by Matt Valvano Here’s a little backstory on what lead to this starting this construction company – If you know me, feel free to skip this section!
Being in the flooring business all my life, it was only natural that I built up a construction company when I moved away from home!
My first go at re-building a company, Floors by Valvano, took me 9ish years to achieve $3.2million dollars and this was such an amazing experience that I will discuss in detail within another blog post OR make a video!
Fast forward to the present day as it was time to spread my wings and move away to my new home in Georgia, light-years away from my family’s nest in Ohio. What I found out in creating these companies is how much I enjoyed closing the sale and helping people get what they desire!
I figured I had a nice buffer saved up that I should take a leap and dive into mastering the art of sales!
It was a sluggish start as my first sales job was working for a fairly new startup company, that took off with the Bitcoin boom. Sadly they were not able to maintain this upward momentum because there was no clear direction for the company and eventually they fired 89% of their team.
Here I was so proud to be as Gary Vee would say, CRUSHING IT as their top sales rep at the time and I thought I would be safe. As the first round of people was let go I decided that it would be wise to schedule an upcoming surgery that I required with the paid time off (PTO) I had saved throughout the years.
Well.. thankfully I did this as let me go three days before I was scheduled to have surgery and that was a painful pill to swallow. This put me out for months and I started to doubt myself if sales were the way to go because of how unstable it could be.
All I could do was lay in bed and watch my growing pyramid of debt overburden me and think.
- Am I an idiot for walking away from what I had going for me?
- Am I a failure?
- Was focusing my attention on sales really what I want to do because I could go right back to web development or installing floors… Why struggle, don’t you want an easy job?
Eventually, the pain subsided and I was able to get out into the world. However, my depression ate me alive as I felt like a huge failure because of what I left behind. I walked away from everything I had. Not only did I build up my family’s flooring company I also walked away from Ideas and Pixels. This was the web agency I helped my business partner grow, so I could learn web development and online marketing. Remember back then the online world was brand new, not even Amazon was around and this was exciting to me. This was a major part of my growth!
Regardless, all of that was behind me and everything I built was back in Ohio. Nearly losing it all when I moved down to Georgia, I knew it was time to quit complaining and start over. My friend Bobby was in a similar situation and we messed around with an idea to focus on building a construction company. This sparked the light and fire back in our veins and this company would be the first thing we jump start. Future plans would allow us to then use this construction company to manage our flips, rentals, and Airbnb’s in the area.
I was from Ohio and he was from California. Other-words, neither of us knew anyone as we settled in the gnat invested murky swamps of good O’ Georgia. We knew we had to start building up our clientele and after my surgery, all of my debt was expanding faster than I could handle. With no connections in the industry or even within the area, we had absolutely no help and we should have started this company as they say “yesterday”.
There was no more time to waste. It was do or die for both of us!
We took this as a challenge to jump-start our endeavor because both of us had nothing to lose and would become our last stand. We combined our past experiences and took our first steps to lead generating websites.
Here’s how we started this construction company monstrosity:
What’s the trick to building a million-dollar construction company from nothing?
Starting out we did not pay for advertising and focused on growing our network. Thankfully, we live in the knowledge years where this thing called the inter-web exists.
In our initial start, we found a few jobs within the Facebook communities and one scary venture from Craigslist that we won’t go into detail about. These first few jobs gave us money to get our first sets of tools and allow us to start paying for leads from websites like HomeAdvisor, Thumbtack, Houzz, Angie’s List, and Handy.
As we would secure the contracts we would take their information and put it into a spreadsheet to eventually build up an email list. During this time we would land as many jobs as possible to fill up 10+ hour days for the next month.
We did this on rotation by taking on small jobs, in between the larger ones to keep a steady stream of cash rolling in. This is what kept our slow-moving ship moving forward. Eventually, we did so much work and had so many referrals we were able to stop using these lead-generating outlets!
Hands down our absolute best results came from Thumbtack and Handy (Keep in mind you may have other results from somewhere else as the goal is to find what works best for you). Sadly a large variety of Thumbtack and Handy’s customer leads were normally flooded with people trying to get the lowest price possible. Eventually, this did pay off as it only took about 3 months before we really started dialing it down!
We would target Houzz and Angie’s List (Angie’s List was acquired by HomeAdvisor – Make your free profile, but do not pay for both) for higher paying customers. This worked for the most part, but we saw mixed results. From what we noticed in our area was that it really came down to the zones of the communities we were working in.
Now that you have a bunch of profiles created, Google Business and website completed it is time to grow this company FAST!!
Want my #1 secret to quick success to grow a company really fast?
Talk to everyone, stay humble and care about what you do. Once you have your core clientele start utilizing virtual assistants to assist with the daily tasks. It’s that simple!
