The Home Service Expert Podcast - Ensuring Your Company’s Longevity and Success with the Right Leadership Mindset

Episode Date: March 10, 2023

Darius Lyvers began his career at F.H. Furr Plumbing Heating Air Conditioning & Electrical, Inc. in 2001 as a sales consultant. As a sales consultant, Darius was known for setting and breaking sales records. Due to his success in the field, Darius was promoted to the role of Sales Manager in 2010. In 2016, Darius was promoted to the position of Chief Operating Officer, where he oversees all aspects of the F.H. Furr business operations. As COO, Darius has grown the company’s revenue from $37 million in 2016 to more than $90 million in 2021. In this episode, we talked about growth, mergers and acquisitions, sales, training…

And so if there's anything that I would coach younger individuals coming into the industry, into whatever industry service that you provide, to be able to step outside of that and recognize that the customer is not you. And as much as I say that, if your technicians and your employees sell or provide service or speak about the services that you offer from the viewpoint of themselves, who are the individuals that are trained to fix it, you're going to have an uphill battle ahead of you. So one of the things I would suggest to anyone that's bringing is to train on that, to recognize that the most important thing you can do is not sell to yourself because the person in front of you is not you. And when you do, you're making the interaction and the consultation about you, which is extremely selfish, and not about the person in front of you. Your job is to provide the options, go through that, provide professional recommendations, and let that customer decide for themselves.

And I can't tell you, the better you can do that, the faster your company will grow. And it's just done wonders for us. 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. Hola, welcome back to the Home Service Expert. My name's Tommy Mello. Today, one of my favorite dudes of all time.

This guy is full of knowledge. He's energetic. He's funny. He's inspiring. He's taught me more than I could ever learn about financing, which is called promotions. And there's only three types of buyers, right, Darius? That is right. Absolutely.

There's low interest, no interest, and no payment. And everybody should be talking about promotions because you get higher job satisfaction. You got job security. You get more conversions. You make customers happier. There's a lot of reasons why. Never use the word hundreds or thousands. I just did orientation this morning and I was going through these things. So let's go ahead and let's get started here. So Darius is a expert in home service financing, sales marketing, and training. He's based out of Woodbridge, Virginia. He's a COO of FH for Plumbing, Heating, and Air Conditioning Incorporated, a Northern

Virginia-based company with two Virginia offices and one in Maryland, approximately 250 employees. Darius was known for setting and breaking sales records. Due to his success in the field, Darius was promoted to the role of sales manager in 2010, and his role, he continues setting and breaking sales records, this time from inside the office, overseeing a team of sales consultants. In 2016, Darius was promoted to the position of chief operating officer, where he oversees all aspects of FH for business operations. In his time as COO, Darius has grown the company's revenue

from $37 million in 2016 to over $90 million in 2021. What are you guys at today, if you're allowed to say? We're just peaking over about 140. Wow. And it's been a hot minute since we spoke. You were in the middle of stuff that we just got through, which was just finding a partner that could help us grow exponentially. And we were talking previously, how are things going for you? It's going great. We were very selective. We identified a partner that we felt was in alignment with a lot of our objectives and our vision and really matched up really well with our core values. And we were just blessed. We partnered up and it's been much more than just a partner from a capital perspective, just the resources

provided, the insights, and quite frankly, really delivering on all aspects. So it's been a great journey and we're looking forward to continuing it. How much of your plan would you say, and I don't know if this one year, three year outlook would be greenfield versus acquisitions. So we're going to continue to focus in on naturally our organic growth and maintain that roadmap. So if you were to look forward three to five years in terms of the growth over the next three to five years, I would say that we're going to be somewhere in that 50-50 range between organic versus M&A and we'll just be strategic and more than likely a lot of green fielding. Have you done any major acquisitions? We have. We've partnered up with private equity

back in July of last year. We've already partnered up with over seven companies since then. You know, I think this is going to be an interesting conversation for some of the, seems like everybody knows, like, how do I buy companies? How do I buy companies? And I'm like, man, I've been in the thick of it. And it's not easy because it's a different culture, different mindset. The hardest part is if the leader wants to stay on, but yet the leader as an old founder or owner usually says, I'm not going to get back into inventory.

I'm used to coming in three days a week. And now you can't necessarily take those owners and throw them into a market manager positions. And then some of the owners leave. Sometimes that's easier. Our main goal is that we don't lose the morale. We keep the staff. And then you got to change all the HR, the payroll. There's a lot of things you need to do there. So what have you found challenging? First of all, let's talk about what's been challenging for this to you that you were like, whoa, this is not as easy as I thought it was going to be. First of all, going into it thinking that it's going to be easy is the first mistake. But

so no, we prepare for obviously the worst. And the worst obviously is that the culture does not adopt that you're not in alignment with visions and goals, that the individuals have not been held accountable over time and are not part of a structure of accountability and a culture of maybe growth. And so you've got a lot of obstacles to fight there. But naturally, best case scenario, you're hoping that the leadership team and management team are in alignment. That's great. But as far as challenges, granted, it's changing potentially their CRM and the platform under which they've been working forever or for a very long time. That is a very big thing. And people don't naturally like change and setting the standard that there's going to be some change and we're going to do it strategically and we're going to communicate that and make sure that we bring everybody up to speed. We're not going to tell you it's not going to be painful. It is,

there is going to be some pain, but we can assure you that once we get through it, you know, that things will be brighter on the other side. So our greatest challenge naturally is getting the leadership in alignment with us and the management team. And then of course, if you don't have that, then you're really fighting an uphill battle in regards to, you know, retaining the talent that's there. And there's always talent. You just may not be able to realize it as quickly as you'd like. And certainly in some cases, not realize it at all because things can go sideways on you and you can lose more people than you had hoped. And you weren't able to figure out a way to have them stay on long enough to recognize that, you know, the benefits and the brighter side of things.

So it's all the people. The greatest challenge is the people. Your greatest asset on the flip side is the people and your greatest hardship is the people that you're adopting. So that's where I would say that most of our time is spent is identifying the pluses and minuses, identifying the strengths, making sure we recognize the type of culture that's there before doing any change, and make sure you understand the people that you're working with. Because at the end of the day, that is everything. And we do our best to manage that and build out trust and make sure we understand the culture before we start trying to do things that we believe will better the business. So I think the hardest thing in home service

that most people don't understand outside of home service is capacity planning. And every major forum I know of, specifically in HVAC plumbing, everyone's kind of like, hey, the leads aren't quite as great as they were last year. Seemed like it was like, I need more people. I need more people.

We're setting records. I don't necessarily think we're in a deep recession or anything. And even if it is, it's an opportunity. It's all in the way your mindset and outlook is. How do you handle capacity planning when you've got the people? And it's never perfect. Sometimes we need more leads. Sometimes we need an extra tech or two or installer, whatever it might be.

