← Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC Business Growth Podcast
Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC Business Growth Podcast
How One Inspection Company Scaled to $20M Without Private Equity
00:42:34
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- [00:00]
A
We're the largest independently owned inspection company in the country.
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B
All right? Hell, yeah.
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A
I had no skills, I had no connections. I wasn't getting anywhere. And I went, that's it. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go get work for these home inspectors.
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B
What was revenue trying to get to.
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A
20 million this year? No private equity, no franchise, no licensing, Nothing. Just owned 100% by me. I had to teach myself and learn. And so much of it was just going out and obsessively listening the clients, what they want.
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B
What's your advice? To be able to even get close to what you built.
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A
If there is one thing that any of us can do tomorrow to transform our businesses, it's just.
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B
Welcome back to Owned and Operated. I'm your host, John Wilson. During the day, I run a $30 million home service company in Northeast Ohio, and for fun, I run a podcast talking about how to do the same. Today I'm joined on the show by Harmony Brownwood, and she is the CEO and founder of Greenworks Inspections and Engineering. Welcome to the show.
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A
Hey, John, thanks for having me. Yeah, appreciate being here.
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B
This will be fun. This, this, this is, I think, the first time we're, I don't know, 300 episodes in. This is the first time we've ever had, like inspection on the show before. So you've set the bar pretty high because now if we come in and bring somebody else in from the inspection, you know, industry, they're going to have to follow probably one of the largest inspection companies that I can think of. So this is going to be a ton of fun. I'd love to hear some of the background on how you got Greenworks to where it is today, which is a six state organization with hundreds of employees and $20 million revenue. I'd love to hear how you got there.
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A
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. You know, I love to share and talk about this because it's a wonderful thing to look back over 15 years and try to sum it up right and just a couple minutes or less. One of the biggest areas of my life that I have profoundly focused and put energy towards is my mindset. I am just constantly evaluating and taking a critical look at what is it that I'm thinking and how do those belief systems serve or not serve me. And it's a constant process of change and evolving. But when it's all said and done, if you ask me, what's the one thing that helped me go from completely nothing, I was a broke, obscure, lost, depressed, Student, five years in school, didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I really had no direction whatsoever. And I ultimately ended up finding my way into home inspections because I went on the Internet and just searched. How do you find your passion? And I got lucky, found a cool ebook. And this ebook was like, hey, if you're lost and confused, you know, click here. And I'm gonna take you through these questions and we're gonna do this quiz and we're gonna go through all of these steps to figure out what it is that you love. And I'm like, okay, sounds great. And, you know, one of the first questions was, well, what do you like to do in your free time? And I'm like, I like watching tv. Like, duh. Yeah. What are you talking about? What I like to do in my free time? Like, I want to do nothing. How about that? But the ebook was really smart. It was like, well, even if you like just watching tv, what do you like watching on television when you're not watching television? And it was just peeling an onion, right? And I was like, well, these are the shows that I watch. And all of them were real estate related in terms of like, HGTV's home buying shows.
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B
Yeah.
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A
I mean, those are still around, but those were really big.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And I would obsessively watch them. I mean, just like constantly, like, which house are they going to pick? You know, And. And it goes, what do you like about the show? And. And I answer those questions. And it was basically like, well, if you like this and this is what you're doing with your free time, you should look for careers in real estate. I was like, that's kind of smart. Okay, what do you do next, though? Like, look for careers in real estate. And they're like, well, these are the careers in real estate. Call everyone. So there's four major categories. You've got appraisal, you got mortgage, you got inspection, and you got the realtor. Those are the big kind of four for the real estate category. So the book next is like, call those four categories. Call people and ask them what they actually do every day. Don't read about what people do. Call and ask. Okay, pick up the phone. I'm like, hi, Mr. Mortgage Lender, I'm Harmony. You don't know me from Adam, but I just wanted to know what your day looked like. It turns out people are really nice. They answered.