Monkey Business Radio

Episode #15 - Leap of Faith

• American Gutter Monkeys, LLC

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After 35 years in the corporate world, Andy Brennan hit a crossroads. At 55, he walked away from a steady paycheck and a VP-level job—and took a leap of faith into small business ownership.

In this episode of Monkey Business Radio, Andy joins Chris and Dennis to talk about the journey from burnout to business ownership. They cover the early days of Cape Cod Gutter Monkeys, the value of planning (and re-planning), and how trust, partnership, and a simple business model laid the foundation for success.

You’ll hear how Andy and Dennis built the company out of a garage, used church bulletins and radio ads to land their first jobs, and why they chose to focus solely on gutters. They also share how the franchise idea came to life when customers started asking, “Can I do what you do?”

If you’ve ever thought about leaving the 9-to-5 behind—or wondered what it takes to build a business later in life—this one’s for you.

Speaker 1:

What if the best years of your career weren't behind you but ahead of you and completely your own? In this episode, taking the Leap of Faith, we're joined by Andy Brennan, co-founder of the Cape Cod Gutter Monkeys and the American Gutter Monkeys, who left a 35-year corporate career at the age of 55 to start over. No roadmap, no safety net, just a trusted partner, a simple idea and a leap of faith. Andy shares how he went from a printing company to the rooftops of Cape Cod and what it took to launch a new business later in life, why customer service, humility and hustle still win the day we talk risk reward radio ads and the moment he realized they had something worth franchising. We have a great show for you, so grab a cup of coffee, sit back, relax and welcome to Monkey Business Radio.

Speaker 1:

Hello everyone, welcome to episode 15, taking the Leap of Faith. As always, I'm here with Dennis Siggins. How are you doing, Chris? Cape Cod Gutter Monkeys. Hello, dennis, and we have a special guest We've been trying to get him on the show for a while His partner in crime, andy Brennan of the Cape Cod Gutter Monkeys and American Gutter Monkeys. Great to be here, guys. Hey, andy, glad to have you on the show. We've been trying to drag Andy in here for a while. We finally got him. So here we go. We're going to talk about the genesis of the Cape Cod Gutter Monkeys and then we kind of roll into American kind of monkeys. But why don't we start with? Where do you want to start College? I guess that's where you guys met college roommates. How about this?

Speaker 2:

Andy and I met in the fall of 1977 at Bentley College. We were roommates. Andy was from East Walpole, I was from Framingham and housing threw us in the same room together and we've been friends ever since.

Speaker 3:

Welcome to the show, Andy. Hey, thank you A pleasure.

Speaker 1:

Usually as college roommate first freshman year. Things don't work out, but you guys made it through that.

Speaker 2:

Andy and I lived together for four years in college and that was a long time ago and he still lets me hang out with him.

Speaker 3:

After all these years I still like the guy.

Speaker 2:

We still get along pretty well, andy after college. I mean we had a great time in college. I think we learned a lot. Andy was really a superstar at Bentley's soccer program back in the day, and after college I went one way and Andy went into the corporate world. Talk about that, andy.

Speaker 3:

Well, I kind of took the traditional approach. After college you go into the corporate world, go into the nine to five type of job. That's what I did. I went into the printing business and 35 years later I was feeling the struggles of corporate life where you had really no control over your future and at the time there was a lot of payroll freezes, mergers, acquisitions, constricting job market, things that made me think what do I want to do for the rest of my life? I was 55 years old and was at a crossroads, didn't know what I wanted to do next.

Speaker 2:

And then one day, Andy and I were talking and even though we didn't work together, we went in separate directions. I was self-employed my whole adult life, but Andy and I, we married our wives back in 1983. And in 2013,. Back in 1983. And in 2013, Andy suggested that we bring our wives to Hawaii to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversaries together, which we did, and that's where Andy started bringing up the subject of maybe him and me starting a business together on the beaches of Maui. I thought it was the margaritas talking and it wasn't. That's where we started talking about starting a business together which would evolve into the Cape Cod gutter monkeys.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, for the last five years of my business life I was always wanted to be in self-employed, but I said to myself I have, you know, the knowledge, but what skills do I have that I can actually go and do my own job? I'm not a carpenter. I don't have the skills Dennis has. That takes years to gain those kind of skills. What could I do that actually I could go out and actually do my own job. And that's when Dennis and I started kicking ideas around and boy I tell you, we came up with a beauty.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we did. This is the best business. The Gutter Monkeys is the best business I've ever owned, and my business partner for my whole life was always my wife and she came on board, and Andy's wife, nancy, came on board Two couples that we had known each other for well over 30 years. At the time, we trusted one another implicitly and it was a great match. It really worked out well and we're still running a wonderful business and it's expanded into several other business opportunities as well. But it really did. It started in Maui and when we get home and that was in 2013, andy, it was in September, it was January you called me and then we started talking about this business that would turn into the gutter monkeys.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, the funny thing is we we literally just kicking ideas around. There was no exact plan. We started in January, february hey, let's come up with a, what kind of business do we want to get into? And then it turned into well, let's, what are we going to come up with? A name and what are our colors going to be. And it took us months to come up with a business plan and still no exact plan of exactly when or if we're going to do this. It was just an idea at this point.

