Best Service Businesses to Start or Buy in 2027

What are the best service businesses to start in 2027, and which overlooked industries offer the biggest opportunities for growth?

This week on Owned and Operated, John Wilson and Jack Carr break down the profitable service businesses they'd consider starting or acquiring in 2027, exploring opportunities beyond traditional HVAC, plumbing, and electrical companies.

John makes the case for combining retail locations with home service businesses, from water filtration and artificial turf to pet safety and underground fencing. Jack takes a different approach, looking at elevator repair, security companies, and specialized service industries where high barriers to entry, limited competition, and recurring maintenance create opportunities for long-term growth.

They also discuss what makes a service business profitable, why recurring revenue and multi-location operations are critical to scaling, and how the right business model can grow into a multimillion-dollar company.

Plus, an update on the Wilson Companies' push toward its first $5 million revenue month and how unusually warm weather impacted HVAC, plumbing, and other service lines.

Whether you're looking for the best home service business to start in 2027, evaluating your next acquisition, or exploring new industries, this episode breaks down the business models and growth opportunities worth considering.

For more opportunities in traditional home services, check out our guide to the Top 8 Most Profitable Home Service Businesses to Start Right Now.

In This Episode:

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The best service businesses to start or buy in 2027
Why elevator repair and security could be profitable business opportunities
Combining retail locations with home service businesses
Water filtration, artificial turf, and pet safety business models
Building recurring revenue through memberships and maintenance agreements
Why high barriers to entry can create competitive advantages
Scaling service businesses through multiple locations and acquisitions
The Wilson Companies' push toward a $5 million revenue month

Connect

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John Wilson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbwilson1/

Jack Carr
https://x.com/thehvacjack

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John Wilson, CEO of Wilson Companies
Jack Carr, CEO of Rapid HVAC

We're currently at 4.575, but we have around a half million of billing left.

If you had to start a business in 2027, how are you feeling? Where are you going?

Small retail opportunities and if there's a way to combine that with home service. I think there's something in retail and home service, and I don't think it's like super explored.

It might not be explored for a reason.

The only way to build a billion-dollar business is have a lot of something. But if you can figure it out in one location, like you can probably figure it out in a hundred.

Direction I would go if I were to seriously consider something in 2027.

Welcome. Welcome. Welcome back to Owned and Operated, a top 100 business and entrepreneurship podcast. I am your host, John Wilson, and here with me today is my co-host Jack Carr.

Welcome to the city. Wow. Hey John, are you okay?

Uh dude, I'm feeling good. I'm feeling good. I got up at 5 this morning, worked hard in the gym, got after it. Dude, feeling good. Feeling good. I've had uh it's what 11 in the morning and I'm 150 grams of protein deep.

That's a lot of protein.

Feeling great.

Yeah. Awesome, man. Well, uh, do you wanna do you wanna start with updates? We haven't done an update in a long time.

Yeah, yeah. What do you what do you got new? What's new? It's almost ski season.

That's my biggest update. Um business-wise, rough October for us, but strong September. So, you know, I mean, like, it wasn't bad. We beat, we beat last year. Um, just not by the 90 or 70 or 80 percent that we have then. So it's relative. Uh, and we're just like jumping straight into winter. So we went from hundred-degree days in September to like November's going to hit 30. So I'm I'm pretty pumped. Oh, really? End of November's they're saying polar vortex gonna hit the Ohio Okay, and end of November. So I think we're only gonna get like a month and a half of shoulder, which actually feels pretty good.

Yeah, that's not bad. Yeah. I I I mean, we uh October was kind of funny. Um, so yes, similar. Um October last year for us was the highest month, and it wasn't close at all. Like it was absolutely ridiculous, just total banger month. Um, like the difference for perspective, like we did in 2020 what was last year, five, in 2025, we did um like 1.7 or something million in September, and then in October we did 2.6. So it was like almost a million dollar swing, and then like right back down for November. Um huge banger month for us. And then to be honest, it was kind of funny. We've obviously acquired like seven businesses this year, all of them had a huge October. So, like this October was we were pretty nervous going into it that like we were just not gonna beat last year at all. Um, but we ended up smoking it like kind of handily. Uh so October, we we don't have final numbers, so I don't want to like jinx it too bad. I know, I know. We're um we don't have final numbers, but this is potentially our first ever five million dollar month. So we're we're really we're really excited to see it. Uh it it is kind of funny because we do have another business, you know what we've talked a lot about like our growth this year. Uh we have one more acquisition that we're closing at the end of the year, and that's gonna put us up into the six million to like six and a half million months. Like we're we're pacing on a run rate like future of like 85 to 90. Um, but like backwards looking, we're in the we're in the 60s. Uh, but it is kind of funny because like first ever potentially first ever five million dollar month, and if we miss it, we're gonna miss it by like yeah, like ten thousand dollars or like something so annoying. Like it's like a fraction of a percent.

