The Home Service Expert Podcast - Can AI Create The Systems And Processes You Need For Your Business?

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

Al Levi is a consultant and CEO of the 7-Power Contractor and one of the contributors of the book The Home Service Millionaire. He was rated as one of the 25 most influential contractors in the United States by Plumbing and Mechanical Magazine, where he has also been a longtime columnist. He now helps other contractors learn how to run their businesses with less stress and more success through consultations, workshops, and webinars. In this episode, we talked about business manuals, org charts, standard operating procedures…

if you're watching or listening to this, we're not passing judgment. We just did what you're doing and we realized how idiotic it was. And to Tommy and my credit is we'll only do idiotic for so long. And then we're going to do something different. So at my company, I was a New York City union shop. My union never gave me anybody that was any good. They didn't even do anything in training. So everybody thinks, well, it's union. No, we had to build this ourselves. So the org charts, the manuals, and then becoming better trainers ourselves and building the right training center

and learning how to train people are becoming the great trainers. That builds on this first program. So I did Operating Power, which is Signature Operating Manual System today, which is signature operating manual system today, which gave them the org charts and all the manuals to take control of the existing company. But Tommy wanted what I wanted is not to be a hostage to his own staff, particularly his techs. And I said, Tommy, we build new techs the right way. We're not going to be held hostage anymore.

And we're going to build as many as we want. 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. Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the internet. So I asked my team to take the notes for you. Just text NOTES to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299. And you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, go check it out. I'm going to share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states.

Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy. Now let's get into the interview. All right, guys, welcome back to the home service expert. You guys know my number one mentor in my life by far helped me out grow a one to the next level, but really helped me out in every facet of business and life. Al Levy's here. He every facet of business and life. Al Levy's here. He's an expert of business planning, operations, sales, coaching, training, really done a lot in the HVAC plumbing world, but now he does, there's not really a whole lot of industries he hasn't worked with because in the way I see it, everything's the same.

It's just a different widget. We have call centers, CSRs, we have dispatchers, we have technicians, we have installers. He's based right near me in Scottsdale. He's a consultant and CEO of the 7 Power Contractor. He started that out in 2002. He also was an owner of OSI and Comfort Services, which is still going. It's a family business. 1975 till 2001, he was in that business. Al has been rated one of the 25 most influential contractors in the United States by Plumbing and Mechanical Magazine, where he has also been a longtime columnist. After starting and growing his business, he was able to sell the business and then retire before reaching 50.

He's the author of The 7-Power Contractor and helped co-authoring the book, The Home Service Millionaire. In this episode, we talked about entrepreneurship, contracting, leadership, staffing. And Al came into my business, it was about 15 million and just changed the way we do things. And once again, I'm calling on Al because I needed him back. And I always need him back because sometimes we get out of the groove. We grow and then we need to go back to the fundamentals, which are the systems, standard operating procedures, the org chart, the way we do things for inventory.

I just found out a guy stealing openers out of the warehouse, well, Friday. And it's all the time. And it goes back to the fundamentals of how do they check things out? What are the systems? And Ella, it's a pleasure to have you back on. Tell us a little bit about, you know, I think everybody knows who family business, you're at work by the time you're eight. There's something to do. We used to ride with my dad at night, you know, run calls. We'd work on the weekend with them, cleaning bathrooms, sweeping up, things of that nature, riding with guys, learning the trade. It's what we did. Our dinner

table was always crazy because we would talk about sports and then talk about business, talk about sports, talk about business. And that's just kind of how we got weaned up. And then, of course, when I finished college, and even when I was at college, I was working six months a year. So it wasn't like, oh, I just came home and had a spring break. And I really learned so many things about chaos. Because even though we were super successful, if you measure just with money, our Our problem was it was just chaotic. Nobody knew what they were doing and who was doing it. And whenever you are in a situation like that, you either have no people doing it or two people doing it, and that's bad in both scenarios. And so come around the 90s, I really decided it was time to take control. And the book that

changed my life was Michael Gerber's E-Myth all those years ago. It told me why things didn't work. It told me what I needed to do. And it gave me really much nothing in the way of how. But I'm really good at how, as Tommy can attest. And that's really launched us on the course of defining how to run our business in a systematic way, because that was finally how we took control of stress. What I wanted to share today in particular is technology is a phenomenal tool in your toolbox, but like all tools in your toolbox, you need to know what it can do and what it can't do, and when do you use it, and when do you use? And so that's really some of the things I wanted to focus on here today because the software and the hardware and the stuff that Tommy ran when we started years ago with 15 million in sales is not the same that he uses today. Now, there are some

core things there, absolutely, but some things never change. And what I mean by that is having org charts, now they evolve. Having manuals, now they evolve. But having the right org charts and having the right manuals and having the right foundational pieces, the best way to describe it, whether you're 1 million or 200 million in your sales or a billion, it all really works off the same principles. And this is really kind of the big thing is having that, but having it in a way that is integrated and working right. I went to one of Joe Polish's meetings of his genius network. And there was this guy there that I met who wrote the book, Come Up for Air. And the book explains

how half the company is working on Microsoft Office, and they've got the Outlook. Half of them have Google Gmail. Half the people are using different communication tools. One person's using Trello. The other person's using Asana. We've got people using Monday. We've got people using email. Other people are using text.

Some people are using StreamYard. Some people are using Zoom. Some people are using Microsoft Teams. And I think technology is great, but it also could be the biggest hindrance in the company. Where are your manuals? Well, the manuals are in this one, but we updated over here, but this is where we normally go. And here's where we read it off of. And this is the biggest problem I'm facing right now, is technology is becoming a hindrance. So picking the right technology that we all agree and then training on that, because someone walks in and says, well, we used to use this in my last place and it's much better. It doesn't really matter if everybody's using a different thing, it doesn't work. No, it does not. It does not.

And that's such a great point because a lot of the great companies I worked with, some of the best shops in this country and before I arrived even, in those days, 10 to 15 different pieces of software trying to integrate with one another. And it really became impossible. Tommy mentioned to me recently, there's like 45 pieces of technology and, you know, softwares that have to blend. It's really difficult. Okay. So you've got ServiceTitan, but then you've got you've got the camera systems and the vehicles right which is a zuga that that a lot of people are using the the api

right into service titan and then you've got intact and we've got so much more software if you include email and everything else and it's and slack so many people communicate yeah so a lot of people don't communicate in slack so it it falls through the hole. And it's almost overwhelming because you try to figure out what's going on in the company. And if there's no hierarchy of one software to look at every project and it doesn't matter, some people say the software does so much better. I don't care. If I took your phone and my phone, I guarantee you, we know how to use it 10%. We can never do the things that it's capable of doing because I never took a course on my phone. And if I could, I would. If they give a good course on it, I will. Bree just bought a really nice Mercedes. And I'm telling you, she

didn't go to the course. She doesn't know how to do anything that the car could do. We just teach on the right software. But I know what you're saying because people are saying, I'm going to use ChatGPT to write me a business plan. They'll do my org chart. They'll do all my advertising. And it's great. It could do a lot of stuff and definitely invest some time into that. But understand one thing. No one knows your business like you.

