How Jake’s HVAC Company Doubled with No Private Equity | Customer-First Growth in Knightstown

Jake Adams, co-owner of Jake's Heating & Cooling in Knightstown, Indiana, shares how he and his wife built and scaled their HVAC and plumbing business with a relentless focus on customer experience—not private equity.

You'll hear real stories of growth, hiring, training, ghost hunts (yes, really), and the secret to thriving in small-town markets without sacrificing service or sanity.

This episode is a masterclass in building a sustainable, local-first service business with integrity.

Transcript

Jake, how has your customer experience, set you apart with your business? And, also you work with your wife every day, so what's the most rewarding part of that?

We try to give a positive, process driven experience to the customer, and they love us for it. And working with my wife. You know, she loves me.

Welcome this edition of the Hoel Truth podcast! Today, our special guest is Jake Adams with Jake's Heating and Cooling in Knightstown, Indiana. So Jake's one of them. I'm going to, let him introduce himself, but he's actually one of them that I've kind of followed, just because he has grown an Hvac company.

For being a local contractor on what I'm trying to do with the roofing. So it's just, it just this just made sense. So take a minute, introduce yourself, and, we'll jump into it. Oh, yeah. I'm Jake Adams with Jake’s and air conditioning and plumbing out of Knightstown, Indiana. We've been in business about 18 years trying not to say ‘um’, a lot.

And it's really hard when you think about it. I own it with Kelly, my wife. If you look at our logo, she's the lady that's in there. And, you know, we've grown quite well over the years. And we're still growing today. So what, how did you get in the Hvac? My dad, was in Hvac, and when I was graduating high school, I got, rolled up into an apprenticeship program that he kind of put together, with his employer.

And that's how I got to HVAC. Okay, so did your dad ever owned his own? No. Okay. No. What, So was your dad union by chance? He wasn't when I started out. Okay. But about halfway through my apprenticeship, he, joined the union and the unions kind of. I got wrapped up into it as well.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. So what made you decide that, Hey, I'm going to go do this. I'm going to do it for myself. I set to work. Oh. That's easy. My mom, is an entrepreneur, and my dad is two, but my mom is a real entrepreneur. Like, just entrepreneurial. Like, that's all there is to it. And she owned, some daycares out in Oklahoma City.

Did some, bought the wrong business. The ended up with, some IRS troubles because of that. The last people didn't pay their taxes. So the, we moved to Indiana, but I always had the bug. I wanted to run a company. I wanted to be a successful company. I just didn't know what kind until, I started going through the apprenticeship, and it's like, oh, this is what I want to do.

Was there. So, people that that are entrepreneurs, like, they get it. Like, I knew that I wanted to start my own company. What that was, I tried a few different, like, kind of side gigs. But, yeah, I mean, like, people, some people understand that, like, I was in environmental consulting before I got into roofing and like, I almost try to open up one of them companies, but I was like, my heart, you know, my my heart wasn't in it.

So did you try anything else before, before you tried Hvac? Not really. The. As I was going through the apprenticeship, as soon as we topped out, within a year, I was open. Now, the whole time going through the apprenticeship, I did more side jobs, and I probably should have, when we had about 80 hours a week, doing the side job stuff and 40 hours a week working for Honeywell at that point, it was like, you know, it's it might be time, like, it just might be time to the jump off.

So in 2007, that's what we did April 1st, 2007. So, your wife works in the business with you day to day? Yep. What's, what's her main role? Well, it has changed a little bit over the last year. I lovingly say that I fired her, but she's still around. She does a lot of the administrative stuff.

A lot of the, she's also a business owner, which is different than, a role in the business. So she's going over numbers, making sure people are happy, taking care of our team. The team we used to do, she used to do these, haunts where she got, like, kind of tuberculosis hospitals and stuff.

The team absolutely loved that. They actually came back to her, within the last month and was like, we start doing that again. So now she's starting to implement that stuff where they go on ghost hunts and just. I don't know that that's her thing. It's not my thing. But, they seem to really enjoy it.

So where are these ghost hunts? At the, Oh, they're all over Indiana. It was one in Winchester that I went to her with, which is an old tuberculosis hospital. And, you know, you put a ball in the middle of the room, and you asked a little boy to move it, and the wind moves it in, and everybody freaks out and it's like, okay, so I play along.

I do play along. I don't want to ruin it for everybody, but get the idea. The hell with that. Now, Finley was sitting here. I know where this conversation would go to. We actually did do some work, for, a lady over in Franklin and the building that we did some work on. It's it's haunted. Super duper Ellis.

Her name, like, fantastic customer. And I believe it was even. Maybe it was just on, like, a haunted Facebook page of Indiana. But I do know, Yeah. So that's that's funny. I mean, that's a that's a different subject. Me and my wife, we, we have them conversation sometimes. So what did what was so did your wife always work in the business with you?

But. No. In 2013, she is a plumber by trade. Welder. If you call our plumber, she might get mad. But, she got her plumbing license in 2013. She got laid off, from. She was doing commercial stuff, and, she's like. Jake, I got the office, you get the field. And that's pretty much how it was up until about a year ago.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, it was. I was running in sales. Emily was running production. The problem in a roofing construction company, it's either a sales problem or a production problem. And I'm really bad about shutting stuff off when I go home. So then if there was a problem here, I just go home and continue to have discussion.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So only works for the first month after that. The, the yeah, I don't want to talk about it. You don't want to talk about it but we end up talking about it. Yeah. Happened this weekend at the it's it's it's 1030. And she's like seriously we're not talking about it anymore. Yep. I was like and my wife has been working from home.

