SPEAKER_06 0:01

And when I signed the paperwork, and uh Jeremy's at a ball game, so uh and and I always talk over Jeremy. So if you need to hit me on mute, you can and Jeremy likes to talk too. So if you want to hit me on mute, you can. But uh the economy was changing in 08 and 09, and Jeremy and I are from CentOS. I don't know if you ever heard of CentOS or not, but man, I had so many stock options. They were like $5 a share and $30 a share. And I told my wife, I said, you know, this this stock is not gonna, she used to call them so-called promotions in corporate world. I was taking them for the stock options. And I I must have been the problem, me and Jeremy, because the stock at like $800 a share now, it would have been millions of dollars. And so, but you don't know that. I was 44, 45 years old. And I remember um Steve Howerton and Tim uh we worked at Centas, he said, you got to look at this citywide. And back then, uh Savannah was probably, I mean, I don't know how old you were back then, but you were just a little nugget running around at the first convention at Frank's house, you know, one of the first ones. And and so this this didn't look like anything like you all see uh today. But I just I remember telling Jeff, I said, I'm in a fork, when Jeff was trying to talk us into going citywide, a bunch of us, and this was there wasn't that many. The convention was about this big right here, the first convention I went to. But I said, I'm in a fork in the road, you know. If I go this one fork and stay in my corporate life, I got an idea of what that might look like. If I but if I I just have this entrepreneurial spirit, if I take this other fork in the road, and you only get one shot at it. You only get this is it. You take one fork or the other. And I said, I just don't, I just feel like I can make this thing happen for myself. And I like the structure of the franchise system. You it's an old saying, and and people use it, you're in business, you know, uh uh uh uh you're in business for yourself, but not by yourself. But just that we we liked corporate America, a lot of things about it, you know. We had a good product and we knew what to do, and we could succeed if we did follow the recipe, but it was just too much micromanagement. And you know, a human is a depreciating asset. We don't get more valuable as we get older, you know, like a stock does. We get less valuable as we get as we get older, you know, in the marketplace. So I just I just jumped and took a shot. And at that time it was 09, and I uh it was me, John Duffy, and and Steve in Tampa. And um, and so that went that was three and a half years trying to launch that. And I just uh I just felt like Jeremy, I left Jeremy behind. Jeremy's on this call. Me and Jeremy worked together at CentOS, and Jeremy's like, I can't believe you left without me, basically, you know. And so he wanted to launch, and Atlanta was available at that time. And then so a few three and a half years went by, sold my interest in in Tampa, moved back up to Atlanta, and Jeremy and I launched Atlanta in October of 2012. And this is how crazy this business is, is if if you have a, if you, if you, if you just do what we would have done in corporate America, if you don't make your numbers, you're gonna lose your job in corporate America anyway, you know. And so you make your numbers over here, the upside is so much higher. This is so when we unloaded that U-Haul in in uh it was January of 2010, I remembered uh it was some of the crappiest furniture you've ever seen that Steve had somehow hit sent house and sold at like a scrap place, and our office was awful. And Duffy was like, this is risky as hell, this is risky as hell. You know, we should have never quit these corporate jobs. And so now, now that was then, and this is almost exactly 15 years later. Between the the locations that we've all opened up, it's over 60 million dollars in revenue the business is. It's crazy. I mean, that was the same thing we were doing in corporate, except now it's our business, you know, and Jeff's business and Savannah's business. We're in this thing together. And the Oto's are such fine people. I mean, I'm not I'm not saying they just Frank and everybody's just fine people. They just want to do life, do it as well as they can. And if we're doing something, might as well do it for ourselves as much as we can, you know? And so we just participate in that. And uh Jeremy and I, we uh and uh October 12, we open up and we start this same thing again. I'm like, this is stupid. I'm like a glutton. I'm doing this again from scratch, you know. And so, but we we will do, and we I'm telling you, I don't know why Savannah has us on this call. Uh we we rank so poorly right now. Now we've we've won our share. We've won and won and won our share, but we are me and Jeremy on the best losing streak you've ever seen in your life. We will do 20 billion dollars in the Atlanta market, 19.5, something like that. We have 3540 of the most amazing people. When we opened up Atlanta, it was just me and Jeremy looking at each other, and my wife was mad as a hornet. I moved her back up here from Florida and going to do this again. So it was the three of us in there thinking, what the hell did we do? What was on our mind? I'm like, I can't believe I'm doing this again. But we'll do $19.5 million in revenue, and this is exactly 12 years later. I don't know any business model that can do it. I don't, and there may be one. I don't know of any of them that do that. And I have friends that own businesses. They're like, what the hell? It's the scalability of it all. It's a, you know, if if you get in a line at a time, I think of this as Chick-fil-A. I got a friend that owns Chick-fil-A down there. Yeah, I mean, we were waiting in line, you know, to get a free Chick-fil-a for a year when he opened up the car. The lines are around the corner, you know. But but they hit a capacity, you know, maybe 10 million, maybe 10 million dollars in revenue for a location. And you don't really own uh fully own it. You are owner operator, but you don't get to sell it when you exit. You know, you you somebody else enters and they get a percent. In this thing, you got to go get it. They're not lined up around the corner. They are not lined up around the corner, but we have such an amazing offering in our in our space. But uh, but the upside, it's I I really think in my lifetime and all uh that we this city of Atlanta will be a hundred million dollar city. I mean, we can just see it now, what we've what we've said, and our losing streaks about to be over to what we've set up, what we set up here and the scalability of it all. And and uh anyway, that's that's sort of my little story there. And Jeremy and I get along so well and balance each other. And so Jeremy's got his own family, he's at his ball game there, and he's got his own part to tell. But this has just got a lot of upside. But you gotta bring it. Is Jeremy still on this thing here? Did I cut him off?