That's the worst. That's crazy though. I mean, if you go back and listen to like last year's episodes in October or two years ago episodes, it's like we're we're really trying to get that first two million dollar month, and now it's like an hour goal for five.

I know. Well, and we're I mainly just want to pass five before we bring on this other business in December because like we know we pass five once we bring it. Like we're that we're already there, like we get it. Like with them, we're at like 5.9 or something. So so we know we'll hit six. It's just I really want to hit Oh, yeah.

It's the full ego, it's the ego number. You just got somebody just gotta shoot for it for no reason other than it's just a nice ramp.

Five's a number. Yeah, five is a number. Like I did um, we didn't cross five million of revenue until 2020. So to do that in a month is like exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

Let's go. Let's get the let us go.

You're you're you're breaking five is now breaking five in one month in 30 days.

Yeah, no, it's good.

Uh so but it it was we, I mean, we we walked into the month with some heat, I I feel like. Um now, something that was pretty interesting about it, I can actually probably show portions of this. But what was really interesting about October, let me see if I can screen share. If you're not watching this on YouTube, I'm I can uh I'll just like talk about it verbal. But um what was really interesting is specifically in Ohio, so obviously we're Ohio, uh Tennessee, um, and Indiana, but specifically in Ohio, HVAC, it was it was 85 degrees last week in October. I I'm sure I could uh I gotta Google this and like actually figure it out. I don't think I've ever had a warmer October in my life. Like when I was uh trick-or-treating in a t-shirt two years ago it was snowing, you know. Um so really odd. So like HVAC, we just got our face kicked in. Uh that's what I was just gonna ask. I think we were down like 30 percent HV.

Is like what what what percentage of that is HVAC? 80 degrees plumbing.

Yeah.

Totally, totally. So it I mean, it was 80 degrees in Ohio. So for us, like the winter hasn't even started yet. Uh which normally October is normally the peak month of the year because heating season just starts, and like in Ohio, you have boilers, and like there's a lot more going on with the heating season. Um, but like it actually hasn't started yet. So I don't know that I've ever had a uh year in my like 10-year career that like October you didn't turn the heat on, but like I have yet to turn the heat on in my house because it's still 60 something at night. Uh it's crazy.

Yeah, we have people turning down like normally October's the month that we hammer through all of our mem maintenance memberships. Like we couldn't we couldn't book people because they were so against it, and I don't blame them. It was 80 degrees, like nobody wants a heating maintenance when it's 80 degrees out, but the it's like it's it's gonna flip so fast. And I'm we tried to like get people to come through on that. So that's really interesting. But plumbing did wonderful in our business as well. Um, so yeah, October was a plumbing market.

I'm I'm sharing our little I'm sharing our screen here. Um we're we're not done with our billings, so it says 4.575 right now. Uh, but we've got around a half a million of billings still to go. Um, so I will update everyone soon if we hit our first five. You'll see it all over LinkedIn, I'm sure. Just screenshots, me with cool chains, maybe a couple Lamborghinis. Yeah, so like yeah, if you're not watching this, I'll just read it off. So plumbing was three percent uh year over year growth, like fine, you know, nothing crazy. Drains and sewer was 71. So like absolutely nuts growth. HVAC was down, I actually thought it was 30, so it was only down 21%, but like that's still kind of a lot. Um, and then electrical and restoration were up like 15 and 16. So uh yeah, I'll I'll find out soon. Uh but yeah, as you can see, last year was 4.168 for all the companies combined. We're currently at 4.575, but we have around a half million of billing left. Um, and the billing is like restoration bills a week late. Uh, we have a bunch of commercial contracts in one of our businesses that they bill a week or two late. Um, so I don't know. We're we're supposed to know this Friday. So I have to wait a whole week to know if we hit five million or not. Yeah, I'm so annoyed. Yeah. Just gonna start making assumptions. Yeah. Anyway, so that that's the update. So potentially first five million dollar month.

