If John Wilson and Jack Carr lost everything and had to start a plumbing company from scratch, what would they actually do?
In this episode of Owned and Operated, John and Jack break down exactly how they’d build a plumbing business from $10,000 to $1 million in revenue using everything they’ve learned as home service operators.
They compare two different paths: staying extremely lean by subcontracting work and proving demand before spending money, or hiring early and building the operation one truck at a time. They cover how they’d land their first customers, where they’d spend their first marketing dollars, when they’d hire, what jobs they’d target, and how they’d build toward four productive trucks.
John also explains why he’d eventually use a small acquisition to accelerate the business, including examples of companies he’s previously acquired with very little cash down.
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In This Episode
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• How to start a plumbing company with $10,000
• Getting your first customers without a big marketing budget
• Subcontracting vs. hiring your first plumber
• Why John would prioritize revenue before investing
• Using Facebook, Nextdoor, referrals, and LSAs to generate leads
• The plumbing jobs Jack would target first
• When to add your first truck and technician
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Connect
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John Wilson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbwilson1/
Jack Carr
https://x.com/thehvacjack
Owned and Operated
https://www.ownedandoperated.com/
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Sponsors
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Service Scalers
Get more high quality leads with marketing built for home service companies. Book a free strategy call with Service Scalers and see what's driving real jobs: https://os.servicescalers.com/go/oao_podcast/referral/podcast
Yelp
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Well, how do I start? Like, I need all this money to start. And I'm like, I actually don't think that you do. I think you can build a business.
I've seen guys build to a million just on Facebook and next door.
How we would start a plumbing company from zero doll hairs.
The first step is I'm getting my GMB right.
Like, can you get the first job before you put a dollar to work? Like rent somebody else's list, basically. And like I think you'd get your first couple of jobs off of that. So you would pick that though over LSA's. I mean, like, look, LSA. Welcome back to Owned and Operated, a top 150 U.S. and business and entrepreneurship podcast. I'm your host, John Wilson. On this show, we talk about home service businesses. We talk about the home service industry. We talk about our own home service business and what we're doing inside it to grow or change or really whatever. So today I'm joined by my somewhat infrequent co-host who's basically always here, uh, Jack Carr. Jack, hey, welcome back to the show. It's been so long. It's been like what, four days, three days?
Not like I haven't been on this podcast for the last three years or three years.
It's funnier this way because then it just gets you riled up so then we can start arguing. I do. It's actually a pretty good time. Um well before we dive into like what we're actually gonna talk about today, like how you been? What have you been up to?
Um, it's been good. I mean, we're just rounding out the end of summer, and it's been yeah, record after record after record, all thanks to joining the Wilson team. That's what I'm attributing it all to. Nothing to do with like us or how we were doing or decisions we made prior to summer. Thank you. Um, so really excited about that. It's been it's been solid. Um, so honestly, it's been it's been a great summer. We're really happy. We've done a bunch of recruiting.
So yeah, when you we talked about this uh a couple weeks, months ago, but um you were talking about how this was the first summer you feel like you've been appropriately staffed. Like, what was the impact to like how do you do you think about that impact?
Well, that's been the entire difference is we've ran marketing in summer for the first time ever. Yes. So running marketing in summer, obviously we have a higher marketing spend in summer, but we've also had more jobs and we've had more capacity, and we've been able to fill the capacity with now the marketing. And so that's essentially doubled everything this summer from last summer. Yeah, and I uh to be honest, I think that there was more capacity too. Like we could have hired another person and actually tried uh to fill board, like you know how in September, October you're like, Oh, I need to fill this board, so I'm gonna outbound and I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do that to put more leads on. Like, we didn't go above and beyond to fill capacity, we just let capacity fill and then moved on. Um so I think that if we were actively trying and pushing to fill capacity, we could have even grew more.
Yeah. No, yeah, your your team's done awesome. It has been crazy. It's like literally a hundred percent year over year growth, which is just nuts. And I was looking at this yesterday. Oh, because we're looking at like properties for like, okay, do we do we outgrow the current one? And like, how do we think about it? And um you were like almost about to hit five million year to date, which like feels crazy to me, uh, because you did four something all of last year. Uh, so that's crazy.
Yeah, yeah. We hit we hit last year's in July. Last year's number in July. Yeah, but crazy summer. Yeah, we just had a crazy, crazy great year. Uh, shout out to again. Part of it is Wilson, part of it's having a great GM. Part of it is just learning from our mistakes last year and continuing.
GM did GM did great. Uh plumbing's doing great. You have an awesome sales team that I don't think you had in place last year. I really think like you guys put all the right stuff in place and your team just like executed. Yeah. They they just like did it, which is just been a watch.
The interesting part, it's a young team. So if we can keep them on through until next year, it'll be wild because I mean, you know how it goes when you're able to like teach them your method and your way, and then you see them actually execute. Like, our best producing uh service service guy on on HVAC has been with us for three years. So like he knows our like that's why he gets it. And so once we get these new younger guys up to par with that, like I think it's gonna be even wilder. Like the amount that they're gonna be able to do is gonna be crazy.
