From DoorDash to $81K/M With This Overlooked Business Transcript, AI Summary & Key Points

So, in August, we did 81,000 in revenue. Holy  crap. And how long have you been at it? 85 days. [laughter] And the crazier part is [music]  as we're sitting here, September is just begun. We have $54,000 on the calendar for September.  That's wild. I never had a internship. I never got my degree. I [music] had no work experience. I  had really nothing.

I was driving Door Dash and I don't want to be in that situation. $500 of setup  and we were ready to go. That was a oneman show. The thing I get personally most excited about,  [music] we are in a time period right now where there is an ever diminishing amount of skilled  laborers. Way more people are retiring than there are people that are starting.

You have so  many service types that have a market rate that is just completely made [music] up by whoever  the five people that offer the service are. There's no reason that [music] that cost $10,000  and no one's thinking about it. No. And it will always be overlooked because people they don't  understand it. They think that it is harder or more complicated than it really is.

Yeah. [music]  The way I wanted to run this, I'm not a licensed. Just have them handle the install part of it,  right? And when you do the math on what they're going to make, then they do 16 jobs each and  they make an average of 500 bucks a job. I mean, that's a really good setup for them as well.  They're going to make an extra $8,000 a month. So, you don't need to ever go there or touch  it or do it.

I go there twice a month. My guest today as a 25-year-old went from  delivering for Door Dash to making $80,000 a month. And he started this business  less than 3 months ago with less than $500. He subcontracts out all the work. And  in this video, we cover everything you need to know to launch this business. And at the end,  we talk very specifically about how to find customers for cheap.

also how to find the right  subcontractors on the right platforms because that's the whole business here. You don't need  experience. You don't need a college degree. You don't need much money. You just need to watch  this episode and actually do what Parker talks about doing. This is legitimately one of the best  episodes I have ever filmed. Please enjoy.

So, what's your background? So, I am originally from  Chicago. Was a division one soccer player and then was a professional soccer player. Wow.  What school? Northern Illinois. Oh, nice. I played semi-professionally in Michigan with a team  called Kalamazoo FC and we lost in the national championship and I was ranked like the number four  player to watch under 21 in the league.

Oh jeez. And I got an opportunity to go pro and I was like  this is my chance. So left, went and played pro soccer for one season. at the end of that season  had a small knee injury that really just got worse and worse and worse and then kind of decided  that I had really scratched the itch of playing soccer and that I was ready to just wrap it up.  You know, I had the goal of being a pro soccer player my whole life and I got there and it really  wasn't as glamorous as I had hoped for.

Yeah. And so I decided I was done. That was right as my uh  girlfriend at the time was graduating college. Gave us a chance to finally move in together.  We got engaged and then that was kind of like my my point where it was like sink or swim, you  know. I I never had a internship. I never got my degree. I had no work experience. I had really  nothing.

Uh I was driving Door Dash and just trying to do something. Ended up taking a loan  from my girlfriend for $3,000 to start a cleaning company in 2023. So your girlfriend graduates  college. What put you onto a cleaning business? Yeah. So it was not my first choice. I mean, it  was like my 10th choice. I had tried a dozen other things. I tried to be a fitness content creator.

I tried to launch a white label supplement brand. I did everything right. At some point, I was  really just I had exhausted my runway. You know, it' been like 6 months since I had worked. Now  I'm engaged. I've got my fiance who's working as a civil engineer on construction sites like in the  100 degree heat working 10 11 hour days. and she's coming home and I'm like sitting at my laptop  trying to edit a fitness Tik Tok and hope that it goes viral and I'm like all right I need to I  need to do something and even if

she doesn't say anything you're just like h and her mom was saying  stuff you know [laughter] so that stings even more me yeah and you know I didn't know at the time  honestly but you get the feeling and you just also like I I'm a prideful enough person where I don't  want to be in that situation you know I actually saw a Tik Tok video of a guy talking about he had  a cleaning business a remote cleaning business and I was like, "This is cool.

This is tangible. Makes  sense to me." I went to my girlfriend and I said, "I don't have any money. You know, you're the one  paying the bills right now. Like, can we do this?" And she said, "Yeah, I'll you I'll loan it to  you." And the guy let me pay like in installments. And we started the business. And I started  cleaning myself. Like, I would sell jobs.

I I went to Walmart and spent a hundred bucks on a vacuum  and a Swiffer and a bottle of multi-purpose. And went and cleaned college apartments. I was billing  myself out at like 40 bucks an hour, which was way better than Door Dash. then slowly learned the  business like how to actually delegate and how to not be the the means of production but rather  be the person running the business.

That was end of 23 and I ran that business for just about 2  years. That kind of skill set was what helped me start my holiday lighting business which I still  own and still run at the end of 24. Similar type of thing. I started just putting the lights up  myself, you know, found some installers pretty shortly thereafter. And once I knew the business,  we we ended up kind of taking off with that.

And um I sold the cleaning business at the end of  25. That was my first real like giving myself a little buffer. You know, honestly, probably  it was undervalued when I sold it. But to me, you know, someone who had zero dollars to their  name 18 months prior, it was like a I could get multiple six figures for it. And that was  life-changing money at the time.

It really just bought me the flexibility. And then January of  2020 or February of 2026, we finished the holiday lighting takedowns. Cleaning business was sold.  I was like, what am I going to do now? You know, like now I've got nine months until we're  looking at holiday lighting again here. Yeah. So, I kind of went back to scrolling and and looking  for other things that people were doing and um stumbled across, you know, several people in like  a 3-day period talking about water filtration and never heard anything

about it. Where did you come  across people talking about it? Just Instagram, Tik Tok, you know, um there's a guy Anthony Jory,  there's uh Rob the Bank, he made a and he's like a doesn't never talks about bluecollar stuff and  it was a I never see his content. Super obscure video. He's like, "The most underserved business  model in 2026 is a water."

And I was like, "What is this guy talking about?" And then a  good friend of mine posted that he was starting something on an Instagram story he made. He's  like, "I'm starting a water business. Like, let me know if you guys want a water system." And  I was like, "Wow, this this can't be coincidence that I've never heard of this." And now in 5  days, I'm seeing three people online all talking about this.

So, I was like, "Let's just jump right  away on it." Hey, if you're liking this episode, please just hit subscribe. These episodes take  a ton of work, a whole team of people, a lot of equipment, and if you want to say thanks, just hit  subscribe and maybe share this with a friend. So, you always see waves on different home service  industries. Pressure washing, bounce house, house painting, home cleaning, windows, gutter  cleaning, gutter install.

Absolutely. And so, you were just seeing all those signals for  water filtration. Yes. Same thing. I was like, people that don't talk about bluecollar stuff are  talking about this. You know, it's like when your barber starts talking about Bitcoin with you and  you're like, "All right, we're at the top." Yeah. Yep. You're like, "I need to start selling."

Well,  this is kind of the opposite where it's like when people that know nothing about this start to talk  about it. Yeah. And it's just a quiet murmurings, then you're like, "All right, we're we're early."  Like, there's something here. We just moved really quick. Thankfully, this was my third time doing  it now. So, I knew like really quick how to pop up a website, set up a scheduling platform, set up  a payment process.

What did you do specifically? Like, what did you use to build a website? Yeah.  the website. I actually use Claude. Okay. Yeah, that was my first time doing that which was very  fun. Uh I'm a big Claude fan and um getting to like actually do end to end like development. You  know, it's kind of funny to call it that as cuz we don't know what we're doing.

You're just  kind of watching and clicking allow and you know going from there. But uh built the website  on Claude classic like Google Workspace domain GHL white label snapshot for a CRM jobber for a uh  scheduling platform. form and I was like all right that's my tech stack right email phone scheduling  CRM sorry did you use go high level for phone as well yes yep lead connector so go high level  for your CRM customer relationship management lead connector and then uh jobber for scheduling  specifically claude for

the website what did I miss Google workspace for the domain email y okay  exactly what I would have used basically yeah and and I mean that whole tech stack is 300 bucks a  month maybe I mean depending on what you pay for the snapshot maybe even less Yeah. And then we got  a a general liability plumbing insurance policy which I think was about 180 a month, something  like that.

