Full transcript7 chapters · 9,737 words
0:00Leaving a Wall Street IT career to buy a one-man pest control route
Carmen Reino: I left Wall Street to buy a pest control company knowing almost nothing about the industry, and it turned out to be the best decision I ever made.
Tyler Martin: Welcome to Profit and Grit with Tyler, where blue-collar owners and insiders spill the real story behind their hustle, building businesses that thrive through sweat and smarts. We’ll dig into their journeys from scaling chaos to growing the bottom line with lessons and grit that pay off big.
Tyler Martin: Here’s your host, the blue-collar CFO, Tyler Martin.
Carmen Reino: Going from a one-man pest control company doing about $130K a year to a business on pace for $12 million takes more than just finding more customers. In this episode, Carmen Reno, owner of Anchor Pest Control, shares how he made that climb after leaving a Wall Street IT career, including the risks he took, why he shifted towards
Carmen Reino: higher margin residential work, and how leadership, systems, metrics, and AI helped the company keep growing. We also get into what changes as the business moved from a small operation into an eight figure company. This is a good one. Let’s get into it with Carmen now.
Tyler Martin: Hey, Carmen, welcome to the Profit and Grit Show. How’s it going today?
Carmen Reino: Good. How’s it going with you?
Tyler Martin: Good. Thanks. As I understand it, it’s your birthday tomorrow. So happy advanced birthday.
Carmen Reino: Thank you so much.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, right on. You have any special plans?
Carmen Reino: No, nothing crazy. I’ll go out with my kids on Wednesday because they work on Tuesday. So we’ll go out Wednesday, have a nice dinner. That’s really it.
Tyler Martin: Very cool. Well, hey, you got a great story. I want to start out learning a little bit about you. Can you just share with me what you’re doing professionally right now? And then I’d love to just know a little personal tidbit about you.
Carmen Reino: Yeah, I’m the owner of Anchor Pest Control. That’s 65 employees. We should do around 12 million this year. That’s my main focus. I’m a father of three. I have three grandkids, a son, two daughters, and three granddaughters.
Tyler Martin: Awesome. Hey, I want to start with your story. So you were a IT Wall Street person, not necessarily the profile that you typically think that would go into pest control. I’d love to just understand, like, what made you start this all out where you left kind of a stable career going into home services or pest control?
Carmen Reino: Yeah, I mean, I always want to be my own boss. So I worked, I went to school for five months, got a computer certificate. So I do an IT, then my little ended up working for brokerages, fixing brooders and Bloomberg. That was my specialty.
Carmen Reino: So I worked in some cool places, made great money, but always in the back of my head, I’d get passed over positions for people to agree that I didn’t have a degree. So I always wanted to be able to control my destiny. So I knew being your own boss was the best way to do it.
2:42Why the partnership with a friend didn't work out
Carmen Reino: So when opportunity came, I jumped on opportunity, bought a one man operation. He trained me for 30 days, moved out of state. And here I was owning a pest truck company.
Tyler Martin: Wow. Now you had an opportunity. I think this is good for the audience because we all run into scenarios like this at some point. You had an opportunity to partner with someone. And I believe you made a conscious decision not to. Could you talk about that a little bit?
Carmen Reino: Yeah. Yeah. So one of my best friends, one partner with him, didn’t really want to do the partner thing. Down the road, I partnered with another friend at another business and that kind of fell apart too. Not that I think it’s a good thing, bad always, but for me, the partner thing was tough.
Carmen Reino: Like I said, my other company was a services company. We did like building maintenance, landscaping, the electrical license. And just through the years, you just see different visions, right? So partnerships, you got to make sure you have the same vision.
Tyler Martin: You seem like you’re kind of a control guy. Would you say that’s part of maybe why a partnership might not work with you? Is that a fair statement?
Carmen Reino: So it’s funny you said that because I’m actually not. My old partner was very much in control of everything. I’m okay. I’ll do my role. I’ll do whatever I have to do in the other company. And I don’t have an ego. So no, I’m not a really controlled person, but I feel like your visions have to align
Carmen Reino: what you want at a company. And at a certain point, people just want different things. And that’s kind of when you grow apart and partnerships can fall apart. Or if you both want the same thing, they can be great.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. Partnerships are tough. You know, I get to see the angle of it as the fractional CFO with a lot of different businesses over my career. And I would say like 80% of the time, they’re very, I don’t want to say they won’t work out, but there’s a lot of friction. You know,
Tyler Martin: one partner feels like they’re doing more than the other, or one partner feels like they’re contributing more than the other in terms of capital. And there’s just always this friction. So they’re very, they’re interesting to me when they work, they’re great. They’re like a marriage,
Tyler Martin: but when they don’t, they’re yucky. I completely agree. Same Zachary. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I
4:35The scary first six months running the business alone
Tyler Martin: want to go back to like your first six months. So you leave a stable job, you get 30 days of training, owner leaves town, you’re on your own. What’s that first six months look like? Like, what do you do to just keep it afloat and make sure you’re doing the right things?
Carmen Reino: I mean, it was scary to be honest with you. So, you know, you try and learn, like there’s a lot of laws and regulations of pesticides and you try to follow the label and do the right thing. But then you find yourself in situations where it’s just not working and maybe you’re skirting around where you should be just to make the customer happy.
Carmen Reino: And then you’re going home and you think you did a great job and then you get the phone call. Or, oh, I didn’t do a great job. Or, you know, it’s Saturday at 6 o’clock and you think you’re done and someone calls and you got to run out to make everyone happy.
