167. His Secret Weapon to Building a Home Services Empire to $810K a Year!

0:00How can you turn a modest$3 ,000 investment into a revenue generating machine? Our guest has cracked the code on home services and today is generating$80 ,000 per month in revenue, all while working on the business, not in the business. This is Ryan Atkinson and you're listening to the Upfit Podcast, where we uncover the secrets of building and scaling successful businesses. Joining us today is David Mormon of Revive Services. With nothing but a used minivan, a pressure washer, and some basic window cleaning equipment, David has built a business that's not only profitable, but also a leader in the industry.

0:35I am so excited for today's episode with David. We're going to talk a little bit more about the startup costs, revenue, marketing, and so much more. So David, welcome to the show. Thank you so, so much for being here. So honored to have you on here. This is going to be a great one today. Yeah, Ryan, goes both ways. Love you guys' show. Excited to dive in. Well, let's do just that. To start us off, can you share a little bit more about Revive? What are you guys offering? How did you get into this business? Yeah, definitely, man. So we're a full home service detailing company. So we do a lot of window cleaning, pressure washing, roof cleaning.

1:06We're out on the West Coast, just outside Vancouver. So like we're chatting off camera. We get a ton of rain. So doing a lot of roof cleaning. And in 2019, we actually plugged in holiday lights as well. So we do a lease model with that. So we've been able to make the business go year round. In a nutshell, how I got started actually was way back in 2009, I ran a student painting company all through college. So I will say you don't need a business degree to run a business, but I thought you did. So I was going to school on a soccer scholarship and painting houses along the way. So that's really where I got my start.

1:39Interesting. All right. So that started in 2009. So let's kind of quickly fast forward the clock from 2009. What really led up to like getting started with the Revive? Yeah, man, I was in a painting franchise at the time. I had cleared over$500 ,000 in revenue. And I distinctly remember looking at my profit and loss statement, I was paying$52 ,000 a year to the franchisor for franchise fees, right? And it wasn't inherently bad. I just felt I wasn't getting a lot of value. So I said, screw this. I want to go build my own brand. And I was signed in something called the non-competition agreement, which said, you can't just start your own painting business.

2:17So I met with the franchisor. I said, I'm going to go into pressure washing. They said, we don't care. There's not much money in that. You won't be able to grow it. So I had a bit of, you know, extra motivation in my spirit. And in 2016, Revive Washing, we were originally called, was born. We did$89 ,000 in our first year. Wow. Window cleaning, pressure washing, and gutter cleaning. And that's really where we got our start. Oh my gosh, absolutely love that. I love the point of like the chip on the shoulder because I feel as like entrepreneurs, like it's kind of like a code that you need to have is like, You need to have that chip on the shoulder that really motivates you in times, and it speaks true to that.

2:51But$89 ,000 in year one, that's incredible. I think listeners' ears would perk up with that. Before we dive into all of that, what you're doing in revenue now, marketing, I want to talk about the startup cost. What did your startup cost look like back in 2016? Yep, so I had$3 ,000 to get started. So I bought a used Chevy Astrovan. It was like a 2002 at the time. I love that. Nothing special. but because I had grown my painting business previous, we used Dodge Caravans and they were a few thousand bucks and I would wrap them. So I've now bought year to date 13 pre-owned vehicles. I only bought a new vehicle last year.

3:26I just love the pre-owned and wrap it. So that was a big cost was initial, was getting the van going. And then man, I walked into Home Depot and I rolled out a 200 dollar Ryobi pressure washer, which in the pressure washing industry, people would laugh at. And the other day, it's just part of my story. I was in for$189 rolling out that pressure washer and I was literally unboxing it on my first job site. So it wasn't like I had all this extra money. It was literally just like, this is how I'm getting my start. So it was 3 ,000 bucks we started with. I love it. So you're rolling out like$189 pressure washer is what I'm hearing.

4:01But obviously to do that, you have to land a customer. And we're gonna dive into marketing and sales later in the episode. But for now, how did you get your first customer of the$189 and a dream? Yep, it was door knocking, man. Most of that 89 ,000 the first year was a combination of either me door knocking, say, hey, I'm Dave with Revive, can I get you a quote for your windows? Or it was a door hanger that I left behind if they did not answer the door. So I really became a student of the neighborhoods that worked well in my painting business. And I distilled it down to about 30 neighborhoods were really good for us.

