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In this episode of Owned and Operated, we dive into a powerhouse conversation with top sales leaders—AJ and Noah from Premier Home Pros—as they unpack how to scale a home service business rapidly and sustainably. Whether you're hiring your first rep or leading a high-velocity sales team, this episode delivers practical strategies for fast growth without losing control.
From building a magnetic company culture to overcoming supply chain roadblocks, we explore what it really takes to run a top-tier sales operation at scale. If you're aiming to grow your team, tighten your sales systems, or simply perform better—this one’s for you.
🚨 In This Episode, We Cover:
🔹 Hiring and Training for Rapid Sales Growth
🔹 How Culture Impacts Sales Team Performance
🔹 Marketing Strategies That Actually Drive Revenue
🔹 Navigating Supply Chain and Operational Hurdles
🔹 Why Metrics & KPIs Are Your Best Friend
🔹 Running Sales Training via Zoom (and Making It Stick)
🔹 Building a Scalable Sales Leadership Framework
🔹 Retention: Keeping Top Talent in a Competitive Market
🔹 Their Massive Growth Goals—And How They’ll Get There
🎙️ Host:
🎙️ Episode Guests:
🧠 AJ & Noah, Founders of Premier Home Pros
💼 Special Thanks to Service Scalers!
We’ve been partnering with Service Scalers to maximize our Local Service Ads (LSAs) and optimize our Google My Business profiles, and the results have been incredible. With hundreds of thousands in sales and 900+ calls in a single week, GMBs are now our top-performing organic lead channel.
Want to learn how Service Scalers can do the same for you?
💼 Shoutout to Quick Staffers LLC
Need trained HVAC & plumbing CSRs at a fraction of the cost? Quick Staffers LLC specializes in placing top-tier global talent with the best SOPs and scripts.
🔥 Get $1,000 off your first placement here
205 Transcript
Noah Jackson: [00:00:00] If, if there's any sales managers listening to me right now, I'm gonna give you the best advice of your life. Never stop bringing in new talent to replace the bottom of your organization and help push up the middle. You need to be able to identify very quickly who is and is not a fit. Yeah. And fire quickly.
Don't ever become a wood chipper 'cause that's your culture and you need protect your culture. Right. We notice. The difference on the bottom line immediately between having good people or not having good people.
A.J. Wadian: It's, it's a win or learn mentality. It's not a win or lose mentality for us. It's like if we lose, we learn from it and that that loss is so short span.
John Wilson: Welcome back to Owned and Operated. Uh, today I have AJ and Noah again from Premier Home Pros. Welcome back. Thanks for having us. You. Yeah, this is gonna be fun. It's gonna be a continuation. What I'm looking forward to, hopefully deep diving into is like, hey, we set the platform, we talked about the history.
Uh, I wanna understand the scale and the, and the path to scale like six Greenfield locations in a year is a lot. [00:01:00] How are we thinking about launch? How are we thinking about zip? You know, we're talking about zip codes we like in our next 30 markets, so I feel like there's a lot to unpack there. Uh, how do you guys wanna start?
You, you do the roadmap and we'll. Yeah, all the questions. Well, so first two, like first two markets, it was Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Uh, yeah, Cleveland and Phil. Cleveland and Philly were the first two markets. Oh, Cleveland and Pittsburgh was third. Oh, interesting. Okay. Okay. Uh, and like your current one, do you consider that Cleveland or is headquarters like its own thing?
Noah Jackson: Headquarters is its own thing. And then we have a Cleveland Service, uh, Cleveland Market within, and Cleveland's gonna cover Canton.
John Wilson: It's really a north can office. Yeah. Youngstown. Oh really? But it covers Northeast Ohio. Okay. Okay. Interesting. We just are finishing the best April we've ever had. 55% year over year.
Organic growth. Really just a huge thanks to Service Scalers for being our marketing partner in that a ton of that growth came from both paid and organic SEO efforts. We did a ton of work on our SEO [00:02:00] with service scalers, really strategizing and working on that about a year and a half ago, and the results have been creeping up over the past about year.
Really started to go crazy over the last few months as we're starting to see multiple six figures of revenue attributed to our website. And that's from their work on our SEO. On top of that, the management of paid has just been absolutely huge. Year to date, we're up 30 something percent. April alone was 55.
And, uh, we're just super grateful for service scalers in that partnership. So if you wanna learn more about how they helped us, make sure you check out service scalers.com. Okay. So first couple, first couple markets, like what did that look like? How did we start driving leads? How did we nail down marketing strategy?
You guys are figuring this out and you don't have Vince yet who's driving leads? Me and Noah. Me and Noah,
A.J. Wadian: yeah. Um, like Smack and Home Advisor that amongst other ones. Yeah. We had, I think, you know, there's about five partners, like marketing partners. Correct. You're in the industry long enough. You know, like I said, I has been in the [00:03:00] industry since 2009.
He was in it since 18. You start to see the same marketing partners start to pop up on lead sheets. Like you get an idea that, uh. This company amongst everyone else is going to the same companies for leads. So, um, that's where we started. Like we just started with, hey, these are the companies that we know for sure.
And then we started fielding calls to other companies that we started finding online and just saying, Hey, do you guys do bathrooms? Hey, you do bathrooms. What's your set percentage? Average, you know, what, what's your cost of marketing across all your partners on average? And from there we started kind of vetting that all out and, um.
Just started buying leads and setting budgets for each lead provider and then just monitor 'em really closely because your, your room for error and margin is so small. When you're, when you're new, like yeah, you can't afford to spend $50,000 on a marketing partner and not get nothing back. Yeah. So everything's in sample sizes.
Right. Gimme a hundred leads. Lemme see what we do with a hundred leads from there. If we see a return on a hundred leads, we'll up that, and that's exactly what we did. We made like very small. Gradual changes and increases in budgets. [00:04:00] And then from there we started adding more partners and you know, and there's five now.
Oh, now there's Oh, 20,
John Wilson: yeah.
A.J. Wadian: 20 market partners. Okay.
John Wilson: Yeah. Because five, I was like, wow. Okay.
A.J. Wadian: Yeah. But for year one ship over there.
John Wilson: Yeah.
A.J. Wadian: Yeah. No, year one was like five. Yeah. You know, to get us to 15 million. So,
John Wilson: and then, like I said, it was just, and that's gonna like, just to reiterate, that's like an Angie's list that's, uh, maybe a modernized.
A modernized, yeah.
A.J. Wadian: Okay. Home advisor.
John Wilson: Yeah.
A.J. Wadian: Uh, you know, a social partner for Facebook average, like targeting, retargeting, banner ads, things of those things of nature. So, um, yeah, it was like five partners. We monitored closely. We landed at under 15% in year one for marketing. Just 15. Yeah, you've said that 15% that, like, that's industry.
That is, that is like your golden handcuff right there. Like that's where you wanna be, right? 15. Your sub 15 doing unbelievable. But when you climb 15, like, and it all depends on what your, what your margins are and what your cogs are in every industry, right? What, what [00:05:00] is gross margin? I didn't ask that last.
