Service Business Growth: One Line to $1M Before the Next (Hadley Nightingale)

Simone Henry: Here is a plan that sounds smart to most almost every founder who has one service line working. Add a second, maybe a third, three offers at $300,000 each, and you have your million. Then you look at the numbers a year later. one line makes money, one breaks even, and one loses money and takes the profit from The first one with it. You did not build three businesses. You built three jobs. And you're trying to do all of them at once. Today's guest made exactly that bet, paid for it, and then grew his business by doing the opposite. Welcome to the growth ceiling.

Nate Grossman: Okay, well I I think I'm I'm already intrigued by this and what the world's all this about going on. so Hadley Nightingale runs a buyer's agency in a market where buyers agents are still kind of unusual, which means he had to build the category and the delivery engine at the same time. He works in property but the growth problem he solved is the one every service founder hits, the point where you have to delegate to grow or stall. right, so Hadley, welcome. Thanks for joining us.

Hadley Nightingale: Good. Than th thanks for having me. Looking forward to the the conversation. It's it's been a bit of a wild ride and yeah, there's there's nothing like putting your foot in it with with doing what you guys are talking about, but no doubt we'll we'll dig into that.

Nate Grossman: Put putting your foot in it, I like that. all right, so buyers agents are common in the States and in Australia, but not necessarily in New Zealand. So what was it like building a business that a lot of buyers a lot of your buyers had never even heard of?

Hadley Nightingale: it was re it was pretty tough. mainly for the fact that, you know, kiwis are very DIY. We're still very DIY and it's a case of, well, why would I pay you when I can go and do this myself? the the benefit that I had too was I was working with an investment company that sort of was teaching at the time that, you know, using a sourcing agent, using a buyer's agent is is a smart use of your time. And so that sort of helped a little bit with traction at the start. But it was really just around breaking down those barriers of, Hey, look, I I can do this myself. Why would I pay you? or why would I pay you in in quotation marks an exorbitant amount of money, without realizing the downside that you you don't see until you're you know, in this regular.

Nate Grossman: Until it's too late, right?

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah, a hundred percent.

Simone Henry: So are we talking

Nate Grossman: so you

Simone Henry: about even even even wealthier people are do it yourselfers?

Hadley Nightingale: yeah, to a deg yeah, to a to a degree. I think New New Zealand is a very you know, DIY we're quite conservative in terms of adopting new things to a degree in terms of new services. People are very skeptical here, around, hey, look, you know, this is this is what I can do for you. And so I think as sort of time's gone on and we've got that social proof, things have changed. But at the start it was definitely a a grind. The overseas clients weren't quite so bad because they they could see the upside where they where they needed us on the ground 'cause they didn't have that that physical presence. but breaking into the New Zealand market for New Zealanders was was definitely challenging at the time.

Nate Grossman: I that we're going off track a little bit here, but I did sales, international sales. My territory was the Middle East, and we had to have local presence at that time, both for for what you were saying, because we weren't local, obviously. So it helps to have somebody on the ground. But then it was there were also rules around that, right? Like the government actually required because they wanted to have somebody to blame basically if something went wrong.

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah.

Nate Grossman: But Is there any kind of like rules or regulations around that type of thing that's kind of working in your favor in that case? Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: No, no. So there's so nothing on that side of it's regulated. On the the buying side of it, there's some rules around property management. but on the buying side of things, no, you can you can live in Timbuktu and buy a place here if you want and

Nate Grossman: Okay.

Hadley Nightingale: you know, go go through the as long as you you go through the necessary steps, all's all's good.

Nate Grossman: Gotcha. So you started what you're doing now, around the COVID years and you played around with it for a while and then you got serious about two and a half years ago, or maybe three. So what changed when you decided to get serious? Like what what did you start doing differently?

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah, I I think part of that for us was is I s I started a bit a little bit pre COVID, but with the licensing and stuff like that, I had to work for someone else and then decided it would be a good idea to to go out on my own and then COVID hit at the at the same time. and at the same time I was also going through a pretty rough relationship breakup. and so I ended up putting more energy into that thinking that you know, I was gonna have my kid taken off me and I was gonna have, you know, all my assets

Nate Grossman: Oof. Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: taken off me. And that's where focus went. And then

Nate Grossman: Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: myself and my wife sat down one day and and said, well, you know what, we just sort of need to figure out we we can keep I can keep on focusing on that and we make no money. Well we were making some money, but you know, there's we we can either keep feeding into the system that you have no control over, and we can put our focus there and and chip away at our own goal slowly. Or we can put that to the side because that's just going to be the long burn that it is. Nothing nothing fast is going to happen when you're you're in the the court system and lawyers are lobbying emails at each other. or we can go, right,

Nate Grossman: Well

Hadley Nightingale: that's that's happening in this in the side, quick for the court systems, six to twelve months for to get anything done. but quick for us is what can we do in a week? Well, we can do a a heap more than what we can do in the court system in a week. And if we don't reply to a lawyer for a couple of days, well, so be it. Nothing's gonna burn down. and that was that was really the biggest mindset shift. It was was away from the the things that we can't control to the things that we can. And are we gonna spend our time focused on something that's not gonna build our life, that detracts from our life? or do we wanna put our energy into something that's gonna help us and and push us forward? So that's really I suppose the the defining moment in

Nate Grossman: My my wife has been getting into Buddhism lately and they

Hadley Nightingale: Right. Yeah.

Nate Grossman: talk they talk a lot about detachment. You know, like it's

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah.

Nate Grossman: this is the the Buddhist approach to to life, I guess. Like you know, detaching and and not worrying about so much about the things that you can't you can't change, I guess. So it's kind of a interesting philosophy. Yeah. Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah. I it's it's a lot easier said than done when you're when you're in it and you're you're you know, pulling your hair out and you're stressing and you think the world's gonna come to an end to go, look, I'm just gonna detach from this and not worry about it. but I think it's just around realizing that in in that particular situation anyway, is there's just nothing you can do. So the less energy you put into it from a from a constant focus perspective, the the better off you're gonna be.

