How A Local Radon Pro Protects Homes Without Panic with Alex Micco, Alpha Radon LLC

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?

0:58Hi, 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 Alex Miko with Alpha Radon. Alex, how are you doing today? I'm doing good. How about yourself? I'm doing wonderful, and I'm really, really excited to have you on. So if you don't mind, let's go in and jump right into things. Let's do it. All right. So, you know, radon is invisible and easy for homeowners to ignore. How do you explain the risk without creating fear?

1:34So when it comes down to it, I think a lot of people understand what radiation is and that it's bad. And I think if you can translate to someone that radon gas is just microdoses of radiation, I think that's when they start to grasp, oh, wow, this is a problem that I should probably look into taking care of. okay okay okay and then now we kind of jumped right into it so let's just kind of take it a little step back so what does you know what radon what is what do you guys do for the community so mainly as far as our community outreach we do a lot of golf outings some more sponsors for a few the one that we've been doing the longest is is actually for a gentleman he went to the same high school as us and he was in a drinking and driving accident and was currently or was for a while in a coma.

2:20And so we, we always sponsor that. We show up every year. They're actually friends, kind of close friends. And so we always try and make sure that we show up for them and just show face and be part of the community rather than just stick strictly to business. Okay. And who is Alex Miko as a person? What do you got going on in personal life? I'm just a funny, goofy, professional guy. I wear a lot of hats. I like, I like to have a good time, but I know when it's time to buckle down, you have to be serious. But I think laughter is a good form of medicine. Yeah, no, definitely, definitely. Yeah, because that's the thing.

2:55I mean, I talk about this all the time that, you know, we spend so much time working, right? So it's like if you can't have a little bit of fun while you're at work, spending all your life working, then, man, you're going to have a miserable life, right? Right, exactly. So, Alex, what did your path look like before Alpha Radon? And what led you into this highly specialized field? So before I got involved in Radon, you know, I was young, didn't know what I wanted to do. I was about 21 years old. And I got involved with an electrical company. I thought I wanted to be an electrician. I thought, you know what, I think there's going to be a good surge in this profession.

3:31And so I got a job working as basically a helper, for lack of a better term. And I thought, you know, I'd develop my skills and eventually become an electrician, make a good earning wage. and the gentleman I was working for, he couldn't get me enough hours. And so that was a problem. And I asked him, what else can we do? And he said, I have a subsidiary radon company that I can push you off on, do a little bit of that work. And I said, okay, why not? Got involved in that. Sure enough, the same problem happened between the two. Couldn't get me enough hours to work a job worth working. And so I had gone to school for a few years, and my major was entrepreneurship, believe it or not.

4:12And I told him, I was like, hey, why don't you let me help you grow the business? You win. I win. I get more hours. Everyone wins. There's no harm, no foul. And he didn't want to trust a 21-year-old with that task. And so I had to take things into my own hands. I left. I started my own company. And here I am eight years later. Wow. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's really good. So you just really hit the ground running. Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. So you have said that neighboring homes can test completely differently. What does Western Pennsylvania's geology teach you that surprises most customers?

4:50So Western Pennsylvania, we have a lot of mines. Not all areas have mines. And basically those mines can act as underground tunnels to divert radon from one place to another. And I don't think, I mean, a lot of people do understand that, but maybe not enough. But we also have mountainous and hilly terrain, lots of topography. And when you have hills and mountains, you typically will get looser materials in areas where there's not clay, at least. And those looser materials that are more porous can help promote radon coming to the surface of the earth and ultimately into your home. Wow. Yeah. OK.

5:31Now, what would you say, you know, and this is in regards to just your business, you know, in general, I kind of want you to be as candid as you can. So what would you say is your biggest challenge that your business is facing right now? My biggest challenge is that my industry is very real estate driven. And so basically the process of how I do work is someone's purchasing a home and they run a rate on test as part of their home inspection. If they fail that test, they have a set amount of time before a closing date that they need to get that work completed in in order to meet that closing date.