I said a couple of days off a week. It turned into more just working from home, for about a year now. And I, I like, I wake up and it's like them days, like, I want to talk, work, work, work, and I might. Never mind. Today's your morning off. Or today's your day off. Like, I'll,

I'll. I'll leave that go. What? What do you contribute your success to? Because like I said in the introduction, like, you've grown a business in night's town with hundreds of reviews. And you know what? I'll be honest. What I did is I worked for a couple of the big roofing companies in Indianapolis. It's funny because now they'll come out this way and do work, but it seemed like when I worked for them, they'd always complain that we were too far out.

Nobody wanted to go out there. We, our suppliers, didn't want to deliver their material. Our crews didn't want to go out there. So I just took the concept. I try not to say business model, but the concept of having several sales reps and actually having a production team. So kind of talk a little bit about your growth and what you've had to do.

And, you know, maybe some lessons that you've learned. Well, our biggest thing is our people, they've run a process, that we designed, that has a high level of, customer experience, type thing in there. So we want the customer to be, to have a great experience with us because, you know, when we show up, your furnace is broke, your air conditioner broke.

You're not having the best day. But if we can take that and, like, hey, we've got this under control, we know how to fix it and so on and so forth. And run that process. It turns out very well every time. It's, I'm trying to think of some lessons. There's been so many over 18 years that, you know, sometimes you get your teeth kicked in, sometimes you got to eat it, and sometimes you screw things up.

Sometimes they flood a house and you just got to they they flooded the house. I'm sorry. Let's just make it back better than what we found at those type of things. But, sometimes that happens just every week around here, so. Oh, and. Yeah, it's. Well, when you're doing, I was talking to somebody about this yesterday when you're doing somewhere between 20 and 40 calls a day, right.

One of them going bad is going to happen, right? We're going to make somebody mad. Or there's going to be miscommunication, which is usually where it turns out to be. You know, they're not having the best day. We show up and, you know, you might need a new furnace or air conditioner. And it's like how am I going to pay for this?

And I'll sell that type of stuff. So we try to take those stress points and make them as easy as possible. If we can make them easy as possible, then their day is not so bad. They can get back on with their life and so on and so forth. One thing that I stressed around here is like communication, because in the contracting world, contractors never they never show up when I say they're going to, you know, they never do the job when I say they're going to and they don't get the estimate out when they say they're going to, you know, and where in the world that stuff happens.

But there is a lot of stuff that we can control, you know? So I mean, it's just the customer experience. I mean. Exactly. That's probably the the biggest shift that I had, because sometimes I felt like I was going to the team and I'm like, this is how I want to do it. And it was for the customer experience.

But they took it as, oh, this is how Bob wants it done. Yep. Then I kind of flipped it to, hey, let's look at the customer experience. Like, how can we make this the smoothest handoff from sales to production, you know, and you still have like today, the suppliers in here right now, they, one of the shingles, they didn't have it at their branch.

They shipped it over to a different branch. Well, that communication fell through and the materials weren't delivered until about 20 minutes ago, you know, but they owned it. They got it here. It's all going to work out, you know, so well. And when you talk about suppliers, ours, we partnered with Trane a couple of years ago. And it is the rep is the reason why we sell train.

Yes. Trains are a great piece of equipment and so on and so forth. Hesitancy may be a little higher than everybody else as far as cost. But if I called him right now and said, Jeff, I need an 18 seer unit here and it's in Dayton or something, he'd go run a U-Haul and get it here.

Right? Like there is no question there is no well, this or that or others like, oh, that's what you need. That's what we got. Yep yep yep. Absolutely. Yeah. Suppliers like being out here where there isn't a whole bunch. Yep. It makes all the difference in the world. So what and and everybody wants that. What's the silver bullet?

What's the secret to success? But what do you what do you think you guys have done well to grow to where you're at? Again, I put it back on that process. Yep. You get the people in place, you put the process in place that takes care of the customer and that customer experience. And we just grow every month.

We grow a little more, and every month we grow a little more or so. So what? So heating, cooling and plumbing is that. Is that your guys's three services? Yep. And we are planning to do that cleanings as well. Yeah. Yeah, you actually did duckling for us on a job. We did a tornado damage house a few years ago.

Oh, really? And it it was smooth. I shouldn't probably admit this on the phone or on the camera, but we called somebody else, and I was like, what in the heck? And I was like, just call Jakes and see if they do it. And I mean, literally, I think it was done within a couple of days and yeah, got out there, got it done, which for you guys, it was a perfect scenario.

The house is empty, you know, I mean, like you can just go in there and do your job and get it done, but still, like just from one business owner to another, like you made that part of our day go a lot smoother. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We just take it, we'll take the problem and you go put roofs on.

Let's deal with this. So what, What? So you said you've been in Knights Town 25 years. So been in business 18 years? Yeah. Like what? How's Yolanda? Tonight's town? Yeah. That again? It's not that interesting. My dad, I. I always knew I wanted to start a business, even when we were going through the apprenticeship. So me and my dad decided we're going to buy houses and flip them and make money.

I finally sold my very last house. No, I still have one more. I still have one more of my sister's living in it. But anyway, we didn't make any money doing that, so, but we did flip some houses. One of those houses, we bought Knight's Town and he paid very little money for, and so when my daughter was born in 21 or.

Yeah, 21, I was like, we, we lived in over by Speedway. And I was like, Kelly, like, wherever we land, we're not moving from that spot to all the kids graduate. So, my dad had two house nights down there in the middle of flipping it, and he's like, just pay me what I have in it, and that's what we'll do.

And I bought my house for a little bit at nothing. And we lived there for 25 years, and we are getting ready to move. But, we're still in the same school district. Yeah, I still have one more that's got about ten more years. Nice. Nice. Yeah. No, it's, I like I said, it's it's it's ironic.

