The Home Service Expert Podcast - Getting Accounting Done the Fast & Easy Way

Episode Date: February 21, 2019

Randal deHart is the co-founder of Fast Easy Accounting, an accounting firm in Lynnwood, Washington that specializes in construction accounting. An expert in outsourced contractor bookkeeping services with 25 years of experience in the construction industry, Randal runs a podcast called the Contractor Success Map. In this episode, we talked about bookkeeping, accounting, success...

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. This is Tommy Mello here. I'm the home service expert. I'm here with Randall D. Hart. He's the

co-founder of Fast Easy Accounting in Linwood, Washington, and a leading expert in outsourced contractors bookkeeping services. He usually specializes in $10 million or less for different companies. He specializes in QuickBooks. He's been in the contract world for over 25 years. He was born and raised in a construction family, and I've already talked to him for a half hour before this started, and he's just a wealth of knowledge. He's got a lot of complex concepts that really make sense when

it brings it down to the contracting world. And Randall, I'm excited to have you on today. How's your day going? Tommy, it's great to be here. I really appreciate it. And I'll tell you what, my day is going so well. If I was any better, I'd be twins. That's amazing. I love that little anecdote. So, so you know you've been in the plumbing industry you've done a lot of things you have your own podcast called the contractor success map tell me a little bit about your father got started in the business he's a contractor tell me a little bit about that and kind of where you've been where you're going here with what you're specializing in sure let me see if i can probably get this condensed as much as I can. My stepfather, I actually was born in Oklahoma and we moved up

here in 1965 in the Seattle area. I married a guy who is just a really neat fellow. He's my stepfather and he had a landscape and gardening business, which he started in 1949, and he retired in 1999, 50 years later. Now, it's kind of a funny situation here, Tommy, because I didn't know this growing up, but step-parents are supposed to be terrible people. My stepfather was the greatest guy on earth. He was just a real sweetheart. The thing was that having grown up in that environment, I got a different view of contractors. He had a lot of friends who were contractors, and they were just wonderful, wonderful people. The fact is, I'll put this very gently, is I always had food to eat, clothes to wear, and a place to live. But we were what would be, I guess you would refer to it as the lower middle income, because it's just what his perception was.

Perception is reality. And I enjoyed the construction, and I got to develop what I called the four different kinds of contractors. One is a dog and pickup truck. That's someone who literally had a dog. He had a Cocker Spaniel and a pickup truck. Second level of contractor was salt of the earth. He had quite a few friends who were salt of the earth. And he would just get you there for picnics and barbecues and, you know,

chats in the evenings and weekends. And he would all describe how he had between one and three employees. I hadn't asked him on the contract. I said, why three? Oh, that's simple, Randall. Because you can hold one by the throat in each hand and eyeball the third one. And I thought, well, okay. And I got to look at my stepfather, and that's exactly what he did.

Okay? Then over the course of time, I got to understand that there was something called a professional contractor. They had between four and 20 employees. A little different thinking pattern. And then the fourth level contractors are enterprises, 20 people plus up. Now, what took place was I really love my stepfather. He's a great guy. He's passed on, but he was just fantastic.

I got out of high school, and I met my high school sweetheart in junior year and got married when I was 18, just celebrated 45 years. She's the greatest person on earth, God's gift to me. Anyway, I left high school, went to college, got my degree in accounting, university actually, had a lot of fun, and spent a very short time in an accounting office to become an accountant and set for the CPA exam and so on and so forth. And an interesting thing took place.

I see that the universe has a sense of humor. And there was a couple of people that would come in who were obviously contractors. They were big, burly men, a little rough around the edges. And I'm 6'2", 7'5", so I'm in pretty good shape myself. But at the time, I was maybe 6'2", 25. In any event, these guys were a little rough around the edges, and the other accountants would kind of cringe and i thought oh what the heck so this one i never forget this one particular

plumbing contractor he comes in with a cadillac with minutes of the gunnels and he said i need one of you blankety blanks every third word was was a bad word it didn't bother me i'm accustomed to that to you know take care of my bookkeeping and process payroll and i said i can take care of that so i took care of it and i processed payroll we had a lot of fun well later a guy comes in this is kind of funny guy comes in the brand new pickup truck i mean it's gorgeous and i couldn't afford that and he was a home builder and he needs some help with his accounting so i did the accounting he came back picked up the reports later this is all by hand you know pen and pencil years ago in the 70s

and he comes back looks at reports and he is just madder than heck and he picture this i'm like 25 in really good shape and he's probably in his 50s he's a builder and i got a little upset with him he got a little upset with me he said you a little upset with me. He said, you know, listen, punk, blah, blah, this, and if you were man enough, I'd take you out behind the building. It was a small town, and behind the building was a parking lot.

And I said, oh, man, I would like to do that, but I'd really hate to hurt you. Now, Tommy, this is the 1970s. You would never in a million years do this today. We went out behind the building, and we kind of had a few punches. And I can tell you, I beat the crap out of that guy. I banged on his fist with my face until it was bloody.

And I turned around, and I thumped the bottom of his number 12 shoe with my chest a number of times. Then, because he just didn't seem to listen. So I pummeled his elbow with my stomach eight or nine times. And then I absolutely beat the crap out of the back of his hand with my left and right cheek. And I get all done, go back in the office, and I said, how is it that you are pretty good at street fighting?

