Austin Gray: How much revenue did you guys close? 2024 at? 

Sam Allsopp: We closed 2024 at 25,735,000  

Austin Gray: In what industry? 

Sam Allsopp: Roofing mostly residential roofing. 

Austin Gray: Residential roofing. And what was final ebitda? 

Sam Allsopp: We did 4,000,944,000 in EBITDA in 2024. 

Austin Gray: That's incredible. And then what's the goal for 2025 

Sam Allsopp: Double.

Austin Gray: Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Owner Ops podcast. I'm your host, Austin Gray in this episode. I have Sam also joining me again. I had Sam on in season one. Sam is a roofing business owner. They put up about 25 million bucks last year in revenue, four and a half million bucks in profit, and he's got a plan to double the business this year.

So we're gonna dive into his exact plan strategy for how he plans to double the business. Y'all stick around for this complete episode is it's value packed with a seasoned veteran entrepreneur. In the roofing industry, Sam. 

Austin Gray: Awesome. Welcome back to the show. How much revenue did you guys close 2024 at? 

Sam Allsopp: We closed 2024 at 25,735,000 

Austin Gray: In what industry? 

Sam Allsopp: Roofing, mostly residential roofing. 

Austin Gray: Residential roofing. And what was the final ebitda? 

Sam Allsopp: We did 4,000,944,000 in EBITDA in 2024. 

Austin Gray: That's incredible. And then what's the goal for 2025? 

Sam Allsopp: Double. If you guys have been following me on Twitter X, whatever you wanna call it, that's been kind of the goal is to double every year and so far so good. 

Austin Gray: All right, so we had you on the show last time and you sort of, uh, just took us through your journey zero to 25. What's been going on since then? 

Sam Allsopp: Man, we have been, uh, we've been executing on driving the, uh, call it right KPIs that need to, that need to happen to, to go double again. So think all the way to mostly the marketing and the sales is kind of where we're starting. How many leads we need to be bringing in, how many points we need to be sitting, what's our ticket value, need to be. How many salespeople do we need to have? What's our revenue need to be per day? How many appointments we need to be booking per day?

And it's just been executing. So when I referenced, you know, so far so good. You know, that's not just like a, so far so good because we're hitting all of our, our metrics and our, uh, and our sales are tracking for another two x. It's just been getting after it. 

Austin Gray: So you close at 25 and then. On the show, uh, or, or before the show? You were mentioning that January, you were on track for your goal in 2025. How did January end up? 

Sam Allsopp: Yeah, so we, uh, we were up a hundred. I'm, I'm gonna make, it was in the 130, uh, percent up on the month, right? So January, 2024 compared to January, 2025 sales, uh, we're up 130 something percent and we are doing the same.

I can actually kind of pull some sheets up because I'm on my work computer. Um, and we're doing the same in February. Just back the napkin math. Yeah, about about double, more than double the amount of sales. In February to the 22nd of the month as we were in January, or sorry, in February, 2024, uh, to the 22nd of the month.

So again, you know, tracking to, to double, it's another story to go build that, right, like we're speaking sales right now. So huge focus has been on building the ops, uh, team and, and pushing that revenue through and building it, which. It's always a little bit of a, a hurdle, but, uh, we've done it the last four, four or five years, so just gotta do it again.

Austin Gray: You make it sound so easy. I mean, like, how do you even, like, like I talked to a lot of people and, and a lot of people would throw around like, yeah, I want to double my business next year. But actually doing it is a complete. Different animal. Like how do you break that down coming into 2025? 

Sam Allsopp: It all starts, and I'll tell people this all, every single time. It, it starts with your marketing. It starts with how many appointments you're booking, right? So, um, what I do is we'll take our revenue goal for the year. We'll apply, you know, seasonality based off of previous data to, to each month we're gonna set a, a, a, a revenue goal in sales for the month. And then I've got this.

You know, kind of process that I go through, and I've been doing it every year where I break down what's our ticket value, what's our booking rate, what's our close rate, what percent of our revenue comes from re roofs, what comes from repairs, all the different KPIs, right? That, that go into yielding that much revenue.

And we break it down to how many booked appointments do we need to be setting per day. And we are tracking that literally daily. Right. So we're we, I've got another sheet. We're tracking how many appointments we're booking daily, and I know that if we execute on that number on a daily basis, as long as I have the sales team, you know, that has the capacity to take those appointments unless something catastrophic happens, right?

Unless our close rate tanks, unless our booking rate tanks, um, as long as those KPIs stay constant, I know that we're gonna trip over those, those numbers, and that's just how I've always. Looked at it, um, you know, a lot of people say they want to do, like you said, I want to double. And then you actually break down, okay, what do you need to do to do that?

How many appointments do you need to be setting per day? Right? How much revenue you need to be driving per month, and they're not even close. So take a very data. Data, uh, approach to this and, and back into the numbers that need to be getting done on a daily basis. 

Austin Gray: This episode is brought to you by Jobber. Jobber is an all-in-one software management solution for home service and trade businesses. I've been using jobber since day one. When I started bearclaw, we use it for things like quoting, scheduling, invoicing, and most recently I've been using it for our snowplowing services. I love it for snowplowing because we're able to create a job specific to the client's profile.

And we're able to track visits each time we go out and plow. This is important because each visit is logged in the system and it's ready to send invoices at the end of the month, so I never have to worry about how many times did we plow a specific customer's account, because Jobber takes care of all of that for us.

If you are interested in an all-in-one solution for managing your home service or trade business, look no further than Jobber. They're offering six months at a 20% discount if you use the link in the description below. 

Austin Gray: All right, so. Once again, you make it sound easy. Let's take it to the top. Your marketing, how do you go get these leads?

Sam Allsopp: That's the, that's the, uh, that's the $25 million question right there. Right. The uh, I have to be careful and I'm kind of careful with how I, you know, and I post these things on Twitter and, and get a bunch of questions 'cause, 'cause people may look at a snapshot of where I'm at right now. Right. And go try to apply that to where they're at.