You know, I, we moved from Ohio over to Rushville or Rush County, I guess, back in 96, so. Holy cow, that'll be 30 years here in a few months. That's that's crazy fast crazy that that crazy to say that out loud, you know, and, so, I mean, that's why that's why we did. That's why we did what we did.

Do you guys have any other locations besides Knight's Town? We do. There's Newcastle, Knights Town, Greenfield and New Pal. Okay. And 2020, when I started, building those out, we were going to put CSRs in them and kind of run them as a their own little shop. Covid kind of put a stop to it.

So I just tell people they're glorified billboards. It's actually cheaper to buy a building and put a billboard in front of it than it is to rent a billboard. Yep. So, we hold meetings there usually, and things of that nature. But that's usually with the like Newcastle, for example. We have a lot of, leadership meetings there.

Greenfield. We'll have, Hvac service meetings there twice a week. Those type of things happen, but they're not actively open. Right. Yeah. So what so what is how big is your team? We were being 44 people after today. I do believe in including Kelly and myself. Wow. That's nice. Is that the largest you guys have ever?

No. We've actually been a little bit larger. Sometimes in business, you have to reset a little bit. That happened in between 23 and 24. So we had to cut about 18 people. And that's something I'm extremely proud about. But, when you're a little bit of a crisis mode, you, you, anybody who's not a team, a player.

Yeah, yeah. They're great people. Absolutely. And, you know, most of them have moved on and got jobs and things like that. But if you're born a producer, we didn't keep that. Right. So, I wrote a book one time and said, you got motors and you have anchors. Cut the anchors. Right. Keep the motors, cut the anchors.

Sounds so, like, mean now if I say it out loud. But that's what I did. Well, what what people don't understand as a small business owner is like, you know, it's we have to make money. And I know that may sound greedy. But when you look at, you know, our team has grown so much here lately, and we seem to have a lot of young families, like, we just had a cookout on Saturday at my house, and some guys, like you had more kids there than you did dance.

And my son is ten and he's like the old one other group. I mean, there's, I know Tim's got a boy. It's a few years older, but, I mean, a lot of them are months old to 3 to 5. And I mean, so, like, I, I carry a burden. Like when I look at LA, I see, you know, four kids at home.

Yep. Like, you know, and it's just there's a different there's a different layer, a different level of that. Like Ellie's a fantastic young lady. She could go be successful at a lot of places. I'm very appreciative that she works here. But I'm just, you know. Yeah, I mean, I, I, I, I get it. What book was that? I actually forget what it was.

College has, had good to. Great. Maybe. Okay. So I'm going talent. Yeah. Okay. I think that. Yeah, I know Jim Collins has a few different books. He's got good too. Great. And then now I'm going to, like, complete idiot because I, I just seen him at a Dave Ramsey conference, and, they were actually talking about,

Yeah. B 2.0. I was like, I just looked over and said on Adams desk here, I believe that was one of his first books. If I remember right. And, yeah, I'm just a book junkie and a leadership junkie, so. So what kind of. What do you guys? I mean, you follow a process. What I've kind of learned in successful businesses is there has to be systems and processes, and I hate that word because I felt like some companies I worked for before in environmental even there was two corporate.

Now I kind of understand the importance of some of that. But like what is your your employee training look like? Because because I know that has to be a huge part. Oh, yeah. Well, on the plumbing side, there's an actual apprenticeship that goes through the back. Okay. Those type of things. But then we also do some in-house training.

We've hired a full time trainer. Robert. Roberts worked for me for 11, 12 years. Something like that. Started out as a, installer. Worked his way all the way through everything. And we've recently, in the last year, made him specifically trainer. So he's building out areas, and we've always had for the last five years, like systems, in place where the guys could break them and all kinds of other stuff, and then learn how to do tune ups and learn how to do transitions for the installers and things like that.

But we're kicking that up a notch. Okay. So hopefully in the next year you'll start to see to where we just take people that are not out in the field every day, teach them, then put them out into the field. What we do now is, a couple hours a day, then they go out to the field, with the exception of installers, we actually did the installers where we teach them one thing about the Hvac install, and we teach them and teach them and teach them for two weeks, and then they've got that down.

So then I can take that person and put them out into the field. And they're not learning on the fly. So they can learn how to put an outdoor unit. Then, they may not be able to braise it and some of the other stuff, but they can get it level, they can set it in place, they can hook it up electrically, under the supervision of the journeyman that is there on the site.

So, but our training, we're actually doing something really neat with Ivy tech right now to, it's just in the beginning stages that hopefully by the end of it, we'll have some, where they can go. They'll graduate with an associate's degree on top of our apprenticeship program for Hvac. So that's actually a cool thing we've been working on the last couple of months.

So does Ivy tech have an apprenticeship for Hvac now? Not specifically for us. They do have an Hvac program. But it's not considered an apprenticeship. But we're talking about building as an actual apprenticeship. That's governed by the state and things like that, where they'll have to come and do some co-op hours and stuff like that.

Yeah. Okay. Well, they, so many, same thing with plumbing. It's so many school hours and so many, field hours. Okay. And they fill out a sheet and turn it in. Then they take their journeyman test at the end of it. Hvac doesn't have a journeyman test. Okay. Have you got a licensing test? But you don't need it.

You need to operate a business, and you don't need it to work in the business. That makes sense. Oh, yeah. Yeah yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. No, I mean, it's, it's, in the roofing space. It's kind of crazy with, I've got friends all over the country, and, you know, this state needs this licensing, this state doesn't, you know, that kind of stuff.

