How He Built an $800K Handyman Business… Then Lost It All

Most people think more jobs = more money.
 That’s not always true.

In this episode of the Home Hero Podcast, Coby shares the real story behind building a handyman business from scratch… growing it to $100K/month and $800K/year… and still having to shut it down.

If you're a handyman, contractor, or small business owner, this is a must-watch.

👉 Inside this episode:

• How Coby started his handyman business during COVID
• The simple marketing strategy that got him his first jobs
• How he scaled to multiple crews and big remodeling projects
• The hidden mistakes that destroyed profitability
• Why revenue doesn’t equal success
• The biggest lessons about pricing, hiring, and debt

This isn’t theory. It’s real experience.

If you want to grow your handyman business the right way — without burning out or going broke — this episode will open your eyes.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hello and welcome to the Home Hero podcast. Today is a very special interview with actually my co-host, Kobe McManaman. He is a very amazing, special part of our team here at Handyman Marketing Pros and a former owner of a handyman contracting business called Rust Belt Remodeling. Kobe's a licensed general contractor actually in the state of Michigan. Kobe, thank you for joining, man. If you could uh give us a little background on um Rust Belt Remodeling, which is going to be the focus of today's episode and your experience there and your story and kind of how you how are you here as a co-host on the podcast. So uh kick us off with how did you start Rust Belt Remodeling?

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Ooh boy, that is a long story. Um first of all, thanks for having me. I know this is our thing here, but um, it should be fun to to to chat about this. So I started Rust Belt Remodeling, originally a handyman business, um, in 2021. So I was 20 years old, so this was during COVID. And so what kind of sparked getting into the the the handyman business was honestly, I was at the time I was a um personal trainer and a CrossFit coach. And so during COVID, all the gyms shut down, and I was like, man, what the heck am I gonna do? And I think I always kind of had the um, you know, like the business owner mindset, like, man, I want to go build something, right? And so at the time I was like, maybe I'm gonna do a personal training business or a gym or something. I knew I wanted to get into business of some sort. Um, but like a lot of young people, I got on YouTube and I was like, what's the best business to start? You really were like looking up like general, like what's the best business? Okay, yeah, seriously. I mean, there was I I mean, I was just looking all over the place because I was like, man, I I I know I want to do something. And um, you know, I was like, I don't know if I want to do the the gym things. I knew the owner of the gym that I was working at, and um, you know, she she was kind of struggling, like you know, doing micro gyms and stuff are gonna be tough. So I was like, I gotta find something. Um, so searching on YouTube and you know, home services can be uh an easier business to get started in because you don't need a bunch of upfront capital, right? You can kind of bootstrap it. Um and so I actually stumbled across Alan's YouTube channel, um Handyman Journey or Handyman Success. What's the name of the Yeah?

SPEAKER_00 2:41

So shout out to Alan Lee. If anyone listening here has not followed the Handyman Journey YouTube channel as part of the handyman journey mastermind group on Facebook, uh it's kind of the uh handyman community where a lot of people join to figure out like, okay, this is a thing. I can I can make good money as a handyman? What the heck? Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

So I stumbled across his his his YouTube channel. And there was there was a few more. Um one is called like the handyman or something. Just seeing people that are kind of out there, you know, out there getting after it. Um, and there was another another YouTube channel. I forget what it's called. I'm gonna the the name's gonna escape me, but they they interview home service business owners or small business owners and kind of interview them to figure out how much money they're making. And a lot of them were doing handyman home services. And I was like, okay, maybe I'll give this a shot. My brother was a property manager at the time, also. So he was managing apartment complexes, um, rental units, and that sort of thing. He knew I needed to do something because the gyms were closed. Um, and so he's like, hey, this toilet's leaky. You want to come fix this? Started doing some side jobs for him, um, started bringing in some cash because at the time I was completely unemployed with all the gyms being closed, um, and just kind of took it from there. I know that was kind of a long answer, but that was that was essentially the birth of the business, was just wanting to do some sort of business. And I was like, wow, this seems like a good enough idea.

SPEAKER_00 4:03

Yeah, yeah, that's great, man. Um, really great story of how you kind of got started, kind of just needing to make some money. And uh it I guess I I you just posted like in our Slack channel, the like as a kid you had the the construction outfit. I don't know if that was Halloween or just something you wore as a little kid. So you always had this like knack about it. So what I'd love to do now is kind of like almost fast forward and then we're kind of gonna go backwards because um you built up Rust Belt remodeling to like ultimately have a couple like you transitioned to remodeling fully. Uh, like you mentioned the big sexy remodels, had a couple crews out there.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

Um let's let's let's start from like where like how did you get let let's start with it's a complicated thing, but yeah, I think I know where you're going.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

Okay, so we're gonna start with how did you initially start putting yourself out there? So you're doing jobs with your brother as a property manager, um, like like did you get a logo? Like what was the initial start of traction where you got to the point of like, okay, this is now this is what I do? So from that ideation of like YouTube research to trying some things out to I'm a professional handyman remodeling uh contractor. Um, like how do what was that like?

SPEAKER_01 5:27

Yeah, so like I said, starting out, it was it was just getting you know real small stuff from from my brother working on rental properties and stuff. Um, and I was like, all right, I'm gonna give this a shot. I remember I had one of the first jobs I did for me was I replaced a dishwasher. Um and I charged like 400 bucks and it took me, I don't know, an hour and a half. And I was like, what? I just made that much money that quick because I had no expense. I didn't even have insurance or anything at the time, right? So I thought that was awesome. Um, so I started posting on Facebook. I went on um Canva and made a super generic logo um to get started and just kind of thought of a business name. So we were in you know, Southeast Michigan, northwest Ohio, Toledo area, which is the Rust belts. We went with you know Rust Belt Remodeling. Um started posting on Facebook. So what really worked for me on Facebook getting started was posting in Facebook groups, so neighborhood groups, mom groups, um, and and kind of a big one. There was a uh Toledo, Ohio real estate investing group. So I joined that one. I posted there was like, hey, if any of you investors, it was a group for investing questions like need any work on some of your rentals, and that actually drove a ton of work. Um eventually they didn't want to kind of when I started learning a little bit more about pricing, they didn't want to pay, you know, what I needed to charge. Um, but to get started, I mean, that drove a a ton of a ton of business. Um handing out business cards and then you know, friends and family sharing on Facebook. So um at the very beginning, that was what you know really got things fired up was Facebook. That was pretty much all I was doing. Okay. And then within the first six months, um, I hired you guys because we had gotten into um you know the slow season. So it was our first winter. Obviously, it gets cold here, not a ton going on around, you know, Christmas and the holidays. Any handyman business listening, I don't care where you are in the country, it gets it gets slow around Christmas. Um I was like, man, I I don't know if it's gonna work. I got nothing coming in. Um and so then I had, you know, I I called you, Jason, and um first phone call, you gave me a bunch of pointers, um, told me, hey, you're probably not ready yet. You probably don't want to be dishing out this cash when you don't really have any. Um and so called Jason back. I think it was I don't know, maybe a few weeks later, maybe it was a month later or something. I was like, all right, I'm ready, we're we're doing this thing. Didn't have the money, put it on a credit card, which we'll talk more about later, but why that was maybe it was maybe that particular thing was a good idea, but that's what I that's what I did uh to to kind of get rock and roll. It was the Facebook, once I hired you to do the website and marketing within the first, I don't know, month or two, I mean leads were just rolling in. Um, so it, you know, if if if we didn't sign up for the website at that point, um, you know, I don't know about it. Maybe through that first winter, I probably would have gone and got a job because we were pretty fresh into it.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

Yeah, I remember you uh calling a few times or scheduling a few calls, like, oh, I know I'm taking up so much of your time. I swear, like we're gonna hire you. It's like it's all good. That's how we roll. Uh anyone listening that doesn't work with us yet, that's we're just here to help. So um, so let's uh like I'd love to just let's get to the end and then come back here. Cause like obviously, like you work with us at Hand-Man Marketing Bros, and you built up to a couple crews. Um, I can't recall what was like the like in your last year in business, like like not even a full calendar year was your highest revenue. What was like the revenue in what was it, 2025 or 2024?

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Yeah, so 20 2025, we were averaging a little over a hundred thousand a month. Um, so I think by the time we actually had to to shut the doors, um, we had done about 800,000 in in revenue that last year. Um at our at our largest from a like a crew standpoint, from an employee standpoint, we had we had eight employees, um, which if you do the math on eight employees plus one owner and 800,000 in revenue, the math doesn't work out so well. So a little bit of a little bit of uh short foreshadowing there.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

So yeah. Cool. So so I just want to set the frame here of like um like like what was like what all happened, I guess. Like how did everything kind of build up? Like, because on on the outside, you know, everything looked great. Um, like, you know, big jobs coming in, you know, multiple crews going out. Um, and ultimately kind of like what was the ending? Like, when did you know you had to shut the doors? And like if you can kind of let's talk about that kind of like end story to Rust Belt remodeling, and then we can backtrack and almost kind of build up and probably pull lots of learning opportunities through the course of the years. Because you instantly mentioned, you know, putting handyman marketing pros on a credit card. And that's a great example of like if we all understand the end um and kind of how things started to close down as we kind of reverse and go into the past, we can really pull out a lot of helpful good tidbits um for our audience here that um hopefully can inspire them and give them something to think about and and maybe avoid. Um, and of course, plenty of things to to jump onto because you did so many things amazing, man. Um so all I'd say, what what were a lot of the variables of like what happened to Rust Bell doing you know a hundred thousand dollar plus months and then having to close the doors? It seemed so backwards for most people.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

