Profit & Grit with Tyler

Turning Seasonal Gaps into Gold with Matthew Efird

• Tyler Martin • Episode 10

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Matthew Efird transformed seasonal business challenges into thriving enterprises by creating complementary companies that operate year-round and positioning his services as premium offerings. He shares his journey from Mosquito Joe franchisee to founding Lighting Pros, now a successful franchise system focused on quality over price competition.

• Started with Mosquito Joe franchise providing outdoor pest control primarily to residential customers
• Created Lighting Pros to solve the seasonal employment problem and keep quality team members year-round
• Positioned both businesses as premium services with a "charge more and be worth it" philosophy
• Average lighting job now exceeds $10,000 by focusing on value over competing on price
• Leverages complementary seasonal businesses with mosquito control in warm months and lighting in cooler months
• Differentiates from "chuck-in-a-truck" competitors by specializing rather than diversifying services
• Builds strong company culture through monthly all-staff meetings focusing on professional development
• Implements clear "rules of engagement" defining what excellent service looks like
• Maintains employee retention through year-round employment and regular bonuses
• Created a board of advisors with experienced mentors who provide honest feedback
• Aims to grow to 100 franchise locations generating $100 million annual impact within five years

Head over to ProfitandGrit.com to book an intro session with me. We'll dig into your numbers and figure out how to turn your daily grind into sustainable profit.


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Speaker 1:

But what I've learned is I've been able to define out my value, because the people that value what I value and the work that I do, they are happy to pay the price that I charge. They're happy to pay over that and it is amazing and I can look back across our business and we used to when we first started out doing lighting. You know we're average job for us in the outdoor lighting space across this past year is just over $10,000. And if you would have told me that back in 2017, 2018, we're starting I'm like you're, that's a lot.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to Profit and Grit with Tyler, where blue collar owners and insiders spill the real story behind their hustle, building businesses that thrive through sweat and smarts. We'll dig into their journeys, from scaling chaos to growing the bottom line, with lessons and grit that pay off big. Here's your host, the blue collar CFO, tyler Martin.

Speaker 3:

Hey, welcome back to another episode of Profit and Grit. I'm your host, my name is Tyler Martin, and we're going to dive today into the world of outdoor lighting and seasonal businesses. My guest today has figured out how to keep his team employed year round while building not one, but multiple successful companies. And, as we all know, the challenge with seasonal companies, especially in trades, is you hire some really great employees, you're happy with them, and then the slow season hits and what do you do? Do you cut their hours? Do you take a hit and keep them employed? They go find another job. Then the season picks back up. What do you do? They've already got another job. They may not come back to you. So it's this perennial challenge.

Speaker 3:

And Matthew Eford started with a Mosquito Joe franchise, and then he launched Lighting Pros to solve this classic seasonal business problem. And he was trying to answer the question what do you do with your good employees during slow months? Well, now he's turned that solution into his own thriving franchise business. In this conversation, we're going to break down how Matthew balances his competitive drive with smart business decisions, his journey from corporate leadership to entrepreneurship, and the pricing strategies that have allowed him to position his business as a premium service in a market full of what he calls a chuck-in-a-truck competitor. If you're a trades or service business owner looking to scale without losing your mind, or if you're struggling with seasonal cash flow challenges, matthew's got some hard-earned wisdom that might just change how you run your operation.

Speaker 3:

Let's get into it. Hey, matthew, welcome to the Profit and Grit Show. How are you doing? I'm doing well. How about you, tyler? I'm doing really good. Thanks for asking. I'm excited to talk with you. Before I get into some of the questions, I want to just learn about you a little bit first. What do you do professionally?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, thank you for asking. I've got a few businesses that I have and I have a podcast Pillars of Purpose podcast that I run that I'm super excited to have conversations with folks all over the world. The businesses that I have I started out first with the Mosquito Joe franchise. So I'm a franchisee of Mosquito Joe, I'm an area developer for them, meaning that I bought multiple territories and I slowly phased open them over four or five years. I also own Lighting Pros, which is an outdoor lighting business, and that was a need that came out of our Mosquito Joe what do I do with my staff in off-season? And then, out of that, we found great success in our lighting business and we had folks reaching out to us saying, hey, can you help us start in the lighting business? And we created the Lighting Pros franchise. So those are the three organizations that I run.

Speaker 3:

So Mosquito Joe, what is that?

Speaker 1:

It was a great question. It's outdoor pest control. So obviously we treat for mosquitoes, but we treat for fleas and ticks as well as fire ants, just kind of general outdoor pest control. So our tagline is we make outside fun again.

Speaker 3:

Very cool. And then is that to businesses, or is there a commercial aspect to that?

Speaker 1:

That's a fantastic question yeah, it's predominantly to residential, so we're about a 90-10 split on a residential to commercial properties.

Speaker 3:

And in terms of that mix, is that where you always will be, or do you have aspirations of being more commercial? Or is the model basically residential?

Speaker 1:

The model is geared more towards residential. Yes, obviously, we love the commercial properties, right? I mean, there's a lot of value in a commercial property, which is why, in our lighting business, we've focused predominantly on commercial properties. We can make, in my opinion, a bigger impact a lot of times on a specific residential property, so that's why we're so successful there. But the commercial properties, yes, we definitely go with. Those are your HOAs, those are your living centers, those are your kind of live work, play areas, pools that we can work with.

Speaker 3:

Got it, and then lighting pros. I'm assuming is all residential. Is that a fair statement?

Speaker 1:

No, that's actually not. We're about at 85, 90% we actually flip. So we go about 85% commercial, about 15% residential.

Speaker 3:

Wow, so you're serving mostly businesses in terms of the lighting, is that that is correct? Okay, wow Okay. Very cool. And how do you? I'm getting way ahead of myself. No, you're fine, let's go. I didn't ask you for a personal. I have to know something about you personally. Can you share anything before I already dive into all these questions?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so I've got four boys, seven and under, so we have a very, very fun household, but it's very loud. All boys Walker, noah, abel and Warren. They're a handful.

