The $3 Million Shutdown That Saved My Business - Teddy Slack Jr - Profit & Grit with Tyler

Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_02 (00:01):
My grandfather installed the oil tanks.
I built the companies thatpulled them out.
Four generations of lessonstaught me how to turn chaos into
profit.

SPEAKER_00 (00:10):
Welcome to Profit and Grit with Tyler, where blue
collar owners and insiders spillthe real story behind their
hustle, building businesses thatthrive through sweat and smarts.
We'll dig into their journeysfrom scaling chaos to growing
the bottom line with lessons andgrit that pay off big.
Here's your host, the BlueCollar CFO, Tyler Martin.

SPEAKER_01 (00:33):
Hey, welcome back to another episode of Profit and
Grit.
This is Tyler.
Today we've got someone who'slived the full cycle of
blue-collar business.
Failure, rebuild, and the bigexit.
Teddy Slack Jr.
is a fourth-generationentrepreneur who has started
five service businesses, eachscaling into seven figures

(00:57):
within the first year.
He built simple tank servicesinto a$4 million business with
profit margins north of 40%.
Pretty good numbers.
He sold it for a 5x multiple,and he now runs Modern
Contractor, where he helps othertrades owners build lean
transferable companies.

(01:18):
Teddy also sits behindbizscore.ai.
This is a financial health toolfor service businesses.
And he's writing his book,Profit Driven Growth.
So this conversation is abouthitting rock bottom, clawing
your way back, and buildingsystems to set you free.
Let's get into it and talk toTeddy now.

(01:42):
Hey Teddy, welcome to theProphet and Grit Show.
How are you doing?
I'm good, Tyler.
How are you doing?
Good, good, man.
I'm I'm so happy to have youhere.
I want to learn about you as uhwe're introducing you to the
audience.
What do you do professionally?

SPEAKER_02 (01:53):
So currently I'm doing some coaching right now,
some consulting in the homeservice business.
So, you know, dealing withdifferent uh companies such as
roofing, I'm doing plumbers, Ihave some, you know, other
environmental companies Iconsult with, you know,
basically anything in homeservice businesses.

SPEAKER_01 (02:07):
Yeah, and you're like the blue-collar man to me.
Like when we say blue collar,like, you know, some of your
businesses, I believe you've hadfive businesses, five service
businesses.
I'm like pretty hardcore oiltype industries of some hardcore
blue collar.
Is that a fair statement?

SPEAKER_02 (02:23):
It is.
I mean, yeah, I come from that,you know, third generation.
I grew up in it, you know,operating heavy equipment as a
young boy, you know, dealingwith dirt and and oil and you
know, hazardous materials.
I just grew up around that.
So that's what I know.

SPEAKER_01 (02:34):
That's very cool.
What about something on apersonal note?
Anything you can share aboutyourself?

SPEAKER_02 (02:38):
Yeah.
So I have seven children, whichshocks people.
Yes.
Uh and we have a four-month-old,and our oldest is uh 15.
So it's a it's a wide range, butwe could we come from a blended
family and there's seven of uhseven kids.

SPEAKER_01 (02:51):
So that's a lot of kids.
So my partner many years ago,the business we were in, he was
raising five kids, and I wouldhear all the stories of you
know, ones in baseball, ones indance, ones in I can only
imagine seven.
That's a whole nother level.

SPEAKER_02 (03:06):
I I have a 12-passenger sprinter van.
I call it the bus, and that'show I get them around.

SPEAKER_01 (03:12):
Wow.
That must be uh a lot of whenyou got a handful of kids in
there, I imagine that's a prettyinteresting ride.
Yes, it is.
Yeah, that's funny.
Okay, hey, I want to start outwith what I call your rock
bottom moment.
And I I'm going back to 2018,and you made one decision that
you know some might say a baddecision.

(03:32):
Can you talk about that and howthat played out?

SPEAKER_02 (03:34):
Yeah, absolutely.
So going up to this point, Imean, I grew up, like I said,
third generation.
I grew up in a family business.
I started a residential divisionwith my father in the he was in
environmental business foryears, for 35 years, but he was
doing commercial environmentalwork, not really much
residential.
So out of college, he's like,Hey, do you want to start a
residential division?
So I said, sure.
I got that up and going.
That scaled pretty quickly.

(03:54):
I had no experience of scalingcompanies at that point.
I mean, I built the website, thelogo just from scratch, and that
scaled to seven figures withinthe first 12 months.
And I ran that for five years.
And unfortunately, it's verydifficult working for family, as
a lot of people listening mightknow.
Uh, and uh, so we decided topart our ways back in 2009.
I went off on my own.
The same thing, start the sameexact type of business, scale

(04:16):
that to seven figures veryquickly.
And unfortunately, if you scaleany business uh from scratch and
you're you know successful at itright away, as a young man, I
was 28 years old, it got to myhead, right?
So I was like, I could do thiswith anything, you know, like in
your sleep.
Exactly.
I can do this in my sleep.
Business is so simple.
What it's really not.
I mean, you know, so once Istart going all these different
directions, I started a hazmatspill response company, which

(04:38):
did well.
It did millions of dollars ofrevenue, you know, year one.
And uh, you know, then I wentinto a door knocking business in
the Bronx with a friend of minefrom college.
Then I went into real estate.
I flipped 24 houses in 24months.
I mean, scaled like quick stuff.
So, and and I'm doing all thisstuff simultaneously.
And then uh I had an issue withthe the hazmat spill response
company that I was running forabout five years around 2018,

(04:59):
and uh I had to shut it down.
So that division was generatingabout three million in revenue,
and I start to panic because I'mlike, I'm losing all that
revenue, even though thebusiness wasn't profitable at
this time, it's still moneycoming in, it's still cash flow,
right?
So still paying bills.
So once I shut it down, Ipanicked.
And my CFO at the time, who wasin-house and he was like,
Listen, I have a connection withthese guys out in Ohio, they are

(05:19):
working around the frackingindustry, they have contracts
with public key traded companiesdoing fracking.
They want you to buy the trucksand just they have all the guys
to drive the trucks.
All you gotta do is rent afacility, get the equipment, and
we have the contracts in place.
So at this point, I've scaled somany companies bootstrapped with
no personal guarantee, no loansor anything.
But this in particular needed amillion dollars in equipment.
And I didn't have a milliondollars in cash.

(05:41):
So I was like, Well, uh, let mesee what I can do.
And I went out and I gotapproved off the balance sheet
of my main company.
They're like, Yeah, you got agood company here.
I'll give you the loan.
So I did that.
I got a personal guarantee on amillion dollars equipment.
We got into the uh businessright away, making money.
I mean, 300 grand in revenuemonth.
Number one, we were doing 300grand revenue.
But the problem was it's 24-7.

(06:02):
So the bills are coming in fast,faster than I could ever
imagine.
And uh, I didn't have cash,enough cash behind me to keep
the feeding the beast, right?
So uh I tried to go get loans,and as you know, brand new
business, they're like, Yeah,you're not we're not, you know,
we're not gonna loan you anymoney.
So I turned to factoring, whichyou probably know it's not a
good idea.
Yeah, this bad idea.
So I I turned to them, and whatI didn't understand about

(06:24):
factoring at the time, and now Iknow obviously, is they don't
look at your credit, right?
They look at your customers'credit because they're basically
giving you money on theinvoices.
So, and I'm figuring, well,they're publicly traded
companies, they must be havegreat credit.
Well, long story short, theydidn't have great credit, and I
needed about 150 grand just topay the bills every month, and
they would only approve me for50,000 a month.
And I just couldn't come up with100 grand a month to keep it

(06:46):
keep feeding the beast.
And now looking back at it, Iyou know, because I've gone
through it, I've there's otheroptions I could entertain at the
time, and I just didn't have it.
I didn't know.
At that time, I wasn't readingbooks, I didn't educate myself
about business, I didn't have anetwork of people that I have
now.
So I wind up just shutting itdown and they had come for
everything.
I mean, personal guarantee, theydon't mess around, you know?

