Why FANNIT Started

Keith Eneix tells how his family hardscaping business ran out of leads in 2008, and why he and Neil built Fannit to solve that problem for contractors.

I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs. My grandparents, my uncle, my dad -- entrepreneurship was just a normal thing in our house. But while it was normal, nobody was wildly successful.

My dad was probably the most successful out of all of them. He ran a hardscaping business that my grandpa started back in 1975. I grew up watching him work in that business, and eventually, he bought it from my grandpa. To me, my dad was Superman. He was a smart, disciplined man who was always reading a book or getting caught up on current events in the newspaper.

But there were some very clear things I saw growing up that shaped my view of entrepreneurship.

Looking back on it now, I describe it like this: he was Daddy Warbucks in the summer, but a poor pauper in the winter. Most Christmases, he'd half-joke and say, "Hey, we can't buy you guys Christmas presents this year." Now, that never actually happened -- we always had presents -- but it was how we felt because things were so slow during the wintertime. It felt normal to him, and we'd all just laugh about it.

But one year, when I was 16, he gave me a copy of Rich Dad Poor Dad. I read that book and was just blown away by the ideas -- assets working while you sleep, the cash flow quadrant, all of it. It made one thing painfully clear to me: my dad had traded a 40-hour-a-week job for an 80-hour-a-week job, for basically the same pay.

That's when I realized the truth about his company. Even though it was set up as a corporation, he was really a solopreneur. He didn't have a true business. If he walked away, the company stopped making money. He had to be there. And because of that, he couldn't grow past that ceiling.

My brother, Neil, and I grew up working in that family business. We did the shoveling, moved the rocks, did the landscaping -- all of it. When I was 18, right around the time I graduated high school, I sat down with my parents at the dinner table. I told them, "I want to take over the family business. I want to be an entrepreneur. I want to help fix this."

My dad looked at me and said, "No, you don't. It's too hard. Go to college, and I'll pay your way."

He told me the business wasn't valuable. He believed it was only worth the value of the equipment in the yard -- which, at the time, was maybe a little over $100,000.

So, we listened to him. My brother and I went to college. But we always expected to come home and take over the business that had put us through school and paid the bills all those years.

Then, I finished college. It was right in the middle of the 2008 recession. I was engaged to be married, full of hope, and we walked right into a brick wall. The contractor work had completely dried up. We had no leads. And the truth is, if you don't have leads, you don't have a business. My dad's business went from hero to zero.

Neil and I looked at each other and realized we had a massive problem to solve. First, we talked to the marketers the business was using to see if they could fix it. Their answer? "Just spend more money." We were already spending thousands of dollars a month, and it wasn't working. They just didn't understand the trades.

So, Neil and I decided we had to figure it out ourselves. We dove into search engine optimization (SEO) and started going after residential jobs. My dad was ecstatic because those residential jobs paid half down up front and the other half right at the end. It was immediate cash flow, with no waiting on other contractors to pay us.

That effort to save our dad's business is exactly why Neil and I started Fannit in 2010. We had seen firsthand what happens when a great contractor can't get found -- and we knew there were thousands of guys out there in the same situation. Contractors who were good at their trade, worked hard, and still couldn't get the phone to ring consistently. That's the problem Fannit was built to solve.

In 2022, Neil and I bought our dad's company from him. We took a business that he once told me at the dinner table was only worth the value of its equipment, and we paid him $1.2 million for it. We more than doubled his retirement.

That outcome is what being Exit Ready looks like. And what we were building toward the whole time -- the real reason any of this matters -- is right here.

And the marketing side -- getting the right leads, building a brand people trust, showing up when customers are searching -- that's where it starts. You can't build a business worth selling, passing down, or stepping back from if the phone isn't ringing.

You don't have to be the guy working 80 hours a week for 40 hours of pay. You don't have to believe that your business can't run without you, or that nobody else can do what you do. And you certainly don't have to accept that your life's work is only worth the scrap value of your trucks and equipment.

I know there are a lot of smart, hard-working, incredible guys out there running contracting businesses who have the exact same problem my dad had. He was my hero, but he was trapped. I want to help you fix that problem -- for your family, your community, and your own peace of mind.

Being Exit Ready doesn't necessarily mean you have to sell your business tomorrow. It means getting your business to a place where it is healthy enough that you could exit at any time. You could sell it and retire. You could hand it off to a manager. You could pass it down to your kids and create a legacy for your family. Or you could keep running it without it running you.

When your business is Exit Ready, you get freedom of time and freedom of finance. You get to make the impact you actually set out to make when you started. You get more time with your kids, your wife, or volunteering in your community.

You started your business to build a dream. But if it isn't built to be Exit Ready, that same business can crush your dream. That's why Fannit exists -- to fix the marketing side of that equation, so you have a real shot at getting there.