In this episode, John Wilson and guest Rich Jordan dig into one of the scariest (and most valuable) moves you can make in home service: rebranding multiple companies into a single brand.
Rich runs three acquired companies across New Hampshire and New Jersey…and he’s in the middle of rolling them all into one new identity: High Ground Service Pros. They walk through why he’s willingly tearing down a strong local brand (Sanford), what’s driving the decision, and how he’s trying to avoid losing customers, culture, or SEO in the process.
From “house of brands” vs “branded house” to truck wraps, domains, Google Business Profiles, and core values (“seize the high ground”), this is a tactical conversation for anyone growing through acquisition or multi-market expansion.
What You’ll Learn
- When to keep multiple brands vs. going all-in on one — and how that choice impacts growth, culture, and marketing.
- How to execute a rebrand without losing customers — scripts, GBPs, websites, and call center tactics that actually work.
- Where the real ROI comes from — SEO, media, and operational focus once every truck and trade is under a single name.
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John Wilson
Guest
Rich Jordan
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💼 Special Thanks to AppleTree Business Services!
One of the most common and expensive mistakes in acquisitions is not getting serious about accounting. Whether you’re buying a business or running one, you need the right financial partner. That’s why we’ve partnered with AppleTree Business Services — a one-stop shop fluent in tools like ServiceTitan and Housecall Pro.
👉 Listeners get a free tax & financial review, plus 10% off quality of earnings when buying a business.
Visit https://appletreebusiness.com and tell Patrick Owned and Operated sent you!
More Ways To Connect with O&O
John Wilson, CEO of Wilson Companies
Jack Carr, CEO of Rapid HVAC
📌 Disclaimer: Some links may include UTM parameters or affiliate relationships, meaning we may earn a commission if you make a purchase. Episodes may feature sponsors, but all opinions expressed are our own.
OAO EP 261
John Wilson: [00:00:00] And you're prepping to rebrand. What are some pros that you have that you can just like clock off?
Rich Jordan: Yeah, I guess you're de-risk. From like a reputation standpoint, one of the big cons is like bandwidth, especially if you're trying to do like branded marketing, it gets it really hard to do when you're doing it for more than one brand.
John Wilson: How are you thinking about customer like risk?
Rich Jordan: You want customers that are looking for that old brand to still be able to find that old brand? What's the story that you're gonna. Tell in those markets to the teams that you're changing their name to the customer.
John Wilson: If you're in marketing working across multiple brands, it's really hard to have like the shower epiphany.
No one can put a hundred percent focus into one thing.
Welcome back to Owned and Operated. I'm your host, John Wilson. I run a $30 million home service company in northeast Ohio. And for fun, I run a podcast talking about the industry. Today on the show, I have my good friend, rich Jordan from Sanford, temperature [00:01:00] Control. Rich was just on the show about a month ago, and it was his story of 70 700,000 a year to 30 million in just three years.
Today we're talking about branding. This is gonna be an awesome topic and I look forward to diving in Rich, welcome back to Own and Operated. I. This might be your fourth or fifth man like you. You've, you're a frequent flyer. I'm a
Rich Jordan: regular, yeah.
John Wilson: Yeah. Well, I feel like what if you're not here on air physically with us?
You get a lot of mentions. I, I realize it more and more. I'm like, yeah, I was just talking to Rich about that. And I'm like, you know, for the people that have no idea who Rich is, RIE. Yeah.
Rich Jordan: It's like I have, I have to be on here frequently just so people know who I am when you mention me.
John Wilson: Yeah. We just did a good, I think your episode from, uh, Pantheon came out maybe a month ago, two months ago, and that was a good episode.
It was like. 700,000 to 30 million in three years, four years. And then you're at three locations and you guys are, you guys [00:02:00] are growing, uh, like crazy.
Rich Jordan: Yep. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That was a fun episode.
John Wilson: So, yeah, I'd love, uh, maybe we, you know. We can dive in pretty quick. 'cause most people, like you wanna know more about Sanford, we can just like link to that sh show from a few weeks ago.
'cause I think that'll give people a really good idea. But today you came on 'cause you have three companies. Uh, you, you're in New Hampshire. New Jersey and also New Jersey. Yep. And, uh, all through acquisition, and I think you've acquired a few others in there too, they just sort of rolled in and you're prepping to rebrand to one brand, which is like kind of an interesting conversation.
Like, I think about this a lot. I know I did this 'cause we had, we did nine acquisitions, but then it's all just Wilson now.
Rich Jordan: That's right. You did do it well because you operated under, under those brands for, for a little while. Couple
John Wilson: years. Yeah, a couple years. And, uh, but yeah, I think the, for, for being in one location, I think it makes a [00:03:00] lot of sense.
Uh, so I mean, maybe we can even give some pros and cons. 'cause I think there's some funny pros and cons of running multiple brands. Like what, what are some pros that you have like. That you can just like clock off your team's doing the work. Big reputation makes sure that Google knows it. Some of the key areas they help are if you have multiple Gs, they can post on every single one of them every day.
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Rich Jordan: Pros of running multiple brands. Um, I mean, I guess you're de-risked from like a reputation standpoint. You could have one, you could feasible have one brand that screws up, gets bad reviews, whatever it is. I, I don't know. What, what do you think?
John Wilson: I think if it's in one market, there's [00:04:00] some,
Rich Jordan: yeah.
