← To The Point - Home Services VIP Room Podcast
To The Point - Home Services VIP Room Podcast
Unleashing Explosive Growth: How These Titans Built a $250M Home Services Empire! 🚀
00:40:38
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- [00:01]
A
Hey, what's up? To the Point listeners. It's your boy. Excited as always when my homies are on the podcast. We got Chad Peterman from Peterman Brothers and Aaron Gaynor from Eco Plumbers Heating and Air Conditioning Technicians. About a quarter of a billion dollars worth of revenue from Indiana and Ohio. But I love it because they talk about, you know, current problems that you guys are having and solutions for or. Or potentially future problems you guys are having against some solutions for that they've found and worked through. So, like real life scenarios. So I love these type of episodes. And another thing, an important thing, turn the volume up. You might start noticing some changes with the to the Point Home services podcast come May 1st. Why? You ask why? I'll tell you. Because your boy just got full control back from Rhino. Since I exited Rhino, so I got full control back, which means I get to do my own thing, and that means more. We need to start shaking it up and doing more with this podcast. And now I've got free reign to do it. So pay attention come May 1 or the first episode in May, because you just might notice a difference. So enjoy this episode with the homies. Chatty P and Aaron G.
- [01:24]
B
This is
- [01:26]
C
to the Point, a Rhino experience. Voted one of the top home services, marketing and operations podcasts. Cutting through the bullshit and getting to the point.
- [01:42]
D
All right, thank you both for being here. Start off, wanna say congratulations to Chad and closing a great deal. Really proud of you. So, wingman, what's your call sign?
- [02:02]
B
Viper.
- [02:03]
D
Viper and I, we went through all the surveys, and instead of just going one subject to one subject, we used used a confidential technology with AI to figure out what everyone was most concerned about. And so we formulated some questions along that lines. A lot of people had similar questions and issues in their business. So with that, you know, looking Back to like 2020 through 2023, we had a lot of stimulus, easy money, companies grew, a lot of private equity entered our market or our. Our industry. And then in the last couple years, we've heard, you know, leads have gotten softer, it's harder, margin's been compressing. So we're going to start around there. We're going to start with kind of the market shift. H Vac manufacturers have reported that shipments have been down year over year, about 30%. So the first question is, what do you guys think is causing this? Is it the macroeconomic pressure? Is it, you know, consumer sentiment changing? Or is it just that we pulled all those installs up from during COVID
- [03:09]
B
You're the H Vac Guy.
- [03:12]
C
Yeah. I mean, I think. Is this on?
- [03:19]
B
There you go.
- [03:25]
C
Yeah, I think. I think there's a. I think there's a lot of that stuff. Right. I think there's, you know, macroeconomic stuff. I think there's pull forward through Covid, but I think at the end of the day, it all comes back to execution. People still need to replace their equipment. Their plumbing's still gonna break. They're still gonna have electrical issues. And, you know, I think if there's one thing that I learned kind of coming out of call it the back end of 23 into 24 is, you know, we saw a ton of growth. You know, we. In 20, between 22 and 23, we doubled in size. And when you double in size in 365 days, what you find yourself doing is throwing a lot of people at problems. And so I think, as a lot of businesses did, okay, demand's pulling back. How do we continue to grow? For us, it came down to a lot of execution. Like, how are we good at these things? Are we, you know, what is our booking rate? Are we sending the right tech to the right call? What's our onboarding? What's our training look like? All of that stuff. And so, you know, I think that that's something in the business. It can. A lot of growth and a lot of demand can mask all of the blocking and tackling that needs to take place in these businesses. They're not. It's a very simple business, but it's not easy. Right. Because it's all the unsexy things that you have to focus on in order to be successful. And I think, you know, lucky for us, we're in a room here today with a ton of great operators who understand the importance of those things. And I think if you talk to them, it's not about some new whiz bang marketing idea or this, that, or the other. It's about execution. It's about answering our phones. It's about sending the texts out, giving options to customers, all of those things which I think are, you know, critical. And the building blocks that, you know, aren't always the shiniest, but they're what make these businesses work.