Carmen Reino: So the business owns you at the beginning. So from the day one, you know, start every day at 5, 6 o’clock in the morning, go home, do paperwork. Then you got a bill, you got to collect the money. So it’s scary, but it’s fun, right?
Carmen Reino: It’s very time consuming. but I like, I like challenges. So I enjoyed it. But, um, a lot of people think my favorite saying is it must be nice, right? Yeah. Because I’ve been doing this for 20 years. So I have a lot of freedom. It’s nice now, but back then when my friends were out partying until two, three
Carmen Reino: o’clock in the morning and I was up every day at 6am, uh, you know, that that’s where you get to the must be nice. Yeah. Yeah. I think people forget about the sweat equity that somehow gets
Tyler Martin: pushed under the rug a lot. Yes, it does. Yeah. So when you purchased that, what was it roughly
Carmen Reino: in revenue? It was in 130,000. Wow. So you’ve gone in 20 years, 130K on path for 12 million. Yes. That’s what you’re doing this year. Oh, that’s really impressive. That’s quite a bit.
Tyler Martin: So, hey, so you figured this business out, it sounds like pretty quickly, but then you made another kind of big decision. You decided to buy a $10,000 dog or maybe it was dogs. I don’t
Carmen Reino: remember. Could you talk through that story? Yeah. So, so one of our housing buyers we did, they were like, oh, we have this dog coming in today. They’re going to find bed bugs. And I’m like, a dog can find bed bugs. Like, yeah, you know, you want to come watch. So we go there and
Carmen Reino: we watch the dog and to be honest, the dog kind of underperformed, but I’m like, wow. So dogs can really find bed bugs. And this is when bed bugs were getting really, really big. So the next thing in all, I’m on a trip to Florida to buy a $10,000 dog and get trained how to walk a dog. Right. So
Carmen Reino: we go down there to take the training and we have to take a certification class. And at the end, I failed the class, right? So I have this dog I paid 10 grand for. I failed to handle a class. Now I got to come back in a couple of weeks to try again. Luckily it went back and went well.
Carmen Reino: And bedbugs were a huge part of our business for many years. The dog was a great tool. Through the years we’ve had three. We have one right now that still works. It’s kind of one thing that COVID kind of killed was the canine business because it’s preventative maintenance. They realize they
Carmen Reino: don’t eat them as much. People are more educated on that bug. So it’s not as big as it used to be.
Tyler Martin: When you didn’t have that, when you failed that test, so you have this expensive asset, I hate to call a dog an asset. That’s basically what it was. And yet you couldn’t perform the service for that period of time. Is that right? So you were kind of like in limbo.
Carmen Reino: Yeah. It was like, you had to wait like two, I’m going to say two or four weeks to go back to retest. It wasn’t terrible because I didn’t have a lot of business I’ve had before. I just bought the dog without the business.
Tyler Martin: Stressful, yes.
Carmen Reino: You know, like, oh, I’m only out here in Florida to get this dog. And yeah, I didn’t pass it. So we had to shoot back out there. Luckily, it wasn’t good after that. And then that’s just what happened.
Tyler Martin: What was your, like, has this been your kind of ethos in terms of just, I don’t want to
8:00Being a gut-driven risk taker even at $12 million
Tyler Martin: say high risk, but taking risk? Are they calculated risks? Or when do you know, like, to do something versus you just hold them as opposed to making the move?
Carmen Reino: I would like to say they’re calculated, but they’re not. So I’m a go-with-figure-it-out type guy. I’ve done things for the years that don’t make any sense. We’ll have a great year and spend 5% on marketing. I’ll decide, oh, no, we’re going to spend 15 next year for no reason.
Carmen Reino: Because I like the risk. I like movement. I don’t like anything that’s a status quo. So I always want to push. So, yeah, I’m a risk taker to a fault. Many sleepless nights, payroll coming in, hoping that we’re going to get checks at the bank. So yeah, I definitely, uh, I don’t go with
Tyler Martin: status quo and just roll with it. Do you find that you’re being a $12 million year business now? Has that changed your risk tolerance at all? Like, are you kind of cruising a little bit more or is
Carmen Reino: it, you saw that same risk? I could say that, but then we just did a complete rebrand this year and we changed our logo. I rewrapped all the trucks. We spent a ton of money on this. And last year before it was great. Like we grow every year, 25, 30%, always bottom line, pretty healthy,
Carmen Reino: 15 to 20, depending on the year. But for me, all right, I learned something, how important branding is. All right. I don’t think we have a strong brand. You’re going to rewrap 40, 50 trucks. Yeah, we went out. So yeah, it’s a huge financial undertaking, hoping that a ton of work has been
Carmen Reino: working. I believe in it, but yeah, I continue to do stuff and the risk is bigger and the stress is more, but being in the size we are, like we access some more money if needed.
Tyler Martin: That makes sense.
Carmen Reino: Sure.
Tyler Martin: So with the branding, what was your hope in getting out of that? Like, were you, is it cultural? Is it more business? Is it more in the community recognition? Like what were you thinking when you made that decision making?
Carmen Reino: It’s a little of everything, just everything you said. So we had a culture, company culture we’ve always been big on, but a brand, we didn’t have a great brand. Same logo from the beginning, which was a nice logo, but we wanted something that pops,
Carmen Reino: right? And there’s science behind branding. Dan Antonelli’s a guy for KITCHARGE always talking about branding. I saw him speak tons of times. It makes sense. And since then, to be honest, prior and this is, we’re in July now. We started to rebrand in
Carmen Reino: December, so we’ve been rolling it out for maybe like four or five months. We got 250 leads from we saw your truck. Prior, we had six, right? So that was a big part of it. A big part of it, Rick, is also I decided, let’s do this huge
Carmen Reino: billboard camping. So now I have the billboards everywhere. I did a six-month commitment, tons of billboards because I want to just double down on it.
