This episode of The Huge Insider Podcast centers on hiring and the power of establishing “core behaviors” to shape company culture. This segment from Mike Dahlke (who owns or invests in 11 blue-collar businesses), emphasizes using “core behaviors” (akin to core values) to hire, fire, and regularly coach employees. By identifying the best traits of your top performers—and inverting the worst traits of your underperformers—you create a concise framework for consistent, behavior-focused hiring and feedback. This core-behavior method is straightforward, repeatable, and ensures everyone on the team embodies a clear, cultural standard.

Show Notes

Mentioned in the Episode:

Resources:

Transcript

Sid Graef:

So here's the deal. This is not your typical podcast. It's not an interview show. It's not an expert-driven show. Instead, we've gathered seven- and eight-figure business owners, people running companies that are doing anywhere from 2 million a year to 40 million a year and beyond, and we're bringing you their best insights, all focused on a single topic each month.

And these are real owners. These are people that are actually running businesses. They're quietly building empires behind the scenes. They're not the people that you would see on social media looking for attention. They're in business to run a business and making things happen.

So this month, it's March. We're diving deep into our main subject, and that is hiring. Today, you're going to hear from Mike Dahlke. Mike owns or is invested in 11 blue-collar businesses, and they all use this framework as the foundation for all of their hiring. Let's get into it. Let's hear from Mike.

Mike Dahlke:

So it's coming up to hiring season. We're getting real close to where we're going to have to really ramp up, especially in our northern climates where the snow's starting to melt, and we're going to be really, really focused on hiring. So we have core behaviors standardized across all of our organization. So most people would know these as core values. We've changed the wording just a little bit, but most people use their core values to hire and fire.

Most people use them to discuss that in an all-hands-on meeting. What we do is a little bit different. We use our core behaviors at every single coaching meeting. So if you're set up on a review system where we're going to review the team member every 30 days or every 90 days, we're going to go through those core behaviors every time.

Now, this is one of the reasons why we call it core behaviors and not core values. It's really hard to tell somebody in a review, “Your values aren't good,” or “You need to improve your values,” or “Your values aren't aligned with ours.” It's a lot easier to say, in a review, “This is how you're behaving in a way that's going to help us accomplish our mission and goals, and this is what you can do better.”

So our core behaviors are really an outline of how you have to behave when you are a part of our organization. It doesn't mean you can't value integrity or have other values that are different than ours, but you have to behave this way in our organization. And that makes it a really, really easy hiring conversation, coaching conversation, firing conversation.

So, how, if you do not have core behaviors or core values, the easiest way to come up with them is to take the top five employees that have ever worked for you or that you've worked with. If you're new to business and you're just getting started, think about a job that you had where you had excellent employees that worked with you, excellent team members.

How did they behave that was so attractive to you or that you really, really enjoyed? Maybe they were ultimately responsible. Maybe they owned up to their mistakes. Maybe they were humble, hardworking, hungry, smart. What are the things that were consistent between those five? And those are things that are hopefully consistent in you as well, so that you can put them on your list of core behaviors.

The other side of that is to invert it. So Charlie Munger, who was Warren Buffett's partner, one of the wealthiest men in the country, he had a famous line that said, “All I want to know is where I'm going to die, because if I know where I'm going to die, I'm never going to go there, and then I'll never die.”

And so he used that philosophy of always inverting, looking at the negatives and saying, “Okay, let's just go the exact opposite of that.” So if we take a look at those inversions and say, “Okay, well, what about the five worst employees I've ever had, or the worst members, or the worst that I've ever been with? What were those core behaviors, and what would be the opposite positive of that?”

So maybe they were dishonest, so that would be honest. Maybe it was that they were lazy, so that would be hardworking. So take the five that are just awesome and the five that were terrible and use that to come up with your core behaviors, your core values, if you haven't had them.

Once you've got them, you can hire them and bring it up in the—you should hire people and bring it up in the hiring process: “This is how we behave,” or “This is our core values, and if you want to work for us, this is what our expectations are.”

And then my very, very strong encouragement for everybody is to have one of the questions that you think through before every review: How is this team member behaving in a way that's going to help us accomplish our mission and value our mission and vision this year? How can they do better? So giving very consistent, real feedback on what they're doing well and what they can do better is awesome.

So again, for core values, core behaviors, the two most important things are: get them—get them dialed in with the top five and the worst five. Secondly, use them when you're doing your hiring this spring so that you get the right people up front, and they know if they're not going to value or behave the way—that they're just not going to get what they need, or they're not going to be able to work for you in a positive way.

And then lastly, bring it up in every review: “How are they behaving in a way that's consistent with these behaviors and want to make you better?” Hope that's helpful. Enjoy your spring. Talk to you soon.

Sid Graef:

So your next step is to take some action. Everything we covered in today's show is in the show notes, but most importantly, you can download the free action guide that goes with today's episode. We put together a three-page action guide to help you execute this week's strategy. Grab it at thehugeinsider.com.