And, you know, I've been around the block. And one of them was saying, he said, listen, son, son, right? I'm not his dad. He's not my dad. Listen, son, old Asian treachery will overcome youth and skill. I never forgot that. I never again had any more difficulty than anybody. He had something prophetic. I mean, the universe has a sense of humor. He said, Randall, you've got to understand,

there's two types of accounting. I don't understand it. But he said, there's regular accounting and there's construction accounting. He said, I'm a home builder. So I deal with what's called WIP, work in process. So he said, I take money out of the bank, I buy a piece of land. That's still an asset, but you're too stupid. You wouldn't know that.

You thought it was an expense. I bring labor and material, other costs and some contractors to build a house, and it's an asset. It's called work in process. That was a game changer for me. All of a sudden I realized there's something called a construction accounting. And I got really interested in it. And I talked with one of the old guys in the office and I said, this is great construction accounting. He said, yeah, you might like that. He said,

obviously you're in shape for it. So it might be a good thing i did some research had a lot of fun and then there was a big aha there's a book written a long time ago it was called the search of excellence they talk about the bfo i had a blinding flash of the obvious i came home i told my wife i said sherry god love you you're wonderful i'm going back in construction and she says oh, Oh no, you're not. I said, Oh yes, I am because there's money there. You know how to do it. So I became a plumbing contractor, a German plumber and a plumbing contractor. And sure. And I started several small businesses, you know, remodeled and handyman's everything. So we started a business, we build it up and we'd sell it. And we started a business, build it, and sell it. And we were using an accounting program at the time.

I can't tell you the name of it because it's not smart. Anyway, this is the 1980s, late 80s. And the program was $65,000. Base price was a DOS program. You paid $500 a month to get the key to keep it unlocked month over month. And in 1991, a program came out called QuickBooks. Oddly enough, it was like $100. That was a joke, but we went ahead and bought a copy of it and gave it a try.

And I ran dual books on two different workstations. And it was funny, Tommy, because the reports, the profit and loss and balance sheet, cash to see Google accounts, payable and cash report, those five reports were the profit and loss and balance sheet, cash receivable, accounts payable, and cash report. Those five reports were the same on both systems, except that the QuickBooks system was a lot simpler and a lot easier to work with. And we switched over.

I called the boys and girls up later in the program. I said, you guys are dead. You just don't know it because this thing called QuickBooks. And they kind of laughed. They said, I don't think so. They did fold up about five years later. Any events. So we used QuickBooks since it first came out.

Now, a funny thing happened because we had friendly competitors that had a lot of fun, and they would ask us if we could help them with the bookkeeping because it was kind of a chore. I said, yeah, I've got somebody in the office that would help me out. I'm going to do it for a few bucks. We're a few competitors. I'm not going to take you into business. And then we started actually doing some bookkeeping for contractors about 1992, 1993. It ended up being pretty heavy in 1994. And just a few contractors here and there.

And we actually opened a business, which is now Fast, Easy Accounting. And as it turned out, in about the year 2000, exactly, we sold our last business. It was a small plumbing mechanical, 27 employees and seven trucks. But here's the key. We sold the business. And when you sell a business, Tommy, you know this more than anybody else. Nobody wants your frigging equipment. They don't care about your trucks. The business name may have some value. What they're buying is an income stream. And we had a bunch of what's called service contracts.

So we had service contracts with a lot of restaurants in Swinburne County and some in King County that we would set a crew in so often to go in and clean the drains, fix the faucets on a service contract arrangement. And so when we had slow times, I could send a crew out to do drain cleaning and maintenance work. We also had service contracts for residential and some apartment complexes and condos. So that's what we actually sold was that renewable income coming in. So in 2000, we bought the motor home, you know, the RV, and we toured the country, Sherry and I did, had a lot of fun. And we had a few contractors who were doing some book work

for it. I had a person in a little office, life was good. We came back and about six months later, Sherry said, I love you, honey, you're wonderful, you're fantastic, but please get the hell out of the house, you drive me crazy. And so I got more involved in the business. And in about 2004, we decided that we love contractors. Now, I have a ton of randalisms. I call them randalisms. And one of my randalisms is that the four types of contractors described earlier, the dog and pickup truck, Salto, the Euro professional enterprise.

And the randalism, and this is an opinion, Tommyy not a fact strictly an opinion okay got it my opinion this is all it is my opinion is that the earth sky sun heavens stars were all put together by a builder that builder in my opinion had a son his son was a carpenter and therefore my opinion, had a son. His son was a carpenter. And therefore, my opinion is anybody who is in construction has royal lineage. And I have a lot of respect and a lot of love for anybody in construction. This is who I am. That's a little hint there. I'm a big fan. One of my favorite books is The Basic Constructions Before Leaving Earth.

So as it turned out, I discovered I love contractors. In 2004, we went through and we farmed out anybody who wasn't a contractor. I said, you need to go someplace else. And we found our places for their homes. And so since 2004, we have just focused on contractors. And my favorite contractors, bless their hearts, the brand new startup, I get a big kick out of new startup people.

They're great, okay? They've got lots of great ideas. They've got lots of them, they're in vitality. And I think it was, there's an author, I don't know his name off the top of the head. He wrote several books. And he talked about entrepreneurial seizure. So in any event,

we work with a lot of startup contractors event we work with a lot of startup contractors we work with a lot of trade contractors journal contractors handyman home builders land developers and we really focus on startup 10 million dollars and we use a program called quickbooks a lot of people are familiar with that there's two flavors of books there's a quickbooks desktop which is great for construction. It has all the whistles and bells you need to get all your parts, KPIs, work in process, retention, that sort of thing. There's another piece of QuickBooks. It's called QuickBooks Online, which I think QuickBooks Online is great if you have a lemonade stand.

