Episode 49 Building to a Successful Exit

Episode 49 Building to a Successful Exit

summary

In this Episode, Jonathan Fodera interviews Chuck Staszkiewicz, co-founder of the OG Group, who shares his journey from being a plumber to building a successful business. Chuck discusses the challenges he faced, the importance of pricing strategies, customer experience, and company culture. He emphasizes the need for entrepreneurs to understand their financials and the value of personal branding in attracting clients. The conversation also touches on hiring practices and community engagement as key components of business success.

takeaways

• Chuck built his plumbing business from his garage to $20 million.
• Transitioning from employee to entrepreneur requires a leap of faith.
• Pricing strategies are crucial for business growth.
• Customer experience can significantly impact business success.
• Hiring for personality can lead to a better company culture.
• Community engagement is a powerful marketing tool.
• Understanding financials is essential for making informed decisions.
• Personal branding helps in attracting the right clients.
• A strong company culture can enhance employee retention.
• Continuous learning and adaptation are key in business.

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Transcript

0:09

Hey everybody. I have a friend of mine, Chuck from the OG group. before I have him come on and give a little bit about his background, I just want to point out a couple of things. We have a lot of people on here. There's very few people that hit certain milestones. And I tried to make sure that anyone that comes on has actually hit those milestones. what I love about Chuck, not only is he from the tri-state like me, and he's blunt and crass, He's actually built a successful company to a very nice exit And now he has the OG group and he's consulting. someone that actually did the thing and now he actually teaches other people how he did it. And there's no fakeness about that. So Chuck, thanks for coming on brother. thanks, Jonathan. I appreciate it. little background with me, I'm Chuck Staskiewicz. I'm co-founder with my sister at the Opus and Golds Group, OG Group for short. Someone the other day on a podcast dubbed me the original Chuck in the truck. And I thought that was kind of cool because we named our company the OG Group. I was like, all right, maybe it'll stick. And here we are on podcast number two, and I think it's going to stick. Someone asked me a really great question the other day they tagged me in Facebook and DMed me and they go. can you really help my business? There's so many fucking gurus out here claiming That they can help me in business. Are you actually someone that can help me and I said man, that's the question of the year said, well, good thing I'm not a guru. because I can definitely help you. you talk about the grind, And actually doing something. I was 26 years in plumbing. I started out, in the field, in my own business. I was in a truck for nine years, Mostly by choice. I probably could have came out of the truck faster, but I grew that business from my garage. I moved to Salt Lake in 2008, In 2011, I started my own business, Not knowing anybody, You know, a lot of business owners, like in New Jersey, it was easy. I went to high school there, I knew all these families. No one in my high school was going out to be a plumber. No one wanted to. touch poo for a living, So I had a client base built up, but when I moved to Salt Lake, I didn't know anybody. So it was really scary for me to start out of my garage, but I grew that from zero to 20 million in 12 years with 130 employees and I exited with double digit multiple and double digit profits. And I went through what I call the craziest time in business for almost every business owner because it's changed the dynamics of everything. COVID. If you were a business owner during COVID, man, you can get through anything. people say, COVID this and it was that. that was the greatest awakening I've ever had in my life because I was a plumber in the trade service doing $12 million a year. I'm on top of the world. It humbled the shit out of me. and it made me take a real look at my business and the things that I was not doing and didn't know yet. That's kind of the story, I love it. So I got a question for you. So you were working for somebody else and this is something I always ask people. What was the point? And everybody remembers this. What was the point where you're like, hey, fuck this. I'm going to do it myself. great question. I was moonlighting. I did side work for 10 years. Again, in Jersey, I had my own company on the side and I was making more money in that company than I was working for someone, but I was working towards a master plumber license, And I had a great clientele. All my friends thought, you know, you're crazy. Why would you move to Salt Lake? You're gonna open up full time once you get your license in place. you're gonna blow it out of the water. Why would you move to Salt Lake City? I wasn't happy. I wasn't married. I had no kids. I was just like, I love the outdoors, And I love snow specifically. So I came here for a ski vacation and I said, you know, this is it, And six months later I moved and all my friends thought I was crazy, But I'll remember the moment that it happened. 