The Marketing Stack for Home Service Businesses: $1M to $10M

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "The Marketing Stack for Home Service Businesses: $1M to $10M"

Owned and Operated – Hosted by John Wilson

Guest: Ethan Wright, Service Scalers
Release Date: March 12, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, John Wilson and guest Ethan Wright explore the marketing and technology strategies that propel home service businesses from $1M to $10M in revenue. They break down what marketing actually works at each growth phase—drawing from real-world experience in plumbing, HVAC, and electrical companies.

The conversation is candid and practical, emphasizing actionable tactics, core principles, and avoiding common money-wasting mistakes. The tone is direct and matter-of-fact, with some humor and personal anecdotes.

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Key Discussion Points

1. The $1M Shop: Survival is All About Leads

• Primary Focus: Fill the job board with leads, hire more techs, and generate positive reviews
• Lead Sources: Prioritize quick-return channels like Google Local Service Ads (LSA) and aggregators (Thumbtack, Yelp, Angie)
  • "Just get leads. Most of your money needs to be going to filling your job board and then hiring the next tech. You have to get reviews on your GBP." (B, 00:04)
• What Not to Do: Don’t blow your budget on delayed-return strategies (SEO-heavy agencies, branding, billboards, radio)
  • "What I wouldn't be spending on is like buying a billboard or a radio." (B, 00:14)
• Tech Stack: Install speed-to-lead software for instant response; having the right tech enables “feeding the machine” smoothly
  • "It is a bit like fighting with two hands behind your back if you don't have the right tech stack." (A, 06:45)
• Market Nuances: Big city? Competition is fierce on LSA. Smaller/rural markets can have huge advantages with little competition and lower lead costs.
  • "If you have 5 to 10 million and your LSA leads are 20 bucks because no one else is there, like, who gives a shit?" (A, 10:56)
• Ownership Mindset: Be scrappy, do unscalable personal things (owners calling after jobs for reviews), don’t overhire for marketing.
  • "Those little things that don't scale, people like oh, I can't do it because it doesn't scale. You're not scaled yet. Do it." (B, 17:04)

Notable Quote:
"Simple, not easy. The playbook is more leads, more techs, that's it. And then sales training." (A, 04:41)

Important Timestamps:

• 00:47 – “Just get leads... fill your job board”
• 06:41 – “What’s the tech stack?”
• 14:27 – How technology changes lead response (“speed-to-lead”)
• 18:57 – Why you shouldn’t hire a marketing person too early

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2. Transition to $5M: Doubling Down on What Works

• Consistent Playbook: Keep running LSA and effective aggregators, just at a higher budget and scale (“do the same stuff better”)
  • "I would say it's a lot of doing the same stuff better. So up your budgets on LSA. If you found a great aggregator that works, do you have a system? Keep upping it?" (B, 25:10)
• Adding Complexity: This is when pay-per-click (PPC) starts to make sense, and when tracking, attribution, and tighter data become essential.
  • "Somewhere along this path, you can start to think about introducing pay-per-click more. Because yes, cost per lead is going to be a little bit higher than LSA... But you can really position yourself well and you can scale it." (B, 25:19)
• Retargeting and Lifecycle Marketing: Customer lists are big enough to start outbound and rehash programs; revisit your own customers regularly to book jobs.
  • "So the number that I've always sort of had in mind was 6,000 people in your customer list is one full time outbounder making 100 calls a day." (A, 29:12)
• Still Lean Operations: Don’t overbuild. Most “marketing hires” (even at $5M) are unnecessary; agencies plus owner/office manager oversight is the norm.
  • "You're still very agency heavy here. Because even at five, if you are bringing... you might have a coordinator, yeah, maybe. But you're not—it's not a good use of spend, to be honest." (A, 34:17)
• Build for Speed: The infrastructure is “messy in the middle”—get your KPIs, track spend, watch returns, but as owner you’re usually still involved.

Notable Quote:
"If any dollar I put towards an internal team under $10 million is like, well, that's lead. What's my return on ad spend? What am I sacrificing in ads?" (A, 36:41)

Important Timestamps:

• 25:10 – Scaling proven lead sources, intro to PPC
• 29:12 – Customer database size and outbounding
• 34:17 – Agency vs. in-house at $5M
• 36:20 – Tracking and measuring ROI as budgets get real

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3. The $10M Shop: Building a Predictable Machine

• At Scale: Business is a “machine”—multiple effective lead channels, tracking and attribution dialed in, and sometimes diminishing returns in main channels.
  • "This is where it gets really interesting. This is where like you have a machine running." (A, 39:07)
• Lifecycle Marketing at Scale: Mining your enormous customer base (rehash, win-backs, maintenance) becomes a key revenue driver.
  • "This is also where, depending on how good you are getting reviews, you can think about more GBP locations.... Because if you're able to get to a thousand reviews or 750 reviews, whatever, then you can support a second one." (B, 28:04)
• In-House Marketing Hires: Now is the time for a full-time marketing manager—role is about budget management, strategy, and managing agency relationships, not running actual campaigns.
  • "Someone who is eight figures is a perfect time. And so their job, they are not running things at this point... they're managing budget and they're managing relationships." (B, 44:26)
• Branding Gets Real: Consistency and investment in branding (logo, vehicles, website) matter more; but still, “leads” are the first priority
  • "I just don't think brand matters that much until like 20 million... literally just go buy the leads. Like it's not." (A, 38:46)
• Marketing Team Structure: Even $30M–$60M companies typically have a lean in-house team overseeing agencies and budgets, not running all execution in-house.
  • "I was consistently amazed by... $50 million companies, 60, 30, whatever. Their marketing team was like two or three people and they were managing agencies... that was the exception to the rule." (A, 46:06)
• Market Leadership: At $10M+, you’re becoming a recognized leader and brand in your market, benefitting from lower acquisition costs and higher organic visibility.
  • "When you're at 5 million, you have the potential to become a market leader... 10 million, like you're, you're in the running. In almost every market." (B, 47:34)

Notable Quotes:

• "At this point, it needs to not be like something we do. It's like a machine." (A, 43:20)
• "The bigger the player a lot of time, the less you end up having to pay across the board." (B, 47:53)

Important Timestamps:

• 39:07 – The $10M "Machine"
• 44:25 – What the first marketing hire actually does
• 46:06 – Real-world marketing team structure at scale
• 47:34 – When branding and market leadership take off

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Additional Insights & Memorable Moments

• Simple, Not Easy: The main formula doesn’t really change, but execution improves and scales.
  • "It's simple but not easy. Like you just need leads. ...People really love to overcomplicate it. Yeah. And it's just not that complicated." (A, 20:59)
• Pricing Power: If you “can’t afford leads,” check your pricing model, not your marketing; higher tickets = more marketing firepower.
  • "If you can't afford leads but your competitors can, there's usually a pricing issue… If my average ticket can be higher than my competitor, I can pay more per lead. I can win more leads." (B/A, 21:39–22:09)
• Call Management: Speed-to-lead and outbounding are non-negotiable for growth; comp call center staff on measurable outcomes.
  • "Our compensation doubled. ...what it did was culturally like I don't have to push on outbounds anymore." (A, 32:24)
• Branding Reality vs. Myth: Most large home service growth is built on direct response and transactional marketing, not high-concept brand work—until $20M+.
  • "I just don't think brand matters that much until like 20 million..." (A, 38:46)
• The Machine Keeps Running: At large scale, the outbound/repeat marketing runs with or without CEO intervention; true systemization.

