59. Sales Comes First, Even in a Franchise

Okay, so the first couple of years, so 2019, I'm going to turn this into a little bit of a timeline.

2019, I buy the business.

And then a year and a half later, COVID happens.

And that's rough for multifamily because we've got landlord tenant laws that favor the tenants quite a lot, you know, which is great.

Like people need a place to live, especially during the pandemic.

But multifamily fired all of us.

They fired all of their vendors, especially their preventative maintenance.

And I ultimately, in hindsight, I was able to benefit from that shakeup when things started to turn back on.

So once I acquired, acquiring recurring revenue was number one.

So I had to learn how to do sales.

I learned how to do sales.

I learned how to teach my technicians how to door knock.

And it is, like it's sales heavy.

You know everybody likes to say they're great at operations.

Well, operations doesn't, quite get the job done.

You know, you need customers, you need revenue that's predictable.

So I learned very quickly that like being super organized, you need the customers.

And then once you get the customers, you're like, oh man, okay, I'm spending too much money.

That's like phase two for me.

It's like, okay, well, where am I spending my money? You know, everybody says to do a budget.

So I like tried to learn how to budget.

first and like I'm doing my budget like I'm not spending money stupidly like what's going on and then I learned about cash flow forecasting which is very different from budgeting And, and I figured out it's, it's like, it's labor stupid.

It's, it's your paychecks are what is going.

If you don't figure out how to get everybody tight and efficient.

So that, that was kind of the sequence of just to kind of put a bow on it.

Okay, so the first couple of years, so 2019, I'm going to turn this into a little bit of a timeline.

2019, I buy the business.

And then a year and a half later, COVID happens.

And that's rough for multifamily because we've got landlord tenant laws that favor the tenants quite a lot, you know, which is great.

Like people need a place to live, especially during the pandemic.

But multifamily fired all of us.

They fired all of their vendors, especially their preventative maintenance.

And I ultimately, in hindsight, I was able to benefit from that shakeup when things started to turn back on.

So once I acquired, acquiring recurring revenue was number one.

So I had to learn how to do sales.

I learned how to do sales.

I learned how to teach my technicians how to door knock.

And it is, like it's sales heavy.

You know everybody likes to say they're great at operations.

Well, operations doesn't, quite get the job done.

You know, you need customers, you need revenue that's predictable.

So I learned very quickly that like being super organized, you need the customers.

And then once you get the customers, you're like, oh man, okay, I'm spending too much money.

That's like phase two for me.

It's like, okay, well, where am I spending my money? You know, everybody says to do a budget.

So I like tried to learn how to budget.

first and like I'm doing my budget like I'm not spending money stupidly like what's going on and then I learned about cash flow forecasting which is very different from budgeting And, and I figured out it's, it's like, it's labor stupid.

It's, it's your paychecks are what is going.

If you don't figure out how to get everybody tight and efficient.

So that, that was kind of the sequence of just to kind of put a bow on it.