6:04So basically someone calls me and says, hey, I just got a radon test back. Can you get here in two weeks? And if I can't get there in two weeks, they start looking elsewhere. So it's very, very time sensitive that I get on it as quickly as possible. And unlike other contractors who may build decks or do roofs, people are willing to wait months for that so you can book out months. I have to keep churning and burning, and I never really know for certain if I have worked more than three weeks out. Okay. Okay. Yeah, that's got to be stressful, right? Because, I mean, you can only do so much. Are you working?

6:39Are you alone or do you have a team? I have a partner. Great, great. And what's his name? Go ahead and introduce him. His name is Bryce Honig. He is our certified mitigation specialist. I'm our certified testing specialist, but we've both been along for every installation up to this point. Now, what do you believe is, you know, other than that, what do you believe is preventing the business from reaching its next level and kind of its big potential? Now, that's a good question. I think about this all the time. In our business, it requires a leap. And, you know, sometimes you have hesitations. You have real life going on in the background, real finances that come into play.

7:19And in order for me to take my next leap, you would basically have to bring in another individual to work for you. And it makes you wonder, is it worth bringing that person in and sacrificing some of my pay now for hopefully a long-term return? Now, are you close to that right now or are you not hiring an employee or anything like that to come on? We're relatively close to that, yes. Like I said, we only schedule out two weeks. So some weeks it feels like I'm way closer to that than I am. And other weeks it feels like I'm way further away from it than I am. Yeah. So you're really just trying to find that balance and kind of, you know, making sure that if you bring somebody on, you'll have to work for them continuously.

7:58Right. Right. Because I would hate, I would hate to bring somebody in and say after three weeks, Hey, listen, we don't have work for you and I got to pay my bills. So I got to dump you off. I mean, that would just be terrible. Yeah. Definitely. Definitely. Now, you know, kind of digging into that question a little bit more, what, What have you already tried and why do you think it has not fully worked yet? We've tried a little bit of everything and there's still a lot more we probably could try. And we've done everything from banking on word of mouth and that only gets you so far. We've tried HomeAdvisor and Angie Leeds, which I'm very much against at this point in my career.

8:38we've tried going into offices, real estate offices, introducing ourselves and bringing them food and whatnot. But as everyone kind of finds out they can work from home, it turns out a lot of these realtors aren't going to their offices as much. So it becomes more of a mission of calling and reaching out to them and making more of an effort to meet with them individually rather than getting into a group setting, which I have done. I have gone into offices and given a quick presentation, basically explaining who I am, what we do, and how we could help. I mean, there's a lot that we have done. There's a lot that we could do.

9:16I'm certainly not at 100%, and that's why we're here. We're here to grow. Yeah, okay. That's fair. That's fair. Now, what do you wish customers that work with you understood before hiring a company in your industry? I wish they understood the individual that they would be dealing with. A lot of people are very cost and price driven. Oh, this is the cheapest price. This is who I want to go with because it hurts my pocket the least. What I pride myself in and what I value is that when you call me, you're dealing with an owner. I personally am going to show up to every installation. And if there is a problem and you call me or if we install and our levels don't quite get to where they need to be on the first try, I'm going to answer.

9:59I'm going to be back and I'm going to get your problem solved. A lot of people are just so focused on saving that extra$100, maybe$200. And they call the company to come back and fix something and they don't answer. And when they do, they say it's going to be a month that we can get back. And I think that's kind of invaluable dealing with someone who's driven to get your problem solved. Yeah, that's huge, man. Yeah, no, you're exactly right. You don't know how many times I hear that and deal with that. It's just, you know, like you said, communication, follow through, you know, following up with folks.

10:30I hear that a lot where people are reaching out to these folks, business owners, whatever the case may be, and they don't get a call back. It's huge. It's huge. I don't know why that is. It's like we have so many ways to communicate now, but we can do that. You can text, you can email, you don't even have to pick up the phone, and it's like we can't even do that. Right. No, I agree.