4:35And so I took myself, actually a member of the high school soccer team I was a coach at, And I said, man, you want some extra hours? I'll doorknock left side, you doorknock right side. And if he'd get more leads than me, I'd go buy him a gift card. So we started doorknocking. I love that. So let's talk about that specifically about doorknocking, but also like who do you have on your team in year one? Because is this$89 ,000? You have two people, including yourself on this team. Talk to us about those logistics. Yeah, so it was Dave, myself, and it was two part-timers. So one was Graham. Graham was actually a student at a local college and he had four months free.

5:14So I stacked up the work and he would do a lot of the production. So he was the one driving the van for those four months. And then my other employee was Conrad and Conrad was a part-time doorknocker with me who, funny enough, he's a lead today still at Revive and my company's grown up and he's crushing it. So kind of a cool story there over a bunch of years for employee retention. Yeah, employee retention is always super important for any company to retain your most important employees here. And what I honestly love about the home service business is a lot of it is just like how you get your first customers, like door knocking, like go knock on doors, get in people's faces.

5:50But I'm honestly just like curious, I've never done it. Like, what are you saying? Like when you knock on these people's doors? Yeah, it's short and to the point, man. So through student paintings, that's what we were taught. I actually knocked on 4 ,000 doors as a student painter. And I got really comfortable with people telling me to screw off and all kinds of things that I developed such a thick skin that I just don't care what people say when it comes to rejection. So it's just a really simple doorknock. I say, hey, I'm Dave with Revive. We're doing some homes in your neighborhood for window and gutter cleaning.

6:21I wanted to see if I could give you a quote. So it's like seven second pitch. What most people do, they screw up and they just keep talking because they're so nervous. You have to pause because psychologically we open the door and we just want to say no as quick as we can. but you want to make that offer. Quickly say who you are, drop the social proof you're in the neighborhood doing some jobs. That really helps and make sure that, you know, ideally you are doing some jobs. And then mention of your service and offer the free quote. So it's kind of four things in like a seven second window and no pitch is perfect, but I just try and lead with authenticity.

6:55Same with these interviews, just what you see is what you get. And I think people really buy into that. Interesting. So we got$189, got our pressure washing. We got our first job from door knocking. Talk to us about like those first years. Like, what are you doing? We're going to dive really into revenue, what you're doing now. But month one of 2016, like, are you doing$1 ,000 in sales? Like, talk to us about that. Yeah, we would have done, I don't remember exactly the first month, but I had Graham going pretty well full time. So it wouldn't be abnormal for us to do like a$15 ,000 month. I would approximate.

7:27He was stacked up pretty good cleaning. He was just a solo technician. I would jump in if needed to help him, but he could easily do$700,$800 days executed. Wow. He could handle that. One other thing to note too is with my painting business needed some pressure washing jobs done. So I had some contacts that I could say, hey, this could actually be washing on our washing side. So that did help, but it was really a full on push for me. I launched Revive actually in January of 16, but we weren't actually doing jobs until I want to say late April, early May. So I gave myself almost five months to just go buck wild with marketing and door knocking to load up that hopper.

8:09And I think a lot of service businesses don't initially do that. Yeah. Interesting. So I'm here like, yeah, like you said, like a four or five month lag time. Was that like intentional to build that client list or was it because of like weather conditions in Vancouver? I just want to be clear on that. It was a hundred percent intentional, man. And I think that's something a lot of owners miss. They get one client, And they get so excited. They do. And then they take their foot off the pedal with marketing. Again, this was instilled with me of student painting. I remember my fourth year painting houses in college.

8:39I came into May with$106 ,000 of signed contracts without painting a house that year. So it's like, I'm all for doing a pre-launch properly. And then you can segue into production. So it works beautifully for painting, pressure washing, whatever home service you have. Interesting. Well, I want to hit on that then, of course. What goes into like a successful pre-launch with like the home service industry? Yeah. So branding is a big one. Like I really love having a good logo, a good name, lock in a website. With Revive, I was really proud of myself. I set up my Google business profile from day one.

