Huge Transformations

15: The Jared Skinner Episode

In this episode of the Huge Transformations Podcast, host Sheila welcomes entrepreneur Jared Skinner, whose journey from concrete laborer to investor in multiple successful businesses provides valuable insights for service-based business professionals. Jared's experiences, from door-to-door sales to financial management, underscore essential strategies for sustainable growth and stress the value of surrounding oneself with knowledgeable mentors and industry leaders. This conversation offers actionable advice on how home-service business owners can achieve profitability, leadership effectiveness, and lasting success.
Guest: Jared Skinner
Owner/Investor in 6+ businesses
Entrepreneurial experience spanning finance, door-to-door sales, and home services
Key Topics:
Importance of financial literacy and knowing your numbers
Leadership strategies for effective employee engagement and autonomy
The transition from labor-intensive roles to strategic business management
Benefits of mentorship, masterminds, and industry networking
Strategies for rapid scaling and sustainable growth in home-service businesses
Resources:
The Huge Insider Newsletter Signup
The Huge Insider Podcast Downloadable Action Guide
The Foundations Platform Trial Offer
The Huge Mastermind Info Page
Facebook Group
PCF Marketing
Transcript:
  Hello, everyone. Welcome to the huge transformations podcast. I'm Sid Graf out of Montana. I'm Gabe Torres here in Nashville, Tennessee. And I'm Sheila Smeltzer from North Carolina. We're 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 percent theory. We're 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. 
Hi, this is Sheila Smeltzer with the Huge Transformations Podcast. Today's guest is Jared Skinner.  Jared has a great story that outlines the skills he's learned throughout his entrepreneurial journey and how actually caring about people and about numbers has been a huge key to his success.  Jared is owner and, or investor of more than six.
businesses, and he shares the important lessons. On finance and leadership in today's show. Let's dive in. 
Hi, Jared. How's it going Sheila? How are you today? Doing excellent. Thanks for asking. How about you?  Good. Yeah. No, I'm great. Great here in North Carolina. So Jared Skinner, we have you on the huge transformations podcast and i'm super super excited to interview you today Um, and uh, yeah, I just I want to know more about you.
I've I've been involved with you through the huge for a number of years, and I get to take a deep dive into Jared Skinner's life and see what's going on.  I'm pretty sure it's great after everything that I already know about you. So, um, so Jared, tell, tell our guests who you are and what you're all about. 
Yeah. Uh, so Jared Skinner, obviously, um, currently in Denver, Colorado is where we're based out of right now. Um, So I can give you a little bit of background if that's what we're going for. So I Yeah, please. Grew up in Idaho.  Yeah. I grew up in Idaho, a small town called Rigby. Uh, about 4,500 people. Um, my dad had a concrete construction company, so I grew up doing concrete work my whole life, which was a good start to learning how to work hard.
Right. Yeah.  Labor definitely hard work. Mm-hmm . Wanted me to take over the business. Wasn't interested  in doing that. Mostly 'cause. It's like super labor intensive and I, you know, my dad was on the job site every day and I was like, I don't want to do that because he just wore himself out. Right. Right. So anyway, um, you know, I started to see your mission for my church and then I went to, uh, college at BYU and  got a  degree, a bachelor's degree in business  with an emphasis like in marketing.
So, but marketing, So, you know, marketing back in the day, there was no internet,  so it was a different type of marketing back then than it is today. So anyway, I feel you there, by the way, I feel you there. Our first advertisement was in the Yellow Pages. So  right. Yeah. It was a phone books. And the Internet was just starting to come online when I was graduating college, so not  going on there as far as learning that.
So, um, anyway, married and, uh, met my wife at school in a statistics class. Our punchline is what are the odds right? 
So, um, got married and, uh, my wife, you know, stayed home, um, we actually worked together. So I actually sold pest control  throughout my college years. So did really well with that. Ended up managing multiple offices. I was in a regional sales manager where I traveled the country and trained all the sales rep for work in pest control.
Uh, I did that for about six years, actually.  So, uh, that was a really good experience. Knocking doors is.  Most people hate it, right? To be honest, like it's a hard thing to do. But the skill sets that you learn from that is absolutely off the charts if you can do it. So cold calling on people and selling stuff that way.
So that, that actually ended up being a massive  jumpstart to a lot of the things that I did in the future, right? With learning how to sell door to door, essentially. Door to door. Yeah, so did that for work and we were, you know, we were selling about 30 million worth of pest control in 4 months for them.
Right? So the numbers and the things that you can do is just insane with it. So,  and I did that for a little bit and then, uh, ultimately my, my goal. Back in the day was to work on like wall street for investment banks. So that was kind of the direction I was headed. I did, uh, went out to New York after we got married, took my wife.
We did, uh, interviewed with multiple investment banks. And, uh,  we basically walked away from there saying there's no way we can live in like New York city, right? Like that's just not my jam.  I'm from the farm country, right? We grow potatoes. So, um, we just, good  for you for chasing after a dream though. Love that. 
Yeah. Yeah.  So, um, anyway, so we ended up saying, you know, this isn't the life we want to live.  So ended up going to graduate school and got an MBA with an emphasis in finance. So I did that and, uh, worked in finance for about seven years with investments. So stocks, options, futures, Forex market, all of that fun stuff.
So the Forex market or just the, the investment world is just fascinating. Right. And that was kind of the direction I wanted to go. I just did a pivoted off of wall street, end up working for home from home in that space for a while. Um, which was good. And the problem that I had with that is that I felt like number one, I was going to die just sitting behind a desk all day, right?
So being raised, working hard and doing the thing.  So now I just felt like I was, like, dying. I was like, I can't do it anymore.  I've got to do something else. Um, so, just looking at different things to do, and I, you know, I knew I had the skill set to go style anything I wanted to door to door. So my wife and I decided we would, uh, kick off, you know, pest control we'd done for six or seven years, but let's just try something different.
So window cleaning it was, and, uh, so that's how I started. How did you decide upon window cleaning? How did that go? Where did it come from? Yeah, I had a buddy in, uh, Boise, Idaho, who was cleaning windows and, uh, you know, back then he was doing,  you know, three, 400, 000 a year, which sounded great, right? Yeah.
Yeah. I was like, if he can do that, I can do it. And I can sell this stuff door to door. Like I know I can sell this door to door. Right. That feels really easy.  And it was actually really easy to sell. So it was just really low barrier to entry.  I already had a truck and it's just you don't need much to get started like in the window cleaning space I was like, you know what it's not gonna cost me anything.
We'll just go do it and see what happens  Um, yeah, that was,  I think we started with 600 bucks.  Seriously. Yeah, that's the beauty of it, right? It's like, 600 bucks. And it's a two edged sword. Now it's like, well, that's not the beauty because anybody can do it and you wish you had like a bigger moat around like the space a little bit, but you don't think of that when you're.
Starting out a business, right? So it's like, what can I do? So, um, and the other reason I wanted to start something is, you know, when I was in the financial space, like I was like capped, right? And I just hate feeling like I can't move and I don't have anywhere to go. Right. Yeah. So if I have a ceiling above me,  it kills me.
So it's like, if I either have to start my own financial business, which that costs a fortune in the space I was in millions of dollars. Right. And that's just like, that's not happening. I don't think I want to take that leap. So I took the opposite, which was, doesn't cost me anything. Just a little bit of sweat equity and right.
Just go get, go get grinded on the thing. So  we were living in Minnesota at that time, moved back to  Colorado and  it off. So I would go knock doors in the afternoons, hired my brother. And during the day, we would service the thing and go sell in the evenings. The next day we'd service all the stuff, right?
So, um, that's how we kicked it off. So that's how we launched our first business was knocking some doors, knocking some doors. That's really cool. And I mean, one thing that I really relate to with what you told me so far, Jared is  Um, as I and I can tell just by you going through your story right now is all of the things that we do from literally our very first job.
Yours was in the concrete, working with your dad, doing concrete, the labor and all of the different opportunities that you've had along the way have contributed in some way, shape or form to what you're doing today. You know, it's it's all learning You and you, you get all these different skills that can, you know,  bring you to where you are today.
And so, 'cause I'm hearing a lot of things I'm hearing like, yeah, you had to do the labor. You obviously had to learn into, uh, lean into your door to door, which you learned from Orkin. Um, and I know that this finance bit is gonna come into play here in the next part of your story.  And the NBA,  right? Yeah.
Yeah. Cause I mean, you got to, you know, so in the corporate world, you kind of, to get into like these big banks, right. Investment banks or, you know, in a, in a nice big corporate job, you kind of have to have the NBA. Right. So, and the, in the longterm play for me too, was to be able to, if I wanted to, like when I'm getting close to retirement, cause I wanted to be able to have an option to go like teach at a college.
Right. Um, and so some of my very favorite, Yeah.  Professors or teachers, right? Where people who actually Did the thing  they're actually they're not go to school and then come teach it They're actually like guys from Wall Street right so and they were just like or people who owns like franchises or a Chick fil a or like and like five probably four People that like made a big impact just because they had the experience Right.
So anyway, that's like Yeah, is that still a dream of yours?  Um, so I loved like I like the education stuff, right? And I like  trying to make an impact somewhere, right? By helping people. Um, so I think big picture that would be a possibility for me, but when I'm all said and done with the whole business thing and retired, I don't ever think I'll retire, but that might be just a good thing to,  to do at the end.
But we'll see. Yeah. I love it. Okay. So take me forward because I know you've, you've accomplished a lot more since where we are right now, starting as like the bucket Bob with the brother and the door to door starting the window cleaning company. So tell me what's happened.  So, you know, kicked off the door to door thing.
We started, uh, we had a pretty good little strategy that we had as far as knocking doors. So we, and this might help some people who are kicking off. So we'd knock doors and then whenever we sold the job, right, we'd post a yard sign. Whenever we were servicing a job, we had like an a frame in the middle of the street, like next to the truck on the street set. 
doing stuff. But we knock doors. It's such a tight, you sell so many people on the street that we'd have like 5, 10, 15 yard signs right on the street. Like every 4th house, right? Was just  And so it just really created this nice organic thing and everyone's like, wow, I guess these guys are doing everybody.
Right. And when you're selling door to door, you could be like, yeah, we're doing them. And then we're like, yeah, I know we see your right. And so it just makes it like easier. Right. Yeah. And so that's for us. So we were able to, um, get kicked off pretty well. Um, and then we launched holiday lights as well at the same time.
So we just try to mimic my friends.  Business model who was in Boise, right? Just tried to copy what he was doing because it seemed to be working for him. And I thought 300, 000 was like.  Big. And it was right at the time. And so, um, so yeah, so we started to grow that, started to hire more employees and, uh, you know, in a couple of years, we up to about three years or so to about a half a million dollars, um, in that space. 
So I think, you know, when you ask about the MBA and how that plays in, I think one benefit of that is  obviously, you know, you don't have to have like an education to be successful in business, but there's things that it can help with and maybe things that it doesn't. But, um, The things that I think really benefited me was the finance side. 
So I, I really know numbers and I know how important it is to be cashflow positive and have money in the bank and like all that stuff. Right. So, you know, I've never ran my business like in the red, like ever, right. All our companies are fully debt free, no debt. And it's just that mindset of knowing how to control costs and.
Knowing the numbers and actually caring about the numbers, right? I think the big benefit to me, cause most people ignore the numbers and ignoring the numbers is.  can be death, right? If you really don't know what's going on in your business. So I think that was one big advantage. So if I, you know, had to say something to the guys who aren't  in the numbers or know the numbers or think it's a big deal, like, I think that's something you have to be very careful of that can blindside you.
Um, so I think that was one thing that really helped me out.  Very good. Yeah. That's. That's so important. And I mean, I can tell the opposite story and not really the opposite story, but  I mean, about 15 years ago, I, I just started working with a business coach and I knocked on his door and, uh, well, actually I hadn't worked with him yet.
I knew of him through my local chamber and I knocked on his door and I sat on his couch and I started crying and he's like, what is going on, Sheila? Like, I barely know you and I'm like, I need help. I don't, I have this business. I know we're making money, but I don't know, I don't know where the money's going, nothing's being charted.
Like, we were just doing the thing, and not even thinking of, like, I mean, obviously we were thinking, I was thinking about the money, I knew the money was coming in, but We had no financial reports. We had no chart of accounts set up. We had no budget. You know, it was nothing was organized there and it takes a minute.
It took us about three years to get that really going. And it's been a game changer ever since. I mean, now you can say when you know your numbers, you can say, yeah, I have a business.  Yeah, absolutely. And I think a lot of times we're just scared of them if you don't know about them, right? Or how to do it or how to go about it.
And so we just ignore it. We pretend it doesn't matter. Right. And then that's when you get in trouble. So, you know, big piece of advice kicking off is if you don't know, that's okay. Just hire someone who does, right? It's not that complicated if you just hire someone. It's not that expensive just to take that piece.
And do it for you, right? And I think that's a hard thing when we're starting out is we just don't want to let go of stuff or we, you know, we think we have to do it all ourselves or we think I have to figure it out, but I don't have time to do that. We think hiring somebody is way too expensive, right?
And we view it as a cost. And not like as an investment, right? So all we think is like, man, it costs too much to do that. Well, no, this is an investment in your business because it's going to help your business grow, right? When you understand stuff like that. I think that's a hard mindset  that we have when we start out as we think. 
It's all me. I got to do it all. I got to figure it all out. Right? And if you go that route, which most of us do, it takes a lot longer, right? To, to ramp up the business and actually get moving and gain some good momentum when we have that mindset. And that's hard. That was hard. It still is sometimes hard for me to let go of certain things, right? 
Yeah. There's, there's something, there's a few things really important though. You said caring about your numbers, like to care about the finance of the business. And that's true. And also to be able to explain the numbers when you read a P and L and you have some exorbitant costs in an account or whatever for that last month to be able to say, yeah, that happened because You, where, you know, what's going on in your business and you can explain the numbers.
That's when, you know, and at least for me, that's when I knew that I was like really starting to get it and be in control.  But the other thing that you said that I just have to take a moment and comment on is you said, yeah, if, if the, whomever the business owner is, if they don't,  if they don't know how to do that thing, which in this case, we're talking about finance, who does. 
So who, not how, right? Who knows how to do this and how can I outsource this so that this can be under control and something as important as the finance. Like that's, that's step number one. Yeah. Really appreciate you bringing this up. It's so important to talk about  so, but keep going. I want to hear more. 
Yeah. And one of those piece on that, especially in our industry where it's so cyclical, right? Like you kind of need to know, like, we know exactly to the dollar, like how much money we need in the bank to float the winner and to get through those bruling, you know, spring months, right? How much cash do we have to have set aside?
So we're not borrowing anything. We're not stressed out. Right. And even those little things just to make life easier, because the worst is when you're just.  So stressed out about your business, right? But when you kind of know the numbers and you know, you've got the exact amount of money you need to float this, and then this kicks in and all that.
Like, like life just gets easier  and business becomes a little more fun, right? More fun.  Yeah, like, like just killing it. So, um, anyway, so yes, we've traveled down the window cleaning path, uh, for a number of years and then, uh,  you know, started to join some groups, right. Just to educate myself more. So I think that's another big pieces. 
The key to, to really ramp up and to, to, to collapse time is to surround yourself with people who've done it before. Right. And so I started to figure that out and I wish I would have done that sooner. Um, so started to surround myself and come in contact with people who were doing. You know, bigger and better things than me, where this, you know, where they were, where I wanted to go. 
Um, so at that point, you know, we started to push up and ramp up a little bit more, um, and got our business up to a seven figure business. And then, you know, I don't know if this, this is kind of, I don't know. I'm not encouraging anybody to do this, but I'm the guy who, once I've hit something,  I kind of get bored and I'm like, I need something else to like get excited about, um, and our window cleaning business basically is just structured in place and Everybody was running the thing and, you know, I just check in with.
The people who are running it in a couple of times a week and they're just amazing and doing the thing. So now it's like, well, what's next now? Right. Um, so essentially, uh, got into the concrete coding space. So we kicked off, uh, a concrete coding business and  we did seven figures our first year in business.
Amazing.  And so. You know, with that, it's, when you look back on it, you're like, well, you know, how did you do that? Well, it's, it's because you learn so much as you go, hopefully, right? And you, you're able to figure out how a business works, how it functions, how to go to market, right? And how to, again, scale and collapse time. 
So that went really well, really fast. And we still have that seven figure business today. Um, and again,  not, I'm not a hundred percent hands off cause we're trying to do some other things with it, but you know, again, mostly fully functioning. Um, so has opportunities to join and invest in some other.
company. So I've got the opportunity to be part of the huge convention. So part owner in the huge awesome. And then we have a marketing company called PCF marketing as well. And it's kind of a different animal. We don't.  Anyway, that's kind of a tough one to get into. Um, and then one or two other companies that were invested in as well that We are part owners of, so look at your entrepreneurial story.
Okay. So, I mean, okay. So you literally go from concrete labor to sales, door to door, pest control,  investments, going to New York city, trying to do that, you know, thinking that's your dream, right?  I'm doing the investment thing, and then now I'm counting minimum six businesses that you're either own or have invested in. 
And, um, and I mean, that's pretty awesome, Jared. That's really awesome. And I just want to, I just want to ask, like.  You know, I don't know. It's still, you know, really like the demographic of who's listening to our podcast right now. Um, I'm hopeful that we've got a lot of, um,  more startups, new entrepreneur, not entrepreneurs that are listening that, you know, are trying to look for tips, but  like if you could go,  well, I'm going to, I'm going to ask you this question actually, because I think this one is true all the way.
Cause until, you know, when you, when you want to get out of doing the thing yourself, And you want to start hiring people, which is what you need to do to grow.  How would you describe your leadership style?  Because surely between all of these companies, how many people do you employ? Just curious.  Um, do you have any idea? 
Yeah. I mean, we probably have  currently like 15 ish probably. Okay. All right. Yeah. So, um, I mean, that's a lot. And so like, How would you describe your leadership style? Are you, are you pretty engaged with your employees or what does that structure look like for you? Like, what does your org chart look like?
Or, you know, what does it just, I'm curious.  Yeah. Um, so I do like to be.  involved a little bit, like to at least show up, right? Um, so I do show up to the office most days. Um, and just so I can see the people  and just say hi and let them know that I exist and that I care. Right. Um, I'm always trying to send out, you know, if I, if I catch wind that we get a good review.
So I, every time we get a good positive, like Google review or kickback from a client, right. My office people always send me those messages and I'm always.  Messaging my guys directly, just like, Hey man, way to crush it. Like, so I want them to know that I care and that I'm on, and that I'm watching that stuff because I am right.
Um, so I try not to like really micromanage as much as I can. I try to, you know, we have people who do the things, um, but I still.  They still know that I know what's happening, right? Um, because I do check on things and peek on things. Um, so we try to have a good culture. Obviously, we'll do, you know, Christmas parties, we'll do events.
So we've done stuff where we take our people like whitewater rafting, yeah, ATVing. Um, just company events, stuff like that,  just random bowling stuff. Um, but yeah, try to be involved. I'll try to get out on some jobs now and then, um, especially if it's, you know, bigger jobs or something that matters or, you know, just to go help out and support the guys like I like to do that now and then, um, just to be.
There. So, um, I just want my people to know that, like, I have their back, right? If needed,  like, I'll step up and do whatever. Um,  so as far as that goes, I think, uh, you know, one of my biggest struggles, though, which I think held me back and still, I think, holds me back a little bit is I've always had this hard time to let things go.
That was my very first.  Hardest thing is like trust somebody to answer the phones trust somebody to go out and do the job by themselves Trust somebody to go sell the thing right? Yeah, like just the trust factor and being willing to actually push Things off of my plate, um, was probably the very biggest roadblock that I had that kept me from, from moving quicker.
Right. Um, and I still to this day realize I'm like, man, I could be doing this, but I still am like, I just need to let someone right. And so in a way, I still. You know, we have some good things going, but I still know like we could do much more. Right. Um,  I think on the flip side, I think on the flip side too.
And I think I'm guilty of the same thing of we, uh, we want to be, yeah, letting some of these things go in the business, but I think for the employee. Um, maybe it's an office manager, you know, maybe it's an operations manager or whatever it may be for them when they're kind of used to us keeping our thumb on the pulse of everything.
And now we say no. You have the autonomy to go do this. Like, you know what to do. You have the autonomy to go do this on your own. They sit there and go, Whoa, wait, what do I do?  I mean, I have found that somewhat in my own business and, and some people, you know, absolutely love that. And some people, I think are still a little like, wait a minute, what's going on here?
So there was a real transition and to start out when hiring people. Like, what are some things that we can do when we bring a new role into our company? Let's say it's a customer service rep, a CSR, somebody who's going to answer the phones.  What would be your recommendation, Jared, bringing this new person into your business to set them up for that autonomous role that you don't,  that sets them up for success?
What's your, what is, what is your recommendation?  Yeah, good question. So I've, I've done a lot of different things really bad and hopefully better with, with this of, you know, as little as hiring them and saying, okay, listen to me, answer the phone three or four times. And then, all right, go for it. Right. And so that usually doesn't turn out very good. 
Right. And they just don't have enough knowledge and training and, you know, in, in guard and guide rails to keep them, you know, on the right path. Um, so we've kind of evolved over the years. So now we've got. You know, a training. Right? So we do a sales like on the phone, how to answer the phone, how you talk, what words you should use and speak and how to talk to the client.
Right? And so just a whole, you know, framework of just what that looks like. Right? And then Exactly. Then scripts on, you know, we don't want them to be robots, but you know, these are your key things you need to find out about the client, right? And we're not here just to  answer the phone and schedule quotes or schedule jobs, right?
Like we're here to make, cause if they call 10, five companies or three companies, right? Most companies are just trying to schedule them,  but we want to become like the consultant, right? Ask them questions, figure out what's really going on, right? Actually have some care and concern. We want them to like get off the phone and be like, Okay, I'm not even going to cancel my other quotes because these guys obviously know what they're talking about, right?
Right. So we also have for those roles like exact roles and responsibilities, right? Like this is your job, right? Bingo. Because a lot of times when I started, I would, I knew what I wanted to do in my head. And I say, yeah, answer the phone, schedule the thing. Right. And they would do that. But there was so much more to that, that I would just assume they would figure it out or just no.
And so you get frustrated with them and you think they're doing a bad job and maybe they're doing a great job, but the problem is me. I'm not like giving them what they need. to know to fulfill their role and responsibility. Right? So now they have a very specific role responsibility. It's like, you know, this day of the week, these things have to be done this day of the week.
These things have to be done. Right. And it's almost like a daily checklist just to keep them on track and keep them. And some people need that. Right. Um,  We need to know like what needs to be done. And then after a while, they've, it's easier for them to settle into their job and actually be super effective.
But  I think the danger is, is when we just, it's all in our head and we just assume they'll figure it out and they should know what we know and do what we would do. Right. Yeah, but they don't, we're all different. Like everyone's programmed different.  Yeah. And if I may just contribute to that, you know, it's. 
They have a role, they have responsibilities for that role, and then there's the tasks, right? The tasks are the da da da da da da da, like, do this, this, this, that. But when you start to define what the responsibilities are, and I, I come across this a lot in my business, where if I have Jackie, who's a CSR, and she's responsible for the emails, But now Jackie has to go out of town because of an issue in her family or whatnot. 
It's Jackie's responsibility to make sure the emails get handled, even if Jackie's not there to answer the emails. Right. And that's where the responsibility comes in. So it's kind of back to that who, not how thing again, but, but I mean, seriously. That's that's why it's so important. So your responsibilities may be like five things, but it covers a ton  on a task list, right?
Yeah.  Yeah. And to your point, if you're, if you're leaving town or if you're gonna cut out work early and we have leads coming in, it's your job to make sure somebody is going to pick that up. Right. Right. Like notify, you know, either talk to Jake or talk to so and so or talk to Amber, like  if you're not here, these things still have to happen.
Right. And so I love it. Your responsibility then  it becomes  assigning that out or making sure that still happens or checking it at home or whatever, if you can. But, but yeah, cause sometimes you'll just, somebody will leave and nothing's happening. Right. Yeah. So what happens when nothing happens? Like now what do we do as leaders, right?
In the business when the responsibility does not get fulfilled, what happens in your business, Jared?  Yeah. So first of all, a lot of times it's because I didn't, I failed to.  Let them know what should have happened in that case, right? We can just use that example. So yeah, I'm so glad you said that. Yeah. You know, and they might be like, okay, well, I'm, I'm gone this week and they don't say anything or do anything.
Right. And you show up to work and sometimes I don't know that they're out. Right. They just,  or I'll forget, right. It's like on the list of all my things, it's like not even on it. So I feel like, yeah.  They're like, Oh, she's gone. I'm like, Oh, well, who's doing this? Right. Like, I don't know. You know, and it's usually, you know, if I, if I just go after her and say, Hey, like you can't just do that.
Right. But it's, I usually stop and say, well, did I do a good job training that? Right. Did I do a good job setting the expectation that that was supposed to happen? And like, you know, the truth hurts, but most of the time it's because I failed to set the expectation. Right. We're all culprit of that. I mean, yeah, so number one, it's that, um, if I have set the expectation, you know, usually I, I try to, my motto is to just, you know, I feel like if we  show forth love to our people in good times and bad, right, then there's a loyalty that actually develops.
So I never really go off on my people, like I'll be firm and just like.  Hey, Caitlin.  I know you took off and you did this and or whoever it is, right? Um,  but we talked about it. It really puts us in a bind. Nobody's doing this. We spend this much to, to get this lead. We spent 500 bucks to get this name. Like, and if no one's doing anything, we're just like, you know, so it's important that this is done next time.
Right. And I try to do it in a loving. Yeah.  I know if it's my bad, I do try to like say, Hey, this is my fault. I should have told you this in the future, just so I don't forget, like, make sure this and this and this is happening. And I think when you come with some vulnerability as well to your people, so, you know, And they know that  they know we're not perfect.
They see all our flaws. And if you come off as like  the perfect person, right, it's, it's harder for them to respect you, I think, as a, as a leader, as an employer. So I think it's a hard thing to be vulnerable and to. It's okay if we screw up and yeah, people just admit we're human and, you know, and so they don't come after me if I screw up, which I do a lot, right?
So really aggressive way. So I try not to do the same, right? Um, it's kind of the, the approach that I take with my people, you just described though. Um, what I call the frame. Well, it's the framework for having a critical conversation. Um, that I, I originally learned from how to win friends and influence people and that framework.
And I teach this to my people and my company, and that's any confrontational  type of conversation that needs to be have or critical conversation is.  I see your side.  Here's my side. Now let's examine the facts. And usually when you do that, you will come up with a resolution  all parties are good with. And, and I've used that since I learned that 10 years ago or so.
I've used it in, You know, dealing with customers, employees, and it's hard. You have to bring these things because when you're in heat of moment, sometimes or whatnot, or you're dealing with a situation, you tend to forget, you know, but,  but, um, but you just described that and, and it's very important.  It's very important that we remember to treat people the way we want to be treated, right?
Because, because you're right. Then they'll be very loyal to you as employees and things like that.  So, um,  I've heard from you I've heard some really great words come from your mouth today Jared, and I've heard you use the word care  And I think that's awesome.  And, um, and you know, obviously you care about your people a lot and things like that.
But, um, you know, caring about our numbers, caring about our people. Um, we haven't talked too much about clients, but of course we care about our clients. They pay our bills, right?  Um, but  yeah. And, and so I just think, um, you know, it's really great to get to know you. I want to, as we. As we kind of conclude our podcast today.
Um, and what else would you like to share in regards to, you know, the way the direction our conversation has been going or maybe for our listeners? Um, what I'd really like to know as well is where are you going? Um, because  We all have a plan of some sort. Do you feel comfortable sharing your plan?  And then I want to kind of leave you for some final thoughts or anything else you'd like to share to our guests. 
Sure. Um,  that is a great question. Where am I going? So maybe it's my midlife crisis that I'm trying to figure that out,  but I really asked myself this question over the last I'm going to go to the next year or two, right? Like, what is the, what do I want to do? I mean, I've done, you know, it's like, where do I go?
Can I just keep doing this thing? Am I going to like shift gears? And what would that look like?  So, the answer is, I  For now, I'm going to stay on the path and we've got some things we want to continue to do with our businesses. I'm really excited about the direction that huge is going and my involvement with that.
So that gets me excited.  Um,  and so, you know, as far as.  I don't, I don't know the bigger picture, although I feel like there's still more for me. Right. And what does that look like? I'm not, I'm not sure yet. Um, okay. But I, I've been more, more and more involved with the huge, which has been fun for me on the education side of things.
Yeah. So excited about that and the things that are in the pipeline for that. Um, yeah, I don't, yeah, I see, I see you on the social media posts. That's great. I love it.  Yeah. So I guess I do have some of those that  I'm on there for. So yeah,  um,  but yeah, so I don't, I don't know that, you know, I don't really plan on taking like this, any of my existing companies to like a 10 million company or things like that.
Um,  you know, I, I feel like I'm just trying to do things that I love and enjoy and trying to fulfill.  Bring me fulfillment more, right? Versus the money, if that makes sense. So, um, we're in a good spot and I don't need to do more things for that. So now I feel like it's, how do I contribute? How do I help or, you know, make an impact is kind of, I think that the direction my mind's been shifting over the last few years, right?
So we'll see where that goes, but I'm not a hundred percent locked in.  No, I'm really glad you bring up the parallel between like the money and the, um, the feel good and the doing good things and giving back and the kind of altruistic side, because, you know, huge. And, and I love that with your involvement with the huge as well, because, um, since I got involved, I mean, I remember going to huge conventions before.
All of you crew owned it. Right. And then when you guys took it on, and then, you know, being invited to the BBB group and the AMP group, and now, um, the huge mastermind group, there is a very, like, there's no doubt that this is a, that huge is a business. Like, there's no doubt. You know, everybody sees that.
But there is that feeling within Love you too. And, and I'm not going to call it a group because it's open to everybody, but it's, there is a feeling there where it is a, there's a lot of caring. There is a lot of, um, standards. I believe there's a lot of standards that are set and like, we want to do the right thing as business owners.
And I, that's a very good fit for me. I can tell it's honestly a great fit for you. You're, you know, part owner of it, but, um, I just think that that's really important for people to know who are thinking about, you know, being involved with huge is that there's, there is a very altruistic, um, like very giving and caring,  caring, um,  uh, culture.
Within the huge. And I think it's, it's been an awesome experience for me. And, um, I love that you're a part of it. I think it's awesome.  Yeah. And I mean, you know, as you're talking about that, so, I mean, all of the owners of the huge right now, like we all have a very strong mission to help business owners succeed.
Right. And I think we're at that point in our career and in our life and like what we want.  And it's just kind of shifts, right? It kind of changes. And so we're super excited about like the huge mastermind. Um, and we're really trying to help people go to the bigger levels, right? With that. And we've got proven frameworks and strategies and,  um, you know, just building the machine that's going to help people create the freedom in their life that they want.
And so it's all proven and it's, you know,  Amazing business owners in there, the Mike Kaplan, Michael Dahlke, right? Who've done amazing things with their companies to tens of millions of dollars. Um, and we're just really trying to help. So that's fun for me, right? It's to get the P right there. It's so, you know, you get 50 people in the room to, to help and it's, it becomes fun to do that.
So, yeah, we're excited about the direction for sure. You know, and when you ask, you know.  And just kind of playing off this a little bit. So yeah, what piece of advice or what do you, would you tell people, you know, if I look back, I could have gone back, I could go back in time. I would say,  educate myself faster.
Right.  Find people who have proven systems methods, right. To scale faster. Cause it was really, it's, even though, you know, it was, it's painful to start off a business and to figure it out yourself, there's a lot of stress. I mean, I remember sitting at home at midnight. You know, I'm trying to just  respond to everybody and get back all these texts and stuff.
And I'm just like, I just remember stopping and saying, Jared, what are you doing? This is so stupid. Like, all you do is get up at 5 a. m., go to bed at midnight.  This is the dumbest thing. Like, this is not what you envisioned for yourself, right? Like, my family's suffering. I'm suffering. Like my, you know, you do have to put in a grind.
The answer is yes. But, um, if you know things.  Then you don't have to go through that for as long. Right. And there's shortcuts to that. And I wish I would have connected with the right groups and the right people to, to get through those pain and suffering points in my life, right. Quicker and had a better life sooner.
Right. Cause there is a sacrifice that we all put forth as entrepreneurs and it's, you know, how do we. Is there a shortcut to that? And the answer is yes, there is, right? You,  so don't, don't be scared to like make those investments. Put yourself out there. Yeah. And sometimes you do. Connect with people and find the right groups and yeah. 
Yeah. I have some real key mentors within my industry and really just throughout. Yeah. I mean, it's not even just in window cleaning industry or pressure washing industry, but um, Just in business. I have so many mentors that you know, they're on speed dial on my phone I mean, it doesn't matter what's going up going on throughout the day if I need some advice or whatnot you know, I can pick up the phone and call and And so yeah, you it's it's building those connections and you're right when you can go to conventions and in different events Mastermind groups and things like that, where you can, you know, put yourself in a room with other people because you said something that I said to at the beginning of this podcast, you said, wow, I'm in a room.
I'm with people like if they can do it, I can do it. Right.  And that's what it does. It kind of gives you some benchmarking, right? Like, Oh, wow. Okay. Cause that's what we're all doing when we're in a room together as business owners, we're kind of comparing ourselves. Are we not?  We're totally comparing ourselves. 
Do we think we are or not? We are, we are, we are.  I think it's healthy. Cause you know, you're, you're, you're saying like, wow. Okay. And  wow, that seems like totally unattainable to me, but wait, he's sitting next to me here and he's done it. Why can I not do it? And so, um. So, yeah, I think putting yourself in the room with the right people is, is good.
And sometimes you're going to put yourself in the room with the wrong people. And it's knowing the difference. Yeah, be careful with the form, right, and, and opinions online and things like that. Like those can, you know, you want people who can speak from experience, right, is usually the best people. And I  think the problem is a lot of times when we start, we have like these blinders on and we're just going through, but when you start to join some of these higher level groups, like it opens your mind, right, to like bigger possibilities.
And it's like, you know, you would ask me 10 years ago if I would. You know, have,  you know, my fingers in so many different things and companies and that said, no way there's no, it's just window cleaning. Right. And now it's like, what else can we do? Like, it's just, it opens your mind, expands your mind and it.
Breaks limiting beliefs. Right. And you're just like, wow, like there's so much possibility out there. Even at our last mastermind, when we talk about, you know, total addressable market index in, um, revenue expansion and things like that, most people's minds are blown because they're like, I had no idea, like there was this much potential right here.
In my own little town, right? In my own little town. Yeah. And so that was the, being the big fish in a small pond and, um, man, I have thought about that a lot and I've, I have come back and I've got a whole plan around it right now and we are going to work the plan.  You're gonna know it's exciting.  Yeah, it is exciting.
So,  so awesome. So any final thoughts, Jared?  Um, well, it's I would, I would just encourage you, you know, anybody that's listening, that's struggling, right? Is there? It's always a struggle, right? And there's even  you structure with the right people. Everything always comes up. But it's worth it if you just push through and connect with the right people.
Um, you need, you need kind of like a, an AA support group for business really. Right. Yeah. It makes your life a lot easier, um, by surrounding yourself with the right people, but yeah, don't give up. Right. I mean, the great thing about being a business owner is. That nobody  can stop you from becoming what you want to become, except yourself. 
And so that's what I love about it is you have the freedom and the opportunity to do whatever you can dream of, right? By taking the correct application and implementations and things like that. But, uh, the path's worth it, right? I mean, the goal is true freedom and it, it can exist  if you.  Can structure your stuff correctly. 
It's, it can be a real thing, but it can also, you can be, you've probably seen me a slave to your business, right? It can also be a slave to your business and have a really hard life. Uh, but the, the thing about it is it's a choice that we all make.  And your business is treating you exactly the way you designed it to treat you.
So if you don't like it, the great thing is you can change it today. It's just a decision. It's just a choice. It's just a new plan. And you can control all of that, which is, what's just the beauty of being a business owner, in my opinion.  Yeah, no, that's great. I, I think of it as, um, with that freedom, There comes responsibility and so like nothing's totally for free, right?
There's comes responsibility and you know, just owning up to that responsibility. There's so many good things to come.  So many good things to come. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Good point. Yeah. Well, thank you, Jared. I really enjoyed talking to you today. I've definitely got to know you. Got gotten to know you a lot better.
And, um, I'm sure that our listeners have learned a lot from, from your story. And I love the story and tell the storytelling part of it, by the way, cause we all have such a cool story and a lot to learn from each other. Um, I love that you care. And, um, I think that's an important story in itself, especially in talking with, in talking about business.
And I'm really proud to share that here on the huge transformations podcast today. So thank you for contributing.  No, thank you. I appreciate it. That was really fun.  All right. Awesome. Thank you, Jared. We'll see you soon. We'll see you around. 
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 want to let you know, the, 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 Foundations Education Platform. That is, we've got over 120 hours of industry specific education and resources for you. And every month we do 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 got to check it out. It's. Every August this year, it's in Nashville, Tennessee. That's August 20th through 22nd in 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 want to pour jet fuel in your business, Check out the Hughes mastermind. Now it's not for everyone. You got to 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'd 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 and 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 want to 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 liked the 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 on the next episode. 
 

