Profit & Grit with Tyler

Why Your Home Service Business Needs a Weekly Dashboard - Daniel Felt

• Tyler Martin • Episode 12

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Daniel Felt shares how he scaled Kura Home to nine locations nationwide by building a weekly financial dashboard that guides real-time decisions instead of relying on delayed monthly reports. He reveals the exact metrics that drive his 19% profit margin and why focusing on bottom-line results beats chasing revenue.

• Weekly financial dashboards outperform monthly P&Ls for making timely business decisions
• The critical 42.5% payroll-to-revenue ratio that serves as his primary profitability indicator
• Why he abandoned handyman services despite rapid growth when the numbers showed poor margins
• How he leverages micro-influencers (5-20K followers) through service trades instead of paid advertising
• The morning routine (including 4-minute cold plunge) that prepares him for entrepreneurial challenges
• His work-life boundary of shutting down business at 5pm daily to maintain family time
• The importance of consistent execution rather than jumping between revenue activities and operations
• His goal of donating $100 million over his lifetime through business success

Ready to get the financial clarity needed to grow your home or commercial service business? Visit CFOMadeEasy.com to book a no-pressure intro meeting with Tyler.


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Speaker 1:

You know, like, my bookkeeper sends us her P&L on a monthly basis and to me that's too long. To you know, like if you're getting that on like the 10th or the 15th of April and now you're saying, oh, we messed up in March by the time you get that information, dissect it. You're now like halfway through the next month and you're on a six to eight week trailing decision. It's too long.

Speaker 2:

So what I've done is I actually get a weekly report on Monday morning of how the previous week went, so that, if things are off, we can make decisions really fast. 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 Profit and Grit. This is Tyler Martin, the host of the show, and today's episode is a masterclass for any home or commercial service business owners who want to stop flying blind and start using real numbers to drive smarter decisions. I'm joined by Daniel Felt, a multi-business entrepreneur who scaled Cura Home to nine locations nationwide by doing one thing most service business owners overlook building and using a weekly dashboard that actually guides decisions. Daniel breaks down how he tracks payroll at 42%, why he ditched handyman services even when revenue looked great, and how he uses EOS, that's Entrepreneurial Operating System, to run his business like a machine. If you've ever said, hey, I think we're profitable, or hey, we just need more leads, this episode will flip your thinking. Daniel shares the numbers that actually matter, the traps that kill margins and the simple system that keeps his team focused, and what I love to hear is cash flow strong. Let's get into it.

Speaker 3:

Hey, daniel, welcome to the Profit and Grit Show. How are you doing? Doing well. How are you today? Yeah, great to have you. So this is. You were kind enough to share your story on my Think Business with Tyler show. I think it was a couple of years ago and your story was awesome. It fit the show very well, but I wanted to have you come back now to share your story as it relates more really on the home service side. I mean, that's the reason you're back. So I'd love to just start out with could you tell us a little bit what you do professionally?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, for sure I'm an entrepreneur, I'd say professionally. Kira Home is a routine home maintenance company. It's one of the very first companies that I started and expanded to now nine locations across the country. So I'm an entrepreneur by heart. But yeah, I love getting companies, starting them and getting systems and processes in them so they can run smoothly. Without me, I chuckle.

Speaker 3:

And I chuckled when you said you're an entrepreneur, because that is such a great label. You're not just Kira Homes, you also own a social media company. Can you share the other things, yeah?

Speaker 1:

Yep. So Kerr Home turned into, by expanding, helping people with social media and that's expanded to all companies. So we have a company called Consent Social that does social media management. From there, my joy of aviation turned into an aerial advertising business called Aerial Banners, where we have airplanes in Miami and Minneapolis, minnesota, doing that, and I have a few other, a couple of short-term rentals, things like that. But those are my main three companies that take up my nine to five life.

Speaker 3:

That is so cool. And then the other aspect of that is Kerr Home. You also have allowed people to license your model, which allows them and you have numerous companies already doing this allows them to plug in their own model into their business while retaining their own name and adding services and doing it in a way that's a proven, successful system. That's even another thing which is mind boggling. Now, when you say nine to five, obviously tell me, are you really working a nine to five, or what does your work schedule look like?

Speaker 1:

I'd say it's more five to five. It's more realistic. I do have three young kids, from 10 months up to four and a half, and so my dad did a really good job modeling a work-life balance. He'd go to work early and he'd be home around 3.30 or 4. And so I really dedicated from 5pm till about 8.30pm. I'm very dedicated to just having the phone, leave it on the countertop and having dinner together with my family and things like that. So it is busy.

Speaker 1:

I'm really fortunate to have a lot of really great people on my team. I really enjoy getting businesses from a toddler stage to the point where they can walk and then, once they're walking, you get the right people in place to hey, the company knows how to walk, we know how to bring clients on, we know all those systems, all those processes. Now you just keep duplicating that. I want you to get it to jog or to run or to a sprint where you can get it growing fast and bring me out of it. So that's what I really focus on of any company that I'm involved in Very cool.

Speaker 3:

I want to go back to what got you to become an entrepreneur. Did you see at a very young age that, hey, I'm going to become an entrepreneur? Was there something that triggered it? Give me that story that started this all out in your mind.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I would say I was raised to be an entrepreneur without my parents even knowing it. I'm one of six kids and all of us adult children in one shape or another kind of are entrepreneurs, whether it be our main job or a side hustle. I think we all own an LLC or two. So we my parents raised golden retriever puppies and we were very involved in that business. They've sold the dog, I think, to every state that you know. They they have a couple of letters a year and they they really focused on a really high end, high quality job. So I was involved in that.