It's garbage. This is an opinion. It's just not worthwhile if you have a large business doing anything over $100,000 a year in construction. It just doesn't work. So we use QuickBooks, and we have an Intuit-approved commercial host, which means the QuickBooks desktop rests on a server in California, in Washington State, and anybody can access their QuickBooks desktop from anywhere in the world, and it looks just like it's on their desktop.

It's very easy to work with. So we use QuickBooks. We also use a program called Xero, which is X-E-R-O. We just started using that about three months ago. We've got 40 clients on that right now. So I like Xero and QuickBooks. Xero is kind of the competitor to QuickBooks Online, but it actually works, especially in construction. So that is kind of the competitor to QuickBooks Online, but it actually works

especially in construction. So that's kind of the short story in a long-winded way. Well, you know what? I love the background because it really gives insight to where you came from, where you're going, where you are today. I got a lot out of some of the talks we had beforehand, especially, you know, the fact is that you knew Ron when he started QuickBooks, which is very interesting. That's a huge deal. 1991. QuickBooks is still a good program. And I think the biggest thing I see people fail, and this is coming from my CPA who, by the way, used to have hundreds of clients. Now he's got like seven and I'm his by far smallest client.

And we're going to know I'm the smallest client and he's going to do, you know, I'm going to do close to 40 million. So that's a good thing because he chose me because we get along very well and he wants to help me. I'm like his little protege or something. So his apprentice, but you know, he said, Tommy, there's two main areas I see companies fail as they're growing. He said, number one is you've got to keep current on your city and state and federal taxes. He goes, you cannot put this off. You cannot delay it. You cannot be late.

Don't make payments. Just make sure you got that. Put that away. Pay that stuff. And he said, number two is inventory. When you start expanding the multiple states, I see people getting robbed blind. They have no inventory controls. And, uh, you know, I think some of these guys out there listening are probably not having huge issues with that.

And they say, it's fine. I keep an eye on this stuff myself, but you know, if you're going to be that guy that does all the inventory, pays all the taxes, tunes up all the trucks, answers all the phone calls, you're not really, you know, this podcast might not make sense to you because we're really trying to figure out ways to help you grow and help you work on the business and hopefully delegate the majority of the stuff that you don't like. So what is your experience been since you've worked with a lot of contractors, especially, you know, under 15 trucks, where do you see them go wrong a lot of the time? And where's the biggest room for improvement of the people that are listening out there? Well, Tommy, I totally agree with your CPA.

A hundred percent. We say the same thing. Pay your taxes. I've got an article on my website, which describes what it costs and don't steal the government hates competition generally speaking if a person if a contractor doesn't pay their taxes and if you do the analysis the present value future dollar and all the interest rates involved and penalties and interest it runs about 300 is what they're going to be paying in interest so paying the taxes is number one. I totally, completely agree.

And the other thing that I've seen a lot, and I worked, you're right, I worked a lot of contractors, and it breaks my heart, because, and I also agree in inventory, we're going to cover that in just a quick second,

but if there's one area, that your listeners, if you're doing your brand new startup, if you're doing 100 million a year, the one thing that I have seen, that has lives as far as their business is concerned is real simple. They're called the KPIs, the Key Performance Indicators. Now, the Key Performance Indicators are huge. And depending on who you talk to, I think you're pretty skilled in that.

They can get very deep and very involved. I put together what i called a five at five for five several years ago and it can be in quickbooks really simple the number one in a report is called cash so put an icon on your icon bar on quickbooks and you press that icon it tells you immediately what your cash is and all the investments and the savings and the market accounts, checking accounts, because here's the randalism. Cash is a fact.

Profit is an opinion. So cash is number one. Number two is ARs, accounts receivable, okay? And that's really critical. Have a good handle on the accounts receivable. And rule of thumb is the very successful contractors I've worked with have very little accounts receivable. We did over a million, five, two million with our construction companies. And I think at one point I woke up in a cold sweat.

I was almost, you know, I slept like, I usually sleep like a baby at the time. I wake up crying every two hours because all of a sudden I realized I've got 15,000 receivables. Okay. I just cold sweat. So accounts receivable is a real problem. Don't keep a lot of ARs and have that report on your icon bar. Number three is the accounts payable. Now I wrote a whole article and there's a way to make money in accounts payable. You can make 36% interest in your accounts payable if you know how to do it right. But keep your accounts payable low. Keep them paid. If you have an opportunity for a 2% discount, you pay by the 10th, take it.

Because 2% pay by the 10th, what they're really telling you is that you can borrow our money for 20 days and we'll charge you 2%. Well, 20 days into a 360-day year interest year period is 18 periods. 18 periods at 2% is 36% interest. So keep your payables low. Number three is the profit and loss. Watch the profit and loss and on the right-hand side of the profit and loss report, have all the percentages. You get to know the percentages. And there's all kinds of places to understand where you're at in your area, like your garage or installation. So there's probably some place on the Rutgers Associates or RMA that you can pull out the percentages and know where you're at. Number five is the balance sheet.

And again, a random list of the balance sheets called the three O's. The first O is what you own, is your assets assets the second o is what do you owe everybody those are the liabilities the third o is what's left over that's the equity now really simple i'm going to say if a lot of contractors for some reason and i'm just as guilty, we love these one-ton pickup trucks. It could be a Ford or Chevy or Dodge, it doesn't matter. But let's say if a person has a brand new F-350 pickup truck and they go skiing in the mountains, and at the end of the day of skiing, the truck is just covered with snow. All they can see is the front foot and a half, the grill, and a little bit of the hood. They know that's their truck

because they've seen it so many times. In the part of the brain called reticular activation device, we recognize patterns. We can see that, oh, that's my truck. I don't know, it doesn't just start changing out and drive away. Well, the five KPIs I just described, if they look at those five KPIs at 5 p.m. for five minutes, five at five or five. You can look at them at eight o'clock in the morning. It doesn't matter.

