How to Make Millions Doing Dirty Jobs for Homeowners with Adam Chapman

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation! JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, the only daily show interviewing the world's top entrepreneurs seven days a week. Today, we'll be breaking down how to make millions doing dirty jobs for homeowners. To draw these value bombs, I have brought Adam Chapman into EO Fire Studios. Adam, known as the home service king, grew up with nothing and went on to play pro hockey until getting a career-ending injury. Then he built his own million-dollar home service business from the ground up. And today, Fire Nation, we'll talk about the best way to get started from ground zero.

0:33If it's a saturated market, too much competition, what do you do? Can this type of business give you the freedom you desire? And oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Adam and our sponsors. Do you have the right mentor in your life right now? For the first time in seven years, I'm opening up a few mentorship slots for individuals who know they need the guidance and accountability to take their business and life to the next level. Email me at john at eofire.com with the subject line mentor and we'll schedule a 15 minute chat to go over the program and see if it's the right fit for you.

1:10Over 41 ,000 businesses have future proved their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. Download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning for free at netsuite.com slash fire. Adam, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Hey, John, thanks for having me out here today. Something I believe that people disagree with would be that you need money or a bunch of connections to become excess. Fire Nation, you don't need either.

1:50You just need an idea, an execution, and a lot of desire to work hard. And that's why we're talking today about how to make millions doing dirty jobs for homeowners. Now, listen, time is money, Adam. And if we're going to spend our time doing something, how realistic is it to make money doing home service businesses, doing dirty jobs for homeowners? It's absolutely realistic. I think it's the best business model in the world. You can go out literally today by the end of this podcast, start knocking on doors and make money right away. You can get started for less than a hundred bucks and make 500 bucks your first day.

2:27So if our listeners are like, all right, I want to put this to the test. Let's talk about step one. What is the best way to get started if you're absolutely at ground zero? So I always say to guys, you can be lazy, but you can't be broken lazy. So if you have no money, ground zero, I'd be going to Home Depot, getting a squeegee, a bucket and some rags and start knocking on doors. That's the easiest way to get started. If you have a little bit of capital to go. I just do some door to door still and then run some ads and get out there and start closing deals. I mean, I live in a place in Palmas Del Mar where let's be honest, there's just a lot of disposable income.

3:03I mean, people move down here because their business is successful. They're looking for tax breaks and there's always stuff. These are massive homes. My home is 5 ,500 square feet and that's like an average size home in this community. And guess what happens when there's homes like that, Fire Nation? There's something wrong with that house. There's a lot of things wrong with that house. There's nonstop maintenance with that house. Think of something, think of one thing that you just say, you know what, I can provide services to this community in this service and go after it. So you gave a couple ideas, Adam.

3:35Let's talk about a couple more. Like what do you actually see people being able to do as far as these specific services they could offer a homeowner? Speaking about Puerto Rico, I actually have a student in my program, Home Service University. He's only 21 years old and he's doing 200 ,000 in window cleaning, pressure washing, and then post Airbnb cleans. Oh man, the post Airbnb cleans is genius. Number one, actually my sponsor's Airbnb and they're doing some really cool things where he could actually sign up to essentially take over the management of people's Airbnb. They're calling them like co-hosts and there's some really cool things there.

4:12So definitely have your guy look into that, but that fire is a great idea. And power washing, man, my roof needs to power wash right now. My tiles in my backyard by my pool need a power wash right now. I mean, there's endless things that you can do. But I kind of heard this is a saturated market, Adam. Is there too much competition to actually make real money? Yeah, I've never heard that before because there's tens of thousands of window panes all around your city. There's thousands of square feet of asphalt, pavers, They call it in the States, we call it interlocking Canada. People want Christmas lights, permanent lights, lawn care.

4:46These services literally never end. And the beautiful thing about thinking about competition is your competition is sleeping. It's a lot of old guys that are doing this stuff. A lot of people that are unprofessional, kind of smoking cigs on the front lawn. So if you can go out and brand yourself, be a professional company, use the social media, use the modern tools that are disposable, the money is there. So I don't ever worry about competition. I always tell guys, be a premium service, get your foot in the door. And then we teach this thing called service stacking. So we'd go to your house, John, get you on the window cleaning and say, Hey, your roof's dirty.

5:20You need the soft washing on the roof. And then, Hey, what do you do for Christmas lights? Bang. That's how you go take one customer, do a really good job and make a couple grand off them. No, I absolutely love this. And I interviewed the founder of 1-800-GOT-JUNK. That was literally his whole business model. He's like, man, people were just terrible when it came to getting your junk. They'd show up late. They'd be all like just discombobulated. They'd track like mud into your house. They didn't look professional. They didn't act professional. He's like, I just mean a professional. You show up, you get a uniform on, you've got a checklist, you follow that.

5:53You got little booties for your, I mean, that's by the way, a huge pet peeve of mine, not to get into too many details here, Fire Nation. But if you show up to my house, which has like gorgeous white tile throughout and you've been trekking around in the mud all day, which is kind of Puerto Rico because it's always raining and there's just mud everywhere. And you just think it's okay to just walk up, you know, the stairs of my white tile and like walk onto my white rugs. And with these, I don't understand how that is a thing. How can that possibly be a thing instead of just saying, you know what, I'm just going to pop on these booties and make sure that I leave this house as clean as I found it and going off to the races.

