The Secret to Building a Winning Team with Vince & Anthony Nardo

Vince and Anthony Nardo, Truvolv investors and TruCoach mentors, spent forty years building a family home improvement business with their father. Vince ran it as president, Anthony as CFO. They grew it past a thousand employees and multiple states before selling to private equity.

In this episode of The TruCoach Podcast, Vince and Anthony unpack what they learned along the way. They start with what their mother drilled into them early: business stayed in the office, family stayed at the Sunday dinner table, and they were a family with a business, not a family business. That distinction shaped how they made decisions. They get into where most home improvement operators get stuck: making decisions without a real financial plan, confusing cash with profit, and expanding into new markets without modeling the cash requirements first.

They cover why they simplified their product mix when they realized they were spending 80% of their time on 20% of their profit, and why dollars per crew day became a more useful number than margin for everything from staffing to forecasting. They also get into what they say was the pivot point in their growth: getting outside their own four walls and learning from operators who'd already been there - or were right there with them. Peer groups, mentors who shared what they knew early on, the questions you only think to ask once you've heard someone else ask them first. It's the same belief TruCoach is built on: the business can't outgrow the team, and the team grows fastest by learning from people who've already done the work.

The TruCoach Podcast is brought to you by Truvolv - digital marketing and business coaching experts built exclusively for the home improvement industry. TruCoach is Truvolv's mentorship program: real-world guidance from people who've actually built, scaled, and exited home improvement companies so you can skip the hard lessons they’ve already learned and get to growth faster. Learn more and have your lightbulb moment at truvolve.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to the TrueCoach Podcast, where you'll find industry-specific actionable methods to help you build a supercharged home improvement or home services business. From leads to leadership, we exist to help you and your team successfully grow. TrueCoach is your single source of truth for organizations looking to scale. Brought to you by TrueVall. You'll get exclusive access to leaders who have been there and done that. And the wisdom that only comes from experience. Proven strategies for you and your team to implement.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

Hi, friends. Welcome to TrueCoach. My name is Brian Gottlieb, but today we're joined by two really awesome people, Vince and Anthony Nardo. They are amazing business leaders. They live in California, dear friends of mine, and also investors in True Evolve. Let's start off. Vince, thanks so much for joining us. Can you give everybody a little background how I think you have such a good coming-up story, please?

SPEAKER_03 0:52

Yeah, so the real condensed version, and glad to be here again with you, Brian, and this opportunity to speak to the listeners. You know, we come from, my brother and I come from a family-owned business started by our father back in the 80s. And over the next several years, after we got involved with the business, we grew it to be quite a substantial business, uh, a little over a thousand employees, multi-state, multi-location, and ultimately ending up ended up selling it to private equity. Some of the listeners might have already heard the downfall of that scenario, but um had a great run and um, you know, had a great team. So we're very excited about what we were able to accomplish and our family accomplished.

SPEAKER_02 1:27

Yeah, and that that downfall, by the way, you are already out of the business. And it was just you know, it was a shame because they just simply didn't listen to to you guys who really understand how to grow a business. And and I think that was frustrating for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_03 1:39

It was.

SPEAKER_02 1:39

So, so Anthony, you you you were functioning as the CFO in the business, and the two of you are brothers, and and Vince, you were functioning as the president. When there are, I think there are a lot of listeners that have family in the business, right? And and that can create challenges. How did how did the two of you navigate that?

SPEAKER_04 1:58

I think the unique uh characteristic that Vince and I had is we knew our own individual roles, and we had worked together for so long that uh it's interesting because our offices were, you know, one office separated the two of us, and there would be days that we would be in the office together and we wouldn't even see each other because we knew what our individual responsibilities were. Vince was in charge of moving the business forward, and uh, how are we going to get to the revenue that we wanted to get to? And my responsibility was to make sure that we took care of it, were profitable, had cash flow, and then together, collectively, we kind of managed everybody else. Uh, as you know, Brian, culture was a huge thing for us. It's a big part of any business, and that that was our driving factor. We drove culture.

SPEAKER_02 2:41

Yeah. So tell me more about that, Anthony, please.

