Full transcript9 chapters · 8,665 words
00:00From a $400k lawn care business to a $1.2M gutter company
Adam Sylvester: Like 1% of a really big number is a big number and so if you can do that over and over and over again, it’s like, oh well, I only shaved off this and shaved off that, Well, yeah, but that’s going to be like a lot of money to like put in your college tuition, a savings account, Like think about, you know, like every hair.
Adam Sylvester: That really came clear to me when I started actually budgeting for my business and actually started going back and making and actually reconciling my budget and forecasting all that. Like man, if I, if we do this revenue and then these expenses and this labor and this is this, then we’re going to have 8% net profit.
Adam Sylvester: That’s not enough for me.
Narrator: 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.
Narrator: Here’s your host, the blue-collar CFO Tyler.
Tyler Martin: Martin. Hey, welcome back to Profit and Grit with Tyler. Today we’re diving deep with Adam Sylvester. He’s CEO for two successful home service businesses. Adam’s here to show how he transitioned from a $400,000 lawn care business to a $1.2 million gutter company, and he’s got some game-changing tips on leveraging AI for killer customer feedback.
Tyler Martin: Plus, you’ll hear about his bold vision to build a $5 million company without crossing state lines, and secrets to balancing entrepreneurial success with a fulfilling family life. Stick around. You don’t want to miss these insights that could transform your business. Let’s get started.
Tyler Martin: Hey, adam, welcome to Profiting Grit with Tyler. Thanks for being on the show. It’s great. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for being here, man. So just a little backdrop before we get into more about you. You were kind enough to allow me to be on your podcast.
Tyler Martin: You have a really successful and very entertaining podcast called the Masters of Home Service Podcast, so that’s just how we got to know each other and I thought you were a great guy. Tell us a little bit about you. I mean both professionally, and then I’d love to know a little bit about you personally.
Adam Sylvester: Okay, so you and I met in Vegas filming the Masters of Home Service Podcast for Jobber and I’m the host of that podcast. It comes out every Tuesday. I’m a really huge fan. We’ll get into that. So I’m just a normal guy with two businesses and a wife and four kids.
Adam Sylvester: I’m super happy and I live in Virginia and I started Charlottesville Lawn Care about 10-11 years ago and that business has never really taken off huge or anything. It’s a $400,000 revenue this year business Only a couple people, but it’s pretty profitable, which took me a while to get there and it doesn’t take a whole lot of my time right now, which is nice.
Adam Sylvester: And then my, my Charlottesville gutter pros business my so I do gutters and grass and my gutter business took off, spun out of my lawn care business about three and a half years ago, and that’s what takes more of my time at this point.
Tyler Martin: And that’s the, is that the larger the two entities or the two business?
Adam Sylvester: That’s bigger. Yeah, we did about 1.2 last year and we’re not looking at any more revenue this year, unfortunately, just because, well, that’s a different story. But we’ll hit about 1.1, 1.2, hopefully with one fewer staff member, and so it’s going to be a little tighter on the profits, on that and then get some other systems in place and then hopefully scale it to next year.
03:25Why the technician mentality sinks most home service startups
Tyler Martin: Yeah, few questions. First, I want to talk about this whole home service business category of services. What’s your thoughts around that? Like is that? You know, I get quite a few people that come to me and they’re like, hey, I’m thinking about doing this or hey, I am doing this, but it’s really competitive and I’m not making any money.
Tyler Martin: And it’s usually a lot of times it’s in the home service business. So what’s your thoughts around that? You have two different niches, so you have a lot of experience. Is it a lucrative area to be in? Is it hyper competitive? Any commentary or words of wisdom you can give?
Adam Sylvester: us, just like everything else. I think some people make a killing and some people are killed. I think, just like anything else, it can be a win or a lose game. I think there’s a tremendous upside in home service. Some of the biggest companies that I know of that aren’t Walmart and Chick-fil-A are home service companies.
Adam Sylvester: Leaf Filter is a gutter company. They’re the biggest trade in the country. They’re a billion-dollar gutter company. They sell Leaf Filter. But there’s humongous plumbing and HVAC companies. So I think home service is a great place to be in. Mike Rowe is popular.
Adam Sylvester: He’s made this whole idea popularized. Instead of sending your kid off to college to get a degree, to make $35,000 a year, how about you send him to be a locksmith and make $300,000 a year and set his own schedule, all that kind of stuff.
Adam Sylvester: So I think there’s a tremendous value in it. But, just like anything else, that has unique struggles. I think the problem that people face is they get into it with what Michael Gerber calls the technician mentality, where they have a technician, they have a seizure, entrepreneurial seizure and they think, oh, my boss is an idiot, I can do this better than he can.
Adam Sylvester: And then they go off on their own and then they flop because all they want to do is just do the work. They don’t want to build a business as an asset. And so I think someone goes into home service with that kind of mentality.
