The Home Service Expert Podcast - Building a Stellar Reputation to Grow a Company by 535% in Just One Year

Episode Date: December 22, 2020

Susan Frew is the author of Pufferfish Effect. A CEO, professional speaker, and business coach, she propelled her family business to reach the Inc. 5000 with her own formula and experience, simultaneously overcoming a devastating employee theft that almost took their company down. She has coached 150 different companies and 17 different trades to success during the 2008 Recession, and has honed her skills across two decades to help business owners overcome adversity and achieve success. In this episode, we talked about business consulting, leadership development, change management, budgeting...

Here's another thing that I have seen in my experience as a business coach is people don't find a niche. They're like, everybody's my customer. And I'm like, well, no, they're really not. So let's look at all your existing customers and grade them. A, B, C, and D. Awesome, basic. C's can't deal with them. Total pain in the behind. Waste a lot of your time. And D, dead beach. They don't pay you. get out of the way, right? They're not your customer anymore. It looks terrible to a bank or to any investor when you have $100,000 of accounts receivable

sitting on your books, right? So I think that finding a niche will create, first of all, a better experience for that niche that you're focusing on. It will cost you a lot less in marketing. It will help you to focus and be able to build a strategy, a customer service strategy around that customer. Now, you may have more than one niche, but you need to really decide who you can serve the best and not have 82 products either, right? Pick your top five products and just go for it and become an expert. So I think that is something that

I see business owners do all the time. They're like all over the place with who they serve. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, 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. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. My name is Tommy Mello and today I have a special guest. She's visiting us from Denver, Colorado, Susan Pru. It's great to have you. Let me go ahead and read some of your expertise here.

You're an expert in public speaking, management consulting, business consulting, leadership development, change management, and budgeting. Sunshine Plumbing, Heating, and Air, President and CEO and CFO from 2013 to present. Fix This Next Business Coach from 2020 to now. Team Star Training Group, CEO, keynote speaker, breakout speaker, 2014 to present. Thryphonista, founder and CEO from 2017 and now, action coach owner from 2007 to 2014. Susan Frew is a CEO, professional speaker, business coach, and author of the book, Pufferfish Effect. Pufferfish Effect. Pufferfish Effect.

That's a tongue twister. With her own formula and experience to propel her family business to reach the Inc. 5000 while overcoming a devastating employee theft that almost took the company down. She has coached 150 different companies and 17 different trades to success during 2008 recession, learning the art of the small business turnaround in the process. With skills honed across two decades, she helps business owners overcome adversity and achieve success, delivering entertainment, energetic, and value-driven keynote and breakout speeches to business owner audiences. It's great to have you, Susan. Thank you for having me. So much fun to be on your show. Yeah, it's going to be great. So it sounds like you've done a lot and you're no stranger to operating as an entrepreneur under unfavorable times.

Yeah. Why don't you go ahead and give the listeners and myself just kind of a time lapse of where you've been, what got you into the trades, and where you're going. Sure. Well, I'm originally from the East Coast, New Jersey, and I had always worked as an adult in New York City. And I was with AT&T Wireless,

and I was transferred out to Denver long ago. And then they sent me on an international assignment in the country of Pernada, which yes, that is in the Caribbean and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. And when I came back, I ended up buying a business coaching firm. Now that was in 2007 when we know right around the corner was a big giant recession. And, you know, none of us could have predicted that, right? It was just everyone was all, yay, the economy's great. It's wonderful. And things started tanking.

And so as business coaches, you know, even though we went through training and certification and processes and more training, none of us really were equipped for what was about to happen. But we learned really how to buckle down and make it through. And I really believe that those lessons have helped me in growing Sunshine Plumbing Heating Air. And I also believe it's helped us get through our story that we had that that's part of my story and help there's right now because there's a lot of business owners that are not faring as well as others during this time of covid and post covid like what are we going to do now tell me a little bit about sunshine plumbing heating and air well i was business coaching

up in the mountains and the franchise asked me to meet with this gentleman who wanted to buy a franchise. And we sit down to lunch and we have this great conversation. And then at the end of the conversation, I say, hey, where do you want to put your business coaching firm? And he said, right here in Breckenridge. Now, as I said, we were right around the corner from the recession thing to happen. So I was thoroughly annoyed with this person. So for the next five years, wherever I went, I kept running into this guy. And then in 2012, we got married. And he was plumbing, heating, and air conditioning. So we joked that we merged and we did move down to Denver. The map's already those times as the city was.

And we started our company against 950 competitors. Wow. It was just one truck, one technician, and that's that. And how was it? What is it now? Well, now we are at 10 trucks and we like it that way. You know, we have had opportunities to have venture capital and growth, more growth opportunities, and we have gotten bigger. We are happy at this spot. This allows me the freedom to continue to coach and to speak and do what I love to do. And my husband dips in and out of the field at his leisure.

We travel when we feel like it. So it is the perfect size company for us. And it will facilitate our retirement goals in the 10 years from now when we want to retire. What is the CRM you guys use for that company? We use Service Titan. And we were one of the first clients with Service Titan. Wow.

