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To The Point - Home Services VIP Room Podcast
Offense vs. Defense & Why I Walked Away After 18 Years
00:42:26
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This is to the Point a Rhino experience voted one of the top home services, marketing and operations podcasts. Cutting through the and getting to the point. Hey, what's up to the point listeners. It's your boy, Chris. It's just gonna be me. This is actually going to be a vulnerable episode from me. Now I've done a couple of these over my journey and I've always been pretty open and transparent about my journey and I think this, what I share with you is probably going to be applicable to quite a few of you. Whether you've been through the sale of your business, if you're thinking about going through one, if you haven't either, which way I think that you're going to be able to fall in line with what I'm feeling and what I'm thinking. And you know, the commitment I made to myself was just to be open about my experience and how I'm dealing with it and you know, and maybe it's. And my hope is it's relatable to you. So again, this is like industry agnostic. It's like position agnostic of how we know what you're trying to do with your business. But listen, if I don't share it, then what good is it, right? It's just a complaint or it's just something I hold internally and don't get to share with everyone in hopes that it helps you. So I'm just gonna let it rip. Now I'll tell you what I did like, so that way, again, I'm being transparent is I wanted to do a podcast on being on offense versus being on defense. Now I was talking to Goodrich about this a few weeks ago when we were flying over to LA to go look at this potential business deal that has nothing to do with home services. But I was talking to him about, about it and he's like, oh, let's jump on an episode and do it together because I'd love to share his experience. Well, KG's not here on this one, so I have to do a follow up with him. But, but it reassured me that this is something that's worth talking about. Um, and so all I did was I came up with a few things like I had been on my mind, you know, and because I use chat GPT 5.2, I speak to ChatGPT and, and I asked it a bunch of questions early on to ask me. So that way it learns me and how I think and, and you know, my thought processes and like things that I would say and like from my history My background, which is a whole other thing that you. The whole other episode. Tommy taught me that one. But I did about seven different iterations of questions to ask myself on this episode and it turns out there's about eight segments I'm going to go through. So I'm going to try to hit them all in one. But if it starts to get a little bit long, then I'll probably push this into a two parter. But you know, I don't know how it's going to go because I'm just free flowing this sucker. So, man. So I hope you really, I hope you like this episode. I hope some of it hits home and helps you and please reach out to me like this post Rhino Life. Honestly, it's been pretty damn good. Like it's felt. I felt like I've had a massive weight off my shoulder. It had been 20 years of me working in digital marketing a little bit longer, with 18 of those being specifically in home services. Man, I've seen it all, I've been through it all, I've heard it all at this point. And I thought, let's just talk through my journey and I'm going to do it from as I sit today as a free man who's still able to run this podcast and serve all of you contractors. So the first one is, is just the straight up first question is pretty simple and it's what does playing offense mean to me as a founder? Well, here's what I think it is to me who is naturally a sales and marketing guy. I'm not really an operations person. I'm not even really an integrator. I should say I wasn't an integrator. But being on offense means you're driving the business forward and you're doing that a couple different ways. You're driving the business forward. I'm actively seeking out opportunities for us, which is part of the hunt and the fun. It's kind of like if you're into recruiting, recruiting is like a cool sales tool too at a different level. But you're trying to go after and sell great talent on why they should come work for your company. I love that challenge. I know me and Peterman talk about that. He loves to do that at Peterman Brothers. But it's like the, it's the sale of getting great talent. But whatever it is, I'm a sales and marketing guy. I love being creative, coming up with new ideas, trying new things, learning new technology, trying to get attention because I like to create attention plans instead of marketing plans because that's the first round of the game is you got to get somebody's attention and that's the world I love to live. I love that stuff. I'm really, really good at that stuff. And part of that comes with understanding how your clients, how your, your customers buy. So if I can learn their buying habits and I can serve you the contractor by and understand your industry, how your business works and like all like to me that's the challenge of it. It's fun and you get to be competitive. I'm a, you know, I'm a competitive guy. I want to win. So yes, I like being on offense. That's way more fun like because you're moving the business forward and you can do it at your own speed. So the other question is, well, what does playing defense look like in a private equity owned company? Well, I could tell you for me it sucked and, and I wasn't always on defense. You know, after we did our deal In April of 2023, I didn't, we didn't do our deal to sell the business. We did it to scale the company and we took our time 14 months from start to end of our process of finding the right partner. And I loved the previous the, the CEO of the business at that time. I really respected him. His name's Jeff Moser. Shout out to you, Jeff Moser. I was a good friend of mine today, still stay in touch with him too. And he was exited, which I didn't even think was a thing we'll get to. But man, I had a lot of respect for him and I was eager to learn from him. I mean he had worked, was an executive, a godaddy and had acquired a company that he had been a part of and had overseas skill with Amazon, like all kinds of cool stuff. And