Latest / Booked Out / LB Capital: Bill Rossell on Booking Rates, Roofing Roll-Ups, and Building a Business to Sell

Transcript

LB Capital: Bill Rossell on Booking Rates, Roofing Roll-Ups, and Building a Business to Sell · Booked Out

• speaker-0: Welcome back to the Booked Out Podcast. This is the podcast to help home service business owners with the scale with the blueprint to scale their businesses. Today we've got Bill Russell joining us from LB Capital and Build It to Sell It. They partner with founder run roofing and home service businesses to help them scale, build real enterprise value, and get ready to sell. His path started in the US Navy. Incredible. Thank you for your service, Bill. speaker-1: Appreciate that. speaker-0: Ran through yellow pages in digital marketing, including leading one SEO through a private equity exit. Yeah. And today he oversees a portfolio of now eighteen companies total. Seventeen roofing sixteen roofing businesses, Titan Pro, Build to Sell at LB Capital. We'll we'll hear more from Bill. But incredible portfolio. Bill's an incredible CEO. the LB Capital platform is doing more than a hundred and fifty million in sales. And Bill also helped scale Muns past twenty five million. these days he's also one of the hosts of the Build It to Sell It podcast himself. Welcome to the podcast, Bill. Grateful to have you on today. speaker-1: Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I'm excited. speaker-0: Tell us we had some awesome chats with the refer pro team here. Bill is Bill's a legend, huge mentor of mine and consider you a close friend, Bill, and have learned a lot from you over the next few years. Tell us, tell us your background. Where'd you come from? How'd you get into this? What are you seeing these days? What are your goals at LB Capital? Build it to sell it. speaker-1: so I'm originally and from Pittsburgh PA. grew up, went to college, as I told your your team, partied my way out of school. ended up joining the Navy. Was in the Navy for six years on nuclear powered submarines. spent spent some time Virginia Beach, Groton, Connecticut, Charleston, South Carolina. made six tours out of Holy Lock, Scotland. I was on a what was called a a boomer. We'd go out for three months, come back in for three months. and so a lot of learned a lot at a very young age about discipline and responsibility. I never looked at you know, while I was in the military, and in the military you have to be in a position for a certain period of time before you get to the next position. It's something I I really didn't like. so I got out after six years, went back to school at North Eastern, started working in a restaurant while I was going to school. ended up Ended up falling in love with the restaurant business. opened up a bunch of different locations around the country. I was kind of a traveling traveling GM to help different locations. So I got very, very early on a lot of guidance and directions for some great people about how to, you know, cause a restaurant, even though it's like three, four million dollar shop, you have so many different it's the only business in the world where you bring a raw product in, you produce it. sell it and give a customer experience in an hour. So yeah you learned a lot about that business and you know ended up in in the early two thousands getting out of the business which was a tough transition because you know people didn't want to give a thirty four year old guy a shot at at a sales career. and so I ended up getting a job selling print yellow pages. for for those that are that are on on your audience that or can remember that the dinosaur here. That's awesome. and then I met up with a guy named Lance, Lance Bachman. he he he he gave me some guidance and direction about like how to be involved in the sales call. I I had a I had a leader that that really didn't care for me. and she was making her mission to kind of get me out of the business. And so in those days, instead of having dashboards and you'd walk in and see where sales are and this, that, and the other thing, we had leaderboards that were hard printed and put out on the walls, most new sales, highest book of business, most cancels, most decrease, right? And there was one guy that was named and was consistently across the top. And that name was Lance Bachman. And so I would often think about, well, If he's doing it this way, why why can't I just go and see what he's doing and then I'll duplicate it? And so I asked him if I could go ride with him one day. And he said, yeah, be at my house tomorrow at five fifteen. I'm thinking five fifteen, who who we gonna see at five fifteen? But he said five fifteen and he said, This why wanted to bring. Bring me a large T two tea bags, cream and sugar from Dunkin' Donuts. I was like, That's a pretty specific order. So I got up at four thirty that morning. I told my I told my wife at the time I'm going to ride with this guy. He wants me to five fifteen. He must have a seven o'clock appointment somewhere. so I met I I drove to his house. I get there at five fifteen and now this is the days when you had a flip phone, you had to you had to press multiple like A A B B C C Yeah D D, whatever it might be. Okay, of texting. And so I sent I said, I'm here, right? Well that I got there at the five fifteen time. Well he didn't come out till seven fifteen. Right. And I was like, he gets in the car and I'm like, Like I'm texting him a multipl like I'm here. I'm here. And he came in, he got in the car. And and the first thing he did was he grabbed he grabbed the coffee or the tea, he took the tea, he read the label and he threw it out the window. And I'm like, Yo, dude, what what I I don't got two nickels to rub together right now and you're throwing this tea out. And he said, Well, the first thing I needed to do was to see if you could follow direction. And you got the T right. The second is I wanted to see what was your commitment to bettering yourself, regardless of what the instruction was. It's amazing. As stupid as it was, as stupid as it was, it was a good lesson for me to understand that when when you want something more than somebody else, they'll never be successful in where you go. And it's a lesson that I've r remembered for a long period of time. So We ended up ended up becoming pretty good friends and then he he said, I'm starting this