Gratitude As A Business Strategy with Joshua Pugliese, Grato Property Care

0:00Welcome to Epic Entrepreneurs. I am Cliff McRae with Action Coach Business Growth Partners. Every week, we sit down with business owners, founders, and leaders to uncover the real stories behind building a successful business. The wins, the setbacks, the lessons learned, and the strategies that help them grow. No scripts, no fluff, just honest conversations with entrepreneurs who are in the trenches every single day. Whether you are a business owner yourself, thinking about starting a business, or simply enjoy hearing how successful people think and operate, you are in the right place. Let's jump into today's episode, shall we?

0:58All right, everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. I am Cliff McRae with Action Coach Business Growth Partners, where we work with local business owners to turn big ideas into real scalable growth. Today, I'm excited to be joined by Joshua Puglis, owner of Grado Property Care in the Irwin and North Huntington area. Joshua, how are you doing today? I'm doing great, Cliff. How are you? I'm doing great. Really, really excited to have you. So yeah, if you don't mind, let's go ahead and jump right into things. Yes, sir. All right. So Grato is a memorable name. It's great. It sticks in the mind.

1:31What does it mean to you? And what did you want customers to feel when they heard it? Yeah. Grato means grateful, appreciative, thankful in Italian. And when I was starting the business and trying to come up with a name that meant something to us and encompassed kind of the attitude that we're aiming for, Grato certainly fit. My last name, like a lot of home service businesses in my line of work use their last name, but my last name is hard to pronounce and is not very Google friendly. So I went outside the box there and Grado is something that we came up with and is a great fit. And it honestly resembles the attitude that we have.

2:13We're grateful for the people that reach out to us. And we try to have that attitude both internally amongst the team and externally with all of our customers. Okay. And who is Josh as a person? What do you got going on in your personal life? Josh is in his late 30s, have four wonderful children and a beautiful wife that certainly keeps all the family stuff going ever since I started the business. She certainly has picked up a lot of the slack around the house. Four kids ranging from two and a half to 20. They are, you know, my why. They're why I started the business. They're my motivation, you know, to grow this business.

2:52And, you know, in, in the very little free time that I have or, or every once in a while, you know, one of the perks of, of the businesses that I do get to golf occasionally. So, you know, that's my favorite hobby, but yeah, family, family man, started the business to, you know, provide a better life for my family and maybe have an opportunity that if one of the kids in the long run are interested in the business and want to get involved, they'll have that opportunity. Very nice. Very nice. Now, what did your path look like before grade O Property Care and what pushed you towards business ownership?

3:29I started working full-time at 18. I had my oldest daughter when I was young and had to grow up a little bit fast. I was in the restaurant world, well, fast food restaurant world for a little over a decade between being a general manager at Burger King and Five Guys, and then eventually a district manager at Five Guys. All the while, I completed my degree online in organizational leadership and then went into staffing and worked for a very large staffing firm in recruiting and sales. I thought that I wanted to get out of the hustle and bustle of the restaurant world and use my degree, but it turned out that corporate America and sitting behind a desk was, was not something that I really enjoyed.

4:15And I always found myself, you know, enjoying kind of doing projects around my house, helping out neighbors and stuff like that. And, you know, a few years ago, I guess four years ago now, I was lamenting about the desk job one day. And my wife said to me, Josh, you've always talked about starting your own business. You know, when I was in the restaurant world, I talked about like a coffee shop or a sandwich shop or something like that. She said, we're not getting any younger. If you want to do that and be happier, now's the time. And yeah, we just, you know, did some research on what, what type of opportunities were out there, what would be a good home service business to start.

4:53And we kind of took the ball and ran with it from there. Okay. Now, was there a specific moment when you knew you were all into this business, like, this is the way to go, I'm doing this thing? Yeah, so the first year, you know, we kind of, we bootstrapped everything, started out real small, mostly was just myself on nights and weekends, I kept my corporate job, I was going out and doing quotes in the evenings, and then doing, you know, projects when I didn't have quotes, or vice versa, and then working every weekend to do that. The first, you know, season was essentially like a proof of concept to me, make sure that, you know, it was something that I enjoyed doing in terms of the actual work itself, and then made sure that, you know, we had a viable business.

