Full transcript9 chapters · 7,316 words
00:00Selling seven companies and partnering with operators
Lance Bachmann: But the majority of people can’t do it on their own, and you know that. 99% of the people I meet will never do it on their own. They don’t have the expertise, they don’t have the know, they don’t have the network, they don’t have the understanding of basic financial literacy,
Lance Bachmann: of the sales organization, systems, processes, structure.
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. If you’re running a home service business and you feel you’re stuck between that $5 million and $10 million mark, this episode will get your attention. Today, I’m joined with Lance Bachman. Lance has built, scaled, and sold multiple companies and now partners directly with owners
Tyler Martin: to help them grow faster, clean up operations, and build businesses that are actually sellable. We talk about why most owners get trapped at mid-seven figures, the leadership mistakes that quietly cap growth, why financial literacy matters more than most people want to admit, and what really has to change to break into eight figures.
Tyler Martin: This is a straight shooting conversation with no fluff. Let’s jump into it with Lance. Hey, Lance, welcome to the Profit and Grit Show. How’s it going?
Lance Bachmann: Great, how you doing?
Tyler Martin: Good, I’m really excited to be talking with you.
Lance Bachmann: Yeah, I appreciate you having me. Big fan of you, like what you’re doing. So thank you for having me, my friend.
Tyler Martin: Okay, well, I’m a big fan of yours and I followed you for quite a while. So I appreciate you even taking the time to be here. Hey, where I’d love to start out is just learn a little bit about you. Can we talk first, like, what are you doing these days?
Tyler Martin: I know you sold a company. Now you have a company that’s helping other companies grow. Can we start there and just talk about what do you do day to day?
Lance Bachmann: So what I do day to day is I sold six different companies now. Actually, seven, if you include my Allstate, which I should probably put that in there. I forgot I even sold that. But, you know, what I saw when I was growing these companies is the problem is most operators,
Lance Bachmann: What my company does now is we help operators grow their businesses, scale them, make them profitable. And then we sell them to private equity firms. You know, I always say we’re an incubator. You call us, we’re the miners that we sell to the majors,
Lance Bachmann: whatever you want to call it. I’ve done it now multiple times. And I just saw a problem, right? A constant problem where all these fake fucking gurus, I don’t know if I can curse now, so I’m sorry. All these fake gurus just going out there,
Lance Bachmann: doing all the wrong things. And I just kind of got heated one day. And I was like, you know what? Like, this is it. we’re going to help contractors across the country and all businesses, right? Because I don’t, I’ve sold digital agency, IT.
Lance Bachmann: And we’re just going to help businesses scale and grow their businesses and become profitable. Every business is the same, change out the widget. And that’s all we do. So that’s why I always tell people, I have nothing to sell anyone. Like, yeah, you can join my coaching group.
Lance Bachmann: My coaching group is my smallest business. It’s a passion project of mine. I’m involved heavily with it. I love helping people. That’s one thing. But really where at the core of our businesses at LBB Capital is we partner with people
03:14Taking 50% and operational control of $2-8M contractors
Lance Bachmann: and we are in the trenches with them every single day building their businesses.
Tyler Martin: When you partner, do you have a certain niche or area that you most prefer to partner with? And what, just to help me to understand, when you say operator, we’re definitely talking about Joe or Jane, business owner, right?
Lance Bachmann: Joe or Jane, business owner, they’re going to be doing somewhere between two and a half, two to seven, eight million dollars, somewhere in that ballpark. And we’re going to partner with you and we’re going to take 50% of the company and we’re going to take operational control
Lance Bachmann: and we’re going to put all the systems, processes, salespeople in place. Service type is a requirement of ours across any of my companies. Just that’s our technology of choice. And we just made it crystal clear. It’s speed to growth, speed to growth, speed to profit, speed to success, speed to fail.
Lance Bachmann: Like we’re not, I’m not afraid to fail. Like, like just I’m not. So like we’re going to speed everything that doesn’t work in your organization that we, and the thing about this is we failed so much. We’re not going to make the same mistakes
Lance Bachmann: over and over again. So we have almost things that we roll outside of an organization is about 95%, 98% success just because we’ve done it now. We have a playbook and we implement our playbook and we have a lot of high growth very fast.
