Full transcript10 chapters · 12,392 words
00:00Leaving a private equity partnership to build Swift Pro solo
Tyler Griffin: My mission in the first five years isn’t just to grow revenue, it’s to build the best blue-collar business to work for in Northern Virginia.
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. Fast growth hides a lot of problems. This conversation with Tyler Griffin is a real look at what happens when a company scales quickly and nothing is polished yet. We talk about getting shut down by Google in the first month, building a lead engine
Tyler Martin: that doesn’t rely on one platform, investing in a brand early, and hiring A players before the systems are fully built. What makes this episode worth listening to is the honesty. There’s no highlight reel version of growth here. It’s what actually breaks, what actually works,
Tyler Martin: and what has to be fixed next when revenue starts moving faster than the business underneath it. This is a great conversation about building something real, not just growing for the sake of growth. Let’s talk with Tyler. Hey, Tyler, welcome to the Profit and Grit Show. How’s it going?
Tyler Griffin: It’s going great, Tyler. It’s weird to say your name that’s the same as mine and sound like we’re echoing each other, but great to connect with you and happy to be here on the show.
Tyler Martin: It does. I’m immediately gravitated towards you because you’ve got a great name.
Tyler Griffin: There you go.
Tyler Martin: But hey, I want to learn about you. So tell me first what you do professionally. That’s the first thing I want to learn.
Tyler Griffin: Yeah. So live in Northern Virginia. Centerville is where our family’s located. We’ve lived in Northern Virginia since 2017. Love the area, love the state. For those outside of the region, we’re about almost about 45 minutes or so from D.C. So it’s considered D.C. metro, but quite a ways from there, closer to the mountains, which I’m thankful for.
Tyler Griffin: So nice. Nice to get out there. But yeah, married 18 years now, three boys aged 16, 14 and 12. Time goes fast outside of business. Love pickleball, love hiking, love the outdoors. And business wise, been part of a few that we’ll talk about.
Tyler Griffin: But building right now from scratch, just over a year in, a company called Swift Pro focused on HVAC and plumbing, primarily residential service and install.
Tyler Martin: Very cool. I can’t pass this up. How often do you play pickleball? Do you play in tournaments? Just curious because I’ve been running into a streak lately of pickleball players in the trades.
Tyler Griffin: I hope to get to the place in life where I have the bandwidth to do a lot more coaching and champion tournaments and all that kind of stuff. Right now, though, I do have courts at my house. And so we do try to play every day. It’s not quite every day, but I do have friends over. We usually play about usually three times a week, early in the mornings, mostly like six to eight. I have lights on my courts as well. So lots of fun. You know, a bunch of other entrepreneurs and business owners mostly that come over and play and we fit it into our busy lives, you know, kind of around the edges where we don’t take away from family or our business endeavors.
Tyler Martin: That’s too cool having Quartz on your own home. That’s awesome. Hey, so where I want to start is let’s talk about Swift Pro. This is your first business that you’ve done solo where you don’t have partners or other people. Talk to me about what got you to even start Swift Pro on your own.
Tyler Martin: What was the thing that crossed you over the line and said, hey, I want to do my own business?
Tyler Griffin: You know, probably part of it is I came out of a kind of a challenging partnership and we’d been acquired by private equity. And so the last couple of years were a little bit tough. And, uh, you know, and then, and then part
Tyler Griffin: of it is like, you’ve had people around you that, that you’re just a great salesman or you’re just that. And it’s like, so, so I think there’s that aspect. I was 40 at the time and I’m like, man, I want to, I want to like do this. Like I want to, I want to build something from scratch. Like
Tyler Griffin: there was, there was something in me. Cause I initially looked to buy and I was looking at options. And frankly, I think we live in, in one of the highest valued areas as far as businesses go and private equities dump tons of money and bought most of the large and now most of the
Tyler Griffin: mid-sized companies within our region. And so I had a passion to build a family-owned local business. I’m not anti-partnership. I think you just need to be very careful that you’re aligned on values. And I think the mistake can be that let’s just achieve success together and we’ll
Tyler Griffin: figure it out. The problem is success, especially at a high level, introduces a new level of complexity. And so I think it’s just very important to start with the end in mind and make sure you pick wisely. And so I’m still open to partnership and I may have partners in the future. It just
Tyler Griffin: has to be the right situation, the right complimentary gift sets and contribution and
04:53Google shut down his listing in the first month
Tyler Griffin: someone that’s aligned on values and vision outcome, you know, where we’re going in five to 10 years, et cetera. So that’s, that’s where I’m at. But yeah, for in the short term is like, let’s do this thing. I didn’t have anyone that was aligned at the time or ready to jump
Tyler Griffin: into this at that level and able to invest or anything. But I do have people on our team that certainly I treat like partners that I involve in all major decisions, get their input. And yes, they directly influence the decisions I make. And so I do believe in that. I think, you know,
Tyler Martin: you got to have a leadership team. Has there been anything in the first, say, year, maybe even today that has been a setback for you or was harder than you envisioned in terms of getting started and getting up and running? Anything stand out?
Tyler Griffin: Oh man, that’s a loaded question. I would say every step of the way has been harder than I expected. Like two weeks in, two, three weeks in, we’re just doing small service stuff and just trying to get reviews, honestly, to get on the map.
Tyler Griffin: And I think we had like 20 reviews. We’d worked our butts off. No revenue to speak of, right? Just trying to do real work for real people and get real reviews, right? So we could show up on Google. I don’t want to fake this.
Tyler Griffin: We’re not paying for reviews. None of that, none of that crap, right? Like we haven’t cut any corners. We’ve done everything legit. And so anyways, uh, we had 20 something reviews. We’re all excited and hype. Again, we’re two, three weeks in and nothing else was working yet. We, you know,
Tyler Griffin: and so we were just like, Oh, at least we had that. And so when we got referrals, we’re like, yeah, look at our Google page. Look at these reviews. Right. And then Google shut us down. And, uh, like we disappeared overnight and we were in our first month of business and we had
Tyler Griffin: nothing else to fall back on. And so I was like, you gotta be kidding me. I think it took us like two weeks to get back online. And it was a fight with Google. And I mean, it was a typical thing where something, you know, some I that wasn’t dotted, T wasn’t crossed. Like I think it was
Tyler Griffin: some of our formation documents didn’t have the same ad. Some of it was started with my home address because we didn’t have an office and then we had an office. And so there was some conflict. We, Google never said exactly what it was. There was something that set the red flag off and they
Tyler Griffin: just shut us down. Right. And so we went through dotted all our I’s, crossed all our T’s, submitted all our docs and eventually won and got it online again. But in the process, I was like, I am never going to be focused on one platform alone. I’m going to make sure that if one platform takes
Tyler Griffin: me down. There’s seven others to carry us that we will not be dependent. So I’m like, I’m going to broaden this funnel. That’s when I went hard after Angie, after Yelp, you know, Facebook, I just started going after every single marketing platform I could. And we don’t have like tons of reviews on
Tyler Griffin: those sources like we do Google for the time we’ve been in business, but we have a decent amount and we still look good on those, on those sources. And we work really hard for that. So we have traction with all those. And so, so it was, it was a very difficult setback in the moment. It freaked me
Tyler Griffin: out. In fact, I was like, man, are they going to kill my business? I don’t even look like I exist right now. I’m a brand new company. We worked so hard for this. Again, I was like, several weeks in, less than a month. And so got through that, learned the lesson. And that’s how I would say
Tyler Griffin: the setbacks have been primarily. It’s like when I have a setback, it’s like, okay, let’s fix the problem. Let’s avert the crisis. Let’s get through this. But on the other side of this, how can I make us stronger so the next time we get hit with something like this, it won’t have as much impact.