2008 everybody remembers that if you were in business then you still got a bad taste in your mouth from that and I said to myself okay 2011 at this point Couldn't find a job as a master plumber for more than $16 an hour and when I left Jersey I was making 25 an hour now you're going back 2008 that's that's quite a bit of time that was really it. So I took this job at $16 an hour. I took it because they offered insurance and I was having my first child. My daughter just turned 13. I would have been in business 13 years. I took this job and I said, I'm going to give it three months. I'm having a baby. give it a shot. And I went in. and I tracked my numbers. they weren't doing drain cleaning and they weren't doing boilers and I developed that department for them in 90 days. My average billable hour was $737 an hour. I went in 90 days and they did a review with me and it's a big company. They're still in existence today. can't say who it was but. Probably the worst mistake they ever made was letting me go away. The next guy he was only doing like 232 an hour. And so they come in, they're all excited. They're like, hey, Chuck, how's it going? we have some incredible news. we want to let you know how great you're doing and you're doing about$735 an hour, I said, you're close, And they're like, we got some amazing offers for you. we're gonna give you $18 an hour, we're gonna bump up your insurance, this and that. And I said, nah, that can't happen. I'm about to have a kid. I gotta be at least where I was at, $25 an hour. I said, I developed your drain cleaning department that was non-existent. I developed your boiler department that was non-existent. And I'm billing out at this rate. what's the guy underneath me doing? And they said, well, you know, we can't. And I said, well, I know already. I know he's billing out at 232. I'm billing out almost three times as much as this guy. And I know what he makes per hour. And so they could not go higher than 18. And I said, I can't do it. I took a leap of faith. And that day is when I started my company. So guys, a couple of things here. If you're an entrepreneur listening to this, listen to how Chuck went about that. Chuck put up the work, created enormous value, and then went into his employer and asked the right way. Hey, with facts, with figures and everything to back it up. Hey, I did X, Y, Z. It brings in this much to you guys. This is what I'm looking for. Now, obviously, Chuck made the right decision. A lot of people don't have the balls to walk away. And the reason I always ask that question, I had a similar experience at two companies. I built them up, made them a small fortune, and they did not come through, and they withheld pay, So I just started doing it myself. It was the best decision I ever made as well. Yeah, I'm glad it only took me 90 days to figure it out. I didn't. I'm a slow learner. I'm not the guy that touches the stove once and says, no, this is not for me. I usually fucking lick it a couple of times. So let's talk about building your company from scratch. what are some of the things that you may be scratched clawed through to get from zero to 20 million? I'll tell you it's like yesterday, It wasn't that long ago. It's 13 years ago. That's not a long time. I tell this to business owners all the time when I meet with them. And I meet with probably 20 business owners that are looking to work with me a week, Because I'm out there on social. I'm putting myself out there. I'm only 46. I'm not retired. I know that there's a bigger purpose for me in sharing my story because I did a lot of things the wrong way for the first 10 years. Some of the biggest challenges that I faced was that scarcity mindset, I took on anything, I mean, I was doing sprinkler systems. I was working for other companies for $65 an hour, Anything that came my way, I took it. I didn't know how to say no. I was still working 150 hours a week, And that was not knowing my value and not pricing myself correctly. because man, this is my only source of income. I gotta take whatever I can, where in turn, yeah, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do, I knew I had an extra mouth coming to feed, so I wanted to make sure. that that was handled. that's what my upbringing was. I came from nothing, so I didn't know any better. I wasn't priced right for a lot of years. And going back and looking at it, if I would have done just that one little difference, I probably would have been a $40 million a year company. that's the honest truth. let's say anyone that's in the services or trades right now and they're saying, shit, am I priced correctly? How would you break that down for somebody to figure out if they are priced correctly or not? How do you go about figuring that out? obviously you wanna take your cost, we had it dialed in. We did a budget every year, we knew what our marketing costs, we knew what every dollar was being spent to, Most startup companies, they don't have the time to do it. They're out doing the work, they're probably answering the phones, they're doing the scheduling, they're doing the sales, all that. what I would suggest is this, until