#2 - John Montillo - Montillo Electric

Welcome to another Episode of The Digital Toolbox Podcast! 

Each episode features a guest in the home services industry, sharing their personal journey and the challenges they've overcome to get to where they are today. This is a very conversational podcast and we do not stick to a pre-written script. We keep it real!

Today our gest is John Montillo, the owner of Montillo Electric in Lyndhurst, New Jersey.

On this episode me and John discuss various topic including going all in on your dreams, joining a Labor Union or Open Shop, advice on how to break into the electrical industry, and much more!


John Montillo IG: https://www.instagram.com/johnmontillo/

Montillo Electric Website: https://www.montilloelectricllc.com/



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Let us show you how we leverage Website Design, SEO, and Google Ads to make it rain with qualified leads! Get in touch with us today! 

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Transcript

Enmanuel Tejada (00:00.014)
Haha, yep, we get the countdown awesome. So we're now recording Alright, let's do it Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the digital toolbox podcast. I am your host Emmanuel Tahata I am the owner of what pixel work digital marketing agency for home service providers and today have a special guest somebody that's local to us here in Linhurst We have John Montello. So John go ahead and introduce yourself, man

John Montillo (00:24.751)
My name is John Montillo. I'm born and bred here in Lenhurst, New Jersey. I own Montillo Electric LLC. We're a small electrical contractor. We started up in this company. We started up in, I started up in 2008 and we've grown over the last few years exponentially.

I'd say in the last few years, we've been fortunate. It's been a struggle. We started the business. Let me back up a little bit. So in order to be an electrical contractor, you have to have an electrical license in order to practice electrical work in New Jersey. So in 2000, 2001, my brother and I started

to we worked with local union number three in New York City. And we were union electricians. And my father was also a union electrician. I'll even go back a little further, but I'm fourth generation electrician. Yeah, so it runs pretty deep in our family. So back in 2000, 2001, my brother actually came up with the bright idea of

Enmanuel Tejada (01:37.746)
Fourth generation! Holy shit.

John Montillo (01:51.599)
owning our own businesses and going out on our own and making all this money and blah, blah, blah. And I never really wanted a part of it. I was happy going to work every day, working my 40 hours, working some overtime. And we made good money. It was steady work and it was a pretty good living. It was good to my family all the years. My father was in the business for 40 plus years before he retired. So, you know, we...

The union was very good to our family over the years, so why not just continue to trend? That wasn't good enough for my brother. He always wanted a little bit more. And I fell right into that trap too. And in 2001, you know, the...

Enmanuel Tejada (02:36.338)
You

John Montillo (02:42.159)
The union work in the city, we were forced to take furloughs, which is mandatory time off, in order to kind of circulate the membership through jobs and whatnot.

like a fair work program. So, you know, we would be forced to take some time off of work. And, you know, I had young kids at the time and it was, it definitely hurt financially. So, you know, you're, you're, you're forced to kind of do what you have to do to make ends meet. And my father had his electrical license, never really used it over the years. Never really had a reason to use it over the years. So.

You know, my brother and I kind of took it under ourselves to expand a little bit and, and, you know, word of mouth, friends and family, that kind of stuff, and run around town with, with our tools and, and do electrical work. And over the years, it, it, it just started to kind of take a lot of its life of its own.

Enmanuel Tejada (03:48.466)
Man, and you know what John, what would have happened if you would have gotten caught? Because of course, I'm sure your father has a different name than you, right? What would have happened if somebody would have stopped you at a job site? What would have happened with his license, not yours?

John Montillo (03:59.727)
So in order to, we were basically employees of my father's company. So my father's name is actually John Montillo as well. So he's a senior, I'm a junior. But yeah, so in order to, you have to do the electrical work under a company that is licensed, bonded and insured. So, which we always were.

Enmanuel Tejada (04:11.026)
Hahaha

Enmanuel Tejada (04:26.128)
Mm.

John Montillo (04:27.247)
but I did not have my own license, so it was not my company. So we, my brother and I were basically employees of my father's company. We were just going out, getting the work and actually doing the work itself. But, you know, my dad would always have to come by the job, make sure it was right before we called for inspections and whatnot. And it became profitable over the years and it just kind of took on a life of its own. And...

between 2001 and 2008, you know, we continued working in the city. I continued working in the city, but in 2007, 2008, you know, I was up to 24 week furloughs that I had to take. And, you know, being out for 24 weeks out of the year, I'm going to tell you that that's tough. It's very, very tough to do. So I...

Enmanuel Tejada (05:26.258)
I can imagine that.

John Montillo (05:29.295)
took an opportunity to go back to school and go take some classes and go for my own electrical license to kind of go out on my own and make an actual go of it. And in 2008, I actually did get my license and I did wind up leaving Local 3 in the city and started Montillo Electric LLC. Almost to be,

kicked right on my backside, right off the bat. It happened very quick, took that jump, going from a steady union job paycheck, weekly paycheck to I'm hoping I get paid this week to pay our bills. And things didn't really work out so well the first time around 2008, 2009.

basically lost it all, got hit on a couple jobs that I did not get paid for and took it on the chin and was almost forced to go back to the union job. And thankfully I always had that as a safety net, but I really didn't want to, I didn't want to go back. I didn't want to have to kind of, you know, tuck tail and go back to where I came from. I still wanted to keep it going.

Enmanuel Tejada (06:48.656)
Yeah.

John Montillo (06:57.327)
And thankfully, my wife kind of put up with it and, you know, she kind of she she was very supportive of it. And my whole family was it because it's not a decision that you can make on your own. If you don't have the support of your family, of your immediate family, it's not going to work because you have to put it all in. You have to put all the chips in because this is not something you can have at all.

Enmanuel Tejada (07:22.202)
Yep.

John Montillo (07:26.287)
You know, it's definitely something that it's all or nothing with owning and operating your own business. There's no half measures with something like this. There's too many things that could go wrong. You know, it's high risk, but it's high reward too. You know, I wouldn't do it if we didn't make money. You know, I wouldn't do it after all this time in 2024 if it wasn't profitable, but...

Enmanuel Tejada (07:37.554)
Yeah.

John Montillo (07:53.059)
I'm going to tell you, it's been challenging. Some years have been better than others. We happen to be riding on a good wave right now, but it could change tomorrow. It really could. The industry changes, the work changes, COVID happened. I mean, who foresaw that? And then talking about COVID, there were a lot of people that weren't able to go to work for that time, that were told to stay home.

