Welcome back to A-List Podcast. I'm Adam Armbruster. Your host with me is an incredible executive.
I promise you you know the companies he's been involved with. Let me rattle off a few.
Train air conditioning, weight watchers, Ben Franklin Plumbing, Mr. Sparky, one-hour air,
Praxis 10, service experts, physical rehab centers, Contractors Success Group, Future
University, Clockwerk Home Services, and more. Jim, you've had quite a career.
Well, I'm old. I've had a long run. With me is Jim Abrams. If you know any of these brands,
you also know the man. He's a servant leader. He's an incredibly kind person.
And I think his real skill set is people skills, but he's going to prove that out by talking to
us. Jim, let me fire off with the first question. Jim, what's a word that describes how you would
want people to see you or know you? If they never met you, what's one word that you would hope that
they would use? Well, today I would say content. So I've found great contentment in my life and
enjoy virtually every day. And Jim, I know you started out as a very wealthy man making $5,600
a year as a schoolteacher in Detroit. How did you get to where you are? I mean, what was home for
you as a child? Well, I grew up in Detroit and then later, Livonia, a suburb of Detroit. And
my journey and travels from a teacher in Detroit, and after I graduated from college,
were strange in many. I wasn't making enough money, as you just mentioned, as a schoolteacher
in Detroit. So I thought I'd make more money teaching in college and was able to get a job in
a college and start teaching there. I was teaching an evening course in accounting for continuing
ed and an accountant recruited me to Weight Watchers. Weight Watchers, the owner decided her
son would take my job. So that put me on the road and I found train and then really became an
accidental entrepreneur. When train bought GE, my position was diminished because GE was so much
larger. And that's when I decided I would go into business for myself, which started with a company
called Home Energy Savers in St. Louis in 1981. And that wasn't a real easy start, was it? No, no,
that was that was, I mean, every single mistake one could possibly make. Back in those days,
the yellow pages were the critical thing for advertising. The cutoff date was in March. The
book would be published in October. I opened my business in June, missed the cutoff date,
would not be in the yellow pages for a year and a half. So it forced me to really use
ground floor marketing, if you will, which became telemarketing and foot canvassing. So I
literally walked up and down the streets of St. Louis, knocking on people's doors, asking if I
could be their air conditioning contractor. That's got to have a very low success rate,
going door to door, selling a concept that people was even a newer concept back in the 70s and the
early 80s, right? For a central air? Well, it's surprising. So the history of foot canvassing
is broad. All the electrical companies, believe it or not, when they first came in inception,
in the early part of the 20th century, would use foot canvassers to go out and they would sell
irons, washing machines, dryers, these types of things so that electricity could be used.
For heating and air conditioning, I'm not sure anybody else had done it yet.
Perhaps others had out of desperation, but it was certainly out of desperation that I did it.
It's something about starting out with nothing that puts gas in your tank. One thing that, Jim,
I always in hearing you speak in and anybody that's listening to this, I mean, you can see a lot of
Jim's speeches and talks online, just Google them, they'll all start popping up, is grit, Jim.
You have a grit that you have an energy level and a determination that most people would
pale next to. Where's that come from? I think a sense of responsibility that my father really
drove into me hard. So in the beginning, when you mentioned I started my own business in 81,
I also was married with three children. So a huge responsibility to be able to provide for that
family. A lot of people have a challenge just providing for oneself. When you obviously get
married and take on responsibility of children, you have that responsibility. When you take on
the ownership of a business, now you have even a broadened responsibility to the people working
for you. And I always look at those, not as people, but as a family. So if I employ somebody,
I assume that their job has a tremendous effect on how their relationship with their wife, their
children, or their husband and children, or whomever will have. And it's very, very, very,
very important part of life. So when you become a business owner, I think you have to have that
strong sense of responsibility almost as if you feel to your own children to the people that have
decided to trust you and work for you. And now you're your family, you're married to Kathleen,
two beautiful daughters and three sons and nine grandchildren. Yes. And seven of them will be here
for Christmas. Unfortunately, one of the daughters is married and has two children out in California.
