#243 Noah Jackson & AJ Wadian (Premier Home Pros) — $0 to $250M in 3 Years — Bootstrapping America’s Fastest Growing Remodeling Company

AJ Wadian [00:00:00]:
Every time I move away, I'm like, man, something's missing, you know? And it's just, I'm rooted here. It's where I'm from. It's where family's at. It's where home's always going to be. And, you know, as crazy as it sounds that you love snow, I don't love snow, but I love something about Northeast Ohio that always makes it home for me. There's just nothing more rewarding than being able to do it in your home, you know, and be able to do it right where you like to be at. So it's just an honor to be able to service the community and continue to grow and help other people achieve what they're trying to achieve in their life as well by Premier being a vehicle of that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:31]:
Welcome to the Lay of the Land podcast, where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio. I am your host, Jeffrey Stern, and today I had the real pleasure of speaking with Noah Jackson and AJ Wadian, the co-founders of Premier Home Pros, the nation's fastest growing bathroom remodeling company. Launched in December 2022 with just $65,000 of their own capital and a decision made around a dinner table, Premier Home Pros has scaled from zero to more than $150 million in annual gross sales in just 3 years, surpassing $100 million in sales in under 24 months, all without raising a single dollar of outside capital. Headquartered in Canton, Ohio, Premier now operates across 14 states and continues to expand at a pace that very few companies in any industry achieve. In our conversation, Noah and AJ walk through the entire evolution of the business, from doing over half a million in sales in their first month and the relentless execution required to turn that early momentum into a scalable multi-state operation. We talk about what it really means to build the plane while flying it, the mistakes they've made along the way, why bathrooms are far more complex than they may appear, and how process, data, and elite talent can compound when aligned correctly. We also explored their leadership evolution, how the business at times has grown faster than the people, what it takes to lead from the front, how they disagree productively as partners, and why Northeast Ohio remains home even as the company scales increasingly national. This is a conversation about ambition, about resilience, systems, and building something enduring right here in Northeast Ohio.

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:11]:
Noah and AJ are operating at a level of demonstrated performance intensity and conviction that is rare and admirable. I took a lot away from their ambition and focus, and I hope you all enjoy our conversation. Lay of the Land is brought to you and is proudly sponsored by Roundstone Insurance. Headquartered in Rocky River, Ohio, Roundstone shares Lay of the Land's same passion for bold ideas and lasting impact from our community's entrepreneurs, innovators, and leaders. Since 2005, Roundstone has pioneered a self-funded captive health insurance model that delivers robust savings for small and medium-sized businesses. They're part of the solution to rising healthcare costs, helping employers offer affordable, high-quality care while driving job creation and economic growth throughout Northeast Ohio. Like many of the voices featured on Lay of the Land, including Roundstone's founder and CEO, Mike Schroeder, Roundstone believes entrepreneurship, innovation, and community to be the cornerstones of progress. To learn more about how Roundstone is transforming employee health benefits by empowering employers to save thousands in per-employee, per-year healthcare costs, please visit roundstoneinsurance.com.

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:20]:
Roundstone Insurance, Built for entrepreneurs, backed by innovation, committed to Cleveland.

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:26]:
So I want to get right into it, but for those tuning in via audio, we'll do just a, a brief set of introductions here so people can tie voices to who each of you are, and then we'll, we'll dive right into it. I know if you want to just kick us off.

Noah Jackson [00:03:43]:
Yeah, my name's Noah Jackson. Along with AJ, I'm one of the founders and owners of Premier From Northeast Ohio all my life. So it's, it's nice to connect with a, with a local podcast and, you know, have a good discussion today.

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:57]:
Right on.

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:58]:
AJ.

AJ Wadian [00:03:58]:
Well, no, introduce me. Alrighty. My name's AJ. I'm one of the founders and CEO of Premier Home Pros, bathroom remodeling company based out of Akron, Ohio, serving Northeast Ohio amongst 21 other states across the US. And we're a fast-growing home improvement company. Owned by, you know, some young adults that are super enthusiastic and ambitious to be entrepreneurs and to do great things in the community.

Noah Jackson [00:04:24]:
Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:04:24]:
So I'm certainly excited to unpack that ambition and the journey you guys have been on. I want to get right into it. I think when most people today would hear about a company reaching and surpassing $100 million in sales in a matter of months from a timeframe perspective, they, you know, AI is what's going to come to mind. I don't imagine many folks are going to anticipate that that is a, you know, a home market company and doing the kind of work that you're doing. And so I'm just personally fascinated and excited to learn more about how you guys have made this a reality and the journey that you've been on to build what I think is one of the most ambitious companies on a pretty remarkable growth trajectory. But yeah, maybe just to help us set the stage for that, you know, with that, kind of growth and, and what you guys have achieved in mind, just paint a picture of, of how your, your personal paths intertwined and, and kind of the origins of, of where this, this idea in the first place even came from.

AJ Wadian [00:05:22]:
You want me to kick it off, Noah?

Noah Jackson [00:05:24]:
All right.

AJ Wadian [00:05:24]:
So, you know, it goes back a long way. You know, me and, me and Noah been in the industry quite some time. I, I actually, you know, I'm 38 years old, but I, but I really started in the industry at 22. Been in the home and mountain industry for going on year 17 in 2026 here. You know, we both worked for some very large players in the home remodeling industry, you know, Leaf Home being one of them, Window Nation. I had a background at Erie Home, which is now a merger of Leaf Home. So, you know, spent all that time there. And when I was running a sales division for Window Nation, that's when me and Noah kind of crossed paths.

AJ Wadian [00:06:01]:
Noah came in for an interview and was looking for a sales job and kind of turn a different chapter, you know, was, was working more into, uh, like SaaS companies and, and doing a lot of business-to-business sales. And, you know, you got a, got an ad from a recruiter to come in for Window Nation and be, be an opportunity to run a sale, you know, be a sales rep. And we, we crossed paths and realized that like home was really close to each other. Um, you know, we lived like 5 miles apart from each other. We were, we're in the same school district. Uh, we're the same age. We had the same friends, but we didn't know each other. Like we, He went to Perry and I was from Aslan and like we just didn't know each other.

AJ Wadian [00:06:35]:
So kind of weird how that all went when we're like, wow, I know this person. And yeah, that's my friend too. And so we developed a good bond and we, you know, we worked together for a while and then, and I ended up going back to LeafFilter, which I was there previously before Window Nation. They were on this rapid expansion plan. So I went back and me and Noah stayed in touch. And then at that point, probably about a year, year and a half later,, me and Noen getting dinner and I was like, man, you know, you should really look at, you know, taking a, taking a jump again and jumping back into this and coming over to Leaf. And, uh, that conversation was, was pretty lengthy, but the decision was quick. It was like, yep, I'll move to Philadelphia.

AJ Wadian [00:07:13]:
I'll move my family. I'll uproot my new baby and we'll, we'll, we'll go, we're going to travel 7 hours away and during COVID and I'm going to move there. And, you know, and, and that paid fruits to labor. He ended up having an opportunity to be a manager and grow in the organization and we did very, very well there. But as time kind of resonated and it went on and we just got to the point where we were like, man, you know, like Northeast Ohio is home, family's home. My, I had two girls, you know, now 14 and 11, but they were both in school and, and home was still Northeast Ohio, but I was stationed in Philadelphia. So I wanted to kind of turn a chapter and do something different and, and make a change. And that was like a really vulnerable move because like compensation was unbelievable where I was at.