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Like, they're like, sure, kid. Like, here's what I do every day. And I was like, okay. And I'm listening. And, like, just, you know, jotting notes here and there. And I'm like, okay, thanks. Next. And. And I'm hearing what their work is, and I didn't like it. I didn't like the actual task. Like, that doesn't sound that interesting. Like, I don't think I'd be good at mortgage. And I called the next person and the realtors. I'm like, well, really, I mean, it sounds kind of cool, but they do so much lead generation. Like, that is the majority of what they have to do every day when they're not showing the house, they're generating more leads. And I was like, I don't know if I can make a difference there. And that appraisal. Appraisal sounded cool. Very neat going out there doing appraisal. But the reality is that industry was changing. You have to have a degree to actually become an appraiser. And you can't drive a business because the banks are choosing. And I'm like. Because they were telling me these things. And I was like, well, I don't know. That's great. And next was inspection. Mm. And inspection was. I called the guy and I said, hi, Harmony. What do you do every day? And I was like, well, sure, I'll tell you. I go to realtor offices, I make presentations. If I'm lucky, they give me work. And then in the afternoon, I get to go out and do a home inspection. And I went, wait, wait a minute. You have to go make presentations to the realtor office and go generate all your own work for no pay. And then if you're lucky, you get to get a paid job doing the thing that you actually want to be doing. And he was like, yeah, I do. And I was like, interesting. Called the next person said the same thing. Called the next guy said the same thing. And I'm like, oh, my word. That makes no sense. I mean, just makes no sense to me. To this moment, that makes no sense. Why would you have to work so hard to generate so little money? Because the realtor basically does the same thing, except their commissions are very different, so it justifies the effort. And home inspector. No, it doesn't make sense. And I went, that's it. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go get work for these home inspectors. And to this moment, that is literally what I spent my life doing and absolutely love every minute of it.
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B
This episode is brought to you by by Lead Truffle, the AI Speed to Lead tool built for home service pros. You spend real money getting leads, but if you're not calling them back immediately, you're losing jobs. Lead Truffle fixes that. It follows up instantly 24, 7 with call, text or email. Contractors using it are seeing 5 second response times with a 94% reply rate. Never let another lead go cold. Try it for free for your first month using the link in the description down below. That's a good origin story too. I like the book. Yeah, the calling people and asking is funny. Can you give me a like, what's the scope of this now? That was where it started. We're going to talk about the in between. But like, where are we today?
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A
Yeah, I mean today, you know, we're doing 2500-3000 services. Whether that's commercial, residential, we do both. We got about an 8020 mix on that. 80% residential, 20% commercial. And that's across our inspections, across our engineering and across our environmental services. So we're going into a lot of homes, a lot of buildings and performing services. And so much of our business, you know, we obviously we have to generate a lot of business to get there, but it started very small and we're doing that through all kinds of ways. But the big thing for us is to be very word of mouth. It's huge. We want our neighbors to recommend us, refer us, realtors recommend refer us. And so luckily, being able to provide really high quality service has been our way to do that. And it's kind of in the backbone of everything that we've done.
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B
And it was 2,500 to 3,000 clients a month, right?
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A
A month.
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B
A month, yeah. That's crazy. And then how many people are on the team? How many inspectors, how many, like administrative, like what does the team split look like?
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A
Yeah. So we've got at the moment, if you include inspection leadership, there's 82, give or take of them. I've got 11 engineers, I've got like six environmental people. And then I've got like a admin call center team. There's 30ish mix of them.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And then the rest are just like other leaders.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Over those categories.
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B
So, yeah, I feel like there's a lot to unpack here. And what was revenue? What was most recent revenue? Just so we have scope there.
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A
Yeah. So closing 15, trying to get to 20 million this year.
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B
I have full faith. I, I have full faith. As you're, as you're thinking about like first question that comes to mind just as we're thinking about like pacing and budget has real estate Market impacted what you're doing. I don't know what it's like in Texas right now. Like, Ohio still seems to be fine. Florida is like crazy. So, like, how has that impacted projections for the year?
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A
Oh, yeah. I mean, it's definitely matters for us because we are so driven by whether people are buying. Right? Yeah. So, yes, it's definitely been a flat ear to almost on the lower end for us. You know, we, we serve some of the hottest markets in America, luckily. But when those markets start flattening out, like Austin, it impacts us. And so it's been really hard trying to like, do better than the market. It has been substantially, you know, more difficult because you're putting yourself in a position where your only way to gain is to take market share at that point, which is its own little mountain to climb. Right. So that's, that. That's been a speed of growth. It's been a lot of learning with scaling. The good thing about that is, is once you start learning the skills of how to take market share and increasing market share in other ways, you know, like, we don't want to just eat from one pie. We're always trying to add more pies and expand the existing pie. So how many people know about our service, know that it exists? Why do people need the service? Who out there could benefit from what we do? And then are they willing to obviously pay us to give them this service? Right. And, and be well worth the value to them?
