February 25, 2026 • 17 mins
In this episode of CEOs You Should Know, we sit down with Brian McMahon — an entrepreneurial powerhouse who took the reins of his family’s business and transformed it into one of South Pittsburgh’s go-to home improvement and repair teams. As Owner and CEO of Ace Handyman Services South Pittsburgh, Brian brings over 7 years of hands-on leadership and business management experience to a company that helps homeowners and businesses solve their toughest property needs.
From his early hustle — kicking off ventures as a teen — to mastering the art of running a local services company, Brian’s journey is a testament to grit, community focus, and smart scaling. Under his guidance, Ace Handyman Services has become a trusted name across Monongahela, Bethel Park, West Mifflin, and beyond, tackling everything from drywall and carpentry to aging-in-place renovations with integrity and craft.
In this conversation we explore:
From his early hustle — kicking off ventures as a teen — to mastering the art of running a local services company, Brian’s journey is a testament to grit, community focus, and smart scaling. Under his guidance, Ace Handyman Services has become a trusted name across Monongahela, Bethel Park, West Mifflin, and beyond, tackling everything from drywall and carpentry to aging-in-place renovations with integrity and craft.
In this conversation we explore:
- How Brian’s entrepreneurial spirit shaped his leadership style
- Turning a hobby-driven start into a thriving home services business
- The balance between hands-on craftsmanship and strategic management
- What it takes to build trust in your community one customer at a time
Listen
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
And welcome man. This is the CEOs You Should Know podcast.
I'm your host, Johnny Hartwell, let's say hello to Brian
McMahon of ACE Handyman Services. Thank you for joining me.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Yeah, thanks for having me, Johnny.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
So tell us everything we need to know about your business.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
So. Our company has been around for twenty one years.
We used to be known as Handyman Matters, but in
twenty twenty partnered up with ACE Hardware and so we
became Ace Handyman Services. So nothing really changed there outside
of the fact that our branding changed. But for those
twenty one years, we've been serving our customers as what
we call a home ally, so the first call for
(00:41):
anything they need home service related.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
And what makes you different than maybe other handyman services.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Yeah, so you'll often see whenever someone needs something done,
they might go into something like the Washington County What's
going On group and they say, hey, I'm in search
of a plumber, and you get ninety different comments from
different people.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
You don't know who's trustworthy.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
There's a lot of people out there that can show
up and they can do a quick job, and they
can do it well. But what we really try and
build with our customer base is trust and loyalty from
the first call to the final walkthrough, good communication, of course,
all the things that everyone taughts, license, bonded, insured, background checked.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
And services. What kind of services do you provide?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
We do over eleven hundred different things. So we can
do drywall, painting, carpentry, wood wod doors, we can do windows,
we can do flooring, minor plumbing. Mine are electrical things
within our insurance as well as a different licensure as well.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
All right, so when did you get into the business.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Yeah, so twenty twenty is whenever I actually purchased the business.
My aunt and uncle owned this for sixteen years from
two thousand and four and they were looking to retire.
They asked me if i'd be interested, and I was
very interested. So since I was a kid, I've always
been intrigued with doing handyman stuff with my dad, with
my uncle John, we'd be doing a lot of bigger
(02:02):
projects as well. But also realized that a lot of
these companies want the bigger jobs, so that's where we
kind of found our niche of the smaller jobs. So
I took that over, saying, hey, I've never run a
home service company in my entire life. Let's do it,
and here I am today.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
What were you doing prior?
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Yeah, So right out of college, I got a finance
degree and I said, let's use that finance degree and
I went into the health and fitness field. So for
four and a half five years, I was doing online training,
I had my own supplement line, and I was looking
for a career change rate at the time that my
uncle actually reached out and said that they were looking
(02:40):
to retire.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
So are you an entrepreneur at heart?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
I am.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
I always tell this story. I want to say it
first started in seventh grade. I was selling gum. So
kids would always come up to me and they'd ask
me for gum. And after a while it was like, Okay,
I recognized that there's demand and I have the supply,
so I would My mom actually took me to Sam's Club.