John Wilson: It you get the people that I know that do it.
Um, like, compete against their brands. Compete against each other. Yeah. Which on one hand is like weird. And on the other hand, either way they got the customer, so like nobody cares.
Rich Jordan: Yeah. I've definitely heard, yeah. Some guys like to, yeah, they like to get cute and say like, you know, the customer got three quotes and all three quotes are from us.
John Wilson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I have, um, like Har Heartland, you know, home services, the big. Consolidator, they do that. They have like 10 brands in our market. I know they have a bunch of brands in Chicago, a bunch of brands in Detroit. Um, and yeah, you can call all, you can call all 10 and get an estimate and have no idea that you're working with the same JWC or whatever the p backer is out New York.
Yeah. Uh, there's a local guy that does that too. I think he's up to five brands and that was always his thing. He would like. It takes a lot of maneuvering.
Rich Jordan: Yeah. That just seems [00:05:00] small, if seems like a lot of effort. Yeah, it seems like a
John Wilson: lot effort. Well, dude, they had a shared call center too, so like the dispatch team literally knew that they just sent Jimmy from a b, c company to this lady's house, and now they have to send like.
Alfredo from De De Company, and she's like, all right. Can't send the same guy. But it's, you know, I'm like, this is crazy, man. But yeah, I, I just, either way they get the customer trying to
Rich Jordan: market. I just even, I just think about trying to market, you know, five or 10 brands in a market. Yeah. Um, and if you're trying to market, well, it's transactional marketing.
Well,
John Wilson: yeah, I think it's transactional marketing like, uh, yeah. Google, which, you know, is most of ours these days. It's a lot of leads. Like, we just need the lead. Yeah. Um, so I, I think that's probably the biggest pro. I think if you're acquiring companies, there's no potential disruption. Uh, like you brought these, you bought these brands.
Yeah, I did.
So there's like switching costs. There's potential customer like [00:06:00] disruption. Um. I dunno, but I think those are the pros.
Rich Jordan: Yeah. One, one pro is that you don't have to rewrap all the trucks. That's, that's one
John Wilson: pro. Yeah. Well, you and I have argued about this, but like we've rebranded a bunch and we did not rewrap any trucks.
We're running around, we're running around multi, multi-branded, I don't think as, I don't think as much anymore. Well, so we, you know, we bought these, uh,
Rich Jordan: like you, you have some like a PT electric trucks on the road right now.
John Wilson: So those were unmarked, but we brought, okay, we bought downs, uh, drain cleaning and we bought central heating and air and we still have one or two downs drain cleaning trucks.
And then we have three central heating and airs. I mean, most of the other ones, like, we bought those companies three years ago and we've just like cycled 'em out. So it was a lot of old vehicles, like, I'm not gonna rewrap. A five-year-old vehicle if I'm gonna cycle it at six years.
Rich Jordan: Right. And you also don't need to deadline it.
You could keep it on the road.
John Wilson: Right. So yeah, that's, that's how we thought about it. [00:07:00]
Rich Jordan: Yeah. We did that with some of our like, like when we did the Bill Trombley acquisition in New Hampshire, that was a pretty decent sized one that, in that I remember. Yeah. 16. 16 vehicles. And we sort of slowly rewrapped or salvage those trucks over the course of 12 months.
Yeah. Following the, the tuck in.
John Wilson: Okay. Alright, so those are the pros. What, what are the, what are the cons?
Rich Jordan: I think the, one of the big cons is like bandwidth, especially if you're trying to do like branded marketing, right? Like non-transactional branded marketing. Um. Like all the things that go behind, like creative and media buys Yeah.
And things like that. It gets really hard to do when you're doing it for more than one brand. Um, yeah. You end up what, what it, what ends up happening is you end up neglecting some brands. Um, and that's kind of the story for us. Like we, we basically leaned really hard into the Sanford branding and, and grew that [00:08:00] name in its market, but really, you know, kind of let the other, well, the other one at the time kind of.
Wither on the vine as far as branding. Yeah. And we just did transactional down there for the most part. I also, there's some element of, like, even with my vendor negotiations, you know, we're trying to negotiate with vendors, you know, equipment pricing across, you know, trying to use like the muscle and like mass of the multi-market to get better pricing and stuff.
And like vendors just really struggle with the fact that you're not the same name even really. Yeah, it's like a huge pain in the neck. Um, no. Yes, we own that one. Yes, it's the same EIN, like, you know, um,
John Wilson: that's really interesting.
Rich Jordan: No pain. Yeah, it's actually.
John Wilson: That doesn't even like make sense to me. No,
Rich Jordan: it doesn't.
It doesn't. And I mean, obviously people get around it, you know, like, uh, these, uh, PE firms and stuff are certainly negotiating pricing.
John Wilson: Yeah. I mean, I'm like, I'm again sitting [00:09:00] here like Heartland has 10 in my market. Like that's not even like 10. That's 10 in my market. They're all within 10 minutes of each other.
Right? Like, but you know what is kind of funny? I was talking, I mean maybe this sort of proves it. I was talking with one of our wholesaler uh, relationships last week. They, they have one of the Heartland accounts. And I was like, what do you mean you have one of the Heartland accounts? Like, why wouldn't you have all of the Heartland accounts?
