The 4 Core Principles of Leadership to Create Stellar Business Growth

People don't need to understand the direction and the plan. They also need the tools.
It's all about, we like to say, it's all about the man, not the land, right? Or woman. But in this case, you know, inclusive sense.
You know, it's amazing how many folks go through business. They don't write down a business plan.
They don't really have any personal goals. And as a result, folks in the direction, it's just kind of operating without this roadmap.
Nobody really knows. We just kind of, maybe you get lucky every now and then, but in the end, you're not going to get to where you want to get.
But you got to communicate that strategy as well. People need to know where the company's going.
Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello.
Welcome back to the home service expert. Today, I got a good buddy of mine.
This guy's a genius in home service. Ken Haynes is visiting from the Atlanta market.
He's an expert in marketing operations, resources, and support leadership, mergers and acquisitions of business growth. He's been the CEO of wrench group from 2016 to present.
And he's also the owner operator of cool, Ray heating and cooling from 2003. Ken Haynes was appointed CEO of wrench group in 2016, transitioning from the owner and CEO of Coolray Heating and Cooling from 2003.
Ken Haynes was appointed CEO of Wrench Group in

2016, transitioning from the owner of CEO of Coolray, which he held since 2003. Ken brings with him 44 years of experience in the home service industry.
Since CEO of Wrench, Ken's leadership of the Wrench Group has guided the company to become one of the largest non-franchises home service companies in the United States, growing the organization from 165 million to over a billion in six years. Your reputation precedes you, my friend.
This is pretty crazy. Big fan of yours.
Got to meet you several times. We've talked on the phone for years now.
What's new with you? What's going on?

No, like I said, first off, thanks for having me, Tommy.

It's great to join you today.

Congratulations to you.

Been up to a lot over the last several years and have made great strides in the garage door business.

So hats off to you, my friend.

But no, thanks for having me.

It's been busy.

It's been a great ride.

Been doing this for a long time.

And we're trying to build a real company here

and doing some acquisitions, a little bit of greenfield, a little bit of organic. You know, it's kind of a mixed bag, but we're fortunate.
We've got great partners and great companies and great markets. So just more of the same.
Just got to keep on growing. We're going to get this thing to $3 billion.
That's the plan, $3 billion? I'm just trying to get this to share on Facebook. You know, we'll do about 1.2 this year and you know we'll continue to grow organically as our main focus sprinkled in with some uh m&a and some other things and uh yeah i mean you know i think 3 billion in our sites can take a little while to get there but i think we can do it such a big space so there's so much to talk to you about here.
I've got a lot of questions. What was the transition like going from Cool Ray, which you did all in for about 13 years? How big did you get Cool Ray to 2016? You know, just to back up maybe a little bit, I was fortunate and right time, right place.
Sometimes it just works out that way.

Cool Ray was owned by a business that I worked for, my employer.

And in 2003, actually in 2000, they had relocated me from Florida to Atlanta because I wasn't

doing so well.

They wanted me to fix it, broken.

So I moved up here in 2000.

And by 2003, our parent went bankrupt.

And my phone rang one day and they said, how would you like to buy Cool Ray? I thought about it for about a half a second. And I would.
And so not to bore you with the story, but Cool Ray was a big new construction business. When we acquired them in 1990, 1997, it wasn't doing so well.
I shut it down in 99, 2000, and was left with a $5 million retail business. So when I bought the business in 2003, we were about $5 million.
I took it to about $60 million in those 12 years. But the transition was easy.
I mean, I'd been in the space and did just about everything you can do in a business from starting out as a service technician in my early days in the late 70s to running call centers and operations and sales folks and to the front office. It was a fairly easy leap for me.
They appointed me in July of 16th. I've got a lot of questions just around what you did with it because I kind of understand your acquisition style.
correct me if I'm wrong, but you're trying to buy some of the best companies and you're not just saying you're going to adopt everything, but there is a reporting factor, but you're basically saying you're a great leader. You build a great business.
You're going to use our resources, but we're not going to change everything. Can you explain kind of the fundamentals of that acquisition style? Yeah, so we are, not only is it an acquisition style, but I think it's fundamentally how we operate and how we think about things.
We are definitely a differentiated platform. As your listeners know, there's a lot of private equity in the space.
You know, we kind of started this in 15. We were the first ones really in late 2015 to embark on this private equity-owned.
And a lot of followed suit. But first and foremost, we want to partner with great companies, with great cultures, and great markets with long track records of top-line and bottom-line growth.
They don't have to be the biggest in the market,

but they have to be really well-run businesses.

And then we want those owners to stay.

We want them to stay.

They've done a great job.

The reason we partner with these businesses

is because they've done a great job.

We want them to stay.

And to get folks to stay,

you can't come in and turn the business upside down,

take away all the entrepreneurship

that got them where they are today. And you can't tie their hands up.
You got to let them run the business upside down, take away all the entrepreneurship that got them where they

are today, and you can't tie their hands up.

You got to let them run the business.

Having said that, we are building, we're not a federation of companies all over the country.

There's some, what I like to say, non-negotiables, some things that we're focused on.

But to a large extent, it doesn't feel all that different when you partner with Wrench.

You still run your business, you roll equity in Wrench, or you take some chips off the table, you roll some equity into the big business, and then you come along for that ride. So financially, it's a great opportunity as well.
But we are a little different. We don't centralize for the sake of centralization.
There's some standardization. We like to say we partner with great businesses, buy those companies, and we pour jet fuel on a raging fire.
How do we make them even better with a lot of collaboration, a lot of best practice sharing, centers of excellence, et cetera? And that's really kind of how we think about it. But fundamentally, we don't go in, turn a culture upside down.
And we want these businesses to continue to flourish rather than, it's got to be one plus one equals three, not one plus one equals one and a half, right? And which is what happens in a lot of cases. So I've got a concept and tell me what you think about this is the concept is, if I was pursuing you, Ken, and you were much smaller in the garage door space, and I said to you, listen, why don't you tell me what you love to do more than anything in the world? What are the three main things you love? Is it recruiting and training? Is it going and finding other companies to partner with? Is it your commercial accounts? And then what do you hate the most? Is it accounting? Is it HR? And then really try to build your dream role that you love to come to work on Mondays and take all the other nonsense away.
What is your thoughts on that? Well, if you come to me and I'm an owner operator and you want to partner, you want to acquire my business, I want to know what life's going to look like post-close, once the ink is dry. And the first of the three, I think, would be, I want to have fun.
I have fun. I mean, sure, business is hard.
It's tough work. There's ups and downs.
There's frustrations. Everything that goes along with owning a business and growing your business, clearly.
But it's fun. It's fun to grow something.
So I want to have fun. So I want to make sure I understand what the environment's going to look like down the road.
And can I still have fun? I want to continue to have the freedom, to a large extent, to continue to do what I do well, and that's run the business. I want to make sure that it's an environment where I can help lead and coach and bring people along.
What I get out of this, I think, and what I'm so proud of with the Wrench Group and what we've done is we've changed so many lives. It's great to have folks that work for you that you bring in and you help develop them, bring them along.
And maybe they're running the business someday, or maybe they're your number two or whatever the case may be. They have an opportunity to get some ownership or to really do well financially for themselves and their families.
That's what gets me excited. And that's what I'm super proud of that we've done that at Ranch several times now as we've gone through various sales iterations.
So you got to have fun and you got to be able to do what you love to do and bring people along. I think those are the two biggest things for me.
And I don't want to be micromanaged along with that. Let me do my job.
I'm not looking for a boss. I get it when you sell your business, things change.
But you want to partner with me because I assume, in this example, that you know that we're a great business and we'd be a great fit and you want me to continue to do what's made us so successful thus far so i think those would be the three things but i don't hate anything i mean i you know my background is a service tech i grew up in the business turning a wrench and then learning along the way i didn't go to college my long story parents wanted me to go but didn't go i ended up starting a business at 19 years old up in the northeast in air conditioning and major pines repair it's kind of how I got in. Looking back, thank God I did that.
I don't know that I'd be where