- [05:25]
B
Yeah. So I guess from an economic standpoint, I think. I think the last couple years, we just did a study from our plumbing department since 2000 and just took a look at said what's happened to our conversions. Average sales in general, and we have seen a downtick in conversions over the last five years in general in that area. I think, obviously, inflational prices have changed that. I mean, from five years ago, what our pricing was till now. I do think consumers feel pressure. We saw, you know, some. Some great growth last year in our business into our ebitda, but we did see a margin shrinkage in some of the areas in our business. So I think, I think you are feeling some of that pressure in general is. My belief is. I know some guys in here have done some have some big numbers going, but from my standpoint, yeah, I think. I think the market is. Feels a little tight, but I still believe there's tons of opportunities. The call volumes still seem pretty strong. I think the conversions and getting people to say yes has got a little harder. I think there's been a shift in a little bit of purchasing on how you buy. Consumers have changed a little bit of how fast they'll pick up and get a H VAC system. I definitely have seen that. And we're newer in the H VAC game and the big picture to some of you guys. I think we got in probably after everybody was making all the money in H Vac. So it's been a good lesson for us. But I do think that there's some economic things that are still tight in, like, I guess what I say is, I know there's enough money available to fund these projects. Right? But there is. We're seeing turn down rates a decent amount in our area. We're definitely. I think you've seen repo rates go up, right? For home foreclosures are going up. So I definitely think there's things playing into it. But to your point, I think there's still a lot of opportunity, but it is getting harder to get yeses. At least what we've seen in our business, it's getting harder to get yeses.
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D
Thank you. To wrap this question up, in the last 12 to 24 months, is there anything, one specific thing you started doing or stopped doing that moved the needle for you?
- [07:24]
B
That's a great question. I think one thing for me is I went back and I spent a lot of time with our team just really looking at our price book and saying, hey, I think obviously we've seen the price increases, and I think what's happened over time is we just started pricing a certain base of people out of the market for us. And I think that started to really hurt us in our. In our marketplace, our brand and the ability to create volume in work. Right. So we went back and said, hey, we need to find better price points for things. We need to make sure that not every average plumbing sale ticket is $1,000 like cost. The entry point basically for us became $1,000. And I think we went back and said, how do we revamp this and make this feel that, you know, the everyday American can provide buy service from us? And I think we were starting to price people out of the market and we were starting to see that a lot of the people that had done businesses for years weren't actually able to afford that from us anymore. The people making, you know, even $80,000 a year or $65,000 a year just couldn't, couldn't afford to actually purchase a plumbing repair from us, which I thought was a big change for us. So we really looked at that.
- [08:29]
D
So it wasn't raising your prices, it was lowering your.
- [08:32]
B
It was actually lowering prices in certain areas that we felt would add more value. Finding better price points on toilets, finding better price points on disposals, et cetera, et cetera, all the way down to renegotiating our equipment, making sure that we could find something that was an easy swap out for a furnace for the everyday person in general. And I think that that was just for us, recognizing that there was a whole base of business that was, that we were under serving and a volume game that we were losing.
- [09:01]
A
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D
Pastor Chad.
