In this episode of Owned and Operated, John Wilson sits down with his good friend and fellow operator, Rich Jordan, to unpack how he scaled from $700K to over $30M in just five years — across three branches and two states.
Rich shares the unfiltered lessons from going multi-location, from the chaos of centralizing call centers too early, to re-decentralizing and finally recentralizing with the right infrastructure. He and John dive into the cultural challenges of acquisitions, how to win buy-in with frontline techs, why leadership development is the true bottleneck, and how “force of will” integrations differ from slow-play rollouts.
Rich also reveals how his team pushed margins up 10 points in just 60 days, why he cut a top producer to save culture, and what it takes to prepare for a Greenfield launch while still buying and integrating new branches.
Together, they unpack:
- The jump from $700K → $30M in five years through multi-location growth
- Centralize vs. decentralize — when to share services and when to split
- Driving culture post-acquisition with rapid feedback loops and frontline wins
- Leadership pipelines from the trades and the military
- Integration style: high-touch, high-speed, “bear hug” takeovers
- Preparing for Greenfielding — recruiting, training, and marketing from scratch
🎙️ Host
John Wilson
🎙️ Guest
Rich Jordan
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OAO Episode 246 Transcript
Rich Jordan: [00:00:00] Your life would be easier if you stayed at one location. That said, though we're not 30 million today, if we didn't go multi-location,
John Wilson: 700,000 of revenue to 30 million in five years is kind of
Rich Jordan: crazy. Some people, when they're talking about doing an acquisition, they, they talk about don't touch anything for six months.
We don't see it that way. There was one technician there where that was a high producer. He ended up getting his head cut off. 10 days in, um, 'cause he's a prick.
John Wilson: But it like, how are you thinking about driving culture in these new
Rich Jordan: branches when guys who maybe haven't been listened to for many years, they float an idea and then they see rapid action on that idea.
That's how you like, turn someone on. Yeah.
John Wilson: We're about to go multi-location in like the next 30 days. What's your couple pieces of advice for me? Um,
uh, I'm John Wilson. I run a podcast called Owned and Operated. Uh, and during the day I run a 30 ish million dollar plumbing HVAC electric company up in Cleveland, Ohio. So that's who I am. I'm joined [00:01:00] today on stage by one of my good friends, rich Jordan. And Rich Jordan has grown a business from the last five years from first acquiring in 2019, uh, a small business in New Jersey, and I think unfortunately, after just relentlessly chasing me.
For five years has officially passed my revenue. Uh, so he's like low thirties now. Three branches across two states.
Rich Jordan: Yeah. Started at 1 million in 2020 and now he had just, uh, just about 30,000,003, three branches. Two states.
John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Alright, so today what we're gonna be talking about is, uh, scaling through multi-location and, uh, how rich thought about that, how he approached it.
And, uh, we're gonna try to dive into this a little bit deeper. So I'm ready to rip it. Are you tired of chasing reviews and watching competitors outrank you on Google? Well, big Reputation has your back. They're an AI powered [00:02:00] review and SEO platform built just for home service businesses. With automated review generation ai, keyword rich responses, and heat map local search tracking.
You'll finally get the visibility and reputation you deserve. Plus they integrate with all major CRMs you already use. And the best part setup is free. And your first month is on the house. Book your demo in the description below. Big reputation.ai. Cool. Well, I would love to start off 700,000 of revenue to 30 million in five years is kind of crazy, right?
Like the, that's a crazy jump. And like, not only that like, but you also did it with multi-location, multi-state. So we're not gonna focus on the first acquisition, we're just gonna go straight to the second. Yeah. If you could help walk us through, you've got this business in New Jersey, you're like, Hey, I. I think I want to go by something in a different state.
Like walk me through what you're thinking.
Rich Jordan: Yeah, I wish I could sit here and say that this was like a strategic, you know, like very measured [00:03:00] decision at the time. Um, the reality was, and, and some of you guys may, uh, empathize with this or have been here, is, you know, we were a very small, you know, we started at a million in 2020 by 2020, late, late 2021.