And you guys got to work with seasonality. But is it service agreements that get you through if you're just not getting the leads? Yeah. So I would say that there's a couple of things there. And actually we started preparing a long go with growing memberships, as you alluded to, you know, having a good deep bench of customers that you're loyal to and reciprocate that loyal back. That definitely helps. You know, you have a pool to pull from when you've got good times you got bad times you got lulls in the market weather pattern changes economic downturns having people you can call upon to drive inspections certainly helps and you know adopting that across all your trades or all your services is very important but uh more

or just as important is is really having a system together to where you can see what's happening and plan accordingly. One of the hardest things to do is try to get inspections for the same day or next day. You really need to have someone on the lookout looking at that iceberg in the distance and start planning accordingly a week plus out, to get reactive on inspections is a hard thing to do. And turning your entire call center into an outbound machine to try to generate immediate turn inspections has been the challenge. So it's twofold, right? One is to build up the customer base, and two is to manage that effectively, right? Capacity planning, as you alluded to, is critical. Having someone own that part of your business, recognize what's happening,

give direction, just being able to orchestrate and make sure that everyone is rowing in the same direction and in alignment to shift gears from outbound calling to maybe outbound texting to emailing to a variety of different methods that you use to reach your customer and to systematically do that by branch or by department and make sure you're regulating that at all times. I talked to Ken Haynes about, I don't know, two months ago on a podcast. And it seems like lots of the guys that are buying companies have a whole different strategy. You know, Ken Goodrich usually buys companies that are not necessarily performing great,

that he knows his model will go change everything. You've got the David Geiger methodology. There's a lot of things over the years. Ken Haynes is like, I just buy great businesses and make them report the same way. Do you have any philosophies on when you're going to buy a business? What exactly? Or is it just you look at everything specifically to who they are in the marketplace and figure out a recipe? Yeah, I mean, there's definitely ideal or what I would consider ideal opportunities. And I would

agree with Ken's viewpoint that you look for good companies and you look to make them better. I definitely steer away from distressed companies or companies that are showing high levels of turnover and certainly stagnant growth are all concerns. Yes, there's levers that we could pull. And yes, there's things that we could do to make the business better. But if the people aren't of the right mindset going into it, that uphill battle is going to be long and hard. So I do look for companies that are stable. I've been in business for a good amount of time, that have a history of establishing themselves with memberships, that have good tenure and retention of their people that are there, and hopefully a couple of good leaders that have really set the foundation but are really looking to grow to the next level.

If you can get all that in one company, I think that's a winner. Naturally, that's a lot harder to identify before going into the transaction with that company than it is afterwards. But there are some telltale signs there. And certainly working on quite a few things. What do you think is your focal point the last six months, last year, where you guys are headed? Where's your time and attention going into in the business? Wow. Developing talent would be the number one, and that's leadership talent for me. The general managers of tomorrow, the leaders of tomorrow, really helping to train and to mentor and to provide expertise and industry insights. Because you can come in with the best business acumen. You can come in with all these leadership qualities and a history and being in the military

as a leader. But at the end of the day, there's something to the industry experience and identifying things and seeing things that aren't readily available to the amateur eye that once you train that and really provide those insights, it really helps them develop faster. So I've been working on leadership development around me and surrounding myself with really strong leaders. And then really getting the right people in the right seats. I mean, that's always a challenge when you're growing. And even though someone was in the right seat yesterday, it doesn't mean they're in the right seat for tomorrow. And identifying that and having those hard conversations and making the moves that need

to be made so that you can continue to see the growth and the success. When you say a lot of these, whether they're from the military or they graduated from a leadership program, maybe they have an amateur eye, what are some of the things that they don't see in home service that, through your experience, you've learned to look for in a blue-collar service-based business? Well, I mean, obviously, being in the private sector, you know, P&L is everything, right? You've got to generate a profit to stay in business. And what I notice is a lot of individuals, even though they may have leadership experience,

don't necessarily recognize the urgency and the tact it takes to drive and motivate and inspire performance and results you know it's one thing to take a process that's already established and just follow the process and get everyone in line with the process it's a whole another thing is to take that process which is the foundation of what you need to be doing but to build on top of that right and to identify different ways to improve and to get better results. And having those hard conversations, I feel like, you know, where we identify and bring in the talent,

whether they graduated from a top Ivy League school or on top of their class or what have you, yes, they've got a lot of intangibles. They're very typically very organized, intelligent and have drive and ambition, but not catering all of that into translating that into others. That's been the challenge that I've seen is the hardest.

It's really driving revenue. Yeah, read a report. You can identify whether or not you've got weaknesses within it, but what do you do about it, right? And that's the challenge. I think driving top line is probably the greatest challenge there that I've seen. Speaking of sales world, being in a world where you're going to get pushed back at all turns, identifying and believing in systems and really inspiring that I think has been the challenge for me. So you're, if I had to say, you're a really, really fun person.

I mean, overall, I talked to you last time. One of the guys says, hey, you want to go have a beer? You're like, yeah, yeah, I'm finishing something up. I'll go have a beer. And you're fun. And you laugh a lot. But yet, at the same time, you're like, I have to have these fierce, hard conversations. I think this is important for leadership, COOs, general managers.

How do you create that balance? When's a good time to come down? When's a good time to be down? When's a good time to be, hey, listen, I'm not only, I'm a great guy, but 10% of the time I got to lay down the hammer. So I lay that off primarily upfront with the people I work with, right? I make a distinctive difference between business and pleasure. And sometimes it's okay to combine them as long as all parties know that that's what you're doing. But I have that conversation up front, right?

We're going to have a great time. I'm great to get along with. But when it comes to business, business, and when it comes to going out and having a beer and having a good time, I'm equally as passionate about that, right? And building that relationship outside the business. But because I have that conversation up front, I think most people that work with me understand that I work hard, play hard, and I rarely mix the two when one needs to take precedence. So I will have those conversations frequently and early. I will let individuals know if they're meeting expectations and very open and transparent about that. Hey, you're doing good with this. I need you to work on that. I didn't like this. I think we need to discuss this. And I think as long as you have those conversations regularly, you determine that balance between them. But absolutely,

I go to both extremes, fortunately and unfortunately. I can have a great time and party hard, but at the same time, when it comes to business, I want nothing more than to win. And I'm competitive in that way. So I want to surround myself with winners. How much damage do you think could be done? Because I know how hard it could be by replacing a role because as a leader, sometimes you say, if I make this decision, I might have to be back in the trenches, especially when you're growing at your pace. And sometimes you might, a lot of leaders say, listen, I'm going to wait to find somebody, wait for the perfect person.

I mean, when do you decide maybe whether to have a really tough conversation or cut ties or move around somebody that was good for yesterday, not good for tomorrow? How does that process look to you? And what is the damage of not doing it immediately when you realize it? Yeah. So the damage obviously can be exponential and certainly can outweigh making a decision to cut ties. So how I look at that is, is, you know, what exactly is the problem? Is it a coachable problem or is it not? Now, typically if it's not a coachable problem, i.e. a confidence

problem or a get it problem, I don't believe that you can coach get it or confidence. If it's one of those two, you know, attitude, you can you can coach around you know not being motivated as you like to be coached you know sometimes people will be more motivated by whipping versus you know prize whatever that takes you can work around but it's one of the items that you just can't fix i'm very quick to eliminate even if it will be detrimental to the business at first, I have learned that long-term, you're going to come out ahead. If you set the bar low, your team will only live up to that bar and the people around them.