And we never lost the day. Actually, we actually got busier than we've ever been during COVID because...

Enmanuel Tejada (08:23.826)
Oh man.

Enmanuel Tejada (08:31.61)
Really? And you know what John, so what was that? Why was that? Like when COVID happened, how were electrical companies impacted like yours? Like what type of jobs were you guys doing that you guys were so busy?

John Montillo (08:41.775)
So we were fortunate to do, I don't know if it was fortunate, but we do a lot of work for area hospitals. And so to kind of be working in that setting during that time period, I mean, just the whole...

The whole scenario was, I mean, you couldn't have written a better movie script. And to be working in that setting throughout that time, I mean, it was literally like working on a movie set every day, but it was real life. And lines out the door, the masks, the suits, the whole nine, and we were there working because they...

they were classified as obviously essential workers as were the trades. They still needed work done and we were still there to provide a service. I mean, thankfully, none of my guys or none of my employees or myself, we got sick from it, but there was always that concern. But again, you try and take the necessary precautions. But like I said, there's always some kind of challenge that...

Enmanuel Tejada (09:44.594)
Right.

John Montillo (09:57.827)
you know, stands in your way. But that's why we kind of, that's why I think we wound up, you know, we work throughout, you know, we were essential. Things still break even if the world was shut down. You know, lights still go out, things still need to get fixed. And anytime that you know something that not everybody else does, I think, I think you'll always be in demand. You know, it's, it's supply and demand. If you have something that

Enmanuel Tejada (10:19.634)
It's definitely profitable.

John Montillo (10:26.831)
Not everybody does and you know something that not everybody does, you can turn it into a business and that's kind of what we've done over the years.

Enmanuel Tejada (10:37.522)
Yeah, man, I couldn't agree more, John. And as we all know, skills pay the motherfucking bills. So you gotta be skilled. You gotta be able to do something, right?

John Montillo (10:42.127)
Yeah, right.

You have to, you know, and it's, it's, it's funny because as much schooling and as much classwork and as much codebook there is, you know, there, there's really no better teaching tool than, than on the job training and, you running into certain problems and, and actually just dealing with it head on, you know, face up, upfront, right then, right there. No two problems.

That's not true. Some things are, some problems that we run across and we're called out to fix are alike, but you know, there's a lot of things new that you see every day when you think you've seen it all. You shake your head sometimes and you know, sometimes the fault is because of faulty work or you know, shoddy work or just, you know, mechanical breakdown and you know,

Enmanuel Tejada (11:32.946)
Ha ha.

John Montillo (11:46.127)
Troubleshooting is one of our specialties. That's kind of what had put us on the map in the first place. And it's just something that I've built up over the years to where we are today.

Enmanuel Tejada (12:02.002)
Man, that is awesome right there. And you know what John, let's actually hit on that because yes, now we know that you're an electrician. We know that you have a crazy initial beginning. You took a lot of risks to start your business. So what type of electrical work do you focus on? Right? Do you focus mostly on residential commercial? Do you guys bid for projects?

John Montillo (12:20.047)
So that's actually an interesting question because it's changed over the years. You know, when I first started out, I would say I probably did 90 % residential and 10 % commercial. And that percentage shifted drastically to where today I would say it's probably 10 % residential and 90 % commercial.

Um, you know, the commercial, the, the, the residential market for, for my particular trade, it's, it's very tough to, to, to stay competitive with. Um, a lot of our residential clients are, you know, our clients from when we first started, you know, we, we, we'd never say no to work, but we don't really go looking for it either. Um, you know,

Dealing with a homeowner is sometimes challenging because they're looking at the bottom line number and they don't necessarily look into if a company is licensed or insured or bonded properly. And I'm gonna tell you that those costs have gone.

They've gotten astronomical, almost unaffordable over the years. And, you know, it's got to reflect in your service fees and the rates that you charge. And it's hard to justify sometimes, you know. I mean, I have a hard time justifying it to myself sometimes, but when you break it down and you're breaking down the hourly rate of what the labor's costing you and your overhead and to try and make a couple of dollars on that, it's gotten...

It's gotten a lot harder. And actually I'll even say post COVID, you know, costs have gone up for materials, you know, in my world alone, you know, costs for materials have gone up, you know, two, three fold, just inside of three, four or five years. And I mean, I can't see a rationale for it, but you know, companies are still paying for that merchandise and...

John Montillo (14:35.183)
People are still, it's still flying off the shelves and we're still hearing supply chain problems and hard to get basic materials. It's kind of gotten back to some type of normalcy, but the prices are still abnormal.

Enmanuel Tejada (14:41.65)
Man, yeah.

Enmanuel Tejada (14:52.85)
And I can imagine, yeah, I mean, you're running a business here. The goal of a business is to make profit. And so you kind of have to put off those expenses onto, you know, increasing the pricing of the job, right? And I can definitely see what you mean by having some difficulty trying to explain that to a customer. And they're like, but why the fuck should I pay this? It's not my fault that Webster West canal was closed.

John Montillo (15:02.767)
Customer, you have to.

John Montillo (15:13.327)
It's hard sometimes, you know. I just got a letter about two and a half weeks ago from my insurance company that our insurances are going to go... My insurance companies are petitioning the state of New Jersey for a 24 .7 % increase across the board. Across the board, 24 .7 % in my insurance costs.

How do I absorb that? How does anybody absorb that? It's gotten to the point where it's like, when is enough enough? I mean, how much can you actually charge to come by to somebody's house to change a light bulb? I mean, it's very, very difficult to navigate, which is why we've kind of gotten away from that type of work. And again, not that we turn it down if it comes to me, but...

It's not something I aggressively go for anymore.

Enmanuel Tejada (16:13.298)
Gotcha. Gotcha. And so what are you going after now? You mentioned that you're, you started off 10 % residential and you're 90 % commercial now. Sorry. You started off 90 % residential, 10 % commercial, but now you're, it's kind of flipped, right? So 90 % of your work is commercial, 10 % residential. So how do you get those guys?

