Building a $2,500,000 Business for a Stranger in 36 Minutes

0:00 This is Corey.

0:00 Cory runs an HVAC business with his wife

0:02 doing over $1.2 million per year in revenue.

0:04 But number one, that $1.2 million isn't all profit.

0:07 And number two, he has $60,000 in debt that he wants to get rid of.

0:11 I'm Alex Trazosi.

0:12 I own Acquisition.com, which portfolio of companies that did over

0:14 $250 million last year in aggregate revenue.

0:16 We have several service rate businesses in our portfolio.

0:18 So I've done a lot of thinking about the problems that Cory's dealing with.

0:21 And so first, we're going to deep dive into the business and then we're

0:23 going to break down all the tactics that he and you can use to scale.

0:26 And at the end, we're going to check in with Cory one year later.

0:29 Originally, we were doing about 1.25 million in sales.

0:32 Currently, see if the tactics actually helped him scale his business.

0:35 So, let's meet Cory.

0:36 What's going on, Alex?

0:37 My name is Cory.

0:38 What's up?

0:39 I own ProShine Professional Cleaning with my wife, Nicole.

0:41 We are an HVAC cleaning and duckwork repair company.

0:45 What What problem you trying to solve?

0:46 So, right now, we're allocating about 10% of our profit

0:49 going towards paying off some of our debt.

0:51 How much debt you got?

0:51 It's about 60,000.

0:54 Okay.

0:53 And then lead generation.

0:55 Uh we're trying to get higher quantity of leads

0:57 and also um leads that are higher value clients.

1:01 On the bottom of that is just to like

1:02 really just help our client with our booking process.

1:05 I think that we can streamline it a little bit better,

1:07 make it easier on them and then also not lose out

1:10 on the possibilities of upsells or anything like that throughout that process.

1:14 Why is solving this important?

1:15 What happens if you don't fix this?

1:17 First and foremost, we're a people company,

1:18 so we really go out in the community and just do the right thing.

1:21 And I'm grateful to have guys on my team that really share that goal.

1:24 makes our life a lot easier.

1:26 That's why it's important to us so we can

1:27 help more people and then also grow our business.

1:29 All right.

1:30 Awesome.

1:30 Okay.

1:30 So, how do you make money?

1:31 This is actually where Pro's a little bit unique.

1:32 For our HVAC cleaning, full-end price for us is $1,575 per HVAC unit.

1:38 Okay.

1:38 Each house we do has about two units.

1:39 So, uh with that 1575, we have a 2-year growth guarantee.

1:44 What that is is when we come out,

1:46 we make sure that we're disinfecting that deck work properly,

1:48 killing any kind of bacterial growth.

1:50 So clients love having that guarantee in place so

1:52 that they don't have to worry about it in the future.

1:54 And then we have duck work rewrapping which is pretty much replacing

1:57 the old installation and then also our dry vent cleaning which is $175.

2:01 Do you show customers pictures of the inside of their vents?

2:05 Yep.

2:05 Absolutely.

2:06 So actually we have a customer profile so they can access any point in time.

2:10 So if they want to sell their home they can use it as an advantage for them.

2:13 I like that.

2:14 Where do you get your customers?

2:15 All right.

2:15 So we have a couple different channels.

2:17 Um 60% come from paid ads.

2:19 3,000 a month go from Google.

2:21 Uh we actually just upped that a couple days ago to 5,000.

2:24 And then also 650 from Facebook.

2:26 Facebook is very new for us.

2:27 We just started the last two weeks.

2:29 And then 15% of our job flow comes

2:31 from local SEO which is a third party company.

2:34 And then affiliates and referrals are a very big portion for us because

2:38 we are partnered with a lot of HR track companies in our area.

2:41 One of them actually sends us about 30K a month.

2:43 So we really just want to replicate what they have

2:45 going on and then share that with our other partners.

2:48 So, what's the advantage to that affiliate sending you the 30,000 a month?

2:51 We actually send them back roughly 40

2:53 to 45,000 because they have higher ticket items.

2:56 So, when they go in, they're doing full

2:58 replacements where we're doing some patchwork and some cleaning.

3:00 Say they send us 20 uh leads, we'll send them maybe four or five,

3:05 but they make double what we would send.

3:07 So, Cory has a unique affiliate strategy,

3:09 which is that he purposely limits his own services so

3:12 that he doesn't compete with other businesses in his quote space.

3:16 And so he refers them the high ticket business,

3:19 but then they refer him some percentage of their business.

3:22 But the beauty of this model is that he's able to do this with tons of high

3:26 ticket providers so that he has almost limitless lead

3:29 flow of people coming towards him basically for free.

3:32 So give me whatever other numbers you think I should know.

3:35 Our numbers right now 1.25 million over the last 12 months.

3:38 Profit on that is 479,000.

3:40 Uh our net margin is 38%.

3:43 So, our marketing spend right now is just

3:45 under 7,200 as far as our marketing strategy altogether.

3:48 Our show rate, actually, funny enough,

3:50 is 99% because it's the 1% that the client just

3:53 happens to not be home where they forgot about our appointment.

3:55 And then our close rate is 82%.

3:57 If we double the lead flow of the business, can you handle that?

4:01 Yes.

4:01 So, actually, we just hired on two more employees and we just got a third van.

4:05 Right off the bat in every business,

4:07 I think the first problem I try to delineate is

4:09 this a supply constraint business or a demand constrained business?

4:11 Meaning, if we can double the lead flow and they can handle it,

4:14 then it's a demand constraint business.

4:16 If we double the lead flow and they can't handle it,

4:17 then it means that we got to go build the resources and infrastructure

4:20 to be able to handle a double in lead flow in the future.

4:23 And I think this is such a common thing that I see with business owners.

