How a Math Teacher Built Jayco Handyman to $150K and Got No Deal

Today, I'm meeting Jordan. He used to be a teacher making $60 a year, but doing God's work, coaching, teaching, but ultimately said, you know what? I'm gonna quit and go full time on his handyman business. Do you have the car at this point or was it just you hauling stuff around with your hands?

It was just me hauling stuff around with my hands. I was just MacGyver and everything just kind of figuring everything out. 2025 we did just shy of a 150,000.

Can he scale from here?

I'm probably doing about 80% of the jobs.

You can only make so much money yourself with one car and these tools. Can Jordan use some of my capital so he can stop trading his time for money and ultimately scale this business big time? I feel like I'm having to work extra hard here to figure out a way to give you money which is not never a good position to be in. Do you have a like a concrete ask? Like you need x amount of money to do y thing?

What's up, man? I'm Nathan.

Hey. I'm Jordan. Nice to meet you, man.

Nice to meet you, man. Tell me more about what you're building here.

Okay. Yeah. My name is Jordan. I'm working on Jayco Handyman and Contracting Services. And normally for a handyman companies, people have like a, you know, like they kinda wanna save money, so they're called handyman, we're working on expanding. This could work more so leaning into the contracting part so we can essentially make more money and to be able to serve more people in our community.

When did you launch the business and make your first dollar of revenue?

Say probably 2014. I was like, I just got out of college. I learned how to do some things with my hands and just, I used to be a teacher. It's my background. And so during the summers, during the breaks, I just like being busy. And so I just took advantage of the opportunity to help some people and make some money.

Do you have the car at this point or was it just you hauling stuff around with your hands?

It was just me hauling stuff around with my hands, different car.

What was the first job that you did in 2014? Do you remember?

Started with thumbtacks. It was like little small jobs here and there.

Thumbtacks is a lifesaver. If you guys don't know, you gotta comment below if you've ever used it for like a home repair, but it's basically a marketplace where you can find folks like Jordan. Did all of your business in 2014 come from thumbtacks?

I would say a good portion of it did. Yes, sir.

And do you remember about how much revenue you did that first year?

I was like only doing it in the summers and breaks. So I would say I would say probably under 2 k.

What were you what were you doing full time?

I

used to be a math teacher. Yeah. Are you full time today on the business?

Yes, sir.

What year did you quit?

2021, 2022.

Okay. And tell, take me in your head at that point. Were you nervous? Was it easy to call up the school and say I'm quitting next year? Or what was it like?

I was making as much money doing this on the side as I was teaching full time. And so I thought like, hey, if I just quit teaching and do this full time, you know, I'd be there to make exponentially more and I have more time back.

Can I ask how much you were making just teaching?

About 66,000 I would say.

Okay. What made you pull the trigger to quit your teaching job and go all in here on the handyman service?

Teaching was my life. Like I just every almost every hour of the day, I got to do something lesson planning, you're teaching for eight hours, you gotta grade papers, you gotta call people, you gotta tutor. I was a coach as well, so there's that as well. And so with Handyman, stuff, I just, you know, I would go and fix a toilet or replace a toilet. It goes like $250 right there just to remove and replace a

toilet. You could do it in like in a couple hours and bam. I thought with the handyman thing that I'll be to make as much money quicker and I'm not bringing stuff home. And so that's kind of why I decided to jump into a full time.

And in 2022, your first full year in business where you're only focused on handyman services, what was your most popular like revenue item? Was it fixing a toilet or something else?

I would say the one that gave me the most bang for my buck was probably like, like some painting VAs. We did a lot of furniture assemblies. We did like replacing faucets and fixtures. So different things like that. You can do pretty good with just even just those couple of items right there.

What do you guys think is first full year revenue 2022? What was total revenue? Leave a comment below. Let them hook. Let them guess. Now give it to me, Jordan. What was 2022 full year revenue?

I would say about 62,000. What I did that first year. What I learned during that is that there was a lot more to running a business than I anticipated. I thought I could just go in there, do the job, be out, and then I'll get calls every day. And then, you know, I'll just every day. I didn't know about the advertising, keeping the books and different things like that.

It's still just you doing all that stuff?

I do have a team. I have some partners to help me out when, if I need an extra hand. I have subs I can call in as well. I have master electricians, master plumbers. I have people that specialize in remodeling.

With all these additional folks and capabilities that you have, whether it's glass or toilets or leaks, etcetera, what do you think total revenue will be here in 2026?

2025 would be just shy of a 150,000. So ideally, I wanna get to the point where I can do like 200 or $2.50 a year.

Alright. Take us in the back here. What are you what are you working on?

Okay. So there's a lot of stuff going on here. I have all my paint stuff here, drywall stuff. Here I have like some of my power tools like reciprocating saws, different like longer blades and battery power things.

