← Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC Business Growth Podcast
Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC Business Growth Podcast
How to Rebrand Your Company and Add $500K in Revenue
00:47:17
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- [00:00]
A
And you're prepping to rebrand. What are some pros that you have that you can just, like, clock off?
- [00:05]
B
Yeah, I guess you're de risked from, like, a reputation standpoint. One of the big cons is, like, bandwidth, especially if you're trying to do, like, branded marketing. It gets really hard to do when you're doing it for more than one brand.
- [00:17]
A
How are you thinking about customer, like, risk.
- [00:20]
B
You want customers that are looking for that old brand to still be able to find that old brand. What's the story that you're going to tell in those markets to the teams that you're changing their name to? The customer?
- [00:30]
A
If you're in marketing working across. Across multiple brands, it's really hard to have, like, the shower epiphany. No one can put a hundred percent focus into one thing. Welcome back to Owned and Operated. I'm your host, John Wilson. I run a $30 million home service company in Northeast Ohio, and for fun, I run a podcast talking about the industry. Today on the show, I have my good friend Rich Jordan from Sanford Temperature Control. Rich was just on the show about a month ago, and it was his story of 77,000 a year to 30 million in just three years. Today, we're talking about branding. This is going to be an awesome topic, and I look forward to diving in. Rich, welcome back to Owned and Operated. This might be your fourth or fifth man like you. You've. You're a frequent flyer.
- [01:21]
B
I'm a regular. Yeah.
- [01:23]
A
Yeah. Well, I feel like, what if you're not here on air physically with us? You get a lot of mentions. I. I realize it more and more. I'm like, yeah, I was just talking to Rich about that, and I'm like, you know, for the people that have no idea who Rich is.
- [01:39]
B
Yeah, it's like I have to be on here frequently just so people know when you mention me.
- [01:43]
A
Yeah, we just did a good. I think your episode from Pantheon came out maybe a month ago, two months ago, and that was a good episode. It was like 700,000 to 30 million in three years. Four years. And then you're at three locations, and you guys are. You guys are growing like crazy.
- [02:02]
B
Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a fun episode.
- [02:05]
A
So, yeah, I'd love. Maybe we, you know, we can dive in pretty quick because most people, like you, want to know more about Sanford. We can just, like, link to that show from a few weeks ago, because I think that'll give people a really good idea. But today you came on because you have three companies you're in New Hampshire, New Jersey, and also New Jersey and all through acquisition. And I think you've acquired a few others in there too. They just sort of rolled in and you're prepping to rebrand to one brand, which is like kind of an interesting conversation. Like, I think about this a lot. I know I did this because we had. We did nine acquisitions, but then it's all just Wilson now.
- [02:50]
B
That's right. Did do it. Well, because you operated under, under those brands for, for a little couple years.
- [02:55]
A
Yeah, a couple years. And. But yeah, I think the. For. For being in one location, I think it makes a lot of sense. So I mean, maybe we can even give some pros and cons because I think there's some funny pros and cons of running multiple brands. Like what, what are some pros that you have? Like that you can just like clock off your team's doing the work. Big reputation. Make sure that Google knows it. Some of the key areas they help are if you have multiple gbps, they can post on every single one of them every day. They can send reviews by your closest GBP to wherever the job was completed. And they have built in SEO heat maps that show exactly where you rank on the map pack in real time. There's no more manual updates, no more missed opportunities, just results. Get started free at BigReputation AI and unlock 15 free SEO scans today.
- [03:45]
B
Pros of running multiple brands. I mean, I guess you're de risked from like a reputation standpoint. You could have one. You could feasible have one brand that screws up, gets bad reviews, whatever it is. I, I don't know. What do you think?
- [03:58]
A
I think if it's in one market, there's some.
- [04:02]
B
Yeah, it.
- [04:03]
A
You get the people that I know that do it like compete again. Their brands compete against each other, which on one hand is like weird. And on the other hand, either way they got the customer. So like, nobody cares.
- [04:18]
B
Yeah, I've definitely heard. Yeah, some guys like to, yeah, they like to get cute and say like, you know, the customer got three quotes and all three quotes were from us.
- [04:25]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I have like Heartland, you know, Home Services, the big consolidator. They do that. They have like 10 brands in our market. I know they have a bunch of brands in Chicago, a bunch of brands in Detroit. And yeah, you can call all, you can call all 10 and get an estimate and have no idea that you're working with the same JWC or whatever the P backer is out of New York. There's a local guy that does that too. I think he's up to five brands and that was always his thing. He would like. It takes a lot of maneuvering.
- [04:59]
B
Yeah. If you're small, a lot of effort. Yeah, it seems like a lot.
- [05:02]
A
Well, dude, they had a shared call center too. So like the dispatch team literally knew that they just sent Jimmy from ABC company to this lady's house and now they have to send like Alfredo from de company and she's like, all right, can't send the same guy. But it's, you know, this is crazy, man. But yeah, I just, either way they get the market.