14: The Brandon Vaughn Episode

In this episode, host Sid Graef welcomes Brandon Vaughn, a serial entrepreneur who has founded and grown multiple successful businesses in the home service space. Brandon began by taking over his father’s small window cleaning business, then scaled it into a 70-employee operation. Along the way, he discovered the importance of developing a broader entrepreneurial mindset, investing in the right people, and letting go of self-limiting beliefs. Brandon has since founded the Conquer coaching program (serving business owners nationwide) and is now focused on his new venture, HireBus, a platform designed to simplify the hiring process. He also shares insights on the power of adversity, continuous learning, and the excitement of growing through challenges. This is an uplifting, experience-rich conversation for any business owner looking to accelerate their own “huge transformation.”
Show Notes
Guest:
Brandon Vaughn – Founder of All-Clean SoftWash (scaled from 1 to 70+ employees), Creator of Conquer coaching program, and CEO of HireBus – a next-level hiring solution for business owners.
Key Topics Discussed:
Scaling a Small Service Business: Brandon’s journey from a single-truck operation to a 70-employee powerhouse.
Mindset Shifts: Overcoming self-limiting beliefs by seeking mentors, coaches, and peer accountability.
Unlocks for Growth: Hiring a sales team, adding new locations, and learning to invest in top-tier talent.
New Venture—HireBus: Simplifying the hiring process for small businesses in a variety of industries.
Future Plans: Rolling up multiple businesses via Hammer & Forge, exploring acquisitions, and remaining “coachably humble” as an entrepreneur.
Advice to New Entrepreneurs: Focus on finding and empowering the right people—avoid “doing it all” yourself.
References & Mentions:
Conquer coaching program
Dunning–Kruger effect
Simon Sinek (“The Infinite Game” concept)
Berkshire Hathaway
Yeti Books
Resources (mentioned every time):
The Huge Insider newsletter signup
The Huge Insider podcast downloadable action guide
The Foundations platform trial offer
The Huge Mastermind info page
Facebook
 
Transcript
[Sid Graef]:Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Huge Transformations Podcast. I'm Sid Graf out of Montana.
[Gabe Torres]:I'm Gabe Torres here in Nashville, Tennessee.
[Sheila Smeltzer]:And I'm Sheila Smeltzer from North Carolina. We're 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.
[Gabe Torres]: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 percent experience, zero percent theory.
[Sheila Smeltzer]:We're 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.
[Sid Graef]:Thanks for joining us on the wild journey of entrepreneurship. Let's dive in.
[Sid Graef]:Welcome back to the Huge Transformation Podcast. I'm Sid Graf, your host, and today's show is really cool—it's quite an honor to have Brandon Vaughn on the show today. You may know Brandon Vaughn as the guy who built All-Clean SoftWash—a power washing company in Oregon—from zero employees (just one guy) up to 70 employees in a very short period of time, or you might know him from the Conquer coaching program, or you might know him from HireBus. He is truly a serial entrepreneur, but he started on the ladder, in the truck, running a home service business, washing windows with his dad. Eventually he took over his dad's company, grew it exponentially, then sold it. He built another business to serve home service businesses, and he continues to do that. He's a visionary in the truest sense. The great thing about Brandon is he's always been in the service business, looking to serve people: “How can I help and serve people?” Our conversation today—I wish we could do an hour longer than we did, but everyone's got time limits. I'm so thankful Brandon was able to join us. Enjoy our time with Brandon Vaughn.
[Sid Graef]:Hello, everybody, and welcome back. It's the Huge Transformations Podcast, and today you're going to be really excited, like I am. We have my friend and an industry leader for a lot of years, Brandon Vaughn, on the show. Brandon, thank you so much for joining us. How are you?
[Brandon Vaughn]:What's up, Sid? I'm doing great, man. Thanks for having me.
[Sid Graef]:Good. For those who can't see: Brandon, you're on the treadmill. You posted—and I chatted with you about it—your body fat dropped. You credited the treadmill and just action or movement for doing this. Where are you at now?
[Brandon Vaughn]:I've lost 45 pounds in about five and a half to six months, dropped about 15 percent body fat—down to nine and a half percent body fat. Literally, I just walk nine to twelve miles a day. I'm on my walking treadmill at my desk, on Zoom six or seven hours a day. I just decided one day to walk instead of sit, and the fat just melted off. It's been one of the best things I've done for my health—it's awesome.
[Sid Graef]:Wow, that’s awesome. The ADHD—my wife always laughs at me because when I'm on the phone, I pace in the front yard, back and forth. One time they set up a time-lapse camera on me because of how ridiculous it looked—like a caged animal, just walking back and forth. So this actually satiates that need to be moving while talking. That's cool.
[Sid Graef]:This is the Transformation Podcast, and we were talking earlier—it's not really an interview, it's just a couple of questions to hear your story, because everybody starts somewhere. Generally, when you start, you have an idea or dream, but you don't really know how it's going to turn out. A little bit of background—I'll let you fill in all the blanks—but you bought your dad's window cleaning company from him, and it was just you or just you and a helper, and then you grew it into a substantial soft wash company in Oregon. You had, if I recall correctly, either 60 employees or 60 trucks—something like that.
[Brandon Vaughn]:Yeah, about 70 employees, 24 service trucks. Yeah, I just started out as a guy on the tools. I've been in home services my whole life. And I'll be honest with you, when I first made my growth plan in year one, it was taking the business, which at the time was doing about 100,000 a year—and had been doing that for about 20 years—and doubling it over the next five years. That was my goal. Even at the time, I looked at it and thought, “Man, is that even possible?” My dad was like, “I don't know.” But I had to grow it, and I really had no idea what I was capable of doing. I got some really good coaches and mentors along the way and could never have imagined I'd be doing what I'm doing now. I’d say the huge transformation for me has mostly just been mindset.
[Sid Graef]:Yeah, that is so—I'm going to come back to that and dip into it because that's actually the fourth question I had, and you just answered it, which is great. You built and sold that company, you anchored and built the Conquer coaching program that has helped so many home service businesses, and you've had several other businesses and investments. Now you're all in on HireBus, helping not just home service businesses but other companies hire efficiently and hire A-players and all that. You just answered this, but I still have to ask: when you first started, your biggest goal was just doubling from 100,000 to 200,000?
[Brandon Vaughn]:Yeah.
[Sid Graef]:Along the way, as you're hiking up the side of the mountain, the higher you go, the further you see. What were some of the inflection points where you realized, “Wait a second, this isn't a 200,000-a-year thing, this could go to 2 million, 10 million,” etc.?
[Brandon Vaughn]:I'd say there were a few different unlocks for me. The biggest one came when I hired my first salesperson. That was unlock number one, because there was finally someone else in the business whose livelihood was dependent on selling and growing, putting food on the table, so to speak, for the techs. Up to that point, I openly acknowledged I was the bottleneck. There's only so much Brandon can sell. Brandon was doing six to eight estimates a day, hustling to keep all these trucks busy. When I hired a really great salesperson on commission only, that unlocked me to say, “Okay, Brandon, you just learned how to print money—this is huge.” We ramped up to five salespeople very quickly, then started doubling and tripling every single year.
Then the second unlock was when I went out and started my second market. I picked a location 45 minutes to an hour away, opened shop, put two techs in a truck there, had a part-time salesperson assigned to that territory, and grew that one. I was able to grow that location faster than I grew my original location. That was unlock number two: “Okay, this is how I grow. I can just duplicate the proven model and keep expanding.”
[Sid Graef]:I'm going to step backward into your head during that because you said it was all mindset. Did you do anything specific or have any key steps for expanding your mindset?
[Brandon Vaughn]:Someone told me: if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. I found myself constantly in an echo chamber, whether it's a Facebook group or something else, where we all had the same struggles. If I asked a question, they'd say, “I don't know.” Then they'd ask me questions, and I realized I was answering their questions. I had to change my environment. I went out and got a coach—Kedma—who was my first coach. She broke a lot of self-limiting beliefs about letting go of control and provided perspective because she'd spoken to hundreds of business owners, some way bigger than me. That perspective gave me confidence—“Yes, of course it's the right choice, go do it.” I was like, “Okay, alright.” So that accountability was huge.
Also, I'd tour people’s shops that were bigger than mine, bigger operations, and that’s where I started to see what was possible.
[Sid Graef]:Was there a point where you realized, “I'm the king, I have the answers,” but then you get around bigger players and discover, “Whoa, there's a lot more possible…” That’s the Dunning–Kruger effect.
[Brandon Vaughn]:Yeah, the peak of Mount Stupid, or "child's hill"—teenagers who just know everything. Once they learn more, they're like, “Oh crap, I know nothing.” I believe the Dunning–Kruger curve looks like a roller coaster—it's not just one hump and a valley and then back up. It's every day. Right now, this week, I'm doing things I'm terrified about—never done them, don't know what I'm doing. Last week, I'm on top of the mountain about something, and this week I'm in the valley of despair, hopefully next week on the slope of enlightenment, right? The journey never ends. The quicker you acknowledge you know nothing, the quicker you can be receptive to solutions. That’s absolutely critical.
[Sid Graef]:When you were growing your original business or in Conquer or even now, did you ever hit points where you're like, “Oh my God, I'm so frustrated, I'm ready to quit; I'd sell this for a dollar”?
[Brandon Vaughn]:Yeah, once a week. That’s not a fake number either. Let me remove the mystery: every successful business owner I talk to, especially really successful ones, feels that way constantly. The difference is the length of time they allow themselves to feel that way shortens over time. I no longer let it paralyze me. But the feeling of “What am I doing, why did I do this?”—that’s normal. To get somewhere you've never been, you have to do things you've never done, and that means embracing pain. Pain is part of growth. If you're comfortable, you’re complacent. If everything's great, maybe you're on the verge of death in your business because you're not innovating.
[Sid Graef]:I spoke to an entrepreneur whose greatest fear was that “this is all I have,” that he'd be in the same place next year. But he's grown well beyond that. Let’s look at your pattern: you started with your dad's business, then built Conquer, and now HireBus. Do you go out looking for needs, or do you see it as, “This is my problem, probably others have it too?”
[Brandon Vaughn]:I’d say it's the latter. I'm not out looking for a problem, but I'm presented with problems daily. One of the coolest things about coaching is I have over a thousand hours of my own coaching calls. I've heard just about every problem in the book. Even starting Conquer, I said, “Man, I wish I'd had this when I was in the thick of growing my company—done-for-you systems, done-for-you pricing so I wouldn't have to do 50 hours of refinement.” Same with hiring: the constant frustration—people ghost you, or you hardly get any applicants, or you hire someone and they're terrible, or you don't want to fire them because you're scared you won't replace them. It's all these self-limiting beliefs. So I asked, “What if we could make it so it's no longer painful to hire? You just click a button, and the top 3 percent of talent shows up on your calendar to interview?” That’s what we've built. It's been fun—customers give us feedback, we fix it. That’s what I’m doing with HireBus.
[Sid Graef]:If you compare and contrast where you started to where you are now, you've got a bigger perspective of what's possible. You probably couldn't have imagined you'd be here. If you tried to crystal-ball it ten years from now, where do you see it going?
[Brandon Vaughn]:Oh boy. I just started a company called Hammer & Forge—that’s an acquisition company buying up businesses. I've spent the last few years leaning into my “investor era,” buying, holding, and selling companies. One project is rolling up electrical companies. We just bought a 40-year-old electrical company, and now we can deploy a team of vendors, support people—Yeti Books for bookkeeping, Denzel for marketing, HireBus for hiring GMs—then rinse and repeat, buy more companies, fold them together. I see HireBus as a multibillion-dollar company because our problem isn’t just for home services but for all small businesses. We're helping a roofing company hire 60 sales reps in three months, also working with healthcare, hospitality. It's massive. That's where I'm spending 90 percent of my focus. I anticipate having a holdings company with additional companies where I'm an investor owner, and I'm also focusing on having an incredible family. That’s my biggest priority now—being a great dad.
[Sid Graef]:Looking back, what would you do differently? Or what advice would you give to younger Brandon or someone early in their home service career?
[Brandon Vaughn]:I’d really try to pound into younger Brandon’s head: it's all about the people you pick. Build your business as if you have no arms and legs—don’t DIY everything. It's good to possess that skill, but there are people dumber than you who built bigger companies because they intentionally released control and found people way smarter. Every time I've done that, I've had more time freedom, less stress, and way more fun working with insanely smart people. I feel that's been the biggest unlock as an entrepreneur—realizing that's where I need to focus.
[Sid Graef]:Would younger Brandon listen to you?
[Brandon Vaughn]:I hope so. I'd say, “You invented a time machine? We’re geniuses, so of course I'll listen.” But seriously, I've read the books, listened to the podcasts that say the same thing, and there's probably someone listening now who's heard it 10 times. The question is, “Now do it.” Some people only do it if forced. One of our Conquer members had a health emergency—they physically couldn't do the work or drive for sales, so they hired techs and salespeople. The business doubled the next year. Why wait for something like that? It's scary to do, but if we do it by choice, that's ideal.
[Sid Graef]:Thank you so much for spending time with us, talking about your journey and transformations, and giving sound advice. Whether they're early or in the middle, there's no end until you quit. You can keep growing.
[Brandon Vaughn]:That’s right. Simon Sinek calls it “the infinite game.” The players change, the rules change, the scope changes—there's no winners or losers. The journey is the thing you win. We’re so blessed to do what we do, and the more we come from a place of gratitude, the more we realize it doesn't have to be a dumpster fire all the time. Get better people on your team, though—that really helps.
[Sid Graef]:For sure—thanks again. That's a perfect place to stop. Thanks again for your time and for, as always, being generous with sharing and helping and delivering wisdom. Thank you very much.
[Brandon Vaughn]:Thank you, Sid. Anyone who's listening—if you want us to help you find someone for your team, hirebus.com/huge—love to talk to you and help more.
[Sid Graef]: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—any resources, books, tools, anything like that—is in the show notes, so it's easy for you to find and check it out.
I also want to let you know the mission for The Huge Convention and for this is to help our blue-collar business owners like you and me gain financial and time freedom through running a better business. We do that in four ways:
Our free weekly newsletter: It's called The 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.
The Huge Foundations education platform: We have over 120 hours of industry-specific education and resources for you. Every month we do a topical webinar and Q&A with seven- and eight-figure business owners. It's available to you for a $1 trial for seven days.
Of course, The Huge Convention: If you haven't been, you've got to check it out. It's every August; this year, it's in Nashville, Tennessee, August 20–22, 2025. It is the largest and number-one-rated trade show and convention for home service business builders. We have the biggest trade show where you can see all the coolest tools, meet vendors, and check out software to run your business. We have world-class education and educators and speakers who will teach you how to run a better business. And it's the best networking opportunity in the home service business space.
If you want to pour jet fuel on your business, check out the Huge Mastermind. Now, it's not for everyone—you've got to be at over $750,000 in revenue and building toward 1 million, 5 million, 10 million in the next five years. It's a network, a mentorship, and a mastermind of your peers. We help you understand and implement the Freedom Operating System. You can get info on all four of these programs and how they'll help you advance quickly just by going to thehugeconvention.com and scrolling down to click on the Freedom Path. Or you can find links in the show notes.
Sorry if I sound a bit wordy, but I just want to let you know about the resources available to help accelerate and advance your beautiful small business. So keep on growing, keep on learning, keep advancing. If you like the show, please take 90 seconds and give us a review on iTunes—then subscribe and share it. It would really mean the world to us, and it would help other people as we continue our mission to help folks just like you and me.
Thanks again for listening. We'll see you on the next episode.

