Double Your Profit Day #18 How I Destroy Monthly Bills and Save Big! - Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC Business Growth Podcast

Summary5 min read

Episode Overview

Episode Title: Double Your Profit Day #18 - How I Destroy Monthly Bills and Save Big!
Host: John Wilson
Theme: Ruthlessly cutting and managing recurring business expenses to drive greater profitability.

In this dynamic solo episode, John Wilson reveals his aggressive, actionable system for reviewing and slashing recurring costs in his plumbing, electrical, and HVAC businesses. With candid advice and an entrepreneurial edge, he discusses the tools, mindsets, and negotiation tactics every business owner should use to prevent profit leaks and maximize savings.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The “F*** It Up List” (00:00–01:00)

Main Idea: Every month, John creates what he calls the “fuck it up list”—an unapologetic inventory of all recurring costs, which he then aggressively targets for elimination or negotiation.
Significance: Small recurring costs can quickly add up in larger businesses. Vigilant review is critical even for “insignificant” subscriptions or services.
Quote:

"Every single month, what I do is I create a fuck it up list where I list out all of the recurring costs inside my business and I go fuck them up." —John Wilson [00:10]

2. Every Cost Matters—Small and Large (01:00–02:00)

Explanation: Whether it’s a $100/month charge or a $2,000/month bill, every recurring cost should be scrutinized.
Quote:

"Every single cost matters, especially if it's recurring. I'm going to care about $100 a month, and I'm going to care about $2,000 a month." —John Wilson [00:30]

3. Leverage Digital Vendor Cards for Cost Segregation (02:00–04:00)

Strategy: Use credit card systems that offer true cost segregation (e.g., Ramp, Divvy)—not traditional cards (Chase, Amex).
Tactic: Assign each service or vendor its own digital card, isolating payments and making negotiation or cancellation easier and more powerful.
Negotiation Power:

"He who has the gold makes the rules. So it's much easier to negotiate a cost while you still have the money versus if they were already charging and they have the money in their account." —John Wilson [02:40]

4. Maintain & Regularly Review a “Painful” Recurring Services List (04:00–06:00)

Accountability: Inventory all recurring services, no matter how tedious. The more annoyance in maintaining this list, the fewer services you’ll feel compelled to keep.
Memorable Moment: John encourages listeners to embrace the pain:

"Sometimes creating a report or creating a system to manage things is about being annoying. So this is one of those things where I actually kind of want this to be painful." —John Wilson [05:00]

5. Frequent Review and Team Accountability (06:00–08:00)

Team Check-Ins: Regularly verify with your team if the tool or service is still needed.
Proactive Cancellations: Occasionally, John will cancel a service card just to test if anyone notices—an effective way to weed out unused tools.
Negotiation Mindset:

"There is no such thing as renegotiating too often. I like renegotiating. I think it's funny... there are very few times in your life as a business owner where you just get to be an absolute dick and nobody can say anything that mean to you. And renegotiating is definitely one of them." —John Wilson [07:10]

6. Assign Budget Owners and Make Adding Recurring Costs Inconvenient (08:00–09:30)

Process: Department heads or budget owners must approve and be accountable for any new recurring expense—create friction in the approval chain.
Quote:

"It should be as inconvenient as humanly possible to bring on recurring costs. And I mean it should be awful." —John Wilson [08:30]

7. Reinvest Savings into Your Team (09:30–End)

Philosophy: Savings shouldn’t just disappear—they should fuel growth, ideally through investing in people.
Incentives: Budget owners who save money could earn bonuses, creating a cycle of accountability and reward.
Quote:

"One of the benefit of having a high profit company is you get to invest in your team who then makes the company more profitable." —John Wilson [10:10]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

“Every single month, what I do is I create a fuck it up list where I list out all of the recurring costs inside my business and I go fuck them up.” —John Wilson [00:10]
“He who has the gold makes the rules. So it's much easier to negotiate a cost while you still have the money...” —John Wilson [02:40]
“Sometimes creating a report or creating a system to manage things is about being annoying... I actually kind of want this to be painful.” —John Wilson [05:00]
“There is no such thing as renegotiating too often. I like renegotiating. I think it's funny.” —John Wilson [07:10]
“It should be as inconvenient as humanly possible to bring on recurring costs. And I mean it should be awful.” —John Wilson [08:30]
“One of the benefit of having a high profit company is you get to invest in your team who then makes the company more profitable.” —John Wilson [10:10]