Tyler Griffin: I mean, Google’s always going to have an impact, right? They’re powerful. So we’re very careful. We’re very, very careful with that, you know, with the stuff we do there. But again, we wouldn’t disappear. You know, there’s a whole page of places we show up if somebody looks.
Tyler Griffin: So that’s an example.
Tyler Martin: What would you rate the most challenging part of growing and scaling? Is it people?
08:21Personal cash, supplier terms and nobody taking him seriously
Tyler Martin: Is it cash flow? Is it business, getting new business? Where would you rank in your experience so far as the most challenging one?
Tyler Griffin: I think it depends. And here’s what I mean by that. I was in a position, thankfully, we had some savings. So I was able to put a decent amount of cash into the business. I didn’t have any outside investors or any other sources of capital.
Tyler Griffin: But I was able to put some money into the business to get going. So we kind of had that operating capital. Because, you know, man, I mean, to this day, we’re not profitable like I want to be. We’ve grown too fast. Like, we just keep reinvesting in the business.
Tyler Griffin: If you don’t have that, I’d have to name that number one. I mean, it’s like, and then getting cash flow, getting creative. I had to get terms with all of the suppliers, 30-day terms. And again, I’m a nobody, no business history. I had to use my personal credit.
Tyler Griffin: And so every step in the beginning is a fight, right? And nobody takes you seriously. So if you are starting from scratch, which is the advantage of buying a company, you have all that established usually. Every single step. So it changes by the week, by the month, as far as what that challenge in front of you is.
Tyler Griffin: So once those are not the challenges, I would say early on staffing was a challenge. I had a couple of guys that I was very thankful for that joined early, you know, one the first month, another second month. So we had a couple of very experienced technicians, great guys with versatile skills that could
Tyler Griffin: do install service sales, you know, they could move around and really help me early on. But a lot of our staffing in the beginning was like trying to use a recruiting company and find somebody and who wants to work for a company they’ve never heard of that barely
Tyler Griffin: exists online. So it was, it’s just a fight. And then our breakthrough came when we got like, we got a couple of experienced people, one in particular that had been in the industry for over three decades. And then all of a sudden he knows everybody.
Tyler Griffin: And so it’s like, now we have like today staffing is not our biggest challenge. There’s still key positions that can be tough certain times of year. Right. But that is not thankfully our biggest challenge. We have more people that want to work for us than I can hire just because of how fast
Tyler Griffin: we’ve grown and, and, you know, the friends they have that work here, right? Like friends bringing friends. Initially, I was scared of that. Cause it’s like, what if this new person, you know, doesn’t work out and then I lose both people. So, so to be honest, I was gun shy at first about that.
Tyler Griffin: Cause you hear the horror stories and it can go that way. My experience has been the opposite. All my best hires, honestly, my best hires, aside from a couple of people I knew in the beginning have all come through other people. That is how we’ve grown.
Tyler Griffin: And those are the people that are really building our team today and getting people with industry insider experience was huge for us. And so that was really a game changer and helped us increase the momentum, helped us be able to capitalize on the short summer we did have.
Tyler Griffin: And so that’s been a big deal.
Tyler Martin: Have you had any challenges from a lead standpoint? And a lot of times, so cash flow is definitely a big one I’ll see no matter where a company is in their journey.
11:093.4 million in nine months and the modernize lead cliff
Tyler Martin: People, oftentimes, unless you build a strong team and the continuity of them staying, the people issue can go away. The business, a lot of times, the conversion on leads, I see a challenge, especially for young businesses. Has that been a challenge for you guys?
Tyler Griffin: I mean, it’s never enough for me, right? Because that’s the only throttle. No, but for real, that’s the throttle that controls our growth. If I could fully solve the marketing matrix, right? And just get enough leads, I could hire the people I want to hire today.
Tyler Griffin: I could keep my people busier in the shoulder season, right? It’s just the lead flow. So that’s never enough. But what I would say in fairness is I think most people looking in would be shocked at how much lead volume we already have, how fast that we were able to grow, you know, that, you know, we, we have the summer we did, you know, we, we like our revenue on the year so far right now, you know, just over about nine months in, we’re, you know, we’re at 3.4 million top line in our first nine months, you know, of this year.
Tyler Griffin: and our goal was 5 million. It was kind of a pie in the sky. I was like, I want to make sure we crush three, but I’m going to say five and we’re going to push like heck for it. We’re going to be
Tyler Griffin: pretty darn close. If we can close out the year strong enough, cold weather would help since our hot weather ended too soon. But extreme weather is always nice, right? And HVAC. But we’re trying to ramp plumbing and trying to diversify a little bit more. And so, yeah, we’re going to get close
Tyler Griffin: to that goal. But back to the marketing thing. Again, diversification is huge. John Wilson recently on Own and Operated made a comment, don’t diversify too much, double down on what works. But I think you have to diversify enough when you’re new to figure out what works and not be
Tyler Griffin: over-reliant on one source because here’s what can happen. I’ll just pick on Modernize for a moment. I like those guys. They have a good team over there and they’ve been good to work with. But for several months, we were on their leads program where they’re just shoveling leads at us, man.
Tyler Griffin: And we know our schedule rate on that’s like 20%. So it’s like one out of five is good, four out of five are bad. That’s just, it was just not, they have a lot of leads, but they’re not expensive. The leads are pretty cheap.
Tyler Griffin: But it took ferocious work from our team to get even one out of five scheduled. I mean, and then we hit August and I think we got 40 or 50 leads in one day and we got one schedule. I’m like, this freaking thing fell off a cliff.
