What does it actually take to build a billion-dollar septic company?
In this episode of Owned and Operated, John Wilson sits down with the founders of Epic Septic to break down one of the most overlooked—and profitable—home service industries.
They share how they went from zero to rapid growth, why septic is dramatically less competitive than HVAC or plumbing, and how simple fundamentals like answering the phone and selling on the first call can outperform expensive marketing strategies.
In this episode, we cover:
- Why septic is one of the most overlooked home service opportunities
- How 90% of competitors fail to answer the phone (and lose business because of it)
- Why speed-to-lead and phone sales drive extremely high close rates
- The real economics behind building a $100M–$1B service business
Host: John Wilson https://x.com/WilsonCompanies
Guests:
Kyle Voss
Chad Riddersen
https://epicseptic.com/
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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.I don't know what it is about septic, that fascinates pull up poop. Poop. They love shit. And we call it a brown collar industry. We are currently trying to figure out how we can make a billion dollar septic company. We'll be out with the franchise. So we've been like working on this thing for months and months and months and months.So we have, um, our own energy drink that we created. Brand is something that. Started to build the beginnings of a lifestyle brand around the septic world, which is like the weirdest thing you could possibly conceive of. Septic is s is like wild. It's how no advertising. We're paying $10 roughly a click in our region.Yeah. Through 60 mile radius. There's probably a hundred independent operators out there. I call it all 100 of them. 90% of them didn't answer on the first, the first time I called. All we gotta do is answer the phone. Answer the phone, make money. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we have these agreements with some of these like commercial clients.Yep. Where it's like five grand every Friday. Like it is kind of a crazy lifestyle business. Yes. When we're talking a billion, we're talking enterprise value. If you could truly build a national brand in this industry, you're looking at probably a 20 x multiple. We're talking like $50 million of of ebitda.That doesn't feel that crazy to me. It does not. I wanna give that freedom to every single person that wants an opportunity to have a vehicle to make generational wealth. Mm-hmm. And I found it in septic. People are concerned. About their jobs. Yeah. And then we have AI proof businesses. Septics obviously a great one.Just from your experience, you've been doing this a long time. What advice do you have for us? I think, um,welcome back to Owned and Operated. I am your host, John Wilson. During the day, we run a two going on three state plumbing, HVAC, and electric operation. And for fun, I talk to my friends on this podcast about how to grow home service companies. Today I'm joined by the founders of Epic Septic and Service, and we're deep diving into the septic industry and trying to figure out how we can make a billion dollar septic company.Thanks for tuning in. Welcome guys to the show. Thanks for having us. Thank you, John. This is gonna be fun. Fun. Yeah, we're gonna excited my, uh, I don't know what it is about septic that fascinates. People love poop. People they love shit. They really do. They just, they love it. Uh, first, like time after time, our best performing content is septic.People just absolutely love it. And we're not even doing like the, the ick stuff. Like, we're not like, yeah, here's us pumping. You know? It's just like us talking about Yeah, I was talking about, well, you, you have kids, right? It comes, it starts at an early age. Yeah. Yeah. Changing diapers. The, the Freudian uh, anal stage is like three to five, I think.Anal fixation. Yeah. Yeah. And the kids love poopy, like, oh, the poopy diaper. Like, yeah. Yeah. It starts really early and, and it doesn't go away, apparently. So It doesn't, yeah, it doesn't. Well, and we call it a brown collar industry, like there's the blue collar and we're like the dirtiest of the blue collar, so we bring it into brown collar.That's pretty good. One of the, I mean, I really. Look up to you honestly, as like one of the luminaries for media creation around septic is such a forgotten niche. Yeah. And you perform, or your videos perform like top of the stack. And so the fact that you actually know the business is something that was super exciting for us.Yeah. And, and also it's really hard to find peers that know the business in our industry. Mm-hmm. A lot of the industry is owner operators from the sixties. Right? Yeah. And also that generational knowledge isn't transferring or is it attractive for somebody who's in their thirties Yeah. To get into the, into the business.So it's nice to finally meet a peer that actually gets it. Yeah. Yes. Um, and I, I think it's a good time for the industry. Mm-hmm. You know, we started, um, we bought our company that has septic in it back in 2021. And, uh, even then people were like very fascinated by the septic mm-hmm. Uh, component. Yeah. I still don't totally know why, but I mean, there's a lot of interest around it.Yeah. Um, and I, and I agree with you. There's not, there's not that much content about it. Uh, but this feels like the right time. Mm-hmm. You is what some of the content we're starting to like look at. 'cause we're on Twitter. I'm probably on Twitter too much. Uh, but like, hey, AI layoffs and like, what are the jobs that are protected 100% when I'm Yes.Come on. Like, what robot's gonna pump shit. Yeah. Yeah. In Cleveland, Ohio. Yeah. Uh, no one. Yeah. Literally no one. Literally Not one. Not a one. Well, that's a, that's a really great talking point. And, you know, there's, there's companies that want to grow through acquisition. You look at, like yourself, for example.Yeah. Or there's a huge septic conglomerate. I don't know if you've ever heard of Wind River. Yeah, yeah. Well, they're the big one. The, the big one. Right. Hundred million dollars, $200 million revenue. I, I have a friend that I think is 20. 20 deep in what? Acquisitions? On septic. In in septic? Yeah. I don't remember the, he, he has like 10 funds.Uh, but it's LP First Capital and they're doing septic. Oh, we know lp. We, yeah, we know LP very well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I think they're 20. I actually, I, he sent me a letter here and I was like, Thomas, come on, Doug. Like, yeah. So we're, we we're anti that. Yeah. Private equity is not our game. Like that's been something that we've intentionally stayed away from.Yeah. The owned and operated ethos is something that we have a lot of. Mm-hmm. A lot of respect for. And, and you embody that. And I think that's something where you get a private equity mindset brought to any trade and it starts to. You create a risk profile that's super different. Yeah. It's like how do you invest in brand when you can't see the bottom line?Like that's something that, you know, there's like long-term value that you can accrue from brand. Yeah. But if it's not gonna show up in the next 2, 3, 4, 5 years and you can't flip it into whatever. Yeah. And you take something that's, you know, a couple little guys and you make one big guy with a better EBITDA multiple, and that's your game that you're playing.Like turtles all the way on down. I was talking about that. I was talking to a friend about that last night. 'cause we were, we, we had a really big EBITDA win in February. Okay. Which was bugging. Awesome. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. I'm actively feeling it. It was awesome. February was a short month too, so the fact it was a short month.It's February. Yeah. But we did like 5 75 in February. Damn. Congrats. And so last year's, February was 90. So, you know, okay, little six x, six x dude, let's go. So, and February is typically our worst month. Like if we're gonna lose money in one month is February. Okay. So five, seven fat was like, fuck. It's funny, it's funny he said that.Yeah, I know he did. Yeah. But, but what was interesting, I was talking to a friend about this yesterday. Uh, 'cause we were just like talking about like, we're in, like, we're like really focused on net right now. We're focused on ebitda, really trying to drive. And, um, and last year we, we went from a million to like three and a half, four.So like good this year we're, we're, we were trying to get to like seven, eight this year. Mm-hmm. Yep. Um, and I had the same comment. So I'm driving home and I'm talking to my friend Jack, who's one of, he's like co-host for the show. Yeah. And we're, it's like. The moment you start focusing on ebitda, like really focusing on ebitda.Mm-hmm. It does get hard. Mm-hmm. Because you sort of set your. You pick your own growth path. Yeah. You are. You measure, it almost has to be acquisition because nothing in an acquisition counts. Yeah. Like it's all integration costs. The legal is fake. It's all like, it's all like fake money. Yeah. Yeah. And it pre, it does prevent like sort of real building.Yeah. If you're focused on. For too long. I was letting the wrong marketing agencies set my money on fire, and their marketing looked pretty good. On paper, the reporting was attractive, but at the end of the day, it just wasn't driving leads. That's why I started using service scalers at Wilson Service.Scalers is a marketing agency built specifically for home service companies. They focus on the channels that actually drive leads, like targeted PPC, local service ads, SEO, Google Business Profile, so that you're showing up in front of your customers that are actively searching. They'll help you see exactly what's working, so you stop wasting ad dollars on low quality leads.Right now, they're doing something crazy and they're giving the opportunity for one entrepreneur to get up to 12 months of marketing on them, so that's up to a hundred thousand dollars in services for the right operator. If you are serious about tightening up your marketing in 2026 and want to see what this could look like for your business, go to service scalers.com and book a free strategy call and let 'em know that I sent you.So after the Marine Corps, I did 10 years in the Marine Corps. My first job, everybody, so coming outta the Marine Corps, um, I had different pals, an officer, right? So everybody's like, go get your MBA, do this, go white collar, go become a lawyer. He played football professionally prior to the Marine Corps prior.So he had ego coming into, no, no. So, so that was the first, first big transition, uh, after football, you know, uh, went into tech sales, hated it. Yeah. And then I was like, you know, I've always had this affinity toward the Marine Corps. Yeah. You know, two of my best friends were re Raiders, right. Our, our equivalent Navy seals.And I kind of followed that path and did that for 10 years, got off, got off active duty. And the first job I got, I got my MBA from Rice Jones School Business, Houston. Um. Was knocking doors for a roofing company and, 'cause I, I did a white collar job. I hated it. My buddy was running a roofing company in Austin at the time.I was like, dude, help me integrate back to society. Mm-hmm. Like, let's go, like, what's the hardest job I can possibly do? He's like, dude, go knock doors for a roofing company in 110, 10 degree heat. Go get spit on and go get humbled. It's exactly what I needed. I ended up becoming very good at it. Um, and this is kind of like a roll role how we got into the septic industry.Yeah. So, so literally, um, I noticed really quick getting the roofing. I made a lot of money in roofing. Right. Did really well there, but I noticed a trend. Private equity was rolling up roofing. They were rolling up hvac, the rolling up electrical. What year was this? Oh, when did we, when did I get outta roofing?I mean, this was a couple years ago. Yeah. Because I'm like, PE roofing is like. That's new. 2022 maybe. So I, I was a, I was like a, I was a, you know, independent consultant. I sold for a couple of roofing companies. I had my own sales staff. Yeah. Yeah. Kinda like my own business, you know? Yeah. Sales process, right.Every, every roof company wants sales guys. Yeah. And that's kinda where my niche was. Um, but our company got acquired. It literally got chopped up and covered parts. They put it in a big pool and promised to buy out three years down the line. But I was like, do I wanna bet the next 20 years in an industry that's not, that's that's dependent on the weather.Insurance companies are always fighting against you. Yeah. Um, and the second a storm hits in Texas, you're not just competing against one or two companies, you're competing against all 10,000 in the state. Mm-hmm. Because say there's, say there's no hailstorms in Texas, then you gotta drive to Mississippi.You gotta drive to Florida. Yeah. You know, and you gotta find work. Yeah. I was like, well, I don't wanna bet my family's, um, generational wealth bet on an industry that's fragmented and not, not secure. So ironically, this is how we got inep. This is a God honest story. Got on a story. Okay. My neighbor at the time, her name was Jan, she's like 72 years old.The, a truck rolls around. 'cause the house we were rent in at the time, me and my wife was on septic. Mm-hmm. And we were new to it. I never had to touch the septic 'cause it worked. Um, yeah. Yeah. And, uh, she, she was getting septic tank pumped. The truck that was rolling in looked like something out of a horror movie.Yeah. It was all rusted. It was called Country Fresh Septic. It was like with a K fresh. It was rusted painted everywhere. The guy got out, um, very unprofessional, had no teeth, looked like he just like, I don't know where this guy was coming from. Very rude. Um, he, knowing what I know now, he just pumped the pump tank like 300 gallons, charged her 1200 bucks and left.And I went over there and I was watching some YouTube videos. I'm like, oh, this doesn't look right. You know? So we tried to call him back, tried to call him back, couldn't find him. Ironically, I was driving a couple days later and I found him at a gas station. I'm like, Hey dude, like you didn't do it right.Let's go back there and make it right. He's like, I got other jobs. Like, here's 500 bucks. Go make it. Right. Mm-hmm. You know, it's just like, I can't, I can't let that happen. And I was like, well, at least I can fix that part of the industry. You know? Mm-hmm. Having, having a trustworthy company where people trust you to show up to the house, you answer your phone, you educate.Yeah. The homeowner what Right. Looks like. 