And here are a few more ways that you can continue to grow and level up your business. This podcast is just one way that we help you grow. Next, we have our free weekly newsletter—weekly insights that come straight to your inbox, also cleverly named The Huge Insider. You get that, you can sign up for it at thehugeinsider.com.

We have a Facebook group—Facebook group where you can ask questions. We have a monthly Q&A. It's a pretty engaged group. And you find that at thehugeinsider.com. We have a mastermind. We call it The Huge Mastermind. Now, this is for people like—and maybe this is you—if you're pushing a million in revenue or you're over a million in revenue, you've got five or more employees.

This is the fast track to a freedom business. The Freedom Operating System is a system that allows your business to run and grow without you, and that gives you more freedom of money and freedom of time. So all of those resources—and The Annual Convention, The Huge Convention—that's the ultimate event for home service business owners. This year, it's going to be in Nashville, Tennessee, August 20 through 22.

All of this is available at thehugeinsider.com. Last thing before we go, we'd really love to feature you on our podcast. If you've had a big win in business, or more directly, if you've taken a concept from one of these episodes and applied it and gotten a result, we'd love to hear about it. If you've had a painful lesson or, like, a game-changing failure that ended up helping you grow into a better businessperson, we want to hear about that.

We really want to hear about it. We set up a special phone number for you—it's 804-600-HUGE. That's 804-600-HUGE (4843). Call and leave us a message. Tell us about your win or your loss or your growth, and we might just feature your story on an upcoming episode.

That's it for this week. Don't just listen—take action. I'm Sid Graef, and this is The Huge Insider Podcast. We'll see you next time.

In this episode of The Huge Insider Podcast, host Sid Graef spotlights the importance of maximizing revenue from existing customers, featuring insights from Michael Kaplan, an entrepreneur who grew a carpet cleaning company to strong eight-figure annual revenue before exiting. Kaplan stresses the value of upselling or cross-selling on-site, gamifying the sales process for technicians, and offering generous incentives to motivate teams. He explains that once you have already incurred the costs of acquiring a customer and dispatching your crew, any additional services sold can dramatically increase overall profitability. From creating fun, competitive spiffs to giving technicians scripts and training for door-knocking, Kaplan reveals how to turn “one job” visits into bigger revenue opportunities. Sid closes by urging listeners to download the free action guide and call in with both success stories and lessons learned from failures.

SHOW NOTES

Guest: Michael Kaplan

Key Topics & Takeaways

Resources & Links

More from The Huge Convention

TRANSCRIPT

Sid Graef (Host):

So here’s the deal. It’s not your typical podcast. It’s not an interview show. It’s not an expert-driven show where somebody just tells you all these smart things. This is the deal: we have gathered a bunch of business owners and gotten them to share their top insights. These are seven-figure annual revenue, eight-figure annual revenue, and even bigger businesses. These are people that are running companies from 2 million to 40 million dollars a year in the home service industries, and we’re bringing you their best insights. It’s all focused on one single topic each month.

February—it’s all about prepping your marketing strategy and launching your business this year to its maximum capacity, revenue, and profits. These are real operators. These are people that are quietly building empires behind the scenes. They’re not on social media looking for attention. They’re in the trenches, making things happen every single day. So this is about running a better business.

Okay, I already mentioned this: since it’s February, this month we’re diving into marketing strategies you can implement right now to set yourself up for a massive year. You heard from Michael Dahlke on expanding your capacity for the spring season. Last week, you heard from Jared Skinner going over networking strategies that you can use at low or no cost to build your business this year. And today, you’re going to hear from my friend Michael Kaplan.

Michael Kaplan doesn’t talk much about his background in this share—he just gives actionable insight. But he’s a very astute businessman. He owns or is invested in a couple dozen businesses. He cut his chops with a carpet cleaning company that started with less than a half-million in revenue, and they grew it over several years until he sold and exited that company as a strong eight-figure business. So he knows what he’s talking about. He’s been in the trenches. He’s successfully built a profitable large enterprise—one most of us would crave to have. And he exited. So now he’s happy to share insights on what he calls “taking the second bite of the apple.” He’s going to teach you about how to maximize revenue and profits for each customer. I want you to meet my friend, Michael Kaplan.

Michael Kaplan (Guest):

My background is carpet cleaning—or, affectionately known as rug-sucking—and we were accustomed to going into a home and building a ticket through upsells. A lot of people in the huge world are focused on pressure washing, window cleaning, that sort of thing. A lot of the models tend to focus on having a sales guy go out, then having a worker, a team, a field team guy, go out and take care of the work. My pitch to you is: do not miss that second opportunity—that interface when you’ve got the guys out there sweating, doing the work. Have them be sales guys. Everyone on your team should always be selling.