And that was it. We were live, you know, $500 of kind of setup and and we were  ready to go. But the thing people overlook is actually because of the nature of like the way I  wanted to run this. I'm not a licensed plumber. I I don't really know this stuff that well. I wanted  to partner with private plumbers and just have them handle the install part of it, right?

You  got to know enough to really be able to hold a conversation with those guys. It's actually easier  with the customers than it is with the plumbers. Yeah. Cuz they don't know anything about water  filters. No. Most customers are very very naive to it. They basically just know whatever they got  in a pamphlet or I can always tell when a customer is just regurgitating like chat GPT.

Yeah. You  know, and they're asking me a follow-up question. I'm like, you don't even really know what you're  asking me. But the plumbers, you get on the phone with them and they're like, "Well, what type  of pipe are we using and what's the fitting and what's the bypass size and what do you do about  this?" And in this case and in this area of town, all these people have crawl spaces, but they're  only and you're very quickly like over I'm in over my head.

And your business lives or dies on  the plumbers. They're doing all the physical work, right? Absolutely. The customers, that's  sales, right? That's marketing and sales, which you've done before. But the plumbers  is like I have to know enough about this industry to not sound like an idiot because  if I don't have good plumbers on my team, I don't have a team.

Yes. Absolutely. And  the second thing was I just old-fashioned way went took the plumbers out for coffee or  a lunch, sat down manto man, face to face, and just had a conversation. Hey, this is what I'm  aiming to do. This is what I've done in the past. I don't know everything about water softeners and  plumbing and water filtration right now, but I'm a quick learner.

And 30 days ago, I didn't even  know what a softener was. Yeah. So, why don't you explain to people what it is? Because it's kind of  regional specific, isn't it? Yes. Here in Texas, like I have under my sink a reverse osmosis filter  just for taste, but that's it. I have friends in other places that have a whole house. Like, what  is exactly? What are you selling?

Absolutely. So, the main kind of bundle that we sell, it's it's a  three-part. So, the first part is a resin softener that removes hardness or GPG, grains per gallon  from your water, which the easiest way to think about that is there are many rocks, not visible,  but very, very tiny rocks that float around in the water depending on where the water comes from.

That just beats up your pipes, your appliances, your your hair feels dry, your skin feels dry.  Some areas have super hard water, some areas have no hardness at all. That's the first component is  a resin softener. Hard water equals more rocks. Yes. Okay. Harder water, more rocks, more damage,  more dryness, you know, more bad. Okay. Now, then you look at the second component and that's  a whole home or what we call POE, point of entry, which just means the water gets filtered at the  point that it enters the whole

home, the main, like the road or whatever. Right. At the main.  Yep. And it's it's on the private property, but it's like right where your central shut off valve  would be for where your water comes into your house. Okay. Now then the second element is carbon  filtration. Carbon filtration again is a point of entry system. So it's for the whole house and  that is what removes the contaminants.

We'll call it the stuff that you don't want in your water.  Not rocks but things like chlorine, chloromine, chloroforms, halo acidic acids. Those are all just  buzzwords for stuff I don't want to be drinking. Yeah. Right. Or on my body. Yeah. Or on my body.  Exactly. the stuff that I, you know, imagine in your home showering in pool water every day.

You  get out of the pool and you want to shower because you've got chlorine all over you and then you go  take a shower and you're in just as much chlorine in your in your shower water. Yeah. So, that is  what a carbon block or carbon filter does. So, we our flagship system is resin and carbon to soften  and filter all of the home's water. And then we also couple that with what you have, which is a  pointofuse system, reverse osmosis.

And that is a either a tank or a tankless system that just goes  under the sink, draws water through it through a reverse osmosis membrane, which is the best form  of filtration, and then pushes it out a small dedicated faucet directly for drinking water. And  that's like an upsell. Yeah, we we like to sell it as a bundle and it kind of becomes our our unique  value proposition is like, hey, we charge the same or less than other people for a whole home  system and we include the drinking water system and that's just

that's just part of our bundle.  Yeah. So, that's kind of how we sell. It makes your close rate go up. Definitely. Okay. Yep.  What are your price points for these packages? So, we sell our our flagship which is a single tank,  a 10x 54 tank. So 10-in diameter, 54 in tall. A single tank that has both resin and carbon in it.  It's a mixed bed system, which just means it has both.

That tank with the RORO or reverse osmosis  drinking water. We sell that at $26.99 installed. Okay. Taxes included, install included, everything  included. Now, is that is that in the ground like at the main? It is most often installed in the  garage and tied directly just into the water line. Okay. So the water man we can do you know  whatever. So the water man at the street comes in right where the shut off would be.

It comes to  the garage or whatever and it goes there first. Yes. Okay. So it looks like a tall skinny water  heater. Yes. Okay. Exactly. Okay. It's just a tall black cylinder. Um and then there's a small  little like almost garbage can looking black tank that's called a brine tank. Okay. And you put salt  in that. That helps the resin softener function properly.

Okay. And 2,700 bucks. Y Okay. How much  of that goes to hardware, plumber, profit, etc.? So, at a $2,700 install, we will pay about $950  for all of the we'll call heavy machinery. So, the brine tank, the control valve, the actual  tank that has the carbon and resin in it, and then the RO system. So, those are all your main  components, about $950.

Okay. From there, we'll probably spend about $100 per job on miscellaneous  stuff like just pipe fittings, you know, salt, insulation if you're in a cold climate where you  need to insulate the pipes, things like that. So, that puts us to what $1050. We'll pay on average,  I would say, about $500 an install. So, to the plumber. To the plumber. Yeah.

And that that could  be as low as 400, that could be as high as 600, 650. Sometimes we'll add a little bit of markup  on top if the install is very difficult or we need to bury a system underground. Like that's a  lot of labor. So, but on that that classic system, I would say probably 450 to 500 to a plumber, 1050  for all materials. How long does it take him to do?

About 4 hours. Okay. So, you're shooting for  like 40 to 50% gross margin, give or take. Yeah. Yeah. I would say, you know, about about 40% gross  margin. Okay. So let's say you said 2,700, right? Yeah. So 2,700 minus 1,500. So call 1,000 bucks  in profit, gross profit. How much of that is like marketing costs or sales costs? Yeah. We right  now acquiring clients for like 175 bucks a client, which is really really cheap.

I don't expect it  to stay like that quite frankly. It's it's that's uncommon um from what I've seen. But I mean, I  even feel that a client acquisition cost of 300 or 350 is very justifiable. I mean, you're still  running the 3x return on whatever you're spending. Yeah. Cuz that puts your net margins closer to  30%. Yeah. Which is amazing for any business, especially home service.

What are the geographical  areas that need this the most? Where physically is your business? Cuz I South Florida, Chicago,  Wisconsin, Raleigh. Yeah. Yeah. So, the business is in Raleigh. Um, I did want to be able to have a  hands-on element to it. There's something nice for a business like this of just having the option to  step into the field, shake hands with a plumber, a customer.

So that's in Raleigh, North Carolina.  And to your first question, I've had a little bit of a mixed experience with this. I would have  thought that, you know, the areas that have the worst water would have the most demand, but  they also have the most people that have already been doing this, right? Yeah. So, you know,  you go to an area like let's say I mean here, right?

Dallas for Worth like this area. This is  going to be there's there's hard water here. Like there there's absolutely a need. You look at maybe  a Salt Lake City, absolutely super hard water, huge need, right? But there's a ton of companies  that have been selling softeners and filtration for a super long time, which isn't necessarily a  problem. But I think what like a market like mine, Raleigh, we don't really have hard water.

People  buy the softener because it kind of comes with the combo, but there's not a lot of need. Yeah.  there's a lot of need for the carbon filtration because they dump so much chlorine and chloromine  and other stuff like that into our water. So, what my market might lack in demand, it also lacks  in competitors. So, there's there's a lot fewer businesses that are selling this type of service.

Mainly, it's plumbers that are like, "Yeah, I could also do a softener if you want me to do  a softener." Yeah. Yeah. But they're not running Facebook ads. They're not like really trying  to acquire doing other stuff anyway, right? So, your plumbers aren't your competitors. And Raleigh  is has a good economy. It's got it's got like good average income.

