Hey friends, welcome to the handyman success podcast. We are here basically to hear from other handyman and basically share their stories with you, in hopes to teach and inspire you. So today, I am here, my name is Alan Lee here with my co host, Jason Call. And we are blessed to be here today with Brian Davis out of Florida. So let’s go ahead and throw it over to Brian, you want to introduce yourself, let us know who you are, where you’re located and what you do for a living, we’d love to hear it. Well, I want to start off by saying I’m the one who’s blessed. I’m honored to be here with you guys. I’ve been excited all day. So my name is Brian Davis. I was born and raised in Bonita Springs, Florida. And I live right on the outskirts of Bonita springs and estero, Florida. And I own and operate complete maintenance and homewatch services. And we’ve been in business full time since probably about April 2020. I really count this year as my first year because last year was was so wacky, and I had some personal stuff going on. So this is the first year where I’m really looking at it as you know, how is the business doing?
Awesome. So I’m so so sorry to cut you off. So do you want to tell us a little bit about kind of how you got started or why you went ahead and started. We can kind of we can kind of make some some guesses because last year was 2020. But you want to kind of go ahead and let us know why you started the business and kind of how you got started. Absolutely. So I grew up. My father was a business owner. He owned a painting contracting business in the town south of us, Naples, Florida. And I grew up in this shop from like a really young age. Every summer, I’d be in the shop, I’d be earning money sanding, painting, doing all sorts of stuff like that. And my dad, he hated drywall work. So that was something that I learned really quickly because he’d have me do that when I was out and about so I was naturally. Yeah, he was he’s one of the best man. He’s one of the best. So naturally, I grew up kind of in the trades. My dad was a really handy type guy. And I always was involved in some sort of trades. I worked at Sherwin Williams for a while. I worked as a maintenance man for a local organization for a while. And I was really trying to work my way up
with that nonprofit organization, the Art Center, I was trying to figure out a way to get out of maintenance and earn more money. So while I was working for them, I put myself through school. And I got a degree in psychology and I focused a lot on industrial organizational psychology, like the psychology of like kind of business and motivating people leadership, stuff like that. Because I knew really quickly I wasn’t going to make any money in psychology if I wasn’t a doctor. So I switched my focus over to that, and just tried to work my way up, but I never really happened. So when the carone in 2019, actually the end of 2019 I started this business on the side as a way to make more money. I had a daughter now, I needed some more income. And when the Coronavirus hit, everybody got sent home for like two weeks. It was even longer for us it was like a month and when they wanted me to come and that’s when I really started doing the handyman work. I put myself out there and I was working every single week during that lockdown. And when it was time to come back, it was like your new job is sanitation, sanitize everything all day. And it was just a long time coming. So I respectfully resigned. And I’ve been going at this thing ever since. Awesome. So where where was your business at like, if you don’t mind sharing kind of like revenue wise that month when you were like alright, I’m not going to be sanitizing I want to work on my business full time. If you can kind of like shed a little bit more light on the details of like where you were in that in that kind of like decision and kind of just what that was like for you to leave that that you know stable paycheck job and go full time into your handyman and home watch company.
Well, I was terrified. I was terrified even more so once I did it and started getting the ball rolling but easily. In the month of April I made as much as I made at the Art Center in probably like two weeks like one job was like two weeks of pay. So So I saw where this could go quickly with not knowing really anything about business not knowing anything about my pricing, just looking at a job and saying I want this much for that. So I knew there was something there and I knew at you know 30 years old then if I didn’t go after it now, I was going to be 40 and looking back thinking I should have at least tried that I can always get a job in maintenance you know, I have a degree
Three, so I really wanted to go for it. And that first month, I easily made as much as I made at the Art Center. And that was really, the deciding factor was I saw how much money I could make when I didn’t even really have a business setup. I had the LLC and the licensing and insurance but I had no foundation, no no business set up other than just the legal requirements. And that year 2020 was a wild year because Coronavirus, slowed everything down a lot. And then I decided at the end of the year to have a knee surgery that I had needed for like five years. So I took November and December completely off even into January of this year just to recover from it. So that was like it was just a really weird year last year. Wow, wow, that’s awesome. Man, that’s so cool to hear. I know that you know a lot of our a lot of our audience or people that are, you know, looking to start a painting business, or maybe they’ve been in it for a few months. So I think that kind of information is definitely valuable. So what are some of the things that you did in that first few months of your business, to really maximize productivity and make sure that you could get your name out there and start, you know, getting more clients in? Well, in the first, the first few months, I was researching how to market a handyman business, and I got linked up with you. And that’s not a sales pitch. That’s what I did. I did that handyman marketing funnel class, I forget when that was but it wasn’t very long into my business. So being full time. And I did that marketing funnel class and I went after it, I had some savings saved up. So I invested a little bit in the advertising and building the platforms and getting myself at least a uniform that was better than just a random t shirt. And I really put everything into that marketing funnel. And I put some money into advertisement when I was like really afraid to I didn’t know if it would work. But I just followed the steps that you guys had laid out. And it took a little while it was it was it was scary. It was frustrating in the beginning, you know, you go through the emotions of it feeling like a failure, feeling like just just low for a while, you know, because you get a job and you’d feel real high and then it’d be slow for a while. But after about that 90 day mark, maybe four months or so, phone calls just started coming in, you know, and now I was at least putting myself in front of these people. Even if I didn’t win the bid. I was out doing business. And that was a really big thing for me when the phone started ringing.