That doesn't make sense. The Heartland account. Yeah. I'm like, that doesn't make sense. Uh, and it was exactly that. Like sometimes the individual brand can negotiate better rates than the p. Like themselves.
Rich Jordan: Yeah. And I think just like, even, even like inside the team messaging leadership, like culture and values and stuff, it's like, it's possible and we have, you know, imbued that into the three different teams, but there's friction in that when you're like wearing different colors under a different name, different [00:10:00] taglines.
Yeah. You know, um. Again, like brands get neglected, you know, like this brand's got all the nice swag and the nice jackets and like, you know. Mm-hmm. And like these guys don't. Yeah. Um, so there's definitely, there's some of that too. It's just friction. Yeah. And I think when you're on a small team, like if we had this like big, robust team, like maybe it would be easier to manage and like we could have different.
Brand managers, you know, that were focused on those brands.
John Wilson: Mm-hmm.
Rich Jordan: But, but we don't, we don't have that sort of, you know, we don't have the sort of resources. So Yeah. Ends up being like, can I split my own brain to three, three pieces and try to like keep all this stuff in the air?
John Wilson: I mean, you've run two brands for years.
Yeah. So. It's obviously changed at three. Like you ran two brands for like four years, right? Or three years. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so it was [00:11:00] the third brand that you were like, hold on. Yeah. Whoa, whoa. Yeah. This is weird. Like, is that how it felt? Like you just sort of added the next one? It was like, oh, this no longer makes as much sense.
Rich Jordan: I think, I mean, I've always kind of wanted to be under one name.
John Wilson: It's
cohesive.
Rich Jordan: Yeah. Like I, it's something I've always desired. Um. And then the IT pro, I think it was the third brand that sort of just like, kind of was like, all right man, are we gonna do this or not? Like, how many brands are we gonna grow to?
Are we gonna go to 5, 7, 10?
John Wilson: Yeah.
Rich Jordan: Um, like this is just gonna get unwieldy. So while it's like somewhat manageable right now, like it's not gonna be manageable soon. So we really should like, build this muscle of like, figure out how to execute the rebrand, get everyone under the same name. Um, and have that really be the desired play going forward.
And I think like, you know, like you and I talked a little bit about greenfield operations on our last [00:12:00] episode, I think that that too kind of weighs in here. 'cause obviously, like if you're gonna greenfield, you're gonna greenfield under a particular name that already exists. Yeah. Um, so it's like, all right, like, what name are we gonna do that under?
You know, we're about to greenfield into Southern Maine. That's gonna, that's our first one. Um, and that's gonna be an extension of the Sanford location in New Hampshire. So are we gonna do this Greenfield at Sanford or are we gonna like do the rebranding name change before we do that Greenfield, you know, and start, yeah, start fresh.
So that's, that was definitely kind of like the third branch and then the green, the active greenfield both, I think probably pushed us over the line on this.
John Wilson: Yeah. How are you thinking about customer like risk?
Rich Jordan: Yeah, I think I, um, there, so there's definitely risk, but I think [00:13:00] it's able to be mitigated. Um, so what kind of gives me confidence on this is that Bill Trombley, when we, when we bought the Bill Trombley company, it was kind of like, it was at the time it was like a peer company to Sanford.
Pretty close. And Sanford bought it in that market and we just absorbed Bill Trombley into Sanford. Um, did away with the brand. You know, everyone, you know, Sanford shirts, Sanford Hats, Sanford trucks. Um, what worked for us then was sort of two things. One is that you want customers that are looking for that old brand to still be able to find that old brand.
Yeah. Right. And like that generally means like digital real estate, right? It's like Google Business Profiles, websites. Um, so like we left all that intact. We didn't change it at all. We, the only thing we changed about the website was like, it was like a photo [00:14:00] of like me and Bill shaking hands on the, on the marquee of the website, um, with like a little bit of intro to the um,
John Wilson: mm-hmm.
Rich Jordan: To the change. But that's the only change we made. The Google business profile is like completely pure. We left all that stuff up. Um, and then in our ServiceTitan we, you know, created campaigns that made it like very clear that like these phone calls are coming from a Bill Trombley phone number, right?
And then for like six months, the call center answered the phone. As you know, if they came in from a Bill Trombley phone number, it was, thanks for calling Bill Trombley. You know, how may I help you today? Book the entire call. Take everyone, take them all the way through the booking flow, and then on the end be like, Hey, you know, we're, we're happy to announce we recently partnered with Sanford and in order to get someone out to your home faster, or maybe a Sanford or a Trombley truck coming out, is that okay with you?
Oh yeah, no problem.
John Wilson: Great.
Mm-hmm. [00:15:00]
Rich Jordan: And that's ba that's how we ran that. Um, I mean,
John Wilson: that feels like way better than what we did. Like the first time we did this, it was nine years ago, we answered the phone. Wilson Plumbing and r and r Plumbing, like that was how, which like for everybody including Wilson Plumbing.
Yeah. 25-year-old John. I was like, yeah, this is a great idea.
Rich Jordan: Yeah. So that, that worked really well and like as far, yeah, as far as the feedback that like I was able to receive and get is that like we didn't really lose customers and like, and customers took it really well over the phone. Occasionally there'd be some long time trombly customer.
Mm-hmm. That would give a little bit of pushback. Great. Like we'd love for them to give us pushback while we're on the phone with them. Yeah. Like our CSRs are kind of armed with like, here's how to handle this. You know, like, yeah. Same team. You know, like same service. Your warranty is still active, blah, blah, blah.