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Episode Flow & Speaker Tone

• Conversational, practical, with a friendly banter
• Relies on real business examples (Akron, rural markets, shop tours)
• Pokes fun at founder mindsets and overcomplication
• Data- and principle-driven, not theoretical

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Conclusion: The One-to-Ten Formula

• 1–5M: All about buying leads, fast response, reviews, and not wasting money on branding or premature hires.
• 5–10M: Layer in PPC, real attribution, grow customer base, consistent retargeting/lifecycle efforts, prepare for brand consistency but don’t obsess over it.
• 10M+: Build the machine—hire for marketing accountability, not execution; manage agencies; invest in branding as appropriate; develop a true outbound/repeat customer engine.

Summary Quote:
"I always thought it was going to get so much more complicated and in a way it did. But like when you zoom out... I need more leads. ...Keep it simple." (A & B, 48:44–48:57)

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For more:

Visit Owned and Operated for show notes and additional resources. For specific marketing questions, Ethan is available via LinkedIn, X, or email ([e-mail]).

Transcript

[A]

Today we're talking about the marketing stack from 1 to $10 million.

[B]

The first million dollar shop is just get leads. Most of your money needs to be going to filling your job board and then hiring the next tech. You have to get reviews on your gbp.

[A]

Yeah, it's so important.

[B]

What I wouldn't be spending on is like buying a billboard or a radio.

[A]

We have three businesses now that are in that one to five range. Our path to five, like this is it.

[B]

And you also have to price right. If you can't afford leads, there's usually a pricing issue. 5 million. It's a lot of doing the same

[A]

stuff better at 5 million. Like you could spend $500,000 a year. Like that's a lot of money.

[B]

10 million. This is where it gets really interesting. This is where like.

[A]

Welcome back to owned and operated. I am your host, John Wilson. During the day, I am the CEO of Wilson Plumbing, Heating, Cooling and electric in Ohio and Indiana. And for fun, I wrote this podcast where I talk to my friends about the home service industry and how to build businesses inside today I'm talking to my good friend Ethan Wright. He works with service scalers. And today we're talking about the marketing stack from 1 to $10 million. And what's the difference in technology and leads and everything involved in marketing and home service company along that journey? If you want more like this, make sure you like and subscribe. When was the last time we had you on the show? Like a year ago, Two years ago?

[B]

Six months ago.

[A]

Six. Oh my God.

[B]

I think, I think, I think it was the last time I was here for breaking five.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Now you get to say Ohio and Indiana.

[A]

I know. And, and in a couple weeks I have one more state to add.

[B]

There you go.

[A]

I know. We're, we're, we're super excited.

[B]

Puerto Rico.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It, it, yeah. Bad bunny is the manager there.

[B]

Like I just saw the talent on the show.

[A]

But no, yeah, we're, we're excited. Two State is fun. I've said this a few times on this show already, but like it was always a dream of mine to like one day run a two state operation just because it felt like when I first started it felt so far out of reach. Like how could I ever do that? You know, it was like eight people and like we were in this shitty brick building and, and the idea that like one day we could do that was just so like no way.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so it's fun today to be like, yeah, we did that. That was cool.

[B]

Oh, I know you, you added it in as soon as you could in Ohio and Indiana.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Hell yeah. I gotta, I'm telling my 23 year old self that like hey, we made it, we made it.

[B]

Not too bad kid.

[A]

Not too bad kid. Just a plumber from Akron.

[B]

Just a plumber. Just a kid from AK is fun too because you now are as you're doing this expansion, you know, acquisition, whatever.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You have different markets and different sizes of branches or different things.

[A]

It's really, it's really interesting to go through exactly that where. Hey like. Yes. So we'll do around 40 million this year and on one hand that's like a big number and kind of unapproachable to probably most of our listeners and audience. On the other hand we're like, we bought a business that did a million and a half dollars last year and the marketing stack that we're running over there is what we're about to talk about.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And like we doubled that business in the first 30 days. Like literally doubled it doing what we're going to talk about here. And then we took over another one that was three and a half million which I think both of those numbers are pretty relatable to the audience. And the playbook is a little bit more complicated. So we like, we'll talk about that. But yeah, it is kind of fun because despite size of the business.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The branches are in new markets that I don't have 65 years of brand. Like I'm new to these people.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And we have to run the exact playbook that we're about to run. So I think it's a great, it's sort of great to be like. And I haven't like, you know, talked to Jack much about this because Jack's always like oh yeah, from your position. But I'm like actually no where to get. We're all plumbing company and this is what I'm doing.

[B]

Yeah. And it's probably really interesting for you from when you were the million and a half or three and a half million dollar shop, how different marketing is now.

[A]

Well, you can move so fast. Like if you, I think it's, it's

[B]

a little,

[A]

I mean once you do something once.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, and it's like sort of ingrained. Like I, to me a lot of this stuff is a bit second nature.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So just because it's all I've been doing for like a 10 years of my life. But you know this, this plumbing company, like we walked in and it wasn't it's not like a complicated playbook. You have to trust it's going to work and there's probably some risk and like, if it doesn't work, then I lose some money.

[B]

But simple, not easy. Like, yes, retraining, simple people, whatever.

[A]

Simple, not easy. Yeah, because like, hey, the playbook is more leads, more tax, like that's it. And then sales training.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

You know, at some point. But now we were really fortunate because the plumbing company that we took over in January had an excellent sales training program. Like, their technicians were already very high performing. And so coming in was like literally all they needed. Feed the machines. Yeah, feed the machine.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And they were just like not being fed.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So it was a very easy double. But our other one, they did not have really any. There was a, there was more commercial, commercial work and not as much sales training. So that one we're like, we're having to really double down on the sales training there and like helping to lead their team to, hey, here's how you can offer more options. And yeah, it's definitely more complicated.