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C
Yeah, I think for us, you know, I think Aaron made a great point. You know, getting yeses is harder. And so I think what we did is really looked at. Okay, if getting yeses is harder, how are we Going to let. How are we going to position ourselves to get as many yeses as possible? And so for us, it really started. And this may sound like a weird place to kind of pinpoint, but for us, it was onboarding. You know, it sounds silly, right? It's like, okay, yeah, hire new techs and bring them on and we'll have more people and all of that stuff. And for us, it was literally like looking at every 15 minutes of onboarding a new technician into our business. And how are we going to make this the most impactful experience of their life so that when they do go out in the field, one, they can start generating revenue sooner and also they're ready to go and they're providing an experience where people can associate that value with it. And so for us, onboarding is like the most sacred of sacred things, especially when you're getting technicians that are job ready. You know, we train them from the ground up, but you can only do that so many times over the course of the year. So technicians who have five, seven years of experience, how do we take and take what they may have already learned, really untrain that and then train them in the Peterman way. And so we are like maniacal about how we do this. What are all the touch points, how we're educating people, bringing in professional educators into the business to say, hey, you know, it's not enough for just the service manager to stand up in front of the room and rattle off a bulleted list of, well, this is what you do and this is how you do this. Like, we have to be able to connect with these people. How do we teach adult learners the skills that they need to be successful out there? And I've seen a lot of really positive stuff. We've still got a long way to go, but I think it's something in your businesses. Taking a look at what does your onboarding look like? Is it, you know, we were back in the day, it's like flip the guy the keys and hand him some calls and let her rip. Obviously not the best, but I think looking at your onboarding experience and seeing what that looks like is only going to set your guys up and gals out there for success in the field and to get as many yeses as possible.
- [12:55]
D
Thank you. My next question was on margin, but you guys both kind of covered that with your answers and that, you know, it sounds like you guys are doing a lot better at onboarding. Aaron, you went back, negotiated a lot of pricing to get to protect your margin because we've Seen a lot of people racing to the bottom as, as the leads have gone softer. So we're going to skip that question and we're going to go into growth now. You both have built sizable multi location businesses, you know, originally through Greenfield, but I know you both have done some acquisitions more recently. So if you had to start over today, what model would you choose and why?
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C
Greenfield, one location.
- [13:35]
B
Greenfield, one location. I agree. Look, I think for me, I know Chad did probably some more acquisitions than we did. We did one acquisition for an H Vac company. It was about $8 million. It didn't go that well. I think we, Mike and I both were to say that if we could redo that, we would just get our money back. But as part of the growing pains, as part of learning, we definitely learned a lot about what that looks like for us from an acquisition. I think our success has been through Greenfield personally.
- [14:03]
A
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- [15:17]
B
I think we just understand how to do that better. I think our culture of our business is more around that we understand how to just go into a market, start, you know, buying the radio ad buying the positioning, doing the things like that. And then the culture is easier for us to integrate right from the beginning. So I, I personally am a fan of Greenfields. I think we've been able to do that really good in the Dayton market and making some headway in the Cincinnati market. Now in the last couple of years. So we went, you know, we had a Greenfield and DAYTON in about four years doing 20, $24 million. Right. So I think it shows that it's still possible to go take market share by just going in and starting from the ground up. And purchasing leads is cheaper.
- [15:54]
D
So you would find that it's easier to build culture than to keep it after an acquisition.
- [16:02]
B
Yeah, yeah. At least from my experience, a lot of these guys have done that better than us. I wouldn't say that's a strong suit for us, but we like Greenfield and I think secondary markets are strong too. Not always having to go in a major metro.
- [16:15]
C
Yeah, for us it's been a combination. We've done a little bit of everything. I'd say probably my favorite is, you know, one and we've got 11 locations across kind of Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky. My favorite is doing tuck in acquisition work when I already, when I know that I have an established leader at a branch who can do more. We look at smaller acquisitions kind of in that 2 to $5 million revenue range that we can tuck into a current location, retrain those technicians. While they're retraining, our own technicians in that market can run those additional calls that we're generating. All of our stuff is centralized, so we answer every call, dispatch every call. Indianapolis for all 11 locations. We're all one brand and hope to be one brand moving forward. And then when we go into a new market, we do kind of a, I don't know, there's a bunch of weird names for them, but like, like a brown field where I'm going to acquire, flip the brand and then go off to the races. So we kind of do the, you know, yeah, we want to go in heavy on the branding, but usually do a small acquisition to get things started. So we have calls rolling day one so that the technicians that we bring on we can keep busy. And then we're going to use our brand over top of that and would second Aaron's point. In secondary markets, I think there's a lot of business. If there's one question I get asked a lot, it's like, should I start a new location? I'm like, well, how big are you in your current one? You could probably be four times the size. I think a lot of these markets are a lot bigger than we think. And I would tell you to grow your one location as big as humanly possible before you do a second one. Because distance is a thing. You know, we've got locations that are three hours away. Well, that is a different culture than say, Indianapolis, where all of our back end is and all of that stuff. And so it becomes difficult to manage and you've got a lot of personalities and all of those things. And so, yeah, I mean, I'm already down this road, so I can't turn back now. But yeah, if I had to do it all over again, I would just have one location in Indianapolis and, you know, know where everybody is at. Everybody comes to the same building. It would be awesome.