We bought one hundred and fifty dollars of gum, and
(03:08):
I even got a niche product that Joe Energy gum,
and so I sold I sold it for Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
You knew you had to do you had to deliver
something a little different.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Absolutely, yes, and so I yeah, it sure was.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
So I sold a stick of gum for a quarter
of stick and three dollars a pack. And that went
on for about a week and we made one hundred
and fifty dollars worth of profit. And when I say we,
I made up some contracts for some people and friends
and they were our subcontractors, and they went out and
they sold gum for me as well too. This this
(03:45):
escalated very fast, and it's funny. My dad would say,
I had this little ATM and i'd have it at home,
and he knew what I was doing, and he went
in there and he opened the ATM and he said,
I just saw these this wat of cash and I
started thinking, and oh, this is not good. And that's
when eventually I got called into the principal's office and
(04:05):
they said, hey, you know, you can't do this, and
I said, I'm sorry. I didn't realize this was I
couldn't do it, and I shut it down. But again,
after all that, I paid my mom back for all
the gum, and then I had one hundred and fifty
dollars in my pocket.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
You can go walk into the bank. I'd like to
get a you know, hey, helldon for this gum company
that I so I was reading your bio on the
Ashandymanservices dot com website, and I noticed one line it
says I'm a little weird. Is that true?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
I didn't write that.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Yeah, yeah, I am a little weird. I'm I'm that
guy that I really enjoy systems and processes and I
really enjoy creating experience for customers that doesn't really require
them to lift a finger. So a lot of those
things that give people's headaches, that's the stuff that actually
revs my engine.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Really, So that doesn't make you weird though.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Well, it just depends on who's judging. I guess.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Oh, okay, tell me about your team. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
So one thing that has helped us stand out over
the years is that we can minimize turnover a lot,
and we do that through company culture. So my office manager,
Tammy now has been with us going on eleven years.
My general manager same thing, eleven years. We have a
craftsman that's been with us for ten and then multiple
guys for three years plus.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
So they were with your family prior to this, and
so during the transition you were able to maintain that continuity.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Yes, yeah, that was definitely a difficulty because, as you
can imagine a handyman, they're going to have years of
experience right under their belt. And I was twenty eight
years old when I took over the company. So just
imagine being that guy that's been with a company for
that many years seeing a twenty eight year old come
in and say, hey, now I'm your boss. So there
was definitely that level of difficulty to get past that
(05:59):
and basically say that I am here to work just
like you are. I want to continue to grow and
figure out how we can constantly improve year of a year.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
And so what kind of improvements Once you took over,
what kind of improvements did you see that you could accomplish.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Yeah, so a lot of this comes back to that
weird aspect of I love the systems and the processes.
I like going into something finding any level of inefficiency
and improving that. One thing that I did recognize going
into this was just because you can improvement, you can
improve it, does not mean that you should improve it.
(06:34):
There's also an element of employee satisfaction and changing too
many things at once. But one of the biggest things
that I did whenever we went in was we utilized
more of our softwares. And one thing I implemented was
a CRM Customer relationship management software so that we can
actually track the customer journey from the first call to
us actually completing the job, so that no one slips
(06:56):
through the cracks.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
What kind of feedback are you getting from customer since
you've taken.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Over, Really no different feedback because this was not a
I didn't go in and buy a job. I bought
a business. So oftentimes if you go and look on
Google or Angie or Porch or rate a bus and
you see all of our reviews, most of the time
you're not going to see someone reviewing and saying Brian
was great, It's gonna be Steve was fantastic, Dan was fantastic,
(07:22):
Tammy was so nice on the phone. Pat came out
estimated my job. That's our team, and so I'm more
behind the scenes on that team rather than forward facing
showing customers it's me. It's me, it's me. It's the
standards and processes we put in place that create the experience.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Tell us about your marketing strategy.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Yeah, so being in business for twenty one years, you
could probably keep one two trucks busy without doing any
different type of marketing. But we also do some of
the basics. We do Angie, we do Thumbtack, Google, pay
per Click, We've tried a lot of different other avenues.