SPEAKER_01 (07:04):
Wow.
So so hold on, because there'sso much to unpackage here.
Okay, first on factoring.
Yeah, let's talk about that alittle bit because nowadays they
don't always call it factoring.
They kind of have differentterms for it.
And I even forget the term.
So you got to kind of keep yourguard guard up if anybody is
listening out there.
Basically, you give an invoice,and we'll call it a bank, but a
lot of times it's like someprivate company.

(07:25):
You give them the invoice, youthe invoice hasn't been paid
yet.
Yep, and then the thatinstitution will give you a
percentage of the money, thebusiness.
It might be 70%, it might be80%, it just depends.
The minute you get paid, thatthat payment goes to them.
Or in the olden days, which isprobably even your before your
time, Teddy, what would happenis the the customer would send
you the check, the business, andit was your job to remit it back

(07:48):
to the institution.
Well, what would happen manyyears ago is sometimes you're
cash starved, and that checkwould get deposited into the
business.
And now you're double in thewhole you owe for the invoice
and you got paid by the customerand you're out of cash.
I will tell you this, Teddy.
I have seen one scenario in myentire career where it worked.
Yeah, and it was actually theone business that I went into,

(08:10):
and it wasn't when I was at thebusiness, it was before it.
They used it in the first year,it was a staffing firm and they
had giant invoices that were onnet 60, and they were paying
labor, the consultants, to billthe client, but they and then
they were paying the payroll,but they weren't getting the
billings until later.
And that allowed them to bridgethe gap to growth where they had

(08:31):
enough profit.
But the margin of error is smallbecause if something goes wrong,
you're dead, right?
So, so my question was what wasthe, and sorry for getting off
on that tangent, but it'spassionate to me.
No, it's okay.
What were your like your biglearning lessons from that
failure?
Like what if you had to do ado-over, what would you have not
have done and what would you dodifferently?

SPEAKER_02 (08:50):
So for me, I mean, uh, you know, not knowing where
to turn, right?
So I could have brought inequity partners.
I had the contracts.
I mean, I had amazing contractswith these publicly traded
companies.
I had the equipment, I had themanpower, I had the facility I
rented for the year.
I mean, I had everythingaligned.
If I would have had a network ofpeople that I could have turned
to, I probably could havebrought an equity partner and

(09:10):
say, hey, I'll give you 50%.
Just be the cash partner in thisdeal.
I just need 150 grand a monthand to keep the beast going, I
had the money coming in.
So there's things I could havedone.
But at that point in my careerin business, I did everything
through hustle and grit, youknow, and uh I did, you know,
with the show Profit and Grit,it was hustle and grit at the
time.
I didn't know anything aboutbusiness except for just what I
was taught, you know, from myfather who was super old school.

(09:32):
And he did it, he started outwith zero two and grew with the
business he grew.
And, you know, when I start whenI crashed and burned, everything
crashed and burned, I startreading, right?
And that's where I startedlearning a lot of things.
And that's where I startthinking, like, damn, I could
have done this different, Icould do that different.
You know, so educating yourselfabout business and it doesn't
take much, you know, listeningto podcasts like this, you know,
reading books about different,you know, avenues of business,

(09:53):
whether that's marketing,operations, sales, and you could
learn so much because they justdon't teach in college.
I went to college and I didn'tlearn anything about how to run
a business in college.
I just didn't.

SPEAKER_01 (10:00):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Teddy, one thing though, youknow, I do agree with you.
Like you did great.
You had multiple businesses.
Now you're in a great situationwith this next business.
Was it all just about not havingthe experience?
Or do you think part of it wasego too?
Because it sounds like thingscame to you pretty quickly.
You're obviously really good atwhat you do.
So, do you think ego played intothat?

SPEAKER_02 (10:20):
100%.
Like I said before, I mean, at28 years old, you know, I
generated a million three inrevenue within like 12 months,
like from scratch.
That can get to your head, youknow, and you can, and
especially when you've neverdone it before, it's like, holy
shit.
And then you do it again asecond time.
So it really got to my head.
So absolutely ego and yousometimes you just need to get
ego checked in life.
I mean, and it it really what itdid to for me after 2018 is when

(10:42):
I went back to my main business,the residential tank services,
and we revamped and restartedsimple tank services.
I mean, we had no debt.
I had took no loans.
We and we very slowly andmethodically grew that business
to the point where we looked anddialed in every single number.
I mean, I owed nobody any money.
The vendors were paid ahead oftime to save percentages off.

(11:02):
I mean, we did everything, Ibelieve, the right way.
And it was a whole differenttype of way of running business.
Where before that time, I wouldtake a loan for anything.
If you would give me a loan andI could grow, I'll give you the
loan.
Let's go, let's go.
It was just grow, grow, grow.
And you, you know, as you know,you could get yourself in
trouble, you know?

SPEAKER_01 (11:16):
Yeah, for sure.
Okay.
And then one other thing beforeI wrap up this segment, I want
to go back to a comment that youmade.
You had a business with yourfamily and it didn't work.
I think there's a learninglesson in there because a lot of
home service businesses arefamily.
Yeah.
You know, you have a son, you'llhave mother doing the off basket
office work or whatever.
There's a lot of family.
What was your takeaway from thatfalling out in your family

(11:38):
event?
Did that spill into yourpersonal relationships with your
family?
Talk us through that a littlebit.

SPEAKER_02 (11:43):
Yeah, sure.
So when I started that divisioninside of my father's business,
at that time, my mother wasinvolved in the business as
well.
She did all the bookkeeping.
She had done that for myfather's whole life.
So my mother helped me, youknow, with the bookkeeping
aspect of it.
And we just uh what I did is Istarted very slowly, same thing.
Like I didn't have guys oranything like that.
But my father would let me usehis guys, and I went out and I
did the marketing and I got thephone to ring.
And very slowly we grew that anduh we put we stashed some profit

(12:05):
away and we start investing intoequipment.
So we did it very methodically,and that's how I learned how to
kind of bootstrap essentially.
It was my first kind of forayinto bootstrapping a business.
And um, unfortunately, my motherpassed away in 2008 of cancer,
and uh yeah, it was it was atough time for the family, and
uh, she was a big part of thefamily business that you know,
and you know, things kind ofjust start to go sideways.

(12:26):
My father wind up leaving thebusiness, he had to deal with
hate without he had to deal withuh, you know, with the passing
and everything like that.
And uh then he came back afterbeing gone for a year, and then
me and him just went at itbecause it was like, Hey, I've
been here for a year, you left,and I got this thing run, it's
humming right now.
And then he, you know, it wasjust like two masculine, you
know, you were just two type outper a personalities like going
at it, like, you know, and he'svery old school, and I'm more

(12:47):
new school, where again at thetime I'm like leverage
everything, let's grow, grow,grow.
Uh top line revenue.
That's all I cared about.
My father's like, slow down, youknow what I mean?
Like, you know, so I probablyshould have listened to my
father at the time, right?
I mean, absolutely, that was alesson that I took.
I should have to listen to him alittle bit more on that front.
And uh, yeah, it's just reallydifficult uh working for family
because then yeah, it does spillinto personal.

(13:07):
Unfortunately, him and I didn'tspeak for almost four years
after that breakup there.
But now we're best friends, weare closer than we ever were,
you know, and we talk almostevery morning.
So we have a great relationship.

SPEAKER_01 (13:18):
Yeah.
One thing I want to share withyou because I can relate to you.
So I lost my dad last year.
Oh, so are you there?
When I lost him, it kind ofchanged the family dynamics a
little bit.
And then literally two weeksago, I lost my mother.
She was 88, she was older.
But it's funny how you know, youhave family members, and in your
case, maybe your mom, they'rekind of the fabric of keep

(13:38):
keeping the family together, thesiblings and everyone.
And it's I'm going through thatphase right now where the over
the last couple of years thingshave really dramatically changed
in terms of, you know, you justalways go to moms, for example,
for Christmas, and that doesn'thappen anymore.
And it's just keeping that alltogether.
So sorry to hear about yourloss.
I'm kind of in the samesituation.
Sorry to hear that too, man.
Anyway, it's never good.