Speaker 3:

So it's very fun, okay. So I had another podcast this morning, jacob Lawson. He has three girls and I said to him I said, hey, jacob, you know, I just so happen to be the fourth child. The first three were older sisters and my parents didn't stop until they had a boy. So I guess my million-dollar question to you is is there going to be a?

Speaker 1:

fifth and tenth for a girl. No, we are done. No, the Lord has blessed us with our family and we're very thankful for it, and we're comfortable and confident that we are done as a family. That's awesome.

Speaker 3:

That's cool having four boys, but I'll bet you that's a handful.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it gets to be loud and kind of WWE, which is very fun. You know I'm wired to be a boy dad for sure. I played football growing up and so it's really being able to kind of translate that over, teach them things about business, which has been really fun for me. My oldest son is super interested in making money, which I'm not opposed with at all, and so we're coming up with creative ideas, helping teach him. Like just because you have an idea doesn't mean somebody wants it. So we've got to test in the market, We've got to see what a customer wants. So it's been fun.

Speaker 3:

That's very cool. So, getting back to, because I don't want to lose that train of thought, I thought it was interesting. So Mosquito Joe's, you're going out and helping homeowners fight their pest control issues, and then Lighting Pros, you're mostly helping commercial business owners. What are you doing for them exactly?

Speaker 1:

And it has seasonality to it. Sure, yeah. So the way that we started is we, within our franchise system, we talk about two avatars. So avatar one is named joe and joe is a seasonal business owner. Right for mosquito joe. But joe's mosquito is a seasonal business owner. He's got a pressure washing business, landscaping business, um, fencing, roofing, outdoor pest control, painting.

Speaker 1:

He has a slowdown in the winter and we've created a solution that says, hey, you can do temporary holiday lights, temporary Christmas lights. That's very seasonality. It's very, very defined what that season is. It's in the winter and it's typically when your other summer, spring, summer, fall, seasonal businesses are not working or they're very, very slow. So that's where we started.

Speaker 1:

But what happened was we kind of grew from a Joe to what we consider a Mitch, and Mitch is an outdoor lighting. He actually does all outdoor lighting and he's a portfolio investor. He's a corporate refugee who's trying to jump from the corporate America into business ownership and he doesn't want a seasonal business, because there's lots of nuances about a seasonal business that I'm sure we're going to get into. But he wants something that's more permanent. And so what we've done is as we've adapted as a business, as we've grown, as we've gotten more feedback from our customer base. It is more what else can we do to serve them in the way that we're serving our customers in our temporary lighting?

Speaker 1:

And so we've added permanent holiday lights so we install those all year long. They're control printer phone, which is really fun. They're RGB, so you can change them to any color. You can put them to music. There's all the fun things you can do with that. But they're a one and done installation so they're not a take up put up in the late fall and take down in the early winter. You actually get to put them up and leave them up all year long so you can celebrate Valentine's Day, easter, memorial Day, veterans Day, fourth of July, across the board, you can Halloween, thanksgiving, birthdays, anything you want to do, mardi Gras. Then we got into the outdoor lighting space, which is more defined as landscape lighting, so architectural lighting, the exterior lighting on a home that we're already servicing for homeowners and business owners that year-round lighting that's appealing to residences.

Speaker 3:

is that correct? That is correct, yeah.

Speaker 1:

So we do that for homeowners and business owners. So that part of the business, the non-temporary lighting, so the temporary lighting, that's about an 85% 15% split between the commercial to residential. And just to clarify the reason for that, what we believe is there's a real defined ROI for a business owner. When they install temporary decorations on their business. They bring typically a 6% bump in year-over-year sales in the end of the year. There's a pretty defined, you see, a bump in sales.

Speaker 1:

Some businesses do it better than others, right, but it's what we're seeing is business owners are taking this as this is a way for me to market my business in my local community. And then some business owners are taking it a step further and are saying like, hey, let's put up the holiday permanent holiday lights. We work with a lot of Chick-fil-A's here throughout Georgia and it's throughout the Southeast, and what they're doing is they're installing these and they're saying, hey, we do a lot of fundraiser nights, right, that's a big deal. For in the Chick-fil-A community they do. They share some of the resources with the local school or a local charity. Well, they get to now turn their lights on to that charity's colors or that school's colors. It's really fun. It's just kind of integrating more into the community.

Speaker 1:

What's the business owner's goals? Got it. But on the outdoor lighting space, the permanent landscape lighting, that's more of a 50-50, 60-40 split in terms of residential to commercial. So there's definitely aspects that we do for the commercial properties, but predominantly that is more focused on your homeowners right, they want to be able to pull up to their beautiful house they just bought and be able to see it at night. They want the added security when their kids pull in and they have to walk around the side of the house to get in. They want their natural lighting pathway. Lighting up, lighting, down, lighting I mean there's all sorts of nuance that you can get into. But the main thing is how can we make a home look better and be safer all year?

Speaker 3:

long, very cool. What's the pricing model that look like? Is that a subscription where you're performing some type of check-in and maintenances? Yeah, that's a fantastic question.

Speaker 1:

So the way that we do it is we have an upfront installation and so that installation is based on the design that the specific homeowner has. That ranges anywhere from 5,000 to 50,000. I mean, we've got some that are six-figure jobs that we do. That get kind of way out there, but that's typically kind of the price range that we do. And then that comes with a maintenance plan. So we're working with the recurring revenue, which is something that everybody wants. That's a great way for us to stay top of mind to our customers. The way that we like to say is every customer within our lighting business because that's what we're specifically talking about right now there's an upsell, cross-sell opportunity for them that they any service line they come into the business for, they have the ability to be utilized across the other service lines as well, which is a great opportunity for our sales team and our office staff to be able to continue to serve them in an appropriate way. But the maintenance plan gets us their quality installation.

