The Home Service Expert Podcast - Delivering Outstanding Customer Service to Attract Better Quality Leads

Episode Date: March 24, 2023

Charlie Felker is the co-founder of Free-2-Grow, a company that provides back-office support to service-based companies, allowing the owners and operators to focus on their customers and growing their businesses. Free-2-Grow offers its customers the services of a full-time office manager at half of what it would cost to hire someone full-time and provides team support with its cross-trained staff. In this episode, we talked about entrepreneurship, customer service, leadership, management…

don't hire family. I know people do it all the time. It can work out. It can be a total disaster. And if it's a disaster, it's going to be a big problem. Hiring part-time, I hear that a lot, makes no sense to me because tell me when the phone's going to ring. Okay. So you've got a part-time somebody in the office. You don't know when the phone's going to ring. So you're ultimately getting dragged back into the business. I think you got to get to a certain size, depends on your average ticket, depends on the industry. You got to get to a certain size where you're quite comfortable. You're not going to be able to handle it and you can delegate to a full-time person or a company like ours. It's going to take a lot of time. I think there's

value in owner-operators for the first year or so, answering the phone, taking the tough phone calls, doing the outreach. I did that. I used to own my own home service business. I think there's a lot of value in that. You learn your product better, learn your customers better, and then you can train people better. I think there's a lot of value for owners doing that themselves for a period of time. 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.

Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. I'm Tommy Mello. Today is a buddy of mine, Charlie Belker, and he's an expert in entrepreneurship, home service management leadership. He's based out of St. Louis. His company that he's the partner and co-founder in is Free to Grow, and that was 2019 it was founded. Before that, he was the co-founder of RFP Testing. And then he also was at HBM, Holdings Corporate Development Associates.

He's a co-founder of Free to Grow, a company that provides back office support to service-based companies, allowing the owners and operators to focus on their customers and growing their businesses. Free to Grow offers its customers the service of a full-time office manager at half of what it costs to hire someone full-time and provides team support with its cross-trained staff. How are you doing today, brother? Tommy, love seeing you, man, as always. Yeah, it's going to be great. Why don't you just let the listeners know how things have been going since the last interview? Yeah, it's been a while. Things have

been going great. We've invested heavily in our people. I know you're a big fan. You got a big book coming up about culture. We are big on that as well. We spent the holiday season and we're going to be spending the rest of the quarter getting our entire team trained. I know you know Joe Corsaro, Service MVP. We're putting our entire team through their pretty rigorous training program, which has just been phenomenal. Introducing some standards, some best practices that we can take, kind of a train the trainers, we get our people out working and supporting small home service businesses. I know we're going to be talking a lot about technology today. We have in our designing kind of a proprietary, let's call it a free to grow software package that, you know, our team can access and our clients can access.

And just to kind of refresh your listeners, we've coined what we do as kind of customer service as a service, meaning answering phones on the inbound and outbound side, scheduling leads and estimates, living and breathing in your CRM, whether it's a service titan or field edge or field pulse, there's a variety of them. Conducting lead outreach, doing happy calls, selling service and maintenance plans for those HVAC owners out there listening. Dominating your back office so you can focus on business growth. Okay, long story short. So with that, we also, as a business, since we're virtual and we're not in your office, we get judged frequently more harshly

than your full-time CSR sitting next to you. So we're building a neat software that demonstrates the revenue that Free2Grow assisted. We're integrating it with our call system, with CRMs, basically to demonstrate daily, weekly, monthly, whatever efficiency that we bring to your team. So in addition to investments we're looking to make in AI, I'd say culture, people, and technology have been where we've been focused. You know, I need to talk to you about some technology, Charlie. I'm working with a company that lives on top of the CRM.

So it communicates with every major CRM so that you could actually get more capacity per person. And we'll talk about that offline, but definitely it's crazy. And it's much better to keep capacity. Your main goal is if you could have someone answering for a franchise and have attribution models, it's something that I need because we're in 30 markets about to be in, we're in 20 states about to be in 40. So. Yeah. So we actually work with several franchises and we've got two now that we're working with two younger franchises that say below five locations looking to expand, obviously, as the year goes. And what we bring in addition to that technology is systems and people that know that franchise, know how to answer phones and frequently ask questions, all that stuff that those franchise entrepreneurs don't want to necessarily have to worry about as they grow. So we're kind of the easy button for a franchise to go from five, 10, 50 past emerging brands. It's been a good model for us for that reason.

Yeah. I've read so many books on the franchise model. I mean, Michael Gerber talks about it in E-Myth as well, but my hardest part is a lot of businesses want to turn key business. The reason I would go for a franchise and I would never let anybody in the one of the franchise, I would have a line for franchises because I would say you need to be the boots on the ground. You need to be the relationship. You need to be get involved in the community.

That's the only reason I think a franchise would make sense because I think everything you do, you set up the call center, the marketing, the media buys, everything. I mean, why not just own it at some point? What's your thoughts on? And I'm not discounting franchises because there's some brilliant ones out there. There are. There's some industries I wouldn't touch.

And I can say this from personal experience, having supported some of these industry franchises. I think some of the franchisors are overselling to a potential franchisee, this absentee component. I think it's total BS, mostly. I think you can put a lot of time, sweat, money, and tears for the first, let's call it three years, to maybe get to that point. But to your point, there's a lot of meetings, there's a lot of door knocking, there's a lot of hiring, firing, culture building that goes into that first phase that you can't just tell me that you're going to walk into a semi-absentee business. I just would never buy that. So I think your comments are correct. And it'd have to be a super unique industry. I look at lawn care and some of the more mainstream home service businesses. I don't know why you'd want to franchise in that market.