- [18:40]
B
Yeah, just be like Parker and Sons or Morris Jenkins.
- [18:43]
C
They seem to have figured it out. That seems easier.
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D
All right. Competing in a commoditized market. So it seems like, you know, in the last five years or so, everyone's got prolific or kick charge brand. You know, everyone's on the same CRM. It's kind of table stakes. The booties, the dispatch, text message. So do you guys have one thing in particular that you're doing in your market that your competitors genuinely are just not doing that sets you apart?
- [19:11]
B
It's a great question because I think early on we felt like a lot of those things were competitive edges. Right. And now they're just. Everybody does them. I think one thing that we tried to introduce in our H Vac business is a $1500 buyback program where we just say, hey, any repairs you do for the life of forever, we will buy back that repair. As long as you buy a system from us and there's no strings attached, there's no short term gain, there's nothing on it. Just, hey, here it is. This is what we're doing. We haven't seen anybody in our competitive markets do that. Right. Like the way that we've seen it, at least doing so I think that's one thing that we're leaning into. Seems to be building some momentum for us. But I'll keep you posted.
- [19:50]
C
I think for us it comes back to kind of just our process. So, you know, I talked a little bit ago about onboarding. Our process is our technicians give six options on every single call. And we that is actually one of their KPIs average options offered. And it's difficult. The only one we give them a little bit of leeway is H Vac maintenance. But in all other trades it is six options. And we have to teach them how to build those. It's the toughest thing to do for a technician because they're a technician, they know how to work on the furnace, they know how to work on the water heater. And so building out the value in these Options has been critical. And I know most companies give options. I think our differentiator is the process with which we run and then we want to give those six options and they need to be really, really good. And I think we've seen conversion rate jump. It helps with average ticket. And I think, you know, Zach was talking with, with Mantle about creating that shopping experience. It's hard to shop if they just give you two options, but if you've got six, well then all of a sudden I can start shopping and well, maybe I want a warranty on a longer warranty on this option and I don't want that piece or whatever. And they start kind of building out what it is that they actually want. And so for us, that's been the thing we've kind of leaned into and you know, are always looking to perfect it. It's. It's not science for sure.
- [21:19]
B
Yeah, I agree. I think that that's probably the newest evolution and there's a lot of AI stuff from a digital space that we probably could get into. We don't have enough time that I think everybody really needs to be thinking about.
- [21:27]
D
It's coming up.
- [21:28]
B
Okay. But I think the shopping experience is important and we've really leaned into that with Mantle software to change how people purchase. But you know, we'll, we'll see how that it's going. Going well. So I agree with Chad on that.
- [21:40]
D
One of the best parts of these events is, is what Chris mentioned earlier is that you get a network and talk to people. I was talking to Maverick last night and I hope you don't mind me sharing your idea, but you all, when I operated my business, we lost money on maintenance. I think most of us do. It's really to get in the door. And he just on the radio started giving away free maintenances or, or free memberships, but it doesn't include maintenance. They, they send promotions for maintenances out to those customers. So it's more of a, of you're in the club and I thought that was a great idea. And he. A couple thousand memberships, you added in in like a four month span, I think. Yeah. So differentiator way to get in the door when leads are soft. So, all right, this question's gonna be asked to a couple different debaters up here. So the question is what breaks first at scale? So when you guys have both grown sizable companies from, you know, 10, 15, 20, 50, 100 million, what breaks first as you scale? Is it the operations, culture, Cash flow? What's the pivotal point there?