10:53Now, Alex, about 80 % of your work has been described as real estate driven. how do you manage the pressure of transaction deadlines while still doing technically sound work so becoming efficient at your work is crucial when we first started i would i would say an installation would take us somewhere give or take in the realm of four or five hours because you're still figuring things out whenever i got into this yeah i had a little bit of background in it but i wasn't really incentivized to to get it done in an efficient manner but basically understanding the steps to the installation and prepping as much as you can beforehand.

11:34So our radon fans can always be basically wired with a switch on them before we even show up to an installation. So as I'm driving to a job, I can have my partner wire up a fan. When we show up, we're ready to hit the ground running without having to sacrifice and end up with hasty work. And we do warranty all of our work physically. we'll give a craftsmanship guarantee. So if someone has a problem, they give us a call. Even if a tree falls into your system and knocks it off the building, we will come back and fix that free of charge. Which I know that's something I can't prevent, but I'm willing to take that risk for people to let them know.

12:11We do good work. I stand by it. And getting into that work here as a kind of a follow-up, do you have some kind of guarantee that you give folks? Yeah, absolutely. So we have one year physical protection on our systems. So if anything happens in the first year, which will basically give you enough time to run through every kind of weather scenario, like a strong storm, a strong wind day, heavy rains. We have a three-year warranty on all of our levels staying below 4.0, which is the EPA's recommended action level for radon. And then we give a manufacturer a five-year warranty on the fan as well, in which we don't charge labor to replace.

12:45So if someone's fan dies at four years and six months, we'll be back completely free of charge to replace that fan. The switch is outside, the fan is outside. You shouldn't even have to call off of work for us to come out and replace that. Nice, nice, nice. So about how many hours a week are you working in and out in the business right now, would you say? I would say right now somewhere between, I mean, some weeks 30, some weeks 35. We're certainly not at max capacity quite yet. Now, how much of that work, you know, or how much of that time is spent doing work someone else could eventually own?

13:21I would say, I mean, technically almost all of it. There are things that I would prefer to do down the line, like dealing with customers, answering phones, answering technical questions, things like that. But I mean, technically, it is all trainable work. If I theoretically wanted to, I could be one of those guys who's just always at a different vacation destination and have someone trained to take care of everything. but I don't foresee that happening in the next year or two.

13:51Alex Micco:Yeah. Yeah. Seems like you're more hands on. You want to be involved in the day to day, right? I do. I wouldn't, I wouldn't say that I'm a control freak, but I do say that if I'm going to put my name on something, I want it to be done right. If someone calls me with a problem, I need to know that it was an either an honest mistake or that it was a freak accident. I love that. I love that answer. So Alex, What would you say is your greatest strength right now as a business owner? I would say communication, having the emotional intelligence to deal with people, understand what they're thinking, and work with them to get their problems solved.

14:26So a lot of people would just kind of run through a script of what people want to hear. And I like to talk to people as human beings. Now, what is one leadership or business skill you know you still need to improve? One leadership or business skill that I think I need to improve on. I will say I absolutely hate dealing with paperwork. So my father, he's a 5 % owner. He originally funded us, and I kept him involved. So I kind of pushed some of that stuff off on him, but he can't do that forever. And I certainly know that I'm lacking in a lot of just payroll and basically anything on a computer or on a piece of paper.

15:04Those are all areas that I could absolutely improve on because I like to be so hands-on. I'm so indulged in the work. that that's become more my specialty than the administrative aspect of it. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Now, Alpha Radon has reportedly completed more than 1 ,000 mitigation projects. What systems or standards helped you deliver that volume without compromising safety or quality? Like I said, it all just kind of comes down to being efficient. so basically from start to finish i the way a job happens i get a phone call from someone they basically say they need a quote and so i can at this point i've been in so many houses and i understand the situations that nine times out of ten i'm able to give an accurate estimate over the phone unless someone has a crawl space or a very unique home i can i can basically cut out that whole estimate process.

