Mastering Success: Conversations with Nilson Silva

Join us for intimate conversations with Nilson Silva, the visionary behind Master Touch Outdoors, one of the top 50 service and construction companies in the United States, headquartered in the vibrant state of Florida. Delve into the journey of a self-made entrepreneur who has not only built a successful business but also manages several other ventures. From humble beginnings as the child of immigrants to navigating the intricacies of entrepreneurship, Nilson shares his inspiring story of determination, resilience, and the pursuit of the American dream. Tune in to gain insights, motivation, and practical advice from a true master of success.

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What's up guys, Chris Bowen here with Level Up the podcast. Thanks for joining us today. I am joined by Nilsson Silva today of MasterTouch Outdoor Living. I have been blessed to have known Nilsson for several years now. You know, I've actually had the chance to go out to Florida and meet with Nilsson and learn from him and kind of see what they're doing a few years back and I couldn't ask for somebody better to be on the podcast. Nilsson, why don't you introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about your company. Yep Absolutely on Chris? It's an honor to be here. I remember a couple years ago actually prior to COVID for his meeting. So it's good to actually make relationship outside the Facebook area, the outside area. You know, a lot of cats out there just they're doing the talking not the walk. My name is Nilsen Silve. I'm the owner of Operator of Master Touch Out To Our Living. We own a couple brands in the pool industry. I'm 30. Four years old, I'm gonna be 35 in a couple days, 14 days. Yeah, I'm getting old. So we're involved in a couple ventures where we own a software company, where we do our own CRM. We own a leak detection company where we provide our own clients a leak detection side instead of having a single company doing it all. We have a side that does leak detection for us and to other competitors. We own a company called Step by Step Pools which does more of like high -end and unique service. Yeah, I mean I've been doing it since 2009. So it's been quite a while. I started with the pool cleaning. A lot of the guys usually will merge either like straight to remodeling and construction. Where'd their guys go start with the pool cleaning? They usually don't go from building to pool cleaning. but I did go from pool cleaning to, yeah. So, and I think you've got such a unique story, man. Why don't you give everybody a little bit of your personal background? I think that's one of the coolest parts about this is kind of your success story and kind of the American dream. I'm an immigrant. I'm from Brazil. As you can see, I don't look white boy with green eyes. Not that that's the look, but it's your standard American eyes. I'm from Brazil. I was born and raised there. Migrated to the United States when I was about 12 years old. Ended up turning 13 in March. I was in Florida. I started being an immigrant, doing painting, doing all that kind of stuff where my parents, my sister, my mom were involved in putting me to work. out there because I needed to maintain the home. So I started, you know, being a bus boy, being a waiter, trying to juggle through, through stuff. And I was illegal in the country, not because I wanted to be legal, but my parents brought me when I was, when I was under age and going back to when, when you're 12, 13 years old, you don't have a choice of living by yourself unless you're super crazy about it. Um, And then I overstayed. I came to the US and I overstayed. So from 12 to like 20, 21, I was illegal, totally illegal in the country. But I already had started MasterTouch. I used to work for a guy cleaning pools. And I was like, man, I can't be working for anybody. While trying to go to college, trying to be a computer software guy, college was just too expensive due to the fact that my credits were outside credits. It was not. like resident because I didn't have a social, I didn't have any of that in order to be able to pay for credits. While doing that, I had a brother -in -law that was dating my sister and he was doing pool service. He used to work for a company called Uniserve, huge at the time, probably 10,000 pools. It was, yeah, so you know how these private equity groups are acquiring everybody? That had already happened before. So this group got all together, bought a bunch of pools, bought American pools, bought a bunch of stuff and got into a big, like made a car wreck and they had a different style. They only did pool service. They didn't do repairs. They didn't do anything else and they wanted to do package like gold, bronze or whatever. gold, bronze, silver. And they actually wanted to merge it with landscaping. So they would do the pool service and landscaping together. So it was very interesting. And you couldn't scale. And I was like, man, I believe I can do this. But I got no skills with my hand. I can't, I mean, I can do a couple of things, but if you tell me to build a house or build a desk, if it takes a regular human an hour, it will take me three. Just, I'm not handy. And so I'm like, I'm not handy at all. And at the time he was like, bro, you can't do this. I'm like, yes, I can teach me how to clean pools. So I ended up cleaning pools for a little while. And while doing it, I met a guy that was like, bro, I can put you on the first page of Google. I can do it. And I'm like, really? Okay. So I paid him a couple hundred