Zero to $86M in 24 Months: The Home Service Growth Blueprint

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC Business Growth Podcast

Episode: Zero to $86M in 24 Months: The Home Service Growth Blueprint
Host: John Wilson
Date: October 28, 2025
Guests: AJ and Noah, Co-Founders of Premier Home Pros

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Episode Overview

This high-energy episode features AJ and Noah—the founders of Premier Home Pros—detailing their meteoric rise from zero to $86 million in revenue in just 24 months with their home service bath remodeling business. The conversation is a deep dive into the playbook, systems, and mindset that enabled such explosive growth, covering everything from startup origin stories and go-to-market tactics to organization building, marketing, process engineering, and lessons learned along the way.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. How Premier Home Pros Started ([01:39]–[04:49])

• Origin Story: AJ and Noah, previously colleagues at Window Nation and Leaffilter, shared a desire for entrepreneurship and control over their destinies. In 2022, they launched Premier Home Pros at a dining room table, initially operating with just the two of them, AJ’s wife, and one additional team member.
• Product Choice: After considering several home improvement verticals, they zeroed in on bathrooms, citing lower market saturation and high growth potential compared to roofing or windows in Northeast Ohio.

  "Bathroom is a carve out that I think that we have a real opportunity to grow and scale this business." — AJ [02:52]

• First Sale & Early Traction: First lead was run in December 2022 and resulted in a successful sale ($11,300), boosting confidence.
• Outstanding First Month:

  “We demoed at 91%. We closed at 82% for $557,000 our first month. It was the elite mindset of being hungry.” — AJ [00:06, 04:50]

• Mindset: AJ credits their “elite mindset of being hungry” and rejuvenation from leaving corporate roles for enabling their remarkable start.

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2. Strategic Product Upgrade: The Game-Changer ([07:04]–[09:07])

• Supplier Breakthrough: A chance meeting introduced them to a manufacturer offering a unique engineered stone wall system—superior to the acrylic alternative (albeit 40% more expensive).
• All-in-One Supplier: This supplier streamlined operations by providing all wall systems, bases, and doors needed.

  “Everything just kinda fits like a glove…Six months from that day, we're the largest client in the country for him.” — AJ [08:04]

• Unique Selling Proposition: By switching to this differentiated product, they separated themselves from commodity competitors, raised average order value, and created a foundation for nationwide growth.

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3. Model for Scaling and Office Structure ([09:07]–[09:51])

• Three-Office Year One: Rapid expansions into Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia within the first year.
• Local Office Model: Each office contains a sales manager (also ops lead), project manager, service manager, and teams of sales personnel/installers.
• Scaling Philosophy: Highly process-driven and replicable at the local level:

  “You have a sales manager...an operations manager...a project manager...a service manager, and a sales team.” — AJ [09:23]

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4. The Role of Talent, Partnerships, and Owner Mindset ([11:06]–[13:08])

• Team Building: Recognized their personal limits in marketing expertise, so they recruited Vince, a top marketing exec from Leaffilter and ARS, who eventually joined as a third owner.

  “Within two hours, he...said, I got the itch. Like, I gotta be part of this.” — AJ [12:31]

• Core Belief: “If you have the right person, you have the market.” — Vince, relayed by Noah [28:21, 44:04]
• Humility + Ambition: Despite rapid progress, they maintained humility about their journey, acknowledging both calculated risk and luck.

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5. Simplifying Services for Scalability & Efficiency ([13:33]–[22:15])

• Core Service: Full-service bathroom remodeling in as little as one day. Focus is tub/shower replacements, aging-in-place, and “pull and replace” jobs—no massive, bespoke construction.
• SKU Discipline: Early “anything and everything” approach gave way to a tightly controlled SKU count, making operations and training far more manageable.

  “We've built the airplane while it’s in the air.” — Noah [19:50]

• Process Streamlining: Focusing on repeatable work meant more jobs per installer, improved margins, higher customer satisfaction, and accelerated cash turn.

  “Let's not gripe about the 5%...let's talk about the 95%...we can do.” — AJ [21:48]

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6. Recruiting, Training, and Market Launch ([23:01]–[27:13])

• Hiring Philosophy: Prioritizing payment and treatment of talent over squeezing costs ("when you pay Talent, talent stays” — AJ [24:05]).
• Greenfield Launch Playbook: Drop in an operations/sales manager, recruit and train installers, then ramp sales and marketing.
• Onboarding: Stringent hands-on vetting and training before new personnel are deployed.
• No Debt: Company remains entirely self-funded and cash-flow positive, with markets generating cash within ~46 days.

  “We started the company with no debt. We still have no debt...fully profitable and we haven’t taken $1 of debt.” — Noah [25:50]

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7. Superior Go-to-Market and Lead Generation Strategies ([29:50]–[34:13])

• Efficient Market Entry: Costs less than $100k to launch a new city, with nearly immediate payback thanks to lead-buying (versus heavy branding spend typical in the industry).

  “The weight of percentage is much higher with affiliate marketing than it is with branded.” — AJ [31:30]

• Marketing Mix: Heavy use of purchased leads (e.g., Angi, HomeAdvisor), moderate branded presence, and a calculated spend profile.
• Conversion Metrics: Relentless focus on funnel conversion rates and cost of acquisition.

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8. Operational Excellence: Metrics and Data ([48:39]–[52:05])

• KPI Mastery: Know conversion rates, cost-per-lead, demo rates (~80%), install rates, and false positives to within a few percentage points month-to-month.

  “If you don't know your metrics as a business owner...you're not running your business. Your business is running you. Hope is not a strategy.” — Noah [52:05]

• Data-Driven Decisions: From market entry to installer hiring to marketing spend, data drives every decision.

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9. Culture and Organizational Design ([44:31]–[48:14])

• Org Chart: 200+ people (300+ with contractors/1099s), with functions across finance, install ops, marketing, call center, and sales.
• Internal Mobility: Initial key hires were external, but now most leadership opportunities are being filled internally—promote from within culture.
• Recruitment: Dedicated five-person team divided by region; main recruiting churn is installers and sales, not project managers or service techs.

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10. Vision, Lessons & Advice ([36:05]–[56:47])

• Vision: Aggressive from day one (“monstrosity” was always the goal), but systematized and rational—no arbitrary caps, let the market and infrastructure dictate scale pace.
• Unique Selling Proposition: Essential to scaling quickly—must have a product/process the market cannot get elsewhere.
• Balancing Risk: Strong internal debate between "pedal-to-the-metal" and conservative approaches keeps expansion sustainable.
• Advice for Entrepreneurs:

  “You need to do everything, know everything within your business…It all at the end of the day starts with people...If you don’t have good people working for you, you're not going to get where you want to go.” — Noah [53:41]
  “It starts in sales and marketing…If it takes you to do every facet of your business, rethink the business plan…You want to be able to teach someone a process or a system that you can repeat.” — AJ [54:40]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On risk and mindset:

  “One of the two things are happening here. It's either we're going bankrupt or we're going to be extremely successful. And I'll tell you every time. I'll bet on myself.” — AJ [00:00]

• On data’s importance:

  “If you don't know your metrics as a business owner…you're not running your business. Your business is running you. Hope is not a strategy.” — Noah [52:05]

• On scaling:

  “We were the only company in home improvement history to ever do 15 million in their first year. We were the only company to ever do 100 million in their first two years." — AJ [00:31, 38:06]

• On hiring and people:

