How to Scale a Company Fast: Josh Zieglowsky on Opportunity, Partnerships and the $1.8 Billion Lesson
- The story: Serial entrepreneur Josh Zieglowsky and his partner wrote down a goal of 40 grand a month each. Three years later, their company was a $1.8 billion sales company with 50,000 affiliates.
- The lesson: Scaling fast came from spotting a gap nobody was filling, committing to it before it looked safe, and building leverage through partners, affiliates and technology.
- For owners: Speed is only worth something if you are building a business someone can buy. Josh now judges every company by whether it is sellable.
Most home service owners want to know how to scale a company fast without blowing it up. In this D2D Experts partner series episode, James Edwards sits down with Josh Zieglowsky, a serial entrepreneur and partner of D2D Experts, to unpack how Josh took a pandemic-era opportunity and turned it into one of the biggest companies in its niche in three years.
Josh is not a door-to-door guy. He says so himself. But the way he spots opportunity, commits to it, and builds through partnerships is exactly what owners in our world need to hear. Here is what stood out, and how to apply it to your own company.
From Mortgages to Commercial Real Estate to a $1.8 Billion Company
Josh grew up in Mountain Green, in Morgan, Utah, and played one year of college basketball at Ricks College in Idaho. After that he got into the mortgage business in his early 20s, started his own brokerage, and got into real estate investing at 23. About 10 years later he moved into commercial real estate.
The early real estate years were not glamorous. He started in D-class apartments, including a 40-unit complex in Jackson, Tennessee, where he had two murders in three years. "I remember the first time like, oh my gosh, should I even do this business?" he said. He moved on to triple net properties like shopping centers, surgical centers and dental centers, and became a minority owner in a few businesses along the way.
When the pandemic hit, one of those businesses, an oil company with about 25 employees, was suffering. Josh was looking for extra stimulus and learned about the Employee Retention Credit (ERC). That is where the big opportunity started.
How to Spot an Opportunity Everyone Else Is Passing On
Josh did not find the opportunity in a market report. He found it by trying to solve his own problem and noticing that nobody wanted to own it.
He called his CPA's firm. "Sorry, we, we don't run payroll. That's a payroll credit," they told him. He called his payroll providers. "Sorry, we don't amend payroll taxes," they said. "So you have to talk to a third-party service."
When he talked to third-party firms, he asked whether the process could be done as software. "And they're like, there's no way. And I'm like, really?"
That moment of "really?" is the signal. Every party in the chain was pointing somewhere else. Josh called one of his best friends, who became his partner and co-founder, and said, "Let's sit down. I think we have an opportunity here."
Josh Zieglowsky: "We wrote it down, if we can each make 40 grand a month, we'll kill this business."
Josh Zieglowsky: "And then three years later we turned that into a $1.8 billion sales company."
What owners can take from it
- Pay attention to handoffs. When everyone in a process says it is not their job, there is often a business, a service line or a system waiting to be built.
- Write the pro forma down. Josh and his partner whiteboarded it out the very next day and put a number on it. A written target makes the decision real.
- Ask whether it can be systemized. His first instinct was to ask if the work could run on software and tech instead of people alone.
Scale Through Leverage: Affiliates, Partners and Tech
The company did not grow by Josh doing more work himself. It grew through leverage. He described it as "lightning in a bottle," with 50,000 affiliates, and said, "we ended up being the largest in the country in that niche."
The affiliate model created real wealth for other people too. "My top, top affiliate commission-wise made close to 30 million in commissions in a three-year period," Josh said.
Technology was the other lever. His CTO asked if he had ever thought about getting an API to the IRS. Josh did not even know what that was. They learned it required putting up a big bond, and "there was only 60 companies in the country that had an API to the IRS."
Once they had it, the IRS notices that used to flood their support team became something they could handle before the customer even worried. "We already took care of your problem," Josh said they would tell customers. "Our customer service calls went down 60%."
For a home service owner, the parallel is simple. Growth that depends on you answering every call caps out fast. Growth built on partners, referral relationships and systems that remove friction for your customers is how a company scales without breaking. If you are trying to build that kind of structure, our guide on how to scale a home service business walks through the stages.
Just Send the Message: Commitment Before It Looks Safe
One of the best stories in the episode is how Josh got the first wave of business. In the second or third month, he told his partners, "I'm going to text 500 people today."
He went through his phone book and sent two kinds of texts. One went to people who had companies with W-2 employees. The other went to people with a good network who could earn an affiliate commission. He sent four to 500 texts that day.
The response rate? "It was between five to 10%."
Josh admitted that part of him wanted to quit. "There was parts of me that was like, dude, should I not even do this? Because now I'm kind of embarrassed." But the replies he did get turned into referrals, and "it just got bigger and bigger and bigger because I was starting something that no one have heard about."
Three or four years later, one person from that list texted him asking to get lunch because he had heard Josh had done well. "I look at my thread, the last text I sent was that text I sent to him that he never replied to."
James summed up the lesson for owners: a lot of business owners are a little afraid to "just send the message."