dollars. I think that the time was three grand, but Craigslist was probably the first thing that made me think outside the box. 60 % of the local service in America was from Google and Craigslist. Craigslist was your biggest player. changed? You know, now everybody's Facebook, Instagram, Google ads, but back then, yeah, I mean, you, Craigslist had everything. it was OXL back page and Craig's those are your three major local listing. So I ran an ad, reliable pool service in Boca reliable pool service in Coral Springs. And bro, I would pick up 30, 40, 50 accounts in a month without knowing what the hell I was doing because that ad would rank it on on on Google right away because of the traffic. So. I did that for probably two, three years. And then I hired my first guy. I hired my second guy. Then I sold a couple routes, bought a property. And while doing that, I just leveraged like, I don't really know how to clean pools, but I do okay. I'm not great at it, but I got to get my money out of real estate. So I started doing a little bit of, of, of leveraging until I got into remodeling, building and et cetera. And here we are tonight. Man, that's incredible. What a story. So you've kind of, you know, in the past you've used the sale of portions of the business or the routes to kind of fund other ventures basically. Yeah. what happened while driving without a license I got arrested while driving without a license I had no option I had to survive so I had to pay $10 ,000 to get out I did have the money saved up I paid I got out but while doing it I didn't know how long would it really take for me to be completely legal end up getting married I dated my wife I have two beautiful kids today but it was just weird so what I did was let me build a route And it would sell for 10 multiples. I don't know how it's in Texas or different places of the unit. So because I was grabbing anywhere between 10 to 40 accounts a month, multiply by 10 quick money. So I would leverage like, hey, I'm not going to put all my eggs in one basket. Let me leverage it out. So that would allow me to give me cashflow because at the time it was $75 a pop. Every pool is $75 and there were no way for you to scale and actually make big bucks You know you do a skimmer nowadays you make a thousand dollars But what the pools bro you had a queen tons of pools that pool a year would have been to a thousand dollars so I was like The Florida market's kind of weird. I mean, it's better now, but it's not like, it's not what it should be. still at a hundred and sixty a pop per pull. Like there's no money. Um, I go crazy when guys are still at old pricing. So I would use that for leverage. I would use that for all leverage because it's like McDonald's. I'm not flipping burgers. I'm in the real estate business. So I use that for traction. Dad would allow me to buy a car and they need to buy a car would pick up 50 accounts. sell and buy a car. So that way I would be debt free. Yeah, that's really smart. So when I sold a portion, when I sold my service side, we sold like 240 accounts and we reinvested it all back in the business. And yeah, it's, it's good money. I mean, honestly, when you're selling, you know, stuff like that, you can make several hundred thousand dollars pretty easily. So if you're, you know, only selling 40 accounts. over 1 ,000, probably 1 ,200 pools a week. So we do quite a bit of pools, but we continue to grow. We're not trying to sell. We get approached often by private equity groups, but we're just in a unique situation because we're spread out to wine. We do remodeling, we do building, we do control. Yeah. me to get a guy that just buys my service side. He's not gonna want to buy the name like So I'm playing I'm playing with the cards that I have Well, and I think that you guys have done a good job and I've always kind of said that this is the case is that when you do service and construction, the service side really feeds the construction side and vice versa. You know, if you're doing construction for people, yeah, that's exactly right. traction because people don't really notice branding, right? Like our brand is orange. There's a little bit of blue there, but every company in South Florida, at least are blue. Every pool company is blue. And I'm like, man, I got it. I want to go against the market. I want to go against everybody else. So I hired a company, paid top dollars for it. But it was worth it. So the service side allows you to get that car driving back and forth. The problem is people don't want the headaches that comes with the service. Because for 30, let's say you're making$50 per month on a pool. You get two, three phone calls for that person a month, you're done. You're gonna make money. That's true. It's true. But I look at it as a long game in that it's a marketing tactic. Because like you said, people see those vehicles out there, they associate the name with it. It's no different than running Facebook ads, in my opinion. You're building name recognition. I try to say to others is the more hands you shake, the more money you make. So the more clients I am seeing on that weekly base, the more people I have opportunity. For example, we do close to none commercials. You're like, why? There's a lot of money commercial. Yeah, but if that commercial account cancels, I'm done. That's exactly right. Yeah. There's a lot of guys that do that. You run into that. Yeah. 20 more opportunities than that commercial because there's a lot of money to be fed on commercial from property. You gotta pay people. You gotta give that kickback. And I'm not