No, I agree. It'll be interesting to see. I feel like a lot of businesses that I've seen that have gone on like the growth streak that you're on, like they they the stuff clicks, which like you your stuff is clicking right now. And uh, but they usually click for like a couple years in a row. So like I bet what's gonna happen again is like I don't know if it'll be a double, but like I bet you'll hit like north of 50% growth again next year and like be in that 12 to 15 range.
I think what yeah, I'm I don't disagree with you at all because there's some really I don't want to call them easy levers, but there's some levers that we can pull in the next year. Yeah. That if we can get that level.
Well, even just like electrical driving the bus.
Electrical driving the bus, plumbing, yeah, sewers, plumbing sales clicked correctly. Um, like there's some really easy levers to add an extra five million in revenue.
Cool. Uh well, before we get too far, I am uh supposed to give uh two shout outs. One, uh, this is kind of funny. I think I'm pretty sure our breaking five like might have sold out. Did we sell out? Okay, we literally have one left. Uh that's hilarious. So um we usually there's like we get close to filling up completely, or we fill up, but like it's within the past last couple days or whatever. But it's like this one was kind of funny. Yeah, yeah. But this one was kind of funny. I'm pretty sure we like filled up like a like a month out, which uh is pretty cool. It's fun that we've um I feel like it's been our way to uh give back and um we've I don't know, helped companies grow, which I think is just a lot of fun. Uh, but we do have another event, May 3rd to the 5th of 2027, baby. We're calling this one catalyst. Make sure you check out ownedandoperated.com and you can find the information for the event catalyst. This is the biggest event that we've done with uh owned and operated so far. We're expecting around 100 home service entrepreneurs. We're gonna have some great uh speakers, some
great breakout sessions, and really like help people uh be the catalyst for uh companies to continue to grow to whatever their next stage is. So we're really excited about it. Um, it'll be a lot of fun and we're we're just excited to get together with everybody. As your business grows, the financial decisions get a lot more expensive. Things like hiring techs, buying trucks, raising pricing, and marketing. If you're making those decisions without really understanding your numbers, you're probably leaving a pile of money on the table. And that's where profit and grit comes in. Tyler has built, scaled, and sold a $25 million service business. So his advice comes from real operating experience. You'll work with him directly to improve your cash flow, understand your margins, and build better forecasts to make you more confident as you make decisions as you grow. One client increased bottom line profit by 11% after fixing pricing, improving job mix, and stabilizing their cash flow. If you're doing between three and five million a year and you want more clarity around your finances, book a free 20-minute strategy call at the link below. Um, okay, so today we're talking about starting over. We've done a few of these. Uh, like if I had to start from zeros, what would we do? Um, so today, specifically, how we would start a plumbing company from zero doll hairs in 2026. Here's the story. All right. Jack and John begin gambling. We face horrific losses. We lose the whole company. We escape with a hundred dollars in our pocket, but we get to keep everything we knew, which is which is great. We have limited capital, zero customers, no employees, and one goal to build a plumbing company from zero to a million dollars as quickly and realistically as possible. Uh the rules are no vague answers. No vague answers. That had that had to be for you, not for me. Yeah. And they have to commit to numbers, timelines, and decisions. Our family's still supporting us despite our incredible gambling addiction. We're both still married. Uh, but really, we just lost everything and we're ready to roll again. My limited capital, because I would say that's pretty vague uh to whoever wrote this script, 10 feet to the right of me. I will say that we've got 5,000 bucks. Yeah. 10,000 bucks? Like we're gonna have to do that.
$100 is light. I mean, $10 feels good.
Okay, all right. $10 feels good. We we saved everything. Our wives shoved $10,000 away from our uh horse jockey um bedding.
I mean, so the the assuming that I'm still in Tennessee and I still have my licensure, um, which I think is a big part. So obviously the the beginning has to start with the things that every beginning company has to start with. You spend the $30 on getting your LLC put into place. You come up with the name, which really doesn't matter at this point. Don't spend too much time on a logo, don't spend too much time on any of the silly branding stuff that people worry about for months and months.
Chat GPT. I mean, Chat GPT can put together a nice little package for you, yeah. And then once we only have 10 grand, so you can't spend, you know, yeah, 700 bucks even is a lot on a logo.
Yeah, definitely agree. Um, and then I think that uh the first step is to put some advertisements up for a uh plumber. Um I could do some plumbing, but I definitely need a plumber. Um, so that's gonna spend is gonna be about my my hope was that I could probably get that through and get somebody hired within a week, um, which at about $30 a day from Indeed, that would put me at $150. Maybe run some meta ads in local or meta posts and in local groups, plumbers of Nashville, tradesmen of Nashville, Nashville contractors, run some some ads there, or at least free advertisements just saying, hey guys, looking for some plumbing help.