Sales can be a dirty word. A lot of people are hesitant to creep out a customer, or they’re shy about it, but that’s because people define sales as extracting something that’s not wanted from the situation—pushing something on a customer that they don’t need. That’s not what I’m talking about. I define sales as the transfer of benefits and enthusiasm, and there’s no better way to transfer benefits and enthusiasm than when you’re on site working. You can do show-and-tell. You can do a demo. You can give an explanation. You can get excited about something that you know will transfer massive value at a price below that value proposition. If value exceeds price, that’s our happy place.

So what I’m talking about is: you’re on site cleaning windows, and you have a pressure washer in the truck, but no pressure washing is scheduled. Think about the math if you add pressure washing, say, a fence or a driveway or the front face of the house—whatever it looks like. You’re going to provide that service, and what are your costs? You don’t have to acquire the customer—you’re already there. You don’t have to drive to the house—you’re already there. You’re going to use a minimal amount of product, and you’ve got to pay for your labor. So it’s a stripped-down version of COGS, and if your COGS is normally 40, whatever the number is, you’ll see that what’s left in expense is pretty nominal. The rest goes straight toward paying your bills or to the bottom line. So you’ve got a massive opportunity to be really, really profitable, which is fun thing number one.

Fun thing number two: you’ve got an opportunity to play games with incentives and probably pay more than you think is reasonable or logical to your tech—but get them excited about selling, and get them excited about their job because they’re going to make more money. Your opportunity cost—what’s your next best option? If you don’t crazy-incentivize them to sell, you get nothing because they didn’t sell that pressure washing. So think about this: you come up with a sales strategy to double the commission. Let’s get crazy. You pay your guys 25%. Let’s make it 50%. Let’s say your COGS was fully loaded—which it won’t be because you’re not going to have all of the associated expenses—but let’s say it was fully loaded at 45% before adding 25%. You add that 25%, and you end up well in the profit. You’ve got great money coming in, and your tech’s getting twice the wage. How is that not a win? Because the alternative, again, is you get zero.

So you can play with commission. Imagine if you said, “Hey, I’m going to give you a commission to door-knock—not just door-hang—and do five rounds, but door-knock to try to add a job because our schedule sucks. We’ve got wide-open lanes, and you’ll be home by one o’clock, which isn’t good for the truck. We don’t want it sleeping. We don’t want you coming home early. Go door-knock, and why are you going to do it? Because I’m going to pay you 50% of whatever you bring in, or 60%. You’re already there. You don’t have to pay for radio, or postcards, or the phone operator to schedule that appointment. What if you overpay? The tech’s going to like it. You’ve got to give them scripts and coaching and training, but if they become effective, they’re going to like doing work for twice the rate, and you’re going to like that the truck’s not coming home to sleep—it’s making 30, maybe 40 percent of something. It’s taking a second bite of that apple, that opportunity where you’re already out there, you’ve got your guys out there, and you’ve already incurred most of the expense. So why not take advantage of it?

Alright, so if you’re convinced that you are missing an opportunity by not selling when you’re on site—either upselling or door-knocking or doing something while your guy is at a location—or if you’re already convinced of that, the second key piece of this pie is to make the magic happen with contesting, gamifying, and creating competition for your guys to excel. Some of your team members will naturally take to scripting; they’ll be great sales guys. They’ll transfer benefits and enthusiasm and come back with an extra 500 or 1,000 dollars per day. That’s well and good, but what about the 90% of your team that doesn’t take to it naturally? You’ve got to create a context and circumstances where they can excel, and I think that’s through gamification and contesting.

What I’ve had great success with—and what I encourage you to work on—is figuring out how you can make a public spectacle out of whatever your goals are for upselling and create games, create spiffs, and make them really public. Spiffs don’t work nearly as well if they’re secret, if they’re hidden, if they’re private goals. I think you create accountability by sharing those goals and getting everybody enthusiastic about it. You are the Chief Repeating Officer. Your job is to have the megaphone and the wacky waving inflatable arm tube man out there, getting excited about what you’re asking the guys to do. Give them incentive for doing whatever it is you’re asking. If you hit X, you get a prize. If you’re the top sales guy, you get to throw a dart—and you get 10 times whatever dollar number you land on—or shoot a free throw and get a hundred bucks. Create spectacle. Get them excited. Chief Repeating Officer, very public. Track the snot out of it—get whiteboards all over and highlight who’s winning, who’s not thriving—and be very public about it.

Obviously, you’re going to coach up the guys who aren’t doing great; you’re going to roleplay in the morning and give everyone an opportunity to practice. If they can do it in the office, they can do it in the field. But you’ve got to create this environment where you can lift everyone up, create a shared expectation and competition, and maybe a Voxer channel—whatever it is to keep people bantering, talking, and competing. You will find that when you create a game and a contest, people will do the work for you. They’ll have more fun competing at work than they do doing most things in their life. They’re going to want to win, and you’re going to see that rising tide raises all ships. Even your guys who are timid or hated selling—when you reprogram them and teach them that selling is just getting other people excited about the benefits, then you give them the tools to communicate and the incentive and peer pressure, you’re going to see magic.

