Every home service operator has a failure story.
In this episode of Owned and Operated, John Wilson sits down with Jack Carr (CEO of Rapid Plumbing, Heating, Cooling & Electric in Nashville) to break down the biggest business mistakes they’ve made — and what those mistakes actually cost.
From a $13,000 ad spend weekend that only generated $7,000 in revenue… to overpaying vendors for an entire year… to discovering $80,000 per month in unnecessary purchasing — this is a candid conversation about the operational blind spots that quietly drain profit.
The surprising takeaway?
Most major failures weren’t dramatic. They were data problems. Process problems. Cash flow misunderstandings. And hiring financial leadership too late.
If you’re scaling a home service business — or planning to — this episode could save you years of expensive lessons.
In this episode, we discuss:
- The $13K marketing mistake and how capacity planning changes everything
- How tightening purchasing controls instantly improved margins
- Why most contractors overpay vendors (and don’t even know it)
- The hidden cost of software bloat and subscription creep
- Construction vs. service cash flow — and why mixing the two can hurt
- Why hiring a controller earlier would have changed everything
💳 Extra Special Thanks to Coast!
Coast is the smart fuel card built for home service businesses. Set custom spend controls, stop fuel fraud in real time, earn rebates, and use it anywhere Visa is accepted — no more station restrictions or admin headaches.
Want to see how much you could save?
🔗 coastpay.com/ownedandoperated The Coast Visa® Commercial Card is issued by Celtic Bank. All card accounts subject to credit approval.
🛒 Extra Special Thanks to Contractor Commerce!
Contractor Commerce turns your website into a 24/7 sales engine for service contractors. With guided pricing, online service and membership sales, and deep system integrations, your site pre-qualifies customers before the phone ever rings.
Visit contractorcommerce.com Book a demo to see how Contractor Commerce turns your website into a 24/7 sales and qualification engine.
💼 Shoutout to Quick Staffers LLC
Need trained HVAC & plumbing CSRs at a fraction of the cost? Quick Staffers LLC specializes in placing top-tier global talent with the best SOPs and scripts.
🔥 Get $500 off your first placement here
Connect:
John Wilson - https://x.com/WilsonCompanies
Jack Carr - https://x.com/thehvacjack
#HVAC #P
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.
Today we're talking our biggest business failures. That first item is my $13,000 ad spend weekend. Oh yeah. And we only made $7,000 the first time we tightened up purchasing. We saved $80,000 a month. Ooh. Any given month, we might accidentally overspend $10,000 from software licenses. Any other big misses that have really been material to your business?The mistake I think I made, and maybe this is the mistake.Welcome back to Owned and Operated, a podcast where we talk about growing home service companies. I am your host, John Wilson. I'm the CEO of the Wilson Companies. We're a $40 million plumbing, HVAC, and electric business out of Ohio and Indiana. For fun, I run this podcast where I talk to my friends about how to grow their home service companies and the industry.Today I have my very good friend, Jack Caram, the CEO of Rapid Plumbing Heating, cooling, and newly added electric down in Nashville, Tennessee. Welcome back to the show. What's going on? John? It. I bet it feels good to say. Um. Ohio and Indiana. Now you are a two-state company. That feels, that feels really good.It, it does. Uh, you know, there was something, um, when I, when I was, uh, I. Like early twenties, I told my, I told my dad, I bought the business from my dad and I told my dad like, Hey, uh, one day I want to have the biggest company in, you know, this part of the state. I wanna be the biggest company in Akron. And even one day past that, I want to be in multiple states.And, uh, you know, my dad was just like, okay, like, whatever buddy. How, how? Yeah. You know, it's like three plumbers or whatever, like, walk me through it. Um, so it has been kind of fun to like reflect back on that, like John at 20, what his thoughts were on what he could do, and, uh, seeing out that, hey, well we actually could do that.So we did. We did, we did do that. We're now two state. That's cool, man. That's, that's a really big, uh, stepping stone too. Like, yeah. It, it feels, it feels good. I think, uh. We've talked a little bit about it on the show. I think at some point we have to do like a debrief. Um, but yeah, we've added two companies in the past 40 days.Uh, and we're looking at two more right now. And it's a very active part of our, of our business in early 2026. We're actively acquiring, actively bringing on new markets. Yeah, man. That's awesome. Uh, you don't wanna talk about today, we'll debrief another day. I think we can debrief another day. I think we can do a whole