This is Under Pressure, a podcast where we dive into the untold stories of entrepreneurs and business owners who have conquered adversity to achieve greatness. And now here's your host, Nic Staten.

Welcome to another episode of the Under Pressure Show. I'm your host, Nic Staton. Tonight, we have a guest on, Jacob Stahler Jacob, if you don't mind explaining to everybody a little bit about your background and stuff like that.

Nic Staton

Well, I've got background in doing, I guess, consulting work. Started quite a few different businesses in different industries. And I guess I have a an off-angled view of most situations and things. I tend to come up with solutions and ideas that would probably be atypical in most settings. But I don't know. I think what I'm most focused on in most of the things I'm doing lately have been more trying to unlock other people and the way that they view things and operate. Because I think we live in a society where we hear we're not those people or We can't be like them or know from a young age. So I think once we become an adult, a lot of stuff feels like it's supposed to be impossible. But yeah.

Jacob Stahler

Definitely see that because I pretty much get online all the time and you have some definitely some different views than a lot of people, but you hit right on the nail with a lot of the things that you post about.

Nic Staton

I just don't have any. I'm not selling this. What do you call it a program? I don't have a mastermind. And so I don't have, I don't need to have an angle. I don't need to appeal to certain people. I just don't, I say whatever I think really. And if you like it or don't, I mean, it doesn't change, shouldn't change your opinion on somebody. Uh, we're allowed to get along and see things differently, but that's part of surrounding yourself with people who don't. who aren't carbon copies of you and how you operate. It's really difficult to learn and grow if you're always surrounded by people who do all the same stuff.

Yeah, that's exactly where I talk about staying in the pond with all the small fish and you get those certain ones that try to block the stream. But as soon as you find the stream, then you end up realizing that life's a lot better.

I grew up in a really small town on a farm. I remember moving to Chicago for the first time when I was 18. Growing up in a small town, people don't lock their doors. Everybody knows everybody's business. I was giving up ideas I had about business and stuff like that to people because I always thought I'd get cut in. And then you see somebody just take off with their idea. And it was, there's a lot of people that would go through situations like that and be like, okay, you know what? I'm not gonna do that anymore. I'm not gonna share with anybody. I'm not gonna do any collaborating. I'm not gonna do whatever. But then the people who wouldn't take advantage of that person never get to meet you. And so, you know, I think we all get jaded, especially in business early, early on with the first couple of times that we get taken advantage of, or, you know, somebody, somebody smokes us on a deal or whatever. And your first reaction is like, you know what, not doing this anymore. Screw everybody. You know, I'm, I'm not, I'm not this, I'm not that. And then you start almost being ruthless and all your other stuff. Cause you're mad at this person who's no longer around. And you can ask any business or like, tell me about your first bad deal. And it'll take them 30 minutes to talk through it because they remember it that vividly. But it was, you know, they're all coachable moments, even if it's just with yourself. So yeah.

So how did you start your business? are your businesses?

So honestly, the first the first business I ever started, I was announcing MMA fights, and I wasn't even old enough to buy cigarettes when I started doing that. And I was riding Greyhound buses like all over the place, 14, 20 hours to go to these shows. And I was doing it for free as long as they paid for my travel and my hotel. And I won't ever forget when I was explaining to people how I was getting started with that, just chewing me out. You can't do stuff for free. You can't all this. And it's like, look, they already have somebody doing for them what I want to do for them. They don't know me. I don't have a brand. Why would they want to swap to some unknown? The only way that I can attack it is be like, look, you guys will save a grand a show if you use me. And if you don't like me, we don't have to sign a contract. I'll do one show. And if you don't like it, bring another person back. Right. And, uh, that was, that's literally how I started doing it. Next thing I know, every gig I'm getting is a paid gig. Uh, I ended up doing like a syndication deal with one of the bigger MMA announcers in the upper Midwest where we were a tag team in the entire region, just him and I. And, uh, I wasn't even old enough to drink at the time. And, I mean, I got I got expelled out of high school. And so I don't I don't think anybody expected me to go anywhere or do anything. And so when I was doing that, people were just like, well, that's crazy. You know how to get involved in that. And next thing I know, I'm managing fighters. And then I started an MMA show. and promoted a bunch of those. And then I got into marketing stuff and sales stuff and operations stuff. And it all just kind of went from there. And I mean, when I was 20, I ended up getting a job that people 30, 40 years older for me were applying against me on. And I got it because when I went in for my interview, They just said that I was so confident about my skills. And I was I honestly was willing to take 20 grand less than anybody else. But when I got in there after your first 90 days, you have like. Like a reassessment. Right. And of course, I was asking for. Like part of the negotiation is opening up the door. Right. You can't you can't have that conversation unless you're in the building. And, you know, you hear people talk about, you know, make sure you're getting paid what you're worth. There's a process to getting to that. And I think people, especially these days, like to skip it.

You know, oh, I want to start off at the end. It's like, yeah, they're worth that. But it's like, show me you're worth that. Then you'll get to that.