You could create your own unique local brand that's going to be more searchable, etc., more recognizable than starting a big brand name or buying into a big name franchise in those segments you know i think mcdonald's has a good concept of owning the property and as a franchisor there's good things about franchises you can raise money but everybody's like i want a franchise i want a franchise i was like you don't even have your house in order like you're franchising what model what is your ebita what's your percentage yeah and it's funny because they want to franchise their... So I partnered with Quartec. It's a PE group and they call it Popsicle stands. You want to just go open a $4 million Popsicle stand or do you want to make a dent in the density of a market and own

market share? And they're just a big fan of attacking. And franchise fees is a big part of it. If we're entering a recession and you've got these fixed rates, it depends different franchises do it differently. It can create a lot of tension. It's not like you can adjust that. You're bought into that like a bank loan. It can be tough. You know, me and a buddy of mine were talking at dinner the other night about what's going to happen Q2, Q3 of this year with the economy. And he has some pretty interesting data points that he has access to. And one of the things he discussed is in May, this money is going to run out for all these renters. They're not paying their landlord. And apparently, debt is pretty high up, credit card debt, higher than it's ever been. And

I'm an optimist. I'm cautiously optimistic. But what do you think is going to happen here in the next year? Yeah, I worry more about national spending. I have read that more people later in their 30s, that the credit card debt is going up. Where it was 20s, now it's kind of getting up into the 30s as far as age demographic. I don't know what the near term, whether we're talking Q2 or Q3, I don't see that being directly, you know, impacting our economy. But I think there seems to be a lot of funny money in the economy. I look at some of these massive collapses, like an FTX or JP Morgan just invested heavily in an IT platform that was totally fraudulent. I worry more about some of the funny money in our economy versus asset-driven business like yours

that can create strong EBITDA. I feel like there's too much guesswork, betting, rather than investing in good, solid trades or businesses that have assets. Trades are hot, man. Trades are hot right now. We're coming off of COVID. We're essential. People are still scared of hotels and nail salons and bars and restaurants. It's pretty interesting. And just how big money, there's $4 trillion sitting on the sidelines waiting to invest. And I think anybody listening, you should really try to become a platform, meaning you're the best in class. You're just amazing at what you do. And I think anybody listening, you should really try to become a platform, meaning you're the best in class. You're just amazing at what you do.

And I think that that's so important to just separate yourself from the crowd. And that I've just realized over the last few years that no one really wants to do what I'm doing because it's not easy. And I'm never going to be content. I don't care what the numbers are. I'm out to prove.

I want to be the biggest and best in home service, period. I want to be the biggest influencer. I want to be the biggest company. And now I'm just out bettering my best every day. I'm the best I've ever been, but the worst I'll ever be because tomorrow I'm going to be better. And people ask why. And I said, it's just something inside of me.

I don't have this higher calling, except I think if you could, you should. If you should, you could. if you could, you should. If you should, you could. If you could, you should. I don't know if you know who David Goggins is. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to ask you about living with a seal. So David Goggins, I'm reading his book right now. You reminded me of him. The book's called Never Finished. And his big pet peeve, to your point of people being satisfied, is people will go run a 5K, for example, and say, OK, that's it. You know, I did my 5K. And he goes, when he looks himself and says, this is why I'm better and different than everybody else, is I'm doing that 5K. But then I'm done.

I'm saying, OK, what's next? What's my next, you know, big hurdle? I'll send you the book. What you just said, you reminded me of naked guys never finished constantly improving you know well simon sinek talks about it too it's it's literally what is this book uh the one i'm thinking of i know all those books but it's no the infinite game okay that's a great book too the infinite game says listen you don't necessarily win or lose a business The long play

What's going to be best for the company long term What's the long play Elevate the book Build a company which everybody wins It doesn't need to be a loser Play the long game People underestimate what they can achieve in 5-10 years But overestimate what they want in a year

We're all 4 hour work week We're all on this I don't believe and I'm going to ask you about this, but I don't believe in work as a business owner, this happy balance, this happy, Ooh, I'm just going to cheer myself one out for the weekend. I mean, look, we delegate properly with the right people in charge, but when you start at sweat equity, it's a lot of hard work and you can't have your cake and eat it too it takes i've never met a successful person other than bitcoin that has not put time energy and effort and dedication and consistency and put that all into their business and then they wonder

well how did you do it i'm like i show up show up every weekend, every night, every day. I'm here. You show up. That's half the battle. Yeah. Again, going back to David Goggins, I love something he pointed out. And I'm trying to do this more as what he calls mental aid stations. Okay. Where, and I'm like him and you probably are too, where people go and say, I need to go spend two weeks on the beach. And I just can't understand that.

And he goes, I got my mental aid station on my ride into work. I turned the radio off. I got 20 minutes. That was my break. I think that's a great way to look at it. Me personally, I got my mental aid station on my ride into work. I turned the radio off. I got 20 minutes. That was my break. I think that's a great way to look at it. Me personally, I'm like you. I'm going to be go, go, go and doing stuff, whether it's work or physical improvement or that crazy race I'm doing in December I told you about.

And I think you got to find those little breaks when you can. But if you're not thinking about the big overarching goal or working towards some defined outcome, that to me is the satisfaction. Yeah, it's good to hit accomplishments. I got really heavy into budgeting a couple of years ago and it changed my life. It changed my business. You know, I've always known how to make money. I've had a hard time keeping it. But this last year we did 33 million of EBITDA.

I mean, it's fun. And it's to me, I'm like, how are we going to 10X again? And it's not Grant Cardone 10X. It's literally just, my number is always 10X, 10X, 10X. The ability, the mindset to dream bigger is I think what separates a guy like me from most people because my new personal goal is 10 billion. But to think 10 billion, you have to be able to work backwards as an outcome and key result of what does that company look like? How do you get to that number and build a path to get there and believe you can do it? And I don't think a lot of people, they say, man, I'm happy with a $5

million of even, look, that's fine. That's great for you. You know, I'm not, I don't have any kids yet and I'm not married. So let me ask you, this is funny. How do you maintain the work-life balance? And what are the systems you recommend for home service business owners? You know, that's a great question. I got a great life partner. I got a great business partner.

