The Home Service Expert Podcast - Applying The Football Season Strategy to Get A-Players on Your Team

Episode Date: September 11, 2020

Danny Kerr is the managing partner of Breakthrough Academy, a company that works with over 300 contractors across the continent, managing nearly a billion dollars’ worth of revenue. An expert on recruitment, leadership, and company culture, he continues to push boundaries and create his own success in life, while helping other entrepreneurs do the same. In this episode, we talked about hiring, systems, productivity...

if you think about it, people are like Plato when you first hire them, you can mold them. You can kind of tell them what to do, what not to do, what their expectations are, when they should work, when they shouldn't. And they're pretty eager. They're eager to please, and they'll do what it takes. But after three or four months, they'll harden. And those expectations are set. And it's 10 times harder to reset those expectations after the fact. And so you have this unique window of time, this unique opportunity in the beginning of a new recruit coming on to set those expectations. But a lot of us, again, don't take the time to think through what those expectations actually should be. And if we're all honest,

we probably know what they are because we learn about them over years and years of just making mistakes, but they can be documented, right? So one thing, all of our members, and actually, I think we'll give it away. We have a little download package at the end of this webinar with everyone. So we're going to give away like a nine page employment agreement that'll give the details of all those things. And it starts with having goals. Here's the numbers you need to achieve this year to be worth your weight, right? Based on those goals, here's the specific areas of your job that you're in charge of. Here's where you pass things over to the next person. Here's who you report to. Here's how

often you report to them. Here's what you need to update to the next person. Here's who you report to. Here's how often you report to them. Here's what you need to update for us to be able to know if you're hitting your numbers. Here's the things, responsibilities that you need to basically take care of when shit hits the fan. Here's the stuff that you don't need to take care of. Like that type of clarity allows someone to be a functional member of the organization. But when you don't set any of those expectations, they'll set their own. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business.

Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. This is Danny Kerr. This is the guy, the legend. He runs a very successful company called Breakthrough Academy. He lives in Canada, specifically British Columbia, and they work with over 300 home service companies and manage almost a billion dollars of revenue. He's been on the podcast before. We were just getting into how important it is

to start thinking about hiring the right people and how important it is to create a culture of leadership. All the bad words I hated a long time ago, I've learned to enjoy. And you know what? There's certain owners I know, there's certain CEOs, certain COOs that what just happened on Facebook would set them

loose. I guarantee you, I'll never think about that again. I just, I get it out of my head onto the next one and I won't let negativity ruin my life like a lot of people. And I feel like, you know, we've gotten to these car accidents. One guy got hurt yesterday. Thank God he was wearing a glove, but it's really, it can be devastating if we focus on the negative. I look at that as a learning. And he's getting some surgery done. He's going to be okay, thank God. But these are all learning opportunities. But when you start focusing on the people, you start doing great things, and you start becoming a team, and you start focusing on top grading. And if you don't hit certain key marks, and we work with you long enough, and I love the fact, Danny, that you spent some time approaching the hiring process, like a coach

building a sports team. And I always talk about sports. The manuals are literally how you play the game. And the scoreboard is your KPI dashboard. And when you tell people how they're doing and how well they're doing and how amazing they are, what's amazing, what happens is you start focusing on the good and people want to learn about the good. And I talked about the power of my morning mojo call today to all my management. And we all discussed it. We said we could all do a better job. We want to lift up the leaders and we want to show the opportunity costs of everybody else not being this great and what it means to them. What does that mean to me, Danny? It means how do I benefit your life by you doing better for this company? You could take that Harley ride. You could come down to Phoenix from British Columbia.

You could finally bring your mom over to where you wanted to bring her to Toronto. I don't know, to Calgary. I don't know Canada very well, but anyways, I love what we're at. Talk to me about you're a coach and you're going to build a team. Tell me what you meant by that. I think it was one thing too, is like, go back to high school. Were you in sports? Yeah. I played a lot of sports. What did you play? What was the one you played? Like to play the hardest? I used to like wrestling and golf the most because those are single action sports is how I got my little finger accident. But I love that I can control if I won or lost. That's my big thing. So I'm learning to be a team player in this business. But all the team sports, I said, I don't care if you beat us. I wasn't the second baseman or the pitcher. I was a shortstop. I don't

care if you beat us. I play left tackle. Ultimately, or the pitcher. I was a shortstop. I don't care if you beat us. I play left tackle. Ultimately, I did care. I hated to lose, but I was like, I want to have it in my own destiny. But go ahead. I know that probably didn't. I was actually in wrestling too. That was actually the one I took the most seriously, funny enough, dude.

But what I remember was how hard I would work on that team. And then I would have to go and do my dumb job. I worked at a clothing store. I did all these different, but I was like so drained to go and make 15, 20 bucks an go and do my dumb job. I worked at a clothing store. I did all these different, but I was like so drained to go and make 15, 20 bucks an hour to work in my job. And I would work 10 times as hard for no money on my sports team.

And why was that? It's an interesting psychological thought, right? And so now we grow up and we take ourselves into our adult world and we're trying to shove everybody into these jobs and saying, well, if I just pay you more, why don't you work harder? Not realizing there's all this intrinsic value people get from being in a competitive environment and being in a sports driven type environment that we don't include in the job

world for some strange reason. Now, I think we're starting to smarten up to that. I think a lot of employers are starting to employ all these same principles, but it's the same idea, right? People want goals. They want to be a part of something. They want to feel achievement. They want to be able to win and be able to say like, look what I've achieved and get recognition for that. And none of those have to do with how much you get paid. None of those have to do with whatever, like the status of your job. They have to do with being a part of something. And I think, you know, our younger generation, I'm 33, you're probably, I don't know exactly, you're probably close to my age. 37, 37, 37, just outside of the millennial

generation. But like, I'm right at the tail end of it. And I don't know, 83 qualifies. All right. Sure. But like, there's just going to be more and more of us coming. And we all have this mentality where it's like, look, like, I don't want to be just like ordered around all day and trade my time for money. Right? That's like the biggest jail sentence for most of us ever. I want to be a part of something. I want to be able to achieve something. I want to be recognized for what I'm doing. I want to get paid for the work I put in. And these are all principles that exist in sports and have for years. You know, here's what i love about sports is i practice five days double two a days to play one game yeah when's the last time you you know in sports we learned practice practice practice get ready for the game the game is when you're meeting the customer the client

okay but do we spend enough time practicing yesterday we sat in the back and i watched these guys practice with one another. They went over everything. And you know what? Out of the last top 15 in the company, out of 130 techs, nine of them were within the last 30 days that they graduated our training program. Nine out of the 15, because we've done a better job of practicing, practicing, practicing, practicing. But the difference is I was out there.

I know what it's like. I'm not one of those owners that say, hey, I've never done this before, but I'm going to coach you there. I know what it's like. I'm not one of those owners that say, hey, I've never done this before, but I'm going to coach you guys. And I think it's important. Now, I brag about the owners that never had to do the work because they get to focus on running a business versus the technician side, which is the e-myth, which is all over on that bookshelf. But I love the sports analogy. And it's like this. When you're a recruiter for a college baseball or college football team, do you think a recruiter for a college baseball or college football team, do you think you wait for the quarterback to get hurt to find a second string

and start finding that? No, you always are looking. And I, people say, I always be closing. I say, always be recruiting. So let's talk a little bit about what is your mentality of people that I lost somebody's time to find somebody. And I wish I had a mirror here because I could say, if you could fog this mirror, you could work for me. Yeah. Now I'm like, wait a minute. Now you got to pass a predictive index. We'll see if you got the right personality for the job.