When you're making decisions as a leader, hold on to somebody that's incompetent or doesn't get it. Believe me that everybody else knows that they're incompetent and they don't get it. Your decision to live that out or hold on is working against you by the day. You're better off cutting ties and asking people around you to step up and respect the decision. And I have found that if they know that the decision was made for the better good of the business, that the people will rally around that and help. And I think long-term, you're much better off doing that. Now, that's not to say that there's not some consideration in a critical role within your dispatch team or your

call center operations or in your service, but I've never met anybody that's held on long-term to a cancer or to an underperforming individual that said, you know what, that was great that I held on for an extra six months or a year. It's extremely rare that that is the outcome of the conversation. Typically, I should have done that a long time ago. And that's been my experience as well. So I'll be quick to move it on to be honest. Unless there's a pressing reason, I'm going to cut bait and try to find somebody different. Your company's branded itself absolutely the best when it comes to home services. How do you think the client perceives that as a brand? What do you

think has branded you differently? What are some of the things that you want your clients to perceive you? To be the best. We're the most professional, most talented, most innovative, most responsive. I mean, naturally, we want to live up to all of those expectations, do we? Of course, we fall short in certain areas as we all strive to get better. But as a motto and as a vision and as a company filled with individuals, whether it's our arrival, our onboarding process, whether your trucks are maintained, whether you're leaning on someone for support and you're getting it, we strive to be that, not just externally, but most importantly, internally, which then translates to that customer experience. So we work on it within our company because if you're not professional and absolutely the best internal, there's no chance that you're representing that on the outside.

So we focus on that every day with having the best onboarding processes, the best training, the best support on recruiting, marketing, talent acquisition. I mean, you name it. We're really striving to be the best in all those areas. We have a lot of work to do in all of them, but darn it, do we try and make the most of it and invest in it. I always explain to people, there's really two types of leads. There's the people that go to Google and they search A1 garage door service, or there's the people that search garage door repair Phoenix or whatever market. Branded versus non-branded leads. And some companies really build the business on non-branded leads. And that's fine if you can show up number one and deliver a good service. But when it comes to building a brand, brand recognition,

customers knowing your name, choosing you because you're really for the community, you're willing to invest in the community, you're changing lives. What are some of the best tips you'd give to another home service, founder, owner, COO, whatever it might be to build a brand within a community? I think it all starts, of course, internal, same way with your culture or your customer experience. You build an internal brand, which is a brand that represents your vision. In our case, our vision is helping people, improving lives, and achieving dreams. We believe that if you help people and improve their lives, you then will achieve yours and their dreams. By having a vision that you can relate to and convey to your people, I think that's where

it starts, right? You build that community engagement from inside your business. Then that goes outward, right? If you're there to help people improve lives, how can you do that unless you help everybody and help, you know, strive to improve everyone's lives, whether that's your coworkers or your customers. So we build that brand internally, and then we actually bring in and allocate because what you focus on gets better. We bring in a community strategist. We have a community strategist that works full time along with the team, specifically on engaging with the employees to do charitable events, food banks and fun runs with schools, sponsoring athletics within local schools in the area, partnering up with Charity View, whether it's for wounded warriors or what have you. We just partner up with a lot of them that

we believe in. And then we surround that with our efforts and our resources. I think that as you grow, you realize how important it is to be involved in the schools, the football moms, even the micro bloggers and mommies and mommy bloggers. But I think that that's kind of the second tier company, because there's so many people that are like, man, I can't even recruit a guy that'll show up on time and they don't know their KPIs or their CRMs not set up correctly. But I think that that's the secret sauce to getting to a 100 million is when you start to really develop your internal, but you got to care.

And I've seen a lot of founders that hate coming into work because their employees are inept. And we say, if you don't do it right, I'll do it myself. And that will never get a company to 100 million. What I tell these companies is look in the mirror. You wonder why you don't sit and talk to people. You don't have any empathy when they're having a bad day. You say, what the hell's wrong with you? That conversion rate sucks today. Instead of saying what's going on at home, how are the kids? Is everything okay? And I don't

know if that's trainable or not, but teaching leaders to care and actually, I don't think there's a tool or trick or any magic, but what do you do to get people? Is it just your hiring methodology that gets those people and just kind of teaches them? You obviously care about people. Now I'm going to show you how to do home service. What's the best thing that's worked for you? Yeah, so core values, huge, not just to speak them, but to incorporate them into your onboarding and your hiring processes, right? We go over our core values with every applicant,

making sure they're in alignment. And if they're not, we encourage them not to come on board. Everybody goes through a personality assessment. And that is for two reasons. One, have fun and have engagement with each other. But more importantly, to learn how to communicate with one another and how to extend respect and understand that there are people who do receive information differently. And depending on your personality, something might be funny or something may be offensive.

And it's the same thing said to do to different people. Understanding your audience and being respectful is a non-negotiable at FHBIR. You will respect others. And when we identify that you're not, you know, one of our core values is further together and we make it funny. We put two R's in that, further together, which is just basically teamwork and working collectively and collaboratively. So when you're not expressing that or being disrespectful or being offensive, you're called

out on it. You know, you will live to the core values of this company, one of them being that you're going to be respectful through group engagement. So we're very big on that and have identified over time that if you don't have that relationship building and the training to do that within your business, you're missing a very important link. Not everyone knows truly how to be respectful and to say things in a way that will yield better results because your recipient will receive the information in a much more respectful manner, right?

So we train that actually at FH. We run everybody through group classes with personalities and recognizing that not everybody is the same. And if we can work collectively together here as a family, then we will work better as a family with our customers and with the community. What exactly do you guys do? What type of tests? Is it just the basic disc? It's similar. We do color code, actually. So it's a lot easier to understand. We not only do it, but I conduct the majority of those color code classes. It's my opportunity to let them know what makes me tick and what I find funny and what my weaknesses are,

which makes me vulnerable. But I think that's very important as a leader. I let them know up front that one of my greatest weaknesses, well, there's several, but is my attention span. My listening skills are weak. I have very poor follow-through. I have to work very hard to follow through on all my commitments because I'll commit to everything and not be able to actually follow through on everything because I want to appease everybody. That is a flaw for me that I have to deal with. So I'm vulnerable with that. And as a leader, I think it's important for the people that work with me and for me that they understand that I'm not perfect and that I'm working on my weaknesses and I'm okay telling you that I have problems. And I think that by doing that,