So, I imagine a lot of what you're  selling is kind of fear. Like, they're just like, "Yeah, or or like they can afford it." So, they're  like, "Yeah, why wouldn't I? If I've got 2,700 bucks and I want my kids to probably have better  drinking water, that's a good investment to do." Yes. And that that's a lot of what it comes down  to is a lot of people they look at the price and what we do that's unique about our our kind of  marketing angle is our best performing ad.

We closed our first deal on $41 of ad spend and it  was just a static image ad that was a photo of our unit and it said $26.99 installed and that  was it. That that was it. What was the headline or text or I mean everything was just like whole  home plus drinking water $26.99 installed and the entire angle the entire thing we try to do is pick  up the scraps left behind by the billion-dollar companies like Cooligans Kinetico Leaf home water  where they come they do this big in-person sales process it's a really

elaborate thing they test  the water yes and the price point is 678,000 for honestly a very comparable system and we're  like following in their wake like picking up all the people that just got completely priced out.  Yeah. You know, because there are plenty of people that can afford that $8,000 system and they'll  go with them because they're a hundred-year-old company that has been doing this forever and  they know they're going to get a certain product and a certain experience.

Yeah. But there are so  many people that just purely cannot afford it or don't want like I can afford 8,000. I wouldn't  pay that. It to me it doesn't have that much value. Right. That it has to match the value.  Yes. And a lot of people are just the analogy I always love to use is like we we opened up a uh  a Chevy dealership next to a Ferrari dealership.

It's price anchoring. Exactly. They're they're  doing your heavy lifting. They're anchoring. So, if you put 2,700 bucks in the ad, you don't need  a killer sales guy. No. Which is great because you don't have to pay a sales guy 25% commission.  Nope. Quick word about today's sponsor, Beehive. They just launched something called community,  and it does something that I've never seen on any other platform.

Every newsletter and podcast  you publish gets added to your feed automatically, sitting right in front of the people who already  love your stuff. So, your biggest fans get a whole new way to find out what you love with no  algorithm getting in the way of what it wants them to see. and the conversation keeps going. The  replies that your readers send come out of your inbox and into a live town hall where everyone  can jump in.

You can add community access to any subscription you already sell in about 5 minutes.  Whether it's free, premium, fully paywalled, or paywalled with upsells inside. And yes,  of course, Beehive doesn't even take a cut of those earnings. A quick community post is easy to  write, and the feed is easy to scroll. So now you can keep your short form and your long form in  the same place instead of renting that space on social media.

Get more juice from everything you  produce. The links in the description below. We are more like order takers if anything. You know,  we we've set it up so you know our our whole angle is like imagine you just need to get to work  every day and work is far and you're tired of walking and the only place in your city that sells  cars is Ferrari and you just you can't afford a Ferrari so you've just been walking.

Yeah. But  walking socks and and you would love to just get a Chevy. You'd love to just get a Honda and just  get to work and get But you didn't know a Chevy existed. No. Until you see a Facebook ad. Yes. And  in a lot of cases, in some markets, Chevy did not exist. There was no Chevy dealership. And I said,  "Wait, why wouldn't we open a Chevy dealership here?

There's plenty of people that would buy a  Chevy if they could." and and you know now it's just genuinely just getting awareness because  once people know about the product and they have a conversation where they can feel confident  that this will solve their problems which again in my area they don't have crazy water problems  it's a pretty easy sale.

So what are the markets where this is an established industry there is  hard water so you said Salt Lake. Yeah I would say Salt Lake uh Denver is going to have really  hard water out west in general. a lot of out west, you know, you go closer to the mountains and  just in general, they do. A lot of markets in Texas do. Florida has notoriously hard water.

And, you know, it's a little it's a catch 22 because you go to a market like, let's say,  Orlando, and every single home in Orlando has a water softener. Every single home. So, are  they built like that? They're not built like that, but it's just standard practice. It's like  the water is so hard that you just thrash your appliances and your skin and your hair and and so  they just don't do it.

Nobody doesn't have a water softener. And so with that in mind, like while  those markets are definitely more competitive, they're also the TAM is 100%. Every home needs  it. In Raleigh, we have 3 million people. Probably less than a million of those people have a water  softener. I mean, you know, if there's a million households, probably less than half of them are  even interested in that as a product.

Yeah. How did you land on that price point? Two things. The  first thing was that I always wanted to target, when I made this step up, I said, I want to target  $1,000 net margin. That's my ideal price point to be at. Can I make $1,000 net? And that gives me  a lot of wiggle room for promos, for, you know, uh, bulk discounts, for referral programs, for  a lot of things.

And then the other thing that I thought is why wouldn't I just sell as many as  I can at this price point and my two options are either it's working phenomenally and we just keep  going or if it's working well but the margin isn't strong enough then we can just raise price once  we have a reputation that allows us to do it. So, I just said, "What's the cheapest I can go where I  can still target making $1,000 a job?"

And then I can inch my way up from there as I have a review  that or like a a reputation that allows me to do so. Yeah. What percentage of your customers are  you getting from Facebook ads? 95. What about the other five uh referrals? Yeah, referrals.  Business profile. Google business profile. Yep. We we have 52 fivestar reviews. Wow. In 80 days.  I think today is 85 days since we turned on ads.

Wow. I am like a psycho about Google reviews. Like  if we do a Google review for or we do an install for a client and I've been speaking with Zach  after the job's done, I'm going to say, "Zack, hey, do you mind leaving a review?" I'm going to  get Zach to do it. I'm going to say, "Hey, Zach, I'm going to be in the area actually later this  week. I would love to come by, drop off some extra water softener salt for you guys.

Would you mind  uh having your wife leave a review? Would you mind having your brother leave a review?" reciprocity,  right? You're saying like here's some free salt. Also, can you do me a favor? And it's not a if  you do this, then I'll be It's implied though. Yes. And that's okay. Absolutely. And I feel  like the the higher ticket your home service, the more you have to be a maniac about begging for  reviews because if I'm a landscaper doing $50 jobs all day, like whatever, I'm doing a hundred  of these a week.

But if it's a $3,000 ticket, a $3,000 item, then you're only going to do  so many of those. Yeah. Right. Few a week, 10 a week, whatever. So you got to get more  reviews. Absolutely. And we are the on the east side of Raleigh where our GBP pin is located.  So I guess like where our physical location is, we are the number one ranked water filtration  company.

Like if you look up water filtration in Raleigh and you are on the east side  of town, we are number one. And how long have you been at it? 85 days. [laughter] All  right. So let's start. So what day did you start the business? June 8th. June 8th. Like  you built the website that day or before that? That was like that was like go live. That was  go live.

You told the world that you existed, right? Building a website isn't really doing that.  No. No. You know that it's I could have built the web. I think I I filed the LLC maybe on like May  15th or something and then I spent three weeks like just getting everything ready. Okay, that was  those uh coffees with my plumbers and getting them on boarded and comfortable.

That was building  out my website, building my first ad creative, setting up my ads manager, little things like  that. June 8th was the day we said we're live, right? And that was ads on. Plumbers were eagerly  waiting work, you know, and that and that's kind of what I consider our first day one. Okay. Who  did your Facebook ads? I did. Okay. Yourself.

And you had experience with your other businesses?  Yes. Okay. How many ads did you launch with? Like one that still that static image, multiple  three static images. Okay. No videos. What are like your tips and tricks for making Facebook ads  successful for this industry? I think in water filtration specifically, you either have to sell  likeformationally like providing a client value as to why they should watch the video or read the  text or whatnot.

Or you just have to compete on on value. Um, and that's what we did. Everything was  just priceoriented, system quality at a low price. And we were again just trying to pick up scraps.  We didn't want to go compete with the established companies and try to say our product is better  or you know we didn't want any part of that. We wanted all the people that they left behind.

One  approach could be hey let's educate the market. Hey if you have hard water do this here's a test.  And you're like listen we want the people that are already educated. Mr. Algorithm go find the people  that already know that this cost 6 to 8 grand from the other guys. We're just going to tell them  we exist. This is what we cost. And we almost withheld information on the ads because we only  wanted an educated customer.