13: The Michael Kaplan Episode

In this episode of the Huge Transformations Podcast, Gabe Torres interviews home service veteran Michael Kaplan, who scaled a failing three-truck carpet cleaning company into a multi-state, 200-employee enterprise generating over 17 million in revenue. Kaplan shares how he stumbled into home services after exploring other business opportunities (including franchising Jimmy John’s!), and how leaning into “low-reputation” industries can pay off big when you focus on professionalism and customer service. He explains the evolution of company culture—starting with a “frat house” vibe, then formalizing values as the business grew—and how protecting culture and nurturing genuine relationships were critical to long-term success. Kaplan also highlights how recessions reward lean, scrappy operators, and offers practical wisdom on scaling, culture-building, and the power of investing in relationships.
Show Notes
Guest:
Michael Kaplan – Home service entrepreneur, formerly owner of a 17M+ multi-state carpet cleaning business.
Key Topics Discussed:
Accidental Entry into Home Services: Transition from exploring Jimmy John’s franchises to buying a struggling carpet cleaning business.
Rapid Growth & Recession Strategy: Doubling down on marketing spend during the economic downturn to outcompete bloated rivals.
Culture & Values: Starting as a small, close-knit “frat house” environment, then formalizing core values to scale effectively across multiple states.
Relationship Capital: Why building genuine relationships matters more than short-term gains—key partnerships and mentors can change your trajectory.
Operating Lean: Avoiding costly overhead and vanity warehousing; how lean operations can unlock bigger marketing budgets and faster growth.
References & Mentions:
Jimmy John’s
Stanley Steemer
Patrick Lencioni (culture and leadership resources): https://www.tablegroup.com/pat-lencioni
Warren Buffett
Resources:
The Huge Insider newsletter signup
The Huge Insider podcast downloadable action guide
The Foundations platform trial offer
The Huge Mastermind info page
Facebook
Transcrip
[Sid Graef]:Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Huge Transformations Podcast. I'm Sid Graef out of Montana.
[Gabe Torres]:I'm Gabe Torres here in Nashville, Tennessee.
[Sheila Smeltzer]:And I'm Sheila Smeltzer from North Carolina. We're 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.
[Gabe Torres]: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 percent experience, zero percent theory.
[Sheila Smeltzer]:We're 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.
[Sid Graef]:Thanks for joining us on the wild journey of entrepreneurship. Let's dive in.
[Gabe Torres]:Hey, what's up, everybody. It's Gabe Torres with the Huge Transformations Podcast. We have an incredible guest today who is a home service legend that most of you probably already know by the name of Michael Kaplan. But if you don't, you're going to be really, really happy after this episode because there's going to be so much value in it. So, Michael, thank you so much for joining us. What's up?
[Michael Kaplan]:Thanks for having me—legend, that's a big word. No pressure, right?
[Gabe Torres]:The one that was weird for me was to call you Michael, because I always call you Kaplan. And so, um, I think I'm going to stick with Kaplan, but to everybody else, it could be Michael Kaplan.
[Michael Kaplan]:My mom gets my name wrong, so it doesn't matter.
[Gabe Torres]:Where are you at currently? Are you home?
[Michael Kaplan]:I'm just outside of Minneapolis, in Minnesota.
[Gabe Torres]:And that's home base for you, right?
[Michael Kaplan]:Yep, we're digging out from about ten inches yesterday, so we got a little bit of snow and sludge and all that crap before the home service boom in a couple of weeks.
[Gabe Torres]:Yeah, before busy season. So, for those of you who don't know Michael Kaplan, give us the quick backstory rundown: how'd you get into the home service space? What did you get into specifically in home service?
[Michael Kaplan]:You know, it was not on purpose; it was kind of by accident. I think that happens to a lot of home service entrepreneurs. But in 2006, I was looking at starting a business or buying a business, had run across plenty of opportunities, and really couldn't come up with a business plan that made sense with any of them. I hadn't looked at service at all.
Then a friend put in front of me an opportunity to invest in a carpet cleaning company, and honestly, I didn't know people cleaned their carpet. I was 26, and I started looking into it and thought, “All right, well, I can do that.” And the thing that really got me to pull the trigger, as dumb as it is—and this might get edited out, but it's true—was in 2006, I'm digging through the Yellow Pages to try and figure out who the competitors in the carpet cleaning space were. I'm flipping through, flipping through, and I came across one of the most reputable companies in town. They had a half-page ad with a little checklist of all the things they were awesome at, and near the bottom of the checklist was “We don't smoke in your home.” I was like, “I can do that! Is that where the bar is?!” Like, you know, we have to promote that we don't smoke in your home? So, I figured there probably aren't a lot of business people in this industry, I'll give it a go.
So I dug in and originally, I had three partners. We bought a failing three-truck, two-employee carpet cleaning company in Minneapolis, and we were running from there.
[Gabe Torres]:Can I pause real quick and backtrack a little bit? Because, like you said, a lot of people's journey into home service is sometimes accidental, or they're looking in one direction and end up going another way. What were you looking at before the carpet cleaning opportunity hit your plate?
[Michael Kaplan]:The first thing that really got me juiced up was I wanted to franchise Jimmy John's. I grew up in Minneapolis—St. Paul, actually—and there was one Jimmy John's in Minnesota. It's where you go to get a late-night snack, and it just became part of my culture. I was like, “Man, I went to college out in Maine and spent a lot of time in Boston, and there's nothing like this in Boston—it would crush!” So I spent like a year and a half pursuing that. Not because it was franchising, not because it was anything other than it made sense to me.
But the more I learned, the more I shied away from the opportunity because rent in the major metro areas, especially Boston, is just insane. If I were smart, I would open up 200 Jimmy John's in Minnesota, but I haven't been accused of being that smart. So that was the first thing.
The next thing I looked at that I got really serious with was a financial education program where we would get banks to sponsor us to go into high schools to teach financial literacy. It's an under-evolved part of education, and so many people make so many preventable mistakes because they just haven't grown up talking about credit or interest rates. But the nuance between the private sector, the public sector, and schools made it really complicated. It just didn't go anywhere.
[Gabe Torres]:Okay, so all over the board. That's cool. I love that. I was just talking to a guy who has a DJ entertainment business, and he got a random, crazy idea to start a window cleaning company. He was like, “I don't know if I'm going out too far out of my lane.” So it's always interesting, because entrepreneurs are always looking for opportunities and will take a look at almost anything, right? So for you, it was becoming Mr. Jimmy John himself, the financial education opportunity, and then landed on buying a carpet cleaning company—was that the one in Minneapolis?
[Michael Kaplan]:Yeah, I ran into the opportunity because a good friend was being approached to join an opportunity to buy the company. He had carpet cleaning experience. I, again, I didn't know it was an industry; it didn't appeal to me or jump out. I just started to learn about it and started to map out what it would mean, and I thought we could fulfill this type of responsibility, cater to the clients, figure out the money, and all that. The pieces came together.
But my real goal was—I didn't really have the vernacular for it, but I wanted to be in private equity. I wanted to be someone who buys and fixes broken companies. So there was a broken company in front of me, and I thought, “All right, to do this, I've got to start somewhere, and this one is small—how hard could home service be?” Well, it's really freaking hard, but my goal was to spend three years in the industry, working in the business, figuring it out, and then keep it or flip it. Success would be, instead of three trucks, maybe we'd have five, maybe we're doing a million or a million-two, and then I'd move on to the next thing.
Well, I ended up spending about twelve years doing it because the opportunity presented itself to keep growing. I was having a ton of fun, was still learning, and had more to prove. Also, I hadn't wrapped my arms around what leaving would look like, so I just stuck with it and kept running. We ended up in six states, had about 200 employees, just causing trouble.
[Gabe Torres]:A couple more trucks?
[Michael Kaplan]:A couple more trucks, yeah—maybe 80 or 90.
[Gabe Torres]:80 or 90 trucks. At what revenue point were you guys at twelve years later?
[Michael Kaplan]:17 or 18 million, somewhere in there.
[Gabe Torres]:Jiminy Christmas, that's awesome. That's a lot of rug-sucking.
[Michael Kaplan]:A lot of rug-sucking.
[Gabe Torres]:So three years became twelve years, a couple of trucks became 80 or 90. One of the things that we always talk about on the podcast is obviously you've seen a ton through that amount of time, and you've done stuff beyond that carpet cleaning company, still doing stuff in the industry. But when you think back from when you first got into it to twelve years later, there's the big issues like: how are you going to get the work, right? The demand part. Then there's how do we staff up for it. Those get talked about a lot. One thing that had to have changed or gotten ingrained over that time is culture. I'm sure the culture from when you first got that business to twelve years later—did it stay the same? Did it change? Did it get ingrained deeper after twelve years of you guys hammering the culture? Was there no culture when you got it?
[Michael Kaplan]:Well, there were no employees—there were two brothers, so there wasn't a lot of family culture. I think early on in a business, the culture is really defined by the leader. Eventually, when you're having success, you can sort of templatize it. I don't mean to downplay the need to work on it—it gets easier to reinforce, but harder if it gets off track the bigger it gets.
Early on, I was in there making egg sandwiches and pancakes and doing cookouts after hours. We were trying to drive business through postcarding, so we'd buy 6,000, 10,000 postcards and have licking-stick parties, literally licking because they weren't the peels. We'd just have a case of beer, and I wouldn't ask anybody, but we had maybe 5 or 10 employees. They'd come join me because I had a case of beer, and I'd be there until ten at night. They wanted to be part of something, so we gave them that community. Some of the driving forces behind competition within the business, spiffs, and things like that got them fired up about inching forward.
Service was one of our big rallying cries because the carpet cleaning industry is really not very reputable. People are not expecting you to kill them with kindness and care about the results. They assume you're going to screw them, so they get aggressive when there's a problem. We took the opposite approach and tried to say, “How would you want to perform in your mom's house? How do we templatize that and get people to pursue that type of service on a daily basis?” So we did it, I think. I'm all over the place, but we did a pretty good job at creating that rallying cry.
But it doesn't scale. You can't have a ten-million business that operates like a frat house doing 300 transactions—it's really freaking messy. So eventually, we realized the culture can't be based on the leaders and our rah-rah; it's got to be based on the team. We started using Patrick Lencioni's tricks and tips for documenting culture, putting it on the wall, and making sure we didn't have aspirational core values. We looked deep and tried to figure out what really makes us tick—what are the values that we run the business on, and which values can we hire and fire by? When you take it that seriously and you put them on the wall, it can be like a North Star that shows people, “We're going that direction, and you're never going to get hired—and you will get fired—if you're not going that same direction with us.” The behaviors people exhibit become meaningful. We'd take B-players over A-players if the B-player was aligned with our culture and the A-player wasn't. It's easy—maybe it's not easy—but it's not a Herculean lift to find new revenue if you had to fire someone producing a lot of revenue, but it is a Herculean lift to fix culture. So we were really protective of it.
[Gabe Torres]:At what point did you realize that didn't scale—that the culture can't be on the leader?
[Michael Kaplan]:We ran out of room on the grill for pancakes. The grill got too small. I always didn't have a job description early on, but down the road—when we were doing 5, 10, 15 million—I did have a job description. The top bullet point was always something to the effect of “I own the result of whatever our culture is.” I was the key ambassador for culture, but that meant I had to make sure policies and direction were aligned, not that I had to introduce the values and reinforce them with every employee, every time, at each step of their onboarding process.
Eventually, you're working on the business rather than in the business, so you need to make sure you've got the values articulated and cascaded down the ranks. By that point, you're deputizing the team and playing the role of chief repeating officer to a few people who then reinforce it with the masses. We were operating out of state as well, so there's a lot of repeating needed.
[Gabe Torres]:I heard this while listening to a podcast on Steve Jobs, and they were talking about why he was so good. He said he just never forgot that people forget that people forget, and that you just constantly have to remind them. So I imagine that in itself could become a full-time job with 200 employees and key people in different states.
One of the things you brought up earlier was you said, “Starting a home service business—how hard could that be?” Then you said, “Man, I found out it was really hard.” But also you started in 2006, right before a great time in America. Right now, I'm starting to hear a lot of people talk about how the economy seems to be going downhill, inflation is through the roof, eggs cost—I mean, my mom calls me every week to tell me what she spends on eggs. For the business environment that everybody's operating in right now, you are somebody who has gone through arguably a much harder time than what we're seeing. How was that, starting up a home service business right before the Great Recession?
[Michael Kaplan]:My story is probably a little bit different than the typical story because we started booming at the beginning of the recession. So September 11, 2008, we were operating five trucks, doing 1.1 million in ’08—on pace to do that 1.1—and we got some good press that day. We had pursued an article in the newspaper, and it got published, and boom, our business started taking off. That opened our eyes to the opportunity; it didn't reinvent the business, but it gave us confidence to reinvest differently.
But what happened is capital markets dried up, liquidity dried up, and anyone involved in property was getting their asses kicked. My business partner at the time had joint and several liability on 21 million dollars of real estate development—there were no tenants, no buyers. He had preorders, and they all evaporated because all the finance requirements changed. So he filed for bankruptcy at the beginning of ’09. Our business is booming; we're trying to buy trucks, and our capital guy evaporates. He filed for bankruptcy, so no one would give us any loans based on our guarantor.
What might be more relevant here is that while I think you need to carefully think through consumer mindset and the type of investments you're making when the world is rocky, most of the viewers of this podcast are smaller businesses. One huge advantage we had in growing during a recession was we didn't have a lot of bloated infrastructure—we were already pretty lean. The Stanley Steemer in Minnesota was one of the biggest in the country in ’08–’09. They were doing about four and a half or five million. Four years later, they sold to their franchisor, they had been running 25 trucks, they were running four and doing less than a million. Part of it was the recession, part of it was the employee bathrooms had gold faucets—it's also a second-generation company, and there wasn't that scrappiness.
Buffett has an awesome quote: “When the tide goes out, you see who's swimming naked.” That means, when the tide's in, maybe people are doing stupid things, spending on high interest rates or having too much excess capacity or too many employees. When it's boom time, they're not watching the budget. Then the tide goes out, the market gets harder, and it's harder to operate. So you find out real quick who's swimming naked, who gets their butt kicked.
We were a tiny tot running just a couple of trucks and started realizing, “Okay, everyone else is in the corner sucking their thumb, nervous about this recession—what if we get really freaking aggressive?” So we went from having a 6,000 monthly budget in marketing to over 30,000 within four months in 2009. Within a year and a half, we were spending close to a million dollars on media per year, and the opportunity was there. People liked what we were doing, and we had a model we thought we could run with, so we said, “Well, let's double down—get while the getting's good.”
[Gabe Torres]:Yeah, and I think you laid that out perfectly because had you been bloated, spending 10 grand or 20 grand a month on a lease, you wouldn't have had the extra to go from 4 to 30,000 a month.
[Michael Kaplan]:We were in a dirty garage that we were subleasing from a defunct cable subcontractor. They left town, had a little shop—maybe 7,000 feet—and we said, “Hey, can we lease a third of it?” They ended up coming back in the market and saying, “Hey, you’re leasing a third and using all of it.” That's true—but we were super nimble, and we were underpaying. Fake it till you make it, man. So many people I've run into have these vanity shops and spend all this money on warehouses before they really need it. Keep it down and dirty. Gabe, you can speak to it better.
[Gabe Torres]:Our shop is inside something called Dolly's Grooming. I tell everybody, when you're going to show up for your first day, go to Dolly's Grooming—don't go through the front door, because that's actually the groomers’ side. We lease out two of the old doggie daycare spaces that they don't use anymore. We have a parking lot back there, and we spend 500 bucks a month for it.
[Michael Kaplan]:People who don't get it might say, “Holy shit, what a slob.” People who know and make real money will say, “Damn, that's thrifty—I love it.”
[Gabe Torres]:Yeah, exactly—so nice. Okay, so one of the last questions before we go, because the time is wrapping up, is the same question we ask everybody: if you were to go back and do it again, what advice would you give yourself, knowing now—almost 20 years later—if you could talk to 2006 Michael Kaplan, what would you tell him before he starts to take on that carpet cleaning company?
[Michael Kaplan]:Before buying the business or right after?
[Gabe Torres]:Right after.
[Michael Kaplan]:You know, one of the lessons I've learned is about the value of relationships. I'd say there are a couple of moments where I can identify that I put near-term rewards ahead of building relationship capital for the long term. I think I've corrected that behavior, and I'm super focused on investing in people now. Most of what I do is building relationships, and I didn't understand how impactful or important it was because the right relationship can change your life.
There are times where I've not made an investment, where in hindsight, even if it wasn't the right investment, it would have been the right investment in the relationship. When I started doing that, my life changed. The partners I have today, the relationships I have today, they're both extremely meaningful to me and pay the bills. But for making some stupid investments in the right people—maybe for the wrong reasons—I wouldn't have some of these relationships. I know that's maybe a little abstract, but invest in people. Really find ways to double down on relationships.
People running a business, especially a startup or a new acquisition, feel like that guy on Letterman spinning plates—you're the dishwasher, the cook, the guy mopping the floor, the marketer, the finance guy. It's super overwhelming, and you're working in the business. It can be hard to step outside that role and recognize, “I need to invest more in this person because they're doing things I want to be part of.” Cutting relationships short can be a real hindrance to growth, personal and professional.
[Gabe Torres]:Nice, that's a great piece to end on—value relationships over the short-term gains.
[Michael Kaplan]:Yeah, I always talk about it as relationship capital. There's human capital, the people you work with and that work for you, there's financial capital you buy stuff with, but relationship capital has value too—it can be exchanged and traded, and it can create huge opportunities for you.
[Gabe Torres]:Yeah, I mean, we're both obviously in the mastermind, and even just thinking about some of the relationships there—I had a situation that was a 50,000 problem, and a relationship there found me a 500 solution because they'd run into that problem before. Not to pitch the mastermind too hard, but being in a group like that is how you build those relationships. So many solopreneurs out there—good on you for watching this podcast and trying to digest information, but being part of the group and being there, all of a sudden you've got a 50-person opportunity to pick your board of directors, and they're experienced people doing cool stuff. That's a goldmine. You talk about a 50,000-dollar problem—there are people who've made millions, going from 1 million to 5 million, or fill in the blank. When you look at the Jareds, the people in that group, how they've evolved over the years—it's huge.
[Michael Kaplan]:Yeah, absolutely.
[Gabe Torres]:Nice. Well, thank you so much for carving some time out to be with us, Kaplan. You have such a cool story that I think people barely got a glimpse of here—we'll have to do a part two or something.
[Michael Kaplan]:Well, thank you. We'll see how it edits out, because I don't know if I said anything that was too coherent, but it's fun to see you again.
[Gabe Torres]:Yeah, we will see all of you next week. It's Gabe Torres at the Huge Transformations Podcast, and I hope you guys go out and crush the rest of the week. See you later.
[Sid Graef]: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—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 out.
I also want to let you know the mission for the Huge Convention and for this podcast is to help our blue-collar business owners like you and me to gain financial and time freedom through running a better business. We do that in four ways:
Number one is our free weekly newsletter—it's called the 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 Foundations education platform. That is—we've got over 120 hours of industry-specific education and resources for you, and every month we do a topical webinar and we do question and answer with seven- and eight-figure business owners. 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've got to check it out. It's every August; this year it's in Nashville, Tennessee. That's August 20th through 22nd in 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. We've got 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 you can have within the home service business.
Lastly, if you want to pour jet fuel into your business, check out the Huge Mastermind. Now, it's not for everyone—you've got to be at over 750,000 of revenue, and you're building toward a million, 5 million, 10 million in the next five years. It's a network, mentorship, and a mastermind of your peers. 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 they will help you advance your business quickly just by going to thehugeconvention.com and scrolling down—click on the Freedom Path. Or, of course, you can find the links here in the show notes.
I'm sorry, I feel like I'm getting a little bit wordy, but I just want to let you know about the resources available to help you accelerate and advance your beautiful small business. So keep on growing, keep on learning, keep advancing. And if you like the show, please go ahead—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 as we continue our mission to help people just like you and me. So thanks again for listening. We'll see you on the next episode.

12: The Steve Hunsaker Episode

In this episode of The Huge Transformations Podcast, Sid Graef, introduces holiday-lighting entrepreneur Steve Hunsaker. Steve shares how he built a thriving Christmas light installation business—starting from scratch by leveraging sales skills, proactive marketing, and high-end positioning to differentiate from cheaper competitors. Despite nearly going under in his third year, he refined his operations, hired strategically, focused on profitability, and now generates more than 800,000 in annual revenue from Christmas lighting alone. Steve also discusses his newer ventures in permanent and landscape lighting, along with his “Home Service Accelerator” coaching program. This episode provides valuable lessons on systems, hiring, marketing, and mindset for home service professionals looking to reach six, seven, and even eight figures.
 
References:
Paycom
Sweaty Startup (Reddit)
Jason Geiman (mentioned as a YouTuber in holiday lights)
Jobber (CRM)
Go High Level (marketing & automation tool)
Tommy Mello (nine-figure home service entrepreneur)
The Huge Convention
Newsletter Sign Up!
Downloadable Action Guide
The Foundations Free Trial
Huge Mastermind Info Page
Connect With Us On Facebook!
 
