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Episode 145

The Real Cost of Building a Successful Plumbing Business

Episode Overview

What does it take to turn a plumbing business into a thriving company? Pete and Alicia Green of Go Green Plumbing share how they grew from one service truck into a multimillion-dollar operation through financial discipline, business systems, leadership, and community investment. They also explain why knowing your break-even costs, separating salary from profit, and learning how to run a business are essential for long-term success in the trades.

Learn more about Pete and Alicia Green at gogreenplumb.com. 

Time Stamps

0:00 Welcome to Blue Collar StartUp
2:06 Pete and Alicia’s Story and the Start of Go Green
3:26 Building a Business Roadmap Before Hiring
5:40 Pete’s Early Interest in the Trades
7:39 Failed Businesses, Visionaries, and Implementers
9:06 Learning Business Systems and Leadership
12:26 What Nexstar Offers Plumbing and HVAC Contractors
16:32 When Is a Contractor Ready for Business Coaching?
19:10 Why Pete Committed to the Nexstar System
21:15 The Conversation That Inspired Pete to Start His Business
24:42 Starting With One Truck and Working Long Hours
25:17 Why Knowing Your Break-Even Cost Matters
27:00 Sacrifice, Salary, Profit, and Reinvesting in Growth
31:01 Go Green’s Early Revenue and Growth
34:07 Learning From Bad Reviews, Employees, and Mistakes
37:52 Finding the Right Roles and Supporting the Team
45:51 Go Green Community Promise and Giving Back
50:06 Advice for Future Tradespeople and Business Owners


Read the Full Transcript Here

00;00;00;23 – 00;00;09;26
Unknown
Oh, hey. Oh!

00;00;09;28 – 00;00;15;07
Unknown
Oh!

00;00;15;10 – 00;00;25;17
Speaker 2
Welcome to the Blue Collar Startup, the podcast where hard work meets big ideas. This is your home for real talk real stories and real strategies from the front lines of life in the business of the trades.

00;00;25;19 – 00;00;47;05
Speaker 2
One of your hosts, Mike Nelson from Five Towers Media, and I’m your co-host, Derek Foster Daigle. Cleaning systems. Where are you, Mike? I am good loving. Fall in the northeast here, Derek. That’s. That’s what I’m doing. We did, like, all the fall things this past weekend. We did farmer’s markets. We did pumpkin patches. We did Harvest Fest.

00;00;47;06 – 00;01;05;06
Speaker 2
We did all of it this weekend. So yeah, I did. Well, I don’t know how you did all that with all the rain that we got here, but, God, God bless you. And, I don’t know if it rained out a little. We got ran up a little. You didn’t have 1,000 pound pumpkin. And, the Saratoga contest stadia?

00;01;05;08 – 00;01;27;17
Speaker 2
No, sir. We did, we did try to grow monster pumpkins this year. And the borer squash beetle got us. So we ended up. We end up. We did end up with a couple of pumpkins, but, they’re not very big, so. And I’ve never had luck with them. No, no, we just we get mutilated every year by these squash borer beetle things.

00;01;27;17 – 00;01;44;01
Speaker 2
And they are. Yeah. So no big pumpkins for us, man. But there were some big ones. I don’t know who won it or how big it was, but I saw him weigh in and then yeah, it was like 1,300 pounds or something like that, or not even understand what you feed a thing like that. Like that’s crazy mirror.

00;01;44;03 – 00;02;06;11
Speaker 2
But anyway, anyway, let’s, let’s, let’s move on to the important part while we’re here. You know, not that big pumpkins are not important, but let’s introduce our guests here. Guys, we’ve got, Pete and Alicia from Go Green Plumbing. How are you guys? Okay. How are you? I’m good, I’m good. You know, let’s. We always try to start out.

00;02;06;11 – 00;02;12;07
Speaker 2
Maybe just tell us a little bit about yourselves. A little bit about go green.

00;02;12;09 – 00;02;16;11
Speaker 2
Go ahead. Yeah. Please. Or leave.

00;02;16;12 – 00;02;40;12
Speaker 3
The earth. A little bit about ourselves. So we started Go Green in 2015. We have actually been together since we were teenagers. So, you know, before we, we even knew what we were going to do for a living, Pete had made up his mind that he was going to go into the trades. I went to nursing school, so that was my background.

00;02;40;14 – 00;02;52;16
Speaker 3
But from the very beginning, Pete always said that he wanted to someday on his own plumbing company. So it was always kind of in, in our minds back, I guess, like in 2000.

00;02;52;19 – 00;02;55;12
Speaker 1
Yeah. 2000.

00;02;55;14 – 00;03;26;19
Speaker 3
So, for me, I’ll just speak about myself. My background was in, in nursing, critical care, cardiac ICU. A lot of leadership went into management roles. Ran the ICU and trauma, you know, areas where, where where I, focused my career on. And then in 2014, we really sat down and kind of started writing a business plan.

00;03;26;21 – 00;03;42;17
Speaker 3
We’re really intent on making sure that if we were going to start, we were going to start at the right way. So we wrote an employee handbook, all those things, before we even had employees really built out the future, what we wanted things to look like. And then, 2015, we started.

00;03;42;19 – 00;04;04;24
Speaker 1
Yeah. So the roadmap was probably one of the most important things we did besides the, the company handbook and what kind of company we wanted to be. We already had a vision and, and we basically just put that down on paper so that any employees that came on with us knew that vision. And we could immediately tell if someone was aligned with that vision or not.

00;04;04;27 – 00;04;14;08
Speaker 1
And so the roadmap that we initially did at our picnic table and on our deck on a hot summer afternoon.

00;04;14;10 – 00;04;15;04
Speaker 3
Literally, it was.

00;04;15;04 – 00;04;33;08
Speaker 1
Yeah, with coffee stains all over the paper and things like that. But ultimately what we did was we just plan the business out. What will this business look like on day one? What will it look like a year from now? What will it look like in three years? What will it look like in five? What will it look like in ten?

00;04;33;10 – 00;04;47;00
Speaker 1
And essentially that kind of gave us like the direction we’re heading, as you know, as a couple and as business owners and partners and also to our employees, like what were we after?

00;04;47;03 – 00;04;59;20
Speaker 2
So, well, like usual, I have so many questions, but let’s, before I get because I want to ask about the roadmap specifically. And if you use something that was existing or how you came across that.

00;04;59;20 – 00;05;08;26
Speaker 2
But before we get in there, though, it sounds like you knew and the high school college that you want to go into the into the trades.

00;05;08;29 – 00;05;32;23
Speaker 1
Hey, everybody, just taking a quick break to talk to you about one of our sponsors, Curtis Lumber. Curtis Lumber is the professional’s choice for home improvement from windows and doors, roofing and siding, decks and building packages to floors and more. Trust the pros at Curtis Lumber for expert advice and daily delivery. For locations, visit Curtis lumber.com. That’s Curtis lumber.com.

00;05;32;26 – 00;05;40;14
Speaker 2
But before we get in there, though, it sounds like you knew and the high school college that you want to go into the into the trades.