- [22:48]
B
A Lot of things have broke on our journey. I think first step is around 10 million. You kind of start to break with managers, managing managers starts to happen. Right? So I think you start to have to break there. If you're asking like that type of question here, I think. And then I think we held on pretty good to about 30 million. And I think things started to break again around 30 million. Pretty hard for us. Being able to be, you know, operationally, how much can you be involved? And, you know, moving over to intact was a fun, fun itch, Fun right from there. And you start to see some of the systems that you had as a smaller business don't align with scale. Some of the stuff, some of the pay plans we had kind of got broke as you scale across multiple locations, did stuff. So I think there's just an array of things there. But I think really the biggest thing for me with broke was, you know, as you scale, you know, relationships change in the business and, you know, not everybody's going to make it with you. And that's kind of the sad part, I think, of the business that we don't talk probably enough about. Sometimes it's bittersweet, but, you know, it's just like some people make it with you and some don't. And that's probably the hardest part that breaks in the business, I think, is the relationships with the people that you had as you were building this business all the way up to the scale it is, and they change the dynamics. I know it's not probably the answer. There it goes. Maybe the answer you're looking for, but I think that was the biggest thing for me. I remember calling Tommy, talking to him one time, and his was like, yeah, it's great, man, but it's part of the journey as you go. So that'd be my answer, I think just relationships break and the business changes and people shift, and you got to be okay making those changes.
- [24:27]
C
Hey, Chad Peterman here. I've been all in on Bluon 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.
- [24:52]
B
Easier.
- [24:52]
C
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. Yeah, I think I mentioned it is kind of the process piece, you know, for us in 22, we, I think we hired 300 people and went from 50 million of revenue to 90 in 365 days. And I think what we learned through that as we kind of came out of that was that we threw a lot of people at problems and you know, it's like, oh, we're growing. This is great, you know, just hire some more people, like, let's do all of this. And I think what we learned is that like, it's very difficult to grow, you know, and we hear these amazing growth stories of, you know, we doubled in size, we've grown 6, 60%. And what I would question people or encourage people to do is to understand what processes need to be in place. And it's really hard to build those processes in that condensed amount of time. And so I think getting out ahead of kind of process development. And then to Aaron's point, the other thing is we both came up in nexstar, we joined the same year, damn near the same month. And a lot of those processes when we were smaller were fantastic. Like, it was a great launching pad. But what I can tell you is a lot of those processes, like they break and you've got to go into, you've got to iterate. And it doesn't mean that what you did before was wrong. It just means it worked at that level. And you're going to need to adapt and create a new one to work at a different level. And the unfortunate part about that is you don't always know that it's broke until you break it. And then you've got to correct. And I think to Aaron's point, what allows you to correct on the fly quickly is talent. And he is 100% right. The people that sit at my, on my leadership team today, I think the person that's been there the longest has probably been there for like two or three years because as you're growing, the talent requirement increases substantially. And I know we have a lot of owners in the room. And the one thing I would encourage you to do if you want to minimize those breaks, you yourself are the lid, right? Maxwell talks about it, law of the lid. And you have to be growing and developing faster than your team. I think Tommy said it one time, he sat down with his team and said, hey, here's the deal. This is the pace at which I go. And if you can't keep up with this pace. You may not be on the team long. And so it's you as a leader setting that pace at which you're going to grow and develop, that your team's either going to follow or you're going to find out really quickly who can't, who can't hang. And I need to bring on someone who's, you know, got more talent and has maybe been where we want to go and things of that nature.
- [28:04]
D
I should have mentioned these guys never saw these questions. They're just answering these on the fly. And my next question was how do you stay ahead of these processes when you grow? So you answered that well, I guess you just break them first. So thank you. All right, I want to leave a couple minutes for questions and we're about eight minutes away from time, so I want to cover this one quickly. Even though you touched on a little bit, Aaron, AI, everyone's talking about it, but how are you actually using AI in your business? That really moves the needle and has an effect.