[B]

Well, and the thing too, and we can jump into it, but like the things that you do, you know, we're going to, we're going to talk about a $1 million shop. Five million, $10 million. The things you do at one million, you don't necessarily, I mean most of them, you don't stop. It's just your foundation. Right. So like the things that you're doing today here, know, at your biggest location where you have the brand awareness, like, it's not like you are not still doing the fundamentals every day. And so when you're going back into a one and a half or a three and a half million dollar shop, you're like, oh, I'm still, we're still running the blocking and tackling, we're just not running the flea flicker and whatever else.

[A]

How fast can you install it? Because I think that's. That was kind of an interesting part of this whole journey. So, so we, we have actually, I. This is kind of funny because the, the third company we're about to buy in like three weeks is a $7 million company. So we've got a one. Yeah, yeah. So I've got the whole.

[B]

Perfect.

[A]

But. But what was kind of funny was, hey, part of the more leads isn't just like, I mean a lot of it is just like lsa, you know, but it was interesting going into these organizations and you know, we're talking about the marketing stack, but a big part of marketing stack Is what's the tech stack?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And going into these organizations and hey, we have ownership.

[B]

It.

[A]

It is a bit like fighting with two hands behind your back if you don't have the right tech stack. So like, yes, we had some really early wins. We did double that organization in the first 30 days, but that was without the right tech stack. And it was hard. Like it was way more like manual input. And we're going in there, we're like, dude, I just wish we could, you know, have our speed to lead software set up. Because without that you're playing very analog. Yes. You know, hey, every call comes in but we have to manually respond in 10 seconds or whatever. And it's a lot more complicated. So I think that's a big part of it too is like, hey, if you're a 1, a 5, a 10, what's your tech stack?

[B]

Yep.

[A]

How fast can you put that tech stack in play? Because without that you're really like playing the game on hard mode for no reason. I talked to a lot of home service business owners and if you are anything like the many shops that I know, you're getting flooded with AI pitches right now. Most of them sound great, but then they fall apart the second they hit the real world. The one that I've kept coming back to is Avoca. What impressed me is they actually get how contracting businesses run. And it's not just some AI answering service. Avoca is going to handle inbound calls, outbound follow ups, texts, web leads, dispatching, and Even coaching your CSRs inside of one system that's built for growing home service companies. And if you're on service titan, this matters. Their integrations go deep. So you're not duct taping five tools together and hopefully hoping nothing breaks during your busy season. I also like that they're honest about what AI should and shouldn't do. When a call needs a human, they have a 247 live transfer built in. No drop balls, no awkward customer experience. Owners using Evoca are seeing hold times basically disappear and booking rates jump, sometimes by more than 30%. And that is real revenue, not just a vanity metric. If you're looking for the one AI partner that actually helps you book more more jobs without creating more chaos. This is worth taking a look. Book a demo at the link below.

[B]

Well, you think even let's we can get into it. So the first.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The first million dollar shop.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Is just get leads. Really? It's like yeah. You in marketing spend at least.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Every dollar that goes out needs to come back within a relatively appropriate time frame. Right. Where. This is where a lot of times I'll, you know, someone will talk to me. They're doing one to two million dollars, and I kind of ask them what their marketing spend is. They're, they're, they're, you know, they're saying we're hurting for leads. And they say, okay, what is marketing look like? Well, we have a SEO agency and we're paying them $3,000 a month. And that's it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And like, I love SEO. SEO leads are the best. Like, let's do that. But let's do it when you can really afford to. Because if you have $3,000 a month to spend and it's all going to a delayed lead source that compounds over time.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Your, your job board's not going to be full. Right. So I always talk with people, like at 1 million, if you're using a relatively, you know, consistent budget framework or whatever.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Most of your money needs to be going to filling your job board and then hiring the next tech and filling his, you know, filling his job. So that's like the big thing. But even when you're talking about the tech stack, like one of the big things. So obviously, like, LSA is great. And the caveat. LSA is a lot different than it used to be. So if you're a plumber in Dallas and you have 75 reviews and you try and turn on local service ads, it's going to be hard because there's going to be 15 people with a thousand plus reviews, and it's going to be really.

[A]

We talked right before we went on.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Of like, there's this sort of like. And we've talked about this a lot on the show.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because I frankly, I'm kind of annoyed by it. Yes. But it's almost like the more rural, the easier there's no other people there. So there was a. I have a friend and he was out. We had like a shop tour thing, and he's based out of Chicago, but his businesses are in Nebraska. Okay. And it's hilarious. He buys these, like, two, $3 million companies, and he is very literally it. Like, there's. There's one game in town and he's it. And the obvious downside is it potentially caps.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

It does cap the upside. Like, you can't have $100 million sing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But like, if you have 5 to 10 million and your LSA leads are 20 bucks because no one else is there, like, who gives a shit?

[B]

Go do that in five locations. Totally.

[A]

Well, that's what he did. He's on four now.

[B]

So I, this is like the same Walton approach to Walmart. So when Walmart first started, they didn't want to go compete in the big markets because they couldn't afford to. And they, he wanted to work in smaller communities and then grow into larger ones.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so he intentionally went to the town instead of, you know, where, where's the town? 500, 000 people. He said, where's the town with 50, 000 people and a 30 mile race or whatever. I don't know the exact. But it's the same idea where if he can stand up enough of those stores, then he has a, a pooled revenue that is such that he can then go afford to compete in a bigger market where he can pay a premium for leads because he has all the systems and he's got the revenue backing him. So that is interesting. But yeah, if you're a plumber In Dallas with 75 reviews hard, it's, you're, I tell people, don't count on it. Like, turn it on, try it.

[A]

Don't count on a couple leads.

[B]

Yeah. But if you're in, you know, there's someone here at the, at the marketing workshop and they're in like a more rural part of the Northeast. Yeah. New York. And you know, we were talking the other day and they're like, yeah, we're a little bit slow. I was like, well, what service areas you have turned on? They're like, oh, we don't really like to, we don't want to drive like too far. So we only have our little city turned on. It's like, well, if you're slow, just turn on the next two cities. They like tripled their leads overnight.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because no one else is running lsa.

[A]

Well, I've used the example on this show but like I've talked to people in different parts of Ohio and they, they've doubled in the last year or two and it's like, well, what'd you do? Oh, we turn on. We turn on lsa. It's like, oh my God. That's like a, you know, there. So there's still parts of like the country where this works. It just is rural.