Lance Bachmann: So that’s the difference. We’re operators. We understand it. I’m not a private equity firm. People think I am. It’s all my own money, my own capital. I have no investors in any of my organizations, none whatsoever.
Tyler Martin: And what about in terms like niche or area of expertise? Are you looking for any certain types of companies that make for a better candidate that you can help?
Lance Bachmann: I mean, we don’t, I mean, the majority of my companies are technology, roofing and technology right now, but I’ve been in HVAC, painting, IT, and digital marketing. So no, nothing’s off the board for me. I buy people, not companies. Like I really, so like right now,
Lance Bachmann: like my name’s really hot in the roofing industry and home services and people are like, who are this guy’s doing anymore? But like, that’s not true. I’ll go in the painting company and HVAC company, a fence company. it had to be the right partner though, right?
Lance Bachmann: Like, yeah, I think about this. Like, business partners are more important than your wife. But if you don’t understand that, like your wife is your wife. Like, if you get divorced, it’s just real simple. You go to the courts. Business is brutal. It’s nasty. There’s 101 ways that you can go.
Lance Bachmann: I’m not making light of a divorce by any means. Right, right. But if you ask me, and listen, I love my wife, so I’m just giving you a hypothetical here, right? Sure, I get it. If I had to go through a divorce or a bad business breakup,
Lance Bachmann: I’d rather go through the divorce. because the divorce is going to be outlined. You got to take care of the mother of your children. You got to pay for her for the rest of her life. You’re going to have to take care of your children.
Lance Bachmann: So like, it’s real simple, right? You’re going to have to take care of the mother of your kids, right? So you might as well just bend the knee and I’m going to take care of you. Business partners, you’re probably not going to take care of them when you break up
Lance Bachmann: because they’re going to get their own business. You’re going to be right by them. But so we buy people. Unfortunate. I’ve never had a bad breakup ever. Very fortunate. I only had one guy sue me. I gave him a million dollars and I tell him this all the time,
Lance Bachmann: make sure you know who works for you. We gave him a million dollars and he won another 300,000. And I didn’t pay him. I didn’t pay him. I threw it all the way and I won. But like, you know, just, just not a good person.
Lance Bachmann: Just not a good you and me. And you know, he’s right back to being a small little organization and barely getting by. And I tell people like the proof’s in the pudding. Look at him. Look at me. I got nothing bad to say about him.
Lance Bachmann: I wish I’d done the best, but yeah. People, when they see you have money, they want more.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. What do you see in, and let’s stick around home services. It can be roofing, it can be HVAC,
06:44The same five stumbling blocks in every home service shop
Tyler Martin: but I know most of my audience is that, so I think it’ll resonate for them a little better. What do you see most, someone that you’re going to partner with when they’re even considering that, what are the stumbling blocks they’re facing? So when you say, I think you said two to seven
Tyler Martin: million is kind of your range. What are some common stumbling blocks that they’re hitting?
Lance Bachmann: It’s the same. It’s the same across every business, sales, marketing, leadership, systems, processes, technology. It’s the same. Listen, you can’t show me a business that that’s not their challenges. I’d say bullshit. If they weren’t their challenges, they’d be doing 300 million like Tommy Mellon.
Lance Bachmann: He still has the challenges. He’s my body, right? It’s so simple. Listen, businesses are run off of the same thing. My biggest thing is people overcomplicate it. They can’t get out of their own way and they want to use their business. They want to pay their wife’s car through the business.
