The Home Service Expert Podcast - Finding Your Highest Calling As A Leader

Episode Date: February 20, 2018

Larry Janesky is the founder & CEO of Basement Systems Inc. and its sister companies that cumulatively bring in $100M annual revenue. In this episode, we talked about hiring great employees, marketing strategies …

This is the Home Service Expert podcast with Tommy Mello. Let's talk about bringing in some more money for your home service business. 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. Thank you for tuning into the Home Service Expert. Today is going to be so much fun. We're bringing

Larry Janeski on. He's the authority on creating and growing businesses for the benefit of business owners, employees, and customers. Larry is a highly successful author of over five books. He's an acclaimed speaker, inventor with 29 patents, business leader with 31 years of real-world accountability and success, and has big plans for the future. Larry started out very young at the age of 17. He bought his own house, and he spent 31 years in the industry. And now he owns a very, very large company. He's the founder of Basement Systems, Inc. and his sister companies, Connecticut Basement Systems Incorporated, Clean Space, Total Basement

Finishing, Dr. Energy Saver, Dr. Energy Saver Connecticut, Morehouse Financial Company, and the co-founder of Foundation Support Works, Inc. With all these companies, he's an award-winning, successful in every way in Seymour, Connecticut, with over 345 dealers in six countries. He's got so many great things to look at, but one of the things we're really going to dive into is the highest calling. It's the winner of the 2010 Small Business Book Awards. And he's just done so much in his life and he's giving back to business owners. And when he comes on here, we're going to talk about everything from attracting great employees to his take on what it takes to create good leadership within a company. And he's even going to tell us about how to dress at work for success.

And I'm really, really excited to have him on today. Ladies and gentlemen, Larry Janeski. Larry, you just do so many things. Obviously, you know everything about the home service industry. You live and breathe it every day. I just want you to introduce yourself and tell everybody why they need to listen today to this episode. Yeah, well, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Well, you know, I'm 53 years old now. I've been a contractor since I was 17, and I've learned an incredible amount.

I built my first house when I was 18 years old, really young. It's a whole story there. But today I have a company that has five different dealer networks. Or if you want to think of it like a franchise network where we have contractors all over North America who use our products, who we train to be successful. We train them in leadership, marketing, appointment center, sales, production, service, and even financial literacy and accounting. So we basically teach them how to succeed. And that's really what any entrepreneur wants is not, you know, to sell any one product or service. I want to be successful, right? I mean, the whole package has to lead to me, you know, accomplishing my personal goals through my

business. And that's what we teach contractors to do. So today we have 400 employees. We do our local service business, just local services. We do $25 million in sales out of one office, just one office. We do $130 million in sales in total. We have an internet marketing agency within our business. We have something I'm really excited about, which is the School of Entrepreneurship. We have an online program that we teach contractors how to be better leaders and very excited about that. And, you know, basically I've done it, you know, I've lived it and I continue to live it. You know, you continue to send those 60 trucks out on the road every single day, and you've got to have processes and systems and know what you're doing to get other people to get the results that you want with your customers. And if you make mistakes, you're not going to be able to scale your business because you're just multiplying your mistakes.

So I've learned a lot, and I've been teaching other contractors since 1990 how to get the same result. Well, I mean, that's a lot, you know, incredible amount of money. And the fact is there's no way you could have done that without systems. And you mentioned to me earlier, you had some trials early on and you overcame them. And like I said, to be able to talk to someone like you and just get the perspective of what it's like to be successful. Because I think everybody listening today wants to know how to get there and not make the same mistakes. And, you know, the thing is I've made a lot of mistakes and I learned from them. And that's why I'm so excited about this is to talk to somebody who is much bigger than I am and find out a lot more about you.

You know, you mentioned your number one goal is to improve the lives of millions of business owners, their employees, their customers and humanity in general. How did you come up with that realization and when did you come up with that? And how did you come up with the passion behind that? Well, I'm a big fan of business. You know, if you go to a third world country, you know, a country where there's a lot of poverty, you look around and one thing you don't see is businesses. There's no place for people to work. And there's no places that provide the products and services that people need to increase their standard of living and solve, I believe in capitalism. You know, I believe in businesses make the world go round, you know. And so my job is to help entrepreneurs succeed. And the only way that a business owner can succeed, despite stories you hear, you know, in the news, is to help other people. Right. Your employees have to win first.

And some people say customer first, but I say, no, no. It's got to be employee first, team first. Because without a team of experienced employees who know what they're doing, have the right attitude, the right tools and skills, and are empowered to make the customer happy, you're not going to have happy customers. So employees have to win. After. So employees have to win. After that, customers have to win.

And when those two parties win, then the stakeholders can win, you know, whether it be shareholders, the owner, the leader, you know. But until those two parties win, there's no winning for the entrepreneur, right? So when you, I wrote a book in 2009, and actually it's one best business book of 2010 in three different places. It's called The Highest Calling. And it's available on Amazon. And the audio version of this book came out incredible. In The Highest Calling, I say that when you create a successful business, you improve the lives of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people.

There is no higher calling. And I really believe that, you know, your business is a vehicle for you to make the world a better place. Now you can make a mess too, if you do it wrong for you and everyone else, but if you get it right, you can make, use it to make the world a better place. So that's what, you know, that, that idea is about. So it's a big, you know, you, you went into a few things there. Number one is you talk a lot about employees and I'm a big fan. You got to have the right team and you need a process to get employees. And one of the biggest things that I find from small companies, just whether they've been doing this 10 years, they say, I just don't trust anybody to do it.

And they ask me, you know, I have right now 154 employees just within the garage door company. Explain to me, because it's so, it's probably the most important thing is people. And tell me how you were able to get great people, because there's no way you could be as big as you are now without the great people. Tell me, talk to the entrepreneurs out there with one, two, three man shop. You got your kids working for you. You know, you don't trust people. Tell me a little bit about how you've been able to do this and scale and get the right people. So I'm going to take a tack on this question that, you know, people probably don't expect. And I'm going to start by saying that my fundamental, you know, belief that I teach

in the School of Entrepreneurship and my my blog and so forth is from the invisible comes the visible. From nothing comes something. And so the root of all the results that you get, you look around, open your eyes and look around you, whether you're at work, home, the root of all those results, relationships, your finances, your health, is how you think, right? And what your beliefs are, what your self-concept is, your self-image. And if you have a problem there, you're going to have a

problem with hiring and you're going to say, man, what's wrong with, I can't find good people around here. Well, it's because, you know, you're not the kind of person that other people want to work for. Okay. So you need to get you straight first. And so when you talk about hiring people, attracting and hiring and keeping people and getting them to perform at the top of the performance ranges, the first thing you got to do is look in the mirror. First thing you got to do is say, why would a superstar or a great employee who, you know, cause great employees know they're great employees. They have, you know, a choice of where to work. I can work here. I can work there. And why would they bet their career and the future of their family on me? You know, why would they look at me as a leader and say, you know what? I think I'm safe here for, you know,

I'm going to camp out. I'm going to commit. This is what I'm going to be for the rest of my life. I'm not thinking about working anywhere else. This is not just a stepping stone job or a job for a paycheck until I get a better one. I feel that this company, this place, and this leader is going to lead us to the promised land, that tomorrow is going to be better than today for me, that there's growth, that this guy's not going to, you know, make a big mistake and throw it all away or that he has a grander vision for the future and he's working toward it. He has a plan. We all know what the plan is. And, you know, so if you're not the kind of person that anyone would want to commit to, if you're treating your employees like you do this and I'll give you this paycheck,

well, no wonder you're having a problem, right? So you're going to have a bigger vision. You've got to say, I'm building something here for tomorrow. I'm going to create opportunity for others along the way. I'm going to bring them with me and I'm going to be credible. I'm going to have influence with my people by being forward-looking and honest and have, you know, supreme credibility. And, you know, that's the first part of hiring the right people and, you know, attracting the right people and getting them to stay. So that's a different angle than I've heard. And I agree with it wholeheartedly. And I've changed so much in the last 11 years and I'm not nowhere from perfect.