What is, So, our. Is Ivy tech done a roll that out? Like, statewide are you working? I think it's just in the greenfield area. I we're, they are about a year away from even having the program in Greenfield, so we're still a ways away, but we are working on that. So, did you know you've got the normal model for training is you get throwed out with Jim Bob, right.

And Jim Bob's done it this way for 25 years, and he doesn't want to tell you how he does it. So you end up just skipping along. And the first two years you're just trying to get Jim Bob to open up and teach you how to do stuff. Then he ends up teaching you how to do it wrong and so on and so forth.

If we can contain that and say, okay, Robert, I want this guy to be able to install an Hvac system by the time he gets done with all this to our standards, not Jim Bob standards. That's how well we want to do. And you can take a young man or woman, you know, fresh out of high school, teach him how to do a skill that they'll track for the rest of their life, then that's kind of where we're at on training.

Well, and what I've noticed in the trades is Jim Bob is 60 years old, and he's complaining these young damn kids don't want to do anything. However, the 60 year old doesn't want to train the damn young kid. It seems they forget that they were a dumb young kid. 18, 19 one time, you know, and I've and and I mean, we're we're doing the same thing, like we're trying to we're trying to train better, and we've always had some training.

We're always investing, investing in more. And I always tell the team like, I want the same Big Mac. If you're at the Knights Town McDonald's here at Russellville, when they open back up or wherever, like, that's, that's that's the consistency that, you know, we're looking for as as business owners. Yep. You know, so yeah, absolutely. But I didn't know, with a track, you know, with the testing and, you know, that's that's all that's all news, you know, news to me so.

Well and there's some things in track. No, I just think about it. One is the 608 exam. So, the exam that license you to handle the refrigerant? Yep. Which is not a hard test at all. I interviewed so many guys that are, like, my company doesn't want me to have that. And I'm like, why? It's an easy test.

It only cost 100 bucks to take the test. And it's just a memorization of the dates and figures and things like that. So it's not a hard test. But for some reason, I interview tons of young people that are like my the company I'm with now just doesn't want me to have that license. And I'm like, no, we actually signed up and became proctors so we can give that test because, you know, you need that to get to the next step in your career.

So anyway, so what do you like? This may go more business than actually, real entertaining for for, podcast viewers, but what do you like when you're hiring? Do you like somebody comes in with experience the what's your thought? Kind of depends on what you're hiring for. Okay. If I'm hiring an accountant, for example, or a controller, I want somebody who has done that before.

I don't want them to learn how to screw my money up. Like I want something like, we do that enough for a business owner. Yeah, I don't need help in that area. But the on the other side, it all depends on their attitude. So even if you have experience. And we just ran into this, we interviewed a guy who came in, sounded great on the phone.

But when we got there, his attitude was just like, I'm the greatest in the world. And it's like, I don't need that negative attitude here. One of our things is we need positivity. Like we want to be stay positive. And to me, that would just foster a negative attitude. So we didn't end up hiring him. He ended up sending me a big, long text message about how I was stupid.

So I was like, well, I was I I've got right on that one. So the, I that never happened to you. So I just, yeah, I just, I think of hiring mistakes that I've made, so. Yeah. So, so we started looking for, you know, people. Just a positive attitude. I don't really care how old or young or what.

If you're going to come in and contribute to the team in a positive way, in a proactive way? Then I'll probably end up hiring you. But if you come in with, you know, a chip on your shoulder. But I've been doing this for 30 years. Like, I've. Well, you've been doing it the way we don't do it, right?

This is the way that we do it. So, the biggest thing I actually, I went to a conference whole last year, and, speaker was like, if they don't smile during the interview, don't hire them because they're not going to smile on the field. And so I've kind of looked for that. And he's not far off like it's like, okay.

Yeah, I see that now. But anyway, so what what are some core values? Inside, we have the five piece and I'm going to screw these up because I always do. One is a process driven, we want every customer to have the same experience, or positive. We got to stay positive even when things go negative.

We got to stay positive. And we're proactive. So we actively want to seek out problems and solve them versus let them fester and become huge, things, positive process, proactive. I told you that, you know, I did it to him, and I'm the one who came up with him. The, Anyway, the it's the five P's.

Thinking about making it the £0.06 to put people in there. Yeah. Just because if you can't take care of your people, like, they're they don't take care of you. Right? So we are very strong on trying to make sure that, you know, people that work for me can pay their bills, right. We don't pay, you know, minimum wage, which makes us, you know, they have health insurance, they have retirement plans, which makes us not the cheapest person around.

But I know at the end of the day, they can you know, live. But I don't want us to hire somebody, and they not make enough money to live. And then that person is miserable and the whole thing goes off. So, one thing, one thing that I learned from Dave Ramsey, I actually went and worked for him for about a year, and we had to submit a budget.

Yeah. To prove that we could live off of what he was paying us because he said early on he hired a secretary and she was great. Interview was great. He paid her what he could afford to pay her. And then like two months later, like, she's like depressed and he's like, what? She's like, I can't afford to work here.

And he she got a job offer for a third more and he's like, go like, thank you, but go like, you know. So I mean, that's, you know, that that's something that what I've probably learned is like, I know some people that try to hire the cheapest help and it just it's such a revolving door. Like, I know Cody, I think just celebrated his third year working for us.

A couple of days ago. Nick has been with us almost five years now. Adam will be four years here in another month or two. So, I mean, it's kind of cool. And as young as we are to start seeing, you know, people with with that because like, like you said, like, you know, I, I, I had a boss one time said it's the best compliment when a sales guy pulls up and, you know, bought his wife a new car or whatever because like, yep, they're doing well.