And, and it's not one size fits all when it comes to marketing. You know, there's. There's tons of different ways to skin the cat. And um, I'd be naive to say that if I was a $2 million roofing company, $3 million roofing company, trying to get to six or six, trying to get to eight, it's not gonna be the same approach that we're applying to, to my current company.

Right. So, um, with that being said to your, to your question, I mean. Currently what we are doing is primarily, uh, a lot of Google ads, so a lot of pay-per-click ads. Um, we'll max out local service ads. I wish every single lead could be local service. Those things are great. They convert, and then, you know, we're, we're using tons and tons of different channels, right?

We're on edge leads. We're on edge ads, we're on thumb tech. We're on any marketing platform that you can think of. Good chance we're on it. How much of our budget is allocated to each vertical at any point in time? Um, that's forever changing, right? So, like I said, uh, you know, before looking at how many appointments we need to book, we also break that down to where those appointments came from and which channels they came from on a daily basis.

And we'll push what's working, you know, if we're getting cheaper leads from. Uh, PPC, we will, we'll go increase the budget on, on PPC, right? And that's not the whole story, right? We can, I can go all day about this. Cost per lead's important, but cost per acquisition is. More important. So you might have a, you might be looking at your An Angels leads and going, oh wow, you know, it's $200 less per lead for an Angie's lead, uh, versus a PPC lead.

And then you need to go break down how much you spent and how much revenue that drove. And you'll be like, ah, the close rate on Angie's leads, it's 50% of a PC lead, right? Because they're price shopping. So there's a lot to it, man. And it's, it's, it's been a, uh, a heck of a. Process to get to kind of the where we're at right now and how we look at marketing and how we make sure that we drive those results.

Austin Gray: I think it would be an understatement to assume that you have a consistent pulse on this on a daily basis. Correct?

Sam Allsopp: Um, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's, it's, uh. It's an absolute obsession. I mean, that's, this is what drives the business, right? This is, in my opinion, the most important thing when it comes to hitting our goals.

And, uh, yeah, I've got a constant pulse on it, right? I still make, I still, although our CRM tracks like 90%, 95% of this data we would process every single day where we take the data out of the CRM and put it into an Excel sheet that I've been using for years, just because the same thing, right? They're like, journal your goal, your goals, right?  Write it down. As opposed to typing it out on your phone. Just something happens when you have to physically do it.

I believe that that's true with these, uh, these daily KPIs that I'm talking about. 'cause I want my team grabbing the data from CRM, putting it in, not just refreshing the screen, looking at it and going, okay, here we are when I'm pulling the data over. Um, and it just hits differently. Right? And, and we can also manipulate the data a little bit different than we could through the CRM, but 

Austin Gray: So you've done that since day one. You copy and paste data from your CRM into a spreadsheet. 

Sam Allsopp: Yeah, and I think that like, the more sophisticated, I think now that we're talked to, you know, a couple other sophisticated operators, like a lot of people will use Power BI or like they'll layer kind of something on top of their CRM.

That's why it started, right, is I just didn't, I have a very specific way I wanna see the data and break it down and our CRM just wasn't giving us that information, so I'm like. I need to pull this out and put it in an Excel sheet. Since then, we've gotten a lot better at the CRM kind of telling us the data we wanna see, but there was just something about that habit of every single day holding ourselves accountable to pulling that data over and looking at what it spits out. That's, uh, you know, it's been super powerful. 

Austin Gray: Interesting. Now, do you still manually do this? 

Sam Allsop: No, my team does, but I still go in every morning and look at it. Okay. And if it's not inputted by nine o'clock, I mean, we've got, you know, we're, it's kinda like what's going on? So. Uh, it's still very much part of my day and I'm still analyzing everything, but no, I'm not going into every single lead channel and pulling out the, uh, you know, the spend and whatnot. So, uh, yeah, we, we've got a team that does that. 

Austin Gray: All right, guys. Um, listeners, we're, we're gonna dive deep on this, so if this is too far in the weeds for some of you. It just is what it is. But I'm really interested to learn the psychology behind this. So there's something there, and I'm gonna take note of this, Sam.

So think you for sharing this habit. My question though, specifically for you as the owner and still an operator, when you pull up that data, where does your brain go immediately? Like what are the first three things that you find yourself looking at every day? 

Sam Allsopp: I look at. Are we tracking for budget on, on spend, right? So like, are we, uh, are we over budget and our under budget in, in total spend across all platforms? It's the first thing I look at. So I'm kind of looking at how much gas we have less in left in the tank, can we push? And then I look at, are we on quota for the appointments set column, right? And then we have little formula that says.

On the month you have, you've set four more than you need to. Right. So I'm, I'm ahead of quota. I know we're, we're sitting pretty and then I'm referencing back to the, the spend data and going, wow, we're, we're under quota and we're actually tracking below budget. So we're, we're doing really well. CPLs must be, must be crushing.

And if we are under right, I need to go, uh, it's the 22nd and I've set 10 less reroof appointments than I need to. My brain goes right to, um. Two different channels, BP, C, and Angels leads. 'cause those are kind of the two channels that you can flex up and flex down. Um, and then depending on where we're at with spend is how aggressive we're gonna get there.

Right? So if we're 10 behind but we're way behind on budget and I've got a lot left in the tank, I'll go pay more, you know, for leads. 'cause it's, it's more important for me to book the amount of appointments that we need. But it all, it, it's, it's very fluid, right? Like it's, every day is a little bit different. There's no one size fits all. 

So it's. It's tough to answer people's questions and like, what do I do? It's like, it's, it's, it's multiple different, um, lead channels and, and just really understanding how, how to look at, look at everything and, and turn things up and down and change budget and, and move it around. But through your question, I'm looking at. Where are we at in spend? Are we on budget, under or over? And then where are we at on appointment set, under or over? And then what do we do? 

‍Austin Gray: Okay. How do you allocate budget?

‍Sam Allsopp: We have, I look at it between two different buckets. I've got my fixed, fixed spend, right? So, eh, I'll go, I'll even go back, right?