We've done print, and then we also do some level
of outbound whether we call previous customers just to see
(08:01):
if there's anything they can use help with, as well
as different email.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Campaigns and what has been most successful for you.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
It's really hard to pinpoint, so it's kind of a
combination of everything where you might look at something like
Angie and Thumbtack and you could see that maybe the
close rate on those leads are a lot lower, but
the return it could be a lot higher. So it's
not just actually putting our money and our efforts into
one avenue. It's diversifying our marketing strategy and finding that
(08:28):
we get a little bit from email, we get a
little bit from pay per click, we get a little
bit from Angie. But if I were to go back
to anything, it's going to be referrals and word of
mouth is always going to be the name of our game.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Tell us about Brian, Well, what do you want to know?
Speaker 1 (08:43):
What you want to tell us?
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Yeah, so I've said for so many years that I'm
a jack of all trades, master of none.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
I love my hobbies.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
I love finding something new that maybe I'm not great
at and becoming the best at it. And I had
realized in college that it's okay to not be the
best at everything as long as you're enjoying your life.
So when I was younger, no matter what it was,
if I was bad at and I worked very very
hard to be the best. Then I realized, I'm not
(09:13):
real good at geography. I'm not great at understanding cars
and automobiles. But I had friends that were, and so
that's where I said, Okay, maybe I just need to
surround myself with those types of people that kind of
fill in my gaps there. But I do a lot
of different things. I love doing my own home projects,
build a bar in my basement. I love doing homebrew.
(09:36):
I started that a few years back and have just
just love spending my weekends doing that. Anything that kind
of keeps me going and brings joy to my life. Home.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Oh okay, I'm not going to let you off the
hook here. Homebrew, what kind of how did that hobby start?
And what do you specialize it? What do you what
kind of brewed do you prefer Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
So my wife and I we really love New England IPAs.
And so probably about five years ago I got intrigued
by it, and my brother was actually saying, I'm going
to make one, and you make one, and let's see
who does it better. Okay, And at that time I
didn't really want to get into it. I didn't have
the capacity he made. Someone was like, yeah, this is
(10:19):
a lot of work.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
I'm not doing this.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
And about two years later, my wife took me to
a brewery in Ohio and we toured the brewery and
I left and I was just inspired, and I did
the typical Brian thing.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
I'm like, I'm going to do it, and I'm going
to go big or go home.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
So I got all the equipment, I got everything set up,
and I made my first New England ipa. And they
always say, whenever you're starting with homebrew, start with extracts,
or start with what they call a smash, a single
malt or a single hop. And I said, yeah, I'm
not going to do that. I'm going to go with
one of the most complex beers as my first one.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
I did it.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
I did my research and I got a lot of
really great feedback from it.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
I love My wife loved that you personally, you personally
liked it?
Speaker 2 (11:02):
I did, Yeah, I actual absolutely did.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Of course, I'm going to be hard on myself and
say I think this could be better, or why is
that color you know a deeper amber than what it
should be?
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Blah blah blah.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
So are you able to get a consistent brew every time?
Speaker 3 (11:15):
I am Yeah, So I do like to diversify my bruise.
It gets a little bit boring making the same thing
over and over again. But there are certain ones that
you go back to, like a specific New England IPA
that I absolutely love, and the way that I do
that goes back to the systems and processes. So a
lot of people will say, no, just put a little
bit of this and a little bit of that, and.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
I don't like it.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
I want to know, down to the gram or down
to the ounce what I'm doing. I want to know
how long I boiled this for or how long I
mashed for, so that the next time, if I want
to make a tweak, I can go on a strong
foundation and I can make that adjustment.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Do you have aspirations of coming up with a brewery. No, Okay,
that's a step too far. All right, what are the
hobbies do you have? Yeah, so, well, I know you
have a nineteen month old, so that's probably keeping you
busy these days.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Yeah, She's definitely one of my biggest hobbies. But yeah,
I mean anything that is something new I always kind
of get sucked into. But yeah, doing the handyman stuff.