new little venture called Yellowpages dot com. we went out and blew that up from about a hundred and fifty nine million in three years, had nineteen offices around the country. I was in charge of the East. There was another guy in charge of the West. Lance exited when his brother passed away, went and started one SCO, but I just wasn't in the position to to give up a quarter million dollar salary to go to be involved in a startup. Yeah. and take that kind of sacrifice. And he would always kind of recruit me and say, Hey, let's go let's go to lunch. Well, anybody knows Lance knows that he doesn't he doesn't ever go to lunch, he just works through lunch. and so one day he said, Hey, let's go look at my new office, which everybody knows Lance knows that he loves to to showcase the things that that are important to him. And so we went and saw the the office and I saw the vision of what he wanted to do with one SEO. And so we ended up taking that from and he was really successful at probably doing anywhere from five to six million in twenty fourteen in in digital marketing. It was a multimillionaire. and we grew it and then we ended up selling it to a a private equity company and and exit it. Went and spent some time working with Tommy Mello. and then, you know, the opportunity to come back and work with him as far as helping kind of build the platform that we have now, which you kinda illustrate in the intro, which is sixteen different roofing companies you know, across the nation from Fresno, where we got a Tuck in and Lee's, all the way to, you know, Tampa, to, you know, Iowa. We're all over the country. So we partner with companies, help give them the implementation to grow and to strategize to get better. And hopefully it's a situation we were looking individually at exiting the different businesses, but we made a strategic decision in our business to roll up into a platform called Exteriors. and it's gonna be a situation where we hope to be the largest roofing exit in the history of of roofing. You're well on your way there. We are doing well. We are doing well. speaker-0: If you haven't if you haven't seen or been a part of L B Capital and the Build It To Sell It Movements, shop tours, Masterminds, Winter Circle events, annual conference, let's plug that coming up in December, seventh through the ninth in Hollywood, Florida. speaker-1: Hollywood, Florida, the diplomats, seventh, eighth, and ninth. it got some great speakers. You're gonna be up you're gonna be up on the stage. I'll be there. Yeah. You'll be on the stage. I'll give for for those that know one the couple of different keynotes that we have, you know, we always look to say, hey, how can we step it up from last year, which last year was it was phenomenal. It was phenomenal. and Jesse Cole and Tim Tebow were our main keynotes besides obviously Lance and a couple of others. We have James Dumelin who if you don't see social media and know the school of hard knocks and how to build your brand and and build it online, he's coming to talk to you know, I interview millionaires all over the all over the world. I love his content and speaker-0: I was already excited. I'm more excited now. That's awesome. I love it. speaker-1: we want people to be educated, inspired, and take actionable items out of the conference. And we're bringing in Inky Johnson. If you haven't seen who Inky Johnson is, his story of inspiration. you know, I don't believe people can be motivated. I people inspired motivation has to come with from within. you know, obviously Lance is gonna be talking about his vision of where he sees the the the trades. lot of different people. some of the largest companies in the world, Frank DeMarco of Champions Group is gonna be coming and speaking and talking about what the HVAC community is doing and where his vision is and the things that are going on. they did they did it, I think two and a half billion or two point four, who's who's counting? Who's counting when you get to that level? I'm sure somebody's somebody's counting. the the the fact is that Dennis Elliott, Vertex will be there. just a lot of good Ellen Roar, obviously. Yeah. we got a whole she's the best. She is the best. we obviously, you know, I'm excited about Carrie and speaking about her growth at A plus and what they've done. you know, Stephanie Allen, just really solid people of of of the industry. There's a guy by the name of Mark Shapiro. Yeah. and he's gonna be talking about his real estate portfolio of growth because I know a lot of entrepreneurs double and his story of redemption and success. I think I think the aspect of what people obviously in our space a lot of second chances. And so for us it's a situation where we want to make sure we're sharing those successes so that people can get educated how to turn their businesses around or to grow their businesses, get them ready to sell and go from there. speaker-0: Yeah, if you haven't been a part, come to the annual conference. It's phenomenal. They r they run one of the best shows I've ever seen and their team is next level. You've got to get involved in these. You you learn so much at these shop tours and masterminds and their their team and the team that Bill and Lance have built is phenomenal. So you gotta get involved in that. Bill, you mentioned started off in the Navy. Incredible. Again, thank you. I've heard you tell a story once of even at a hotel room you make your bed, a lesson you learned from the Navy and and just that discipline and you make your bed every morning and speaker-1: I think it might be more O C D than a lesson, but you know I I heard I heard a great speech from and I think it just instilled in you in the military that these are the the wins that you have to have each and every day. And when you're on a submarine you have a very confined space. So you know, you go away for essentially three months under water. Yeah. and so you want that, you know, the The the depth of the depth of your your bunk is no like you're in a coffin essentially. It's no wider than what we have here on this desk. And it's about this high. Okay. So to have everything in in a place where you can feel comfortable and when you when you when you wake up To be able to have a win to get back into that bed each and every night, that that's where it really comes from is to have this success of saying, these are