So I say that I wanna spend my target issues, call it $50 million in, in top line, right? I'm comfortable sending 6%, 7%, maybe even 8% depending of total top line revenue on, on marketing, I pull that back to what I'm comfortable spending monthly. Um, again, apply seasonality to, to those numbers, right? So it's not just gonna be the same amount.

I'm gonna spend way more in the, you know, the rainy months than I will in December. And we just, we work back from there, right? So that's how we, we allocate budget on a monthly basis, uh, in terms of like the total amount that we wanna spend that month. And then I look at it in terms of fixed and variable.

So I've got my fixed spin, which is TV commercials. Angie's ads is like a fixed spin. Uh, SEO, right? I know I'm gonna spend this much money no matter what on these channels. And you gotta apply that to the total budget so you know how much variable spend that you have, variable spend being. An leads thumbtack, Google, LSA, Google PPC, right?

So like that could, you could spend five grand in one day, or you could spend one grand in one day, um, across those platforms. So I look at that in variable just to make sure that I'm not going over budget accounting for that fixed spin. So probably sound like a little bit like a mad scientist right now, like I'm hoping, I'm hoping this makes sense.

Austin Gray: Um, yes, yes it does. Okay. My question for you. Let's say you've got a listener at the million dollar mark right now. They've started their business, they've got the initial team in place. How much should they be allocating to marketing? Do those percentages change at early stages? 

Sam Allsopp: Um, I think that a fast growing company, right? And you'll hear, um, you'll hear people say different numbers, but 10 to 15% on marketing. And I say that. Um, very, very hesitant, right? Like, I don't wanna, I'm not trying to drive anyone to the ground here. I don't know your business, I don't know the gross profit that you're selling your, your jobs at. I don't know your overhead.

So for me to just, um, come out and say, you need to be sitting 10%, 7%, 8%, um, it's not, it's not the best, uh, it's not the best advice just because I don't know your business, right? I don't wanna go tell someone to spend 8% of their target, uh, top line revenue. Then they're selling all their jobs at 15% gross profit.

Right? Or they don't even know. And then they've got office staff and all of a sudden they made $0. Right? And you see that all the time. So, but rule of thumb, if you build out your, you know, you, you price accordingly to account for, you know, the, the marketing spend and the growth that you wanna drive.

Anywhere from five to 10% is, is awesome. I mean, there's companies that spend 15%, there's companies that spend 20% go listen to a Tommy Tommy Melo podcast with a one garage, right? I'm making, I, I think it was like he was just saying when they go into a new market, like they'll spend 15, 20%, not turn a profit at all, but they're just buying up market share, right? So everyone's got a different strategy. Mine has been anywhere from 3 to 7% a year of total revenue on marketing spend. 

Austin Gray: Okay. And if you are listening to this and you have not listened to Sam's first episode, I believe we covered just how you should think about pricing jobs, uh, at a general high level and what gross profit the target should be. What, what is your gross pro profit that you shoot for? 

Sam Allsopp: Like 35%. Everyone has a different definition. Uh, do you include commissions? Not include commissions, but, but yeah. I mean, the thesis is that we, we price this at 35% or overheads anywhere for 15 to 20%. And we landed a, you know, a good, a good, uh, net number.

So, uh, that's tough though, uh, when you're growing really fast because you typically are building out your, your overhead and your operations and your salaries and your trucks and, and all that in ahead of what. You're actually producing because your sales is driving a ton of, of volume and you need to get ready.

That's gonna cause some drag on your EBITDA or your, or your net. So it's important you have a good CFO when you're doing this just to make sure that a fractional C-F-O-C-F-O control or whatever, um, just to make sure that you're, you're looking at the numbers right, and you're not making any RAs decisions just because you're not allocating, uh, you know, stuff properly.

Like it may look like your pinch for a little bit, but really your backlogs. Through the roof. You haven't recognized any, you've recognized colleagues, you haven't recognized any revenue. Just make sure that you've got someone that kind of understands the financials of a fast growing service business that can look over your shoulder and make sure you're being, um, you know, being smart there. At what point, oh, go ahead. I was just gonna close out with 35 percent's what we've, we've found to be good in the market, but we have a, we have a pretty large ticket, so. 

Austin Gray: What is your average ticket? 

Sam Allsopp: I, I say 30,000. Um, it changes month to month. I can tell you to the dollar where we're at right now, so in February our average ticket is $34,961. Right. So it, it does vary. 

Austin Gray: Alright, so let's break down. Cost per acquisition and cost per lead. What's the difference for somebody just jumping into this and doesn't have any background in marketing? 

Sam Allsopp: Alright, so, um, so your, your cost per acquisition is how much, how much you spent on your marketing, um, to generate, you know, a sale. Right? So like, um, that's how I, I view cost per acquisition. Now, some people, when I speak to them, they're, they're talking more in terms of like acquiring a booked appointment. So I think it's just important to like, you know, to, to kind of just define CPA. But in general, it's like, I'll spend a thousand dollars in marketing, $2,000 in marketing spend to acquire a $30,000 reroof client.

That's how I look at cost per acquisition. And I break it down by different channels previously to that. Right? Like a, uh, a cost per booked appointment is all that I care about, to be honest. Right? Like, and I've, I've someone listening to this could be like, that is stupid. You know, you need to know your cost per lead, blah, blah, blah.

Look, I on a daily basis is looking at, I'm looking at how much I spent and how many appointments I booked. There's a lot of noise depending on what type of, uh, Google ad, uh, you know, you're running. Um, you could be bringing in a hundred leads and setting 30 of them, right? But your CPLs are a lot lower, but your booking rates.

Lower right, so that you can just play around with so many different types of campaigns. Um, and I'm not saying bookie great's not important. That's something we look at separately, right? So if my cost per booked appointment is going above where I'd like it to be, then we start digging right? Then we're like, okay, maybe our, maybe our booking rate is, is not great here.