You've got to do a cognitive test, background check, drug test, ride along form. You've got to make it three weeks before you even are eligible to come train in Phoenix. Then this is hell month. If you make it through here, it's so much fun. But if you make it through here, you're part of the group now. It is like you actually graduated. You're part of the team. And I say this, not, hey, glad you're aboard. I say, congratulations. You guys freaking made it. You killed it. You are a true A1 material. And that's something that I take with a lot of pride and respect for our company. And it's not me. It's the team. I keep telling you it's the team.

But what is your take on the fact that these people, a lot of company owners, first of all, I hate to say this, but they have no right running a company that they're just hiring because they're desperate. But I've been there. So I can't talk down to them because I think I've been there more than anybody. Yeah. There's emergency situations and there's also the ability to plan for what's coming. Right. So every year, like this is what we do with all of our members. This is what we do internally as a company. This is something I've done since I was pretty much 18. I started my first contract in business is you take

a look at what's coming. Right. And it's not as hard as people think you can sit down and say, hey, you know what? We did a million bucks this year. We should do about 1.3 next year. To do that, we're going to need an extra salesperson because I can tell we're going to need to do more quotes than even I can do on my own. We need one more mini project manager that I can hopefully promote into a full project manager a year later when we go for 1.5. You can start to build what I call an organizational structure a year in advance with what we call some basic planning, right? A strategic plan, right? So one of the things we do every December with all of our people, we sit down, we figure out their financials. From there, we figure out their one-page plans. We figure out like a one-page strategic plan. And it often includes a hiring process because the org structure demands it.

You know, if you can do whatever, 200 quotes in a year and you need to do 300 next year, you're probably going to need someone. And you could sit back and say, well, I don't fully need someone because I need someone to do 200 more quotes. It's like, well, no, like it's time to hire someone, relinquish some control and give yourself a bit more time. Right? So every year it's good to sit down usually at the end of your season too, and start to really look at what's next year's plan. What are the people are going to need to be involved into making that plan a reality and start recruiting early. So we'll set it up and then we'll actually project, okay, roughly in six months, we should have that hire done. So we'll add the salary to that monthly

cost. We can see what our costs will be month to month for cashflow. Like you can get a bit of a crystal ball on this stuff. Now, in reality, that person comes in when they come in, they might come in a little earlier, they might come in a little later, but you've given yourself an entire year to start looking for these people versus six weeks or whatever it would be, right. Or sometimes a week. And I find a lot of people, they sit down and they say, we need someone in the next two or three weeks. Cause it's all in the owner's plate. They're like busy as it is. They're running around like crazy. And they don't usually find the right person because they got three applicants. One person was high on drugs. The other person never showed up for the interview and the final person, you

know, whatever, it wasn't quite a fit. And they just hire the one person that showed up and that's it. That's not real recruiting though. I remember myself. So when I was 18 years old, I did a terrible job of my first ever training of my people. So I showed up late for the actual training. I had my ladders had fallen off my van. So I was trying to get them back on. I never even fully got them back on. So I showed up on the job site with these ladders, like half off. I opened up the door to my vehicle and two paint cans fell out, just splattered all over the concrete. And I was training six guys that day. Three of them walked off the job site. I never saw them again. And I was like, crap, I booked work for the whole month for six people. And I only have three to work with. And I was about to go and try and paint myself with them. And I was like, well, I've got two arms. I've lost two

people. Maybe I could paint with a third arm and somehow catch up. And I had a coach at the time because I was part of franchise system. And he just looked at me. He's like, you're an idiot. He's like, go tell the three that you currently have to take a week off and go spend the next 40 hours figuring out how to fill some of those spots. Otherwise your entire summer, you're going to be behind the eight ball. And it was the first lesson for me about just realizing that like, even in emergency circumstances, like you can't just do it all yourself. You have to pull back, look at the future a little bit and go just gear down a little bit before you gear back up. And you can't do it all yourself.

You'll just burn out. You need people. You need good people behind you to do it. So big thing in my life is just the planning behind it. I have a business partner who's incredible, who just forces me to plan because I don't always like to. I'm a bit ADD and like to do things last minute. But that reminder every day, it's like that is where you're going to get ahead. I've seen it enough in my life. I'm bought into it. So, you know, there's, I don't do all the interviews. I rarely do a lot of them. We've got two full-time recruiters and

I'll tell you, there's something to be said about, I've gone through Southwest, the interview process, and we were all in this big room. This was when I was, couldn't have been much older than 20. And they told us, tell a story. They asked us really good questions. They said, tell us one time that you were really proud. And I was like, well, I'm a busboy at Cheesecake Factory. And at Cheesecake Factory, they really tend to look at you when no one else is looking and they give you a green card. It's a free meal if you do a good job. And one day I was in the section, it was completely closed down and there was stuff on the ground. It wasn't my section and I cleaned it up. And I really got, I got a green card the other day because the manager

happened to be seeing me. It was really nice blessing in disguise because I was really hungry and I didn't have any money that day. So it was really kind of cool. And I was one of the finalists and they were going to hire me, but then I'm like, I do not want to do the baggage, like throw them off the cart. But you know what I love is I realized their hiring process and how much there's certain people that, you know, if you work there, you're kind of hireable enterprise is known for being that way. Southwest is like great people work at Southwest and it's because they do such a good job of training and recruiting and orienting. And I got to tell you, I told my general manager, and I've told a lot of the managers here,

some of the people that have made it here today aren't going to make it next year. And the reason why is our expectations have grown so high. The first thing I said on a podcast like a month ago, I said, you got to fire every single person that nods their head when you're at a meeting and they roll their eyes. I said, you need to get rid of those cancer. And some of them are your top producers. And you got to start with your culture first. And, you know, I used to think the glass door was a joke. I'm like, people only go on glass door when they get fired or they quit because of a dumb reason. And now I think it's so

important. And I wanted to talk to you a little bit, it's talking to me about setting the right expectations when you're hiring for a job and the problems that come when you don't set them up with a plan. Yeah. Like if you think about it, people are like Plato, when you first hire them, you can mold them. You can kind of tell them what to do and not to do what their expectations are, when they should work when they shouldn't. And they're pretty eager. They're eager to please and they'll do what it takes. But after three or four months, they'll harden. And those expectations are set.

And it's 10 times harder to reset those expectations after the fact. And so you have this unique window of time, this unique opportunity in the beginning of a new recruit coming on to set those expectations. But a lot of us, again, don't take the time to think through what those expectations actually should be. And if we're all honest, we probably know what they are because we learn about them over like years and years of just making mistakes, but they can be documented, right? So one thing, like all of our members, and actually I think we'll give it away. We have a little download package at the end of this webinar with everyone.

So we're going to give away like a nine page employment agreement that'll give the details of all those things. And it starts with having goals. Here's the numbers you need to achieve this year to be worth your weight, right? Based on those goals, here's the specific areas of your job that you're in charge of. Here's where you pass things over to the next person. Here's who you report to. Here's how often you report to them. Here's what you need to update for us to be able to know if you're hitting your numbers. Here's the things, responsibilities that you need to basically take care of when shit hits the fan. Here's the stuff that you don't need to take care of.

That type of clarity allows someone to be a functional member of the organization. But when you don't set any of those expectations, they'll set their own, right? So I remember hiring people and I would forget to tell them that if we have rain all week, because we were an exterior painting company at the time, you had to paint on the weekends. And that simple expectation of just not saying that would have somebody be like, well, you know, it rained all week and like, I'm going away for the weekend. So I'm not working. And I'm like, well, you're, you're fired.