But we go to California once every month to see them so that we can keep in contact. So they won't
be joining us for Christmas this year, but everybody else will be here. So it's exciting day next week.
So they feel that bond, they feel that want to be involved and your employees from what you just
said had to have valued that from you as well. Did they feel like they were part of something bigger?
I hope so. I grew up in a family, my dad worked at Ford Motor Company on the line.
And we as a family, we're always very, very, very, very, very grateful for Ford. We got
employee benefits on those days, health insurance, dental insurance. Even when my dad would get laid
off every third year for a model changeover. I remember my mom always saying, thank God,
you work for Ford, at least we still have our health insurance until they call you back.
In those days, every three years, they closed the factories and retooled and came out with the new
cars. And they usually closed down for three months. And there was no unemployment wages back in
those days. So, you know, thousands of workers in Detroit would just have to find other part-time
jobs or just be at home for that period. It's interesting, Jim, you started out as a teacher.
So you started out clearly with some kind of desire to serve or help or educate.
Do you remember what first moved you in that direction way back? Let's go with the way back
machine, 10 years old, 13 years old. Those dreams start then. Do you remember that happening?
I'm not sure about that. I wish I could say that. In my case, it was more, again, I grew up in Detroit.
My family's business, my grandfather was in the moving business. So all of my uncles and cousins
moved furniture and stuff. My dad had done that as a boy. I would say I didn't have a very broad
vision of what was available in terms of careers. So when I went to college, I went to college
specifically to become a teacher. Initially, I got a history major and an English minor. And then
I worked for a gentleman by the name of Leonard Blumenreich one summer in his CPA firm. And he
said, what the heck are you going to do, Jim, if you're not a teacher with your history in English?
So I immediately went back. When I went back to school that year, it was my junior year,
and I changed and I was still going to be a teacher, but now I was going to teach business
subjects. So for my last two years, I literally inundated myself with business subjects and
picked up a major in business as well. And then went to teach because I didn't really know what
else there was. There was the factory, which I worked in. And I just wasn't broadly exposed to
different careers and opportunities. So that was the event that you said this is my ticket,
my ticket to something better. Yeah, I clearly remember thinking, wow, having my summer's free,
I'll travel, I'll do all of this. And strangely in those days, when I graduated from college,
I was pretty confident that $100 a week would do it. That would be a good wage and I would be
successful. If I could ever get to $200 a week, that would be a miracle. So I took the job because
I intended to. And then because it's summers, we're free. And boy, I paid $100 a week. So who
could ask for more? Someone once said, like, a real gift is not being able to see past the distance
of your car's headlights. Because if you saw how long the road really was, that's probably true.
So you could see past your headlights to $200 a week. And then how about what brought you into
the home services industry? You could have picked 100 different businesses when you went to St. Louis,
right? You could have done anything. Why that one? Well, I can't, when I went to St. Louis,
I'd been working for train prior to that. So I was in the heating and air conditioning business
then. But what led me to train was I'd been working at Weight Watchers and Florian Mark
had made the decision, my boss, that her son would effectively become the general manager of the
company. And I would be second to him and I would help teach him my job. I didn't see much of a
future in that. My second child had just been born. In those days, there was no internet.
So I went to the library every night as I generally did anyway. But now I went with a very specific
purpose. And that purpose was to find where the future lied. So where, if I'm going to expend myself
to make and provide for my family, where can I have a future? Because this management of
businesses for others didn't seem to be working out too well for me initially. I didn't want to
go back to teaching. So I narrowed it down to three things. Cheap food, so fast food, if you will.