(13:58):
It never is.
It's hard, but it just, youknow, it gets to be time in
life.
Sometimes, unfortunately, thingslike this happen.
Yep.
Okay.
So I want to go over now to theturning point.
So we we talked about the rockbottom.
Yep.
And I'm talking mostly aboutlaunching simple tank services.
You went into like a fixedpricing model, and that industry
is generally known as being ashading industry.

(14:20):
So talk to me about how did thatbecome a differentiator?
What moves were you making whereyou were like, man, this is a
turning point that's reallytaking off?

SPEAKER_02 (14:28):
Yeah.
So uh for that businessspecifically, I wind up
partnering with somebody who wasin the industry.
He had been in the industry foralmost 35 years.
But again, old school mentality,you know, he never really grew
beyond like, you know, I thinkfour or five hundred thousand
top line revenue at the time.
And my previous business, whichwas the same exact business, um,
qualified tank services.
I mean, we we topped out at liketwo and a half, three million.

(14:50):
So I was used to getting, youknow, decent amount of revenue
in that industry, anyways.
Again, it's a very, it's veryintricate business.
So in that business, uh,unfortunately, like you said,
there's a lot of shadycharacters.
You know, the way that they dothe pricing forever since I got,
I mean, I've been in it since2000.
My father was in it for yearsbefore that, but more mainly
commercial.
But the way it works is this.
So you're dealing withunderground oil tanks,

(15:11):
everything's underground.
So there's a lot of unknowns.
We don't know how big your tankis.
We don't know, and there's norecords on town of these tanks
were put in in the 30s, 40s, and50s.
The townships don't haverecords.
So there's a lot of unknownstuff that you're dealing with.
And then once you open it up andyou remove the tanks, a lot of
times there are environmentalimpacts into the ground.
And again, we don't know how farthe contamination traveled.
That's like the whole story theytell, which is true.

(15:32):
It is the God's honest truth.
You don't know how far thecontamination has traveled.
But most of the contractorswould lean on that and they
would tell a customer, Hey,yeah, I'll do this for you know,
eight grand, starts at eightgrand.
I don't know what it's gonna beat the end of the job, but it's
gonna start at eight.
So now you got a homeowner who'ssigning off on a blank check,
essentially, like, hmm, let megive this guy eight grand, just
trust that it maybe it's gonnafall around 10, 12 grand.

(15:53):
But sometimes they'd come backat 40, 50, 80, 100 plus thousand
dollars to do a cleanup.
So you start at eight and it cango into six figures within three
days.
I mean, I'm talking three days,I could give you a bill for 100
grand.
I mean, it's crazy how it wouldwork.
So customers didn't like that,obviously.
Who would the hex would whowould like that, right?
And I knew what my customers'pain points were, and they would
always tell me, Can't you justgive me a price?
Can't you give me this price?

(16:14):
So, in the in the commercialenvironmental industry, they
have what's called the geoprobeand they go out there and they
do what's called a soilinvestigation and it's called a
delineation, and they wouldcharge upwards of 4,500 bucks to
investigate a property.
So, hypothetically, if you'regonna buy a commercial property
in New Jersey, anyways, you haveto do this investigative work,
and it's about$4,500.
Well, no homeowner is gonnaspend$4,500 on doing this work

(16:35):
ahead of time.
But what I did is I went out andbought the equipment and I
invested in the equipment, andthen I trained my guys and I
basically cut all the servicesthat are required to do that,
except for the actualinvestigative work.
So I didn't include anysampling, I didn't include any
reporting, like all the stuffthat added up to 4,500.
And I said, I'll do this for 600bucks.
I just came down to like what mytrue cost was.
I'm like, it's basically a costdriver for me, just cover my

(16:58):
cost, but now I could give you afixed price.
So now for me, it was like, hey,I could go in there and I could
drill around and I could tellthe customer, hey, this is gonna
be 17,500 bucks, and that's it,no matter what.
If my investigation is wrong,you're still gonna pay 17.5.
If it's right, and maybe I havea little bit of a uh, you know,
uh insurance factor in therewhere it's a little bit padded,
then I do well, right?
And sometimes I did really welland sometimes I didn't.

(17:19):
But uh overall, when you ran thenumbers, it worked out, so it
was amazing.
Nobody else in the industry wasoffering it, so the customers
couldn't price shot me.
They would come and be like,Well, I'm gonna go price this
around.
Like, no one else is offeringthis, so good luck.
You know, if you want a fixedprice, and I would give them the
option.
If you don't want a fixed price,we could go open-ended too, but
then you take all the risk andliability where I'm taking all
the risk and liability on thisfixed price item.

(17:41):
And uh the customers loved it,they absolutely loved it, and it
was very profitable for me.

SPEAKER_01 (17:45):
How much were you qualifying?
Because to me, it's like 600bucks for a lead.
You're you know, that's yourcost of acquisition.
How much were you qualifyingthem, or what were you doing?
Was it anybody that expressedinterest you'd go and do that,
or did you kind of was therecertain criteria that you had
before you'd invest 600 bucks,basically?

SPEAKER_02 (18:00):
Yeah, so they'd have to sign the contract and uh for
the 600 investigation, we go outthere and I'd have to bring that
equipment out there, we woulddrill down and do the
investigation, and then I'd givethem the price.
And sometimes they didn't signon, but at least the 600 covered
my cost to do thatinvestigation.
Yeah, so you were break-evenguy.
Yeah, exactly.
Yep.
But the the other thing, so thatwas for the remediation aspect
of the business.
The other thing that I changedwas the the tank removals was

(18:21):
what increased my closing cost,my closing percentage.
So, for example, again, it wasopen-ended.
So they call, I have a550-gallon tank.
Okay, where is it?
It's in my front lawn.
Again, it's like, all right,well, it starts at 1200, and
then these line items that go updepending on permits, disposal
costs, uh, access issues, blah,blah, blah, blah.
And then before you know it,it's$2,500 to pull your tank.
So I went out there and Ilooked.

(18:42):
What I did is I ran all thenumbers.
You'll like this CFO guy, right?
I ran all the numbers and Iliterally put them in an Excel
sheet.
I'm like, all right, so over thelast 120 days, I looked at how
many additional line items wecharge for, and I came up with
an average price.
I said, on average, we'recharging customers about 200.
So let's just throw it in there.
So I'm gonna make flat rate 1400bucks, and boom, my closing
percentage went from like 45% to75% because the customers were

(19:04):
like, same thing.
They couldn't price shot me.
They're like, nobody else isoffering flat rate.
I'm like, exactly.
Hire, you know, hire us.
It's one price.
I'll include the permits, Iinclude everything.
I mean, it blew my competitor'sminds.
They're like, you're gonna loseyour shirt.
You can't do this.
I'm like, lose my shirt.
My closing percentage went up30%.
I'm like, do the math on theaverage ticket.
I'm like, the amount of revenueI'm driving in this place right
now, it just was insane what Idid, right?

(19:26):
So and my competitors hate itnow.
They all have something similar,you know, that they're doing,
you know.

SPEAKER_01 (19:31):
So, what's the learning lesson here?
Because my takeaway is you wereokay.
And this is hard sometimes.
I think I see this in my ownpractice with owners, is to
accept that some deals aren'talways going to go your way.
But if you can look at the allof the deals and aggregate,
you're gonna be fine.
But I think a lot of times theyjust the one deal eats them up

(19:51):
of the loss more than the 20that are positive.
How did you deal with that?
Or is that just what you're inyour DNA?

