Episode Details

Justin Campbell got fired from a management job at TGI Fridays, moved back home into the room down the hall from his grandmother, and started taking $50-a-day temp shifts. The job site was far enough that he slept in his car outside it rather than risk the morning drive. One evening a guy from the commercial floor care company next door knocked on his window and asked what he was doing out there. He offered him steady evening hours. That knock is the whole origin story.

Four years later Justin was the youngest director of operations that company had. Then an outside sales team came in, the tenured managers started getting cut, and he got fired again. He started Midland Floor Care off temp-work money, renting equipment from Home Depot one job at a time.

Fifteen years on he's at close to $450,000, 98% commercial, three full-time people plus temp labor he flexes by project. A buyer has already approached him. They want a $4 to $5 million company, so that conversation ended quickly. The gap between those two numbers is what we spent most of this episode on.

We break down:

• How he got his first commercial client: he noticed the floor while checking out of a Massage Envy, asked who was doing it, and the owner happened to be in earshot. She kept opening locations and kept bringing him with her
• Why residential paid him the same day and commercial pays net 30 to net 120, and what that does to a business funding its own growth
• What the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program actually gave him, which was not the grant he thought he was applying for
• Why he thinks his next hire is a general manager, and why I think that's the wrong one
• The hire I'd make instead: take a salesperson who already sells to his customers, pay a higher commission than feels comfortable, and fund six months of ramp
• The financial model you build before you go recruiting, or you end up with someone pricing work below cost and earning commission on it
• Why one good salesperson is enough to double a business this size

Justin is also the first guest I've had who actually did the thing I keep telling young people to do: skip the debt, go work inside an industry, then start something in it. He just didn't do it on purpose. And the last thing I told him is the part most people skip. You keep looking for the next solution when the answer is in the doing. There's no magic bullet. Go make it work once.