16:05And I am very transparent. And I say, hey, listen, I have asked you these questions and you've hopefully answered honestly. If I do show up and find something different, that price is subject to change. But very, very rarely does that actually happen. And I think that's probably the biggest contributor to being efficient and being able to get that many installations done, not wasting time where time doesn't need to be wasted. yeah it's actually surprising you say that that a lot of it so a lot of people give you pretty much the clear and clear picture of what's going on for the most part yeah i have a questionnaire of all the important parts that i need to know and then before we do before we do any work i mean we do show up fully prepared for an installation i do a visual inspection make sure everything checks out and assuming they were telling the truth and everything looks good we get started on site and if they did, you know, answer a question incorrectly, I explained, hey, it may need to fluctuate a few hundred dollars this way or that way.

17:05And if they're okay with that, great. And if they're not okay with that, they can tell me to kick rocks and they don't owe me a dime. It's just part of the risk I have to take. I love that answer. I love that answer. Now, you've kind of talked about this a little bit already, but I want to kind of dig into it just a little bit more. You know, communication is better than most, you know, quality of work, you know, efficiency, all that good stuff. Is there anything else that you think you're doing better than your competitors? Yeah. I mean, other than treating people like people, I would venture to say I'm absolutely the most honest radon mitigator in my area.

17:42So frequently what I'll run into is not real estate transaction driven, but if I find an individual homeowner who has a very borderline level, we'll say a 4.1 or a 4.5 or something like that, and I show up and I find that they have a French drain, I will a lot of times recommend, hey, instead of paying me$1 ,500, give or take, why don't you go and buy yourself some caulk, maybe spend$100, seal this French drain, and I'll give you a test kit. And if you run that and it passes, great, that's totally fine. Keep monitoring it. And if not, at that point, if you still need me, give me a call and I'd be happy to help.

18:20I would venture to say that basically no one else would be willing to do that. Because at the end of the day, there are people, and it does actually feel good saving someone over$1 ,000. Especially when you know everyone can't necessarily afford that. It is satisfying. Yeah, yeah, it's tough out here. So you know you're helping somebody out, just tell them, yeah, I mean, it is, you know, gas is a million dollars a gallon and all this stuff, and then, yeah, it's right. Saving people money is always good, yeah. Right. And these people just made the biggest purchase of their lives. The last thing you want to be doing is paying$1 ,000 to$1 ,500 for something else.

18:58I love it. Love it. Love it. Love the honesty. So yeah, that's definitely something you're doing better than, you know, more at a higher rate than your competitors, I would say. Absolutely. Yeah. Now, let's say a qualified lead comes in, right? Person calls you, they're perfect. They got everything going, right? It's a perfect job for you. How confident are you that it becomes a customer? it really depends on are they price or quality driven. If they're quality driven, I feel very confident. If they're price driven, we'll say 50 % confident. Because like I said, we aren't necessarily the cheapest, but you will get a quality product and you will get the most attention from me.

19:43And if people value that, I feel good that they'll head my way and they understand where I'm heading with this project. Now, you've kind of talked about it before. I don't know if you've ever had it. Have you actually had to hire anybody even temporarily yet? So I have, but not for expansion reasons. So several years ago, I actually broke my hip skiing. Oh, man. And so with a broken hip, you cannot do contracting work, I found. And so we did have to 1099 somebody out for, it was about seven or eight weeks. I broke my hip and basically had to just sit still and let it weld back together. And we found a young kid, and my partner was able to work with him, get him trained up.

20:25And the work pace was a little slower, so we made sure we didn't suffer in quality. But it was definitely an adaptation I wasn't expecting to make. Now, did you actually hire him, or did you use a temp agency to kind of do it for you? So we actually knew him. He was a friend. He is significantly younger, but he was a friend of ours. And so we basically asked around because we were scrambling. We had to find somebody, and we just said, hey, I know that you're not making as much money as I can pay you, at least for this short period of time. Do you want to take it? And he said, yeah, let's go for it.

20:59And so we gave him the speedrun crash course. Bryce did a lot of the heavy lifting until he could get the hang of things, which maybe took a few weeks. But we got it done, and by the time I came back, we were able to keep him on for a little bit, just give him some busy work to alleviate myself while I fully recovered. but it was it was quite a quite a stressful situation to be honest oh yeah sure sure now and this question this next question is hypothetical but let's just you know kind of say let's say if you know you woke up tomorrow you know and business just suddenly doubled or even tripled overnight what would you say would be the very first thing that would break we would immediately need vehicles.