Speaker 1:

And you were doing all kinds of work. Right, you were doing decks and painting.

Speaker 2:

I was sort of semi-retired, so I was doing handyman work. I was in the trades most of my life. So so I was doing handyman work, I was in the trades most of my life. So I was doing light carpentry and you know, for families, friends and neighbors, and we pretty much zeroed in on gutter cleaning, repairs and maintenance here in Cape Cod. And so one of the first things Andy and I agreed to is that Andy would work his corporate job he lived in Walpole at the time Monday to Friday and he would come down every weekend and we would do a job together. So we were like we built an outdoor shower, we were building a deck. The next weekend we might put a roof on a cottage. I mean, we replaced some windows just to see if Andy really was going to adapt nicely to working with our hands.

Speaker 3:

I've been sitting behind a desk for 35 years and, you know, did I really want to go out and climb ladders and jump on roofs and do the physical work that's necessary for the job? And yeah, it was a good kind of a good training ground.

Speaker 2:

But you adapted quickly. Yeah, You're not afraid of heights. Yeah, First time I watched you walk on a roof I think we did my mom and dad's roof out in Dennisport you walked on with a crew and you couldn't tell Andy. You couldn't tell that that was his first day on a roof.

Speaker 1:

So did you get the feeling of liberation? I remember I kind of left my business, sort of did a semi-retirement and walking out that door moving on to a new project like the gutter monkeys. It must've been pretty liberating.

Speaker 3:

Oh my God, it was the best feeling in the world Scary. You don't know where your next paycheck is coming from. But my whole life was Monday to Friday. I knew exactly what I was going to get paid, no matter if I missed days, if I was sick, it didn't really matter. But the liberation of actually knowing the harder you work, the more money you make Wow, what a concept.

Speaker 1:

Exactly Take control of your own life. I remember I never left to start my own company, but I went to successively smaller startups and each time I felt more liberated and I got exactly down to what you just said. You know, I left the safety of a 40 hour week to work in a startup, but I felt like I had more control over my life and where it was going and, at the end of the day, I was getting paid for the amount of work I was, more time I was putting in.

Speaker 3:

So yeah, my, my big questions to myself was you know, did my years of experience in the corporate world? Was that transferable to self-employment? And? And the answer to myself was I don't think I could do it on my own. I needed a partner, you know. I know I have a lot of skills, but self-employment, you know, was pretty new to me. I didn't know exactly, you know, how to handle that kind of world. So, you know, I knew, with Dennis as my partner, we can do anything Truly, we can do anything physically, you know, and we had different skills but they kind of merged well together. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

So tell me about I mean you must have the conversation with Nancy, of course giving up the paycheck but all your friends and family and stuff like that. What was their reaction to you actually going off?

Speaker 3:

I had a couple of funny reactions where I was like you know, what are you doing? What are you wasting your college education for? But you know, dennis and I went to business school. And what better use of a business school degree than to start a business from zero and grow it to a multimillion dollar company? That's exactly why I went to Bentley.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and yeah, there was a lot of doubt In theory. I quit my job, I sold my house, I moved down to the Cape and I started a business all within a year. Not not a lot of people do that when they're 55 years old. But again, and then why did I do it? Because I was not happy in my current job. I mean, I just I saw the future. I was 55 years old. I said, hmm, what am I gonna do for the next 10 years? I just didn't have any faith in the working for the man you know. So it's like. Again, I wanted to do it because I was disappointed in my current career, where it was going and where I thought it was going. But without a partner, a solid partner who could help me navigate the stuff I didn't know, I wouldn't have done it.

Speaker 1:

There's no way. I would have done it Until you started talking about it today. You know, pre-show, I was thinking about this as well. You know, one thing I kept running up against when I wanted to get out of my business was you got a master's degree in computer engineering. Why would you ever go to paint houses or install brick sidewalks and things like that? You have a master's degree. The one thing that probably would have got me over that was a partner. I didn't bump into that person who had a similar way and wanted to go into it with me or, you know, kind of take each other along down that path, and so that was kind of one of the things I missed, I think, is not having that partnership. Yeah, I mean again.