That company, you know, significantly at that small size to like two and a half million and two and a half to 5 million is like a real dog fight. Yeah. Right. Um, you're starting to add, you know, add costs. You're not making any money. You're trying to push. Yeah. Yeah. And an opportunity came across our place sort of serendipitously to perk purchase another business.
It was a $3 million business in a different state. We're like, well, this will take us to five and a half million. That sounds amazing. This will solve all of our problems. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure. Um, so that was ba that was basically the, the strategy. Um, and uh, what we [00:04:00] quickly found out was that, uh, running two businesses in two states about five times harder than running one business in one state.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Rich Jordan: Um, and took our lumps for a little while there for sure.
John Wilson: What, what'd the first, like, couple of lessons in that first six months? Like what, what were the big ones?
Rich Jordan: Yeah, so we, I think, I think anyone who's like multi-business, multi-location wrestles with this like centralization of, of services and decentralization of services.
It felt like at the time. The right answer was, well, let's centralize, let's, let's gain some synergies. Right? And, and, and the business that we bought, the second business that we bought, had, um, call center issues. Like they had missed 12,000 phone calls the previous year at a $3 million size. So 12,000.
12,000. Yeah. And so we, so we tackled that right away. And one of the reasons, one of the ways we tackled that was centralizing the call center, but the reality was like we were a [00:05:00] small business. Like a janky call center. Mm-hmm. Looking back. Um, and then we tried to basically double the volume on the same team with, you know, the training that you would expect of a two and a half million dollar call center team.
The dispatch training you'd expect at that size. I mean, like, we just basically like did poorly. Um, so about like six months into that we, or maybe nine months into that, we decentralized again. Um. And, and basically like split those two businesses completely at the time. Um, now, you know, three years later we've recentralized everything, but we're a much more robust business, uh, and like have our shit together.
Yeah. A little bit more. Um, and we're actually doing a decent job of it this time around.
John Wilson: Yeah. I think something to to note 'cause you're on your third location now. Yeah. And like thinking about fourth, uh, or fourth in the next six months. Yeah.
Rich Jordan: Yeah.
John Wilson: The way that [00:06:00] you've approached growth so far has been like very high touch.
Like you're gonna walk in the door, sort of bang it down with a shotgun. Hmm. Is that fair?
Rich Jordan: Yeah. I would say that is a fair characterization.
John Wilson: Right, perfect. Uh, as you're thinking about that for like that specific deal, do you feel like that deal showed you how to do it and that's now the playbook? Or how, how do you think that changes from now on?
Rich Jordan: Like the second deal or this third deal we just did? Yeah, both. Um, yeah, certainly. I mean, we have our integration style and we're, we're a small team. We're, you know, bootstrapped, um, our integration style is very high touch and, uh, very like force of will and cult of personality. You know, proximity is important.
Um, and so certainly in that, that second acquisition, we were very much, you know. Dove right in, in the trucks in the office. Uh, at one point in the first month, [00:07:00] like I had a headset and I was answering the phones myself, you know? Um, and that's, I mean, that's kind of the character with which we've gone forward.
Even this third acquisition that we just did two and a half months ago was very high touch from the executive leadership, right? Mm-hmm. Um, with, with great results, but. At some point that is gonna become difficult to do. Um, and certainly like the last, you know, so now we have three branches and, and while we were doing this third deal, we were also recentralizing the call center trying to help out our New Jersey business, get to where our New Hampshire business is.
Um, so I've spent a lot of days on the road the last 120 days. So I think at some point, like we're gonna have to assess, you know, either hiring. For some of our, um, like frontline management and, and elevating leaders to help me do that or bringing in additional leaders to, [00:08:00] to help me do that right now.
Right now there's a lot, like integration is very much like my box.
John Wilson: As you've thought about bringing these other branches into your culture, like how, how do you think about doing that? You talk about force of will. I'm gonna use magnetic personality. I don't remember what you said. That's very nice of you.
Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Uh, but it, like, how are you thinking about driving culture in these new branches?
Rich Jordan: Well, I think like the way you integrate is super important, right? Um, we tend to lean a little bit, you know, like some people, when they're talking about doing an acquisition, they, they talk about, you know, don't touch anything for six months.