I am today if I ended up going to school. So in any event, I've done just about everything

you can do in the business. I'm an operator at heart.
I mean, I love operations. I love looking at situations and creating, whether it's processes or new platforms, ways to get things done, making them more efficient, make them more productive, make them better.
I'm not a finance guy. Obviously, I know numbers and you have to, but it's not my love.
I don't love to stare at spreadsheets all day. It's not what I like to do.
I like to get my hands dirty, if you will, and get out in front of people. And I'm an operator.
So there's a lot of different styles out there. Some guys like to go like Ken Goodrich.
Sometimes he buys broken companies, not completely broken, but you can look at a lot of things. You could say, what's your average ticket? What's your conversion rate? What's your booking rate? And what does it cost you to acquire a customer? Plus we're buying better than you.
If we could help fix those because you've got a centralized good crm or there is a strategy of just taking companies and putting your kind of infrastructure on it which is better it doesn't mean you got to change everything but you got to say is this better for everybody do they get to make more money do they get to go on vacations and have pto and have a 401k and drive new trucks? We just did a deal in Denver and the guy said, wait a minute, you pay weekly and you give us new trucks? That's all we care about. Then we gave them the tools because in my industry, there's not a lot of five, 10, $20 million EBITDA companies out there.
I mean, those are hard to find. What's your take on the different strategies

out there? Look, there's different ways to skin the cat. I come from my background, you know,

as you know, our space, the home services space, HVAC, Plenty Electrical, there was an attempt in

the 90s to roll it up, if you will. I hate those words because it's really not what we do.

And it failed. And, you know, if we learned anything from then, we learned what not to do.
And I swore when I interviewed for this role in early 16 with InvestCorp, which was really our first private equity partner, I told them, I said, this is how we're going to run the business because it's not going to work. They were new to the space and I'd been in the space 30 years already or more.
I think I'm 45 years now, so probably 38, 39 years. I said, here's how we're going to do it.
It's not going to be a roll up. It's not going to work.
It will not work. It's not sustainable.
I want to build a business that when I'm long gone, this thing is continuing to flourish and grow. I I walk out the door and a handful of our team walks out the door and it falls apart, we clearly didn't build this thing with legs.
And so having said that, there are different ways of doing it. There's other private equity-owned platforms in our space and outside of our space that have more of a roll-up mentality where everything is done from corporate.
They take the autonomy out, a lot of the entrepreneurial spirit out. They put a lot of systems in place.
And here's the book. Here's how you do it.
It's just not for us. I mean, I think there are certain things you have to do to standardize.
Some things may be even centralized. But I think you have to be very strategic around that.
We don't do anything that impacts our people. Anything that's going to change the culture.
For example, we don't drive pay plans from Atlanta. Corporate, Wrench Group corporate is not telling Parker and Sons in Arizona, in your backyard, what to pay people.
And we don't say, well, we pay differently in Northern California or in Florida, so you have to do that way. So we're going to make it all the same.
It doesn't do anything. There's no benefit of that outside of saying we've centralized it or standardized it.
Just one example of things we're just very careful about. But others have other strategies.
You mentioned Ken Goodrich. I know they buy some broken businesses.
I'd rather pay top dollar for a great business and make it even better. I don't have the time to fix stuff.
Sometimes businesses break and you have to fix them, but I don't want to buy broken businesses out of the gate. It's just not what we do.
So you mentioned you're able to do one plus one equals three. Obviously you guys got buying power through Service Titan, through every major HVAC plumbing company out there that you're able to use the buying power of the whole.
You guys are probably able to get better insurance plans. You guys are probably better priced on vehicles.
And there's probably 27 softwares I use today, one. And we're able to give that buying power.
But what else? Obviously, there's some insights for marketing because you're able

to use a bi tool examine certain personas and how to market using everybody's data and culmination i think you guys use power bi or you might have used domo a while ago we're moving we're moving we're actually moving from domo to power bi now as we speak yeah okay so so you've got a lot of insights. There's obviously

probably some recruiting,

the power of the team. Where would you say the biggest movement comes from the wrench group, you know, for the new partner? Yeah.
So we really focus on five key enablers, five things, five levers, if you will, that we like to focus on. One is around finance and operations, right? A lot of collaboration.
It's the power of wrench. We've got a lot of smart people across the organization that are really successful, that built incredible businesses.
They all do things a little bit differently. So it is not one best practice.
So there's a lot of collaboration and what we call these centers of excellence, people who lead these user groups, if you will, in the organization to help one another, whether it's how to sell HVAC or how to increase your margins, how to run a call center, how to market, just a handful. There's about 20 of them.
And they're led by, typically by, location leadership and supported by corporate, we help facilitate it.

So a lot around operations around collaboration.