I remember I was working at a law firm in Chicago. We had built a call center, and we were doing national bankruptcies and stuff. I used to get in trouble because I was hiring people from the west side of Chicago, the people from the south side of Chicago. I'm in this meeting, and they're like, You're hiring a lot of urban people and a lot of alternative lifestyle type people. They're referencing black people and gay people, but they're using safe words for telling me that I'm doing that. These people are coming in and killing it because I always like to hire people that I felt like need the opportunity. And it's like, oh, don't you get burned on that? I get burnt by people that had four-year degrees. Of course, I'm going to get burnt by somebody else. Anybody can burn me. But because I always felt like I was an underdog, I always gravitated to hiring those people when I was hiring for people to come and work for me. And I remember, and I'll never forget this, because they were like, we're going to reach out and we're going to get relationships with these colleges. We're going to bring these kids in to have business degrees. We're going to put them on the phones and have them do sales. And I remember telling them, I'm like, this is going to bite you in the ass, because they're going to come here and they're going to want a salary that's at least 50 grand a year, because their four-year degree says they should get one, they're owed one. I go, but secondly, they're going to work nine to five, and they're going to go home. They're not going to come in here and chase sales tiers. They're not going to come in here and grind anything out. They're doing what society said they're supposed to do that will get them this amount of money and this type of a lifestyle. Oh, no, no, no, it'll be fine. We started hiring the college kids, two-thirds of them didn't cut it. They're always the guys that were arguing about, why is commission this? Why is this? It should be that, and none of them wanted to learn anything. It was just wild. The company went under now, but one of the best salespeople forever was someone that I hired in 2013. It was one of their top salespeople, even after they sold and got shut down. What's that?

What were you all selling?

They were doing intakes for bankruptcies. Basically, people would throw leads in and they would call and you'd go over the situation. There was a payment plan to pay for fees to do a bankruptcy file. The thing about it is just like it was pain point selling mostly. Someone's calling and they have a 500 credit score and owe half a million dollars or walked away from some cars or wrecked a car that wasn't insured or whatever, and you're walking them through just talking about that stuff. The funny thing is, is a lot of people tried to turn it into a pressure sales thing. That was where I worked with a lot of the sales team on. more like emotional intelligence and talking to them about, you know, pull out the reason why they're even on the phone. You know, find out what made them decide that right now is the time that they need to talk to somebody about this. Just let them tell their story. And if it's something that our stuff could potentially help them with, explain how it could help. And if they agree with you, then they'll do it. Like, you know, it isn't hard. And I think a lot of people put a lot of pressure on on selling when it really isn't, it's an education.

It's taken me a minute to figure out the actual sales side of everything.

Cause once again, you know, I just came from running around the streets and shit like that and ended up peddling and drugs and stuff. So it was like, I thought I was a salesman.

No, you're an order taker at that point.

And it was like, nah, you had something that they wanted. So it was like, nah, you know, I got out here and it was a slap in the face. That's where I really had to find my authentic self and just be myself and be confident in actually what I'm selling and know and believe what I'm selling to them is actually going to benefit them and add value. But at the same time, I don't even really try to sell anybody. I just show up and just be myself and literally just bullshit with you, find out what your problems are, tell you that I have a solution. I'm confident in telling you that I have that solution and basically saying I'm ready to show up and then I get the job. It's not really me showing up and being like, well, hey, look at my equipment and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. Because I've already had people, you know, you'll pull up and they're like, oh, you're too expensive.

Yeah.

But it's just stuff like that. You know, I mean, it's taken me a while, but you really got to zone into it and really just be yourself and just figure out that you're not selling a product. You're really selling yourself at the end of the day.

Yeah, when I was in high school, uh, I actually worked, um, for a company and we pressure washed, um, 18 wheelers and trailers. Yeah. And, uh, we had a big, uh, 18 foot truck with like, I can't, I can't remember how many gallons were in it, but I mean, we had to go and fill the truck up and then we had to run all weekend where we were washing three, 400 trucks and trailers. And, uh, I remember talking to the guy who owned the company because I didn't understand. I was 16 at the time, so I didn't really understand the industry. I was like, how are you getting contracts to go into wash 100 semis? Who do you talk to? Because I know if I was to call up some truck rental place and be like, hey, I want to wash all your trucks, they'd be like, cool, click. You know, so I was talking to, I think his name was Sean. I was like, I don't understand, you know, what's your way in. And he was like, well, I have this specific pre-wash that I have that doesn't damage stuff the same way that the acids that a lot of the guys that wash these trucks do.

What's that? Because it's usually two step in one of them is an acid. I think it's an acid and then a degreaser and it somehow combined together and work.

And a lot of the people, and this was, I mean, almost 25 years ago at this point. But the stuff that a lot of those guys had would strip a lot of the shine off of chrome or aluminum that was polished. And so like stuff would really look dingy, even though the bugs were gone. And so he was like, I would actually show up with him and be like, I noticed that this is happening. I have a way to stop it from happening. You guys spend a lot of money on your equipment. Like, let me show you, even if it's just like with a video. And so that was like my first real experience with selling the difference, because that's what he was doing. He was like, I found a problem that people were having. I came up with a solution for it. And all I had to do was get in front of him to show him how we could do it differently. He was like, the thing is, my stuff wasn't more or less expensive. He's like, I charge the same amount as everybody else. The thing is, they didn't look bad when we were done. And that was how he grew the whole thing. And he ended up selling it, I think, seven or eight years after I worked for him. But it was an interesting deal, being out there all day, understanding, I mean, you really have to learn how to wash stuff. and how much stuff can be wet before it starts getting dry. And like, there is like an actual science to washing a semi trailer. It's like you weren't out there just whipping around with the wand.

