What does the perfect marketing team actually look like for a $5M home service company trying to reach $10M?
John Wilson and Jack Carr go head-to-head to build a marketing department from scratch, with Sam Preston judging every decision.
They start with the exact same $5M appliance repair business, zero internal marketing employees, and a $400K payroll budget. Across five rounds, they have to decide who to hire first, what to keep outsourced, when to bring marketing in-house, and what gets cut when the budget tightens.
Along the way, they break down lifecycle marketing, lead generation, PPC, SEO, content, branding, business development, multi-location growth, and why the marketing team that gets you to $5M may not be the one that gets you to $10M.
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In This Episode
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• The first marketing hire John and Jack would make at $5M
• Marketing coordinator vs. lifecycle marketer
• Using your existing customer database to drive more revenue
• How the marketing team changes from $5M to $10M
• When growth requires expanding into new markets
• What should stay outsourced at $7M
• Why PPC, LSA, and SEO may belong with an agency
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Connect
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John Wilson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbwilson1/
Jack Carr
https://x.com/thehvacjack
Sam Preston
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-preston-a682103b6/
So it is John versus Jack of an exact five billion dollar home service company. And your job is to build a marketing department that can take you to 10 million.
I would be net new customers because we're remarketing to our own customers, filling our own board. Our marketing percentage is low.
So I'm thinking you have to go multi-location here. I would be focusing on content, content, content, trying to grab more. John's winning this one. I don't think that's correct.
I think it's correct.
All right, round three. What stays outsourced?
The answer that I'm going to give you is welcome back to Owned and Operated. I am your host, uh John Wilson. With me is my very frequent co-host uh Jack Carr and our frequent guest, returnee, Sam Preston. And today we are talking about how to build the perfect home service marketing team. Let's do it. Let's do it. This is fun. Yeah. I'm ready to rip. I'm excited. Who's actually running? Who's actually running this show?
I think I'm running this show. I think you keep okay. Yeah, Sam's supposed to be the uh arbiter here. All right, all right.
Is it is it us versus you or is it us versus each other?
No, no, no. Y'all are going against each other. Um the premise is that y'all have the exact same five million dollar home service company. I don't know if we're going HVAC or plumbing or if it even matters.
Well, let's go roofing because roofing's like a fake trade.
Okay, fake doesn't actually exist there.
Cool. Okay, so we just have something we have to watch. And so just you know, and he's like, I think his roofing business was like eight million dollars. Yeah, he's like, and he stood up and during his intro, he's like, eight million dollar roofing business, just so you all are aware, it is as easy as John says it is on the podcast. God damn it, why am I not doing the next one? I think I just need to launch it and like accidentally trip into a $10 million business. Okay.
John's just accidentally tripping into million dollar businesses here. Uh love that. So it is John versus Jack. Dun dun dun. Uh you got the exact five million dollar home service company, roofing, apparently. And your job is to build a marketing department that can take you to 10 million. Here we go.
Okay, I'm ready to go.
So I am your judge and jury on this. I'm gonna challenge you uh with hires, uh, problems, and then you're gonna tell me what you're gonna do with that.
Okay.
Do we like roofing?
Roofing's fine. It's actually super unique in that I think it would be different than some of the other trades.
Or alternate, okay. So I'm gonna pitch one other one. Okay. We have three options, guys. This is like HVAC. We've got a good, better, best. Okay. Roofing would be the easiest because like I could just say anything, and it would be like a you know, $100 million business immediately. Alternatively, like almost the opposite, which would make this a harder discussion is appliance repair.
I like that one.
Because that's just like that's actually hard. Very different. That's actually hard. Um versus, or like alternatively, just plumbing a check electric.
You know, y'all choose. This is the fun thing. Maybe y'all choose. I think we should fuck around with appliance repair. I think we do appliance repair. Okay.
All right. So you both own. I think I know enough of appliance repair that this is dangerous for both of us. No, both of us, but um, it's still more difficult. Yeah.
Okay. Okay. Both of you have a $5 million appliance repair. No acquisitions allowed.
The single largest. Oh, damn it. No acquisitions allowed. No acquisitions allowed. We're the single largest appliance repair company in the US at $5 million per year.
All right, we've got some rules though. Okay. Okay. This is not just a free free go. So you got $400K total payroll budget. Okay. You're going to start with zero internal marketing employees. No one's in there, right? Uh, agencies still can be used. Okay. Service scalars is for hire. Oh, yeah. Uh, every hire needs a salary. Once you hire someone, you're stuck with them.
I love that that rule's in there. You do have to pay people. We're gonna offer them equity only in this business. I feel like uh when when John uh prepped this, he's like he's trying to like corral me into not breaking rules.
Yeah, exactly. Uh and uh once you hire someone, you you're stuck with them. Okay, and then I get the challenge. Uh Sam can challenge any pick.
So 400,000 total payroll.
Okay. Okay. And round robin, we're just drafting round robin. So I'll give you each round, we will have a little bit of a different premise of where you're at and what you do.
Okay. All right, I'm ready.
Ready for this?
Um I've actually never been more ready than Rand
Robin.
All right, round one. Your first hire, you're five million. You uh and the owner still oversee marketing, you're doing it all. Okay. Uh, who is your first market? Yeah, you're so good.
In this example, it is.