you can get to that point, or... if you can talk to somebody fractionally, there's a lot of fractional CFOs out there that can help you build this out. So if you don't know how to do it, find someone and pay them to help you set it up and set it up correctly. It doesn't matter what you pay them. You're going to get it back tenfold. Because I know for a fact that me and my partner for years we were discounting our services. by a lot and if we had that we wouldn't have had the struggles trying to get funding and different things we would have moved we moved fast I mean 12 years is fast but we would have moved even faster had we been priced right so worst case scenario if you can't find the CFO and I have a great one if you're looking for a recommendation reach out to me I'll gladly introduce you If you can't or don't want to do that and you just want to go at it yourself What I would do is collectively look at what everybody's charging in your area I never want to be the highest I never want to be the lowest But I want to be somewhere in the middle creeping towards the highest Everybody chases these thumbtack leads these Angie's leads and it's all just everybody bidding against Themselves and it's crazy to me. stick to your price There's plenty of people that need work out there sure There's a lot of other people doing similar to what you do But you set yourself apart and you start to find the right clientele Absolutely. so. I'm sure this would translate to the trades, but All my content is education for my clients and for my ideal potential clients. And that travels, that spreads. It's shareable. People want to consume it. people get to know me before they actually do know me. And so it builds a layer of trust. And almost a relationship before a relationship even forms. And I know that for me, that works incredibly well. Everybody has their own thing. You might be Google ads, you might be Facebook ads, but you have to have that educational component for that. I commit to getting in my clients the best program possible, but when I do SBA loans, I charge. Why? Because I know I get them done faster and smoother and I get people into the right. program, So you have to understand the value if you're going to be at that higher end. And I think everyone should be at that higher end because if you're going to be at that higher end, you have to back it up with massive amounts of value. And it's more about how you make people feel. I don't care if you're fixing a toilet or you're giving them a million dollars. it's the same shit. Yep, it is. Yep. if you fix a toilet, but it's a great experience, maybe even stuff that they weren't expecting. Like how clean the area was a thank you card left there. these little things add up. And to your point, how big a deal is pricing? I changed two things on one of my programs and I increased the revenue 300 percent over the course of a year, from pricing it correctly. And what happens, people don't realize this, if you are not priced correctly, and you don't know it for two years, you could fuck, you could go out of business. when you actually look back and see the amount of revenue that you gave up, it'll make your stomach turn. if you think about it like this, I trained my technicians as they went into a house. I wanted the client to have the same experience no matter who went through it. So there was a set of questions. There was like 12 questions and I don't have it in front of me. So I'm not going to get them all But, in the discovery phase, when you go into someone's house, what is one of the best questions. What is the most important thing that you look at when you're making a decision when hiring a company? Is it warranty? Is it, how fast we can get it done? Is it, cleanliness? and one of them in there was price. 95 % of the time it was never price. The price comp, they want all the other things price is the last thing. I used to handle this objection really well when I was in the field. I would say to people, look, of course, there's companies out there that charge more than me, and there's companies out there that charge less than me. But here's the thing, I'm here, I'm gonna do the job, you're gonna have this warranty, I'm gonna clean up better than it is right now, If I don't, I have a clean home guarantee, so. I'll hire a cleaning company to come in and clean up after me if you're not 100 % satisfied. Someone else can do that, I'm licensed, insured, so on and so forth. But here's what I never learned, until now. You're the owner. They are never gonna get a better experience or quality of work than having the owner in their home. So you should be charging triple what the big guys are that's sending out their employees. Your time and your knowledge is worth that. If you think about that the next time a homeowner says to you, that's expensive, say look, you can take your shot and call these other companies that are spending millions of dollars on. marketing and have these employees but you're getting me. I own this company. No one is going to do it like me. It's crazy, I see this happen. the biggest things that I see when I'm talking to business owners is they don't know their books and they're not priced correctly. the book thing drives me crazy, So