SPEAKER_02 (19:58):
Well, so it's funny because I told you my partner
was old school, right?
So he was an older guy,gentlemen, he's been in the
business for 35 years.
When I tell you he fought metooth and nail every way with
every contract, like oh, wecould have got an extra$200 for
that.
It's under concrete.
I'm like, an extra$200.
I brought in$35,000 in revenuelast month.
You know how much extra$200 we'dhave to charge to get to that$35

(20:18):
grand.
But after I showed him thenumbers, I mean, he was an
accountant too by trade, sobefore he got into the
environmental business.
And I broke, I mean, it took memonths, but then I showed him,
like, I'm like, we literallywent at the time, I think we
were at like$2 million inrevenue, and almost overnight we
were at$4 million, like within12 months.
We doubled the revenue.
So he saw it and he's like, allright, he stopped complaining,
but yeah, he gave me a hardtime.
He did not want to do it becausehe had that problem.

(20:40):
Like you said, he he's like, Ican't comprehend it.
And I learned this from reading.
I don't know what book I read,but somebody's like, you know,
flat rate pricing, you know, youknow, you learn about this, your
closing percentage, yourcustomer acquisition costs, you
start learning about all thesethings.
You're like, holy shit, now youcan start tweaking your business
like this.
And it's like you startthinking, like, well, how can I
improve these numbers?
And that's what I did.
I start really dialing in on theprofit because the profit is
what drives the value of thebusiness.

(21:00):
And ultimately, that's what wewere doing.
We were growing the business tosell it.
So I wanted to really justhammer down on the profitability
of the business, you know.

SPEAKER_01 (21:07):
So so my number one lesson here would be because you
said it so well, is if someone'shaving trouble fee getting
comfortable about a flat feepricing, I'd say the number one
thing, and you said it, is lookat the data.
Have someone create data for youand show you the different
scenarios, and the numbers don'tlie.

SPEAKER_02 (21:24):
Yes, 100%.
It's all data driven.
And all the decisions I madewere all data driven.
I literally would not make adecision unless I had some kind
of data to back it up.
And then I needed to prove to mypartner at the time, like,
listen, look at this, look atthese numbers.
And then he would say, Allright.
But yet, if you're just throwingstuff at the wall and you don't
have the data to back it up, itbecomes hard to make those
decisions because you know, youwill lose money on this job,
maybe.
But again, overall, you look atit at the end, you're like, oh,

(21:45):
all right, my pro I mean, myseller's discretionary earnings
or EBITDA, however you want tocall it, was 43% of revenue.
I mean, that's unheard of inhome services.
Yeah.
I mean, and I wasn't involved inthe day-to-day.
Like I was literally out of theday.
I mean, it was crazy what I wasable to accomplish in like a
36-month period, you know?

SPEAKER_01 (22:00):
Because you answered one of my questions.
I can tell you're very revenuedriven.
I think that probably feeds youa little bit.
Like that excites you.
The problem is, you know, we allknow that saying, you know, top
line is vanity, revenue issanity.
Or I mean, sorry, top line issanity, bottom line is uh
sanity.
I'm saying that, I'm totallybotching that, but you know what
I mean.
So we tend to not look at thebottom line, but you just said
43%, which is insane uh bottomline.

(22:24):
When you first started that flatfee pricing, did you have some
loss?
Like, what if like the first onewas a loss?
Would you maybe have been like,hey, I'm not sure if this works,
or did you have some bad datawhen it first started out and
you just stuck with it?
Or how did that play outinitially?

SPEAKER_02 (22:39):
Yeah.
So uh I actually wrote a book.
It's coming out in September,hopefully on Amazon.
It's called Profit DrivenGrowth.
And it's literally just about,you know, profit.
And that's the main thing youshould be focusing on.
Because yes, I was that guy thatchased revenue top line, top
line, top line.
But I have clients right now.
I have a guy that's doing almost60 million in top line revenue,
and he can't take a paycheck outof his business.
So I don't care about top line,I care about profit, and I

(23:01):
really want to dial in on theprofits.
But yes, uh uh, what I did forme is I said, I need a 90-day
plan.
I want to see this over a 90-dayperiod, and then I'm gonna look
back at the data.
So I'm not gonna look at one-offjobs, right?
So, and and that's what my mypartner was doing.
He'd go and be like, Well, wecould have got 300 bucks for the
permit.
The town charge us$300.
So we actually did this job forlike 900 bucks.
I'm like, okay, that's fine.

(23:21):
Let's let's look at it in 90days.
And then we did.
And because my closingpercentage went up, so in the in
the tank business, yes, you'rein the oil tank business, right?
So we had to remove oil tanks,but that's not what we were
there to do.
Our real business wasenvironmental cleanups.
That's where the jobs were,that's where the profit is.
So the tank removals were likeloss leaders, right?
You're doing them just so youcould find more tanks that are

(23:41):
leaking, so you could have thosecleanups, right?
And I hate to say it because youdon't want anybody's tank to
leak.
It's a homeowner, you don't wantthem to have to pay for that,
but that's where the money is inthe business.
The money is not in pulling oiltanks, the money is in the
cleanups.
So you want to, in order to findthose cleanups, you have to pull
more tanks.
Well, how do you pull moretanks?
You increase your closing cost,your closing percentage.
So we went from 45% to 75%.

(24:03):
So if I was sending out ahundred proposals a month at an
average ticket of$3,000, I mean,you do start doing the math on
that.
I mean, it quickly your revenuegoes through the roof, you know?

SPEAKER_01 (24:11):
Yeah, but that's gold.
I don't want to gloss over that.
You because we we're all guiltyof this.
We tend to look at result byresult when we first start
something, the first few, and wemake decisions based off that.
You had the presence of mind togo, no, I'm gonna look at a fair
population of time, 90 days inthis case, and then I'm gonna
evaluate and either pivot,change, tweak, whatever it

(24:32):
takes, but I'm gonna make mydecision off a good amount of
data.

SPEAKER_02 (24:35):
Yes, 100%.
You have to.
And then I do that even now andtoday.
I mean, any kind of decision Imake inside of a business, I
always say, we let's run it for90 days or 30 days, depending on
what it is.
Yeah, whether that's uhproposals.
I mean, I tweak the proposals, Imean, down to the wording of the
proposals, and then I'd run A Btests on the proposals, and I'd
say, all right, well, let's runthese for 30 days, let's see
what has a better closingpercentage.
Because I get obsessed with allthese little numbers, you know,

(24:57):
and I'm like, proposal A closedat 75.
This one closed at 65.
Well, let's scrap that one.
We're only going with proposalA.
So yeah, you could I do thatwith every decision I make now
in business.
And I never did that before.

SPEAKER_01 (25:07):
But we're so emotional that, you know, myself
included, and people, I'm sure alot of people out in the
audience, because I interactwith a lot of business owners
like this, we're very emotional.
We're very uh just like the guy,the the your partner that you
had.
We look at one by one and weforget that we need to evaluate,
or we don't know maybe even thatwe have to look at a population
of data before we really make adecision.

(25:28):
So I I love that.
That's gold.
Yep, yeah.
Good stuff.

SPEAKER_02 (25:31):
It's it's helped me a lot in business is the to go
and really dial in on the data.
Yeah, without it, you can't.
I mean, I I did it for years, soI know what it's like doing
without it.
And now that I'm obsessed withit, it makes a massive
difference.

SPEAKER_01 (25:42):
You're like a covert finance person, I think.
I think you're like, I thinkyou're a finance person in
hiding.

SPEAKER_02 (25:48):
Yes, I get that a lot, man.
I I became obsessed with thenumbers.
When I started reading aboutbuilding businesses for value
purposes, I really came obsessedwith how do I increase the
profits and playing these littlelike I call them like games.
It's like a little game to me.
It's like, all right, if I tweetthis proposal, if I do a price
here and I change this pricing,I mean, I came up with all kinds
of stuff.
Like uh, we gave out aguaranteed uh soil test, which

(26:08):
no one in the industry wasdoing.
There was no expense associatedwith it, unless I got uh like so
we would we go out and soil testyour tank, and I would say, hey,
for$1,400 additional, I'llguarantee that if you pull it
with my company.
So now I got the removalguaranteed, which is another
$1,400.
I'm like, if you pull with usand there's a leak, I'll clean
it up for free.
Nobody was like, What?
They're like, we can't do that.
But again, I would pull 20 ofthem and maybe one of them would

(26:31):
be a minor leak.
And I so I again run thenumbers, okay?
So I sold 20 of them at 1400 apop.
The minor leak cost me threegrand at my cost, you know.
So it was worth it, you know, itmade it made sense.
So I start playing all thosegames.