Yeah, I'm with Service Titan. Yeah, Ara and Vahi used to answer the phone when we called sometimes. I mean, that's how far back it went. But I'm actually speaking at Pantheon, which is upcoming here. Pantheon's next week. It's going to be great. Okay. So tell me me fix this

next tell me a little bit about Michael Michalowicz and what you learned what that's all about well Mike Michalowicz I have been a fan for a long time of Mike Michalowicz and Profit First and ironically he and I over the last couple years I've spoken at all of the same conventions, either he's behind me or I'm in front of him or what have you. And then just sort of coincidentally, his sister became my speaker agent. She manages my speaking career, which is just ironic. But when I decided to start coaching again, I had written a coaching program for another organization, which took a year to do. I didn't

want to go through writing my own again. So Fix This Next had a phenomenal premise. I loved it. It was super simple. It's going to get great results for clients. It's going to help them to go where they need to go. It's not trusting their gut, but with real concrete evidence on what to do in their business next to make them work successful. So that's why I went through the certification process and it's a great program. Love it. Give me a little bit of inside clue. So I've read the book, but I'd rather hear from you. So there's a lot of things to fix, right? Obviously every business needs work to work on the business. So there's a lot of things to fix, right? Obviously every business needs work to work on the business. So how do you identify, just bring us through that a little bit.

So there is an assessment tool that every business owner will go through the initial assessment tool, and it will point to exactly the first thing that you need to fix right there. And as a certified coach with them, then I have the tools to be able to back that up on the back end to get you to the next step. Then once you solve that problem, you take the assessment again, and then you get to the step two and step three and step four, and it just walks you down that path. Now, granted, you can do it on your own. It would probably take you a lot longer than if you brought a coach along with you so that's my role with coaches around the United States that can take on that path and it

identifies the business hierarchy of needs all of the things that are every business no matter what line of work you're in, you're going to need these to be successful. I love that. The hierarchy of needs. Okay. So, you know, you've been, you've been doing a lot of this stuff for a long time right now. I have. I mean, you understand business insider. Now you've helped 150 companies be successful. Talk to me about your 12 points of love philosophy and how it helped your company provide exceptional service to your customers. Well, you know, when we entered the market here in Denver with 950 competitors, you know, it was challenging for us. I mean, there's some really big companies that are competing with us in Denver, massive. They

spend a million plus dollars a year in marketing. Little us could not afford to do that. We bootstrapped our company. So there was no way we can compete. So what we did was to deliver over the top outstanding customer service. And we focused on women customers. So women baby boomers have more money to spend than anyone. And no one was really catering directly to them. The 12 points of love, basically what I did one day is I just highlighted, I wrote down on a piece of paper, our steps of how we deliver mind-blowing customer service. And there were 12. So I said, okay, we do this and then we do that, this, boom, boom. Granted, there's probably 900 other companies out there that do 12 steps. I just gave them a name.

And as soon as I gave them a name and started promoting that and marketing it that way, we started getting a ton of media about it. And if you Google the 12 Points of Love or Susan Frew, you'll see that come up all over the place. And really, all I did was document our customer service strategy, and it became a thing, which every marketer is always looking for the thing, right? Yeah, I'm always looking. You know, I'm one of those guys that I'll take anything and make it. You don't have to be very successful at everything. Like you could be direct mail. You could do voicemail drops. You could do billboards and radio and TV.

You could do newspaper. You could do Craigslist. You could do Google SEO. You could do pay-per-click. There's about a hundred ways to make a lot of money. Door-to-door is huge in pest control. I try to take every one of them and become, find the master, the best of the best in the world, get them to help. And that's why I've got 50 guys out here training right now. Tell me a little bit about how you guys market these 12 points of love. Well, of course it's on our website, but I have done, in the past, I've joined a lot of women's groups. We have marketed it on an SEO platform. We've marketed it through pay-per-click. I have marketed it face-to-face when I'm doing any kind of trade show or anything

to that effect. And then any sort of national publication that I'm quoted in or writing a story or an interview, I always bring it up. And it just seems to be something that people remember. And every time I did a keynote for years or a breakout session, I would bring up the 12 points of love. And it just sort of became our thing. And anyone listening to this, you can do this in your own business. And you don't need to call it 12 points of love. You can call it 12 points of anything and people will remember it. Whenever you bullet something and number it and name it, people will remember it.

So you've been doing this a long time. You've had theft happen in the family business. There's a lot of lessons I've learned and I had to go through it myself. I could have just read it in a book. Although with podcasts and the books I have read, I've learned a lot, a lot, a lot. Tell me about some lessons you've learned. Why don't we pick maybe three to five? Like, I'll give you an example so you know what I'm talking about.