That's probably one of the main drivers. But from a snapshot view of what I'm looking at per day, I'm looking at what did I spend to put an appointment on a calendar, right? One of my CSRs talked to the homeowner. Yes, we want someone to come out to give us a reroof quote. That's what I'm looking at. I'm less looking at cost per raw lead.

‍Austin Gray: Okay. And you mentioned CSR. Okay. You drive the lead. What happens after you get the lead just operationally within your business?

Sam Allsopp: Yeah, we've got a full team, full team for that. Um, we, we do, uh, it's partly in-house, partly overseas. Um, but we have an entire training program for these people. Right. We're, we're we're tracking their, uh, customer satisfaction scores with our VoIP system. Uh, they get graded on how happy the, the customer was. They're following scripts, but our speed delete is, I don't have the metric on me, but it's, it's under 30 seconds, right? So like, if a, if a form fill comes in under 30 seconds, we're reaching out, text, voicemail, drop.

Phone call, email, all of that. Um, and we don't miss a single inbound call like we've got it. We've got so many fail safes that at the very end, if none of our c, if all of our CSRs are on, uh, the phone, it's gonna go to a third party service that answers it, um, fills out the information, and then it comes back through as a form fill for our. For our team, so we don't, we do not miss calls and we're reaching out to every single form pill in under 30 seconds. 

Austin Gray: Stryker Digital specializes in SEO services specifically for local service businesses. Bodie and Andy, the two co-founders, have helped me get Bearclaw land services to the number one search result on Google inside my state for my specific search term. If you wanna learn more. Visit stryker digital.com. That's S-T-R-Y-K-E-R digital.com. 

Austin Gray: How many leads do you get per day on average?

Sam Allsopp:  Uh, good question. Our booking rate is pretty high, um, just because we're, we kind of have that luxury right now where we've been, we've just been really, you know, working on getting our, our lead quality dialed in for the last X amount of years, five years.

Right. So it's different for, for everyone depending on the stage you're at or what channels you're primarily. Running on. Um, but I mean, our booking rate is 70% right now, call it. And we're booking anywhere from 15 to 20 appointments a day. Uh, some of those being reroofed, some of those being repaired. 

Austin Gray: Okay. And once you book it, what's the process? What, what, what happens from there? 

Sam Allsopp: So once it's booked, um, there we're, you know, there's a drip campaign, go into the, the, uh, we're building trust with the, with the person that booked it through, you know, a text campaign, uh, getting 'em warmed up, and then it's getting assigned to a sales rep.

Um, we're doing intro calls, you know, we're kind of setting the, uh, setting the expectations and, and making sure that both decision makers are there and they've got enough time to go through, you know, the proposal. We're trying to book those within 24 hours. 

Austin Gray: Okay. Okay. And you schedule those for onsite meetings?

Sam Allsopp: Yeah, we do have an inside, uh, arm to our business, but like that was just developed over the last, within the last year. Um, you know, there's a lot of tire kickers and there's people that are like, I'm out of town, or. I'm closing on a house. I don't have the house yet. Right. So it's not really worth going out. So we do have an inside sales team that, that works. Those, but for the most part, yeah, we're, uh, we're in home. 

Austin Gray: Okay. Before we move on to the next topic, anything else you want to add to just, um, like recommendations for somebody thinking about giving leads and booking appointments? What would you coach me on?

Sam Allsopp: I mean, we've gotta, you know, I've got a. Process that I would like in a perfect world, if I had the time of day, I would, I would sit down with someone and run them through Exactly, you know, what I do at my own company. Um, and I'll just kind of speak to that real quick, right? So I would ask you. What is your revenue goal, you know, for the year, uh, for the next 12 months?

Tell me it's, uh, let's make up a number, right? 6 million. Okay. Um, let's pretend this is a roofing, you know, roofing client. What's your close rate? Oh, my close rate's? Yeah. They're smaller, right? Let's call it 25%. Okay. What's your average ticket for a re-roof? Uh, $20,000. Great. Let's plug it in. What's your reroof rev split with your repair rev split.

Oh, we're a hundred percent reroof. We don't do any repairs. Sweet. Okay. Uh, you know, then we'll go through booking rate, we'll go through sales cycle, um, and then we're gonna apply marketing as a percent of revenue. So you're always taking your marketing as a percent of revenue, uh, tied to your, your goal.

So if your goal is 6 million, let's use a good round number. Uh, you know, you wanna spend 10% on, uh. On, on marketing, right? Apply seasonality and then break that out into how much you need to be spending per month. And then we're gonna go and break down how many appointments, how many, for this example, right?

How many reroof appointments not leads? How many reroof appointments do we need to be setting per day at a 25% close rate at a $20,000 average ticket to ensure that we sell enough that month? You know, and then we apply a cancellation rate, right? So we, we get pretty detailed, um, how many appointments would be, need to be setting per day to, uh, to back into that number.

And then it's a matter of every single day, you know, and then we, we would apply, you know, the, the different channels that I would recommend based off that stage of business, just for fun, right? I'd probably say LSA, uh, yard signs, angels, add engines, leads, uh, Thumbtack, uh, should probably have some type of SEO going.

Should have a really good referral program, um, for 6 million, probably door knocking, warm neighborhoods, having some sort of door knocking program in place, um, at least knocking the six pack. Um, maybe Yelp, maybe some sort of small postcard campaign. And then we would break that out into all the different channels.

We would break that out into, you know, what percent I would recommend spending in each channel, uh, you know, per month. And we go execute and we make sure that we are. Staying within budget and making sure that we are setting, you know, the daily required number of appointments per day to, to hit that number.

And if you're not, you gotta go tweak things. And that's, that's something you gotta be doing every single day. 

Austin Gray: Okay. All right. I'm gonna dive deeper on this. Can we use a goal of 2 million and let's say, let's say the company is hovering right around a million. The current company in the example. Um, and I want to get specific and, and the reason being is because I know a lot of our listeners are in this phase right now, and I want to get as specific. As getting your recommendation per what you've mentioned on the specific channels at that phase. 