Tyler Martin: And we will see the payouts for this dividends over the years You know people are going to see it and recognize it So I still take risk at million And I say every time I do it stop being an idiot who wants to be all distressed and I continue to do it So So when you made that decision for the branding how like
Tyler Martin: how much did you calculate on it? Like, were you like going, Hey, this is going to be a, whatever, a hundred thousand dollar decision or whatever that dollar amount is, or was it a little bit more like, Hey, we’ll, we’ll figure it out type thing.
Carmen Reino: So it starts off. I’m like, Oh, the truck should cost about a hundred thousand dollars. Right. So I get my leadership team together. Like, Oh, well that’s fine. No problem. And then like, I’m like, Oh, I signed a billboard campaign. And they’re like,
Carmen Reino: Oh yeah. Yeah. And then another one. And I’m like, Oh yeah. And by the way, we’re going to get all new shirts. And like, so it just got deeper and deeper and deeper. So I would like to say it was somewhat calculated. I should be more like,
Carmen Reino: keep, keep really write it down and pay attention. But I, I just grow my gut too much. I do. It’s a problem. Yeah.
Tyler Martin: It’s interesting. It’s probably, you know, it’s, it’s a gift and a curse, right? I mean, because I’m sure a lot of the successful things you’ve done have been because you’ve gone with your gut. So it’s kind of like when it doesn’t work, it’s probably a curse when it works. It’s like, oh man, I got the greatest gut in the world.
Carmen Reino: You know what it is? As long as I know where the problems are coming from, right? So like if I look at RP now and I see how it’s off, I know why. So that gives me like, I know enough business now to know what the problem is. It’s when you don’t know what the problem is,
Carmen Reino: you’re struggling. So that’s why like, if I make a risk, we do everything performance-based I’ll call it a Carmen special. Like if I take our marketing budget from five to 12, I’m not going to punish our leadership team’s bonus because I decided to go crazy. So I feel
Carmen Reino: better. In fact, I just, I know more now. No, I know the mistakes that I’m making or the crazy decisions we’re doing. Yeah. And the reason I’d asked on the branding and I love the way you explained it, because I think when we, when we think about branding, we think, okay, maybe there’s
Carmen Reino: the design firm we got to hire and then maybe wraps, but there’s all these other things. There’s uniforms, there’s signage, there’s, it just never ends. And then when you add it all up, it gets to be a sizable amount. Yeah, it was pretty expensive. Like little things you don’t think about.
Carmen Reino: Like, you know, a tent for a Little League event. You know, oh, now that’s a match. Replacing all of our signs, all of the Leagues, and now it’s different. Like, something we did that worked really well is, and I actually learned this last year at the
Carmen Reino: Build and Sell conference from a guy from, I think, Savannah Bananas talked about it. We got branded water. So we went around and we donated pallets of water to all the local little leagues and i you know my times through this season people oh i’m drinking your water
Carmen Reino: like little things like that but that also to the cost it adds up so but it does work yeah yeah now
Tyler Martin: looking a few months later it sounds like some leads have just definitely played out from your branding what about from a cultural standpoint have you noticed much of a difference at first so at first i send the picture of the shirts out to all the technicians and like who likes them
Tyler Martin: and they’re like oh they’re a lot it’s like a billboard and i’m like yeah well we’re going with it because we originally started the branding with winter jackets so they all got nice new car hair jackets and they got so many compliments about the dog on the back like how beautiful it looked
Tyler Martin: and my process was we originally just got polos like short little polos with the logo i’m like that’s nice but so many people mentioned the jackets now we’re going to take the jackets off coming into the season we’re going to lose that so now let’s get those you know almost soccer jersey
Tyler Martin: like looking shirts and you got a lot of comments on them they stick out i said it’s because the World Cup this year. So we got a World Cup anchor jersey. Some of the guys try to go back to the polo. Some of my managers are a little tougher than others. But as long as they’re wearing our
Tyler Martin: gear, it does work. Like you see a big orange and blue shirt with a huge dog on it. People notice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It really does. I mean, I’ve had numerous clients, especially in particular with Dan Antonelli’s work. It speaks volumes. I mean, people notice you in the community after a
Carmen Reino: while. Yeah. It’s huge. Okay. Hey, I want to get into this segment I call The Number. And what I’d like to talk about in the numbers, I like to pull out a couple of numbers that are relative to your business that you’ve used to either grow or learn from. And the ones that stuck out for me is at one
14:41Shifting the mix from low-margin commercial to 40% margin residential
Carmen Reino: point, you guys were more focused in the commercial world. And I believe your margins were around 15, 10, 15 to 20%, I think were the commercial margins. And then you said, hey, you know, my residential margins are closer to 40%. And you started to change your mix. Can we talk about that
Carmen Reino: a little? Like, how did you catch that? At what point did you decide to make that change? And how
Tyler Martin: has it played out yeah i mean you would hear for years guys go i’m going to the industry events residential is better as i’m better i’m like great but i’m making a great living my i’m on top of the world you would listen to them but you wouldn’t listen like so you hear over and over again and
Tyler Martin: then finally like with cash flow and commercial good stuff right so my margin 10 15 but my ar is crazy because the commercial accounts take forever to pay you you know it’s it brings stress that you don’t need. So after hearing it time and time again, I’m like, let’s roll this out. And we
Tyler Martin: rolled out, this is probably season three or four. It’s been very successful, getting close to a 60, 40 split right now. But yeah, residential, it’s just, it’s a better margin. It just, the customers are more demanding, right? But they’re also more profitable, right? And
Tyler Martin: it’s worked really well for us. It’s a big difference.