And it's not a generic business. Like the way we do performance pay, I don't think ChatGPT can figure that out. I don't think it's a tool that's made. It does a lot for marketing. It does a lot for great ads. Jasper and ChatGPT combined can do some cool stuff. Bart is coming downstream. There's going to be an alphabet soup of all of these things. It kind of reminds me of when search engines, which everyone takes to Google, ended up being the winner, but there were tons of them. And so we don't really even know who it is. But I'm going to share with you one of the things that I wanted to share today with Tommy was, I didn't even realize that people were considering this, Tommy. They thought that,

well, I'll just ask AI Chat GBT to create org charts and manuals, and that'll take care of it. There's nothing for me to do. And that's really not, and actually the person that alerted me, there were two people that alerted to me, were clients that were in the online program already. And they go, Al, do you know what people are doing out there? And we have to, one of them was so insistent. He said, you got to let me shoot a video testimonial because I want to make sure, let them know that I use this stuff, but I know how to use it for what, you know, like you just mentioned a marketing piece or a short thing or checklist or something, not for an integrated org chart, not one that's stacked in a certain way, not one that's interconnected.

Like the manuals, as you know, the CSR to dispatcher to tech relationship and closing it up, it could pluck stuff from all over the place. It's not going to be integrated and it be integrated. And it's also actually dangerous. Can I give an example of what dangerous is? Yeah. So when we were putting the gas heating manual together, for those who don't work in the gas heating business, we had a service of 60 family apartment house. And there's just one apartment that has a half inch little line that's leaking. We're going to pull it on the fly, which means we're not going to kill the gas in the building. Because if we do, we have to bleed out every one of these things. So we catch it on the fly is it's live with gas and we're

going to swap it out and put it back. You cannot put that in your manual because if the building blows up, that's what I'm talking about. There are dangerous things and that takes the human component. So the words you put in, the words you leave out are critical and the tonality of it. How does it sound like a robot speaking to me? Or does it sound like a friendly big brother, big sister? And that was what, you know, the fellow wanted to explain. There's all of this. And I thought Chloe Davis, the great Chloe Davis of Express Palm Bay, she was talking about even she didn't realize, even though she bought the whole program, about how you start with the CSR dispatcher tech and really get that solid foundation, which you knew immediately, Tom, about how just getting the CSR straightened out. What a huge difference that makes your call count, quality of calls, and building real great sales. But she didn't even realize how the interconnectivity

between all the other manuals, and that finally she understood it's a bottom-up approach, not a top-down, because the thinnest manuals need to be at the top for the managers. It's really their ability to keep everybody else. So she really spoke to this elegantly in one of her video testimonials. And I don't coach anybody in any of their testimonials or any of these podcasts what to say, because I'm going to tell you, and I know it sounds, oh yeah, because you're saying that. I haven't needed to work since I left. Like Tommy mentioned, I walked out in 2001, started a business in 2002. I was lucky and blessed.

I did not need to work. So I don't need your money to do any of what I do. My kids were long put out, had all the money for the school and the rest of the stuff. I'm here to help you as a contractor. And even if that means to use something else, I'm going to endorse that. But just like if I came to your house and I was there for your plumbing, heating, cooling, electric, I am the expert and I am here to make sure that you don't make a bad decision today. I'm going to open your eyes just like you taught me when you would show up to a garage door call,

right? I know they've been on the internet, they've watched the YouTube video and all of a sudden they're an expert, but reality is how many garage door calls did you do before you ever arrived to that? And you weren't even on the field. You've been trained in-house now. All these guys are trained in-house. So there's more to it that people are missing. That's really what I wanted to make sure I focused today. But best way to think of it, whether it's AI, you know, ChatGPT or Google Art or anybody else that's coming down the pipeline, there are things that can do and do great. And there are things that it is not ready to do. And I don't even know if it will ever be

ready to do, but understand the difference. Does that make sense, Tom? A hundred percent. It's sitting down in a room and figuring this stuff out. You know, I have a lot of businesses I talk to. And one of the common themes I heard just yesterday was, we're not big enough for that yet. We're not big enough to know our numbers like you know them. We're not big enough. We're not like you.

We don't have the resources. And I'm like, I hear people. I was just listening to a social media post about this one said, if you walk into a room where you're a CSR and you're sitting like this and you think you don't deserve it, you never will. You kind of put it out into the world. And then I hear these business owners going, yeah, but you're Tommy Mello. I'm like, shit, I don't care. I mean, look, I was in the truck for eight years. Oh, yeah. I didn't understand the triangle of communication, which this is what I want to dive into because I know we're going to talk a lot about AI and just systems and what the technology is, but also just understanding the fundamentals of the CSR, dispatcher, technician relationship used to be so bad. It used to be like, for me, they all hated, one group hated

the other group. The dispatchers hated the CSRs and the CSRs hated the technicians because it was like, they don't want to run that call and they should have pre-qualified it more. And you should have heard this call, Tommy, you're not going to like the way they sounded. And so we wrote it all down and told them the expectations. You know, I'm going to let you jump into that, but I want to make one more comment. My dogs, the other night, I've got a little dog named Huckleberry, and then I've got Finnegan, who's two and a half. It was 3 a.m. I let him out. Of course, Huck goes pee on the pavers.

I don't want him to go pee on the pavers. They're nice pavers, and it's a mess that cleans up, and I don't want him to go pee on the pavers. You know, they're nice pavers and it's a mess that cleans up and I got to wash it off. But I'm like, you know, Huckleberry, until we take the time to train him, teach him, motivate him, reward him with treats when he does the right thing over and over and over, and then make sure he continues that training. It doesn't ever start going on the pavers again and continue the reward system. And I applied this a little bit to business because so many people say, what's wrong with you? You should know not to go pee on the pavers. Well, you should know to do your inventory like this. Well, how much did you work on training them? And I know that's a bad analogy.

It's a canine versus a human being. I don't think it's a bad analogy. And I'm glad that Tommy stopped that because think of your kids, just use kids. And when I say kids, look at me. I still think I'm a kid. If I never looked in the mirror, I act and think like a kid. And I always want to know what happens good for me if I do what you want and what happens if I don't do what you want. And dogs and children and CSRs and dispatchers, we don't mean anything demeaning here, but Tommy's example is spot on. Well, you know, I do think that coming up with the, like, Al, you know what I'm doing? You're going to think I'm crazy

because this is probably what you would do. But I'm going through my house and I started whiteboarding. I said, where do I spend most of my time? Well, I take a shower. How do all my showers set up? Where do all my raz want my razors? I can afford to have the help. And I think if you could, you should to get more time back to focus on meaningful decisions. I use a towel. How many days do I want to use that towel? How much do I want my sheets? How am I going to handle my

laundry? How do I want my clothes? I came back with a $1,500 jacket washed from the cleaning lady. My fault. I didn't get mad. I said that was my fault. And then I'm going like this. I'm building a whole chart of my house. And every time I use the room, it's going to be shaded in a certain color. It's almost OCD, but it's actually because I'm lazy. I'm lazy in a way that I'd rather do an SOP and have an expected result. And I'm making a whole post like about this later, Al, about how I delegate so much and how I put deadlines and how I build systems because I don't want to be the fire.