I didn't want the ad to attempt to educate someone. I wanted somebody  that would see the graphic and immediately know, oh, that's a softener, $26.99. I just got quoted  last month 8 grand. I better call these guys. And that was like, no one calls us and says they don't  know what we sell. No one calls us and says that they need an explanation. They call us and the  only thing we have to be prepared to to handle is one a comparison to the other system.

They've been  quoted on a genuine honest comparison and how that is relevant to their water. And then we have to be  ready to if like use that the discounted rate as our crutch without leaning on it entirely because  you you can't say yeah pick us over Connecticut because you know we're going to do something  better. We're not. We're going to do something we have a better system.

We won't. We don't. It's  really just we're going to do the same as far as you're concerned. you will get the same and you'll  get at a lower price. Yeah. And that was just our whole angle and and it really sold quite well.  So, do you use Advantage Plus for targeting? No, I turned most of that stuff off. In the beginning,  we actually started with just a broad targeting, just geo targeting.

That was it. Zip code or  or cities? Yeah, we did kind of radius. Yeah, more more like radius. And the way that Raleigh  is laid out is it's it's very sprawling. Kind of similar to a DFW where it's all one metro, but it  it's it's big. Yeah. Um so we kind of expanded out that way. We set a couple focal points and then  expanded radiuses around those focal points.

And then over time we've just now actually trained a  pixel and now we can actually do a little bit of retargeting and we can you know create lookalike  audiences and things like that. But before, were you saying Facebook, you know, we want 30  to 60 year old homeowners or did you just say this is the radius? You go Raleigh 30 to 60 age.  Yep. That's it.

Okay. Not male or female, just not homeowner. Nope. Okay. And now you're still doing  that, but with the pixel that's trained, but with a lookalike audience of people that have clicked  or called or purchased. Correct. Exactly. Okay. Well, it's interesting that you're Are you still  using static images only? Well, not only. We have um we have videos, but I will tell you statics are  the best performers.

Best one for you. It's it's almost frustrating for me to like carve out a day  to shoot a bunch of video ads and then the statics just take all the spend because we'll put them  on campaign where effectively meta just decides how to spend and it always picks the statics.  Yeah, always. Are you using AI to make the static images or not? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm a huge fan of  Dolly Chachi BT, you know, I think it's the best for images. For images, I really do think it is.  It's the only thing I use it for images. And if if I want to put myself like a person, then I'll  go for like a nano banana or something that can do a little higher level. But if it's just product  on backdrop with price and text, dolly every time.

And what type of conversion are you optimizing  for? We're optimizing for leads. So lead and then we just go direct instant form. Instant form.  And then it just drops it right in our CRM and we're we're on them right away. Interesting.  So, you don't send them to your website at all? No. Interesting. No. I've heard the opposite for  like higher ticket home service because they need to get more educated and but you said, right?

You  said thing we don't That's so interesting because you're telling the algorithm without telling them  I only want people that are interested and I'm going to optimize for people that give me a lead.  So, if I don't tell them too much information and they fill out their lead, then they are interested  and they're educated. Yep. Yeah. They're already educated and they're interested.

We're just  kind of taking out a lot of the it's low skill advertising is really what it is. We're taking  out a lot of the skill and probably I would say by October we will be rolling out like a VSSL like  a classic funnel. They go to a sales video of me explaining the product and all of that stuff. I  think we we'll probably sprinkle that in. But my objective is to use that on Google because Google  we can't train the same way.

Google we can pick our keywords like lowest cost softener or you know  we can we can target to sell for certain keywords and then when they click dump them right into a  funnel with a VSSL of me explaining the product because I'm going to assume that the buying  intent is going to be lower and the education is going to be lower on Google than it will be  on Meta with the way that we're advertising.

So, you're not running Google ads at all right now?  Not at all. What about not LSA either? No. So, for LSA, it's very hard to target water filtration  specifically. So, you'd almost have to do plumbing general, which then you're just going to I'm going  to get a lot of stuff we just don't want. I think the cost per lead is too high to justify because  LSA is still relatively new and there's a thousand categories that could be on there, but there's  only hundreds, right?

They're just kind of rolling out more over time. Yeah. They don't have water  filtration or water softeners. They don't have those as categories. Okay. So, that's just still  like blue ocean for you. Like, oh yeah. No Angie, Thumbtac, Home Advisor, none of that. We just  honestly, we haven't been operationally ready for it. Yeah. We're selling already the maximum  amount of jobs that we can fulfill.

So, I just partnered with a third plumber who's now ready to  start taking jobs. He's actually doing his first job right now. Um, I was like, "Good luck, cuz  I'm going to be unavailable for a little while, but I'm sure he'll be fine." And um really the the  constraint for us has been having product in hand and being able to uh fulfill it. Yeah. And and  really that that's been it.

Or people not knowing their homes very well, which is kind of something  I didn't expect to deal with, but I asked someone, "Do you have a power supply in your crawl space  so we can install in the crawl space?" Yes. No, they don't. And because we don't do an in-person  sales appointment, my plumber shows up and says, "Parker, there's no power in the crawl space  here."

Yeah. So, we've been running into a little bit of that. And then we have to push out three  weeks because they have to get an electrician in and at the outlet and then we come back. And so,  client acquisition has not been our bottleneck at all. Yeah. So, I'm not too excited about I just  need to add more client acquisition channels because we don't really need it.

Well, every  business has one or two bottlenecks. Fulfillment, sales. Yep. And in my experience, sales  is usually the bottleneck, right? So, I would rather solve for sales and figure out  fulfillment because to me, it's a lot easier to figure out fulfillment. Absolutely. By the way, if  you are a diehard fan here on YouTube and you want episodes early or exclusive episodes or unedited  full episodes, join my community.

It's only five bucks a month. Don't join on iPhone cuz it'll be  seven bucks a month and that doesn't go to me. join on desktop and it's only five bucks a month  and you can get exclusive replies from me. Early access to all these episodes, exclusive episodes  that never make it to the general public and every single $19 business plan is free. Five  bucks a month.

You can check us out at the link below or on my channel page that's hosted  right here on YouTube. So June 8th, first day, what do you do in sales and profits in June? So in  June we did about I think it was five installs. We sold our first job on June 8th. Second lead we  ever got. We installed it on the phone. Yes. On the phone. Super nice guy. David was his name.

And  he was like, "Yeah, I want a your classic flagship system in my garage. Easy install. I just moved in  yesterday. I just want the system in." And I said, "$26.99." He said, "Great. When can you come?"  And we said, "Two days." So, we came out. Uh, we installed on Wednesday. We ended up selling,  I believe, fulfilling four more jobs that that month.

So, 10 grandish. 15. Okay. Yeah. Yeah,  cuz I think we had one that was about 4,000. It was like a well system and then the rest were  all around 2,700. So I think it got us right around 15. So 15 grand in sales your first month.  How much profit? Well, I mean, if you're looking at operating profit, it was probably about 800  bucks a job. But if you're looking at real profit, it was zero because I I frontloaded inventory  and, you know, reinvested everything.

So, but I'd say operating profit probably probably  about $3,000. Okay. And then July, uh July we did, uh just under $50,000 of installs. So we did, uh  it was 16 jobs. Um it ended up being like 498, like just shy of 50,000. Um and again, I would  say our operating profit would have been slightly lower than that that first month because we were  kind of figuring out some of the um sales side and I was struggling because I was a oneman show.

Mhm. I was struggling to follow up with leads. And the big thing that that was different about  this industry was we have a 25% true closing rate, which is very high once you get them on the  phone. No. Or true closing rate. Like 25% lead to close 25%. Super high. Yeah. But the problem  is we don't get a client on the phone normally within the first like four or five touch points.

So, we've got to call them for a week before we even get to speak to them. Once we speak to them,  we close at an extremely high percentage. Like, we're closing probably 35% of the people we  actually speak to. Wow. But I was only speaking to a very small percentage because I had to call  them when they opted in and they didn't answer and then the next morning and then the next evening  and then the next morning and the next evening and we had automations running but I was just  getting inundated with leads.