Sure, we haven't centralized purchasing the way you're thinking about it, but we leverage our purchasing. There is an opportunity there, but it's difficult to do.
It's one thing that we'd rather focus on some other things. I'd rather focus on things that are going to help grow the business at, you know 30% a year versus how do I save $1 or $2 million by buying a little better and making everyone's life miserable in the process? Changing people's garage door brand, right? It's amazing how folks will fall over a sword because they love Genie versus overhead, or they love Carrier over Train or it's unbelievable.
We still find ways to leverage the OEM. Same thing on trucks.
We have a national fleet manager. We do leverage a handful of things, but at the end of the day, that's not what takes us from a $200 million EBITDA business to a $400 million EBITDA business.
It's our ability to grow this business organically and be smart about it. So things around finance and operations.
One of the things that a lot of your listeners probably don't have great insights to today, same thing in the HVAC polymological space is data. A lot of these businesses are kind of run by the seat of the pants.
I think Service Titan has done great helping the industry, but we want real-time data that helps our operators understand what's going on today. Not the 29th of the month when it's too late and the month is over.
It's real-time. And it's through the entire business.
Whatever you want to look at, and data aggregation tools like Domo or BI, Power BI help do that. And we use this internal data lake or data warehouse, which houses, takes information out of Titan into that lake.
And from there, we can go get it and do what we want with it all in real time. So a lot of work around finance, making sure people know we're looking at numbers, we're finding a lot of feedback, a lot of insights as to what's going on, things that most owners didn't have or didn't know what they don't know, not sure what they need to be looking at.
So we helped shine a bright light on that. Another one is IT.
We used to have all these disparate systems. We now have one platform.
It's Service Titan. So as people join, they're all onto the platform, onto our instance, onto our financial book of record.
And then we use Power BI and a host of other software. So having commonality around software and IT, cybersecurity, it's the biggest, if you look at our staff at corporate, we have roughly 60 people.
Half of that is IT-focused. So a lot of work, a lot of investments around IT.
So that'd be a big change at the location, getting them on our platform. A lot of folks are already on Titan.
We acquire them because Titan's made such great inroads. But they're using QuickBooks.
And they don't really use the system very well. So we help them use the system as it's designed.
Marketing is another one. While we don't centralize marketing, we own all things digital at corporate, along with our data lake and Adobe Cloud Stack.
We have some really interesting insights into our data. And we've been on this digital transformation journey for four years now.
It's painful. But we're starting to get some of the benefits and see some of the rewards from that.
So marketing is another big one. And then, of course, we're focused on strategic M&A, partnering with more great partners in markets.
So another big piece. And then you have human capital, right? I mean, there's two things that prevent you from growing.
One, your ability to spend money in market, make the phone ring. And the other one is having capacity.
And you got to have both, right? You got to make the phone ring. and when you do make the phone ring and the other one is having capacity and you got to have both right you got to make the phone ring and when you do make the phone ring you got to be able to get out to people and in the hvac space and it's 118 degrees in phoenix you can't tell people i'll see you in a week so you got to be same day next day year round regardless of the weather and so we've we've got this shared service concept around recruiting where we own own recruiting a corporate to an extent.
The location's on the last mile, if you will. But we've shined a bloodlight on recruiting.
And as a result, it's paid dividends. And we'll be able to bring you here stories around shortage of people in the trades.
And while that's true, they're working for somebody. We just got to get them working for us.
And so that's been another big focus. So we own that area of HR and benefits and stuff like that.
We're self-insured around health and 401k and handbooks and some of that sort of stuff. It's really those five enablers and then those details underneath those five areas.
Outside of that, we let the businesses run.

You know, the only problem, and tell me, I'm sure you ran into this,

but if you've got different pay grades per market,

do you guys ever let a Parker and Sons move to Atlanta and vice versa for a change?

Because then you're like, oh, well, now you're going to make less because we pay different here. To me, it seems like you've taken a lot of stuff in-house and you almost want them growing into the whole company.
Now, I know that there's some pros and cons and we could do a whole SWOT analysis on this, but what do you do with that circumstance? Every market's different. The cost of living is different in California.
It's obviously probably the highest in the country. And what folks make in LA is probably different from what they make in Sarasota, Florida.
Benefits are the same. 401k is the same.
Health's the same. The pay grade may be slightly different.
So to answer the question, yes, you can transfer within one company. So we encourage that.
Obviously, we we want folks to stay and if they want to relocate great come on and keep your tenure and everything you know whether they're making 20 an hour or 24 an hour you just you work through it it doesn't happen that often where it creates a big issue but the fact is pager i mean it's not going to be exactly the same because market dynamics, the cost of living varies from state to state, market to market.

It just does.

So, you know, when I think about the godfathers and I'm switching up a little bit, but that's a great answer.

And that's absolutely true.

I just I've got so much to ask.

So I'm just going to keep firing questions at you.

HVAC spells wealth, Ron.

He was really doing different things in the 60s and 70s. Is that somebody you've spent time with? Tommy, I missed the name.
Whose name? Ron HVAC Spells Wealth. Ron Smith? Yeah, Ron Smith.
Roswell, Atlanta guy. I love Ron Smith.
You know, I've worked with Ron a little bit.

He owned a business called Service America down in, there was another name for it, down

in Southwest Florida.

I want to say Naples, Fort Myers area.

Yeah, it was.

Yeah.

And one of the first companies I worked for when I moved from the Northeast to Florida

in the 80s, we were all by business. We were a sister company of Roto-Rooter.
Everybody knows who Roto-Rooter is. And we were changing our name.
And we hired Ron. And we actually bought the name Service America from Ron.
Because we were going national. We couldn't protect the name we had at the time.
In all states, in Service America, we could. And then we also have we were a service contract business we sold service contracts to folks on fixed incomes but retirees that had relocated primarily from north to florida and we sold these fully insured if you will service contracts but we wanted to get into the retail space so we found out there wasn't a ton of money in just selling the insurance piece and doing all the work.
And so we hired Ron to help launch us into retail sales. We worked with Ron and his daughter.
I can't recall his daughter's name now, who worked for him for a long time. In fact, she's now involved, I think, with CAG, Conditioning Hair Association of Georgia.
Her name escapes me, darn it. But Ron was big, and it's a big thing for me, and for Wrench.
Ron was big into service agreements or maintenance plans. And that's a big part of Wrench's business.
And I think it's single-handedly the most important thing you can do if you're in a business that you can lock people in, make the relationship sticky, build a fence around their home. It's great for the customer, but it's also great for the company and it keeps your techs working year round.
So we learned a lot about the importance of maintenance from Ron. And frankly, when you look at lifetime value of a maintenance agreement customer versus a non, because we love relational versus transactional, right? The difference in lifetime value is incredible.
And so it's a big part of a business, keeps our techs working when our competitors are unable to, because it's a shoulder month and it's slow and there's no demand for HVAC specifically. So we learned a lot from Ron on maintenance.
And Ron's got a whole book on maintenance agreements. Right.
And so we learned a lot from mine. I like Ron Smith quite a bit.
He's a legend. A lot of people came out of the Jim Abram days, even Alan Rohr.
I mean, really there's so much that got built off of that. And then, you know, right around the same time, Frank Blau and George Brazil were working on Nextar.

There's a lot there, but I'm just curious.

And I know you're not going to belittle anybody, but just what is your take?

You said some stuff have gone south in the past, but like Nextar is amazing for a lot of people.

But what is your take?

I asked you two questions in once.

Well, really, what was one hour air Benjamin Franklin and Mr. Sparky and then the Nextars of the world?