I could fix all of it. I could go change out my towels, fold them the way I like them, put my boxers the way I like them. I could, I could go vacuum myself in the perfect way and cut my lawn and the way I love the lawn to look, or I could build a training and then make sure we cut my lawn in the way I love the lawn to look,

or I could build a training and then make sure we sit down and make sure they sign off on it. So I'm taking everything you taught me and I'm applying it to the way my vehicle looks and I'm applying it to the way my home, the way I work at home. I'm applying it to even relationships because I say it's lazy, but it's not really lazy. It's a way of me making my time more valuable. Time is the most precious. I mean, we always talk about time, energy, and money. And health. No, not that money's not important.

It's vitally important. I always hate when people go, oh, money's not important. Yeah, try living without it. So I think what's really valuable is time. But you can actually create time, what Tommy's talking talking about if you get organized, systematized, and everything we're talking about, about your business also applies to your personal life. I think that's the thing that Tommy's trying to make clear here. And I agree. Same thing goes, but where you run out of stuff and you cannot create more in many cases is energy. Now you can, if you do what Tommy's talking about, eating right, exercising right,

all of those things, but ultimately where are you going to spend your emotional energy? And that is a different topic. Are you going to walk around every day yelling at somebody because they washed your jacket, which they shouldn't have, or the towels weren't folded right? So for me and my own self, speaking to technology, I don't think about my next appointment. Not at all. I just wait for my alarm on my phone to tell me, hey, get an appointment. That doesn't work. Guess what's on my wrist? And then people go, well, that's OCD. Well, yes, it is. I'm not denying it, but I can tell you I am free of stress because I don't spend a second thinking about it. I have already done all the prep work.

It's already in there. And now I just need to respond with whatever cushions that I put in here. So I show up to this podcast. Do you guys think I fell out of bed and just came here? And Tommy would think, no. I have a podcast list of prep that I do on my own. There's signs on my gate so people don't come in here slamming it, right? And there's this from Tom.

If you do the, you know, the classic answer to this is always, I had a guy, you know, work for me really great. You know, he bought his company. But he was always, I don't have time, I don't have time. So one day I was just talking to him about, how are you coming on the ride-alongs? And he goes, I don't have time to do it. And I was mad, but I just caught my breath for a second.

And I go, so tell me where you'll find the time to fix all the mistakes. Here's what I can tell you. Every time you climb in their truck, they get better at sales, operation, technical performance. So you tell me, where is a better place for you to be spending your time energy? That's where you need to spend it. Now, you guys are saying, because I want to make sure I cover this too. When I show people that box or chart and I say that fits every company, everywhere, any place, I don't care if it's just you and your wife and your friend in the garage, because you have all those boxes it takes to run the org chart. The problem is you have to own every one of those boxes. I didn't make it happen. You already owned it, but you didn't even know the boxes. So the org chart and the right org chart, which I believe is mine because of its 40-some-odd years of testing so, and not just with me, but all across the country, all across Canada, and now it's in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. How much more proof do you need? These are the boxes it takes.

Now, when you get big like Tommy, well, here's the great news. You can add more of the key boxes, and you have way more depth, and your name should be moving down, down, down, down the boxes. So you're not folding towels. You're not doing your own wash because you've got bigger things to do. Well, people ask me, i can't tell you how much i get that question am i ready for l evie i think i'm getting ready to buy his package and i go don't buy it unless you're going to use it see l evie forced my hand we sat in a room and i didn't

have a choice he showed up whether i liked it or not and we sat down and he made me work through it but once i learned what he was trying to do and I focused and I read the manual out loud and we worked on it. I mean, it's everything. It's sitting down with the team that matters and putting together, whether it's a cleaning lady, how your landscaping is done, how you want your car washed. And once you figure out all these things in work and business, you can't help but grow. And people ask me, am I ready? And I go, probably not. If you don't know if you need it, then maybe not. But you don't know until you sit down and you understand why. If you don't have a big enough reason to implement systems

and you're not going to dedicate it, you know, Al, you said you give away, I don't remember, three hours with your coaching when you saw it online? I give, yeah. So if they buy the Signature Operating Manual System All Access, that's all the manuals, but they also get six 30-minute Zoom sessions with me within the first six months. And if they buy Signature Staffing, the next program, Signature Staffing, also has six 30-minute Zoom sessions. Yep. So how many people are using that? Tommy knows the dirty secret. They are your sessions. And I stress this as often as I can, but they don't. Now, here's the good thing. A lot of what I've done in this program,

in the video tutorials, and these are all the things that separated from having your executive assistant go out with chat GBT and go find systems or whatever software you use or any artificial intelligence, but everything is sequenced and integrated. So I've done 23 video lessons, kind of what I did with Tommy one-to-one, which none of you could afford to bring me in because I don't do it anymore. And so I've taken you step by step on how you climb the mountain because putting manuals and org charts is a little bit like climbing a mountain, more like a hill in my opinion. But I'm your virtual trail guide in the videos and in the workbook,

which is 57 pages is like an install checklist. And if you've ever worked in the field, it's really good to have an install exit checklist. Because if you don't, here's what I i promise you you're going to skip steps it would be like your pilot on wherever you're going to fly goes i don't need a stinking checklist i've been flying this plane for 30 years would you get on that plane because i know i wouldn't be happy you know they they have a checklist for a reason so these are are these reasons. But that said, people don't use the calls they're entitled to or the sessions. A lot of that is human nature. That's really what it comes down to. And even though they've purchased it, they don't use it. The good news is the majority of them have a success because it's set up so well. And yeah, it's my program. So yeah, you're thinking I'm saying that, but it isn't mine. Don't take my word for it. Go to the testimonial pages because, and I've got way more than that. I've only put, you know, the few that absolutely insisted that

they wanted to be there. And, you know, Tommy obviously being the biggest of that, but it's really, you're ready when you're ready. People have said to me, Tommy, over the years, you know, I work with them, they go on to great success and they go, wish you had been here like five years ago. And I go, you weren't ready. You know, the classic, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. It's really, they weren't ready

because their mind was not ready is what Tommy's speaking to. Maybe you're small and you don't realize that you're always going to be small, not having an org chart. If you're small and you don't realize that you're always going to be small, not having an org chart, I'm going to help you out here today. Not having the right org chart is purposely keeping you small. Yes, I said that. It's purposely keeping you small because you can't figure out the steps. Not learning how to... A good person couldn't even show up to your company today to help take

one of those boxes away from you if you haven't defined what goes on in each of those boxes 80% of the time so a great willing person is just going to be thrown to the wolves and try to do their best and I got news for you you're not going to happy. If I could go tell any great operator, and the reason I preface great is what you give will work. It's just the ADHD person that can't sit down for two minutes, that's constantly firefighting, that will do nothing with these. People ask me, I'm just starting a business. Do you agree with Al Levy? And here's the best advice I could tell you is Adam Cronenberg was part of Al LeA.V.'s manuals from day one. He got a very good outcome from day one.