episode on like.Here's what we saw in this deal. Here's what we did. Oh, it's so exciting. And I think that would be, I think that would be kind of interesting because we made some, like one of 'em we doubled and I was telling you about this on the phone earlier today, like that's crazy. Like we literally doubled this business.The other one that we took, it was losing money when we got there. And EBITDA, I think is like 40 to 50,000 a month now. And we did that in 30 days. 30 days. Yeah. It's so dumb. Yeah, it's, it's, yeah. I mean, I'm a little tired, but like, yes. Yeah. I will say that our conversations have been, uh, a lot more business, straightforward, business oriented, and less John just shooting the shit.Um, so I do miss that. He's in it. He's it, but I'm glad that he's in the mode. You are. You're doing well. And how's February been wrapping up for you then with the three, three businesses? Yeah. Fe February is good. February is really good. Uh, so our core business, not a lot of growth. Um, maybe two or 3%. Uh, but when we add in the other businesses, uh, I think it's a plus 30% month, like year over year.Wow, that's huge. Yeah. Yeah. And, and just a, I mean, it go February is like the worst month as well, historically, I think for all. Yeah. February rough, February's rough. And then 2025 was rough for a lot, you know, we've done it, we did a deep dive on 2025. Um. And I think, you know, from, from what I'm hearing, most people in early 26 are feeling good.And I mean like most people, the contractor, the homeowner, but even the vendors. So what I think is kind of interesting is just like the ripple effect. Mm-hmm. That comes from a slow back half of 25. So slow back half of 25. Well, okay. Carrier, Lennox Trane, all their earnings calls are like very depressing, right?Lots of layoffs in manufacturing and in distribution. A lot of the service providers are like tightening the belt because they aren't, maybe they're churning more people who are trying to save money. So it's just, you know, the, the bigger our audience gets, the more conversations we're having and it was, it, it felt, uh, I don't know.It was just interesting. I remember having tough times in my business over my whole career. And the back half of 25 was like a tough time that everybody went through together. Like if you were a manufacturer, if you were a distributor, if you were a service provider, a software, a contractor, everybody was fighting in the back half of 25, so early 26.Everyone seems to be feeling pretty good, which is exciting. Yeah, it's interesting and I, I don't think the weather helped. I mean, obviously we are not, we're a home service, uh, business. This is a home service podcast, but the big part of home service is definitely HVAC and it's very strange. Yeah, the weather this year has not been overly helpful.Um, but we did get that one big storm through the South that was crazy. The helped out a lot of contractors. But I'm still talking to contractors out in Denver who, you know, it's crazy, man. They haven't had a winter, like they haven't had a winter. Yeah, well I was in Salt Lake City last week. I got off the plane and it was, it was 40 degrees warmer in Salt Lake City than in Akron, Ohio.Like, it was ridiculous. I went from wearing a coat to a t-shirt. Yeah. Like it was crazy. And then we skied Snowbird that day and I was literally on the top of that mountain in a t-shirt. Yeah. So we, we will see how the, the end of the year shapes up too. 'cause I know, yeah. Again, you and I are both big skiers, so I, I always watch the snow reports and I just saw like mammoth.Mountains in California and Tahoe just got absolutely dumped. Yeah, they got dumped, dumped on. They got dump multiple feet of snow for multiple days. Um, and so like maybe on the backhand half of February, March, they'll, they'll actually get a winter and it'll kind of continue to pop, which I wouldn't be mad.Our, our winter seems to be over here. Yeah. It's 70 here today. 74. It's 60. 60 here today. 60 yesterday. Now what's been really interesting, and maybe we do an episode on this, uh. But just like how to sell during the slow season. Actually, we should do an episode on that. I'm writing this down. How writing it down.So what's been really interesting is, uh, hey, we're February back. Half of February is usually when we enter our slump shoulder season. Mm-hmm. Dude, we're fucking killing it this week. Yeah. And this is the warmest, this is like 60 degrees. We sold, uh, on Monday we sold like 70 grand of hvac, which our daily budget's 35.So. We sold double daily budget yesterday. We sold 40 or 50. Today we sold 50. And I'm like, what the fuck is going on? Like this is, you know, yeah, it was zero degrees three weeks ago and we were struggling to sell equipment and this week we're just like, you know, here we go. Maybe tax return, money's coming in.We're seeing a lot more finance approvals, so I, I'm not sure what the, the macro is, but