AJ Wadian [00:07:55]:
And I was, I was just, kind of stuck in my own ways of my way of living and not wanting to do that. But me and Noah made a decision to do it and we start a business, right? And I think, and I won't go like deep into that because it would take forever, but I think every entrepreneur has this turn back moment where it's like you, you, you run into some serious resistance somewhere along your journey. And that journey is either forward or backwards. You know, you have a decision to make at some point. It's not always just sunshine and rainbows. So, we, we, uh, we had a decision. The business that we originally started could not, could not stay in business just due to some, some legalities of non-competes and things of that nature. And we had 3 locations.

AJ Wadian [00:08:37]:
We had a location in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and Cleveland. And, you know, we looked at each other and we said we could either financially be ruined probably here, or we can, you know, design something special and try to see what we can do with it. And that's kind of how Premier started. It was, it was literally a Thursday evening at a dinner table and it was me and my wife and we were like, what are we going to do? Like, let's start this business back up. Let's, let's try to keep this footprint going and let's get into something different. Bathrooms was just like, hey, we looked at the competitive landscape and we said, this is something I think we could dominate here. I don't see a big player in the industry. That's how it started.

AJ Wadian [00:09:11]:
It wasn't like a background in installing bathrooms or, you know, knowing much about it. I mean, I sold bathrooms at Erie, you know, a little bit, but it was a supplemental product, what they offer. And, uh, we made that decision on a Thursday. We had the website up on Friday night. We had the logo built the same day and we had leads turned on on Saturday and Monday was our first appointment. And we went out, me and him, and, uh, you know, when you're in, when you're in that kind of mental state to make it work and your back's against the wall, you either claw out or you, you sink. And we went out and we sold this lady, lovely couple, and we sold them on our very first day. We sold our first appointment.

AJ Wadian [00:09:47]:
We got a car and we said, We can do this. And, uh, we had a couple people, stragglers that were at our previous company that, that we owned and they decided to make the switch with Premier. So we had, it was me, him, and me, Noah, and another individual in our first month. And we sold $600,000 our first month. Uh, we sat in front of, you know, I want to say maybe 130 customers and we sold 90% of them, or we sat in front of 90% of them and we sold about 82% of those people. That, that, that said, hey, I want to have you come out for an estimate. And we sold them. And as we got through all that velocity, we realized, okay, that's all great.

AJ Wadian [00:10:22]:
We know we can sell people, like we can possess a ton of value to people, but how the heck are we going to install this stuff? You know? So Noah kind of took the bull by the horns and took in a role that he wasn't familiar with. And we started sourcing products and sourcing installers and getting people that kind of knew a lot more about the installation practices. And that business just took off. And, you know, we, we had those locations in 2023. We did $15 million our first year. You know, the remodeling industry does some cool stuff to keep the industry tight-knit and together, and they put out a publication every year.

Noah Jackson [00:10:55]:
It's called QR500, right?

AJ Wadian [00:10:56]:
It's the top 500 remodeling companies in the United States based on revenue. And we were, we, we made the list. We were the fastest growing home improvement company year one to ever do $15 million. So, At the end of that, me and Noah looked at each other and we said, we know we can do big things and we can do, we can make some waves in the industry, but we're not marketing people. We're sales and operation background. And we really need a marketing person to take us to the next level and to be able to capture the demand. We brought in our third partner at that point and it literally fit like a glove. We're all very different in the Venn diagram, you know, but we work very well together intricately.

AJ Wadian [00:11:34]:
We're all, we know how to just kind of blend together and make things work. And that's kind of the magic behind it is that we're all not afraid to roll the sleeves up and make it happen no matter what position that requires to be. So in 2024, we put gas on the business and we went from $15 to $86 million. We opened 6 more locations. We had 9 locations at the end of 2024. And then in 2025, we opened an additional 5 locations, and we did $151 million last year in our third year of business. And here we are in, in 2026, we'll do a quarter billion dollars in just bathrooms, and we'll do about $35 to $40 million in our newest product line, which is flooring. So it's been a great ride.

AJ Wadian [00:12:19]:
It's come with a lot of stress, a lot of ups and downs, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. And it's, uh, you know, it's, it's, it's, we look back a lot of times and we try to, we have to give ourselves some reflection and be proud of the moments. 'Cause it's been a, it's been not easy getting here, but few can say that they've done what we've been able to do as a team. So I'm real, I'm really proud of the team.

Jeffrey Stern [00:12:37]:
Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:12:38]:
I mean, it's a remarkable journey the, the, the whole way through. I mean, from sales on, on day 1 to $600K in sales in the first month. I mean, you guys obviously have figured out some things that other people haven't and have been able to execute against that. And I, I'm curious how you would articulate what you feel that you understand that maybe others don't grasp that has allowed for you to experience and realize the kind of, of growth that you have in such a short amount of time.

Noah Jackson [00:13:11]:
It, it is truly remarkable. I, I'd say that our superpower If I were to say, like everybody always asks, and AJ, you can, I know you'll agree with this. How'd you guys do it? What's your secret? Right? And it's like, I wouldn't say that there's any massive secret. I would say that perfection is a lot of little things done right. And we're definitely not perfect, but I think where we excel is stacking, finding and stacking motivated individuals that have juice with a high level of expertise in their craft. You know, there's 6 departments here. So for us to grow the way that we have, we've needed to find a lot of great people and have them believe in us, take a chance on Premier, take a chance on the growth, which we've been fortunate enough to be able to do that. And then, um, you know, let them run and let them do what they do best.

Noah Jackson [00:13:58]:
And, you know, that comes with a few things that comes with, you know, managing personalities and, you know, they're typically higher compensated individuals. And, you know, the great thing about all this, I think that the best part of this story for us is that we've done this with no debt. We have no debt. We cashflowed the entire thing. AJ and I put $65,000, a dream, into our new business checking account when we started this business. And that's it. We cashflowed it from there. So we did that mostly because we've been able to find and source like phenomenal top of the industry people, take a bet on them.

Noah Jackson [00:14:32]:
And then really what that allows you to do is immediately capital, capitalize on a high amount of ROI once they get going, if that makes sense. And you just keep snowballing it and stacking it with other people. And you've gotta have a sound business model, right? Like just having people isn't gonna pay the bills. We've been able to dynamically craft the business model day over day, month over month, time over time, and, and kind of change it. You know, we're not, we're not afraid to act with high velocity in our decisions and how we craft the business. But if I were to say that there was one thing we did really well, it's finding the right people and letting them run.

Jeffrey Stern [00:15:07]:
Yeah. When you reflect on what it was like to sell that, that first woman day one on the, on the bathroom, has fundamentally the, the pitch changed? Like why, why do you feel there's been such a, maybe a gap in the market that you've been able to grow into? Was there structurally something missing in the market or were just people not persistent enough in, in sales?

AJ Wadian [00:15:30]:
Like what, what was it? Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:15:33]:
What was the problem that you're solving?

Noah Jackson [00:15:35]:
How would you, how would you frame that?

