23: The Brian Gottlieb Episode

In this episode of The Huge Transformations Podcast, Sid Graef hosts a powerful and candid conversation with Brian Gottlieb—founder of a $155 million home service company and author of Beyond the Hammer. Brian shares how he built a massive business from $3,000 and a folding table, emphasizing key lessons about discipline, culture, and scaling through simplicity. With refreshing humility and tactical wisdom, Brian walks through everything from surviving the chaos of early entrepreneurship to becoming a leader who builds people, not just profits. If you're a business owner aiming to scale, avoid burnout, or develop a rock-solid team, this episode is full of valuable, experience-driven insights that are actionable right away.

Featured Guest:

• Brian Gottlieb, keynote speaker for The Huge Convention 2025

• Author of Beyond the Hammer

• Website

• Book available on Amazon

• LinkedIn

• Engage presentation tool

 

• • Resources

    • The Huge Insider newsletter signup

    • The Huge Insider podcast downloadable action guide

    • The Foundations platform trial offer

    • The Huge Mastermind info page

    • Huge Foundations Facebook group

 

Transcript:

 Hello everyone. Welcome to the Huge Transformations podcast. I'm Sid Graff Outta Montana. I'm Gabe Torres here in Nashville, Tennessee. And I'm Sheila Smeltzer from North Carolina, we are your hosts and guides through the landscape of growing a successful home service business. We do this by interviewing the best home service business builders in.

The industry folks that have already built seven and eight figure businesses and they want to help you succeed. Yep. No fake gurus on this show, just real life owners that have been in the trenches and can help show you the way to grow profitably. We get insights and truths from successful business builders, and every episode is 100% experience.

0% theory. We are going to dig deep and reveal the good, the bad, and the ugly. Our guests will share with you the pitfalls to avoid and the keys to winning. In short, our guests will show you how to transform your home service business into a masterpiece. Thanks for joining us on the Wild Journey of Entrepreneurship.

Let's dive in.

Hello my friend. It's Sid with the Huge Transformation Podcast. Welcome back. Today's episode's a little bit different, so I want to give it an introduction. So Brian Gottlieb. Brian Gottlieb is going to keynote at the huge convention this summer and he's, uh, kind of a unicorn in the home service industry in that he built $155 million a year revenue home service business.

He started with $3,000 and a folding card table, and he built this thing big, beautiful, strong. Fast. He did it in 12 years and he recently published a book titled Beyond the Hammer, and this is a book, it's about more than culture, but that's a big focus of it men. It's a, it's a easy read, it's a fun read and it hits home if you have a home service business.

But we had a conversation on the live stream, uh, that we did a Facebook Live, live stream last week. And just had a wide range of conversation about his journey as a business builder and as someone who understands how to scale a business to nine figures, um, because that conversation was so good, we wanted to release it as an episode right away because it's incredibly valuable.

And Brian is also humble. He's got a servant's heart and he knows his stuff. So I want to get out to you right away. With that, I hope you enjoy today's episode with Brian Gottlieb. I. The author of Beyond the Hammer and a hell of a great guy. Good evening everyone. We are live, it's it's Sid Graph with a huge convention.

We got Brian Gottlieb on with us and Brian's the author of Beyond the Hammer. I got my copy right here. Um, great story. But we're tonight, Brian, first of all, thanks very much for being on with us. I really appreciate your time. Oh, I'm really looking forward to it. You got, you do such great work in the industry and you have such a cool convention coming up, so Yeah, we have some fun things to talk about.

Okay, good. Well, it's always funny when we get ready for the huge convention. I mean, our team, we're preparing for it from the, the second day after last year's ended. We take a day off and then we don't talk about it, and then we start back up and we're like, we've been. Working and working and working, but really not much happens publicly until about 90 days before the show.

And then attention goes up and that's when all the ticket sales, uh, start happening. So it's starting to get really exciting. Me and, uh, two of our teammates, we call, we refer to our wives as the huge convention widows at this point in, in time because we're, we're just so busy doing stuff. But, so on Thursday the 21st, you're gonna be our keynote speaker.

Right, which is excellent. Um, it's, but before I ask, say, ask this question, people are jumping on live. Thank you very much for joining this evening. When you pop in, just take a second and say hello in the comments and let us know where you're joining from. And in 15 or 20 minutes or so, we're gonna give away two tickets to the huge convention.

I've got a little trivia question for everybody. So with that, so a, a lot of people, Brian think of like, they're like, Hey, if somebody built a nine figure business, pretty much in, in the industry, but specifically in home service, they're like, yeah, this guy's a unicorn. How like is, do you ever consider yourself remarkable and special or you just go, I don't know, I was just doing the thing.

You. You know, I think the thing that like most businesses, business owners have in common, especially in the blue collar, the home services industry or the home improvement industry, it's not like we built this giant business plan with this great concept on how we're gonna build this massive business.

What happens is we probably were working for, somebody didn't like working there anymore, so he started doing some stuff on our own, and next thing you know, we get a little traction. And before you know it. We've got ourselves a business and, and, and quite often in that process, we don't actually know what we're doing or how to grow and all that stuff, by the way, is perfectly normal, you know?

But, but for me it was about how do I go from survival? Like where the. Only rule of business is to stay in business, to, okay, now I have a job, but you know, nobody would want my job 'cause it's a nightmare. But then how do you get to a business where you actually have to start adding people and processes and all those sorts of things.