[B]

Yes, it's, it's going to be. Hey, our county is spread out. It's a large county by area and it has 120,000 people. Yeah. Like with one, one main city that's got, you know, 45,000 and it's like, but again, like you can do millions of Dollars in revenue in that. And so that like an example that

[A]

I've given is there's a SILA branch and SILA is like a large consolidator and they do like 35 million in a population of 40,000 people. So you can do it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

They own electric. Yeah. So you can do it. So, so that's why I said, hey, potentially caps your upside because I mean that's not the rule. But like that guy's doing, you know, a dollar per person basically. Since $10 per person, that revenue is kind of funny.

[B]

Yeah. So but anyway, it's like do the basics.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So turn on Google lsa.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

If you can get leads out of that, that's awesome. The next thing, and this is like where a lot of agencies won't really say this because it doesn't benefit an agency. But yeah, I tell people when you're at the million dollar point trying to pay, you know, pay an agency to run, let's say like pay per click ads for you, you're having to pay a fee plus like to run pay per click. Well, you need a decent budget to make it work.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So I usually tell people like hold off on that for a while. Like you're go get scrappy and run aggregators. Right.

[A]

I agree with that.

[B]

Test, test all the aggregators in your market.

[A]

Thumbtack, thumbtack, Yelp.

[B]

Angie.

[A]

Like I think this is back to the what's your technology?

[B]

Yes. Because that's what I was coming back to.

[A]

We went and we bought this company in January. Yeah. And we, we, we basically turned on lsa.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And like. Oh yeah, we doubled. You know there's that story that I've had but like that was also our story too.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We went from $1,000 a month of LSA to 5,000 and but the company doubled. We went from 100,000 of revenue to we did 240 in sales in February. Like it was ridiculous.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And, and all of that was just filling the board. But just lsa.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The problem was we didn't have a speed delete technology. They were on servicetight and they're using Marketing Pro. Marketing Pro is not a speed delete technology. It's like a maybe email and potentially text. Potentially. Like they're very like stingy on that. And so we had, and it takes a kind of a minute to, to get the Avoca like speed to lead things set up. So because you have to go through the TCPA approvals and all that stuff. So it took like a month I think but like, but now we can turn on thumbtack, now we can turn on Angie.

[B]

Because when someone puts on in their information, you're texting immediately, you know, getting notification, a call or whatever.

[A]

So we weren't even doing aggregators without that technology because in our minds it's kind of like wasted money.

[B]

I was talking to a shop that's doing about one and a half million yesterday.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And my advice to them, because of their financial situation, they didn't have a huge budget, which makes sense. And I said, you should go try the aggregators. They said, okay. They don't. None of them work.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I said, I, I'm sure some, like, it's very market dependent. I'm sure some of them are not great for your market. Yeah. But I've never known a market, unless it's really rural where it's not offered that it doesn't work. So I kind of asked the process. I was like, if you, let's say it's Angie's and they sell you a lead and. Yeah, like, what's your process? Well, we, we see it come in and we get to it. Yeah.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

How long does that take? Well, it depends on if we're online.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So it's like, okay, well, you know, if you're not calling in the first 30 seconds or texting the first 30 seconds. And I said, what if you do get to it quickly? Well, I call and they don't answer it usually go straight to voicemail. Leave them voicemail and try them later. But do you ever call them twice in a row? They're like, oh, no, I don't, I don't want to annoy people. And I said, well, if you called me once and I don't know your number, I'll never even see that it came in. But if you call me twice, I, then it comes through and I see that I had a missed call from you, I'm way more likely to pick up. And I was asking you to reach out to me. I need your help.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so it's those little things that you have to be able to do to take advantage of it. But like, when you're at this size, aggregators can be great and just be scrappy. Like, I'm going to be the first. I'm going to get the speed delete platform set up. I'm going to use my, hey, I'm the owner of the business coming to talk to you versus, you know, I'm

[A]

one of, I'm Joe Schmo sales.

[B]

Exactly. And so do that and that's going to help you fill your job. Boards like LSA aggregators. I mean the biggest thing we talk about all the time, we don't need to to you know, beat a dead horse. But get reviews. You have to get reviews on your gbp.

[A]

Yeah. It's so important.

[B]

Like big rap. Like yeah, they're amazing. You get automated reviews, they help you with like setting up your profile correctly. But even if you are in a market where people have thousands of reviews around you, you can still own your, your backyard.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

For, even if it's only a mile or two mile radius, that's a big deal if it's a populated market. And so, and those, those are great. And so you need to be, yeah. Calling after jobs like getting the reviews again using I'm the owner, like I know owners that make calls at the end of every day and they, their techs have asked for reviews but they say hey, my name is John Wilson, I run a local company here. It means the world to us that one, we did a good job and then two, that we're able to know it. And it also really just helps our business. And people are way more responsive to that. And so like those little things that don't scale, people like oh, I can't do it because it doesn't scale. You're not scaled yet. Do it like, like that's how you fast track it. You know, have a basic website, you need a CRM. But like just like it's these little things like reviews treating people well, servicing them well.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then. Yeah. Is it, are they coming through lsa? Are they coming through aggregators? You know, how are you getting them? But every dollar that you're spending really needs to come back to, to being a lead. Like in the short term what I wouldn't be spending on is like brand strategy. So like yeah. Not buying a billboard or a radio ad or anything like that because it's good that people know your brand. But if you're not getting calls immediately, like I tell people, build your brand through reviews and through treating people well in the first one to 5 million or whatever. And then you can, you can worry about that. The other thing, I see a lot of full time hires too early. Yeah. And usually I don't know why I

[A]

see that so much.

[B]

I think just people think like I need to do marketing and so I need to hire someone to do marketing.

[A]

Yeah. I, I, yeah, there's like companies that like I'll hear people in like the 3 to 5 range and be like yeah, I think we need. And I'm like what are you talking? Like our first hire was at 13 million.

[B]

Yeah. Like it's.

[A]

And even that felt a bit early.

[B]

Well it's because I think a lot of owners are just like I'm not a marketing person. And so this person either has a marketing degree or they've worked in marketing somewhere. The problem is at that size what you can afford to pay someone to do marketing. They're usually maybe good at one thing. Yeah, I'm really great at organic social media. I'm really great at running paid ads on Google. But if you're trying to optimize a business profile, you know, do SEO on your website. If you're eventually trying to do Facebook ads or you know, general branding, like you don't really want to spend a full time salary on a generalist. Yeah, not yet. Now I'm a big fan of in house marketing hires as you scale that essentially agencies can partner with and eventually as you grow you can outgrow your agency. You can hire more things internally. But they're, they're not even really, they're not even like the direct marketer pushing and pulling buttons. Yeah, they're. They are strategy accountability. They're communicating what budget management.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What is our cost per lead need to be what. What channels are working, what what levers need to be pulled up and down. But that's kind of. We can get into that next. But like that's 5 million is like not even that higher necessarily. But you start to think more about that. But like an owner, a good agency is hopefully going to over communicate to you as an owner and, and speak in plain language that you don't have to rely on a. Yeah. You know a marketing coordinator or whatever for, for that early. So yeah.

