In this episode of The Huge Transformations Podcast, host Sid Graef sits down with Dan Gibbons, co-founder of Shine Window Cleaning in Toronto, Canada. Dan shares his journey from a college student in a painting program to bootstrapping Shine with his partner and growing it from zero to $6 million in under seven years.

The conversation explores Dan’s entrepreneurial roots—from shoveling driveways as a teenager to knocking doors in the freezing Canadian winter—and how those lessons shaped his approach to growth. Dan reveals the systems, partnerships, and mindset shifts that fueled Shine’s rapid rise, including a strong reliance on door-to-door sales early on, transitioning into digital advertising, and focusing on dense local market penetration rather than premature expansion.

Listeners will gain insight into the realities of scaling a service business, including the importance of delegation (not abdication), the role of mentorship, why belief and resilience matter more than “hacks,” and how to prepare for the leap from owner-operator to true business leader.

Resources:

• Renewal by Andersen

• The Huge Insider newsletter

• The Huge Insider podcast downloadable action guide

• The Huge Mastermind info page

Transcript: 

got it — here’s your transcript split by speaker, fully unabridged (no edits to wording or punctuation).

SID:

 Hello everyone. Welcome to the Huge Transformations podcast. I’m Sid Graff outta Montana.

GABE:

I’m Gabe Torres here in Nashville, Tennessee.

SHEILA:

And I’m Sheila Smeltzer from North Carolina, we are your hosts and guides through the landscape of growing a successful home service business. We do this by interviewing the best home service business builders in the industry, folks that have already built seven and eight figure businesses, and they want to help you succeed.

HOST:

Yep. No fake gurus on this show. Just real life owners that have been in the trenches and can help show you the way to grow profitably. We get insights and truths from successful business builders, and every episode is 100% experience, 0% theory. We are going to dig deep and reveal the good, the bad, and the ugly.

HOST:

Our guests will share with you the pitfalls to avoid and the keys to winning. In short, our guest will show you how to transform your home service business into a masterpiece. Thanks for joining us on the wild. Journey of entrepreneurship. Let’s dive in.

SID:

Hey my friend. Welcome back to the Huge Transformations podcast. This is Sy, and today’s episode is gonna be a ton of fun, and here’s why. My friend Dan Gibbons. Whom I met at the huge convention last year, introduced us to our keynote speaker this year. But he’s got a really interesting backstory from a college kid that worked with a painting company to getting a wild haired idea with he and his girlfriend said, we should start our own window cleaning company in Toronto.

SID:

So. Normally when someone starts their own window cleaning company, they struggle and stress and they grow nice and slow, and it takes a few years to get to a half a million or whatever. They did a half a million their first year, a million their second year, and then they’ve continued the growth of a million dollars additional revenue every single year they’ve been in business.

SID:

So they went from zero to 6 million in under seven years, and I want you to listen in on this conversation and find out and understand how they did it. Because it’s not normal. Dan’s very generous. He’s got a lot of energy and we kind of bounce around all over the place. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did, and I hope you learn as much from it as I did.

SID:

Also, thanks for joining us on the Huge Transformation Show. Please meet Dan given and thanks for joining us at Sid g Graff and this is a huge transformation podcast and it’s rare when we get to do it live and in person. Usually it’s on Zoom, all stuff. But today we’ve got Dan given with this Dan. Check out the hat, look at that camera over there.

SID:

Shine window cleaning in Canada. And, uh, Dan, you’ve got a, you’ve got a fast growing window cleaning operation in Toronto, right?

DAN:

Yep.

SID:

Yeah. Tell, tell us a little bit about like, well, when did you start?

DAN:

Um, I started Shine, uh, we started shine seven years ago, so this is year seven. Uh, but I’ve been in, in the game, so to speak, for about just over a decade now.

DAN:

I started in, in university doing like a student painting program, and then I realized I could go out on my own. And here we are.

SID:

Do you know anybody else that start with you in that student painting thing? Did they go out on their own? Do you know anybody else that started their own painting?

DAN:

Um, it’s an interesting program because, uh, when you go into it, you’re, you’re a bunch of students.

DAN:

There’s like 200 students across Canada doing it. And, um, you’re in the program and you’re all hyping each other up and you’re in school, so nobody’s doing anything. And so you guys are like, doing something. Yeah. And, and you’re, you’re convinced you’re all like these crazy entrepreneurs and everybody puts like entrepreneur in their, in their Instagram buyout.

DAN:

Um, and then you realize when you leave that maybe like 5% of people actually go out on their own. Most of them end up going for like really high performing jobs. ‘cause now they’re, they understand systems and they’re very capable. Um, a lot, some, I would say. Maybe 10% try to do something on their own, then they realize it’s not for them, and then a small percentage actually end up doing it.

DAN:

And um, I mean I think that’s just a testament to like most of life, which is, you know, you gotta figure out what what you want by doing it. But yeah, I have a few friends, I would say a couple that like are very successful from it and a bunch that just kind of went out and realized it wasn’t for that.

SID:

Right. Was there a time, like when you were a kid, what was your first kind of. A real thing or sell some things. Did you like sell cookies or any of the stuff?

DAN:

Um, I, what was my first thing? My first thing was probably, uh, shoveling driveways. That was like my first independent thing, and I would always try to, before that when I was like six, I would always tried to harass my dad and be like, how much can I make to take out the trash?

DAN:

You live here, take out. He’s like, you get to continue sleeping. So, yeah, right. I said, alright. Um, and so, and so my first thing was I was probably like 15 and I convinced my neighbor to go knock on doors with me, uh, and shovel driveways. And, uh, that was my first lesson in, in partnerships because, um, I got very discouraged when he didn’t want to go out with me.