There weren't many in those days. So this was back in the 70s. So I saw that as really a rising place
that if I could get involved with that, I would probably do okay. Automobile aftermarket, because
in the 70s, people were holding onto their cars for a very long time. And yet there was no
pet boys or Western hot or none of that existed at that time. But I kind of perceived that the future
would be that that would be their own energy related business. Tried to get in with Mike Gillich
from Little Caesars for the cheap food, didn't make that one, walked all around Detroit applying
at different engineering firms for the automobile aftermarket. But in those days, you needed an
engineering degree and I did not have that. So by default, I ended up in energy related and went
to work for training. What was the first step you took when you went to St. Louis and you missed
the cutoff on the yellow page book, which back then was pretty much a death sentence probably as
far as generation. There was no Google. There was no Angie's list, nothing, right? Now, you walk,
take me back to when you first walked up that first house. Did you have a little sales pitch
figured out when you rang the doorbell? Like what was in your head when you walked up and pressed
the button? But I needed to get an appointment either for my one technician to tune up their
equipment or I needed to get a lead so I could come back and sell it desperately. And unfortunately,
that didn't work out as well as I'd hoped it would. I had to go back and get better. So I did
devise a little stick on thing that you could stick on your furnace and my pitch at the door would be
my name is Jim Abrams. I came here, I opened up a heating and air conditioning company. I made
the biggest mistake of my life and I didn't get in the yellow pages. So I'm out here, Mr. Armbruster,
knocking on doors, asking people if they possibly allow my company to serve them for their heating
and air conditioning needs. Generally, the person would say no and I'd say, well, I have this little
blue sticker I can put on the side of your furnace and it tells you what to do to prevent a service
call. So you can do these five things before you ever call for service and hence you won't have to
spend any money or have your life disrupted if you do these five things. Plus, if this is on the
side of your furnace and you decide to call my company, you can see you get an automatic 10%
discount. May I come into your home and put this on your furnace? Some people let me, others didn't,
one out of 40 would send an appointment with me. So it was just, I learned early about numbers
and not to get discouraged when the first one or the second one or the third or the fourth or the
fifth told me, no, thank you. Only one person in all my career, only one ever slammed the door in
my face. That's it. I only had one bad experience at the door and I literally have knocked on thousands
of doors. So 39 doors in, 39 no's in a row. I wonder if people listening to this in sales
would have the grit to go to that 40th doorbell after 39, no thanks go away.
In Detroit, which is kind of a blunt city, is that the right word to use? It's kind of blunt.
It was a hard city and I didn't know it. So I'd opened up my business in probably the worst place
I could. The FBI arrested the number two most wanted person living directly across the street
from my business. Two people were literally murdered on the street that I worked, while I worked in
that place. And I could not let my wife and children even come to visit me at my place in
business. It was just too dangerous. We had one of our employees robbed a gunpoint. We had batteries
stolen out of our trucks at night. It was, it was a challenge. This is a bottom up success story,
very American. Jim, who, who or what helped you along the way? Can you name a mentor that really
put a road sign in your journey for you? Can you name one or something that happened?
Yeah, I think I was very fortunate in that area. My father, who I would say grew up in a very hard
area and really had a difficult life as father put him to work on the trucks, on the moving
trucks when he was 11 years old. So he blew out his legs, moving pianos as a teenager,
served and fought in World War II and different two different theaters. And yet always had this
tremendous optimism about life that, you know, the future was going to be unbelievably great.
He never told me negative war stories and he could have because of the places where he was at
and what he had to do. So I was very, very, very fortunate in that, you know, I had Frank Abrams
as my father. Following that, I got lucky. Again, I remember I was working and accounting that one
summer. I was working for a gentleman by the name of Leonard Blumenreich. And Leonard pointed out to
me, you know, history and English may not be the answer for you, Jim. So key point there.
And then I worked for Leonard directly after college. And then lastly, I got by the name of
Angel Aguero. I became an assistant director of a small college in Saginaw, Michigan, and
Angel O was the director. And he was just a phenomenal guy. And he saw on me things I didn't
see in myself. He shared with me an analogy that many of your listeners may like. He said, you
know, Jim, I teach Little League or I coach Little League. And he said, I see two types of players.
I see one kid come out who's very talented, but he's got to have his gloves just right, his hat's
got to be on right, his bat's got to be perfect, his uniform's got to be like this. And if everything's
right, he'll go to the plate and he'll probably hit the ball. He said, I like kids like you who
don't even know what a bat is and are willing to step up there with a broom just because you want to
play. He said, you'll learn the things you need to learn to get really good. He said, but you cannot
replace that enthusiasm and excitement about wanting to succeed at whatever it is that you do.
