The Home Service Expert Podcast
00:00:00 · Tommy Mello, Becca Erdmann
[00:00:00] S0: One more quick question I have is like, how does having a designer in the room change the sales process for what you guys do? [00:00:06] S1: I never have the personality to sell. I want them to get what they want. I want them to be aware of their options, and it always naturally ended up adding, you know, 1 to $2,000,000 of sales a year just from me adding on change orders. So yes, it adds on money. Yes, it's a secondary sales system, but ultimately the point of it is to make sure because it's such a large investment that the customer is getting what they want at the end of the day. That's what matters to me. [00:00:28] S0: All right, guys. Welcome to The Home Service Expert. Today is going to be a special podcast because it's a dynamic duo husband and wife team. Kyle and Becca Erdmann. Erdmann, correct. And they're partners in business and in life. They're second generation owners of Erdmann Outdoor Living, a company their father started with a two man crew in 1982, a year before I was born. They've grown it to nearly 24,000,000 in revenue with 50 employees and recently expanded from Chicago into Arizona. Kyle is the president, Becca is the general manager. They've got two boys under six and they figured out how to build something in business together without destroying their marriage. That's correct. Today, they're going to share how they went from butting heads to building a machine. What it takes to transition a family business to the next generation and the one rule they never break as a couple of business. Thank you guys for coming in today.
00:00:28 · Tommy Mello, Kyle Erdmann
[00:00:28] S0: All right, guys. Welcome to The Home Service Expert. Today is going to be a special podcast because it's a dynamic duo husband and wife team. Kyle and Becca Erdmann. Erdmann, correct. And they're partners in business and in life. They're second generation owners of Erdmann Outdoor Living, a company their father started with a two man crew in 1982, a year before I was born. They've grown it to nearly 24,000,000 in revenue with 50 employees and recently expanded from Chicago into Arizona. Kyle is the president, Becca is the general manager. They've got two boys under six and they figured out how to build something in business together without destroying their marriage. That's correct. Today, they're going to share how they went from butting heads to building a machine. What it takes to transition a family business to the next generation and the one rule they never break as a couple of business. Thank you guys for coming in today. [00:01:20] S2: Thank you for having us. Honored to be here. [00:01:22] S0: Yeah, it's going to be great. So, originally? [00:01:24] S2: Chicago. Yeah. Born and raised. I was born and raised in Rolling Meadows. She's from Arlington Heights. We grew up five minutes apart from each other and didn't meet until really after college. [00:01:32] S0: Cool. Well, I'm a Michigan guy so family's up in Wisconsin but a lot of my friends are in Chicago. It's a great spot. A lot of unions. A lot of unions. It's sometimes tough. Chicago's tough. Like Illinois is tough. So is New York. So is California. So is Washington.
00:01:32 · Tommy Mello, Kyle Erdmann
[00:01:32] S0: Cool. Well, I'm a Michigan guy so family's up in Wisconsin but a lot of my friends are in Chicago. It's a great spot. A lot of unions. A lot of unions. It's sometimes tough. Chicago's tough. Like Illinois is tough. So is New York. So is California. So is Washington. [00:01:50] S2: Second worst state to run a business in. [00:01:52] S0: So Cali is the worst? [00:01:53] S2: Cali is [00:01:53] S0: the worst. Okay. So tell us the story. Know, you guys, I don't necessarily... Hopefully, you guys, there's three of us, so you guys finish each other's sentences and do that So, kind of
00:02:05 · Kyle Erdmann
[00:02:05] S2: I mean, my dad founded the business as you said. Worked in the business since I was 12. I swept floors. I was a truck driver. Eventually, I learned how to frame and that was for the first iteration that built custom homes. When I came back from college, we had started an exteriors business, which my dad and I, similar in a lot of ways, which means we butted heads a ton as business partners. But I'm a sales and marketing brain, and he was a guy who liked to put things together, but neither of us were business brains. So, we kind of just puttered around at about a $5,000,000 business until we couldn't figure out how to get past it. We tried organizations, nothing really helped, and little did I know the person I lived with was gonna be the catalyst to really push us past. So I gave Becca the best birthday present ever on her thirtieth birthday was her first day with us. But yeah, she had a background in commercial interior design and the pandemic affected her industry a lot. She was taking care of our oldest kid at home and I was super busy. And I was still doing renderings at the time for every customer and she picked up the Slack for me, did the renderings for me and realized she had a knack for it. So, in June, she joined the business as a designer. She spent a couple years as our design manager, putting together beautiful projects for customers. Then in 2023, we had the idea of splitting off this beautiful outdoor living business that we started as our passion project. That's all this was supposed to be, was a passion. We were doing siding, roofing, windows before. So, and our passion project has now spiraled. 2023, we gave her... We started giving her more responsibility or really, she took the responsibility. She isn't one to wait around for things, so she took everything. Took the bull by the horns and just said, I'm gonna I'm gonna turn this baby around. Taught herself P and Ls, taught herself budgeting, pro formas, and 2024 was the first year that we operated the business together, and my dad took a little bit of backseat. So you wanna talk about from 2024 on?
00:04:10 · Becca Erdmann
[00:04:10] S1: Well, think to back up a little bit, I came in, yes, 2020, and there were zero systems, zero processes. So I didn't have any background or really knowing what to do, but it was just very apparent. Customers needed to be communicated with, people weren't applying for permits, There weren't any pictures of job sites. There was no social media or talking to the marketing company. So I just took on all these additional tasks myself, and I created systems and processes. And then I would hire and train the person to do each job and get it off my plate. And that's kind of how we started growing and scaling and getting all those different positions going. And then, yeah, 2023 is when I read Charlie Gandel's lessons learned booked and lessons learned too. And that's really what taught me everything. And then I just called him and I was like, look, Charlie, like, don't know what I'm talking about. I didn't... I don't know what a P and L is. I don't how to read this. I have no pride. Can I call you and ask you questions? So he he would answer my calls. I set up calls with him, that's how I taught myself everything. And then from that point on, yeah, I started managing and running the business, looking at the numbers, creating KPIs, all the things. So that's the background of the beginning.
00:05:19 · Tommy Mello, Kyle Erdmann, Becca Erdmann
[00:05:19] S0: Yeah. That's interesting because I remember when I was 5,000,000, it was 2013, the middle of twenty thirteen, and it's just my average ticket was much lower than roofing, siding, or windows. And like those tickets are like massive in comparison. Like my ticket was like 800, and those tickets are like $15.20 grand. So that... But they're more complex jobs, obviously. [00:05:46] S2: Yep. That was that was where we struggled was, I mean, the dynamic between my dad was I I sold whatever I could and he just figured out how to put it together, which naturally brought together a great great relationship between production and sales when sales is just winging it and production has to pick up the pieces. [00:06:05] S1: Well, nobody is looking at the numbers and none of it was making any money. So, when I started tracking the data, and we separated the companies, it was very apparent that outdoor living, just a deck or just a pergola, we could be profitable on and we can control that. But when there's siding, roofing, windows, doors, front doors, garage doors, fascia, soffit, gutters, we were building porticos. We had to be masters of everything, yet nobody could be 100% expert on anything. And so that business, when you look at the data, it was never profitable and it was never making any money and there was no point in doing it. So we finally got rid of it. Well, we're finishing getting rid of it. [00:06:40] S0: So just outdoor living. [00:06:42] S1: Correct. Now we're growing and scaling just the outdoor living business.