He Makes $27K/Month Sending Text Messages

Summary

Aaron Fooks describes building a referral-pipeline service for home-service businesses. The company connects businesses whose services appear at different points in the same customer journey—for example, roofers with siding contractors, or custom builders with electricians. Rather than selling shared consumer leads, the service creates business-to-business relationships that can generate repeat referrals.

The idea came from Aaron’s work as a receptionist for a siding-repair company. He saw that a larger siding company regularly referred smaller jobs it didn’t handle to his employer, creating value for the customer, the referring company, and the specialist. Aaron began by arranging introductions, initially charging about $150 per appointment. After seeing the potential value of the jobs and ongoing referrals, he shifted to packaged relationship-building services.

Business Model and Positioning

• Target customers: Home-service businesses that can receive work from complementary businesses, including painters, electricians, siding contractors, landscapers, and general contractors.
• Core offer: Find prospective referral partners, identify current projects or bids, and connect those opportunities to the client. Aaron emphasizes that he sells relationships and referral channels, not just one-off leads.
• Value proposition: A partner may send repeated jobs over time, while shared lead platforms can sell the same consumer inquiry to several businesses.
• Revenue model:
  • Early pricing: roughly $150 per appointment.
  • Later package: about $6,000 for 10 introductions or appointments.
  • Ongoing relationship management and nurturing: about $250–$500 per month.
• Guarantee: The package includes a target of two real bid opportunities within the first 20 appointments. If a partner fails to deliver a quote within the agreed period, the company replaces that partner rather than refunding the client.

Outreach and Sales Playbook

1. Start by finding supply-side opportunities. Contact businesses that may have projects needing a complementary service. For instance, ask roofers whether they currently need a siding bid.
2. Use a concrete project to establish credibility. Once a live bid is identified, contact the relevant trade business with a specific opportunity. This helps demonstrate value before asking them to buy a package.
3. Lead with a partnership, not a generic sales pitch. Explain that the businesses are complementary and non-competing, and ask whether they would be open to working together.
4. Call promptly when someone responds. Aaron’s process is to follow up with a human phone call, qualify the project and business, and capture details before presenting the opportunity to a client.
5. Sell the ongoing channel. Use the first opportunity to build trust, then discuss how many introductions the client wants and whether they need continuing relationship management.
6. Nurture the network. Track who referred what, follow up with partners, and use automated messages to reactivate the network when relevant events occur—for example, contacting roofing partners after a storm.
7. Match incentives to decision-makers. Aaron found conversations were more productive with owners, who benefit directly from new referral relationships, than with project managers or other gatekeepers.

Outreach Metrics and Operations

• In the early appointment-setting model, Aaron reported calling 20–40 businesses per day and setting about two appointments, a stated 5–10% appointment rate.
• His first client’s appointment show rate was about 50–60%. Aaron and the client held weekly review calls to assess which prospects showed, qualified, and converted, then refined the approach.
• For campaigns seeking partner businesses, he reported texting a few hundred businesses at a time, with roughly a 2–5% response rate to a project or bid request. A campaign might produce two to four businesses with an actual bid opportunity.
• For outreach to prospective clients when the company already had a valuable opportunity to offer, he reported sending around 100 messages and seeing a 10–15% response rate.
• Aaron used GoHighLevel to manage contacts, calls, texts, tags, automations, and campaign pacing. He described dripping messages rather than sending everything at once, helping keep follow-up manageable.
• The business had no employees at the time discussed, though one caller was paid commission—about 30% of the appointments he handled, with no base salary.
• Aaron estimated software and messaging costs at roughly $500–$600 per month overall and described margins as around 90%. These are his estimates, not independently verified figures.

Revenue and Growth

The business reportedly generated about $14,000 in total monthly revenue in June and approximately $27,000 in September, combining one-time packages and recurring management revenue.

Aaron put monthly recurring revenue at about $16,000 at the time of the interview. He distinguished this from total monthly revenue, which also included one-time package sales. He said the shift to packaged pricing and relationship nurturing drove the growth over roughly the prior nine months.

Examples of Client Value

• Painter: A text campaign to custom builders and interior designers generated four bids within 48 hours, ranging from $17,000 to $64,000.
• Electrician: Aaron’s team brought an electrician access to a luxury builder with five projects, including a 10,000-square-foot home. He estimated one potential electrical job at about $110,000.
• Landscaper: A client seeking commercial work was introduced to a development of 80 homes, valued at roughly $1 million to $3.5 million per home, plus the HOA work. The opportunity included a reported $4 million contract bid and introductions to homeowners in the development.
• Roofing and siding: A roofing company could refer siding work it did not handle; the siding contractor could then bid on the additional work. The discussion gave an example of a combined roofing-and-siding project worth $40,000–$50,000, with the siding portion around $15,000–$20,000 and a possible 5% referral payment to the roofing business.

Recommendations and Cautions

• Build the offer around a clear, immediate business outcome; a real project is more persuasive than an abstract promise of future leads.
• Price based on the value and repeat potential of the relationship, but use early projects to prove value and learn what clients will pay for.
• Review campaign outcomes with clients regularly and track qualification, show-up, and conversion results.
• Differentiate from shared-lead marketplaces by emphasizing exclusivity, trust, and repeat referrals.
• Start with direct human outreach. Aaron’s advice is to set a daily call target and make the calls, particularly in relationship-driven trades.
• Choose a business idea that genuinely interests you rather than chasing whichever software feature or business model looks easiest.
• The host and guest briefly discussed rules around business texting. The interview did not establish legal requirements; businesses should verify applicable consent, privacy, and messaging regulations before running outreach campaigns.

Presenters and sources: Chris Koerner, host of The Koerner Office Podcast; guest Aaron Fooks, associated in the subtitles with Hyros/Hytros.