You got this. Okay. Uh, all right. So who's your first hire? Is it a marketing manager, director of marketing, coordinator, chat uh channel specialist, someone else? Give us the role, salary, and their number one responsibility.
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This one for me at this point, because I was kind of just there in HVAC not too long ago. Uh, the answer that I'm going to give you is marketing coordinator. Okay. Uh, I'm running all the marketing. So I'm I'm currently turning on and on on and off LSA. I'm turning on and off leadags. I am doing everything marketing. And so my goal here is to put somebody in place. I'm going overseas hire uh at I'm gonna give them a healthy salary because I'm going to be lazy here with the marketing side while they're turning on and off. Uh $15 an hour.
Okay. Okay.
Which comes out to be what $30,000, $30,000. Yeah, $32,000. Okay. And that's my hire.
All right. What is their main responsibility? Obviously, turning on and off.
So their main responsibility is to coordinate all of the marketing management, not the strategy. So I want them doing the day-to-day tasks within my SOP, which is turning on and off LSA based on my capacity. Oh, excuse me, don't turn off LSA. Managing budget for LSA. Never turn it off. Never turn it off. Managing budget for my LSA, but turning on and off lead ags. Because my suggestion or what I would be doing right now is having three or four lead ag companies delivering me appliance repair, um, appliance repair leads.
Okay. All right. And uh, what are these three lead ags that you're going with?
I'm feeling real confident. I at this stage, I feel confident. Uh Angie's Thumbtack. I'd probably be trying out Yelp or trying out uh some kind of meta or TikTok ads on top of that. I like this. It would have some level of reporting as well, some KPIs on, hey, where are we at? How are we doing? And then making sure that that report comes to me so that we can make decisions. I love that.
What's that one KPI though?
What's the main thing you gotta do? Well, definitely ROI. Uh, how much how well are the channels doing? Each individual channel, because I'm running five or six different channels here at five million.
I love it. Sweet. Marketing manager or marketing marketing coordinator, excuse me. Yeah, love this 30k. That's that's good. I like this. I like this. John, let's go. I think I'm gonna go classic.
We're gonna acquire it.
Um we're gonna use that 400,000 to buy a four million dollar marketing agency and get everybody I need.
Yeah. Um, all right. So I think um the context now, Sam. I think how many, how many uh do you guys work with appliance repair companies? And if so, like how many?
Uh I think we've only worked with a couple. Uh, and the problem is mostly is that they need really cheap leads. Yes.
And I think that's actually what makes this kind of like an interesting example for us. So of the one, my understanding of appliance repair, and it was kind of confirmed, we actually had a workshop attendee here this week, and he was actually kind of big for appliance repair, it was like two and a half million dollars. Um, but my understanding of appliance repair is one, they they need cheap leads, but two, there are just an unreal amount of leads for appliance repair. It's like the craziest. Yeah. So the guy here at the workshop this week was a two or two and a half million dollar appliance repair business, and he had 14,000 customers in his database, which like that's insane. Yeah. Uh, but it also, you know, Chris Hoffman from Hoffman Brothers, he built appliance repair as a um like a lead generation tool for his plumbing HVAC electric business. So he would go get an appliance repair lead because they're like much cheaper than plumbing HVAC. He'd get the lead, he'd run it with an appliance repair tech, he'd sell a membership, and then he'd convert them into plumbing HVAC electric. But it's like they are there are tons of customers, and whereas like in HVAC, it's like you run three or four calls a day. I think in appliance repair, you run like six to eight.
Yep. And but the problem was in a lot of them is that there's there's like levels to appliance repair too. Totally. You have you have the cheaper pieces of appliances, and then you go all the way up to like what is it, sub sub um like Viking ranges and subcool fridges that are just so the reason why explaining the industry for the listener is appliance repair has a unique dynamic because you need a ton of leads, but they are all there.
Like you will get a ton of leads and they're cheap. So I think the most interesting thing you can do is like a position that probably most of our listeners have never heard of, which is a life cycle marketer.
Interesting. All right, so life cycle marketer.
So life cycle marketing, you see it when you look at um, does Leap have a life cycle? You see it a lot when you look at PE. Have you seen this role before?
I have not seen this role before. Oh this is new for me.
Okay, all right, let's go.
John's, you're making up roles to like win this game.
I mean, first off, classic. Yeah.
This person just happens to be the best person in the entire world that you've never heard of. You've never heard of this position.
So, yeah, lifecycle marketing is um, and also we all kind of do it. Like we just call it outbounding, but outbounding is lifecycle marketing. So it's marketing to a customer during the life cycle that they are your customer. So that's going to be your email, your outbound SMS, your outbound calling to like contact them. So, one of the unique things about appliance repair is they have a massive customer database because they get so many leads and for so cheap. And I think that just our my experience from talking to the gentleman this week is he's not contacting them at all. So I think that's like the big untapped thing inside appliance repair is are we doing life cycle marketing? Are we in on this show? We just call it out loud.
What's the value? And I know this is off script, but what's the value of a lifecycle marketer in this business, though, in the sense that I know this is probably Sam's job on this, but I'm curious. I love it. Go for it. But um, like so they don't have a broken appliance, and you're not selling them anything else.