And there are certainly steps to it. But, but look, I think once you have some success with it, then you can really start to build momentum and, and that's when fun things really start to happen. Yeah, for sure. We're here. We've got, um, a handful of people jumping in. This is Kyle from Austin, Texas, hopping in and uh, Hey Kyle.

Good to see you, man. And our friend in Houston, Texas, we got all our Texans coming in strong right now. Perfect. What was outta outta curiosity when you say, you know, like, and, and it's, it so resonates when you start, you're like, I just gotta survive. And then you go, it's this utter freaking chaos. I don't own a business and a job.

Um, but then like, what was your first goal when you started? Because you know, the story is like $3,000 and a card table. Yeah, right. It was $3,000 on a plastic folding table, and there wasn't a lot of $3,000 more to put into the business, just to be clear, right? Because you got a bunch of kids and all that stuff.

But look, I, in the beginning, what I actually started to realize, one of the early principles of, of business was that if nothing else, the lead is sacred. If nothing else, the lead is sacred. And I think what happens with a lot of business owners, by the way, we get so caught up. You can go on social media and everybody's talking about, you've gotta document your processes and all these sorts of things.

But the truth is that's a very difficult thing to do if you don't first understand what are your business disciplines. As an example, it's much easier if I say, okay, the lead is sacred, then I can say that's a discipline. Then I have to an ask the question, so how does a sacred lead get treated? Well, we have to respond to it in 10 seconds.

What technology do we need? Uh, we have to convert it to a sales call. What scripts do we need? Then all of a sudden, your systems and processes start to get a lot easier once you first identify your disciplines. And we're gonna talk about that at your conference to show you some ways you can really think about that.

Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Um, so with. What, what several people in our mastermind wanted to ask is like, what were some of the inflection points as you were growing from that, the desperation to chaos, to actual systems and like the, the primary question that came up was, as your business grew, how did you work with or help?

Like you've got, you've got staff, you've got people that were great, but now the business has either outgrown, nom, or outgrown their skills. How did you help them? Yeah. Well, sure. Well, as I write about in my book, you know, you, one of the keys to, to leadership and to business is that leaders model their business as a training organization.

You know, I used to think, well, when you, when I first started the company, I would've said, well, we we're a construction company. As we grew a little bit, I would say, well, we were a sales and marketing company. That happened to be in home improvements. But what really allowed us to, to grow was becoming a training organization.

And, and you know, when we do that, then we have to say, okay, what does a training organization do? How do we train and develop people? How do we, how would we not be held hostage by rules that you can't find good talent out there? How do we grow people? Yeah. Yeah. So what was the answer early on and how did that change?

I. Well, like the answer early on with understanding, you know, just as your team changes your, and, and it is true that sometimes the people that get you to one level aren't the same people that get you to, to a whole nother level because the skill sets have to change. But also we as leaders have to change our role changes our, our purpose changes too.

You know, in the early days of business, like I said, your purpose is survival, but over time your purpose is then, okay, how do I. How do I make sure my team is successful? Because in the early days, the success of a business comes down to me. If it's just me, the success of the business is all about me. But the moment you start to have to add people to your team, and whether you are, whether you're washing windows or it doesn't matter, our power wash, it doesn't really matter what you're doing, but, but we have other people doing that.

Now, the success of your business is very much tied to how well your teams. Perform both when you're watching and when nobody's looking. And, and that's kind of the art and science to business, to how do we get in the line team that performs consistently at a high level. Yeah. And that's, that's the art of business.

Yeah. Okay. For sure. So, um, the, um, the lead character in your story in the book Beyond the Hammer is, um, oh gosh, I wrote down so I can remember. George Warren. George Warren. How, how autobiographical is George. To you. You know, people ask me that all the time, right? So the first thing you should know is his mentor named Marty.

Okay. If, when he gives a tour of his office, that's actually my office. So it was a nod to anybody that's ever been through our facility. Okay. They would know that's what it was right away. Okay. So that was a nod. But what I also share with you, you know, and again, for the, for the people that are, haven't read the book yet.

It, it's, it's the first, the book is in two parts. The first half is a parable, it's a business parable about this contractor that's really struggling with all kinds of stuff coming at him in all directions. Something we all can relate to. Yeah. And he meets his mentor. So the first half of the business, the book is a business parable.

And, and in Georgia's struggle is me and in Marty is me too. So I, there's a, there's a bit of me in both characters at different points in my life. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I wanted to ask you, so, um, your background before. The starting, uh, tundra land, uh, I'm not sure what it was, but you're, you built the business in about 12 years, from zero to nine figures, which sounds like riding a rocket ship.

Did you, did you bring some leadership skills with you, or did you just grow really, really fast? Yeah, well, well, a combination, right? A combination. One of the things that happened was prior to me starting my business, I, I, I, I've always carried the bag into the home and sold at the kitchen table. Ever since I was 18 years old and selling pots and pans.

Mm-hmm. So I knew the sales side of things, but prior to starting my business, I was a consultant in the, in the home improvement industry. And I got to visit a whole lot of companies across the country over my years. And I got to see two types of companies and I kept a list of it and in my journal that I carried with me all the time on one page.

I had, if I ever open up a business, I'm definitely doing these things. And on the other page was, if I ever open up a business, I'm never doing these things because I also gotta see a lot of problems out there. So that was kind of really helpful to me. You know, it was really helpful, but also it was really helpful in, in scaling my business and, and I think you do this really well, is that I, I didn't, I didn't want to be in a bubble in my business all by myself.