It varies. 50,
Noah Jackson: I would say it's even more than that was gross margin. Gross margin. Yeah. We try to aim for about 55, 60%.
A.J. Wadian: Okay. But you know, that depends on your market. It depends on your product that you're, you know, like Leaf was, their cost of marketing was up into the high twenties to 30%. Really because their cogs are so small so they can afford Right.
So you can Right. You can afford to do that, but bathrooms are a little tighter. Yeah. Same with roofing and, and windows and kitchens and all those things. Mm-hmm. Because your cost per lead increases
John Wilson: mm-hmm.
A.J. Wadian: Based on your product category. So you just gotta be mindful of those things. And, you know, that's what we did.
We, we, me and him monitored really tight and, you know, we scaled a business to 15 million and mm-hmm. Kept the marketing cost at 15%, under 15, and. Like, hey, like sound to add more partners, but like, we don't really know Yeah. How to add more partners. Like we want to get into like, you know, uh, you know, paid ads and we want to get into, you know, different avenues that we weren't really, you know, inclined to do.
So that's where [00:06:00] Vince, that's where Vince came in.
John Wilson: Yeah. And uh, first location was Cleveland, second was Philly. How far after? Uh, oh. Within like two months
A.J. Wadian: really. We had Philadelphia Open. And why Philadelphia? I was rooted in Philly, that's where I worked in my previous job. Okay. So I had a huge network of people in Philly.
John Wilson: Okay.
A.J. Wadian: And it's a massive market man. Yeah. Yes. It's so I knew the market well. So
John Wilson: that's actually, I think where Horizon is based out of. So that, um, I think that's their headquarters, 850 million before we got it was like in the other building, but they have a, it's 850,000,034 locations along the East coast, and they have a one day bath.
That they've deployed into a few of the locations, but I don't, I don't know how many. Yeah, but I think they're based outta Philly.
A.J. Wadian: Yeah, we're actually like right outside of Philly, in New Jersey, south of Jersey. Um, we cover all greater Philly and, and, and all of the south Jersey and top of Delaware. But, you know, looking at that in [00:07:00] 20 and 24, you know, I would say, let's say 23 and 23, Philly was a $4.7 million office.
Mm-hmm. In 24, it was a 21 million office. Wow. So that's, that's what marketing hypergrowth that office location just by adding more partners, more lead flow, better conversion. Yeah, those things. So
John Wilson: yeah,
A.J. Wadian: we've seen considerable increases in markets since, since 2023 to 24. But yeah, so like
John Wilson: same
A.J. Wadian: store
John Wilson: sales.
A.J. Wadian: Yeah. I mean, just diversifying your portfolio of partners. Yeah. Right. And scaling with more budget and then getting better at what you're doing. Correct.
John Wilson: So the, so we start off with five, we add Philly pretty quick. Um, sounds like we drew talent from our network. Most of this business came from that app.
Yeah. Yeah. Um, and that got us to 15 And what, what's 15 is that $2 million, first year's budget was $2 million revenue. Does that sound right for marketing? Yeah, probably. Probably close. Okay. 15% it and all of it leads [00:08:00] All of it. Biden leads. Yeah. Yeah. At that point, yes.
Noah Jackson: Yes. Okay. You're not, you're, you're gonna go out of business if you do it otherwise, the way we try to do it,
John Wilson: yeah.
Were you guys doing door knocking or events or you do some events that Here in Cleveland we did some events.
Noah Jackson: Yeah.
John Wilson: Great.
Noah Jackson: Big garden show. Great Q one's amazing.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Noah Jackson: And the rest of the year is just a battle. Yeah. A losing battle. In events. Yeah. It's, um, you, you, you go from being at a great big home and garden show and Cleveland home show and all this good stuff, high intent homeowners that are buying a $15 ticket for the husband and wife and they've been in their house for 30 years and it's time to get that bathroom done.
They have a cash set aside they're going to buy. It's a matter of who, who. To then go into rib fests in July.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Noah Jackson: People that are there to see a concert or fest fairs, county fairs. And you're trying to, to draw people to take an in-home estimate. Yeah. So And are you guys doing that? We are. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Just harder team continuity for [00:09:00] when uh, it's time to make hay in, in Q1 obviously is a big thing. And then, uh, you know, just try to di diversify your, um, your lead flow as well.
John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah, we did. Um, we have an events and canvasing team. This was our, we started it last April. This was our first like full Q1 with it.
And we're, we've been messing with it to hopefully, you know, drive into, uh, new markets. But How's your canvassing going? Canvassing is good. Like it's a eight and a half times roas. Yeah. Which like that for me. I'm like, that feels good. That feels really
A.J. Wadian: good. And you guys do like proximity marketing where you're like, from a job that you did, do you just canvas a, you know, three mile radius?
Yeah, they're doing proximity and they're doing, um,
Noah Jackson: like target. And that being on interiors is isn't a concern for you guys? Like you're still able
John Wilson: to make it happen? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Biggest, biggest months were events, right? Like, uh, and so, uh, like the great big show is a really. That was a, that was a great big help.
Sure.
Noah Jackson: Uh, for, it's a great start. It's a great, you [00:10:00] shut it down from that point. It's like the greatest
John Wilson: program of all time. Right. It was awesome. I mean, it was great, but like we, we broke even on like return in December. Sure. And then now it's 10% of revenue comes from that team.
A.J. Wadian: What's your, what's a good month in canvassing?
Free in, in terms of revenue? 200. Now. That's good. Yeah. And, and what's your team account? Many. How many Canvasers. Eight. A seven?
John Wilson: Well,
A.J. Wadian: hourly, we've just gotten up to eight. Oh, hourly. Hourly or variable base or what? Hourly with a, with a spiff on top. And then they're all required to do street sheets and stuff like that.
John Wilson: Yeah. Well for us it's just like, there's no plumber out, there's door knocking. Sure. Oh no. Yeah. So it's sort of like, uh, carving on the market there. Yeah. Yeah. It's different and it works. Uh, even events were kind of big and helpful. Okay. So. Two locations. Did you have dialed in, like the 46 day pay? What did payback look like in Philly second location?
Noah Jackson: It couldn't have been as fast. Listen, it was harder at that time to get a, to get another location going because, uh, you just don't [00:11:00] have the army that you have now. And you're asking people, like when he said something earlier, he said, uh. You're asking people to kind of take a bet on you.
John Wilson: Mm-hmm.
Noah Jackson: And in the beginning days of this, asking people to take a bet on us was a ridiculous proposition.
It was a ridiculous ask. Like we didn't have anything. They're betting on us personally that we'll make it happen. And so, you know, open that office. It's a lot of trial and error and I, and I don't know what our payback period was at that time. Um. But I'll say it wasn't probably 46 days because you gotta get a sale, so you gotta get leads going.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John Wilson: I mean, you're f you're figuring it out.
