29: The Matthew Efrid Episode

About this episode

In this episode of The Huge Transformations Podcast, Sid Graef sits down with entrepreneur and franchise builder Matthew Efford, founder of Lighting Pros and multi-location operator of Mosquito Joe. Matthew opens up about scaling from a small, grinding startup to a multi-location enterprise by building strong leadership, clarifying roles, and designing a business that supports, rather than consumes his life.

After the heartbreaking loss of his son in 2020, Matthew completely restructured how he works. He shifted from 100+ hour weeks to a life centered around faith, family, and intentional leadership. During this conversation, he shares the systems and mindset that helped him build businesses that run without him, allowing his family to travel over 150 days per year while his teams continue to thrive.

Resources:

Lighting Pros Franchise

Notebook LM 

Mosquito Joe

Two Second Lean

Lighting Pros

The Huge Insider newsletter signup

The Huge Insider podcast downloadable action guide

The Huge Mastermind info page

Facebook Group – Huge Foundations

 

 

Transcript:

 Hello everyone. Welcome to the Huge Transformations podcast. I'm Sid Graef out of Montana. I'm Gabe Torres here in Nashville, Tennessee. 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.

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.

Our guests will share with you the pitfalls to avoid and the keys to winning. In short, our guests 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.

Hey, my friends, it's Sid over here at the Huge Transformations podcast. Thanks for joining us this afternoon or today, whatever time it is when you're listening. We've got a great conversation today with Matthew Efford. Matthew Efford has, um, lighting Pros down in Georgia. They've got multiple locations, couple franchise locations.

He also runs a Mosquito Joe's operation. But more than that, he's a man of purpose and when you get to meet him and get to know him, you're gonna love how he has redirected his business and his life to support the things that he values in both, which for him, his faith, family, and business. A lot of us say that, but we usually put business first.

So get ready for a great conversation and a ton of learning and insight. From my friend and soon to be yours, Matthew Eer. Hey everybody, it's Sid Graff and this is The Huge Transformations podcast. And today our guest is Matthew Eer. Uh, Matthew has got Lighting Pros down in Georgia, is that right? That's correct, course.

'cause you're the mighty Bulldog fan. That's right. Go dogs. Yeah. As well as, uh, was it last year your company was a top in the top 100? I think you replaced number 10. Yeah. Top 10. Yeah. Top 10 of the fastest growing, uh, businesses founded or managed by new JL? Yeah. That's pretty cool. 'cause uh, university of Georgia is no slouch as far as alumni and alumni business owners.

Congrats. We, we've been very blessed. Um, it, it, it is foremost God's blessing on our business and then the amazing team that we have and also we've got some incredible customers that, that have supported us from early on, even when we didn't really know what we're doing. They're very gracious. We, we try to do a really good job s the way you wanna be treated.

It's one of our core values. So yeah, it, it is been a lot of fun. Yeah. That's wonderful. Um, so we, we'll, we'll start here, uh, without giving the like large introduction, background, 'cause we'll pick all that up, but Sure. When you and I, uh, talked before the huge convention and then not long after, you and your family had just been kind of, I call it the epic road trip you had had committed to spending more time with your family and making memories with your kids.

And how long were you guys on the road? Yeah, so, um, we were on the road, we were on the roof for a 45 day stint. Um, and then we, before that we basically, we were gone for two weeks, home for a week, gone for 45 days, home for two weeks, gone for three weeks, home for a week. Going for a week. We we're just kind of on and off the road a bunch.

And, um, we will have traveled 120 something days, something like that, 150 days this year by the end of the year. Okay. So, and I'm gonna loop this together. So you have lighting pros, you do holiday lighting, you do landscape lighting. You do permanent lighting. So my assumption was this, oh, Matthew's got, you've got your poop in a group and you're, you've, you know, you're able to manage your time, but it's, you know, as the holiday lighting business, like you've got some slow time.

And then, but like now when we're recording this is, is, uh, we're almost Halloween. So all holiday, like people are getting busy. I assume that would be true for you as well. Probably is. But you said you guys, you and your family go back on the road tomorrow, so you got more time gone. It, it, it is. We've got a great team.

And, and, and we've just, we've built the business as you and I shared, you know, when I spoke at, at Huge, which is amazing opportunity. Part of this story starts for me back when my son Noah passed away in 2020. And it was really, how did I design my business in such a way that I don't work a hundred hours a week?

'cause I was at that time, yeah. And it was a, a needed, I have to not work a hundred hours in their business. And so we go sense where we work a bunch obviously, and then we go sense where, um, our team is just running on all donors and, and it is fantastic and it's more of how can I support them. So my time now is spent more around how do I cultivate leadership within my organization as well as with our franchise locations.

How do I help them develop? And so a lot of that can be done remotely. So I know that's not normal for people, right? That's not a normal thing that they can do. They can pick up and leave for 45 days for, for even four days. Four days feels like a lot. Yeah. But the big thing for me that I kind of challenge with in my presentation that I've been challenging people is if you cannot step away from your business and it operate without you, you have a job, not a business.

And so that's what I've been teaching our franchise owners. That's what I've been teaching our, our team is, and, and myself is uh, we, we have to structure this in such a way that we can step away for a period of time, whether it's just a day that there was a time in our business where I felt like I cannot even take my wife on a date because I've gotta be available to the business because I have so much that I have to catch up on.

And what really taught me is I have to learn how to delegate better. Yeah. Yeah. And, and that's a very common theme in our industry is just, you know, they, the guy, the owner operator, started everything, did everything, does everything. Doesn't know how to not do everything and how to structure it. So that's a big deal.

