How Home Service Founders Build $50M Companies Without PE Using Smart Hiring with Sammy Ayoub

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Podcast: Service Business Mastery for Skilled Trades: HVAC, Plumbing & Electrical Home Service
Episode Title: How Home Service Founders Build $50M Companies Without PE Using Smart Hiring with Sammy Ayoub
Host(s): Tersh Blissett, Josh Crouch
Guest: Sammy Ayoub (Apex)
Date: October 29, 2025

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Overview

This episode features Sammy Ayoub, founder of Apex, an explosive $50M growth home services business in Columbus, Ohio. Hosts Tersh Blissett and Josh Crouch dive into Sammy's unconventional journey into HVAC, plumbing, and electrical trades, focusing on organic growth without private equity, smart hiring, scaling operations, and leadership culture. Packed with candid insights, the episode is a treasure trove for those aiming for rapid, sustainable growth in the skilled trades.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Sammy’s Backstory & Path to Home Services ([04:03]–[08:08])

• Entrepreneurial Roots:
  • Never worked for anyone else; built a legacy in wireless retail, scaling from scratch to 250+ stores and 750 employees before shifting focus post-COVID.
• Entering Home Services:
  • Considered various industries, selected plumbing/home services for perceived “pandemic/recession/tech-proof” nature and scalability.
  • Chose to build from the ground up to set the culture and systems right from day one.

Quote:

"I proudly say I've never been employed in my life. ...I wanted to try something different; started to slow... I really wanted to do something from the ground up so you could do it the right way and implement your policies, procedures, your brand, your culture and all of that stuff."
— Sammy, [04:03]

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2. Growth Trajectory & Trade Expansion ([08:12]–[10:28])

• Timeline:
  • 2021: Started plumbing with three trucks; soon added excavation.
  • 2023: Introduced HVAC.
  • 2024: Added electrical.
  • 2025: Opened first expansion branch in Dayton, OH.
• Growth Reflections:
  • Admits luck and timing played a role; couldn't easily replicate the exact journey.
  • Variety and change keep momentum; admits to some ADHD in always looking for the next move.

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3. Multi-Trade Integration: Challenges & Solutions ([10:28]–[13:17])

• Initial Advantages:
  • Leveraged tech background for early wins (inventory, warehouse systems).
• Unexpected Complexity:
  • Underestimated the realities: called it not just opening a service business, but “a call center, logistics company, warehouse, fleet manager, and uniform company—all at once.”
• Advice:
  • Emphasizes “just figure it out as a team”—no magic formulas.
  • Early partnerships and mentors helped, especially for HVAC.

Quote:

"I thought I was opening an appointment company. I didn't realize I was opening a call center. I didn't understand I was opening a logistics, a warehouse... There were 10 other businesses that I didn't realize I was opening."
— Sammy, [10:54]

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4. Trade-by-Trade: What’s the Hardest? ([13:20]–[16:20])

• Plumbing:
  • Staff are a “special breed” but business tends to “hum along.”
• Electrical:
  • Similar to plumbing in terms of business rhythm.
• HVAC:
  • The most challenging: highly seasonal, complex processes, heavy reliance on weather, and major call center dependencies.

Quote:

"When we're talking about people, HVAC guys are probably the easiest from the human perspective. The business side of HVAC, it's a different business to manage... If you're not prepared for HVAC, you're like..."
— Sammy, [13:55]

• Initial HVAC efforts benefited from a competitor's collapse (PE-backed implosion), absorbing experienced staff, but real challenges appeared during market “shoulder seasons.”

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5. Call Center and Proactiveness ([16:20]–[21:44])

• Critical Points:
  • HVAC success hinges on aggressive, proactive call centers and club/membership models.
  • Outbound calling is essential during slow seasons.
• Club/Membership Programs:
  • Fast-track for customer retention and steady work; a must for HVAC, but less so for plumbing/electrical.
• Call Center as 'Make or Break':
  • Underestimated in the beginning, later identified as pivotal to the business.
  • Owner took personal responsibility for call and dispatch.

Quote:

"The call center, in plumbing, you're booking calls, right? You don't have that seasonality. With HVAC you have to be proactive... If you don't have tune-ups, you got technicians sitting around... The call center will either make you or break you."
— Sammy, [19:41]

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6. Smart Hiring & Culture Setting ([21:44]–[34:49])

• Hands-On Recruiting:
  • Sammy personally hired the first 110 employees, viewing recruiting as a sales role, not HR.
  • Prioritized culture and vision alignment over pure skills.
• Learning Through Interviewing:
  • Used hiring interviews to learn the market, competition, and employee pain points.
• Keeping It Real:
  • Maintains authenticity—cautions not to “oversell” the company or create false expectations.
  • Regular onboarding and all-hands meetings reinforce culture, with policies like “no stick up your ass” and open door for all.

Quote:

"Recruiting is a sales position. It's not an HR position... I was out there, you know, selling, hustling, doing a tour of the shop. ...I wanted to make sure that was somebody I thought would fit in, that fit the mold."
— Sammy, [22:16]

Memorable Company Policy:

"We have two management policies... No stick up your ass policy... The other one is an open door policy."
— Sammy, [29:47]

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7. Dealing with Culture Killers & Problem Employees ([34:49]–[45:32])

• Red Lines:
  • Draws a clear distinction between performance issues (coachable) and “cancerous” culture issues (zero tolerance for those infecting the team).
• Processes:
  • Weekly company meetings, open reporting, and visibility to weed out negative influences.
  • Promotes a positive, peer-accountable environment (e.g., family events, wellness, perks).

Quote:

"You will either fit in or quickly fit out of Apex. So those cancerous people or those people with bad attitudes... the technicians in dispatch and the call center and accounting or warehouse, they're all already chirping about that person."
— Sammy, [34:49]

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8. Operational Change Management ([45:38]–[48:17])

• Adding New Divisions:
  • Importance of live, continuously-evolving procedures and operations manuals.
  • Every function needs clarity on expectations, KPIs, and workflows.
  • "Inspect what you expect"—don’t set and forget.

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9. Branding, Marketing, and Scaling Without PE ([48:38]–[64:48])

• Branding:
  • Branded/wrapped trucks from day one; huge local visibility.
• Marketing Spend:
  • Strongly refutes formulaic % of revenue approaches to marketing.
  • Encourages aggressive, goal-aligned investment—sometimes up to 20%+ for high-growth targets.
• Key to Explosive Growth:
  • Relentless marketing + building a great team + flawless execution.
  • Don’t fall for “secrets” or shortcuts; it's all about hard work and hustle.

Quote:

"Nobody...somebody asked me, how do you grow, bro? Hard work, hustle. There’s no magic pill, buddy...The secret is years of hard work and hustle."
— Sammy, [50:53 & 52:11]

• Scaling Advice:
  • Growth isn't for everyone; be honest about your desires, risk tolerance, and skills.
  • Success does not happen overnight; “be patient, grow over time.”
  • If you want “visionary” freedom, you must grind it out first—can’t outsource the key early years.

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10. Personal Growth, Learning, and Work-Life Balance ([60:05]–[64:48])

• Continuous Learning:
  • Prioritizes shop tours, podcasts, books, and mentorship—urges others to “be a student of the game.”
  • "If you don’t have time to learn, you’re probably not serious about being elite."
• Work & Hobbies:
  • Treats work as a hobby; relishes the “second shift” (self-development after hours).
  • Family, sports, and cars fill his cup—but willing to sacrifice hobbies for business growth when needed.
• On Visionaries:
  • All legendary skilled trade leaders put in the early work themselves; there’s no hands-off shortcut.