he was an engineer by trade, just a different thinker than me. I love working with somebody like that who can diagnose my problems or architect my ideas faster than I can. But once we did a c, a CEO shift to the next CEO, that person I couldn't be led by and I knew that immediately and it turns out my gut was correct. So I went from being on offense and trying to move the business forward, the whole portfolio company forward in a CMO role and then a chief strategy officer role, Jimmy Lee being on defense, meaning I felt like I had to now protect what I knew was coming from the new leadership and that halts really all new development. Like you can try it, but it ain't the same. It's not genuine if it's not genuine to me, what am I doing? It's no good. So I went from being this guy who's moving and pushing the business forward at lightning speed, you know, working crazy hours, all the right connections, all the right relationships, getting on all the stages, doing all the podcasts, doing all the things, to now feeling like I needed to protect what we had in place because the inevitable stigma of private equity coming in and now reducing expenses or reducing costs to try and increase the EBITDA to get more multiple. When they flip it again, like, this was starting to feel a little bit more real. And though you heard about it, you think maybe that won't happen to you because you picked the right person. Now I'm just speaking from my experience. Okay. From my personal experience is what I'm sharing. So this doesn't. You know, there's a lot of. There's a lot of really great, successful stories, too. Okay. Just. We're talking about mine when we shifted to that CEO. Yeah, man, I went on defense, you know, and I could tell I was in a. In a. In a C suite. Sweet. A C suite position that honestly really carried no weight. It was almost like a courtesy. Keep me happy, keep the founder of Rhino happy, make him think he's got an opinion when really we're gonna do the opposite of everything that they suggest, which is. Which is what happened more often than not, or the Anna suggested specifically. We went with the integration of Blue Corona into Rhino. Like, I felt like every decision that was made, we said the opposite. And they still did the other things. You bring in new leaders, like the things that we knew weren't going to work. And so, yes, you feel like you're on defense, and that is not moving the business forward. And that is a very unhealthy pattern to be in. So. Have you felt like that at all? One of you and you listening right now like, you're kind of on defense, man. It's a shitty position to be in when you know that you're trying to take the last second shot because you're the man. You're Michael Jordan, you're Larry Bird, your Magic Johnson, your insert, whoever. I'm not going to say LeBron James, but, man, I am an offensive player and I want the damn ball. When there's a second left, I'm not going to be the assist leader. I want to take the damn shot. So it feels good for me to be back on offense again and have all these possibilities in front of me. The volume of offers thrown at us over this last month has been incredible, incredibly flattering and man, it's humbling just to see the. How many people really, really want us to kind of, you know, re like, you know, reinvigorated me again to be like, damn, yeah, like I got that fire. People know I got that fire. And. And I haven't been able to. To be on offense anymore. Now I'm ready to be on offense and kill it. And whether that's with somebody in a partnership back on our own, whatever it is, I'm ready to go. But I am not playing defense again. That is not who I am. And I'm never ever gonna do that again. Ever gonna be that guy. So I only got two questions in. I'm already ten minutes into this. I got this, probably gonna be in the two parter number three. When I sold, what did I think my role would feel like? So actually I was completely content with not being the man anymore and being the leader of the business and stepping into a learning position because I was always curious to. Like, I knew that I wasn't. I had so much more that I could learn to become a better leader, a better businessman to understand the financials better, to understand so many different things. So I was eager to learn those things. And I felt like it was a responsible move to make that decision because we did a pretty big number of business and I thought, man, to get this thing to fifty to sixty to seventy, a hundred million dollars, like I don't know how to get there and I'm gonna need somebody to help guide me. So getting that intellectual capital was also important to me and I was okay to recognize those things. So I was hoping that was what I was gonna get. Not only the, you know, the financial support to scale faster, but also that leadership and intellectual capital support. And I did for a period of time. But what did I think my role would feel like? I think it actually felt like I expected it to. I would say the one on the one thing that threw me for a little bit of a loop was when I had to go to my first board meeting, you know, or sit in my first leadership meeting with. Now the portfolio executive portfolio company executive teams is like you have imposter syndrome because you don't quite know if you just got lucky, right? Did you just get lucky all through your career and like, you made the right calls, Enough of the right calls. And like, am I really capable of building these big businesses just because I have one that I get lucky? Was it more Anna than myself or was it both? Like I don't know. And so you have imposter syndrome. And it took me a solid year before I felt like, no, no, I can, I totally belong. And actually, not only do I belong, I think I understand more, more than who I'm sitting with. And then as I went even further, I realized, oh yeah, yeah, these guys don't have any idea how to run these businesses. Guys and gals not discriminating. And I started to learn like I not only do I fit in, but I probably could have done this without doing this if I knew them what I knew now. And that was just, you know, a year, year and a half in. So I think it felt kind of what I expected, you know, it's just it shifted when I had to go on defense and that's when, that's when I would say it didn't. Everything changed for me.