Speaker 3:

You got to take a chance in life, you know, and what I did is I took a gamble on myself. I took a gamble on myself and Dennis that you know this company was going to succeed. I really didn't doubt myself it was. You know people say, wow, what a gamble you took. I almost I didn't see it as a gamble. I knew Dennis was a solid self-employed guy. His whole life he ran many businesses. I had no doubt that this was going to be a success. Didn't know exactly how well.

Speaker 2:

Well, you didn't so much take a risk as you assess the risk, and there's a difference between a risk taker and a risk assessor. And I think what you did, andy, was you what we did I remember talking about it was we built a business model that I eliminated most of the normal risks and the rest you just got to work through them. I mean, you did take a big risk because you probably had a six-figure salary, probably had your name on the door and that's a lot to walk away from.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, Like I said it was, if I was really happy in my job, I wouldn't have done it. You know, if I wasn't, the future was uncertain Again, a lot of things back in that time where corporate life was going downhill.

Speaker 1:

That's why I went into the startups. After a while I looked around and said wait a minute. The odds of me getting laid off or getting fired in this job, this big company, is just as great as going to the startup. I might as well just go to the startup where there's some more potential for return. It worked out that way, but yeah, yeah, I can hear you. So how did this kind of all? What did it look like in the early days? What were you guys doing? How'd you start out? How fast did it evolve into something bigger than just the two guys in a truck?

Speaker 2:

Well, I remember in August of 2014,. We started our radio ad campaign.

Speaker 1:

Oh, so you started the radio ad right out of the gate A month before. A month before Wow.

Speaker 2:

Then we also took out ad space in every church bulletin, every Catholic church bulletin on Cape Cod, and there's something like 16 different churches, yeah, and so Because every good Catholic knows.

Speaker 1:

That's what you read during the gospel, during the homily.

Speaker 2:

You're out there reading the ads, I think that we spent $2,500 a month advertising and the first month in September, we did like $4,000 in gross revenues, and then the second month we did $7,000. And the third month, I think, we did about $11,000 or something. But I do remember, andy, it was back in maybe June that we actually decided okay, we're going forward, forward. We shook hands and we each wrote a check for eight thousand dollars and we opened up a bank account, a checking account, in the business checking department over at rockland trust, and that's how we started the business and that was a big one, because before that, the months before, was just kind of.

Speaker 3:

we were just kind of playing around. We said okay, let's come, said okay, let's come up with a name, let's come up with a concept, until we put the money down.

Speaker 1:

It was all fun.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it was all fun until we said I guess we're doing this, I'm quitting my job, right, I guess I am Again. You can't do it without a supportive spouse, there's no doubt. Oh gosh, yeah, nancy was I. And she says oh no, no, no no. And you know it was the right thing to do Wait patiently, plan. Like I said, this, all about this is about planning. We planned.

Speaker 2:

We really did, yeah, we did.

Speaker 3:

And then, when we started September 1, 2014, we were ready to go and, you know, again, advertising helped. You know, we didn't know exactly how we're going to get the business, but we knew that we're a marketing company, we're going to market ourselves and people are going to call us. We don't sell people, we market ourselves. People call us and we're the solution to their problem.

Speaker 2:

Andy, talk about that last month of work in the corporate world. Remember you've often talked about that and I remember you were calling me every other day as you led up to giving your notice and then preparing to leave the company. Talk about those final two months. Your superior at work one of the owners, told you you've got to lay some people off and you've got to fire some people and you had just hired one of them.

Speaker 3:

My goal was to give them like three weeks notice. That's what my goal was. I said I'll be fair. I you know I liked the guy. But he called me in once, probably six weeks before we started a company. He said, nope, you got to lay this guy off. I said we just hired him. How can I lay him off? We got to lay him off. I said, well, I'm going to let you know I'm leaving, let me go and we'll keep this guy. And he goes. No, don't be a martyr. I said I'm not being a martyr, I'm leaving and I didn't want to. But you know, eventually it was like, yeah, it's not printing, it's not, I'm not going to be going to the competitor, but I'll give you six weeks notice. And you know it worked out phenomenally. It was like the timing was perfect. The timing was just perfect.

Speaker 1:

So how quickly did the business then kind of become gutter cleaning exclusively and then eventually gutter installation. How quickly did that occur?