Too many leads. I didn't have the time to call everyone. So our  CAC went up because we were overspending. We had too many leads in the pipeline and people weren't  dealing with them. But still probably let's say 650 I would say is probably a pretty good 12 grand  in profit give or take. I I would say something something around there. Probably 11 to 12.

And  what what were you paying per lead to Meta? It's always range between 30 and 40 per lead. Yeah.  Okay. It is crazy because I have a like a backyard sportcourt business and then a tree trimming  business and those instant form leads can be so weak. Oh yeah. Like sometimes you call them  like who are you? What? I don't know what you're talking about.

Like bro, this was you submitted  this 45 seconds ago. Like speed to lead is everything, right? What do you do about that? You  just keep calling. Yep. Yep. Remind them. We live by a mantra in my business and my my uh operations  manager Jack could attest to this. until the lead either opts out of conversation or says, "Leave me  alone." Yeah. It's incessant.

Like, we we are we are ruthless with followup because if you filled  out my form and you tell me that you didn't fill out my form, fine, whatever. We'll we'll remove  you from the CRM. There's 10% of metal leads, that's just how they are. I I don't understand it.  It's got to be an algorithm problem. But we get that all the time. We call and they're like, "Why  are you calling me?"

I'm like, "You filled out a form yesterday and I've just been trying to get a  hold of you." I never filled out a form. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, that's not  even my name. I'm like, "Okay, sorry. And have a nice day." You know, but everyone else, it's a yes  or a no. We don't take not answers. That's that's not an option. But there is a correlation between  how many times it takes you to follow up with someone and the chance that they'll ever actually  answer, right?

Of course, a month from now, the the likelihood drops way off. But what we saw,  and I looked at my numbers before coming on here so I could be well educated as we talked about  it. Um, when I brought my operations manager in, I brought him in on like the 3rd of July or of  August because July got overrun. I was like, I need to bring somebody in. Originally brought him  in just as a sales guy.

Was like just follow up with the leads, call the leads and and sell jobs.  It didn't really work very well in that regard because there was too much disconnect because he  had to also, you know, have conversations with the plumbers about special installs and scheduling  and, you know, get service agreements or things like that. And I was like, "Okay, I'm going to  have you're going to be an operations manager and you're going to just own it end to end, right?

Lead to job completed. You need to own that process." And that's worked much better for us.  So, I gave him the first two weeks. He basically just called leads. We didn't really spend anything  the first half of August because we had so many old leads in the pipeline and I I wanted him  to get his feet underneath him. August 15th, we go back to $200 a day of spend.

I meant to ask,  what were you spending per day in June and July? June it was probably uh $100 a day on average.  She spent two two grandish in June, something like that. Um and then in July it was probably  $300 a day for the first 10 days. Then $400 a day for the middle 10 days and then like nothing  for the back half because I was just overrun with Yes.

Exactly. And um so I bring in Jack and uh he  starts August 15th is when I consider his first real like he's in the big leagues now. Leads are  flying. Everything is we're we're going and we're at we're at full steam ad u $200 a day of ad  spend. He just sent me the readout from August 15th to August 31st. So about 17 days we got 89  leads. Those are fresh leads, not old ones.

Not old ones. New leads. 89 leads. All right. So  we're talking like four leads a day or three. Three to four. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah.  Four. Even five. Some days, you know, and you know how meta is. Some days it's two and then  it's eight. And some I'm sure we're duplicates, but let's say 89 was the actual number on the meta  ads manager. We actually connected with 70% of those leads.

So 30% of them we never got a hold.  Not texting phone. Do you do you count a text as a We actually prefer text. Um Sure. But are they as  effective? I think that text is just as effective because so many buyers are so averse to calling  that our intro is not speed delete immediately call. It's speed delete immediately text.  When is a good time for us to talk?

Okay. So, you're setting up a call but texting first. Yes.  And so, always they opt in and it'll be, "Hey, Kevin, this is Jack with Raleigh Waterpros. I got  your form. When's a good time for us to chat for 5 minutes so I can get you a quote on a on a whole  home system." And is that automated? Yes. GHL? Yes. Okay. So, as soon as the new leads created,  that that message gets automated, sent out.

And then the majority of our customers will text and  respond and say, let's say 50% of our customers will text and respond and either say now or in  a week or Monday or who is this? I don't even know what you're talking about. Right? And then  we'll schedule the calls from there. Then we have another flex 20 25% that don't respond to the text  and then they just go into the call cycle.

We're just calling and texting them trying to get some  form of life from them. So, on your follow-ups, are you texting them over and over until they  respond to get them on a call or do you text them once and then you start calling? Then we start  calling. Yep. So, we text them and we'll give them about an hour to respond to that first text and  then they get called and texted after that.

And the call is manual. Yes. Okay. You're getting a  trigger in GHL or whatever. Then a human's picking up the phone. Yes. Correct. So, we're doing that.  So, we had about 70% connection rate. So, 30% of leads we never got a response from. Text or phone.  Text or phone. they were or they just opted out immediately. Of that 70% we closed 20% of the full  90 of them.

So I think that would be you it was 18 leads out of what would that be 60. So you know  it was a good percent about 30% of the leads that we actually closed that we got on the phone with.  Let's say hypothetically between August 15th and 31st you got a 100 leads. of those you connected  with 70 and then what was the next step down the funnel there? So the best way would be we got 90  leads, we connected with 60 of them and then we closed 20 of them.

Wow. Okay. So you closed Yeah.  I mean 20 a quarter of all all of your leads, which is what you said a few minutes ago. Yep. At  an average ticket of 3,000 3,300. Okay. Yeah. Cuz we we sell a lot of a lot of people are eager to  buy the upsell when they see how valuable the main is. Yeah, they're like, "Wow, I was really about  to pay for this." So, now that it's 2,700, sure, I'll buy the $500 upsell thing.

No problem. So,  what were your August sales then? So, in August, we did uh 81,000 in revenue. Holy crap. Your  your second full month. Yes. Or your third month? 81,000. And the crazier part is as we're  sitting here, you know, and and we're September is just begun, we have $54,000 of installs on the  calendar for September. That's wild. And that's all from August.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. So, of the 80  what? 81,000, how much was profit? So, 81 installs was generated by uh about 25 jobs roughly. Mhm.  and 25 jobs. Our net margin, it went up because we did better with the CAC, but it went down because  now I pay Jack for every closed job. Sure. So, uh, Jack gets $200 per closed job, not a percentage of  sales because I don't want him selling a product that people don't need, right?

So, he gets $200  flat plus his base salary. So, the gross profit per job kind of ended up back around like 750 800.  Yeah. Beautiful. Yep. So at 27 jobs, 18 grand. Yeah, give or take. Something like that, man. Yep.  Your third your second full month. But again, we didn't take any profit. I haven't taken a dime cuz  you're growing it like you want to build and we're buying so much inventory cuz one of the biggest  bottlenecks that we really faced in the third week of July and in the second week of August and that  81

grand that we did was with zero installs in the second week of August. H because we didn't have  product. we were waiting for inventory to come in. That has been a a recurring issue for us. And so  I finally was just like, I'm done with that. I'm done with that game. I want to have way more than  I'm going to need of every system that we're going to sell.

So that it's too expensive. It's way too  expensive to not be able to install it. Where do you store it all? Uh I have a 10x20 storage unit  and 150 a month, 200 a month. Uh 125. Yep. Jeez. And it is um remote access. So my plumbers I have  a smart lock on it. Every plumber has their own access code and then they all have the gate code  and my delivery driver has his own access code.

We do all of our freight LTL and it's we have  the same driver and so you don't need to ever go there or touch it or do anything. I go there  twice a month. Yeah. And honestly the only time I go there is to break down deliveries cuz they  come in pallets and they're shrink wrapped and all that. So I go spend a couple hours sweating  out in the sun, breaking everything down, getting it organized, clearing out all the trash that the  plumbers are leaving behind.

But other than that, there's really not much. Where do you get your  hardware from? We have two different distributors that we buy from. One is actually here and then  one is uh based in Indianapolis, but they're just like uh OEMs. They're just manufacturers of  systems. I mean, the really the important thing to the end customer is the valve, which there are  two main brands of valve that we install.