it really helps others to open up with something similar and create an environment for vulnerability. And I think that's very important to get everyone working collectively. I think me and you are pretty close in personalities. I haven't taken the color code in a long time, but I would be willing to bet if you put in a quadrant a quadrant we're in the same quadrant we're very close i would say so i'm a high yellow with a backup red you may be a red first yellow second that may be the only difference uh but explain that explain that i think this is interesting and i think the audience would love to hear just go into those two colors and basically

what how you're yeah so there's only four colors which makes it real easy to follow and most people are primary one color it's very rare that you're you know equally all four there's usually a primary and the secondary will basically define most of your motivations but you know you have yellow which is motivated by fun which just means the underlying motivation behind what i do on a daily basis is to have fun. That doesn't mean I'm not willing to work hard. It just means that I naturally gravitate to making fun in light of things that maybe aren't so fun. So motivated by fun with yellow. Red is motivated by power. In color code, it's not just power as a positive or negative, but power being moving

from A to B with the least amount of resistance and most effectiveness possible. In the process of trying to achieve A to B, you may offend somebody or leave somebody behind or make a decision that may not be okay for everybody. But as a red motivated by power, you're making that decision to do that. And it's not intentional that you're trying to disrespect anybody or make anyone feel bad. It's that you have a goal and a motivation and you're driven by it naturally. You're born with it. So that's motivated by, you know, red. And then you've got your white, which is motivated by peace, which are the people that cannot in any way engage in any hostility or any conflict. And putting them in a position of

that makes them very uncomfortable, but they're very, very insightful, very neutral and unbiased in their opinions. And quite frankly, the most relied upon individuals to give you clear, concise, you know, read or information without any bias. And then you've got the last color would be blue, which is motivated by intimacy, because the motor by intimacy and close deep seated relationships can be the most offended, take things very personal, can really close down or when under pressure and get flustered. So there's different ways that you engage with each of those four groups. And if you effectively communicate the different ways, it's amazing what kind of results you can get. And I've learned that the hard way by being very offensive to whites. Whites take my

approach very forthcoming and loud and direct, very offensive, and so do blues. And so when I'm engaging, I typically will tone that down, knowing that I'm dealing with a blue, into a much more relatable way, a lot less confrontational and more relationship-wise. Whereas with the red, I can just go to him and say, dude, look at that, call that person in, review this, and let me know what the outcome is. And I can walk out and the red will say, yes, sir, and move towards it immediately. Whereas if you do that with a blue, they may close the door, start crying a little bit, and wonder why you've been so offensive and do what you like them, right? So very important that I think that we understand the differences of people and that we have

to understand that everyone is their own person and you've got to be respectful at all turns. So you're familiar with DISC. It's probably the most widely known. As far as DISC versus color, the color code, what would you say you guys chose the color code, and what's the subtle differences? Because we teach DISC is very easy to train, and it teaches you how to deal. These always are usually engineers. They've done their research.

They wouldn't want to make the decision based on research. I D get to the point. I's talk about the family. S's are 67%. We really focused in on that. What's the difference between the two? The main difference is, is this focuses more on behavior and why people do what they do. And color code focuses on the motivation that leads to the behavior.

So I like that. It goes one step behind. The actions of people is not as concerning to me as why they're taking those actions, right? So once you understand how red is motivated by power and can be this and can come across that way and it's not personal, it just opens up a whole new level of thinking. So it's easier to understand when you talk about the colors. Everyone just knows what the colors are. We publish our colors.

You know, people use, even on their badges around the building, they'll put color stickers on there. So it's really more fun and engaging. It's easier to remember, right? Yeah, just still four letters versus color code for colors.

The colors are a lot easier to relate to. You know, when someone says, I'm a red, everybody knows what a red is because we train the best weaknesses and how to communicate with it. So I just think personally, from a training perspective, it's easier to not only roll it out, but if you go back six months later and you ask

someone what DISC and what the differences are, the odds of them knowing that versus the four colors, because when you relate to a color versus a letter, I think it's more memorable. I think you've got a great point. It's weird because I know 10 companies and all of them have found something they like. And it's really, I guess, the third decision what they want to choose. But just having the five love languages, right? There's some people go after the five languages of the workplace. And it's interesting. and they all work.

And people do change over time because they get more comfortable in their surroundings and the people. I'd love to see you put on one of those courses. I'd do it here. I've done it for a lot of companies. You just let me know. You get a group together. We'll give them the test. I'll come out there and throw one down at your office, and you'll see how it goes.

It's a lot of fun One problem that Home service business owners really have is Their main focus all the time is Sales And me and Tom Howard, Tom Howard specifically Came into town and gave a clinic And I've always told people We get so angry

At our sales guys if they get a zero But that call That CSR that's a 60 that's answering 20 calls lost eight and i think it's so underestimated when your conversion rate conversion rate and average ticket are important but 90 of the time i find the call center is underperforming and owners don't really realize that they go you, you know, the call center is fine. They make 16 bucks an hour. I got to work with my guys. If you got five people at 60% to get 20 calls a day,

I mean, you're losing 40 opportunities a day, but yet you're mad at the one guy that didn't get the conversion rate. I think there's other things we need to be looking at. A lot of people, the easy thing, Darius, is I need more leads. I need more leads. I need more leads. And then I walk in and look at their KPIs. I was like, wait a minute.

Your conversion rate's not good. Your booking rate's not good. Your average ticket's not good. Leads is the easy thing to want. That's like, I don't want to work. I don't want to work within the business. And I told my marketing, my VP of marketing, I said, I don't want to get more leads for the markets that aren't doing great. He said, what do you mean? We need to get capacity. I said, no, those guys don't need to come back and retrain. We need leadership. Let's go deeper in the markets we're in with great meetings that they lift each other up on each other's shoulders. Let's get another five technicians in those markets and really go deeper to take market share because we've got a great thing going instead of trying to build something out of nothing or not hitting on all the KPIs. What's your thoughts on that? No, I agree wholeheartedly.

I mean, yeah, naturally, it's easy to measure the outcome or the last step, which is actually converting the sale. And it's easy to point a finger and say, hey, your guy just went 0 for 3 and he's terrible. Whereas on the flip side of that, which is harder to measure, you can measure abandoned rate and booking rate and length of call and all of these things. And there's always variables that impact that, right? Was it really a bookable call? Was this, was it that? So yeah, it's more money, right?

And a lot of people don't have the sophisticated systems to measure that effectively. And if you did, sometimes there's a cost related to that, right? So I agree. Call center is probably the number one arena in which every company is bleeding or losing out on opportunity and definitely efficiency. So we do certain things like obviously monitoring the CRM, time logs, abandoned calls. We look at all those things. But even with that, I can tell you right now, we're not nearly where we need to be. And as you grow, that problem just expands, right? And whether your call

center is localized or virtual in remote locations, it adds a whole other level of complexity to the situation. So I agree that that's an area that we often miss at all levels of business. And the larger the business, probably the higher percentage of losses that you're facing, not just from a revenue side, but a dollar side, but actual, your ability to manage it decreases with volume. So we expend a lot of resources to that. But even then, I don't even think we're even 80% of where we need to be. I would say that we're probably bleeding out 30, 35%, if I were to be being honest with myself, as far as where we are versus where we could be. You know, we've really worked really hard as a company to build scorecards and really focus on three to five KPIs per department.