They're like, what do you mean you're fired? Like, I'm not having to show up on the weekends of like, well, I never, I never told you either way. So it's up to me, actually, I can't do anything about it. But the minute you're like, if we don't hit 40 hours by Friday, you're expected to work your weekends to make up for it. Simply writing that down. Not only do you not have as much rebuttals, but you have people super, there you go. You have people super motivated to actually want to do it because they understand, Hey, I got to hit 40 hours every week to hit my goals,

to hit my bonuses. I see how this is all going to work by year end for me. And they're a part of the process. They're a player on the team now, and not just there to make a buck. So, well, you know, when I learned my position of left tackle, I learned exactly how to set up, but we drilled ourselves to not go off sides. We drilled, we drilled ourselves on every single aspect of the, that's what my job was. I knew exactly who I had to protect. I knew my job. I knew that I had to protect the quarterback at all costs or make sure that hole was open when it comes to the running back. I knew what my job was and I knew exactly, they taught me every aspect of it. We drilled, we drilled, we drilled, we drilled. And the thing was, is if you look at my manuals,

you know, the expectations. Now you've got to understand these are living, breathing documents, but we're one of a thousand companies that even has something as easy as a manual. And before you hire somebody, you just say, what is their job? Where do they fit in? The other day, we were really kind of frustrated on the manager call of one of the gals and she's doing a great job now, but there was a lot of mistakes happening. Her job was to get the new doors going in for the next day, all set up and make sure we've had full capacity. We wanted to make sure every guy had a busy day because that income coming in that day, we want to maximize it. And she was missing her expectations. They were complaining. And I said, show me her manual, by the way, because we created

a job within the dispatcher specifically for her. And there was no manual. And I said, oh my gosh, how is she supposed to succeed? And that weekend, the guys ended up working on it and getting it. But I wanted to ask you what a good job description really looks like and what should be included in it. And I think it's going to be the bonus package that you guys are giving is a piece of that, right? Yeah, so we'll get everyone to download it so they can see it.

But essentially, I see lots of different job descriptions. And actually, I talked to a lot of people like we have job descriptions, we're good, they're actually really well written. One of the things that almost everybody I've met so far is missing is a numerical what we call deliverable, a number that somebody needs to achieve. And I find the best ones are usually around quality, volume and profit. If you can get it into someone's job description, all three of those, it holds them accountable to a more holistic way of approaching their job. So if it's all about trying to get revenue, then they're probably going to book jobs that are low profit, and they're probably going to do bad quality work for the customer, right?

If it's all about quality, they're probably going to go way over budget and cost you as a company way too much money, but the customer may be super happy because that's the only metric they cared about. But if you have all three at play, quality, volume, and profit, in some way that they're directly accountable and relatable to their job, that's when you hit the nail on the head. And it has to be something they have direct control over, right? So your administrative assistant maybe can't be in charge of profit, but they can be in charge of having all updated records ready for you for Monday morning, right? That helps with the profit side of the company.

You know what? They can help with maybe collecting AR and keeping it below a certain percentage by year end. There's certain things that everybody in the company should have an ability to make a direct impact on around quality, volume, or profit, or preferably all three. I love that. It makes a lot of sense to me. And I always tell people, customers want three things. They want it done fast. They want it done right. And they want it done for cheap. You'll never get all three. But the funny thing is, it kind of reminds me quality, volume, and profit, kind of similar what we expect out of our employees. And I think putting true key performance indicators in place, we track every single technician. There's a number by their name of where they stand in the company. And if you're past 50 with 130 guys, but my top 20 guys,

I'm always like, wow, dude, awesome. Number 18. But I love the guys. And I say guys, because we've got amazing CSRs that are women that are amazing. They book over 90% on a continued long-term basis, but the guys are all technicians. And I love the guys that are sports fanatics that have to be number one. They walk in and there's number two by their name and they punch the wall and they go, and they said, can I come talk to you? And they want to talk to me. And they're like, shouldn't you show me what he did differently than me? How long was

he staying at the job? What did he sell differently? What's going on? They hate being number two. And that's one of the biggest things I look for is the analogies to sports we've been talking about is show me your competitive, show me the last sport you were passionate about. And I got to say this because you get good people still. These are my campers that are just content. They do a good job. They're happy to be part of the team. And you need these people.

But I love the hikers to say, dude, I jumped from 20 to number nine. My goal next week is number five. Then I'm going to grow to number three. But you know what I'm doing, right? I'm coming for that number one spot. And it's all the competition, man. And I love when I hear them tell me a story about, like, if I told you how I play cards, even the game Euchre, and it's all luck of the draw of the cards, I'm like, oh, this, my partner sucks. Like,

what do I got to do to win? I'm the perfect technician, probably not the perfect team player. When it comes to recruiting, I think social media is amazing because you could get a hold of people that already have other jobs, but they might want to switch. You're not going to the unemployment line. Although some people looking to make a change might be going to Craigslist and Indeed and all these other places. Some of those people are job hoppers. So I've found that social media is a very, very good point to be recruiting. What is your take on that? Yeah.

So actually that's our number one strategy is using social media to find good people for our team internally. And it's one of the better ones that we teach our members to go do. It all originated with just years ago. Our biggest strategy was network recruiting, right? So we use our employees or our franchisees network to find more people. And usually it's go through your phone list, go through your yearbook, go through your, you know, back in the day before

we had Facebook, go through all your lists and circle all the people that you think could be good and give them a call and see if they'd be interested, you know, in a job. And that's evolved now into something that's way more powerful, way more simple, and ultimately you can get your team involved pretty quickly. So what we do now is we, well, first, actually, we drop a job ad. So we try and drop an ad that really appeals to an ideal candidate that we're actually looking for. We can sell to a specific type of person who is like, hey, I'm looking for this type of job.

Good. We're going to write up an ad that really appeals to that type of person. We can talk about that in a bit. But once that's done, I show it to my team. And I'm like, here's what we're looking for. And I want you to message 100 to 200 people on Facebook, like direct Facebook message. So yeah, you know, put it posted on your, on your page if you want and have people like it and share it and all that. That's good. That's good exposure. But this direct Facebook messaging thing is where the rubber really hits the road.

So they'll message them all basically people who would be a good fit, people who they think would just be a good connector and people they generally just have a good relationship with. They will not ask any of them if they want a job. What they will say is, hey, so-and-so, our company XYZ is looking for a person in XYZ role. Curious if you know anybody who'd be a good fit. Please see link below. P.S. We're offering a $500 hiring bonus or $2,000 hiring bonus.

If you know anyone, be happy to split that with you. Thanks. And you send that out and have all your whole team send that out to a hundred people each. You get some pretty crazy traction, right? So depending on the size of your team. That's amazing. Okay. So I do this thing where the guys come in, they get a hundred other friends and family, they go do a free tune up. And then we'd say, if we did a good job, let us know online. We tell them where to go. But the difference was I built this and I said, do it. You know how many people did it?

Like 10, 5, 2. Well, they get like 6 or 7 or 15, but they never made it to the dispatcher to dispatch the jobs so that people tried, but I didn't create a full thing. So number one, I believe in accountability and tracking and making sure it's done properly. So tell me exactly how are you holding them accountable to that? So we do it together. We physically will just sit there and do it. Like, let's spend a couple hours doing it. Right. Oh, God, this is golden. It's golden because I love the connector.