DAN:

So after like two nights of knocking on doors, he, um. He would, he would just keep saying, yeah, I don’t want to go tonight. I don’t wanna go tomorrow night. And, and then I wouldn’t go out. And so I was dependent on him to go out. ‘cause in my mind I was like, I’m not gonna do this thing alone. And then I stopped knocking on doors.

DAN:

And later in life I realized, oh, that was not, it wasn’t that I should have stopped it was that I stopped because I was relying on someone else who I shouldn’t have been. Like, who wasn’t driven to do that with me. Yeah. And. Um, you know, if I could go back and talk to my yourself, I’d be like, no, you need to go do this because you’re alone and that’ll make you better.

DAN:

So that was, that was the first thing. And then there had been a bunch of, like, I like sold weed to my friends. Um, and then I started student painting and I realized that it was much more legal and profitable. Um, and, and then that was when I got hooked. I became, I, I changed my whole life when I, uh, I started becoming addicted to, um, to realizing that I could put in work.

DAN:

And get a direct correlation of results for that work. And I went from sleeping in until 10 o’clock in the morning and smoking weed all day and, and staying up late to just being up at six in the morning and working all day till 10, 11 o’clock at night and not taking days off. Um, which ended up being a hard habit to break later.

DAN:

But, you know, when I’m 19 that that was what I needed.

SID:

Right. Did you, uh, did you ever pick up on, so a lot of the online. People, you know, here’s my morning routine and I get up at six. Yeah. And I read two books and I take an ice bath and do all that.

DAN:

I was just before that. So, um, Instagram had like, just started Yeah.

DAN:

When I was starting our business. So this was when you could post a picture of like your sock and you’d get like a 400 likes on it. Right. Um, and so no, there was no morning routine stuff until much later when I realized that a lot of it was just garbage. Yeah. Um, and I think morning routines are good. If they help you.

DAN:

But I think most people think that by doing it, it will make you productive. And really the mindset that I like that served me the best is just like, get up and work. Just go just, yeah. Just like get up, roll out of bed, have my smoothie, and I just sit down in front of my computer and the closer that I can get to the moment I get out of bed, uh, to doing work is my most productive work.

DAN:

Yeah. So anytime I know I need to like really work deep on something. It has to happen before like 10:00 AM or after that my brain is so noisy with stuff that I just can’t focus. Yeah. Um, or there’s a lot of, you know, noise coming at me and so if I can clock in at like 7:00 AM and just work for three hours, I’ll get more done in those three hours than I might week.

SID:

Right, right. Yeah, for sure. So let’s go back to the start of Shine. When you started Shine Women Clinic, was it just you, did you have a partner? Was your girlfriend your wife?

DAN:

Yeah. I don’t think I could have done it wrong. Um, so my, my old boss. Uh, at student painting was, uh, a year older than me and we had, we had become best friends basically.

DAN:

So she was coaching me for four years and then she coached me to coach other business owners. So she was always like a little bit ahead. Um, and, and I really looked up to her. And then when we finished school, we kind of did two different things that we had always talked about, starting a window cleaning company together.

DAN:

‘cause we had launched their, their student window cleaning franchise. Okay. So they were just doing painting prior. It. And then we said, wow, this is, this is a really interesting business model. There’s easier, it’s easier to train, there’s higher margins, lower friction, um, uh, lower issues, reoccurring revenue model.

DAN:

Mm-hmm. And, uh, and so we kind of, you know, I went to Travel South America. She went to go run a hotel and uh, and then she called me one day when I was in the Galapagos Islands and she said, what do you think about moving to Toronto? Because we were in Montreal. And, uh, I said, why would we move to Toronto?

DAN:

She said, well, we, we could start that business we’ve been talking about, um, and there’s lower taxes and there’s no French. And I was like, sure, you know, worst case will be a great story and we’ll just move back. Yeah. And I’m 24 at the time. Um, and so through that process we, uh, we were planning a move together when I got back from the trip and then I was like, I’m not Toronto’s crazy expensive.

DAN:

I’m not gonna pay $3,000 a month and she’s gonna pay $3,000 a month for rent. And, and then we’re gonna spend every day together running a business. So we actually started dating throughout this process. Um, and we already known each other for so many years that, yeah, it was just immediately like, okay, we’re probably gonna spend the rest of our life together.

DAN:

Um, so we had, we had started Shine together and then, um, uh, one of our best friends, pat, um, was, was also like interested in joining us, but he was still in Montreal, so he ran a franchise of Shine in Montreal. And the original thesis of Shine was to actually just be a franchise. So we already had all the systems and we were like, we know 30 people that wanna start businesses.

DAN:

Let’s just call ‘em all up. We’ll get ‘em all to, to run franchises, and that’ll be that. And then, uh, we were young, so everyone we were working with was like in their twenties, early twenties, and a lot of people got cold feet when it came time to like signing contracts and getting serious. Mm-hmm. And we said, you know what, um, if if it’s not a fuck yes, then it’s a fuck no.

DAN:

And there was. It was just in hindsight, like we, it was such a great idea that we never partnered with any of these people. Like, I cannot believe how many bullets we dodged, because in hindsight now I’m like, oh man. Like a lot of these people, like we never should work with. Um, and so we just got frustrated.

DAN:

We say, why are we depending on all these other people? We should just do our own thing. Yeah. And so we did our own thing. Pat ran a franchise in Montreal, uh, for two years, and then two years in, we, we hit about a million in sales. And, and it had grown beyond like what we could do on our own. So we were at like 10 employees.

DAN:

Um, I was getting all the phone calls, training all the employees, dealing with all the problems, doing all the sales. My phone was averaging 110 calls a day. Um, this was like before Apple let you scroll beyond 110. So I was Max. That’s how I knew I was at 110. I couldn’t go past it. Um, and then I said, we need help.