4:25 They're trying to fix a problem that's already a problem that if you fix it,

4:29 makes your existing problem worse.

4:31 I got a a bunch of notes.

4:32 I think we might be able to help you get more people,

4:34 more impact, and more clean air.

4:35 That's what I'm talking about.

4:36 All right, let's do it.

4:37 There's nothing majorly wrong.

4:39 And so that's the good news.

4:39 And obviously, you have 38% margins.

4:41 Since you're growing, the last thing I want to do is like break something,

4:44 right?

4:44 And so I think this is going to be a game of incremental improvement, right?

4:47 Like no Hail Marys.

4:48 This is just consistent yardage.

4:50 Trust the process, right?

4:51 Yeah.

4:51 Number one, I think that there's actually still some more room for pricing.

4:54 Number two, wait, let's talk about the debt.

4:58 Number three, talk about the affiliate piece.

5:00 Okay.

5:03 Four, we'll go funnel conversion rate optimization.

5:07 And then five, we'll go ads.

5:09 Perfect.

5:10 a six reactivation emails.

5:14 Cory's at stage five on the $und00 million scaling road map.

5:17 He's at productize.

5:18 So he's got 10 to 19 people who work in the business.

5:20 She's got maybe two or three people in the business

5:22 that are kind of like manager leaders that are running this thing.

5:24 Now some of the issues that he's dealing with is

5:26 that customers are having nothing else to buy and churn.

5:28 We have to figure out how we can get more repeat business for the business.

5:31 His qualified leads are too expensive and cap your ability to advertise.

5:34 And so what we're doing is we're

5:36 trying to improve the throughput on his existing

5:38 advertising process so that he can get

5:40 more leads because he can handle more leads.

5:42 We're creating more sales materials, tweaking pricing,

5:45 sales process, creating a CS playbook,

5:47 all of this stuff is the things that happen all the time at the productiz stage.

5:51 And so if you're like, shoot, that's almost exactly what he's going through.

5:55 That's because businesses behave in patterns.

5:57 And so if you're not sure what stage of business you're at, um,

6:01 this scaling road map is 100% free.

6:03 You can go and get it

6:04 at acquisition.com/roadmap and put in your business details.

6:08 And on the thank you page,

6:09 if you would like our help actually helping you debottleneck these things,

6:13 kind of like what I'm doing with Corey here in person at my headquarters.

6:15 On the thank you page, just schedule a call.

6:17 My team would love to have a conversation with you.

6:19 Worst case scenario, we provide value.

6:20 Best case, we'll see you out here in Vegas.

6:22 So, first things first, the price.

6:23 So, you did a 23% price increase after the first time we talked to you.

6:26 Okay.

6:26 And so, that resulted in a higher close rate and more money, right?

6:30 Wonderful.

6:30 So Corey had actually come to one

6:32 of our workshops atacquisition.com earlier and we

6:34 had made this first initial suggestion which is like hey bump your prices and he

6:39 obviously saw a big improvement right he was able to charge more and close

6:44 more and the reason we made that recommendation is cuz we looked at you know

6:47 businesses in that space and we were like we think you're mispriced some people

6:49 may be like how could you raise prices and close more well let me explain

6:53 there's two scenarios where this could be

6:55 true one is something called a vellin good

6:57 which in economic terms is usually like a high-end luxury item So like a Rolex,

7:01 sometimes if something goes up in price, it becomes more soughta.

7:04 That's not what happens for Cy cuz he's in the other bucket, right?

7:07 No one's like bragging at their Rotary Club

7:09 about how much they spend on their Hback.

7:11 So instead, what happens is that if you have what I

7:13 would consider a normal business providing a normal service or product,

7:16 if you raise your prices,

7:17 what sometimes happens is that the conviction of the customer

7:19 that you can actually deliver on the promise you're making goes up.

7:22 And so on the value equation, which I talk about in this book,

7:25 it actually increases the perceived likelihood of achievement.

7:29 So by raising the price, we actually increase the value.

7:32 And this is why I talk about charging premium prices.

7:35 Page 48 in the offers book, I talk about the virtuous cycle of pricing.

7:39 And so what happens is if you raise your price,

7:41 you increase the emotional investment.

7:43 You increase the perceived value.

7:44 You increase the results and you decrease the demandingness of the customer.

7:48 You get more money to actually deliver.

7:50 And so what happens is a lot of times people will just try and like ah

7:53 they're so afraid of charging money that they

7:55 actually sell themselves out of a sale because

7:58 it's so low price that they're like gosh this guy seems like a run you know

8:02 uh super seedy duct tape operation right

8:05 and so many of you especially newer business owners

8:08 I'd say like sub call it three sometimes

8:10 5 million in revenue some of the biggest

8:12 levers that exist in the business is simply

8:14 charging more because people actually believe you can

8:16 deliver the service now so whenever I hear 80% or over 80% close rates I usually

8:20 know that there's room and so basically what

8:22 I penciled out was a 10% price raise.

8:24 This is more asking than telling.

8:26 We would have to believe that we're not going to drop to 65%.

8:29 As long as we close more than 65% we make more money.

8:32 Thing is is that 10% price raise for you

8:34 equals roughly a 25% increase in net profit,

8:39 right?

8:38 So that'd be roughly 100 plus,000 a year

8:40 and that's at last year's volume in profit.

8:42 So that's number one.

8:43 Does that sound something like something that you could stomach or no?

8:46 Yeah, 100%.

8:47 So the second thing is how fast do you

8:49 plan on paying off this 60k debt that you have?

8:51 We are planning to pay off completely in the next 4 to 5 months.

8:54 Okay, good.