00;05;40;16 – 00;06;04;00
Speaker 1
Well, yeah. So I immediately knew when I was probably I mean, it’s 6 or 7 years old, I was wiring my parents attic, you know, and putting things together and just, you know, I was a kid that was taking the VCR apart, the brand new VCR. That was 1980s, and I just knew I needed to work my hands.

00;06;04;00 – 00;06;35;13
Speaker 1
School was not something I was very interested in. I was interested in learning, just not anything they wanted to teach me. You know, lecture wise, I was terrible at that. And so in high school, I went down the trades path and we we had a very good, wing in our high school. And Alisha and I are from originally from Reno, Nevada, and we had a very good weighing down our high school where I had metal shop, woodshop, drafting metal shop, auto shop, all those things.

00;06;35;13 – 00;06;59;01
Speaker 1
So I spent a lot of my years in high school down that wing. And fortunately I had really good shop teachers and things like that. And then, of course, I was always doing so stuff on the side. Naturally, I wanted to own a business, always wanted to own a business. I started two businesses while I was in high school, one landscaping business, and the other one was, due to web hosting was a lot to do with computers.

00;06;59;03 – 00;07;03;07
Speaker 2
Yeah. And we know a little bit about that web hosting stuff.

00;07;03;14 – 00;07;07;11
Speaker 1
Yep. Yeah. That was back in the day. The the.com bubble.

00;07;07;13 – 00;07;08;02
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00;07;08;03 – 00;07;09;20
Speaker 1
With I always selling hosting.

00;07;09;20 – 00;07;13;26
Speaker 2
Yes I would say did you have a server like in your, in your bedroom, in the closet and.

00;07;14;02 – 00;07;18;01
Speaker 1
In my bedroom. I had it hosted at my buddy’s ISP on a T1 line.

00;07;18;08 – 00;07;39;21
Speaker 2
Nice. Nice. The old ones. Yeah. That’s amazing. Yeah. It’s changed a little bit in the last 20 years, but, Yeah. That’s great. So when you, you started landscaping business now, did you continue on with that or like, did you at some point move into a different area of the trades? No, I mean, all.

00;07;39;21 – 00;08;02;12
Speaker 1
Of my initial business is pretty much failed. You know, they were here, you know, I mean, you’re going to fail quite a few times before you succeed. And I do. So there’s two types of people. There’s, there’s, a visionary and there’s an implementer. Right? I’m definitely the visionary. She’s also a visionary, but I’m definitely a visionary.

00;08;02;14 – 00;08;16;05
Speaker 1
She’s most definitely the implementer. So that’s kind of how it works in my initial businesses were great because I was a great visionary, but nobody ever implemented anything.

00;08;16;07 – 00;08;25;09
Speaker 2
You know, I’m starting to get some Gina Whitman vibes here, some traction, some EOS. Is that, is that the the sauce, the structure that you guys ended up using?

00;08;25;11 – 00;08;29;08
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah, I love it. I love her source, that’s for sure. Yeah.

00;08;29;08 – 00;08;47;04
Speaker 2
Yeah, I love it. We’ve had a lot of conversations on this show over the last year with folks that have used EOS in their business, and how great it’s been for them and, and what it’s done for them. And, you know, Derek and I are both big fans, obviously. And, we so we’re we’re excited. I didn’t know that.

00;08;47;04 – 00;09;06;06
Speaker 2
And that’s why I wanted when you started talking about your building out your roadmap and where you wanted to go and vision, I was like, oh, all right, where are we at with this? You know, how did you how did you guys come across the EOS system? Was that, something that you, you heard about, or did you have somebody come into the company and recommend it to you?

00;09;06;09 – 00;09;30;05
Speaker 3
I think that we’ve done it in, in different ways throughout the years now, you know, it’s a very expensive thing to implement, and it doesn’t really make sense to implement it when you only have three people or five people or ten people or even really 20 people, maybe. So over the years, we’ve we’ve kind of integrated things a little, a little out of time.

00;09;30;07 – 00;09;57;20
Speaker 3
I would say that by the time we had started Go Green, Pete had been the GM of another plumbing company. And so he had a lot of that business experience and a lot of those kinds of, leadership trainings. And then we had I also had the same, from the hospital organization, in leadership roles as a nursing supervisor, you know, where I was sitting and board meetings and things like that.

00;09;57;20 – 00;10;21;22
Speaker 3
So we we both had experience in being in those kinds of systems as far as bringing it in here, I think at the beginning we really focused on books work. What could we read, what could we focus on, you know, traction, images, any of those kind of implementation books that that really kind of give you some guidance?

00;10;21;24 – 00;10;45;28
Speaker 3
Even simple things like Five Dysfunctions of a team when we had small leadership group, you know, how do we start bringing stuff like this in with only three leaders? And, you know, just a little bit at a time. And then we did bring in an integrator, to help us manage that back in, I guess, 2021.

00;10;45;28 – 00;10;48;12
Speaker 3
We had someone come in, Cathy, come in.

00;10;48;12 – 00;10;50;12
Speaker 1
And we started only 20, and then.

00;10;50;18 – 00;10;54;11
Speaker 3
They had clean. Yeah, yeah.

00;10;54;13 – 00;10;56;00
Speaker 1
And of course we have next door.

00;10;56;01 – 00;11;21;28
Speaker 3
Yeah. And then we have our next are where we are next are members. So anyone that’s familiar with next door and, and that organization for trades. So we had coaches there. So you know you can start implementing these things. A full EOS system doesn’t make sense. L10 meetings don’t really make sense for organizations that only if it’s just me and Pete, but you still, the point is, you still have to have the meeting.

00;11;21;28 – 00;11;42;10
Speaker 3
You have to operate. I think for us, the important thing was that we operated like we had 500 employees and we were doing $15 million a year from the very first day, even when it was just us sitting in our basement. Yeah. So whatever you can do, you do, you know, and then you can grow it from there.

00;11;42;10 – 00;11;58;12
Speaker 3
But as long as you’re in the habit of those basic principles from the very beginning and, and don’t skip those important things, I think it really helps set you on a different path, you know, moving forward as you do grow.

00;11;58;14 – 00;12;25;16
Speaker 2
You mentioned, next Nexstar. Yes. And it’s interesting because I have I’ve talked to a few plumbing and HVAC companies that, have also mentioned next door. I don’t know a ton about them. And and I’ve, you know, I don’t want to have your show be about next. But could you just just to kind of put it into, context a little bit, just kind of tell us what they do and like specifically like, compared to, like what an EOS is, maybe they’re similar or maybe they’re not.

00;12;25;16 – 00;12;26;09
Speaker 2
I’m not really sure.

00;12;26;09 – 00;12;33;25
Speaker 1
Well, so next door is a best practices company specifically for plumbing, HVAC and electrical contractors.

00;12;33;27 – 00;12;34;12
Speaker 2
Okay.

00;12;34;12 – 00;13;04;09
Speaker 1
In there. It’s a very they focus on one group of those contractors on top of it. So they’re ideal. The ideal person that would look to coaching for them is is a is a is a contractor who’s doing mainly residential service. No new construction, no commercial work. And basically is focused on that residential service sector. Now, that being said, it’s not only a best practices group A, you know, it’s networking.