Tyler Griffin: Now everything hit the fan in August in terms of marketing sources that were working. All of a sudden our marketing costs just went through the roof. everything stopped working. The lead volume went down and lead quality went down across the board, but modernized was the worst. And so back to the drawing board, meeting with them along with
Tyler Griffin: everybody else and trying to figure this out. I ended up switching over to their warm leads transfer program where they vet the lead and then transfer them. It’s still not a hundred percent. We still get some whiffs, you know, where they transfer somebody and they hang up on us, you
Tyler Griffin: know, and that’s frustrating, which is not, you know, they can’t control that. Like they get somebody on the phone and then people do what people do. But I will say the numbers work again. I don’t have to devote so many crazy hours of my team’s time on the back end to hit the leads so
Tyler Griffin: hard. And when we get that warm leads transfer, which we had to revise our schedule and cover most hours, we now have hours seven days a week and we cover heavy full-time and then some six days a week. We’re on the phones. And so I’ve had to build out my back end a little bit more,
Tyler Griffin: but the warm leads transfer program does work. The numbers work. We’re getting the conversions, the sales out of that program. So there’s always a new challenge. Angie, we had to hit the reset after August. They were really gracious as well. Honestly, we got a really… We changed reps,
Tyler Griffin: but we have a really great rep now who’s been really helpful and helping us dial in. They gave us a credit because we track everything. We track all of our performance.
14:45Keeping marketing spend under 10 percent per channel
Tyler Griffin: We track every metric. What comes in? What’s our booking rate? What’s our sales rate? What’s our average ticket? And then what’s our total return? And our guideline is we try to keep our marketing expense for every channel under 10%. And like I said, in August, it just
Tyler Griffin: hit the fan, right? It was everything was above 10%. Whereas like the months before June and July were like 2% or 5%, which we know that’s not realistic to maintain, but 10 is our guidepost. And when it goes above 10, it’s just the way I red flags, you know, alarms, what’s going on,
Tyler Griffin: let’s figure it out. And we’re aggressive, just to be clear, like our schedule, our booking rate with Angie’s like 50%, which is unheard of. I, you know, I’ve never seen numbers that good. And it’s just because we push so freaking hard to get those books.
Tyler Griffin: So anyways, we make it work. But when things go off the rails, then it’s just making sure we have a good rep. And thankfully, our volume is high enough that we have some good reps. But we’re still diversifying, man. We’re still trying to find more good sources.
Tyler Griffin: We just recently partnered with ValPAC, for example. We’re hitting 250,000 homes next week through ValPAC, hoping that we can get some traction there. So that’s now becoming one of our major hopeful lead sources. And so that’s, you know, that’s a focus of ours as well as an example of continued, you know,
Tyler Griffin: I’m always looking like, hey, you know, how can we, you know, how can we grow faster? And I only, so my, I only up the marketing when the metrics are in place, you know? So when I can get something like recently, we upped our budget with Yelp.
Tyler Griffin: And then I looked at the numbers and they got better. I’m like, you know, and that’s partly because our team dialed some things in. We have some automation built in some AI stuff that’s really working. And so it’s like, all right, we’re going to incrementally keep pushing that up.
Tyler Griffin: And so I push budgets up until things go off the rails and then I’ll pull back and try to look at, okay, why did we go off the rails? What do we need to fix? But again, things can change. You know, we’re in shoulder season right now.
Tyler Griffin: So our approach has to be different.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. Okay. Shifting gears. I know for you, your mission is to build the best blue collar workforce in Northern Virginia. That’s one of your goals and missions over the next five years.
16:41Selling the wild west, not a polished shop, to A players
Tyler Martin: And there’s a little caveat there and it’s mostly for A players. And what we know a lot of times when we hire people, they don’t always have the same game plan as that we have. So talk to me a little bit about your mission.
Tyler Martin: How do you find the right people that go to the same beat as you and are in line with what you want the company to be all about?
Tyler Griffin: Yeah, I try to. So what I’ve learned is early on, I would oversell us sometimes, like, you know, just make it sound great. We’re going to do this. We’re going to do that. And while there’s truth, right, there are great things about working here at Swift Pro.
Tyler Griffin: And I do think we have a great culture and a great team. However, there’s also some things that are really tough. And so, you know, you promise a new installer, things are going to be great. It’s going to run smooth when they don’t run smooth yet. Cause we, you know, at the time,
Tyler Griffin: like we went through half a summer, we didn’t have a warehouse, right? Like we were, we were picking up material every freaking day from a supplier. And then they, you know, and then things were, Hey, why are some of our suppliers, some of the locations, half the order is missing.
Tyler Griffin: You know, this one’s not ready. Our guys are spending hours. So, so it was a heck of a summer, And then towards the end, we got things on track in terms of organization. And today, we’re in a way better place. We’ve moved people around.
Tyler Griffin: We have a guy running it now that’s an experienced installer. He’s our install manager. So we’ve made a lot of changes and improvements. But there’s some real pain points. Every growth milestone has pain points attached. And so I just say, being honest, I’d like to think…
Tyler Griffin: I talk about the upside. And I say this. If you want to be able to achieve rapid career growth, if you’d like to earn a leadership slot, be in a completely different position a year from now even, right? This is the place for you.
Tyler Griffin: If you’re willing to work your butt off, if you’re willing to go above and beyond, if you’re willing to strive for excellence every day for every customer interaction and every type of project you complete, right? Take pride in your work. If you want to be the best you can be
Tyler Griffin: and be part of a team that strives for that, this is the place for you. If you’re looking for a nine to five, if you’re looking for an easy gig, If you’re looking where everything’s polished and there’s every position in our company, there’s a warehouse manager, there’s a, you know, every single thing is a box is checked
Tyler Griffin: and we’re already a well-run machine. That’s not it. We’re the wild, wild west. And there’s going to be a new challenge tomorrow that we have to face and solve that I don’t even know about yet. So I can’t tell you what it is, you know?
Tyler Griffin: And so I just try to be brutally honest with people about the upside so that I attract the right talent. Early on, man, you’re so desperate for people. You almost say anything to get them in. I’m not saying don’t lie. Don’t BS, right? No, I know you mean.
Tyler Griffin: But at the same time, it’s like, you don’t want to talk about the bad things because it’s like, I want them to come work for me. I need them, you know, but that’s a mistake, I think, because if you’re not and, you know, there’s there’s some famous things with that guy that was going on.
Tyler Griffin: I think it’s a North Pole expedition. He’s like, you know, looking for men, you know, low wages, long days, extreme cold environment, you know, and then he had to line out the door of hundreds or I think maybe thousands of people that applied for this small group that was going.
Tyler Griffin: You know, we underestimate people sometimes. Right. I think a lot of people out there, and I will say this in particular about young men that are in the trades or entering the trades, they want something hard. They want to be part of something meaningful.
Tyler Griffin: Mission matters, you know? And so when you can create a strong mission, a strong purpose, be different than other people around you, and it’s not just motivated by money, right? It’s not just, I want to sell this company in five years and, you know, buy a big mansion or retire to Florida.
Tyler Griffin: Like, that’s not what drives me, right? So I think the mission’s authentic. I want to build a place that matters, that serves the community, that’s here for the long term, a multi-generational company, family owned and operated. You know, they get behind those things.