John Montillo (16:29.391)
So, yeah, so right after, I'm gonna say right after COVID, you know, listen, owning your own business is great, but I don't care what kind of business you have, you're only as good as your employees. You know, you're only as good as your employees, or you're only as good as what you can do yourself. And, you know, if you really want an opportunity to grow or really expand your business,

You need employees and you need good employees. And in my industry, without being dramatic about it, it could be life or death. You could very easily make a mistake as an electrician and there could be fires and you don't wanna have that problem. And so you need good, conscientious,

skilled employees and I'm going to tell you, they're very hard to come by. You know, again, I was fortunate, but I was only able to get two of those employees. So, I mean, my business was maxed out with two employees and myself and I hit a ceiling and that ceiling wasn't cutting it anymore. And, you know, to fill the three, four, five, six slot,

it just wasn't happening for myself. So, you know, I turned around and decided to go a different route. I decided to take my company and become a signatory of a Bergen County local union electrical union, Local 164. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, what that did for me and my business is,

Enmanuel Tejada (18:18.226)
Oh wow.

John Montillo (18:26.127)
It opened our options and the biggest challenge that I have as an electrical contractor is labor. It's skilled labor and signing with Local 164 has allowed me to go after bigger, better jobs, different type of work. It's tough to stay competitive with the residential work.

being a union contractor, but there's avenues that they have in place to try and stay somewhat competitive there. But the work that we kind of go after now is more prevailing wage work, public work, municipalities, board of education, that kind of stuff, things that we have to put in bids for and they're advertised.

publicly. So that's the kind of work we go after now. But again, it's unfortunate to where, you know, if we landed a big job tomorrow, you know, I make a call to the union hall and, you know, tell them how many guys I need or how much labor I need. And, you know, they're there within a few days. So that skilled labor and having that option is definitely a benefit.

Enmanuel Tejada (19:26.61)
Yeah.

Enmanuel Tejada (19:45.618)
Wow, man.

John Montillo (19:54.031)
is the biggest benefit that I see to have signed with Local 164.

Enmanuel Tejada (20:00.71)
Wow, and so you know what John, so how does that work then? For example, like let's say that you need 10 guys and you guys are gonna be working on City Hall and Lindhurst, right? Changing out all the outlets, right, for example. And you need guys for that. At the snap of a finger next week you can have some guys there. How does that work for pricing? Like are they subcontractors under you? How does that work?

John Montillo (20:21.775)
No, so the way it winds up working, it's really the same thing that I did when I worked, when I was a local three electrician in New York City. I worked, my home base was the Union Hall. And when a company would wind up calling the Union Hall for X amount of electricians, the Union Hall would then dispatch out the manpower and then...

manpower to go out. They come do the job and you know if we have more work we'll transfer them to another job. If we don't you know the industry is just you lay them off and they go back to the hall and they wait for the next job. It's yeah it's actually a pretty good it's a pretty good gig you know it's you try and keep the guys as long as you can. You always want to have work to kind of keep feeding the beast but you know you do have downtime and

you know, if you don't have the work to keep feeding that monster, you know, it gets, it's the, the, the payroll gets expensive. You're paying the benefits, you're paying the, the fringe benefits on, on that labor. So, I mean, if you don't have the work to accommodate that, that type of payroll, you know, you, you lay them off and it's no hard feelings. It's just part of the business. Yeah. It's all, it's all, it's just business. It's all business. And it's, it's fortunate to.

Enmanuel Tejada (21:40.946)
It's just business.

John Montillo (21:48.559)
be able to call the local, be able to call the union. And you know you're getting skilled electricians. They've already gone through the apprenticeship program and they've already gone to their schooling. And basically the same way that I learned how to be an electrician myself. You go through an apprenticeship program and you do your time and you work with different contractors, you work with different companies.

and you become seasoned over time. And you make yourself very marketable.

Enmanuel Tejada (22:20.082)
Yeah. And it's less for us than you, right? Right. Yeah. It's a win -win, right? Because you get to become an electrician the proper way where you receive proper training. And then at the end of the day, when they're more mature, they have some years under their belt, people get more competent employees, right? Competent electricians.

John Montillo (22:39.087)
Yeah, well, listen, with that competence and with that skill, you know, there's a cost associated with it. You know, it's not, you're not getting the average Joe off the street and, you know, he's putting a pair of pliers in their pocket and calling themselves an electrician. You know, there's a lot of time, money and energy that goes into, you know, teaching someone how to be an electrician. Our industry has changed so much over the years.

from safety, from materials and the tools that are out there. It's constantly evolving. And to be a part of an industry that its core membership, its membership is constantly teaching and they're learning and they're educating. And that's the product they're putting out on the street. Again, there's a cost associated with that. So...

that it's the old adage, you get what you pay for. I mean, it's really that simple. It really is that simple, you get what you pay for.

Enmanuel Tejada (23:45.362)
You can't what to pay for it.

Enmanuel Tejada (23:51.378)
I like that. I like that. And then, you know what, John, let's just say we're right from that. And I know that as we talked earlier before the podcast, it's like, things are kind of changing up in the trade, especially as of the last five years, right? Not a lot of youngsters, not a lot of young people are coming into the trades, right? They kind of look at it like, oh man, blue collar jobs. It's not for me. It's dirty. I have to be outside.

John Montillo (24:12.815)
You know, I'm going to tell you, when I was in high school and when I was coming out of, when I was graduating high school, you know, there was a very, very strong emphasis on, you know, you got to go to college, got to go to college, got to go to college. If you want to be successful, you want to make money, you got to go to college. You know, I bought into that. And I was mentioning to you earlier that, you know, college, the only thing college did for me was, you know, cost my parents a

Enmanuel Tejada (24:28.754)
Okay.

John Montillo (24:42.319)
hell of a lot of money and cost me a lot of time. Made a lot of great friends, had a lot of good memories, but, you know, after a couple of years, it was done for me. I never finished. I never finished college. So there is opportunity there if you want to make a go of it without a college education. I'm not saying I did it the right way. I'm not saying I did it the wrong way, but...

You do have options and I will tell you, like I was saying earlier, if you know something and you educate yourself with something that not everybody knows and you have that knowledge that not everybody does and you're able to do things that not everybody can, you become marketable. You become a value. And that's the way I've always liked to play it.

You know, I've always liked the benefit for me, the biggest benefit for me to owning my own business was my time, you know.

John Montillo (25:52.111)
I enjoy going to my kids sporting events. I enjoy volunteer coaching. I enjoy.

doing everything under the sun except work. And if I wanna play hooky on a Wednesday, I don't have to ask anybody for the time off, but you bet your ass I'm gonna be working on a Sunday to make up for it or late Tuesday night or whatever. But that freedom to kind of, I'm not gonna say all the time, but to kind of have a more flexible schedule than someone that has a...

a job that they're showing up for. That benefit to me was always outweighed anything else or any other benefit to owning your own business. That was, yeah.