9:12Used to be called Google My Business. Now it's your Google business profile. So from day one, I'm asking for reviews, right? And Google's changed a lot. But back in the day, you could go ask your grandma, your girlfriend, your girlfriend's parents and get reviews. It's a little different now, but you definitely want that set up from day one. I built out my CRM on Jobber. So that was set up from the start so I could have accurate data. And then it was just, man, like literally at the time, printing out neighborhoods and circling maps and making marketing routes. We got a bunch of lawn signs, tons of door hangers.

9:45So it wasn't like I had, though, like, you know,$50 ,000 for startup. It was still just very lean. but I used like my sweat equity and my time because I didn't have a lot of money. Want to launch your first business with confidence? Start with a 10-day free trial of the Uplup Academy. The Uplup Academy provides unlimited access to 11 plus courses created by seven figure entrepreneurs who walk you through exactly how they built their businesses from the ground up. They'll show you what to do every step of the way so you can grow fast and avoid the common pitfalls that keep most entrepreneurs stuck.

10:18This is as close as you can get to guaranteeing business success. So if you're serious about launching with confidence, start your free trial of the Uplip Academy today by clicking the link in the show notes below. And that's what I want listeners like really know is like you don't need$50 ,000 like launch a home service company. A lot of it just comes down to that sweat equity piece and like, are you able to develop those routes? Are you able to put yourself out there and actually go knock on the doors? Are you able to actually do that work to land your first client? I think that's a super important part when it comes to home service companies.

10:47Yeah, and I had the hunger, man. I got into cleaning. I'd seen painting. It's good. But with cleaning, you've got higher profit margins, which is great. We could talk about that. You've got recurring revenue. And you've got what I call a fragmented industry, which is if you go on Google and look, there's not one dominant washing company yet that's really taken over. There are some, but there's potential in any given market if you brand properly and build a business. So those are the three factors. I'm like, whatever my revenue is in the first few years, I'm just going to make the jump and get started.

11:19I absolutely love that, David. And last question before we dive into revenue, what today looks like those margins. I want to be clear as well here. So when you're pressure washing, was it you doing it for the first year or so? Or were you hiring people to actually do the pressure washing? So I would say the first year of 89K, Graham probably did 70 % of it, I would say. And then I was filling in the other 30-ish percent because Graham also went back to school in September. And so I had another part-timer stay with me. So it was kind of a combo of getting Graham doing the jobs and I would jump in when needed.

11:50I love that. Graham sounds like a great employee here. He sure is. Yeah, I love that. Let's talk about revenue. Listeners love revenue. Talk to us. What are you doing yearly now, monthly? How has it grown over the past, whatever, it's been seven years or so, eight years? I don't know. Something math. Yeah, seven years, man. It's funny. Our annual revenue has almost turned into our monthly revenue now, which is exciting. I think it's tough on a show to say this is exactly what it is because we're mid-year. But I would say very confidently,$80 ,000 a month now is like a base for us. But August this year, I just looked on our CRM, we did$127 ,000.

12:27Last November, we did$130 ,000 of Christmas lights. So it kind of ranges as$80 ,000 monthly as a floor. And$130 ,000 would be like a high, crazy busy month for us. And it's not like you need all these employees either. That's running for us, running three trucks, six technicians, and then I've got two managers that help me run the day-to-day. So it's not a huge, complex organizational structure. Interesting. So if someone was going to look at your guys' operating expenses, what are the largest expenses? I'm assuming payroll, but what else would be your largest expense? Super good, man. I'll just riff on this for a sec.

13:04Super easy numbers. I go 30, 50, 20 if the listeners follow me. 30 % goes to our crew. So that includes payroll taxes and workers' compensation insurance and paying the crew to do the job so the owner doesn't need to be there. 50 is the biggest one of the company. And that's what's called our overhead. So of that 50, 30 is like marketing, insurance, technology stack, all this good stuff. 20 of that 50 is what I call overhead salaries. So that would be my office manager, my sales consultant, paying any virtual assistants we have overseas. And then the final 20 everyone loves, that is net profit.