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B
I said this before we started recording, but I feel like, you know, I've. We've talked with, I don't know, variety of inspectors. Just personally over the years, most of them seem to be like two to three people on a team. You're obviously much larger. Can you give me, like, what's the biggest in the industry? How close to the top are you? Are you middle? Are you high? Like, where are you size wise?
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A
Yeah. So we're the largest independently owned inspection company in the country.
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B
Yeah, that would feel like that would be the answer. Because everyone I talk to is like two or three people. Yeah, right. Yes.
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A
That's very normal.
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B
Yeah. That's amazing. That's amazing. And you guys are still private. You're not like private equity backed or, or anything?
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A
You're exactly right. Yep. No private equity, no franchise, no licensing, Nothing. Just owned 100 by me.
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B
Cool. Let's dive into the sort of the early stages. We, we read this ebook, we called some people and we're like, hey, walk me through what you do, which I think that's great. Like, what did the first year look and feel like for you?
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A
It was a disaster.
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B
Yeah.
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A
There's no other word I could describe that would be more true. I put in all the effort, right? So I had this idea. I was like, oh, this is going to be great. I'm going to go out here, I'm going to do this. However, nothing worked. I had no skills, I had no connections, I had no money. And so I wasn't getting anywhere. I spent 16 months sincerely putting in a full time effort, meeting people, going to networking events. I built my own website because I didn't have any money. At this point, I'm literally homeless and I'm desperate to get this to work and the only thing I can do every day is get up and try again, try again, try again. And I'm just trying. I found ways to make some side income just to survive. But the reality is I knew that this made sense for me to solve it. I just wasn't getting anywhere. Finally though, got my first customer. Sixteen months later, they found me on my website, I still don't know how, paid me $93 to come out and do a home inspection on their new construction house. I then called that home inspector because I'm not a home inspector. I've never been a licensed home inspector. I was the person who wanted to get them to work, right? So I called one of the inspectors, I said, hey, can you meet me out here? I got a job for you. And it's like, yeah, how much? And I paying $93. And he was like, okay, yeah, that'll work. Meet you out there. I didn't mean to give him all of the $93, but I did and I still was happy. Met him out there, like, okay, it happened. Got my second customer four months later. So it's like, is this ever going to happen? Like, I got to give up at some point. But I, I don't know, I think I was, I was too obsessed with this idea that it could work and it could be something. I just knew I hadn't found the way and I was determined to figure it out. So once I got that second customer, I'm there and I'm asking and I'm talking and she ended up loving me. And she's like, hey, listen, let me introduce you. It turns out she was an investor. She saw it, found my website too. She ends up saying, hey, let me introduce you to some more investors that I know and maybe they'll use you too. Oh, and by the way, you need to raise your Prices because you charge me 99, and that's not enough. She's like, no one's going to use you if that's all you're charging. She's like, Charge 199. And so she starts mentoring me a little bit. And it worked. That just grew upon itself. So then I slowly start getting. I like to say that because then I went to one inspection a month, and it became one inspection a week, right? Then it becomes. And I'm going to all of these and I'm learning and I'm asking questions and I'm talking. I'm really trying to understand, like, why are you using me? What do you like? What do you not like? And I do this for years. We get really busy. I end up hiring my first inspector. He's still with me today. We spent tons of time together crafting the perfect service. You know, something that would really make sense and last and make people have a feeling of, man, that was not enough. Like, I would have paid more for that. That's the. That's the feeling you're always trying to walk away from. I feel in home service because so often we experience home services where we feel like we've paid an arm and a leg for something and we're grumpy about it, right? And it's like, okay, I don't care who I use again. I'm not. I don't care if I use that company or if I get a better deal next time. I don't. For me, that's not a model I wanted to build. I wanted to build something that could be referable mostly, I think, because it took me so long to get a customer, right? So there's this underlying fear that, like, I still may not ever get another customer again. I mean, it's just a part of the DNA of myself and Greenworks. Like I tell my team every single week, every single week, nobody has to call us. No one needs us. If we went away tomorrow, everybody's still going to get a service done. So we still have to earn our opportunity each and every day with every single person that we touch. And luckily, it's really transformed and turned us into a huge force that we are and trying to still grow more.