Yep.
Call some subs. And then the marketing is like, okay, I got my people set up. The next thing that I'm doing simultaneously is I'm getting my GMB, right? That's a free source. I'm putting it in a spot that's probably close to my house. Um maybe at your house. Maybe at my house with a service area rather than a geolocation. And then I'm asking for reviews from I'm allowed to ask for reviews from any of my previous work that I did before my gambling addiction to cold.
It was a real tragic gambling addiction. Yeah. But fortunately, you helped a lot of people in your previous life, and they're all happy to help you with a four to five star review. Hopefully, five. Well, you may have lost their money in your gambling. Yeah, we don't. I I don't remember how far down the rabbit hole you went to my tragic story that we put together.
My hope is to drive about 20 reviews right out the gate. Um, and then at that same time, I set my Google Business profile up, I fill it out, I take some pictures, even if maybe my phone got smashed. I can take pictures of my water heater or some previous jobs I had, populate it, turn on LSA. Um, and so right now we're still probably at under $1,000. I have uh hope of somebody coming in to help me out with some jobs. Um, I'm also going on those same Facebook groups, and I'm saying, hey, looking for work, plumbing work. I'm going on next door, hey, looking for plumbing work, have openings in my schedule, willing to help out. Um, so like that's my big first steps. I still have 9K to now focus on like truck equipment, parts, material, things I need for those first jobs. But that's my hope is to get the phone ringing. I have to get a VOIP, probably, grab a cheap VOIP uh because I want to start the build correctly and not use my personal phone number.
There's like two different ways you can think about investing cash inside a business. Um and you can basically invest uh before revenue or you can invest after revenue. Um and the idea of that is like investing before revenue is if I'm an existing business and I want to launch a new service line, does it take me a million dollars to get that new location or whatever up and running? Um, well, that million dollars would come before I drive revenue or like some large portion of that. Uh the other is like, hey, we are going to respond to revenue by investing further into it and basically like testing it. Uh that tends to be my philosophy. Uh, we've said this a lot on the show of like, hey, before we go buy a lining machine or jetting machine or whatever, somebody go sell this thing. Like, prove that we can actually drive revenue from this idea, um, and then we'll invest in it. But like, I'm I'm I tend to not invest before revenue because like you just don't know. And I've been burned enough times that uh, you know, you just don't know what works until it works. So I would be focused on like, can you do like a couple hundred bucks? Uh, or even before you do anything, can you just go on next door and say, like, hey, I'm a plumber and I have work? Like, can you get the first job before you put a dollar to work? Because if I only have $10,000, like 10% of it into like formation is still a lot of money.
I think that's I think there's a base level of setup though that you need. You could probably avoid the the hiring, but the hiring takes multiple days to actually kick in. And so that that's why I I invested early in hiring, just because it takes you know time. Whereas like equipment you can go out and buy down at Home Depot. And so I mean, another way to do it.
Another way to do it, and maybe this is maybe this would be interesting, is like, hey, I'm gonna go on. I I'm broke. I got 10 bands that my wife set aside from my what should my gambling addiction be? I was gonna take card gambling.
There it is.
This time it'll be different. Um, yeah. Oh my god, that's horrible. All right. So, so yeah, so I think I think what you could do that'd be kind of interesting is like, what if you just subbed from the get-go? Like, hey, you I called around to a bunch of plumbers and said, like, hey man, um you just want to work with me on this. Uh, like I'll be your apprentice or whatever, but like I'll get you the jobs and like we I don't know, we can figure it out. Uh or like drain cleaning. I I feel like there's a way to do it, because we've subbed people in to install or do sewers, or so I bet there's a way that like you could actually get a business going and like prove out the thesis without any of the formation stuff where you just start posting on Facebook and then you find somebody to like partner with, run the jobs, whatever, you sub it out, you pay them whatever, you mark it up 10% or whatever to cover your fee, and then boom, you have a you have a plumbing company.
Yeah. No, I I actually agree with you there that that is a viable method to start, is you sub everything out. Because then you don't have the right tools, you don't need a truck, you don't need to install, you don't need people. That being said, you are starting with your knowledge, right? That was part of the the background. And so this is my knowledge, is like I think with I could sub it. I think with that knowledge, though, like you could also you know how to hire, you know how to get your first jobs, like you know all this stuff. I don't disagree that like that is how we started. We subbed out, we had one plumber and we subbed all of our rest of our plumbing out, especially stuff that we couldn't do. But like you can sub out jettings, you can sub out sewer work, you can sub out anything. So I don't think that's a bad idea. Is like, hey, you you roll some ads for drains, and then you sell it to sell the job at a percentage to a sewer crew, and now you're ripping two, three thousand dollars. Um, and the sewer crew's pretty happy because hey, like they're ripping seven, eight.