That's where this industry gets so messed up or whatever, because you got YouTube and all of that, and everybody makes it look like it's so easy. And then these guys get out there and don't realize that it's really about the science. You allow the chemicals to do the work for the most part.

Yeah, it was. You know, you go in there and he's like, if you're facing the sun, you can only do a third of the truck at a time. He's like, if it's if it's cloudy out, you can do it this way. Like if the wind is blowing this direction, he was like there was like a serious like deal. And he's like, you have to do it like this or you'll have to rewash the whole thing. And of course, I'm 16. So I'm like, fuck you, dude. I'm gonna do it however I want. And I found out the hard way real quick that if I didn't do what he said, it didn't work right. Right. And there were times when me and my buddy Travis would show up to fill the truck. We'd be hung over from the night before and like fall asleep in my car while the truck was filling and wake up and the whole thing is like flooded because we fell asleep in the in the water tank overflow. And we're like in this long, like a truck. Yeah. And it's just it was it was a disaster. Of course, like we never told anybody that that happened. Uh, we're an hour and a half late, like starting our route and we still didn't got everything done.

Open the doors and just let it all flood out.

Yeah. Like you're driving down the road and it's literally just spraying out of the fucking back of the, the, um, the truck. I mean, if we didn't care, well, I mean, it's not like it was illegal.

Right. Now it's funny when we leave the water, letting it dangle out the back and just letting it spray out, you'll have people pull it beside you. You know, you're all wasting out in the back and you're like, yeah, it's just water. Okay.

You'll be fine.

What's been the hardest part of running businesses and stuff?

I think learning that you can't do everything alone. was the hardest thing for me. And I don't necessarily mean that you have to have partners or anything like that. It's like, as you scale a business, the person who owns the business becomes the least important person of the whole group. Because people don't really interact with you anymore. You're not selling the jobs anymore. You're not servicing the jobs anymore. None of the customers that are giving your business any money even though you're alive. The thing about it this way, take a major brand, for example, like Johnson & Johnson. Nobody off the top of their head can tell you who the CEO of Johnson & Johnson is. Absolutely nobody. The thing about it is you got, there's 50 products in your house right now that they make. And the thing is, your relationship with that brand comes through product quality, or it comes through the people who service your house, or the people who actually interact with the customers. And I think a lot of times when we build a business, we want it to be a projection of how we operate. And so as you start scaling, from smaller to getting to a point where you're trying to replace yourself, you start wondering, are these people going to care about it as much as I am? Or whatever. The thing is, they never will. Even if they're completely bought in, they're never going to care in the same amount that you do. The thing is, it's like, if you take care of those people, and they're allowed to make decisions and they're allowed to put their own print on the brand, they start to feel ownership. That was the hardest thing for me to give up. was it wasn't control. It was giving up like who's actually like making these decisions because maybe they don't have the best interest of the business in mind. It isn't the decision itself. It's the result of the decision that you get worried about.

You know, that's where I'm at right now is, you know, in the middle of making this, wanting to make this move and going to make this move here soon. Um, That's that's kind of all the thoughts that have been running through my head and stuff like that.

But at the same time, you've got to move out of your own way.

Otherwise, you're just going to plateau out. And I mean, you can. My vision is is franchising. How the fuck do you franchise? You don't fucking franchise stand in one fucking place.

And.

But you wanna expand and you wanna give that layaway to other people that are here and make them feel a part of this actual brand and building it up. And if you don't give them that, then they just plateau out and you're gonna have those nine to five, like McDonald's type workers. And that's not what this brand is about either.