This is my rant about in-home or on-site upsells. Take it or leave it, but I’ve had great success, and I’ve seen countless companies implement similar programs. They turn a fixed job with very clear costs and a low ceiling into something with a much higher ceiling once those costs are already fixed—except for labor. Who doesn’t want to pay their guys more, and who doesn’t want to bring in some extra cash? That’s my pitch for you.

Sid Graef (Host):

Alright, here’s something I learned: million-dollar ideas are worthless, but million-dollar execution—well, I guess you could say it’s worth a million dollars. The point of this entire podcast is to give you wisdom, insights, tactics, and strategies you can actually use. But the only benefit you get is by taking action and doing the thing.

That’s why every week—like this week—we have either a one- to five-page action guide based on the episode that you can download. The link is in the show notes, or you can just go to www.thehugeinsider.com. Download your action guide and go on and do the thing. This is what I really love to see most about the show. We have these experts and experienced business builders share some of their best insights on the topic. You, as a listener, take that information, apply it to your business, and then tell us how it worked out.

We’ve set up a special phone number for you to call in and let us know your successes. That number is 804-600-HUGE—that’s 804-600-4843. You can call and leave us a message. Here are the things we’d love to hear from you:

Here’s the thing: I’m going to be real authentic—I lost my place in my notes, so I’m finding my spot. Yes: The Huge Convention and The Huge Insider Podcast. These are two ways we meet our mission. Our mission is simple: to help our blue-collar brothers and sisters build a better business—a business that brings you money freedom and time freedom. That’s it. We are fueled by freedom, because isn’t that the goal? Isn’t that the reason you started a business? You wanted to be free. You didn’t want to have a boss. You didn’t want someone telling you what to do. You didn’t want to be limited by someone else’s opinion of your worth. You wanted to build your own thing so you could have time freedom, money freedom. That’s our mission: to help you achieve that.

There are three specific ways we do that. One is through our free newsletter and podcast—the one you’re listening to now. Two is through The Huge Convention itself—our annual event, always in August. This year, it’s August 20th through 22nd in Nashville, Tennessee. It’s the place where breakthroughs happen. It’s the place for world-class business education for home services. For the best networking with other business owners at different levels, so you can learn from them and help each other, and we also have the biggest trade show in the home service industry. It’s pretty darn cool. I hope we see you there. Tickets are insanely inexpensive, and it’s always a ton of fun and learning. You’ll come away with strategies, tactics, and actionable ways to improve your business—that’s the point.

The third way we help achieve that mission is the Huge Mastermind. This is for more mature, bigger businesses. We have a mastermind that meets quarterly, currently in Nashville, Tennessee. It’s for business owners whose revenue has surpassed the million-dollar mark. If you want to get to ten, if you want to 10x your business but do it without adding more chaos, it’s all about leadership, operating systems, and bigger-picture thinking. If you’re rapidly approaching a million dollars, if you’re already there and looking to grow and streamline—and you want to stop playing whack-a-mole and actually have a business that works for you rather than you working for your business—the Huge Mastermind is something you definitely need to check out. You can find all of this—tickets, the Huge Mastermind, everything—at thehugeconvention.com. Just scroll down; you will find it.

I really appreciate you taking the time to listen. Call us and leave a message, give us your feedback, and I’m looking forward to meeting you in person at The Huge Convention. That’s it for this week. But here’s the deal: don’t just listen—take action. I’m Sid Graef, and this is the Huge Insider Podcast. I’ll see you next week.

In this mini-episode of The Huge Insider Podcast, host Sid Graef introduces a powerful preseason marketing strategy from Daniel Dixon, CEO of SendJim and co-owner of a concrete coatings business in Nashville, Tennessee. Dixon shares how his business uses a preseason promotion to overcome slow-season losses, keep employees working, and increase profitability.

By raising prices during peak season and offering discounts for customers who book jobs during the slow months (December–February), Dixon ensures his business remains profitable year-round. He also uses SendJim to send ringless voicemails and emails to past leads, converting them into paying customers.

SHOW NOTES

Guest: Daniel Dixon

•CEO of SendJim

•Co-owner of a concrete coatings business in Nashville, TN

•Works with thousands of home service contractors across the United States

Key Topics & Takeaways

Preseason Promotion Strategy

•Raise prices during peak season when demand is high.

•Offer customers a discount if they schedule their job during the slow season (December–February).

•Customers pay a deposit upfront to lock in the discounted rate.

Follow-Up to Convert Old Leads

•Send ringless voicemails and emails through SendJim to past customers who received a quote but never booked.

•Example message:

“Hey, this is Daniel with My Garage Floor Guys! You had a quote with us that you never moved forward on. Right now, we’re offering an additional $400 off for work completed before [date]. Let us know if you’re interested.”

Financial Impact

• Before: $40,000–$50,000 per month in lost revenue during the slow season.

