1st Media Consulting Group, Inc. Podcast
Welcome to the Business Chronicles, where we dive deep into the stories behind the businesses that shape our communities. We bring you conversations with inspiring entrepreneurs who share their journeys, challenges, and the unique value they bring to their customers.
In this podcast, we explore the passion and vision behind successful businesses, uncovering the secrets to their success and learning about the innovative products and services they offer. Whether you're a fellow entrepreneur looking for insights or simply curious about the businesses in your area, this podcast is your go-to source for inspiration and practical advice.
So, sit back, relax, and join us as we explore the dynamic world of business, one story at a time."
1st Media Consulting Group, Inc. Podcast
From Engineer to Entrepreneur: Andrew's Journey with Mr Handyman of West Orlando
Ever wondered what it really takes to transform from a field service engineer to a thriving business owner? Our guest, Andrew, the owner of Mr Handyman of West Orlando, shares his compelling journey and the invaluable lessons he's learned along the way. From mastering the intricacies of small repairs to tackling major remodels, Andrew's story is a testament to the power of reliability and stellar customer service. He also provides an eye-opening look at the unique challenges posed by Florida's licensing requirements and how answering the phone can be a game-changer in this industry.
Andrew doesn't hold back as he candidly recounts the pitfalls of overconfidence and high operating expenses he faced as a new franchise owner. He reveals how scaling down and becoming more efficient not only saved his business but also set it on a path to success. Aspiring entrepreneurs will find a treasure trove of practical advice here, including the importance of finding good mentors and the benefits of franchising for quick growth and robust support. Tune in for an enlightening discussion that wraps up with Andrew sharing his contact details for those eager to learn more about Mr Handyman.
Welcome to the First Media Consulting Podcast, the Business Chronicles, where we dive deep into the stories of successful business owners. Here's your host, Didi and Nicholas. Thanks for joining today. Let's talk.
Speaker 2:Welcome everyone to our podcast. I am just so excited to bring to you Andrew, who's the owner of Mr Handyman of West Orlando. Good morning, andrew. How are you doing this morning? Good morning, I'm doing well.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me on the podcast. Super excited to be here.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely, I love the shirt, everything. The hat, the shirt. It's very nice, so let's dive into it. Man, tell us a little about, tell our listeners a little bit about your business.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely so. We're, mr about. Tell our listeners a little bit about your business. Yeah, absolutely so. We're Mr Handyman, serving Windmere West and South Orlando. You know we're a general contractor, although Mr Handyman sounds like we do smaller projects. We do do small projects, but we also do large projects as well. You know, interior, exterior, residential, commercial, bathroom remodels, kitchen remodels, full interior remodels, flooring, pretty much anything under the roof, we will do. That's within our licensing jurisdictions.
Speaker 3:Interestingly enough, florida is one of the only states where a general contractor can't pull electrical permits or plumbing permits. You have to be a master electrician or a master plumber to pull those permits. Which permits? You have to be a master electrician or master plumber to pull those permits, which makes sense in the grand scheme of things. But many other states, a gc can pull any kind of permit they want. So it's a really big misconception. In florida we get a lot of folks coming in saying, hey, can you pull our electrical permit? No, I can't play electrical permit, we're not a licensed electrician, but we do. You know, from hanging grab bars to full interior remodels. You know we don't get, we don't do too much in concrete or pool work or stuff like that. Again, irrigation. That's a separate license in Florida, so we don't do any kind of irrigation systems and most of my guys don't want to be outside anyway, so they're relatively happy with that.
Speaker 2:A little hot, right yeah. They're relatively happy with that. A little hot, right yeah. So what do you find the most out of all the services that you provide? What is the one that kind of stands out the most? Oh?