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• "Apex is a conglomerate of a whole bunch of good ideas from everywhere else...Let plumbers plumb, HVAC guys do HVAC, electricians do electric, and I focus on trying to run a business." — Sammy, [26:26]
• "Growth isn’t for everybody. And let me be frank, growth is not easy and everybody cannot do it. I don't give a damn how hard you try to do it, it's just not that easy." — Sammy, [56:32]
• "The secret is years of hard work and hustle and marketing and growth don’t happen by accident." — Sammy, [52:11]
• "Don’t ever ask somebody what percentage of marketing you should be spending unless they ask you 20 other questions first." — Sammy, [53:23]
• "If you think you can hire somebody who's going to do it for you, guarantee you if that person was that good, they'd be doing it for themselves." — Sammy, [64:04]

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Memorable Moments / Advice

• On learning from shop tours vs. conferences:
  "I don't go visit a hundred shops...I visited five to ten that matched where I wanted to go." ([60:41])
• On personal sacrifice:
  "The guys and gals that are most successful are willing to put their hobbies aside for a short period during the growth stage. Business isn't going to grow without you being involved." ([63:38]–[63:50])
• On cultural enforcement:
  "Your culture is what's walking around your building...not what's written on the wall." ([32:52], paraphrased)

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Key Takeaways for Listeners

• Explosive growth in the trades is possible—without private equity—through relentless hard work, smart hiring, an adaptive culture, and fearless investment (in people, marketing, and self-development).
• Smart hiring is a sales job: recruit for vision, culture, and potential, especially early on.
• Don’t expect to skip the grind—true leaders are in the trenches from day one.
• Build robust, living operational systems; inspect what you expect, and evolve with scale.
• Regularly reinforce culture through structure (meetings, policies, team events) and be ruthless with cultural detractors.
• There’s no “magic pill”—hard work and intentional execution are the true secrets.

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For more info, visit: servicebusinessmastery.com

If you loved this summary, consider listening to the full episode for even more context-rich advice and entertaining, candid stories.

Transcript

[Sammy]

H Vac guys are probably the easiest from the human perspective. The business side of H Vac is just difficult. It's a different business to manage. Pullman just if you're doing a good job kind of hums along. We add electrical. Very similar kind of hums along H Vac man. If you're not prepared for H Vac, you're like, so our first year wasn't doing too much marketing. Ironically enough, one of PE companies came in and did a wonderful job destroying another company here.

[Podcast Narrator]

Are you looking for valuable business advice to reach that seven figure revenue mark? Do you want actionable tips to properly navigate through every business challenge you encounter along the way? Let Tersh Blissett and Josh Crouch be your guide in getting you to the top here at Service Business Mastery. Tune in as they sit down with world renowned authors in business leadership and personal growth who share valuable insights about management, marketing, pricing, human resources and so much more. Let their nuggets of wisdom gold guide you in owning a thriving, profitable and ever growing business. Here are your hosts, Tersh and Josh.

[Josh Crouch]

Today's episode is powered by Ciro Systems.

[Tersh Blissett]

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[Josh Crouch]

They use AI dispatching to get the right tech to the right call automatically and job time efficiency to ensure your entire team runs like a profit generating machine.

[Tersh Blissett]

Get a tech upgrade for your business at Get Sarah Tech Service Business Mastery. Mark your calendars right now. October 27th through the 30th Service World.

[Josh Crouch]

Expo is back in Vegas for its 10th anniversary and we're going big.

[Tersh Blissett]

The biggest expo hall in the industry, 2,000 contractors. We're talking live podcast recordings all week long with industry's top top contractors.

[Josh Crouch]

And when you get to Vegas, come find us at booth 2403.

[Tersh Blissett]

We're dropping an AI automation keynote that will change how you run your operations. Save 100 bucks by using our code SBM100.

[Josh Crouch]

You and I are doing a keynote on AI and automation. Contractors absolutely need to hear this stuff. This isn't just another trade show, it's.

[Tersh Blissett]

Where contracting businesses transform.

[Josh Crouch]

We're not just attending, we're taking over the podcast stage. Don't miss the 10th anniversary. We'll see you in Vegas.

[Tersh Blissett]

Hello everyone out there in podcast world. Hope you're having a wonderful day. You're listening to or watching Service Business Mastery Podcast. I am one of your hosts, Tersh Blissett and I'm sitting virtually next to my co host Joshua Crouch and we have the lovely Sami on the call today. And we're going to talk a little bit about transition, growth, the pain points that come along with it, and how you can grow fast. And it's not for everybody, and it's okay, but we're going to talk about how Sammy's done it. And with that being said, welcome to the show, Sammy.

[Sammy]

Thank you. Appreciate you guys having me on. A pleasure joining the crew.

[Tersh Blissett]

Absolutely.

[Josh Crouch]

Sammy's a fish that I've been trying to land on the podcast for a little while now. I had to kind of beg, borrow and steal to get him on here, but I'm glad he's on here. I actually kind of made him feel bad because he was on Cristiano's podcast to the point we had talked and done some other stuff. And I'm like, sammy, I think you owe me now.

[Sammy]

Come on the show. Josh was pretty quick on that trigger. I think, like half an hour after Chris's podcast came out, I got that message. I kindly obliged and told him I owed him anyway for his graciousness over the years, giving back to me and being there for me. I had some questions and concerns and always just being somebody willing to help and not ask for anything in return, so.

[Tersh Blissett]

Well, we appreciate you coming on the show. For those who are not aware of you, your brand, and everything that you've been doing over the past, you know, four years or so, can you share your history and how you got into the industry and all of that?

[Sammy]

I give the brief version. I have a business background. I've. I proudly say I've never had been employed in my life. Pretty much been my own boss since I was 17, 18 years old. I ran a wireless business and kind of. We grew that wireless business from zero stores and, you know, 1996, 97, we kind of got up to about 2015ish, where we got a little bit serious about growth. And there was a carrier named Boost Mobile at that time that, you know, was nationwide. So we kind of itched our wagons to there. Started off with about 15 stores around then Ohio and Indiana, and then grew that to about 250 stores right before COVID 2020, about 750 employees. So did that my whole life. Had a really good team, long time employees and, you know, people that were with me for a really, really long time. Covid came, you know, I wanted to try something different. Started to slow, not to get into too much of that story, but a lot of that, they switch hands from going from Sprint to Dish Network and a lot of things changed and kindly tapped somebody on the shoulder over there. And, you know, one of the guys that been with me for a really long time and started as a, you know, sales rep and kind of moved his way up and then I tapped him on the shoulder after I opened Apex and had to move into a GM row. But prior to that, I was kind of looking at a couple different businesses. Almost bought a landscape business. Thank God that didn't happen. Just settling on plumbing. A lot of people said that trying to go out and buy something to get started and quite honestly, really want to try to do something from the ground up so you could do it the right way and kind of implement your policies, procedures, your brand, your culture and all of that stuff. So landed on plumbing and home services for all the obvious reasons. For me, I thought it was pandemic proof at that point. You know, recession proof, technology proof, outsource proof, had the ability to grow. One big thing that I realized in the wireless business, it was extremely hard with growth, even though we had phenomenal time growing and we're largest prepaid dealer in the country. But it was a little bit difficult because everybody was in the same building. You can grow that same culture that you can have with everybody being around you and able to, you know, build it, sell it. That was other. One of the other appealing things about Apex is that you could have everybody kind of in house per se, and get in front of everybody continuously and kind of build what you want to build. So. And then also the scalability of it being able to add H vac and electrical and maybe expand and do all types of other crazy things. So that was kind of how it originated. So went out and hired a light, licensed start a plumbing company. And unfortunately, he had a commercial background and had us putting in bids on Chick Fil A's and Burger Kings and a whole bunch of other stuff. And like, okay, so what's next, buddy? Oh, we just wait for somebody to accept our bid. I'm like, man, it's been a month. Nobody accepted anything. Now what? So anyway, quickly pitched that idea, got online, did a bunch of research, and I say, thank God we did a lot of things right from the beginning. I was dumb enough to call nexstar from, you know, day one, before we even had a company, and say, hey, we're ready to sign up and we want become one of your contractors. And very lovely lady by the name of Lisa, she politely told me that wasn't happening. There were certain parameters. And xyz, she did give me a couple good pieces of advice. And then she Actually sent me like a welcome package for their members. And in hindsight, that welcome package did a lot for us. Dan Antonelli, his branding, he had like a brochure in there. So we quickly picked up and, you know, started our branding the right way and kind of developed the apex brand from there. We're on upwork looking at some pretty cool brands, you know, know, some white trucks with some water flowing on the side of them, all types of other cool stuff. But so I added them quickly going Dan Antonelli and then also picked up service type from day one. So started a lot of things the right way. I'm not a guy that really aspires, you know, throws out crazy goals, but I. I am a guy that understands if you put hard work, hustle and, you know, just energy things to take care of themselves. So thought we would grow not at the pace that we did. Quite honestly. I didn't even know $50 million companies existed. $100 million companies existed. Feud $12 million. I'd have said, man, that's a badass company. Hopefully we can get there one day. And I think we did that, you know, probably about 12 months in. So.