Number one, it was to get a personal assistant, more of a corporate assistant. She's absolutely phenomenal, makes my life easy. That actually duplicates my efforts. I actually had to get a, I'm the visionary phenomenal. Makes my life easy. That actually duplicates my efforts. I actually had to get a, I'm the visionary. I got my integrator. I hired him in 2014. I needed him. I got out of inventory a hundred percent. I've got a company that handles all my inventory. Those are just three big ones. Service Titan, monster. Boom. I mean, picking the right CRM. That was my sixth one. So those are just a few of the ones that I think changed my life. Do you have three to five like lessons or certain things

that impacted you and your business? Well, I've been kind of teasing around something that happened. So something that happened in 2015 is I was starting to speak a lot more and I was traveling quite extensively and I was doing some speaking and coaching for some different organizations. So I was gone a lot and I kept transferring my responsibility to one of my employees and they kept taking more and more and more and more on. And I will tell you that as much as I thought monitoring key performance indicators and looking at my QuickBooks, looking at the bank, I thought I had it dialed in. And I had coached 18 different trades and 150 companies.

Like, duh, how could I have someone who would take advantage of me being gone? Well, that's exactly what happened. So a big lesson though in that is that you need to have systems that wall off any type of employee infringement on that level. And one of the biggest things, sounds weird on me, but it's a tiny little thing, get your own mail. And I don't care how successful you are or what a big shot you are. You or someone in your family needs to go and get the mail because that is where all the dirt will come up. And also you need to be able to have access to all of your employees' email accounts, cell phones, all of that. I think that's key. And not to be a spy or a snoop or what have you, but it's just good business for

you to be able to protect yourself and your investment. And I think that you really also have to build a wall around your employees. If you're going to travel and pursue other interests, just like yourself and me, we have other interests outside of our home service business that we love to do. That's what lights us up. But you need to have the processes dialed in so that you have the freedom to go and do that. I like that. And I'm really working on a third-party controller right now. Never let someone do your payroll and do your financials and do your inventory

because you're asking for trouble. It's almost like putting candy next to a kid that's two years old and saying, don't touch that. And you can make good people bad is really what happens. And they know how to hide it well. So that's a great one. Why don't you give us a couple more? Because I love this stuff. This is where the gold comes. And I've already got pages and pages of notes. So you can barely see on this, but here's another thing that I have seen in my experience as a business coach is people don't find a niche. They're like, everybody's my customer. And I'm like, well, no, they're really not because so let's look at all your existing customers and grade them, right?

A, B, C, and D. Awesome, basic. Cs, can't deal with them. Total pain in the behind, waste a lot of your time. And D, deadbeats. They don't pay you? Get out of the way, right? They're not your customer anymore. Yay. It looks terrible to a banker, to any investor, when you have $100,000 of accounts receivable sitting on your books, right? So I think that finding a niche will create, first of all, a better experience for that niche that you're focusing on. It will cost you a lot less in marketing. It will help you to focus and be able to build a strategy, a customer service strategy around that customer. Now, you may have more than one niche, but you need to really decide who you can serve the best

and not have 82 products either, right? Pick your top five products and just go for it and become an expert. So I think that is something that I see business owners do all the time. They're like all over the place with who they serve. I agree. They haven't defined their avatar and there's programs out there that'll actually help you understand the credit score, the dual income of the house. You know, I've defined mine very, very detailed, but I think my advertising a little more broad, but what I want people to do is now search for me versus search for garage door repair. And that takes time effort. It takes money, but it takes smart money. And a lot of people just throw everything at the wall and some stuff sticks, some doesn't and the wrong stuff sticks sometimes. And it makes you go down

the wrong road. Exactly. I think another thing too is your reputation. You have to be mindful of your reputation. And, you know, that's been helping me lately. It's a tough market to hire. Like it's been a tough market to hire, right? Because the trades have a shortage. And, and I know that you guys know, I did a TED talk about that, but the situation right now with people collecting a lot of unemployment, right, you have to really be the employer of choice to get people to actually come for a job. But one of my positioning statements in an interview is that our reputation is so awesome that it makes it easier as a technician. And I think that's something

that you need to discuss in every interview because if they go down the road to your competitor who has a lousy reputation but might be paying more, well, that technician's gonna go up against that bad reputation every single day and it's a horrible experience for them. So I always talk about that, about how our reputation is

going to make them have pride in who they're working for and pride in their job and make their job easier it's easier and I'll tell you one other thing is the CSRs my mom used to answer the phones in 2010 and 2011 she she moved out to Arizona to work for me her and and my stepdad. And, man, she answered the phone, and the smile would pop up. She was like, ha, ha, ha, ha. She'd answer the phone, and I'm telling you, she'd laugh, and she'd be like, oh, my gosh, honey, we're going to save your day. Wait till you meet Tommy.

He is going – and when I show up to these customers, I mean, they'd walk up out of their house, and they'd give me a hug, and they'd be like, you must be Tommy. And they'd be like, whatever you say goes. They'd be like, that person on the phone must love your company. She never said she was my mom, but she would laugh and brag about me and brag about the company. And it made it so easy for me.

I mean, it was like, and I had guys and this was kind of creepy. They'd be like, be like who's that lady because she's almost flirtatious on the phone and i'm like and you're like that's not for you no see no evil hear no evil exactly when did you publish the puffer fish uh two years ago do you have it on audible i don. That's your next thing. I know. This is your next thing. I'm telling you, just get a decent mic.

It's time to get about the mic sitting in the front room. I have a big boom mic. And yeah, I was filming here, so I don't have it up. But you're right. Thank you, Coach. Well, look, I'm just telling you right now that a lot of the listeners, obviously, they're probably going to listen to the podcast. And I want to hear a lot more about it.

