Pod Insights Financial Freedom Podcast with Dr. Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD 🚀 Starting a Service Based Business: The Brutal Truth No One Tells You | Aleks Krylov About this episode To book a PREMIUM spot on the Podcast: https://www.drchrisloomdphd.com/_paylink/AZpgR_7fBook a 1-on-1 coaching call: https://www.drchrisloomdphd.com/booking-calendar/introductory-session Subscribe to our email list: https://financial-freedom-podcast-with-dr-loo.kit.com/email [email protected] with "Podcast freebie" to book a coveted FREE guest spot on the show. Disclaimer: Not advice. Educational purposes only. Not an endorsement for or against. Results not vetted. Views of the guests do not represent those of the host or show. 🧠 Starting a service based business sounds simple—low overhead, high demand, and fast cash flow. But in this episode with Aleks Krylov, we break down the real, unfiltered truth behind what it actually takes to build and scale a service business from the ground up. If you’ve been searching for answers on how to start, grow, or scale a service business, this conversation dives deep into the realities most people don’t talk about—why operations are messy, why hiring is harder than expected, and why becoming an owner first requires mastering the role of an operator. Aleks Krylov shares how he transitioned from Wall Street into the home services industry after experiencing firsthand how broken the customer experience was. What he discovered is that building a successful service business isn’t about having the perfect idea—it’s about executing consistently in chaotic, real-world conditions. Inside this episode, you’ll learn:Why bolded adjacent SEO keywords below 👇How becoming an operator first is the key to scalingWhat actually separates successful service businesses from failing onesWhy your pipeline can disappear in weeks if you stop sellingThe biggest myth about entrepreneurship—and why it’s dangerousThis episode is designed for anyone searching:👉 how to start a service business👉 how to grow a service based business👉 service business startup tips👉 scaling a small business operations👉 home service business model insightsAleks Krylov’s experience gives you a real-world blueprint—not theory—on what it takes to survive and eventually scale in the service industry.how to start a service businessservice business startup tipshow to grow a service based businessscaling a service businesssmall business operations managementhome service business modelentrepreneurship reality checkservice business systemsoperator vs owner mindsetbuilding a small business teamservice business challengesmanaging field teamslogistics in service businessescustomer experience in home servicesentrepreneurship mindset shift⏱️ TIMESTAMPS (12:51 TOTAL)00:00 – Intro: From Wall Street to Service Business01:00 – The Broken Home Service Experience That Started It All02:15 – Service vs Product Business (Pros & Cons)03:30 – Career Advice: Corporate vs Entrepreneurship05:00 – Operator vs Owner: The Hard Transition06:30 – Why Vision Alone Doesn’t Scale07:45 – The Biggest Lie About Service Businesses09:00 – Why Entrepreneurship Is Harder Than You Think10:30 – Advice for New Business Owners11:45 – Outro🔥 HASHTAGS#startingaservicebusiness #servicebusiness #entrepreneurship #smallbusiness #businessgrowth #homebusiness #financialfreedom #startupadvice #businesspodcast #alexkrylovFinancial Freedom for Physicians, Copyright 2026
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.
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2:32 Speaker 05 Most people think starting a business is the escape plan. You leave the job, you build something of your own, and eventually you buy back your time. But what if that's not how it actually works? What if the reality is that it's messier, slower, far more demanding than anyone tells you? In this episode, you're going to hear from Alex, someone who started his career in the structured world of Wall Street, managing investments, analyzing deals, operating in systems that were already built. And then he stepped into something completely different, a home service business, where there's no systems waiting for you, no playbook, no safety nets, just missed appointments, broken processes, unreliable teams, and customers expecting everything to work perfectly.