- [05:27]
B
I just even I just think about trying to market, you know, five or 10 brands in a market.
- [05:32]
A
Yeah.
- [05:33]
B
And you're trying.
- [05:33]
A
It's transactional. Well, yeah, I think it's transactional marketing like which you know, is most of ours these days. It's a lot of leads. Like we just need the lead. So I think that's probably the biggest pro. I think if you're acquiring companies, there's no potential disruption. Like you brought these, you bought these brands.
- [05:55]
B
Yeah.
- [05:56]
A
So there's like switching costs, there's potential customer like disruption. I don't know but I think those are the pros.
- [06:04]
B
Yeah, one, one pro is that you don't have to rewrap all the trucks.
- [06:07]
A
That's one pro. Yeah. Well you and I have argued about this but like we've rebranded a bunch and we did not rewrap any trucks. We're running around, we're running around multi, multi branded. I don't think as. I don't think as much anymore. Well, so we, you know, we bought.
- [06:25]
B
These like you have some like apt electric trucks on the road right now.
- [06:29]
A
So those were unmarked but we brought, we bought downs drain cleaning and we bought central heating and air and we still have one or two downs drain cleaning trucks and then we have three central heating and airs. I mean most of the other ones like we bought those companies three years ago and we've just like cycled them out. So it was a lot of old vehicles. Like I'm not going pre wrap a five year old vehicle if I'm going to cycle it at six years.
- [06:54]
B
Right. And you also don't need to deadline it. You can keep it on the road.
- [06:57]
A
Right. So yeah, that's, that's how we thought about it.
- [07:00]
B
Yeah, we did that with some of our like, like when we did the Bill Trombley acquisition in New Hampshire, that was a pretty decent sized one. I remember 16, 16 vehicles and we sort of Slowly rewrapped or salvaged those trucks over the course of 12 months following the. The tuck in.
- [07:21]
A
Okay, all right, so those are the pros. What are the, what are the cons?
- [07:26]
B
I think the, one of the big cons is like bandwidth. Especially if you're trying to do like branded marketing.
- [07:33]
A
Right.
- [07:33]
B
Like non transactional branded marketing. Like all the things that go behind like creative and media buys. Yeah, things like that. It gets really hard to do when you're doing it for more than one brand. Yeah, you end up. What ends up happening is you end up neglecting some brands. And that's kind of the story for us. Like we, we basically leaned really hard into the Sanford branding and, and grew that name in its market. But really, you know, kind of let the other, well the other one at the time kind of, you know, wither on the vine as far as branding. And we just did transactional down there for the most part. I also, there's some element of like, even with my vendor negotiations, you know, we're trying to negotiate with vendors, you know, equipment pricing across, you know, trying to use like the muscle and like.
- [08:25]
A
Yeah.
- [08:25]
B
Of the multi market to get better pricing and stuff. And like vendors just really struggle with the fact that you're not the same name even really. Oh yeah, it's like a huge pain in the neck. No. Yes, we own that one. Yes, it's the same ein. Like, you know.
- [08:44]
A
That'S really interesting pain.
- [08:46]
B
Yeah, it's actually shock.
- [08:48]
A
That doesn't even like make sense to me.
- [08:50]
B
No, it doesn't, it doesn't. And I mean obviously people get around it. You know, like these PE firms and stuff are certainly negotiating prices.
- [08:58]
A
Yeah, I mean I'm like, I'm again sitting here like Heartland has 10 in my market. Like that's not even like 10, that's 10 in my market. They're all within 10 minutes of each other. Like. But you know what is kind of funny? I was talking, I mean maybe this sort of proves it. I was talking with one of our wholesaler relationships last week and they, they have one of the Heartland accounts. And I was like, what do you mean you have one of the Heartland accounts? Like why wouldn't you have all of the Heartland account? That doesn't make Heartland account. Yeah, I'm like, that doesn't make sense. And it was exactly that. Like sometimes the individ individual brand can negotiate better rates than the P like themselves. Yeah.
- [09:40]
B
And I think just like, even, even like inside the team messaging leadership, like culture and values and stuff, it's like, it's possible, and we have, you know, imbued that into the three different teams, but there's friction in that when you're, like, wearing different colors under a different name, different taglines, you know, Again, like, brands get neglected. You know, like, this brand's got all the nice swag and the nice jackets and, like, you know, and, like, these guys don't.
- [10:15]
A
Yeah.
- [10:17]
B
So there's definitely. There's some of that, too. It's just brick. Yeah. And I think when you're on a small team, like, if we had this, like, big, robust team, like, maybe it would be easier to manage, and, like, we could have different brand managers, you know, that were focused on those brands, but we don't. We don't have that sort of, you know, we don't have the sort of resources. So. Yeah, being like, can I split my own brain into three. Three pieces and try to, like, keep all this stuff in the air?
- [10:48]
A
I mean, you've run two brands for years.
