Epic Entrepreneurs

From Small Jobs To Big Wins: How A Handyman Scales With Profit, People, And Process with Dennis Koval

• Bill Gilliland

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A five-star review doesn’t happen by accident—it’s built on numbers, people, and promises you keep. We sit down with Dennis Koval of FixnCarolina Pro Handyman Service to unpack how a local home services company scales with profit discipline and a people-first mindset. From job-level cost tracking to a satisfaction guarantee that holds final payment until the client is truly happy, Dennis shares an operating system any service business can adapt.

We start with the real problem a pro handyman solves: all the small but critical tasks homeowners don’t know who to call for. Dennis explains why tracking materials, labor hours, and target gross profit per job is non-negotiable, and how quietly stacking $19.99 subscriptions can bleed cash if no one audits the tools. He walks through the playbook for clear communication—owning setbacks, explaining fixes, and leaving homes cleaner than they were found—so the only visible change is the improvement. That discipline turns one-time visits into repeat business and over eighty five-star reviews.

The conversation turns to culture. Dennis treats employees as the first customers, hiring for openness, friendliness, cleanliness, and attention to detail. He shows how that approach drives rapport with homeowners, fewer callbacks, and a calmer schedule. We also talk boundaries: setting work hours, planning vacations with coverage, and resisting the urge to reply from the beach. The quick-fire segment hits education, planning for the worst while hoping for the best, and drawing inspiration from family and local founders. We close with practical advice for owners: invest in your team, obsess over service, keep learning, and build peer circles that keep you out of the weeds.

Ready to turn small jobs into big wins? Listen now, subscribe for more conversations with builders and owners, and share the one change you’ll make this week. If this helped, leave a review so others can find the show.


Guest info: 

dennis@fixncarolina.com

https://www.facebook.com/fixncarolina/


Thanks for Listening. You may contact me or our team at https://billgilliland.biz/

All the best!
Bill

Thanks for listening. Please hit the subscribe button, leave us a 5 star review, and share this podcast. You can reach me at williamgilliland@actioncoach.com or at https://billgilliland.biz/

All the best!

Bill

SPEAKER_00:

All right, welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. I am Cliff McCray, filling in for Bill Gilliland with your local business training and coaching firm, Action Coach Business Growth Partners. I'm excited to have Dennis Koval with Fix and Carolina Pro Handyman Services on today as our Epic Entrepreneurist guest. So, Dennis, uh please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself and your company and what primary products or services you offer the community.

SPEAKER_01:

It's a pleasure to be here, Cliff. My name is Dennis Koval with Fixing Carolina Pro Handyman Service. Um we help homeowners deal with any of those tasks that they may have that they don't know who to turn to. So a lot of contractors do bigger projects. A lot of contractors are specialized in regards to plumbing, electrical, HVAC, and so on. And we help streamline the process of any getting any small tasks done for homeowners.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, great, great. Love it. So if you had to start from square one in your business, what would you do differently?

SPEAKER_01:

If I had to start from square one, what I would do different is keeping track of the numbers. The numbers show if we're making a profit or not. It shows if certain projects that we do are do are profitable if we need to adjust. Um and then keeping up with finances, uh making sure everything's covered for the month, overhead, uh profit and whatnot. At the end of the day, we're in business to make a profit.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, okay, great, great. So, what have your biggest learnings been as an owner and employer since you started your business?

SPEAKER_01:

My biggest things that I learned are keeping track of numbers, like I stated before. And then also once you start hiring on employees, their employees become your number one customer. Um, if you treat them well, they're gonna go around and treat other companies well, and they're not gonna go around your back and treat your company any worse than they were treated. So treating customers well and then treating your employees well prior to treating your customers well.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, okay. And going back to what you said on the first question, you know, if you had to start from square one and kind of look at your finances a little bit better, what what would you recommend business owners do? Like would you would you recommend them to use some kind of service to track their expenses or a finances? Or what would you recommend?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I would recommend them to use some sort of software or at least like spreadsheets, Google Sheets, or uh Excel on each job, make sure they track costs of those jobs, so what the material costs or whatnot are, and then how much labor hours they put in those jobs and making sure that they receive a certain amount of gross profit. And then in connection with that, if they track their numbers in regards to their overhead, so making sure that they don't they're not paying for systems that they're not using because uh the more systems you have, uh it can be death bet uh million cuts. So um at the end of the day, if you're paying for a$19.99 subscription here and there, and you start to accumulate those after a couple months or years, and you're not watching out for those, um at the end of the day, it could just slowly drain your bank account and you just wonder where all your profit went to. Uh so it's just tracking those and tracking your overhead.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, yeah. No, I love it, love it. Uh so what are some common misconceptions about running a business and how do you address them?