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To the point. Listeners, listen up.
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What if the biggest thing holding back
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And, and I was, because I expected them to understand and make the correct decisions or to help us make the rip, but we would be a part of, you know, of the solutions, like they would ask our opinion. And I just don't. I think that, I think that the executive team that was brought in didn't understand our business, didn't understand the people in the business who were leading other people. And so we put the wrong people in the wrong seats. And what happens is you start stripping benefits away from people. And all this change is happening, and it's not to their advantage because they do not give a crap how much the company's making. All they really care about the end is themselves. And I don't, and I don't blame them. And if you're taking things away and feeling the change, you're feeling the pressure, it's not the same. Like, people, you know, start to get concerned and worried and they start leaving and you start losing good talent if you don't take care of good people. And then you can lose good talent and you lose good people. And then clients follow those good people. So you're degrading the company. And that's ultimately what was happening. And so here Anna and I are on the sidelines, put on the bench, trying to protect anyone and everything that we can within our control, which, you know, we gave up with our private equity, with our deal. So, you know, the last question here in this first segment is, was the tension about strategy or was the tension about control? I think it was both because we saw that the strategy was going the opposite way. Now, let me back up a second. I believed that the integration of the two big companies was the right call. In my heart of hearts, I believed it because I thought, man, you put these two incredible businesses together that have good brands and really solid talent that are complementary to one another, you put them together and wow, we have got the, the, the all star team of digital marketing companies for home services together, and boy, we're going to go. What I, what I didn't take into consideration is how bad integration can mess that whole Thing up, which is exactly what happened. So in theory, I still believe in my heart of hearts, it was the right move to make, given the situation. But it was executed very poorly, about as poorly as it could be executed. And what's awesome is that we still had so many loyal people, you know, that were excellent employees who just stuck to it, who still, you know, working at Rhino today, I mean, when we exited management team, I felt was very strong, incredibly strong to move, to keep moving the business forward. But you lose control. You know, you're losing the control, but it's very difficult to manage through that process when you have none and, you know, the strategy is going the opposite direction. It's pretty helpless feeling to be in. So now listen. All this to say, I'm still incredibly happy that I. That we did our deal when we did it. The timing was right. I felt like it was the right partner at the time. It gave us a lot of opportunity to do so many more things. So I am super grateful that we did it. We were incredibly blessed, but we were worked our asses off to get to that spot. It's just this next phase, you know, isn't kind of going the way that I thought. But, hey, that's not the end of the game. I still got a lot more game to play. Now segment two, let's go into identity and energy. And the first question it asks me is, when I'm on offense, what does my week look like? And when I'm on defense, what does my week feel like? When I'm on offense, I'm continuously chasing down the sales team. You know, what else are we doing to. Are we going and asking for referrals? What do you do? Are you just sitting around waiting for customers to come in or what are you trying to do? Are you reaching out to some of your happy customers? You're reaching out to just customers in general to check in? Are we connecting with our strategic partners and pushing on them so they're not just taking leads from us, but they're also reciprocating and bringing us customers? So what are the new opportunities for us? Are there other events that we can go and speak at, you know, where we can share our wisdom to others? Is there a podcast that I can go and join or someone on the team can go and join and share the wisdom and stuff? Like constantly doing things to get attention and to be helpful along the way. Not take, but give. To me, that's being on offense. And you do it every single day. And I loved it. I loved it. I get to do it again today. It's just in different capacities with the different investments that I've had. But being on offense is so much more fun. I'm not saying that you don't have hardship you got to deal with, you know, in the business and you got to be on defense from time to time, but it shouldn't be your full time fucking job, I'll tell you that much. Especially for an offensive player. Now how's it feeling? Feel like being on defense? It feels like you got the weight of the world on your shoulders and no one to help you take it off. You can't get it off your shoulders because you don't even have the control