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 Staton.

Welcome to another episode of the Under Pressure Show. I'm your host, Nic Staton. Today's guest is Travis Terrebonne. if I pronounced it right. Well, anyways, Travis, if you could tell the guests a little bit about yourself and where you come from and stuff like that.

Nic Staton

Yeah, bro. I am currently sitting 10-15 minutes from I was born and raised in South Louisiana, a little town called Lockport, believe it or not, L-O-C-K-P-O-R-T. It's way down south in the bottom of the boot, like we call it. Louisiana is shaped like a boot. Born and raised Gulf of Mexico, maybe soon to be Gulf of America. A kid, man, I'm born and raised in the Gulf swamps and chasing redfish and speckled trout and stuff as a kid. And oil and gas is kind of the major play here. That's our big industry, offshore oil and gas. And so I took that path out of high school, went to a little trade school, moved to Houston. And then in 2000, Y2K kind of jumped in, started ranching as a diesel mechanic in the oil field, started a business shortly thereafter in 05, and then ran that oil and gas diesel heavy equipment shop, built it up to, I don't know, probably did 80, 90, 100 million in revenue in a 17, 18 year stint. I had no idea what the hell I was doing, grew the business way too fast. In 2021, man, after surviving COVID and what was a pretty crazy storm that ravaged us in 21, very similar to Hurricane Katrina, my wife and I were literally both entrepreneurs looking at wanting to do something different, something more scalable. And this generator thing came about. as a result of our community being ravaged and people not having power. So I leveraged my professionalism as a mechanic, started fixing generators, started deploying my technicians out fixing generators. And I got a concept for a business. My wife and I jumped in head first. And then realistically, we got out of heavy equipment repair in late 22. And then kind of jumped full fledged into this our 1st year, we grew pretty damn fast. So I figured out a formula with gin Gators. That's the name of the company located in Homo, Louisiana. And yeah, man, I think we kind of

Travis Terrebonne

Are y'all just doing repairs or y'all actually like replacing them, selling them and stuff like that as well too?

No, we do full service installation, sales service installation and maintenance contracts. So the idea is we've got a sales team, we've got a CRM, much like you, I think you might, you probably use GoHighLevel, right?

Yeah, I use GoHighLevel as our main base, but then we also have Housecall Pro as like our scheduler because of People need to know where they're going.

So I started out in the growth phase from go high level to house call pro. And then once our inventory, different SKUs and stuff started kind of going crazy, we decided we needed to level up on that side. We ended up in service fusion. And then same thing, go high level. We market for leads. Manufacturers send us a few leads. We have a pretty remote extensive sales process that Doug Mitchell helped me build. Kyrie was my CRM guy. And then I started building a marketing business specifically around generators internally. That's what GenX is. Market for leads, get leads, send our consultants out, they size them, spec them, get the codes, give a price on site, try to close at the kitchen table, then ultimately sell the maintenance and service agreement that our maintenance techs come in and fulfill, you know, two, three times a year on a long-term basis. So that's kind of our low-ticket membership model. And we still do repair them and sell extended warranties and stuff like that too.

So is a lot of it like scription-based and stuff like that or monthly?

Yeah, we do finance. And so Synchrony Bank, Service Finance, Good Leap, Hearth, several other finance companies are in our space now and give the consumer a good opportunity to probably could get into a generator for like $1.99 a month, whole home ready to start automatically.

That would be really good for y'all's area when they have the stuff that happens in those areas.

Man, it's a great business, but the reason I got in it, no doubt, was low-hanging fruit, bro. The dealers that were in our market, I got to say, prior to us getting in it, were just kind of rabid dogs, man. They really didn't know what they were selling. A lot of Like I said, unrealistic expectations being sold to homeowners, people not doing what they're supposed to do on the service and maintenance side. And that's our unique angle is I'm a mechanic. My team of guys started out as a mechanic. We actually went out and hired electricians because none of us were electricians to do the install. Because our competition is electricians. And when it comes down to the unit breaking and if you want to do very intricate maintenance, the electricians kind of tapped out on the install, whereas a mechanic, we could really take the equipment apart, nuts and bolts, put it back together. So they have the one part, but y'all have the two parts. Yeah, kind of combined. I went out and hired for my weaknesses, man. I'm like, I could write a book on maintenance and how to take care of these things, make them run, fix them when they break. But I'm going to go out and get some badass electricians. And that's what I did. Built a winning culture, core values-based business. I think we kind of met in the same apex circle. And I wrote the same dudes, Doug, Kyle, Drew B., all these guys kind of Getting in the rooms with great people, I've kind of robbed and duplicated so many little nuggets from all these dudes and applied it to our industry and it worked.

It worked.

That's what's up. Yeah, Doug built us a sales program. We're in the middle of getting that implemented now.

Doug's a machine.

Yeah. And then Kyle built our CRM. So he helps out with a lot of stuff, plus our websites and stuff like that as well, too.