A.J. Wadian: Budgets were a lot less though. They were a lot less. Yeah. So as did like what you needed, what we spent per market on each budget. Yeah. You know, like I said, Philly did 4.7 and 23. They did 21 million last year. Yeah. So we spent a lot of money there.
Yeah, I would agree with that. It was a lot. It was a lot tougher.
John Wilson: Impossible. Yeah. It was impossible. What, at what [00:12:00] point, like maybe number of locations, did it start to feel like easier? We got this, I, I, I would say Atlanta. Let's say Atlanta was a turning point.
Noah Jackson: I wouldn't say which number was Atlanta. Six, five or six.
I literally don't feel like it got easier until our 10th location. Really? I didn't notice it. I noticed every other location before that. Yeah. I stressed out infrastructure, stressed out people. Sure. Sure. Added too much to people's plates and mm-hmm. Conversions from the very beginning aren't what they, and this, this most recent one in Dayton, the 10th, I think we opened at the beginning of March.
Is that right? February? February 13th. Yep. Um, it's a, we marry Cincinnati, Columbus market together and that's been. Rather smooth. And then we just opened North Jersey last week and unbelievable first week. Smooth as smooth can get. And it's literally because we did a business deep, deep dive at the end of 2024 and kind of did a [00:13:00] org chart re-imagination where we decided to go really heavy with senior sales leaders, running regions, people that are like just proven.
Motivated. Yeah. Experience solvers, problem solvers, high level achievers, we pay 'em a little bit more and divide them a few less offices each, and hire more of them and let them manage the managers in those offices. Mm-hmm. And our conversion rates and our, our problem solving has just gone up. It was a monetary bet, but it was one that made sense.
So for me, it wasn't until this year that I felt like it's starting to. Autopilot.
John Wilson: He's out. Yeah. Aj, why do you think, why did you think five? Like what was to what turn for you?
A.J. Wadian: Oh, we were in a position to keep, we, we opened all, you know, we went from, uh, January in 24. We opened, um, Detroit. And then February.
And then February we opened Atlanta. And then March we opened, uh, beginning of end of March, early April, we opened Chicago. And then it kind of just continued to go. So it's like. Business. Yeah. It felt the pressure of like [00:14:00] needing support in those markets, but we continued to just keep opening. So I would say we figured out the recipe at that point.
We knew what to do. Yeah. How to do it. Um, but where the lag is, is in two areas. We never had lag in sales. We'll go to any, we go to Alaska and sell people bathrooms, right? Mm-hmm. It's getting the marketing dialed into where we're not returning these high reject ratings 'cause we're buying leads that. Are are not high intent or affluent people that can afford the product.
Right? Yeah. Filtering that out and getting the data back to be able to make the decisions and kind of refine the process and dial it in with the right partners to get the, the market going the right direction, and then getting the time for installation to get their feet under 'em and installing the business cleanly.
Because you gotta assume when installers are new, they're going to make some mistakes and there's gonna be some service and callback. So it's like, and then. Do they have the temperature to stay when they're knowing they have to go back and fix their own problems? People just wanna worry about the next dollar.
They don't wanna go back and fix the ones they already got paid on. Mm-hmm. So that, that's part of it. [00:15:00] But I would say that we definitely figured out the recipe in 24 is my opinion. Uh, as far as a profitability standpoint. In a smooth transition, we reorganize the org, uh, structure dramatically. We got rid of, yeah.
Walk me through it. No more. VP of sales gone.
John Wilson: Because
A.J. Wadian: you and you're, you are now VP of sales. I'm, I mean, I'm the CEO, but I just run our sales team. Right, right. Just the, but as in like you took that seat. I've always been the guy that they went to. Okay. But I had a guy that I thought could run the team and there was just too many holes in the below him to, to be able to get things done at the pace that we need to get things done.
So I said, why are we spending this money on this crazy expensive person that we didn't feel like was bringing back the value? Yeah. Yeah. Why don't we just take that money and let's get a bunch of people that we know can do the job very well. Mm-hmm. Put 'em in regional roles and just give 'em one to two markets and then we build from there.
John Wilson: Mm-hmm.
A.J. Wadian: And we, I mean our net volume Appreci Lee went up $800. Yeah. [00:16:00] In one month of putting that team in. Yeah. It's increased $800. That's interesting
Noah Jackson: when I said earlier that like, people, you better have good people.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Noah Jackson: We notice the difference on the bottom line immediately between having good people or not having good people.
And spending the money in the on, on those people is, uh, is worth it, my opinion if you have it. Yeah.
John Wilson: We just transitioned our director, like our head of sales, like we went from one to another and um, this was his first 30 days, like April and like absolute blow off like crazy. Like we 20% over budget and 55% year over year like crazy.
So. Yeah. Like, uh, yeah, I don't, I totally get it. 'cause we're looking at the results now as we're like, prepping for this and we're like, holy shit.
Noah Jackson: Yeah. I, I'm, I'm sure you've seen this too. It's like, you know, the thing that a lot of business owners don't wanna talk about, but it's the absolute truth. And I've heard a few, like Merck Cuban and some people that have been very successful talking about it, is [00:17:00] you need to be able to identify.
Um, very quickly who is and is not a fit. Yeah. Uh, you know, hire over a little bit longer term. Yeah. And fire quickly. Don't ever become a wood chipper 'cause that's your culture and you protect your culture. Right. Yeah. You don't ever wanna be known as a wood chipper, but yeah. Like, don't negotiate on the type of people and, and, and the pace that they will push within your organization.
Like you need to find the right people. Don't negotiate on what you will or won't accept and. Let those people kind of drive the boat like you need to empower 'em. Yeah. So it's, it's really all about people for us.
A.J. Wadian: Yeah. It's, it's a win or learn mentality. It's not a win or lose mentality for us. It's like if we lose, we learn from it.
And that, that loss is so short span because we're gonna turn into a win in the calm really quickly. By taking those mistakes we made, rectifying it, putting a better process in place and fixing it, that's what we did. We got rid of, uh, top end leadership that was really, really expensive and. Made some changes that that fit the business model.
It [00:18:00] fit the business model. We were like, man, the values and the people of the doers. Mm-hmm. Right. It's the people that's in the field doing it. It's not the finger pointers saying, get this done, get this done, get this done. Right. That, that's great to have that visionary mindset, but like really what we realized is we were the visionaries and we were just telling an extra person to do, to do what we could just tell 'em to do on our own.
Right. Telephone. Yeah. Yeah. And the doers are the value. Like let's get these people out here that are doing the business and like. Making the changes and executing the dream like that, that's what we were looking for. So we've seen, and then Noah came up with a great idea this, uh, beginning of this year, um, with sales training, because our struggle was, we, our, our sales system is elite.
I'd say it's the best sales system in the country, and I would, I would put my money against it, right? Mm-hmm. But how many people can
John Wilson: get through it? Actually, a fun anecdote. I believe we have someone that used to sell at Premier Home Pros. He has been great. Good. Who's that? But yeah, he worked with you guys for like short period of time.