Nate Grossman: Yeah. I like that. A valuable lesson for our listeners out there. for a valuable life life lesson here. so I think I think what what you're talking about fits into what we call the the viable layer. So we talk about the visible, viable, and valuable building a more visible business, right? You're being found by the right people by showing up in the right places, saying the right things, right? And then there's that viability of the business. Can it can it stand on its own two legs? Does it require the constant input from from the owner? has the owner looked into or considered delegation, you know, and and setting up systems and processes in the business? And so both of those obviously make the business more valuable. So can I guess the question here is can the business produce revenue in a way that repeats, right? without the founder

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah.

Nate Grossman: holding all all those pieces. And your story starts with a decision that looked like growth and then turned out to be the maybe a the thing that was actually in the way.

Hadley Nightingale: So in in terms

Nate Grossman: No problem.

Hadley Nightingale: of like that side of things, there was the the this the sort of step before that was is that I went w I I hired way too early, or the wrong person too early. Not the the person themselves, great person, still talk to them, but in terms of like position, that the we I went right, I need a I need like a a higher end delivery person to go and take over the delivery before I delegated my calendar, my email. all those types of things. so it it had like a as you said earlier, like running a three hundred thousand dollar business, paying eighty thousand dollars in salary, plus costs and expenses. And at the time we were doing f Facebook marketing as well. So it was more or less making nothing. employee

Nate Grossman: Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: was making a a whole lot more than than what I was. Then thought, hey,

Nate Grossman: Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: look, could it be a it'd be a great idea to go and bolt another business onto this 'cause this'll we're another service offering, because this'll make us some more money. but then exactly the same thing again is you can't do two. And then we sort of got put in a position where we needed to start the the project management side of things as well. So we ended up having like the the buyers agency was was breaking even, making money by the time the pro property management came along, that was profitable. Property management wasn't. and then so we built that up over time and then we got put in a position where we sort of needed a project manager as well. So then the project management sucked all the money out of the other two as we were as we were going. But we've got them now to a stage where, you know, everything's profitable. it was just way too early to to diversify out of of what we originally had. Should have been one one thing to a million bucks first and then look at the second service offering rather than one

Nate Grossman: Mm.

Hadley Nightingale: to three hundred grand and employ another person at ninety thousand dollars a year and hope fingers crossed that that all things are going to plan.

Nate Grossman: Yeah. So what was the what was the the thinking on the math at that time,

Hadley Nightingale: well my my initial thinking was is like look if I can just get three doing three hundred grand a year or three hundred and thirty three grand a year, there's a million bucks and and I'm sorted. but I I suppose too it just it goes to show you know the the size of not so much size of mindset, but where where when you're starting and if you haven't been down the route before, you know, a million dollars in revenue sounds like a lot of money and then you take all the costs away. And and I think that's the the part of it where a little bit of naivety and and the unknowing of of the work and the time and the compliance actually goes into things. If if I could go back now I wouldn't do it again. But I also wouldn't be in the position that I'm in now if you

Nate Grossman: Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: know, if we didn't do it.

Nate Grossman: It's kind of a yeah.

Simone Henry: Sorry to every every experience teaches you, right? Hmm.

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah, a hundred percent.

Nate Grossman: Yeah. The the hard lessons, I guess, hard knock life.

Simone Henry: Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah.

Nate Grossman: in in our in our first conversation, Hadley, you had said something that kind of stuck with me. You you is you'd mentioned that you either learn to delegate or you end up awake twenty four hours a day. And and you never get past three hundred thousand. So What what does the founder who stalls there usually believe about their business?

Hadley Nightingale: That that their business is special, that they're the only one that can deliver on it, can do the thing, and that that they're unique. and and I think the the thing with that is is that you've when you get yourself to that position, you've just got to look around and go, is there someone else that runs the same business that I do? Chances are the answer's yes. So therefore your business isn't that unique. You've just you're just so obsessed with it that or you or you need control of it so much that you can't let go. And with that sort of early stuck at three hundred thousand, that as I said, the the the issue that I had was is I was paying someone a lot of money to go and do the delivery side of things while I was still checking my email, while I was still scheduling my calendar, while I was still doing, you know, the the tasks, the the the fifteen dollar an hour tasks. and and the other person was you know, out there doing what I should have should have done. So in terms of timing for employees I also or team members I also got that, you know, upside down as well.

Simone Henry: think what you in your story what you illustrated is the reason why why they say to pick pick a particular a what do you call it avatar ideal client or whatever you know pick a particular service and double down on that get it moving get it going get it growing before you branch off into other things because otherwise it'll never grow because you're you're your energy and your focus is always split, you know. Once you get this one thing moving, then you're, you know, it might be moving a little bit, but you don't pay enough attention to it to really get it going before you you split off and you're going to to do something else. And there's there's that myth of of multitasking. It's it's a

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah.

Simone Henry: myth. We we don't multitask. Our brains don't multitask. It it's really switching quickly is what it it's doing.

Nate Grossman: Yeah. C contact switching.

Simone Henry: Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah, no, a hundred percent. I'd I'd agree with that. And it's it's that thing of like you were saying, the the switching between tasks, you can't focus on on what you're doing and and you end up having rather than one constraint with trying to grow your business, you end up with three constraints that all strangle you at the at the same time.

Nate Grossman: Mm-hmm.

Hadley Nightingale: and so it's it's like my my thinking behind it now is is that if you can get to a million bucks with one thing. And you've got a pod of people. So that's an EA that can look after the admin side of things. You've got someone that can deliver. You've got a marketing person and you've got someone that can sell without you. Cause I think that's that's the the biggest unlock is is it if you can have someone that can sell when you're not there, then that means that gives you some freedom. And that's probably the hardest thing to let go of because you let go of control of you, well, perceived control of your revenue and chances are that salesperson's probably gonna do a better job than than you are because you ha you're not trying to jump off in in seven different directions. Then once you've got the pod sorted out, then maybe look at something else. But yeah, it's that the ones and threes where the the constraints come in.

Simone Henry: So speaking of that, if you have if a founder had a team of of ten to twelve people, what does spreading across three different offers actually do to that team? Who ends up holding three

Hadley Nightingale: yeah.

Simone Henry: jobs?