I love saying if you know anybody. And one other thing I love to do, Danny, is I tell all my managers to start broadcast this on social media and get all your guys to share it. We're doing pizza for everybody. We just got lunch for everybody. They're playing the arcade games. We're shooting hoops in the back. We've got more games here than we know what to do with.

And people go, oh my God, I want to work for you guys. That place looks awesome. Sharing those things. And people go, Oh my God, I want to work for you guys. That place looks awesome. Sharing those things. And I had somebody on my podcast about it a year and a half ago. And he said, pizza and beer and have your people go live. This isn't my own authentic thought. And I don't do beer as much. I do plenty of beer myself, but I try not to like, Hey, we're going to drink a bunch of beer, but so you guys get together and you physically just. So, yeah. So back in the day, we'd physically get together.

Now we're doing it on, on zoom, right? Or what we will do is we will set a goal by the end. So we have a weekly meeting and we'll set a goal at the beginning of the week. And by the end of the week, everyone has to have it scheduled in their calendar and do it right. But the easiest time I've ever had is when I get my team and we just literally do it together. We're going to go get together, have some fun, make a game out of it. Whoever messages the most people today wins something.

And then later on, whoever gets the hires out of it will get a bonus out of it and just have some fun with it and keep it pretty casual. And the key is to like your people will, some of them, not all of them, but might have a few apprehensions about it. So usually it's around like, have you hire someone that you fire and then it's on me. And I also don't want to lose my job. So I don't want to hire someone, you know, my network, or maybe, maybe you'll hire somebody that replaces me. So I always, you know, started out with a good conversation about why it's so important that we hire through the network, that the network is the strongest set of people we're

ever going to find that as a team, we want nothing but a players. And they all, they'll get that because they're all trying to do their job. And it's hard to do your job when you work with a bunch of B or C players. And they've seen it too. Like back in the day, I'm not a perfect hire. I've hired a few people that didn't work out. And they see that. And they're just like, I really don't want any more of those types of people. If we can avoid that, that'd be great. I'm like, you know what, it comes from from you guys, you guys are the A players on the team. Good people know good people. If you're open to that, I'll pay you for your time. Let's have some fun around it.

And ultimately, I'll give you a bonus. Now, if they don't want to do it, I don't force it. I don't want it to be cheesy. I don't want people to feel awkward about it. But it's become a cultural thing in our company now. And for the most part, our team does. But once in a while, same thing. I've got one person who works with me right now who's done that for five years.

And she kind of looked at me. She's like, I kind of don't want to keep doing that. I've done it every six months. And I've zapped my network., she's like, I kind of don't want to keep doing that. I've done it every like six months. And I like, you know, zap my network. I'm like, cool. I'm not going to force you to. It's not the end of the world. So of our entire team, we've hired almost everybody from that except for like two or three people. Hey, I hope you're enjoying this conversation. I just want to let you know that we have a special offer from Breakthrough Academy for you today. So stick with us to the end and I'll reveal how you can take advantage of it. But if you're in a rush, just go to btacademy.com forward slash home service expert and check out

our exclusive offer that we put together for our listeners today. Okay, now let's get back and continue our chat with Danny. You know, I thought about this. If I went to every new guy that's in here for training, it's probably not the best thing to do is to get someone that hasn't been through. But I'd say this out of the 34 guys in the back I have training right now there's probably 10 of them that my my managers my trainers are going dude this guy's gonna kill it because they showed up early they clean up after themselves they're leaders and I will say that I expect 95 percent of those guys to be here on the top of their class. So those are the guys that probably want to reach out to the last day and say, look, you guys are top gun. You're the best, the best.

You guys are A1 from day one, baby. Let's go out there and let's find some people to message. And you guys are going to be my recruiters. And I get 1500 bucks. I give half up front and half after, you know, it was 180 days. We switched it to 90 just because I'm like, dude, no one's incentivized to make sure that it's our job to hire them right and make sure we did the right tests and did our research and checked with their referrals and everything else. If we did a crappy job hiring than them, that's on us. I still think it's a mistake. And I'm almost ready to give it all up front because if we don't recruit right. And I've got a lot of books on hiring and recruiting

and who it's called is one of them right up there is like, why are you punishing your employees? Because you did crappy hiring. You were the one supposed to do all the research and do your job. Right. I don't know what your take is on that, but. Yeah. I was just going to make a different comment. Actually, we were talking about compensation on this. I often like it's easy to give money to people you don't know. So if you get a referral network through someone's cousin that, you know, through a Facebook message kind of led to a hire, I'll give them money all day long. But what I actually love to do is give trips to my team. So I'll just be like, you know what, if you get someone on, why don't we get you and your wife or you and your girlfriend a weekend away, and just pay for that and just try and give

them more experiences. And I find that's a bit more fun. It's a bit more, it's less transactional. I think people feel a little weird sometimes getting their friend hired for money. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but we found that works a little bit better. I've got, I got a guy with 17 guys right now and he's, you know, I got this, these books on the bookshelf and hate to walk away in the middle, but it's the five languages of appreciation in the workplace. And we're making the new hires here that are coming in next month. We're giving them the book and there's a free test in here. We want to learn what their language is because maybe it's money. Maybe it's free time. Maybe it's words of,

there's five things and it really gets it down to it. And mine's where acts of service. Yeah. Because I need help from everybody. And as I'm taking the test, I'm like, I need help. I need help. I'm thinking to myself, I can't do all this. I've literally got so many great people around me to pretty much.

And I think the trick is delegation. I love the idea of trips. So I've got a whole software that puts in key elements of the role and it kind of writes the ad for you. And my philosophy is you write an ad that sounds amazing culture. It's like, we have fun. We do this, we do that. Here's your role. By the way, we're a garage or a company. When I read ads that are like mandatory, must be background checks, no BS, must work weekends. I'm like, I rewrote my cousin's ad in Colorado Springs. He's like, I'm only getting two applicants a week. I'm like, this looks like

a prison sentence. Are you kidding me? I would never want to apply to work for you. You look like a big old asshole. So I rewrote his ad and he goes, dude, we got 200 applicants the first, I think that was within three days. And I'm like, make it sound good. Make it sound fun. Have a testimonial from a real employee there. Like when you start thinking about this stuff. So I wanted to ask you when you're putting your, your recruitment ads together, what's the best way to do it? So you're on the right track. We take it a step further. I'll get into this, but we basically look at this as a marketing and sales activity. Okay.

So we are marketing to our ideal candidate to attract them through a interview and sales process to bring them through appropriately. And the first thing you do in any good marketing campaign, you can definitely put on a marketing campaign that's all about hype, but you also go deep a little layer deeper and you say what is my ideal customer looking for so you do the same with your candidate what's my ideal candidate what's what are they looking for like who cares what i like what do they like right and so the best way to do that is to interview your top people and in the past when i'd done this you get some interesting stuff.

So we're talking about sports. One of my top project managers was an athlete. He was a quarterback of the football team. And he would say to, I remember sitting down and interviewing him. I was like, what do you love about your job? What do you hate about your job? What keeps you around? Gets you up in the morning?

What were you fearful of when you first started with us? I get into the psychology of this person and things come out of it. I love that you're my coach more than you're my boss. I love that you give me freedom and autonomy to run the cruise my way. I love that you set goals with me and I can score touchdowns basically at the end of the week and make a bit of money. You know, I love that basically I am kind of like a quarterback of the painting teams, but I get paid to do it. And I'm like, right. And I changed my ad from need project manager to run our painting crews to need a quarterback to take our painting teams home.