to take it off your shoulders. But. And the only way out was to leave. And that feels like fucking quitting. And I'm not a quitter. So you kind of carry this burden with you. That's what it is. Almost burden. Burden and some regret, you know, and you feel you're responsible. Like everybody in there trusted you to make a good decision and the decision didn't go the way that you want and now you're the one carrying the bag. You picked it for them. So you, yeah, you drop into defense mode and you can't do the things that you want to do that you know would make it right. And man, that is a, that's a heavy, that is a heavy burden to bear that I hope none of you, none of you have to experience or if you're experiencing it now, get, like, get out. Because the deal is, is that you can't, it is no matter how much you want to help and you don't have the control, you can't. And it's not your fault. You didn't pick it hoping it was going to go shitty. You picked it because you thought it was the best move at the time. But things changed and you have to understand that. And I finally got to that moment, which is why I decided to leave at the end of the year. There was nothing I was going to do that was going to do any good. I needed to shift for my own well being, I needed to shift. I'm so thankful that I did. And I still get to be a senior advisor, which is cool, you know, and advise Jeff, who's taken over and. But I also get to do it with a lot of other companies, right? A lot of other people who are asking my advice on things. And it's given me more opportunities to go and teach these other people how to be on offense the right way. I Don't want to be on defense ever again. And it said, the next question was, did I start the company to manage EBITDA or as a lot of the financial guys like to say, ebitda. God, I hate hearing that. Every time I hear EBA die, it already makes me think negative. Just say ebitda, please. Okay. Did you start the company to manage EBITDA or to build something meaningful? I think this is a pretty obvious one. I started the company to build something meaningful. I didn't even know what the hell ebitda was until 2020. That's the first time I even heard that word EBITDA from Goodrich. And that's when I started paying attention to like, oh, I've heard net profit. I've heard, like, you know, oh, you know, what's the company meant? I've never heard the term EBITDA or understood what it meant or how it's calculated. Today I completely understand it, understand what the makeup of it is and how that applies to multiple in different industries. Like, but here's the thing. I never went into this thing and neither did Anna on scaling a business focused on the dollar amount. Like, it could be a driver, it could be an end goal, but it was never the driver for me. It was, how do I continue to do as good as I possibly can for each customer that I have? Because if I did, we could scale this business very healthy because it's a lot easier to keep somebody than have to go. Keep paying money to go and find new people. And part of that process is take really good care of your employees. Like, really good care of your employees. Don't get, you know, stingy. You can't scale these things without them. I think that you, if people say, oh, it's more important your employees or, or your customers, employees. You don't have customers to serve if you don't got employees to serve them right. Take care of your people. You know, it gets harder as you get bigger, but that's when leadership and management matters. Like, as long as everybody's following the same values and you give them the right, you know, the right framework, work with them with the right benefits, and you do all the right things with education. Help these people become better, smarter people than the first day that they came in. If they exit, you know, more talented, making more money because they're better, you did part of your job right. You made them better and they were better for your company. And, you know, attention to the point listeners, branding has never been more important. 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So check them out at prolific brand design.com and ask for the to the point promo. Prolific Brand Design. Be more of you. Be Prolific. If they don't leave, it's because they're very happy with their position. Right? You're providing them everything they need to be as successful as they possibly can. And if you are, in turn, your client should be successful. If that starts to fall off and you lose control of it, the business is in trouble. That was so important to me. Now what happens today is I in the companies I invested in that I am actually, you know, coaching. I'm certainly thinking about ebitda, but I'm not thinking about it like it's my driver. It's just I'm aware of what it is understanding where I'm trying to go and what it allows me to do with the scaling the business. Number two, what part of you dies when culture is sacrificed for efficiency? Ooh, this is a great question. What part of you dies when culture is sacrificed for efficiency? Well, someone like me, who's a very high eq, I feel that, you know, I feel people's feelings. Okay, don't laugh at me when I say this. And some of you that are listening right now are the exact same as me. And you watch a show or a movie or whatever, and there's that moment when you kind of