You certainly got to take little breaks here and there. And I think if you're not taking care of your body, I see a lot of people going down that road. That's important, as I know you're a big fan of that too. Work-life balance, it's different for everybody. I've found a great sweet spot. I'm going to be really the hardest person on myself. This is me. You're probably similar, Tommy. I also don't want to go tell people the best way to come up with a work-life balance. It's got to work within what you want to achieve and your restraints and your partners throughout this life. But I'm quite happy where I am. I'm saying no to a lot more things and saying, yes, that's critical.

And I have laid out some pretty well-established priorities and go after them every day. What always annoyed me with people, especially that I work with, is they say, I don't think we could do that. And now is not the right time. And I always say, if I gave you 20 employees and a million dollars, could you figure this out? So don't say no to me. The answer is here's the resources I'm going to need to get that done. The one thing I've learned is I don't hire people that are going to train on my dime anymore. Technicians, CSRs, dispatchers, yes. But if I'm hiring for a C-suite, VP, whatever it might be, I'm getting a badass. And I think that's one of the biggest mistakes I made early on is I

couldn't afford that. But I guess I made a lot of mistakes. Hypothetically, I've got scars all over from the mistakes I've made and I don't forget them. So maybe it was a good thing that I spent 15 years making a lot of mistakes. Now I'm ready to sprint. But some people just don't know how to get started. Half the battle is just you see January, the gyms fill up, and then they stop going. But a lot of them don't even make it to the gym to start. New Year's warriors, yeah. I'm reading this book called Lifespan, Why we age and why you don't have to.

And it's a very interesting book. He talks about a lot of different things. One of the biggest things is never get full, never eat too much. And how good fasting is for your body and how good it is because it goes into fight or flight mode. And the reason he says grapes and blueberries are so good for you is because the way these are brought up, they're always in fight or flight mode and eating those nutrients.

It's an interesting book. I recommend you check it out. It's by David Sinclair. Yeah, I will. So the success of your business, you know, in outsourcing in general relies on great relationships. I'm sure you've had to fire some clients.

What do you think it would take for a home service owner to not only partner with you, but cultivate the relationship? Yeah. Our sweet spot with our customers, when we get really good at managing their customer service range of what they need, phones, CRM, booking stuff, et cetera. Probably doesn't really happen until the second month of our relationship. We onboard very slowly. We're going to stub our toe. We've got our battle wounds like you do of mistakes that we've made with our customers, et cetera. And yes, we've fired clients that have

been unruly and jerks. And certainly I understand the need to be tough with companies like us. But there's a line between tough and being a jerk. And we'll take tough all day. But any sort of personal nastiness, we won't stand for. But past this month, too, after we've stubbed our toe enough, and what we like to see, and we're talking about technology, we use Slack a lot. I bet we've got 2,000 Slack messages today just between our employees and our clients just today. We like to see the personal back and forth between a technician for an HVAC client or a plumber saying, checking in on our team and us

doing the same. That's when I know culturally that we've kind of ingrained and enmeshed with that company. But that typically takes us like two months, Tommy. Doesn't happen from the word go. There's going to be, is this the right fit? It's free to grow. And they're not next to me. Just makes sense. Okay, I got it.

They're working in my best interest. And they're taking stuff off my plate that I was handling before. And then that takes time. And then we're literally a part of the company. How many employees are you guys up to? Oh, a couple dozen. We're getting there, man. We got to keep growing.

We hire smart. We take our time hiring. We're trying to get more efficient. Talking about AI. I know it's a big buzzword these days. We're going to be implementing some smart bot, virtual agent, whatever you want to call it, to help our people onboard clients faster, we can make them more efficient, we can get through SOPs quicker. There's no doubt in my

mind that AI is not going to replace people. It's just going to be an augmentation tool. I'm convinced. I'm not worried about any sort of job replacement in the near term. And call centers, we're not a call center, but call centers are probably more ahead of the game than most industries, I'd say, with AI. Yeah, I'd love to hear more about that. I've got this 18-year-old guy. He's a genius, and he's building out a bunch of stuff with ChatG. I think we're using AWS as an Alexa. It's a different AI, but we're building out some ridiculously badass stuff.

And I'd love to hear how you're going to be using it. Yeah. So our growth partners, that's what we call basically our employees, handle several accounts within the home service industry. So where our agents get caught up is with different companies calling in. It takes them a lot of time, especially if they haven't been working in that account for a long time, to look at SOPs, look at service areas, how we want to book or dispatch a salesperson. It takes too much time. Okay. So we want to pull quickly those SOPs that

we identify with our clients and pull updates, notes, nudgings, whatever you want to call it, into our Slack. Okay. So that company is going to have a Slack channel, you know, hashtag A1, for example. And then we're going to integrate that call feature. And then there are going to be these updates throughout Slack. Okay. So then we can track that communication and then nudge our in-house CSRs to make the right decision faster. We want to reduce any sort of inefficiencies, any sort of post-call follow-up, all those kind of things get improved. Are people more confident? That's a big part of it because they can come off a call and then answer a completely different

call and you're kind of deer in the headlights. But if we can have a system that's going to flash in front of them quicker updates based on working SOPs, that's what we're going for. End of the day. So I see AI not only for leads coming through the form fills, as I think it's going to change the way we do the game on form fills. It's going to change the game we do content. It's going to change the way we do rehash. It's going to change the way we reactivate customer lists. I mean, listen, I'm jumping in headfirst on this stuff. There's a happy medium of having human beings involved. And you can't replace experience, like personal experience of somebody that can relate to

a client on the phone of something they're going through in your industry. That's hard to replicate in AI. I don't think you can. I don't know. It's going to replicate an AI. I don't think you can. I don't know. It's going to be a combination. You know, I read that HomeServe is piloting AI that is handling the calls, booking repairs, you know, handling the full suite. So I don't know.