Pretty excited about it. Awesome. And so with that, now that you have uh this is me trying to smoothly transition, if anyone can't tell. I felt really junky. Felt really good. Yeah,

no.

I was like, oh, this is nice. He must he must be a professional.

Okay, so now with the changes in that as you're going through and looking at like electrical and restoration, how hard it was to get there. If you had to start a business in 2027, how are you feeling? Where are you going?

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. I have I have uh I have a lot of thoughts. I almost feel like I have um I feel like it's the opposite of I don't know if we we gotta branch out into some other businesses here. Um but before we started recording, my pitch was to roll up, or actually we might have already been recording. My pitch was to roll up anytime fitnesses. Um so something that I'm kind of interested in right now I was talking to this guy and he's he's it's he's my neighbor and he works for uh local family, and the family has this massive uh gas station like empire, basically. I think they have like 80 to 100 gas stations and then the C stores, like the convenience stores, and then on top of that, they have they're loading down the real estate with franchises that they control, specifically like fast food franchises. So all in all, it is a supposedly uh high eight, low nine figure EBITDA business, which I'm like okay. So something that I've been kind of interested in is um small retail opportunities and if there's a way to combine that with home service. So like I'll give a couple examples because I I think at home service the benefit is you can scale more with trucks. So like if I'm a retail, if I'm a gym, like a great gym might only do like a half a million to a million of revenue. So you need to grow like you need like 20 of those gyms to even have like a business, right? Um but if you're home service, like I mean, we do 30 million out of like these four walls, right where I am. So you can just you can build a big business in home service. So what I've been thinking about is can you use these like almost hub and spoke to either centralize a service, like honestly, like a quick staff, because I think that'd be kind of interesting. Um, where like you go, you control the real estate, and then you go and you plant operating companies inside it that you can scale beyond what the normal square footage would allow. Uh so one I thought was interesting was like water filtration or like water care, because you could still drive like a half a million plus of recurring memberships from like salt or delivery or whatever. It's easy testing hubs, um but like still big average tickets, and you could install from like a central area. Another one I thought is uh pet safety, which is like the electronic fences that go around the houses, like average tickets, two or three thousand dollars, a neighborhood hub, like a retail like suite makes sense for it.

Um why why would a re why would a retail suite make sense for that?

So I'm imagining and and I don't know if this actually makes sense or not, but I think there's a couple things that to me make sense about the retail. So one, like some of this there are some sections of home service uh that a physical location like Showroom does make sense, and you definitely get the credit for the GBP. So that's why I kind of think it makes sense because if you're if you can put like a retail, like say you have 1500 square and you want to put a little retail in, like you could have like a retail dog training store that also sells the pet safety fences, and you'd have like some recurring revenue from the retail, like from the dog training, then you'd have the big three thousand dollar whatever it is install from the uh like the fence.

Yeah, I think it that's interesting when you get into some some kind of uh industries that cross that retail barrier. A good one which uh surprised me when I went in depth on it was um fireplaces. So fireplaces are highly, highly retail. And as much as I try to push the owners into hey, service, service, service, like that is such a small part of their business. And uh apparently the ability to take good photos of the flame that comes out of and like the the actual viewing of the fireplace is nearly impossible on video or photography. So it they need to be in person, and so their their model is they they have to bring people into this retail location to do to earn these big installs.

Like yeah, look at it, yeah. That's interesting.

I know that huge tickets, yeah.

So I'm I I kind of like I kind of like this idea of like, hey, the business is built on like multiple GBPs, right? Like everybody has a bajillion GBPs, but how do you make the GBP actually valuable, like really truly valuable to the end business? I think water filtration is just like there's actually a need for water filtration retail. So, one, you have the GBP so you could drive LSA leads, you could drive like organic traffic of like you know, clean water or whatever near me. You can sell the softeners, which that that's like seven thousand dollars, but then you can also sell the salt and you can have a recurring salt delivery. So there's like a membership component to this. Um and I don't think you need that much square footage to do it.

Yeah.