Right.
John Wilson: How do you think that impacts like overstate? Because like, you know, I'm thinking about that acquisition and you guys were in the same market. Yeah. They had probably [00:16:00] seen a Sanford truck before. That's not gonna be the case for the next one. So like, is it a similar playbook? Yeah. Like what do you think?
Rich Jordan: I think it is a similar playbook. Um, the, we're we're basically planning to run it almost exactly the same. The, the, the tough thing for us is that like we've got, and we have a shared call center now, um, yeah. Across the three markets. My, my CSR is like, God bless 'em. They, they've gotta run that playbook for three separate brands at the same time.
John Wilson: Yeah, yeah. That's exhausting. Um, so
Rich Jordan: it's gonna be kind of tough. Um, yeah,
John Wilson: well, even right now it's tough. I mean, they're booking for like, Hey, thanks for calling. Like, yeah. I think that's complicated.
Yeah. How,
how did you, like, this is like in the weeds, but AI in the call center, like how did you do that?
Because I'm like, I'm imagining AI has to mess that up.
Rich Jordan: Uh, just talking about like the three brands, [00:17:00] AI in the call center, um, we've been able to basically like silo the bots.
John Wilson: Okay.
Rich Jordan: So, so like, if a call comes in from this phone number and this ServiceTitan account, then it's gonna, it's like a separate bot that knows nothing, like, has no knowledge of the other brands.
Only this one brand. Okay. So like right now we're rolling out new bots this week. Will still be siloed by local brand, but they'll also have knowledge of this new brand and like how to massage that, that introduction. So we're, we were just working on that yesterday actually.
John Wilson: All right. All right, cool.
Alright. So you think different state, it's the same, it's the same playbook.
Rich Jordan: I think it's the same playbook and I think it would've been so, you know. Initially, like our natural path, like our natural, natural inclination was to take yeah, our largest existing brand and use that brand across all three markets, right?
So for us, [00:18:00] that's Sanford and New Hampshire, Sanford's.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Rich Jordan: Double the size of the next largest brand that we have. Um, and, and we've done a lot of brand investment in Sanford, so we are gonna just make everything Sanford. Um. The problem, like as we got close and like we were, we were gonna run that play, we were ready to run that play.
Um, but as we kinda like got closer to the finish line on that, what became clear to me was like. You know, we're taking the, and, and like my other two companies are guarantee Plumbing, G-A-R-O-N-T, Tom Garant Guarantee Plumbing and C and F Plumbing, which is mm-hmm for the two, the last names of the two founders of that company.
Um, so we were gonna take the last names of the forgotten founders of these two brands and we're gonna replace them with another past founder, last [00:19:00] name. Not in the market. And like, it's like, what, what's the story that you're gonna tell in those markets, you know, to the teams that you're changing their name to the customers, to the market?
It, it basically, it just seems like a, it, it seems like an acquisition is what, is what it looks like. Um, and like that story's just like hard to tell and hard to get people behind. So that's why we deci, we really went towards like, Hey, look, you know, if, if we're gonna do this, like let's really think about should we just change our name?
Um, like should we take this opportunity to change the name of everything and change it to something that's like, that we feel like we can kind of rally behind that speaks to our values, tells the market a little bit about us and like what they can expect from us. Um. And that's, and that's the route we went.
So we're actually, so we're taking all three brands to include Sanford, you know, which is our most robust brand. And we're changing the name to [00:20:00] a, to a entirely new name.
John Wilson: That's, yeah, that's a lot. It's awesome. It's a lot. It's a lot. I'm like, I'm imagining now granted, like my name's still on the business, so I think like, yeah.
Yeah.
I'm like, would I do that? And, and my first thought was like, no, no, I wouldn't. But it's also like, well, yeah, it's 'cause my name's on the business, like, I think.
Okay. Alright, so the, what's the new name and the
Rich Jordan: story? The story is a little bit better. Dude. What's the
John Wilson: new name? Like,
Rich Jordan: uh, yeah, so the new name. Um, so, and I'll give a little bit of like prelude here is um, yeah, yeah.
John Wilson: Give us some prelude.
Rich Jordan: Our, so we have. Core behaviors at our company, um, that like we, we take really seriously.
We brief all the time, spoken around the office all the time. Um, and one of them that the team has really rallied behind, actually I'll, I'll prelude this even too, is, um, I [00:21:00] actually last week, so I did, our brand reveals to the teams last week, and at Sanford I had the team. There's, we have 10 core behaviors and I had the team, I was pulling guys into the.
A conference room on the whiteboard and having them vote on their top core behavior. The winner was seize the high ground, um, seize the high ground, do the right thing, even when not easy or profitable. That's, that's one of our core behaviors. A lot of the guys really rally behind that. Um, they're proud of that.
And we, and we, we live that every day. Um. To the chagrin of my wallet sometimes.
John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. I'm like you saying that, looking off in the distance. The, uh, it was just like, we live that every day and I'm just like, ah, dude. Yeah. I lose money every single day, every day. I have never made a dollar.
Rich Jordan: Yeah. But we really like, we really go above and beyond for our, for our customers.