Adam Sylvester: They shouldn’t, and they should just be. They should work for somebody else and just be happy. But if someone really wants to build a business, then I think there’s tremendous opportunity in home service.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, that’s great. That’s great thoughts around that technician mentality. I think that can only take you so far, unless you kind of stand back and think bigger picture In terms of your own journey from lawn care to gutters.
05:29Watching a North Carolina gutter crew and starting his own
Tyler Martin: Did you start out lawn care first, or is that what you said? You started out with lawn care and then you went Lawn care was first, yeah yeah. And what was your strategy? Like, how did you? I mean, how do you start with lawn care and then you go into gutters?
Tyler Martin: I mean, does that just you saw a natural opening for the market there, or did it somehow feed one feeds off the other?
Adam Sylvester: So that’s a good question. I, like most lawn care guys, I started when I was 11, and there’s a certain point, once I got older, when I had to decide okay, am I going to actually do this, or am I going to go do something else?
Adam Sylvester: I could go get a real job or something. And so when I was I was about 22, when I had this pretty big life event when everything was broken, everything was bad I said Am I really going to do this? And, long story short, I decided to double down and make it a real business.
Adam Sylvester: But I just started out, like most people do, just cutting their neighbor’s grass, which is part of the reason in lawn care, that entrepreneurial seizure is very prevalent in my industry because the barrier of entry is so low. But here’s the thing we’re still serving people and as long as you’re serving someone, it can be whatever you’re doing.
Adam Sylvester: I told the guys this morning. I said, guys, you’re not just cleaning gutters, you’re serving people and you just happen to clean gutters, and so it’s no different. So I started lawn care just as an outcropping of my youth. But then, about in 2020, I met a guy named Donovan Questenberry, who’s down in North Carolina, and he was telling me he was doing big bucks in gutters.
Adam Sylvester: So I went down to visit him for the whole day I watched him in his cruise and they just crushed it. They slayed the beast, dragged it home and had a feast that night. I just couldn’t believe how well they did. And so I went out the next day and started Charlton Gutter Pros essentially the next day and started Charlton Gutter Pros essentially officially six months later, and so that was.
Adam Sylvester: I didn’t really want to do it as a umbrella service of lawn care. I don’t like this whole idea where, like, the lawn care guy does the gutters. I think that’s stupid. It’s like, well, does the lawn care guy do the plumbing and the HVAC too?
Adam Sylvester: Like why is suddenly that? Why does the lawn care guy do the gutter? Two separate companies to serve two different people and provide two different services.
Tyler Martin: So when you say that they don’t In other words, when you go do gutter cleaning you’re not pitching lawn care Is that what you mean? You’re kind of keeping them?
Adam Sylvester: It comes up some, but not intentionally. No, they’re completely separate. They’re completely separate.
Tyler Martin: Got it. And in terms of the gutter, is your team cleaning them or are you actually replacing them too? Or a little bit of everything we do it all.
Adam Sylvester: So we do cleaning, install, repair. We even do underground drains, which some of your listeners may not even know what that is, but in our part of the country we have a lot of gutters will go down into the ground, There’ll be a black corrugated pipe and it’ll go out away from the house, takes the water away and those get clogged and messed up.
Adam Sylvester: So we fix those and we can really do it all.
Tyler Martin: Wow, in terms of margin, is there a better margin in cleaning them or is there a better margin in replacing them? What’s that look like?
Adam Sylvester: That’s a good question. So the margin actually comes out to be very similar because cleaning has no material cost and installs or repairs does. So if you factor in materials costs, then cleaning is pretty sweet because you go out there and clean. It’s all labor With installs, it’s both it’s labor and materials.
Adam Sylvester: But if we could fill our schedule with installs all day long, I would prefer that. But cleaning is just so simple and easy that I like both. But the profitability is a little bit higher on the install.
Tyler Martin: Okay, and I imagine from the cleanings is it fair to say that’s where you get a lot of your installs.
Adam Sylvester: Yeah, it’s an upsell, so our technicians are trained.
08:47Building gutters on an HVAC model with dispatchers and CSRs
Adam Sylvester: I really wanted to build Gutter Pros as an HVAC kind of model where you have a technician, not just a guy and a nice fan, and that technician has an iPad and his shirt’s tucked in, there’s a dispatcher who’s making sure that people go in the right place at the right time and there’s CSRs so people answering the phone and booking jobs and all that kind of stuff.
Adam Sylvester: And I wanted to have just more of an HVAC trades style business instead of a lawn care business that I created. It doesn’t have to be this way, but mine was more of a just like me and then all the guys, but I wanted to have a little more structure.
Adam Sylvester: I wanted to have more of a different feel to it, and so our technicians, just like an HVAC guy who goes in and says, hey, we can service your unit or we can replace that sucker for you for $30,000. Our guys do the same thing We’ll clean the gutters, but then they do all these upsell opportunities and make sure the client knows there’s other ways to spend money with us.