Yeah, yeah, it seemed backwards in in in my head too. Um so yeah, just just last year, um in August or so, um we decided we had to shut the doors. I say we, it was it was me that decided. I had some some great employees that that that kind of helped me um and and come to that conclusion. But um we were bringing in, you know, obviously there's much, much, much bigger remodeling businesses out there than a hundred thousand a month. Um, but we were bringing in what I thought was a good chunk of change every month, and we were super busy. Um, you know, we had some pretty good systems at that point. Um, we were doing some awesome projects, but there was no money at the end of the day. We were running negative flow um month over month. So I say we had good systems, we didn't until kind of that that final year when things kind of caught up to me. I was like, oh crap, I've got some stuff I've got to fix in the business, um, or this isn't gonna go well. Um we were running negative cash flow for a for a long time, but it didn't feel like it because we were we were so busy. The phone was ringing off the hook. Um, we were quoting left and right and landing projects left and right, or at least it seemed like it. So there was always money coming into the bank, and it was hard to see, you know, how how quickly it was, you know, how much how much more quickly it was going out of the bank than it was coming in because you're taking client deposits for these big remodels and um things things like that. So once you well, you know, once we kind of sat down, I was like, you know, we we gotta take a look at these numbers, it it wasn't so looking so good. Um and it sounds crazy to to say like, oh, well, how did you not know that you were losing money month over month? Um and you know, at the end of the day it was because we were we were taking on debt, and I was calling it you know, investing in the business. All it was doing was was hiding negative cash flow. So, you know, we had a line of credit so we could kind of float things like, oh, it's just you know, I just need this a little bit until you know we hit the next draw on some of these big projects. Um next draw comes and we take it, and it's like, well, we need it for this thing now, can't pay down the line of credit. So, you know, everything started stacking. So long story short, we were running negative cash flow, taking on way too much debt, and then you've got debt servicing payments um, you know, month over month that are kind of stacking. So now your expenses are higher, um, and you're on this the this hamster wheel. Um and so there was there was no real reasonable way to get off this this hamster wheel without you know quadrupling the size and and net profit of the business in a very short period of time. Um so ultimately, um end of last year we had to um shut the doors and file bankruptcy.

SPEAKER_00 13:35

So it was just too big of a mountain to climb. Um, so like so practically at the fundamentals of business, there's you you bid a job for let's call it$100,000, and then obviously the expenses and labor materials that go into that, you want that to be uh less than a hundred thousand dollars. So what was the problem um like underbidding and not pricing like maybe a handful of big jobs correctly? Um, was it a a consistent pricing issue where you didn't um like you like just basically weren't bidding enough? And then the other variable that also comes up is as you take on debt, because like but say the hundred thousand dollar job, but you only get you know twenty-five thousand as a deposit, and then you take those draws right as the project moves forward, like floating some of those labor expenses, payroll uh materials, um, and essentially your cost to do the job is more because the interest you're paying for the debt to float that. So that was a lot all at once, but just trying to break down the real practical like what was the main route of uh there could be multiple of like the debt pile building.

SPEAKER_01 14:43

Yeah, I mean there's so many of them. Like I like I mentioned earlier, super early on in the business. I'm like, man, I know I know I want to grow this thing. Um, you know, I gotta I gotta do some marketing, I get jobs rolling in. I'm gonna put it on the credit card. Um and I'm gonna pay it off because I'm gonna get so much so much work from it. And we we did get so much work from it, but um, you know, then then it's like, well, I got this this profit now. Now I can get a new P Sprayer or I can get a new tool trailer, and then you don't pay the credit card. I say you, Kobe. This is what like you know, you can you can you can leverage debt in a smart way, especially if you get into remodeling. Like you said, um, it's super common for you know, remodeling or bigger contracting companies to have a line of credit because when you're doing a draw schedule, like, hey, I'm not getting paid from this project until framing on this home edition is done. You know, if that takes a month and I've got bi-weekly payroll, pay and payroll every two weeks, you know, where's the money coming from in the meantime? And and so sometimes, you know, line of credit can be a good tool to kind of float that for for a couple weeks if you're super on top of your numbers and super disciplined with it, which I was was not. Um, so I took on a bunch of small debts early, um, you know, and they're accruing interest and it kind of stacks on top of itself. Um hired too quickly. So instead of spending more time, you know, training employees and trying to make them more efficient and better at their jobs, so we can actually hit our gross profit targets and you know our timeline targets and things like that. It's like, oh, we're not getting stuff done as quick. We need to hire more people, and then payroll goes up. Um, you're making less gross profit per project. I mean, there's there's so there's so many things that that played a role in this. Pricing was a huge one early on. Um, we fixed it in the last year, but you know, you you you've gotta be very diligent about your pricing. Um, and I spent way too much time you know, pricing to land a project instead of pricing to on a profit. Um so that that was that that was a huge thing. Pricing is pricing is massive, but frankly, if I was making more profit, I would have found a way to spend that money anyways, and and called it reinvesting in the business. So if I had to distill it down to one thing of like what went wrong, it would be Kobe's ego and trying to grow the biggest business that I can and have the most trucks and crews on the road, yeah. Biggest projects and um, you know, trying to look as good as I can, which I think we did look with.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

I thought you looked good, man.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

I think you still look good, by the way. Thanks. Thanks. Yeah, and you know, we we had a great reputation. We always did fantastic work and our clients loved us, and we did really, really cool projects. Um, but I was I was paying way too close attention to the vanity metrics and not nearly close enough attention to you know the numbers that that actually matter. Um, so when I say that perfect example is trying to grow revenue as much as possible and tell people, oh my God, I've got eight employees. It's a real business. Um, instead of paying attention to, okay, how much money is actually left over, you know, at the end of the day, how much money are you actually making? It's really easy to make the biggest revenue number possible if you don't actually profit from.

SPEAKER_00 18:13

Yeah. Yeah, that's really wise words, man. I commend your heart of like just you know, face like just being honest of like the biggest variable is my ego wanting like more revenue, more trucks on the road. Uh a lot of business owners kind of fall into that trap, and it's a slippery slope, um, especially when you're funding a lot of stuff with debt. Um one of uh my my my business coach I've used for a long time, Michael Oaks, a Sundance coaching, very big numbers guy, and he's always told me, he said, business is a sport or it's a game, and profit is the scoreboard. Like that's that's the number at the end of the day. Um it also underscores too. I know you you sought mentorship and coaching from a variety of places. I know some good, some some bad. Um, and so a big takeaway to I at least that I have from from your experience is mentorship is so important and to seek guidance and mentorship from those who are who are doing what you want to do. But I, you know, one of my favorite coaching questions to ask is like, well, how much are you making? Like I'd be asking that to anyone I'd be hiring as a mentor, a coach, like the like the real tangible profit numbers and not just the vanity, because a lot of that stuff is can be more revenue driven. Um, so I uh thank you again for sharing kind of the the heart of that. Uh so um any other thoughts before we kind of zip backwards and we kind of go through like what all happened to get Kobe up to that kind of boiling point because there is because there is so much great stuff that you did, man. I mean, just most of it is so positive and um productive and helpful and at such a young age, man, uh it's just so impressive. But any other kind of final takeaways or thoughts as far as like the ultimately the the company going under? Yeah, probably probably too many, too many thoughts.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

Um you know, the the biggest thing I'd want anybody to take away from it is it's you know, handing up in a position like that is tough. Um that was by a long shot up to this point in my life, most difficult thing um I had to deal with. Um, you know, like laying off those employees because of mistakes I made. Um by by far, hardest thing I've ever done in my life. Um and it was because Kobe wasn't a diligent business owner paying attention to the things that actually mattered. Um you know, and a lot of it for those for those first, you know, three years or so. I mean, it was just a well the whole time. I mean, it was just a it was just a grind. Um and and owning a business is, um, but I almost you know took too much pride in that. I'm like, oh, it's supposed to be hard. And it's like, yeah, it's gonna, it's gonna be hard. Um, but it should be hard in the in in the right ways and not hard for you know four years being like, man, where's the next payroll gonna come from? You got the years in a row where you're wondering where payroll is gonna come from. Man, you gotta you gotta take a look. And the answer is not just growing your revenue numbers. You're um, you know, and I I alluded to earlier, spent a lot of time on on YouTube, and it's easy to get kind of caught up in the all the online gurus and all the stuff they're telling you. Um something I heard that stuck with me in completely the wrong way is you know, all the people that talk about using leverage to to grow your business, in the sense of using debt to to to grow your business. Um I was like, man, yeah, that's a great idea. So I'm like, yeah, that's good, that's leverage, because I heard it so many times times from too many people on the internet. Obviously, the way I did it was not the way they were talking about. Um but so you can't just take it at face value. Sounds super obvious. Um saying it out loud, but and then the other thing was you know, you gotta you gotta take risk in. business which you do business is is is risky uh but that doesn't mean you can't be again diligent and educated as you're taking risk like just because something's risky doesn't mean you should take the take the risk.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

Yeah that's great man um absolutely a business is a risk I mean that's why there is like bankruptcy as well because it's productive for the economy for people to take risks on these businesses that produce jobs and tax income and um a lot of goodness I mean it's kind of America's backbone if you will is people that are risking to open up the bagel shop open up the the construction company uh home builders etc um a couple couple of things I noted there is is you know the strain of you know year four and still like like gosh uh payroll's coming up like how long am I gonna do like is this sustainable like look at these big huge numbers and money coming in and out of the bank um I absolutely believe there is a there is that investment in the first year or two that it's a lot of elbow grease figuring things out. I would encourage anyone you know of course you need to make a living wage to pay your stuff like quick as possible like within the first year for most unless you've got some cash and are planning for you know a longer kind of timeline. But profit is a muscle and the more you work it the better you get at it. That was from uh Mike Mikalowitz the uh profit first if you if anyone listening has not read the book Profit First they actually have one Profit First for contractors that's tailored for contracting companies I have not read that one um but he talks about profit is something that it's it takes work to take it from your business and that's where the profit first system is important. But it just shines a light on that like you really got to be working to be profitable as soon as possible and so you can take care of yourself, your family, alleviate that mental stress, that burden, not build up debt which is you know expensive, you know, that interest expense when you don't need to have it is very expensive on the bottom line. And so profit must come sooner than later. So that's an encouragement I have to all of our listeners uh even if you've got this growth potential top line be honest about your profit and what would bring a smile on your wife's face or your family's face or your face um that you could feel that that security if you will at least to a minimal level uh where you're not stressing like crazy of taking on debt to fund payroll that is not good. Um the other note I have is family support. Um you know you are engaged uh Kobe we're filming this March of 2026 so if it's past November uh congratulations to Kobe because he'll be a married man uh to uh his fiancee who's been such an amazing support so uh it underscores the amount of support you have to man uh being a young man going through uh a more difficult situation than most will go through in their entire life you obviously have done a lot of work on yourself and your own heart to um you know overcome the burdens and the battles of going through something like that. And then also the the family and friends surrounding you is just incredible. And obviously I get a little closer peek into that um which is it's just an amazing thing. So those are a couple takeaways I heard from you know what you just said there problem must come sooner and later and like your family the people around you as that stress and that that that kind of problems build up they will spill over um and so you need their support and and it's kind of like this two-way street of of doing the work you need to do to support them and also taking that support from them to keep keep the shit moving forward.