SPEAKER_01:

Um if you're not if you're not keeping up with your money, with your overhead and whatnot, a lot of people think that you're just flown with money and that you can pay for anything. Uh, you can take off, take off of work whenever you want. Although we are flexible with our time, like we could take off for 30 minutes to an hour, or take off a couple of days. There's a lot of preparation that we need to do. And if you don't prepare in that way in regards to scheduling and letting homeowners know or customers know that we're off for those couple days, or if you don't have employees to fill in whenever we're gone, um, that can definitely hurt us in the long run.

unknown:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. Now, what have you uh attributed to your growth so far, company?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh satisfaction guarantee is what we focus on. So being cleanly having cleanliness whenever we go into customers' home, when we leave their home, it looks better than when we got there. Um, they don't notice a difference except for the improvements that we made on their home. So focusing on cleanliness, uh quality of work, and communic being communicative with homeowners. A lot of people they understand that things can go south, things don't go as well as we want them to. And uh a lot of times they're not happy if you keep them in the dark. So as long as you communicate with homeowners, hey, this happened or that happened, and this is what we are going to do to resolve it, a lot of people are okay with that. And they're they're open and happy that you came that you brought it to their intention attention and that you're doing whatever you can to resolve it.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. Now you said you guys have a satisfaction guarantee. Is that for any anything you guys do?

SPEAKER_01:

For everything that we touch, if they're not satisfied, we don't accept final payment until they're satisfied and we do whatever we can to make sure they're satisfied.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, okay, yeah. No, I like that a lot. I like that a lot. So basically, you know, if you're in, you know, because like you said, it's a handyman business. So if you're working on somebody's, you know, back porch or fixing something for them and they don't like the way this looks or whatever, you guys will redo it. No, no charge to them. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01:

So if uh we always like to be upfront with a lot of things, we try to consult with the homeowner on how this is gonna look or that's gonna look, so then we don't put a lot of time and effort into doing this, uh doing this route or that route. Um, and that I think helps mitigate a lot of the questions that homeowners have, and at the end of the day, most times they're satisfied. But if there are certain things that need to be corrected, because we can explain the whole process all day, but visually, a lot of homeowners are not able to um visualize what something's gonna look like. So once something is completed, then they can see what it looks like, and it might not be the way they thought it was gonna look like. So we're more than happy to make changes um to the to a certain extent, I guess you could say, as long as it's not like rebuilding the whole house.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Because if we did something small, but anything that we touched, yeah, we're definitely gonna make the changes that we need to to make sure they're satisfied. Because homeowners, they're living with it for the next five, ten, fifteen, twenty years. And the way I see it is if it was my personal house, I don't want to notice something and then live with that little nuance every single day the rest of however long I lived there for.

SPEAKER_00:

So okay. So how do you balance your personal life with the demands of running a business?

SPEAKER_01:

That is very tricky to balance balance personal and family life or personal and um business life. We just have to set hard guidelines of when we work and when we set our phones down. We have to for sure set our phones down in an area where we are not distracted and just have certain guidelines.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, great, great. Now, how does how about vacation and everything like that? Does that work the same way?

SPEAKER_01:

That works the same way. Um, a lot of times when we go on vacation and it helps to have the right employees to fill in all those holes, um, so then they can hold at least hold down the fork while we are gone. But there have been times in the past if you're wearing all your all the hats in your business where you would get a call or a text from a customer while you're in the middle of laying on the beach in Florida with family. Um it's hard not to respond right away. And it's hard not to respond within a certain time frame just to let to just to be uh customers, customer friendly. Um so it's hard not to do that, but then you have to set certain things up and plan ahead of time to make sure customers know that you're around and you're you can help service them, but you're away for a couple of days.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. And what qualities do you look for employ in employees? And how do you foster a positive and productive work environment?

