Danny

a few people asked me to turn this into a full essay, so i did! read my full field guide to jobs, cold emails and making yourself legible to the right people. share with a student or jobseeker in your life: open.substack.com/pub/velvetnois…

@AKASpencerScott Send a nice note explaining that while we don’t normally take things of this size as part of our service, I grabbed it to build a pool slide for my kids (: Humanizes but reenforces standards

Option 1 = Email them and say we can't take it Option 2 = Go pick it up and build a pool slide for my kids Which do I do?

Offering another scenario that is true for me and many neighbors: I have babies. Takes forever to get them to sleep. That doorbell rings or door knocks, the dogs go ballistic and baby wakes up and starts crying. For some parents it’s a quiet window to actually be productive, disrupted because someone ignored the sign. I respect the D2D hustle. But in this regard, I’ll never do business with someone who ignores the sign. Just sharing another perspective that’s real for many parents 🤙🏼

Why do we knock houses with no soliciting signs? Wouldn’t those have the most angry people and the lowest close rate? 3 scenarios 1- Some reps DO skip those doors. That means those people get talked to less and are happier to hear your pitch. This means higher close rate. 2- some people didn’t even put the sign up. When I bought my first home, it had a no soliciting sign. I thought it was ironic and funny and left it up. I was happy to chat with any rep that knocked. 3- some people put those up to try to stop reps from knocking because their spouse can’t say no and keeps signing up! Literally the easiest sales. 90% of people that have those signs up do not care. We’re hitting them every time.

@JustinLapier @mhp_guy Men’s department! 😂 right back at ya brother

@DefiDanny_ @mhp_guy Thanks Danny, much appreciated! Also, thank you for your service, and for working in a department of the Navy 😉

Back in February I posted about starting a forestry mulching business after watching @mhp_guy’s interview with Alex Boyd from Brushworks. Well… we actually did it! Introducing BrushCuts (brushcutsva.com) - clearing brush one residential yard at a time in the Fredericksburg, VA area. 🧵👇

Our team recently placed two senior operators into a privately funded A&D platform that had just closed their 11th acquisition. EVP of N. American Manufacturing for $150M business unit, and a multi-site plant MD reporting to the EVP. Critical need. Both in-seat in <90 days. They’d tried recruiting sr leaders from primes in the past, but those candidates struggled in the rollup environment. Those executive leaders spent careers inside polished systems with abundant resources. But early integration work is the opposite. Resource-constrained, ambiguous, & demands fast decisions with incomplete information. We focused on a very specific profile instead: Veterans with 10-15+ years of post-military manufacturing ops experience. Multi-site P&L, supply chain decisions under defense program timelines, have led teams through operational transitions, and carried real commercial accountability after their military service. It’s a smaller (and harder to access) talent pool vs the typical industry-insider list. But the fit for integration work is significantly tighter, because military leaders are trained to take control of unfamiliar units under pressure. You walk into a new operation, quickly assess, and stabilize it without burning trust. Which is the day-one reality for a multi-plant director inside a newly acquired facility. Potentially frustrated employees, unclear inventories, customer commitments that can’t slip. That military background combined with the decade+ of commercial P&L experience means these guys are powerhouses with financial discipline AND instinct shaped in private industry. Both leaders are crushing it. Veteran leaders = S-tier value creation strategy.

@nicktheriot_ Leads

I'm going to disable this post in 48 hrs... Because I just dropped the COMPLETE lead generation system that generated 200,000+ qualified leads and $45 MILLION in revenue for a single client through Facebook ads. This is the exact TOP-TIER campaign structure, CRM integration, and sales team optimization framework we use to get 7% close rates (while most brands are stuck at 1% with lead forms). We charge $10,000/mo to do this for clients… But today, I'm giving it away 100% FREE. Like + Comment "LEADS" and I'll send it to you. (Must be following)

@jamesonhaslam What’s orange and sounds like a parrot? ..a carrot

EMERGENCY I need your best dad jokes (this is for a bit tomorrow) Hit me 👇🏻

@braxton_mccoy @wayofftheres +1 vouch for this. Wife and I are obsessed with Grandpa’s Weeder, its wizardry

@wayofftheres Ours is terrible too.

Got this new dandelion pulling tool so I am autistically plucking weeds out of the lawn under a headlamp now.

@chrishume_ Iwo Jima + lighting goes hard

New setup kinda tough

@keyan_concrete @jamesonhaslam Same 🤝

@jamesonhaslam iphone 11, ios 17, cracked screen. lightning fast.

against my wishes my phone (16 pro Max) updated to the new iOS and is completely bricked Does this get better after indexing? Insane delay on everything

@sbabmarks Heck yeah. Love seeing veterans win! Congrats Bruce

We closed a nice acquisition transaction for a veteran today! Also, got a green light on another one. I must say, I relish in the fact of being impactful to those next generation of business owners.

@therobertbrooks Holy crap well done, Rob 👏🏼 busy season just getting started!

Had to crack a few eggs on the sales side of my company, but had to do what's best for the company in the long run. 4 selling days into May has proven that decision was the right one.

@jamesonhaslam Ugh. Just be a real person! AI slop outbound is getting ridiculous

Normal people don’t talk like rhis, right?

7x on sub-$1M SDE in tree service.. I want what that guy’s smoking.

@thesamparr Graham is the man! Our team at TheMilVet partnered with Apex/Alpine early and placed most of their veteran operators. They’re an incredible early partner, and we continue placing badass veteran leaders across their portfolio to this day. This profile is OP for home services.

How to turn $8M into $500M in revenue in 6 years, according to Graham Weaver (he came on MFM recently): - Pick the most boring industry you can find (he picked plumbing + HVAC. $170B TAM) - Buy a small one with ~$8M in earnings - Hire ex-military, ex Stanford guys to run it - Partner them with a grizzled industry lifer who knows the ins and outs of HVAC - Roll up 10+ add-ons, funded entirely by cash flow and debt - Copy the best playbook from each acquisition. By deal 11 you've got 10 superpowers. - Watch $8M in earnings become $500M and then have Sam tweet it out in a very simple way that makes it sound easy when really it was a TON of work. The business is called Apex Service Partners. Navy seals running plumbers. Badass.

@Tradermayne Series in a similar sci-fi/fantasy vein: Empire of Silence (Sun Eater) Will of the Many Children of Time The Expanse The Name of the Wind (warning - you’ll fall in love with books 1 and 2, and fans have been waiting on book 3 for 15 years).

I just finished the Red Rising trilogy and, omg, one of the best fiction stories I've ever read. I flew through these three books in under a month. I only wish there was more. What are some other series that you consider on the same level?

@HSchenewark @JaredDHardin If my feed is any indication, asphalt X is already a thing! Jared is awesome. Looking forward to following your killer growth here too

You’ve been a big inspiration @JaredDHardin ! Pretty soon, asphalt X is going to be a thing.

@HillWillbanks67 @toxiccowboy1 S-tier survey rig

@toxiccowboy1 A-Team for me… @DefiDanny_ hear me out.

I'm thinking starsky and hutch.

@homeservicebase Saw him on a panel at Pantheon last year, dude is hilarious + wicked smart

4 years after selling NexGen HVAC & Plumbing to Wrench Group for about $150M, Ismael Valdez is back in the game. I think a lot of PE firms will be reviewing their non-compete terms now. He built a huge residential home service company in California once, he’ll do it a second time.