And yesterday we do a meeting every, we're in nine states, started at 7 a.m. And I was talking about our goals. I said, our goals are to do $100 million by 2020. And I said, here's how we're gonna get there. And I said, the first person that needs to understand that is me. And I make a lot of mistakes along the way. And when I do make a mistake, I hope you guys let me know. And if you believe in me, like I believe in you, we could do this together. And I think you're absolutely right. You got to have some foresight. You have to know where you're going. And I write it on my mirror. I don't write it on my hand, but you know, I try to remind myself every day where we're going, how we're going to get there, KPIs, processes, and the people. And

I'm a huge fan of processes. You've talked, you know, since we've been talking a lot about processes and do you believe that there's, once you do have that, you have the leadership, which we'll talk about your new school in a little bit. But once you are that person, explain to me a little bit about the process, because you've done it, and we're looking to you to tell us how it's done. So tell me about the process that you do to hire in the home service industry, what that looks like. Okay. So we have a program called Hire, Hire within our school of entrepreneurship. And we have a process that goes something like this. The first thing we do is identify what are the qualities of the ideal candidate? What are we looking for? You got to

identify that ahead of time, because if you don't, you're going to have, you know, somebody comes in and interviews well, and you're going to be seduced into hiring somebody who you think or thought right or wrong was good, but maybe doesn't match exactly what you're looking for for this position. So you've got to write down what are the qualities of this person. Would they be friendly? Would they be outgoing? Would they be analytical? Would they be ambitious? Would they have great communication skills?

Would they love to be on the Would they have great communication skills? Would they love to be on the phone all day long every day? Would they, you know, like to work independently or, you know, what is it? So you write all those things down and you say, man, this is what we need. And the second thing you do is you start getting candidates, right? So there's all these websites that you can use to, you know, collect resumes and get people who are interested. Then you got to screen and you got to screen through a variety of different steps. And this isn't, you know, new, this isn't, you know, rocket science here, but you've got to be disciplined about your screening process. And one of the highest value things that an owner could do is hire the right

people. There's no question. I mean, you got to live with these people. They're going to be your company. You got to work with them every hour of every single day. And if you get the right people, then for your culture, for your team, for your goals, what you're trying to do, then your life is going to be a lot easier. So one of the highest value things that a leader could do is get the right people. However, you don't want to spend all your time recruiting. I mean, recruiting could be very time consuming if you're involved in doing job postings and getting all the resumes and screening resumes. So you want to divide the duties amongst some of your other key people that can do this. And you want to be involved, you know, toward the end on second and third interviews and group interviews to, you know, make sure that you select the right one. So in order to divide and conquer,

we have a thing called a recruiting card. And what we do is we list all the people for all the resumes that we got on there. And it's kind of like college sports, you know, bracketing, you start out with all these teams and then you narrow it down. And, you know, these ones make the next cut, these ones make the next cut, these ones make the next cut. You wind up with fewer and fewer people that you've got to interview or do second interviews on. So the first thing you do is a resume screening. You look for things that, okay, this is no good, this is no good, this is not what we're looking for. And then you give them a call and you do a phone screening. And the phone screening, you whittle

some more down. Then you the phone screening, you will, you know, whittle some more down. Then you give them homework and you say, well, answer these few questions. If you can answer by email, we'd appreciate that. And you have them do a little essay or even write it in their own handwriting. Okay. Then you give, if handwriting is, you know, important and written communication skills is important and send it to me and you see who really wants the job, right? Who's serious. If they don't do their homework, well then, okay, you're out. And then, um, and then you go to first interviews and you can have other people do first interviews if you want. Depends how big a company you are and how much you want to divide this process. And then you have a list of pre printed questions that you ask on phone interviews and first interviews and second interviews,

because you want to ask everybody the same question. Because when you ask everybody the same questions, then you'll get to understand what is a good answer, what's a bad answer, right? You yourself as an interviewer will understand, you know, what the difference is and how people think, how they think differently and how they, you know, their communication skills and their ambitions and desires and talents and so forth. And then you get down to a group interview to make sure you have other people sitting with you, make sure you're not missing anything. Sometimes, you know, I like my cousin from California.

I've met him four times, and I really like him. This guy reminds me of him. So you have a bias toward this candidate, or somebody else won't, and they're seeing something you don't see. So you do group interviews women are very intuitive so i would have women in on interviewing too to see if you're not missing something and then you just keep whittling it down that way until you you know you never say yes until it's it's either no or hell yeah you know there's no well okay you'll do you know yeah that's that's our process so two things and i know that i dive into this stuff because this is stuff that that i want to

learn more about um number one is i feel like a lot of times number one we fill a void we have to hire somebody we take the lowest hanging fruit they come come in. You're like, you'll do. Tell me, tell me why we end up in that trap and also why we got these bad apples, but their sales are number one in the company. And tell me why it's so important to get them out because I've done it. I fired our top performers and it's hard, but I want the, I want everybody to really understand from a perspective of someone who does well over $100 million in a year, why we fill these voids and why it's so hard to get rid of top performers that really bring everybody else down. Well, okay, there's a patch on something, hey, we can't cover these leads or we had somebody quit last minute and we got to hire quick. Hiring quick, you're always going to make a mistake. You're always going to make a mistake.

So what you got to do is you got to have a virtual bench of superstars that you'd like to have work for you and you keep in touch with them. And maybe the timing's not right because all the good people are working already hello you know all the good people are working the ones that are unemployed are the employees that in a large measure other employers didn't want right so you want to hide from a bank of people that are already employed and you want to steal them away from other employers and that's why i said you got to be the kind of company with the kind of leadership and the kind of vision and the kind of facility. And if you don't, you're just starting out, you get better, be good at vision casting because that's all you got. But you know, you got to be able to lure them away from other companies to your company. Fortunately,

there's a lot of good people working at companies that don't have a vision, that don't treat their employees well, that don't, you know, recognize their people that are stuck, that don't have a plan and aren't cruise control, that people can see that and say, I've got to make a change. So you're always hiring. You say, I am always hiring. If I need four salespeople and I have four, I'm still hiring. I'm always hiring.

I'll hire the fifth one, and I'll train them, and then I'll get rid of the bottom one. I'll look for the fifth one and I'll, you know, train them and then I'll get rid of the bottom one. You know, I mean, I'll, I'll, uh, I'll look for the fifth one in advance. I'll hire the fifth one and lo and behold, my marketing's working better. I need five anyway, you know, so I'm not waiting for the last minute. The other thing is that I think leaders don't put enough value in hiring. You know, they say, oh yeah, I got it. This is something I got to do. It's not really my job, but you know, I got to get this done. I just got to, okay, you'll do. And, you know, they don't have the right attitude going in. As far as, you know, getting rid of somebody who doesn't fit in the

culture, no matter how well they perform. Yeah, that's important because, you know, if you've got somebody that's not cooperating with your vision and, you know, it's, it's, you're losing credibility as a leader because you put up with this guy you know you're trying to uh work with everyone else and this guy's fighting over here and he's a top performer and everyone else you know you know he's undermining your your leadership ability you know that's that's not good always look in the mirror first say is it me am i missing something but you know if it But if you can look at it objectively, and that's one of the skills of a good leader is to put his ego aside. Consider you

may be wrong. Because in business, we know there really is only one business problem. That's you. As the leader, as the owner, you're the problem. You're responsible for everything. Therefore, there's a problem in your business. You created it or allowed it to happen. And you are actually the problem. But you want to make sure that to set things right, you got to see things right. I mean, that's a big thing. I say that all the time. To set things right, we have to see things right. Are we seeing it right? Do we have all the information? Is the information biased or incomplete? Whoever gave us this information, do they have an agenda that they're trying to push that they tweak the they they tweak the information for us you know to to decide their way you know so to set things

right we have to see things right and spend a lot of time learning and gathering data uh so that when we do make a decision that split second that we make a decision it's the right decision you know so well there's a lot there but no, this is exactly what I want the listeners to. This is just, in my opinion, pure gold. And I'm so happy you're on. There's one other thing. I get this daily because one of the things I try to do is really listen to the people out there that are trying to build a business.