So I think you have to find, and I'm not gonna cheat and say, like, launch HVAC uh on the back of this customer database. I you come in for a need, so like, hey, my fridge is broken. Um, well, can can you sell a membership to clean their dryer vents once a year? Yeah. Or can like what are the uh like you came in for an emergent situation, but what is a somewhat recurring service that has to happen every year? I mean, it could be like, hey, once a year we'll clean your ovens, or once a year we'll do your dryer vent cleaning, or we'll do duck cleaning, or or something that like is appliance in nature. Obviously, you can like we could cheat and say, hey, like we'll add plumbing or whatever. But I I do think that like dryer vent cleaning is a totally reasonable add-on to an appliance repair business. And I mean, you could sell the shit out of that with 14,000 customers.
Like you send one email and you you know fill up a fill up a uh Yeah, I think the problem becomes, right, is with that that nature is trying to figure out, right, if I'm buying leads for $10 to $15, do I need to to outbound like the value of a life cycle customer? What is that life value? Is it more than just getting in the customer?
So the gentleman this week that he was. Was he having trouble? He was having trouble getting cheap leads. So if you can find another way to drive revenue off that same lead, then it becomes more valuable.
Yeah, I that's what I don't know is is how cheap can you continuously get leads? Because if at some point, if the leads are cheap enough and you can have the velocity, you don't need to find a secondary source of income on that same lead. Just because hey, if I ten dollar leads all day long, I don't need anything else. I'm good with just a ten dollar lead.
Well, I also think a lot of these companies, I think in a five million dollar appliance repair business is extremely uncommon.
It's huge. Yeah, that's huge.
It's it's gigantic. And I think a part of it is because they only rely on leads because they're so plentiful, but they haven't done this part, which is what allows them to you know move to the next step. It's the same thing in plumbing HVAC. You know, we talk about like, hey, we need broken furnaces, broken ACs, broken water heaters. Eventually, you do have to move to low intent leads and be able to remarket your base or sell a meta lead or something that's just a little bit different. So, anyways, I I think that that makes sense just because the customer database is humongous and you can mine it. 14,000 customers is a lot.
That's a lot, that's a lot of a lot of phone numbers.
All right, and then um I would bring on like an ear, like as far as like compensation. Um I think it would be like a junior marketing, uh like someone looking to move from marketing coordinator to manager. So that's probably like uh I don't know, sixty to seventy thousand dollar base comp individual. Um and the reason I would want to sort of like step up to that hire instead of a coordinator is I think you want the creativity that they're gonna bring. Um because I think the goal is hey, we're getting all these people inside the database. What else can we do with it? And I think that just takes that's not like a coordinator, that's like there's some there's some critical thinking there. How do we can we sell a membership? If so, like what would be involved? Uh, what are the other ancillary services that we can offer that are still within our lane? Um, I just think it it takes like some real critical thought.
Oh, I like it. Um is I feel like though the lifecycle manager um marketer, you are focused more on uh past clients, your customer list, but that doesn't really affect net new customers.
It does not, but I also think if I got to five million of revenue and appliance repair, like I've got that on. I've got that. Okay. Because in that case, you know, the gentleman that was here this week, he was two and a half million to 14,000. So I probably have 20 to 30,000 customers in my database that goes on.
I like that.
And that's like the untouched asset inside the business is that database versus the uh inbound lead flow is clearly working. Yep.
Yep.
So I would just keep doing that, I guess.
Yep.
All right, so now I've got to grade these picks. Uh and John, I'm gonna give you uh bonus points for coming up with a brand new company that's making something up a position that I've never heard of in my entire life. Uh however, I'm gonna give this to Jack as the winning of the round. No, like he went with net new customers. Of course, he's gonna get people coming back. I get you're gonna mind those people and get more out of it, but like I like the net new customers. Did you bring it up? That's what I went first because I knew. After, after off camera. Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna award Jack this first hire.
If you want to learn about uh lifecycle marketing or the listener, you should um you can get on ChatGPT and learn about it, or alternatively, like a lot of um you see it on a lot of uh private equity business like websites, like their director of lifecycle marketing. But like it's a whole discipline inside a business. Are y'all ready for round two?
Let's do it.
I've actually never been more ready.
Never been more ready. All right, things come back.
Really good. Both of you are successful with your hires and is moving up to seven million now. One of the top appliance repair companies in the nation.
In the world, yeah, not even the nation, just like the world.
I love it. You get one uh person because your life cycle marketer uh and your marketing coordinator is overwhelmed with all of the stuff they're doing. You get one more person. Is this more of a creative content kind of person? Are you going after PPC, SEO, CRM uh person, marketing coordinator? At what point are you using the second uh hire? Where are you going? John, why don't you go first this time?
Mine would be net new customers.
Okay.
I I mean that to me, I think that makes sense because I think we built the machine to re-market to customers, and then we probably in that time period we worked through our list. Yeah, like we've remarketed to every customer. Now I have to add more into the funnel uh and I have to like get that more efficient. But I do think the benefit of what I've done that I'll just state is in between the five to seven percent uh million, because we're remarketing to our own customers, filling our own board, our marketing percentage is low. Yeah, it's like it might be like five or six percent. So we have like money to reinvest. It's not like it was 10% the whole way up. So yeah, I think we remarketed everybody, we built a system for it. We probably have a speed delete function now because that's sort of in line with the um uh remarketing part, and I would focus on that new. The only thing I don't know, um, and I was like thinking as you were prompting, is would it be agency or internal hire? Because I do think I mean it's still a small business. Like two marketing hires at a like seven million dollar business would be kind of wild, I think.