That’s so awesome, man. That’s awesome. So what are those? If you don’t mind sharing? What are those first few things that you invested in as far as marketing goes those first few months that that maybe took four months or so to pay off? You know, what would you say those are? Those are the things like if someone was watching this and like okay, Brian, like, this is awesome where you’re at. But yeah, where do I get started?
Well, you have to get your social media going. So if you’re on Facebook, you need to have a business Facebook page, if you have Instagram, you need to do that. You need to get on all of the free platforms. Next door, Yelp homeadvisor Angie’s List, even if you’re not going to pay for the platform’s, you need to be on those because like you guys know it’s generating your footprint on the internet, and making you known as somebody who’s reputable Look, he’s all over these places. So I did those things I started posting every day on Facebook, I started marketing myself to everybody in anybody, I didn’t care how silly I looked, how inexperienced it might have come off, I put myself out there. And and I started a paid platform, I started paying Angie’s List and I liked Angie’s List because it was a little bit different from the other ones, you didn’t have to pay per bid, you paid a little bit more per month, and you could do whatever you want it on their platform. And they would fish you the leads that through working with your success manager, you would, you know, get into a certain category and it would only fish you those type of leads. So it’s just tweaking that and that really kind of took me off with the Angie’s List because I felt a little bit higher end clients were on Angie’s List. And I instantly made a lot of return clients through Angie’s List so I would say number one after like Facebook was Angie’s List because the Facebook put me on the map for people that I knew so they know that I’m doing this now. Yeah, something I want to commend you, Brian to you is
you tested and tweaked and you were patient and you were diligent with spending money on your marketing. You know you mentioned there was like three months before you felt that like consistent traction, but you stuck with it. You know you tried different platforms you found one where the lead quality like you were gauging you know the quality of leads and the number of leads you’re getting from me
Angie’s List identified that as like, this is working well for me. So that’s, that’s what I encourage you to listen to this is, you know, it might not be angie’s list for you, you know, it might not be Yelp, it might not be good. It might it might not be, you know, anyone else’s story. But anyone that has went through this, they’ve they’ve tried, they’ve tested I know, honestly, he’s tried everything, so and identified what works well for you. So I commend you for sticking with it and, and doing that testing, tweaking and not getting discouraged after two weeks, you know, it’s like, spent $200, and I haven’t gotten anything I’m done, like you owe it to yourself in your business to stick with it. And so I commend you for that. I appreciate that. And there was a lot of discouragement. But I’m a fighter. You know, if I haven’t been taken out by now, this, this isn’t gonna stop me. So it was just push forward. And I knew that the market was out there. And I knew the market for a professional handyman, which is what what I am, was there, you know, I knew that I brought something very valuable to the table. And it was just going to take some time to build it.
And and one thing too, I want to point out, you mentioned like building that like footprint. And I know you’ve done an awesome job getting like Google reviews on your Google My Business. And so just a pro tip out there. And to kind of explain this really quickly for for listeners with Brian mentioned this footprint getting on all these free platforms so and which I’m sure you’ve gotten more calls from like Google Maps, or Google My Business listing. And the reason being of Brian creating all these free profiles, like Google has a folder of your business. And in that folder, they see your handyman website, they see Google Maps, they see Angie’s List, Yelp, all these things. And the thicker that folder is, the more mentions of your business, the more places you are, the more authority that you’re communicating to Google to search engines. And so you are going to have more visibility more people are going to find you. And especially if you’ve got that like that paid ad source like you did through Angie’s List. It’s that’s how things compound and you know, after three months, like oh my gosh, it’s like zero to 100 from you know, two months ago to here we are now. So that’s it makes sense in how you started and stuck with it. And now that tractions really built up
on that note, too. So we haven’t gotten to so we kind of covered a little bit where you started knee surgery, might get into that a little bit in the future, because that’s that’s quite a journey, like three months off of work as a business owner. But where are you at right now in your business.
So right now, it’s myself and I’ve one employee who’s he’s full time, he gets about 25 to 32 hours a week, I’m trying to keep it up at the 30 hour mark, but he works every day with me, we try to keep it around six hours a day. So it’s him and I my truck, my trailer, I also have a van if we need it, but usually we’re riding around together because he’s really skilled in his in the technical terms and the craftsmanship, but I really want to teach him, um, you know, my way of doing things in terms of customer service and how we act and treat the clients. So we’re driving around together right now.
Awesome. And I say, yeah, it’s, it’s been great. You know, that was something that was really nerve wracking to because you start to make it in your business, you start to be able to pay your bills and have a little bit of money. But you find out like, I can’t really do much more than what I’m doing, I’m not able to get the estimates done quickly, I’m not able to take on any more work physically by myself. So you bring on a guy and at first, you don’t really know how you’re going to do it. You just know, okay, I’ll take less money right now. And we’ll figure it out. And maybe there’s a better way of going about that. But that’s how I did it. Um, but then really quickly, I linked up with the guys in the Business Builders group and, and made sure I was charging enough to supplement most of his income.