I think he went [00:19:00] through the training, but like, he has been great. His closing rate is the highest ghost team. We
A.J. Wadian: spend a crazy amount of time on sales development. Yeah. It's, it's just what we believe in. Yeah. Like I'm to the core. That's, that's, that's my thing, right? Yeah. Um, but what we've realized is that.
To get these people into training and spend eight consistent days in training.
John Wilson: Yeah.
A.J. Wadian: Develop them. Mm-hmm. Get them in the field, have the leaders cultivate them, build the mentality proper, and then get them on the streets theirselves to do their own job. Yeah. Is a long term. Right? Yeah. And we were realizing that at most, we were getting 10 people a month, new employees, sales reps into the field a month, company-wide.
Mm-hmm. I was like, let's think about maybe doing this zoom. Dude Zoom. Like the amount of Just the vibe bullshit. Yeah, just the amount of detail that goes into our training. It was just, there's no way. So I'm like, I'm gonna try it, I'm gonna try, we're gonna try this. I'm going to run our first sales training class, zoom, [00:20:00] we put 15 people in it.
Mm-hmm. Out of 15, 10 of 'em are here. We did the next one. We had another 17 in it. Out of those 17, 13 are here in a month's time. In the month of February, we put 22 new representatives into our business that are in the field that has immediately spiked this new sales talent. Yeah. And the change of mentality of someone being fresh, motivated, ready to run.
Our net volume ion lead has went through the roof. Our talent in each office has went through the roof. All those new people, they raise the floor. Yeah. So now all of a sudden, these people that are been in these office locations that are stagnant, now all of a sudden they're really at the bottom. 'cause these new people have climbed to the top.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it's just changed the culture in the business. And it was just off of a crazy idea of me and him sitting there and he's like, why don't we just try it? Zoom? Yeah. I'm like, it's easy for you to say you ain't gotta do it. And he's like, just try. Let's try it. Let's see. Yeah. Let's see if we can do it.
And yeah, it was awesome. It worked. Yeah. And it's working. We're doing two Zoom trainings a month. [00:21:00] Right now, two classes a month.
Noah Jackson: Yeah. You, you battle stagnation of mindset, um, with, with employees.
John Wilson: And, um, and sorry, just to re-hit this two classes a month, like that's the onboarding or that's like, I'm going to do a refresher.
No, no, no New New hires. New hires. Okay. Every
A.J. Wadian: two a month
John Wilson: cohorts.
A.J. Wadian: A month, two massive company-wide classes, training, sales, training classes for new sales reps. Okay. So if you wanted to come into the business? Yeah, yeah. I'd say, Hey, I got a class on May 8th for you. You're gonna be in that class for eight days, you amongst maybe another 12 people across the country.
Yep. And then they go back to the respective locations and then they run with their managers for the, you know, understood. It's, yeah.
John Wilson: Understood.
Noah Jackson: It's helped us, uh, battle the stagnation of talent in the, in the company. It's, um. You can bring talent into your organization, but six months from now, are they gonna be pushing hard?
And it's really about what you're doing to push them. Right? How does this help push? I don't know that I understand that you bring new, new, new talent in [00:22:00] that's hungry, makes your existing talent base realize somebody's coming for 'em. Mm-hmm. If that makes sense for their opportunities, essentially, like mm-hmm.
I've gotta perform because there's somebody coming right behind me that's a killer that's gonna push me to be my absolute best. So it's a lot of the same thing with, with football, when, when you draft a. A player on the, you know, it's like, you know, next year's class is better. You know, we, we just drafted a guy in this first second round and, and he's my position.
I I, I've gotta pick it up. Like, yeah. Or I'm gonna be, it's the same thing, same exact thing.
John Wilson: Understood. So, but I mean, with how new you guys are, it's hard to imagine stagnation. And lemme
A.J. Wadian: tell
John Wilson: you what
A.J. Wadian: happens. We've realized that the peak of most people's career in sales is in their first 30 to 40 days.
Peak. Why They learn the premier process. They don't know any other way at that point. They know the premier process. They're fresh. They go out and execute the X's and O's that we've taught them, our 12 step selling system. They go out and execute it and they see the success, right? But then when they get past the 30 day mark, they realize they go to appointment.
The [00:23:00] customer's tempo's fast, they don't have a lot of time to sit. They cut out a couple steps and they still get a sale, right? And they go, oh, that worked. Like I didn't have to do. I didn't have to go through as much of a needs assessment in the inspection. So then they do it again, and then the next customer, they get, they get rushed again and they cut some of their product demo down.
Before you know it, they've, they've morphed this sales system of their own mm-hmm. With the foundation that we had. But it's, it's their own sales system. They're missing the tie downs. They're missing the gradual steps. They're missing the closing time. Yeah. So now they're in this rut in day 45, and they're like, I'm doing everything I'm supposed to be doing.
We get a field trainer in the, in the field with them, and they're like. You're not hitting any of the tie downs. You're not spending the amount of time on your warmup, your agenda's not proper. So it's like redirecting them back on the right road, right? So this new talent coming in constantly. These people are fresh, these people are breathing the sales system and they are out knocking outta the park three weeks in a row.
We celebrate rep of the week every week we, we have a con conference call on Monday as we celebrate all the wins for offices, individuals. Three weeks in a row, the top three reps in a [00:24:00] company were brand new reps in their first 30 days.
John Wilson: Hmm.
A.J. Wadian: I have 25 new sales reps this month that are gonna do over quarter million dollars in revenue and their first month.
Yeah. It's unbelievable.
John Wilson: Yeah. That is interesting. So do you think the. It sounds like you're ramping new talent. What do you do about re-engaging the old talent? It, it, that
Noah Jackson: has a habit of helping do that. So
John Wilson: just bringing in the new talent?
Noah Jackson: Yeah, it's re-engaging. It's, it's the, you know, 'cause we ran some of the most successful sales teams for Relief Filter and, and he brought me in Window Nation.
I ran leads for him at WIN Oh Nation. And, um, you, you essentially at the end of the day, like. You have your 20% or maybe 10% of top performers that are always gonna be your top performers, and then you'll have your 10 to 20% of low performers that are never going to make it. And then you have your 80% or 70% in the middle that you can push up, or eventually they can live in the middle and be [00:25:00] happy to being a C, C plus B minus player and make a solid amount of money and be a contributor.
Never really go up or they can flame out in the end and go down. Your job as a sales leader or a sales manager, if, if there's any sales managers listening to me right now, I'm gonna give you the best advice of your life. Never stop bringing in new talent. To help take out the bottom mm-hmm. Of your, to replace the bottom of your organization and help push up the middle.
The very worst thing that can happen is they push up the middle to be better. The best thing that they can happen is they push the middle down. 'cause they jump 'em. Yeah. And they, when they push the middle down the bottom leaves and at the end of the day, you're left with a couple better players than you had before.
Never stop bringing in new hungry talent. It's the worst thing you can ever do.