AJ Wadian [00:15:36]:
I think the first thing is, is that most businesses in this industry, they're essentially focused, most of 'em are, are labor-minded. They're, they come from a, you know, a blue-collar background where they were installers and they've scaled their business maybe to a few crews and they're trying to adapt to figure out how to scale their company. And the hardest part in this industry is how to scale it. Starts right with the main ingredient that Noah said is people, but you gotta have an unbelievable process. And really the difference with Premier and a lot of these large companies in this industry, they're not necessarily remodeling companies, they're sales and marketing companies that happen to install a product, right? So we are process-driven to a, to a T. It's every single thing is very biblical here. We, we, we have very strenuous sales processes where we, We teach people the methodology of how to walk people through a sale and how to inform the customer and educate them throughout the consultation where they, they have enough trust and the value exceeds the price and they feel confident to make that decision the night of, right? The night that you meet them, they're making a decision and signing a contract to move forward with you. And then there's, you know, a lot of processes that you have to put in place and on the front end when you capture the lead, you know, when you capture the appointment, How do you convert that appointment? Well, it starts with speed to lead.

AJ Wadian [00:16:52]:
You have to get to the appointment faster than everybody else. It's a rat race. The first person there 80% of the time gets the job, right? So we have a call center that, you know, Noah leads up and we've, we've put in great processes and automations and just the data. You can see the data at a different level where other companies don't have that ability. And our third partner Vince is a genius at those things. He's very, very smart at building data that you can see and, and, and how to populate the data and build automations that you don't have to search for the things that we're looking for that are leaks to the business. And then it follows up with a great installation team that's quick, they're fast responding, and we know how to scale installation. I mean, when you have 16 markets like we do and you have hundreds and hundreds of contractors that install these products, how do you rein those people in? How do you motivate 'em? How do you train 'em? How do you replicate that process? So it all rolls down to process.

AJ Wadian [00:17:44]:
Every single division that we have that was scalable has a very, very strenuous process in what, in the way we teach things.

Noah Jackson [00:17:51]:
But I would say that that's, you know, the process thing and all that, you literally are only as good as your process, right? Because if you want to, if you want to like build a company, now we have 15 offices. We just opened Indianapolis on Monday. And you're only doing that with playbooks, right? And all of this, at the end of the day, these playbooks are developed by elite people. Right. And everybody gets kind of on, on the same one-track mind. And then we have Vince, who's another great person, our third business partner, who's able to build kind of the data railways for everybody and everything to talk to each other so that the playbook is, can, can just consistently kind of turn over. And so, you know, there's a lot of things that we're really good at. You know, AJ and I, we were two of the best to ever lead a sales operation at, at LeafFilter, which is now LeafHome, the largest home improvement company in the world.

Noah Jackson [00:18:41]:
So there's, there's talent there and, and, and Premier is probably metric-wise for the size of contract, the most successful sales organization in home improvement history. But then, you know, we're really dangerous now because we have that, that person in, in Vince that came on the backside of that and tied it all together with actionable data. And so our velocity to make changes or make improvements and refinements is damn near instantaneous. And it'll take an organization. Weeks, months, or a year to build dashboards and have everything code and tie together, we'll have it done in 24 to 48 hours with just a couple coders because they're the best at what they do. And so that's really kind of our little niche that we've been able to like dive in and dig down and just time and time and time again, exploit it is like find people that can get stuff done immediately that are like damn good. And then double down, never stop doubling down.

Jeffrey Stern [00:19:31]:
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Jeffrey Stern [00:20:21]:
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Jeffrey Stern [00:20:27]:
So if you were to zoom out and look at a revenue graph, it, I mean, it's largely up and to the right, but AJ, you mentioned it's, it hasn't really felt like that necessarily. You know, there's been some challenges, some downs along the way, and I'm curious, especially in when you hone in on this playbook concept, something that you've had to refine is kind of the repeatable process that you've optimized and made better over time across these different markets. Like what, what were the, some of the harder earned learnings, some of the mistakes along the way? What has gone wrong? Because it, it sounds like it's, it's been a lot of things that have gone right.

AJ Wadian [00:21:06]:
It again goes back to the very first thing Noah said and, and kind of the, you know, the success story is like it, it all, it's a people business. It's 100% a human capital business. So what is happening right now with Premier Home Pros and really what has been happening since 2024 is the business is growing faster than the people., right? So when the business is growing faster than the people, you either gotta leapfrog their skillset and, and put 'em in a role that they're very uncomfortable in and get 'em comfortable, or you have to be able to be elite at going and finding people that are in the industry that can adapt to the atmosphere and the velocity at what Premier grows at. So what we realize at anything, I think, is because it's a people business, people at the end of the day, they fail you sometimes. They fail you either on skillset, they fail you on effort, they fail you on buy-in, you know, and you have to be able to adjust that. 'Cause once you, when you open a new market, you have invested a lot of resources and money into that market between marketing, between leases, between everything, talent around them, and you gotta make it work. So when people fail you, you gotta find a replacement quickly. So I would say it really has, the challenge has always been the business is growing faster than the people and how do we get both of them on the same level so that the business could continue to run smoothly? That, that would be the main thing that I can point out that we've had.

AJ Wadian [00:22:24]:
I would never call it a struggle. We've had adjustments along the way to find the right player in the right market.

Noah Jackson [00:22:30]:
Yeah, but you name it, we've, we've made the mistake, right? Like this, this had, like, this has not been a linear success story. It's been whack-a-mole, right? Like literally, you name it. Okay. We, we've had to give customers money back for projects that we shouldn't in theory have to because we didn't get one little form signed. Or we got phished for $86,000 by a fake marketing vendor because an I in the email looked like an F. Look, you know, um, that's a true story. We've opened markets where we thought we had the right person and we didn't. And because of that, we lost a couple hundred thousand dollars in the first two months.

Noah Jackson [00:23:06]:
And then you got to go find the right person and reclaim. And you name it in every single department, it's happened. We have bought the same product for the same job 3 times in a row. It broke twice. We got invoiced 3 times in a row for it. Didn't catch it. And that happened for the entire first year of the business. So like, if you name it, it's happened.

Noah Jackson [00:23:25]:
And, you know, as a business owner, you have to have an unbelievable amount of resiliency. And people don't necessarily always understand what that means. Like Mark Cuban, you know, always says, just don't quit.

AJ Wadian [00:23:37]:
Okay.

Noah Jackson [00:23:37]:
He says it a little more passionately than that, but as a business owner, you will succeed if you just don't quit. Well, what does that mean? That means that you'll be taken well past the line where you're comfortable, well past the line where you want to quit. And there's two types of people. When your backs are against the wall, do you fold and run away? Or do you dig down with your heels and come out swinging? And AJ can tell you, there's been so many times when we will talk to each other, look at each other, et cetera, and we'll say, dude, I'm, I've had enough. I've just had enough. You need, like, it doesn't rain raindrops, it rains oceans sometimes. It never stops. But what's your appetite for that? And what's your appetite for just not quitting? And then you keep your nose to the grindstone.

Noah Jackson [00:24:18]:
You stack pebbles every single day. One day you wake up and there's a castle there. And there's little breakthroughs that happen out of nowhere for no reason at all. We messed our marketing model up so bad last October and lost few hundred thousand dollars because of it. And accidentally, it was the greatest thing that ever happened to us because once we discovered it, it gave us the long-term model on our marketing and we'll make well over that a million times over moving forward. So it's like, don't quit because your breakthrough is right on the other side.