8:54 That's one of those things that like I would say this is more an emotional

8:57 thing but it's just this back of mind if there's a range of like Dave Ramsey

9:02 and then like you know Wall Street I tend to skew like very close to the Ramsay

9:07 side and the single argument that I

9:09 have around it is basically debt increases risk.

9:12 Risk when multiplied over a long time horizon tends to come due.

9:15 And so like businesses have seasons, they have volatility.

9:18 And why did I take the, you know, the debt out to begin with?

9:21 A lot of times it's like because I wanted to grow faster.

9:23 You know what I mean?

9:24 If you look at some of the most enduring companies,

9:25 a lot of them like Chick-fil-A operate debtree.

9:27 Let's do ad stuff first and then I'll circle back to affiliates.

9:30 So let's pull up the um the page that the Google ads are going to.

9:34 Right now, this is where the ads are going.

9:36 Right now, what most people are probably doing

9:37 is they're clicking the button on the top right.

9:39 If they're desktop or if they're mobile,

9:41 they're probably clicking the button right there.

9:42 It's almost like having two landing pages in a row.

9:44 And so you might not know this, but like typically you'll lose about 50%.

9:48 Yeah.

9:48 By like half.

9:50 Okay.

9:50 Just for every step you add, it's usually about half or more that you lose.

9:53 Can you shrink that to mobile just so I can see what it looks like on mobile?

9:57 Okay, that looks a little better.

10:00 But what I'd want to do is like I want that to just be a headline.

10:03 I don't think the ProShine etc stuff

10:05 at the like see how it's kind of like messy.

10:06 It's like there's a lot of stuff going on.

10:08 So I tend to just either really shrink the logo so it's

10:10 like a very small because it's literally the prime real estate is

10:13 everything that's above this fold and the first thing someone sees is

10:16 the top which right now is like a lot of blank space right

10:18 so I would probably wipe that probably that button

10:20 so it's just the hamburger menu and the pro shine

10:22 that'll massively shrink the top bar you have the home

10:25 and then the siteen nav you can drop that we

10:27 want to basically build a specific lander for ads

10:30 which isn't the homepage because this page it serves one

10:33 function which is conversion we actually don't see an offer

10:35 keep scrolling yeah and so this is actually where So,

10:38 we're losing a ton of traffic.

10:40 Going to the top.

10:41 Oh, yeah.

10:41 The basic level of this is like let's just have this offer

10:44 clear and then eliminate all the other stuff on the page.

10:47 So, let's go to the ads real quick.

10:49 I think the the one takeaway that I

10:50 have there is you have more opportunity to spend.

10:54 Absolutely.

10:53 So, like I think that at the very least be like we just want to continue

10:57 to spend month over month provided our row

11:00 and our cap stay more or less the same.

11:01 And the fact that you're already at 13 to1 up front and that's with like

11:03 what I would consider like a pretty unoptimized

11:05 page like that might double to like 26.

11:08 The changes that we do in the funnel, you might be able to go from like 5,000

11:11 to like 30,000 a month in spend which be sweet, right?

11:15 So let me ask you a question.

11:16 If for every dollar you gave me, I gave you $5 back.

11:21 What would your budget of dollars that you'd give me be?

11:23 If you answer that correctly,

11:24 the answer would be as many dollars as you possibly could.

11:26 And then once I give you more dollars back,

11:28 you take those more dollars and give those more dollars to me.

11:30 and then I give you more and more dollars back.

11:31 And fundamentally, that's how good advertising should work.

11:34 And so, what's interesting is that there's a lot of business,

11:36 and you probably seen multiple on this show where you'll see somebody

11:39 getting 10 to1, 20 to1, 30 to1, and they're spending $1,000 a month.

11:43 And it's like, why are we not spending $2,000 a month or $5,000 a month?

11:45 Now, if you're not sure, then you have a data problem.

11:48 So, you got to go make sure the attribution is right.

11:50 But, if you know that's where the money's coming from, by all means, spend more.

11:54 And I know that there's like some emotional, you know,

11:56 barriers cuz I've gone through them where you're like, "Oh my god,

11:58 I can't believe I'm making $1,000 a day." Cuz you

12:00 feel like you're getting $1,000 poor and you're like risking it.

12:02 But the thing is is that if you already know based on past

12:05 metrics and the existing campaigns that you're

12:07 running that you get this expected return,

12:09 then this is just part of leveling up in business is that you take

12:11 greater and greater risk and at the same

12:12 time you get greater and greater rewards.

12:14 Okay, so let's go Facebook ads.

12:16 All right, so the good news is that you got ads up.

12:20 Yeah, the way that I would try and look

12:23 at these is that most times when people make ads,

12:25 especially creative people, they'll use Canva or whatever

12:28 and they're making on their desktop.

12:30 But the thing is is that the way that you need

12:31 to see it and the way that your CMO should look at it,

12:33 you should literally text,

12:35 she should text you the image of the ad cuz it's going to be

12:37 about as big as it's going to be on someone's phone on social.

12:40 You can't even see you visit our website, you can't see that little,

12:43 you can't even you can barely read it now, right?

12:45 You can't see the number.

12:46 You're not going to be able to read that.

12:47 The the checkpoint things you can't see that either.

12:49 All we really see is a picture of you and your wife

12:52 and air duct and dry cleaning experts.

12:54 That's actually the only thing that we're seeing.

12:56 I'll bet you I don't know, but I'll bet you that's the highest converting.

13:00 Absolutely.

13:00 Yeah.

13:00 So, absolutely.

13:02 So, and that's actually still with pretty rough contrast.

13:04 Like the 18 point is actually kind of hard to read.

13:06 You don't need to worry about logo stuff for when you're doing direct response.

13:10 Okay.

13:09 Hilton Head Bluffton, you want that in the ad copy as the headline.