Yeah, dude, I have a friend of mine actually that has a small pressure washing business here local and kind of does it as a side gig. He's a younger dude and he's always been after me like, bro, can you help me? I want to break away from my W2 and start doing this full time. And I'm like, bro, I don't know nothing about pressure washing, but I can get leads and I can get a lot of leads and I know how to market and sell. So if you want to do the work, let's, let's do it. So I actually told him a few weeks ago, I'm like, bro, you got to start watching this dude, the wet and wild guy, Nic Staten. And, uh, when you wanna make a pressure washing side gig, a full-time, legitimate, reputable business, look him up. So it's crazy that when you were looking for a podcast guest, I'm like, bro, I gotta get in this dude's draft if I'm gonna be fooling around with pressure washing. Yeah, pressure washing's fun.

It's very gratification. I'm in a growth pain right at the moment with hiring and stuff like that, and then just getting the workflow up more. It was fine when I was by myself, but now that I actually got people, it's a little bit more difficult, but at the same time, it's just another challenge.

Look, I'm going through it right now, too. This is our slower time of the year, and it gave me an opportunity to really evaluate my staff. A players, A-minus, B players and try to figure out who was going to help take us to the next level and try to eliminate some of the consumers and just surround myself with producers. And that's kind of where I feel my first go around in business is people. I failed on the people game. I had a great product, a great service, a great location, great marketing strategy in terms of B2B. Very well known, but man, I failed at the people game. And so when I originally grew that business up to five million, It was probably in my fifth year is when I finally got there. And then as soon as I started to approach six, I realized, man, I can't stay profitable. It's killing me. The more and more I grow. And I kicked that can down the road for like 18 years, man. leveling up my circle of people, joining Apex, got another several masterminds, just got around freaking legit business owners that I didn't have an opportunity to get around. My dad wasn't a business owner, wasn't really around much, so I kind of learned the hard way. I paid a very, very expensive lesson in business education over 17, 18 years because I couldn't keep any freaking money to save my life. And so at this go around, I put in the same principles. However, a lot of new systems and highly educated people helped me in marketing sales, how to master those things. And then I just put my craft into it and I realized, okay, I can build about any company to 5 million. I'm not failing in the people game this time. Like I got to build culture. build an impeccable training library, tools, software, get all my ducks in a row before we really bust at the seams. And I held it in all of 2024 as much as I could, like the company was trying to grow like crazy just because of the things we do. And I really want to ace the people game right now. So I kind of dialed it back a little bit in the fourth quarter and really started trying to evaluate why I would plateau at 5 million. And it was a second, third, you know, under me levels of leadership that I wasn't developing. We would hold our technicians to a really high standard, but I wouldn't hold my managers to a high enough standard because I had the mentality of, bro, you're a leader. Like, I don't have to remind you. of how to lead every day, and that couldn't be further from the truth. Just like you got to train technicians on the bottom, you got to train managers how to manage. And that's my biggest, that's what I'm going through right now, is that growing pain.

Yeah, that's exactly where I'm at right now, is navigating and trying to get the revenue to where it's actually meeting what's actually there with people. It was fine while we were thriving throughout the season. And now that we're actually at a dead spot, it's kind of like you see it kind of tanking because there's several months that just weren't really thriving as well. So then when your overhead is kind of high, then you got to need it. takes things back.

No doubt. Little things too. Like, uh, man, I thought I built a pretty good group of CSRs had really good scripts on calling the damn leads. And, uh, we, we hit a sales plateau end of December, beginning of January. And by the time I kind of got my ducks in a row to get my hands around and going through my sales manager, I'm like, uh, Let me get in the CRM. Let me see what I can do. I get in the CRM, get in the incoming hot lead pipeline. And man, I started calling and found little things. I'm not even a CRM expert, but I know how to handle the phones. I know how to talk to leads. I know how to qualify them and just be genuine. And I got on the phone and got in the phone with my sales team. and started booking in-home consultations, because that's kind of how I trade my CSRs, is book the sales rep into the home. And once we get in the home, we know exactly what our closing percentage is going to be at the kitchen table. And even just the conversations that I was having with clients, get off the call, and my sales team's like, bro, that was amazing. And I'm like, man, all this stuff is in the scripts. So it's totally different when you train people and you think they're going to do, you know, they're not going to replace you. So you got to continue to train and train and train until the way I think becomes the way that my employees think. And I'm hoping that's my word for the year is focus, man. Get laser dialed in, focused on messaging, sequencing, cadence. That way everyone in the company thinks the same thoughts. I know it sounds crazy, but that's how you get to the point where you can grow. You can take your eye off the ball and know that somebody else is going to swing the same way as you. Right.

How did you get started?

Both times, bro, it was nothing. If I explained the years, my entry-level years, I'll go through it in a nutshell. I'm in high school. I don't even curse, but I don't even know how to say I was a fuck-up in high school without dropping an F-bomb.

You can curse whatever you want, however you want. My audience listens to it all.