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah, so I mean well the found the founder does at the start. That's the that that's the the tricky thing. So it there was like me as the buyer's agent, me as the project manager, me as the property manager as well, trying to run round. And then it comes back into hiring, which then more or less eliminates your profit altogether because you know, y with things like property management, you can't it it's a good long term revenue play and and you can provided you're adding doors, you watch your monthly revenue grow month after month. and it's a great model. The issue being when you're making forty dollars a house a week, you need a lot of houses to pay for a wage. And so that's that's the other part of it. That so the like in terms of it for us, we're you know, we're turning over five to ten thousand dollars a month as as a start for the the property management, which sounds like it covers someone else's wage, and then you take away overheads and things like that and you're you're upside down. you're still needing to fund it from another business. And if this is having a hard time and your property management still having a hard time, then then you're having a harder one. but you can't just down tools on the on the first one that you've started just to focus on the second, you've got split. And then you miss priorities and things like that. So it turns into a bit of a mess. but as as that team grows, it I think it becomes really important just to have people focused on one section of the business. So, you know for for now we've got three pods of people that are either buyers agency, project management, property management, and you stick you stick to your lane in terms of that's where you sit. The the marketing side of things is slightly different to that. but that's where the the lanes sit for the people that are there. So there's not crossover and missed priorities.

Nate Grossman: So it's I I think we're getting into a little bit of your your framework or your approach. You you had said that basically you're you need to turn it into a machine, right? so what what does turn it into a machine actually mean in practice? I think you were kinda getting into that a little bit here, but what what had to be true before you would call one line even done?

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah, so I think it comes back to that pod situation where you've got

Nate Grossman: Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: the admin person, you've got the delivery person, you've got a marketing team or a marketing person that can look after the marketing for it, and you've got a salesperson that can actually go and sell the product and sell that well. once you've got those things, that it's not particularly stable at that because if one person leaves, then you're back to you in it. But it's a really good starting point to be, you know, at this size, which is, you know, a million to a million and a half in in revenue for that one pod as sort of that that starting point, then you can sort of step away. It gives the the founder a little bit more time to to work on the business rather than being in it or the choke point. because I think that's the other thing when you're when you're the owner and you're also doing all the sales, plus you've got other things that you have to sort out. the sales can go on the on the back burner for a little bit while you go and sort out the other things that you think are kitchen fires. and then you go, Jeep is only going to sell some stuff to go and catch us back up. So that's where the also the sales revenue dips up and down depending on, you know, what else you have to try and sort out in your your day to day.

Nate Grossman: Hmm. Okay, so what I mean, how are you deciding which which line to actually keep, which to pause, which to cut?

Hadley Nightingale: so at the moment we've we've got all three that are profitable now, which is which is nice. I think if we'd if we'd gone back and and I could start the whole thing again, I probably would have started with the property management just by myself. And for the the reason behind that being is recurring. And I think anything that you can get that's recurring that you can write on a napkin, what you're gonna end up with at the end of the month, just makes life a whole lot easier, gives you a whole lot of certainty, rather than having to go and sell new people each and every week. And that that would have been probably number one, then the buyers agency number two, and then the the project management number three. as I say, if we hadn't been in the position that we were needed to be in, then the project management probably wouldn't be there. It would just be property and and the buying side of things. But fr I th I think you need to look at it from you know, how can I generate revenue? But then how do I also have something that's recurring? And I think that's probably the key thing when looking at lines. is like what's recurring, what do I need to build that up to so that if I have the worst month that I could possibly have and I make no s new sales in X, that my recurring is going to cover my costs as a as a bare minimum. And then it turns into those things that you need to make new sales on every month to make money is the cream on top rather than the thing that you have to do. And if you don't make the sales, everything else you know, it turns upside down.

Nate Grossman: Mm-hmm. Certain predictability is the key there, I think. Building predictability into the revenue stream.

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah, hundred percent.

Nate Grossman: yeah. okay, so I guess one thing real quick, just for our listeners out there who may not quite understand what's going on here, can you get can you elaborate on what you mean by project management?

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah, so that's on the renovation side of things for us. so what happens is

Nate Grossman: Renovation.

Hadley Nightingale: that we purchase a house for for a person, then we have things like new bathrooms, new kitchens, painting carpet, those types of things. and generally people don't have they they come to us because they haven't got the time or the inclination to do it. then they purchase the house and they're going, well, Jeepers, I haven't I also haven't got the time to organize tradespeople, check they're doing the right things, find them in the first place. so that's how that service came about. and that's

Nate Grossman: Interesting.

Hadley Nightingale: yeah, what what we've also so we saw the opportunity there and then it's just been a case of yeah, we can do that. to make sure that we hold on to clients through to the the property side of things as well, or sorry, the property management side of things as well. but yeah, that's that's the the broad brush stroke of the the project side of things.

Nate Grossman: Yeah. No, that's that's nice. So you're actually handling it. You're you're sourcing all the the the home service providers and all that and making sure that everything stays on track and yeah, good. I know there's a lot of

Hadley Nightingale: Yep. Yeah. yeah, so we we do sorry.

Nate Grossman: lot of home service businesses out there that don't have project managers that could use that, I think.

Simone Henry: Ha ha.

Hadley Nightingale: No, it's it's probably the the biggest thing that we've found with with doing it is is the fact that you know home service guys are are really good at doing home services but they're

Nate Grossman: Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: not necessarily great at client communication, invoicing, keeping th keeping track of things and then invoices turn up three months later and people are going, Well, what's what's this for? and so that's really been the the biggest part of it and cost blowouts. where we we

Nate Grossman: Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: had it where we had a contractor that was doing some work, we had a sixty thousand dollar quote and somehow it ended up at and this is why we got ourselves into it, was it started out at sixty

Nate Grossman: Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: thousand, ended up at eighty. and the client that it happened to was one of our it was the guy that we've used or that's come back to us the most. and so we're like, right, if we just need to get this sewn up so so this doesn't happen to anyone again. but

Nate Grossman: Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: it was like Yep, here's the bill. And we were like, well, what's it for? there was a variation here and I didn't quite quote this properly. And then this happened, so I'm not quite sure, but there's the bill. And then you go back through

Nate Grossman: Okay.

