Schadensanierung: Wachsen, wenn Versicherungen aussteigen

0:00Unternehmer/Gast I sell property damage repairs, so emergency services for residential commercial clients. So, pipes break, wildfires, hurricanes, we do that kind of stuff. Uh do 13 and 1/2 million dollars in revenue. 2.5? 13 and 1/2. >> 13.5. Nice. Um want to be at well, $100 million is long-term vision, so that's the plan. Um what's stopping us right now is insurance covers most of our clients' bills. Mhm. Right now, landscaping in California is they're exiting, dropping a lot of coverage.

0:27>> Mhm. Um we've noticed in this last year alone that um a lot of clients that have property damage aren't being covered, so we're having to we're going from being able to just start work to low-cost estimates and price bidding wars. Um I'm watching the landscape turn into kind of a red ocean in my my mind. And I am wanting to launch kind of get out of a red ocean, wanting to launch into a kind of Costco-like membership where we sell subscription access for low-cost services.

0:55Um just as a way to try to swim uphill. You mean like a home services membership? Yeah, home services membership. Yeah, exactly. Um as an alternative to insurance as most people aren't or less and less people are being covered. I guess where I'm going with it is I've heard a lot about focus in this conversation or in the last couple of days, and I'm trying to figure out balancing focus versus needing to pivot when um I have big questions about our industry and and the viability of it.

1:21Are you all in California right now? Majority of our work is California. We travel a bit for but that ends up being in Florida for hurricanes and So, you're national? We travel nationally, yeah, but I'd say 70% of our work is California. Okay, got it. Are you growing? This year, no. This year we we've taken a a hit. What was last year? Last year was 13 and 1/2. This year, it's a bit seasonal, but this year we're probably going to be closer to 10. Okay.

1:48Uh what are margins? Uh bottom line's 35%. Okay. So, that does the I mean, do you have a lot of fixed costs or is it mostly variable? So, that like at 10, you'll just still do 3 and 1/2 million in profit and at 13, you did five or whatever, four and a half? Yeah, it's um it's yeah, a lot of variable cost. Okay, got it. Um and so, to restate the question, it's should I change my business model from what I'm currently selling and how do you get customers right now?

2:16Right now, most of it's online, so like Google PPC. So, PPC is the primary source, like people search I have an emergency, blah blah blah. >> Yeah, water break, you know, someone come help me. They call us. Got it. So, that's how that's how that's how you're getting customers now, and you want to switch the whole business to the membership model. Yeah, because we had customers originally calling years ago, covered by insurance, price-insensitive clients. We could charge premium rates, make our margins. Um now, without being covered, they're you know, price shopping a lot more of their work.

2:46Our model isn't working well for that low cost. So, two possible paths to solution, and you know, changing the entire business is typically is like to my in my opinion, like the Armageddon button of like let's blow the world up, like so it's like are there other things that we could do beyond that that's not blowing the whole business up? And I think the simple one is like is there just another place I need to get customers who already have full coverage? Now, if you think that all carriers across the US are now changing all of their policies, then that's a systemic issue. So, then it's like okay, then maybe maybe we have a model thing, or is there a way that we can test sales process so that we can just get basically if we have first contact, we can just close. And if we can do that, then it's like okay, great.

3:32So, we're going to do a blend of cash and insurance, we get set cash up front, and then um and then we'll get insurance on the back. So, the cash covers our cost to acquire, and then we'll you know, basically we make our nut on the back. The difficulty of switching to what you were considering, just so that you can kind of see like, okay, this woman's really cute, she seems nice, and then you get home and she has pictures of every guy she's ever dated on the wall, and you're like, this is weird. Um and then she like keeps little clocks of their hair, and you're like, that's not what I expected. Um so, the issues with the the model that you're getting into or that considering is like if you think that it is hard and competitive to sell when part of it is being covered, it is even more competitive when none of it is being covered. Right. And selling a one-time solution when someone is in pain is way easier than selling a recurring solution when someone's not in pain.

4:22And I have I've seen a I've seen a a huge huge number of businesses in the home services space, typically venture-backed, that are trying to do this uh membership model. I've yet to see someone who has done so profitably and well. What I have seen is guys who will come in to fix the HVAC and then get people on the memberships. That works especially well. And so, I think the easiest like 1.0 test for you would be continue to respond to the inquiries that you're getting that are emergency-based, but then don't let that be the only sale.

4:55So, once people you know, once you do the work or whatever, afterwards it's like, hey, by the way, let's get to like let's make sure that this doesn't happen to you again. And that would actually make a lot of sense. And if you can't close those people, then definitely don't switch the model. But uh I'll bet you that there is a very compelling offer that can be made on the back end of the emergency thing because the thing is it's emergency for you is there's like levels of emergency, but if it's Vegas and your AC goes out in the summer, it's a [ __ ] emergency, right?

5:20Right. [laughter] And so, um in terms of sellability, it actually the whole sales motion works the same way. Okay. Which we can walk you through. Cool. Thanks. Yeah, you bet. If you're a business owner and you are not growing as fast as you'd like, I'd like to give you a free gift. So, my team and I put together the $100 million scaling road map, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had and what stages of growth they went through, and more importantly, where they got stuck and how they got past it. And so, we broke it into these 10 stages, and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you put in your business information, it'll tell you where you're at and the most important part for you, what to do for each of functions of the business across product, marketing, sales, customer success, recruiting, IT, human resources, and finance. And so, no matter what you're struggling with, someone else has already struggled with it and solved it. And so, I'd like to give you this thing absolutely free. You can go to acquisition.com/roadmap, plug in your business information, and if you want us to actually help you deconstruct the business and you're trying to scale, we'd love to help you out. On the thank you page, you can book a call with my team, and we will look at the business, see if we can help, and if we can, we'll invite you out to Vegas, and we'll do this in person live.