feel a little tingly happening and you know, and your eyes are starting to water a little bit, but you don't want to blink because if you blink a tears, you'll come and you hope nobody's going to see it and, and like call you out on it. Yeah, I'm that guy. Except I'm okay with blinking and letting the teardrop, but I just. I'm proud of people accomplishing things and I'm proud to see people get better and I'm proud to see people get into crappy situations and then dig themselves out of it and learn something new. I'm proud of people whenever they can go and buy their first home and I'm proud when they hit their goals and, and if I. And I want to help them do those things. So culture absolutely matters to me. It was the number one thing that I cared about was making sure that we ran a really solid, well put together business. I mean, shit, we did community service one month every single, or one day every single month for all the way up until, you know, we sold the business and a little bit past it. Like it was that important to me. If you look at a PNL to go and pay somebody. Now these were, these were typically on Fridays, which we did run four nines and a four. So most people were only working four hours on a Friday anyway because it's a half day. But I'm covering. Me and Anna were covering all their expenses to go and do community service. That's zero business output. But you look at it through this lens. When you go and do community service together for somebody who needs the help, it's not self serving, it's not serving the business, it's serving someone else. The bond that your team builds together is so strong that it builds the culture nice and tight. It's just different than what others are doing. So if you look at it from a straight expense perspective, it looks crazy. But if you think about in the long term, your turnover, your turnover of employees is really, really low because you're building something special internally. And when you go and do something for someone else together who's less fortunate, my goodness, if you even have a morsel of a fucking beat in your heart, it makes you feel real good and that the company paid you to go do that. So I'd encourage you, if you haven't done that, maybe give that a try. My goodness. We're about 25 minutes into this episode and I only made it through two segments. So it looks like I'm probably only getting through about three segments on this. I'll probably have to two part it. I'm gonna switch over to segment three, which is a private. This one says Private Equity Reality check the balanced and mature and. And I think this one is a good one because it's good to say some of these things. I'm not bitter. I'm learning a lesson. I've learned a lesson. I'm not bitter. Okay, maybe I'm a little bit bitter, but. But let me just talk through this. I think there's also. I understand some of the decisions that are being made. I just think they could have been done differently to accomplish the same end result, which is make the business more profitable and continue to scale. First question is, is private equity wrong for reducing expenses? Absolutely not. Like that's also part of the game, right? You kind of hope that you bring them in so they can figure out how to reduce expenses. It's just how. Like how are you planning on doing that? Is that cutting? Is that doing a riff? Also known as cutting, headcount cutting, you know, laying people off. I think you better ask those questions before you go into a partnership. If there's going to be needs to be a major layoff, like you need to know those things. And that wasn't the case for us, but I could see where it would be now with the AI advancements on how that could be a thing the next time around. Right. Because maybe you don't need as many headcount which immediately goes to the bottom line. So you should certainly be aware of that. But are they wrong for reducing expenses? Of course not. Like that's part of the game. You need to find ways. Or maybe they have, you know, because it's bigger as one entity that they can get better deals on things which reduces expenses. Like that's part of the game. I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all. That makes complete and total sen sense to me. It's just how you do it. Great piece of advice. How you make your money is more important than how much money you make. Got that? Say it again. How you make your money is more important than how much money you make. Let that one sink in. That's your integrity. Don't give it up for the sake of a dollar. In the long term, that shit will keep you awake at night. I'm glad I never fell into that trap. Okay, next question. What are founders naive about when they sell? What are founders naive about when they sell? Well, I'll tell you what I was naive about. I actually felt like I had a pretty damn good idea of every question to ask. I mean, we took 14 months, met with 20 some odd different companies that were wanting to acquire Rhino. And I think of every question that I asked except for one that I'd never heard. In all the complaints I'd heard about private equity, I never, ever, ever thought that the CEO would exit the business. A CEO who has equity in the business would leave the business. That thought never crossed my mind. I mean, maybe I've only ever heard of one other person who's a good friend of mine who I just had this conversation