Marketing, Sales, Capacity Planning, and Scaling Home Services with Ismael Valdez

The Home Service Expert Podcast

Tommy Mello

Management, Business

4.7 • 793 Ratings

🗓️ 23 February 2026

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Tommy Mello hosts a Super Bowl day episode of The Home Service Expert with Ismael Valdez, founder of VE and NextGen (Anaheim), discussing how to scale home service businesses through disciplined marketing, sales process mastery, and operational execution. Ishmael explains how he would evaluate investing in a $20M company by first assessing the energy and leadership of the C-suite/upper management, then reviewing data systems like CRM/ServiceTitan and financials, contrasting this with smaller $4 - $5M owner-driven businesses. They discuss the importance of competitiveness, infrastructure, and recruiting, and Tommy's focus on lead generation and funnel math (booking rate, cancellations, conversion rate), including capacity planning, overstaffing with outbound to fill boards, and lowering cancellations driven by response time. Ishmael emphasizes three core departments: marketing, sales, and operations/customer fulfillment, and argues many operators underperform in marketing and sales.

00:00 The Importance of Client Empowerment

06:03 Marketing as the Foundation of Success

11:53 Managing Seasonality in Business

14:59 Investment Strategies Post-Exit

22:28 Creative Financing and Collaboration

31:14 Market Entry Strategies and Performance Metrics

36:27 Marketing and Brand Recognition

39:06 Sales Techniques and Customer Engagement

49:19 The Power of Personal Branding

55:16 Sales Strategies and Growth Goals

Transcript

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0:00.0	One of the biggest mistakes that I see contractors do taught me and their technicians do and their project managers do is that they do the shopping for the client.
0:07.9	You guys cannot ever, ever do the shopping for your client. That's not what you're there for.
0:13.6	Welcome to the home service expert where each week Tommy chats with world class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales,
0:22.6	hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business.
0:27.6	Now, your host, the Home Service Millionaire, Tommy Mello.
0:32.6	Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you.
0:35.6	First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a things with you. First, I want you to implement
0:37.6	what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to
0:42.4	fully concentrate on the interview. So I ask the team to take notes for you. Just text,
0:47.9	note, N-O-T-E-S, to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299, and you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's
1:00.6	episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out.
1:06.4	I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a
1:09.9	$200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevate and win.com for slash podcast to get your copy.
1:16.9	Now let's go back into the interview. All right, guys, it's a special day. It is Super Bowl,
1:22.4	and I got my good buddy Ishmael here. Ishmael Valdez. He's an expert in business.
1:27.4	Air conditioning, heating, and plumbing. He's based out of Anaheim. Founder of Nuvei and founder of NextGen air conditioning, heating and plumbing. Ishmael is the founder of CEO of, he was in NextGen. And now he's 100% in on Nuvei. Yes, sir. Been in the trades for almost 20 years i just about a that she
1:47.1	sounds old man honestly 20 years bro so i started 17 yeah so i'm going on 21 years now i feel like
1:53.8	dude that's crazy the overnight success everybody talks about how long you've been on it tom 20
1:58.8	um yeah no i was painting garage doors for i guess
2:03.6	2005 yeah so 21 years yeah um so if you were to go in a company let's call it a 20 million
2:11.4	dollar company what's the first thing you do if you were let's just say call it you're an investor
2:16.7	you're buying 20%.
	...

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