SPEAKER_04 2:44

So uh I would say maybe 15, 20 years ago, Vince and I created the core values, which were the 10 core values of the business. Um, the first core value was building winning team. Um and that that really talked about having surrounding ourselves with the right people, uh, everyone wanting the same drive, taking care of the people that were around you, because we know that if you take care of the people around you, they're going to take care of you and take care of the business. And we had a lot of folks that were with us for uh, you know, 10, 15, 20 years. We had been been in business for 40 years before the private equity unfortunately took it down. And sadly, a lot of those people had been there for 20 plus years that ended up ultimately losing their jobs. Um, fortunately, Vince and I dove into something different, and we have brought in uh a substantial amount of those people because um they saw the value in what we brought to Reborn and what we're gonna do with the new venture. And um it's really about us being able to take care of them and give them something that they can, you know, provide for their families. That's more important to us in the business.

SPEAKER_03 3:49

And if I if I can, real quick, Brian, I want to dive a little deeper because I do think the point you brought up about a family business is really important. You know, I like you, I also like to coach a lot of other businesses, right? I like to get back to what I've learned over the years. And one of the things that I pick up a lot of, a lot on is how a business that has family members involved navigates the stresses of business and the stresses of a family at the same time. And so the way that I've kind of always summed it up and the way I've kind of presented it is we weren't a family business, we were a family with a business. And I think that kind of helps define how you're gonna act, right? So in a family business, family coming first and business being right next to it, you're almost saying that the business is the family. Right? And that it's all one and the same. And we learned early on through our mom, who was very adamant about this, is that there was business and then there was family. We were a family with a business, meaning that whatever happened in the business never defined the family, and whatever happened in the family never defined the outcome in the business, and you had to keep those two things separate. So early on, we learned, and Anthony and I learned very well, is that you know, we could sit in a room and we could argue over a business point, and we could not see eye to eye on a business point, but at that same Sunday, we'd be at mom's house with our families to have an Italian dinner, right? And we never talked about business during that, during that dinner. So I think that's a key thing for the listeners to kind of differentiate and understand in their own business is, you know, how do I, you know, like you, I have children that worked in the business very close, right? How do I make sure that I'm not taking home that, you know, I'm pissed off because they didn't hit revenue numbers, right? Or that there's customers upset at what he's doing. And I had to really make sure and condition myself that that was never gonna cross that line of business and family.

SPEAKER_02 5:49

Yeah, I think that's really good advice. And I you I've seen you act in your business, and I've certainly hung out at your home for a Sunday dinner, too. So it's it's really good what you speak about. And I think it's great advice. You know, we I had uh I had every one of our kids, we have six kids. We had every one of our kids at one point working in the business at the same time. And you're right, there's a lot of complexity there. And I think if you don't, if you don't create those, you really have to treat them like they are in the business when they're in the business, but you can't let it define the relationship that you have at home. But sometimes that's hard. You know, I was on a I was on a mentorship call with somebody that has a very, very high labor cost. They're the their labor cost is running through the roof, but they're afraid to make the changes to it because one of the owners is part of the family and that and the son is doing the installs and they're charging a lot. What advice do you give to people like that? And I'll I'll leave that up for whoever wants to answer.

SPEAKER_04 6:41

The business has to come first. Vince and I always knew that. Even you know, my son worked there, Vince's son worked there, my wife worked there at one time. Um, the business has to come first, but there's a there's a tactical approach you can take that still maintains the family relationship and professionalizes what needs to get accomplished. So, in other words, in in in the scenario where maybe uh an individual in the family is running an apartment that is over budget, we simply take that person aside, we have a conversation with them, and we redirect maybe their talents to another area of the business. Or we just try and coach them along. The value of it being a family member is you spend the extra time coaching them along because you want them to be successful, right? You know, including you at home.