Tyler Martin: So a little earlier you said hey guys, you got to remember, we’re serving people, we’re not just cleaning gutters, we’re actually serving people. Do you think your team buys into that? Like, do they connect on that?
Adam Sylvester: Oh, that’s a million dollar question, right, I mean. Good question, I hope so, right. I mean, there’s different mentalities on this. There are some business owners and business talking heads that will say your people will never care as much as you do this, and that, as long as they care, 80%, that’s what you really want.
Adam Sylvester: And then there’s some people out there who I think they’re telling the truth too. They say no, you can definitely have people on your team who care just as much as you do. It just depends on who you are. And so, honestly, I’m not a genie, I don’t really know what the answer is, but I like to think that the latter is true.
Adam Sylvester: One person at least who cares as much as I do, and I think the other guys care enough. They definitely care, and so I think a blend. I’m reading a book right now actually, I just started it yesterday by Mike Michalowicz, his newest book called All In.
Adam Sylvester: I’m like three chapters in, literally I’m in the middle of it right now and he’s talking about how to get your team completely all in, and so I’m interested to see if I can integrate some of his principles. But honestly, tyler, I got a call from my main technician on Friday afternoon and he keeps his hand on the pulse for me and here’s what the guys are saying and that kind of stuff.
Adam Sylvester: And he said man, I think you just got a little bit Not intentionally, not with ill intent, but I think you’ve just gotten From your messaging. You’ve got a little bit too carried away with revenue and not enough messaging about doing a good job, things that we used to do in the beginning.
Adam Sylvester: He said, adam, in the beginning, the reason you kept me here and I didn’t go somewhere else is because you made me feel like a million dollars every time we solve someone’s problem and you just don’t do that as much. And he was right. He was right. And so this morning I spent 30 minutes just praising the guys and just reiterating how important what they do it is and the work they do matters.
Adam Sylvester: There’s a reason that I have Seth Godin on my wall, right there with the bird the work you do matters and no matter what it is, as long as you do with excellence and you do it for someone who cares, our clients matter.
Adam Sylvester: And so when we get that client selfie at the end of the job and they’re smiling, they’re like this like you are the very most important person, that person’s life at in that moment, solving their problem. So I hope it’s resonating. But you never know, that’s cool.
Tyler Martin: No, I mean the fact that you had that conversation with your leader. Your lead says a lot about you. It’s really good open dialogue and it’s cool that he’s got your back in terms of sharing his perspective. I do believe speaking with your team about what you value and how important it is in this case, serving your customers and it’s bigger than just cleaning gutters I really do believe that that conversation’s healthy and it does.
Tyler Martin: I mean, it obviously depends on the individual, but I think it does rub off on the team as a whole and they know what you stand for and I think that’s really important. Some will choose, maybe, not to take it to heart as much, and then that’s definitely their prerogative.
Tyler Martin: But I think if you have the team as a whole kind of thinking that way, they’re going to pull along some of the weaker I shouldn’t say weaker, but some of the people that don’t have as strong of thoughts about that. They’re going to help pull them along.
Tyler Martin: So I think it is a value. I think it is cool that you’re doing that. I’m sure it has impact. It may not affect everybody, but it will have impact overall, yeah for sure. So, on that same kind of thought process, how do you balance?
Tyler Martin: Because, as business owners, we’re always focused revenue, profit. We’re thinking about money. How are you going to shift gears where you’re still thinking about revenue but maybe it’s a little less transparent from a staff standpoint? Have you thought about how to manage that and shift those gears?
Adam Sylvester: So I think I’m not going to stop talking about revenue and productivity and efficiency and upsells, because that’s got to continue for the ship to sail, right, right, but it’s just a matter of talking about the other stuff more too. There’s always time to talk about other stuff as well, and so, you know, monday mornings I read aloud all the five-star reviews that we got the previous week.
Adam Sylvester: That’s good, but that’s not all we have to do. Sure, I need to remind the guys that selfies are great. We remind the guys that every as soon as they send that we’re on the way text that’s like them stepping onto the steps of the stage.
Adam Sylvester: They’re on the stage yet, but they’re stepping on the steps and they get to the top and then when they walk, they pull in the driveway, they’re entering the stage and then they knock on that door. They are on the stage performing and every client deserves a star performance, no matter how many clients it’s been.
Adam Sylvester: It doesn’t matter if you feel like it or not, it doesn’t matter, and none of the day they don’t care. Just like when I go to Chick-fil-A and I get a chicken sandwich, I want it to taste just as good as everybody else’s, not like.
Adam Sylvester: Well, we made 10,000. No, that’s not okay, and so reminding’t think they’re at odds with each other at all. I think doing a good job and seeing the work that you do matters is cousins to being productive and being efficient and all that.