Well, really, what was one hour air Benjamin Franklin and Mr. Sparky and then the next stars of the world? Well, I think one hour was an operator for the most part.
Right. I mean, you know, a lot of these, you know, contractor 2000 became next star.
You've got the other one airtime 500. I don't know much about them.
Honestly, I think next star is phenomenal. We all go on the next star.
We've got some really big bits. And we don't require or shove it down our location heads' throats to participate.
Frankly, Parker & Sons is a giant in Phoenix. I don't know that they're going to benefit a lot from a Nextstar, but we have lots of companies that benefit and participate in some of the training.
They do a great job. They churn incredible businesses.
They provide fantastic support. They help a lot of folks get from startup all the way to 20, 30 million plus.
Morris Jenkins, for example, in Charlotte, arguably one of the best operated HVAC companies in America, part of the W group, belonged to Nextar back in the day and

learned a lot, adopted a lot of their systems and tools and processes. But I think you do get to a

point when you get to a certain size, you may outgrow it. That said, if you're a business that's

50 million-ish, maybe even a little more and less, you should belong. So I'm a big proponent

of what Julian Scab and his team are doing at Next nextar they're trying to figure out how to deal with the whole private equity in the space stuff that they will i'm confident they will and again i don't know much about airtime i know frank blau but never met may have met frank once 20 years ago but look i think they all have their place they all have memberships they. They offer good tools and programs, but it's like anything else.
You go to these meetings and you take a lot of notes and you get really excited. Then you come home and you don't execute.
So if you can't execute on this stuff, what's the point? And I think it's probably a frustration from a lot of these affinity groups that teach this stuff and then, all's, we got to get it implemented. And that's where people struggle is in the implementation.
Yeah. Julian does a fantastic job.
I admire him very, very much. And he's always been a great friend of mine and he definitely deserves a thousand shout outs because he's doing an amazing work there in Minnesota.
And he comes from Atlanta, you know, he's got a great story. Right down the street from where I sit right now.
You brought up Morris Jenkins. And I'm curious, I never got an opportunity to meet those guys.
And I've heard amazing things. What is your take on Roy Williams? You know, I know Roy.
I like Roy. I started working with Roy.
I never hired Roy to help me when I owned Cool Ray. But a good friend of mine who also works for one of the big 50,000 watt sticks here in Atlanta radio station, AM Talk.
You know, we did a lot of radio. I think Cool Ray still does a fair amount of radio.
So I'm a fan of spoken word versus music because I think people are listening when it's spoken

word versus listening to music and dial hopping. But he ended up helping me out a lot in marketing.
And he knew Roy Williams. And so I went to some of the early on Roy, you know, trying to think of Wizard of Ads.
And there's a handful of courses I did out in Austin. This is before Roy, you ever been to Roy's place? Oh yeah.
Yeah. This is before he had the big compound, you know, with the whole people get married on top of the hill.
And this is when he was in a different place and man, you go in and it's eight o'clock in the morning and the wine is chilled, the beer is chilled, the music's blasting. And he's an amazing guy.
He's amazing guy he's very very smart all left brain right brain and he wanted to work with us but i i just my style of marketing was different than what he was selling i just couldn't get there but that said i think i learned a lot from from some of his courses i don't think he teaches much these days uh he's got folks that do it but yeah yeah, so look, I respect Roy. Obviously, he did a great job from Morris Jenkins over the years building, helped to build that brand with Dewey and all the advertisements.
So this is a tough question. And I know you're not probably prepared because you've got a lot of mentors and people you look up to.
One of mine is Al Levy. He came in and helped me out a lot, the seven power contractor.
But I love Jack Welch, built to last, does not build a company that falls apart when you leave, which you discussed. But is there people that have really worked that you look up to with personal relationships that they've left a big impact and created a catalyst for you

to grow yeah so i wasn't expecting that question so a good one you know i'll give you the person i think has made the biggest difference in my life and it's it'll sound cliche it's my father i mean i think i don't have anyone in business i mean obviously i follow a lot of these guys you mentioned a couple of names but really it's it's my mother and father really in what they instilled in me in terms of work ethic uh and how to act and the kind of person that i hope i've become and it transcends into business that i think has really helped me be successful uh i've had some good mentors too i mean look i've i work for companies a guy named pat johnson who's a ceo the old ceo of a blue dot services that took that took a chance on me back in the day, but he probably shouldn't have in terms of my experience and the role he gave me. But I've worked with some really smart people, and I listen.
And I think that's a trait that leaders need to have. If you want to be a good leader, listening to people.
But I think it would be my parents, really, that I would look to. I look at my father, who never missed a day of work in 20-something years, traveling on a railroad an hour and a half every day up at 4.30 in the morning, traveling into New York City for a mundane job, and never missed a day.
And I had the same job for all that time. I mean, that's incredible.
Yeah. I mean, it's unheard of today.
Who does that? So, yeah, that's probably who I would. That's a great, great answer for that.
I really appreciate that. And I think my dad gave me the inspiration.
My mom gave me the love to always have my back. Even when days weren't going so good, her love and care.
You know, it's great. Sometimes some people don't mention them and it's important.
You talked about something I'm very interested in. And by the way, I know I sent you a lot of questions.
Those were if I didn't have plan B, but for you, I can bet you I could talk for hours. So talk to me about commercial new construction, Home Depot, and then retail retro space because i think there's still a lot of people that listen and tune into the podcast that are like you can make a lot of money in new construction and then i look at their books we focus on their ebda ebda whatever that million people call it different things i'm like you're really not making money and i think there's some

ways to make money or you're running home warranty calls or whatever it might be but you took a

a new construction company and shifted it explain the concepts and how to really let people

understand that concept yeah well the two businesses are very very very different and

prior to having the opportunity by cool ray i was a regional vice president of operations

Thank you. Well, the two businesses are very, very, very different.
And prior to having the opportunity to buy Cool Ray, I was regional vice president of operations. And we had a lot of new construction companies in my region.
And what I discovered early on is it's hard to do both really well. If you're really good at new construction, and that's your thing, and that's your focus, then it could be okay.
And you can make money. You're not going to have great margins and you're probably always going to be dealing with bad debt and cash flow issues because your money's tied up with builders and they're in your pockets all the time on chargebacks.
And so it's a very frustrating business. But also, I think it takes more people.
It's a little more labor intensive. But it's hard to have a business, I found, and I've witnessed and seen, it's hard to have both under the same roof.
It's hard to be a leader and say, they'd be really good at new construction and then having a retail division focused on break, fix, service, maintenance, repairs, install, all three trades, related services, maybe even garage. I mean, it's just hard to do.
And it's a different mindset. And so I haven't seen, with the exception of maybe one or two, I haven't seen a lot very, not that it can't be successful, but I just haven't seen a lot.
For me, we don't have any new construction at the Wrench Group, all. We're 99.9% single family homeowner business.
And so a little bit of commercial, which I'm not opposed to, not big, heavy stuff, chillers and all that. It's just not our thing.
I'm not good at it. But I haven't seen a lot to be very successful.
So because the margins are subpar in my mind, we've made a decision. You're tied more to the economy.
Obviously, when the economy is bad, there's less home starts. So people are buying less.
So you are tied, kind of like home improvement. You're tied to the ups and downs, those cycles.
In some other spaces like plumbing, we love to say toilets break during

recession. HVAC units break during recessions.
Waterhairs break during recessions. Garage doors break during recessions.
Gabula gets your car in and out. Gabula, you need air conditioning, you need heat.
And so not that we're recession proof, but we are certainly recession resistant. new homes are not right and so it's more risk and i don't like the risk and so we've made a decision you know strategic decision to not do new construction now will that change someday if i run across a business that has really gotten figured out and managed and structured in such a way where we can kind of separate it never say say never.
You never know. But that's kind of my spin on new construction.
And I don't like bad debt. I don't like having a bill.
I love COD getting paid the same day. From a cash flow standpoint, it's better for business.
You know, all the reasons. So that's my spin on or take on RNC.

With respect to what we call retail, which is Home Depots and Costco's of the world,

Lowe's of the world, again, we're very strategic there.