Lance Bachmann: They want to pay their kid’s school through the business. They want to do all this nonsense. You’re going to put every nickel back into the business and starve and live and live very, they’re poor. And that business is going to grow as long as you’re doing marketing sales, install
Lance Bachmann: correctly and collect it, right? You have the sale tape, the build tape and the collected tape. So I just say, you got to sell as much as you can. You got to run the install, whatever it is at home services, and you got to collect as
Lance Bachmann: fast as possible. And you got to get your systems dialed in, marketing dialed in, leadership dialed in. It’s really not that complicated. People are complicated. And I thank God I was never really into trades. I worked with my brothers, you know, taking off roofs and doing concrete work and
Lance Bachmann: carrying bricks. I’m so appreciative. They took care of me, my brothers, before they passed away. So I know how hard these people work, but it’s really not that overcomplicated to scale and grow these businesses, if the leader wants to scale it, it’s very easy to. Now, I will say
Lance Bachmann: leaders, a lot of them don’t know how to, so that’s where we come into play. But if that leader wants to sacrifice and suffer, success is going to be there. They’re going to find it. It’s impossible
Tyler Martin: not to. And that’s where I would like to start is leadership. So just going back to kind of some you personally in terms of your own leadership evolution is, I believe, you know, you might have described yourself in the past as maybe like a screamer type leader or kind of savage in your
Tyler Martin: style and you’ve changed through that. Could you kind of take me through like what you learned
09:01From screaming at AT&T staff to apologizing on the spot
Tyler Martin: about leadership, how you changed your own style? I mean, I personally, just a little side note, I had my own challenges early on as a leader where I was just an absolute ass. People hated me. And then I realized one day through a mentor that, you know, hey, you know, you care about
Tyler Martin: your clients. Why don’t you care about people that are working under you in the same way? And that was an epiphany for me. That’s what changed me. So what caused your evolution and how did
Lance Bachmann: that work. It’s funny. I was vice president at AT&T and I treated people like shit. I really did. Even the beginning of One SEO, man, if I could just apologize to so many people, the way I screamed at them and talked to them. And there’s no excuse, right? You sign up to be a firefighter when you’re
Lance Bachmann: a leader. You sign up for the stress or don’t sign up, right? You sign up for people making mistakes. You sign up for all these things. And listen, I’m still not perfect. I’ll give you an example. Neary’s right here. Like something happened at the conference and I got mad at him
Lance Bachmann: and I snapped. But immediately, I went and found him and hugged him and I was like, dude, I’m sorry. Well, that would have never happened 10 years ago. Like, I knew I was wrong. I was right in what I was saying, but I was wrong in the message,
Lance Bachmann: right? And, you know, the other thing about this, these people are killing themselves for you. These people work day and night the majority of people. And, you know, I have sons. I don’t want someone treating my son. Listen, it was funny. I just had a wrestling tournament
Lance Bachmann: on Sunday and I wasn’t there and some guy told my sons, shut the fuck up, right? And this guy, Tony Watson, and got in a huge fight with him. And I just walked into the room. And I was just going to the bathroom.
Lance Bachmann: I’m like, yeah, what happened here? And the one guy running to him was like, yeah, that guy just told your son to shut the F up. I just walked up to the guy in the license. I’m like, you got to apologize. You don’t talk to people that way, let alone a kid.
Lance Bachmann: At no point in time do you ever talk. I said, what did he say? He screamed my son was stalling. I said, well, okay. That doesn’t warrant that. And he went to say something else. I said, license to him. I said, you have two options, man.
Lance Bachmann: You can apologize. eyes immediately we’re gonna have a problem you’re gonna like the problem right like and i was saying it rudely it was just like like we’re both fathers and i look i think sometimes i’m a father and listen when you’re the best version of yourself your team will be the best version of them
Lance Bachmann: and when you’re being a terrible and listen i made all the mistakes i fired people on the spot i humiliated people listen you name it i’ve done it it gets you nowhere it actually cripples and hurts the team. And people that operate out of fear will never build anything great. I built one SEO
Lance Bachmann: and it took me about 15 years. What I managed to do at LB Capital in less than three years, we’re literally almost six times the size of one SEO. And people are like, well, that’s because you learn so much. Well, the biggest thing I learned was to be a better leader, to be a more
Lance Bachmann: sincere person, to take care of the people that take care of you. I mean, my people are all getting their Christmas bonus this Friday. We send it out Monday already. Make sense? Letting them know. Like, like I want to give you everything now.
Lance Bachmann: Like you guys, like everyone’s ever worked with me. I can only thank them that you worked with me. I had the honor and my life is the way it is. Like I have a great life. So I’m not perfect. I’m a work in progress.
Lance Bachmann: By the time anyone listening to this, you want to be kind. You want to be sincere. I always say people
12:09The difference between a nice man and a good man
Lance Bachmann: there’s a difference between a nice man and a good man. I’m not a nice man. I’m a good man. And there’s a difference. A nice man is like the court jest to the clown. They’re going to be nice no matter what. A good man is always going to take care of people, treat people good, be nice up until
Lance Bachmann: the point where you come into their territory and you want to step to them and you want to trust past boundaries. And that nice man flips the switch and says, now I’m not so nice. So that’s the difference between a nice man and a good man.
