From $6M to $40M in HVAC Revenue Without Adding More Markets - Matt Pozda

Most home service owners think growth means opening new markets. Matt Pozda proved you can scale to 100 million without adding a single zip code.

When he bought Sky HVAC, he thought it was a 50/50 mix of service and new construction. It was 98 percent construction. That painful surprise forced him to rebuild everything from the ground up, separating divisions, learning capacity management, and eventually spinning off construction completely.

Today, as CEO of Call Dad HVAC, Matt runs a 40 million dollar business across eight Carolina markets with a goal to reach 100 million in the same footprint. His strategy flips industry norms. He keeps capacity open, focuses on first-time customers, invests in people before he can “afford” to, and builds culture around shared ownership and transparency.

He even created Call Dad University, a full trades academy with more than 2,000 applicants for 22 spots, joking that it’s harder to get into than Harvard.

In this episode, Matt shares how he turned a misstep into a powerhouse model for sustainable scaling. He breaks down how to manage capacity for growth, why perfect attribution is a myth, and how sharing financials can turn employees into true stakeholders in the mission.

What You Will Learn in This Episode

• Why buying the wrong business led to a stronger one
 • How Call Dad grew from 98 percent construction to 100 percent residential service
 • The power of capacity management and why “booked out” is a warning sign
 • Why over 70 percent of revenue coming from new customers drives stability
 • How ditching ROI obsession and focusing on brand creates real momentum
 • How Call Dad University solves the trades labor shortage in-house
 • The impact of sharing budgets and numbers across every level of the company
 • Why transparency builds accountability and loyalty
 • How investing before you’re ready accelerates long-term growth
 • Matt’s mantra, “100 percent fast, 70 percent correct,” and why speed beats perfection in scaling

More From Profit & Grit

Book your complimentary Financial Insight Session with Tyler Martin, fractional CFO for home services and the trades, here:

http://cfointrocall.com

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Follow the show for weekly interviews with HVAC, plumbing, and home service owners and experts who share what it really takes to grow, scale, and profit in the trades.

If you listen to any of the following shows, we’re sure you’ll love ours too!
 To The Point Home Services Podcast, Toolbox for the Trades, Masters of Home Service, Home Service Business Coach With David Moerman, BlueCollar.CEO, The Home Service Expert Podcast, Next Level Pros, Blue Collar Business Podcast, Home Service Millionaire with Mike Andes, The Contractor Fight with Tom Reber and Blue Collar Success Group

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Tyler Martin, a fractional CFO for home services and the trades

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Chapters

• 0:00 Cold Open: The Wrong Deal
• 0:14 Show Setup & Host Intro
• 0:37 Meet Matt: Wall Street to HVAC
• 2:24 Call Dad Brand & Personal Story
• 2:48 Rock Bottom: 98% New Construction
• 5:16 Why New Construction Collides With Service
• 7:15 Capacity, Waves, and Chaos
• 9:33 The Mindset Shift: Separate Divisions
• 11:21 Due Diligence Misses & “Deal Pregnant”
• 13:19 On QofE, Risk, and Grit
• 14:34 Today’s Mix: 100% Residential
• 15:21 The Slow Pivot: Retail vs Production
• 17:17 Spinning Off New Construction
• 18:17 Holding Capacity and Saying No
• 20:12 Finance Skills Don’t Run Trucks
• 21:55 Good Advice, Bad Advice: Attribution Myths
• 24:05 Brand Over Perfect Data
• 26:08 Budgets, Autonomy, and Being Wrong
• 28:18 Should Smaller Shops Invest in Brand?
• 30:18 Budget Transparency With the Team
• 33:00 PDPs, Dream Manager, and Growth Paths
• 36:14 Why It Matters: People Achieving Dreams
• 39:08 The Next Mountain: $100M Vision
• 41:19 Market Share, Capacity, and New Customers
• 43:12 The Real Constraint: Talent, Solved

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:01

I bought an HVAC business thinking it was 50% new construction. It turns out it was 98% new construction. And you know, learning from that mistake nearly broke me.

SPEAKER_00: 0:14

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_02: 0:37

Today's guest is Matt Posta. He's a guy who walked away from the Wall Street grind and dove headfirst into the world of home services. He went from investment banking to buying an HVAC business that turned out to be nothing like what he thought. Instead of quitting, he rebuilt it. Fast forward, now he's running Call Dad, a$20 million plus powerhouse with nine locations and a unique culture that blends grit, tech, and a servant's heart. We're digging into the hard lessons he learned from a disastrous acquisition, a rebrand gone wrong, and what it really takes to earn respect in the trades. This one's raw, real, and packed with takeaways. Let's get started. Hey Matt, welcome to the Prophet and Great Show. How are you doing today? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for being here. Hey, I want to learn a little bit about you before I start hitting you with questions. Just learn about what you do professionally and then maybe a little bit about you personally.