One is Hankscraft and one is Clack. And then the actual  material or the media is what we call it inside of the tanks which that's the resin and the carbon  and the gravel and cuz that's really it. Otherwise it's just a fiberglass holding tank and you just  screw a valve on top and you fill it up with media. So what matters is where did the media come  from and what brand is is the valve.

It doesn't really matter who assembled the tank. We could buy  the the product from anywhere. It's a commodity. Yeah. So that's why my reverse osmosis tank tastes  like res resin the first time because I needed to flush it out more. Yes, absolutely. It definitely  had most RO systems are either five or seven stage and one of them is resin softener, one's a there's  normally two carbon blocks and then for taste you definitely have one that does something called  remmineralizing which means this is a little bit of I'm a

water snob. Like I can taste it and it's  delicious. Yes. And a little bit nerdy science for you on it. Let's say the average what we call  TDS or total dissolvable solids. These are the micro micro micro particles in the water, right?  There are some that are good like electrolytes, right? Those could be deemed TDS, calcium,  magnesium, things like that.

And then there are some that are bad like POS or forever chemicals  and that micro microlastics, that type of stuff. So unfortunately that's it's indiscriminate  in an RO filter. The RORO just says, "Hey, if the TDS is 100, means there's a 100 mini  particles floating around in this unit of water, I'm going to try to get that to zero." Yeah.  What ends up happening then is your water tastes flat.

It tastes off. It tastes wrong because it  doesn't have the stuff you're used to, which is trace sodium, calcium, magnesium, these minerals  that you you are used to having in your water. So, the good RO systems will then remmineralize the  water. And the last stage before it comes out your faucet is it actually passes back through  a membrane that adds the minerals back in, but only the ones that you want after the ones  that you don't have already been removed.

Gotcha. Okay. When it comes to plumbers, how does someone  find a good plumber? My experience has been more straightforward than I think most people would.  What I did, I went to Indeed, I made a sponsored job post. I said, "Hey, I'm looking for a plumber.  I'm looking to pay between 75 and 125 an hour. And I need you to be licensed independently,  have all your own supplies, and be ready and willing to take at least two jobs a week.

And  this is what you're going to do. You are only doing whole home softener, carbon filtration, and  point of use drinking water. That's it. And I ran that as an sponsored Indeed post. $90 a day budget  for four days. I got four four qualified leads. I hired three of them and I was done. So, not a  lot of leads, but good leads. Yes. What types of people are these?

Are they business owners?  Are they employees? They're all private business owners. They all own just like Chuck in a truck  guy. Yes. All of them. They're all, you know, Kevin's plumbing company. And maybe they have a  website, maybe they have a a a van with a cool decal on it, and you know, but they just can't  stay busy enough. Yeah. And we I I personally am not a fan of hiring people that are in a place of  struggle.

And I know that could sound insensitive, but it's just the reality. I don't want to hire  the plumber who is like, "Hey, man. I'm like about to get evicted. I can't get any work. I'm Yeah.  But I don't You also can't hire a plumber that is busy seven days a week. 3,000 fivestar reviews.  Yeah. It's never a bunch of wrapped trucks, a bunch of crews. No.

I need a guy who's really good  at what he does and he's busy 30 hours a week, but he'd love to be busy 40, 50 hours a week. And  the way that I view it, I mean, we we're we'll do in September, we better do 150,000 plus, which  will be, call it 47 installs. That's I think the number we've set out for. 47 installs, that's two  and a half plumbers. I mean, that's not even full capacity for three plumbers.

Yeah. And when you do  the math on what they're going to make, then let's say it's three plumbers. They do 16 jobs each and  they make an average of 500 bucks a job. I mean, that's a really good setup for them as well.  They're going to make an extra $8,000 a month. Yeah. No, nothing impeding on their schedule.  You know, they don't have to do anything outside of a comfort zone.

They don't have to buy new  equipment. They don't have to stock inventory. They don't have to run ads, sell jobs, do  estimates, none of it. I mean, if I'm a plumber, I'm going to do this exclusively. Oh, and and  many of our guys come in and they start to trend towards that. Yeah. Please, I need you. I need  you to send me your stories. If you or someone you know made thousands of dollars in a short  period of time with a business, a side hustle, a growth hack, I don't care what it is, I want  you on this podcast to

give you free publicity and to help grow my podcast. So if that's you,  go to tko yes.com, fill out the form. If it's a friend of yours, send them tkos.com. Have them  enter your name and I'll give you a,000 bucks for the referral. That's tko.com. The first guy  that we hired, he was like, "Yeah, you know, I can maybe take two or three a week." He does like nine  a week for us now because it's better than fixing a toilet, right?

Like he can't get better work.  I mean, he makes on average $100 an hour working for us and I keep his schedule as full as he'll  let me. Yeah. How many competitors do you have there? Doesn't seem like really any at this point.  Um I know we do have See on Google you have them, but Yeah. Yeah. It's strange because I almost  don't consider like an Eco Water or a Cooligan or a Kinetic or Leaf.

I don't even really consider  them to be a competitor. Yeah. Because they just run such a different business. It's opt-in form.  We need to come to your house, elaborate sales process, like it's all that, right? And they sell  to a very specific highinccome demographic. Or like Eco Water for example, they do I would guess  80% of their revenue is from Costco, right?

So they're a competitor of ours, but they're just  sitting in Costco and people just it's just laydowns. Yeah. And and that's the nature of their  business. So the people that do what we do in my area, there's probably probably five legitimate  businesses that aren't a Chuck in a truck and that aren't Yeah. a Cooligan Connectico billion-dollar  company.

And of those five, are they on Facebook ads? Some of them are. I honestly am not the  type to really go sleuth around. You don't need to. Yeah. If my if my cost per acquisition went  way up, then maybe I would start looking and say, "Hey, are these guys running my same ads or what's  going on?" Yeah. Um, but in the in the meantime, I'm just honestly trying to get ahead on  reputation because that's the biggest thing is everyone in my area, they're all pretty similar  newness.

Maybe they were started in 25 maybe, but nobody that's selling at $2,700 price  point has been around for 5 years. Yeah. So, it's completely up for grabs in terms of  who becomes the gold standard at our price point. Yeah. And that's what our sole focus has  been. How quickly can we get to 500 reviews? I almost think this could do even better in  in a market where everyone has hard water, right?

Because like I had a name for it. I can't  remember what it is, but like if if I wanted to start an amazing five-star barbecue restaurant,  I would go to Austin, where all the best barbecue restaurants are. If I wanted to start a dessert  shop, I would go to Provo, Utah, where all the dessert shops are, cuz that's that's the culture.  That's understood.

People want to try the new thing, and they're already educated, right? Back  to education. Like, I feel like the ads could do even better there. But it's encouraging to me that  you in you're in what might be a harder market and crushing it, right? So this is this really  could be done in any market. I 100% agree. I think the only thing that you have to be aware of  is is labor availability and it's the number of, you know, people that are are advertising, right?

When when I do a competitor analysis, I don't look at how many companies sell the service that I  sell. I look at how many people are actively legitimately advertising because those are my only  competitors. If you're not advertising, you're not my competitor. Yeah. You will get your market  share and mine will be totally different. Nobody that was going to buy from me is going to buy from  you instead.

And and nobody that was going to buy from you is going to buy from me instead. Yeah.  you know, the the referral-based legacy companies, they will have their market share forever and  they'll slowly bleed it out, you know, from a pin prick, but they'll be fine. I'm looking at  the new school companies that are doing something similar to what I am at a similar price point with  a similar customer experience.

Yeah. What are you seeing in the industry of how people are acquiring  customers that are not called Facebook ads? Like what are some other good acquisition channels  for this industry? I think Google ads will be phenomenal. I think it's really just all about  not fighting for the densest keywords because that is where your big billion dollar companies,  that's where they pump all their money.

You know, if you look up water filtration Raleigh, like  it's going to be Cool, Kinetico, Leaf, Eco Water, it's going to be all the big boys. Yeah. Right.  But discount water softener, right? I think there are backdoor keywords that are still 100% up  for Make hard water soft. Yes. Yes. Like uh I had a guy that does forestry mulching and his  competitors were bidding on forestry mulching, but what consumer knows that phrase?