Tyler Griffin: And maybe they’re leading places where it used to be that, but it’s not that anymore. And so I think it’s just being really clear about your mission and then the hard things, right? Not shying away from what’s hard. Like, look, we still have some problems to fix, but I want your help fixing them.
Tyler Griffin: You know, I don’t want you to just to bring me problems. I already know we have problems. Bring solutions, bring ideas, help us build this. And then you attract the right people. So I’m looking for people that have entrepreneurial talent or, you know, want to be part of building something and grit and willing to just push
Tyler Griffin: through adversity and do something that matters with people that they enjoy working with.
Tyler Martin: I think a lot of us as business owners, and I don’t care the industry, you know, it’s our baby, it’s our business. And I think it’s somewhat common for to leave out the growing pains part at first. And then you get this mismatch because just like you said, if someone’s coming
Tyler Martin: from some big company, they’re used to all the structure and everything, and it’s just a bad fit. And if you set those expectations, it’s just so much better. Like the people come in knowing there’s going to be some growing pains. There’s going to be things that go wrong.
Tyler Martin: We know that. We expect that. We expect you to dig in and help us fix them. So I think that’s awesome. That awareness, you kind of threw the learning curve. Hey, I want to switch gears into
21:28Why he hired KickCharge and wrapped the fleet on day one
Tyler Martin: a brand. You really, from day one, went all in with brand. I believe you used KickCharge. I did. You got a beautiful fleet. I mean, when I look at your pictures, I always just kind of smile because it’s just such a beautiful fleet. What was your thinking on that? Because
Tyler Martin: that’s an expensive thing to do from the get-go.
Tyler Griffin: Yeah, I read Dan’s book, actually, and I think it’s branded, not blanded, if my memory serves correct.
Tyler Martin: That’s correct.
Tyler Griffin: which he did a great job expressing the importance of that. And I just knew from day one, so one of our big picture goals, our five-year goals, aside from becoming the best blue-collar business to work for at the core of our mission, we also wanted to be the most loved, trusted,
Tyler Griffin: and recognized blue-collar brand in Northern Virginia within five years. That was core to what we wanted to build. Notice I didn’t say biggest, I didn’t even use the word best, you know, love, trust, and recognize. And so the recognized thing is like, everybody knows who we
Tyler Griffin: are and what we stand for and what our mission is and whether we’re a good fit for them or not. We’re very clear about that. Right. You know, like you tell me, if you’re looking for the absolute cheapest, that’s not us. You know, if, if you’re, you’re looking for the absolute biggest,
Tyler Griffin: that’s not us, but there are things we are that I think we can serve customers really well. And so I would just say we’re in a very competitive market, Northern Virginia. I would argue has got to be up there, maybe top five markets in terms of competition. We have a
Tyler Griffin: lot of private equity money, a lot of big budget brands that have been building for a long, long time. And so some of our competitors, I mean, that we go up against, I mean, they got 5,000, 8,000, 10,000 reviews, right? Here’s us, right? So I just knew that we had to put our… I wanted
Tyler Griffin: to give our team a fighting chance, right? I wanted to make us look legit from day one. And so, yes, I hired Dan, I invested money in the brand and, you know, we had a couple of rounds, you know, what happened the first round, but their team worked with us and we came up with something that we really loved, uh, that we really failed to express to. We are Swift pro fast and professional, right? We want to, we want to, in our world, HVAC and plumbing, we got to get there fast, but then we got to couple that with excellence. We got to fix the real problem. Right. And so that’s what we’re about. That’s, that’s what represents us. And so, you know, another one of my slogans is go for wow. Right. I don’t want to be average at anything.
Tyler Griffin: I don’t, I don’t want to just get by, you know, I don’t want to do the bare minimum. And so, you know, I don’t want my guys driving around in white vans, you know, and it’s like, and so, yeah, so that was important to us establishing an identity, what we’re about.
Tyler Griffin: It really did help us in attracting talent because of that legitimacy. Cause even though we’re brand new, it’s like, wow, I get to drive around that, you know, and it just, it was appealing, I think, to some of our early hires as well.
Tyler Griffin: And so it was a big part of what we, we fought to establish. It’s still a work in progress. But I do have already someone that’s on the back end working in a marketing nonstop, marketing manager. And a big part of her focus is brand building, right?
Tyler Griffin: We’re just constantly focused on how do we not just focus on today and the leads we need today, but building a brand people recognize and yes, come to love and trust.
Tyler Martin: So when you look back on that initial investment, what would your recommendation to people out in the audience? Would you say, do it no matter where you’re at in your journey? whether you’re starting out day one or you’re 10 years in, if you don’t have
Tyler Martin: a cohesive brand that makes an impression, invest the money. And it’s significant if you go through some of the better services. What’s your thoughts on that? Yes.
Tyler Griffin: That has to, that’s determined by their goals though, I would just say. There are guys where it’s like, look, I don’t, you know, I just want me and a helper and I just want to have enough work. Well, maybe it doesn’t serve him to invest $50,000 in total in a really robust website and a really
Tyler Griffin: robust brand and all of that. I think a level of professionalism is important, but I understand that there’s guys that, Hey, I want to stand out the fact that, you know, whatever I can do, whatever I have a white van. I’m just a neutral player. But if you want to build a company,
Tyler Griffin: a real business, a business that eventually can run without you in the sense that it’s not reliant on just owner operator doing the work. If you’re like coming from a technician background in particular, then branding matters, you know? So if you want to get, let’s say if your goal,
Tyler Griffin: even if your goal is at least 5 million and above, right? If that’s your goal, then you have to build a brand, in my opinion. I mean, you’re, you know, if you don’t have a brand in our world, at least, I think it’s really tough to get above like that kind of maybe
Tyler Griffin: 1 to 2 million. And I know there’s outliers and I know there’s new construction, which is a different world, right? That’s a different world. But I’m talking about like a residential focus brand, like what we are. I think you have to have a brand. I mean, even driving into the driveway to
Tyler Griffin: do the work, I mean, customers comments, right? And, and cause even that it’s like, you want, you want a level of trust. Are you using subcontractors? Are these just gay laborers? And we’re able to say, no, these are full-time people and they’ll drive up in a Swift Provan.