it's interesting. My, my only wonder, my only fear about this, um, is that on the back, you know, I, I'm just hoping that because we're seeing early spring, it feels like, like the weather Yeah. Based on weather performance that we're not seeing our normal like April in February.Yeah. And then we hit April and it's like, oh, it has been 70 for now four months straight and 1775. Yeah. And, uh, sunny and like now it's hard. Like I just wanna make sure that we're not hitting that is my hope. Um, that being said, I mean, I still think we're, we're getting through a lot of the last bit of that snow storm Snowmageddon.Yeah. And people are, people are fixing stuff, so I. That's my hope. Yeah. Uh, but we shall see. It'll chalk up to what it is, what it is. We don't have control over it. So if you're running a home service company with a fleet, here's a question for you. Do you actually know what's happening at the pump? Not what you hope is happening, but what's actually happening?I'm talking shared pins, manual odometer entries, cards that still work even when the truck isn't there. That stuff adds up fast, and that's why a lot of operators that I know are switching to Coast Coast is a smart fuel card built for the trades. It uses GPS and vehicle data to verify transactions in real time.So if the vehicle isn't present, then the card declines. If the fuel volume looks off, it flags it and it's backed by a $25,000 fuel fraud guarantee. Some terms apply. It's also a Visa card, so your text can fuel wherever. Makes sense. No detours, no weird network limitations, and you can control exactly what each card is allowed to buy.One company, milestone Home Services. Saved over 130,000 a year after switching. Plus cut down fraud and admin time if you've got trucks on the road, and fuel is a meaningful line item, this is worth five minutes. Go to coast pay.com/owned and operated, or click the link below and get a custom savings estimate and see where your leaks are coming from.Sweet. Well, today we're talking are surprising lessons from our biggest business failures. Bum bum, bu ooh. Are we talking business failures across all businesses that we've ever done, or are we just gonna stick to home service here? I mean, I think we, I, we, you could do either, I'm gonna stick to home service.Okay, I'll stick to home service. It'll be more pertinent, I think, 'cause uh, failures in the wine industry. Oh, yeah. Although fun to talk about, uh, don't necessarily, and, and consumer packaging goods don't pertain to a lot of HVAC stuff. Yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh. Do you should start this one, I think. Wow. Yeah. I'm gonna just more, because I want more soft softball, way more kick my can down the road.Okay. So when I think of the biggest failures that we've had. I mean, they've almost always been tied to like cashflow, like every single one, and not being dialed in, uh, it's like process turns into cashflow. So, and maybe cashflow was the result. So I mean, I, God, dude, I could think of 20, right? Like where, hey, we, we took.We took on this project, or we did this acquisition, or we bought these vehicles or whatever because it looked like a p and l win. Like it was more profitable, but our processes weren't locked in, so we ended up. Yeah, not understanding the actual investment that we were making and the time to get a payback and like what the cash flow impact of that was gonna be.And again, I could think of like 20 examples. Some of 'em were just like a big new construction project. Um, and some of them were like, I talked about this a lot at the end of the last year, but we made a ton of CapEx decisions in early 25 that I should not have made. Like I wouldn't classify them as my biggest business failure, but they were definitely like.A bad decision. Um, before, before you go further with that, do you feel, so, I'm trying to think. I'm, I'm kind of, um, segmenting this though, is do you feel like those decisions kind of around what, what you made and where you failed, those, those feel like further down the road decisions, right? Like you couldn't have made those mistakes early on.Do you feel like that? Well, the, the mistake I think I made. And maybe this is the mistake is I didn't bring on a controller soon enough because everything was tied to not having clear visibility into my numbers, where we would make a decision as if we were making it inside a vacuum and there was no ripple effects.But hey, there's a lot of second and third ripples that come from a half a million dollar new construction project, or 200,000 of inventory or whatever it is. So. May, maybe that's the issue, is like, hey, we started acquiring companies really early and growing through acquisition, and we didn't prioritize a clean accounting system.And because of that we didn't know what we didn't know inside our own business. Okay. So then actually the opposite of what I was saying, 'cause that's actually my biggest