I used to detail cars whenever I was younger, so
I kind of always have that aspect. I love anything
that's cleaning or analytical based. I like building different things
(12:24):
online as well too, like AI agents. Anything that's a
little bit different that I feel like has a learning
curve that I could absolutely obtain.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Then that's what I'm attracted to doing.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
All right. When it comes to the business, what's your
plan in five years, ten years, what's your future plans
for this particular business.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Yeah, so, really, our vision is always going to be
around deepening the customer relationship as well as improving our
company internally. So you'll always hear this that the customer
comes first, and that is absolutely something that we leave in. However,
if our employees are unhappy, the company is in a
bad financial situation, we can't take care of our customers
(13:06):
and so whenever I took over, I really really focused
on our team, and I wanted to make sure that
people were happy, people were heard in our team. So,
whether we're deeping into that customer relationship by improving our
company culture or our team, or simply hearing feedback from
our from our customers on maybe a different service or
a different way that we can do things, we always
(13:28):
want to be focusing on trust over our transactions so
that we can continue to be that home I live.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
How about you? But I listened to a lot of
podcasts and a lot of sports podcasts, and quite frequently
especially NFL players. Are you a football fan?
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Okay, you'll hear other players asking other NFL players what
was your welcome to the NFL moment? You know, whereas
you know, they're on the field and they you know,
they get hit by you know some you know, some
super star or whatever. So what was your welcome to
the business moment? Was there one moment that you went wow?
(14:08):
That was that was something I didn't expect from.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
A good or bad either way. Yeah, I would say
going into the business from the very beginning, being twenty
eight years old, you do your due diligence. The way
a twenty eight year old would do their due diligence.
And I don't regret a single thing that I did,
But it was a dive in head first and figure
this out as you go along. On the surface and
(14:35):
going through the different trainings and everything, everything on paper
sounds good, but whenever you're actually managing the guys and
you're managing the different calls and the customers, you really
start to understand what it takes to create a good business.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Next thing you hear there's a snowstorm and everything is
you know, up in the air, and you got trucks
stranded everywhere. Yeah, everything else.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Well, and not only that, but I mean I took
this business over in late August of twenty twenty and
so right in the middle of the COVID era. And
not only do we need to have guys on our team.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
This is a business that goes in the homes and
you can't go there.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Exactly exactly, although we were deemed as a necessary business,
right yeah, so there was no issue with us actually
getting into the homes. But you know, hiring is always
going to be difficult. Not only do we need to
hire people that have the years of experience because we
don't have a training program that teaches them eleven hundred
different things. But they have to be a good communicator
(15:34):
as well and good with customers because this is all
about the experience now twenty twenty. Add onto that that
now you have to wear masks and bring hand sanitizer
with you and all these other different elements. That is
very difficult to manage throughout that time period, but is
necessary to keep the customer comfortable.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Oh, I couldn't imagine. We talked about a large variety
of topics. Is there anything else that we miss that
you want people to know about as handyman services?
Speaker 3 (16:00):
I think the biggest thing is finding a home ally
or that go to person before a problem occurs.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
So I go back to that.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Hey, if you have an issue, you go on Washington
County What's going On group and you may be in
a rush, so you just find a guy and you
hire a guy. We do the one off jobs. There's
some times that we only do maybe one job for
a customer, but it's very rare.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
We like to build those relationships the same way.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
If you scratch your vehicle or anything like that, and
you say, I know a guy, I got Bob. It
lowers that level of stress because you know someone's going
to take care of you. So that's my biggest tip
is to just find someone that you can rely on
before a problem occurs.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
And if somebody wants more information on your business, where
they go.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Yep, you can check us out on our website, Acehandymanservices
dot com.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Brian McMahon of ACE Handyman Services and definitely a CEO
you should Know. Thank you so much, Brian, Thank you, Johnny.