You never say never. But I think the happy medium is going to be a combination of the two. Tommy, what company is that? HomeServe. I'll send you a great article about this. Yeah, no, I'd love that. You know, in this day and age, you know, we're doing a bunch of acquisitions and it's amazing how many people I'm hiring right now. And I don't feel like it's fair because of the technology suites we use. Just the decks that I'm able to look at on a weekly basis. I could get a magnet out and look,

but I focused on some major KPIs and it's crazy what we're able to do with technology. And my question for you is obviously I think CRMs are important. We use HubSpot and service Titan and another couple dozen technologies, but where's the line? Because we're blue collar. I mean, look,

I went to U of A for my master's program. I did some cool stuff, but I'm as blue collar as they come. So what do you say software versus just great leadership, I guess? That's a great question. I don't know. I think we're going to figure that out as we go here.

Leadership is never going to go away. Leadership, direction, culture, that human component is just, I mean, so critical. Somebody that you need a lodestar, point your people in the right direction. This is why we're going to be the best. This is what the best looks like.

You can never regulate that or technology that out of a business. No chance. I think some of the mundane, small tasks are going to be technology out. They are being technology out, which hopefully is going to make people think about more complicated issues that AI or other technologies can't handle right now. Well, you could set up AI to learn your systems. And if you could teach it,

I think it's going to learn how to dispatch. I think there's going to be a lot of automations. I mean, I have this vision that's crazy about the future of just what's going to be. You're not going to be grocery shopping. Everything's going to get

delivered into your garage. I don't know how quick it's going to happen, but it's going to happen. And what if I showed up to your garage the minute it had an issue before you even knew it had an issue i mean that's that's not too far from the future i'm on the cutting edge of these things

and what if amazon paid me instead of the client because they're making so much money on the deliveries yeah they need that door functioning correctly what if i could give them the exact cycle life of each part know exactly when to change stuff out before it goes wrong right i mean that's that's the kind of stuff that i just get obsessed with there's this book What if I could give them the exact cycle life of each part and know exactly when to change stuff out before it goes wrong? Right. I mean, that's the kind of stuff that I just get obsessed with. There's this book called Come Up for Air, and it's just brand new. And the guy's name is Nick. And what he explains is we get so lost.

You're using Slack. This other guy's using Teams. You're using 360. This guy's using Google. This guy's using Slack. This other guy's using Teams. You're using 360. This guy's using Google. This guy's using Bing. Man, if you look at, hey, I'm using Monday. Oh, I'm using whatever it might be. There's a million different project management tools.

But what he explains is just getting rid of email and having an internal system to communicate gives back a day a week to each executive. And I do think what's happening with A1 and a lot of businesses get big is what you should be doing. And we need to do a better job at A1 is these are the systems we use. Here's how we communicate. We're going to teach you how to communicate on these because Slack's a great tool. So is Microsoft Teams. So is Zoom. So is StreamYard, which we're on.

And the crazy thing is they all work, but you've got to pick a platform from the beginning and make sure that everybody's trained and you pick the good one. And so ComeUp Rare just talks about, man, where is everything? Is it in Paylocity? Is it in HubSpot? Is it in ServiceTitan? Is it in Microsoft Docs? And I think that's something that companies should really focus on if you're going to grow, is we're going to use this tool. We're going to use this for communication. We're going to go zero email. It's called zero inbox, I think is what they call it. So we're paying to get that consultant to come out and teach us how to get more efficient with the tools we're using. Yeah. And not a plug for free to grow, but I will say for the smaller

home service owners out there listening, the half million revenue, you're kind of just starting to build a business. A value for us is that technology implementation. You tell us what you want to, whether it's a Slack or whatever the CRM is, that technology implementation is a big part of our value add for sure. Because at that point, your ability to focus and use that stuff day in and day out is if you're doing it, you're probably doing something wrong or you're not focusing your time and energy in the right way at that point. Hey, I hope you're enjoying the conversation with Charlie. I just wanted to let you know that we have a special offer from Charlie's company, Free to Grow, that I want to share with you today. So stick with us till the end and I'll reveal exactly how to take advantage of it. But if you're in a rush, just go to homeserviceexpert.com

forward slash podcast forward slash Charlie-Falkner, F-E-L-K-E-R, and check out this exclusive offer that we put together just for our listeners. Okay, now let's continue the chat with my boy, Charlie. Other than call center and different things, what are some oddball things you do for customers? Happy calls are amazing.

Happy calls, big one. You know, with Joe's training, obviously selling service and maintenance plans is a big one. You know, especially if you're a smaller company, we can make companies look a lot bigger than they are by just doing that. Tell me a little bit about happy calls.

Tell me a little bit about the value of a happy call. If I'm a company going, man, I don't need to make happy calls. We get a review right after or whatever. We use a marketing pro. What is the importance of happy calls? I think it's just longevity with customers, man. Hearing that voice immediately after the job's done is, in my opinion, very valuable. Probably nothing more than that. Well, that's obviously a big part. But placing that, especially if you're trying to build a brand and a market, I don't know what the value is for a smaller, let's say, smaller HVAC in Alabama trying to build their business than having a company like ours professionally reach out to a designated list of customers after the fact. Talk about building a local brand, man.