I wanted to network. With like-minded business owners that are also trying to grow together. Many of us, well, it's interesting. We started our own little, our own little mastermind group, and we, when we started, there were 12 of us. We originally called ourselves a dirty dozen, and then it became the big 12, but, but we all grew our businesses together.

Back in the days when we started in total sales, all 12 of us represented. Probably under a hundred million dollars in sales. Yeah. Today those same 12 businesses represent about $3 billion in revenue. Wow. When you talk about growth, it's just incredible when you, when you put your mind together with other people.

Yeah. So a quick question on that with, um, were, were those were the Dirty 12 or the, the, the Super 12? Were, were you all in the same area, in the same town? Did you meet in person or was this, you spread out? Uh, we, we, we were all over the country in non-competing areas across the country. Okay. We, we sold similar products.

We sold bath remodeling and that, that sort of thing. Yeah. But look, you know, it was important that, that, that we met on a regular basis. We trusted each other. We left our egos at the door, and, and we, we shared what we were struggling with or where we were winning. And you know, the thing is when you have that kind of a relationship, and then, and then when you get your production managers to know each other and your marketing managers to know each other, and then all of a sudden this ripple effect that happens inside of the organization, is it, it's powerful.

It's powerful. Yeah. And that, that's why your event is so important, by the way. It's, it keeps people outta their bubble. Yeah. Yeah, I, I couldn't agree more. And I mean, this is about you, not me. The first time I ever went to an industry event, I'd been in business for 15, almost 16 years before I ever went. I thought industry events were probably a waste of time.

I should be home earning money. And I went and it was this big eye-opening, like I began to network with. I met people that. Understood the struggle. I met people that were further along the journey than I was and people that were, were up and coming. So I was able to help others and then get mentors and, and it was literally, it was a turning point for me and my business to turn it from chaos to a business and not a job.

And that's a great word. Chaos. You know, one of the early lessons I had to learn. Is that in the early days when I launched the business, I, we just, we had one rule. Just, just sell it, you know, just sell stuff. Yeah. We, we didn't use the word stuff. We used a different word, but it was just sell stuff and, and what we learned is that chaos can produce revenue.

Boy, we were able to generate revenue. We didn't make any money, but we sure sold a lot of stuff. Chaos produces revenue. But discipline produces profit, profit, and a lesson to learn that that's, and to have discipline, you need an aligned team and a strong culture. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. 'cause I, I, I do hear frequently people say, you know, you don't have any problems that, that more sales won't solve.

And I'm like, I don't believe that's true. Having more revenue is, is helpful in a lot of ways, but you can have things going on in the background that will kill you no matter how much money is coming in. Yeah, sometimes more revenue will kill you because you can't keep up with it. And that's, that's another problem, you know?

And I think another lesson I learned early on also was that. We, when I started my business, we were a sunroom company, sunroom editions. And boy did we build some beautiful sunrooms that we didn't make any money on. And what I learned also in business is complexity is the enemy of execution. That you need your business as simple as possible, but making a simple business is very, very hard.

Mm-hmm. And making a complicated business is very easy. It's EAs there's always a reason to make things more complicated than they need to be. It's very hard to remove that complexity from your business, but once you remove the complexity, that's when you have a real scalable business. 'cause complexity requires unicorns as managers, and we both know how hard unicorns are to find.

Oh yeah. So simplicity wins. Wow. So when you were, you know, in your, your early growth was, was your growth because it was fast. It, it was fast. Did, was it hockey stick, like you went, uh, boom rocket, or was it like a pretty good curve? It was, it was a hockey stick because the first few years was figuring things out.

It was really proving the fact that we could actually make a lead, sell a lead, and install a lead with any level of consistency. Once we understood that, you know, if you ask me what is the most important discipline in business of all the disciplines there are, look, I, I bet, I bet just about everybody.

That's going to be at your, at your convention, and I, and I'm gonna ask the question when I'm there, how many people. Need to hire somebody inside of their organization, but they're afraid to take on the overhead to do that. Okay. That's a real concern for most businesses across the nation. Yeah, but that's a symptom of a much bigger problem.

The real truth is that the company isn't, they're not confident that they can hit their forecasting targets that they've created. The single most important discipline in business is understanding not just how to create targets. But how to hit them with consistency, because when you're good at that, the willingness to invest in the business, well, you got that all day long.

If, I don't know if I'm gonna hit my targets, I'm not so willing to invest in the business because I don't wanna put that money at risk. But if I'm confident I'm gonna hit my targets, investing in the business becomes easy. It becomes easy, and that's when things really start to scale. Yeah. Okay. Um, hang on one second.

I'm gonna give a quick shout out to everybody that's joining us live. Yeah. We got Sheila Smelter, we got Florida in the house, and now we got Jeff from Virginia and, uh, Ethan in Branson, Missouri. We, we held a camp conference there. Our conference there is in, in, uh, 2019, I believe. And, uh, that's great. Then our, then our Texas contingency.

You guys, everybody, thanks for joining. Go ahead and, uh. Uh, yeah, I don't even know how to do it, but share this live stream into a couple of groups that you frequent so other people can jump in, ask Brian questions. If you guys that are on live, if you've got questions that you want to ask, just type it into the comments and, uh, we'll see if we can get to 'em.