Transcript
Gabe Torres:“Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Huge Transformations Podcast. I’m Gabe Torres here in Nashville, Tennessee.”
Sheila Smeltzer:“I’m Sheila Smeltzer from North Carolina.”
Sid Graef:“I’m Sid Graef out of Montana. We’re 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.”
Gabe Torres:“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.”
Sheila Smeltzer:“We get insights and truths from successful business builders, and every episode is 100 percent experience, 0 percent theory. We’re going to dig deep and reveal the good, the bad, and the ugly.”
Gabe Torres:“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.”
Sid Graef:“Thanks for joining us on the wild journey of entrepreneurship. Let’s dive in.”
Sid Graef:“Welcome back to the Huge Transformations Podcast. This is Sid Graef, and today you get to meet Steve Hunsaker. Steve was a young man in Arizona, and he started a junk removal service about six years ago, kind of struggled his way through it. And then he started hanging Christmas lights. He spent time getting educated on marketing and systems.
In four or five short years, he built that to 800,000 revenue last season. He did really well. And now he’s got a partner, and he also spends time teaching other people how to start up their business. So Steve’s an interesting guy. He has really worked his way through struggles and challenges and just doesn’t quit. He’s doing a great job, and he’s a great example of a transformation from bootstrap to seven figures—he’s almost there. And I’m excited for you to meet him. So without further ado, meet Steve Hunsaker.”
Sid Graef:“Hey everybody, I’m glad you’re here. This is Sid with the Huge Transformation Show, and I’ve got Steve Hunsaker with me. And did I say your name right? Hunsaker?”
Steve Hunsaker:“Oh yeah, Hunsaker.”
Sid Graef:“Hunsaker. Close enough. Okay, cool. So, interesting story. I’m really glad to have you on the show, and I’m glad to meet you because, in full transparency, I actually stalked you online just a little bit. You came across my Instagram feed—I was like, ‘Oh, this guy’s got good... you know, like you’re articulate, and you had some good content for the home service industry.’ You’ve got a holiday lighting company, a landscape lighting company. I think you had another service business beforehand. And now you coach people. And I was like, ‘Well, I’m going to pay attention.’ And I start paying attention, and I’m like, ‘Ooh, content’s good. You actually know what you’re talking about. I’m like, I gotta get you on the show because this is The Huge Transformation Show, and you’ve shared a lot of your story online.’ So before I just introduce you forever... how’d you get started in home service business, Steve?”
Steve Hunsaker:“Yeah, no, I appreciate the intro. Yeah, I started—it was 2020. I was working at Paycom, which is like a human capital management payroll software company. And I was just miserable. So like, you know, the big sickness, if you’re putting this on YouTube I can’t use the C word apparently—so the big sickness or whatever happened in 2020. Basically, I was an outside sales rep wearing a suit and tie every day, like doing decently well. I was a career sales guy for five years, something like that.
Then they did this stay-at-home order, and I was calling CFOs of these massive companies to try to get in the door because they were forcing us to when the whole world shut down. And from a guy who was selling in person to getting told essentially, ‘How effing dare you call me? I just laid off 400 people?’—this is like April of 2020, worst time ever—and I was just miserable. I thought, ‘This is not ending anytime soon. I’ve got to find some other way to make money.’
So I went on Reddit, typed in like, ‘Cool ways to make money,’ and I found a Sweaty Startup Reddit post about hanging Christmas lights. It linked to one of those Facebook groups. I went into the Facebook group and was like, ‘Oh, it’s October...’ or at that point, it was maybe April, May when I started—kept looking at it. And then by October, I was like, ‘Oh, okay, it’s October, this’ll work.’ Then I just started looking at the Facebook group and found some dudes with, you know, a 10th-grade education ripping six figures hanging Christmas lights. And I was like, ‘I’ve got to talk to some of these guys.’ And so that’s how I started. Day one was just from Reddit to Christmas light company. That was the first thing I did.”
Sid Graef:“Okay, and then, so I mean, clearly you did it for a season, and it was interesting enough or profitable enough to say, ‘I’m going to keep doing this.’”
Steve Hunsaker:“Yeah, the cool thing for me was—and this is what I tell a lot of like the people that join the Home Service Accelerator too—it was really interesting because I have a different journey to home services than most home service guys, where I came from a sales and more techy background first, and then I had to learn the trade. That was pretty interesting to me because my first year, when you run a Christmas light business, if you want to make it profitable, you have to be high-end; you have to be selling to million-dollar homes most of the time. Because to do it—to be the cheap guy—you have to be so good operationally that first-year guys will not be.
And so typically, to start out and actually make money, you have to go after the high-end, custom-cut, all that stuff. The sale part came naturally to me. And so we did, like, I want to say it was 98K in revenue our first year. But the issue was, I wasn’t very profitable. So that sounds all cool, and that’s classic internet goober, right? ‘Oh, 100K my first year!’ But we made very little once the tax man was paid and everything else. It was very little money. But that was the start point: sales background was natural. I ran a little bit of Google Ads, a little bit of Instagram, Facebook ads, and then just, like, sold, sold, sold all myself, installed myself until maybe Thanksgiving. Then I had two buddies help me, and then we just kind of ramped up from there.”
Sid Graef:“Right. Did you—aside from that Facebook group of holiday lighting installers, or whomever—did you have any other type of coaching, instruction to figure out, like, how do I price, who do I get suppliers from, or did you just glean it all off of that group?”
Steve Hunsaker:“There’s a little bit of the group. I didn’t pay for any coaching—sorry, I can see my camera’s out of focus, let me just tap real quick. Sorry about that, I didn’t want to ruin your video. Yeah, so I started just talking to the guys in the Facebook group. The funny thing is, like, even in 2020, there was very little coaching out there for Christmas lights—maybe Jason Guymon was making some YouTube videos. Other than that, it was pretty minimal. I would just call dudes from the Facebook group—I’d message them on Facebook Messenger and say, ‘Hey, do you have some time to chat?’ And most of these dudes would be like, ‘Yeah, absolutely,’ and they would just give me the keys to the castle for free, which is something I’m always like— that was really interesting, because if someone calls me now and they want to talk on the phone for two hours, I’m usually not super thrilled to do that. So it’s always—I always have to remind myself, like, when I started, dudes did that for me, so I’ve got to kind of keep doing that.”
Sid Graef:“Yeah, true. But, you know, so often that kind of stuff just leads into coaching, because people call you up, like, ‘Hey, can I pick your brain?’ And ordinarily, from someone that’s gained a level of success, there’s a willingness to help because you remember where you started. But at some point, you’ve got to account for your time, too. You’re like, ‘I don’t have two hours; I’ve got 10 minutes, 15 minutes maybe.’”
Steve Hunsaker:“Yeah, the thing that frustrates me a little bit in that scenario is, like, I never on any content say, like, ‘Do this because this is the only way.’ Most of the tone of everything I make is like, ‘Hey, I don’t have all the answers. I am by no means a guru. I’m not Tommy Mello with a nine-figure business that everything I say is essentially gospel at that point. I’m not that. I’m just in the thick of it right now. I’ve shared my growth year by year, and I just share based on what’s worked for me.’
So, you know, when guys call me, what happens when you start making content or when I started the Accelerator is every high school buddy and friend, everyone’s cousin is like, ‘Oh, I have a buddy that does home services. Let me give you his phone number, and you guys can talk for an hour.’ And it’s like, ‘Yeah, that’s great.’ And it’s kind of weird because now I have a monetized thing for it. So I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m happy to talk with you.’ But what gets frustrating is when I talk to somebody for two hours, and then I talk to them three months later, and I’m like, ‘Hey, how’d you do? Did you implement all those things?’ And they didn’t do any of it. And I’m like, ‘Okay...’”
Sid Graef:“Yeah, exactly. So I’m going to tie two questions together—maybe it’s just a concept. So you’ve had five seasons in your holiday lighting company, is that correct?”
Steve Hunsaker:“Five, yeah. 2020 was the first year, so going on the fifth year.”
Sid Graef:“Well, congratulations—you’ve beaten the majority of the statistics that say 80 percent of new businesses are gone in five years. So good job on that.”
Steve Hunsaker:“Isn’t it the three-year mark that makes the difference? Because we almost went under at year three, so I was almost a statistic.”
Sid Graef:“Yeah, well, it’s like running an ultramarathon. A lot of people drop out. It’s not like they got hit by a car; they just don’t have the gas to make 50 or 100 miles, you know—recognizing that business is just a freakin’ marathon.”
Steve Hunsaker:“Yeah, exactly.”
Sid Graef:“But you’ve grown each year, grown that. But do you find that people pay attention to what they pay for? Meaning, you’ve got the buddy of a high school friend that calls and gets all this advice, and then three months later, you go, ‘Hey, did you do anything with it?’ You get that no. Was free, so maybe they treated it like it was free. But now, you have people that pay you, and they take a lot more action.”
Steve Hunsaker:“Yeah, it’s actually a really good point. There is definitely something to, like, if you are selling any product that requires work still—like the way we describe it is, ‘We steer the boat, but you still have to row.’ We just put the boat in the right direction. You still have to row. It’s a lot different than what a lot of these guys are used to buying, which is agency services where it’s like, ‘I’m going to give you 1,000 a month; make my phone ring.’ And so when guys come into it, a big thing for us is, ‘Hey, these are systems and processes that have worked for me—now 200 other home service business owners. We know they’ll work for you, but you still have to do the work.’
If you don’t charge enough... in terms of the market for selling info or coaching or anything like that on the internet, we’re pretty cheap—full transparency. Our thing is anywhere between 2 and 3,000 for 90 days. We’re not that expensive given how good our testimonials are. But what’s interesting is, the times I have—earlier in the business—let people in for free, like friends of friends, they are the worst results, pretty consistently, because they don’t have that buy-in to actually do the work. But somebody who pays full price, they’re like, ‘Okay, I invested 2,500. I better do something with it.’ They’ve got skin in the game, and that makes all the difference.”
Sid Graef:“Yeah, for sure. So we talked about the holiday lights, and we’ll transform out of that, but you mentioned your accidental entrance into the industry, which is really interesting. Most people start in service business because they’re a good technician. They don’t like their boss, or they think they can do it better. ‘I’ll go start my own.’ So they start as a technician and then try to figure out business or sales. You came at it from a different direction—sales first, which I think is a big benefit on your end.
But year one, 98,000, two, three, four—you’ve grown each year. I’d like to ask you: what did you have to learn to progress from year one to two to three to now?”
Steve Hunsaker:“Oh, I love this question because I remember it year by year. Okay, so year one: 97 or 98K in revenue. If you’re looking at the skill quiver—sales skill, marketing skill, operations skill, people management skill, maybe accounting skill if that’s the five main skills of a business owner—year one, I maybe had ‘sales.’ That’s it.
So year one was like, ‘Okay, I can white-knuckle myself to about 97K doing all the sales, because I at least know how to have a conversation with somebody.’ Then year one was 97, 98, something like that—terrible margin. Year two, I went, ‘Okay, if I look at these five skills, year two: what’s the thing that has the biggest return on my time to offset this?’ And of course, in Christmas, it was operations. So in year two, I brought on somebody to help with operations. I was like, ‘Okay, if I can train somebody to be 80 percent as good as I am at installing—which, in hindsight, I was terrible at installing, but I thought I was really good—so if I can do that, that’s helpful.’
So year two, I hired an operations guy, which meant now I have ‘sales’ dialed in and I have a semblance of ‘operations’ dialed in. That gave me two of the five. We jumped from 97 or 98K to around 253K or something that year, because all the time I was spending on operations, I could now pour into sales and the other three that I was bad at, right? So that was a big jump, but also all the new problems that happened from scaling up a team—vehicles, everything else—that was year two.
So then year three, I was like, ‘Okay, how can I expand again?’ The third biggest thing was, ‘I can’t teach someone to run Instagram and Facebook ads for my company that well. I can’t teach somebody how to hire Google Ad agencies or anything else, so I’m going to keep doing that. I hired two sales guys in year three.’ So then year three became what was supposed to be the year where we actually had a full system, right?
What ended up happening was a classic case of, you know, bad things happen in twos or threes. My brother died on October 10, which was terrible—back in Seattle. So I had hired two full-time sales guys, cranked ad spend infinitely to make sure they were busy enough, had an operations guy, maybe 15 or 20 crew members part-time, full-time, all that. My brother died, and I obviously had to go to Seattle; my parents are a mess, all that. Essentially, what I thought was ‘Okay, I have people in each position’ completely fell apart. My main operator basically just— for lack of better terms—ran the business into the ground. All my employees hated their lives; but again, I’m the owner, so it’s my fault. It was a bad situation, so that year three we almost went out of business entirely. We did like 350-something K in sales, and I could barely make payroll at the end of the year—really bad.
So then year four, I replaced the operations person, got the salespeople systems and automations to help them sort leads. So year four, the big thing was systems and processes. Then we jumped to 500K at good margins. And it was like, ‘Okay, now we have a system, we have leadership positions in place, everything like that.’ Then year five, I expanded the office staff and all our tech systems. So the big jump that year—we did 808K in sales. Our average ticket has gone up every single year substantially. Our close rate has gone up every year. The better you start doing in these richer areas, typically, the more they tell their friends. Your close rate goes higher the more organic leads you get. Because it’s more word-of-mouth, so they’re primed on your pricing. Versus if you do all cold traffic, that’s where you get people who thought it was going to be 200 bucks, and you’re like, ‘Add a zero.’ Yeah, so that’s kind of the difference.
To sum it all up, year one was white-knuckling, year two I offloaded ops, year three I offloaded sales, year four I got systems, and year five I optimized the systems.”
Sid Graef:“Okay, good. Really good. So what’s your projection for year six? I mean, do you anticipate—what’s the skill you need to add to continue to scale?”
Steve Hunsaker:“Yeah, that’s a good question. Year six is we need to get better at hiring mid-level management. That’s the big emphasis this year. Even at 800K in two months, we still had certain crew leads that ran circles around other crew leads. One crew lead can consistently install six, seven, eight grand in revenue a day. Sometimes we have another crew lead doing three or four grand, and the good crew lead will take that third job because the other guy hasn’t finished his second. So that’s a big emphasis for us this year: hiring and talent. The bigger our brand got locally, it seemingly has gotten easier to attract talent because we pay pretty well. That’s the big emphasis this year.
But outside of that, too, we’ve finally taken the black pill on permanent lighting and are going all in on that—the permanent Christmas lights. We’re going to start doing that. We’ve been completely temporary lighting for these five years—none of that revenue has been permanent Christmas light jobs. And so now we’re expanding into landscape lighting and permanent lighting, because that’s married to our existing clientele. Versus—I’m selling off the junk removal company, because I was just robbing from Peter to pay Paul as the businesses got bigger, subbing out junk in Q4 because I needed everybody I could for Christmas. At a certain point, I looked at the five-year plan and was like, ‘That’s not going to work.’ But this permanent and landscape lighting is definitely a bolt-on to the business. It’s going to take us to the next level.”
Sid Graef:“Okay, cool. I’m not super familiar with the permanent or landscape lighting or their margins, but it doesn’t appear that that’s a recurring business model the way temporary lights is. I know—I see that look on your face, maybe it is?”
Steve Hunsaker:“It is if you’re smart. The issue is most of my competitors won’t be able to do it because they’re not profitable enough. But you can do a permanent product that’s year-round and give people some pretty juicy lease terms on commercial buildings. So you can do permanent product, but instead of forcing a company to fork over a five-figure invoice that three different levels have to approve for the permanent lighting display, if you can front it, you can rent it and have a recurring model. Then you become an MRR business with an actual exit potential. But most guys can’t do it— that’s why I’m not afraid to talk about it, because most guys can’t do it: they can’t front the cost of installing a product that costs 12 dollars a foot for 7- or 800 feet, and they’re not going to even break even for nine months, ten months. Most guys can’t do that, especially in the Christmas light world, because most of them are fly-by-night.
But on the residential side, you gotta sell it. Because there’s too many variables, you’re cutting tracks, all that jazz. But there is a recurring model there, which is what I’m more excited about.”
Sid Graef:“That’s really interesting. Let me ask you this: in your growth time, year three was desperately sorry about your brother—really brutal— but lessons learned along the way. I love to ask people, ‘What was either a mistake you made or a landmine you stepped on that you think, “Oh, geez, if somebody had just told me, I could have avoided this whole mess?”’”
Steve Hunsaker:“Yeah, I would say hiring is number one. So, like, everyone tells you to get off the truck, but they don’t really put an emphasis on, like, ‘It matters who’s on the truck for you.’ That’s a big one. The other thing—and this is a Hormozi, Alex Hormozi quote that basically sums up the situation with employees and all that— ‘Most of your business’s problems are probably going to be solved with the conversations that you’re avoiding.’ And so I had this kind of passive-aggressive relationship with the person essentially running the entire business. You know when you just know that someone doesn’t really like you? You just know, even if they don’t say it. The way the interaction is happening, you just kind of know in your gut, ‘Oh, this isn’t always a fun interaction.’ Typically, a good rule of thumb is if you’re dreading your one-on-ones with that employee, you should probably ask yourself... yeah. And so that was kind of the scenario, but I was like, ‘Oh, the entire business is tied there. I can’t do anything right. It is what it is.’ I just shoved it under the rug. Then when push came to shove, I’m three states away, not coming back anytime soon. The workload’s falling on one person, and it got pretty hairy.
So for me, the main lesson was that: the magic in your business is probably coming from the conversations you’re avoiding. That’s number one. Then two: hiring specifically, and knowing that if I’m truly giving full control of my business to this person, I better be able to trust them to do me right and I’m going to do right by them. But the trade-off is they also have to trust you. So if you’re going to pay somebody peanuts, you’re going to get peanut results. If you’re going to hope somebody clocks in and cares as much about your business as you do for $15 an hour... I’ve got beachfront property in Montana where Sid lives to sell you, you know?
So those are probably the two big lessons. The other one, too, is that revenue is vanity and profit is sanity. When you’re new to business, you start hitting six figures. You’re brand-new, you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, 100 grand, 200 grand, I’m invincible.’ Then you start realizing that means nothing if you’re at 20 percent margins, 15 percent margins. That means nothing. So in my earlier days, it was so much about revenue, and now I’m like, ‘I don’t give a rat’s... you know what... about revenue; I care about profit.’ That’s the actual skill, which again ties into: now that I’m in the influencer space with Home Service Accelerator, it’s funny because I see all these dudes that just shell out their revenue numbers everywhere. I’ve talked to a lot of these coaches privately, and when you know what to ask about these guys’ businesses—like, ‘Oh, okay, tell me about that. How many crews do you have? Okay, well, how many—what do those crews average per day?’—when they start not being able to answer those questions very clearly, you start going, ‘Oh, okay, this is an influencer cosplaying as a business owner, not a business owner cosplaying as an influencer.’”
Sid Graef:“Yeah, that’s really interesting. It was either Charlie Munger or Warren Buffett that said, ‘When the tide goes out, you see who’s swimming naked.’”
Steve Hunsaker:“Yeah, it’s definitely true. It’s funny though, because I speak at conferences now a lot for Christmas lights. I speak at, like, Christmas Light Contractors, HBL, a lot of the vendors that put on conferences. They’ll have me come out because I’m younger, so if they’re selling product, obviously that helps. But it’s funny, even though I’m saying that to you here, what happens when I go at 28—now I’m 29—and I speak at these conferences, the old heads all say I’m lying. All these dudes who’ve been doing it 20, 30 years say I’m lying about my numbers. And the same way I talk about it in my Instagram videos—like, even in my presentations, I’ll pull up Jobber and, like, live, pull it up, show my payroll. I’ll show everyone my payroll liability for the year. Yeah, I’ll even show basically a blueprint—I can basically show my P&L. And the old heads still accuse me of lying.
I think that part of it is—I do the same thing. If somebody does something that’s better than what I’m doing, I instantly meet it with, ‘There’s no way,’ instead of, ‘Oh, maybe there is a better way that I’m unaware of.’ It’s just funny, because even though I’m talking about the internet gurus that are lying, which they are—most of them—it’s funny that I get met with that at the conferences too, even if I show my numbers, sales, P&L, and everything.
I think that’s because there’s this weird world of content creation now, everything else, where I feel like I have to overshare my numbers because there’s so many bad actors in the space, I feel like it’s my fiduciary responsibility to say, ‘I don’t care if one out of 10 people thinks it’s douchey—this is our sales, this is how much my payroll was, this is how much I spent on ads, this is real.’”
Sid Graef:“Yeah, that’s valid. Especially with the old heads, we’ve seen this transition. With The Huge Convention, we’ve got a couple thousand people every year. We see it all the time. There are guys who’ve been in business for 10, 20, 30 years, and it took them 20 years to break seven figures. Now we see a lot of guys like yourself—fourth year, they’re crossing the million-dollar mark, third year once in a while. It’s pretty rare. But doing in five years what took you 20, you think, ‘No way.’ But the fact of the matter is the information flow is so fast right now, and you’ve got a lot of people teaching stuff that took them 20 years of trial and error, and a wise next guy just goes, ‘Instead of trying to figure it all out, I’ll just do that. You built the wheel, I’ll spin it.’”
Steve Hunsaker:“Yeah, my entire story was picking the brains of guys in Facebook groups who had already done it. If I had to figure it out all by myself, I’d be paying the ‘incompetency tax’ for probably 10 years. So it’s like if you go talk to people and get proximity to people who are killing it, that 10 years of trial and error is squeezed into probably six months. Don’t use those engines, hire more carefully, you have to charge 9 a foot, 10 a foot. All these things I would never have done—I would have bought Home Depot lights and done that route for five years until somebody told me otherwise.
But that’s funny you bring that up, because that’s exactly why Home Service Accelerator’s exploded: it’s a mix of young guys going, ‘Okay, Steve’s gotten his businesses here; it’s not guru style, it’s just pure systems and processes. I just want to copy and paste into my business.’ But the other half is these older cats with bigger businesses who are like, ‘Okay, hold on, this kid got a Christmas light business to 800K, a junk removal business to two or three hundred K. We’re all just kind of messing around with it. He did it in two, three years. There’s gotta be something I don’t know about that’s a faster horse.’ Then those guys come in—and, again, those guys’ businesses are way more stable because they were built largely off of word of mouth. If they have that social proof combined with what the young guys are good at— GMB, Facebook, Google Ads, automations, all that stuff—then those guys will print more money than their wildest dreams because they have the baseline. It’s been funny for me, because now there’s like 200 people in the Accelerator, about a person a day comes in five days a week. It’s really interesting, because I have guys in the Accelerator doing a million dollars a month. I’ve got garage door repair guys that sold 30 percent to private equity this year, doing mid-six figures a month. Then I have new guys who have a 5,000-a-month window cleaning business just getting off the ground. It’s really funny to see that mix, because they’re all buying for different reasons, but it all comes down to the same thing: they’re just trying to compress that incompetency tax timeline. It’s like, ‘Yeah, you can figure it out on your own. Just tell me how much that’s going to cost and how much time that’s going to take.’”
Sid Graef:“Yeah, I’ll tell you how much it costs. It costs 18 years. That’s what it cost me. I built slow and steady for 18 years. It served its purpose; we provide for our family, we’ve been successful, we’re very comfortable. Then after that, I was like, ‘Wait, this is not a business, I own a freakin’ job.’ So my story, I’ve got to turn this into a business, and I started learning all the skills to run a business. Now it’s a much larger seven-figure business that runs on its own. I do my two weekly meetings, which doesn’t seem like a lot of work, but it feels like work when we’re doing them. Some days I think, ‘22 years... I could have done this 18 years ago and painted a different picture.’ Anyway, that’s interesting, especially with the Home Service Accelerator—having so many different levels gives you an opportunity to meet the needs of others but also learn from others as well.”
Steve Hunsaker:“Yeah, it’s pretty clear. We teach people how to run Facebook ads, how to set up automations, how to do an organic signage strategy that actually works. It’s pretty basic: if you’re not doing it, it can help you. That’s funny, because I don’t need to hone in and force some $10,000 course down the throat of a $2,000-a-month window cleaner and say, ‘He won’t grow without it.’ It’s just, ‘Hey, these are the systems that work for me. It’s been documented on YouTube and Instagram for five years.’ There are YouTube videos of me starting the junk removal business from scratch—fully documented. So that’s also been really helpful, because my sales guys—if someone comes in with skepticism, they go, ‘You don’t need to join. Go watch the YouTube videos from 2020 or 2021. Steve’s fatter, has long hair, looks like a schmuck, and is buying or picking up people’s trash for 100 bucks five years ago. It’s all documented along the way.’ Now you go on my page, and there are team dinners, leadership positions being interviewed. That’s how I fight the ‘guru’ allegations: ‘No, no, no, it’s been documented the whole time. I’ve never pretended to be something I’m not. You see the worst part.’ It’s funny because my girlfriend watched those videos before our first date. So that’s also been a challenge—she got to watch Fat Steve buy a junk removal trailer five years ago and still decided to go out with me, so that was a win.”
Sid Graef:“That seems like a pretty big sale right there. Good job.”
Steve Hunsaker:“I just had to get her to date once. Once we got to date one, we’re good.”
Sid Graef:“That’s good. All right, so you touched on it briefly. You teach marketing and systems. Before we started the call, you said sometimes you have to tell guys, ‘You gotta get an EIN, you need to set up your business structure so you don’t get hosed later.’ What are some of the very basic things—because business is just like, if you dial in and repeat the basics, you’re going to succeed, because the basics work. You mentioned, in rapid fire, GMB, or ‘Go set these up.’ What are the basic things that people just need to have dialed in? They don’t have to be great, they just have to be doing it.”
Steve Hunsaker:“Yeah, first thing: ‘I am not my customer.’ That’s number one. Before they do anything else: ‘I am not my customer.’ Just because you wouldn’t pay at your position—starting a business from scratch with probably no money—because you wouldn’t pay somebody 500 to clean your windows, doesn’t mean there isn’t an entire market who would. So you are not your customers; you can’t sell out of your own pocket. The second thing is, it’s much easier to sell 10 more expensive things than a thousand super cheap things. There’s a benefit to being the cheapest, and there’s a benefit to being the most expensive. There’s not a lot of benefit to being in the middle. So that’s the second part. Those are more mindset.
The third part is you just have to document the business. In 2025, if you’re starting from scratch, you will die if you’re not comfortable on camera. The cheapest, most efficient way to crank a business from scratch right now is using an iPhone for Instagram, Facebook, a little bit of Google Business, everything like that, so you don’t even have to get on a computer. If you get comfortable on camera—filming ads, filming organic content of yourself as the business owner, talking about the business day in the life—you will crush the guys who refuse to. A lot of pushback I get is from people who’ve been in business 5, 10, 15 years. But if you’re brand new, you need it. I could build any home service business from scratch right now with just an iPhone. I’d never have to get on a computer, and I could do it pretty well. So that is number one: if you want to stand out early in a crowded trade, put your face on camera and talk about the business, 100 percent.”
Sid Graef:“Yep, we do an exercise every year. I’m in a small market, 70,000 people. We own about 25 percent of the marketplace, so that’s comfortable. But every year, I think, ‘If I was brand new coming into this market, how would I beat my existing company?’ It’s always video. Because if you don’t keep running, you’re not going to stay in first place. The new guy could come in with video and just take a lot of mindshare. That’s the type of content people want to see. Not the guys that are over 60—my clients that are over 60 still want to pay by check, and they’re not going to change. But homeowners now, new homeowners, are not 60—they’re 35.”
Steve Hunsaker:“Yeah, and I think what people neglect to realize is every year that passes, more people who buy electronically are getting into homes, and the check payers who want to call you five times on the phone are phasing out. So every year, the gap for content and social media presence is getting bigger and bigger. For example, in my own business—just to show how powerful it is: we run Facebook and Instagram ads, but we also have organic content because we know people do their homework. So they get an ad, but they’re also going to click our Instagram page, right? They’re not just going to fill out the form. We had a 30,000 residential Christmas light job this year come from an organic piece of Instagram content. Organic.
When my sales guy went on site, it’s hard-coded in our system that it came from our website, right? So we think it was just an SEO sale. My sales guy gets on site, and the lady goes, ‘Oh, you’re not the guy from the Instagram?’ She goes, ‘Oh, I saw you guys on Instagram.’ He’s thinking, ‘Oh, I gotta tell Steve the reporting is wrong.’ She’s like, ‘I saw you guys on Instagram, and then I was doing something else, so I Googled you.’ So what sold that 30,000 job? Did my SEO sell it, or was it the fact I made an organic piece of content that was really engaging? That’s been interesting: how can you afford not to do that? The new guys say, ‘I only have 20 or 200 followers on Instagram, so what’s the point?’ You post the organic as a billboard, and then you run ads to actually generate leads, but the organic is a billboard for your business. So it’s like, the ads drive them there, but the organic has to be there because they do their homework.”
Sid Graef:“For sure. I gotta ask you this: one of the things we teach, when I have the opportunity, is we’ll say to contractors in the home service space, ‘Who’s your competition?’ Is it the other guys that serve your county? And basically it’s, ‘Yeah, kind of, but your real competition is Amazon.’ Because the friction to buy is zero. You go click-click, order, it’s on your porch tomorrow, no friction. That’s why I spend too much money on Amazon—there’s no friction. So what do you do in your business—because you use Go High Level with Jobber as your CRM, you have follow-up systems, you have organic and paid ads—to remove friction from the buy process? Where do you see friction points, and how do you remove them?”
Steve Hunsaker:“Number one: speed-to-lead. Speed-to-lead is the number one thing that took us from half a million to 800K year-over-year. I got a system—this is how it works: someone comes in and submits a form—website, Facebook ad, Google ad, whatever—to get a quote. Instantly, my system takes their info, calls the sales rep that’s assigned to it, and says, ‘You have a new lead; press 1 to get connected immediately.’ Zero manual data entry. The rep presses 1, instantly calls the customer. You know what happens? That customer didn’t get a chance to go to competitor two or competitor three to get a second or third quote because they got called instantly.
The data on that is if you get to somebody within five minutes of them submitting a form, you have, I think, an 80 percent higher chance of closing. But if you get to them in under a minute, it’s like 340 percent higher than companies that take more than five minutes. So if you know that, you know that speed-to-lead is everything. We give them the answer so fast, they don’t get the opportunity to quote out somewhere else. Because we know, if we’re the highest-end people out there, the most important thing is giving them what they want as fast as humanly possible. Instant automation. If they don’t answer, we send a text, a voicemail drop, follow-up nurtures, etc. Then my sales guys see who replied to the nurtures. That’s who I call first to get an appointment. So speed-to-lead is number one. That’s everything.
A good rule of thumb: if the first thing out of the customer’s mouth is, ‘Wow, that was fast,’ you’re probably going to be winning a lot more than the guy who— because you know, most guys are so busy on job sites, they’ll get back to it. Every minute that passes is another minute for them to call your competitor. The competitor that’s not insured, or the competitor who’s thrilled to install Christmas lights at 3 a foot. And you’re giving them that opportunity. So speed-to-lead is number one.
Then the second thing is: I don’t price for the ‘no’s’ I get; I price for the ‘yeses’ I get. If that makes sense. Guys go out, they give 10 quotes for a roofline, let’s say. They bid 700. Five people say, ‘That’s ridiculous, I’d never pay that, that’s crazy.’ Two ghost them, so we have three people left, and they said yes. So they closed three out of ten. Those three probably valued something other than price. They valued the speed that you came out with, the way you delivered, or something else. If they value something else, you can charge more for that. The reason is, if they value something else more, your job is to deliver that something else at a high level. So you do a better job, and when you do a better job, your customers are more thrilled, they go tell their friends. That’s how you grow a profitable business.
It’s so funny. I go in these Facebook groups and see these one-crew operations bragging about being booked out for the year in September. I’m like, ‘That’s not a flex at all; that just means one of two things: you’re too cheap or you’re too afraid to expand.’ That’s it. Don’t be the cheap guy; be the most expensive. But to be the most expensive, you actually have to be better. You can’t just charge premium prices. Speed-to-lead is huge. If I started from scratch again, I’d focus on that. Then if you do that, you better go on the USPS EDDM website, sort your zip codes by the highest earning neighborhoods, and start your advertising campaigns there. Don’t try to sell 2,000 products to people on a 40K fixed income. Go sell it to people on 180K average income in those areas.”
Sid Graef:“Amen. I get frustrated trying to help people—they’re like, ‘Go where the money is; stop trying to serve everybody. Just go to where the money is.’”
Steve Hunsaker:“Yeah, it’s like you’re not Amazon, you’re not Walmart. Do you think you have the operational efficiency to serve that many people cheap? There’s zero chance. A good example: I always tell guys in my group, ‘Go look up Walmart’s margins. Do you want Walmart’s margins?’ I think it’s 2 percent or 1.8 or something. Same with Amazon. They’re not that profitable—often operating at a loss for years. It’s a lot easier to run at a low margin when you’re doing billions in sales. These guys aren’t. You need to be a good margin. So if the low margin is ‘volume’ and the high margin is the sniper rifle approach, we should do the sniper rifle approach, not be a shotgun approach.”
Sid Graef:“For sure. So let me ask you this: you talked about valuing outside of price. Did you, at some point, do anything deliberate, like, ‘I want to make my value proposition not about price’? And do you package that in your advertising, your brochure, your website, etc.?”
Steve Hunsaker:“Yeah. The big thing for us: number one, all of our ads and everything show my face—clean-cut, explaining what we do, why we do it, how we do it. But more specifically, every piece of advertising content we have explicitly says, ‘We’re not the cheapest.’ It says that, but it also says we are the best. We’re heavy with testimonials, heavy with that stuff. So that’s number one.
The other side is one of the things that’s actually an anti-friction point—kind of the opposite of what we were talking about, but hear me out— all these guys who do 200, 300K in these Facebook groups say, ‘You can’t do in-person quoting, it doesn’t make sense.’ I say, ‘Hold on. These are the people that shop at Chanel, the people that will spend 4,000 at a steakhouse, they don’t want just a roofline. They want the best in the neighborhood. So we force-feed our process: we’re going to go onsite and design something specific for you. Because that’s what you’re used to. You can meet us if you want—it helps close if they’re there—but if they don’t want to meet us, we’re still going onsite, taking videos, telling them what we think we should design. If your average ticket is 800 dollars, in-person might not make sense. My average ticket is 3,800 on residential, so it makes sense because we know how to squeeze every drop of juice out of that lemon when we get there. We’re selling off something bigger than just, ‘We’re one of three quotes on a piece of paper, and the couple picks the cheapest.’ You’re going to lose.
There’s a reason IMEs (Hermès) or a coach can charge 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,000 for a bag, and there’s a reason Wal-Mart sells a 30 dollar bag. The utility is not a thousand times better, or a hundred times better, for the 3,000 dollar bag. There’s something else at play. You have to figure that out. For me, it was always super clean branding, super aggressive with my face everywhere, super aggressive on ad targeting, unbelievably aggressive on getting customer testimonials, reviews, and photos. We’re big on that. When a prospect calls us, my sales guys text them three to five of our best photos right away, so they know they’re in the big leagues. All those little things help. If the other guys aren’t doing that, who’s going to win?”
Sid Graef:“For sure, man. That’s rich. All right, we could keep jawing about this stuff and having fun, but we’re going to land the plane and finish up for the sake of time. So two questions to wrap it up: one is, ‘What’s the most common mistake you see from guys who are actually trying to do it right?’—not your $99 house wash guy, your $3-a-foot guy who’s stuck in his ways— but the ones who are actually trying, what’s the biggest mistake they make?”
Steve Hunsaker:“Most common mistake from the ones who are trying is that they think their first employee has to be a 40-hour-a-week, full-benefits, fully insured hire. They think the first employee has to be a full-time employee. That’s not true. If you’re an owner-op and you want a little bit of help, you can find someone. There are people out there that want 15 to 20 hours a week. So for the guys right on the edge of scaling, they’re booked out five days, or if they hired a helper, maybe they’d be booked out three. It’s that they can start fitting more revenue in per day. Number one is you don’t have to have your first employee as a 40-hour-a-week with benefits. You can get a helper, W2 them, get them on your general liability, everything else, but you don’t need to bite off a full-time salary. That’s probably the biggest piece of gold.”
Sid Graef:“That by itself is gold. I have a funny story about that, but I think I’ll have to wait. All right, last question: what’s the advice you’d give to the guy just starting out—let’s do better: ‘What’s the advice you’d give to fat Steve, younger Steve, five-years-ago Steve?’”
Steve Hunsaker:“Yeah, I thankfully understood that you have to not be the cheapest because of my background. For the guy who’s starting out: there’s no benefit to being the cheapest, because you’re not a good enough entrepreneur to be the cheapest. If you find yourself consistently losing on price, either you’re not getting enough lead volume—like me, we get three no’s for every yes in my business—or you’re not differentiating yourself from someone else. So I’d say for new guys: richest areas, start there. Imperfect action beats a perfect plan 100 out of 100 times, so just go do something instead of sitting there on YouTube feeling like you’re working. Eventually, just do it. And the other side: the earlier you get comfortable on camera, the better your business will scale from a marketing and sales perspective.”
Sid Graef:“Pure gold. Well, Steve, thank you. Thanks again for your time and jumping on. This is super valuable for everybody listening, because our objective with The Huge Convention and with this podcast is to help our blue-collar brothers and sisters build a business that will let them be financially and time free. Good money, good time, so your business supports your life, not the other way around. Thanks for sharing your insight on your pretty rapid journey. You’ve got a great learning curve going here, man.”
Steve Hunsaker:“Yeah, you know, we almost went to zero in year three, so I don’t ever forget that, that’s for sure. But I appreciate you saying that, man. It’s because of guys like you, doing stuff like this. I was able to learn from folks who had experienced a lot more pain than I did, so my learning curve was faster. That’s kind of what I’m trying to do with Home Service Accelerator—accelerate that for other people too.”
Sid Graef:“Cool. Thanks again. I’m going to end the recording, but I want you to hang on for a second—I have another question for you.”
Steve Hunsaker:“All right, cool.”
(Recording ends, then resumes with Sid’s sign-off.)
Sid Graef:“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, 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.
Also, I want to 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. We do that in four ways. Number one is our free weekly newsletter, it’s called The 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 Foundations education platform that has over 120 hours of industry-specific education and resources for you. And every month, we do a topical webinar and do Q&A with seven- and eight-figure business owners, and it’s available for a 1 trial for seven days.
Next, of course, is The Huge Convention. If you haven’t been, you gotta check it out. It’s every August—this year, it’s in Nashville, Tennessee, August 20th through 22nd in 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, meet the vendors, check out the software to run your business. We’ve got world-class education and educators and speakers that will teach you how to run a better business, and it’s the best networking opportunity you can have within the home service business.
Lastly, if you want to pour jet fuel in your business, check out The Huge Mastermind. Now it’s not for everyone—you’ve got to be over 750K in revenue, building toward a million, five million, ten million in the next five years. It’s a network, a mentorship, and a mastermind of your peers, and we help you understand and implement the Freedom Operating System. We can go into more detail, but you can get all the information on all four of these programs and how they’ll help you advance your business quickly by going to https://www.thehugeconvention.com and scrolling down to click on The Freedom Path. Or, of course, you can find the links here in the show notes.
Sorry, I feel like I’m getting a little wordy, but I just want to 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 like the show, go ahead—if you would—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 on the next episode.
 