Yeah, yeah, you I mean you're sure.
Well, not to mention that you are also decent enough at marketing to get you up to five to seven million by yourself. So like that's a there's really three marketers in that business. You're trying to be the best, the biggest appliance repair in the entire nation.
Which is not the biggest.
So I would, yeah, I think and just thinking about Wilson's marketing team, I would, and like I think the budget constraint that we have here is I would add in the coordinator that manages our league channels. And I yeah, so unfortunately not like much more of a creative answer, but I have a creative answer because I'm gonna win again.
All right, so you're going back to coordinator, similarly to where he started.
I think that I think that makes sense. I think like yeah, we built the market remarketing machine, we the speed delete is in there, we have contacted all of our customers, we have like a way to drive revenue from a base. Now let's fill more into the base. Like, honestly, this is what Wilson's done.
Yeah. I think that the direction I would go is more based on the actual business, in the sense that the problem with appliance repair is there's a lot of cheap leads, but the volume of leads I think caps in the market. So my worry at 7 million is that we have to be in a large market, but that large market is getting really close to being tapped, right? So we've seen um companies down in Austin who have this problem. We've seen companies in that. I looked at a business like before I bought the HVAC one in Nashville, which is the biggest appliance repair company in Nashville, and it was 3.2 million. Like eight or nine trucks on the road, busy, but there's no other big appliance repair company in Nashville. They are the company. Nashville's not a small area. So I'm thinking that at 7 million, my capacity constraint is going to come from you capture market. You capture market. Yeah. And so I'm thinking you have to go multi-location here. And so I would be focusing on it in the the role, like the role and responsibilities as somebody who could start or a team that it would have the person, but like the team would need to be able to do a new GMB in a new location and start to market in a new location while somebody else is now like it's not one person is the problem. That's what I'm coming down to. I mean, there's nothing saying well, I guess you have to pick one person. Yeah, it also affects ops like massively. It's like, how do you go multi-location here? But um from a marketing standpoint, I think it is a higher level higher because you have to manage now multi-location marketing. And I think I think it's the fun answer is not the answer. I want to give a fun answer, but it's a fun answer. The fun answer is like I've capped, I capped my my total. I want to go like um content. I want to go content, content, content, try to grab more. I just don't think there's more. If you're in Nashville and you're at 7 million in appliance repair, I don't think there's more. Or not meaningfully more. Yeah. I think you can grow faster by going to Chattanooga or Knoxville or a different market. So I'm going marketing manager. I think the role is probably a mid-level marketing manager focused on lead gen and understands GMB and local services. Uh, and they were gonna have to own all of the marketing. So it's not just like now one channel going on and off. They're managing a marketing coordinator who's turning on channels on and off across multiple locations and managing those marketing coordinators. I say marketing coordinators, but it's probably one for now. So marketing manager, supervisor, market manager, it's manager.
I like it. 100, 100. 100. It's gonna be hard to get 100.
You have a $400,000 total budget.
I know.
I think a hundred. I like it. I like it. John, did you I mean you got a coordinator? Did you do what you didn't go offshore? Get yourself a nice little or did you dump it? All right, and what are you spending? Some similarly? Um, I think that's what we spend 30 32k for a coordinator. Yeah. All right.
Okay.
I had a better idea after you answered your bullshit. Womp womp. Yeah, yeah.
I'll save it for the next one.
Yeah, yeah. Um to grade this. I do like the creativity of going to uh uh new markets and setting up new locations. Uh, I do think that is uh you know expensive. It's a lot of money going into managing people. You got a marketing manager, then you get a coordinator. Uh whereas you you fixed your problem of marketing to your now, you're going into net news. There's so you're wasting so much, there's so much money left on the table on Jack's. John's winning this one. Boom. I don't think that's correct. I think it's correct. I don't think that's correct.
I think it's actually the most correct.
All right, round three. What stays outsourced? So through this process, I don't know where it was, but you hired service scalers. Yes, and you're looking at that bill and you're like, man, I'm spending a lot of money on agencies. Uh, I only have 400,000. And so, like, how what can I bring in-house that that you're not paying service scalers or whatever agency of your choice is? And uh, you have a couple options. You could do PPC, SEO, creative, CRM, social content. Uh, what's coming inside? What's staying with agencies? Um, and what should almost always stay uh outsourced at this size?
Gosh, you gave him the easy one to go first on, me the hard one to go first on.
You gotta fire me right now.
I feel like this one's kind of easy. What what what to outsource and keep inside the business at seven?
Company's still seven.
Still seven.
It's another year you haven't grown anything, you're still at seven.
I think from a marketing perspective, what out we already are doing our own uh aggregates, uh lead aggregation. So that's continuing to stay in the business. We had hired a coordinator for a reason. Um, we're we could do outbound calling, like that's not exclusive to a lifetime person. Lifetime coordinator.
What was the life cycle marketer?
Life cycle marketer, thank you. Um we have a marketing manager, so we have some some firepower there. I still think we leave PPC with somebody. I think the games of PPC are meant to be played by people, people who play PPC games all day long. Marketing nerds, enjoy Google. Also, I don't like playing with Google. So uh, and then with all the changes in LSA, like I actually might just like package LSA and PPC up as one thing and ship it out just because of the new changes of it merging. I think that stays together stays outsourced. I I even think SEO at this point stays outsourced. I don't want to own SEO. SEO is a lot. And if you get a good marketing agency who is not the typical, we're gonna give you one article a month and like with all the chat GBTs and everything now, like it's less relevant. I think that uh I don't know if Service Scalers does this, but I think that um most they can offer more than they've historically been able to offer agencies can. Uh, and I think that you get a benefit as a customer from that in the SEO realm.