DAN:

And I don’t know how to hire an executive team. I don’t know what KPIs to look at. Uh, I just need people that I can trust that are deeply loyal, that are gonna build the ship with us while we’re flying. And so I called Pat and our other friend Dustin, and uh, and I convinced them both to basically run shut down their businesses.

DAN:

Pat sold his, um, both of them moved to Toronto and I, we told them, Hey, like, we can’t promise anything, but if you do what we need you to do, uh, then you’ll, you guys will own the company with us. At some point. Yeah. And so that, that’s been five years now. And, uh, and they did, they did that and they worked for five years without taking days off and treated it like their business.

DAN:

And, uh, I would say last year they really crossed the point of, of being like completely independent and being able to really drive things forward without us. Yeah. And that was when they said, okay, you know, ownership and, and now the four of us are in the company together. Okay.

SID:

Yeah. That’s cool. And you guys have been growing at a really steady clip and a fast look too.

DAN:

Yeah. Not a million years.

SID:

Yeah. Uh, what’s your, what’s your primary, like, customer acquisition channel? How are you getting that many clients or that much, you know, additional new revenue? You, you said it’s recurring revenue, so I’m assuming like you sold a million in 2020, then you start with about 800,000 in 2021 and you add onto that.

DAN:

Yeah. So, um, I would say about 50, 40, 50% is year over year. Mm-hmm. Um, ‘cause it’s a, there’s a lot of one-off stuff. Someone wants their driveway power wash. They don’t need it or windows want, but, um, so in the beginning, the main driver was entirely door to door. So like, I didn’t

DAN:

Did you have the whole team?

DAN:

It was just you?

DAN:

It was me and like some misfits that I found in the streets, you know, like I like go in Indeed. I’d feel like come knock doors with me. I it’s a great job. Yeah. But mostly is that the ad? Mostly because that’s gonna be the best ad ever. Come knock doors with food. It’s a great job. Yeah, basically.

DAN:

Um, some money maybe and, and, and it’s knocking doors is tough. Um, but knocking doors is really tough when it’s minus, uh, 25 degrees Celsius, which is I guess like 20 degrees Fahrenheit or something. Yeah, yeah. Um, so it was, it was like there’s ice all over, there’s two feet of snow and you’re knocking on doors at night when people are home from work.

DAN:

Yeah. So it’s basically got every part of the job you don’t want. And so there’s a really high turnover rate, and I was mostly doing that, dropping flyers at every house. Mm-hmm. And then. Uh, you know, since then we’ve kind of scaled into, now winter is not the best door knocking season, but spring is, uh, but we actually only knock in the winter, and then in spring we’re just fully on production.

DAN:

Okay. Um, now I would say, uh, I haven’t looked at it for this year, but I think last year our stats were, uh, 20 to 30% of our leads came from just organic Google. So like people finding us through lawn signs and, and going to our website, uh, just Google searches, Google Maps, um, being the highest ranking company in the city.

DAN:

And then, uh, I would say another, we did, I would say another 20% last year came from Instagram ads. So that was like a really big code that we cracked. What was that year? You’ve done Instagram ads? Last year was the first year we really like pushed it. Um, and, and that was, that was crazy. It was like unlocking like a whole new channel where I went from knocking on doors and putting in three hours of work to book a job, to um, just like.

DAN:

Uh, clicking a button to increase the spend on my credit card and getting another a hundred leads. Yeah, and so that was a big one. And then the rest came from, you know, long signs and, and some car magnets and people just seeing us in the neighborhood.

SID:

That’s really cool. In your, the market that you serve, the area, like what was the side you’re in Toronto, is that you serve all Toronto or you like

DAN:

Yeah, we serve all Toronto.

DAN:

So Toronto is about, uh, 6 million people in the greater Toronto area. We’re mostly focused on the core, which is probably. Two and a half ish. Yeah.

SID:

Um, have you done everybody yet?

DAN:

No. No. We’ve gotten to, I was talking to Brian about this yesterday. We, we did about, uh, I think 8,000 homes last year. Yeah.

DAN:

Um, and so it’s crazy ’cause when you look on a map and you zoom out a little bit, it looks like, like the whole, the whole map is covered in blue dots.

DAN:

The, the dots. Yeah. Yeah. But, um, but when you really zoom in on a street, there might be five dots. The street. So, and then I’m going, oh, so the opportunity is actually the 300 houses in between these houses that I’m not doing. And so what I found is I really want to, like, I, I believe in, in building, uh, a dense business and dominating your local market before going outside.

DAN:

Yeah. And I think that, um, most people that I meet who haven’t scaled a lot, um, their first inclination is, I need to grow to a new, new area. They think they’ve tapped up the market. Yeah. But really they’re not even doing 1% of the marketing they should be doing in that market. And so they’re wasting all this energy installing, uh, managers in other locations, driving further out, uh, dealing with, with, you know, different areas.

DAN:

Yeah. When they could just, you know, do 10 times as much in that city. And then it becomes way easier to scale in other locations. ‘cause now you have a real system. Yeah. Whereas they’re, you know, to figure out how to manage a team that’s an hour away is, is way harder than doing it when it’s five blocks away.

SID:

Right? Yeah. And you lose efficiency driving because it’s low ticket jobs. So if you drive an extra hour, that’s a lot of money you’re running. Whether you can do the neighbor, if you just looked at, like, you define what your total, total addressable market and what the market penetration like if you had to guess, what’s your market penetration of your, um, that core two and a half million?

DAN:

I think we can probably do like 50 million just there. Yeah. That’s my, my thesis. Yeah.