[00:22:00] Um, certainly we make things right when things go wrong and stuff like that. And yeah. And that's the core behavior that really drives that. So we're, so we're rebranding as High Ground Service Pros. Okay. Um, and, and you know, like I, I really think like we could, the way we could do the brand marketing for that in the market, I think we, it could be pretty powerful.
Um, so that's. That's where we're
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Whoa, no missed calls, no missed customers. So I would've also thought largest brand. Mm-hmm. Um, I also, but maybe it's 'cause that's just where you sit every day. What do you think the loss is? So like branding, investment in your mind that sort of like sunk cost?
Rich Jordan: I think so. I mean, it trust me, like it pains me deeply to change the name mm-hmm.
Of Sanford. I mean, I've invested a lot of money in that brand. Mm-hmm. And, and really like we built that to like what I would consider like nearly like household name status in New Hampshire. Um, and it's the largest, or you could argue like, it's the, it's like the number two, um, largest home service company in the state of New Hampshire right now.
And, and we built it into that. Mm-hmm. When we took it over, [00:24:00] it was only 12 people, 3 million revenue. So yeah, I mean, like, even the signage on my building cost me like 60 grand to put up. Now I have to turn it down. Yeah. Like it kills me. Um, so,
John Wilson: so what's the thought? Like how much is the investment to do this?
Rich Jordan: It's, um, it's like a half a million bucks. Yeah. Okay. It's like, it's like 300 grand just in wrap truck wraps.
John Wilson: Mm-hmm.
Rich Jordan: Um, it's like another 50 in uniforms and uh, and then it's like website design. Um. And then some stuff that we probably would've done anyway for other, for like the existing brands like radio spot production and yeah, stuff like that.
John Wilson: What do you think about, uh, we had this with one of the brands we bought. So I bought this company and the company was like tiny, uh, like a million dollar business or something, or like 1.5 [00:25:00] and. Um, and their SEO was ridiculous, like way better than ours. It was like, I think you remember this. I remember. It was embarrassing.
It was so embarrassing. Like, oh, it was, it was actually
Rich Jordan: insane. It was insane. It was
John Wilson: insane. It was like a local HVAC company doing a million and a half a year that was hitting like 15,000 page views a month. Like it was, it was absolutely ridiculous. Um. It
Rich Jordan: had like a 40 domain authority or something.
John Wilson: Yeah, it was, it was like crazy.
I mean, they honestly should have just shut down the business and turned it into like an e-commerce for filters. Like it would've been a larger and more valuable, uh, business. Um, but yeah, kind of funny. So like how are you thinking about the investments you made in like digital real estate, like SEO as you transition?
'cause you're gonna change domains, you're gonna do all that. So like how are you thinking about it?
Rich Jordan: Yeah, so we've got. Um, so like Sanford's domain performs very well now, right? We've made some SEO investments [00:26:00] there. Um, it gets, I think, right? We, we've definitely seen a down, like AI has hurt us on the SEO front, um, in the past six months, but I think we're still getting like 14,000 visits a month on that website.
John Wilson: Mm-hmm.
Rich Jordan: Um, and it, it's got a decent domain authority. I think it's like 27. Um. But it's not like, it's not crazy good. Yeah. Um, we, so I actually bought high ground.com, uh, which I was surprised that I was able to get.
John Wilson: That is really surprising. Yeah. Was it like for like $20 or like $2,000? No,
Rich Jordan: it was, it was, yeah, it was a little bit of money.
It was like it was 10 grand. Um, yeah.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Rich Jordan: But, uh, it, you know. It's a two word domain. Yeah. Um, pretty solid domain. Domain and likes. Yeah.
John Wilson: 10, 10 grand fills pretty good, to be honest. It,
Rich Jordan: it had, it was dormant, like someone was sitting on it, but it had been previously used for [00:27:00] like a, uh, like a technology, hr, yeah.
Platform thing. Mm-hmm. And they had made a bunch of investments in SEO, the backlink profile's crazy. And it has a 48 domain authority.
John Wilson: Holy shit. That's crazy. And I don't how much of that transfers.
Rich Jordan: I
John Wilson: think it,
Rich Jordan: I think it, I think it transfers. I, I think you just have to maintain, you know, if you start like bleeding backlinks, I think it goes away.
But I think if you maintain the backlinks, it works. I, I mean, honestly, I'm not sure, like we'll find out.
John Wilson: Yeah, we'll find out
Rich Jordan: because we're gonna be changing the content and I wonder if like Google's not gonna like that.
John Wilson: Well, it's gonna go to four oh fours. You'd have to like copy where the link's destined to.
Rich Jordan: The thing is, I think a lot of the back links are actually to the homepage.
John Wilson: I mean, that would be amazing. Yeah. Because that then it probably would just continue,
Rich Jordan: right?
John Wilson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wonder, I wonder if there'll
Rich Jordan: be any [00:28:00] penalty that like, you know, the site's back link to it now are all like HR related sites, but, and then it'll be a plumbing site, so I wonder if that's gonna be a problem.
Yeah. But I don't know.
John Wilson: That's really interesting. But
Rich Jordan: it feels like, yeah, like I actually bought the domain without even realizing the, the domain authority of it. And then I was like, oh, this is a nice little surprise.
John Wilson: Yeah, that is solid. Yeah, that's solid. Alright, so we, alright, we got the domain. We're gonna change the website.
Are, are you gonna, I know there's a way to redirect, so that would be something to look into. Have you looked into that?