Yeah.
Um, so I'd leave those two things outsourced. I think I would take all of like direct lead aggregation outside of that in-house. All right.
So you bring in lead ag in-house.
Yeah, lead ag's always been in-house. I think that we we would continue to leave uh SEO and PPC slash LSA out.
Well, what's outside that you're bringing in specifically?
Yeah, I don't think I'd bring in anything else. I mean you've got to.
That's
the challenge here. You have something that is outsourced, you've got to bring inside.
Maybe Facebook. I think that Google, like I agree.
I was like tick TikTok or Facebook, you could bring in if you have been outsourcing it. Yeah. Uh by now you probably have at seven million, you have a decent enough call center to be able to handle that volume of leads.
7 million is only usually like two people in the call center. Plus dispatcher.
In appliances, you're running eight calls a day per yeah. Yeah, I think it's a few more. Like that's a lot of leads. That's how you get to 14,000 at 2 million. It's like that's a lot of you're getting a lot of leads. Yeah. So I think that you have a your call center is pretty stacked, um, decent. They're able to handle dispatch probably decent. I think that what I would bring in um is probably Facebook TikTok marketing if I was outsourcing that.
Yeah, I like it. I think Google's too. Yeah.
You'd bring in Google too.
No, I think Google's too complicated.
Yeah, like to me. The games of Google are too complicated for me.
And it's also like I don't think I would get any alpha from it.
Well, because Facebook has gotten really good. I mean, I can't speak for Facebook recently, um, but I can speak for TikTok recently, is like TikTok's algorithm is really good at just like set it and go, almost like LSA to a certain extent. From zero to one, you derive a lot of value. Obviously, you can go one to a hundred and and perfect the machine, but zero to one is good enough that you can start to really pull leads without having to really understand the entire TikTok. John, are you doing the exact same thing?
Yeah, I I don't know if it's Facebook exactly, but I think socials in some like that's if I if I'm being forced to bring something in, socials is easier to bring in than Google. I think in like actuality, beyond the prompt, I think that either of them is too much for a business of this size to internalize.
I agree.
I agree.
Yeah.
All right. Well, I am judging both of you on this, and since you gave the same exact answer, I would. This is a tie. My boy. We can't assist them. All right. All right. So we're going to go.
Are we on our is this the last round?
No, we get two more.
Okay, okay. Because right now we're tied. We're tied. Yeah. Most home service companies don't stall because of demand. They stall because they run out of good people. Finding solid help fast is hard, especially in this industry. And that's where Quick Staffers comes in. They help home service companies build reliable virtual teams that actually understand how the trades work. Quick Staffers provides vetted, remote staffed who are already trained on Service Titan and use proven SOPs, the same as the ones that I use at Wilson. These are VAs you can plug in from day one to handle customer service, lead follow-up, scheduling support, and a ton more. They've been a huge help in scaling my team without the usual hiring headaches. Check them out at the link below.
Round four. Congratulations, you both have made it to 10 million. Let's go.
Uh, you reached 10 million, but Trump has personally congratulated us for being the largest appliance company in the universe.
I have gone to space on Elon's rocket.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Your lead volume is up, but also your cost per lead is up. Your booking rate is down marketing.
That's true.
I'm not actually gonna lie.
Did you see that problem? Like you like plan this out?
No.
I'm gonna win, I'm gonna win with the market.
We're just like action is up. Job's doing up. Okay, great. So continue the problem. Yeah, I'm doing amazing. 5% marketing spend.
Okay, okay.
Lead volume's up, cost per lead is up, booking rate is down. You get one final hire. Who are you adding? Is this a marketing hire or someone else? Could the actual problem be someone else in the business? Uh, John, you get to go first this time.
I'm hiring a lifestyle marketer. Lifecycle marketer.
Second one. Either one. Yeah. I am hiring Biz Dev. Biz Dev. Okay. So appliance repair, a bunch of it is um residential, but I think the good side of appliance repair is commercial. Or like, I don't think landlord is good, but there is a lot of landlord volume, which like could be good. Um so I would go hire a biz dev person uh because I think what you could do is you could go call on property managers and you could get you know, they could close $50,000 a year accounts in one swoop. I get I mean, obviously it counts towards my payroll, but like it would be a sales higher slash marketing hire. So I, you know, maybe half the salary would go into marketing budget, half would go into commission from the accounts that uh that person drags in. Um yeah, you've got restaurants um that need appliance repair, probably somewhat frequently, and then you could add hood cleaning to that, which I think is like a code required once a year, which I is still inside that you know, appliance repair bucket. Uh, you could add landlords, you could add property management companies. Um yeah, I feel like that to me that makes a lot of sense because I think an appliance a biz dev person on that could go take down like a million a year each. Um so yeah, I think I'd be pretty into that. They would probably cost uh like 40 base, 5% commission. So that'd be a $90,000 higher, but half of that goes into marketing, half goes into sales. So I don't know how we want to split that up. But um, yeah, I mean I think I think that makes sense.