DAN:

Um, because you’re doing windows and gutters and then. You have power washing. And power washing might be, you know, 10% of our business. Um, but there are power washing businesses doing millions of dollars. Yeah. So, you know, if we cap our, our market cap on, on Windows, we can go 30 minutes further out with the city or we can say, Hey, why don’t we really focus on this power washing brand for advertising that, um, and we have all the tools to do it.

DAN:

So it’s really become a function of like. Like looking at the formula of the cost to acquire a customer mm-hmm. And how much that customer is gonna pay us. And so it really just comes down to running the ads. And so I’m going, how much does it cost me to, to find a client and book the job? And what’s the, what’s the multiple, um, in terms of, of what that customer is worth to me?

DAN:

So for window cleaning in the off season, it’s not profitable to run ads because you might spend $30 a lead, you’ll book one in, you know, 10 leads, let’s say one in five leads. Uh, so you’re spending several hundred dollars to get that client. Yeah. And then you’re making maybe five, six, $700 on that client revenue.

DAN:

But your net profit is less than that. So you’re, you’re actually losing money or breaking even. Yeah. So we won’t run ads in that season, but if I have a service like deck staining or uh, power washing where I’m average ticketing, you know, 1500 to $5,000. Now all of a sudden I’m going, oh, if it costs me $500 to acquire a customer, this is very profitable.

DAN:

That’s all right. Now I’m printing money. I am the casino. So I can just, you know, scale up. Yeah. So I think the question is always what’s the ratio of your, your cac, so your lifetime value of your customer. Yeah. And if that map adds up, I just stay in the current market.

SID:

Yeah, for sure. And it’s, it’s very cool.

SID:

You’ve got it dialed where you like, don’t spend money. It’s like, uh, if you’re fishing, like don’t spend a lot of money on bait throw and you’re hooking the water when the fish aren’t binding. Yeah. There’s, there are times when they, yeah. You don’t fish there. But you know, in Montana, fly fishing, it’s like that summer months.

SID:

Yeah. mid-June. Till about September. Yeah. When the water has come down enough that you can fish. That’s the only time you don’t fish in the winter. Yeah, they don’t bite.

DAN:

Yeah. I think it’s, I think, um, I think just like. Trying to be thoughtful and like mindful about like what, what impact is what you’re doing.

DAN:

And then once in a while, checking in on whether or not continues to make sense. Because sometimes the things you do that get you from zero to one don’t get you from one to 10. Yeah. And, or they’re not as efficient. So a lot of guys here that I, that I meet probably like the most controversial thing is door knocking.

DAN:

There are so many people that are like against door knocking. Yeah. And. I say what you will about it, but if you’re starting out and you don’t know anything about marketing or sales or like door knocking is the best way. ‘cause it costs nothing other than your time. Yeah. And people will hire you if they like you, whereas if you’re running a $40 million business and you call me and say, should I install a 50 person door knocking team?

DAN:

Well, I think you should probably focus on ads first because you can just deploy capital. Yeah. So my theory is just, you know, focus on where your inputs are easiest. To deploy and what your highest return on investment is gonna be and, and go after that first.

SID:

Yeah, for sure. So you brought door knocking in.

SID:

Now, you know, on Instagram they’re, they’re a handful of influencers and all about door knocking it, just gimme your hot take on that.

DAN:

Oh boy. I get asked a lot about this. Um, I think that, I think it’s like everything, there’s a couple like really good actors in there that genuinely, um, are like making money and wanna help people.

DAN:

And then I think there’s a lot of people that saw what they were doing and said, I can make quick money and I’m gonna do this. Yeah. Um, the best way to describe it is, uh, Alex Zi talks about this where he’s like, the people that are making millions of dollars coaching you how to invest your money are not the people that are making millions of dollars investing money because they would just continue investing.

DAN:

Yeah. And they would make more money doing that if that was actually how they made their money. And so all these door knocking guys, they go knock on doors. And this is what happens. Even the guys who run their own businesses, they get to a point where they go, oh shit, this is hard work. I’m gonna have to hire people and build a team.

DAN:

It would be much easier to just sell a course for $3,000 and then other people can do all the work. Yeah. Um, but every business, once it reaches a certain size, requires work. So they end up facing that, that that problem. So my, you know, short answer is, um, door knocking is amazing. I think it’s incredible.

DAN:

I think if you wanna start out, it’s, it’s a great avenue to do it. I think. I’m not a huge fan of like, some of the practices that some of ‘em do, but I respect the hustle. Yeah. And I think that even if it’s not right for you, if, if you buy course from that guy, even if the guy’s not a great guy or he doesn’t, you know, have integrity or follow through on what he’s promising, um.

DAN:

You’re gonna learn from that experience and he helped you in that journey, whether it was good or bad, you learned from it. Yeah. And I think it’s just important to continue moving forward and, and try stuff and figure out what works for you. Yeah. And just don’t, don’t be close minded.

DAN:

You said that, you know, no matter what, that was a step in your journey that helps you learn that journey.

DAN:

Yeah. And I know, uh, one of the guys, some for you now, but like on, on the, this journey for you, in the past eight years, have there been key inflection points where you’re like. I’ve done all I can. I’m stuck. And then you meet somebody mm-hmm. Or you find a mentor. How do you, like what are some of the key influences that you’ve had along the way and, and how did they change the Yeah.

DAN:

Trajectory in business?

DAN:

Um, I wouldn’t say that there were points where we were stuck. I would say there were points where I got really impatient and I was looking for answers to go faster. And the answer that I got usually was more what I needed to hear, not what I wanted to hear. Um, usually, uh, well, I quote Hormo a lot.

DAN:

He’ll say, um, the, the, the answers you’re looking for is hidden in the work you’re avoiding, and generally it comes back to, um, mindset and like your own limitations. Um, and so, how do I put this? Like, if you want to lose weight, you can do all the hacks to lose weight, but the best way to lose weight is just to become a person who thinks like a healthy person.

