I want to try something different. Okay. It's the Hormosi hotline. Take five listeners out of the crowd. Have them call in. Tell us about their business. Tell us a business problem. Cool. So, this is the Hormosi hotline. Are you down? Let's do it.
Okay. We got Flo here. Flo, I want you to give us the what's the name of your business and give us the one minute description of what you do. Give us a sense of where you're at revenue-wise. And then we're gonna get to what's your biggest business problem and we're gonna try to help you out here in a couple of minutes.
So like I said, I'm Flo. I live in London. I own a company called Wentworth Protection. And so what we do is we install security bollards on people's driveways. Now, if you don't know what that is, basically like a metal pole that you put on your driveways to stop your car from getting stolen. I started this business as a side hustle in January 2024. So we're now like a year and a half in. It's just me and my best mate. We both still do this as a side hustle. We've got a couple of installation guys. First year we did just shy of 250k revs. This year we're probably going to do 500. And kind of the biggest issue we're having right now is content.
The problem you solve is people in the UK are getting their car stolen and there's some you put a pole in the driveway that prevents that.
That's correct. Yeah. Car theft is just through the roof in the UK, especially around London. So this pole comes up through your driveway and it means even if someone gets into your car, they just actually drive it away.
Okay, got it. So you get 250k the year one, 500. You're on pace for 500k this year. And give us the quick and dirty on how are you getting those customers today? Because you said it's a side hustle. So where are you getting business?
Yeah. The first three months was basically purely door-to-door. Saturdays and Sundays just knocking on doors, which by the way in the UK people find that really, really strange. But now it's about kind of a 50/50 mix between Google ads just like search and mainly SEO. So we get loads of organic leads coming in as well and then a little bit of referral in there.
Okay. All right. How much do the poles cost?
So average ticket is about a thousand bucks.
Okay. So what's it cost you to install?
We go on roughly 50% margin. So like paying the installation guys and buying the units is about 50% of tickets.
Okay. Got it. So you make 500 bucks in gross profit per. Does that sound right?
Okay. Got it. So what do you want to have happen?
Okay. Got it. So what stopped you from doing more door-to-door?
Honestly, it's a time constraint. Currently it seems like the conversion rate on door-to-door and the amount of time that it takes it just doesn't equate to extra effort put into content or writing more blog posts or trying to reach out to commercial partners, that kind of stuff.
Okay. So, one of the big things is like I think you have to get a little bit narrower in terms of how you want to get leads because you're super resource constrained right now. Like you don't have, you know, a ton of capital that you can like put to work or anything like that. And so it's like you've got search, you've got SEO, you just mentioned commercial partners, which I'm guessing you're doing through outbound. Is that how you're getting it? And you also said content.
Yeah, correct. Content is basically the nut that I'm trying to crack. I inherently know that content can be really big for this business, but it's just like we did a viral TikTok two days ago. I did a million views and it's just not translating to any increase in kind of lead flow.
Yeah. So, okay, I want to rewind for a second. I think that so fundamentally because you have these three ways that you can reliably get customers and then you have this other way that you would like to get customers but aren't really getting customers from yet. Does that sound right?
Okay. So, why not like what are you spending on search right now?
Okay. What do you make back on the 3k?
3 to 1. Okay. So, you're making nine grand a month roughly off Google.
Okay. And then SEO is bringing in how much?
Okay. And what do you spend on SEO?
Honestly, I'm just doing it all myself. I buy backlinks every now and again, but I'm just doing all the writing and all the technical SEO myself.
Okay. Got it. And that's bringing like 9,000 a month as well pretty much.
Yeah. It's about 50/50 these days.
And you stopped doing door-to-door. Right now you're not doing it anymore. You stopped doing it because you got tired of it or because it stopped working?
No, it's just it was such a grind in the early days. It was like that was the way for us to get the business off the ground. So we had no money in. We just had to hustle, speak to people. But at the moment it's like I still have a job. I have a kid. My partner has a job. He has a kid. And for us to find any time to go door-to-door, it's no bueno.
Okay. So, and then the rest is referrals.
Yeah, it's referrals. There's a few little platforms like Next Door, Checkatrade, Bark. Like, we get a dribbling through those.