I'm trying to, for me- I understand. Look, bro, I can't say I was a screw-up. I was a douchebag in high school. So I think my senior year, I only stayed for four classes. It was English 1, 2, 3, and 4 because I failed it every year going into my senior year. And so a lot of my dudes in my FFA class and shop class were like, bro, diesel mechanics make a lot of money. I didn't have much guidance in that regard. So I'm like, shit, I'm going to jump in. Started taking diesel shop and ag and took an aptitude test. And I test pretty high. So I jumped in a trade school. My mom was single. She was like, you gotta do something. I'll work a third job for you to go get an education, like do something. So I took off to Texas, 17 years old, went to a trade school, busted out of that thing in 12 months, got back home, took the first job that hired me, eight bucks an hour, I remember is what I started. And in my interview going in, The general manager or vice president at the time was like, where do you see yourself in five years? And I said, man, I'll be disappointed if I don't have your job. And he kind of laughed and said, well, good luck. And then I worked there, bro, literally. Two years, they tried to run me through it. They didn't have any guys from trade school back then, all hard nose, blue collar, just grease monkey diesel mechanics that just didn't train anybody new. Fought through that adversity, became a pretty good troubleshooter. And then my wife at the time was in college kind of wasting time and we wanted to get started in life and she was waiting tables and she said, the owner wants to, I think I'm going to lose my job. The owner wants to sell the seafood restaurant. So I kind of cut a side deal behind her back. I ended up buying the restaurant. So when I bought the restaurant, I used my savings, cashed it, made an owner financing deal. That was my first stint as an entrepreneur. I bought a seafood restaurant and I knew I couldn't keep a regular job. So I started doing mechanic work as a side hustle on fishing boats, commercial fishing boats. And then Hurricane Katrina hit in 05. So that was like end of 04. I only did diesel shop work for about three and a half years, bro. And I thought I pretty much knew everything I needed to do to go on my own and started hustling, running the seafood restaurant with my wife. She got pregnant. And the rest is history. I had to hire somebody. And that one guy turned into, two years later, 53 employees and built a 7,000 square foot shop. Didn't know what the hell I was doing. Just borrowed money to get by and shook a lot of hands, kissed a lot of babies, and hired anybody I could with a pulse. At that time, the oil field was on fire. And it was gangbusters until We kept hitting economic cycles. Obama got elected drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico. So I just kept riding it out. I mean, that's how I got started. Just freaking straight hustle, bro. Like I think I had 2000 bucks in my savings account. Um, when I signed my first master service agreement on the hood of my, my pickup truck, that was in 2004. Damn nice.

You've grinded really hard since then.

All fields pretty rough, man. I ended up, my first marriage ended, I had two kids, and didn't spend a lot of time at home. Probably loved the business a little too much. Didn't really know what the hell I was doing in terms of keeping a family satisfied, a business, and all these different things, and I screwed up. that marriage ended. I still have a great relationship with her, a seven and seven, but my, I guess the coolest part of it is my 18 year old daughter is now like, I guess you could say my right-hand woman. She graduated high school. She's been around entrepreneurs her whole life and she just jumped right in it. So she's kind of training to take the business over a couple of years. And so she's got an awesome head on her shoulders. And I guess all the years of riding in a car seat, in the backseat of the truck with dad on the phone, cutting deals. She grew up into that, bro. My kids are freaking gangster negotiators. Even if it's to buy shit, they just, they've listened to me negotiate for their whole life. So hard to punish my kids. They negotiated me out of it. That's funny. What's been the hardest part? Dude, it's like, um, You get good at one thing, but I'll say this. Probably the pivotal moment for me as an entrepreneur, man, I had very little self-awareness. I didn't know what the hell I was really good at. I didn't know what the hell I was really bad at. And I started leveling up my circle. I started going out to Dallas, Frisco, shit like that, getting around people who had it. And one dude, bro, I was at a men's event. We were freaking grinding it out, working out. I was with Steve Weatherford, actually, in Frisco, Texas. And I was at a men's event. We were cold plunging, sauna. And I think I was sitting in a sauna with a dude, telling my story, sharing my testimony. And the guy was like, Nate Burkhardt was his name. And he's like, bro, have you ever read the book Rocket Fuel by Geno Whitman? And I'm like, nah, no. He's like, Go buy it immediately before you even leave this weekend, because it's going to tell you a lot about who I think you are. And bro, I read that book. And I literally, I was crying on the pages, because I had done entrepreneurship the wrong way for so long. That book hit me like a ton of bricks. I realized that I'm a high visionary, very low integrator, bro. I'm not a systems and procedures guy. I'm not a good bean counter. I can make it rain. I can get the leaves in the door with almost anything, but integration and SOPs, that ain't my shit. And so I realized that's why I could never scale. And so I realized, I learned in that book what an integrator could do for me. I got an amazing VA now. bring in and recruit managers. Like I said, I'm still learning to train them, but I went and got integrators. That was the hardest part for me, is realizing... What are integrators? Basically, just like a person who doesn't really get the vision They are system and procedure-oriented people. Rocket fuel is associated with EOS, the book Traction, written by the same dude, but traction is part of the system or the result you get out of putting EOS in your business, entrepreneur operating system. It's an accountability tool. I sucked at holding people accountable. And so I went out and got people who were software experts, people who could integrate and manage projects, because that's not my shit. My shit is making the phone ring, selling, marketing, branding, speaking, teaching, leading.

I'm actually kind of glad you got on here right now, because you're speaking to me right now. Really?