00;13;04;09 – 00;13;20;11
Speaker 1
So you’re going to you’re going to come across other contractors that are highly successful that are part of the group as well. You get to network with them, reach out to them when you need something, your questions, maybe they’re doing something better than you are or things like that. And then of course, you get your coaches, your business coaches.

00;13;20;14 – 00;13;52;20
Speaker 1
They also have implementation coaches for your middle managers. And then they also have like call center coach that, that, that can coach your dispatchers in your call center, your CSRs, and then they offer classes for pretty much every position in your company. So they have an accounting class for your bookkeeper, on, you know, the metrics that are important to us as contractors, specifically to our trade, how we organize our books, you know, what a profit and loss should read?

00;13;52;22 – 00;14;17;19
Speaker 1
You know, your KPIs in regards to balance sheet, all that. Then it goes into classes for owners like, how are we supposed to run a business that’s successful? They have classes for your technicians on soft skills, on how to deal with customers and present options and things like that. They have classes for call center on how to answer the phone and how to direct the calls and the calls and get higher conversion rates.

00;14;17;21 – 00;14;34;22
Speaker 1
So it’s an all encompassing, network of coaching and best practices is the best way I could put it not to not to go down a big long road. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, those are really too much to talk about in, in probably this whole show about what Next Door offers.

00;14;34;23 – 00;15;04;05
Speaker 3
I think Michael Gerber is that a great in his book when he said, you know, a lot of tradespeople are really good technicians who have entrepreneurial seizures and think that because they’re really good at the craft, they’re really good at running an organization. And next came about, back in the, the early 1990s, because there were leaders who recognized that just because you’re really a great technician doesn’t mean you understand how to read a PNL.

00;15;04;08 – 00;15;27;05
Speaker 3
And so they are really the OG of coaching networks, I would say. Now you have like your blue collar is your home service for you down your all of these, these grand cordons and all of these coaches out there. But Nexstar really is the OG. The flattery pricing came out of Nexstar, the you know, having a system for your technicians.

00;15;27;05 – 00;15;35;20
Speaker 3
They they came from Nexstar. They’re really the OG of it all. So it’s kind of a, brief summary of what they do. But. Yeah.

00;15;35;23 – 00;15;39;21
Speaker 2
And for for our listeners, Mike Gerber was what he revisited, right?

00;15;39;22 – 00;15;42;01
Speaker 3
He made the image for control.

00;15;42;04 – 00;15;42;16
Speaker 1
You’ve got.

00;15;42;16 – 00;15;42;28
Speaker 3
A bunch.

00;15;42;28 – 00;15;43;04
Speaker 1
Of.

00;15;43;06 – 00;15;54;03
Speaker 2
Devonte the imports. Yeah. And then obviously we mentioned, you know, Whitman Traction. You also mentioned Five dysfunctions of the team, which I think is what Pat Patrick Lynch, Yoni.

00;15;54;07 – 00;15;55;05
Speaker 3
Caitlin Simone.

00;15;55;12 – 00;15;59;12
Speaker 2
Lindsay Oney. Yeah, yeah yeah I love all his books to, follow that.

00;15;59;12 – 00;16;01;08
Speaker 3
He has so many amazing books.

00;16;01;08 – 00;16;04;06
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah for sure. And.

00;16;04;06 – 00;16;07;27
Speaker 3
If anybody ever wants any more book recommendations, I’m happy to.

00;16;07;28 – 00;16;09;29
Speaker 2
You got a list? Okay. Yes. Yes, yes.

00;16;10;01 – 00;16;10;25
Speaker 3
Message me. Yeah.

00;16;10;25 – 00;16;32;03
Speaker 2
Anytime I love. Yeah. The. I love all the business, professional development books. There’s, there’s just so much great content out there. Okay. So started so 11 years in business, right? Started around 2015. Yeah. EOS around 2020, 2021. Somewhere around there. And then when did you go to next year.

00;16;32;05 – 00;16;33;16
Speaker 1
2017, 2017?

00;16;33;16 – 00;16;36;06
Speaker 2
We started 2017 was next. Our okay. We’ll start with.

00;16;36;14 – 00;17;01;02
Speaker 1
Next door is is not going to be for every contractor. I think they have a minimum they’re looking for now. And the best way I could explain it is, is they’re not trying to be selective in the fact that they just, you know, don’t want to take the the younger contractors that are, that are still growing. The fact of the matter is, is that once you join a coaching organization like next door, they want you to use their their system.

00;17;01;05 – 00;17;20;23
Speaker 1
And then for, one man truck, it’d be damn near impossible to implement anything and, and take the time out of your day and actually work on your business instead of in it. They just find that the success rate of contractors that join very early in their building of the business don’t work out too well.

00;17;20;24 – 00;17;28;03
Speaker 3
They want you have a certain amount of people in place that can implement, right? If we can have visions all day long, but we got to have the implementation.

00;17;28;06 – 00;17;34;16
Speaker 2
Yeah. Well, also really vision without traction is delusion, right? Is now Wickman says yeah.

00;17;34;16 – 00;17;54;29
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. So any any person listening to this and so on and so forth, I think it’s a good idea for you to reach out to next door if you’re interested in joining and talk to them and just see where you need to be at least, to join. But, don’t get your hopes high. You know, being a one man or even a three man truck operation, that you’re going to be able to get in there and and join.

00;17;55;01 – 00;18;12;22
Speaker 1
But they can definitely direct you on improving your business. And I’m pretty sure that they are working on a platform to actually help contractors, that are that, that smaller in size to get them up to a level to where they could become full members.

00;18;12;26 – 00;18;41;10
Speaker 2
Oh, I love it. I love that idea. I’m such a firm. I think everyone should own their own business if they are willing to pay the personal cost that goes along with that, right? Like we all know what that means, you know, and and so there’s and that was going to be and that was kind of where I was going to go to was, you know, if you launched 2015, your next year, 2017, your EOS 2020 word 2026, you’re obviously doing very well as a business, I would imagine.

00;18;41;10 – 00;19;04;19
Speaker 2
Right. The but the one thing I want to ask about was before Nexstar in 2017, when did you start saying like, hey, we’re doing great, but we need some outside objective opinions on what we’re doing and how we’re running things. Or maybe there’s a better way, like when did that start to surface?

00;19;04;21 – 00;19;09;09
Speaker 1
Well, so I was a general manager of a Nexstar company.

00;19;09;11 – 00;19;09;29
Speaker 2
Okay.

00;19;10;01 – 00;19;20;19
Speaker 1
Where I began my business. And basically from the ground from the get go, you know, I had been immersed in Nexstar for close to six years.

00;19;20;21 – 00;19;21;03
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00;19;21;03 – 00;19;42;24
Speaker 1
And I was I just bought in, you know, I, I drank the Kool aid, and I saw how fast and quickly we were able to build that business after joining, a networking group like next door. And they had all the processes in place. They had, you know, policies, procedures, how we do things. It’s all prewritten for you.