I'll give you a great example. the two most important questions I ever ask when someone's coming to me for financing is where is every dollar going? what are you trying to accomplish with it? And what do you anticipate the return on this investment to be? I need to know exactly what they're trying to accomplish. I need to know why it's important to them. And I need to know how they need the money to function. because money is just not money, okay? Money works in all different ways. You have invoice factoring, you have project financing, you have an SBA loan, you have a line of credit. They're all used for different things. when people go out of business with lending or debt, it's because their program wasn't set up properly. They use the wrong tool, improperly, and it sunk their company, or they just used too much of it. And that's one of the things that I always try to avoid. I want to make sure I get people in the right program, with the right company. so they can accomplish their goals. And long as I have those things, it works, It's the same thing in any business. You have to identify those key questions that allow you to drive the rest of your value delivery process. The first thing I need to look at is if you have a budget. If you don't have a budget, that's the first thing that we're going to do. After we do the budget and I know where all the dollars are going, now I can say, yes, you can afford to spend this much on digital marketing. Yes, you can do direct mailers here. It all comes back to those numbers, And that's where real growth happens. If you don't know that, if you don't have that at your foundation, you can't do any of the others. because I did it for 10 years not knowing my numbers, but I threw a lot of Hail Marys, I'm the Tom Brady of home service companies because I threw a lot of Hail Marys and they stuck. And I ran it just like most entrepreneurs, Bank accounts going up, I'm doing good. Bank accounts coming down, I'm freaking out. I ran it like that for 10 years. And then I realized there was a better way. And by looking at that budget, you can direct everything. knowing that, hey, I can buy four trucks this year and I'm gonna need four employees based off my budget and the numbers that are allocated in there. And then by having a budget, when they go to someone like you to get a loan, hey, look, here's my budget, here's my numbers. This is what I want to do with it. This is the gross that I'm expecting and I've had year over year. And then you're like, this is awesome. Here you go. Here's some money. it sounds simple, But it's so complex for many business owners because they're wearing so many hats. I don't think it's complex at all, actually. you have to slow down to speed up and no entrepreneur figures that out until they've either absolutely crushed themselves or they go out and hire a consultant that basically tells them, this is how you have to do it. This is why you have to do it that way. Most entrepreneurs push through and fucking burn themselves out because they do every job, every role in the company. Yep, at 100%. a lot of these PE firms and corporations are coming in and, people don't want to work for them, Which is fine, here's the thing. If you don't think those guys know where every dollar is going, you're crazy. in order for you to keep up with them or compete with them, you have to do the same. Now, here's the advantage. And this is what I love. They don't understand human relationships like you as a small business owner. They can spend millions and they have to spend millions of dollars on advertising. You as a small business owner. And this is what I love. You get on the level of I'm local. I grew up here. Go to the home shows. Meet and greet. the best form of advertising right now is imagine you're campaigning for governor and everyone you talk to you're trying to get them to vote. But instead of getting them to vote, you're getting them to remember you when they need your service. I love small events in the communities. We did home shows. I put on my own home show. This community that I was breaking into was about an hour away. They didn't have a home show in that community. So what did I do? I contacted all kinds of vendors and I did a parking lot home show one spring weekend. It was awesome. We did it three years in a row. it helped me break into that community. But it also showed that I wanted to support that community with the other business owners. I wasn't afraid of them being competition. We had other plumbers there. We had other HVAC guys there the whole nine yards. I'm not afraid of the competition. Come choose who you want to choose. And going back just a little bit on pricing, It is never about the price. I will pay more for better service. Most people in general will pay more for better service. they're not buying the company, they're buying you. And if you ever worked for someone else, I had a following at the job that shit canned me. People would call in and ask for me specifically and when they found out that I wasn't there anymore, they sought me out on Facebook. I never went to them. They came and found me. So again, it's not about the price. You're buying the person in front of you. It's not about the price, it's about