You know, and there's too much of that presumption that we're the rich, greedy business owners, that we make all the money and none of our peasants make any money. And I always tease some of my sales reps and tell them I'll swap and paychecks in any week they want, you know, and I really swap them headaches any day.

Well, there you go. Do you have so do you have any sales people that go out? Because the Hvac world, is a little different than the roofing space. Like when a customer calls on knowing they need a new unit. I understand sometimes they're hoping for a repair that turns into a new unit. But how does that look when they.

When they work with you guys? We do have we call them comfort consultants or supervisors. And, there's two different leads that come in. One is a marketed lead, which is, hey, I want a price on the new system. And even then, sometimes we'll still send a service technician out there. Because sometimes, you know, another company told them something was wrong or, you know, something like that.

We want to make sure that that system is not repairable or is repairable or whatever the options are. And then we do have the supervisor who goes out and goes over all the details and information about whatever system that they're going to purchase. The other one is the, not a marketed or excuse me, that's a marketed lead.

And then the other one would be, you know, we're out there on a maintenance or something like the customer's system is, you know, just not repairable or the repair options or, you know, over a thousand bucks and it's like, hey, there's no pressure here, but do you want to talk to, the supervisor to go over all the information that you have so you can make a informed decision?

Those are the two types of ways that the cover consultant, you know, for lack of a better thing, gets into the house, but, is able to help the customer through those decisions because, you know, Hvac, even some plumbing repairs, you know, water heaters aren't cheap anymore. And there's 15 different water heaters we can put in your house.

So which one fits your best needs. Which one you know, fits your budget the best. Those type of things. And that you know as a technician out in the field trying to go over that with somebody there's going to be a lot it gets misconstrued. So we'd like to have that, that second person go in and sit down with the homeowner and make sure they're making an informed decision.

So with the plumbing, are you doing a lot of like new drain piping? Are you doing more hot water heating heaters? Ours is all residential. Although I did see a commercial one come through this morning, which is very odd for us. But, it can be anything from, you know, a simple change, a false it out repair to, tankless water heaters are a big thing right now.

Down to if you ever had to think was water heater. But if you don't, you need to get one. Could you can turn the water on five days later, come back. It's still piping hot water coming out of that thing. There is no waiting or anything like that. Or, you know, around here, a lot of the plumbing systems in these houses have been kind of cobbled together over the years.

So you go in there and they'll be like 5 or 6 different materials throughout the house, and they're like, well, what are you doing here? And they're like, well, it leaked here, leaked here, leaked here. That's like, well, if we can replace all of that for you, give you a warranty and a guarantee that says, hey, if it ever leaks in the next five years, you just call us, we can fix it.

Would you be interested in doing that? And you know, 50% of the people say, yeah, give me a price on it. 25% of those people say, go ahead and do it. Because they don't want the hassle of a leak. Every couple of months you got to take off time off work, you got to deal with the kids, you got to take a cold shower.

All those things happen. Nobody likes those things. So let's give them the option of fixing it completely and totally or what we call a bandaid repair, which is fixing the issue at hand. So, like I said, most time people are like, yeah, let's go ahead. Do it. Right, right. It yeah. It's no one wants to take another day off work, that type of thing.

What do you do? Only service, only repairs. Or are you guys doing new construction? We try to stay away from new construction. Okay. For years and years and years, I did commercial, plumbing and some Hvac. In 2023, we quit doing that, the McDonald's getting built here in Rushville. We would have done that for that builder.

Those type of things. People can find money in it, but I can't, so I just give up on it, but just stick with residential, take care of people, take care as many people as we can, and the money will follow. Yep, yep. I was like Ziglar says, if you help enough people, you never had to worry about money.

And there's so much, you know, so much, so much fruit of that. What, how old are your kids? Emily is 24. 25, something like that. Kelsey is 19. Fox is 17, Carson is nine. And then I got three grand babies. One that's almost two years old. I do believe one that's one years old and one that's about six months old.

Oh. So, yeah, any of the kids work in the business with you? No. Not really. Fox. Every now and again, we'll do technical stuff. I have, you know, set up computers and things like that, but no, he's. Well, he's also in high school, so. Yeah. And the other two, Kelsey wanted to be a mom. So she's got two beautiful grandbaby, her daughters.

And then Emily's a nurse. So, she works a couple days a week at, community around the area. Now, being a mom's, I mean, that's why my wife went to a couple of days a week, being home at least. School just got back in the session. But our kids are here a lot, and, they're getting their six, eight and ten, so they're getting kind of.

They're pretty rambunctious. So, we try to keep them as home and, as much this summer is as possible. So. Well, and that's the, the crazy thing about especially being out here, like Fox and Carson, literally, I they're running around in their little walker things, pulling the computers off and all the cords out and just just wreaking havoc.

It's just what we did. There's. Yeah. Yeah, they've just come to work. Can't afford a babysitter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I want to work with us. Well, I mean, I just I told them, I want them to say the the hustle and the grind. It. You know, mom, mom and dad are are put in there. I mean, they're I don't know if I should make this on camera, but there's a few times that we let them stay at home for a little bit.

Like one of us ran out for an hour or two. You know, we had ways for them to get Ahold of a sir. You know, we're on 26 acres, so they've got plenty, plenty of stuff to do. The problem is they probably got too much crap to get into, actually, where, you know, maybe an adult needs to be, like the.

The other day, a sheriff's deputy stopped in my house and said there have been three 901 calls, made for my residency. So I went looking for the old phones because it wasn't it wasn't registered to a phone. Well, it happened to actually be a crew that was working on a barn at our on our property. And it rained that morning and his phone got wet.