Josh Zieglowsky: "There was a couple of people that kind of talked behind my back thinking I was starting an MLM or whatever. And you just kind of have to like... stay with your focus and your vision, you know, of what you believe that this could be."
Credit Your Failures and Build a Learning Habit
When James asked what drives him, Josh pointed to a clip from his own podcast. People ask where he dedicates his success. "And I say failures. That's how I dedicate any success."
He also has a simple daily regimen. "I learned about 10 years ago to give yourself one hour of education a day." He is not a big reader, so he listens and watches instead, and he loves stories of how companies were built. His example was the first drive-through, which he credits to In-N-Out, not McDonald's. The point was not the history lesson. It was that the founder "believed in it. He had the vision."
"You're going to have people that don't believe in your product or don't believe in what you're planning on doing," Josh said. That is true for anyone starting a new division, opening a new market or rebuilding their company.
The Fractional BDO Model: Partnerships That Make One Plus One Equal Ten
Today Josh describes himself in a way most owners have never heard. "Just like there's fractional CFOs or fractional CTOs, CMOs... I'm basically a fractional BDO, Business Development Officer." He said he has created a company behind it, and "we have about eight companies now where we bring in the business for their business."
James framed the whole partner series around this idea: the right relationships make "one plus one equal more than two, it makes it ten."
Josh's current companies show how that works in practice:
- Acquire, but keep the brilliant founder. One company he partnered in was started nine or 10 years ago by a registered nurse. "We acquired a portion of it and then she retained a, a portion ownership... because she's brilliant. Uh, honestly, if she wasn't part of it, it'd be, it'd be a tough go." Her limit was scale: "she was doing everything through basically Excel sheets, not through tech." Josh and his partners brought the tech and the business development.
- Partner where your experience already lives. Another company came out of his commercial real estate world. A man came up to him at his commercial real estate mastermind group, laid out his background as an attorney who had worked for insurance companies, and said, "I think we could be partners."
- Know whose network fits what. "Everyone has a different niche," Josh said. Some people know a lot of companies with over 20 employees. Others know commercial landlords. Matching the offer to the network is how referral partnerships actually produce.
James put it in plain terms: "So the trick is find someone who's absolutely brilliant and just convince them to do business with you."
For owners, the takeaway is to stop thinking you have to build every capability yourself. Strong partners, a founder who stays in, or someone who brings the business in can move you further than another year of doing it alone. It also means building a real leadership layer so you are not the only engine. Our post on how to build a leadership team so you can step back covers that side.
Build Companies That Are Sellable, Not Just Fast
Here is the part fast-growth stories usually skip. Even with $1.8 billion in sales, Josh said the ERC company "wasn't a sellable business, even though we had a pretty big player, um, engage us to buying us early. Um, but we didn't agree on the number." What that buyer really wanted, he said, "is my affiliate network, really."
Compare that to how he talks about his current companies: "both of them are sellable businesses." His timeline is clear too. He gives himself about five to seven years before he slows down, and said, "I do think those three businesses, hopefully we'll have exits by then."
His newest venture is built around the same problem many owners face when it is time to sell. Josh said M&A brokers called it "a game changer" because "they need P&Ls, they need tax returns, they need all this other stuff and they're always chasing it." He used a plumbing company as an example of an owner who wants to sell in a couple of years but does not know where to start, and wants to see "two or three things we can do to help increase our, our value from a million dollars to five million dollars, whatever it is."
He also made a point about tax planning that every owner should hear. Friends of his who had exits would go to their CPA and ask what to do with the money, and the answer was, "Like, go buy a truck." His response: "That's small. There's a lot of other stuff."
Josh Zieglowsky: "ERC wasn't a sellable business... what they wanted to buy is my affiliate network, really."
The lesson for home service owners: scale fast if you can, but build something a buyer can actually purchase. That means clean numbers, systems that do not depend on one person, and a team that can run without you. Start with business exit planning and getting your numbers right before you sell. If you own a roofing company and want to know where you stand, Forge Strategic Equity offers a roofing company valuation.
Get in the Room With People Doing Big Things
James closed with a challenge to owners in the direct-to-consumer world. A lot of hard-working owners, he said, "might not have like the business acumen or business know-how on what's the next step, how can I take a risk." His suggestion was to come to one of the D2D Experts business boot camps and rub shoulders with partners like Josh, because "you're the culmination of the five closest people you surround yourself with."
"Get in the room with people doing big things and see what your own life comes into," James said.
Josh's version of that advice is just as direct. "I'm, I'm an open book," he said, and invited people to find him on Instagram and send him a direct message.
How to Scale a Company Fast: The Short Version
If you want to apply Josh Zieglowsky's story to your own company, here is the playbook drawn from this conversation:
- Look for the gap. When everyone points the problem somewhere else, there may be a business in it.
- Put a number on it. Josh and his partner wrote down 40 grand a month each before they built anything.
- Commit before it is comfortable. Send the 500 texts, even if only 5 to 10% reply.
- Use leverage. Affiliates, partners and technology scaled the company far past what Josh could do alone.
- Partner with brilliant people. Acquire with the founder still in, and match offers to the networks that fit them.
- Build to sell. A fast company that nobody can buy is a lesson, not an exit.