AJ Wadian [00:24:47]:
Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:24:47]:
Well, I mean, well, the corollary to the, the, the Mark Cuban idea is the, the reward for good work is more work and the reward for solving problems is new problems. More problems, more problems, bigger problems, more meaningful problems. It never stops. In the framing of the business outgrowing from a velocity standpoint, the growth of people, I'm curious how that's applied to both of you, you know, on this meteoric rise of an organization from, you know, just literally, you know, both of you to a now very large organization. How have you both thought about your own personal evolutions and what it's meant to like upskill yourself? To lead this through that journey and just your reflections on kind of leadership and how that's changed over the last few years, your perspective on it.

AJ Wadian [00:25:38]:
I think the one thing that has always put us in a position to be able to adjust with the velocity of the business is that we've always been lead from the front leaders, right? I'm still on the sales calls every single Monday, leading the entire company in sales calls. I'm on our regional manager meetings. I'm on our, I don't miss a meeting. I'm, I'm still in my mind, 5 levels below, and I'm in the weeds with these guys every day. And they know that I would never ask them to do something that I wouldn't do. And by doing that, we get so much buy-in from the company, right? We get so much buy-in when they see 3 active owners involved. They're here at 8 in the morning. They're leaving at 6:30 every single night.

AJ Wadian [00:26:19]:
They're involved in every division of the business. We make a round every single day to every department. We sit with them. We're involved. We don't really know. There's nothing in the business that we're not privy to outside of field locations and a Jacksonville location that we'll eventually hear about it today or tomorrow, but we may not be presently there. So I think the difference is we're not a manage from afar type of ownership team. We've never been that.

AJ Wadian [00:26:43]:
We'll probably never be that. We're just, it's infectious. We are, we have a combined of 3 people. The 3 owners have a combined drive that I don't know if another company could match that drive. They might match surrounding skillset around them and find a lot of talented people like us, but the ability to never stop and just go, go, go, go, go. That's what we're, that's how we're chemically made up, you know? And, and if you have that, that hard work and that effort, it never equals zero. It always equates to something. And I think that's what has allowed us to adjust as leaders regardless of scale.

AJ Wadian [00:27:21]:
We're people leaders. So people get behind good people. They don't necessarily work for the logo on the shirt. They're working for the people. And our people believe in us because we're always leading from the front and we're involved with them every day.

Noah Jackson [00:27:33]:
Yeah. I, um, you know, if I were to self-scout for a second, like something that, like as owners that we're really good at, uh, is I think we have an incredible understanding of the business and of the industry. Just innately. So we're running something that directly aligns with our highest level of expertise, right? So like, we're not out here trying to run dental practices and scale a big model. We'd have no idea what we're doing, right? But we understand this industry like as well as you possibly could. We're always becoming, we always need to learn more, right? But our, our competency is, is, is high level. So that's good. We're in the right spot.

Noah Jackson [00:28:13]:
One of the things that when AJ and I started this business, you know, it's hard to, you know, we've all probably had a dog and walked a dog before, right? And there's like 3 types of dogs. There's a dog that you pull on the, on the leash. There's a dog that pulls you nonstop. And then there's one that just walks with you. There's slack in the leash and it's an easy walk. And at times it feels like this business is pulling us, like it just goes, it's going so fast in growth and adding people and needing to compensate for missing processes and, fill gaps here and there. And so there's been several times when we're— I know I've felt like, holy crap, I'm not— this is more than I bargained for, right? And, um, and it gets tough. Like, there's so many times where you just gotta figure out a way to level up.

Noah Jackson [00:28:55]:
Like, I never had dreams of leading a 400-employee home improvement company, not in 3 years, right? So you just gotta adjust and kind of, and kind of figure it out from from there. But we are, as AJ said, we're, we are involved. Like, we're launching our second product line in 6 weeks, and I'm personally doing the training for the, for the call center agents on the new scripting and the new processes because I want to make sure it's done correctly so my leaders can see it and then deploy it from there. So like, you got to be involved, and that'll do a lot of the leveling up for you because you always know what's going on in your business. But yeah, it's, we're figuring it out every single day like everybody else, would be, which is Pete.

Jeffrey Stern [00:29:33]:
Yeah. If your dreams, when you reflect back, weren't, you know, when I grow up to, to run a, a home renovation company, did, I mean, did, did you have these kind of entrepreneurial dreams growing up? Did, do you both feel like this was the path that you wanted to, to be on?

Noah Jackson [00:29:47]:
Or AJ did. AJ always has.

AJ Wadian [00:29:51]:
He always has. Uh, yeah, I would say after college, I, I, I got into something and realized, wow, I was made for this. I was made to be in front of people and lead people. I was made to be in sales. That, that's what my, that's what my skillset really narrates. But I would say that when we started this, right, when it, when we started it, I always dreamed big because I came from big companies. So I, we don't work for the money. That's the weirdest thing I've never thought I would say.

AJ Wadian [00:30:18]:
I don't, do I like the money?

Noah Jackson [00:30:20]:
Sure.

AJ Wadian [00:30:20]:
I don't work for the money. What motivates me is the chase. I am confident that Premier Home Pros, unless an economic crisis happens, Premier Home Pros will go down as the largest home improvement company in the United States. And it will be very, it's going to be fairly quick because that fire is not burning out inside of us. You know, so I've always dreamed big. I'm always up for the challenge. I love it. When I tell you that when I graduated high school, I wanted to be leading a home improvement company, that's probably not the path that I thought I'd be on.

Noah Jackson [00:30:48]:
Right.

AJ Wadian [00:30:48]:
But I've had a lot of path changes in my life and I just adjust to them. But I love what I do. I love what I do. And it, every day I wake up and I'm motivated to do it. So I know I'm in the right place. I don't know. I don't know how Noah's response would be. You know, I don't know what Noah's response would be to that.

AJ Wadian [00:31:04]:
I mean, your background's in finance, right?

Noah Jackson [00:31:06]:
And what it was in finance and what was it, what was your degree in?

AJ Wadian [00:31:11]:
Business?

Noah Jackson [00:31:11]:
Business, business and operations. But yeah, no, listen, I'll be honest with you. I didn't have, I've always had side hustles, always. I've always been the kind that'll go 300% into one thing and 0% into everything else, right? Which lends itself, and I'll take big risks. I have no problem taking big risks. So that, you know, if you were to do a personality profile on all three of us, it would scream own your own business. I also don't like working for other people. So there's a lot of personality traits that are there to be an entrepreneur, but did I want to own my own business? I don't think I ever had those dreams.

Noah Jackson [00:31:46]:
And this business has taken, it's been the dog that's pulled me on the leash. And where Vince and AJ are like a hypercar going at 300 miles an hour, I'm naturally, I've been the brakes of that. Like, hey, hang on, you maniacs. We gotta make sure we do this right. So I'm kind of the yin to their yang, kind of slowing them down and being like, hey, we're not opening 12 offices this year. Let's open 5 and do it right. And here's why. And then there's a lot of battles.