SPEAKER_01:

The qualities that I look for in employees are open-mindedness, um, for them to be open about learning a new skill, um friendly. So then whenever they are working with customers, they're open to speaking with them and they're not closed off uh because our employees are a representation of who we are as a company. Um, so the and then cleanliness and attention to detail, those are the four main things that we look for.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. Do you look for any like personality traits at all or just just those two things?

SPEAKER_01:

Um, personality traits. As long as they're open and they're not too introverted, where they're open to having a conversation with homeowners, um, building rapport. That's the number one thing. A lot of times, if if you have somebody that's a little bit closed off, it's difficult to have a conversation with them and build rapport with them. Um so personality-wise, it's just them being open and uh honest with everybody that they talk with.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, okay, that makes sense. All right, so this is gonna be the the next one is gonna be the quick fire round. So basically, I'm just going to say a word, and I just kind of want you to tell me the first thing you think of when you hear this word in regards to your business. Uh education.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh it's important to always be educating ourselves, either on a process, on our product, on our ideal customer, on ways that we can improve with working with our employees, or ways we can make the process smoother for homeowners and clients that we work with. Perfect, perfect.

SPEAKER_00:

What about planning?

SPEAKER_01:

Planning is it's hard to plan a lot of times because things are always ever changing. A project may take hours longer than we expect it to, or days longer than we expect it to, or uh customers may change certain things on the project, which change which changes and the plan. Um, but we definitely have to plan, uh plan for the worst, but hope for the best.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh now what about inspiration? Inspiration. Our my family inspires me to do what I do and making an impact in other people's lives, either our employees' lives or homeowners' lives, or lives of people in our community that we don't talk to on a day-to-day basis. Um, and then we're also inspired by other other founders and other companies that work in the same community we do.

SPEAKER_00:

Commitment?

SPEAKER_01:

Commitment, uh we are committed to our customers to make sure they received they're satisfied and they received a um service like no other.

SPEAKER_00:

So what words of advice would you offer to other business owners who are looking to grow?

SPEAKER_01:

Words of advice are employees are your number one customers, um, so you should make sure you treat them fairly. Uh hire an employee that you would want to be around every single day. Um customer service is another piece of advice I would have. Make sure you pay attention to customer service. Um and then education, make sure you keep educating yourself and surrounding yourself with like-minded people. A lot of times we can be in the weeds working on our business, but it's it's easier and it's difficult because then we there are different points in life that we become like you could say a little bit depressed in, and we can't assimilate with other people in our life, so it's best to surround yourself with other like-minded people.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Any upcoming events that we personally have no, but I am looking forward to starting up something where I can rub shoulders with other uh other um business owners.

SPEAKER_00:

And what would you say? What what's the next big thing for fixing Carolina?

SPEAKER_01:

I haven't thought that far ahead. Um but make more of an impact on people in our community, homeowners, uh, customers, and uh hoping to bring on more employees, more technicians to help us with our day-to-day tasks.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, so you're really looking to grow and expand a little bit? Grow and ex expand, yep. Okay, great, great. And lastly, what's the best way for someone uh to find you or get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_01:

Um, if they search us up on Google, Fixin Carolina Pro Handling Service, they can find us on Google. We have over 85-star reviews, all from customers that are satisfied with our work. Um, they can call us at 828-707-9086. They can email us at support at fixincarolina.com. Uh, yeah, that's the best way is to reach out to us.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, any social media?

SPEAKER_01:

We have Facebook set up, but we're working through the process of setting up our Instagram. Um, I think those are the two big ones that we're setting up, but we're setting up profiles throughout all of social media so then people can find us anywhere and follow us for anything we may have to offer in the future.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, so you said you're setting it up. So when do you when do you expect the Instagram to be to be ready to go?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh before the end of the year, so maybe in the next couple weeks. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, perfect, perfect. Yeah, fantastic. Thank you so much for being a part of the community and and thank you for being on the podcast. We certainly wish you continued success.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh thank you, Cliff.

SPEAKER_00:

It was a pleasure. Yeah, thank you very much.