Yeah, yeah. So that's what I love to do. And I realized that when I tried to do all of my own integration, I got caught up in desk work, man, like desk work is not my shit. In EOS, when I learned and trained a lot about it, they talk about something called HCRs. As a CEO, I want to act as though I'm a CEO, I want to handle the HCRs, the huge corporate relationships. Like if somebody's going to be in the community speaking on our brand as the brand ambassador, that needs to be me. Nobody knows it like me. Nobody's as passionate as I am. Nobody's going to lock in the contract just on a handshake in a conversation. That's my best and highest use. And so I was grinding it out at night, looking at freaking invoices and trying to write SOPs. And I'm like, I hate this shit. If this is the case, I don't want to grow a business. And then that's when I realized, go find people to do that. I read the book, Rocket Fuel led me to traction. And then readers or leaders, I realized, holy shit, man, I'm not cut out to do it all. If I want to scale, I got to empower people. I got to get people who are who are really great at what I'm not good at. And that's that's been the hardest transition for me is realizing that I can't handle everything. But if I want to grow, I would just hire a players are a players who are amazing at what I hate doing.

Right. I like that you just spoke to me really, really. really strong with how you, how you are and how you're pushing things off. And that's kind of like where I'm at right now. It's kind of like, I have SOPs and all of that in place, but when it comes down to actually like the computer systems and stuff like that, man, fuck, take me away from that shit because it mind fucks. crap out of me.

And look, I value the hell out of it. Like I don't know where I'd be without my CRM and house call pros and the service fusion and the SOPs and the sales flow charts and the lead followups. Like bro, it's fucking amazing. All that helps.

But I'd much rather be exactly what you said, out talking to people, explaining about what we can do for them. Because at the end of the day, I'm very passionate about what the business is and what it can bring. No one else is gonna be able to do that. If I'm continuously just sitting right here doing all of this crap, then I can't be out there doing that.

That's hard to do both. Like my sales guys, we do, we call it a in-home consultation. And so we try to do everything cadenced in our sales organization. And I treat my sales team like we are a third party sales organization. And so we speak in the same cadence, like everything we take on a LEEDs, an in-home consultation or a home energy audit, very, very specific about that. Because I knew that I would not be able to hire sales guys who had the same passion for building a business that they didn't build. So I had to create a playbook, build an offense that they could run around their strengths and weaknesses. So when I train my sales guys, they come back from their first four or five in-home consultations, no bag. I couldn't close. It's like, did you get to the kitchen table? Yes. Did you use the sales playbook? Did you go by the host? Yes, yes, yes. All right, I'm going to go back with you. And I go back with them in the home. knock, knock, knock. Hey, I wanted to go over a few things that so-and-so might have missed. My name's Travis. I'm the CEO of the company. Oh, absolutely. We can sit down on the porch. Five minutes later, we close. The truck and the sales guy's like, bro, what did you do? I'm like, dude, you watched me. Like I didn't do it. I didn't do anything. He said, you didn't even do anything different than me. It's like, no people can sense the confidence, confidence, passion, that genuine, uh, brand belief. Like it's in my blood that shit oozes from your pores. And so, My challenge has been, how do I get people to get on board and eventually that oozes from their pores? And for me, it's like, I got to live it, eat it, sleep it, digest it. Every time, whether I'm around my staff or not, I am on brand 24-7, because that's how I feel like they'll pick it up. It's because our core values are my core values. And here's the discipline level that I can live life at in the business and thrive. They can pick it up. But you just got to find the right people. And so that's probably a long-ass answer to your question of what's hard enough is,

Oh, man, that's more the better, actually, because I mean, people are going to pick up on things in different ways. But I mean, they like for people to go in on different things. How do you manage your mindset?

Well, I'm going to probably flip the script on this response. You can't see it, but this red neon light right here says legacy. And it's about a four foot long neon light. And bro, I didn't even realize what that meant. I had one mentor growing up as a young kid. It was my great grandfather. And he died at 98 years old. COVID got the best of him. But I wrote his eulogy, and he was freaking Superman to me. He was just that dude. When he went to town, everybody knew Mr. Wallace. And when Mr. Wallace walked up to a restaurant, they opened the door for him. But he treated everybody with respect, and he was just always that guy. So after COVID, when that happened, he always thought legacy for our family. Everything that he did, he wasn't even going to do it if it wasn't going to be a legacy impact. He spoke to me, my brother, my aunts, my uncles, like we were always somebody. And so when he passed away, when I wrote that eulogy, I just vowed to myself that I'm going to start thinking about legacy impact in everything that I do. So I got four kids, man. God gave me an amazing second chance at marriage. My wife is a blonde bombshell, smoking hot milf, who loves fashion. She's a fashionista. She's got an online business selling clothes. Two amazing kids that I raised the majority of our life. my two amazing kids. I'm 22 years old, 18, 17, 11, and I actually have one-year-old and a two-year-old grandson. That is how I keep my mindset right. I traded my family and the first business I had for business. I don't fuck around like that anymore. My priorities are my priorities. And so the way I keep my mindset right is I don't miss my kids' events. I drop my son off at school every day. When my daughters want to go out on a date, now they have to make time for me because they're freaking teenagers. I don't miss that. I don't miss events. My wife needs me to show up for her. I show up. In order for me to show up as a dad, a husband, a business partner to my family, I can't dick around with my schedule. I got to be dialed. My wife is so amazing. Like, I'm 43, man. Her and I have an amazing, intimate relationship. Our marriage is awesome. But I can't do that if I'm a fat slob. And so that's how I keep my body dialed in. I enjoy prepping food, meal prepping. And I've always talked to my kids about health and wellness. They didn't believe shit until dad was doing it till I was doing it when they saw me meal prepping and getting the gym and not compromising on church and reading the Bible. Kids don't care a damn thing about what you say. What are you going to do? I realized that my kids don't want to hear nothing I got to say. They want to see the receipts. So I'm 43. When dad says, I'm going to have a six pack by the summer, I'm going to do it. Or else my kids are going to, I'm going to let them down. And if I'm willing to let them down, I'll let anybody down. So it's legacy mindset is I got an 18 year old daughter who wants to take over this business. If I'm a loose cannon, I ruined it for her. I got an 11-year-old son who's a dog athlete that says, dad, I want to go to the NFL or I want to go to the NBA. Well, you know what? The number one reason why young athletes don't make it that far is dad's not in their life. and they don't have a winning mindset. So my job as a dad is to get that dude prepared for the next level. And if he, when he gets to college and it's time to work out and train and eat right, he's going to have been watching me and doing that with me his whole life. So to hell with what you say, you're going to talk about it. You got to be about it. And that's how I keep my mindset, right? Dude, I look at my family and like, I can't, I gotta be that dude for them.