Definitely, I think it all relates back to what relates back to what you talked about earlier was investing, right? I think that’s really what businesses wildly all about. And I love how, you know, you made it a point to talk about how you invested in marketing, you know, they’re at, you know, month one, month two, even though it didn’t show up until month four, right? That’s really what investing is, is it’s it’s putting in the hard work now and maybe taking a little bit less, you know, from the business now, in hopes for better and greater things in the future. You know, I think that’s one thing that you’ve definitely shown through the whole marketing is because, you know, with marketing in general, right, it takes you know, 90 days for the marketing that you do, on average to kind of pay off, you know, so I think it’s important to continually be investing and then right now you’re investing in the employee, right? So I think sometimes like I was listening to Gary Vee the other day, and sometimes in order to make it to the next level in something you need to invest you need to take
Cut, in some sense, in hopes for a better future. You know, I think that’s awesome. That’s exactly what we’re doing. And I think getting the the right things in place right now
may not completely make sense at the moment. But I think you’re laying the foundations for that to pay off, which I think is absolutely huge.
Well, that’s a huge thing is exactly like you said it, setting it up now where you want to be in three to five years, because you’re going to get there. And then you don’t want to be scrambling to figure everything out. And it doesn’t all make sense right away, because you’re like, well, I don’t need to pay for this and that right now. But at the end of the day, you’re going to get there quicker than you know, if you stick to it, and you’re going to be busy during that time. So invest in that stuff now, set it up the right way. And I’m preaching to myself, you know, and build it so that when it’s time it can work for you and make your life easier, because you’re going to be out there working. So it’s just smart to do that. Huh? That’s huge. So so in this whole journey, what would you say? I mean, you already mentioned some things about you know, some knees and stuff like that. But what would you say is like your biggest struggles that you faced, both in business and personal likey even take us back to at the beginning of 2019, or at the end of 2019. When you were doing this on the side? What are some struggles you set you found there? And what are some struggles you found when you first you know, decided to quit and take the leap. So my biggest struggles, probably when I first started and had it saw on the side was not knowing what to do with anything, not knowing how to get clients not knowing what to charge, only doing work that I know I performed for just super inexperienced, and then you know, lugging around a right leg that was on fire all the time.
A lot of injuries that I carried with me from from a younger age into business, they kind of showed themselves a lot as you’re working out and about every day. Um, so those were like my main struggles, I don’t think the struggles really began until I went full time. Because that’s when it all became you know, much more important that I that I do the things right and make the income that can provide for my family. And once that happened, I would say, once I really got going with it, the biggest struggles was in Florida, the licensing, the licensing is so strict, so stringent, everything has a contractor’s license, it’s like this contractor, everything has it. So I was really, really limited. And then getting that knee surgery done was something that had to happen. So that those are probably my biggest struggles in the beginning and just staying with a good mindset. Because it’s rough in the beginning. Hmm, definitely so. So if you had to give someone a few tips on because I know that you’re huge into, you know, mindset and, you know, anxiety and things like that. So if you had to give someone like three tips, you know, to overcome kind of that anxiety and those struggles at the very beginning, what would you What would you say would be your top three tips for someone,
you have to have a why you have to have something bigger than yourself that you’re doing it for, cuz we always can cut corners when it’s for ourselves. So have a why, um, have a support system, have people that you can go to when you’re feeling down, and you can talk to them and people that understand your vision and also support your vision because not everybody’s going to support your vision in the beginning. And it might not be your family might be your friends that have ideas to do something on their own and be an entrepreneur but definitely have a support system.
And three would have to be my third advice would be stay the course you know, give yourself enough time
to let this plant grow before you start thinking about you know, given up or anything like that, you know, give yourself time you know, be be cool with yourself you know, don’t beat yourself up all day every day. And if you do try to do it with your support system around
man that because that’s what that’s what helped me was was my fiance, I would come home and I’d be in my garage and I would just be really upset and at that time in my life my anxiety was at an all time high.
I deal with obsessive compulsive disorder I have my whole life that was at an all time high. Because just all new things were going on and everything was so important. So I’d be in the garage just really talking about about myself feeling bad feeling like a failure and she just never listened to it. She let me have my spiel and then she say hey, you know what you’re doing the right things. You’re connected with the right people. Give it time.
Like we planned on this, you can do this. And she helped me so much, you know?
That’s awesome. Yeah, I resonate with that, like, for my personal story is, you know, not most people are not going to support your decision to like leave a job leave security to start a business.
And not that they’ll directly not support it. But, you know, they’re kind of like, okay, yep, well, at least you’re employable. That’s funny. Like, in my family, my mom actually said that, like, well, at least he’s employable, he’s got a degree. And so, you know, all I had was my wife who believed in me.
So that that certainly resonates with me. So be prepared. anyone listening, if you’re starting, like, it’s okay, if you have all these doubts, if it’s in your heart, you have that y support system, like Brian was saying, I mean, go get out and do it, because you’re only going to look back in the future be like, Ah, what would have happened, if I did that. One of one of my coaches, he used to be a,
some kind of specialist in the medical field. And so he worked, he saw a lot of people die. And a common thing he said people talked about was business ideas, things that they wanted to try, and they just weren’t able to, they didn’t do it. And they reflected on that. And so
it’s, it’s amazing to hear like those stories like Brian starting, and then like, you know, having these issues, but here you are now, like you’re training up somebody else in your company, and like, he got over three months off with the knee surgery. So it’s, it’s amazing to kind of look back at that, and then where you are now.