SPEAKER_10 6:23

Yeah, he's on here. I muted them, but he can he can jump back in whenever he wants to.

SPEAKER_04 6:28

Yeah, okay. Yeah, there you go, Jeremy. Can you hear me now?

SPEAKER_10 6:34

Yes, we can.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

Okay, good. Yeah, um, I've been on mute for 15 years, so this is a pleasure to be off mute, but I mean David pretty much summed it up. Um this has been a uh it was a dream of ours to to take our our talents and um God-given uh gifts and uh apply it to some opportunities that were out there outside of uh corporate America. And uh, you know, we we just by the grace of God found citywide and um it was an avenue that was uh just uh fertile and and ready to take off. And we got in, you know, at a good time and uh we had a lot to give and um um it was a it was a point in our life too where you know it was time to it was a time to make some hay. And uh we were able to um uh get to a good market here in in Atlanta with a with a good uh service company and citywide and apply uh you know our skills and sales and and just really get after it and go grow the business. And uh that was 2012, about August of 2012 when we opened up. And um, so I know there's a couple of stories going on. David originally had started in Florida and then and then came to Atlanta. We started in 2012 and uh bought the east side of Atlanta and then bought the west side of Atlanta about three years ago. So we have uh two uh citywide locations within the Atlanta market, uh just to clarify that. But uh uh anything as ambitious as you want to be, uh, which I would say David and I are were two of the most ambitious people that that I had ever been around. And uh once we got over to Citywide, we found out that uh there's a whole lot of ambition out there.

SPEAKER_06 8:24

It's hard to win over here, man.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

That's right. So uh it's uh it's been an unbelievable ride. Um I'm not gonna you know go into too much more detail about about us unless there's something in particular that you guys want to know. But uh this is if you're looking for culture and you're looking for uh um people that care and people that want to treat you right and um something that you can stand behind and be proud of, that you put your your life work into, this is definitely the place for that.

SPEAKER_09 8:57

Thank you both so much.

SPEAKER_10 8:58

I appreciate it. If you guys want to jump in with any questions, feel free to take yourselves off mute and fire away.

SPEAKER_00 9:07

Yes, I uh Ollie Say it here. It was really inspiring to hear about the journey of both of you. Um I had a question, I guess when you started off, what did the first couple of years look like? The first, I guess, year one to year five.

SPEAKER_06 9:19

Yeah, that's the part you don't want to do. You know, that's I mean that's nobody and uh you know if it was easy, everybody'd do it and there wouldn't be any money in it. I mean, it just really is the first two years are not easy, but here's here's here's kind of um here's how we started. It was me, Jeremy, and at that time my brother invested some money in us getting going. It's good to have family. And our biggest fear was, you know, the only thing that can get us if we run out of money. And you y'all work so hard and you put your money aside and it's sitting somewhere, and uh uh, you know, it and you just scared the weirdest thing is we'll bet that money on cryptocurrency, but we won't bet it on ourselves, you know. And so we just put that money uh uh in a pot there, and it was a certain amount, and we weren't we weren't rich guys. We didn't have, I mean, every dime we had we put in, and we were just hard-working CentOS guys, and I think it was $350,000 or something like that. We scraped up. And so, and Savannah and the team will give you a formula, a performa. I think y'all probably still do that. And the bottom line was uh I told my brother Mike, we sat there, and my brother Mike was, he was gonna get paid nice, and we got going. He got paid nice, he got paid real good. And so we helped him launch his dream of having his own insurance agency through this. And so we uh we said that and I said, if we get from what I've seen, uh that if we get what we call four surveys a week, basically four appointments a week, with somebody's looking to outsource commercial cleaning, we're gonna the weird thing, I read this in Frank's book. He had the same thoughts. That was strange. And so I said, we will get one deal a week. And if we get one new customer a week, our average customer at that time, it's a little bit more now, but our average customer is gonna be $2,000. And I said, if we do that four appointments a week, we'll get a new customer every week. $2,000. There's 50 weeks in a year, uh 52, but we're going to take a couple. Hopefully, we didn't really, Jeremy didn't get many hours off, but you go, you go 50 weeks. I said, we will have $100,000 in contract revenue. And keep in mind, I'd been at this a few years longer than Jeremy. So I'm the one that kind of explaining what I've seen. Jeremy, Jeremy quit such a good job. He had more stock houses. I went at it, said Doc. He was about to kill me that first three years. And so, but the dream came true. And so he's loving me now. So the uh that that's a hundred thousand dollars in contract revenue. So that's a hundred that now we get 50 cents on the dollar on extra services. You know, these floors, there's floor work, there's other things so that you get to so at that time. Now people are doing better than that. And so it that so that's that's uh 150,000 a month. I said year two, we'll be a $1.8 million business. Now 85% of all businesses never hit a million dollars in revenue. Second year, we're gonna be one point, we're gonna be, we're gonna be uh what was 1.8 million, and we were we hit that number right to the dollar. We hit every first seven years performer we hit to the penny. We were counting on 7,000, uh $7,000 net gain. Our problem is we should have raised that darn bar sooner. And so we started getting passed by, should have dreamed bigger because our big our dream was to be a $10 million business in 10 years by abiding by the golden rule in our dealings with each other, uh with our contractors, with our employees. Uh, we were that was our $10 million business in 10 years. And at that time we were new. This thing was just launching. This system, I haven't seen anybody fail. And Savannah could say whether they have. I hadn't seen anybody fail in years. This was unproven when we first got into it. But that as far as I could see, and we hit every number. So this, and then now the scalability is that of that. Break your territory in different parts, hire a sales rep, they get they have the certain buildings that the math adds up, that they get four surveys in one deal, and you can scale your growth to an unbelievable amount. And we were just scaling janitorial contracts. Now, keep in mind, we can clean, maintain, fix anything inside or outside of commercial property. We haven't even gotten good. We've got 67 landscape product contracts. We're not even any good at it. We haven't even tried. And so the the scalability of this is unbelievable. So I don't know if that at what was the first few years look like? It was a beast. I mean, we didn't have anybody. We didn't have any scalability. It was us. Jeff has this thing where he's wearing hats around. We were wearing every hat uh to do everything. And my wife was mad as a hornet. She was keeping the books, she had no desire to keep the books. And so, but we were just, we knew if we could get to a certain point, then uh then we would then this would this would this would be possible if God gave us the time. And I'm telling you, our life is so good right now, it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. Everybody wants to be where we're at, as John Maxwell used to say. They do. Jeremy's at the ballpark there. I guarantee you everybody around here, uh, him probably saying that guy owns his own business. Okay, he rolls up in a in a dang truck we just got through the business. And uh I never thought that I'm not even a truck guy. I drive a nice car, no compliments. I drive his dang truck up there, man. Everybody's complimenting. He probably rolled up one to be like Jeremy, you know, because he's he's got his own business. He's his own man. It's uh everybody, but that first few years is a sacrifice. I'm sorry, it's a sacrifice, unless you bigger pockets than us. And some people have rolled into this system with bigger pockets, they'll bet it all. Load up the sales team, load up the Savannah, and that team will help you as big as you want a budget, as much scale as you can get and want to roll in with. It can be scale.

