Todd Krause owns The Cleaning Authority in Fishers, on the northeast side of Indianapolis. He came to it from a career in institutional finance. His job ended on March 6, 2020, and ten days later he found a cleaning company for sale almost in his backyard.

The financials were solid. Then he got inside. There were thirty-two to thirty-four employees on paper, and on a good day twenty-two showed up. Every morning started with the managers telling each team what they'd done wrong the day before. Cleaner turnover was north of 200 percent a year, and the company was losing about 60 percent of its customers annually.

He told the managers to stop, and he tied bonuses directly to customer feedback. Mrs. Smith says the team did a good job, and a known amount lands on the next paycheck. She leaves a review and there's another. The crews didn't believe any of it until the first couple of teams got paid. The culture changed within weeks.

Other owners tell him that sounds expensive. Todd is a CPA, so he has the number. He says it cut operating expenses by more than eight percent, which he puts at $320,000 a year in profit on $4 million in revenue. He has since been named Franchisee of the Year by the International Franchise Association, and again by The Cleaning Authority.

It didn't start with the cleaning company. His father hauled milk for dairy farmers in Wisconsin, and in winter he'd shovel snow off their roofs so the sheds wouldn't collapse. You can hear where Todd got it.

Find Todd at silversunconsulting.com. His email and cell number are on the About page.

Hosted by Ashley DePiano, Duct Tape Marketing certified fractional CMO.

New episode every week.

Want to be a guest? connectidcrm.com/handshake-podcast

Dave Daley runs BrightSide Restoration in San Diego. He built four companies in four different industries and crashed one to the ground.

The one that crashed was a burger joint. Four hundred burgers at the soft opening, a line around the building, the mayor and the fire chief in the room, and a general manager frozen solid. Tickets were taking an hour. He fired the manager that same day and it still ended in personal bankruptcy. His own diagnosis: he stopped following the business plan that had already worked three times.

He's 60 now and scaling the restoration company through a private equity lens, which means answering one question. Does the business run without you? Most owners can't. Dave's view is blunter than that. They never built a business at all. They bought a job that carries all the liability and pays them last.

We also got into the two years that rearranged how he sees all of it. The bankruptcy, then his father's diagnosis, then a question he asked him in a hospital room a month before his 92nd birthday.

Find Dave at brightsiderest.com and on Instagram at @davedaley.

Hosted by Ashley DePiano, Duct Tape Marketing certified fractional CMO.

New episode every Monday.

Want to be a guest? connectidcrm.com/handshake-podcast

Mario Lanzarotti runs the Sovereign Advisor Group out of Cape Town. He was born in Germany to an Italian father, and his parents ran an Italian restaurant for nearly thirty years. They worked until one in the morning and there was nobody to watch him, so he spent his childhood evenings asleep in the storage room on top of the supplies. Mostly pizza dough.

He moved to New York in 2015 and talked his way from intern to co-founder of a custom shoe company. Then he spent five years running its operations badly enough to become the thing holding it back. Redoing work his team had already finished. Getting pulled back into client accounts. And telling himself, the whole time, that he didn't have time to build the systems that would have given him time.

It ended with a panic attack in the middle of his own influencer event. He walked out, sat down in Bryant Park, and called his girlfriend in Germany.

He sold the business in 2019. Since then he's worked with more than two thousand founders across fifteen countries, on two things at once. The operating standards and acquisition systems a business actually needs. And the reason the founder never gets around to building them.

He's also my advisor, which I should probably admit up front. He made me do the calendar exercise you'll hear in this episode. I didn't like the number.

Find Mario on LinkedIn, where he posts Monday to Friday. His site is mariolanzarotti.com, and you can apply there for a free diagnostic session or join the Founders Room, a weekly session he runs for founders.

Hosted by Ashley DePiano, Duct Tape Marketing certified fractional CMO.

New episode every week.

Want to be a guest? connectidcrm.com/handshake-podcast

Steve Barton created The Game of Ten. In Portland, Maine, he was arranging flowers at eight years old, standing on a stool in his father's shop. At twenty-two he was three days from a one way ticket to Germany when his mother called to say his father had had a stroke and the business needed him. He stayed for thirty years and took it from two hundred thousand to two million.

How he did it is the part your audience will recognize. A wholesale license in Maine cost five dollars, so he bought one, called growers around the country, and told them he had two good clients. They were his own two shops. When Maine banned billboards

he put a mural on the side of his building instead and argued the city planners into it.

Then he sold it, and spent the years since working out a framework for the thing the numbers never answered. It is called The Game of Ten® and about two thirds of the way through this episode he stops explaining it and walks me through it live. Six phrases, about twenty seconds. I said them out loud on my own show.

Find Steve at stevebartoncoaching.com, where you can also download The Father, The Son, and The Aha Moment, the book he wrote with his son. He is on LinkedIn as Steve Barton.

Hosted by Ashley DePiano, Duct Tape Marketing certified fractional CMO.

New episodes every week.

Want to be a guest? connectidcrm.com/handshake-podcast

Most people play it safe when everything falls apart. Lance Cayko started F9 Productions.

In 2009, with the construction industry losing half its workforce and no jobs to be had, Lance and his partner Alex Gore did the opposite of what everyone around them was doing, they launched F9 Productions, a design-build firm in Northern Colorado, out of a one-bedroom apartment on Craigslist.