And a scorecard is when I was in school, I usually had five or six classes. I brought home my report card and attendance. And there were some things that they looked at. You know, it was a great way to say, you know, maybe this guy needs help in social studies and his attendance or tardiness, whatever it is. What are some metrics that home service business owners and their team should include in scorecards? And I know it's different departments, but let's just talk about technicians. You were the number one guy, 120 months in a row. That's pretty incredible on the sales side. So I really want to focus in on that. Yeah. So, I mean, obviously there's a front line metrics that you look at. And then of course,

you've got your, you know, behind the scenes or your backend kind of metrics that you look at, but when you sum it up and you're looking at a P&L, you know, what, what, what are you really looking for in what areas? And you've got to surround your metrics around those areas, right? You know, your material, your equipment, your direct labor, of course, is huge. Your indirect is another big one. So we surround our metrics around that. I mean, naturally in sales, you've got to be looking at the basics. You know, your average ticket conversion, all of those.

But really when you sum it up is what is your payroll to revenue by tech, right? You're paying out X amount. What is that technician bringing in? And making sure that you're looking at that on a regular basis by technician. I mean, that to me is a big one. That tells you the story of where they're lying in with the production versus what you're- So you look at it as a percentage. As a percentage, yeah.

I mean, if you're looking at an individual fully burdened with his training pay, if they're an hourly, if you're on spiffs, if you get commissions, the only thing I would take out are the things that they don't complete, like turnover spiffs or what have you. But all the completed work that they perform, all of that income pushed against their revenue by vehicle. So you can see it real clearly because what you'll find is that you've got technicians that are skewing your average down and ones that are really not making you any money. I mean, you have a technician that's running at 40% income to revenue. You're not making any money on that guy. I don't care how well you're running your business. So there's things like that that we look at. And more importantly with KPIs is if you're not doing

morning huddles, got to do them and looking at your capacity by day, looking at your revenue productions by day, by department. If you're not doing weekly meetings with the technicians and bringing them in, go over the good, the bad, the ugly, and to coach them up and inspire them and go over numbers and have fun with it, I think you're missing out on that if you're not setting up weekly reports. So I think it's twofold, right? One is, are you running certain numbers? But more importantly, even if you are, if you're not doing anything with them, it's worthless. So to me, I'd rather see you do a lot less than what you're looking at. And a lot more was repetitively reinforcing whatever it is that you are looking at, like making sure that everyone knows that these are the important

numbers in your business. Because too many numbers, you know, death by numbers, certainly, if you're trying to look after 20 KPIs, you're really not focusing in on probably hardly any of them. Because you know, you're gonna go down rabbit trails every time you turn left and right. So I'm a big fan of choosing just a handful by department and by division, and then really honing in on that and making that part of the culture of that department. So Luke and Dan, I know you're listening to this. We are definitely going to take a deeper dive into payroll by revenue, by tech and the vehicle. And I think we should come up with a threshold to say, this guy needs to come back to Phoenix. Obviously, I don't love the word performance improvement plan, but some type of

success plan. And I think what I'd like to do is change our PIP into a success plan. Sounds a little bit less condemning to the person. One of the things, I got something I wanted to ask you. So we just recently, this happened last Thursday at our last, we have two meetings per day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, one long Thursday meeting that they come in. And then a Friday, the two 15 minute meetings virtually. We just added pre-financing onto the scorecard. So we took something away. Usually it's no more than three to five things. And it's amazing. The three things we say is that we start the work. It's different in garage doors than it is because they got to have their garage door working

because we can't get a new unit out there the same day. We got to order sometimes at six weeks out. So three things in garage doors. Did you start the work? Was the customer excited? Because then we can apply some of that towards the job. Second thing that we look at is, well, did the customer get excited? I mean, did you really have them? Did you ask questions? Did you give them the pamphlet? Did you get them like, this is like your domain. And we're at 22% of revenue through the promotions. My question is to you, and we say a line of, did you want to use our money or your money today? And we present in options, like you say. I look at a company and I happen to have KPIs and stats on about a couple, probably two dozen companies. And most of HVAC is over between 60 and 70%. Now we're having around this low 20s.

Obviously, the price have gone up dramatically for garage doors. So I think there's an imaginary line where people would prefer to use financing. But are you even allowed to do a turnover to a comfort advisor? Are you allowed to do it if the customer has not gone through that process yet? I mean, yeah, we leave that to the, obviously the consultant when he goes out and actually if it's a turnover, it's typically a bigger ticket item, you know, replacement HVAC or something of that nature. But yeah, I mean, do we want them to sell the turnover on a low payment? Sure, that helps. But at the end of the

day, our consultants are trained to incorporate promotions through their presentation. And how important do you think to have that tool in your tool chest? How important is it to be able to use the promotions and financing? Oh, it's critical. It's mission critical. And naturally, the larger the ticket, the more critical it becomes, especially if you're in a service industry that the customer didn't plan for that, which is most of us. They didn't plan for those large tickets in most cases.

When you're not planning for something and it's coming out of left field, if you want to shorten that sales cycle or have a good conversion at all, having the ability to provide the customer and the ability to pay, in my opinion, is critical. I mean, when I was back in the day when I was selling HVAC, and I say back in the day because I'm kind of feeling old right now because I've been in the field for seven, eight years, but it wasn't until my second or third year in my career in outside sales that I started adopting financing. And the difference was night and day.

I doubled my income the first year that I adopted it financing. And the difference was night and day. I doubled my income the first year that I adopted it effectively, like really went in and said, Darius, I'm going to offer these promotions on every job and I'm going to stop prejudging and I'm going to stop saying that the customer doesn't need it or want it. I'm just going to offer it on every call. And when I made that commitment that year, I doubled my income. That's why I'm so passionate about it. Had I not done it, I probably would have. That's why I'm so passionate about it. Had I not done it, I probably would have had modest growth at best. And I certainly would have been as successful as I was when I was out there without having a payment plan. I mean, I relate back and

I say, hey, you give me two sales guys or two technicians, whatever. And they both run the same 500 calls this year. One can only collect cash or credit card, and the other can collect cash credit card and no interest, low interest, low payment options. And I guarantee you, even if the individual that is more talented, I will still beat that individual just because I can give my customer more options. And options leads to success. We don't realize how important tools are until the tools are taken away. And those that are successful with it will tell you, you take that tool away from me

and I'll be building a house with a manual hammer is what you're asking me to do, right? This is a power tool in your bag of tools. And when you have that power tool and you've used it and you realize how more effective you are with it, talk to anybody that does 20, 30, 40% of their income comes from payment or promotional plans and tell them, if I took away that tool from you tomorrow, would you be as successful? And I really can't say unless they're being deceiving how they would answer that any other way, but there's no way that I could do what I do without it. So that just tells you how important it is, but you have to recognize that tool,

use that tool and then realize how important that tool is. And you pull back. Financing is the only time you're allowed to assume anything for your client. Always assume, never ask if somebody wants to, you know, use financing or payments,

just assume it. They'll always tell you when they don't need it. So it doesn't matter. I always assume this is the only time it's okay to assume. Never use the word hundreds or thousands. So if it's 1,086 and 26 cents, 1086. That's it.