Okay. And what about what it's in the back? Are there in the back seat, like ladders and stuff mainly?

We do have a three step ladder here that helps me be able to reach almost eight to 10 foot ceiling.

And where is most of the revenue coming from today? Is it still coming from Thumbtack or are you getting customers in a different way?

A lot of my a lot of my business is coming from... We have a good portion that come from Google. We get repeats, referrals, and we also have a lot of partnerships. Partner with over 10 different companies. And so we do commercial maintenance for different companies. And we also provide a lot of stuff for new people moving into luxury apartments too. We have about 15, say about maybe 15 luxury apartments that we service.

What kind of contract will you sign with an apartment complex? So tell me, understand how, is it inclusive? How many units?

Whenever somebody moves into one of their units and they need like a TV mounted, they wanna hang some pictures, they wanna put some furniture together, different things like that, they'll call us and then we'll just go there and just do whatever the said job is that they want Well,

let's say you do a $500 project, do you get to keep all that money or do you have to pay them a cut?

We get a percentage of it.

So it sounds like you don't own the direct relationship with the customer. You're billing through the apartment complex. Is that how it works?

Yeah, with third party we get paid either, I think I wanna say bimonthly with them.

So let's say you're doing a $500 repair, are you getting paid the $500 or are you charging an hourly rate? How does it work?

Some jobs like the TV mounts, they'll have a set price. Other things, they're just like, Oh, there's a whole bunch of furniture I need to assemble, or just we're just hanging pictures or whatever. We'll get compensated about like $65 an hour.

Okay.

So yeah.

How do you scale this thing? Cause you're just, you're right now you're trading your time for money. Yeah. You can only make so much money yourself with one bar and these tools.

I would say now I'm probably doing about about 80% of the jobs, and I'm subbing out the others. I'm getting more and more to the point where I can have other people doing the jobs on my behalf.

Make it simple for everyone watching online. The job is a thousand dollar electrical job. Gotcha. You sourced it, you priced it, you brought them the work. What do you pay your guy? What do you keep?

Ideally, we're going for 15 to 20% margins, if you will. With our electrical guy in particular, he does his on an hourly rate. So his is a little bit more of a floating cost. But with my plumbers and my remodelers, they'll more so get a set cost. Then from there, we could just add the 15, 20%.

Okay. So if you sell a job for a thousand dollars, what you're saying is you're gonna pay your labor $800 and you're gonna keep $200. That would be a 20% margin. Is that what you're saying?

Yeah.

Path to scaling this business is what you finding and managing more subcontractors?

We've started identifying the jobs that give us the most bang for our buck, either jobs that I can do with the small team or jobs that we got sub out where we have dependable, reliable people to do the jobs. I had a team of plumbers yesterday that went and removed and replaced two water heaters for a client. They charged me $3,000 I told the client we could do it for 3,600 or whatnot. And then, they did the job while I was out doing my own thing. And then I made like $600 on that job.

Okay. That's cool. So that's how you make money where you're not trading your time anymore. You're really telling me what your IP is, your ability to attract the inbound request to do the plumbing repair. Yeah. So what is your marketing strategy? Is it SEO, paid advertising, something else?

We just started a new marketing strategy this year. We've been using AI to kind of help us build this strategy. And essentially what we're doing is we're posting three to five times a week on social media, primarily Facebook and LinkedIn that more size our target audience. We're also asked people for reviews whenever we service them. Right now we have one hundred and sixty two five star reviews. We have 4.9 rating on Google. I made a list

of like all of our top of our jobs that gave us the most return, our biggest bang for our buck. So we made a strategy just to like, every week we're just posting different things on that set topic during the So

what are those top three, the biggest bang for your buck?

One thing that we did is we did like a rock ring project. We just created like a giant rock bed for the client. We did two of those. And, for the numbers, I wanna say we charged the client, 2,900 for that. After everything was said and done, I think I walked away for like 19.

And what are the... What's the smallest job you'll take where if it's too much lower than that, it's just not worth your time?

So somebody wants us do something small like, oh, my doorknob is loose. Can you come fix it? Then I'll tell them like, Hey, yeah, we would love to come help you. Right now we have an $80 minimum. Is there anything else he wants to do while we're there? And with that, that sets the premise that they're going be spending at least this much with us, but then it gives them opportunity to start looking like, oh, well, since you mentioned it, the toilet keeps running and then they'll start adding things to the list and then we'd be walking away with a lot more than the $80.

So you guys have to tell me, as you're watching, if you're trying to help Jordan, let's say you guys are SEO experts watching. If you're Jordan, you're trying to get people to find you that need a toilet repair in Dallas, Texas, what tactic would you try and execute to help the business grow? Leave a comment below. Tell me your plans here. How do you grow this business?

Essentially, wanna get 6 figures, is about 8,300 a month. So that's what I've been shooting for last year.