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B
So the. How much of the dynamic of, like, challenging to get customers was. You launched it in 2009, so I think, like, home transaction levels were just really, really low. Like, was a lot of this, like, highly competitive? You're up against a bunch of other home inspectors trying to make it. Did home inspectors leave the industry like what, what was the sort of dynamic at that moment?
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A
Yeah, you're exactly right. So home inspectors were leaving the industry. Home sell levels were low at that time. The opportunity was always still there though, because you are in Texas. Right. And so we have been getting an influx of people for many, many years.
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B
Yeah.
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A
But that was a particular low. So there's a really, the timing was awful. People weren't willing to try new things at that point. Right. So I hit a really bad time. But the persistence and the willingness to stay with it I think helped me that once the market started to change, things started to get better. I'm still there. Right. And I'm at this point learning every single day. Like I'm reading, I'm reading like I'm an avid reader. Like I to know how to do this. And I'm all self taught. Right. I did go to school and, and I did study business but I never got a degree to graduate so I had to teach myself and learn. And so much of it was just going out and obsessively listening. You know, I think there's a, there's so much to be said for listening to the client.
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B
Yeah.
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A
They will tell you everything you need. Like, I'm sorry, like if, if there is one thing that any of us can do tomorrow to transform our businesses, it's just ask the clients what they want. What do you want more of, what do you want less of? Where do you, where did you like spending money here? Where did you not like spending money here? And then just adapt and change. Right. And make the changes that can be done. And it will, it will work.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Because at the end of the day, like the market, the market does decide, it does tell us what it wants from us, what it wants our business to be. You know, our client base is determined by that. Like we can choose certain things, but then there's a part of it that's really not within our control to be mega successful. I genuinely believe that. I genuinely believe that when Amazon began as a bookselling company, they did this better than anybody. You just adapted and learned and had a big huge vision of what they wanted to be and they change and modify to become it. And you see, Apple has done the same thing. Like they're able to reinvent themselves, but they stay core to and true to who they are. And that's some of what I think comes, comes as a miss in the home service field where we too much want to put our own stamp in ideas on what we want instead of what is the market's. Actually asking us for. And it can be that resistance, right? It's like, why does this feel so hard? Why does this feel so hard? Why does it feel so hard? You know, for me, I'm always trying to remove friction, you know, so it starts getting a little too difficult. Like in other words, in the market's not behind me. Perfect. I got to go back out in the field. You know, I was just out in the field last week. I'm going out again tomorrow. I'm going to go talk to clients because it's feeling too difficult. So I'm missing it somewhere. Where, what do they, what do we need to do now? Because what, what we were giving you two, three years ago, it may not be exactly what you're looking for today. So why not make sure that we're delivering exactly what it is that's going to make us five star worthy. Right. And continue to build this snowball that can roll down the hill faster and bigger.
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B
So we've driven like customer obsession, focus, sort of like a fanatical response. So what are all the different ways you're measuring it? Asides from asking, like, probably some basics like reviews, but are like nps, how deep are we diving here? Are we calling after every appointment like, what's that look like?
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A
Yeah, Net promoter is huge. You got to measure that. I, I, I, I couldn't even imagine. I've been doing that for very, very, very long time. Reviews, of course, yes. We make happy calls as well. Right. So like to make sure that everything that we promise is getting actually delivered. And when are we going above and beyond and when are we not? So that's major. Tracking the reports itself, you know, there's a quality control process for us where we can actually look at those. You know, we use AI tools to measure and see and compare because We've served over 80,000 clients in our existence. So there becomes a lot of data to help us know what we are expecting to see. And then of course there's outliers, but we have a gauge there, we have a lot of in person training that we do. So like we're going out and assessing and asking the clients and the inspectors and their leaders like, hey, what are we seeing? What are we doing? What is the response here? So there's lots of tools to measure. You have to lean on those tools and that's just, you know, that's the field side. Then you also have the phones. Tons, tons, tons to talk about there too. Right. But overall it's using all of these tools and resources to make sure that we're, we're hitting it right on that bullseye as much as we possibly can and as often as we can. And as long as you know, we've decided, you know, I am fanatical about client experience. I'm obsessive and I'm a perfectionist in that way. Like there's nothing else that has to go right as far as I'm concerned. Like, but as long as we are exceeding our clients expectations, we're always going to have jobs. It's as simple as that. So let's do that and let's do it really, really, really well and then let's build from there. And it gets hard, especially when you're like me. Like, I know the model that I want to build and it's difficult because I want to add more services and I want to be this one stop shop. So every time I do something new, I have to go back to start and make sure we're meeting the expectations and refine and change and tweak from there. But that work ethic is there and we're willing to do it.