[A]

On the one sort of that finishing up the one stage.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We have three businesses now that are in that one to five range and our path to five like this is it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We're buying more leads. We're installing the technology to respond to those leads fast and we're selling them.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And it people really love to overcomplicate it. Yeah. And it's just not that it's not that complicated. It's simple but not easy. Like you just need leads. You and like that one plumbing company, the example I gave like we took it over in January. It's a great team. Like they just needed more leads. They did a million like 1.48 last year or 1 point. Yeah. And like we'll probably do 4.

[B]

Yeah. This year, just with some simple but not easy.

[A]

Simple but not easy. It's. It's expanding the lead budget significantly. Installing the right technology, answering the phone more. And like, that's actually it.

[B]

And you also have to price. Right. That's another. That's one more thing.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Like, we don't have to talk about a long time.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But you.

[A]

If you did a 30% price increase,

[B]

like, off the road, if you can't afford leads but your competitors can, there's usually a pricing issue because it is a supply and demand market. Like, Google is not new to this. Like, they will not make a lead so expensive that no one can make money on it. But there are people like, you know, you've talked about it before. If my average ticket can be higher than my competitor, I can pay more per lead. I can win more leads. We.

[A]

I got in this discussion last two. Well, two weeks ago, we had like a shop tour thing.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Maybe 15 companies were here, and this was a discussion people were really focused on, well, like, what's your cost per lead? And it's like, who the cares? Like, it doesn't. It doesn't actually matter. Right. So in. In our restoration company, Cut and dry, they did $150,000 last month at a massive gross margin. Like 70 gross margin. It's ridiculous business. And Sarah, she runs it, and she's awesome. And like, the leads are like $500. Like, we've spent more than $500. And our closing rate is 30.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So, like, okay, we closed one in three. So we spent $1500 per job, but our average ticket might be six grand.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's like, okay, would I pay 25 for that? Sure. Yeah, sure.

[B]

Especially with your gross margin.

[A]

Like, it's.

[B]

Know your numbers and then, like, know what they need to be.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Anyway, that. That's a whole other conversation. But, like, we. There's only so much a good agency can even do in terms of cost per lead because you get in trouble.

[A]

You know, people, I think cost per lead's not the thing.

[B]

It's not.

[A]

And people, what's your roi?

[B]

Yes. People ask me all the time, what's my cost per lead gonna be? I said, well, it's gonna depend a lot on a lot of things. Like, you're a plumber. I get your cost per lead really low. And you'll only be doing leaky faucet calls. You'll never touch water heater.

[A]

For a good example of this is LSA versus Angie.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So LSA might be like $80 to $100 a lead. Angie leads might be 15 to 30.

[B]

What are you closing? What's the quality?

[A]

So our book, right on Angie is 29%. Our book rate for LSA is like 80. So like right off the rip, it takes what, three Angie leads, which is $90 to equal one LSA leads.

[B]

And, and you're not, and you're not introducing automatic competition. Like people when they called you through lsa, they saw your brand in your reviews, so you already have a higher.

[A]

It's a little annoying that people get. So yeah, it's like you are missing the forest through the trees.

[B]

Cost per lead matters as a part of a, an equation as just like

[A]

every, like five other data.

[B]

It's the funnel, but we can, we could go forever on that. Okay, so 5 million.

[A]

Have you ever bought enterprise level software and realized that managing it really just became a full time job? Well, that's pretty much exactly why my restoration business switched over to fieldpulse. We were tired of software that promised efficiency, but came with endless training sessions, onboarding and frustrated texts. And using it began to feel like it was a job all on its own. Fieldpulse was built for owner operators who don't want more dashboards. They need scheduling, invoicing and job tracking. And they need it all to live in one place without the chaos or the learning curve. FieldPulse is simple to roll out. It's easy for your team to actually use, and it was 75% cheaper than the other titans of software we were using right now. If you book a demo with FieldPulse, you'll get an exclusive partner offer. It's 20% off an eligible annual subscription and 50% off premium support for your first year. If your software upgrade has turned into a time suck, it might be time to make the move. Book a demo with Field Pulse and see if it's a better fit.

[B]

I would say it's a lot of doing the same stuff better. So up your budgets on lsa. If you found a great aggregator that works, do you have a system? Keep upping it?

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Somewhere along this path, you can start to think about introducing pay per click more. Because yes, cost per lead is going to be a little bit higher than lsa. Everything's market dependent. You're going to have to pay more for a man, for, you know, an agency to manage it. But like, what's great about pay per click is you can really position yourself well and you can scale it. I always tell people like, LSA is great but everybody's LSA account looks the same, or LSA ad, essentially.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

It's how, it's how many reviews you have. You have a couple of things you can toggle.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But if I am running in a market where everyone's running PPC and when I look for plumbing, you know, plumbing, Akron.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And the guy's ad says plumber in Akron, and mine says, you know, plumbing, plumbing, Akron, same day service, no service fee. Yeah, no. Like, who are you picking? Yeah, you're picking the one with the unique selling proposition. We work with some people that are in heavily private equity markets. And I'm like, guys, let's run an ad that says still family owned, still locally owned. Because consumers are more and more aware of private equity.

[A]

And so I have a friend in Virginia and he was telling me, which he had him on the show, but he was telling, he might have even said on the show.

[B]

I, I, this is the conversation I had with him.

[A]

Okay. Yeah. So, like, he'll walk up, his text will walk up to the door and like, the customers will, will ask, hey, are you guys private equity at the door? Which was, he was really interesting.

[B]

He was the first guy. Because I was talking through how ads might make sense.

[A]

I think that, I think that coast, because Len the plumber was one of the earlier big deals. I feel like that was 2017, 2018. Big freaking company. And that went pretty early. And then Horizon has been humongous over there too. So I think like the combination of those two, they're like 40 branches each. Like, I think they got.

[B]

Yeah, well, people know and like, I live in Dallas, huge H vac market, a lot of private equity.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, people, people are aware and you know, even like, if you'll, you know, go look on like a forum somewhere, it's like, hey, who's the best? Whatever company. It's like, hey, you know, the joke is like, well, if they walk in with an iPad, you know, run away. Like, that's kind of the joke because everyone has the same play. But. Yeah. What's your unique selling proposition in your market? Is it, do you work with a lot in a, in a, an area with a lot of chuck and in a truck, then yeah, didn't play like the professional, timely, you know, buttoned up, you know, approach. Are you in a big private equity market? Well, we're still family owned, still locally owned. I love that because it tells people you're family owned and you still are, which implies that other people aren't. Like, yeah, those little things can really Work. So yeah, PPC is great for that. You can be way more targeted on the type of customer budget. Yeah. And you have budget, so you can go for it. Yeah. Real SEO strategy, like thinking through how does my local SEO, like maybe pushing

[A]

on like a programmatic type with.