the things that it's a scenario where I want to be a part of to win one thing when I start the day off. I do make my bed in the hotel. That is a true statement. I love that. Not many people do. They're they're you know, it's just a way that from the time that I walk out of the house to the time that I walk back into the house. Yeah. it's generally speaking for me pretty much a it's pretty much a scenario where I wanna win every day. And if I can start my day with a win, it'll be a situation where I'll end my day with a win. Yeah. speaker-0: I love that. You guys operate that way. Any other lessons from the Navy that you've taken into your business career and you're in building, build it to sell it in LB Capital today? speaker-1: Yeah, I think there is. There's a big one. I think leadership is inherently natural, not based on how long somebody's been with ya. and you know, for me I carved out a lot of a lot of the leadership things that were were you know, I think athletics is a natural perspective to leadership. I didn't like in the military you had to be in a position for nine months before you could advance. If you were the best qualified person for the job, then you should get the job. and the military holds you back in that in some ways. And so, you know, I think natural born leaders are always natural born leaders. And they they they have a tendency to lead. Yeah. speaker-0: One thing that stuck out to me in in seeing you and Lance operate your businesses is your this idea that no one should leave LB Capital or build it to sell it for another job. It should be because they've developed their leadership skills and they're starting their own business or doing something like that. And that's that stuck with me. It's cool how you guys develop and build talent at at your businesses. speaker-1: If you're gonna go start, right? let's say that's one one of your teammates comes up and and says, Hey, Murphy, I got a great idea that I want from a software standpoint. and I want that software to be able to impact people in the trades. Either you have a choice as the CEO of Refer Pro to say, man, that's something that sounds like a great idea, but that's not in our wheelhouse. But I think you could go do it, right? And then that person goes off and they develop the next great, you know, I don't know, Google Reserve platform that allows people to integrate directly with Google on an AI standpoint, not on a referral or refuse standpoint. That person goes off and achieves success and they learn from you and your team here. Then that can't be in a better, it's like the the the Mike Holmgrom football tree. Yeah. Like if you look at Lance's football tree of entrepreneurs and sales leaders that have been from that Yellowpages.com days, it's pretty extensive. And from our standpoint, the extents of the extent of being in a situation that we watch people grow. If you go now, if somebody said to you, Murph, I'm going across the street to the Competitor, then you have to ask yourself as a leader, what did I do wrong? Yeah. That you didn't want to stay with me, that you wanted to go to the competitor. Because I think that's where success happens. I never have a problem if somebody wants to go do their own thing. When they're going to do somebody else's thing that's my thing, that's when I got a real problem. Yeah. Yeah. Because I didn't do it and it has to be back on me. speaker-0: Yeah, it's a learning experience, absolutely. No, great leadership lesson. Tell us across your roofing portfolio, what are you guys looking at today? What's what's the latest? What are your goals? What what's the what's the progress happening right now? What are you looking for? speaker-1: business intelligence is our number one. how how do we utilize the data that we have to better situate ourselves to make intelligent data driven decisions, not I think I feels. how do we centralize our reporting so that we can continue to be best in class across the board so that the information that we have that'll allow us to have profitable P and L's year over year growth and winning culture, that's the thing we focus the most on. Yeah. and if it's a scenario where we continue to to elevate the data that we have, you know, data doesn't lie, people do. Yeah. and so that's our number one our position. We we've onboarded six roofing partners in the last six months, which If you look at the and A landscape of roofing, most of the the big P E companies and we're not a PE company. It's it's Lance's cash. it's Lance's cash and his partner's cash. we we've had six six transactions that essentially have happened and that's unheard of in the space right now and we feel really confident. we feel really confident that we're gonna continue to grow and allow those partners to benefit from the excellence that we provide. Yeah. speaker-0: even talking to your partner businesses, it's incredible to see the difference you guys make when you come in and elevate every one of those owners and employees in that business. Rising tide lifts all boats and when LB Capital and Build It to Sell It come in. Just talking face to face, we work with some of those businesses and they the whole business is elevated, right? Some of are doing great, some of them are struggling before. And as soon as you guys come in, it's like you snap your fingers and everything just moves up. It's pretty incredible to see. speaker-1: Yeah, there's a perfect example of that. you know, we have a location in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Joel Manji's partnership with us and you know, he had he had been doing, you know, anywhere between over the last four years, four or five million dollars. And which is great for any roofing company. I mean any business that's doing four to five million dollars. very successful, came in, wasn't in debt. The month of April, okay. In the month of April we did five hundred and thirty seven thousand. We partnered April the sixteenth, okay? He did five eighty-seven in the month of May. The month of June he did one point one. It's amazing. Okay. He did one four. One four, right? In the month of July, okay? Another one four in the month of August. Now there's eight inches of rain annually in Albuquerque. And he got leveled. He did three million dollars worth of of of business last month and he's on pace to do four point six million. It's amazing. Like