And that's what put it on the Fritz. But yeah, when I was like, hey, kids, we finally phones and my kids, like, my son can't lie. I mean, like, just he can't lie. My daughters, I know how to look him in the eyes and get them to confess when they are. And, my wife's. I know the phones are here.

And I walked in, and all three of them were there, and. But. Yeah. So, yeah, I get it. You know, I don't think the kids, the kids grow up around it. I think it's, you know, it's it's a good thing. But I also think it's a good thing for your kids to go do what they want to do.

Also, because I've already had them conversations with my kids like, go do, go do it. You want to do like, don't think that you've got to come back and work in the family business. Now if you're called to like, you know, yeah, let's let's go do that. So what is I always tell people working with your spouse is the most rewarding thing, but possibly the hardest thing.

In the entire world. So, what what do you guys do to balance that? Well, And, hahaha, Kelly and I's dynamic is a little bit different. We, we're high school sweethearts that we've been together since we were 14 years old. So we've grown up together. Yep. We can argue vehemently, screaming at each other.

Do all that type of stuff, and then at the end of it be like, okay, what's for lunch? What's for dinner? Like? It's like it's not that deep in our thing, right? If it is, and we have ways of communicating that, hey, no, this is deeper than it actually should be or deeper than I'm letting you know. But when we have had several, we just had this kind of killing.

I had this conversation yesterday. We've had several, people over the years that come work for us, and then they see that dynamic play out, which we've gotten better about not doing it in front of people. And people just quit because they're like, well, you're being disrespectful to your wife and things like that. And it's like, no, that's just our dynamic.

And she'll be the first one to tell you that's that's our dynamic. It's how we it's it's how we talk and communicate with each other. So that's always been a weird thing. So it's just a matter of setting those guidelines up beforehand, like, okay, if we holler and scream at each other, we still have to go home and be husband and wife like we can't be business partners anymore.

And like you said, wanting to talk about it. We're on our way to Menards this weekend. And it was like, oh, this and that and this. And I was all excited about it. And she's like, I really did not want to talk about Jake's this weekend. I just want to go to Menards and pick out this paint.

So it's like, okay, what do you want to talk about? And then she ends up talking about it for the next two hours. So, but that's just. Yeah, you just got to know where those lines are. So, some people probably wouldn't want to submit it over the camera, but that's okay. We're working with a nurse practitioner, here in town.

She's freaking amazing. But she's got more degrees and a thermometer. So she's also a psychologist counselor? I think a massage therapist. A nurse practitioner. And, you know, she's really focused in. My wife's lost, like, 30 pounds. Oh, nice. I mean, like, she 30 pounds to lose off of me, like, okay, you'll kind of notice it, but, I mean, she at least is not a big.

Yeah. Yeah. So, she's we're also working with her because a lot of times there's, you know, mental health and, and I hate the word mental health, like, because it's either like, oh my gosh, I should let my kid be a cat and pee in the litter box. You know, like that's where some people want to take it.

But, you know, we're doing like a marriage counseling session, right before we have a team meeting and, you know, and things are brought up house, like, I looked at my wife and I was like, all right, we've got to put all this crap this last hour and a half behind us, and we've got we've got a team meeting that we can't walk in.

They're divided like we are right now. Yep. You know, and I told Stef I was like, okay, no more sessions together right before team meeting. And she started laughing. She was, I'm sorry, you know, but like, I mean, I, I get that, you know, and I'll never forget one time me and Emily, we were we were in a heated this, heated discussion, and it was after hours, one of the sales guys popped in and he walked in, and he walked back out.

I was like, hey, man, I owe you an apology. That got a little heated. And he goes, that's your guys business. He goes, I was to stay the hell out of it, you know? Which that's Nick. He just kind of, he just kind of goes with the with the flow anyways. But like I said, like, genuinely, it's to me, it's it's such an honor just for what we've been able to build together.

You know, there's unfortunately this world, there's so many husbands and wives that aren't even on the same team. And, you know, life is freaking hard. Oh, yeah, raising kids is hard. Oh, yeah. And then put a business in there on top of that, it's hard, you know? So to me, it's just, it's enjoyment I get for that opportunity, you know, to build something and, you know, and for me, this business was my vision.

It wasn't. It wasn't my wife's the poor girl. The reason we started doing Dave Ramsey stuff was she wanted to be a stay at home mom. You know? And then it just we got busy and she started helping, and she's just a worker, and she started helping. And, you know, that's how we kind of looked up like, holy crap.

Like, you know, we had to let somebody go one time and she's like, I'll step in and take this over temporary. And we looked up a year and a half later and I'm like, we've done nothing to make this not temporary for you. So yeah. What is is you guys running fall specials or anything like that, you know, to encourage people to get furnaces checked out or anything like that?

We are this year. We're changing it up a little bit. Our, price has been like, 59 bucks. Okay, I do a tune up, that is gradually going up over and October. So we're doing it. We're going up at $89. Okay. So the faster you get it done, the less it'll cost you in the end.

That's our big special. It's coming out in the next couple of months. Okay. Yeah. And then we on the plumbing side of things, the $68 drain cleaning. Clearing. It's something we've done for a couple of years now, and, you know, you got a toilet's clogged for 68 bucks. We can unclog it and go from there.

And. Yeah, I'm sure that's not a, I'm sure, I just I chuckle because, me and my wife, we flipped houses and, we remodeled this house not too far from here, and it had a the garage was about as big as the livable space was. Yeah. And it was the garage was so big that the guy I was flipping it with, we decided we could make a master suite, in that area.

