Ep 189 - "From Feeding the 5000 to PuroClean and Plumbing"

0:00 Wow. How many of you have listened to the Head, Heart & Boots podcast? I can't tell you that reaction, how much that means to us. Welcome back to the Head, Heart & Boots podcast. I'm Chris. And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. This new camera angle makes my arms look smaller than yours. I'm noticing that and I really appreciate it. I thought you did that on purpose. No, I don't. I didn't. And I am not happy with it. All right. Hey, welcome back, everybody, to the Head, Heart & Boots podcast. I'm here with Nilo Kiros and John Velen. I'm really excited. They own a one-time plumber and a Pure Clean franchise in the Houston market.

0:42 And they were recommended to us by a couple of friends. And this is our latest edition of Owner's Stories. We've got a lot of feedback from many of you listeners. You enjoy these. And I think today is going to be no exception. I think we're going to have a really fun chat with these guys today. They're young enough in their heroic journey with their businesses that I think many of you that are also new to the industry will identify with a lot of their successes and struggles and their own personal stories of how they got to here. But they've also had some tremendous success right out of the gate. And those of you achievers out there, I think there's going to be some notes that you can take to learn from their experience and hopefully replicate some of their success if you're just now starting your restoration company or service company.

1:27 Welcome to the Headharm Boots podcast. Why don't you guys, one of you, we're going to have to kind of do a little back and forth here, I imagine. Give us kind of each of your origin stories. Where'd you guys come from prior to restoration? All right. Thank you for giving us the opportunity for being in the podcast. I'm from Peru, naturally from Peru. You know, we're coming from a country that security is not the best. Our parents normally educate us in the way that we need to study a good career. You know, we need to work in big companies. And that's how I did my initial part of my life. I'm a mechanical engineer. I studied bachelor's degree of science in Peru. I enrolled in one of the biggest service companies in oil and gas, Slumberger.

2:08 I worked with them eight years. And after all this exposure, I realized that it wasn't for me. I don't mean anything about oil and gas, but I meant like it's not for me to be an employee. I need to be the leader. I need to be the head. I need to really do something that is meaningful for me. And that's what I would I decide to turn around. And you know what? I look at the North. I say, you know, United States, how can I reach there? I need to do a master's degree. Say, OK, let me go to do a master's degree. I went to a study subsea engineering. You know, SAP's engineering, we design everything that go below underwater, you know, everything to bring the oil and gas, you know, to the surface. And that's what I study.

2:48 And then I realized, you know what? I want to open a business here. I'm in the U.S. I want to open a business in the U.S. and everything, the journey starts. Multiple companies, a lot of good experiences, some of them failures, like you already know, you know, but you already know, right? It's not about the destination, it's about the journey. I enjoy every failure I made in my life, you know, especially with businesses, because it prepared me for the next step. And that's what I want. Even in the big picture, this is whatever I have, Nilo. So my story, I'm from Mexico originally and not like many people think that I just came here, you know, and illegally or something. I came here by a choice or by chance of life, you know.

3:30 I also come like John from a country where there's not a lot of opportunities. And even if you find an opportunity, it's very hard. Like you can make a house full of space and then it crumbles. because I have started a couple of businesses. I hustled when I was a kid since my 18 years old or something, and all of them failed because of corruption or things that you cannot you can actually not make something work with. It takes time, takes a lot of corruption and it's hard. So like John, my parents always told me, you know what? Stop trying to do something and just get a job. You know, so I got a job in the same company as John, Multinational, Slumberjays, Oil and Gas.

4:11 And they grabbed me. Basically, this company grabbed you and sent you all around the world. I lived in nine countries. He lived in a couple as well, super weird countries. And then we met. And John always has been like, he always wanted to do something. I also always wanted to do something. And then he told me about this idea about doing something in the U.S. And I said, I'm all in. But I didn't probably know what is really being an entrepreneur because... It is totally, totally hard, you know. It was very weird because we had a meeting, you know, with a lot of engineers at that time in the company. And everybody always talked, right?

4:51 Oh, yeah, let's do something. I'm ready. Yo, I'm ready to leave. Okay, guys, this is the moment. I'm leaving the company. We need to put money in. We're buying a company in the U.S., to start from zero, who is saying, you see how everybody fading out. Everybody fading out. And the only person who say, I don't know what's going to happen. I have no clue what is going to be the outcome. It was Nilo. I say, let's do it. You know? I mean, I'm going to say, for some reason, I always wanted to own a McDonald's. I love McDonald's. Like, since I was a kid, my parents used to take me every Friday to take a, you know, grab a Happy Meal in Mexico. I mean, So I said, how hard can it be, right?

5:32 We both had also like the sports We used to do sports when we were kids So when we talk about business, you know, I said Well, Rocky, you know, Rocky the boxer Used to have a, you know, he used to be a boxer And then he has a business and he's doing good How hard can it be, right? that saying that people that don't know, they actually don't sometimes do things and then it just works. I was kind of that guy. You know, I didn't know what I was getting to. I think John has a little bit more experience in that sense that his family has owned businesses before. So he knows how hard it is to do a business. And he has taught me so much into what is to be a Because I was with the bad conception that business owner is like you're the boss, you come in two hours and then you walk away and everything is running smoothly.

6:19 But you have to get into that point. It's probably 15, 20 years in the future once you have processes and all these things. But you don't know when you don't know, right? So that's why I didn't walk off. I wanted that life and I wanted what's the feeling to own something, you know. Plus, when we when we decided to do it and because he was the one that checked all the business and give many ideas, you know, he was really hustling that side. He presented me a couple of businesses and then I say, you know what, I'm going to do it, whatever it is. But it's very hard to, you know, just just say that you're going to do something and then don't and then continue with it. Pure game was not our first business that you need to know. And we've been working together for like 15 years now, actually. Yep.