That's doing it. So tell me an example of a happy call. So just say I'm ABC Plumbing and, hey, my name's Charlie. Hey, this is Tommy. How can I help you? What does this look like? You know, it's what Joe teaches as well. It's, you know, look, Mrs. Smith, we were happy. We appreciate the business. You know, our technician, Ron, was out in your home last Tuesday doing this and this and this. Wanted to follow up after the fact, making sure service, you know, the etiquette, all that kind of stuff was in line with your expectations. If you want to leave us a review, we welcome that. I know a lot of technicians are encouraged to do that. Most don't do that. But man,

we appreciate the business. We're here in the market. We'd love to support you. We are doing this sort of plan, maintenance plan, et cetera. That's kind of how we push our folks, Tommy. And a lot of tonality is important. Sincerity is important. Listening to the client, the back and forth engagement is important. But keeping it at that level is how we're doing it now. I mean, I think every criticism you get makes you stronger. I agree. Just because you're getting good sales and just because you're getting high conversion rates doesn't mean those customers will ever use you again. So the happy calls ensure that you're delivering the right service. Yeah. We sold 110 service agreements today so far okay so you're doing happy calls or you're doing them right no this is not on the phone okay these are

my technicians i think the best time to do it is there but i will say joe cassara teaches this uh bring them yeah power selling pros these guys teach a very good way of when the customer calls in to say you would happen to be part of the a1 protection plan we found that protection plan works better than service agreements okay and you know the techs are still allowed to call it service agreements but ultimately i love the idea of selling it over the phone and you know you get priority service you get a free service, whatever that looks like. But my texts are at such a high conversion. I think we're approaching 40% conversion rate,

which in what's in garage doors is unheard of. Yeah. Because you have more experience because you work with a lot of companies, what is a good target to shoot for? What's the difference? Why do you have a higher conversion rate for one company versus another? What are the tips on service agreements? Well, I could certainly see in your industry, that being tougher, where it's much more in line, you know, and let's just use a simple one, HVAC. And we do happy calls for several HVAC clients. And certainly, if we're not hitting north of 40%, we're doing something horribly wrong in those industries. We don't do any happy calls for garage door clients now, so I can't give you an apples to apples comparison,

but I know selling maintenance and memberships in other industries is much more generally acceptable. At this point, we got very spoiled the last few years. We had more leads than we could handle. And if you weren't making a high profit the last few years, then you probably shouldn't be in business. But now it seems to be, I've talked to a few companies actually today that said their lead volume is going down. People always ask me, Charlie, they say, would you be the top salesman in the company if you went back in the field? And I say, I don't know if I would be, but I know one thing. I'm going to have four reviews. I'm going to have one on Yelp, Google, Nextdoor, and Facebook.

I'm going to have a video testimonial. I'm going to have a yard sign. I'm going to have the HOA president's number. I'm going to have the two names of the Nextdoor neighbors, and I'm going to go knock on those doors. And I'm going to stretch that and build a business off of each and every lead. And I think that's what the difference is of a true badass. They're looking out for the company, but as an employee, I'm like, what's in it for me? And you always got to think about that. So having attribution models that they get, any lead they get, they get a self-generated lead

and they make money on that stuff. So the next level of my business is to build a team of marketers. Every employee, every one of my coworkers will be, we're going to teach them how to be a marketer. You might not be huge on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram,

LinkedIn, YouTube, but you might be along to a church. You might be on a softball league. Your wife might be a realtor and we're going to use, I've got 700 soldiers here waiting. And just like we train so hard, our technicians, dispatchers, CSRs, and we're going to use, I've got 700 soldiers here waiting. And just like we train so hard, our technicians, dispatchers, CSRs,

we don't train them how to be great marketers, go to a B&I meeting, how to recruit somebody. We've got a whole force of people that can make an extra 50 grand a year, and I'm happy to pay them. And then it makes it easier to recruit because you're like, man, I got a $50,000 bonus this year just for going out there and representing the company. But we don't train on that. A lot of companies don't think about that. Yeah. That owner mentality on the marketing side.

And as much time as we spend on how to profile personalities. And, you know, I'm doing another podcast, I think, next week with you ever heard of the five languages of appreciation in the workplace? I have not. No. week with, you ever heard of the five languages of appreciation in the workplace? I have not, no. You know the five love languages, they basically put this into the words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, tangible

gifts, and physical touch. Have you ever heard of those? Yeah. Yeah, so they wrote a book on that, and it's just interesting. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Who's your, I don't even know the name, but who's your favorite owner? What attributes do you just love? And you correct me if I'm wrong, but you probably don't want someone that's over the top, but you probably don't want an absentee owner either. That doesn't

really check in at all. Great question, Tommy. We want high standards. We want an owner that's going to commit a lot of time during onboarding. We're going to get an ironclad set of SOPs. We want an owner that's going to be very tough with us in the first couple of months to make sure we're answering phones, conducting happy calls, all those things to his or her standards. And then slowly over time, that owner gives us more and more rope and says, okay, free to grow. Here's your left limit. Here's your right limit. You guys make all the decisions in between and tell me how we're doing at the end of the day. Ultimately, that's where we just really thrive. It takes time to get there. Certainly going to be some growing pains, but that's when we found owners can go out and

doorknock, go to BNI meetings, all that stuff that it takes to get the business going. That's our happy place. Do you have any clients you do a rehash for? Rehash, you mean with a client or a past customer of theirs? What do you mean rehash? So if you don't close a bid. Yeah. Lead follow-ups. Absolutely. And how does that process look like? Because you probably don't know as much as a top salesman at a company. Are you just trying to book an appointment for...

We're trying to book an appointment or direct connect. We've got the owner on the line. If you want to speak to the salesperson, we can connect you now immediately, or they're happy to come back out. We keep that script very simple because we could get in trouble. They could start going down the scope of work and asking detailed questions that we're not going to want to touch, but we can certainly put a salesperson back in the field. We can certainly connect them while we've got them on the phone. That's where we stick. We don't want to talk details on those quotes. We can get in trouble that way. When it comes to home service business owners

and establishing systems, what can homeowners do or home service business owners to increase efficiency and productivity? Man, technology, SOPs, you know, the call scripting, the continuity, the consistency, so you see what works, what doesn't work. It's those owner operators that spend, it's like that, you know, person going to the gym after. It's those owner-operators that spend, it's like that person going to the gym after New Year's. You spend two weeks, your returns aren't going to be great. But if you're consistent on how you're picking up the phone, how you're following up with leads, how you're entering data into CRM, rehashing leads, all that kind of stuff, it sounds simple, but we see a lot of corners being cut. And we see a lot of owner-operators that want to bring somebody in-house and they'll hire a friend

or hire a family and works for a couple of weeks. And then they start cutting corners and developing sloppy habits where we're fortunately able to focus on that full-time job is delivering that consistency. So a lot of business owners, we have a hard time hiring. What would you recommend for home service business owners when it comes to hiring administrative help? What are some of the common mistakes and some of the things to look out for? Don't hire family. I know people do it all the time. It can work out. It can be a total disaster. And if it's a disaster, it's going to be a big problem. Hiring part-time, I hear that a lot. It makes no sense to me because tell me when the phone's going to ring. Okay. So you've got a part-time somebody in the office.