But if they look at those five KPIs on a rigor basis, this is a game changer. Because reticular activation device will begin to see patterns. And they'll say, hey, something's wrong here. And what it is, all of a sudden, the labor cost is going up a little bit. Or the material cost took a spike and this is how a lot of my smaller contractors under 10 million i say watch that material cost in your industry which example will say it should be 12 all of a sudden it goes to 14 or 16 of the gross sales okay my next question is not if,

but who is stealing inventory? So one of the simple ways that we use to control inventory is we watch that material cost. Now, inventory is an asset, but it when it's used, it becomes an expense for cost gets sold. So if we watch those various numbers, these are fantastic.

And just a quick segue, we do put these kpis on for free if people want them but that five at five is probably the most important and that's pretty basic but i've used that same five or five i had a contract a couple years ago and they did like 20 million a year they didn't have the five at five and I put the 5 at 5 on their icon bar, and we talked several times. We still do some consulting work. And the person said, this is ridiculous.

He said, when you said that first 5 at 5, I rolled my eyes up at a MER, major eye roll, and I thought it was stupid. But now I look at it every day. I look at that darn thing, and I learn so much because now you're triggered to your activation device what to look for so i would say the cpa is right tax is most important keep those things paid number two is that five at five and that will do i'm only touching the surface but that five at five is so huge okay because it tells you all kinds of information. And if you know what to look for, then it just starts speaking to you.

And the numbers will start reaching out, not literally, but metaphorically. They'll reach out and they'll wave you with their hand and they'll say, hey, look at me, look at me. My cost is kind of high. And one of the other costs we look at in a 505, we do an analysis on what is the cost per mile to operate a vehicle. And I had one contractor doing this about 10, 15 years ago. And I said, you know, one of your trucks has a high cost per mile to operate. And he said, well, yeah, it does. I said, no, I told you before about getting GPS.

This was years ago. It was more expensive. He said, yeah, I can't afford it. I said, you can't afford not to. Okay, fine. Shut up. I'll put the GPS on. I put the GPS on. Called me up a few days later on the weekend.

I says, hey, I'm in Seattle. Guess where my truck is. I said, Portland? He said, no, it's Wauken. I said, oh, my gosh. Now, how do you know that? Because he was looking at the KPIs. And some guy had taken the truck

and was going to Spokane like once or twice a month to visit his family or something and use them to accompany Rick. So those numbers are very important. I think, Randall, the hard part, and this is where I believe the consulting actually comes into play, is it sounds

really nice to get all these things it's just it's kind of like setting everything up in the perfect way because the setup is everything and i just i talk to people all the time and the data is only as good as the people entering the data and the accuracy of the data so you can look what i've learned is that people can make you see any number you want to see. The only number they can't make you see, and trust me, accountants, I know accountants that can hide a needle in a haystack. So they can say, yeah, there's a bunch of checks out there right now, or there's not a lot of checks out there. So you got more cash to the bank. So I think it's easier said than done, but to get to that process. Now I have a whole different amount of KPIs that have to do with call booking rate, average time on job, average ticket, the average cost of goods sold per

ticket. You know, there's so many more that I look at that are different, but they go all up to your stuff, which is really what you should be focused on. And then if you've got a problem, dive into mine. But you know, that's the hard part. I think it's getting the data that you can rely on, you know? That is so true. Oh, you are so right so right and it's it's funny because i've arranged the next point is like i said i started using quickbooks in 1991 and i love quickbooks about 93 i told sherry my wife is you know i'm going to take the afternoon off uh hold my calls i'm going to take it the afternoon off because i don't like the way QuickBooks sets up their chart of accounts and their item list and their entire setup. And I'm going to set up what I'm going to call a contractor template.

And it's going to work because it's going to have all that setup stuff you're talking about. Well, that started in 1993. This is now 2018. And I get an intern in every so often. And we are still updating that template we now have a template designed for handyman for trade contractors builders developers you name it and you're right because that template we use is set up in such a way that we can take any contractor merge our template into it and it gives them a whole new perspective.

Now, our template is based on construction accounting, and even more importantly, for those who understand it, it also follows the rules that's called GAAP. And GAAP is- I don't accept it as the accounting principles. Yep, yep. A big white building in New York City that we all salute at noon. And so it follows the GAAP.

And then what happens, there's something called the RMA or Rob Marks Associates. And that's the same company that the banks all use to do loans and lines of credit and this sort of thing. So when a person, when a contractor takes their profit, loss and balance, you get into the banker, banker looks at it and kind of smiles and nods her head and says, this is interesting.

This is good. Thank you very much. Once the contractor leaves, all they do is plug it into a piece of software. It used to be a big yellow page book piece of software, and that software tells them whether they're lying, telling the truth, whatever it is. And the closer that we can keep it to the RMA that the banks want and gap with this template to set up,'re absolutely right now things start to gel

and you you're 100 right and i encourage this for all contractors and again under 10 million especially under 5 million for goodness sakes outsource the daily data entry bookkeeping accounting payroll to people like us or somebody else. It doesn't matter because we do this all the time. And this is the reason we don't do anything more than $10 million because when it gets to that $10 million mark or getting close, I encourage them, let's go find somebody who can do it all in-house and we can train them or you can get training elsewhere.