13:12 And then the actual image, if we're just sticking with image ads for now,

13:16 uh we want the free 18 point inspection to be like boom,

13:19 it says get yours today,

13:20 just be like get your and then that way it's all the same size, right?

13:23 And you can probably drop that today.

13:24 Then I would run 40 variations of this.

13:27 White background, blue background, blue on white,

13:28 like take all the colors that you have for your brand

13:30 and I would just basically just run a lot of variations there.

13:33 And you might be amazed by this, but

13:35 the picture that you choose there just like it's kind of blocking the work,

13:38 which is kind of bummer cuz I want to see what you're actually doing.

13:40 Right.

13:41 Right.

13:41 Also with pictures with customers like smiling

13:43 and super happy near their HVAC unit.

13:45 Like people understand what it's about,

13:47 but I would be running a ton of different images.

13:49 Also, do you do any organic like posts on like

13:52 Instagram or I would take all the best performing organics

13:56 and literally just the last 5 seconds just tack on like, hey,

13:59 if you want an 18 like if this is cool and you want an 18 point inspection,

14:02 it's absolutely free.

14:03 Just click the link and we'll come straight at your house to the site.

14:06 Yeah.

14:06 So just take the best performing ones,

14:07 add the 5 seconds on the back and then basically each one of them become good,

14:11 typically pretty good ads because the algorithm

14:13 already does the testing for you.

14:14 The cheapest ways of testing new ads um is just

14:16 like post them as organic and then see how they do.

14:19 Now let's go funnel CRO.

14:20 So this is what the page is going to look like.

14:22 You're going to have your little hamburger menu here.

14:24 I think you just put the the number 333 whatever up here.

14:27 You want to make sure that on mobile this is all one line.

14:30 So there's no no other room.

14:31 Do you do free assessments or no?

14:34 Yeah.

14:34 Okay.

14:34 Uh, we actually we saw that just changing the verbiage instead

14:38 of doing a free estimate to like the 18 point inspection.

14:42 Yeah, people love that versus 18 point inspection.

14:44 And then I think we have our form right here underneath.

14:47 They have the number at the top for the people who want to call cuz

14:49 I'm guessing cuz you have it all over

14:50 that you do have somebody who's answering those.

14:51 And then you have your little, you know, submit

14:54 whatever thing here.

14:56 Gotcha.

14:55 And then I would probably put locations just because I'm

14:58 thinking what are the most common questions that someone might ask.

15:00 If you already know those other ones,

15:01 then I might also include FAQs at the bottom and that would be it.

15:05 That's more like that's the page and it should be a freestanding

15:08 page that's you don't even have to have it navigable from the site.

15:11 You can just be like this is where all my ads go.

15:13 You might also find though that if you change all

15:15 the buttons on your site to redirect to this page,

15:17 you'll just convert more of the existing traffic.

15:19 Also on the SEO side.

15:20 So I think this honestly like of all the things I'm going to go over,

15:23 I think the pricing, the ads,

15:24 and us doing this funnel change in terms of how we're directing

15:27 the traffic is probably going to be by far the biggest improvement.

15:29 I think you probably have somewhere in the neighborhood of a 2x or more here.

15:34 That's going to be really big.

15:35 The funnel conversion, we've outlined that you're going to increase Google ads.

15:38 You probably have a ton on the Google side.

15:40 On the Facebook side,

15:41 we're going to do uh plus+ on images

15:45 and we want less text and basically offer first.

15:51 Like basically just lead with the offer.

15:53 In general with marketing,

15:54 like I don't want to say thing the same thing multiple times.

15:56 I'll say in different ways,

15:57 but the same content over and over again like it just looks

16:01 cheap, you know, for lack of a better term, which will impact your brand, right?

16:04 So, let's do the reactivation stuff and then let's pull up the emails.

16:09 We recommend a yearly free checkup for your dryer

16:11 vent to ensure it's working safely and efficiently.

16:14 If you use your dryer frequently or have furry pets,

16:16 we suggest cleaning it more often.

16:17 Frequent use means more than three loads per week.

16:19 If you have pets, consider more frequent cleanings.

16:21 Okay.

16:22 So, what's interesting about this is that this is like I mean

16:26 what you've proven is that just telling

16:27 people you exist tends to get more business,

16:29 which is like first first objective.

16:32 Um I would say the second version of this is where he says,

16:35 "Hey, you know, ProShine family,

16:36 two things that I would probably consider testing.

16:38 I owe you uh a free checkup or I owe you x amount of money." So,

16:42 whatever the cost of a checkup is $175 or whatever, like I owe you $175.

16:46 That'll get a lot of opens.

16:47 It's like, "Hey, it turns out that when you signed up,

16:50 we didn't communicate a component of our offer that we did to other customers,

16:54 and I want to make sure that we're trying

16:55 to do right by you." More like, "Hey, we messed up.

16:57 Can we make it up to you?" It's a different frame than like,

17:01 "Hey, like we're coming back out." You know what I mean?

17:03 So, nice thing is with this, you can just split test it.

17:04 So, you can run it one week and see

17:06 what the open response rates are the next week.

17:07 And the way you're doing this, you're just doing this manually,

17:09 like just looking at your list,

17:10 who was the last time out and then, okay, that's fine.

17:12 Then this, I mean, the nice thing is that creates

17:13 a really easy way to do the split test.

17:15 You don't have at no cost to you in here.

17:16 So I would make sure that that is definitely highlighted highlighted.

17:19 Yeah.

17:19 So we recommend a yearly and then I put bold

17:22 underlined at no cost to you because people scan these things.

17:25 Some of the things that I thought of that are

17:26 like unique angles kind of like the hey I owe you

17:28 some money or hey we messed up dot dot dot like

17:30 what will make this business more valuable in the long run.