[Tersh Blissett]

So are you currently offering more than just plumbing?

[Sammy]

So we started just plumbing pretty much. I I count our star date as really March of 2021, when, you know, we launched our plumbing service business. We got a couple guys to do plumbing service work and then had a couple branded trucks. So started with three trucks and a couple guys. March 2021. Ironically enough, we didn' to June of 2021. And then we had, you know, a lot of things fell in place. If you asked me to duplicate it again, I probably couldn't. As good as I think I am, I probably couldn't duplicate what we did. So probably three months in, a company shut down a block away, and I had two excavation crews, a manager walk in the door and say, you guys want to start excavation? Scratch my head. Looked around and said, yeah, sure, let's do it. What do we need to do? So when I bought some excavators, a truck, and so we added excavation. Pretty Leanne fast forward. That was 21, 22. We were just running plumbing and excavation at that point. Drains 23. We added H vac. Fast forward to 24. We added electrical. And then fast forward to 25, our first real expansion. We moved out. We just had our ribbon cutting a couple weeks ago in Dayton, Ohio, which is about an hour and 15 minutes west of us. So we, we do have the trifecta and a little bit of growth. I do have bad adhd, so I like to keep moving and grooving. So every year we've accomplished a little sun. I don't know what 2026 holds for us yet, but we'll figure it out when we get there.

[Tersh Blissett]

Now, where are you located?

[Sammy]

Columbus, Ohio. So we, we serve service what we call central Ohio. So pretty much all the central Ohio, which is around Columbus, population about two.

[Josh Crouch]

And a half million people adding trades. I know that's been, you know, more of a trend the last few years. I think as people have grown and they feel like they can kind of add, they can go horizontal, then vertical to grow to be able to do that back to back years like that. What, what did that process look like, man? Because one like some people add a trade and it takes them years to figure out the inventory, the price book, the how to sell those calls, how to, how to leverage plumbing and H Vac together. So that way their plumbers are selling H Vac services and H Vac is selling plumbing, etc. So what did that look like to you?

[Sammy]

We started a lot of things correctly, talking about servicing, talking about the market. And also when we got started, I had a buddy of mine, childhood friend who actually helps me run the business. His name's Fatty. He's, you know, more of a computer guy and I love the computer side. Super intelligent human. So brought him over day one, he was helping out on the wireless business, said hey, there's going to be a lot of technology and stuff involved here. So inventory and stuff, you touch on that like running 250 retail locations. I had have inventory figured out pretty quickly. So I'd say four months in, five months into the business, we actually had service site, inventory set up pretty much from day one, replenishments, warehouse, everything. So that was for, you know, retailer was pretty easy for me to figure out the trades. Now that was a, that was a totally different story. You talk about getting into it. I thought I was opening an appointment company. I didn't realize I was opening a call center. I didn't understand I was opening a logistics, a warehouse. I didn't think about fleet, I didn't think about dispatch. I mean, you know, there, there was a whole lot of other things, you know, uniform company. There was 10 other businesses that I, I didn't realize I was opening. So I think yeah, it wasn't easy, a lot of hard work. Also Ken Goodrich, he's like, well make wait, wait to your number one or you know, number two, top three and one of the trades before I add another one. I had Josh Kelly here and he was doing a site visit with us and I'm like, we're going to add H Vac. And he's like, I'm like, we're going for this goal. And he said, oh, you're crazy, you're not gonna hit that. And yeah, we do. All right. So we added H Vac. Didn't know anything about it. And ironically enough, we, we didn't even have an H Vac guy start the H Vac department. So I had, we started prematurely. So I had a guy who, who came in. I would have plumbing background, but he had some management background, guy named Brad. He was at another company with GM for another company. And he walked in and he was looking for a gig. And I'm like, man, I don't really need anything on the plumbing side, but I do plan on doing H Vac near future. You got some management experience. You want to figure it out together. So quickly jumped online and started figuring out what a single stage was, a two stage, you know, modulating and all the other good stuff so we can speak intelligently to the vendors when they walked in the door and still didn't have a clue what we're talking about when they walked in. So. And then we, we ended up with a really solid guy who has been in industry for 20 plus years and a guy named Joe. He's, you know, was with the same company for about 18 years. He came over, he's our license holder. I knew about, he didn't really have, he had zero management experience. We had a lot of sales experience, but just a passion for the business and brought him over and them two together and me, we kind of fumbled our way through it and then, you know, just figured it out together as a team and lo and behold, we, we had a H Vac department.

[Tersh Blissett]

So which trade has been the most difficult?

[Sammy]

H Vac is a different monster. So.

[Josh Crouch]

Well, is it a different monster because of all the equipment or is the people? Because what I've heard. So my wife worked at, she was doing the sales for. It was a primarily electrical company for many, many, many years. And electricians and H Vac technicians, from what I've heard are different personality types. And so there was a lot of issues with that because like the, the, the owner was an electrician by trade. He's been electrician, he's dealt with electricians. And then here come H Vac techs and they're just a different animal. It's from what I What I understand.

[Sammy]

You don't want to include plumbers into that different animal conversation because, yeah, plumbers are special animals. So, you know, we started with plumbing, so we got to deal with a lot of craziness to begin with. Guys talking about, I'm like, man, what's up? Oh, we just go in the back of the truck and we fight it out, you know, that's how I'm like, huh? He's like, yeah, that's how we do it. I'm like, but we're not doing that here. So people, from a people perspective, there's nothing like plumbers. I love, love my plumbers. And ironically enough, I hired pretty much every one of them. I was our recruiter for the first two years, and I. I interviewed and hired our first 110 employees myself. Recruited them, hired them. I moved from A to Z. So the plumbers have a special place in my heart, but they are a special breed of humans, so. But when we're Talking about people, H5 guys are probably the easiest from the human perspective. The business side of H Vac, it's a different business to manage. Plumbing just, you know, if you're doing a good job, kind of hums along. We add electrical. Very similar kind of hums along. H Vac, man, if you're not prepared for H Vac, you're like, you know, I mean, so our first year, we just, I don't want to say monkeyed around with it. We didn't know what we didn't know. It really wasn't doing too much marketing. Ironically enough, one of PE Companies came in and did a wonderful job destroying another company here. So we were on the receiving end of a lot of their employees. So we did pretty good to get started, but we, we weren't dependent on it. And then 24, which was our, Our first, like, real, real year, we struggled pretty bad with it. We. We came into the shoulder season, we really didn't know what we were doing standing around. It's a sick feeling when you walk in and see every install crew standing around playing at the pool table first thing in the morning, and then, you know, hanging out for the next two, three hours without any. It's. It's a different business to understand. We. We figured it out. I thought we figured it out. We did figure it out this year through shoulder season, and then summer hit us, and yeah, then we looked at our board and we were way over, way, way overbooked and fumbling a lot. So last year we. We figured shoulder season out this year and Then peak season, we kind of fumbled our way through it just because how busy we were. And then so hopefully next year we can combine the two and do all right. So up.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yeah.

[Josh Crouch]

The H Vac is a different beast because you don't know when the weather, because it's so weather dependent, like plumbing.

[Sammy]

There are times, Josh, I try to lie to our guys and tell them we are weather enhanced, we're not weather dependent. But we all know that's, we all know that's a crock of so.

[Josh Crouch]

Well, it's a good story. Hopefully they bought into it. But you know, and, and that's, that's the, the thing. And that's why it's so hard for these trades because like plumbing and electrical typically are very non. There's. There's not a whole other. Maybe around the holidays and some of those things back to school or when summer, you know, school's out and stuff, there might be a little dip or, or spike, but with H Vac it's so. And you don't know what's gonna happen. Like California had, has had like the coldest summer they've had in, I don't know, 20, 30 years. Like they haven't had a day over 100 degrees, which for them is really rare out this way. We had in Arizona, we had the coolest July we've had in like 30 years or something like that. That August has been hot. But July wasn't so like that. You know, contractors that depend on that because they're not doing anything proactively, it can really hurt their business and they can be way behind the eight ball. And then by the time they actually get to the point where demand season, a lot of these people have either been taken care of, marketed to by another company, or just don't need them. And then your whole, your whole year is, is messed up then.