SPEAKER_03 7:22

And you know, Brian, I think you have everybody has to be aligned in the goals of the business. Whether they're a family member, whether they're a team member, we all have to be aligned, and that's ultimately we gotta have profit, right? So if we're all aligned in that, then the decisions should be easier. This the other side of that, where it does get more complex, and we've all experienced this in our family in our families with businesses, is sometimes tough decisions have to be made and have to be done through conversation. You know, I'll give you the case in point. You know, in our business where where we sold the private equity, um, my son was a was a was a high general manager there, right? He was in the very top level of command. And uh, we, Anthony and I had to make a decision as you know, do we leave this business to him or do we sell it to somebody else? Yeah, and so we had to have that discussion, and and even surprisingly to me, he didn't want the business. He's like, I dad, I don't want to do what you do.

SPEAKER_02 8:20

I don't blame him.

SPEAKER_03 8:21

Right, right, I don't want to do what I did. But I having those discussions, sometimes they don't need to be as difficult as they may appear, and they don't need to be as complicated as they may sound, they just have to be worked through. And I think with honesty, transparency, and an aligned core set of set of values and direction, you can have those conversations.

SPEAKER_02 8:39

Yeah, I went through a similar situation when I had my renewal by Anderson businesses that were operating, and I had my tundra land business, and I've got kids in in that are you know kind of in both businesses, and I had to really decide okay, who's gonna go with tundra land when because that business sold first, and who's actually going with renewal by Anderson? But you're right, and and like you, none of my kids wanted to take over the business, and so I think it all worked out pretty good. But you're right, it's really about having those conversations. And I think I think some business owners that have family in the business are afraid to hurt feelings. So I really like how I like the advice that your mom gave. She's very wise, and that's what she advises everybody to come. So, so, and I know Vince, you work with a lot of companies, you do a lot of mentoring of people. What do you see out there as some of the high level, some of the things where companies get stuck? What holds them back?

SPEAKER_03 9:28

The list is a lot. Um, I think the key things are a lot of businesses operate without a plan. Right? So their plans are very shallow, they're very, they're very, they're not in depth, and they make decisions without that. And really, it's a financial plan. They're not making those decisions with a true financial plan and an expected outcome. So they then go through make this decision process of doing everything in a vacuum because they haven't looked at the entire plan. For example, coach a lot of people on expansion. Should they open up another market, right? And we've had these discussions, we both opened lots of branches. And the first thing I ask them is have you put in a cash flow model? Have you thought through the cash requirements that you're gonna be required to carry that expansion forward? And are you not possibly putting yourself in a cash constraint because you might not have enough cash? And then a lot of people confuse cash with profit. So it's just understanding the mechanics of building a plan. And you know, I see that as a really big, big hurdle for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02 10:34

Yeah, I agree. I think one of the most important disciplines of business is being able to not just properly forecast, but hit those forecasts to targets with a high level of certainty. And once you're able to do that, well, then you can do a lot of other things. But until you're ready to do that, opening up a new location can be very risky. I have to know your numbers. Yep. Anthony, yeah, I want to, Anthony, I want to ask you a question on that too. I think also some people, you know, look, ultimately, this is a very simple business that's easy to make complicated and very difficult to keep simple. And some companies start thinking they need to grow by adding more and more products to their mix and making more and more complicated projects. You even went through that too, right? You used to sell the vast majority of your business was more complicated. Can you talk about that, please?

SPEAKER_04 11:19

Well, so we had to simplify what we were doing because we were starting to get into too many different things. And we were known as a full service remodel business at one point, and we realized that that, by looking at the numbers, that isn't where the profit was. A lot of our effort was there, but the profit wasn't there. So we were spending 80% of our time on 20% of our profit, and we realized that we needed to keep it simple, keep it to bath, one product, uh, single SKUs inside the in the bathroom. We stayed away from the cabinets. We stuck to what area only, our cabinet refacing, we stuck to countertops, we didn't really want to do anything other than that because it was a simpler sale and it really helped the profitability. In and out faster was better for us. That's not everybody's model. That doesn't mean a full service remodel business isn't the way to go. It just wasn't our model.