We like the space, but we like it a certain way.

It can only be a certain size relative to the total.

It won't be where it's 30%, 40%, 50% customer is massive and and which which poses a lot of risk if they fall out of bed and lose that business but that'll never happen sort of like an ars where they've over the years it's just become this monster to me that's risk i don't want to take so it's got to be a certain amount no more than a certain amount of our sales. One customer, no more than a certain percent.
And then in total, amongst a set of customers, no more than a little bit more than that. So that's number one.
Number two, it has to stand on its own two feet. There's a term in that business called flipping sales, which companies that participate in the program will take their own sales and they'll give them to one of the retail stores so they can hit their numbers.
I said, look, we're not going to do that. That's just, if we can't figure out a way to make the program work, we can't get our close rates up.
We can't get our average orders up. We can't make it where it stands on its own two feet.
Then we're not going to do it. We figured out how to make it work.
And it's become a good part business. Home Depot and Costco are two great partners of us.
We love working with them. We have a great relationship.
We use it also to expand into new markets as part of our Greenfield initiative. And that's worked well.
It gives us an instant jumpstart in markets where we're starting from scratch with no brand at all. So we love the relationship.
I'm hopeful that it will continue on. But it is strategic in how we think about those partnerships.
So I'm not going to ask you for the secret sauce when it comes to those box store agreements. But here's a question.
And I think it's a little bit different in garage doors, but we have stickers, big ones on your garage,

big ones on your opener, hopefully on the wall.

And those are impressions you're seeing every day.

And I know some new construction companies

that get 70 calls a day, but they don't want to run them.

They're like, because they're not good at retail.

I think there's a real big opportunity there

of somebody that's generating 50,

they've been there 40 years,

they got stickers on every door, they hate retail. There's an opportunity to work with those companies.
Now, do you want to take on the new construction? Maybe not. I think if you get them on a service Titan and show them they're running around in circles for no money and they didn't realize it and you get them on intact and you point out you're actually losing money, you just didn't have the accounting figured out.
It's not really a hard decision. And I'm not trying to convince you.
I'm just wondering if you have any insights, if someone's getting 70 calls a day without Google. Well, look, it's interesting.
In fact, if you're going to make a decision to do new construction and retail, the biggest decision point in that would be, in my mind, you just said it, is the fact that you get access to all these future customers. That's the one thing that these businesses don't do well.
So the whole reason for doing new construction, because you're sacrificing margins, but you're building this big database of future homeowners that are going to buy from you right now there's rules around you can't just sticker at least back in the day i don't it may have changed but a lot of the builders don't allow you to sticker up their home if you will until the home sells and it's out of warranty then you can reach back out to them but certainly if you had the ability to sticker the house up, it was obvious who installed the garage doors. It's obvious who installed the HVAC system.
They're looking at the system. It's got the big old sticker on it.
And then market to them as well. That's a tremendous benefit and reason you may want to do new construction.
But it's the one thing that these operators did not do well. And it's the biggest reason you would be in this space.
be in the space. Times have changed a little bit from the 90s and 2000s, but that said, you're right.
It's a captive audience, per se. If you can get in there early enough and start doing maintenance, there's certainly maintenance that needs to be done on garage doors.
I'm assuming you guys sell maintenance plans. If not, you ought to.
I'm sure you're all over that.

But you want the relationship sticky.

You don't want them to forget

who their garage door

company is.

Same with us. I would agree with you.

That's the one reason that you may want to do

new construction. To me, there's so many other

opportunities on the retail

space. I'm just not sure

that it's necessary. All the other cons that go with it.
We're not where you guys are, but we sold 2,400 service agreements last month, which I'm pretty proud of because we sold about 100 in February. It's what's measured gets managed.
It's one of those things where you've got to instill this into their scorecard. And you've got to constantly be coaching on these things.
It's not like you just say, hey, we're starting a service agreement. Go sell it.
Or go recruit people. It's you've got to slowly and continuously.
You've got to drive it. You've got to drive it every day.
You've got to do anything else. You've got to drive it every day.
People need to understand the vision and the plan. And you've got to shine a light on it.
you got to drive it. You got to drive it every day.
You got to like anything else. You got to drive it every day.

People need to understand the vision and the plan.

And you got to shine a light on it.

You got to measure it.

You got to provide feedback.

You need to have a goal.

Maybe it's the goal.

Maybe it's 30,000 by 2025.

Get it up on a banner.

Get it in front of folks.

Make it everyone's job to do it.

And drive it like anything else. And it's amazing how things get done when you do that versus the alternative hoping that it just happens on its own let me ask you another question so i was with two coaches of the cardinals last night we got an opportunity to go to a q a and it's pretty enlightening because these guys say as much happens on the field those three hours we're working 18 hours a day six days a week off the field and the way that i relate that to home services i just spent three and a half hours i do a special presentation an orientation with the new guys there's 24 of them this month and i take them through everything I've learned and why we do things a certain way.
But that's what I call practicing off the field. I don't want people learning to do garage doors in customers' houses.
And so when I used to play football, we did two a days. We'd practice twice a day to play one game a week.
And some days those were on weekends. And I think that whole concept of home service, here's a wrench, follow me for two weeks and you'll be good.
We do two months of training before you're even, and then we do polishing for another two weeks. So you're almost a quarter of your life.
And then there's ride-alongs coming back to Phoenix, retraining, training the trainer, constant, constant, constant, an investment into the people. What is your take on that? I mean, I think it's great.
I mean, you have to do that. People need to understand the direction, the plan.
They also need the tools. It's all about, we like to say, it's all about the man, not the land, right? Or woman, but in this case, in an all-inclusive sense, it's amazing how many folks go through business.
They don't write down a business plan. They don't really have any personal goals.
And as a result, folks in the direction, it's just kind of operating without this roadmap. Nobody really knows what's, we just kind of, maybe you get lucky every now and then, but in the end, you're not going to get to where you want to, you want to get, but you got to communicate that strategy as well.
People need to know where the company's going. And so you have to invest in that.
I mean, it's great that you do that, but that message has to make its way. And it's tough.
We've got over 6,000 employees. I can't possibly get in front of everyone.
It's just not humanly possible as much as I would love to. So we have to find ways to do it differently, get the message to locations who then can take that message down all the way down the rank and file to make sure that we're all pulling the cart in the same direction.
Not easy. It's tough to do.
And it's, you know, it's a tough job and it's a stressful job, but you have to do that. And football teams, I mean, look, there's great sports analogies that transcend the business.
I mean, it's amazing how many successful sports people come out of sports and help and talk and speak in front of business leaders. Because, I mean, it's all the same in the end.
You know, I'm working on a book called Elevate, Build a Business Which Everybody Could Win. And the main focus is as much as I could tell people we're going to hit 200 million, whatever, they don't give two shits.
It's what's in it for me. So what you just said is perfect because it goes right into what I like to work on with the company is, wait a minute, you could have all these KPIs, conversion rate tracking, service agreements, service to sales.
But what if we worked, you said you meet all these business owners, but what if we worked with each and every technician, CSR dispatch or warehouse manager and said, I love performance Bay, right? So what are your goals this year? And I'm going to dare you to dream a little bit bigger. What do you want out of life? What are your dreams? What are your aspirations? Do you want to go to Disneyland? What do you want to do with your family? Do you want to own a home? And then from there, let's figure out what needs to happen.
Not this year, not this quarter, but this month, this week, today. And let's work in reverse order because now when I'm talking to you, I can say, Ken, you came to me and we worked on a personal budget.
We told you what needed to happen. And I'm willing to get you all the help in the world.
All you got to do is ask. And we're going to have one-on-ones and I'm going to try to make you the best version of yourself.
and what's in it for you now? You told me you wanted to take your dad on this fishing trip. You told me you wanted to own a home.