Beyond $10 million, get it all in-house. Under $ train them or you can get training elsewhere. Beyond 10 million, get it all in-house. Under 5 million for sure, outsource it and get it set up correctly and get the data in correctly. And I hear this frequently, gee, I can't afford to. On the other hand, we've had a lot of contractors who've done it and three years later they say, my gosh, I'm making, I had one guy, this is kind of funny, a guy who was in the service repair business for like 30 years, and he had one truck, and he didn't make any money to speak of. He worked with us for about three or four years, consulting.

He took over his bookkeeping and set it all up, as I described, and then one day he comes in, he is madder than hops. I mean, he's ready for a fist fight. He's the make of C Street. I said, what's the problem, Mr. Ruggs? He said, you SOB, do you know that I paid more money in income tax last year than I made before I ever came to talk to you? I said, you need to speak up. I can't hear you over the purr of your Escalade. Yeah. I said, and by the way, how was your last vacation in Hawaii? Yeah.

Long story short, he kind of settled down. Anyway, he sold his business because he had a lot of service contracts. He sold his business and bought. This is before the big increase in pricing. He bought five rental houses and now he's retired and life is good.

Simple as that. So you're right. The setup is important and the data entry is important. What we usually start with is five KPIs. I started with five KPIs because then I can say, okay, here, we need to look at this. We need to clean this up, so on and so forth. Are you familiar with how, when the Pilgrims first arrived, how they were able to have fresh pork and meat? They had to trap wild boars. Now, I was not there, but my kids think I was. My understanding is that what happened, I think some of the Native Americans, this is the story I've read, whether it's true or not. I understand some of the Native Americans said, here's what you do. They put a little handful of grain.

They picked a clearing, maybe 10, 15 feet clearing in the woods. They put a pile of grain and they put a stick there next to the grain. Then the next day, the grain goes away. They put another little pile of grain and put another stick. Over the course of time, they would build a trap. The wild boar was so interested in coming in and getting that grain, he didn't really pay attention to the fact that the trap was being built. And the very last time they pulled the lever, the trap fell, the pig was captured, and then he'd come back later and find the fresh pig. So what I do with the five KPIs is that wild boar, if we put our finger on the back of our skull and we feel a little bump there about the size of an almond, that's called the amygdala. And the amygdala is also known as the

lizard brain. And everything that comes into our five senses goes to the amygdala. And the amygdala has one function and functionality. It's called fight or flight. I have some information coming in. There's someone coming, walking toward me on the sidewalk. Is that person friendly or unfriendly? Should I go into a fight mode or flight mode? It happens to me. Everything happens instantaneously. And so that wild boar is fight or flight. So you're right. There's a lot more to the KPIs and there's a lot more to set up. So what I do is I take that little pig, and I give it a little bit of grain, and I say, hey, let's look at these five KPIs. And then later on, hey, you know what would be interesting?

Let's take a peek at the inventory question. There's all kinds of ways to track your inventory. And let's take a look at other things. And I just keep building it until after a while I have trapped the amygdala and the amygdala now lets information go to the seat of judgment and people can make intelligent decisions. And that's when they all of a sudden realize, oh my gosh, I'm making money. Life is great. I love that concept. I think there's a lot to be said here. When you could identify the data and it's correct,

and it's just, it's like anything else. What do you do when you work out? You measure your arms, your legs, your body fat, you get on the scale, and you look at how your body changes over time. So all very, very important things. What I'd like to do too is possibly get some of these resources on the page on the Home Service Expert that your podcast is going to be on because I think as much as they could

get about you and then maybe have a little form that goes to you if they want to get some of your advice. And I'm going to go into a lot more of how they're going to get more of you later here at the end of this. But one of the things I was going to ask you too, is we talked about the universal common. Oh, real quick. I had one more thing. So AR, I just looked up something where we were on about AR and the probability of collecting when the invoice is due on the due date is a hundred percent after 90 days. This isn't universal, but this is a chart I'm looking at. Comes out to about

78% after six months, it's roughly around 60%. And then it goes after 12 months, roughly between 40%. And then after 24 months, you're right around 20%. So I believe collecting the money, and that's why banks love my business because we collect on the day of service most of the time, unless it's a home warranty company, we always get that. So AR is a huge thing. But I want to dive into the universal common denominator of what we talked about before we jumped on the podcast, because I think it's important that people understand. You say it's easy to get from one to three and three to 10. But personally, most people struggle to get to that point to where they say, I'm going to trust somebody other than me, other than my wife and kids and family. You know what

I mean? So let's talk about that universal common denominator. Okay. There's all kinds of universal common denominators. I've used a variety of them. I'm going to give you a couple of quick examples of what a universal common denominator is. One would be, let's take a concrete contractor. A concrete contractor, the universal common denominator is cubic yards of concrete. Now, there are dozens, if not hundreds of different mixes of concrete. And I've been through this process with a lot of concrete contractors, and I finally get to understand if we just take cubic yards and say, how many cubic yards of concrete are you able to produce with one man hour? Or how many man hours produce a cubic yard of concrete? And it's really simple. So we go at the end of the year, and we say, you poured 1,000 yards of concrete for the year.