So I want to, let me get my list of questions from our mastermind, um, Brian, one second. Yeah, because they're like eight. Alright, hang on. I gotta make sure we, we've already answered a bunch of these. Um. Okay. What was a key strategy or what was a favorite strategy to increase your revenue per technician?

Like thinking on a technician level? Yeah, so, uh, a couple things. First of all, that margins. Only tell half the story, right? A margin only tells half the story. What we wanna look at is in business, we wanna look at revenue per crew day, right? When we send the team out, I send the team out, how much revenue are they bringing back, right?

Because mm-hmm. I could sell like this pen, you know, I could buy this pen for a dollar and sell it for $10 and I can celebrate a 90% gross profit margin. But if I only sell one a day, I'm in trouble. I'm not gonna have a business very well. Right? Yeah. So, so, so margins only tell half the story. What I need to do is I need to only do things where I can maximize my revenue per crew day.

So I was very careful, even as I started adding different products and services. To our businesses that, that I, I was very, very conscious of that. And look, and I think also when we think about how hard it is to generate a lead to begin with, and we finally get an opportunity to earn somebody's business, how can we sell 'em other products and services that we have?

Because then you don't have that same repetitive marketing cost. And that's also super important. How do we keep, how do we keep the customer involved in our business for, for a very, very, very long period of time without being obnoxious. You know. Okay. Used to send out, we used to sell Ann, we send out anniversary cards to our customers, so if we did a project for 'em, it was, you know, we, we do all kinds of other drip campaigns to keep top of mind, but then we send out an anniversary card letting 'em know, Hey, it's here one year or your four year anniversary.

It was just kind of cool. It really helped a lot. So, and, and I'm sorry, to be clear, this is the anniversary of the time you remodeled for them or Correct? They're okay. Okay, great. Because at first I was like, wow, you, you know, kept track of their wedding anniversary. That's cool. Yeah. Alright. But I think, by the way, I think the thing in business too is this, look, business owners have to try stuff.

You know, business owners are great decision makers by the nature of it. Okay? And I think it's you. You've gotta try, you've gotta try different lead sources. I can't tell you which source is gonna work in every single market. What I can tell you is this, it's okay to be wrong. Just don't be wrong for long.

Yeah, don't kidding. Right, right. Go ahead and get stuff out there. Try stuff. Mix it up, see what's working, see what's not working. I, I would rather try a lot of things and have a few things work than be caught in analysis paralysis, not trying anything at all. I know that not everything's gonna work, and again, it's okay to be wrong, but I'm not gonna be wrong for long.

I think it's a core business discipline also. Okay. Where do you, where do you see owners? 'cause you help and mentor a lot of people now? I do. Where do you see typically the, the bottlenecks or maybe the resistance to letting something go? 'cause you, you talked about earlier, like the beginning, it is chaos, but it's easy to build a chaotic business and hard to build a simple business.

Yeah. I think one of the, one of the issues, and I was guilty of it in my early days, is, and especially when we're all in on our businesses, we're all in financially, we're all in on our business and, and we. We don't want to be a micromanager, but we tend to default to that accidentally. We want to make a lot of decisions inside of the business and it really stifles people's growth and we have to give people an opportunity to make mistakes.

We gotta, we gotta, we gotta let people grow. We have to empower people because otherwise. The business is only gonna grow to the, to the capabilities of the leader of the business. And that's really a problem. Yeah. And, and I think, but I think connected with that is also understanding that as you build a team, the truth is this, that the lid of the business is directly connected to the lid of the team.

The business can only grow to the, to the, to the, to what the team can grow to. So when we think about what is our role as the leader of the organization is to help people not just only realize that potential, but truly reach it and it means empowerment and all these other things that are so necessary for business skills in business leadership.

Yeah. As you were growing your team like that in the leadership and helping raise the lid, did, I mean when you introduced ways for people to grow personally. Did you get pushback or, or resistance, or had you already built a culture as a place where We're always learning, we're always growing where it was expected.

Look, you know, it it, so it's more difficult when you bring in people with a lot of experience because then they think they know it all. And you know what comes with that is also a very different culture. They bring their culture with them. They bring all that stuff from the last company. Yeah. When you start to really become a training organization, you can, then you need to hire people that are trainable.

If I'm gonna be a training organization. I better hire trainable people, otherwise I'm not gonna be much of a training organization. That then becomes a lot easier. And you know, we got to the point where we, ve very seldom wanted to hire anybody with experience. We would rather groom and train them ourselves because I.

E experienced people that know what they're doing. Not only, not only do they sometimes resist training, they also keep their skillset very much to themselves. It's like their own little trick, their own little secret that they don't like to share. Yeah. And a organization is collaborative. Okay. Did you, when, um, did, did you generally, uh, get your leadership from within, like people RA rising up.

Yeah. I wanted to give everybody an opportunity to grow within the organization. You know, it's, it's, as we saw, as you read about in the, in the book, you know, George made the horrible mistake of instead of posting an ad internally, first, he posted something online and got this pushback from his team.

Rightfully so. If people don't think there's an opportunity in your organization, guess what? They're gonna go somewhere else. Yeah. You know, they're gonna go somewhere else. Look. But, but ultimately to build a business, you just. You have to commit to building people, and that's that's what it is in, in the service industry.