- [10:51]
B
Yeah.
- [10:52]
A
So it's obviously changed at three. Like, you ran two brands for, like, four years, right. Or three years. So it was the third brand that you were like, hold on. Yeah, this is weird. Like, is that how it felt? Like, you just sort of added the next one? It was like, oh, this no longer makes as much sense, I think.
- [11:13]
B
I mean, I've always kind of wanted to be under one name.
- [11:16]
A
It's cohesive.
- [11:17]
B
Yeah. Like, it's something I've always desired. And then the pro. I think it was the third brand that sort of just, like, kind of was like, all right, man, are we gonna do this or not? Like, how many brands are we gonna grow to? Are we gonna go to 5, 7, 10?
- [11:34]
A
Yeah.
- [11:35]
B
Like, this is just gonna get unwieldy. So while it's, like, somewhat manageable right now, like, it's not gonna be manageable soon. So we really should, like, build this muscle of, like, figure out how to execute the rebrand, get everyone under the same name, and have that really be the desired play going forward. And I think, like, you know, like, you and I talked a little bit about Greenfield operations on our last episode. I think that that, too, kind of weighs in here, because obviously, like, if you're going to Greenfield, you're going to Greenfield under a particular name that already exists. So it's like, all right, like, what name are we going to do that under? You know, we're about to Greenfield into Southern Maine. That's gonna. That's our first one, and that's going to be an extension of The Sanford location in New Hampshire. So are we going to do this Greenfield at Sanford, or are we going to, like, do the rebranded name change before we do that? Greenfield, you know? Yeah, start fresh. So that's. That was definitely kind of like the third branch and then the green, the active Greenfield, both, I think probably push us over the line on this.
- [12:46]
A
Yeah. How are you thinking about customer, like, risk?
- [12:52]
B
Yeah, I think I there. So there's definitely risk, but I think it's able to be mitigated. So what kind of gives me confidence on this is that Bill Trombley, when we, when we bought the Bill Trombley company, it was kind of like it was at the time, it was like a peer company to Sanford, pretty close. And Sanford bought it in that market and we just absorbed Bill Trombley into Sanford, did away with the brand, you know, everyone, you know, Sanford shirts, Sanford hats, Sanford trucks. What worked for us then was sort of two things. One is that you want customers that are looking for that old brand to still be able to find that old brand.
- [13:44]
A
Yeah.
- [13:45]
B
Right. And like, that generally means, like, digital real estate. Right. It's like Google business profiles, websites. So, like, we left all of that intact. We didn't change it at all. The only thing we changed about the website was like, it was like a photo of, like, me and Bill shaking hands on the, on the marquee of the website with like, a little bit of intro to the, to the change. But that's the only change we made. The Google business profile is, like, completely pure. We left all that stuff up. And then in our service titan, we, you know, created campaigns that made it like, very clear that, like, these phone calls are coming from a Bill Trombley phone number.
- [14:27]
A
Right.
- [14:28]
B
And then for like six months, the call center answered the phone as, you know, if they came in from a Bill Trombley phone number, it was. Thanks for calling Bill Trombley. You know, how may I help you today? Book the entire call. Take everyone, take them all the way through the booking flow, and then on the end, be like, hey, you know, we're happy to announce we recently partnered with Sanford. And in order to get someone out to your home faster, maybe a Sanford or a Trombley truck coming out. Is that okay with you? Oh, yeah, no problem.
- [14:59]
A
Great.
- [15:01]
B
And that's. That's how we ran that.
- [15:03]
A
I mean, that feels like way better than what we did. Like, the first time we did this, it was nine years ago, we answered the phone Wilson Plumbing and R and R Plumbing. Like, that was how. Which, like, for everybody, including 25 year old John. I was like, yeah, this is a great idea. Yeah.
- [15:22]
B
So that, that worked really well. And like, as far, as far as the feedback that like I was able to receive and get is that like, we didn't really lose customers and like, and customers took it really well over the phone. Occasionally there'd be some long time tromb customer that would give a little bit of pushback, but like, that's great. Like, we'd love for them to give us pushback while we're on the phone with them.
- [15:42]
A
Yeah.
- [15:43]
B
Like, our CSRs are kind of armed with like, here's how to handle this. You know, like same team, you know, like same service, your warranty is still active, blah, blah, blah. Right.
- [15:53]
A
How do you think that impacts, like overstate? Because like, you know, I'm thinking about that acquisition and you guys were in the same market. They had probably seen a Sanford truck before. That's not going to be the case for the next one. So, like, is it a similar playbook? Like, what do you think?
- [16:09]
B
I think it is a similar playbook.
- [16:14]
A
The.
- [16:16]
B
We'Re basically planning to run it almost exactly the same. The, the tough thing for us is that like we've got. And we have a shared call center now.
- [16:24]
A
Yeah.
- [16:25]
B
Across the three markets. My, my CSR is like, God bless them. They've got to run that playbook for three separate brands at the same time.