5:38And going into the spring of 2024, I had enough business to bring on somebody and also like kind of book out my schedule for almost a month. And at that point, you know, it was an all-in moment that we were We're going to dive headfirst into this. And yeah, it's been a ride ever since. It's been a lot of fun. Okay. Now, you offer several services that naturally fit together one way or another. Was that bundled property care model part of the plan from day one, or did customers pull you into new services? It was all a part of the plan, really. When I was looking at the home service industry and kind of trying to find a way of differentiating ourselves aside from providing great quality service and strong communication, which my background kind of lends itself to.

6:34It was the niche that I kind of saw or the opportunity that I saw, I guess, was providing a service that made it simpler for homeowners and business owners that they have one person that they can call and rely on for their exterior cleaning and maintenance needs, whether it's the routine stuff such as, you know, window cleaning that needs done pretty frequently, gutter cleaning that needs done annually, landscape maintenance, trimming, weeding, all of that kind of fun stuff, or bigger project stuff, power washing and landscape design and install. So the goal really is to provide, you know, a custom tailored approach to each homeowner's need, whether it is just one of the one-off services or reoccurring services, we're happy to help with that.

7:20And then we've also something that we have developed as we've kind of gone along is like a full service property maintenance program where, you know, we sit down with the homeowner, kind of understand where their pain points are on their property, what their priorities are, and come up with an annual plan where, you know, we essentially come out for so many hours a month and kind of work through a calendar to make sure that their property looks great. Everything is taken care of from them. And other than getting the initial setup going, you know, it kind of runs itself so that they don't have to constantly be thinking of, oh, it's, you know, it's time to have the gutters cleaned or, oh, that bed really needs weeded out.

8:03They just know that, you know, we have that on our calendar and we're going to take care of it for them. Okay. Now, Josh, what would you say is the biggest challenge your business is facing right now. We've been rapidly growing and, you know, growth causes multiple different pain points in any kind of business. One, you know, the reinvesting into the equipment, the trucks, the more team members, adding benefits for the team members certainly puts a little bit of strain on cash in the business. And then, you know, also growing pains in terms of making sure that we're hiring the right people and getting them trained up and up the speed.

8:41Thankfully, over the last three years, we've developed some good leaders underneath me in terms of running different trucks and services, which is kind of how we have it segmented out. And this year, we've had a lot of success in terms of adding great team members that really embrace the kind of culture that we have and the attitude of making sure that all the customers get taken care of well and that we take a lot of pride in what we do. So, you know, it's when you're rapidly growing and it's kind of put a number to that where we two X from, you know, 2024 to 2025. And this year we're on pace to do about the same, if not maybe even a little bit more.

9:26So with that type of rapid growth, you know, those, I think both cash and the right people are the two biggest pain points that any business is going to have. Yeah. Yeah. Have you noticed a problem with, you know, getting enough qualified candidates to apply or is that, uh, what's the, what's the issue there? No, I mean, honestly, I think that's part of the secret sauce with my background since I didn't, you know, I don't grow up, you know, I didn't work as a, in my twenties as a landscaper or something like that. I worked in running other people's businesses and then eventually as a recruiter, You know, in the restaurant world, somebody taught me at a very young age that you just never stop hiring.

10:08And, you know, having that attitude, you know, constantly just running. We have an ongoing posting on a job board. We push it through our social media and also get great referrals from our guys. So finding the right guys hasn't been so much a challenge as much as once we find them, getting them up to speed on how we do things. My process also is a little bit unique. I've found I'd like to talk to a candidate over the phone for 15 to 20 minutes, kind of get a feel for who they are. if I feel like, you know, their experience and who they are is a good fit for us. I jumped straight into bringing them in for a work interview, which for us, you know, we pay them whatever their hourly rate would be if they were to come on board with us.

10:56And they go out and they work a full day with one of our teams or myself. It gets them, you know, in a truck with other guys, gets them to be able to meet the team hands-on. And then, you know, most importantly for us is seeing how they work, you know, do they take direction well? Do they take pride in what they're doing? Are they detail-oriented? You know, when you ask them to do something, do they have a smile on their face? As long as, you know, we're checking those boxes, I always say, you know, what we do isn't really rocket science, but it is hard work. And so having, you know, a good attitude and being willing to put in a good, honest, day is hard work is what's most important to us.