6:59 Wow. Okay. Just a minute, guys. I've got a quick question for you because I think this is really important before we dive deeper. Business partnerships can be really messy. And a lot of people listening to this have found themselves in a bad business partnership. And a lot of times that's because two people that are very, very similar come together and then they do this. And so I'm curious, can you guys talk just a little bit about your relationship with... Are you guys different in kind of your natural wiring and skill set or are you guys similar? And just talk about how that's been just generically about your friendship and working relationship. Sure. Whenever we work in oil and gas, we were like friends.

7:39 You know, we visit our families, you know, whenever we were like a cutting day off. on vacation time. Whenever we become partners, of course, the expectation is high. You know, Nilo was thinking that it was like spending two hours in a business and that's it. You know, I'm out and going for to watch movies. I want to go to watch NBA games and everything. And then, you know what? My wife was telling me what your friend is thinking he's doing. He's spending two hours in the business. Well, since 5 a.m. working in this business until 7 p.m. We were working there, right? He spent two hours, you know. But again, this is something you cannot force people to do something. For me, the less resistant way is always make the people realize what is going to be the best choice.

8:23 Right. If I tell Nilo, oh, you need to do this, you need to do that. No, I don't care. No, it doesn't work. You need to tell Nilo, hey, we have a problem. We need some help in the morning. Can you come earlier? Yes. OK, I'm in there. Hey, can you help me with the pickup in the afternoon? You know, like it's more how you manage. And then people realize, hey, I hardly made it. You know, I'm here at 6 p.m. What do you need? We're grilling chicken because our first business was a catering business. So we were grilling chicken, frying chips, preparing plates, forks, napkins and everything for next day orders, you know. And that was more or less a relationship. And it was kind of weird for us because we always bring our wife with us. In any type of business, we are four of us, you know.

9:07 At the beginning, as you can imagine, it was chaotic. The first two years were very, very difficult. Nilo want to go right, I want to go left, my wife want to go up, my wife want to go down. So this is the real situation and that was a critical moment for the business. And on top of that you're losing money. You're losing money and your bank account is reducing and you know what, this is going nowhere. Guys, we need to make a decision, either we pack our stuff and we leave the country. or we really, really need to get a direction. And that was the whole deal, right? Who's going to be the leader? Who's going to be leading the team? Who's going to be, you know, even my wife gave a suggestion.

9:49 We need to do this. Let's introduce this menu. Let's go do some marketing. Let's create something, another type of meal for this customer that have, I don't know, 60 people every single day training. You know, what do you know about food, right? No, I'm not doing that. How do you know? A validation. His wife, even me, like, why you're saying that? How can you prove it? They were always challenging me in a way that, for example, I don't know anything. Right. And that was true. I didn't know anything. But in business, you cannot get a different outcome if you don't try something different. Right. We need to challenge. We need to challenge the system and try one after another one. We try, we try, we try. And then we decide, we thought and say, you know what?

10:32 This is going on where we need to really follow one direction. And they chose me like the leader. And since that day, I think I haven't failed. You know, I'm being like always taking care of all of them. I try to always put my partners, you know, is super important, but... I would say it wasn't easy. It was difficult. To answer your question, we're totally different. Black and white here. I love sales. I love talking to people. I am the one that always, you know, like meeting, doing greeting, trying a lot of stuff. And I jump. I'm the one that jumps the plane without a parachute. And, John is the one that goes right behind me and say, I got you. You know, I have the parachute here and then throw it at me.

11:15 He's that kind of guy. I'm crazy. He's very, you know, like into details and oriented and like organized and structured. And I do believe that's why it make it work. Because if he was just like me, we probably will have failed. Or if everything was, you know, superstructure, maybe you don't advance and try stuff. I don't know. But we're totally different people. And we have focus in totally different parts of the business, right? We complement each other. We talk a lot. We talk a lot. I talk to John more than I talk to my wife in a daily basis. And we probably know more about each other than we should. But we know. But this is, I think, the way to work.

11:57 If you want to put it in the way I see things in life, do you remember that movie that they have like gigantic robots and two people go in and they need to synchronize to control their robot and fight the bad guys or something like that? Pacific Rim. Pacific Rim. Yeah, yeah. That is how we work. And that is how we sync. And we kind of like we have met each other so much at a certain level that we just control the robot, you know, like his left arm and right arm, things like that. It's just the way we work. But in reality, when you look and meet each one of us, it's totally different opinions, totally different views. We clash and we have a lot of discussions, but we agree in trying new stuff. And we also agree in what is in the best interest of the company.

12:41 company we have like what is the best interest in that company so i think i think we reach reach a moment that the ego was on the side and now that's correct move forward you know egos on the side nilo what is your idea this one let's try three weeks give results let's keep doing putting money on that you know what about that idea it doesn't matter who say it let's try it it doesn't work okay put it on the side we keep doing whatever we're getting more results right now i think if purchases don't work is because of egos Like, oh, I know better than you. Oh, you know better than me. Like, you know, you have to lower your defense on that sense and say, hey, maybe this guy is right. You know, and the sooner you do that, the easier that partnership is going to work.

13:21 And you need to understand how the other person is, you know, why they think different and why they think this is a bad or a good idea. But also having a business partner is the best thing you can do. In my honest opinion. Look, you want to go to Christmas, you want to go to like Halloween is my thing. John is all about, you know, Christmas and family. Each person is different and you don't let the business alone. And also, you know, business goes up and down. When you're in that down, you're not alone there, you know. At least somebody keeps up the spirits and the other person is down. I'm a very person that switched moods quickly. And I don't know anything else to talk to John and tell him, hey, what we're going to do here, right? And when we're happy and great, you know, he's always thinking about, oh, somebody's going to come and get us and something's going to happen.