I mean, yeah, that's how we did sewers for for a long time. Um I'm kind of into this. So there's actually uh well, Sam Preston from Service Scalers, he started a home service business, and uh, which is you know, kind of like kind of cool. So he's like running ads for it and stuff. And um, it's it's been a huge win. And this is literally what they're doing. It's not plumbing, but they started a home service. I don't, I don't remember if we've talked about the industry on the show. So like I probably won't call it out so I don't like ruin his uh like everyone goes and does this thing, but it's exactly this where like he runs ads against something, um, and then he like gets the job. I think he's like sells it over the phone or whatever, and then he subs somebody out to do it. And I think that for something like for him, he needs to run ads just because of the type of work it is. I think with this, like you could literally just start with Facebook. So I think you could do this for I think you could drive your first dollar of revenue with zero money out of pocket, which that would be my start is like, okay, I have $10,000. How do I get to 20 before I actually invest anything? Or 15. Like, how do I build a little bit more of a buffer? Um, so I don't, you know, I don't want to bet the house and maybe it's a bad season or something. I don't remember what season I had this addiction problem. Um all right, so two different options there. I feel like those are good options. Any others?
No, I feel like that those are the those are the two ways: limited capital, um, yeah, limited labor, tons of knowledge. It's like, hey, you figure out how to market in sub or you market in higher, uh, keep marketing low in both scenarios, try to do scrappy free, free things to get free jobs, and then run them and make some money.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, you could probably get going, like a couple thousand dollars of revenue a day. Now, granted, 80% of that would go to the uh sub, but you know, you could clip 200 bucks a day. Probably like early. You could do it early. Which, like, that's grocery money, you know? It's the mortgage. Try not to move out of the house. Really leading into this narrative. Okay.
Um, I'm sure that we're supposed to put like a if you have a gambling addiction, call this number, so we'll look that up. Uh, you know. All right. Uh, you need your first hundred customers. So we started off, we're either subcontracting or we are uh spending all this money. Well, I think we roll. Jack's just got like $10,000, and he's just like LLC documents and logos and hey, my logos are free. But yeah.
Yeah.
I think we continue. That costs 50 cents of tokens on Chat GPT. Yeah, yeah.
Absolutely wrecked.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay. Yeah, I'm gonna do mine. You do yours. Yeah, I mean, I think yours has some huge benefits, right? Because you don't have to buy a truck, you don't have to rent equipment, you don't have to do any of that.
Whereas my hope it just doesn't scale as well.
Yeah. So we need to we need to get our first hundred customers. Um, I think a lot of it's the same. So it's number one, it's staying super, super scrappy. So again, don't go dump money into PPC. I wouldn't even focus on I wouldn't, I don't even know if I would buy aggregator leads at this point. I think that you could fill schedule for one one person just by word of mouth referrals and dude, you totally could.
Yeah, up to up to like if you have kids bringing up at your kids' schools, bringing up at sporting events, wear a shirt. You know, like if you're uh if you're like a one-man band, like it's a it's a lead a day.
Yeah, you just need a lead a day, especially if you're doing service and installation yourself, where you're like service and then you kind of sub out some installation work, like a water heater, which you can get a ton of water heaters, um like because you can undercut everybody, you can undercut everybody, and you can get the cheapest water heaters at Home Depot. Like at the end of the day, you could you could scrape three four hundred bucks per water heater job and do two of those a day. Um but point being is you need your first hundred customers. I think that's how you continue to build. I actually wouldn't put any in money anywhere else except LSA. And I'd keep my LSA options even pretty tight. Like, um I think that LSA options would really just be like water heaters, uh, maybe maybe some drains work, maybe some light. Yeah. See, I don't even know what categories I'd pick in like sinks. I don't even know if I'd pick sinks, faucets, cartridges, leaks. I mean maybe pipe leaks. Because you have to be careful because you get a lot of junk when it comes to like tubs, toilets, and sinks, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
And then I'd run that. I think you could do a hundred customers. What if you're doing one customer to two customers a day, that's two to three months. I think that's realistic.
Yeah. Yeah. Um I think what I would do. I would go. So we got ten thousand dollars. Um I would go to I want to say like a garage door company or the landscaping company would be another one. Like who's somebody that has customers in uh residential? And I think I would just like offer, I'd be like, hey, can you I know I like this?
I already like where this is going.
I'm gonna I don't want to spend any money. Like it, bro. I only got 10 G's, like I burned everything. Um, so I would go to someone that has no chance of like competing with me, right? Like uh like HVAC, like they, you know, they might get weird about it, but like garage or landscaping, like they don't care. Um, landscaping, like I bet they hit sprinkler heads or they need backflow. Like, I bet there's work there already. So you could just like partner with them and align with them. Because this the the prompt is how do you get your first hundred customers? Uh, but you could also just like ask them to like blast their email list and like pay them money. Like, hey, dude, I'll give you if I've got ten thousand dollars, like I'll I'll give you a thousand bucks plus like twenty-five dollars for every lead that comes my way, or or no thousand dollars and fifty dollars for every lead that comes my way. Uh, here's how I'm gonna track it. Um, you're my only marketing source, so any lead is you. And um, and then like run a promo just on the back of some like rent somebody else's list, basically, yeah. That they've built. Uh, and like I think you'd get your first couple of jobs off of that.