Carmen Reino: How hard was it making that transition? And do you turn away commercial business now, or is it just more yourself?
Tyler Martin: We don’t turn away. We still, I spent many, many years myself making it networking to do multifamily housing. We do a lot of apartments, a lot of senior buildings. So I wasn’t just going to give that up. So we still do that. We still grow that.
Tyler Martin: What it is, it’s a different technician, right? So what we realize is the way we train our techs have to be different. They gotta be more personable. They gotta do little things like bringing the garbage can. Just little tiny things, touches to customers
Tyler Martin: and ask for a referral, ask for a review. So the techs are different. We definitely try and keep our commercial, commercial, residential, residential because it’s a different person.
Carmen Reino: How do you sometimes technicians are more suited for a commercial environment versus a residential, which is higher touch, probably better bedside manner. How do you deal with that? Like, do you consciously when you hire people, do you go, they’re just definitely just more of a commercial person or how do you handle that?
Tyler Martin: Yeah. So when we run through the interview process, I do all initial screenings and I’m just make sure to have a learnable personality. They’re coachable. They’re positive, right? Some guys are rougher. The rougher guy, he might be more towards commercial. So when it’s super outgoing salesy, they’re going to be more towards residential.
Carmen Reino: So yeah, we do make a conscious effort when we hire, like if we need residential guys, a certain person we’re looking for. And commercially, it’s also a different skill set too because commercial guys deal with some stuff a lot worse than the residential guys deal.
Carmen Reino: So yeah, it’s two different profiles.
Tyler Martin: Yeah.
Carmen Reino: What’s your mix right now in terms of commercial residential?
Tyler Martin: It’s probably 60, 40 or very close to 60, 40.
Carmen Reino: Yeah, it’s probably close to that. Yeah, that’s a pretty good mix.
Tyler Martin: And then from a cashflow standpoint, obviously residential, you’re probably COD. So it’s going to be every time commercial, just from a cashflow.
Carmen Reino: Yeah. So residential, we take credit cards, right? So we don’t come out, we charge you like Netflix. So we hit you every month when you pay X amount per month and you get your services and then you have all year round service when needed. So yeah, it’s every month with credit card runs great. So
Carmen Reino: that helps the cashflow in the winter when we’re carrying guys and our model is a little different. I don’t go out in the winter unless you have a problem. Being in the East Coast, I just learned from Viking, which is the biggest family on comp
Carmen Reino: a year. They were like, we don’t go in the winter. You try to come kill bugs in New Jersey in January, you’re going to get a lot of cancellations. So we will go if they ask, but we don’t just show up. So from a labor standpoint, that gets kind of tricky a little bit too, because then we’ve
Carmen Reino: got to keep all the good guys. We carry them through the winter and we’ll throw them on commercial work and do lots of trainings. But yeah, it’s been a huge game changer.
Tyler Martin: What do you do like in those slower periods? So you try to put them on commercial work, but I imagine then your guys have a lot of downtime. I mean, to the, you know, there’s only so many commercial you could probably plug them into.
Carmen Reino: So what I’m going to say is there’s self-selection that happens towards the end of the season. So we wrap up our residential in October. There’s guys, you know, we always try and top grade that towards the end, you realize they’re probably not going to be a long-term fit.
Carmen Reino: We also have moved people into sales roles, manager roles as we grow. So it’s worked out well. where it hasn’t been a huge problem yet. We do talk about having to maybe stretch, maybe start, finish in November, just to stretch out a little bit longer.
Carmen Reino: But yeah, it’s challenging, but it’s doable. We just operate a lot. So some people aren’t good culture fix and you realize that late in the season, we finish the season and just rehire again in January.
Tyler Martin: Do you guys, by not servicing people during those cold months, do you have, are they locked into a one-year contract or do you get cancellations with people? You know, you’re not really doing anything. How do you create value, I guess, is my question.
19:34Hiring different tech profiles for commercial versus residential
Carmen Reino: Yeah, you are in a one-year contract, right? We don’t charge cancellation fees. I consider this like a plumber electrician. Like, I call it a one-year price agreement, right? And then after the year, it just continues on. So yes, you’re on a contract. A lot of companies charge cancellation fees.
Carmen Reino: I know. Like, if you don’t like my service, don’t use us. How do we try and stay in contact? Email mailers. There’s little things in the winter, little touches over the winter, just reminding that we’re here. But obviously, once April rolls around, we have a spike in cancellations.
Carmen Reino: It’s like, oh, I’ve been paying for this all. And they don’t realize it. Now they start seeing you. I don’t know if there’s a way to lessen it. We pay really close attention. It’s always a work in progress. But I think if you build value and do those little things in the season, they remember you.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. So pretty much your entire residential client base, maybe even commercial too, is on some type of membership.
Carmen Reino: Yeah. Everyone’s month. Everything’s reoccurring. I mean, we do do one-time residential work. We do wildlife. And we will come out and kill your bees. We try and get you into a plan because it’s a better value. Well, you know, we have both.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. Okay. So now I want to talk about just the stages of growth and how you’ve had to build infrastructure and organizations. So what does that look like as you’ve gone from, you know, one, two, three, five million, now you’re 10 million plus going on 12 million.