Noah Jackson [00:32:11]:
And one thing that we do really well as an ownership group is we openly disagree with each other. We have, we'll have, uh, never disrespectful, but conviction-driven, knock-down, drag-out problem-solving sessions where we make a decision together. And there's straight up times when you will believe with every ounce of your conviction, 110% of it, that you are correct, but you get outvoted in the room of 3. You just gotta eat it and then, you know, drive forward with the same conviction that you got outvoted with by them. To make sure that the plan works. So, uh, I, I did not want to try to chase a quarter billion in sales in 3 years because it's just like, people don't understand how crazy it drove AJ and I to get to zero to 15. And that was almost out of a survival mechanism, right? Um, but, you know, year 2, we had a goal of $50 million and we stood up at the end of year 1 at our Christmas party, end of the year awards ceremony, and we told the company, Okay, we're gonna do, we're gonna triple sales next year. We're gonna do 333% more.

Noah Jackson [00:33:14]:
We're gonna do $50 million. And we ended up slowing it down to get to $86 million in year 2. So it's been a nonstop cruise control's been on 120 miles an hour since the very beginning. And that's a little more than the pace that I have an appetite for, but I've developed a love for it. And there's times when one owner pulls back because they're just like, what is going on? And the other two drive forward., and then one pulls back and the other one catches up and, and we just kind of level each other out that way. But I'm in love with this. This is fantastic. This is, this is, this has grown into something that's so special.

Noah Jackson [00:33:47]:
We have so many phenomenal people and this business is fun. Like sometimes I'm in the office and I have a hard time leaving. My wife texts me at 6:30 and says, where are you at? Have you left yet?

AJ Wadian [00:33:56]:
I'm like, no.

Noah Jackson [00:33:56]:
And I don't know what I'm doing at that time. I just don't want to leave. Right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:01]:
So yeah, it's, it's grown into something really cool. It definitely is special. I appreciate your guys' collective framing of ambition because I think it's actually really important. And part of why I love even doing this podcast and celebrating, you know, some of the work that you're doing is because I think unless people are aware, and this is like the value of your guys' collective experience at a place like Leaf Home and LeafFilter prior, where you like know what excellent looks like and you know, like how good something can be. And unless you see it and are aware of it, your ambition might not, like, let you realize what you could do for yourself with that in mind. But it's crazy. You guys are just on this journey at a level of ambition, but also execution that I think is demonstrative of, like, you can just, you could just do this. You could build this kind of company here in Northeast Ohio, and that you guys have done it also entirely bootstrapped is incredible.

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:56]:
And part of what, I mean, a lot of things I'm still very curious about, but do you, because you, you don't have outside capital from a governance standpoint, I assume, you know, you guys just are your own board, but how do you think about like mentorship and, and just folks, you know, that you've brought into the business that help you, you know, work through this like order of magnitude leveling up over the last 3 years? The exponential growth is, is like a, I'm just curious how you guys approach that.

Noah Jackson [00:35:22]:
Just to understand what you're asking, like mentoring people or being mentored?

Jeffrey Stern [00:35:26]:
Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:35:27]:
Like, do, do you guys have formal mentors that, that you like work with or people that you've brought in, or, or are you guys just like figuring out yourself the, the whole way?

Noah Jackson [00:35:36]:
Yeah, you have a lot of connections throughout the years. People you meet that impact, impact you, right? And whether it's, you know, how to do something or a quote that drives you, right? But a lot of this has been,, you know, taking little parts along the way from places you've been and your experiences, and that kind of shapes who you are. And then just figuring it out, you know, what's right is right. We know, we know how to run this business. We know the underlying metrics that, that, uh, you have to have and when it gets outta line and how to fix it. So, but then a lot of it, I mean, I don't know how you feel, AJ, but I don't think we have a lot of close contacts that have been incredibly successful in this industry. Some of the most successful people in this industry, but I wouldn't say that we've used them as mentors. I think we'll bounce things off of them and they'll bounce things off of us, but a lot of it just comes into figuring it out.

Noah Jackson [00:36:25]:
Like people, people can think too much and not do enough, or they can learn everything that about something and never do it, and it doesn't make it an expert. What makes you an expert is jumping in and figuring it out.

AJ Wadian [00:36:37]:
Yeah, I would say, I would say that, that we, we built the playbook., and then we needed to fill in the guts of the playbook, and that is putting the right people in place for us to be successful, right? Having the right IT person, having the right finance person, having the right leader in the call center, people that drive people in the sales and, and our sales organization, our installation leader. I mean, the, the good thing is, is that playbook, there's not really a role outside of IT, at least for me, I don't think there's not really a role that I, that I don't have the ability to do or know how to do it. It, right? So that's the great thing about the ownership team is that we all know how to do all the jobs. We don't do them every day because the business is too big. Yeah, I, I would go back to, we hired right. We hired right. We found the right people. And when we looked at bringing in the talent in the core leadership team, we found people that came from past relationships and companies at scale that have worked in this velocity.

AJ Wadian [00:37:34]:
They've worked in this environment before. So by doing that, this isn't, this isn't something new to them. This is just a, it's a different product and a different company. It's still the, the objective is the same. They're used to this. So hiring right is, is the most important part and putting those people around you.

Jeffrey Stern [00:37:50]:
The rest, we figured it out. When you think about the, the business of bathrooms, what do you wish like more people understood about it? Because you two have probably spent more time thinking about it than probably anyone. And I'm just, what, what have you learned that you wish more people understood about the, the business?

AJ Wadian [00:38:06]:
Itself? I would say that bathrooms are one of the most meticulous products in a home that people evaluate the most, right? They sit there and they look at it a long time, so it's gotta be pretty much perfect. And the clock's not right, the customer's calling, right? So you realize that like, okay, we got the demand for this product, meaning that there's the consumers find interest in calling about bathrooms. There's a high demand for it. We know how to sell it really well and we can install it. But what you don't realize is the skillset that it takes to actually install it and do it at scale and to find 200 of those people every day to go out and execute the product that you're selling on the streets every day. So you've learned a lot. You've learned that redos are really, really expensive. A wall panel that goes on the wall is extremely expensive.

AJ Wadian [00:38:56]:
Right? We came from the gutter industry, putting a, uh, replacing, uh, so much linear feet of plastic back on a gutter. That's really inexpensive to do. You can afford to make some mistakes along the way. So in this industry with bathrooms, that's not the case. And you need to make sure that you train everybody extensively and that we're confident they can do the job to the pedigree that Premier is. I mean, that's why the name is Premier, right? We want to put an unbelievable product in a homeowner's house at an affordable price. And that's been some learning lessons along the way. You know, making sure you have the right training and development program when you're bringing in contractors, starting installing your projects.

AJ Wadian [00:39:31]:
So what I've learned along the way, it's expensive.

Noah Jackson [00:39:35]:
It's very expensive. What about you, Noah?

AJ Wadian [00:39:36]:
It's expensive.

Noah Jackson [00:39:37]:
I knew you were going to say that. Uh, yeah, you know, uh, if you don't do it right in bathrooms, you will make no money. You will not be in business. If you are not, if you don't have an elite business model, um, it's not happening.

AJ Wadian [00:39:52]:
It's not.