'cause Yeah. Septic system, the majority of the homeowners we, we talk to don't have no idea how it works. Yeah. You know? So education's really big for us, and then we went under, it was like, well, I'm like, Chad, why don't we buy a septic company? And we went under LOI with like four of 'em.Mm-hmm. I got all the way to the end and we both made the judgment calls like, well, there's not really anything worth buying. They're very profitable on paper, but it's like, yeah. I'm buying a phone number for a lot of money. Why don't we just do it ourselves? So literally, I bought a septic truck, Randy Septic truck.Mm-hmm. I was watching YouTube videos on the way to the jobs, figuring out how to, to do it by myself. And, and we could talk, you could talk about the revenue ramp, but I was literally figuring out the job. I was building the plane as, as it was, was taking off. Um, and I'll talk about the revenue ramp. Yeah, go ahead.Go ahead. John's a numbers guy, I'm curious. I know. Yeah. And we'll, we have to disclose for the franchise stuff, and this is first three months, we'll disclose first three months and off, off camera. I'll tell you. Where we're at now. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, um, 22,000. This is Kyle driving just me. 22,000. Yeah, 50%.You know the margin net? Yeah. 50% margin. Well we can't say that technically, but we Sure. Whatever. Um, and then n next month we went up to 50 and 57, I think is what the number was. Of revenue. Of revenue, yep. Brought in a guy to replace Kyle to the truck and started that. Started that one driver. Just me.Yeah. Yeah. It was well, Kyle, month one we brought in driver month two and started, he started subbing some things out for the repair side. Yeah. And then month three we made it over 90. It was 91 for month three, I believe is the exact numbers. Knowing drivers or one driver that was still one driver. One driver at that point.And just really getting into like the bigger jobs. 'cause in Texas it's a different market out here. 'cause we shadow shopped your business out here and it's like two 60. How are these guys like surviving on this? We're seven 50 on the pump side, but when it comes into the pump with the right YouTube education mm-hmm.Not like having tech that's, you know, competent, you're able to identify other systemic issues with the system. For example, this drain field is compromise. Like do a, you know, kind of do a test to see how things low test. Yeah. And those jobs range from, well you, yeah. What were you selling? Like and then, yeah, so back then I, I was like knowing, knowing anything.I found a subcontractor in my area, very competent guys, third generation septic. A lot of, a lot of the guys like, I gotta have all the talent in house and septic, not so much because a lot of these guys are freelancers and they're always looking for more work. Even if they work for a company that company's not the best at lead generation and septic, you know, that I've watched all your episodes.Septic is like wild. It's how no advertising, how it is, how it's like, uh, unbelievably easy. Especially when you compare it to plumbing and HVAC and an answer your phone. It's disgusting. You're playing in the big that way. It's disgusting. Literally in septic. Just answer your phone. It's, it's so annoying.It's so annoying. I shadow our highest ROI. Yeah. For Google Ads ever. Has been septic for new service. Amen. Amen. Like it's just Amen. Just, it's so dumb. It's so annoying. We're paying $10 roughly a click in our region. We're in Austin, we're selling these high ticket items. Yeah. And then if you compare that to roofing industry, you're like five x plus on Yeah.On that side. Plumbing, hvac. But then the other thing is this is an emergency response. A lot of times it's like red light. Yeah. Who's gonna be the first to answer the call? And when you were, you were shadow shopping, what percentage of people even answered the phone on the first time that you're calling 'em?So I did a 60 mile radi. I put a spot on the map in Austin. I drew 60 mile radius. There's probably a hundred independent operators out there. Right. It's, it is pretty wild. How many fragment. Yeah. But it's fragmented. Right. And then you have anything ranging from super professional companies, like 305 star reviews to like a company with like seven, five star reviews.But like those guys do really well on revenue side. But I call it all 100 of them. Yeah. Every single one of 'em I, I recorded most all their calls. 90% of them close to 90 didn't answer on the first, the first time I called. Oh yeah. The same, I would say 80% of 'em. They didn't call me back until the next day.Yeah. And then 50% of them didn't even call me back until three days later. Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, all we gotta do is answer the phone, answer the phone, make money. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And clo And the key to our success is obviously I have a sales background. Chad has a sales background. We, we have a general manager now who's a killer on the phone.This is a one call close. You have, you have one chance to make a first impression on the phone in septic for, for our thing. And I can we disclose per closing percentage numbers or ranges? Rough ranges. Yeah. Yeah. Ranges. Kyle's an assassin, so he's like an anomaly. Hey. But a business we've grown, if you, if you can master.Selling them on the phone on the first ring and getting that septic truck out there the same day. Your speed to revenue is less than a day and you can accept payment right there at the door. An 80% close rate is what we've like 80 to 90% systemically. Percent. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Kyle hits the 90 plus when he talks, but he's also like, he's just a gregarious person on the phone.I, I will compliment your organization. 'cause what we did coming into here, it's like, let's shadow shop John's company and see how it's, and Pam asked me like, how can I make you smile today? And like, I kind of smiled just in hearing that, which. Took a conversation, which was you typically a robotic conversation.Yeah. And then now my body language is changing physically. Mm-hmm. And I come in happier as a customer, and I've created like this emotional positive connection with your brand. Mm-hmm. And so it's like small little things that your organization's doing well, and we get a tour from, you know, the other John over here.I met your assistant at the door and the tour. You have your brand values. Um, is it, is it, uh, what is the acronym again? Is it Build Bat? Yeah, bat Batman. Accountability to Work Transparency. Okay. Yeah. And then just how, and just how your floor's laid out too. Like you have a review wall. The review wall is legit, and then you have your, you have, it's 110 feet.The, there's three review walls. Oh really? The biggest one's 110 feet. This next one's like 60, 70. But it is kind of fun. I think we're at 6,000 reviews or something. Yeah. It's kind of crazy. Yeah. You have, you guys are killing it's lot. You're crushing. It's a lot. You're crushing, man. So kudos to you. Yeah. I can go briefly into my background 'cause Yeah, I'd love it.Yeah. The other thing that Kyle and I have is the fact that we're brother-in-laws and so, oh, okay. Well, sometimes we accidentally say our wives are married and then they're like, this is the most polygamous business I've ever come across. Yeah. Texas, salt Lake sea's, all, we live on a compound, all contemplated compounds.Um, I've known his wife like. Five times longer than he has. She was 13 when I True. Yeah. So I, my wife and I have been together for 18 years, not married all of those, but, um, yeah, so they're, they're sisters and then he's just doing all these like, you know, unique things getting brought into the family. We have, we have Latina wives and so like, there's an initiation process and so I'm like, okay, sure.Alright, white boy, you're on your own from this process. Like, I'm not gonna be able to rough ride, help you too much. Um, and the, and and he passed all the tests and then we're like, okay, let's start like talking shop. And he'd started going down this acquisition process and rewind in my career, I came outta college the position for septic.For, for, yeah, for septic. And so he went down and so I was. Kind of brought in through barbecue conversation at the outset. 'cause I worked investment banking outta school. Mm-hmm. I was a minion analyst. I was dumb enough to do my third year as an analyst though, which kind of like gave me the ability to start skipping the MBA programs and looking at private equity venture capital.Yeah. So I went really far down the process with Dreesen Horrowitz, which is like in my world. Yeah. It was like, you know, technology luminary and this is very beginning, um, of when they were getting started. And so I had that as an option. I had Dollar Shave Club that was moonlighting. One of my VPs, my bosses at that point in time, um, her husband was coming out as a number two guy there.Dollar Shave Club. They ended up getting acquired four years after that for a billion dollars by Unilever. Yeah. I could have been employee number three. My dad, Midwestern gentleman, conservative gentleman. Um, I was talking about this razor blade of a month subscription commerce. And he goes, that's ridiculous.And I'm like, all right, fine. So I parlayed that into option number three. 'cause I go down this path with Andreesen Horowitz. Mm-hmm. Andreesen Horowitz, the guy who was gonna be the person I was replacing. He was like, Hey man, you sound like really entrepreneurial into this whole thing with Dollar Shave Club, and you got all these ideas and all like.Go now, because you don't have kids yet. You're not one of those crazy 25 year olds who has mm-hmm. Started their family already. Um, but you're gonna be in a very dis different risk profile a couple years down the road when you're actually looking. 'cause there is no partner path here. Partner path is go out and start a billion dollar empire and then you get to come back and you know, you've earned your seat at that table.And so that was where I decided to take door number three, which was kind of an entrepreneurial path by way of really just doing marketing because I had done the investment banking thing. Mm-hmm. I had kind of done this go to market strategy with Dollar Shave Club. And so started off with a slew of companies that were coming outta the Shark Tank.We were polishing up for Beyond the Tank that went into a book that I wrote called Bro, like literally Shark Tank. Literally Shark Tank. Okay. The, the way in which I encounter this, my wife worked at a building, there was some signs across the road about they were filming for something, it was in LA and they're always filming for something.And so asked the mailman who just delivered mail there, what are they filming for? It was like the Shark Tank cold emailed them, said, I'll do a bunch of work for free. Uh, some guy from the University of Spoiled Children, um, USC, which in that neck of the woods is like a good, notable, notable school. Um, and they're like, we'll take your free labor.And then kind of, it's a mutually understood exchange that if I don't suck, they get to promote me to their little Facebook group of people been on the show. And so that worked well, turned into a half dozen clients that started paying me. Um, it ended up being super dramatic and like crazy. Like there's people who are filtered for television.So like people are like, oh yeah, cra kind of crazy. Yeah. Yeah. I can say this now a little bit, but like, I got like taken to this like dark corner in a back office between the husband and the wife. The husband's like, we're getting a divorce and how much do you think this company is worth? Because my wife and I'm like.Wait a second. Like, why are you pulling me to Dark Corner and tell me this? Yeah. And why should I have like, anything that's gonna be related to this? So, long story short, we get into this path, wrote, wrote a book, worked with, you know, grew this company called Deviate Labs. Now I have clients, um, like Harvard University.Mm-hmm. GoDaddy, big, big entities. And so as Kyle got down this acquisition process, I get brought on board with an understanding of brand finance. Mm-hmm. And then he just like full send on a, on a truck. I bought it before we even had the conversation, what's this truck? And, and then, and it worked out fabulously well.We talked about that revenue ramp. And then during that we just landed brand. And you know, having something that gave confidence to the endeavor that we're going down this brand, we come bearing gifts for you. Oh really? We've created, I might like crank that real quick. This is, um, septic shock, epic septic shocks.So that is funny. So we have, um, our own energy drink that we created. Why not open it? Here you go. Yeah. The the flavor is green. Yeah. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. From one septic entrepreneur to another to another. Yeah. Um, but oh, mine's fizzing like crazy here. It might, it's also pretty good. It might be room temperature.I'm good, I'm good. This the flavor is green. I still don't know what the flavor is. It, it's kind, it's, it's inspired by OG Surge is kind of like, okay. I don't know if you, you're a little bit younger than I, I dunno if you had surge back in the day, but I may need to drink something. Yeah, yeah. No, it's, it's, it's definitely frothy, but yeah, I'm, I'm having a good time.Um, and so brand is something that we've started to build the beginnings of a lifestyle brand around the septic world, which is like the weirdest thing you could possibly conceive of. But this, I honestly feel like it kind of resonates, uh, a hundred percent me. Well with that. What is that? Like my joke, I've said this probably a hundred fucking times on this show.This is why I am profane on Apple Podcasts. This is why explicit content, this is why I'm explicit content you mouth, I'm a plumber. But, um, but so I've said that like so many times on the show where we, you know, we have these agreements with some of these like commercial clients Yep. Where it's like five grand every Friday and I'm like, you could just retire.Like that could just be your life. 100%. Like five grand every week is a good business. Yep. Yes. And that is two hours a week. Yes. Like it is kind of a crazy lifestyle business. Yes. But yeah, my joke, and I'm sure I've sat on the show a million times, it's like, if I ever retire, I'm probably just gonna like pump septics and just like do one client I love because it's like kind of ridiculous.Yeah. And, and you gotta like. You know, work hard to get lucky. Yeah. And you've now created your own luck and opportunity. Yeah, I did buy that business for like seven figures. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're an empire builder, John. I think the, the things that you've accomplished at a very young age, like to be 34, to be able to do what you've done.Yeah. And then build a media company. Good team. Yeah. Good team. Yeah. And like the team that is able to bring media into the world. I have a lot of appreciation for what you've built. Um, and this is where you, we talked about the smile and this visceral feeling like this is something for us now. We have a flavor of our company.And if you look at like brand, like being able to grab onto this different surface areas, the lifestyle brand, I was, as I was mentioning, like we have the ability to go in as a franchise organization, which we haven't even talked about all that much. Which I was gonna say, like, I know this, this episode's about franchise.I know you probably have a lot of questions for us. We're happy to answer 'em, but yeah. Yeah. But this is where we can make money, oddly, from energy drinks, which becomes an accretive marketing channel for us. Like we're monetizing our brand impression. Oh, you sell these. We've start, we got inbound inquiries from our conference.We'll send you a bunch of free boxes for your office. He, he, that's hilarious. How much do you sell these for? Well, four bucks is what we're doing. Yeah. Where, where do you sell online is what we're, yeah. Oh my God. We joke. Not officially a drink in California. We actually, it's white labeled. You can totally drink it there.But we have does not contain poop. It's keto paleo, five calories. B12. Electrolytes does not contain poop. Does not contain poop. Yeah. I'm dying. I'm dying. Talk about your, your raw power story with like, because this is where we realize like, this could actually be a thing. Yeah. So I, so Seneca, he's my personal trainer.He's a two time world champion, Olympic Lifter Seneca, uh, bro. Big yolked as fuck. Yes. I mean, he's, he's like, he's so big. Uh, that would sounded weird. Cut that out. He's so big. He's so big. Oh my god. No. Um, he, uh. Hey. He's like, dude, like I love your brand. Whatever. He's like, Hey, funny story. You're the first person that's gonna taste this.Let me know. Because he, he has like, you know those bro gyms, like the powerlifting gyms? Like, yeah, yeah. I went to the, uh, there's one like, uh, thousand feet, the kettlebell gym. Oh yeah. Whatever. It was like, bro jam, whatever. But he has all these like jack 3D, you know, type energy drinks. I'm like, dude, try this.I gave him a whole box. It's like 24, sold out in three hours. Everybody bought it and I was like, oh God. It's hilarious. It's hilarious. Yeah. It's, and, and, but we took it to the wet show was is our industry's biggest trade. Oh, totally. Yeah. Trade show. And we bought 500 of 'em. If anybody wants to Google It's WWE ET.Yeah, yeah. Wwe ET. Yeah. Which is the wet show. And we bought 500 of 'em and they're all gone, which the white show. We had to, and again, like I'm, I'm, I'm being self-promotional here. Yeah. But I'm proud of this particular, so this is Pumper Magazine, which is the guys that put on the wet show. Um, yeah. That photo is smoke grenades that we put at twilight with us holding hoses in brand new suits.My first time wearing a cowboy hat to be able, 'cause I'm from Minnesota originally. We'll, we'll put this onto the YouTube. Okay. Yeah. This is like the YouTube, the YouTubes. Yeah. Um, yeah. So like, oh my God, that's so funny. The brand has legs and I, I think that's where, yeah. You know, I look at owned and operated.Now you have Jack as another property under your umbrella here, which I didn't realize, like the Jack Connect. I don't know why I didn't realize that immediately. But you've done a good job of brand and it's hard to quantify brand, but we've quantified it. And that's something that I know I've talked too much.Turn the floor back over to Kyle. Oh, I turn the floor back down. Yeah, there's, there's a comment that you have in your video, your antit truck wrap, and I think that's something that, uh, there's probably more perspective. Okay. But, but actually give your perspective on the Antit truck wrap. I wanna hear it.Okay. I really wanna hear it. Yeah. Alright. He, here's the, because it's opportunity cost. Here's, here's my beef Yes. With truck wrap and I'm, there's a whole episode. Um, and really I, you know, if you're listening to this and you listen to that episode, I want to apologize for everything that I say, but people agree, people agree with you in that episode.Uh, so yeah, there's a, there's a few episodes, uh, not a month, but like a quarter probably. We're like, I'm like, I shouldn't, you should do, you should do once a month, a public apology for all the stuff that you said. Yeah. It's pretty, it's pretty rough, rough John's Reparation podcast episode. It's pretty rough.It's pretty rough. So, so this one, the issue that I have is someone told me. So like brand in general? Very pro. Sure. I'm excited about brand. I think it makes sense. I think it adds a ton of value. It's added a ton of value for us. Yes. So like no argument on brand at all. I have an issue with the way that our industry goes about brand and the exact thing I say in, you know, I'm gonna distill 30 minutes of ranting down into like one minute.Mm-hmm. I paying 30 to 50 grand for a branding package that looks exactly like every other competitor's. Yeah. I think is ridiculous. Agreed. And you know, like I feel like I, and, and it was awful. 'cause we, I, we do this like I, I do this episode where I just like rip. And the internet likes ripping it. And then like immediately after that, we're hosting an event next door with like 15 people.Yeah. And somebody walks over, Hey man, you're kind of harsh. I heard, I heard you have an opinion on truck wraps. I I just paid 30 grand for mine. And I'm like, oh, well the van wraps. So you're like, like ruder heroes. Like you have like a, a guy on the side of your truck, but Yeah, it's always the same. There's, there's a guy, there's a dog, a robot.He's holding a ranch robot. But we, we did the exact opposite. Yeah, no, you just, from what I saw, that, that looks pretty good. But that's my issue with the brand. Amen. The truck wraps is like, there's a guy in my market, and I use this as an example, he probably paid 50 grand for his branding package. It looks exactly like mine and it was by the same company.So I'm like, you made the same company that I paid 10 grand for a decade ago. Yeah. And you paid them 50 grand. Yeah. To match my colors and have a little mini guy that looks like mine. Yeah. Like what? What was the point of all this? Have you, have you ever quantified, can you, so can you have you, so the you track metrics, right?Like lead generation brand is fairly quantifiable. I know. So how often do people say, I saw your van in the neighborhood. I want you to come out, uh. That I don't know. Mm-hmm. We measure it by organic search. Okay. Got it. And he's a monster entity and that's where, but we have these numbers. Give him the numbers.That is interesting. So, so, okay. We're like, okay, we're looking at all the septic trucks center. Yeah. Yeah. In our neighborhood, all of them are tin can, right? Yeah. Plain. Or they have a sticker on the side, or that's what mine look like, basic lettering, which is totally fine when you have a, when you have a brand like Wilson, you don't, you don't need to, you don't need to flex.Right. But we're like, look at this Lamar advertisement sign. Yeah. $3,000 a month just to put a big billboard that everybody drives by. Nobody looks at it. Mm-hmm. How do we, so then we have this $250,000 septic truck. That's massive. Yeah. Let's turn that into a rolling billboard. Yeah. I passed. Tens of thousands of people on the road every single day.20 to 25% of our inbound traffic comes from. And we quantify this every single time we ask comes from people seeing our truck in the neighborhood on the road. That's interesting. 20 to 25%. We, we have children that will run down after the septic 'cause it looks like something out of a marvel. We playing the ice cream song we were playing No, no.Seriously. Our pumper. So when I started, I would gain a neighborhood. That's actually a funny idea. That's a really great idea. You guys should try. We wanted fart noise. Um, on our fart noise on the horn. Yeah, that's really good. So I would, I would drive the truck in the neighborhood and I'd pump a neighbor and the other neighbor would come over and be like, Hey, can you pump me?Yeah. Or the kid would come up. I was like, daddy, look at that truck. And he was like, Hey man, how much you charge? Like one day I, this isn't a lie. I, I, I did a pump and then literally went to go dump and I sold two more while I was out there at the same day. I turned that $750 job to a $2,400 day. Yeah.Just in one Your cl lea without even have to like knock. That's pretty solid. So 20, 25% is what we've observed in That's interesting. In, in the truck itself. And so those numbers change when you get to scale and you have other channels and then it's a whole measuring game. But we had a microcosm where we were able to actually quantify brand.Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. So what do you think, uh, how much does a wrap cost on a four grand? Yeah, that's not that bad. It's not bad. We, we have, we have, we, we use graphics guy, shout out graphics guys in Austin. Um, they, they, they do a really great job. And 50 grand, I was gonna say is fucking ridiculous.Well, that's a brand package. Oh, package. It's brand, brand package. But also that's, you know, yeah. That's a non amount. Well, if it was unique. Yeah. I have no issue with it. Yeah. It's, it's the, there's copy of case there is literally a Wilson Plumbing Heating and Cooling in Texas. It might be Austin or I found, yeah, there's another one, Florida.Yeah. You used these same branding package from the Oh, like it is literally what I paid for cease desist, what I built. Yeah. And they're fucking in Texas. We met them at a conference. And they have like my logo on their hat and we're like, with like the little plumbing, Hey, who are you guys? Did you trademark your logo?They're like, who are you? I'm, what the fuck? I'm your godfather. Wait, did you so and so wrap shop? No, it was, it was ridiculous. So yeah, that's the beef I have is Okay, that makes sense. That's fair. It, yeah. So we understand and, and it understand because. But the thing is, you're the incumbent, you're the 800 pound gorilla.Yeah. And people are trying to emulate success, but if you're the upstart who's coming in to disrupt, you have to take the road less traveled. Yeah. And that's where if you're gonna embrace brand, like we have a competitor, um, they were really into the environmental and everyone thinks dolphins and clover, leafs and rainbows.It's the environment. Um, but this is really just like a, you know, a. Sanitary way of talking about the septic industry, but instead of trying to be sanitary and polite, like, let's embrace it. A bumper of our trucks says We ain't hauling chocolate milk. That's like what people have, like, and they left. I've seen a lot of memes on the back.Oh, it's so good. Trucks. Yeah. Yeah. But I, I, I wanna, I wanna get into every single episode that I've, I think a septic pumper owns poop.com. poop.com Probably. I saw that on expensive domain. Oh, he's probably, he can retire if he just sells it. That's awesome. Yeah. Well, I, I've watched a lot of your episodes, John, you know, I know, I know.You probably have a lot of questions for us. Um, yeah, like getting to the numbers and the, you know, will you preface this video of billion dollar septic industry? Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure you, you have a lot of questions for us, um, on how we plan to get there. Maybe, maybe not. I, the a hundred million dollar show was really enticing to us.I still think that's like a. Very attainable number if you just do the numbers. Yeah. Do you know how Big Wind River is? I actually don't know. One to 300 million is what Chad DPT says, but yeah, they have 50, well I think they're 75 roll ups now. No, it's 80 is what I heard. 