SPEAKER_01: 1:40

Yeah, so I'm uh CEO of Call Dad, which is a uh residential heating and air conditioning business. Uh we're in eight markets across North and South Carolina. That's great.

SPEAKER_02: 1:51

What about something on the personal side? Anything people might not commonly know about you?

SPEAKER_01: 1:56

Well, I was gonna say this I assume most people would know, but I'm a dad. That that one that one might be a given. I always laugh when uh, you know, meet people in the street and they hear our ads or whatever it is, and they ask if I have kids. And I'm like, yeah, what it would be a little weird if I if I didn't, and I named the business. So yeah, definitely uh a family man, uh love to spend time in the summer, you know, fishing with kids and traveling. So any moment that I can get to be a dad, I I enjoy those moments.

SPEAKER_02: 2:25

I do, by the way, that I and I'm sure you get this a lot. I love the name because it gets you to pause. Like it's like, oh dad, it's like, okay, what am I? And then it gets you to just spend the minute to figure out what it's about, and that's the brand worked. It's like I know of you now, you know, it's cool.

SPEAKER_01: 2:40

Yeah, it touches so many different emotions. So we we have a lot of fun with it.

SPEAKER_02: 2:44

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's good. That's good stuff. So hey, I want to kind of start. You normally I call this rock bottom. I want to start at that period when, like, man, you were just almost like questioning everything, and you were you're stuck.

SPEAKER_01: 2:56

You want to take me back to the lowest low, is what you want. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 2:59

Yeah, the painful part. Well, what is that moment? Can you share it?

SPEAKER_01: 3:03

Yeah, uh, I mean, well, moments would probably be the the best way to describe it. But you know, when I when I was getting into this industry, what I was getting into it for specifically was an experience that I had, right? So I had an experience with uh, you know, two very polar opposite companies. One was responsive but dismissive. The other was uh incredibly unresponsive, but very genuine and willing to educate. So that that kind of my personal experience is what sparked me really getting into this industry. Uh, so I wanted to solve for that. That was my vision. I wanted no customer in the Carolinas to experience what I went through when I had a problem at my home. Uh so I had this beautiful vision set out to go acquire an HVAC business and, you know, solve that conundrum or that vision that I had. And uh, you know, I it was not like it is right now. Not everybody was getting into home service back then. So there weren't a lot of opportunities to get into it and found a business that was in Charlotte, North Carolina called Sky HVAC. I knew that there was some residential construction aspect to it. What I didn't realize is that the majority of the business, the vast majority, like 99%, 98% of it was residential new construction. So, not that there's anything wrong with new construction. Great businesses, there's tons of them. They do very well. That business did very well, but it just wasn't ultimately matching with the vision that I was trying to achieve. So maybe a little dismissive or ignorant to what I was getting into, but kind of day one, get in there and start snooping around, spending more time with the business and realize, oh my gosh, this is this is purely a new construction business. And I have to learn, if I want to succeed, if I want to pull through this, I mean, you've got in your name, profit and grit. I have to have grit and determination to be willing to learn an aspect of the business that ultimately isn't where I want to be or what I want to be focused on. So that was very humbling for me.

SPEAKER_02: 5:11

And what was like, just to if there's someone out in the audience who maybe they don't know, what was like the concern in the new residential side of the business? Is it the slower pay aspect? Is it the slower movement of the project? Is it not so much? I mean, what is it that mostly like this sucks?

SPEAKER_01: 5:27

It's Tyler, it's it's everything. Like I have a lot of conversations with businesses in the home services space that are in new construction that want to get into residential uh maintenance, install, and service. And the thing that I try to explain to them that's not their fault of their own, but difficult to understand, there's a mentality. Like it is a different mentality from the top to the bottom of the organization with regard to how you approach the business. So getting out of the concept of scheduling, install, uh coordinating, you know, project bidding, all of that stuff doesn't apply to a reactionary, service-oriented, customer, like consumer-facing business. So just all the way as high level as I could possibly explain that, the mentality of the business is different. And then the other thing that I try, and I draw this out on uh whiteboard sometimes for people, but like if you were to imagine what business looks like in terms of waves, right? Residential service businesses are like this, like really small, steady waves that come. And new construction businesses are like this, where the waves are up and down. And then if you throw in which we decided would be a good idea to do as well, commercial new construction, the waves are like this, right? And it's like it's one thing to manage one wave set, but when you've got all three wave sets coming at you at the same time, it just causes discord and chaos. So I don't know if that answers your question.

SPEAKER_02: 6:57

No, that's that's yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 6:58

Yeah, yeah, it's chaos.