Speaker 1:

They saw the first day. They saw it. They get to enjoy that all year long. Right, that things happen shrubbery grows, lights need to be moved, lights need to be cleaned, right? I mean, you don't just drive down the interstate with your windshield every day and not ever clean your windshield. You won't be able to see right. You got to clean that. That way your headlights can come through, you can see out. It's the same way with the lighting fixtures. You got to be able to clean those off and do some minor maintenance on them.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So I want to go to your journey here. So it's unique that you started out with a franchise Mosquito Joe's and then you then started your own business on your own. What's your thought process in terms of? Because the franchise kind of has everything set up for you. You follow their rules. You're kind of stuck to what you need to do. Having your own business, you've got all this autonomy. It could be a good thing, could be a bad thing. What was your decision-making going from? Like I know you had the seasonality part, so that drove some of this but going from having a franchise to having to build everything from scratch. What was that change like?

Speaker 1:

That's a great question. So the thing that I found about Mosquito Joe back when we started with Mosquito Joe in 2017 is they were winning a lot of awards. There's a great brand, a memorable name. I tried the service. It works Fantastic.

Speaker 1:

I love the imagery of Outside's Fun again. Right, I mean with a family of young boys. We spend a ton of time outside and I love to be able to do that in a safe way. We have dogs that we get to protect them from fleas and ticks, as well as mosquitoes. I love that model. So I didn't want to reinvent the model. What I didn't know about the mosquito control world is I didn't know any of the kind of back-end maintenance of the workings of the business or the supplies. I could have figured that out, but I love the opportunity to kind of join in with a brand.

Speaker 1:

My brother and I had a mowing business when we were in high school right, I mean, but that was M&M Mowing and it was like we had a little M&M, which is not legal but it was modified enough that it wasn't the actual M&M, but I didn't want to do that. So being able to get out of corporate America into business ownership, going with the franchise route felt the safest because most of the time franchisees fail less than a local business owner. But with that said, when we started to grow, started to develop ourselves, matt said, when we started to grow, started to develop ourselves, we saw that it was not quite as scary as we may have initially thought and at that time I didn't see any outdoor lighting business that I really felt confident with. We didn't try a bunch of those, we did do some research on them and across the board I didn't see anything that really stood out to me and so I was already installing lights for my wife Even we dated through college, we were high school sweethearts and we dated through college and I would put stuff up on her apartment.

Speaker 1:

I put stuff up on my apartment. I mean, I just was used to doing that and so I felt more confident starting that type of business because it had been not a side hustle, I wasn't making money at it, but I was doing it more myself than trying to go out and find another franchise to be a part of.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And did you find starting Lighting Pros? Was that? I mean, was that pretty difficult, because you're starting just literally from scratch.

Speaker 1:

I mean from accounting systems to CRMs, to paperwork, to contracts. Yeah, that one, that one, that one. We have made many, many mistakes on and I'm sure we'll get to some of those, but it has been. The goal on the front end was as an entrepreneur, I want to invest in my team. My goal is to build teams.

Speaker 1:

Rich Dad, poor Dad was a book that changed my life. I read that in 2016. And my family and I my wife and I were praying through like what does it look like for me in corporate America at this time? I have a great job, I've got great benefits, great pay, a great company I work with, but I'm unsatisfied. I'm feeling this pull, this call to do something different.

Speaker 1:

But one thing I didn't want to do is I didn't want to start a business like Mosquito Joe and then tell my staff hey, go find something else to do in the winter. That just didn't sit well with me, right? I have to pay my mortgage every month. I got to pay my car phone across the board. I don't work on a nine-month payment period, so this idea of sending them away was really adverse to me.

Speaker 1:

And so, pretty quickly, we started our Lighting Pros along with our Mosquito Joe and we just kind of learned as we went, and so that is something that, if I go back, if we would have joined a franchise system again, we created our own because we felt like there wasn't anything in the market that was really a superior product, so we created our own system. We would have been more successful, faster, and so I do know that, but I'm thankful for the experience because it helped me create the franchise system that we've created now, because we've made bumps and bruises along the way that we can help all our franchisees say hey, here's all these roadblocks that you're going to want to avoid.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, you basically created a system now that other people are willing to buy, which is exactly what you essentially did with Mosquito Joe's. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah, very cool. Hey, so you, in researching you, you're either self-ascribed or people refer to you as a go-getter. You have a go-getter mentality. I'd love to know is there a scenario where two scenarios one where you know that's obviously played to your benefit and it's been a part of your success and having that mentality but has there also been a situation where it's kind of been detrimental or it's taken you down the wrong path?

Speaker 1:

Oh, yeah, that's so. Let me. Let me take the latter one first, because that's the one I'd love to share, and there's many of these. But early on in our business we were getting into jobs. My mentality has been, yes, we can do that and we'll figure it out as we go. Right, and that's not always the best approach, but that's I build the rocket ship as it flies, right, that's kind of my mentality. I have to hire good operations people. If you are a proponent of EOS, I'm a good visionary. I'm a really poor implementer. So the implementer role that role is critical for me to have within my organizations.

Speaker 1:

So what we have done is a bad scenario is we got into a job that we were working. We were understaffed, we had a tremendous amount of demand in our lighting business and we took on a job that I knew, on the front end, we should not be doing. I knew that it was going to look incredible when it was done, but it was so far outside of the scope of what we are standard doing that it took us. We worked 100 hours in a week on this one job. 100 hours we spent on this one job, myself included, and multiple all-nighters right, I mean drinking Red Bull, monster Energy like it doesn't matter. We got to stay up. We got to get this done. The finished product was incredible. The customer was very pleased with it, but the scope of work was so far removed from what we normally do. We don't even want to offer that service anymore. So you can't find pictures of that service on our website. You can't find pictures of that service online, right, I mean, it was a good job. We were quote unquote profitable on it, but the opportunity cost was dramatic because there were so many people we had to turn down in our core business. That has been something that I have wrestled with. That my board of advisors and my mentors really helped gauge me on, because I love the startup phase. I love the let's break systems, let's build people. I love that. Let's cast a vision, let's go conquer. That's really helpful for us, right, that's helped us. We were the 10th fastest growing company in 2024, founded or managed by UGA alumni, so we're very proud of that. So that's that part of that go-getter mentality, right, I mean I will go out and visit with folks after hours on the weekends, during the week. So we have gained a lot of access into some larger commercial accounts because we show up.