00;19;42;24 – 00;20;12;02
Speaker 1
It’s a secret sauce. And I usually tell, like new members that join next door, you know, you’ll get you’ll get pieces of, of information from different contractors across the country of like this is the way we do it. Oh, this is the way we do this over here. This is the way. And the problem with that is, is that we know I’m not a cook, but I’m going to tell you that if you change the recipe and you add a little bit more salt, you’re going to end up with something really bad, right?

00;20;12;07 – 00;20;38;13
Speaker 1
So we’re just we’re what you would call a Nexstar purists. We’re like, I’m not interested in I’ll listen to any other coach and what they have to say and things like that. But I’m very careful. We’re both very careful on what we implement our business because next already has the recipe. All you got to do is follow. And and the other thing is, is knowing what I knew about next door.

00;20;38;13 – 00;20;53;09
Speaker 1
I knew that as soon as I could join, and it took us two years to build the business up big enough to to become a member. As soon as I could join. We did basically.

00;20;53;11 – 00;21;13;14
Speaker 2
Amazing. I want to I want to hear about those first two years, but I also want to know what like what was the obviously, you said you always knew you wanted to own your own business. What was the catalyst like? When did you sit down with you, you know, as a couple and say like, hey, we’re ready to do this.

00;21;13;14 – 00;21;15;14
Speaker 2
Like, what does that look like?

00;21;15;16 – 00;21;37;22
Speaker 1
I’ll tell you the catalyst. It’s it’s actually a funny story. I was general manager for another business, and, you know, while the owner was involved, you. He was good owner, good company. We sat down for lunch one day, and when he initially hired me, he asked me, you know, like, so what’s your future look like?

00;21;37;22 – 00;21;54;15
Speaker 1
And all this. And I was honest with him. I said, you know, one day I will own my own business. And, you know, he chuckled that off when you hired me initially and then, you know, about six years later, we’re sitting down for lunch and he says to me, you know, what’s it going to take for you to stay?

00;21;54;17 – 00;22;15;13
Speaker 1
And I gave him, you know, at the time I was not making what a GM should make. And I told him, you know, honestly, you know, I gave him a number. And he laughed at me. And then he got very serious. And he looked at me from across the table and he said, you know what I think? And I said, no, what do you think?

00;22;15;15 – 00;22;36;02
Speaker 1
And he says, I don’t think you can do it. And I said, well, what can I do? He says, I don’t think you could own a business, and I don’t think it would be successful. And that’s the catalyst, you tell me or anyone really that they can’t do something and it’s instant fuel. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got home.

00;22;36;05 – 00;22;57;20
Speaker 1
I told Elisha here, I said, guess what today is she. So what? I said, this is the day we start building a business. Nice. And that’s how it began. So my, my advice to any business owner out there talking to any employee is the last thing you want to do is tell them they can’t do something.

00;22;57;23 – 00;23;06;02
Speaker 2
Fair enough, fair enough. I’m in the same camp as well. Pete. If someone told me, like, I’d be like, oh, okay, well, watch me then. Like, yo.

00;23;06;04 – 00;23;09;01
Speaker 1
Exactly.

00;23;09;04 – 00;23;16;25
Speaker 2
So how long between that conversation until Go Green went live and we’re accepting new business that way.

00;23;16;27 – 00;23;41;21
Speaker 3
I think that was the like the summer of 2014. And we started really, maybe towards the end of summer of 2014 and then, by we started making plans, making adjustments. We had a one year old is so, you know, you’re in the middle of, of life at that point. So and your life is still going to have to figure out how to run.

00;23;41;21 – 00;24;14;10
Speaker 3
So, at that time, we had a one year olds, seven year olds and a ten year old. And so, you know, I switched hospitals where I was going to make a little bit more money, because we knew that we would be giving up an income. You know, I think we spent a little bit of time preparing, in March of 2015, we filed with the state for our LLC and our, our, you know, in numbers and all of those things.

00;24;14;10 – 00;24;22;18
Speaker 3
And then, really July of 20, what, mid June of 2015, we went live.

00;24;22;18 – 00;24;24;03
Speaker 2
So you went live.

00;24;24;05 – 00;24;25;13
Speaker 3
Yeah.

00;24;25;16 – 00;24;41;29
Speaker 2
Now did you. So p so sorry, Alicia. You were working at the hospital as a nurse. P your general manager. Did you have to go out into the field or did you guys higher up some staff so that you had techs going right out the door when you first opened?

00;24;42;01 – 00;25;00;02
Speaker 1
No, I was one mantra from day one. Yeah. You know, and I think, I think it took us about five months to get a full time apprentice to work with me. And he quit on us three times because of the number of hours I was working. He wasn’t.

00;25;00;02 – 00;25;06;02
Speaker 2
In the lab. I just, like, you know, that’s one of those things. You got to laugh at it. Otherwise, what else are you gonna do?

00;25;06;04 – 00;25;17;23
Speaker 3
Well, when you’re a one man guy, I mean, it was a lot of hours, right? You’re you’re trying to build something, so you don’t want to say no to anybody. I mean, it was a lot. It was a, you know.

00;25;17;26 – 00;25;45;26
Speaker 1
I, I say often, you know, and I look at these other guys that don’t really know their numbers, like, you ask him, like, what’s your breakeven cost, right? And they they can’t tell you, you know, from day one, we knew our break even cost and that is that is a huge advantage and disadvantage. Because number one, you really can’t get down and dirty once you know your breakeven.

00;25;45;26 – 00;26;13;17
Speaker 1
You just know you can’t go below that. Right? And you’re competing with a lot of guys out in the industry that just don’t know their costs. So you know your costs. You’re educated on the fact and you end up looking like a crook, right? That’s that’s the disadvantage. The advantage of it is it puts a fire under your ass to get out there and actually sell and do and complete and collect.

00;26;13;19 – 00;26;44;28
Speaker 1
And so that was really, you know, the first probably the first three years was really stressful. On the fact that, you know, you know, your breakeven, you got to hit it. You got to keep going, you got to keep going. And it was it was typically seven days a week, 365 days a year. I mean, I even worked, I think Christmas Eve, I worked for years in a row on Christmas Eve, you know, my first three years and, every 4th of July for like five years, you know, I be out a truck running a service call, emergency work, whatever it was.

00;26;45;01 – 00;26;54;12
Speaker 1
So. Yeah. And then. And then you’ve got Alicia here that was working at the hospital full time, at night, so that she could help in the office.

00;26;54;15 – 00;26;55;05
Speaker 3
During the day.

00;26;55;08 – 00;26;58;29
Speaker 1
For free. For free for five years. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

00;26;59;01 – 00;27;00;04
Speaker 2
For five years. You did.

00;27;00;04 – 00;27;01;05
Speaker 1
That five years for.

00;27;01;05 – 00;27;26;16
Speaker 3
Free? Yeah. Now, there were points along this growth. And obviously that’s going to differ for everyone how much you want to sacrifice. I guess that’s the question for everyone that opens their own business. Like how much do you want to sacrifice? In the beginning, we were willing to sacrifice a lot. In the beginning, we were willing to take on a little bit of debt, not make the salaries that we were used to making.

00;27;26;18 – 00;27;50;23
Speaker 3
We, you know, I was willing to work night shift. He was willing to work seven days a week. I came in during the day and I didn’t take any kind of paycheck. And he took a I mean, I think the first year we paid him 35,000 a year. Now, we could have paid more. But then that could have kept us from getting the next truck.