Unlike other organizations and other businesses and technology or manufacturing in the services industry, 99.9% of everybody on your team is interacting with the customer. One way or another, either, either on the phone, face-to-face, they're interacting with the customer. So, so individual performance really matters.

Culture really matters. How we customer journey really matters. How people think about the business and about their role. You know, how what we, the way we think of what we do is how we do what we do. Yeah. So mindset, culture, all that stuff really, really matters. When you were talking about, um, hiring from within, hiring from without.

And, and George posting, you know, the job ad outside of the, the thing, uh, Kyle popped in and he said, gut punch. I think he experienced the same thing. And he goes, I hear you. All right. Um, a couple questions. Kyle actually asked a question earlier where you're talking and, and it's related to your tech stack.

Do you recall, or do you know what your tech stack was like at 40 million? What was your CRM? How were you managing stuff? Yeah, so look, when I first started the business. I, I, I, when I started the business, it was another sunroom company that had our market and there was all this, uh, there were all these old leads that we got, okay.

When we took over this territory and the lead list was so old. My son used to, we used to come. Over to my office after school. He was, he was 15 years old at the time, and he would go through and call these numbers that were on this little tiny, all printed out on a piece of paper and he'd call it number by number by number.

We had no CRM at all. Yeah. And some of the people died. I mean, we're talking about a dead lead. These leads were so old, they died a long time ago. But Okay. Eventually, yeah, we got into a CRM, but even back then, it was like, even in, it's amazing how much technology has leaped forward today. Yeah. Versus how it was even, even, even eight years ago in the home services industry.

So, but at $40 million, look, we had to have a, we had to have a good phone system where we could, you know, record calls. So we can do training. We had a, you know, robust CRM and then, you know, we had, we had a great presentation tool that we used that was called Engage. Uh, it's a great presentation tool. Uh, and, and of course financing from a, from a, from, I mean, I looked at financing as part of our tech stack because it was truly a technology play to help us sell more deals.

Yeah. So, you know, and today there's just so many great options out there, but, and there are, you know, but I also think that when you think about the core of a business, right, to get to $40 million. First and foremost, I think a company needs a very, very well designed website that's designed for conversions.

It's designed to catch a lead and convert a lead, catch a name, and convert it. And you know, and everything else can stack on top of that. But I think that's a really important, also, discipline inside of the business. Yeah. And that's where you started was talking about the speed to lead or like how you, the lead is sacred.

I love that. All right. Um, let's, let's do this. I, I had put on screen a little while ago that we're gonna give away a ticket, um, in a couple minutes. This is the time. Let's give away a ticket. And here's what I always do. I like, I just have some silly trivia question, and the first person to type the answer incorrectly as it shows up on my feed.

I'm not looking at Facebook, I'm looking at different software, and we've got viewers, uh, live on, on, uh, YouTube and on Facebook. So I don't know. How it shows up on Facebook or YouTube. But the first person that I see with the correct response gets a free ticket to the huge convention this year. That's $299 that you don't have to spend on a ticket.

You can spend on food or beer or taking Brian out for cigar. Yeah. So, um, the, the question is this, so we've, the huge convention has been going on for quite a while. It's actually our 13th convention. Where was the first one held? Not the, not the venue, but what city was the first huge convention held?

First one to type it in and get it right and, uh, you know, and or I may just give the ticket to Rob because he's so kind to tell me how cool I am today. Like, that's probably worth it to get right there. Rob. Rob, you already have a ticket as part of the mastermind. Um, okay. First submission here. Kyle says, Orlando is not Orlando.

It was, but it was definitely in the south. So we'll keep going until somebody pops it in. Uh, Jeff, if you know Ethan, if you know, I don't even know if you can Google that and find out where the first one was. I, I don't know if that's, it's fairly common knowledge because we say it a lot, but here we go.

Let's see. We got Sheila down in Florida with Nashville, and Nashville is the correct answer. So Sheila. You win a free ticket to the huge convention, congratulations. But guess what? You already have two free tickets because you're part of the Mastermind. So what do we do with that? Who, who would you like us to give it to of, uh, anybody that's on here live?

Just look at the comments and pick somebody. If it's okay with you, we can give it away or you can give it to some of your team members. Sorry, I didn't mean to take it away from you like that. So, Sheila, I'm gonna watch for your comment here. Tell me what you'd like to do with your ticket. If you wanna bring your daughter or someone from your team, or if you wanna give it away.

It is, Ethan is winning on the comments that I said. Give it to Brian. We're gonna give, we're gonna give you a free ticket, Brian. Awesome. It's great. Okay. I hope, I hope Ethan is bringing that cute little baby with him. That's a cute little kid in his picture there. That's, that's his son Finn. And um, oh.

Last year at the, he Finn was at the convention last year in Nashville, Tennessee. Oh, that's fantastic. That's great. Um, Sheila said, anyone who's never gone, and uh, Jeff says, I highly recommend this guy right here. So what do you say, Sheila? Is it this guy right here? She goes. Any first timer? Okay. We're gonna park that and see if, if anyone hasn't been, that's on the live feed and you want this ticket, I.

Type it in to the comments and it's yours.

Oh, Rob, give it to a Brian. Not to, no, Brian, you're taking my ticket away. I thought I got a free ticket now. I don't have a free ticket. No, you, now you're gonna have to arm wrestle somebody. The, the, uh, the bouncers to get in the show. Tell you what, let's do this, Jeff. Just to Jeff. I know you don't have a ticket yet this year.