Tyler Martin: You know that my mentor that he used to always say to me, and it took like 20 times for it to sink in. He used to say, it’s not what you’re saying, it’s how you’re saying it. And when you illustrated that scenario with that guy that said that to your kid, it wasn’t really, you were saying what needed to be said, but you were saying it in a nice way.
Tyler Martin: You were delivering it. Hey, man, it’s human to human. Yeah, good stuff. Hey, what caused your transformation? Can we talk about that? I believe your wife had an ICU-type event. And was that the catalyst or what, what really caused you to one day wake up and go, Hey,
Tyler Martin: I want to, I want to value, or I want to be a leader in a different way.
Lance Bachmann: I think it caused my transformation in a few things. I had sons and I watched the way people talk to my sons. And if you can’t interact with my children correctly, you’ll not be in my life. I see like, like if someone said to me, I’m doing something, you’ll see people blow your
Lance Bachmann: children off. What? Just watch. And you’re like, damn, I definitely don’t want to do business with you. because if you blow a kid off, you’re going to blow anything else off. Because kids are the most important things. Most men have a soft spot for children.
Lance Bachmann: Sure. If you’re any type of man at all, right? So like, it’s just a very, very, so that’s one. I watched how people interact with my children. So then I always thought now like, well, these are people’s children. Would I want someone talking to my sons like this?
Lance Bachmann: So that was one. My wife almost dying was definitely a big impact. And probably the third biggest thing is I changed my circle. I started hanging out with better people. I started watching the way they led. And I was like, man, like, I got to be more of a leader like that.
Lance Bachmann: I got to be more of a leader like that. But I got to be more of a leader like that. And when I started doing it, I started becoming more sincere and more genuine. And I started liking this version of me of, you know, the man trying to make people have a great experience.
Lance Bachmann: The man trying to treat people good. You know, you said you read all the experiences down and you want to be at the conference and you regret not going. I stood in a lunch line and shook every single person’s hand that went there for an hour.
Lance Bachmann: Just sat there and thanked them for coming. I went at both dinners. At both dinners. I didn’t eat dinner. Me and my wife, we walked to every single table and thanked everyone for coming. Wow. Because I had such gratitude in my heart. The old version of me would have been an arrogant, cocky,
Lance Bachmann: literally me, I got 1,100 people down here on Marco Island to see me. Well, no, that’s the wrong attitude. And if you have that attitude, all your leaders are going to have that attitude. So being that I have such a gratitude and abundance attitude,
Lance Bachmann: everyone on my team, you can meet my video people. And I say this to everyone, and the biggest mind shift you better have is nobody works for you. You work for all your people. These people have options. They can go anywhere. You work for a brand like mine,
Lance Bachmann: they’re going to go anywhere in the country, have an immediate offer, and people are going to hire them. And I don’t want my people leaving because they’re my family, they work hard, and it’s a lot of stress on them. So I want to try and alleviate as much stress as I can.
Lance Bachmann: I’m a very stressful guy to work for because we’re constantly going 100 miles per hour.
Tyler Martin: What would you say to the typical blue-collar owner that’s out there who really hasn’t had any type of formal leadership training? In fact, most of us haven’t. What should they be doing in terms of improving their leadership skills, being more aware of how they’re training their staff?
Tyler Martin: because what you just expressed, I see a lot. And I’m just curious what your thoughts are in terms of helping others maybe improve their own leadership style.
Lance Bachmann: Listen, it costs you zero to be nice. So that’s the easy one, right? And listen, flipping out, screaming, doesn’t do any good. I can promise you that. I done it. Listen, I’m trying to work on all my children. I mean, Jesus Christ, as a father,
Lance Bachmann: your children are the hardest things to try and really get through. through. Listen, there’s masterminds out there. We offer masterminds, quarterly masterminds. And people are like, Lance, they’re very spiritual. There’s a lot. Well, that all goes hand in hand with leadership and understanding marketing, financial literacy, understanding sales and
Lance Bachmann: systems and processes. You being a good person has to be first and foremost. If you’re not a good person, it doesn’t matter if you learn all these core things in your business, they’re always going to want to help you build your business. And you need people. You’re in the people business.