for a business to to grow that incrementally, crazy. Yeah. you have to have the systems, the recruiting. and he's so disciplined in following the playbook. It's like you're getting ready to go tomorrow to the big Notre Dame Notre Dame BYU game. speaker-0: That's right. speaker-1: First of all, I I haven't figured out why your quarterback has a number of forty seven yet. speaker-0: The ESPN announcers they talk they talk about it every game. speaker-1: Just assumed that was the number of conversions that he had on his mission. speaker-0: No, he's not even L D S, you know. He's he's a Catholic kid. Bear Bachmeyer, yeah. He's yeah, he's playing against Notre Dame, his his guys, but I think I wanna say it was the number he had as a kid as a linebacker. So speaker-1: So y he he has a play that he has to run and how he executes on that. Sometimes you score when you run the wrong play. Now you hope that he runs the wrong play and scores a lot against Notre Dame on on on on Saturday. And I think that's where we really do an exceptional job of saying we're not complacent, we're gonna continue to win. Yeah. speaker-0: That it's incredible. You guys talk about we've talked a little bit about it, just the the private equity scene. We talked about the champions, you got Tommy and the A1 deal, the KKR. What are you seeing right now in the industry, roofing specifically, just the trades in general? How how is private equity changing the game and how does that adjust what you guys are doing at LB Capital? speaker-1: They're not transacting. if you look at all the the big boys, there's, you know, a limited amount of transactions that have taken place in the last twelve, twelve months. That means that, you know, n the fact is that there's not substantial growth. how does that impact what we do? I think they're having a hard time figuring out what we do at LBCap because we have this hundred and fifty million with no debt. people are buying into the culture and the the the aspect of what we do and so that's why we kinda positionally shifted and said, Hey listen, we're not gonna sell individuals anymore. We're gonna platform up and and build this really, really pretty powerful machine and and everybody gets the arbitrage of what transpires over instead of one unit and you know could exit e very efficiently for you know and people buy and the fact is Lance has sold six different companies in four different verticals. So there's a there's a lot to be said with as I like to call it your street cred of you you build successful businesses and they continue to grow. I think one of the challenges that the industry is seeing is that they're paying money and then the businesses aren't continuing to grow. Like our our Mun's relationship is the number one is the number one company in the the the alloy platform. Well why is that the number one? Because it was built with a solid foundation and that leaders stayed on. They honored their commitments to the PE groups where a lot of people will take that step back and not be. You know, if somebody, you know Why do you think two point four five, who knows how many billion are staying at A one? It's because they believe in Tommy. And our leadership team stays in place. And that's one of the things I think that some of these individual, great shops, you know, doing twenty million dollars or getting a a big chunk of change. I don't think they're successful because it's really hard for somebody to be handed a a l a large sum of money and then all of a sudden that large sum of money is a situation where it goes away. Yeah. speaker-0: Yeah, it's inter yeah, you see all these pro athletes, right? Or people that win the lottery and they go declare bankruptcy at some point. It's it's an interesting dynamic, but speaker-1: Do you play f do you do you do fantasy football? speaker-0: Yeah, have. I'm not doing it this year. Life's busy, but speaker-1: So if you look, right, and my wife is a huge Niners fan, but anybody that has success in a team, when they think that they get money and they go to another team, you might have seen employees that maybe have left here or you know, have gone somewhere else and maybe that the success they had with you didn't translate to the success that they've had somewhere else. Right? Yep. And they might come back to you at some point in time. Right. No different than my guy Debo Samuels. He took big money to go to the commanders and didn't do anything. Yeah. Okay, but I still stick with them in my fantasy league. Right. So the the the point I'm trying to make is that the grass isn't always greener. Yeah. speaker-0: Absolutely. speaker-1: But when you hand people a large amount of check, they don't wanna they don't wanna work to the level that it took to get their business to and then they let their business and then they blame it on the PE company. Yeah. You know, how well you walked away from your business that you built. What did you expect to happen? Yeah. speaker-0: No, it's interesting dynamics. It's it's yeah, good to hear your thoughts. All these listeners are are deciding, hey, maybe they've already sold, maybe they're looking to partner, maybe they're they're getting called twice a day from PE groups and so they're trying to decide how do I run Yeah, speaker-1: Three di three times a day. speaker-0: a lot. I think you know, the cool thing that let's talk about it now. Like your your whole motion with Build It to Sell It is what should these owners think about, even if they may say, Hey, this is a family business, we're not gonna sell it, why is that still applicable to build it in the way that you can sell it, build it to sell it? What's the philosophy behind that and what can listeners and and business owners who are in that grind right now, what can they take to heart and and how can they affect their businesses accordingly with that? speaker-1: yeah, I I think the the biggest thing is that whether you're selling your business or you're giving your business to somebody, you should have a profitable business to hand down. Somebody might say, Listen, I want my kids to take it. Well, should your kids take a business that's poorly run and financed because then your headaches become their headaches. So whether your business is ready to sell today Or you're ready to sell in twenty years. There's a lot of there's a lot there there's gonna probably