Timestamps for Important Segments

[00:00] The “F*** It Up List”—John’s Monthly Ritual
[02:00] Why Digital Vendor Cards Are Essential
[04:00] Building and Maintaining Your Recurring Services List
[06:00] Verifying Value—Team Check-Ins and Proactive Cancellations
[08:00] Assigning Budget Ownership and Approval Obstacles
[09:30] Reinvesting Savings and Rewarding Accountability

Episode Takeaways

Aggressively manage all recurring business costs—even the small ones.
Use digital vendor cards to isolate and control spending.
Keep an ongoing list of all recurring expenses; the more “painful” it is to manage, the less likely you’ll tolerate waste.
Make it difficult for your team to add recurring costs—assign budget owners and enforce tough approval processes.
Continuously renegotiate with vendors; see this as a fun, powerful part of your job.
Direct the savings to your people, building a culture of accountability and reward.

This episode is a must-listen for any home service business owner aiming to ruthlessly cut costs, boost profit, and build a team-oriented, high-accountability culture in today’s competitive market.

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[00:00]
A
Welcome back to double your profit. What we're going to be talking about is reviewing all of your recurring costs. Now, I have a different name for this that they're going to bleep out on YouTube, but it's called the fuck it up list. So every single month, what I do is I create a fuck it up list where I list out all of the recurring costs inside my business and I go fuck them up. I remove as many of them from our business or I aggressively negotiate each of those price points because recurring costs are a big deal. So first off, every single cost matters, especially if it's recurring. I'm going to care about $100 a month and I'm going to care about $2,000 a month. Might care a little bit more about the $2,000 a month, but you can stack up a lot of those little hundred dollar at a time things inside a $30 million business and they're kind of hard to catch. So what you should be doing every single month is first off, you have to get onto a credit card system that allows for cost segregation. You want to be able to set it up so that each and every service has its own ramp, has this, divi, has this. But if you go to a Chase or an American Express, they don't. So your credit system matters to be able to effectively manage this. The reason the digital vendor card matters is because you can isolate costs. So if I want to go in and renegotiate a specific vendor cost, this is one of those golden rules. He who has the gold makes the rules. So it's much easier to negotiate a cost while you still have the money versus if they were already charging and they have the money in their account. So when you have a vendor card, what you can do if you're getting ready to, to cancel it or renegotiate it or do whatever you're about to do, just cancel the vendor card. That is a really important tool in the negotiating playbook is being able to isolate that vendor to one single card. So that way you can just always stay on top of it and you have a lever to pull if you need to. The next one is keeping a running list of all of the different recurring services that you have. And if you're sitting there thinking that's a lot, I don't really want to keep that list, my friend. That is probably the point. If you have that many recurring services that it's a lot, then that's a really good place to start. Sometimes creating a report or creating a system to manage things is about being annoying. So this is one of those things where I actually kind of want this to be painful because what that's going to encourage us to do is have less of them. The more annoying that it is to put together this report, the more incentivized we're all going to be to have less recurring services. Once you have that list and you have the vendor cards, you want to be reviewing these things monthly. Even more if you can, depending on how often they charge and constantly checking back in with your team on, hey, is this tool still useful? And sometimes just to watch the world burn and maybe cancel the card and see if they actually do still need it. Renegotiate constantly. There is no such thing as renegotiating too often. I like renegotiating. I think it's funny. There are very few times in your life as a business owner where you just get to be an absolute dick and nobody can say anything that mean to you. And renegotiating is definitely one of them. My other couple big tips on this is you want to assign budget owners for recurring costs. It should be as inconvenient as humanly possible to bring on recurring costs. And I mean it should be awful. So including your department heads and giving them budget ownership and forcing an approval process for recurring expenses, that is extremely inconvenient is an awesome way to save money. And finally, make sure you're reinvesting those savings, ideally in your people. Now the way to do this is as you've added budget owners and as you've added high accountability and you've brought on this process. Once you have savings, what do you do with it? I mean, one of the benefit of having a high profit company is you get to invest in your team who then makes the company more profitable. So if you have savings, then maybe the budget owner for those savings gets a portion of that back as a bonus. Like hey, thanks for saving us some money. Here's some money. If you liked this video on ruthlessly cutting recurring expenses, make sure you like and sub for more.