Right. That's awesome. I like that. That's perfect because I mean, at the end of the day, we don't listen to shit that anybody says, but we'll definitely watch you. And if you sit there and say that you're going to do something and then you don't do it, then eventually we're going to pick up on that and not listen to you at all. It's like a wolf crying for, for help or like a, you know, someone crying for a wolf. Um, what's been the best part? of this whole thing, your whole journey?

Probably what I just said, man.

All of that and dialing all of that in.

I take it for granted a little bit that When times get tough in the business, we'll get through a cashflow crunch and it seems like more money's going out than what we got coming in. And we're just getting in that, my sales team might get laxed or we get a bad review or something like that happens. I could sulk in that, but you know what, man, I get to drop my son off at school every single day. And if my kids are off of school and I want to take off, I take off. That's been the best part is what entrepreneurship brings is hard. Don't get me wrong. Shit ain't easy. It's not for the faint at heart. Don't listen to all the gurus on YouTube that's telling you anybody could do it. Nah, bro, not anybody could do it. But if dropping your kids off at school and not missing anything in your family's life and you know having time for Building real experiences. I'm not talking about the vacations and all that stuff because that comes but that's been the biggest part dog is that that I love for me is My 18 year old daughter was gonna just get out of high school and do what everybody else is gonna do go to college and probably fucking turn into a liberal and then just not, you know, and she was like, nah, I want to be like my dad. I want to, when I, when I pick a man, I want my, I want my man to have the same values as my dad. Right. And so that's been the biggest reward is, uh, watching all of my hard work for 20 years, um, pay off in my children.

That's awesome. That's gotta be really exciting to, uh, watch and to see and to know that you've changed a lot of different things.

That's my legacy, bro. And so getting to live it. I know a lot of people concern themselves with leaving a legacy, but like I'm 43. I heard a thing the other day. Some people love Dave Ramsey. Some people hate him. I like a lot of what he says and does. I've been a guy who wasn't scared of debt my whole life. So I'm 43. I'm like, bro, I want to listen to Dave Ramsey. I don't want no more damn bills. I'm done with bills. But anyway, he was interviewing a guy named I think Graham McDowell. I don't know. Maybe not. That might be a famous actor. But long story short, the dude said, you make real money after you're 50. He said, if you've been trying things in your 30s and 40s and stuff almost worked and didn't work, and when you 48, you tried a bunch of shit and it didn't work, you're good. When you're 50, man, you're not getting any younger. You're probably not gonna get a whole lot smarter. You're probably as smart as you'll be at 50. You still feel as good as hopefully when you're 43, take care of your body. And so that's where I'm at, man. I got a lot of time left. I want to build something that my kids can take over and that legacy mindset of knowing that I'm just getting started. I could have. I could have fell flat on my face in 21 and said I don't have it in me to start over, but. I started from the bottom again and. Built it up for that legacy mentality.

Nice. What are you excited for in 2025?

Dude, I try not to... I can't say I try not to. I guess some dudes watch sports 24-7. Some dudes drink beer. Some people have their thing. You know, I had horses and cattle up until I decided to refocus on this business. And so that was some of the distractions I had to remove. So I don't have many hobbies. But I've been rabbit-holing on this Trump thing, man. Just everything going on, I think we're literally about to enter into the best four years of entrepreneurship that we've ever seen. I think the majority of the country is starting to figure it out. this country is a economic machine, if Democrats, or let me just say, if politicians would get the hell out of the way and let small business owners turn this bitch around, I really think we are closer now than we've ever been. I'm super excited about that. I'm super excited for a break in inflation. That's hurt us entrepreneurs, but we're still here. Bob Kennedy to come in and change the health and wellness of the country, make America freaking good looking again. So I'm excited about that, dude. I'm excited about what this whole doge brings to the table and this whole golden age of America got me jacked up. Like, I know it sounds corny, but as an entrepreneur, like, bro, let's freaking go. Like, I've been out of government, on my back seems like for 20 years in some type of regulatory environment, licensing and insurance and compliance and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, get out of the way, bro. And so I'm really stoked about the future, at least the next four years on what it's going to look like for capitalists.