- [16:32]
A
Yeah. Yeah. That's exhausting.
- [16:34]
B
So it's going to be kind of tough.
- [16:37]
A
Yeah, well, even right now it's tough. I mean, they're booking for like, hey, thanks for calling. Like, yeah, I think that's complicated.
- [16:44]
B
Yeah.
- [16:45]
A
How. How did you. Like, this is like in the weeds, but AI in the call center, like, how did you do that? Because I'm like, I'm imagining AI has to mess that up a lot.
- [16:58]
B
Just talking about like the three brands. AI in the call center, we've been able to basically like silo the bots. Okay. So, so like if a call comes in from this phone number and this service titan account, then it's gonna. It's like a separate bot that knows nothing, like, has no knowledge of the other brands, only this one brand.
- [17:17]
A
Okay.
- [17:18]
B
So like right now we're rolling out new bots this week that will still be siloed by local brand, but they'll also have knowledge of this new brand and like how to massage that, that introduction. So we're, we were just working on that yesterday actually.
- [17:37]
A
All right, all right, cool. All right. So you think different state. It's the same. It's the same playbook.
- [17:43]
B
I think it's the same playbook, and I think it would have been. So, you know, initially, like, our natural path, like our natural, natural inclination was to take our largest existing brand and use that brand across all three markets. Right. So for us, that's Sanford in New Hampshire. Sanford's.
- [18:02]
A
Yeah.
- [18:02]
B
Double the size of the next largest brand that we have. And, and we've done a lot of brand investment in Sanford. So we were going to just make everything. Sanford. The problem, like, as we got close and like, we were. We were going to run that play. We were ready to run that play. But as we kind of like got closer to the finish line on that, what became clear to me was like, you know, we're taking the. And, and like my other two companies are Guarantee Plumbing, the G A R O N T, Tom Guarant, Guarantee Plumbing, and C and F Plumbing, which is for the two. The last names of the two founders of that company. So we were going to take the last names of the forgotten founders of these two brands and we're going to replace them with another past founder last name, not in the market. And like, it's like, what, what's the story that you're going to tell in those markets, you know, to the teams that you're changing their name to the customers, to the market? It basically just seems like a, it seems like an acquisition is what. Is what it looks like. And like, that story is just like, hard to tell and hard to get people behind. So that's why we really went towards, like, hey, look, you know, if, if we're going to do this, like, let's really think about, should we just change our name? Like, should we take this opportunity to change the name of everything and change it to something that's like, that we feel like we can kind of rally behind that speaks to our values, tells the market a little bit about us and like, what they can expect from us. And that's. And that's the route we went. So we're actually. So we're taking all three brands to include Sanford, you know, which is our most robust brand. And we're changing the name to a. To a entirely new name.
- [20:03]
A
That's. Yeah, that's a lot.
- [20:05]
B
It's. It's a lot.
- [20:07]
A
I'm like, I'm imagining now, granted, like, my name's still on the business, so I think, like, I'm like, would I do that? And my first thought was like, no, no, I wouldn't. But it's Also like. Well, yeah, it's because my name's on the business. Like, I think. Okay, all right, so the story is a little bit. What's the new name?
- [20:31]
B
Like, yeah, so the new name. So. And I'll give a little bit of like prelude here.
- [20:38]
A
Yeah, yeah, give us some prelude. Our.
- [20:41]
B
So we have core behaviors at our company that like, we, we take really seriously. We brief all the time. Spoken around the office all the time. And one of them that the team has really rallied behind actually, I'll prelude this even too. Is I actually last week. So I did our brand reveals to the teams last week and at Sanford, I had the team. We have 10 core behaviors. And I had the team. I was pulling guys into the conference room on the whiteboard and having them vote on their top core behavior. The winner was seize the high ground. Seize the high ground. Do the right thing even when not easy or profitable. That's. That's one of our core behaviors. A lot of the guys really rally behind that. They're proud of that. And we, and we, we live that every day to, to the chagrin of my wallet sometimes.
- [21:40]
A
Yeah. Yeah. I'm like you saying that looking off in the distance, it was just like, we live that every day. And I'm just like, oh, dude, I lose money every single day. I have, I have never made a dollar.
- [21:55]
B
Yeah. But we really, like, we really go above and beyond for, for our customers. Certainly we make things right when things go wrong and stuff like that. And yeah, and that's the core behavior that really drives that. So we're, so we're rebranding as high ground service pros.
- [22:09]
A
Okay.
- [22:11]
B
And, and you know, like, I, I really think like, we could, the way we could do the brand marketing for that in the market, I think it could be pretty powerful. So that's, that's where we're rolling.