  “When you pay Talent, talent stays.” — AJ [24:05]
  “If you have the right person, you have the market.” — Vince, as relayed by Noah [28:21, 44:04]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:06] - First month sales and elite mindset
• [01:39] - How Premier Home Pros was founded
• [07:04] - Strategic supplier partnership and game-changing product
• [09:07] - Office structure and rapid expansion
• [11:06] - Bringing on an expert marketing owner
• [13:33] - Defining the core service and SKU discipline
• [19:50] - Streamlining operations for scalability
• [23:01] - Recruiting and market launch process
• [25:50] - Debt-free, cash-positive business model
• [28:12] - Launching new markets and the playbook
• [31:28] - Lead buying vs. branded marketing spend
• [36:05] - Vision, risk, and the importance of dreaming big
• [44:31] - Culture, org chart, and recruitment systems
• [48:39] - Tracking margin and KPI measurement
• [52:05] - Data-driven decision making
• [53:41] - Advice for entrepreneurs

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Conclusion

This episode charts a comprehensive, boots-on-the-ground blueprint for business growth in the home services industry, providing an inspiring story and actionable insights for ambitious entrepreneurs. Premier Home Pros’ journey underscores the importance of mindset, data, systemization, and talent for rapid and effective scaling. The playbook: focus on a differentiated product, rigorous process, rapid market entry fueled by smart lead-buying, and never neglect the human factor.

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Connect with Premier Home Pros

• Website: www.premier-homepros.com
• AJ and Noah: Both active on LinkedIn

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If you’re looking to scale a service business, this conversation is a masterclass in growth, risk management, and playing to win.

Transcript

[AJ]

One of the two things are happening here. It's either we're going bankrupt or we're going to be extremely successful. And tell you every time. I'll bet on myself.

[Host]

Yeah.

[AJ]

We demoed at 91%. We closed at 82% for 557,000 our first month. It was the elite mindset of being hungry. So we fast forward through 2024, and we do $86 million.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Noah]

Our first year, our average project was like $11,700. That was wet and dry, and we're up over 18,000 now.

[Host]

Wow.

[Noah]

We started the company with no debt. We're cash flow positive, fully profitable, and we haven't taken $1 a debt.

[AJ]

We in home improvement history to ever do 15 million in their first year. We were the only company to ever do 100 million in their first two years.

[Noah]

You don't know your metrics as a business owner. My opinion, you're not running your business. Your business is running you.

[AJ]

It wasn't about the money. It was just about.

[Host]

Welcome back to Owned and Operated. Today on the show, I have AJ And Noah from Premier Home Pros. Welcome to the show.

[AJ]

Thanks for having us.

[Noah]

Thanks for having us.

[Host]

This is gonna be a lot of fun. Yeah. I mentioned to a couple friends, I was like, hey, this morning, I'm having a bath company on that went from like, zero to almost 200 in a couple years. And everyone immediately knew. And these are people all over the country. They're like, oh, yeah, it's Premier Home Pros. Here's what I would like you to ask them. It was kind of funny. I feel like you guys have done a good job distributing the message on LinkedIn of. Of what you guys are doing, but I'd love to. I'd love to spend a couple minutes and dive into, like, what the heck is Premiere Home Pros? And a little bit of the background. What do we do and. And what's it look like now? So, aj, walk us through it.

[AJ]

Yeah, let's. Let's kind of go back to, like, how Premiere started. I think that's the first.

[Host]

Yeah.

[AJ]

That would be in. Actually, let's talk about me and Noah's relationship first. So me and Noah became friends in 2018. We worked for a previous home remodeling company, Window Nation. Noah came in as a salesperson working in the office with me. We gained a pretty good friendship that migrated over into a new company. We went and worked at Lee Filter for a number of years, and our friendship just continued to strengthen at that point. So we both had that kind of burning entrepreneur itch. Like, hey, like, there's a greater calling. Like, let's do something bigger. Let's do something together where, you know, we're kind of the narrators of our own story. So in 2022 is when Premiere kind of started. It really started nothing more than literally at like a dining room table. We were like, what do we want to do? What kind of product do we want to get into? It was me, him, my wife, and say, you know what? Let's. Let's do bathrooms. Let's try bathrooms. We were looking at the qualified remodel list, and we're like, you know, roofing's very, very clouded. There's a ton of window companies in Northeast Ohio.

[Host]

Clouded being like, there's a lot.

[AJ]

There's just so many companies that are doing roofing, you know, and then. Then the of a lot of it is insurance claims and.

[Host]

Yes. Yeah.

[AJ]

So we're like, bathroom is a carve out that I think that we have a real opportunity to grow and scale this business. And because we always had the bigger picture of Premier is not always going to be a Northeast Ohio company. It's going to. Yeah, it's going to grow across the country. At least what our dreams were come from where we came. So in 2022, December, we ran our first lead. Yeah, I had a background running bathrooms working at Erie. You know, back in the 2012-14 range, Erie ran bathrooms. They. They now they're a metal roof company, but they were at that time. They did everything. They did windows.

[Host]

Eerie roofing.

[AJ]

Yeah.

[Host]

Okay, okay.

[AJ]

They were eerie construction at the time before they branded the eerie metal roofing.

[Host]

Yeah.

[AJ]

So I had enough background in bathrooms to be dangerous. And, you know, I. I took a sales system that I wrote back in 2018, and I said, let's. Let's implement this in the bathrooms. And then me and. Me and Noah really kind of built out this model of, like, from A to Z, what it was going to look like. And a lot of it was on the fly. But so 2022, December, we were on our first lead. We went to Cortland, Ohio, Youngstown. I literally turned on a Home Advisor program on a Thursday. On Monday, we had our first lead. Me and him are in a car together. We're driving up there. He's like, what do you think this is going to be like? I said, honestly, I think we're going to slam dunk this.

[Host]

Yeah.

[AJ]

But I didn't think about what was going to happen after we sold it. Like, yeah, if we sold it, like, where does it go from there? Like, who's installing it? What are we doing with the aftercare part of this? So we get up there and it's exactly as we envision. Like, we sit with this lovely couple, we hammer them down, we sell for like $11,300. We get in a car and I go, so, Noah, what do you think? And he goes, I think we can do this. So we're in a car, driving home, and then, you know, then. Then we're taking another guy that is still with our company today, John Hopkins. And I said, listen, it's going to be us three this month. Let's just turn on the leads. Yeah, let's knock it out the park. In December, the month of Christmas, we demoed at 91%. We closed at 82%.

[Noah]

Whoa.

[AJ]

For 557,000 our first month. Now all those sales kind of came in in the first month.

[Host]

I want to hit that for. I want to double click on that for a second. Because that's. That's crazy. I mean, just the demo rate alone.

[AJ]

Yeah, yeah.

[Host]

Is that exclusive to remodeling? Because it's a high interest.

[AJ]

Extremely high.

[Host]

Yeah. That's crazy. Like, our demo rates like 40%, which is considered best in class for our industry. Our.

[AJ]

Our demo rate presently today hovers between 77 and 80%.

[Host]

That's crazy too.

[AJ]

But it was, it was the elite mindset of being hungry. You know, it was, it was a three people that were running leads. Something fresh we were rejuvenated of, you know, going from working corporate America to doing this. And the mindset was everything, right? So we were like, we're going to demo every opportunity we get and we're going to close every one of them.