SPEAKER_02: 7:00

It's it's the way you it's it's almost the foundation of your company of how you run it, how you react to things, how you probably have to staff, schedule. I mean, I see it. I always chuckle occasionally. Whenever, you know, most of my clients that are involved in that type of business are usually talking to me about how they want to get it, make it less, or they want to get out of it. And every so often I'll get someone that comes to me and they'll go, Yeah, I uh I just want to dive into commercial. I want to dive into new residential. That's an area of the business I can keep people busy and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, oh, this is gonna be a tough conversation. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 7:30

And it's tough because you get stuck in those. You get stuck where you know you need this project to keep people busy when it slows down. So it and then all that does is it costs you opportunity when you could really grow the business, right? So it's just it's it's detrimental both ways, right? You're you're gonna put yourself in a bad position.

SPEAKER_02: 7:49

So kind of take me back to that day one or day first week. You're sitting there going, I thought I had a mix that was probably 50-50. And in probably in your own mind, you were even thinking maybe at some point I'll get that below and it'll be mostly on-demand type business with residential uh consumer business. Was that like a show stopping moment? Like, oh my gosh, like what did I buy? And I mean, was there ever a moment there like you worried, like you wanted to do over in a way?

SPEAKER_01: 8:17

No, I think it was more like I need to mentally be comfortable with putting what I want to do on the shelf, like back back to that vision dynamic. You know, I'll give you I'll give you a very realistic example that happens in new construction businesses, right? Is I've got, I want to grow a service department, right? So I'm gonna start marketing service, we do service on demand, you call us, we'll come out and do repair. But what happens when you do a lot of new construction over time is you end up having to do a lot of warranty calls or startup calls, right? So I market this capacity for new customers to come in, but then I've got builders calling me to start systems up or for warranty calls for things that I installed a year ago, two years ago, three years ago. And all of a sudden, that capacity that I promised new customers is gone. So it's that conflict of like, I can't once I learn that, like I was like, okay, we got a tech for Tuesday. We're we're great. And then all of a sudden the tech schedule is filled up by the new construction team and I have no capacity. It's like I can't keep managing the business as if I have that capacity. What I have to do is get the construction department under control, like manage this, learn this. And then once I have that, create division separation because they just can't coexist together. There's no way to do it. So it was almost like a realization. And then once I was comfortable with putting that plan on the shelf, I was able to actually start growing the business.

SPEAKER_02: 9:52

How do you think, Matt? And this just for others that maybe are considering buying a business, how do you think that wasn't more apparent when you were doing due diligence and kind of going through the process of of the you know, kind of 50-50 mix versus really slanted one way?

SPEAKER_01: 10:07

Twofold. One is I was, I don't know if this is a PC term that you can use anymore. So I apologize, but I was deal pregnant, right? Like I I was so into the industry. It had been a a number of years, you know, really 2014 was when I had that experience. I didn't acquire Sky until January of 20 or 17. So it was a few years. I was just so excited to get into the industry and there weren't a lot of opportunities. So I had some blinders on. Got it, you know, in intentionally. The other is, you know, I'd tell this joke, but they said they were a paperless company. And, you know, I was like, okay, can you give me the, you know, the customer files? I'd love to review some of this stuff. And the owner at the time was like, you know, uh, even better. Meet me at the shop, I'll get you everything you need. And I thought he was gonna hand me like a flash drive, like, oh, here's the data you were looking for. And no, he takes me into the white warehouse and he shows me a bunch of whiteboards. And he's like, here's our customer. And again, that was absolutely a yellow flag, absolutely a red flag. But, you know, like I said, deal pregnant. I knew that the data wasn't going to be perfect, and I was comfortable enough that I was willing to learn anything that I put those worries to the side. And I was just, I was having a conversation with a guy earlier who's trying to buy a small business, and you know, it was a smaller business, and he's doing a Q of E on the thing and like all that. And I was like, there's just a point at which if you really want to buy a if you really want to operate a small business, there's risk. There's certain risks that you're just gonna have to get comfortable with. And no matter what a Q of E tells you, all that's gonna do is put the seller through unnecessary stress, potentially kill the deal. You're not gonna learn anything that would otherwise you know impact your decision. You're taking a, you're making a risky decision. Get comfortable with that, and then have the grit and determination to persevere through it.

SPEAKER_02: 12:04

So that's great advice. Yesterday, I'm probably gonna botch his last name, Clint Fiore, I think F-I-F-I-O-R-E. He posted this great video on Q of E's. And from his perspective as a broker and just how they've, you know, 10, 15 years ago, we didn't even hear about these. And now it's almost like every deal seems like they need to have one. And so he did, if there's anyone in the audience, I'll put the link. But I thought it was a great way to explain. You said it, you're very articulate too, and that there's this false sense of security that just because you do one, like somehow that makes the deal safe. Well, that's just not true. Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_01: 12:40

Yeah, yeah. They've become commoditized. I hate to say it, but they are.

SPEAKER_02: 12:44

Yeah, it's it's a new service that you know that people can charge for. Last question on the segment. I just want to talk about, and this is if confidential, feel free not to say just say so. Where is your mix today? Like, where are you? What what mix of of consumer business?