11: The Jim Dubois Episode

In this episode of the Huge Transformations Podcast, host Sheila Smeltzer interviews Jim DuBois from Squeegee Pros in North Charlotte, North Carolina. Jim shares his journey from starting as a solo operator to building a thriving home service company with efficient systems, a standout company culture, and a focus on hiring “A players.” Listeners will learn how Jim created detailed processes to incentivize high performance, retain quality employees, and scale his company with intent and vision. This episode is packed with actionable insights about recruiting effectively, nurturing a winning culture, and leveraging simple but powerful methods to stand out in a competitive market.
Designed especially for service-based and marketing professionals, this conversation highlights the importance of:
Developing a clear vision and detailed roadmap for your business.
Crafting engaging job ads and a strong onboarding experience to attract top talent.
Paying for performance with spiffs and commission structures to reward excellence.
Building a fun, positive workplace culture where employees truly want to come to work.
From rounding up daily performance metrics to organizing team-building events, Jim explains how a consistent, systemized approach can rapidly elevate a service business—even if you’re just starting out.
SHOW NOTESGuest:
Jim DuBois, Squeegee Pros (North Charlotte, NC)
Website
Coaching & Consulting
Topics Covered:
Company Culture & Hiring: How to attract and retain A-player employees.
Performance-Based Pay & Spiffs: Using incentives to encourage positive behaviors and sales.
Systems & Processes: Why documented procedures help create consistency and scalability.
Vision & Leadership: Shaping a clear roadmap so employees understand your company’s direction.
Time Freedom & Business Growth: Creating a solid structure to step away from daily operations.
Resources Mentioned Every Episode:
The Huge Insider Newsletter Signup
The Huge Insider Downloadable Action Guide
The Foundations Platform Trial Offer
The Huge Mastermind Info Page
Facebook
TRANSCRIPT
Sid Graef: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Huge Transformations Podcast. I'm Sid Graf out of Montana.
Gabe Torres:I'm Gabe Torres here in Nashville, Tennessee.
Sheila Smeltzer:And I'm Sheila Smeltzer from North Carolina. We're 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.
Gabe Torres:Yep, no fake gurus on this show—just real-life owners who have been in the trenches and can help show you the way to grow profitably.
Sheila Smeltzer:We get insights and truths from successful business builders, and every episode is 100% experience, 0% theory. We're 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.
Gabe Torres:Thanks for joining us on the wild journey of entrepreneurship. Let's dive in.
 