Sick of a boss, wish you had more of a coach. Looking for a freedom and autonomy to run crews your way. Want to get bonuses at the end of the week for scoring touchdowns? Or do we have the job for you? I literally use his verbs in my ads so that other people reading it like that person will resonate on a much deeper level than just excitement. But this person seems to understand my inner like brain and you get emails back from people that will email you being like, I don't know who you are or how you know me, but this is me. And it doesn't matter if they have a job or how much they get paid or whatever,

because when they read that and they're somewhat open-minded to it, they'll gravitate to it. You know, what's funny is you brought up verbs and I always give sales lessons on adjectives. Do you want to buy a roller? Do you want to buy a machine pressed 100,000 cycle self-lubricating lifetime warrantied roller? Now with the adjectives, so you talked about verbs and I love adjectives and obviously they work with each other. But I love what you said about autonomy as well is a lot of leaders that are future leaders of the company, they want autonomy.

And it's amazing the lessons we've learned over the years of just making people leaders. We take our workers and we develop them into leaders. And it's amazing. When I was sitting in this room, I said, you know, there's something important going on in there. He's running a project. There's something important going on over there. There's a ton of things going on over there.

It used to be all me. I used to want to be involved in everything. I used to pop in and say, hey, what are we working on? Do I know about it? How could I be involved? And now I'm like, eh, why don't you guys handle that? It's like, that's not even my lane. And it's fun when

you start seeing it because it's all about the people we choose. And the fun part is picking a compensation plan that motivates the crap out of them and finding out how do we both win the game. And I think there's a lot to be said. Hiring somebody is one thing, but getting them motivated, whether that compensation means trips with them and their wife or their husband to go on a nice trip, whether it means taking them out to lunch, whether it means bringing them up when there's 200 people on a call and they walk up to the front and they might be a little shy, but they feel like they're going to call all their friends, their mom, their grandpa, and say, I was number one in the company and I brought our employee of the month.

Finding out what motivates people and really working around that. I got to tell you, you know, I love this stuff, but this stuff is just, it's consulting to me. People are always like, how do you make money in the podcast? I'm like, have you seen my company, A1 GarageBers? It's all from the podcast and the people around me. So this stuff is just pure gold. Speaking of gold, give us some gold nuggets that people could use in the next, these last four months to really kill it, to do some good hiring. Cool. I'll tell you one thing that it's a bit more long-term, but it's, it's a vital, vital thing that if done starting now will help you in the future in a big way.

When I have applicants coming in, one of the first things I do, I don't, I used to print. So at one point, we didn't get into this at the time, but at one point I used to hire 150 people a year for this franchise organization. So I was basically full-time franchise recruitment. So franchise sales and recruitment. And I get about a hundred resumes a day. And it got to a point where I'm just killing trees, right? I'm going through paper, like crazy printing all these resumes out. And it's useless because they're all sitting on my desk. They're all over the place. My desk is a mess. Like I can't fully find everybody that I wanted to call back. And I stopped doing that. And I started basically just taking the file off of the email they gave me, saving it into Dropbox. And I had three different folders, apps to call, apps

rejected, apps set up. And I would rename their application. So whatever the word file that they sent me it in, I would put the score. So it'd be score out of 10, their name, the position they're looking for, and then bracket my last interaction, which would be like left message, sent email, whatever it is. And so my apps to call, I would always have my nine and tens out of tens at the top because it would auto just sort by name and I would call them first. And after a while, like wouldn't get ahold of them, I'd put them in my apps rejected folder, but they're still there. And I've still got all these nines and tens out of tens sitting in my apps rejected folder for a year or two years or three years from now. And I've got all my old applications sitting there for reuse years later. And I think one thing a lot of us need to do is

we talked a little bit about working towards the future when it comes to recruitment. I don't find there's a lot of short-term fixes for recruiting problems. In fact, I think a lot of the times it can be very detrimental to try and rush that process. But I think by always thinking about the future, planning out a year ahead of time, who do we want to hire, keeping your resumes so that years later, you can reflect back on these things, you're slowly building up your like base. So recruiting becomes easier over time. And I think generally, we're in an economic situation where we all thought coronavirus is going to make it easier to recruit. Heck, I'll my hand up and say, I thought I was going to too. It's actually made it harder because people don't want to work because

they're getting compensated to not work for now, for now, for now. But it seems like in general, there's so many baby boomers retiring and there's a huge, especially in the contracting space is a huge gap between what we need and what's available. And we have to start planning for the future for what's coming and stop just like reacting to needing an employee next week. So I want to say, always be recruiting means I'm going to carry business cards, man. I mean, if I'm getting a haircut, if I'm anywhere and I see somebody, I don't care if they're 22,

or if they're 58, and they fit, I'm just like, man, and if you could get your employees to become recruiters and say what's in it for them. More importantly, how awesome is it to work around other people that have your back? How much more fun are you going to have when there's someone there watching your back that you enjoy, that you see smiling all the time? They're picking up the bathroom. The bathroom is a big deal to me. And the other day, Al was in here and our bathroom had plummeted. Somebody just, I don't know what they ate, but it wasn't good. And I was so embarrassed. And he goes, Tommy, you're going to be a billion dollar of your vehicle. These are all important things. And it's somebody, I could see them in their workplace or in their nature, and it becomes a great recruiting tool for me. So always be looking for that great person that you want to be on the team. And if you could instill that in the employees and get them pumped up, a lot of them say, well, why would I care about another technician? Here's why you care, because I'm

going to take a percentage of our total sales of revenue. And I'm going to apply that towards marketing, which means if we're not having good conversion rates, good average tickets, good reputation, you will be indirectly, but seriously affected. So I think there's something to be said there.

And, and, you know, a good technician to me this year, we'll do 1.6 million, a bad one. We'll do 300,000. You know,

that's $1.3 million from top to bottom. Now, most of them are in the middle. A CSR will do an extra million dollars for you a year. And we just get content. And when I go to buy a business, Danny, you know what a lot of people say is, well, there's several people here that you're going to want to get rid of or top grade. And I'm like, why? And they feel like they got this. Well, they helped get me to where I am today. And they worked hard for me. And I'm like, but they got to stay working hard. You mean they're tenured in to treating you like shit? So they're tenured to treating you like poop. So this is great. So thank you for letting me buy you and fix the stuff that you already knew

you had to fix. This is nuts to me. It's crazy to me. And I love talking and recruiting. I got to tell you, the future of the business is recruiting and training. Yep. And it's so much fun. I'm telling you, I'm having such a blast. We've got all these amazing people, Crystal's involved and Bree's involved and just the new people coming on. The next class is, than the one before. Although it's just been amazing. And we just learned little tips and little tidbits. And we're adding these nice label, not a label, but a badge to see who you are. And we're putting that, well, you know, what do they appreciate? We're putting in, like, if they've got,

you ever see, like you'd have, do you have a dog? I do. Yeah. It'd be mom, dad, three little girls with little hair coming out and then the dog. And we're putting that on it. It's just going to be so much fun. And it's like that kind of stuff, the tiny little things, they just make it so much fun to work here. And it's so cool that it's happening here and we're making it happen.