Speaker 3:man, it's, it's. It's tough because you know we get every day is different. Every, every call is different. Every customer is different. You know, I think one of my favorite calls is we'll get a customer that calls and they're really excited for a project and they had found a contractor that maybe wasn't licensed or insured and they took their money and ran. We all have a story, Someone we know that put a deposit down for a project and they ran and I just kind of walk them through the process of how they can try to get their money back and then they explain our process and how we're different. You know we typically aren't taking deposits up front unless it's a special order or item that we can't return, you know, and then we'll collect, you know, our portion at the end of each day.
Speaker 3:No-transcript, the answer to the question. I'm sorry I got on tangent there. Um, you know it's different. Um, each call is different. You know we don't. We're not too specialized into one. You know, category of home remodeling, we try to do as much as we can. We do stay away from, you know, high-end flooring and stuff like that, just because we're not set up to do, you know, delay that amount of floor or work with that kind of material.
Speaker 2:Well, that makes a lot of sense and I appreciate you kind of, like you know, sharing that with us, us what inspired you to start this business of yours yeah.
Speaker 3:so, interestingly enough, uh, before I I went down this endeavor, or started this endeavor, I was a field service engineer for stevens energy and I oversaw, uh, maintenance operations that nuclear power plants around the country. Um, and I have some rental properties and I, when I was, you know, traveling I just traveled seven months out of the year. If something would go wrong, it was impossible to be able to find someone to do small tasks. Or hey, I'm looking to do a bathroom remodel to update this property, and you know, yeah, I'll be there tomorrow, I'll be there the next day. And then you know, you're waiting around and it's like where's this person at? They never show up and there's never no call this person at, they never show up and there's never no call, there's never no text.
Speaker 3:So I honestly thought there was this huge demand in Orlando and I kind of jumped into this and didn't do a ton of market research and one of the questions we'll get to later. I'll explain that a little bit more because I lost a lot of capital being very, very overconfident. But it was just. I thought there was a big need. I had colleagues at Siemens that would say the same things. If you just answer your phone. You can make a million dollars in the service industry. In Orlando that resonated with me.
Speaker 3:I looked at a few different franchises plumbing, hvac, a competitor of Mr Handyman Handyman Services. I looked at their model and ultimately settled on Mr Handyman and it was, you know, kind of. They gave me access to talk to other owners. So we got about 17 owners, I believe, in Florida Mr Handyman owners, and I talked to a bunch of those guys and you know they were very honest with me and that really led, pushed me towards the decision. Because Ace Handyman Services, they wouldn't give me any of their owner information. Now, granted, I could go to their brick and mortar and knock on the door. Hey, you know, looking by, but you know it doesn't mean I'm going to get to talk to the owner.
Speaker 3:So that's, that's pretty much how it started with me.
Speaker 2:I like that, and you know, every business owner has secrets to their success. What's yours?
Speaker 3:So mine is and I've been living with this probably since undergrad is. You know, you're the average of the five people you surround yourself with and I believe the gentleman who quoted that was Jim Rahn. But I try to surround myself with with good people. I try to surround myself with, you know, really good mentors. A lot of my friends are a little bit older than me that have been business owners in different industries. A lot of my friends are a little bit older than me that have been business owners in different industries. But I try to learn as much as I can from from them and then, you know, apply that to my life. But I would say that I try to surround myself with people that are going to bring me up.
Speaker 2:I think I think you hit on a good point and that's very, very important. You know your network is is the key to your success, absolutely Keeping keeping it all real and keeping it all positive, and I think that's awesome. So are there any trends that are standing out right now in your industry that you see?
Speaker 3:It's tough. So we talk about this. You know me and a few other Mr Handyman owners, and then also with you know our home office. You know me and a few other Mr Handyman owners, and then also with our home office, our franchise business coaches. You know it's an election year. You know the stock market's done things this year that are very abnormal. You know we hear the propaganda, we see the propaganda.
Speaker 3:I think when interest rates started going up, one of the trends where we saw a lot more people doing more remodeling versus I'm sick and tired of this house, I'm just going to buy a new one With the cost it's so expensive.