Lance Bachmann: Like, you know, we required, like I just said to you, we recruited an earnest young CPA. You were like, wow, holy shit, right? You know, we got an in-house lawyer I recruited, right? Not to go to a big firm. They come with me.
Lance Bachmann: So like, if you don’t treat people great, they’re going to leave, you know? And I always say this, look at someone’s leadership team and see how long they’re with them. That will tell you a lot. And my leadership team has been with me for years.
Lance Bachmann: Yeah.
Tyler Martin: You’ve mentioned the spiritual side a couple times. What does that mean? Like when you say spiritual, sometimes I think religion, sometimes I think just better well-being.
17:32Ice baths, sauna and why he stopped going to church
Tyler Martin: How do you define that spiritual side that us as owners should really be thinking about?
Lance Bachmann: Listen, for me, I’m Catholic. I believe in God. So like I’m not going to push religion on anyone. My wife isn’t the biggest religious person. I’m very religious. She let me baptize all my children. Thank God. You know, I’m not a church goer every Sunday, right?
Lance Bachmann: I’m just not. But that’s my own personal beliefs. I’m not going to handle why. I’ll tell you why I’m going to church. The crime was bad, but the cover-up was worse. So I don’t go to church no more. And then when I went to get my last kid baptized,
Lance Bachmann: they told me because one of my best friends, who’s a Russian Jew, he couldn’t be the godfather. I was like, you guys are delusional. I’m just looking for good people in my children’s life, and you’re worried about their faith to be the godfather?
Lance Bachmann: I never stepped into a church again except for funerals and weddings, never. And I’m a Catholic, so I tell people, God’s not going to say I can’t come in to heaven’s gates because I decide kind of some idiot priest decided to say, well, Sam’s Lightwing can’t be the godfather of your kid
Lance Bachmann: because he’s a Russian Jew and he’s one of the best men you’ll ever meet. You know what? I’m going to stick with Sam over here and we’re going to do this in my backyard. And that’s just how I felt, right? About that religion.
Lance Bachmann: And then obviously them covering up, touching boys and girls. I mean, it was a majority boy, but the crime was bad.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, but take me through that spiritual side. It is spiritual to you. when you talk about as an owner touching into that spiritual side, is it more of just like mental wellness or is it a religious aspect? I’m just wondering if there’s something.
Lance Bachmann: I think it’s both. I mean, I sauna every single day. I ice bath every day. Your mind has to be right. I mean, I think it all plays a part. I think there’s checks and balances, right? Like I don’t want to tell people how they should live their life.
Lance Bachmann: I can only tell you I live my life. I have God in my life. I make sure my mental clarity is there. So my vision’s funneled and focused. I ice bath every single morning. Listen, it’s freezing here. I got outside this morning, the ice was on the ground.
Lance Bachmann: After I got out right away, I almost slipped on ice. I start laughing, but I just did it, right? Sauna, I sauna every single morning. I try to get 30 minutes of working out every single morning. I think all that goes into building a good business.
Lance Bachmann: I don’t believe that those things are right, that you can go in and build a business. That’s just me.
Tyler Martin: Got it. Okay. And in terms of, I just kind of want to go down this leadership path. Last question here. When you do the operator role, where an operator comes in, you guys do the 50-50 thing. Does that owner, do you help them continue to evolve as a leader?
Tyler Martin: Do they just stand back? What does that look like from an owner’s standpoint?
Lance Bachmann: Listen, we just had all of our owners down in one of our masterminds in Marco Island in the winner’s circle. And we had them working and building out the budgets for 2026. We had the budgets done for all of our companies a month and a half ago.
Lance Bachmann: But we made them do the exercise so they learn. We made them do the P&Ls review because you got to remember there’s life after we exit. I’m going to continue to build companies and you’re probably going to say, I want to go out on my own
Lance Bachmann: without Lance Bachman again. And that’s fine. I want you to. That’s my job to have you ready. I tell this all the time to everyone that works with me every single day. It would make me smile
20:39Why Google PPC is last on his marketing list
Lance Bachmann: with nothing but gratitude the day you resign if you tell me you’re starting your own business. It will make me sad and I know I failed you if you left me for another job. Yeah.