[Host]

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[AJ]

So we ended with 557,000. And then I was like this, Noah, figure out. Figure out how to install it, man. And he's like, install it. Like, I don't know any about installation. I said, that's where you're going to have to, like, you're going to have to blend a little bit. So he's like, we're sitting in this room in our new office in North Canton and he's, he's sourcing, trying to find a project manager. And we had this guy kind of an, you know, an intern project manager. And we're sourcing installers and at the time we're sourcing products from all these different places. So then I kind of fast forward and we get to April and this guy comes in our office and I'm actually not there that day. Noah's there. This guy named Jake Amron comes in his office and he says, hey, you know, I just figured I'd stop by. I was making my runs today. I'm, I'm from Trumbull, Trumbull Industries in Youngstown. And I know you guys do bathrooms, so I figured I'd stop in and see if you guys need anything for product wise. So him and Noah start talking. The guy goes, well, we actually offer this wall system and I, I think that you guys would love this wall system if you've seen it.

[Host]

Sterling wall type thing.

[AJ]

No. So we were presently selling in our first four months of existence, acrylic.

[Host]

Yeah.

[AJ]

You know, high definition plastic, right?

[Host]

Yep.

[AJ]

We were selling it fine. But this guy comes in and shows us this, this, this manufactured stone product which is just.

[Host]

Oh yeah.

[AJ]

Unbelievable. Okay, so Noah's first question always is how much, how much, how much is it going to cost us?

[Noah]

Right?

[AJ]

The guy goes, well, you know, it's going to be 40%, probably more than acrylic and like turn you off like real quick.

[Noah]

Right?

[AJ]

So he follows back up a couple days later. He's like, just come out to Youngstown. Just, just come out, see our facility, sit down with the owner team and see if there's a fit for you.

[Host]

Do they control the manufacturing of this product?

[AJ]

Yes.

[Host]

Okay. Okay, so this is a white labeled product through jumble, Correct? Understood.

[AJ]

So we didn't realize that, I'll say it just like this, we didn't realize that like God's blessing was in the next door. Like we met this company, we go to this place and everything just kind of fits like a glove. We walk in there and, and we meet the vp, the owner and Jake and we start talking about this product. And I'm like, I'm wowed by this product. Oh, we got to make this product work. And at the time, the price of materials was a lot more. So come to find out as we fast forward, you know, they're the manufacturer of our doors, of our bases of Our walls of everything interesting. Everything interesting. One company, one stop, seamless transition there, right? So we, we're sitting in this room and we're towards the end of the conversation and I, and I tell Chick, which was their vp. I said, I want you to realize something, that the, the team that you had here today is going to be your biggest client you're at ever. And he's like, well, we heard that before. You know, we heard it. I said, I'm telling you, you don't understand the people that are sitting in front of you. Like when we capitalize and commit to something, we're going to be your best client. We fast forward six months from that day. We're the largest client in the country for him. So it's been a great relationship through, through, you know, Premier's evolvement and as we've continued to mature. So we fast forward that. We finished that year at 15 million. And so full year.

[Host]

One full year, 1 million, yeah. Gross sales.

[AJ]

And that's three offices. That's Cleveland, Northeast Ohio, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

[Host]

What is in. We'll dive more into this later. But what's inside an office?

[AJ]

So you have a sales manager, what we would consider an operations manager because he's kind of in control of the office and all the day to day operations.

[Host]

But like his, he's driven to be like a, he's vibes sales manager.

[AJ]

He's your sales manager.

[Noah]

Right.

[AJ]

He's your leader of your office. And you have a project manager. He's the guy that runs the crews, the scheduling, the installation, the aftercare, the product, all those things. You have a service manager and you have a sales team, a team of installers.

[Host]

Okay.

[AJ]

And that's your, that's your, that's your model that you have. And, and from there you build on that. Right? So we fast forward through that year. We do $15 million. Noah stood up in front of, at the end of our award ceremony and he said, I think that in 2024 we're going to shoot for 50. If I backtrack that. Two months before that award ceremony, me and him sat down and we, we were talking and we're like, listen, we're two intelligent minds, but we can only take this business so far because at the end of the day we don't know enough about marketing to take it to the stratosphere where we want to go. Yeah, we need to find somebody that knows the business, that knows the marketing business. So as I'm thinking and I'm going through my LinkedIn and I'm going through my network. Of all the people I know in 16 years, I said, I got somebody. I know somebody. He worked at Leaffilter. He was the SVP of leaffilter, Senior vice president of marketing. And I was aware that he moved on from Leaf like a year or two before I left, but I didn't know where he was at in his career. And at the time, the way that we left Leaf and moved to something different, I knew if I reached out to him, that was the first thing would come to mind. He'd be like, ah, you know, I'm sure you guys are doing great, but God, I remember what happened when you left Leaf. It just didn't end well, right? So I didn't think it. He would know who I was. I wasn't sure he would know who Noah was. So I said, no, reach out to him. Just reach out to him. So Noah turns on the sales mode and puts on the hat and he goes, listen, hey, you know, my name is Noah. You know, we got this unbelievable company at Premiere Home Pros. We're gonna do $15 million this year. We think we can supercharge this business to great heights, but we need somebody like you. And he goes, I appreciate you reaching out. It's a great opportunity. You guys are doing unbelievable things. But I think at this stage of my career, it'd be a huge step back. I moved on from Leaf. I'm now the CMO at ars and I got kind of a cookie cutter job, but it's white collar and I don't really want to shake things up of what I've been chasing for so long, but I'd be interested in talking. And Noah said, just have coffee with us. Just have coffee with us. We sat down in Cuyahoga Falls. I don't remember the diner.

[Noah]

I don't either.

[AJ]

No, I know where it was at. It's on the main road across from Leo's. Leo's Italian social? Yeah, yeah, it's on the corner there. A little. Little old diner. And we sat there at this coffee table. It was a book of ours, of our Trumbull samples. And it was me. It was me and Vince crammed in a seat together like this and. No, across the table.

[Noah]

And I'm a big guy, so I had to sit.

[AJ]

We had this unbelievable. It's unbelievable conversation. Really an unbelievable conversation. And we left that conversation like, ah, I don't know what's going to come.

[Noah]

Of that, but yeah, but it gave.

[AJ]

Us some more insight of kind of where the template of where To Avenue from there.

[Noah]

Right.

[AJ]

Within two hours, he calls. Calls Noah three ways me. And he said, guys, when I left that day or two hours ago, I literally ran home to my wife and said, I got the itch. Like, I gotta be part of this. Like, I. I can't miss this opportunity. And I know it sounds crazy, Amanda, but I have to leave when I'm at. And I want to go work with these guys now. When we first reached out to Vince, we wanted Vince to work for us as an employee, not with us.

[Noah]

Right.

[AJ]

Because we didn't really see the vision at that point of, like, how we would make it all fit. Well, ended up being in that. It worked out better that he came in as a third owner, you know.

[Host]

Yeah.

[AJ]

So we fast forward through 2024 and we do $86 million. Yeah. And we opened six more additional locations.

[Host]

Yeah.

[AJ]

So now we're at nine at the end of 2024, and then here we are presently chasing 174 million this year.

[Host]

Yeah. When you're sitting down, when you're like working through original product mapping, can you explain? I guess we should even talk about what the service is first.

[Noah]

So we do full service bathroom remodeling in as little as one day. Bathtub shower replacements, walk in tubs, aging in place products. We will do flooring, we will do vanities. We will do toilets on kind of a pull and replace model. But the bread and butter of our business is, you know, bath and shower replacements.

[Host]

Yeah. What. What is the average order value?

[Noah]

$18,300 is our average contract. If you take. We delineate it into kind of two types of orders, a wet and a dry. So wet is always every.

[Host]

Every job.

[Noah]

Yep. Tub or shower. Right.

[Host]

Okay.

[Noah]

And then the dry would be outside of the wet area. Floor, vanity, toilet, some combination. That's almost $21,000. And then showers by themselves are almost $16,000.

[Host]

So the dry is 21.

[AJ]

If they're combined for doing a shower and a vanity together.