SPEAKER_01 (26:44):
You strew seem to me you're pretty creative too.
So you could not only do youhave a finance background, it's
pretty unfinance ability, it'spretty unusual for you your
creativity in terms of how youprice things.
Have you had some ideas thathaven't panned out where you
would have said you start to doit and you're like, uh, I can
tell this is going way in thewrong direction?

SPEAKER_02 (27:02):
Yeah, 100%.
I mean, always you can't, you'renot gonna be you're not gonna
have a hundred percent win winrate, right?
So we we try to launch a in realinsurance product where we would
charge monthly, because again,learning about value, I'm like,
oh, recurring revenue.
I need to put recurring revenuein my business, you know?
So I'm like, let's do a thingwhere we charge the customers
like 59 bucks a month, but itwould shore their tank.
So if they had an active oiltank and they didn't want to

(27:23):
sell it and they were stillputting oil in it, which some
houses are, right?
Because they don't have accessto gas.
Uh, so they're still using thetank.
So I would go out there and Iwould try to pitch them on it.
And we sold a couple of them,but it just I could never get it
to scale, really, because inorder to really grow that, you
had to partner with the oilproviders and those guys,
because there are competitorsthat do that, but you needed a
lot of money to get it off theground because you had to get in

(27:44):
bed with a real insurancecompany and I couldn't do it
in-house.
So that just kind of whizzledoff, you know.
We didn't we didn't really pushit, you know.

SPEAKER_01 (27:50):
Yeah, I love though that you you your creativity.
I mean, it sounds like youreally immersed yourself in the
business, the numbers of thebusiness, and thought of all
these crazy ways.
And I don't want to say crazyways, I shouldn't say that.
Pain points, creative, yeah.
It's yeah, that you could evolvethe business.

SPEAKER_02 (28:04):
Well, that's exactly it.
I mean, and that's what I tellus a lot of my clients like,
let's think outside the box,like, think about the pain
points of your customers, right?
What what kind of pain pointsare they going through?
How can you solve those painpoints?
And now you can charge for that.
And you know, it's not takingadvantage because you are
solving a problem that theyhave, and no one else is,
especially if no one in theindustry is offering it, it's
like mind-blowing what happensbecause it's so easy to sign
them on because they're like,Oh, no one else is offering

(28:26):
this.

SPEAKER_01 (28:26):
Yeah.
And what kind of breaks my hearta little bit, occasionally I'll
have someone come to me thatlet's say they're running a
flooring business or whatever,and they'll come to me and we'll
talk about what's your strategyin terms of your marketing, how
are you doing things, how areyou presenting your services.
And I've had people say to me,Well, I just do flooring, dude.
It's it's all the same.
Like everybody does the samething.
Like it's just, it's justflooring.

(28:47):
And I'm like, wait.
And then they get in this wholediscussion where no, there's
differentiators here.
And but people don't always justintuitively see it.
I think because we get so closeto things of course of having
doing the same thing.
We just we have optics that justdon't see the big picture.

SPEAKER_02 (29:02):
Yes, 100%.
That can happen for sure.
Do you see that uh sometimeswith business owners?
Oh, yeah, all the time, all thetime.
And even trying to pull it outof them is something I feel like
I have to pull it out of them.
Like, no, come on, let's thinktogether here.
Let's really think about it.
And you know, yeah, it's uh itcould be difficult.
You get especially the guys thathave been around for a long
time, those are the ones thatare hardest because you know,
and I don't blame them, right?
They've been business for 30years, they're doing it one way

(29:24):
and they've been successful.
So trying to get them to change,uh, you know, I have a client
right now that they want tosell, and I'm preparing them.
I'm like, listen, this is whatwe need to do if you want to
grow the value, and they're justlike having a hard time with it
all.
So, you know, it's uh it can bedifficult sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 (29:37):
Yeah, it's interesting.
Hey, I want to switch gears hereinto the next segment.
So I'll give this uh up to yourchoice, but what's either the
best or the worst advice thatyou've seen in this industry,
whether you've gotten itpersonally or you just see it?
And when you say this industry,do you mean oh sorry, home
services, blue collar?

SPEAKER_02 (29:57):
Yeah.
Well, the best advice By far,and I I tell this to all my
clients, and this is one of thethings that I didn't do
initially.
And then once I did it, I itbecame very successful very
quickly.
It's focus.
It's one word, it's focused.
I mean, and when I say focus, Imean I'm talking like hyper
focus.
Like you know, there's so manycompanies I talk to now,
contractors, that are like,well, I offer this service and I

(30:18):
do this too, and this too, andthis too.
I'm like, whoa, I'm like, youcan't be good at all that stuff.
Like, there's just not possible.
And if you when you reallyunderstand uh processes and you
know systems and processes andyou start breaking down, it's
it's different and it's uniquefor every service that you're
providing.
So now you have multipledifferent, it's it just
complicates things.
And when you hyper focus on onething like I did with Simple

(30:38):
Tank and I didn't do anythingelse, I mean, I literally was
just, I mean, I turnedeverything else off.
It was just that business iswhen I was really able to scale
it properly and build the valueso quickly.

SPEAKER_01 (30:47):
So, how do you do that?
I mean, just from a practicalstandpoint, I it worked for you,
but the shiny odd objectsyndrome is is is more than ever
because of AI and so hard.
You know, should I have AIattendance?
Should I have this AI?
Should I have that?
How do you do it?
Like, what what would be youradvice?

SPEAKER_02 (31:04):
So, I mean, again, it for me, it's like um when you
start breaking it down bysystems and when you're you're
used to putting systems inplace, which again, I never did
that after first 15 years.
But then when I start educatingmyself, I'm like, oh, this is
how you do it.
Okay.
But when you start working onsystems and you realize how
complicated it is to like putsystems together that are
repeatable, that you can handoff to someone else, you're not
gonna want to have you know allthese different you know, you're

(31:26):
gonna start looking at thingslike, okay, well, this is really
like let's focus on thesesystems.
Let's so we can hand them off tosomebody.
And then, you know, it's just uhto be good at one thing, most
companies are not doing that.
So you're gonna stand out,right?
So, like I hyper focused, Iactually got rid of a service.
So we offered for the longesttime, we did what's called tank
searches, right?
So uh companies or realtors andbuyers would call us and say,

(31:48):
Hey, we're not sure.
I'm buying this house or I'm notsure it has an oil tank, and you
come out and do a sweep.
And we would charge 250 bucksfor that service.
So now we're dealing with thebuyer, the realtor, the buyer's
realtor, the seller's realtor,sometimes the attorneys,
sometimes the buyer, the sellerat the other.
I mean, we were dealing with sixor seven people that were
calling in our officeconstantly, where are you?
When's my report coming?
Blah blah for 250 bucks.
So when I started Simple Tank,we launched that.

(32:10):
I was like, we're getting rid ofthat service.
And my partner's like, we can'tget rid of that.
I've been doing this for 35years.
We bring in 200 grand in revenueoff of that.
I was like, Yeah, and we getnothing all, we don't get work
out of it because we're dealingwith the buyer.
And once we find an oil tank,the seller's like, I'm gonna
hire my own guy, I'm not hiringyour guy, you know how that
goes.
So we would not get the bigwork.
So I'm like, for 250 bucks, I'mlike, if we hyper focus on tank

(32:30):
removals and soil remediationsand incorporate soil testing,
which will find us more leakers,that's where and that's what we
did.
We hyper focus our marketing,all our efforts went into that,
and we became the experts attank removals, soil test, and
soil remediations, threeservices, and we scaled it.
Like I said, we were at amillion six in profit in the
first like I think uh 18 months.