SPEAKER_04 14:40

But if you do it like Jeremy and I did, it is hard.

SPEAKER_02 14:49

All right, Jeremy.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

Amen, brother. Hey, um, you know, if it if it doesn't take hard work, um, then it's not really worth anything. And uh, if you know it's worth it's worth a lot now, and you're uh uh you're right about you know the first couple of years, nobody wants to go through that. But it depends on you know what you can bring to the table too. But anything's hard to get up and off the ground. But um here we are, you know, 12, 13 years later from when we started. And uh, I mean the system is uh so much more mature. There's so much more uh uh people to benchmark that have already been successful, that have been through it. They've got it down to science up in Kansas City about getting this thing taken off. I was just looking at something I didn't even I just ran across it on our citywide uh the basically our university that's online and is talking about you know scaling past one million dollars, scaling past two million dollars, past ten, past fifteen, you know, beyond twenty, going to thirty and beyond. So there's uh uh all the legwork uh has been done and uh uh you know from from the cities that have started before anybody that's starting now, and it's so much uh it's so much you don't have to figure it out, you just have to apply it. The processes are in place, you run the processes, you'll get the result.

SPEAKER_06 16:12

It's just like you and your corporate America except it's your show and you're gonna get the benefits. I mean, you'll feel guilty how much money it makes. You will, you'll feel you might not. You're from Manhattan and and other big cities. Y'all probably we're from Georgia down here. We feel like this is crazy, man. If I police gonna show up at the door and get us for that bunch of money, this is bribery down here, you know. Ain't nobody in our lifetime ever made this kind of money.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

I don't feel bad about it, to be honest with you.

SPEAKER_06 16:42

But the first you ask the question on the first two years, you gonna earn it. You're gonna earn it. I got an eye twitch. You see my eye twitching, that's for the first three years. If I didn't have two those first three years, man, everybody do this thing.

SPEAKER_09 16:55

Go ahead, Chris.

SPEAKER_08 16:58

Uh thanks for taking the time, Derek, uh David and Jeremy. Um my question, I I think I have two of them. The first is uh you you all you all came at it as partners. Uh would love to hear how you thought of it coming uh together as as two folks rather than a single person has helped you uh over the past 15 years. Uh the second question is what do you think was the limiting factor of growth you mentioned if you had larger pockets and thought that this could scale faster? Uh so we'd love to hear your thoughts on on both of those items.

SPEAKER_06 17:29

You you want uh Jeremy, you want to take that one? I'll be quiet for a second.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Well, yeah, I mean I would just say that you know, having uh you know, having two of us, it just anytime you can disperse the pressure is good, right? So, you know, the more the more salespeople you have on your sales team, the more your you know, your sales goal is is dispersed amongst more people. Um so having a partner I think was was huge because um you know, in the beginning when, you know, there were some days where hey, we might have worked 24 hours a day for two or three straight days and caught a few cat naps because that's what we had to do to survive. Um but it was it was so valuable because you were learning you were learning the business uh with real world experience on the fly at a customer, um, you know, figuring things out that nowadays you don't have to figure out as much because it's all documented and there's people that are gonna teach you. Um But while while you're taking care of one thing, uh you don't have to worry about something else. So uh having a partner was good for us in the beginning because while we had customers that uh we didn't have any customers in the beginning, so once we had some customers, they've got to be taken care of. But if we're gonna grow, we still gotta get new customers. So uh it was easy to kind of disperse that pressure to, hey, I'll take care of making sure that the customers are taken care of and and keep and grow those customers while you go out and and gain some new customers. So uh just having, you know, two people to, you know, you're in it together too. So even when you feel like you're drowning, you look over and you got somebody right beside you that's uh, you know, uh they're the positive person that day. Hey, everything's gonna be all right. I mean, here's here's what's gonna happen. Let's keep keep our eyes focused on what's what it's gonna be like, you know, 36, 48, 60 months from now. And you're like, oh yeah, you're right, you're right, you're right. And then, you know, a week later, you know, you you're saying, hey, don't don't forget what it's gonna look like two years, three years, four years down the road here. This is just a season that we're going through. So, you know, having um two of you to to bounce uh bounce things off of, disperse the pressure, and uh, you know, keep each other, you know, positive at all times, I think is is invaluable. I mean, now that we're 20 million dollars, um it would it would be nice to say, you know, I'm getting all the money and and uh you know I don't have a partner and but I wouldn't have I don't think I would have got here without David. And hopefully he thinks the same thing is that I'm gonna do that.