Can, will you do this? Will you paint a picture of where your business is now? I know you've got multiple locations. Are they franchises? Are they company owned? Yeah, it's, it's a great question. So we, I, I own three businesses, uh, mosquito Joe Outdoor Pest Control Company, lighting Pros. We do outdoor lighting and Lighting Pros franchise, where we support others in the outdoor lighting space.

And so my organization, we are, we have five locations for Lighting Pros currently. Um, that is our corporate office and then franchise locations. And then we are in the launch phase of a couple other locations. And so, um, that by. This time in, in three months? We'll, we'll, we'll push us up over six to seven locations.

Okay. Okay, cool. And, um, with that, with your, like with franchise locations like this strict franchise model, somebody buys into it, they run it according to the systems you have, but you give them support. That's correct, yeah. Okay. So, so we're, we're giving them the branding support, right? You're buying a business in a box.

When you, well, you should, when you're looking at a franchise system, you should be buying a defined ROI. And so the system that you should be looking at, you should be looking at a completely kind of aired out system. Doesn't mean it's not gonna adapt, it doesn't mean it's not gonna change. It should as it grows and matures and becomes better.

But they should have a system for hiring. They should have a system for invoicing. They should have a system for marketing. They should have a system for inventory. They should have vendors in place. It should have those relationships that you're able to buy into somebody's work that they've done for years, that you get to now leverage that and grow faster.

So what we tell our franchisees is within our ecosystem, you can go further faster that you can do this on the own. You you, there's no rocket science here. But what we can help you with is the he who walks with WISE becomes wise companion bull, suffer harm, right? We're gonna surround you with some wise people, ourselves included, that have made a lot of mistakes along the way, and you get to not make some of those mistakes because now we're gonna support you.

And then we're gonna layer on top of that some national brand deals that we've got, some, some national accounts that we have, some national vendors, that we have. Leveraging the overall ecosystem that you're able to get materials at a rate that you can't get anywhere else. You're able to get some training at a rate that you can't get anywhere else.

You're able to get access to some customers that you can't get anywhere else because they're working with us. Right, right on. So take me back to the beginning when you started in, in service business. Did you start with Mosquito Pros? Yeah. So, so Mosquito Joe was our, our first Mosquito Joe entrance into the business world.

Um, I take it back, years and years and years ago, my brother and I had a landscaping business. We were in high school. Yeah, we had some friends from school working with us. We were working every day after school on the weekends. We made a lot more money than we should have as teenagers. We were, we were really blessed.

It's a lot of fun to do. Work really hard. Went school UJ again, go dogs, graduated, got into a pharmacy management company in their sales department and kind of helped that business start. Sales department helped grow. They had incredible operations. It was just me telling the story and then really felt called in the 2016 timeframe to start my own business.

So my wife and I prayed about that for about 12 months and we found Mosquito Joe. At the time, the biggest issue Mosquito Joe had was what do you do with your staff in the off season? So what we say within our franchise model, our two target demographics, our two avatars are Mitch and Joe Joe's a seasonal business owner that doesn't have anything to do in the winter.

His, his revenue draws up. So Holiday lights is a, a very good solution for that. And you're not chucking a truck because Chucking a truck is, there are a dozen, they're everywhere. They're here one day and they're gone the next. Mm-hmm. But it is a, it is a tried and true brand that you get to partner with, learn, leverage the, the learning and knowledge and scale from there.

So we started at the same time, mosquito Joe and Lighting Pros with that intention of, we want, I want to be able to offer our staff year round employment. Okay. Good. And with that, I mean, you're, you're down, you're in the south, but is that filled the gap? Did it. You stay fairly steady year round. Yeah.

You're able to keep your, so we have, we have one week in December, typically that we're slow. Mm-hmm. And one week in February that we're slow. Then we do team building stuff around the office. We do maintenance. Um, and, and from that we operate 52 weeks a year. Yeah. Yeah. Oh man. That's, so it bridge the gap and then what we, what we learned in the lighting space is just what we're finding in the outdoor pest control space, which most people that are listening to us know this to be true.

The home services space, the level of customer service, unfortunately, is so low. Mm-hmm. The bar has been set so low that when we would do simple things like show up when we said we're gonna show up or send the quote when we said we're gonna send the quote or, or, or, or better yet, answer the phone. Yeah. I mean, it is just like.

We were growing at rates, so it was like, how can we be doing this? What, what is, what is so special about what we're doing? Yeah. Not that much. Um, but we found that across the outdoor lighting space as well. So the three key areas that, that we service is we do temporary holiday lights. That's our bread and butter.

That's our tried and true. We all of our locations do that. We also do permanent holiday lights and landscape lighting. Okay. And those two, those two features have really exponentially helped us grow because strategically what's happened within our business is as, as lighting for us to, speaking for us as lighting post is far outpace our mosquito, Joe.

The year round mid-level managers positions were not comparable within the two. So we didn't have as many a big of a need within our mosquito Joe, our structures so much different there. So we had to find a way to keep our middle managers, our crew leaders on board instead of having to retrain them every year because they're going to find other employment somewhere else.

Yeah, completely understand. Yeah. And what we found was we, we had to actually bring, kind of in-house, not set out in work. Let's bring in-house all our permit lighting and let's keep crews that do that all year long. Obviously it makes us, we bring in more revenue, it's more profitable. But now, this is the second season that we've done this and, and our crystals lights is exploding.

And, and we're sitting here looking like, I mean, we, we have more bandwidth now than we ever have and we're this far into the season. And so my wife and I were talking last night like, Hey, what would it look like if we went and lost another location? It's like, this is crazy that we're this far down the road into the season.