- [22:25]
A
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- [23:25]
B
I think so. I mean, it. Trust me, like, it pains me deeply to change the name of Sanford. I mean, I've invested a lot of money in that brand and, and really like, we built that to like what I would consider like nearly like household name status in New Hampshire. And it's the largest, or you could argue like it's the. It's like the number two largest home service company in the state of New Hampshire right now. And, and we built it into that like, you know, when we took it over, it was only 12 people, 3 million revenue. So. Yeah, I mean, like, even the signage on my building cost me like 60 grand to put up knives. Yeah. Down. Like it kills me. Oh, so.
- [24:15]
A
So what's the thought? Like, how much is the investment to do this?
- [24:19]
B
It's. It's like a half a million bucks. Yeah.
- [24:22]
A
Okay.
- [24:23]
B
It's like, it's like 300 grand just in rat truck wraps. It's like another 50 in uniforms and. And then it's like website design and then some stuff that we probably would have done anyway for other. For like the existing brands, like radio spot production and. Yeah, stuff like that.
- [24:47]
A
What do you think about. We had this with one of the brands we bought. So I bought this company and the company was like tiny, like a million dollar business or something. Or like 1.5. And. And their SEO was ridiculous. Like way better than ours. It was like. I think you remember this. Like, it was embarrassing. It was so embarrassing. Like. Oh, it was actually insane. It was insane. It was like a local H Vac company doing a million and a half a year that was hitting like 15,000 page views a month. Like, it was, it was absolutely ridiculous.
- [25:25]
B
It had like a 40 domain authority or something.
- [25:28]
A
Yeah, it was, it was like crazy. I mean, they honestly should have just shut down the business and turned it into like an E commerce for filters. Like it would have been a larger and more valuable business. But yeah, kind of funny. So, like, how are you thinking about the investments you made in like digital real estate, like SEO as you transition? Because you're going to change domains, you're going to do all that. So, like, how are you thinking about it?
- [25:52]
B
Yeah, so we've got so like Sanford's domain performs very well now.
- [25:58]
A
Right.
- [25:59]
B
Made some SEO investments there. It gets, I think. Right. We've definitely seen it down. Like AI has hurt us on the SEO front in the past six months, but I think we're still getting like 14,000 visits a month on that website. And it's got a decent domain authority. I think it's like 27, but it's not like, it's not crazy. Good. Yeah, we. So I actually bought highground.com which I was surprised that I was able to get.
- [26:36]
A
That is really surprising. Was it like for like $20 or like $2,000?
- [26:41]
B
No, it was, it was, yeah, it was a little bit of money. It was like it was 10 grand.
- [26:45]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [26:46]
B
But it, you know, it's a two word domain. Yeah. Pretty solid.
- [26:53]
A
Yeah, 10, 10 grandfill is pretty good, to be honest.
- [26:56]
B
It had, it was dormant, like someone was sitting on it. But it had been previously used for like a, like a technology HR platform thing and they had made a bunch of investments in SEO. The backlink profile is crazy. And it has a 48 domain authority.
- [27:15]
A
Holy. That's crazy. And how much of that transfers?
- [27:20]
B
I think it, I think it, I think it transfers. I think you just have to maintain, you know, if you start like bleeding backlinks, I think it goes away. But I think if you maintain the backlinks, it works. I, I mean, honestly, I'm not sure. Like, we'll find out.
- [27:33]
A
Yeah, we'll find out because we're going.
- [27:36]
B
To be changing the content and I wonder if like Google's not going to like that.
- [27:40]
A
What's going to go to 404s. You'd have to like copy where the links destined to.
- [27:48]
B
The thing is, I think a lot of the backlinks are actually to the home page.
- [27:52]
A
I mean that would be amazing because that, then it probably would just continue.
- [27:57]
B
Right?
- [27:58]
A
Yeah. Yeah.
- [27:58]
B
I wonder, I wonder if there'll be any penalty that like, you know, the sites back looking to it now are all like HR related sites, but. And then it'll be a plumbing site. So I wonder if that's gonna be a problem. But I don't know.
- [28:12]
A
Yeah, that's really interesting.
- [28:13]
B
But it feels like, yeah, like I actually bought the domain without even realizing the, the domain authority of it. And then I was like, oh, this is a nice little surprise.
- [28:24]
A
Yeah, that is solid. Yeah, that's solid. All right, so we. All right, we got the domain. We're going to change the website. Are, are you gonna. I know there's a way to Redirect. So that would be something to look into. Have you looked into that?
- [28:37]
B
So the only problem I think eventually yes, but you know, kind of like.
- [28:42]
A
I think you're supposed to do it sooner than later. So we looked into this for this website that was outperforming like crazy and we didn't do it soon enough. And I think it made it not impossible, but very challenging. What we, what you're supposed to do is every single page you can. I'm going to use the wrong words here. So someone in the comments is going to use the right word. But basically you permanently redirect that page. So the backlink still counts. The domain authority just transfers over. That's how it's been described to me. So anything, anything positive from the page or negative, I guess from the page that you're linking, like permanently is associated with a new page. And what makes it hard is you have to do it page by page. It's individual page by page, not like website because you want this specific URL to go to this specific URL. So your pa, your website is a ton of pages, but I bet you could probably find the top performing hundred and permanently redirect them.