be a few transactions that happen before the end of the year that these people said they'll never sell. They'll never sell. But yet when you start talking high nine figures, it's hard to walk away from that type of that type of money. Yeah. speaker-0: Yeah, and it's regardless of the plan, I I love the the message that build build a business that's ready to be sold. That's the right way to build it. speaker-1: You might be selling it to your child for a dollar. That's right. Yeah. But it's being sold. Yeah. speaker-0: What do guys do? A lot of these listeners and and contractors in general are looking to stay busy. They want more leads, more leads, more leads. the the podcast is called Booked Out. We wanna give people advice on how to fill the board and stay busy. Obviously, there's another side to that that we should talk about, which is what do you do with those leads once you get what's your conversion rate, what's your pricing structure? How do you how do you fulfill on that operational side? But what are you guys doing across your portfolio to fill the board? How do you what's working from a marketing perspective, what's not? What do you guys what do you guys focus on at LB Capital? speaker-1: You're gonna be surprised by my answer. We don't need more leads. Yeah. Okay, we need to book better, right? We have plenty of leads. How do we increase our booking rate is a question. Yeah. And then how do we increase our ability to close on the leads that we have? All right. That that is where our our challenge is because what happens is the more raw leads that I put into the system, what I see is my booking rate goes down. Yeah. And then I see the more raw leads that my sales reps or the more booked leads that my sales reps run, my close rate goes down. So we've what we tried to do is really understand what that what that time frame that we need in home and then specifically how do we increase on the lead volume that we have. you know, a lot of our businesses are heavy in the lead aggregators. Angie Networks Fixer eLocal out of the gate because we're taking businesses and we're incrementally lifting them very fast. So we have a heavy outbounding strategy as well as what we do from an inbound strategy as well. And so I want to increase my book rate on the leads that I do have. you know the the industry averages anywhere from on a lead aggregator of anywhere from 18 to 22 percent. We're pushing the thirty-two, thirty-three percent. I'd rather have a bad review and increase the number of jobs that I do by fifteen than only have a bunch of reviews, right, that are all good, but not increase my level of the number of jobs that I did. That's a little bit of a different strategy that most people won't illustrate because we're pounding the phones. you gotta knock the doors, you gotta pound the phones, you gotta you gotta be strategic in the vision that you have to say, hey, when that phone rings, I gotta answer it. What's the speed to lead? Lance is obsessed right now with speed to lead in our timing. Yeah. and we're looking at right now, number one, is how our automations are set up, right? As far as what we do in ringless text email across the board. I thought it was instantaneous. but there's triggers to the API. there's delays from the lead source into the API into service tight and that triggers it. on all of our campaigns across the board, as far as from a nonverbal standpoint, we're running at about point seven two seconds. speaker-0: It's made. speaker-1: Okay. Now I would have thought I thought it was less than that. Yeah. But when I started seeing the data saying, okay, how do we improve the communication across the board? you know, we want we want that phone answered in 35 seconds or less on a live call. What when I mean a live call, live phone rings in, LSA, GMB, whatever it might be, all right. And but we also have to stay within the performer. I can't have 30 live live CSRs because then the business isn't profitable to where it is. So we kind of figured out for every million dollars what we're doing in booking, we need one CSR. Yeah. And then we're backing it up through automations that we're utilizing in our partners in the same day. that have helped us t to grow and scale so we're not missing calls. Yeah. you know the the the the end all battle is do I Do I shift live agent for sense of urgency and empathy for phone being picked up instantaneously? and where does the better booking rate come about? Yeah. and so I don't think we've cracked the code on it. I still think that when somebody has water leaking in their roof, they want to talk to somebody, they want compassion. And I haven't facilitated that that that empathy on AI is where it needs to be. I think it will be. Yeah. I mean I saw a car fly upside down yesterday. Yeah, was that crazy or what? That was awesome. yeah, I didn't think cars could would ever fly in my lifetime, but they do. so you know, so the the will there be empathy in the AI? Yeah. I've I've listened to a lot of calls, both live and AI. I think the one thing that AI doesn't have is mood poisoning. Yeah. and so if I can find a way to take that that structure and we can utilize it to crank the empathy up. and we're working on it. It's just not perfected yet. I think it's so new. I mean think about if you looked at if you looked at your Claude six months ago, were you even using it really? Yeah. speaker-0: Cess about when we started going all in on cloud. Before that we did a lot of open AI, chat GPT, but speaker-1: Right. Yeah. If you look how that has metamorphosized itself over the course of the last six months, like you're light years ahead. Yeah. Compare it's like the way that I equated it to somebody the other day, I said, you know, the caveman hit with a stone to a stick to get that into the ground. Right. Then over the course of time we develop steel and we put steel on the end of the stick. to hit other metal into something. Now we have automation in place that we have an air gun that has a hundred nails in it that can bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Like where where is that going to be in, you know, another six years? You know, how how are those different entities going to be into play? I think are things that we continue To evaluate no different than you continue to evaluate new ways for the software to work more effectively and