I don't know. You put you put a you put a clean water thing next to a Starbucks, like I feel like that's gonna do something. Uh you could use I'm a you know, I'm imagining like wrapping the windows with the perforated whatever, and it's like clean water for you know twenty dollars a month or whatever. I I don't know. I I think there's something in retail and home service, and I don't think it's like super explored.

I don't think it's super explored, but it might not be explored for a reason.

It might I might like I could be like completely wrong. Yeah, yeah. You're up, yeah. I do like the I like the idea of the GBP though actually being functional, and I don't think it's that much more money. So, like as an example, I Isaac, our friend in Chicago, he pays like $2,000 for some of his GBPs, and some of those GBPs are in retail locations, like their storefront. And it's like, okay, $2,000, that's a lot of money. What if you actually stood up something real inside that? And um I used it for almost anything.

Yeah. Yeah, I I think the the issue comes into play when it's like, well, okay, so you have a retail location, now you have to man it with an extra, extra person, extra man hours. And can you drive enough revenue out of that location to actually make it worth it? I think I I think you're correct that in some businesses it works, and then I think in other businesses, like I don't I just don't think the consumer cares about HVAC.

I don't think it's plumbing HVAC electric. Yeah. No, I I don't think it's plumbing HVAC electric. And if it is, I think it's like very specific subsects of it. Um like pool could could be an example that could run pretty easily out of retail. Like there's there's a reason for it to be retail. I think that water filtration is real. Um honestly, I think like a carpet slash carpet cleaning thing could be uh could be real. But the problem is you have to um I was doing this deep dive in retail the other day, just because I'm like I'm kind of interested in it right now. And something that I found fascinating was almost every and I'm quoting here, good retail opportunity out there is a recurring revenue like subscription model. So like your chiropractor is a subscription, your wine bar is a subscription, your anytime fitness is a subscription, uh, your med spas, like everybody's everything is member based.

Yep.

Yeah,

like yeah, kitty parks, kitty playgrounds, like all those things. So, you know, in a in a complex with like 20 tenants, 20 out of 20 are subscription-based service providers, which I think is just kind of hilarious. So then it's like, all right, what section of our business or of home service is subscription built uh that you could build on the back of like a real monthly service for something, and then on top of that, you still get the benefit of like the big ticket install and you could distribute from like a centralized location. I think like turf installation would be an interesting one. Like you could walk in and like, hey, this is what turf feels like. Boom, sell it. I don't know how you get recurring subscription off of that.

I know a guy who does um turf cleaning, which is ironic, right? You get you you get turf so that you don't have to mow your grass and you don't have to maintain it anymore until oh, like the pet hair and the dirt that like everything actually just goes in and gets caught in that rubberized, you know, substrate, and then you have to clean that out. So um funny in my mind. Uh that being said, that is funny, that is a recurring service, probably quarterly, biannually, where you would definitely pay somebody a couple hundred bucks each each few months to go ahead and clean your turf. So I like there is a model, I think, there that I that I'm with you. It's funny though, you're you the way that you're coming at this is like backwards of everybody else. Everybody else is like, okay, I have the business and that's supposed to be retail, and then I create a service aspect on top of it. And you're like, hey, how do I take a service business that is already this? And then how do I add retail to it?

I just think it's a different type of scale.

Because what what what I'm finding, what I just generally find fascinating, and this is an argument that I've had with a lot of people, but I'm convinced that I'm right. No one in the US has a billion-dollar single location home service business. No, not a single, not a single business out there. In order to build a billion-dollar business, you have to have scale. And scale always ends in multi-location. There's just no way around that. And I've had all these people be like, oh, I'd rather have one $50 million business than five tens. And I'm like, well, no fucking shit. But like, if you want to build a billion-dollar business, like eventually you have to do some of the tens, like you got to do it, or some of the fives or twos or whatever. So I I find retail fascinating because it checks all of the boxes of customer acquisition that we would normally want. It has to be in grade A locations. You're right next to a Starbucks or whatever. You can advertise a little bit easier because people are hopefully walking by. Um, and it gives people a chance to like touch and feel a product, which in plumbing HVAC Electric is not really much of a thing, but in turf, yeah, matters. Yeah. So yeah, I I I just think it's like an interesting way to drive scale. Because if you can figure it out in one, and again, the only way to build a billion-dollar business is have a lot of something, but if you can figure it out in one location, like you can probably figure it out in a hundred.