3:17 Speaker 05 What he found wasn't a shortcut to freedom, it was chaos. And more importantly, he realized that the only way out wasn't to avoid that chaos, but to go straight through it, to become the salesperson, the operator, the scheduler, the problem solver. Because the truth is, you don't get to build a scalable business until you first understand every moving part of it. This conversation is a reality check. If you've ever thought about starting a service business or if you're already in one and wondering why it feels harder than expected, this episode will show you why. And more importantly, what it actually takes to turn something messy into something that works. Now let's get into it.
3:59 Speaker 05 Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the Financial Freedom Podcast.
4:05 Speaker 05 Starting running and owning a service-based company, we have Alex, a serial entrepreneur coming. He's started his career on Wall Street. Now he has his own company in northern New Jersey, a home service-based business. Really happy to have him on. Alex, welcome.
4:20 Speaker 06 Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here and forward to having this conversation.
4:25 Speaker 05 You started your career on Wall Street, investing, managing, monetizing portfolio. What brought you to the home service-based industry?
4:35 Speaker 06 Indeed, I have a little bit of a collective career. Started as an investment banker. Spent many years working for high net worth individuals in the family office space, originating deals, making investments, monitoring the investment and ultimately exiting out. At some point, I realized I'd love to do this for my own family, for my own quote-unquote portfolio. I started soul searching and figuring out where my interests lie. I was hoping to hit the true pain point in the marketplace. The pain point came from my own painful experience, being a fledging homeowner, had issues with the roofing and gutters. I found myself in a situation, calling a dozen
5:18 Speaker 06 service providers. Out of those 12 or 13 that I reached out to, only three made appointments, two showed up. And out of those two, one did not want to look at the gutters, which was the primary purpose for my outreach to the contractors. He was dead set on selling me a new roof. It was challenging to usher the guy out of the house because he was refusing to leave. He wanted to sell me that roof during that visit. Another person who showed up was very down to earth. He climbed, looked at the gutters that I was having issues with, made an assessment, gave me a price, literally wrote in a sheet of paper, handed this over to me, and that was the last time I heard from him. Literally no follow-up.
6:03 Speaker 06 That was my memory of it. There was something broken in the way some of this home services are being quoted and ultimately executed. I figured if I pull my experience of executive and user of technology, try to lower some of this user-friendly experiences for the homeowners.
6:24 Speaker 06 Perhaps we can make a difference in how homes are being serviced around exteriors, like the gutters and roofing. That's how Stern was started. We wanted to focus on technology-enabled home services solution. We've done it for the last couple of years. We have aspirations to continue pushing forward.
6:43 Speaker 05 What are the advantage of home-based service versus product business?
6:49 Speaker 06 The service element is there that you don't have to carry or worry as much about the inventory. We have two proud business. We deliver service around cleaning and repair in the gutters. We have an installation business, which involve carrying the inventory of the supplies. What I learned the hard way is that installation contracting business is like a logistics business because having parts in the proper timing, location is as important to success as delivering quality installations and providing customer service. I do not know if there are a lot of security advantages when you're running a pure mixed business like ours.
7:30 Speaker 06 From the pure service perspective, lack of inventory and the commitment into the working capital that it requires is a huge difference.
7:39 Speaker 00 This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.
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8:42 Speaker 04 So give Lululemon this holiday season. Smooth, seamless running gear builds momentum through every mile. Insulated warmth invites staying out longer. And hard-wearing workout gear enables dialed-in drive. Give the feeling. Shop in-store and on lululemon.com.
9:08 Speaker 03 Sam's Club is the club for every holiday club. Guess who's joining the club this season? Walmart Plus. Yep, Sam's Club Plus membership now comes with Walmart Plus at no extra cost. Two memberships, one great price. Just $120 a year can save you time and over $700. Want to get in on the membership duo of the century? Visit sam'sclub.com. Come join us. Sam's Club.