[Noah]

Floor, wet and dry. Every job has at least a wet.

[Host]

Okay, what is the smallest? You guys mentioned something like your first sale was 11. Is that like a. The smallest? Well, how the average sale is.

[AJ]

Went up throughout the years.

[Host]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I think what I'm. What I want to get to is like, well, what. What is the service? What's the timeline?

[Noah]

Sure.

[Host]

But also, like, I think what makes this fascinating is probably the SKU count seems pretty tight.

[Noah]

We try to keep it as. As. As tight as possible. We do kind of pride ourselves on bringing A very customizable and almost a la carte process to the home.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Noah]

You know, you know, as a business, you have a lot more SKUs than we have, but you want to keep your SKUs as tight as you reason reasonably can while still keeping your customers happy.

[Host]

So.

[Noah]

Yeah, we offer 14 different wall systems. It's two, seven different colors, two different patterns essentially, and, you know, four different bases and a handful of doors. And just let the customer kind of pick and choose their finishes and match it all together. Almost like a bespoke model where they choose what they want.

[Host]

And that's like 20, 30 combos. Sounds like.

[Noah]

Yeah, I mean, give or take.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Noah]

And, you know, in terms of order value over the years in. We're in our third year now. We're starting our 29th month in existence and in May, and it's gone up considerably and consistent consistently as grown. Some of it is growing into more expensive markets or markets that have a higher cost basis for anything that you would buy in Philadelphia versus Northeast Ohio.

[Host]

Right. Yeah.

[Noah]

But then also, you know, we had a cost bump when we switched from acrylic when we started to our engineered stone product now considerably.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Noah]

And that was a calculated bet that we would have a higher average order value. And that was 100% correct. Yeah, but yeah, it's, it's, it's gone up considerably. When we first started, our first year, our average project was like $11,700. That was wet and dry combined, like, everything total.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Noah]

And we're up over 18,000 now. We're able to offer a few more higher quality things to our customers that they absolutely love. But we're also getting better at being able to find some of the really finer things that customers.

[AJ]

But talk about that, like, don't leave that part out. Talk about the first year of, like, how we did everything, and now we've streamlined it so we have a higher ticket average sales price now.

[Host]

Yeah, I think that's what makes it scalable. I mean, it's the like the low SKU count. The like, that's my dream. I've always joked that, like, my dream scenario is all I do nationwide is install water heaters.

[Noah]

Sure.

[Host]

Because that's like six SKUs, but. Yeah, I would love to. I'd love to hear about that.

[Noah]

When we first started, we would sell anything and, and everything.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Noah]

Okay. We. We had installers to do it. Right.

[Host]

Like, we're not like siding like.

[Noah]

Oh, no, no, no. Within the bath. Okay. Knocking out walls.

[Host]

How far did we go?

[Noah]

Yeah, knocking out walls. Widening doorways, moving plumbing.

[Host]

Really a construction company.

[Noah]

Yeah. At that point, a little too much.

[Host]

Right.

[Noah]

And we, we, we did it well, we did it right. We had the right people to install it. You can't sell something you can't do. Right. So we always kind of focused on that, making sure that we could actually enact on the things that we promise homeowners. But as, as we got to the end of 2021 across three or 2023 across three offices, and we said, this is a little more complicated than a scalable model is going to allow for. We need to, we need to chill out on this. So no more moving toilets. No more busting out walls left and right and moving plumbing and vanities and all and all this jazz and building walls. No more of that. Turn into a pull and replace company and get our SKUs down, but also get our labor items down as well so our installers aren't trapped at a job for seven days, not making enough money. We got to make sure these guys can feed their families and can turn jobs. So we've gotten really, really good at not just marketing for the things that we want to do. The more pull and replace model, which is really what we've started. I don't want to ever say master. We've started to get very good at that.

[Host]

But.

[Noah]

We'Ve really simplified things that we won't do anymore as well.

[Host]

Said no.

[Noah]

A lot more said no to our sales team.

[AJ]

And you know those houses in northeast Ohio and the Cleveland area that have the old 60s pink tile wrapping around the border of the walls that's going into the tub. We used to tear all that out. I mean, we would tear all that border tile out and replace the drywall. And you know, you think about dryer replacement and sand and mudding and finishing. You're there three days and.

[Host]

Yeah.

[AJ]

And then just.

[Host]

So that's how we, we used to do bathroom models. This was forever.

[Noah]

Sure.

[Host]

Yeah. When I bought the business, we were like a million total dollars of revenue and we were doing bathroom models and it was these 35,000-40000, like bespoke bathroom. And every single one would take like three to four weeks. And so. And I got out of it as fast as I could because it was like, it's crazy.

[AJ]

You're so bogged down.

[Host]

Yeah, you're bogged down. It, it, it doesn't make any sense. And margin was terrible. So we've sort of avoided baths. But like, this makes a lot more sense to me.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[AJ]

You know, bathrooms and Kitchens are those projects that people spend a lot of time in those rooms and they look at every single fine issue that you could find inside the bathroom. They go, oh, that trim doesn't look perfect. Or, you know.

[Host]

Yeah.

[AJ]

So we were like, it's almost impossible to perfect this.

[Host]

Yeah.

[AJ]

And execute it to where the customer is always happy. So we just have refined the process and just made the process a lot more streamlined so it's easier to.

[Noah]

I like to say that we commonly, we've built the airplane while it's in the. In the air.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Noah]

Right.

[Host]

So when you, when you did that, the transition maybe like saying no more. I don't know if it was like a hard stop or like, you know, over a couple months, but I would assume the first concern was, like, what happens with closing rates? So, like, what did happen with closing rate?

[Noah]

We found ourselves into number one more jobs. The question isn't when you say no to a customer, you know, are they all going to say no? The question is when you say no to a customer, which. That's not really our bread and butter. A customer really appreciates that. The question is how many of those customers are still going to say yes to what you can offer?

[Host]

Yeah.

[Noah]

And we found a very large portion of them still say yes. And look, at the end of the day, the customers that don't want to hire us because they want more of a full service model and a really complex build, we're probably not the right company for that. We're probably not. You know, everybody is good at what they're good at, and we know what we're not and what we shouldn't be. And for us, it was. The closing percentage went down a couple percent, but that just accelerated our cash turn because I don't think we would ever say we don't have enough business. This is almost an insatiable market if you do it the right way. And we just found ourselves into more of the jobs that we wanted that served us right, served our customers right, but ultimately accelerated our cash turn at the same time. Because we're not stuck in homes for seven days or we're not having too big of a backlog. We're right in the meat and potatoes of what we want to do.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Noah]

Just accelerating that.

[Host]

Yeah.

[AJ]

We were able to scale down the expectations with the customer recenter the focus on what was really important to them. And most of the time it's the shower. And then really train the sales team in the transition of how to communicate it properly.

[Host]

Yeah.

[AJ]

So that the customers are okay. With those expectations, like, let's not gripe about the 5% of the bathroom that we can't do. Let's talk about the 95% of the bathroom that we can do.

[Host]

Yeah.

[AJ]

And we found ourselves as we went from like a 57 close down to of 53, and we were doing way more revenue.

[Host]

Yeah.

[AJ]

And our installers were happy because they were making more money because they were getting into four or five jobs a week versus two. You know, so it was like ended up being a really, I would say a win win across the board in every aspect that we could check a box next to.

[Host]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that makes total sense for. I mean, in hindsight, it makes total sense, but like, yeah, that tracks so limited the SKU counts. Limited the amount of products in a place. And you guys, you guys are sort of the. What's the. What's the opposite of a mullet? But you guys are like party up front, business in the back. Right? So, like. Yeah, Bangs.