And they try really, really hard to find good people. And what I say, and I want to hear what I want to tell you what I do, and I want to hear how I can be better. So number one, if I see somebody at Circle K or a gas station or a restaurant or a bus boy or anywhere, and I know this is kind of a cliche, but I really do do this. I carry business cards in my money clip. And if I see somebody picking up a piece of trash or they just got, they're a good human and they're smiling and they're great. I hand them a card and I say, listen, if you're ever looking for another opportunity, come see me. And I got to tell you, I've, I've got 10 good people now by doing that. But I also, I post on Craigslist. I post on everywhere you could think of. I got a system called iHire

and it goes out and it syndicates all over the internet. And I'm always looking. And I have a video that I send people to work for A1 that tells them all about the company, the values and what they're going to get themselves into. And a lot of the questions I get are, how do you find good people? What does the want ad look like? And for my want ads, I don't really talk about the job as much as what they're going to get when they get the culture, what type of person I'm looking for. So tell me, because I get this question every day, how do you, where do you go to get them? And what kind of ad do you put out to get them? And I do geencing i geo fence i basically all the

warehouses that we go to buy parts from i geo fence there so i it pops up and says check out a1 we're hiring and we're doing a sign-on bonus and they could find out more about the business i don't like to say i go out and try to steal employees but basically if you work for yourself or another company there's another opportunity out there if it fits your needs. So tell me a little bit about you, Larry, and what you do to find the best. And I guess I would say steal the best, you know, give people another opportunity to come to you, whether you're stealing them from being their own entrepreneur to come to work for you. And tell me a little bit about the ads you put out there to get them, because this is pure gold, in my opinion, and this is what everybody wants to know

about. Well, you know, the answer to a lot of questions, it depends, right? It depends. Like me, you know, I have a nine building campus. Everybody in the state knows me from my marketing. They know we're a great company. We have a great reputation. We're the leaders in our industry. And, you know, we could put a picture of our new brand spanking new 77,000 square foot building. You're going to see this thing. It's epic. It's over 500 feet long. It's shaped like a big T.

And it has garage doors on the back side and out the middle leg of the T. It's like an airplane terminal for contractors and all these 48 garage doors. I could park 100 trucks inside this facility. It's beautiful. I mean, absolutely gorgeous building. And it's four floors and the top floor is a big training center.

I mean, you know, so me, I just got to say, hey, you know, look at us, we're hiring and I can, you know, attract, you know, so me, I just got to say, hey, you know, look at us. We're hiring and I can, you know, attract, you know, some great people. And one of the things we did was the state of Connecticut requires that home improvement salespeople be licensed. And that's public database. So we just got the whole public database recently of all the licensed home improvement salespeople in Connecticut and mailed them a letter saying, hey, we're hiring, come work for the best. I love it. We got some great candidates from that. But if you're small and you're, you know, you're just starting, then you're going to have to cast a, you know, a good vision. In other

words, you know, there's people out there that feel like they're a small part of a big company. So that would like to be a big part of a small company. So if you're looking for, you know, key managers, production manager, sales manager, marketing manager, you know, there's people out there that would like to, you know, do that. To be number one at a small company in their department instead of, you know, a cog in the wheel somewhere. And, you know, what you said about, you know, hire for attitude, train for skill. You know, I believe that. I believe that. And we have lots of people, lots of examples of hiring people who had never done what we wanted them to do before. And the character is, you know, incredibly important. And, you know, but that being said,

sometimes for key people, you really want people with some experience. I mean, I couldn't really say definitely these positions, you should get experienced people in these positions. You can grow your own. You can take somebody who never had an opportunity at another business to shine and excel and show their talent and, you know, show what they could do. And, you know, you give them the chance at your company and they could shine because that doesn't always happen. Sometimes it does, but it doesn't always happen. So you've got to know, you know, which people are which. And ambition plays a big part in it.

Are they ambitious? Some people want a nine-to-five job and they want to do an okay job and just go home and not worry about it. Other people, you know, they're rising stars and they're, you know, 22 years old and we give them a chance. And I mean, I look back in my life and when I built my first house, I wasn't qualified to build my first house, but I did it when I started my first company, when I started, you know, getting dealers, when I started designing products, when I started a school of entrepreneurship, you know, when whatever, every time I did something, I wasn't qualified, right? I never done it before. I didn't have any experience. So we can't always look for people that have experience. And we got to recognize, you know, the abilities and ambitions. I mean, everybody has the capacity. If we're human and we're breathing, we have the

capacity to do incredible things. But some of us just don't believe in ourselves enough. You know, I have this theory that people don't change. You know, as an employer, don't ever try to save somebody. Don't say, oh, this person is really down there a lot. They need a job. They have some kids, you know, I need to help them out. And then that always backfires, you know, so we don't save people and we don't, while people do change, we can't count on it. They've got to change for themselves. You can't force that. They have to be internally motivated to change. And we're not going to say, well, if I give you a good job, then you're going to see the light and you're going to change because you now have a good job.

Sometimes that happens, but you can't count on it. So we've got to go for what we actually have in front of us, not what we believe they'll do. And I'm an optimist. I traditionally have not been the greatest, you know, guy to hire around here. That's why I have a full-time recruiter, actually two people that are just full-time recruiters do nothing but here today. So, you know, I believe in people. You know, there's so many different levels and I got to tell you, I have an amazing operations manager. He's more of a CTO than a CEO. My brother-in-law is a VP at General Electric, and he's pretty high up in the world as a CEO or a COO, Chief Operations Officer, is kind of going away. Now it's a CTO because Adam focuses on our CRM and our processes through technology on a daily basis. And I know we kind of have an agenda that we set up before, but I'm going a little off topic here.

But you said the key people you need to kind of find some of the experience. And tell me a little bit about that number two guy in your company, the COO, the CTO. Tell me what your thoughts are on technology, because you say you've got a lot of software. You do Internet marketing. And tell me how important technology is. Because there's a lot of guys out there that say, I don't believe in websites. I got a lot of stickers. I built a reputation.

But I just believe that if they don't adapt, as the generation changes from the baby boomers to more of the millennials, the shoppers out there, they're going to fail. So tell me what your thoughts are on that. Well, so if I answer the question to a contractor, to a home improvement, home service contractor, I'll give you the answer because there's a different answer, you know, in my business. Sure. But for a contractor, first of all, intimate marketing is the most important type of marketing in the world forever and ever, you know, into the foreseeable future. And you better have a good handle on it. You know, you better have a great offense on the internet because your competitor that does is going to, you know, be sending, you know, three times the trucks out on the road every day. And you're wondering, well, you know, how's he doing it? And, you know, have a complete blind spot as to where all his leads are coming from because you never see them.

So internet marketing is critical and it's not so easy anymore. Internet marketing is complicated. You know, there's so many dimensions and ways you can, you know, make mistakes and so forth. So, you know, you got to know what you're doing. We offer a service through our Treehouse Internet Group to do internet marketing for the contractors that come to us and we're really good at it. We started doing it 13, 14 years ago and it's grown to 80 people. I have 80 people in house and there's all different specialists that do different things on the internet. And we have this incredible system where a local contractor gets to can put in tons of content into his own site without being

you know knowing anything about technology nevertheless also a customer you know relationship management software is key you know you can't write things down on slips of paper anymore you know if you're going to be organized uh you got to have a good CRM, you know, to work with and to schedule everybody to be, you know, out seeing people. I mean, your whole sales force, your production force, your service force, they need to be in front of customers. And if they're not in front of customers, they're not working as far as, you know, I'm concerned. And so, you know, you got to keep a handle on all that. And you also want to upsell, cross-sell, and repeat service your customers, and you need a database to do that. So you better be on it. These days, I would say,

even if you're a contractor, if your company has more than 25 employees, you need somebody who's your IT director, who is up on the software and hardware, so they have access to software. Something that's like 10, 20 years ago, I was like, are you kidding me? You know, IT? You know, I'm a contractor. I just want to bang nails and turn pipes or run wire or whatever I do. And now we need marketing directors. I mean, when I started, a contractor, I have a marketing director.