Noah Jackson [00:39:54]:
So it's not like, uh, you know, like AJ said, listen, here's the, here's the, here's the fact of the matter. The toilet is right beside the shower most times, and it takes 24 hours for the caulk to cure. So when the customer's using the restroom and they're staring at the brand new shower they can't wait to use tomorrow, they're looking at every meticulous little detail for 15 minutes while they're sitting there on the toilet. And so like, there's no hiding. You can't do a bad install and get away from it. Get away with it. Like if you do roofing, if you do gutters, it might be a while until the customer sees what the issue is or wait for the water to leak or whatever. With this, it's instant.

Noah Jackson [00:40:28]:
And you know, for the price that customers pay for a bathroom, not just with us, with, with any company, it's very expensive. They have high demands and they should for quality. And so you need quality in every facet of your business. You need the sales team to come in and set proper expectations. You need You know, finance to meet the customer's needs in terms of getting the project paid for. You need install to install the project correctly. You need the product to show up, uh, not broken because if it is, it pushes the contract or pushes the, uh, installation date back and the customer has to reschedule off work again and their temperature's already warmer. If there is an issue, you need a service department that picks up the phone and call and solves the issue immediately.

Noah Jackson [00:41:07]:
There's, there's so many facets that have to work together that, you know, 6 departments, 6 links in the chain. If one chain's off, if one chain's broken, chain is in a circle, the entire chain breaks. So if you can't do it all together correctly, it's not happening. So this, we, we definitely chose one of the more difficult verticals to, to do it, but it's, it's, it's very, it's very rewarding if you can do it right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:41:30]:
Is all the, all the leverage, all the innovation in the business process itself or do you guys, how do you think about innovation in the bathroom? You know, is the bathroom fundamentally changing going into the future or, you know, is there technology?

AJ Wadian [00:41:44]:
How do you guys think about that, that part of it? Yeah, you know, the wave of the bathroom business, the companies at scale, right? The ones that you get in your mailbox, you see on the radio, you hear them on the radio, see them on TV, you know those companies, you hear them all the time. We'll install your bathroom as little as one day. I think that that fad, that, that run is dying. What I mean by that is, is the acrylic industry, which is the main, is pretty much, it's the main, the main running product in the industry is acrylic wall systems because they're fast, easy, and somewhat affordable. That fad is dying and more and more homeowners every day are, are getting more intrigued by getting a custom tile shower or getting, you know, a, a natural engineered stone product into their home where they're getting a lot more of a, appease taste of something that looks a little more luxurious and still make it affordable. And what we've done is we've, and a lot of it happened by accident. We ran into a great company at a time of need and we got a, every company in this industry that has scale has a USP, which I call a unique selling proposition. They have to have something unique about their offering to not to be indifferent.

AJ Wadian [00:42:49]:
Right. And we have a unique product. Our product is very, very unique where we don't compete with like for like, we just compete with price. We don't compete with a product in the same realm, which is a great thing to do. Yeah. So I would say that what's changing is yes, there is innovative products that are constantly entering the industry right now. And they're getting more and more unique as time goes on. But even with shower bases and innovation of doors and just a lot more customization, I would say at affordable pricing for homeowners.

AJ Wadian [00:43:17]:
So it will continue to evolve and change just like any industry does.

Jeffrey Stern [00:43:22]:
No AI toilets though.

Noah Jackson [00:43:23]:
No AI toilets. That's probably a good thing.

Jeffrey Stern [00:43:25]:
It's probably a good thing. I don't know if I want AI in there. So when you reflect back to the inception of this, you kind of framed it a little bit as existential, you know, back against the wall. You guys had to figure it out. Obviously, I feel you guys are at a point now where, where, uh, you've largely got yourself out of that situation. And so I'm curious how you feel your motivations have changed, how your definition of success has changed, and how you guys think about the future and what comes next.

Noah Jackson [00:43:59]:
Yeah, I mean, I think for me, the, the biggest motivation now is don't screw it up, right? There's still a lot of things that we, and initiatives that we need to capitalize on and, and do correctly. Like, but look, we've, we've built the plane in the air. For 3 years, but there's nothing stopping that plane from crashing if we don't fly it right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:20]:
Right.

Noah Jackson [00:44:20]:
So outside of some geopolitical or socioeconomic black swan event, I, I would hope that wouldn't happen, uh, cuz we built a model the right way. Um, but it never stops. Like you, you never stop having to be able to execute. I think now that we have 400, 400 people here, give or take, and several of them we've built relationships with, had relationships with before, or, you know, at the end of the day, that's 400 families that we're responsible for executing for to make sure that they can feed their families. So for me, it's keep the train going, right? Like, and one byproduct of this business is that being involved in this for 3 years is I now look at almost to my detriment, everything on a long-term view. I almost make like no hateful decisions with things that I do now. Like we have a bad day or a bad string of a week and it hits the P&L and it looks bad, I look at the overall picture, I go, okay, nothing's broken, we're good. And it's like, things don't affect me in that manner anymore, which is good.

Noah Jackson [00:45:16]:
And AJ's the exact opposite. So there's a Venn diagram right there. But I think the core of our motivation is, well, I think AJ's is just build, build, build. This guy never wants to stop. He doesn't ever want to stop building. He doesn't ever want to stop building, which he's a maniac. For me, it's let's make sure we build the right way so that We're sustainable so that people can hang their hat on and be in, be in that premier, and this can be a long runway for everybody.

AJ Wadian [00:45:40]:
So what does success look like to me? I would say it's still, you know, you gotta stack up wins. You win the day, then you win the week, you win the month, you win the quarter, you win the year, right? That's how you have to look at this business. You gotta win every day. You bring your best every single day in every division. You know, on our wall at corporate, It says ACT. That means always compete today. That's our mantra, right? Like bring your best every single day. I want the best version of you when you enter the door, bring your best.

AJ Wadian [00:46:10]:
And, uh, and if, if you consistently, a lot of what Noah says is factual, but you still, in my opinion, for success, you have to focus on winning the day, right? Because that's what momentum is. And then as that momentum happens, people get contagious to that. So keeping that culture high, and what success looks like to me, you know, as a leader is employee growth. You know, how do we grow careers here? How do we get people to take the next step in their career and do bigger and better things? Whether that means, you know, a new role, whether that means more compensation, whether it means a new vertical, we want to be able to give, you know, inward growth. And that's a step in a company that it starts to marinate and get seasoned because early on, like we've said, the business is growing faster than the people. And you can't always do that, but you are now getting to the point where you're building a really good bench and people are starting to really understand their roles and they're getting good at them. And now we have opportunities for them and that's exciting. That's super exciting to see that, you know, 400 today is probably 600 at the end of the year.

AJ Wadian [00:47:12]:
And we have a new vertical coming on and there's so much more opportunity. And it's just, it's just an exciting time when you see a business grow at this velocity and what you can do for people.

Noah Jackson [00:47:21]:
And that is a really good point. Like 400 can become 600. Well, you know, the landscape on the employment market is this is not a good time to need a job. Not a lot of companies are laying off and, and we're exciting. I'm so excited to say that we're one of the companies that are hiring like crazy right now. We will continue. We have a 5-year plan to get to $1 billion in yearly sales. I very high chance we do that before 5 years.

Noah Jackson [00:47:47]:
Uh, God willing., and we're gonna add a ton of jobs during that time.

Jeffrey Stern [00:47:51]:
And it's, it's very exciting. It really is. It, it is for sure exciting. No, you mentioned like 3 years into this journey, you have a different perspective. You know, the, the long-term time horizon feels like it comes more, more naturally, uh, maybe than it, than it did. I'm curious if there are other things that feel more natural or obvious today that seemed kind of foreign when you guys were starting.