And it still made the garage plenty big enough for the average person. And however, the garage is all on a slab, right? Yep. So, we had to bust out some concrete. It worked out the way we did the bathroom. We could tie it back in to the main house. Real, you know, relatively easy. Poured a little concrete, you know?

Yep. And, the inspectors there doing his test, and he goes ahead and and I don't know exactly how that goes, but I know they fill the tub so full, and then I leave the water running and they pull the drain. Yep. And he went to the other part of the house to continue his inspection. And he came back.

Well, my daughter at that time, which, she would have probably been about three, she had tried to wipe with Wendy's napkins. And we flooded most of the, the master new area we had just done. And, yeah, we tried, we tried and we tried and it took digging the outside up and replacing one of the lines.

Good night. Because that's how, that's how much she had shoved down there and how much we had compacted it. And everything we did wasn't, you know, but so I, I'm sure there's some good stories. Oh. Well, so there's all kinds of. Yeah, there's every day is, picture of them pulling something out on the end of the sewer line, and they send it over text message and.

Yeah, like, look what I got. Yeah. So anyway, what's, what's the funniest thing they've gotten? Well, the tree roots are the biggest things. And those flushable wipes that are flushable, those type of things everywhere. We've pulled cats out, the, probably the last one that I did where it was me that went out. I stuck a camera down the toilet because we have a camera that will actually go into a toilet in around, and there was a minion ball in there.

So as the camera came up, the little minions face was like, right there. And I was like, man, I wish I could record that. But, you know, you get the hook and you grab it and you pull it out and they got toilets again.

What's one thing that maybe nobody ever ask you about your business?

You know, I don't know, Not too many people ask me about our business. There is one going around right now. I love rumors and gossip about myself. I find out so much. There is one right now where it, local competition is telling people that we've sold out. So I had a sales guy or supervisor call me up and be like, Jake, you still on this place?

I was like this. Like, why are you asking me this? Yeah. Like it's been me and Kelly. And he asked me a series of questions, and by the end of it, the homeowner was like. So the guy lied to me, and I was like, what are you talking about? It's like, well, they said you sold twice in the last year.

And it's like, no, it's been me and Kelly for 18 years. Like, it's just us, like, and so that, sometimes those rumors and gossip that you hear is like, really? And like, you try to lie to get a sale. I don't make no sense. Yeah. Yeah. What? So did they spread the rumor that you sold the private equity?

Yes. So that's that's a conversation that I really didn't think that we could have. But. So if you're listening to this, like, private equity, is this all this hedge fund money that you're putting together? And they are they bug the living. You know what out of me? Like I'm not exaggerating. Six to 8 to 10 times a day.

Really? The other day, Adam got some. So now what they've done is they've found, I mean, the office email gets it because that's easy to find on their website, but now they're even trying through like Adam, you know. So, and, you know, I'll just go ahead and say it from I've watched some friends do it been I don't want to say been part of it, but watched it and it's been a complete trainwreck.

In my opinion, you know, I've got an I've got a good friend. And like I said, I know a lot of roofers over the, over the United States. I've got a one friend that he's, I, I haven't talked to him here in the last month or two about it, but I betcha he's going to double his business because he was in southern Ohio.

And then there was a private equity company, bought out a company up in northern Ohio, and seven guys walked out of that office and walked into his new office up there, I think. And because it's a human, it's dealing with, you know, a a family. And. Yeah. So for somebody to go yell at when it goes wrong, right, right.

But, and in our space, private equity has bought just about everybody. Yep, yep. And I always tell people ever, you know, anything's always for sale. But for right now, we're not really planning on selling. So, which is kind of weird because we're just outside be there nights town we're just outside of, like, Greenfield and some of those other places where those private equity funds want to be.

So we stay off the radar. I don't get nearly as many calls as you do about getting bought out. I probably get 1 or 2 a year. Okay. Which is odd, because a lot of my friends have sold out and, you're absolutely right. It's. I can think of one instance where for the first three years, he loved it.

And then in the last couple months, he's been like, it's just murder. Because right now in the Hvac world, it's actually going down a little bit. Now as far as revenue and things like that. So we're kind of in, one of those cycles that Hvac does. And so if you're on a downward cycle where your revenue is not as high, you're still profitable, but your revenue is not as high.

Private equity isn't like that. Right? So then they come in and they just start telling you what to do. And and in his case, he's been a business owner for 25 years, and he's ran the business for 25 years. So in the when you start to go down a little bit, he can make decisions. Now. He can't make those decisions.

Those decisions are made by a pencil pusher somewhere and they're getting ready to sell. So they don't want to rock the boat at all. And so on and so forth. So now my friend's a multimillionaire now, and and like he do like he's like, Jake went away tomorrow I'd be just fine. Right. But right, right on the end.

It is something that he spent the last 25 years of his life building up. Well, and, you know, I mean, I've had people ask me in like, is there a number? Yeah, eventually. I mean, I'm just some redneck country boy, you know, like, I mean, me and my wife come from very, very humble beginnings, you know, so like, but I also don't look at it like I'm not trying to grow it, to only sell it because I just feel like that's when you take the human element out of your team.

Out of your customers. And yeah, you're you're right. I mean, they it's made a lot of multimillionaires, you know, and, you know, they've been in it Hvac world a lot longer than they've been in the roofing space. You know, one thing I think they're learning in the roofing space is they want companies more geared towards retail model instead of just everybody that replaces roofs on hail damage.

Because the retail model is a little more pencil pusher happy, where they can keep an eye on what how much is being done, where if all you do is hail damage and there's no hail storms for 2 or 3 years, you know, you don't. You don't. You know you don't. You don't have much, much of a business.