•After: $10,000 per month in profit, keeping employees on staff and maintaining business momentum into the busy season.

Actionable Steps

1.Identify your slow season and create a discount offer.

2.Train your sales team to present the preseason promotion when customers hesitate due to price.

3.Use automation (voicemails and emails) to re-engage past customers.

4.Track results and adjust the offer as needed.

RESOURCES

• SendJim – Marketing Automation for Home Service Businesses

https://www.sendjim.io/

• The Huge Insider Podcast Action Guide

www.thehugeinsider.com

• The Huge Convention (August 20–22, 2025 in Nashville, TN)

https://thehugeconvention.com/

Call & Share Your Business Story:

📞 804-600-HUGE (4843) – Call and share your success or lessons learned for a chance to be featured on a future episode.

Special Offer: The first person to call in and share a success story will receive a free ticket to The Huge Convention.

TRANSCRIPT

Sid Graef (Host):

Hello, my friend, and welcome back to The Huge Insider Podcast. This is a mini-episode that’s going between our regular episodes. So you already know this is a brand-new podcast, and you get to see it evolve and grow as we move along. We just jumped in, and we’re adapting and growing and changing as we move.

One of the things we found out is that we have so many great insights from so many great seven- and eight-figure business owners that we’re not just going to be putting out one episode a week. We have an anchor episode that’ll come out every Monday, and then in between, we’ll have a sub-episode or a mini-episode. So in this one, it’s just a deep dive on one single topic, and it’s more tactical and more user-friendly—that’s not even the right word. It’s information you can take and utilize immediately.

So in this episode, you’re going to meet Daniel Dixon. He’s the CEO of SendJim. He also has a concrete coatings business in Tennessee that does very well. And you’re going to get some of his insights on how he manages his early spring, even winter and spring marketing, to maximize his revenue and fill his calendar early. So meet Daniel Dixon.

Daniel Dixon (Guest):

Hey everybody, this is Daniel Dixon. I’m the CEO at SendJim. We have a couple thousand home service contractors across the United States. And I’m also a co-owner of an epoxy floor coating business in Nashville, Tennessee. And I wanted to share my preseason promotion with you that we run at our garage floor coating company, and it looks a lot like this.

So our slow season starts roughly in the beginning of December, and then it ends about the end of February. And so what we do is during our busy season, when we are super slammed, booked out two months, we actually raise our prices so that we can get top dollar for our service. And when we go on a quote, our salesperson goes on a quote, and they get pushback based on price—“Hey, you guys are too expensive,” or “Hey, it’s out of my budget,” or “Someone else is less expensive.” What we come back with is our preseason promotion, which is, “Hey, if I can book you now for our slow season”—so if we say, “As long as you do your job between December and February, we can actually give you better pricing.” And so we might take three or four hundred off that job. They pay the deposit now, and we get them on the schedule for our slow season.

So then what we will do is, as our slow season actually arrives, we will send ringless voicemails through SendJim and emails to all the open quotes that we have, or archived quotes even, and just say, “Hey, this is Daniel with My Garage Floor Guys. We’re just calling because you had a quote that you never moved forward with. I want to let you know we’re running a discount, a heavy discount during this time of the year. If you get your job done before [XYZ date], we can take an extra four hundred off your quote. Let us know if you’re interested in that.” And then that will convert a bunch of different, or a bunch more people as well.

So before this promotion, we were losing forty to fifty thousand dollars a month in the slow season. After the promotion, we are making ten thousand a month in our slow season. So it’s a huge swing, and we’re able to keep our employees, we’re not laying people off. So our employees are staying happy, we’re more equipped and ready and trained for when our busy season starts. So there’s tons of benefits, even if it’s not just financial. And then, of course, at the end of the year, our company is way more profitable because we’re not starting with a January, February very large deficit. So it’s a great program. One of the best things that we’ve figured out in our business, and I hope it’s helpful to you.

Sid Graef (Host):

That’s a wrap. What did you learn from Daniel Dixon? What did you learn that you can use right now and take to the bank? There’s an old phrase that I heard: they said, “Action takers are money makers.” That’s the reason we’re putting out these mini-episodes, so you can take something from it and take action immediately. So it will impact your business positively.

We want to help you add to your bottom line. So please don’t get overwhelmed. Like, if somebody gives you five tactics on how to market, you don’t have to do all five. Take one, and then put it into operation and press the gas pedal and get some results. Test it, tweak it, and do it some more. We want you to win. Learn in business. We want you to profit and win.

So with that, that’s the end of this episode. We have set up—and I mentioned it last episode—two things that you can get your hands on right away. One is, once a week, we publish an action guide, and that matches and goes along with the primary episode for the week. So the action guide is now available at its new permanent home, thehugeinsider.com/action. You can download the action guide. It’s got more resources on it, but it’s got a summary of the primary episode, and it gives you step-by-step instructions on how to put it into action.