Yeah. What I found more interesting about that though is like the fact that retail starts there, they start on multi multi-location. Like, that is a muscle that you have to build so early on to even do growth. Yes. So that muscle early on is really strong. You're able to run six locations by 10 million in EBITDA, 5 million in EB because you have to. So going from 10 to 20 is easier than one singular location HVAC company going to like a different city and trying to. So that that's what I find interesting about that is like I I bet we are way better at customer acquisition through Google and PPC and LSA and all those kind of total aggregates, but they are significantly better at.

All the advantages of retail plus all the advantages of foot traffic. It is kind of like I feel like there's something OP there.

So if you could figure that out, that'd be that'd be super interesting. Uh to keep on prompt though, because we just went off on a massive tick engine. So what I would do. I'll give you mine first.

So I like I like dog safety. I like the turf.

So retail turf business with a cleaning aspect that you can put on people on service contracts.

I think I just think you can build like I think you can build a nine-figure business doing this. So those are my two.

I mean, I've seen some big turf businesses.

I think pet, I think pet safety would actually be pretty interesting because pet's still booming.

Would you do like a nationwide rollout though? Because like I don't see a nine-figure business on pet safety in one, two, three markets.

Oh, we've interviewed people. We actually hired a guy. Uh this was seven years ago, but they had a high eight approaching nine-figure pet safety business. Oh, it's ridiculous. But it was they didn't do retail, but they did have, I want to say it was 30 or 40 locations. So like the average store size is smaller, like a couple million bucks a piece, unlike plumbing HVAC Electric, you know, maybe worth you know five or ten or whatever, but those are like two. Uh but it's only like two or three people. And they're sent they centralized install in these like sort of regional hubs. So like you'll drive two hours to go, you know, trench the little electric thing in. Um, and then they had a dog training component to it. And they like manufactured it.

I because I know you love that business too. So I do I do think poop is pretty hilarious. You need a full pet service roll-up. Pet service safety and yeah, I mean, hell yeah.

Like, I mean, I think that would be a great customer acquisition cost, though. Pet safety and shit.

Like talking about growing your customer acquisition cost on just singular items, like the ability to go in and do pet safety and be like, oh, also we offer scooping services. Yeah. Like, I bet you would pick a meaningful business on that. Not my favorite business, which I've outwardly said, but I think it would be a good add-on to that business specifically.

Yeah.

The rabbit hole I have been going down in the direction I would go if I were to seriously consider something in 2027, like brand new, not HVAC plumbing electrical. Um I've been going down this rabbit hole of businesses that are still service, maybe not home service, but like pretty close. Um but that have a huge moat. So some of these that I've been looking into is there's a big roll-up that they bought 57 ADT style security uh businesses this year. Oh yeah. 57. Which tells me like the the fragmentation of that market has to be just incredibly huge. Oh, yeah. It almost feels like guild early on, where like the ability to buy the mom and pop shops at three million each is huge. Yep. And so I kept going down that and I went a step further. I said, what is like security but has a huge moat, and I bet it has a huge moat for a reason, and it's really, really difficult to do. But elevator service and repair. Elevator and escalator, and like kind of like all this the man lift um business. Uh like huge moat, huge liability, but there's a reason that there's really like two or three big companies nationwide, and that there's not a lot of service. And back when I was running facilities, I remember when you needed service on our elevators, it took uh uh like four weeks to get somebody out there. Four weeks. And not only that, there is a yearly forced component of actually maintaining them, so they have to be maintained by somebody at one of those companies every year, or your elevator gets shut down. Like it's a it has built-in recurring revenue on top of the average ticket repairs, are huge. Think about it. I mean, you have the the hydraulic pump go down on the elevator and you you can't go up or down. Like you is your hotel gonna make every person take the stairs? No, you're paying.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, that is interesting. So I think that I'm I'm gonna bring this back to my brilliant.

And then I opened a retail relocation.