One of the things that, and there's been a couple of businesses that I've been a part of that have done this this way. We move people. from like the main area. So like I've moved people to San Antonio for my medical business. I've moved people to Austin, you know, for the medical stuff. I'm getting ready to move somebody down to Houston. And it's like, you know, the carrot is, You're up here. You're going to learn how we do everything. You're going to do everything our way. You're going to do it for a certain amount of time. There has to be a certain amount of attendance and stuff like that that has to be hit, this, that, and the third. But if you can do all of this stuff, and you're perfect on your SOPs, we'll move you down, and you can launch a whole new region for us. For a lot of people, that's more than they've ever been offered. And don't get me wrong, man. And I say this to even people I interview. I don't need everybody to want to be a manager. I don't need everybody to want to be a leader. Plenty of people are cool waking up, going to work, going home and playing with their kids, playing with their animals, going on vacations, finger painting, whatever. And I need those people. There's a position for everyone. Yeah, I need those people too. That's the backbone of the business, the people that are going to work there for a decade. But the people who do have ambitions, you need to show them that it exists, and you need to show them what happens if they reach those things. Because I think a lot of places will hang a carrot, but there is no actual result, or they'll never see it happen to anybody. Power home remodeling is like, they do windows, roofing, siding, and stuff like that. I think they were recently bought by private equity money three or four years ago, but they would literally move 25 people to a new region. to start up a whole office. And they would be handpicked people from all over the country. So the Tampa, Florida office might have five people from Connecticut, three people from Chicago, two people from Colorado. But in those offices, it was, hey, the sales guys that kill it, you're going to get an opportunity to move to this new market. The new market's going to be Tampa. The new market's going to be Phoenix. If you want to go, put your name in the hat and then go show us. And that was how they opened every new office. So every time they opened an office, that thing was flying right out of the gate, because everybody that they moved down there were perfect. And I think most places, when they open up new spots, they go there and they hire externally. then they struggle. They can't get culture correct. People aren't dialed into the core values. They don't do stuff the same way that the other offices do. Well, how could they? Nobody that works there now knows how it works. If you're not the one going and moving and teaching people how to do stuff, the people who are going and moving need to be perfect. Right. Like otherwise, you're going to have to give this new location a ton of additional attention because you're going to have to go fix it. Right. Can you move faster if you hire people externally? Sure. But does that get you more revenue?

So it's kind of smarter to kind of like leave what you already got and then you turn around and go over there and start building the same way, but just faster on what you already have done.

And that's what I'm saying. It's one way or the other. But the person that goes needs to be the person that's perfect. Because how are you going to scale that new spot quickly? It has to be right. So either it's someone that you trust or it's you. Because if you can leave people who don't want to go anywhere, and they're going to be fine where they are, you've been doing it somewhere else perfectly fine.

That's exactly where I'm at right now. And it's kind of like, you know, leaving these guys here. They've got families and stuff like that. They don't want to be out somewhere else. I don't have all that. So the smartest thing is to turn around and allow me to go out that way.

When also, I think that's from talking to you. I think that's part of your journey, though, too. Is kind of getting out of where you're at right now, getting out of your comfort zone and seeing kind of what's out there. Cause you've been in your little bubble for, for some years now.

Yeah, I have. And I'm really just busting out of it. And I've lived here in Georgia my whole entire life. I want to expand out and see what else is out there. You know, there's more to more, more to the, to the vision and more to the journey than just staying plateau in one place.

The thing is too, like there's a lot of people who do service industry stuff that don't do what you're doing until they're 85 and that's their vision. They want to be in control. They want to own their schedule. They want to know their clients. They want a fixed schedule. They know how much money they're going to make. Nothing's very volatile. It's all very

I see a lot of companies do that. And then I've had a couple of companies hit me up and tell me that I probably shouldn't do what I'm doing, because at the end of the day, I need to focus more on just one area and one branch and all of this. And it's kind of like, that's like y'all's insecurities. That's things that y'all have in your head of limited belief and fear. If I do that to myself, then all I'm really doing is debbing down what my mind is actually ramped up to actually take on and actually go after. Regardless, I'm just like rolling the dice on myself at the end of the day.

One of my favorite things I've said for a long time now is it doesn't matter where you go. The only thing that you're taking with you is you. You can or you can't, and you know before you go. It's that simple. Anybody that tells you, hey, do this, hey, whatever, those people have built a prison for themselves, and they feel very comfortable in the prison that they're in. Me, I would rather go flat broke and be borderline homeless again, but I'd rather take the shot. And people are always like, oh, what if you lost your house? I'd still have somewhere to live. It might not be this house. I'm gonna have a roof. I've never not figured it out. And that's what I'm, I'm just not afraid of it. And I think that's, there's no such thing as being fearless, because you're afraid of stuff. The thing about it is there's situations that I've, there's no situations that I could get put in that I don't think I'd be able to figure out. Right. Right. And the thing I'm the most afraid of is getting to 80 years old and having a lot of what ifs. I'd rather be able to say, remember when. Good, bad, indifferent. I'd rather have the story.

Right. That's exactly how I am. I don't want to be later on and then fucking guessing, well, what if I could have done this? What if I could have done that? Just fucking go after it. If you have the thought and and you have the belief in it and you know for a fact that you're confident in yourself, then fucking shoot your shot. Worst case scenario, you fucking hit the fucking ground, but you're always gonna get back up. That's just how I've done everything in life. And football taught me that shit. I remember a lot of things from back in football that fucking today, I'm like, no wonder the coach was that way.

And there's a lot of stuff I think people said when I was younger that pissed me off that resonate now. The thing about it is, though, the universe gives you things when you're ready for them. Right. But the thing is, you're going to notice it's stuff that you've been served up many, many times prior. Just you weren't ready at the time. And so, you know, for me, I mean, seven, seven years ago, I was driving like a 2011 Ford Edge, and I wasn't even sure what I was going to do next. Because I had spent all this time working at these other companies and watching people grow businesses and then destroy them because they got greedy. And I was at a point, it's like, I need to stop doing this for other people. But it was like, what am I going to go do for myself? And so I just told my girlfriend, who's my wife now, I was like, whatever contract I get offered next that I think I can handle in 30 hours a week, I'm going to take it. I don't care where it is. You don't have to come if you don't want, but I got to start buying some businesses and doing some stuff for me, or I'm going to get to an age where it's too late. It took me down to a little spot down here in Texas called Haltom City, which is not a nice area. But it was another thing. No, that's where I was. That's where the law firm I went down to work on was. Oh, okay. We moved into an area in Fort Worth, which is probably 30 minutes away from the office.