So, do you guys have, a maintenance model that you guys do where, like, once a year, you'll come out and check the roof and the siding and things. So, I would think that's that's our. We have a maintenance agreement where, you know, twice a year, we come out, check your furnace, check your air conditioning, check your plumbing on the third trip, those type of things.

And it does a couple of things for us in our business. One, those customers get discount. So if they ever have a problem, hopefully we're the first people that they call, and they also get other benefits. We have contests throughout the year. We give away pies. Monday, we give away the pies. I bought a crapped on Thanksgiving.

The the marketing people were like, give pies away. So we went up to the pie place in Winchester and bought a bunch of pies and give them out. Just different things like that, throughout the year to remind, you know, people that we exist. I wonder if you could do that in the in your guys's space.

Yeah, we were actually, I was talking to a guy the other day. It's big in the commercial roofing space. I could see that, once again, you know, they're trying to extend that life, you know, there, as you know, and and on the residential side, like a mom ain't happy that the AC doesn't work, right. You know, the chance of the AC getting fixed new is little higher than if it's at a commercial building.

Yep. And it's like, yeah, suck it up, buttercup. You're in the office for three hours, you know? So, but I do know that on there, there's a couple of business models where guys try to get into commercial roofing with pretty much the maintenance, be in front of them every year, and then in five years, when they need a new roof replacement, at least you're at the top of their their bed list.

You know. So, it's it's something we've, we've considered and talked about. There's just about 75 other things in front of that that I want to get implemented. Yep. Before, you know, before that, is there any future expansions? You know, kind of like, what's the next few years look like for you guys? Well, we're in the process right now of, figuring out what that kind of looks like for us.

Over the last year, we've actually doubled. So, revenue wise, like, that's been a really crazy trip over the last year. So it's can we sustain that in the market that we're in? Do we need to expand, look at our marketing people kind of looking at that and figuring out what we need to do?

As far as that's concerned, or is there enough people in the zip codes that we service now that we can still maintain, you know, the revenue that we have now and just grow? We're trying to grow 20% every year, which is what we shot for this year and went up 200%. So our went up 100%. So that was kind of a unique thing for us.

But is that sustainable? Could we double again and the zip codes that we're in, I don't not in one year. I don't think we could. But the marketing people are looking at it and seeing what the next strategy is versus my gut feelings, which, you know, are wrong 98% of the time. Right. And the marketing is usually around 95% on those.

So they, I've gone through some marketing firms. I've spent more money on marketing than I ever want to admit. But I landed on one that I started with. Okay. It's really cool. In 2018, I was with online access as the name of it. I went through 3 or 4 different marketing companies in that interim.

Every one of them got paid a lot of money, didn't do a lot of results. So I went back to online access and they were like, hey, we got this new program. They put me into this program, and this lady is absolutely phenomenal, probably the best with details I've ever seen in my life, which I'm not a detail person drives me up the wall.

But I know she's driving results, so I will listen to whatever detail you want me to listen to. And she's just turned out to be wonderful over the last year. So, before, when the phones weren't ringing, I'd call the marketing people up and they'd be like, well, your phones are ringing. I was like, no, I had like, they're not like, the winner.

I need to do something. This lady is like, okay, they're not ringing right now, Jake. Okay, give me ten minutes and then she'll come back with a plan. And then, you know, we're off to the races again. So do you have any in-house marketing people? Not anymore. Just me. Okay. Just me. Nice. Nice. And I listen to her, so.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Is that all? Is that mainly Google? There's Google, the LSA program? Yep. Which is really good. We started do pay per click, but I'm not a fan of it just because it can get so expensive so fast. Yep. So I've capped that, we can't go over like $3,000 a month or something like that.

Like, I don't even want to play that game. And you can't play it with private equity. Yeah, I'm private equity has, you know, $100,000 a month they can dump into your, pay per click program, and we just don't have that right. I don't have whatever money they have. So, that was when I said we spent a lot of money that can get much out of it.

We were playing that pay per click game. And people don't realize that, like when you're talking to customers, you know, that pay per click can cautiously as a penny or cost as much as $1,000. It depends on the word that you chose to do. And people don't realize that you're paying Google for this large amount of money and you just don't realize it.

Even the LSA is still, what, an hour for us. It's like 68 bucks a, booked job, right? And it's like, man, that gets expensive after a while. So anyway, that's the the marketing thing. Oh, absolutely. Don't let me ramble. I will ramble for days. How can we support you as we wrap this up? Just keep putting, you know, our name out there.

And, you guys have actually referred some customers over the years. That doesn't go unnoticed. That probably doesn't go. We don't call you up and say thank you, but, and then I also try to refer you guys, especially on roofing things on Facebook and things like that. But, because it's, you know, you don't find too many roofing companies where you can actually go sit down with the person and find the person and things like that.

So what I like about your guys's company, normally the roofing company is somewhere, you know, in another state or something. It seems like, and that's that's I. Yeah, support us just like that. Personally. And I appreciate your time coming in, Jake. And, Yeah. Jump on. Follow follow them. If you're in the greater Knights Town area, sounds like night.

We're going to make that sound sound real big, you know, New Castle, Rushville, new pal, Knights town, kind of everywhere in between. Give them a call. Like I said, they've they've helped us on a few things. I think we actually helped you guys. We did a roof repair. I think you guys did exhaust, for something.

When I say a few weeks ago, it could have been six months ago, you know? But I do remember that everything went smooth. And I heard that from the office, so that's that, you know, that's that's always nice, because as a homeowner, if you're watching, is like, you want things to go smooth, I really want things to go smooth because there's probably five people involved here at the office, plus the homeowner.

So, thank you for your time and thanks. I Appreciate it. Sir, I appreciate you having me. Thank you. Right.