SPEAKER_01: 12:58

Yeah, no, we're 100% residential. Yeah, wow. Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. There's some you know, tangential stuff that still sneaks in, but there's a a little bit of light commercial, but we we turn away anything that's that's not just residential consumer service. Good stuff.

SPEAKER_02: 13:15

So just switching gears here now, because I thought I think that's really helpful for people that are in that situation. What's even I think could take it another level. Like, how did you when was this turning point where you go from you know, 90 plus percent new residential business to now you're a hundred percent consumer-facing business? What was the pivot point there? What did you do? How did how did you make that work?

SPEAKER_01: 13:39

Yeah, so slow and methodical. So what I back in the at that time, I had termed the two divisions retail and production. Uh, so production was the construction division and retail was again residential service maintenance and install. It was again starting to have a tiny bit of schedule control. So getting the construction department to understand like we have, even if it's not booked up capacity, we have to separate and bifurcate capacity so that we have capacity for demand business. Otherwise, we'll never be able to grow that. So it was kind of constant conversations around schedule and capacity management that started it. So it was it was like kind of chipping a statue. I was chipping a little bit of capacity out of the construction department over time. 2019, so you know, two years in was when I finally got that mix to the 50-50 that I thought it was. And then December of 22 is when we officially spun out, we spun it into a separate business, the new construction. So 2019, 50-50 split. 2020, we actually said, okay, these are completely different departments. No one in construction is gonna work in service and install, and no one in service and install is gonna work in construction. We're separating them. And then two years after that is when we eventually spun out the new construction business altogether.

SPEAKER_02: 15:10

Wow. And then just to clarify a couple things, that business that you spun out is that is that a business that you were intending ultimately to sell? Do you still run that? Like what was the strategy there?

SPEAKER_01: 15:22

You know, so I'm a minority equity owner in that now. Uh the person who was running that department has actually taken over as the majority owner. And, you know, business is still doing great. They're doing a good job. And I'm still happy to be a part of it. It's just, you know, not what my intended focus was, or or as I said, my my vision for this industry or why I got in it. So I sit kind of almost like board level, if you will, and and help out as much as I can. But I spend all my time on Call Tab.

SPEAKER_02: 15:51

Wow, what an elegant way of handling that. You know, as you were kind of explaining to me, I was expecting you to say, hey, I gave the contractors a heads up that we'd stop doing these services a few months out or whatever, you know, that transition would look like. But that's cool that you could spin it off. And I mean, you make it sound kind of easy, but that's that's pretty big deal to pivot your company from a high mix of one type of revenue to another. Talking about that capacity, I want to drill down a little bit on that. Were you like literally going like, hey, Tyler's a technician? I'm only gonna fill his plate with 50% of stuff, and I'm gonna leave it with 50% nothing booked, because that's gonna serve the consumer stuff that comes in. Is that kind of what that looked like? Or what does it look like in terms of it?

SPEAKER_01: 16:35

Yeah, correct. It was having having the ability to say no, right? Okay, yeah. So to say, like, we have to have this open. There, I it was funny. When I first got into business, it was almost like a bragging right to say, hey, we're booked two weeks out. Like I get home and tell my wife, like, hey, schedule's booked out, you know, three weeks. Isn't that awesome? Like, great news. And it's like now like my business today, if I told you I was booked out one day, like it's all hands, like this is unacceptable. Like, we need to always have capacity. So it's just that I was too young and immature to understand that what I thought was a good thing was actually a bad thing and strangling the business from growing new customer base.

SPEAKER_02: 17:17

Yeah. It's actually a hard concept, I think, though, for because to your point, like we our natural thinking is okay, if you're booked out for a long time, you're in a great spot. Yeah, how could that be bad? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I mean, it but then when you kind of rethink the different angle of it, that if you're leaving capacity, that means you can service your best clients. That means you can deal with emergency stuff. It just leaves the ability to deal with all those things. But it it does take some conditioning because I've had those conversations and it until it sinks in for people and then they go, Oh, wow, that that changes everything. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. It's a big deal. Cool. Okay, that that's great stuff. Wow. I love to hear such a transformational change. That's a big deal. You make it sound very calm, though. Like you seem like you're very calm under pressure.

SPEAKER_01: 18:03

How much of your because that's where the gray hair comes from? All right.

SPEAKER_02: 18:06

Wait till you get to be my age. Yeah. On that same note, you I know you have a uh strong finance background. How much has your finance background do you think played in to, I mean, from where you started, and I'm sure because I have a finance background too, and I I always feel like I have a little bit of chip on my shoulder in some ways when I'm going into evaluating deals and thinking through growing things, how much of it has played a role in from where you first thought it was to now where you're at today?