[Noah]

I don't know. I think it's what the. I think it's what the teenagers have today with their curly hair down, they can't see.

[Host]

You guys got what I was putting. Yeah, but, but sales and marketing and we're finding partner companies to install our products. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what's it look like finding and sourcing vendors in like Pittsburgh? Like you guys are here in Akron. Like, what did that look like?

[AJ]

That's a beautiful thing. Like, we have one vendor for the entire country.

[Host]

There's. Oh, I meant installers.

[AJ]

Oh, I mean. Yeah. I mean, so. So, you know, it's went through phases of growth. Obviously, every department has broadened dramatically.

[Host]

Right.

[AJ]

Our recruiting team now is a broad team. In the beginning, it was just my wife. She was the one person recruiting for the entire country that we had. It's really just going to the market, posting the ads on. Indeed. And all your. All your hiring platforms, vetting those calls up front. Hey, listen, do you have tools? Do you have a trailer? Do you have a truck? Do you have reliable transportation? Do you have workers comp and liability insurance? Yes. Great. Schedule you for an interview.

[Noah]

Right.

[AJ]

Project manager field those interviews and filters out. And I would say no market has been challenging. Like, no market has been overly challenging. Finding installers. Because Premiere pays well. We pay well. We believe that we would pay. We would rather pay great on our sales team and pay great to our installers and we'll figure the other stuff out in the back to continue to be a profitable business, which we are. But when you pay Talent, talent stays.

[Noah]

Right.

[AJ]

That's just what it comes down to. And when you're dealing with bathrooms and you're dealing with the intricacies of what the liability and risk of a bathroom can be, you better have good people installing it. So him saying, we simplified SKUs, we got into more systems. We've created processes with how we install, which products we offer, what kind of sealants we're using, what all the different options on doors and niches and shelves, we've just refined that so that we don't have a million different ways to skin the cat. Let's just, let's make it one or two different ways and it's a lot easier just picking colors and changing the color. So I would say as far as getting the labor has not been difficult. We start every market with, like I told you, an operations manager that controls the sales team, a project manager which controls the install team. And then recruiting goes to work and we fill and we build, we build around that. We got a sales leader and an install leader and we build around that. And there's a, there's a work through process where you're filtering out if the salesperson's the right fit. As they go through training. Each one of those departments go through strenuous training. We put them through a complete premier sales product training, complete sales process training. And then the same thing with install, they go through an install training. We need to know, I've been doing this for 20 years. That's great. Let's see you install the product. Let's see you take the product and install it. Making sure we know you know how to move plumbing and you know how to mess with a P trap and change the valve and do all the things that people say they can do. Let's make sure you know how to do that before we send you out. We have a field trainer that takes these installers out for the first week and they shadow.

[Host]

Yeah.

[AJ]

And then each day of the install we start to kind of pull the shell back a little bit and say, now you do this step, let's watch you do it, you know, before we kick them loose. So we know that by the end of that week that we've taken these people out, they're ready to go, that we know they can do the job.

[Noah]

And how, how, how we've kind of structured our business because when you ask, you know, how do you find installers and stuff? It's, we know it's a process to find the right, a collection of the right installers. Right. So Going back to the genesis of this company, we started the company with no debt. We still have no debt to take today. We're cash flow positive, fully profitable and we haven't taken $1 a debt. And, and we built this P and L from the beginning to be almost 70% variable. So if we don't sell a job, we don't have any costs other than employees and some marketing costs that are recurring. We're going to sell jobs. Right. So it allows us when we greenfield a location, a lot of companies are doing M and A and they're taking out debt, buying other companies, systems, processes and kind of trying to merge them into a platform and make them all one for us. We have a 46 day payback period on any greenfield location on average. And the reason why is because our, our P and L is basically fully variable and we're not out a ton of investment over time because the, the market starts cash flowing very quickly. And so it allows us to buy time to find the right installer base. It allows us to find the first two good installers, really work with them, get another one in there and over time build the right collection of people so that when we can accelerate the marketing when it really starts to dive in 90, 120, 180 days out, we have the installer base, we have the sales base and we're ready to just.

[Host]

Start moving business inside the 70%. This variable. What's the 30? That's not like base comps, GNA marketing.

[Noah]

Yeah, two things.

[Host]

Yeah, yeah. And variable. Are we counting cogs in variable?

[Noah]

No.

[Host]

Okay, so that's like variable opex.

[Noah]

Yeah, that's interesting because cogs only happen when the job actually finally gets installed.

[Host]

Right, right, right, right. Are you still missing calls after hours or losing leads while your team sleeps? That's why we work with Avoca, AI owned and operated's exclusive call center partner. They answer 24, 7, sound like a real human and plug straight into your CRM to book jobs, send quotes and even revive old leads. There are plenty of AI call centers out there, but we trust Avoca because we've seen the results firsthand. More book jobs, less wasted spend and no more missed revenue. See it in action at the link below. Start winning more jobs today with Avoca. I mean I, I want to double click on that a lot. So we, we drop in a new manager. We greenfield. Sure. 48 day payback.

[Noah]

46.

[Host]

Yeah, that's wild. What it, what is the dollar that it takes like a hundred thousand dollars starter market. Yeah.

[Noah]

For us Less than that. If you look at the totality of the cost, it's like $96,000. I haven't updated in the last 30 days, but it's typically right around a hundred thousand dollars to get a market started. But in terms of cash flow or cash out to cash in, it feels like much less than that almost immediately. Because what we end up doing is there's a premier way. We've coined this, this motto of this is who we are, this is how we do business across, you know, 200, 300 people in this organization now. And we try to find the, the right people. We always say if you have the right person, you have the market, right? And we've got marketing planned out for the next 30 markets. We already have the zip codes that we want to attack and the type of homeowners we want to go after. So we're looking for the right operation sales leader, right, that can convert our spend into revenue. And once we find that person, we get them through training and we get the lease, they get into the market and they immediately, three days before we actually want to start running leads, we buy the marketing, we buy the leads, they start coming in, call center starts qualifying them, Getting a schedule built together for a couple in house sales leaders to go out to the market with that new sales manager and start selling projects and generating revenue. At that point we have our sales trainer in house. That is this training the first team of sales reps to go out in the field in a week or two to join that sales manager and then we just kind of get it started from there. So almost from day one, when we're running leads inside of a market, we're starting to generate revenue. And it's because we have the right leader to get out there and grow it from nothing. We have the system, the playbook.

[Host]

Well, in the playbook too. Something that's been really interesting. As we're looking to greenfield, our next spot is like industry standard, which I'm curious if it's the case with what you guys have seen. It probably is with roofing, but industry standard for greenfielding plumbing H vac electric is I'm going to come in and I'm going to drop 80 grand a month of like branded. Sure, spend.

[AJ]

That's the difference.

[Host]

Yeah. I mean that's crazy. And, and then, so then it becomes this like race. You know, first off, you're already down a million dollars. You know, I was talking to someone, I was talking to someone Monday and five location shop in Pennsylvania, 130 of revenue so like that's, you know, that's a lot. And they're getting ready to greenfield their next spot and it's half a million dollars in the first 90 days, all brand. And it sounds like that's not the, like we're buying leads.

[AJ]

Absolutely.

[Host]

Yeah.

[AJ]

It's the best way to keep your com low.