You know, watch and observe, you know, keep your cake gloves on. Be respectful of the seller's business. Don't screw it up, right? We, we don't see it that way. Um, so we're a little bit more of like a smash and grab, like get in there, get your arms around it, bear hug it, and remain flexible. So like we, we don't, so like it is a bear hug and it is a fast pace.[00:09:00]
However, it's not like a fixed. A hundred day plan. It's like very flexible and adaptable, and we're really like trying to read the room on like, what is this team ready for? Mm-hmm. For us, like we, we have all these things holstered, chambered, and we're ready to execute them, um, not execute the team. Okay.
Mm-hmm. Um, I, I realize what I'm just doing with my hand right there. So, trying to think of maybe like some examples. Um. For instance, like pro, like things like price increases, right? Or dispatch methodologies. Yeah. Like we know that the price needs to increase at this acquisition. You know, they're way below market.
They're not making any money. Okay. Like, we don't have to do that immediately. We can kind of like get some feedback from the team, get into the truck, talk to the technicians, hear the feedback. This recent acquisition, the feedback was we're charging too little. Yeah. From the text, like, yeah. Say less good feed.
Yeah, good feedback. I'm ready. Um, [00:10:00] so like really trying to like solicit feedback from the team and then be ready to rapidly execute our plays relative to that feedback, which gets you coming from a culture standpoint when, when guys who maybe haven't been listened to for many years and like now new ownership, new leadership this year.
And they float an idea in the cab of the truck, in the service meeting, whatever. Yeah. And then they see rapid action on that idea. That's like, that's how you like, turn someone on. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like really like get them bought in.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Rich Jordan: And that's then, that's basically how we operate.
John Wilson: Would what's it look like? Like how are you, Dr that makes sense for as you like, activate it six months later, a year later. Like how, how do you keep people inside?
Rich Jordan: The full, we're right now we're three branches across two states. We're also currently three brands across two [00:11:00] states. Um, and it is difficult to drive culture and values and like shared, um, shared mantras and like ways of operating across three different brands.
Even something as different as like as, as little as like different colors, different hats, different names. Just makes it more difficult. So we're actually rebrand, like our three branches. We're rebranding right now. We're gonna rebrand it all to a single name.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Rich Jordan: Um, and that's gonna happen here in the next 60 days.
Um, and it's like huge, a huge project of ours right now that I think will help. But really it's for us, like our, we, we place enormous emphasis on the ability and. The approach of our frontline leaders. Um, so we do a lot of like, like we have very, um, well, I would say well articulated like [00:12:00] leadership standards and we like coach on leadership and we really place a lot of training and effort into our frontline leaders.
Yeah. And I think like that's really like where culture like really. Hits the road. And so like, certainly like this acquisition we just did, like we, you know, like I spent a lot of my time like coaching that manager on mm-hmm. On how we lead, um, and what expectations are of him and like how I can help him get there if somebody that, and I think that's a good part of it.
John Wilson: Yeah, that makes sense. And you've talked a few times now about leadership. How are we finding these leaders, especially being remote like leaders are hard enough to find when I'm recruiting outside of my headquarters? Like how are they, how are you finding them? States away?
Rich Jordan: Yeah, so we basically, I mean really we have two, I would call like two channels for leadership primarily.
The first is from the field. So, especially like frontline leaders, like [00:13:00] I'm, I'm a believer that our frontline leaders ought to be from the trade. Um, and if we can take a guy who we have operated with and we know, we know who he is, we know what makes him tick, he's seen us lead, and then I can kind of shepherd him into a leadership role and like really put a lot of time and effort and development into, into that person's development.
We've had like really great success with like taking people from the frontline of like say the the field and also like the frontline of the office. Mm-hmm. Right. Um, we've got two people here from Sanford today, former dispatcher now customer experience manager, former technician, now service manager that are both kicking ass and doing a great job and are like great examples of this.
I would say like the second channel that we're starting to tap more and more is my. Uh, and Connor, my number two, you know, um, our military background is starting to reach back into the military and pull guys out [00:14:00] and pull them into the, into the team. And we've, um, so we've done that now with one and, uh, early, early innings with him, but it seems like we're gonna have a good, good outcome there.