SPEAKER_01 (32:50):
Wow.
So I was about to say itprobably took you a certain
amount of time to be able totarget what you want to focus on
and what you don't want to focuson.
But 18 months is not a lot oftime for that level of growth.

SPEAKER_02 (33:02):
But you have to remember, I was in the industry
for since 2005 full time.
Okay, so I was in it at thatpoint.
So it wasn't like it was a brandnew industry for me.
So I kind of already knew whereto hyper focus on.
And again, reading all thebooks, I'm like, all right, I
got to really dial it andfinding that service that's the
most profit.
Some people think like thislike, what is out of let's say
you're you're offering sixservices, which one is the most
profit?
Which one has the highest profitmargin?

(33:23):
Well, why don't we concentrateon finding more of those, right?
And let's get rid of the lowprofit margin services so you
have more time to deal with thehigher profit margin jobs
because that's gonna open you upfor giving better customer
service.
And if you're giving bettercustomer service, you're gonna
get more reviews.
If you get more reviews, you getmore customers.
And it's just a flywheel, right?
And it and it worked reallywell.

SPEAKER_01 (33:42):
Good stuff.
How about before we wrap up thissegment?
Anything come to mind that kindof falls in the bad advice or
the worst advice category foronce again, like home service
businesses or just blue-collartrades in general?

SPEAKER_02 (33:54):
Yeah, absolutely.
Uh, it's definitely revenue.
Okay.
Everybody's everybody taught allthey talk about.
Oh, I did 10 million, I did 20million.
Like I said, I have a clientright now who's doing 60
million, he can't take apaycheck.
So revenue is not the target.
Okay.
Yeah, I mean, it's it's scary.
I mean, I have a lot of clientsthat are even 8 million, 10
million, and they're not evenbringing home a half of the
revenue or the profits that Iwas bringing home.

(34:15):
And I was only at 4 million topline.
So profit is where you need toconcentrate on, again,
concentrating on profit, uh, theprofit drivers, what what
services are the highest profitmargins and really dialing that
in?
It doesn't matter how muchrevenue you bring in.
I know it sounds great, itsounds sexy.
Yeah, I brought in 30 million,but you know, if you're not
making any money, what's thepoint?
We're all this is when this isnot charity, we're not running

(34:36):
charities here.
We're here, just the for-profitbusinesses.
Why are we not talking aboutprofit?
And that's what I think everycompany should be talking about.

SPEAKER_01 (34:42):
What would you say when someone comes to you?
Because I see something verysimilar to what you're saying.
Someone comes to you, you know,$8 million a year business and
owners taking a nominal salary.
I true story.
Had someone come to me about twomonths ago, two guys, partners
doing six million, you know whattheir W-2 was, and they're
taking no distributions?
$85k a year.

SPEAKER_02 (35:02):
Oh my God.
That's what I'm talking about.
This is what I mean.
It's like, dude, like, I whywould I even do that?
Like, I mean, you know, go get ajob at that point.

SPEAKER_01 (35:10):
Exactly.
And you, you know, even if youare only working 20 hours a
week, maybe you're tanking alittle bit.
It's still not worth even theheadache, in my opinion.
So, what's the first thing youlook at when you hear a scenario
like that?
All right, is it all aboutraising pricing?
Is it about cutting expenses?
Where does it fall in for you?

SPEAKER_02 (35:24):
So, a lot of times it's pricing.
That's what I see with a lot ofmy clients.
It's they're just not pricingright.
Like they're they're they don'tunderstand gross profit, they
don't understand what theiroverhead is and what their
target should be.
So, yeah, they're they theythink they need to be
competitive.
So they're dropping the pricesto get the jobs.
But I'm like, okay, yeah, you'rekeeping your guys busy, but
you're not making any money.
I mean, I just sat with aclient.

(35:44):
I'm like, yeah, you did, likeyou said, around six million.
I'm like, you did all thismoney, but you're less than like
5% in profit when you reallylook at everything.
What are you doing?
I wouldn't even get a bet forthis money.
And yeah, so it's pricing is alot, but it's not just, hey,
raise your prices.
It's not always that.
A lot of times it's yourprocesses, right?
And streamlining certain things.
I had a client, same, same sizeuh revenue, and they had a

(36:06):
full-time bookkeeper in there,and they were paying them a lot
of money.
It was like 75,000.
And they were like, Well, mybooker's been with me for 15
years.
What do I do?
I'm like, okay, well, let me sitwith the bookkeeper and let me
see what they're doing everyday.
I want to know exactly.
I mean, literally, I'll breakdown by 15-minute increments
what you're doing, and then I'llsee if this she's worth the
money.
And it wasn't.
I mean, what she was doing, I'mlike, okay, we could outsource

(36:28):
this, we could do this, we couldhave this person do this part of
it.
And now we just, and I hate tosay it's like, you know, people
say, Oh, you're firing people.
You but listen, at the end ofthe day, this is business,
right?
Right.
We're in business to make money.
If if the business goes down,everybody loses their job.
Everybody's out.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
So you can't just look at itlike, oh, you just want to fire
everybody.
No, it's not about that.
It's about streamlining theprocesses, making the business
profitable so everybody cancontinue to have a job, or the

(36:50):
majority of the people cancontinue to have a job, you
know?

SPEAKER_01 (36:52):
Right.
One thing I hear commonly, I'dlove to know your opinion on
this.
So someone will come to me, andpart of the reason their profits
are so poor is they're workingwith a type of business segment
segment.
So let's say property managersand HVAC or a commercial
business.
And it's generally known to below margin type business.

(37:14):
And really, the the solutionprobably is to be more in a
higher return business likeresidential.
How would you deal with likewhat are your thoughts around
changing business mix and how doyou handle that type of
conversation?

SPEAKER_02 (37:25):
Well, I have a client right now that's
literally going through this andwe reworked, they do public bid
work, right?
So, as you know, public bidwork, you gotta be real tight on
your bids because otherwise youwon't win the work, right?
So, and he was getting a lot ofwork, but he wasn't profitable.
And I said, listen, at the endof the day, and they have four
divisions inside their company.
And I said, Okay, at the end ofthe day, here's here's the
target you have to shoot for.
If you can't win bids at thismoney, like at this profit

(37:49):
target, like you have to decidebecause you have three other
very profitable divisions, andyou're taking money out of the
three profitable divisions tofeed this division that's losing
money, it doesn't make anysense.
So here's the new target, andthat's what they did.
They start putting out the bids,and you know, they lost the
first one, but then they got thesecond, the third one, and now
they're starting to come backand it's starting to do really

(38:10):
well.
But it's crazy because the guythat I sat with, he was the
estimator for this business.
And now you would think he's theestimator, right?
He's working with numbers allday long.
I asked him to show me what theprofits were.
He came and he showed me thegross profits.
I'm like, it didn't have uhoverhead.
I'm like, do you know this isgross profit, right?
Do you know the differencebetween gross profit and profit
and net profit?
He was like, Well, I justthought that's what the company
keeps.
I'm like, yeah, it keeps that,but then it's got to pay all the

(38:31):
bills.
I'm like, so that's not what'sleft over, you know what I mean?
So so I deal with that all thetime.
And yeah, sometimes it makessense to just cut it, cut it
loose if you have to and go inthe direction where the where
the highest profit margins are,you know?

SPEAKER_01 (38:42):
Yeah, that's good feedback.
That's great.
Okay, as usual, I'm not doing agreat job of managing time, and
I've got uh my favorite topic Iwant to be sure to cover.
Let's talk a little bit aboutlike your blueprint, is what I
call it.
In terms of we've talked alittle bit about numbers, but in
terms of KPIs, dashboards,things that would keep the team
and the company aligned.
What are you looking at?
And what do you feel are themost critical things that, and I

(39:04):
realize this might vary betweencompanies and industries, but
generally speaking?