Rich Jordan: So the only problem, I think eventually yes, but. Kinda like I was talking about before, I think you're supposed to do it
John Wilson: sooner than later. So we looked into this for this website that was outperforming like crazy and we didn't do it soon enough, and I think it made it not impossible, but very challenging.
What we, what you're supposed to do is every single page you can. [00:29:00] I'm gonna use the wrong words here so someone in the comments is gonna use the right word, but basically you permanently redirect that page, so the back link still counts. The domain authority just transfers over. That's how it's been described to me, right?
So anything, anything positive from the page, or negative, I guess, from the page that you're linking, like permanently is associated with a new page. And what makes it hard is you have to do it page by page, right? It's individual page by page, not like website. Because you want this specific URL to go to this specific URL.
So your pa your website has a ton of pages, but I bet you could probably find the top performing hundred right. And permanently redirect them.
Rich Jordan: Yeah. I guess I just wonder how that squares up with, um, like keeping that digital real estate so that your customers don't, so that your customers still land on the page that they were looking for.
You know, if they're looking for Sanford, you want 'em to find Sanford.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Rich Jordan: So that's like the only thing that would keep me from just like straight up redirecting it, [00:30:00] you know, maybe keep
John Wilson: the homepage.
Rich Jordan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe. Yeah, there's definitely some like subordinate pages that have good backlink profiles and stuff, so maybe, maybe we could re redirect those.
John Wilson: Yeah, that's interesting. Alright, so you're uniform signs. How, like what's the time period you're thinking about this?
Rich Jordan: So we've been working on this like the. The brand design, the copy, the website. Mm-hmm. All that stuff. We've been working on that for like, since August. Um, so like three months.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Rich Jordan: Um, and now like we just, we just revealed the name to the team, so the team's known that the name's gonna change for a while, and they've all been like, you know, anxiously awaiting what the name was gonna be.
We just revealed that last week. Um, so now we're the website's supposed to go live? F in three days. Um, we're like [00:31:00] transitioning gs. Mm-hmm. The name on the GS one one GBP in each market. And so there's some, like, there's some like fuse time to all this stuff, you know? So things have to get verified, you know?
Um, and. At the same time we're running billboard and radio campaigns in those markets.
John Wilson: Yeah,
Rich Jordan: that's all starting next week.
John Wilson: Is it announcing the rebrand or just like talking about high ground?
Rich Jordan: The billboards are announcing the transition, so it's like co-branded. The, the radio spots are just like pure high ground spots.
Um. As if, as if the other brands didn't exist. Yeah. Um, and then, but yeah, so we're, and then trying to just like mitigate operational disruption. We're doing two trucks a week. We're, we're re [00:32:00] wrapping.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Rich Jordan: In each market. Um, so like Sanford for instance, that's gonna take like four months
John Wilson: mm-hmm.
Rich Jordan: To rewrap.
Um.
John Wilson: It was a humble brag for how large this fleet was. Yeah. For the folks that missed that. It might,
Rich Jordan: it might be, it might be five
John Wilson: months, might might be longer. It might be five months. Could be six. Yeah.
Rich Jordan: Yeah. You know, I had to throw that in there. Um, yeah, it was good. But, uh, so yeah, it's kinda like there's gonna be this sort of awkward, like, two month stage.
Yeah. Um, but that's, that's kind of like what we're trying to do. Yeah, that's because I get the, get the digital real estate assets up. Yeah. Start doing mass media, pushing mass media to those digital assets. Keep the old brand digital assets up as well.
John Wilson: Mm-hmm.
Rich Jordan: Um, and then the hope is that we're like, not really, uh, like losing customers due to confusion, you know?
John Wilson: So like the cost is obviously [00:33:00] like a big part of the equation. It's also an add back, right? So it's a one time capitalized cost that you get to carry forward for who knows how long. So like the cash, it's definitely like a lot of cash out of pocket. But the, the reason I'm saying that is why do you think PE doesn't do this?
Because they, it is an add back. It's an invisible cost, uh, as far as like whatever their next trade is. So why do you think they don't rebrand more into one? Why isn't Apex. You know, 250 shops of Apex?
Rich Jordan: I don't know. That's a good question. I mean, um, especially when it comes to their smaller shops, you know, like, I, like,
John Wilson: I mean, we have some Apex shops locally that are like a million dollars a year of revenue, and I'm like, I don't even know why Apex bought them.
Like, it's, it's very odd.
Rich Jordan: Yeah. Like for those, like, I definitely think I'd be rebranding.
John Wilson: Mm-hmm.
Rich Jordan: Um, and like at least consolidating in a market, [00:34:00] um. I don't know. I mean, there's risk, right? Like there's execution risk to doing this. Like I certainly didn't, I didn't set out on this like having all the answers to what we were gonna do.
Like we sort of landed on some that I think are pretty good.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Rich Jordan: Um, but it wasn't like super obvious how to do this. I don't know. I, I, you know, maybe it's like, you know, the focus on just like retaining and maintaining EBITDA and growing EBITDA is like, Hey, look, we don't, we don't need to mess with the name.
John Wilson: A limit of J Curve.
Rich Jordan: Yeah. I would say like, I
John Wilson: mean, maybe firepower for other acquisitions, I don't know, because I, I think like what we've seen and I'm, I. I don't, the story feels different here just because it's different markets, but we rebranded all of those brands into the same company in 2023, and the next like 12 months was 60% year over year growth.