But those must be small because you basically said about 10K from each of these. That's 20K a month. That's 480K a year. That's basically what you said you're on track to do. Was 20, right?
So that gets us 250. You said your run rate's 500. Yeah, correct. So a lot of this is in pounds. So the numbers I gave you.
Oh, all right. Whatever. Big picture. More, better, new, right? So if you've got search and you've got SEO, I will come back to it. But what do you have to make in order to quit the job?
We could quit right now. I'm just a little bit of a coward to be honest.
Okay, fair. Well then how many hours are you dedicating to doing this versus the job?
It's like 40 hours on my job and 50 hours on this every week at the moment I've worked on this business.
I got it. So, let me ask you a quick question. If you actually just went door-to-door for 40 hours a week, I'm not saying you do this, but I just like to ask the hypothetical. If you went door-to-door, basically replaced your job with spending 100% on door-to-door, I'm not going to say you do that, but just hypothetically, would you be able to replace your income if you did that?
I think probably not. I mean, just like running really quick numbers. Let's say I do make two sales a week or three sales a week from door-to-door which would be really impressive for us at this point. That would bring in 1,500 gross a month. That wouldn't cover it.
Okay, great. So then what stops you from spending like 10 grand a month on Google ads?
Yeah, great question. So we just scaled our Google ads from 1500 up to 3K. And it takes us about two or three months to get that to scale.
Okay. Flo, one of the things I love about business is that every problem has already been solved. And so, one of the things I would ask is, can you work backwards from a business that already is doing what you're doing? So, are you the only guy doing this? Are you the only company that offers this service? And if not, who's that company and how do they get customers?
Yeah. There's a couple of much, much bigger players in this space. And I think what they've cracked is they're just really, really, really good at organic. They just get like maybe 5 to 8x the amount of traffic that we get.
When you say organic, I don't think you're saying that the incumbents are amazing at TikTok. What do you actually mean when you say they get organic?
Sorry. I literally mean like Google search.
Okay. So, they rank SEO leads.
Well, let me ask you this question. So if I bought your business tomorrow, my first ads would probably be Meta ads because making Meta ads work. And the thing that you have is one, you have a clear fear like people are afraid of their car getting stolen. And I'm sure you can put some stats up on the board that shows like big arrow to the right. Oh my god, cars are leaving, right? And you also have a service that is tangible and visible. Like you can demonstrate it. Much harder to say, hey, in an ad, I'm really good at SEO. It's way better to be like, look, car got stolen. Like literally you could just do a before and after of like look guy with a mask on gets in the car walks out and then right afterwards guy with a mask gets in and then he's like oh no this one. It's literally the ads that I would mirror are the carjack ads if you Google that. It's the little like the bar you use the steering wheel. Yeah. Put on the steering wheel those ads and then you just go local targeting do a 10 mile radius or whatever that is in kilometers. That I would bet you right now would get you the like that would scale like really high like you could probably get to 10, 20,000 a month.
We did Meta ads in the early days and I told myself that didn't work but it was just the creative was just terrible.
Yeah, I'm sure it was. I mean, advertising works so it's not like Meta ads don't work, right? It's like you just needed to get the process down. But if you just do a very simple narrative ad with your iPhone demonstrating the product and the problem that it solves and keep it under 60 seconds. I guarantee that you'll be able to get leads and then all you have to do is just call them, get a deposit on the phone for you to show up and then roll the deposit towards the thousand bucks which is like, hey, it's a hundred bucks for an assessment. It's just to make sure that you show up and if you suck at sales, then say, hey, just put a card down and then I'll only bill you if you don't show. It's just to make sure cuz I'm going to send a truck and a guy out there. It's just we don't want to get no-showed. Most people will be fine with that and then you just roll it right into the thousand bucks if they just decide today and that gives you a little bit of urgency in the sale when you show up.
Even better, we don't even have to show up. We can just do the whole thing. We don't really do site visits.
Can I ask you a question? Wait, you just install it on first go. There's no scouting. Explain that. So you just go out and install it first shot, right? Is that what you're saying?
Yeah. They just send us a picture. We say, let's go for it. They send us a 50% deposit.
Yeah. Okay. Great. So that's I mean literally it's a phone sale. So, if I'm looking at all this stuff, the first thing I would do is say like, let's see if I could triple Google ads. You already went to 3K. I'd be like, can we get to nine? And then it's like, cool. That buys you your job back, right? If you tripled and you kept ROAS the same, would that allow you to quit?