Um so you would do that though, over so you're spending two, three hundred bucks on that plus twenty-five a lead. Say you get 10 leads, so it's 250 plus 300. I mean, so you're at 500 just for rounding $600. But I drove revenue. Or I drove less. But you're driving revenue. So you would pick that though over LSAs.
Yeah, I mean, like, look, LSA in in I'm like focused on this prompt. I'm I'm living this right now, Jack. Uh, LSA like doesn't seem to work if you have less than 100 reviews. So my concern would be if if I have to open the doors on Monday and I lost all my money on Friday, I'm gonna be scouring Facebook groups, I'm gonna be calling new construction plumbers, but like someone that is looking for like work more consistently, and I would partner with them, I would like get a sub-relationship in those first couple of days. And you'd want like a stable, like you'd need like two to four guys, like, hey
man, I got this job. Like, can you help me with it? I'll give you, you know, 800 bucks to do it, whatever. And then yeah, I would like start calling garage door people or landscapers or whatever and say, hey man, I just need you to let your customers know about us, or do you know anybody that needs you know something hope, drippy, hose, faucet, whatever? Like, I'll give you some money for it and we'll make it happen.
Okay. Sweet. I think that we have, I mean, that makes sense. Again, it's like uh I like the idea you don't lose any money though, if it like if it just runs.
I mean, I think you'd set up LSA. I think I'm for that. I'm just I'm focused on like the speed and then how do I get revenue and then give money? Like, how do I because I I feel it, and the reason I'm focused on that is one, that's just my mindset in general. But two, I think that everybody gets so worked up about like, well, how do I start? Like, I need all this money to start. And I'm like, I actually don't think that you do. Like, I think that you can just build a I think you can build business.
There's plenty of people who have done it, yeah, that build business. I've seen guys build to a million just off Facebook and next door. Like, it's definitely possible. Uh, and then now you're starting to get jobs. You at some point you need you actually do need to graduate to like, hey, one truck.
Yeah. My metric for that, like if I'm hitting like five to ten leads a week consistently, I'd probably go hire somebody, but keep my stable of subs. That way I could just like keep sort of like have expandable capacity, but fill my one guy.
Yeah. So I already have the one guy. I'm probably calling subs as well to take on jobs that are bigger that we can't handle. Um, but like realistically, right? If you're looking at that doing that month two, month three, which I think is realistically possible, um, that that looks like what you yeah, I'd probably buy a Maverick, which would be $500 a month in payments. I mean, that's definitely coverable with one person early on. So as long as it's finance, I wouldn't go and
buy a used vehicle with like 12k or something. Like, go, I'd rather get a cheap finance truck, put a sticker on the side for another, you know, $50, and then um I think I would just continue. I keep targeting water heaters. Water heaters is a great one. I target dig jobs and leaks, and I target um drain stuff. Like those are my big three. I think I would go after just because the others can be profitable, but they can also be a lot of runaround work. So yeah. I take pretty much but I think that like I take them, don't get me wrong, I take the work, but I'm I'm saying like when I'm targeting, I'm targeting certain things, like hey, we're doing a special on water heaters, or hey, you know, leaks. You know, we'll do repipes for cheaper than the other guy. I don't know.
Um I would uh I think the only difference is like I'd probably buy something used as hell. Like give me the dirtiest and nastiest fucking clunker I've ever seen.
Drop like 2K, 3K though, on that, and you only have like now four or five left.
Well, what city I'm in? I mean, can I bike? You know? Can I get a little like kids' bike, shove a shove a toolbox on the back of that bitch?
Uh you could get you could get a like a decent old transit for like 2k with like 150,000 miles. Not like a transit connect, excuse me, like the mini transits.
That's perfect.
Okay. I mean, that's like five months of payments. So on a like I'd rather I'd rather have cash going out at like $500 a month versus dropping $2,500 right out the gate.
Because what happened if you guys went from $2,000 to $2,500 so fast. Here, I'm gonna look this up actually right now. Cheapest. I mean, dude, this thing could be anything. Cheapest work vehicle.
What do you think you're gonna find on Google right now with that? Like going to scroll Facebook Marketplace for hours to find that.
Dude, I could get a car. I bet I could fit a water heater into this. Uh okay, all right, here it is. I gotta, I gotta hit.
It's like a Zuzu Trooper from like 1995 for uh 1500.
So much better than this. So much better. A PT cruiser. Yeah, this baby is 1,500 bucks. It's 2003. It's got dude, it's got 70,000 miles. This thing's brand new. It's brand fucking new. Just don't get a little bit more. And you know, because of that weird ass shape of those PT cruisers, I could fit, I bet I could fit a water heater in that thing.