- [28:37]
B
Yes, you look at the AI functions, a lot of the vendors are here have AI stuff that you can use. I mean, obviously we're using things like book features, AI phones, implementing other technology to just add efficiency. We're doing Field Pro, we're doing, I guess Field Pro recorded calls, now what they changed it to, listening to calls, bundling all that information up. The thing is like getting all this data from AI and then understand kind of what to do with it and what activities to take with it. But I think the short term is you want to use things that increase efficiencies through your dispatch, your call center. I think those are just pretty no brainers at this point. I think most people are doing those and diving into that. But I think the real AI game for me is not so much operation. I think there's a ton of operational stuff that'll happen that'll create efficiencies for sure in the business. I think everybody should take it serious because there will be real efficiencies that will happen through AI, through your HR departments, through finance, through lots of things that are coming very quickly and then over overlay AI stuff on your operating systems, which whole nother kind of conversation to start to get into. But again, I think the AI game is also changing in just the digital space. I think people should really be aware of what, you know, what's going to happen through search engines over the next year or two and position yourself to really make sure that you're in a good Spot through this, the AI search engine stuff. I think there's going to be a significant change in how behavior of searching and do stuff happens and if you're not showing up, you'll be erased.
- [30:08]
C
Yeah, I would agree with all of that. I mean I think it's here. So I think this room is probably smart enough to realize that. But I feel like you talk to some people and like, ah, you know, it'll catch on. I mean it's here. You know, we're answering in our call center. I think roughly about 3, 30% of our book jobs are booked with an AI agent right now over the. And that's like over the last six months. Not to mention all the calls that it can handle that it's not a bookable call, but it's a customer calling in or you know, just checking on something or whatever it is. AI is able to handle that really easily. So we're using a call center, we're using dispatch. I think that the one area that, that I'm most interested in is kind of the business intelligence piece of, you know, how quickly it can generate reporting, how quick it can generate like, hey, here's my data. What's going wrong? Whereas you know, before it's like looking at each individual ticket and you know, doing all this stuff. It's like the ability to have that information fast I think is going to, you know, really challenge us. And our, the talent on our team is one, are we capable of using these technologies to make quicker decisions, pivot quicker? Especially as, you know, you know, in the H Vac business, the seasonality and different stuff like that, can we pivot and move quicker so that we don't see kind of the ups and downs of this business and we're able to flatten out those lines. So I think it's very interesting and I think something that, you know, lucky for us, I talked to a lot of friends outside the industry and they're like, hey, who do you use for AI and phones and this, that and the other. And I think we've gotten really lucky with a lot of the, you know, really smart people who have entered the trade space and kind of enabled us to use this technology probably faster in most cases than a lot of industries out there.
- [32:06]
D
Thank you very much. All right, we got time for probably one or two questions. Anyone have questions for these guys?
- [32:13]
A
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- [32:54]
B
Okay,
- [32:59]
D
Three questions. Very generous. Thank you.
- [33:01]
B
Chris Peterman. I'm, like, huge advocate on onboarding, and I think I did it too late in my journey where I was taking onboarding seriously. Can you give us an overview of what your onboarding process looks like, maybe per department or what it looks like so everybody could learn from it?