And the next thing—we set this up, and I’m looking for the first person to call in and leave us a message and tell us a success story or a lessons-learned story. I would love to hear a success story of somebody taking information from an episode or from the action guide, putting it into action, and then getting a result from it. It doesn’t even have to be big. You could just be like, “I tried Daniel Dixon’s thing. I did one thing. I got two new customers. I wanted to share the story.” I would love to hear that. We’d love to feature you on the show for doing that.

And then lessons learned is a hell of a way to learn from other people’s mistakes because, thankfully, we don’t have time to make all the mistakes ourselves. Sometimes I feel like I have made them all. But if you can see where the mines are buried and avoid them by learning from the mistakes that other people have made—and then just don’t do those things—you’re going to be way, way ahead.

The last thing I’m going to wrap up with is, thank you very much. Oh, I should give you the phone number to call in. We want to feature you. By hearing from you, please call in to 804-600-HUGE. So 804-600-HUGE, that’s 804-600-4843. You can call in, leave a message, and tell us your story. And then, if it’s great, if the audio quality is good, we’ll put it on a future mini-episode.

So call in. And I’m going to throw in—to sweeten the pot—the first person that calls in, since this show is brand new, and nobody’s called yet (there’s only been one episode where this has been available), the first person to call in and actually share a story of a win or lessons learned, we’re going to give you a free ticket to The Huge Convention. So how cool is that?

That’s all for now. Remember, our mission is to help our blue-collar brothers and sisters build a better business—a business that brings you time and money freedom. We want to see you win and prosper. And we do that with our free newsletter, The Huge Insider. We do it with this podcast. We do it with The Huge Transformations Podcast. We do it with The Huge Convention every August. And this year, it’s in Nashville, Tennessee. Links to everything that’s talked about, all the resources, are in the show notes. Go get them. We’ll see you in a few days.

In this episode, Sid introduces Jared Skinner, a successful Colorado entrepreneur with multiple home service businesses (window cleaning, flooring, holiday lighting). Jared reveals simple yet powerful marketing tactics to stay productive during slow months—specifically by building relationships with realtors, home builders, and complementary service providers. Key takeaways include:

Don’t miss the free action guide from The Huge Convention, offering detailed steps to implement Jared’s strategy.

Grab the action guide: https://thehugeinsider.com/

SHOW NOTES

Guest:

Topics Covered:

Resources & Tools Mentioned:

TRANSCRIPT

Sid Graef (Host):

So here's the deal: this isn't your typical podcast. It's not an interview show. It's not an expert-driven show. Instead, we've gathered together seven- and eight-figure business owners—people running companies that do anywhere from 2 million a year to 40 million a year—and we’re bringing you their best insights. It’s all focused on one single topic each month. These are real operators, the guys and gals that are quietly building empires behind the scenes. They are not on social media looking for attention. They’re in the trenches, making things happen every day.

And since it's February, this month we're diving into building your marketing strategy—the one you can implement right now to set yourself up for massive success this year. So last week, we heard from Michael Dahlke on how to expand your capacity for the spring season. Today, you're going to hear from Jared Skinner. Jared owns several successful service businesses in Colorado, including a window cleaning company, a flooring company, and a holiday lighting business. He’s breaking down a low-cost—maybe even free—strategy to help build relationships in the winter that will help you dominate the rest of the year. These are things that you can do today to start building for a big win and a big success for the rest of the year. So let’s get into it. Meet Jared Skinner.

Jared Skinner (Guest):

What we've done that has seemed to give us traction and help us to build the future months out is use this downtime to really start creating networks and relationships with others. Let me give you a couple of examples of what we do, which can make an impact.

We created gift cards for our window cleaning company—say a $35 gift card. We'd go around to all the different realtors in our area and give them a pack of 50 of these gift cards. We'd basically introduce ourselves and say, “Hey, I'm Jared, and we're with View Window Cleaning, and what we'd like to do is work with you so you can help your clients. If a client buys a home or sells a home, as a gift from you to them, you can give one of our gift cards.” They can use this gift card to get their windows cleaned or get their house washed—whatever you want to do. It’s a great gesture for the realtor to give to their client, and it costs them nothing. It’s just the relationship we're trying to build.

We've given out thousands of these gift cards to realtors for their clients. Now, is every realtor going to do it and get on board? Not all of them. But we have a number of realtors who really do it, and we get quite a bit of work from that. The great thing is, all it costs us is the cost of the gift cards and our time to go out and network.

That's one idea to keep you and your team busy. When our guys weren't working, if we needed something for them to do, we'd have them dress up and go out to network with the realtors, just to help us get that momentum going a bit quicker. We'd pay them to hand out the cards and do the networking. We had a couple of sharp techs who fit that mold, and they enjoyed doing it.