They want  their kudzu removed, right? Cuz in that part of Ohio, everyone had kudzu. So he started bidding  on kudzu removal. You need forester mulching for that. He crushed. Right. So a lot of a lot of it  is like what would people actually search for? Not what is my industry called. Yeah. You could do  chlorine removal, POS removal, you microplastic removal.

Yes. microl plastic removal like whatever  somebody might think of or you know drinking water system you know that could be one that's bit up  but there's a lot of different backdoor angles with Adwords so I think that's definitely one  I think a huge one is the referral game it's interesting but because we are a discount  service line we sell to a lot of Asian and Indian customers right and that's just it just is  they're they're looking for a good discount Right?

I think we can all agree on that. And they're  also huge referral communities. I mean, I have had a singular customer and they they they might  haggle me for a good price, but when we do it and we nail it for them and we gave them a great price  that they couldn't get anywhere, they are itching to tell everyone on their street. You're the guy  for that community.

Absolutely. And oftentimes they all live in the same neighborhood. We did  three on the same street. Yeah. in in July. We did three on the same street, two in one day, one  the day after. And it was literally boom, boom, boom. We got I got a Facebook ad from one of them,  haggled me. We went back and forth for forever. I finally gave him a great deal on it, and he was  like, "All right, both of my neighbors want the same thing."

And I was like, "All right, great.  Now you made it worth my while." But referrals, I think, are huge. We have also started, and  this is something I'm toying with the idea of, we have started to do like little uh freebie  packages when we do an install. I think it's a high enough ticket to justify it, but I'm looking  at maybe a nice like insulated cup or mug that has our logo on it when you get your drinking water  when you get when you make your beverage and you think of us.

Because the other thing people forget  is while this feels like a one-time service, it's really not. It's an every 5 to 10 year  service, which young people like myself, they think 10 years from now, that's basically  a onetime service. It's really not. Yeah. If you do good work and you stay in business, you will  get a lot of customers. And once you hit year 11, you will now have an endless supply of reinstalls  based on the work you did over the first 10 years.

So, you just need to swap it out every 10 years,  give or take. Yeah. A lot of the systems just they they just don't last forever. And it really  depends on how hard the water is. It really depends on how much wear and tear on the system it  makes. But they don't last forever. The valves go, the media just gets used up, right? and and  over time they need to be swapped.

Can you not just swap the filter on these? So it's it's not a  filter in the traditional sense. There are filters the whole system. All right. Right. It it's the  tank itself is filled with resin and carbon and the water flows down through it and then back up  and out of the tank. Eventually every every gallon of water that goes through the tank uses up 0.001%  of the carbon.

M and so over 10 years you will use up 90% of the carbon and now your chlorine levels  are going to start to rise and they need more carbon put in the tank. So either that's a tank  refill or in a lot of cases we're so we have such a good price you know point that they'll just  get a whole new system because if you just do a carbon refill your valve could be super old and  that could be close to a mechanical failure.

So why wouldn't we just do a refill or do do a whole  tank swap for you? Yeah, I know what you're doing is working brilliantly. I would be so curious to  see what would happen if you AB tested ads where one of the advertised like a free in-home test  and you actually sent someone in there to do a test just because that the visual of like your  water sucks.

Look at this little strip is so powerful and I think you could offset that cost  more than that cost with a higher price as well. So we 100% could I think for me it just becomes  an operational weight. It's like how many guys do I want to manage? How many people do I have to  train and babysit and fire and you know things like that. It's not a lever you need to pull now,  but eventually all markets get more saturated.

Absolutely. And in time when we have reputation  and go into the home and that'll be a slam dunk, but right now once again it's part of the reason  why I love our our advertising strategy. Over half of our customers already had that experience.  Yeah. Connectico already came in their home, showed them the test, and you didn't have to pay  them. and I didn't have to pay anymore, you know, and they already know they have a water test and  they're like, "Look, I saw how bad it is.

I need this fixed, but I can't afford it from them." Do  you have any data on specifically what percentage of your previous paying customers had someone in  their home from a different company? I don't have the exact number, but I could very confidently  say it is over over 35%. Wow, that's wild. just anecdotally what based on what people are saying  well just based on the pure number of people that send us a water test which you don't just have a  water test laying around right that means somebody came and did a water

test for you and we always  say on the call do you have a water test did you get one done and then if they say yes we say  great send that over and then now we're on even terms with Eco Water or whatever it is because we  have the same information in front of them they already had the shop even if we don't see their  pricing but we know exactly what Eco Water knows So there's no knowledge gap and now the inhome  visit has no value.

They already had the shock value which we can piggyback off of and we have  the test results. So there you go. Now we're on even terms with whoever already quoted them  and our price is cheaper. Or if they say no, we didn't have a water test done. Can you come  and do a water test? If it's a private well, we will do a water test or send them to someone  else to do a water test like a third party, the county, whatever.

because wells are a little  bit more intricate and you don't want to prescribe the wrong well system. But the majority of our  customers are city water systems in which case I can say you know what you might have been  told by someone that they need to come out and test your water. That's really just kind of a  sales gimmick. I'm not a fan of that personally.

I'd rather save you your Saturday afternoon and  save you the cost of a sales rep. Just pass that savings on to you. I can pull up the EWG water  report public government database and I can tell you exactly what's in your tap from the second  that it left the water filtr the water treatment center. Yeah. And people love that. They eat that  up. So, it's a great sales tool, but can you do anything with previous test results?

Like what  does it change about your operations? Like is it are you putting a different system in there based  on what it shows? It's just system prescription. Okay. It's just me being able to say with absolute  certainty, I see the numbers in front of me and I know with 100% certainty this system will solve  your problem. Yeah. Versus if there's no test, I can say based on publicly available data, it's  just not as strong.

It's just not quite as strong. And if you already got the test, why would I not  sell on the authority that that test builds in? Yeah. What have you done wrong in this business  that you could have done differently? I wish I had more inventory. that's been a bottleneck for us  endlessly. And it's it's a good growing pain, but it's still a growing pain.

That's definitely the  first one. The second one, I would say I probably would have focused a little bit more on um the  backend and the recurring side of the business. Up to this point, we haven't sold a single back-end  client. And this one, what do you mean by that? Um filter swaps annually. Oh, got salt services. If  you get a UV disinfection, which is like a light bulb, that bulb needs to be changed annually.

Presetedment filters need to be changed every six months. There are small low ticket things. And  this one I'm a I'm a in a bit of a rock and a hard place with because I think it's part of what  causes us to sell at such a high clip is that we advertise not just as the cheapest front-end  system or one of them, but also the lowest cost to maintain because we are not going to nickel  and dime you.

You can change your own filters. We're not going to pretend that you can't. Yeah.  Right. You can do your own salt. We're not going to pretend that you can't. Whereas so many c  companies will also sell, hey, it's $5,000, but it's also $500 a year for us to come out and  do all your filter changes and flush the system, even though the system flushes itself.

So you,  you know, that was a big selling point for us is, yeah, we're cheaper on the front end, but we also  have a system that you can totally self-maintain. You don't need me involved at all. and I'm not  going to charge you anything unless you call me and you tell me you want to add something on or  you no longer want to handle a service. Now we're at a point where we've sold 100 jobs, you know,  or closing in on 100 jobs sold and we don't have a single penny of recurring.

Yeah. Where maybe if  I would have pushed filters a little bit harder, we probably could have sold on just upfront price,  right? and then matched competitor recurring pricing and built a little bit more value in our  book. But yeah, that's really probably the only other thing. Hey, so if you want to start a water  filtration business just like Parker, you'll see below in the description it says Parker's website,  go there and you can get more info.

I promise it is super tactical, high quality. You can work  with Parker directly. I would not be pitching it if I didn't believe in him and in his product. So  right below you'll see Parker's link colon. Go to that link and you'll see exactly what I mean. Have  you ever had an install that just went completely off the rails? I wouldn't say completely off  the rails.

We've had installs that it's taken us four tries to do it. We I just had one where  we went out, we planned the install. We went to do everything and then the outlet wasn't working  properly. So, we couldn't do it and the customer was like, "Well, can you just leave it set up and  I'll just plug it in when I get the outlet fixed?" No, we can't do that.