I do, I do think, yeah, yeah. Well, I do think that the security component is a good example of what I was saying. We're like, I think that the businesses that I can think of that are like extreme crazy, like pet safety is one, leaf home filter is another one. There, you know, I talk about them a lot because they're headquartered like 10 minutes away from us, uh, Premiere Home Pros, uh, ADT. I think they are all maybe not retail, but like there's the sales spoke and the hub of manufacturing or like maybe the IT infrastructure for alarm. But I think that they're like kind of a good example of what I'm thinking about, where like Leaf Home Filter, they started as like these sales, like just go out and sell stuff, and then they bought the thing that manufactured the good. So then it turned into you just create more sales teams to go sell your good. Uh Premier HomePros is probably gonna do the same thing, but they basically like established this relationship, and now they're just like driving as much sales through that relationship as possible. Um, and it's like this hub spoke sales model, but the hub is the IT infrastructure of security or the manufacturing or the manufacturing relationship or uh the the dog uh safety business that I was talking about earlier, the one with 30 or 40 locations, they also manufactured it. So like it was like they had the good, and then they like created their own distribution chain. One of the hardest transitions for any home service business owner is moving from running jobs to running a business. At some point, the whiteboard or the spreadsheet or that group text that you guys are doing just stops working and things start falling through the cracks. The office is gonna lose visibility into the field, and you become the bottleneck for basically everything. That's one of the reasons that I like Field Pulse a lot. Field Pulse gives growing home service companies one place to manage scheduling, dispatching, estimates, invoicing, job tracking, customer communication, and reporting. It has the tools you actually need to run and grow your business without the complexity of a bloated enterprise software that your team's just not going to use. It's powerful enough to scale with your business, but simple enough that your team will actually adopt it. If you've outgrown the whiteboard and you're ready to build some better systems, check out Field Pulse using the link below. For a limited time, they're offering 20% off your base subscription plus 50% off premium support for your first year.

I I do find that stuff interesting where where you actually instead of moving horizontally through the chain, you move vertically and start buying. Yeah. And we've talked about that on the show before, actually, a while back, about buying um like a manufacturing or white labeling your own water heaters or something like that. And it seems so difficult. But speaking of that, you know who recently did that? Carrier uh just bought an HVAC company, like a $30 million HVAC company. I'm probably off on the number, but a large one out of like Pennsylvania or something recently. It was on home pros the other day. Like commercial or service, but they bought an HVAC contractor, and I was like, whoa, whoa, they're like, well, I mean, train had that for a while.

Like train had um, I had a friend named Tom, and he he was working inside the service for train, and train has like thousands of technicians that go service their own stuff, it's their train equipment, and yeah, it was pretty interesting. I mean, I think they're doing it on like some serious commercial stuff because they needed to control the end product, but yeah, it was pretty interesting.

I think it's interesting if if to if that somebody could do vertical integration inside one of the big three, yeah, that would be wild. But the amount of lift to be able to do that, I just I can't even fathom. Like, even like if you you just you just spoke to um uh the thermostat, uh not um what I'm yeah, Ishmael. You just spoke to Ishmael and like the amount of lift that he had to go just to start selling and installing thermostats, like a small piece, it was was incredible. So I couldn't imagine trying to do like the entire infrastructure of anything, all of HVAC or even units or compressors or anything, just like nuts.

Yeah, all right. Now that I'm thinking about this, I'm I'm like I'm I'm obviously really focused on retail, but Peloton's an example, they manufactured and sell sold it through retail stores. I think Warby Parker is an example, Nest may have been an example. Um Tesla's an example where like they drove their own distribution through their like manufactured product.

Example. Uh yeah, that yeah, that is I bet there's something in the home service ecosystem outside of the ones that you've already said that you could probably use that model and drive. I mean, I think that that's extremely realistic. It's it it to be honest, it's probably like you're I mean, I think there's other companies inside the water filtration space that that do this as well. Um, they manufacture, sell, and move.

Yeah, I mean, so at one point, you know, we bought a business that had a retail desk, basically. It wasn't anything fancy at all. It was a plumbing company that had a retail desk, but we sold salt, just like over you know, for your softener, and like maybe some filters or something. It was it was like 10 grand a month of just like something that we didn't talk about, we didn't touch. People walked up to this counter and they paid 10 grand a month for salt. And that's obviously like not a tremendous amount of money, like 120 grand a year. Um, and you have like the cost of the salt, but it it it it has always like come back to my brain of like, oh, that is a thing. Like you could actually that's a thing. Like people did walk up and swipe on our square for like ten dollars at a time. Uh so like that could be the recurring, and then we could have we could have and should have done a better job of selling the softener, which I just don't think.

I think that's a perfect opportunity to do upsells and softeners, and yeah, like bring in your water from your house, we'll test it right here.