SPEAKER_06 19:55

Oh, there's no doubt you wouldn't have. You wouldn't have had a chance. I mean you were a sitting duck out there. I mean, my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 20:00

And hopefully he thinks the same thing about me. And uh um, but anyway, that uh if if if I had to say what what um what I like most about you know having the partnership is just you know dispersing the pressure, and but you gotta have somebody that's like-minded, you gotta have somebody that's willing to work as hard as you're willing to work. And uh if you don't have that, it could be it could probably be you could have negative effects from it.

SPEAKER_06 20:28

And there's all shapes and sizes in this system. There's there's people that are three partners, there's people that are two partners, there's uh uh uh Steve Carroll, Oklahoma City. He went at it by himself. He's amazing, he's incredible. He he hired some good people. Uh your money situation, not everybody's the exact same uh boat or risk exposure. It's just this is a puzzle. You put it together and and uh do do do it more with more thought than old Ben Jeremy did, you know. You go and and so, but but I'm telling you, don't think too much because you'll find every reason not to do this. You'll find it the timing ain't gonna be right, and and you'll find every reason not to do this. And and you'll find every reason not to do it. It's and we say it's like the elephant at the uh uh at the the that when it was a baby, uh uh um y'all probably heard this story, but there was a pole there, and the elephant at the at the uh uh circus, whatever you call it, was going around, but it got to be a big elephant and it could have just pulled away, but it was so accustomed to walking that it never pulled away, never took any chances in life. And um you get one right, you get one shot at it, and y'all are at the fork in the road, it seems like, and you get a decision to make. But I'm telling you, the thing about this is you're in control of it. It's you're not dependent on uh somebody driving up to that window, and you're not dependent, you are in control of it. It's gonna test. And you don't have to be it. Me and Jeremy were salespeople, so it was a big advantage to us in the beginning. We went out and sold a ton of business, and we grew like crazy, and we were winning awards and crazy, but we couldn't operate worth a damn. Know and so we have to we if in hindsight, if we'd have gone back and hired a really good operator right off the bat, even though we thought we couldn't afford them, we couldn't afford not to have them, but we didn't see it at that time. So there's a lot of things that Savannah keep you from making and their team of making the same mistakes we did. And so that you because these contracts you get them and you keep them. No need to get a bunch of contracts and not keeping them.

SPEAKER_01 22:22

So you can't really do this for that's what they do for is that's what they used us for issues. We gave the demonstration to show them you can't do that. So they could document them and show other people how not to make this.

SPEAKER_06 22:34

And the other thing is don't this this is a building maintenance business and whatever. It doesn't look glamorous to some people being janitorial contracts. This is reoccurring revenue. This is this is doesn't have to be glamorous, and you don't have to know anything about it. We didn't know people put wax on floors. I mean, we didn't we didn't know anything about it. You don't have to know that, don't overthink this. It's uh but don't underestimate it's gonna take it's gonna test you, and you're gonna have to commit.

SPEAKER_04 23:03

This is not a dabble in it business, as far as I can tell.

SPEAKER_02 23:09

Fantastic, thank you.

SPEAKER_10 23:15

Okay, so let's talk about sales executives from day one. Obviously, you guys came from Cintos, you had a ton of sales experience, you yourself, you knew the salesperson you wanted to hire, but what would be your recommendation for those that are coming in today and making their first hire of who to look for, maybe what industry to look in, what backgrounds do you want to hire, what kind of people are you looking for for your first hire?

SPEAKER_06 23:43

That that's a good one right there. I mean, I could teach a seminar on how to hire the wrong person.

SPEAKER_05 23:49

I mean, I'm like the best, I'm the best at it.

SPEAKER_06 23:52

That's Jeremy. So we got in here, and that's another roadblock that got us because we were good at selling, we just hired people to get us appointments and we could say, and it really got us going quick in the beginning, but set us back long term. So we hit a little, we we're in a reorganization. I'm so proud of our sales team we've got right now, though. The mistake Jeremy and I made Jeremy used to call it Centa Shady Oaks. You know, it was like if you're doing a draft pick right now, I don't think it was a better running back than who's the best running back of all time. I mean, Jim Brown just passed away, but Barry Sanders, you know. So we remembered all these guys at Centah, but I'm I'm 59 years old, you're not over my age. And so they're not that you know that wasn't the profile. We were great, we were in our mid-20s, uh like Savannah and her age group. And so we had we looked around the room, Jerry's like, I didn't never seen an older bunch of people we got in here. I mean, uh good people, God bless them. But this is a young man's game out here in the in the hustle game. So that you're the owner now, if you get this. You're you're you're not hiring, you're not providing retirement plans. I mean, you're you're hiring the up-and-comers. And and so we we set a scale. I'm so I just can't wait to y'all see what happens with this sales team. Our sales team is off the chain. It's like, I mean, it's off the chain. These young people are are nuts. And so they're like I was when I was young. I'm nuts now, and they're and they're like I was when I was young. And so you've got to look for for uh um who you look look for the young up and comer, the college athlete coming out, so achievement. You can't teach people to have desire. You can't teach people to have achievement. The past is gonna predict the future. Let your gut be your judge on this, you know. So hire hire these high achievements and pay them well, you know. Get in the we our comp plans were so bad in the beginning. We we attracted what we deserved, you know. And now we we uh we're gonna pay it and we're gonna, if I'm gonna bet on myself and I'm gonna bet everything, I'm gonna bet it, you know, I'm gonna give them a damn good comp plan. And it's uh so what we have now, you know, and I'm not saying it's the greatest new Manhattan comp plan or California, you are all out of out of control, but it's a different economy. But here in the Atlanta, you know, metro area, you know, you get a $65,000 base. We've got reps, uh, Nick earned $195,000 this year, you know, and he's worth every penny of it. So we want five of them, five of them earning that kind of money. And it and then we're gonna scale it and blow up. It's like five individual franchises you get to run territories out here by that. But my tip on hiring salespeople is is don't you're better off with nobody than somebody that you think is cheap because it's a cultural thing. And so we had to overcome that. It's a cultural thing, and it will get into your organization. So hire a past predicts the future. This is a hunter's game. Pick yourself a former athlete, somebody that's uh that's and and stick with the personality index. You'll get that mavericks. You know, you want uh there's a certain profile that you're gonna want to hire. And so but all that's a part of this recipe now. That's uh if you execute it perfect and you're gonna hire out of desperation, you're gonna want to hire your buddy, and he's he's 50 years old, and don't do not do that, do not do that. And so uh, I'm not saying it's a hundred percent every time, there's always exceptions, but as a rule, yes, staff and staff well and pay them well. It's a young person's game. Past predicts the future. Jeremy, you got any uh tips on that? But uh is our sales team not look completely different than it did a year and a half ago? And we got to 19 and a half million making every mistake you can possibly make.