Another thing we did is we really started reaching out to builders. We have relationships with the biggest builder in one of our cities, and we clean all the homes for them. It’s turned into a really great recurring revenue stream because every time a home is completed, we do the cleaning. Then, right before they sell it—right before closing—they do another clean just to touch everything up. We almost get a double hit on this, which is absolutely amazing.

One thing I’d recommend, and that has worked for us, is to create a list of all the realtors in your area that you can reach out to. You can make gift cards for whatever value you want—$50, $100—and start to use those networks to push your product. This is a really good way to market.

Make a list of all the home builders in your area or other services in the home service space and build networks. We've built networks with other contractors who do things in the home. We refer them; they refer us. You can blast each other’s databases. Maybe they can send an offer for your service to their database, and you can reciprocate.

This is a great time to go out and build these critical relationships. The nice thing is, once you get them going, your customer acquisition costs are extremely low. There's a lot of profit potential that comes through developing these networks. Most people don't do it because it takes time and effort, but once you get them established, the recurring jobs that come through make it absolutely worth it.

From our experience, this has been a great time of year—February is our time to go out and build these relationships and networks, and to establish those baseline recurring jobs that can come in all throughout the year. Hope that helps and hope that'll help you gather more jobs and income this year, and get prepared for the busy season!

Sid Graef (Host):

I'll give you a quick example. A couple of years ago, we did this exact strategy. We took coffee and donuts to every property manager in our town. Some of them were already clients, some weren't. At one stop—already a client—I mentioned that we not only clean windows, but also gutters. The owner's eyes lit up. She dashed into another room and came back with a list of properties, saying, “I didn't know you cleaned gutters. I want you to clean all of these spring and fall.” That single visit turned into an extra $25,000 in revenue, just for saying hi and letting them know what we do.

That's the real lesson: networking works, but only if people know what you offer.

Here's the next thing: take action. Everything we covered today is in the show notes, but the single most important thing is to download the action guide. We put together a five-page guide to help you execute Jared's strategy this week. You can grab it by going to www.thehugeinsider.com—that link is in the show notes. Make sure you don't miss it.

There are more ways to level up your business. Our mission is to help our blue-collar brothers and sisters build a business that gives them financial and time freedom. This podcast is one way we do that. Another way is our free newsletter, The Huge Insider, which is sent weekly, packed with actionable insights. When you download our action guide, you'll get access to it.

The next way we help people win and prosper is The Huge Convention. It’s like the Super Bowl of conventions for home service businesses—the ultimate event for networking, education, and the biggest trade show in the industry. This year, we're back in Nashville, August 20th–22nd. Tickets are really cheap right now, so grab yours at thehugeconvention.com before prices go up. Real breakthroughs happen at this event.

Finally, we’d like to feature you. If you've had a big win in your business—or, even better, a painful lesson or failure that led to success—call and leave us a message at 804-600-HUGE (that’s 804-600-4843). We might feature your story on an upcoming episode, using your recorded message so our audience can hear it directly from you.

And that is it for this week, my friend. Don't just listen to the show—take action. They say knowledge is power, but that’s not quite true; it’s the proper application of knowledge that is powerful. Use what you learned today, use it to win and prosper, and have a bigger 2025. I'm Sid Graef, this is the Huge Insider Podcast, and I will see you next time.

The Huge Insider Podcast is a brand-new show designed to help home service professionals break the million-dollar revenue mark. Hosted by Sid Graef, this podcast brings together real seven- and eight-figure business owners who share proven strategies to grow a profitable business.

In this first episode, Mike Dahlke, who built a five-million-dollar window cleaning company, breaks down his winter and spring marketing strategy. He explains how to prepare in February, use strategic offers in March, and maximize lead generation in April, May, and June. Key takeaways include:

Mike’s insights provide a practical marketing roadmap to help home service businesses generate revenue even during the slow months. The episode also includes a free action guide with step-by-step implementation strategies.

Get the action guide: https://www.thehugeconvention.com/action

Guest: Mike Dahlke

Topics Covered:

Winter & Spring Marketing Strategy

Proven Marketing Tactics

Resources & Tools Mentioned

importance of maximizing revenue from existing customers, featuring insights from Michael Kaplan, an entrepreneur who grew a carpet cleaning company to strong eight-figure annual revenue before exiting. Kaplan stresses the value of upselling or cross-selling on-site, gamifying the sales process for technicians, and offering generous incentives to motivate teams. He explains that once you have already incurred the costs of acquiring a customer and dispatching your crew, any additional services sold can dramatically increase overall profitability. From creating fun, competitive spiffs to giving technicians scripts and training for door-knocking, Kaplan reveals how to turn “one job” visits into bigger revenue opportunities. Sid closes by urging listeners to download the free action guide and call in with both success stories and lessons learned from failures.

SHOW NOTES

Guest: Michael Kaplan

Key Topics & Takeaways

Resources & Links

Transcript:

Hello, my friends. This is Sid Graef, and this is the Huge Insider Podcast, and this is a brand-new show from the Huge Convention, and it is specifically for home service pros who are stuck trying to break the million-dollar mark. If you've been trying to hit and break a million dollars a year, this is for you.

