In this episode, Sid introduces Jared Skinner, a successful Colorado entrepreneur with multiple home service businesses (window cleaning, flooring, holiday lighting). Jared reveals simple yet powerful marketing tactics to stay productive during slow months—specifically by building relationships with realtors, home builders, and complementary service providers. Key takeaways include:
Don’t miss the free action guide from The Huge Convention, offering detailed steps to implement Jared’s strategy.
Grab the action guide: https://thehugeinsider.com/
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TRANSCRIPT
Sid Graef (Host):
Hey, my friend, Sid Graef here, and welcome back to the Huge Insider Podcast. If you caught our first show last week, you already know this is a brand-new show for home service professionals who are stuck trying to break the million-dollar revenue mark. If that's you, you're in the right place. And if you've already gotten to over a million dollars in your business, you're going to get even more out of the show.
So here's the deal: this isn't your typical podcast. It's not an interview show. It's not an expert-driven show. Instead, we've gathered together seven- and eight-figure business owners—people running companies that do anywhere from 2 million a year to 40 million a year—and we’re bringing you their best insights. It’s all focused on one single topic each month. These are real operators, the guys and gals that are quietly building empires behind the scenes. They are not on social media looking for attention. They’re in the trenches, making things happen every day.
And since it's February, this month we're diving into building your marketing strategy—the one you can implement right now to set yourself up for massive success this year. So last week, we heard from Michael Dahlke on how to expand your capacity for the spring season. Today, you're going to hear from Jared Skinner. Jared owns several successful service businesses in Colorado, including a window cleaning company, a flooring company, and a holiday lighting business. He’s breaking down a low-cost—maybe even free—strategy to help build relationships in the winter that will help you dominate the rest of the year. These are things that you can do today to start building for a big win and a big success for the rest of the year. So let’s get into it. Meet Jared Skinner.
Jared Skinner (Guest):
Hey, everyone. Hope everyone is doing well and getting all ready to rock and roll for this upcoming busy season. My name is Jared Skinner, and I have a couple of different home service businesses. One of them is a window cleaning company, and to prepare for the upcoming busy season, we try to use February and utilize it as much as possible.
What we've done that has seemed to give us traction and help us to build the future months out is use this downtime to really start creating networks and relationships with others. Let me give you a couple of examples of what we do, which can make an impact.
We created gift cards for our window cleaning company—say a $35 gift card. We'd go around to all the different realtors in our area and give them a pack of 50 of these gift cards. We'd basically introduce ourselves and say, “Hey, I'm Jared, and we're with View Window Cleaning, and what we'd like to do is work with you so you can help your clients. If a client buys a home or sells a home, as a gift from you to them, you can give one of our gift cards.” They can use this gift card to get their windows cleaned or get their house washed—whatever you want to do. It’s a great gesture for the realtor to give to their client, and it costs them nothing. It’s just the relationship we're trying to build.
We've given out thousands of these gift cards to realtors for their clients. Now, is every realtor going to do it and get on board? Not all of them. But we have a number of realtors who really do it, and we get quite a bit of work from that. The great thing is, all it costs us is the cost of the gift cards and our time to go out and network.
That's one idea to keep you and your team busy. When our guys weren't working, if we needed something for them to do, we'd have them dress up and go out to network with the realtors, just to help us get that momentum going a bit quicker. We'd pay them to hand out the cards and do the networking. We had a couple of sharp techs who fit that mold, and they enjoyed doing it.
Another thing we did is we really started reaching out to builders. We have relationships with the biggest builder in one of our cities, and we clean all the homes for them. It’s turned into a really great recurring revenue stream because every time a home is completed, we do the cleaning. Then, right before they sell it—right before closing—they do another clean just to touch everything up. We almost get a double hit on this, which is absolutely amazing.
One thing I’d recommend, and that has worked for us, is to create a list of all the realtors in your area that you can reach out to. You can make gift cards for whatever value you want—$50, $100—and start to use those networks to push your product. This is a really good way to market.
Make a list of all the home builders in your area or other services in the home service space and build networks. We've built networks with other contractors who do things in the home. We refer them; they refer us. You can blast each other’s databases. Maybe they can send an offer for your service to their database, and you can reciprocate.
This is a great time to go out and build these critical relationships. The nice thing is, once you get them going, your customer acquisition costs are extremely low. There's a lot of profit potential that comes through developing these networks. Most people don't do it because it takes time and effort, but once you get them established, the recurring jobs that come through make it absolutely worth it.
From our experience, this has been a great time of year—February is our time to go out and build these relationships and networks, and to establish those baseline recurring jobs that can come in all throughout the year. Hope that helps and hope that'll help you gather more jobs and income this year, and get prepared for the busy season!
Sid Graef (Host):
So what did you learn from Jared, and more importantly, what are you going to do with it? His strategy is simple, but don't let that fool you—it's powerful. You know why? Because at the foundation of every successful business is one core truth: people do business with people they know, like, and trust. If you take time to connect with others, bring them something of value, or give them a tool they can pass along to their customers that makes them look good, you’re laying the groundwork for real long-term relationships.
I'll give you a quick example. A couple of years ago, we did this exact strategy. We took coffee and donuts to every property manager in our town. Some of them were already clients, some weren't. At one stop—already a client—I mentioned that we not only clean windows, but also gutters. The owner's eyes lit up. She dashed into another room and came back with a list of properties, saying, “I didn't know you cleaned gutters. I want you to clean all of these spring and fall.” That single visit turned into an extra $25,000 in revenue, just for saying hi and letting them know what we do.
That's the real lesson: networking works, but only if people know what you offer.
Here's the next thing: take action. Everything we covered today is in the show notes, but the single most important thing is to download the action guide. We put together a five-page guide to help you execute Jared's strategy this week. You can grab it by going to www.thehugeinsider.com—that link is in the show notes. Make sure you don't miss it.
There are more ways to level up your business. Our mission is to help our blue-collar brothers and sisters build a business that gives them financial and time freedom. This podcast is one way we do that. Another way is our free newsletter, The Huge Insider, which is sent weekly, packed with actionable insights. When you download our action guide, you'll get access to it.
The next way we help people win and prosper is The Huge Convention. It’s like the Super Bowl of conventions for home service businesses—the ultimate event for networking, education, and the biggest trade show in the industry. This year, we're back in Nashville, August 20th–22nd. Tickets are really cheap right now, so grab yours at thehugeconvention.com before prices go up. Real breakthroughs happen at this event.
Finally, we’d like to feature you. If you've had a big win in your business—or, even better, a painful lesson or failure that led to success—call and leave us a message at 804-600-HUGE (that’s 804-600-4843). We might feature your story on an upcoming episode, using your recorded message so our audience can hear it directly from you.
And that is it for this week, my friend. Don't just listen to the show—take action. They say knowledge is power, but that’s not quite true; it’s the proper application of knowledge that is powerful. Use what you learned today, use it to win and prosper, and have a bigger 2025. I'm Sid Graef, this is the Huge Insider Podcast, and I will see you next time.