SPEAKER_02 (39:08):
Yeah, generally speaking, I mean, in my last
business, um, the main thingsthat we looked at is we looked
at, you know, how many estimateswere we giving, you know, how
many phone calls?
We start with that.
So, how many phone calls arecoming in, how many leads were
coming in?
Out of those leads, how manywere turning into proposals?
Out of those proposals, how manywere closing?
So, our closing percentage.
The closing percentage is veryimportant because you want to
tweak that.

(39:28):
If it's not a good closingpercentage, you want to work on
your sales process to increasethat.
Uh, so closing percentage ishuge, your customer acquisition
cost is really big.
You want to know what it coststo acquire a customer because if
you know your customeracquisition cost, now you can
figure out ways where you couldacquire customers for maybe
cheaper, you know, through maybereferral partners.
There's a lot of different waysyou could uh, you know, acquire
a customer.

(39:48):
So yeah, I mean the profitmargins, obviously, you're
looking at profit margins, butyou know, as far as uh like
marketing goes, it's it's thosethings essentially leads and
closing percentage and customeracquisition costs.

SPEAKER_01 (40:00):
Do you have a dollar amount of uh, or not dollar
amount, I'm sorry, a percentageof your marketing budget as a
percentage of revenue thatgenerally people should,
businesses should be in?

SPEAKER_02 (40:09):
Yeah.
So and this varies.
Now, the way I did my marketing,so marketing is one of the
things I really love.
So I I am I call myself like ageneral contractor of marketing
because I can go and and findthe, I call them the killers
that they're like, you know,specialists in what they do.
Like I had one guy for on-pageSEO, one guy for off-page SEO,
one guy for my backlinks, and Ihired all these freelancers
essentially.
I mean, I had probably 20 guysworking in my marketing

(40:32):
department, but they're alloutsourced, you know, and I
manage those teams.
So what my marketing spend, whenwe were growing from year over
year, 100%, I was at 3% ofrevenue, which is very unheard
of.
But again, this goes back to the43%, you know, even uh, I was
able to keep that profit marginreally high.
Typically, though, mostcompanies that are hiring are
outsourcing to companies thatare doing their marketing and
doing their SEO and stuff likethat, anywhere between five to

(40:54):
10%, depending on how much theywant to grow, is is usually a
good number that I like to see.

SPEAKER_01 (40:58):
Okay, good.
Okay, yeah, that's that's prettycommon.
Three percent, considering yourbottom line is pretty amazing.
That's crazy, man.
You you're doing a heck of a jobclosing, and your cost
acquisition must have been likenothing practically.

SPEAKER_02 (41:12):
Yes, it was very low.
I mean, our cost of acquisitionwas very low.
I mean, our average ticket was3,000.
I think our cost of acquisitionwas about 50 bucks.
And you know, but I did a lot ofthings that were outside of the
norm.
I mean, I had a podcast in theoil tank industry, which who the
hell hasn't a podcast in the oiltank industry, right?
So I had that.
I had a YouTube channel that Iscaled that that drove, I mean,
the customers were like, Ilearned so much from your
YouTube channel that I just Idon't care.

(41:33):
I want to hire the guy with thebeard, they would tell me.
You know, it was me at the time.
And I'm like, all right, yeah,let's go.
And my closing percentage wentthrough the roof.
So a lot of things like that,which helped, you know.

SPEAKER_01 (41:41):
Which, oh, by the way, there's your branding of
the guy with the beard.
Uh, whether that was organicallyhappening or not, that's cool
that people recognize you thatway.
That's awesome.
Hey, okay.
I think we've talked good about,I think we've covered a fair
ground on the numbers.
I want to go into the lastthing, and that's just kind of
like the next summit, I call it.
Like, where are you going?
What are your next steps?
What's big for you and happeningon the horizon?

SPEAKER_02 (42:01):
Yeah.
So uh I've been doing somecoaching and consulting, like I
said, uh since I sold mybusiness.
And uh I like it.
I mean, I do.
I really do like it.
I like helping other people.
Um, but my passion is uh whatI've really found in the last
couple of months here is Ireally get like excited to grow
something from nothing, right?
So taking something from zeroand seeing it like a baby just
grow.
And uh so I'm actuallyentertaining.

(42:24):
Well, I I really did pull thetrigger this week, actually,
just this week, where I amstarting a residential roofing
business in New Jersey.
So I see a major opportunity inthe roofing space.
I'm really interested in thisspace because of the way that it
operates.
I have a lot to learn,obviously, because I don't come
from that industry, but I'vedone some consulting in the
space uh and now I'm starting tolearn.
And I'm bringing on coaches, I'mbringing on people that are

(42:46):
going to help me through that,the industry knowledge aspect of
it.
But as far as the businessaspect, the marketing, the
operation, the sales, I feellike I bring a lot to the table
in the space.
And uh yeah, I'm looking topartner with companies.
That's what I did my lastbusiness too.
I did a mini roll-up in the tankbusiness.
So I'll be looking to do that aswell and with some of the small
guys in the roofing space tokind of just take it and grow

(43:06):
and see where it goes.

SPEAKER_01 (43:07):
So you envision kind of acquiring some small roof or
so to speak.
Would that be to acquire talentthat way?
Or would it be what would be thereasoning behind it?

SPEAKER_02 (43:16):
Exactly.
Yep, it's acquiring talent, uh,it's acquiring, you know, uh
phone numbers that, you know,people like I a lot of times I
just sat with a guy, he's doingfive and a half million top
line.
He does zero marketing, zero.
He just hasn't, he's been doingit forever and it's all
referral-based.
So for a guy like me, where I'mcoming in, I'm doing all PPC,
LSA and Google Business Page,you know, optimization, I'm
doing all that stuff, right?

(43:36):
YouTube, I bring a guy like thaton my team.
Now it's like fireworks becauseI got the referral work coming
in, plus I got the digitalmarketing aspect working
together.
And it's like, boom, we go tothe next level really fast, you
know.

SPEAKER_01 (43:46):
When you look at projections or some type of
forecasting, what do youanticipate in terms of like your
first year?
Do you already have like you doyou think you'll be a
seven-figure company in yourfirst year?
Or how do you how do you modelthat out in terms of
expectation?

SPEAKER_02 (44:00):
I mean, the way it's back of the napkin math for me,
essentially, uh, you know,average ticket in the roofing
business in New Jersey is about20,000.
So, you know, even at with onecrew, with one project manager,
I could probably do anywherebetween 3.6 to 4 million in the
first year is kind of what I'mprojecting.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (44:14):
That's crazy.
And you're you're obviouslycoming from a standpoint now
where you've had severalsuccessful businesses.
I imagine you probably have alittle bit of capital.
So you can invest.
I would think you're able toshorten the curve a little bit
here, even be just because youare in a stronger position than
maybe other times that you'vestarted businesses.

SPEAKER_02 (44:31):
Yeah, exactly.
Every time I've started abusiness before, I mean, in the
first business I started after Iwas my family business, I
started, I had$8,000 in mypocket.
I mean, that's how it had to myname because I was 20 years old.
I wasn't making a lot of moneyat the time, but I was, you
know, young kids.
I spent it on everything cars,houses, women, everything, you
know, 20 years old and you'remaking decent money.
That's what you tend to do.
But now, yeah, I'm in adifferent financial position,
but I am gonna still take thatsame mindset of bootstrapping

(44:52):
because uh, you know, I'm notjust gonna dump a couple hundred
grand into an account and say,yeah, let's run with this.
So I'm gonna start slow.
I'm actually gonna record a lotof it on my YouTube channel,
documenting the process of uh,you know, doing this
bootstrapping in in theresidential roofing business.
So it should be fun.
It's gonna, I'm gonna have avideographer full time from day
one.
That's one of the things I'mbringing on board.
But yeah, I'm gonna do I'm doingprofessional branding right off

(45:13):
the rip.
Um, you know, I'm gonna spendsome money there.
And uh yeah, I'm gonna do itright, you know, right out the
gate this time, you know.