We're not pulling our hair out. I'm not losing sleep at night. Little changes like that have helped us on the structure along the way. It is been great. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of, that's crazy. So you've been, you've started the business about nine years ago? 20 16, 20 17. Alright, cool. Um, and I, and I apologize.

I was laughing so hard a minute ago because you said we did crazy things like show up and it sounds ridiculous that that can be a competitive advantage be because you expect, like what would a business do if you called them for business and like, Hey, I wanna give you money to do this thing. You go, cool, I'll be there.

Why is that so hard? Or why does so many businesses not show up? No, not just the phone de you know, take two weeks to get a quote. When we have our team meetings, one of the things that, a part of our time, specifically with our franchise owners, but even our leadership team, I will very intentionally take time to take off my owner hat.

And put on my consumer head mm-hmm. And say, let's evaluate this from our consumer standpoint. We are all consumers. What are the pain points that make it really frustrating? When is the last time you called somebody to come do work at your house and they did not show up? It is, it is infuriating. Yeah. I took time off of work.

You told me you were gonna be here now I want to give you money. Yeah. And you did not show up to my house. What are you doing? Or you showed up to my house and you never sent me a quote. Mm-hmm. Why would I as a consumer ever have to follow up with you for a quote? I should not ever have to say, where is that quote?

You should be beating down my door. I called you, I legally gave you my information. I told you, sit, I want to spend money with you now. Let me spend money with you. Like, take my money. Yeah. Don't make me, don't, don't make me, don't make me. Don't make it work. Ah, yeah. It, it makes me a little crazy. We had an experience, um, earlier this season.

We do, you know, window cleaning, we've got a commercial side and a residential side. Commercial side runs a little different. And we, we had, we got called for a quote at the university here in town and they called us on Monday, Tuesday we were there Wednesday. They had a quote in hand, but we said, we're ready to go.

We can complete this in August, according to your timeline. And they said, that's cool. We have to get three quotes and we're waiting for two others. And I said, fine. We followed up, you know, respectfully, like every three days and two weeks later they got the second quote and six weeks later they could not approve a quote until they got three in hand.

It took the other company six weeks. Crazy thing is they have a, a policy where basically they have to take the lowest quote 'cause they're using state funds. Um. The company that was the slowest, was the lowest price, got the bid. But I became friends with the guy and I'm like, how does that make you feel?

Like these people can't even return your phone call or get you a quote for six weeks. You think they're gonna be able to deliver the service? What kind of quality service? Yeah, yeah. Well, whether there's an issue, right, but when, because issues happen. Yeah. So as a consumer, I have started valuing and evaluating businesses based on the way they solve their issues.

Yeah. So not is there never a problem, because that's not realistic, right? But when there's a problem, what do they do to overcome that? What do they do to make it right? Are they quick to blame me or are they quick to say, you know what, not an issue. Let me fix it. I'll be there today, I'll be there tomorrow, whatever it is.

And normally just acknowledging the fact that it is a problem makes me super happy. Yeah. So you're big on core values and you've, you've talked about 'em at the convention. You mentioned one here a second ago. Um, what is, what is your core value or how do you guys approach it when there's a problem with Mosquito Joes or with lighting Pros, customer says, Hey, this is whatever.

Sure. So the great question. So we, when we say around our office, first or last, so I, I'm a big proponent. I'm a highly aggressive person. I like to win. I'm very driven by winning. And so the, our first is feedback, integrity, respect, shared growth and teamwork. And so within our company culture, we talk about that every month when our large team meets.

Mm-hmm. And all of our leadership team pulls out where each employee has lived out a core value that lasts 30 days. And we acknowledge that in that meeting. And we say, Hey, jt, here's you, here's our core value. Here's how you lived it out. Great job, jt. And it's amazing when we started that a couple years ago, or actually three years ago now.

The responses that we get to that people are starting to look for that amongst each other. Yeah. But for us, when you call me, when you've got a lighting, a project that you did with us and you're having issues, the first thing we'll say is, Sid, I appreciate you taking the time to give me that feedback.

Actually, one of our core values is feedback. Give and receive accountability. I said, I really appreciate you taking the time to do that. Another core value we have is shared growth. Be better today than were yesterday. So we, our team is going to take this, we're gonna talk about it, and we're gonna get better, and we're gonna take ownership over what we did.

We're gonna make it right for you. That conversation 90, I know all statistics are made right. But 95% or more of the time when I have a customer that calls me this angry, when I give them that pitch in mm-hmm. In a genuine sense, completely diffuses the problem. Yeah. Completely. And then we still go out and fix it, right?

It's not that we're just not gonna fix it. If we did something wrong, we wanna fix it. But having that level of conversation with our team as well as with our customers helps mitigate a lot of issues for us. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Um, let, let me ask you this, 'cause you've had some pretty rapid growth in the, in the last five years for sure.

What are, what are some of the bottlenecks and plateaus that you see, well, that you saw in your business and that are fairly common too, the service industry, and if you wanna put, you know, sort of general dollar benchmarks on it for revenue, like in half a million you run into this and a million run into that, that's fine.

Or just in general, like what were some of the bottlenecks and plateaus you guys experienced as your growth? Yeah, I mean, we were, we were approaching 200,000 in, in holiday lights and it was me and my brother and like one guy working with us. And that was, we were working a hundred to 120 hours a week, and it was just like, this is, we're ain't gonna be able to survive.

Um, and so we started building a team from there. The, the biggest jump from us was from 500,000 to a million. And really what that pushed us to do was to really develop our team around what does our org chart look like, which we don't really spend a lot of time with, with all of our staff talking about, here's your org chart, here's your report to, but we do teach them that.