SPEAKER_01 25:50

Yeah yeah absolutely um yeah you said a lot of super super important stuff there but prop profit obviously most important thing arguably in a business um you know and a lot of it again was was me kind of gaslighting myself and being like man I'm early 20s you know I'm at time single I don't have a family like my expenses are low I'll sleep in my truck if I have to because I'm reinvesting in the business and that's why profit's so low not not not what it is. Reinvesting in the business should come from the net profit of the business after the owner has been paid. That's what reinvesting in a business actually should look like um and the and the whole thing helped me kind of reframe you know my whole per perspective on on on life I guess because again at the time you know young kid trying to build a business and trying to be you know ultra successful and um you know again ego getting in the way of things um just having that like grindset mentality like this is the most important thing and I'll do anything to sacrifice for this business I'm just gonna be as big as possible. And then it all blows up in your face and you kind of realize okay that's not the most important thing. Yeah. And I and I told Jason this but um you know when I made the decision to close the business and things started blowing up in my face I went I you know went to Margot my fiance we were engaged for you know a a few months at this point and I was like hey here's here's the situation this is really bad right like we're probably gonna go bankrupt this is gonna get shut down I I don't know what this is gonna look like but you didn't sign up for this like you didn't think that this is what we were signing up for you thought oh Kobe's a successful business owner and you're gonna take care of me and everything and I was like you didn't sign up for this so you know you you if you want to nobody would blame you for for leaving um and she didn't bat an eye and she said it's my turn I got it and so she you know towards the end there she really carried me through and then made me realize what's what's really important.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

That's awesome man. Thanks for sharing that shout out to Margot what a what a wonderful woman um to have behind you. One one note I had is in investing in the business from profit. I'm personally a big advocate of that as well uh obviously there's plenty of internet and business people that would uh that that would go against that. Um and why I'm for is that I think investing in the business growing the business from profit after you pay yourself is most practical and and realistic for most people. I think 75 to maybe 90% of business owners are not going to be able to use debt productively to have it be a positive ROI right I think most debt is is people cannot use debt very well um and it's no fault to them. It it's a tricky weird thing and if you don't know what you're doing it can create a really slippery slope. Actually I used to work in banking it was my career before it ate my soul and I started uh you know marketing um and I uh when I was in college I uh I worked as a teller accounts person and we'd have these credit card promotions of you know if you get so many credit card applications you get all this you know incentive$20 here and there's competitions and I told my manager straight up I was like I'm not gonna like I'm not gonna push credit cards on people because I see the the not the evil but just the the bad things. I see it all the time because we pull up their accounts and you can see someone's debt and how they cannot healthily use a credit card. They cannot healthily take out a line of credit or a home equity loan. So I'm an advocate for investing in your business from profit from the standpoint of it's best for most people and it assures your kind of support for yourself and your family and that that kind of healthy mind to at least you don't have that financial burden which can really wreak havoc on someone's mindset um on their decision making. So um wise words there in my opinion investing in the business from profit uh it's always what I tell people when you're going to hire somebody do it from profit don't take a pay cut your your family's not going to appreciate that unless it's agreed upon there's a plan for it.

SPEAKER_01 30:19

Yeah that's very very well said um you also have to have a clear understanding of what an actual investment in the business is of the putting fuel in your truck is not an investment in the business. It's a business expense right it's part of your I would I would classify it as overhead um so in you know knowing what an investment actually actually looks like like maybe an investment is you know a a a training for one of your your employees um that could be an investment in the business a good website could be an investment in your business long term um but you you gotta you gotta understand what you when when you're actually investing in the business to to grow the business or make the business more healthy or when it's just a business expense like me taking on debt or using a line of credit to pay payroll is not investing in the business that's oh crap something's wrong with the finances of the business yeah that needs to be fixed. You mean it's not just a write-off right yeah that's what uh we always joke about my wife always jokes like can't can't we just write that off as like the you know don't worry about it kind of thing uh it's just a write off it's it's alarming and and maybe it's less people than I hope it's less people than I think but I had an employee early on and he kept saying oh can't you just write that off and he I I dug into it dug into it a little bit with him and I was like what what are you talking about? And he thought that if you owned a business and you wrote something off the government meant the government paid you back for the thing that you bought. So you bought a new tool and you wrote the whole IRS would send you a check to pay you back for the tool I don't I hope that's not the majority I know it's not the majority of people but yeah it's good to have a CPA uh at least once a year, even when you're early on uh go talk to a local CPA.

SPEAKER_00 32:20

Um but yeah don't be loose with don't be a loose canon with expenses and just kind of tell yourself internally like oh it's gonna come back to me I'm gonna be profitable next year. I'm gonna, you know, like it's just it's a slippery slope. I've you know I've been in the entrepreneurial communities for almost 10 years and uh usually the people that are saying like oh well in a couple years we're gonna be so dang profitable and that's when I'll take my payout they're still saying that uh and it kind of breaks my heart um it it definitely does break my heart because people that make the risk and build something great built something really great man really did um they deserve to profit from that but it it does take some diligence and understanding the financial side so um yeah so thanks for kind of sharing all that Kobe um love your heart man and that's how uh you know for our listeners how Kobe's a co-host on the podcast he's an amazing team member at AM Marketing Pros your first contact if you do uh start to work with us um or reach out to talk to us um you know we've been working together for like four years I remember originally talking to you in that winter time and uh just uh a young man I was always rooting for and just a great spirit great uh always positive even in the midst of trials um uh just someone I was really trying to get after it and build something special and so um when all this was happening um you know Kobe I really appreciate you letting me know um what the situation was and I was trying to you know we were trying to see if I if I could help at all with anything with digging out of the hole um but at the end of it you know you mentioned to me like I'm just I'm applying for you know acquisition.com jobs like sales sales roles jobs and my my business coach been telling me for quite a long time like we need to look for someone for the sales marketing like uh my more of a senior strategist that um can fill a lot of roles I'm doing and the stars aligned and so December of 2025 um Kobe started with us and so it was all birthed from you know you being an awesome client and someone that is special to me and I was kept up with and um you know even even though there's tons of learning experiences and you know the tough time with that um I'm grateful for kind of our relationship now and what we get to do together. So uh hopefully that kind of ties up like how the heck is is Kobe here? Uh I am personally super grateful man and especially for your heart to share this to our audience and anyone listening um it's it's a great story that is way more common than one would think.

SPEAKER_01 34:52

Yeah yeah lots of lots and lots of of guard lessons learned so and be ashamed to not uh to not to not share those things those lessons with people yeah absolutely so um now that we got through uh like the the kind of the end the end game there for for rust belt remodeling maybe not the end game as planned but that's how the game ended um let's let's jump back it let's let's jump back to the start man so um like uh one question i had is you it went rust belt remodeling if i recall correctly was it rust belt remodeling and handyman services and then you dropped the handyman um when did you get your general contracting license because you instantly jumped into the you know you you I remember early on you were really focused on those remodeling projects um so uh how would you respond to that one yeah so when we we started our the original name was was Rust Belt Services um which does not do a good job of telling people what you actually do right like what is what is Rust Belt Services so um you know after after doing a bunch of handyman projects and I was you know I was actually being I was I was paying myself I think I think the most I paid myself um was the the second year I was in business when we were really focusing on you know the smaller handyman projects it was me and kid I graduated high school with um working together and we were we were doing a bunch of work for investors still at that time real estate investors and so we started doing some you know some kitchen remodels and bathroom remodels for some of these flip houses and that sort of thing. So one I I liked the the larger remodel projects a little bit better than the the smaller stuff. I found it easier um as far as scheduling and stuff goes because you need you need less volume for for remodels um because you might be on a project for you know a week or two or three at a time um versus kind of in and out in a few hours on handyman type projects and again Kobe's ego um the the bigger remodel projects they were sexier there's a bigger ticket price there's a bigger number attached to it um makes you feel good and so I was like man I want to do I want to do remodels um so I ended up getting Michigan residential builder's license because we're Toledo Ohio is is right on the border between you know Michigan and Ohio um so we jump between both states Ohio doesn't have a state contractor's license Michigan does so I got the Michigan one um changed the name to Rothbell Remodeling we kind of changed everything on the website Jason said are you sure you don't want to you know be Ross Bell handyman handyman jobs are you know easier to get on Google all of the reasons which if you want to hear more I'll tell you all about it on a strategy session.