Adam Sylvester: So I don’t think it has to be at odds or anything.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. How do you stimulate reviews? Home service business reviews are huge. I think they can kind of break you, make or break you, type of thing. What do you guys do Anything in particular to simulate reviews?
Adam Sylvester: Yeah, I don’t want to make it sound trite, but I actually think getting reviews is really easy. Really, I really do. I’ve never found it hard to get reviews.
14:53Paying techs $15 a review and $30 when their name is in it
Adam Sylvester: Yeah, I mean, people have told me, oh my gosh, I didn’t get some reviews and I don’t really know how you don’t get them. And I it’s like, yeah, eight of those are going to really review pretty much with on clockwork. So a couple of things that we do we incentive our technicians.
Adam Sylvester: They get paid if they get review. I mean, it is what it is. We pay our technicians to get review. They matter that much to us and so we put our money where our mouth is. They get $15 each if they get review.
Adam Sylvester: They get $30 if their name is in it. If I could go back in time three years, I would make those numbers less. It is what it is. I can’t do that now, but I’ve been off a little more than I could chew.
Adam Sylvester: But hey, we’re over 500. So I’ll take it. But yeah, I have paid out a little bit for those. If I were to do it again, I’d probably do like 5 and 15. But anyway, yeah, and then we use Nice super easy. It’s like $80 a month.
Adam Sylvester: It’s the cheapest thing we use and it’s a no-brainer, and that’s it. And then when we send the text through NiceJob, the app we use for the review, we include either the person’s house, with our beautiful van parked in the driveway. Just make it a little more personal.
Adam Sylvester: If we got a client selfie with that client, then we’ll include that photo, which is really compelling. But if you do those three or four things, it’s pretty hard not to get reviews. It just and it’s really it’s so important in our business because we have over 500.
Adam Sylvester: The next guy only has three and the next guy has like 50. And so if you’re in an opposite situation, where all your competitors have a ton of reviews, then you don’t have a choice because you got to stay up to speed with them and so, either way, it’s super critical, especially for high volume people like me where we’re doing high volume lead jobs.
Adam Sylvester: It’s a no-brainer, just get tons of reviews?
Tyler Martin: Yeah, do you find you know you give a delineation between if they actually named the technician? Do you ever get Sometimes when you do incentive plans, people they get out of control a little bit and then they’re harassing your customer to include their name in the review?
Adam Sylvester: Do you ever have anybody that’s ever complained about that when they’ve said, oh man, this guy’s on me a little bit too much about reviews, or maybe even in the review they mentioned I wish I would prefer that a little bit within reason than me trying to have to, because every now and then we go through seasons where I say trying to have to, because every now and then we go through seasons where I say hey guys, we haven’t gotten a review in like two weeks.
Adam Sylvester: What’s the deal? Wow, and we all know the reason, although clients won’t. No, no, no, we all know what the reason is. You stopped asking, right, let’s just call for what it is. Because here’s the thing this week, after I get Our guys err on the side of not being nice which we all know, that’s a terrible word and so I would prefer them to be a little more aggressive than less aggressive, because I think it shows passion and I think it shows that they really care.
Adam Sylvester: If we get some client who’s disgruntled, I’ll live with that for the exchange of having an army of people asking for reviews. That’s more important to me. Yeah, that’s awesome.
Tyler Martin: It brings up the classic issue, though, like you’re incenting for those reviews and sometimes, for whatever reason, your staff is forgetting. It doesn’t sound like it doesn’t happen often, but it does happen, and it’s just weird because it’s like, well, there’s an incentive tied to it.
Tyler Martin: Why are you guys not remembering that you can earn an extra $300 a week, or whatever that number is? It’s interesting. I don’t know what the answer is to it, but it’s amazing how making people aware of that incentive continually is really what drives their behavior, sometimes more than just the incentive itself, which is hard to get your mind around.
Tyler Martin: I mean, do you agree with that? What are your thoughts?
Adam Sylvester: Yeah, one thing I’m trying to do now is take them to the next level of training. Instead of just saying, hey, the next level of training, instead of just saying, hey, guys, make sure you ask for the review. Well, how do they ask for it?
Adam Sylvester: When do they ask for it? Who do they ask for it? Do they ask the nanny? Are they asking for the man, the woman? How do they? Do they ask it? Cowardly? Or do they just say passively, or do they? What do they do? And so there’s a lot of variable there, lots of variable there.
18:42Role-playing the door knock and the five-star seed
Adam Sylvester: And so when you roleplay with these guys and say, okay, let’s just pretend you find out, oh, now I know why you’re not getting reviews. It’s obvious that everyone who’s watching knows. It’s very obvious. And so you just tweak this, tweak that. And so I think that, making sure that you talk to your technicians and you’re practicing with them and role-playing the very scenario, one guy comes out of the knock.