That's where I'm looking at is out that way.

Yeah, it was Halton City is kind of like between Bedford and downtown kind of. It's an older area. It's got a lot of smaller houses. It's not like crime-ridden or like a bad part of town. It's just not new. The building that the law firm was in was in an older area right off of 121. I went in and they were doing 800 grand a year. I think by the time I left, they were trending towards 3 million, a year and a half later maybe. Yeah, I think I bought a couple of med spas and a gym. And then around Thanksgiving, I think in 2018, they kept trying to argue with me about something that I had nothing to do with. And so one day after they, they argued with me, I backed my truck up to the door, loaded my office up, took all my shit to the gym. And like, I haven't, I haven't done anything for anybody else since then.

Bam.

I took in the three mil, and you're like, I'm loading my shit up, I'm out of here.

I don't want somebody to piss me off. And the thing is, they're pretty much out of business now. It's weird, and I hate to say this, because I don't want to, I don't know, it sounds narcissistic, but I know how to build a company culture, and I know how to make people perform. And then once you start doing that, people start getting greedy and doing stupid stuff with money. And then you lose all the culture and all that stuff, because now you're not paying your people anymore. You're paying yourself. And then you take away stuff that made work fun, and you take away stuff that made people hang out with people from work. And then next thing you know, the bottom just dumps out. And I don't know. I mean, I'm concerned with my lifestyle and stuff like that, but it's always relative. I would never pay an employee less so I could take home more. And I think that's the difference. People want you to buy lunch. People want you to throw an event for them or, you know what I mean? I make the least in my company. But that's the part of the game.

And I get by. Everybody's like, how the fuck do you do that? And I'm like, I see the vision. Later on, I'll make some money. But for right now, everybody else is making the money.

If you build your business up to a $3 million EBITDA type deal in three or four different markets, you'll be able to sell your company for 10 or 15 million. That's the thing, if you have 10 or 15 million dollars, you put 7 million of it to work, and you can make 700 grand a year on residual, you have all that money to still put to work for you. You're not going to go broke, and you're going to keep the money that you invested already. There's plenty of people that have a decent license on half a million to 700 grand a year and do nothing. If that's what you're shooting at because you want your time back, the best thing to do right now is to not pay yourself. All that money should be going back into building towards.

That's exactly what I'm doing. I'm not trying to slave around all day, every day. My mind just That way, it's not fucking just focused into this and being like, that's all I'm ever doing and all I'm ever gonna do.

People always ask me all the time, they're like, oh, you've always been doing something your whole life. Like if you sell your business, what would you do with your time? I would still run businesses and stuff, but I would be on boards at that point. And I'd be like, I'm available to y'all noon to three on Monday. It's not I'm waking up at 2am because I got ads get rejected by Facebook and I got to run out to my desk to fix them. You know what I mean? I'm not doing that anymore. I'm doing the stuff that I enjoy because now I don't have to do the stuff I don't love.

Right.

And that's exactly where I'm at and where I want to do is find the things that you love doing and focus on those and push away and pay other people to do the other things.

That's part of the thing I tell people all the time, especially when they're first building businesses. You have to do all the stuff you hate, and you have to be good at it. Do I like doing spreadsheets? No, I hate it. It is my least favorite thing to do on planet Earth is work on data. I don't like it. I got good at it though, because it's important for me to get good at it. I still haven't been able to find anybody to outsource my marketing to. I'm going to spend a million dollars a year on my medical business in marketing. I run it all. I have like 1,400 active ads right now. I manage the whole thing. Like, I've tried to hire external people to take it over. I can't do it. I can't find anybody that does it better than I have. And I've done SOPs and tried to explain it.

But there's some stuff that I'm doing that's just... Is there like that fine line of like you look for somebody that at least does it like 80% of how you do it to end up giving them that role?

So eventually you can do that, but the amount of stuff that I'm doing right now doesn't necessarily equate to a full time job. Because if I'm hiring somebody now, I'm hiring an agency. you know what I mean? And I'm paying them four grand, five grand a month to run my, my $80,000 marketing budget. But then I got to spend a bunch of time with them. And then they're putting a different person on my account or they're firing somebody. And then like, it just ends up, it's like a whole new relationship that I got to manage, you know, it's different.

You've got it. So it's kind of like, it's not broken. So why, uh, why fix it?