SPEAKER_00 37:46

So we've got another episode releasing if it's not out yet um we break down in detail the pros and cons of handyman remodeling projects and also talk about if you're a handyman you want to add remodeling what are you going to consider there and if you're a remodeler looking at handyman what's there to consider there. So we uncovered and unpacked all the variables there because there are a lot to unpack and there is not one that's right for everybody because it does come down to preference but check out that episode for the full uh I guess synopsis uh takeaways of the differences there. Totally totally yeah so started focusing on remodeling projects um we still did handyman stuff and then I think every few months I would send you or Lauren an email and be like hey can you take this handyman service off the website to just remodeling um and I mean we were we were busy having you know once once we got the website online we're getting some traction we were doing some Facebook stuff on our own um you know networking with with other contractors and that sort of thing like lack of work was was never the issue in in the business we had plenty of work plenty of leads the issue was you know all the things I mentioned earlier um so again transition to to focusing on uh on some of these bigger uh remodel projects cool um so let's dig into more of like um like let's talk about marketing um like yes we we work together and produce a lot and it's funny because our marketing uh gal shout out to Lee um like Kobe actually filmed a testimonial video for us like you know it's been like six months of working together uh all the jobs coming in like booked more in three or four months than you did all the previous year and you know it just and so she's like wait I recognize this Kobe this Kobe guy because she used that video for our marketing um so I'd love to talk about marketing a bit how did you how those leads were generated and then transitioning maybe to like how how you were closing those but it's also a great um it's a great takeaway man that you have there of of it's like getting leads is typically not the problem for most uh businesses it's it's closing them and and closing them in a profitable way like with correct pricing um so that your cash flow is positive um so I I think that's a great takeaway too it's not just about leads there's so much more in a business that um as we as we just learned the top line means nothing um the amount of money that's coming in means nothing compared to what's actually coming out the bottom of it in profit um so like let's talk about your marketing journey um so initially getting out there post YouTube like oh I can do handy mail remodeling stuff that sounds cool work in the Facebook groups real estate investment group that's really sharp um also a good variable too of like they became a little more price price conscious because they're on a margin too with their real estate investing um what did your marketing journey look like post uh the kind of initial hustle and almost verifying like wow I like this I can do this I can make money from this what was that marketing journey look like through the course of Rust Belt?

SPEAKER_01 40:50

Yeah so so again I already talked about at the beginning you know the Facebook stuff but I kept that up for for a good while um just periodically posting you know before and afters or whatever and in in Facebook groups um what is periodically sorry to interrupt uh because I want to hear the consistency and like all that is so important. Early on it was um I would do Monday Wednesday Friday I and I would post in different groups on Facebook uh on those days because a lot of times if you're I mean if you're spamming those groups the admins or moderators will go boot you out of there. And you got to check out the rules um a lot of times the rules in the groups will say no advertising um so you got to be diligent about that. But so early on I was posting Monday Wednesday Friday um later on I would do it like once a week. And what worked well is I would post a a picture of myself or a picture of recent work that we did. And I would say you know hey I'm Kobe I own this business this is the type of stuff we can help with if you know peep you need a hand with anything give us a call um super simple but it but it worked well um and then you know once we got the website up we started getting leads from from from that um that was pretty consistent um and we didn't do a a ton for really the next year or so um you know outside of that and kind of the Facebook groups I tried next door didn't have any luck with next door in our area I never did the thumbtack or or Angie's leads um and that was based on I would have jumped on that but I was checking out the handyman journey Facebook group and everybody's like stay away from Angie's list thankful that I did um and then and then later on kind of started expanding um B and I was a was a good tool um it was a good group uh that helped me get a lot of business to business relationships uh in the in the B and I group not so much marketing for the business but I found my CPA in the in in the B and I group things like that um you know the trucks were um we had lettering we didn't do full wraps on the trucks um we did yard signs which yard signs were were pretty effective we got the nice like metal real estate style signs with like the LED solar lights on them because when we were doing remodels oh we'd be there for you know a month at a time sometimes um and so it wasn't a pain in the butt to move the signs around so much it'd be expensive to get enough nice metal real estate signs for for getting me at work jumping around as much as you do um so even still just having one like nice one like if I if it were me I'd get a nice big one and I would be like hey Mr.

SPEAKER_00 43:30

Customer I'm gonna be here three hours can I keep this like in the front it really helps my business and like I'd love doing this work. And they'd mostly like yeah sure boom and then just yank it out after every job. So anyway just a just a thought there I wanted to share for inspiration for anyone.

SPEAKER_01 43:45

Yeah and that's exact exactly what we did. We'd always ask if we could stick it in their yard um we would just take it out when we're done with the job because again we'd be there for several weeks at a time typically for the remodels but I just got the the biggest nice metal frame um like a real estate sign And then they had the solar LED lights, they'd light up nice at night and they they looked awesome. That's sweet. And so, you know, people are walking their dogs and they're walking past the sign. So, you know, just trying to be in front of people in as many ways and places as possible so they get, you know, used to see you kind of helps build build that trust. Um, another tactic that that worked was I printed out some some door hangers, but we didn't go door to door and you know leave these door hangers um on on people's front doorsteps. It said something like, I could probably find one, but it said something like like pardon the dust, we're we're working next door, here's our phone number, um, you know, if we're in the way or something. And so again, we're there for a while, several weeks at a time. So I would have whoever the crew leader was would go the day we started the project, knocked on the two doors to the left and right, and said, you know, hey, I'm Sam with Rust Belt Remodeling. We're working over at Joe's house. Um, we're gonna be here for a few weeks. If our trucks are in the way or, you know, we're bothering you at all. Give us a call. Here's our phone number and leave them with the thing. And so we got several calls from people like, oh, you just did Joe's thing. Can you come give us a quote on that? Um because you know, people don't feel like they're being sold. You're giving them your info, you're making good first impression. Yep. Um, and you're just saying, hey, if we're in the way, let me know. So that was a pretty effective strategy, and it was super cheap to get a bunch of door hangers, and it would take you know, the the the crew leader five minutes, you know, at the start of a project to to go do that. Um, we did uh everydoor direct mail. We only did that once, so we sent out I think it was 1,500 uh postcards. So if people don't know what everydoor direct mail is, you get postcards printed out and they print the prepaid stamps directly on the postcards. This is through the postal service.

unknown 45:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 45:50

Postal service doesn't print the cards, you have to go through a some sort of service. So we had a local lady that helped us with it. So you get the cards printed out, it's prepaid postage from the post office. Um, then you you go on their website and you pick what mail routes you want to deliver these postcards to. So you can you can hit it's not even by zip code necessarily, it's by you know, each mail truck gets a bin of your postcards, and they put in every single mailbox on that on that mail route. So it's a good way to get a lot more targeted um with postcards. So you can be like, oh, this is a good neighborhood. I really want to get into. Um I'm gonna actually see the route on when you go to set that up. Yeah, yeah. On their website, you see you see the map and you can click around and it shows the whole the whole mail route on there. Um and you can even you can search by demographic, average, you know, house price. Um, it's a pretty cool tool.

SPEAKER_00 46:44

We are gonna create a little free training or something on that. So um if you're listening and want to know, give it a search or or reach out to Handy Man Marketing Pros. Uh, we'll see if we can get that drummed up here this next month or two. That'd be really powerful and helpful for everybody.

SPEAKER_01 47:00

Totally, totally. And we only did that once. Um, I think I think we spent about two grand on it for like 1,500 postcards. I think the printing the postcards is a little bit more expensive than it should have been in my case, but it's with the post office itself for the postage and for them to put them in every mailbox, it's like 27 cents per door, something like that. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 47:20

Um, it's more that could be done definitely cheaper uh if someone wanted to, but still, I'm you have like your ROI on it, right? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:29

So we we landed eight or nine thousand dollars in um in revenue from from those those postcards. Um, but it's it's a really it's a long-term play. Like you want to be hitting the same mailboxes a few times throughout the year that omnipresence marketing. Um so people leave the postcard laying around, they see it again. Um so doing a you know a one-time thing probably wasn't as effective as it would have been if I would have hit those same houses a couple times throughout the year. Um and we did that in our last year in business. So frankly, we didn't we weren't around long enough to really, really see see it through. Um, but just that one that one time we did it, I mean we we landed eight, like I said, it was eight or nine thousand and and sold projects um from from that one drop. Um, and the one client in particular said, Man, we saw the home edition you were doing over on Smith Road. We saw your yard sign, and then uh we were at Kroger and saw the truck driving by. And so we get we got your postcard, and we're like, all right, we needed this stuff done. Yeah. So I thought that was that was good feedback they gave me.

SPEAKER_00 48:39

Yeah, perfect example of like omnipresence. Um, and and also definitely anyone listening, anyone doing EDDM, everyday direct mail, I'd advise it a quarterly or bi-annual. Um, because that that return you got, even though it's positive, um, you know, depending on margin and stuff, it was probably a little tight um that one time. But when it's done repeated, uh the ROI just continues to go up and you know, you just touch people more and more. And especially when you got, you know, good Google presence, good SEO, nice website. You got the signs around town, you got the trucks driving, the lettered trucks. Uh, hopefully our listeners understand this omnipresence um builds this trust inherently, this comfort of reaching out, um, and then that neighborhood touch too, as far as like there is a powerful neighborhood effect when someone's working on a neighbor's home, um, what landscaping, remodeling. Uh, there was like a land clearer actually uh kind of nearby us, and like there's this instant, like, ooh, they're working on my neighbor? This trust that's instantly built. And then when you add in all these other variables, uh, it goes a long way for a really high ROI marketing strategy. Yep, definitely. What else were you guys doing? That worked great.