Speaker 1:

And it's amazing, in the home services spaces that's the business line that we're in it is amazing how many people we go up against in competition that don't do several basic things. They don't ever call back, they don't answer the initial phone call, which is ridiculous, but they don't. They don't follow up initial phone call, which is ridiculous, but they don't. They don't follow up with voicemails or emails or text messages. That's ridiculous. But then when they actually go meet with a client, they're never sending them a proposal.

Speaker 1:

So you see, there's this, just basic. We call it kind of blocking and tackling right, the brilliant of the basics, like the basic fundamentals of business. If you can just get that, you will far exceed so much of your competition. And then from there, as we go the extra mile, as we look at projects and we say, okay, the way that we teach our team is if you own this property and your mom was coming to see this job or your grandmother was coming to see this job, how would you want it to look? And you do not leave this property until it looks that way. So when you were working over here and you got it dirty, you better clean that up, because your grandmother would see that and she'd be disappointed, right? So that's some of those kind of go-getter I would say that's kind of the best way that I could describe that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's good stuff. That makes a lot of sense. I chuckle, though, when you talk about sometimes maybe biting off a little more than you can chew. I think we've all been there. It's funny that you're self-reflective, though, and you know that you're a visionary. No-transcript.

Speaker 1:

Oh, definitely, yes, A hundred percent. And it is somebody that I trust and it's somebody that I have said hey, when I'm running amok, you know, throw your hand up. This is somebody that I have said hey, when I'm running amok, throw your hand up. This is somebody that I've worked to establish that rapport with them that we can have a healthy dialogue. At the end of the day, it's my decision, but we're gonna have a healthy dialogue.

Speaker 1:

And what I found, if I'm really self-reflective and honest, the more times this person's kind of raised their hand and say, hey, I don't think this is a good idea, or I think we're going in a direction we don't need to, and I just put my head down and bust through that wall, normally it ends up not being a good decision. Normally it ends up being a decision we say, hey, that was not the best. We shouldn't have done that service line. We shouldn't have taken on that customer. We knew this customer was going to be a difficult customer. Yeah, the revenue number looked great, the profit margin looked great, but the headache that this customer calls was not worth it.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I love how you your key word there is trust. You trust the person. You have someone that you can have some friction with, but you know, at the end of the day, you're confident with where their spirit is at. Yeah, yeah, that's important.

Speaker 1:

For me. I think that kind of came from a lot of my athletic background, right. So the best teams that I were on were the ones that you fought like dogs on the football field. So that's me. I talk about football. That's what I played into. College is you've absolutely fought like dogs with your coaches and with your teammates, but off the field you were best friends. On the field you were warriors and you fought, and the idea was the harder I go against you, the better I get and the better you get.

Speaker 1:

And as iron sharpens iron, so does one man sharpen another. It's like how can we continue to work, to refine the work that we're doing? That when we leave this table, we will be unified in the decisions. That's what I tell our team when we meet. When we leave this table, we will be unified when we go out and present it to the rest of the organization or organizations. This is the direction we're moving. It's not a he said, she said, but in this moment there's trust and we need to be able to shoot as many holes in this as we can, because those holes will surface if we don't shoot them here. Very, cool.

Speaker 3:

Okay, I want to shift gears. Talk about pricing a little bit. You position lighting pros as a premium service using commercial grade materials in a market full of what you call chuck in a truck competition. So I got two questions One, what is a chuck in the truck and what do you mean by that? And then two, when did you reach that point where you got confident about your pricing? Because you know it's very common home service businesses, trades in general they just always say, hey, I'm going to price what my comp. I can't charge more because my competition doesn't charge more. So that's really where I'm kind of going with this conversation.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, that's a fantastic question. So let me answer the first one. First, chuck in a truck is that guy or gal and we love them, but they're a jack of all trades and definitely a master of none. The back of their truck has 15 different decals on it, 15 different stickers on it, of all the different service lines that they do, and they're the ones Michael Gerber E-Myth Revisited. It's a fantastic book. If you haven't read it, highly recommend it.

Speaker 1:

He talks about this concept of adding service lines that a customer asks you. So you're there to cut their grass and they say, hey, can you blow the leaves out of the gutters? Well, yeah, I can do that. Well, what happens is then you start you say, oh, I clean gutters, and then you get asked to do a pressure washing job. And, okay, well, now I pressure wash and you continue to add these service lines. And then your messaging is so convoluted, right, I mean, you go to when we come up to somebody where we're competing against them, and it's like you know, joe's handyman. It's like, okay, we're going to win this job, most likely because we're a professional company, if you want a professional brand, that's this. This is all that we do. All that we do is outdoor lighting. We could do a hundred other things, but this is all that we do, and so that allows us to differentiate ourselves a lot.

Speaker 1:

Now to the pricing point. One of the things that I did when I was coming on with Mosquito Joe is I called almost a hundred owners before we actually bought and I asked them like the good, the bad, the ugly hey, what do we like about it, what do you not like about it? And consistently across the board, I heard we charged two less when we started because we were trying to get customers. So when we started Mosquito Joe, we just said not doing that. And then I was listening to a podcast years ago and they were talking with one of the most successful in the Atlanta area one of the most successful home remodeling businesses, I believe it was and he said this idea of the podcast guest host asking if you could get a billboard and somebody paid for it and you just put up a message to all business owners. What would you put up there? And his only comment was charge more and be worth it. And I thought, hey, that's kind of easy, right? Okay, why don't we just charge more and be worth it.