Enmanuel Tejada (26:45.906)
Same with me, John, actually. Yeah, same with me. Like that freedom to be able to, and like, I know, for example, if I wanted to right now, I can go and go to sleep or go lay down. But of course I'm not going to do that because I'm hungry and I want to continue to scale my business. But having the freedom like to like, if something happens and my family needs me to cover at the family store, I can do that. If my mother needs me to do something, I can do that, right? That freedom.

It's priceless, man, because I remember being at my job and I'm like, man, I want to continue scaling this business and I don't have enough time to do it. And now having that time, it's like, holy shit, like, like I can actually run this thing now. I can actually scale this business. So that freedom is everything.

John Montillo (27:22.863)
Well, listen, like you said, it's going to go as good or not as good as you make it go. You're going to get what you put into this thing. And like I was saying earlier, there's no half measures on in your own business. I mean, if you want to be successful, I mean, again, I may not have the same definition of success as you may or the next person may, but I mean,

In my world, if you want to be successful and you can't do this half ass, you know, you got to you got to take risks. And again, thankfully, I had my family behind me to, you know, they were the safety net because it is a risk. I don't care any way you slice it. It is a risk. You. There's always that chance, you know, that things may not go well, but.

clearly, you know, if my business folded tomorrow and I had to lay out all my employees off tomorrow, you know, I could make a living, put a decent one at that, put making a living, putting in ceiling fans on high hats for people, you know, because not everybody does it. You know, if that's what I wanted to do, I don't want to work with my tools anymore, but you know, it's there if I needed it to, if I needed it to be. But yeah.

Enmanuel Tejada (28:44.05)
Haha.

Enmanuel Tejada (28:48.946)
That's the beauty of it, man, yeah.

John Montillo (28:49.647)
So it's having that ability to do something that not everybody does and not everybody knows how to do.

That in itself, I think, is a big factor for me.

Enmanuel Tejada (29:08.434)
Boom, I love that, I love that. And you know what, John, so let's say that, of course you value your freedom a lot, right? And let's say that you were an electrician, right? You're just coming out of school. You may not be in a union yet. You may not even, maybe you've done a couple of apprenticeships before, but what advice would you give to yourself? Like you're a young electrician. You wanna start your own business. How would you go about that if you were to start over?

John Montillo (29:33.839)
Listen, I'm to tell you, it's like anything, it's hard to break into. But I would tell anybody that's coming into, becoming a union anything or becoming a union blue collar worker, it's extremely competitive. It's extremely competitive. There's very few spots available and there's a lot of people that are

that are obviously searching for something like that. I mean, that's kind of the...

That is the best you could possibly hope for coming into the trades, is to go through a union apprenticeship, in my opinion. Somebody else may think differently, but I think I've been around it long enough to know that, that would be what I would recommend to anybody. That would be the first and foremost recommendation that I would give anybody to go through a union apprenticeship.

But again, not everybody has that opportunity and not everybody will have that chance. And the second thing that I would tell anybody is go with a small company, call around. There's always people that need help. And I would say work with a smaller contractor, work with a contractor, electrical contractor that has a couple employees. Chances are...

a company with only a handful of employees, chances are the owner of that company is going to be working with their tools. And that's the person that I would want to work with. That's the person that I would want to learn from. I would work with a bunch of companies like that over the years and learn from those types of electricians, licensed electricians. And again, I'm not saying every licensed electrician is

John Montillo (31:42.575)
wonderful and does everything the right way. I'd like to think so, but you know, I think a lot of our business is common sense. It really is. You know, but the actual installations and stuff, I mean, that would be my recommendation. Try and get in with a smaller company because like I said, the chances are that the smaller companies has the license holder working with their tools and

working on the jobs themselves and that's who I would want to apprentice under. And over a period of time, even if you're not a union electrician or go through a union apprenticeship, you have that availability. I believe it's now, if you have seven years in the industry with seven years of pay stubs, you're able to take the test to...

Enmanuel Tejada (32:17.968)
Mm -hmm.

John Montillo (32:41.615)
for your own electrical license. So I mean, the union's not the end all be all. It's definitely a route to go, but it's not the end all be all. There are other opportunities out there. It may take a little longer, may be a little harder. It may be the best thing you ever did because I mean, again, you wind up landing with a small open shop contractor, a one man show.

this is all he does or she does, sky's the limit for you. I mean, you're learning from a great teacher there. And who better to learn from them one -on -one? You don't get that anywhere. I mean, that's how I would want to learn. Again, I was very fortunate over the years to always work with good journeymen and good electricians. And I saw a lot of things over the years. And...

Enmanuel Tejada (33:24.566)
Thank you.

John Montillo (33:38.191)
you know, again, I still see new stuff today, but, you know, I was very fortunate over the years to work with very good electricians. So again, that would be my recommendation. You know, go one of those two routes.

Enmanuel Tejada (33:48.978)
Man, that's awesome. That's awesome, yeah. And it sounds like you really value those, because you guys, I would imagine you came up with a lot of electricians that were good and they had good values and you were able to study under them and really hone in on your skill. And that really does a lot, right? Because instead of being an apprentice, I would imagine for a larger company that's doing a bunch of things, you may be restricted to what you can do, right? But if you like, if you go with a smaller contractor and you start doing an apprenticeship under them, like you mentioned, they're going to expose you to a lot.

And it's them with the tools in their hands. It's not like you're gonna have to go and learn from somebody that's not competent, right? You're learning from the man himself.

John Montillo (34:26.799)
No, if your end game is looking to go into business for yourself, again, going with a smaller contractor, I mean, you could actually even start to learn the business end of it. I mean, nobody sat here next to me to figure out how to operate and own a business. I mean, I figured it out as I went along. I mean, I have no business background. I didn't go to school for business, the short stint in college that I did.

Enmanuel Tejada (34:40.208)
No.

John Montillo (34:56.515)
I don't have many regrets in life, but if I could do anything over, I would probably say I would like to have a bit of a business background. I'm fortunate enough nowadays to be able to, when I have questions about business or how to operate and questions in my industry, I'm fortunate that I have a few mentors that I can call and

You know, people that are very successful in my field and in others that have very successful businesses. And I bounce things off them all the time, almost like I'm looking for approval sometimes. But, you know, am I doing this right? And there's no right or wrong answer. It's really kind of what works for you. I guarantee you there's a lot of things that I could be doing better with my business. But, you know, right now it works for me.