- [33:17]
C
Yeah, for sure. So for us, they spend. Everyone comes to Indianapolis. So regardless of what location you're at, you come to Indianapolis. We onboard every other Monday. Typically, we'll have a class of, call it 10 to 15 people from, you know, a bunch of different departments, primarily technicians. So they come in, if they're, you know, pretty far away, then we'll bring them in on a Sunday. They're gonna spend the whole week in Indianapolis. So they come in Monday is all in the classroom. They're kind of getting, you know, all of the HR stuff and this, that and the other, how to clock in technology, all of that on Monday. On Tuesday, if they're a field technician, they begin. They begin riding out with other technicians. So what we found is that we tried to teach them the process before they ever went out in the field. And like, they had no basis for what we were trying to teach them. So we flipped that around where they go out with some of our technicians and we have certain technicians that take new hires that run the process really well and do all of that. So they'll do that for, I think it's two days. And then the back end of that week, they come back in the classroom and we teach them what we call the Peterman way. And that's essentially from start to finish on a call. And then they're going to do addition in the second week, they're going to do additional ride out. So they ride out, they see a technician do it, they come back in, they train, and then they go back out with a technician, do it for a little bit. And then it's varied on when we let them out into the field. Some are quicker than others, but that's that's traditionally how we do it. I will tell you that, like, our training piece, one of the biggest, like, breakthroughs that we made from, like, a talent perspective is my COO is a former educator and middle school principal, so he understands all of the mechanics of learning. It blew my mind the first time I saw it. I was. He was like, this is trash. We're gonna redo this whole thing. This is how people actually learn, and this is how we're gonna teach them. So that's been really, really impactful for. For us as we think about onboarding. Good question, Ishmael.
- [35:34]
D
Thank you. Hey, thank you, guys. When you were at 30, 40 million, and you guys had excessive cash or excess cash, what was your highest roi? Whether it be marketing, talent acquisition, or just buying other companies.
- [36:02]
B
40 million. I don't know if I can sit here and say, well, what Was our highest ROI at 40 million? Mike Barnhart, our CFO sitting over there, what was it? Yeah, I mean, yeah, I love to spend money on marketing. I mean, I spent a shit ton of money on marketing.
- [36:27]
C
Yeah, yeah, Yeah. I mean, I always. I always say, like, when it comes to, like, where do I put this excess money? I think the key is where do you want to go? Right? Like, so many people are like, I want to grow. I'm like, okay, like, well, what's, like, the. Where do you want to go? Because that's going to determine where you put your money, like, if you're happy. You know, hey, I've got a $20 million company. We're putting 15 to 20 on the bottom line, and I'm really good dealing with the amount of people that I have to deal with. Well, then put your money in your pocket or put your money in building a process or do whatever. But if the goal is, hey, I want to be 150 million, well, then, okay, I need to spend it on marketing. I need to go maybe get a high quality cfo. I need to do all of these things to build the business at 150. What I've always found is, like, talent is going to be king, and finding the people who have been where you want to go and can help you get there, they knock out a lot of roadblocks. And you don't spend stupid dollars. I mean, we still spend some, but try to minimize those. But, yeah, I mean, to me, knowing where you want to go is the key and what that looks like, and talking to the people in the room who have been there to tell you, hey, this is. Do this. Don't do that. You need these people to kind of help you along the journey.
- [37:50]
B
Maybe to answer the question a little better, since I didn't, maybe I misunderstood what the question was there. At 40 million, we did a rebrand of the business. We did kind of what Chad talked about. We refocused our attention to what does the future of our brand look like. Where do we put our resources? Where do we put capital investment in? So we did a rebrand of the business. We added in multiple trades. We also looked at expansion in Greenfield to other markets. We understood what was the cost to be able to operate these. Can we cash flow that for the next 18, 24, 36 months? Have we built enough cash reserves for that? Do we feel good with that? We also then invested into our talent pool for developing technicians through building out our university, our training programs, all of those areas to be able to backfill that staff and that growth over time. So that's what we did, similar to what Chad Sanders really invested in the brand itself. So we went from transactional, more of transactional advertising to brand advertising to transactional mix, really spent that. Then we went into Greenfield market, really bought a bunch of, you know, bought branding messages to do that, and then we worked on just investing in talent development and spent the money there.
- [38:54]
D
Thank you. All right, one more doc.
- [38:59]
C
What's up, buds? Long time, Chad. I didn't know that you did a deal, so congratulations on that. That's fantastic. Yeah. Hell yeah. So along the ride, we're all trying to win here, right? And winning looks a little different for everybody. Maybe give me. Each of you guys, give me your biggest personal win to date and what you think your next big win is going to be.