- [29:40]
B
Yeah, I guess I just wonder how that squares up with like keeping that digital real estate so that your customers don't. So that your customers still land on the page that they were looking for for, you know, if they're looking for Sanford, you want them to find Sanford. Yeah, so that's like the only thing that would keep me from just like straight up redirecting it.
- [30:00]
A
You know, maybe keep the homepage.
- [30:03]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe. Yeah. There's definitely some like subordinate pages that have good backlink profiles and stuff. So maybe, maybe we could re. Redirect those.
- [30:13]
A
Yeah, that's interesting. All right, so you're uniform signed how, like what's the time period you're thinking about this?
- [30:20]
B
So I mean we've been working on this like the, the brand design, the copy, the website, all that stuff. We've been working on that for like since August. So like three months.
- [30:37]
A
Yeah.
- [30:38]
B
And now like we just, we just revealed the name to the team. So the team's known that the name is going to change for a while and they've all been like, you know, anxiously awaiting what the name was going to be. We just revealed that last week. So now the website's supposed to go live in three days. We're like transitioning GBPs. The name on the GBPs, one GBP in each market. And so there's some Fuse time to all this stuff. You know, things have to get verified, you know. And at the same time we're running billboard and radio campaigns in those markets.
- [31:23]
A
Yeah.
- [31:23]
B
That's all starting next week.
- [31:26]
A
Is it announcing the rebrand or just like talking about high ground?
- [31:31]
B
The billboards are announcing the transition so it's like co branded. The radio spots are just like pure high ground spots. As if, as if the other brands didn't exist.
- [31:46]
A
Yeah.
- [31:47]
B
And then, but yeah. So we're, and then trying to just like mitigate operational disruption. We're doing two trucks a week. We're, we're rewrapping.
- [32:00]
A
Yeah.
- [32:01]
B
In each market. So like Sanford for instance, that's going to take like four months to rewrap.
- [32:10]
A
It was a humble brag for how large this fleet was. For the folks that missed that it might, it might be, might be longer. Goodly six.
- [32:21]
B
Yeah, yeah. You know, had to throw that in there.
- [32:23]
A
Yeah, it was good.
- [32:25]
B
But so yeah, it's kind of like there's going to be this sort of awkward like two month stage. But that's, that's kind of like what we're trying to do.
- [32:38]
A
Yeah.
- [32:39]
B
Get the digital real estate assets up, start doing mass media, pushing mass media to those digital assets. Keep the old brand digital assets up as well. And then the hope is that we're like not really like losing customers due to confusion, you know.
- [32:57]
A
So like the cost is obviously like a big part of the equation. It's also an add back. Right. So it's a one time capitalized cost that you get to carry forward for who knows how long. So like the cash, it's definitely like a lot of cash out of pocket. But the, the reason I'm saying that is why do you think PE doesn't do this? Because they, it is an add back. It's an invisible cost as far as like whatever their next trade is. So why do you think they don't rebrand more into one? Why isn't Apex, you know, 250 shops of Apex.
- [33:35]
B
I don't know. It's a good question. I mean especially when it comes to their smaller shops, you know, like, like.
- [33:43]
A
I mean we have some Apex shops locally that are like a million dollars a year of revenue. And I'm like, I don't even know why Apex bought them. Like it's, it's very odd.
- [33:52]
B
Yeah. Like for those, like I definitely think I'd be rebranding and like at least consolidating in a market. I don't know. I mean there's risk. Right. Like there's execution risk to doing this. Like, I certainly didn't, I didn't set out on this like, having all the answers to what we were going to do. Like, we sort of landed on some that I think are pretty good.
- [34:13]
A
Yeah.
- [34:14]
B
But it wasn't like super obvious how to do this. I don't know. I, you know, maybe it's like, you know, the focus on just like retaining and maintaining EBITDA and growing EBITDA is like, hey, look, we don't, we don't need to mess with the name.
- [34:28]
A
A limit of J Curve.
- [34:29]
B
Yeah. I would say, like, I mean, maybe.
- [34:31]
A
Firepower for other acquisitions. I don't know because I think like, what we've seen and I'm, I, I, I don't. The story feels different here just because it's different markets. But we rebranded all of those brands into the same company in 20 and the next like 12 months was 60% year over year growth. And we started at 13 or 14 million. Like, it was like ridiculous and it just like, it clicked. We were all one team, we were cohesive. It got rid of like half of the daily conversations used to be about this team versus that team versus whatever, and it's like none of it mattered now. What also happened at the same time for us is we rebranded, but we also physically combined locations, so we were able to solve problems in 10 minutes. What used to take a month because I could just walk an office over and be like, we're doing this right now. And it's hard to say like, which was which, but it definitely in one market anyways. Like, I mean, it, it blew up pretty quick.