But we're going to kind of shift directions here and we're going to start talking about effective systems in the workplace. And very few people have effective systems. So how do you break the habit of being two hands on in your business? And it's every owner's got to get out of their own way, and I'm still a problem in my own business. But how do you become the person that learns to live in their own lane, but trust, but verify and inspect what you expect. Those are things that I'm super big on. If you don't pay attention to your accounting or your marketing, you can watch your whole company change within a month. So, yeah, I mean, I'm not perfect either, man. Like I think any honest

entrepreneur will put their hand up and say, like, I kind of suck at a lot of things and I'm really good at a couple of things. Right. And we have to be pretty fair with ourselves and honest to the public about that. Like I literally, if you ever get an email from me, it'll say at the bottom PS hyper dyslexia, like please excuse all the expelling mistakes. You guys are all taking out the garbage. Oh, you missed it. I love that when I looked out there, I'm sorry, but you're right. Go ahead.

I want to keep, sorry. We just have to be super honest with ourselves about what we're good at, what we're not. I mean, for me, I'm a hard, very hard worker and I can get caught up doing a bit of everything all the time because I want to do it right. I want to do the best. I'll drive it. I'll do it myself. And I'll get caught up just realizing like I'm working a bunch, doing a bunch of stuff. That's not tasks or stuff that's oriented towards the future of our company. And I'm really for the amount I could have paid to have somebody else do it, I'm wasting my time. And so one of the first things that I've, I've seen this with myself, I've seen this with all of our members, I've seen this with any like true entrepreneur, is we're ADD people with lots of ideas who are out there able to execute all day long,

who need to step back and learn how to take a little bit of time towards building for the future. And one of the first things I did when I started Breakthrough Academy was I said, I am not going to be the person that owns this whole thing and do this all myself, because I'm going to shoot myself in the foot with the ability of where we can go in the future. And I brought in a couple of amazing people I worked with for years at College Pro Painters, one of the guys names Igor Trinanek, another guy named James Dale. And between the three of us, we have a really good set of skills. And even off of us, we have an awesome team of people that can execute for us. But I had to step back and just get my ego out of the way and realize like, I'm not going to be the be-all to everybody for everything. I'm just a human, you know, poop in the toilet, just like

your staffs do, right? Like, and make messes too, right? But like, at the end of the day, that's okay with me. And to let go of that like stubborn pride and ego where like you need to be the doer of all things is huge. And it allows you to step back and see what's really going on and start to build better systems and start to work and develop better people. And really your goal should be

that your staff are all better than you anyways, right? I love it when my salespeople can sell better than me, when my marketing people can think of better marketing stuff than me, when my coaches, honestly, people want to work with me sometimes in our coaching program, we've got a huge coaching team and they're way better than me. I'm like, you might be inspired by me. You might like my personality. You need this other person though, over here, you need more of an engineer because I'm an entrepreneur and it's just a blind leading the blind right now. Right. So I don't know, that would be my one big thought,

but just like being able to get out of your own way. And also for a lot of entrepreneurs, it's just being able to commit the time to like building the future, even if it's just five hours a week. You know, one of the things we work with all of our members on when we first start with us is it'll be more later, but let's just start with five hours a week where we work on the future of the company to,

so you can get out of being that doer and start to be a bit more of that leader. So, you know, it's interesting as I walked outside and these guys are in this huge circle. One of the guys that's been here 10 years is coaching them. He's doing role-playing. He's explaining to them a little bit of Sandler training. We're going through a lot of steps and I just wanted to get in. I wanted to be part of this. He goes, uh-oh, boss is walking out. I'm like, don't call me boss. I hate that. But I was just laughing

because he's given such good information and this guy's fighting the fight. He's a field supervisor, but he's in there every day. He's setting records. He's selling so many new doors, service to sales. And I just listened to him

and he said this thing. He, you know, that's too expensive is the first thing he said. And he goes, oh, really, Danny, why do you say that? When somebody says, hey, I want the most unexpected thing you have. Right. Really, Danny. Why do you think that is?

You know, he's so good at it. And I'm like, dude, this is amazing stuff. And I'm like, you're putting on a clinic. I came in and had this long phone call. I'm not even kidding. It was probably 45 minutes. I go do something. I don't remember, but I was in the showroom or something. I walked back in there and everybody's like this, just listening to him still. And I'm going, this is awesome. So I think I have so much pride in the people that take the initiative to go above and beyond. I go out there the other day, I'm

showing off the building to somebody and all the guys are on the back mopping, they're cleaning up. They're like, hello, sir. I was like, hello. No, I didn't do that. But I was like, this is so cool. So I think that's great, man. I just think, let people do what they do best. You hired them to do something, give them the space to do it. I advise people, I'm super trustful. I've been burned so many times, but the good things that have come out of trust are thousands of percentages higher than not trusting. So I think it's hard to grow a business. You're going to limit the growth. You're going to stunt your growth and it's going to be small. But you know what, Danny, a lot of companies want to be

small. They want complete control. They just need to make a living. They want to make 200 grand a year, whatever that looks like. The business makes nothing. But I can't say that's bad for them because that's what they chose. And they got to decide what they want. I think that's, I'm always like, why wouldn't you continue to grow, Danny? Why are you going to stop at 300 or 400 people? Well, we're good. We were going to really make a difference.

We're going to make these guys multiple millionaires. And I might say, why don't you have a goal of 5,000 people to help? You might go, dude, I've got three daughters I want to raise. I've got the most amazing wife in the world. That's nuts. I'm fine with what I've got. So I think learning to be able to tell people too from a different perspective is what are your goals?

I don't know what your take is on that. It's not one of our things to cover. I think at the end of the day, you do need to have a balance between what you want and what your people want and not to get too caught up in things that maybe maybe you thought you wanted you don't write like I, I see my my team. And I'm like, look, like at the end of the day, you're spending 40 hours of your week often, often more than that here. Why? Besides paying the rent? Like, why are you here? And how can I help you long term with what I know? And vice versa? How can you help me long term with what you know? And vice versa, how can you help me long-term with what you know?

I've got my assistant who bought a house, got married, did all these cool things. And I remember talking to her about her first purchase and getting a mortgage and what she should be able to afford and not. And I know how much I pay her and trying to get her to hit her bonuses so she has a down payment. And I remember her getting married and talking to her about my marriage. And I'm slightly, I don't have to be, but I'm slightly interested and involved in where they're going, not only in my business, but in their life. And I find together, we're all forging a path together where it's not just me being like,

follow me. I've got it all figured out. I'm like, we're a team. Let's do this together. Let's forge this thing together and let's figure it out together. And those who are a part of that rock and roll. If you don't want to be a part of that, I don't want to force you to either. Right.

And it creates a pretty cool dynamic. So, you know, I'm getting ready to close on a house. Hopefully if everything goes right on the eighth and I'm the dinner with all these people and I'm talking to all these people, all the people that I trust too. And then I'll like, make sure if it's a nice house, you can't have employees there. They're going to get mad. And I'm like, they helped me earn this. I've not taken a lot from the company ever. This is something I wanted to do nice for the future. But ultimately, I feel like they're the ones that helped me get this. They should enjoy it.

And I'm like, if someone's got this attitude of like, we make him too much money to be able to buy that, then I don't think they're the right person on the team, first of all. But mostly, I want to do things not to brag to them, not to say, but to say, thank you guys so much. Come enjoy this with me and let's have some fun together. I don't think it's fair to say, no, no, no. Your employees are going to start thinking they're going to ask for this. Look, every single person for the majority of the people here are on performance pay. They want to make more money. They know exactly what they need to do. And it's not going to be any exceptions. And here's the thing is we got a no loan policy.