SPEAKER_01 27:31

Yeah, no, I'm I would say if you guys uh um become part of the system, uh look us up. We can save you a lot of grief.

SPEAKER_05 27:43

And there's a lot of other one of us out there.

SPEAKER_06 27:45

We've all failed four, you know. I can't believe Jim Hughes is kicking our ass. And I can believe Steve Carroll, he's better looking and handsomer and a professional golf player, all that.

SPEAKER_07 27:55

I can believe Carroll, but I agree with you, David. When you you really should take that as a stake in the heart that Jim Hughes is on you, that is.

SPEAKER_05 28:04

I gotta go down there, I gotta go down there and see him at the convention. It's embarrassing. It's embarrassing.

SPEAKER_07 28:09

You should. You should be ashamed. It's embarrassing.

SPEAKER_05 28:12

It is these two guys will come on and kick our ass. I would have to be out there clapping for the hell they kicked our ass with cash and check, so it's crazy.

SPEAKER_07 28:23

So I think one question I haven't heard anyone ask on this. Do you have any sort of a niche from an industry or a building type focus that you guys either have started with in the beginning or that have you found uh that there's a large profit margin in that you guys are focused on right now?

SPEAKER_06 28:42

That's a good one. That's a good one. So our space, sorry, Jeremy, because I'm on mute and can't get a word again. Go ahead, Jeremy. I'm gonna let you go. So you didn't put your face in here. I can't see you. You can't go ahead. Did you have it on that, Jeremy?

SPEAKER_01 28:56

And I I apologize to everybody too, because I'm my my son's got his first baseball game today, and I didn't want to miss it, but I didn't want to miss you guys either. Um I mean we we do have uh we've got a basic footprint for a a tier one prospect that um you know uh citywide gave to us in the beginning. Uh it may have changed a little bit over time, but not much. We live in the uh 10,000 to 100, 150,000 square foot single tenant property. And um we we found that most buildings that size where they're the only ones that occupy that space, and it's within that square footage, uh, there's there is a need for uh facility management. And uh we're selling a managed service. We are not we are unique in our industry in that space because of what we bring to the table. We save time and solve problems on building maintenance issues. Uh we just start off with the commercial cleaning because that's where most people uh find their pain and frustration is with their cleaning team. So that gets us in the door. Uh those types of buildings are um auto dealerships, off-site medical schools, churches, uh, warehouse and distribution. Um, and typically those buildings at those sizes don't have an on-site facility manager. So that makes us even more valuable because we can take care of any of their building maintenance needs, not just the cleaning, you know, painting, plumbing, HVAC, electrical construction, parking lot, seal coat and striping, mill and paving. You know, we can we can even tear your building down and rebuild it if need be.

SPEAKER_06 30:45

And our space has never seen a business model like us before either. Keep that in mind. They've never seen it.

SPEAKER_01 30:53

So, and within those, you know, we find that um with what we were taught by citywide and in the industry, there's a lot of studies on um, you know, cleaning rates and things like that for different types of industries. We've got a bid module, and if we just go if we quote and propose by the book, um our margins uh are always right in line uh with our pro forma, which is uh to operate on um thir you know 30 to 32 percent revenue due the office uh after you pay your contractors, and you you're trying to make between you know 10 and 15 percent profit at the end of the day. And if that answers your question or not.