A.J. Wadian: Coach up or coach out. Mm-hmm. That's the mentality, right? It's, we either take people, we cannot uphold 'em to the next level. They average performers become a lead. Average floors don't be, they don't, they don't stay long because the new floor is raised.
Right. It just continues to raise. It's speaking to what you were saying with the existing talent. We do a lot more development training now.
John Wilson: Yeah.
A.J. Wadian: So, yeah. What's that team look like? Sounds like there's one, so we have, there's gotta be a lot. We [00:26:00] have a national sales trainer that does Zoom trainings twice a month.
Then each regional now is doing, in their region, they're doing once a week, they're doing a progressive development training. Mm-hmm. They're taking the KPIs and they're saying, here's the bottom performers in each of my regions Yeah. Markets. And they're required to be on training for, you know, 30 minutes to an hour and basically go through our lead audit sheets and we'll say, what is the, what is the common denominator here of, what's the reason, you know, all these people are failing and we'll find that it's.
Maybe it's sit, no sale, other estimates, or it's, uh, no snap decision or no urgency. Customer wasn't ready to buy. And we dial that down with all these struggling reps and we realize that here's the main objection that we're struggling with, right?
John Wilson: Mm-hmm.
A.J. Wadian: Then we don't just say, how do we conquer the objection?
What stems the objection? Where's the objection coming from? Well, either comes from lack of rapport. We didn't move one to need. They just wanted the bathroom. They didn't need it. We didn't make 'em need it in the inspection. If we didn't price condition the homeowner enough to understand what the cost of the [00:27:00] services in the industry, they had no idea when we got to the close that they should have, what the cost of the product or service was.
And they were shocked. And at that time, we spent all that time trying to build it and we didn't do enough of it. So the close got rushed, the tempo of the close got rushed, and the customer didn't spend the appropriate amount of time to have those tough conversations to walk 'em into a sale. So we have to deal with all those things in this progressive development training that we do weekly, and we continue to give different, different viewpoints.
We'll also bring in some of our top performers and say, tell the team what you're doing that's working. 'cause what's better than a person that says, Hey, Noah was in the field every day. He wrote $420,000 last month.
John Wilson: Mm-hmm.
A.J. Wadian: Let's listen to what this guy's saying, right? Mm-hmm. This guy does he, he's our trainer.
He is great. He's, that's why he's our trainer, but he's not running, he's not doing four 20,000 a month. What's this guy doing? Mm-hmm. So we've got a lot more out of that too. Yeah. Like, don't give me the vanilla response. Well, I'm just talking to customers and No, what are you doing? What are you doing?
You're doing something right. Are you guys using like any of the AI software? We're not using [00:28:00] the rilla and all that stuff. We feel like for our sales team that the, the cost, the return is not there. I mean, it's like
Noah Jackson: we're already so high performing as it is what we've had to almost engineer our, uh, closing percentage down over time because you just have too many jobs.
So it's like. What, what, and that's by like price increases or, uh, yeah. I mean, and, and then also, you know, the thing that we can do to best support our sales team, we've decided instead of, you know, you buying a rilla and hoping our closing percentage goes up is instead on the business that we are writing, how can we help our sales team understand how to do it more profitably so they can make more money?
Yeah. Support them on their existing books of business that they're writing. Yeah.
John Wilson: So the, there's a, a director of training, was that the title? He's the National sales trainer. Okay. Sorry. National Sales Trainer. And then I, all the regionals, you guys have talked about that a lot. They, they have, uh, two branches each.
Mm-hmm. And then they, some have three, but two to three branches each. Mm-hmm. And they're really like driving the bus with the location sales leaders. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And then are [00:29:00] there, uh, who's doing like ridealongs
A.J. Wadian: or,
John Wilson: you know, so
A.J. Wadian: ops managers do two to three ridealongs a week. Yeah. Then every region regional that's in the market, whatever market they're in, they'll, they'll get on ride-alongs every week too.
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John Wilson: Can you describe the ideal location manager, like the sales, uh, operations leader, like who? [00:30:00] There's,
A.J. Wadian: there's a few facets that they have to have. Yeah. Okay. One, they have to be a steward of the system.
Yeah. Like they have to be able to perform, they have to believe in it. They have to be able to perform the sales system at an elite level. Okay. They need to be. So are these former salespeople typically? Most of 'em are all a salesperson at one point in time for Premier. Mm-hmm. Some of them are. Some of 'em, other people have been leaders at other organizations that I've worked at or that we've worked at together and we've brought 'em over.
Okay. And then we taught 'em the premier way. So, um, they need to be able to hire, trained, motivate, and recruit, and then they be able to develop leader, develop sales talent. We hire, train, motivate, and recruit. Yep. And develop. So those are the five facets we look for, right? Most of those people are alpha mentality people.
They're eight, they're a plus. Personality people, they just are, right? We have some people in, in, in our organization that are not as dominant personalities as others, but we find that the people that can command the room [00:31:00] and a hundred percent designated they are the leader, are the ones that to get the best outta their team, right?
Those facets are non-negotiables. They gotta be able to do those things. Yeah, we, we, we give them a strict process of what we want them to do. What does a morning routine look like? Well get in the office by 8:00 AM What do you do? Then? Look at your book of business. What did you sell yesterday? Okay, go over all your sales.
Take those sales, go through the contracts, scrub those contracts. Is there everything filled out properly? Is anything missing? Yes, yes, yes. No, no, no. Track down the down payments at every one of those jobs. Do they get ran through financing for the down payment? Or they go check our credit card. Track down those down payments.
From that point visit all your sit, no sales, the leads that you did not sell. Okay. Look at the notes. Make sure the notes match the report from your call center leader. They sent out a report at the end of the night and then go through those reports and start writing down on the lead audit sheet, the common denominator of what the misses are.
Okay? And they have that information 'cause the sales rep did like a debrief. It's, it's in [00:32:00] our CRM. Okay? It just tells you every note. So when they resolve it. So, so at that point, we start following trends. We're creating a, a, a playbook of what train's gonna be later in the week. And then from there, at that point, they're gonna go and they're gonna spend some time with, they're gonna first put all their leads that they have today on their board, and they're gonna say, where is my availability for same days?
And did I put the right leads in the right person's hands? There's an art to that. It's not just issue lead to issue name. Mm-hmm. It's, we have leads categorize as what's a gold lead? What's a silver lead? Mm-hmm. What's a bronze lead? What are those categorized by home value, debt to income. Poverty percentage.
Mm-hmm. Credit, fecal score, all those things. So gold leads go to gold reps. Mm-hmm. Silver leads go to silver reps. And then bronze leads are fill-ins. Right. So then we look at where's the same day capabilities. If Noah's call center gets the same day in Philadelphia, who can take it? And does it hurt the office by having to give this person the same day?
'cause he's in that area. Or do I need to [00:33:00] revert the leads to make sure that the best person's taken the same day? Right? So that's the first part of mapping it out. And we go and we spend some time with our project manager. We go over all yesterday's sales. Hey, I went through the deals. These are clean. No problem to go ahead and push through ordering.