the people. Same thing with the boat mechanic. When I moved here four years ago, my boat is my baby or was my baby. It's no longer since the hurricane. Yeah, I found one mechanic here. He did two jobs for me. He was priced high. But there was a lot of issues, he just didn't fix it right. And when he left, he would leave the old parts on my boat. this is disgusting. And then the one time I caught him gouging me, I'm like, you know what? I'm going to shop around I found somebody else. On his first job, he went out and did a little bit extra for me. Just took a picture that I needed so I didn't have to do the 40 minute drive. And I know it was inconvenient for him to do it. I have sent him at least five other people and I've used them for three other things. And he is my guy. Why? Because he showed he cared. It's not all about price. It's service. It's reliability. These are the things that matter. Guys, our culture right now it's changing. culture is a big one within teams and then within our country. I could tell you. just from trying to hire people, Their culture is not there like it used to be, The work ethic is not there. People think they're above doing things. People think that they don't have to work hard. Well, guys, you know what the only thing's gonna be separating us from robots soon? That ethic, you're speaking my language right now. Just so you know, and I try to keep pitches to a minimum, but on November 20th, 2 p.m. Mountain Standard Time, I'm doing a webinar for an hour and a half, and it's all about hiring, we're gonna show you how we ran our hiring events virtually, and I would have sometimes 15, 20 people in there. just a soft interview, And then they would graduate to a second interview. I'm going to show you slideshows. I'm going to show you the decks and the questions that we answered during those interviews. if you don't have KPIs and scorecards, how to hold your employees accountable. I'm going to show you How to run your meetings, There's a right way and a wrong way to run your meetings, to get the most value out of having meetings. we're going to go through managers meetings, leadership meetings, technicians meetings, And I'm building that out right now. How to build a culture. to get the family feel integrated into your culture having a Halloween party or Christmas party. hey, we hit our targets for this month. Let's celebrate. Halloween decorations in the office, How to bring the office and the field together. That's a huge one. You got the office people and the field people that usually go like this because one's jealous it's a hundred degrees out and I'm in an attic and you're sitting behind a desk. Well, yeah, it's a hundred degrees out and I'm dealing with Mrs. Jones because you pissed her off and fell through her ceiling, so there's both sides, but. building an amazing culture, our culture was one of the best. the company that bought us said this is going to be a challenge, Because it was a family dynamic in our culture. And I want to teach people that I think people miss that a lot. But going back to that and why I'm doing this event it's after the election. People will calm down and start to make decisions. It's before the holidays. typically, between now and February is usually the greatest time to hire people, this year, especially, because change is coming inevitably, they're uncertain about a lot of things. So it's even more important right now to talk about hiring. And here's the other thing. robots, AI, how many people are scared for their jobs? If I owned a trade service company right now, every day, two, three, four times a day, I'd be doing posts, videos, showing jobs, showing my culture, what it's like when they come in in the morning and there's coffee there waiting for them and their vans are clean and the Christmas party or the Halloween party, I'd be showing that and say, don't you wanna come work? in a career that can't be taken by robots, this is the greatest time to hire. And why I think doing these hiring events, whether you do them live or in person or virtually, you get a bunch of people through, my goal was to build a training center. if you have these live hiring events and you bring people in, imagine you could bring people in, And you talk about your culture, you talk about your company and why you're hiring and what you're looking for, the direction you're going in, your core values, your core purpose, and you're doing it to these people. And then you say, let me see what you got. here's a water heater, unscrew this, do this, do that, and then run them through a quick test if They're slightly mechanically sound and they got a great attitude and the willingness. You could teach them the other stuff so that might be a great candidate. But you're not doing it one on one when you don't have a lot of time anyways. You're bringing 15, 20 people through, sometimes more, and you're able to mass do these interviews, when we did these hiring events, anyone in the company could come to the hiring event. Sometimes I would have two people interviewing and 20 of my employees asking questions, we wanted to give you a taste of what the culture was like before you started. And wanted to see if you were going to be a good fit. I loved hiring for