SPEAKER_06 31:38

Yeah, well, that's a good point too, because this will probably disappoint you guys, but it excited me and Jeremy. You do not have to be that smart to run this business. It is so, it is so simple. I mean, price in a building, you go off a ratio like 4,000 square feet can be cleaned in an hour. Because there's this is this business should not intimidate anybody. Uh, if you got a cleaning rate of 4,000 square feet cleaned an hour, you got a 20,000 square foot building. So it's gonna take five hours to clean it. I sound like a genius to my customer model, it's probably take five million hours to clean your building. And the cleaning rate here is $25 an hour. Yeah, so it's $100 a night. You're like, this guy's a genius. And so um, and then you say $100 a night, there's five nights in a work week Monday through Friday. I'm just keep getting smarter. That's $500 times 4.33 weeks in a month. That'll throw them for a twist in Georgia. But so you go, and so that's about $2,100 to clean your building or $2,150. And so, is that about what you're spending? I say, Yeah, how'd you know? And so you're gonna hit their budget. It's not, it's not, it's the everything in this business is not that difficult. You just got to have the hunting spirit and you gotta go out there and you gotta attract talent too. People have got to work for you, you got to treat them right, you've got to encourage them. That's it's a leadership game, you know. And then uh your your question was, oh, the other thing on our space is but when we started in this business, my wife's uncle owns a car dealership and he said they'll never make it. I get called on eight times a day by people uncleaning. You know, they're everybody's gonna discourage you. Your best friends will discourage you the most probably. They'll never make it. And he would he he passed away, but I think I rest his soul. But if he were still alive, he would not believe between the four guys he sat there to say we wouldn't make it. We're doing like 60, 80 million dollars in revenue. This is like less than 15 years later. And because in our space, the same people are calling on them. They're frustrated for a reason. It's hard to get an appointment because our our prospects are jaded. They think we're all the same. They think we're all the same. But it's franchise cleaning companies, master franchise cleaning companies, Janna King, Janpro, System 4, Coverall, CleanNet. Everybody calling on that 10,000 to 100,000 square foot space is uh is a master franchise cleaning company. And I won't bore you with how the model works, but it's a flawed model. It's a very flawed model. So there's no need for them to change from Janna King to Jan Pro. It's the same business model, it's the same flaw. So once you get in front of Prospect and you educate them why they've had all these struggles and they're like, oh man, I didn't know that. We become the obvious choice. Then they get so frustrated with master franchise cleaning companies, they go directly to the cleaner. Well, the cleaners are still unmanaged. It's after five o'clock, it's an unmanaged service. Either way you go. So they're gonna naturally run to the dollar store. They're gonna, you know, get the cheapest chemicals. They'll go in and put uh a bleach on your floors, put uh put uh a pine saw, they'll put things that cause residue, they'll damage your building and you'll pay them to do it. And if it's uh and it's an unmanaged service. So once they realize citywide's gonna give them a citywide facility manager that's an extension of their team and not on their payroll, and watch and manage this simple service for them, it's the obvious your closing ratio should be very high. Now, to get appointments is very hard because we're in a jaded audience. They've heard it all before. They don't want to see us. They've heard it. We used to be taught they get the mediocrity, nobody's stealing anything. They they didn't they didn't uh they didn't leave the doors unlocked and they got the trash and filled the dispensers. We're good, you know. And so that it's uh, but once they understand our business models, why it can kind of you can catch up, you can really catch fire. One dealership and a dealership group sees that, and then now you get you we call verticals. You get one, you get them all. You'll walk into things now. We didn't walk into, we didn't have a national accounts division when we got into this, but you'll you'll walk into you get one XBO Logistics and you'll get a bunch of them. You'll get one Davida. We're up to uh I think Jeremy, 40-something Davida dialysis clinics. I think Alabama opened up and and uh uh Obaba, even Bubba's kicking our butt, Jeremy. That's ridiculous. And and so, but he he picked up like 90-something Davitas right off the bat, him and his uh sales rep out there. So just because you uh I remember one of the first dealerships we called on this big BMW dealership. He was walking us around. Jeremy hadn't been in, we hadn't been in business uh of three days, and this guy's walking us around wearing our ties and suits and trying to look big, and we drop some national references and all, and everybody's uh looking at us and he goes, These guys are big, man. These guys are big. We're gonna bring in a big company in here, you know. And so you just look bigger than you want to. And now, yeah, now that VP of that group, he wants to go into business with me and Jeremy. He'll hit us up all the time and say, Well, we're gonna go into business. We're like, we needed you back then, we don't need you now. We don't need you now, you know. And so, yeah, it's yeah, isn't it crazy? Tyler Heard, we love him, but we don't need you now, you know. We needed you back then. We've taken your money and you'd had ownership in this thing back then, you know. So, but anyway, that the question was, I think I forget what the question was, but it was uh what was the question, Saman? But the go ahead, Chris.

SPEAKER_07 36:53

I think Chris has got a question for you. Go ahead, Chris.

SPEAKER_06 36:57

The point is this is very unique. You're not buying into the cleaning industry, you're not buying a cleaning franchise, you're not opening something for a limited period of time. We have something nobody else has a management company in the space of the 10,000 to 200,000 square foot space. Someday somebody's gonna come up with a good model like this. But this thing caught fire. I mean, when it was 15 years ago, I think the largest location was Colorado doing 400,000 a month or something. I mean, and they've been at it for a little while. The Brown brothers talk Jeremy and the Jeff. He didn't like them for three years, did you, Jerry? You're loving them now, though. And so, but uh, but uh but now uh the uh average location is doing something like eight to ten million dollars in in uh revenue, and and they're kicking off so much faster. They open up and they hit five million really quick now. It's just a compression of time, but you're not buying a cleaning franchise. It's a management, it's a management company that can clean, maintain, fix anything inside or outside of commercial property.

SPEAKER_08 38:01

I'll jump in with another question. Uh David and Jeremy, uh, I understand that you guys uh expanded into, I believe, East Atlanta for your second tour, second.

SPEAKER_06 38:12

We bought the West Side. Scott Schoenberg opened opened, I think, the sixth or eighth franchise. I think he was friends of your dad in in college, uh Savannah. And so, and when we first got on this thing, the first convention, I went to you, we it well, this thing wasn't as big as a church bus. It's like 10 of us are going over to Frank's house. And I looked at everybody knew Jeff. And I was like, we didn't buy a franchise. I mean, this is all Jeff and his friends. We're the only ones that weren't Jeff's friends, you know, except the girls from California and San Diego that opened up and sold their thing for a fortune. I mean, they sold that thing to, and Ian's just killing it. He's taking it to the next level, and so uh but but you asked me a question, I already forgot what you asked. My attention's fan is too poor. What what did you what did you ask me?

SPEAKER_08 38:56

Yeah, so I I believe you you you acquired or you opened the business. Yes, okay.