You want 6 figures or 7 figures? Oh, well, I'm going

for it for 6 right now. Come on. We gotta

go to 7 figures.

Okay. Can do seven.

Let's do eight.

Eight. Eight.

But you told me last year you did a $150. So you already did that. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So We gotta go bigger. Okay. So what... Tell me what's the plan to go bigger?

Alright. Leaning on my subs more, getting them. Again, we're just pushing more jobs, bigger jobs that they can do and fulfill without me doing it. And then more so finding the jobs that I can do that can generate the most revenue and just pushing those jobs. One of my partners, they're master plumbers. He has a partner with them, and he just told me that, like, they have this one job. They can do it one or two days.

Mhmm.

Can make 10 k from it. It's called a dick job or whatnot, so I think it's more so, like... Because they've got maybe, like, a foundation leak, something like that, I'm imagining or whatnot. It brings them home, like, 10 k in about a day or two. I just wanna get to the point where I could do that same thing or why I even do it for him. You know? I just find the big jobs, give it

to him. And he does it for eight. I get two. Or maybe we we quote it for 12. He gets his 10. I get my two. I know that's kinda small. You're trying to go go bigger or whatnot, but that's an extra, like, what, 8 k in a in a in a month for me not even having to do a job. And that's like a quarantine, you know?

Understood. Yeah. So I'm... What... I'm obviously looking for companies where I can write a check. The founder has a clear vision to grow the business. Yeah. And if they align, you know, we do a deal together. Yeah. What you just described, finding more of that kind of work. Do you need capital to run an SEO strategy? I mean, what is your ask? Do you have an ask for capital?

We just adopted, if you will, our SEO strategy. And so I actually have two people who are helping me out with it now. There are some things that we could fine tune. We're still working on, I guess, dialing it in and just learning as we go.

I feel like I'm having to work extra hard here to figure out a way to give you money, which is not... Never a good position to be in. Do you have a... Like a concrete ask? Like, you need x amount of money to do y thing?

With the handyman, it's like you kinda start with very low, like, capital. And so you're more so like, I need a screwdriver for a job. I price that into the job. So, you know, I could

get Jordan, I'm not trying to write you a $10 check to go to Home Depot and buy a screwdriver.

Yeah. I'll just use an example. I'm just saying, usually you're able to get what you need to do the job within the money for the job, if that makes sense. You probably send materials and labor into the job.

I get that. What I'm trying to push on is thinking about expansion. Right? So if you knew, for example, you could spend $20,000 and own the SEO for every time someone in Dallas searched, I need help with a dig job because you know that makes you $2 a pop. Yeah. That would be a very clear use of capital, but I'm having to pull very hard here to give you, like, have you give me something where you feel confident you could take capital and grow the business.

Mhmm. SEO is your specialty and so you know how to like put in a dollar and get 20 back, but that that's not really my forte Mhmm. Unfortunately.

Tell me more about just how you think about money in general. Right? As you run the company, cash flow is very important. How do you manage your bank balance? Was there ever a moment where you almost ran out of capital and shut the company down?

Not necessarily. I tend to work really hard. Honestly, I'm a good go getter, and I have, like, a certain amount of money that I wanna make, and then I always shoot for... I go for more than what I need just in case there is a slow month or whatever. We already have like six months, six months set aside for emergency

That's awesome. That's great. I'm about ready to walk out and be like, man, we couldn't figure out a deal. Just, I mean, you're a hustler, last shot. Is there an ask that you have for capital or is it better to just wait and come back later?

I guess I don't know what I don't know in order to scale the business. Like, when we were talking earlier, was like, okay, yeah, if I wanna get to $10.20 k a month, can do this, this, this. I can bring it home extra Kenya like, we want a million. I'm like, oh, okay. Know? Like, that's good. And that's that's something that I could shoot for, but I'm I'm still figuring out how I could go that route, if that makes sense.

Yeah. Well, look. My job is to come in to obviously and and meet founders in different cities and find someone that has ambition and passion and a vision for how they wanna scale and grow. But other times, you know, you've built a great business and it's cash flowing and you got six months saved in the bank and there's just no opportunity for me to write a check to help the company grow faster. I sort of feel

like we're in that situation right now. So I don't see an opportunity to make an investment today, but I'm gonna root for you. I love the business. You've scaled from being a teacher, quitting a $60,000 a year job to jumping into this, doing a $150,000 last year. Mhmm. You'll break hopefully 200,000 this year. Yeah. And then when you break a million, you'll call me and go, I'm ready for a million dollar investment now. Right?

Yes, sir. Sounds good, man.

Alright, Jordan.

It's good

to meet you, man. Thanks for your time. Yeah. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Click here to subscribe so you don't miss out. Also, wanna see more deals like this one? Click here to see the next deal immediately.