Once we open Houston and once we open Phoenix and stuff like that, I'll end up being able to hire somebody full-time and I'll tell them and show them exactly the way that I do it. And they'll be able to do it and it'll make sense for me to pay somebody 40 hours a week to manage all of that stuff. I just haven't hit that point yet. But there's a ton of stuff that I already don't do. You know what I mean? That's just one of them that I haven't been able to push off. And the thing is, when Facebook isn't broken, it'll run flawlessly for months at a time. It's just like when Facebook decides to change their AI algorithm for how they scan in my market. I think I sent a screenshot of my ad rejections, I was getting 200 or 300 a week. I have to go in and edit the ads, then I have to bitch at Facebook. It's a 40-hour a week job when their AI breaks. But it's like, do I think an agency would be able to handle that the same way that I did? Unlikely, because they don't know my industry as well as I do.

That's the hardest thing to find is any agency and period. I don't really think it matters what fucking industry it is, because even in the pressure washer, man, I've got burned so many times. putting so much money into people saying that they could do this and they could do that and it's working for this person and that person. They'll show you and then they turn around and you put all that belief in them and then it's just like they shit on you. So I've literally ran all my stuff just organically and grown this whole side organically and felt like that was the best way because I put them side by side. It was like I spent 20 grand one year, didn't get shit. Next year, cut it all off, went organically. The company doubled in fucking revenues. Again, this year, no ads spent again, doubled in revenue. Like, there's just no fucking point. I mean, I would like to have it, to have that extra phone calls and stuff coming in, but you can't find nobody.

Yep. And it's like I said, it's one of those things you kind of, and I would tell you, learn how to run ads yourself. Because if you ever do hire anybody, you need to know your numbers because you have to babysit them to some point. So it's like if you hire someone and you don't know what good marketing looks like, you're not going to look at your dashboard and know if it's good or not. Right.

It's like any other position in the business. You need to know how to do it so that way when you can hire for it, then you can actually train for it or actually know how it's supposed to be done at least.

I feel like people are like, oh, I don't know anything about marketing. I'll hire somebody to do it for me. There's so many people who do that shit. But how do you babysit it? If you've never actually gotten in there and seen what a bad campaign looks like next to a good one, how do you go into your dashboard and look at active marketing and know if it's decent? You can't tell me that some of the higher ups and VPs and all of that kind of stuff at places even like Coca-Cola, you can't tell me that those guys don't look at marketing dashboards. I guarantee you that they do. And they know what the data means. And they could be like, you know, this wasn't doing what it was in it. It just has to be 30,000 foot view. But you should be able to glance at it and be like, that's broken. Like, why is that doing that? Otherwise, anybody that has a marketing job for you is going to tell you whatever they want to tell you, because you don't know any better. And they know that.

It makes a lot of sense.

Yeah. Oh, I'm going to keep my job because you're too dumb to know I'm stupid.

Yeah, pay me for another three months. We got to keep this going. Next thing you know, you're so much money and you're like, all I did was just pay your bills for the fucking money.

And all and all it is is like, you know, it's like the SEO guys. We need 90 days to make sure your SEO sticks. Well, I'm not just going to hire a dude to just do SEO because I'm not going to pay you for 90 days while we figure out if your keywords work. Right. And that was how everybody marketed it 10 years ago.

Yeah, I found out that SEO shit's some bullshit too, because those guys will turn around and they say, pay us this and we'll get that going. And then three months later, two months later, you need to pay us this to put in some other words because they changed up the algorithm and now they're wanting these words. And then you dump so much shit into that stuff. I understand you can't do that yourself.

Well, and like I said, I mean, there's something to be said for like being able to hire someone and outsource it, but you have to understand your data. There isn't anything more important in your business than the information that generates your revenue, you know, your ad data, your revenue data, your margins, your cogs. Um, a lot of people don't know the difference, um, between, uh, Margin and what is the other term? I'm blanking on it because it's late on a Sunday. Margin and cost are different. People don't understand the difference because your cost, let's say that you do pools, and you have a pool pump that you can buy for 400 bucks that you sell for 800, your margin is not $800. Because your margin is not just a difference between what you have and what you sell, it's got all the other costs that go into actually putting it in and

And, uh, chemicals to do whatever for it, all that stuff. That's what I preach to a lot of people all the time is like, they'll sit there and they'll say, well, I did this job for $800. Well, did you did that job for $800? Cause you don't get to collect all of that. You got to take out all that other part, then turn around and take a little bit out for your company. So your company grows, and then you might have some profits left over in those profits is what you got.

Yeah, margin and markup. That was what I was getting at. A lot of people don't know the difference between margin and markup. Markup is just your markup over your wholesale cost. Margin is the actual math for selling that thing.

Right. And if you were asking to do the whole entire job of X, Y and Z, but then the markup is basically what the profit would be in between that.

Yeah. And if you talk to anybody that owns a service industry business, welding, HVAC, plumbing, ask them what their margins are on a five ton install. I would bet you at least half of them don't know off the top of their head.

Right.

Yeah, that's what we had to go over just not long ago was what the margins were between different things and finding out that the commercial side had the most margins. So that's why in my head, I turn around and go after commercial because I'm like, that's where we make the most money for the bang. Why am I going to go after these little bitty pieces over here? Although those little bitty pieces do add up because you get that every single day, you'll get that money where these bigger pieces, you might not get the money for 14 days or 60 days. or that can fuck up some cash flow, but I ran by myself for so long that it didn't matter.