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15:31 So take action. Don't kick the can down the road. Start with our business health and value assessment, and let's unlock the next chapter of your success story. I got a question for you guys. Let's go back. So that's really interesting in that I think maybe most partnerships are like this, where one partner is very different than the other. It's certainly true of Brandon and I and people that listen to podcasts. They hear it just about every show. But let's go back to those first couple of years. So you buy a Pure Clean franchise in one of the most active restoration markets in the entire United States, Houston. So you're really thrown in. And what year was this? You guys opened Pure Clean in Houston? You have to tell the story. Tell the story how we made Pure Clean in restoration.

16:13 So I mentioned to you that we started with the catering business. So I'm always very active, trying to always to connect with people. I think it was back on 2018, 2019, whenever I started getting phone calls from FEMA, the Hurricane Laura was supposed to hit in Louisiana. and they want us to provide 500 meals. I told them which day, what time, in three hours. 500 meals. I say, that's my entrepreneur inside me. I call the cook, guys, you need to come now to the kitchen. What are we preparing? I don't know. Let me check the cooler, let me check the freezer, what we have. We're shipping this thing out. We couldn't make it in three hours. We make it in four hours.

16:54 We deliver 500 meals, you know, to one company, large loss company, it was a restoration company. It was providing food. And then I say, there is an opportunity here. We put the Google ads. We start going around. We get the gold and black company, the green company, the yellow company, the orange company, everybody ordering food from us. We was delivering 2000 meals per day. So $20 each. So sometime breakfast, sometime lunch and dinner. It was crazy. And they were paying credit card in advance. And John said, are you guys doing something legal? I mean, this is a lot of money. What the hell is going on here? You know, I want to get into this business. We have, you know, food and beverage. Normally you make 7%.

17:35 You manage to make 11% net profit. You're amazing. You're amazing. So I say, how come you can pay your guys a very expensive meal and charging you a lot of delivery fee and you're still paying and you're still making money? Oh yeah, I have a partner coming from California. I have another partner coming from Oregon. I have another partner from New York. It's like, wow, which business is this? And then you go and see what they're doing. Yeah, exactly. And then the morging houses and he's like, what's going on? It is a restoration. So for the first 10 days of delivery, because we stayed three weeks there, by the way. I went and I started analyzing what's going on. They can say, tell me what you do. Come to this house. I want to show you. So I entered the house. I said, guys, you are destroying the house. No, we're restoring the house.

18:17 I see you're breaking stuff. I don't see you putting everything back. Yeah, there is a process. What is this company about? How much money can you make in this company? Oh, the bottom line is going to be very, very, very high compared to other industries. You know, like that's one from my first approach to restoration. We actually, I mean, that's how John met restoration. And we were in the food and beverage business. Quick break over there. We did try to do food and beverage in Singapore. We opened a company in Singapore. It was a startup middleman, classic website, middleman for food and beverage. John and me, we moved to Singapore. We were there for a year and something, almost two years. It was profitable.

18:58 It was great. We learned a lot about technology, how to do apps, the whole enchilada, you know. But we went in an incubator by the government. We got funds. We learned how to raise money. We learned a lot of stuff. How to teach, how to talk, how to get big companies with us. And COVID hit. And when COVID hit, we basically, you know, killed the company over there. I mean, everywhere, you know, food and beverage was lost everywhere. So we came back to the U.S., reunite, and then we said, what we're going to do next. And me and John, we always have this dream about doing construction and working, you know, Well, he want to do like projects, you know, engineering and designing and all these things. And I want to do roads. For some reason, I like roads. I want to do roads. I think it's just a good business.

19:38 And we said, let's do a construction company. But we like franchise systems. And we can talk about that later. But we love franchises. So let's say let's find the best franchise in restoration. I mean, you know, in construction, there's not, it doesn't exist. All right. So if anybody's looking for a good idea, that's a good idea. Yes. You know, that's a good idea. So there's no franchising in construction. And then he came up with all this story and told me about restoration. And I said, you know what? That sounds like something interesting. And we did research for six months about restoration and everything. And we are getting at this point, we're very good at making business plans and understanding if it's a good business or not. Took us six months. All four of us like involved in checking what's going on.

20:19 We have different options. We have like four options. We basically contact four franchises and we kind of make it through all of the procedures of every one. Not pure coin, by the way. And we were almost going to get one. And but they just told us like we were just we did all the interviews. We were just about to deposit the money for a franchise fee. And then they told us, you know what, guys, Houston market is taken completely. You cannot get in. And we're like, what are you talking about? We were in the process. We were good. You know, it was free at the beginning. And then they told us it's not available anymore. OK, can you make an official document for me to have it, please? And they didn't do it. And we talked to the broker and we asked the broker sincerely, hey, look, we want to get a restoration company and we have all these, but nothing convinces but the one that we just lost.

21:01 So do you recommend any company at all that is restoration and that is good? And the broker said, you know what? We just got this franchise. That used to be okay, but now they're doing, they're making waves and they're just going on a road. They're doing great. They just got acquired and needs a brand new leadership and everything. And it's called Pure Clean. And then you said, you know what? Let's talk to them. Let's talk to them. Yeah. And that's how we got into Pure Clean. That's how we joined Pure Clean. And we started with a story in 2021. In 2021. Wow. Okay, guys. Let's just recap a little bit what's happened here. So you really got turned on originally to the industry where when you own the catering company, you're serving hundreds and thousands of meals a day at a really nice margin.