One digit, two digits, never more. That's it. If you get to five digits, like it's 10,300, you just say 10,300. Boom. If it's 10,34 10 300 you just say 10 3 boom there's 10 346 you still say 10 3 nobody cares about the 46 this is gold brother listen l ev has studied hundreds and hundreds of companies and he was my mentor he's the one

that taught me and the the gang here they won everything he's a great that taught me and the gang here at A1 everything. He's a great mentor. Taught me a lot. He says the ratio we should always be shooting for is two people out in the field earning money to one helping them. Now, the COO, all my trainers, all my recruiters, the CSRs, the dispatchers, the MAT team. Do you believe there's a ratio or do you even monitor a ratio to say there's no way you can be one to one, one person supporting the guy in the field? I don't know unless we've got a huge infrastructure that's made to grow. So we're obviously not a perfect two to one. We're like one to one point six right now, which we want to get that up. But what are your thoughts? No, I think there's definitely, and you got to take that even further, right? Because the more technical or the more support that a certain department or

trade needs, you know, you may be at 1.5 to one out there, but on some of the other trades that are less technical that require, you know, less support, you might be able to get a 2.5 to three to one, right? So I wouldn't hold that standard across the whole company because you can be heavily overhead burdened on certain divisions if you try to do that. But you just got to be realistic. There's two things I look at it, which is manager to field rep ratio, and then office to field ratio as a whole, right? So first, you got to break that down into manager to field ratio. Then you've got your CSR to field tech ratio, your dispatch to field service ratio, and then some of the backend warehousing and so forth. So, but all in all, I agree with

it. If 65% of your employees are in the field generating revenue and completing work versus, you know, one third supporting that, that's a pretty healthy ratio, right? You go much more on the field to office ratio and you're going to have quality assurance problems, right? Where you're not providing the support and you're going to have a lot of turnover because people feel like more of a number than anything else. So there's definitely some pros and cons there. But if you can get to a two to one and two thirds of your business are in the field generating revenue and completing revenue versus support, I think that's a very good starting point.

Naturally, if you can stretch that to 2.5. Kudos without losing quality assurance. That just means you have really good refined processes. And I think that's where you start to focus in on is, do you have good processes to where you're not repeating or doing things multiple times or multiple people are doing the same thing? Then you'll find yourself falling back on the 1.5 to 1, or worst case, 1 to 1 1 like you're describing, which means you're probably not profitable at 1 to 1 in most businesses. I just started thinking about this. We're actually looking at Parker and Sons. These guys have a great call compliance.

They run out of the Philippines. And these people are really, really smart, by the way, inilippines and the virtual assistants all over the world i'm almost tempted to change my ratio to anybody that's a really really reasonable rate it's all 1099 stuff right that you this k1 you're not paying fika medicare any of that stuff so i'm almost tempted to tell my team that for every two vas it equals one person for our ratios because it literally it's still saving money for two over there and all these people need is really really easy steps easy steps they do a fantastic job a lot of them have master's degrees they speak english very good yeah so what is your take on um you know scared is my first reaction right i have a hard enough time managing you know here on the

mainland managing processes getting people to do what i want them to do and i think the further reaction, right? I have a hard enough time managing, you know, here on the mainland, managing processes, getting people to do what I want them to do. And I think the further you get away from me, the less ability that we have and the harder it becomes. So naturally, my first inclination is scared. But you know, you reverse that and you ask yourself, because when we went into COVID, and our call center went remote for obvious reasons. And then we started hiring West Coast, kind of like fill in the later hours. And I realized something in the Midwest and in down South, we were getting better talent for the same amount of money we were paying. And so even though maybe some of the arenas of control and ability to manage, we lost some of that being in-person versus remote because we were hiring

a higher caliber of individual in terms of talent. They were coming from areas that we were paying hourly, stretched a lot further. In our area, in the DMV, a certain hourly wage fetches you the bottom 20% of the talent pool, whereas maybe that same amount of money fetches the top 50% in a different area, a rural area in the Midwest, right? So I can see the benefit there. I haven't pulled it all together to say I'm going to venture into, you know, I'm going in that route, at least with some of our operations. But no, I see the benefit. I think you've done correctly. And you've got the right people. I mean, smart people, you surround yourself with talent, anything can work, right? I've learned that.

So you need to do less because talented people do things more effectively and, you know, just are better. So, hey, if you can find a good talent pool, I don't care where it is in the world, and you've got good processes in place to oversee and structurally to manage that, I think it can work out great. I think it works out better in many instances because the work ethics change. I think we're getting, as a country, the work week, we wish it was smaller.

We call it work-life balance. But even the schooling in Asia, they doubled the amount of time in a day, but they figured out a way to help people focus. And they just, when you're brought into the world or the organization, knowing this is what's expected, I'm not asking for people to work 16 hours a day. I just said, you break down the steps to where they're so simple. It's Henry Ford's methodology is this is your one thing you're going to become an expert at. And this is what you focus on.

Listening to calls, grading them and looking for these certain things when the CSR books the call. What are your thoughts on chat GPT and AI? Because I think it's going to be a huge disruptor in the next five years. We've adopted some of that automation in our business already, especially when it comes to capacity and dispatching, right? We brought in a company that helps integrate some of those things for us. And we've noticed and adopted some of those measures. And we think it's great. Naturally, it's not where it needs to be or where I'd like it to be. Let me rephrase. But it's heading in that direction and we've seen the benefits. So big advocate for it. Right. Use properly. I think you've got to use the tools that are available to you. Right.

And in many cases, it's more effective and certainly takes less time and can be more efficient. I'm going to ask one more question before we wrap up. Then I got a couple closing questions, but I realized people are always, they ask me, how do you find such great talent? And I said, we're everywhere recruiting all the time and we're always training our employees on how to recruit and they get $1,500 per recruit. But the onboarding is another thing that's super important because somebody chose, most of our technicians are males. So this individual of it is a male, chose. He said, I'm going to take a chance on this company. I think this is a career. The first two weeks are

so important. Bring that significant other out. Meet the kids. Build a relationship from day one. Let them know what it looks like when they come into the company. Like a lot of people, they just say, here's your manual. Learn this stuff. Ride along with this guy.

There's no like, congratulations. This is your career. Your life matters. And just showing people their individualism. And this goes into one-on-ones versus group therapy, which I'm a big fan of doubling down on one-on-ones.