We had chatted earlier online, so you have a ticket to the huge convention. I'm gonna shoot you a message after we're done to give you the code so you can claim it. Sounds good. And thank you very much Sheila. And I picked, how's that? Great. That's amazing. That's amazing. All right, cool. Thank you. Um, hey, here's a, another question from, uh, one of our mastermind guys, and I love this question.

He said is, what are some of the most important things for. A home service business to get right in its first 5 million of annual revenue to set it up for long-term success. Yeah. Well, it's a series of things, number one. You have to be able to make data-driven decisions at $5 million. You have to be able to make very specific decisions based on the data, not on our gut.

We get, we get to the first million on gut, that's what we do. We don't know what we're doing. We get to the first million by gut. But as you start to get, uh, volume, your financials, being able to read a p and l and balance sheet mm-hmm. Is very, very important. Making sure your financials are set up right.

You're able to close out a month. Effectively, and you're able to see what did we learn from this and where are we going with this? And so that's one thing. The second thing is that at $5 million you have a team. Okay? And you might, you might, you might think that you have great systems and processes, but lemme tell you something, if it's not written down, it doesn't exist because you'll have iterations of that as, as the business grows.

If you think it's being done this way and you find out it's being done a totally different way. So that's another real key discipline in really trying to scale, is make sure, you know, if it's not written down, it doesn't exist. Having that, having that mindset. And I think the third thing is the idea that, that when you're coaching people, okay, different people are coached differently for effectiveness.

And when it comes to coaching people, there's a big difference between being right and being influential. There's a very, very big difference. I might be right that somebody isn't doing something a certain way. It doesn't mean they're gonna learn a lesson from it. I have to be influential with people.

It's the same as true with with customers. You might be able to go to somebody's home, you might show up at somebody's home that has filthy windows and really needs their windows cleaned, but they're not hiring you because there's a big difference between being right and being influential. Mm-hmm. And I think that's the, that's the key in business in general when it comes to dealing with people.

I. Did early, earlier on, and I, I know, I, I keep reflecting early on, 'cause most of us can relate to a business that's doing, you know, 20 million or less. 'cause we've never gone to that extent. But did you have the confidence to be influential with your team? Or did you ever feel like, kind of like an, an imposter with your own company?

Yeah, I look, imposter syndrome is real. You bet. I did. I, I felt like these were, again, like there were a lot of times in the business. I didn't know what I was doing and I'd never run a $20 million company. I never ran a $5 million company. I never ran a 10 million, never ran a 20 million company. So the voices in our head can really start to speak to us, you know, and, and we hope that we're giving.

The team, the right advice, but what I'll also say is that you, you just gotta not pay any attention to that noise. This is your business. You gotta, you've gotta run your business, you gotta drive your business. And, and, and self-doubt is real. But, but ultimately, you know, ultimately over time you start to get some, some wins and you can really start to build momentum off of the wins and just, just, you know, just give yourself a break on stuff.

Yeah. Is what? Yeah. All right. Wouldn't, well, uh, I mentioned earlier like your, your growth, uh, in 12 years is pretty phenomenal. Did you, yeah. After you kind of got where, like, okay, I'm not fighting for my next meal where I'm not in desperation mode. Maybe it's chaotic. Did you just, did you have a, a moment where you're like, I'm gonna put my foot on the fricking pedal and just see how hard can I be drive?

Like how big can we grow? Or was, what was the catalyst for really driving big growth? Right. So a couple things to that. I used to do this to my team all the time. I put my fingers like this because my goal was to bend each department. I wanted to bend each department at any given point without it breaking.

Because what I wanted to do is create a problem. To fix a problem, to create a problem, to fix a problem. I have too many leads, okay? I don't have enough salespeople. Let me fix that problem. And now I have plenty of salespeople. I don't know if installers, okay, now I got plenty of installers, but now I need more leads.

Let me. Let me constantly figure out how do I create a problem to fix a problem? And that was really the methodology to grow the business. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Did, were there times, when did it, did anybody break? I. Or did you like put 'em back together, put a splint on 'em and go, it's gonna be okay. We can do this.

Yeah. Well, yeah. Let's just say I probably could have kept on a full-time therapist for my team. I kept them busy. Yeah. For me, you know, look, I'm all gas and no break. And the other part of it is I need to also surround myself with people that are able to challenge some of the, the crazy ideas that I have.

You know? Yeah. And that's also important. I just gotta listen to that and not, not that I'm gonna follow everything, but I need to be at least open to it. Okay. At some point you're like, like you're the successful guy. Even in your business, in your community, people look up to you. You're like, you've accomplished something really, um, impressive or important.

And did you struggle at that point, not having, like if, did your, did your circle end up being a lot of Yes. Men or Yes. Women that were going, oh, Brian, you're so cool. You're great. How did you like find the people that speak the truth? To you. Yeah. Well look, you, you, it's very easy to get in a meeting and you, and if I say something or if I ask a question, there are gonna be a lot of people that are gonna try to, you know, have the right answer and then look to me to see what I'm set to see if I approve.

Yeah. But what's more valuable, and you have to, you have to just publicly. A appreciate it and celebrate challenging questions. I would rather have a challenging question than the right answer, right? Mm-hmm. Because that's what you really need as a business leader. You need, and so I think that also is part of the culture though.