And then I say, what does your schedule look like that you have installed this week? Is there any jobs that you're not able to get ahold of that you need me to try to call to get on this schedule this week? Let's go over the whole business. What jobs are in a stagnant position? Customer holder management hold.
Mm-hmm. Customer hold means the customer is not allowing us to install for a particular reason. Management holders, we're holding it for our own reasons. Right. Clear those up daily. From that point on, the next hour for a sales manager is to spend time on recruiting. He was telling you never be stagnant.
Mm-hmm. They're constantly taking those interviews that they have and they're spending time in that time slot of fielding interviews for recruiting. Then the back half of their day is an hour of development training, bringing people into the office to train and then be in a field a couple times a day.
John Wilson: Mm-hmm.
A.J. Wadian: By two o'clock their day's open. [00:34:00] Now they're taking phone calls, fielding any drop call that they need to take reps in a house, can't close it. Phone line goes to the sales manager, sales manager's talking on the customer, trying to walk 'em into a deal. Mm-hmm. So that's the process, you know, and that process we don't wanna deviate from.
That's what creates a process to open time in their day to be a manager. And then when it comes to, to the sales reps
Noah Jackson: themselves, a lot of people that we want those alpha leaders to bring in, we really, we really kind of look for like three main things. You gotta be competitive. I like people that wanna, they hate to lose more than they like to win.
Um, 'cause they'll just refuse to lose. Right. Um, you have to be charismatic. You gotta be able to talk to people, make a friend, make people like you be, be magnetic. Yeah. Then you gotta be hungry. You gotta be professionally hungry. You gotta be driven. Not big on motivation. Motivation is fleeting, driven is is kind of the engine that takes you every single day.
You don't have to
John Wilson: Yeah.
Noah Jackson: You know, get started to go somewhere and then it dies. So we really look for, uh, those three things and, um, from [00:35:00] there we can work with those types of people and very often we will find that our best performers are people from kind of outside the industry who are just desperate for an opportunity to make a lot of money.
Yeah. And not, um. Somebody that, I hate to use the term old dog 'cause we've, we've taken many veterans and been successful with them and we're thankful for them. But maybe not somebody that hasn't worked out at several other places that they, they, they've sold bathrooms for 20 years. I can't win with you.
You have, you have your way of doing it. Um, I, I'm not necessarily asking you to do it my way, but I'm asking you to do it the premier way.
John Wilson: Mm-hmm.
Noah Jackson: Because that's how we can kind of recruit, hire, trained, developed people can duplicate, have a culture. Yeah. Yeah,
A.J. Wadian: yeah. That makes sense. And then me and him have been.
You know, we've officially put this into motion. This is something new for Premier, is we've looked at this landscape of like all these new greenfield markets. We still have DC we're opening this year. We still have Minnesota. We're opening this year and we're still opening in Boston. That's three more markets, right?
And then next year probably ends up being like six to eight more markets, depending on how [00:36:00] fast we keep implementing the process. So we're looking at this and we're like. There is going to be a point in time with this biggest premieres at this point that we can't continue to pick from the vine and go into a network that I've had and just keep taking a sales leader from somewhere and hoping that they become a premier person.
Like we need to develop that person. Right? Because at some point companies gain strength when they can promote from within. That's a reason to be here. It's a, it's a way to create buy-in. Yeah, it's good culture. We're just getting to that point now and it's been a really big win for us, so massive win.
What we're gonna do is we are gonna create assistant sales managers in every market. Mm-hmm. And that's getting rolled out now as we speak. Yep. Where a great sales performer, maybe not the best rep in that office, not the top generating sales rep mm-hmm. But maybe the one that is above average or really good, but does it to a T He does our sales system to a t and that person's gonna be responsible for field rides every day with a, with a new rep or a struggling rep, they get paid extra to do that.[00:37:00]
They get an office bonus. There's, there's a lot of different things that we're doing. Compromise to make it worth the time, and then that person all of a sudden gets some of the backend work from the GM and we start cultivating this person getting groomed and ready. So when the next market opens, I go, Hey, you know, Pittsburgh's assistant manager, I got an, I got an opportunity, and Buffalo.
John Wilson: Mm-hmm.
A.J. Wadian: You'll want to go, it's an opportunity to make three, $400,000. Are you relocatable? Yes. Plug and play now, right? You create this farm system and now there's a vacancy in the assistant sales manager position in Pittsburgh, and now another person has a path to, to grow in the company. So that's what the model is, is going towards for us.
Um, that's the next big jump.
John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. Like a merging leader. Do you think, um, like how does training look like aside from being attached to that person's hip? Are they bouncing between locations? Is there. For the assistant sales manager.
A.J. Wadian: Right. They'll be stuck in, if Cleveland's manager will only be a Cleveland assistant man manager.
Okay. He'll be working hand in hand with his [00:38:00] gm. He'll know his reps. He is literally, if I'm the GM and he's my assistant, he is my ears to the field. Mm-hmm. Because when a rep is out in the car with that person every day, yeah. They're way more liable to tell him what's what's going on inside the, inside their.
Ears, then what they're gonna tell the gm. That's the actual boss. Yeah. That person then can relay information to the gm. We can get a temperature on everybody, and we can just continue to build on all the deficiencies that every person has and start grooming and making 'em stronger. Those new reps, they're not so hungry to make money.
Now we have someone out there helping 'em make money. Yeah. Developing them, letting them, letting 'em develop at a proper pace. So we see a huge upside to that. Uh, that's, that's really an eerie model. Redid that from the existence. Mm-hmm. And they're strong at that. They, they that they build seasoned leaders by doing that.
And when you come in it, most people that are ambitious, they go, what's my path to grow? Mm-hmm. I don't know. You're just a [00:39:00] sales rep. Mm-hmm. I don't wanna dispute sales rep. Well, what else can I be? I don't know. You have to wait for another market. No, you can be an assistant sales manager. You can grow to a gm.
Mm-hmm. Your GM might go to be a regional. There's, there's Pathway for growth. Right. I think that's huge for culture.
John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. I agree with you. Are they still running active leads while being an assistant manager? It sounds like they're every day. Yeah. So, so it's like an override
A.J. Wadian: addition. So our reps get paid, uh, no, implemented a new bonus program for them to make it more, make it more advantageous.
They're talk about it.
John Wilson: Yeah, I wanna hear
Noah Jackson: about
A.J. Wadian: it.
Noah Jackson: Yeah. So, um, basically it's a ladder system where the more revenue, revenue, net revenue that they do in a month, they'll get, um. Increasingly more compensation, uh, and you, it keeps them fighting for all the deals. When I say people they hate to lose, it helps them not ever wanna lose and ride a deal wherever they can ride it within parameters, if that makes sense.
And helps, helps reps stay around and, and keep [00:40:00] chasing, kind of chasing the, uh, the carrot every single month. So, um, we've got reps making my goodness, with, with, with bonuses and with commissions. We've, we've got reps making. Five, six, $7,000 a week. Mm-hmm. Every single week. Um, and you know, it's a sliding scale based on where you sell, you can make as little as $250 for a job you shouldn't have sold 'cause it didn't come into parameters.