21:43 You guys are making money, but then you start to... into some of these restorers and you're like, holy cow, we think the money's good here. These guys are making big money doing this restoration thing. And so that's where it originally piqued your interest. But then you guys go off and there's a whole other interlude where you guys go to Singapore after that company and you start some food and beverage technology, whatever thing. That goes pretty good until COVID. And then you guys come back around and start Pure Oakland. Okay, now I have to ask you this. Okay, I wanna go back to the chaos. that you guys mentioned in your first couple years because in the catering company oh that was the catering company okay well let's talk about the first year in the catering company by pure clean we work together very good as a more seasoned yeah we were seasoned as a partnership okay okay well let's talk about that first year guys what 2021 in pure clean yeah yeah when you got into your i mean there's chaos i'll tell you okay Okay, all right.

22:39 What was the first thing that you guys encountered? So by this point, we got the franchise and everything, you know, you go through the training. But even before going to the training, we learned in Singapore, you know, by doing, when we got accepted to Singapore and all these things, even without being in Singapore, we start calling people because you can do market research. even if you're not there, or in this case for restoration. So we learned that with the startup. So before, when we got accepted into Pure Clean and we got accepted into restoration, John told me, Nilo, you know agents? Well, I maybe know a couple of insurance agents. And he said, they say agents is the thing. Why don't you start calling some agents? And by the way, this is my agent. This is my agent. This is like he knows some people. And I start hitting the ground and talk to people without even knowing what am I going to sell or talk to them about, you know, but I just go, you know, that's me.

23:24 So I just go. We don't even have a company. We didn't even have a company, but I'm talking because we want to understand the market. Right. So I go and hit the ground. Then we went to and they start explaining me how it works restoration. Then we went to training and then we come back and then we start to, I mean, we keep doing the sales, you know, in the exterior, try to get orders. We don't have anything. It's just like that. And a hurricane hit Louisiana. Aida. Aida. And you have a couple of hundred thousands in the bank. That's what we have savings for the whole year. And then, John, tell me. Because, you know, I'm more at this point, I'm out in the streets all the time and he's just managing the whole operation, you know, and he tells me, Nilo, there's this opportunity here. I can hit. We don't know anything about the game, but we can go to Hurricane and they say that's how you can make some cash.

24:08 We have a couple of hundreds. We can probably support the operation and learn. But the most important thing for us, it was not making money. To be honest, he told me we need to learn how to do this. That's the best scenario because you can actually learn and we might have jobs. Yeah. John is always a very realistic person. Like I told you, he doesn't play and go crazy. He told me, if we go there and do three houses, we're good. We can at least don't lose money. We make a couple, come back and we learn how to do houses. We want to go for the experience, exposure, right? We want to make sure what are we getting into? What is going to be a cut? You know? So we have one week after we finalize our training, our soul wasn't even open. We were painting walls and stuff. And we were heading to Louisiana already.

24:49 But John told me also, if we fail, we might lose the business because we don't have more money. You know, we don't have more money to sustain the business. So I told him, okay, I mean, like, I don't know, let's try it, right? But I think I know what he was doing, so... Yeah, we went there. Okay, we didn't even open shop. We took like they send you stuff, right? They send you equipment, they send you everything just in the package. We put in a truck and get the hell out. Like we didn't even open equipment like we didn't open shop. We just went. By the way, when they receive a lot of the items, we were not sure what was this equipment for. I brought carpet cleaners, like a instruction machine we don't need.

25:29 I bought a lot of chemicals for all the authorization. I mean, everything. For fire. You can go to a train, but you're not an expert, right? Yeah. So, but guess what? It's better to have everything there and choose what you have that don't have it, right? So that's whatever we did. We ended up... No, before we ended up. Okay, yeah, you can say how much we did. Okay, we ended up doing 49 houses, you know, we brought the revenue around like $490,000, almost half million dollars on our, I think the month prior our opening. And we were already invoicing and the corporate office was like, guys, are you coming back to Houston? You need to open your store. Yeah, they tell us to open the store.

26:11 Sure. But I mean, we didn't do it wrong or anything, you know. On that stage, I don't want to sound cocky or anything. At the bottom line, we're engineers, right? Once you do it once or twice, you get it. You get it. And we were also, you know, not stupid in a way. When we go to deployments, there's not only one Pure Clean. There's like 20, 30 Pure Cleans over there. So we talked to another Pure Clean. You know, we talked to a regional director and they told us, hey, you can pair it up with these guys and they'll teach you the ropes and everything. So the first house, we basically did it for free. We just went with another Pure Clean and, okay, explain to us how does it work? And then he explained us the whole theory behind it and how do you do this? So to learn. So that's where the Pure Clean Network helped each other. We made a deal that he was not about to refuse.

26:51 Give me two houses. I have 10 people with me. Let's go and give people for two days for free. For free. We do labor for free. Labor for free. And you just need to teach them and teach me how to do it. That's it. That's why we went two houses and then we finished. I said, thank you so much. We're on our own. And then I signed my first house. I think it was complete God. You need to demo all the entire house. You have multiple perforations on the roof. And then I call Nilo, the homeowner left, left me the key. I call Nilo. I say, Nilo, I got my first house. I couldn't believe it. And Nilo is like, are you sure? Yeah, I have the key. I'm inside. Homeowner is not here. I need to call Darren.

27:32 Bring everybody. Our instructor from Puraclid. I don't know what to do, right? And we were literally with the iPhone, you know, doing FaceTime and everything, doing the readings. And he was like, that's gone. That's gone. And Johnny's like, are you sure? Are you sure we're not going to pay for this? Can I take it down? And he's like, it's gone. Look at this, you know, explaining. And John is like, OK, OK, let's do it. You know, the whole house is like we went down, you know, it was a major hurricane. But by the way, in the struggle over here, you need to understand, even before we got the deal with the Philippines and when we arrived, because we were very early into the hurricane, Me and John were out knocking doors, trying to get jobs for like three days. And we entered a house.