Yeah, I'm excited to see how that's going to be because when I got started, revamped the company again, that was when he was getting out of office and Dumbo took office and then we went through four years of hell. And this last year was definitely fucking hell when it came to finances, because dude, it seemed like we made, we made more money, but we didn't make more money. And then I started hiring people. And when I hired people and stuff like that, too, you know, you see more money going out as well, but at the same time, you've got to have that in order to grow some more. And then now you're at a dead point, and it's kind of like that.

Yeah, no, it's crazy. Both of us, in your business, my business, home service, home, and we say home and light commercial, because I'm not interested anymore in doing generators and the big nuclear plants and stuff like that. But I like to work at hotels, doctor's office, urgent cares, grocery stores. They all have backup and standby power. So I do light commercial. But in those industries, we pretty much, you and I got the same avatar client. Well, you can scale both of these businesses as big as you really want. And it's fun, don't get me wrong, it's fun to like build the machine. But to what, you know, everything has a price. Do you wanna pay your price? Do you wanna be five, 10, 20, 30, 100 million in revenue? Or maybe the type of person that's, I want to be 2 to 3 million and I want to make 750 to the bottom line, and I'm totally good with that. I now look at everybody in each category, I just got mad respect for them. When I first started in business, I didn't understand people that wanted to stay small. I'm like, what the hell is wrong with you? I want to build a $150 million business. And then the dudes that I passed up on the top line, they passed me up on the bottom line because I stayed small in their box. And before you know it, they built wealth. I was growing the top line number and they were growing the bottom line number. And I learned so much from watching that. And now it's like, You don't have to be big. I'm not going for a specific number. I'm going for a specific net margin. And it took me this long to build the right KPIs and get the right people in my corner to do it.

Yeah, I'm about to make some changes. I think one of them is going to be the office. Uh, staff, I think I need to actually not have a VA and actually have somebody that's more local. We can feed off each other and then we can go to these events and stuff like that. And they're more note takers and I'm more presenter.

Yeah, bro. Uh, I was going to say that one thing. I don't know. I know you'd probably get leads like I do from every which way to Sunday, but we're about to approach the home and garden show season, bro. We absolutely annihilated. Short story, my wife, she's in clothing and fashion, right? So she bought a mobile bus and turned it into a mobile boutique. And so she starts doing all these like holiday shopping markets and shit like that. And so we're both her and I are like seven day a week entrepreneurs. So I'm like, Hey, what do you got going on this and such week? We're just going over to calendar. And she's like, well, I got this event, this event, and she's got, I got this holiday expo event in Baton Rouge. And it's like 50,000 women that come in and go Christmas shopping, uh, after black Friday. And it's all like small vendors. And so I couldn't think about anything other than the fact that on the calendar, my wife and I had no time together. So I'm like, you know what? I called the venue that's having the holiday expo. I'm like, you guys got any more extra booths? Yeah, yeah, matter of fact, we do. What kind of boutique do you have? I said, I don't have a boutique. I got a generator company. He's like, what? I said, I sell home generators, bro. And 99% of the time, he's like, well, I'm not interested in you coming. I'm like, bro, hear me out, hear me out. So I'm a Kohler dealer. And older generators make all these new colors. You can get your generator custom colored. I said, I got a red one in stock. I got a green one in stock. I'm going to show up. And 99%, when we close on generator sales, the husband looks to the wife and says, babe, what do you think? And if the wife says, do it, the guy writes the check. So I got 50,000 buyers coming into this thing. I just want to be next to my wife. So no shit. We show up to a holiday expo. I tell my sales guys, dude, wear a Santa hat, an elf hat. I don't give a shit what you got to do. We are going to sell generators. And my wife popped up to do jewelry and clothing. I popped up on the side of her. We paid $500 for that booth. We sold $45,000 worth of generators at that show. Damn. Nice. So, like, you can get leads if you are creative enough, if you hustle enough. And my deal was my wife and my daughters are going to be at this Holiday Expo, and I want to be with my family. So, if we're going to go to work, let's go make some money. That's what's up. We do well. So show season's coming up and that's my favorite time of year.

That's what we're about to do is get into some shows this year. I haven't done that before.

Oh, I love it. Like, I don't know if you got it in your capacity, but like, even if you got a, you probably seven and a half hours, come do a show with us. And dude, watch how we work a show. It's our best lead source, highest closing percentage. And we do abstract shows. We got a boat, sport, and RV show. in the last weekend in January, we will be the only home service company in that bitch, and we will close because it's our avatar buyer. Who walks into a boat sport and RV show? Dudes with money, like husbands and wives looking to buy a jet ski or a side-by-side. You don't have to always go to a generator show or a home improvement show, who is my avatar buyer? My CRM has taught me 150K household income, likes outdoor hobbies, probably an entrepreneur or a high-level husband and wife, lives on a corner lot, two dogs in the home. 99% of our buyers have two dogs in the home. Dude, I'll go sell generators at a pet expo. Because if my avatar buyer is in the building, I'm showing up.

I got you. I like that. I like that. I really do. I didn't even think of it that way. How did you find out that your average person or whatever is someone with two dogs?

Because when my sales guy is doing home consultation,

the right stuff down.