00;27;50;25 – 00;27;52;23
Speaker 1
I was prolongs his stuff.

00;27;52;26 – 00;27;54;22
Speaker 2
Right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

00;27;54;24 – 00;28;06;11
Speaker 3
You know, really, I just always ask people when they they ask me that, like, how did you handle that? I said, well, we we adjusted our lifestyle,

00;28;06;13 – 00;28;07;06
Speaker 2
You know, on a credit.

00;28;07;06 – 00;28;33;25
Speaker 3
Card, use a lot of credit cards. And that that drove us like, we got to get this debt paid off. We were willing to take the risk. And and anyone that opens a business is taking risks, and making a lot of sacrifices and so on. The on the beginning side of things, we made a lot of sacrifices so that we could grow, and then start paying ourselves what we deserved to be paid.

00;28;33;28 – 00;28;46;04
Speaker 3
Now, from day one, we always charged our customer for the salary that we should be earning as a business owner. We just didn’t take that for salary. Yeah, yeah, we just weren’t taking it because we wanted.

00;28;46;10 – 00;28;46;25
Speaker 1
It back on the.

00;28;46;25 – 00;29;00;10
Speaker 3
Business. Yeah, we wanted to to build. So we used it to create more jobs, more trucks, you know, that, you know, marketing spends whatever we needed to do to to grow.

00;29;00;13 – 00;29;28;26
Speaker 1
Yeah. And I think that there’s a huge misconception on, on profit and salary with a lot of the younger business owners in the industry, you know, you need you need a salary and you need profit. Profit is not your salary. And so I think that’s probably what attributed a lot of the success was just knowing and understanding the financials of a business’s, you know, profit is made above and beyond the owner’s salary and of all expenses in a business.

00;29;28;26 – 00;29;54;06
Speaker 1
Right. So you get a lot of business owners ago. Well, you know, I’ll just live off the profit. Well, if there’s no profit, then there’s nothing left left for growth. And like I said, you’re just prolonging the suffering. So you’re just going to be that one man or three man truck forever. If you’re busy, if you don’t have a salary where you can pay your personal bills and you don’t have profit, where you can actually roll it back into the business for growth.

00;29;54;06 – 00;30;19;01
Speaker 1
New trucks, better tools, better equipment, more marketing if you need it in a low time, whatever, whatever that growth looks like to your business. And and a lot of guys think that growth means more trucks, that that’s not what growth means. It could mean something different for everybody. But unless you a profit, you’re not going to see any type of growth that you want to see.

00;30;19;04 – 00;30;35;06
Speaker 2
You know, it’s it’s interesting because it sounds like, well, no, maybe it doesn’t sound this way, but first five months in, it’s you. An apprentice? Apprentice quits three times. Is is the apprentice still with you today? That’s, you know, would be one of those three.

00;30;35;08 – 00;30;36;08
Speaker 1
Up until last.

00;30;36;11 – 00;30;50;19
Speaker 2
Year. Yeah, I love it, I love it, but, you know, so you’re by the two year mark in 2007, 17, roughly speaking, you’re ready for next. Right. So you’ve grown a lot in two years.

00;30;50;27 – 00;30;51;23
Speaker 3
Since it was 18.

00;30;51;23 – 00;31;01;09
Speaker 1
18. So our first year, which was a partial year in business, this was back in 2015. We did 1.2 million in revenue with one truck.

00;31;01;13 – 00;31;02;18
Speaker 2
Wow.

00;31;02;20 – 00;31;09;17
Speaker 1
Yeah. Our second year in business with the second truck added, we did 2.4, doubled it.

00;31;09;20 – 00;31;10;29
Speaker 2
Wow.

00;31;11;01 – 00;31;44;28
Speaker 1
You know, 2 to 2 technicians. Well, I was one of them and another one. And then plus a helper. So is three guys born in 2.4 million. Our third year we did I want to say 3.3. Yeah, 3.3 million. And we had added two trucks. So now we had basically diluted how much each truck could produce. But that’s, that’s to be expected, you know, to, to ask a company to even today to do 1.2 million out of an, out of a service truck is a pretty big stretch.

00;31;45;01 – 00;32;00;28
Speaker 1
Yeah. There’s guys do it. I mean, every company has their unicorns and you got that unicorn that can that can pull 1.2, 1.5 million out of a service truck. But I think your average this day and age is around 650,000.

00;32;01;00 – 00;32;19;18
Speaker 2
You know, it’s wild to me. And I just have to make the statement for any listener of the show that has not yet made the smart decision to go into the trades, but like we have had. But, you know, there’s a statistic, right? Only 4% of all businesses makes it to $1 million. Yeah, okay. 4%. That’s small number.

00;32;19;20 – 00;32;44;04
Speaker 2
Okay. That means a ton of people are getting there right now. In the last six months we have interviewed many businesses similar to yourselves that like in the first year in the trades, they hit that mark that only 4% of businesses ever reach. Wild. Tim. Absolutely wild. Yeah. I’m questioning every decision after high school right now. I’m like, why did I go into marketing.

00;32;44;07 – 00;32;50;05
Speaker 3
You know, $120,000 in student loan debt? When I graduated, he had fun.

00;32;50;07 – 00;33;02;21
Speaker 2
Yeah, right. Like what is going on here? Like I should’ve stayed in the trades. So that’s amazing. First of all, I, you know, that first 18 months, like,

00;33;02;21 – 00;33;16;25
Speaker 2
what do you guys think the biggest lesson that you learned as big as new business owners, even though you both had leadership and management and kind of leading, but like from a business owner standpoint, what was the biggest thing that.

00;33;16;27 – 00;33;43;11
Speaker 1
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00;33;43;14 – 00;33;56;26
Speaker 2
what do you guys think the biggest lesson that you learned as big as new business owners, even though you both had leadership and management and kind of leading, but like from a business owner standpoint, what was the biggest thing that.

00;33;56;29 – 00;34;03;15
Speaker 1
You’re saying within the first 18 months? What did we learn? Yeah, you were you were asking a decade ago.

00;34;03;17 – 00;34;06;29
Speaker 2
I know it’s it’s a little fuzzy.

00;34;07;01 – 00;34;37;18
Speaker 3
I didn’t I mean, there’s a few things, I think I was very humbled. I didn’t realize how personal, I could take things. So those are big lessons for me. I mean, you know, like, the first negative review we got, I swear, that was like, I couldn’t sleep for Rico, right? Yeah. You know, and not that you should ever be okay with a one star review, but I don’t lose sleep over it now, you know, I don’t.

00;34;37;21 – 00;35;07;13
Speaker 3
I it’s just that, something that hits so hard. I think that employing people, I think that I, I used to get very that I would get very close to people and then I just, I would take it so personally if they wanted to leave, like we had everything we did for you, you know? So there are a lot of lessons there in the beginning with employing people.

00;35;07;15 – 00;35;31;13
Speaker 3
I would say setting boundaries between us, like, who’s doing what? Who’s. He would boss me around. I’d be like, you’re not bossing me around. Then I would boss him around and he’s like, you’re not boss of me around. I mean, we had a lot of that. There is a lot of that, that we had a really learn on the job in real time, in front of a team of people, you know.