John Wilson: How are you guys thinking about balancing speed and control as you're doing this? Like safety. We
Rich Jordan: don't place a whole
John Wilson: lot
Rich Jordan: on safety. Safety of the business. I would say. Um, we definitely are risk on.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Rich Jordan: Um, and like generally we lean towards a bias for action. Yeah. So if something needs to be done, like we will make it happen.
We're gonna attack that problem today. Um, and we will move with speed and sometimes we break things and sometimes we make the wrong decision. But again, we will move with speed and pivot again. So generally we lean into like our, one of our like competitive advantages against problem sets, challenges, competitors, is that we move with a lot of speed.
John Wilson: Yeah, you just took over a brand. 75 days ago. Can you walk us through like the wins the, the [00:15:00] LS in this new acquisition?
Rich Jordan: It was a small team, so it's a, it's $3 million plumbing branch. Mm-hmm. Um, pure plumbing. Um, about 10 people. Small, but really easy to get our arms around.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Rich Jordan: So a lot of ride along time.
The nice thing now is that we have, you know, with a little bit more infrastructure and some centralized services in previous integrations. Dispatch. Payroll onboarding. Like HR onboarding? Yeah. Payables. Like I'd have to take care of all that. I might get suppressed with that and I can't do the leadership things that I want to do now.
We have the team, the process, the centralization where a lot of that stuff is happening in the background. Yeah, right. My HR guy's taking care of stuff, call centers, taking care of things, and I was, I was able to really just dive in, jump in the trucks, get with the managers. And like really drive meaningful outcomes in the field.
Um, and like culture, culture wins. So we really leaned into [00:16:00] that. There was one technician there that was a high producer, um, and kind of had everyone fooled that, that he was the right guy. He ended up getting his head cut off, uh, 10 days in. Um, 'cause he's a prick. Yeah. Um, to everybody. So that was a huge, actually a huge cultural win.
And, and that was some of my ride-alongs in the trucks with the other plumbers kind of like made me aware that like, hey, like we have a problem over here and this is actually like a really systemic problem. Um, so when we sort of made that seemingly difficult decision, um, we gained a lot of like credibility with the team immediately and that was able to like push change faster, right?
Yeah. Like we were able to really lean in after that. Um. So like the following week we made price changes, right? And in some cases they were drastic, but armed those technicians with like in the ride-alongs, in the service meetings with the training to kind of weather that, um, that price increase. Um, and they, they've nailed it.
So like for instance, in June we took over July 1st in [00:17:00] June, these plumbers were like generally at like 20,000 or 19,000 to 25,000 a month mm-hmm. Of revenue. Which like is not great, uh, for a plumber, in my opinion. In August, those same plumbers were doing 120,000 out of one truck, 76,000 outta the next truck, 56,000 outta the next truck Price had to, had to do with that, but also like conversion rate, close rate, these guys are getting told no a lot, even at a lower price.
Now they're asking for a higher price and converting at a much higher clip. And so like what does that mean, like say for the p and l is that we push the gross margin up 10 points. In 60 days, um, and push, you know, EBITDA to like, you know, of course we have, we're assuming a lot of costs, centralized.
Mm-hmm. But for that branch level, EBITDA's, like 28% mm-hmm. At that branch today.
John Wilson: Yeah. I would, I would take 28% all day. You're getting ready to start green fielding. [00:18:00] How are you thinking about that as a part of the whole, everything we've talked about so far?
Rich Jordan: Yeah, so we, we have never green fielded a location we've only purchased in new locations.
Mm-hmm. Um, and our, and of course like, and we have done deals, we know how to do the deals. We, we feel comfortable in our ability to integrate. We could just keep doing that, but it feels pruded to us that we ought to build a competency in green field. Right. We, we, we should know how to start a new branch and new location.
So that's kind of the bet that we're making right now.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Rich Jordan: You know, basically what we, what we determined, you know, almost a year ago was that the, some of the hurdles we had to clear that we hadn't cleared already was like leadership. So what does that, like, how do we, what's the chicken or the egg on the leadership for that greenfield location?