You don't know when the phone's going to ring. So you're ultimately getting dragged back into the business. I think you got to get to a certain size. Depends on your average ticket. Depends on the industry. You got to get to a certain size where you're quite comfortable. You're not going to be able to handle it and you can delegate to a full-time person or a company like ours. It's going to take a lot of time. I think there's value in owner operators for the first year or so, answering the phone, taking the tough phone calls, doing the outreach. I did that. I used to own my own home service business. I think there's a lot of value in that.

You learn your product better, learn your customers better, and then you can train people better. I think there's a lot of value for owners doing that themselves for a period of time. You know, we were going to have a competition a couple of years ago between me and Adam to see who could book the most phone calls. And I was actually worried. I'm like, I know too much. So I think sometimes just saying, sir, I could get a trained professional out there. What was it going to take to earn your business? But they need to understand in my

business, the garage, but they don't need to understand it too well. I don't want them trained on everything and giving answers. Our job as a CSR is to get with empathy, get the technician out to the home. Yeah. And I was like, man, I know I'll book every call, but am I going to waive the service? Because I will not lose a lead. I mean, look, if they're like, listen, I'm going to talk to my husband. I'm like, okay, when can I call you back? Yeah. I mean, literally like I will not lose a call, but my problem is less is more a lot of times on the phone. I agree. So I used to own a business. We sold stair lifts, you know, those lifts that go up and down. Okay. So I learned

early on that most people, most of the buyers in that space felt like salespeople had a very low level of understanding of their physical needs. Okay. So I, less is more, I went straight to what their physical needs were. Okay, ma'am, thank you for calling. I understand you're having mobility issues. Can you tell me more about that? Quick conversation turned it, okay, ma'am, I can be out there, you know, nine o'clock. You know, the speed to lead in that industry was critical. But there was a data point that stuck out to me.

I said, these people are calling me. They have no idea what my physical needs are. So I was like, I'm just going to spend time on that and talk to my customers about that. And the success was incredible. So little nuggets like that, paying attention to customers, certainly data supports that, technology supports it, but I certainly agree less is more. But finding out what that little link is, is critical. So on the hard to book calls, I've got a formula that I've used for a long time when I took the calls a long time ago. And I say, Hey, Charlie, listen, you know, obviously we want to earn your business today.

What are your cross streets? If you don't mind me asking. Okay. And you, you give me your cross streets. And I said, listen, I've got a technician that's going to be within five minutes of your house between four and six this evening. Why don't I have him stop by? No pressure. He's got the parts on the truck. Let him take a peek. And if you like what he's got to say and everything sounds good to you, he can go out and do the work. If not send him on his way. And that literally, Oh, you got a guy in the area. Like it works every time. Yeah. You know, customer service is so important when it comes to successful businesses. Why should a small business and medium businesses and even large business consider outsourcing

their customer service? That's the question. I mean, that's the rock we're pushing uphill. You know, I just told you, I ran a home service company. And when I sold my company, this was the reason my partner and I started Free to Grow. About a $3 million. We weren't certainly that big, but I grew it from zero to $3 million in four years. So there was good growth.

We were in multiple markets, had an attractive product, had good relationships and a great brand in the community. And the CSR role, I just was convinced that we didn't need full-time people, that there could be a better way to answer calls more efficiently and handle the CRM, handle all that stuff, customer questions. Certainly, there'd be questions that I would need to field as an owner, but there had to be a better way. So Free to Grow was born out of my frustration with that. So I think if you're a small growing company, I could quickly pitch you the value of working with a company like ours, cost, consistency, et cetera. And then even for

bigger companies, if you can't handle your current call volume outsourcing or delegating to a company like ours for overflow. So there's multiple benefits, but CSRs are going to be absent. They're going to get COVID. They're going to want to take time off, especially if you've got one CSR, you know, you're one person away from being back to, you know, Tommy entrepreneur asking for cross streets again. So we can build a team. We do build a small team around each business where there, so there's not one choke point where your business could slip. You know, there was a time about 18 months ago where we had a pretty big abandonment rate, COVID and all that crap going on. Yeah.

And I was alarmed. We hit 9% a couple of days. And that's ridiculous when we're paying what we pay for a lead. And I don't think people are paying attention. You know, I can't speak for everybody, but are you paying attention to your abandonment rate? You might say, well, we don't get that many calls on the weekend. But how can you afford not to take those calls? It's an unfair advantage to have a team that's able to take those calls and get them ready for Monday or whatever it might be.

I think that people underestimate the ability to be around nights and weekends. What does it cost to get somebody up and going? I don't need the specifics, but I just want people to get an idea on how this works. Before I answer that, we do a lot of prospect calls. Let's call it that. I could list, let's say we've had hundreds and hundreds of prospect calls over the past few years. I can list on my left hand how many prospects know their call metrics, how many calls are getting abandonment rate, missed calls, where those calls came from. It's a very small group. And we're talking companies from $200K in revenue to $15 million.