SPEAKER_01: 18:33

Oh man, I was very confident that my investment banking skills would translate immediately into business ownership. And I hate to admit that is simply just not the case. The only thing that translated was, you know, determination and you know, willingness to try and find an answer and you know, complete adversity. So grit and determination definitely was translated. But other than that, like I'm, you know, the business, we'll do 40 million this year in total revenue. And I'm just now starting to get into some of my former skill set because you know, dealing with auto lenders and captives and leasing and all that type of stuff. So I'm starting to get some of that old finance skill set, but the vast majority of you know, the past seven years has had I I wish I could be like, dude, the that Excel skills really, really translate it, but yeah, no, that is it's not the case. What you think you know about small business, you don't know until you roll up your sleeves and get into it.

SPEAKER_02: 19:45

That's so true. Yeah, that's a great point. Hey, I want to talk about a little fun game here. Good advice, bad advice. What's like the best or worst? And this is it your choice, advice you've kind of run into that that might be applicable or at least comes to mind.

SPEAKER_01: 19:59

Yeah, I think one thing in this, back to your question about the whole banking aspect, unfortunately made a lot of sense to my personality, which is you need to have attribution for everything that's going on in the business. So, like marketing is a good example of that. You know, you need to know exactly where every lead is coming through, what that lead results in in terms of revenue. You know, you need to do anything and everything you can to have max attribution for every single lever and every single aspect of the business. And I think what has happened in today's world to spin this into where that was maybe misguided a little bit is that, you know, it's almost data anal overload right now. And I don't care what marketing company you're talking to or who you're talking to from a software perspective, I could give you a billion dollars and you still wouldn't be able to prove true attribution across every lead that comes into this business. It's just not possible. There's imperfect data and there's no way to make it perfect. And when I had somebody, I met somebody at a conference who kind of reprogrammed my mind to think through that in a way like, hey, it's okay to not have attribution, focus on the things that you can control, focus on building a brand, focus on building a culture, focus on building addressable market. And that pays way more dividends than trying to prove out every key metric in the business. And that was for me as a former banker a very pivotal moment in terms of my ability to grow this business. And it's been lights out ever since.

SPEAKER_02: 21:44

So would you say there's some things you kind of, I don't want to say let go of, but it's not, you're okay with it not being perfect. Like, what are like the biggest things that you'd say maybe you're a little more loose in terms of getting precision out of? I hope I'm wording that correctly.

SPEAKER_01: 22:00

Yeah, yeah. Marketing would be uh again a a good example because you know, my perspective was I'm only gonna spend money on digital marketing that I can track. So if I can't put an ROI on it, I'm not spending the money, right? If I can't derive some profit and some revenue stream from it, money is not being allocated. Versus now I understand that there's this whole aspect of uh branding that plays into this industry. And my perspective is the whole process, like the the be like Amazon thought process, where I want to be in that consumer's mind before they make the decision that they need me. And that costs money, and I'm never gonna be able to prove attribution to that. So I'm I've become comfortable with spending those dollars and doing those things that otherwise I would have never been able to do. Something else is, you know, budgeting. We do a phenomenal job budgeting. You know, we bring ever all of our managers all the way down to service managers, installed managers, they make their own budgets, right? But when it comes to, you know, the overall corporate side of things and the admin side of things, I'm comfortable with being wrong. It's like I'm if if a business is performing, I'm not gonna stop spending money on something. I'm not gonna, you know, reduce the size of our apprenticeship program or our training department because we're growing and I've got some budget KPI that tells me I can't. So being comfortable with things like that, that otherwise my personality 10 years ago would have never allowed, like there's there's a lot of examples.

SPEAKER_02: 23:28

Two questions on the map. One question I have for you is in regards to like being comfortable on the marketing ROI and maybe not having full track track attraction on or full full tracking on it, and part of it it's okay, it's branding. Would you say is that true? I mean, at$40 million, you're a different company than maybe a company that's six million dollars, let's say. Would you hold that same standard? Like, would you say if you were a six million dollar company, I want to I want to know what every dollar's doing, and I can't really have branding isn't important at that level. What what's your thoughts?

SPEAKER_01: 24:00

Yeah, I think I think there is some validity to that statement. The thing that I would challenge you on there is the the branding can be different. So, like what that six million dollar company is doing for branding may not be the same as us, but they need to be doing it. And the only reason that I I say that, if you if you really want to scale and grow, it's a knock them out bloodfests on Google and digital and all of those things right now. And the game is constantly changing. And what you know, when I was a six million dollar business, the cost for leads on Google, it was possible to say you shouldn't do brain. Now it's it's not possible. And with what's happening with, you know, the AI search and certain things like that, like, all right, do you really want to spend money on SEO when SEO may not be the same thing that it is today next year? There's just too in my mind, there's too many variables. So I'm not saying go mass media like I do, but you can find ways in a community to go niche to specific zip codes and do heavy branding without breaking the budget like what I do on a regular basis. Does that answer your question? Or yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 25:13