Adam Sylvester: How do you knock? Do you bang on the door or do you do the friendly knock? That matters, and it even matters the way you set the conversation up. In the beginning you say, hey, ma’am, just so you know we’re going to get started, but I am here to provide you five-star service, and so, at any point, if you feel like we’re not quite doing that, I want you to let me know so I can make sure that we deliver, and then you sow the seed then.
Adam Sylvester: So within the time an hour goes by and you come back around, they’re expecting you to bring that back up and say hey, ma’am, I really want you to leave a five-star review. Don’t leave the company one, leave me one, because we all know that we don’t tip the restaurant, we tip the server.
Adam Sylvester: And so I tell the technicians all the time make sure you’re taking advantage of that truth, and so that’s why I want their name in it, honestly. And so, anyway, there’s ways that you can really help the technician be bold and be aggressive.
Adam Sylvester: Not aggressive, but bold and confident in this whole thing. And I wouldn’t say I’m a master, by no means, but I am learning how to do that better. Yeah, I love though.
Tyler Martin: I mean, you take a very simple topic like getting reviews and there’s so much nuance to it, down to even knocking on the door, which is true. I mean, have you ever had that service technician that bangs your door down? And it’s like you’re immediately put in that state of mind that you’re kind of annoyed because they’re so aggressive with the way they knock.
Tyler Martin: It seems subtle, but it does have an impact I’ll never forget. You also said something, too, that I think is a good lesson for us all to be aware of. When I used to have my staffing and recruiting business, we’d actually record calls for new people.
Tyler Martin: We’d have them record their calls and then we’d listen to them together and we’d write notes and observations. And that was one of the. As much as it wasn’t always liked by everybody and it was a little bit intimidating, it was the best exercise ever, because you would hear people say things to potential clients that would just floor you their manners.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, it’s like I can’t believe. You just said that Like I and you just had to get over it as a as a trainer, and just go. Hey, this is just something we need to talk about. We need to talk about how to knock on the door because it’s not obviously obvious to some people that they can have an impact on how people are perceiving you.
Tyler Martin: I had one guy he was a heavy breather and it was the worst thing man. It did not sound like he was just making a phone call and it was just horrendous and I just looked warm every time. I heard his recorded calls and we finally got it fixed.
Tyler Martin: But it’s definitely good to periodically see what your staff is actually doing on the front lines, because it’s amazing. You’ll learn some stuff.
Adam Sylvester: The next iteration of this we’re going to start to implement. We’re not quite there yet because it takes a little infrastructure, but I’d like to do this within the next few months. And it’s actually a takeaway that I got from one of the guests on the Jobber podcast.
Adam Sylvester: Masters of Home Service was like secret shoppers. We all know secret shoppers and stuff, but a lot of times it’s not the breakthrough, is not the thing that you hear for the first time. It’s the thing you hear at the right time. And when she said that I was like, oh my gosh, it’s time for us to do secret shoppers.
Adam Sylvester: Like it’s time. And so you just have a client who we will probably charge them half, you know, and say, if you tons of feedback, we’ll just and tell the technicians ahead of time like, hey, we’re gonna be doing secret shoppers you won’t know which one, but we’re gonna be doing secret shoppers and mystery shoppers and then you really find out what they’re doing in the field.
Adam Sylvester: You really find out how they’re knocking, what they’re saying and how they’re quoting and how they’re closing out and all this kind of stuff. And I’m really looking forward to that because that’s when you get the real answers to the test.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, and I like that you say you’re going to tell your staff in advance, because I think that’s part of a healthy exercise. It’s a good way to treat them. It allows them to not feel like they’re being spied upon, so I think that’s a big part of that equation too.
Tyler Martin: That’s cool.
Adam Sylvester: Because the goal isn’t to catch them. The goal is to do a good job Exactly. You want to be the form that they have, that our clients have. Make sure you hit the form that way. They do it the way you want them.
Tyler Martin: That’s the whole point Right. That’s awesome. That’s really a good thing. Hey, how do you Just switching gears here?
22:59The sales conference speakers whose kids stopped talking
Tyler Martin: So you have four children, you have a wife, you have two businesses, successful businesses how do you manage that? Work-life balance is a huge thing among business owners. It’s easy for us to get burned out and just get tired and drained and hate our business, hate our life, hate everything.
Tyler Martin: How do you work that all out?
Adam Sylvester: That’s a big question, because so often you see business owners and the tail’s wagging the dog. It’s not the dog wagging the tail, the business has a hold on the business owner in a way that’s unhealthy, and that’s been me at times. I won’t lie, that’s been me. I’ve been too consumed.
Adam Sylvester: And not confuse that with seasons of busyness and then downtime. There’s seasonality to business, but there’s also a whole other level of just being dominated by the business and letting it control. You Wake up in the morning, you go to bed. All you’re doing all day long, weekends, nights, you’re at church on Sunday morning.