[Host]

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

[AJ]

I mean you're going to have, you're going to have to weed through a lot of fat. You know, where you're paying for a branded lead that is calling you specifically your brand, they're calling you probably not shopping you. And your conversion rate to convert that to an appointment, it's probably like 95%. Right. Unless you hear some kind of a red flag on the call that says yeah, we're not a good fit for you or we can't help you. That's such a high conversion rate where when you're dealing with affiliate marketing, you're, you're weeding through a lot of things that the customer's window shop and the customer thinks that they're, that we just do repairs, we're outside the work scope.

[Host]

So are you guys branding? I mean it sounds like you're buying the leads directly.

[AJ]

We do both.

[Host]

Okay.

[AJ]

The, the weight of percentage is much higher with affiliate marketing than it is with branded.

[Host]

You know, what does affiliate marketing mean to you?

[AJ]

You know, you're, you're buying leads from like, you know, like Angie's List.

[Host]

Yeah, I've never heard that called affiliate marketing.

[AJ]

And affiliate marketing can be a non branded lead or it can be a branded lead.

[Host]

Okay.

[AJ]

A non branded lead is, hey, I'm just interested in a bathroom and I just put my name in there and three or four companies call me and first one there probably wins the job.

[Noah]

Right.

[AJ]

You can close them on the spot. A branded lead is the affiliate marketer creates a campaign that has your logo on the lead, whether it's a social ad or a banner ad. And they're running it and saying this is premiere. You know, we're advertising for a bathroom and people are clicking that and they're only, you're only getting their form. So it's, you're converting at that at a higher clip. Cost per lead on that is a lot more expensive than just buying it from pool, you know, but there's a place in time for each one of them. You know, we run a lot of non branded ads that, with affiliates that happen to be our best cost of marketing conversions, like you know, sub 15%. So yeah, so it's a, it's a great lead source, but yeah, there was definitely. I think it's way more difficult to scale a business going with brand leads. Oh, yeah.

[Noah]

Just a longer time frame.

[Host]

Yes, well, it's a longer time frame and it's on, like, front pivotably expensive.

[Noah]

Our bet was always to buy the demand that exists while we work on generating demand through our brand. Yeah, that's a long.

[Host]

I think that's what makes sense to me too. I, I think. And I, I'm wondering if it's a generational gap of like, the folks that I'm seeing doing the branded spend tend to be like, that worked 10 years ago, so that's how we're going to do this. But like, what's your funnel now for. For just buying leads? Because the leads are there. I mean, the leads are there for.

[Noah]

Bathrooms, but you have to be able to convert.

[Host]

Like, everybody needs a water heater. Yeah. And I, I think that's a problem in our industry. Like, you guys don't have. I think it's kind of funny to compare industry sometimes because. And Vince probably has this perspective too from like, dealing with plumbing and. But like, our industry is so drunk on hot leads that they don't know what to do with an Angie's List. Like, they don't even know what to do with it. They don't know what to do with like door knocking or like events because everyone's always expecting that bottom of the funnel. My toilet just broke. My furnace didn't turn on today. And I mean, you can get pretty far. Like you can get to 20, 30 million dollars on emergent leads. High close rate. But no one has like, or very few people have that funnel dialed in on acquiring leads the way you guys have had to acquire leads since day one.

[Noah]

Yeah, your, your, your industry is, and Vince can speak to this a lot more, but it's a need industry more than a want. And ours is a. We have need. We definitely have a need. There's a lot of want. People will look at their pink tile bathroom and say, I want a new updated bathroom. So we're able to capitalize on that a little bit. It's a little bit of a different type of consumer process. But part of the, part of the thing with like the, the, the payback period kind of goes back on, on a greenfield of market. Kind of goes back to chasing branded or chasing like current demand with affiliates. Is part of the reason that he was so excited to come over to Premiere Home Pros and make it happen is because, I mean, he was the chief marketing officer at ars. That's a 2 billion dollar plumbing and H vac. Conrad. Right, right. I think they have 120 brands or 150 brands. Something like that.

[Host]

Huge.

[Noah]

So just a larger version of what you guys.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Noah]

Right. And he's like it's a two year payback period because we have to get in and anytime we open our markets, two year payback period of millions of dollars because we have to get in there and saturate our brand.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Noah]

And wait for the phone to start ringing at time. You need trucks. You need just.

[AJ]

They're almost all M and A though. And they're hovering at a 10 to 12% EBITDA.

[Host]

Yeah.

[AJ]

So they're heavy and. But they also do affiliate marketing.

[Noah]

Sure.

[AJ]

They have a. There's, I think it's like about 20, 25% of their business.

[Host]

Yeah.

[AJ]

Is affiliate marketing. So like I said there's a place in time. But I think.

[Host]

No, I mean 46 day payback is wild.

[AJ]

Yeah.

[Host]

That's amazing.

[Noah]

It's because there's real want generated or demand.

[Host]

That that's a hell of a flywheel.

[Noah]

Buying convert. Like. Yeah.

[Host]

That's incredible. Back to. I accidentally skipped this but I'd love to understand it a little bit more. So like we're sitting at. We're either sitting at the kitchen table or we're at a, at a cafe. But we're setting the tone for what we're going to do. We're going to launch a bathroom model company. Yep. What was original vision like? Is this original vision? Are we, are we surpassing where we thought we would be at this point?

[Noah]

Like.

[Host]

Yeah. I mean because this is crazy.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Host]

From the outside looking at, we're dreamers.

[Noah]

Number one being.

[AJ]

Being 100, transparent and upfront. Like we dream big.

[Host]

Like. Yeah.

[AJ]

From the get go. Like we came from two jobs working at Leaf making absurd amounts of money where most people would never leave that job. They would never even consider leaving the job. You know when you're bringing in 600 000amillion dollars a year, you're not leaving that job. But it wasn't about the money. It was just about like I got to that point in my career where I knew I could serve better doing something different on my own. And. And he was in the same alignment. We're like this may end up epically failing or we're going to be like we're going to transcend the industry. Right. One of the two things are happening here. It's either we're going bankrupt or we're, we're going to be extremely successful. And, you know, I'll tell you every time, I'll bet on myself. I'll bet on myself every time. If my back's against the corner, I. I believe I'll fight my way out. And he feels the same. So when we envision Premiere. Yeah, we envisioned Premiere to be a national footprint from the get go. Now there was a lot of, like, stepping stones and like getting off the road and coming back on. And there was multiple break points. We're like, are we gonna get through this?

[Noah]

A lot of luck.

[AJ]

You know, a lot of good things had to happen.

[Host]

And what were some of the breakpoints?

[AJ]

It's a people element, right? There's people element. And, and you know, people that you believe are loyal to you or that you are going to come through and do their part and, you know, you're paying for their talent and they fail you or, or people leave you high and dry and, you know, you're dependent on one person run a market, you're a leader, and that person leaves. And now you have this gaping hole.

[Host]

Yeah.

[AJ]

Or your sales team ends up depleted.

[Noah]

Or marketing. Marketing doesn't come through.

[AJ]

Yeah. Or marketing's failing in a market for a short, a short period of time. Or, you know, installations just can't get up and run at the speed that you want them to get to. So there's. This is a human capital business. Like I was asking in the hallway, like, is this an asset driven business or is this a human capital.

[Host]

Yeah, we're human business.

[AJ]

And all day you rely on people to deliver the message and execute for you. And, and that's part of it. Right. So when we sat down, our, our vision was, let's create this to be just a monstrosity. Let's create this to be something great. And let's do something that no bathroom company's been able to do. There's plenty of other companies that have done this in other industries, in the home improvement industry, but maybe not bathrooms. Like, let's do this. And that was always the goal. So I would say yes to that. Answer that. When we sat down, when we pitched it to Vince, it wasn't, hey, we plan to be a $15 million company. No, we took it to zero to 15. We were the only company in home improvement history to ever do 15 million in their first year. We were the only company to ever do a hundred million in their first two years. Let's continue that pace. Like, let's not stop there. Right?