Um, but it was more around, we have to define out what the role is and whose responsibility certain actions are, which sounds simple, but it was amazing because we were growing so fast, we would hire somebody and be like, I, I just need you to take care of that. And then we would add, it would be a scope creep, right?

But then we kinda look at their job descriptions. It's like you're doing 55 different things and I just really need you to do five. Yeah. And so I'm gonna cut off all the other ways. I'm either gonna hire that out or I'm just gonna cut it out and then we're going to consistently keep you in this lane.

And so big building block, kind of what I said a few years ago, we started implementing this idea of keeping middle managers around in a, in a more non-seasonal role, a permanent role that they established core into our, our team and we keep them around. That has been a dramatic leap for us to be able to, when we start the holiday like season, because that is our busiest season.

Yeah. We do operate all year, but that is definitely our busiest season that we have the core infrastructure in place. We've been doing this long enough now. We've got guys that return to us every season. And so one of the things that we found, just kind of a side note, I used to want to pitch the job as a, if you do a good job, you can have year round employment.

'cause we have both businesses and we can operate all year. And you can be employed all year if you want to. Yeah. Part of that became a disservice. And really what we found was there, there are people that want to work a seasonal job and they want it to be seasonal. Mm-hmm. And they're okay with that. And then if they have leadership aspirations, if they have career aspirations, if they want to get in and they actually do love our team, then we give them opportunities to approach us in that way.

And we do approach some of them in that way. But for the most part, our seasonal workers, they, they wanna work seasonally. They're tree climbers, they're roofers, they're, you know, some of the. We've got some guys that are, are river ramp guys and they love it. Yeah. And that's great. And that's their passion.

And this is what they do to put food on the table. Right. So that's their passion. So they're not looking for full-time employment. They wanna be able to go in spring and go back and do that. And we say, God bless you. Good luck. We'll see you in the fall. Yeah. And they come back every year because we've kind of created this culture of, hey, this is, this is, let's kind of help clarify what this means.

Um, man, as a leader, I really have struggled over the years of not always addressing things when I first see them. Right. That I, I just assume that it's gonna go away or I just assume that that person's going to know what I expect of them. That really, within myself, I have learned I have to do a better job and I'm, I'm getting, continuing to get better of when I see something, address it right away.

And so this is one of those things that we just kind of saw like. We have to address this, but we clearly define out this is the role, this is the expectation, this is the timeframe. If this works for you, then great. And if not, then this is not the right role for you. Yeah, yeah. You know that something interesting about that with seasonal businesses, yours, uh, before you get, you know, the two integrated or even still with lighting pros, um, and us here, you know, in, in Montana and, and winters, it gets cold and we are not cleaning windows in the wintertime.

And we used to that, I used to consider that a deficit or a problem. And, but then we started, we just shifted the perspective and started hiring people based on like, it's a benefit that you get off three months in the winter. What are you gonna do with your time off? And we, we started attracting and hiring people that are avid snowboarders or skiers.

Oh yeah. Cool. Yeah. And that's the perfect guys, like the guy that just wants to shred all winter and then work the rest of the year, but have that time off and have their job. I'm like, oh hell, I didn't realize that was a benefit. I thought it was a death penalty. Great point. Yeah, we got several guys that travel, um, that, that, that absolutely love it.

And, and that's what they want to do. And so what it's done for Arm Mosquito Joe's has helped us keep better people there as well. Right. We, we've been able to offer that career path guy that he's not quite ready for a leadership role within one of the two organizations, but he's, he's a solid or she's a solid individual that wants to be part of the team that wants to work all year long that wants a hi higher end paying kind of daily labor job.

And so we're able to offer that and then teach them those skills to help equip them and lead them and develop them and hopefully train them up into a, a more career oriented role. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So I'm gonna ask you this and, and I wouldn't normally bring it up, but you've, you brought up several times.

You, you guys had a family tragedy. You lost your son, Noah, in 2020. And you said prior to that you were, you were the guy working a hundred, 120 hours a week and just all work and nothing else. And after that you use that as a catalyst and to honor your son, uh, you said, I'm gonna redesign this thing and have a life that is family first.

And like your podcast, we'll get to pillars of, uh, purpose a little bit later, but, faith, family, and business in, in that order, um, when, how did you define your redesign? I, okay, I'm struggling with the question because That's okay. Most of the time guys get busy with work and they just go, it's just work and this is the way it is.

And you can't really change it. 'cause that's how it is. And more's coming at me and so I have to do more rather than deliberately sitting down, I go, how do I want this to be? Starting with the first, I, I really want you to run through that with me. When, when I sat in, I mean, there's many times along the way he said it, it was when I sat in the hospital room with my son and, and not to get overly emotional and dramatic, but as he was dying, as I was holding him, it was, it was a very clear shift within me of time is so precious.

It, it is so precious. And when I looked across my life, it was, what am I, what am I chasing? So, mm-hmm. I had said, faith comes first. I had said family comes first, but when I actually looked at my schedule, it was any sales meeting, any co, anything that I can go to day or night that helps propel the business forward.

If it's a networking event, if it's a Saturday meeting. If it's Sunday after church, like I, I'm probably going to go to that because I know I can make connections there and I know I, I can leverage that. And what happened was it, it shifted a mentality in me to say, I need to block my time better and I need to be fully present at home and fully present at work and, and outside my relationship with Jesus Christ.

The best decision I ever made was marrying my wife. She's unbelievable and, and she's super supportive. And there are seasons, even after Noah passed away that I've worked 80 hours in a week. Of course that has happened. Every business owner knows that everything falls apart, it hits the fan and you get called, it's okay, we gotta do something.

So we, I've still had those moments, but it has been a more intentional grind for me to say, what do I want my business to do? Yeah. Is it to fund give me a lot of money that I can't use because I'm working so much? Hmm. Or is it to give me time? What is most important for me? So the, the challenge that my family took was to save time value.