CRM, I fleece them for data. And our girl in the office that supports our sales guys, she'll ask our sales rep all kinds of questions about the house. Google Earth the house. If they got a dog kennel, they got a boat, two car garage, maybe an expensive outdoor kitchen with a pool. Then we tag all of that stuff in the job. So when we close, The AI in our system can cross-reference all of that. So our average buyer is 55, freaking gray hair, doctor, two cars, two dogs, hunting camp, travel baseball. We put as much shit as we can find because once you do 3,000, 4,000 appointments and you dial in, I got a 35% close percentage, all right, let's go study who we sell to.

Now you can go get in front of those people and sell it. Forget about everybody who does it. Instead of wasting all the other shit.

That's right. So when we do direct mail, I know exactly who to direct mail. You don't check three or four of these boxes, I'm not spending 65 cents on a mailer for that person. I got you. Probably the coolest thing I did coming up in 2025, I could have said, this is what I'm super excited for. So my son is an athlete, he's 11, plays travel baseball. So we service area about two hours from HQ. We play most of our baseball tournaments in that same vicinity, basically where my customer base are. Travel baseball across the country has grown into a machine of a business. You got these eight quad baseball parks that every freaking mom pulling up in a Denali, a Range Rover, dad's in a F2 Feezy or a freaking LTZ, Denali truck. Bro, these dudes are all my customers. So what is the cost of a lead? When you start to learn your customer acquisition costs, you can do stuff like this. It costs me $300. 28-inch hardball bat. I pop up a sales guy in the ballpark. I got an inflatable generator made. We give away the bat. They scan the QR code to enter to win the bat. They put in their name, phone number, email address. The end of the weekend, I give the bat away to some little Johnny, and I got like 400 or 500 leads that are all pre-qualified to work in that area wherever we gave away the bat. So if we close one deal, the $300 bat was covered, and we got crazy amounts of leads that we didn't have to pre-qualify with. Can you afford it?

Because if you're in the- That's what I did at a realtor thing event, a free house wash. Ended up getting 80 people the entry and got all their stuff. And then now we basically they're locked into our system and we can market to them and end up picking up a job here and there from out of those people.

You can hit them up for reputation management, dude. You could use it for, we send out our company newsletter now to all of our lead lists. We send out seven day weather forecast. If you're going to subscribe to my shit, I don't want it to constantly be a marketing deal. I try to give some value along the way to keep them engaged in our stuff. And so that's through our content. We got a podcast. We got a YouTube channel. We're trying to actually in twenty twenty five, we want our YouTube channel to kind of be like a small reality TV series inside of our business or some stuff that people normally wouldn't show. And so trying to keep the content spicy, stay relevant, be different. I read a book. You got to read this book called audio book too when you're on the go. It's a great audio book. If you were to ask me in the podcast, because I do it in my podcast, give some book recommendations to the audience that could get your mind right, read them in this order. Blue Ocean Strategy. I'll summarize it. I love Patrick Bette David. That's how I found out about the book. PBD is pretty awesome. Blue Ocean Strategy basically tells, here's the brain of all my competition out here in this red ocean carving each other up, doing the same shit, racing to the bottom. What if I do this? Like Nic Staten right now is making content and telling the dudes in pressure washing, here's the freaking, here's the business, bro. Here's the game. Like, I'm not bullshitting you. Follow what I'm doing wherever you are. You know what? If it's a next town over, good luck, dog. You got to catch me. But here's the business. When I started doing that, giving the game away for free, taking a page out of Harmozy's book, Doug, I got industry authority. You have industry authority. Dudes are looking at you like, bro, I'm going to follow this guy. Well, the cascading effect of that is the customers, when they type it in, they find a Nic Staton when they type in power washing or whatever. So I realized my trade secrets, share them. I ain't worried about my competition. I know what kind of grinder I am. If you ain't built like that, I'm not worried about you anyway. And so that blue ocean changed my mind, changed my business life. And then I jumped into your next five moves by PVD, bro, staying ready to act, get out of the paralysis by analysis, always planning five moves ahead. Easiest way to write a business plan in the history of the world is read that book. And then his second book, Choose Your Enemies Wisely, freaking brilliant. Try to figure out in the blue ocean, man, we get bombarded by regulatory and compliance. You got to have a permit to get a permit, to get a permit, to get a permit. In some of the downtown areas we work, you got to have a permit that the frigging fumes are not going to kill the native trees. I mean, just crazy. Gas permit, electrical permit, noise permit. So when I got into business, all I heard was my competitors bitching and griping about the regulatory side. And I'm like, bro, I ain't doing that. I'm not letting some regulatory compliance agency dictate the success of my business. Instead of running from the compliance, I'm going to run to it. So I started going directly to them saying, biggest problem our business is chucks in a truck who don't get permits and making them realize, holy shit, this guy's serious. So I started pursuing relationships. with all the permit offices, the regulatory, the compliance, and saying, I want to do it right. There's only one way that's going to last forever. And I don't want one of you schmuck bureaucrats telling me I can't install generators. So tell me how you want to do it. And if you listen to these people enough, they'll tell you exactly the cheat codes you need to thrive under their governance, instead of running and griping and complaining like all the other guys. I'm making friends with these companies, inviting them into my office on Fridays to train my staff. It's given them the ego effect of their head this big when really I'm just building relationship, building relationship, planting seeds. So now they don't give me as much crap. When I file a permit, if it doesn't come through quick enough, pick up the phone, make a phone call, problem solved.