You told me you wanted to take your dad on this fishing trip.

You told me you wanted to own a home.

You told me you wanted to get her out of credit card debt.

And I feel like it's our obligation to help them dream a little bigger, but to tell them what needs to happen at work to make those dreams come true.

And when they see what's in it for them, it's amazing how things can change.

I think you're spot on.

And I think it's awesome that you do that.

I do the same thing with my son.

My son's 20 years old.

He's in college and smart kid,

but he,

you know,

he's a big dreamer,

but nothing's written down.

He's got some things in his head.

I'm trying to get him to understand,

write it down.

So with him,

and it's not even next year,

it's this month.

I'm going to read this book.

This will be younger, right? So it doesn't have all the life experience that folks that are working for us may have. But, you know, for him, it's write it down and then tape it to the mirror in your bathroom and look at it every single day.
Every time you walk in there, brush your teeth, take a shower, whatever, look at it. Remind yourself of what that goal is.
That, you know, that's the 15th. I didn't start that book.
Or I want to do whatever, whatever it is. And so rather than have those goals too far out, which are sometimes hard for people to grasp, break it down into shorter timeframes where it's just easier to grasp it.
And so, but I think it's the same. I mean, for the tech, maybe a motorcycle.

I want a motorcycle next year. Well, let me show you how you can do it and lay it out.
It's amazing how many people do not write their goals down or business owners that don't write down their business plan and involve others in the organization to help get there. well having a budget and then having a budget that you could actually hit, we're within like 3% of our budget.
I mean, now that doesn't include changes when you do M&A because you got to add their EBITDA into it. But yeah, I think that's so important.
The number one reason why companies fail is they don't know how to budget properly, write down goals, and understand how to use data. It's so funny.
We bought a company a little over a year ago. And when we got them on service site and they self-corrected almost overnight, they were like, holy crap, we didn't know this dispatcher was this bad.
We need to retrain. They didn't know that this tech had this bad of conversion rate.
They didn't understand. So when they realized the data that was accurate, because we've got a data integrity team, it's amazing how are like whoa or if you show them in numbers we built out a calculator for the technicians that they plug in all their stuff and it goes here's how much you can make a week but it's great to see a year and a quarter and a month but it's great to see a week and to say if we moved you from here to here this is what would happen so this is what's in in it for you.
And what I figured out, Ken, is if their dreams come true, so do ours. So do our budget.
So do everything. And there's a reason for everybody to win.
And I wanted to, what do you feel about equity incentive programs? I love them. You do it here to an extent.
You know, with 6,000 employees, it's difficult. But it's, you know, it's a thing that I think is gaining steam.
And, you know, private equity, one of the things that private equity has brought to the home services space, other spaces as well, is the ability to do that in a way that would be very difficult for you and I to do it as an individual business owner, because it creates tax implications for folks. It's just hard to give equity without it creating taxable challenges for the folks on the other end.
And so private equity is through profits, interests, profits units, has this mechanism to be able to do that. And I think it's great.
I wish we could have at the beginning. It's tough for us now with our size, but I wish at the beginning that we would have started this in a way that we could really have reached almost everyone in the organization to give everyone some equity.
Because I think, I do think that's a game changer. People want to have skin in the game.
They want to work for a cause. They want to have skin in the game.
They want to be aligned. They want to have opportunity.
It's something I think over time, over the next five to 10 years, you're going to hear more and more about, led by primarily the private equity space. We do that today, but it doesn't go that deep or deep enough, perhaps.
But I think it's important. I think it's great for business.
It certainly helps your retention. It's an incentive for people to stay long-term, hang their hat, and do the tough things, right? I mean, business is hard.
We make tough decisions every day. It's not easy.
And getting people to buy in to some of the things that you want to do, we all want to do as leaders and owners, that buy-in is tough. So I like it.
I love it. So one of the guys had mentioned in the chat over here is that he says that the PE companies and the roll-ups, they're making it impossible to compete.
Now, I was the guy in a truck running all the calls. So I understand what it's like.
Luckily, I got in in the early 2000s. But now that we're big data, we understand insights.
But we have company. Literally, I have 10 full-time recruiters, 10 full-time trainers.
We've got a special relationship with Dodge, with the Sprinter, ProMasters. We worked really hard to build this up into a real company.
And I'm not going to belittle anybody and say the guy selling fruit on the corner is not a real business. But the problem is if he doesn't show up, the business doesn't run.
So I always ask people, is that something to where you really feel like you're best off competing? When you go to sleep at night, are you still making money? Because I promised you, if me and you were to go to Hawaii for a month, my company would not skip a beat. Hopefully some of them would miss me, but some of them wouldn't, I promise you.
But ultimately, what do you say to somebody that says, man, these guys are impossible to compete with. They're buying, we can't outbid them in pay-per-click.
I think there's something to be said about creating relationships. It's David and Goliath, or David still won that battle against Goliath.
So ultimately, what do you say to somebody that's saying, yeah, Ken sounds great and all, but he's putting us out of business? Yeah. Well, you know, rising tides rise all boats.
And I think, I don't know about the overhead door space, right? The garage space. I will tell you, and I don't know how big, Tommy, you can tell me how big is the space nationally for overhead? I'm not happy with the study we did, but it's between $14 billion and $15 billion, just residential retro.
Massive. HVAC plumbing and electrical is about $130 billion.
Private equity owns less than 10% of it. So our space, the home service space, the ones that we operate in, sure, private equity has acquired a lot of companies, but they're still relatively small.
It's still a mom-and-pop space and it's always going to be largely a mom-and-pop space especially spaces that that have a lower barrier of entry that it's easier to get in get started get wrong then take the kind of capital maybe some investment and then some real grind but there's no question that that I think, but I think it's good for us, all of us, because they want to grow. They want to professionalize it.
It's been largely an unprofessionalized, undercapitalized business for a long time. I think they're shining a light on that.
And I think ultimately, it will help, right? Maybe they are driving up cost per pay per click. They certainly have deeper pockets, be able to spend money.
I just think it's going to create the need for you to get better for your asker. I mean, your audience.
I mean, focus on things you haven't focused on. Deliver better customer service.
You can do that. Be smart about how you go about business.
Hire better people. Work on retention, things that you can build capacity to be able to get out to people quicker when other mom and pops can.

So I think there's ways for you to compete.

I hear what you're saying, though, but I do think it will rise all boats.

And over time, the space is always going to be dominated by the independently owned and opera.