Tyler Martin: That’s good. That’s powerful. What do you see as a company morphs into like an eight-figure company? So they break that $10 million mark. A lot of companies under that that I’ve seen, they’re often relying like on a Google AdWords. They’re relying on LSA, local service ads.
Tyler Martin: What changes in your mind to get, because I’ve read about you, I’ve done so much research on you now. Your mind is like, hey, I’m going to take you to $40 million. What needs to be crossed once you know that $10 million to think differently? Like Google Ads probably isn’t going to cut it.
Lance Bachmann: Well, I think number one, your mind shift has to change. Okay. Right? Like when someone says to me, oh, I built a $10 million home service-based business, and they walk around like, oh, that’s, like, what the fuck are we doing here? Like, that’s, like, I’ve done that multiple times in less than a year.
Lance Bachmann: Right? Like, let’s just be honest. I’m taking companies at 20-some million in my first year with them, like, from nothing. Right? So, like, let’s have perspective. Right? Let’s have perspective. I think your mind shift has to change. I think you got to understand you need a blended marketing campaign, meaning like I’m a big
Lance Bachmann: aggregator, Ben. I love Angie’s. I love networks. I Google PPC is probably last on my list. I like SEO. I like Google GMB. I like LSAs. I like social media. I like email marketing. I like billboards. Google PPC is probably last on my list. Wow. Where does branding fit in? Where does just like
Tyler Martin: organic branding, would you say, fit? Branding’s huge. Branding’s huge. Like you are the brand though like i tell people this i am the brand and then for lb capital like i am the brand like
Lance Bachmann: and then every one of these small organizations we have people that are branded putting social media content out constantly put out locally like someone has to be the brand of your company and when someone says when someone says i don’t want to be the brand and i don’t want to post post on
Lance Bachmann: social media so i go look at their social media and i’ll see yeah you don’t post anything about work but you sure will give you your comments on fucking republicans and democrats so that’s more important to you than posting about what you do because you’re so tied up in nonsense that
Lance Bachmann: makes you no money, there’s no value to your business. So I’m a big believer in brand and marketing and you better have a good brand and it better make sense. And if you can get a good brand and you actually fulfill what that brand says, you’re going to see your company grow.
Lance Bachmann: I mean, it’s really that simple, but marketing is the easy part for most people. They just refuse
Tyler Martin: to dive into it and understand it. Yeah. So Lance, one thing I see is a lot of companies that come my way are using Service Titan. And they’re, you know, the owner sitting there
23:17Buying Titan Pro and driving Service Titan like a golf cart
Tyler Martin: playing with the price book. They’re kind of stuck in Service Titan. Sometimes they’re utilizing it to a very, you know, they may have the integration with it going to QuickBooks. If they do have the integration, it’s going in wrong. Just all these different things.
Tyler Martin: What are your thoughts around that? And what do you see? Because you started the show saying, hey, you really advocate your companies you work with being on Service Titan, or I think you require it. You didn’t say advocate, you require it. Where does this all fit in,
Tyler Martin: in terms of what we should be thinking about if we’re on any software, let alone Service Titan?
Lance Bachmann: Well, I think you got to pick the software that’s right for you. I just advocate and a big fan of Service Titan because of what it’s done for me. It’s changed my family’s trajectory and generational wealth, right? And home services. So it’s done it for me.
Lance Bachmann: I’m not the brightest guy in the world, like I tell people. So monkey see, monkey do. You know, I think, you know, the challenge a lot of people have is adaptation to any technology. And I think technology is frustrating. I had the same challenges when I onboarded on the service Titan.
Lance Bachmann: And that’s how I wound up acquiring Titan Pro. And they had about three employees at the time. We now have about 60 employees. I think we’re service Titans number one Titan consultant. And I just saw a problem in the marketplace and a lot of friction
Lance Bachmann: among great contractors that own their businesses and a great organization in the middle, right? Just building out the price books correctly, marketing pro, other pro products. and I just said, okay, we’re going to build this out and we’re going to be the Tylenol or Advil,
Lance Bachmann: whatever you want to call it for these contractors. And it’s been great and the business has been growing. I believe that the average, you know, people hire attorneys because you’re not an attorney. You don’t just sit there on chat GPT all day. People hire accountants, same thing.