SPEAKER_01 49:53

So the only other real thing we're doing was Facebook. Um, we we I tried meta ads briefly with not any real success. We were getting cheap leads, um, but they were very poor quality leads. And you say this all the time, Jason, but Facebook's an entertainment platform. So somebody's just scrolling, they come across your ad, then they might be like, Oh yeah, we could get a quote for for this or that, right? Which is stark contrast from somebody who's searching handyman near me on Google because they need something done and they're looking for somebody instead of you just interjecting yourself in their, you know, their binge scrolling, right? Yeah. Didn't have a lot of uh good luck with that. Um ended up bringing on um somebody full time to help us with content creation, um, posting on Facebook and um, you know, kind of answering the phones, helping with some of the the back end admin stuff of the business. And she would follow us around, Paula Cruz around every day and record. She would just, you know, behind the scenes on the job sites, record, you know, do the final walkthrough videos of the of these projects and that sort of thing. And um, we would put that up on on Facebook, and that was effective for building trust with potential clients, which is really important if you're doing larger remodel projects, right? If somebody's looking to get their their kitchen remodeled for$50,000, they're gonna do some research before they, you know, sign on the dotted line, right? And so they're looking at your website, they're looking on, you know, BBB, they're looking at reviews, and they're looking at Facebook. Um, and we get a lot of feedback from people who are like, oh, we've been following you on Facebook for years, you love seeing your projects, and you know, now we're ready for our kitchen. So it's a it's a long-term play. Like, if you start posting on Facebook, you're like your phone's not gonna ring off the hook the next the next day. It's a it's a trust building tool. It's staying in front of the community. Um wouldn't recommend it depends on revenue and numbers, every but every business is different, but bringing on somebody full-time like I did to do social media and then actually putting a bunch of real focus into it when you're like we're not trying to build a following on on YouTube, it's not a revenue stream, another not wise decision I made. But you know, just uh putting a clip or a short video of you doing a walkthrough on a project or something once a week on Facebook, it's kind of low-hanging fruit to to build some of that trust. Um, and then the last thing that was pretty effective for marketing was going to trade shows and and home shows and that sort of thing, setting up a booth. We had one in in my hometown, small town in in Michigan, and it was a trade show. So there was we were the only we were the only contractor there. It was all types of businesses, real estate agents, um, I mean everybody. We were the only contractor there, and I was from the town. Um, you know, a lot of people recognize me, you know, just from just from being, you know, be being around there growing up there. You had teachers, you just graduated. You were just graduated a few years ago, young man. And it was and it was at the the high school I graduated from in the gymnasium. But it was it was a big, big turnout. So again, it was a small town, the the population of the town's like 35,000 people, but it seemed like everybody showed up to this this trade show. Yeah. Um so we got a ton of we got a ton of work from from from that. Um we didn't have as much luck going to it was still effective, didn't have as much luck going to the like the home show in Toledo because there's you know everybody there is also a contractor. You're sitting in a booth directly next to your competition. Um again, not saying it's it's not effective, but you gotta put in a lot more work to win people over when there's a hundred other booths in there that do the same thing that you do. Yeah. That was a lot of stuff, but that was pretty much the whole picture of what our marketing was.

SPEAKER_00 53:53

Yeah, that's great stuff, man. Um, I've got a couple notes. Um, for Facebook ads, uh it's it's definitely for any smaller shop, um, it's it's best for brand awareness, maybe boosting a post for you know, that's personal. You gotta use personal photos. It's gotta look like it's part of someone's feed. It's those are the most effective. You know, just doing some boost posts, don't overthink it. Uh, for you know,$50,$100 a month, you know, to spend, that's good for brand awareness, really cheap eyeballs. But any like robust paid ads, Facebook uh program, you need a really good sales system because the lead volume is very high, but the lead volume, the lead quality is extremely low. Uh you the folks that are kind of most people are that would see a remodeling contractor um or handyman business, if you will, um, and say, oh yeah, I need some things done. And then they're gonna see$125,$150 minimum or whatever. Oh, yeah, our low bathroom remodels are$12,000. It's like, oh, I thought it was gonna be like three or five. Um that's kind of that's kind of the lot of the people that are gonna be reaching out. And so it does require a lot of automation and systems to be able to profitably run. Um, super stoked. This year, uh, we'll be launching our Facebook ads program uh with the anime marketing pros. Um so stoked to bring that up, but it's really investing anything more than you know 100, 200 bucks a month for most and most markets that have premium pricing, that's a good variable. If you don't have premium pricing, it's probably gonna be more effective. Uh, but if you're top of the market pricing ads, it's a really uh low quality leads. If you don't have a system to field those out to filter those, then you're gonna be spending a lot of time uh with folks that are never gonna pay you a dime. Um so that's just my quick note on Facebook ads and what you're doing with the community groups. Very low-hanging fruit for anyone listening. Um a question about the home show, trade show. What is the difference there? What home show, trade show? I think of trade show, I think of like, you know, um yeah, all the contract like the home builders association networking more for trades. So how how is a trade show that families would go to and stuff, the ideal clients, different from the home show?

SPEAKER_01 56:02

Yeah, so the the the home show was um excuse me, it was all contractors. So it was home builders, general contractors, handyman companies, um, you know, tree trimmers, so people from trades. And then, you know, I'm sure that the terminology changes based on you know the areas to you, but yeah, it is gonna be different by market for sure. And so the the trade show that we had a lot of success with, that was any type of business, but they had to be located in that town, which I I was. I grew I grew up there, so we were able to to get in there. Um, and so that's why there wasn't a ton of competition. Um, because you know, most of the mostly contractors had, you know, had their their offices or whatever in, you know, Toledo, the bigger neighboring city. Um, but it was real estate agents. It was there was there's a couple of pressure washing companies there. Um, there's chiropractors, and you know, basically anybody who owned a business in that town was was there and set up a booth, and people just walked around and shopped for free knickknacks and frisbees and stretch balls, pens, all that kind of stuff. And we always everybody just kind of passes stuff out. Yeah. Um what we did is we uh I I put together a toolbox. We went to Home Depot, we spent like a hundred bucks. We put together a toolbox with some hand tools and things in it, and then we did a raffle. And so if people put their name into our CRM, they filled out a form, they get entered into the raffle. Um, and then we would obviously we retargeted them with you know our emails and and that sort of thing. And you know, some random person we just drew a random name and they they want a cool tool tool.

SPEAKER_00 57:42

So that's what worked. Cool. Yeah, it's probably gonna vary by market. My encouragement for anyone listening is just go and see. Um something that I I talked about in a recent coaching called was um being an authentic member of your community and a promoter of your community is like this undercurrent of a successful business, a successful local home service. You're you're gonna be at these home trade shows because you're part of the community. You uh if you might be at the farmer's market, a lot of farmers market allow, you know, now kind of not just food and produce, but like just uh a local town square for any business. Let's set up a little booth and you got to pay a little bit of money, but just go and be involved, be in your chamber, um, you know, sponsor a little local, you know, your kids' local team uh for T Ball or whatever it is. But this authentic membership of community is a common denominator of our successful clients that that we've worked with over the years. Uh so I can't help but mention that. And it goes beyond SEO websites, online, Facebook ads, email marketing, all the fancy dancy stuff that one could do. The undercurrent of that is very, very simple. And it's just being an authentic member of your community that really just cares about folks and and wants to be involved. So um home and trade shows, just go and see what yours are gonna be like because it's gonna be different by market.

unknown 59:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:01

All right. A few more big topics I want to hit on here. I know we've been chatting for a while. Um we're gonna cover estimating and pricing separately. Uh, if that uh episode isn't live yet, uh do check that out. We're gonna be digging into um kind of pricing advice, how Kobe used to price his kind of takeaways from that. And also estimating goes hand in hand with pricing because if you have to profitably estimate jobs. Uh the any time involved with a lead needs to be factored in your pricing. So I don't want to go, I'm already, I'm so tempted. I love this stuff. Just so tempted to dive in. I'm more about to about to just belly flop right into it. Okay, so important. Okay, I want to talk about hiring and culture. Something that I want our audience to know is uh when Kobe broke the news, that one of the hardest things that he's done is break the news to his team members that he had to close the business. Um just that's one of the most difficult things anyone could ever do as a business owner. Um and Kobe did that. And he still had some projects that he was wrapping up because Kobe's heart, he wanted to do right by the homeowners and finish all the projects uh that that that were people paid for. Um and so when he broke the news to his team, and Kobe was already planning on doing that, you had uh uh quite a few guys at least, or a few of these employees that they took it so well, they were very supportive of you. I remember you saying it went well, like way surpass your expectation of how positive everyone took it. And then they offered and they helped on these job sites just as a favor to help you out. I think that is a testament to your character, um, uh your leadership, that people want to follow you, they're inspired by you, they want to help you in a hard time. Um, and is also a testament to the culture that you built up in Rust Belt. Um, and there's a part of me that feels like when you mentioned the, you know, hiring someone to marketing to follow you around and do the video, probably not the wisest financial investment at the time, but I can see your heart of like I want more people in on this and what what we're building here, and like you just have a heart to like be with people and have them kind of join and and um bring value in their gifts. So how what would how did you find like hire people? What went into building culture um and ultimately people that were wanting to help you in such a trying time as a favor to a friend, even though you were their boss? That is just a beautiful thing that obviously you have such incredible leadership, culture, and hiring. Um, I'd love to hear your thoughts on on how you did that in Rust Belt.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:48

Yeah, and that that was hiring and and and training is exceptionally difficult. Certainly do not have all of the answers there. Um if you're in a home service business and you're trying to grow, you're trying to you know build a business that kind of runs without you, you don't want to be just an owner operator. And say just owner operator, completely cool, great way to have a lifestyle business. Oh, wish I would have done it that way. But if you're trying to grow, you're you are in a hiring or recruiting and and training business because the guys out doing the work, they gotta know what's going on. You've got to be able to find good people and you have to be able to train them. Um and so it is kind of a mix of of where everybody came from early on. This was silly, it worked for a little while, um, turned into a lot of hard conversations early on. But I hired a bunch of friends from from high school um to to come work with me. And and they were great people, which is why I wanted them to me. But you know, anytime you you work with somebody who's who's a a friend, especially when they're a friend before you start working together or they start working for you, it's tough on a relationship. Um, and so none of those ended up working out the way that anybody had had hope they would. Um it's always it's always difficult in my experience.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:16

I had that same experience. I don't advise hiring friends and family. Um my biggest business regret is is working with someone who I love very dearly. And um it the the relationships change when there is that business side of things. Um, some people can make it work, but most cannot. So I definitely want to point that out. Uh, I have the same experience, many others do, and I'm very passionate about that because preserving amazing relationships should come before uh most things in life. Um so anyway, not to interrupt, but go on. I had that same experience.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:48

Well, because even if you can even if you can can switch hats and you can put the friend hat on or you can put the you know the the boss hat on, that doesn't mean that they you know they can all the time. So that's where I started. Um, you know, and and they were great em employees. Um it wasn't worth losing, you know, friends over.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:09

Um so that would be a regret for you, like you wouldn't do that again with approach initial hires differently.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:15