I was away’s extremely nice to the security teams running the gates, brought them donuts or some little gift after I was done. They would talk about me to everyone as most had to attend the community HOA gatherings. I knew this was important to do because I did phone sales for my flooring company to secure commercial jobs. Almost daily I dealt with secretaries as “they are the gatekeepers” to getting what you want, a signed contract with the CEO. Ironic that the security guards, in this case, were the actual “gatekeepers”, but played a major part in my quick growth.
I can guarantee that other companies offering similar services, don’t even bother learning the security guards’ names. I know this because many of them say that I am one of the only people that even acknowledge that they exist. Many hate their jobs for this very reason, because each one told me how other people treat them, and that is why they have a list of people in the community that are on their naughty list.
Like the secret naughty list of potential prospects you may want to avoid, these security guards would disclose so much valuable information. Think about it. They are there everyday watching and listening to your customer’s problems. Some of which you can use to solve for a profit with the services you perform!
For example, Danny, a security guard at one of the resorts told me about how their community uses a thing called NextDoor to stay in contact with each other. I never heard about it so I checked it out!
I highly suggest you look into this if you work in a lot of HOA communities or within a certain zip code. I now use this to target the communities I work in as it is like Facebook, but designed on a local level for communities and HOA’s. When you sign up, you even get 100 free postcards to mail to try out their advertising platform.
I sent these postcards out one day when I was doing a lot of work in a community. However, I did not stop there. By schmoozing with the security guard they let me post up a sign that says “Working in your Area – FREE Flooring Quotes” at the entrance!
Now everyone in that community would get a postcard that offered an intensive to call me, see my “Free Quote” signs before/after work, see the signs that I would place in the yards of a customers house I was working at, see my previous customers houses that had signs stating “Another Happy 5 Star Review Customer” (think I had 3 houses done by that point so 3 signs out front of their house as you drove through the community) and then the advertising on my car – At one point I had 3 couples schedule appointments, in the same day, because of how much work I was doing in the area!
The crazy thing was that I had to sub out work with the number of phone calls that were coming in due to the frequency of phone calls coming through. This is when I hired a virtual assistant or VA to handle my day to day work, like scheduling.
With my presence being everywhere within these 5 communities, potential clients were begging to talk to me about their projects. I remember one client saying they could tell I was trustworthy because they knew all of the neighbors I was doing work for!
I took this one step further and target that zip code with Facebook ads to send them to our website. If they visited our website and did nothing, I would then retargeting them with Google ads, like on YouTube.
It’s scary how targeted you can get with all of these advertising outlets and I would be everywhere in these focused zip codes. Even though I had to pay a little more for this type of targeting I knew I would always have clients hiring me in these 5 communities, because of how frequently I showed up!
With my blog, I will create step-by-step guides for you to follow to grow your business. Follow me on Social Media, like YouTube, for updates as I grow my brand.
Speaking of brand, you have to build that trust factor and then ask for a referral. This is what building a business or a brand is all about – Highly targeted marketing on a local level so your customers come to you because of what you have to offer!
Always, ALWAYS ask for a referral.
I state again: Always, ALWAYS ask for a referral. In other words, NEVER rely on these lead generating websites and take what they provide into your own hands. This is why people feel as if they get burnt by these lead generating websites and post things like “They don’t work…” or “They’re all crap…” and this is why you must take things into your own hands. This is how you control the startup chaos.
EVEN if I know I’m not going to get a job I will still ask for that referral – It doesn’t matter. That person wanted help to solve a problem and now I am here.
So I look at it like well… since I am here let’s see how many problems I can fix because maybe that person won’t do business with me, but their aunt or neighbor that lives two houses down may. When you get any sort of lead you need to take full advantage of this connection and use it outside of these platforms.
I found out about the 250 rule a long time ago and this has been why I’ve always had so much work. Drop me in a new country and I’ll grow a business from nothing. Don’t take this as bragging, as I am trying to show you how powerful this concept is. This simple rule is based on the fact that most people know about 250 people that they would invite to their own wedding. That’s 250 leads you can tap into and when you realize this, it is a game-changer.
Always ask! I cannot stress that enough and don’t be ashamed to do that. Keep your pipeline full of prospects and take advantage of these websites that put potential prospects in front of you!
Useful information about these lead generation websites they don’t talk about.
HomeAdvisor eventually bought Handy and because we sent crews out, not physically go ourselves, the GPS tracker showed we would not go to the job to complete the project. We were banned from using these sites even though we had 127 something reviews.
This was complete BULLSHEET, but we did screenshot all my reviews so… We still get to use that and it was a good thing we kept all of my previous customer’s contact information.
Thumbtacks prices doubled since we started using them because they increased their referral program pricing. This in return allowed me to increase my pricing to buy potential leads. This is why they increased their pricing along with their “get a quote + same day install” feature. It only works for certain categories, but we did this with TV mounting.
Know that there will always be another website like Handy or Thumbtack. Try them all and see which work best for your niche!