that guy. You either like me or you don't like me or else whatever. I'm just a weird cat. Look, I try to... I've stayed a lot away from Facebook lately. I've been so busy growing. We got a second location in Boca. We've got our headquarters now. You were at our old showroom, which was tiny. Now we're... 2019 maybe? Because it right before my first daughter was born. So it's been a good minute. at an 11 ,000 square foot facility. So it's huge. We got Bobcats, we got like Tramers, we have Escovite, we have it all. So it's 80 % of our, we don't shoot gun night, like we don't shoot the gun night, the shock rate, none of that. The plaster, we use the same guy for the past 12 years. So like it's almost in house, right? yeah. But towels are in house for me electrical most of it Yeah, that's a great way to do it. And if you have the volume to do it, you know, it allows for you to be able to control the schedule. It is tough. we grew too fast and we lack on procedures. And I'm not afraid of saying a lot of people like, how do you do those? Bro, there's so many things that I can improve. Like before our call was looking at my list of like, what are things that I need to cut? Why my overhead is a 28 % when it should be a 15. There's just tons of stuff that I'm going through. And on, Jim. We grew too fast. Yeah. Hey, I've been there. Trust me, I understand fully. It's why people that are starting a business now, I think it's so important to develop a lot of those SOPs in the early stages before you get to that point to where you need them. Because once you need them, it's too late. Yeah. mean a lot of ventures such as pain I've done HVAC I've spread it out myself a lot and the other day they got Yeah, uh -huh. I own a bunch of stuff. I do real estate. I do cars. I do a bunch of stuff and I don't think I have enough time right the We own a printing company where we're print out all wraps and stuff our wall wraps and etc Because of all like we have over 50 vehicles So you have to. So like we're all, we're our own client, right? And one of our partners and he was like, I'm like, bro, the office is a mess. He goes, I get it. I don't have time. I'm like, you think when you grow, you're going to have time? You either fix it while you're small or you're not going to fix it when you're big. That mentality that like, oh, I'm not, I'm too small. I'm like, doesn't matter. Start, start them young, start them early. I think a lot of people's mistake is thinking they don't have time. No, it's not that you don't have time. You're just not managing your time as well and as efficiently as you could be. or you find an excuse. Your wife was at the hospital. You made it. You could have chosen to risk your life. So like, it's how bad you want to do it. You know, I tell my people that. people that follow me to ask how I did it it's consistent is doing a little bit every day all day every day every week every year you know there are times drive. I think so many people think that, hey, I'm going to put in the work for six months and I'm going to make it. No, you're going to put in the work for two years and you may get lucky and make it. There's a difference between being disciplined and being driven, right? There are people that just do it just to do it. They wake up, they go to work. They have a discipline, but they're not driven to do more. They have to have a purpose. I'm disciplined to wake up, or I'm in a routine. If you're in a routine, you're just doing it automatically. You don't have the drive. of the discipline, that discipline has to have a drive. Well, I think that's the big difference between people that are destined to be employees and people that are destined to be business owners. That's exactly right. Not everybody's got to do it. And you got to find out why right like why am I doing this? It's not for the money. The money is irrelevant to a point like it doesn't solve everything and it doesn't create happiness. It does make things, some things easier, but I mean... in a better place, you can go to any restaurant, you can buy any house you want, maybe any car. But it gets to a point that it has to be more than that. Well, that's exactly right. I mean, how many people have 10 cars and they drive one of them? You know, so what's the purpose? You know, they don't have one. me, it's to try to leave a legacy, right? Change people's life. Like, all employees, like, some of them bought houses after working for me. Some of them put their kids through college. So like, the goal is, like, put a vision for them. Like, when I hire someone, I'm like, I want a dream for you. What are your dreams? Like, what are your goals in life? Give me your three, five, and 10 -year path. I think that's important. I think that so many people don't do that for employees. You know, they may do it for themselves, but I think that if you have an employee, what's that? really cares. That's the sad part. And it's finding out the key players, who are going to be the people that I can count on to help me go to the next level. Yeah, I think that's a huge part of it because not everybody's going to be along for that journey. Not everybody has the drive to be able to or the work ethic to. So I always I don't try on talent I try I hire on drive I don't hire on on on talent because You can be extremely talent like extremely talent But if you don't you don't have to drive the discipline the heart You're not gonna do it like you're just So like I'm Honestly if I was out there working I wouldn't hire myself horrible working. But I can think outside the box. So my job as the company is