[B]

Yeah. With my, with my Google business profile. How is that going to tie into how my website performs, what content I'm putting on the website? And then this is also where, depending on how good you are getting reviews, you can think about more GBP locations. Yeah. You know, on the other side of town, like however far it's going to be. Because if you're able to get to a thousand reviews or 750 reviews, whatever, depending on your market, then you can support a second one. And can you get that to 100 reviews really quick? Well, now you have another just like awesome review source.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That is really. It's a lot harder to do that when you're at a million because you're not running enough jobs to actually support two profiles with reviews.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So that's big. And then you really get like into. You've grown your customer list over time and so you're doing a lot more retargeting. So people.

[A]

I actually think that comes in earlier.

[B]

Well, it should always be a play, but it becomes more of a, it becomes a bigger deal because the bigger your list is now, if you've been in, if you maybe are a family owned company and you're at a million and a half, you may have a customer list as big as you know as you do. Like if they've been in business for 80 years.

[A]

The company that we took over in January, they had 8,000 people on the list. And like that's a humongous list. Like I. So the, the number that I've always sort of had in mind was 6,000 people in your customer list is one full time outbounder making 100 calls a day. Because then you call your whole customer list every 90 days and then you just restart. Yeah. Because you probably won't get a hold of them. You'll probably actually only talk to them once a year.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

But 6,000 is like that's enough for a full time person to call that list every single day and that'd be their whole job.

[B]

And so even if you don't have 6,000, when your CSR is not picking up the phone or your dispatch or

[A]

whatever, like so that was another part of our core strategy for doubling that business. It was LSA and literally 20 outbounds a day like, we actually couldn't even. The company was so small that because they only had four technicians, you can service it. I think we have seven now. But like, yeah, we couldn't service it. If we did put a full time outbounder on it. We would book eight to ten appointments a day because that's what our full time outbounders book. Like, I don't have room for eight to 10 employments. Like, we're literally too small.

[B]

Yeah, you need to hire because it's too successful.

[A]

It's too good of a lead channel.

[B]

I talked with a plumber in South Carolina, family owned business. Literally, he. I was in this chair calling, you know, you were making a face at me over there while I was on the phone.

[A]

Before you twerking, I mean.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, before we recorded.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But he was just like, hey, man, I know. We just, you know, I've talked to him the first time maybe two weeks ago. He's like, I know. Like, I just need your help. Like, we don't know why I call volumes really down. They don't really do much marketing. And I said, how many calls are you guys making a day? And it just was a foreign concept. And they. Again.

[A]

Well, I was talking with Josh and he's here for the workshop.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And they just started.

[B]

Right.

[A]

He's on like week three of like, you know, we'll have these calls. And he'll be like, yeah, dude, we're just, you know, we're really slow. And I'm like, cool. All right, like, how.

[B]

What's happening? What do we.

[A]

So finally after the third week, he's like, fine, all right, we're going to do it. So I think they started yesterday.

[B]

And another guy here, Matt, who is local, Ohio. Yeah, we. We had a call a few weeks ago and he. I was like, what's working? Well, he's like, well, we've got an. We do have an outbounder. And they're booking, like for every call that connects, they book two. Two jobs. And I was like, great, okay, so. So go, like, go do that. Right? So, yeah, it works so well. But then he realized, you know, this is little things. He's like, man, I feel like it could be better. And then you realize we're only using one phone number. It's getting flagged as spam. And they're still booking too. So he starts rotating phone numbers. They double their pickup and double their booking rate. And so it's like, those are. If you think about what can be real. Like, don't think about what A call costs.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

You're paying for that salary really easily. And those leads are warm. They know you. You're not. They're not shopping. Like, yeah. Those are worth hundreds of dollars.

[A]

And, well, we commission our call takers.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

To do it. And that's. I think a really big part of this is. Is how do you make it a part of your culture? And so the way our compensation works in call center for someone not here is there's a low base comp.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And it's not minimum wage. Was not much higher. But then they get commissioned for every inbound and commissioned for every outbound. And it's $10 per inbound booked and I think 15 or 20 for every outbound.

[B]

But make way. They must make great money when we

[A]

change to that compensation model, their compensation doubled.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, it was outrageous.

[B]

And it's. That's an easy bill to pay for you.

[A]

For what?

[B]

For what they're.

[A]

It's incredible. And. And like, what it did was culturally, like, I don't have to push on outbounds anymore. And every day we'll make. Depending on, like, how much, how many inbounds there are. Like, it. The more inbounds, the less outbounds. Right. Because we have less time and we're. And we're busy, but we'll do anywhere from 300, 400 to 800 on our slow days of outbounds. A day.

[B]

Yeah. Which is like, mind blowing to a lot of people.

[A]

Totally. But. And hey, guess What? We book 18. Like, that's our book rate. Which is crazy. Right. But, like, we're three years into running an outbound strategy. But yeah. With that company that we took over in January. Literally, like Playbook one, because I think lsa, like, didn't work for the first day or two was just like, hey, we're dead.

[B]

Where's the list?

[A]

Outbound.

[B]

Yeah. Hey, Ms. Johnson. I know it's been six years. Totally.

[A]

But you're on water heater flush.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah, it's. It was. It's a hilariously easy win because, like, the. One of the benefits. And this is going to sound so, so stupid maybe, but, like, one of the benefits of being a smaller company is you need less jobs.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Which, like, is on one hand is, like, obvious, but on the other hand, like, Wilson needs 200 some jobs a day.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So, like, yeah, we need a lot. You know, it takes a lot to keep this thing fed. This other branch needs 10. Yep. And if they've got 3,000 to 4,000 customers, like, I know. I can fill four or five a day. So, like, I only need to buy five leads. Like, oh my God. Yeah.

[B]

And like, are you getting five organic leads from your GBP already? Like, do you need to buy, like.

[A]

So that's what we were finding. They had 150 reviews. So, like, we're getting one to two organically already. So really we're only buying like two or three leads a day and it's not that big of a deal. Yep. Anything else on five?

[B]

Yeah. So this. The only other thing I'll say is this is caveat. I'm. We're an agency. You're still very agency heavy here. Because even at five, if you are bringing.