It is a little surprising, Tommy, because we certainly, when we do pricing, we're going to ask that so we can staff that and be prepared. So we're not having a 9% abandoned rate or whatever it is. But just a ballpark pricing, probably three grand a month. We have a small onboarding fee. If people listening to this podcast want to call, there's a discount through Home Service Expert, but we're trying to be more cost-effective than if you were hiring somebody, putting them on payroll, doing merit increases every year. We want to be that kind of obvious benefit where you can take that $1,000, $2,000 a month you're saving and put it in your pocket or pay it on debt or increase your marketing or pay tax more, all that kind of stuff. But long story short, I'm surprised with owners, their lack of knowledge on what and who is calling and what calls

you're getting. It surprises me every week. You know, we really pay close attention to booking rates per CSR. And what we found is there's some that are just amazingly great in their goal. If you're going to do a human IVR is to have the front line, getting it over to the best booking people. And then the administrative, I need to cancel and redo my visit, whatever that might be. I got a warranty question. I need this

and that, you know, half the calls we get, which is a crazy number are not to book an appointment. It's just administrative. Where's my door? What's this? What's this? What's this? So it's interesting to see that most people do not have their ninjas on the phone to do what they do best and have that data. Yeah, see, we're going to have more generalist, Tommy, our folks are. And going back to AI, we're hopeful that on those administrative questions, when we get a 20-second pause on the phone, we can eliminate some of that pausing, which is just killer for us. It's ultimately what we're trying to get knocked down. I love this stuff, man. It sounds like you really get the right people. And a lot of people have a hard time with that concept. Do you only hire in St. Louis?

No, we're all over. We've gotten rid of clients because we're so committed to our team. We'll let clients go who we feel like are going to disrespect our people. It's just a consistent, I hate to say it again, but we get treated more harshly than somebody sitting in an office. And again, tough, I get it. Standards, high standards, I get it. But any sort of disrespect or demeaning or bad language,

we've let several clients go for those reasons. As a leader, you can't get away with that stuff either with your own employees. So why us? We've got high standards for how clients take care of our people. Let me change topics real quick. What are your thoughts on Schedule Engine? I'm not super familiar with it, Tommy, to be honest. It's obviously a good technology. So how are you booking phone calls? So we're going into their CRM? Yep. Going into the CRM.

Yep. Service Titan pulled up with that client's account pulled up. Typically, we'll have our people who know that business, know what salespeople to book, know any sort of regions or time zones or day of the week that we've slotted for those people. A lot of that's going to be built with our onboarding and they'll just plug and play right there in the service titan. Is service titan the only CRM you work with? No, we probably work with six others, but that's probably the leader in the clubhouse. When it comes to outsourcing, how does that affect company culture?

Well, we're seeing more and more companies that are going kind of office footprint light, where maybe they just got a warehouse with a parking lot and maybe a small little office. I think that's a little bit of a trend, maybe more in HVAC and some of the other trades than your industry. So that favors us more, I think. I think culture is going to be driven a lot by who's at the top of the food chain, whether they've got one CSR there or two or no. There's certainly going to be relationships with the owner and technicians and other staff. So I don't think it has a big impact, honestly, Tommy. Obviously, that's not one size fits all. But if anything, with the clients we work well

with, our culture is a part of their culture. And if it's a fit, then that partnership reaches new heights. If it's not, then relationship probably won't work out. And do you guys do outbound? Oh, yeah. A third of what we do every day. Obviously, we talked about happy calls, following up with leads and estimates. We'll get a lot of day-to-day correspondence with technicians late to a house or a sales rep late to a house. Hey, guys, can you call and make sure the client knows we're running 20 minutes late? I mean, just a small sample size. But if they have a list of customers they want us to call on for maintenance or service, we can pre-program that. Absolutely.

Outbound's a big part of it so if someone wants to reach out to you we'll talk about a couple things if they want to talk to you directly what's the best way to find you charlie at free to grow is my email i know we'll post it on the podcast link we got a great website free-to-grow.com you know call me email me I'm extremely quick to get back. I've walked the home service owner operator. I've been in your shoes. I know the frustrations of growing a business. When do I hire CSR? Do we outsource? The same questions have crossed my mind. So I've been there and done it, as have you, Tommy, in spades. So one of the questions I always ask at the end here is I'm a big fan of books

and we all know Ultimate Sales Machine, you know, E-Myth and Dale Carnegie. Is there any books that are outside of the box that you recommend for some of the listeners? Man, Coke Land is good. Christian Leonard,

that's about the Coke Brothers. That's a great, a little bit of an older book, a couple years old, I think. That's a fascinating story. I mentioned the David Goggins book. I'm a huge fan of him. That kind of no excuses, get it done, personal improvement bit by bit every year. But Coke Land is one that I finished. That's a fascinating story of no frills, Wichita, Kansas, built it like you built a heck of a business, phenomenal P&L, no flash there. One of the books I'd recommend that you check out is a book by Alex Ramosi called 100 Million Offers. This is how it looks and it's pretty freaking amazing. I think everybody's on the fence if they should do this or not. And what I'd really recommend, Charlie, is that the people

it's just have a discovery call, but you know, here's the deal. If you commit, you got to commit. It's not something you just dangle your toes in and say, I'll just try it out. But ultimately you save money, you get a great employee. And it's such a good name because you're really free to grow. It's, it takes some of the bullshit that we don't love in business out of it and do what we do best. You know, I was talking to one of my vendors today and they're like, well, why don't you carry inventory?

Like everybody else, like HVAC and all these others? And I'm like, HVAC doesn't carry it. Ferguson carries it. Like, look, I'm not in the inventory business. And a lot of these people are not in customer care business. Get the technician out to the home. And, man, I'll tell you what, this free to grow is not only great in home service But I'm thinking like cleaning businesses If I had a cleaning lady that said

I decided This week we did your fan blades Next week we're going to do behind your toilets The next week we're going to do all your baseboards It's just these simple things And those happy calls I just think it's a game changer Especially when you've got the perpetuity type of pull service or bugs or cleaning.

Absolutely. And I think the people that are on the fence want oftentimes, and rightly so, want to control the process completely. However, when you start talking about what their process is, it's pretty thin or constantly evolving. And at least with us, we've tried a lot of processes. We've got a lot of best practices. There isn't a CRM we probably haven't dabbled in. So on day one, if you're using a service tighten or whatever, we're probably going to know that better than you are and will. Okay. Cause that's our job. So there's some basic stuff that the processes and stuff that some people want to control. I get that. But not to say you can't have an impact on how we do things, but And you guys do a darn good job at it.