finding out where each player goes. That's what I try to do. And a lot of times I remember on Facebook back in the days, I would fight with some of the people like, oh, you do it this way. Can you do it better than me? No, then shut up. Like, if you've done better, no, then like relax. I remember and people always have something negative to say. But like, where are my shoes? Where are my shoes? Like, you're American, you were born here, you had a green card, you had decoction. I guarantee you, and it's not about being racist or not. If I had a white boy, six -five, six-five, like five -nine, five -ten, under six -five, okay? Standard height, blue eyes, blonde hair, bro, my selling ratio would double. I don't care what anybody says. People like people. with you, it's no different than putting an attractive woman in front of a video versus me. You know what I mean? Like, it's just the way it is. here that you don't have an advantage. When you have an accent, oh okay, you've been here a long time, doesn't matter. I have an accent. My writing skills are worse than yours just because who I am, not because of a language barrier now. But if the white boy is there, still he's gonna close it higher than an immigrant. Dude. say 90 % of the time, in my opinion. Yeah, absolutely. you're finding excuses. Oh, you do that. Bro, I was broken. Didn't have money, didn't have papers. What's your excuse? That I'm smarter than you? I had the same opportunities as you did. Actually, I had less. So people just, like, they're just bitches, I'm sorry. So don't sit in here on Facebook. ethic that we were talking about, man, the drive, the discipline, the work ethic. You could be incompetent when it comes to the actual task itself, but if you work at it and you have the drive and dedication, you're going to succeed. It may take a little bit longer, but you will succeed. No different than you talk to me. went to the pool show and I brought 18 of my guys We're the biggest gang in there and people are like, why do you bring? Why do you bring them here? I don't bring them to the show. I bring them to the gathering after the show No, I bring them to the gathering after after the show inside the home that we rent like 15 beds 20 beds Whatever that the count was but we're playing. Oh, no, we're going into the pool. We're barbecuing. We're your team building, you're building a culture. So like if I were to give any advice, like build a team, you can't do it alone. You're not going to do it alone. That's spot on, man. And that was something that I used to preach a lot too, is I want to have that kind of that family culture. I want to have this to be a place where people want to come to work every day. And I think that that's something that a lot of people forget about is in order for people to succeed and your employees to succeed, they have to enjoy what they do. And if they're not enjoying it, yeah, if they're not enjoying it, they're not going to stick around. I joke with the partners that I have in some of the business. I'm like, look, I want you to be rich. He goes, why? Like, because I want you to buy the boat so I don't have to maintain it. So like everybody has to win. And in order for us to treat our employees right, we got to charge your property. Oh, but you're charging, I'm not charging too much or I'm not charging too little. On Facebook you often see guys like, bro, you're undercharging. How do you know? You heard it. overhead looks like. How do they know? or you're no no no let's say you're undercharging like don't complain for things they haven't seen or they heard and i'm like so see my growth that complain about certain builders that it's like, they complain about, you know, let's throw it out there. Lucas Lagoon's Lucas Cogman. You know, I see everybody complaining about that guy online, but you know what? The guys pulled started like 250 K half a million dollars. Look, make the money he's making. That's exactly right. You know what? That's why they're complaining about it. I could be wrong, but I think they sub it all out. I think vankirk does it a Big builder in our region the guy charge you 1 .5 on a pool. Can you charge that you can't then no complain about the guy? Did the problem that I see is people usually complain for for people they want to be right like They're complaining because the guys are above them. Nobody complains for someone that it's under you No, no. And I had a post on Instagram today and it was, if seeing someone else winning makes you jealous, you'll never win. And I think that that kind of applies here in a lot of ways that seeing these guys be successful, if that makes you jealous and that's what, you know, you're going to go on Facebook and social media and complain about, you're not going to ever get to that level. Yeah. You'll never get to that level. hate, if you're full of hate, that's what your heart is. Maybe that's why you're not being successful. So usually what comes out of your mouth is what your heart is full of. That's exactly right. So like I'm the type of guy that like, if I can put you on my shoulder for you to see it further, why not? Why do I have to put you by my side? I want you to go further. I want you to like kill it. Like if I can make it easier for you, why not? That's exactly right. Why not want that success for everybody? Why would you want somebody to fail? That speaks more about you than it does about others. So, it is. But my goal is for the injured to get together and grow. Grow with them. Teach one another. Like I didn't have a mentor, I figured out stuff. Yeah. I mean, I think I never