with, like earlier, earlier this week that. That happened too. Same thing. Picked a private upgrade. Partner in the CEO change. The person you believed in changed. So I was naive to that. I'll be curious to know what Anna's answer is on this. And I think also it might be you think that your opinion and your experience is going to matter more than it actually does once you start to get into the relationship for a length of time, you can read between those lines. Okay, I'm going to move on to this next one segment for leadership style and self awareness. Where am I? Okay, Actually, I'm pretty good. Maybe I will get through this. It says, are you built to scale Something from 0 to 50, but not 50 to 200? Okay, this is a great question and probably a lot of you in this position. I'm gonna, I'm gonna start this thing off by saying this. Whatever you think, more often than not, you're wrong. Because we have this limiting belief system that says, even me, somebody who's like, optimistic, I can do anything. There's. I don't see all the bad shit that can go wrong. This certainly happened to me. So I've got two answers to this. First one saying, are you built to scale something from 0 to 50? And the answer is, absolutely, am I built to do that? And I knew it then because I was a machine and I knew I had built a machine because I had Anna running operations and we were executing on all the things that we were selling. And what we were saying in marketing was true. It was not only. And we were staying ahead of the market and trying new things that our competitors weren't, featuring happy clients that were major players that people respected. Like, we did all the things right. So I knew the machine was working. And once I knew it was working, I kind of knew we knew what levers to pull to keep growing and scaling. And so, yeah, I mean, did it get harder as it got bigger? It did, but not that much harder. Like, you could still, you could start to see, okay, when I got the 5 million, when I got to 10 million, when I got the 20 million, like, what's it going to take to grow to 40? It started becoming a little bit clearer. Like, you understood how you could take bigger chunks, and that does happen. But you have the, you know, but you can only see, you know, so far ahead of you based on what your experience has been, which is why it's so important to go and visit, Visit shops or some things that are bigger than you who can kind of help you to really visualize what that looks like and understand it when you work backwards. Because if it's. If you're trying to be 50 million bucks or 50 million. Yeah, $50 million business and you're sitting at two, like, let's just back it up a little bit, maybe go to 10, you know, and like, let's just chunk this thing out. Because if it's. If you, if you just set a goal with no real, no real crystal clear plan to get there with checkpoints along the way, it's just a dream. It's not even real. Not to say you shouldn't dream, but you know what I'm saying? Like, make it a realistic goal and it. And it moves. But from zero to 50. I had a plan laid out where I was like, we can get to 50. It's just, I pulled the trigger before we got there because I saw an opportunity to do it faster, faster by, by getting to a private equity partner, which plays right into my thought process. It's like, hey, this is just one step in the process to get to 50, to then get to 100. And the highest we ever got the business to was $92 million overall. As a portfolio company, it's a pretty damn big business, you know, But. But the second half of this is 50 to 200. That one, to me, I couldn't see that seemed unrealistic to me. Today as I sit in this chair, it's crystal clear to me on how to accomplish that. And it's because the biggest blessing I had over these last two and a half years is the education that I got of learning business at a completely different level, understanding how some of the big businesses get bigger, the different opportunities that you give yourself when you're a bigger business and you've got more capital to put in things, the respect that you build along the way in the industry creates opportunity. The relationships, the peer groups, all this stuff creates opportunity for you to continue to scale. Relationships is critical in scaling. But if you don't see it, you go and find the help to get it. Like, here's a good example. I've been, I've been messaging back and forth with Dan Martell, courtesy of Tommy Miller. But you know, who's whose book is buy back your time. I've now mentioned it a couple of times previous podcast was on was on the episode I lived listed listening I listened to of his and even then like I'm picking up, you know, four or five things I'm considering. Do I bring him on as a coach to help help make the path on this next journey of mine crystal clear to get me to $100 million of net worth And I don't have it all figured out so fuck it, I'm going to get a coach who knows how to get there and can help help me figure it out and hold me accountable and that's worth whatever he wants to charge. But I put myself in the position to be able to do that in the 0 to 50 plan. Plenty of people out there who are in that 50 to 200 that are willing to help you. Chad's in that ballpark. You know, Ken Gaynor, Tommy Hoffman, Ishmael, like Tom. These guys are my friends and they're all willing to help you guys.