Yeah, it makes total sense. Yeah. Very, very uh articulate in the way you said it. It made a lot of sense to me. The other question I had for you back to talking, you mentioned budgeting, and you're okay with sometimes, hey, you know, admin, for example, if it's in a different spot, you're okay if if there's a different perception on that, and then you'll sound like you'll revise the budget or do whatever. When do you think, when does it make sense for a company to start introducing a budget? Like at what point did you you're a finance guy, so maybe you were doing it pretty early on, but do you think a six million dollar company should have a budget? Should they be doing some forecasting? And what's your thoughts around that? Oh, a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_01: 25:51

Yeah. At the very least, everybody in your business should understand the budget down to gross profit, right? Right. And they should be involved in it. And, you know, I've had people that have come in or or other businesses that I've talked to where they they cannot fathom how much financial information we share with our entire staff. And for me, it's like it's that old tale that they say is like people won't train people to do their job because they're afraid they're gonna leave or take it. And it's like, wonder if you don't, right? And it's like the same with the five, like if you don't share the budget or you don't have them have say in what they think they can do, like, how do you expect to hold them accountable to anything that you're trying to achieve? So for me, it's always been, you know, transparency almost to a fault of we share it everything and anything with everybody in the organization because the budget is so important. And especially when I have big aspirations for growth, it doesn't matter if I'm back when we were sub a million dollars, if I didn't sit in front of the company and say, hey, next year we're gonna do three, right? And somebody didn't ask how it's like, well, you know, there's no shot in in hell that we're gonna do three million. So I I'm I think at any scale you should be doing budgets.

SPEAKER_02: 27:10

So on that transparency in regards to the company's numbers, was that pretty much a day one thing that you've always felt really open about, or did that evolve? Because I know like a lot of companies have a perception, like, oh man, if I show them that, they're gonna think I'm making too much money or they're not gonna understand. And that is hard if they've if that's the culture they have to all sudden change that. Were you from day one pretty much this transparent?

SPEAKER_01: 27:36

Yeah. So right. When I bought the business, you know, knew very early on that I was building an asset, not a revenue stream. So I think to answer that question, it depends on what you're trying to do. So if you're running a business because you want to have the biggest boat to show off to your friends, then yeah, I would probably hesitate to tell you to share the budget. But if you're building a business to do what we're trying to do, which is bring comfort to the Carolinas. So we want to get in every single market in the Carolinas and you know have exponential growth. When I present the budget, it's hey, so we can do these things next year. Hey, we can build a new lab, we can get this new location, we can create this subset of uh mid-level managers for promotions for all these people. Like, hey, we can have better health care. Like it's like everything that we're doing with it is within context of saying we can do we're doing this because of this. So the why is there. And then we back it up by doing what we said we were gonna do. So I think, yes, if if you're doing it to fulfill, you know, personal property acquisitions, then yeah, it may be a little tough. But if if you're connecting the dots between the budget and what next year will look like and why, uh, you don't have a choice.

SPEAKER_02: 29:03

Yeah. So every dollar has a purpose, basically, is what I'm hearing you say. And have you ever had an employee in this journey that couldn't handle that, maybe? And or, you know, was and what I mean by that is they've come into you and say, hey man, I need to make more money because we're making so much money, or you know, somehow correlated it back to themselves in terms of how the business was doing.

SPEAKER_01: 29:26

Yeah. Oh yeah. I think that that's that's um unfortunately human nature.

SPEAKER_02: 29:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 29:32

But a lot of times that's probably uh a failure of leadership and not properly communicating, right? So we you know, we tried to solve for that by having we do what they're called PDPs, which is uh personal development pathways. And we're constantly it's it's not like a three sixty review, it's not an annual review, it happens quarterly. We have a dream manager, these conversations are happening all the time to try and avoid, you know, miscommunication. that so yeah it it happens it's gonna happen but we try to avoid it by communicating sure um what's a dream manager that sounds cool yeah so we we took a combination uh there's a guy out of uh out of Pennsylvania I can send him send you his name he does uh a pip process which is a performance improvement plan process I thought pip has a negative connotation but it does I like some of the aspects of what he had so I took some of the best of that and then there's a book that was written called Dream Manager which is kind of this it's a select in type process and it's a little more niche than what I liked because I wanted it broad and I kind of took the best of those two and mashed them together and we created this again it's everybody in the companies in it on it you know we set short-term goals midterm goals long-term goals it's really about you what you want to achieve with your life if you know there's monetary goals we have actual back to Excel we have Excel sheets where you can plug and play different performance metrics on what you want to earn and stuff like that. So it really what it does is it allows the teammate the employee to have a say in their future and their performance as opposed to me telling you why you're not performing. You know why you're not performing or you know why you're performing before you're coming in that meeting because we've given you all the tools to be able to to have that knowledge.

SPEAKER_02: 31:30

Wow I hear like it just screams transparency like it just screams like hey I control my own destiny.