I actually don't disagree. Uh it's funny how our minds work because I I went a different direction. That's not a bad direction, though. It's like, hey, I need to expand services, go for bigger stuff, and then I'm gonna force it through with a salesperson.
Yeah, and then you could add you could add like recurring, yeah, like the hood cleaning, I think you have to have a contract for. So you could add like there's a recurring maintenance component, it's a bigger ticket instead of 150 bucks for like a repair at my home. It's like a thousand dollars for that hood cleaning, or yeah, you know, you're fixing like a 12 burner stove or something.
You that's funny you meant that direction. So, my my direction, I'm going, how do I reduce cost per lead? And I'm thinking you have to increase brand awareness so that you're not paying as much on a cost per lead basis because you're just picking up more organic, picking up more.
I don't know how that would work in appliance though.
And that's right. I was going truck wraps, lots of billboards. Um, no, I would high, I would hire a content team. I think that it would be a content person.
Yeah, okay.
And if you were able to drive the hard part with content is like the person that you need to be able to do it effectively has to be so good and so kind of on point that it works. But if you can get the right person, I think that that would be highly effective to reduce CPL. And then booking rate goes up because you have you know more awareness, more trust, everything, every other lead, right? Because branding reduces cost per lead for a kind of across all paid platforms, essentially. I half question. I mean, is that what you've seen? Yeah. I don't do much branding at rapid, so that's why I'm just like confirming like that's what the book says.
I don't know the the way to think about like marketing as a as a we'll we'll hit it in two ways, but like one's cost per lead, one is marketing as a budget item. Cost per lead will go down on average with more branding if it's done well, but marketing budget will significant, significantly go down. Like the more you add um branding and life cycle marketing, which like life cycle marketing in HVAC is just like a membership program. So like we're using all these other words for it, but like it's it's life cycle. So you know, like that is how you go from like a 10-12% marketing spend of revenue to like four to six. Like Wilson runs it a six, and it's because that we have like a really strong life cycle. We outbound call, we outbound SMS, we email, we have membership programs, we uh have like different services. So when we bring in a plumbing customer in, we can then add HVAC electric, sewer, resto, and then and same with any other trade. So there's like a cross-selling component, and that reduces uh aggregate cost per lead.
So my my answer is content. Content. I think I would pay them gosh 80. We already have a marketing manager who's managing multi-location, multiple uh coordinators. I think that the and we have an agency that they're managing as well, doing PPC LSA. I think the answer is to add some kind of way to bring down cost per lead, get your name out there without somebody having to pay to see it. And I think that's branding. So we'd focus on content, A, because it would achieve that, but B, I also think it'd be fun. I do see some of the TikTok videos. I don't want to be in them, but I do want to embarrass all of my technicians and have them like singing on camera. So I think it would be fun.
I like it. I mean, we definitely see when we start running a campaign and they have branding that's already in place, which makes us look way better at our jobs because of that.
So I win that round. Sweet. You can go on the next one. That's easy. Thanks, Sam.
Well, yeah, this is a tough one. I mean, we went totally different directions on this one. Uh I like both. You're like, I'll dance on the internet, and I was like, we're gonna go sell contracts.
Going back to my college days.
One of them might be more likely to work, but uh, it's cool.
It's cool.
Uh, I like both of your answers. John's going for the biz dev, spending 90K. Yeah, with a base plus commission. Jack's gone the content route uh at 80k. Um, man, this one's a tough one. I'm personally gonna go biz dev. I'm sorry, Jack. I'm going John.
I thought that made you look good. Damn it.
It did look good. Um, and it is a great answer. One great dance by uh Jack on TikTok could go viral.
He could have it could more views fridges to fix from that dance.
Good. Um I already have ideas on appliance content.
Or you know, you could do um Brandon Schlichter's brother has an appliance repair uh YouTube channel. So like maybe that's the play, is like a full business pivot. Like, hey, so I've got this two million dollar appliance repair, but I have a YouTube channel that drives seven million because our content is so fucking good. So, yeah, maybe that's the angle.
It's it's it's a great answer. I just like getting repeat customers, and when you have those commercial businesses because you've you know biz dev'd out to them, they're always sending you uh business on repeat. It just does hit for me. It does hit. So, this is what Victor feels like.
This is nice.
I like this based on where this is going, I do think this might tie. Um, okay. Well, here we go. It is there's a sudden death round like the guy he's too kind, he's too kind of a human. It's rock, paper, scissors for who wins. Um, okay, so uh uh John at two, Jack at one. We are now going into um five.
Uh round five. Here we go. And this is budget cuts. I don't know why, but you're still at 10 million, and you've got to cut $100,000 in payroll. Uh and so you gotta figure this out. I don't know if you're trying to sell, so you're trying to like pay our bigger. John, you dirty freaking dog because prom, you're at 180k between uh these guys, so you have to pull that down to 80. Uh, Jack, you spent a lot of money. You got up to 210. Now I'm assuming since y'all had 400,000 and only spent close to two, I think I was assuming agency fees there. Um, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. There's probably a lot there that we didn't talk about, but you do have to pull your budget down by 100,000. Who are you cutting?
So we're assuming that we're at the full 400 with agency fees.
Yeah, yeah. Well, even like even just spend on ads alone would get you way past 400. But that's just labor.
400 was just labor? It said labor, but uh, it said 400 total in payroll budget. Um big payroll for advertising purposes. Let's say it's yeah. So let's say you've got to cut 100 grand.