Tyler Griffin: And I think that really helps with trust, legitimacy, and the customer experience as well. And so then it goes uniforms, boot covers, everything we do. We want a great customer experience, which I think if you’re going to build a business, that’s important. And so,
Tyler Griffin: yeah, all that stuff matters. There’s always more to do, but I think we’ve overall done a good job. I think we have a great website. I think we have a great brand. I think our band stuff and truck stuff is really great. Proud of it. And I know the team that represents us is proud to have that representing them in the field.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. And I think it has this self-fulfilling prophecy, if you will. Once you start to have pride in the brand, everybody’s like, it works for itself. Like people are proud to work for the company. I’ve seen pictures where people take all their branding that KickCharge did,
Tyler Martin: and they make like this employee lounge and they’ve got all the coloring and it just takes it to a whole nother level where there’s all this pride. Even like me with you, before I had researched you, I saw your fleet, your pictures, and I’m like, wow, this is in my mind. I’m thinking
Tyler Martin: this has got to be a $20 million a year company, like their image, the way they look. And then I started researching you and learning more about you. And I was even more impressed. And it was all just because the brands, the brand sent such a message that you guys have. Is there anything
Tyler Martin: when you went down that path of branding that you weren’t expecting that was either more difficult, more costly, anything catch you off guard? And when, when you first initially did it and you
Tyler Griffin: were thinking about it? Um, it took more time than I wanted to in the beginning. Okay. Time. I like to go fast, you know, and so things never move fast enough for me, you know, as great as our milestones that we’ve achieved are, it’s like, I wish we’d already done 5 million, you know, you know what I mean? Like, it’s just never enough. And that’s part of what makes me who I am. I’m relentless and just, you know, kind of obsessed, right?
Tyler Griffin: so in the beginning it was hard to slow down to actually make sure we built things out and we did we did roll out like we had a temporary website in the sense of like some temporary branding and things we had to show up somewhere because we didn’t really have things built out to like
Tyler Griffin: November honestly you know where things were really we had a couple rapid bands by that point but yeah just I would just say this like you have to slow down and do it right like it’s worth spending time and getting it right because if you think about it what’s a couple of months in light
Tyler Griffin: of the next 10, 20 years, you know, and then not having to come back and redo it all. Like wrapping is expensive. Get it right the first time. Don’t, don’t have like a, you know, like a halfway brand that, that looks okay. A mediocre. That’s where I’d say, whether it’s Dan or someone
Tyler Griffin: else, use a team that’s really good at what they do. Don’t just come up with it in-house. I would say that, like, I do think it’s worth the investment. Dan, maybe you can give me some, you know, maybe you guys can design a lounge now if I can get enough shout outs here. But anyways,
Tyler Griffin: you know, this is our next step. When you said that, I was like, yeah, our office needs some work. Yeah. We just kind of, you know, we moved into the summer. It was crazy. It was mayhem. The walls are a little bare right now. You know, we definitely need, I was just at John Wilson’s
Tyler Griffin: shop, you know, out there, you know, owned and operated guy and they’ve done an amazing job in terms of they’ve got reviews printed all over the walls. They’ve got their mission statements, you know, they’ve got their brand colors and logos and all that. I’m like, ah, yeah,
Tyler Griffin: our office needs some work. So, so don’t come to our office expecting that, what you see on the hands right now. We need, we need to get that done over the next few months, but there’s always more, but yeah, I just, I think it’s important and it helps build that, that identity for your team,
Tyler Martin: that culture as well. Yeah. Very cool. Okay. I want to switch gears into reviews. So you guys went all in on reviews really early on. I mean, you, I want to know what your methodology was or what was your style for getting so many great reviews. I think you have over 300,
29:41366 Google reviews and the text chain that celebrates them
Tyler Martin: are we at 13 months? Some crazy number. Yeah. 13 months in 366 on Google, you know, and then we have a good amount on Angie on Yelp and a bunch of other places. Yep. So what was your process? Take me through, obviously there has to be good work to get
Tyler Martin: good reviews, but I mean, what’s beyond that? Like, tell me what your psychology was, what you did with the staff to make sure you’re getting them. Walk me through what your,
Tyler Griffin: your methodology was. Number one, teaching technicians to get them on site and push for it and ask for it. Number two, all of our business cards for every technician, every salesperson, every whatever person in our, in the field, um, we have a QR code on the business card to try to
Tyler Griffin: make this easy. So then they can ask the customer here, take, you know, use your camera, pull this up and it takes them right to a Google page where they can post a review. So we try to make it easy. We try to make it, you know, scalable, right? So it’s, it’s not a hard thing. Then you got to
Tyler Griffin: teach them, right? And there’s always more work to do on that, right? Like we can improve, we should be getting more than what we are. So, but you gotta, you gotta teach them. Like you can’t just get reviews, you got to say, here’s how you ask for it. Introduce it early. They ask you to do
Tyler Griffin: that one extra thing rather than just doing it. Say, Hey, if I can do this for you and you’re happy with all the work I complete today, could I, you know, could you take a minute and write a review for me? And that’s the reality is like, you just don’t ask for it. You don’t push for it.
Tyler Griffin: And they just walk away. It’s another point of resistance. It’s uncomfortable at the beginning, right? So that’s a big deal. You know, we have backend things, automations that we build in where they, we also ask for it on the backend as well. Usually it’s like a survey first because
Tyler Griffin: we want to make sure they’re happy. And if they’re not, we want to make them happy. But yeah, we have some processes like that. And the last thing I would say, which is honestly, I think the most important, because if you don’t do this, I think the other stuff, it’s going to be mediocre.
Tyler Griffin: You have to celebrate what you want more of. So what I do is we have a text chain with all of our team on it, right? So it’s a big text chain. And we don’t put everything into that text chain, right? If there’s an important question or communication or an all hands on deck meeting,
Tyler Griffin: that go through there. But what we do is we celebrate wins on there. And one of the greatest wins we celebrate are great reviews. Anytime someone writes a mini essay on Google for us, I screenshot that and I put that on there and I shout out the guys that got it, right? And say,
Tyler Griffin: great job. And that happens almost daily. That’s pretty common, right? Sometimes multiple times a day. That’s a big deal. You have to shout out, you have to celebrate the wins. And I’m a driver. It’s never enough. We should have got five. We got three. Great. You know, you know, so I can
Tyler Griffin: sometimes seem prickish. I’m aware of that. Right. It’s like, but I have to, I have to take a minute, whether it’s just one, if it’s a great review, celebrate that great review, you know, take a moment. And so I try my best to do that and really, you know, just, just can congratulate
Tyler Griffin: the team members that got it. Great job. And then people like to be celebrated, right? Like everybody wants positive affirmation. And so that, that helps. I think that’s a big difference maker. And that’s what we do to this day.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. When you say text, do you mean, is this like a Slack environment or is it really over a phone?
Tyler Griffin: Like as some text chain, man, if you work in the blue collar trades world, you know that using other apps are not going to work for whole team communications. I mean, you know, there’s a lot of my guys that probably have checked their email once
Tyler Griffin: a month. It’s like, you know, please look at your email. I send you something important, you know? So text. So yes, not, not field texts. I’m talking about texts on a cell phone is how we communicate with the whole team. You know, obviously our office team does not function like that.
Tyler Griffin: We have other ways to, we actually use Gchat, you know, as like a Slack channel, but it’s Gchat. So everything functions through that. I mean, I have designated channels and yes, my team leaders are expected to communicate through those channels, but I can’t expect everyone else to.
Tyler Griffin: So we just use our whole team communication, celebrating wins. We use cell phone texts to go out and screenshots and that’s how we celebrate things like that.