Hadley Nightingale: line by line and go, well, can you provide us all the invoices, provide us everything? We don't mind paying you. We just want to know what we're paying for. I

Nate Grossman: Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: can't I can't give you everything because I'm not quite sure where it is. And we were, okay, where when you're when you're spending this kind of money, we need to to make sure we get this button down.

Nate Grossman: There's a a famous comedian here in the US named Shane Gillis. He he did a bit recently where it I think it was on SNL Saturday Night Live where he it said the the bit was upfront home services. Basically they say, We're gonna tell you how this is gonna how bad this is gonna suck up front, you know? It was hilarious.

Simone Henry: Ho

Nate Grossman: But anyways, all right, so so you went from basically zero. To a team of thirteen, and doubled your revenue most years. So what changed in how you hired and delegated at each stage? We've kinda dabbled into this a little bit, but were you were there certain, you know, triggers or

Hadley Nightingale: At at the start I had no idea. I just thought, right, we can just hire some people and then let's let's start on that. But I I the the biggest thing that I that I think that I didn't realise at the time, once again, the naivety is a great thing, is is that you can you can double your revenue but your cash flow doesn't necessarily match that, which sounds crazy to people because you've got a hire in front of your cash flow. and you you're going, I really hope I get this invoice in because I've got payroll on Thursday and I need to get that out so they're not digging into into my own my own savings. And so probably what we did was we overhired, then we realized that, hey, look, there's some certain numbers in our P and L that we need to hit for for labor costs. And if they go over, we need to figure out where we're becoming inefficient. and so we overhired, then we trimmed back a bit, then we've hired a couple more people again as our revenue's growing. But I think now in in terms of size of the business that we've got is that we can probably double again this year without Well, with there's probably two or three other new people that we need to hire, but it's not a case of of rehiring another ten people to double revenue. We're at a a stage where we've got the the base that's there. and it I think it's it's also the the tricky bit when you're growing as well as is that when you've got one of each, you also become vulnerable in terms of as I said earlier, one person leaves and you're back in the seat trying to do it. We've just had an accountant that moved on to a to another position. It's like Jeep is not gonna go and put my accountant's hat back on and figure out how to do this until we find someone that can can take the position again. so yeah, that's that's really the the biggest thing was there was no methodical way to it. And then now we've got like numbers in terms of each person can handle X. And then when we get to this particular point is when we s need to start looking at hiring another person. So we're getting them to about eighty percent capacity. rather than a hundred and twenty and then bringing the other person on and working them into the business rather than one person being in a hundred and twenty percent pulling their hair out, we drop the ball, we bring a new person back in, they drown because they have no one's got any time to train them because everyone's too busy doing their own thing and catching up. and so that's really the biggest thing is like eighty percent, let's look to hire, bring someone on between eighty and ninety, and then get that person trained while we're not under you know, huge amounts of pressure. And and don't get me wrong, sometimes it does happen where the person's at a hundred and ten percent and we're going, Jeepers, sorry, we dropped the ball there. We need to get someone in here as as as quickly. So it's not a it's not a perfect science. That's the that's the aim.

Nate Grossman: Yeah. Yeah. I I I I've often said that, you know, people out there looking for jobs don't realize sometimes how much the people who are hiring need them. Like

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah.

Nate Grossman: maybe they don't they don't really consider it from that point of view, you know. But you know, if you're if you're a business owner, l you really want somebody who's gonna be good and can do the thing that you're hiring them to do and what a tremendous relief that is. You

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah.

Nate Grossman: know.

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah. I I think with that too, it's also a case though of of figuring out fairly quickly if they're not the right person. that's something

Nate Grossman: Mm-hmm.

Hadley Nightingale: we've become extremely good at. At the the start was a case of like you have someone that turns up, you know they're not probably quite right, but there's that the the eternal optimist in me says, but we'll we'll just it it's just because it's a new position and they'll get a bit better. and what I've found over time is is that you know, people put generally tend to put in their best performance in the first four weeks. in terms of like they they sh

Nate Grossman: Okay.

Hadley Nightingale: they show who they are. and then by the

Nate Grossman: Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: end of week four, if they're not the person that's if if they start to slip off, then they're only going to keep sliding down the hill.

Nate Grossman: Mm-hmm.

Hadley Nightingale: and the the thing of of like we we've we basically work through a thing of like, well we've got a process problem. If they're not performing it's like, well there's a a process problem where our where are our processes lacking. and that's a me problem. Then we've got the processes. How do we train them? We've trained them. It's still not happening. Then we've got a people problem at the at the end. and I think that's the important thing when you're getting someone new is is is that run through that process. But if we're four weeks down the track and things aren't getting better, th they're not going to get better by week eight. you're better

Nate Grossman: Mm.

Hadley Nightingale: off just and and it's advantage advantageous for them as well because the chances are they know they're not doing you know, or th they're not as well suited as what they could be to it. and so it's sometimes better just to part ways early and then move on to to the next person so they can move on with their life rather than being in a position where you're you've got animosity towards them because you know they're not performing. And I think deep down people know

Nate Grossman: Mm.

Hadley Nightingale: when they're not a hundred and ten percent suited to something. and

Nate Grossman: Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: that they're like, Well, I don't really want to be here, but I need the job, so I need to be here. And it just it also ends up damaging your culture as well.

Nate Grossman: Yep. Yeah.

Simone Henry: It becomes a a case of hire me because I need this job rather than hire me because I'm the best fit for what you need in your team.

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah, I

Nate Grossman: Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: think desperation gets in the in your way as well. Especially when you you're you're growing quickly and you start getting desperate to hire people. And so there's definitely the case of as you said, Nate, that the business owners they definitely need great people. And when you're a great person, they generally tend to need you more than you need them, initially anyway. But there's also the the flip side of that when you're running around pulling your hair out, you're working ridiculous hours. and you're going, you know, Frank sounds good, so I'll just grab him. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Are you you've you've done you've done this before, you've got the job and you've skipped all the interview steps and they turn up on Monday. Yeah. You turn up on Monday and you go, what have I done? Maybe I wasn't that desperate.