13:43So that is the business running without Dave. Everything paid, we want 20 % left over. And that's really how I chunk it down. 30, 50, 20. Love it. 20 % net profit is a pretty good margins here that we're dealing with. It's good. I think one caveat with that, our holiday light division can be close to 40 % net. Wow. Yeah, it's an amazing business. I know you've had some of my friends on this show just crush their episodes. So that's a great add on profitable service if you run the lease model. And so that lighting division, we do a few hundred homes a year in Q4. That helps push us up to that 20 % mark.

14:25But yeah, one other key thing too, Ryan, I have yet to have a year in business that I've spent more than 7 % of my overall revenue on marketing. So I'm not going so break the bank on paid ads. We do a little bit, but we've really built a great brand locally that pulls the right clients in that we don't have to go out and go buck wild on marketing if we don't want to. Yeah. It gives us a good idea. Like you broke down like what your revenue is, what your net profit is, where your expenses are going. So I do want to hit on that marketing piece as well. Cause we just heard you say like, yeah, I'm going super crazy with marketing.

14:57And that's amazing to hear, obviously. So a lot of it has to be, you're providing a great service, but you're also getting like referrals or what would be that funnel, like how you guys are getting clients? Yeah, definitely. So reviews and referrals is like, if it's a pyramid, like reviews and referrals is just baseline. So you should have reviews coming in every week and you should have referrals coming in every week. And for those of you starting, like I want to get to 10K a month, like just go one job needs to turn into two. And we call it at the end of the job, every job, we call it the three R's.

15:26We want a review, we want a referral, and then a receivable is like, we want to get them paying. So the reviews and referrals I'd say is like, we can't talk about marketing without just like baseline. And I'd say of our$80 ,000 a month, what reviews and referrals contribute to probably 50 of that 80K. Someone's reading a Google review or getting referred or seeing a van. Those would be a huge baseline. Beyond that, second tier of the pyramid, we do a really good job. We call it creating neighborhood buzz. So that is, we call it a five around, which is five flyers to every neighbor we do. We put signs up in the neighborhood.

16:02All our technicians are in uniform. Back in 2019, I put$12 ,000 into wrapping all of our vehicles because I just was such a believer that we want to brand this thing properly. So we dominate the neighborhoods. And then final tip of the pyramid is paid. We work with an SEO company right now. We're about$900 a month just to keep that top ranking on Google. And then additional to that, we do the Google pay-per-click ads. And we've also ran some Facebook campaigns. So for listeners listening, I try to keep it so simple. I would build that three-tier pyramid in that exact order, one, two, three. David, I have to say thank you so far on this podcast because you've been great just breaking down a revenue and super actionable.

16:44So you're doing a great job and we're going to continue this. So stay tuned as well. But the reviews and referrals piece, I think is interesting because that's really the foundation of how you're getting, you said$50 ,000 a month to get to that$80 ,000 a month. What's that system that you guys have in place? Are you just simply asking people, asking them to go to Google, ask them for other houses? What does that look like? Yeah, so we got to give credit where credit's due. We work with a software called Nice Job when we're around 100 Google reviews, and that helped grow us and get a few hundred more reviews.

17:12So that was great. But honestly, man, we've not even used much software in this last year. It's just been us doing a great job. And through Jobber, we actually, when we send the invoice is finally paid, we send just a hyperlink that says, thank you so much for your service. If you could do us a solid writer review. Here's the kicker though, man. And I'm so glad to just get this out to the world. We say in that email, we will tip our technicians$10 each on behalf of you if you leave a Google review. You say that, conversion through the roof. And we do. We tip our technicians$10 for every review that they get.

17:45And we see a steady highway of Google reviews come in. And one more thing I want to say, man, we actually had our Google business profile suspended earlier this year for about 65 days. And as a business owner, I was freaking out. like, are we going to get jobs? Is this going to happen? We still had really strong months for revenue. And one thing I want to hit on with marketing, we have a client base now of about 8 ,200 and some odd people we can email and text. And now that was the strategy that got us through those 65 days of just going back to our well, people who hired us and saying, Hey, it's Dave with revive.