I've broken it for like if a single mother needs tires for her car. And I do personal loans sometimes because I think it's important, but overall we're not a bank, but I don't think that mentality, I just never thought that was the right way to treat people. But I want to divert here into time management because time management is probably the majority of the owner's weakness, the largest weakness. It's delegation. It's poor time management. And it's unorganization. They don't know where shit is. They can't find it on their computer.

They don't know where they're supposed to be. They're bad on their calendar. And I think that it's a huge topic that we could kind of nail sure i'll give one thought on this is my simplest little like quick tip i guess you could say that would help with this because i struggle with this too so it's like i get way too busy sometimes and i have to really look at myself and feel like what is actually important one of the best things i've ever done and one of the things i get a lot of our people to do and i still have to check myself on you make a list of all the stuff you do in a week. Circle the stuff that's highest time consumption and lowest skill.

And that's usually an indicator of the next hire you're going to be making or something that should be delegated down to your team appropriately. And for a lot of us, we just kind of year over year don't check ourselves on our job descriptions. And if you're growing a business, especially if you're growing quickly, your job description should change annually at the least, minimum. And every single year, your job's the same. You're going to be doing your current job, plus your new job, plus that new job, and you've got four or five jobs on your plate now, plus all the other random stuff that just comes up every week. And that's how you lose all your time. Whereas if you slowly are just focused on the delegation side of what you don't need to be doing so you can move forward in the next stage, you can make sure you can kind

of ride that wave properly, right? Or you get crushed on it on the way in if you don't take care of it. So that's a great point. And delegation is so important. I think in delegation to the next level, I delegate too many things. If I could delegate someone taking a poop for me, I would, but that's just not, it's not plausible at this point. I'm waiting for the technology. Let's talk about, you know, it's called the diaper Tommy. Yeah. Just got to get comfortable. How did you know?

You know, you, when we've talked, uh, that was probably about a month ago. You just had so much passion and you were just so excited about the things you guys are building and the opportunities you're building for the business owners that you've met over the last years. And just you're kind of like on autopilot, letting these guys sprint now. And Breakthrough Academy is doing a lot of great stuff for a lot of people. Talk to me about some of the things that have happened over the past few months and some of the changes and what you guys are trying to build with this, this consulting. Yeah. I mean, we've got committees fully focused to starting a podcast. We've got a committee fully focused to starting a piece of technology. That's going to build out digital versions of SOPs. We've got, you know, our coaching team, which is completely like building entire playbooks for

entire industries that I've like, I've no idea what they're doing half the time. It's cool. It's cool to watch. And I just know that once a quarter, me and my partners, we sit down, we talk about the initiatives, we talk about the money allocation of where these things need to go, and where our values lie and what's important to us personally along the way. And we're constantly making decisions about what's right to us, what's right for our team, and what's right for our members in the industry. And it's becoming less and less about me needing to do it every day. I don't need to be out there and create that manual, coach that member, whatever is on board that new member.

I need to be there to make sure that we stay aligned with our core values, that we don't lose ourselves along the way as business owners, that we stay focused on our families and our health and the other things, my faith and things that are important in our lives, and that we feel for our customers and our employees. And if I can keep those people happy along the way, this thing could be absolutely massive organization in the middle, or just a little bit bigger than it is today. I'm not really worried about that. It's just, I want to make sure we do it right. When we started Breakthrough Academy years ago, there was a pastor that actually spoke at a thing called LeaderCast that I went to right before I started this company. And he said something to me that I wrote down and I'll never forget. And it

was, what is it you believe is fundamentally impossible to do in your industry, but if it was done, would fundamentally change your industry forever? And to me, that was like building a coaching consulting company that's actually legitimate, that provides real value, that's not bullshit, that doesn't have a bunch of marketing stuff on the front end and nothing on the back end. And at the same time, it was helping the trades and contracting industry, which is like super under-professionalized. I spent 10 years in it. And I was like, this is a joke. And there's tons of wasted money and tons of people pissed off. And there's got to be a better way. And I saw it within a franchise system. And I was like, I wonder if I could kind of knock two

birds with one stone and actually start this thing, impact these two industries, have a little fun doing it. I was like 28, I think it was 28 when I started this thing. And I was like, what else am I going to do with my time? When I'm 40, 50 years old, what do I want to be able to say I did? I want to make impact on those two industries and do things that most people said were impossible, but if done fundamentally change the industry. And that's what I'm busy doing. And what happens out of that after that? I don't know. I'm good. and do things that most people said were impossible, but if done, fundamentally change the industry. And that's what I'm busy doing. And what happens out of that after that?

I don't know. I'm good. I've got some girls. I've got a house. Everyone else is pretty good, pretty happy. I'm healthy. So I'm going to try and enjoy the ride. But let's make sure we do it right along the way.

It's really, really interesting that you say that because I've been telling all my managers this last week. I love the podcast, man. This is like, this is everything. This is so much, you know, Al was in last week and he said, Tommy, when I do stuff and I coach and I talk to people, it made my business run better. And I'm like, you have no idea what it does for me. But the last few weeks, I'm like, we're going to create something here. That's such a freaking monster. I mean, it's like, it's so big and there's so many lives. Think about this. If the average, if I had 2,500 people and I don't right now, but if they're helping out three other people, you know, maybe they got a wife or, or, or a husband and a couple

younger ones, or even some families they're helping. I mean, that's 10,000 people. That's crazy to think about. And you know what? I think it's, I can see it. It's not even in the distant future. It's not like a mile away. It's about a hundred yards away. But listen, I want to end on a good note here. I want, we always end in a certain way, but I wanted to ask you real quick. Some businesses are hurting from this. Some people's mindset are broken. Some people, they're using government funds to just pay rent right now. And there's going to be a successful business.

And a lot of us are trying to scale up and bad stuff happened. And some of us were really fortunate. But give us some words of wisdom, maybe, that we could bounce back here these last few months and begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I think our last podcast, we got into my life a little bit. And some people know me personally. Some of you obviously don't that are listening to this, but probably, I think you might have as much story as me, Tommy, but like,

I grew up nothing, man, like 800 bucks a month on welfare with my mom. You know, dad was a drug addict. Like it was not who I am today, but it was what I was brought up in. And to be honest, if I'm super honest about that glim story, I was still pretty happy kid. I had a little sandbox. I had like school. I had some friends, like life was pretty simple. And as we get older, I think sometimes we forget about how simple it was when we were kids, no matter how good or bad it was. And I try and remember that. Like, I'm like, look, like we could have millions of dollars in the bank or we could be in debt by quite a bit,

but there's still just like numbers in a bank account. Right. And for the most part, we can still eat, sleep, poop, and breathe relatively the same. And Tommy, like you're a guy, you get it. Like you've made a lot of money in your life. You're going to go buy an incredible home, but you still just sleep in it and like barbecue at it and have some fun in it. It's not like monumental changes to who you are. Right. There's a cool documentary on Netflix called happy. I don't know if you've ever seen it, but it talks about how your happiness set point is changed over time, but it goes right back to normal over time too. So they did a study on like a prisoner and a person who won the lottery. And the person who won the lottery was happier for a while. And the person who went to prison

was sadder for a while, but over time, both of them came back to normal. The only problem is the person that won the lottery slowly lost a lot of their money and got more depressed because they had more to lose. The person that was in prison eventually got released and got happier because they had more things to look forward to. And we just got to be very aware that our perception of what is reality and what's true is all in here. And whether you're making a million bucks right now because you just invested in Tesla before it went crazy or you just lost a million bucks because you made a bad move and tried to grow too quick. It doesn't actually matter. You can still eat, sleep, poop and breathe. You already won the genetic lottery.