And then 5% all the way up to 12% with kickers on top of that. And then we pay extra for Sunday sales. And so we, we've kind of created an environment where there's all these different kickers left and right where reps can really just stack and stack and stack and they're, they're starting to make some, some really insane money.
And then when we throw training on top of that, when I was talking earlier about. Showing them how to take the deals that they're currently writing and then make more money on top of that.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Noah Jackson: They're just, they're starting to see, uh, they're starting to see some, some serious gains and then, um, to the point where our last three manager placements, I believe are.
Um, yeah, that, that's, that's insane. So we doubled the bonus this month, so talk about that. Doubled the bonus this month. We just basically said at beginning of April, [00:41:00] Hey, we're gonna, we're gonna do a push for,
John Wilson: for your sales managers,
Noah Jackson: for sales reps. Reps. So whatever you would make this month a normal sales bonus, we're gonna double it.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Noah Jackson: And so we've got, oh my gosh. One, two, it's a good idea. 1, 2, 3, 4. And, and we're gonna set a monthly record this month. We're gonna do over 12 and a half million in sales. Uh, 1, 2, 3. How does the cost
A.J. Wadian: structure
Noah Jackson: absorb
A.J. Wadian: that? It's all variable. It's all variable. Yeah. There's, we have no fix over rate on a sales rep.
Zero.
Noah Jackson: So would, will your, we got 20, 24 reps doing over a hundred thousand in net volume this month so far. Um, across the company. And what's good, like what's good for sale? That's pretty, so a hundred, a hundred's. Good. That's okay. That's fine.
John Wilson: Two, five deals. Six deals. What's that?
Noah Jackson: That's six deals, net deals.
Um, yeah, so you know, really for us it's, the bonus starts at 150,000 in net revenue and then. Okay, it goes up to two. 200,000 is the next market. Two 50 is the next marker. So yeah, your great reps are doing two 50. Your really good reps are doing 200, and your solid reps are giving one 50 plus
A.J. Wadian: top rep did 4.7 million last year.
Yeah. So [00:42:00] that gives the perspective. Yeah. But you know, me and Noah were talking, we're like, we want the sales position to be like very advantageous of. Some people just have the vision that they don't, they don't want the problems of being a manager. Mm-hmm. Just wanna make a great living, being a sales performer.
Yeah. You lead at that job, go home to their family every day and shut off. Right? Mm-hmm. And, um, we wanted to create a carve out that that bonus was enough to be like, I have to hit bonus this month. Like, it's, it's an extra two to 4,000 a month for me. I gotta hit it. Like I'm, I'm, if I can make an extra 50 grand a year just by doing my job well that I already do, I'm chasing it, right?
Yeah. Yeah. So. We, we double it and we've seen that the, that that is that permanent. So we're
John Wilson: probably
A.J. Wadian: that
John Wilson: that was a task. So it's nice. Is it? And it's only if you
Noah Jackson: hit a certain threshold. Sure. And you asked where the extra margin comes from it. Well, Hmm. It's almost, um, you know, our marketing budget per month is fixed on a dollars basis.
Like this is what we're gonna spend this month. Yeah. And you get really [00:43:00] close to it. So. What's the worst thing that happens? You sell more. Yeah. And then your net cost of marketing is lower because you sold more, you paid more in commission, but it came almost directly from your net cost of marketing at the end of the month.
So it just balances out because you're capitalizing on more sales that maybe you wouldn't have capitalized on last month.
A.J. Wadian: Yeah, and there's a balance there because here's what you realize with reps. They do one or two things. You have represented, you have representatives that don't care as much. Now you're gonna say, this is sound sounds crazy, but I'm just being honest.
You have reps that don't care as much about what their commission percentage is versus getting the win. 'cause they're fighting
John Wilson: for the bonus. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. We have that. Like guys are just like, yeah, I'll take the two. I, I just need this to close even if it's 200 bucks because I'm fighting
A.J. Wadian: for my bonus at the end of the month.
Right. And then you have other people that say, I'm fighting for every single ounce of commission on every deal. Mm-hmm. And I wanna make the most amount of money working the least. And what we find is that. Even the people that chase the volume and not the commission percent as much, they end up making great money at the [00:44:00] end of the month because they get the bonus.
So that's the kind of, we don't wanna promote people to sell jobs at the floor, but we wanna also reward people for taking the effort of saying it's either walk the deal or get the get contract signed. Yeah. Let's get the contract signed. Right. Yeah. So, so there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a common ground.
John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. So what, what is the threshold for the double. This is all, anybody who makes bonus is getting double what they normally, and bonus is like a threshold is a minimum of $150,000. Okay. I'll go. Okay. Okay. So if it was $2,000, if I hit 50, it's four. Correct. All right. Yeah, I'm super into that. That's a good idea.
And we've seen that our net volume
Noah Jackson: pressure lead
John Wilson: has exploded.
Noah Jackson: Yeah. Yeah. We have metrics. Uh, I, I think we have as good of if not better analytics on the backend than anybody I've ever seen and. We have metrics that'll dial down for a given time period. How, what, what's the average commission percentage or, and or discount percentage that a sales rep will sell at?
Um, and we can, we can dial it down and kind of, kind of tailor what we're looking to do [00:45:00] based on what the reps are doing recently based on this promotion. So after today, which is the last day, a month, we'll do a, uh, what we'll do a deep dive, um, and kind of go back and see how effective it was month over month.
I think it's gonna be pretty deep, pretty darn effective.
John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. What, what do you guys day to
A.J. Wadian: days look like? Individually?
John Wilson: Yeah.
A.J. Wadian: We're in the business to the waist up. Mm-hmm. It's, I mean, there's never, never really a dull moment we get in there. I mean, all of us are probably in there by the latest at 9:00 AM I'd say 9, 9 30.
Um, and you know, us, us three are all, we all have kids. Yeah. And a wi and wives. Right. And, and all our kids are fairly young. Yeah. Uh, Vince has two daughters that are. Under four on three, two and five, I think two and five. And Noah's got a third one on the way. And, and, uh, and two, three boys now. And, and they're young.
Uh, and, uh, and I got of the three, I had the oldest children, 13 and 10. So [00:46:00] we're like heavily involved in family. Mm-hmm. But we get in there in the, we get in there in the mornings and, um, Noah, Noah heads up dealing with the call center and the internal inside center. So like that's a task in itself. Like he's wrapped up in that.
And then. He's bridging the liaison between sales and inside call center on issues and, and kinks that we're working on conference calls and those things. Vince is really wrapped up into marketing, tech automation it heavily. Mm-hmm. And then I'm running the field, I'm running sales, installation, all those things, you know, so, um, we're, we're busy.