There's that grit again, right? How about this? Not everybody along your journey
is a fan. Sometimes you get critics, but I've had some executives on this podcast say things like
people see, people see things in me that I can't see. Like you just said that. And I've heard this
before from high powered successful people. Did you welcome the criticism? Did anything
sting and turn out to be right? Did anything sting and motivate you to give you fuel? Did
anybody critique you along the way? Well, I definitely had an experience because I was a
low man on the totem pole going all the way back to when I was 15. I worked on the back end of a
golf course and we had a tournament coming up. And on our golf course, we had Porter Johns
located throughout the course. I don't know if they still work this way today, but it was a
little plastic thing. Then there was another plastic thing that went down in a hole that we had to
dig and it would connect by little metal things to the house on top, if you will. So what you
had to do is disconnect, move the house, the truck would come in, lift it out, dump it, and then put
it back in the ground. Unfortunately, one of these got stuck in the ground and it was coming up for
the tournament. And my boss Fritz said in his German accent, Jimmy, you little man, you're going to
go down there. I can't do it, Fritz. I'll puke. Maybe, but it doesn't matter. There's so much,
I won't use the word he used, crap down there that it won't matter anyway. I think it was crying
and embarrassed in front of the other guys because I had two choices now. I had to go home and tell
my dad who works double shifts in a factory that I was unwilling to do this after what he did in
World War II and what he does every day to work, but I wouldn't do it. And I got fired or I would
go home and tell my dad why I smelled so badly. Those were my two choices. So I went down and
I did vomit down in there, but I did it. And on that day, I really, after I got out, I rode my bike
home. They didn't want me at work anymore because I smelled so badly. They squirted me down with a
hose, but it wasn't enough. So I rode my bike home crying, trying to figure out now what I would
tell my mom and dad about my ruined clothes because again, in those days, one didn't have a whole
bunch of clothes, right? So that was a changing life experience. I learned I could do anything if I
was willing to do that, but I could do anything and probably survive it. That is hard to top, Jim.
It's been hard to top. I'm saying it happened at 15, so I've had no further experience anywhere
near that since I was 15 years old. I could tell it was stinging because the memory seems crystal
clear as you describe it. It does. It is. It's one of those moments one never forgets.
So these are things that define us, right? As people, as humans, and you've been extremely
successful obviously in business, financially, big family, a lot to be proud of, Jim. But one
thing I've noticed is people that have listened to you, attended your trainings, become franchise
owners of which you've got a long list of franchise businesses you've started. I notice
they're really successful too. Why do you think that is? You don't always hear that. You hear
of successful franchises, but then you hear of a lot of franchises or maybe not so successful.
A lot of yours seem really well off, like they did well. Why do you think that?
Why do you think yours were different? I think it was different because it was important to me.
So one of the things I take greatest pride in is that in all of my businesses,
all, without exception, every one of my executives that worked with me are all multimillionaires.
There is no exception. So it didn't matter where they started. Some started as a receptionist
and worked up in the organization. It was that ability to be able to perform and achieve
and succeed at what they did that my vision on the world was, I'm not a guy that's after a billion
bucks. So that was never important to me. The numbers are important because I have to have a
budget that was important to me. I have to be profitable because I have responsibility. At one
time, I employed 3,500 people. Those 3,500 people morph into families that might have been as many
as 10,000 people and all those Christmases and all those birthdays and all those things that
these people are working hard to provide for their families are extremely important. So
I think with my franchisees, the franchisees came and said, hey, teach me to run a business
successfully or more successfully than yours, Jim. And that became my responsibility. That's what
they paid me for. My favorite story about customer satisfaction was on a July 4th. Kathleen and I
were walking down a beach with Paul and Celia Marchese, who you know. We had a beach house out
on C.S. DeKee and I'm walking down the beach with Paul and Celia and Kathleen. We're about halfway
down C.S. DeKee and I see behind me a guy running and a woman behind him running to catch up to us
and I know who it is. So I stopped and the guy is really sweaty and he said, Jim, can I have a hug?