SPEAKER_02 12:05

Yeah, I think that there's a lot of emphasis put on margin, right? Margin's important. But the other thing that's important is something known as dollars per crew day. And the reason that's important is look, if if if I'm in the business of selling pens, and let's say I buy this pen for $10 and I sell it for $100, I can hang out and talk about our 90% margins that we have, and we'd all be, but if I only sell one pen a day, I don't have much of a business. So the other piece of it really is dollars per crew day. So, Vince, when you start looking at the difference between like in your business when you're doing really full-blown kitchen projects on a dollars per crude basis versus a one-day shower, you know, how did how did how did that impact how you thought about things?

SPEAKER_03 12:46

Well, and I would 100% agree. I think, you know, to both your points, you first of all have to have a scalable business model, right? And if you look at successful fast food chains, in most instances they have very narrow menus, right? Because they realize that in order to scale at the level they want to scale to, they have to have a simplistic model. They don't have to be everything to all, they don't have to provide all food to all people, right? A very scalable model. Um, and that's the kind of way we look at our business is you know, it's great, I can do all things in a very isolated market, but if I want to take that and replicate it 20 times, that's gonna be much more complicated. As far as the, you know, to the crew to the dollars per crew day, yes. That is a missed number that a lot of people never never really take into consideration is how much money revenue is my crew turning per day. And I think there are products that have a high dollar per day, products that don't have a high dollar per day. I think aggregate total, you got to look at the contribution margin of everything and eliminate the ones you know that aren't producing near what the other products you have offering are producing per day in revenue.

SPEAKER_02 13:53

Yeah, I think one of the beauties of this business is look, the more, the more you can boil things down to a daily number where somebody has to speak to it, like they're closing out the cash register of their hamburger stand at the end of the day, the better the business is. What I it's very difficult for a production department to close out a cash register at the end of the day and report on material and labor costs. This is difficult to get. You can't get that, it's very difficult to get to that number on a daily basis with all your crews. But dollars per crew day, that's a daily number they can. Revenue installed, the amount of time it takes them. Absolutely. Yep. Yeah. Anthony, how did you you were the you were the numbers guy in the business? And how did you use those sort of KPIs to help you make decisions in your planning?

SPEAKER_04 14:34

Well, we broke everything down to number of people responsible for a task, uh, the dollar volume they could produce in that task. And that's how we forecasted out not only uh staffing needs, but revenue generation that we were gonna have. So, in other words, if we were gonna forecast that we get $100 million in sales, is what our goal was at a particular time, we worked backwards to the number of staff we were gonna need based on those metrics by the dollars. Not necessarily the profit, but the dollars that every project would generate.

SPEAKER_02 15:03

Yeah. So just as a little sanity check here, somebody watching this or listening to this might think, man, these guys really have it together. The truth is we didn't always have it together, did we?

SPEAKER_04 15:13

I we really didn't. Well, what we had was each other, which is what kind of like um you know, this is spurred off of is the value that we could talk to each other about our own businesses from when we were small to when we grew and bounce ideas off of one another. I think that was very valuable.

SPEAKER_02 15:28

Yeah, so we we started a group called the Big 12, maybe, and in fact, it was originally called the Dirty Dozen. I think our met some vendor named us that. But since maybe you could talk about what that was and the difference it made in your opinion. I'd like to hear both your opinions on that, actually.

SPEAKER_03 15:42

So the one thing that I've always enjoyed about this industry, and I am involved in other industries, is the amount of information sharing that is available from business to business. There's a lot of industries where they're very isolated in their own business and they will not share things out, right? It's like, oh, I can't, you know, you know, Burger King is not going to share anything about hamburgers and the fear of McDonald's understanding it and stealing their ideas, right?

SPEAKER_02 16:09

They even called the secret sauce.

SPEAKER_03 16:11

Exactly, exactly. But you know, in our business, it's different than that. You know, we can be competitors and we can also be sharing advice because at the in the end, we all grow better together and the industry gets better. And there's enough business. We're not, while we might be competing in a market, there's enough people looking for our product that not not one of us alone can service all of them. So, you know, we came, as Brian mentioned a long time ago, at going to all these industry events, we realized that we were having more, we were taking home more knowledge after the event day was over at the bar or at dinner than we were at the event. And so we created this thing, this group called the Dirty Dozen, it was you know, several of us. But was real key for us, for me at least, was the ability to bounce off others what I thought might be an area of the business that might have been performing well or not. And really just sanity check that, right? I mean, who else knows what you're going through in your business than another business owner in the same business?