Okay. All right, so I've got 180 in people in 220 agency in ad spin.
I went first in the last one. Here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna step out of the business as the owner. My salary, sell the business, all the EV is mine. Let's rock.
Yeah, yeah. Uh, that's obviously the right answer. Um what would I do? I would that's rough at 10.
That is rough at 10. Oh my gosh.
I think I would I would start with life cycle. The first person that we hired um built the system, but now the system's running. So I would hire a lesser hire. So I basically trade that down. And um it's you know, the membership programs built, the sales funnel's built, the speed, like all of that is there present and functional. So I would uh go from a higher level hire to a coordinator. So um you have 60,000. So that saves me 30, so I have 70 more to go. Uh and then I would get rid of um well, I guess we said we in-housed Facebook ads.
But we didn't really say where they're who's responsible for them.
Yeah.
I mean, mine would probably be a marketing coordinator and a lawyer, yeah.
So I would I would likely cut those first. Um I'd probably like cut that section of spend like entirely.
The channel?
I think I would cut the channel. Because I think um if I was like resetting the business, which we have had to do, like the first thing that goes is the nice to have's or the low intense. And like we know a Google lead is more valuable than a meta lead, so we have to go to the more valuable lead. So yeah, I that would be my play. I would trade down um the manager to a coordinator, and then I would cut that channel of spend, reset the business, and like re-evaluate. I wouldn't want to touch the coordinator dealing with lead aggregators because that's probably working, and like we still need that. And I definitely wouldn't want to touch the person that just dragged in a million dollars of commercial contracts.
Yeah, right.
Um, so I think that's a good thing.
But he didn't yet, because you're still at 10 million.
Well, maybe I lost maybe I lost a million of revenue in face, but like he brought a million up or something like that.
Yeah. Okay. Mine's much easier, I think, is is I would have to cut the branding. Like content uh is wonderful, but it is when it gets once again a nice to have. Takes a lot more time to track. Uh it's not as direct on tracking because you're again tracking like the the differential and CPL less so than the it's just less, less um, it's more ambiguous on on if you're actually winning or not. And if you're paying someone 80k for that, that's a lot to to not grow. Um, and I don't think that ironically, you said that we we dropped a million and we gained a million, like we wouldn't have that same ability to say, like, hey, we dropped a million in aggregators and we gained a million in branding. Like it doesn't work like that. So it would have to be branding oriented cut. Yeah. And that's what 80. So you got 20 more. Yeah, I think I think we would do that. I don't think I would touch agency.
Yeah, I mean, you still need lead. To run the business.
You still need leads to run the business and everything else is a direct lead generator.
Yeah.
I'd probably pick the channel that's operating the least best and roll it back. Whether that's an aggregator that we're spending 10, 20k on if we miss a few months. Because aggregators are kind of hard sometimes when yeah.
I mean, last month we saw this.
In our business, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, we have a channel uh that normally does like what five times ROAS.
No, I was doing nine to twelve. Yeah, I know.
I know you were.
Nine to twelve drops to one.
I know. Yeah. So across Wilson, like all five locations, it went from like, I think I think Stowe was doing a five times, you were doing yeah, north of nine to twelve. It was crazy. Uh, and it across the whole platform, it went to a 1.7 so in August. Just like a total, but like we spent 50 grand. Like it was like a ton of money.
Um, which tells you it's not, it's not the individual, like it was across multiple brands in multiple locations, which tells you like the the It's not one sales guy botching it, like it's the channel that fucked somehow.
Yeah, and and yeah, that we'd like actively just live through that in August, which is weird.
Um, but with that, that my my point of that, where where I was going with it is because you have the coordinator, and like I said earlier, you're watching your KPI. You're tracking that every month. I would be looking for things that are like that, where yeah, maybe one month or if you look at it on the year, like there might be something that equals out to a five or six, and maybe you could say, hey, that's good. But in a reset, I think I would look for things that are out cushion so fast.
Yeah, and that's what we that are pinging back and forth or just under if it's under a five X, we just slice.
So I yeah, anything under under a five X, you slice immediately. Um, anything that's maybe a five or six that's on that border, but causing uh what I want, what do I want to call this? Like a lot of time investment, right? Because yes, maybe one month you do great, or one season you do great. It's a seasonal thing, but something that pings back and forth is a lot is a lot to manage from a time perspective. So if I could reduce labor in that sense, I would look at really reducing labor in that sense if I didn't have just like an easy push button.
Yeah. I think the only other one that you might be considering is like SEO in this case, because you've built it so big, you really just needed to like sustain. And so, like just reducing what you're putting out from like an SEO standpoint, whether that's like taking the agency out and you're like, hey, I'm just gonna push like maybe a little bit of content. I think you can get that another 20k down.
Usually the way um we've thought about like cuts, like we're 10 years into this, so we've had probably like three instances over that period where like we got over our skis and we had to like clean up. So you can cut skin and you can cut bone. And cutting skin is like what I did in my example, where um and and I and I think here, sorry. But uh but like it's like we we are making a change that will not deeply impact the business past 30 days. Uh like we you can you can cut it, you'll bleed, but like you can band-aid, like you'll be healed shortly. Cutting bone is like removing a like if you fully remove the branding, that actually might cut bone. Yeah, we're like over a long period of time that will take six to twelve to eighteen months to reactivate that section of the business. Yeah. Uh so for me it was like, hey, we're gonna trade down because so I don't really lose anything. Maybe we're not as good, but like we don't lose something, and then we'll cut meta, which like or socials, like we can reactivate socials in like half a second. Yeah, so there's no um yeah, like long-term uh damage to the business.