DAN:

Yeah. And then you don’t have to go, oh, I need to say no to this chocolate bar or this pizza. You’re just gonna wake up and be like, I want to go to the gym. I want to go for a workout. I don’t, I don’t, I’m gonna have a banana instead. Yeah. And then all of a sudden you’re gonna lose all this weight. And, um, and I see that in business where, you know, I can, someone can give me all the hacks and here’s how you motivate someone.

DAN:

Here’s how you sell this, here’s how you do. But if they really dive deep and, and get to know me, and they go, oh, your, your actual problem is that you don’t care enough about other people. Cool. That unlocks a whole slew of, oh my God, like once I start to really care about other people, now I’m treating my employees better.

DAN:

I’m really, I’m asking better questions. Mm-hmm. They feel like I’m listening, I’m doing better in sales. And so, key inflection points, I would say number one is, uh, is my, my wife Kendra, who, uh, who is just like, she always, it, it, it’s very difficult ‘cause she always sees my blind spots. Mm-hmm. And so, uh, it’s taken me years to, to.

DAN:

Just hear it and be like, oh shit, if this bothers me, it’s probably true. Yeah. So, um, so she’s usually like the first person that will always be like, this is all the stuff that you’re missing. And I’ll be like, how do you like this? It just, it’s crazy that to have someone else know you better than you can know yourself.

DAN:

Yeah. And then I would say, um, the second one has been Brian who, um, who’s just, you know, an anomaly of an anomaly like we were saying earlier. Like he hasn’t just ran a crazy business. But he also, um, really understands where you’re at in your journey and in the same industry too. A similar, you know, in the trade industry.

DAN:

Yeah. And, uh, an hour of talking to him totally changed our whole hiring process and how we’re structuring our pay because, uh, he doesn’t just say, Hey, you should pay people by performance. He, he’ll go, this is how you implement that system and here’s how you should structure it, and here are the numbers you should look at, and here’s who should be in charge of it.

DAN:

And I’m like, wow, you just saved me like a year and a half of, of trial and error. Um, and so I think that it’s a combination of me trying to like find mentors and rarely finding them and also being in a position where like, I’m ready to receive it. Yeah. And them recognizing and saying, oh, like he’s gonna be worth my time.

DAN:

Yeah. And uh, and then I just try to do the same for other people.

SID:

But just earlier we were talking about where you first started. Started from scratch, bootstrap, whole thing. Two years, get to a million dollars and. And just a second ago we were talking about total addressable market. You’re like, yeah, we can probably do 50 million in this market.

SID:

Yeah. Could you imagine yourself six years ago going, yeah, we’ll probably get to 50 million. What was your big goal?

DAN:

Yeah, I mean my, I, I was always like, I wanna do a hundred million. You always big thinker. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve always been, I remember I was, you know, part of it is probably like grandiosity, but uh, I think you have to be delusional, right?

DAN:

But you have to have so much delusional self-belief because. What I’ve noticed is that even the people that I coach, like in our business, um, a lot of ‘em are smarter than me in a lot of areas, but I’ve noticed that when I’m coaching them, they stop short of doing the thing that I would do or solving the problem that I would need, needed to solve.

DAN:

Not ‘cause they’re not capable of it, but because they’re al they’re like afraid to try and fail at it, and they can’t imagine the, the gap between, like the gap is too wide between where they are and where they want to go. And so they go, oh, that’s just not, like, that’s not possible. Yeah. And I’ll be like, we should do this ’cause this is gonna happen.

DAN:

Like, we’re gonna grow by whatever, $20 million and, and, and these are my dreams. And, and they’re like, that’s crazy. Like, why is that crazy? Let’s, let’s like really talk. Like, tell me why. It’s crazy they don’t even have an answer. Yeah. They’re like, uh, I don’t know. It just seems like a lot. And I’m like, well, if we do this and this, we’ll get to five and this and this.

DAN:

We’ll get to 10. And, and, and so all of a sudden it becomes like, oh, I guess you’re right. Yeah. And so, uh, I re yeah, I remember being like 12 years old and there’s like a lookout point in Montreal, and I was like, looking over city. I was like, one day I’m gonna, I’m gonna own one of these tall buildings. Um, not ’cause I, I actually care, but I was just like, this is, this is cool.

DAN:

Yeah, yeah. And so, um, and so yeah, I think I’ve just always believed that like, like I could do that. And most of my life has just been a, a serious. A series of frustrations and going, I know I can be there. I just haven’t figured out what I need to do to get there. Yeah. And, and I’m like scrambling for the answers and trying to talk to whoever I can and like, what am I missing here?

DAN:

What am I missing here? Yeah.

SID:

You find, I, I notice a lot of people are, they’re like, is growing stuff. They end up afraid to fail. Like when you, when you start getting some success and you’re competent in something, it’s like learning something new. You’re very become very much unlike the kid that’s trying to learn to ride a bicycle.

SID:

Mm-hmm. Kid riding a bicycle, they just wanna ride a bike. Yeah. And they’ll fall down a millions times. They don’t care. Yeah. They don’t wanna ride a bike. But a lot of times you get a little more successful, you’re like, well I don’t wanna look dumb ‘cause I’m learning something. Like you don’t seem to have that.

SID:

What holds people back.

DAN:

Um, it’s really interesting that you said that. Um, I’m flattered that you said that because I was watching a, an interview with Naval Han Yeah. Who was talking about, about Elon, and he was saying that the thing that really separates Elon from everyone else is that most entrepreneurs, most people, but especially even entrepreneurs, um, have that trait that you just said, which is they, they get a lot of success and then they’re, they’re attached, their ego is attached to that success, and they’re afraid to look stupid and fail at the next thing, so they don’t try other things.