And this is, like you said, with the color code. What do you think works with you guys well that other home service companies might be able to take the cart out of your playbook to not only recruit, but onboard? Well, we maintain that. One of the compliments that we get, and this is an in-person we maintain that one of the compliments that we get and this is an in-person compliment but one of the compliments that i hear day in and day out is when anyone visits our building or is in our lobby that they get greeted and they get asked if you need anything or need any help multiple multiple times right and a lot of people have come after that and said i can't

believe it daria so when i sat in your lobby over five people came across and asked me if I needed any help. That just told me what kind of culture that we're building. So we have and we'll continue to build that through our onboarding, which we have. The onboarding process, which is multiple touches with the individual, which is speaking to them, which is following up in the process. And we've created processes for all of that. So things don't just fall to the wayside. And then first day, making sure that we do a good meet and greet, that we walk them through and give them a tour of the building or the office and have a process through that, a journey that we give everybody that comes through. So we've identified that when we don't do a good onboarding,

that we have less retention because we've got to live up to everything that we're promising. And that first day, those first weeks are critical in establishing that relationship and that trust. So we've worked hard to do that. And I think, like I said, with everything, we have room to grow,

but we certainly look at it as a very important function or a part of our business. You know, I've asked you a few times to come on to our Thursday morning calls where I've interviewed you for just five, 10 minutes. And one of the things that stood out to me, Darius, is you said, every time that you went

in a home and walked out without superior outcomes, you pulled, got in your truck, you looked in the mirror, you might've pulled around the corner and you owned it. You took personal responsibility. You said, I could have said this differently. There's something I could have done differently. You owned, not only that you were number one for 120 months, but you said, I could have done better. You were always trying to grow 1% on each and every call. And I think that's so important for technicians to internalize, is that you're going to get credit when you do amazing. And really, owners need to hear this and managers.

You can't just accept the trophies when things don't go well, when you don't have the best outcome. Maybe it was, of course, what do we say? Well, COVID. Well, Biden. Well, it's cold outside. Well, it's tax season. Oh, well, the dispatcher hates me.

Oh, well, you know, how come I'm not getting the good job? What these excuses, these victimhood, I call it. It's like, you just want lay down customers and grandmas all day long. Like, what do you tell to a technician that's listening? And this isn't meant to be a lecture. This is meant to be to help them to be able to accept the fact that they could be better and better their best every day. Yeah. to be able to accept the fact that they could be better and better their best every day. Yeah, I mean, that was one of the hardest lessons that I had to, you know, come to Jesus' moment, basically,

where, you know, I found myself falling victim to the same excuses that you'd sit in. If you sit in a room with individuals and, how did you do last week? And, you know, there's always somebody that didn't do well. You'll notice that immediately they're saying, you know, it was all warranty work. They're all one-legged. I didn't even meet the homeowner. I had this. You know, I've got this happened.

It was never, like, productive because every time you say the reasons are conditions that were out of your control, all you're basically saying is that there was no room for improvement. And I took a vow after I went to a seminar once, and this is back before YouTube, and basically had to go in person. And someone had spoken up on stage, and I was like, that's me. I'm that guy that's making those same excuses. And they said something that resonated. To that 1% better, I made a vow that day that every time I walk out of a call and I don't make the sale or I get a smackdown or I didn't make it happen, I'm going to look at it in the opposite way. I'm going to say to myself, is there anybody in the world, globally, you know, billions of people, is there somebody that could have gone into this call and

yielded a different outcome than what I just witnessed or experienced? And if you're answering truthfully, there's always somebody that could have done something differently to get a different result on every single call that you go on. So which leads to the concept that there is room for improvement. I am not perfect. I have things that I can work on. So then it leads you to the next question, which is, what could I have done 1% better to have increased my odds 1%? Not that I would have walked out with a sale, but could I have done something to be 1% better?

Could I have given better eye contact to the spouse? Could I have asked a different way? Should I have worn my booties when I went outside and came back in and I decided not to put my booties back on? Should I have done that? Should I have explained things a little bit better? Should I have held off on delivering price another 30 seconds? Whatever. There's always a moment in every engagement where you realize that you didn't do everything exactly like you should where you got a reaction by the customer that wasn't fully engaged where they stepped back a little bit asked a different question you're like oh man i just slipped up i said that wrong or i shouldn't have done that every engagement you have in communications you

could have done something differently or nothing better so having said that you know if i'm sitting in a room with people making excuses you know i, I'm a very, very, very straightforward guy. So I do ask the question, so everything you did was perfect, right? And if someone gives you the response that, yeah, I think it was, then what you're dealing with is a person that's not coachable, right? And maybe you've got to backtrack and you've got to get through this individual and become vulnerable yourself to say that I'm really good at certain things, but I'm not great at anything and break down that wall of arrogance or ego or what have you before you can get any further.

But as soon as they do say, no, somebody could have done something differently or I could have improved. Well, what was that? So you're really trying to get them to recognize that if you do something 1% better every day or even a fraction of that, at the end of a year, you might be 11 to 12% better, which means your income will go up 11 to 12% on average

if you're 11 to 12% better. So I start talking in those terms. What if you could make 10% more this year? Would that be good? Yes. What would that equate to? I make 70 now, that'd be 77,000. Great.

Okay. So if you could get 10% better over the course of a year, which is just a fraction per day, and you can look at it that way, and it got you there by incrementally getting better, is that something you'd be interested in? And if you get them to open up about that, because everybody wants more, it may be more money, it may be to send their kid to private school, whatever it is, it's always breaking you down in the smallest increments.

And when I started breaking things down to getting, what could have been to be at 1% better or not? What could I do to have walked out with a sale? That mountain may be too big to climb. It's too cloudy. So what I did was, is what is one thing that I could have done differently, right? And if you can get someone to open up about doing one thing differently,

now you're on the journey to growth and being able to get through it and train that person or teach that person or mentor them. So I think that that's where it's at, right? Break it down into such a small piece. Could you approach the house differently? Where did you park your car? In the driveway. Well, I can tell you, you can gain 1% right now by parking in the street every single time, because people, how did you walk up to the house? If you cross the yard, I can tell you, that's going to give you your 1% right there. So everything, when you open the door, did you step back? What did you do, right?

So there's so many different small items. Start with the small stuff, the tangible stuff, and then move up to, did you put your clipboard or your tool bag when you went in the kitchen? Where did you put it? Oh, I put it on the table. Well, that's your 1% right there. So someone can think, oh, you're going to scratch my table and how disrespectful you are. So it's all these small details that count. But once you open up the door to one, that can get you 1%.

They recognize there's a lot more behind that, right? You know, do you let your phone, do you bring your phone in? Do your phone ring at all when you're in the house? If they smoke, when was the last time you had a cigarette? I had one in the driveway when I was outside. Well, come on, man. There's your 10% right there. I can assure you that's an automatic 10. So there's so many things. You just got to find one. And when you do, it opens the door to improve yourself. And then you get vulnerable.