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:14

And so, you know, and I know for me personally, I can say that is the only reason having that group and that peer group of of like-minded business owners is the reason why we were able to take our business to work.

SPEAKER_04 17:28

And getting real numbers because we were all friends sharing the same experiences versus sometimes you talk to people and I think things are inflated or not real. So that was helpful also.

SPEAKER_02 17:38

Yeah, and and I I agree with you. If I were to, if I were to say, what was the pivot point in my business? It was that. It everything connects back to that. And and Anthony, you were the CFO. There were the CFOs met together, the marketing people met together. Talk about that, that we didn't just leave it at the at the CEO level.

SPEAKER_04 17:59

Well, as with most businesses, you know, family businesses like ours, when we start them, we don't really know what we're doing. We don't know the mistakes we're gonna make. And you know, you had an outside CFO um that worked in your business that uh uh I was able to talk to. So I was able to learn from him as well as the other businesses things that I didn't even know, and then I was able to share with them tribal knowledge that I had from growing up in the business that I think helped with the other businesses as well. So coming from different walks gave us the ability to learn from one another things that we probably wouldn't even have known to ask.

SPEAKER_02 18:34

Yeah. Yeah. How important is it too? Because if people are thinking about maybe joining a mastermind group like that, or maybe they already belong to one, it's really about checking your ego at the door, not trying to be the smartest person in the room.

SPEAKER_04 18:49

And you think you have to find the right group. You have to find the group that is really going to benefit you the best because some of these groups don't have the right individuals, and at least some of the groups that I've seen, they don't seem to have the right individuals. I know Vince, for example, is part of a very small uh business group that he leads some of the other businesses, not related to home improvement, of course. And because Reborn was so much bigger than those businesses, I could see he wasn't getting anything out of it. He was teaching them more than they were giving to him, which I think is nice, but from a business perspective of learning, uh a Big 12 was definitely more valuable to us because we all had the same experiences, we all grew together. So it's important to be in a group that you're really gonna feed off of and be able to contribute to.

SPEAKER_02 19:35

Vince, go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 19:37

Yeah, I you know um every every one of the listeners needs to be in some sort of peer advisory group. It's complete 100% invaluable. Um and you know, with the right group, number one, you develop relationships that'll go on forever. I mean, all the guys that were in our group were still friends with. We have a text thread, right? I mean, we talk all the time. So you you develop those relationships and you are able to then bring in if it's done right, you do expand it down below just the ownership, you know, where we had marketing. I mean, ours were big events, right? We'd have 150 people at an event every other quarter. Um, but just to be able to allow every department in the business to develop those relationships from the ops people, the finance people, you know, marketing people, call center people, so that they also can grow their area of the business through knowledge they gain from the other businesses. And super important to your point you mentioned was check your ego at the door, be honest.

SPEAKER_02 20:40

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03 20:41

You don't have to go in there and say, you know, I'm making more money than everybody or whatever, and have a willingness to learn. I what worked in our group is none of us came in there with an ego, and none of us promoted ourselves as the expert, and we were always willing to listen and learn from somebody else. And that's probably why every single person that was in our original group has either sold or owns extremely large home improvement companies.

SPEAKER_02 21:06

Correct. Yeah, it's been it's been quite the success story. And also, look, I think it's so easy for us as business owners to get stuck in our own bubble. And the only perspective we have are the the people in inside of the walls of our business, and just getting outside perspective is there's a sense of freedom to that, you know.