Speaker 2:

Right away. I mean, we started cleaning gutters and the ancillary work started falling in our laps. We would clean gutters, repair them, flush them, tune them up. And when you install gutters, oftentimes you take a gutter down you find rotted wood behind it. So we replace the rotted wood, we scrape, seal and paint the fascia boards, hang a new gutter. And sometimes the customer would say they look so good, can you paint the rest of my trim? So we'd take that job. Then we brought on Chris, who was a nephew of Andy's. He was our first hire and he came on. And then I think Adam was our next hire, andy's son, and over that first year I think we grew to maybe six, seven people in the field. Oh, that quick. And then, yeah, within a year. And then Babs, my wife, came on, and then Nancy came on a few months later.

Speaker 1:

Well, that's a whole other thing, right? When you start, not only are you responsible for your paycheck, but now you're responsible for other people's paycheck. That's a different level. That's a different level of stress at that point.

Speaker 2:

Well, I wouldn't say stress, it's a different level of responsibility. Yeah, yeah, that went up pretty quick.

Speaker 3:

But when we first started again, we would take any job. Like when you first start day one, the phone's not ringing and people aren't calling because they don't know us yet. So we took any job we could. We took painting jobs, carpentry jobs, anything we could, and it just grew from there. You know what I'm saying. It's one of those things that we had the skill to do a lot of things and we did it Whatever it took to get the company rolling. There was going to be valleys, there was going to be peaks and again, proper planning helped us out a lot.

Speaker 2:

But also we never strayed from the fact that we're a gutter company. We didn't advertise carpentry or ancillary work like painting. We didn't advertise it. If it came our way we would take it, but from a marketing and branding standpoint, we stayed true and we still have stayed true to the fact that we're a gutter company, first and foremost.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so years later, when you got a slow point, you didn't bail and start power washing houses or cleaning windows or something like that. You stuck to your mission. You stuck to your branding and your marketing. Yeah, we stuck to our mission statement, exactly.

Speaker 2:

That's exactly right, because in any business, no matter whether it's the restaurant world or the automotive world, you're always going to have busy seasons and slow seasons, peaks and valleys, and so you always want to stay true to your mission statement, to what it is that you do.

Speaker 1:

And having a partner helps with that, because you're bouncing ideas off of each other. You might have a doubt one day, but the other guy is there. No, no, we got this, we got this, and back and forth, yeah that's exactly.

Speaker 3:

You always have somebody to lean on. And you know we said we had. Our basic thing was that we customer services lacking in the service business. In the service area we like to call people back the same day when they call us. If we don't answer the phone right away and you know there's a thousand landscapers on Cape Cod but you try to get someone to call you back it's almost impossible. So just common courtesy, common customer services is so lacking in the business. So people used to thank us just for showing up on time. It was amazing. We showed up at 8 o'clock and they said oh wow, you showed up. Yeah, isn't that what you're supposed to do? I mean, it's common sense. But boy, I'll tell you people appreciate it.

Speaker 1:

We've talked about that in past podcasts about customer service.

Speaker 2:

Well, we had traditional offices, Andy and I. We always had a traditional have is that they oftentimes use their cell phone as their business phone and when that's in your pocket and it starts ringing, they often feel they have to answer that phone, as opposed to having an office that is staffed by one or two or more people. So for the most part after the first four or five months, at the very beginning it was just Andy, myself and an answering machine. But after a couple of months, when my wife Barbara came on, she became our office manager and she'd done that before. This was nothing new for her. And then we brought Nancy on and then Bruce, our third roommate from Bentley College. He was working remotely running our website. So we really had a tight five-person team early on and that grew into what it is today.

Speaker 2:

But really the key was old-school business. That's what it is Answer that phone. If you're really busy and you can't get to it, the machine picks it up. Then you call right back and we've always run a traditional office where you can take care of the customer's questions and needs. Somebody's always in the office. I think that's one of the things that separates us from so many of the other businesses out there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, another thing we touched on in past podcasts was this idea of old school is innovation. Today, you know, answering the phone, having someone answer and having a landline like that, that's an innovation because people don't do that anymore and yet it, you know, really resulted in some amazing growth in your early years because you had someone answering the phone.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, our website has pictures of ourselves. So you know, it's verification when people like, oh, what about the gutter monkeys? Well, look at the website. You'll see a picture of me, you'll see a picture of Dennis, you'll see a picture of everybody in our office. So we're here. I go to a lot of websites and I have no idea if they're on Cape Cod or in California. You have no idea where they are, so we just like to let people know who we are and where we are.

Speaker 1:

So at some point you started adding trucks. I mean, at some point you guys had to sit down once again and say, okay, we're going to have to take this to the next level. We're a couple of trucks, we need the extruders and so on, and so forth.