- [24:12]
B
It's no secret that my office here in Nashville is almost completely empty. So how do I support my team as well as have great growth metrics? Well, the answer is international contractors with quick staffers. So Quick staffers is a premier staffing agency which will place top tier talent in your business. Built by the trades for the trades. So if you need a csr, they'll be placing a CSR that is highly trained in your business, that knows service titan and can book calls effectively. Day 1 Call 1. Affordable, reliable and trained in all of the industry best practices. Quick staffers can help you cut that overhead, boost conversions and scale your business fast. So don't waste another lead. Visit quickstaffers.com and transform your business today. I want to, I want to hit multi state and we're probably going to spend like a decent amount of time here because that is really interesting. So at what point did you go multi market? Like what year do you remember?
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A
First market, when we left DFW, because we can call that one market. We went to Austin, that was 2018, 2019, we went to Houston. That was awesome. Did that. And then just last year, well maybe it's been about 18 months. 18 months. We were like, okay, we're gonna start branching out, we're gonna start going into Florida. We're starting, we're gonna start taking opportunities on engineering and environmental services and the way that we get to do A home inspection is if we land some sort of contract experience, you know, that lets us go into the state. So we're not just performing home section services in all six states, but we are doing the engineering and the environmental there. And that's been us putting someone in that state. Right. So another part of our model is the home inspector or the engineer or the environmental person. Like they're the star of everything that we do. Because the knowledge and what people want from us is what they're paying us for is to know if this person's coming in and giving them the expertise that they're looking for. So they are the center. And that's something that we have as a consultive service that we have to focus on. We have to focus on our honor, our people. Versus like you John, like you get to go out and do really great work, right. And if I'm happy with how my H VAC system is running, like attempts happening the way I want, my phone app is doing the things that I want it to do. Like I'm overall happy and the technician is a, maybe a part of that service, but maybe not the feature versus in my world, they're the whole feature. You know, how the information was communicated, how it's delivered, follow up questions to ask later, all that has to kind of hit it out of the park. So we spend a lot of time and effort trying to get that right. And every single time that we can find the right person who really is going to believe in our mission and honestly do the extra work that it, that it takes to work at Greenworks, you know, we're not an easy company to work for. Our standards are very, very high and we are very open and honest about that. You get the benefit of what being a very high level inspector and high level engineer and high level environmental technician gets you, which is a lot of work. Like you're in high demand, you're liked when you walk in the home because honestly lots of time people already know you, they've already seen you. Things of this nature is happening even at our scale, but it doesn't mean that you aren't putting in the effort to gain that. So it's a world in which you're trying to attract the type of person who wants to be seen, wants to be known, wants to not just be someone in a uniform, right. But their name actually be next to the name of the brand. That's what we, that's what we do and that's what we build. And honestly I look forward to doing that. In more states over the next few years. Like we're going to expand in the states that we're in for now. We're not going to go more long term. I want to go national, but there's.
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B
The three service types and I just want to understand this a little bit more. So there's property inspection, like home inspection, point of sale. There's structural engineering, there's environmental testing. So for Texas, Austin, Houston, dfw, we were like really focusing on home inspection. Florida, Georgia, Colorado. I think I have those. Right. That's mainly engineering. Like no home inspection. Okay, what's the, like, walk me through the difference. Cause like, I, I don't know that I understand the difference.
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A
Well, the engineering part of it is a lot more focused on say, your foundation part of the home and the framing aspect of the home.
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B
Okay.