And we still work together on a lot of stuff. Right now he's taking time with his family, spending time with his parents and his daughters. He's helping his cousin out. And they've got a misting system. So they missed. And the first thing he did the day he got involved was, hey, I'm going to call L.A.V. And I'm going to get the manuals. Are you okay with that? I said, of course we got into Al's Levy manuals together. And the first thing he did is initiate the manuals and they're doing

20 grand a month. They had a $40,000 a month last month. But the fact is Adam gets it. Anybody that's worked with you, that's actually done the work gets it and ellen roar always says al's always right because you are right you are right but a lot of us don't want to do the vanilla we don't want to do this stuff it's a lot of work we got to sit down and then and then we don't use it and when it's not being used and even when you help me rearrange the way we sit in the building the day i implemented it the day i've implemented the warehouse the day i implemented it i had freedom the day i came up with a custom truck for with a spot for everything model truck yep the model truck and people are like yeah well they have all these different trucks on the road different styles different wraps different and it's never good enough and

they think the magic wrap is going to help them, but it's systems. And when we did this deal in December with Cortec, the number one thing I could tell you that, well, there were two big things. The first one was you guys could build technicians. They said, you're the only company we've ever seen that could actually build a technician that's an all-star this quick. And number two, they said, you've got your numbers dialed in. And that was a lot. It took Alan and Gal and then it took a lot of really great people to know down to the decimal point, every single thing on the balance sheet income statement.

And most people don't have those two things. They don't have the organization. They can't build technicians. They're looking to hope to find the next best guy to walk in from another company that'll just take the high dollar for the short term? If you're watching or listening to this, we're not passing judgment. We just did what you're doing and we realized how idiotic it was. And to Tommy and my credit is we'll only do idiotic for so long. And then we're going to do something different. So at my company, I was a New York City union shop. My union never gave me anybody that was any good. They didn't even do anything in training. So everybody thinks, well, it's union. No, we had to build this ourselves. So the org charts, the manuals, and then becoming better trainers ourselves and building the right

training center and learning how to train people are becoming the great trainers. That builds on this first program. So I did Operating Power, which is Signature Operating Manual System today, which gave them the org charts and all the manuals to take control of the existing company. But Tommy wanted what I wanted, is not to be a hostage to his own staff, particularly his techs. And I said, Tommy, we build new techs the right way. We're not going to be held hostage anymore. And we're going to build as many as we want. It's just getting this pipeline of willing apprentices with no skills to willing techs with great skills. And then the second part of this is, as you go and grow, you can't just rely on a great service manager,

a great install manager to just run all these people through them. You have to create another level, which is field supervisor, and it has to be done right, which is qualify, compete, and train. And that's really what is in the second program. And so this integrated approach that I was speaking of versus just pulling random pieces out of the internet, interweb, wherever you want to go, and just thinking it's all going to work. The only analogy I can use, again, is you're likely to end up, if I gave Tommy his ability to have his dream car and build his dream car, would he take a Hyundai chassis, Ford engine, Toyota seats, and call that his dream car? I think not because it's

not going to integrate and not going to work the way you design. And this is, again, knowing the tool and the power of AI and where it really works and what it can't do. So it's both things. You know, talking about the field supervisor, one of the things I think is interesting, I had a buddy over that's really, it wasn't Kent Goodrich, Kent's amazing, but it was one of the higher guys in command. He was at the house yesterday. And he goes, Tommy, I think we're going to invest a lot more in training. And I go, you know what I think is crazy? Is you have all these people at the office for support. You've got job-by-job managers.

You've got your virtual closers. You've got your rehash group. You've got all this overhead. When have you just trained your guys good enough to close and taught them, you wouldn't have these millions and millions of dollars of overhead. And it's like, well, these guys are not smart enough to be able to handle it. And I'm like, well, then you're picking the wrong guys.

Or you're not training the right guys. Training. Yeah. You're not training because I found a long time ago, people that I thought weren't smart were not smart. They either were not motivated because they didn't understand what's in it for me. And they didn't get brought up into the position and earn their way up the org chart or the manuals and the boxes. But absolutely.

So it kind of reminds me of, you know, Ellen and I work from different perspectives. She was a great at defense. She created, you know was a great at defense. She created a client satisfaction program. So when you goofed up and the company goofed up, how to do it in a very systematic way. And I believe in a great defense, but I don't really believe in a great defense over a great offense. And a great offense is what Tommy and I talked about so long ago, is building great techs right from scratch so that they're making less problems. They can do more. So they don't need all of the safety nets that you create underneath them and that have to catch everything. When I first walked into

Tommy's shop, and remember, it was $15 million. He had a full-time guy having to fix fires all day long, sunup to sundown. That was his own job. And I said, I'm not saying that you don't need somebody to handle it because it will carry on periodically, but it should be nowhere near this level, not even close. And that is, again, because you don't start where you need to start, is proactivity, playing great offense, and, yes, having a defense, but using it only when you need it not

relying on yeah sales is an interesting thing what what can happen when you build the right technicians and know you know these guys were in my office about two weeks ago talking about ai and i said this is only half of the equation i don't care how many leads you get i'll put my top guy at the worst lead he'll still kill it i said so until you figure out this piece and I'll tell you, I'll over and over and over and over. I hear one thing when I could build my own technicians and they come out of training, they're better than all my other techs. And the next training class, when we've learned a little bit more, just got a little bit better, polished a little bit more. Those guys are the next best set. And when they keep refining their training and make it continuous improvement, and they continue to bring their people back in the training, that's when the real money happens.

I was talking to the same guy from Gettle yesterday, and he goes, Tommy, I work for a company. The day it sold, we went from $6, a five ton unit to twelve thousand the conversion rate was the exact same so getting your prices right now and rora talks a lot about that is how much you encourage i really think that people they don't invest enough into the systems and that's what you align this is what you do here is to be and a lot of people say well you're lucky because you don't need to have you know the schooling that goes behind an HVAC or a plumber. And I understand it only takes me two months. I'm going to stop that because I've built plumbers, HVAC, electrical guys, kitchen cabinetry guy, all of these things along the way.

There is licensing. There are some other things. But it's a tweak to the program. It's not a rewrite. Building electricians all around this country. You've done it. I mean, one of your best students. You've got students that done, like you said, cabinetry. It starts in the training. Most of us train people out in front of the customer. We practice on real life scenarios.