I appreciate that. Yeah, that’s really exciting. I mean, that makes me think about something that I’m really passionate about in legacy building, you know, like, you are literally changing the legacy, you know, for yourself, your family, your employees, families, like, it’s huge, you know, so, I think I think I love those three things that you that you put out was, you have to know why you’re doing it. You know, if you don’t know why you’re doing it, what’s the point, you have to have a support system, you have to surround yourself with like minded people, you know, like, Jim Rohn, says, you know, you become the average of the five people you hang around with, you know, so maybe start asking yourself, hey, who am I hanging around with? And do I really want to be the average of those people. And if you want to be the average of someone else, start hanging out with those kinds of people. And then stay the course. I mean, man, if we had, if we had given up on stuff, life would be completely different, you know.
So that’s really what it’s all about is staying the course and sticking to what you want to do. And the vision that you have, you know, because there’s gonna be, like Jason said, there’s gonna be all those people that don’t believe in you. At the end of the day, really all that matters is that you believe in yourself. You know, I think that comes from step one, you know, having a why. And then having a good support system and staying the course I think that’s so huge. And I really appreciate you sharing that, Brian, that’s really, really huge. So learning from the biggest struggles that you’ve had, what what would you say, have been the biggest wins that you’ve experienced in both your business and personal life,
my, my biggest win would have besides putting my footprint on this community, and having some of my client most of all of my clients really love me, helped me to feel like okay, I know what I’m doing is working. Um, my, my other biggest success would have to be linking up with my mentor, who’s here, local, he’s a general contractor, and he’s really been guiding me and helping grow me up so that one day I can
test for my general contractor’s license, and that’ll open up a whole new door and world into what I’m able to do. So that would have to be like my biggest wins, and then having the time to do the things that I need to do in terms of you’re really busy when you start a business. So don’t think I got all this time, but I can plan my schedule in a way that I’m able to wake my daughter up every day and get her ready for school and drop her at school. And if I need to be off for something, I can tweak my schedule and be where I need to be on time. Those are, those are huge wins and huge things that you want in business and when they start to happen, man, it feels great.
Yeah, that’s exciting. So you mentioned looking for a mentor, right? I think that could also be something that people might get caught up in. I love going back to those steps that you brought up, you know, so say someone you know, they have a why they know why they’re doing something. But they’re struggling to find a support system. How would you recommend and how did you even find a mentor in your local area? Or how do you find people that that will support you in what you’re doing?
Well, for me, I’m a man of faith. And I know the Lord connected me with my mentor, but you need to put yourself out in your community with like you said like minded people. So go
into different business meetings for your community, like your local Chamber of Commerce, go look at the people on social media that are maybe doing the same things that you’re doing go to local, when the realtors get together, just sit back, let them do their whole thing. And then at the end of it, start talking to people, put yourself out there, it’s one of the most difficult things to do. But you have to do it. You know, a lot of people, they struggle with anxiety, or they struggle with not wanting to look silly, but we only know what we know. And in order to know something further than that, you have to have someone that brings it to you. You know what I mean? Especially in the world of like business and self improvement, you need other people that have been through some of the stuff that you’re going through to help you get through it. Like my mentor always says, He says, like, you know, the things that I’m teaching you, I either paid to learn, or I got hurt learning them. So that’s why you see the value in this because you’re able to learn the things without getting hurt all of the time to learn them. That’s something that’s kind of stuck with me. Awesome. I want to point out Chamber of Commerce, realtor associations, that is a huge untapped opportunity for most businesses, most industries, but certainly Home Repair, if you are new, or if you are calling part time trying to fill up your schedule and struggling to get new leads. Join your chamber of commerce, join your realtor Association, there’s there’s one everywhere you can join as affiliate members show up at their meetings and network with
all of your ideal customers, you know, maybe it’s not realtors, but the Chamber of Commerce is full of other business owners and community leaders. They all have friends, they all have family locally, and they want to support your local business, especially just a brand new business. Someone getting out there. Like they probably took one look at you, Brian, like, oh, man, this guy’s so nervous to be here. Because they looked at me in that way too. But they step up to the plate and support you. That was my story. And I me getting started was the local Chamber of Commerce supported me, promoted me, because I was unique and no one was doing I was done. And I guarantee you there’s
99% there’s not a handyman and your local Chamber of Commerce, and they all desperately need a reliable one. Yeah, oh, yeah. Cuz that’s that untapped market is the professional handyman, that that is as professional as it gets, you know, and I don’t, that doesn’t mean that other handyman are great. They don’t do have great craftsmanship. They don’t do every job, great. But it’s that professionalism, that’s punctuality, it’s being able to be in in that group and speak and maybe not speak, but just put yourself in that group because it takes effort, you know, to you have nothing to do so you’re gonna go to the Chamber of Commerce, you could sit at home and do whatever, but just be in there shows how much you care. Hmm, definitely, definitely. I think one thing that I wanted to highlight was, you know, we have, we have a Facebook group, we have for one, the handyman journey mastermind group on Facebook, full of, you know, 5000 plus handyman from all around the world. So if you if you are looking to get into this, I think that would be a great thing. I know, a lot of people have met handyman better in their same town, right? And I think that the cool thing about the handyman journey, what we’re creating, is we’re creating a different type of handyman, like, like Brian said, we’re creating the professional handyman, right? Like, our goal is to take the handyman business to where, you know, the H HVAC and plumbing industry is right now. So in five to 10 years, it will be there. And I think with that, it changes the whole thought where you don’t have to be scared to talk to the handyman, that’s, you know, one town over, but actually, you can learn a lot from him, you know, you can partner with him, you can help him grow, he can help you grow, right? So that’s a way of creating that type of community.