It's like if I got to drive an hour and a half one way, I'd rather drive an hour and a half for 10 grand instead of driving an hour and a half for 800. I got to burn the same amount of road time to go to this place, I would rather have a higher return on the other side. Like a lot of places, when you first start out, it's very normal for you to take stuff that's outside of your range or outside of your price or whatever. Anytime that you own a business and your calendar is empty, any money is better than zero money.

So it's funny that you say that because that's how I started off in 2020 when I revamped everything was literally just took everything no matter what it was. I might've drove fucking two hours to make 200 bucks. Yep, I would've done it too. Because I put in all that work like that, that's how I've expanded our radius so much on word of mouth that now we just get jobs all over the whole entire state and go up the whole East Coast now pretty much.

And that's the reason why I was never afraid of working for next to nothing. It's like, if I'm going to drive an hour and a half, and I do something at my own cost, and I got the bid, I might not make any money on this job. I may break flat even. But I was at that job for three hours, and people saw me doing it. And learning. So it's like, I could have just been sitting at home screwing off and playing video games. Or I can go out, and I'm in the field, and I'm doing the work. I break even on it, and maybe a neighbor comes over and says, hey, I need that done too. Well, I'm sure as soon as I'm done with this one, I'll come down. I'll do it for the same amount I did this, guys, because I already got trip figured into this job I just broke an even on. Now, I'm going to make all my trip money back on the second job, and I'll go home two and a half hours later than I thought. I don't care.

Yeah, no, that's exactly how I've been running this whole entire thing is structured just exactly like that.

It's like. I was going to it's when you get first get started and I use this analogy with everybody, so I think it. Makes the most sense to people, right? When you start a business and you hire sales guys. The only people sending in their resume are brand new at sales or their 55 have an alcohol problem or a drug problem, and it's like 5050 if they're even going to show up. Because no one knows you. You have no brand. No one knows your product. You're a brand new company. Your office is tiny, and it's in some alley somewhere. But those are the only people. that are going to let you give them a job at this point. You got to hire them because you have another choice. But as those guys start selling stuff, and as you start creating good business, and as you start generating revenue, whatever, eventually, those better sales guys, when you start offering good pay, they start recognizing like, okay, I've seen this job ad for two years now, and this guy's offering 5% more than I'm getting other places, I'm going to at least go have a conversation. then you hire your first guy like that. Now what it does is he's gonna send a new benchmark. And like the guys that were doing 20 deals a week, and that was like top of the board, this guy comes in and does 35. Well, all these other people are gonna be like, well, he can do 35 in a week. Like, why can't I do 25? Now, because there's a whole other person setting a whole new pace in the business, everybody that you hired that's coming to work drunk is either going to have to figure it out and catch up, or they're going to get replaced by people like this new guy. And that's the same way that the business grows, because you're going to get a whole new culture gets developed when you start hiring better employees. but you only hire better employees. If people know your brand, if people have seen your trucks, if people know people that work there, like it's all a part of developing this enigma, that is your business. And if you radiate a certain amount of stuff, it's very easy for you to hire people. You know, my medical business, for example, when we launched the eight years ago, I'm hiring people at like 14 and $15 an hour straight out of school. They're giving people injections and bruising them, like all kinds of stuff. They're brand new, right? I'm paying 8.50 more an hour now, plus PTO, plus, you know, every other Friday is a paid day off. Like, we're good, right? The people that are applying now have like 25 years of experience. So I'm getting these people that I can just like, here's the stuff, see you later. I'll talk to you in a week, you know what I mean? Whereas before I was having to micromanage everybody. Now, there are still people with this company that I hired eight years ago when we started. Those people grew as the company grew, as employees and as leaders. The people who aren't here anymore, they stayed who they were and the company outgrew them. And that's okay. It's not for everybody.

That's where I was stuck at was micromanaging over everybody that I was hiring. And then finally, this one person came on and didn't have to micromanage him at all. And it was like, that's the type of people that I need.

The problem is, man, I would love to say it, but hiring is not a skill. You'll never be good at hiring. It's just not, I don't care. You could be hiring for VP level executives and their resume is gonna be one they wrote. The references that they give you are not gonna talk shit about them. Their previous employers, you're not gonna call them all. There's just no way to get that right. The problem is people usually hang on to employees too long. They're not quick enough to fire. If I'm hiring someone to do a job, they can't do the job, then I micromanage them because they can't do the job. Is that a them problem or is that a me problem?

It's a me problem because I hired the wrong person that can't do the job. Now, I'm trying to show him how to do a job he doesn't know how to do. I just need to go find somebody who could do the job. You know, the people always.

That's where I was, but I was butting my own head for fuckers long and was like, dude, I'm constantly have to show these motherfuckers what the fuck is like getting pissed off at them. And it's like, why are you getting pissed off at them? You need to redirect and figure out what's going on in your head and why you're picking these people.