It's just so big with so much white space that it's just massive. I wouldn't be too concerned about it.
Yeah. I think that's, it's great.
You can focus on other things like relationships and affiliate marketing with the people, you know, and I can't go to a B and I meeting right now. I don't have the time.
So there's a lot of opportunities that are more deeper and greater to the community. You know, I used to hate the word corporate when I was young because to me it meant coffee drinking, slow moving.
And now there's a word for me that everybody says, Tommy's very entrepreneurial. And what I take by that, sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, is I like to get things moving.
Now, maybe they're not as thought out. We fall down a little bit along the way.
But I don't like to go to a committee and say, hey, guys, maybe next week we could talk about an idea and get it done in a month. I don't like the idea of slowing down.
So now I take entrepreneurial as a really good thing. But I'm just curious, because corporate to me is like, you're kissing your boss's ass.
You're trying to move to that next level. All of a sudden, there's rumors.
I just want to be more family oriented. And if that's, call me small business, call me entrepreneurial, what does that mean to you? Well, I don't like the word corporate either.
I mean, as it relates to, you know, our structure wrenches the parent, if you will, and that's corporate. But I don't like big, slow, bureaucratic organizations, and we're not that.
And so we work really hard to not be that. I mean, sometimes you get caught sometimes and things slow down and some bottleneck.
But we're very, very careful to not create that environment for all of our ranch locations and partners. I'm not going to say it never happens, but we really, you know, if you think about our size and how many people we have supporting locations, it's small.
We only have, we'll have 60 this year in the business that'll do 1.4, 1.5 billion. That's not a big overhead.
Think about it. So we try to focus on things that make sense, that we can't do it better and more efficiently.
Assuming it doesn't change culture, we don't do it. We just don't do it.
But we're not this big bureaucratic corporate machine. But I think at the location level, maybe moving to the location level, I think the same thing.
People want to work for a cause. They want to work for a leader they can get behind.
They want someone who is a great listener, who's appreciative, who has humility. Here's a term for your folks.
I forget where I heard this, but be interested, not interesting. I don't know if you've ever heard that, Tommy.
Yeah, I did. I like that.
Isn't that great? Again, I tell my son that all the time. My son wants to be the life of the party.
It's like, you know what? Actually take a minute to slow down and listen to other people. It's not about you.
Not about you. Be interested, not interesting.
And so that's how I've always run my business prior to Ranch when I owned Cool Ray. And that was a big part of the culture.
And then, you know, servant leadership, you're here for people and you build trust. That's really been my philosophy.
And it's been pragmatic in that two things always come first, our team and our customer. So everything we do is grounded in those two things.
And so every decision we make, how does it impact the customer and how does it impact our employees? And if it doesn't impact them both in the right way, you don't do it. And that's really been my, I'm going to break it down, easy.
That's really how I've operated my business and now corporate as well. You know, I have a philosophy in the new book that says when you build a company that everybody wins.
So I work on OKRs for the vendors. What's your one year goal? What's your three year goal? How do I help you get there? What markets aren't doing well that I could go into that you could help me out? How could we get my guys loaded out quicker? But what do you need? My internal customers got to win first because if they're happy, my customers will then be happy.
The partnerships all got to work and they got to win when we go in and consolidate. My favorite word in the world, and I thought this was like cheating.
I thought this couldn't exist. I learned learned it a long time ago.
It's the word arbitrage. And the way I learned it is these clipper ships in the 1860s.
They used to go from New York to San Francisco. And they could get there in three days, the fastest ships on the sea.
And they'd buy something for 10 cents and sell it for a dollar. Because in San Francisco during the gold rush, you needed tennis shoes, you needed supplies.
And so that's arbitrage. When you buy in a market and sell it in a dollar because in san francisco during the gold rush you needed tennis shoes you

needed supplies and so so that's arbitrage when you buy in a market and sell it in a different

market it's arbitrage and what gives companies value is there's certain thresholds you hit

that you figured out systematic approaches to to getting an outcome you want okay our outcome

a key result and the systems are starting to run the company michael gerber the e-myth revisited

Thank you. approaches to getting an outcome you want.
Okay. Our outcome, a key result.
And the systems are starting to run the company. Michael Gerber, the E-Myth Revisited.
What is arbitrage to you and how important is it? Do you love the word like I do? Oh, I love it. Oh, you knew that already.
I mean, look, that's really what we're doing. That's how private equity makes money and everyone else who's coming along for the ride makes money.
It's through arbitrage. And so how do we leverage? How do we buy it? To your example, it's spot on.
How do you buy something for a dollar and sell it for 10? That's the arbitrage, right? And so we're trying to build a business and we're buying companies along the way, right? At X multiples and at X dollars, we've got to continue to grow them. And organically is the best.
Here's the deal. If you want arbitrage, big secret, don't tell anyone, I told you this.
Grow organically. Well, the rule of seven, if you grow 10% a year, seven years in a row, you just grew 100%.
percent. And guess what? And you didn't spend, you know, 15 times somebody's earnings to buy them, which now you got to sell at 20 to get some arbitrage, right? Or on the multiple.
And so grow organically, invest in ways to grow your business organically. And then everything else, M&A is icing on the cake, right?

Find great partners, great markets.

I already have to repeat myself, but great companies, great leaders, great markets, great cultures, and stretch for them.

And then help them grow and make them even bigger and bigger.

You know, we partnered with Parker in 2015.

Parker was around, gosh, I want to say 80 million, 75 million in sales, maybe 200 million this year. That's all organic.
I'm not even including the couple of deals we did that are growing like crazy as well with the Greenfield in Tucson. That's just Parker and Sons.
So think of that overtrust. That's all organic growth.
That's where it's at. And that's why we're focused on all the things that was enabled, as I mentioned, we'll focus on things that help organically grow the business and get some leverage on the bottom line.
Just get a little better every day and add just a little more leverage. And that's how you get it.
I've always looked up to Paul. He's always been in my backyard.
I've been watching these guys at the 16th hole and the waste management.

And Josh has always been.

I'm sure that was pretty, pretty.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, Paul and I get along great.

He's just, he's probably one of the best operators out there. I mean, there's Geiger, you know, there's you, there's Canada's Goodrich, there's lots of great operators.
But Paul, what would you have to say? Because he's the biggest wing of Ranch Group, the one thing, you know, Phoenix and Tucson now. What would you say if you had to give me a few qualities that you see in him? Well, I know Paul for a long time.
We go, we go way back. Paul grew up in the Roto-R i mentioned rota root of that i was part of that as well so we go back 30 years and so i've known him a long time i can tell you all the bad qualities too but you don't want those paul's a good and look one of the smartest things that he did over the last several years is hire a guy named daryl bingham and daryl has been running