Nate Grossman: Any any sign of relief? Yeah. Yeah. You're breathing? All right. Yeah. Yeah. man. okay, so in in your case then when you when you s when you started hiring whatnot, what were you what did you find yourself handing off first?

Hadley Nightingale: so it started out as the the delivery side of things. and that that's basically all I could hand off at the well no, that that's not quite correct. In in terms of the delivery was the part that I handed off first. which if I go back, it should have been the the admin side of things. I had I had an EA there for a little bit, but w who didn't work out. But now that I look back at the time, that that was once again that was a me problem because I was like, right. I had I had no idea what I was doing. cool, you're an EA. You should be able to go and do EA stuff. And I get to the end of the day and go,

Nate Grossman: Right.

Hadley Nightingale: What's this person done? There was no there was no you know, there was no procedures, there was no SOPs, there was basically a case of here's a log into my email gun, do the be do the best you can. and that yeah, yeah, working

Nate Grossman: Mm-hmm. D work your magic. Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: you work your magic 'cause 'cause you're an EA. work your

Nate Grossman: Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: magic 'cause you're a delivery person. delivering our product, you should be able to do this without me, because that's what you're employed to do. and so that was really the yeah, that we started with delivery but surely got the admin stuff sorted first and then worked our way out.

Nate Grossman: When you when you say delivery, do you mean actually delivering a a physical product?

Hadley Nightingale: yeah, or the or the service. So

Nate Grossman: Okay.

Hadley Nightingale: if you can get someone to deliver your service or yeah, deliver the product or whatever that is, manufacture the product, and you can get yourself out of that, then that for me is sort of step two in the in the process.

Nate Grossman: Yeah. What so do you was there anything that you held on to long to?

Hadley Nightingale: sales. And that's still for part of it that I'm letting go. We've just got some ads running at the moment for some new salespeople. but that's exactly what I was talking about before is like I went away for a couple of weeks and you watch revenue drop because I'm not there to sell my section of of what I need to. so that's that's the other part as you that that I've held on to for too long is you know, that sort of things.

Nate Grossman: Okay, so for our listeners out there, they're maybe they're a service business owner doing maybe two to three million with with a team of twelve or so. And you know, the founder is still the person that every hard decision comes back to. What is realistic to hand off in the first six months and what maybe take maybe will take a couple of years?

Hadley Nightingale: I I think anything's possible to hand off. and it comes down to well like we operate a a a trust based business. and I think that's probably one of the biggest things is like you've got to you've got to get your hiring process down tight, which which forms the the culture for that. hiring good people generally they aren't better at it than you are. So like our accountants be a better accountant than I am, our property manager is a better property manager than I am, our project manager is a better project manager than I am. And so it it really comes down to a thing of finding people who are better at things than you. once the business starts to get more complex, there's a a little bit more nuance to it. But as as long as you're documenting everything, and this is this is really one of the things that we've we've been pushing really hard, is like if something happens to me, can my wife just walk into the business and go, right, cool, here's here's what I need to do. There's there's some business owners that I know at the moment that we've been talking to that are looking to sell. and the the thing is, and I said to them, I was like, Well, if if something happened to both of you tomorrow, or if something happened to to one of you tomorrow, could I just walk into your business and go, right, cool. Here's the here's the base overview that I need to to run it. Not know all the nuance and know all the customers and all that sort of things. That obviously takes time. But is there a base operating system that I can plug into? I can make the orders. I know where this goes. I know where the couriers are. I know where I'm paying for stuff. has someone else other than you two got access to the bank accounts? No, just us. Well, how how do you guys pay stuff if you don't trust people to you know, just put twenty grand in a bank account that your employees can can use so that if they need to go and buy something, they can. And I think that's where it it comes down to is is that If you've got the process, you've got the trust, but as soon as people break that trust, they've got to be gone.

Nate Grossman: Mm.

Hadley Nightingale: and then you develop that culture within the you know, within the business too.

Nate Grossman: That's interesting. I feel like we could do a whole podcast around trust based business, but can you give us like a quick, short and sweet version of what that means to you?

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah, so that means to me that we you've obviously you're working with us, we we work as a team. there's certain things that we expect out of you during the day, but at the same time, I don't stand over your shoulder and check that you're doing those those particular things. So there's outcomes that we need to hit. if we haven't hit them, comes back to a thing of like, is there a process problem, is there a training problem, then we've got a people problem. If someone steals from us, they're gone. There's no ifs, buts, maybes. if we can't we also a chunk of our team works overseas. if we can't get a hold of a person for a couple of hours or for an hour and they haven't told us that they're they're gonna be here that they're gonna be away. Well, I've got no problem if like one of our ladies said to us the other day, look, I've got to take my kid to the hospital. Cool, go for it. Get get your ki your family sorted out because that's super important. But then we also had a lady a little while ago that would just disappear for an hour, hour and a half without saying, Hey, look, I'm just shooting out, I've got this to do. so as soon as that happens, like, look, if if you can't communicate with me that you that you've got to go out to take your kid to the hospital for an hour, then how am I gonna trust you to do anything else? so therefore, you know, you're not a great fit for for who we are. And so I think it's that trust and that communication that's the you know, that's the important thing with that. But then also having safeguards with things like money, that the person that sets up the the batch payments isn't the same person that makes the payments, isn't the same person that authorizes the payments off. So if if someone was to scheme against you, they'd have to have three people in it rather than just the one person that's got, you know, keys to the castle.

Nate Grossman: Hmm. Yeah. Okay. all right. So basically ru rule of thumb to hand off in the first six months, maybe look for some of that low hanging fruit, whatever is driving driving you the most crazy. And and then maybe the longer term stuff would be developing those SOPs, getting that the the documentation because that takes time before you can actually you know, 'cause you actually have to do the thing to know, right? So

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah, I mean with with the admin side of things too and AI has made it super, super simple. I remember when I started talking to coach at the time and he was like, Look, just get up at four a.m., get your pen out, and just write down the things that are on your mind in terms of the processes that you do so you can put them in place. whereas now with like screen recording products, and and this is how we basically run ours, is that If there's a task that you've got to do, you record yourself doing it, you talk to the the video at the same time, you pull the transcript, you put it into Claude or ChatGPT, that spits out the SOP. You've got the video, you've got the SOP, it takes you all of three minutes, and you've done the task at the same time. and

Nate Grossman: Nice.