You had 10 employees. You spent 100 hours. So do the math. It's pretty simple. That's a real simple equation. If it's a framing contractor, we use board feet of lumber. And I hear this all the time. Well, yeah, Randall, but you know, the walls go up a lot clearer than the ceilings. I said, that's fine, but we just need a UCD. So if we can break any contractor down to what is the universal common denominator in plumbing, it's foot of pipe. The minimum size it is, it's feet of pipe. If it's electrical, it's called rope or they bend pipe and pull wire. So rope is, it's wire. So there's all kinds of universal common and non-nators for different traits. Now, there is one that I have discovered and done a lot of research on,

and I use it all the time in my contractors, and it's universal. It's across all contractors. It is employees, staff. So the universal common and non-nator is how many employees employees they have and then we can do some calculations on that but i want to go back to answer your question about that contractor who starts out and he he or she i hear this all the time i can't find good people there's a cesspool of things flowing in cesspool that are plumbers, electricians, drywallers, carpenters, garage door installers, you name it. And they're all terrible. Okay. There is a wonderful author

and his name is Dr. W. Edward Deming. Have you heard of Deming? Yeah, I have. Okay. I love Deming. He's fantastic. I have a PMP. My dissertation is on Deming. And I want to address that question about people really briefly. There is a country in this world that if that country were compressed and all landmasses, you know, you just took it in your hand, just compress it into one little square or rectangle, like on a globe, that country would fit inside the borders of the state of Montana. That country is about the third or fourth largest powerhouse in the world. That country was almost bombed into the Stone Age in World War II. It's Japan. We dropped two nukes on that country. Japan, before the nukes were dropped, they were pretty arrogant. They knew everything about everything. Once they had the nukes dropped

on them, they were bound in the 20s. They had nothing to lose. And so the U.S. sent some people to help rebuild Japan. And one of the problems they had was MacArthur couldn't make a call across Tokyo. So MacArthur got a hold of and brought Dr. Shuhart in, who's a communications expert. Shuhart came and took a look at it and said, you don't have a communications problem, you have a systems problem. And so they brought in Dr. Edward Deming. And Deming comes in and takes a look at the situation and said, well, you know what? I can do for Japan what I did for the U.S.

agricultural department in the 20s and 30s. It's a systems problem. And so Deming began to preach the concept of quality. And I love Deming's definition of quality. It's a predictable

result. And so he identified a couple of the Japanese industries and said, you'd manufacture, you know, like scooters and bicycles. And half the bicycles you manufacture fail in the first year. You have achieved quality if it's a predictable result. Now all we got to do is go through and figure out how to make it down to, make it up to 51% in 60 and so on and so forth. And how we do that is we focus on the process, the system, not the people. And Deming, who was a statistician,

he said that 97% of all problems rest at the feet of management because management decides where the building is going to be, what kind of the in-committee stock is and the tools and equipment. 3% of the problems are people problems. And so everything is about the system, the process, and so on and so forth. So now what we've done in our broad businesses is I focus on the process and the system. I don't care whose fault it is because fault is worthless.

All I care about is what's the process. So the contractor who's by himself and he says, I can't hire anybody because they're all stupid. Well, bless your heart. I understand. I truly understand. But let's take a step back and let's say, do the people you hire,

are you hiring a lot of mentalists who can read your mind? I can't read minds. So what if we were to document our process? That's the key. So the people that serve themselves and they stay with themselves, they're simply mentalists. I live on my own head and everything in my head is perfect. And if you don't think like I think, then you're no good.

But then if we start to document just a little bit, you can go to that three employees. Now, going from one employee to three employees is not that difficult because they can communicate by holding one by the throat in each hand and eyeball the third one. And they can do what I call over the campfire. The key is to go to one to three is if they start to write things down and document the process, life is good. To go from three to 10 requires an enormous amount of documentation. It requires some operations. Does this make sense? I'm obsessed with manuals. I got to tell you real quick, I broke with this guy named Al Levy and he helped us put some really important manuals with processes together. And it's the 80-20 rule, get 80% of it documented.

You don't have to worry about the crazy stuff. Don't document every single scenario because you want people to go to the manual for their position and understand what's good and bad or what's running. But if you look at any successful franchise that's been able to scale, it's all about the processes. And people always go, well, don't you believe in the people? And I say, I believe one thing, the process dictate the people that I get. The way I interview them, the way I find them, the way I check their history, the way I background check them. So the people come from a process. And absolutely absolutely I believe in people, but the process is what dictates everything. And I've, I just grabbed a couple of books off my shelf. The Toyota way by Jeffrey Liker, you know, double or triple the speed of any business process, build quality in a workplace

systems, eliminate waste, turn employees into control, quality control inspectors. And it talks about lean. And it literally, the two-second lean by Paul Akers, I buy this book for everybody, all my managers that work here, because we're a lean company. And we're always thinking about how to get more efficient, how to develop a better process, how to get rid of waste, how to make employees happy, how to create a better culture. And it's all about Toyota. And it's all about Japan. and it's all about japan and it's funny that you brought up dr deming because that actually is the root of all this stuff so interesting stuff you brought me back to the basics here that is so true well now here's a

you should delve into the expansion and contraction isoquant which we're going to right now so the expansion and contraction isaquant is like a stair of steps so let's visualize our minds you know we have like a like 10 stairs and they're concrete stairs and they go up 10 stairs and there's a platform or a plateau then that plateau goes for a period of time and there's 10 steps to go down either side. I've done the zero. Well, that first step in the expansion isoquant is I start a business. I'm a handyman. I'm a plumber. I'm a contractor. I'm going to be a home builder wherever I am. So that's the first step. They take that step and they become a contractor. The next expansion isoquant is they hired an employee and they get to three employees.

Now, to do that, they have to have some type of process somewhere. It may be rudimentary, but it's something. Now, with a lot of contractors, I see this all the time. They say, Randall, I can't get beyond three. You know, four and five would be nice. I just can't because I can't find people. And that's, Tommy, that's where I say, let's take a peek. Show me your operations manual.