[Sammy]

Yeah, I think you hit on a keyword with H Vac is proactiveness. And I think that is the difference between a successful company and a non successful company. It's a proactiveness that you have. And I think proactiveness comes in twofold. You know, for us, what plumbing, quite frankly, we never sold a membership. We didn't even have a membership program. I mean, we just again, we were new and we just had business, more business. And we, we understood what to do it right. And we, we couldn't keep up. So one of the, the first things that we discussed and figured out quickly with H Vac is you definitely do need membership. Right? You need those. That was Club programs, you need to keep a fence about around your customer. So that was one of the first things we did. The other thing was obviously just being super proactive from a call center. I don't think people understand the importance of that. You know, I know people say it and you don't really think about it. You know, I say I got my PhD in the trades from just listening to podcasts all day, every day when we were first getting started, reading books and, and scrolling every Facebook post that I can kind of figure something out. But you hear people talk about call center, but the reality is you don't really even think about it, right? And for me, probably the call center was the most forgotten, if you want to call it department, business unit, whatever you want to call it, until we started H Vac and then, you know, really, I removed the leader I had in place and kind of took the mentorship of the call center and dispatch room over myself, you know, after we started H Vac, just because it was so important. But, man, it'll either make you or break you, depending on how proactive or reactive you are. You, you sit down, you're sitting duck, or you get in the shoulder season and. And you don't have, you know, tune ups, you know, ready to go, and you got technicians sitting around or, you know, plumbing super busy, and then H Vac guys are sitting. Like, there's a ton of things that you could do proactively where I think everybody, I think I speak for myself. I know we missed the buck on that. And I think a lot of people overlook the call center. That's probably the worst department in a company to open.

[Tersh Blissett]

Why would you say the call center is so different in the H Vac world versus any of the other ones?

[Sammy]

Because I think the call center, in plumbing, you're booking calls, right? I mean, I don't think you don't have that seasonality piece with H vac. You have to be proactive, right? I mean, there's two things, you know, you got to figure out. If plumbing and electrical are busy, can you, you know, double book some of those calls? Right. How do you take advantage of that customer base that's already calling you for, you know, business? When you have people sitting down and you have technicians sitting. So how do you double book the calls? Right. You know, Josh Kelly's got something you called, you know, oh, by the ways. And, you know, when you're calling somebody, then, you know, somebody's calling in for you. How are you, you know, getting that? But again, you have to teach your CSRs that you have to incentivize your CSRs to make sure that they're hitting that as well and making sure that there's consistency in that.

[Josh Crouch]

Right.

[Sammy]

And I think that's a lever that you can pull as needed. The other piece is you need to outbound. Right. Like in my, you know, my experience, we didn't really have to focus too much on outbound, what plumbing. And boy, you need to do some serious outbound with H Vac, you know, for memberships for we call it our Care Bear club. You know, trying to get those, those staffed up, you know, stocked up for the shoulder season proactively a month in advance, a month and a half in advance, two months in advance. And just trying to, trying to get that done just to keep your tune ups, keep guys busy and moving. But ultimately, you know, there's a third piece of it too is, you know, all of a new system that we installed. I, I know you know, a guy see me at Pantheon, I think it was Jamie Diamantico here. I've wait till the dog's tail catches up to you. I'm like, I don't know what the hell that means. And sure, sure enough, you know, you come out of a busy summer or busy winter or H Vac and as soon as they flip those systems on, you got a ton of warranty calls. So again, you know, using your call center, be proactive to get in front of those before the, you know, peak season hits. So you're not trying to run warranty calls at the same time as you're running demand calls. So it's again, a lot going on in there and then obviously the different lead flows and what you're trying to do as far as, you know, you know, touching that customer base and cultivating that customer base.

[Josh Crouch]

Same. I got a couple questions for you, so I want to go back. You, you mentioned that you hired the first 110 people that you brought into the company and recruited them and everything else. You know, I know there's probably some people listening to this that are like, how in the world does he have time to do. I have have and 10 guys and I can't even find time to hire another one. What is different in at least what you, what do you believe is different in your mind? Why it was so important for you to hire that first batch of people to bring in and bring in high level culture people that can help you grow your business?

[Sammy]

I guess twofold. One, I feel like I wanted to be the one making Those decisions, as far as who's joining our team, from a cultural perspective, right. I wanted to make sure that that was somebody that I thought would fit in, that can grow with us, that, that fit the mold of what we were looking at. Looking for. And two, you know, I think you sit me in front of somebody, I can sell the vision better than anybody else. And, you know, at that point in time, I was able to sell the division better than anybody in the company, right? So that was my. That was my chance to, you know, I like to sell. I'm a competitor at heart. That was my chance of really, you know, competing out there. Right. And I was able to go in and you sit a plumber in front of me that was interviewing with somebody's HR department and you sit them in front of me, hey, I probably wasn't going to lose that battle that much, right? So I was out there, you know, selling, hustling, doing a tour of the shop. And that was my little bit of excitement and fun and hustle in the company is, you know, just recruiting and onboarding those guys and getting them in. But I think ultimately for, you know, an owner or any organization, I. I got a buddy of mine who was pretty large out of PA and I told him the same thing. He was, you know, he's been in business for a some time and I'm like, dude, hire recruiter. At that point, he's not outgoing. He don't like interacting with people. I do on the other hand. So I guess for that owner, whoever that person is, I like that when I hired my recruiter, I'm like, recruiting is a sales position. It is not an. It's not an HR position. It is a sales position. So I think, you know, obviously I thought I was good enough to sell them right on division and where I wanted to go, like where Sammy wanted to take Apex, opposed to. To putting them into somebody in front of somebody else. And also I wanted to be careful what culture, especially that. That. I don't want to say that few first because it was a hundred, right? So, you know, that, that, that first batch of humans, you know, how we wanted to bring them in. And also, you know, then it was. It was good to build a relationship and kind of understand what. What we had in the company and, you know, who we had here and them understand who they were coming to work for as well. They weren't coming to just work for a service manager, right. They were coming to work for the owner of the company. And I'm heavily involved in the Business in the day to day, I think rec people talk about, you know, it was Covid when we. We got started, right? Coming right out of COVID I wish we would have seen the COVID first with H Vac, but, you know, we're coming right out of COVID So first thing everybody used to ask me is, how'd you get so many vans? Where are you getting all your vans? I'm like, from a car dealer. Like, what's the problems? You did a deal with a car dealer and, you know, we had. Then the next question was always, how did you recruit so many employees and how. Where'd you find people? We can't find anybody. And I'm like, well, you're probably not doing a good job of trying to find out, right? I mean, and then when you get somebody, how. How good are you at, you know, closing the deal and making sure that, you know, you can get them on board? So I think those two pieces, quite frankly, the third piece was selfish for me is I really learned a lot about every other company in this market from a plumbing perspective, from an H VAC perspective. As far as when I was interviewing guys, I was really grilling up how, how. How'd your old company pay? What did you guys do? What did you like about it? What did you not like about it? What was the culture over there? How was it? So I learned a lot about the business, but I also, what I was able to do too, is when I had the next guy coming from ABC Plumbing, well, I already knew what they did good and I already knew what they did bad. So I knew how I can sell against that. Was it a. A company that had culture issues where I could just hit on culture, you know, overcoming objections or, you know, I trying to overcome them before they even arise. So. And trying to close the deal. So we did that. Or if it was a company that had didn't pay or they were hourly and we were performance pay, I'm like, man, what did you sell? You did this an hourly. Well, you could have made double over here if you perform that same amount of revenue here. So just trying to figure out a business as well. So that, that was a good, I guess, learning curve for me.

[Josh Crouch]

Do you think it's benefited you from being outside the trades, coming in and having like an open mind about everything versus having, you know, working for someone for five or 10 years, coming in with those preconceived notions? I guess. Do you think, do you think that's helped you grow faster?