SPEAKER_06 39:01

Scott was one of the originals. Scott was one. Scott did not follow follow the business model. Scott, when we bought Scott, he had three hundred thousand dollars in janitorial. I don't know how he did this. I don't people used to think Scott might have been a little lazy. He was the hardest working man I have ever known. No wonder he retired. He's in Cabo now playing golf every day. But he had $300,000 in monthly in contract revenue running, and he had no employees. He had no employee, he just contracted it out, and so uh, and it was a very volatile business. We didn't know exactly what we got into over there. That's why I thought we thought Scott was a little lazy. We thought he'd playing golf all the time and it was gonna be easy. He didn't have a single employee over there, and so we we did an acquisition of Scott's business because when his 15 years came up, he didn't get renewed because he didn't stay with the business model, he didn't progress with everybody else, and the and the and the system just left him behind. And I'm telling you, this thing is requires your full attention to keep up with everybody. Now, if they buy you at it, probably worth a lot of money. You know, we paid Scott pretty good for his uh $300,000 in contracts. But this is a continuous learning environment. This is uh Savannah has no reason to even jump into this business. I mean, they they could sell this whole system for a ton of money, but her heart, her whole family heart is in this family. It's still a family business, it's still got the spirit of it all. But we did acquire Scott and we fought for that location. We had to back in the day, Jeff would beg us to to open a citywide location, and then we're begging Jeff to open up one. It's got we gotta have the West, you know. It's it's this thing has flipped the script. You all are getting sort of interviewed too, you know. They don't just they don't they want to award this because we're you're in business together now. And so there's it's a two-way street. First, you gotta want it, and then they're gonna decide whether you're the per best person to be the steward of the citywide name and brand in the market. But we're proud of steward Atlanta right now, but we feel a lot of pressure to do it the right way in the citywide way. Not because they pressure us, they leave us alone. They leave us, we just feel pressure because it's it's it's such a good system.

SPEAKER_04 41:05

It's a it's a it's a responsibility. But we did make that acquisition.

SPEAKER_06 41:13

Did that answer your question on acquisition? We we bought the west side.

SPEAKER_08 41:17

Yeah, uh I'll let that uh yeah, just have a one one one short question on what what made you prepared to take on that on the on that second territory and any initial are are you using the same contracts that you are using in your existing territory, or that's a bit too far to use those contractors for the yeah, you you pod your territory out.

SPEAKER_06 41:37

That's a big mistake we made in the beginning, too. We would have uh employees across the whole side of town, we would have contractors driving across each other at night. And when we got a compliance officer that makes sure everybody lives within a 23 mile radius if they get assigned, especially a cleaning contract, because that's time so it's a whole separate business unit. It's separate, it's uh it's completely separate. That's the scalability of this business. So uh that business grows at its pace and is dependent on the leadership quality over there. The east side is a whole separate business unit that grows at its own pace. So you've got two of them, if we do it right, will scale separately and allow us to grow our business bigger than it would have if we'd been under one.

SPEAKER_04 42:22

We do share some resources, but did that did that answer?

SPEAKER_02 42:26

Was that yeah, that was clear. Thank you, David.

SPEAKER_04 42:33

Jeremy, you got anything you want to say?

SPEAKER_09 42:35

Go ahead, Daz.

SPEAKER_03 42:36

I can jump in. I can do it. Uh Das Connell in New Jersey. David, enjoying listening to you. It'd be fun to ride around a golf course for a few hours with. What's your handicap? Uh I I enjoy the conversation. I don't know if I keep up my end of the bargain, but I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_06 42:54

It's gonna get worse if you get in this business. You ain't gonna play much golf.

SPEAKER_03 42:57

No, I don't play much golf. I'm a salesman. So the but the uh question I have, put the sales part aside because I've listened to a lot of the Z calls. A couple one thing that I had in my notes that I wanted to follow up with you guys on is operations, night manager, the FSM account manager, the onboarding process for them. If you hire those folks, you know, you get you find a good one, you you think you go through the process, you get them on board. Is there a is there a operations manual? Is there a system uh approach with how to you know get those those folks right?

SPEAKER_06 43:34

Yes. And uh and Jeremy, you can talk to this uh, but they've added Mitch who who's right out of the field for right out of college, and it's just continuous improvement. But yeah, Jeremy, you want to speak to that?

SPEAKER_01 43:49

Uh yeah, I mean every we everything there's a documented process for everything. Um so the onboarding process, you know, we we actually have a manual that we go by, what we do. You know, what we do day one, what we do week one, what we do month one. Um, so there's a there's an onboarding process and training and training off the training materials are uh I mean in abundance. I mean, we've got citywide university. I mean, you can watch videos, you can read manuals, there's uh any any kind of classroom uh information and knowledge that you can gain is out there for you. Um and you couple that with uh going out in the field and you know, benchmarking and writing, especially when you start start up. Uh this everybody in this system is so ready to help you be successful. So if you have a new person, you know, you can send them send them to us. We'll put them out in the field with one of our or several of our people for a couple of days. I mean, there's uh you know, there's just all kinds of uh ways that you can get uh get people to uh to benchmark and learn and and and grow right off the rip.

SPEAKER_06 44:55

Uh but yeah, very everything you're using will be just like you you joined a corporate job.

SPEAKER_02 45:05

I didn't mean to cut you off, Jerry.

SPEAKER_01 45:09

No, you're good. I had crying babies all around me.

SPEAKER_06 45:12

Okay, I know you're the game. But yeah, uh training, yeah, training your people. You you'll open up, you probably won't have very many people. So this thing will grow, you'll grow into it as it grows, and every decision you make is more important than you might think it is on who you're bringing on board. And and it really is a game. Um this thing's it's a compression of time. Every new location is growing so much faster than they did years before, because everything gets documented, everything it's a it's a group think type of uh continuous improvement environment. But they will your people will be very well trained. The other thing to know is we're the management company. So one intimidating thing is we've we've uh done a million-dollar remodel of a car dealership uh back in our early days, and we didn't know anything about remodeling, but we had a good contractor that did. So we don't have to do everything, we just got to get everything done. And we don't have to know everything about everything. You're gonna have a ton of resources once you bring your contractors in. You just own the relationship with a customer, and then you vet your contractors and you get everything done. You're not the expert, you're the generalist, but you will surround yourself with experts. So don't think you have to know everything to be successful.