Yeah. I'm just gonna say yeah, and then move on.
Dude, I'm I'm screen, I'm screenshoting. How do I do this? Yeah, there we go.
Fun fact, I actually threatened all of my um managers that I was buying them PT cruisers at one point if they didn't sell more. So this is the reason.
Do you mean threatened or do you mean offered? Because this is obviously a great situation. So yeah, I would get a PT cruiser, $1,500. Uh, it's screen shared if you're watching on YouTube. You know, like this exists. I pull it off Facebook Marketplace. And uh yeah. So yeah, $1,500, dude, no tax. Like that's a Venmo transaction all day long. Because I don't have a bank account yet, because I haven't gone through that process. Uh so yeah, you can keep your $500 a month thing. I'll pay rent. That's like that's my ramen. So you're just gonna end up broke again, dude. Jack, you're just gambling again. I don't think you're going down. I don't think so.
I'll take the $500 a month payment that I have to cover, which is like what? Oh, five jobs at like $100 in profit.
We thought he was getting back on his feet, but just he started gambling on Mavericks again, which is what got him here in the first place. Bad choices. Okay, all right. So I have a cooler uh truck than you, obviously with my PD. Um, all right. Well, yeah, what else? Here's a stat about Yelp that I bet you didn't know. When millions of people ask AI like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or any of the others what the best home service provider is, Yelp recommendations show up three times more than Angie, Thumbtack, Home Advisor, Better Business Bureau, and Nextdoor combined. And here's why that matters to you
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Okay, so I think the next is like race to a million. Like so we got the basis is in, you got your first truck, you have your first hire, you're subbing out. We both got to the same spot, just slightly different paths. I've spent, I think, less money in the short term. I will spend more money on that truck in the long term. Well, see, I did free advertising.
I haven't filed for my LLC or documents yet, but I did spend $1,500 on a truck. So I in my mind, I maybe I've spent like $1,000 on the leads from that garage door company. That was a great partnership. Uh so like I've got $7,500 left. So I'm feeling pretty I'm feeling pretty good. And I've been driving revenue, so I'm probably back still back at $10.
I mean, I'd say the same thing.
Yeah, well, I'm not sure if you're at $10. Yeah. Also, I bought a fleet of Mavericks. Yeah, seven of them. Um Your gambling addiction was like betting on Maverick futures, and you're just like right back at it again.
Just spent all my money on Ford on stocks. What's the next big step, right? So you there's this like early on, there's a there's a sh a jump, a step change that has to happen from like really small to small and scrappy. Um, where is that? What what do you feel like that point is?
I mean, I think eventually it's probably like number of leads. Like you have to figure out how to get from like the five to ten leads a week to like a hundred.
Well, here's the here's the other question, I guess, which is more important is like what big changes do you have to make to get to a million in revenue? Because I don't think that right, you're running LSAs, you're doing Facebook, um, you're doing referrals, like all that actually from a marketing standpoint, I don't think actually changes that much, other than you drive leads so you get more LSAs potentially. But if you chose the right market and you chose the right spot, maybe you finally rent a small building, like a like um a contractor warehouse or something, but like nothing really changes from a marketing standpoint, in my opinion. Like you can get to a million off of that.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, something a few other things you can do, and I just like thought of these, but um like you can buy phone numbers from other plumbing companies. Uh those honestly probably like ten thousand dollars. Um I mean, we bought companies for ten thousand dollars down. Like the second deal I did was twelve or fifteen thousand dollars down.
Yeah.
Um, and that was an eight hundred thousand dollar revenue business. So, like uh you could do that. So if I still keep all my knowledge, honestly, like that's probably what I would do is I would start, I would like get the I would get the base rolling of like, hey, can I get jobs? I'm subbing them out. I got I got that sick whip, uh that PT, you know, whipping around, town and that bad boy, windows open, chunk, chunk out, and um got this awesome partnership with this like garage door uh guy, just really painting the narrative. And um, and then I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go do a deal. I got ten thousand dollars in my pocket.
There you go.
And I got a lifetime of knowledge, seller financing 0% data deal.
Just what everybody says is not possible. John's gonna go and do it.
I'm gonna go do a fucking deal. So I'm gonna, I I don't know how I'm gonna slug this thing together, but it's gonna be like a rev share or it's gonna be seller, or maybe it's just a phone number and it's ten thousand dollars or five thousand dollars. Um, but I'm gonna do a deal if I get to keep everything I've learned over the years. That's that's step one. So I'm gonna go from like just go with my Psycho.
These other 5K that you have to like put on legal fees to rip a manager service agreement and just take over a business.
I'll talk to my attorney and say, hey man, um, I'm gonna need like 90-day terms on on this. Uh or chat GPT. Like if you know, if I'm really like that that level of broke, you know, chat GPT, maybe.