I'm in my bathing suit. He's in his. It's not really something I wanted, but okay, come on,
bring it in. We introduced each other. After they left, Paul said to me, who was that guy? He was
my franchisee from Tampa and the prior year, he had paid me a million dollars in franchise fees
and he was running down the beach to introduce his wife to me. That was what was important to him
that day. And I think, I don't know how you can get better than that with a customer. Here's a guy
paying me a million bucks a year and his final words, I love you, man. And I still get text from
this guy and many of my franchisees or my affinity group, people still call me or text me or email
me and it's still sometimes asked for guidance and advice and business. I think that the people
that work for you, if you're in the service business, particularly, they are your business.
So you have to have honest, hardworking, caring people and it's difficult to be able to find those
people. So once you find them, you'd better be kind to them, generous, offer them opportunity,
clearly show them a path where they can succeed and not put on them your feelings. So many times,
I was early, I was disappointed because a person would have such great talent I could see,
but they just wouldn't use it. And then it dawned on me, success is measured in so many different
ways that it's not all about money. I see my father is perhaps the most successful man I've ever
known. And he provided for his family throughout his life, but when he passed away, he and his wife
were living in a 900 square foot condo, beautiful condo, right on a golf course in San Diego.
But very content man, very happy in life, not a lot to leave other than to his wife,
you know, what little he had, he was able to leave to her. And yet very, very, very, very,
very fulfilled with his life, very proud of what he'd done and very happy with it. At that point,
I backed off pushing those very talented people. I'd make the opportunity available, but I would
not impose my thoughts as to what they should achieve in life onto them. Let them do that.
To me, when you said the franchise or gave you a million bucks and then ran down the beach to
hug you, there's two lessons in there. One is his gratitude for what you did for him and his
family, right? But the level lesson I heard in there was, you're charging what you're worth,
Jim. I mean, you know, he could have paid somebody else a million bucks, but he paid you. So
you're not afraid to charge what you're worth. And I think there's a business lesson in that.
I found that unless people pay, especially for knowledge, they don't value it. You know, if it's
just free seminars or whatever, people come and there may be that one in the group that will
come and really be there to listen and learn. But unless people invest in that, they're not
there to listen and learn. But unless people invest something in it, at the very beginning,
they don't really value it, perhaps as much as they should. Hard lesson because, you know,
you have, when you get this knowledge and you learn the keys to success because there are
keys to success, you know, in one of the books I wrote, I have a 10 step approach. And it's always
worked, always worked. I think it always will work if you apply those 10 steps to any business.
Are any of the books available to the public? I know if you're, I know praxis.com, there's a
lot of videos of you talking. Is there anything that people could look into if they wanted to
read more of what you're talking about? I had one book published called Contractors Guide to
Success. There were 10,000 copies of those they've all been sold. I've been asked to reprint that
it's so dated that I haven't, I occasionally see them come up on Iggy Bay or Amazon. I saw
one self for $5,000 on Amazon. So that was pretty impressive for a book that used to sell for $24.95.
But the other book is just, I've written it, edited a number of times, I'm not ready to,
you know, make it a final published book yet. Terrorist Group Praxis has access to it because
I licensed him to be able to use my book for that purpose. I've sent it to friends electronically,
etc. But other than that, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it before I'm gone.
You've done a lot of teaching, a lot of sharing. Let's talk about some things. I mean, you've had
a lot of hits, but something tells me you might have had a few misses. Did you ever develop an
idea or concept or a business or business idea that didn't work out? And what did you do learning
from that experience? Yeah, I've had a few of those. One was relatively large back,
when was that, in the 80s. So I had an opportunity to become the distribution for Coleman,
who manufactured heating and air conditioning. In those days, I'm not sure they still do,
but they did then. So I had the opportunity to acquire the distribution for five states surrounding
Missouri. And I had a young man working with me, who is very ambitious, hardworking guy,
but had some challenges. He had $80,000, which in those days was a lot of money,
that he wanted to invest and become my partner in that business. So I didn't think he was the
right guy, but I had nothing to lose. He would do the job, he would put the $80,000 in, and then I
would benefit from it. That's how I saw it at the time. It didn't work out. The guy lost all of his
money. He quit. He had to resign from the business. He had a wife and two children, and he had to
go elsewhere. So I closed down the center. I felt terrible about the whole experience. First, it was
my first real loss in business. And second, this man was now in a very difficult position.