17:32 So number one savings.

17:34 So if you can ask for people's bill from your existing

17:38 people and be like hey can you just send us

17:40 your bills from the last 12 months and it shows

17:42 before and after cuz then you'll have a 12-month running average.

17:45 It's such a stronger pick.

17:46 Hey, this actually saves money.

17:47 The reason that I think this is so compelling is

17:49 that this is what when paired with the larger price will make sense.

17:54 We're charging 1,500 bucks or $1,700 per unit.

17:57 So, it's 30 whatever 3,400 that you're going to pay.

18:00 But the average person is getting that back in 18 months and it's going

18:02 to increase the value of the house cuz we're going to give you this, you know,

18:04 this little portal that'll show you all

18:06 the the the fixit and the mess ups, whatever.

18:08 One is I would send those stats out about savings.

18:10 Okay.

18:10 Number two in terms of themes of the emails

18:13 is I would take the exceptional ones and send those.

18:15 I'd be like, "Hey, this is Casey.

18:17 Casey was at $600 a month and now she's at 150." Like, "Holy cow,

18:20 I could use that kind." It's like, "Hey, you know, hit us up.

18:22 It's better for your allergies and it's better for your pocketbook."

18:25 Like those are pretty kind of strong uh angles,

18:28 which then leads me to the second kind of stat that I think is worth collecting.

18:31 So, one, we have the stat on savings, which I think will be the most compelling.

18:34 But interestingly, I'll bet that if you had

18:36 a different angle on some of the ads, which is like, "Are you sneezing a lot?

18:39 are your eyes watery?

18:40 Like what are the pains of somebody who has allergies?

18:42 And I'm somebody who has terrible breathing.

18:44 And so that's why, you know, I I I recognize it.

18:46 And if if someone says,

18:48 did you know that allergies are reduced by 33% by just having better air?

18:52 And then be like, contrast that with 90% of houses are

18:55 past their period of time where the the existing filters work, whatever.

18:59 That's why we blow up in April when

19:01 pollen season comes and all the windows are open.

19:04 That's big for us.

19:04 So the nice thing is that if you have one or two

19:07 times a year that you know it's going to kind of blow up,

19:09 then you actually get basically year- round coverage.

19:11 In the gym world, people want to get in shape for summer.

19:13 So for us, we have summer and then we

19:14 have New Year's as like two kind of polar ends.

19:17 But we can get year- round signups because as New Year's approaches,

19:19 it's like you're advertising,

19:20 hey, you want to start, you want to start getting in shape for the new year.

19:22 And then once New Year happens, it's like, hey,

19:24 don't you want to make sure you have your New Year's resolution that worked?

19:26 And then it's like, hey, did you miss your New Year's resolution, right?

19:29 As we're getting into like March, April, it's like, hey,

19:31 if you want to get in shape for summer, you got to do it now, right?

19:33 Right.

19:33 And then once summer hits, it's hot as and then they're like,

19:35 "Fuck." You know what I mean?

19:36 I'm in a bikini.

19:37 I look like I look terrible.

19:38 Hey, if you look terrible in your bikini, you should come in now.

19:40 It's like, "Hey, did you and then right

19:41 at then we're going right back into the year."

19:43 And so we only need like one or two

19:44 kind of seasonal pain points to go pre- during post

19:48 twice basically on two cycles a year.

19:50 That theme is what you would communicate to the CMO.

19:52 All of our messaging for the next two months is going

19:54 to be anti-allergy and that's going to be through the emails,

19:57 that's going to be through the ads, it's going to be through Google PBC.

19:59 Next two months it's going to be like, "Okay,

20:01 season's here." Because the thing is is also your targeting

20:03 is going to go to some of your existing customers.

20:05 And so I'm sure some people are booking

20:06 through Google search that already are customers of yours.

20:08 They just don't know how to find you.

20:09 They just Google you, right?

20:11 And so this just gives you another opportunity

20:13 to get in front of them more times.

20:14 So it was really cool that hear from Alex that we

20:16 could start using some anti-allergy or some mildew kind of things

20:20 that we can implement cuz I know that this is a big

20:22 issue that many homeowners don't think about until it's unfortunately too late.

20:25 Real quick, I'm going to show you the exact 10stage road map from zero

20:29 to 100 million plus that less than 1%

20:32 of companies finish I've now done multiple times.

20:34 And so I can say with a lot of confidence that these are

20:36 the stages as headcount increases that you need to get through.

20:40 And I broke each of these down by eight different functions of the business,

20:43 what the constraint feels like,

20:45 like what are the symptoms of it when you're going through it,

20:47 and then what steps we actually took to graduate.

20:49 And we've done this across software, physical products, uh,

20:52 service businesses, brickandmortar, all of this, and it works.

20:56 And it's my gift to you.

20:57 It's absolutely free.

20:58 And so the link's in the description, but you just go acquisition.com/roadmap.

21:01 Just enter your info and it'll spit it right back to you.

21:03 All free.

21:03 The other thing, do you have retargeting across all platforms set up?

21:06 We're working on it.

21:07 Okay.

21:07 Yeah.

21:08 So that would be for me like probably be number seven,

21:12 crossplatform retargeting.

21:15 And the other thing is number eight is we want to own all terms.

21:24 Quick pro tip for just about anybody.

21:25 If you advertise at all or even have some level of word of mouth,

21:30 people will search for your business or your name.

21:33 And so for me it would be like I should own Hormosi,

21:36 Alex Herozi, you know, al Hormosi acquisition, acquisition.com,

21:40 all these different permutations of things that are words or branded terms

21:44 that I have been consistently marketing over an extended period of time.