Speaker 1:

I remember being seven, eight years old and someone showed up pulling up to our driveway and I'd be walk out hey, how's the drive and where are you coming from, and like that Minnesotan small that my parents instilled in us. But I started training horses for other people when I was 13 years old and someone could train their horse. I would train their horse for a month for $300. Out of that I would train dogs through college. I would come to your house and give you a one hour consultation for $100. And then, just to try to make money, I turned that into a boot camp where you could bring your dog to my house for a week and I would charge you $700. And that would allow me to go fly airplanes for about five or six hours if I trained a dog for a week.

Speaker 1:

But I was working for my brother's home service company called Russell Williams Home Services. They do window cleaning, holiday lights, and the idea came up to. The problem that we had is we have a ton of employees from March until December 10th, and then we have to lay them all off. And so the idea was to have a home service company that could keep people employed all year long and have consistent work. And so how can we get a subscription-based business going with that? And so I told him I'm like, hey, we should start doing this routine maintenance. Everyone needs your filters, change your AC unit clean, dryer, vent clean. These are simple tasks, All of our current employees could do it, and let's keep your guys busy all year long.

Speaker 1:

He's like, no, it's the dumbest idea I've ever heard. That'll never work, and so I'm going to run with it. I have a personality. If you tell me that I can't do something, that makes me want to do it just to spite you. So I started out originally doing monthly visits. This was in August 2016. And that was a huge bust. By the third visit I would be in someone's house for like 15 minutes. I'm like this is ridiculous. So I talked to a few clients and I ended up offering quarterly visits and that's really what got the company going, where we were signing on a couple of clients a week and people. That made sense, the seasonality of it, the timeframe of it. You know you come every three months, change all my filters, you know, check my light bulbs, grease under the garage door. The quarterly visits really made sense to clientele Very cool.

Speaker 3:

Now, where does the? Because you had a period where you were doing like handyman services and then you had to scale back. You decided, hey, this really wasn't working and you pivoted. Where does that fit into it and kind of tell me the thinking there of when you were going down that path? And then you said, hey, because I think sometimes everything always smells like it's easy and it's always like, oh, you just get to success and people gloss over those pain periods. So share with us what that story is and what made you decide to pivot.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, for me, I mean, a lot of entrepreneurship, right kind of comes down to supply and demand and there, in my opinion, always has been and probably always will be, a demand for reputable handyman to come to your home, and so with that it seemed like an easy fit, like reputable handyman to come to your home, and so with that it seemed like an easy fit. We're already doing all this reoccurring routine maintenance stuff, but even today my technicians they don't have a hammer or a skill saw in their vans. We're doing the janitorial services, not the handyman services, and so it seemed like a really natural fit. And so I added on the handyman services, and that was in January of 2021, I believe, and by November we had 11 trucks going doing handyman service. It was like it was explosive, rapid growth and at the time we that was funded by some of the government programs. That happened through COVID. You know like companies got through PPP loans or EIDL loans. I didn't take that money and buy a Maserati, I was pumping it back into my, into my business. So we were equipping this handyman and the problem that I saw with that was finding Every handyman or handywoman will tell you that they are really good at everything Like, oh yeah, I can handle everything and they probably can at their own home.

Speaker 1:

But when you get the profitability standpoint of getting there and everyone does they all do it a little bit differently. My interview process would be to the point where I would bring a handyman down and I would take a hammer and I would make a hole in the sheetrock and say, show me how you're going to fix this. And someone be like well, I don't, I don't actually know. I'm like well, one minute ago you said you were a great handyman, right, right, yeah, Fix this higher level of craftsmanship that a certain product or service requires. The more difficult it is to scale it. Craftsmanship is really not scalable and that's where an artist if they're really really great, their paintings are worth so much because we can't duplicate this.

Speaker 1:

So we ended up, we expanded our handyman stuff and we actually expanded to several states and managing handyman 1000 miles away was very challenging. And guys would call and be like hey, we got a call back. Like you, you installed this wrong, whatever. And they're like oh, that lady's a lunatic. And it's like no one's a lunatic, she's frustrated, you need to go back. And they'd be like I'm not going back and it's like like 12, 15, $18,000 handyman jobs and we just couldn't squeeze the profit out of them.

Speaker 1:

And so with that, like you know, I've gotten to point my business for, like, top line is great. Like you tell me you're running a million or 2 million or $5 million business. But I've gotten to the point where I'm like, well, what's your profit? Like are you, are you running a 10 or 20 or 30% profit or not? Like cause otherwise, if you would have been better off working at McDonald's for 12 months, like you know, is it really that great of a business? So a lot of people talk about how you know they're running a two or three or $4 million business, but it's like, well, what's your profit? Because someone else might be running a $500,000 business and they're making 250 K in profit. That's a lot better than a $2 million company that has made 10 grand last year.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I wish I had sound effects or something I'd be like jamming on the sound.

Speaker 3:

That said preach or something, because it's so true. I mean it's just because I see it a lot. You know, that's kind of my world and people come to me and they're you know, before they've shared their financials, they're like, oh yeah, I'm a $6 million a year company or $4 million or whatever. And then you'll get to it and you'll start going, okay, well, what's your profitability? And they'll go well, I think I'm making this or whatever.

Speaker 3:

And you look at their actual numbers and a lot of times they're robbing Peter to pay Paul and they're really not making money and there's just a lot of poor decisions mixed in with that and it just blows your mind and it's there's that saying, you know, uh, top line is vanity and revenue is sanity, or, I'm sorry, uh, top line is is vanity, Uh, and bottom line is sanity. Is what? I'm messed that up bad. But basically the point is the bottom line is important and, um, yeah, it's good. It's interesting to hear you say that. So do you have some general like numbers that you look at Like? So you said 20 or 30%. Do you really try to get 30% net income, net profit?