Got you.

So those books, man, reframe my thinking as an entrepreneur so much.

I like that. I like how you're super dialed in as well, too. Like you said, you got to with as much stuff as you got going on.

And getting that way seven days a week is still the challenge. Don't get me wrong, but... Yeah, I understand. Business is a sport, bro. You gotta love to play this game. It's a game. If you don't love to play the game, it'll eat you up.

Oh, it definitely will, for sure. It's not, like you said, it's not for the faint heart. Everybody hops in it and thinks that it's super easy because of YouTube and all this other shit, but it's not. Not when you're actually growing. I mean, a lot of these people just have glorified jobs because they're just a one man show. They do every damn thing.

You know, so each his own. If somebody decides they want to grow, I'm no expert, but I give free advice on what not to do all day long. I can tell you I wouldn't do that if I were you or and some people listen.

That's just like what you're going back to. And you said just a minute ago, giving out all that free game. It's not hurting you. It's only really it's helping you. And at the end of the day, not everybody is even going to do anything. Some people are going to implement some of that. And those people that actually implement it, if you actually watch them and see them and notice them doing it, they're actually doing really good. But then the people that just sit there and hop into the comments and bitch about you sitting there, giving out all of that or message you and say, why are you doing this and doing that? It's like, man. Too small of a mind, you're not understanding. Whatever, bro.

Yeah. Look, the Harmozy method is what we call it. It's worked well for me. I've seen it.

Is that in the Blue Ocean book? What's that? What you're talking about, the Harmozy?

Alex Harmozy is who I'm talking about. Okay. $100 million leads, $100 million offers. He's a young entrepreneur, worked a lot. I mean, a couple hundred million bucks for sure. He's an influencer, but he's also a smart entrepreneur. What I mean by him, his method, he was the first dude to start giving away the entrepreneurial game. I mean, Grant Cardone's probably the OG, but New Age is Alex. But what I meant by that is, I have the receipts to prove that it worked. So when I got into this industry, I didn't want to be the cheap guy. Like that was the last thing I wanted to do was be the freaking cheap guy, because I was that already in my other business. And that's a race to the bottom. So what we call it is, we don't say the most expensive company, we just call it the premium price provider, basically with the highest price in our industry. Well, it's better if you just acknowledge and own that upfront. But you just have to deliver on the value constantly. And that's where a lot of companies fall is you don't have to say you're the most expensive guy. Just do the absolute best work, have the best marketing, have the best graphics, have the best brand strategy, brand story, best employees. Just cultivate that and your price and value goes up. So I did a YouTube video one time, I tell my graphic design camera guy that works with me, I'm like, Nic, I got this idea for our YouTube channel. I'm like, bro, I want to debunk the $10,000 generator. I'm basically going to take a whiteboard and I'm going to build one of our estimates on it at our cost and actually show people that this shit's not as cheap as it used to be. Like Chevy and Ford trucks don't cost 40 grand anymore. the industry has changed, cost has changed. I get on a whiteboard, we turn the camera on, it's on my YouTube channel, but I freaking broke the price down, start to finish. This is what I make, here's the profit margin, and now I got to pay all these guys and got all these trucks and parts inventory and all this stuff. Well, private equity is popping in and out of our business pretty hard right now, because they're buying up a lot of HVAC, and it's very closely related. Big private equity company buys my number one competitor, and they were trying to raise their prices and couldn't figure out how to do it. Their general manager pulls up my YouTube video in a manager's meeting. and basically tells all the region managers, watch this jackass, plays my video on debunking the cheap generator. After the manager's meeting over there, regional vice president calls me. He's like, man, would you come meet with us at our office? And I'm like, here we go. Somebody is about to make me some type of buyout offer. And basically what they told me was like, that video just changed our industry. That allows all of us to raise our prices, and make more money, give a better service, because somebody went on the internet and said, here's exactly what it costs. So when you wanna set the market, get public about it. And that actually, like I said, I heard the receipts from my number one competitor saying basically, thank you, because that allowed all of us to come up. So when we all come up in price, people don't think one, Whoa, I'm going to have competition. I get it. I'm not the only game in town. Why don't we at least make a few bucks while we do this shit? Cutting each other's throat for a couple of pennies. So that method of thinking really, really helped our business grow too.

That's what's up. That's nice. That's a good outlook on that, because in our industry, it's very cutthroat. There's so many different people that do that stuff. But let's go ahead and stop that, because we're at 60 minutes. We went over a little bit, but it is what it is, because you went in, and I just wanted to listen to what you had to say. I'm sure everybody else will enjoy it, too, because I know I definitely did. I'm going to go back and actually listen to this again.

Episode two on my podcast. You come on my podcast and we'll shoot a sequel.

Let's do it.

Prime mover podcast is ours. Find us on the website, but I'll get that episode started up. They will shoot it soon.

Yeah, let's do that. I appreciate you coming on here tonight and explaining a little bit about where you came from and this whole journey that you got going on in your legacy and stuff like that. It's very intriguing. But thank you and we'll talk again. Y'all have a good night.

Thanks so much for tuning into this episode. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you consume podcasts. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. And if you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. And remember, pressure doesn't break you, it makes you. Until next time, friends.