Yep. And it's the thing about it is you're selling a job. They're selling themselves, you know. Oh, it's going to be great here. We got this. We got this. They're going to be like, I'm really good. I show up on time. And then it's like, yes, they always do. It's the first six months of relationship, right? Everybody in this relationship's on their best behavior. But then six months in, she starts getting mad because you always leave your towel on the floor in the bathroom. But you've been doing it for six months. But today, it's going to be a problem moving forward. Because no one ever says what they think originally. You're not going to get frustrated with a new guy because you don't want to scare him off. And you're afraid if you give constructive criticism, that maybe it will damage them in some way. The thing is, there's a way to communicate stuff to people where it's like an escalation. The first time, you're having a conversation. The second time, you're actually going and showing them. The third time, you're like, I got to write you up for this. This is the third time that I've had to come and talk to you about it. I did the gentle white glove stuff early on. This has become a serious problem for the business now. You're going to have all of my attention for this for the next 10 days. If we can't get it figured out, I'm going to have to tell you that this isn't going to work. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. You gave them all the coaching and training that you could offer them, so they could never tell anybody, whoa, like they never tried to help me fix it. You know, you were not rude and you were not disrespectful when you first brought it up. And the third time where you told them like, hey, your job's on the line, it was just very matter of fact. I don't think you're stupid. I don't think you're not capable of this. There's something in the teaching or something in the situation where maybe I'm not present enough, and that's why it hasn't rubbed off. So now I'm going to give you all my attention. And if we can't figure it out after you have all my attention for a little bit, probably isn't a job for you. And once you get to that point, you're going to fire people. And there's going to be a serious turnstile. But the thing is, that's the only way to get to a size team that can perform. Right. You're going to have to get rid of the people who can't.

Right. And don't keep them around because that bad apple will turn around and turn the other good apples into bad apples.

It happens faster than you think.

Oh, it definitely does. It's fucking you can definitely see everybody just dragging ass because of one person.

Well, so I have, like I was saying before, like we have every other paid Friday as a paid day off for my staff. So literally every other Friday they get paid for a full eight hours and they don't work. They get 10 PTO days that accrue from when they start. We have like cash incentive programs like inside the company where it accrues internally. Then they can cash it out anytime they want. I've bought Cruzes, I've bought tires, it doesn't matter what it is. That's just money that they make on the inside. Somebody came to me and was like, I've been here for a year, I want to raise. I was like, well, you quit before with no notice, and I let you back. because you came hat in hand, you're at the top of what this role pays. There isn't any more money to give you, but you haven't been earning all of your cash incentives internally because you're not getting data correct and you haven't been on time, which that's 1500 bucks a year. They were like, well, if you can't give me a raise, I'm going to have to go get two jobs or whatever to pay my bills. I was like, best of luck. with that schedule, because I would hate to do that. Sorry, it came to that, but that is what it is. Then they get mad at the situation, and they'll go and write a post up, and they're like, we have to do data. They ask us to stay after, but they only pay us until 730, but it takes till 745 for us to get the data done, and this, that, and the other. You get an entire eight hours of paid stuff twice a month. It more than makes up for any of 15 minutes that I could possibly give you. It makes it so you don't have to burn PTO to go on three-day weekends. It makes it so you don't have to burn PTO for doctor's visits, dentist visits, stuff with your kids. Now you have Fridays open. And that's the whole point. But no one wants to talk about that because they're trying to get even, right? So they want to put a thing up on somewhere like Indeed where it's bad for the company's culture. If you go and ask the staff that works here, they'll tell you this is the easiest job that they've ever had and the favorite job they've ever had. But it's because someone doesn't get what they want when they press you, they want to go and do stuff like that. And so the more people that you fire, the more angry people they're going to be because there's entitled people out there that think that they're owed stuff. And then people are worried like, well, gosh, I don't want bad reviews on Indeed, or I don't want bad reviews, this, that, whatever. People are still going to apply to your jobs, even if that stuff is up. Because they don't have firsthand experience with it. And if they go through an interview, they can ask you about all of those things. And so why even waste the time as a former employee to go try and blast the company that you worked at? You'd have been better off putting that energy into looking for something new.

But this shows where their character was and where they actually were in the first place.

It enforces the fact that you let him go.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. So how can everybody find you on social media and stuff like that? We'll go ahead and end this.

Oh, you're good. Everything is just first and last name J.A.C.O.B. S.T.A.H. L.E.R. after the slash or whatever. I'm like that on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook's like that. I don't have a LinkedIn or anything like that because I've heard that that website's weird and I don't need any more social media in my life anyway.

Yeah, LinkedIn is a little different.

Yeah, I never got into it even years ago. There are active profiles of me on LinkedIn, but they're not mine.

You got you. Yeah, we run it for our commercial side just to catch commercial work because that's where just about any company is. And you can find all that. Yeah. Like say that you had a company on there, you can find out who the president is, who the vice president is, who the general contractors are. You can find all of that and then you can turn around and start scoping those people out.

Yeah. And like with some of the businesses I've got, we'll end up getting into corporate You know, stuff like that. So I'll end up having a VA or something run a LinkedIn page of mine. Right. Like messaging people. But like, it'll never be me.

I got you. Well, I appreciate you coming on here tonight and filling us all full of tons of knowledge and different things of your journey and everything. Of course, man. Yes, sir. Well, guys, that's the end of the show. Y'all have a good one. We'll see you on the next one. Peace.

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