21:47 And so we just have to think what are people

21:49 most likely to search for if they know who we are.

21:52 And we just want to make sure

21:53 that we're first thing that people see because otherwise

21:55 you're comp you leave that space open for competitors

21:57 to advertise and scoop your customers for you.

21:59 And this also helps out businesses who don't have as strong of SEO.

22:02 So, search engine optimization so that if your customers

22:04 are searching for you that they find you and that's

22:06 the point and I'm willing to do that even

22:08 if I have to pay because some people are like,

22:10 "Well, they were going to find me anyways.

22:11 I don't want to pay for that click." Dude, get bigger problems.

22:13 Like, you're you're not going to lose

22:15 money on that cuz think about the alternative.

22:17 Someone could just out bid you on your own terms and then it becomes a problem.

22:20 And I'll say this, if someone is out bidding you on your own terms,

22:23 the good news is you'll always be able

22:24 to beat them on being more profitable on your name.

22:27 If we're looking at this stuff,

22:28 I think we're looking at basically once a month here, one time per month.

22:33 And I think that these reactivation emails,

22:36 I'm going to pull this OVER would be one is like I owe you.

22:47 Mhm.

22:47 Which I would have a follow-up to this one.

22:48 So there's difference between like we might email once a month,

22:51 but we might have like a two or three

22:52 email sequence just for like that little segment.

22:55 Does that make sense?

22:56 So it's almost like three six mini campaigns more than six

22:58 individual emails and be like I made a mistake on your account.

23:10 Okay.

23:10 But that's like kind of like a and then b allergies angle.

23:15 Then we have our savings angle and then we have our environment.

23:22 You never know.

23:23 Yeah.

23:23 Another good one around the allergies

23:25 like from the polar opposite from obviously

23:27 April to like the end of year like when it starts to get cold

23:30 is a mildew smell because a lot of times when those heating elements

23:33 start to kick up in electric heat you're smelling it through the duck work.

23:35 So you've got pollen and then you've got uh would you say um mildew right?

23:39 These are kind of like your two

23:40 variations of your different kind of allergy angles.

23:42 I would also consider doing case studies.

23:47 Okay, as the followup for each of these.

23:50 So it's like here's the stats behind this.

23:52 Then the follow-up email is like, "Hey, here's Casey who had the same issue.

23:55 Maybe you should consider that." And so then this one gets us to like come back.

24:00 Right.

24:01 Because that's our six months.

24:03 Yeah.

24:03 Like I would be unsurprised if it doesn't do 20 to 30% of revenue.

24:06 Yeah.

24:07 Like Yeah.

24:07 Big time.

24:08 Big.

24:08 And nice thing with this, it's all profit, right?

24:13 All right.

24:13 So, let's talk about affiliates.

24:16 Okay.

24:15 All right.

24:16 So, walk me through your existing affiliate process.

24:20 So right now we just have a connection with our other partners.

24:23 Typically they're either in the HVAC space or their pest control,

24:27 even remediation companies.

24:28 We've made connections one-on-one with them.

24:30 They know what we do.

24:31 How'd you make the connection?

24:32 Through networking just in general.

24:33 So we have networking events that we go to.

24:35 People that we're partnered with refer us

24:37 out to other companies that they work with.

24:39 Your existing referral program has basically just been like,

24:40 I'll send you business, you send me business, and that's worked out.

24:43 Okay.

24:43 But how many would you say are actively sending you business

24:45 on a consistent basis?

24:46 One.

24:47 Okay.

24:47 Which is the one?

24:48 Yeah.

24:48 So, I I'm going to guess that's just worked out.

24:50 But most of the times, if you want to have like a true

24:52 kind of affiliate or partner program,

24:53 we need to have some sort of offer for them.

24:55 I see this as basically two potential avatars,

24:56 and I don't want you to focus on both.

24:58 I want you to like pick one.

24:59 Basically, we've got the events play, which is,

25:02 okay, I'm going to go to these HOAs.

25:03 I'm going to go not during the time that there's an event and say,

25:06 hey, when do you have your HOA events?

25:08 I did this house and this house in this neighborhood.

25:10 Cuz that's going to be key, right?

25:11 Like, we already did this house, this house.

25:12 You can call them up if you want, hear their numbers.

25:14 We love to be able to just know what your schedule is

25:16 for when you have your HOA events just so we can just show face.

25:20 You know, we like to be a part of the community, blah blah blah blah.

25:22 Um, but this is an outbound, okay,

25:25 effort that you're basically it's you plus car or Nicole

25:28 plus car going out and shaking hands, kissing babies.

25:31 And basically what we want to do is create

25:32 a calendar so that we end up getting to, you know,

25:35 one to two a week, which I think you could totally do.

25:37 The stuff that we're getting from that event, I mean,

25:39 the last event we did, we booked 55 inspections.

25:42 both our CMO and Nicole, I mean, they rock that stuff.

25:45 So, I see this as a very good way of doing it, but I think we go outbound.

25:48 Give us your calendar for what your events are,

25:50 and then it's just like once you have their calendar, you're in.

25:52 And then every time you're there, you're like,

25:53 "Hey, when's the next one?" And that way,

25:55 you just always go book an event from an event once you're in.

25:57 Now, on the partner side, what I want to talk about is the offer.

26:01 We want to have a really compelling offer for them.

26:03 Referrals, everyone promises, no one delivers.

26:05 And so it's like you need to have something that they're going to like,

26:07 you know, get into bed with you on whatever

26:11 the highest gross margin thing that you can do that's like kind of lower ticket.

26:15 So that $175 thing, I think that you say, "Hey, you can charge $175

26:21 and you can keep the whole thing and we'll

26:23 do the work." But then when you go out,

26:25 you've got the client and then you can sell

26:27 the rest of your the rest of your work.