Lance Bachmann: I’m a big believer in hiring the best at what they do and let them do that and you operate your business. Every time you are diving into things that you’re not an expert on, you’re costing yourself a lot more money. I call it be working on the dials
Lance Bachmann: that you’re the expert in and watch your business grow, right? You have to work on the dials that you’re the expert in and bring people in for the dials that are going to make your business grow. Because you’re going to do it that much faster, right?
Lance Bachmann: So big service Titan band, I believe it serves as Titan, but that’s what made us buy Titan Pro and grow that company.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, one of the quotes I believe you said is, you said, you buy a Ferrari, but you drive it like a golf cart. I believe I’ve heard you say that. I don’t know if you remember, you probably had so many quotes, but I chuckled when I read that because that’s what I see a lot of times.
Lance Bachmann: Yeah. I mean, you know, people don’t realize, you know, service tightens correctly will spitfire your business. And it is the number one contractor’s CRM, right? It’s their best technology out there. And I’m not saying the other ones are bad. Sure. It’s a matter of what you feel comfortable with.
Lance Bachmann: But I just believe service tightens the best for me and my needs. Yeah.
Tyler Martin: Hey, very last thing here. if a company stuck at 5 million and they’re coming kind of into your ecosystem and the goal is to get them to 20 million what’s a timeline like that look like for you like when you’re 18 36 months
Lance Bachmann: 18 36 months yeah that easy wow that’s crazy that’s a short relatively speaking that’s a short
Tyler Martin: timeline listen i tell people it’s all time timelines you make your timelines based on what other people think i don’t make my timelines what other people think i’ve done it now multiple of times. Months, we went to 20-some million in our first year.
Tyler Martin: Planet Roof, we did 17 million. We’re in the face of 19 our first year. Pups, 13, 14 million our first year. I have no tolerance for, you know, we’re not building a house. If you gave a contractor three years to build a house, he would do it all, take all three
Tyler Martin: years. If you give him 12 months, have it done in 12 months. Business is the same way. Build your business as fast as you want.
Lance Bachmann: Good stuff. If you had to say three things that a business owner should work on today, short, you don’t have to be long. What would you say the three things someone should focus on today just to have a better business?
Tyler Martin: Sales, financial literacy, marketing. They’d be my biggest three things, assuming that you have some type of leadership to you. So sales, marketing, financial literacy. You need those three things to operate a business.
Lance Bachmann: Okay, good stuff. And in terms of sales, in your mind, if someone, I guess it’s going to vary by business, but is that like more getting out there and calling people? Is that hiring a salesperson? Is that, what would you, do you see some common trend?
Tyler Martin: You’re the sales guy. I’m constantly selling my team on our goals, what to do, hiring new people, recruiting people. You better be good at sharing your vision and your goals to what people are. I’m constantly selling. What’s funny is no one thinks I’m a sales guy
Tyler Martin: and I was the number one salesperson at Verizon for years and people think I’m full of shit. I’m like, all right, man. Like you don’t build everything I built and not, I’m not a hard seller. I’m a relationship seller. I’m a show you the vision and those type of things seller.
Tyler Martin: But yeah, I mean, like you got to be able to recruit people, talk to people, get people
28:03Why accountants keep owners financially illiterate
Tyler Martin: to buy into your vision and goals. So you got to understand sales, marketing, and you got to understand financial literacy.
Lance Bachmann: And I love that you say financial literacy. It’s funny. I went through a course about five years ago and they were preaching on the course. Oh, you don’t really want to get clients into any type of financial literacy. They’ll glaze over. They won’t understand it.
Lance Bachmann: And I have such a passionate disagreement with that. Like I literally, with my clients, I’ll take them through a balance sheet and a P&L and just talk on a very, on a layman’s level. I don’t need to sound all super smart, but it’s empowering when they can kind of go,
Lance Bachmann: when you point at a number and you go, do you really have a negative $500,000 in your bank? And they’re all, no, I don’t. It’s my bookkeeper’s mistake or whatever. It’s empowering. They suddenly understand like where the numbers are coming from.
Tyler Martin: I’m going to tell you why most accountants don’t want their people out of financial literacy. You want to know why? because most accountants are shitbags. They want to take the easiest way to get, it’s the truth, they are. They want to take the easiest way to get things done.