Yeah. On the job training. Rather than doing it in a training center yeah yeah for years and years we we we were embarrassed to call it on the job training so we just said otjt as if that made it better but you know how idiotic that is because you're basically saying i'm coming to your house to learn my job today and actually we built into our marketing and sales approach is we're not coming to your house today to learn our job. We're already trained and certified in our own. And that's one of the 10 great reasons to choose our company is because that is the case. We're not coming to you. And it's also the other thing that people miss in properly constructed

manuals and training is one of the reasons, and I use Starbucks just as an example, because I've always, you know, I traveled this country and I'm a lefty. So in my left hand and everywhere I ever went, Tommy, there was always going to be a Starbucks. It's in my hand, except if I go to Boston, usually it ends up Dunkin' Donuts because they don't believe in Starbucks. But anyway, so there's a cup of coffee and I don't think it's the best coffee by far. By far, I don't believe it's the best coffee. But here's what I can tell you. I always know what to expect.

It's always consistent. That's what I appreciate. So when you have techs, and every one of them come differently, some put on shoe covers, some talk to me, some do surveys, some don't. You know what I'm saying? This is all the stuff that's a problem, whether it's, you know, your door has crashed in the garage world. So as you taught me, it's either all the way up, all the way down or halfway. All three are bad scenarios. Can you create a process that we all come to that and pretty much do it the same way? Well, yeah, we did. And I go, I don't care what trade it is. I've done it in power washing and I was never a power washer. So yeah, it's really pretty much the same, but what you put in, what you leave out, tonality, there's a lot of subtlety more than just words on a digital device. Some people, they talk about too much information in the manuals.

People always wonder, what do you put in the manuals? What is the substance of it? Can you go through some of that? Yeah. So it took us a long time to get it to where it was. And some of that was pairing stuff out. We always had to ask ourselves, is this an 80? In other words, 80% of the time this comes up, or is this a weird 20? Because if it's the weird 20, we're not going to address it in the manuals. There's just too much stuff to go. And if we're really great at the 80% of what goes on day after day, the 20% doesn't throw us. And the problem is we as perfectionists think we have to cover everything and every little inch of it. And that's where this thing goes wrong. And now that it's digital, people go, well, I can just add it

to the manuals. And the fact that they're bigger is, you know what, they can search it. Well, yeah, they can. So I should be up in an attic in 120 degree weather, looking at my tablet, trying to figure out what I should know already before I climbed into this attic. So the manuals are supposed to be known. And there's a process about how to get buy-in, how to roll it out. And here's the other piece, keeping in the culture. So keeping the manuals smart. So what I always tell people who join the program is it's 90 to 95% the way it should be. And if you're changing more than that, here's what I have to tell you to ask yourself. Are you chasing perfection?

Are you adding pages? Because every time you add a page, it makes it worse, not better. Are you going after the 20% of weird stuff that goes on versus 80? A lot of the shops who get into this program, they love it because they'll go, you know what? Last week, we were just asking, what do you do when you transfer a truck? Last week, we were asking about what happens if somebody has a jerk. They didn't think of these scenarios. So much of this is already baked into the pie. That does mean some tweaking on your part, not rewriting. And that's so much easier. But the danger is to think it's, oh, it's digital. I can make it as big as I want. That's wrong. I think there's a big problem with when they get the manuals is the integration of the manuals and getting everybody to read them

and then asking questions after they read the manual and changing those questions up to make sure they internalize everything and they understand. And they can show you they understand. Because it's like just because you create the manual doesn't mean it's integrated no and that's the csr to dispatcher tech triangle communication you were talking about was all based on you know why it cost me 150 grand for a fraction of what's here and none of the lessons and really nobody to hold my hand. And it really changed our company. Within two years, we paid it all off.

Increased every call we ran, able to put more trucks on the road, and we weren't saddled with a dramatic problem of callbacks. If you run a callback, you can't get to the new work. You have unhappy customers. And my years ago wasn't as onerous as it is today because I can go online in every platform and just make your life miserable. Fakes are way higher. That's kind of my point here. But there's really this CSR, happy hostess in a restaurant, makes you feel good, didn't interrupt your day, empathetic, lets me know that when Al the great tech shows up, my plumbing, my heating, my cooling, my electrical, my garage door, everything's going to work again. And then explains the system so I as a tech don't have to get there and explain it. Books the call, lets them know if there's any changes.

Dispatcher will work out or there's going to be a text message when they arrive or the tech will be calling as they're nearby. They hand the information off to the dispatcher, and preferably they're separated. Even if you're in a small company, magically they're moved over on the org chart to under the service manager, where they're now figuring out how to maximize billable hours, because that's all you have to sell. Don't count how many widgets you got on your truck. Really, all you have to sell is billable hours. How do you maximize that? And that's what the dispatcher with the service manager are really working on. And then their job is to get all the information out to the tech. So they run the call without the blinders. They're set up for success. They run the call. And here's the tricky part. They've got to close the call right with the dispatcher. So I will forgive you for a lot of

things. But if you came to my house and my air conditioning out here in Arizona, where it's not just a nice thing to have, it's life-saving. So you came here, you told me my capacitor is weak, you'll be back in a week, and now two weeks have gone by and I have to call you. I am not going to be happy. And that's where everything falls through the cracks. So this integration is very critical to the process. But you talk a lot about you recruit, hire, orient, train, retain. Yep. And we celebrate when people leave. They worked here 20 years. We're going to get a cake and we're going to take them out to the bar.

We're going to tell them how much we love them and give them gifts. How come we don't do that when somebody starts and have a plan and have an orientation to tell them what the core values are, what we're about, why isn't the owner involved in that? And to make it a big deal and give them a tour and make them feel like this is their home. Why don't companies understand what orientation is? Well, if they were like I was years ago, Tommy, they're in desperation mode. Somebody just quit or I have too many calls. There are no texts showing up. And now I'm in desperation mode. And that's where I've talked before about my brother, Marty, who never really turned a wrench. He was the inside guy used to

nickname our hiring practice, the mirror test, because out of desperation, if you could fog a mirror, we're going to hire you. So we didn't have the time to properly recruit, hire Orient. And Orient was a word that we didn't even know existed at our company. Hurry up. Here's the keys. Go see what you can do. And then we cleaned up the mess. Actually learned a lot about it. We did get better at it. I got even better when one of the very first clients I worked with, the great Lowry Services, and they used to be electrical. Then we moved into plumbing, heating, cooling, Philadelphia area. The great Joe Haney, who at that time was a service manager, now the general manager,

and they've grown up. They were already pretty darn good. They're really great today. But he was the one that said to me, because it was going on about, you know, we need to tighten up our orienting process. And I said, yeah, I have a five to 10 day. He goes, no, Al, it's really important. So I just kind of reached back and I go, okay, Joe, what am I missing about this orientation? And he looks, Al, do you remember when you went from junior high school or middle school and you went to high school where you were a big guy in a small pond. Now you're a little guppy in