You can watch it all go down ten thousand dollars softener.

Hundreds of dollars on softener every month. Like, why not test to make sure that your software is actually working?

Boom, it's not here's a new software. I feel like I yeah, yeah. I mean, I I think it's interesting. Or like you could have people sign like $50 a year and like they deliver the salt. So you've got the recurring, you've got the install. Anyways, I'm pretty into softener. Uh like water quality, I think would be interesting. Turf, I think would be interesting too. That's a really good one. Or dog or pet safety.

Sweet. I think we've hit all the bases on this episode.

Yeah. I think the only thing we didn't do is would you um you know first 50 grand or like how much money do you think it would take to do?

Behind yours um is that they are realistically able to do it in a short period of time, uh, with actually low, yeah, low overhead and low um finan or uh governmental oversight. Like I always pick the worst government like when I was making wine, I had to deal directly with the ATF and the Alcohol Bureau and all this kind of labeling requirements. It is an absolute nightmare to do deal with the the bureaucratic red tape. So I know that saying uh elevators, but like turf, there's none. Dog products, there's none. Yeah. Like I do there is a high level of respect for understanding how simple those products are to start a business behind. Like you could go start a turf business tomorrow.

Well, yeah, I think what you could do with it is I think you could start a turf business, and like maybe the way you like acquire customers is you put in those stupid golf sims. Put in a golf sim, sell turf. I don't know. Like, hey, you want this in your house? You want this in your backyard? We could turf up your backyard.

It could be like your pet care company. You're tired of yellow.

You want to just hose off your dog shit? Yeah. This is brilliant. We're inventing stuff, right?

Sorry, all the listeners on this episode. Yeah.

I think some of the challenges of uh all the just absolutely incredible ideas that I had uh here today is I do think that scale is like it. I mean, it's multi-location. Yeah, you know, it's like it's a lot of locations in order to drive the scale.

I mean, I think all these businesses end up being really good um like lifestyle businesses. Like a turf business is a great lifestyle business in Dallas, right? You can run a turf company in Dallas and be have a boat and have a nice F-250 and be pumped on life, um, live in a nice house. So it is what it is.

Awesome. All right. Um so just to round this out, you would go buy security company. I think and I would start a dog.

If I was starting a company, I would start an elevator repair company.

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that, yeah, that is like the most complicated one. That's so much more complicated.

There'd be like four four years of licensing and training for myself, and I would do it myself just because like I'm that person.

Totally. Well, like, and the and the problem is I hope the licensing is you want it to be. Like, I want it to be nuts. Like, I need to be stringent. If I'm ever gonna feel comfortable getting on uh, you know, an elevator again, it can't just be like any asshole can walk in.

Exactly. That's why I don't go on carnival rides.

That is funny. We uh dude, I I feel like elevator people are built different. That's like the same people that like change the light bulbs on top of like the you know 500-foot telephone towers or whatever. These they're they're just fucking built different. We we used to do a bunch of apartment building work, and I we there was they would constantly be, you know, the elevator guys working on the elevator, and it's just like an open, like a hundred foot deep, and you're just like, oh my god, and they're just you know, like just climbing up, yeah, making their way down it. Yeah, crazy. Mine's like we're gonna rank them real quick. All of mine are like relatively easy. Maybe like pet maybe the pet safety would be hard because you have to figure out where you're actually gonna install like an electric fence. Um elevator, I feel like so. Mine mine were like a two or three, I think. But also, I think that scale is way more complicated because it requires a lot of locations. Whereas for you, I think that scale is maybe like you could have the giant one location, yeah.

Um, which is good, but startup is probably just gonna say I think startup is a 10, it's a straight 10 out of 10. You have to get the skills, the knowledge, and it has to be and you want it to be a 10 out of 10.

If it's not, I'm never getting on an elevator again.

It's a 10 out of 10, but I think once you get it up and running and you actually understand the business, I think scaling is a lot simpler than other uh service businesses just because competition's not there because it's a 10 out of 10 to start.

There's so much demand. Yeah, there's so much demand. Yeah, that makes sense. Awesome. Well, thanks everybody for tuning in. Comment below what your business that you want to start in 2027 is.

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#363 We Bought 7 Businesses This Year. Here's What I'd Buy Next.

Best Service Businesses to Start or Buy in 2027

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