We value time more than money. So a few million dollar business is good for us and the rate at which we're growing rather than going to a $30 million business in the next two years, that time commitment is not worth it for our family right now. It's just not that time. Commitment may change and that's completely fine.

So what my wife and I do is every year on our anniversary we go away. Just she and I and we started this, our, our first, or I mean our honeymoon. We literally said like, what did the last year look like? Let's look back in a year and let's look forward a year. And we have some of those conversations as a couple to say what, what do we want to do?

And um. There, there have been years that my wife has told me nothing new. Please do nothing new. And I said, okay. Because I said I, I love new, and I, I love, you know, like we're, we're really looking at launching some additional corporate locations as a way to scale our franchise model that we feel like we can do this really well.

Not that other people can't, but it may be a prideful thing, but we've proven that we can do this well. And so would it, would it be more advantageous long term for our franchisees if we go and launch some cities mm-hmm. And help the city scale and then bring in another owner to, to buy it from us and run it under the franchise model?

So, yeah. You know, that's something that, that we have talked about, but we've looked at our time as a family. We said, okay, what does that time frame look like? We homeschool, we're mobile. So what, what would it look like if we brought our boys along with this journey along with us instead of it being so removed and separated out?

Um, that's kind of, that's, that's been a big shift for us. And, um, then it's just, I mean, everybody will say this, and it sounds cliche, it is, you gotta hire better people. You gotta pay them as much as you physically can afford, and then probably pay them more than you think you can afford and just try to hire really good people and then allow them to do the job that you paid them to do.

Yeah. So that's a big thing for me. I used to be a super micromanager and I've, I've, the pendulum has swung too far the other way, right? Where I've, I've, I've dumped, I've not delegated. And so the pendulum has come back a little more for me in the middle of, I, I'm going to empower you as a leader. We're gonna have checkins, I'm gonna spot check some things because I, I wanna hold you accountable just like you should hold me accountable.

It's our number one core value feedback. Give and receive accountability. So we're gonna have some difficult conversations, but at the end of the day, I hired you to do this role. I expect you to do it. Yeah. So talk about your, your leadership development, um, plan or philosophies within your businesses.

Yeah, that's a great question. So part of our monthly meeting we do is a personal development. And so that is, we, we watch TED Talks, we, we bring in speakers. I, I speak a lot. I like to speak. It's like I spoke to huge. I, I avid reader. I'm normally bringing up, Hey, I just read this book. Here's a synopsis of it.

If you want our bayou copy of it, we can talk about it. So we started doing that, um, three or four years ago now. And really the shift for me happened where, um, this was three years ago, we had a key staff member that helped us in the transition, um, throughout Noah's journey. That came to me and said, you know, I, I feel called to do something else.

And, and she left. And it was very difficult for our team. It was, she was a key person. Yeah. And she went into a completely different career. We're still good friends with her family. She's thriving in the career that she chose. But it was a big shift for me, and really it taught me to say, I'm gonna be more open-handed with our business.

And so every employee, when they come into our our business, I tell them, you're going to work for us for a season. What I mean by that is you will have an end date with us. Either you will retire, you will pass away, or you will quit. You're not, this is not a forever thing. But my job as the leader is to elongate that season as long as we can make it, that it's mutually beneficial for both you and me.

And so part of what I do is I want you to be better for working here. I want it to be something that when you look at your resume. And you're looking for that next job, that, that career change, whatever that is, that you look fondly on your time here, because you can say, these are three things I learned there, that I was developed, I had opportunities to lead, I had opportunities to speak, I had opportunities to, to do sales, I had opportunities to be on the phone.

I had opportunities to run a crew, even when I wasn't really ready for that, um, I had opportunities for that. Yeah. That's really been our, our mentality. Okay. How do you balance it with employees with, because I, I don't know how many employees do you have roughly right now? Yeah. So we're, when we're fully staffed, we're at 25, 27.

Okay. And so with, you know, with 20, 25, 30 employees, you've got some that personally, that they want to grow, they wanna grow, they wanna learn to be leaders, they wanna develop. And you have some that just want a paycheck. Like how do you balance that within the team because. There's one of you and you've got a pretty clear and singular message, but what about the guys?

They don't really want to grow, but they're great workers. They just wanna jump. Yeah, that's a great point. Um, we are pretty unapologetic in growth. So shared growth be better today or yesterday. It's one of our core values. We do preach that all the time. Mm-hmm. And so I will consistently go through books with team members that are wanting to grow and they're, they're saying, they're coming to me saying, Hey, Matthew.

Like I, I, I wanna grow as a leader. I'm in my early twenties. Like I, I want to become a better leader. So, okay, here's a John Maxwell book. We're gonna read this together and we're gonna talk about it. And we're, we're gonna, you know, grab coffee, we're gonna grab lunch, we're gonna grab breakfast, we're gonna do it remotely.

I'm gonna call you, you're gonna have to show up in that moment. Um, the other folks in that, we pay people to come to those meetings, that development day. And so when I'm paying you there, I expect you to be there and be present. Outside of that, I can't force anything upon you. But if you want the extracurricular, if you want the above and beyond, I'm happy to engage with you that way.

But we chose during that time actually pay our staff to come that it, it is not a like unpaid day. Know it is a full paid day. Come enjoy. We, we, we do company update, we do, um, professional development, personal development, culture celebration, and then we, we eat and have fun. So Is that a monthly thing or, or, yeah, it's once a month.