that business really for a long time paul's been involved paul's kind of taken more of a regional approach but daryl's been really turning the dials and pulling the levers paul's been a part of it paul's passion is marketing so no surprise that his son josh has got it into marketing as well and so that's his passion really growing businesses and and the marketing. He wrote a little book called Ta-Dah, right? I don't know if you saw it.
Yeah. A lot of his marketing tricks in that book.
But he was also smart to understand that you've got to get the right people in the business alongside you. And so outside of marketing, that's what he did.
And Daryl's the operator. That's the glue in that business.
And a huge supporting cast as well. Good operators beneath him that have gotten that business where it is today.
So Paul's passion is marketing. That's really, if he was here, that's what he would tell you.
Yeah. And that's usually great founders are great marketers and they're good at sales.
Last closeout questions here. I do this with everybody is if someone wants to reach out to you, I know you're a busy man.
Is it LinkedIn a good source? Where's the best way to reach out? Yeah, you can give me a LinkedIn or you can shoot me an email at khanes at wrenchgroup.com. And I'll get back to folks.
Happy to take questions offline. I know that you're familiar with some of the books I am, like E-Myth.
And what I found is being around successful people, being on podcasts with a guy like you, reading books, readers are leaders. Is there any books that you recommend? Some of them, Napoleon Hill, and then they ask you answers, my favorite book is Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Is there anything that you'd recommend for reading? I've read that one, read all of his books, and did a lot of his workshops where you got to get up. I mean, talk about being young and getting up in front of a group at a Dale Carnegie meeting and having to speak, you know, when you're 20, 22, you love to speak.
So for you, it's probably super natural. But, you know, it's funny, full disclosure, so growing up, I can never sit still long enough to read a book.
I started reading a little bit later in life, but a couple of books that I, for those that, you know, really want to figure out strategy and put together a plan, one of the best books

that I read was called Strategy, Pure and Simple 2.

It's how winning companies dominate their competition.

I think it's by a guy named Mike Roberts.

My boss gave me that book back in 1997 to read.

Out of it came a template. One, get the impetus to do it, right? It's hard work and how to involve your team and do it.
But from that, a template that was born, how to put together a real strategic operating plan for your business. So that's the one I would recommend.
The other one is, I like leadership books. I mean, one of my favorites, probably a guy named Rick Pitino, a great, you know, he's the first coach, you know, to bring three different teams to the final four.
Super highly successful guy that doesn't take shortcuts. The book is around how to build an inspiring organization, right? Basketball for him, business for us.
And so that's a book. It's called Success is a Choice, I believe, if I remember.
Good to Great is another great book for those starting a business to really understand how to operate and think about things in terms of people. So Good to Great, Rick Pitino, Success is a Choice, and then Strategy, Pure and Simple would be the three.
And then Dale Carnegie books are great. Those are great quick reads, but know i should probably read more it's just that uh you know i'm old now i'm in bed by eight o'clock i pick up a book and i fall asleep so it's uh you know leland mentioned a book at rhino x which i wanted to speak real quick about but he mentioned bob pfeiffer how to double your business in six months or less and it was a book written in the 90s.
And it really is about getting controls of the money. Because I think the financing side of things and knowing when to grow and when to not grow and understanding that some people in your organization will spend your money quicker than you could make it.
So understanding where the money's going. But you've got Rhino X coming up.
I love Chris Shano. Great guy.
You're going to be there with a lot of very successful. Yeah.
I miss it last year. It was my wife that booked a vacation out of the country.
So I'm looking forward. I did it the first year.
I'm looking forward to getting back. Yeah.
I like Chris and he's doing a great job and that'll be a lot of. Well, hopefully, I'm pretty sure I'm invited.
So I enjoy watching you guys, just some of the leaders of the... I love the fact that I could take what you guys have done, and anybody...
My podcast is to all home services. The success leaves clues.
And if you can take what HVAC has done, HVAC has always been the leader. Lots of brilliant people in HVAC.
It could be applied to other industries. And I just love that concept.
You know, if you think about it, you break it down, it's not unlike what we do, Wrench, and how we're built, where it's a lot of collaboration. You know, we've got some of the best businesses in the business, and we're learning from one another, right? Versus jamming it down your throat.
And there's more than one best practice. There's lots of best practices can be born on a subject.
So that's great. I appreciate what you're doing and keep it up and keep it cranking.
Well, here's the last question, Ken. We talked about a lot of stuff.
I have a little bit of ADHD, but I had a lot of questions in mind. So I try to stay in home service.
We talked about arbitrage, an equity incentive program, everything from setting up a business for success, commercial versus residential versus box stores. There might be something we didn't talk about or just a final thought to leave the audience with.
And this is where I turn it over to you to just leave the final thought to the audience. This has been amazing.
You're amazing for taking the time to do this with me and the listeners. And I'm thankful for it.
So I'll let you close us out. No, I appreciate the kind words.
I guess, you know, for me, it's, you know, have a great story for those that are, whether you're just starting out in business and you've got a lot of runway to get to where you want to be, where you may consider selling it one day, and you all have a plan, succession plan to do that. Be thinking about that.
Always be thinking about that. But have a great story.
I mean, I love businesses that have track records of great revenue growth that are consistent over time, earning strong management teams, great cultures. They have a lot of fun.
They work hard. They play hard.
And again, people want to work for a cause. So what's your cause? Create a cause.
Maybe it's a charity. Maybe it's something that your organization is working towards.
So develop a cause, create a cause, get people rallied around that cause. You'd be surprised as to how great that is.
We do that on the local level versus driving it primarily from wrench group corporate because all the people are in the field, they're not here. And so it works for us.
And have fun. You got to have fun.
Business is tough. You go in frustrated.
It's sleepless nights, but it all pay off. And think about it in chunks.
I mean, for us, and for you, it should be just, how do I get just a little bit better? Paul Smith, our CEO, says this all the time. How do we get better, just a little bit better every day? Doesn't have to be hugely better, just a little bit better.
How do we continue to just get better every single day? That's all you need to do. And in the end, you look back and say, geez, I've gone from 5 million to 50 million.
And you'll be a dominant player in your market. So I guess that's it.
I hadn't thought about that. So I'd talk to Cuff, Tommy.
It's really great. It's great.
It's fascinating. I can't wait to see you.
It's in short order here. Thank you for your time again, Ken.
You're brilliant and your record shows it. And I just appreciate the fact you're a great dad and a great husband along the way.
So keep up the great work. I wish you all the best.
Can't wait to see you. And thanks for the time.
I appreciate it. Thanks, Tommy.
Thanks, my friend. We'll see you.
Appreciate it. Hey guys, I just wanted to thank you real quick for listening to the podcast.
From the bottom of my heart, it means a lot to me. And I hope you're getting as much as I am out of this podcast.
Our goal is to enrich your lives and enrich your businesses and your internal customers, which is your staff. And if you get a chance, please, please, please subscribe.
You're going to find out all the new podcasts. You're going to be able to ask me questions to ask the next guest coming on.
And do me a quick favor, leave a quick review. It really helps us out when you like the podcast and you leave a review, make it four or five sentences, tell us how we're doing.
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You get a ton of inside look at what we're going to do to become a billion dollar company. And we're just we're telling everybody our secrets, basically.
And people say, why do you give your secrets away all the time? And I'm like, you know, the hardest part about giving away my secrets is actually trying to get people to do them. So we also create a lot of accountability within this program.
So check it out. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club.
It's cheap. It's a

monthly payment. I'm not making any money on it to be completely frank with you guys, but I think it

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