21:41We would immediately need workers. Now, that's probably one of the tricky parts of my job is that in this trade specifically is finding someone who has any kind of radon experience, which is basically never going to happen. So immediately, we need to find someone, we would need to get them trained or at least familiarized so they can be along with either Bryce or myself, who is trained and can guide them along each job until they can get the hang of things. I love that. Love that. All right. Perfect. So let's go ahead and get into, you know, the this or that. You know, basically what it is, is I'm going to give you two things to choose from.

22:21You just choose one of them and then kind of give me, you know, kind of a little spiel or a little paragraph on why you chose it. OK, to kind of learn your learn your personal side a little bit, the fun side. So coffee or energy drink? Energy drink all day. I will say I am a weekend latte drinker, but for the most part, give me a 12-ounce Red Bull and I'm good to go. Nice. I love it. I love it. Early bird or night owl? I am a night owl. Absolutely. That's my quiet time. Yep. Yep. No, I get it. I mean, it's so nice because it's like the whole world is shut off. It's quiet. And you can, you know, get into your mind, do something, whatever, play some Fortnite like you said earlier.

23:08yeah no that's exactly it it's it's everything's turned off and i'm still on and i'm in control at that point it's it's me time i unfortunately it's it's kind of it's kind of hurt me oh unfortunately i'm just not a morning person at all and i don't even try to fake it like you know how you have a period in your life where you're like man can i try to get up earlier try to be more of an early bird and i just i learned my lesson that i'm just a night owl it is what it is. I'm just, right. No, I completely get that. I went through a phase maybe a couple months ago where I need to lose a few pounds.

23:40So I would get up at six o 'clock in the morning. I'd hop on this treadmill. I'd watch, you know, YouTube video or a show to keep me busy and, you know, get a shower, get to work. And I did that for like a month straight and I did lose weight, but I was so exhausted. My body wasn't used to it. And I said, you know what, this is going to have to be an after work thing. I just can't get up at 6 o 'clock every day. It's not for me. Yep, yep. No, I get it. Totally. Dogs or cats? I'm a cat guy. I've always had cats growing up. I will say I am in the market for both right now because my girlfriend does want a dog and I do want a cat.

24:18So we are compromising in getting one of each. But for the most part, I'm a cat guy. Mountains or beach? That's a tough one. That's a tough one. I think I'm a mountain guy. I like the weather of the beach. I hate sand. I do not like sand. It gets in everything. You have to completely wash yourself as soon as you leave. And I think I like the beauty of the mountains. I would go mountains. Yeah, same way. Phone call or text? Depends on what it's for, but usually phone call. Basically something I could solve in 30 seconds ends up taking 10 minutes. If you do it through text. So I'd rather just figure it out and get it passed, move on to the next thing, whether it's casual or business.

25:06Okay. Okay. So either or. Okay. Testing or mitigation? Mitigation. It's challenging. It's fun. It stimulates my brain a lot more than testing. Testing is boring. It's necessary, but it's boring. You're basically just driving around, dropping off canisters, saying hi, saying bye very quickly. And mitigation gives you time to challenge yourself and gives you enough time to meet your customer and get to know them a little more. Planner or go with the flow? Planner. I need, if I sit on my calendar, I have no clue what I'm doing. My calendar is what I live by. Even if it's a personal event, that's the only way I can do it.

25:51Crawl space or basement? Basement. Any day of the week. Have you ever been in a crawl space? Yes, I have. I'm going to enjoy it. Okay, you get it. You get it. And especially like if it's really, really hot out. Oh, God, when it's muggy. I don't know. So attics, yeah, attics are, I mean, when you refer to crawl space, does that include attic? Okay, yeah, that is an absolute, I couldn't stress any more basement. New construction or older homes? New construction. They are, they're typically a little cleaner and they're very predictable. They all have gravel underneath of them, which makes my job a little more simple versus trying to drill through someone's basement floor and pulling air through clay.