And we started at 13 or 14 million. Like it was like ridiculous, right? Uh, and it just like it [00:35:00] clicked. We were all one team. We were cohesive. It got rid of like half of the daily conversations used to be about this team versus that team versus whatever. And it's like. None of it mattered. Now, what also happened at the same time for us is we rebranded, but we also physically combined locations.
Mm-hmm. So we were able to solve problems in 10 minutes. What used to take a month? Yeah. Because I could just walk an office over and be like, we're doing this right now.
Yeah.
And it is hard to say, like, which was which, but it definitely in one market anyways, like, I mean, it, it blew up pretty quick.
Rich Jordan: Well, and now like the firepower that you put behind any sort of mass media or branding Yep.
Or, you know, events team or whatever it is, you know, the name on the, I couldn't imagine
John Wilson: doing that across, across multiple teams. I mean, it's massive. It's just too confusing.
Rich Jordan: It would be massively inefficient. It'd be massively inefficient.
John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It feels like, yeah, just a, basically a waste. Like, like why?
Yeah, why bother? Um. [00:36:00] All you could do is transactional marketing. And even then, like yeah, you can't do events, you can't do canvassing 'cause it's like a different pitch and you can't like get to scale with anything. Uh, but I also think, uh, so for like the operator, it makes sense. Well, something else this reminds me of was, uh, bill Dand.
Yeah, he, he described this as shower thoughts, and I think about this all the time, but like if you're, he was using it for this exact case, so like what this is called is a, a, a house of brands or a branded house. So a house of brands like is. The PE company. So I, Hey, I have 200 locations and 150 brands inside there.
So they're a house of brands. They have a bunch of different brands. And the way that you manage that is different. It, it's not, yeah. Worse or better, it's just different. Like depending on your scale, it might be worse. Like in this case it's worse, right? For me [00:37:00] it's probably worse. Uh, but a branded house is what you're transitioning to.
You're, so you're moving from three brands to one and you're, you're hoping to get operational efficiency and like better brand power and all the things you're hoping to come from this. But yeah. Um, I remember going over that with Bill Alessandro and he's an e-commerce and he was running a house of brands where he bought all these e-commerce businesses related to pets and, and he was using it for this use case of marketing specifically.
But I think you could take this to any section of the business. If you're running a house of brands. It. What is your shower thought? So what are you thinking about when you're not thinking about anything else? And if you're in marketing working across multiple brands, it's really hard to have like the shower epiphany where I'm not thinking about anything.
And I had an aha about this idea to go do this thing. Uh, like right now, our friend Isaac. Is running this really interesting thing for sewers [00:38:00] and drain lining and it's like working wildly, which is awesome. And my suspicion is that if he was working across multiple brands, multiple geo geographies, he would not have had that epiphany, which will probably allow him to double in the next 12 months.
Right? So like he would've missed it because he was too focused on these other things,
Rich Jordan: even if he was multi trade. I think it would harder even,
John Wilson: even if he was multi trade. Yeah. He's one trade right now and he just, yeah, he wouldn't have had that because I, I know that that holds us, like we're a branded house, we're Wilson, but we also have plumbing, hvac, electric drains and it feels a little more confusing.
No one can put a hundred percent focus into one thing.
Rich Jordan: Yeah. And like we, you know, we have one branch right now that's still pure plumbing. Um, it's our smallest branch, but. It is so much easier to like, get your arms around it. Oh, yeah. You know, it's like, we're gonna improve this, we're gonna do this. And it's like,
John Wilson: boom.
Yeah. Yeah.
Rich Jordan: Um, it's, it's a lot more [00:39:00] difficult when you're trying to manage HVAC service, HVAC maintenance, HVAC install plumbing drains, electric.
John Wilson: As you think about, as you think about the brand, it's sort of, sort of in that tandem, like, how are you thinking about like, adding, adding or subtracting. Services, I suspect you just end up with all of them.
Have all of them.
Rich Jordan: Yeah. That's where we're headed. Um, so like that pure plumbing branch. So right now, like the two largest of the three branches have all of them.
John Wilson: Yeah. To
Rich Jordan: varying, to varying degrees. Um, that one smallest branch, which is also our newest branch is pure plumbing.
John Wilson: Yeah. Um.
Rich Jordan: I think the way we're gonna go here is I'm basically, I'm gonna hire an hvac, a couple HVAC techs, like immediately.
Um, yeah. To be able to handle HVAC demand there. So we'll be plumbing an HVAC here pretty soon. I could have my mind changed on this, but I think we're for, for the time being, I think [00:40:00] we're gonna tell people if they call in for electrical service, we're gonna tell 'em that we don't offer it at that branch.
Um. Which is not great, but I think, at least in my experience, you know, like electrical gets the lowest call volume of the three trades. Um, so I don't think it's gonna be a. Terrible. Yeah. Issue
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John Wilson: There's a few Ohio's kind of interesting 'cause there's some interesting like. Use cases, uh, maybe not even use like case studies where, uh, CLE uh, Columbus, Cincinnati and Dayton are this like perfect triangle that are all only an hour apart from each other.
So it's this like hour, hour, hour. Um, and they're all like, growing like crazy, which like double digit growth, um, which is obviously big and uh, like big. Like in that little quadrant, you know, Ohio has 11 million people and in that little quadrant is like seven of them. Hmm. So it's a, it's a big area. So what I've found is these companies, they all go three location.