[Sammy]

Tremendously, to be honest. With you. I, I don't have any preconceived notions. I came in there, there's a whiteboard that you see a corner of behind me and it's, I don't know, three, four times that size. And I haven't sat in my office since I opened Apex. I do have a lovely office in here. But if you ask 90% of our employees where Sammy, Sammy's office, They'd walk you into this conference room. Room I got me and Fatty. I sit across from each other for the last four plus years and we're just trying to figure out what makes sense. So I say, you know, Apex is a conglomerate of a whole bunch of good ideas from everywhere else, right? So, you know, obviously we put our fine tuning and fine touch on things, but I say we let plumbers plumb, we let HVAC guys do H Vac, electricians do electric, and I focus on trying to run a business, right? Guy comes in or a guy has a great idea. You, I don't have to tell you, buddy, that don't work. We've been doing this for 25 years and this is what work I know works. Man, that sounds like a good idea. Actually. Let's polish it up a little bit. And guess what? That's part of Apex's policy right now. So you know that that's how we've done it. So being able to be ciphered a whole bunch. And don't get me wrong, some of the ideas, you know, that people kick around aren't the best ideas. But there are a lot of good ideas, right? And you know, you can find something out from a small company that maybe has two or three techs that are doing something really good. So. So yes, 100%. But I think as a leader, you have to, whether you're from the trades or not, I think, you know, as a leader you have to have the skill set of, of listening, right? And I, I think you have to be willing to change, right? You have to be willing to adapt. And if you can adapt and you can't change, you're probably not going to go anywhere, right? So whether you're from the trades or yes, I say, have an extent, a business background outside of trades, I wouldn't trade that for anything, right? But I do think if you're a good tradesman and you could just get out of your own way and listen to others, who cares what you did, right? Just listen to others and who cares how everybody else did it, right? There's, you know, best practice groups that teach Some of the best. I don't necessarily agree with every single thing they say. Right. But there are some good ideas that they have. There's a lot of outdated ideas that they have as well. So it's like maybe you take this and you kind of move it here, right? So I think as a leader you just, just need to be willing to listen, learn and adapt. And you know, these podcasts are, you know, a great place to do that. Obviously, you know, reading is a great place to do that. But sometimes just listening to your team and understanding that sometimes they have good ideas too and it's just because they're a plumber or just because they're an electrician or a warehouse guy or a manager that you don't have to listen to them. I think that's where some of your better ideas come from.

[Tersh Blissett]

You have so many team members. When you were hiring them, they. Because I ran into this a while back where I was hiring the individuals, but I didn't interact with them every day. And so like, do you ever have a situation where you're presenting the company one way and then they go and, and experience the company and they're like, oh yeah. But it's not really going to be like that because you're the owner, you're to sell your grand vision. But when we actually get into the day to day operations, I'm going to actually deal with some nonsense or that's their perception anyways or whatever.

[Sammy]

I try to address that. So for every onboarding that we have, I jump in the room and I kind of go over. Obviously these days I don't get in every interview, but I do still find interviews fun and I try to jump in as many as I can when I can. The guys do a good job of hiding most guys from me, but they, they will get mature and then I'll see them. But I try to set that stage and kind of explain what the culture that I want them to have. And I put the onus the same thing. You know, I stopped saying, I have hardly joke about it because I'm dead serious about it. We have two management policies, right? No stick up your ass policy is the first one. I tell my managers, I want you smiling, I want you happy. I want your, you know, your, your attitude and your energy to be an infectious right. And I want you to be happy. Go lucky guy. And I want you to lead that way as well. Lead as a friend and as a leader instead of a boss. And you know, so for lack of better word, people want to work for. So that's one, and then the other one is an open door policy. Right? And I want my managers to have an open door policy. And not just the managers. Everybody in this company should have an open door policy. So everybody in this company knows where I sit. They can walk up here whenever they want, however they want my policy, then that better be everybody in the company's policy. So I make sure I set those standards in the beginning, and people understand that. And you know, we talk to the managers and we make sure that everybody feels that way. And if somebody doesn't feel that way, they should be able to voice their concerns on why they don't feel that way. And we should be able to do something to change that.

[Josh Crouch]

Right?

[Sammy]

And if it's a coaching moment that a manager needs to. To have, or if it's a coaching moment that a technician or employee needs to have, have, and we should be having that. You know, we, we got early on, you know, managers, unfortunately, and I won't say our managers, but I just think a. Naturally a human thinks when they get a management role or a power position, it means that you have a license to become an. Right. Yeah, we try to coach our guys the exact opposite of that. Right. Becoming a leader, becoming a manager means the opposite of that. Right now you need to be a therapist. You need to be, you know, you need. You. You need to be a dad, you need to be a mom, you need to be a marriage counselor. Right? You need to be a coach, you need to be a mentor. You don't need to be an asshole. Right? That's like, I have a policy. Even if somebody is a complete jerk, let them go out the door and don't. They should never be able to turn around and blame Apex for anything. Right? We should be able to let them go out the door even if they're acting a fool. Let them go out the door happily and not be able to blame us for anything. We don't need to suit doubts any different levels or. Or change management style.

[Tersh Blissett]

How would you do that, though, if. If they're creating turmoil in the business. And I'm not saying this has even happened to you because, I mean, I'm sure. Okay.

[Sammy]

You have cancers, I think.

[Tersh Blissett]

And there's people who are really good at the interview process. Josh and I were just talking about this the other day. Like, there's people who are real. Like their, their job is to do a killer interview, and then when they get into the actual role, they suck book.

[Sammy]

Yeah. I think you have a lot of that. But if so, it's one thing you as the owner have a culture, right? It's another thing that you could make sure that your managers have that same understanding. The third thing is making sure the technicians have it right. And I think if you can rally enough technicians around that mindset, right, and you can have them believe in it and have them feel they don't have by accident, right. You know, the managers have to be involved. We do outage. We just had a summer event where we bought family, kids, wives, everything out. We, we did all that. We do a hockey event where we got 250 tickets at the, the Corus Blue Jackets arena where we take, you know, family technician plus one. We do another award ceremony at the end of the year. We try to do things at the end of quarter. We do breakfast. This anytime we do, we hit a, a nice milestone, right? We have a barber that comes in, you know, two times a week and cut people's hair. We got pool table. We got air hockey. We got a gym in a building, right? So there's a lot of stuff that, getting people to really enjoy working here. I don't allow managers to yell at people, right? I, I don't yell at people. I don't treat people like, I don't allow them to do that and I don't allow them do that to Artichence. So I think after you cultivate that and, and you know, there's not one mission statement written, not, not that I'm saying it's a great thing. There's not one mission statement written on our walls in this building. There's no core values written on our walls and there's nothing that people are memorizing. And I feel that, you know, your culture is what's walking around your building, right. And what's in your company. So I think if you can cultivate that properly at this point, I say you will either fit in or quickly fit out of Apex. So those cancerous people or those people with bad attitudes and they're nasty, usually the technicians in dispatch and the call center and accounting or warehouse, they're all already chirping about that person, how he's not a good cultural figure. And then it usually takes care of itself pretty quickly.

[Tersh Blissett]

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[Josh Crouch]

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[Sammy]

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[Tersh Blissett]

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[Josh Crouch]

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[Sammy]

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[Tersh Blissett]

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[Josh Crouch]

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[Tersh Blissett]

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[Josh Crouch]

Yeah, Tersh, those industry leading analytics tells you everything that you're going to want to know about your lead. Where they came from, what they did before scheduling and what page they converted on other things. Earnings on average, about 75% of people start a booking with our app completed. But we'll give you a more granular reporting that shows conversion rates based on marketing source and medium to help improve your marketing efforts.

[Tersh Blissett]

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[Josh Crouch]

Tert and I were talking about that because I had really great interview, really great on calls the first couple months for a new service we were offering and then you know, just like over time you just realized that they just, I don't know what happened. Like they either stopped taking their meds or something happened and they just fell off the wagon. And, and I don't mean to joke about that, but it just, it was really bizarre. But it is difficult. Like, like no matter what your experience is, like, you've obviously hired a lot of people, a lot more people than I've ever hired in my life. But you still, you still get it wrong sometimes because the person that comes in the door the first time is not necessarily the person you get when you're actually doing the work and they're working well with others or they bring baggage from outside of work into the office and start taking it out on everyone close to them at work. They don't know how to turn that off. Do you guys? So you said the culture kind of takes care of itself. Is there some sort of reporting structure you guys have for that as far as, you know, like when, when somebody's out of line or somebody does something and it's, it's open door to report it.