efficiently, so that you get more referrals out of the deal. Yeah. speaker-0: Absolutely. Yeah, AI we talked private equity, AI is changing the landscape drastically. And what's cool to see in the trades, I actually think different from ever before, trades are adopting AI faster than a lot of other industries right now, which is cool. speaker-1: I I think that the one thing that I think that there's caution. Yeah. Right. Is that let's say for the sake of argument that somebody says, Hey, I'm gonna build my c RM out in Claude right now and I'm gonna do away with service Titan. Yeah. Because you know you hear the chatter. Yeah. Well, the guy that's buying you He doesn't want nine different CRMs that are all built on Claude because then it's not scalable for him. And so then what he's gonna say is, okay, you built your CRM out in Claude, great. You got sales, great. All right, I have an LOI that's gonna give you 8X, but all my organizations I'm gonna need to put on Service Titan. I'm gonna take money off the table for implementation because you went ahead and built this out. So speaker-0: Integration risk for hundred percent. speaker-1: So you have to look at specifically is there challenges and opportunities that exist in any CRM, whether you're on house call pros, whether you're on workies, you know, Service Titan, whatever it might be. The people that are buying companies, they still want the consistency of the way they build it. Or they buy it. Yeah. Because they're going to want to roll up their data across all of their portfolio of where they're going. So I think there's some guardrails that you have to watch as far as what your game plan and your exit is. Yeah. And it's going to be interesting to see when, you know, as the market and transactions continue to grow, what will happen with people that went way off the reservation as an independent, building their websites out and clawed. be in a situation where they're utilizing Claude from a C R standpoint. And then they have an evaluation because they have X amount of revenue, but then somebody's gonna have to pull that back and say, Well, we're gonna have to put you on service Titan, it's gonna cost you cash. speaker-0: Yeah, and a lot of the businesses we work with too, the ones that try to build their own CRM, people don't realize the maintainability and the scalability of those platforms long term. You run into issues and now you've got full time engineers who are trying to keep up with that. And it's one thing to do it at a small scale, but when you do that across, you know, tens of thousands of customers and you're running lots of volume through those tools, they start to break down. And so Yeah, you just you don't wanna sign up for a big project that you're not ready for either if you're trying to build your own. There's to Service Titan's credit, they've mastered every edge case and they're still mastering a lot of but they do a great job of ten plus thousand contractors are on there, they've seen all the problems where if you build your own, you really gotta figure that out and there's you know you're gonna come across those problems for the first time and have to solve but speaker-1: I I think the the caveat to that is that like what are you really good at? Okay, yeah, you might what are you really good at? The re your business is based on installing an HVAC unit, not whether you can build a Claude Cowork to to to to do your CRM. Yeah. Your core business, then then go into the software business. Yeah. Build out your own and then that you facilitate it. Not If you're s selling your business that, hey, this is what you have, then this is what you should focus your attention to. speaker-0: We've had a handful of people come on the refer pro side of things, separate from the podcast, come and say, we're actually gonna we see the value. This is awesome. We're gonna we're gonna do it ourselves, Without fail, every single one of them within six months has come back and said, We wasted our time. Let's let's get this thing going. We see even now more of the value of what this is. So curious, what's we've talked AI, your tech stack, you guys are big service tight end advocates. What does your tech stack look like across your LB Capital platforms? How do you see the value of you know? alignment in that tech stack as you manage all the different businesses day to day. speaker-1: Yeah, look there's we we were we're early adopters to everything that that that we try to do because we look at ourselves as a sales and technology company that sells roofs. So you know from what we do what look there's a lot of great tools. there's competitors to refer pro. Okay. I just happened To partner up with ReferPro. And now when you have 16 companies, trying to change 16 companies is really, really hard. you know, so our tech stack really starts with the on the automation side. Now, when we got in almost three and a half years ago, you know, Hatch didn't utilize voice, right? Same day wasn't utilizing what they do from an outbounding automation because they've grown over time. So I utilize multitudes of different aspects to get my speed to lead down. I l I I love the hybrid of live versus you know automated aspects in the tech stack. We run into service titan. We utilize Rilla from a coaching standpoint. You know, we're just trying to make everything better at at scale As well as be in a situation where we don't cripple the ship because when you're doing a million dollars in a day to make an incremental change that doesn't put you in a position for long term success, you're gonna be in a scenario where it we obviously we use refer pro on the back end to make sure that, you know, I mean I I th when I when we had the the chat with your team this morning and I told you about the number, did you think the number of what we've done in revenue year to date was what it was gonna be. speaker-0: Yeah, it's it was yeah, it was a little higher than I thought, honestly. I think it should be higher than that. We go speaker-1: No doubt, so do I. speaker-0: double triple that thing this year, but it's yeah. speaker-1: You I to do a million to do a million four. Yeah. A million four year to date, I'd I had heard, you know, the six hundred thousand dollar number that you had talked about with, you know, one of my colleagues who's a very good friend of mine. I was happy