Right. And I would before doing Meta, I would keep hitting Google ads until I can't do it anymore. I would buy all the traffic. And then once I'd maxed out Google locally, I would 100% put all my stuff in Meta ads.
What's the rationale on keeping going on Google rather than just running with like doing now every extra penny in the Meta?
Because you haven't done it yet. Got it. If you're making money somewhere, make as much as you can first and then once you can't make any more, better new.
So, Flo, one last thing that I think is important is you basically said something that I think is emotional but not logical. And I think you could counter either emotion with emotion or logic with logic, but don't try to counter emotion with logic. So you basically were like, I haven't quit my job. Why? Cuz I'm being a bit of a coward about it. So I think you got to have a conversation with yourself about how you feel about that. Do you want this to be a forever side hustle or would you actually like this to be your main business? If so, where would you get the courage and the conviction to do this? Cuz you have some evidence. Do you have currently enough evidence? Would you like some more evidence? What would that take? Because, you know, you're going to be limited by your own bandwidth in this business. And so, we could give you five strategies that would work, but if you only have 10 hours when you're fatigued to go execute them, you're going to walk away saying, ah, it didn't really work. Cuz you didn't really try it. And so, I think for your long-term success, you got to be able to go all in on this. And maybe now is the time, maybe it's not. Only you know that. But it sounds like that's something to address today. And try to figure out how do I want to think about that? I know how I have been thinking about it, but how do I want to think about that going forward, right? What's the narrative? What's the narrative to myself about that? So, don't answer that now, but I think that's something worth doing. That's between you and your therapist. But I think it's important to answer that. I know a lot of entrepreneurs who have gotten success started on the side. I don't know a lot of entrepreneurs who finished with it as on the side, right? So unlikely that that's your end outcome with this is that this stays a side hustle. And so the question is how do you get there from where you are today?
Yeah. I love nothing more than being in the game. So I think that's where I'm headed.
All right, Flo, we've been charging 199 a minute. So you owe us some money now. Thank you for calling the Hormosi hotline. We will see you later. Thanks, dude. Appreciate you. Let us know what happens. See you at the book launch.
Hey, let's take a quick break for a message from our sponsor HubSpot who's making this episode possible. Listen, if you're trying to build something big, and I'm talking about a hundred million or billion dollar company, one of the most important things is to focus on the market. Where is the opportunity? You are like a surfer on a surfboard and you're trying to find the biggest best wave possible for you to go on. Well, HubSpot has put together a cheat sheet that is studying and sort of reverse engineering what's working today. So, they're looking at the top performing industries that you could be looking at, the funding routes that work the best, and the growth strategies that the fastest growing companies are using. So, if you want a one-pager that is a cheat sheet on the big company playbook, you can get it right now. Just either scan this QR code that you see on the screen or click the link in the description below. All right, back to the show.
All right. All right. What's up? Who am I speaking to?
Nice to meet you, Carson. Pleasure, man. Tell us about the business.
So, yeah, my name is Carson. I have a recruiting business. I tell my clients hiring should make you money, not cost you time. That's why I built Diamond Connect.
I'm a customer. I use this business. Work with a lot of companies like True Classic, HexClad, and Hard Rock.
Got it. So, what roles do you recruit for?
Yeah, really all roles. Junior to C-level roles. Did a CMO for Sean, did performance, creative, retention, social media, head of ops. So, a lot more on the marketing and rev side.
Carson, here's your ad, Carson. Carson found me my CMO for my e-com business, who's now the CEO of the e-com business. That's as good as you could do. There's your blog. There's your blog. All right. What's revenue right now?
Right now, for last year did 1.6. This year tracking, it hit around two.
Okay, got it. So what's the issue? What's holding it back?
Few things. Being a contingency focused recruiting agency, ultimately allowed us to get a lot of clients in the door. It does come with flaws of pausing roles, slow communication, having to let clients get in the game. And so I think really like we've learned once we unlock the first hire, they see the value and stick with that. Really just trying to focus on kind of building that first role with them to show them what we're doing.
Okay. And what's the issue with your current way of doing it?