11:36Okay. Okay. Now, following up on that a little bit, do you believe that is what is preventing the business from reaching its next level and its top potential? No. Right now, I'm actually probably the biggest bottleneck of the business. Really? While we've grown the outbound team or the service team a lot to kind of handle the growth in customers and demand. I haven't until recently added anybody else on the back end of things and I'm still in the field. So the biggest bottleneck oftentimes is getting quotes out. Some of the simpler services, I have it pretty automized or have a nice spreadsheet that kind of pretty quickly can get like a gutter cleaning or window cleaning quote out.

12:26But some of the more elaborate projects, especially on the landscape side, and I failed to mention it, but we also do Christmas lights in the fall and winter. Those quotes tend to take a little bit more time in terms of creating a design for the customer, try to create an image that they can see what they're going to get. And those things kind of take a little bit more time. So with the expanding, going from two trucks last year to four trucks this year, it means a lot more quotes going out. And with me still working in the field most days, and then also running around in the evenings to do the quotes and then getting those quotes to customers in a timely manner is kind of where our biggest bottleneck right now is.

13:14So, you know, got to continue to work on replacing my, more of my day-to-day tasks in the field so that I can focus more on developing more relationships and providing a better experience for the customers on the front end. Okay. Now, what is something people assume is easy about running great old property care type of business that is actually very difficult, would you say? I think that a lot of people are, you know, even talking to some of the guys on the team or some of the phone interviews that I've had with other folks is they think that you can kind of start a home service business and it's going to just, you know, be like working a job and you're going to get, you know, you get more freedom or more control of your schedule.

14:03And that, you know, at least in my experience to this point is not the case. I kind of came in expecting that just based on the research that I did and my experience with running other businesses in the past. but you know it does it takes a lot of work you got to show up every day for the guys with the right attitude you know if you're just a team member somewhere you can kind of show up and not not be chipper in the morning or kind of kind of get get by going through the motions on a day right but when you're you're the person that's running the show and and you know leading the tempo and kind of the attitude of the team, you know, you constantly have to make sure that you're bringing yourself up and, you know, getting everybody else started on the right foot before, you know, you can really even do your own thing.

14:55And then, you know, like I mentioned, the bottleneck point being me still being in the field and doing all the sales, you know, it's not But more days than not, you know, I get started early in the morning, catching up on quotes that I went out and did the night before, emails, all the admin stuff. And then I go, you know, down to the shop space, get the guys started, you know, between like 6.30, 7 o 'clock, then load myself out, get out in the field, work an eight to 10 hour day, then come back, go right back out and do, you know, somewhere in between three and six quotes a night on site with customers.

15:37And so, you know, the long days, the, you know, being able to juggle multiple different things, especially now that we have like a dozen full-time employees, there's always going to be a need somewhere. Somebody is always going to have a small issue or need something from you and just being able to kind of juggle those internal demands with the needs of the customers and kind of the demand that puts on you as the owner to manage your schedule and kind of keep yourself going. Okay. Now, Josh, how do you turn a one-time pressure washing or cleanup customer into a long-term property care relation?

16:20Yeah. When I go out and do quotes or when I do quotes initially, my focus is always on meeting the customer's need and pain point that they have. So, you know, if I go out and somebody wants just their driveway watch, then, you know, I'm going to get them a quote for their driveway washing. And then after we deliver on that initial need, we kind of take advantage either in person or via follow-up text or email, whatever the customer's preference is, and let them know about other things that we saw on the property that we can help with. And then, you know, through that process, oftentimes, you know, that leads to conversations about the more reoccurring services that we do.

16:59And then one thing that we added this year is whenever we send out, you know, our invoices on the back end, there's a, we add a free line item that kind of highlights the other services that we do along with that property guard service that kind of encapsulates everything that they might need on the exterior of their home. which certainly has led to more conversations and the more frequently you work with somebody, you know, the more opportunities that you're going to have to help them with different needs that they have. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Now, what is something you personally had to change for your business to grow?