So it talks about the marketing secrets you use to grow your company by 535% in just one year. Let's go ahead and talk about that a little bit. So pufferfish, just like where the heck did you come up with that name? Right? So pufferfish, when they see an enemy, a real pufferfish in the ocean, when they see an enemy, they're really a small fish and they make themselves look bigger than they are. And I was able to do that with our company based on our reputation. I would meet people all over the country and they would think that Sunshine Plumbing, Heating, Air was like this massive company that we had a hundred trucks and we had all these employees and we're like, nope, we got five trucks, we got four trucks, whatever it was. And we ended up being on the cover of Plumbing, Heating, Cooling magazine, contractor of the year in 2017. We're like, how the heck did that even happen?

And it just made us look really big. And then everyone would ask me like, well, how did you do that? And as I mentioned earlier, we did bootstrap our growth and we had a really limited marketing budget. The only way for us to market was through our reputation. And I networked with this women demographic market. And I networked to women who were dual income, single income, and just wanted safety. That was kind of the key. And I went down to the Colorado Women's Chamber and I interviewed all of these women, high-powered career women, to ask them, what do you want in your service contractor? And I did this documentary almost about that. And I started realizing what this demographic needed and wanted, and then just

started delivering it. So what's in it for me? That's what every customer wants to know. So we just started delivering what they wanted. We would background check our guys. We would send a photo. The service Titan with the photo and the bio was gold for this demographic. And if you are listening to me and you serve a women market, if you don't have that photo of your tech and a little background, a little history, something personal, you're missing the boat because when the technician then shows up, that customer feels, first of all, safe that I background checked them. They know a little bit about this guy now, and they also feel more comfortable. So the closing ratio started going up. And next thing we want to do is make a video. Not all of our guys are comfortable in

front of the video camera though. So we might start doing a, hey, I can't wait to meet you type video. So that's all part of the pufferfish effect on how we were able to look bigger and not to be disingenuous or lying or anything like that. We never said we were a big giant company. People just thought that because of our professionalism, what our website looked like, all of our collateral, our marketing messages, everything we were putting out just was top shelf. And that also enabled us to have a price point that worked for us. And we never, ever would use a word called cheap, low cost, bottom dollar, nothing. We wouldn't do that ever.

Not once in a while. So that's kind of the puffer fish effect in a nutshell. And I take people through step by step. Another big thing in here is how we won awards. So I started applying for awards. Omaha, our big city has a business journal. So I started applying for awards. Omaha, our big city has a business journal. So I started applying for Denver Business Journal, fastest growing company, won that seven years in a row. Then I won best places to work, top 100 women owned, Inc. 5000, Inc. Magazine best workplaces,

PHC contractor of the year. I mean, you name it, I think we were up to like 42 awards. So awards are a way for you to win big, great, your team gets to celebrate, but it also creates huge PR and a marketing opportunity for your company because you will get SEO organic ranking out of that because all of these other organizations are lifting you up. And of course, the Torch Award, we won that one. That's a big one. And now I'm a judge. So that's kind of fun. Yeah, that's incredible. Yeah. You know, we love, we won the third year in a row, the Inc. 5000, but I'm ready to be in the Inc. 500 here soon. I want to come to the party when you have a big let's do it yeah I'm also in Denver to where we're in a legal battle about a one garage

because everybody and their brother's name was a one if I go back in time I would have not made it a one but I wanted to talk to you a bit about discovering your Wow what it means and why home service business owners need to find their wow. Well, I mean, you have so many competitors out there and everyone's doing the same thing. You know, $50 off services, coupon, magnet on the front of the yellow pages, you know, all of that. And you have to figure out what makes you different from everybody else. Blanchard is the master of raving fans. You need to find them. And if you don't have money, you can still do this organically. You can do it on Facebook. You can do it on Twitter,

Instagram. You can do it on Nextdoor. Some markets, Angie's List works. It doesn't work in our market anymore. But anywhere where reputation management is over the top things. So I'll give you a couple of examples of wow. And these are also some of our 12 points of love. We always send a thank you note. Sometimes we send brownies based on the ticket cost. And they're not Colorado brownies. They're just regular brownies. If we can't get your stuff fixed and it's a heat or a hot water or an air conditioning issue, and you're going to suffer

and you can't wait till Monday till we can get a part in, we'll put you in a hotel. So I have put people in hotels countless times, two different reasons for that. One, it's a big wow for the customer. Two, it is less expensive for me to put someone in a hotel than it is to pay a technician to work on call. And then I run the risk of losing that technician. Because if you're a big 100 truck outfit, right, your guide might not be on call for maybe once or twice a year. My size company, you'd be on call every other month for a week. And you know, with the workforce shortage, you want to keep your in place hat and making them be on call makes no one happy. So we just

figured out the hotel thing was a big wow. We also have to make sure that we have dog biscuits on all of our trucks and just little things that make us stand out from everybody else. So you always send thank you notes. Talk to me about that. Well, every single customer that we work with, we send a thank you note with a $25 coupon and we use send out cards and I'm not plugging them, but I a thank you note with a $25 coupon and we use send out cards and I'm not plugging them, but I'll tell you the reason why we do it. Cause first of all, we can do a bulk upload. So at the end of the week, we can take reports out of service Titan and upload it. If we want to send the brownie, we send out parts too. I use, I'm a big fan.