[Sammy]

It's open door to report it. We, we've done something since we first started to. There's two things that we, we did from the day we opened our business and that we do till today. I'm having some struggles with trying to keep them up from a logistics perspective. But every Tuesday we hold a full meeting and it's in the shop. So we have every technician come in. And so it's nice because they get to interlink, mingle with each other, cross departments. I actually host A meeting, go over the numbers, we go over any, you know, challenges and things like that. We read some reviews, we give some shout outs, we go over, you know, we do raffles. When we have, you know, hit a new review milestone and things like that, we do anniversary cards. So there's a lot of intermingling with them. So, so they understand who everybody is. The other thing is, and then we hold a manager's meeting as well. And that's literally every manager in a company is together on every Tuesday. So a lot of those things will come up and you know, they'll come up in conversations, they'll come up within the manager's meeting. And the manager's meeting is really just like an open session. You know, there's a little bit structure to it, but then after that it's just kind of an open structure where everybody can talks about something. And then if there is something one manager might discuss, hey, I seen this with this person, or so on and so forth, and that stuff might arise in there. And usually the managers are pretty much in tune with their guys. And just if there's some, if there's a complaint from dispatch, they're probably sitting down and talking to that technician. And you know, I think you just need to have a accountability policy in place, you know, and accountability doesn't need to be, be, you know, a stick, right? Accountability needs to be a conversation and just having a conversation about what's good, what's acceptable and what's not. And I think some people, again, when you get into management, so we got to put them on this performance improvement plan. We have to have this verbal write up, then we have to have this sit down. If that's like, dude, treat them like a human, right? Somebody might just be having, you know, a bad week, right? You know, they might just got in a fight with their wife today. Like if they're having a couple bad days is, let's have a conversation about it and see what, what it is. They're having a couple bad weeks, then yeah, maybe that's a different conversation and maybe it needs to be a little bit more formal. And if this is a repeated habit and they probably don't belong here, right, or they meet some time off. So I think if you just have, you know, kind of a policy of accountability, then you'll be okay. When you don't have accountability and just like cancer, you know, we first, early on, you know, those two guys that sat in the back of the room and then, then, you know, after the meeting was over, there was 10 people hovering around them and it was mad faces and it was a bunch of talking and it went out to the, to the parking lot and it's like this and that. And then you keep hearing the same person's name, same. It's like when you start feeling and seeing that it's probably. There's one thing I have zero tolerance for performance. Let's have a conversation about it. You had a bad day. Let's have conversation about it. You know, you had a couple of tendencies that, you know. Let's have a conversation about it. When you have a clear cancerous culture problem, you know, it's somebody going around trying to infect other people. I think that's where you just have to have, you know, draw a red line.

[Josh Crouch]

Right.

[Tersh Blissett]

So we got a couple questions in the chat. But, but I do, I want to ask you based on that. So, like, sometimes you'll have somebody who is really good at hiding the fact that they're cancer, sir. Like, they're always, when you talk to them, they're like team Apex, like, let's go. And then as soon as they're off one on one with another technician, then they're talking crap like have you run into that and, and not necessarily just in, in with Apex, like with your, your other business as well, because of having people remote.

[Sammy]

I think you always have that, right? I mean, humans sometimes could just be negative, right? And I think, think some, not some. I think a lot of humans thrive off of negativity and they thrive off of drama, right? And it's like they, it's, it's their medicine, right? You know, I, I see you sipping on your, your, your rehydration drink and somebody else might be sipping on their energy drink, right? They need to sip on their, their, their dose of drama, right? I think if you could get ahead of that and just let them know it's not acceptable behavior and have a conversation. But also if you don't have other people willing to accept and indulge in that, I think that helps you. But again, if you do have that and it's low key, then it's probably worse off than it being outright because that person's going to go unfiltered and try to infect a whole bunch of people. But again, I think where you have somebody cancerous that is trying to infect other people, you need to get rid of inertia. I have a open, I don't want to say open return policy like somebody leaves or they'll leave terms most of the time I'll allow them to come back. You know, we, we jokingly, we have a policy that every new employee on Tuesday they have to get up and introduce themselves. Right. And you know, it's, it's a running joke because we do that to the guys that leave and come back as well. It's always some laughs and giggles. But, but last week we had a guy leave and then that was like on Thursday, Tuesday, Wednesday of the previous week and then next Tuesday he was in the meeting and everybody's looking at him, they're like, hey, he needs to get up, he needs to get up. So we made him get up and somebody's like that grass must not have been greener on the other side. Well, I think it was a manure on the other side. It didn't look like it was grass. Anyway. I think if somebody, you can allow them with certain parameters, but I think somebody cancerous, but that is also trying to infect others is just like a no go, right? You know. Yeah, somebody's got an attitude and their manager can deal with them and he's a little bit of headache for the manager. You know, when dealing with 2, 300 humans, you're going to have that. But when they're trying to infect others negatively continuously, I think you just have to have a red liner and move on.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yeah, absolutely. So really quick, Elise asked a question here. Josh, you want to read that out for me?

[Josh Crouch]

I can like this screen.

[Sammy]

I the things, how did you navigate those changes and bring everyone along internally? Through those changes we're adding a new division. I think for a new division you just one thing I, I believe and we, we didn't talk much about it and I was chit chatting with somebody yesterday via messenger as I think you have to have, have a good operations plan, right. And I'm not saying you have to have some elaborate business plan, quite honestly and I'm not saying you even have to have a 50 page operations book, right. But I think every department should have kind of a basic set of understanding of how that department's going to run and what the expectations are of that department. Right. Whether it's KPIs, whether it's a standard operating procedures for your dispatch or your call center. So I think as you continue to add stuff, stuff you need to continue to evolve.

[Josh Crouch]

Right.

[Sammy]

And I, I like to say especially for like dispatch, you know, coordinating room, you know, call center, those documents just need to be living, you know, adjustable documents, right. So you, you get in, you know, you add H Vac well, you need to bring your call center along and make sure that they understand H Vac is different. And now we need to be focused on age of equipment. And 10/plus is a non negotiable to be asking the age of equipment where, you know, maybe plumbing you can get by, you know, not asking an agent with water here. Right. But I think you need to adjust and I think you need to, you know, implement. And I also, as far as implementation, you need to go ahead and you need to inspect what you expect on a continuous basis. It's not set and forget it. This, if you sit seven, forget this business, you'll be out of business right there. There's nothing. You know, I listen to some of the bigger guys and I was listening to, to, you know, podcasts from Gus from Milestone that. So you listen to all these guys, you look, oh, they're at 100 million or 150. They don't have any problems. You know, sometimes I sit in my meeting manager meetings or sales meetings and I'm like, man, everybody, all you guys do is bench and Apex is, I'm like, like, you know, sometimes it starts wearing on you and you're like, damn, oh yeah. Like, do we got that many problems today? You hear everybody else or you go, sometimes I like to go do a shop, visit it. And I say, man, that was some pretty good affirmation, right? Confirmation that what we're doing, we're, you know, so now I tell people, I used to listen, far from perfect, but we're better than most. Like, yeah, this definitely isn't a show, but again, we, we need to continue to evolve. So I'd say for that questioner, have some policies and procedures in place and then continuously update what those policies and procedures are. And they need to vary from department to department. And for the departments that touch everything thing, they need to vary as well as you continue to add departments.

[Josh Crouch]

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[Tersh Blissett]

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[Sammy]

Points.

[Tersh Blissett]

Stephen Bates asks, did you wrap your trucks from day one? One?

[Sammy]

I don't know what else you would do, but yeah, so we, we wrapped our trucks from day one, ironically enough. We had five, six, seven trucks. And then we had, we had highway front the building that we were in we were in previously. My previous businesses were in there, but we had highway frontage. So we put a sign, an amount of people that said, man, I see your trucks everywhere. And I'm like, do you? We got like seven. Yeah.