Hadley Nightingale: so you know, sorting things like email, sorting things like your calendar, and that side of things, reconciling zero or QuickBooks, if you just record it. And then you've got the SOP for it at the same time. It's a it's a really easy way to fast forward this. it's not like, as I say before, Loom or whatever it is that you use where you had to write everything down, have an old dusty book that you hope people you know, use to to look through things.

Nate Grossman: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Simone Henry: a

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah, that that's where we pulled the the first part of that from and then another book with the the screen recording and the the GPT side of it, Cameron. I think Clockwork's sitting up there behind me. There we go.

Nate Grossman: No. Michalowicz.

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah.

Simone Henry: Yeah.

Nate Grossman: Right. Very good.

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah, I I I can't take credit for for creating that part of it. That's our our project manager. She's a an IT genius. so yeah, she set up our C R now that everything basically flows down the the one path and everything's automated and there's AI agents that pick stuff up as we as we go. So technology's been a big a big part of that. obviously Zoom, Google Meets, we we use a lot with both a team in New Zealand and also the the team of the Philippines as well to to make sure that, you know, we're we're all talking to each other, we know who each other are. I think just to go back to an earlier piece around like the trust model is is that all all of our team get treated the same. And I think it's one of the things that our ladies in the Philippines keep saying to us is is I it's amazing that you guys know who we are and you know who our kids are. you know, roughly where we live in the Philippines, which may sound like basic stuff that you'd know for someone that that lived in your home country. but I said part of the issue w that they have previously dealt with is that they just get treated as a number, not as a person.

Nate Grossman: Mm-hmm.

Hadley Nightingale: So the performance and the the effort that they give aren't as you know, aren't as good. Now ladies have been with us, some of them have been with us for th must be what, three years now since the start of this. one left and then came back. and so which was a yeah which was really, really great. And I think that's the other thing is just treating people like people, regardless of where they live in the world is the other the other key thing for it.

Nate Grossman: That's that culture aspect, right?

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah. Hundred percent.

Nate Grossman: Mm-hmm.

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah.

Nate Grossman: Okay, so once you have one line going, right? It's running like a well-oiled

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah.

Nate Grossman: machine. what what needs to be true in the rest of the business? like for example, how the leads come in, how you're selling, how the client experience holds up and everything like that for for it to keep going, right? Self perpetuating and for it whatever work that you've done to actually, you know, stick, I guess.

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah. So in in terms of that sort of things is obviously there's that base foundation to to get it running. but I think you're always going to find something that breaks when you're growing. And it's I I don't think you're ever going to get yourself to a position where everything's great. You don't have to touch anything because you generally tend to sit stagnant and if you're stagnant, you're you're really going backwards. and so it's it's a case like for us anyway, has been like the admin side but was broken, then the delivery side was broken, then the marketing. you know, six months ago, eight months ago was more or less non existent, because all we'd done is just build our business through referrals. And there was a big gap there because we were solely reliant on other people to to generate leads rather than us generating our own stuff. and then the sales side of things. And then, you know, marketing doesn't produce enough leads for sales, then marketing produces too much leads, and then sales sells too much stuff. So then you have a delivery problem where you can't sell enough. So then when you can't deliver enough, so you're gonna put in another delivery person and then you haven't got enough leads and then you're not selling enough and then you're selling too much. And so I think there's always that perpetual wheel of what part do we need to fix? as opposed to everything's well oiled, there's nothing I need to touch. and then it's about refining process around client experience. refining who you're targeting, what you're doing from mark from a marketing perspective. you know, dialing in your scripts, r adjusting prices, running tests, then can happen once you've got consistency. but I think that's probably the other the other, you know, pitfall is is that people don't give themselves long enough to actually test things properly. Well, they haven't got a method to test. They they start this week and go, right, I'm gonna offer my product at fifteen thousand, one person brought it, I think I might offer it at twenty five, no one bought it. next week I might offer it at 10 and see if I can get twice as many people as what I got at fifteen. there's no there's no like baseline of this is what we sell as a minimum viable product. We've tested it, we've sold a hundred of these. Now we're gonna run a test on part of the script. And so I think this will

Nate Grossman: Hmm.

Hadley Nightingale: happen if we change this. What's the result from it? people just tend to zigzag off and try a whole lot of different stuff and there's no consistency. on the the way through. So that's also part of that that oiling as well.

Nate Grossman: Mm-hmm. So if you had to do it over again, you would have all of that in place before you added on another one, another branch or

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah. Yeah.

Nate Grossman: another stream.

Hadley Nightingale: Get get one to a million dollars at least and then look at at adding the next. Because it then you've got someone that's taking care of or you can have someone that that can take care of all that stuff and you can afford to have them and you still keep some money. yeah. Any less than that it starts to get a bit trickier. Yeah. Hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah, I agree.

Nate Grossman: So so once so once you had everything, you know, nailed down, you know, quote unquote, in in in one of those in one of those lanes, what it what started working that maybe you didn't expect would to s to start working?

Hadley Nightingale: I think the biggest thing is is like that where I said earlier about like my business is unique. I'm the only one that can do this. And once you get out of the way and you find out that people can actually do, you know, you've got your superpower that you're really good at. and then when you're the founder you think you're good at everything and you realise pretty quickly that that you're not, that you've got, you know, big gaps. You might be really analytical but you're not great at sales, or you're a great salesperson but you've got no admin skills. or you're delusional and think you you've got both, but you're your one skill set's sort of one or the one or the other. and I think that's that's sort of it where I went away for a couple of weeks and my phone I think my phone rang twice for stuff that was work related that wasn't

Nate Grossman: Nice.