Yeah. So it's easy and it's professional. And you know, I could probably send brownies or cookies or something cheaper out of my own job, but I'm worried about safety. Like I don't want to be like getting baked goods from the local bakery and then mailing them. And like, it was just a hassle. It's so much easier to do it. And then it's their stuff and their stuff is wonderful when do you decide to send cookies or brownies we have a dollar limit so we cut it off at a certain amount so they go above an amount you spend you yeah then we send that and then another thing if they do an install which is a furnace install boiler air conditioner air conditioner, something like that, something big, we send a gift basket.

And we have a gift basket company that has our little cards with our name on it and little sun there that say sunshine on it. And it's all Colorado products. And then we also, in a couple of instances, have been able to identify that we had two customers that we knew were only a kosher. So we made sure that we got a kosher basket. And then we had another client that we knew was vegan. So we sent a vegan basket and that's really a wow, right? That you listened to them so much that you knew that they were vegan. They're like, are you serious? That is interesting. I'm really impressed. So, so what have you noticed this is what i've

always wondered there's a couple things so people send out quarterly newsletters and i have 280,000 people in my database so i would be literally spending half a million dollars a quarter to send out a newsletter i'm wondering what is your reaction I love the thank you letters, and I think it's important. But I'm wondering, I always say, is the juice worth the squeeze? Is that better than an email or a text message? It's different. And the brownies and stuff, I'm just wondering. Certain people might view that and say, wow, we must have spent good money

because they got the money to send me brownies afterwards or whatever. And I'm not saying that. I'm just wondering, what has been your experience? I'm sure there's delighted people. It's a tough question to ask because I know you believe in it. I just think some business owners, a lot of people go, well, does that move the needle? What does that do? Well, it gets people talking, right? And here's something else that we've done. We will send the gift basket to their work. How do you find out where they work? You have the gift basket company call them and say, we only deliver Monday through Friday. We'd like to deliver this to your basket to the front desk of a company and they're like, oh my gosh, you got that from your plumber, then it got a whole other strategy going on there. Right. That was probably great pre-COVID now that nobody's...

I know. Exactly. Yes. Now we do baskets of toilet paper. That's great. I hear what you're saying about that. Well, here's something. The cards cost us a dollar, right? You know that. It's like a dollar or something. Unless you handwrite it yourself, then it's free. This is also true. And then the brownies, we really only send it if it's a higher end and we don't send it repeatedly. We usually will send it to the first time a customer uses us or something like that. So not in every time, but I hear what you're saying. I mean, we deal with a lot of realtors and that's another thing too. The realtors really appreciate that type of service for their customers. And that's why they keep referring us

because realtors are a big part of our business. And that's why we trademarked Video Plumber, where we could do video estimates online because the realtors needed estimates right now. And it was always, I'm going to the closing in an hour. Can you help me? I freaking love this stuff. I'm actually got another one. I'm going to start taking them. I got notes here. Now they got to make it onto here. So this is just slam packed with gold nuggets. So you've given TEDx talks that tackled the skills trade crisis. Yeah. And you know, I think I've solved that. I got to say during COVID, I think we've hit something special and I could define it, but everybody I know, someone asked me the other day, they said,

when you do consulting, what do they ask? What do they say? And I say, someone asked me the other day, they said, when you do consulting, what do they ask? What do they say? And I say, it's only one of two things. I need more guys or I need more jobs. Those are the big two. It's right or left hand. I need more work and I need more help. One or the other. I mean, those are like the large amount of it. They don't say I need to build a better culture. I need to refine my marketing. I need to pick an avatar for a customer. I need to develop leadership or, you know, I need to have a better manual. None of them understand the intricacies that go and lead up to that stuff. But talk to me about the skills trait. You know, I know the average plumber now is 49 years old. How do you get more people interested? I'd love to hear your take on that.

Well, I have been doing a sign on bonus, which, you know, in my market, that is not that big of a deal. It was at one point, but what I have done with my sign-on bonus, which is either $2,500 or $5,000, you might be going like, well, how do you decide? I want the 5,000 if I come work for you. Here's the thing. It's how long do I have a truck sitting? Right? So if I have a truck sitting just for a week, because somebody left last week, then I'm going to start with a $2,500 sign-on bonus. The longer that truck sits there, the more money it costs me. And it's worth upping the ante to 5,000. There is a competitor in my market though that does 10,000. But the way I do mine is I spread it out.

The $5,000 bonus is spread out over a year. So every quarter, you get 25% of it. You get $1,250 every quarter for the next year. So that helps me to sort of dig in and get somebody working for us for a year. And also in the state of Colorado, we can terminate your employment for absolutely no reason. Yeah, at will. We're an at-will state.