DAN:

Whereas if you look at Elon, like he’s, every business he’s had, he pivoted and he was like, forget all this other stuff I’ve done. I’m gonna, I’m gonna do this new thing. I’m gonna go from PayPal to, I’m gonna start a car company, and then, oh, I’m gonna run Twitter and then I’m gonna make a big hole in the ground, and now I’m gonna go to space.

DAN:

And so it’s the willingness to constantly just fail over and over again. And I found that, um, ego just, it doesn’t serve you. And you have, and, and each level you go up, you have to shed it. And recognize that, um, you don’t gain anything. You, you, the, the, the mindset that you already know everything is directly an opposite to the mindset of I want to learn something.

DAN:

Oh, yeah. You can’t learn if you think you already know. Yeah. And so even when I’m talking to someone who is running a business that’s 5% the size of ours, I go into it like really curious as to how they’re operating because. There’s a 5% chance I might learn something from them and I go, oh, you know, that’s, that’s a really cool way of thinking about it.

DAN:

Um, and if I go into it and I go, oh, this guy’s not gonna teach me anything, or, oh, I don’t want to do that. ‘cause I, I might fail at it, then, um, I, I take away the opportunity for myself to learn. And I would say, yeah, I’m just, I’m just so curious. And I never want to be in a position where I look back and say, oh, I, I could have done this, but I didn’t.

DAN:

Because I just wasn’t looking at it really? Yeah. Does that make sense?

SID:

Yeah, makes sense. Makes sense. So imagine this, like get your crystal ball and think out like three years from now, if we’re sitting here, back here in this room, three years from now having the same conversation and you go looking backwards over the past three years, what would have to have happened in your business and maybe in your personal life where you go, this has been a really successful three years?

DAN:

That’s a great question. Um, I think that. You know, Brian said it today in his talk, which, uh, really hit me. He goes, it doesn’t matter if you’re right. You have to be influential. You can be right all the time, but if you can’t influence people, it’s meaningless. And I think that that’s really where I’m at in, in my career, where I’ve got guys on the team who are very capable and they’re at a level now where they can execute, but they need guidance on it.

DAN:

And thinking back, I’ve, I’ve become much more involved in the day-to-day coaching, uh, over the last two months and really trying to understand like what they do on a daily basis and kind of micromanage, like the strategic way that they go about their week. Mm-hmm. And I’ve noticed that I’ve gotten really good at telling them what to do.

DAN:

Um, but I haven’t done a really great job of coaching them so that they don’t need me. And then I can just hop in three weeks later and go, oh, you’re, oh yeah, you’re all over that. And so I think the biggest shift that I would need to make is a, uh, being able to influence them and speak to them on their terms where I’m not just talking at them, but I’m really like making sure that they’re absorbing what I’m saying.

DAN:

Mm-hmm. And giving, empowering them to move forward. I would say the second thing is probably, um, to. Um, just more data in the business so we can make better decisions on, uh, running ads, on tracking, uh, production budgets and, and quality control. Um, and then I would say the third thing is I need to become very good at, uh, at hiring, outside, hiring from outside to bring leaders into the business, um, with accurate.

DAN:

Okay. So saying, Hey, we need like three new sales managers, let’s go run ads. We’ll get 200 applications, we’ll filter down to the top three. And those three end up working out and being really good. Yeah. Rather than saying, Hey, we’re gonna try this guy, oh, he didn’t work out, you know, in six months, we’ll do it again.

DAN:

Um, because as we scale now, the bottleneck is no longer leads. We have more leads than we can handle, and we need to make sure that the operation actually continues to grow. Yeah, yeah.

SID:

Interesting you say that. So what recap. You’ve got, you want to um, be the kind of leader where you can coach people into their greater success Yeah.

SID:

And make data driven decisions. Yeah. Right.

DAN:

Now my um, you know, on the note of our, when, when we were on the, the plane with Brian yesterday, um, I was asking like, what is the, you know, there’s a point where you stop growing in a million year and you grow by five, 10 million years mm-hmm. When you get to hundreds of millions of dollars.

DAN:

So what do you feel that is? And um, it was really interesting ‘cause he flipped it on me. He’s like. It, it’s not gonna be, you’re driving the business forward and then you’re gonna bring people up. You actually have to push people up and they’re gonna bring the business up. Yeah. And so up until this point, it’s always been me thinking, okay, how are we gonna add a new marketing channel?

DAN:

How am I gonna implement this? Um, you know, I have to go and sit in on all the meetings and, and make sure everybody knows what they’re doing. So I’m, I want to grow, so I’m pushing everyone. Mm-hmm. And after, after this week, my mindset is gonna shift to, I need to just. You know, figure out what everyone else needs to grow and then the growth will take care of itself.

SID:

Yeah. Yeah. The, uh, there was a guy last year, I think maybe it was the year before. We, we have, we host our VRP dinner. Yeah. We always have a panel. He’s a guy that started, um, service, not ServiceTitan. Oh yeah. Different the other one. Okay. The lawn care guy, um, oh, Mike Andies. His, his name is Jonathan Osh.

SID:

Okay. And I can’t. Like, man, I’m embarrassed. I can’t think of the name of his company, but he, he built it, sold it. He’s got a, still has a long field company, he stuff, but the, um, service on pilot. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, we, during the, the meeting, you know, people ask him questions of the panel or the speaker or whomever, somebody, Dan, you’ve grown really fast rule.

SID:

What’s the key to success? Yeah. And they’re looking for something that they already want to be the answer. Yeah. Not the answer. And Jonathan just said, look. All the fluff. Cut it. It’s just a bunch of people. Yeah. It’s like, spend more money than you can imagine on the best people you can find and let your team run it.