Speaker 3:

We're looking for a 19% net profit on our Okay, that's good, that's very healthy.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, for the home maintenance. In a marketing standpoint, you'd expect higher net margins on that, just depending on what you're all doing. But for the home service company and there is quite a few numbers a really key number that we focus on is our payroll. We really want that to be, with all included, at 42.5% or less of the previous week's sales. So we run payroll weekly and on Tuesday I look at what was our sales and what percentage of that is our payroll. And if we're at 42.5% or less, we're doing really well. And I do have an executive system that's included in that. So we could probably get that lowered. Yeah, we could probably have it at 40% or less. So that's a really, really big one. And then if you're in growth mode, keeping your marketing at 8% to 10% or less is really important as well. And from there, if you're really focused on those two numbers, it's pretty easy to stay profitable. If you let those slip, like if your payroll gets up to 50%, you're probably gonna have problems. Based on what we have going on.

Speaker 1:

I do play a little bit of games, like I have an LLC that owns a building and then the company's renting from that. It probably is a little bit above market value and things like that. And then another thing, too is like really focusing on your debt. We made the mistake of growing really, really fast and people kind of warned me about it. They're like you got to be careful Because we went from At one point we went from In March we had 3 vans to 9 vans by August. At another standpoint, we went from 10 vans to 27 vans in a year. Wow, and all these vans they all cost like $25,000, $30,000. And it's like my current growth strategy that we're really focused on is like if you don't have, like, it's okay to get booked out, but I, then the next van that we buy is going to be in cash, because I don't want to have to service that debt.

Speaker 1:

And when you're financially stressed as an entrepreneur, it's so hard to focus on growing your business. When you're just being like are we going to make payroll this weekend or not? Or, you know, am I gonna make rent, like all these things, and you're constantly fighting, with people calling or trying to get you to pay your bills. It's really really stressful. So a payroll percentage is a big one for us. Our marketing spend is another large one and to make sure that you are profitable and just to run lean and sometimes as a business owner, yeah, debt it might be helpful if you don't want to pay taxes. Minnesota is the from a tax standpoint, it's the third worst state to have a business in it's. You know you're taxed pretty heavily on on things, but you know, so you kind of you have to play some games and I've turned to real estate to help me alleviate some of my tax stuff. You know, no-transcript.

Speaker 3:

Going back to your payroll, the 42% number. So you probably compensate yourself from some form of salary that's embedded in that number too.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, but I pay my, you know. So the IRS wants you to pay your fair reasonable corporation, reasonable salary uh, the fair?

Speaker 1:

uh, yeah, reasonable S corporation, reasonable salary. So I pay myself $24,000 a year from cure a home. And then, you know, my kids are social media models for that company as well. So they get paid and and, uh, you know, it's paying for different things. That are all you know. If I'm going to be audited, I'm I'm happy to say on a podcast or whatever, like they, they do services for the company and then they're paid for that too. So but then you know, at the end of the year or quarterly, whenever you feel it's necessary, I'll do an owner's draw as well.

Speaker 3:

But when you're looking at that 42%, all that is included in that number.

Speaker 1:

Not what I'm paying. My subcontractor kids and my owner's draw. It's that, yeah, okay.

Speaker 3:

So it's just your? Is it just your direct labor plus your executive admin?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yep, and my office, so my yeah, anyone. So I've got like two ladies answering phones, I've got an operations manager, I've got an executive assistant and then technicians doing doing the work.

Speaker 3:

Okay, so then we'll say it's the 42 spent is everybody, but let's say ownership. So it's everybody but ownership Got it. Okay, that makes total sense and you don't really look at like GP. Do you focus around gross profit at all or do you feel like if you are honed into that labor number, that pretty much is telling you how the business is doing?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I do, but a lot of that is so delayed. My bookkeeper sends us our P&L on a monthly basis and to me that's too long. I agree, if you're getting that on the 10th or the 15th of April and now you're saying, oh, we messed up in March by the time you get that information, dissect it. You're now halfway through the next month and you're on a six to eight-week trailing decision. It's too long.

Speaker 1:

So what I've done is I actually get a weekly report on Monday morning of how the previous week went, so that if things are off, we can make decisions really fast. We have a level 10 meeting with my entire leadership team on Tuesdays. So like we're we're making decisions fast. Like we don't make the same mistake twice, like it's like hey, we payroll is high at 48% last week. What's going on? They're like, oh well, you know we had this callback or, but you know we can figure it out really, really fast, rather than you know if, if I went off of just my P and L and like gross things like that, it's two things are happening too fast. That.

Speaker 3:

So you've got like a dashboard you get every Monday with your critical numbers which, by the way, every business should have and then you sit in your EOS meeting, your level 10 EOS meeting, and is it safe to say when you see that 48% show up, is that an identified, discuss and solve type problem that you do in the EOS meeting or is that okay? So that's how you handle that and you kind of like as a group, and how do you like, let's just hypothetically, the 48% you say, oh, we had to go out to jobs several times. Is it like okay, what are we going to change? So we don't have to do that? Repeat, and we're basically, it sounds like there might be an efficiency there. Are you? How do you usually? How would you solve that problem?

Speaker 1:

Like is it their solution there, in terms of you need to adjust something? Yeah, so we, we are wanting to adjust stuff really really fast. Okay, like pretty much immediately, like if it and sometimes it might be like, hey, this was one week of like we made a you know, hey, like this guy was in training or whatever, and it's like we'll make allowances for it, but we gotta stay focused on that 42 percent, be really focused on it okay, okay, that's your number.

Speaker 3:

Like that, guys, if we're not hitting that, we got a problem. It's code, right.