- [36:10]
C
Hey, Chad Peterman here. I've been all in on Blue on for quite a while now and it's not just me. Contractors all over are seeing similar results. Tony at Just In Time Heating says their support calls dropped immediately once they rolled it out. His techs get reliable answers from Bluon's AI faster than what they get from the OEMs and their parts guy. He's loving it too. It's made his job way easier. They're saving time, solving problems quicker and feeling more confident in the field. Blu on just become part of the process. And yeah, Peterman Brothers is definitely seeing that impact too. Click the link in the description and book a quick demo. You'll get it.
- [36:57]
A
Okay. I think what I'm going to do is I don't think I'm going to go into any more of these things. I'll tell you what I am going to do is any more of the other checks. I think I kind of hit the nail on the head. As far as you know, being an offense versus defense. Is that you. You can tell from this podcast where my head's at. And you should know where your head's at. Like you're an offensive player too. People are complaining about. I'm gonna talk about marketing. Just a second. The marketing section is hard. It's hard because it's like the one thing that you really can't completely control. You can create systems and processes in your business in all different departments and you can control what happens in them. You can manage to the process, you can continue to reinvent the process based on what you learn from your team or yourself or from others to keep scaling. And that's a normal part of the business model. But marketing is one of those things that is very hard to make predictable and there's always moving targets and introduction of artificial intelligence and the large language models, the chatgpts, the claws, perplexities, Geminis, all that shit does change the landscape a bit. Has radio and TV play it and they're like, how do I attribute when I do all this? How do I attribute what to what? They started on TV and then they went to my website. How do I know which one to attribute it to? Like these are. This is. That is going to. I don't know how, how you, how can you attribute someone's thought process? Only way I know how to do it is if they, if they take action based on that thought process. That's measurable. But how do you know if they watch TV ad unless they put in, I was watching your TV ad and then I went to your website. If they. Most people aren't doing that, but you can start to see a lift in business when you're running all these different lead source channels. All right, Most of you're just afraid to do it, to go bigger because you don't trust it. You don't trust anybody. And that's fair. I understand. This is why I was always so like big on the reporting piece of it. And if you just really believe that the reporting was accurate, whether it was a good month or a shitty month, at least we could trust one another. And I was such a big advocate of those things. And I still am. You're never gonna hear me be the, you know, the shit talker online who's, you know, and they exist, though I have the freedom to say it. I'm not gonna say it, but there's a few people online that I have zero respect for who tout themselves as digital marketing experts, but who just aren't good human beings. And there's a lot of marketing companies out there trying really, really, really, really hard to do the best that they can for you. There's probably some that aren't. I genuinely believe that people are trying to do their best for you, but if you can hold them accountable by trusting the reporting, then good that that's one way that you can help, you know, do your part but be involved in your, like, it's not these days where you can set it, forget it like get you or somebody Involved to hold them accountable. Make sure you get all the benchmarks correct, whether it be a number of service leads each month that they're supposed to bring your install leads or whatever the number is, the cost per lead they're running to what? Or if you have a customer acquisition cost you're trying to stay within. Man, I'll tell you one thing I was trying to do right before I exited Rhino that I thought was brilliant and I wish I would have done that a couple years ago, but I guess I didn't know this, you know, three years ago was I wanted every lead source for you guys, you know, for, for, for not only for the marketing company but for you. Any which way that I had for a lead source, whether it be radio, tv, ott, which is the streaming ads, ppc, SEO, Google, Google, local business listings, Google Business profile, social media, direct mail, you name it, whatever it was, I wanted to know what the LTV over CAC was. The lifetime value over the customer cost per customer acquisition. And if that number for me was a four or above, I felt really good about my return on that lead source. So if you said one month, okay, I know that radio is giving me a blank, you know, a, a 4 to 1 ratio, but PPC is giving me a 7 to 1 ratio and I need more leads, which one are you going to pick? The 7 to 1 ratio, right? The one that's giving you a better LTV over cac. And that's what I thought. Man. If I'd have been doing that for Rhino specifically on every single lead source, I would know the exact lever to pull when we needed more business to hit whatever our revenue goal was or whatever the goal was for the quarter or the year. And you can do the same thing. You guys have to have somebody who understands it and make sure the attribution is correct and that you have a write in service titan or what, you know, whichever CRM that you're using and that you can believe that the information is accurate and that somebody's going to give you the correct information. Man, that's the right move to make. And with our roofing business, I'm thinking about the same way with, you know, I bought, I bought majority stake of Prolific. That's no longer just brand design, which they've been doing for 10 years, but also rolling in the email marketing side of the business, which has been fricking exceptional. Zach is killing it on the email marketing. 