Adam Sylvester: You’re thinking about business. That’s not healthy. And so I do have a lovely wife. Her name’s Ashley. We’ve been married almost 12 years and she’s awesome and I have four kids and it is tricky. But here’s the deal. This inspires me. I know people who have way bigger businesses than I do, who have more free time than I do, and so they can do it.
Adam Sylvester: They put their pants on, just like I do, one leg at a time and so, but practically speaking, I have some deadlines. I don’t really work till past five pretty much anytime. Occasionally I do, but it’s because something happened that caused that. But I’m usually out of here about between four and 5.
Adam Sylvester: My wife goes to the gym at 4.30. So I got to be done before that and stuff. And so I do go to work. I go to work early and so I’m not here in the mornings during the week. But I have two phones.
Adam Sylvester: I have a work phone and a personal phone, so I turn that off at night and stuff. But basically when I was young my parents were in sales and I sold with them, sold insurance, and I go to these big conferences and they get all these income rings and double platinum and all this kind of stuff, big rah-rah events, and this guy would come across the stage and making all this money and he’d say, great thanks.
Adam Sylvester: But my wife hates me and my kids don’t talk to me, right. And so I was 19 years old and I heard that over and over and over again for years and it just made me not want that. It just burned that in my brain and so for me it’s like I just have to build these businesses with the amount of time that I have, because when I write down the list of priorities for me, it’s my faith in the God, it’s my wife and then my kids.
Adam Sylvester: Those are top three. Well, my work isn’t even in that list, but I spend tons of time doing that stuff, which is fine. It doesn’t have to be a time, a linear thing, but I have to make sure that I’m actually. I want my kids to like me when they’re older.
Adam Sylvester: Sure, when my kids move out, I want my marriage to still be strong, right, and all those things matter way more than my business is. Now. My businesses are really important because they fuel those things too. So it’s a dance, right, as you know, it’s a dance and so I’m not sure that answers the question, but I’m doing my best to balance the two or three things.
Adam Sylvester: Sometimes I fail. Sometimes I fail, yeah.
Tyler Martin: No, I think it’s a great answer. I think the biggest takeaway I got is that you’re cognizant, you’re aware that you’ve got to balance these things and you do your best to do it, and one of your priorities is to make sure your kids know you as they grow up and go through different phases of school and life.
Tyler Martin: So I think those are cool. Those are cool, ambitious things you’re trying to focus on. Hey, going back to Masters of Home Service, your podcast, you did mention the secret shopper as one thing you took away from one of your guests. Are there any key takeaways, because you’ve interviewed some really cool people.
Tyler Martin: I’m on that list. I don’t know if I’m one of the cool people, but I’m definitely on the list. Anything you have taken away over the years that you’ve applied into your business that stand out.
Adam Sylvester: Yeah, one thing that comes to mind and this is really specific, but a buddy of mine, phil. He’s the owner of Flash Consulting.
26:48Using AI to answer every five-star Google review
Adam Sylvester: He was telling the podcast listeners, me included, how you can use AI to automatically respond to five-star reviews on Google. It’s my kryptonite. I hate that and you know me. We’re high volume, so we get a lot of reviews and it’s the worst Sitting down and trying to respond uniquely to every single five-star review.
Adam Sylvester: I hated it. It drove me crazy. It would back up. We’d have like 20 or 30. I would never catch up. It was terrible. And so now what happens as soon as someone leaves a review? It’s unique, it’s fresh, it uses keywords, it’s set up, it’s automatic.
Adam Sylvester: I never have to touch it again, and I love that. And I got that from Phil on the podcast, and so there’s other things like that too, but I love that little takeaway. But the podcast was really inspiring too, because you’re in the room with other people just like you who are slogging away.
Adam Sylvester: Some of them are, they’re owner-operators. They’re very much in the business, doing the work, which is fine. Others had, in my view, had scaled up to a place where they were, they had created jobs for people, and so they were leading and organizing the business in a way that is sustainable, which is very inspiring.
Adam Sylvester: And so when you have all these different people in a room and they all have all these great ideas, all these fresh takes, and it’s just a very inspiring podcast in my opinion.
Tyler Martin: It really is. You know, the night I went out to dinner before I went home I sat with three different people out to dinner. Before I went home I sat with three different people. One was running a multi-million dollar coaching service and had just tons of stories.
Tyler Martin: He was sharing one left and right. Another was a 22-year-old kid that was running a $1 million landscaping lawn care type business which just blew my mind. And then another guy was sharing his story about how he used to have a partner that was screwing him out of most of the business, and it was just, I mean, how he used to have a partner that was screwing him out of most of the business and it was just.
Tyler Martin: I mean, you, just one night of dinner, you get all these stories and experiences, and it just blew my mind. So you do have some really cool guests with some really awesome stories that they just openly share. And Phil, I would argue Phil, mr Flash Consulting.