I got to come in and and flex on the one four, you know? I mean, because a million four on the ad spend of what the software costs, it's my number one producing. Return on investment. Yeah. and so, the that relationship obviously is what drives the performance. And anytime there's like there's gonna be good and bad. And one of the things that the trades had taught me is that I heard my highest amount of negativism, negativity, in shoulder season when I was in the digital marketing space. I would try to get the middle of the summer, I would try to get an HVAC contractor on the phone to talk about their marketing and couldn't they would be blowing off meetings left and right. The moment September fifteenth came around and we were between I used to say between for our teams, I would say between, you know, seventy and thirty is the worst temperatures in the world. Yeah. Right? Because we're not turning on the heater and we're not having the a c air conditioning run. And so you know, those are things that for me, I tried to parlay that that experience in the past to say, look, there's only so much we can move at a certain certain period of time and how quick we can be. Let's do the best job that we can in that. And so from a tech stack standpoint, a lot of it is we were early adopters and we have relationships now. And those relationships are really strong because your people fix Yours specifically fix when we have challenges and we run to it, not away from it. And I think that if everybody took that o to opportunity to not say, my God, I'm gonna leave, versus saying, you know, hey Jake, can you do me a favor? Let's take a look at what's going on here. Is this a me problem or is this a system problem? Because you've brought me one point four million dollars in revenue. So I know that it's not refer pro. Yeah. But I'm having challenges in units and how do we make those challenges better to make it get to three million dollars? Yeah. speaker-0: Yeah, absolutely. And and there's a power in the automation and from referral specifically and with all your tech stack and within the trades, but with automating the things that that need to be automated. There's a a ton of customers, that database is a gold mine. And then there's also best practices and understanding and and the data that comes from it is hey, what's what size should that reward be, right? As you guys do such a great job of the speed to lead. Some people roll out refer pro and then they don't call the leads and it's a problem, right? So it's it's a holistic view of saying, Hey, as a business You plug in a tool and you want it to go solve the problem. Yeah, that's true, and that's the goal. But there's also other pieces to it that come together and that's where you guys do such a good job of all the other pieces are there and anyway. speaker-1: Think about think about this perspective. We live in a digital world, right? But in an analog environment, something as simple as a name tag badge with your refer pro QR code on one side and your Google My Business Review on the other side. How easy first of all, COVID was the resilience of the QR code. Yeah. Okay. It was on its deathbed. Right? And then COVID gave you the ability to say, hey, we can use this QR code. And now can you think about something not having a QR? Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. And how people are in last night, I was I was I was flying out here and I was I had to get my rental car. And the rental car that I got, I was literally on the plane utilizing the QR code to get because I my preferred Avis wasn't sold out. Well like what's going on at Salt Lake that you're sold out in the Hollandley concert. It is a Hello Langley concert. speaker-0: Well you know the name game, I don't know. speaker-1: So I couldn't get a car and so I was literally trying to upload And it had QR code that that helped me get through the process right on the plane. So do simple things. Don't you sometimes you so people overcomplicate what we do in saying, hey, would you be happy to share this in your community? Yeah. Because we did a good job. Yeah. It's powerful. It is powerful. speaker-0: We've got I don't know if we have you launched with these yet, but we have virtual wallet passes. And speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: iPhones, those are those are a game changer too. Bill, what are the KPIs you track every day? What's what's the top of mind? Top you and you and Lance are texting five, six A.m. every day. I know. What's what's on the speaker-1: So Yeah. the sometimes you can have paralysis by analysis. and that you can have so many KPIs that are coming your way. I want the ones that are gonna help me propel and understand where the business is. First of all, I want to know where my sales are for the for the day before. I wanna know w what I have more KPIs than I know what to do with. but I wanna know where my sales are. I wanna know where my sales pace is, okay? I wanna know how many appointments I rent. I wanna know where my AR is, okay? I wanna know how many booked appointments that I had for that particular day. I wanna be able to react to what's happening across the board. Do I have enough appointments on the day and is my capacity at where I need to be? That all comes through text messaging. It's like I coming to Utah was great. I get two more hours on my day on the front end because I'm running two hours behind and then I got two more hours on the back side. So you know, look, if you know where the number of appointments you had, what your close ratio is, what your booking rate is, what your sales were for the day, you can really essentially take your business. But you can't just stop because the sales tape, you have to look at the revenue tape. Because, you know, on all of our marketing, yes, I base upon whether the The the campaigns are performing, but I got a lag time of anywhere from four and a half days around the country from the time I sell till the time I collect. Okay, in California, it's 22 days. So I have to be very, very good at understanding that as far as from a PL standpoint, my marketing efforts are based upon where the percentage is of my completed revenue. So yeah, I have a campaign that's bringing in nine, ten X on the sales side, but I'm not installing it as fast as I need to. I'm gonna put myself in a position of getting