28:13 We spent like four or five hours with a homeowner trying to do a sketch. You know, everything basically as per the book in the school. And it was just not working out. And the customer was like, I'm not going to sign. Let me think about it. And we were losing customers left and right. And we also were doing horrible sketches and everything. We were so lost. And then when this guy came in, you know, they actually show us a lot of tools, you know, sketching tool, how to document and how to do it the proper way. You know, that was the reality. So we learned a lot. The PureClean network helped us a lot. OK, so let's move forward a little bit to you get through the hurricane. You clearly awesome first showing, right? Half a million bucks. You've got 50 homes, projects under your belt.

28:54 Right. So you've learned a lot. I love your comment about you guys are engineers. Right. couple, you're paying attention. Then you start doing your own. You still feel a little bit lost, but you've got resources through the franchise that are helping you kind of hold your hand a little bit on the next several, I imagine. Correct. And then you guys start to get a system in place, but you're in a hurricane zone, very different than local mitigation operations. So you guys get home and you finally open up your store in Houston and... Talk to me about sort of your first year or two kind of establishing that local operations. What would you guys say was your biggest challenge or learning experience when you started building the local operations?

29:35 So that's why it's important that I told you that even when we did an open shop, we were not even in the training and everything. I was visiting agents. I know it will sound crazy, but when I came back, those agents start calling me. Hey, are you back from the hurricane? I have this lady in this house that asking me about some odors and whatever. And I'm like, sure, let's take a look. And they start ringing that phone and that got us traction and we start getting jobs. I couldn't believe it. Those three months that I stay out and try to knock down people or month or something that I don't know how many time frame, to be honest, but we did some sales, if you want to say. When we came back, immediately we started getting orders here.

30:16 So for us, it was not really like a lot of waiting and sitting around on the phone or whatever, because the minute we came down, I was back in the streets hustling. We struggle with bigger things, more like operational stuff. But in the sales side, we were okay, you know. By the way, now again, I was learning the ropes of selling. One of our biggest contributors to PureClean is one of our agents, our best agents. You know, I met him before, then I met him after a hurricane, and he told me, hey, look, I like you, you seem nice, but you don't know what to do. You really know. You don't know. You know nothing about restaurant. Yeah. And the guy sit me down for two hours and explain me how to sell him and any other agent. And there's a nap for him before this conversation.

30:58 Yeah. Tell me what he said in that conversation. He said, you need to join a networking group. You need to make your brand recognized. You need to talk like professionally. You need to go and do inspections for free. You need to, you know, he tells me a lot of stuff that we actually have to do. You don't need to come here and just give me cookies or candy or drop me stuff. I will never talk to you. Who are you? Like, let's make a relationship here, you know? So he started explaining to me how to get into an agent. And he tells me, I don't want you coming in, walking in and just talking to my people. They're busy men. you know, and a lot of stuff. And he tells me, this is how I want you to work with me. And then we will work together. And that agent basically helped me build a bigger network. And he told me, I know this guy and this guy and this guy.

31:40 Go visit them, tell them that this is, you come in my behalf. And then you start getting jobs and that's it. And another thing, you know, it happens all the time. Mom and pops or things like that. They go up in a hurricane and then they go down. Or also what happens is big companies And that's what we have never done. Big companies get big commercial jobs and they start to stop servicing residential. Right. And that was the case of this agent. He used to be partnered with a big brand. And as soon as they start getting commercial, they stop serving him. So he needed that help. He's a residential agent. So he told me, if you're going to do good, I'll give you business. And he presented me a lot of people. So. So I will talk in the operation part a little bit at the beginning of Pure Clean.

32:22 We have a big challenges. You know, we have very few. We have a lot of contacts. A lot of people, you know, coming to the store with visiting, but no claims. Right. We have no production. So we were sitting there. I think one of the secrets is to never say no. Okay. A, we have an odor removal. Okay, I will do it. Hang up. Get information of the customer. The first thing I do, I call my instructor. What should I do here? I don't have the certification for odor. Tell me everything you know about Odor. Call this guy. He does this thing every month. Okay. He gives me all the intensive training, you know, over the phone. I go inspect with the customer. I tell him, give me a couple of days. I will be coming. We do it. And then he takes a flight and go get the certification and come back just like that.

33:05 It was crazy. Never say no. We never say no to any type of services. We never say, for example, people that are starting restoration, they're always afraid to do reconstruction. You know, they say no content. Oh, yeah, slowly, slowly. Since day number one, we start with a 10,000 square feet location. and it was empty. It was empty. I have to see this location empty every single day. I was not happy. I was always concerned to make this location to be like full of contents, full of furniture, you know, and that's the secret, I guess, of our early success was diversification. We do all the services since the beginning.

33:45 We never say no. We have a fentanyl, I think. One time, but that was later after two years. Yeah, but the fentanyl. And guess what? I wasn't certified to do fentanyl, but I call Peter Clean from the network that is in Dallas Fort Worth. He came with his crew. We team up. They did the training for me. We did the job, period. That's the bless of being in a network, right? You have the instructor, you have the owners that they have a ton of experience. Those people, they have 15, 20 years in business. Yep. Right now, we are four. That time, we were like one, not even one, but that is the benefit, you know, to be part of the network. But I would say diversification, I'm not saying no. Yeah, I'm hearing a theme, guys, and I imagine it made you ultimately kind of the sweetheart of the Pure Clean corporate office because, you know, these resources are available.