[A]

You don't have to cash to invest into your own team. You don't.

[B]

You might have a coordinator. Yeah, maybe. And maybe it's an office manager that also, you know, tracks this for you. But you're not.

[A]

I don't think it's a good use of spend, to be honest, because I think you're. 5 is a really important number where you have the potential to become a market leader when you're at five.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If you reinvest properly. And I think reinvesting properly at five is you're not yet building infrastructure. You are doubling down on leads.

[B]

And if you pay someone $50,000 a year plus benefits and whatever else, like, how does that.

[A]

That could go towards leads.

[B]

That could go towards leads. And truly, like, and I mean this, the person that you can afford to pay at that point, let's say it's

[A]

a 50 or very generalized. They're like, they're not going to.

[B]

They're going to be younger. They're usually going to be younger, which is great. Like, that can be really awesome and helpful because they're scrappy and they want to learn or whatever else.

[A]

But it's just low value. Like, what they'll end up doing is like, hey, we posted on Facebook today. It's like, okay, that didn't really drive leads.

[B]

They haven't been in a business to understand the economics of marketing yet.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And unfortunately I have a marketing degree and it was not very helpful when I got into the real world of marketing. But yeah, so probably not even a coordinator. Like, a lot of times it's like sometimes if it's a husband, wife, owner

[A]

duo, like, I'll see someone's kid.

[B]

Yeah, a kid. Or like one of the spouses is. Is more locked in on it. A great office manager will. That cares.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Will help track it. But like, we usually are more pushing with People at this size for like, hey, we want to track this. Can we get this data from you? Can we make sure this is set up and we will help you understand it.

[A]

The budget starts to get kind of real.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Where at 500, at 5 million, like you could spend $500,000 a year. Like, that's a lot of money and you need to know where it's going and like start scale. Like you're in the, you're in the stage where LSA might be 50 grand a month or 40 grand a month. Like you have to know ROI on that and book rate and you need data and, and yeah, it's real.

[B]

Yeah. So tracking this is. But this is like the messy middle where like tracking is really important. Keeping on this is really important. But not. You're not.

[A]

But no one has the tracking and

[B]

you're not yet to the point where you can hire someone full time to do that.

[A]

So sorry, it'd be a waste of money.

[B]

So sorry. As the owner, this is something you're probably going to have to be the most.

[A]

Brandon and I ran, we were locked in on marketing. Like I said, Till 13 million.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, and because up to that point it's like I, if any dollar I put towards an internal team under $10 million is like, well, that's lead.

[B]

Like I'm literally saying, what's my return on ad spend? What am I sacrificing in. In ads? And for that, the, the last thing here is this is where brand consistency, consistency starts to matter more. And so, you know, this is where we see more people like doing more wraps or maybe investing more in a branding design or whatever. You don't have to pay a ton to get this done. Well, like especially in today's day and age, like people are, are the, the technology people have to be like a one man.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Or a smaller. I'm a branding shop. I can get you your design, your logo, your truck wrap. That's where it starts to matter more. But still, I'm like the best brand you can have is a Google business profile with great reviews and people who will call you back. Now, does having a great brand with a logo and a wrap and consistency across help? Absolutely.

[A]

I just don't think brand matters that much until like 20 million.

[B]

It's just, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's an undercurrent and like, and I, and people will fight me on this and say, well, like a branded, you know, if you're running a paid ads campaign, a branded call is much cheaper for you to capture and you know, a higher return ad spend. I say, yeah, but that's true. But for your brand to grow, you have to run calls. Yeah. And you have to get more customers. You have to get in more homes. And so it's still this balance. And it's like, I am, I'm over.

[A]

It's all worked up.

[B]

I'm over indexing towards leads for a, for a while. And I, I think, I love branding. I think a great brand does a lot. But like.

[A]

Well, the story I've told on here is we, we were talking with the Leap partners, CMO or VP of marketing or something if 1920 business. I've told the story a few times on the show but like it hit, it hits me every time because like my thesis is you don't need to really invest in brand till like $20 million. And like that's theirs too. So they have 19 or 20 different brands and they start investing in brand at $20 million. It's radio and TV and all that stuff at that point. And up till that point you literally just go buy the leads. Like it's not.

[B]

Well, yeah, any Legion is not branded at this point. I'm really only talking about like get your, get your logo, like your company colors and whatever and maybe wrap some. But like that, like memorable. Sure. But yeah, not, not running, I'm not running meta ads yet. Unless you're, unless you're a very specific type of business. I'm not buying billboards. I'm not doing radio. Those are all great. They all have a place.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But again, like when someone's water heater is leaking, they're going to search for someone or they're going to call the guy. They know they're not. They're not. Oh, that's too bad. Let me go, you know, scroll Instagram a little more. So but that's kind of 5 million for me. 10 million. This is where it gets really interesting. This is where like you have a machine running. So. Yeah. And especially on marketing where like you. To get to this point, there are some people who stumble into this point. But most people, when they get to the point they have their tracking and attribution like dialed in. And so, you know, that's funny because we didn't. Sure. Well, and that's what I'm saying. It's like, it's like sometimes you find

[A]

a lead source attribution dialed at 20.

[B]

Well and I'm saying sometimes like if you're aggressive or your lead source is so Good. And it's never going to be perfect. But more people you at least have an understanding of. If I get an Angie lead it does not make me as much money as if I get a Google business profile call as, as if I get a local service ad lead, whatever else. So you're just tracking it better. Usually this is the point where you're on a better CRM by this point and so you can naturally do some attribution cleanly through, through those. And so like you're using, you know, if it's Service titan, you maybe have Marketing Pro or whatever the, the setup you have but you're able to, you're really able to track it better. The other thing I started to see here is again it's scaling what worked and so it's like scale your lsa, scale your, your, your pay per click. Yeah, you're maybe have more heavily invested in SEO. Maybe you've added a couple Google business profile locations, whatever it might be. But like life cycle marketing is like way more important at this point because you do at some point and not really at 10 million depending on your market but you start to hit diminishing returns on certain lead channels or like hey, I can't buy more leads from this lead partner for my market. I'm tapped out. And so how are you marketing to your own customers for maintenance? How are you nurturing? How are you doing win backs, things like that, that becomes way more important. Maybe this is you know, you guys at 13 million, maybe this is where you start to think of an in house marketing manager. You have more.