Damage, yeah. Yeah, the only thing I worry about is that. So you do have to cut hard and fast.
That's what we've learned is whenever you whenever you're in that situation, you have to cut hard and fucking fast. You gotta go.
Yeah, you just don't want to fall. The one I always worry about is like when contractors fall into marketing death spiral, where it when you start to cut marketing, you need the marketing. Like that's when you need the mark, when you need yes to yes, you're yeah, I'm I'm I'm trying to put this nicely, but when you need to cut because you're not doing well, the one of the last things you want to cut is marketing because that's how you actually make the money back to survive whatever you're going through at this moment. Um, that being said, there is times when you're again over your skis or your marketing's bloated. Um I think I don't think that branding, if you're if I mean we built a $10 million company without lead gen or with with lead gen only. Cut it for a little bit, come on back, 18 months.
How many how many? We're gonna go literally quick. 10 million dollars divided by $150. So we do $66,666 jobs a year.
A year.
251 That's a lot of drugs. That's a lot. That is crazy, actually. That's more than Wilson Stowe for one third of the result. That's wild. Because Wilson Stow does like 160 to 100.
If they're running five calls a day, what does that come out to be?
Like 150 times five.
No, no, I was trying to figure out how many trucks were on the road for that.
Oh god, I don't know. Now I gotta work backwards on that.
It was divided by five calls a day, was the answer.
Okay, yeah. Boomer in my way through this. Hey, you in the back.
Divide by five. That's 50 trucks on the road. That's a lot of vehicles for a $10 million company.
Yeah. Yeah, that's crazy. That's a lot. That's crazy. That's a lot. Uh I'm tapping out on that. Yeah.
That's like 90 people.
That's a lot of people to have to manage.
Let me work my way. We gotta Well, I think we did.
We were doing public math and we're probably missing something. So if you own an appliance repair company and you're feeling insulted at the moment, we're really sorry. Please comment how much you hate us.
Please comment. All right, so so we're if there's 50 trucks.
Uh I'm gonna go back and look at the CIM and see like the revenue and number of trucks and see what their actual like cost per truck was.
Like 75 total, like another 25 team member. That this is crazy. All right, so revenue per employee is 133,000. I mean, you might as well be a new construction business. I guess you get paid same day. So that's good, but yeah. Wow. Okay.
Yeah, yeah.
We need to understand. We need to understand more.
Our team can dub it over with the right numbers.
Yeah, I'm gonna uh looking at the budget cuts though in round five. Okay, if I have to pick somebody, I think Jack is obviously arm wrestle for the win. Just Brandon gets an easy one to just like pull out. Uh, I do think like you can probably pull some of um that money out and maybe go hire an outbounder uh because you're paying a low 40k and commissions only on things that you're making more. So I think you have I think you just built your team in a way that's easier to like uh go up and down. I don't like removing the lifecycle guy for a new like marketing coordinator. I feel like you're just you're asking yourself for not as good results.
Someone told me I had to cut 100 grand. Yeah.
Oh, interesting.
Well, I'm just saying, I didn't like the prompt.
I will work on that next time we do this. Um, so I'm gonna reward this one to Jack. Um what a tie. Yeah, what an opportunity race here. Uh short distance, probably.
We're both looking at you, Sam. If you're not watching, we're both just staring at waiting for how John and I are gonna compete for this win.
Okay, I think we just take the cameras outside, we do a quick lap around the building.
I've got bone knees, so this is not a while.
Um well, I feel like we painted a good scenario. Yeah, I feel like we picked a complicated trade, which I think is good. It doesn't have like, oh, we're roofing. Yeah.
I'm sorry for John, all of our roofing friends.
But the thing is, everyone I talk to that has listened to the show that's a roofer, they're just like, hey man, yeah, run a roofing company, listen to the show. You are right. You know what the crazy like no one has disagreed. Everyone's like, it is actually as easy as you say.
Well, the funny part of the whole thing is we've always assumed just because they didn't have to do fulfillment, Seth is like, yeah, where I'm at, we kind of have to do fulfillment. Yeah, like California had to do it, like it's not as fun, but yeah, it's still pretty easy.
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If I have to pick a winner, Jack, man, I think you're getting this one. I, you know, the the initial hire was the one I would have chosen uh to begin with. Uh I think John kind of copyposted you once he got into the second hire. Uh he realized his mistake on the second one, so he went that round. And then you get into the the body. I thought you were a better, you were set up better to cut this for me than John. I do agree with that part. The five rounds. I think you take the cakes. Man, good job.
Yeah, that uh that wounds my soul, but um it's fine. I'll I'll keep my five percent marketing budget. I'll just keep like making more Eva, you know, the real score of the game.
They both sold their company at 10 million, both but bought roofing companies, and next time we will do how we grow our roofing company. That is funny.
All right, good job, guys. Awesome, good game, Jack. I'll beat you next time. If you like what you heard, make sure you like, uh comment below. If you're an appliance repair and we totally mess this up, please let us know where. If you're in roofing, like you know it's easy.
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