Sheila Smeltzer:Hi, this is Sheila Smeltzer with the Huge Transformations Podcast. I've got an awesome guest for you today: Jim DuBois, Squeegee Pros, North Charlotte, North Carolina. Jim and I have a just pure gold conversation about what it takes to build a business at scale. We talk a lot about recruiting, attracting the A-players, and the multiple channels of attraction—where do we find them, what’s the story we tell to them to bring them into our company? Everything here is just pure gold. We know you're going to love it. I can't wait for you to hear my conversation with Jim DuBois today. Enjoy the podcast.
Sheila Smeltzer:Hello, everybody. This is Sheila Smeltzer with the Huge Transformations Podcast, and I have a very special guest today: Jim DuBois, Squeegee Pros out of North Charlotte in the Lake Norman area. Hey, Jim.
Jim DuBois:Hey, Sheila. What's happening? How are you doing?
Sheila Smeltzer:Oh man, it's such an honor to interview you today on the podcast. We've known each other for a long time.
Jim DuBois:Yes, we have. And hey, I am honored to be here. This is always special to be a guest of yours—a podcast in general—so thank you for the opportunity. I’m super excited.
Sheila Smeltzer:Yeah. Well, just so you know, I made a special request to interview you today. I've always admired you. We both have a residential-focused window cleaning company. Jim, you’re going to tell us a lot more about what you do as well. And we've both been in business for 25 years, right?
Jim DuBois:Yeah, I'm a little bit longer than you. I'm in 29 years now, but yeah.
Sheila Smeltzer:Wow, okay.
Jim DuBois:Yeah, 1996.
Sheila Smeltzer:Okay, yeah, I'm ‘99, so very good. Well, Jim, I've been to your shop in Charlotte—Squeegee Pros—and I gotta tell you, I was very impressed with your operation. Just a couple of takeaways: When I walked away, I came back to my staff and I said, “Man, Jim DuBois over at Squeegee Pros…he is running a tight ship.” There were so many systems, processes, organization—very thought-out procedure that was visible. It was visible that you built a model of a business where things were working. Can you—I want you to first tell us a little bit more about Squeegee Pros, but I want you to kind of dive right into what it looked like for you to get your business to where you are right now. Is that going to take up the whole hour or what?
Jim DuBois:It could, but I'll give you the bullet points—the top bullet points.
Sheila Smeltzer:Yeah, sure. Please tell us about yourself.
Jim DuBois:I have to tell you, as far as Squeegee Pros goes, it wasn't always that way—I can tell you that, holy cow. I can remember getting my 5,000 little Ford Ranger and my bucket, my squeegee, and it was just me and that, getting this whole thing started. But it's amazing what can happen if you really focus on certain things—things we'll probably touch on here. I started in my home like a lot of people do, and eventually hit a revenue number that I was comfortable with to step out of my home and get a little office, which was on Highway 150 in Mooresville. It was like a little house, and that was a big step. That was transformational, really. Then I bought where I'm at now—which you've been to—I bought that in 2020, and that was another huge transformation in my company.
It’s like, every time I made a move—when I moved out of my house into an office—my staff was like, “Holy cow, this is so exciting,” even though it was just like a little house that probably had nothing going on. But growth just kind of took off. Then when I moved again to the shop that you've been at, it was like another just huge jump in growth.
But so yeah, that's kind of what that looks like as far as the backdrop. But I have to tell you—those watching—it’s interesting how I even stepped into the world of window cleaning, if you want to talk about that for a second, about how I even started Squeegee Pros. I remember I was 16 years old, and my dad said to me—we were sitting at the kitchen table—he said, “So what are you going to do for money? What are you going to do for a job?” because I was 16, I just got my car, and that whole thing. And I said, “Dad, I have no idea. All I know is I want to do my own thing.” I had no idea what that own thing would be.
Long story short, that was in Indiana. So I'm a farm boy from Indiana. But I moved to New Jersey, and I got a job washing windows—it was a commercial storefront, I guess, route that I was doing. So I did that for about a year, and then I started my first little company, Done Right Window Cleaning, and building that. That was kind of my start. I did that for a few years, and it was a pretty cool little company. I had 600 stores, so I had a couple of people doing that, and I had a guy helping me on residential. I did about 300 houses a year, so for a kid in my early twenties, I'm like, “Yeah, this business thing is kind of cool.” I knew nothing about business. I just knew how to wash windows.
So that was my stepping stone into the industry. And Sheila, I’ve got to tell you, I pinch myself almost every day that window cleaning, pressure washing—the industry that we're in—can do what it has done for so many people, you, me, and so many others, if you take it seriously and you really get away from the mentality of “I have a job I call a business” but instead focus on a business that you turn into a company. And if anything, that’s what started to click many years in for me, and I started focusing on that.
Sheila Smeltzer:Can you pinpoint the turning point? Was there something really bad that happened? Was there something that—like, what was that wake-up, that “Wow, I've got a business on my hands, now I have to start running this like a business”? Was there a specific time?
Jim DuBois:Yeah, it would have been—so back in the days of Done Right Window Cleaning, no, I was just a kid in my early twenties, just having fun, making money. My whole focus was the technician mindset: “Let me just wash more windows.” And I had, obviously, a couple people helping me. But when I moved down here to North Carolina and made the decision that I was going to start another business—and the short story is I wasn’t even sure I was going to do window cleaning. Some of you heard the story: I walked into a mattress store, and his windows were dirty. I told myself, “I'll pitch the guy on window cleaning. If he says yes”—and the chance is like this, that he would even be there, let alone say yes—“I will start another window cleaning business.” I had a couple of other business ideas I was going to try also. But he was there, and he said yes. I wasn’t even ready for that. I was driving a Corvette, and I'm like, “All right, give me till the end of the week.” I had to find a janitorial supply company—because back then you didn't have who we have online and all that—so I got there, I showed up.
But to answer your question, that was one of the turning points for me. Because when I walked out of the store, I again said to myself, “I'm going to build the biggest window cleaning business that Charlotte, North Carolina, has ever seen. I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I'm going to do it.” That’s where the maturity changed from being in my early twenties to my thirties, and now I had to figure out how I was going to do that. That was a pretty lofty intent that I had put on myself, but that was the turning point.
Another turning point for me was I had hired an administrator. She was with me for a few years, and she moved on to bigger and better things. That was a turning point for me to come up with a better company culture. Because I figured when somebody gets a job, that’s a career for them. So I'm thinking automatically, they're going to be with me for 20 years. I did not know that there was a revolving door and that's how people's mindsets were and all that kind of stuff, because it just didn't register with me back then. So that's when it began—coming up with, “Well, I need to find the right people that are looking for a career opportunity, but then I've got to fulfill what they want that’s going to make them want to stay with me for many, many, many years.”
So that was a turning point for me, too. And I'll tell you another one. Another one for me was—we know how it is in business. It's like this, and we have to be prepared to make payroll every single week. So a turning point for me was, “I need to frugal up here a little bit. I've got to start putting some money aside. I've got to be prepared for those times, because it's not always going to be win-win-win-win-win.” Those are some things that, I think, began to align my business acumen maybe a little bit, to start thinking about those kinds of things—to build an actual company versus just something I was winging.
Sheila Smeltzer:Right, wow, so much there. I'd love to dive into all of it, Jim, just so you know. But one thing—we talked about financials on another podcast I did with Jared Skinner—but this turning point of administrator, and now you had a key role to fill and you realized that you need to improve company culture.
What I know of you now is—do you actually have like a board of directors at your company? Are you structured that way? Because I know you have Chris. How are you structured?
Jim DuBois:Yes, I have—so how does that work? And how do I say it in a non-boastful way? I don't want this to sound any weird way, but this is what's possible. I don't have an office at the office. I'm 100% separated from the day-to-day except I go in every quarter for a leadership meeting. That's where I keep the finger on the pulse and, “What are the strategic moves we're looking to make? Where are we weak? Where are we strong? Let's think about ideas.” That's kind of where I come in. I love that stuff. That's my jam right there.
Then there's Christina, and she's really at the top. She runs the show; she’s the president. I vested her in as a partner of the company. She's been with me for 18 years. If you kind of go back to what I was talking about before, that became really important to me to not have a revolving door, or limit the revolving aspect of the door turning as much as I could. So she's president. Then there's Brian, who is my vice president. Christina oversees the entire company, and Brian oversees everything to do with the field—and he’s hands-on in the office also. Christina is my right hand, Brian is Christina’s right hand. They make up my board of directors. The three of us get together and we talk heavy-duty shop.
Sheila Smeltzer:Sure, okay. So company culture—what did that look like? What was it, at that turning point, that you decided, “Okay, I just lost a key employee, my administrator, and now what do I have to do? What do I have to change?” What was it that you determined? What did you come up with? What did that look like?
Jim DuBois:Yeah, that's a great question, and I guess I would answer it probably a couple of different ways. One is, I think if we're paying attention to our employees—whether it be office staff or technicians—if we're paying attention to what they want, what they're asking, you can start to build a culture around that. This is how I learned: by listening to them, what’s important to them, how can I make it so they want to come to work versus having to come to work? That's a takeaway, especially—it was especially for me, but maybe that's a takeaway for a lot of the people listening. Because that sentence, that's where I went to work on building a company culture.
I want to make it fun. I wanted to make it, you know, if you pass by my office and if we're in hiring mode back in the old day, the sign would say “Help Wanted.” Today it says “Career Opportunities.” There's a different psychological spin behind that. So many different things to touch on with this. I built out a system to start attracting better people to help mitigate that revolving door, and building out a system that would not just attract them but keep them. And not just keep them—again, let's come up with pathways to advancement; let’s come up with things, dangling carrots, so that why would they ever want to go anywhere else? That's my mission. When they're out in the parking lot—if it's technicians or even office staff—I want them saying to themselves, “We’d be an idiot to go work for another company like this down the road, because Jim and his team, they've really got this thing together.”
So some of that backdrop: I started going to work on that. Back when I really did not know any of this—when I had a couple of guys working for me—I can remember like yesterday, I'd go to Outback for Christmas, and I'd bring my two guys. It wasn't on Christmas Day, but it was around Christmastime, and I'd have a little dinner for them, and I would buy it. And that's all I did. But I felt like, “Hey, I'm really reaching here to be the nice, cool boss.” But today, in comparison, holy cow, we have music playing every single morning outside—like some jams happening. So the guys are pulling up, it might be country day, it might be hip-hop day, whatever it might be. We have a tech lounge downstairs that's got leather couches, gaming is going on, we've got a pinball machine, ice machine in our tech lounge. We have cornhole going on. Every three months we take the entire company out for some kind of adventure, and it's every quarter like clockwork. So it's go-kart racing, it's ax throwing, it's—I think last time was Topgolf. We'll go bowling, we'll have cornhole tournaments—just all kinds of crazy stuff like that.
We'll do spin-the-wheel. We got one of those wheels in our office, and we'll do it for like our office staff. If they're hitting wins in the day, it's, “All right, everybody stop what you're doing. Meet us in the conference room in five minutes, as soon as you get off the phone,” or however we say that. Then we’ll spin the wheel, we'll give away cash, but we make it fun. We have a kitchen in our office—Heather made cinnamon rolls, not to go off on a tangent, but up against Cinnabon, and they're vegan. They were unbelievable, but we make it fun like that, so that they want to come to work, not have to come to work. Yes, the pay is good.
This is not—everyone's going to agree with what I'm about to say, but our technicians, they're not paid hourly. We feel we can pay them so much more in a percentage-based compensatory way, and it attracts the A-player. My feeling is: The A player, the B player, they want opportunities to make as much as they can. The C player, maybe; but the D player, the F player, they just want to do the minimal amount that they have to do and get an hourly wage to know they're going to get that money. The A player knows that they can make 50%, 100%, 200% more, and that's how we pay. That's tied into company culture, because they know they can make bank, and then they can make more on top of that with what we call spiffs. That's a different conversation. But it's those things—it’s kind of a long answer to your question—it’s those things that have changed everything. Birthdays—oh my gosh, they get more attention at my office than they probably do at home on their birthday! We've got prizes, we find out what their favorite cake is, we just turn it into an absolute spectacle—something they're not going to forget anytime soon. So things like that.
Sheila Smeltzer:Okay, there's so much right here, there's just so much. I want to stick on the performance pay for just a minute, because I have to show you this. This is so cool. When I came to your shop, I have a whole note in my phone with the photos and all the notes and everything that I took, but you talk about spiffs. I know you don't want to go off on it, but I mean, I've got your spiffs—they're laminated and posted all over your tech lounge. You’ve probably changed some by now, but this is a couple years ago. Spiff number four: No Callbacks. Spiff number two: ProGuard Estimates. You clearly define what the spiff is, what the target is. This is part of your performance pay, right? You're paying commission; you're incentivizing for the good behavior, the good performance that you're looking for.
How did you build that out? Because there's always the things—when we build these ideas as business owners, what does that process look like? Because then we implement it and a bunch of things you didn't think about happen, right? Like, “Oh, we didn't think about that situation,” and “Oh, now we’ve got to go back and fix it.” What is your process? Let’s just talk about any type of procedure, or we'll stay on spiff. You're going to roll out a new Christmas lighting estimate spiff number three—when you, Christina, and Brian are sitting down, what kind of process, what kind of conversation is that?
Jim DuBois:Yeah, problems that are happening in the company—challenges, issues—us as business owners, our mission is to solve them. It should be to solve them. If we can solve them, how can we make the company better, and how can we serve not our clients in this scenario, but our team, even better? The backdrop to this is our mission is always to hire the A player, the top-tier employee. That’s our mission, because if we know we can get those people hired, we know they're going to outperform the C player, D player, F player, every single time, if you've built out the right recruiting system. But then you're still going to get those that—let's go to Christmas lighting for a second. That's spiff number three, I think it was. That leans to marketing, so we wanted to come up with ways to get the word out on Christmas lighting a little bit faster, less expensively than depending on external marketing. All they have to do is just talk to the homeowner that they're already serving and say, “Hey, by the way, we provide Christmas lighting—Christmas lighting like you've probably never seen before. It is unbelievable because it does this, this, this, and this, and we'll do this, this, this, and this for you. It's white-glove, the Ritz-Carlton service in how we do it. If you'd be interested in an estimate on it—which I think you're going to love—I’d be happy to have my supervisor reach out to you.” If they do that, they get 50 bucks, whether we get the job or not. They get 50 bucks for generating that estimate, because we've run the numbers and know that the return on investment is through the roof by the number of jobs that we get and what we're paying out in spiffs.
Sheila Smeltzer:That's great. What I just heard is you're taking a problem in the company, or in this case you're taking a new initiative or a new service that you want to promote, and you're turning that into a performance-driven spiff to get you the results that you want.
Jim DuBois:Yes, that's exactly right. You mentioned ProGuard—that’s a gutter protection product that we have. It's the same spiff layout, how we do that. But then you mentioned one before, Sheila, which was callbacks. Callbacks would be an example of one. Another one is they're not showing up to work on time—that’s a big one for a lot of people. These were issues, these were little challenges that we had, so it's like, all right, how do we incentivize and limit those from happening in the future? With callbacks, we'll do something like if you don't have any callbacks for 30 days, you’ll get a half day off, and you can let those half-days off accumulate. Or maybe it's a day off, or however those listening want to build that out. But these are the ideas on how we do that. Now it’s on their mind. But here's the thing with spiffs: You can't just put it into the company manual, go through it on the onboarding day, and then never bring it up again. Or you can't just bring it up at the monthly safety meeting. You want to—yes, do that, but what we do is every morning we have roundup meetings. The supervisor gets together with the lead techs, the technicians. It's a 10- to 15-minute meeting; it’s a get-everybody-excited, we've got the music playing in the background, you know, the mood is right. Then, “Oh, by the way, don't forget—let me run through your spiffs. A couple of you are new, a couple of you haven't done these in a little bit. Let me run you through the spiffs. Oh, and by the way, this spiff—not coming in late—is going to be the spiff of the week.” We’ll take some of these spiffs and we'll take it to the next level. If they don't come in late for a 30-day period, maybe they'll get a hundred-dollar cash bonus, maybe they get a full day off, something like that. You can pick and choose how you break that out. But those little things are almost like a small hinge that begins to open up a big door.
Sheila Smeltzer:There's another thing I heard there, though, Jim, which is very important with rolling out any of these types of programs. I heard basically you created a procedure for documenting and tracking those spiffs, but you did it in this really fun way in your—I call them huddles, I'm sorry, what did you call them?
Jim DuBois:Our morning is a morning huddle, basically.
Sheila Smeltzer:Yeah, morning huddle, yep. That is your way of tracking, right? Because as business owners, we can create all these really cool things, but we have to be able to deliver them so our employees can trust that they can expect that spiff on their paycheck. These are the parts that get really tricky and are so important to build. When I brought up, “What does it look like to build out the spiff when you, Christina, and Brian are sitting down?” as business owners, we have to build this out all the way through. We have to think it all the way through. It's really a brainstorming and a strategizing of what this looks like. I know you guys are really good at that because of, again, all the things that I saw when I was there—the way you guys are tracking your outbound calls on the whiteboard on a daily basis.
One thing that I saw there, too—and this is going into the systems and processes that ensure these programs that create this culture and environment that people want to work there—is, I think it was because I sit there and go, “Oh my gosh, okay, outbound calling, I've got a target for outbound calling.” You have—can you mind if I read this? This is coming straight off your board from your shop: “Daily calls, you've got an amount—so much per day for 50 to 100 calls, so much per day for 100 to 135 calls. That's a goal, 135 to 155 calls per day.” That's insane. “Closing jobs, 5 for every three jobs made. Sales—20 bucks for sales 1,000 to 1,500, 25 for sales over 1,500.” This is the cool part—so you get everybody listening to that. Then, when I watched, I was like, “Okay, now how does this filter into payroll?” Jim, you answered my question that day, because you’re like, “Oh, that's easy. They have a daily call sheet where they record all of their own metrics,” right? And they're turning that in for payroll. I'm sure there's some back-checking or auditing of that, but am I correct—is that what it looks like?
Jim DuBois:You're spot on—right on, exactly.
Sheila Smeltzer:You’ve done a phenomenal job at creating the systems, the procedures, and the processes that go into really building a strong business, Jim, and that was very apparent whenever I came there. I want to ask you—I want to dive back in, because you said it twice now: A players, A players. Let’s talk about hiring. How do you find the A players?
Jim DuBois:Yeah, this is a challenge for so many people out there. So I'll use the word “backdrop” again. You have to really—everyone’s got to really think about this: Don't think that everything changes just because you hire an A player. You have to have the system built out. You have to have created a place that A players want to work. That's another big takeaway right there. If the people listening—if somebody listening, for example, hired me, and I'm an A player, well, when you're onboarding me, are you walking me through—so one, when you hire me, what does that look like? For most, what they do if they were to hire me, they'd say, “All right, come on in to work. We're going to get you in the training and get things started.” But I'm like, “Well, hold on a minute. What's the company manual?” “Oh, yeah, just go through that paperwork right there. I'll be over here. Just let me know when you're done.” No, I'm an A player. The owner needs to walk anybody that they hire through your company manual, through the company policies for that specific job scope, not just say, “Here, read it; let me know when you're done.” I did it wrong in the beginning, and then it got me in the end, because I did not do it right.
So now we walk them through—that’s a 45-minute onboarding process. One, it's almost like a second interview, even though it's not, because we're hiring them but we haven't hired them. If you get the gray area in there, we want to just make sure. So let's go through the company manual, let's go through all these different things, let's check-close them. “That makes sense, are you with me here, this is why we have that, any questions on that?” You’re going to get them talking a little bit. You want to make sure this is the person you want to hire, that the lean is an A player you want to hire. Then, so you have to have those things in place to get the traction to keep the A player.
I'll take it a little bit further: A certified training program needs to exist. I'm an A player—I'm expecting a training program, not, “I wish, while there's a truck, go work on this, go work on that.” No, I want to see—I'm checking things off. How am I doing? What's my improvement look like? Where am I at so far in the training? How many days? What's the training program look like? Because I'm an A player—I'm going to dial this in if I have a plan to work off of and a good trainer.
Then another part of this is we hop in your truck—McDonald's in the floorboard, there's gunky pennies in the cup holder, the inside of the windshield is disgusting, paper is everywhere, there's wet towels in the back—I'm already questioning, “Do I want to work here?” I'm an A player. This is a clinic. So you have to have that already ready to go before you start the attraction process for A players. That would—I'll pause there for a minute. There's a little bit more to that story as we go into the attraction of that, but…
Sheila Smeltzer:That's powerful. If I'm a company that is—I've got maybe one or two employees, or maybe I'm hiring on my first employees. We've got to start somewhere. Do you remember what that looked like, and what would be your advice for people that are bringing on their first-time techs and their first-time employees when they don't have all this stuff to offer, Jim? What would be your advice?
Jim DuBoois:Night and day compared to how I would do it today, or how—of course, I have a coaching company—how we coach someone that's at that level, compared to where it was for me back in that day. So the sentence takeaway would be: Create a perception of a million-dollar company, even though it's just you. Again, you're building a company; you're not building a job that you call a business, and that starts on day one. And again, this is where most are off-track with that. It's not their fault; they just don't know. But the wrap—a beautifully wrapped vehicle. Beautiful doesn't mean you just spent $60,000 on a truck. We've never spent $5,000, ever—ever, to this day, 29 years later—on a truck. You would never know it. We buy them right, we buy them smart, we beautifully wrap them, they stay clean, maintained. That's a whole different conversation when it comes to cash flow.
So if I'm that person, and they're looking to start hiring that first or second person, everything we just talked about becomes absolutely apparent and has to be on the table: the brand, the company manual that we talked about, some kind of a training program that can be documented, how the pay is going to work. Again, I'm an A player, you're an A player—we're not going to work for a lot of what people are paid out there currently because that's, in my opinion, a C-scale versus an A-player-scale pay. You want to build those things out so that there's opportunity for them to go after it, even though it's a one- or two-person operation or they're about to hire that first or second person. You need to already be thinking three, four, five steps ahead: “What's the company vision? Where are you going?” because that's an attraction mechanism for me to work for you. What do the pathways to advancement look like? Am I going to go anywhere in this company? I'm an A player—maybe I want to own it one day. What does that look like? So these are all things that the listeners that are at that place as a new, younger, smaller business—that’s what I'd want. If I'm coaching you, those would be the things that we're going to be talking about to get those dialed in before we start the hiring process. There's more to that story, but that would be a pretty good highlight.
Sheila Smeltzer:Yes, very good. So, again, it's taking the time before you go out and initiate those first hires—it's taking the time to get organized, to document, to get things in place. Your manual, your—like, how are you going to train them? Have a job description with roles and responsibilities, right? Just get your stuff together, and it'll be far more successful.
Is it okay whenever we hire—especially in the beginning, we've started our business with all these big dreams and goals—is it okay to be sharing that vision a lot with our new hires? How do you recommend people do that? Sometimes people, I think, can get caught in talking too much about that, and then there's not the delivery, and then they lose them. They lose their hires, right? It's like, “Oh, they said I was going to do this much work and all this stuff, and it's not there.” We need to be very careful, right—humbly, like a humble visionary? What would you call that? When you don't have it to show it, but you aspire for it and you're doing the work to get it done, how do we sell that? What kind of culture does that look like?
Jim DuBois:Yeah, that's a great point that you brought up. There's a couple of things that come to mind with that. One that I want to make sure I put out there real quick: When you hire that first or second person, or any person that you ever hire, you do not become friends with them. Let them talk to you and tell you all about their life and all that stuff that they have going on all day long. You listen. So let's say it's windshield time and you've got that first person in the truck with you that you've hired. You gotta be really, really careful. I did it all wrong; I learned the hard way. But they know nothing about my personal life in this scenario, but I know everything about their personal life. So what am I doing during windshield time is I'm training, I'm coaching them, I'm talking about how we do this, how we do that, “Repeat it back to me,” or however that might look in the conversation, especially when you're with them all day long. You've got to be really careful with that.
So that's gold, because what that is…when you don't have the capital, the cash, whatever, to have all this stuff that we're talking about to attract the A players, and you don't have the training program, you don't have a trainer—what you were saying is that as the business owner, and you have this vision of your business, when you're bringing on your first-time people, you're playing that role: “What does my role look like as the business owner five years from now and ten years from now?” They want to start it from the beginning.
Jim DuBois:Yes, yes, yeah. And if we pivot to the other question on the vision—what we need to do as a younger, smaller, new business owner type company is, you need to have a vision statement anyways. We need to know, as the owner, what's the intent behind the company? Where do I want to go with this? But in the conversation with the technician or the office person, the vision statement correlates with the mission statement, and they kind of come together in the conversation. So in the vision statement, we're not going to make all these promises—this is the vision. This is where I want to take the company. I'm looking for the right people that are going to help me get there. It's a team. What's it going to look like exactly? Still figuring that out, but I do know I want to build the biggest company that Charlotte, North Carolina, has ever seen, and I will not stop until I get there. When they hear—when an A player hears confidence, when an A player hears that kind of vision, the A player wants to latch onto that and help make that happen. Especially when the A player knows there's pathways to advancement, when they know they're going to be taken care of financially. Again, that’s all the background stuff that the new owner or the younger business about to hire has to have already laid out, has to have it pretty much dialed in what that looks like. You're thinking three steps ahead as you go into step two—hiring your first person. That's how I would explain that, and we're not getting deep in the weeds with the vision and “Here, if this, you're going to get paid that.” We don't even know what that looks like yet. I just know we're going to get there, and we're going to figure those things out along the way.
Sheila Smeltzer:Leadership from very early stage, thinking two steps ahead, three steps ahead before you implement, thinking about what it looks like five years from now. I've made so many mistakes, and if I would have just thought, like, “Oh, I'm going to implement this new program,” okay, if I would have just thought, “What does it look like five years from now?” I would have probably not implemented a ton of programs, right? They might satisfy something right now that's a problem, but they don't serve us later down the road with growth and market changes and things like that. So that is such gold, what you're talking about.
I want to go back to two things—I could continue this podcast forever—but we were going to go back to attraction, attracting the A player. Then I do want to talk about Window Washing Wealth before we come off. Let's talk about attraction. How do you—so first we were talking about getting the A player and how we keep them, but now we're talking about how do we even get them? How do you attract them? Where do you find them?
Jim DuBois:Multiple ways. Kind of like in marketing, you want to have multiple ways to generate leads. Attracting A players—you want to have more than one way to find them. So one is, when you are building an A-player team, there's a pool of people right there that are going to direct you to other A players. So we have referral programs, referral incentives, because like-minded people pretty much hang out with other A-player-type, like-minded people, too. So that's one way. It doesn't typically cost anything except for maybe the spiff that you put out to them.
Then there's the different job placement platforms. There's multiples of them out there. This is probably where most people will lean to find people. And then I'll come to social media in a little bit, too. But on the ad platforms—one of the things that's worked very well for us is—it's like marketing, and I love marketing. Most people fail miserably at marketing because they're not good copywriters. If you go down and pick up the newspaper, or women listening—Cosmopolitan magazine—or if you go back into the ‘80s, early ‘90s, you had the National Enquirer tabloid thing. Those are great training exercises for headline generation—headlines attract. We carry that over into attracting A players. Come up with a headline, wherever you're marketing, to find these A players, and put the headline and the subheadline in there to attract them.
Where I'm going with this is, when we build out an ad, it's a long-form ad—going back to marketing, you have to separate yourself from everybody else as to why would they want to pick your company to do work for versus another company. It's the same thing when you're hiring people. When the people out there are looking for a place to work, what is it about your company that separates you from that company? Most of the ads look exactly the same on these hiring platforms. It's all the same stuff. So I like to zig when people zag. Our ads are long-form ads: headline, call to action, bullet points. We build out a story. “Imagine coming to work at Squeegee Pros, and we've got the daily jams going on when you get there, we're talking how you're going to make more money today than what you made yesterday.” I just walk them through the day, right, like a story. People like stories—they’re easy to listen to, easy to read, or whatever. And then, “When you finish up the day, you’re going to go and play a little cornhole or maybe go grab a beer with your new technician team.” I make it into where they're reading it, and they're saying to themselves, “This is the place I want to work. They do this, they do this, they do this, they do this.” Whatever that might look like for you might be a little bit more limited if you're a smaller company or don't have all of the things, or whatever that might be. But when you have a strong headline, when you have body copy that really engages them—and they're reading it like, holy—when it's written right, they will read all the way to the bottom, and then they will submit an application. That has been a big differentiator for us.
The big part to this, too, is that everything we were talking about before—it connects together. You've got to have that backdrop, you've got to have that foundation. Because if you're attracting these great, great people, but you've got dirty trucks, you’ve got $20 an hour pay—hourly, nothing wrong with hourly, but that's my perception of it—and you've got these things that you're not doing right, that person—like me in that earlier example—“Yeah, I don't think this place is for me,” is what they're going to say after day one or day two or week two. So you've got to have that foundation in place before you start attracting them.
Then, as the company gets more mature and there's cash flow, which is a whole other topic that's so important today, you want to be able to offer the benefits of a career opportunity. Again, that's the important word—versus just a J.O.B., journey of the broke. People want to win. They're going to come work for a company, they want to be able to support their family, do the things that they want to do. We as employers want to support the things that they want to do, and we build that into our model as well on the culture side. But all of that connects together, and it's so important.
Sheila Smeltzer:Yeah, well, let's talk about Window Washing Wealth to close up our show here today, Jim, because obviously you've got a lot of these things figured out. Tell me, how are you doing that to help other window cleaning companies?
Jim DuBois:Well, thank you for that, and that opportunity, Sheila—I super appreciate it. Thank you for saying I've got it all figured out. I’ve got a long ways to go, but I know where you're going with that. Here's the thing: It's when you've been in business—and I've been in business literally since I was 20 years old, 19 going on 20 years old—creating my own income ever since, and I'm pretty daggone proud of that. I never had to go back and get a job. But there's a seriousness that one has to take.
So if someone's looking for mentorship or they're looking for guidance—here's the lead-up: I would go to conferences, I would meet people. The first conversation, “Yeah, how are things going?” “Oh, everything's going great, going great.” A couple beers later, “I don't know how to do this stupid marketing thing. I can't hire people that stay. I'm taking draws; I can't even give myself a weekly paycheck.” You'd hear the real—it starts to come out. And after going to these and hearing and talking to these people so many different times, I'm like, “You know what? People need help.” They need help, and I was on this journey, too. Maybe I was just a little bit further along the pipeline or something, but that's where WindowWashingWealth.com came from. So I started helping people with all of these things, and it's seven years in now. We're coaching over a hundred companies around the country.
I'll tell you what—we were talking earlier, before we even got on, how I pinch myself on what window cleaning/pressure washing can do for one's life. I pinch myself an additional time when I—we have so many clients that have gone from wherever they are—$100,000 a year revenue, $250,000 a year revenue, to that annually, to that a month! $100,000 a year to $100,000 a month! It blows my mind. We have a system. We have so many clients who do that. So what we've done with Window Washing Wealth is we've created a roadmap: Do this first, do this second, do this third, check it off, let's validate it. We have a client accountability report to make sure they're doing each of these things. Then they all of a sudden get traction that they didn't have before to scale, to grow, because they're not making all the mistakes that I made. They're not wasting all the money that I wasted. It's literally a roadmap, and that's what we do. So if it’s marketing, lead generation, if it’s recruiting, if it's expansion, if it's policies, we have a system called World-Class Service Elements that will raise the bar above any competitor. It's all these things that we teach—there’s seven systems. You're familiar with the seven systems. We break it all down. So Window Washing Wealth is dear to my heart. We have so much fun with it, but it's even more fun when I review my “wall of wins.” That's an emotional point for me.
Sheila Smeltzer:That's awesome. So much value that you can offer to people. To be able to be given that roadmap and avoid the pitfalls, I mean, that's what you're doing. You're investing in avoiding the pitfalls that cost you far more than maybe an investment working with Window Washing Wealth.
I want to know—working with these clients of yours through Window Washing Wealth, what's a big takeaway for you? What have you learned in working with them?
Jim DuBois:What I have learned is the vast majority of those that get into business really have no clue about business. They were just like me, and that's where we hold their hand. That's where we put our hand on their shoulder and we coach them right down. Now, we’ve brought on clients that don't even have a company name. We have a whole exercise to get the company name right, get the brand right, get the pricing right. Some are doing way too many things at the same time, and a master of none. Focus on what you're really good at before you open up another division. We break all that down because the mission is one thing: scale operations—whatever that looks like for them—and get their life back. Let's go from 10 hours a day to 10 hours a week, or even 10 hours a month. Listen to that—that's the mission behind it. I call it “time freedom wealth,” because I call it Window Washing Wealth—that word “wealth” on purpose—because what we're involved with here, Sheila, is just a vehicle that can open up so many opportunities to have wealth in our lives if we do it right. The tagline to this is, when we coach people, we're coaching them to build it right once and be done. This is a two-, three-, four-, maybe five-year plan, and by that time, you should have your company dialed in to where you're separated from the day-to-day. The systems, the A-player employees run the company for you so you can go off and do other things. That's what we do.
Sheila Smeltzer:I've thought about—so many times in our conversation I've thought about something my dad always told me, and it was: “It doesn't matter what you do, it's how you do it.” You've been a true example of that. Just from your story of wanting to do your own thing—farm boy from Indiana, 600 storefronts, and then you're like, “Oh crap, I'm gonna walk into a mattress store, and if this guy says yes, I'm going to start a window cleaning company.” I love that. That's such a great story. Then, you know, to where you are—and it does take time. It takes a lot of grit, right, Jim? It takes a lot of work. You said that before we hopped on. It's a lot of work.
Jim DuBois:It really is. For many of us, it's the hardest thing that we'll ever do, but it's not 40 years of it. It's three to five years of working harder than you've ever worked. I tell people all the time, I didn't just snap my fingers and all this came together. I ate it, I drank it, I breathed it, I everythinged it, I sacrificed to learn what I had to learn to get it to where it's at, as so many of us have done who are further along that pathway.
Sheila Smeltzer:Yeah, well, I sure congratulate you for your success, and I really thank you for sharing your story. There's been so much good stuff that we've talked about here today on the podcast. I know that there's been a lot of value for our listeners. Thanks, Jim—this has been a real honor to talk to you today.
Jim DuBois:Well, thank you, Sheila. I super appreciate being on. We'll have to do another one. There's so much good stuff to talk about.
Sheila Smeltzer:I've got a whole list of things on my sheet. We can keep going; we'll do another one.
Jim DuBois:We will. Sounds good. Thank you for having me on.
Sheila Smeltzer:Thanks so much.
Jim DuBois:Welcome.
Sheila Smeltzer:Thanks for joining us on the Huge Transformations Podcast.
 
Sid Graef: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. Listen, anything that was covered—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.
Also, I want to let you know: The mission for the Huge Convention and for this is to help our blue-collar business owners like you and me to gain financial and time freedom through running a better business. We do that in four ways:
Number one is our free weekly newsletter, it's called the 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 Foundations education platform. We've got over 120 hours of industry-specific education and resources for you, and every month we do a topical webinar and we do Q&A with seven- and eight-figure business owners. It’s available to you for a $1 trial for seven days.
Next, of course, is the Huge Convention—the Huge Convention. If you haven't been, you've got to check it out. It’s every August. This year it's in Nashville, Tennessee. That's August 20th through 22nd in 2025. 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. We've got 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 want to pour jet fuel in your business, check out the Huge Mastermind. Now it's not for everyone—you've got to be over $750,000 of revenue, and you're building toward a million, five million, or ten million in the next five years. It's a network, a mentorship, and a mastermind of your peers, and we help you understand and implement the Freedom Operating System. We'll go into more detail, but you can get all the information on all four of these programs and how it will help you advance your business quickly just by going to thehugeconvention.com and scrolling down and clicking on the Freedom Path. Or, of course, you can find the links here in the show notes.
Sorry, I feel like I'm getting a little bit wordy, but I just want to let you know of the resources that are available to help you accelerate and advance your beautiful small business. Keep on growing, keep on learning, keep advancing, and if you like the 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 as we continue our mission to help people just like you and me. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you on the next episode!