Show me your checklist for installing concrete. Show me your checklist for installing a garage door. Show me a checklist for roughing in a two-story, three-bath, two-bedroom, four-bedroom house for electrical. Oh, we don't have one of those. Oh, no problem. Let's put one together. And that's painful,

but if they'll put it together, they can go from three to 10 fairly easily. Now, there's another grand list I use. This is very important with people listening to this. The people that got you where you are today are not necessarily the people who are going to take you to where you're going tomorrow. Very, very important. I hate to say it, but I agree. I mean, there's certain players that work for me that can, but what's very difficult is you've got what the people that wear a lot of hats and they're good at it and they like it and they're firemen and they're good firemen and they're good at problem solving. But then you get the next caliber of a manager that says, I'm not going to take care of everything. I'm going to follow the manual. I'm going to adhere

by the manual. I'm going to use steps of delegation and steps of corrective action if it's not followed. And instead of giving people the answer, I'm going to make it easily available to find and continue to lead them to that so they don't become reliant on me. And the next caliber up from that is more, it's all systematic processes. And I hate to say it, but the old cliche is it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks. It's hard to take somebody that learned a certain way and can mature within the company five years later and go from where you were at 3 million to 50 million. And then they go, well, it doesn't really, it's not what it, what happened to what it used to be.

Right. I'm like, look, it's changed. It's evolutionized. It's different. This is a new millennium. We communicate differently. Everything's different. You're right.

We got to roll with the punches if you embrace. So I think a lot of that too,andall is is teaching the people early on that you better embrace change or you're not going to have a position here within the next year oh oh tommy you're so right you are so right and one of the things that we do i love amazon just a big fan of amazon and so every so often you know there's a good book that comes out in amazon like the gift good to great you know all kinds of books and who blew my cheese so home service millionaire it'll be a home service millionaire yes in three months that's my book there you go i love it the home service in three months i love it that'd be a great book too so what we do and when i recommend my clients i say

readers are leaders okay your mind is mind is, if you please, it's a little bit like a body of water. If you don't put fresh water in, it becomes a swamp. So we go to Amazon or so often, and we'll buy a bunch of books for our staff. We'll pass them out to the staff. And then I wait and listen and hear because I know who's reading those books

because they'll comment on them. We eat lunch together. We provide lunch. We pay for people to eat lunch and so on and so forth. And it's a working lunch. We each have our different things we're at and what our afternoon schedule is and what issues are involved. And when someone brings up, hey, you know, I was just reading in the Home Service Millionaire in three months. And Tommy said, fill in the blank, I know I've got a leader. So this is one of the keys that I tell my clients

as well. Your staff will not necessarily buy a book, but go ahead and spend the 10 bucks a piece and buy a book, pass it out, and then wait to see who comments on the book, because those are the people who are going to take you to that next level but it's you're right it's really important because going from three to ten is a little tough but when you go from 10 to like 15 if you have a bookkeeper fire them because the bookkeeper will be overwhelmed they don't understand what's going to take place with the additional transactions involved. And they get a little concerned and the accounting is out of control and they don't know what to do.

So again, 50 to 100, same thing. You've either got to grow your C-level, your corporate level, or you need to replace them. And that is the area. I call that the death valley between 10 and 50, because a lot of contractors, God bless them, I love them, they're fantastic. A lot of contractors will not change people. And I have a randomism, you can't change people. You change people. So you can't take somebody who is with you at 10 and go to 50 unless they grow internally. And the best way to grow internally that I have found is, you know, it's kind of a fact, Tommy, if a person were to say, hang around with attorneys for four years, every day you hang around attorneys and you talk to attorneys and you

do it, you read law books and you become familiar. It's called law school. Become a lawyer. Same thing for a dentist or a doctor. Okay. So I tell my clients, I say, where are you at today? Because this is very personal and people listen to this podcast and do it internally. I wouldn't judge any of your friends. Make a list of the six people you spend most time with. Guestimate what their annual income is and guesstimate what you think their net worth is. And let's say the six people that a person listens to this podcast, the six people you spend time with are making $100,000 a year. That's $600,000. And each one of those people have a net worth, a house, maybe some investments, and their net worth is $100,000 each.

Well, divide $600,000 income by six, and your income is within 20% of that. It's either $80,000 or $120,000. Your equity, your net worth is between $80,000 and $120,000. So the best way to increase your income and your thinking and your net worth is spend time with people who are very successful. I spend a lot of time with millionaires and billionaires

and I love them. And I have a lot of conversations with these people on a regular basis. And they're very giving of their time. And it sounds funny. Okay, we're in the high-tech world, which there's nothing wrong with that. I have a library in my house

and I've got over 5,000 books. I keep adding them so often. And yes, they are books. They are ink on paper and they are books written about and by very successful people. And so when I read that book, I'm having a conversation with the Ray Kroc story.

I'm in conversation with McDonald's. I'm having a conversation with Bill Gates hard drive. I'd never met Bill Gates, but Bill Gates and I have a conversation through his books. Does this make sense? Yeah. What I think a good, easy way of looking at it is you don't need to go out and find a bunch of

new friends, although networking and hanging out with people that fly like eagles is a great thing. And you don't need to definitely give all your old friends up that you grew up with. But by reading and spending 50% of your time reading, whereas instead of going and drinking or maybe going on your bowling league, take some time to read actually gets you to that level. And if you add those people up and consider those part of where you're spending your time,

it's a great way to move up your income level and net worth and also probably your education and the way you talk to people and the way you interact with people. Absolutely. And it's so funny because I've run across a lot. I haven't actually had the opportunity to associate with people

who are billionaires and millionaires. One that comes to the top of my mind is a guy by the name of Jay Abraham. And he put together a marketing seminar. I've done one quite a while. What's his name? Jay Abraham. Okay. He's from the 70s and 80s.