34:32 And of course, that's part of the design of franchise companies is to be able to provide that support early on so you don't have to figure it out yourself. And you guys actually leveraged that knowledge and experience as you encountered challenges. I think it's a really good thing for our listeners to hear, right? Because Brandon and I, we've worked with many, many, many, many franchises, as have our other consultants and partners. And often, people aren't leveraging those resources. They're not calling on individual jobs. How do I do this? And getting paired up with a subject matter expert. And so I think that's a great message to folks, right? You know what the main reason they don't call? Because of the ego.

35:13 They don't want to check with anybody in the headquarters because of the ego. People don't want to look that they're asking something maybe silly or maybe obvious, you know? And guess what? Since day number one, our ego, I think our ego is top in the catering business. I came to Pure Clean. You know what? I don't know this. What should I do? You ask. And our instructor was telling me, John, stop texting me. Stop calling me. It is Sunday, 11 p.m. What do you want? Oh, I have another job. I have another inspection. At 11 p.m., I'm doing inspection in Louisiana. A customer couldn't make it before. I was doing an inspection. You know, John, please, I will talk to you tomorrow. Thank you. Bye. But at that level, right, we put our ego behind and we just say, listen, I know this thing.

35:59 I don't know this one is more advanced. Please guide me through. And we're listeners. You know, we listen. We try to capitalize on their own experience and we try to apply it in our market. That's what we did. Yeah. That's good. Where are your wives in this? How involved are your wives in the Pure Clean business? A lot. A lot. So we are four basically and we split kind of like in sales. I'll do sales mainly. John do ops financing strategy and Nadine, which is John's wife, do accounting and office management and Carol do marketing. That's it. And HR a little bit. And that's kind of what distribute different tasks in each one place.

36:40 Now, have we ever done it like this? No, I mean, we were switching and stuff until we kind of find what are we good at. And now that we keep growing in businesses, we want to change and do other stuff. You know, we want to try other realms and try to improve skills because it's always good to learn new stuff. Right. That's another thing we like. Yeah, yeah. How, you know, with you guys working so closely with one another, have you ever had conflict in the Pure Clean business between the four of you or two of you? And how have you guys navigated that? How have you chosen to deal with those situations? I think we learn to face those challenges in the catering, you know, to don't go very extreme, you know, but it is extreme. Yeah. Me and Nilo, in different times, we were very close to a divorce situation, you know, or separation.

37:25 But I thank my wife, you know, to support me 100%. I thank Carol for supporting Nilo, you know, because we will not be able to do anything without them. They're taking care of the house. They're taking care of our kids, you know, and that's super important. And the other stuff. how we look, trips, all that other stuff. I mean, we are fully immersed in working and trying to build a brand in Houston that we need that support in the back, you know, like if they were not there, our life would be a mess, you know? Yep. Another part I want to mention, I think I forgot to mention It is a lot of people, whenever we are starting in Pure Clean and we're getting some quick results, they will ask, what is your secret? There's no secret. It's like, put the hours. You know, I start my day at 6, 7 a.m. Five, because you do it by noon.

38:07 Yes. Yeah. So 5 a.m., but in the office at 7. And then I leave here around 9 p.m. I reach my house, 10 p.m. That was the first two years, right? And then it's like, wow, you work a lot. Yeah. Think about it. If I take six hours per day difference from what you work right now, I was talking to another pedocling owner, right? Multiply that in a year, two years. That's why, and plus I have a partner doing the same. That's why we sometimes we advance quick because we're moving faster. So that idea that, oh, I'm a business owner, I will work less, that is not going to happen. It doesn't go with us. It doesn't go with us neither. We know we need to grind. You know, we need to really hustle to really get results.

38:48 I think that was a secret that we knew since day number one, what needs to be done. Marketing? Check. Google Ads? Check. Training? Check. Equipment? Check. Capital working? Going outside and work? Check. Now we have contacts, we're missing some components. Hey, can you clean rugs? I clean rugs. Yeah. We have a friend that have a problem with the dog. They stay in the house and do all these things around for a week. We can take care of that. Sometimes we didn't even know how to estimate. Oh, yeah, yeah. That was a big one. I'm not kidding. We used to say, okay, it's a $2,000 job. My labor was $3,000. You know, but guess what? I learned. I asked, hey, my labor was $3,000.

39:29 How much should I have charged? Five times this, four times the labor cost. I was learning. But I'm not afraid to invest my money. I don't say it lucid. I'm investing my money for knowledge. And that's the, I would take it like with a lot of pride. We do what we do because we fail a lot. And guess what? Sometimes because we won. He has this saying about, I don't know, let's say we do a biohazard and not make money. And he said, okay, so learning biohazard costs us X money. Now we know. So, but there is the cost of learning, right? But we have to. There's one thing that maybe you, a lot of people say, even in a different way, John and me were getting, we have skills in sales probably.

40:09 And that's why also we have that hustling, you know, like we really want, we go after, we're going to stop. We keep going and going and going. Good times, bad times, economy up, down, sideways. We don't believe any of that. There's work out there. Somebody is doing it. Why? We are not the ones doing it. And that's what we are. That's our mentality. Yeah. Don't get too caught up in the successes. Just keep moving. Correct. Accept more failures. Just keep moving forward. Yeah. And we see, you know, the big restoration companies, they have a different structure. I might want to be like one of them or not, you know, maybe not. I want to be our own version, right? That's what I want. Our own version of restoration company. And we want to grow and decide, you know, that we're comfortable.