Tyler Martin: What does that look like in building your leadership team and infrastructure?
Carmen Reino: What have you done? It’s probably the hardest thing, right? Because who led you at 2 million can’t lead you at five and can’t lead you at 10. And it’s realizing that and seeing that. So as the company grows, people need to develop. Right. So that’s one of the things where I think people get stuck.
Carmen Reino: Right. Because, oh, he’s been with me for 20 years and it’s okay. But that kind of hurts your business. So that’s been a huge for me, like realizing it and making the moves and putting the people in the right seat. So, yeah, I mean, like I said, what worked at 2 million doesn’t work at five.
Carmen Reino: doesn work at 10 and like you know we constantly I think my gut is like after every two three million there a change going to happen Like you have another position involved like you know different things like that
Tyler Martin: So you have to keep aware and look for your weaknesses. So what have you done? Like specifically, like, I believe you’ve introduced at some point you introduced EOS. When did you introduce that and how did that work for you?
Carmen Reino: So we introduced EOS probably around at two or three million and it worked great. because prior to EOS, it was all like, oh, he’s a good guy, he’s doing a good job, but no one had a number to chase. Once we started doing EOS,
Carmen Reino: everyone in the company has a number that they’re aware of. So you have clarity if you’re doing your job right or not, right? Not just are you showing up. So when you have high performers and team players and people are competitive, they want to chase a number.
Carmen Reino: So once we started doing that, it was a huge difference. Our growth continued because I was always told, oh, after you pass 2 million, you’ll be happy to grow at 10 10 i’m like me i’m like that’s never gonna make me happy but i think
Carmen Reino: that was the difference maker for us was at that point we put these metrics out there and like there was some stuff that took forever to get by like reviews we had a hard time at the beginning and now we have tons of reviews leads same thing at the beginning you have some sales and operations
Carmen Reino: hit heads because the sales guy wants to know why no one’s asking for leads ops guys trying to get to buy in, but also the people change too, right? So the type of person we hired now has to be more customer focused. Who’s going to ask for a lead? Who’s going to ask for a review? So it kind of
Tyler Martin: just evolves. Got it. Now, how does EOS, would you say now as a $12 million company, is it just as effective as when you were at a $3 million company or have you had to make modifications
Carmen Reino: to it? How does that fit in your business? To be honest, we’re doing it, but we don’t do it like you said. It’s changed and we’re trying to get back to it. I actually had my leadership team to say, guys, we got to get more structure in our meeting. So it gives you meeting structure.
Carmen Reino: We didn’t go away from our numbers, right? But the whole system of rocks and issues, we kind of went away from some of that. I’m trying to get back towards it because it does. It just gives you clarity and everyone has a clear
Carmen Reino: future. Everyone knows what they’re expected of and there’s timelines. So we’re getting back more towards it, but we don’t do it 100% because a lot of it is we found ourselves forcing things. We’re in a quarterly meeting. We need more rocks, more problems. We create a rock that was really just to do. So that’s kind of how we just,
Carmen Reino: you know, went away, but we are moving back towards more structure because the bigger you get, the more meetings you have. And I want productive meetings.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. As a larger small business, what numbers are you like? What does it look like for you? Numbers like are in Monday, are you getting a flash report of some type or a dashboard report that gives you all last week’s metrics? Or what are you looking at that helps you to manage the
24:12Building a simple daily dashboard and using AI for sales coaching
Carmen Reino: business. Yeah. I actually had a dashboard created for myself. So I have an app. So every day I log in, I can see new, new, so everything’s sold. I can see what’s in our bank account deposits received. I can see technician per hour rate, like what’s running last week. So that’s the
Carmen Reino: stuff I really look at the most and our gross profit margin on a monthly basis. But I kind of had created because my finance guy had his spreadsheets and my VP had his spreadsheet. They all, all these different spreadsheets that they would share with me. And I’m like, I just,
Carmen Reino: I hate looking at all these spreadsheets. So I got a real simple app makes, and I just log into it, check it out, and kind of see what’s going on.
Tyler Martin: That’s really cool. So is that app, it’s pulling from what, your CRM, and is it also pulling from like a QuickBooks, or where is it getting the data?
Carmen Reino: It’s actually very easy. It pulls from a Google Sheet, right? So you put everything on one master sheet. They all put their numbers on there, and then it just shows up on the app. It wasn’t that difficult to do. I didn’t do it myself, but I was, I seen a different one, how it works.
Carmen Reino: And I’m like, Oh, it just, it’s a gooey interface for sheets. And now a lot of my guys are getting really good with this program called Taskla. So Taskla is like a AI automation. So once they do it once back to who’s going to the CRM,
Carmen Reino: they just teach Taskla to run it every morning. So now it’s almost fully automated where no one’s going back to check the numbers and like do it manually. So it’s not taking up a ton of time.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. I love though. I mean, I feel like this is such a gold tip. So many times, if we do get numbers as an owner, we get this big old spreadsheet or some attachment to an email that we’re too busy to open up because we’re driving or we’re doing whatever.
Tyler Martin: And we never really look at it. I’m a big fan of having one spot where you see one, maybe your seven, ten big numbers, five numbers, whatever it is, you can easily see. And then if you need to ask more questions, then you get the detail.