Are you kidding me? You know, we don't need that. We just meet with our yellow page guy once a year. What's the big deal? You know, so now we need marketing directors, we need IT director, we gotta have a big internet offense here. If we do these things,

we can get a jump on our competitors and we can dominate the marketplace. If we don't, then we're gonna be relegated to just using the tools and having one helper and somebody in the office and we're out there busting our butt and 65 years old comes and our knees have long since been shot and, you know, we got nothing to show for it and, you know, we can't sell our business because nobody wants to trade places with us.

So, you know, you got a choice. You can buck up, you can do the right thing. Here's the good news. A leader doesn't need to become an IT expert to hire one. You don't need to become a software expert to use software, right? You can just make the right decisions, right, and get other people to do it. There's plenty of other people that are, you know, good at this stuff out there that you can hire. You just got to be the kind of leader that can discern what it is that you need, and you got to make the call right and get it to happen and you can do this you know i i don't consider myself but you know digital native and i'm not whenever i have problems with software i just call somebody i just walk in the next room and i say hey doc's helping out with this or hey christy help me out with this and they got it you know so i i

don't need as a leader i don't need to bog my mind down, you know, with all this stuff if I've got people. But I was smart enough to hire those right people, you know, to make it all happen for my company. Yeah. You know, that's what I tell people. One of my best strengths is recognizing my weaknesses. And people say, I'm going to I'm going to work on my weaknesses. I'm going to work on my weaknesses. I say, no, listen, I got a master's degree. I took accounting finance. I hate accounting. I got the best CPA. I got the best controller in the world in my eyes. And I understand financial statements because it's important for an owner to be able to read a balance sheet and an income statement and that cashflow and all that stuff. So I know what I'm looking at, but I hire the people for my weaknesses. And I think

that's so very important. And real quick, Larry, I had my CRM. We're one of the top performing companies and we're with a company called Service Titan. And they sent a crew of four guys out to interview some of the employees in management. And I was in an interview and they asked me, they said, tell me a little bit about what you had before for a CRM. And I said, this is my fifth CRM. And basically we talk about it a lot, customer relationship management system. It does your invoicing. It does your scheduling. It does your phone calls are incorporated in it. It keeps track of my advertising. I have over a thousand call tracking numbers. But I said, when I got with Service Titan, it changed me as a person and an owner and a leader.

And they said, how so? I said, now I feel like I could take on the world because I have every single KPI out there, key performance indicators that tell me how my business is doing. And they said, well, like what? I said, why do marketing if you don't know how it's doing? I ABC test everything, even ValPak.

I run a different ad in every zone. They said, tell me a little bit more about that. I said, we try 20 different Facebook ads to figure out what we got to get on an ROI. Then I look at my call percentage booking rate. And then I could tell CSRs who's doing good, who's doing bad. And I get training. And then I go from there and I say, who's the best technician? And how do I rate a technician? I look at conversion rate, average ticket and customer satisfaction rate, because they all get a survey. I get in front of the bullets of the bad, angry customers and I call them personally or my managers do. And I stop it from going live online because social media could spread a thousand

of people really quick. And then I have happy customers go ahead and spread the word, the gospel out there. They get on Yelp, Angie's List, the BBB, Google, and they leave us good reviews. So that's why I'm five stars. That's why I have an A plus rating. And it's not because we do everything perfectly.

It's because we get in front of the stuff that's bad. And when you talk about CRMs, when I was sitting there the next day, I went into my meeting and I was fired up. I was excited. I said, man, we could do this. We have every tool out there and it's not easy. You're right. You have to have, I have a guy that focuses every day on making our CRM better. I have a marketing director. I mean, this is the stuff we talk about and it's really what I would call the unfair advantage. And if you're not moving that way today, 2017, you know, we're in a 2017 right now, we're going into 2018. If you're not ready to adapt, I tell people, listen, you might as well start packing your bags and look forward to

retirement and sell me your phone number for 10 grand in three years. Because if you don't start making these changes today, you're not going to be able to catch up. I mean, and I'm sorry to go off topic, but I'm just so passionate. I mean, getting the right systems and the right CRM is so vital and knowing those key performance indicators in your business. And they asked me, they said, what about, you know, we built this software originally for an HVAC company. Tell me what the people that could tell us, you know, it's just not made for a garage door company. I said, wait a minute here.

I said, a garage door is what I saw. You saw an HVAC unit, same exact process. We dispatch our guys. We advertise same exact thing. I said, we service an air conditioning unit. We service a garage store. That's just a scapegoat. And if you get 10 guys on service 10, it might cost you a couple of grand a month. I said, I make that back saving one customer. That's a small cost to pay to have a system. So I went off on topic there, but I'm just so passionate about getting the right technology because it's so important these days.

And it's kind of bringing me back to you've got an email. It's a free email newsletter called Thinking Daily. And you give a short message each day and every morning it comes with a question to the entrepreneurs. And what are the three main questions as an entrepreneur, as a home service expert that I should be? You do this every day, but I want you to try to focus on the top three. And it might be about leadership. It might be about lead by example and a lot of stuff. But I'm curious, what are your top three most important questions that a home entrepreneur needs to ask themselves? Yeah, it's called Think Daily and ThinkDaily.com. It It's free and it's a very short message of the day. It could be a sentence,

it could be, you know, a paragraph, but, and then there's Think Daily for business people. So there's two messages of the day. I've been doing it since 2009. And so for Think Daily for business people, you know, I think that the most important thing for an entrepreneur to do is define his own job. There's only one person who can be leader, and that's you. One of your employees isn't going to walk in and say, I don't think you're leading very well. I'm taking over. You step aside.

That's not going to happen. So you're really responsible for the whole thing, and you've got to know what your job is. And it's leader. And oftentimes I say to an entrepreneur, um, you know, how much money do you want to earn? You know, if you want to earn $200 an hour, then why are you doing work throughout your day that, you know, you can hire somebody for 15 or 20 or $25 an hour to do. You're not doing the $200 an hour work. And then the next question that would come up is, wait a minute, there's, there's no $200 an hour job in my company.

And I say, exactly. There's only one if you got it right, and it's called leader. And so you need to know what your job is as the leader. And it's not so much about doing things right. Let your people worry about doing things right. You've got to worry about doing the right things at one thing. And if you're, you know, a half million or a million dollar business, then your job is changed. And then if you got, you know, 12, 15 employees, your job has changed again, or it should. The problem with entrepreneurs is that they don't change their leadership job,

you know, definition, you know, they keep doing the same things that they started doing. And in the beginning, our winning strategy is work hard, work longer. You know, we say, I'm going to gut this thing out. I'm going to do what I got to do to work harder. I'll work any competitor. I'll do anything to make this company succeed. And yeah, when we're one of three employees and we're, you know, working 85 hours a week, you know, we can make a difference by doing two people's jobs, right? But our winning strategy becomes our losing strategy as we grow to 15 and 20 people, because now we're just focused on working harder, working longer, doing the same things we've always done, just trying to do more of them and compensate by multitasking and trying to be hyper-efficient. It just leaves us being burnt out. What we got to do is change our job. And it's an incremental process. You know,