00;35;31;13 – 00;35;53;12
Speaker 3
So I would say the first year and a half, the first three years, a lot of those lessons would come. You know, it’s like you can’t you don’t know everything and you don’t know what you don’t know. So as things would come, you know, I think we built the majority of our employee handbook and our policies and procedures.

00;35;53;12 – 00;36;14;00
Speaker 3
We thought we did like a great like we had as SOPs. We thought we were good, you know, and then an employee would do something and we’re like, are you kidding me? Who would think to do that? And so now we had to create another policy and procedure. So, you know, things just come about. But it’s on on the spot learning I guess.

00;36;14;00 – 00;36;18;28
Speaker 3
You know, it’s just learning in real time because you you don’t know what you don’t know.

00;36;19;01 – 00;36;26;16
Speaker 1
Yeah. I would say that a really good company handbook was written by the worst employee you ever had.

00;36;26;18 – 00;36;28;01
Speaker 2
It’s a good way to put it.

00;36;28;03 – 00;36;51;06
Speaker 1
Right. So, you know, she brought up the point, but it’s totally true. You know, unless you’re constantly documenting and correcting and and, you know, renaming, it was a book and I can’t remember what book it was in, but it basically said, you know, yeah, business is like a cannon you have to fire. Right. And some of the worst businesses can’t make decisions, so they never end up firing.

00;36;51;08 – 00;37;17;28
Speaker 1
Fire the cannon. Try it out. If it doesn’t work, you got to aim again. Buyer again. If it still doesn’t hit your target, rename it and fire it again. And that’s essentially what a lot of business owners, you know, they’re either not improving continually or they’re just constantly making the same mistake over and over again. And we know that insanity is making the same mistakes over and over again and expecting different results.

00;37;18;00 – 00;37;38;14
Speaker 2
Yeah, I, I want to get into if we can a little bit about what it look like for your speaking of firing to kind of fire yourself from being a technician and, you know, and kind of how you guys leveled up. But but I also want to talk about like how involved in your local community. I mean, I’m looking over your website.

00;37;38;14 – 00;37;52;15
Speaker 2
Everything on there talks about your community, you know, being, a part of that community, supporting that community. Can you touch on that a little bit of why that’s so important to go green?

00;37;52;18 – 00;38;22;25
Speaker 1
I’ll briefly, but I’m going to let her take over on the community stuff. She’s wired that way. She’s a nurse. You know, so, community is really important, in regards to it. You know, I would say that we we have gotten a lot of benefit from our community, and it’s changed our lives. Yes, we worked hard for this, but it also took our community to support us in getting here.

00;38;22;28 – 00;38;49;16
Speaker 1
So, you know, why wouldn’t you just give back to that? Right. And so we’re big local buyers, you know, like we eat out. I’d rather go to a local restaurant than a chain. I want the money to stay here. Because, you know, when when our customers spend it with us, we try and keep it here. And so when we go spend money personally or as a business, we try and hire local.

00;38;49;18 – 00;39;17;09
Speaker 3
So there was two parts of your questionnaire, I would say on the day to day, we have kind of gotten, you know, we’ve have fired ourselves from certain roles. I think that we’ve kind of I mean, for Pete, he does a lot of he’s really into this I and he’s really good at it. And I like it to work, but I hate I could not sit there and program anything.

00;39;17;09 – 00;39;40;16
Speaker 3
I have no interest. Right. So finding what you love, what your passion is, he’s been able to help all of our technicians out in the field dramatically by not being in the field, but by providing them with better tools, you know, to do the jobs that they currently do. I love marketing, I love community events.

00;39;40;16 – 00;40;10;00
Speaker 3
I love really just kind of being available to serve our team in whatever way they need me to serve them that day. So I have CSRs, I have dispatchers, I have a CMO and, controller, and we have all those positions filled. But I really sit in our operations center and not back in my office. And then whatever they need me to do for the day on there and help do so.

00;40;10;00 – 00;40;34;10
Speaker 3
If that means that they need some ideas on pulling outbound call lists for today, you know, help me, help me with this. I would just wherever I can serve them best, I’m always available to them. And then we brainstorm and I think just our presence helps them feel supported, even though, I mean, we just got back from a two week trip to Italy and our business operated.

00;40;34;12 – 00;41;09;20
Speaker 3
So if we’re not here, things still run. When we are here, they run a little better. You know, I think our people are glad that we’re here when we are here. I’m sure that they’re glad when we leave, too, sometimes. So, you know, I think you just have to find what you’re passionate about doing. But I will also say again, I didn’t we didn’t either have expectations, either of us, of not having to wear multiple hats for a very long time.

00;41;09;23 – 00;41;35;02
Speaker 3
And there were times where we wore all the hats, you know, we were he was answering the phone in the crawl space because I was working at the hospital. I was answering the phone. I’m on ride alongs. I’m helping do marketing. I’m doing the box, dispatching. We have worn every hat and every hat in the same day for many, many years.

00;41;35;04 – 00;41;54;17
Speaker 3
I, you know, I think some people have the mindset of, like, quick, results. You know, people are used to very gratitude coming quickly. And we were willing to sacrifice a little bit so that we could build more. So back to the sacrifice part.

00;41;54;19 – 00;42;19;28
Speaker 1
And getting, you know, getting out of the field and, and becoming an owner that that would be probably primarily to get out of the field, probably around five years after starting a business. And even then I was dragged out into the field, you know, and I say dread, I don’t mean it that way. But essentially, yeah, you know, like so and so called out, we got this install, we got to get this revenue.

00;42;20;00 – 00;42;32;19
Speaker 1
All right, I’ll go run an excavator for the day and I’ll, I’ll dig it. You know, and then and then eventually you become a princess and you’re like, okay, I’ll go do that job. If you give me an A, a two apprentices or, you know, so not.

00;42;32;19 – 00;42;35;17
Speaker 3
Getting off the exit in her day, I am not only.

00;42;35;17 – 00;42;46;16
Speaker 1
Oh, yes. You know, there’s that diva part of me that started kicking in and, probably around year six was like, okay, I need like my time. So.

00;42;46;19 – 00;42;48;23
Speaker 2
And then even then, I mean.

00;42;48;25 – 00;42;54;09
Speaker 1
I think last year I went out in the field a couple times, just to help out, you know, we we ended up.

00;42;54;09 – 00;42;57;17
Speaker 3
Training more than anything. We go out in the field a lot for training.

00;42;57;17 – 00;43;17;12
Speaker 1
And, you know, every now and then I’ll get an upset customer, and my GM’s not available, or my service manager’s not available, and I’ll. I’ll run out and I’ll. I’ll kind of, do that, but nobody wants me out of the job. Because I give too much shit away for free, you know, because I have that power while.

00;43;17;12 – 00;43;18;07
Speaker 3
Telling them never.

00;43;18;07 – 00;43;31;11
Speaker 1
To do. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You know, do as I say, not as I do kind of thing. As soon as I show up into tears, roll out of some woman’s eyes. I’m giving the shit away for free. Yeah, and that just pisses my team off. So.