This has been the CEOs you Should Know podcast, showcasing
businesses that are driving our regional economy. Part of iHeartMedia's
commitment to the communities we serve. Johnny Heartwell, thank you
so much for listening.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
M
And welcome man. This is the CEOs You Should Know podcast.
I'm your host, Johnny Hartwell, let's say hello to Brian
McMahon of ACE Handyman Services. Thank you for joining me.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Yeah, thanks for having me, Johnny.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
So tell us everything we need to know about your business.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
So. Our company has been around for twenty one years.
We used to be known as Handyman Matters, but in
twenty twenty partnered up with ACE Hardware and so we
became Ace Handyman Services. So nothing really changed there outside
of the fact that our branding changed. But for those
twenty one years, we've been serving our customers as what
we call a home ally, so the first call for
(00:41):
anything they need home service related.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
And what makes you different than maybe other handyman services.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Yeah, so you'll often see whenever someone needs something done,
they might go into something like the Washington County What's
going On group and they say, hey, I'm in search
of a plumber, and you get ninety different comments from
different people.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
You don't know who's trustworthy.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
There's a lot of people out there that can show
up and they can do a quick job, and they
can do it well. But what we really try and
build with our customer base is trust and loyalty from
the first call to the final walkthrough, good communication, of course,
all the things that everyone taughts, license, bonded, insured, background checked.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
And services. What kind of services do you provide?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
We do over eleven hundred different things. So we can
do drywall, painting, carpentry, wood wod doors, we can do windows,
we can do flooring, minor plumbing. Mine are electrical things
within our insurance as well as a different licensure as well.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
All right, so when did you get into the business.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Yeah, so twenty twenty is whenever I actually purchased the business.
My aunt and uncle owned this for sixteen years from
two thousand and four and they were looking to retire.
They asked me if i'd be interested, and I was
very interested. So since I was a kid, I've always
been intrigued with doing handyman stuff with my dad, with
my uncle John, we'd be doing a lot of bigger
(02:02):
projects as well. But also realized that a lot of
these companies want the bigger jobs, so that's where we
kind of found our niche of the smaller jobs. So
I took that over, saying, hey, I've never run a
home service company in my entire life. Let's do it,
and here I am today.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
What were you doing prior?
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Yeah, So right out of college, I got a finance
degree and I said, let's use that finance degree and
I went into the health and fitness field. So for
four and a half five years, I was doing online training,
I had my own supplement line, and I was looking
for a career change rate at the time that my
uncle actually reached out and said that they were looking
(02:40):
to retire.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
So are you an entrepreneur at heart?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
I am.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
I always tell this story. I want to say it
first started in seventh grade. I was selling gum. So
kids would always come up to me and they'd ask
me for gum. And after a while it was like, Okay,
I recognized that there's demand and I have the supply,
so I would My mom actually took me to Sam's Club.