Enmanuel Tejada (35:38.992)
Hehe.

Enmanuel Tejada (35:54.834)
Gotcha, gotcha. And then you know what, let's go right from that. And I'll ask you one last question here before we get into the digital marketing section of this. It's let's say that, okay, you had a great apprenticeship, you want to go into business, you have your own license now, and you want to go after commercial jobs, right? You don't want to just do only residential. You also want those higher paying jobs on the commercial end. How would you differentiate yourself, your business?

from other businesses to win bids, right? Like what's some advice you would give her on that?

John Montillo (36:28.087)
Wow. Um.

John Montillo (36:32.943)
In order to do the type of work that we primarily do now, there's a lot of certifications. I mean, and I hate to say it, it's a lot of reading, it's a lot of learning, it's a lot of learning curve. I mean, this isn't something that we just did. I keep saying we, like, you know, there's somebody else here. There is nobody else. Not the sound, it is I.

You know, and it's hard when it's just I, because again, you know, you don't have anybody sitting on your shoulder, you know, telling you to do this and do that. And you literally have to kind of figure things out. And it's really by networking and talking to other peoples that have maybe run this gauntlet before. But in order to do the work that we primarily do now, there's a lot of state certifications that you need to have.

Um

John Montillo (37:38.767)
It's not easy. You know, it's really not. It's...

John Montillo (37:46.799)
You have to turn around and wind up, you have to familiarize yourself with public bidding laws. You have to familiarize yourself with public bidding requirements, certifications that you do need, types of insurances that you need, special bonding that you need. And again, if you don't have that someone to rely on or ask these questions to,

It takes some time, you know, and it took me years. It honestly, it took me years to figure it out. And I'm not saying I haven't figured out now. You know, it's working. I know it could always be better, but it literally took me years to accomplish the things that I've been able to accomplish to be able to even bid the projects that we do now.

Enmanuel Tejada (38:43.824)
Man.

John Montillo (38:43.983)
It's a lot of reading. It's a lot of reading. It's a lot of reading online. Online is a great resource. We didn't have that. It was very new when I was first coming up in the business, but now there's really nothing you can't find on the internet. It's very accessible. Yeah, sure.

Enmanuel Tejada (39:03.73)
So it's a great advantage. Yeah. And then, so it sounds dumb. It sounds like you almost like, like you have mentors of your own, right? Even though you're an expert in your field, you've been doing this for over 20 years. You, you sometimes rely on just for confirmation from other mentors in the space, right? So like, like what's an example of that is that people inside of your union or who do you rely on?

John Montillo (39:17.839)
Oh, that's, yeah.

John Montillo (39:23.887)
So, you know, other business owners, maybe a little bit bigger than myself, got a great example, just what we were just talking about, you know, certification requirements in order to bid certain projects, how to obtain certain bonds and how to obtain certain insurances, how to obtain certain certifications from the state of New Jersey.

how to be classified by the state of New Jersey. It's just applications after applications. It's challenging. And I think that paperwork push is kind of what separates a lot of contractors from staying in the residential field and making the jump into the type of work I primarily do now.

Because it's a deterrent, I believe it's actually a deterrent because it is so, I'm not kidding. I believe it to be a bit of a deterrent because it's extremely challenging. It really is. I'm not going to lie. It's very challenging to be able to even be competitive, to even be able to throw your name in the hat and to submit some type of bid for a project.

The hoops you have to jump through in the state of New Jersey, they can be a challenge sometimes.

Enmanuel Tejada (40:58.77)
That's funny. It's funny because when I was in school, they had a couple of teachers that would always mention that the SATs and tests like these were, they weren't tests to see if you can get in. It's a test to keep people out, right? Specific people out. So you mentioned that the paperwork is kind of like a deterrent to hold people. Okay, you stay over there. You're like, this is something to, yeah, stay in your lane. Stay over there. Keep the paper. You're scared of me. Don't worry.

John Montillo (41:12.815)
Yeah.

John Montillo (41:21.711)
Stay in your lane. Yep. Yep. Listen, I've repeated that phrase to myself countless times over the years to where every time I thought I knocked down a wall and then there was another one standing there in front of me and it gets disheartening after a while. It really does. It's not easy. But if you're persistent with it and you just keep on staying on top of it,

Now mind you, you know, you kind of have to do all this while you're trying to have a successful business operation in the meantime. You know, so all this while, if you don't have the administrative help, you know, which, which I don't, you know, and that's, that's something that, that

Enmanuel Tejada (42:13.33)
What do you mean by that John? Like an assistant to take phone calls or an office manager?

John Montillo (42:16.207)
Well, yeah, that's exactly right. You know, any type of office administrative help, you know, all my labor is fieldwork. You know, all my employees are electricians. You know, I have no administrative help. You're looking at it. You know, I answer the phones.

Enmanuel Tejada (42:33.266)
So what did that cut your short john a little bit kind of like because now you have to handle all the paperwork that somebody else can do and give you up to do better things other things.

John Montillo (42:41.615)
Kirk, that's exactly right. So, you know, if I'm focused on obtaining certain certifications in order to even bid projects, I'm not going out to get the next one. Or, you know, I'm not out collecting invoicing for a project, or I'm not paying the benefits for the, to the union hall or, you know, whatever, something's got to give, you know, something's going to give and it's...

Enmanuel Tejada (43:08.882)
Right, there's only 24 hours a day that we all have, right?

John Montillo (43:11.503)
that's correct. So, you know, like anything, you're gonna get what you pay for and you're gonna get what you put into it. And if you do wanna grow, you definitely have to learn to let go a little bit. And that's kind of where I'm at right now, I'm trying to learn how to do that, it's not easy. Because when you take something from the infancy stages like I have with this, it's hard to let go, you know, you become...

You try not to micromanage, but it's hard sometimes. It really is. That's the bit for me. It's a very type A personality type deal, and it's tough sometimes to put that responsibility onto somebody else.

Enmanuel Tejada (43:57.746)
Right, and just rely on them to get it done. So let me ask you this then John, let me ask you this follow up question on that. You own Montello Electric, right? Montello Electric, how big do you envision Montello Electric getting by the time that like your legacy is over?

John Montillo (44:17.711)
So I don't know if I want the legacy to end. You know, I'd love for my son to take the business over one day. I mean, recently had a grandson who's about six months old now. So, you know, who knows? We might be looking at six, seven, eight generations down the road, but let's worry about tomorrow. I'm just worried about getting through next payroll week right now. So.

