plus the main quest and then having fun along the journey, it's the journey that ultimately matters in the end. So that's kind of what's next from my vantage point. I don't know if you want to have a different answer for it.

[Chad]

I don't have a different answer.

[John Wilson]

Okay.

[Chad]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[John Wilson]

There's, there's something about, there's something about building and there's something about, um. I, I think franchising would be fun. Like we, I, I think of one of the cool things you get to do and I think you guys get to do it a little bit differently than I get to do it because ours is through like W2 or like some version of ownership for our leaders

[Kyle]

commission and things like bonus profit sharing.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, yeah. But I, I think it's like, it's always like impact you can make is really fun. I, I, I don't get to like, I, I don't interface directly with most of the team. I work like directly with like six or seven people. But y, it, it's always cool when it's like, hey, this gave me the opportunity to do whatever. And I think Septic would be like a really fun version of that. Y, like we had somebody buy a House, like. And they tripled their income from like their previous job. Yeah.

[Chad]

That's an awesome feeling.

[Kyle]

They're building careers with you, John. Like, that's what's cool.

[John Wilson]

And I think that's the goal here too is I think that's fun. I think that's a cool way to show up.

[Kyle]

It's a team of. Teams is kind of the way of looking at it. And you're harnessing that entrepreneurial and ownership energy and mentality that that's what resonated so much with us. And I think it's takes 36 years. How many years of the Wilson organization been in business?

[John Wilson]

1958. So what are we at? 68 years.

[Kyle]

Yeah. So like that long time, you know, compounds brick by brick by brick by brick. Brick. And then now you're here versus like the franchise model. It's like how do we lattice a network across the entire nation so that we can land national accounts so that we can create national buying power to reduce your input costs and how we can go in and create systems and processes so you can take a new talent off the street to tool them up on epic so that your speed to revenue for that individual and your organization is super, super quick. Those are a big three that we're trying to focus on for these operators. And franchising is a way where we all win together on that.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, yeah. No, I like it. I think it's the right industry to do it too. The. Because I think the speed to training is probably like not long.

[Kyle]

It's not compared the way we train,

[John Wilson]

it only takes like 90 days or less.

[Kyle]

Oh, really? Even for plumbing over for second plumbing

[John Wilson]

is like a year.

[Chad]

Yeah. Like what I alluded to license is really fast again.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Chad]

It's the continuing education which we're building out. But we have a. We have a system for it.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

So awesome. Well, this was awesome, guys. Any final thoughts you want to close out with here?

[Kyle]

I want some Wilson branded merch when you get into that world. John wants some over here.

[John Wilson]

John does want some.

[Kyle]

Yeah. How can we be of service to you and your brand and the things that you're doing? I would love to like help you.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Septic content is always really interesting. I don't think people eat it up.

[Kyle]

I know. I don't know this is gonna be. I'm gonna call the shot. Like the two out of the top three are septic as your videos, at least on YouTube.

[John Wilson]

I think across the media properties. I think like the top five across Jack. Yeah. All septic.

[Kyle]

Oh.

[John Wilson]

Even people are fascinated.

[Kyle]

People love the poop.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Chad]

Have you ever seen Poor Pumper Society?

[John Wilson]

I want to be the Cody Sanchez.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

Septic we.

[Kyle]

Which you definitely are that.

[Chad]

Speaking of Cody Sanchez.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[Chad]

She's an Austin.

[Kyle]

Yeah. She's out. Yeah. Yeah. Queen mother is out there.

[Chad]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

She.

[Kyle]

And she's on the Resi Brands. Pinks is one that we've really. She. She invested early and they went on to Resi Brands. But. Yeah. Well, I guess as opportunities arise where we can return the favor to you, John, we're happy to do so. Hopefully, we've created some great content that has that potential for top five status for you.

[John Wilson]

Oh, yeah. Let's go.

[Kyle]

Epic Septic Co is our handle across the board. Epiceptic.com is the website. You'll see everything that you need from that there.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Chad]

And if you're into being franchisee, there's a form on there. Just fill it out. And we love to talk to you.

[John Wilson]

Cool.

[Chad]

All right, guys.

[John Wilson]

Thank you, guys. Yeah. If you like what you heard, make sure you like and submit.