SPEAKER_01: 31:36

I know exactly what I need to do to get to where I want to be or not want to be the best thing of it is like we were going through these stories at our last you know semi annual meeting but it's like what makes me unbelievably happy is when people achieve kind of their dreams. And we we say this I say this often internally is like my dreams have to be big enough that everyone in the organization can achieve their dreams. So when somebody puts on their PDP that they want to buy their first home and then you know within six months or 12 months they buy their first home like that's that is such a fulfilling feeling for them as well as for us as an organization. Because not that we bought the home for them I don't want to say like they still went through the process they had to find the house they had to get go through the mortgage but the fact that like they set that goal and then we over the course of time helped them achieve that their their dream their goal that's just to facilitate that for somebody is that's it's magical and that's why I do this.

SPEAKER_02: 32:36

So yeah that's uh so I used to have a a staffing firm was about$25 million a year. So a lot smaller than where you guys are at, but it brings back memories. You know, I had a staff of probably about 25 people depending and we had about 150 consultants out in the Bay Area, but the staff that was internal, you know, you get to know them your very personal relationships and you brought back memories of when someone would get that first verification of employment or uh you know they needed some type of check or support to be able to put the down payment for the home not not I don't mean by loan or anything. I mean just some type of information so they could put down payment yeah verification. And it was the most coolest feeling and there was I mean I agree with you like we didn't they did it they earned it it was all them but there is a part of you that's like you feel like you I don't know why, but it felt like I contributed to that and made me feel really proud it was a cool moment.

SPEAKER_01: 33:28

Yeah for me it's like the PDP works. Yes it's like that level so anyway it's it's cool.

SPEAKER_02: 33:36

Yeah love it. Okay hey last area I'd love to just touch on is like what's your next mountain to climb from my research I believe your next big number is 60 million. Is that correct? Is that your next big goal?

SPEAKER_01: 33:48

Yeah um it's probably bigger bigger than that. So I don't I don't want to derail your your question but we every year we go through an exercise last year it was what does the business look like at 60 this year actually the meetings tomorrow we're going through the exercise of what does the business look like at 100. Wow. So the the next big goal for us is what what do we look like at 100 million and how do we structure around that?

SPEAKER_02: 34:13

Wow wow how and once again this might be too confidential. So feel free to just tell me how many markets you're in eight markets now to be a 100 million dollar company do you have an idea of how many markets you'd need to be in I well we could do it in the eight really I feel very conf yeah I feel very confident in that yeah is that by expanding how far out you go or or do you mean actually the area you're covering now?

SPEAKER_01: 34:35

Yeah no I mean if you do you know the the 40 divided by eight we're not from a home service in a single market we're not like super large right we're still kind of some of the smaller players in some of these markets. So there's ample runway to be able to grow a new customer and our our new customer acquisition because of the way we manage the business, you know, we're north of 70% sometimes and just in terms of our new customer mix. So what a lot of businesses right now are doing is they're milking their existing base, right? So they're doing, you know, you hear people talk about it all the time I've got this new software program, whatever it is that can stay in front of existing customers. And I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that or that we don't stay in front of existing customers, but we don't need to take advantage of our existing customers because we focus so much on managing capacity and solving the need of that on-demand customer. So it allows us to grab incremental market share when others aren't capable of it. So for us it's a market share game. And I feel very confident that we could do it within the eight markets that we're in. Now we're not going to stay in eight markets, right? Like I think we've we've really figured out this de novo and greenfield strategy and the way that we flex assets, we kind of operate as one across all these markets, uh, which is really cool to do it that way. So we'll definitely expand markets, but we could do it within the eight that we're in.

SPEAKER_02: 36:00

What would you say is the biggest barrier or I guess maybe I'd say threat in terms of being able to get to that$100 million number.

SPEAKER_01: 36:09

You want me to answer that for people trying to do it or for me? Uh either one I'll I'll leave it up to you. I'm gonna tell you I've already solved for all of them. So come on yeah give me give them maybe just give me people can relate to maybe yeah the biggest thing that I hear people say and that people blame you know is is the skills gap right yeah that there's not enough people going into trades. There's you know for every one that comes in there's five retiring you know that whole thing. You know Mike Rose belief and I I believe he's right that there was too much of a focus on you know engineers and lawyers back in the 70s and 80s that they did it so good that they did it to the detriment of the trades where it was kind of taboo to be blue collar all that. So again I believe that that's real. I'm not discrediting that. But what I will say to you is this is I travel around the country and I see a lot of these HVAC shops, I see a lot of the plumbing shops, a lot of these trade shops who claim that they have apprenticeship programs and you go into the classroom and there's dust on the tables and you know you ask them when the last time they have a class was and they're like you know it's been like 18 months 24 months you know and you say why did you not why do you not have a class and they're like we got busy blah blah blah like and they're just not committed. What happens is it's expensive it's an inconvenience to the business right who wants to take people from the field and put them in a classroom when you need field workers like there's just it's such a commitment and we started our trade program uh dad you in 2022 we really did not start reaping the benefits of it until this year. And you know we've we've got it to now where our last class we had over 2000 applicants and we took 22 people. So our acceptance rate not to brag is it's harder to get into CDU than it is to get into Harvard. But you'll never hear me say that people is a problem for our business. So I think that that will continue to be the most prevalent uh speaking piece, like talking piece in the industry. But I think if people just really commit and they were willing to take the sacrifice, you're not gonna like this, but the sacrifice to profit to invest in the future of the business, you can you can absolutely solve for that no problem. So people, but I think that because of you know what we've done and what we've put in place we're gonna be able to solve for that no problem.