In handyman, I mean, for instance, and we also have, you know, the handyman success mastermind group on Facebook, which is a new group that we’ve just created, and that’s specifically, you know, geared to talk about marketing and business growth. So I think that that is another amazing way to, you know, grow in this kind of community and surround yourself with like minded people.
Yeah, I think that’s huge. So, so Brian, let’s get it a little bit back to your business. Where would you Where would you like to see your business in a year in three years or five years? What would you say is kind of your goal or vision for that? So in a year from now, I would like to see my employee out on his own. I’m utilizing the truck that I have now and the trailer that I have now have me in another vehicle so that I can be there if I need to help him or be out estimating running around and, you know, just past that year, I’d like to have him have a
helper, maybe even within a year, have him have a helper that’s maybe he’s working part time or even 1099. Or however we need to do it. Um, and probably like three to five years from now, I would like to see my employee now doing more of an oversight role of maybe two other full time employees. That’s more maybe like five years from now.
And then he’ll be there to help them when it’s maybe a little bit more of a technical job or a job that we need to get done really quickly, but have him more in a role of doing the jobs that are super technical on his own, or maybe even like little punch slips list items. So he’s out moving around doing that stuff, overseeing what they do, so that I can be out by that time general contracting, sub contracting work checking on those jobs that I have going on, and networking and estimating full time. And by that time, I’d like to see my fiance working full time. As our are picking up our phone calls. I forget what’s that? ccrp CRM, yep, CRM having her do that. And also all of our home watch, cuz that’s really hard division is the home watch.
So quick question on that. So you, you’re like passion, what you want to be in is more like managing the business and networking getting out there and estimating rather than being like in the field and the day to day? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I love doing the work. I love when a project gets completed, you put something back and boom, there it is. I love that. But ideally, I don’t want to be working so hard. You know, in terms of physicality, I would like to be estimating I’d like to be mentoring other guys, I’d like to be general contracting and in the position that my mentor is in where he’s got younger guys that he’s bringing up and taken to the next level. That’s really My passion is helping other people. I’ve had a lot of tough stuff in my life. And if I didn’t have people that helped me through it, I wouldn’t be where I’m at today. So really, my passion is helping other people.
That’s exciting, man. That’s huge. Dude, I love it.
So So what are your what are the the necessary goals to get you there? Right, like, so if we go back to, you know, the beginning of 2020, you just started your business. And you saw where you wanted your business to be. And it took you four months to get there, right? You needed to start, and you knew what you needed to start doing a new start investing in this marketing to get you to where this is gonna pay off. So where do you what steps do you think? Or do you see that you need to take to get to that in a year and in in in three to five years.
That’s a tough one. But it’s definitely the systems you have to set and build the business so that all of the things outside of the physical work are really easy and seamless to do. The way that you handle incoming calls, people reaching out to you the way that you handle estimating and billing, you need to have that stuff really buttoned down, so that it doesn’t come back to haunt you later. And you don’t have to spend time figuring it out. Now as your business is exploding and growing. So definitely the systems and then you have to invest in other people, you have to take the chance to hire on a person and maybe it can go wrong, maybe it’ll go good. and invest in those people and be patient. Because not everybody is like you. And if you if you were like everybody else, you wouldn’t be special. So be patient with these guys. give them time to develop and grow themselves and, and invest in people because they’re going to be the ones that run your business. If you ever want to be on the beach, hanging out, you have to have people you trust and can depend on running your business. So investing in other people as well. And, again, staying the course don’t get discouraged. Make sure that you have a support system, make sure you have something that you’re going to do when you start feeling like that. You know, make sure that you have a plan in place for when things get tough.
And then just go for it with with all of your heart, make sure that you put everything into it. And don’t hold anything back because it’s either going to work out great or it’s not going to work at all. And if it doesn’t work at all, you want to make sure you did everything in your power to make this thing work. So go out at full force. You mentioned like like, I know Alan and myself. We’re both huge into like processes and like really planning things out which is especially important as you grow you add employees because you touched on one of like your first reasons of like your why or like something we really enjoy the big wins was the fee
feedback you got from your clients like, oh, wow, I really love the work that you do the experience I had. And you as the owner have to set up your team to give that same experience, but you’re not the highest level that you can, but at least like 80%, right, so they can still have that great experience and come back as a repeat client, cuz that’s really, for most businesses, that’s where the money’s at. I mean, the average homeowner needs a handyman once every quarter, every every three months. And whenever you come in there and do a great job. They’re gonna call you next to So what, what would you say? Because of course, like at first, you know, when you’re starting to market, you’re trying to get your name out there, everybody that comes to you, like it’s either a personal referral, they’re a new client. So what would you say now your distribution is like, have like repeat clients calling and then new clients that are coming in the door.
So right now, I think I’m in a stage where I’m growing right now I’m getting a lot of new clients and a lot of random calls for people that are just finding me organically. So I would say probably like 30% repeat clients, and 70 to 80% new clients. But I would say the ratio that I make new clients returning clients is very high, you know, in 80% range, unless they don’t like my pricing, then that’s, that’s really the only thing that makes people not a return client of mine would be the pricing. Awesome. So on that note, if you could kind of give us like your pricing and like estimating journey, I think that’s what we’ve been calling it. And pricing, which is always fun to dig into. Because everyone has had their own experience and struggles with oh my gosh, I have no no idea how to price. Most guys were like you, Alan, like you show up, you’re like, Oh, well, I think it’ll be $62.