personality versus knowledge. So everywhere I went, I was looking, the girl that did a great job and smiled every time and asked me great questions, she was on my radar. I would ask her, you love your job? Are you you looking for a career? She would be an outbounder for me. I built an amazing outbound department of five people, doing over $240,000 a month in outbound sales Fantastic, where a lot of people miss they hire for knowledge versus willingness and personality. I had a recruiting card everywhere I went and I saw someone this one guy at the drive through coffee stand. it didn't matter what was going on in the world. This guy was the happiest guy ever. Always had, smile on his face. I ended up hiring him as a CSR. if you can Smile like that while you're on the phone. Everyone that calls into my company that interacts with you, their day's gonna be better because they interacted with you. culture is so big because it permeates to your clients through your employees. It weeds out all the bullshit. If I bring somebody into my team right now, Let's say they fake it through the interview process. and they get in and their sweethearts in front of me. but they start pulling some shit when I'm not there my guys would pick them up and physically heave them out of our office without me being there. That's what you get when you create a winning culture. those people will never leave you. They will stay loyal. They will work very hard, but you cannot take advantage of that. 100%. It's got to be shit that they don't expect. If you think just because you're paying somebody well, that's it. No, you got to do cool shit. I'll give you guys one example and then me and Chuck are doing a part two. here's what I will tell you. You got to do really cool things that they don't. anticipate. I'll give you two that I'm doing. One is actually coming up. I have two people that most people would never have access to coming in to train my guys on self-defense and firearms training. There are people out there that, charge five grand for a weekend like this. I have two people coming in that are actually going to do this training in our office and a local range. Another thing we did, we have a goal. And when we crush that goal, me and my guys are going to be blowing stuff up out of a helicopter. Where else are you going to do that? we're going to go pig hunting out of a helicopter. Love it. if you don't like that or you want to leave a wise ass comment, this is definitely not the show for you. So kick rocks. But listen, otherwise do us a favor. Chuck brought a ton of value and he's going to come on again and bring even more. So share this with people that need to hear, especially if you're in the trades. Guys, if you're in the trades, you need to follow him. At least follow him. if not hire him. Chuck, where can people reach you? thanks bro. Look, I don't care whether you sign up with me or not. If you got something going on in your business, reach out to me. Follow me on Facebook, it's Chuck Staskiewicz, right? DM me, okay? I'll probably drop my cell in there, because I'm a text guy, I don't care, I ran a 24 hour a day business for 13 years, or 12 years, It doesn't matter to me, and I love talking business. This weekend... A guy that knows you, Jonathan. I was on the phone with him on a Saturday. he was looking for an outbounding strategy and I walked him right through one. And then the next day I was on with a guy that was looking to build out a service side of his business and he wants to acquire another company. So I was talking strategies on how to do that. I'm never too busy. You're not bothering me, reach out. So follow me on Facebook, that's number one. If you can be at the November 20th event, it's 2 p.m. Mountain Standard Time. It's free, it's virtual, it's gonna be on Zoom. I would love for you to be there. If you have employees like HR or hiring managers or whatnot, get them on too. It's not just about you getting the information, it's about them getting the information too and we will do a really good job bringing them up to speed and we'll have a section for them to ask Q &A, You can also get us opusgolds.com. That's O-P-U-S G-O-L-D-S dot com. My calendar's right on there. Pick a day, book a one hour strategy session with me and my sister, We'll gladly get on with you. Whether you want to sign up with us or not, we don't care. We just love doing what we do in serving the small business community. We have a Facebook group. It's called the OG Business Success Group. You can join that as well if you want to follow along and every Thursday we do an open Q&A It's at 11 a.m. Mountain Standard Time. this is open zoom You have to go to our Facebook group to get the link Every week we put out that link, jump on and ask questions. Even if you don't have a question, jump on and say, what should I be asking right now? What is the question I should be asking right now? Awesome, guys. it. Chuck, thank you so much for coming on. And Nate, share this with two people. It's the only thing I ask. Guys, I say a lot of stuff on here. Obviously, the algorithms hate everything I do and a lot of the topics I bring up and also how I speak. So do me a favor. Just share it. All right. Appreciate you guys. Catch you later.