a big ocean. He said, wouldn't it have been nice to have a big brother, big sister coaching you or making you feel comfortable? I was lucky. I actually did have my big brothers and sisters in high school ahead of me. But the reality was that what he was sharing about it is, he goes on to say, the way I orient anybody in their first two weeks dictates their success at this company for the rest of the time they're here. And I just kind of said, come on, Joe, that's kind of traumatic, don't you think? He goes, no, it is not. Because every time we now use the orientation process we put together and the strength of the orientation, Tommy, one of the biggest pieces they do is you read the manuals that pertain to the job you do because that is

how you own your box. How are you set up for success? We explain the technology to you. We don't just go, here's your tablet. Go ahead, go get them. Could you imagine handing a tablet to somebody who doesn't know if service tightened or even know how to navigate around. So this first five to 10 days are critical in the process. And then training them up and verifying what they can and can't do. And then fixing those holes, fixing them in-house rather than at somebody else's house. You know, people think that this is like sports almost sometimes, but you don't lose in business. You don't win. It's an everlasting game. It's a game that keeps going. So, you know, I feel like we're doing great. I think we'll hit, my goal is 50 million of EBITDA this year, but ultimately that doesn't mean I win

because my mindset says, I know my goal is 110 million in 2025 of EBITDA. And now my best thinking time is when I'm getting ready, whether that's in the shower or in the bathroom, I'm constantly my best thinking. And I'm like, how do I get to a billion of EBITDA? And it doubles down on systems. And when you nail it, you scale it,

but you got to continue not to lose any pieces in the process. And I think that's some of the hardest part as you look at these pe companies and i could name a dozen that have done very well is they're all this next year two three years they're not growing at all they're trying to grow organically because they didn't have the systems to integrate properly when they bought a company and they need to go go back because they grow too fast and it doesn't work. So making sure through the process that you're holding the processes tight, using the manuals. And I tell you what, the steps of delegation used not just on the pad of paper here that I always have, but the steps of delegation put into a project management tool with deadlines and that everybody could kind of look and see who's working on what

you like Trello, but having somebody sign off, understand, relate, relay it back to you exactly why you're doing it when it needs to get done by. And I've never become so obsessed with deadlines and making sure someone's accountable and making sure there's one decision at the top that I can point to good or bad. And that's some of the stuff I've learned from you. And I've really taken what

you've given me and didn't even know I was using it. Then I go back and I'm like, Al already taught me that. I just didn't understand that that's what he was trying to get me to do. Maybe I read a different book and then I went back and I'm like, holy shit, Al gave me this stuff already. I just, I wasn't doing it in the right way. Yeah. You know, all of this is a series of processes. People go, when did you know that you needed to create an org chart and manuals?

And I go, it wasn't a day. It was, you know, one day wheny and i are in the hallway yelling at each other in front of everybody in the company because he's upset about how the service department's running and what's going on and i'm upset about not paying the bills on time the way they're supposed to that was the birth of the org chart is we finally decided that you know we got to create a relationship and then even it evolved in a way of like the install wing we couldn't understand why we weren't making money at install because we had plenty of install work we didn't realize the key pieces the sales manager about

making sure big tickets were sold right and then turned over to the install team right and then that they brought the jobs in on time on budget because i used to pay you know my system advisors big ticket sales people just on gross sales and they proved that to me tommy that they could bring me every dollar i wanted and make me go broke until i changed the you know the nature of the scale here so sometimes also we get caught up in kpis and this is also speaking to automation and technology. It is phenomenal. Hear me. But it is a two-way sword, double-edged, if you will, in that you could start looking at 50 screens on your desk, and pretty soon you're looking at everything and nothing. And so even a pilot is not looking at

every control every second, they can bring things up. The same thing goes for your company. What are the four to five KPIs that most move the needle for each of the boxes on those box board charts? What's going to drive profit? And in my case, what I always looked for was gross sales and gross profit. If it's not in both, not interested, not interested in dry land. That's how all of my major people get bonus. They get 100% bonus and 60% of it's on revenue, 40% of it's on gross profit. And it comes at the end of the year. Dan Miller came in and said, we're going to make this so freaking easy. We hit our dan miller came in and said we're going to make this so freaking easy we hit our numbers we set a budget we're going to set reasonably

you know i i set really unreasonable goals so he goes you know we'll have your tommy goals but we're going to set this for the goals for everybody to get their bonus because if they hit this you know we did absolutely great am i right and i'm like yeah i guess i would consider that good but you know i i see things differently and i don't care if they hit their bonus because they're total bonuses it's not well let's let's stop for a minute because what what did ellen and i ellen teach both of us and years ago with me was um bonuses should never come out of the owner's pocket. It's out of the money they create. So when the budget is already baked in, what I need to get,

anything you bring me above that, I'll be generous with. You brought it to me. Yeah, you're right. We're looking at a $26 million EBITDA company going to 50 in a year. So a lot of that came through acquisition. But but ultimately to be able to dream a little bigger, I think that's one of my secret quality, like a great quality is like, I just don't, I don't look at things. I was in this room, Al, which just recently there was about 300 people. And I go, who here, what's your big dream? What's your goal? And one guy said $2 million of revenue. The other girl goes a million dollars of revenue. And one person goes two and a half million. And I

go, stop right now. That's not good enough. That's not a big enough goal because I've got technicians that do more than two and a half million dollars. And I'm not trying to sound condescending, but you need to dream bigger. You need to think you're worth more than that. Because let me just tell you guys, if you dream like that, you'll hit that and then you'll just fizzle out. And that was your goal. And I think your ability to dream big and be able to reverse engineer what needs to happen with your KPIs, hiring training center manuals, I know these things need to happen.

But here's the hardest part, too, is you and I both know that everybody wants to be in shape. I mean, whether they are in shape or not, they're always going to get ready to start a diet. They're going to start. They're going to say, I'm going to start eating right. And it's the same thing with the manuals. It's the same thing with your program. And I'm saying a lot of people have been successful.

From where they were, they only need to apply 10% of it to have. Yeah, you don't have to be perfect. I guarantee you, you get started. You do. I would wish you do all of it. But whatever you get done already makes you better. So it's not like you have to wait till the end to get better. And that's kind of like dieting. It took me three years to put on 60 more pounds than I should have. But guess what? As soon as I say I want to go on a diet,

I want to lose it in a month. Yeah. Yeah. It took me three years to put on this weight. It's going to take a while to get it off and keep it off. And I think, you know, when you go, I just want to if you don't have my only tweak to what Tommy was saying is I'm OK with you having a million and a half. But I want you to say I want a million and a half, two million in revenue in next year. And my three-year budget is five million. And my other is 10. I don't really go past five years myself personally. I know some people like these 10-year deals. I can't think that long. One, three, and five is really good framework. So if you hear this today, you should have a one-year goal and a three-year goal and a five-year. And what Tommy's talking about is reverse engineering. And Tommy, if you remember in Leadership Power, we talked about the goal, but it was very clear and specific.