And the one thing, I just spoke to a group of 70 entrepreneurs earlier today. And I said, look, I pay attention to a lot of KPIs. But the number one area I could fix every company. And I actually talked to Roy Williams about this, the wizard of ads. And he agrees. Call center. Book more phone calls. And he agrees. Call center. Book more phone calls. Follow up more.

Yeah. You know, they say, I'll talk to my husband, follow up with them. It's the difference of 60 to 90% adds a million dollars to your business. If you've got a $500 ticket average, 20 leads a day, 300 days out of the year. $940,000. And it's just amazing to me that the owners won't spend three grand, $36,000 to add a million to get the right KPIs. I don't know. It's hard to help some people that won't help themselves. Yeah. Well, we're here. We'll gladly talk to whomever. And if we can't help you,

we can give you some advice and point you down the right path. Certainly, as listeners of you, Tommy, we'll do whatever they need. So, appreciate it. Usually, I finish up on what I want to do is twofold here as a final question. Tell us about this crazy rowing trip you're going on, and then I want to just let you close this out with one last food for thought. Yeah. So, I was in the army and deployed with a couple of SEAL teams and I didn't touch Mike Cirelli. Good guy. He was on actually Joe Rogan's podcast. And I, about a month ago, we're still good friends. And he texted me out of the blue and said, Charlie, you want to go set a world record

crossing Drake's passage? And I said, well, what the heck is Drake passage? He goes, it's a 650 mile gap between antarctica and chile and i was like okay well i got to talk to my wife and i took my wife out for some margaritas and she said yes and so i'm doing this and so next december we're going to go and the scheme right now is we're going to parachute in antarctica we're going to pre-position-position the rowboat and then row up south and north from Antarctica to Chile, hopefully 12 days. It's been done once before and ultimately raised a bunch of money for veteran mental health. So being a veteran, that's an important issue.

I lost a former colleague of mine, just died by suicide about a month ago. And it's a real issue, especially for veterans transitioning from active to civilian life. There's a sense of loss of purpose and all that stuff. And so we're really going to do a big documentary and talk about those issues and going to have an enormous hardship for 12 days. That's the toughest ocean anywhere in the world and a lot of wind and a lot of high seas. And just, you know, we're doing it manually. So I know a lot of veterans listen to this and I know a lot of people like to get behind something like this. Every dollar helps. How does someone go about contributing?

I'll send out our website. It's going to be through Legacy Expeditions. I'll get you all the information, Tom, if you want to share it or whoever. But, you know, we just got the team formed. We're going to be meeting in April for our first big training exercise in Austin. And then the benefit of working with Navy SEALs is we're going to go out to their Human Performance Institute and their facilities on both coasts, one in Coronado and the one in Virginia to do more of our big training exercises. But yeah, it's going to be the real deal and it's going to be between the ears and we'll all be in great shape, but it's going to be tough.

I'm a big fan of Dave Goggins as well. He's like, you don't feel like getting up good. Your day was hard. Good. Yeah. I mean, I can't, you know, I call my buddy up the best guy I know in shape. Then I said, how often do you work out? He says four times a week, 15 to 20 minutes a day.

And I mean, this dude is chiseled and he's like, dude, why don't I just come out and hang out with you for a month? He's like, we'll meet up a couple hours a day. I'll go on a couple of trips with you. He's like, I'll teach you how to get your steps in. I'll show you a quick, easy kind of trick I use for diet, how I supplement the little things I do like saunas and the infrared and the cold treatment and the therapy. And he's like 45. I'm like, dude, he sent me a picture. I was like, yeah, I'm going to pay you to help me because there's two things I can't buy. And that's my health.

And that's my time. Yeah. And I think that some people underestimate that. The fact that you can outsource for them. How much is your time worth? How much is your time worth going through emails? How much is that worth? I figured out what I made per hour. And I'm like, I should be outsourcing everything possible for me. It's crazy what I figured out. And I still got a lot of work to do. But if you measured what your time is worth in the minuscule,

mundane tasks that you're doing on a daily basis. I always tell people the biggest thing that set me free is an executive assistant, not going through email, not wasting my time, not getting ready for meetings. I'm prepared. And it's a game changer. It is. I'll let you kind of close us out with some final thoughts, something that maybe go to action or something that we didn't talk about. Look, there's some incredible owner operators out there. And I have to tip my cap. It's harder and harder to be an entrepreneur these days. Entrepreneurs keep our economy vibrant, bring new ideas, new companies.

Most of the hiring is done by small companies. And so really, if we can help you get to the next level, if you can outsource stuff like your CSR help to a company like ours, and we can help you get to where you want to be, mission accomplished. We'll do it. Or we'll go to great lengths to try. So, yeah, look us up, Free to Grow. Charlie, Tommy, love seeing you again.

And I'm looking forward to your new book. Yeah, thanks, man. This is great. I think you're doing an amazing thing. The fact that you got home service experience, the fact that you really pick the best of the best and you do the hard work up front for businesses is changing the game. So appreciate everything you do. You're welcome. Thanks, Tommy. Now listen, if you're feeling stuck with all these administrative tasks and you can't find a way to grow your business into millions of dollars fast because you have to do it all yourself, then Free to Grow is the solution you need. They essentially take care of the entire customer interaction without the owner-operator having

to be involved. From filling the call to scheduling the estimate to booking the project and invoicing the customer, they do it all for you. And the great news is that we put together a special offer for our listeners. If you go to freetogrow.com forward slash HSE, that's freetogrow.com, free-to-grow.com forward slash HSE, you'll get 50% off on your startup fees. So if you want to get out of the field and grow your business faster, go to freetogrow.com forward slash HSC and book a call now.