Noah Jackson [00:48:17]:
That you only have from the perspective you have now? For me, it's just like so abundantly clear that you win with people. You win with people. You give 'em a, a playbook and you'll, you manage 'em to their success. That's your culture basically. We knew that from when we started the business, it was like, okay, we want the best people, but this is not the right time for those people. So we gotta find people and make it work, right? Literally, the success is finding the right people, putting them in a, in the soil they can grow within. You can hire a great person and not have a good environment for them to work in. They will not work out.

Noah Jackson [00:48:54]:
So then that's the right candidate for the position. But, you know, if you find the right person, put them in the right soil and let them grow. That's how you grow. Straight up. That's how you grow. You know, there's parts on the P&L that you got to refine and fix supply chain or fix marketing, like the, the day-to-day business tasks. But at the end of the day, you're only as good as the collection of your people, like the sum of your parts. So it's more apparent now than ever.

Noah Jackson [00:49:19]:
It seems like every day it just becomes more cemented.

Jeffrey Stern [00:49:23]:
I concur.

Noah Jackson [00:49:23]:
Amazing.

Jeffrey Stern [00:49:24]:
I think we can work to, to bookend it a little bit. Part of the impetus for this whole thing, AJ, was you mentioned, you know, wanting to, to bring it home, uh, here in Northeast Ohio. And I'm curious for, for both of you what it's meant to to build this here and just any reflections you have on, on if that, you know, matters or, you know, if it crosses your mind at all or just how you guys think about building, building it here.

AJ Wadian [00:49:45]:
Every time I've moved, I've moved a lot in my career. You know, every time I moved away, I've, I've lived in Atlanta, I've lived in Harrisburg, I've lived in Philly. And every time I moved away, I'm like, man, something's missing. You know? And it's just, I'm rooted here. It's where I'm from. It's where family's at. It's where home's always gonna be. And, you know, as crazy as it sounds that you love snow, I don't love snow, but, but I, I love something about Northeast Ohio that always makes it home for me.

AJ Wadian [00:50:07]:
And it's, You know, I, if we're going to, we're going to do something special and we're going to, we're going to service the community and give job opportunities to people. There's no better place to do it than your backyard. And there's still a chip mentality that we got something to prove. And it's time. It's not now, but there was a time when the home improvement world wrote up, wrote us off, right? Like, they're like, there's no way these guys are going to, going to pull theirself out of this hole. Like, there's just no way, you know, and, and You know, little did they find out that, you know, 3 years down the road that the narrative and, and the press isn't talking about Leaf Home at the QR500s in Vegas anymore. They want to know about the story about Premier and how they did it. And that, that's a burning desire and it's so awesome to do it right here and, and be able to give opportunity to people in this community.

AJ Wadian [00:50:54]:
I see new faces at our call center every single day and they're all from local Ohio, right? They're from Akron, Ohio, or or Canton or Cleveland. And, and, and we just opened a brand new distribution center in Brunswick and it's opening new job opportunities. There's just nothing more rewarding than being able to do it in your home, you know, and be able to do it right where you live. So it's just an honor to be able to service the community and continue to grow and help other people achieve, you know, what they're trying to achieve in their life as well by Premier being a vehicle of that.

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:24]:
A chip on the shoulders is a powerful thing.

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:27]:
Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:51:27]:
One of my favorite investors always says, chips on shoulders puts chips in pockets.

Noah Jackson [00:51:34]:
I like that. I was at my son's classmate's birthday party on Saturday and I was talking to a woman that I went to high school with and she would, I can't remember what exactly how we got there, but she said something like, do you like, you know, living in the area? And I was like, oh, this is the best place in America by far. Like Northeast Ohio is the best place in America. I've lived in Austin, I've lived in San Diego, I've lived in Scottsdale, I've lived in Philly. I've lived all over the country in some of the best places that people say. And like, I always find myself like, AJ, come back here. You know, the only bad thing about Northeast Ohio is 5 months a year you have less than desirable weather. Everything else is perfect.

Noah Jackson [00:52:14]:
School systems, restaurants, sports teams, the type of people that you meet around here, cost of living. I mean, you name it. Everything in Ohio is amazing other than the weather. Weather is what it is, right? We have the Buckeyes here too, which is a big thing. And so to be able to do this here is really, really special. And it's not just that we're doing this here, like we're, we're, we have 15 offices open. I think we service 30 states, so we're doing it in 30 states right now too. So becoming more national, but yeah, it's the, the, the, the root of it all is, is here and that's special.

Noah Jackson [00:52:46]:
I don't know.

Jeffrey Stern [00:52:47]:
I, I love this place. So it is special. Absolutely. Well, I think we'll, we'll then seg to the closing question, which is a perfect follow-up to that, which is for some hidden gems in Northeast Ohio, completely unrelated to what we've been talking about, but you know, things you think other people should know about that, that maybe they don't about the area.

Noah Jackson [00:53:04]:
You talking about restaurants or, or parks or like just—

Jeffrey Stern [00:53:07]:
yeah.

Noah Jackson [00:53:08]:
Your, your favorites. Landmarks. Yeah, whatever. Oh goodness. Plug your favorites. Okay. I'll, I'll go first. I'll give you a couple.

AJ Wadian [00:53:15]:
Okay.

Noah Jackson [00:53:15]:
Uh, I don't have like favorite, I do have some favorite spots, but I have favorite things at favorite spots, right? So Tremont Coffee, 2 months a year has the best gingerbread latte you'll ever have in your life. And you'll find that down in Stark County. Okay. There's a Greek restaurant, a series of Greek restaurants I used to work at in college called Papa Euro's in Akron and Canton area. And they're Greek food is absolutely phenomenal. Trying to think what else. We got some great golf courses here.

AJ Wadian [00:53:41]:
I don't know, AJ, what do you think? You know, I ate at a, I ate at a restaurant in Strasburg, Ohio.

Jeffrey Stern [00:53:48]:
Okay.

AJ Wadian [00:53:48]:
This is a little, little town. I'm talking, there might be, I don't know if there's 1,000 people in this town. Yeah. But my wife's good friend is a chef and she's in correlation with the owner there. It's called 63 Corks and it's a hidden gem. The food. Was some of the best food that I went to other restaurants in Northeast Ohio and spent $400 for dinner, blew it away. 63 Corks was an unbelievable restaurant that we ate.

AJ Wadian [00:54:13]:
We went there last weekend, actually. That was, it was very surprising for such a small town, you know, to, to offer such fine dining. And it's a really small little quaint restaurant. It only holds about 50 people. I was, I was blown away by the quality of food there. You know, yeah, we love golf. I think some of the best golf courses around are in Northeast Ohio. There's some awesome golf courses in in Northeast Ohio.

AJ Wadian [00:54:34]:
Love Marble Room, right? I mean, I think that's a staple. It's a beautiful atmosphere. I love Marble Room. There's a spot right down the road here from our, from our business, Diamond Deli. It's a walk-in, walk-out. What a great place.