Speaker 3:

So that's a whole other level of kind of ranching up things. Again, we try to do things before we have to. So we were growing pretty fast. So we were hiring people, probably earlier than we needed to, but we wanted to train them and get them up and running. So when the busy season hits, they were up and running.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's another interesting thing you guys have touched on a couple of times is this idea of acting before you need you know, hiring the person before you need them, buying the truck before you need it that's a very hard thing, you know now American gutter monkeys we have go out, we have our franchisees. That's a very hard thing to convey to a franchisee. Is this idea of taking again taking that leap of faith and buying that truck before you need it or hiring that employee before you need them. Well, especially post-COVID.

Speaker 2:

We cannot get the truck we want in three days. Andy remember it was like 2019, Christmas week that's when we always buy our trucks and we bought a pair of 2020 trucks and it was 2019, Christmas week. We went in like on a Tuesday and they had one of them in stock on the lot and they said come back on Friday and pick them both up. And we came back three or four days later, picked up both trucks and drove them back to the shop. Today, this year, 2000,. Well, just past 2024, we ordered two new trucks Christmas week of 23. We picked them up. We took delivery something like June. It takes six months If you want a silver Tacoma in this particular color, match four-door with a six-foot bed that matches our fleet.

Speaker 2:

They just can't get them that fast. So you have to order them before you need them, and I don't think it's necessarily so much a leap of faith. Is this confidence in your business model? Yep, Yep. And you have to understand that post-COVID getting trucks and inventory in general is different than pre-COVID, and that's just an adjustment we all had to make.

Speaker 1:

You must have had some interesting conversations leading up to COVID or in COVID about how to run the business, whether the business is going to survive, et cetera, et cetera. Or were you guys pretty much locked in at that point.

Speaker 3:

Nobody can predict the future, and no one could have predicted COVID. But you know, if you run your company as debt free as possible, you know little humps in the road aren't going to bother us. If you have a business that you have a lot of leases and rents and you get into a COVID situation where you shut down for months or weeks, that's going to put you out of business. We didn't prepare for COVID, but we were prepared for anything.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's a really good point. Again, another thing we touch on in this podcast a lot is that ability to if your finances are in order, you have a lot of latitude to kind of go, you know, go with the flow, take whatever punch gets thrown at you and be able to survive it.

Speaker 3:

And also we were able to pivot. We never really planned to franchise, it wasn't part of our business plan. But as the company grew, we adjusted and we pivoted with it. And when customers are coming up to us and asking us if they can geez, can they do what we do? And Dennis and I said, yeah, I guess we can. You know, because it's a simple business plan, it's not a complicated business plan. But you know, if you follow the rules you could succeed also. So that's how kind of we pivoted into American.

Speaker 1:

Gutter Monkeys. Okay, so people started coming to you and saying can I do this too? A customer.

Speaker 3:

A customer said wow, I love what you guys do. You think we could get into this kind of business and we'd never thought about it before. But we said, sure, let's come up with something. And we did. And then that spun off to another customer, another person coming in, and then so on and so forth, and kind of American gutter.

Speaker 1:

Monkeys was born. Okay, how many years in was that about Two?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, two and a half Okay, wow.

Speaker 2:

That was fast. We had bounced around many ideas. There were a lot of ideas. Whenever you're starting a business, no matter how much you think you know, you only know a small amount. And then, as we move forward, we say, oh wow, there's additional ancillary work in gutter cleaning, gutter tune-ups, gutter repairs, gutter installs. So then we bought an install truck and, as that occurred, we said, ok, there's an awful lot of carpentry involved in gutter repairs and gutter installs, because we have to take old gutters down, a lot of carpentry and repairs behind it.

Speaker 2:

So we started focusing on building carpentry teams that can do this type of work, and there's no way we could have anticipated and predicted that at the beginning. But you go in with some level of flexibility and, yeah, it worked out really well. And you know, integrity is huge. Skill set is one thing, but you can't teach integrity and if you surround yourself with people of integrity, your problems will be minimized, because men of integrity will always be true to their integrity and I think that, especially here in the front office, we've always surrounded ourselves with men and women of integrity and it makes a huge difference.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you always say you know you're the average of the five people you surround yourself with.

Speaker 1:

So you had a good start because you had your wives. You had each other, your wives, so now you've got four people and you start adding your family members in, so you're surrounded by some pretty good people right out of the gate. So that's a huge advantage, yeah, it is. And again it goes back to having a partner. You know, it's just a good partner, someone you've known since college. It's huge. So did you guys start breaking into, developed roles yourselves? Right, you guys kind of went Andy, you've done a lot of the estimation work and things like that. Tennis, you've kind of run the teams and things like that. That role sort of happened pretty quickly or did it kind of evolve over the years? It definitely evolved over the years because Dennis and I did everything for the first six, seven years.