jammed up if it's a scenario where we're not long term successful. Yeah. No. speaker-0: interesting. Yeah, this is awesome, Bill. We could go all day. we'll hear from you. We we like to do a lightning round. I know you've got stuff to get to today, but we like to do a lightning round with all of our guests. a few questions that are some work but some not. But you already gave us some stories from the Navy. any other stories or anything that that's interesting for viewers to hear from speaker-1: I want I want people to have good good good good good understanding about Bill. There's too many stories out there. Yeah. speaker-0: what's your favourite book? speaker-1: what is my favorite book? Extreme Ownership. Jocko. Yeah. Can't go wrong. Yeah. speaker-0: That's an amazing one. How do you stay sharp and healthy? I know every conference we're at together, we're on the road. I see I see Bill in the gym. Every time I go to the hotel gym, Bill's in there, but stay sharp. speaker-1: Yeah, I I'm a huge believer in the Peloton. I'll pick my hotel based upon whether it has a Peloton or not. if it's interesting, if I if I don't have a Peloton, for some reason I'll blow off going to the gym. Yeah. Like I like I've been on the road for for two weeks straight, okay? And every time that I've been in a hotel that's out of Peloton, I'll work out in the morning. I don't know what it is. It's just about continuing that streak of what Peloton brings for me. and I know that I gotta be more disciplined that if there isn't that, there's other things that I can be doing. But it's the start and the gateway to my time frame to be you know, to be able to get the sweat going. I did it this morning, I didn't want to get out of bed. I got in after sitting in traffic on the fifteen last night. sitting in the traffic in the fifteen and ended up getting up this morning, doing a workout, doing a ride. than doing my l my weight workout. So I listen to a lot, a lot of audible. as far as you know, it's a it's an interesting question. Do I do I I I'm not a typical read one book all or listen to one book all the way through. I probably have nine books that are going. the probably the second book outside is a book called Growth IQ. by Stephanie Bova. Yeah. Who you know, she talks about a lot. I don't know if you've read it. You told me about that last year. Yeah, that's what I'm It's a great, great book. you know, to be able to understand that not all not all ideas work the same in the same markets. Yeah. You know? And so I love that book. but I I try to stay sharp by by getting myself off, make the bed, get to the gym. Yeah. speaker-0: Love it. What's how's the move from Philly to Utah been? speaker-1: It's been incredible. I said to I I said to my wife, if we if I would have known how beautiful like you look out and the the the canyon that I look out is called Shirts Canyon right before you make the the right hand turn down into Canaraville from Cedar. I look out over this canyon and I I'm blown away every day. my brother-in-law just went and it was he shot an elk. Yeah. speaker-0: kinda last week. speaker-1: Yeah. And he it was a spike. It was I I didn't know the difference. I thought you had antlers. That's what you go shoot if it was a it was it was but I didn't understand the whole there's this spike sub sub elk level. Yeah. and so it it you know, there's just if you go up in into Duck Creek and, you know, up by Bryanhead, it's like it's it's it's you you can't even explain it. It's so beautiful. And I live in the high desert, so yeah, you have to wear layers in cedar. Yeah. You get up, it's fifty degrees. By the time it's noon, it's eighty. Yeah, that's right. So but I love it. Sosa and Chloe are both settled in and you know, I wish my son would play football at SUU, but he's locked into Moravian. Yeah. but doesn't it's Did you see the block coming across? Yeah. speaker-0: That was impressive. I love it. speaker-1: He's doing well. He's doing well. He's a sophomore. you know. It's got a lot of lot a lot of energy and it's something of you know, it's funny as I said to his coach when I got to see his coach, I said, you know, as much as I'm I'm grateful for my son's accomplishments on the football field, I'm ten times more grateful for his accomplishments as a teammate. And that as a father makes me the most proud. speaker-0: Yeah, absolutely. You set a good example for speaker-1: I try awesome. I try. speaker-0: bring it home for us, Bill. What's what's one piece of advice you'd give to any listener building a home service business so they can go implement Monday? speaker-1: Number one, don't be afraid to go invest in yourself. Okay. Invest in yourself because others will share it. When I was in the digital space, we wouldn't. I would not g I would not go and say, Hey Cristiano, hey Kate Donovan, can you do me a favor? Can I come and see how you run your PPC campaigns? We were too guarded on it. And then people like Dustin Van Orman and Wyatt Hepworth and Aaron Gaynor, and Tommy Mello, and Tom Howard, they opened their doors to say, hey, come and see what what I'm doing and go duplicate it. Yeah. And so I would say how do you invest in yourself to better your business? You're getting ready for twenty twenty seven to come. you know there's a lot of different events and whether it's our event or some other event, I hope you come to ours. I think it's gonna be phenomenal. Go invest in yourself. Make the plans, buy the ticket. It's a write-off. Go go go invest yourself and you'll be you'll be better off for your 2027 year. And look at where, you know, be self-aware of where where your strengths and your weaknesses are and and be honest. It's like, yeah, I went and worked out this morning, okay, and if I eat a Twix bar or some candy that you got sitting out here in the lobby, right? It It dilutes the work that I did. I gotta be honest with myself. Be honest with yourself about where your business is and you'll have success. Yeah. I love speaker-0: It incredible advice. Awesome to have you on. That's one of my favorite things about the trades is the willingness to share and and open up the shop and teach people. So another plug, December seventh through the ninth, Hollywood, Florida. Your conference is coming up. If you haven't bought your ticket, go get your ticket. speaker-1: Yeah. Thank you very much. I appreciate you having