17:37Did you have to change anything about your personality type or something in your personal life for your business to start growing? Yeah. I mean, a couple of different things come the mind there. Probably the, the kind of, I guess the simplest, but also one of the biggest changes is I used to be like a little bit of a night out, you know, I'd get the kids off the bed and stuff. And then I would, you know, spend a few hours kind of doing my own thing. And now my own thing doesn't, doesn't really come into play. So I've become an early riser. My alarm is normally set between like 3.30 and 4.30 in the morning.

18:12That way I can get up, get that computer done. I've just found that I'm so much more productive on my computer with a fresh brain and a pot of coffee in the morning than, you know, kind of running through the day and then trying to get onto the computer at eight or nine o 'clock at night and do quotes. I'm just not as efficient, not as sharp. So I've kind of switched myself from a night owl to a morning bird, I guess. And yeah, it's been a transition, but I certainly get more productivity that way and no longer, I guess, needlessly wasting time at night, either watching stuff that isn't going to make an impact in my life or my family's and stuff like that.

18:55So kind of making that habit switch has been probably the biggest change personally. Any tips for that? Because, man, I'm having an issue with that. I am a night owl through and through. I just don't know what it is. once the sun goes down, you know how it is in the summertime. Sun doesn't go down until almost 10 o 'clock at night. And I get to like the second wind. You know what I mean? And I don't know. Any tips for an adult? I'm struggling with that. I would say two things. First is you almost have to have two alarms. It's something that I picked up from Alex Ramose. You don't need to have the morning alarm to wake up.

19:30You need to have an evening alarm to tell yourself to like wind down and get ready to go to bed. because if you're staying up until midnight, you're never going to make that, you know, four o 'clock alarm work. Or if you do, it's going to catch up with you eventually. And, you know, I've, I've felt that pain as I've kind of made that transition. And the second thing is just having, you know, a morning routine and an alarm system that works for you. I am a heavy sleeper. So I've actually, I've had to move away from just using the, the traditional like alarm on your iPhone. I downloaded a separate app that kind of allows you to create your own custom alarm in terms of like mine makes me get up and walk so many steps.

20:14And then I have to take a picture of my coffee maker to turn off the alarm. And once I get to my coffee maker, you know, it's kind of like, are you really, you know, that's where it's just a little bit of discipline and sometimes a little self-talk. Like, are you really going to shut off this alarm by taking this picture, go lay back down? Or like, are you going to do for the day? So a couple of habit twists and then kind of purging, you know, a little bit of technology to get myself moving is kind of been the thing that's helped me make that transition. Okay. Okay. I appreciate that. Appreciate that.

20:47Yeah. I don't know what it is, man, but I'm trying to transition to that, but it's just, it's been a struggle. It's just like, I just, I'll just lay in bed. Like if I go to bed at a decent time, I'll just lay in bed and toss and turn and I just won't go to sleep. I don't know. So I got to figure this thing out. Because I struggled with that too. You just have to be exhausted. which isn't hard when you know i have a day in the field where you know we're whether it's washing windows or or end up and down the ladder or doing a landscape project or whatever you know you put in an eight to ten hour day in the field and then you you juggle the other things and spend a little bit of time with the family you know eight or nine o 'clock rolls around and i'm normally pretty exhausted there's been i've fell on i've fallen asleep more times in the past you know two years on the couch with the kids in the evening than I probably ever have.

21:38And so just kind of getting yourself exhausted and, you know, if depending on what your job is, if it's not a physical job, then, you know, going to the gym or walking the dog, maybe lengthening those to kind of get yourself physically a little bit more exhausted. That certainly has helped me kind of wind down in the evenings a little bit more and hit that, you know, evening alarm, so to speak. Okay. Okay. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Now, about how many hours are you working in and on the business right now, would you say every week? I don't like to track that. Honestly, I don't track it because, you know, it would just be something that I think innately I would be like, oh, man, that's a lot for the return or whatever right now.