Speaker 1:

If our business does not make profit, we cannot support our customers. We just won't. You live by price, you die by price. It's a race to the bottom.

Speaker 1:

And so what we have said is let's define out what we believe we're worth, the value that we can provide, and then let's push that. So let's see it's the supply and demand curve right. The lower our price is, the higher the demand is. So if our demand is at a rate that we cannot support it which has consistently been for us we've done a very good job marketing. Consistently we've been doing these type jobs and within the lighting space that we're drumming up more business than we can typically support, which means we're probably not charging enough.

Speaker 1:

So we consistently kind of push up on the upper threshold of like, hey, what is appropriate for us to charge? That we can then come and wow the customer, because I'm not looking for the one that's going to nickel and dime. That's just not our customer. I completely respect them. I may be that as a homeowner myself, but that's not my customer base. I'm not going to be all things to all people. I'm going to have a customer base that says, hey, this is what I'm looking for. I'm looking for a phenomenal experience that you create an environment. So what we say, our tagline for Lighting Pros, is your vision perfectly lit. So if you wanted your vision to be perfectly lit, we can do it, and we're going to have enough profit built into the job that if we have to add things, we can do that. If we have to take things away, we can do that. That we can support our staff right. That we have office staff, we have good insurance, right. I mean there's all these things that we have good insurance, right.

Speaker 3:

I mean, there's all these things that somebody who's competing by price you start for 35% less. Is it really gotten to the point where it's like, okay, that's just going to happen, or is it like, oh man, that kind of hurts?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's super hard. Right, I'm a winner and I love that's a go-getter in me. I love to win and every job that I go at, my goal is to win that job. I want to win that customer, I want to win that business. I want to win.

Speaker 1:

And so it is hard to realize that I'm not right for everyone. I'm at the core of who I am, as a man of faith specifically, but I'm a people pleaser and I love to live in harmony with people and I don't like those kinds of conversations. But what I've learned is I've been able to define out my value, because the people that value what I value and the work that I do, they are happy to pay the price that I pay, that I charge, they're happy to pay over that. And it is amazing and I can look back across our business when we used to, when we first started out and doing lighting. You know we're average job for us in the outdoor lighting space across this past year is just over $10,000. And if you would have told me that back in 2017, 2018, we're starting I'm like that's a lie. It's a blatant lie, but for us it's just been. This is the quality of work that we do so, being able to focus around the idea of ideal customers, ideal job scope, like what are the service lines that we do? Who can we provide the most value to in terms of referral partner? Again, just don't be all things. All people Give some focus around what are you best at? What can you charge the premium for that is the customer wants to pay for.

Speaker 1:

So my son, for instance. He won't listen to this for years, so I'll go ahead and say it my son loves to draw and it's fantastic. I love that. He's creative. He comes up with all these different scenes. He'll set up toys in his room and shoot it as a video. Who knows where the Lord will take him in terms of directing, I don't know, but one of the things that he does that his grandparents have spooled him on is he will draw something and he'll take 30 seconds to draw it. And then he'll call his grandparents on our phone when we were talking to him in the evening and say, hey, do you want to buy this? And he's like yeah, sure, it sounds great. And he's like okay, a hundred dollars. Like Like well, no, I can't. Like okay, buddy, you're pricing yourself out of the conversation, right? We kind of touched on that earlier, of trying to help coach him in on what are you offering? Is the value there and is someone willing to pay for it?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's funny, but it's grandparents, so they probably overpay for it.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to say yeah, they definitely do yeah, so that's a whole different conversation for another day. Yeah, but they're good.

Speaker 3:

If we only could all sell to our grandparents as our main customer.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that would be fantastic. That would be fantastic.

Speaker 3:

Hey, so I've heard you talk about how employee turnover creates costs that don't necessarily show up on the P&L. I'm wondering are there other hidden costs like that that aren't super obvious to business owners and entrepreneurs? Anything come to mind?

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So for us, let me touch on the turnover just for a second. So the reason that we started Lighting Pros was to support our Mosquito Joe. I mean it just it was. And a few years into it what we found was actually our Mosquito Joe supporting our Lighting Pros and it was the opportunity to provide year-round staffing as we were building up this other branch of the outdoor lighting, the permanent lighting, and allowing kind of lighting pros to stand on its own.

Speaker 1:

But what happened in both businesses? As we retained staff? So let me touch on that. As we retained staff, our referral rate went up, because we're consistently doing a good job for our existing recurring customers in Mosquito Joe and in Lighting Pros, over and over and over. These are employees that have been to that property before. They know how to treat Ms Smith, they know how she likes to be communicated with. That is a huge deal. So our referrals went up, our retention rate went up. That is a huge deal. So our referrals went up, our retention rate went up. So the year-over-year retention of both seasonal businesses, both kind of annual services that we do, that went up, which is fantastic, right, I mean, the recurring business is the bread and butter of a home services business. That is the lifeblood of your profit center. So that was super important. That is the lifeblood of your profit center. So that was super important.

Speaker 1:

But then what happened was the retention rate is the culture that we were establishing within our organization. We were having to reinvent the wheel every six months, nine months, 10 months, as we're recruiting new people and reintegrating them in. It was like, okay, we've kind of had most of these conversations and so now when we do one of the things that we do is once a month we bring everybody in from across the state of Georgia. We do an all staff day. We do five things. We do a professional development. So when I tell all of our staff and they come on with us I want you to be better for working here. So I know you will work here for a season. Even if you retire with us one day, you will leave. If you move out of the community, if you move out of the state, if you get a better job opportunity, great, I want you to be better for having worked here.

Speaker 1:

So we do professional development, we do a company update. So we're pretty transparent with a lot of the numbers that we share. We don't share bottom line profit. Depending on the employees. We get into different metrics. But we try to be pretty transparent with hey, here's how we're doing, here's how we're doing compared to last year. And then we immediately tie it into okay, here's what we're going to do. So if we're ahead, here's how we stay ahead. If we're behind, here's how we're going to catch up and here's how we're going to advance.