00;43;31;13 – 00;43;50;18
Speaker 2
Yeah, we have a term for that. Internally. We call it freedom fighting. Yeah. So. So, like, And I am the chief freedom fighter in the company. Like, they had to take me out of pricing because I started talking to. I’m like, well, there’s small business too. I don’t have a lot of money. And I’m like, next thing you know, I’m, I’m, we’re doing all this stuff for free.

00;43;50;18 – 00;43;57;26
Speaker 2
And I’m like, oh, don’t worry about it. You know, I’ll send you a referral sometime. And my team’s like, what are you doing? Like.

00;43;57;29 – 00;44;13;29
Speaker 2
We can’t afford to do that. Like, we like, we’re literally paying this customer so we can work with them right now. Like, and you know, but it’s that like, for me, I, I think the true form of freedom is to own your own business. And I want everybody that wants to, to experience that. So I’m just like, how can I help?

00;44;14;04 – 00;44;32;08
Speaker 2
And they’re like, well, I only have 200 bucks. I’m like, we’ll do it. So like meanwhile it costs me 350 bucks. So I just, you know, I’m skipping a bit. I’m skipping dinner this month, I guess, but yeah. So anyway, I, I can I, I know how you feel. TSR knows the,

00;44;32;10 – 00;44;54;11
Speaker 3
The second part of your question was about community, and, like Pete’s. Then we wouldn’t be in existence if our community didn’t call us. Right? So our community calls us, we ask them to call us. We we put it on TV. Please call us. You know, we put it on every social media platform. We’re responding to their questions online.

00;44;54;14 – 00;45;25;26
Speaker 3
But we’re also very, philanthropic, I guess. You know, we really like to be a part of our community. There’s a couple reasons. One, you need to do it just because we’re human beings, and we should be giving back when we can. You need to do it to stay relevant. If your brand is not recognizable, if people don’t see you out there in the community, they’re not going to think to call you.

00;45;25;28 – 00;45;51;20
Speaker 3
But also, I think it’s just a responsibility that we have as leaders in our community. So for us, for me specifically, if you ask me what my idea of success is, you know, someday I’d really love to build our dream house. But that that isn’t success for me. That doesn’t that, like, implies success for me. It’s really.

00;45;51;26 – 00;46;15;24
Speaker 3
Yeah. How many people were we able to build and how many people are we able to serve? And in 2018, we started our first organization. It was at that time called Plumbers Promise. And then as we added HVAC in 2019, we added electrical in 2022. We’ve kind of grown and now it’s called Go Green Community Promise.

00;46;15;24 – 00;46;46;05
Speaker 3
But it’s our own organization where we give back plumbing, HVAC and electrical to people in our community in need. And we accept nominations online, or our technicians will give us a call and tell us when they’re in a bad situation. And, and a customer really needs some help. We’ve been able to serve a lot of people, I think right now, as of the end of 2025, we were at $975,000 in free plumbing, HVAC, and electrical that we’ve provided to our community.

00;46;46;07 – 00;47;05;13
Speaker 3
But we also are just a part of every event. We have a huge trunk or treat and a haunted house that we do in our, building every single year. And it’s super awesome. Our community looks forward to it. We do hand out free turkeys at Thanksgiving. We, like, we’re party trucks.

00;47;05;13 – 00;47;07;23
Speaker 1
Full three box trucks full of turkeys.

00;47;07;23 – 00;47;30;14
Speaker 3
Yeah. We, we have, you know, different angel networks that we’re a part of at Christmas time. We support a few different foster organizations, children’s foster organizations within our in our, community. We have a couple different cancer organizations. We have a lot starting up in the fall. It seems like a lot of events happen in the fall.

00;47;30;14 – 00;47;53;28
Speaker 3
So we have like a puca mania event for, you know, rescue animals in the triad coming up in a couple weeks. And then we have trunk or treat events and we have cancer walks and galas for foster families. And there’s just, you know, food drives and Back-To-School drives and we try to help wherever we can.

00;47;53;28 – 00;48;16;29
Speaker 3
We like to support our local, our local schools. We give back for their athletic organizations so that all the kids can participate in playing on the teams that maybe don’t have the money for cleats or, any of the the things that are needed there travel. I think it’s just really important that if you can give back that you do.

00;48;17;02 – 00;48;19;15
Speaker 1
Reopen by next year, we solve world hunger.

00;48;19;17 – 00;48;23;03
Speaker 2
Yeah, that’s a good goal. It’s good call.

00;48;23;06 – 00;48;24;27
Speaker 3
Yeah.

00;48;25;00 – 00;48;26;13
Speaker 2
One community at a time, right?

00;48;26;20 – 00;48;27;02
Speaker 1
Yep.

00;48;27;08 – 00;48;28;13
Speaker 3
That’s right.

00;48;28;15 – 00;48;34;22
Speaker 2
Well, and that’s, you know, I mean, we’re in a very similar mind. I know Derek is as well I, you know, like,

00;48;34;25 – 00;48;40;27
Speaker 2
if you can help make your own local community better, if every community’s doing that, it’s going to be a pretty good, pretty good world to live in. Right?

00;48;40;27 – 00;48;42;22
Speaker 3
So

00;48;42;24 – 00;49;05;05
Speaker 1
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00;49;05;08 – 00;49;18;18
Speaker 1
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00;49;18;21 – 00;49;24;23
Speaker 2
if you can help make your own local community better, if every community’s doing that, it’s going to be a pretty good, pretty good world to live in. Right?

00;49;24;23 – 00;49;25;01
Speaker 3
So

00;49;25;02 – 00;49;25;29
Speaker 3
that’s exactly right.

00;49;26;06 – 00;49;32;04
Speaker 1
If all businesses were good corporate citizens, it probably would be a much different place. And we know that.

00;49;32;04 – 00;49;34;13
Speaker 3
They would search, you know, solve world hunger.

00;49;34;13 – 00;49;42;22
Speaker 1
Honestly. Yeah. So I think that, you know, profits to be used for a few things sustainability, growth and giving back. Yeah.

00;49;42;25 – 00;50;06;23
Speaker 2
Yeah. Guys, I know we’re getting short on time, but, you know, I gotta ask the big question, right? Is, that we try to ask every show. We don’t always get to it. But, you know, if you if there’s someone thinking about going into the trades or maybe someone’s in the trades and they’re thinking about starting their own business in the trades, like, what is one piece of advice that you might give to both those groups of people?

00;50;06;26 – 00;50;30;08
Speaker 1
One piece of advice. Well, what I would say is do it for the right reasons. Right? So I, I run across kids all the time that that were not meant for the trades. Right. It’s not for everybody you know that there there’s white collar jobs for a reason and there’s blue collar jobs for reason. And there is prime people for everything.

00;50;30;08 – 00;50;56;29
Speaker 1
You know not everybody’s a musician right. Not not it not everybody’s an artist. Not everybody’s an auto mechanic. And and so you know stick to what you’re naturally good at. And if, if you’re good with your hands, then I would say do it. You’re not going to go wrong, you know, don’t don’t listen to that guidance counselor that tells you that you’re not going to amount to anything unless you go to college.