Sam Allsopp: So your revenue is 2 million? 

Austin Gray: Yep. Let's say your goal is just to double this year, and you're currently at 1 million. So can we go through this specific example? So you're saying 10% of your total goal towards marketing, correct? 

Sam Allsopp: Yeah, let's use that number. It's easy number. Yep. 

‍Austin Gray: So 200 k for the year. And let's break that down over 12 months and you keep mentioning seasonality. Can you tell us which months will be seasonal and which months will not? Or excuse me, which, how you should break down your budget per the seasonal recommendation?

Sam Allsopp: Yeah, I, I mean it's uh, it's show case by case and it's industry specific, so I'll just use like a, uh. I'll use an example of like me, right? I mean we're at, it's a bad example 'cause we're in South Florida and it's like, it's pretty pretty year round. But say that you are a roofer in December, January, February, or tough, right?

Um, we're not gonna go sit there and divide 2 million by 12 and, you know, put that. $166,667. We're not putting that on every single month. Right? Because that's, that's not realistic. You know, that those three months outta the year are gonna be a little bit lower. Um, so you would just apply essentially seasonally where you would, you would drop that number down to a realistic revenue target, and then you're gonna take that, you know, revenue that you would've gotten in those months and apply it to, to add it on to the, uh, the months where you're more in season.

That's all that that is. And I guess what would be realistic? Just, just if it's 16,000, let's call it, you know, $16,600 per month is your, is your average marketing, but budget broken down mm-hmm. On the 12 month cycle. 

Austin Gray: How would you, how much would you drop off of that in your slow months? December, January, February. And how much would you, yeah, let's start there. How much would you drop up of that, those three months? 

Sam Allsopp: A direct proportion of how much you're dropping in your, in your total revenue goal. Um, 'cause that's what drive your, your spend is gonna drive that revenue. So start with the revenue and say, uh, I know I need to be doing, uh, $166,000, uh, a month, spread out over 12 months. I know that in December I'm gonna do 50 grand. Right? 

Austin Gray: Okay. 

Sam Allsopp: 60 grand multiplied by six, that 60 grand by the 10%, and then that's your budget for the month. You just need to make sure that you're gonna go flex up, spend in those other months to drive. You know, drive the revenue over the 166,000 of the other months.

Austin Gray: Sure. So for the, for, for this example, should we bump it down to 50% of, of that, or should it be 25%? Just for this example? 

Sam Allsopp: Yeah, I mean, uh, let's say that, yeah, for roofing rate, like I've seen some people that, um, it goes down to almost nothing. Right? Like they, they need to be doing, call it. For this example, I wanna be doing $166,000 a month in revenue.

Um, they may only sell a $50,000, you know, $50,000 in, in December. Uh, and that's probably someone from their pipeline from previous months. Right. That finally just pulled the trigger. Um, so, so you would just need to make sure that you're applying, uh, it's estimating at the end of the day. Right. That's why like there's no one specific, we're talking very.

Proactive and a lot of this is reactive. Mm-hmm. Um, so like we can set it up as pretty as we want and, and make assumptions on, on what we're gonna do that month. But the reason that we look every single day and every single month at the end of the month is 'cause we gotta move stuff around. Right? Like, we don't, if we're setting this up for the year and we think, let's estimate that we're gonna do a hundred thousand to 166.

Great. You multiply your a hundred by your 10% of marketing, you know, you got your plan, you're going and executing every day. But then let's say you only sell 50,000, right? Well, now you're a little over budget as a percent of revenue. So you need to account for that. Um, and then you need to go add that extra revenue onto the next month where you're gonna do more volume.

So it's your, it's, you gotta be fluid and it's just a constant game of balancing budget, um, you know, with your, with your rep goals.

Austin Gray: Perfect. Alright, so let's say we cut that budget all the way down to zero in December, January, February. Mm-hmm. That gives us an extra $50,000 in spend to go allocate to some other months. Just being in the space as an operator, like, what's gonna be your top three months? Or how do you allocate that extra, additional 50K?

Sam Allsopp: That's a good way to put it, right? Yeah. Let's assume that it's zero. So you're getting, you're getting. 16,667 times three. Uh, you just unlock that much, you know, marketing budget that you didn't spend in those down months.

Um, I mean, for me, right? Like, uh, when it rains, it, it is when we get the most, uh, the most business. So I'm looking at summer months in South Florida, um, that's when I'm gonna go spend a ton on marketing and drive a ton of leads. So any excess budget I have from previous months. I know that I'm gonna be, uh, you know, gonna be applying that to, to when there's more demand and a little tip for everyone.

Like, if you go into your PPC account, there's like a, uh, there's a section in there where you can actually look up search volume, right? So there's like, there, you can't get around the macro environment of your specific, uh, eh, I. I don't wanna limit anyone. You can't. You can force stuff, right? You can get out there and knock in one degree weather and, and convince people, you know, to, to get a quote.

But for the most part, we gotta be realistic with the macro environment and search volume. Um, so if you're looking to start planning, get with your PPC person, um, or YouTube it and, and go into your PPC account and look at your, uh, the monthly search volume for your keywords and use that as a guide to.

Kind of the vari, the variability that you should be applying for your, for your seasonality. That's a good, a good way to kind of get an idea of your, 'cause. Every single market's different and every single service is different. And that's looking at demand search volume is probably the best way. If you don't know off the top of your head, if you don't have the numbers, that's the best way to, uh, to start.

Austin Gray: Now, uh, uh, I'm very familiar with running Facebook ads. Uh, I personally haven't dove much into Google ads yet. So my question, uh, apologize if it's a naive question here, but for someone jumping into that, it will break down your month, the monthly search volume for the specific search term. And can you, uh, break it down geographically as well, all the way down to the city? In the county? 

Sam Allsopp: Ooh. I haven't done this in a while, but yeah, I believe so. Yeah. Okay. Um, yeah, I believe you can, so you can really start seeing. And it also projects, unless Google, they do updates all the time. Last time I was in there, they, it'll project, you could do it for this month and then it'll project the search volume for, for the next months. Um, pretty cool tool. Something that a lot of people don't know about. Yeah. 