40:51 And that's what we want. We don't work anymore like in those first two years like we told you, 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. We don't do that. That was because we needed to get the business at some point, right? Yeah, right. At this point, we have a couple employees. How many employees do we have right now? 61. And of course, totally different business, right? I don't say I'm going out at 2. Actually, it never happens. But we cut it at 5 or 6, right? And we can take a vacation. We can take days off. But at the beginning, that didn't exist. But now we're in a different place. But it was a choice. It was our choice. It was our choice. You can do it, but you're not advancing that quick. That's correct. Yeah. Question. When did you guys explore the plumbing and the one-time plumber?

41:33 Oh, this is interesting. Okay, it's always John, right? I mean, as long as I told you that I shoot with, I mean, I go out in the plane without parachute, but still I have learned to be cautious maybe from him. So we were in a convention. That's another thing. I'm just a tip. You need to go to conventions, group, like everything, you know, all these conventions that exist in restoration, you meet people. So there was one guy approached a girl actually approached me and told me, we just got into this new business that goes great with restoration. And it's a plumbing business. Immediately. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, Rocky. Immediately. I was like plumbing. No way. Never. Never. A plumber? Like, that's the bottom of the construction line, you know? Like, no, bottom feeders. I'm not interested. Thank you very much.

42:14 It doesn't matter what it is. I just don't care. And John, same lady approached John. No, no, I approached because I saw the lady talking to Nilo. I said, what were you guys talking about? Ah, Nilo doesn't like the idea of the plumbing. And said, like... Tell me more about it. I want to hear. Tell me more. Who is enrolled? Who already franchised? How is the franchise? Who is the ownership? Getting more information, more over and over. How does it help the restoration? That's correct, right? So another, the key, right? We try to always, after year number three, try to get more into the commercial side. And we were thinking about like kind of a pivot or use the plumbing, like leverage some jobs for us. Actually, that works. I have to tell you, after being a year in the plumbing, we are referring to pewter clean maybe between, I would say, an average of one and a half jobs per week.

43:02 So that's a six water jobs for pewter clean per month. I mean, that can be a $10,000 or $20,000 jobs, you know. So think about the incremental of $100,000 per month. $1.2 million per year just owning that brand. And that is growing, growing as long as you do more services in the plumbing, that will grow and grow more. Right. So the concept works, you know, and the team, you can talk about the team. But for me, just to make it short, great leadership, great operations, you know, everything is like need to be done with a checklist. It's easier to manage. It's easy to get money into your bank account. So I would say thumbs up for one time.

43:45 Yeah. So, I mean, we've noticed about it. I mean, they told us and then we talked, John and me, you know, in the hotel and we were talking about this. And he told me, let's give it a try. Let's talk to them. You know, that's the other thing that I like. And just like oil and gas, we didn't told you, but it takes forever to get into a big company in oil and gas or it used to. I don't know how it is anymore. And to get into the plumbing, it's very complicated. It's not that easy. It's not as easy as a restoration. They have a very hard, strict procedure to get in. And it's like three or four interviews, which is, and a lot of people drop. So we got into the first or second phase. Then you have to go visit them. And I couldn't because I have small kids and some of them have a flu or something. I couldn't go.

44:25 John went, they like him. And then they say, hey, but we cannot say yet until we know your partner. And when I went there, I went punching and kicking. I didn't want it. I'm going to tell you, I didn't want it. I say, no, no, no. So I went with a bad attitude and I went hard. I went with all the facts and asking hard questions. Like, how are you going to do this? What's this? What's that? You know, like, why? And like a lot of questions. And they answer every single one of them. And by the end of that session, I said, Milo, now I wanted to get into the business. And I said, Milo, you better start flipping the script here and make these guys like you. Otherwise, you're out. And this is a great opportunity. And I was like, damn. So, I mean, you know, I flipped the script and we started, you know, mingling in a very mood and I was not that, you know, negative about it.

45:07 And then we got in and it's been a crazy ride. But just like John said, we use it a lot for leverage into getting into commercial. Houston is a super crowded market. We have one of the biggest brands here, born and raised Houstonian, and is getting a lot of contracts in commercial. So it's very hard for us to penetrate that market. So the way we are doing it is starting with the plumbing, getting the people to know loving the service, now they are in love with the plumbing, and then they say, hey, we can do restoration too. You guys know we have a sister company, and they can do the job. And then we start getting in those jobs slowly, slowly, nothing happens quicker. And then that's it.

45:48 Regardless of the fact, leadership in Wontem is very great. They have like, you know, superstructure. They really grab you along the hand. I mean, we're doing probably closer to 200K per month stadium plumbing in the year after a year. I mean, we just got like a year this month or something. So it's just good. It's good business. That's great. And you guys back in 2023, it's worth mentioning, International Franchising Association awarded you guys Franchise of the Year. Did I read that correctly? Yes. So we have at the early time, I think we did the Rookie of the Year. We did the Biggest Breaker until now. Nobody can break it. It was, I think, $2.1 million in the first 12 months. That's what we did. And then we did President Circle the first year too.

46:30 And since then, we didn't stop. In 2023, we do International Franchise Association. We do the Franchise of the Year. We also get awarded, you know, like a restoration company. You have different categories. And since then, you know, it's been a journey. The journey is amazing. I love it. I have passion about it. I like what I'm doing. I'm learning and keep learning. Believe it or not, I keep failing, you know, and I like it because that's the only way to improve, you know, that's the only way to improve. We keep failing, you know, we're changing. I mean, I don't know you want to say it, but we are doing right now, we have a development company we create and we are 70% in construction of our first project. It's a two houses project and we already have project number two funded and project number three is we're about to buy the land.