That's your monthly. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's cool. That's really cool. I know, you know. Okay. So this is interesting because I struggled with it. A lot of people struggle with, like, even with team meetings, like I can't afford to do team meetings, paying everybody to sit different an hour. Yeah. Yeah. We're bringing no revenue in and I'm paying everyone the same normal daily rate.

Yeah. I've just lost a bunch of money and I'm gonna provide lunch and I'm gonna provide a speed. It's like, what are we doing? Yeah. Yeah. So talk about the ROI of that. Yeah. I think for us it is, it gets into the, all the metrics, right? Behind any service based business. You want your reviews to go up, you want your repeat customers to go up, you want your referral rate to go up.

The, the reoccurring revenues is dominant in this market for especially your bottom line profitability. Yeah. For us, we've seen all of those things trend in the right direction. Um, without getting specifics, it, it is, every, every needle of the KPIs that we look at over the last three years have gone in the direction that we wanted to there, and we believe a big part of that's the culture that we create, that the people that we bring in, that we've had some team members leave our organization for what they felt like was a better opportunity, and then circle back kind of boomerang back and be like, oh, it's not a better opportunity.

And it's because we, we care about our culture a lot. Yeah, we don't do it perfectly, but we, we really care about that. Our customers are feeling that. And so anytime you can get a referral is excellent. We celebrate those. We try to, um, within our team, we talk about those, those, um, monthly meetings. And so that's a big deal of somebody's giving you a sample approval, Hey, I trust you.

I believe in the work that you're doing. And so those numbers are, are, are really up for us in both businesses. Yeah. Yeah. It is been my experience and what you're talking about, it's like whenever you have a deliberately planned and executed team meeting. I mean, it's got a purpose. It's not just, Hey, we're having a meeting to, to tell you what you already know, but you're driving culture.

You're reinforcing things like how do you ask for a review? How do you ask for referral? And doing the chief repeating officer work like that builds a better, more reliable team. Your people make more money. Your customers are happier and like, uh, are you familiar with the book, the Two Second Lean? No, but I'll add to my list right now.

It's a really, uh, it's, it's a short book. It's interesting, but it's, and it's primarily for manufacturing and deals with ergonomics. But this guy, uh, is very competitive. You'll like him, I forget the author's name. Two second Lean, and he said, he said a lot of companies are afraid to have meetings every week.

We have a 15 meeting minute meeting every single day. And he says, I'll run circles around you. Because that moment of unification and making sure everyone's on the same page and you're marching together, it makes you so much more effective for the rest of the time. You do the same weekly or monthly.

It's like you just perform better when you're aligned, but you don't get aligned when you're out in the field working all the time. Yeah. So we, we do this every year. We, we do this, especially when we hire new staff. Um, one of the analogies, and I'm sure we get old eventually, um, that, that we bring everybody in and I ask them one question.

They give them a piece of paper and a pen. Asked them one question. I say, how do you make toast? And it started out we had 10 people in the room and room. Last time we did, we had 20, I think 27 people in the room, 25 people in the room. And every single one of them gave a different answer. Oh, wow. Even the, even the people that have done this test before, every single one of them gave a different answer.

And so what I did was I took all of them. We, we kind of quickly read through 'em and we laughed, and it was, some of 'em were silly, but I said, okay, this is simple. Making toast is extremely simple, but every single one of us set a different process. Yeah. So there's no uniformity there. So what we want to do is we want to create a, this is how we make toast as an organization.

And so we've kind of, we call the roles of engage. We've created that for the roles to say, this is the way that we engage with the work that we're doing. This is important. This is the reason that we do it this way. And then one thing that we do that has been super helpful for us is I used to hate reviews.

I, I just, just sped them. I hated 'em when I was an employee. I hated providing them. But our employees need that feedback. They, they need to know how they're doing, celebrate them, challenge them to continue to grow. We started at 90 days for folks when they first come on board with us. 30 days is too quick.

90, sometimes it would be a little too long. 16 to 90 days. We're touching base with, with a key employee that we've hired to say, Hey, we ask them, got a handful of questions, but, but effectively, what are you seeing? What do you like? What can be approved upon? What did you have to learn the hard way? Mm-hmm.

And we asked all of our, our employees that. Yeah. And it's amazing. S it is absolutely amazing what comes out of some of those conversations. That's where it was for me. It was, I felt like I was better at describing things, but I was more assuming that you would just understand that. So I was assuming that you would know technician, that we expect you to ask for referrals.

We expect you to ask for a review. If you hear somebody talking about how they love the service, hand them the door tag that has the QR code on the bottom and circle it and say, will you give us a review? It's an easy process to do as a business owner. I was doing that when I was in the field, but our team members are not doing that.

And so little things like that, let's make it abundantly clear. Let's, let's try to clarify the process for everybody involved to help me help you. The more successful that you are in the field, the more successful the business is. A rising tide rises all ships. It impacts your take home income. It impacts your bonus.

It impacts all of those things. Let's do this together. Yeah. Oh yeah. Do you find yourself, um, when you, you know, naturally when you instruct your team, you're like, let's use getting reviews as an example. You say, okay, we gotta ask for reviews. This is how you ask for reviews. This is why we ask for reviews.

This is how it helps you, how it helps us, how it helps the customer do that. And you teach 'em once and then. Don't say anything else about it. Are you naturally like that? Like I already told you. Why aren't you doing it? Or you just like Yeah. Naturally, yes. Naturally, yes. I, I, I, I'm a, I should tell you this once and you should know it, and we should be able to move on because that's my personality.

Now, my wife would, would beg to differ. Um, that, that she, she would say no on that. But for the most part in my life, I get it. Once I got it, I'm good to go. But our team is not that way. Mm-hmm. And so we, it is the same thing you learn in school, right? People are visual learners for audio, audio learners.