you're one of three, you're one of four, you're one of five, you're one of 10, you're one of 12. It's an incremental process, but our job needs to become as soon as possible to be team builder, right? To get the right people, to train them, to motivate them, to get them operating at the top of their performance ranges, get them doing the right things and doing them right. And that's our job, not to do the work anymore, right? We keep doing the work and, you know, we're not getting the results and we wonder why, because we own a job instead of owning a company. So that would be, you know, the very number one thing. And there's a lot of dimensions to that and changing somebody's thinking, you know, to try to get them to

see that what their new job is, the job that they refuse to do so far that, you know, you got to be willing to create something that you haven't created yet. You know, I wrote a whole chapter in my book, the home service millionaire about delegation and people are afraid to delegate. And my number one thing, Adam, my number two, I mean, he's amazing. He's my basically partner in this. And he has to put up with me all the time. And I say, dude, I say, I want you to walk around for one straight week. And he did this. He took a notebook out two years ago. I said, I want you to write down every time you get interrupted. And I want you to write down every task you do. And now I can tell you one thing. He's a master, a master delegator, and he's good at delegating and delegating is an art in itself. And you nailed it. I mean, you wrote in your book,

the highest calling, you know, not making much money, working 70 hours a week. His family life is suffering. Troy is frustrated and confused. And I was that guy. I mean, literally, my relationship suffered. I mean, I worked so hard in my business. I took the phone calls. I ran the calls. I'd open up the shop. I'd do the hiring, the firing. I'd pay all the bills. And then someone told me, and I always used to ask more successful people questions. And I would consider myself a lifetime bills. And then someone told me, and I always used to ask more successful people questions. And I would consider myself a lifetime student. And every day my goal is to learn more. And talking to people like you is really what gives me a new opportunity every day to learn something.

And he said, Tommy, you've got to start working on your business instead of in your business. And I said, how so? Somebody's got to do this stuff. And he said, Tommy, figure this out. Figure out how you could train somebody that's better than you. Because believe it or not, you're not the best at everything. And that was hard for me. I thought if it's going to be done right, I got to do it. And it's tough. It's tough to delegate. It's tough to say, I trust this person to do as good a job as I'm going to do. And, you know, it's a struggle for a lot of the people on this phone call.

It's a struggle to say, I'm going to put my trust in you. And the hardest part of being a successful big time entrepreneur is letting go and trusting and trusting people. And I'm looking at this this line and it just fits so many people, 80, 90 hours a week that, you know, because you come home and then you're paying bills and then you're going to meet with the IRS and then you're going to talk to your CPA. So, you know, from your experience, what's one of the biggest self-limiting beliefs that these business owners miss when it comes to building a long lasting profitable business? Well, you know, everything's related. You know, I mean, none of these questions live in isolation, right?

So how do you delegate? Well, you know, you delegate to other people. Other people are the secret to your release from slavery, from your business. You've got to be able to get other people to do things. And then, okay, well, that's related to hiring. Well, that's related to what kind of person you are. Well, you know, that's related to hiring. Well, that's related to what kind of person you are. Well, that, you know, everything's related. So yeah, I mean, I think we're afraid to delegate because we think we can do it better than anyone else. The problem is we're trying

to do so many things that we don't do it better than other people do, right? So if we can do it at 100%, someone else can only do 80%. But we're actually doing it at 50% because we're trying to do too many things. They can actually do it better than us, even though they can't do 80%, but we're actually doing it at 50% because we're trying to do too many things. They can actually do it better than us, even though they can't do it as well as we could, if it was the only thing we had to do, but it's not. We have a lot of other things to do. So you got to create processes and systems and you got to empower people and train people and motivate them to do their best and create a system where ordinary people can operate and get extraordinary results. You know, they're using a process and they're getting a predictable outcome

out of the process. And whether it be production, like, okay, the guy arrives at the house in your truck with his crew of one or two guys or whatever, and they got out of the truck, what happens next? Right? What do they say to the customer at the door? What do they give the customer at the door? What expectations do they set? What do they do when they're halfway through the job? What do they do when they're all the way through the job? How do they walk the customer through what they did?

How do they get, you know, collect payment? How do they, you know, encourage the customer to complain, you know, right there on the spot so that you can just take care of it instead of, you know, as soon as you drive away, now it's a complaint if something's not right, you know, before you drive away, it's not a complaint, it's an adjustment, right? So, but what did you train your people to do, you know, when they got out of the truck? Is there a way that you can make sure that everybody's going to be happy even if you're not there? And so those are the kinds of processes that you need to put in place. And, you know, we say the secret is other

people. And I think you've got to begin with the end in mind. You know, some contractors say, well, I envision a company and take mental pictures are incredibly important. That's what I say from the invisible comes the visible. If you envision yourself, well, if I had two crews, if I could work on two houses a day and I have two, three man crews and I get, you know, uh, I could sell the work, maybe have somebody else helping me sell. And I have a couple of people in the office that, that, that would be what I want. Well, you know, then you're never going to exceed your own, you know, image. And maybe that what you thought about was really you being self-employed with a bunch of helpers, you know, are you, do you want to be self-employed or do you want to be an entrepreneur that there's a difference there?

Oh yeah. You own a job, you know, and so nobody wants to trade places with you. So, you know, you got to build a business that works even if you don't show up, you know, in my local business, you know, we do $25 million a year. They might not see me for a month. I mean, uh, I might walk in and use one of the rooms there or my office, but I don't actually check in with them. I don't have to. I'd love to, but I'm doing other things. And when you get people to run your business, it allows you to do something else if you wanted to, whether it be grow the next part of the business, diversify the business, start a different business, spend time with your family and

with your hobbies and interests or travel or whatever. But you think about this word lifetime, lifetime. Now let's break that word into two words, life and time. That's all we have. Pretty soon it's going to be over. And I'm very aware of that. You know, this is our one chance. When you're dead, you're dead. It's done. You know, you had your chance on this earth and it's over. So what are you going to do now? You know, why are you wasting time? You need a sense of urgency.

You got to reinvent yourself. And so if I can get my business to run without me, if that's what I want to do, everybody's got, you got to make your own goals and your goals change with the seasons of life, as Jim Brown would say, you know. But then I have all this time, all these hours, all these days to be doing something else, to express myself creatively through another channel. And for me, I've opened seven different related, they're very closely related, but they're, you know, different functions, seven different businesses. And we share employees, we're all on the same campus and everything. So to me, it's one big thing. But if I didn't get one part of my business right, I wouldn't be able to do something else. You know, and I get bored.

I mean, everybody's different, but I like to think entrepreneurs get a rush from doing something different. Well, you can't do something different if you screwed up last year and this year looks just like last year, which just looks just like the year before and the year before that.

Pretty soon you're going to lose interest, right? You're going to lose your enthusiasm and it's going to be hard. You know, that's contagious. If you're stuck, the business is stuck and your people are stuck and the good people are looking to go work elsewhere where there's some promise for the future, you know? So it's all related. So you made me think of a book by Jim Collins. It's called Built to Last. And what that book is all about is getting the systems in place so that if you're not there, that the company runs itself. And a lot of us that have egos in our business, and let's say we do a huge IPO, we become a huge company, and I'm the CEO. When I leave, I say this company is going to fall apart without me. Now, that's not a great leader.