Austin Gray: And that's within. Just Google AdWords, is that correct?

Sam Allsopp: Yeah, that'd be in your PPC um, account. 

Austin Gray: Okay.All right. 

Sam Allsopp: It's called like keyword. Uh, it's not keyword planner. It's. I don't know. All the serious PPC guys are probably laughing at me right now, but I haven't done it in a while. I haven't ran my own PC yeah, in a while. So it's in there. Just YouTube it, Google it.

Austin Gray: If you're a serious PPC guy or gal, just post in the comments below, whatever the name of that specific tool is. Yeah, help me out. Thank you. 

Sam Allsopp: Yeah, thanks. 

Austin Gray: Um, all right, so you decide to allocate that 50 K to the, to your highest. Uh, months based on this keyword plan. And I'm just looking to get like a general plan.

Sam Allsopp: Yeah, yeah. No, great questions. 

Austin Gray: Yeah. Um, but as a reminder for listeners, like this is a fluid dynamic activity and Sam is continually revisiting this on a day-to-day basis to change his decisions and update those decisions, but putting a general plan together, you have 50 k extra alright, to go into your busy months, let's call it June, July, August. How do you break down? So let's say in those three months, right? What did we say? You had? 16,667. Let's just say you are on average doubling your budget during those months since you're cutting it in the winter months. You have $33,334 to spend in June, July, and August at the 1 million mark. If somebody's trying to get to two.

Which channels do you specifically recommend they don't overlook? 

Sam Allsopp: So I'll, I'll answer that generally, and then I'll ask you to gimme like an avatar. Um, but for the most part, actually I think I need an avatar. 'cause I think that, you know what, no, lemme just, I'll, I'll try my best to answer this generally, right.

So if you are, no, I have to. Sorry, I'm going back and forth. It, it really depends on like, um, on what, uh, industry you're in. So like ticket value is important. 'cause the reason I say that, everything's data driven, right? So someone who's average, so someone who wants to do 2 million, right? Whose average reroof  ticket is 20,000.

They need to be setting, I've got it in my sheet right here. It spit out 1.3 reroof appointments a day. So what I would prescribe to that person to book one, let's call it two to be safe appointment today. I'm not even telling you to mess around with, with PPC. I'm not even telling you to mess around with, you know, you should be running a, a strong, uh, referral program.

You should be running a strong door knocking program. Um, you should be doing some SEO stuff, right? Even if it's not a huge package, and you should, if you wanna be doing Google, you should be running LSA ads. Um, easier said than done. Have someone manage your LSA if you've never done it. Um, but that's all you're, you're running, right?

So that, I'm just kind of backing into why I responded that way. That's a totally, totally different prescription than someone who's, who's a painter that wants to do 2 million, whose average ticket is $4,000. At a 25% close rate, you need six and a half appointments a day.

Austin Gray: Hmm hmm. 

Sam Allsopp: Right. So that, that appointments per day driver, um, is really, really important. And, and that's how I would kind of think through what your marketing strategy should be. Um, 'cause that person I'm, I'm recommending. That they're on Angie's, that they're on LSA, they still need to be door knocking, doing SEO, they should look into Thumbtack. Um, and they're almost at the mark, right? Like six and a half appointments a day. Um, you're, you're getting close to the mark where you need to be running some sort of PPC campaign. 

Austin Gray: Okay. What is that Mark or general Mark in your mind? 

Sam Allsopp: I can only really speak to, you know, to what I've seen and, and myself. I started running PPC campaign at, honestly, around, I lemme put the numbers in, I can tell you.

So our average ticket's 30,000, we were doing two and a half and we were going to six. Yeah. It was when we, it was the year that we were going to six and a half million that I started running PPC, um, and we were trying to book three or four reroof appointments a day, six days a week. Through all the reactive channels I call them.

Um, we weren't, we weren't hitting our mark, so I had to go start running PPC to kind of force, force numbers and force appointments. And although cost per lead went up, we were at least hitting our, our goals to hit our revenue goals. So PPC is usually gonna be a little bit more expensive, but it's the one tool that you can use to spend more to get more. 

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Austin Gray: Referral program, LSA and door knocking. That's what you mentioned before, PPC? Correct. And so that's what you were doing? 

Sam Allsopp: Yeah, we were doing LSA right off the bat door knocking like crazy. I mean, 20, 30 guys running around, door knocking. That's a whole nother thing to talk through.

Um. How you structure that, how you keep people motivated, how you train on it, how you have oversight in the field, how you get guys speed to money. Right? Speed to money is super important and door knocking. It's a grueling job. And the last thing you wanna be doing is waiting, say four months for me, right?

For a towel roof to get installed, to get your money for the appointment. You set. You wanna be p paying people weekly, uh, for setting appointments. We can, we can. That's a whole thing to dive into, uh, separate from digital, but it's, it's encompassing of marketing, right? So like when I'm. At the stage I'm in right now, everyone, you know, kind of looks at me and know that's the, you know, ton does a ton of Google ads.

It's not always been that way. Uh, it's just been marketing in general. It's been our strong suit and, and yeah, door knocking is a big part of getting people to that like five, $6 million mark and, and getting their, uh, efficiently and not spending a ton of money on Google and going upside down. 

Austin Gray: Okay, we're gonna leave people on a cliffhanger here for the door knocking. We're gonna have to bring you back on for a third time and just dedicate it specific to door knocking, because I know that you're gonna have likely a 40 to 60 minute episode to where you could dive deep on that. 

Sam Allsopp: Okay. 

Austin Gray: My specific question on this episode is going to be referral program. What referral program were you using at that stage and have you changed anything about it? And what works best? 

Sam Allsopp: This could be as simple as just, um, saying, Hey, every time you, uh, uh, anyone, right, customer or not gives us a lead, uh, we'll give you X amount of dollars. Some people want more protection. Hey, if someone signs up with us that you referred, you get x amount of dollars. Uh, and it could be as simple as just some people don't even have that established no sort of referral program.