Enmanuel Tejada (44:29.328)
Oh wow. Congrats.

Enmanuel Tejada (44:36.498)
Well listen, you guys made it forward.

Enmanuel Tejada (44:45.714)
Man, that's awesome, man. You gotta start preparing the gifts for the little guy. Six mums, you gotta get him a nice little baby toolbox, plastic, a little screwdriver.

John Montillo (44:46.767)
We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

John Montillo (44:54.191)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's that that we'll see. We'll see what happens.

Enmanuel Tejada (45:02.226)
Awesome awesome awesome, and this is fun and John you know what it is that time let's go ahead and do some free digital marketing advice that I'm going to provide for you and for the audience as well to benefit from so I Know that you mentioned that you're mostly focused on you know commercial contracts Bidding to go out and get jobs, but this is part of the podcast while I just provide some advice

Any questions that you may have I know that you know technology can be confusing sometimes and I'm here to answer that I'll give you some free tips So I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen here and then we'll start covering some of those topics here So I'm gonna go here I'm going to share my screen

Enmanuel Tejada (45:53.284)
Boom, let me know if you can see my screen on your end. Perfect, awesome. Let's go ahead and refresh. So first thing I did, John, I typed in Montillo Electric on Google, right? And right away, I'm glad to see that you guys have your Google business profile set up because that is very, very important. People miss that all the time. The reason why it's so important is because the first thing that anybody does when they need an electrician or a plumber or a roofer is they go on Google and they type in electrician near me, roofer near me, right?

In your case, and the way that Google was able to present that for free, completely for free, is through having a Google Business Profile, which you guys have. That's awesome. Now, John, by the way, when was the last time that you went in there and you updated a couple things?

John Montillo (46:36.943)
It's a couple years now. I mean, I actually do think I pay Google. It's not much, but I do have some type of... You know, I had an online presence. And I will tell you though, I mean, just to your point.

Enmanuel Tejada (46:44.56)
Mm -hmm.

John Montillo (46:56.047)
Prior to the business shift with my business, as soon as I started to focus on the online aspect of things, social media, reviews, that kind of stuff, there was definitely an increase in business, 100%. Mostly residential.

Enmanuel Tejada (47:08.506)
Mm -hmm.

John Montillo (47:19.715)
some commercial jobs, but mostly residential. But I mean, if you have somebody that's going into the business and wants to primarily focus on residential, I mean, highly, highly recommend having an online presence and an active online presence.

Enmanuel Tejada (47:19.792)
Mm.

Enmanuel Tejada (47:38.194)
Yeah, yeah, it's really the make, because if we don't do it, right, that's the thing. It's to the point to where like, it's okay if you don't do it and nobody else is doing it, but if other people are doing it and then you're not doing it, they're gonna win 100 % of the time, right? Because if somebody's coming in here and to Google and typing in, Ella's Christian, you're me. And then like that specific company isn't showing up, but the competitor is, the competitor is gonna win every single fucking time. So you're absolutely right on that, yeah.

And actually John the reason why I asked the question as to when was the last time you edited? This is because Google's constantly adding updates to it right so you see here where you have Electrician in Lindhurst, New Jersey That's good, but over the time over time Google's added more options to it right so you can add a secondary category a third category fourth and fifth and there may be services that you offer but

John Montillo (48:18.927)
Yes.

Enmanuel Tejada (48:30.802)
Since you don't have them listed there, Google might think, oh, this electrician doesn't do this type of service, right? So if somebody's looking at a specific thing and you don't have it there, then they won't show you. They'll show somebody else, right? So that's just a pro tip. And what I'll do at the end of this podcast, I'll send you an email with like a PDF document that I created on how to update it. And the audience can also reach out to me and they'll get a copy of that as well. So yeah, John, but it looks good though. And you guys have 69 reviews. I'm sure you understand the importance of that, right? Because people...

John Montillo (48:59.951)
I'm going to tell you that I do and I can attest to that. That alone has grown our business. It really has a lot of potential. If I continued to stay focused on asking clients to leave reviews and whatnot, it would even be better. But like I said, I'm...

Enmanuel Tejada (49:00.274)
more days.

Enmanuel Tejada (49:20.4)
Mm -hmm.

John Montillo (49:27.991)
forced right now to do all the admin stuff on my own and it's it's some things fall through the cracks and that's one of them.

Enmanuel Tejada (49:35.986)
bright. Yeah. And like you said, yeah, if you're going to test, it's very, very super duper critical. And by the way, John, um, let me, let me, I guess I can just like kind of stop and share it for a quick second here, but how does the, how does that look for you then? Like when, when you bring in a job and somebody gets dispatched, how does that look for you as a pen and paper or do you have some sort of software that you use? How do you write your estimates? How do you do all of that right now?

John Montillo (50:01.359)
So we operate off QuickBooks, QuickBooks Online. I actually have two versions of QuickBooks. I still use a desktop version for our invoices and our estimates. It's very antiquated. But again, it's what I learned. It's what I taught myself to use in the beginning. It's what I continually used. Then for my payroll, I also use QuickBooks, but I use the online version for that.

Enmanuel Tejada (50:06.17)
Mm -hmm.

Enmanuel Tejada (50:11.12)
Yep.

Enmanuel Tejada (50:29.298)
So how do you keep the two synced up?

John Montillo (50:33.583)
Right up in my head. It's a challenge. It's definitely a challenge because it's a lot of cross -referencing. I personally think that the desktop versions is easier to work with just because I'm used to the platform itself.

Enmanuel Tejada (50:34.756)
Uh oh, we gotta change that joke.

Enmanuel Tejada (50:53.906)
I like the desktop version too and the only reason that I know about it is because like I said, I used to work in IT and that was a very big aspect of it with every company, right? Everybody has somebody doing finances and QuickBooks is a great tool for that, right? And I actually hear this a lot of times from home service providers, right? That they use QuickBooks and they write out their estimates in there and they ever send them out and they use it for payroll. And one thing that I would recommend is probably, and this is the advice for you, John, and anybody that's listening to us right now, it's,

Investing in a CRM, right? I'm sure you've heard of it. Client Relationship Management software. There's a bunch of cool tools, right? And now I don't sell, I don't own a CRM. I'm not selling you anything, but the concept behind it is awesome because you get to do everything inside of an application on your phone, right? So for example, you would have an application where you can manage all of your finance inside of there. You can manage all of your, you can create invoices on the fly. You can create estimates on the fly. Every employee.

would have the application on their phone as well, and they're able to track their time, they're able to enter any notes onto specific projects. So it just makes all of that, all those different tools that you would need, it consolidates it into one.