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A
Right. So anytime that we're making large investments, we want to know that we have a good, solid foundation. Foundation expense on homes can be very, very high. There are obviously basements, say in Ohio and things of this nature. Right. So like that is a huge part of anything that you're doing. Yeah. Especially if and when you want to go up. So additions like we love or we're really big on those. You want to expand out on the house. Right. So we want an open concept home. Like we want to remodel. We do a lot of that work as well. So any, any of that. And all of that is a part of our engineering service to where we are now with our investors who want to open up the house. Whether they want to flip the house or they want to turn into a long term rental or whatever they want to do, we're there for them in that way. Same thing with our realtor clients. It turns out like there's a lot of them who want to get in that game and then just turn around and sell. So we love to do that for them. And then on the environmental side, again, it all started tying together for us because once you start opening up walls, oh, here's asbestos, right. Oh, here's mold. What's the water quality going to be like in this home? You know, all of these things that we can help with and provide a solution for is just a part of the service offering that we want to give. So that way people can feel the same commitment level of not just buying a house and having us necessarily do the inspection, write up the report and tell them what's wrong. But, but part of it is us getting into the work side of it. So the work of the consulting Though still not swinging a hammer. We are not general contractors. We're never doing that. We've tried to do work. Turns out we are not good at materials and trucks and all of that. Like, it's not our world. We are people who like to inspect, we are people who like to consult, and we are people who like to connect. So we want to connect them to companies like yours, John. Right. So that way they know, like, who are the trusted people to come in here and actually get this fixed for me, oh, we need to call Wilson. But our side of it is to point it out and say, hey, here's something that we're identifying is an issue. You know, call a trusted professional, get it fixed.
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B
Why that service type? Like, what makes it different? Like, I. And thanks for explaining the difference. Why launching with that in a new market versus the home inspection, like, what makes it more or less attractive.
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A
I think specifically we have a need that is there in other markets that's a little easier for us to get into. So it's interesting. We could start with the home inspection and build that. But it is a very intensive marketing a step for us to take. It takes a lot of money to get going for home inspection. Stay busy. The home inspection. Yeah, the home inspection versus the engineering and the environmental part of it. Turns out, like most of the states in the states that we've chosen, they already need these services. There's a lot less competition.
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B
Okay.
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A
Shockingly for those services. And we're really good at understanding the real estate transactions. So like us going in and communicating our value proposition to investors, to hoas, to realtors for the engineering and the environmental service is just way less resistant. So it's easier for us to get started there in that and then build the home inspection later.
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B
So we've, over the past couple years, we've expanded. We're in a few states now. How many locations or is it. How do we determine that? Or is it like six states? That's the same thing.
- [33:10]
A
Yeah, it's six. Yeah, it's six states because we can, we can work all over. But we do like, we do have like 11 actual locations. So, like we have a location in Denver. Yeah, right. We have, you know, like our location in Tampa, you know, so like we, we are there. It's a funny though, like when you start getting in, and this is a big one for me too, is when you start getting in there and we have, we're looking to see where are we going to be able to penetrate because there is always an audience for us of people who want what we're selling and we want to find who it is that wants what we're selling and then grow and build from there. So sometimes like we tried to start in Boulder, which isn't too far off, but like it was like, wow, you know what Denver see seems to be a lot more interested in the service. Okay, let's pivot and go a little bit more that direction. Yeah, let's keep here. Right. And let's expand into these suburbs and, and go from there. So it's, it's, it's nice to be able to have a not tied down identity because my guys, like, they can travel, like engineering work, like we can, we can get into homes and commercial buildings very easily, especially on the environmental engineering side. It's a lot more flexible so we don't have to be so tied to specific city markets, if you will.
- [34:37]
B
So you sort of alluded to this, but like, what's next for greenwork? It sounds like we're going to be building like more density inside our existing markets.
- [34:46]
A
We are 100%. There's so much for the taking. It's kind of incredible. Like every, like I, we look at our market share and it's so small. It's so small. I mean, we don't have 1% of the market share in Texas. So, you know, one could argue that we don't need to leave Texas yet. And I would actually agree with that argument. We just have a desire to be in more places overall and we're going to do that. But at the moment it's the density that's going to matter most because you do start getting more economies. Right. As if you stay tighter.
- [35:31]
B
Yeah.
- [35:32]
A
And at the same time though, you also have the risk that happens when being in a central market. Right. Like, okay, there's a major disaster, you know, and a certain market and now that market's underwater. Like we run into that with Houston. If all of my work was there, now I have nothing to protect me. So I think it's a, it's a combination. Right. Trying to get that right, knowing where to put capital resources is huge and just trying to make the right decisions at the right times.
- [36:02]
B
What's your advice for owners building out large, like service driven teams? You said that your person is the main stage here. So like, what's your advice? To be able to even get close to what you built?