1500 bucks a month and he's just crushing the sales, especially like for us at Redbird. He's been killing it. A lot of big players on board. You know, Peterman loves it too. Killing it. 1500 bucks a month. I mean, you kidding me? And you can dial it up and go and remarket your customers and it's pulling in business. It's like a no brainer, some grassroots shit that's just working really, really well. And now I told him, hey, this shit's working so good. Offer a guarantee, three months. If it's not successful, you fucking give everybody their money back. That's how confident that we are in the prolific brand right now. That's a really great position to be in. Zach's killing it with his team and it keeps growing. But the point is, is if you can put somebody in your seat that understands your marketing and can give you a lifetime value over customer acquisition cost and you know your number and you know that you need more leads and you know which lever to pull that gives you the best return on the dollar spent, man. How powerful is that? Now you start to become, you make, you start to make your marketing become more predictable. How good of a position would you be? You say, man, I got all my shit figured out. I've got sales down, we've got, we've got tech turnovers down, we've got the CSRs down, we've got operations down, we've got our equipment costs negotiated correctly to where we feel good about that. We're getting the right co op dollars from our marketing or from our vendors or from our manufacturers, the whatever you got all that shit down in. But man, if we just could get more leads, that's my thought process on it as a marketing guy. Build that, man. That's a hell of a way to build the business to make it more predictable. So hopefully that's helpful. I mean, I kind of went on a little bit of a tangent there, but I genuinely believe that like that's how I'm running my business portfolio today, is I am actively trying to build that out in these businesses, the ones that I, the ones that I have enough control in to do. And I think you should do the same thing. And if you need help on this, you know, who knows how much longer to the point podcast exists, you know, with, with the private equity company, you know, going back and forth with me on, on owning it, you know, who gets ownership of it. For now, I get to continue to get to do it, but not to worry because if for some reason it goes away, I won't believe that I'm an offensive player. So anyway, hopefully this is helpful, you know, and if anybody's kind of in this position right now, you know that you're going through it. And like this can impact your family too, which really sucks. So you can't let it get to you. When you're on defense, typically it has a negative impact on your, on your personal, personal life and, and nobody needs to be in that situation. Like, this shit's hard enough. Business is hard enough for it to impact you personally. So man, find a way to get on offense quick one way or the other. And sometimes cutting it, like cutting the cord is, was worth every penny. I potentially will lose just to be free and to be back on offense and to do good to this industry that I love so much. Like this podcast, I want to continue to give back to you guys. So hopefully this is a helpful episode. I don't know if, if it was or wasn't, but I thought it'd be vulnerable and just share, you, share with you kind of my experience, my thoughts, where my head's been at with all this stuff. And I got such a, a lot of really great comments, you know, around the last one that we did that Anna and I did about being vulnerable with our position. And hopefully this does the same for, for you regardless of what kind of business that you're in. And if it did, then I did my job, which has always been my job. And that's to help you help scale businesses, grow them, care about people and celebrate the successes and, and hopefully you'll continue to follow me along through this journey too. There's a lot of really cool stuff in front of me right now on what I can go do with a lot of really great people that keeps me, you know, in this industry, which is where I want to stay. I mean, not when I say industry, I'm talking about the home services world. I can not start an Internet marketing company again within my non compete and I don't plan to do that anyway, so not a problem. But hopefully this was helpful to you. So I'm not sure, you know, if I'll do a bunch of these moving forward. Who knows? I'm just gonna kind of let it rip. Who knows if I even get slapped on the wrist for doing this for my private equity, probably a good chance that I will because that's the nature of the beast, but I don't give a shit. So listen, I care about you guys and that matters most to me. And all I'm doing is telling my story and the truth of my story and my perspective. If that's against the law, then. This ain't America. You don't gotta do everything, but damn it, you gotta do something. No. Zero days.