Speaker 3:We're seeing a lot of people do that bathroom that they've wanted to do for 10 years, but we're going to go buy another house instead of doing the bathroom. As of recently, we're know our first time customers are usually um, you know they'll spend a small amount of money with us for a small project and then they'll get our experience and and, you know, understand how we work and really like the quality of work that we do, and we'll get a call back saying, hey, you know, I really you guys were great. I'd really like you to, you know, do my bathroom remodel. I'd like you know I have this loft and my, my daughter's moving back from college and you know I really need to turn this loft into a full blown bedroom. You know, can you help me remove the carpet and put, you know, laminate flooring or tile down and put a door in and stuff like that? So I would say the biggest trend with all of our owners is probably, you know, that first impression turns into much bigger revenue driving jobs than you know that first initial job.
Speaker 2:And there are challenges in every business, right? Yeah, and you know it's like I speak to a lot of business owners. What is a challenge that you face in your business?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So the first one definitely was I was very overconfident in the demand that I thought was in Orlando. So when I, when I bought the franchise, I came out I had three vans running around. You know I had this big office space and you know I had my operating expenses were extremely high for a business that hadn't generated any revenue yet. So that was my first big one. And then, you know, after that first year, you know I sold off a van and we got real lean and you know that we've worked that, we've worked that out since then.
Speaker 3:And the other one is just people, like any business, finding good people, finding people that you know really buy into to you, who you are Right as the owner. They're going to look up to me, they're going to need me there to be present. I think some folks go into franchising thinking that it's going to run itself and they're not present and then they fail. We've seen some franchise owners that have failed relatively quickly coming into this business. But people, just, you know, making sure you're driving that ship, make sure you're giving, given a vision to work towards, whatever that may be, everyone needs to work, everyone needs to make money. But there's a difference between someone shows up for a paycheck and someone shows up to help you build your business.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Good point, and you know there are listeners here that are aspiring to be entrepreneurs and own a new business. Any advice that you would kind of bring to their attention?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I got. I got a couple of things there. I mean, the first one is find good mentors. You know, get out and go talk to people face to face. You know, there there's so much on social media now where you know these people portray themselves as someone they're not and I think we get a lot of younger kids that attach themselves to that.
Speaker 1:No, I don't want to.
Speaker 3:I don't want to go to work at McDonald's because I'm going to be an influencer and so like well maybe, but you know, you're 25.
Speaker 3:You still live with your parents. This time they're really trying to figure this out. So, and the other thing would be don't reinvent the wheel. You know there's franchising is great. I remember I'd never thought about franchising until I read one of Robert Kiyosaki's books and it talked about how easy it can be to scale, and so I thought about that for a long time.
Speaker 3:If I didn't buy a franchise and I took the capital that I had to, you know, start my own, start my own service company, build the website and get all that stuff done, I was thinking it'd take me four to five years to really turn a profit, versus franchising to give you a business model. You have support from the home office because they don't want to see you fail, obviously, because they're taking royalties off of our top line. Right, and you could just scale a lot faster. So that would be the biggest thing. Find good mentors and don't reinvent the wheel, and there's a lot of different businesses out there that we don't even know about. That. A lot of folks don't even know about that. Help make this great country the country that it is.
Speaker 2:Awesome, I love that man. Very inspiring. So, as we we wrap up here, can you provide our listeners a way to get a hold of you, your website, your phone number?
Speaker 3:yeah, so, um, you just go to www excuse me, wwwmrhandymancom, um and then, once you get to that landing page, I'll ask you to put your zip code in and I'll point you in the right direction, uh, to whatever franchise owner area you're in. If you want to call me directly, my office number is 689-240-3500.
Speaker 2:Well, andrew, thank you so much for taking time to share your story. Very exciting to hear about that and hopefully we can have you back in the near future as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. I much, much appreciate that. Thank you so much. You're very welcome.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning in to First Media Consulting Podcast. If you enjoyed the podcast, subscribe today To nominate a business you would like to recommend to be on our show. Go to firstmediaconsultingcom or call. Thank you for listening.