[Josh Crouch]

It's crazy. What happens when you like, we had the same thing and we're in a little town. We had like four or five guys, four or five trucks on the road, but they were wrapped and they're like, nobody else had wrapped trucks in our area. And the colors look great and everything. I hear the same thing on the phone all the time when people call it, oh, my God, you guys, you guys are growing like crazy. I see you guys everywhere. Like, well, not really, but thank you.

[Sammy]

I just wish we would have made Dan Antonelli, like sign some type of non compete, you know, agreement when we did our brand. Because, you know, after that, like five, six, seven people rebranding now, now we got a whole bunch of nice pretty trucks around the city. Buttery, right?

[Josh Crouch]

Like, that's flattery because they're chasing what you're doing.

[Tersh Blissett]

So Matthew Tyner, really fast. Josh is the last one I got here. Matthew Tyner said, tell Sammy hey is a good dude. And then he also said that just drove by one of your trucks in Columbus this morning.

[Sammy]

Matthew Tyner is he. He's a beast. He's, uh, he, he's somebody that also, uh, beg for advice. And so, as they say, slide into his text messages and his DMS and ask questions. And I would just, you know, if I could give advice, you know, everybody asks questions, but I think, you know, I tell my kids and I tell my employees, there's two people in the world who will never learn anything, right? One who's too arrogant to ask, the other one who's too shy to ask. And don't be either of the two. But along with that, if you're going to take somebody's time up, you know, Matt, you know, has been somebody great. I just, you know, know we chitchat back and forth. Obviously, Josh, you know, I do and probably a lot of people in the industry will say the same thing. I ask questions, you know, and I don't have a problem asking. But I'll say, if you're going to take the time to ask somebody a question, don't waste their time, right? Like, ask a question and go implement it, right? There's a sign that is the biggest. There's a sign right behind me.

[Josh Crouch]

I peeve of mine.

[Sammy]

There's a sign that sits right behind me. There's A couple quotes from my office. But it's an idea. It's nothing without its execution, right? Like, don't know, ask for something, somebody give you something, and do zero with it, Right? When I first started, I was going to these conferences, and I'm like, man, like, dude, I've seen you at the other conference. Oh, are you going to this one? I'm like, no. Like, I just got into business. I've been at three, four. No, I don't. I'm not going to go to every conference there is. And I probably won't be back to these. These three ever again in my life. It's like. But, like, why do you keep coming to them? Like, there's nothing up on that stage. Stage. And I get. For the network, some of them, right, but it's like, there's nothing up on that stage that you haven't heard. And the fact that you're still stuck at 2 million or you're at a million and you're still going to these same conferences, like, why don't you spend your money, time, and effort working and busting your ass in your office implementing 2, 3, 4, 5 of these ideas and actually seeing them through, and then you'll see your company grow. Nobody. You know, my new thing is, somebody asked me, how do you grow, bro? Hard work, hustle. There's no magic pill, buddy. Like, because I know that's what I was looking for when I first got started. What are they doing? I mean, they. They know the secret. They got like, I'm trying to figure out what that secret was, but the.

[Josh Crouch]

Secret was years of hard work.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yeah.

[Sammy]

The secret is years of hard work and hustle and marketing and growth don't happen by. By accident. For everybody that wants to know how you grow so fast, because that's always the question. Question. You market and you build a very good team, and you run those leads and you convert those leads. If you're spending 2%, if you're spending 3%, then you're not serious about growth.

[Josh Crouch]

I wanted to add that was going to be one of my questions, because obviously, to get from, you know, to 50 million in four, four and a half years, like, you got to be spending some money. Like, there's no. And I know you guys have a partnership with the Columbus Blue Jackets. The local. The. The National League hockey team.

[Sammy]

Come on. The national hockey team? Yeah. National.

[Josh Crouch]

Sorry, I'm not a big hockey guy.

[Sammy]

Season. I bet part of our. Our sponsorship deals. I get season tickets and I don't. I just give them up. So I'm not a hikey guy either.

[Josh Crouch]

Okay, but you know, what does that look like for you? Because a lot of people, you know, there's a lot of stuff out there and obviously being in digital marketing, it's like, you know, we always talk about spending because people always ask us the question like how much I should be spending? Especially if I want to go from 1 to 2 or 2 to 5 or 5 to 10, how much should I be spending? What's your answer to that question? Because obviously, I mean, to go from where you. To 50, like that's a whole different ball game.

[Sammy]

My answer to that question is, My answer to a question is do not ever ask somebod buddy when you're trying to grow what percentage of marketing you should be spending, right? It's if somebody doesn't ask you 20 other questions that gives you a percentage, then don't listen to them, right? Like what, what are your goals? Where are you at in life? What is your financial situ situation? What's your risk tolerance? Right? There's a lot of other questions that need to come along before somebody should spit out a percentage, right? And, and those percentages don't work unilaterally. The company that I've been in business for 40 years is different than the company I've been in business for four months, right? The company that's got 15,000 club members is different than a company that has zero club members. There's too much to answer that. So I would say that depends on where you are financially and what your risk tolerance is. Me personally, I like growth. Growth. I wasn't focused on profitability and quite honestly, I didn't care about profitability, right? If that wasn't for me, and I know most people will cringe and every coach will tell you you're crazy, but I didn't care about that, right? Like that, that wasn't what drove me and I wanted to grow. There is trade offs, right? Like you look at PEs, I, I talked to, you know, one of the PE CEOs and he's like, we go into a new market market and we spend 25 to grow that market over two years or three years because they're trying to build enterprise value, right? You want to say, oh, you need to be profitable, you should only spend 5 to 7%. Well, 5, 7% on a 2 million dollar company is getting nowhere, right? And I'm, I think depending on the size of company you are in, your risk tolerance, I don't, I wouldn't give a damn if you spent 25. If you spent 20%, 15%, you go on the new market or you're new and you got the money, go spend 15, 50%. Like if you're doing it intelligently, right. And I think that's not just throwing it. Yeah, don't just throw it. Like have a real marketing plan. Hire marketing professionals, right? Your plumber or your H Vac or electrician. Don't go try to become a marketing professional. Like focus on your. That's where you need to be focused on your trade. Like there should be some oversight, but go hump hire, you know, a legitimate company that understands marketing. Marketing, you know, maybe one for mass media, might be one for digital or maybe one for however you're going to do it. The have a plan in place. Have somebody advise you on that plan. Go. There's a ton of fractional CFO CMOs out here. Like go hire somebody if you really want to spend all of that money and figure out how you're going to do it. Right. But don't be, don't go spend 2 to 5% on a million dollars and tell me you're serious about growth. Right? And I know everybody can't do it. I know everybody don't need to do it. Right. A five million dollar company is a beautiful company and if you're focused on your bottom line and if you're owner operator and you're comfortable and you have your own peace of mind and you don't want to be happy with that. Right. Don't get lost in looking at the guys online with their nice cars and their jets and they're that. Right. Just social comparison.

[Josh Crouch]

Age is where we're at.

[Sammy]

You don't need to do that. Right? Like a $5 million a year business and you're pulling in 15, 20%. That's yeah. Great life. And believe me, you probably can't spend that million dollars a year, a million dollars to live off of any year anyway. So like if that's what your com. Growth isn't for everybody. And let me be frank, growth is not easy and everybody cannot do it. I don't give a damn how hard you try to do it. It's just not that easy to accomplish something.

[Josh Crouch]

How would you know if that's you though? Like, I think that, I think everyone, they want it to be them but then they just don't realize they don't have the skills and they don't have like some of the, you know, some of the background stuff because they're just trying to figure it out. They just never get very far.