Speaker 1:

Okay and it took me a long time to figure that out too Like if it'd be like oh, why aren't we? Why you know how can we only have a hundred dollars left over at the end of the month. And it'd be like I finally came down to like payroll is what controls this. And then you have fixed costs of your salaried employees that you know. Whether sales are up or down, they're, they're paying the same. So you have to figure out your fixed costs and how you get profit. You know high enough above that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's gold. I mean it may not be 42% depending, you know, businesses might be different, but the concept of looking at that number and managing to it is just gold, like that's the difference, probably, between success and not being successful. Otherwise, like you said, you're you're looking at an empty bank account every week.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and that is. That is no fun. I mean, you like, at the end of the day, I think, business owners, what's really frustrating is, like you might be really great at doing like a certain task, but at the end of the day, you have to be. You have to become a financial person and you have to become a marketing person. Right, like you have to. You have to be able to market and sell your business and you have to keep the numbers stale, because even the most profitable businesses, if you get lazy or compliant, like if you're not pushing, pushing, pushing to keep those numbers where they're supposed to be, they, they, it will take over the company, will get fat, they'll start eating stuff up and all of a sudden you have like a subscription that you're paying way more than you thought you were for, whatever it is. Yeah, you have to. The numbers are. That's a lot of my day is spent ensuring that we're getting sales and leads are coming in from a marketing standpoint and that our numbers are doing what they're supposed to be doing.

Speaker 3:

Do you have when we talk about leads, do you have a favorite channel in terms of where your leads are coming from, or is it pretty diversified?

Speaker 1:

Yeah for social, for Cura Home. We love referral partners. We love referral partners. We are very, very intense, and this is one way how we built our social media management company, but we've used social media. We have a large following. We have 30-some thousand followers on Instagram Wow and it's all come from organic posting. We haven't bought any of those followers, and what we're really focused on, though, is using.

Speaker 1:

This is something that every single person in the service industry, in any industry, should be doing, but for us, one of our best referral partners are HVAC companies, home inspectors, whatever, and what we do is we'll actually go in as Cura Home and we're engaging with them. We're doing 30 comments, 30 likes a day, and we're building a relationship online, and then, that way, they end up calling us a few months later, like, yeah, we see you guys all over the place, and it's like yeah, we know you do, cause we have our crosshairs on you, and from there we build that. And then, that way and we actually have built such solid relationships with some of our referral partners that, if you call them and ask for air duct cleaning, they transfer the call to us. It's like it's as warm of a lead as you can get. Besides that, like the problem with some, like you know, paid advertising, like you know, facebook ads or Google ads. We dabble a little bit, a couple grand a month, but the algorithm changes, whatever. It all changes so fast that you really have to be an expert on it and almost have it outsourced to someone who's really focusing and watching your cost per lead and things like that.

Speaker 1:

So, referral partners through COVID, through whatever it is, if your website goes down or whatever it is, referral partners, they're still out there working like they're, they're real, live, human beings. So we're really, really focused on that. And we've also really utilized micro influencers. Like we're not working with Kim Kardashian, I'm talking like the wife of the NFL hockey player. You know, like, micro influencers have five, 10, 20,000 followers and they post every day and we show up at their house. We do a trade of service with them and we'll take care of your routine home maintenance. You post about us and that has gotten us. The hundreds of routine maintenance clients that we have today is because we're really focusing on on those things.

Speaker 3:

Wait, and your only cost is just trading services? Yeah, yep, wow, wow. And how do you? How much do you formalize that? Are you like going? Hey, we'll provide you a year of service and we want you to post about us once a week, or what does that look like? As much as you're willing to share.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I mean it's, I think we haven't paid sign like one page agreement like we'll do this for you and then you post. Sometimes they won't post. And so I think in that agreement we say like, if you don't post within two weeks, we have the right to send you an invoice for the services provided, just because we have had people just not post. They're busy people. But yeah, there's a lot of influencers out there that want you to pay them $1,000, $2,000, $3,000. We've done that and they do not perform nearly as well as the person who is genuinely excited to have you at their home. And a lot of times these influencers when I say micro influencers for a reason, because they are to the point where they're wanting to like prove to their spouse or their family like, hey, see, all this time that I've spent building this, this, this page and this thing, look, it's worth it. We just got a couple hundred dollars with the free stuff. And especially if it's a woman, now, like not to stereotype genders, but the woman can say to the husband like, hey, now you don't have to change all the filters or clean the AC unit, the dryer vent, I took care of that for you While you were at work today. That was all taken care of by this company and they really appreciate that.

Speaker 1:

So it's a lot of work to get these influencers and it's like herding cats. They will cancel appointment because they have an eyelash appointment. I mean, it can be very, very challenging to work with them, but it is worth it because they, if they genuinely like your service, and they post and they tell everyone. We had a really good experience with Cura Home. You should call them. Use my $25 discount code. It works really really well. Our goal, this part of this EOS 90 day, is to have 60 posts throughout the three months. We're looking for a post a day, five days a week.

Speaker 3:

By any of these micro influencers. So you have to build up enough of micro influencers that well. I guess it could just be one. I guess that if they're that, would you have one post that many times, or do you want it more diversified?

Speaker 1:

No, we're typically having them post like once every three months, you know, maybe like every six weeks, but it's usually a monthly thing Like we'll do things, even where, like hey, we will reach out like mid cycle, you know, like every six weeks or so, and we'll say like do you want to give? We want to give one of your followers a free AC unit and dryer vent cleaning combination. This is a $250 value. Do you want to post about it? And they're like oh, of course, I'd love to give my follower. Okay, sounds good. You know, have them. You have to follow our page and your page and comment. Done so, you'll get a whole bunch of engagement on your giveaway.

Speaker 1:

This is a $250 value. They just have to be in the Minneapolis metropolitan area and now we'll get you know 25, 50 followers for free. That now, potentially, we can continue to educate on why they need our services, because we're posting every day and you just keep on pushing that. So it takes an effort. This is not something like a solopreneur. It would be very challenging for them to do, but if you have someone in the office who's dedicated to keeping the schedule full, it's a lot easier to have that person say like hey, your task is to have one post a day, and here's access to all of our. Here's our list of influencers doing all this stuff.