So in the first 90 days, we evaluate you if you're going to make it or not. There are some companies that advertise that they pay that $5,000 or $10,000 in the first check. I don't know how they do that. But that is something that has worked for us. Also, we don't do on-call, which I mentioned earlier. It's less expensive and less drama for me to make my guys work on-call. I like on-call for a couple reasons. And I obviously have a garage door business but Typically on call is they're my avatar. Those are the people that say I want it fixed I don't care what it costs if you get here today

Right and my guys love those jobs and not to mention it's 120 degrees right now in arizona and at night it cools down to about 90 so There's some advantages and you know, we've got 145 150 techs now we'll have 200 next month so ultimately they don't get a lot of it but some people beg for it some people like pick me pick me coach put me in coach yeah can you give us some insights about the opportunities that women can really pursue when it comes to home service? Because I've literally had two women apply that we've hired that didn't end up working out. I mean, obviously I've got

CSRs and dispatchers and I've got my recruiter, my recruiter manager is a CSR. I don't care if you're black, white, Cuban, or Asian, male, female. I don't, you know, ultimately if you do the job, but what kind of insight could you give to us about the opportunities when it comes to women? Well, the numbers are really small, right? So 1% of all plumbing technicians are women, 7% in HVAC. Electricians are doing a little bit better at 2.2%. I don't know on garage door what that number is. The number is a little higher on manufacturing or welding because it's all lumped under the same NAICS code in some areas. But it blows my mind that women will go and be police officers and there'll be firefighters and there'll be EMT drivers and

they'll go into the military and they go and smell dominated fields, but they're not going into trades. So when I was doing my research, what I found is nobody's ever talked to them about that. They never said like, hey, Mary, you know, you can be an electrician. You can be a plumber. You can make a great salary. And the same thing's happening, too, in our schools with the trades in general. It's bringing it up to them that this is a good viable opportunity. So I think the recruiting and the public relations campaign

needs to start younger and younger and find us some women role models out there that could be the spokespeople for all of the trades. And I think that will start to get people interested. You know, it's a great job. I mean, you can get on the job training, you can get all your schooling paid for, you won't have any debt.

I mean, if you can be a police officer, you can be a plumber and you're gonna do a fantastic job. And I do know a few women plumbers and they do phenomenal work, very, very successful. And I think that we need to start talking about it more and we'll build the awareness that we need. I love it. I saw on Facebook the other day, this guy came up with a new slogan for a plumbing company. It's called a shit's going to go down.

Shit's going down. It does. Yes. How should businesses be realigning their strategies for the next year or so in preparation for the new normal? Okay, so with the situation that I described to you earlier that we had this bad employee situation, we almost went down. We really did. And one of the things that we did, we had to remove all ego out of the equation. And we downsized our shop from a 5,000 square foot shop, big giant parking lot. I mean, very prestigious on the highway lighted sign, all that. And we said, you know what?

None of this matters. We downsized our shop into a small shop. Our offices are remote. We just took all ego out of it. And we had already downsized our facility and our overhead expenses to a much lower number. So when COVID hit, we did not feel it as much as some of the other competitors of ours and some other contractors out there.

We also, residential still kept going. People are still a little weary about having us come into their home. We, you know, of course followed all the protocols and all that for safety. But I think that you have to downsize yourself now or right-size yourself. So whatever that looks like and ego and what other people think and appearances need to go out the window if your business is slowing down you need to right-size your expenses and but down and that's the way to get through this you know it's all about profit it's not about revenue I think a lot of us get confused early in business we brag all the time about how much

revenue we brought in. Yeah. I'll tell you what, I can spend it just as fast as I can make it. I've proven that. You know, we are a lot more profitable now than we have ever been. And our revenue is lower. Okay. Who cares? I don't care about that number anymore. You know, I just don't care about it. I care about our future and our family and how much I take home. That's it. And we, you know, we, we worry about our employees and making sure we have the best employees and they have everything they need. Yeah. That's, that's super important to really look in your own backyard first. And I think a lot of people don't do that. You know, two days ago from now on every month we're donating.

I only had 20 guys cause 20 of them are out doing ride-alongs, but 20 of them went to feed the hungry. So it was a weird thing. They impact these lunches and there's vitamins in them and stuff, but we packed like a thousand, there was 20 of them and it was five hours. So we donated a hundred hours. And one of the things we're going to start doing is every single month, we're going to not only donate our time or donating garage doors to single mothers, to, you know, anybody in the military that needs it. We're really trying to get involved. I don't talk about it enough on the podcast, but I'm not bragging. But, you know, the point is,

if I could do it, anybody could do it. And it's a great thing to do. But first look back at your own backyard and see what employees need stuff. Make sure those kids got a good Thanksgiving, good Christmas, good Easter. There's people out there that are a lot less fortunate than us. And it doesn't need to be a publicity stunt. It could be just to give, to give. I'll tell you something funny about that. When we first started, we have our team meetings every Tuesday. And husband and I would get up at 4.45 on Tuesday and we would make all these peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And we would have these little bags with socks and tissues and

toothbrushes, and we would give them out to each of our technicians. So when they were in a downtown area that if they saw someone homeless, they could hand out a little bag. Well, I don't know if you can see what's coming next, but we started finding peanut butter and jelly sandwiches underneath people's seats and all over the tracks. So we're like, okay, this isn't working. So then we said, okay, we're going to give you money. And when you're going to the drive-thru or what have you, you're going to pay it forward and pay for the person behind you. So we would give them pay it forward and pay for the person behind you. So we would give them pay it forward money. Well, then we started getting complaints that, oh, the guy in front of me is hitting on me