They're written learners. They have to read it. So we try to give all that in different formats. So one of the things that we've started doing is making videos of like, Hey, here, here's a video of how you ask a customer for a referral or you ask them for a review. Watch this little video, right? We, on our podcast we had, um.

Morgan Knox, who was, who was at Huge, yeah. As, as a guest. And we, we talked about notebook lm, unbelievable platform to be able to integrate in with your team and do teaching and education within your core system. I don't wanna get into that episode, I don't wanna get into that, that's way out the field.

But there's incredible resources that we can do to reiterate that. And so part of our weekly check-ins with our leadership team, when they're out in the field with our teams, part of our monthly check-ins with our whole team is we go through our toast process. Mm-hmm. And we highlight those. We, we have an annual calendar that we look at.

And based on the time of year, we highlight different things. So we're due, we're due a competition within our team for referrals. We're couple that with our marketing campaign for that time period, right? Yeah. We're gonna double up on referral bonuses for our team members as well as our customers. We're really gonna push that for the next 30 days.

And we're gonna do, you know, somebody's gonna get a trophy and they're gonna get a hundred dollars in cash. We're, we're gonna, we're gonna push those things. The more planned out we've been and not fly by the seat of your pants, the better the results that we get. Yeah, for sure. And, um, so it, I, I learned this from Mike Dalkey, um, who I'm met at the huge convention nine years ago, but he talks about having a position in your company.

It's not really a position, but he said somebody has to be the chief repeating officer. Yeah. You just have to say it over and over. It's like, we implemented new core values four years ago, and guess what? We didn't say it once and then not mentioned again, expect everybody to get it. You're like, we, we taught it.

Then the next meeting, you know, every our, our company, we do a, you know, every Monday we have a team meeting, and it's usually about 40 minutes. And so for the entire year, even though our core values have not changed since last year, the first, when we started back, we went over 'em, we taught 'em, we used examples.

We have them give us examples. But every Monday we're like, we're focusing on this one this week, and everybody's gonna talk about it, talk about it. And I get exhaust. I'm like, really? Are we talking about this again? Like, when did we get, but it, that's what it takes. It's like you want something done, you gotta repeat the hell out of it until everybody becomes, until it becomes muscle memory.

And then by that time you have new employees and they have to hear it a hundred times too. So you're just gonna keep doing it. And if your organization's growing and you should be bringing new team, right? You should be adding new roles. You should be growing and developing. And your people, every business owner hears this gets a little pit in their stomach when I say this, but your people should be leaving eventually.

They should be, they should be going up, starting their own business. They should be trying other careers. They, they should be growing and developing, right? Mm-hmm. I want our team to be doing that. When I, when I look at, um, organizations that have had employees that have been with them since the very beginning, I always not to judge that owner, but always question is that person in the right role, because I know I'm not the same leader that I was when I first started.

Mm-hmm. And I know some of the people that we have initially worked with us that were key early years and key middle years and key recent years, their skillsets not always aligned with what is needed at the next level. Yeah. And so as we continue to mature and grow, we gotta evaluate and we gotta have hard conversations.

Say, Hey, maybe this isn't right for you anymore. This isn't the right role. It doesn't mean you can't be here. We're gonna find a different role for you. We're gonna continue to grow and develop. So to reiterate core values, of course you should be doing that, right? Of course we should. We, we teach our, our boys with a classical education model, and it's all about memorization.

It's about repeating. It's about this idea of ingraining this into our subconscious effectively, so that way it changes the way that we act. It changes the way we engage with information. Yeah. Oh, for sure. So it, it's interesting too, and I'm sure you've experienced it just based on what you said, that um, sometimes your organization outgrows people who were, were a good fit, but now they're not because the company has grown.

Sometimes your people outgrow you. Um, I forget who I heard Sam, but they, they were talking about, they had someone on their team that was just a superstar, and they realized, they said, if my vision isn't big enough to leave space for their vision within my company, they are leaving. Yeah. And so they like expanded wildly because they wanted to keep this one person, but it opened up a whole new vista of their business.

And, but people gotta grow and if they're not, they're, they the right people. That totally agree. One, 1000%. Yeah. Well, let's, let's shift slightly and, and this is kinda where we'll wrap things up, uh Sure. For the day you've got a podcast, it's called Pillars of Purpose podcast, and it's all about faith, family, and business.

When did you start that and what is the, like, what is the message that you're trying to make sure to bring to the marketplace and who needs to hear this podcast? Yeah. Uh, I appreciate that a lot. So I started recording episodes middle of last year, so we're, we're 18 months into it almost. Um, we've got 110 episodes that are, that are published.

And really the, the emphasis was, um, I started, part of my growth as a leader was I need to surround myself with, with wise counsel. And so I started a board of advisors and I wrote out an entire board of advisors plan. It was, here's the requirements, here's men that I admired my life outside looking in.

Right? No one's perfect, but. Outside looking in, here's, they've gotten to points in their career that I admire. Mm-hmm. And so I wanna surround myself with them. I want to have some quarterly kind of business meetings, and I wanna talk about three key areas of my life, my faith, my family, and my business.

And, and I want to define out what is it, what's a scorecard that I can give myself in those areas to evaluate the, the, the, I, I heard a preacher say it a long time ago. Like, we need guardrails in our life. Mm-hmm. And the guardrails in our life are there for a reason. They're to keep us from diving off the, the cliff.

Yeah. And, and to our demise. And so this is kind of like a guardrail in my life to say, these are the things that I want to do. These are the directions I want to go. These are the conversations I want to have. And these are the conversations. I don't wanna have these, these are the things I want to be true about my life.