[Sammy]

It don't happen overnight, Right. Like let's look at, look at some of the legends. Like I don't want to call out any of the names but you know, it took them 20, 30 years to build a 50 million dollar company or a hundred million dollar company. But guess what? You look at whatever Jimmy Hiller that started as a plumber, or Dave Geiger that started as a plumber or, or Ken or Leland, like those guys started in a trade. But guess what? It didn't. Success didn't happen for them overnight. They built over time and they became that person. Right? So it's like you might not be that per. Had I been in my 20, you know, in my 20s right now and not had, you know, 20 plus years of business experience, I couldn't have done what I did today. Right. Like I had the know how of building a big business. Right. So it isn't for everybody and it don't happen by accident. Accident. But I would say, you know, fit Rod, if that's you. Everybody doesn't have that tolerance, that risk tolerance and that stress tolerance. That's a, a ton of stress dealing with all that financially, mentally, the human side of it, the policies side, the different departments. So figure out what you want to do and then if it's not you, be patient. It's okay being a little bit patient and growing over time, right? Everybody doesn't have to see, you know, explosive growth and this and that. That's why I don't like getting on here talking about 0 or 60 million for years. Years. Because it's, it's deceitful in the first. Oh, how much money did you have? And did you know, is it pe? Well, it's none of that, but it is a lot of years of experience in growing another big business and understanding all of that. But again, I have kids in their 20s and I'm like, are you sure you want. They're like that. Sometimes we see you, you know, stressed and work and it's like, I don't know if I want to do that. I'm like, you don't have to do that. Right. And it's like everybody does. Everybody's not cut to be that person. Person. And if you are a good tradesman that could build a 3, 4, 5 million dollar business and make a million dollars a year or half a million dollars a year or 250000 a year and have a good living for yourself, then so appeal like you don't, you don't have to Be that next guy. Right.

[Josh Crouch]

There's some gold in this episode.

[Sammy]

If you do need to market your ass off, you need to be super engaged in your business. You need to hustle, you need to work hard and you need to have a phenomenal team around you to make it work. You know, I could go through and name everybody in this business. Right? Right. I tell them all the time. Without them, Apex wouldn't be possible. Right. I'm only one man. Yes, it's my vision, but they're the ones that are implementing them on a daily basis. They're ones that are coming in here starting at 7 o', clock, leaving at 5, 6, 7 o'. Clock. They're ones that are busting their ass. Right. So. And you don't have to do it with a whole bunch of C level people. Almost every one of our managers, for the most part, a great handful, large percentage of them we pro promoted from within, from the trades and from the front line. So like, but again, that's with me having the ability to mentor that if I, if I didn't have the business acumen, then I probably wouldn't advise somebody to do that. Right. Like, you probably want to bring in some guys that can actually help and get there with the experience.

[Josh Crouch]

Another question I want to ask you because one, you've talked about shop tours, podcasts, reading books. How do you structure your day or week to make sure you have time for those things, especially early on in your career when you need needed early on in your trades career to make sure you had time for those things? Because I, I find that at least I think that a lot of people, they don't have time to do those things. Right. And they don't. What the, the truth is they don't make the time. But how do, how have you made the time to make sure you're doing shop tours and you're going to see these bigger operations and, and learning everything that you need to know to be a successful visionary.

[Sammy]

I think you have to prioritize. Right. It's like, like going back to the hiring thing where, where are things on your priority level? Right. If you're, you're fine where you're at, then don't prioritize those things. But for me, I wanted to learn and consider myself a student of the game. Right. So I tried to figure out what shops made the most sense and kind of organized my time around that. Again, I didn't go visit a hundred shops, I didn't go Visit, you know, 50 shops, probably visited five to 10 shops but was pretty strategic in where I wanted to visit and what I wanted to see was, right? And kind of that path of I didn't want to go see a shop that was the same size as me or a shop that was smaller than me. I wanted to see a shop that. Where I wanted to go, right? So I think, you know, prioritizing those. If you don't have. If your claim is you don't have time to learn, I mean, you're probably not serious about being a leap time to learn as a relative, you know? Podcast, how much time do we spend in our cars, right?

[Tersh Blissett]

Oh, yeah. Listening to the music or scrolling TikTok.

[Sammy]

You can listen to music or you can pop on a podcast, right? I don't listen to music. I pop on a podcast. My daughter, you know, she played soccer, you know, and on a travel team. So guess what? You know, I was on podcasts. I was listening to, you know, different podcasts going through. I was just listening to your guys's automation podcast last week about. So my point is, like, do that, right? Continuously learn. Like, be thirsty for knowledge, right? Everybody's on social media, everybody's watching tv. Like, prioritize your time. Like, I'm not even saying do it within your eight hours of work every day. Like, if you're that serious about being an entrepreneur and you're that serious about growing up. Wrong. I say I go to work, you know, and the way I learned is I started my second shift when I got home, right? Hung out with the family, took care, ate dinner, did all of that. Nighttime comes, quiet time comes.

[Tersh Blissett]

Well, that's a good point that you make there. I want to ask you this. Do you have any hobbies? Like, I was a car guy for years and years and years. I'm gonna have a full sleeve of.

[Sammy]

Car part preaching my language. I love cars too. So, yes, I like cars and I like fast cars. So same. So yeah. So like cars. I do have six kids at home, you know, in the older ages. My youngest, young as 17, have four nieces and nephews that live next door to me that I bought the house and they live in as well. So I consider work as a hobby for me, right? I enjoy. A lot of people don't enjoy coming to work. I enjoy, like, work for me is a hobby. On the weekends when I'm bored, I'm like, man, there's not. I need to get up and get out the house. That's just who I am, right? Like spending time with the family. I'm a sports guy. I Like going, I'm season ticket holder for the Browns. I like love the kid or fella.

[Josh Crouch]

You, you punishment, man. You guys literally trying to hire every damn quarterback that's available.

[Sammy]

Yeah, you figure out, man, you get lucky one day. But hey, maybe they need to hire.

[Josh Crouch]

You as the gm.

[Sammy]

Sammy, obviously for me, family's important. I like spending time with the family. You know, we just, I went over to Morocco. We're. We're going to Miami for a couple days. We're actually leaving tomorrow, going to Miami for the weekend and just hanging out with my niece is down there. She's getting in the middle medical school. So just, you know, hanging out with the family, doing some sports, enjoying my cars and, you know, enjoying work.

[Tersh Blissett]

So I feel like the guys and gals that are the most successful are willing to put their hobbies aside for even if it's a short period of time during that growth stage. Would you agree with that?

[Sammy]

You have to. Your business is not going to grow without you being involved. And I know everybody, you know, you hear this visionary and you hear this integrator. I'm just not a believer in that. You know, I think in the beginning.

[Tersh Blissett]

Think you, you have to be at all.

[Sammy]

Go pick everybody you want to pick in this industry. Ken Leland, Dave Geiger Hiller. Go pick anybody you want and show me which one of those didn't get in their companies and bust their ass from day one. Right. I'm not talking about becoming a visionary later 20 years in or 15 years in. I'm talking about to build their company. So I think people look at that, they start thinking, oh, get in and grind. Right. Like in a bust your ass. If you think you can hire somebody who's going to do it for you, you guarantee you if that person was that good, they'd be doing it for themselves. Yep. Right. So, like, go find all those guys and go look at all those guys and show me which one of them that hired somebody kicked up their feet and said, hey, go grow me this business to 100 million. It happened. I'll be waiting for that answer.

[Tersh Blissett]

Sammy, we appreciate you hanging out with us. We've gone way over our time here, but we could be here for a couple more hours asking you a bunch more questions. We really appreciate you and hanging out with you. Josh, do you have anything else you want to add for.

[Sammy]

For you?

[Josh Crouch]

No, I just appreciate you coming on here and sharing your wealth and you can tell that you're passionate about what you built because just it comes out in the way that you present yourself and the way you talk about Apex and your team, it's just exciting to. I mean, you guys are privately held and growing. There's ways to do it without investment money and stuff like that, and it's really cool to see.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Sammy]

Thank you guys. Appreciate the opportunity. Hopefully there's that Sammy sitting behind a speaker somewhere that's listening and learning and going to rah it off too. So.

[Tersh Blissett]

So absolutely, 100%. We appreciate everybody that's listening and hanging out with us. If you have any questions at all, don't hesitate to reach out to us. And until we talk again next time, I hope you have a wonderful and safe week. We'll see you.

[Sammy]

Appreciate it, guys.

[Podcast Narrator]

Thank you for listening to this episode of Service Business Mastery. Now that you are equipped with essential business advice from this impactful conversation, you are one step closer to becoming the successful owner of your dreams. If this episode has been helpful to your business journey, don't forget to subscribe to the show, leave a rating, and share it with other owners as well. Visit servicebusinessmastery.com to learn more.