I did something then that I'm very proud of now. I thought it was just the right thing to do at that
time, but I gave him back his $80,000, and I took the loss. And if anybody questions whether
there's, you know, you get rewarded for good things, the story will come around and show that
you do because a few years later, I was looking at buying a house in what's called Wilson Farm
Estates back in St. Louis. I picked out a lot, but it had a premium of $220,000 on it, and I just
couldn't pay that premium for that lot. So we decided on a lesser lot. On the day I'm in signing
the contract, I see that it says lot 144, which was the lot that had the $220,000 premium, but it
did not have the $220,000 against it. And I thought, hmm, I made a mistake. Do I just sign this real
quick? And I said, no. So I said, George, I'm sorry, the gentleman I was signing the contract with,
you guys have made a mistake. This was a lot I wanted, but I can't afford it. So we were going
to go here. He said, I know, just sign the paper, you got 144. Well, why? And he turned around a
picture that was on his desk. And there was this man who had worked for me, who I gave back $80,000
to, with a woman and two small children. That woman was this guy's daughter. And he said,
I've never forgotten what you did. A lot of cheers. So I got back $220,000 for an $80,000
investment. And I got the lot that we dreamed of that we wanted. And it was all because of that.
So leaving good actions, good tasks, good, you know, things along the way as you're
going down this road. What's a, you know, you describe yourself as content. And I guess I would
be content after all those wins. I guess I can envision that maybe happening, not personally.
I mean, I haven't experienced that, but for you, absolutely. I mean, what's a word that describes
your career though, looking backwards, the ups and downs, the lefts and rights, the wins, the
losses, what's a word that describes the career for Jim Abrams? You know, you had that on your
question. I'm not quite sure which is the best word. There were a lot of them, I would say
accidental. I mean, I got recruited out of a classroom to go to Weight Watchers. Weight
Watchers decided to go in a different direction. Personnel wise, I landed at train simply because
I was in a library and found energy related businesses. And I ended up going into business
for myself because train was effectively going to move me to Tyler, Texas. And I was going to have
to go back on the road again every single day. And I just didn't want to do that. So I left and
opened up my own business. I always saw myself at that point in time anyway, as a still as a teacher,
but as a manager, I did envision myself as being a very good manager at many different things. So
I learned what was necessary and then I was able to manage those things. So I'd say accidental. I
ended up in one place after another, got into physical therapy because I was in a car with
Tief Jogelberg. And I was going to fund a small medical park in Venice that he was going to occupy
with some other doctors. So that's how I got into physical therapy, just talking to him in a car one
day and then ended up growing the largest physical therapy franchise in the world.
Get some of the young people that can really learn from you and your experiences. And I hope
people do dig online and listen to some of these videos. The internet's full of Jim Abrams. I mean,
it is not hard to find you and listen to some of these stories. Well beyond what we're talking
about, if a young professional walks up to you now, Jim, saying, let's just pick home services.
I want to get into home services. What's your counsel to them? What do you say to these young
pros? Let's assume they're talented and you like what you see. What do you say to them?
I'd first ask them why. Everybody that I've ever worked with, it's really two things. Why do you
want to do this? And secondly, what is it that you want out of it? And the same thing with the people
working for me. Why do you want to work here? And what do you hope to get out of this experience
working here? So I know what it is that you're looking for because I might perceive you looking
for something totally different. I had a very successful guy in one of our affinity groups
out in the Northwest. He had a relatively small business doing $900,000 a year. He only employed
five people, but he took three months off every year to go hunting. I took another month off every
year to go skiing and he had the perfect little business for himself. So me teaching him how to
build a multi-million-dollar business, it wouldn't have been successful for him. So why is it that
you want to go into home services and what do you want out of it? I see a lot of people wanting
to go into it today because it's a very, very, very popular field for home equity right now
and there's tremendous amounts of money flying out there. So a lot of people are going into it
for the money. They may find when they go into it for that alone that it's a tough, tough job
and then it's going to be difficult for them to continue if it's just about money.