9:29 Speaker 07 Annual plan only, auto-renews, T and C apply. Estimate based on average combined Walmart Plus and Sam's Club Plus savings among members of both for one-plus year versus non-member or club member pricing/fees. Excludes membership fees. See Walmart Plus terms and Sam's Club terms for more info. We just moved into our new house and I didn't realize just how close we were to the neighbors. That's when my friend told me about blinds.com. Blinds.com isn't a medication, but it can improve how you feel about your home. Customers who shop at blinds.com experience excellent customer service, from consultation to installation. Side effects include increased privacy and better sleep. Talk to your partner today and see if blinds.com is right for you.
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10:11 Speaker 05 Quick pause here. If this episode is making you rethink how your income is structured, that's intentional. Information doesn't create freedom. Structure does. At the end of this episode, I'm going to show you how to diagnose whether you're building leverage or just scaling complexity. Let's get back into it. For someone listening to this, interested in investment banking versus starting their own home service or product business, what would you tell people who want to own a business but don't know where to start?
10:46 Speaker 06 I'm glad to say try out where you're going to like it most. The avatar that I'm speaking to is me 20 years ago. Younger guy willing to try different things, figure out how to build a career or the life path from there. Experience in investment banking was a great foundational experience. It gave me the business communication, the software, technical skills, skill in finance, enabling me to zero in what is important around cash flows for the business. I have zero technical skills related to servicing buyers. Home services is a very different skill set from investment banking. You have your customer the similar way that you will have your seniors within investment bank.
11:29 Speaker 06 You've got to pay a lot of attention to treat with respect, to be responsive to what they ask you for to deliver.
11:36 Speaker 06 The actual service business itself, running a team, like a sports team. It's all about managing folks from your team, making sure they are engaged, motivated to work hard, but also follow safety as well as the other business protocols you need them to get the job done. None of these elements were available to me 20, 25 years ago when I was starting out. It's only way to get into it, try it out and see what it feels to.
12:04 Speaker 05 How do people that decide to start their own business, become self-employed or business owner? How do they grow their business and stop becoming operators? What had to change in your own thinking to make that growth possible in people, revenue and service areas?
12:23 Speaker 06 This question has a lot of layers. It's like peeling the onion. Our story with Stern is different because I started with a vision of having the sales force and growing the sales force from there. Having the installation team in place and growing from there. I learned very hard and quickly that heaven vision is not enough. It's about the small minutia and operational protocols important to be conveyed to salespeople to the installation of the service folks. I ended up stepping into the sales person myself, have been doing this for a year and a half now. Now this process is streamlined, how to scale it.
13:03 Speaker 06 This is where I have the intent to hire additional people, coach and train them, how I want the sales process to run. On the operational side, I find myself being in the field helping manage inventory. So the installation team can get things done. I get involved in scheduling. I don't think we're there where the team can operate self sufficiently. We have aspirations to bring full-time operations manager in place. Is going to provide day-to-day tactical management items. Also provide leadership. At this point, you have three trucks, the crews operating at the same time. This is like coordinating different teams on the field. Bottom line is, it took me the journey of thinking that this is going to be an easy transition
13:48 Speaker 06 to management, from ownership. I ended up pulling up my sleeves, doing a lot of the day-to-day with the vision of how to step back, take a holistic leadership role in the business. I haven't learned what needs to be done for the business to run successfully. I don't think there is a path that can be reputable for every single person. I think one has to go through the journey and discover that for themselves. The only exception that I can think of is when folks starting the business are acquiring a franchise where the processes and protocols have been prescribed by the franchisor. All the person has to do is to provide the capital, keep the turn-on button and execute
14:33 Speaker 06 the operating manual that the franchisor have put in place.
14:36 Speaker 05 As a small business owner, what do you think is the single biggest lie people believe about building a service company?
14:43 Speaker 06 It's gonna be easy. It's gonna be quick, but there is plenty of people who are willing to come and work, show up. It's, in my experience, messier, more complex, more layered, more intertwined, interconnected. One element of the business not properly working, affecting other elements of the business. It's not a big company where things are running as a well-oiled machine. I used to be a part of a multi-billion dollar investment bank where if things trip up, there were checks, balances, and backups in place that automatically came in. The machinery of the larger organization can keep you moving forward. The small businesses is not the case. One has to think through various contingencies.