Carmen Reino: And that’s exactly how we’re doing it, because I’m all over the place. any email longer than one paragraph. Please call me. This is a phone call. So yeah, especially why they’re great. When we do our in-depth meetings, dig through them, sure. But on a daily basis,
Carmen Reino: for me to see the pulse of the company, I just log into my marketing dashboard and I log into this dashboard every morning and I just kind of see where we’re trending at. And we do have daily check-ins, BlueDTrip team, for like 10 minutes
Carmen Reino: just to discuss any bigger issues. I think that’s worked a lot. Keep everyone connected because of remote working. I feel you lose some team feel or, you know, someone doesn’t know what’s going on. So we start doing this call just so everyone is more involved and knows what’s going on day to day.
Tyler Martin: So you do a daily huddle. Do you do that in the morning or do you do that end of the day?
Carmen Reino: We do it every day at 830 in the morning.
Tyler Martin: Oh, wow. First thing in the morning. Okay, that’s cool. That’s cool. You know, that’s one of the books like EOS that has come out. It’s called Scaling Up. It came out many years ago. Their whole thing is that whole daily huddle is, you know, just do the quick daily huddle.
Tyler Martin: everybody knows what they’re, you know, what they’re going to march to for that day. It keeps them focused. It definitely helps.
Carmen Reino: And we started for communication. We had people in finance that were not local and they’d hear something. I didn’t know about this. So you’re right. Like even like the people update part, like it just for culture and for everyone looking for the same thing. It works a lot.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, that’s cool. What about just going back to like the different levels of a business of your business? When you were at 5 million, were there any ceilings that you had to hit through that you recall? Like, is there anything in your journey to scaling?
Tyler Martin: Were there any ceilings that really took a lot to get through that stand out?
Carmen Reino: So for me, two to three or two to four was the hardest.
Tyler Martin: Okay.
Carmen Reino: That’s when in pest control business, you have to hire managers. Because I could run 2 million on my own.
Tyler Martin: Sure.
Carmen Reino: You say we got 250, 300,000 dollars per technician. You could do that with one service manager. Once you go beyond that, now you need someone to help with sales. So two to three, once we got to five, it was pretty good. Once we passed five, it just started blowing.
Carmen Reino: I feel a 10. They hate when I say this. We’re having bottlenecks now that we never had before. I feel we know where they are. So for me, two to three. But what I was realizing is we were growing the top line and the bottom line was shrinking.
Carmen Reino: That’s when I really, you got to make the right choices. That’s when we changed our model of business, pushed more towards residential. because, you know, those were the lessons I had to learn.
Tyler Martin: As part of that, when you started to see your net profit margins start to deteriorate a little bit, was any of that your overhead was kind of getting a little bit chunky too? Does that tend to happen as you scale?
Carmen Reino: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And being that I don’t ever work off a budget, right? Which is another issue, right? We have one. We look at it. But yeah, like to me, and this was my mistake. It always be like, oh, I live a good life.
Carmen Reino: I don’t care. Let’s spend it on the business. Spend it on the business. My life’s good. I personally don’t need more. And that’s how I kind of ran it forever. Like, oh, yeah, but this guy wants to actually kind of ran the air.
Carmen Reino: Let’s do it. And then you realize you turn around and you start benchmarking against what it should look like. And then that one or 2%, the bigger you get, becomes a much bigger number. So that’s something that I think if you pay attention from the beginning and you’re like me, if I’m just doing it, it would have been much more easier a road than this.
Tyler Martin: Have you found adding a leadership team has kind of insulated you from some of your, you do things quick from gut and make decisions without a lot of data?
Carmen Reino: Not always, but sometimes.
Tyler Martin: Has a leadership team helped insulate that from happening as much?
Carmen Reino: Yeah, it helps. It helps a lot. I don’t have the patience I used to have for customers. I don’t have the, I sell the patience for techs. I love the technicians and my favorite, them and the CSRs are my favorite people to deal
Carmen Reino: with. But yeah, it definitely helps. Like one thing that I stuck with, I would see every lead form that came in and I would start sending to people like on Saturday, Sunday, and then by who now is my VP, who was a sales manager.
Carmen Reino: Like, can you just not do that? He’s like, I already did it. And I sent someone else like getting me off of stuff like that.
Tyler Martin: Right.
Carmen Reino: Or like even stuff like vehicles, like the operation guy will have the vehicle set up and the guy will come ask me a question. I’ll just take that one. So, yeah, it definitely helps a lot. And then just the stuff that we deal with.
Carmen Reino: like today was a Monday, like a really crazy Monday. One of our guys, unfortunately his house burned down over the weekend. Oh no. Well, yeah, everyone was okay, but he lost everything. One of my lead techs, Louis ACL playing basketball with his, so like I hear all that on Mondays,
Carmen Reino: but the day to day, Johnny being late, whoever’s kind of attitude with customer, you, one person can’t take that all on. If you try to do that, you’re going to spend your growth and you’re going to lose your mind. So that’s what I realized.
Carmen Reino: I don’t even hear a lot of stuff that happens and I’m happy about it.
Tyler Martin: Yeah.
Carmen Reino: That was a bit for me.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. So you’re insulated from all the day-to-day BS. And unfortunately, the more major stuff like houses burnt down and broken ACLs still make it up to you or torn ACLs.
Carmen Reino: Yeah. My thing is like people who say, oh, I need to do it all. You’re only hurting yourself. Like you’re only hurting yourself. You’re not going to grow.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. That’s great feedback. Hey, so last thing I want to talk about is just technology in the future. So you guys have done, you’re very progressive in your business. You’ve done zero AI, I think is how you say it. You do AI coaching.
Tyler Martin: Can you kind of walk through that? How does that work in your business?