and he just bought my McDonald's. We're like, oh, are you serious? Mind blown. So we settled then. And this has been really rewarding. For the last couple of years, we go to the local food bank and we serve. And it's a great experience for our team, but it's also a great experience for the food bank because we bring so many people with us. They're able to run two lines and we serve at the food bank,

but it's very rewarding. And we try to be good community citizens. We actually, in our award thing, something was just given to us. We didn't apply for it. We were given congressional recognition for being a great community partner. And that's for all the things that we did gratis for our community. And we didn't publicize any of those. And our local congressman heard about us and gave gave that to us so that's something that we're really proud of it's amazing you know it's kind of funny that you brought all that up because i love the idea of doggy treats the problem is i think a lot of our employees dogs will have treats till the uh for the full year and i'm always wondering and how how much of a C-type personality, which I'm zero,

would I be if I inventoried dog treats? You know what? What will happen, because we do happy calls, and I'm sure that you do too. You call up and ask how the experience was. People will tell our CSRs about the dog treats. And Little Rover loved it. And then people have asked me, are you going to do cat treats? And I'm like, no.

Dogs, we're dog people. That's it. Right, me too. So one of your talks, you talked about hiring slow and firing fast. I wrote about the same thing in my book. Tell me a little bit about what your meaning was behind that.

Well, you know, I think I've done a lousy job of just hiring on skill. I really do. I think we've done a lousy job of that in the beginning. And we hired a lot of people on skill and didn't really take into consideration if they were a good culture fit for our organization or not. And whether they were going to fit in with the rest of the team, if they were going to be kind and respectful. And some of those softer skills that we all find out 60 days later, then we realize it's not a fit.

So the strategy now has to be maybe a paid ride-along day. You pay this interviewee a ride-along to go with your top person and see how that works out. Because I don't want to have that revolving door all the time. We really need to focus on hiring for the culture. Yeah, that's 100%. And I'm all about that. I've got a huge ride-along form that I give. And I'm looking for all kinds of stuff. Did you ask the right questions? How often were you on your phone doing social media? Did you smoke cigarettes? How did your car look when you pulled up? Were you punctual? How did you dress? Did you ask the customer the right questions? I look at all kinds of stuff. When I walk the person back to the car,

I look in their car to see if it's a McDonald's Happy Meal sitting there. All these things are just so important. And what do you want out of life? Where do you see yourself going in the next five years? These are all things before they even start working for me that I'm getting. Right. It's very rare now because then you've got to apprentice for a month. And we get rid of you in the apprenticeship usually. Then if you make it through, you come to Phoenix to train for four to six weeks.

And my trainers will definitely find out if you're a culture fit or not and we sent two people home two and a half weeks ago and it's not uncommon for us to send people home we've sent over a dozen people home in the last six weeks and i'm not gonna say i'm not happy about it that's their job we've already invested some money why get them to see my customers these are our internal customers but right we know it won't last. So it's very, very important, the people that you hire. I mean, I think in my business, that's jumped to the top, is the process in which we hire and the people we hire. But in our industry, and I don't know if we're going after the same market or not, what happens a lot is we'll do an interview,

and if we don't hire them right there that day, tomorrow we'll call and ask for a second interview. Oh, I'm already, I took another job. So that's how dog-eat-dog-eat competition is out there. Well, that's if you're looking for somebody with experience. I use a thing that basically records, it's an instant interview. And we're on that when they finish it, we get text message. And we contact them right away to get them on Calendly if we like their interview. That's a machine generated interview. Another thing we do is the predictive index. Another thing we do is the cognitive test. So they've got to take tests,

but the cool thing is we get them excited to take the test. This is going to tell you a lot. This will help you get along with your significant other. This is going to tell you what you get bored of. And so we make the test kind of appealing to the people. So is that through Indeed or you're doing it on your own site? The interview is through SparkHire. Okay, cool. That's awesome. I'll look into that yeah no it's pretty insane what we've got i mean like i said my goal is to get 70 new technicians a month i did by january so we're working 30 40 50 a month right now but i'll get to 70 a month and for that needs a huge infrastructure we need to be able to open markets we've got a go-to-market

coordinator we've got a success coordinator it's kind of funny because I'm mimic some of the stuff that service time calls there's I've got lots of things to spark business up from nothing rather than than doing acquisitions which I love as well you know I'll ask you one more question till we get to our final few here what's what's one tried and tested strategy to create an amazing culture you know I've learned in this last 18 months where our company shifted significantly from where we were to sort of a rebirth which is very exciting for us but I think you need to be transparent with your team and very sometimes vulnerable and used to say hey this is what's going on this is where we are this is where we need to be transparent with your team and very sometimes vulnerable. And you used to say,

hey, this is what's going on. This is where we are. This is where we need to get. This is how you can help us. So to be that everything is wonderful type of boss, I think that's out. Brene Brown changed the world when she did that TED talk about vulnerability. So it doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman or blue collar, white collar, whatever it is, you need to be genuine and authentic with your team because it's not going to work any other way. And I think that is paramount that you need to be, let your guard down, be honest, be genuine. And if it's not all a good story, then it's not all good. Don't be lying to anybody. I agree.