Speaker 3:

Like we were out on every truck we did, you know, we touched every house and then as we started to grow, that's when we started, you know, having, you know, separate teams go out and but we were pretty much hands-on and then again we still had to run the business. But that's what our wives were doing inside, doing all the office stuff. But, yeah, it was kind of exciting being out in the road. But eventually we started taking more of the running the business and Dennis pulled off the truck first and then, probably a year later, I pulled off the truck and now we're pretty much running the whole business as it is now okay and sometimes the younger kids still.

Speaker 2:

Let us go out and play on the trucks it's getting dangerous.

Speaker 1:

You guys are at the age you shouldn't be on ladders.

Speaker 2:

I hate to say um, it's no, it's not so much that it's. It's those little things, the twisted ankles, and yeah little aches and pains that hurt a little bit more now than they did 10, 15 years ago.

Speaker 1:

You're even getting up on the. What do you call it, that small ladder? It's the pit bull or the chihuahua of the gutter industry.

Speaker 2:

The step ladder is the chihuahua of the ladder industry. That's the one where everyone gets. No one falls off a 40-foot ladder.

Speaker 1:

You essentially get bit in the ass by that ladder.

Speaker 3:

But the beauty of this business is that the learning curve is real quick. You know, like I said, when I first started, I said what can I do in business that can transfer my skills into a self-employed business? And boy, I tell you, gutter cleaning is the perfect one. Because you know, within six months you're pretty much an expert at the business. And you know it's not rocket science what we do, but we do a service that people appreciate.

Speaker 1:

It's an amazing thing. Yeah, that's what we try to explain to our franchisees. It's a great business to get into the learning curve is very quick.

Speaker 2:

Let's just take, for example we have a couple of crews that primarily install gutters. So one of them is a six-man crew. I can take a beginner and put him on a gutter cleaning crew, training for six weeks, and he's going to be pretty competent after six weeks. And then I can rotate him onto a gutter install crew and now he's surrounded by five or six highly skilled guys. So he just almost by just association, blends in nicely and he picks up everything very quickly. And so once the company grows and you have many good people out there, it's very easy to bring new guys in, train them, teach them and then move them around to different crews and they assimilate very well. It works well. On the learning curve. It's not as difficult and long as so many of the other trades.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, we talked to our friends the plumbers, the electricians, and they were shocked at how fast we're growing, because we grew really fast there for a while. It's because we can train a guy quickly and put him in a truck and two guys in a truck and he can go out and start making money. Where a plumber has to go through, you know, apprenticeship and you know all these stages and five years later maybe he, that guy's making money for you. We can put a two-man crew out there fairly quickly and they're making money for us within, you know, two months, three months they can be. You know we can get a truck going.

Speaker 1:

So we were able to expand really quickly that kind of goes to the brilliance of your idea of sticking to gutters and nothing else. Because you can train them how to do gutters, you don't have to treat them how to do roofing or fixing a chimney yes exactly.

Speaker 1:

You know you're not. You don't have all those tools you got to introduce them to and he might be a carpenter, but he doesn't know anything about roofs and blah, blah, blah. You guys can go right to the gutters, that's all. You train them and you teach them how to get the ladders up and do all that stuff, but yeah, and we hired a bunch of the restaurant business.

Speaker 3:

they're used to customers coming up to them and complaining and you know, about whatever. And then they come out here and people are actually giving them tips because they did the job that they were hired to do and they were, you know, wow, this is great, it would be in the rain.

Speaker 3:

and people say this is still better than my restaurant job because I used to get yelled at all the time in my restaurant job and it's like again, people appreciate doing a good job. And you know, during COVID it actually helped because a lot of people were staying home, they had extra money because they weren't going out to dinner or driving and they started taking care of their houses and we stayed outside and it didn't affect us at all.

Speaker 2:

We had a good year in 2020. It was still a growth year and I mean COVID definitely impacted everybody, everybody in year, and I mean COVID definitely impacted everybody, everybody in the whole country. The way he or she runs their businesses. It impacted us all. But we did pretty well. We had a good year in 2020.

Speaker 1:

And then you started building sort of a little bit of a real estate empire. I mean, you went from your house to a leased facility, a rented facility, then you leased some space and then you built this beautiful building here.

Speaker 2:

Well, no, we actually bought three buildings. This is our third one.