6:30Like I would hire that person in a second for many, many more jobs. Like Adam's talking about stacking that cool. You have to stack that cool. Adam, tell us your story. I mean, I dropped some of it, you know, when I was going through the introduction about growing up with nothing, playing pro hockey until you got a career ending injury. Then you built your own million dollar home service business from the ground up. Talk to us about that moment, about building your own million dollar home service business from the ground up. What did that look like? It's kind of funny how life works out, but I was raised by a single mother.

7:03It was me and my mom, my brother sleeping in one bedroom basement apartment didn't come from money the only goal my whole life was hockey had a career entering injury I ended up sleeping in my car for a month and no idea what to do with my life went to university because they were going to pay for me to go there and make sure that I got my recovery done in the hopes that I'd go back to hockey while I was in university I quickly realized that this is not going to get me where I want to be in life definitely not teach me what I need to know so I started getting into window cleaning I had no money.

7:31I went door to door in February and March in Canada, which is negative 30, collected deposit money, use that money to buy my first set of equipment in April. We did 55 ,000 my first year, a little over a hundred my second year. And then by my third year of university, when I graduated, we're at 280 ,000. By the time I come to graduate, I just doubled down on my business. We added Christmas lights in, seal coating, and then built it up to a million dollars. We did 1.4 million last year. And yeah, simple, dirty jobs. I have guys that do the work for me, a good crew. And like I said, I take three months off in the winter.

8:05My guys manage the stuff and then I go back in the spring for crunch time and keep pushing the business forward. So from rags to riches, I guess. Rags to riches. Let's go. But literally, literally having rags and then going to riches. Now, before we move on, like what was one of the aha moments? Like what was one of the turning points where you're like, okay, I did this to make some extra cash and to kind of just, you know, get some dollars in my pocket to like, whoa, wait a second. This could be big. What was that moment? So I'd say there's two key moments. So the first moment was my first day I went out.

8:40It was mid February. I was going door-to-door sales. And I told someone, yeah, for your window cleaning and gutter cleaning, when the spring comes, it's 500 bucks. And they said, yeah, sure. Sounds good. And gave me a deposit for 50%. That's what I was like. I was addicted from then. I was like, literally like an addiction right away. I'm like, this is actually what's going to give me that beautiful life. And then my second moment would be as soon as I was, cause I was doing university for my three years while I was doing my business and hockey as well. So it was busy. And then that fall I decided, Hey, I'm not going to go chase the pro dream.

9:10And I said, I want to try this new service Christmas lights. We did$70 ,000 in 45 days. And I was like, Holy crap, I can't wait to start the next year and do full time in my business. So there was a couple of moments, One, when I first started, I couldn't believe people spend 500 bucks on windows. And then the next one was as soon as I graduated, we did Christmas lights, did$70 ,000 in 45 days and never looked back since. Man, I love this stuff. Fire Nation, we have a lot more to talk about around this topic when we get back from thanking our sponsors. It would be really nice if we could predict what the future holds for our business.

9:45Talk about saving a lot of time and frustration, but predictions are just that, predictions. rates will rise or fall, inflation's up or down. Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until we can actually see into the future, over 41 ,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one fluid platform. NetSuite gives you one source of truth so you can have the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions. And with real-time insights and forecasting, you can see into the future with actionable data.

10:20If our businesses needed this type of software, I'd use NetSuite in a heartbeat because whether your company is earning millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities. Speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at netsuite.com slash fire. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash fire. Netsuite.com slash fire. Question for you, Fire Nation. Do you have the right mentor in your life right now? For me, mentorship was everything. From when I was just getting started in podcasting, webinars, course creation, book writing, you name it, I hired a mentor to guide me every step of the way.

11:01For the first time in seven years, I'm opening up a few mentorship slots for individuals who know they need the guidance and accountability to take their business and life to the next level. It's a three-month program and together we will achieve massive results. If you're interested in learning more, email me at john at eofire.com with the subject line mentor and we'll schedule a 15-minute chat to go over the program to see if it's the right fit for you. That's john, J-O-H-N at eofire.com, but only if you're prepared to ignite. Adam, we're back and listen, my audience, Fire Nation, they're entrepreneurs.

11:42They're small business owners. What they really want at the end of the day, though, is freedom. Can this give us the freedom that we've always desired? Because I think a lot of people might look at this and say, man, but like, I'm going to give myself a job that I got to do every single day and like, yada, yada, yada. Like, whereas I'm exchanging, you know, time for dollars. So can this give you the freedom that you desired? Oh, absolutely. So a big misconception people have is that when you're starting this type of business, let's say it's a window cleaning business or a gutter cleaning business, that you need to be on the field.