And you know what? Sometimes it's tough. I had to close down four markets about a year and a half ago. They weren't profitable. I didn't have the right leadership in place. Our go-to-market strategy was not foolproof. So I bit the bullet, did it, and it's the best thing that ever happened to the company. We got rid of our non-producing areas and all of a sudden we were making several hundred thousand dollars a month. And that was the money to fuel the growth again. So I was robbing Peter to pay

Paul for a while, but I had to swallow my pride and say, this is what's best for the company to do right now. And we're going to go back there in the future, but that was what's good. So I got some other questions. What's three books that you'd recommend? Obviously, Michael Michalowicz, Fix This Next, Profit First, and then we need your book, which The Pufferfish Effect. And I'm going to buy that right now on Amazon. Let me send you a signed copy. I'll send you a signed copy. But you know what book I really love right now is Story Brand by Donald Miller. Are you familiar with the series? Yep. It really helps businesses to refine their marketing message and making sure that it is speaking to their clients' needs and that it's simple, right? We get all these complicated taglines and messages and people can't absorb it and they'll pass you

by. So what is your one-liner? And it's given me a lot of thought on what my one thing is. And I'm going to probably look to be rebranding before the beginning of next year so that book I love it right now okay yeah mine is simple a1 from day one and it sticks in people's mind because I made it and they're like oh what does that mean I'm like it's a1 from day one it's a1 it's the best so yeah it's pretty simple but we've got a lot more stuff but I used Dan Antonelli to do my trucks. He did a great job. So what's another book? Well, my tried and true favorite of all times, Think and Grow Rich. I don't think you can't go wrong with that. Three Feet from Gold,

just when you want to quit. Oh yeah, Three Feet from Gold. Yep. That's a great one. Well, you know, it's so funny because two years ago, I was giving this keynote at this women's event and I told the Three Feet from Gold story. And little did I know that later on that year, I was going to have this employee situation, which had me thinking about selling my company and just quitting and just being done because it was so painful and so stressful. And I remembered what I said, that no matter how bad it gets, just when you are about to turn the corner, man, that's when you can't quit.

And I had to listen to my own advice, which we all hate doing that, right? When you say something publicly, you gotta live with that. Hey, listen, I love it. How do people get a hold of you? The best way to reach me is my website is www.susanrobertsfrew.com. Or you can email me at susan at susancoaches.

Or find me on any social media platform. I am out there a lot. Cool. Yeah, I love it. I am out there a lot. Cool. Yeah, I love it. I can't wait to meet you in person. Yeah. I come down to Arizona a fair amount, Tommy, so I'm going to call you next time I come.

Yeah, for sure. And I'll send you a book, too. We'll definitely exchange books. I always end it with this. Give me some gold nuggets. Give me some take-to-market strategy. Give me just any piece of advice you want to leave the audience with like a last minute, last thought. I think that of all the

different companies that I have coached and, you know, all the business owners that I've had the pleasure of working with, the ones that were the most successful were the ones who committed to a plan, right? They have spent the time to create a budget, to create a plan for exit, to create a plan for the future and march towards that goal and had a vision board all the time in front of their face.

And the clearer that you can be on your vision, the more likely you are to hit it. And I've seen this a million times. Everybody's heard this, right? But seriously, if you do not have that, you're going to just be wandering off into the desert somewhere and you're never going to get to where you want to go. Or you will, but it's going to take way longer. Just make your plan, stick to your plan and go for it. And it doesn't mean you can't adjust. You can, but you gotta walk the walk. I love it.

Vision board, know where you're going, make a plan. Susan, you know, I always make notes, but this is an extreme amount of notes. So I love it. I'm gonna check out the 12 signs here too, the 12 points of love too in a little bit. So appreciate you coming on today. I look forward to doing this again in the future.

Thank you so much. Have a wonderful evening. See you soon. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Hey guys. I just wanted to thank you real quick for listening to the podcast from the bottom of my heart means a lot to me.

And I hope you're getting as much as I am out of this podcast our goal is to enrich your lives and enrich your businesses and your internal customers which is your staff and if you get a chance please please please subscribe you're gonna find out all the new podcasts gonna be able to ask me questions to ask the next guest coming on and and do me a quick favor, leave a quick review. It really helps us out when you like the podcast and you leave a review.

Make it four or five sentences, tell us how we're doing. And I just wanted to mention real quick, we started a membership. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. You get a ton of inside look at what we're gonna do to become a billion dollar company. And we're just, we're telling everybody our secrets basically. And people say, why do you give your secrets away

all the time? And I'm like, you know, the hardest part about giving away my secrets is actually trying to get people to do them. So we also create a lot of accountability within this program. So check it out. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. It's cheap. It's a monthly payment. I'm not making any money on it to be completely frank with you guys, but I think it will enrich your life season further. So thank you once again for listening to the podcast. I really appreciate it.