You know, X amount of dollars, this many trucks rolling, each truck producing this. So even as we wrote the goal, it was already becoming real. And now I'm working on the same thing for my personal one, three, five year. What does my life look like? And I'm really digging deep on this spirituality, physical, like my health. I love golfing. I love fishing. How often am I going to do it? And I want to design the life, not just the business, because I've done a pretty good job of that. It's paying in dividends. So now there's the next realm of how much am I going to travel? What is, you know, kids, what does all this look like? And I know it's not going to be perfect, but to start thinking

about the framework and what truly makes me excited, what do I enjoy doing and how do I get more of that? And someone said to me this weekend, they said, dude, you love business so much. I said, I do. I love working on business, but I also enjoy time too. So I don't want to lose that side of it, but I don't enjoy calling a customer up with a one-star review and fixing it like I used to. I used to be a great firefighter. I used to be a good leader. I watched you.

I watched you do it. You were the best CSR ever. Can you clone yourself? Those people out there CSR ever. Can you clone yourself? Those people out there listening to me, can you clone yourself? Because Tommy couldn't. Now, was he the best CSR I've ever heard? Yeah. The only one that was as close?

Probably Alan Rohr. Is he the best firefighter? You bet he was. He had to be. But he doesn't have to be today. Let's just say, Al, this is what i told somebody a few weeks ago i said what if i could clone myself up to 70 now there will be some mistakes and they won't sound exactly like me and they won't care as much well unless you get the right performance pay and hire

the right people but probably not let's say i get a hundred doing 70% that will produce. Let me do the math real quick. So if I get a hundred at 0.7, that gives me, it's like 700 times what I could do alone. And that's what people don't understand. And they got to pay attention. And this is where I've got a scorecard,

right? And those five KPIs were scoring everybody just like they do in baseball if you look at the back of a baseball card yeah there's nothing wrong with that to let people know basketball and every other sport we play and we watch and the deal is i compare them amongst their peers i don't come up with the numbers they should be and we take the mean we take a median and actually we're looking for service calls at the mode to understand and that was one of the core tech things is they said what's your most common service ticket 39 well let's dig into that why are we only getting that 39 and i'm like going back to seventh grade math

and now we're looking at things a little bit differently and the one thing i've learned from these pe guys is that the greatest leaders in the world they're great at asking great questions to make you think deeper about the problem. Instead of giving us the solutions, they know we're the platform. They say, what were you thinking about when you made this decision? And if you don't give a great answer, you're going back to the drawing board and really coming up with a very systematic way of thinking about why you made decisions and what the expected goal is. They don't care if I spend 25% in marketing, but they say, what kind of market share do you hope to get when you do that?

What is the outcome that we can look at in, in 30 days, 60 days and 90 days. And if it doesn't trend that way and you can't prove of why you did a decision, then you're not going to make that decision. They're not going to stamp it. Oh yeah.

No question about it. At first, having a plan is great, but if you're not measuring it, so it would be like, I want to get on the road. We're in Arizona. I want to drive back to New York. Well, it's helpful that I have GPS, but that isn't everything I need. I need to know where I need to stop, where am I going to take my breaks? What do I want to see along the way? All of that, or I don't end up enjoying the journey and making it really work. And since I have a Tesla, I have to see along the way, all of that, or I don't end up enjoying the journey and making it really work. And since I have a Tesla, I have to know where to charge up, you know, and yes,

it tells me stuff, but it's just a lot of things that go along this journey. But if you have a plan, and Ellen had it really well, I still love this line. She said, plan or be planned for. And that's what your team does to you every day. Here's what they also do. If you get to the point where you have, just have all these great people and they still don't know how to own their box. Well, they have the right to knock at your door every five minutes and go, Hey, got a minute and ask you the same question every day over and over again to the day they shovel dirt over your casket. Sorry for being dramatic, but that's what it's like.

And I said no. I said no to that, as did Tommy. I'm not going to tell you over and over again where you get your shoe covers. I'm not going to tell you over and over again about where your replenishment thing is. I'm not going to tell you over stuff that I can easily cover and that you have basically signed off on. And that's how I got my life back. That's how I got to be more of a manager and owner and visionary for our own company. You got to get your time back. And that's one of the best people I would say, where do you start? And I say, if you're not going to invest in Elle's program,

can you afford a $20 calendar? And they say, what do you mean? You know, the old school black calendar you flip and it shows every time you get distracted, I want you to write down what it was. What you'll find is it's mostly operational. It's what to do when this happens and who's responsible and your day gets taken from you and stolen from you. So those decisions to hire a great CFO and bring the next person on board, that's going to make a huge difference. You're not doing that because you're, you're problem solving, you're firefighting all day. So you can't take the time to spend the time with the right people to help

grow the business. I have just as many problems as I had when I met you, except now it's, I wouldn't even consider them problems. It's breaking through barriers and there's still decisions I need to make every day, but they're not, why isn't this guy showing up?

Why is any sober? Your decisions or problems today are not, how am I going to make every day, but they're not, why isn't this guy showing up? Why isn't he sober? It's not your decisions or problems today are not, how am I going to make payroll? Yeah, no. Well, that was what we had, you know, years ago. Yeah. I actually worked with checks back in payroll. I've worked with great owners. One of the owners, Tommy echoed exactly what you said. You go out, you know, when, before you arrived, there were doors that I had to go through. I felt like I had to break these doors open and get to someplace. And what I found is, and those doors were pretty miserable, but working with you, I still have doors to go through, but the difference is these are good doors to go through compared

to the doors that I used to have to go through. I got to tell you, it's super fun. I can't, people say, did you feel like you made a mistake investing in getting an investor? And I'm like, no, I'm like, look, the writing was on the wall. Money was tightening up. I felt like we were one of the only platforms in our industry. And it's like one of the old sayings is, would you rather be a big fish in a small pond or a medium fish in a monster lake? And I feel like the growth trajectory is 10X with the right partner. And I feel like I did the right choices. And I still feel like with what I've

learned, I can take what you've taught me, some of my personal experience, and just understanding how to motivate people and use those things to do the same thing in a lot of different industries. Now, I'm not there yet. And I don't want to be there yet because I'm still having too much fun at A1. But I can take a dentist office with what you've taught me. I helped a real estate company back in New York. I've helped a commercial photographer in California. It's all the same, and I'm using what you taught me for my vehicle and my house. And you know what I thought about?

I thought about it at the house I'm building in Idaho. I'm literally printing out a map and finding out where I want stuff. And it's not like I got people walking through there every day. It's a little bit different, but figuring out where the traffic's going to be walking. And I want convenience. I want to lean house to where the vacuum is a central vacuum system and there's plugins and there's a swifter mop in every room and there's a spot for it. And everything's got a system. It's weird to think like that. And people are like, it's a little bit crazy, but I'm like, it's optimized. And it gives me the most amount of time. And even like the cleaning lady, I'm going to sit down with her for hours.