Look, I think I've been very fortunate that that because we were figuring out stuff together and we were growing the business together, and I, and I would share that. Look, you know, if we're working a home show and we're trying to set leads, I'm out there as a co-producer in the early days. So, you know that, that brings credibility.

And also when we don't get things right, we gotta talk about why we didn't get it right. You know? But not about the people. Because look, if Syd, let's say you and my production manager and I got a problem with some customer and then, and I say, what happened with this job? How did things go wrong? And you say, it wasn't me, it was them.

But you're gonna immediately point your fingers to other people. Yeah. So instead I've gotta approach it, Hey Sid, we got a problem with this job. You know, I know we have the right people. Help me understand, where do you think our process is broken that's creating this? I really want to get our team to focus on the process because when you focus on the process and where the process is broken, people don't take it personally.

But then they're also not afraid to challenge the process because the ultimate goal. Is how do we have a better process? And that is open to anybody to challenge it. Okay. Okay. That's really good. I want to, um, ask Rob's question he posted in here and then I have sort of a, we need, you know, it's uh, wanna be respectful of your time.

I have a closing question for you right after that. So he was talking about where as you were bending people. And that balancing act of more leads, more installers, more you know, sales. How do with that scale, department by department, how did you get it to grow more steadily in all three departments? I don't know if.

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, look. Okay. In, in the early days when you, when you have, when you have two or three salespeople, you almost have to schedule to perfection to keep everybody busy. You almost have to schedule to perfection. It's a lot easier when you have more salespeople and you have more leads.

I can have a, I can have a couple of people at the bottom of a batting order and a couple of people at the top of the batting order. And, and the way I found balance is that if. And especially on the sales world, if I have the philosophy that my, my best sales reps are gonna get the most leads and my bottom sales reps are gonna be back in the house for training, that automatically gives me a buffer in, in if I have too many leads or, or if I have, or, or too many salespeople.

That gives me a buffer. I think if you think about being overstaffed for the sake of training and the betterment of the business in different areas as you're growing, that's kind of what helps to add balance. But also it's a matter of which is the, and it's different for everybody. Which area in your business is the hardest for you to scale?

Okay. Which area of your business is the hardest for you to scale? Some people struggle finding in installation people or technicians. Other people struggle trying to find people that can generate leads. Other people try struggle, trying to find people that can sell. Look, I think if, if you know the hardest area to scale, scale that area first, because that's the one that's really gonna get you in a bind if you're not growing.

Yeah. No, that makes sense. It makes a lot of sense. Okay, so a after you, since you've published the book and, uh, yeah. To remind everybody like Beyond the Hammer, it's a, it's a quick audio book and it's in print. They can get the audio book to, the audio book is terrific. You listen to it, it's fantastic. Did you record the audio?

I recorded, I recorded the second half of the book in on the audio book. Okay. The strategy side, I used, uh, a very professional narrator, Eduardo Ballerini. He used to be an actor on The Sopranos, and he Oh, really? Did the parable side with all these characters is a real, it's a great, it's a great listen, if you like audio books, that's on Amazon.

Okay. Yeah. Okay, good. So with like, and now like, I mean, you get interviewed a lot and, and you're helping a lot of people. You're mentoring, you're speaking at different events like the huge convention. What's a. What's a one question that you really wish somebody would answer, but it's your, like, you rarely or never get asked.

What a great question, right? What a great question. Um, why Brian, you had such a successful business. Why did you sell it? Hmm. And so when I repeat that question back to you, Ryan, you had such a successful business, why did you sell it? I'm not gonna answer that. No, I'm kidding. Okay.

Because what I, what I found, and this is really interesting, is that as the business was growing, once I got to, I had 600 employees, right? Mm-hmm. And I found that, that, and I was 62 years old at the time too, by the way, with 600 employees. What I found is that, that, that, I wanna call it chutzpah. The, the energy, the chutzpah, the, the courage to take a lot of risk as a young entrepreneur.

Was waning and I started and I started to become a little more risk averse. Okay. You know, I've got this big business and I'm just trying to keep it all running together. And I thought, if I ever get hit by a bus, is my wife gonna step in and run this business? That's not fair to her. Yeah. Combined with private equity, they were jumping over each other to get in our space.

We were in a well positioned, uh, business. Uh, it was, they were great businesses. All three of them that I sold and. You know, it was, it was the right time. It was the right time and, and I needed to write a book. So, but that was, that was primary. The two primary reasons was I was getting a little risk averse and I was worried that about my wife having to step in and run the business.

Yeah, yeah. Very fair. Well, then I said, that was the last question. You brought up the book. What was the motivation to write a book and how has that motivat, like how is, is it met expectations? How's it turned out compared to what you had in mind where you're like, I. The, the motivation was, I feel like. I feel like a lot of, uh, leadership books aren't applicable to the home improvement industry or to the home services industry.

Yeah, and I, and I feel that they don't, I feel they tend to be a little preachy, and I wanted something that was very relatable, that, that spoke to people, was approachable and actionable and, and, and, and people could do it, and then they can see the result from it, because I'm all about. You know, if you want to build a business, you have to build people.

And, and look, the entrepreneur affects so many people. That's why I love working at the entrepreneur level because they, they hire people. They, they, and they just, they're, they're life changers. They really are. Yeah. And so the, the, and, and, and for me, look, my thing is that when I started really going all in on building people, here's what I realized.