Noah Jackson [00:54:46]:
They've been there for 50 years, I think. That's a gem. That's a gem. Yes. Jack's Deli. If you're in East Side of Cleveland, Lindhurst, South Euclid, Beachwood, right on the line, there's a place called Breakfast Diner called Jack's Deli. And they have, The absolute best corned beef hash you'll ever have in your life. If you think you don't like corned beef hash, go there.

AJ Wadian [00:55:07]:
And I'm telling you, you'll love it.

Noah Jackson [00:55:09]:
It's phenomenal.

AJ Wadian [00:55:09]:
And then two things that are like really dear to my heart. Compass North Church is, you know, I joined there three years ago. Non-denominational Christian church, best pastor. I mean, a guy that every Sunday, I'm fortunate that he's speaking to that crowd because he's so gifted that. Belongs to be speaking to thousands of people, which he does as he travels on mission trips. He's unbelievable. Pastor Joe Hunt, unbelievable church on a great mission. And then, and then best high school football in America, Massillon Tigers, Paul Brown.

AJ Wadian [00:55:43]:
So that's, I mean, that's a list right there. That's amazing. So yeah, that's the list. We're, you know, we're, me and Noah are very like a small circle, you know, we don't do a lot. You know, we're family-oriented, faith-oriented. We work, we golf, and we spend time with our families. And that's, that's really what we— and Vince as well. We're not, we're not going to extravagant vacations much or going to the big cities.

AJ Wadian [00:56:07]:
Like, we, we just, we're essentially focused on small town. And I enjoy what I do every day, and I enjoy going home to my kids and my wife and laying my head down at night in my house.

Noah Jackson [00:56:17]:
Like, I'm okay with that. I got nightly scheduled 2-hour wrestling matches with my 6- and my 3-year-old boys. That's, that's, that's where a lot of my, my time goes. And we, we, we go pretty hardcore and my wife yells at us, we're waking the baby up. But yeah, that's, he's, he's right. We're work, faith, family, and golf and watching some Ohio State Buckeyes football. That's, that's another big one.

AJ Wadian [00:56:38]:
And then other than that, I can't say there's much more.

Noah Jackson [00:56:41]:
I gotta ask you, where's your gem?

AJ Wadian [00:56:42]:
I mean, you got, yeah. What's your gem? What's, what's, where's a, where's a hidden spot for you?

Jeffrey Stern [00:56:47]:
You would point out. Yeah, I mean, the, the trite but true answer, and it's really the spirit of this whole podcast, is I, I believe this whole place is a hidden gem. Having not been, you know, born and raised here and moved here on my own volition because I just think it's way better than people think it is. But I, I live in Ohio City and there's gems all over Ohio City, all over. I mean, I, I, I have to go to Mitchell's Ice Cream though.

AJ Wadian [00:57:11]:
I, I think it's the best ice cream in the world. Okay.

Jeffrey Stern [00:57:14]:
Citizen Pie. Citizen Pie.

Noah Jackson [00:57:16]:
I love that.

AJ Wadian [00:57:17]:
I love that.

Noah Jackson [00:57:18]:
That's phenomenal.

Jeffrey Stern [00:57:18]:
Yeah.

Noah Jackson [00:57:19]:
Mitchell's Ice Cream.

Jeffrey Stern [00:57:20]:
I'm gonna try that out. Good stuff, man. I'll try that stuff. I'm a connoisseur.

Noah Jackson [00:57:23]:
I, I love ice cream.

AJ Wadian [00:57:25]:
Mitchell's is the best I've ever had. Is this weird though?

Noah Jackson [00:57:28]:
Is it soft serve or is it like regular ice cream? It's hard packed. Real, real ice cream. That's my, that's my—

Jeffrey Stern [00:57:39]:
I'm, I'm vanilla soft serve only. It's my favorite. You can, I can respect that though.

Noah Jackson [00:57:42]:
You know, ultimately you want to enjoy your own desserts.

Jeffrey Stern [00:57:46]:
What's the best flavor? What's your favorite flavor?

Jeffrey Stern [00:57:49]:
Banana cream pie.

AJ Wadian [00:57:50]:
It's good stuff. Or wild berry crumble. Top tier.

Noah Jackson [00:57:53]:
He's got a number of them. He's a regular. AJ, what was the donut? All right. So at our end of the year awards gala, not to push this on too long, but we had a donut wall this year. We did it at the Nine downtown Cleveland and AJ's wife. Is unbelievably creative, like one of the most creative human beings I've ever met in my life. And she always helps plan the end of the year awards gala, does a phenomenal job. Like it's, it's like straight off Instagram.

Noah Jackson [00:58:20]:
We're so blessed. And she had a donut wall this year where it's just pegs on a wall and there's like 10 donuts deep on every peg. There must have been 400 of these things. Where were those donuts from?

AJ Wadian [00:58:30]:
Because those are like some of the best donuts I've ever had in my life.

Jeffrey Stern [00:58:34]:
It was, they were Grunuts or something. They were Grunuts. Grunuts is phenomenal.

Noah Jackson [00:58:37]:
Yeah.

AJ Wadian [00:58:37]:
They're, they're good.

Jeffrey Stern [00:58:38]:
Goldies is also around.

Noah Jackson [00:58:41]:
I think it was Grunuts. Yeah. Grunuts is fantastic. We took 4 of them home and I about lost my mind.

AJ Wadian [00:58:44]:
I was about to drive back up there and ask them if they had any more. Love it. Find good spots.

Jeffrey Stern [00:58:49]:
Jeff, I appreciate your time so much today. You didn't even know what— I appreciate your guys as well. It's, it's amazing what you built. And I think it's, I genuinely, it's, it's inspirational, aspirational for for the entrepreneurial community here. So appreciate you guys sharing your story as well. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you.

Jeffrey Stern [00:59:09]:
If folks had anything they wanted to learn more about, where on the interwebs would you point them?

AJ Wadian [00:59:14]:
We're active on LinkedIn. Yeah, we're active on LinkedIn. We put out a press release on every market that we open out there. It's always on LinkedIn. We have a Facebook and an Instagram page, and then there's quite a bit of YouTube content that we publish monthly as well on there for for everybody to see. So, you know, the story will look different in 24 months from now. I think we'll, you know, we ever get back in conversation again, I think we'll celebrate some, some new successes, but you know, it's been a wild ride and I still think we're just, we're just getting started.

Jeffrey Stern [00:59:44]:
Just getting started. Yeah.

AJ Wadian [00:59:46]:
Well, certainly look forward to, to the follow-up conversation.

Noah Jackson [00:59:48]:
Thanks, Jeff.

Jeffrey Stern [00:59:48]:
I appreciate your time again.

Jeffrey Stern [00:59:51]:
Yeah. Thank you, brother. Yeah. Thank you guys.

Jeffrey Stern [00:59:54]:
That's all for this week.

Jeffrey Stern [00:59:55]:
Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show, so if you have any feedback, please send over an email to jeffrey@layoftheland.fm or find us on Twitter @podlayoftheland or @sternfe.

Noah Jackson [01:00:09]:
J-E-F-E.

Jeffrey Stern [01:00:09]:
If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland Founders builders we love having on the show. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land. The Lay of the Land podcast was developed in collaboration with The Up Company LLC. At the time of this recording, unless otherwise indicated, we do not own equity or other financial interests in the company which appear on this show. All opinions expressed by podcast participants are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of any entity which employs us. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.

Noah Jackson [01:00:57]:
Thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.