15:27 Speaker 06 If I'm sick, if I'm not going out making estimates, that means a week, two, three weeks down the road, we may not have a business to execute. Some of the elements I spend my time learning about. It's definitely not easy. This quote is attributed to billionaire, successful entrepreneur who started multiple businesses. His recommendation to business owners and entrepreneurs is, don't do it. Because it's not easy.
15:52 Speaker 05 How can people connect with you?
15:55 Speaker 06 We are based in northern New Jersey. We operate throughout the northern part of the state. We are available to the website at sternguttersNJ.com. We're available on social media, Instagram at sternguttersNJ as our tag. I'm happy to discuss one-on-one, small business considerations, thoughts that anyone may have from the audience. Ask questions. It's a big market out there. I don't view another person contemplating the gutter business as a competitor. Happy to share my experience in a more intimate one-on-one setting, answer any questions that the members of your audience may have.
16:34 Speaker 05 Thanks so much for coming on the podcast.
16:37 Speaker 06 Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure.
16:42 Speaker 05 Let's zoom out. If you're a physician, founder, or high-income professional, and you feel like you're working harder every year, but not structurally freer, you're not alone. The mistake is an effort, it's architecture. This show exists to help you convert expertise into scalable leverage, faster and with fewer expensive missteps. Here's the diagnostic I mentioned before. If your income requires your constant presence, if your capital isn't compounding outside your profession, if your highest-value talent is doing low-value tasks, you don't have a growth problem, you have a leverage design problem. And if you want to fix it with clarity instead of guesswork, I offer a limited number of one-on-one leverage strategy sessions each month.
17:27 Speaker 05 We audit your income model, capital deployment, authority positioning, and structural bottlenecks, and design your highest-return move. If you're serious about compressing years into months, the link to apply is below.
17:47 Speaker 05 When everything feels nonstop, movement becomes the pause. So give Lululemon this holiday season. Smooth, seamless running gear builds momentum through every mile.
17:59 Speaker 05 Insulated warmth invites staying out longer.
18:04 Speaker 05 And hard-wearing workout gear enables dialed-in drive.
18:10 Speaker 05 Give the feeling. Shop in-store and on lululemon.com.
18:16 Speaker 03 Sam's Club is the club for every holiday club. Guess who's joining the club this season? Walmart Plus. Yep, Sam's Club Plus membership now comes with Walmart Plus at no extra cost. Two memberships, one great price. Just $120 a year can save you time and over $700. Want to get in on the membership duo of the century? Visit sam'sclub.com. Come join us. Sam's Club.
18:47 Speaker 04 When you shop pickup at Kroger, you can expect the savings you love and fresh groceries selected just for you. Our associates are committed to getting every detail right, carefully handpicking your items, checking for quality and freshness, and packing your order with care. Because bringing you fresh, quality groceries is what we do best. And right now, enjoy $20 off your first online order of $75 or more. Restrictions apply, see site for details. Kroger, fresh for everyone. Afternoon glare totally ruined my watch party for the big game. That's when my buddy recommended Blinds.com. With custom window treatments made to fit your style, space, and budget, customers
19:28 Speaker 03 who shop at Blinds.com experience overwhelming satisfaction. Side effects may include a fuller, deeper night's sleep and the sudden urge to host the watch party again. Blinds.com isn't a medication, but it can improve how you feel about your home. Shop Black Friday all month long at Blinds.com. Don't miss huge deals dropping every week.
19:50 Speaker 07 Abercrombie is, and always has been, the destination for holiday dressing. Think soft sweaters for those cozy nights in, and classic matching sets for unforgettable nights out with friends. Complete the look with our Wool Blend A&F Carry Trench and you're all set. Make this season all about the moments you turn into traditions. Have a very Abercrombie holiday. Shop in the app, online, and in stores.
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