That's not built to last. So, you know, take the ego out of it. You build the systems to keep it going. And that's that's what I believe in. And, you know, a lot of us entrepreneurs got to understand when I met I met another guy, great guy. He consulted me for a long time. He said, I said, hey, I'm going to put my eggs in a lot of baskets. I'm going to do this, this, this and this and this. And I see a lot of entrepreneurs do that and you've done it, but you made sure you perfected the first business. And he said, Tommy, I want you to try one thing for one year. He said, put all your eggs in one basket and watch that basket overfill. And I did. I focused on the garage door business. I went back to the drawing board. I built systems and boom, I remember we hit 10 million bucks. It was an amazing year. And I got to tell you, I believe a hundred percent. I'm an entrepreneur. Sometimes

I get the shiny light syndrome and it happens to all of us, but focus on your core business. Let it make money. Be, I always ask people, if you went to Hawaii, if I called you up today and I said, I got, I'm going to Hawaii, I'm taking you and the kids. I'm going to pay for all, all the drinks, the fares, the, the, the food. I'm going to take you guys on the excursions. And you came back to your business in nine days. First of all, could you leave today? And what would the business look like in nine days? And if you can't say it's going to run itself, then focus on that. Don't go into real estate. Don't chart because you lose your focus. Just focus till you can get it to the point that Larry's done. And he could not show up there for a month and know that it's running right. So I always say that. I always say you can't get the time back. Listen, we have money,

but you can never get back time. So stay focused. Work hard today for tomorrow. And that leads me to the next question. And this is a great one because if larry had to do it all over again you're 18 years old you know you you're building your first house tell me about the first systems you would put into place and how you would do it if you had to start over again what what do we need to know is just going into business or if we're out there thinking about going into business for ourselves i you know you've got to learn from other people. You'll never live long enough to learn it all yourself. And I would have tried to tune in to the right, you know, teachers, the right source of information

or what I need to know, you know, sooner. I mean, I was, I've been a rabbit, but I had Nightingale Conan programs in my truck, right? And this was the 80s. We all had long hair and we were 80s rockers at night kind of thing. And my friends would get in the truck and I'd stuff the Nightingale Conan program underneath the seat because it was motivational stuff. You're listening that you know i knew the power of it uh and brian tracy and ziggler and all these guys but that's why i have my school of entrepreneurship and so it's a complete i mean complete program for a home service and home improvement contractors these are you know any contractor that needs a lot of leads and gotta you know turn them into

sales and send crews on the road. And you're selling to homeowners, right? You're not selling to governments or insurance agencies. You're selling to homeowners. And that's what it's for. And so there's loan-in contractors, fencing contractors, roofing, plumbing, siding, windows, driveways, mason, all kinds of contractors like that. And this is a place where you learn how you can scale your business, right? When you learn something new, you see the world in a whole

different way. And so you need to learn the right things, right? You need to hang around with the right people. And when you listen to someone, you know, you're basically hanging around with them. They're teaching you what they know. And, you know, I would say you need to, if I may say so, join our School of Entrepreneurship online and get yourself, you know, an education. Because if you can get there, quote, unquote, there, whatever it goes on, you know, 10 years sooner, or maybe you can get there in 15 years instead of never, right? Or in 10 years instead of, you know, 30 years, you are just saving yourself an incredible amount of years, right? Just by beating your head against the wall, doing it wrong, and maybe not even know you're doing it wrong. You know, we say that an entrepreneur spends the beginning part of his career being desperately underpaid, so that if he gets it right, he can spend the latter part of his career being wildly overpaid. So in the beginning, you're reinvesting and making mistakes and investing in people's

education and you don't know what you're doing and you're messing up. But you've got to leverage that to get it right so you can make extraordinary income. I mean, it's not all about money, but let's face it, if you're going to make your dreams come true you're going to need a surplus of money and so if you can make 10 years average americans pay 20 years or 30 years average americans pay in a year because you built and shepherded and owned this business and made it work your job then is to string those years together and don't screw it up you know and so i would learn from the very best who know what they're doing and you know as absolutely as soon as possible and that would be my number one tip yeah i agree i mean always be educating you know larry's got a great program as a matter of fact i've looked into it i'm going

to join the program just by talking to you. It's really pushing me. I always, you know, I teach entrepreneurs, but I'm always learning. And every time I talk to somebody like you, I pull some gold nuggets out of that. And I'm excited. You know, Larry owns Basement Systems, which is named one of Connecticut's top workplaces several times in the last couple of years. It all starts with the employees and the culture. I mean, it really does. And you build that by leadership.

And you've talked a lot about leadership. Tell me a little bit about what kind of leader you are and what people, if they asked you at your company, you know, tell us a little bit about Larry, the good, bad and the ugly. Tell me everything. Tell me a little bit about what they'd say and how you're a leader and basically how you're different from from other people that do a good job of leading as well. Yeah, well, I think authenticity is important. And you can't go around trying to be a big shot. You got to admit your weaknesses. You got to care for people. You know, I love people, like all kinds of people. And maybe that was when I grew up, I, you know, the neighborhoods that I

grew up in and, you know, different people that I met, different ethnicities and different kinds of people. I, you know, in high school, I got along with the jocks and the girls and the dweebs and the every group I got along with everybody. And the gre but I I like people you know and when you smile at people you show appreciation and approval and you know I don't have a 400 employees I if I pull in a lot and the nearest spot is 100 yards away that's why I park I don't have a reserved parking spot I don't uh you know have people people get my coffee, you know, or anything like that. I'm a regular guy. And I, so, but, you know, you got to be inspirational too.

You got to look toward the future and you got to, you know, look out for tomorrow. That's what a good leader does. And you've got to be able to communicate that and inspire others. And you got to be emotional too. I think you can't be a stuffed shirt. You know, that doesn't inspire others. And you got to be emotional too. I think, um, you, you can't be a stuffed shirt, you know, that doesn't inspire anybody. You, you gotta be, you gotta show that, you know, you really care. And there's times in my career when I've done a talk and you're practically crying, you know, because it means so much to you or you're, you're so grateful or, you know, whatever it is. And, you know, don't be afraid to show some emotion. That's kind of how I'm wired. So I just be me, you know, don't try to be anybody else, just be the best you can be.

And I think people see a reinvestment, you know, our facilities are something that's noteworthy. We are in this industrial park, a commercial park that's beautifully landscaped. And I think we kind of saved this commercial park from going the wrong way with a bunch of contractor buildings and trucks, you know, parked along the road and everything. It's just, we kind of, we own half the properties in the park and just built two brand new, beautiful buildings, really beautiful. But our building one is interesting. So it's 92,000 square feet in total, but our main office floor is 36,000 square feet. And we remodeled these themed workspaces. So we have space that is decked out like a treehouse.

So it has stations where people sit, their desks that are either on floor level, could be a couple steps up, could be seven steps up where you have somebody under you and, you know, somebody working over you where it's an open plan so they can communicate. But, you know, everybody has their own little space, but it's all different levels and it's all like wood and really cool building materials, you know, that, you know, kind of really rustic and trees and things in there. We have a tree fort that has 11 stations. The tree house has 26. We have a 50s cafeteria with red and white diner booths that can seat 100 people. We have a space station, which is our video department

and animation department that's decked out like a space station. We have a place called Boomtown that's 26 people working there, and it's an 1880s mining town theme. We've got a water tower. We've got all these old buildings. We have a mine that you actually walk through. We have a vintage industrial space called the Forge and Anvil. It has like 80, 100-year-old fixtures from old factories

and old 100-year-old oak desks and really cool. It defies explanation, but there's so much more to it. But, you know, when the employees see you investing in them, your facility tells the world what the leader feels about the future of the organization. If you don't invest in your facility, your infrastructure, your workspace, right, to make it clean and open, and you have very high standards, you know, when if I walk in a men's room and there's a little bit of toilet paper on the floor, I pick it up, you know, and I tell everybody else, I expect you to too. I, you know, and I'll call people out if their standards aren't to where we want them. We have a book called Dressing for Influence, and it's for all of our salespeople who go out on the road.

We teach them how to sell and, I mean, how to dress. And do you have to tell grown men how to dress? Yeah, you do, because if you don't, they're all going to impose their own standards, you know, whatever. So we say this is how we dress around here. This is how we do it. And you have to have very high standards and reinvest. And that's one of the things that people see around here. They see, I believe in the future, right?