I realized the two most important days of your life are the day that you're born. And the day you finally figure out why. Wow. And I realized that I'm on this planet to make a positive impact in this world, and I do it through the entrepreneur and through helping and developing people. Yeah. The result of the, the book has been terrific.

On average, about four, four or so thousand books a month are being purchased month after month after month after month. I, I've got, I'm actually heading to London in September for an award, for a, uh, book award, for International Book Award, which is really cool. So it's been a fun ride. It's been a very humbling journey for me.

It's been great. That's great. Congratulations. Great. Thank you. With, with that amount of book sales since I, there was, there was an obtuse, uh. Factoid, but I didn't, that I found online because I was doing a little homework in 2018, uh, tand was awarded a Guinness Book of World Records. Yeah. But I didn't but it, but I couldn't find for what?

Yeah. So what's interesting is we, we, when we. One of our businesses was putting windows in people's homes and we always looked for cool ways to interact with the community, right? Whether it was, you know, people singing in our shower or whatever we did for our shower displays to send a kid to music school.

But one of our products was replacement windows. When you put new windows in people's homes, you typically take the old windows out and you throw 'em in the trash. And we thought that was such a shame. So we started doing, let me show you something. Hold on. Yeah. We started, started. With local artists and community members, and we would give people these old window sashes and we would ask them to turn them into beautiful art pieces like this one right here.

Wow. So these, okay. Beautiful art pieces. Okay. And then what we would do is we would take all these window sash art pieces and we, we would do, we would display 'em in our town in a big community center. Yeah. And we would do a giant public auction. All the money raised would go to help somebody in our community that really needed it.

So it was a really cool thing. So we did a lot of cool stuff with it. Well, I wondered, we, we set, we would set up like a hundred windows, 200 windows. So I wondered what the world record was on it. So I called Guinness to find out, and Guinness, we could do a whole podcast on Colin Guinness. But, uh, they didn't have a category, so they said.

Okay, it's 1500 windows you have to display. I'm like, 1500 windows is two tractor trail fulls of windows. That's a tre. I, I, I, where am I gonna put these things? Yeah. I mean, so we rented this convention center and now I need to get these things painted. So I did a giant community calling to have, look, I had.

This whole convention center was full of plastic folding tables. Yeah. And, and window sashes, the windows paint. And people came out with their kids, their grandkids painted windows all weekend. And yeah, then we set Guinness World Record. So it's pretty cool. Well, bravo. That's fun. Yeah. That's fun in so many ways.

Yeah. Well, good. What I, I gotta tell you, thanks again. This has been a lot of fun, but like, thanks for your time. Like I recognize that, you know, it's, it is a big deal and I'm truly excited. I mean, thanks for, I. In advance for coming to Nashville. Um, for those of you, you're still on like August 21st, Thursday the 21st.

Brian's gonna be on stage, take the stage, I believe it's 9:00 AM we've already got it scheduled, um, to lay out some wisdom and then maybe have time for some q and a. But really appreciate it and look forward to meeting you in person. Yeah, yeah, likewise. Thanks so much Sid, and thanks to everybody.

Appreciate y'all. Look forward to seeing you in Nashville. Hello my friend. This is Sid. Thank you again so much for taking your time to listen to today's episode. I hope you got some value from it. And listen, anything that was covered, uh, any of the resources, any of the books, any of the tools, anything like that is in the show notes.

So it's easy for you to find and check it out. And also, I wanna let you know the. Mission for the huge convention and for this podcast is to help our blue collar business owners like you and I, to gain financial and time freedom through running a better business. And we do that in four ways. Number one is our free weekly newsletter.

It's called a Huge Insider. I hope you subscribe. It is the most valuable newsletter for the home service industry, period. Paid or otherwise. And this one's free. Next is the huge foundation's education platform. That is, we've got over 120 hours of industry specific education and resources for you. And every month we do, uh, a topical webinar and we do question and answer with seven and eight figure business owners.

And it's available to you for a $1 trial for seven days. Next, of course, is the huge convention or the huge convention. If you haven't been, you gotta check it out. It's every August this year it's in Nashville, Tennessee. That's August 20th through 22nd and 2025, and it is the largest and number one rated.

Trade show and convention for home service business builders. We've got the biggest trade show, so you can check out all the coolest tools and meet the vendors and check out the software to run your business. And it's got, we've got, um, education, world class education and educators and speakers that will teach you how to run a better business.

And it's the best networking opportunity that you can have within the home service business. And then lastly, if you wanna pour jet fuel in your business. Check out the Hughes Mastermind now. It's not for everyone. You gotta be at over $750,000 of revenue and you're building toward a million, 5 million, 10 million in the next five years.

And it is a network, and a mentorship and a mastermind of your peers, and we help you understand and implement the Freedom operating system. We go into more detail, but you can get all the information on all four of these programs and how we'll help you advance your business quickly just by going to the huge convention.com.

And scroll down, click on the freedom path. Or of course you can find the links here in the show notes. So, sorry, I feel like I'm getting a little bit wordy, but I just wanna let you know of the resources that are available to you to help you accelerate and advance your beautiful, small business. So keep on growing, keep on learning, keep advancing.

And if you'd like to show. Go ahead. I mean, if you would go and take 90 seconds and give us a review on iTunes, then subscribe and share it, man. It would really mean the world to us. It would help other people, and as we continue our mission to help people just like you and me. So thanks again for listening.

We'll see you in the next episode.