10: The Daniel Campell Episode

In this episode of the Huge Transformations Podcast, hosts Sid Graef and Gabe Torres interview Daniel Campbell, nicknamed the “Wizard of Oz” for his ability to transform big dreams into thriving ventures. Daniel owns Emerald City Window Cleaning in Syracuse, New York, and shares his journey from launching with $200 worth of gear and Craigslist ads to nearly shutting the business down. He explains how firing an entire staff, developing straightforward processes, and hiring the right people turned things around—leading to higher profit margins and real momentum. Daniel also highlights why he joined the Huge Mastermind, emphasizing the value of learning from peers who’ve already solved the challenges you face. If you’ve ever felt stuck or on the edge of quitting, Daniel’s story proves that bold changes and a supportive community can elevate your home service business to new heights.
SHOW NOTES
Daniel Campbell’s Company (Emerald City Window Cleaning) – Syracuse, NY
“Extreme Ownership” by Jocko Willink:
“Culture Proof” with Sam Gemble (podcast)
Jill’s Office (call answering service):
Twister (1996 movie)
The Huge Convention (August 20–22, 2025 in Nashville, TN):
Huge Mastermind (for $750K+ businesses):
News Letter
Downloadable Action Guide
TRANSCRIPTSid (Host):Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Huge Transformations Podcast. I’m Sid Graef out here in Montana.
Gabe (Co-Host):And I’m Gabe Torres here in Nashville, Tennessee. 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 and owners in the industry—folks that have already built seven and eight figure home service businesses, and they want to help you succeed. You have 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 profit. We get insights and truths from successful business builders, and every episode is 100 percent experience.
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.
Sid (Host):Hey, my friend—Transformations Podcast—and today we’ve got a great interview. I think you’re going to love it. I certainly did. I call Daniel Campbell the Wizard of Oz. I first met him at the Huge Convention in 2024 and was impressed by the fact that he is the Wizard of Oz. He owns Emerald City Window Cleaning in upstate New York, and his story is so good. You get to see him go from zero to slow growth to fast growth to getting ready to throw in the towel and cancel the whole thing, to growing a respectable and solid company. But the cool thing is, no matter how successful he’s become, he is still in growth mode and he’s still learning from others. He became a part of the Huge Mastermind this year, and he’s great at taking what he learns, putting it into action, and teaching others so they can grow as well. Please join me and enjoy this conversation with Daniel Campbell.
Sid (Host):Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for joining me today. I’m glad that you’re here and taking time to join us on the Huge Transformation Podcast. Today, our guest is Daniel Campbell. Daniel Campbell is the owner of Emerald City Window Cleaning in Syracuse, New York. It’s the middle of the wintertime, we were just chatting offline about what it takes to survive the winter, but Daniel, thanks for taking some time. It’s good to see you.
Daniel (Guest):Yeah, absolutely. It’s great to be here. I’ve always wanted to be on a podcast.
Sid (Host):Yay! All right, now you’re on a huge podcast: The Huge Transformation. Fun fact—I don’t know if you’ve seen it, we’re rebuilding The Huge Convention website, and so we have kind of a placeholder, but we just got the recap video from the 2024 show. And it’s like a two-and-a-half-minute recap, but I don’t influence what the videographers choose to put in there at all. They always put one or two testimonial videos in, and I don’t know if you’ve seen it yet or not, but you’re the featured guy for The Huge Convention, talking about how it helped and inspired you and stuff.
Daniel (Guest):I haven’t seen it, but I’ll have to go check it out.
Sid (Host):Yeah, check it out: thehugeconvention.com. So, I’ve just got a handful of questions for you—mostly we’re just going to chat. But I’m going to ask you about the Huge Mastermind and why you joined it. Before we get to that, how long have you been in business, and why did you start this crazy journey in the first place?
Daniel (Guest):So, business for 11 years now. And why was basically because I can’t ever sit still and I have a problem with authority, so I wanted to start my own business. When I was younger, I’d tried a whole bunch of stupid little things, like selling candy out of a locker. Then in high school and all through college, I worked at this pizza shop around the corner from my house, and the guy that owned that place—his name was Vinny—he was the main inspiration. He was the first business owner I met, and he got to do all these cool things, take vacations, had a race car, a badass ’88 Mustang that he took to the drag strip, and I was like, “I want that life.” So, long story short, I went to college; that sucked. Got out, became a truck driver, stopped doing that, decided to look at starting my own company again. I basically just Googled “easy businesses to start,” got one of those old listicles, and window cleaning was the fifth one down. I was like, “I like working outside, I already have a pickup truck, I can clean windows.” So I went to Home Depot with like 200 bucks, bought a ladder and a Home Depot bucket and a mop and squeegee, then started advertising on Craigslist, of all places. The rest is history.
Sid (Host):Yeah, was it honestly your first customer you got…?
Daniel (Guest):Oh boy, I still remember him. There’s this neighborhood with these really old mansions right outside downtown Syracuse, and they found me on Craigslist. It was like 60 windows, old single-pane wood frames with the pulleys. Maybe you don’t have those in your area…
Sid (Host):I know what you’re talking about, yeah.
Daniel (Guest):…with the triple-track storm window on the outside. I was like, “Oh my God, this is awesome, I’ll charge 300 bucks.” I was there for 15 hours on a Saturday. I was like, “This was a mistake.” But yeah, that’s how I learned to price stuff, ’cause that sucked.
Sid (Host):Right. So that’s the pricing learning. Most of us jump in, like you said. Then you realize, “Wow, I guess I missed that one.” But then the next one, you probably didn’t bid it that low.
Daniel (Guest):No, I’m a very slow learner, so it took me a year to figure out I should probably be charging more. Realistically, that first customer, 300 bucks for a day’s work—looking back, that’s still 300 in a day. Not horrible, right? The first year, I did maybe $5,000 total for the whole year because I was working a full-time second shift job, so I was doing this on the weekends. I was just pocketing the money. But after that, I realized I did enjoy the work, I wanted to grow it. That’s when I had to figure out how much we need to produce per hour. Probably year two or three is when I really got that figured out.
Sid (Host):So, 11 years in, what’s one of the hardest lessons or failures you had, and how did it shape the future?
Daniel (Guest):Last year was the big moment. We talked offline: last winter, I was ready to close the doors. We had no money. I had eight guys in the field, me and an office person. We did a little over $500,000 in revenue, and I kept none of it—we finished the year at 1.2 percent net profit. My training systems were garbage, my guys were not good employees, and I was too afraid of confrontation or hoping they’d change. The biggest lesson: they’re not going to change if you don’t hold them accountable. My word for 2024 was “leadership.” I had to learn to be a better leader. By the end of 2024, I fired everybody because I thought we were going out of business anyway. I told my mentor, “If I have another year like 2023, I’m done.” Over the winter, I hired a new crew, wrote down a by-the-book system, and made it very clear, “If you don’t meet these things, you won’t work here.” And we got serious about accountability. Now we’re finishing the year around 28 percent profit—massive change.
Sid (Host):That’s quite a shift. Did you just hammer out systems all winter?
Daniel (Guest):Basically, yeah. Before, we had almost nothing written down. I wrote out “This is how I want things done, this is what I expect,” and I showed it to the new hires. If they didn’t do it, I’d say, “Hey, remember this paper you signed? You’re not meeting KPI X, I have to let you go.” And it wasn’t always fun, but I found a real A-player who became our field supervisor, and between that and accountability, everything changed. We became profitable in June. Our close rate went back up to 65 percent. It was literally all about the people.
Sid (Host):So you’re in growth mode now. That leads to my question: what prompted you to join the Huge Mastermind?
Daniel (Guest):I firmly believe you’re the average of the five or ten people you spend the most time with. I also believe if I have a health issue, I go to a doctor. If I have a car problem, I go to a mechanic. If my business “hurts,” I go get advice from a coach or a mastermind. The Huge Mastermind has people who have solved the challenges I’m facing. So it fast-tracks my success.
Sid (Host):That’s wise. People in certain categories always rely on pros. So your approach is similar. We do that with health, so why not with business or relationships?
Daniel (Guest):Exactly.
Sid (Host):Now, think back five years. You’re six years into the business, you’re starting to see traction. Knowing what you know today, what advice do you give your five-years-ago self?
Daniel (Guest):I’d say you must invest in the right people if you want to grow, because you can’t do everything yourself. Five years ago, I was trying to do it all—answer phones, do sales, do the work. I’d tell that Daniel, “You don’t have to do it all alone. There are people who can do the cleaning, or the phones. If they’re not all in, let them go, find the next person. Firing someone isn’t bad; they’ll be replaced.”
Sid (Host):Who would you have hired first?
Daniel (Guest):Admin. A hundred percent. It’s often the easiest position to fill, less expensive, takes the most off your plate. If no one answers the phone, you won’t grow. Even an answering service like Jill’s Office is better than nothing. Because if it goes to voicemail, the lead calls the next company.
Sid (Host):Right. And you said your market is a lot more crowded than when you started.
Daniel (Guest):Absolutely. The barrier to entry is very low. That’s fine, I’m not scared of competition, but you better pick up the phone or they’ll pick the next place.
Sid (Host):Let’s do some quick rapid-fire. What’s your top book for business owners?
Daniel (Guest):Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink.
Sid (Host):A podcast you like?
Daniel (Guest):Right now, Culture Proof with Sam Gemble.
Sid (Host):Favorite movie?
Daniel (Guest):Twister.
Sid (Host):How do you recharge?
Daniel (Guest):I’m an outdoors guy, so hiking, camping, fishing—spend a weekend out in nature.
Sid (Host):Where’s Emerald City Window Cleaning in five years?
Daniel (Guest):We’ll be in acquisition mode, doubling our trucks from four to maybe eight or ten, possibly a full sales team of three or four guys. I want to be out of sales and operations.
Sid (Host):That’s awesome. And yeah, the Mastermind is full of people bigger than me or you, which is how we level up.
Daniel (Guest):Exactly. I was in another coaching program, usually near the top of that group. Now I see guys double my size. That’s the table I want to sit at.
Sid (Host):Thanks for sharing your journey and being gracious with your time, Daniel.
Daniel (Guest):Thank you, Sid.
Sid (Host):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, 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.
Also, I want to 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 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 the 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 Foundations education platform; that is, we’ve got over 120 hours of industry-specific education and resources for you. And every month, we do a topical webinar and Q&A 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. If you haven’t been, you got to check it out. It’s every August. This year, it’s in Nashville, Tennessee. That’s August 20th through 22nd in 2025. 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 we’ve got education—world-class 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 want to pour jet fuel in your business, check out the Huge Mastermind. Now, it’s not for everyone. You got to be at over $750,000 of revenue, building toward $1 million, $5 million, $10 million in the next five years. It’s a network, 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 info on all four of these programs and how we’ll help you advance your business quickly, just by going to https://www.thehugeconvention.com and scrolling down to click on the Freedom Path. Or, of course, you can find the links here in the show notes.
Sorry if I’m a bit wordy, but I just want to let you know about the resources available to help you accelerate and advance your beautiful small business. So keep on growing, keep on learning, keep advancing. And if you like the show, go ahead—if you would, take 90 seconds to give us a review on iTunes, then subscribe and share it. It really means the world to us and helps other people find these resources as we continue our mission to help people just like you and me. So thanks again for listening. We’ll see you on the next episode.

9: The Justin Boyd Episode

In this episode, Gabe Torres interviews Justin Boyd, a seasoned finance professional who transitioned from a corporate role at IBM into launching a fractional CFO service for small businesses. Justin details how selling everything to travel the U.S. with his family helped him move from playing “not to lose” to playing to win in both life and business. He explains why financial forecasting—especially understanding your cash flow—can guide better decision-making and unlock sustainable growth. Whether you struggle with overspending on ads, hiring at the right time, or simply want to future-proof your company’s finances, Justin’s insights shed light on how to use numbers as a strategic asset.
SHOW NOTES
Guest: Justin Boyd
Fractional CFO Services for Small Businesses (No direct URLs provided)
Key Topics
Corporate-to-Entrepreneur: Leaving IBM to gain more freedom and impact
Overcoming Fear: Selling everything, traveling the U.S. full-time, and embracing risk
Financial Forecasting: Using future-focused models (P&L, cash flow, balance sheet) to influence today’s decisions
Cash Flow Management: Going beyond P&L statements to see where the money actually ends up
Scaling: Balancing client service with building an infrastructure that doesn’t solely rely on the founder
Mindset Shift: Switching from “playing not to lose” to “playing to win”
Time Value of Money: Outsourcing tasks so you can focus on high-value activities and long-term goals
Resources Mentioned
Full Focus Planner – productivity tool
Traction by Gino Wickman
The E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber
No Excuses! by Brian Tracy
People & Mentions
Mike Dahlke – Business mentor and mastermind leader
Jesse Itzler – Entrepreneur emphasizing “time rich” living
Additional Resources for Home Service Entrepreneurs
Huge Insider Newsletter
Huge Foundations Education Platform (120+ hours of training)
The Huge Convention (August 20–22, 2025, in Nashville, TN)
Huge Mastermind (for $750K+ revenue)
How You Can Support the Podcast
Subscribe to the Huge Transformations Podcast
Leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
Share the episode with entrepreneurs eager to scale sustainably
TRANSCRIPTSid Graef (Host):Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Huge Transformations Podcast. I’m Sid Graef out here in Montana.
Gabe Torres (Co-Host):And I’m Gabe Torres here in Nashville, Tennessee. 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 and owners in the industry—folks that have already built seven- and eight-figure home service 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 percent experience, 0 percent 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.
Gabe Torres (Co-Host):Hey everyone, it’s Gabe Torres with the Huge Transformations Podcast. I have an amazing guest for you all today. We had a really fun conversation around finance, believe it or not, but also around overcoming your fears and traveling around the United States, and a lot of ways that you could apply finance strategically to your business to continue to grow. So I’m really excited for you guys to meet him. His name is Justin Boyd, and he has a huge depth financially. He’s a lifelong career finance professional, has spent time at big companies like IBM, but also small businesses like a lot of the ones listening to this podcast right now, and has just become an expert in forecasting, budgeting, using your finances to fund your future. So I’m really excited for you guys to listen. Put a smile on, throw the radio on, throw your headphones on—whatever it is—but get ready to smile and learn some good stuff. Thank you all for joining.
Gabe Torres (Co-Host):Welcome. This is Gabe Torres with the Huge Transformations Podcast, and our guest today is Justin Boyd. Justin, where are you at right now?
Justin Boyd (Guest):Southwest Florida, actually. So yeah, it’s nice compared to—I was just in Chicago. It’s a lot nicer than that, but it’s still kind of cool down here.
Gabe Torres (Co-Host):Much nicer than Chicago. Cool. Well, we’re excited to have you. And you’re based out of Florida now, right?
Justin Boyd (Guest):Yeah, yep. That’s where I live. My business is—well, that’s where I live. We’ll get into that.
Gabe Torres (Co-Host):I was going to say, give us—yeah, do it now. Give us some backstory on your story, your journey.
Justin Boyd (Guest):Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, I’ve always liked—I’ve always been a finance guy. I’ve always liked numbers and money, ever since I was little. My favorite game was Monopoly, and I’m still getting made fun of for that. One time, I played with the in-laws…
Gabe Torres (Co-Host):Didn’t end with like a fistfight or anything?
Justin Boyd (Guest):No, it ended with two people getting pissed off and leaving, but I feel like that was a win. (Laughs)But yeah, I’ve always been in that. I always had a knack for it, not necessarily like business—I’m going to be a crazy entrepreneur or business owner—but I’ve always had a knack for numbers and finances. So yeah, went to school for finance and accounting, got my MBA, did a bunch of different stuff: personal financial planning for small companies, mostly households—investments, insurance. Worked in a bank for a few years doing loans and banking stuff. Then my longest stint was at IBM, in corporate finance, handling pricing for North America for a couple different products, doing a lot of planning, FP&A, budgeting for expense portfolios, some cloud pricing, different things like that.
Ultimately, I was—until later, I didn’t realize I was very entrepreneurial, but I couldn’t do it anymore. I just can’t sit here… They’re treating me well, but I just can’t sit here and try to hammer it out until retirement. It was very exhausting, soul-sucking, feeling underutilized, and yeah, just part of the machine, right?
Gabe Torres (Co-Host):A lot of entrepreneurs would probably describe any finance thing—going to look at a P&L as soul-sucking. (Laughs) So going back even before then, where are you originally from?
Justin Boyd (Guest):Originally from Wisconsin. Born in Minnesota, grew up in Wisconsin, then lived in Minnesota.
Gabe Torres (Co-Host):Okay. That’s where you were stationed?
Justin Boyd (Guest):Yes. I was in Minnesota when I worked at IBM for a while.
Gabe Torres (Co-Host):You moved around a little bit, right? I think you were here in Tennessee for a bit, and then landed in Florida?
Justin Boyd (Guest):Yep, so we traveled across the country, pretty much full-time for three or four years. (Coughs) Sorry, just getting over a cold. (Coughs) I was at the end of it, but yeah… So yeah, we traveled, I think we saw 34 different states, 16 or 18 national parks with the kids, just a blast. We sold everything. That was like 2020 with COVID—that was the last straw. We said, “Let’s make lemonade out of the situation,” so to speak. It was definitely a learning experience. We’d never done anything like that. We jumped in full-bore, never had been camping or anything.
Gabe Torres (Co-Host):So it wasn’t even like you guys were a big camping family or anything?
Justin Boyd (Guest):No. (Laughs) So we just went with it. IBM had gone remote at that point, so I was like, well, at least I have some sort of safety net, making some income while I figure out the next step. I was always kind of a finance-oriented, risk-averse person, so it was definitely outside my comfort zone.
Gabe Torres (Co-Host):Yeah, that’s interesting for a finance guy…did that stress you out?
Justin Boyd (Guest):It did, but I realized, “What have I done in the past, and has it gotten me where I want to be?” So maybe there’s something to be had from being more adventurous and risk-taking. That was the big realization: “I’m in this job because I’m afraid to take risks.” So maybe I can flip that. And yeah, traveling full-time taught me you can do hard things, figure it out as you go. You don’t need all the answers at the start. Great segue for me.
Gabe Torres (Co-Host):So that was the impetus to leave IBM and start your own gig. Now you run a fractional CFO business. So how’d that come about?
Justin Boyd (Guest):I saw all these frameworks and tools we had in corporate finance, like pricing, forecasting, etc., and talking to small business owners—especially in the home service realm—no one had that. Marketing? Sure. CPAs for taxes? Sure. But no one was helping them with the strategic side of finance, looking forward rather than backward. So I thought, “Hey, they can’t afford a full-time CFO, but maybe they can afford a fractional CFO arrangement.” That’s basically how it started: we bring big-company finance know-how to smaller businesses so they can make data-driven, strategic decisions.
Gabe Torres (Co-Host):What are some things you do that business owners might not realize could help them?
Justin Boyd (Guest):Forecasting is the main one: not just looking at the P&L after the month ends, but projecting ahead—P&L, cash flow statement, balance sheet—12 months out, so you make decisions now that impact your future. It’s surprising how many owners only look at the bank balance or the prior P&L, ignoring their balance sheet, ignoring where the money actually goes after net income. So we help them map all that out and plan how much cash they’ll have, how they can invest in growth, etc. CPAs typically handle historical data, but we handle the forward-looking side.
Gabe Torres (Co-Host):That’s awesome. So you started that about three years ago?
Justin Boyd (Guest):Yep, three years now. It’s been good, but at an inflection point. I love serving clients, but I also need to build the business—kind of like a plumber who doesn’t want to fix his own sink. We have good software and processes in place, but also I need to hire and scale so it’s not solely me. Because that’s the next step: building an entity that can succeed without me working 60 hours a week.
Gabe Torres (Co-Host):Yes! That’s exactly what I’m going through with my business. Trying to do the same. You’re basically living the journey so many entrepreneurs face at that next level. That’s sweet.
Justin Boyd (Guest):Yeah, for sure. I’m still struggling with it, but you don’t have to have all the answers before you dive in. Talking to coaches and masterminds, you get different opinions, but you still gotta do it and figure out what works for you. Reading business books is great, too. Each one can give you a little nugget. Eventually, it all comes together.
Gabe Torres (Co-Host):One last piece of advice for folks listening?
Justin Boyd (Guest):Keep moving forward, even if it’s not pretty. Don’t let fear of not being perfect stop you. And trust yourself. Even if other people’s stories don’t match yours exactly, you can chart your own course.
Gabe Torres (Co-Host):Perfect. Justin, thanks so much for joining us, buddy.
Justin Boyd (Guest):Yeah, thanks, man!
Gabe Torres (Co-Host):See ya.
Sid Graef (Host – Outro):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, 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 out.
Also, I want to let you know the mission for The Huge Convention and for this podcast is to help our blue-collar business owners like you and me gain financial and time freedom through running a better business. And we do that in four ways:
Our free weekly newsletter—it’s called the 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.
The Huge Foundations education platform—that is, we’ve got over 120 hours of industry-specific education and resources for you. And every month, we do a topical webinar and Q&A with seven- and eight-figure business owners, and it’s available to you for a $1 trial for seven days.
Of course, The Huge Convention. If you haven’t been, you gotta check it out. It’s every August. This year, it’s in Nashville, Tennessee, August 20–22, 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. We’ve got world-class education and educators and speakers that will teach you how to run a better business. And it’s the best networking opportunity you can have within the home service business.
Lastly, if you want to pour jet fuel on your business, check out The Huge Mastermind. Now it’s not for everyone; you gotta be at over $750K of revenue, and you’re building toward $1M, $5M, or $10M in the next five years. It’s a network, mentorship, and 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 info on all four of these programs and how we’ll help you advance your business quickly just by going to https://www.thehugeconvention.com and scrolling down to click on the Freedom Path. Or, of course, you can find the links here in the show notes.
Sorry if I’m getting a bit wordy, but I just want to let you know about all the resources available to help you accelerate and advance your beautiful small business. Keep on growing, keep on learning, keep advancing. And if you liked the show, go ahead—please take 90 seconds to give us a review on iTunes, then subscribe and share it. Man, it would really mean the world to us. It helps other people, as we continue our mission to help people just like you and me. Thanks again for listening. We’ll see you on the next episode.

8: The Adel Majd Episode

In this episode, host Sid Graef interviews Adel Majd, the owner of two successful home service businesses in Toronto: 416 So Clean (carpet and upholstery cleaning) and Air Force (duct cleaning). Adel’s journey includes working in IT, launching his first cleaning business, taking a five-year sabbatical traveling through Central and South America, and coming back with renewed focus on systems, automation, and people development. He explains how “relentless communication” (before, during, and after each job) boosts referrals, why empowering employees with life goals fosters loyalty, and how he’s embraced chatbots and AI to streamline operations. If you’ve ever worried you can’t balance personal dreams with business growth, Adel proves you can do both—and thrive.
SHOW NOTES
416 So Clean (Adel’s Carpet & Upholstery Company)
Air Force (Adel’s Duct Cleaning Company)
Who Not How concept (Dan Sullivan)
Peak by Chip Conley
Stephen Covey – 7 Habits of Highly Effective People:
ServiceTitan
Jobber
The Huge Convention (August 20–22, 2025 in Nashville
The Huge Mastermind (for $750K+ businesses)
Downloadable Action Guide
The Huge Insider Newsletter Signup
The Huge Mastermind Info Page
TRANSCRIPTSid (Host):Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Huge Transformations Podcast. I’m Sid Graef out here in Montana.
Gabe (Co-Host):And I’m Gabe Torres here in Nashville, Tennessee. 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 and owners in the industry—folks that have already built seven and eight figure home service businesses, and they want to help you succeed. You have no fake gurus on this show; just real-life owners who’ve been in the trenches and can help show you the way to grow profit. We get insights and truths from successful business builders, and every episode is 100 percent experience.
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.
Sid (Host):Hey, this is Sid with Huge Transformations Podcast, and today’s interview, I think you’re really going to love. I had the privilege of interviewing Adel Majd. Adel lives in Toronto—or outside of Toronto. He’s got a fascinating background. He’s got an IT background, a computer science background, and he’s been in service business not once but twice. And you’re going to be fascinated—or at least I was—by his story of taking a five-year sabbatical to travel in Central America and Colombia before coming back to business and starting an air duct cleaning company called Air Force, as well as a window cleaning company, and his rapid growth. Most impressively, his smart growth and his use of automations.
Adel is a regular guy just like you and I, but he has learned and knows how to learn from others, and to apply what he’s learned and to grow really rapidly. Please join me and enjoy this interview with Adel.
Sid (Host):Oh, hello, my friend. It’s Sid Graef with the Huge Transformation Podcast, and I’m excited to have you here today because our guest today is going to be a lot of fun. It is Adel. And Adel, I apologize—how do I pronounce your last name? I always call it, say Majd.
Adel (Guest):You got it. Majd.
Sid (Host):Okay, good. All right. And Adel, you’ve got two companies in Toronto, Canada: 416 So Clean and Air Force duct cleaning. I love your logo, which makes it look official, like “This is the Air Force.” When did you start these businesses? Because I realize you had a business career prior, so we’ll start with what you’re doing now, and then we might go back in time. When did you start the current business, and then what made you start that?
Adel (Guest):So the first one was 416 So Clean, officially started in 2009—almost 15 years ago. And the Air Force, I would say halfway through that journey, almost seven, eight years ago.
Sid (Host):Why did you add a second company?
Adel (Guest):Many things. The main reason is, I am already at the homeowner, and I’m looking for a service I can add to diversify and see what kind of value I can add to the homeowner. But I’m also always looking back and saying, “What could happen in my existing business? I need to diversify. God forbid something happened with this business, I have something I can back into.” From economy, from a different scale of things happen. I tried different things. I tried micro-seal application of fabric guards, to get into the marble restorations, wood restorations, you name it. Eventually, the duct cleaning side really stuck and went pretty well.
Sid (Host):So, I’m not terribly familiar with duct cleaning. I know what it is, but is there a larger barrier to entry—especially equipment or could anybody start in that business?
Adel (Guest):Technically, you could walk in with a portable system, but from the client’s perspective, trust is huge, because they don’t see most of the work you do. So showing up with a powerful vacuum, powerful compressor, with a big truck, well-branded, makes a huge difference to gain the trust if they don’t know you yet. And that becomes an entry barrier, a real entry barrier, for a lot of other guys to walk into that business.
Sid (Host):So in a small business, a lot of people, when they start out, they just want to compete on price, like the homeowner gets a quote for 500, the scrappy hustle says, “I’ll do it for 400,” and it’s a price competition, which usually doesn’t end well. But it sounds like you’re not selling price, you’re selling trust. What else gives you—how do you view it? In your mind, how do you think about what you’re actually selling?
Adel (Guest):Peace of mind, for the most part. It’s really a peace of mind for the homeowners. To them, it’s like, “Who can they trust?” With duct cleaning, you don’t see most of the work, so you have to set in place a lot of things to gain trust. I got fortunate that I had a really good client base using the carpet-upholstery cleaning business. And I didn’t go to the market for new clients; I offered duct cleaning to my existing database and said, “We also offer this.” And that helped me go just overnight with the successful Air Force duct cleaning business, with its own brand. Once they saw our trucks and people… And the funniest thing is our existing clients in the carpet and upholstery cleaning side, they went crazy, started referring us left and right because it’s almost like all the people they know, they want their duct cleaning done, but they don’t know who to trust. There’s a lot of 99-dollar offers out there. The moment we communicated with them that we are in this space, it’s almost like a relief for them. It’s like, “Oh, my cousin wants it, my mom wants it, my brother-in-law, my neighbors.” And it just spread out beautifully in that aspect.
Sid (Host):That’s fantastic, because I love referral marketing more than any other form. Because it doesn’t really cost, and because it’s a transference of trust, you automatically have less price resistance, it’s easier to close, it’s just a clean step. So that’s great. When you said we had a conversation about some of the technology that you use, specifically your communications systems or processes, how do you typically communicate with your clients? You use email software, but how deep do you go?
Adel (Guest):Communication, like from the website, from the phone, like live agents, obviously there’s the WhatsApp group, the WhatsApp messages. Right now, we’re investing heavily in AI, so at any point, if there’s a point of contact, there’s always someone talking to the clients, and there’s a lot of follow-ups. So the moment the experience starts, we immediately—like, lead comes in from Angie’s List or something, we reply to it. We wait a little bit, we follow up again, we have the conversation, the appointment is booked, everything is communicated through emails and texts and calls, email, texts, and calls.
To the point where sometimes they say, a lot of the feedback we get back is like, “The cleaning was amazing, but beyond the cleaning, we felt we’ve been walked through the whole process from the beginning to the end, and the handover from one department to the other was just amazing.” From the person answering the call, booking the appointment, to the technician showing at the door—there are no surprises. They text them half an hour before they come over, they know we’re on the way, we show up, we reiterate what we talked about already on the phone. It’s a different person, but we’re reiterating the same script, so they know what we’re going to do. The moment they’re in the middle of the job, they stop, they communicate again with the clients about what’s going on. They finish the job, they communicate again the post-inspection cleaning.
The moment they’ve left, we know in the office they left, we follow up with another text and email, says, “How did everything go?” 24 hours later, they get another text and frequent communication. Is there anything else we could have done better? A week later, the CRM immediately kicks in asking for referrals. A month later, we got another communication with them, says, “By the way, it’s been a month, anything went wrong after we left, let us know. Okay, I know it’s been a month, but we can fix it again.” So that’s communication. Obviously, they got their reminders, they got their six-month, but the leverage of the CRM, the leverage and the technology of the AIs right now that we get, like over the weekends, if I’m not logged in or somebody else is not logged in, we had our chatbot right now answers all the questions, gives them the pricing, schedule them in directly, give them dates available, and people want that immediate response, and it’s there.
Sid (Host):That’s cool. Now I have 15 questions for you, but let’s start with your communication structure that you just walked through, from the time they make an inquiry till they get scheduled and confirmed, and then the tech shows up. Did you design that and think it through, or did you buy something that was off the shelf and just change the name?
Adel (Guest):For the most part, it’s from the ground up. It starts, and it’s been like 15 years. We upgraded our CRM a few times—it used to be Excel sheet, then a database, and so on. Every time we adapt a new technology, we ask, what is the feature there and how can we use it? And we add more stuff. But then I always look around, like I ask my friends—like if I book something, and I got a notification that I like, something new that we don’t do, I immediately go back and change it.
But then I have a full-time IT guy; his job is automations and simplification. That’s all he does. So every day, he and I have our call, and I say, “Can you watch what this person is doing for a day, and let’s go back and simplify the process?” For me, my big part of the training with my technicians and my office staff is, in real estate business, it’s location, location, location. In service business, it’s communication, communication, communication. Because you cannot underestimate—things will go wrong, and they do go wrong. But every time something went wrong, but we were on top of it with communication, it turns into a positive review online.
Sid (Host):Yeah, it’s surprising how it’s normal for the business provider, if something goes wrong, to try to avoid it. If it’s a contractor that repairs your door, then the door is broken again, they might not return your call. But if you address it so fast, so aggressively, they become a raving fan.
Adel (Guest):Yes, 100 percent. Last month alone, I had two scenarios I can share with you. One of them, a client, because we send a month later—I personally send them my own email and say, “Listen, it’s been a month. I’m not leaving you out to dry. If you noticed, since a month, something else happened and now you noticed it, we still have a warranty, we’ll come and fix it,” even if it’s a month or a year or 10 years later, we back up everything we do. That person came back and said, “You know what, there’s a scratch in my floor.” And I said, “You know what, we’re coming back.” We jumped in, I sent my technician, we looked at it. By looking at it, I know this wasn’t caused by us, but I still said, “I’m more than happy to replace that tile for you, whatever it costs,” we were proactive.
He sent me a text right after he says, “I took care of it. I knew you guys didn’t cause it, and I’m impressed by the fact that you owned it. Although it obviously wasn’t your guy.” Another quick one: we’re doing dryer machine cleaning, and it wasn’t heating anymore. We immediately say, “We never had this issue before. I don’t know what’s going on, let’s look at it.” We followed up, we offered to come and fix it if needed, so we were actively going after to make sure it’s fixed. Eventually, she said, “I got a repair guy who came in, he fixed it, it had nothing to do with your guy. Your guy did an amazing job, but the fact you kept following up meant the world to us.” That communication helps with trust, referrals, everything else.
Sid (Host):So with the day-to-day booking process, do you send them a reminder three days before, the day before, the day of, or how do you do it?
Adel (Guest):Yes, I feel three touchpoints is perfect. I book the appointments, they get an email and text. Then three days before, they get the email and text. Then 30 minutes before the window arrival, we send them a text and call them to say we’re on the way. That works perfectly. I find nobody ever complains we need more. Nobody ever complains it’s too much. The three-day reminder is crucial because that’s where if something comes up, they forgot they have a doctor appointment, we can reuse that spot so we’re not losing that day. That changed everything for us.
Back to your question, we try, test, adjust. If the day-before reminder wasn’t working, we changed it to 72 hours, it helped. Everything is R&D, small improvements.
Sid (Host):So you focus on constant refinements?
Adel (Guest):Exactly. Constantly. We ask, “What could we improve?” We always see a million ways to improve, whether it’s the communication, the cleaning process, the email, the structure, the tools. As long as every single day we look at something and say, “Let’s go fix this,” that’s how we grow. If something’s not broken, we fix it anyway, because I consider everything always broken.
Sid (Host):Cool. So let’s shift gears. First, for people listening, we got a lot of guys that are new in business or they’ve been in business for a few years. They want to scale, they have aspirations. I don’t know the size of your business—about what’s the scope? How many employees do you have, or what’s the size?
Adel (Guest):We’re operating at $1.5 million revenue. We got around 20 full-time employees, 20–25 depending on the season. We do a little bit of subcontracting, but the majority are full-time. We’ve got eight trucks on the road. We’re almost at 50–50, half duct cleaning, half carpet upholstery. We do a little bit of windows and gutter cleaning as well.
Sid (Host):Gotcha. So, going back in time 15 years, was it just you or did you start with a team?
Adel (Guest):Probably I did it the worst way, where you just go get a small little portable and say, “It’s easy, just go and clean carpets.” And how hard could it be, right?
Sid (Host):Yeah, that’s the typical. Right. So you were in the trenches. Then you took a break. You told me you took a five-year sabbatical to travel in Central America and such?
Adel (Guest):Yes, probably more out of desperation. So I did my first career in IT—good money, good environment, but no freedom of time. Then I jumped to carpet cleaning. But I went extreme with entrepreneurship, ignoring everything else, and it took a toll on my marriage, the family. So I took a five-year sabbatical. I had enough staff to run it on a low scale, so it was easier to manage without me. I rethought what I wanted. Do I want corporate or keep being an entrepreneur? And I traveled from all the way south to Central America in different trips, volunteering, hiking, connecting with nature. It reenergized me to come back and say, “I love building a service business. I just need to do it better.” That’s what started my third phase—where I am now.
Sid (Host):How did that sabbatical help your work-life balance?
Adel (Guest):It gave me perspective. There’s a world out there beyond work; we’re very fortunate here in North America. We have so much opportunity. When I returned, I realized I want to be of service, to employees and customers. I was able to connect with employees in a deeper way because many come from tough situations too. We talk about traveling and volunteering, and we bond more than just “You clean carpets.” We’re building a meaningful culture.
Sid (Host):So how do you convey that bigger purpose to employees?
Adel (Guest):Money is just a tool. The bigger goal is what we create for homeowners and for ourselves. We share a vision and mission, talk about what each person wants outside of work. Then we map daily tasks to those bigger dreams. I might say, “What’s your dream, buy a house? Let’s tie that to your KPI.” We built a small app with scorecards so employees see in real time how each completed job moves them closer to their personal goals.
Sid (Host):So that fosters reliability, commitment, retention?
Adel (Guest):Absolutely. And there’s nothing more powerful than that. For instance, an employee might say, “I wanted a down payment on a house. Now I have it because of this job.” That’s the biggest retention tool.
Sid (Host):Awesome. So to wrap up, if you had to give one piece of advice to a new business owner who wants to scale, what would it be?
Adel (Guest):Don’t quit. Get out and meet others, attend conferences, see how bigger players operate. Avoid living in a vacuum. Every time I’ve gone to events like The Huge Convention or a mastermind, I learn something that accelerates us big-time.
Sid (Host):Great. Adel, thanks so much.
Adel (Guest):Thank you, Sid.
Sid (Host):Hello, my friend, this is Sid. Thank you again for taking the time to listen to today’s episode. If you got value, check the show notes for all the resources, books, and tools mentioned. Also, The Huge Insider is our free newsletter, we’ve got Huge Foundations with 120+ hours of industry training, the Huge Convention every August, and the Huge Mastermind if you’re doing over $750K. It’s all at https://www.thehugeconvention.com. If you enjoyed the show, please give us 90 seconds with a review on iTunes, then subscribe and share. It helps more people discover these resources. Keep learning, keep growing, and we’ll see you on the next episode.