- [39:25]
B
Well, just got some extra money. How about you? I say my first win was first off. Most of you guys know my story is, of course, went bankrupt with my first business early on at the age of 28. Went completely bankrupt and then just getting back on my feet and getting going. I think the biggest win for me was my first million dollars, like in my bank account personally. Felt like a recovery to life. So I'd say that was just. You're asking me a personal win. That was a personal win for me. I think it was just not giving up on myself and realizing that you come back from bankruptcy back and have a million dollars in your bank account. I think that was the. That was kind of the big win for me to get moving again. And then I think the next win is just that building a business that has opportunity for the future, for the Trades. I love the trades. My mission for our company is build great tradespeople, advance their life and win big. So I love the trades. Trades saved my life. It allowed me to rebound back from bankruptcy. It taught me a skill early on in my life that I didn't have. So my goal future is to keep building this business where it can advance trades, people's lives, create opportunity into it and you know, you know, obviously, you know, I got some financial goals that I'd like to achieve as we go in 26, 27 with the company. I was 28 years old when I went bankrupt with my first business, which was in new construction, plumbing, about three and a half million dollar business. And during the housing crash lost that business. So it's been 19 years now building and trust me, the first nine was like nothing or doing anything. But so, yeah, I just think my personal win is just be able to bounce back. I think resilience matters and everything. Right. And we all go through resilience stuff. So that's answering your question, I guess, in some sense. And then my other big goal benchmark was $100 million business, was to put that out there 15 years ago. When I met Mike, 13 years ago, I said, I want to build $100 million business. Don't know how it is. I didn't even know really anybody at that time. I wasn't part of nexstar or any of those things. So it was my goal is still to build $100 million business independently before potentially find a partner. And that's what I want to complete this year. So that's my other mission, is to complete that independently, grow business to $100 million and then from there look at what the next steps of chapters of my life and our business life is. I was a million dollars when I wrote that goal.
- [41:49]
C
Yeah, I mean, for me personally, you know, when I think about, you know, I spent a lot of time at work, which I love, you know, to Aaron's point, getting to hear the stories of guys who came in as a $18 an hour apprentice and now are running a branch or, you know, some of our lead installers make, you know, 130, $140,000 a year. And they started like three years ago, they're making $18 an hour. And I'm like, wow, this is really, really cool. I don't know that there's many industries where someone could accelerate that quickly. And just to hear those stories of guys who, you know, got into the trade and, you know, they were kind of not knowing where they were going to go and then all of a sudden they're in a place where, you know, their wife's able to go back to school to become a nurse and she's always wanted to become a nurse. Like, to me, those are the stories that keep me working because the ability for something that is, you know, in my mind, the trades. Our mission at Peterman Brothers is to elevate the trades. That's what we want to do. That's what we talk about when we walk into a customer's home. It's. We're here to elevate the trades. And I don't. My dad started our company back in 86. He was an H vac tech. And you know, I knew what dad did, but it wasn't anything that I was interested in. I can't fix a damn thing. Go figure. But you know, to be able to be a part of an industry that to me has made such an impact on so many lives, to have a small part in that, to be in rooms like this where like, you know, you got the best of the best that have, you know, truly revolutionized this. I mean, we talked about Nexstar. I remember joining back in 2015, and I'm just looking all googly eyed at these guys who are running. You know, at the time back then it was like 30, 40 million dollar companies. Like that was the biggest of the big. Like these guys were rock stars, the Dave Geigers of the world. All of those guys that, you know, you looked up to and to be able to share kind of our story and to be able to say, hey, you guys helped me out a ton and to just be doing the same thing. Like, to me, this is the most fun that we get to do is learn from each other, share it. There's plenty of fricking business out there. So it doesn't matter if I'm in your market, not in your market, who gives a shit? We're all here to help each other, hopefully create lives for the people that work at our companies and many more. I mean, I think all of the activity in the space, like people are starting to notice that we know what we're doing and we're doing some really, really good stuff out there. And to me, that's kind of the exciting part about the future and where we're headed for sure.