It could be a gift, right? You can give them a, a gift certificate. It could be whatever, just sitting down, whether it's you with your team and just deciding what your referral program is. A lot of people don't even have that. Um, and then the next step is executing it. So it's gotta be become a part of your culture.

It's gotta be something that everyone talks about. So when you're collecting that final payment, right, making sure that your billing team is, Hey, by the way, you know, did you have a great experience? Okay, cool. Please leave us a Google review. And have you heard about a referral program? Right? It's just gotta be something that you talk about a lot now, um, depending on how, if you're like a tech guy, right?

And you wanna, you know, how far you want to go with this. Uh, I'll lead people to water here. Like, uh, go high level, right? They have a really good, um, you can actually build out like an entire referral automated, um, platform within, within go high level where the homeowners can go, make a username, log in, they can fill out a form, it syncs up with your CRM so they can see if the appointment's been set or if it's been sold.

And then you can even get to the point where you're like, automating referral payments. Um, again, that's a whole another world. But to answer your question, just having a referral program and, and teaching your company to, to, uh, to speak to it is, is half the battle. 

Austin Gray: What monetary value have you found to incentivize customers?

Sam Allsopp: It, again, it kind of depends on ticket value. Um, and the reason I say that is because every different, if you have a high higher ticket value, you're probably willing to spend a little bit more for a cost per, you know, for a lead. I know what it costs me to, to book an appointment, right? Because we're tracking that every single day and I'm happy to pay that to someone, um, to, to give us a referral.

And there's a lot like check with your, you know, state local lot. There's like funny stuff about referrals and how you gotta do it. Just we, we made sure that we like cross reference everything that we're doing with our attorney to make sure that the program is like. Fully above board, and I think it may be state by state and stuff, but yeah, I don't want to give that advice, like make sure that you're doing it above board and it's, it's, uh, you know, done right.

Just get with your attorney and make sure that you're setting it up properly. But once it's set up properly, um, you know, it's just a matter of executing and, and deciding what your cost per lead you're willing to spend for a lead. And then, uh. Stacking into a number that way. 

Austin Gray: Can you share your cost per lead or what somebody should be, should be expecting?

Sam Allsopp: I'm ecstatic if we're booking reroof appointments at 500 bucks. Right? My average ticket's $34,000 this month. We close at about 40, and you can kind of do the math there. Like that's, that's an insane return on, on ad spend. So for me, that's kind of like the max that I'd be willing to, to pay or to, to incentivize someone to give us a referral.

Austin Gray: Would it be safe to assume that you would pay a customer $500 if they brought you a qualified lead. Who? Books? 

Sam Allsopp: Yeah. No brainer. Right? I'm paying that to Google all day, so you know, why not pay, uh, Mrs. Smith. 

Austin Gray: Okay, perfect. Everybody loves making money, right? 

Sam Allsop: That's what I'm saying. Yeah. If you, if you present it right and, and, uh. I, it's you. You can, like some of your best customers can just become huge, huge marketing referral sources for you. 

‍Austin Gray: Awesome. All right, Sam, we're gonna have to do a third one with the door-to-door sales strategy. And have you coach us up on that. What else? On customer acquisition, marketing spend, budget, anything, any of the topics that we covered today. What, what else would you share with listeners?

Sam Allsopp: Um, I will say, we, we talked about this before we, before we started, um, I. I have started to, to consult people, um, to an extent on their, on their marketing and on their sales. So everything that we talked about, the reason that it's, uh, there's no one straight answer, right?

There's a huge need for people to kind of get handheld and, and held accountable to track these things daily. For someone to kind of tell them what they recommend their, what platforms they're doing, what budget allocation, you know, backing in how many appointments they need to be setting per day, holding them accountable to do it.

Making sure that we're, we're spending properly. I've kind of created, um, something that can help people do that. Now, uh, we've talked about my, my company, we did not talk about the fact I'm, I'm doing an acquisition right now, like we're about to. Double, even more, uh, company about the size of us. So this isn't something that I'm going and being super public about.

Uh, selfishly I do charge for this, number one. And then number two, I'm looking at this like an awesome acquisition channel for us down the road. No pressure to the people that I'm, that are listening to this, that I'm currently working with. I'm just looking at this like this, this acquisition that we're doing now has gone so great.

Cause there's, there's a personal relationship. None of the horror stories that I've heard from other people. Um, and there's definitely value to building a relationship with someone. Providing value. And then, hey, down the road they're looking to sell. You know, we'd love to be a, uh, we'd love to be in the, uh, in the loop. So I'm doing this, number one to help people out. Number two, we do charge for it. And number three, it's uh, you know, it's a, it's pretty cool potential acquisition channel for, for my company. 

Austin Gray: If people are interested, where can they find you? 

Sam Allsopp: X, uh, it's probably the best place to, to reach out to me. I think I'm like, got like a weird Yeah, it's Sam underscore Allsop, A-L-L-S-O-P-P. And then another underscore, but you can find me there. Shoot me a message. 

Austin Gray: Awesome. Yeah, we didn't even jump into the acquisition. So you're gonna, your company's gonna double after you close this. 

Sam Allsopp: We're gonna organically double and then we're also about to buy a company that, that did around the same volume that we did last year. So, yeah. It's getting crazy.

Austin Gray: Insane. What's your, what's your end goal with this thing?

Sam Allsopp: I got it in my bio. That's a hundred. I want a hundred million. I mean, we'll be at 60, 70 after this. So, um, that's kind of just like the man, like I don't do that. I, I do this 'cause it's fun, right? Like I, I genuinely enjoy business.

Um, I think Bodhi or one of them post-its something the other day, day. It's like some people like to. Play sports or some people like to do this or whatever. They like to go out with friends and that's like their, I, I like business. Um, and as cliche as my goal is a hundred million, it's, you gotta set some sort of goal, um, you know, to be motivated day to day.