26:30 Right?

26:29 So this is the $100 million leads book.

26:30 This is page 223.

26:32 We're talking about affiliates.

26:33 And so one of the key parts about making an affiliate work is figuring

26:36 out the offer that's going to work best for them to sell on your behalf.

26:41 And so I have a couple different versions of of setting this up.

26:44 I outline them on pages 237 to 239.

26:48 So I basically give you three different versions that you

26:51 can use to get affiliates to promote your stuff.

26:53 Now, what I'm proposing for him, he offer number two,

26:57 which is they have the core thing that they're selling,

26:59 but then they upsell for 175 bucks his lead magnet.

27:03 So, they're going to sell something that he's going to give

27:05 away for free to them to give to their customers.

27:09 And then once that customer comes in with that lead magnet,

27:12 cuz they bought the $175 thing,

27:14 you then upsell the core offer that applies to you.

27:17 The reason they do it, the other business,

27:19 is because they make all this money on the $175

27:21 bucks that they don't have to do anything for.

27:23 You like it because it might cost you only $25 to deliver that $175 thing.

27:28 So, your cost of acquiring the customer is your conversion rate from lead

27:31 magnet upselles to uh your core offer times the cost of delivering it.

27:35 So, if let's say one out of three people takes the upsell,

27:38 well, if your cost of delivering that upsell is $25,

27:41 then it cost you $75 per customer,

27:43 which is probably exceptional math for his business.

27:46 And it's a very good point because

27:47 our technicians are trained to even if they're

27:50 doing just a dryer to push the inspection

27:52 to see what's going on while they're there.

27:56 Okay.

27:55 And so this we give this to affiliates.

27:59 So you know you have your your one guy

28:00 but it's like hey let me talk to 10 other ones.

28:03 I saw that you guys don't do duck cleaning.

28:04 We do.

28:05 It's one thing to say hey we're going to refer you business which we will

28:08 but you also only have so much business to refer to.

28:10 And the thing is is longterm it's a less scalable option cuz what ends

28:13 up having to happen is if you're like well I want 20 referral partners.

28:16 It's unlikely that you're going to have sufficient

28:18 referral volume to send them all enough business.

28:20 Yeah.

28:20 So the good thing about what we have right now set up it's another set

28:23 of eyes as as well for us to go through and and diagnose their system.

28:27 So it gives them more visible time on their their units in their clients houses.

28:32 Uh which allows them allows us to say hey listen

28:35 like this is needs to be replaced or this is wrong.

28:38 We'll up your stuff if we don't.

28:39 All right.

28:40 Well, we send them right back to whoever sent us there.

28:43 So, you know, depending on what partner we're going

28:45 there with, solidify some of their sales as well,

28:47 which is why that affiliate with our biggest one is working so well.

28:52 So, I think that this is the offer I would approach them with and just say,

28:55 "Listen, you can sell it.

28:56 I'll send all my guys out.

28:57 I'll eat it at 100% of cost.

28:59 You take all the money and you just know what your metrics are." Like,

29:01 you're still going to close 80 70%.

29:03 And it's going to be 34K, so who cares?

29:06 You would pay 175 cuz the hard cost of sending the guy out is less than that.

29:09 So, what's the cost of sending the guy out?

29:10 Um, about 100.

29:12 Okay.

29:12 So, your actual cost is about 100,

29:14 but you're probably going to close what percentage

29:17 do you think you'll close into new business?

29:19 Um, probably 75% of that.

29:20 Cool.

29:21 Let's be conservative and say half.

29:22 If you had to pay $200 in terms of CA, who cares, right?

29:26 And so, that's the that would be the offer that I lead

29:29 with because that way you don't feel like you owe them I mean,

29:31 obviously you're going to want to try and refer business if you can,

29:34 but this at least gives them real money,

29:36 no extra work, like it's compelling offer.

29:38 They just send it to us and we get it done.

29:39 Yeah.

29:40 I don't think you're going to be able to do both of these.

29:42 Yeah, I agree.

29:42 So, which one do you feel you would be like more equipped to do sooner?

29:46 Equipped to do sooner.

29:47 I think outbound's probably easier cuz we can obviously have our CMO

29:51 just start making those reachout calls to see what's going on.

29:54 Ultimately, I think that this is going to be um very interesting for us.

29:58 We want the activation.

29:59 I think that at a certain point of just having people like,

30:02 "Hey, this is the price chart." So, yeah.

30:04 So, if we're looking at a timeline,

30:06 it's like probably for the rest of this year,

30:07 you're just going to it's going to take you to spin this up.

30:09 And so, this is probably a 2026 thing, okay?

30:12 Realistically, because for each of these things,

30:14 you basically need someone who's full-time in charge of

30:17 as as ugly as that sounds.

30:18 But the thing is, it's going to be worth it because

30:20 you're going to generate a bunch of business.

30:21 If you get one more partner like your current one, it's already paid for itself.

30:24 And I think that if one time one person's full-time,

30:26 that's the only thing they're doing, they'll definitely do more than that.

30:28 And then you run into supply constraints cuz you won't have enough guys,

30:30 which we can do with for our affiliate.

30:32 I think that this is going to be a great program for us

30:34 and we always look at how we can give back to everyone around us.

30:37 So, this is going to fit our model

30:39 and then just really explode the whole process.

30:41 Let's look at our our our overall our overall improvements.

30:45 We'll prioritize them.

30:46 Does that sound good?

30:48 Okay.

30:49 Number one is we're going to do price rates of 10%.

30:55 So, around 1650 per unit and as long

30:58 as close rate stays of above 65% we're making money.

31:01 Okay.

31:02 Two is you're going to continue to pay off the debt.