SPEAKER_02: 38:39

So those 22 technicians at what point do they become revenue producing? What's that timeline?

SPEAKER_01: 38:46

Yeah so it's a uh they're they're just 22 of what we'll put through uh a 100 people through that program this year it's a three year program uh they do eight weeks in the classroom then they go to the field for six months then they come back to the classroom for five weeks then they go to the field for a year then they come back to the classroom for just a kind of cleanup at the end and that's because it's an accredited program. So we just want to make sure that they fulfill their field hours before we can actually give them their journeyman certificate. So once they complete level three, they get a journeyman certificate. It's about two and a half to three years all in and then after that we ask them for a two year commitment back to us because we pay them, you know, they start in that program in the classroom at$18 an hour. So eight for eight weeks we've got you know 20 to 30 people sitting in classroom making 18 bucks an hour. But to answer your specific question they go right in a truck out of that classroom. So you know they're gonna make some mistakes a mis a mistake is a mistake a second mistake is a choice right like things are going to happen but you know we from culture and from mentorship and support we don't let them fail too hard or or too fast. We we give them the support that they need but it's the only way to get them to grow and to grow fast. So within a few months some of these guys are are doing very well for themselves.

SPEAKER_02: 40:09

Wow so you you pretty much the way you have the structure if I understand it correctly someone that gets into the program they're probably going to be with you at least five years assuming they make it through the program because they make a two year commitment after the three year uh approval. That's cool. That's a good that that's a fair deal.

SPEAKER_01: 40:25

I mean unless they're late twice then they're out tough.

SPEAKER_02: 40:30

Yeah okay this is where I want to wrap up and and it kind of ties into you talked about mistakes. Do you have a a mantra or some line that you live by and I know in our open discussion you said you have a lot but we talked about one in particular. Yeah uh a hundred percent fast 70% correct I love that I love that and and so you're okay with mistakes is what you're saying. That's what I'm hearing you said. Speed is what's important. Move, move, keep it moving. Yeah. Yeah it's awesome. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 40:56

Yeah you change and change often right it the worst decision is indecision, right? So the the ability to constantly move the business forward, the ability to advocate for teammates who think that there's a better way to do it and you know constantly correct course correct that's the only way to move the business forward. And I think one of the main reasons that we're growing as fast as we are.

SPEAKER_02: 41:19

So for one last question I want to go back to the training that just hit me. Would you recommend for a smaller company say under 10 million should they be doing their own academy? Should do they hire a consultant to help them with that what would you recommend at that level?

SPEAKER_01: 41:33

Yeah I would recommend get a full-time trainer and do it everything that I've done in this business I did way before I should have so like back in 22 I had no business absolutely no business having a trade school like it just it made no logical sense and the cost of it was just insane. So I anytime that you think you can solve a problem do it before you should don't go willy-nilly don't just go you know crazy and and hire 10 trainers and put 30 people through the class when you can only you know you only really need capacity for for a handful but the sooner you do things the quicker bear fruit because like I said it took you know really three years for that to really get the scale and traction that it has. So if you don't start today you're three years away from being able to do it.

SPEAKER_02: 42:28

Yeah it takes time. Awesome Matt you are an amazing guest tons of uh very transparent and open and just tons of wisdom so I can't thank you enough for being here. Yeah I thanks for having me glad to be here. And then your two websites or your one made website of course is calldad.com I'll put the in the show notes and then people of course can reach out to you on LinkedIn. Yep absolutely awesome thanks Matt have a great one okay yeah thanks appreciate it wow this conversation with Matt hit on something a lot of business owners face but rarely talk about the limits of what you can model on a spreadsheet. Now look I'm a CFO I love models you can map out pricing you can map out org charts even growth paths but if you don't understand how people actually operate that's customers and employees none of this works. As a fractional CFO I see this frequently the real breakthroughs come through when we stop obsessing over just numbers although they're important and start building teams that can execute Matt didn't scale by being the smartest guy in the room although he is an incredibly bright guy. He scaled by figuring out how to build leadership fix what's broken and stay relentlessly curious. If this resonates with you and you want to build a business that works even when you're not in the weeds go check out cfo madeeasy dot com or cfointrocall.com and schedule a no pressure intro meeting and last but not least please make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcast and thanks so much for listening stay gritty stay profitable and see you next time