47:17 So we are already, you know, we have a strategic partnership with certain people, you know, we are trying to grow, you know, our companies a little bit to diversify. You know, if one industry go down for some reason, the oil will start going up or stabilize. So we like to put our eggs in different baskets and that's how I prefer to do it. But I like the journey. It doesn't matter. The concepts apply to every single industry from food to restoration to plumbing to development. You know, so I think we're getting better slowly, slowly. You know, development is easy, way easy. Other companies, you know, you can make money faster, I guess.

47:58 It's just a journey, you know, I'm enjoying what I'm doing. I want to add up there just saying that, yeah, it's hard, but if you start living and breathing and like what you're doing, then probably you're in the right track. Yeah. Listen, guys, I think we've kind of reached a good wrap up moment here. There's been so much good stuff. You guys are clearly serial entrepreneurs. You're not limited to the restoration space. You've got your eyes on a lot of different business opportunities and things of that sort. So I think that'll resonate with a lot of our listeners. Yeah. So many great takeaways. I think as I listen to you two, the things that stand out to me is that you guys were really intentional. You've been really intentional throughout your working relationship together to be conscious of and to set aside your ego, to not allow your egos and your pride to get in the way of you guys learning and growing together and making the business work.

48:48 And of course, that's the downfall for a lot of us. right? It's like our egos often are the thing that gets in the way, right? The other thing I heard you say is that you have embraced failure as a mechanism for learning. And I think a lot of us can sometimes hyper fixate on not failing and not screwing up and ultimately also miss the lesson, right? When things do break down. And it sounds like that's a real part of your guys' culture is embracing failure and learning from it. And I also think too, a takeaway I'm having is, You guys enjoy working together. And that's not lost on me. And I think that's an important thing. It's an important contributor to success.

49:31 If you don't like working with each other, you're not going to enjoy showing up to work. And if you don't enjoy the thing you're doing in front of you... Certainly a lot of it's hard. There's a lot of suffering. But if there aren't this kind of ray of light every day, a fun interaction with one another, joking and laughing together periodically, if you don't have at least that, it's really hard to achieve the success that you guys have. So I'm going to give you guys each one opportunity to close this out. We have a lot of business owners listening to our podcast. As a couple of dudes that are, you know, you've been very successful and you've had a lot of failures along the way. And now you're what? Four. Let's see. You're roughly four years into your restoration and now one Tom Plummer journey.

50:12 What's one piece of advice that each of you would give to our audience? I'm sorry, I'm going to steal this one from you. So John told me a long time ago, I keep this top of my head, to be honest. I'm a speedy person. Everybody wants to like, I want to do everything quick, quick, quick. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Non-stop, non-stop, non-stop. I'm that person. And sometimes for me, failure was like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. You know, like emergency situation or everything is burning down. And I didn't see it as an obstacle. I just saw it like that's it. It's done. When I go down the pit, it's killing me. And he told me, Milo, you know what? Business life is not a race. It's not a hundred meter race. Like a sprint.

50:53 Like a sprint. And you give everything the first day and that's it. And you're done. No, it's a marathon. And you have to prepare. And it takes time. And you will do it once. And when you finish, you will feel like, oh my God, this was amazing. And you know, you have a lot of things in between, like they say 20 kilometers in and you're like, oh, my God, I want to die. And then in 30, you're like, I'm the greatest thing alive. So I think John has never run, but he knows about marathons for some reason. And he told me that's the way you need to see business. So for any owner out there struggling right now, this has been one of the hardest years in the industry. I'm going to tell you this year cannot or any situation cannot say that you're doing good or bad.

51:34 Please remember, this is not a sprint. It's a marathon. That's good. That's it. From one side, I would say, everybody, we tend to listen a lot to other people, you know? And it happened to us in the early stage, you know? Hey, don't do reconstruction. You don't make money out of it. You don't do contents because you will lose money. Guess what? That would save my business many multiple times. Whenever they water, two, three months, there's no water. So I was doing like a... I would say $100,000, $200,000 on contents and reconstruction, you know, per month. That's what kept my business floating, you know. Be careful. Listen to people. Gather the information.

52:14 Analyze it. See how you can apply it in your market. Try and assess the results. It works for you. Your king is the best. Apply it, use it. If it doesn't work for you, park it on the side, go with the next idea. Never stop innovating, never stop trying. There's something I want to say very short. In year 2015, we were about to close our catering company. Four of us, we were sitting discussing who's going to be the leader and everything. And we have a visitor, the customer, the person come and say, what are you guys talking about? We're talking right now. We're talking about this, about the company future and everything. What's your problem? What's the struggle? We don't have too many sales, you know.

52:54 Okay, go to the medical center with a bag of cookies and a couple of menus and just go and spread around and you will get results immediately. Medical center was like seven minutes away. Nilo was laughing. Carol was laughing. My wife was laughing. Everybody started laughing. I was serious. I'm mute. I'm like, that's what I will do. Let's just stand up. Let's get 200 cookies, 200 menus. Tomorrow we're hitting the streets. Even for the least suspected person. We hit the street that week. We double sales. The week after we double again the week after. And we never stop. It didn't stop. Never stop. We keep creating our future. We are controlling our future.

53:34 So the advice can come from people unexpected, to be honest. Wow. Guys. That's different. it's pretty clear some of the key things that have made you guys successful and I think will help ensure your guys' continued success. Thank you so much, guys, for telling me. Thank you for having us, to be honest. It was a pleasure. Yeah, this is awesome, guys. Well, thank you again and best of luck as you guys finish out 2025. And I'm sure this won't be the last time we talk, but thanks for coming on the show. Please take care. Good luck in the day. Have a good one. All right. Have a good day. Bye-bye. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart, and Boots. And if you're enjoying the show, but you love this episode, please hit follow, formerly known as subscribe, write us a review, or share this episode with a friend.

54:22 Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.