So if you could kind of walk walk our listeners through what, like how your pricing originally how your estimating. And now what what does that look like now?
Well, I want to say one of my goals has been to narrow that down. So I’m not an expert by any means on this. But what I’m doing now that was different. When I had no idea what I was doing is I’m charging a minimum, I have a minimum to come out. And that’s $150 in my area, that is for me to come out and typically perform the first hour of just general handyman stuff, hanging photos, changing light bulbs, things like that. So that’s our minimum. And I’m making sure right now that when I have two guys on the job that I’m charging enough, so right now I’m making sure that every hour is between $150.02 $100 depending on the task that we’re doing, because I know that that covers his my employees, I guess you’d call them expenses to have the employee and it’s also making me profit. I don’t know how much but I know at the end of the month, I’ve got more money than what I started. So I’m making sure I’m charging enough and I reason I recently raised my rates to 1050 for a full day of work. That’s just if were just doing miscellaneous stuff with limited supplies. Now I’ll use the caulking if I need to get caulking I’ll use small items like that. But I’m making sure that I charge that because it’s not quite double what I was charging for myself before I had an employee at the day rate but it’s pretty close to that so I know that I’m making enough money to run the business pay the employee and come out with something
but I really need to do a lot of work on that to make sure that it’s right it’s just that’s one of my one of my things is I hate numbers. I was never a math guy but but I know the formula and I need to figure that out but i think i’m i’m pretty close to it and in my market I’m on the high end for for my pricing but our services high end as well and their clients that pay it you know and those are the clients I really want to work for anyway and those are the clients that you need to grow profitably grow your handyman business because you know you can grow it but you know, we we come across so many owners that they work their butt off 60 7080 hours a week and don’t have any money left over to invest in the business. So that’s the clientele that you need to grow profitably. Do you give free estimates and and like how do you how do you currently like estimate your jobs right now? So I do give free estimates. I love pictures. I love pictures and descriptions
I can estimate a lot of work like that. But I got a text message. Yep, text message, they can send me videos, they, it’s whatever they prefer, they can do text message or email. I love that that makes it really easy. But if I’m unsure about something, I’ll set up an A estimate, I typically have one day that I estimate, but now that I have an employee on board, I’m free a lot more, we’re getting jobs done quicker, and I can go out and estimate. And then what I’ll do is if I went out on person, and I estimated, I’ll usually throw a small charge on top of the, at the beginning of the bill for that, and I’m also thinking about am I gonna have to drive to the store to get materials first, like the day before, so I’m typically adding a couple of hours right away for that kind of stuff. And then I’m estimating it kind of hourly, I think about how many hours it’s going to take, I think about how much I need to charge for two guys to be there an hour. And then I add that stuff up. And then honestly, when I look at the number, if for that job, it’s doesn’t seem like enough, like, I’ll reach out to my mentor, I reached out to my mentor a lot for pricing, he helps me a lot. And he’s challenged me to charge way more than I ever thought that I could get. And that’s kind of been my process. And I think I’m getting better at it. Because since I brought my employee on and raised my rates, I seem to have a little bit more money. So I think things are kind of I should have done that a long time ago, but better late than never. So it sounds like though like you, you you kind of whenever you actually show up for the estimate, you do it for free. But if they accept the job, you kind of tack a little estimate charge on the on top of it. Hmm. You have to you know, you’re out, you’re spending your time you’re spending your fuel, you’re spending your energy, you have to now if they don’t approve the estimate, it was a free estimate, you know, but if they hire me, all of that time has to be accounted for or like you said, at the end of the week, you’ve worked 60 hours, and you’re really only getting paid for 40 of them. So that’s important as as the business owner? Hmm, definitely, definitely. Yeah, I think it’s huge. And I know that we’ve had many, many conversations about this, Brian, about, you know, pricing, it really, at the end comes to what your expenses are, you know, and the only way to know that exactly, for sure as to what I tell people is, you know, print out the last three months of bank statements and get different colored highlighters and start highlighting things and putting them in categories to figure out exactly what your expenses are. And then you know, adding on profit and things like that on top of that. But I think that’s definitely something you know, that’s something that we’ve talked about to get things you know, more dialed in, because it’s one thing to see your bank account grow every month. And that’s great, right? We all want that. But to actually be confident that it will grow every single month is a completely different things. So I would challenge everyone listening, you know, to actually take some time out, you know, right out, figure out what your estimate or what your expenses are. Maybe this is geared a little bit towards Brian, but I’ll make it towards the rest of the audience.
It’s something that we’ve talked about a lot. So this isn’t new to Brian. But it’s so important to figure out what your expenses are, so that you can make sure you’re charging exactly what you need to charge and making a profit exactly what you need to make. So yeah, I want to plug to we’re about to release our interview with Chris Olson with Pacific home maintenance. And he talks about this for about five or 10 minutes about how he really knows his numbers and actually builds his annual profit into his pricing and estimating so if you guys haven’t if you’re tuning in to this and that one is out with Chris Olson, Episode Three, so tune into that there’s a section where he talks about it that’s directly related to this and he breaks things down in detail of just really knowing your numbers. So it’s some good information that he dropped for every year when he talks about he kind of got to rewind it a little bit. He’s like whoa, like there’s a lot of information so yeah, definitely.