[A]

So we started pushing on Lifecycle Marketing is yeah like basically rehashing your own, like mining your own database just to define that for people. So we started pushing heavily on that in like we were low 20 millions already like way too late. Yes, to be honest with you, you

[B]

should be doing it at every stage. But 10 is where it's when we

[A]

first, when we first activated it I think it was like 2023. Here's an uncomfortable truth. Growth breaks the moment that your team can't keep up. I know that finding good people people fast is really hard. Especially in home services positions like hr, accounting, marketing, call center. It is hard to keep up. Quick Staffers helps home service companies build reliable virtual teams that actually understand the trades. Quick Staffers provides vetted remote staff who are pre trained on Service Titan and use best in industry sops. These are team members ready to integrate into your business on day one. Handling roles like customer service, service lead, follow up, scheduling support and more. We're actively hiring an offshore assistant controller right now through Quick Staffers. I can't recommend Quick Staffers enough. They've helped us scale our business without a headache. Head over to quickstaffers.com for more. And I think we went from like 15 million to like 23. Then it was like a 50, 40% growth year from getting better at just contacting our own customers.

[B]

And it's the simplest, simplest thing. They like you.

[A]

Now you can launch it. Like you know, we launched it in like week one in that company. We bought a million dollars.

[B]

Well, and there's where. There's way more affordable and approachable tools at this point too.

[A]

For like offshoring helps.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like speed to lead speed. Email technology.

[B]

There's a million email technologies you can figure out. Sms, like you can, you know, there's systems that like, well, you can organize who you're calling when like all that stuff, it's so much easier. It's not a, you know, pen and paper and I'm gonna cross them off and come back to them.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But this, at this point, it needs to not be like something we do. It's like a machine and you know.

[A]

Yeah. It's just a part of our.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Every day process, everyday process. Like when we first launched it, it was very like. It's kind of, it's kind of funny because some days I walk in and I'm like it. The, what's the, what's the way to put this? Managing the business as you become like a degree or two separated from like the front line is just an odd experience because like with outbounding, like I remember launching outbounding and like being in there, you know. And like now it's just like we do 400 calls a day with or without me. Like it doesn't matter. And you know. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of an odd. But it is a machine. It's just like, hey, here's what we do every single day. How do we make that a part of it?

[B]

Yeah, for sure. And then this. Yeah, this is the point where making a hire can make sense. That that represents your side of the table for marketing more. So again like you have probably introduced more marketing channels and more lead partners at this point. You've got agencies, agencies, aggregators, like organic versus paid, you know, all these things. And so someone who is eight figures

[A]

is a perfect time.

[B]

Yep. And so their job, they are not running things at this point. They are, they're not clicking the, the paid ads unless they just happen to be good at it. But they're managing budget and they're managing relationships. Like treat your agency and treat your partners like an employee.

[A]

I totally agree. Like scorecards.

[B]

Yes. Weekly checks let them know what does the cost need to be? What's the performance been like, yeah, yeah, we.

[A]

When so like for perspective into what? Like not just us, but this was. I was always really surprised by this because I think everybody like we're a marketing and sales industry.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

So, but like marketing first.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And so I think companies that are like sort of on their way up are really like, oh, we have to have our internal hire. And like I think my point is I, I like we joined nextar back. I don't even remember when. And three or four years ago now and I went to a couple of like workshops and like marketing workshops and we did. We like just met a bunch of people. And what I was consistently amazed by is like $50 million companies, 60, 30, whatever. Their marketing team was like two or three people and they were managing agencies. And I was just like, what are you talking about? I like, I thought when you got humongous, you brought everything in house and that's just not the case. Like it's like your main. Those that team is managing millions of dollars of spending, but it's like two or three people and like maybe one of them's doing like community engagement and one of them managing budget and one of them sending emails or postcards or whatever. But it was a real like, oh yeah, like this whole time I thought

[B]

x. Yeah, you must have your own paid specialist in house, total meta specialist and whatever else.

[A]

Some, some people, some people do that. But, but consistently I found that that was the exception to the rule.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and like, you know, I, I actually don't really have much of an opinion here, but whether this is technically like a full time hire or there are some people who are like fractional CMOs who can come in and I

[A]

think at 10, you should be optimizing for full time.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And you probably have close to a million dollars of budget. Like.

[B]

Yeah, that's right.

[A]

If we think about like the scope of responsibility. That's a lot.

[B]

Yeah, that's a lot. That is a lot. That makes sense. Yeah. And so, and again, like I tell people all the time because they ask me like, hey, do you. We have someone internally, will you work with us? I'm like, absolutely. And it will make it better. Like, because we want to know what, like what leads are you guys internally? You know, we're not in your huddles and you're saying, hey, we really need to do more water heaters this month. That's a big goal for us or whatever it might be. We never hear that. But if, if your in house marketing, you know, coordinator, manager, whatever did, they can communicate that, hey, our vision for this month, we've got to do water heaters. There's a rebate in the state that ends in six weeks, whatever it might be. So it is like in house marketing manager for vision accountability tracking agencies still for the most part for execution, but the strategy is owned by you. And then this is also a cool tipping point for a lot of people where you're like you were saying like when you're at 5 million, you have an opportunity to be a market leader. 10 million, like you're, you're in the running.

[A]

Oh yeah.

[B]

In almost every market.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And you now, whether you spent a ton on branding or not, you now have a brand new and that actually is going to help lower your, your customer acquisition cost because people know you, they remember you, they see your reviews and so it's kind of like crazy but like the bigger, the bigger the player a lot of time, the less you end up having to pay across the board.

[A]

Because I mean the bigger you get, the bigger you get in home service. Like that's like the sort of the, the golden rule. Like if there's 100 trucks on the road, like yeah, it, you will get more calls.

[B]

Absolutely. Makes sense.

[A]

Yeah. This was interesting. All right, so 1 to 10. So that's the difference between low seven figures, low eight figures and like this aligns and I think a lot of the playbook, like regardless of where you are in the journey, like the stuff that we focus on at 40, we're bringing on these, you know, $1 to $5 million branches and it's the same shit. Like hey, we have to come in, we need more leads. Yeah, we need speedily technology. We have to outbound like that. It, that's it.

[B]

And it's different flavors or different channels or different whatever, but it's maybe it's simplified but that's still.

[A]

Well, I always thought it was going to get so much more complicated and in a way it did.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But like when you zoom out of the day, I need more leads. I need more leads.

[B]

I have X amount of text. They need to run X amount of jobs and I need X amount of leads based on my booking rate.

[A]

It's kind of beautiful.

[B]

Keep it simple.

[A]

Yeah. Well, this is great. If, if you're listening or watching. If you have any questions, comment below. We'd love to answer it.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And otherwise, how can people get a hold of you if they want to contact you?

[B]

You can find me on LinkedIn or on X, or you can shoot me an email directly if you want. Ethanervice scalers.com Happy to answer any questions.

[A]

Cool. All right. Thanks for coming on.