SPEAKER_07 46:31

David, what would you say that you uh from a percentage standpoint, would you guys say that from um a JS janitorial service versus other services uh would be how how you would weight the revenue that you guys are at right now?

SPEAKER_06 46:47

We at one point, not long ago, we had gotten to where we looked at it and we said, to this customer, we look like a janitor company. I mean, that and and we can't look like a janitor company because it's not who we are. And so we were running like an 80-20, 80%, uh 20%. Now we're running more like a 60-40. And our people make a lot more money, our facility managers, and we bring a lot more value. That's gonna make the business more sticky. Our last six months retention is what's got off the chain here. We're we're on to something. But yes, you you've got to remember, even though a lot of times we're leading with the janitorial service in the 10,000 to 100,000 square foot space, because that's where most people are struggling. They don't only have the options of the franchise companies and mom and pop. We lead with that, but once you inject your facility manager, they become an extension of the customer's team, but not on their payroll. And they they should be uh building relationships. And now you want to capture all the building maintenance spend in there, painting, handyman, plumbing, floor work. You should uh locations are running a dollar for a dollar now. They're getting forever janitorial. And just think if that's the other thing about the stages of your business. If we're doing $19.5 million right now and we're 45 cents on the dollar on extra services, if we move that dollar up 50% without gaining a new customer, we've just taken our business to like $25 million. And so it's this that's how these locations are starting to kick our butt. But they ain't gonna do it for long. But but you say, and then it keeps pressure on you to continue to grow your business. Whereas left out of here without the system, we would naturally get a little bit lazy, maybe. We wouldn't, we wouldn't push ourselves as far. It's like having a trainer. We wouldn't push ourselves as far. We go places we would have never gone by ourselves. But yes, you can't just be a janitor management company and reach your full potential.

SPEAKER_07 48:52

Last round, guys, is the the last round champion of the infamous David Otis. No, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_06 48:58

And I'm not trying to put I'm just this is the way I am. My wife drives my wife crazy. My son tells me I gotta get away from him. He wants to be calm. And so I don't want to be like this, and I am not making a sales pitch to anybody. I there's nothing in it for me on this deal. I just this business has I had a good job. I was a uh director of sales over at CentOS and I'm and I'm the number one director in the company. I had a good job. I didn't need to leave that for this, but I would have never fulfilled my God-given potential and and been so rewarded by this. So I'm just and and I know Jeremy feels the same way. This is tested every and still test everything about just test a different thing. It doesn't test our ability to go out at night and work. It doesn't test our we'll not do any of that. It tests how how much value we can bring to another person and how much we can individually grow. And and it doesn't, it's just a whole different ball game. It's everything I I loved about corporate what it did to me, but it doesn't have the micromanagement. There's no politics in this. I can't politic my way to Savannah making me win awards or getting a promotion. There's no there's no politics here. It's performance-based, and the checks are bigger than I ever saw in my corporate life. And and I get to determine what I invest in my location. It's it's so much. Brian Tracy said a person's happy to the degree they feel they're in control. And this brings me why I'm kind of a nut. I apologize. But why I'm happy in my life is because, you know, uh God can take me away today, you know, and I can leave my kids in better shape than they were before. This is sustainable, this is their business. If I if I die in my corporate job, they don't get any part of that. If I die in this job, I feel so happy, it's so fulfilling. And because it's a higher degree of control than I would have ever had before. And it's not for everybody. This is your all, you know, your situations and your individual thing. It's not for everybody. But if it's for you, it just I just can't imagine anything being more rewarding. But I'm not I'm not trying to sell you on it because you'll beat me up at a convention sometime. But it it but the first three years, and then you'll really hug at each other, you're fine.

SPEAKER_07 51:06

But I think that's key, David. And I think that you know, anybody on this call has to ask themselves of do you have the energy and the passion that you see inside of David? Because I think that that is what it takes to get through those first three years. Uh, the conversations in the beginning with Savannah and I, we usually are beating up the candidates that come through our door pretty hard in that that first couple of meetings to let them know how difficult and the level of grit. And um, you know, I always compare it to a 747 that it's really heavy, it's hard to get off the runway, you're probably gonna need a couple barf bags, but that once you, you know, get in the air, it's it's not to the clouds, it's to the moon. But it is a struggle to get there and that it is not for everybody. And so we really try to identify and set expectations for the those on the call that that this is an amazing business model for the person that does have that B2B sales ability, that does have that energy level, that does have the gas left in the tank for one more hard round of of grit and um going through all of the things that we all know entrepreneurs go through in that that first couple of years. So um I just want to thank everybody for coming on this call. And uh I had a great time this afternoon, David. Thank you for making my day and everyone else's he's your ball fire. So we're excited.

SPEAKER_06 52:36

I appreciate that, but I really feel bad when I get off these calls. I apologize. I hope I I hope somebody got something out of this. I mean, I don't know.

SPEAKER_10 52:43

Oh my gosh, you guys were great, Jeremy David. Thank you, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_06 52:47

It is and you'd have gotten so much more if Jeremy had gotten talked more. I mean, you really would have.

SPEAKER_10 52:51

Don't feel bad. This was amazing. I so appreciate it. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_06 52:57

Thank you, guys. David, Jeremy, have a great rest. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:03

Hey, God bless. Best of luck. Bye bye.

SPEAKER_02 53:06

Take care.