31:04 So, we're going to we're just going to keep it debt paid.

31:06 Number three, change funnel.

31:08 So, uh optimize landing page and redirect buttons.

31:15 So, all the buttons on the site should

31:17 now go to this new page that's already optimized.

31:19 Mhm.

31:19 So number four is fixed ads which is variety plus organic best performers.

31:33 Mhm.

31:33 With a plus 5second yep uh CTA.

31:38 And then we're going to increase ad spend now that we fixed these two things.

31:41 So it's like let's go make a better funnel.

31:44 Let's go fix the ads.

31:45 Then we will increase the ad spend.

31:47 And we're just going to keep doing this kind of infinitely, right?

31:51 It should be a There you go.

31:54 forever.

31:54 And for the increase ad spend, what are you thinking?

31:56 Like how much do I do you want me to designate a percentage base on on that or

32:01 The reason that I do it in this order is because if

32:04 we fix the landing page and we just improve the ads you have,

32:08 you might already double or triple your lead flow.

32:10 And so you might not even have to spend more because you might be like,

32:12 "Shoot, I don't have enough guys." Which is

32:13 a problem I'd love to create for you.

32:15 Then we go retargeting crossplatform plus own Google search terms.

32:22 The last main one that we're going to do is just going to be outbound to HOAs.

32:27 Like you can do one through four in the next like 2 weeks, right?

32:33 This is kind of like the first thing that happens.

32:36 This then is kind of happening anyway.

32:37 So there's not really any work that has to happen.

32:39 These two happen together.

32:41 These two will happen together.

32:43 And then this would be the last thing that I would do.

32:45 Gotcha.

32:45 Because all of these might even result be like,

32:47 shoot, I don't even need to do these events yet.

32:49 Like we're already crushing it on this part.

32:50 So I think that this could reasonably increase profit by 25%.

32:57 In profit.

32:58 Um that will also once you have to not pay off the debt,

33:01 that'll increase your profit by like 5%.

33:04 Right.

33:05 But at least 100% in headache.

33:07 Yeah.

33:07 Um this might be a 2x that's sitting right here for optimizing the pages.

33:11 And it might be even more because you have

33:13 your SEO that's going to feed into that too.

33:15 Um fixing the ads and organic like this could definitely be a two to 3x.

33:20 I know that sounds wild,

33:21 but like I think you're getting by with the ads that you have

33:25 because other people who are in your industry don't know how to advertise

33:29 more than because the advertising um the the ad spend is just going to be,

33:34 you know, one to one ratio of basically you're you're scaling, right?

33:37 If you can if we can keep rorowaz the same and we double it,

33:39 then everything doubles down the funnel, right?

33:41 This is probably going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of like a 10 to 20.

33:44 I'll just call it a 10.

33:45 Conservatively, I'll say it's about a 10 10% lift, maybe 20%.

33:49 That you might get from the the retargeting side.

33:52 Um, and then outbound is kind of like

33:53 a uncapped uh because you could figuratively just be like,

33:57 I'm going to go get a 100 HOA and then like you're completely plugged in.

34:00 You do that and you're at 10 $20 million a year.

34:05 Yeah.

34:03 Oh, you know what?

34:04 I forgot one.

34:04 So, um, six email reactivation.

34:11 Yeah.

34:11 Yeah.

34:11 Yeah.

34:13 There we go.

34:13 And I think that can give us another probably 20 to 30% lift.

34:22 Yeah.

34:23 Money.

34:23 And that's and that just keeps growing.

34:24 Well, the nice thing with things like that is

34:25 that they do compound as the business grows, right?

34:28 And so you don't like once that's installed, it just continues to print.

34:32 Do you think this will help you grow?

34:36 Absolutely.

34:35 Sweet, man.

34:36 Awesome.

34:37 You feel good about this?

34:38 I do.

34:38 All right.

34:39 Rock and roll, man.

34:40 Drum roll, please.

34:41 It's been almost a year since we filmed this episode with Corey.

34:43 My team jumped on a call to check in on his progress,

34:46 and I'm going to watch it live.

34:47 Hey, Alex.

34:48 Uh, so yeah, so when we were there originally for the recording,

34:51 we were doing about 1.25 million in sales for the trailing 12 months.

34:55 Uh currently we are on our on our goal here for 2.3 to 2.5 a year later.

35:01 The biggest impact that really that we obviously went over was a lot

35:04 of like my marketing which we knew was an issue when we first got there.

35:08 So went with a new third party that's been

35:10 there done that uh with many other companies before.

35:14 Um so they're been amazing to work with.

35:16 And again, our our lead flow um after kind

35:19 of making some of those conversions from the landing page,

35:22 marketing, upping ad spend,

35:24 uh we were sitting about 120 leads a month to now we're about close to 200.

35:29 Uh which is really great and they're higher quality.

35:31 And then I'm excited.

35:33 Hopefully in the next 12 months we'll be looking at another location,

35:35 which is super exciting, not only for myself, but for my team.

35:39 Uh I got some some good individuals

35:41 here that are looking for some new opportunities,

35:43 and I'm happy to be able to facilitate that.

35:46 I just want to say I thank you and I appreciate all everything you do.

35:50 Um, and I love your mission,

35:52 which again is like very similar to the way I go to help my clients.

35:56 Um, you do it for the right reasons and that's something I can respect.

36:01 Well, there you have it.

36:02 That's Cory.

36:02 Um, you know, crushed it, almost doubled uh within a year just

36:06 walking through the stuff that we went through.

36:08 All the credit really goes to him.

36:09 I mean, at the end of the day, you can watch a 100 of these videos,

36:11 but if you do nothing with it, nothing's going to happen.

36:13 So, real businesses, real tactics, real