Hadley Nightingale: a a a huge fire that needed to be put out. and I think that's the that's really the cool, the the key bit with it is is that once you realise that other people can do what you can do and and you're not the the unique person. You're the un unique person because you've you've got the risk appetite to start it and and do the thing. And I think that's the part that I didn't realise earlier on with the the lack of direction for people is is that if if they could see the path they needed to go down, they'd probably be in my shoes, you know, building a business themselves because that's just how they see the world. but when they haven't got that there they they need some guardrails to be like, hey look, this is the the angle that you need to go down.

Nate Grossman: Hmm. Interesting. Okay, so you you you doubled your revenue year after year, including this one apparently. and then you said last year you grew fifty percent. Okay.

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah, last year we slowed yeah. Last year we slowed down a little bit. and that was just mainly through a j yeah, we brought on a new service, sales got a bit a bit skewed from main focus on on one or or two things. a little bit the same with with the marketing or the the market as a as a whole slowed down a little bit as well. So there was that that factor. but it's actually been quite nice just to take a bit of a breather. And and focus on quality rather than just growth at the at the same time too, 'cause think revenue can be a bit of a vanity metric and it's important to look at what the the bottom line comes down to as opposed to, hey, look, we we make X number of million a year, but our our margin's five percent. whereas

Nate Grossman: Right.

Hadley Nightingale: I'd rather have something that that ran at you know a million or a or or two million at at twenty or thirty or forty percent a whole lot better than five times that with a

Nate Grossman: Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: a fraction of the the profit.

Nate Grossman: Yeah. Somebody said revenue is is is vanity. was it profit is for feeding your families? Yeah.

Simone Henry: It is what feeds the family, yeah. Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Nate Grossman: but you can't have profit without the revenues to begin with. So, you know, gotta st gotta start somewhere.

Hadley Nightingale: Hundred percent. Yeah.

Simone Henry: So wait, you gotta start somewhere.

Nate Grossman: okay, so do you feel like you learned some lessons from last year then?

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah, last year was was about that delegation, getting the right people, or getting better people into into better seats. and then just also giving ourselves some confidence about, you know, what what we're doing and and the direction that we're going as well. The other thing it allowed us to do was actually what allowed me to do is actually take a breath and and actually have a look at our numbers and go right, where have you know, where have we got some wastage? We've just done an exercise now where we've gone through our subscriptions and we've cut about twenty seven thousand dollars worth of subscriptions out of the the business, which

Nate Grossman: for a for tech or something or

Hadley Nightingale: it's so sorry.

Nate Grossman: Was it for tech or just just any kind of subscription?

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah, for tech, yeah.

Nate Grossman: Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: yeah. The mainly our our tech subscriptions to go, right, where are we doubling up? What do we need? What don't we need? and it's and as I say, the accountant went through line by line and she's like, What's this hundred dollar subscription a month? What's this? and and people that that don't have a business would sit there and go, Well, how do you not know that there's a hundred dollars or two hundred dollars a month going out for this or this? but when you're dealing at hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, a hundred dollars is really easy to slip by and and shoot out the door.

Nate Grossman: Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: so yeah, there's that. And I think we also got really carried away last year on the AI side of things, burnt a whole lot of tokens, which also, without not huge amounts on the I I couldn't directly correlate the amount that we'd spent on tokens to to bottom line or to to increase revenue or increase sales. We were we were chasing efficiencies.

Nate Grossman: Right, right.

Hadley Nightingale: Which didn't turn out to be that efficient at all. So I think that's probably the other big lesson from from last year as well, that if we're gonna go down the AI path, we need to see dollars out the end of it rather than just burning tokens to to feel like we're achieving something.

Nate Grossman: Mm. Okay, so you you those are so those are some good lessons I'd say. we've we've had this conversation, by the way, around AI. the a utopian vision yet, you know, for for business owners. but yeah. So you you talk a lot about building portfolios that support time, freedom and legacy. so now that your team carries the day to day, what are you free to work on that maybe you could never do, you know, before?

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah, I mean for for me it's it's a bit more time with family. that I think that's that's probably been the the biggest thing. I've got an eight year old daughter and then I've also got a a twelve month old. so there's a there's a bit of a gap there, but two very different stages of life between the between the two of them. So I I think, you know, when you're in your twenties and you haven't got family, it's all about how do I create a business and how do I, you know, make all this money and then I think as as you have kids your priorities sort of shift and change a little bit in terms of like how do I support them, how do I spend some more time with them, because it's the only thing that you've got, right? The the time's sort of everything. You can make more money, but you can't produce more time.

Nate Grossman: Mm.

Hadley Nightingale: and so it it's been that and I suppose the the tricky bit for me also too is has been letting go of I just need to be at work all the time. and actually just being okay with, hey, look, I'm I'm gonna go. gonna go out for a walk, gonna go out for a run, gonna go to the gym at three o'clock in the afternoon or at eight o'clock in the morning to because that I've got time to do it. and

Nate Grossman: Nice.

Hadley Nightingale: so I think that's probably been the the biggest shift and the biggest change in the the part. And then also, as I mentioned earlier, I've just been away for a couple of weeks, which I couldn't have done twelve months ago without something breaking and and my phone ringing off the the hook all day.

Nate Grossman: Wow, twelve months. That's that's quite a s quite a shift.

Simone Henry: Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: Well, it it just comes down to good people and the those processes and and systems in place. is really the the key thing. That 'cause I I think that the thing that that people were asking me about all the time is like, How do I do this? How do I do this? What do I do now? How do I do this? And if you can nail down the how do you do this into well, have you had a look at the process,

Simone Henry: Mm.

Nate Grossman: Uh-huh.

Hadley Nightingale: we've got that written down here. It eliminates the, hey, if you got two minutes, knock on the door, which turns into half an hour. it eliminates

Nate Grossman: Mm-hmm.

Hadley Nightingale: ninety percent of them. Or where where do I find this? Well, it's in the SOP library. and so once you've got that, your your interruptions for the day decrease because people, you know, can find their own way to a to a degree. Sure, there's still problems that come up that they can't answer that. And then one of our team members said the other day, we've only got a problem until we can turn it into a process. And or or something it was something like that, which myself, you know, was pretty taken away by taken back by going. That's a it's a plumber good quote and a good way to good way to look at things.