But um I think you're breaking the prompt here.
I think I might be breaking the prompt. But I do think it is actually like a viable option. I mean, the amount of businesses that I bought for under $100,000, and like some of those um have been, it's under $100,000. I think it's been like four or five now. And some of them did have like a financing component. So I bought a carpet cleaning business like years ago, and it was uh 30 grand customer list equipment and um like pricing structure, name, GBP, all that stuff. Uh, and I think it was like 10 grand down. And I paid them a couple grand a month for a year or two years or something. Uh so like you can do a deal like that, and like even a carpeting clean a carpet cleaning business or something like that would still potentially work because then you could just siphon it off for the customers. Um yeah, I honestly I would go do a deal. I actually think that's the fastest way to get to a million.
Our second deal was very similar to that. It's like we bought we bought an $850,000 revenue company for um twelve thousand five hundred dollars, six thousand dollars down.
Yeah. So like I actually like inside this prompt, I actually feel like this is pretty realistic.
It's not unrealistic, and like we've done two deals since then that were probably similar category.
Yeah. I think I've done four in this price range of sub 100,000, but like meaningful enough. We did one, it was 60 grand total, and um they did six hundred thousand dollars. We did one the second deal we ever did was a hundred thousand or a hundred and fifteen thousand, but ten grand down, twelve grand down. Uh, but that was seven hundred thousand, seven hundred fifty thousand revenue. Um, we did another one that was sixty-five thousand, it was four hundred thousand revenue. Um, yeah, like you can do it. Yeah, so like I if I was keeping all the knowledge, I would go to a deal. Yeah. And and then I would just keep doing this machine over here of like I'm driving the leads instead of the subs, I'm sending it to like my little thing that I've got here. And um, I'd probably I would try to make it as contingent as possible. Uh, like how do I Rev share rev share or profit share or um uh something?
Yeah, and I think there's enough room inside most plumbing industries to be able to do some kind of rev share just because five, ten percent on sixty percent gross margin is it's there, and you have no overhead, right? Because you're still running super lean. I have a little bit of overhead, you have no overhead because you're running PTs. You just have to hope that they don't get in an accident and then that thing's 71,000 uh miles.
Like that it's basically a brand new car. Like I'm pretty sure it just came off the lot that 2003 PT.
Just like only the absolute worst crash test rating of any car ever. Is it actually it's one of the worst, yeah.
Oh my gosh.
Just putting everybody at risk.
Yeah, not to mention you're putting it like a it's like somehow worse than like a motorcycle behind your head, too. Like yeah, yeah. Yeah. Uh it, you know, part of the part of the risk of the job. Um, okay. I don't know. I feel like that actually makes so then so then like I actually like if this prompt actually happened, like that is actually what I would do. Just so we're on the same, like I can come up with all the ways in the world to like market my way to it and sell my and hire and all that shit. But like what I would actually do is uh probably this. I would spend no fucking money, I would sub the shit out of it, and I would go to a deal. Like, that's actually I think what I what would happen.
And so what so you cross one million though. What does the company look like? Like, what's what should the company look like? For I think that if we zoom out and be like, hey, this is what a million dollar company does look like, and um versus like your way of hey, I'm buying a bunch of businesses, I think that would be more valuable.
Um yeah, well, it would probably three to four plumbers in the field. Hopefully, you buy it that way. I would be my own CSR and dispatcher for a while, uh, just to like maximize free cash. And um, yeah, that'd be most of it. Probably put it on some CRM. But I I'm assuming if I did a deal that I would just like whatever they're currently using is what I would use. Uh yeah, I think I'm sure Jobber I'd figure out how to use house call or something.
Jobber, house call, field pulse. Any of any of them, I would definitely be my own CSL.
I feel like field pulse is like really good for like the what they said. We had them on the show. They were like really good at like the two to five. I don't know if they're maybe they are. I I haven't looked at them as like a one or two man guy.
Yeah, I think I just want to get stuck again in uh one like because I was using RazorSync. Shout out RazorSync, which was yeah. Uh, but I just want to get stuck again in one that like I'm now I'm stuck in Jobber or I'm stuck on House Call Pro. I think like feel field pulse I could build with. You can grow into, yeah. No, you're right. So that's where I sit. Yeah, I'm with you three to four good technicians, uh, doing service and installation, probably not service and sales, an install split, uh, four trucks. So I'm paying two thousand dollars a month in Maverick fees.
Uh cash is going straight. I, you know, I'm I've in the past like 30 days of me launching this uh new project, I've been able to move from like ramen to like I'm on Porter House stakes already. Because like that $2,000 a month, dude.
It's like spending.
Dude, I'm just like I'm back. I'm like I'm not I re-picked up a gambling addiction. Uh instead of Mavericks, now it's um, I don't know, like corn future worst part.