Tyler Martin: That’s so cool. Okay, last thing I want to talk about is just systems and operations. I like your branding. You went in with Service Titan, which is, I would argue, this premier CRM package out there. You started with Service Titan pretty early. It’s also probably one of the hardest. You focused on bookkeeping and job costing, I think, pretty early too. What was your thought process around systems?
33:48Starting on Service Titan and the horrific first 90 days
Tyler Martin: Now, one thing I want to put a disclaimer, systems are a living entity into itself. So in my opinion, you’re always improving, getting them better. So by no means am I saying, hey, I know everything’s perfect. But in terms of just what was your thought process starting with a great package like
Tyler Martin: ServiceSight and just really focusing on systems early on?
Tyler Griffin: Yeah. Well, let me just add the caveat at the beginning. I never feel like our systems are good enough. We got lots more to build, lots more to do, lots of things to fix, right? So I do want to express that. We have not figured it all out.
Tyler Griffin: But yes, I think from the beginning, we did try to be systemized. And we’ve incrementally improved every day since we started, I would say, on that. So the service type thing is huge. One thing that I wanted to do this go around in my last company, I felt like we had a lot of apps that didn’t always communicate together.
Tyler Griffin: And it was complicated for our field team in particular to manage and use all of them. There was a lot of training, continuous training required that had nothing in sense to do with their job. It was just all these apps. So Service Titan for me was the one-stop shop that I could teach my team to use.
Tyler Griffin: And then once we had it set up correctly, run the whole business through. And that is what it is to this day. That said, the first 90 days were horrific. I got no support. Nothing worked. And it was every day. It was like, why am I paying for this thing that costs way too much money and can’t do the things we needed to?
Tyler Griffin: So today, I would say I would give us a B on our usage. We have an outside firm that’s helping us set things up better, dial it in. Again, it’s still expensive. And we’re always reviewing how we can maybe get that down a little bit. But overall, it does a great job.
Tyler Griffin: It’s funny, I had another person from outside that came in for a day to shadow and just kind of see our business operations from out of state, a friend of mine. And he shadowed one of my technicians. He was like, that was amazing.
Tyler Griffin: He’s like, he dispatched to the appointment. He arrived at the appointment on the app. He goes in there. He takes pictures through the app. He documents everything, addresses the customer’s concerns. He shows them the pictures on the app. Then next thing, he’s building proposals on the app.
Tyler Griffin: Then he presents the proposals. to the customer. They select what they want to do. And then they sign the proposal. And then he does the work right there. And then, you know, they review the invoice on this iPad. Everything’s happening on the iPad. And then they sign their approval. And then they pay with the credit card.
Tyler Griffin: And that runs through the thing. And then he closes out the appointment. And then he gets it. And he’s like, dude, everything was seamless. It was all running through one app. And that’s what Service Titan is, right? When it works as it should, everything functions through one place.
Tyler Griffin: And so that’s a big part of it, just getting that dialed in. So most of our systems processes are just constantly improving that because again, that runs our business for the most part. Yes, things like QuickBooks and some systems on the backend. We do some manual tracking, like we track everything marketing. We don’t have all that dialed in inside of Service Titan yet. That’s a work in progress. We do that kind of plus a bunch of spreadsheets where we track everything, but at least the numbers are in Service Titan and we’re always trying to make sure it’s accurate. And so we pull numbers from there and then do some of our own manual processes.
Tyler Griffin: But yeah, trying to know your numbers, trying to know how things are performing. Like how do you make marketing decisions, for example, unless you know the performance metrics of each different channel? And then how do you hold them accountable to what you expect unless you can show them
Tyler Griffin: months of data? Like when I have a meeting, for example, with Angie, it’s like I can show them 10 months of data. And so they take us seriously. So when I say, hey, this month, everything went off the rails. I need your help.
Tyler Griffin: They take me seriously because I can show them the previous eight months exactly what my cost per lead was, you know, what my, you know, what my percentage of, of the revenue from that channel was for the marketing spend. And they take me seriously. So, so yeah, I, you know, for team
Tyler Griffin: following the right process is, is, is critical. And the only way you’re going to do that is if you have some way of tracking that some way of holding them accountable, some process to follow. And in this case, it’s all running through service site.
Tyler Martin: Right. And then you mentioned the 90 day point, you really had no service site and like you were paying for it. It’s a pretty expensive package and you really weren’t getting any support. Is that at that 90 day point where you said, Hey, I’m going to hire an external firm.
Tyler Griffin: No, it’s when they finally gave me a decent rep. I would say somewhere around three to four months in like, look, in the beginning, nobody knew what to do with me, man. Like they, it’s like, Hey, we’re going to, cause they just, it’s like normally a startup’s one tech in a truck for a
Tyler Griffin: while. Essentially, you know what I’m saying? They didn’t know what to do with me. Cause I’m not private equity. I don’t have like, Oh, I already built a business or I’m coming out. like in the sense of in this industry, right? And so, um, brand new industry software,
Tyler Griffin: I haven’t worked with relationships I didn’t have. And it just took three to four months before people in some cases took me seriously. And so that was the case with service Titan. They finally gave, I mean, to be honest, if they want to help on this side, I think most people
Tyler Griffin: start with a different package and then switch to service Titan at like the two, three, four, five year mark. Once they grow into it, I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to switch softwares. I just want to start with what could grow my company. And, uh, you know, from day one. And
Tyler Griffin: again, you got one guy in a truck, you know, you have to pay for three. It’s like, yeah, I get it. I get it. I’ll pay for three, but help me. And, uh, it took a while, you know, but eventually we got support. Eventually we have a good, you know, we have a good rep today who does help us. And
Tyler Griffin: then we have an outside entity helping us. And then I have people inside my team that are constantly getting trained and going through courses to learn it because it is tough. It’s not an easy software to operate. It’s complex. Right. And like I said, I would give us probably
Tyler Martin: a B today. Goal is A+, but we’re a little ways from that. Honestly, a B for a growing early stage company to me is like an A+, because it is a complex package. And I get to see, I get a bird’s eye view of many clients that are using ServiceSight. And most of them, I’d probably say
Tyler Martin: C if I’m being honest, just because they don’t know how to use a lot of the modules. They may or may not have their syncing to QuickBooks really that great in terms of problems and issues that are coming through. So I think you’re doing great. I mean, if you’re grading yourself B,
Tyler Martin: that’s pretty darn good, especially at your stage of your business.
Tyler Griffin: Yeah, no thanks. But maybe you’d give us a C, I don’t know. So, you know, outside eyes, right? Yeah, we got plenty of things to fix, plenty of things to work on. But for the main functions, yeah, I think we’re doing decent.
Tyler Martin: One last company, the consulting company you’re using, are they doing a good job? And is that a company you’d mind sharing if you are happy with them?
Tyler Griffin: Yeah, it’s been pretty good. I mean, they’re Titan Pro is who we’re using right now.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, I love those guys.