We bought one hundred and fifty dollars of gum, and
(03:08):
I even got a niche product that Joe Energy gum,
and so I sold I sold it for Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
You knew you had to do you had to deliver
something a little different.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Absolutely, yes, and so I yeah, it sure was.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
So I sold a stick of gum for a quarter
of stick and three dollars a pack. And that went
on for about a week and we made one hundred
and fifty dollars worth of profit. And when I say we,
I made up some contracts for some people and friends
and they were our subcontractors, and they went out and
they sold gum for me as well too. This this
(03:45):
escalated very fast, and it's funny. My dad would say,
I had this little ATM and i'd have it at home,
and he knew what I was doing, and he went
in there and he opened the ATM and he said,
I just saw these this wat of cash and I
started thinking, and oh, this is not good. And that's
when eventually I got called into the principal's office and
(04:05):
they said, hey, you know, you can't do this, and
I said, I'm sorry. I didn't realize this was I
couldn't do it, and I shut it down. But again,
after all that, I paid my mom back for all
the gum, and then I had one hundred and fifty
dollars in my pocket.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
You can go walk into the bank. I'd like to
get a you know, hey, helldon for this gum company
that I so I was reading your bio on the
Ashandymanservices dot com website, and I noticed one line it
says I'm a little weird. Is that true?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
I didn't write that.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Yeah, yeah, I am a little weird. I'm I'm that
guy that I really enjoy systems and processes and I
really enjoy creating experience for customers that doesn't really require
them to lift a finger. So a lot of those
things that give people's headaches, that's the stuff that actually
revs my engine.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Really, So that doesn't make you weird though.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Well, it just depends on who's judging. I guess.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Oh, okay, tell me about your team. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
So one thing that has helped us stand out over
the years is that we can minimize turnover a lot,
and we do that through company culture. So my office manager,
Tammy now has been with us going on eleven years.
My general manager same thing, eleven years. We have a
craftsman that's been with us for ten and then multiple
guys for three years plus.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
So they were with your family prior to this, and
so during the transition you were able to maintain that continuity.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Yes, yeah, that was definitely a difficulty because, as you
can imagine a handyman, they're going to have years of
experience right under their belt. And I was twenty eight
years old when I took over the company. So just
imagine being that guy that's been with a company for
that many years seeing a twenty eight year old come
in and say, hey, now I'm your boss. So there
was definitely that level of difficulty to get past that
(05:59):
and basically say that I am here to work just
like you are. I want to continue to grow and
figure out how we can constantly improve year of a year.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
And so what kind of improvements Once you took over,
what kind of improvements did you see that you could accomplish.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Yeah, so a lot of this comes back to that
weird aspect of I love the systems and the processes.
I like going into something finding any level of inefficiency
and improving that. One thing that I did recognize going
into this was just because you can improvement, you can
improve it, does not mean that you should improve it.
(06:34):
There's also an element of employee satisfaction and changing too
many things at once. But one of the biggest things
that I did whenever we went in was we utilized
more of our softwares. And one thing I implemented was
a CRM Customer relationship management software so that we can
actually track the customer journey from the first call to
us actually completing the job, so that no one slips
(06:56):
through the cracks.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
What kind of feedback are you getting from customer since
you've taken.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Over, Really no different feedback because this was not a
I didn't go in and buy a job. I bought
a business. So oftentimes if you go and look on
Google or Angie or Porch or rate a bus and
you see all of our reviews, most of the time
you're not going to see someone reviewing and saying Brian
was great, It's gonna be Steve was fantastic, Dan was fantastic,
(07:22):
Tammy was so nice on the phone. Pat came out
estimated my job. That's our team, and so I'm more
behind the scenes on that team rather than forward facing
showing customers it's me. It's me, it's me. It's the
standards and processes we put in place that create the experience.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Tell us about your marketing strategy.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Yeah, so being in business for twenty one years, you
could probably keep one two trucks busy without doing any
different type of marketing. But we also do some of
the basics. We do Angie, we do Thumbtack, Google, pay
per Click, We've tried a lot of different other avenues.
We've done print, and then we also do some level
of outbound whether we call previous customers just to see
(08:01):
if there's anything they can use help with, as well
as different email.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Campaigns and what has been most successful for you.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
It's really hard to pinpoint, so it's kind of a
combination of everything where you might look at something like
Angie and Thumbtack and you could see that maybe the
close rate on those leads are a lot lower, but
the return it could be a lot higher. So it's
not just actually putting our money and our efforts into
one avenue. It's diversifying our marketing strategy and finding that
(08:28):
we get a little bit from email, we get a
little bit from pay per click, we get a little
bit from Angie. But if I were to go back
to anything, it's going to be referrals and word of
mouth is always going to be the name of our game.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Tell us about Brian, Well, what do you want to know?