Tyler Martin: They don’t want to put no extra in for tax planning, tax saving. They don’t want to do no extra work. They just want to go through the process and they want to be the smartest person in the room. As soon as you have financial literacy,
Tyler Martin: you’re going to have true freedom to anything you want to do because you can see how much money you’re making, where you’re losing your money. You can go address the problems inside your business. and I’m not being rude to accountants out there. I’ve yet to have any accountant.
Tyler Martin: I’ve been with my accountant now one for 10 years. Well, I mean, there’s a reason why I brought a CPA into my business now, right? Because nobody’s proactive, they’re reactive. And they got thousands of clients, hundreds of clients, right? And that’s why I always say this.
Tyler Martin: Like, if you’re going to have a fractional CFO like you,
Lance Bachmann: right, I believe that’s what you do, correct?
Tyler Martin: Yeah, that’s correct, yeah.
Lance Bachmann: You better, my thing with you, if you were to work with me and my companies and my clients, I’d say, okay, what’s your bandwidth? How many clients are you having? If you said, listen, I got a hundred clients at a fractional CFO, I’d be very scared. If you said, hey, listen, I got 40.
Lance Bachmann: Okay. I believe that. That’s easy, right? Because, but you said a hundred and it’s just you. How could you manage a hundred different P&Ls, tax planning, balance sheets, right? Getting ready through, getting through quality of our earnings, right? I mean, it’s just, it’s just not realistic.
Lance Bachmann: So I just like that. That’s why I’ve trained myself into financial literacy.
Tyler Martin: and I don’t say I’m a CPA by any means.
Lance Bachmann: No, you don’t need to be.
Tyler Martin: I can tell you this. Yeah.
Lance Bachmann: I don’t need to be, but I can read a balance sheet. I can read a P&L better than 90% of people very fast. I can find you problems inside your P&L very fast. I understand GLs integrating with QuickBooks and service type very well.
Lance Bachmann: I understand Intac. I understand Sage. I understand NetSuite. Like I know what’s out there. Like I become a master in financial literacy and that’s why I have freedom.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, it’s huge. It’s huge. I love you’re such a supporter of that. Hey, okay, I want to wrap up here. I know you got another thing at top of the hour. Just your websites, lbachmancapital.com is your main website. And then, of course, I’ll put LinkedIn, your LinkedIn link in the show notes.
Tyler Martin: Is there anywhere else if people wanted to reach out to you that you’d want them to go?
Lance Bachmann: Then you call my cell phone, 215-796-4393. Just shoot me a text, 215-796-4393. It’s the fastest way to get a hold of me, and I’ll get back to you.
Tyler Martin: Okay, awesome. Lance, you’re amazing. I appreciate you spending this time with me. I can’t wait. December of next year, it’s my number one goal or one of my number one goals this year or next year is to go to your conference next year.
Lance Bachmann: We appreciate having you there.
Tyler Martin: Thank you, brother.
Lance Bachmann: So my biggest takeaway from this conversation with Lance is this. Growth doesn’t stall because owners lack effort. It stalls because they don’t change how they lead, decide, and run the business. Lance kept coming back to a few fundamentals. real leadership, clean numbers you actually understand, strong systems, and the discipline
Lance Bachmann: to stop overcomplicating things. The businesses that scale aren’t doing these exotic tactics. They’re executing the basics better and faster than everyone else. I see this all the time with owners in that $5 to $10 million mark. Revenue grows, complexity grows, but the clarity doesn’t.
Lance Bachmann: And that gap is what holds them back. Now, if you want a second set of eyes on your numbers, your cash flow, or what’s really keeping you from the next level, I’m here to help. You can book a no pressure intro call at cfointrocall.com.
Lance Bachmann: That’s cfointrocall.com. As always, thanks so much for listening. I will see you on the next episode.
Related Episodes
- Your Best Tech Is About to Walk – Chris Buttenham
- The Rules You’re Living By Are Costing You Millions – Laura Kelly
- Thinking Too Small Is Costing You Millions – Alyssa Rogers
- The Real Reason Home Service Companies Run Out of Cash – Stephanie Allen
Tyler Martin works with owners on the numbers behind these stories: Profit & Grit CFOs. For where your business sits right now, read the $3M to $15M scaling breakdown.