We're busy for sure. You know, if we're not on calls, we're. Just talking to employees constantly. Mm-hmm. Constantly. Ears are always to the ground. It's like, where do you wait? You like, you look up, you're looking for friction. You, dude, I didn't need lunch. Like, it's four o'clock. It's four o'clock. What happened to lunch?
They find us.
Noah Jackson: They find us.
A.J. Wadian: Yeah.
Noah Jackson: So,
A.J. Wadian: and there's not really a closed door.
Noah Jackson: It's not really structured because it can't be, I don't think that we'd be doing the business to, um, [00:47:00] a service if we made our days fully structured and everything. It's kind of just get in there and, and get your hands dirty and.
Because of that, I think we have elite relationships with our, with our teammates and, 'cause it's not just structured and bland, it's like we're in there helping and, and fighting and, and figuring things out. Yeah. So,
John Wilson: yeah. What was the, uh, just sort of rounding this out, we've gone from zero to, you know, this year, a hundred and seventy, a hundred eighty one seventy four War Tre 1 74.
That's, that's pace. Mm-hmm. Alright. Yeah. Fuck. Yeah. Based on our growth plan. Growth plan, yeah. Um, like what was the biggest friction point? Like what was the, like the moment where like, hey, this is, this is this might, this might be it.
Noah Jackson: Like this might work or might not work. Might not work. Oh, goodness gracious.
Uh, alright.
A.J. Wadian: Supply chain. I don't know. I, I would venture to say supply [00:48:00] chain, you just couldn't get it. Who, who's gonna whip that out? It was a, it was a matter of both sides not communicating the way that a high level business should communicate and forecasting. Right. We didn't think we were gonna sell that much and they weren't ready for us to sell that much.
So it's a process of balancing that. But we, we, we've struggled at times with supply chain and getting the product at a timely fashion and having enough of it and be able to install our full capacity. That's been a challenge. Yeah. And that's. There was times where it was really bad, I would say, where we were like, whew, we better hope that this stuff arrives
John Wilson: quickly when you, when you read, just 'cause canceled jobs.
Like you start like losing orders. Just, I mean, you need to, when you
A.J. Wadian: start building a business of this size, your overhead's. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Outrageous, you know, try to keep it as low as possible, but it's still spending, it's a lot, a million and a half. Hours a a month of marketing and Yeah. And your overhead and you all like, you need to install jobs,
Noah Jackson: so.
Mm-hmm. I don't [00:49:00] know if there was ever a moment where we were like, this isn't gonna work out. I think there was, there were moments where we were gonna have to make some hard decisions if things didn't happen.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Noah Jackson: Right. And um, that always typically revolves around people or employees, right. Yeah. But, um, I don't think there's ever like a, a do or, or die, like one moment.
Yeah. It was, uh. That doesn't mean that we haven't gone absolutely clinically insane dozens of times during this process. Oh, yeah, yeah. 9:00 PM 11:00 PM calls this person this issue, this problem, and like, you're not gonna believe, call me all the time I call him. You're not gonna wait till you hear this.
What? Mm-hmm. Here we go. Right. And, uh, the, it's a lot of the totality of that, of just like death by a thousand blunt force traumas. Um, yeah,
John Wilson: yeah.
Noah Jackson: But I'm
John Wilson: familiar with this.
Noah Jackson: As you get more and, and listen and the fact that my wife has dealt with it, his wife is like, is, is I try to, you know, shield her from the details and stuff.
'cause, 'cause [00:50:00] it just kind of is what it is. But you just keep showing up. You keep solving problems, you keep trying to create self-fulfilling systems and processes and let things start to run. Trust your people and find talent. Don't negotiate on on what people are gonna do for you and, and, and, um, you know, push your people hard because you care, not because you're just there to push 'em and, um, just show up every day.
Don't quit. And then you, you end up stacking months and looking back and go, holy crap, we're gonna do 13 mil, almost $13 million this month. And yeah, that's correct. We're gonna install more than ever. And then it's, um, I don't know if we really have goals. We have benchmarks we need to hit to be a profitable business.
We don't necessarily say we wanna do this amount to do this amount. The 1 74 isn't some chalk goal or sharpened goal that we want to hit for an ego purposes. It's basically what can, what do we think the business can do, and let's see if we can't hit it, but just show up every day and then
A.J. Wadian: quit. You gotta play chess, not checkers.
Mm-hmm. And you gotta see things way ahead of the curve, whether that's people, yeah. Whether that's [00:51:00] economic issues, whatever it may be. You better see it way out of the curve. You better have a game plan and a, and a footprint of how you're gonna handle it when it gets there, because people are going to fail you.
People you never think will leave, will leave family, friends. You just never know, you know? And you better have a backup plan. You better have things in place so you're not caught your pants down 'cause. Every business owner has been there. Yeah. We've all been there. We're like, Ooh, I wasn't expecting it.
Now what? You know? Yeah. The pivot moments where you're like in crazy stress levels and you're like, what do we do now? And it's like, okay, let's get together three great mind. It's the benefit of having three, oh, let's get in this room. Let's close the door and let's figure these things out. Mm-hmm. Let's get ahead of it.
Mm-hmm. So we've done a good job this here. Mm-hmm. Getting ahead of things. Yeah. Really ahead of things. So that's great. You know, we got to be the year modeled out and we know where we're gonna land mathematically, give or take. Plus or minus a little bit, but we have, uh, we have the playbook set. I would say at this point now, it's just repeating the playbook and continuing to bring and nurture good people into the organization so that you can expand the [00:52:00] footprint.
That's, that's what it boils onto. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome.
John Wilson: Well, I appreciate you guys coming on, uh, and sharing all this, this with us. This was a lot of fun. Thank you. Absolutely. If people wanna contact you, sounds like LinkedIn's probably the best way to get ahold of you. Yeah. Yep. We're, send me a message.
Absolutely.
A.J. Wadian: Anytime. Awesome. Still a lot of, a lot of year left. Yeah. I'd be, I'm, I'm, I'm, I wanna be able to look at this, this, uh, this podcast and go back, do a six month
John Wilson: and back do year. That's some of the funnest, that is some of the funnest ones is I actually, I have a friend flying in, 'cause we did a one over Zoom.
He's in Chicago and he did one six months ago. He texted me the other day, he's like, Hey dude, I, I gotta get back on like, what the last six months. Lot changed and I'm like, yeah, dude, fly on out. So he is coming outta here later, later in May, but yeah, like six months a year. Yeah. It is crazy. Especially in like a high velocity business.
Like, hey, this is what we were dealing with at this point, dude. Like, here's, here's what happened, or here's what happened. I can't even remember what happened six months ago. Like, what was that
Noah Jackson: like November? Dude, I, I'm, I'm [00:53:00] right there with you. Couldn't tell you what headache I was having that day. Yeah.
Just kidding. No, this has been a blessing, but you know, I can never put your feet up. Yeah. Yeah. You're definitely the ops guy.
John Wilson: If you like what you heard, uh, make sure you check out owned and operated.com. Sign up for the newsletter, check out the YouTube. It is, boom. Thank you.
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