Speaker 1 (08:43):
What you want to tell us?
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Yeah, so I've said for so many years that I'm
a jack of all trades, master of none.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
I love my hobbies.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
I love finding something new that maybe I'm not great
at and becoming the best at it. And I had
realized in college that it's okay to not be the
best at everything as long as you're enjoying your life.
So when I was younger, no matter what it was,
if I was bad at and I worked very very
hard to be the best. Then I realized, I'm not
(09:13):
real good at geography. I'm not great at understanding cars
and automobiles. But I had friends that were, and so
that's where I said, Okay, maybe I just need to
surround myself with those types of people that kind of
fill in my gaps there. But I do a lot
of different things. I love doing my own home projects,
build a bar in my basement. I love doing homebrew.
(09:36):
I started that a few years back and have just
just love spending my weekends doing that. Anything that kind
of keeps me going and brings joy to my life. Home.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Oh okay, I'm not going to let you off the
hook here. Homebrew, what kind of how did that hobby start?
And what do you specialize it? What do you what
kind of brewed do you prefer Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
So my wife and I we really love New England IPAs.
And so probably about five years ago I got intrigued
by it, and my brother was actually saying, I'm going
to make one, and you make one, and let's see
who does it better. Okay, And at that time I
didn't really want to get into it. I didn't have
the capacity he made. Someone was like, yeah, this is
(10:19):
a lot of work.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
I'm not doing this.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
And about two years later, my wife took me to
a brewery in Ohio and we toured the brewery and
I left and I was just inspired, and I did
the typical Brian thing.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
I'm like, I'm going to do it, and I'm going
to go big or go home.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
So I got all the equipment, I got everything set up,
and I made my first New England ipa. And they
always say, whenever you're starting with homebrew, start with extracts,
or start with what they call a smash, a single
malt or a single hop. And I said, yeah, I'm
not going to do that. I'm going to go with
one of the most complex beers as my first one.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
I did it.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
I did my research and I got a lot of
really great feedback from it.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
I love My wife loved that you personally, you personally
liked it?
Speaker 2 (11:02):
I did, Yeah, I actual absolutely did.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Of course, I'm going to be hard on myself and
say I think this could be better, or why is
that color you know a deeper amber than what it
should be?
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Blah blah blah.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
So are you able to get a consistent brew every time?
Speaker 3 (11:15):
I am Yeah, So I do like to diversify my bruise.
It gets a little bit boring making the same thing
over and over again. But there are certain ones that
you go back to, like a specific New England IPA
that I absolutely love, and the way that I do
that goes back to the systems and processes. So a
lot of people will say, no, just put a little
bit of this and a little bit of that, and.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
I don't like it.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
I want to know, down to the gram or down
to the ounce what I'm doing. I want to know
how long I boiled this for or how long I
mashed for, so that the next time, if I want
to make a tweak, I can go on a strong
foundation and I can make that adjustment.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Do you have aspirations of coming up with a brewery. No, Okay,
that's a step too far. All right, what are the
hobbies do you have? Yeah, so, well, I know you
have a nineteen month old, so that's probably keeping you
busy these days.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Yeah, She's definitely one of my biggest hobbies. But yeah,
I mean anything that is something new I always kind
of get sucked into. But yeah, doing the handyman stuff.
