Bill Gustin

Client walks in. 68 years old. $2.8M net worth. House is paid off. Worth $950K. She's living on $38K a year from Social Security. Tell me how that makes sense. She brings coupons to restaurants. Buys the cheapest everything. "I'm not taking money from my retirement accounts. I need that for emergencies." What emergency costs $2.8M? You're denying yourself basic comforts at 68. You haven't visited your grandkids in Phoenix in 2 years. Your emergency fund has an emergency fund. She fought me for 8 months. "My parents taught me never to touch principal." Your parents also retired with a pension and died at 74. We finally got her to take distributions last year. $120K annually from her portfolio. Still only a 4.3% withdrawal rate. Now she's flying to Phoenix quarterly. Took her grandkids to Disney. And stopped agonizing over every $12 purchase. She spent 3 years being miserable with $2.8M in the bank. You don't get a prize for dying with the most money.

Our trucks carry almost no stock. Most plumbing and HVAC companies load their service trucks with $500 to $20,000 worth of permanent stock, anything a technician might need on a job. We run what we call a diagnostic-install model. Our top diagnostic technicians visit the home first. Once the customer approves the work, the job is handed off to an installer who grabs a pre-kitted packout built specifically for that job type. Every job has its own packout staged, standardized, and ready to go. It’s easier to track, reduces errors, and keeps the team organized and efficient. The tradeoff is added logistical complexity, but the benefits far outweigh it. Sometimes real improvement comes from rethinking the fundamentals.

Every pizza delivery chain is inedible now. It wasn’t always this way. You used to order a pizza and they delivered actual food, even good food in some cases. Now it’s all garbage. Domino’s, Pizza Hut, Papa John’s, Little Caesars, etc. All insultingly bad.