Speaker 1:

And then we do a culture celebration. So we're really, really keen on this idea of the culture that we have within our company. We need to celebrate that. So if we want to duplicate it, we've got to celebrate it. So we pull out every employee, their direct report, their manager pulls out from the last 30 days. Here's how CJ lived out, one of our core values. Here's how he lived out respect, treat others the way you want to be treated. Here's one of the things that CJ did. Everybody claps. Great job, cj, fantastic. And then for us, we eat and have fun, and so that's kind of the culture that we've established.

Speaker 1:

So that part what we're doing with the retention piece is we're now attracting more employees that want to be in that. So that's great. But also we're not having to kind of reinvent the wheel every time and retell some of these stories. It is okay, let's continue to go further. So now let's refine your skillset as a technician, as a CSR, as an office manager. How can we continue to equip you to be better, to serve our customers better, to go and win more jobs, to go in and be more profitable? So that way, rising tide rises all ships. We can pay you more. That was kind of a long-winded way to talk about your one specific question, so I don't know if there's anything else you wanted me to touch on there.

Speaker 3:

A couple of things. I want to drill down on One. You talked about professional development. How do you do that from a practical standpoint? Do you give a budget to each person of how much you're doing? Do you do in-house training? How do you factor that into the finances of the business? So fantastic question.

Speaker 1:

So we have a budget for my office manager and so she manages that budget as part of our team. So those team days that we do, any kind of events that we send folks to, that comes out of that budget, got it. And then for us what it is is the in-house training is a lot that we do, and so I'm an avid reader, so typically I'm reading a book a month and I'm pulling in new resources relatively quick to our team and it's more like hey guys, this is something I just learned and I'm super excited about and I want to tell you about it. And we may pull up a TED Talk, we may pull up a podcast episode, we may pull up some clips and say, okay, here's what it.

Speaker 1:

But my goal is to always connect it not just on their professional development in terms of their skill sets within. Can they hang lights better? Right, we talk about that. Of course. We talk about a company kind of overview. What does it mean for them to do this key aspect of their job, their kind of rules of engagement as a technician or an office manager or CSR?

Speaker 1:

Those jobs, of course we do, but this is more of like, hey, here's how you can handle conflict. Here's how you can de-escalate a situation. Here's how you can have a growth mindset. This is what it means to make small incremental changes Like let's help you set up a goal for five years and then work back to one year and then work back to 90 days and then work back to this month and then this week and then today. That's what we go through during that time. I'm super passionate about that, so I normally lead that time. But I do bring in from my mastermind group. I bring in folks that have expertise in other arenas or through my podcast Builders of Purpose, that we're actually bringing some kind of thought leadership into that and we share it with the team that way.

Speaker 3:

So you mentioned Rich Dad, poor Dad. You mentioned the E-Myth Revisited. Is there another book I'm asking you for one more that maybe sticks out that you use kind of your all-time favorite.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, one of my all-time favorites is Simon Sinek's Start With why. That's a good one. Yeah, that has radically defined my life in terms of connecting what I'm doing to why I'm doing it, and what that does is. That makes the how, and what you do so much easier, for me, at least, is to keep the why in mind you do so much easier, for me, at least, is to keep the why in mind. I do that as a dad trying to find out when I'm asking my boys to do something, I try to. I don't know this great, but I try to connect it to why it matters. Same thing for my team right now that I'm asking you to answer the phone this way. Here's why it matters. This is the, this is the, this is the core. So his TED Talk is fantastic. If you're not a reader, just go search Simon Sittig. Start for why. Watch the 35, I think it's 35 minutes, something like that TED Talk summarizes most of the book, but if you want a deeper dive, start with why it's fantastic.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's a great one. Okay, one more question in that, and then I'm going to move on to the next one. What about pay? Are you on a hey, you make X amount an hour, or are you on like a pay performance type plan? How do you structure that? Obviously no numbers, but I mean just in terms of how you structure it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, sure. No, I don't mind sharing numbers. This is all in Georgia, right? So it's relative, right, what we have found. We have tried performance pay, we have tried a combination of hourly pay plus performance pay, and then we tried straight hourly pay with bonuses. And we're at this point now where we do hourly pay plus bonuses and so we set a base. Here's your hourly rate. And if you want to mark more, we've got Saturday shifts, we've got extended shifts. If you want to work those, make overtime, fantastic, make as much as you want Then from there it is okay.

Speaker 1:

Let's bonus based off the specific attributes or work activity that we want to see. So when a seasonal employee comes back to us in either business, we bonus them, because that's a big deal, right, I mean, that's completely negating our training calls. We do some slight retraining to re-engage them with our culture, but we're not starting from scratch, and so we do bonus them if they come back in the lighting business, right, I mean, that's the value of those businesses, seasonal businesses specifically. Your revenue ramp is pretty dramatic, which means you've got to be really prepared to take on an influx of work, and so keeping staff is super important and having staff return is super important because, if not, you're just going to be beating your head against the wall because you're going to have excess demand and you're not going to be able to support it, which is very frustrating as a business.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and when you say bonus, are those bonuses driven and I'm not talking about the bonus to come back, but I'm just talking about the general bonuses Are those driven upon individual accomplishments or are they monthly or quarterly, or how are they divvied out? And are there some of those bonus components part of the company as a whole? Like we're going to do 50 installs this month or something like that?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, so we typically will break it up in each business and we'll do it based off of kind of how much is involved in the number of employees. So if this goal, if we have a goal for Mos gel respray rate, that's a callback, we didn't do a good job. If we have a goal of under 3%, we're bonus all of our technicians for that. If it's new customer signups, that's typically in the office, but then we do joint ones because it's referrals, and so that's typically the way we've kind of defined those out.