7: The Chad Gagnon Episode

In this episode of the Huge Transformations Podcast, hosts Gabe Torres interviews Chad Gagnon, the newly appointed CEO of Blue Skies Bookkeeping. Chad shares his backstory of starting out as a real estate photographer and working his way up to help scale a real estate marketing firm to over $20 million in revenue across 32 states. Chad breaks down the importance of transitioning from being “on the truck” (doing the technical work) to delegating effectively, building a strong client success framework, and focusing on high-level growth. Now at Blue Skies Bookkeeping, Chad’s vision is to create the industry’s go-to bookkeeping service for home service businesses and eventually land on the Inc. 5000 list. Whether you’re a small home service entrepreneur or a seasoned business owner, this episode offers practical advice on leadership, delegation, and systematic growth.
SHOW NOTESGuest: Chad Gagnon – CEO of Blue Skies Bookkeeping
Background:
Started as a real estate photographer
Helped scale a real estate marketing startup to over $20M in revenue
Passionate about client success, proactive problem-solving, and leadership
Current Focus:
Leading Blue Skies Bookkeeping
Aiming to become the largest bookkeeping service in the home service industry
Key Topics
Entrepreneurial Beginnings
From photography and floor-plan creation to managing enterprise-level real estate marketing
Lessons learned from rapid scaling and multi-state expansion
Scaling Challenges
The fear of handing off tasks and trusting a team
Importance of proactive client success strategies for retaining major accounts
Leadership & Delegation
Wearing multiple hats in early business stages
Knowing when and how to effectively delegate to focus on strategic growth
Vision for Blue Skies Bookkeeping
Chad’s goal to make Blue Skies the top choice for home service bookkeeping
Plans to reach the Inc. 5000 list
Four Critical Questions
What is working?
What is not working?
What does success look like?
What is my biggest concern?
Actionable Takeaways
Delegate to Grow: Letting go of day-to-day tasks is essential to scale.
Proactive Client Success: Don’t wait for complaints; solve potential problems early.
Ask the Right Questions: Use Chad’s four questions to guide weekly, monthly, or quarterly reviews.
Long-Term Vision: Keep your eyes on a bigger end goal (e.g., Inc. 5000) for sustained motivation.
Resources & Mentions
Blue Skies Bookkeeping
Inc. 5000 List
Huge Convention (Aug 20–22, 2025 in Nashville)
Additional Resources
Huge Insider Newsletter
Huge Foundations Education Platform (120+ Hours of Specialized Business Training)
Huge Mastermind (For $750K+ Revenue Businesses)
Enjoying the Podcast?
Subscribe to the Huge Transformations Podcast
Rate & Review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
Share with fellow entrepreneurs seeking to grow and scale
TRANSCRIPTGabe (Host):All right, great. All right, so this is Gabe Torres here with the Huge Transformations Podcast. With us today we have Chad Gagnon, the new CEO of Blue Skies Bookkeeping. Welcome, Chad. Thanks for joining us.
Chad (Guest):Thank you for having me, Gabe. I’m glad to be here.
Gabe (Host):Absolutely. And where is “here” for you? Where are you at right now?
Chad (Guest):Here is Denver, Colorado—gloomy Denver, which is rare.
Gabe (Host):Actually it’s gloomy here too in Nashville. Cool. Well, we're excited to have you on board. You've done some stuff, and I’m genuinely excited to get to know more about you because I got a little tidbit at a lunch meeting we had a few weeks ago on some stuff you've done in the service space or just your entrepreneurial journey, and so I'm really excited because I think you've done a lot of stuff that a lot of people could learn from—actual tangible real experience, not theory or guru guesswork. So I think to kick it off, if you could just give everybody kind of a quick backstory on Chad.
Chad (Guest):Of course. I think it's always important to start with where I'm from, my roots. Originally from Michigan, I went to school at Western Michigan University where I—that's where, I guess, my business background started, and live in Denver, Colorado via Miami, Florida. I was in Miami for about three years, working in a business that I ended up being with for about 17 years. So once I graduated from school, moved to Miami, worked for a small company for a period of time for about a year, and then hooked up with what at the time was a startup with a couple good friends of mine from college. The company was doing real estate marketing. So we were providing photography, floor plans, and 3D services for residential real estate for sale. And I hooked up with them when I was in Miami. The company at that time was very, very small, bootstrapped, very low revenue. We were just scraping by for a period, and I was actually a photographer myself.
Gabe (Host):That was in Miami?
Chad (Guest):Yes, that was in Miami.
Gabe (Host):So when you said your business kind of started in Michigan at Western, was there something else you started doing there that got you interested in business?
Chad (Guest):No, that was more just my education and kind of where it all started. I was just going to school there.
Gabe (Host):Were you going to school for business?
Chad (Guest):I actually was going to school for aviation.
Gabe (Host):Oh, really?
Chad (Guest):Yeah, so my background—major in aviation, minor in business. But you know, I'm in the home services industry now, so I think a lot of people, what they go to school for, they end up not doing—especially entrepreneurs. So it's interesting. But yeah, I went to school for aviation.
Gabe (Host):Yeah, same. I went to school for diplomacy and world affairs, thought I was going to be an ambassador or something. Look what you're doing now. (Laughs) Anyway, cool. So you got to Miami and…
Chad (Guest):Got to Miami, was doing the work myself—real estate marketing, photos, floor plans, 3D. I was going out to the homes, taking photos, creating floor plans, producing stuff for the realtor clients. That's a good point I want to make: I was actually doing the work myself, and a lot of people in home service, they know their trade well because they did it themselves. I think that's important to learn and understand your business. So I did that for a few years, and then one of the owners of the company and I—he was in South Florida with me—decided to move to Denver, Colorado, just because we wanted to live here. We were big skiers, wanted to be around the mountains and snow, so we decided to move from Miami to Denver. We didn't have an office or anything, working from home. Then I was able to, in Denver, slowly grow the business. We were very sales focused, very quality focused, very client focused. And with that being top of mind, we grew the business over a course of 17 years. We were very successful with it. We became the largest real estate—one of the largest real estate photography companies in the country, operating in about 32 states and all the major metropolitan areas in there. We were able to grow our contractor network of photographers to north of about 500.
Gabe (Host):So you guys really did scale that company, then—you're in 32 markets and had that deep of a network. What was revenue looking like at that point?
Chad (Guest):Revenue at the highest was probably around $20 million. We grew it pretty big. I mean, when I started, it was maybe under $100K. We grinded for a very long time, learned a lot.
Gabe (Host):That's insane. For you, in that time, you said you wore a lot of hats. Were you ops, or growth?
Chad (Guest):I wore them all. I'd say basically every hat. So I'd left Miami, no longer shooting photos, more ops. I'd handle production day to day—photos going from the photographer back to our clients. I'd oversee that, plus customer support, client success, eventually technology, marketing, sales, finance. Over time, I'd fill the seat that needed success. The reason for that was the company needed success in that seat at that time. I would do everything I could to make it happen.
Gabe (Host):So you're a true entrepreneur. (Laughs) So what's your favorite hat?
Chad (Guest):Client success. Many home service companies might not know the term, but it's a proactive approach to retention. We ended up dealing with what we called enterprise-level accounts, so we needed more than just a support line. We built a client success department—onboard clients, meet monthly/quarterly, have proactive conversations. If you add value, you get a client for life. So I had to create that department, and that's probably the coolest hat I wore.
Gabe (Host):Yes, so true. We see that in my own business—like enterprise-level accounts want more than just a phone call if there's an issue. Very different approach. So let’s pivot: what's a big challenge you faced?
Chad (Guest):Well, the big challenge is probably handing off tasks and trusting a team. If you're an artisan or you know your trade well, trusting someone else to do it is big. But once it happens, and it happens right, you can get off the truck or out of the field and focus on growth.
Gabe (Host):Yes, that's huge. So let's go to tangible practices. I like to ask: any exercise or tool you used that was super impactful?
Chad (Guest):I like to keep it simple. Four questions I always ask, whether daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly:
What is working? Lean into it, celebrate it.
What is not working? Make it visible, solve it.
What does success look like? Define it for the day, week, quarter, etc.
What is my biggest concern? Identify it, let the team help so you’re not the only one staying up at night.
Gabe (Host):Yes, that's awesome. I'm going to do that right now in December. Perfect. Last question: you're now at Blue Skies Bookkeeping, not at the real estate marketing firm. Where do you see Blue Skies Bookkeeping in five years?
Chad (Guest):In five years, I'd like us to be the largest bookkeeping service for home service companies, letting owners do what they're good at. I'd also love to see us on the Inc. 5000 list. That's the big end goal.
Gabe (Host):Awesome, man. Thanks for taking the time. I know you're super busy.
Chad (Guest):Absolutely. Thank you. It was great.
Gabe (Host):Yeah, have a great rest of the week, Chad. I'll see you.
Sid (Host):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, 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 out. And also want to let you know: the mission for The Huge Convention and for this podcast is to help our blue-collar business owners—like you and me—gain financial and time freedom through running a better business. And we do that in four ways:
Our free weekly newsletter—it’s called The Huge Insider. Hope you subscribe. It's the most valuable newsletter for the home service industry, paid or otherwise, and this one’s free.
The Huge Foundations education platform—over 120 hours of industry-specific education and resources for you. Every month, we do a topical webinar and Q&A with seven- and eight-figure business owners, and it's available to you for a $1 trial for seven days.
Of course, The Huge Convention—if you haven't been, you got to check it out. It's every August, this year in Nashville, Tennessee, August 20th through 22nd in 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, meet the vendors, check out the software to run your business. We’ve got world-class education and educators and speakers that will teach you how to run a better business. And it's the best networking opportunity you can have in the home service business.
Lastly, if you want to pour jet fuel in your business, check out The Huge Mastermind. Now it's not for everyone; you got to be at over $750K of revenue, building toward $1M, $5M, or $10M in the next five years. It’s 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 thehugeconvention.com and scrolling down and clicking on the Freedom Path. Or, of course, you can find the links here in the show notes. Sorry, I feel like I'm getting a little bit wordy, but I just want to 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 like the show, go ahead—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 on the next episode.

6: The John Lane Episode

In this episode, host Sid Graef interviews John Lane, founder of Castle Rock Lawn and Sprinkler. With over 40 years of entrepreneurial experience, John still feels like he’s just getting started. He talks about starting multiple lawn-care ventures, why he’s now franchising in his 70s, and what continues to drive him after decades in the industry. John’s story reveals the power of consistent learning, strategic acquisitions, and disciplined systems—particularly how a simple online scheduling calendar helped scale his lawn and sprinkler blowout services from zero customers to thousands of automatic appointments each season. If you’ve ever thought you’re “too old” or “too late” to reinvent your business, John proves otherwise.
SHOW NOTES
Zig Ziglar
Winston Churchill Quotes (e.g., “Never, never, never quit”)
Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell
Landscape Workshop (example of large-scale acquisitions)
Castle Rock Lawn and Sprinkler (John Lane’s company)
The Huge Convention (largest annual event for home service businesses)
Huge Mastermind (for businesses $750K+)
Huge Foundations Platform
The Huge Insider Newsletter Signup
Huge Insider Downloadable Action Guide
TRANSCRIPTSid (Host):Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Huge Transformations Podcast. I’m Sid Graef out here in Montana.
Gabe (Co-Host):And I’m Gabe Torres here in Nashville, Tennessee. 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 and owners in the industry—folks that have already built seven- and eight-figure home service businesses and want to help you succeed. There are no fake gurus on this show, just real-life owners who’ve 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 percent experience, 0 percent theory.
We’re 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 this wild journey of entrepreneurship. Let’s dive in.
Sid (Host):Hi, my friend. This is Sid with the Huge Transformations Podcast. Today’s interview was a lot of fun, for a lot of reasons. If you have the opportunity, you gotta look it up on YouTube because while we were doing the interview, it was on video over StreamYard, and I swear I thought I was talking to Harrison Ford—John Lane looks like Harrison Ford, talks like him, and he’s got the wisdom and charisma of Harrison Ford. But let me tell you a bit about John: he’s been in business for a long time. Most people with his maturity and wisdom would already be retired, but not John.
He’s owned a landscape-installation company and a sprinkler company for years—it’s highly successful. I asked him how much time he spends in the company. Is it 100 percent, 50 percent, 25 percent? He said he’s at 44 percent, so he could effectively be retired, collect a check, let younger guys do the work. But no—he steps up his game, says every year he’s always looking at what’s next. He’s got a bigger future planned, including franchising his operation. So he views today as day one, even though he’s been doing this for over 30 years. You’re going to love this conversation. I got so inspired talking to John, and I hope you do too. Please meet John Lane.
Sid (Host):Thanks for joining us today. We have John Lane on the Huge Transformations Podcast with us today. John is in the Denver, Colorado area; he owns Castle Rock Lawn and Sprinkler. And John, thanks for joining us. You’ve been at it for a good while. You’ve got vast experience in business.
John (Guest):Yes, indeed. I started in business when I was basically 27, and now I’m almost 72, so that’s a lot of years of back-alley beatings.
Sid (Host):That’s why I’m so excited to have you on the show—most pop-culture success stories are about someone making millions in five years with an app, but that’s a unicorn scenario. Often, people don’t make it past five or ten years, so hearing from someone with 30 or 40 years of experience gives a whole different perspective.
John (Guest):You make a good point. You see those overnight success stories, and you wonder, “Where did I miss the boat?” because I’ve been grinding forever. But it just takes time. Even now, I’m still a guy trying to learn, going to events, talking to people, walking humbly because this road can be perilous. The moment you think you know it all, you’ll slip. So I keep learning. The last few years especially, because I was able to remove myself from the day-to-day with my general manager, and now I can lead the organization and take us further.
I’ve been in lawn care since 1998, with a break in between. I sold one company, traveled, came back to this particular one about ten years ago, started from scratch—no customers, just me. Today we have nearly 6,000 customers, plus a full staff. Experience really helps once you already know the road.
Sid (Host):Yeah, that first conversation you and I had, I asked how involved you still are. You said maybe 8 percent?
John (Guest):Something like that, yeah. You see, if something happens to me, my wife doesn’t have to jump in and figure out how to run it. But personally, an older man looks forward to the next day of work. I love having a place to go, a purpose. I enjoy learning, meeting new folks like you at the Mastermind. I’m just trying to find my way, even now.
Sid (Host):That’s fantastic. Contrast now with the early days. Back then, you were all hustle. Now, a different purpose. So what is your purpose or vision now?
John (Guest):Locally, I want to be a good employer, provide jobs that let employees buy a home. I want to be reliable to suppliers and customers. Also, I love solving the puzzle—how do we get from here to there. That’s what keeps me motivated. And that’s how I ended up at your Mastermind in Nashville. You did this exercise about “Where you are now, remove a zero, how long did it take, now 10X again.” I’d been thinking about franchising for a year and a half, but in that moment, a little voice said, “Now’s the time.” When I got back, I contacted a consulting firm, and we’re rolling to franchise. So thank you for that. That was huge.
Sid (Host):Glad it sparked something. That’s great. So you want to franchise. Five years down the road, what does that look like?
John (Guest):The consulting firm laid out a business plan calling for 56 units in five years. We’re focusing on the front range of Colorado first, maybe some of my key employees will buy in. That was the idea: give them a chance to build real wealth, not just a decent wage. My guys earn 80 to 100 thousand a year for about 35 weeks of work and then get 17 weeks off. That’s not bad, but the franchise is a bigger step.
Sid (Host):So you’re not just coasting. You’re accelerating.
John (Guest):I am. I used to do everything alone, but that was the slow way. Now I see the value in connecting with bigger businesses or other trades to see what’s possible, like how you or someone might run a $10 million or $20 million operation. That helps me accelerate.
Sid (Host):You also mentioned you started from scratch in the new iteration. You said “no customers,” and you had a truck and a compressor. Didn’t you mention you built an online scheduling system?
John (Guest):Yes, exactly. About 10 years ago, I had a truck, a compressor, and I ran a Google AdWords campaign, plus an online scheduling calendar. I’d just forward that phone number to my cell. I went to bed, and the next morning, someone had already scheduled a blowout. Over 30 days, I ended up doing 200 customers for the winterization season. That was the beginning of what we have now.
Back then, the big breakthrough was attaching a scheduling calendar to that landing page. It was a system designed for, like, barbershops or massage parlors, but I adapted it. We basically built the business around that scheduling calendar. This spring or this fall, whenever I send an email campaign through Mailchimp that says, “It’s time to schedule your blowout,” in less than one minute, the first appointment is booked. Over the next week, we might schedule 1,000. Last season we did about 6,000 appointments, and 5,500 of them were scheduled online without ever talking to the customer on the phone. That was a huge win. So I can manage it with one office person. It’s insane how a little technology and an automated approach can change your life.
Sid (Host):That’s amazing. So from day one, you recognized the power of that scheduling link. Because 5,500 appointments is a lot to handle manually.
John (Guest):Yes, without it, we’d need a big call center. The automation is crucial. People want to book at midnight or on Sunday, so we let them. That’s been a huge success factor.
Sid (Host):I love it. So you’re also looking at acquisitions to expand?
John (Guest):Yes, absolutely. I used to think organic growth was the only way, but then I saw bigger companies do 21 acquisitions in a year. I realized if you have a system, it’s simpler to buy existing customer bases than fight for them. So we recently acquired a 3,000-customer company south of us, and I’m looking at a similar one north of us. Once I plug them into my scheduling and operating system, it’s seamless. That’s definitely a big growth strategy now.
Sid (Host):Where’d you get the vision or the patience to think so long-term?
John (Guest):Meeting bigger players, attending workshops, seeing how they do it. It’s an ongoing learning process. I used to be a lone wolf, but I realized life is easier when you partner or buy. I try to share that with other folks: get out, meet people, join masterminds, come to The Huge Convention, see what’s out there.
Sid (Host):So, final question: a piece of advice for someone at seven figures who wants to reach eight, in the lawn care or any home service?
John (Guest):Don’t quit. You’ll face obstacles. Keep learning, keep building relationships, see how bigger shops do it. If you persist and keep your mind open, you can achieve big-time growth.
Sid (Host):John, thanks for your time.
John (Guest):Thanks, Sid.
Sid (Host):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. Anything covered—books, tools, references—are in the show notes. Our goal with the Huge Convention and this podcast is to help you gain financial and time freedom by running a better business. We do that with four main paths: the free Huge Insider newsletter, the Huge Foundations education platform with 120+ hours of training, the Huge Convention every August, and the Huge Mastermind if you’re at $750K and aiming for $1M, $5M, or $10M in the next five years. You can find it all at https://www.thehugeconvention.com. If you enjoyed the show, please give us a review on iTunes, then subscribe and share. That helps more people discover these resources. Keep on growing, keep on learning, and we’ll see you on the next episode.