Tyler Griffin: And they’ve been very helpful, very good. They’re a little bit expensive, so it’s a little bit tough. Yeah, pay for what you get, right, what they say. But yeah, it’s kind of helping us kind of bridge this. I mean, to be honest, I think they’re a better fit, personally, if you’re like a 10 million plus company.
Tyler Griffin: But I just couldn’t keep bleeding on some of the problems we had to fix. And for one, we wanted to build our own custom price books, and I just didn’t have the internal ability to pull that off. And so we needed some outside expertise to do that. And that’s what we’ve been focused on, along with fixing some of our broken systems and using the software the way we should.
Tyler Martin: Right. And I’ll say expensive is relative to, you know, I think it’s fair to say this, you know, considering service Titan has a pretty relatively high fee to get the most out of it, needing that support element or that consulting element. There should be, I mean, you’re getting return off your dollar.
Tyler Martin: So it is from a budget standpoint, a decent dollar amount, but I think there’s a return standpoint probably to it over time.
Tyler Griffin: Yeah. And that’s the one challenge I had because early on, I didn’t have anybody that has service Titan background. So we were flying blind. I didn’t even know how it’s supposed to be. I didn’t even have the roadmap. You know what I mean? And it was just like, I just was figuring it out.
Tyler Griffin: So we were doing everything wrong inside. They’re jacking everything up. So that’s the thing. Like we found a way to make it work, but it was a nightmare in the beginning. And then step by step, we made it better. You know, so today I’m glad we’re on it
Tyler Griffin: and it works well overall. But yeah, the pathway was rough. And I would just tell, I was scaling so fast that I felt like it justified it. I tell people, if your goal is to be like 5 million in three years, man, probably like Housecall Pro or, you know, Jobber, they’re adding more
Tyler Griffin: features now. I think you can do good, better, best through Jobber. So I’m just saying like, there’s probably some other ones that if you’re going to grow incrementally, man, just use an easier one and then, you know, scale it a while and then, you know, keep your customer list and
Tyler Griffin: data clean and then you can port it over. That’s what I would say. It was just that my goal was in the first full year, this year hit 5 million. It’s like, all right, I felt like, and then keep scaling. It’s like, eh, I probably should just start on what I plan to, you know, because
Tyler Griffin: then I have to learn one and then learn another. It’s like, no, you know, the first year will be painful. And that’s what I’ve told everybody. First year is going to be really freaking tough.
42:17Go for wow and 1 percent better every day
Tyler Martin: And it was, you know, it has been, but it’s getting better. Really good stuff. Hey, I want to wrap up here with a couple of things in terms of a mantra and you kind of already mentioned it, but I want to just talk about it for a couple of minutes. One line or something that you live by,
Tyler Martin: I think it’s the go for now. Could you talk about that a little bit?
Tyler Griffin: Yes. The go for wow. And the idea is that, yeah, no, no, yeah, no, no worries. So it’s go for wow. And the idea is simply this. We don’t want to be average. We don’t want to be mediocre. We don’t want to just do enough to get by.
Tyler Griffin: Every day is a day to aim for excellence, to execute at a high level, to deliver great experiences for our customers. So go for a while primarily outward facing is focused on how can we make our customers super happy? Not just like, oh, it’s okay.
Tyler Griffin: How do we go above and beyond? And we don’t hit that every time. We don’t. But we wouldn’t have the reviews we did, that we do, excuse me, unless we were executing at a pretty high level and had a lot of happy customers.
Tyler Griffin: 300 and whatever, 66 reviews don’t happen by accident. And you have to deliver excellence to keep that five-star average. And so we have really fought for that. That’s something, that’s the way I live my life, man. I mean, and that’s where I told you back to recruitment.
Tyler Griffin: It’s like, dude, I just tell people, it’s like try to self-select out because if you’re not going to drive and push and be like, it might have three core values, total ownership, unique genius, and incremental improvement. I just believe this is kind of the 1% principle.
Tyler Griffin: I just believe in becoming better every day. And so that go for a while fits with that as the mantra, because it’s like, I want to internally within my family, like, so that’s the thing. Maybe you live outside of your home, go for a while, but are you living like that in your
Tyler Griffin: home? Like we try to go on random family adventures. I want, I want my, my wife and my kids. I want to take her on a date. Wow. That was awesome. This was such a unique experience. My kids. Oh my gosh, this was such a fun day.
Tyler Griffin: Like, like, do you live your life like that? Right. Go for a while. Like why the average? Why just ho-hum your way through life, man? Life’s too short. Life’s too precious. And so for us, that’s just a way we try to live. And no, not every day is a wow.
Tyler Griffin: Sometimes it’s a wow in the wrong direction. You know, wow, this day was tough. But, you know, you swing for the fences and you know what? You hit some really great, you know, home runs. You hit some days that it’s just like, that was awesome.
Tyler Griffin: And it’s tough, right? Plus part of that wow aspect is pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone. That’s the key. And when you do that consistently as a way of life, I think it’s going to be a pretty exciting ride.
Tyler Martin: I feel like you got a book in you, man. That’s the title. Go for a while. You’re like, you already got the headlines. Now it’s just write it out.
Tyler Griffin: There you go, man. That’d be great once I can get a team built to run the business. So I’m not working 14 hours a day. Yeah. But no, no, it’s not this season. But yeah, it’d be fun. Fun to write something.
Tyler Martin: I hear you. Okay. So wrapping up, I think my big takeaway from this conversation, And honestly, you bleed it throughout this discussion. It’s incremental improvement. Like everything you say, like, you know, or be a service titan. It’s you’re thinking, how do I improve?
Tyler Martin: How do I get better? How do you know everything from a players to getting matching expectations of people you’re hiring to your review process? I mean, just everything’s about incremental improvement to me is my I would say my number one takeaway.
Tyler Griffin: Yeah, I think that’s a great observation because that’s something, again, to go for wow, but it coupled with like, don’t people get overwhelmed. It’s like, I’m not, I don’t work out at all. And now I’m going to go work out two hours a day. It’s like, that’s not realistic for most
Tyler Griffin: people. There’s maybe an occasional person out there, but that’s just not realistic. Right? So how do we build healthy habits, right? Atomic Habits is a great book. It’s like, how do we make those incremental changes to our lifestyle that can have major long-term impact? And so,
Tyler Griffin: So yeah, like, can I get 10% better today? Probably not. But could I get 1% better today? Probably, you know, if I’m not a reader, could I get 1% better every day? And like, all right, I’m gonna read a page a day. Okay, now I’m gonna read two.
Tyler Griffin: You know, it’s like incremental. It’s just taking steps in the right direction. Okay, I wanna lose some weight. All right, can I walk around the block every night? Now can I do two? Could I cut, you know, could I swap that bowl of ice cream for a salad?