Speaker 3:

That's pretty cool. Wow, that's a great idea and I can see how it takes time, but the investment is worth it because you're getting a very high level of engagement. Probably these people that are, these micro influencers I'm sure their audience are somewhat I don't want to say rabid, but they connect on a deep level sometimes with those micro influencers because it's a lot more personal and that's interesting. That's pretty smart.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we got really lucky with that.

Speaker 1:

It's always like people ask me all the time why are there not thousands of routine maintenance companies across the country, just like yours?

Speaker 1:

And I think the reason why is because they haven't figured out the marketing and they haven't figured out the system, the processes that are needed to grow it, because the first time clients are very hard to pull on without. We've literally developed our own app to track the routine maintenance in your home, because there's all these different SKUs, all these different it's all occurred options, so we offer 35 different things and you can imagine that of the hundreds of clients, that was 30. There's a huge mix and match of different things that they want, different filter sizes, all that stuff and so we had to create an app to it looks like a report card for your home of everything that the items you want done, how frequently it's going to be done. We check the box when you do it and we take a photo of every single thing that we do and that's all in an app and then emailed to you in a pdf after the service wow, yeah, I was going to ask you that.

Speaker 3:

A lot of times people hear, uh, business owners here, especially home services. The hvac's a good one, oh, annual service agreements or quarterly service agreements or whatever. Everybody gets excited, everybody wants the recurring revenue. I get it, but what's the flip side to it? Like, what's the hassle of and you kind of addressed it maybe having to create your own software and having all these unique situations, but what are some things people don't talk about that maybe aren't, that aren't as pretty when it comes to the maintenance side of it?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think it has to be. So I think the frustrations that we have on it is if someone doesn't follow into your system the way you want it. So it's like you'll have 5 houses that you're going to visit that day and they're all basically in the same neighborhood and one of them emails you that middle appointment, emails you and they're like oh, actually we have a dentist appointment tomorrow and so we're not going to be here. And it's like okay, can we get access to garage code? Or like you know it's not, it's not quite mailbox money, like everyone's, like everyone says it's going to be. You know it is. You do have to continue to nurture that. You do have to really make sure that you're providing the high quality of service that these people come to expect. Like I train my team that your job at every single visit is to resell that service for the next visit. You're selling the client that you want me to come back next time because of how much I did today. So we're not just coming in and be like hey, I checked the box, I changed the filter, see you later. You know I'm charging you $400 and I was here for 20 minutes. Like no, you have to add value.

Speaker 1:

You Like I encourage my guys to do one extra thing Maybe it's sweeping out the garage if they're not home, maybe it's trouble with the sidewalk if it's snowing. Sweep out the utility room. So the next time the homeowner comes in they're like, wow, it's really clean in here. And who was the last person in here? Oh, it was John from Cure Home. Perfect, like man. I love those at the client's house to really revisit, because it's really easy for clients to be super excited when they sign on and then they forget about the value if you're not showing and proving it to them. And so, if clients aren't home, I have my guys trained to send a super long email, send the report, leave a long voicemail, whatever it takes to really show like, hey, here's everything I did. And I'm like I want you to be out of breath explaining how many things you did at the person's home for like, okay, I get it, man, you did all this stuff. So I really want to show that value.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, not every client falls in your system and process. We've had our payment system one time a credit card expired and it didn't tell us. And so it tells you that it's pulling the funds, but the funds don't actually end up. And also my accountant emails you whatever. They're like something's wrong here and it's like, oh cool, several clients' credit cards had expired and we're missing 10, 15 grand. It's a nightmare. So there's little things that it's not as simple as set it up. Forget it. All you have to do is show up and do the work. You have to be really intentional about making sure that everything flows smoothly.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it gets glossed over. It's like you said, creating that value. People get excited when they sign up for things, but that that excitement disappears quickly and so you have to kind of continue to show the value there and reinforce that. And I love how you said it seems subtle. You've mentioned about leaving long voicemails and I don't think you know you mean necessarily just, you know, go on about stuff, but it's, it's good, here are all the things we did and it just, if you go through it, it's probably ends up being a very long voicemail because there's a lot of things you guys are doing, right?

Speaker 1:

Yep Most definitely.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, good stuff, really good stuff. So we talked about a little bit. So you said you work five to five. I think in my research about you I think I heard you like even exercise like some crazy eight, four or four, 30 in the morning. Is that correct?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm a really big workout guy. I've done two Ironman triathlons and nine marathons and 27 triathlons. I enjoy working out. It makes me feel a lot better. So, yeah, my current routine is I, I do. I said no to anything this year because I bought too many companies last year and so this year, my, my new year's resolution is to say no, and which can? Uh, like I, I dunno, it's a little crazy. So this what I'm really, my, my main thing is I get up, I do a 20 minute round the treadmill, I do a four minute cold plunge and then I do 20 sit-ups, 20 pushups. Just it's a. It's a pretty simple, pretty basic for everyone. I feel really, really good before the world starts pinging in and sending me texts or emails or phone calls. So, yeah, I'm really big into getting that workout done in the morning and, yeah, I've got all that set up in my basement to get that done.

Speaker 3:

Okay, I'm going to bite on this tangent. This isn't where I was going, but since you brought it up, I've had three people in probably the last couple of weeks mentioned to me cold plunges to them were life-changing. That's the exact word two out of three use. Talk to me about that. Do you feel it's life-changing once you implemented that into your routine?