Tyler Martin: He’s probably one of the most seen people on LinkedIn. I swear every time I go on there, that dude has some type of tidbit or a useful piece of information that he’s doing a video on. So, yeah, really good group of people.
Adam Sylvester: Feels good. There’s a couple on the podcast and they’re all about family planning and making sure that their kids are set up for the future and some of the stuff they had was really insightful and stuff and, I’ll be honest, it was a little jolting for me because I felt like I was a little behind with my kids and their two-year-old is like an employee of the business and a Roth IRA, all that kind of stuff and just thinking about that kind of thing I hadn’t in a while and so just having them talk about the way they do their things and things they teach and everything was very like eyeopening to me and reminded me, oh, I need to like do that stuff and so, anyway, that that was one example, but there’s others.
Adam Sylvester: But yeah, the podcast has been very, very good for me it would go without mentioning to.
Tyler Martin: Jobber is the one that sponsors it, correct, and Jobber is a software for the home service business. Do you want to talk? I’d love to even give them just a little plug. Do you want to talk about Jobber a little bit?
Adam Sylvester: Do you use it in your business? Is that correct? Oh for sure, yeah. So I use Jobber for both companies. It’s funny I looked at Jobber for the first time, I think, in 2014, which was 10 years ago, and at the time I thought, nah, this is just a glorified Google Calendar, so I didn’t sign up until 2018.
Adam Sylvester: And little did I know that’d be the host of their podcast 10 years later. But yeah, I use it for both businesses and it’s super strong. They’re on the cutting edge of a lot of new features like online booking and some AI concepts they’ve introduced and some marketing tools they’ve introduced.
Adam Sylvester: You can email all your clients. It’s not as good as MailChimp yet, but it’s a MailChimp substitute all within their software. For my lawn care business, they have automatic invoicing, which I’ve looked at. Other softwares and other softwares do as well, but I don’t think it’s as good as Jobber’s.
Adam Sylvester: Jobber’s is perfectly seamless, and so every Wednesday night at 7 o’clock, all my lawn care clients get billed for their services the week before I’m eating dinner. There’s no trigger, there’s no click. It just happens in the background, just like their Netflix subscription, and so, between both companies, I use pretty much all their features.
Adam Sylvester: Between both, routing optimization is really key. So yeah, jobber is really sweet. And the best thing about Jobber is our clients routinely will say Are you guys a franchise? Because they associate such a professional software with like a franchise.
Tyler Martin: And I say nope just Jobber, yeah yeah, I have several clients to use it too and it continues to keep getting better and better with features. They add, like you mentioned, the Mailchimp-like features. It keeps getting better. It’s definitely in the home service business space I mean that would be probably the top one I would.
Tyler Martin: I mean I know there’s some others but I’m not even sure if they’re in the same league and Jobber’s just a great company. I had such a great experience when I came out with you. I mean they’re just such a cool group of people and how they treat you it’s you know one thing that I thought about them just living your core values as a business.
Tyler Martin: I mean you can tell they have a certain set of core values in terms of excellent customer service, excellent quality, and they kind of live it all the way through. I love when you kind of can see that when you interact with the company as a customer and you can just see their values come out in terms of actually living them, it makes a big difference.
Adam Sylvester: Yeah, the podcast is right on brand with Jobber. It’s really well done. It’s really well done, it’s really well executed. It’s well produced. The graphics and the brand. It visually looks stunning, just like Jobber’s platform. So everything’s in line. Jason, ryan and Tina they’re in charge of the podcast.
Adam Sylvester: They’re high-end people, they’re really top performers over there and Jobber is better for them. But the whole Jobber brand is really solid and if any of your listeners don’t know what Jobber is or are looking for a new CRM to run their business, I would definitely encourage them to look at Jobber.
Adam Sylvester: Especially if they’re sub 5 million, then Jobber is definitely a good choice. If they’re above that, then they might want to look at some other ones as well. Not that Jobber wouldn’t work, but if they’re a huge HVAC company then it probably won’t work.
Adam Sylvester: But for most sub-5, jobber’s it yeah.
Tyler Martin: And Jobber. I’ll put that in the show notes at thinktylercom, it’s J-O-B-B-E-R. Hey, just before I wrap up here, what do you see in your future in terms of where you want to take your?
33:01Wanting $5M and 20 techs without leaving Charlottesville
Adam Sylvester: businesses as you intertwine it with your personal life. What do you see ahead? So I used to think about two years ago, I used to think that I wanted to just take over. I thought I wanted to have all these locations and franchise and have this huge network of businesses and this web of gutter cleaning all over the state of Virginia and beyond.
Adam Sylvester: And, as I’ve gotten clarity on this over the last 12 months, that’s actually not what I wanted. What I want now is a $5 million business Lawn care is out of the picture right now it would still be there, but we’re talking about gutters A $5 million business with about 20 technicians and a whole office staff and structure or org structure, so that things can just come, with me being the leader.