John Montillo (52:05.487)
That would be a very big benefit to any contractor who is a one -man operation.

Enmanuel Tejada (52:10.564)
Yup.

Yeah, yeah, and that's why I always tend to push me because a lot of times as a digital marketing owner, company owner, I notice a lot of my clients when they start working with me, they're like, oh, we're pen and paper still, and we're manually writing things out. And I'm like, you know, we have to kind of change that if we're going to scale. Now, if you wanted to say the same, I completely understand that, you know, keep doing, keep doing that because you're going to keep getting what you're.

John Montillo (52:36.591)
You can't grow unless you go the route that you're talking. I mean, again, and again, I can completely attest to it. You just, you can't do it. I mean, it's impossible, you know, with the requirements, the filings, it's challenging.

Enmanuel Tejada (52:48.978)
Yeah, like can you imagine balancing?

Enmanuel Tejada (52:54.546)
Yeah, like imagine trying to balance a checkbook or balance a P &L with pen and paper. Like that's manual calculations that will take a long time, you know. So that's pretty much the goal to speed things up. And I'm just going to share screen one last time here, John. I wanted to review the website real quick. I'm going to go here, share entire screen. Boom, boom. Here we go. Let me know if you can see my screen.

John Montillo (52:57.231)
But yeah.

Enmanuel Tejada (53:19.762)
Perfect, awesome, boom. So I did some research on it. I think you guys built this with Squarespace. I don't know if you did it yourself.

John Montillo (53:26.383)
I had it done, but yeah, Squarespace sounds right.

Enmanuel Tejada (53:30.162)
Gotcha. Got it. Got it. Yep. And yeah, man, I like the fact that you guys have the color, right? It looks very good. And I actually took a look at one of your vans and I know you guys have the logo on there. So that's awesome. I like the way that you guys have the color coordination here. I like the fact that you added your picture there, right? A lot of the times, a lot of contractors tend to want to hide themselves, right? And like my good friend, Bobby says, he says, you know, they're going to see you when you go to...

the house anyway, so why try to hide it, right? Why, why hide? So I couldn't agree more. And I love the fact that you guys are using reviews here. Um, one thing I would even suggest is to maybe even use some sort of plugin or some sort of tool to maybe import the reviews from Google so that it looks more realistic. So it looks more realistic and people know that it's okay. This is coming from Google or this is coming from Facebook. And also it'll automatically update with new reviews as people continue to leave them. So,

John Montillo (54:00.911)
Yeah.

Enmanuel Tejada (54:28.068)
people get to feel that, oh wow, I was on here last week and this guy just got two more reviews. So it's like, oh, that's cool. This guy's actually good. Yeah. So that could, that could, that could potentially be of value there. Um, I read your about section. I thought it was awesome. And that's actually the reason why I wanted to reach out for the podcast, right? Because I read it today. I'm like, yo, this guy must have a good story and you do, and now we're here.

John Montillo (54:51.407)
I don't know about good, it's definitely a story.

Enmanuel Tejada (54:54.61)
And coming into the residential services Here it's actually all of the service pages right because you do all of these specific things right one thing that I would recommend John and I don't know you probably don't have time for it, but Just for the audience and anybody else that's listening to us right now One thing that we definitely want to do is have as many pages as we can on our website So that Google can rank us for that specific service, right? Because like let's say that somebody was to type in safety inspections in Lindhurst

Although you have it mentioned here, if you had a page dedicated for it and you have more content around it answering questions around that service, Google will definitely rank you up more, right? So like, let's say that there was a homeowner and they know nothing about...

John Montillo (55:30.159)
Gotcha.

Enmanuel Tejada (55:39.378)
how to get an inspection, the first thing they'll do is go on Google and type it in, right? So that's what we're trying to leverage with that there. I would definitely recommend a separate page for each service that you offer. And then I love the fact that you have the recent work, very, very important. People oftentimes neglect having some sort of gallery on there, right? Showing off the work, showing off the guys, making it look real, right? So you guys, you're showing real people, you're showing real skill.

And I commend you on doing that there. And I know this is probably a bit overly technical, but anybody that's listening to this will probably understand that behind each image there is an alt tag, which is what Google uses to actually understand what the picture is, right? Like Google is not somebody sitting there behind a desk and at every single website that goes up because every day over, I think it's over a million. Let's look it up actually. How many websites are created every single day? How many websites?

created every day.

Yeah, so around 252 ,000 new websites are created every single day. And there's, you know, Google doesn't have 250 ,000 employees looking at every single website. So what they do is they take a look at the metadata, which is like the information behind the image to understand what the image is about. And if somebody's, for example, was searching up, you know, outlet installs and you have.

John Montillo (56:46.927)
Wow.

Enmanuel Tejada (57:09.924)
a page about talking about outlets and then the images on that page have the alt tag as outlets, you'll get better results from that, right? You'll get more leads because Google is going to rank you up. And the whole point of doing that, John, is just because people no longer do this. They don't scroll down. Oh, let me look through a note. When people need an electrician, the first three results are what they're probably going to click on, right? Because they're not going to go scroll down forever. And that's the beauty of it. So.

John Montillo (57:30.511)
Right.

Enmanuel Tejada (57:39.506)
Um, yeah, John, that was a couple of recommendations there for you and for the audience. And like I said, I'll write it up in the email for you. Um, if you ever get a chance, yeah, you can definitely implement those things to get instant results. Right. And, uh, I know it spoke a lot there, so I kind of want to turn it back to you and, uh, these, I guess the next five minutes we can use it as like a Q and a, any questions that you ever had about marketing or digital marketing or Google ads or websites, go ahead and ask me, John, I think it's going to be helpful for you and for the audience too.

John Montillo (57:45.871)
Thank you.

John Montillo (58:07.989)
You know, it's marketing for us now. It's not something that we primarily focus on because of the types of work that we have to do. But I always found it to be a challenge to update. You know, I had a service, I paid somebody to monitor our online traffic and our, you know, our advertisement, our social media.

Enmanuel Tejada (58:20.506)
Yeah.

John Montillo (58:35.567)
And when that person stopped doing it, it's been stagnant since. So getting back into that and finding the passwords and I guess recreating the account, I'm not looking forward to that. But I know it's something that has to be done if we want to continue to grow on the online platform.