Speaker 1:

I don't know all the science behind a cold plunge and I'm not going to pretend to know it. I've heard about different things but, like releasing certain stress hormone or different enzymes, know whatever, after like three minutes I typically do a four minute cold plunge. I gotta be honest, One of the biggest benefits for me is I'm not sweating for another hour after I, just that 20 minute cold plunge, you know, or the 20 minute run Now I'm done sweating Cause I was just in the cold one for four minutes. I do feel really, really good after I do a cold plunge and when I mix that in with a sauna cold plunge, because we have a sauna, a wood-burning one. So if I do my routine, then that I'll do and I call it my wife. It's our executive meeting time because there's no kids in the sauna. It's usually after they go to bed. There's no phone, no technology, and we'll do 15-minute sauna, 4-minute cold plunge, 12-minute sauna, 3-minute cold plunge, 12 minutes sauna, three minute cold plunge, then eight minutes in sauna, and when I leave that I felt like I was just at a full all on spa. Like I feel like I absolutely incredible, Like I was just at a day spa, like for a full Saturday, Like I feel absolutely incredible, mentally, physically, like my skin, everything just feels absolutely incredible.

Speaker 1:

If I just do the sauna, I don't quite feel that way, and if I just do a cold plunge it's not quite that, but I sleep very, very soundly after I cold plunge, Like it's a very deep, high quality sleep which I which is, you know, priceless for anyone it makes you feel a lot better. I don't know exactly all the health benefits of it and it could be all psychological, but yeah, there is something about that and it's also for me, still to this day, even though I've been cold plunging for probably two, maybe three years now, it is still the hardest part of my day. When I get up over that cold plunge and I'm about to hit the four minute timer on my on my watch, I look at that water, I know that it's 39 degrees and there is nothing in my body that wants to do it, but that's the hardest thing I'm going to do that day. From there, following up on a lead or cold calling someone or whatever it might be, whatever challenges you have with your business, it's probably going to be the second hardest thing you did that day, because you already went against all your natural instincts by getting into that cold punch.

Speaker 1:

But if you can do like 20 seconds, you can do 30 seconds. If you can do 30, you can do a minute and once you get to that minute mark your heart rate comes down. It's really nice you get that. It's probably has to do with the fact that you have to to slow your breathing down, get really deep breaths to get through that first 30 seconds of cold plunge, and I think that has to do with what uh, you know, starting to make you feel really good and if you do all that before you know five, five, 30 in the morning, like your day is just really set up for success.

Speaker 3:

And that's hardcore. So my actual question was work-life balance and you kind of shared some of it in that answer. What are you doing to? You know you've got all these businesses. I'm sure they call you out. I mean there are things that happen after hours. How are you monitoring and managing things where you still have a quality work-life balance?

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So for me it's really important when that five o'clock hour hits, that the phone, it's just done, it's done and it's just done, it's done and I do have it's connected to my watch. If it's a really important phone call coming in, I'll take it. If it's an absolute emergency, that's so few and far between. I'm really fortunate to have an incredible executive assistant who lives and breathes in a lot of my emails, sets up a lot of meetings for me. If I get done with a meeting and there's calls to action, she gets a text or email and say, hey, here's what was discussed, here's what needs to happen, and it just, it just happened so I can move on to the next thing. So been really really fortunate to have that and be really focused that I've created a life where I don't have to fly out to Miami or to Colorado or whatever to make things happen.

Speaker 1:

I'm a homebody Like I. If I'm traveling, it's usually with my wife and three kids, which is a circus show within itself. But yeah, it's just making a decision that I'm not going to work. I'm not going to work late. This has to get done during this timeframe and I think for a lot of people they don't realize how much time you're wasting throughout the day doing tasks that don't really matter. Or are you actually focused on answering these emails? I'm a zero inbox guy and it's like I have a to-do folder or a this week folder that by 5pm on Friday it's got to be done, and when you set those deadlines and you just hold yourself to them, it's amazing how fast.

Speaker 1:

But also one thing that has really helped me I really got on a big audio book kick. For like years I listened to an audio book a week and I was doing the 52 audio books, and what that really helped me do is like you hear other people's stories and when you're listening to podcasts like this, whatever and you hear how someone else got through a certain challenge. When you come to that challenge within your own business and you have the option in your subconscious of the way that someone else handled it, it just makes it that much easier to get through that problem a second or third time rather than it being the first time for you. And so that's what I've been really fortunate to absorb from spending time with a lot of different business owners and consuming audio books and podcasts is a lot of these problems when they come up. It's not the first time I've ever heard of that problem, and you can just solve problems so much faster.

Speaker 1:

It's not the end of the world for me to maybe have to fire an employee for this or whatever. It's like. Hey, here's the deal. I gave you a warning. I gave you a written warning. You did it again. You're fired. It's all business. Thank you so much for all you've done. I don't sit there and think about that for two weeks Like I walk in. Thank you so much. It's a handshake. Appreciate all your stuff. You'll get your paycheck on Friday, you know. If you need a reference, feel free to put me down. Thank you so much. Bye and it's.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, that's good stuff. You had mentioned about the books. You listened to one a week, I think you said in the past you have Any particular books that stand out to you that you found were super helpful in your own journey.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and it depends on where you're at. You know, like at times like Grant Cardone can really get you fired up or you know whoever. You know, like these fire up ones. You know, like E-Myth Revisited how to Win Friends and Influence People. Some of these basic ones that really just help you understand, like systems and processes Built to Sell, was a really good one for me. That, like you know, building your business, like working yourself out of a job and taking little nuggets, those three kind of really stand out for me and it always depends.

Speaker 1:

I actually read a fun book on the last vacation I was on. I turned my phone off for three days and that was the first time in years that I've that. I've actually done that. But, um, yeah, just continuing to, and then when you start talking about audio books, people will recommend listening to this one and this one, this one, so the most recent one that I and then a lot of times what happens is I end up re-listening to books because you know, 12 or 18 months later you're now a different business person than you, than you were before, and so currently I'm really listening to how to be a good boss and just that's our entire team is is listening to that and reading it, and and just to make our company a better place.