So, we had to pull out a lot  of the components, let them get an electrician in, come back, we come back. Oh, it's still  not working properly. Now, it's shorting when we're plugging it in because they hired some  cheap handyman electrician. Pull our stuff again, they get a real licensed electrician, we come back  a third time. So, we've had some jobs like that that just like get drawn out for weeks and they're  just like painful for the plumber and for me, hurt margin, you know, things like that.

But we really  haven't had anything go completely sideways. And it's part of the reason why I love the model so  much. Yeah. And it's because these plumbers, it's not that they just really care about me and really  care about my reputation. It's not my reputation, it's their reputation. Yeah. It's their license.  It's their insurance. And you know, they understand that a bad install will reflect much  more heavily on them than it will on me.

Yeah. Yeah. I'll get a one-star review from it, but  they're going to get the insurance claim. They're going to get the infraction against their license.  Like, these guys take this work very, very, very seriously. How can people avoid the most headache  when starting this business or accelerate their success? I think accelerating your success, um, if  you're going to sell jobs and you're not going to have inventory, take a deposit.

It'll stop people  from walking if your inventory gets delayed. Okay. Do you take deposits? I do not because I have  inventory. So, I just install right away. Okay? Like, if you said yes today, I'd say, "Can we  come tomorrow?" That's how we operate. Yeah. But if you're not going to have inventory on hand,  and you're going to get a customer to say yes, sign a service agreement, and then you're going to  order inventory, wait for it to ship in, all that, which a lot of people want to do if they want  to cut cost in the

beginning, take a deposit. It stops the customer from just walking because  they get bored of waiting or because they're they got a better offer from someone else. Right?  That's the first thing. And then the second thing I would say is do not stress at all about any of  your sales or marketing data until you're at least a month in. We actually looked at the numbers of  that closing of those 18 jobs that we closed.

Only one of the 18 jobs from that uh 90 leads we talked  about earlier. Only one of them was closed on the day that they opt in. Opted in on their first  call. Yeah. One. That doesn't normally happen. 17 of them were closed at least one additional  touch point. Okay. And 10 of the 18 were closed outside of 3 days after their first touch point.  Okay.

So, keep following up. Don't be depressed if they don't pay on the first day cuz most  people won't by nature of how expensive this is. And even like getting the first touch point  actually with them like understand you might have to contact a lead eight times before you even get  the conversation and then the timer starts then. Yeah. So it still could be two weeks until they  pay after that.

Our longest lead to close cycle so far was 49 days. Wow. And there was probably  two dozen touch points in there. Most people are going to quit on them by then. Most people are  100% quitting on them by then. And when you do the math, quitting on them makes no sense. Even with  that customer that we waited 50 days and had 20 plus touch points, the average touch point costs  you 60 seconds.

You know, a non-answered phone call, a non-answered text costs you 60 seconds.  Yeah. So 20 minutes of time plus, let's call it three real lengthy conversations of 20 minutes,  it's an hour and a half of your life to close that one customer. and we made $1,000 on it. Yeah.  Like it still makes a lot of sense. People just get very discouraged and it's almost why I don't  like saying I one call closed my second lead on $40.

It's not realistic at all. And we have one  call closed like five customers since then. Yeah. We have two, three, 10, 20 call closed. Five times  as many. Yeah. Before I ask you where we can find you, is there anything I I should have asked you  about but I didn't? anything interesting about this industry? I think the most interesting  thing is the fact that the model has nothing to do with water filtration.

That's I think the  thing I get personally most excited about. We are in a time period right now where there is an ever  diminishing amount of skilled laborers and people that are really really talented at at what they  do. I mean way more people are retiring than there are people that are starting. And what's what's  what's happening is effectively between that and the giant PE entrance into this space, you have so  many service types that have a market rate that is just completely made up by whoever the five

people  that offer the service are. Yeah. Like the fact that the going rate for this service was $8,000  has nothing to do with water filtration. Yeah. I guarantee you if you spent a weekend, you could  find 6 to 10 more services. If you went in the electrical, like a MPU, a main panel upgrade,  I guarantee you that is a $10,000 price point. There's no reason that that cost $10,000 and no  one's thinking about it.

No. And there's just a shortage of good electricians and people that  can bring leads in and and you know, make it make sense for a customer. I think there's so many  of these opportunities that exist in the trades, in HVAC, in electrical, in plumbing. And it's  not a this isn't a water filtration business model. Water filtration is the product and the  service, but it's not the water filtration that made it special.

It's that gap that exists in so  many of these high ticket, very skilled trades. Yeah. Well, Jeff Bezos used to say, "Your margin  is my opportunity." That's kind of what you're saying. Yeah. And I always say on this podcast,  there's over a thousand home service industries, but you're saying like the industry is the product  within the industry. So if if any given industry like plumbing has, let's be conservative and  say five like higher ticket offerings within that water heater install.

I know a guy that only  does water heater installs. He's not a plumber. He subs it out to plumbers. Then there's 5,000,  10,000, 20,000 subindustries industries of just offering one high ticket service within a bigger  industry like Yes. And how many entrepreneurs out there are even have those on their radar to  compete with you? They're vibe coding apps, right?

And so you're saying like, "Cool, that's  cool. I vibe code apps, too." But the more people that are doing that, the more opportunity there  is for stuff like this. Yes. And it will always be overlooked because people they don't understand  it. They think that it is harder or more complicated than it really is. Yeah. And I think  they they think that they don't understand how high margin some of this bluecollar stuff is.

They  think all the margin is in tech. They think all the margin is in, you know, these fancy new school  businesses SAS that has 100% margin. Yes. You're not going to do water heaters at 100% margin. But  that $8,000 water heater is 70% margin. Yeah. You can come in and not really even be very good at  sales or marketing. Yeah. just put your price in there.

Just wedge the market on price and  deliver a good service with a high quality, especially if you can do licensed installer.  That's a business and it's really not. It's a website and a chat GPT ad and a decent sales  script and then just enough product knowledge to, you know, hold a conversation with an  installer. Yeah. For me personally, one of the biggest takeaways from this is just  putting the price in the ad for a high ticket home service and finding the people that are already  educated.

I'm sitting here wondering like one of the first things I do after you leave my house is  I'm going to log into my meta ads manager and I'm going to go to my backyard funhouse Facebook ads  where we sell sport courts and pools and I'm going to make an ad that just says it has it'll have a  picture of a sport court painted with pickle ball and basketball and it's going to say $29,000  sport courts and I'm only going to find those random people that know that that's actually a  $40,000 sport court.

I'm going to call that guy. Yes. Like why wouldn't the same principle apply?  Fewer people that need a sport car, of course. But there's still people Meta can find them.  Absolutely. I mean, that that that is exactly I think the the thing that was so mind-boggling to  me because I think a lot of people know that home services advertising is either founder focused  or offer focused.

That's what I've found works, right? It's either about you and the brand and  your locality and all of that, or it's about the offer, buy one get one free, you know, a great  price, etc. So why try to force a good offer in an ultra competitive niche? Just go find a niche that  is lacking people with a great offer. Yeah. And then that is the sales and marketing.

The whole  is the offer. Yeah. That's brilliant. Parker, this has been amazing. Where can people find you andor  your businesses? Parker J. Smith on everything. So uh that's Parker Jay Smith. Instagram, LinkedIn,  Tik Tok, Twitter X, whatever. Uh, and then Parker Home Services on YouTube. And I upload twice a  week on YouTube, post every day on Shore Form and everything else.

And I help people start home  service businesses, grow existing ones, and I love them. I I've been constantly building my own  for three years. I plan to keep doing it for another decade. So, beautiful. Thank you, Parker.  Absolutely. Thanks for having me. By the way, we took this transcript from this episode plus  a ton of research of other people running this business and put it into a 25page business plan.

super thorough charts, graphs, marketing tips, everything. You can get that for only 19 bucks at  the link in the pin comment or in the description. And if you want to get all of those $19 business  plans for free forever, just join the $5 a month YouTube community. Hit a like or a comment  below and we'll see you next time on the Kerner