SPEAKER_04 21:23

And then all also, I would say that you have to educate yourself. You know, we all of I think everybody in the group, we all read books. Um, it's important to read books to understand business, to understand what other business leaders have to. Hey, listen, I'll give you a plug of your book right here, Brian. You have to read. And, you know, Vince and I read E Myth early on, good to great. We read a lot of books, uh, scaling up. That is important to help you grow your business and sometimes teaches you the questions to ask other people. And then when you find out other people are reading the same book. You can bounce those ideas off one another also. So I think that's important, educating yourself, constantly educating yourself on the business. And because you're going to go from, you know, 5 million, 10 million to 20 million to 30 million. And as you grow, you're going to see differences in the business. And sometimes it's going to seem overwhelming. I remember when Vince and I, when we were, I think at 12 million, and I thought, gee, if we get to we could just get to 20. And we get 20 and it became, oh, this is terrible. And then we go to 30. And then I thought, oh, once we get to 50, and then and then you get to certain plateaus, and things just actually seem to get easier.

SPEAKER_02 22:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:30

Because you're at the right level. And then you start thinking, well, I got the wrong people for 50. We got to start thinking 100. And we got to get the people for 100 now, because if we get to 80, we're going to be in trouble. And so I think a lot of that comes from the education or reading books and talking to others and peers and learning from those that have been there.

SPEAKER_02 22:48

And I think when we when we all got together talking about TrueVolve, right? And this idea of launching this business. And then, oh my gosh, we recognize that because we've been there, right? We've been there. We know that the lid of the business is the lid of the team. And the business can't outgrow the capabilities of the people on the team. So when we came up with the concept of true coach, that how do we, how do we not just, how do we not just be a marketing company? How do we help them actually grow a better business? What do you, Vince, what are you most excited about on the on the true coach journey? And what difference do you hope it's going to make in in a leader's life?

SPEAKER_03 23:26

You know, true true coach, and it was a great, you know, brain idea that we all had to think about how can we better serve our customer, TrueVolve. And I think what it really boils down to is it helps the businesses gain insight to functional areas of their business that they might need to teach, train, or or improve on with other people in their team. And I'm hoping that, you know, through that true coach environment and those and those coaching modules we have on there, that people get a little insight to actually go back and ask the questions of the art of what is possible and really dive into their businesses and improve them. Because the one thing about this so great about this home improvement you know industry that we're in is the opportunities are endless. You know, you can always generate more leads, you can always sell more deals, and you can always improve it. And the improvements you make can be can be um impactful right away. You know, it's not like we're we open up a store and we hope people walk into it. We generate our own leads and go sell our own products. So all we need to do is learn the best ways of tweaking that, and then we unlock unlimited success.

SPEAKER_02 24:35

Yeah, it's very true. What about you, Anthony? What's your hope for True Coach?

SPEAKER_04 24:40

So early on, I'm gonna give you, we'll go back a second. So early on, we got a lot of help from larger home improvement leaders that would just give us tidbits. I remember Murray Girls talked to Vince and I, and and uh Brian Elias gave us some tidbits early on that really helped us. And I think I always aspired that we need to grow our business to be like these guys. And ultimately, I think we actually with some of these businesses, we became a lot larger. But the important thing is they were there to help us. It didn't matter at what stage, we could always call somebody and help. And I think what we owe to the other people coming up in this business through TrueCoach is help them grow their businesses so they can help others, so they can employ more people, so they can build better for their families and other people's families. Because that's what we did. I mean, I think that was what was very successful for all of us. We truly cared about our people. And I think that we owe it to other people to be able to help them so they could do the same thing. It's not really not always about the money, right?

SPEAKER_02 25:42

It's yeah, yeah. I I think you've absolutely nailed it. And I think that, you know, it's fun being invested in in TrueVolve with you. It's fun doing true coach with you, it's fun doing conferences with you. And again, guys, we're proud of everything you've accomplished. Thanks for joining us, and I think we're gonna wrap it up there. Sound good?

SPEAKER_03 26:01

Thanks, Brian.

SPEAKER_01 26:02

Have a great day, everybody. You've been tapped into the True Coach Podcast from TrueVolve, home improvement and home services experts helping professionals like you get better results faster. Subscribe and follow on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts for more expert insights. From digital marketing to business coaching, TrueVolve is dedicated to helping your business grow. Learn more and have your light bulb moment at TrueVolve.com.