22:27I'm in it for the long game. We're, you know, in our fourth season of the business. I plan on growing this thing. to a fairly large size business over the next decade plus. Now, Josh, what would you say is your greatest strength as a business owner right now? I think having a vision for the business and being able to kind of communicate that with the team, especially since we're growing and plan on continuing to grow. Another thing, I think I got this from Mike Andes. You know, your dreams have to be big enough for the business to be able to fit everybody else's dreams inside of it if you want to be able to have a team that's going to grow with you.

23:09So having a vision and a dream for the business that I can have guys that were team members with me a couple years ago and last year that are now leads for me. The next phase, having opportunities as an operations manager or division lead overseeing multiple trucks. and eventually as we look at five plus years out and either a second location or something like that, having both office and general manager opportunities. So kind of having a vision that is realistic and is easy to communicate with the guys so that they know that there's a future here. And if they want to just cut grass or clean windows for 40 hours a week and that's their thing for the rest of their life, then great.

24:05But if they want to be able to grow into something that they can do more and provide, you know, provide differently or better for their families, having a vision that lets all of their goals fit into it, I think is a big strength for me. Okay. Now, what would you say is one leadership or business skill you still need to improve? organization and delegation. I sometimes find myself doing, you know, on the delegating side, I find myself doing tasks that I very easily could have had somebody else do and then free up time for myself to focus on the things that right now nobody else is trained to do.

24:48And then, you know, organization kind of feeds into that, having a better plan, not just for like the day or the week, but over the course of a month with, you know, this is what I need to accomplish. This is who I can help kind of learn or, or train them on a new thing that they can then take over something like that. So I need to get, you know, it's not often the, it's not the cliche that you hear all the time that, you know, I don't think that somebody else can do it as well as I'm going to do it. You know, there probably are some tasks that, that I feel like that about, but you know, it's more, I sometimes don't want to overburden the team.

25:29And I'm just like, oh, I'll take that on myself. I'll take that on myself. And then, you know, my to-do list ends up being more than a page long. And then it's like, oh, you really should, you know, delegate some of this stuff. Right. So I need to get better at, you know, identifying who can do what for me and then, you know, having the organization and the planning in place to make sure that they, they have everything they need to succeed in whatever that task may be. Okay. That's fair. Now, Grado launched in 2023 and you quickly earned, you know, BBB accreditation in the following year. Let me, let me do that again.

26:06That was horrible.

26:07Joshua Pugliese:Jesus. Give me a second. Yeah. That was giving me a tongue twister there. Give me a second. Do that. Let me make a note to edit that out. Yeah. So Grado launched in 2023 and you learned, you know, a triple B accreditation that the following year, what did you do early that helped establish trust quickly, getting that so quickly, like you did, like I said, that was literally what a year in that you got that. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of a combination of a couple of things. First is just a focus on, you know, quality work, being proud of the end results of the projects that we do. We have a grado guarantee that is, you know, A job isn't complete until we're proud of the end result and the customer is grateful that they called us.

26:53So truly taking pride in what we do has certainly earned us trust with our customers. Another thing that helps is asking your customers to leave you feedback on Google or Facebook in terms of reviews. That kind of helps build a brand reputation. And then the BBB, I would say that was easier to get accredited than getting 100 five-star Google reviews. You know, as long as you have all the licenses that you're supposed to have and you don't have, you know, customers that are saying that you were going to do something and then didn't do it for them. The BBB process was fairly simple. but I think the foundation really is you know taking pride in what we do doing what we if we say something to a customer following through and doing it and then you know over the last you know four seasons or three and a half seasons whatever it's been we're not perfect and when we make a mistake you know there's not an excuse it's an apology and then coming back out normally either that day or the following day to rectify the situation.

28:05So, you know, it's, I think, I say to the guys all the time, especially with my leads, you know, do the right thing. Like if you're on a project and you're not sure if this was included in the quote or not, but it feels like the right thing to do, do it. You know, if you're washing a house and a customer comes out, they say, you know, hey, can you hit this piece of furniture for me? we don't need to nickel and dime somebody for, you know, washing off a, a porch swing for 10 or 15 bucks, just, you know, do the right thing and do it, take care of it for them. So, you know, having that attitude of, of gratitude and doing the right thing, I think really lays that foundation that, you know, ultimately got us that accreditation.