Well, that’s kind of one of my goals is like you said on the last Business Builders group is you need to be spending an hour on the business. So that’s something that I’m going to be doing and probably checking out that podcast because I’m very fortunate right now my fiance works full time and she’s able to cover a lot of her own expenses. And there’s gonna come a day where that’s not the case. So I need to be prepared for that and I need to start charging that like now so that we can build to that and when she comes on full time it’s not so much of a you know, scramble. Hmm that’s very true because like when I started my wife didn’t work right. So all of our family expenses were on me you know, so my price was and is quite a bit higher than you know the rest of other handyman and around my area.
That’s just the way it is, you know, so I think it’s important to figure that out and to know that.
But yeah, I think, I think definitely, you as a business, you should be spending at least an hour a week working on your business, because
you know, you need to work in the business, obviously, that’s how you make the money, you know, but we can be so busy working in the business, that we never work on the business, you know, there’s a, there’s an awesome saying for that, but I it escapes me at the moment, but
you know, we need to work on the business in order for it to grow. And that’s the only way it’s gonna grow. Yeah, I encourage people to take a day out. If you’re, you know, doing it full time, take a day, every month. For me, it’s the last Friday of every month, and block it out. And that’s when I look at processes look at kind of all the stuff that you just don’t look out throughout the entire month. Right? It’s, there’s, there’s this thing that one of my codes talks about a lot, the four quadrants of quadrant one is urgent and important. quadrant two is important but not urgent. And then you know, you have urgent but not important, and then not urgent, not important. And it’s it’s often the quadrant to where it’s important, but not urgent, it gets pushed off into eternity. And so looking at what are those items that are, you know, they’re super important, but it’s so easy to push back, all those items are usually like working on your business, building out processes, looking at your finances, you know, all the things to be more profitable and better serve your clients and better serve your employees. I really like that idea. Jason, Have ye instead of trying to fit in an hour a week, right? Because you get busy with work with work and this and that and you end up you know, working late or whatever. But actually, you know, chalking out a day a month, I think that makes a lot more sense and probably easier to renew. Like, mentally for me, it’s very freeing. And I look forward to it when I see it on my calendar, my you know, because it’s Friday, it’s you know, the week and it’s, wow, I get to wake up and, you know, I’ve no call scheduled, no, you know, no jobs for you guys, all this, all this stuff, different businesses, obviously, but it’s freeing to how you have that freedom, you take care of the tasks that you know, need done. And then you also give yourself that freedom to be creative.
Because that’s all business owners are creative. You know, you start something brand new out of thin air. I mean, that’s creativity, which we’re all made to do, I think, but I think it’s freeing to carve out a whole day.
I like that idea. Because you an hour a day or an hour a week, you can only get so much done. But if you set aside a whole day, and throughout that month, you bullet points and stuff that you want to do that day, you can get a lot done. 100% so I know we’ve got like seven minutes. And I know one thing if it’s okay with with you guys, I want to ask Brian about is the homewatch service. And the reason being is we talked with Paul Pacheco pjp handyman, and he has a whole niche of dryer vent cleaning. And we’ve talked with other guys they have just their own niches for kind of like of course they do handyman work, but they also have this really like core offshoot service that they do high with, like extreme profit, because it’s you know, it’s super efficient. So if you don’t mind talking a bit about the homewatch service I’m pretty intrigued with with that whole business line. You’re the only one I know that has handyman and homewatch. Yeah, so in my area, there’s tons of seasonal residents, snowbirds, they come down for half the year, then they’re gone for half the year. And a lot of the times they’ll come back home. And there’s major issues there appliances are not working, there’s been roof leaks and now the ceilings damage. There’s the old the other contractors that they’ve hired haven’t been doing their job that they’ve been being paid to do. So that’s something that’s kind of really specific to this area. People in other states might not understand it. But what they do is they hire a homewatch service to come in they typically come in once a once a week. And we perform a checklist, checking all the different areas all the different systems to make sure everything’s functioning properly. And if there is an issue, they can most home wash services in my area it’s typically like somebody like you said that does something else like some landscape companies will offer it some cleaning ladies will offer it on different services will offer it but what makes me different and sets me apart from them is let’s say we go into your house and there is an issue. Not only are we going to just call somebody else to come fix that issue, but we have the ability to a make a lot of those repairs ourselves and be mitigate other damage because we understand the way a home works, we understand if we leave this leak in your ceiling, that your wood floors could be damaged too. So we mitigate damages. We put out buckets and tarps and all those type of things. And then since I’m linked up with my business mentor, I now have the ability
to complete all of the repairs within my network, so you only have to deal with me. Yeah, there might be other contractors coming in and out. But I will facilitate that. And you know that these are trusted contractors that I trust. So it makes it more of that all in one service. And I’m sure other homewatch services are great, and they’re probably really wonderful people, but I’m not sure if they all have the ability to handle situations head on like we do. And I’ve been training my fiance to do those home watch checks, so that on her day off every week, she’s out doing all of our homewatch checks. And that’s made it really profitable having her do it.
Dude, you need to just, we could send you that snippet, and just like, have your fiance walk up to people and just play that video if they have a house because yeah, I almost want to seasonal house, just hire you guys. I’m so glad.