failures I think in the business are all resolving around not having the correct data and then not making the right. Choices based on that data.Yeah, so mine's, my first one's super easy and I think a lot of contractors do this at some point in their career. Yeah. Um, and that first item is my $13,000 ad spend weekend. Oh yeah. So we've talked about this a long time ago. Yeah. We, we have, it was 17 for us, but yeah, we, we've had that, we bring that up all the time.Yeah. So it was, uh, winter two years ago where we, it was another Snowmageddon situation where I was running calls. I didn't have the time to turn off LSA ads. And by the end of a negative two degree week or weekend in, um, in Nashville, which is nev, doesn't happen regularly. Uh, we had racked up a $13,000 bill.Yeah. And we only made drum roll $7,000. Oh my gosh. So we ran all weekend. Paid, we paid $4,000 to run calls all weekend. But the, the issue was that there was a, there was a giant miss in our, um, kind of in our back of office. 'cause I wasn't in the office. So between capacity. Are we full? Are we not full on capacity?What have we spent? What kind of stuff do we have turned on? Turned off? So we didn't have the good data or we had the data, but we weren't processing it correctly to be able to make good decisions. Like, Hey, we are full. All P ones, turn it off. Yeah. We were more focused on like this. I. Idea of more calls the better because we can just continue to run calls and run calls and run calls and make money.But the reality of it when you're paying a hundred dollars per lead per call, is that at some point you do need to turn that off based on capacity. And that sounds like a a no-brainer, but I think that most, I don't think that's a no-brainer at all. Everyone has done that. Yeah, and I think that the good lesson is actually not in this like extreme scenario, but this good lesson actually flows over into regular.Like operations, right? Because it, it became kind of fundamental post that point to like understand what our capacity was, our max capacity. Yeah. And then understand, um, when we turn on and off marketing, uh, as a whole, yeah, like as a company. Because there is a point where if you have three technicians and you have five calls on each technician and they're all P ones and you have the next two days booked like.You should turn off marketing and if you don't, you're wasting money. And so we, we, it's an active drill that we do every single day now. Yeah. So without that, like that's the big loss. But it's also the long-term win is like, we paid a $4,000, five, $7,000 lesson, uh, in capacity planning and marketing planning.So. That was our big, big loss. We learned at the time. I feel like, I feel like mine is similar where like what I said was it's cashflow, but it's cashflow because of a process problem. Like that's a process problem. Another easy one would be like, Hey, how do we approve, uh, field team members to buy on the credit card?Like that's a process. And when you tighten it up, you can probably save like 10 grand a month. Um, I think I've said it on the show, but the first time we tightened up purchasing. Ever We saved $80,000 a month, uh, just from like literally having to have people approve pos. It was outrageous. That's where I was going next as well, was my, our second big loss was not, was allowing technicians to buy on credit cards with no po or process to, um, yeah, approve it.Validate an approval. Yeah. Hey, is this needed? Is this truck stock? Is it, you know? Yeah, it's a lot, you know, that the, we brought this up earlier on the show, but I, we had a company that we just took it over and we, we've done well with it so far, and the single biggest impact that we made was on day one.We turned off their purchasing and their purchasing for materials went from 65,000 a month on average to 17. Yeah. Ours dropped 30, I think it was 31, 37. It was like a three and then like a line, I forget which exact it was, but I, I do remember 30 plus thousand dollars a month in purchasing. Yeah. Um, it's absolutely nauseating.Um, but yeah, it's, it's still trouble understanding that, to be honest. It's, it's a process. It's a process and controls problem. Um, where, hey, if we have this control to prevent our Google ads from overspending, or we have this control before someone signs up for a new software, uh, like software licenses is a huge pain point where any given month we might accidentally overspend $10,000 from software licenses because frigging every software in the world charges by user like Gmail, charged by user Slack, ServiceTitan.Air call, like all of them, like we've had credit cards try to charge us by user. I think RAMP has a buy user fee. Um, so yeah, just kind of just kind of crazy. Uh, but yeah, all of it tied to the process of how you're functionally running the business, which was something that I didn't take very seriously when we were smaller.And then when it. It turned into real money. Yeah. And then going back, another giant loss in the last four years, uh, was my first year of running business where I didn't realize, and I think this actually ties into this vendor idea that you're working on right now, um, is that I didn't understand the ability of negotiations of material pricing.Uh, and so I think I've told people there's a certain vendor here in Nashville who I will never work with and I refuse to work with ever. I do not let their salespeople in my office. I do not talk to them, and that is because they let me run a year with them my first year with them at full retail price, like the worst pricing, even though I was spending.