SID:

Yeah. Because there are people that are better at it than you are. Mm-hmm. You all these subcategories and everything else, like get the right people and come loose and pay them really, really well. Yeah. Like, and then he mentioned numbers, but you know, like they had a guy, he was like chief bus business developer or something, and maybe they were paying him 225,000 a year and wasn’t cutting it.

SID:

So they hired another guy 400,000 a year. And I was like, I felt my stomach tighten. Yeah. I was like, whoa, you can’t wait so many much. But he was like the guy, you know, he added like $14 million to the business. Yeah. And I was like, that guy was cheap.

DAN:

It’s kind of crazy. Yeah. Yeah. The way I, um, I, I went out to, uh, to Vegas and I, I got to meet, um, Alex and Layla Hor.

DAN:

Yeah. And, um, and I was, I was asking. Um, I said, you know, I’m at a point now where I have to start. This was at the beginning of last year, so it’s almost, almost two years ago now. Okay. And, uh, and I said, Hey, I’m, I’m at a point where I need to start looking at like, executive leadership and, and bringing people in at like six figure salaries.

DAN:

Um, and I was just wondering, like, I feel like I’m almost avoiding it ‘cause it’s scary and I’m like, what happens if I hire this person? I spend six, you know. 80 grand on them, and then I have to cut them. I lose all the money, but worse I lose all the time. It took me to train them and then they drop. Um, and, and so how do you, you know, deal with that mentally?

DAN:

And she basically just laughed at my face and was like, oh, of course you’re gonna fuck it up. You can’t avoid that. And I was like, oh. And she’s like, yeah, like you can’t win in anything until you fuck it up 3, 4, 5 times. Yeah. So instead of trying to avoid it. Try to fail at it as fast as possible. Yeah. And just accept that that’s the, that’s the, the cost of success.

DAN:

Like the failure is the tuition for what you want. And you have to pay that price somehow. And so she’s like, let’s say you go and you figure this out tomorrow. What do you unlocking in your business? At least, you know, a million dollars. So whatever you’re, it’s costing you. Uh, what whatever you, whatever you’re trying to save by not doing it and not losing that money is actually costing a million dollars.

DAN:

Yeah. That’s the ignorance tax. Yeah. That’s a great perspective. And so from that point, I was like, okay, I’m excited to go and burn a up and screw it up because then I’m, I can do the next and by the third person I’ll get there. Yeah. And so we actually just had that happen. We had, um, we, we were trying to build a software on top of Salesforce.

DAN:

Uh, we had it all mapped out. We were so excited. We hired a developer. I spent a year and a half and, and, and six figures on the project. Um, and the, the developer screwed me. They, they made a bunch of promises, they couldn’t do anything about it. Um, and I got, I got absolutely railed on the project and, and I lost sleep for like, a month on it.

DAN:

Like I was, I was so anxious over it. I was like, losing all this money. I, I can’t believe I got screwed. I felt ripped off. Um, and then, and then my wife looked at me and she’s like, you know, this is entirely your fault. Um, you’re angry at these people, but like there were so many flags along the way that you missed that you could have pulled the plug on the project halfway or aqua three quarters and you didn’t.

DAN:

And, uh, and she’s like, I don’t blame you for it, but, um, but like, this is a lesson for you that you should have. You should, there was a lot of different things you could have done. And the moment that I flipped it and I was like, yeah, you’re right. Like, I’m angry at them, but this is a hundred percent my fault.

DAN:

And now that I went through that. I had, like if that was a $10,000 lesson, it might not have hurt me enough to force me to change to really make, but because it cost me 120 grand, like that really cuts so deep that I’m never gonna make a lot of those mistakes again. And those skills are transferrable, right?

DAN:

Like I might not need those skills on another software project, but I might hire someone else and I’m gonna notice some of those same red flags that I should have caught in those people. Yeah. And I’m gonna avoid the million dollar mistake because I made it earlier. So. Once you see it as like, this is the price I’m paying for, you know, life coaching.

DAN:

Uh, you know, it doesn’t, it doesn’t really get easier. It, it, it, it still hurts. Um, but now, you know, things that I used to lose sleep over that were, you know, 10, 20, 30 grand, they don’t bother me because I’m like, ah, this is not as bad as 150 k. Right. Yeah. It’s part of the, part of the dream. Yeah. I’m like, I made it through that.

DAN:

This is, this is small.

SID:

So as we we land the plane, what, um, what advice would you give to the, you got, there’s somebody’s watching the podcast. Yeah. They’re like, they’re on the truck. They’ve got a helper. Mm-hmm. They’re wearing every hat, but they’ve got a bigger vision. Like, I need to get, I want to build a business, not just have a job.

SID:

Yeah. Like what’s your advice to them?

DAN:

Um, it’s a good question because. You know, I was, I was laughing with Brian yesterday because he was saying, you know, all these people say, you know, you gotta work on your business, not in your business. And he’s like, fuck that. You need to be in the business. Otherwise you’re so high, you don’t know what’s going on.

DAN:

You’re not, customers aren’t happy. Um, and I think there’s nuance to that. I think when you’re really big, that’s the advice you need is get stop working on your, go into your business. Understand, get the weeds. Yeah. Go visit the customer’s house randomly. Even if you have thousands of clients, you’ll learn a lot.

DAN:

Um, I think you do need to work on your business instead of in your business if you, if you’re just in on the truck. But I think really the mindset, and I talk, I’m gonna talk a lot about this, um, when, at my talk later, is, um, you can, you cannot work more than 24 hours in a day. And so even if you’re really good at something and you think that you, no one can do it better than you.

DAN:

When you, when your business grows, your attention gets split, and now you’re 10% on 10 different things and 10% of your best. Is always gonna be worse than someone else is a hundred percent on it. Yeah. And my philosophy is like, if I could go back, I would go slower. I would spend more time making sure that everyone did their job perfectly and really knew what they were doing before I continued to try to drive sales and scale up.