So you're seeing that with some of these roll-ups, aren't you? Like where it's easy to buy
five, 10, 15, 20 HVAC companies. It's a little different story trying to run them
and run them profitably and consistently. Yeah, nobody's taking the time to preintegrate.
So you know, you or even have really an integration plan after they buy them. So they
allowed them to continue to fly under their same banner. So you don't have any national
companies today. There's nobody there really that's nationally known and I think that opportunity
is missed. So what you end up with is a local brand that maybe is well trusted and liked,
suddenly owned by somebody from another city without the best practices. Is that where you're
going by preintegration? Yeah, that and they may not be on the same software. They don't have the
same company name. They don't wear the same uniforms. They may not even sell the same equipment. So
it's very complicated to become an expert at all of these different small little businesses.
And usually what's happened is the private equity group where they acquire has come in
and they're not really looking at a long-term relationship with the customer or with the business.
So many times it leads them to do things that they shouldn't do and they can do because the
customer is not savvy on the equipment that's out there today. So they end up doing things
that they shouldn't do. They replay systems before they should because the private equity guys
are in there for the money. You know, the private equity guys are coming only for money, period.
They don't come to enhance what the customer gets. It's rarely enhancement other than for
very senior executives for the personnel of the company. It's just about money. So that would be
dangerous, I think, to get into the home services business because the tide can change very quickly.
When I took my company's public back in 1996, between 1996 and 1998, $6 billion
flowed into the home services industry in terms of capital. And then after that date,
it took another 20 years before that type of money would flow again into home services.
So these windows open and these windows close and right now the window's been pretty wide open for
air conditioning and plumbing and electrical contractors. You know, I have a formula for
success. So I would tell that person, you know, if you want success, success is equal to first
and foremost knowledge. You have to really know what it is that you do and how to do it. And there's
only two ways to get knowledge. That's through education. So reading books, attending seminars,
going to college or experience. Those are the only two ways that you gain knowledge. Next,
you have to have a plan. So what is it that this business looks like? Not next month, but 10 years
from now. So 10 years from now, what's this business going to be? And what do I have to do from here
to get to here? That's, that's, most people don't do that. Most people spend more time planning
their vacation this year than they will their life. They really don't even have a plan for their own
life, let alone their own business. Then they have to be able to execute that plan. So maybe
execute that plan. So manage it. And then they have to have, I've added that to the formula later
in my life, they have to have the willpower because there's going to come a day. You don't know when
it's going to come, but there's going to come a day where you're going to be extremely challenged to
meet the responsibilities that you ever work. And you just don't know where those are going to come
and when they're going to come. So you have to have the willpower to be able to get through
those very, very, very difficult things that will come. There's that grit again, all the way back from
this gritty streets of Detroit, Michigan, showing up again. You never really lose who you are,
dear Jim. You know what I think, Jim? I think your father was right. I think when he said the
future's bright, he was correct, but I don't think he was talking about him. I think he was talking
about you. Perhaps. My dad was a strict disciplinary and when I was a boy later, we became very good
friends in life and I spent a great deal of time with him. So that was good. But yeah, he did tell me
he actually thought it would be much harder in the future, but he thought the opportunities
would be there. The reason he thought it would be much harder is being a veteran from World War
II. He'd seen the whole world bombed out. And he thought at that point in time, the 50s, he thought
we really a great time because America had the only factories in the world. So we could produce
some factory workers who would make a ton of money or a lot more money, respectively than what
they make today. And America would have its way with the world. And we did. But bit by bit,
the world woke up and became more competitive with us. And he foresaw that. He said it's going
to be more challenging. It is going to be a global world. He was a thoughtful guy, just like you.
Jim, it's been such a thrill to have you on this podcast. We could go all day. And I hope people
that listen to this that are intrigued and go down the rabbit hole and read up on Jim Abrams.
There's so many lessons in here, decades and decades, and you won't go wrong. He says such a
success track record, it's hard to top it. And everybody I know that Jim that's worked with you
or for you says all the same things you just said. It's all real. It's all true. Jim, thanks so much
for being on the podcast. All right, Adam. Thanks for having me. Have a good day. And have a Merry
Christmas, by the way. Merry Christmas to you, Jim. Bye.