Like everybody goes three location 'cause they're all just an hour away. And the next city also has 2 million people. And the average income is big and the demographics are perfect and it's growing like crazy. Uh, so they all just [00:42:00] like bounce. And they all do that with just one trade. And then once they get there, they add more trades.
But what's been really interesting to me is they all stop at three locations. So they all get to three. Then they add more locate, then they add more trades, and then they just like stop and like deal with the problems that come with multi trade instead of just adding more locations, which is, I think, kind of funny.
So they still have growth. It's just like same store growth, not geographic growth.
Right.
I don't really know what that like insight gives for me, what I usually walk away from that with is minimum sizes. Like, hey, if I'm gonna start with plumbing, which I think plumbing is the easiest to start a new thing with.
If I'm gonna start with plumbing, like do I get it to 5 million? Then add something different because then I could sup, I could actually support a second trade and I have enough customers and you know, there's just more going on there. But you guys are stronger at HVAC than I am, so I don't know. Yeah.[00:43:00]
Rich Jordan: Yeah. I think we will, I think we'll be able to, and, and like that branch is close enough to my other branch that we're able to sort of share some like, like for instance, like install crews. Like, I could feasibly launch HVAC at this new branch, and I don't have to like, keep an install crew fed. I could, yeah.
I could just push crews to it. So that helps us out a lot. I can just like, yeah, launch HVAC with like two HVAC service techs. Yeah. That's nice. Um, but, uh, yeah, and, and that, that branch is growing on the plumbing side and it's like, at this point it's pushing up on like 4 million of run rate in plumbing.
Good feels like. And, and like, it's only continuing to climb. So I feel like we're we're right about where you're thinking for, for like minimal trade density. Yeah. Yeah. But it becomes interesting too on the greenfield side, like something I've been thinking about, you know, for Greenfielding, do we try to launch a Greenfield with a single trade or do we go too, like I've, I've been thinking HVAC and [00:44:00] plumbing for our greenfields personally.
John Wilson: Yeah. I mean for me, um. I think one is easier. Um, yeah, for sure. And I like the idea, again, this is like, I just feel the, to me it, it, it is easier. Like plumbing is an easier trade to run and it's just like more predictable, uh, deffinitely than hvac. Hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I think there's a lot of variables when launching something new and I'd like to remove as much of that as possible.
Yeah,
so if you could hit two or 300,000 in the first couple months, like just doing water heaters and like, to me that makes sense. That just makes sense. Yeah.
Rich Jordan: Yeah. I definitely, if I had to choose one, I think I would choose plumbing. Plumbing. I think well gives you a
John Wilson: solid base of revenue. You just don't have to worry about very much and it's very profitable.
Rich Jordan: Well, and, and plumbing just like generally gets a higher percentage of like new customers [00:45:00] calling, at least in my experience. Um, HVAC is much more of like a loyalty game.
John Wilson: Almost all of ours are recurring.
Rich Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. It's harder to gain new customers, but
John Wilson: yeah,
Rich Jordan: you're able to sort of like convert them to memberships much easier.
It's like very difficult to sell a plumbing membership. Um, but it's like way and it's way easier to sell an HVAC membership. Customers see more value in that.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Rich Jordan: So, so I don't know. I mean, I think maybe a, maybe a hybrid. Like maybe you get the best of both worlds. Like you're running plumbing, you're like acquiring new customers in a greenfield on the plumbing side and then trying to cross sell into HVAC and retain.
John Wilson: Yeah. Thanks for coming on today. I, this was interesting. I. Honestly, I don't think I knew that you were gonna change Sanford's brand. Like you left and we talk a lot. You left fielded me there. Um, and I know you talked to Isaac about it. 'cause he, he, the other day, he's like, dude, rich convinced me man. [00:46:00] We're changing the name.
We're changing. We're changing the name, uh, and I was like, yeah, okay. Okay. That, I mean, that is a big decision and I'm not, you know, like right or wrong. Like it probably makes, makes a ton of sense. I get where you're coming from, but like, yeah, that's a lot of deliberation
Rich Jordan: there and there's just a lot of work behind it.
Tons. Like a, it's like every rock you turn over, you're like, oh man, we gotta do this too. It's like so much stuff.
John Wilson: Yes. It's, yeah, so much. I mean, yeah. Yeah. It's a lot. But sounds like you guys are gonna deliver in the next six months.
Rich Jordan: Yeah, man, we're excited. Um, I think it, you know, I think the, you know, I'm certainly like happy and proud of the name that we landed on and Yeah, that's a good one.
Um, I think it's gonna, you know, it's really gonna take us forward and I, and I, and I think like. Especially as we lean into like greenfield and branded activity and organic growth. I think, you know, I think having a name that we can really stand behind and it's gonna, it's exciting.
John Wilson: Yeah, I agree. Yeah.
That's awesome [00:47:00] dude. Thanks for coming on. If, uh, if people wanna get ahold of you, how can they find you?
Rich Jordan: Oh, let's see. Twitter, uh, strong point, rich on Twitter and uh, LinkedIn. Rich Jordan on LinkedIn. Happy to connect with anybody.
John Wilson: Hell yeah. Thanks for coming on.
Rich Jordan: Yep. Thanks John.
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