$400,000 with this they never offered to renegotiate, which I mean, I don't blame them. Then they're saying like, Hey, I'm not going to give up a free discount to you. Uh, that being said, you know, as a new person in the industry, you know, I'm, it's my bonehead mistake. But I do think that, that the bigger idea is understanding that there's a vendor re bidding process that you should be doing with every vendor.Regularly, quarterly sending out RFPs or at least discussing with them new pricing and new strategies to how you can, uh, reduce overall cogs. So that was a big one. Customers today expect pricing online, and whether we like it or not, homeowners want transparency before they ever even pick up the phone.So we decided to lean into that. And that's why we use contractor commerce inside Wilson. It costs us about $1,600 a month, and we run it across hvac, plumbing, and electrical. We use it for things like generator install estimates, water heater estimates, full HVAC replacement estimates, and it's producing real revenue.There are months where we've driven 20,000, 30,000, and even 40,000 in book sales. Directly through the platform, we've had double digit jobs booked in strong months straight from our website. What this really does is it turns our website into a guided sales process. Customers can see their options, they can see pricing ranges, and when they contact us, they're way more educated.If you're trying to modernize your sales process and capture demands that would otherwise bounce. It's worth looking at. Go check out contractor commerce and book a demo at the link below. It always blows my mind. Uh, we're like heavy m and a mode right now, so we're talking to two or three owners a week.Uh, which for like a non PE fund feels like a lot, right? But I'm continually finding that. I'm like, Hey, like your materials are 47, 40 5% of your total income. Like that's a lot. When was the last time you talked pricing? Never. They're like, ah. I think like. You know, 95 and I'm like, my guy, like, you gotta do something here.You gotta have a, a conversation. You know, you're spending a million dollars with this person. You have, you do have to be able to have a conversation with them. The the interesting part that I keep running into, 'cause I've had this conversation now. Three or four times in the past couple months. Yeah. And the, the one kind of theme that seems to keep cropping up, which I always enjoy, is this, this theme that like, oh no, these guys, these guys are my buddies.Like the, this vendor has done me well in the past, or like, they're a friend, they're, they're gonna treat me well. But ironically, um. Like those seem to always be the people who are getting hit the hardest is they, they get this personal relationship with some kind of vendor distributor, and then what ends up happening is because they're friends, they don't renegotiate as hard or.They believe that the service and quality makes up for 10, 20, 30%. And yeah, in my opinion, it never does. Um, but I, I, that theme keeps reoccurring is like, Hey, no, no, they're, they're good. Like, they're my good friend. Like, they wouldn't do me like that. And yeah, lo and behold, they did them like that. Yeah, totally.Well, you know, I was, uh, I was talking with someone, it was, it was a tech, it was like a tech executive from, uh, ServiceTitan. This was maybe three or four months ago, and we, we were just talking about the industry in general. Uh, just like I, I think AI came up and like, uh, you know, different services or whatever, but like primarily software based.And the conversation was interesting because. He, he said it in a way that like in instinctually you, and I know, like the industry knows, I've just never heard it described quite like this, and it was, people love the trade, like software providers or, or wholesalers or whatever, love the trades because it's very, very easy to get ahold of the decision maker.Like the principle is you, the principle is me. It is not complicated, right? Like you're not going through Walmart, it's not some big bureaucratic thing. You can just call the guy. He'll probably pick up. Uh, they also like, it's a high relationship, high trust, which is easy to drive additional margin. So exactly that.It's easy to sort of, you know, not be a