Speaker 2:

Oh really, I didn't know about the other two, yeah, so we started the business out of my garage and very quickly we bought a small bay over in the industrial park in Sandwich Mass here on the Cape and we outgrew that one fast, like in a year, year and a half. So then we bought one that was much bigger, about 2,700 square feet, down here in Mashpee. But man, we were growing so fast. But at this point we're like five years in and we said, okay, we have a better assessment and we could assess our needs. It wasn't just the building we needed. Within the building, we needed parking, warehouse and office space. So we broke it down. How many square feet of office space do we need to grow to X? How many square feet of parking space, warehouse space? How many outdoor parking spaces do we need? Our second building had like 15 spaces. We thought we died and went to heaven, but we outgrew that so rapidly.

Speaker 2:

So when we built this new building we bought I think it's about a one and three quarter acre parcel. It's right here in Mashpee in the industrial park. We bought an acre and three quarter lot. We built a very, very large building with four overhead doors, parking indoors for four trucks, a lot of square footage on the floor for inventory lots and lots of office space. We have room enough to have a pool table. We have dartboards. We have a gym. We have a podcast station. We have a podcast station.

Speaker 3:

So we overbuilt the old adage is a fish can only grow as big as its fish bowl. So we want to have a place that we're not moving again. This is it. This is a permanent place and we love it here.

Speaker 1:

It's a great thing about the franchise now with American Gutter Monkeys. Your fishbowl for Cape Cod Gutter Monkeys has pretty much been Cape Cod. I'm sure you went all over the bridge a little bit, but probably it was Cape Cod.

Speaker 2:

But now with the franchises, you're able such a huge growth year in 24. We were running out of parking and we had like 28 parking spaces and we only had maybe 20 employees. But then we had a growth year and we added several more guys in the field and a couple of ladies in the office and we didn't have any more spaces because we have a dozen or more trucks company trucks so we have a dozen well, we're up to 15 company trucks and we have I don't know 25 or so employees in the building. We needed 40 parking spaces and we only had 28. So we took a quarter acre that's on the other part of this parcel here and we made another probably 12, about another 24 parking spaces, and we made another probably 12, about another 24 parking spaces. So that's the beauty of looking forward and we're able to remedy that issue very quickly.

Speaker 2:

It only took our buddies next door. The Gavoni boys came over and they had that thing cleared and graveled and compacted in what? Three days? Yeah, couple of days, that's all, and now we have another 24 parking spaces. So, yeah, it's worked out very well. Don't go to where the puck is. Go to where the puck is going to be when you get there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly how many times have I heard that on this?

Speaker 3:

podcast. The other thing that Dennis and I always say is don't be greedy, don't be stupid. There's a lot of small companies that once they start getting a little success, they go out and start buying miscellaneous cars and boats and stuff like that. We always fed the company, feed the company, pay yourself a minimal salary and let the company grow, and it's worked out real well so far.

Speaker 2:

So tell them that again Andy, Don't be greedy.

Speaker 3:

Don't be stupid, absolutely.

Speaker 1:

And I talk to a lot of potential franchisees and they keep asking well, why am I going to join you? Why do I need you to do this, we to join you, why do I need you to do this? We've been touching on all these points. That last point always strikes me, just the parking. How important parking? Would you ever think of that on your own? Probably not. But you guys have experienced it firsthand. You know what the effect of it is.

Speaker 1:

That's what you get when you kind of franchise or join us as a franchisee.

Speaker 3:

And again, coming from the corporate world, you don't know a lot of these things about liability insurance and this insurance and that insurance, and boy you know, just having someone has knowledge of that. And what do I got to buy and how do I start my business and what am I missing. It's just, it's a wonderful thing having someone to lean on.

Speaker 1:

So now you're into a whole nother thing. You're starting to work with franchisees and things like that, so that's a whole nother kettle of fish. Right, you got to kind of learn how to do that, how to handle franchisees who are, you know, they're not employees, so you can't make them do things that they're supposed to be doing. But that's a whole nother thing.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, the old thing is that. You know we have a recipe that you know provided success. If you change the recipe, I can't guarantee you the output's going to be the same as ours. You know we have a recipe. Follow the recipe. It should work. You know that's. But we can't force them to do what we do. But we're just showing. You bought a franchise for the recipe, Right, and we're giving you the recipe.

Speaker 2:

You're kind of leading by example. Yep, what else can you do Now? I think, Chris, did you tell me that our newest franchisee, Scott Wellington, isn't he going to be on the show in a couple weeks? He's going to be on the show next week.

Speaker 1:

No, two weeks Two weeks from now he's going to be on the show. Yeah, and I was just talking to him just now. He's excited about it. He's like a little kid in a candy shop, right now.