Tyler Griffin: It’s like just making those small changes in every area of life. And the same thing works in business, right? You know, can I fix everything wrong in my business today? No, but what’s the biggest problem that I can solve, you know, that I can create a process for,
Tyler Griffin: have someone accountable for, that’s going to make an impact in my business. And if I just make a tweak every single day and things get a little bit better, then that incremental improvement over time is compounding. And if you start doing the math on 1% improvement per day,
Tyler Griffin: it’s pretty massive. It doesn’t even take 100 days for 100% improvement because it’s compounding, right? It’s like, I don’t know, it’s like 60 something days or 70 days. You forget the exact number, but it’s crazy. And then you can transform yourself. Like, that’s what I tell people that join my team as well.
Tyler Griffin: It’s like, look, if you want to be in a place that’s going to push you to become the best version of yourself, like, that’s what we want to be, right? Because that’s what’s going to bring value to our customers as well. You becoming better helps everyone.
Tyler Griffin: And I don’t just want my team to bring excellence to the workplace. I hope that as a result of our company, that they’re a better human being. they’re a better husband or wife if they’re married they’re a better you know life partner they’re better father or mother um if they have kids because they work here because when you
Tyler Griffin: become better in one area of life it’s if it’s authentic and you’re not faking it right if it’s if it’s real change that affects everything else in your life now all of a sudden their lives are transforming their family’s asking what is in what is with you what i want in five ten fifteen years
Tyler Griffin: is families, spouses, children to say, you changed my dad’s, my mom’s, my husband, my wife’s life. Like working there was the transformative thing that made them who they are today. And that’s what I want. I want like real impact, real change for the positive,
Tyler Griffin: for them, right? Not just for us. Like, yeah, you know, if they’re 10 years, now they go run their own company. Great, great. We made an impact, right? We helped change their life in a positive way. And the generations to follow could be impacted by that.
Tyler Griffin: And that’s what we want. We want to see real impact, real life change. And yes, that affects the business too. The customer experience is part of that. Every area of your life though is what I want to see authentic, incremental improvement in.
Tyler Martin: Man, that’s good stuff. Hey, so your websites, goswiftpro.com is your company site. You’ve got x.com underscore scrappy startup is your x.com.
Tyler Griffin: That’s what we are. We’re a scrappy startup, man. So if you look up Scrappy, it’s like, yeah, yeah. I was, uh, you know, back in my school days, I was a small, I’m still small, right? Who am I kidding? But I worked out with a bunch of like bodybuilder, big dudes.
Tyler Griffin: And I, I worked with them and, and, you know, they’re lifting like four times the weight, but because I was so driven and passionate and, you know, I worked out like a madman in there, they all respected me. And it was funny. On one of my birthdays, they gave me this card with like this scrawny kid lifting this
Tyler Griffin: huge bar, right. With the weight buckling over the edges, you know, and they called me scrappy, right. because I was always, you know, kind of swinging above my weight class is kind of the idea, right? Like you’re, you’re doing things bigger than what you are. And so that’s, that’s what I’d like to
Tyler Griffin: say is like, it’s like, yeah, you know, I’m not, I’m not like this walk in the room and everybody’s in awe. I’m definitely not that guy, you know, but I just believe in swinging for the fences, man. And that when you build the right team and you have the right people around you,
Tyler Griffin: you can do great things together. That’s what it’s all about. This is certainly not Tyler’s accomplished all this in 13 months. This is about the team we’ve built, the people that I’ve joined in, you know, it’s a collaborative team. You know, I wouldn’t, I won’t be where I am without my wife in support of, you know, of her, my, my kids.
Tyler Griffin: It’s just, it’s never in a vacuum, man. It’s always the people around you that help make you who you are and help you succeed. And, and you, man, you want to, you want to take them on the, on the journey. So when you arrive at the destination, you can celebrate it together.
Tyler Martin: So cool. Another wow moment. Hey, so did it, if people want to reach out to you, is x.com the best place to do it? LinkedIn, I’ll put these all in the show notes. Are those the right ones?
Tyler Griffin: to Instagram? What do you prefer? Man, I don’t care. Wherever they are, I’m happy to connect. I’m on Instagram. You can just search me, Tyler Griffin. You start looking for Swift Pro. You should see me. Facebook, same thing, right? I’m tagged all the time on our Swift Pro page. So I’m
Tyler Griffin: on Facebook. And I don’t expect everybody, but if it’s like, oh, it’s a fellow business owner, definitely. No, just say I love that. And then if they’re on X, if that’s their main forum, yes. Underscore scrappy startup, please. Man, give me a follow. And I usually check out the
Tyler Griffin: profile and it’s like, oh, this doesn’t look like a bot. Looks like a real person. Then I’ll follow low back, you know. So that’d be great. Just love connecting, love building, you know, networking and community and learning from other people. I’ve got plenty to learn. Hope that there was
Tyler Griffin: some value here for others, but lots to learn. That’s why I’m here with you today. Just because I believe one step at a time, learning from others, you know, building a community, building a network. And I certainly want to do more of that. And if people looked there, yeah, I’m not
Tyler Griffin: very consistent about posting. I’ve kind of had my head down these last few months, just grinding. and so I’m very, very bad at posting regularly, but I am on there, believe it or not. And, you know, just not always saying that much. So you need to get better about that, but love to connect.
Tyler Martin: Okay, man. Hey, thanks so much. There was a ton of wisdom here. And hearing your story was awesome. So thanks for sharing your journey. Hope in the future, we can come and have another discussion. I think you’ll be at your next goal probably
Tyler Martin: and there’ll be a whole bunch of stories to go along with it.
Tyler Griffin: No, thank you, man. Appreciate the opportunity.
Tyler Martin: Awesome. What stood out to me in this conversation is that revenue doesn’t solve problems. It exposes them. Every time Tyler talks about growth, he immediately talks about what broke next. Marketing channels fail, systems lag, hiring gets messy, cash gets tight. None of that means the business is failing.
Tyler Martin: It means the business is moving. The difference is how you respond. He doesn’t chase perfect systems or wait until everything feels ready. He fixes what matters next, gets 1% better, and keeps going. That mindset shows up in his brand, his hiring, his review process, and how he thinks about
Tyler Martin: people long-term. A lot of owners say they want to scale, but what they really want is stability. This episode makes it clear that fast growth comes with pressure, trade-offs, and constant recalibration. The takeaway for me is simple. Progress beats polish. Fix the next bottleneck.
Tyler Martin: Build momentum. And let the business evolve instead of trying to force it to be perfect early. I’m Tyler Martin, and this is Profit and Grit. Remember, grit’s the spark, profit’s the mark. See you next time.
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- Going Deep, Not Wide, in Home Service Marketing – Dave Carroll
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- Thinking Too Small Is Costing You Millions – Alyssa Rogers
- The $1M Revenue Leak: How Chiirp Fixed Home Service Follow-Up – Ryan Fenn
Tyler Martin works with owners on the numbers behind these stories: Profit & Grit CFOs.