Um, it's to do a hundred million profitably, right? Like I, and I just feel kind of like. Funky putting up an EBITDA number 'cause people know that's tied to like earnings. So I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to piss anyone off. But yeah, I just put a hundred million, that's my top line goal. Do it profitably and, and just build an awesome culture, um, and an awesome company and I genuinely enjoy doing that.

So end goal is just to keep building and, and having fun. And I'll do it for as long as I enjoy it. 

Austin Gray: That's awesome. Well, I, I mean, I feel like you're gonna be there within the next couple years. I. 

Sam Allsopp: Hundred percent. Yep. 

Austin Gray: So all right, well, I, I won't put you on the spot now, but. I mean, what's next after that? What, you're 30, 32, 33. 

Sam Allsopp: I'm actually, I'm 29 years old. 29th. 

Austin Gray: Why did I think you were 30? 

Sam Allsopp: Well, I turned 30, March, March 9th. So we're getting there. I'm about to be the big, the big 3.0 sometimes, or for some reason I, I thought that you mentioned you were 32 last time you were on No, anyways. So you're gonna be,that might've been how much we did in sales.

There you go. There you go. I think we're a little over 30 in sales last year. 'cause our backlog is like 6 million. So we did, yeah, we did like 20, over 25 million in revenue, but our, our sales was much higher in, uh, in 2024. But yeah. Kind of joking, but Yeah. 

Austin Gray: So by the time you're 32, like I'm placing my bet. By the time you're 32, you're, you're already at the a hundred million mark. 

Sam Allsopp: That's the goal. 100%. I mean, it's gonna be a little bit of a, a challenge with this acquisition that we're doing. There's gonna be a lot of, a lot of cleaning up and whatnot we need to do. I don't know if that's gonna organically grow like, you know, my, my company, I started from scratches, so I'm not underwriting extreme organic growth on that front, but you know, the trajectory that company that I built, um, is on. Yeah, we'll be, we'll definitely be in that range in the next couple years. 

Austin Gray: Cool. Well, I can't wait to hear about, uh, what's next after that.

Sam Allsopp: Um, yeah, we'll see, man. Depends on, you know, I'd love to, that's why I'm kind of started doing this consulting thing, right? Like I'm, I'm looking at the, uh, I'm looking at the acquisition model and just seeing if that makes sense and I wanna get myself set up for, uh, success there. If that's the, if that's the route that we go.

Austin Gray: Yeah, absolutely. And then you said Twitter's the best place for people to reach out if they are interested in hiring you as a consultant. Can you just give a brief overview? I mean, I know we just did an hour long episode on marketing and cost per lead, cost per acquisition, but can you just give a high level overview of like what you coach people on and specifically, uh, what they will Uh, leave with after working with you? 

Sam Allsopp: So that example that we kinda went through, right? And it was very, you know, it was quick. We only have an X amount of time. But, uh, you know, the, the first things first is that's what we do, right? We go through what's your goal, uh, all your different KPIs, and we back into a number.

And every single person I've talked to, they are not at all executing on the number of appointments they need to set. And they're not at all executing on, uh, typically the budget that they need to spend to yield the revenue that they want. So. There's usually a pretty big gap there. Um, and then it's just a matter of, um, getting my team in there and tracking on a daily basis, essentially what I do at, you know, my company, the, uh, the total appointments that we're booking every single day, and, and being a thought partner on which channels to use, what percent of budget to allocate to different channels and someone to hold them accountable for, uh.

For executing on those goals and someone to just, like, a lot of people need the reassurance, right? That they're, uh, that they're making the right decisions. And that's, that's what we're there for, right? So I hop on and I'll help people out, um, every couple weeks, but there is a team that's helping with this, um, you know, account managers and whatnot that are very familiar with what needs to get done.

And, uh, and yeah, someone's, you know, um, interested in. Getting some help there. It's not something I'm really like pushing or being public about. That's why we waited until the end of the podcast. If you've listened this far, then you, you know, you might be a pretty good candidate just working with people. I, I see, uh, I could potentially work with, you know, down the line, so. 

Austin Gray: Now is this only for existing roofing operators? 

Sam Allsopp: You know, I had a, I have an emphasis. I mean, I'd say that, um, out of the 12 people that we're working with right now, like. 10 of them are, are roofers, but I'm not, uh, yeah, I like home services.

I do like, I like HVAC, I like painting, uh, I like fencing. Um, I like what you do. Like there's, there's, I like home services. Um, so I'm not, I'm not biased. I could see us eventually getting into different verticals and applying kind of the IP that we did with the roofing to different, uh, services for sure.

Austin Gray: Cool. Well, this is exciting. Thanks again for being on Sam. I appreciate it. 

Sam Allsopp: Of course, of course. We'll, uh, we'll do it again. 

Austin Gray: Okay, next time we're gonna talk sales listeners. Thanks again for listening to another episode of the Owner Ops podcast, if you do enjoy this type of content. Uh, first off, like you heard Sam say, if you are interested in getting coached by him, uh, with that same process we talked about, you can reach out to him on X, that's at Sam Allsopp.

Sam Allsopp: A-L-L-S-O-P-P. Yep. 

Austin Gray: A-L-L-S-O P-P underscore. Again and we just launched a new website for the podcast, so if you guys have not checked that out, go check it out now. It's owner ops.com, OWNR ops.com. We publish these podcast episodes with home service operators like Sam every Friday, and then we send a weekly newsletter on Saturday mornings to you summarizing the high level points that we talked about.

If you haven't signed up for the newsletter yet, go check out ownrops.com/newsletter. And if you're enjoying this type of content, we'd sure appreciate a five star review. We didn't talk about it in this episode 'cause we didn't talk SEO much, but five star reviews are super important for home service businesses and podcasts are the exact same way.

So take 30 seconds. If you're enjoying this content, we'd sure appreciate it. Leave us a five star review on Apple, Spotify, and like, and subscribe. If you're listening on YouTube. And with that, we're gonna wrap this up. Don't forget, work hard, do your best, never settle for less. We'll see you guys next week.

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