It's yeah, I I wouldn't call it a regret. Um I don't have a ton of regrets because you learn from everything. Um I wouldn't do it. I I don't recommend it. Um I learned from it, but uh yeah, I guess that's what you would call a regret.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:32

But uh the learning opportunity is definitely more positive, Spin, but uh yeah. For me, it's a regret. I maybe I have to internally work with it more, I don't know. But uh so how about the like from there? Uh I'm sure that shifted your perspective.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:46

Yeah, so then then from there, um the next hire was he was actually uh a subcontractor, and so he was I I found him initially through B and I. He was recommended to me by um mortgage broker that was in the B and I chapter I was in. So hired Samuel as a subcontractor. He's doing a lot of our finished carpentry and trim. Um and it was just him, owner operator. Um, it wasn't really a business, he was just kind of doing it on the side. Um, and he was fantastic. And so after a few projects, I was like, man, dude, what do you think about a job? And you know, kind of worked on him for a little while, and then um he ended up stopping, you know, doing his own thing, and because he just he didn't want to deal with the headaches of trying to build and and and grow a business. Sure. So he came on board, best hire I I ever made. And as we were talking about friends, Sam and I weren't friends. We didn't know each other before we worked together, and now we become best friends that we've been years.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:48

It's interesting how that shift is uh it it's so different when you start you form a friendship while working.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:54

Yeah, it's it's it's way different. So he's still he's still my best friend um to to this day. So that worked out really well. Again, he was a he was a subcontractor, so worked on him, he came on board. Um, and then from there it was posting on Facebook, like, hey, we're hiring people, people applying and interviewing a bunch of people. Um we this is hit or miss for a lot of businesses, but I actually had pretty good luck on Indeed posting on on Indica because you can put a lot of you know filter criteria in there um to to kind of weed out some of the people that just wouldn't be a good fit.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:32

What are what are some examples there?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:35

Yeah, and so you know, we put I put on there that we drug test before we bring people on board. Um, and so that filtered out a lot of people, and some people would still apply, and then I would ask them in or tell them in the immediate we're gonna do a drug test and a background check, um, because we're gonna be working in people's houses. A lot of times we're at home, they got to be able to trust us. Um, and people would be like, ah, I can't I can't do that. So that would kind of weed people out. Um, you can filter by experience in specific schools, uh in specific um areas, experience areas. So Indeed work pretty good. Um you get a lot of trash resumes that are just not good, and you can tell pretty quickly, you know, how much effort was even put into the resume. Um and and that's where I think I think Indeed and Facebook was where the rest of the the employees came from. Oh, and actually, this is important, there's a a couple of you know local universities that have uh you know engineering and architecture colleges, obviously. And so I I received a bunch of applications from people that were looking for internships at um, you know, with a construction company for their architecture program. So it was Bowling Green State University. And for them to get an architecture degree, they have to do, you know, a summer in the construction field, actually working in the field doing construction work. Um, and so that was actually a pretty good resource in the busiest season, you know, we could get an intern just for those few months out of the year when you're the busiest. Um so that that worked well.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:16

Awesome. And at at its peak, how many W-2 and subcontractors were you working with on a you know regular basis? Yeah at Dubrix? I got off the 1099 thing pretty pretty early. So it started. I I respect you for that, by the way. Like being by the book, um, I know a lot of people don't do that. Um, and like actually, an interview we had with JR, if that episode isn't launched yet, um J.R. Crowell with Steady Home Maintenance. Shout out to JR, what a great guy. Um, a lot of his amazing technician hires are uh they were subs that they didn't want to worry about the business side of things. And so they have a commission pay structure, but W-2. So I really commend all the people out there that are taking that extra expense but doing things right by themselves um and by the employee.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:02

Yeah, and and it helps with retaining employees too, because most people one, it's illegal to pay people$10.99 if you're treating them like an employee. So you do that the right way. Um, and the employees appreciate it because they're not stressed about having that tax bill, you know, quarterly and staying on top of it and and and all of that sort of stuff. So I switched to that pretty early. Um at the at the peak, again, we had eight in-house W-2 employees. Um when I started diving into the numbers, realizing, oh crap, I've got a mess in front of me. We kind of leaned out, was like, okay, I think somebody full-time to do Facebook for us. That's not actually generating any revenue. Um, kind of kind of slimming things down like that. Um, we we whittled it down to five in-house that were so it was two crews of two guys in the field, um, and then one project manager, supervisor that would kind of bounce around where he was needed, helping me with keeping things organized.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:03

So that would have been the optimal size, like if you had to go back in time, um, like as far as your team size, uh, like at the peak of, you know, like like you mentioned, estimate requests were coming in, bids were getting approved, deposits were falling in, a project manager and two two-man crews seen is that like kind of the optimal labor like efficiency at your last kind of run rates as far as your revenue that you're bringing in.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:29

Yeah, it started working.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:30

Very profitable.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:31

It started working pretty good in that last in that last year. Again, hole was already too deep, but we ended up working up to an average gross profit of like 42% um past year. Yeah. And then when you take, you know, the the the debt burden, you know, monthly servicing and everything, that was not there. Um, I would I would say that two crews of two for remodeling business is like right on the edge of like, man, I really need a project manager to help me manage this stuff. And it's not like quite a full-time job yet. It's kind of expensive to pay a you know a salaried guy to to manage this stuff for for two crews. Yeah. Um, so unless you had him do it handyman stuff. Right. And that's that's he he he it ended up helping a ton because he could go do warranty stuff and kind of jump around and um it he helped a ton. The the the finance part of it, two two crews going and him managing the two crews and and projects. It was just it was right on that edge of like, man, I need this person to do this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:43

You know, gotcha. Um, so last uh last topic I've got here, and then I I want to hear too. I I think a really fun thing to explore is gonna be like if you had to go back and do it all again, like kind of were the main takeaways of what you do differently. But before we jump into that, as kind of a I'll wrap up is um what were what was the most important kind of good, effective, efficient technology that you were using? Um like obviously we did like website SEO ads, like kind of the outsource stuff, but like as a business owner, um, you know, as far as CRMs, things like that, like what what kind of technology were you leveraging to make your life easier and the business run better?

SPEAKER_01 1:12:23

Yeah. So one of the first things I did, if not the first thing, as soon as I, you know, got an LLC and and everything, which I I set all of that stuff up and and got insurance super, super early. Um, I got QuickBooks Online. Um, and so we were using that for the you know managing managing our books. I was doing it manually at the time. I didn't have a bookkeeper. So QuickBooks Online, you have to have an accounting software. I don't care what CRM you're using or if you're using one at all. If you're taking money from clients to do work, you have to have some. I mean, there's a bunch out there. QuickBooks is almost a monopoly that's kind of like the one.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:04

It is because all CPAs, bookkeepers, uh, it's it is a monopoly, absolutely, but it's kind of like why you you just should get QuickBooks online.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:12

Yeah, there's zero and and whatever else. Yeah, QuickBooks, you you have to. Um, so I started there pretty quickly. I got um Marcate. Everybody said the different, I don't know if it's actually Marcate or Market or what it is, but um used that for a good while and it worked. It worked well because it was affordable. Um, so that's you know, sending sending estimates and collect payments. So that that was the kind of initial tech stack for probably the first two years. Um, and that was pretty much all I all I really needed. Um, ended up getting job tread, switching CRMs to job tread from from Markate when we started getting more employees in some of these bigger projects because it's got way more tools for um efficiently quoting projects, especially if they're larger projects. You can build out your catalog in there. Um, you can do job costing in there super effectively. So job costing is going back after the fact and taking a look at okay, this is what I quoted it at, this is what I allocated for labor and material. What did I actually spend on labor and material, see how much money I actually made? Super, super, super important. We'll talk about that when we get into pricing, but on the other podcast. Um JobTread was great. And I could the the main selling factor for Job Tread was my employees would clock into Job Tread, and they would clock into an individual project and an individual task on the project. So I could go back and see, okay, I allocated 20 man hours to install cabinets on this kitchen. It actually took 24 man hours, uh so I could you know adjust my my future future budgets. So Jobtread we tried a bunch of other stuff. We were using um render for a while, I think it's called. It's it's a software where we used it for quoting. You go into a project and you if you have an iPhone, um, iPhone Pro, there's a LIDAR scanner on there, which is like invisible lasers, I guess. I don't know, but you can scan a room and it gives you the dimensions of the room. You it's like you're taking a video and you walk around and point your phone around at the at the walls and it gives you the dimensions of the room super quickly. Um for a full house, they say it's accurate to within an inch, and that's not true. It was plenty accurate enough for for quoting. And then that would that synced with uh job tread. There was a native integration, so that would populate right into a quote based on the dimensions, so I could give a quote super, super quickly. Um, um I mean I used I used AI, but that was most I was mostly using it sort of like uh like a chat bot for for myself, like problem solving, um you know, helping with taking a look at her estimates and proofreading stuff, that sort of thing. Um then towards the end, I built a um phone answering agent. Um so I used well, I forget the exact one. I think it was retail AI, and I built a phone answering bot and I synced it up with job tread in my calendar. And so if somebody called the business number and it was either after hours or I just somebody couldn't get to the phone instead of going to voicemail, Chloe, this AI agent, would answer the phone, sounded pretty close to a to a real person and could answer any questions. It was trained on, you know, basically everything about the business and it could actually schedule estimates. If somebody's like, Oh, I'm looking to schedule an estimate, it could say, Oh, well, when are you looking to get it done? Um, or when are you looking to when are you available? You could actually go get their information, put it in job tread, and put the appointment on on my calendar. Um, so it's just a good way to catch those leads. People still want to talk to a real person a lot of the time, but um, if you're the only one answering the the phone and you've got off hours, obviously you're spending time with the family and you can't pick up. It's a good way to capture some of those leads that would have just gone to the next person on Google because they might pick up.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:09