We have like a really good process. It's just we have a lot of clients that sort of like call pause role. There's a lot of potential on the table for candidates that we have that are interviewing and I think there's a lot more potential of kind of getting more of a streamlined process. Me getting less in the weeds.
Carson, let me ask you a question because I think ask a better question, you'll get a better answer. Is your question how do I streamline operations? This is an operational question or is this a scaling question of okay, I did 1.6, I did two, I want to get to five or four a year and right now I don't feel like I'm able to do that because of either a my business model or b my operation. So what is your question on the business model and the growth side of things or is it on the operation?
Yes, I would say more on the business side like the first you said. I guess I kind of said it in two questions, but mainly I want to scale, right? We're about to hit two million this year. I see a lot of potential. I want to figure out how do I take this contingency recruiting business to five to seven million being so lean?
Yeah. So, how do you get customers right now?
Really like 98% of referrals. A really good pilot base, really good customer base and a lot of people in the e-com such a niche space, you know, we get a lot of referrals that way.
Got it. So, if I mean, fundamentally, if I'll ask a different question. If you doubled the amount of people who are asking for roles right now, would you be able to handle it?
I would say yes. I think I would need to bring on maybe a few extra recruiters at scale, but ultimately like these clients used me because of me and the relationships we have. So, I'm trying to figure out how do I stay in the weeds but also kind of still ramp up and scale, right? Like, yeah.
So let I'll cut you off for a second just to So basically the question that I'm asking I'll tell you the intention behind the question which is are you demand constrained or are you supply constrained? Right. And so right now if I were to say I can go send you more business could you handle it? If the answer is yes then we don't focus on the supply side we focus on the demand side. If it's I could handle more but sorry I've got more people than I can handle right now and I need to go get more recruiters. So which side is it?
Yeah, I think we can handle more.
Okay, great. So your demand constraint. All right. All right. So from the demand perspective, if you only have referrals, then you need to have an input output in the business to get more leads.
Okay. So it's actually going to be so best way versus the best way for you will be two different things. So you've got the core four. Have you read the book?
Right. So you've got warm outreach, you've got cold outreach, you've got content, and then you've got ads. And then on the other side, you've got affiliates. Right. Okay. So, based on your background, you get recruits via outbound.
Yeah. Like outbound or really all referrals directly from client.
When you recruited my CMO, it's because you're blasting people on LinkedIn. Hey, would you be interested? Hey, I got some. You're doing outbound to get candidates, which means you have the skill and muscle of outbound already. You're just only using it for your supply. What if you used it for your demand?
Ah, that makes sense. Light bulb moment. Let's go.
So, there we go. So, fundamentally, you already know your metrics for your outbound funnel, which is like, you know, we do 100 connects and then 100 connects get us whatever five meetings and then five meetings turn into one fix or whatever it is, right? All you have to do is just turn that external same exact funnel.
Yeah. Really just focus more on the outbound.
Yeah. Because it's your main game. It's your main game. I was going to be like, hey man, learn ads. It's just like if you were like, you know what? We're really cuz the secondary thing I'll just be transparent with you. Because of the nature you're recruiting, you probably have access to very good marketers. And so if you could go recruit a CMO who go run the ads for you to go get those customers, that would also be a play. But in terms of if I'm going to give like the absolute I had to bet my baby on the fact that you'd be successful, I would say do more of the thing that you're already doing. Just change the target. That's it. And since you've recruited for a whole bunch of different roles, recruiting for customers, if you think about it like that, is I think the natural step and you can for sure scale that to the moon. For sure.
Question on the like being a contingency focus, right? Like a lot of skin in the game. Obviously it's low risk for them, high reward for us. How do I really kind of like demand sort of more communication, making sure clients aren't pausing roles? There's a lot of things out of our control scale. Yeah. I'm trying to figure out how I two things.
Two things. So are three things. So one is going to be the customer vetting, right? You have to have certain types of customers. If you have shitty customers, they're going to treat you shitty. If you have good customers, they tend to be more professional. So part of that's going to be what is our ideal customer? Number one. Number two, the contingency thing. The question is whether it's a feature or bug, right? Like this may just be a co and like this happens all the time. I'll have these conversations. I'm like, what if we decide this isn't a problem anymore and all of our metrics of the business are fine? So what are your margins right now?