Carmen Reino: Yeah. So we use it for a lot for coaching. So every phone call is recorded, right? Okay. And coaching feedback is given to CSRs about temperament, what they could have done better, how they could have closed better, handling situations, right? And that’s reviewed by the head of CSR managers.
Carmen Reino: They check it out, talk to them about it. and you make yourself aware. The one we use the most is for outside sales reps, the zero. And like, it has developed so much over the two years from using it, where the same thing, sediment, tell you what you did wrong as a company,
Carmen Reino: what is our biggest, like where we lose customers, right? Then we can work on price objections if it’s, you know, semi-proposal. So it gains a great ability to be aware of what we losing on and to work on right So we run this like a team a sports team So to me it like watching video right Now Ciro is even better where halfway through the call
Carmen Reino: or halfway through the sales meeting, it’s in-person software. It’ll give you a halftime report and it’ll tell me, hey, Tyler, this is how you’re going to close them. This is his pain. And if you read it and pay attention to it, it’s like a cheat code
Carmen Reino: because it’s analyzing the people’s personality things you might’ve missed as you’re sitting there. So that’s been great. Another thing for automation has been tasked with, Basically, it’s like a, I guess it’s a virtual machine. Anything that I do repetitive on the computer, I could tell it to do and it does it for me.
Carmen Reino: And is it perfect? No. Do you have to check to make sure it works? Of course. But it has developed so much over the last couple of months where it’ll tell you, hey, this number seems off. You might want to rerun this report.
Carmen Reino: So those are the things that we use a lot. I mean, from our video cameras, you know, we have dashed forward and backward facing. So for driver scores, it helps a lot with that too.
Tyler Martin: You know, those two things, the camera facing in and then the AI coaching, a lot of times I’ll hear in shops that, you know, staff just does not like that. They feel like big brother. How did you guys introduce that in your business so that there wasn’t a backlash and it was perceived the right way?
Carmen Reino: There is backlash and you’re going to lose people when you do stuff like this. But you just have to like someone’s always watching. Number one. And when you rather us be watching. Right. Like we had a terrible incident. like three weeks ago where someone threw themselves underneath one of my guy’s cars
Carmen Reino: like the video is crazy i’m watching the video i’m like this is really happening but if he didn’t have that video they could have said he swerved and hit the person like so it just protects you like we’re in a world that cameras are everywhere and if you’re the type of person that doesn’t want
Carmen Reino: to be seen or heard then you’re hot in something and you’re probably not gonna be a culture fit and that’s how i kind of look at it and the culture standpoint if you don’t want to be better you’re on the wrong team because we’re always pushing forward.
Carmen Reino: So for me, if the culture align, they’ll get it. They’ll get it. I think one thing you said that was the biggest part of it is, hey, if it’s not for you, you’re not a fit here.
Tyler Martin: You’re okay with that. I think sometimes as owners, we get scared of people leaving or maybe the timing isn’t right for someone leaving. And so we don’t do it. We won’t push forward with these changes and it prevents us from growing as a company.
Carmen Reino: 100%. Yeah, we go all in. That’s it. We’re doing it. It’s getting done.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, that’s good stuff. What’s your legacy? What’s your next thing? Do you see yourself someday being a private equity type acquisition? How do you see yourself?
Carmen Reino: I mean, we get calls every day. Really? I’m building it to sell it because that’s the only smart thing. I’m building an asset. I don’t want to just build a job. So eventually, maybe private equity, maybe a strategic. I don’t really know. A lot of things happen in our market. Every day, companies get picked up. So I don’t have a great answer.
Carmen Reino: I’m not going to say no. I’m not going to timeline it and say when, but definitely one day it’s not going to be second generation. I tell my son who’s sitting upstairs right now that he can build his own legacy.
Tyler Martin: That’s awesome. Now, what would be like something that would get you to consider it? Is it really a number? Is it the legacy of the business? Like what, like what would get you to listen?
Carmen Reino: I mean, I listen. I do listen.
Tyler Martin: Okay. Sign, maybe sign is the better way.
Carmen Reino: There’s a number I have in mind that I would do without. I’m a financial advisor. And whenever he says this in the time, we live in a scary world. I’m going to be completely honest. We’re not going to be political. I’m not political at all.
Carmen Reino: But it’s scary, right? So you never know what’s going to happen next. So my biggest fear, one thing that might push me quicker is I want to have everything settled where I’m good. I felt good. Everything’s good. So that’s probably more than anything than a number is the world around us, right?
Tyler Martin: Yeah. Yeah. You know, True Story sold a staffing firm many years ago. It was about $25 million in annual revenue. And one of the reasons the partner that I had, we sold it was because of the political climate. This was, I don’t know, was this 13 years ago? The political climate we were really worried about.
Tyler Martin: We felt like it was a little bit unknown. A lot of weird things were happening. And we just wanted to take our cards basically off the table. We were a little worried. So that was the one of the reasons we obviously got the right offer, but that was kind of the influence for our decision.
Carmen Reino: Very similar mindset for myself. I’ll be honest. Like, you know, I don’t read the news or watch the news because it’s just not depressing. But I am aware of the political climate. It’s crazy. So, yeah, that’s a part of it.
Tyler Martin: It definitely is. Yeah. I mean, it is something you have to. And I think the other aspect of that is when you are ready to sell. And if you do sell, you just kind of have to say, hey, I’m selling under the conditions that I have today.
Tyler Martin: and live with that.
Carmen Reino: In the case of our business, it actually doubled in size now 13 years later. It would be easy to go, oh man, we never should have sold. But you just go with the information you have at hand and then you live with that.