really had a mentor per se, but that's what I loved about networking is that I got to meet so many people and see kind of how they did it and what they did to be successful. And I think that, uh, that's one thing that makes. Yeah. Well. wanted to shadow someone to just learn. Yeah, that's how I feel too. I think that we need to get away from seeing everybody as competition and let's grow together. Yeah, let's grow together. Let's all grow. in my opinion, If I literally like grab 300 other pool guys and put it in my region, there's still enough pools for everybody. Oh, by far. By far. I think that's what a lot of people don't grasp is that there's so much work that's out there, you'll never get to the point where one person has all the work. Ever. It's putting a little bit every day and it's what I continue to say. Show up, do what you're supposed to, tell the truth. Do the America value, right? Look people in the eye, do what you're supposed to, show up, don't show up half-stoned. Don't, you know, don't take people's money and run away. We see a lot of stories nowadays on our Facebook groups. And keep it humble, man. You don't have to show what you've got. If you can fight, you don't have to tell anybody you can fight. That's exactly right, man. You're spot on. no proof on that. Man, I want to give you a shout out real fast. I saw you guys made top 50 service companies again. So congratulations. That's incredible. You guys made the top 50 for remodeling too, didn't you? I think so. We don't know yet. It hasn't come out. They started rumors yet. Top builders. So let's see how that goes. We could grow. I mean, coming from nothing and achieving numbers that we have, I mean, we've broke, we've broke, you know, a large number of a lot of records. I mean, we started with $3 ,000 and we've done over 10 million. So. Yeah. And for those of our listeners who don't know, I'm talking about top 50 service companies for pool service and top 50 builders for nationwide. So huge accomplishments in the pool industry. Yeah, it's just incredible. over 10 ,000 companies running for it. I know there's a lot of require, yeah, it's huge. Yeah, it's a huge amount of people that put in for that, so... to be there is also tough. Because there's a lot of new upcomers guys. And you've got now, and you've got like, national pool partners who has, I don't know, 10 ,000 pools. Yeah, freaking pool troopers, huge. Like you've got big dogs that, how can you compete against them? Who has that much money? companies. Yeah. That are, you know, private equity backed. So it's a little different, you know, when you're competing. they're in spot one or two. But like, I was looking at them, I'm like, I'm coming for you, just relax. I'm on my way, you know, like, yeah, like I'll be there. I don't know how long, but I'll get there. So that's the motivation that I have. Yeah, man, always thankful to learn from you. I follow you around, your marketing strategies, all the stuff you put it out there. And whatever I can do to contribute to the industry, to even guys who are starting out that don't know what they're doing or they're trying to learn, or they even want to visit a facility. I would say, look, we're open book. You're welcome to come here to learn and give me a call on anything. If I have the time to help you, I will. Like there's no, I put my ego aside. we more of that. We need more of that in business in general. You know, and that's what I love is back in 2019, man, you're an open book to me. You allowed me to come into your home, have lunch with you, show me around, show me what you guys were doing. I was gonna say, I probably still have it somewhere too. I gotta get your your face on my on my iPhone and then do the matching that way I don't have to search it or if you give me the day approximately I can was spring break or I believe around there of 2019. Um, but I don't know the exact day that we were. Yeah, we were, uh, always say it's good to make relationships. There a lot of guys on the Facebook that I still consult and talk to on a monthly basis. Yeah, absolutely. I remember speaking of pool partners, Hal was always big about that as well. Anybody's welcome to come. I see him at some of the shows. I will approach him like, hey man, what's going on and then touching. He... Yeah. used to be an open book. I haven't talked to him in a lot of years, but, uh, you know. still is. I saw him not that long ago now. He's the main CEO. Yeah. So. Yeah, they got a lot going on. I think they're over 10 ,000 accounts now, something like that. Probably closed, not gonna go over 15 if I had to guess. I don't know how they do it with the staffing, so. But they're doing it. I know how they're doing it, but they're. have it all under one brand either. I'm kind of shocked by that. They maintain individual brands a lot of times too. Yeah, but I think eventually they're gonna come Friday because I think they're going to eventually be bought out by SCP. I think eventually SCP and, you know, Heritage or whatever, they're gonna try to go into the pool accounts. So... I mean, I think that was strategic in SCP and buying pinch a penny. I think that was part of that. You know, they're, they're working their way towards that. So we got to wait until the future holds man. That's exactly right. Well, brother, I really appreciate your time today. I appreciate you coming on, man. And it's always a pleasure talking to you. Awesome, great to have you send me the link. I'll blast it on my media and whatever I can count, count me as a partner man. We're talking to you brother. Bye. You too.