12:11So my mentor, when I started, he said, that's a$20 an hour task. You're going to be a business owner. So right away, I hired workers. I hired workers my first year. So that allowed me to get time freedom right away. I would sell the jobs. My guys would do the jobs. And like the last five years now, I go away from January, February, March, and then I go back to Canada in April. I have good SOPs. And like I said, I pay myself a good salary to have guys that take care of the dirty work for me. So you can have freedom right away in terms of having a crew on the road. also another level of freedom is just being your own boss and most people that aren't making at least 5k a month that's only a handful of window cleaning jobs right average job is going to be 300 bucks so you could work two weeks a month and make your 5k what you're probably making at your full-time job right now where people tell you where to go and where to be depends on what level of freedom you want to have but instantly right away you can have to be your own boss have that type of freedom and then if you do it right build out processes and build up a good team you can do what I do.

13:08I haven't cleaned a window in six years now. So what if we already have a business and we're making some money and we're doing okay and it's growing? And we're doing this kind of home business thing and it seems to be working kind of well. We're getting a little bit ahead here, a little bit behind there. What's the next step? How do you actually go from just kind of still scraping by to really making it? So the number one thing is generating good leads and building your brand name up. So the reason why Pat Pal has done so well is that right away, I've treated like a business versus a side hustle because doing a little bit goes the long way in the home service space.

13:47So just little things like answering the phone when you say you're going to answer the phone, calling people back, showing up on time. If you do those little things right, get a Google My Business profile up there consistently for a year, you'll start seeing the snowball effect of home services. And then a big one I talk about is service stacking. So So if you're right now just doing window cleaning or gutter cleaning, keeping your customer data, treating them like a customer, treating them like a good friend of yours. And then when Christmas time comes, bring up Christmas lights. Another one would be permanent lights.

14:16Those jobs are$6 ,000,$7 ,000 each. So I think it's getting your foot in the door, building your brand name up, and then starting to service stack and taking over the city. There's a lot of smart people in the world and a lot of dumb people in your city. I'd say that. So what if we do hit it out of the park? We're following your strategies and we hit it out of the park and we're really making some momentum, but we want to go big. Like we really want to go huge. Is something like this scalable? Absolutely. Scalable. Absolutely. So it depends on what type of life you want to live. But we have guys that are, uh, we have eight guys now that went through the program that have a million dollar company.

14:50I have a million dollar company, um, scales. It's, it's all relative, right? You're not going to be a Facebook or a software, but I don't think most people want to have make tens of millions of dollars versus making a few hundred thousand dollars a year and having time freedom i think that is the new the new definition of rich is being able to do what you want with your time instead of uh scaling to 50 million dollars i think a lot of people want to make a few hundred thousand dollars a year be able to take the winners off and spend time with their family so depending on what level of scale you want to get to um it's truly uncapped right like my mentor has a 12 million hvac company you can go in different services sell your company one day make it a cash cow that's what i love about home services that the business model is very flexible.

15:33You started in Canada, but as we're talking, you're in Panama. Are you just on vacation or do you live down there now? I always go away for the winters. We're looking right now at potentially moving down here and setting up the company and stuff. So that's kind of like the next step. I haven't 100 % confirmed that, but just checking it out for the winters and my guys hold down the fort. I check in with them once a week. We have a team meeting. And then other than that, just the money rolls in and the guys are out there busy and it's It's a really cool thing about having a home service company is providing opportunities to guys.

16:06So I've had guys now working for seven years that make solid coin and they've been involved in the business and they helped grow it for me too. So I'm a big believer in giving guys opportunities and seeing what they can do with it. I love that. So Adam, we've shared a lot today for individuals that maybe want to take that first step in that direction. If you could just say one thing, what is that one value bomb you really want to make sure our listeners get from our conversation today? If there's something that piques your interest in home services and you want to just kind of tiptoe your way into it, I'd say go check out some of my content, go knock on a few people's doors and you'll be pleasantly surprised at the results you have.

16:45You could literally go maybe a bit more advice than what's in this podcast. But if you go check out some of my content and you want to check this business out, give it a try. There's nothing too much that you can put a hundred bucks in and make 500 bucks the same day. So go test the waters and I'm sure you'll be just as surprised and probably get addicted to it just like I did. Well, let's give a direct call to action. If Fire Nation does want to take that next step, consume more of your content, learn more from you, where do they go? All my social media platforms, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, it's Adam R.

17:17Chap, C-H-A-P, like Chapman. And then we also have our website, joinhomeserviceuniversity.com. And there's some more info on there for you guys. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with AC and JLD today. So keep up the heat. For links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Just type Adam in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up. And Adam, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Awesome. Thank you for having me.

17:49Hey, Fire Nation, a huge shout out to our sponsors and Adam for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, in 100 days, accomplish your number one goal, thefreedomjournal.com. I'll catch you there or on the flip side. Do you have the right mentor in your life right now? For the first time in seven years, I'm opening up a few mentorship slots for individuals who know they need the guidance and accountability to take their business and life to the next level. Email me at john at eofire.com with a subject line mentor and we'll schedule a 15 minute chat to go over the program and see if it's the right fit for you.

18:26Over 41 ,000 businesses have future proved their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP bringing accounting, financial management, inventory and HR into one platform. Download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning for free at netsuite.com slash fire. Thank you.