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Um, thanks for breaking that down, man. And uh, we're working on um our own kind of uh phone answering service for our clients, handyman marketing pros. Um, our the biggest pain point for most contracting handyman businesses is answering the phone. Um, you know, you're hanging drywall, you're painting the room, you're on a project, whatever it is, and and money is calling. And uh there's a lot of great leads that, you know, they they might wait a while to for you to get back to them. Are you gonna get back to them? You know, that's another question. There's also a lot of great leads that they're going on to the next person on Google. Uh, they're calling someone else. And if they answer and they get a quote or an estimate scheduled and they're ready to rock and roll pretty quick, you've quite literally, you know, a lot of businesses are just bleeding hundreds, thousands of dollars in in revenue every single day. So um excited to be able to solve that problem this year. Uh for folks that work with us. Um let's transition, man. The last kind of big question that we'll cover um for an amazing interview, man. Thank you again for your heart and just being so transparent, Kobe. Uh, you're the man. Um what like in Kobe's fairy tale dreamland? If you had to go back and change things and do Rust Belt differently, um, whether it's you know, the you know, doing more handyman or just totally rechanging what you would have done for the remodeling side, like in that fairy tale perfect world, like what what would have been major things that you would have done differently? So many things.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:43

Um The most important thing that I did not do soon enough that probably would have made the biggest difference is actually uh paying attention to the numbers of the business. Um and so what I mean by that probably the most important thing is paying attention to uh job costing projects, knowing what you're actually making for a project, so you can adjust your pricing in the future. Um and making sure that you're keeping track of profit and not just revenue of the business. So I had I had a bookkeeper that I hired early on, and so she kept her QuickBooks clean and it was all ready to go, come tax time, and that was pretty much the extent of it. I didn't meet with her frequently. She'd send me questions if she had them, but she would send me the you know monthly report. I'm like, cool, send my email if I need to look at it. Yeah. I wasn't actually you know paying attention to anything. I'm like, we need more projects, we need to sell stuff for more money, and then you know, it just compounds.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:46

Um it's a scary thing to open up PLs at first, like those bookkeeping reports, but I encourage everyone open those up, generate them yourself every single month. Everyone, most people, especially if they're full-time, need to be paying, you know,$100,$200 a month for bookkeeping services. It hurts at first to approach the numbers, but do it. You you can't not do it. So anyway, sorry to tangent there, but just want to highlight how important that is.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:11

Yeah, it's it's super, super important. You gotta be paying attention to whatever you look at it, you gotta be honest with yourself. Like you didn't make any money that month. It's like because there's a problem. You can't look at be like, I'll make more money next year. I'm you know, investing in the business, whatever lie you're gonna tell yourself. Like, you've got to know the actual reason why you're not making a profit. You gotta you you have to you have to solve the problem.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:34

Uh it's it's like flying a plane without looking at any maps, uh, how fast you're going, how much fuel's in the tank, you know, like you're just flying blind and just focusing on what's right in front of you. And and a lot of people choose to do that because it hurts to open the PL or open the bookkeeping. Um, so it's it's a good habit to build.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:54

Yeah, good or keep keeps you honest. The uh, I mean, you already said this earlier, and a lot of business coaches and people say this, but um revenue is for vanity and profit is for sanity.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:11

Yep. And the profit first, Mike Mikhailitz, uh shout out. Uh he'll never listen to this, but uh bank revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, and cash is king. Yep.

unknown 1:21:22

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:24

You can you you have to look at it in a PL. You've got to be paying attention to it. You can't do bankroll accounting where you're just looking at pulling out the bank account and being like, man, we got yeah, money in there, you're good to go. Because like I said, we were, I mean, when you're bringing in a hundred plus thousand dollars a month, it's like there's some cash in the bank, and then it's gone, and then the next check comes in, and so you can look at your bank account and be like, oh my god, there's 60 grand in here. We're good. Let's go buy a new truck. You have to know where the dollars are actually going. You can't spend them before the money is actually yours.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:06

Yeah. All right, so knowing your numbers, that's a big one that you would have done differently by and the option item there is have the bookkeeper and open up the PLs, maybe even plunk up some of those bigger numbers into a spreadsheet or load them up in a charge of tea, something like that, so you can have some kind of trend, if you will. Yeah. What else?

SPEAKER_01 1:22:23

It took way more time, but I started doing a 13-week cash flow forecast. Um, this was again after I too late organized, a little too little too late, um, super effective. It took me a couple hours a week to kind of get this thing, you know, caught up and updated and and dialed in, but I would project, you know, the next 13 weeks of cash flow and expenses. And we're when you're doing the remodels, I mean, we had more than that amount of work in the schedule. So we could pretty confidently say, okay, we should be done with cabinets on this project at this time. So then we'll get a check for this amount. The truck payments are due at this time. And so forecasting out and you know, assigning those dollars to the right spot ahead of time that helped uh a ton. So that that was that was a huge thing that I wish I would have started earlier. It's not something that would have made sense to do my you know, my first couple months in business. Um super helpful for for paying attention to the numbers. Um, and then the the other thing I would have done differently, it's a little bit more ethereal, but like stop comparing myself to the competitive, but the competitor businesses that have been in the game for the past 40 years and be like, we're not as good as them yet, or we're not as big as them, and they've got more trucks on the road, they've got more employees, and um just trying to put the ego aside and build a a healthy healthy business instead of the largest business possible. We need to get large, like a hundred thousand dollars a month for a general contractor that's not a big general contracting business, um, doing the type of work we were doing. But is that comparison to to everybody and letting ego get in the way and trying to grow faster than I was actually capable of? Um sometimes I I shoot myself in the foot because I get too confident. I've got a lot of ambition and confidence. I jump into something and I'm like, man, if I mess it up, I'll just I don't know, I'll figure it out and just dive in and taking risks that are that are silly.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:27

Um so it slowed down. Um I love that one, Dan. Um so at the end of the day, like y'all, everyone comes back home to their house, their family, whatever it looks like, their friends, their community, and you've got the stuff that's going on in your life. Um, I also, you know, there's a lot of years of learning, you know, especially getting plugged into professional coaching, mentorship of like, how are they there? I'm not there yet. Like, uh what is something wrong with me? Um, absolutely not. Like everyone's on their own journey. Um soak it in and freaking enjoy it uh with your community, your friends, your family, whatever you got on your plate, and just focus on your business. Um, learn from others, but uh their goals, your goals, very different, coming from very different perspectives. So um, you know, if you're taking care of your family, your community first, that's going to naturally promote whatever goals those are for growth and revenue, but not hinge to someone else's success or whatever that looks like to them. So great point. It's what most entrepreneurs really battle with um sometimes for their whole life is that comparison and um focus on your own sailing your own ship, but learning from others.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:37

And and you should you should take this as like if you're comparing yourself to another business, like man, how are they so far ahead? You might be looking at a business like mine was where it might look that way from the outside and they're about to, you know, crash and burn. Um so yeah, I would have I would have sl slowed down. Um I would have paid myself earlier. Um you know, because I kept telling myself, like I'll live on scraps for as long as it takes. Um and there's there's gonna be there's gonna be some of that when you're starting a business. Like you kind of go into it willing to make some sacrifices. Um but just from a financial and business standpoint, like especially if you're trying to build a business and like you're trying to work yourself out of a job, you want to be able to hire people to kind of take over some roles, take some hats off, and um be able to work on the business, early on, you've got to pay yourself what it would cost to replace you to make that job. So if you're working in the field and it would cost somebody 30 bucks an hour, it would cost you 30 bucks an hour to replace yourself in the field, you should be paying yourself at least at least that much.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:50

Yeah. Um the replacement cost, as you've called it. Um, if anyone listening that want to learn about pricing, uh Kobe created uh our pricing playbook. You can visit handymanmarketingpros.com, uh get that pricing kind of playbook, which will break all that down of how to price. And we're gonna have episodes talking about specifically pricing, but that replacement cost is so, so important. Um, because ultimately if your goal is to hire, uh yeah, you're gonna have to replace yourself, and there should be a cost there that's already baked in that is moved into somebody else.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:21

Yeah, and I and I didn't. I didn't I was like, well, when I hire employees, I'll get more work done, so we'll have more revenue, so we need more money left over. But if I can't afford to pay myself, how am I gonna afford to pay somebody to replace me and then eventually eventually pay pay myself? Um it it's it's kind of like the idea of re revenue is not the answer because if you do$100,000 in revenue and you make zero dollars in in in profit, and you're like, man, I need to get more work so I can pay myself more. If you scale the business five X and now you do$500,000 in rent. Revenue and cu'd multiply the profit by five, it's still zero. You get zero dollars in profit at a hundred thousand in revenue, and you five X your revenue, you're not even if you do five extra profit, again, five times zero dollars in profit is still zero dollars. You can't scale a turd. Like you gotta have a solid business. Foundation's important.

unknown 1:28:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:28

So if you do a hundred thousand in revenue, and let's say you're 25% uh you know net profit, so you made twenty-five thousand dollars in net profit at the end of the year, then if you scale that business times five, you do five hundred thousand in revenue, maybe you will make a hundred thousand net profit. But at any size of business, I don't care if it's ten thousand dollars a year, if there's not something left over, something is wrong.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:58

Yeah, I always visualize the you know, all back to the home and the foundation, and and your good homes are built on a strong foundation. You don't want any cracks, gaping holes. And in some symbolism here, uh like the story of most business owners, you know, you put in that equity, that sweat equity, that that hustle to build the foundation yourself, um, and and have a foundation that that pays you. And and then from there, you can imagine like any profit that's being generated is like this these builders that are building up this house, but it's done with profit. Like it has to be done with profit. Um, but you got to get that strong foundation and then have profit to then grow from there for most. Again, there's gonna be the super business scalar gurus that you know are the top 2%, 5% of business owners out there that know how to work the debt, um understand those systems to a T that are finicky, but when done right, it can work. But for most, uh visualizing that profit needs to be building the business. Um it's not just gonna magically appear one day.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:02