Like we sat down in a room and I'm going to say the one biggest thing I'm going to look for is I don't plan on having shoes on ever again in this house. And if I go barefoot or wear socks or wear my indoor sandals and they're not clean, then that's my test. If I go through a room and I'm preparing how I'm going to analyze her performance or his performance. I was lucky enough to have a second home back in New York when I moved out here. A nice escape for the summertime. But my house was organized there. When I would get back, it wasn't like I had a, like, nothing was working. I had to fire everything up. You know, it's strictly, again, plan ahead or expect to be planned for. So if Tommy ends up in Idaho

and he's taking his hard-earned time away from here in Phoenix, when he gets there, he wants it all to be set up and go so he can enjoy what he's earned. And that's the same thing for you is you want to get things handled and systems that operate and automate

are really the way to do it. And I'm going to have a checklist, believe it or not, that I go through once a week. And I'm just going to look at certain things like behind the toilets. And it sounds annoying, but I'm going to say, here's the checklist that I'm going to go on. And like simple things like the dog walker, I put a GPS to make sure they're getting enough, the real walk. And guess what happened? I told Bree, I'm like GPS to make sure they're getting enough. The real walk. And guess what happened? I told Bree, I'm like, I don't think Finnegan's getting real walks.

She goes, no, she walks him a mile a day. And I go, I'm telling you, he's got way too much energy. I've walked him miles a day. And then we looked at the app that tracks him. And she was walking him a tenth of a mile just in circles, like not moving. And she said he hates going. I'm like, yeah, you got to tug him a little bit because he wants to go back home until you get him around the block. But we fired her, but it's everything, the system. It's a classic trust, but verify.

So let me ask you, Al, the future of AI in the home service industry, what do you think owners can do to prepare for it? I think, for instance, if you're building a steady pipeline, and you should, of always recruiting, always hiring, you have to have applicant tracking software that does it. You can't just do it with a piece of paper and a pencil and an Excel and it works. I mean, if you have no money, you can, but applicant tracking software is the lifeblood of your company. You have to do that. You have to be using, I think, AI for marketing. Does it replace having a marketing thing like we put together, Tommy, a marketing plan, marketing budget allocation, things of that nature?

No, but there are so many things that you can do and measurement of it because otherwise it's just a, we used to call it a wag, wild they ask guests as to whether or not it's really working or not and so measuring this stuff you've got to automate all of that stuff the uh you know the texting of a call you know who's in progress and all that stuff whether even if you're a small company there's a lot of software out there there's a lot of things that you can do to make yourself be bigger in the customer's mind and automate your process. Is automation alone without any structure a good thing? I would say no, because I'm biased that way.

And I know it's got to be integrated to what you're trying to accomplish based on how you're laying out what goes on. I agree. Checks and balances. Use the tools out there. But when I spend hard time and effort building something, I know it's going to get incorporated. When I use something like AI to write an ad for a person, it takes a lot of ads out there and write something pretty good. And it's got the ability, but you still got to make it your own. I thought what you said was great about the CSRs and we have the manuals and we

can listen to our calls. Can I someday listen to your calls? Sure they can. Can they do it as well as somebody who's fully trained about how it should sound and what it should sound and the empathy and all those other things. That's still a long ways off in my opinion. It is. And some people think they got it all figured out. And, and, you know, the fact is, I still believe in outsourcing. Like I've got some people in Armenia, some people in Nicaragua that'll work fraction of the cost. They're very, very good at what they do. And it gives me the checks and balances. And I learned that from Parker and Sons. Josh came in and taught me how to set it all up. Last question here.

How can a home service business leverage other technology to streamline their operations and increase efficiency? Yeah, so I would say, you know, pick a CRM is one of the big things that I would share. CRM, you know, customer relationship. Basically, it's software. So whether it's ServiceTitan or Sarah or Housecall Pro, just to name it three, and I'm pretty agnostic.

Yes, I did use ServiceTitan at my franchise and I believe in it. I think what happens is you need to know what fits your pocketbook. What are you willing to invest in time to learn how to use their software the right way? Those are some of the things that I would say that are really important. CRM is a really big stepping stone to this. And I always finish the podcast. We know the books you like.

You've been on the podcast. You got to read The 7-Power Contractor if you haven't read it yet. Last question is we spent a lot of time. We talk about a lot of stuff, you know, a vertical track. Several people came up to me and they were telling me who their favorite speakers were. And a lot of people were like, man, when you interviewed Al Levy, when he talked about his family business and just his brothers and his dad and how it was to talk to his wife and his daughters, they're like that hit home, man. That was amazing. And I know they really enjoyed that to hear that you were human too and made all these mistakes, but we've talked a lot about a lot of things. And I really do, you know, people think just because we're friends and you help me out that everybody says every podcast you've been on, you mentioned Al

Levy. And I'm like, look, I don't know what else to tell you guys. Like he sat down and helped us figure things out. And yes, we've changed things over time, but it's still the platform, the steps to delegation, the triangle of communication, the manuals, the building technicians from scratch, the finding out the right truck, the right inventory systems, everything that you've taught still applies. And that's the reason I go back to on every podcast I've ever done. But I'll give you a few minutes. I just want everybody to know that Al is genuine. He means what he says. And if you apply his principles,

there's no business too big or too small. Going back to the fundamentals, we're doing it right now. But Al, why don't you take a few minutes to close us out here and give us a few final thoughts. One of the things that differentiates me from others has been that I've sat in your chair. And honestly, it can be very uncomfortable. And so I don't want you to suffer. I have suffered. I paid the price. I'm not, by the way, I'm not crying. When I say I

paid the price, I paid the price for my health. Tommy knows that I was 246 pounds at one time and I wasn't around for my family like I should have been and go on and on. But I was lucky. Great mentors came in my life, just like Tommy is nice enough to remember that I'm a good mentor to him and that I never forget what they did for me. So a lot of my work with others has been really to honor them. And I continue that to this day. I encourage you to get a plan in place and to act because having a good idea and not implementing it is worthless. So it has to be both. So if you've listened today and you understand where technology can help you and where it can't just cover everything you need,

and that you need systems like I do and others, that's really going to help you make progress. And then you've got to do it. And what I would say about Tommy, not because I'm on his podcast or any of the other things, is Tommy asks questions, probably the best about asking good questions. And when I covered what he had asked, he said, OK, let's do it. How many of you are asking questions, playing around with it, think it's a good idea, never gets on your calendar, never gets implemented? And that's what's keeping you a prisoner at your own company. Yep. Well, you said it the best. I mean, to hate Mondays, man, to walk in and not know what was going to happen and worry about payroll and not have the right

people and not attract the right talent, not care about culture, and to be a firefighter is the worst thing I'd want for anybody. And Al's one of the ways to help get systems. And you call it vanilla, Al. You say it starts to get so simple because the systems kind of handle the problems. But I prefer vanilla over anything else after living in both sides of it. So thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you for letting me have a chance to share with everyone today, Tommy. Great job. Hey there, thanks for tuning into the podcast today.

Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy. I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high-performing team like over here at A1 Garage Door Service.

So if you want to learn the secrets that helped me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevate and win.com forward slash podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.