I used to detail cars whenever I was younger, so
I kind of always have that aspect. I love anything
that's cleaning or analytical based. I like building different things
(12:24):
online as well too, like AI agents. Anything that's a
little bit different that I feel like has a learning
curve that I could absolutely obtain.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Then that's what I'm attracted to doing.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
All right. When it comes to the business, what's your
plan in five years, ten years, what's your future plans
for this particular business.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Yeah, so, really, our vision is always going to be
around deepening the customer relationship as well as improving our
company internally. So you'll always hear this that the customer
comes first, and that is absolutely something that we leave in. However,
if our employees are unhappy, the company is in a
bad financial situation, we can't take care of our customers
(13:06):
and so whenever I took over, I really really focused
on our team, and I wanted to make sure that
people were happy, people were heard in our team. So,
whether we're deeping into that customer relationship by improving our
company culture or our team, or simply hearing feedback from
our from our customers on maybe a different service or
a different way that we can do things, we always
(13:28):
want to be focusing on trust over our transactions so
that we can continue to be that home I live.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
How about you? But I listened to a lot of
podcasts and a lot of sports podcasts, and quite frequently
especially NFL players. Are you a football fan?
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Okay, you'll hear other players asking other NFL players what
was your welcome to the NFL moment? You know, whereas
you know, they're on the field and they you know,
they get hit by you know some you know, some
super star or whatever. So what was your welcome to
the business moment? Was there one moment that you went wow?
(14:08):
That was that was something I didn't expect from.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
A good or bad either way. Yeah, I would say
going into the business from the very beginning, being twenty
eight years old, you do your due diligence. The way
a twenty eight year old would do their due diligence.
And I don't regret a single thing that I did,
But it was a dive in head first and figure
this out as you go along. On the surface and
(14:35):
going through the different trainings and everything, everything on paper
sounds good, but whenever you're actually managing the guys and
you're managing the different calls and the customers, you really
start to understand what it takes to create a good business.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Next thing you hear there's a snowstorm and everything is
you know, up in the air, and you got trucks
stranded everywhere. Yeah, everything else.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Well, and not only that, but I mean I took
this business over in late August of twenty twenty and
so right in the middle of the COVID era. And
not only do we need to have guys on our team.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
This is a business that goes in the homes and
you can't go there.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Exactly exactly, although we were deemed as a necessary business,
right yeah, so there was no issue with us actually
getting into the homes. But you know, hiring is always
going to be difficult. Not only do we need to
hire people that have the years of experience because we
don't have a training program that teaches them eleven hundred
different things. But they have to be a good communicator
(15:34):
as well and good with customers because this is all
about the experience now twenty twenty. Add onto that that
now you have to wear masks and bring hand sanitizer
with you and all these other different elements. That is
very difficult to manage throughout that time period, but is
necessary to keep the customer comfortable.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Oh, I couldn't imagine. We talked about a large variety
of topics. Is there anything else that we miss that
you want people to know about as handyman services?
Speaker 3 (16:00):
I think the biggest thing is finding a home ally
or that go to person before a problem occurs.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
So I go back to that.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Hey, if you have an issue, you go on Washington
County What's going On group and you may be in
a rush, so you just find a guy and you
hire a guy. We do the one off jobs. There's
some times that we only do maybe one job for
a customer, but it's very rare.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
We like to build those relationships the same way.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
If you scratch your vehicle or anything like that, and
you say, I know a guy, I got Bob. It
lowers that level of stress because you know someone's going
to take care of you. So that's my biggest tip
is to just find someone that you can rely on
before a problem occurs.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
And if somebody wants more information on your business, where
they go.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Yep, you can check us out on our website, Acehandymanservices
dot com.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Brian McMahon of ACE Handyman Services and definitely a CEO
you should Know. Thank you so much, Brian, Thank you, Johnny.
This has been the CEOs you Should Know podcast, showcasing
businesses that are driving our regional economy. Part of iHeartMedia's
commitment to the communities we serve. Johnny Heartwell, thank you
so much for listening.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
M
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Fudd Around And Find Out
UConn basketball star Azzi Fudd brings her championship swag to iHeart Women’s Sports with Fudd Around and Find Out, a weekly podcast that takes fans along for the ride as Azzi spends her final year of college trying to reclaim the National Championship and prepare to be a first round WNBA draft pick. Ever wonder what it’s like to be a world-class athlete in the public spotlight while still managing schoolwork, friendships and family time? It’s time to Fudd Around and Find Out!