That’s it. Yeah, and I’ve done some videos on my Facebook on like, you know, not Facebook Live, but on your story and stuff with that whole spiel. And it’s really, it’s really the truth of the matter. You know, and I get a lot of my home watch clients, we don’t have a ton of them, we have about a handful. Um, and I’ve got them through being a handyman. First they hire me for to be a handyman, they say, Oh, you do home watch? Well, we’re leaving in two months. So I work them up a contract. And there we go. And I’ve been able to get contractors like my roofing contractor, a full reroof while my clients were gone, I’ve been able to do multiple things at people’s homes and make sure that like I said, the other contractors are doing their job because you’d be surprised. You should look into if you haven’t yet like ah oh ways, any kind of marketing through like brochures or something an HOA is or retirement communities, I imagine that, you know, I don’t know, the actual makeup, the communities of your home watch clients, but kind of getting that niche, like micro advertising within those communities would be because I think it’s a service that most of those people, if it’s a seasonal house, they have the high disposable income and you show them that pitch and you know, their 50% of them, at least are going to buy that. Yeah. Anyway, just just a thought. No, absolutely. And my fiance and I, cuz she’s so excited about her, she loves it, you know, that’s her favorite day of the week. And we’ve been saying like, we need to get more homewatch clients and we’re looking into direct mailing, so that we can get into these communities. Because it’s very difficult in in my experience, getting in front of these Hoa boards, a lot of them are like they’re we don’t solicit, we don’t offer we don’t try to recommend services to our clients. It’s all on them. You know, so do direct mailings and things like that. So that’s what we’re looking into next, as and keeping that homewatch in all of my advertising, make sure that they know that we offer that putting it on my truck, putting it on my trailer, things like that your business name. Yeah. And my business name that you guys back me into a corner about but I loved it, man. It’s it’s those challenges that make you understand why you’re doing something why you came up with what you’ve come up with, and then adjust to make sure like that, in particular made me like micro focused on my getting referrals and not referrals, getting reviews to get up on that Google page, because it was rougher for me without handyman and
in the title. So that was that was probably the best thing that could have happened for the home watch division. Hmm, definitely. Yeah. For people listening that don’t know, we’re talking about last year. Yeah. Last year, we had a meeting with Brian and we talked about his his name in particular, and about ranking in Google and things like that, and how he’d rank a lot higher, and get more visibility online if he had handyman in his name, you know, if he was just complete, you know, maintenance and handyman or something like that, and drop the homewatch. Right. And he was in a place where he had to defend the home watch. And I’m so grateful and honored by that, because it’s so cool. I think it really establishes that that first thing you said about have a why and no it right? Is like no like, this is what this is what needs to happen for my business. You know, and I think that’s so cool. And I’m really excited that you stood by that and with that it did require you to you know, buckled down on a few other things get more reviews so that you could start ranking Since you didn’t have handyman in your name, but I think I think that was awesome. And that was a really cool conversation. So yeah, just to drive that home too. That’s really just a short term solution like having handyman your name like a new business. That’s my recommendation. It’s how Google classifies it. But it is more short term because in the long term you can you know, medium to long term you can rank for handyman without that in your business name or certainly it’s it’s but for new businesses,
It’s a short term like win as far as visibility. Just not to confuse everyone. I don’t want people panicking out there like, I need to go change my business name.
Calm down, calm down. Yeah. It everyone’s in a different boat to you know. So that’s why it’s so hard to give blanketed statements like that because it’s like everyone’s in different boat. And I think that’s some cool that Brian saw from the get go, he’s like, no, not I’m in a different boat, you know? And and I think that’s really cool. So just to kind of round us out, Brian. So do you have any last advice or tips that you would give to fellow handyman business owners, whether just starting out or been in business for a little while.
Make sure you’re surrounding yourself with people that are doing the same things you’re doing and go in the same places you’re going that is, I would say the most important besides like your mindset, get your mind around, this is going to be hard, but I’m going to stick it out and put yourself around people that you can learn from, you know, at first, you’re going to be nervous, you’re going to feel out of place. But the more reps you get in go into those places, putting yourself out there, the better you’re going to feel, and you’ll have more confidence. And that’s, that’s what I’m preaching right now is you know, have that confidence, know what, know what your goal is, and be clear about it. But make sure you have people around you because my support system throughout my entire life is what’s got me to where I’m at. And it continues to grow. And, and I’m very grateful for that.
That’s huge. That’s huge. And just to kind of round this out, wanted to you know, throw a little little plug in there. I would recommend anyone listening to this to go check out Brian Davis on YouTube has a fantastic YouTube channel.
Yes, talks about everything from, you know, anxiety to OCD to running a business to you know, being a family man. So, definitely, I would recommend you go connect with him there. He will also be in our handyman success mastermind group on Facebook. So if you have any questions at all for Brian, he’s absolutely phenomenal guy to connect with. So join that Facebook group get connected with him. Jason, you have anything else to say before we head out? Uh, no. I mean, handyman success group handyman journey on Facebook. If you’re not plugged in there, that’s like your community that’s right there waiting for you. Brian’s got your mindset dose from the actual handyman. Like, yeah, that is so niche, man. There’s, it’s, it’s awesome. So I know, Alan preaches A lot of you know, keeping your head on the right on on, right, because at the end of the day, like our businesses is an inside out of leadership. And so, you know, when we’re dialing in to our own hearts, our own, like how we’re taking care of ourselves and our family that that, that outputs into our business and into our customers and into our bank accounts. So I think Brian nailed it man gets you surround yourself with like minded people that are there to support you and take care of yourself. Yep, I love it. So thank you so much. This has been the handyman success podcast. We appreciate each and every one of you listening. Thank you so much for being here. Brian. We are honored to know you and be on this journey with you. So thank you so much. saying I’m so honored. Thank you guys. Welcome. Have a great day. We’ll see y’all later.