00;50;57;02 – 00;51;25;06
Speaker 1
You know, the net worth of a plumber these days is usually typically higher than a doctor. And that’s a true study. They did, you know, and so the sky’s the limit. And that goes for electricians, HVAC technicians. You know, you’ve got guys in trucks for years learning a trade, you know, five, six years, sometimes eight years, depending on, you know, how much there is to learn and what sector of the industry they’re in.

00;51;25;06 – 00;51;57;28
Speaker 1
But these guys are making 200 grand a year with no college education, no college debt. And meanwhile, their white collar friends that are going for these basic degrees of, you know, business degree or a liberal arts degree, they’re they’re unemployed or they’re under underemployed and they have, mounting student debt. And they, you know, they can’t get a job or they’re underemployed, like I said, you know, so it just goes to show you, you know, how much the trades are needed.

00;51;57;28 – 00;52;14;19
Speaker 1
But we also run into kids all the time that are just not meant for the trades. And and so if you’re going in for the reasons of you want to make 200 grand a year, that’s not a good enough reason. You got to be good with your hands. You got to be you got to be a craftsman. Right.

00;52;14;19 – 00;52;20;15
Speaker 1
And if if working with your hands makes sense and you love doing it, then yeah. Come on in.

00;52;20;18 – 00;52;43;17
Speaker 3
Yeah. I would say we have our own apprenticeship academy where they graduate, you know, certified in plumbing, HBC or electrical. We open up our program twice a year. And we’re very honest with them, you know, is a lot, a lot of hours you’re going to be on call. So make sure that you understand the expectations. I would say getting as young as you can.

00;52;43;19 – 00;53;10;04
Speaker 3
You know, we have people that join our academy, everywhere from every age of, you know, 18 and just graduated high school to, you know, mid 40s. We’ve had people in our, academy, but it is really hard to give up a salary of 45 to go back to an apprenticeship level. So, you know, that’s a much easier transition in your earlier days.

00;53;10;04 – 00;53;33;05
Speaker 3
But we do see more and more of a people losing their IT jobs or things like that that are trying to find a new career now. But if you can get in early, be willing to sacrifice a little bit because nobody that makes a really big salary got there without some form of sacrifice at some point. So you’re going to have to sacrifice a couple of years at apprenticeship pay to learn.

00;53;33;07 – 00;53;59;08
Speaker 3
I would also say to find a program, you know, we started our own academy because God love our trade schools and our community colleges. We I’m grateful that we have them. But we, you know, they don’t pump out the best, candidates, and we train. We will pay them to learn. So, you know, we’re not the only organization in the country that does that.

00;53;59;11 – 00;54;24;15
Speaker 3
I would guide people to look for businesses within their communities or just outside of their communities that are willing to pay them to learn and put them through a program. That is really going to, you know, give them a career for the rest of their lives. These are not jobs. These are actual careers. And anyone that’s looking to start a business, I mean, I would say learn everything you can.

00;54;24;18 – 00;54;56;06
Speaker 3
Just because you’re really great at service doesn’t mean you understand how to operate a business. So, you know, take the time to invest in yourself. Understand the difference between a balance sheet and a PNL, understand how to build a flat rate price, understand what your your budget number and your goal number is need to be, you know, really take the time to, to learn what, what is required of really operating a successful business.

00;54;56;06 – 00;55;20;29
Speaker 3
Because the thing that hurts my heart the most is we see, you know, new trucks pop up 25 times a year. We also don’t see them back around the 12 months later, you know, and they could be cheaper for that 12 months until they went out of business. So really we just want people to focus on, you know, learning business.

00;55;20;29 – 00;55;29;25
Speaker 3
We even ask them to come in here and we’ll show them how to create a flat rate. We don’t care if there are competitor. You know, it helps the industry overall if.

00;55;29;27 – 00;55;32;15
Speaker 1
Boats rise with the tide.

00;55;32;17 – 00;55;33;15
Speaker 2
Yes, sir.

00;55;33;18 – 00;55;45;10
Speaker 1
So if you’re not, if you’re not teaching and sharing with even your competitors, they’re under pricing. You and they’re they’re bankrupting not only them, but themselves, but also you as well.

00;55;45;13 – 00;55;47;00
Speaker 3
Yeah.

00;55;47;02 – 00;56;02;19
Speaker 2
Copy that. Thank you both for, sharing all of the sacrifice that you’ve put into your business. A lot of times, you know, you get that? Oh. Must be nice. Comment. And that certainly, speaks to to what it takes. So thank you for that.

00;56;02;21 – 00;56;04;12
Speaker 3
Yeah.

00;56;04;15 – 00;56;09;10
Speaker 2
Guys, if, folks want to learn more about Go Green, how do they find you?

00;56;09;12 – 00;56;29;03
Speaker 3
Yeah. Well, they can find us a message. Us on any of our go green platform’s easy type and go green. You’ll see us everywhere. Or you can message us personally. P green. We’re on every. Or Alisha Green on every social media platform there is out there. You know, you can email me at Alisha.

00;56;29;03 – 00;56;35;27
Speaker 3
You go green thumb.com or I go green pumpkin. So happy to answer any questions or help in any way we can.

00;56;36;00 – 00;56;38;26
Speaker 2
Love it guys. Thanks so much for coming on the show for sure.

00;56;38;26 – 00;56;39;27
Speaker 3
Yeah, thanks for having us.

00;56;39;29 – 00;56;40;27
Speaker 1
Absolutely.

00;56;40;29 – 00;57;07;10
Speaker 2
Absolutely. And of course, everybody, thanks for listening. And you know, obviously, like every episode, big thank you to our sponsors that, helped make this show possible, but also help us donate money for tools and tuition to kids and trade school. Thank you all that. Do that. And, you can find us at, or you can find this episode in every episode at Blue Collar Startup that Io and Rumble, Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts.

00;57;07;10 – 00;57;13;10
Speaker 2
And, thanks everybody for listening. Thanks again. One more time, guys. And, you’ll hear from us next week, everybody.

00;57;13;12 – 00;57;41;10
Speaker 1
And that wraps up another episode of Blue Collar Startup. A big thank you to our sponsors, Five Towers Media, Daigle Cleaning Systems, Daigle Fire Solutions, The Michaels Group, Martin Electric, MLB construction, Pinocchio Construction People, and Catamount Consulting for making this podcast possible. And thank you for tuning in. If you learned something or felt inspired. Connect with us on our website at Blue Collar Startup Bio or email us at hardhat Dot CSU at gmail.com.

00;57;41;10 – 00;57;54;04
Speaker 1
We’d love to hear your questions and topic ideas. Help us spread the word by sharing the show and following us on social media for updates. Until next time, keep on building. Keep on dreaming and keep hustling like your future depends on it.

00;57;54;07 – 00;58;03;12
Unknown
Oh, hey. Oh!

00;58;03;14 – 00;58;04;20
Unknown
Oh!

Details

  • Hosts

    Michael Nelson & Derek Foster

  • Guests

    Pete & Alicia Green

  • Runtime

    58 mins, 9 secs

  • Airing Date

    October 14, 2026


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