Twenty years later, F9 has grown to a team of 11, twice ranked #1 on BizWest's list of fastest-growing private companies, won international architecture awards, and built one of the top architecture podcasts in the world with over a million listeners.

But the most valuable thing Lance learned wasn't about design or business growth. It was knowing exactly when to stop hiring: before customer service declines. After watching two competing firms lose their edge the moment they crossed the 12-person mark, Lance made a decision most entrepreneurs never make: to stay intentionally small, win higher fees, and never trade quality for scale.

In this episode we talk about:

• Growing up with a Rich Dad / Poor Dad experience in rural North Dakota and finding his first mentor at age 13
• Starting F9 during the Great Recession with no jobs, no capital, and a one-bedroom apartment
• The Craigslist ad that launched their first clients, and what it taught Lance about standing out
• How he and Alex Gore went from hating each other in college to building a firm their professor called a "Renaissance team"
• The 12-person rule, and why Lance is convinced crossing it destroys the thing that made you great
• Wearing all three hats: architect, builder, and developer — and why more people in the trades should do the same
• Founding Longmont Community Gardens and what growing food for underserved communities means to someone who's known food insecurity firsthand
• Why Lance believes in work-life harmony, not balance, and what that actually looks like on a Tuesday

If you've ever built something and wondered how to grow it without losing what made it worth building in the first place, this conversation is for you.

Find Lance:

• F9 Productions → f9productions.com
• Inside the Firm Podcast → insidethefirmpodcast.com
• LinkedIn → linkedin.com/in/lancecayko

Marjan Radi, owner of Radi General Contracting Corp, spent thousands on Home Advisor leads before he ran the numbers on what they actually closed. He competed against 15 other Westchester County contractors for the same job. And still walked away with nothing.

Then he decided to find another way, that's when he met Ashley DePiano of Connectid.

In this episode, I sit down with Marjan and Vitore, a husband and wife team based in Westchester, NY who turned years of frustration with bad leads into a business that now closes 50-60% of the jobs they quote.

Marjan started in construction in 2008, trained by some of the best in Italy, and that old-world craftsmanship shows in everything they do. From full home renovations to kitchens, bathrooms, and everything in between, Radi General Contracting brings a level of care and artistry that keeps clients coming back and leaving glowing reviews.

But great work alone wasn't enough. They were burning money on platforms that sent them fake leads, price shoppers, and people who never called back. Sound familiar?

Once they made the switch to Connectid, everything shifted. Better clients. Easier closes. Steady work, even in January. They called it "a blessing." We'll let that speak for itself.

If you're a local contractor who's tired of throwing money at lead platforms that don't deliver, this episode is going to hit close to home.

🔍 View Radi General Contracting Corp Online:
https://www.radigeneralcontractingcorp.com/

Want to be a guest on the podcast?: https://connectidcrm.com/handshake-podcast

When Yessenia Lauzardo started Rise Interiors in Miami, the advice she got was that the market was full.

Yessy's father was abruptly laid off from his construction job during the recession. She didn't just help him find work, she built a company around it and made him her first employee. Eleven years later, that leap of faith has become a thriving Miami remodeling business known for high-end transformations and a deeply personal approach to every client.

In this episode of The Handshake Podcast, host Ashley DePiano sits down with Yessy to talk about the messy, rewarding reality of growing a construction business: scaling up, downsizing when growth outpaced capacity, and rebuilding toward what she calls her "2.0 version."

We get into:

-Starting from small handyman repairs and teaching herself the commercial side on YouTube
-Why she's still on the job site instead of behind a desk
-The permitting nightmare that can stall projects for months — and cost clients
-Competing against cut-rate handymen (and the clients who come back after a bad job)
-Balancing a growing company with raising a family
-The 1940s home she's renovating for a client seven years in the making
-Her best advice for anyone entering the trades: save for a rainy day, stay involved, and don't give up

A conversation about craftsmanship, reputation, and why people hire the person, not just the company.

Korey Mack, owner of Start the Party, in Dallas TX, found out he'd worked a job for Tony Romo after the fact, from the work order.

In this episode, I sit down with Korey, owner of a bounce house and event rental company that's been bringing fun (and a few unexpected lessons) to families across North Texas for over a decade.

Korey shares how growing up in his dad's and grandfather's businesses shaped his approach to entrepreneurship, why he refuses to compromise on customer service, and the surprising moment he realized he'd just delivered a bounce house to NFL quarterback Tony Romo. From cleaning units in front of customers during COVID to learning the hard way that "trust but verify" can save you thousands, this conversation is packed with real-world wisdom for small business owners.

You'll hear:

-How recurring institutional customers became his secret to staying afloat
-The expensive lesson that changed how he vets every customer
-Why he's building this business for his three kids — Elijah, Nia, and Ezekiel
-The unexpected ways inflatables can open up brand new revenue streams
-How to balance optimism with a healthy dose of skepticism in business

Whether you're running a home service business, an event rental company, or just love hearing the real stories behind the scenes — this one's for you.

If you are in the market for a bounce house or water slide and live in the Dallas Fort-Worth area, visit https://hootdanny.com/ to hire Korey for you next event.

👉 Want to be a guest? Visit https://connectidcrm.com/handshake-podcast to learn how we help small business owners turn their reputation into recurring revenue.