great partner. And I will argue that the best vendors are very. Um, thoughtful about like partnership and they are constantly helping you find ways to save money. So I would just like throw that out there for the world. Not, not everybody's, uh, bad at it, but don't disagree.Um, um, that it's more of a generalistic statement though, across the board. It's like, hey. Mm-hmm. My, my friends are the ones, well, and that's the last one, is they don't have the sophistication to check. They're not gonna rebid. Even if they did rebid, they don't even know where to get the data. You know, we we're, uh.And, and the, the problem's kind of funny. We get 200 invoices a day from our vendors. That's a lot, that's a lot of volume. So there's just not many industries out there, um, that get that much inv invoice volume from their vendors tied to small jobs all over the place. And there's not a sophisticated text act to catch it.I think this is becoming more and more of a thing. I have a lot of friends that have like built their own tool to like catch problems and like filter through it and like find opportunity. But, um, it, it is a challenge. So like, uh, I tho I think those three things make it very easy. Um, make it very easy. So those are some definitely big losses.It all seems to be around information and understanding, though. It's like, what's this theme here is Yeah, not having good data has seemed to put yourself in bad situations, whether that's not having good data to know what you, yep. You know, who, how to get better pricing or where to get better pricing.Not having good data to make good decisions on your marketing. Not having good decisions on, you know, projects because you don't have the right controller. So it all comes down to this idea of like. Data. And ironically, I think that's why ServiceTitan, not to shout them out, but like that's why they win, is they have the ability to drive a lot of that good data, but you have to be able to have the time and, and patience to input it and get that good data in.Yeah. I, I do think it, I do think it's all data and it's finding like these different ways to plug the whole, like some of it's purely a talent problem. Like, Hey, I need a controller and I need a good one. Right. And, um, my, my biggest, if I was gonna classify like. Really, all of my big mistakes have been a lack of understanding.Um, and the biggest lack of understanding was how bad I needed a controller $30 million ago. Right. Like I needed it. Um, like if I ever move on to another project, I'm hiring a controller at $0 of revenue. Like, not painful. Yeah. We're, we're handling that one right away. Um. Because I, I think it's, it's the most important thing.Any other big misses that, uh, have really been material to your business? I mean the, yeah, the biggest ones were all cash. I know that there's one for both of our businesses was not understanding, uh, during an acquisition the full extent of how much construction will, will affect your business. I know you had that in electrical and I had that in plumbing when we, when we bought a plumbing company.Yeah. Yeah. And to me that's the same thing as like a controller and like cash is like, Hey, if I would've known better how I think about, um, like cash management is gonna be very different. With construction, then a service business. And if you're used to running a service business, like, Hey, I run a service business, I have a hundred grand show up in my bank account every day.Like that's what we got paid for from yesterday. Or like financing jobs or credit cards or checks or whatever. And like you're just used to that and to suddenly change and like, hey, you might not actually get paid for maybe a couple weeks, maybe a month. And like that's just a part of the deal is tough.Uh, so yeah, but I, I also think that's a process problem. That's a, we didn't, that's a data problem. Like I didn't know what I didn't know, and I didn't know how important cash conversion cycle was, and I didn't understand the cyclicality of construction projects. So I, I think it's all the same thing, but that's definitely another great example of like, we got tripped up and I see a lot of people get tripped up on these big construction things.If you're not built to run it, then you're not built to run it. Yeah. Yeah. And that, I mean, we've talked about this quite a few times before. Um, but yeah, that one, that one was a big hit for us just 'cause it was a really difficult time where we lost money for a lot of months to try and figure that out.For the end all, be all resulted to be, to be just shut it down. Like shut down the construction side. Don't even try. It's not worth it. It's a million dollar top line a year. Um, but it's gonna cause you more headaches in the, the short term. Yeah. Or the long term? Both terms. All terms. Yeah. I, I mean, some people do amazing at it.Like we, we were at HoCo Con last week and there were three people there that run incredible