80. Yeah. Eight Rollups. It's just too good.Yeah. And they include some dump million piece or 3 million a piece. I think they have, um, like a handful, maybe two handfuls of dump stations that they've incorporated. They're building infrastructure now. Yeah. On the back of it. But to your comment, like it's not if you have 80 plus, like it's 2 million.Yeah. You get there really quick, quickly. Um, but the specific comp, uh, comment in one of the videos that you talked that you have septic, someone says. Nice intro. This is Patrick Sears, 1 6 3. But you never actually talk about how to scale to 100 million. What did that look like? And these are good questions.How many trucks? Yeah, how many employees? Back office requirements, how big of a service area? Yeah. Since septics are mostly rural, that's a lot of square miles. Like maybe the, the last comment is everyone thinks rural when they think septic, but there's also lift stations. There's also grease traps and grit traps and all these things that can happen in the suburb.And we're not rural at all. Yeah, no, you're not. And, and the infrastructure's not gonna be, you're not gonna run city sewer anymore. And it gets expensive even to hook it up. Mm-hmm. Septic is, septic is septic. And it's like one of every three homes in America. Yeah. So it's like a significant quantity.Mm-hmm. Um, but to get to that a hundred million, I think in, in our instance, we're talking about getting to 1 billion. Do you wanna unpack the billion? You can do that. Okay. So you're a numbers guy. Yeah. So I mean, like when we're talking a billion, we're talking enterprise value. Mm-hmm. So if we're gonna back into what is a million dollars worth of enterprise value, if you could truly build a national brand in this industry, you're looking at probably a 20 x multiple on this.And so this is something where that would be an EBITDA multiple, like profit, let's just call it. Um, and so out of that, you're looking at. How do, how do I get to like a, a number? That's not insane. Um, we're talking like $50 million of, of ebitda. Um, and when you do, you have your videos you're talking about?Mm-hmm. After all the admin, like, so your gross margins, like you can run 70% on mm-hmm. The pumping side, and then you have your big repairs or maybe, you know, the lower margin work that you're doing on like the install side. Oh, let's just say you're running 20% net profit. So you're gonna say 20%. Okay, I'm gonna multiply my 50 million by five, so I need to get to a quarter billion dollars, 250 million, um, in revenue.Now how are we gonna do that across? Do you actually think you need that much? I don't even think you need that much. I don't think you need that. We know some people in their multiples and what they're gonna get. Like you're, if you were to ever, not that you would ever sell Wilson, you're gonna command a super premium multiple.Yeah. Because you are an institution. Mm-hmm. And when you go to Google, you're a thousand and you're number one, and your Google is informing all the generative answer engine, ai, you know, voice call, like you have a behemoth. People will pay a premium for that. So if, if we're looking at. Each location? Well, I just mean like, sorry, just to unpack the PLA little bit more.Yep. I don't think you need that much revenue. Oh. And revenue. So, so something we've learned this year, and that's been kind of interesting. So we went from one, we had, we ran multiple locations back in like, uh, four or five years ago. Yep. And then we merged 'em all into this one, and then this year we're like, hold my beer.Yeah. Or hold my, hold my, hold my, so, so we went from, uh, one to, we'll have four locations at the end of Good for you. Congratulations. Yeah. But like, I started the first one was January 1st. Yeah. So we, um, and what has been wild is the, I guess depends on how much you guys centralized because you're a franchise, so maybe you can't centralize as much.We can do a lot of back office for folks. Okay. Um, and so, 'cause the centralizing like, I think 20%, I, it probably ends up being like 40%. Yeah. I would imagine. Yeah. After centralized from your mouth to God's ears. Like, we gotta be careful in the multiple on like, the profit that we talk about, just because we're regulated by F tc.Okay. So like, I'll give like, I just my quick. How, how it worked for us. Yeah. Because I would imagine it would've worked the same. Yep. So we went from one location to, again, we're about to close on our fourth one. And, uh, it is three states. And then we've centralized most of their, we basically deleted their overhead, which I know, like, obviously it's gonna be independent operators.Sure. So like a different thing for you guys. Um, but net doubled. Wow. And, uh, like overhead as a percentage of revenue went from like 34, which is like already pretty tight. Yeah. To like, we're in the high twenties inclusive of marketing. Yeah. Yeah. Good for you. And like, that's 5% swing is millions of dollars.What, what was the biggest number, like of that, of that 5%? What was the, the things that you cut, what was, what was the makeup of that? So, well, part of it was like a big focus on gross profit. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So our gross profit went like, do you raise your prices? We raised prices, but we also focused on higher profit like jobs units.Oh, okay. Okay. So like rest, we have a restoration department. Mm-hmm. And that's a 75, 80% gross margin. Yep. Yeah. So like, okay, well can we do more of that septic? Yeah. Can we do more of that? Can we go bring on the next driver? Can we add another shift? Um, what was the other ones? Uh, like sewer replacement, which is a little, a little bit tangential here.Yeah. Um, jetting and all the other things associated with that. Yeah. And then, but like, less on hvac. 'cause hvac, like if you're best in class hvac, you're like 51, 50 2% gross profit. Yeah. If you're best in class septic, you're 80. So like, it's like, okay, well how do we just maximize gross margin? Mm-hmm. And uh, hit harder.So that was a big part of, uh, what happened. And then we centralized call center dispatch. Yeah. Accounting, marketing. I mean, we centralized a lot in a very short amount of time. So these branches, they're like two to $3 million revenue branches. Wow. They went from having a 45% cost structure to a 10% cost structure, like overnight.Phenomenal. 10. It was wild. Can I ask a question about your operation? Are you running these 24 by sevens, or how does your work hours work? For septic? Yeah. Well, let's say septic. Yeah. Or, or broader, but yeah. Uh, no, not 24 7. Like we have like AI phones picking up. Sure. We have. Yeah. Well the, the one thing that we observed when Kyle was getting behind the wheel is the nights and weekends.Your com, your competitive landscape is already a bunch of hooligans that are out there. Yes. Yeah. But if you're gonna do the nights and the weekends, your competitive landscape is like nothing because Yeah. That is, no one is willing to work and you can rotate drivers every alternate nights and weekends.Mm-hmm. So you have a roster of drivers. Yeah. And we command, we, I mean we charge $350 for an emergency fee. EA weekend fee fee. So that seven $50 ticket turns into a thousand. I mean, should we talk about average ticket price? So, yeah. Yeah. Our, our goal for Austin, yeah. So, so for pump outs, right. So the goal for every time we step on the house is a thousand dollars or more.Yeah. Mm-hmm. Okay. The average a thousand and change average customer value for our, you know, step step year of 2025. Do you have, now you said that's Austin. Austin. Have you looked into, like, my example here is 260 is a lot. Yeah. For like, where we're pumping, which to me is hard to believe 'cause everyone else I talk to anywhere else in the US.It's like 5% Ohio might be the lowest in the US Real. So, lot of, a lot of, a lot of, so what we've observed is in certain regions, 'cause we've done a lot of national research, obviously we have a compliance team that goes into these different markets, does a lot of research. Mm-hmm. Reverse engineers there.Licensure. Hey, what do we need to break into that market? Yeah. What we found is that there's, it's a good old boys network and a lot of 'em, price fix, they'll say, Hey, they agree on price, they agree on price, not price. That's a bad word. Yeah. They agree on price. Say, Hey man, like we all need to make more money.There's plenty of work out there. Hey, you're here. Let's all be here and let the best man win. Um, if that hasn't happened here, it probably should because like No, it definitely does. Okay. Landed on two 60. That's, that's crazy, man. Lead the charge. John, you're like you. We do. You do? Yeah. So wait, okay, so it's two, we're the most expensive time.It's two 60 up to, we were competing against 180. Yeah. But if you look at the economics, if you look at the, so I've watched your video in two 60. It blows my mind how that it still 70% gross margin on that. That's insane. Yeah. I mean how, yeah, it's so good. Well, and then how you have systems that are also well over a thousand, so you get that 1500 aerobic system.I dunno how big aerobic is in your particular surface area, but Yeah, like average pump ticket is probably in the fours. Yeah. Yeah, because like 2000 gallons or 1500 and you do high. So it's a high volume game for you. For us, it has to be volume. It has to be, it has to be volume. You get route density and you have, we get route density.Yeah. We have to like map it. And that's why, you know, someone commented on the same video, like, Hey, you know, who's getting eight? Yeah. It's like, well we gonna have to get eight. Yeah. We, we get three to four. Yeah. Yeah. And if we could do 700, that'd be awesome. Yeah. But yeah, no, we, we are currently, I think $15 a ahead.'cause we're always like, yeah, there is a good old boys club. I don't know that, like, I don't know if it's price fixing or what, what's you call, but everyone knows what they all charge. Yeah. Like we're all kind of friends with each other. Yeah. And then we just be 15 bucks more expensive. Yeah. But you, you have the brand to command a higher price.That's the thing. Yeah. So when, if I'm a homeowner, and this is something that we've observed, like I, one, I want to feel that the job's getting done, right. Mm-hmm. And if I have like, you know, a brand that doesn't, it's not as polished online or they don't answer the phone or they show up, they're super unprofessional.Yeah. I think I'm getting taken advantage of just. Put, I'm putting myself in the customer's shoes. You go into someone's home, it's personal experience that home. So, so we can, we can command a higher price. 'cause number one, again, education is so important. We, every single one of our sales reps, every single one of our technicians have a process.They, they show up to the home. The first thing they do when they go to the house, they knock on the door and they introduce themselves, hi, my name is Thomas. I'm gonna be taking care of you today. Do you mind walking over to the septic tank with me? Yeah. I'm gonna give you a crash course on what type of system you have and what I'm gonna do today.I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna take before and after photos. And after we're done, it puts the pdf, DF sent it to 'em and they have it for the records. And people love that. And they'll pay a premium for professionalism. And also just like you being awesome at what you do well and you're emergency response business in many ways, where it's like people are coming in, they don't run septic that way.I, I don't think we optimize septic. And I, I, I've said this a lot, like there's probably so much more we can do on septic. Yes. And the problem is. It's like, if it ain't broke, don't fix. It's a hundred grand a month. So it just gets overlooked. Yeah. Yeah. Because the rest of the business, like it's higher. Way higher.Yeah. It's a small, but I, I really do think, like, if you got into the weeds, well we know there's so much to, and it's almost like annoying. You look at it and you're like, God, we could do, well, lemme, lemme ask you this, John, on the septic side, 'cause I'm very curious, right? Yeah. Um, you just do pumping. We stopped doing replacements.Okay. Yeah. So no installs. No. Now it would be an easy, we, so we stopped doing it a couple years ago. Um, I think for like the independent operator, they should be doing installs. Yeah. I think that we ended up not doing them, uh, for like a variety of reasons. It's it's general construction. It's a, it's time and it's time.It takes, like our business is permitting. Our business is built to do. We're gonna do $40 million this year of like same day, next day shit. Yeah. And septic is like 30 to 45 days of permitting and approvals. Yeah. And we are just not designed to do that. So, but like the independent operator on a million of pumping, you can probably do a million to 2 million of replacements.So like it is real for, so replacements. Replacements is. Okay, so you know this, there's like three years, like sometimes four bucket, like, so you have pumping maintenance and repairs and installs. And then real estate for resale inspections is, he's where we're at. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. The majority of our income outside of pumping comes from same day repairs and maintenance.Yeah. So you ask me a question. So like with LPD systems, low pressure DOS systems, I don't know if they're out here, sometimes regional, but um, the lines get clogged. So if you don't maintenance your pump, all that sledge gets sucked up into pump out. Do drinking roots growing in there. Yeah. And you have to, you have to jet it.Yeah. And we started $5,000 a jet and people pay it because if you don't do it, your whole system's gonna get taller. Now you're gonna pay 30 grand for a new system. Yeah. But god forbid it backs up into your house and you forbid it backs up. Very, very expensive, bro. But those, those jobs are. Super quick to do so.Yeah. In and out in a day. Yeah. Honestly, like we're building on the install side, it's kind of like its own business. It's like, yeah. Very project management install. It's like, but the day to day is emergency response. Pumping is lead generation for maintenance and repair. Maintenance repair is lead generation for pumping.They're, they go hand in hand. And if you're not, uh, so for us, I'm, I'm saying you're not doing this, but your technician, we train all our technicians to do a diagnostic inspection. Yeah. And identify, and a lot of 'em are trained to do pump replacements. Same day. We have, we stock our trucks, we have a big storage compartment on 'em with two or three, uh, grinder pumps.Mm-hmm. And $1,600 grinder pump, and 15 50% margin. It takes 20 minutes to replace. Yeah. That's super easy money. And you'd be in a plumber. You probably know that. Yeah. Yeah. But just to summarize that, one thing that I'll, I'll talk about is a revenue secret is jetting. That's been a significant driver for revenue.All our trucks have jetters on. Yeah. Because you're not, this is a mar, high margin, low labor. Like this is a, it's, it's all the beautiful things that you would want. Oh yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. Well I think in general, like drains is sort of this incredible Yeah. Section of, of. Sewer lines. And so that's where the franchise Zoom, drain, or Rotman.Yeah. That's their whole business model is jetting out. Yeah. You can build a monster in that region. Yeah. On the subject of, I wanna make sure that we still answer the question from our man. Um, well, there was this, well, I think a hundred million of revenues, it's, uh, I think could derive that enterprise value of a billion from your vantage point and acknowledge a multiple.Well, I, I don't know about that, but I do th I think if the question was like, how do you get to a hundred million in revenue? Sure. Like, okay, that's. 30 branches at 3 million a piece. Yeah. And you centralize as much as possible. Like Yep. That doesn't feel that crazy to me. It does not. Yeah. Yeah. And you would be the guy to be able to say that, because you're doing that with, congrats on the third, third state, right?Yeah. Is, yeah. Which third is this? Which state is the new one? Are you allowed to disclose? Not yet. Okay. That's a future episode. Texas is actually, it's actually Wilson's Austin. Yeah. Let's get, yeah. I, I actually have tried to pitch, uh, and I, you know, like a rollup idea I had. Yeah. Um, that never went anywhere, but I did try to reach out to a few people, was literally just buying other Wilson Plumbings.How many? There's a lot of 'em. Oh wow. Oh yeah. There's one in Columbus, there's one in Michigan, and I was like, let's just. Yeah. I won't even have to change the brand. This is gonna be awesome. You should put that out into the universe just 'cause some guys are gonna come back at it. Yeah. Hey, actually looking to sell, if you own a Wilson P plumber, I would love to buy Well, can I pitch you another Wilson idea?Yeah. I was pitching your colleague, um, over here, the other John. Um, so for us, like we talked about this lifestyle brand that we're oddly building, you're drinking the brand right now. Um, we use Wrangler for jeans, so we're in conversation with Wrangler. Yeah. Um, Wrangler. You can buy 'em at Walmart. Yeah.Yeah. Um, we, we, these are kind of a stretchy little thing. We can get 'em for like $34. Mm-hmm. Um, but when we get into big brand mode, we're buying like thousands of these things. Yeah. Um, why not Wilson Athletics? Could your merch be Wilson and then you kind of, you could create aura off of this Wilson Association?Yeah. Has that been a conversation or a thought or anything that you pursued? It was like a, it was a fake thought for a minute. Yeah. So like 10 years ago when we didn't have enough money to invest in like brand, we, I was like. Babe, here's are what we do. Yes. Yes. We all need logoed hats. Yes. Let's just go get the ones with the W Dude.Yes. The Washington Nationals hat. We did do that for like three years. That was our like logoed hat was really wolves and W Oh, that's so great. Yeah. 'cause your cost on, that's very, yeah. Yeah. It was 10 bucks. It's time again for our Breaking five workshop. This is the fifth time we've done it, and we've had over 130 contractors go through this cohort.If you're hovering between one and 5 million of revenue and you're feeling stuck, then you're not alone. I know the hesitation. Can I really step away from my business for three days? Is the workshop actually going to be worth it? Is it too HVAC specific? Well, here's the truth. Breaking five isn't a big conference.It's 25 to 30 operators in a small room. It's highly tactical. There's no rah rod nonsense. You'll be alongside myself and Jack Carr at my home service business in Akron. Seeing the actual systems behind accounting. Call center dispatch service. Install the real bottlenecks. You're gonna work alongside other operators at your exact stage to build a plan that you implement the second you get home.The networking alone is worth it, and the clarity is game changing. Three days limited to 30 seats. If you're serious about breaking through the $5 million wall, grab your ticket for 500 off@ownedandoperated.com with code breaking early bird, or click the link. These brands out there, like that brand association, they're gonna put some media out there for you.And not that you need more media 'cause you already have such a thing, but like it's aura like that you can be in the game at your scale. That third state mm-hmm. Of deriving Aura. And that's where these bigger brand endeavors and it's gonna be a, it's a cost, it's a line item that you're already spending.Um, but to have that type of association, or maybe it's Russell Wilson, who you're CODOing charity with, but your Wilson name has legs, whether you've put out into the Universe acquisition under their will enterprises, all you need to do is tell the Cleveland Browns to bring Russell Wilson to, here we go.His Sunset tour to Cleveland. We go, yeah. And you guys can have a brand deal. Anything to help sounds I had a client and this, this is another way you could drive media from it. Um, tiny little business. It's called Scotty Vest was the business. It wasn't tiny Scotty Vest. Yeah, Scotty Vest. Um, she was on the Shark Tank.Great entrepreneur, just a master of stunt marketing. This guy put, um, do you remember the Sky Mall magazine that you would see Yeah. When you'd go flying? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, there's an audience here on TikTok that's never heard of a magazine, but Sky Mall, they were in bankruptcy and this guy out went out there.Oh, that would've been, and she issued a press release talking about how he's acquiring Sky Mall. Yeah. Sky Mall went for like, you know, it was a big, big organization even though it was, but, but every single media outlet picked up this every guy everyone's talking about, who is this Scott Jordan Guy who's gonna be buying Scotty Vest?And it became this thing. And so it was in 24 hours, 40 media placements that he got there. And it was all because he was gonna, and so if you're to go, go out there and talk about bringing Russell Wilson for his hero tour here to like, there's, there's something that's. Provocative and interesting. And we talked about like, you're talking an SEO and you're talking about truck wraps and all these different things.The next frontier is like, how am I gonna look good in AI engine? Mm-hmm. Like, how do I show up first? The best proxy is what you're already doing on Google is gonna be translated over there, but it also is factoring in these other breadcrumbs on the internet that don't have that backlink style value.And what that is is your podcast, like all the things that you're doing on YouTube and this media that you're gonna get, even if it's just a conversation, you no, no longer have to be stressing about the backlink and ai. And this is like a winner takes all, because a lot of this is a voice response that you're getting from people.It's like, who am I gonna get while talking to Siri? It's gonna be Yeah. The number one thing that shows up. And so you're going into an industry where a thousand winner take, all markets are gonna be existing and you're already winning and taking all. Mm-hmm. And that will continue, you know, to, anyways, that's my high horse on, yeah.Yeah. Brand and brand ideas. And I wanted to pitch in on the Wilson thing. Yeah. I, I, the, the Wilson thing is good. I, I like both of 'em. I think that's pretty funny. Uh, I don't know enough about football, but I'm getting some context clues that he is a football player. He, Russell, I was a football player. Okay.Yeah. Now I'm just a watch up. Old dad. Oh, Kyle is a no no, I meant Russell. Yeah, Russell Wilson. Oh yeah, Russell Wilson is here. Yeah. Oh yeah. Two time odds. Literally don't know. Married to Sierra. Is he married to Sierra? Yeah, he married us Sierra. Oh, okay. Yeah. What was that? Uh, I don't know what song that was.I don't know. Yeah. Now we're getting out of our wheelhouse. No, it's cool. But so how are you like, I'm trying to imagine, so how, how many locations are there now? We're Austin. So to, to two corporate locations. And again, we're new to France, but we plan to be off the, I mean, we could say it, this is, it's on the record.Yeah. So we're plan, be Let's talk with Josh. Yeah. We plan to be in 16 states by the end of this year. Yeah. Okay. So that's, that's, that's what's in pipeline right now. Uh, and then Josh, um, so Josh Cohen, who is the founder of Junk Luger, who's a big one. Have you heard of junk bloggers? Yeah. Yeah. Junk Bloggers.So he, he's, he three grew to three 50 locations across the country. Sold it for a hundred million. Yeah. Nine figure exit. A hundred million nine figure exit. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. Josh, sorry. But You're welcome. You could text me later. Yeah. Um, you're welcome. Um, very successful and we're like. Um, okay. We're new to franchising.Mm-hmm. We need somebody who has experience, uh, to go try to, we have this vision all junk call Poop is like, that was the franchise. Junk Loggers was junk. Junk Laggers was his franchise. Like are any of those non franchise? Which ones? The 100 100 all franchise. All of them are franchises. Lend himself so beautifully to that.Yeah. Because it was 1-800-GOD-JUNK was a pioneer and then Junk lagers followed and then just kind of carved his out. Yeah. Yeah. But so he, he grew, it exited. We're like, man, who understands what we're trying to do? Okay. Solid, solid waste to liquid waste. Okay. Yeah. Jo, we got introduced to Joss to proxy of a franchise consultant, and now he's gonna be, he, he's gonna be the c he's gonna be the CEO o of a franchise entity.Oh, nice. Yeah, so he's he's an and financier as well. Yeah, so, well, he's a, he's a big investor in our company and he brings not only just him, but his whole team that was responsible for bringing John Laggers to that a hundred million dollar exit into our organization. Yeah, that's sweet. So, so we we're ready to go.We've built out so many systems and processes. 'cause he, here's the deal, you know this, so, you know, Ohio Septic. Is from re regulatory licensure. It's Texas is very different than Ohio. Right? It's different state to state, but even county to county. Yeah. So you have to have a centralized, like, compliance team to go to these markets and reverse engineer, like how do, how do you start these?Like, yeah. Some, some, like, all you need is a pump truck and register with a local dump station and a, and a permit to dump and you're up in operational, like in Alabama for example, you have to wait six months and go through a big licensing thing. Oh, that's so interesting. With Wisconsin, it's a hundred, it's 1200 hours just to be in the set.Really? Yeah. Be in the set business. Ohio was a 45 minute open book online, text online. So you wanna hear Texas. Texas Is this, so like, okay, like plumbers, you have to 10,000 hours get your journeyman and whatever. How many hours get your master in Texas, you take one course? Yeah. Okay. It's three days long.And then for, for septic. For, okay. So to get your installer one. So there, okay. So there's installer license, there's hauling and there's install. So there's no license. So the only thing in, in, in, in pumping in Texas, you just need to get your Richard truck. CDL. Permit your truck. Yeah. And dump There's license requirement in Texas.Okay. Interesting. For pumping, I mean, it's less, less stringent. The, the big, uh, regulatory TCEQ, Texas Commission Environmental Quality. You take, uh, your level one installer test, which is three days in a test. And then, but you also take, you simultaneously, you could take your basic maintenance provider test, be able to do maintenance.Um, those are, those are your, those are your bear's entry. And then you can go be a licensed, you can go install, you can go work on pumps and then, but there's certain type of systems that fall under level one. In order to work on a level two system, like an aerobic or these different types of systems, you have to be under the supervision of a level two.Yeah. But you can become a level two within a year if you through a certain path. But that's the highest level of licensure in Texas. Yeah. Is is a year, a year and a half of. Three day courses. Yeah. Once every year. Way different than plumbing. What you're doing. Different plumbing. Yeah. And, but guess what, the biggest issue that we find, which is, which is the bottleneck, which is why we're investing big into education, is transferring the knowledge that Uncle Joe's septic had to this generation.Yeah. 'cause they're, they're there. Very few legacy operators are giving it to their kids. And that knowledge is, is the kids don't want 'em the real reason. The kids don't want 'em. Yeah. Um, but if you, it's. If, if somebody takes the reins for education to attract people from outside the industry to bring 'em inside mm-hmm.It gives them a skill set that sets 'em apart. That's not competing with Wilson Plumbing. Mm-hmm. They're so and so septic and we give them a professional brand systems and processes. They're 95% of the way there and they're crushing. Yeah. Um, and there's two topics I wanna make sure that we cover on this.Um, one is how to diligence a territory which will dovetail off that. And the other is like, why a franchise? Because I feel like it's a valuable unspoken thing. I've seen you have brokers that have come on before, I dunno if that gentleman was a friend of yours prior, but, um, talking about like when you buy a business, build a business, franchises is like hidden adjacent category.Um, but diligence in just a dovetail, you're looking at. Septic density. Um, county records can oftentimes do that. Mm-hmm. You're gonna go and you're gonna look at your dump stations, how much they cost is there, are they at capacity already? Even have a lot of people even have a dump station. Yeah. Like proximity.Yeah. Um, and a lot of those people will give you information. 