If we're gonna be hiring technicians in a new market that have never worked with us before, how do we. Get them trained up quickly onto our system [00:19:00] while not necessarily having like ad hoc osmosis proximity mm-hmm. That we really lean into now. And then of course, you know, the marketing and the leads and, and things like that.
So we've basically, and, and, and like recruiting. So how do we, over the last like 10 months, we really like tried to like check those boxes, hired a recruiter, built out a recruiting plan, brought on an A TS. System started, you know, building out, you know, more robust training, um, that we can really like put a technician through and try to like slam them through in like three weeks to get them lethal in the field.
Um, and like, kind of like indoctrinate them into our values. Hired a leader. This is that military leader, um, train him up, have him kind of like running point on the project of launching his Greenfield. So these are like some of the things that we're. Fighting through right now. But certainly, like, I think, I think it's [00:20:00] gonna be tough, like the, the variable that is still unsolved is like, what is it gonna look like from a marketing perspective?
John Wilson: Yeah.
Rich Jordan: And like what can we expect? Like, so we have a plan to go in and spend a certain amount of dollars in a certain way, but what is that going to bear as far as like lead volume and how fast is it gonna come and what kind of staffing can we feasibly, like be comfortable Yeah. Starting with,
John Wilson: yeah.
Rich Jordan: And that's, uh, that's still TBD.
John Wilson: Mm-hmm.
Rich Jordan: Um, right now I think we're, we're. Budgeting for that. Like a lead is gonna cost us about $400.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Rich Jordan: Not being known in the market. Yeah. And then try to try to fight that down over the course of total loss.
John Wilson: Yeah. Everyone knows leads are tough to come by, but what if they weren't service? Scalers is the no BS marketing team for contractors and they're running S-E-O-P-P-C, LSAs and Google My Business campaigns that.
Actually bringing customers, not just clicks, they've delivered consistent leads for me, tied to real revenue. And they can do the same for you. Sign a 12 month contract and your [00:21:00] first month is free. Click the link below to get started. Service killers, no BS just leads. What's your advice for somebody wanting to get like me?
You know me? Yeah. I wanna go. We're about to go multi-location in like the next 30 days. We close mid-October. What's your couple pieces of advice for me? Keep me on the straight and narrow here.
Rich Jordan: Yeah. I think you, and this is an acquisition. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. I think you have to quickly assess what are the things that you can tolerate not changing, and then what are the things that you really want to bring, like for, for strategic reason.
And also for. Like new wins with your new team and, uh, and an assessment of the leadership on site and, and whether they're capable. And my understanding is that the leadership is capable of this one. Yeah, I think that's, that's like, like understanding what your non-negotiables are, what you want to go in and like really, really push for.
And then what are you willing to be flexible and adaptable? Like we were saying, like I was saying, you know, like [00:22:00] you have the playbook for, but you, you don't necessarily have to play it until the team's ready to receive it.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Rich Jordan: Your team's ready to bring in, right? Yeah. Um, so that's what I would, uh, advise.
John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. That feels pretty good. What should everybody be taking home with them as we end this out? That's advice for me. Any anybody else? Just like stay in one location, make your life easy, or buy a small plane.
Rich Jordan: Yeah. Uh, your life would be easier if you stay at one location. Yeah. Um, it is harder. That said though, uh.
We're not 30 million today if we didn't go. Multi-location. Yeah. Period. Yeah. Actually my second location is now my largest location and my most robust, and it's the reason that we're operating the way we are is that we've learned all those lessons in the second location. Yeah. I mean, I think multi like understand that, you know, if you're like me in 2021 and you think like a second location in a new market is gonna help you get over the hump, it's not.
It's gonna make the hump [00:23:00] bigger for you to try to climb over, but uh, certainly it can be done. And I think a mix, you know, a mix of competency and like greenfield and like small tucking m and a can be very powerful for, for bootstrap owners. Awesome.
John Wilson: Well thanks for, uh, jumping on tonight with me and thanks for like talking to everybody.
I know it's late and I appreciate the story and 700 to 30 million in five years is nuts, so I appreciate you walking us through it. Cheers. Thanks, rich.
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