Speaker 3:

Do you when you say your entire team? Is that a requirement or they just voluntarily want to be part of that, or how's that work?

Speaker 1:

I'd say strongly encouraged, like, hey, like we're, you know, like we're doing this together, you're not going to be fired if you don't, but you're also not going to be part of the conversation when we're all talking about it and you know you're enough. So I'm very thankful that right now I'm at a spot with my teams where, like, there's total buy-in, like we all want to grow the company. We all see the long-term vision of getting to 5,000 routine maintenance clients by December 31st of 2034. We all agree on that. We all know what we're working towards and what do we have to do every 90 days to get one step closer to that goal? And so educating yourself and becoming we're all gonna be different people in our businesses to get to that spot.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and that's your 10 year goal. Using the EOS system is that correct, yep, correct Kind of your North Star? If you will, yeah, using the EOS system Is that correct, yep, correct Kind of your North star? If you will, yeah, a hundred percent. What's in it and I hope I word this correctly, but I love that everybody's marching on the same page what's kind of in it for them, like is is do you? What's your belief? Is there like an ownership piece? Is there profit sharing or how do you do it so they have a vested interest?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's something that I haven't completely figured out yet. As of right now, as we get more profit and things like that, people will be financially benefited. Maybe it's more vacation time, Maybe it's getting an end of year bonus, Maybe it's a company vehicle or company perks the littlest things of hiring someone to come in and detail vehicles for the day. That doesn't cost a whole bunch of money, but it's like at the end of the day your vehicle is detailed and the company paid for it. Like there's little things like that that people really appreciate that we want to get better at doing. We try to do like offsite meetings, go play, you know, do a game, go go karting or whatever it is. You know all in about. But I think right now it's I played around like a technician on a technician level what motivates them and encourages them is totally different than what motivates my office staff and it's like kind of figuring out that game.

Speaker 1:

I really try to focus more. I'm the carrot guy, I'm not the stick guy. You know we were always trying to like, motivate, encourage, like hey, let's try to get this done. Weekly competitions with my technicians work really well, giving them 2, 4, 8 hours of PTO for winning a contest Whoever hung the most door hangers, put up the most yard signs, got the most five-star reviews. There's so many measurables that you can go off of and reward your team.

Speaker 1:

So, yeah, for my team, the long-term, I think it's like, hey, if we sell portion of Cura Home or majority stake, whatever that is, I don't know if it's going to be when I'm 40, when I'm 65, I don't know, but I'm the type of person that who the people who are there, who have given, who have dedicated, you know, 40 hours a week, for 50 weeks a year, for however long like they're going to be financially rewarded. I think people can feel that within me it's. This isn't about making enough money to buy a Maserati, it's. I really love the game monopoly and I feel like I'm playing a real life game of monopoly buying more properties, charging rent, trying to get more stuff, but it doesn't change my day-to-day life.

Speaker 3:

That's very cool. Now, this may be a dated goal, maybe old information it was part of my research but I know at one point you were considering maybe like donating a hundred million dollars over the course of your life. Is that still some goal that you'd like to accomplish, and where did that come from?

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So I don't remember exactly where the number came from. At one point it was 20 million, but then I realized that that wasn't like far enough out and and when you look at like investing in real estate and businesses and like inflation, all that stuff, I got like I'm 35 right now. I gotta be honest, in 30 years I don't think a hundred million dollars is going to be really that crazy. It sounds like a lot now, but it comes from just a portion of like giving back, Like I'm a huge believer in tithing and and giving back to your community. I've noticed that the more I give, it seems like the more that comes in. And right now, my wife and I try really hard to give 20% of our income to our local church and that has been rewarded to me so much so to see my nieces, nephews, kids in my community going through youth programs and things like that.

Speaker 1:

But the $100 million, we bought a $2.8 million building that we cure home as part of, and building that we cure home as part of, and then I rent out the rest of it to someone else and I did that in 2023. It's already worth $3.5 million. So it's already gone up in two years that much. That building is probably going to be worth $10 or $15 million by the time I'm 65. If I sell that at some point during that time, hopefully it's completely paid off by then and I haven't refinanced it and pulled cash out a billion times, but that's probably going to be worth 15 million. I'd like to think that over the course of my life I'm going to buy several more real estate. We have three short-term rentals in Cape Coral that are all worth half a million. They'll probably be worth 1.5 to 2 million in 35 years if we keep them up and do like that. So it's like you're already at like roughly 20 million right there. Yep, just in what I've currently done. And it's like can I do this a few more times and buy a few more commercial? I think I can. Can my companies? Can I sell them for five to $10 million in the next five to 20, 30 years? I think I can.

Speaker 1:

So that is one thing that I'm really focused on is just like having a bigger purpose than otherwise. Like if you're just sitting here day to day, like sometimes, I think you get to the point where, like, well, what's the point? Like my wife and I eat healthy food. I have a vehicle that gets me from A to B. We live on a little hobby farm. I've got the horses and the chickens and the garden. It's like you have everything you need. If you don't have a long-term goal, what's the point? Why hire that next person and go through the pain of training them in If you don't have a bigger goal in mind? You start to ask why am I even doing this? Like it kind of hard. You start to ask like why, why am I even doing this?