DAN:

And I don’t think there’s. There’s any rush to it. Like I think that the goal is to just have clients who love you and who love working with you and are happy because if you’re charging money for something and people don’t like you, then you’re just, you know, driving negative value and you’re taking, and I think that if, if, you know, I guess the one piece of advice I would give would be, um, just start training that one person on your team to take over that team and then.

DAN:

Hire another person and do it again. And then you’re gonna all of a sudden be managing three or four crews, and then you’re gonna get really busy and you’re gonna go, okay, now I have to train the next person to manage these crews. What most people do, yeah. Is when they want to scale, they abdicate instead of delegate.

DAN:

And so ab, is it abdication? Abdication, yeah. When the abdication is saying, um, this is your problem now, goodbye. The allegation is saying, okay, you’re going to take this over. And I’m gonna slowly, you know, walk you through it and then step back a little bit each day until you’re a hundred percent capable of it.

DAN:

Yeah. And so that’s, I think I did too much advocating first, and now I’m like, really? Okay, I’m gonna tell ‘em to do it, but then I’m gonna check in next week, but maybe daily. And then after three months I’m gonna kind of step back, step back, and then I’m gonna check in quarterly with you and, and yeah. So I would say just, just trust the process and believe that anyone.

DAN:

Can do a better job than you if they’re really focused on it. And, and your vision is to create that life for everyone. And you need their, your dreams need to be big enough for their dreams to fit into it. And if they’re not, then people are gonna leave you and they’re not gonna be able to grow, and you’re not gonna have a business that can thrive.

SID:

Yeah, yeah. Agreed. Agreed. For, for anybody that’s, that watches this later on. Um, that it, that’s why like, I love having guys and people that have built. A little bit further down the road than you know you. And we’re always looking for people that are like, you’re just further down the path. And one of the things that Brian said this morning, and one of the slides he had, uh, Roger Banister, the first guy break four minute mile.

SID:

I love that story. Austin. All you need is to recognize that somebody’s already done it. And you’re like, oh, it’s not a crazy ass idea. Yeah. Dan’s already done it, so I’ll just do what he did. Or maybe I don’t even do what you did, but I just, my belief expands. Yeah. And now. Step into it in the future.

DAN:

Yeah, that’s my, uh, you know, it’s a gift and a curse because in the beginning I, I was consuming so much content online, reading so many, and everyone that I was speaking to, reading about studying was worth a hundred million dollars or more.

DAN:

And so it became this like anxiety where I was like, I’m not doing enough. I suck. You know, what am I not, what am I getting wrong? Um, and then, you know, you, you, you remove the context. You don’t remember that, oh, all the guys in their twenties are lying about it, and all the guys who are doing it are actually 65 and a lot of them, you know, anyway.

DAN:

So I think that, uh, yeah, knowing that it’s possible is a huge thing, but then once you identify that it’s possible, leave that there and just go head down and, and work. Yeah. And, and stop. Trying to get more information and just focus on executing. That’s it. Yeah. Nothing happens till whoever hits the road.

DAN:

Somebody’s gotta do it.

SID:

Exactly. Alright, thanks for your time. Thanks for having me. Cool.

SID:

Hello my friend. This is Sid. Thank you again so much for taking your time to listen to today’s episode. I hope you got some value from it. And listen, anything that was covered, uh, any of the resources, any of the books, any of the tools, anything like that is in the show notes, so it’s easy for you to find and check it out.

SID:

And also, I wanna let you know the. Mission for the huge convention and for this podcast is to help our blue collar business owners like you and I, to gain financial and time freedom through running a better business. And we do that in four ways. Number one is our free weekly newsletter. It’s called a Huge Insider.

SID:

I hope you subscribe. It is the most valuable newsletter for the home service industry. Period, paid or otherwise, and this one’s free. Next is the huge foundation’s education platform. That is, we’ve got over 120 hours of industry specific education and resources for you, and every month we do, uh, a topical webinar and we do question and answer with seven and eight figure business owners, and it’s available to you for a $1 trial for seven days.

SID:

Next, of course. Is the huge convention or the huge convention? If you haven’t been, you gotta check it out. It’s every August This year it’s in Nashville, Tennessee. That’s August 20th through 22nd and 2025. And it is the largest and number one rated. Trade show and convention for home service business builders.

SID:

We’ve got the biggest trade show, so you can check out all the coolest tools and meet the vendors and check out the software to run your business. And it’s got, we’ve got, um, education, world class education and educators and speakers that will teach you how to run a better business. And it’s the best networking opportunity that you can have within the home service business.

SID:

And then lastly, if you wanna pour jet fuel in your business. Check out the Hughes Mastermind now. It’s not for everyone. You gotta be at over $750,000 of revenue and you’re building toward a million, 5 million, 10 million in the next five years. And it is a network, and a mentorship and a mastermind of your peers, and we help you understand and implement the Freedom operating system.

SID:

We can go into more detail, but you can get all the information on all four of these programs and how we’ll help you advance your business quickly just by going to the huge convention.com. And scroll down, click on the freedom path. Or of course you can find the links here in the show notes. So, sorry, I feel like I’m getting a little bit wordy, but I just wanna let you know of the resources that are available to you to help you accelerate and advance your beautiful, small business.

SID:

So keep on growing, keep on learning, keep advancing. And if you’d like to show. Go ahead. I mean, if you would go and take 90 seconds and give us a review on iTunes, then subscribe and share it, man. It would really mean the world to us. It would help other people, and as we continue our mission to help people just like you and me.

SID:

So thanks again for listening. We’ll see you in the next episode.