TV Mounts = REVIEWS & More REVIEWS aka Low hanging fruit
Sidenote on TV Mounting: We became the TV mounting CHAMPS in our area and we could install a TV in about 30min flat. We install hundreds of TV mounting jobs for quick and easy reviews, not the money. It’s all about the reviews!
Why do you ask? By having these reviews we could go into any category we wanted and become the number 1 installer. For example, when we added the “Tile” category to our list of installations, POOF!
We magically appeared at the top of the category list for “Tile Installers” based on the zip code searched!
Seriously! Any category we chose we would be in the top 3 because we have many reviews (if you’ve ever played a Mass Multiplayer Online Games (MMO) – Think of it as respecting a character as you would keep all of your previous experience. Previous experience = Reviews in Real Life).
These reviews are worth thousands of dollars each and so much more when you’re at the top of the category lists – Always get a review and a referral!
Apply this Warren Buffet strategy: I love reading and Warren is one strange creature to learn from. One of the things he always talks about is finding ways to increase your profits, while you’re already doing something else that you’re getting paid for.
I call this double dipping!
5-08-2021 Addition – Take ALL of your reviews from these sites and copy/paste them on your own website. AKA make a backup of your reviews because you cannot trust these websites.
I believe it was Handy that used GPS tracking and since I would send out crews they did not like that. Eventually, they terminated our account, and thankfully we had all 125ish reviews backed up and saved on our website.
Knowing that I am very thankful I had a website – I love Bluehost as they are very cheap to start, one-click install to get going (then you can customize your website with a theme), and I’ve attached an affiliate link for a promotional discount (feel free to use).
Let’s implement a Warren Buffet strategy with TV mounting.
When we would get a contact from one of our lead generating websites to install a TV at a customer’s home. We knew there was an extremely good chance that are client bought their TV that they were sold a very expensive TV mount – Some of which were $175+ and all of these have an insane markup. One that we could easily beat and become the hero!
What we would do is buy a few TV mounts from Amazon and keep them in our cars. These TV mounts were great, cost around $22.95, and were really easy to install!
Before we started every TV mounting job we would ask where they bought the TV and what type of mount they purchased. If they paid for one of these expensive mounts (The last one I installed the lady paid $175.00 so we will use this number).
For this example, I said, ” Well… since we’re here would you like to save $75 dollars on your TV installation?”.
After I heard the magical word, “YES!”, I then sold her the TV mount I bought from Amazon for $100 and told her to return the expensive one they bought for $175+ dollars.
It was a win, win situation because she saved $75 dollars, I increased my profits, and decreased my time I would be at the job site because I could install that TV mount in minutes!
Not only would this customer save money this gave them an even greater reason to give us a 5-star review. Which is what we wanted in the first place!
This would allow us to turn a $125 TV mounting job into a $225 job with one simple question and this happened so frequently that we would be making $182.05 or more when we had multiple TVs to install. Here’s the math:
$225 (Job Payment) – $22.95 (TV Mount) – $20 (lead generated fee & gas) = $182.05 for 30 minutes of work
$182.05 /per TV x 4 (customer has 4 TV’s) = $728.20/ 2hrs of work
Why does this work and why are reviews worth so much? These sites do not have a way to rank based on what category of reviews you get them in.
So we’re able to go up against tile guys that would do 1 job a week (may or may not get that review) and we would crank out 20+ TV mounting jobs a week, while we had a tile job going on (possibly get 21 reviews in that same time frame they would receive 1) – No single tile guy or any category we chose of that matter could keep up with us.
This is why our reviews would always position us at the top of the category!
Sorry GeekSquad… We outrank even you!
Here’s how insane it is as we could switch into any category on these websites and rank #1 in any category we wanted too.
For example, let’s say we want to try out lawn care, so we decide to buy a lawnmower. All we would have to do is select that we offer lawn care services and “BOOM”, we would automatically rank in the top spot of the lawn care category.
Tax write off’s Baby!
Remember when you use these sites every lead you pay for is considered marketing + all the miles you drive to provide quotes is deductible. It will be a tax write off and allow you to get more money back on your return or in my case save from paying the government.
When you break the $20k mark you want as many write off’s as possible. So don’t be afraid to spend some money to try new things. NextDoor was a gamble for me and it paid off 10x what I put into it!
What’s next?
From the start, it was a struggle to build our construction company, but we are now at the point where we have five outstanding crews. My passion is in selling and this is something I wanted to master. This allowed me to focus on selling New Construction homes and get my Realtor Licence. In the future, we will flip, rent, or try our luck with AirBNB (we have some crazy ideas). Currently, I am working in Real Estate selling New Construction, while Bobby runs the crews and daily operations!
We’re currently building up our teams, saving money and Bobby has already bought his first home to flip. Expect some good stuff to come your way and stay tuned!