[Noah]

We don't Begin with that end in mind. We try to set up systems and processes and people and put them in the right lane to do things. And then we just, we dream really big. It's almost like an irrational self belief. I don't know. But, and I also, I, I also, I told you this before we started. We're just, I guess, dumb enough to try it where it's not that we're irrational risk takers, where we, we take risks that we shouldn't take or anything like that. It's. We just always want to build it bigger and bigger and bigger and go and go and go. And there's not a natural stop sign in our heads for this. And your business will tell you what you can or can't do. And you got to push, you got to push the limits, like to get a little bit uncomfortable. And it'll tell you when it's time to kind of slow down a little bit and focus on quality. We could have done $120 million in sales last year. In 2024, we landed the plane at $86 million because it was the right thing to do for our customers and right thing to do for our infrastructure. But you know, during that time, we bought ourselves time to build it up to$175,180 this year. So we didn't ever begin with any ends in mind. You know, when I got in front of the, the entire company at the end of 2023 to celebrate our successes in year one and he, he mentioned I had said, hey, I think we're going to do 50 this year. We had modeled that out, but we didn't put a cap on it. And we found ourselves at 86. We didn't say, this is our business plan, Jan1 and this is what we're doing this year. And we're not deviating. It's like, you know, this is a leaving, living, breathing ecosystem. You never stop acquiring talent, you never stop building around your talent. And then at the end of the day, it'll consistently tell you what you should or shouldn't do. And you need to listen to your.

[AJ]

Business and know your business. And the unique is that I told you earlier that all the owners are very different.

[Noah]

Right.

[AJ]

Noah falls almost into the conservative category with a lot of things like where he's like, pause timeout. Like, and me and Vince, like, pedal to the metal, baby. Like, we're going, let's push this gas all the way down. Like we're, we're driving this to the moon. He's like, slow it down, let's slow. We're not ready for this, you know, so there's a good balance there because that happens all the time, you know, where I'm like, dude, let's do 200 million A series. Oh, hold on. Let's, let's shoot for 150 or the same thing with the 50. Like, let's shoot for 50. I'm like, I think we can do 100, you know, and, and then usually.

[Noah]

Because of, we can't because of this, this, this, the wrestle first. It's not just stop to stop.

[Host]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[AJ]

And we still end up getting there. But it's a good way to like re gear and look at it through a different lens and say, okay, what's the, what's the bumps in the road on the, on the way there? Right? But to go back to this premier story where we kind of found like, I guess I'll use the word like the unicorn of the business was that you have to have a couple things that happen in line to scale any business. The first one is, is you better have a documented, well trained sales process. Like it has to be to a T, A to Z, completely trained through and through your company. It's the, it's the living, breathing thing through your business, right? You have to then cultivate that in every other, every other division, your call center has to have a script, they know how to do rebuttal training. There needs to be a process of how you, how you, you know, harness all the leads and where they go and where they store. There needs to be a CRM that talks to, you know, an automation and everything needs to kind of funnel together. Right? But the biggest thing is, is you got to have a unique selling proposition. If you're not, if you're selling a product for you to scale to the way that we wanted to scale, you had to have a unique selling proposition. A product that was unique, that's different from everybody else in your category. If we would have stayed in the acrylic world, we would still be successful. One, the margins wouldn't be there to the average sale would never be there. And three, I believe our turnover insider infrastructure would be high because we're competing with a lot of companies that do the exact same thing. You can only do it so well. People are going to buy at that point. Your process, they're not buying your product. We wanted people to buy our product and then our process was second.

[Host]

Right?

[AJ]

Our process got us to the product, but the product is what makes us unique.

[Host]

So is this A lesson learned from Leaf because that feels like a portion of the LEAF strategy.

[AJ]

It's been my process for 16 years. In every company I worked at, like when I look at every company I've ever worked at, that was three of the top five companies in the qualified remodeler and they owned their distribution. Have a unique product. Yeah, they have a unique product.

[Noah]

Right.

[AJ]

So we were lucky enough with this product to find that to have to go with the state of the art selling system. And then we bring in this marketing guru that can get the leads. And it was like all those things gelled. And then there was one missing element in the business. Finding the right install leader, finding a person that could take your company to the next level. And we happen to have deep networks. And it was a person that I've worked with for going on 13 years that was at Leaf and you know, was looking to grow in his, in his, in his career. He wanted to take the next step. So timing's everything too, right? Like that's part of it is where are people at in their career? Are they willing to take a bet on you? Because that's what they're doing. They're taking a bet on us. We're, we're young, ambitious and we were knowledgeable, but we don't have a brand. We're a young company.

[Noah]

Right.

[AJ]

At that stage, people are taking bets on you. And we were lucky enough to be able to tap into a network that I had for a long period of time in the sales industry that people took a bet on us. And that's how these markets became great markets, was we had the right person. He made that, that saying to you. He said, if you have the right person of the market, that's what it starts with, having the right person. So we were lucky enough to have good people around us to build the business. That's where it starts, that end process.

[Host]

Yeah. There's. You said 200 people on the team. Is that inclusive of contractors? Like.

[Noah]

Yeah. And with, with 1099, I think it's over 300 now. Yeah.

[Host]

Yeah. What's the, what's the org chart like look like?

[Noah]

And what, what facet?

[Host]

I mean, you know, how many sales, how many frontline leaders, What's.

[Noah]

Yeah, so we've got like, you know, obviously head finance, head of install operations, head of marketing, head of call center, and then he heads up sales. And then we have several senior seasoned sales leaders that run regions and kind of manage managers, if that makes sense. And then, you know, we got managers in the call Center. We got managers all along, you know, ordering and, and, and, and installation. And so it's.

[AJ]

How many corporate employees inside the building?

[Noah]

Gosh, over almost 100. No, almost 100 now with, with all the call center inside sales reps. Yeah.

[Host]

And inside sales reps for your industry, that's like an inbound lead and outbound lead. Like that's rehash.

[AJ]

That's rehash is its own.

[Noah]

Yeah, we have rehash in its own.

[Host]

Like inside sales for you guys. Like, that's an Angie's List lead would go to inside sales.

[Noah]

Yeah.

[Host]

Okay.

[Noah]

Anybody that fills out a form or sees a commercial calls anything like that.

[Host]

Yeah, yeah.

[Noah]

And then we call and try to be the first person on the phone with them and get out there today, if not tomorrow.

[Host]

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. I'm imagining all the friction of growing an org chart that quickly. Obviously, people. But like, as we're thinking about growing leaders inside the organization, is that. Has that been the path? Like how much of it has been growth inside versus obviously.

[Noah]

Clearly.

[Host]

We talked about some really key, pivotal outside hires.

[Noah]

I think we've. To find your top leaders. We had to go outside. Right. And then let them start cultivating people on the inside. Yeah, we're really starting to get to that pipeline where people know the premier way they came up through the org. And we want to get to a culture where we only promote from within.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Noah]

And we're almost basically there. But to start it from the genesis of it, you got to find the right person that's probably done it elsewhere and then.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Noah]

And let them kind of start the systems processes in their department and then put people in there and let them work. Work up underneath them. That's kind of been our model.

[Host]

Yeah, we've seen that for us too. Like heads of departments have come from outside. Sure. Some director from somewhere else that's been able to sort of convert their frontline leaders into, into more. How large is a recruitment team? I just got to know that.

[AJ]

Yeah, they're a team of five.

[Host]

Really? That doesn't even seem like that much for the amount of hiring you guys are.