18:21We're doing this service. So it don't want to talk about marketing and not touch on reengaging your clients because it saved us this year. Yeah, that's what I think is a really important piece and what I'm running through my own business right now is who are people that were expressed interest at all over the past year? Because we're going into November, December as an agency. It's tough. People are like, I'm planning budgets. I don't want to take a meeting. So it's going back to people be like, hey, you're interested in July, like is now a better time? And I think that's a really important piece is who do you already have existing in your CRM that you can hit it on that have expressed interest and resell to them.

18:54100%. It's been a huge boost for us this year. Yeah. I'm curious as well. So that's been a huge boost for you as a whole, as a company. A question that comes to mind for me that I'm just like, personally, just curious is you did$89 ,000 in your first year. Now you're doing$80 ,000 a month. But that's soaking. I'm curious, like, what has been the differences as like a leader, as like a CEO of doing$89 ,000 a year to$80 ,000 a month? Yeah, two things, man. It's your systems that we have and it's our team. The best thing a business owner can do, and this might just mess up people, but it's fine. You have to become the most irrelevant person in your business.

19:34And I'm no word of a lie, man. I'm in our office once every two weeks and I take all our team out for breakfast every second Monday. And additionally to that, I'm still available on Slack if someone wants to meet or there's a big issue. But I've worked myself out of a job to go build another company. And I think that's the ultimate compliment is when your people can run the day to day of the business. And I'm not saying this is easy. Like I've been in home services for 16 years. We've done over$7 million in revenue overall. So it's just like it takes time to get there. But if you can really learn to identify who's great people and bring them in your company and show them, hey, in three years, this is our vision where we're going, you'll keep great people.

20:16So that's my little piece on people. We could do another chat about that. The other one is just systems. Everything in your business recurs. And I read Michael Gerber's book, The E-Myth, back in 2016. And that really helped me, Ryan, say, okay, it's so cool to go and get money and do an$800 job and make money. But I need to take that 10 hours a week and work on my business and build out an inbound call script. So what do I say when clients call? What do my technicians say to get reviews? Even what you're wearing on the job site, that's a system in itself. Do you have uniforms? Do you have a nice logo?

20:51So it took me 8 ,000 hours, but I systematized every part of my company to be able to run. And the beautiful thing with cleaning, it's a recurring service. So as long as you're doing a great job and building a great brand, the services will recur. So I would say if you put 80 % of my brain power the last seven years went into team building and system building. And that's really, I think, how we moved our annual revenue to our monthly revenue. Yeah, I love that piece because it is so hard as a business owner to be an owner, not an operator. I think that's a really big jargon work on your business, not in your business.

21:26How long did it take you to do that? Was this a day one day? I know you had Graham doing a lot of stuff early on, but how long did it actually take you to go to that completely owner's mentality? Yeah, it was the year between 2018 to 2019. So first year, just to, I know your audience loves numbers. So first year was 89 ,000. Then we added a second truck seasonal still did 155 ,000 in 2018. Here's the kicker, man. In 19, we went from 155 ,000 to 582 ,000 in one year. So added the vans, wrapped, hired. The winter of 2018, I built out the business. I'm like, we're moving from, you know, one, two trucks up to four and we're going to do this more seriously.

22:08And I still had my painting business running too, by the way. So it's just like a crazy, crazy time. But I had this vision I wanted to grow. So it really took off that year for me because of the systems that I put into place in the winter. And again, giving credit where credit's due. I ran across a fellow on the internet called Josh Latimer, became a mentor of mine. I spent money on his coaching program, got on a coaching call with him and really systematized out my business the best I could at that level and built systems. Then I operated, then I went back, built more systems and operate. So it's constantly osculating from in to on the business.

22:44Cause man, if it's May 15 and you've got$5 ,000 on the books and vans breaking down, you're not going to sit in Starbucks and build out SOPs. Like I'm not I'm not even going to say that. But in the winter, at least in Canada, we get four months or really slow. I was just like a student every day, just working on different departments of the business. And I think it showed come operating season. Dude, I love that mindset of like, there's ebbs and flows when it comes to an entrepreneur, it's working on the business and the business and you have to pick that at the right times. I want to get actual for the listeners here.