I'm going to take care of them. I'm going to impose standards on them and everyone else around them so that they can have pride in where they work and they want to do their best here, right? There's no shenanigans, right? We don't do their best here, right? They don't, there's no shenanigans, right? We don't do shenanigans, right? We have fun. We're friendly. We're like a, you know, family environment. We love each other, but we don't screw around. And when you have that corporate culture, when you get a, an infidel come in, if you hired the wrong person or somebody won't goes bad,

the group will reject them like a corporate antibody, right? They'll say, no, no, no, we don't do that. And they'll report them or they'll stop them or they'll, we'll kick them out or, you know, whatever. But, you know, so that's, that's something that, um, you know, a leader needs to create and it's an incremental process. And sometimes it's, it's hard to explain, but, um, you know, you, you want to be sincere about it. And sometimes it sounds corny. Corny is the new cool. You walk in the front door of our building.

I was an Eagle Scout. Right on the wall, as you walk in, it says, Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. Right there on the wall. And so it tells people something as soon as they walk in, visitors and employees alike. And, you know, that's,

everybody can, you know, you can do it your own way, your own flavor of leadership, but you've got to create something that people will believe in and like to get up and come to every day. I agree. I mean, I'm learning so much here and it's the

little things that go a long way. I mean, just the chairs we sit in, you know, a lot of people, this is what they do. They sit down most of the day. If you invest in the desk so they could stand in the chairs that give them back support, it goes. I had a gal come up to me and thank me. She almost started crying because we got these new, you know, really nice chairs. And we invested in there. And actually because one of the gals in my HR department asked me for one, and I said, if I'm going to buy one, I should probably buy them for everybody. Yeah.

And it just goes a really, really, really long way with these people. They're so – it's the culture, and it's tough. You know, I'm 34, and I learn every day. Just talking to you on this stuff, it's the culture and it's tough. You know, I'm 34 and I learn every day. Just talking to you on this stuff, it just makes me think, man, I'm looking right now. My gal, girlfriend, Hillary, got me this thing that says success. And it says focus, hard work, perseverance, confidence, win, commitment, knowledge, and all these different things. And it's got pictures throughout my life with created success. And it really, it pushes me harder every day when I look at something like

that and you nailed it. I mean, it's, I hope the listeners out there are just saying, you don't have to have perfect. You might not have the money to do this stuff, but set some goals, tell the people what's going to happen, where you're going, what your vision is. And I know you might be struggling to pay your electricity bill. And right now you can't invest in this stuff, but just let the people know down the line that's the goal and that's where your head is and you're there to help them. And if you truly have that in your head, you can get there.

And I love the idea of Dress for Success. Is that a book that's available or is that a book that's internal to you guys? No, it's called Dressing for Influence. And yeah, everybody says Dressing for Success because it was a book, I don't know, 35 years ago, Dressing for Success. But it's Dressing for Influence. And it's funny because it's a, I don't know,

24-page book, but I dressed up in all these different clothes, right? I mean, dressed like a chooch from the street, dressed like a biker, dressed like,'t know, 24 page book, but I dressed up in all these different clothes. Right. I mean, dress like a chooch from the street, dress like a biker, dress like, you know, a punk rocker or whatever. I take all these personas on just by changing my clothes and it's me. Right. So it's kind of funny, you know, because, you know, I'm the one willing to, you know, make the mistakes and be laughed at, you know, to say this is how not to dress. Right. And we show everything. We show belts not to wear, you know, don't wear your alligator belt. Don't wear your big Western belt. Don't wear a wristband and, you know, a fancy watch. Don't wear fancy rings. Don't wear a necklace. You know, don't, you know, button two buttons on a golf

shirt, not just one, you know, don't wear a t-shirt, you know, wear a collared shirt, you know, all these things, right? And this kinds of jeans are good. This kinds of jeans are not so good, right? This is why, you know, and these kinds of shoes are good. These kinds of shoes are not good. You know, this is what socks, you know, we just go through the whole thing. So this is part of our school of entrepreneurship. And it's just one of the many, many, many programs that we have that the contractors that are in our school can get and then deliver right to their people, right at a sales meeting, at a staff meeting, whatever. So a lot of material we have in the School of Entrepreneurship

is only for the owner, to get the owner's head right, and stuff you wouldn't give to your people. And then the other half is stuff that you deliver directly into your system, right? Here's how to sell. This is an incredible program of how to sell, and it includes, if it's 100 videos, I mean, it really goes in depth and detail of exactly how you do it with the customer and exactly how to handle objections and different kinds of objections.

Think shop and money objections. But half of the material is for you to train your people, right, to use directly with your people, whether it be the PDFs that you print out or the videos that you can show directly to your people. So, you know, dressing for influence is just one of the many, many parts of that. Look, life is not that complicated.

Listeners might be listening to this and say, oh my God, I can't get there from here. You know, there's so much to do. I'm already 48 years old. How am I going to do all this? You know, I'm getting tired already. Well, yeah, you're getting tired because you're doing it wrong. But look, you can't get there from where you are. That's true. It's like you can't get from New York to LA. You can't. What you can do is you can get from New York to Pennsylvania. From Pennsylvania, you can gather your thoughts and you can get to Ohio, right? From Ohio, you can get to Indiana. And so it's like, you can't get there from here, but what you can do is go to work and rally your

team. You can have an all group meeting to talk about the future and get your vision, mission, and values straight. That's what you can do. From there, you can impose a little bit higher standards in a few of your departments. From there, you can get a little bit more buy-in from your employees. From there, you can hire a little better employees. From there, you can build on it every single day. And that's what you need to do. And it's an incremental process.

And look, this is what I discovered. And it's an incremental process. And look, this is what I discovered, okay? I've made a lot of money, okay? And it's not, in the beginning, we think it's about the money, but in the end, you'll find, you know, you can't take it with you, right? And yes, we want to make a great income, of course. But it's who we become in the process, right? It's this journey that we're on. If you had a million dollars in the bank or $10 million in the bank or $100 million in the bank, it's not going to make you any happier. It doesn't. What makes you happy is what you're actually doing, contributing to the world and how much of your own potential you feel you're using, you know, effectively without burning yourself out and stuff.

And the relationships that you make, the people that you bring with you along the way. And it sounds corny and I'm not, you know, I believe in there's a small percentage of us in the world that make a large percentage of things, good things happen, you know, in the economy and in the community. But in the end, it's about relationships and it's about your relationship with yourself, right? Can I look in the mirror and say, man, I'm doing my best, right? And I'm making a difference with people. I'm making a difference with my family, making a difference with myself. You know, I feel like forward momentum, forward motion. I feel like I'm in control of my own life. That's what really makes the difference.

So you've got to use this business that you have to do those great things and to get it right. And just feeling that forward motion. I remember the first time we did, let's say, $5 million in a year. We were thrilled. We were so happy. And five years after that, if we did $5 million a year, we'd be so bummed out, right? We're going backwards, right? So it's not what level of success we get.

It's just feeling the forward motion, right? Feeling progress. Progress. Yeah. But you've got to bring people with you, you know, and you've got to have friends. If you're doing business and you're making enemies, that's going to come back to bite you. And it's going to be, you know, you're going to have the players who are happy. Even if they leave the company, they're going to be happy with you.

You're going to have customers who are happy and a family that's happy. You can't, you know, look, don't ever let your work get in front of your family. And I've made mistakes, right? You know, I was working a lot. Kids grow up so fast. And I'm not saying I have these incredible regrets or anything. I mean, I did a great job. I didn't work weekends for the last 25 years.