Carmen Reino: And that’s kind of where I’m at. I have it all numbered and worked out. Do I know if I’m not ready now? I’m ready a year or two? I don’t know. I’ll know when I know, right? And again, I’m just going to take everything
Carmen Reino: into consideration and make a decision.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. You’re a pretty young guy, Carmen. And like, would you, you know, hypotheticals here you ever did sell, would you, what would you do? Like, would you go?
Carmen Reino: I’ll be right back in. Like, I like roofing. I like roofing a lot. Just, I’ve been studying and watching guys do it. I don’t think it’s easy, but I like the fact that a lot of the labor is subcontracted out. So you’re a sales and marketing organization, and then you’ve got to find good partnerships.
Carmen Reino: One of the hardest thing as you build a petrol company is getting the skilled guys to do the work. So a lot of the roofers, it’s all subcontracted labor, which I like a lot. I’ve dug pretty deep into it. So, yeah, that’s something I consider.
Carmen Reino: I don’t know if I want to start from zero. It’s like you’re trying to acquire someone or partner with someone and help them, you know, from what I’ve learned over the years, put our minds together and do something good together. So I definitely look at partnerships like that down the road different.
Carmen Reino: But back to our earlier thing, when you’re both just trying to make it, I think you have more friction. But when someone’s already done it and they’re coming here to help you, you have a different mindset maybe on a partnership.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. John Wilson, he is over at Owned and Operated Podcast, and he has Wilson Companies. And his whole strategy, I think he’s gone from like $30 million this year in annual revenue to, I think he last told me he might be on pace for $80.
Tyler Martin: But it’s all been through inorganic type, like acquisitions, basically. Small businesses. And the interesting thing about him is a lot of businesses that he’s acquired actually have been turnarounds. which I think is like uber hard. Like it’s one thing to a high performing business and just to plug it in,
Tyler Martin: but to take a problem business and turn it around, it’s like double the challenge.
Carmen Reino: A hundred percent. And so we’ve bought, I’ve bought two companies through the years. I would say they’re both the work wins. The problem we have now with social media podcasts, everyone hears this number and they think there are $500,000 businesses worth what they’re hearing.
Carmen Reino: And you know, that that’s been the big, like for, I would love a turnaround to find someone that actually knew what it was about. So I think in different industries, it’s easier to find people who are like, oh, I’ll sell it for what it’s worth.
Carmen Reino: Because some of the stuff that I come across, I’m just like, no, you have a great business, but it’s not what you think it’s worth. Not what you heard it’s worth.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, it’s a tough one. I mean, I think the statistic is something like 80% of businesses never sell or something like that. It’s a crazy, crazy high number. I mean, and people do. I mean, it’s their baby, right? So everybody, you know, everybody thinks their baby’s worth more than probably the market perceives it.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. Anyway.
Carmen Reino: Okay. Hey, just a few things that I really took away from the show. Obviously, commercial revenue has its place in terms of consistency, but lower margin. Interesting to hear that you really made a conscious effort to go more residential, to increase your margins.
Carmen Reino: Makes a lot of sense. Really a lot to take from that. I loved your unconventional investment in a dog that really rode during a period that that was a big topic. I think that was a really cool thing to take away. And then the other thing that really stuck out at me is as you’ve scaled, it sounds like you’ve added leadership.
Carmen Reino: You’ve added AI. You’ve always watched metrics. You’ve added systems. And I think all these things we can kind of gloss over. But when you look at your success, I think they add up to a lot of really cool clues as to why you’ve been so successful.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. Like I said, I’m a risk taker and I’m never the smartest person. I don’t ever come off and say, I know best. You’ll never hear me say, we do this because I said so. I don’t. So, yeah, just kind of open mind.
Tyler Martin: We all love it.
Carmen Reino: Okay. Your website, anchorpestcontrol.net. I’ll include your LinkedIn, your Facebook and your Instagram and the show notes. People wanted to reach out to you anywhere in particular that’s the best place for them to do it.
Tyler Martin: I’ll get my cell phone number 732-713-2158. They could text me. I want to answer a number I don’t know. So text me first to tell me who you are. Or my email address is carmen at anchorpestcontrol.net. Awesome. Can I put both of those also in the show notes in case people want to chat with you?
Tyler Martin: Okay, cool. Awesome, Carmen. You’re amazing. You got a lot of wisdom. I love hearing your success and really appreciate you sharing your story.
Carmen Reino: Thank you for having me. Appreciate it. It was really good time.
Tyler Martin: What really stood out in Carmen’s story is how often the business had to change as it grew. What worked at $2 million didn’t work at $5 million, and it definitely didn’t work at $10 million. He had to build a stronger leadership team, give people clear numbers to own, and stop trying to stay involved in every problem.
Tyler Martin: He also talked about a point where revenue was growing while the bottom line was shrinking. That forced him to look harder at overhead, margins, and the mix between commercial and residential work. Shifting more towards residential helped him improve both his margins and his cash flow,
Tyler Martin: while a simple dashboard gave him a much clearer view of what was happening in the business without digging through 10 different spreadsheets. That kind of visibility matters more and more as trades companies scale. And if you’re at a point where the business is growing, but you want a clearer handle on cash flow,
Tyler Martin: margins, profitability, and the decisions behind that growth. That’s exactly where Profit and Grit CFOs can help. So go ahead and check out ProfitandGrit.com. You can feel free to learn more about us and also book an intro call on the site. And as always, can’t thank you enough
Tyler Martin: for checking out the episode, listening, and I will catch you on the next episode.