Is you say this as a joke, but I've actually seen like the owners who are ripping like three, four hundred thousand dollars out of these no overhead million dollar businesses. Like that's real. Like they are the ones with the nice new trucks eating porter house. Like we've you are like a decent amount of these companies.
Yeah, like a boat.
Uh yeah.
Yeah, I already have a lake house under LOI, like I'm good to go.
But yeah, I think that I think the owner could be running calls, the owner could also be doing big sales, the owner could also just be office only, but you're gonna have to hire for what's not there, have a have like three to four trucks, probably four running at any point in time. Um, again, I would lease trucks, I would get as low monthly payment as possible. John is buying PT Cruiser still for us, guys. Nobody wants to work there because they're afraid they're gonna die in a PT cruiser on PT Cruiser incident. Um outside of that, I think those that's like that's the biggest view. Maybe at that point at a million, you could start trying other methods of um like verticals for branding and not branding but marketing. If branding's one of them, it's one of them. I mean, we've seen the yard sales, yard signs work well at that size. Um you could start doing uh some small ag, lead ag. Um like you gotta fill up three guys, four guys worth of work. So you're looking at what 20 calls a week, 15 calls a week.
Each, yeah. Yeah, I feel like we did something great here. So me doing a deal, I think I'd beat you to a million bucks.
I think you could get there in six with with a deal. Like if you were scouring Facebook marketplace for closing plumbing companies every day and hustling and I would just go door knocking.
I mean, I would just like I would literally just go like I would go to every single one that's out there and I would knock on the door and I would say what's up, like hey man, it's me. Yeah, what's up? Yeah. Uh but no, I think I would hit the pavement, like, dude, I want to stop eating ramen. We're gonna move to poor house, you know? So um, yeah, I I actually like I actually think that's how I would do it, uh, which is kind of funny. Um I would just like I'd I would probably uh just buy my way up to like five as like as fast as possible. Um we talk a lot about breaking five. Obviously, we have a whole there's a whole conference on it. Yeah, there's a whole event uh based on breaking five. But I really I mean deals can get you there fast. Eventually you do have to learn how to run a business. And one of the dangers, and I see this time and time again, is like people buy their way up to five or ten million dollars, but then they never figure out how to do marketing or like really grow the business beyond that. Like MA is a tool, it's not the whole business. Um, but it you can use it to kickstart or get past a plateau. Like it can get you to whatever the next step is. This this year for Wilson and our core business is a great example. We went from like 30 to 50 some million, and uh, we got to skip a couple steps, which is great. Like we're excited about that. We still have to run the business and we still have to market and hire and recruit and sell and train and all the stuff that comes with it. Uh, it's not like buying stuff solved all of our problems, uh, but it did move us down the track.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now you just have to get a directory of emails that all makes sense.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We do. Actually, uh, I gotta give that feedback to Brian. So that's hilarious. Christy, I'm sorry.
Here we are. I think that's a good breakdown.
Awesome. All right, so uh we both had $10,000. Month one marketing. I spent like, I'm gonna say like a thousand bucks on leads that turned into money. My first hire happened after I bought a company. Um and I think, yeah, I mean, I think that I hit a million bucks probably in that first uh year or really close because I would be aiming at like something north of half a million uh revenue.
Yeah. That like million to eight hundred thousand in in top line is like a really good spot where you can buy that for really cheap because it's not valuable to anyone else except.
And back to my earlier point of like, I want revenue before I invest. You go buy that company, go freaking ham on leadaggs and like uh everything. Um but still like keep up some of the level of scrappiness that you had up until that point. But like you have the revenue, you have the infrastructure, go rip. But you know, just being able to um sort of get across the line. Now, obviously, you know, we've said this a lot on the show, just so just fair warning. If you have not listened to the years of content that we've had on this show regarding this, this is what I would actually do. Uh, but buying a company that small is one of the riskiest things that you can do. It is a very easy go-to-zero risk. If one guy leaves, half the business goes away. It is not like I say it easily because uh we've done a lot of them now, and I'm very comfortable in the industry. But if this is your first at time ever glancing at this industry, uh it's not as easy as like the conversation that we just had.
Nope. Totally makes sense. Um, I think mine's starting 10. Month when marketing is probably a few hundred first hires quicker than you. Um truck number two comes into play at around 250,000, 300,000. Um, and I'm targeting about $250,000 to $300,000 per truck, which at four trucks will get you to that million dollar number. And I think that time to take a million is time to one million in revenue, or at least on a benchmark, like, hey, this I'm on track to hit a million, is probably around that 16 to 18 month mark. As I think year one is just getting it alive, keeping the baby alive, and then year two is more focused on okay, baby's alive. We have our first good hire, it's we have marketing channels that are working. Yeah, now we we try and go for for the million. So yeah, that's where I think we are at.
All right, thanks everybody for tuning in. If you like what you heard, like and sub. I've also been told to refer to one eight hundred gambler if you actually have a gambling addiction. Uh, I hope you find help.
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