Nate Grossman: Mm.

Hadley Nightingale: so that's how it's shifted so quickly over twelve months.

Simone Henry: Fantastic.

Nate Grossman: Nice. Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: when when things are are showing in in terms of adding a new service.

Nate Grossman: Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah, I I like the the million dollars I think is the starting point. but it it really comes down to the the question I think you need to ask is like is it a distraction or is it something that's actually gonna add value to the clients, to to the experience, to what we're doing? you know, for us to go and start like a housewashing business because we purchase property for people is probably gonna be a distraction for us. Yes, it might help some of our clients, but it's not something that we need to do every day or starting a home maintenance business because that might tack on to what we're doing is more so a case of like, have I extracted or am I really efficient at running the first one? And then

Nate Grossman: Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: have I got the bandwidth to then be able to go and focus on the second one to get that. And the the second one will come faster if you've got a really well oiled first line and first process. but it's when it's like half done and then you get distracted with something else and you get distracted with something else and then you never end up pr you know, progressing anything anywhere.

Nate Grossman: Hmm. I mean it is you're basically you have to have built essentially a business and then add on before you add on another line, which is essentially another business, right? even though they may be connected through whatever means. But y th there's a lot of lessons learned from that first go round, I think. That's and

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah, I I think even like with ours and that they're all like down the line where we start to purchase, then we do the project management, then we do the property management. So they're all sequential, but it's

Nate Grossman: Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: not one person running across all three. you've

Nate Grossman: Mm-hmm.

Hadley Nightingale: got to have different people in different areas and then you have similar problem you've got to figure out different problems for for different and you've got experience from the first one. So the the sales side of things isn't necessarily the hardest part to get sorted. It's more so the compliance, the delivery, what do we need to have? Are we insured? All the the things that you don't think of when you first start. You're like, right, let's get into it. And then you learn the rest of it as you as you go. And I think that's probably

Nate Grossman: It's

Hadley Nightingale: the other thing that that slows you down what to a degree once you've you've built something is is you know that when you start the next thing, what you've got to go through. as opposed to having that sort of youthful naivety of she'll be right, we'll just we'll give it a crack and then you, you know. You find out about HR compliance and tax once you once you get your first tax bill and you go, Jeepers, how am I gonna pay for this? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Or your accountant rings you

Nate Grossman: Forgot forgot to pay it.

Hadley Nightingale: a week and a half before due date and says, Hey, you've got a fifty thousand

Nate Grossman: Ha ha.

Hadley Nightingale: dollar tax bill and you're going, I haven't got fifty grand in the bank.

Nate Grossman: Right, correct. Yeah. That's a unpleasant surprise. I I like I like how too how property management was the the third one that you added. I'm assuming that's because you'd had experience with the details prior to that. Yeah. the second, okay. that's what I meant. Sorry,

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah. well property management was the second and then the projects came into thing. Yeah, was the second.

Nate Grossman: pro I meant I meant I meant projects, sorry, project management. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We it basically came down to a thing of, you know, how do we how do we protect our clients on the way through? And this is gonna have to be the the step that we're gonna have to put in place to make sure that we've got seamless transition. but it was also a drop off point for us as well, because we'd we'd lose contact with them for six weeks, between or you know, six weeks to to four months between when we started and when the property got managed. and so there was a chance there that someone else would tap them on the shoulder and go, Hey, we also offer property management and they disappear off to to someone else.

Nate Grossman: yes, yes, yes, yes. Gotcha.

Simone Henry: Gotta grab while they have they have trust in you. And

Hadley Nightingale: Keep yeah, keep them in the system.

Simone Henry: yeah, keep

Nate Grossman: Yeah. So Bob Marley said strike while the iron is hot.

Simone Henry: Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: Yeah, exactly.

Simone Henry: Ha ha ha.

Nate Grossman: All right, let's do let's get into the the rapid clarity round here.

Simone Henry: Okay. So one or two word answers. I've got four. So first off, a founder who has two or three service lines right now, what is the one question they should ask about their their lines this month?

Hadley Nightingale: which one's unprofitable and which one should I look at getting rid of?

Simone Henry: You are at three hundred thousand and doing everything yourself. What's the first role you hire?

Hadley Nightingale: AI.

Simone Henry: remote hire.

Nate Grossman: Some you mean someone to to someone to me to do AI, you mean or?

Simone Henry: or or just get an AI assistant. EA, okay. Executive assistant. Okay.

Hadley Nightingale: sorry, EA. A and and e no, sorry, yeah, and EA. Sorry, sorry.

Nate Grossman: EA EA, my bad, sorry. Okay. Executive assistant. Executive assistant. Yeah. Yeah.

Hadley Nightingale: Yes.

Simone Henry: I've heard that before too. first remote hire in another country. What is the one thing to get right before day one?

Hadley Nightingale: systems and process for them. Or have the time to build it with them while they're there.

Simone Henry: Yeah, and get up to speed. in one sentence, what does going wide too early cost a founder?

Hadley Nightingale: Profit. Colour in their hair as well.

Nate Grossman: Ha ha ha. Nice. All right. So what I take from Hadley's story is that focus is a growth strategy. Three offers at half attention will end up costing you more than one offer that you can hand to a team and that you trust. So build one thing that runs without you, and then the next one gets easier.

Simone Henry: So if what Hadley shared today r resonated, go connect with him. If you are investing in New Zealand property and you want one team to handle the whole process from the search through to management, New Zealand Property Buyers offers a free consultation at New Zealand Property Buyers dot com and follow Hadley on Instagram at instagram.com slash Hadley Nightingale.

Hadley Nightingale: Mm.

Simone Henry: yeah. It's spelled just like Florence Nightingale. Or connect with him on LinkedIn where he shares how he builds the business and the portfolio. And if this conversation made you realize you're not sure where your biggest growth constraint actually is, this is what we dig into every week. Subscribe to the newsletter at thegrowthceiling.com.. Each week we send one real growth constraint and how it how to spot it in your own business. Whether that's too many service lines or something else entirely. And of course, subscribe to the Growth Ceiling wherever you listen. And if this episode helped you see something differently, send it to a founder who needs to hear it.