And what I did was I always ask my customers, is there anything I could have done differently to provide a better experience for you? And I'm vulnerable. This was the technicians. They told me I smelled like alcohol. You disrespected my dog. When you talked to me, you didn't even give eye contact to my wife. When you were in the basement, you took a phone call. We could listen to the whole conversation. You were cursing. This is all real. And when I'm vulnerable, I say, guys, these are the things that were told about me, me, that I wasn't even recognizing I was doing or being offensive by doing Doris You crossed my lawn and that's true. You wore your booties when you got here

But then as soon as you got comfortable when you went outside and came back you decided you didn't have to care about my house Anymore then I've heard it all and I asked and so and they can relate to these so if you've got anybody that Has similar experiences they can relate to because they know they've done all these things They know they've tracked mud in a house. They know they've cursed or taken a phone call. They know that they've had the phone on ring during a conversation. They know they disrespected one of the partners in the house or a dog that's slobbering all over your leg. And I pushed that dog away. And she told me, Darcy, I didn't buy from you because you disrespected my dog. And I wanted to say at first, well, if you stopped your dog

from slobbering all over my leg, maybe I would have had to push the dog away. But of course I didn't say that. But I did disrespect that dog. And if you're honest, you did. Or you came in and you said something political or what have you, or religious, and you shouldn't have.

You brought up a topic that you shouldn't have embarked on. You walked past the Donald Trump side of the yard and you made a remark, because you're a strong Biden fan, whatever. I'm just saying there's things that we do wrong on every call. It's just calling them out on just one and then building from there. Very powerful. One last thing I just wanted to ask you, do you guys have any training to try to get both decision makers there when you know that they're going to need a new unit? We encourage it, but we don't require it. So yes, we mentioned, you know, obviously go into,

you know, that this is a pretty sizable project that we're going to be going over a lot of questions to customize the system for their needs. It'd be helpful if everybody was there, but at the end of the day, we train our people to really good at second sets. So if I go in on a one-legged sit and I know that there's going to be, or I discover that there's going to be more people involved in that process, I'll try to second set it. Now, actually that's not my go-to, but hey, you've got to do what you need to do. And if you get decision makers, you have a better chance. My best guys, they go back to the house when the second person gets home.

If someone wants to reach out to you, Darius, what's the best way to reach? Is it LinkedIn, Facebook? Is it an email? What's the best way? Email is the best for me. I get so consumed on the social media side and Facebook and LinkedIn and what have you. I just can't keep up, to be quite honest, obviously. Email is the best thing.

I go through my emails daily. I don't necessarily respond daily. I need to do better. We'll follow through. What are my weaknesses? But I will get to it. It doesn't leave my inbox until I resolve it. So the best way is to get to my email.

Remind me your email. I don't have it in front of me. First initial, last name. So dlivers at fhfer.com. And is there any good books you've read in the last couple months, maybe a year that you would think are got to read books? Sure. I'm an old school guy. You know, here won't get you there. Start with the why,

seven habits of highly effective people. I go back to the basics. I have ADD, so finishing a book is really hard for me. So one book may take me, I read a chapter here and get excited, read a chapter there. But I always go back to just leadership and motivational books for me. That's the most important. And then now, of course, podcasts and just listening to the radio. So we talked about a lot of stuff, but I'd like to end the podcast. And I've started it this six years I've been doing this. By the way, this is my meditation. This is my counseling. It's to listen to people that are successful in what they do. And a lot of the stuff you say, I already know,

but it just reminds me, new ideas, some are old ideas, but it's just, it's compelling the way you say it as well. Maybe we didn't go over something. Maybe there's something that maybe some business owners need to hear that we didn't discuss. Maybe there's something you just wanted to discuss or get off your chest or any piece of advice, I'll let you close us out.

I mean, in the whole improvement business, we always have to be mindful that the individuals that are working around us and on the front line engaging with our customers are often younger and inexperienced, but more importantly, just may not be at a point in their lives where they would even utilize the services in which we are providing for our customers. And so if there's anything that I would coach younger individuals coming into the industry, into whatever industry that service that you provide, to be able to step outside of that and recognize that the customer is not you. And as much as I say that, if your technicians and your employees sell or provide service or speak about the services that you offer from the viewpoint of themselves, who are the individuals that are trained to fix it, you're going to have an uphill battle ahead of you. So one of the things I would suggest to

anyone that's bringing is to train on that and to recognize that the most important thing you can do is not sell to yourself because the person in front of you is not you. And when you do, you're making the interaction and the consultation about you, which is extremely selfish, and not about the person in front of you. Your job is to provide the options, go through that, provide professional recommendations, and let that customer decide for themselves. And I can't tell you, the better you can do that, the faster your company will grow. And it's just done wonders for us. When you're not giving options, you're giving ultimatums. I love this, Darius.

You are the man. I really, I owe you a phone call. It's always a pleasure to catch up. You know what I love about our relationship is that we might not talk to each other every month, but it feels like we just picked up where we left off. You know, it's like, I don't feel bad. You don't need to call me. I don't need to call you all the time.

I think it's because we're very alike in personalities, but I think I always wish you the best. You're killing it. It's remarkable what you've built and you deserve everything that's coming. And I hope you and your family are doing amazing. Absolutely. And likewise, utmost respect for you

and what you're doing for the industry and what you do to help others and putting on an event like this and your podcast, your books, all the things that you're doing. the industry and what you do to help others and, and putting on a, you know, event like this and your podcast, your books, you know, all the things that you're doing, it's just changing lives. And whether anyone,

you know, takes the time to let you know that I can tell you that what you're doing for the industry and for people in large, they don't recognize your contribution. I certainly do. So, you know, thank you for what you do.

And likewise, I know if I needed something, you're there. And I hope you know that I am too. And we'll always be there to support. We have a common vision, a common belief, and certainly a very similar personality. So whether you don't call me for six months, you just call me out of the blue and say, hi, we'll be right back to where we were six months ago.

So it's been amazing. Hey, guys, I just wanted to thank you real quick for listening to the podcast. From the bottom of my heart, it means a lot to me. And I hope you're getting as much as I am out of this podcast. Our goal is to enrich your lives and enrich your businesses and your internal customers, which is your staff. And if you get a chance, please, please, please subscribe. You're going to find out all the new podcasts.

You're going to be able to ask me questions to ask the next guest coming on. And do me a quick favor. Leave a quick review. It really helps us out when you like the podcast and you leave a review. Make it four or five sentences. Tell us how we're doing.

And I just wanted to mention real quick, we started a membership. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. You get a ton of inside look at what we're going to do to become a billion dollar company. And we're just we're telling everybody our secrets, basically. And people say, why do you give your secrets away all the time? And I'm like, you know, the hardest part about giving away my secrets is actually trying to get people to do them. So we also create a lot of accountability within this program.

So check it out. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. It's cheap. It's a monthly payment. I'm not making any money on it to be completely frank with you guys, but I think it will enrich your life season further. So thank you once again for listening to the podcast. I really appreciate it.