construction businesses. Um, yeah, but they're only construction businesses. I think that's the key. They're only construction, and that is the key because they're running at like a 35% gross margin for a service business that would kill you.You couldn't afford a CSR. You couldn't afford marketing, like you couldn't afford the things that you need to run a service business for construction business. That's a fucking gravy train. Because your overhead might be like 7%, like you've got like an estimator and you and like, and that's it. And like, it's a very lean structure.Um, one, one of the guys there, his name is Chad, we're gonna have him on the show, but he runs a, I wanna say it was a 50 to $60 million, uh, big construction pro, uh, plumber in DFW. And uh, average project size was like two or 3 million bucks, like big projects. And, um. I, I, I thought he said he had like 15 office employees.15 for like 50 to $60 million. It was like crazy. I was just like, who? Yeah. Who are they? Like, what are those positions? But, um, just totally different. Yeah. And, and I think there's another big portion to that is, is also how you're buying, right? So you, you can't actually buy a construction business on debt.You, you can physically do it. Yes. It's, it is physically possible. Yeah. But is it recommended? And the answer there is. Absolutely not because Absolutely not. Yeah. Any kind of fluctuation in either pay cycle Yeah. Or building cycle can destroy your business within a month. And Yeah. And so like that's the other side to it is understanding that, hey, well we're buying businesses on debt.We have debt in the business. So like really having that construction arm just doesn't fit. Yeah, no it doesn't. Yeah. There was another guy, uh, Adam at HoldCo Comp and he, he's about like five or six construction businesses, plumbing. I think, I wanna say he's like 16 or 17 million of revenue now. May maybe 20.It, it's somewhere in that, it's somewhere in that, uh, range. Um, Adam in Utah? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. He's, he's a cool guy. Uh. But I wanna say he pays like a one times or less, he pays less than one times, which I, to, to me, that makes a mm-hmm. That makes a lot of sense. He does a lot of revenue share agreements too.Yeah. We, we think we're known that, you know, the same people. Um, yeah, yeah. But yeah, he, he's the only one who I've seen buy multiple construction businesses. And actually I know there's a few people, so like, I know it's possible. Um, but he's one of the few that I've seen actually, like do it regularly and kind of roll 'em up in an area and do really, really well because the way he buys it makes sense, but it's not like heavy debt load.Um, yeah, so like, that's, that's one of the big keys. I just wanted to, to say like, Hey, you know, that's, that's a big portion of why ours didn't work, is we can't, again, cash cycle, you can't wait 60 days to pay people and we can't buy nice trucks and then have them running and doing. Rough ends. It just doesn't make sense.Here's an uncomfortable truth. Growth breaks the moment that your team can't keep up. I know that finding good people fast is really hard, especially in home services positions like hr, accounting, marketing call center. It's hard to keep up Quick Staffers helps home service companies build reliable virtual teams that actually understand the trades.Quick staffers provides vetted remote staff who are pre-trained on ServiceTitan and use best in industry SOPs. These are team members ready to integrate into your business on day one. Handling roles like customer service, lead follow up, scheduling support. And more. We're actively hiring an offshore assistant controller right now through quick staffers.I can't recommend quick staffers enough. They've helped us scale our business without a headache. Head over to quick staffers.com for more. All right. Cool. Any other, any other big failures or lessons learned? Oh, gee, yeah. Thousands. There's some, yeah, there's some probably around recruiting and making sure that you actually listen to John Wilson when he says have a recruiter at 3 million.Um, that definitely helps. Uh, but we talked about that one recently, so I'm not gonna beat that Dead horse. Essentially, the only key to that is have a recruiter at 3 million or have some kind of recruiting function that's always recruiting, uh, because Got it. Yeah. Losing two, three people overnight is a very real possibility.And in a business that has 10 people, 12 people, we had a branch lose two people last week. It was, it was like out of 10. It was a lot. Yeah. I mean, that's 20%. 20% of your revenue generation is gone. Everybody, if you've got a huge mistake, we'd love to see in the comments below. Uh, we'd love to, if you want to talk about it, tell what you messed up on.Yeah. Tell us what you messed up on. Um, make sure you like sub and give us a five star review wherever it's you. Listen to shows.
