Speaker 1: Perhaps there is a limiting belief within the plumbing business owner that says, I need to keep as much money in my bank account as possible at all times. And if it's not always just going up, then it's, then I'm doing something wrong. Could you, what do you think? Could you speak to that idea?

Speaker 2: Yeah. At some point in time, like you have to get used to the idea of cashflow. I know we've talked about this a lot in the past, but it's this idea that as you go throughout the week, you're making money, right? Every day you make more money and you need to be willing to like drain that bank account down to a point to be able to reinvest into your business, whether that's into equipment, vehicles, new team members, or new marketing channels. You have to be willing to take some of that cash, be okay with it disappearing, knowing that that cash is going to make you more money in the future because you're going to put things in place that are going to bring more work your way. Or things in place where you're going to actually be able to go do more work, right? And in my mind, the faster you get to the point where you can do the maximum amount of work, the better off you are.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: The faster you can get to seven techs in the field, eight techs in the field, nine techs in the field, the more money you're going to generate and the, and the better your cashflow is going to be and the faster your bank account's going to fill up. So why not get there as quickly as possible?

Speaker 1: Sure. Yeah. And it starts with being comfortable with the idea of cashflow at a smaller scale and that at like a slower return back into your bank account, because eventually it'll be quicker.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And it really starts with marketing. You don't do marketing. You don't have a business.

Speaker 1: Right. True. Yeah. You, yeah, you, I don't know what you have at that point.

Speaker 2: You have like an idea or. You can put all the team members there and you can have a logo and you can have cool van wraps and you can have, you can be all ready to go, but if you don't have a customer calling you, you're, you're going nowhere, you're just dying.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: So you got to spend the money on the marketing to make it all work, to make everything go round. Like when I had two, when I had two or three guys, I was spending like $24,000 a month on marketing.

Speaker 1: Wow. That seems like a lot from the guys that I talked to that is way more than what they would be spending.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And I would argue that that's probably like the number one reason we were able to grow and scale from zero to 5 million in two years is solely because I consistently spent money on marketing. And I've seen it in other people's businesses as well. The ones who are willing to just put money in marketing consistently over and over and over again, are the ones who win. They didn't pull back on marketing. If they needed money or they were short on cash, they found cash elsewhere. Right? So they didn't buy this piece of equipment or didn't buy this new van or maybe scaled back their manpower rather than scaling back their marketing.

Speaker 1: So you would, correct me if I'm wrong, but you would say perhaps that marketing would be the last thing that you would touch if you needed to like, well, let's say like you're in a rough spot, right? Call volumes low. Like what's the first thing you're going to do?

Speaker 2: So a lot of people are going to cut their marketing, but that's like the worst thing you could possibly do.

Speaker 1: Makes sense. You're trying to get call volume, taking away the thing that is the only thing that's giving you call volume.

Speaker 2: You've got no money coming in and you've got guys that you have to pay, but no work for them to do, and you're going to cut the one thing that's going to bring in work for your guys to do. It just doesn't make any sense. Yeah. Instead you should be cutting the manpower, as bad as that sounds. And, and the reason guys do it is because they don't want to cut their manpower because they feel bad. But at the end of the day, like if you cut your marketing, your bank accounts can continue to dwindle and you're going to have to get rid of those guys anyways.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And it's going to be very hard to get them back later.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And then you're going to be out of money to spend on marketing. Yeah. And you're screwed. And you're back to just you. Bad spot, right? Yeah. Yep. So I would, I would never, ever, ever stop spending on marketing and I would spend as much as I possibly can on it. For sure. I think that's where a lot of plumbing business owners make the mistake. They spend more on other things before their marketing is working when they really should be spending on their marketing.