Speaker 1:

We pay those out monthly, some of them we incentivize. Whenever they come up, we pay them out immediately. So when they refer, when they get certain reviews, when they get certain metrics in the field, we pay those out immediately. So it's an immediate feel. And then we have an annual big goal that we do that we share a portion of the profit with the employees that were helping us get there, and so we typically pay that out at Christmas, which is fun for us to be able to do. And then we have other ones that we set up in the season, amidst season, in the season, for both businesses, both the lighting business and the Mesquite Joe lighting pros and Mesquite Joe.

Speaker 3:

Very cool. Now I got one last question on this whole EOS stuff. You made a comment that you share numbers with your team but you don't share the bottom line, and this is a very personal thing. Everybody has a different take on this. What's your feeling around? It sounds like you might share the sales numbers, but you're not necessarily sharing the bottom line. Just what's your philosophical feeling around that? Whatever, you are open to sharing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, happy to share. So for us it is more in line with my employees can affect, as a business owner, how many expenses I run through the business, right? So if I want to buy a new truck for me and I want to expense the entire truck this year, that's really going to affect my expenses. If we're going to buy a new piece of equipment because I think we need to buy it and I want to buy it, what I don't want to do is I don't want to make those decisions as an owner. That impacts my technicians, my entry level staff. Then they say like, hey, we're in trouble, right, that's what I'm trying to prevent. But I also don't want them to look and say, look, how greedy he's being, look how much money he's making. So for me personally, I don't share with my staff how much we take out of the business. I just don't. I'm the one that took all the risk when we started. No-transcript.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, no, I get it. I mean it's definitely a personal decision and it definitely has to fit you as an owner and what works. It's interesting I met with an EOS implementer a couple weeks back and you know her very strong, passionate feeling was you have to show all the well not that you have to, but you should show all of the numbers and if you don't do it, it means that you're not communicating or you're not educating your team on the right decisions. And I don't know. I mean, I can see it from both sides of the fence.

Speaker 3:

I know, when I had my company, I did not share full sales numbers. I did not share full bottom line number, for your exact reason. Like, the bottom line is very much driven by decisions I want to make. It doesn't necessarily impact staff performance, and so that was my feeling. Yet I was very open in terms of nobody was questioning how the company was doing. Let's. That was my feeling. Yet I was very open in terms of nobody was questioning how the company was doing. Let's put it that way. They just may not have known the exact sales and net profit number.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I'm happy for somebody to correct me on that. It's just it's worked for us since we started and our team feels supported and they may be curious and that's fantastic and I'm happy for them to be curious and if they want to know more, they can buy a franchise location and they can get into business ownership themselves.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, they get as much data as they want. That's right. Oh, okay, last two questions here. Legacy question I want to ask you when do you see, let's say, the next 20 years? What do you want to look back and say, hey, this is what we succeeded. Where do you want to be?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so in five years I can tell you my five-year goals. My five-year goal is 100 franchise locations. So we're bringing on our next round of 10 this year and our goal is 100 locations in five years. And so my goal is to continue to provide a resource to our franchisees. Right, I have this vision of $100 million impact a year, which is 100 franchisees doing $1 million a year in revenue.

Speaker 1:

That I believe that business can change the world. I just do. I believe that business can change the world and I believe that good business can make it great. I believe that good business can make it great. I believe that good business can make the world great. That when you come into a city, in a community and you create a business out of nothing, you create jobs, you create tax revenue, you put money on employees' tables, they now have buying power, they go out into the community, they continue to spend money. It is a snowball effect that a good business changes community.

Speaker 1:

And so for me it's like, okay, I just kind of see the US and I see these little maps. It's like, okay, man, the impact we can have there is incredible. And then you get mission-minded business owners. They don't have to be people of faith. But just this idea of my business is an avenue to engage in the community. Right, I can support nonprofits, I can donate to things I can sponsor, you know, T-ball teams right, I mean all across the board. It just gives you the leverage to make an impact and that's my vision.

Speaker 1:

So in 20 years, as long as we're still doing that, are still on this business, if I ever feel called away from it, then I will exit with a partner that will continue that purpose and that passion to reach communities in that way and build business owners in that way that can support them. The Joes and the Mitches of the world, right? The seasonal business owner that needs the all season fix, or the portfolio investor or corporate refugee that's wanting to get into business ownership. There's going to be organizations that can take lighting pros further than I can. I know that, and so it's eventually. One day we're going to get into those kinds of conversations. I'm pushing them off right now. Right, Because I'm loving it and I love what we're doing. But who knows where Lord will lead us.

Speaker 3:

That's okay. It just sounds like someday you're going to be chairman of the organization is what I'm hearing. That would be my goal. Yeah, that's awesome. Hey, okay, last one, and I've actually gone a little longer than I anticipated, so I apologize for that. Two tips I'd love to have from you, just if you can come up with them, two tips that you've learned in your entrepreneurial journey that you could pass back to us, that we could apply to our business, particularly if you can, geared towards either home or commercial services.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So for us, when you're talking about a homeowner, one of the tips that we always do is what I shared earlier, right, that we want to treat this property like it's ours. Is what I shared earlier, right, that we want to treat this property like it's ours, or, specifically a lot of our younger guys and gals, it's their grandmother. That's kind of the picture that we put in their head, like how would you want your grandmother's property treated? And so the tip is defining the example of what you want. So I have to define out what it means to do a good job. If I tell you, tyler, do a good job, our definition of a good job is going to be different. So I've got to clearly define out this is what a good job looks like. So we call those our roles of engagement, and so we have defined those out for all of our roles. Like, here's the roles of engagement. We kind of have gold standards. We took that from the Ritz-Carlton. We set like, here's the gold standard that you have within this role. This is what it looks like to exceed expectations for a customer. It's what it looks like to live out of core values. So that's number one.