You grew up in North America. You're fine. It's a great point. And I'm looking at this house going, oh, man, it's a great investment. I'm just like, I'm so happy with my apartment and I'm like, I wish I had a bigger kitchen and a nicer place to have people for nice dinners and to do really cool stuff. And it's all about, for me, it's about, it truly is about hosting. It's about having a bunch of people in the same room and enjoying each other, especially the people I work with. And I'm like, this is an investment, but more importantly,

it's not about how big and how cool. I don't want any of that. I don't want the crap that comes with it. And you're right. I don't want to ever lose something. Like I'd rather not have anything to lose. I drive a nice old truck. It's fun. I get what you're saying. And it's like, and I was thinking about this the other day. I'm like, I hope I paid my darn storage unit because one day I lost one of them. And this one's a much bigger one, which is just sits there. Hopefully I get all the stuff out here next month. But I'm like, you know, other than one box in there of a bunch of memories, which I have, if I had pictures of the stuff, it would have been just as good. So take pictures of the stuff you care about, whether it's a vehicle or a watch from your grandpa. And I'm not a hoarder, but I feel like some of my family is,

but I lost the whole thing. And now I'm trying to think of what was in there. And I'm like, you don't really miss it when it's gone. And, you know, I just, I don't want to have a bunch of all these assets and things. It's fun. I buy off a Coinbase. I put it in this thing called Celsius. I've been investing in the USD dollar and I just got 520 bucks last week for doing nothing. And I'm like, that's awesome. And I've got all these investments and I love seeing it, but I don't know what I'm going to do with

the money. I'm just like, maybe I could help a lot more people. And I definitely have some big goals, but right now I don't feel like it's fair to the employees to start becoming a philanthropist. We've still got a long way to go, although I could do it along the way, but this is such a cool talk. We've said poop at least two dozen times. That means it was a good podcast, but tell me the last few things we talk about is, have you read a book in the last maybe year that maybe three books is what I usually ask that really impacted you? You know, it's interesting. People always ask me that. So I'm super dyslexic. So I actually don't read almost anything. I've watched a lot of documentaries and podcasts and stuff like that. I've become very interested actually in like the future more than business even actually. So if

you wanted to like a random referral to something that if you're interested in like the future and technology and the exponential growth of where we're going, Raymond Kurzweil has an excellent documentary called the transcendent man. And it's something that I watched years ago. It's actually almost probably 10 or 15 years old now, but it, it walks through the exponential growth of technology and how based on Moore's law, where we're heading as a society. And he's been basically talking about this since the eighties and he's very accurately predicted things that now exist and if you follow where that goes in the next 20 years it'll blow your mind we're experiencing it right now a little bit with coronavirus and the digitization of everything and where the world is going right now i don't know if people realize

what's just happened but the entire world is shifting as we speak and if you want to look into a little bit of the future that's a very interesting documentary to get your mind thickened. So if you get a chance and you want to listen to a book and you want to see where the future is going, this book called Bold by Peter DeMontis and Steven Kotler. It's freaking crazy when you learn about linear growth versus exponential growth. And when you learn about the new wave that was the industrial revolution, now they're talking about the 3d printer being able to land. They're able to land on a meteor, extract all the stuff and build stuff from the meteor. Look,

everybody that knows me knows I love this stuff. So I can't say it enough. This is just incredible that people want to get ahold of you, you personally or the breakthrough academy what's the best way to do it well so my email give it to people want to email me it's danny.kerd k-e-r-r btacademy.com we're doing strategy sessions so they can get booked with us it might be me it might be a guy named benji but if they want to sit down and talk business talk life understand some of these recruiting strategies obviously we've been talking about.

I'm happy to do that. So they can go to our website, btacademy.com backslash strategy session. And if you type in the access code, Tommy, I believe that also gives them a recruiting package, which is a lot of the stuff we went over today. So we'll put that in the show notes, I think, Tommy, to be. I got the whole team here that are writing it up as we speak. They're amazing. I'm telling you, best team ever. I got the whole team here that are writing it up as we speak. They're amazing. I'm telling you best team ever. I'm nothing. I'm like 3% of myself without.

Before this podcast, I was like looking at our Asana notes, looking at all the like the prep stuff. And I'm like, thank God we have both of your team and my team. Incredible what they did for all of us and the two of us just sit here and talk about poop the whole time. The way that I ended is I do the same thing, Danny. You've talked about a lot. I've talked about a lot.

But I think that there's something we could do right now to kind of discuss where is the best spot to get started. There's a lot of things going on, Danny. There's a lot of stuff going on personally and in the business. And it almost seems overbearing. It seems like we're just overwhelmed with what do we do? Manuals. What are we supposed to do? Better meetings. Now I'm supposed to be a better recruiter. He talks about leadership culture.

Now there's the five languages of appreciation. Jeez, this is nuts. You know, how do you just sit down and what's the best spot to get started? What's something they could do this next week to really get them, get these business owners out there and these amazing business owners to the next level of their business and their life? I mean, what you just said is super subjective to each individual person, right? Like everybody needs something, but it's usually just one thing. It's not seven.

And listening to a podcast and listening to many podcasts will give you lots of ideas. I think one of the problem is entrepreneurs have too many ideas. I have too many ideas. I'm plagued by them. They just don't leave me alone. The best thing I ever do is I talk to my business partner, Igor Trinanek, who I'm just like, I got 70 ideas. And he's like, they're all shit except this one. And I'm like, oh, he's like, just work on this one. And I think it's important, like identify what that one thing is. And so whether you have a mentor, these strategy sessions, that's kind of what they're meant for.

So if you want to sign up for these strategy sessions that we're putting out there, we'll happily like sit down, be a bit of a sounding board and just tell you to do one thing because that's often is all we need to do. We overcomplicate everything else. So good. And Danny, I got a book and I don't know why I love to do this so much. I just go get so excited today. I had team is in here and I'm pulling out all these books.

I'm like, this one's good. You'll love this. No BS about marketing. And anyway, the one thing by Gary Keller is so simple, but it's one thing. And if you could be the master of one thing, I plan on being the largest, best garage door company that's ever was and ever will be. Because personally, Danny, I think garage doors are going to be gone in about 20, 30 years. I don't think you're going to need the space for a vehicle. I think the space for the vehicle, you have a pastime and the cycle life is going to

start to be reduced. So I want people to say, just like they say about Blockbuster, you remember that guy, that old timer? He's still around the neighborhood somewhere. But he's a garage door guy, Tommy. I'm going to be like, yes, I remember the garage doors. But this is just an amazing talk. And I got to tell you, every time we do this, we hit it off. And things are amazing.

So when Canada opens back up their doors, we let you back in. We got to get together in person. And every time we talk, there's fireworks. So I really appreciate you taking the time today to be on the podcast. Thanks for having me, buddy. No worries. Hey, I hope you enjoyed today's podcast with Danny Kerr.

A lot of people always ask me if I could coach them or provide them training to grow their business. The fact is, you guys probably know this, but I'm really, really busy with A1 Garage or Service, making it the biggest and largest home service company in the country. But I got to tell you, when I discovered what Danny Kerr was doing with Breakthrough Academy, I realized that this would be a perfect program that I'm proud to vouch for. What I truly love about their program is they combine the done-for-you systems with coaching and accountability to make sure you make huge progress fast in your business. So if you're making a million dollars or more and you want to build a solid structure for your

business to generate more profits and grow, check out the link btacademy.com forward slash home service expert to learn more about the Breakthrough Academy. You're going to thank me for it.