And I don't wanna be true about my life. And so we met together in one of the first meetings that I had with that group. Was around the idea. First or second meeting was, Hey, I, I've, I've been praying about starting podcasts. There's a million podcasts out there, right? I, I don't feel like I need another voice.

Um, but it was, how can I take conversations that we're having around this table? How can I bring other people into the fold and then share those publicly? Mm-hmm. And what happened was, it is the most enjoyable thing that I do right now. I love what we do. I love the work that we do, but the podcast is the most enjoyable thing that we can do because I just get to be inquisitive.

Yeah. I'm a naturally inquisitive person. My boys come by naturally. And it's can be so frustrating at times. And my wife is extremely patient with all of us, but I'm just a naturally inquisitive person. And so the, the thing for me is I'm very passionate about, about living a life of purpose that, again. I, I've sat and held my son's casket, right?

This life is very short and this life is not guaranteed. And so with the time that I have here, I want to live a life of purpose in these three areas, my faith, my family, and my business. Mm-hmm. And so what I do is I interview people all around the world around one of those three topics. And there there's a lot of faith conversation in there.

So if you're not interested in faith, you may not like it. Uh, but, but it is, I mean, we've had a hundred million dollar businesses, business owners that come on and they just share like incredible nuggets. And I'm like, where did that come from? Yeah. But, but it's really, it's, it is how, look at the stage that I'm in with my faith, my family or my business.

And let me ask somebody just a little further down the road, and one of the questions that I almost always ask is, if you could go back to yourself 10 years ago, what's some advice that you would give? And I love that question because it makes us think retrospectively. Yeah. For me, it's kind of like I'm sitting there 10 years from your future, like, tell me what you wish you would've known and then let me try to apply that.

Yeah. And, and that's, that's been, that's been so, I, I, I absolutely love it. That's so good. Yeah. It's so good. It's so much fun to when you, you're able to interview someone and, uh, glean from them because most of the time people that have gained a level of success want to share, like they want to help the next guy.

'cause they remember what it was like to struggle and they're like, yeah, let me give you what I wish I had known. Let's go. Yeah. That's great. It's amazing that, that I have people that I connect with right. That early in our business career that I want to get coffee with. That's, this is kind of the way I envision my podcast now is I'm getting to ask questions that I would ask over lunch or coffee.

Somebody and you're just getting to listen in that conversation. Yeah. That, that's really how I handle the, the calls that I do. The, the, the, the podcast. Yeah. So that's pure gold. Um, so what's, what's one thing today from our conversation or with our conversation, for the folks who are gonna hear it, that, whether it's a bit of wisdom or a resource or a tool or something, what would you like for people to be able to take away from the time they've just spent with us today?

That's a great question. Um, I think for me, the, the, a big shift for us was clearly defining out roles within your organization and hiring for those roles, and then adequately delegating to those roles. I if, if, if there's any piece of advice that I could give is around that. It is, don't hire somebody and dump the the job on this.

Don't just give them a job description. Say, Hey, go figure it out. Yes, sit with them, help them, teach them, watch me now do it now I'm gonna watch you now go do it. Right? That this very simple delegation model, but you, you've got to walk alongside you in this process. And then if you hire good people, they wanna work and they wanna work well and they don't want you to look over their shoulder, that's not what they came on the, the team for.

Um, that, that's not your everyday day laborer. Right. That that's not somebody who's just coming in for a short season, a period of time that this is as you're developing our leadership team. Right. That, that's kind of more in, in that arena. Yeah. Oh, that's good. All right, so what's the best way for people to either follow you or learn from you got the podcast Is that is Pillars of Purpose?

Yeah. Pillars of Purpose. Podcasts. It's, it's on everywhere You get podcasts, Spotify, you can watch the videos on Spotify, YouTube, you can listen on Apple, Amazon, SoundCloud, all the different places it, it launches. Um, my email is matthew@ddelightbros.com. Okay. I'm not perfect at responding to emails. I'll be very clear about that.

I do have a day during the week that I typically follow up with those kind of outbound, uh, emails in, in my lead process. So I'd be happy to connect with people, I'd be honored to. And, um, if they want to know more about a franchise system, lighting pros franchise.com, I would be honored to help anybody that send the rest in getting into the outdoor lighting space.

Okay, great. Well, hey, thanks for spending time with me today, Matthew. It's always good to catch up with you. It was good to meet you in person for the first time at the huge convention. And, uh, then we, I didn't mention this earlier, but before we went live, you said after we were talking about all the travel that you and your family have done in the past six months or so, you said?

Yep, yep, yep. And we're leaving tomorrow. What, where are you headed tomorrow? So we are going up to the mountains. Uh, we're, we're gonna spend some time in the mountains, which is, we, it's our happy place. I mean, we just love it. I grew up in, in north Georgia and, um, gonna do some hunting, gonna do some fishing.

Gonna just enjoy the fall weather. Um, the, the leaves right now are absolutely beautiful. Yeah. And so gonna, gonna spend some time up there, which will be very fun. That's great. And I like, it's gonna sound a little weird, but I really admire and I'm, and I'm excited for you to prioritize that time of life to be with your family because as you know, it goes back quickly and uh, and I really appreciate it.

So congratulations on your business success, your podcast, and most of all the time that you have deliberately decided to invest with and spend with your family while they're nice and young. So keep up the good work. Appreciate that a lot. Hello my friend. This is Sid. Thank you again so much for taking your time to listen to today's episode.

I hope you've 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. 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. 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. 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 20 through 22nd and 2025, and it is the largest and number one rated. Trade show and convention for home service business builders. 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.

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And scroll down and 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. So keep on growing, keep on learning, keep advancing.

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We'll see you on the next episode.