[AJ]

They're. They're broken into divisions and markets, you know, so like region. Yeah. So like, you know, Audrey will take. She'll take the Midwest. She'll take Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Dayton. And with those, she'll handle all the facets of operations there. She'll handle the installers.

[Host]

Yeah.

[AJ]

We don't circulate project managers. They stay where they're at. People are happy in their jobs. Same with service tech and field trainers. It's not a heavy circulation position. We're circulating a lot of installers constantly, constantly bringing more people in the door and sales people. So that's really your two areas of recruiting that you're spending a majority of your workflows on is those two areas. Yeah. And then the same thing with, you know, and then we just, if we add a region, like if we go to Minnesota, which we're going to go this year, she'll take on that part of her region as well. And each one of those five people have. Have a region and a number of duties to do.

[Noah]

So they'll set up interviews for the leaders that are going to interview those candidates for those positions and then they'll choose their person. So sifting through resumes, having an initial calls and setting up initial interviews, and then they take it from there. Yeah.

[Host]

When you guys are in this current state, hopefully perpetual state of hypergrowth. How much are, I mean, tracking like gross margin and net margin has to be a moving target, I would assume. How, how are we dialed in on that? Or is that like we will take care of that in a year or two years and just trying to get better?

[Noah]

I mean, we're, we're always tracking it month by month. You know, the really cool thing is we've been, I don't know how we've done this or if it's different from other companies, but we've been able to calculate almost down to the dollar or down to the percent within a plus or minus a 2%, our conversion rates down to how, how it plays into net profit in the end.

[Host]

So we've got, walk me through it, like 53%.

[AJ]

Yeah.

[Host]

4%. Like what happens with us.

[Noah]

Our model starts with marketing, modeling out a market and then sending the zips that we will and will not buy leads in out to our marketing partners. They will tell us then how many leads that they can get us per month.

[AJ]

Estimated.

[Noah]

Estimated. And then from there we'll take all of our conversion metrics and we'll dial the business down to a net profit percentage at the end of the day and damn near land the plan every single time near it. So it's a constant moving target. We know what we've modeled this year to look like.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Noah]

Last year we didn't try to make money. We ended up making money. We didn't try to. Because when you're in a green fielding six locations and you're not even within 24 months of opening, it's like you're not Trying to make money, you're just trying not to lose it. We did that. We made some money. It's very, very happy to say that. It's almost hilarious that we did. But. And this year is a year of doing it much more profitably. We are doing that now. We have a finance team and they model it out. And we, we know our business inside out because we're not silent owners. We know the heartbeat of what's going on in every department and what we can and cannot enact on in terms of a business plan. And so we're able to model out month by month what the profit will be based on, how we've built the P and L cogs, all that good stuff, and then pretty much land pretty closely to it. So yeah, so yeah, you can say that we're pretty calculated with it. Yeah.

[Host]

That's incredible.

[Noah]

You got to know your conversion metrics.

[AJ]

The data gives us, gives us the answers. Right, like the historical data.

[Host]

And you can, like, do you run demo rate? Like, is demo rate pretty consistent? Yes, like at the 80s, almost all.

[AJ]

All those KPI metrics are very, very consistent within a few percent. When I say a few, like 2, 2 to 3%. So when he's talking about like cost per lead, like we know, okay, this is the average cost per lead of all of our marketing team, all of our marketing sources. Here's the average cost per lead. Here's the estimated raw leads we're going to get in the market. Here's the estimated set percentage that we have off historical data. Out of that set percentage, how many of those are going to net set to an appointment? Of those net appointments, how many are going to occur into a demo? And based on historical data, how many are going to occur to a sale? Our average selling price. Take the overall leads that we got as net appointments, divide that by the revenue, it gives you your net volume pre issued lead. We know from that point on exactly all the metrics as it just flows down the chart. And then from there we can basically say we know that for the year last year we installed 91% of our net revenue as a team. So if we put our NET target at 92 or 93%, we know that Detroit's going to install X amount of dollars at the end of the month. And that's how we set our targets every month. But you know, crazy as numbers are, it's like we are within the first Q1, we were within like $200,000 of profit.

[Host]

Wow.

[AJ]

In the surplus.

[Host]

Yeah.

[AJ]

That's how close it was to the.

[Host]

That's fascinating. Yeah, that's fascinating.

[Noah]

Yeah. If you, if you don't know your metrics as a business owner, the inside out conversion rates across the entire organization, you're not. My opinion, you're not running your business. Your business is running you hope is not a strategy. So you need to know everything about how your business confers because then you have a business plan.

[Host]

Guys, thanks for the, thanks for the deep dive into the sort of founding 24 months. Like what a hell of a story this was. This was awesome. I feel like I learned a ton. Brain spinning a little bit, but I can't wait to, you know, go back across the parking lot and, and drive some of this stuff forward. Sure. If someone's thinking about, you know, launching or like if someone is thinking about an entrepreneurial venture, like what's it, what's a quick hit from each of you on how they should be approaching this.

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[Noah]

Oh gosh. I always say be honest with you. I always say don't. It's, it's crazy. It's non stop, it's relentless. It'll take every ounce of you. But if you're built for that, you need to do everything within your business. You need to do everything, know everything within your business. You need to have a system and a process for how the playbook of how this is going to go. Otherwise I probably wouldn't do it personally have done this if we didn't know what the playbook was going to be, if that makes sense. It's the most rewarding thing in the world. It's punishing when it doesn't go right. A lot of sleepless nights and a lot of stress. But it all at the end of the day starts with people. As a business owner, don't ever for one second think that you're special because you're not. It's about the people that you have working for you, the one team, one dream. And if you don't have good people working for you, you're not going to get where you want to go.

[AJ]

I would say that everything starts in a business that you're going to start in this industry at least, or any really, any industry. It starts in sales and marketing. So if you have those two things planned out, the rest of the business can formulate to the way it needs to do. Sales drives your business. Marketing gets you in front of the audience. Right. So you need to have those two things dialed in. And then I would say build a business that is repeatable. If, if, if it takes you to do every facet of your business. Rethink the business plan. If you have to physically go execute the service or sell the product yourself, revisit the business plan. Because you want to be able to teach someone a process or a system that you can repeat and take some of that workload off of you, to be able to scale your business and make business decisions from the top line, looking down on your business so that you're not missing all the things that end up turn into you losing profit or possibly going out of business. Right. It happens quick. So if you don't know your numbers and you don't have a time to reflect and look back and look at the things that are going on in the business, it does. It happens quick. That's why so many people go out of business so quickly, you know, because they're having to do too many things inside their business. So find a process, find a system, make sure that you can repeat that process, and that's the start of a business plan.

[Host]

Yeah. Yeah. I think for both of our industries, I think that roughly tracks because I think everybody starts with, hey, I'm a. I think about your industry specifically. Like, I, I can't count how many bathroom remodelers that I know. And they're all like, you know, a million dollars of revenue.

[AJ]

And it's because they're not sales. Like, they're installation money.

[Host]

Yeah. Their installation. It's a fulfillment crew. Yeah. Correct. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Well, this was, this was a great time. If you want to hear more, make sure you go to owned and operated.com if people want to get a hold of you guys, how can they do it?

[AJ]

Well, if they want to get a hold of business.

[Noah]

Yeah. Www.premier-homepros.com yeah.

[Host]

Active on LinkedIn.

[AJ]

Both are on LinkedIn and then both of us individually are actively on LinkedIn.

[Noah]

Correct?

[Host]

Yeah. Awesome.

[Noah]

Shoot me a message.

[Host]

Awesome. Thanks.

[Noah]

Happy to give advice to anybody.