- [35:35]
B
Well, and now like the firepower that you put behind any sort of mass media or branding or, you know, events team or whatever it is, you know.
- [35:44]
A
The name, I couldn't imagine doing that across, across multiple teams. I mean, it's, it's just too confusing, efficient.
- [35:49]
B
It'd be massively inefficient.
- [35:51]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It feels like, yeah, just a, basically a waste. Like, what? Yeah, why bother? And all you could do is transactional marketing. And even then, like, yeah, you can't do events, you can't do canvassing because it's like a different pitch and you can't like, get to scale with anything. But I also think so for like the operator, it makes sense. Well, something else this reminds me of was Bill Delisandro. He, he described this as shower thoughts. And I think about this all the time. But, like, if you're, he was using it for this exact case. So like, what this is called is a. A house of brands or a branded house. So a house of brands, like, is the PE company. So I. Hey, I have 200 locations and 150 brands inside there. So they're a house of brands. They have a bunch of different brands. And the way that you manage that is different. It's not worse or better, it's just different. Like, depending on your scale, it might be worse. Like in this case, it's worse, right? For me, it's probably worse. But a branded house is what you're transitioning to.
- [37:05]
B
You're.
- [37:06]
A
So you're moving from three brands to one and you're. You're hoping to get operational efficiency and like better brand power and all the things you're hoping to come from this. But yeah, I remember going over that with Bill Delesandro and he's in E commerce and he was running a house of brands where he bought all these E commerce businesses related to pets. And he was using it for this use case of marketing specifically. But I think you could take this to any section of the business. If you're running a house of brands, it. What is your shower thought? So what are you thinking about when you're not thinking about anything else? And if you're in marketing working across multiple brands, it's really hard to have like the shower epiphany where I'm not thinking about anything. And I had an aha. About this idea to go do this thing. Like, right now our friend Isaac is running this really interesting thing for sewers and drain lining and it's like working wildly, which is awesome. And my suspicion is that if he was working across multiple brands, multiple geographies, he would not have had that epiphany, which will probably allow him to double in the next 12 months.
- [38:16]
B
Right.
- [38:16]
A
So, like, he would have missed it because he was too focused on these other things.
- [38:21]
B
Even if he was multi trade. I think even.
- [38:24]
A
Even if he was multi trade, yeah, he's one trade right now. And he just. Yeah, he wouldn't have had that because I know that that holds us. Like, we're a branded house. We're Wilson, but we also have plumbing H vac, electric drains, and it feels a little more confusing. No one can put 100% focus into one thing.
- [38:43]
B
Yeah. And like, you know, we have one branch right now that's still pure plumbing. It's our smallest branch, but it is so much easier to like, get your arms around it. It. Oh, yeah. It's like, we're going to improve this. We're going to do this and just like. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's a lot more difficult when you're trying to manage H Vac service, H VAC maintenance, H vac, install plumbing, drains, electric.
- [39:06]
A
As you think about, as you think about the brand, it's sort of, sort of in that tandem. Like how are you thinking about like adding. Adding or subtracting services? I suspect you just end up with all of them. Have all of them.
- [39:18]
B
Them, yeah, that's where we're headed. So, like that Pure Plumbing branch. So right now like the two largest of the three branches have all of them.
- [39:29]
A
Yeah.
- [39:29]
B
To var. To varying degrees. That one smallest branch, which is also our newest branch, is pure Plumbing.
- [39:37]
A
Yeah.
- [39:40]
B
I think the way we're gonna go here is on base. I'm gonna hire an H Vac, a couple H Vac techs like immediately.
- [39:50]
A
Yeah.
- [39:50]
B
To be able to handle H Vac demand there. So we'll be plumbing an H Vac here pretty soon. I could have my mind changed on this, but I think we're for, for the time being, I think we're going to tell people if they call in for electrical service, we're going to tell them that we don't offer it at that branch, which is not great. But I think, at least in my experience, you know, like electrical gets the lowest call volume of the three trades. So I don't think it's going to be a terrible issue.
- [40:18]
C
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- [41:04]
A
There's a Ohio's kind of interesting because there's some interesting like use cases, maybe not even you like case studies where Columbus, Cincinnati and Dayton are this like perfect triangle that are all only an hour Apart from each other. So it's this like hour, hour, hour. And they're all like growing like crazy. Which like double digit growth, which is obviously big and like big like in that little quadrant, you know, Ohio has 11 million people and in that little quadrant is like seven of them. So it's a, it's a big area. So what I've found is these companies, they all go three location. Like everybody goes three location because they're all just an hour away. And the next city also has 2 million people and the average income is big and the demographics are perfect and it's growing like crazy. So they all just like bounce and they all do that with just one trade and then once they get there they add more trades. But what's been really interesting to me is they all stop at three locations. So they all get to three, then they add more locate, then they add more trades and then they just like stop and like deal with the problems that come with multi trade instead of just adding more locations. Which is I think kind of funny. So they still have growth. It's just like same store growth, not geographic growth.