'cause sometimes the counties are like, freedom of information. What act? I ain't giving you anything. Or I'm gonna give you one location. I can't give you my entire database Here. Counties are like the final boss. They're the final boss for most of blue collar.I like this. It's, it's kind of like sometimes I hear people like talking about the upcoming disruption and I'm like, honestly, good luck with the final boss. Well it's, it's gonna be Betty Sue who requires a paper for real printed permit. Yeah. And literally a cash in an envelope for that permit. Like pop off.Pop off, dude. And guess what? Uh, it's, you almost have to politic your way to get the, it's crazy, crazy. Yeah. You gotta go, you know, Hey, nice. You gotta be on the board. You gotta do this. We have like, strategies for specific municipalities 'cause it's so ridiculous. God. And so the dump stations will oftentimes give you that same information.For example, in Austin, how many registered trucks are dumping at the Austin Wastewater station? It's 300 trucks every month are re And so we can build a market, you know, model off of that total adjust market. Yeah. Yeah. And, and then thirdly, it's your competitors, like, you know, shadow shop, the daylight, just like we were shadow shopping.You're Wilson mm-hmm. Conglomerate here. And that's where you're gonna drive a lot of information on pricing. And then you can just figure out like if there's a lot of competition. And I can come in and I can grab five or 10% market share. I win. Who cares about doing how many septic systems and all the other diligence.All I know is I can beat better than Joe's septic. Let's go. Mm-hmm. Um, and so that was one topic that I wanted to talk through, those three stages of diligence. The other is, why the f are you gonna wanna franchise? Because there's a, you know, three types of people that we're typically hearing from. One is someone who works at Google or Facebook or Netflix or whatever.That's like all the bits that I'm pushing all day long. AI is chomping away at these. And I, my job is at risk. I have to imagine this becomes a more and more risk. You have to move significant, you have Adam add to the weight that you're gonna continue to create wealth. Hey, I'm not saying this is like, it's gonna go extinct.Like why collar jobs aren't gonna go extinct. It's gonna change. Right? It's gonna change. Yeah. But you're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna go from moving bits to having to move atoms. Mm-hmm. Right? Like actual physical labor is gonna be more of what people are gonna pay a premium for. Because number one, so if you look at Ford, Ford trucks or Ford Manufacturing, they, they did a recent case study.Ford is. Uh, attempting to pay 40% more than the average mechanic. Like they're paying like $150,000. Oh, I saw this. Yeah. Yeah. And they can't anybody, and they still can't get anybody. And that's gonna continue. Yeah. What's that? What's the guy's name? The CO's name. Oh, man. But yeah, he did an interview about that.Yeah. Like the, for in last quarter. Is he, um, Farley? Is that, yeah. Is Chris Farley's uncle, or he's a, he's related to Chris Farley. Oh, man. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I remember that article. Mm-hmm. And it was, yeah. He was like paying $120,000 Damn. For a mechanic that, you know, like, that's fucking great and you can't find it.And it's sort of like a great mechanic job. Yeah. You know? Yeah. It's like pinnacle. Yeah. Yeah. And so you're coming in, um, from those like displaced individuals Yeah. Who are gonna come in super high on the scale of like management, um mm-hmm. Good communicators, um, good planning. Yeah. Um, but, you know, probably haven't stuck their head in a septic tank.Have you ever done a ride along, by the way, on your pump trucks and done all that stuff? Okay. I mean, I'm a licensed plumber. I'm the, I'm the older, just, yeah. I forget how there is not a lot that I've not seen. That's impressive. Yeah. Yeah. Well, 'cause we've encounter a lot of people who are like, ooh, like, it's a little bit tough for my tummy here.But like, if you, you're gonna have to, if you're gonna lead from the front like you're doing, being out there, one of my most memorable when like, I, so I, I learned under a guy named Art who's probably never gonna listen to this podcast. So I have no, I have no problem. Art. Shout out. You problem naming this.Shout out art. So, like, I was, I was 17 or something 'cause I, you know, family business. So you're born into it throughout. Yeah. Yeah. Born into it. Started working at, uh, 10. So like it, I was 17 and I was doing a ride along with art. Mm-hmm. And he was like, showing me how to replace a, a sump pump. Yeah. Not septic, but like, I feel like this gives you a good flavor.Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Uh, literally for the story. You're the right size. Let me drop you in here. Yeah. Pretty much. You know, I'm like, you know, I'm a, uh, yeah. So, so we're, we're in a McDonald's replacing a septic or, uh, uh, a pump, like a grinder pump. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I'm 17 years old. Yeah. Like, I don't, I don't know shit about shit.I already know. I already know where this is going. So like, I already know this is going, so I don't, so I'm like, he's like, all right, so undo the check valve. So I started undo the, the check valve. I'm doing my thing. And, um. And I had never done this before and he didn't tell me to unplug the pump. So, so I, so I undo this check valve and I'm, I'm like, I'm pulling it apart and I just get blasted in the face.Oh no. With McDonald's drain water. You know what we call that? Getting baptized. It was getting baptized. I still tasted 20 years later, man. Can I, can I tell you some story? Tell your baptism story. Yeah. My first week I was like, oh man, it's a great idea. My wife, I'm like, baby, who's going off? So well? We're making money.Yeah. Get to the dumb station. Meanwhile, she's like, shower in the back, burn your car. She, she would love me in the house. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I still have, I had a four month old baby. I, it has a pretty specific smell. Yeah. Whew. I, I stomach. But anyway, here's my story to that. I have one for you. Yeah. So I'm at the dumb station.I have the sexy truck, right? Yeah. I'm the new kid on the block. Everybody's asking me questions and I've done it before and I forgot to put the pump on the truck back to vacuum. Oh yeah. Okay. It was on pressure. So I go to open the back. Right. Oh my God. And I open it and I mean, I don't know how many PSI those vacuum trucks have, but thousands.Yeah. All over me. Like I'm talking a hundred gallons of poop until I can close it. And I am sitting there and there's a line of 10 trucks behind me. Oh. And they're all, dude, their months. Dude, you made their months. Everybody's laughing and I'm like, man, I'm giving this truck away. I'm gonna sell it. I can't back.I, I like, I'm like, how am I gonna tell my wife? Like, I ha I literally came home with just my boxers. She's like, where, where were you? I'm like, don't ask question, please. Where's the shower? You know? Now I'm like freaking out. I have like this hand sanitizer, like perpe, syphilis, gonorrhea. But I have some street cred.That's all I'm trying to say. Yeah. It was, that was, that was like my first week. And really maybe me second guess, but not saying that's gonna happen to you. 'cause we're gonna train you really well. You need to, to not to, you probably will. I feel like. Look man. Yeah, drain stories are drain stories. They're wild, funny, wild.Yeah. Uh, and like, I think the funny thing about drains is like, you know, once you sort of get over it like it does. Like I, you know, I've walked unfortunately through like waist deep shit before. Yep. And like, like, I don't know, like you go in, you're cleaning a drain, you're like, I don't want to go on the, I kind have to go on that.So you go in a turd flow floats by, and you're like, God damn, but, but guess what? But you just gotta get it down. And you're getting paid really well to do that. You're getting paid well, yeah. Yeah. So yeah, the people are coming from displaced, big tech, ai, eating their jobs away. Yeah. Then you have the people who are the Marines and the other military branch.Our military is growing in size significantly, and that transition into civilian life to be able to go in and really provide, it was great job, a great episode on this. I heard the military veteran and Yeah. Yeah, and that's a organization that we're getting introduced to. Yeah. It's something that for us, that.That translatable skill is super significant. And it's not just all the soft qualities. There's tangible hard qualities. Someone in motor t like this is big, heavy equipment is a very directly transferrable. Yeah. Yeah. And the last one is someone who knows their way around the franchise industry. That might be multi-system, um, multi-unit type people in other organizations and they're looking for a compliment to a plumbing side or they're looking to, you know, offset something that might be in the junk side.Yeah. And so for us, those are the big three that we're seeing as a lot of inbound, but there's also just someone who's a CDL driver and someone who just wants to provide for the family operator. We have, we have an owner operator bias. John, it's the reason that we were so excited about this podcast is your audience is exactly the type of people mm-hmm.That we're trying to reach. And those people are going to be successful because one of the comments we, I'm going to my notes again. I know I'm that guy, but there was all the, the great commentary, how do you build. Million. A hundred million dollar, in this case, a billion dollar empire on this, which I think we've done a good job of addressing.Um, but there's a nice comment to that comment from Lobster Strange. Um, he says, I don't want a hundred million dollars. I just want freedom to do amazing things with my family. Put my future kids through university. Shout out to Kent State where we stayed over in that area, which is a really nice area that's adjacent to here, or whatever they wanna do.I'm just done. Let them kids figure out themselves, like they have to be like 150 KA year. Hell yeah, brother. That's what his comment is. And that really summarizes mm-hmm. The entire passion that we've. Creating here. And most companies that we've, like, we've looked under the hood of a lot of septic companies and they all do like way better than that now.It does it honestly, uh, probably it's stock selling to, to your point, it makes it very hard to buy them. Sure. Because it's like, I, I can't buy you for a multiple of 500 and you're not gonna stay on for two years until you Yeah. The earn out. Like Yeah. I mean, you see it, it's really interesting. Uh, there was a guy, um, yeah, his kid, you know, typical, his kids didn't want the business.They had two or three trucks and like, it was printing like 600,000 of cash. And I'm like, what do I, he's a neurosurgeon at that point. It's crazy. So, yeah. It's so, so, so you're pumping, pumping poop again, own and operated, right? Like, so, so this is, again, the military can give, give the thing for like, so I created something in Epic called the Epic Veterans Initiative.Mm-hmm. Which I think is on your paper there. But the, it's, it's something that's near and near to my heart too. 'cause when I got off out of the military service. Uh, I was, I was shit show for all intents and purposes. I did 10 years in the Marine Corps, um, and when I got, I had no idea what I wanted to do.Yeah. You know, I was an officer too, like, you know, not saying officers are any different than enlist I'm Marines, but, um, you know, you're expected to go into white collar stuff. So it's like you're an officer, go back to Harvard, get your MBA, go into investment banking or go be a lawyer, go back and get a doctorate.And it's like, none of that sounded appealing to me. Like I was in combat arms. I wanted to get my hands dirty. I want to get out, instead of serving my country, I want to go out and serve my community. I saw this like, call it brain being brainwashed from the Marine Corps, but that's kind like my mindset.Mm-hmm. Um, and I never found a vehicle until I found entrepreneurship. Yeah. To, to, to achieve that fulfillment. Right? Yeah. So I was like, well, there, there's a quote from like five years ago on this show. Yeah. One of my best friends, rich Jordan, he's a, he's a Marine. Mm-hmm. And Semper Fi. Yeah. And he's, and he said roughly the same thing.He's like, Hey, the greatest thing I did to serve, uh, my country was like serving. But then the second greatest thing I did was like, I bought a business. Mm-hmm. And I've created a hundred jobs. And it's like, yeah, fuck yeah. That really is like, how, what else can you do that drives that much value to your country, John?And that's exactly why. So we're like, okay, well do in septic, like do we wanna be like Wind River, environmental and roll up a bunch of companies and mash 'em all together and be this big con and exit? No dude. Like I want, I wanna give that freedom to every single person that wants an opportunity to have a vehicle to make generational wealth.Mm-hmm. And I found it in septic. Like, so like, and if you're a service member coming out or, or say you're transitioning from Google or whatever, man, entrepreneurship is the best way to do it. And I, I wanted to have a vehicle for my brothers in arms to come out, get behind a truck. Mm-hmm. Feel like you're actually making a difference in the community.Like, I don't care if you're doing plumbing, hvac, electrical, or home inspections, it doesn't even have to be in the service industry. As long as you're in your community providing value to your community Yeah. You can do extremely well. Yeah. And, and for those service members coming out, and if you want to consider septic, it's a great business.Mm-hmm. Um, and that's exactly why we started the franchise. 