I haven't worked weekends. But have I thought about it? Yeah. Have I made notes and studied on weekends? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I haven't left the house to go to work, you know, on a weekend for 25 years. So I've done good. But, you know, you can't ever let your business need to be a healthy obsession, not an unhealthy obsession. And there's a difference. And in stoicism, we say,

stoic philosophy, it's anything that's outside of our control. We accept it. We just accept it. We don't let it bother us. We control the controllables, right? And the only thing you control is your own behavior and acting with virtue at all times. And you say, what can I do? You know, how can I make things better? And I don't get upset about things that are outside of my control or things that are over. If it's in the past, why, why are you bitter about it? Just forgive or accept and move on. Don't carry on the baggage and jealousy or envy or hate or fear or, you know, regret. I mean, that stuff doesn't help people, you know, and it's just going to paralyze you. So, you know, business is, you know, leadership development is personal development and vice

versa, you know, so you've got to be the right kind of leader. You know, the chance of you accomplishing your goals depends on what kind of person you are. And we've got to be the right kind of person and continually become a better and better and better person. And you'll get better and better results in the world. Wow. I mean, that's some deep, deep thoughts. I mean, it's true. And I agree wholeheartedly with every single statement. I mean, just I always say progress, not perfection. I don't ever have an obtainable goal. I shoot for the stars. If I land on the moon, we're great. But I tell my guys, listen, I don't need you to be competing with my top guy. I just want to see you

do better than last week. And we got to talk about how to get there. And I think you said it's about progress. And, you know, one of the things that people tell me a lot is passion. Do you have passion for your business? Do you have passion for people and your customers? And what if you don't have passion, if it doesn't excite you anymore, then it might not be for you. And if there's nothing wrong with don't say you're giving up just so you're going on to do something better. So look in the mirror, find out if you have the passion and go from there. And Larry, if you'll allow me to down the road, you know, I'll be in touch with you. I love I have a bunch more questions, but I've already kept you for a long time. And I want to talk a little bit about number one,

I want to get you back on here, but I want to talk about everything that you can provide to everybody from, from your daily posts, which is the think daily to your program and your books and how to get more of you. So if you could just tell us, I'm going to make sure to have a link for everybody, but just go through. and I want to hear every single thing that you offer and every resource. Okay. So first of all, go to thinkdaily.com and sign up for Think Daily and Think Daily for Business People. That's free. That's a no brainer. 35,000 people a year a day get these messages up. And then secondly, if you're a contractor, go to Amazon and buy my book, The Highest Calling, and get the audio as well. It comes with a journal and listen to the

audio and start journaling. And the book tells the whole story of the life that you're living now and the one you want to live. It's an absolutely fantastic book. The next thing you do is something I didn't talk about is I created a new genre of audio. It's mixing personal development, spoken word with music in a way that you've never heard before. There's two CDs I have. One is called Masterpiece and it's on iTunes. It probably is on Amazon as well. And then the second one, which just came out about a month ago, it's called Invictus. And so Masterpiece and Invictus, get those two CDs. Those are, you know, hour long, you know, nine track CDs, and you will absolutely love it. And then for contractors, I just can't stress enough that you want to go to dsoe.com, as in theschoolofentrepreneurship.com, and sign up for the School of Entrepreneurship online program.

It's $500 a month. That's $6,000 a year. That is nothing, okay, nothing. You are wasting so much money and wasting marketing that doesn't work, sales leads that don't get sold right or undersold or not sold, inefficiencies in your business. So here's how you learn how to do it right. It's a multi-year curriculum, and you will get content every day,

and you will get everything that I know. I'm not holding anything back, okay, about how to build a home-approved home service business. You know, we sent our kids to college. I spend $40,000 a year on my daughter. She's in college right now. And, you know, only to get indoctrinated how to be in the bottom 95%, right? We want to be in the top 5%, the top 1%.

And you've already committed to your business. Why don't you spend $6,000 a year learning how to be a better leader of what you already got? So that's what I would definitely do. And the School of Entrepreneurship is a world, there's a whole world inside there that you'll have access to. How to hire, how to train sales people, what to train them. We have the complete program. You don't have to make anything up, right? How to train managers to be expert managers. Because if you have an expert manager in all the main areas of your business, appointment center, marketing, sales,

production, service, and accounting, if you have expert managers in those areas, your job is easy as a leader. So we have that whole thing is inside there. How to hire, the whole thing is inside there. There's a hundred or more different models in there. And it sounds like a lot, but look, we take you through them methodically. That's why it's a multi-year program. There's no quick fix. There's

no overnight getting rich overnight, right? We've got to learn how to be the kind of person we need to be to get the results that we say that we want. And it's an evolutionary incremental process. And we recognize that. that contractors are overwhelmed. You know, they don't have enough time in a day. I'm not going to make that worse. Okay. I like to make it simpler, not more complicated. And so you can do this and there's a money back guarantee. If you get a year through the school of entrepreneurship and you say, man, I didn't like it. Just tell me, I'm giving money back. No problem. So we're going to have thousands of contractors in the school of entrepreneurship. And I think it's going to be the gold standard where a contractor learns how to be a home service, home repair contractor, because they don't teach you that anywhere else in the world.

A complete program. So that's that's what I have to offer the world. And, you know, I'm having a great time. I'm doing what I love to do, which is build other leaders. The objective of leadership is not to build followers. It's to build more leaders. And that's what I'm doing out in the world. Now, also, if a contractor wants to look into our internet marketing program at a Treehouse internet group, just give us a call. Can I give them the phone number here? Yeah, give them the phone number here yeah give them the phone number yeah so it's 800-541-0487 800-541-0487 and uh tell them ask

for stephanie stephanie pelizzari and she can tell you all about our internet marketing program and we have a financing program for all the contractors involved with us. They can offer financing to their customers. So that's what we have. And I think the School of Entrepreneurship is really my, you know, it's been 35 years in the making. You know, it's my, I've written all the content for it and I continue to, we have live classes as well, which you could join, but the online program is where you want to start. And I love what I'm doing. I love my life. It might be interesting for the listeners to know I'm a motocross fanatic.

And I ride motocross and I jump off freestyle ramps. I just see on TV and stuff. I mean, I'm not as good as those guys. But when my son is 22 now, we entered the Baja 1000 two years ago. It's the longest nonstop race in the world. It's down in Mexico. And there's a movie about it. It's It's the longest nonstop race in the world. It's down in Mexico. And there's a movie about it. It's called Into the Dust on YouTube.

Into the Dust. And it's a 90-minute theater-quality documentary about our first year in the race. And I'm not going to spoil it for you. You've got to go watch it. But it's an incredibly popular movie. And we're racing that race. We raced it again last year. And this will be the third time this year.

So, you know, I think when you do scary stuff, it helps you be a better leader, right? Because, you know, sometimes things are scary. You're making decisions or talking in front of a group or trying to, you know, rally your team. And everybody at once is looking at you and you're under the gaze and scrutiny of everybody, you know. It can be intimidating, you know, so by, you know, stretching yourself in every way in your life, you can, you know, you can handle the leadership job. Yeah. So Larry Janeski, ladies and gentlemen, all the listeners out there, we got thinkdaily.com. We got the highest calling book. You want to get both. You want to get the written and you want to get the auto.

You got Masterpiece on iTunes and Invictus. We got the School of Entrepreneurship. And then you guys know about the internet marketing phone number that he gave you, the 800 number. We're going to give all you the resources for this on thehomeserviceexpert.com. I'll put the link here for you. And, Larry, listen, I'm going to do all these things. I'm going to go out and I'm going to get everything. I'm going to become a part of this because I teach a lot of the same principles, but I could always learn more. Listen,

I'm a student for life and this is going to make me stronger. So I recommend everybody go out there and Larry, if you wouldn't mind, what I'd like to do is listen to the book, go through everything that you offer, and get back in touch and talk about it, if that's okay. Maybe the first quarter of next year, but if that's okay with you, I will do all of these things. And if you're okay with it, we can discuss it, and I'll have you back on.

Of course, of course. I love talking about this stuff. It's my passion. So anytime, Tommy, I really appreciate it. Larry, thank you so much. I hope you have a great day and a great weekend, and we'll touch base soon, okay? All right. Make it a great week, great year, great life. All right. Thanks, Larry.

This was the Home Service Expert Podcast. Now listen, for the first time ever, I'm going to give away a step-by-step guide that reveals the hiring process I've used to grow my company to over 200 employees in over 10 states. If you want to scale your business with the best employees, which I know all of us want, then you need to go to homeserviceexpert.com forward slash giveaway. That's homeserviceexpert.com forward slash giveaway and get your free copy right now.