SPEAKER_01 (45:18):
Yeah, you're investing.
Yeah, that's cool.
Is this documentary?
Would you envision that'll bepart of Teddy Slack YouTube or
is that a new channel?

SPEAKER_02 (45:24):
Okay, yeah, it'll be under my personal account.
And then, you know, I'll start aseparate account for the actual
roofing business where I'll domore like educational content
for the for the homeowners todrive lead generation,
hopefully.

SPEAKER_01 (45:34):
Yeah, okay, got it.
Awesome.
What about biz score.ai?
Is that got a life or where doesthat sit in your product line?

SPEAKER_02 (45:40):
Yeah, so it's a tool that I created that was it helps
with my current clients.
So if I have a client, I sitwith them, I go through their
PL, I go through their balancesheet.
And essentially what it does isit just analyzes their business
from uh, you know, financialstandpoint, but also on uh how
involved they are in theday-to-day and it gives them a
grade, right?
That's how it works.
So it'll give them a grade fromzero to 10, it'll tell them
where they're at, and it'll makesome uh recommendations on how

(46:03):
to improve.
And then we have a startingpoint to say, okay, well, if you
want to be out of the day-to-dayand you want to improve the
value of your business and wewant to increase the profit
margins and stuff, let's startworking on these things.
And it kind of gives us astarting point.
And that's how I've helped someof my clients with uh coaching
them through uh, you know,growing their companies and
stuff.

SPEAKER_01 (46:19):
So very cool that you made a tool like that.
I like that it kind of takescomplex things and it sounds
like it synthesizes it into aneasier to understand way.
Yes, yep.
Yeah, very cool.
Okay.
Hey, man.
So uh just as we wrap up here, afew things I want to summarize
on.
So I would say one of my bigtakeaways, I would say easy one
is know your numbers.

(46:40):
I think you've been really goodabout knowing your numbers,
being aggressive in terms of uhnot being afraid to change the
industry you're in and testthings and look at an adequate
amount of data before you makechanges.
So I'd say that's one bigtakeaway for me.
Another big takeaway, althoughwe didn't get too deep into it,
was make making sure that yousystemize your business.

(47:01):
Yes.
I think that's one thing thattends to get glossed over a lot.
Would you say anything else cometo mind to you for as far as a
takeaway that the audience mightbe able to take and apply to
their own businesses?

SPEAKER_02 (47:11):
Yes.
I mean, systematizing, I mean,we just hit on that because you
brought it up.
I mean, uh, that's alreadysomething I'm doing for the
roofing business.
I didn't even start the businessyet, but I already started
putting together systems.
Like I have uh I have anexecutive assistant that helps
me with some of the stuff that Ido.
And I'm constantly puttingsystems in place so I could hand
things off, right?
So you got to start doing thatat any stage of the game you're
at, but I believe that'ssomething you got to start

(47:32):
working on right away.
And it's not hard to do, youknow.
You just evaluate your time andyou start handing off the things
that you hate doing the most,you know, and uh it changes it
changed my life when I learnedabout that and uh, you know,
made running a business a lotmore enjoyable.

SPEAKER_01 (47:43):
Yeah.
And then I think number three Imight end on, although this was
a very small part of the show,is family businesses are tough.
And I'd say understand thatthey're tough.
Just like business, there's upsand downs.
And I think the best job you cando to try to keep relationships
aligned in a family business.
I think I see thoserelationships last longer.

(48:04):
I think when there's a lack ofclear leadership or what the
hierarchy is, I feel like a lotof times is where you see just
it's chaos.
Yes.
Anything else you would add tothat?

SPEAKER_02 (48:15):
Yeah, no, a hundred percent.
I mean, that was the issue.
There was um, you know, it wasmy father's business and I was
working for him and and Istarted the division.
So that's kind of where itbecame an issue because it
wasn't like I was I was anemployee, but like it wasn't
like I just went there and hegave me a job.
It wasn't like, oh, go do salesfor my business.
He's like, here's a yellow padand a desk and a pen and a
phone.
What see what you could do withit.

(48:35):
That's literally what he toldme.
And I started, you know, thisdivision that morphed into this
big business or decent sizedbusiness.
And uh I I think that's whatmade it tough because it felt
like my business, but it wasn't.
It was still my father'sbusiness in the day.
And you know, it was a youngkid, so it it was hard.
It was definitely hard.

SPEAKER_01 (48:50):
Yeah, good stuff.
Okay, Teddy.
So these are your websites.
You've got a LinkedIn profile atTeddy Slack.
That's where you do, I believe,a lot of interaction there.
People can reach out to you.
You've got Instagram is is nowteddy underscore slack.
And then, of course, you havebizscore.ai, b-i-z score.ai.
Anything I left out or anythingelse you want to talk about?

SPEAKER_02 (49:11):
No, just the YouTube channel, which uh that's at
Teddy Slack as well.
There's some some content outthere.
And like I said, I'll behopefully putting together a
documentary on on bootstrappingthis roofing business and
putting out some good content onthere.

SPEAKER_01 (49:21):
Yeah, I'm excited to hear that.
In fact, on the note of yourYouTube, that's how I actually
initially learned about you andwe connected.
Uh, your YouTube videos areawesome, dude.
I mean, you thank you.
You're a great presenter, verythorough.
You talk about numbers.
One other thing as I wrap uphere, are there any books for
you that stand out?
Because you mentioned reading alot of books, any that maybe the

(49:42):
audience would enjoy checkingout and being sure they should
be on their reading list.

SPEAKER_02 (49:46):
Yeah, I mean, so it depends on you know what what
topics you want to cover.
I mean, for numbers, uh SimpleNumbers by Greg Crabtree.
Yeah, I I like that book.
It simplified a lot of uh thingsfor me, understanding of uh your
numbers and your business.
And uh Built to Sell by JohnWarlow is a very good business
as well.
Uh very good book, excuse me, onuh growing your business for

(50:07):
value purposes and how toprepare for a sale.
So it's a great, great book.

SPEAKER_01 (50:10):
Yeah, those are two great, great books.
In fact, John has his ownpodcast.
Yes.
I'm surprised you haven't.
If you haven't been on that, I'dbe surprised because you you
have a great story.

SPEAKER_02 (50:18):
Yeah, I appreciate it.
I appreciate it.
It was nice being on here,Tyler.
I appreciate you having me onfor sure.

SPEAKER_01 (50:23):
Yeah, you're amazing, Teddy.
Thanks a lot.
I appreciate it too.
Take care.
All right, take it easy.
So there's a lot to love aboutthis episode.
And what what I think I likedprobably the most is Teddy's
story, and that it provessystems aren't optional.
They're really survival.
And when you're in the trades,chaos will eat profits faster
than you can believe if youdon't have those guardrails in

(50:44):
place.
And I also really liked hisfixed pricing.
He was willing to take a risk,he had a strategy, he gave it
time to grow.
And that bold move, which wasgrounded in discipline,
transformed his whole business.
So, look, hey, if you're abusiness owner, and I imagine
you are if you're listening tothe show and you're wrestling
with your numbers, I'd love tobe there to help you.

(51:06):
I'd love to be part of yourjourney and get some real
understanding and awareness toyour numbers.
Go ahead and visitCFOMadeEasy.com or CFO intro
call.
You can book a no pressure intromeeting.
It's just a chance for us tochat, see if possibly I can help
you.
And last but not least, if youwouldn't mind uh subscribing to

(51:26):
Profit and Gret, you always geta notice in whatever platform
you happen to listen to episodeand get a notice that there's a
new episode out.
Thank you as always forlistening.
Thank you for being here andhave a great rest of the week.

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The $3 Million Shutdown That Saved My Business - Teddy Slack Jr

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The $3 Million Shutdown That Saved My Business - Teddy Slack Jr