'cause I didn't wanna be a big conglomerate. I wanted to empower a veteran who wants to get an entrepreneurship and show them that it is possible to do something different than just Yeah. Being a grunt in the Marine Corps. Yeah. And it's something really near and dear to my heart.Yeah. That sounds awesome. And yeah, I hope we can get it done. Yeah, we do so well, I think, I think the timing is right, uh, for, for this type of, uh, industry to sort of come to light, I guess. Mm-hmm. Uh. You know, I, I, I don't know if you guys are on Twitter a lot or accident X I'm still stuck in Twitter. Shout out Elon.He lives in our, he lives in our backyard. Alright. Um, but yeah, I think, uh, like obviously ai, a ai like layoffs are a thing. Mm-hmm. Um, like, and there, there's all these different data points. Um, and they're all kind of funny, I think, but like, hey, over here AI layoffs are like whether overblown or appropriate or whatever.Like people are concerned about their jobs. Mm-hmm. Yes. If they're white collar. So like, it doesn't matter, like what we think about ai, like that is an activity that's happening. Uh, and like investors are sort of like looking for the, the next thing. Mm-hmm. And I think people are looking for their next thing.Mm-hmm. Um. And like, yeah. More businesses launch inside a recession. So then we've got, you know, we have that sort of like data point of like, hey, things aren't feeling great for most people. Yeah. So I feel like we've got ai, we've got like some recession concerns. Yeah. Whether overblown or not. Like that's the vibe.Yeah. Um, and then we have very res like AI proof businesses and, um, like Septics obviously a great one. Um, you know, I'm, I'm damage mi I don't know. There, there's a lot of these like, hey, they're not quite rolled up. Yep. You can get into them. Attainable. Uh, they're AI pro, like, nobody, you know, what's AI gonna do to pumping shit?Uh, so like, it, it, it feels like a good time. For this type of thing. Yeah. Yeah. You're speaking to the choir on that, like Yeah. Yeah. But there is something to be said. There's other trades while equally interesting. Mm-hmm. They've, there, there's a competition that exists there. The, like the big four as we call, I mean, plumbers are cut.Yeah. Like the plumbing, the hvac, the roofing, the electrical. Like then some of these companies, I, I still see like comments again on Twitter of like, yeah, I just get into plumbing. And I'm like, you motherfuckers have no idea. No idea. Yeah. 10 years ago, maybe. Exactly. Today. Hell no. Hell no. How, how can it, so educate me.Um, so obviously I know septic, I, I can't pretend I know roofing. Yeah. Plumbing. How competitive has plumbing become since you've been in the industry? You've been in your whole life. How, how? It's crazy. It's crazy. How saturated has it become the, the, the, the best way to describe it is like, when I first got into the industry, the average plumber.Was like three to four people in the business. What That was the normal competitor. Like, you would go and, you know, you knew everybody and like, maybe there's a couple of those now, but like, that's not a thing. Like I think the average might be like $10 million. Oh. And it used to be the average, used to be like one or two.What, what's the driver for? Is private equity just driving the aggregation or what's happening? What is the driver? Great. I I mean, technology. Okay. Yeah. So, so I, I, we did a podcast on this, uh, I don't know if it's aired yet, but I, there's been a, there's like these three or four different waves that I think are really interesting for the trades.So the first one is like early technology. So ServiceTitan was a big push? Yep. Uh, honestly, even just like Google my business mm-hmm. Was an, was an actual disruption to the trade and that's what allowed us to get Yeah. Far ahead was digital marketing, like, allowed us to push. How early did you adopt that?Like from day one? Like 20 15, 20 16. Really? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. But like that we passed the incumbents on the back of Google my business. Yeah. You know, it was kind of crazy. So like, yeah, 2015 to 2020 was like technology. So we've got ServiceTitan, we have digital marketing becoming more and more prevalent and like sort of defeating the legacy marketing people that had built really big brands.Brand is still important, but if 80% of your spend goes to brand and 20% to leads, like you don't survive in 2026 doing that. Right? You did. Or you used to. So yeah, that was the first wave. The second wave was, Hey COVID, uh, we are essential. Mm. You know, there words for it we're essential. Did you see a big spike during COVID?Like everyone did? Everybody did. Yeah. Well, well, there's the two different reasons for it. One, no one will ever admit on air, which is very hard. Are we gonna do it on air right now? PPP loans, bro, nobody talks about this shit. What? Yeah. Yeah. Payroll, protection. I mean, P loans was like, you got to pull forward a year of profit just handed to you.Yeah. And, and everyone's like, oh, home service boomed. They got handed 3 million fucking dollars. Yeah. They boomed. Like it's crazy. It was, I didn't even think about it because no one talks about it. Yeah, no talk about it. No one talks about it. No one remembers it at this point. 'cause it feels like five decades ago at this.Yeah. It's crazy. But, uh, yeah, you had a bunch of, like if you, if you entered COVID at 10 million, you probably exited like 50 or 60 or even higher. Yeah. Like people that entered at 20 exited a hundred. It's like, why? What happened? Well, yeah. Tons of demand, but also you got funded. Yeah. Like it was crazy.Free money. Basically. Free money. Yeah. Well, not to mention inflation over that five year period in America is 20 plus percent. So you, if you were charging a hundred, now it's 120. And that magically creates growth. Yeah. So technology started creating consolidation because we're, uh, what, you know, it's easier to manage a hundred trucks in 2020 than it was in 2010.'cause it was all paper in 2010. Now it's technology. Then leads became the next thing and like demand and how are we collecting demand? And that was like the COVID essential period. So one, everyone starts getting acquired by pe Private guys like me start acquiring everybody. Now we're onto this like third wave, which I think is interesting, which is like the AI wave.And I think we're seeing it in like values of the business, right? So in 2015 to 2020, the early rollup started Wrench, group Heartland. They started collecting plumbing, HVAC companies at that time, uh, and like starting to drive up price. COVID happened. Price went from like six times to a 10 times. Went back down and now we're seeing it again with ai, like companies are going for absolutely ridiculous numbers.Again, because we're on this like third wave of increased consolidation. I, I'm gonna give John a compliment real quick. Um, this is a tactic. I think I can disclose it. It's your tactic. Um, I'll call it the red light district tactic, but I already love this name. Yep. So as you have, um, aggregation of, of back office, you're talking about.Yeah. Even just your three territories here, bringing it to a centralized location, which we did the tour. Mm-hmm. And it was just an extraordinary. Learning experience. I was like, man, it's kind of like, it feels like a cave in there too. I don't know why they keep the lights on. I like it though. But they do.Yeah. It it like, you lose like a casino, I think you headaches or something. Like I could work 24 hours for John. Yeah. Um, so like, that's why, that's exactly why. Um, but there's, but what it happens is it illuminates the red light. And the red light. John, do you. You can talk about what your red light indicates.In this case, it's like op, available capacity, basically. Yeah. So like behaviors change as capacity is either, you know, green, yellow, red. And so that's, and just to unpack my understanding of it, there's a green light or a red light, right? Mm-hmm. Green light is like, we're good today. It like, there's a flashing blue.Okay. Is that even worse or is that midway? Or what does blue mean? Uh, it's kind of like fucking good. Oh, okay. So like, it means we hit break even for the month. Yeah. So like, sell whatever you want. Okay. Yeah, it's good. But, but what this creates in this cave, in this, you know, casino like, like yeah. People.You literally the entire ambiance of the room is changing to red, which now there's this urgency and motivation and this feeling. We talk about these visceral feelings and energy, which I'm like buzzing from caffeine 'cause I never consume. Um, but that's like an extraordinary tactic that when you are the five person, you know, company, you're not gonna have a team that's motivated by lights, that's creating an ambiance.But when you're a hundred person company and they're coming in, it changes the script quite literally on how people are selling. Yeah. So kudos to you on creating that. Yeah. I want to, I want to ask you a question. Yeah. Uh, this is more like advice for us too. 'cause um, I'll, so the marine of me and just who I am, I'm never gonna pass up the opportunity to ask for mentorship from somebody very successful.As we're going through this journey, obviously we have big dreams and lofty goals. Yeah. We think we can build a billion dollar s to company. I think we've built something really great so far. Just from your experience, you've been doing this a long time, what advice do you have for us? I mean, I don't really know on the, on the franchise side, just the business side.Oh, I know. Just business in general. I think any tidbits of information. I think you guys are pr sounds like you're already focusing on the right thing. Um, there was a post, uh. I think it's easy to get lost in like, what our business is. And our business at the end of the day is a marketing and sales business, which I think is what you guys are focusing on.Oh, say that again. Who, who is right? I've told Kyle, I'm like, we can't say that because people want to hear sales solve all kinds. I know, I know, I know. Solves a lot of them. But, but Mike, say it again for the, for the camera here. Well, yeah. I, I like, we're basically, we're a marketing and sales business because at the end of the day, ha 5, 5, 5, like, we have to get the lead and we have to sell the lead.Yes, we do. And then whatever comes next. Obviously like the execution map, a hundred percent. They show up in reviews and that has that Yeah. Virtuous circle. But that also, as we backed up with flaws, execution is, which when, 'cause with sales, you have now the capital build systems and processes. Yeah, yeah.Just like me, like literally driving the truck, make, watching YouTube videos go a pump. I was generating revenue that I could hire a driver and then, but, but anyway, I, I wanna, I really curious to what, well, my, my second item was, which is kind of funny, is, and it's back to this, this guy, uh. I don't remember his tag, but it is like, well how are you actually gonna do that?And like, something that I think is it, it can, it, it kind of drives me nuts because as you're building a business, and I've said this so many times, like me talking to my former self, you think it's supposed to be complicated, so you make it complicated. Hmm. Well how are you supposed to get to a hundred million dollars?Yeah. Okay. It was actually only like, you know, a two to $3 million branch, you just need 30 of 'em. Yeah. Like, it is not actually that complicated. Yeah. Duplicate. Yeah. Copy paste. And, and I think, I think that was something that took me, uh, like a really long time to figure out was, hey, this is actually kind of like the fundamentals and the fundamentals you think they're supposed to change from when you're at like two or 3 million to like 40 or like in different states or different locations.At the end of the day it's like, it's kind of not like the fundamentals are I need leads and I have to sell those leads. And like, there's some downstream, but like. That, that is kind of how you build a hundred million dollar business. Some people say there's no fun in the fundamentals, but there is an f, a U and an N.So it can be fun as you see that scale happen. Yeah. Yeah. Well, well, can you get, so just for me, I, I'd like to probe deeper, like is there any specific things like, like any, because I can share some, some like really big setbacks. Like is there any like big setbacks you've had in your career that you've gotten over Almost all of them cash related.Ing calculator every single one. How, how important is it? I mean, it's a scorecard, I guess. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, I, I'll ask a personal one and I do wanna be conscious of some of our time because like, we're like, we came out here just for you, John. Oh, that's amazing. Like, we flew in, it was midnight when we got in.We stayed next to the campus, um, because we're like, they excel Euros at the bar at midnight. Hell yeah. Next to karaoke. As people were belting out. Kelly, that chick was a hell of a Tuesday night. It was a, yeah, dude, that chick was actually legit. Yeah. There was one girl who was really good at karaoke. Um, so we came in just for you.We diligence, c cri, love it. We shadow shop. Like we really wanted to make this extraordinary. Yeah. Um, but as you were talking about, like you have a 5-year-old and a 7-year-old. Mm-hmm. And Kyle and I are new fathers, and I imagine a lot of people who are looking to get into the trades, especially if you're a guy who's like a long-haul trucker.Yeah. Or you are in the Marines or doing all these things like you have a young family. Mm-hmm. How do you contend with the trade off between time spent building an empire and time spent. Yeah. With these precious moments that you get when they're five. Yeah. I have a lot of opinions about this. I think, um, like, uh, my personal, like, I don't think I do this part.I'll talk about the part I don't do well and then I'll like, I'll shit sandwich it. I'll put in the good part. Okay. The part I don't think I do well, and this is like something that like fundamentally bothers me is when I think about years, I think about my career and just like that, that like philosophy is some, and I don't really know how to break it, but like when I think about 2018, I think about that company that I bought that doubled my business and like how much of a life change that was.And I don't think about my son being born in September. Yeah. And that's like, yeah. Uh, and like 2020, my daughter was born. I think about, hey, I prepped to triple the business in 2021. Yeah. Uh, so like that's something I don't think I have done very well is as I think about. As I think about my life in this, like I'm, I just hit a decade, like 2016 is a decade of like owning this business.And when I think about that last decade, each year has its own story and the story is professional. Yeah. And like yeah, like, I'm rich now. And like that's fucking awesome. Like that's cool, right? Hell yeah. Like there's no doubt generational. We built a huge fucking thing and this is crazy. Yep. And, but as I think about the years, I am not thinking about the, uh, like what happened outside of this.Mm-hmm. So I. Like, that part's not good. And like, I would love to, I would love to change that. And I'm, I, I, you know, do my best. I think. I think me and Chad we're in that thick of it now, like balancing family and building a business. Yeah. When you think about 25 and 26, this is probably what you're gonna think about.Yeah. And like you just said, you just had a kid and like, you probably won't think about it. Yeah. Like, you won't remember 20, 25 is the year that you became a father, because I don't remember 2018 is the year I became a father. Yeah. What, so I guess like, obviously you, you're, again, you're fucking rich now.Your words not mine. Yeah. Congratulations. Um, it's always like, you know. When is enough, you know? Yeah. When, when, when, what is the number? That's enough. Yeah. Right. I think everybody has that. Yeah. In mind it's like, when, when do you make so much money? Or when do you become Yeah. A su because for me, like the kind of guy I am, I could have a hundred million in the bank.I'd still find something to do to keep me busy. Yeah. You know what I mean? But at what expense. Mm-hmm. You know, and that's something that me and him talk about quite a bit is like, we can't leave the, our family's in the dust, you know? And I, I'm, as you were talking kind of, I get emotional about it just 'cause like, we're here, we spent, you know, fine, I'm fine, but I'm watching my kids on, you know, the video app, like watching them, you know, get a book.That part's hard. I don't think there's a perfect answer. 'cause like, you know, I, as I think about this and, and this is sort of like the bad, so that's the bad part. Yeah. Right. And I, I tell my wife that I'll tell my kids that one day. Yeah. But like, that's how I remember 2018 and that's how I remember. 2020.Yep. And unfortunately, I don't seem to be able to do much about that. Yeah. Because those were very like, pivotal years in my life. Mm-hmm. But professionally. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Uh, so what I've done personally. This is the end of the sandwich part, right? This, this we've it through the tough part. This is, this is a good part.Uh, as I, as the business grew and I, I was really conscious of this. It, I was conscious of it and my wife really like, helped Yeah. Uh, for slash supported me to be conscious. Shout out to Mrs. Wilson. Yeah. Thank you Bridget. Um, so something that came up a lot was like, how do you choose to build the business?Mm-hmm. Um, now in, in some ways you guys don't have the same choice that I had because of the method that you're gonna be sure wanting to grow. But as I look ab as I look around like, Hey, what have we built and why have we built this? Because like my dream, and I've said it before, if I could redo everything professionally, ignore the personal side.Like the right business decision is the same exact service with like, it's exactly what you guys are doing. It's like five, 10 fucking skews and ServiceTitan and just do it a hundred times. Yeah. Like that is the right business decision. Don't overcomplicate it. Don't overcomplicate it. My life is super complicated.We have electric, we have hvac, we have septic, we have damage ment, we have plumbing. Yeah. Like it's You have a podcast? I have a podcast. Yeah. My life is complicated. And as, as I was thinking about, um, I, I, you could go back to like 5-year-old episodes on this and it was, Hey, why did we choose to grow this way?Why really? Like, putting my kids down. Yeah. Uh, so I, I think even though like the bad side is, hey, I remember these years, these like pivotal fundamental years for my personal life as like professional wins. I remember my victories. Um, I've still been able to be present because of the way I designed my life.Yeah. So it's like throughout the next seven years, it's like temporary sacrifices for more time in the long run, you know, because I think so, but I also think, what else would I be doing? Yeah. Because, you know, it's like, okay. The business sells tomorrow. Mm-hmm. Well, what would I do? Yeah. The reality is I would do this shit again.Yeah. Like that. Like, I can't stop myself. I can never be satisfied. Yeah, that's true. Because you're, you're the type, you're just like us. You're, I'd say cut from a different cloth, but you're, you, you're a go-getter man. And the where you find purpose, you're a builder and that's where you find, that's where you find meaning is building cool stuff.Well, I, and I want to make an observation about, so can I take this photo down for a second here? Yeah. It's my dad and I, but your dad is wearing a very particular type of boot in here. These are work boots and your dad earned this over his whole life. And this is, I imagine for you, for camera, this is how you remember your dad too, and.That's where if you were just to retire and be the guy that does whatever you would do if you were to retire, like you wouldn't create the same core memory, you wouldn't instill the same value system. Yeah. And it's a totally different life trajectory for your future chil you know, your children Yeah.And your children's children, et cetera. So it is interesting to hear from you. And I think the fact that you get to be down for bedtime at a pivotal moment, it is something that like Yeah. Building something as a local empire with a all these, I think there's a real, I think there's a real advantage. I mean, I, I wanna, yeah.I, I want to express gratitude. Yeah. I think that's the thing where you talk, um. About Wilson and this legacy that's already existed. Mm-hmm. But for you to like shoulder the mantle of that organization over the last decade and then bring more to it. Like you're creating this era of acquisition and you're really building for the future.Like to hear you talk about like these different macro trends that are kind of having confluence in this present day and what you're doing to evolve and adapt and lead and change of which this podcast is like a great version of this. I, I can't imagine. Um, you mentioned, was it Jim or who was the gentleman that did the you did the shadowing, who's never gonna listen to it was the one that art, art, art.Um, uh, but like, this is now part of this entire empire that you've created. Mm-hmm. And it's phenomenal to see you succeed in a variety of capacity. So I just wanna say, yeah. Cheers to you, John, and everything. I'm really terrible at my job and I just hire like a lot of great people at all, which just means you're very great at your job.We call that, we call that, we call that the Marine Corps top down direction. Bottom up refinement. So I tell you what I think it looks like, and then I listen to the lowest ranking, man, tell me what it actually looks like. Yeah. And then we refine it from bottom up. So, so what's next for Epic? Epic. Epic.It's, it's, yeah. I think, I think we need to rebrand Epic. I know. Epic. Yeah. What, what's next for Epic septic? Yeah. So we're, we're, we're franchising literally right now by the time this is, yeah. Out, we'll be out with the franchise. Okay. So we've been like working on this thing for months and months and months and months.And we talk about that billion dollar empire. Like that's the dragging that we're slaying where we're looking for people to come on board for that journey where we all win together. Yeah. And then we also have these like fun side quests, like with energy drinks where we have this like, and this is, you know, me and Kyle has like, we have, um, a cylindrical porta-potty.We've not done much in portable restrooms. Have you done the portable restroom side for your I want to. So bad. Okay. But I have not. There's a capital cost and it's kind of like it's advertising basically. Yeah. But we're gonna wanna use it as advertising. So there's a great music festivals that roll through the Austin region and we can get this cylindrical aluminum based porta-potty that looks just like this.That looks like an energy drink. Oh, hilarious. We can wrap it. And so we can have this hilarity of a vending machine next to a porta-potty. Yeah. And then build just. Comedy. And so like, there's these little side quests of like fun things. We have a Lego truck version of our punk truck mm-hmm. Which I'd be happy to share with your five or 7-year-old if you want it.That'd be funny. We have a un It's Unbreakable is like the mod brick site for that. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and so the side quest plus the main quest and then having fun along the journey, it's the journey that ultimately matters in the end. So that's kind of what's next from my vantage point. I don't know if you wanna have a different answer for it.I don't have a different answer. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's, there's something about, uh, there's something about building and there's something about, um, I, I think franchising would be fun. Like we, uh, I, I think of a, one of the cool things you get to do, and I think you guys get to do it a little bit differently than I get to do it 'cause ours is through like W2 or like some version of ownership Sure.For our leaders. So commission and things like bonus, like profit sharing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I, I think it's like, it's always. Like, impact you can make is really fun. Uh, I, I, I don't get to like, I, I don't interface directly with most of the team. I work like directly with like six or seven people, but Yep.Uh, it, it's always cool when it's like, Hey, this gave me the opportunity to do whatever. Yeah. And I think septic would be like a really fun version of that. Yeah. Um, like we have somebody buy a house, like, and they tripled their income from like Yeah. Their previous job. Yeah. That's awesome feeling. That's awesome.Yeah. Building careers with you, John. Like that's what's cool is like, and I think that's the goal here too, is I think that's fun. I think that's a cool way to. Show up, it's a team of teams, is kind of the way of looking at it. And you're harnessing that entrepreneurial and ownership energy and mentality.That's what resonated so much with us. And I think it's takes 30, 60 years. How many years has the Wilson organization been in, in business? 1958. So what are we at? Uh, 68 years. Yeah. So like that long time, you know, compounds brick by brick, by brick, by brick, by brick. And then now you're here. Versus like the franchise model, it's like how do we lattice a network across the entire nation so that we can land national accounts Yeah.So that we can create national buying power to reduce your input costs. Yeah. And how we can go in and create systems and processes. So you take a new talent off the street Yeah. To tool 'em up on Epic so that your speed to revenue for that individual and your organization is super, super quick. Yeah.Those are a big three that we're trying to focus on for these operators. And franchising is a way where we all win together on that. Yeah. Yeah. No, I like it. I think it's the right industry to do it too. The uh, 'cause I think the speed to training is probably like. Not long. It's not compared to like the way we train, it only takes like 90 days or less.Even for plumbing over for accept. Yeah. You know, plumbing's like a year. Yeah. So like, look like what I alluded to LifeSure is really fast to again Yeah. It's the continuing education which we are building out. Um, but we have a, we have a system for it. Yeah. So. Awesome. Well this was awesome guys. Any final thoughts you wanna close out with here?I want some Wilson branded merch when you get into that world. Can I get John wants some over here. John does want some. Yeah. John does want some. Um, how can we be of service to you and your brand and the things that you're doing? I, we love to like return this. How can we help you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Uh, septic content is always really interesting.I don't people eat it up. I know. I don't know. This is gonna be, I'm gonna call the shot like the two out of the top three are septic. Um, as your videos, at least on YouTube, I think. I think across the media properties, I think like. The top five across Jack as well. Yeah. Ep, all septic. Oh, even Jack. People are fascinating.People love the poop. Have you ever seen Poor Pumper Society? I wanna be the Cody Sanchez Yeah. Of Septic. We, which which you definitely are of that speaking. Speaking of Cody Sanchez. Yeah, she's in Austin. Yeah, she's out in, yeah. Yeah. Queen Mother is out there. Yeah. She, and she's on the Resy Brands. Pinks is a one that we've really, she, she invested early and Yeah, they went on to resi brands.Um, but yeah. Well, I guess as opportunities arise where we can return the favor to you, John, we're happy to do so. Awesome. Hopefully we've created some great content that has that potential for top five status for you. Yeah. Oh yeah. Let's go. Epic Septic Co. Uh, is our handle across the board. Epic septic.com is the website, and you'll see everything that you need from there.Yeah. Yeah. And if you're to be a franchisee, there's a form on there. Just fill it out and we'd love to talk to you. Cool. Cool. All right guys. Thank you guys. Yeah. If you like what you heard, make sure you like and sub.