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this, Jason. But based on what I've seen and experienced, it seems like as a business grows and scales and the business gets bigger and you might be making more revenue, the net profit decreases as the business grows, the percentage of net profit. So maybe not the net profit number, but you might go from you know 40% net profit to 30% not net profit because you're hiring employee, your overhead's probably increasing as you're growing. And I think a lot of people look at it in reverse, like, okay, I'm not making any profit now, but as I grow, I'm gonna make near profit.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:40

And I that's the thing where so here's here's the quick breakdown of that is that as an owner operator, your profit margin as in percentage of revenue that is on the bottom line that you're able to take as a profit draw or invest back in the business. As an owner operator, especially when you include owner pay into net profit, which that's an easy calculation for most. So for owner operator, uh handyman, like your profit as far as take home plus profit from the business is gonna be at least 60, 80% because you don't have much overhead. Uh yeah, most of your overhead's gonna be, you know, buying tools. Uh technically it's not even buying the, you know, the equipment for the job, et cetera. So as a business grows, you're it's natural for profit margin to go from you know 60% to 40% to 30%. And they're the healthy range for contracting companies. Um I mean, you know this better than me, but anything above 10% is is pretty good. 10% is kind of that what you want to shoot for. You know, five to ten is kind of like shaky. There's just less padding, less margin for error.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:47

Um, but if you're less than 10% net, do you that's something you gotta seriously take take a look at.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:55

Yep. Gotta raise your prices uh or reduce your expenses. Uh this it's very simple. Profit's simple. You gotta, you gotta, you know, keep expenses flat while adding revenue or reduce your expenses with the same revenue um or do what you're doing faster so it frees up capacity to do more. Um but when you look at the base, the base, it's like gravity, 9.8 meters a second squared. That is that's gravity pulling us down. Just as sure as gravity, as a business scales, your margins are gonna go down. And so if you're thinking that you're gonna hire but increase the margin that you're making now is it's it's going against gravity. Um it's it's not a catch all, especially technology, automations, AI, depending on the industry. But for a construction company, it's it's a disillusion to think that. So absolutely, as a business grows, your net margin is going to be dropping. But the goal with with dropping your margin, but raising your revenue is that your revenue number is going to produce a higher profit. But you want that to be a healthy margin because that percentage is the health indicator, not the number. Because 10,000 monthly profit, well, that's not I'd take$10,000 in profit, right? What if that business did a million dollars in revenue that month? That's 1%. That is don't want to misbid something there because you're, you know, on the on the line. So that that percentage is very, very important for any scaling business. Cash flow, uh, your profit and loss, understanding when money's coming in, when money's going out. It's it's uh you gotta know your numbers or else you're just digging your own hole.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:36

You have to. And we're gonna we're gonna do another podcast on knowing your numbers because there's a lot of lot of different numbers to to know and keep a pulse on. So I'm sure we'll talk about which ones are most important and absolutely to keep an eye on it.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:52

Yeah, and that playbook that that you came up with, Kobe, that you wrote is is really brilliant. I highly recommend everyone check that out if you haven't. Um, so um back to like what you do differently, knowing your numbers, paying yourself earlier. Uh, you know, there's a few other things you kind of mentioned throughout the interview here as far as um, you know, not hiring, you know, hiring people not like your friends and family, um, you know, just being smarter about the expenses and the hiring that you're taking on. Um what other what else comes to mind as far as big takeaways that you do differently?

SPEAKER_01 1:34:23

I would not do a I would not do a general contracting, remodeling type business. Okay. Um especially the I'm just I'm super averse to the sexy projects now, the stuff that's like super custom, super nice tile, nice custom cabinets, the stuff that's got a big ticket price. Really difficult to systematize custom. Um there's nothing repeatable, everything's different, everything's everything's custom. And so pricing's way different. It's hard to learn from your numbers when every single project is so different. It's hard to train people, it's hard to hire employees. Um we didn't have any real focus. Like I say, we we focused on remodeling, but that's pretty all encumbens. Yeah, I think so. We're doing one bathroom might be, you know, all marble tile, and then one's acrylic, and then we're also doing a kitchen, and we're also doing a home addition. Um, so then you're talking about foundations and framing and you know, roofing and siding and windows and doors. I mean, everything. Um, and when you're trying to do a lot of that stuff in-house, we had a lot of subcontractors too. It gets tricky. The scheduling gets gets tricky. And just across the board, um and and this is not just just me, but general contracting and and remodeling, even even home building, profit margins are relatively low, net profit margins, um, when you compare it to revenue. So if I could do it all over again, I would have stuck with the handyman stuff. But even then, I would have I would have niche down a little bit and been pretty specific about the types of of handyman work I would and wouldn't do, um, mostly because again, consistency with pricing. And it's a lot easier to train somebody when you know you have a pretty clear focus on on what what you're doing, um, instead of it being completely different every single time, which in construction home services, everything's always going to be different. There's always surprises. But again, that'd stay away from the the custom stuff, the stuff that's the stuff that's sexy. Um yeah, not repeatable. Yeah, good example of something that's super repeatable, super profitable is um acrylic shower systems. So I don't know if I think they're nationwide, but there's like well, there's one 800 Hansons and they do acrylic shower installations. And so they go over top of your whatever existing shower system you have and they glue up these acrylic panels um in your bathroom and they do a liner in the tub, like a super simple installation. Materials are affordable. And I know that because we ended up becoming a dealer for the same supplier um for these acrylic showers. And so these are, you know, probably eight man hour installs. Like you get two guys take four or five hours to get one of these things installed, and average material cost, at least around here, is about$1,500 for these showers. 1-800 Hansons is charging$23,000 an hour area to do one of these shower installs. You need a math on eight man hours of labor and fifteen hundred bucks in in in material and twenty-three thousand dollars for the for the ticket price, and they're just churning these things out because that's what their focus is. Yeah, it's super easy to train somebody how to do one of these things. Um and so I would have I would have niched down more and I would have done smaller projects where you're in and out. You're again, we went at length on this in another podcast, remodeling versus handyman. But when you're stuck in somebody's house for a month at a time, everybody gets sick of each other, no matter how big the client is. Even even something like a specialty, you know, a plumbing company or an electrical company, something where it's a lot more consistent. Um, because just uh re remodeling is is so broad. Yeah, super long answer to your question.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:32

No, no, that was great, man. Um, and I'd be remiss to say, uh, you know, having so many conversations over the years, I've I've I talked to people that are like, oh, I'm tired of the handyman stuff, I want to do remodeling. Oh, I'm tired of the remodeling stuff, I want to do handyman. And then one that switches to one and then switches back. So um so there's a lot of variance as far as preference goes. Uh, but absolutely check out the the episode where you break down the pros and cons, and it's it's gonna be different for everybody. Um so any other kind of final thoughts on bigger things that that you would have done differently in Kobe's fairy tale dreamland remake of Rust Belt? And I will say, man, like like your marketing, branding, like the Midwest, uh like Midwest renovations, like your Midwest made. Midwest made. Uh, it was so good, man. What you did with the signs, the the boost, like obviously, like with the lead flow and projects getting booked, like um like you just had a really you were really sharp with being in the community, uh giving people you know great service, uh getting recommended, building up the funnel. Um, and then of course the pricing is and the debt and kind of financials is really the learning, big learning experience. Um, so I just want to shout out like all the amazing positives uh that you did. Um awesome stuff. Um anything else come to mind as far as the bigger changes you're gonna make?

SPEAKER_01 1:39:59

We uh we did awesome projects, had awesome clients, awesome employees. We did a lot of really cool stuff. Um it was a ton of fun. I just very aggressively dug myself a very uh deep hole early on. Um so I would again if I could do it all over again, I would I would early and often be paying attention to my numbers. Gotta look myself in the mirror and say slow down, stop comparing yourself, stop letting ego get in the way. You're trying to build a sustainable, healthy business for you, not trying to impress other people. Um, and just stay, stay focused.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:43

Well, I I love the thought, like internally as a business center of what what needs to be done for us to be around, relevant, valuable in five years, in 10 years. And it really kind of shifts a perspective uh and also alleviates a lot of that short-term anxiety of problems and things to get to. It's like, you know what? When you zoom out, you know, if you can be confident that you're on the right track with the big part, that's financials. Like, uh my financials, how are they? Am I gonna be around in five years? If it's like a big old, you know, no way. Um good question to think as a business owner. What am I doing? Are we on path to be really strong in five years? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:21

Yeah. And it's a now is a really great time. You've got a great opportunity to be able to, you know, kind of lap some of the the guys that have been into the industry for for a while who are using outdated systems and processes, are not keeping up. Um, they're not doing any marketing online. Um bead delete, answering the phone, getting quick quotes. Yep. You got a you get a great opportunity to kind of you know lap those guys. And that's where we won in a lot of ways was you know, the the the marketing stuff, answering the phones, taking care of our clients, doing really, really high quality work. Even, you know, that was the other thing was I had a really hard time going back and asking more money um from asking for more money from from our clients, even if it wasn't our fall or something hidden came up. I just you know, when somebody signed the contract and they agreed to a price, is like that's what they're paying because that's what they agreed to. So taking care of your clients goes a really long way. Like you will be successful if you're paying attention to your numbers, you're growing as fast as you are, you know, capable of. You're not growing faster than your skill set will allow, and you just deliver great service to you to your you'll win, like you will.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:43

Yeah, yeah. Growing without sacrificing service quality. It's hard, but uh totally doable when you got the right people, right systems. Well, Kobe, I think uh uh I think we've been jamming here long enough, man. I really appreciate your heart and transparency um and sharing your story. Um, I mean, I even got to know you quite a bit better uh in the last few hours here, and I'm sure our listeners will as well. Um you guys can talk to Kobe if you schedule a strategy session with Handman Marketing Pros. That's who you'll be chatting with. Um, of course, Kobe's just a great dude. Um, he's in our ecosphere on Facebook, so um, we'll be able to, you know, all kind of connect with him. Um thank you again, Kobe. Uh I think we'll see you again on future episodes as my co host here. I think so. Thank you. All right, bad.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:30

Thank you for joining us for another episode of the Home Hero Podcast brought to you by Handyman Marketing Pros.