Adam Sylvester: I want a 10,000 square foot facility with two stories where we can park the vans indoors at night which would be really sweet and I want a line out the door of qualified candidates who want to work here. That’s what I want, and if I could have that which I think I will have that then I’ll be able to live my life with my wife, my kids, my friends, my employees.
Adam Sylvester: My mission statement is to create environments where people I care about thrive First. My family statement is to create environments where people I care about thrive First my family, then my team, then my clients, and if I can realize that goal, then I’ll be a happy camper, no matter how big and grander it is.
Adam Sylvester: That’s what I really want.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, so when you think about a $5 million a year business, how much would that? Have you ever done any analysis in terms of how big? Would you need to get? In terms of geography? Would you need to get in terms of geography?
Tyler Martin: Would you have to be in multiple states? What does that look like?
Adam Sylvester: It’s a great question and it’s a deep one, because every house has an HVAC system and there’s 30 HVAC companies in my city and they’re all doing $5 to $10 million a year. Every house in Charlottesville has gutters too, but a smaller average ticket.
Adam Sylvester: So I don’t know the answer to that. Really, tyler, I don’t know what the market cap is, so to speak, of my town. I think I can do 5 million here without going anywhere else. Yeah, I’m pretty sure Could be living in a small town, but I’m pretty sure we can there.
Adam Sylvester: We can just stay in Charlottesville and in the next five years I think we’ll be there and then sustain, and then, once we’re at five, I’ll look around and say, hey, do I want to go out further? I can’t. I can always do that if I want to Sure.
Adam Sylvester: Or I can say no. What if we get this net from like 15% to 18% to 20% to 22%? What if we get this net profit 25%? I mean that’d be awesome, right. And so you don’t always have to grow tall and wide.
Adam Sylvester: You can also grow internally healthy. You can grow strong, and that’s what I want. I want to have a strong business, not necessarily Arnold Schwarzenegger, humongous. I want to have a strong business that runs and it’s fun to run, yeah.
Tyler Martin: I love that. I love how you say if you can move the needle on those percentages, whether that be gross profit or net profit or operating expenses, lowering them. Whenever you look at those little percentages and you can move them a little bit, they can have such a big impact overall on your bottom line.
Tyler Martin: It like blows my mind.
Adam Sylvester: You’re so right, tyler, and you know this cause you’re a math finance guy. But 1% of a really big number is a big number and so if you can do that over and over and over again, it’s like, oh well, I only shaved off this and shaved off that.
Adam Sylvester: Well, yeah, but that’s going to be a lot of money to put in your college tuition savings account. Think about it. Every hair. That really came clear to me when I started actually budgeting for my business and actually started going back and making and actually reconciling my budget and forecasting all that.
Adam Sylvester: Like man, if I, if we do this revenue and then these expenses and this labor and this is this, then we’re going to have 8% net profit. That’s not enough for me. So what are we going to cut? Okay, let’s, let’s try hit 12.
Adam Sylvester: And cause, otherwise it’s all just, it’s just all funny money and you’re no different than the federal government. But if you actually sit down and like, like, make sure that you actually visualize how your business is going to perform this year, and then you have a, you have like guidelines to hit it’s way more effective.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, no, I agree with you. I love when you get fired up. Whenever we talk about numbers, you get fired up. I don’t know if you realize that. I remember the first night I met you. We went out for we had a dinner and you, just as soon as we started about and talk about numbers, you were just like lighten up.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, I agree with that. It’s important. I love it. Hey, so your website, adamsylvestercom. Adamsylvestercom. I’ll put this in the show notes at thinktylercom, and then, of course, I’ll also put Jobber and then some other things that you’ve mentioned. If people wanted to reach out to you, is that the place to go, or is there anywhere else they should be going?
Adam Sylvester: Yeah, adamsylvestrocom has me. It has it’s points to all my businesses, points to Jobber, all that kind of stuff. It has my phone number on there if they want to go see that and reach, hear their stories of business and see if I can help with anything.
Adam Sylvester: I probably can’t, but if I can help I will. But yeah, adamsfuturecom is the place to find me.
Tyler Martin: You’re the best. Okay, hey, adam, thanks so much for being on the show. I can’t thank you enough. You shared a ton of wisdom, like you always do. I really appreciate it.
Adam Sylvester: Thanks, tyler, appreciate it.
Narrator: Take care, man, see ya, your hustle doesn. Subscribe to the podcast for more inspiring stories from trade owners who are building businesses that thrive through sweat and smarts. If you want further help, head to yourbluecollarcfocom to schedule a meeting with Tyler, or if you have a story you think would help, you can apply to be on the show.
Narrator: Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next time on Profit and Grid with Tyler.
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Tyler Martin works with owners on the numbers behind these stories: an accountant who works with HVAC contractors, a fractional CFO for HVAC.