Speaker 1:

Oh my gosh, he's just in here, just now he's having a blast, he's having fun and he's just. You know, you can tell when he comes in, sits down. We were just talking, andy. We were just talking. What was the one thing, this little conversation with him? All of a sudden he was like oh, I didn't realize that. Oh, that's great to know. That might have taken him months to figure out.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, uh, I think again comes back to having that partner anything else you guys want to kind of roll into, we could talk business all day.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we could do this, get a six pack of beer.

Speaker 1:

We won't go anywhere. Okay, I'll go. Actually, I noticed there's no beer in your refrigerator. Um no, yeah, yeah, is that one of those liability things? Oh, sometimes liability 101. Yeah, you just didn't look in the right refrigerator. Yeah, is that one of those liability things? Oh, sometimes there is Liability 101.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you just didn't look in the right refrigerator.

Speaker 1:

So let's talk. People are always going to ask you oh, you left your corporate job. Who knows where you could have been? You could have been a president of that paper company right now. Do you have any regrets about that? You would think back on that and say, wow, I could have been vice president of printing and collating.

Speaker 3:

But I still would have been listening to the man, and there's nothing better than working for yourself. Like I said, you have no idea where your next paycheck's coming from, but boy, I control my future. What a concept. So we do have a lot of fun.

Speaker 2:

We do. We have a lot of fun at work now.

Speaker 3:

And you can tell by our ads. You know, a lot of radio ads you hear nowadays are kind of boring and you zone off halfway through them. Our radio ads is meant to be funny. You know, you may not like it, but it's funny. You know, I don't care what you say. Humor is a wonderful thing. Yeah, it is.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean, when I first started looking at American gutter monkeys and joining you guys, I mean this is one thing that struck me right away. I mean your friendships and having fun. This is a great building, great people. You know, it is really a great spot.

Speaker 3:

Life's too short If you're not having fun. Get out.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So what would you say to somebody right now? Okay, I'm thinking maybe getting out of my corporate job right now. You know, I don't know, I know.

Speaker 3:

What would be the first thing? You would as well invest in yourself, you know. And then you've got to find the right partner. Again, I don't know what you want to do or what your skillset are, but we talked to all kinds of people and business is business.

Speaker 3:

It doesn't matter whether you're doing gutter monkeys or you're doing something else. Business is business and the concepts are all the same, you know. So try it. Invest in yourself, don't? I would hate to be now and say, oh, I regretted doing that 10 years ago. I should have done that 10 years ago. You never know what the future is going to bring you, but you might as well dive into the deep end. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Sounds good, but to do it at 55, andy, as you did, is huge. It's most unusual because by 55, most people are looking down the barrel of that gun and saying I only have 10 years left of this. But I think the results were great. I know you're thrilled with what you do every day and this is the best business I've ever been involved in. This is so much fun and it's so much fun on so many levels. Yeah, it must be great driving in here in the morning.

Speaker 1:

It really is. There's beautiful buildings in here. Your truck's all in the parking lot, your guy's going out in the field.

Speaker 2:

Now, just for clarification to any listeners out there Chris and I were high school teammates. Chris, we've known each other since we were 14. Andy, you and I met four years later we were 18 years old and our other partner, bruce, we met him freshman year. There's really nothing quite like lifelong friends and the integrity that they bring to the table. That's a huge part of what we do here.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah Shows in the business. Your customers appreciate it. I know that for a fact. We go into any place. We go into get your gutter monkey outfit on. I live up in Worcester. I go into Home Depot up there and people are like oh, the gutter monkeys, oh you do my place in Hyannis. Like yep, yep, yep, I do, yep, I do.

Speaker 3:

They call that branding. That's what they call that.

Speaker 1:

Although I've never been up on a ladder, I take credit for it anyway there you go as you should. All right Well.

Speaker 3:

I guess if you guys are tired of, talking.

Speaker 1:

we'll move on. Andy, you should come back. You're free to come back, actually for any podcast, we'd love to have you.

Speaker 2:

It's been a pleasure. It really has been fun. Hey Chris, I get tired of talking to Dennis, I don't blame you. Thank God, I got someone else to talk to here.

Speaker 1:

Listen, no monkeys were harmed in the making of this podcast. Good night. Thank you for tuning in to Monkey Business Radio. If you enjoyed today's episode, please make sure to subscribe, like and follow us wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us reach more aspiring entrepreneurs like you, and if you've got a question or topic you'd like us to cover, leave a comment or reach out to us on social media. We'd love to hear your thoughts and keep the conversation going. Don't forget to leave us a five-star review if you found the episode valuable, and make sure to share it with anyone who might benefit from our tips and stories. We'll see you next time. This podcast is produced by American Gutter Monkeys LLC. Build real wealth through business ownership. For details, visit us at AmericanGutterMonkeyscom.