Speaker 1:

Number two, on the entrepreneur side man, I've found so much value for me being in community. I believe we're designed to be in community, but there's so much value that I've gotten out of a peer group like a mastermind group. That's a pretty popular thing. I'm out of podcasts like this, out of podcasts like Pillars of Purpose, out of reading books. But the thing that I did two and a half years ago is I created a board of advisors, and the board of advisors are men that are further down the road than me. They're a couple of seasons ahead of me and they're in defined areas in their life that I see outwardly, looking in, that they're successful in the way that I want to be successful. And I put together a board and we meet once a quarter and we go through cradle to grave, like all the stuff over the last quarter. Here's what the last 90 days looked like. Here's what the next 90 days look like.

Speaker 1:

Okay, it's kind of the same thing I do with my team let's shoot as many holes in this as we can. And so I believe if you surround yourself with wise people, you'll become wise, and so I really, really. That is a huge emphasis that I have. With anybody who's running a business, it can be super isolating. Get within community. Find a local mastermind group. Hit me up on social media. I'd love to connect and let's talk that. You need that kind of iron sharpening iron you need that assistance.

Speaker 3:

Two things, anecdotally, I want to add to that. First one was about the home and treating it with respect. You know I'm not a guy that usually kind of gets upset with home service business providers. I had a company about two months ago came into my home, they were doing the tile in our bathroom and they put down you know, all the stuff to protect our floors. I'm trying to I can't think of the word for whatever reason, but they put it down. I was kind of happy, okay, cool.

Speaker 3:

When they went to go leave, it turned out that that cloth that they put down was actually dirtier than what they were doing and there literally was like chalk and stuff all over my floors handles. They left a big old mess out in front of my house with all this cocking and various stuff. And so my point is I don't think I've ever flipped out quite this bad on a provider. And when they came back I said you know what? I'm not going to let you start work because you guys disrespected my home. This is the exact word I used. It's how I felt. I said you disrespected my home, you did not treat my sanctuary with respect, and that really makes me mad. Now they apologized and obviously finished the job. But that's how I felt and it kind of memorialized that, disrespecting of your home, someone can really do that and I think as service providers we probably forget that that we can do have that impact, and that's big. I'd never use them again. They actually did an okay job, but I never use them again for that one reason.

Speaker 1:

I think it's a fantastic point, yeah, so what we believe is a business is defined around the way they fix problems and mistakes, rather than the way that they perform, true. And so for us, like you know, we teach our team to genuinely say to customers right, our first core value is feedback give and receive accountability. Thank you so much for taking the time to give me that feedback. Our team is one of our core values to share growth. Be better today than we were yesterday. We want to continue to get better. We can always improve, right, we've not ever made it. We can continue to improve upon the work that we do.

Speaker 1:

Tyler, thank you so much for sharing that. There's no reason we should have done that on your property, and I know that we'll probably never earn your business again, right, if it's communicated in that way and then they go above and beyond, maybe they do re-earn your business, totally agree. Or at least they prevent a one-star Google review, right, because Google reviews in a home service business I mean a small business that's your lifeblood, yeah, and being able to I cause an issue, own it, fix it, move on from it that makes you, gives you, a lot more empathy with your customers.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and then part two. The timeliness of this is interesting. Last week I wrote an article on LinkedIn about having an advisory board for a small business, and I've always been a big believer in it. But it just rekindled the thoughts, so I wrote the article. I had a client say to me hey, you know, I really appreciate meeting you with you. He was talking to me and it's not so much about me but the fact that he said you know, I really don't have anyone that can just give it to me straight, and it's so important when you tell me you challenge my ideas and you question them. Once again, not about me the fact that he has someone that can, he can lean on and you you go into an advisory board and it's like putting it on steroids because now you have a group of hopefully trusted confidants that are not going to tell you what you want to hear. They're going to tell you what they're seeing, and it just takes your business to a whole other level.

Speaker 1:

Definitely does. I couldn't agree more Good stuff.

Speaker 3:

Okay, let me go over your websites. So your company website is thelightingprosecom. Of course, this will be in the show notes at profitandgritcom. You also have the franchise page, if anybody's interested in this. There's no, the it's lightingprosefranchisecom. And then you also have your podcast. What's your podcast domain?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's Pillars of Purpose and you can find that on matthuefordcom.

Speaker 3:

Okay, I'll put all these links. I'll also put your Facebook and your LinkedIn in the show notes. Man, I can't thank you enough. You've got so much wisdom to share. This went way longer than I normally went, and that's just because you had so much to share.

Speaker 1:

I appreciate that. I love these conversations. Tyler, Thank you for the way that you're serving the community and the way that you're freely giving content like this. I love being a part of this. I love the podcasting community in the way that we can all make each other better.

Speaker 3:

I so agree, ok, well, hey, matthew, thanks a lot, and take care. Sounds good. What do you think of that one? Wow, I think Matthew brought the heat. It was a good one.

Speaker 3:

My big takeaway is how intentional he's been about building sustainable businesses, from solving the seasonal employment problem to creating systems that can be franchised. That's not just creating jobs, that's creating opportunities for other entrepreneurs. So I'd say, whether you're just starting out or you're already running a multi-million dollar shop, matthew's approach to premium pricing and team development shows that when you focus on quality and you truly value your people, the profits will follow. Now, hey, if you're listening and struggling with similar challenges, maybe you're not sure how to price confidently, or maybe you're fighting the seasonal cash flow battles that Matthew talked about. That's exactly why you need a guy like me, a fractional CFO.

Speaker 3:

Head on over to ProfitandGritcom. That's ProfitandGritcom. Book an intro session with me. Let's chat. We'll dig into your numbers. We'll figure out how to turn your daily grind into a sustainable profit. Hey, most of all, thanks for tuning in to Profit and Grit, the show where blue collar wisdom meets real world financial strategy. If you got value from this episode and you could do me a quick favor, leave a review. Wherever you listen to podcasts, it helps. Every time I get a review I see a little spike in listenership and as this show is starting to gain momentum, I'm definitely seeing listenership going up fast, a lot faster than my other podcast, think Business with Tyler, started out. So that's exciting. But anyway, you can help. I sure appreciate it and until next time, keep grinding smart, not just hard. Thank you.

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Tyler Martin

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