- [36:13]
A
You know, there's, it takes a lot of things to go right. I'm not gonna lie. You know, there, there is a, there's an aspect of I think hard work and time spent in the business that a lot of owners get caught up in where they're working. But genuinely they're working on the wrong things. They're not working on the business, they're working in it. And I think that that is long term the wrong way to go. I think you have to take what for instance I've done like with my president of service when we first started to expand and grow, I, I said, hey, you can't ever do an inspection by yourself. Like you got to take someone with you and train someone next to you. So that way you're teaching along the way. And then once you do that, now that helps you create a format for SOPs. Because guess what, if you don't have strong SOPs, no one can do this besides you. And that's a major weakness, right? So we got to build SOPs and then from SOPs, it's okay, now what's the process to achieving those SOPs and then what are the systems that go next to those SOPs? So it's got to be a love, you know, of business in learning about business. Because I think where what you tend to find in my opinion, John, is the people who get to the higher percents of their industries. Owner opera and I know your industry is absolutely huge. You have a ton of pe, right, and consolidation that happens. So it's like really cool to see businesses like yours where it's you and it's as big as it is. But I think there's so much that happens where you have this lack of love for the actual business and you see a lot of technician driven owners who love the technical work because it's what they're strong, that's what they feel good with. But they don't want to go and learn the parts of the business that actually make the business grow. Right? So they don't want to learn the accounting, they don't want to learn the sales marketing, they don't want to learn about Legion, they don't want to learn about roas, and you know, all of the things that are going to actually grow the business. And so they're getting caught in these gaps. And honestly, here's the thing, you either replace the gap, you find someone who loves those things and you lean into that and partner with them in your mindset. Like, I've never been a home inspector, I'm not an engineer and I'm not an environmental tech. So how do I get to have a company that does those services? Well, because I Have amazing people who I have worked with for a very long time who do those services and I lean on them and we communicate together really well and we depend on one another, right? To do that. I'm also not the best operator in the world. You know, I'm not a great efficiency person. I'm not a great system builder. I'm not. So I have a person who does that in, in my world, right? And that's where we say, okay, listen, I need a system to run this and then I need you to create automations, right, to do that. I'm not a call center expert, right? So like I'm, I'm, I'm really good at not going too deep on any one thing, John. Like for my story, I haven't done that. I just know how to put all these pieces together and I keep my focus on the number one KPI, which is do we have happy clients, right? Because if I have happy clients, if I have high nps, my flexibility to change and adapt and add services or need to increase a price here or there, it's there. I have that because I've earned that, because I've kept that in the forefront. And then at the same time got to have happy team members, right? Like they've got it. They've got to love what they do. They have to believe in the mission, they have to believe in the vision of where we're going. They have to see a better life for themselves inside of Greenworks. Because if the life isn't better inside of Greenworks, why should they stay? Right? So then we're not retaining our people and we're turning people all the time and if we're having turnover, we have problems, right? We can't make money with high turnover. So it's a, it's a lot of pieces. It's a lot of pieces and luckily my mind works that way and I love that aspect of it and I love my people and I'm willing to do business to get to the people.
- [40:54]
B
Everybody knows that leads are tough to come by. But what if they weren't service scalers? Is the no BS marketing team just for home service contractors, they run SEO, ppc, LSA and GMB campaigns that actually bring in customers and not just clicks. They've delivered me tons of leads tied to real revenue and they can do the same for you. If you sign a 12 month contract, your first month is free. Click the link below to get started. This was, this was an awesome conversation on like walking me through Greenworks, walking me through you yourself. And I'm just, yeah. Thankful you jumped on with us today. If people want to connect with you, how can they find you?
- [41:31]
A
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you can find me on social media. So I've got, you know, LinkedIn account, LinkedIn, Harmony Brownwood. I've got an X account, Harmony Brownwood without the O. Facebook, it's Harmony Brownwood. So I have that. I can definitely put it all out there for you guys. So, like, please reach out to me, ask me questions. I. You can message me. Happy to do that on Instagram. I'm there. It's Harmony dot Brownwood on Instagram as well. So, yeah, like, reach out to me. Let's connect. Let's talk more. You know, I love talking business. It's my. It's my favorite thing to do. I learn a lot. I spend a lot of time sharing and learning and listening to great podcasts like this. Right. So I think it's a. It's a great opportunity for all of us to expand and get to know one another better and see, you know, what are you doing great that can help us. And obviously we share what we're doing well, that we can help someone else, too.
- [42:30]
B
Awesome. Thank you, Harmony, for coming on today.
- [42:33]
A
Absolutely. Thanks for having me, John.