And now, if you're over a million dollars, you're going to get so much even more from this show. So this show has a unique format. It's not an interview show and it's not an expert show. What we've done is we gathered up seven- and eight-figure business owners, folks that are doing anywhere from two million a year in revenue to over forty million a year in revenue.

And they're probably not people that you've heard about. Uh, they don't like being on social media. They don't like being on stage or in front of the camera. They are quietly building empires. And they've agreed to share their insight and best strategies for business with you. So here's how it works.

Every month we're going to take a topic, a hot topic for home services, something that's timely and seasonally strategic. For example, this is February, 2025, and all February long, we're going to be talking marketing strategy, how to prepare your marketing for 2025 so that you win and prosper, and each week is going to be a deep dive by one of our business experts.

They're going to go into actionable strategy and tactics to help you to move your business toward that million-dollar mark or beyond and to win and prosper. And so, uh, as I mentioned, it's February, and our topic is marketing strategy. Smart moves to take now to get way ahead. So every week our expert, literally, they're just calling in and recording eight to ten minutes of their expertise on this topic.

So the quality of their recording is, it's not super, but the content is crazy good. So we're going to dive into episode one. So I want you to see what I mean. First episode, I want you to meet Mike Dahlke. He's going to be diving into the winter and spring marketing strategy that he used with a five-million-a-year window cleaning company in Minnesota.

And after the program is over, I'm going to ask you a couple of questions, and I want to find out from you. Definitely. I want to find out what you think. I want to find out if it's valuable, find out if you liked it, if you liked the format, what topics you want us to dive into, things like that.

So without any further introduction, I want you to join me with Mike Dahlke.

Hey, podcast network, happy February. In February, we are going to focus on growing in our business, and we're really going to be focusing on dialing in our market plan specifically for the very short period of time, and then generally for a long period of time.

So growing Blue Skies, we grew it to five million dollars and we had 128 employees at our peak. And then growing also multiple home services businesses. The winter is always slow for us. It was always that I always felt broke no matter how much cash I had in the bank going into the winter. I always felt broke in February, and I wanted to get revenue coming in so bad.

So one of the things that was a core focus was making sure that I had the marketing plan dialed in for March, April, May, and June. In June, everything kind of slowed down. At the end of the Fourth of July, we did a reset. I would get some preliminary numbers in for August or July, August, September, October.

But really going into the February timeframe, I was really, really laser-focused on making sure March, April, May, and June were great. So, a couple of things to work into your marketing plan. March, for us in Minnesota, was always super cold and, uh, was really, really not the best time of year to be marketing.

If the sun wasn't out, marketing to new customers was dead. So we found out through spending tens of thousands of dollars that the sun coming out and providing good weather was more useful, more beneficial to us, for us, than getting a marketing camp going to new clients.

Now the difference was, we had existing clients that were willing to, to get their windows cleaned in March. If we gave them a special offer, so we ran radio ads, we ran Valpak, we ran Google. We did all kinds of stuff in March to try to pull demand forward, and it never worked for new customers. It doesn't mean we didn't run the Google and some of the pay-per-click stuff, but we didn't do our big media buys.

We were buying probably four hundred thousand dollars a year immediately at our peak. We didn't do any of that until after the sun came out. So first thing I'm going to suggest to all of my friends out there is that in March, you have a special offer for customers who buy in March and get cleaned in March.

If they get cleaned in June, it doesn't help you because you're going to be so full of existing or new clients. It doesn't matter. So you're trying to pull demand out of those super busy months and put it in March, which for us wasn't super busy. February is your non-busy time. In March, you're rocking and rolling.

Pull it into February. So for us, we did a 10 percent off deal. And I would suggest that in 10 percent it's not the right deal. We always had better success with 100 off, 50 off. Whatever it is for you that your good offer is, well, let's get that dialed in for March. So what we did is we sent three postcards to every one of our existing customers.

And then we also sent out three emails to every one of our existing customers. And that was usually enough that we did. We didn't do the text message. We didn't do a voicemail bomb to send Jim. We kept those things in our back pocket for later, but we did do the emails and we did do the postcards.

So those go out. So first week of March, we had second week of March. We had third week of March. We had. We do not market in the fourth week for that sale because it's too late by the time they book it, it's, it's not really happening.

And I would say that if we were doing four hundred thousand in revenue in a year in Minnesota, we would book anywhere from ten percent, and pull that forward. So we almost get five to ten percent of our, our revenue pulled forward and out of those super busy months.

Mike, this is amazing stuff. I really appreciate you sharing all these insights.

That’s going to wrap up today’s episode. Make sure you check out the Huge Convention at https://www.thehugeconvention.com, and don’t forget to call our voicemail line at 804-600-HUGE and let us know your thoughts.

Thanks again for listening, and we’ll see you next week.