Speaker 3:

That's so true. So true, that's so interesting. You're right. I mean, I'm a little bit older than you and it's like you know, when I was a lot younger, a million dollars seemed like the holy grail, like there. You could probably count how many there were in terms of people, and now it's like that's no big deal. Now we're talking like billionaires, and maybe even trillionaires is probably some, at least companies-wise. They're that big. It just all evolves. It's crazy actually to think $100 million is a lot, but it's not like crazy money 30 years from now.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and that's because I should probably fold the numbers on this. But today I think there's like 3,000-ish billionaires in the world, or something like that. Something like that, yeah, I bet 30 years ago. That's how many millionaires in the world, or something like that. Something like that, yeah, I bet 30 years ago that's how many millionaires there were.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I would agree. Yeah, yeah, you know, and I and I would be interested in the actual stats on that. But, yeah, in. So in 30 years, like, is there gonna be 3 000 trillionaires? Because right now that sounds insane, it does. You know, when I was 10 years old, thinking that someone would be a billionaire sounded really crazy too.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I mean you didn't really use the billionaire word and trillionaire I don't. Even first time I heard it, I like, well, you know, you kind of had to like think about what that even was, just because you never heard it. It's crazy, yeah, I guess. What is it? Quintillionaire Is that? What a quad for, anyway, okay, so where I want to wrap up here. Last one is can you just kind of summarize, and maybe it's some things you've already talked about, but I'd love to. I get like two or three tips from you, business tips that entrepreneurs are listening out and audience can take action as soon as possible, maybe apply to their own business.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, for sure. I think the largest recommendation would be to mind your business. You know, get, get trackable and receivables from your business that are actually measure and we talked about payroll being at 42%. Maybe for you it's tracking your leads, your cost per lead and your close rate and what's your average ticket item. What do you need to do to get your business? At my company, it's a swear word if someone says we just need more leads. No, we don't. Don't tell me we just need more leads.

Speaker 1:

I want to hear actionable steps that we can do to get the pipeline filled so we really focus. I really encourage people to mind your business, mind your numbers, focus on some of these like trackable receivables that you can measure within your business and know like. So you can see like most weeks we have 50 leads but we're at 45 this week. What, what happened here, like why, why was that? And so if you can really keep your, get your business focused on, to like the actual numbers and you can get that all in a really nice spreadsheet where you can see like actual systems and processes and like, oh, if this number is going down, why, and if you get enough trackables within your business, it'll tell you a story and you'll be able to predict better for your company. So that you can, you have to be able to trust your numbers and run your company off the numbers, because that's really what it comes down to to run a successful business.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's great. One other one I want to add that's really from you. That, I think, is powerful. It sounds simple, but it's powerful is. Consistency is key. Isn't that a little bit your mantra too?

Speaker 1:

A hundred percent. When people talk to me like sometimes people are like oh Daniel, I'm like we love what you're doing, like how do you do it? I superpower. I think like the secret sauce that I have is I'm willing to do really boring, mundane tasks thousands of times, like when you train for a marathon or an Ironman or whatever. It is like going for a bike ride. You know when you're. You get to the point where you're training like 23, 25 hours a week when you're doing some of these big races and it's like it's not very impressive to go for a bike ride for a half hour, but if you keep on doing that, well, now biking for five hours is really impressive and the only way to get there is to start pedaling.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, running a business and I think one reason why a lot of businesses fail is because they run it like a chromosome. So they start doing revenue driving activity at the very top and then they're not doing the actual activity on the bottom and then they flip because their sales and marketing and networking worked and then they stopped doing that because they're actually doing the work and they just keep on flipping back and forth, back and forth. And if you can get two parallel lines going up and to the right within your business where the system and the processes stay steady. But unfortunately a lot of people they'll do something for one to six months Like, oh, it's not working. It's like, well, it was just about to start working. If you go to the gym for three months and you've only lost five pounds and you stop, you're never gonna lose 20 or 30 pounds. Where people start looking and you're like, wow, you've really changed. So you gotta keep on staying consistent within your business.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's such a powerful one. Okay, great stuff. So your website kurahomecom, that's K-U-R-A homecom. Check it out. If there are people who want to reach out to you anywhere out to you Anywhere else you'd like them to go. I'd love to hear your marketing website too.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you have. Constantsocialcom is our social media management company. If you want a 30 by 90 foot banner flying across the sky for your business, we have. I also want aerialbannerscom you can get. If you want to get directly to me, connecting on LinkedIn is a great place to find me there, and that's just Daniel Felt F-E-L-T. Awesome.

Speaker 3:

I'll put all those links into the show notes at thinktylercom. Daniel, it was just as exciting as talking to you the second time. It was the first. I always love how you're just so transparent and open about things. There was just so much gold here that if the people make it through this episode, they're going to just have a lot of things to think about and hopefully apply to their business.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, Tyler. It's always great to be here with you and I appreciate all the questions.

Speaker 3:

Okay, man, take care. Now that's another good one in the books. Love this show. What stood out to me in that conversation with Daniel is just how clear he is on the numbers that drive his business forward and how quickly he acts when something's off. That speed is what you want. Waiting 30 to 60 days for your P&L is just way too slow. That's not going to give you the tools to manage your business. Your numbers should be telling you a story every week, whether that be Monday, tuesday, wednesday. You need to be getting some critical numbers, and they may not be Daniel's numbers, but you need to be getting critical numbers that tell you how your business is doing and that allows you to stop reacting and steer your business in the right direction. If your business isn't running with that kind of clarity, let's fix it.

Speaker 3:

I help home and commercial service businesses build simple financial dashboards that turn guesswork into growth. I'm big on this, and this is one of the big value adds that I'll provide to you is getting that dashboard so you can make decisions. You can book. It's a no pressure intro meeting. It's a chance for us to get to know each other. Go over to one of my websites. Go over to CFOMadeEasycom. Once again, that's CFOMadeEasycom Book an intro meeting, no obligation, let's chat. And last thing, if you got any value out of this episode or you enjoyed it, please help me out. Leave a quick review. It can be on Spotify, it can be on Apple, but whenever you leave a review, they feed the show to more people and it's able to help more business owners, which is really what I aspire to, and it's able to help more business owners, which is really what I aspire to, which is really my mission when doing this show. So, hey, most of all, thanks for being here on Profit Grit, where real business happens, take care.

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Tyler Martin

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