Enmanuel Tejada (58:49.618)
Hahaha.

Enmanuel Tejada (59:02.29)
Yeah, yeah. And you know what, let's talk about that actually, because that's one thing, me coming from an IT background, it's the passwords, right? People oftentimes have issues remembering them, or to avoid that, they make the same password for every single account that they use, which is terrible because if one account gets compromised and all of the other ones can get compromised. One thing I'd even recommend to anybody listening is to use some sort of password storage system, right?

There's a couple of free tools. There's one called LastPass. That's the one that I use. There's a couple other ones called One Password. And every time that you go and you sign in on a website, it'll ask you, do you want to remember this password? And then it'll save it. It'll encrypt it so it's secure. And then that way, you don't really have to worry about remembering passwords. But you're absolutely right. That's probably going to suck getting all the passwords for everything. But just reset the password, and then you'll get through it. Yeah.

John Montillo (59:52.751)
I know it's gonna.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I know it's it's one of those necessary evils. I know it's coming down the pike, but you know, it's it's again, it's the thing that's kind of at the bottom of the list right now.

Enmanuel Tejada (01:00:07.596)
Exactly exactly. Yeah, and what what other questions John have we ever had because I know that you You guys aren't focusing on marketing because you guys are getting so many jobs that you were bidding for but Let's say that you were let me let me even ask you a question. Let's say you were a startup Electrician you have your license you start your business. How would you market yourself nowadays? Like what?

John Montillo (01:00:30.223)
Oh, it would definitely be online. You know, it definitely be online. Everybody wants one touch access. I would definitely, I would definitely focus on an online presence, you know, you know, come up with a website and I would pay the money, you know, I would pay the money to, you know, give yourself a bit of a kick to be recognized sooner before your

you're able to establish some Google reviews and Yelp reviews and become a part of that algorithm. I would definitely pay the few extra bucks that it costs to do that. And social media, it's really not my particular thing, but I think if you're starting up something now, I would highly recommend a social media presence, whether it's a...

Enmanuel Tejada (01:01:06.866)
Right.

John Montillo (01:01:29.455)
maybe a how -to video or a day in the life of, or, hey, this happened to us here. You know, it's something that I always wanted to do, but again, I never really took the next step with it.

Enmanuel Tejada (01:01:48.082)
Yeah, and I couldn't agree more. Yeah, those are some great ways. And what about some of the older ways that electricians from marketing themselves, maybe the Yellow Pages back in the day? What are some, will we try those as well or will you rule them out completely?

John Montillo (01:01:57.327)
Yeah, we were, you know, again, I don't know if I mentioned it to you before, but, you know, I've never spent a dollar on advertising. And if it was, it was very, very minimal. So, I mean, in 24, 25 years of this, very, very minimal money on advertising. You know, all of our business over the years has come over through word of mouth.

you know, in business cards. That's really it. I don't think there's any better marketing tool out there than word of mouth. But I mean, again, now, I mean, especially in today's time, you have to have the online presence. You have to be able to send your links out there. You have to be able to send your pages out there. Again, if somebody was coming into the business now, highly, highly recommend that. And

get people to leave reviews, come up with a quick link and send it out to people to take three seconds and write a review, even if it meant to offer them a discount on the next call or some type of an incentive, incentivize them to leave you some type of review. That would wind up helping out a lot.

Enmanuel Tejada (01:03:19.314)
Yeah, and I love the fact that you mentioned that because that's actually a great way to get some reviews, right? You know, drop us a review and get X percent off of the next service call or the next, you just to get more, right? Because that'll those reviews will turn into money because people will trust you more, which means they're going to go with the wall.

John Montillo (01:03:35.407)
I think if you, you know, what I found over the years is if you make it easier for them and you send them a link, even if it's something simple as a text message, they'll do it. You know, they'll do it. If they have to go on your website and, you know, look you up, they're not gonna press multiple buttons. They'll press one, you know, but they're not gonna press multiple buttons. That's what I found over the years.

Enmanuel Tejada (01:03:45.202)
Yep.

Enmanuel Tejada (01:03:53.394)
Thank you.

Enmanuel Tejada (01:04:00.438)
Agreed 1000 % yeah exactly and it's even better if it's automated right let's say you finish a job The invoice comes in and it's paid and then it gets sent automatically right? Set it and forget it you come back month later. You're like, holy shit. I have 100 reviews. How did that happen?

John Montillo (01:04:07.343)
Oh, definitely, definitely, definitely.

John Montillo (01:04:16.047)
Yep, that would definitely be a strong recommendation for that.

Enmanuel Tejada (01:04:22.802)
Yeah, yeah. 1000%. Um, and yeah, John, that was it. That was the podcast right there. And you know what? Do you have any closing thoughts in your mind? Maybe some advice for a young electrician who's not feeling motivated. Maybe it's an electrician contractor that's not doing too well in business. What are some of the closing thoughts, some advice you would give?

John Montillo (01:04:42.863)
Yeah, don't give up. You know, don't give up. Scale it down. Strip it down as much as you possibly can. I mean, it's something that's going to take time and effort. It's not going to come easy, but it's definitely worth it for me in the long run. I mean, the trades have always been very good to me and my family. Business has always been good.

That's not true. Business always hasn't been good, but the end game has been worth it for myself.

If I could give a little, if somebody is struggling now, just strip it down to the bare bones and start it again. You know, start it again, just yourself, maybe a helper, and then work it back up from from ground up. I mean, like anything you build in a house, you have to have a strong foundation. If you don't have that foundation, it's you're not going to set it up to sustain anything meaningful.

So make sure that the foundation is strong first. So strip it down. If it's not working out right now, strip it down, reevaluate, and then go at it again.

Enmanuel Tejada (01:06:03.218)
Yeah, I love that. Strip it down, rebuild it, but just don't give up. I love that right there. That's the message for today. Strip it down and build it back up if it's not up already. Boom. Everyone, that was the digital toolbox. Thank you so much to our guest today, John Montillo here in Lyndhurst. If you're a resident here in New Jersey and you need an electrician you can trust, call John. He's the man. Hope everybody enjoyed this episode. If anybody has any questions when it comes to digital marketing.

or anything like that, go ahead and get in contact with me. Other than that, stay tuned, keep going, don't give up, and we'll see you on the next episode of the Digital Toolbox.

John Montillo (01:06:39.887)
Thanks, Manny.

Enmanuel Tejada (01:06:43.346)
Boom, I just stopped the record.