- [42:33]
B
Right.
- [42:33]
A
I don't really know what that like insight gives for me. What I usually walk away from that with is minimum sizes. Like hey, if I'm going to start with plumbing, which I think plumbing is the easiest to start a new thing with. If I'm going to start with plumbing, like do I get it to 5 million then add something different? Because then I could support, I could actually support a second trade and I have enough customers and you know, there's just more going on there. But you guys are stronger at H Vac than I am, so I don't know.
- [42:58]
B
Yeah, yeah, I think we'll, I think we'll be able to. And, and like that branch is close enough to my other branch that we're able to sort of share some like, like for instance, like install crews. Like I could feasibly launch H Vac at this new branch and I don't have to like keep an install crew fed. I could. Yeah, I can just push crews to it. So that helps us out a lot. I can just like launch H vac with like 2H vac service techs.
- [43:23]
A
Yeah, that's nice.
- [43:25]
B
But yeah, and that, that branch is growing on the plumbing side and it's like at this point it's pushing up on like 4 million of run rate plumbing. Yeah, it feels like, and like it's only continuing to climb. So I feel like we're, we're right about where you're thinking for, for like minimal trade density.
- [43:48]
A
Yeah. Yeah.
- [43:49]
B
But it becomes interesting too, on the greenfield side. Like something I've been thinking about, you know, for greenfielding. Do we try to launch a greenfield with a single trade or do we go to like. I, I've been thinking H Vac and plumbing for our greenfields, personally.
- [44:04]
A
Yeah. I mean, for me, I think one is easier for sure. And I like the idea. Again, this is like, I just feel the, to me is easier. Like, plumbing is an easier trade to run and it's just like more predictable than H vac. Yeah. So I, I think there's a lot of variables when launching something new, and I'd like to remove as much of that as possible.
- [44:34]
B
Yeah.
- [44:34]
A
So if you could hit 2 or 300,000 in the first couple months, like just doing water heaters and like, to me that makes sense. That just makes sense.
- [44:45]
B
Yeah, I definitely. And then like, maybe I had to choose one. I think I would choose plumbing. Plumbing.
- [44:50]
A
It gives you a solid base of revenue. You just don't have to worry about very much and it's very profitable.
- [44:55]
B
Well, and plumbing just like, generally gets a higher percentage of like, new customers calling.
- [45:01]
A
Yeah.
- [45:01]
B
At least in my experience, H Vac is much more of like a loyalty game.
- [45:07]
A
Almost all of ours are recurring. Yeah.
- [45:08]
B
Yeah. It's harder to gain new customers, but yeah, you're able to sort of like convert them to memberships much easier. It's like very difficult to sell a plumbing membership, but it's like way. And it's way easier to sell an H VAC membership. Customers see more value in that. Yeah. So. So I don't know. I mean, I think maybe, maybe a hybrid. Like, maybe you get the best of both worlds. Like, you're running plumbing, you're like acquiring new customers in a greenfield on the plumbing side and then trying to cross sell into H Vac and retain.
- [45:43]
A
Yeah. Thanks for coming on today. This was interesting. I, I honestly, I don't think I knew that you were going to change Sanford's brand. Like, you left and we talk a lot. You left, fielded me there. And I know you talked to Isaac about it because he, he, the other day, he's like, dude, Rich convinced me, man. We're changing the name. We're changing. We're changing the name. And I was like, yeah, okay, okay, that, I mean, that is a big decision. And I'm not, you know, like, right or wrong. Like, it probably makes, makes a ton of sense. I get where you're coming from, but like. Yeah, that's a lot of deliberation there.
- [46:17]
B
And there's just a lot of work behind it. Like, it's like every rock you turn over, you're like, oh, man, we got to do this, too. It's, like, so much stuff.
- [46:25]
A
It's. Yeah, so much. I mean, yeah, yeah, it's a lot, but sounds like you guys are going to deliver in the next six months.
- [46:33]
B
Yeah, man, we're excited. I think it, you know, I think the, you know, I'm certainly, like, happy and proud of the name that we landed on and.
- [46:41]
A
Yeah, it's a good one.
- [46:42]
B
I think it's going to, you know, it's really going to take us forward, and I think, like, especially as we lean into, like, Greenfield and branded activity and organic growth, I think, you know, I think having a name that we can really stand behind and it's gonna. It's exciting. Yeah.
- [46:59]
A
No, I agree. Yeah. That's awesome, dude. Thanks for coming on. If people want to get a hold of you, how can they find you?
- [47:06]
B
Let's see. Twitter. Strongpoint, Rich on Twitter and LinkedIn. Rich Jordan on LinkedIn. Happy to connect with anybody.
- [47:14]
A
Hell, yeah. Thanks for coming on.
- [47:16]
B
Yeah, thanks, John.