He's a marketing guru. The guy's a billionaire. He's phenomenal. He's a little rough around the edges. There's also a guy, Dan Kennedy. I know Dan Kennedy. I've got all of his books. No BS about marketing and all that. Now, what's interesting, you probably have too. I've been to seminars for both those guys. They're very, very expensive. So I've had the opportunity to be in the same room with these guys and they

are absolutely phenomenal. Hard as nails. And Dan Kennedy, he's just very blunt, doesn't pull any punches. And Dan Kennedy is very strong. He says, look, if you don't read at least a book a month, then you don't belong here. Don't waste my time. And he said, if you're really smart, you read a book a week. And I try to do a book a week. I'm not that great at it. I think you read one or two books a week yourself. Yeah. I mean, I got to tell you, I download at least five books a week on audible and I buy at least three books a week, but I don't, if I read the 80, 20 rule in a chapter, I don't have to reread it. Like I talked to you about Parkinson's law. There's a chapter on that. And if I read through a book, the first two chapters, and I'm like,

this guy wrote a book to write a book, not to give out any good information. So I'd say about two thirds of the book, I go all the way through one third. I get rid of right off the bat because I went through the first three chapters. I'm very selective. If I'm going to make it through, if I go through the first three chapters and I'm through it, I'm going to make it through. If I go through the first three chapters and I'm through it, I'm going through the whole book and I'm obsessed with reading. I got to tell you, it's something I pride myself in and I try, especially when I'm on vacation is I can go through three books in a day.

I mean, not uncommon. So you're absolutely right that I just feel like it changes the whole paradigm of where you're at. And, you know, the biggest thing I'd advise the listeners out there is if you read a book and you like a concept, don't go in and incorporate it in everybody else's life. Because the first thing they say is great. What seminar did Randall come from today? Or what book did he read yesterday? Or that's a big mistake that happens. And I think it's important to get it into a habit of your own life to where

you can prove it out to yourself before you're going to go implement a bunch of new things. So I used to be that guy. Now I go home. I implemented in my private life. I make sure it works in my work life. And then I say, I've been doing this for too much.

You guys have been watching me do it. I'm ready to implement it into our system. Love it. Love it. You know, Randall, I got a couple quick questions for you. I'm going to take some of the stuff on here, put it on here that we've had before we got started because I think there was some great stuff.

One thing I want to just summarize is the value of death is between one and three, three ten ten and fifty fifty and a hundred and a hundred and five hundred so we're at a hundred right now i'm at 220 i mean i'm on a race to get to 500 regardless i think i could get there by the end of next year good fact is manuals are getting more and more recitable the people are understanding now that we weren't kidding when we implemented this stuff and i'd love to talk to you about some of this stuff, get the stuff on the website as well. So let me ask you this. I always like to ask the people on the podcast, if there were three books, and I want you to really pay attention to who the audience is. And I'm not saying they're smart,

stupid, indifferent. I mean, any book you want, I'm just saying, if it could help them in the home service nature, maybe even help them in their lives, that'd be great. What would be the top three that you say, these are ones that you have to read? Well, that's a great question because there's a ton of them out there. Let me give that just a little bit of thought. You want to hear mine? Yes, please. Okay.

So the E-Myth Revisited is of course, you know, the Gerber. That one is just a basic fundamental book that I think it's a great story. And it makes sense. It's about the lady who has the pie business and there's a cake. And so that is the fundamental, the E-Myth. And then the next book is The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes. Absolutely incredible. The 12 concepts he applies there. And then I always love to give people profit first. Now that I recently read that I highly recommended that one last book is, like I said, I give everybody is the two second lean. It explains how to be lean within a company and the processes that you can develop. So those are ones that I just give everybody

that comes and works for me. And I love them. But yeah, you know, from good to great, I love those books or how built to last, you name it. I think if I went through the books just on my shelf here, I probably got raving fans. I've got some Seth Goodwin books. I got Phil Knight's Shoe Dogs.

I've got so many great books at Toyota Way. There's Launch, Double Double, Power Questions. I mean, Who is a Great Book About Hiring Employees? But yeah, well, you know, just give me your top book if you don't know off the top of your head. Well, I'll give you the three. The first one that did cross my mind, of course, was The E-Myth by Michael Gerber.

Yep. And Michael Gerber wrote three. I think it's The E-Myth, E-Myth Revisited, The E-myth by michael gerber yeah and michael gerber wrote three i think it's the e-myth he's revisited the e-myth contractor yeah all the michael gerber stuff is really good the e-myth is this it's a real paradigm shift here's what happens in psychology we have a phrase it's called we all have a state of mind or state of being it's what needs to take place was you need to frozen in a state of being. So you need to unfreeze, change state, refreeze. So I like E-Myth

because it really brings it down to here's some problems, here's some results. And he talks about processes a lot. The second book that, this is more for the advanced class. It's called Out of the Crisis by Dr. W. Edward Deming.

Now, a precursor. Deming is not what I would consider to be the most engaging author on earth. It does take a bit. You have to kind of slog through it. But once you read Out of the Crisis and you get to the very end, you kind of look back and say, oh, my gosh, it was fantastic. And Out of the Crisis, I'd like to make a quick note. If you can write this in the show notes or something.

There's a concept he calls the red bead experiment. It's like beads that run your neck. Red bead Experiment. And if the listeners, if you ever get a chance to see the Red Beat Experiment in real life, if you're in business at all for six months or 20 years, and you have a business that's doing $100,000 or $100 million, and I saw this in action, the Red Beat Experiment, and there were some people there that were very powerful, that had some very large businesses, over $100 million.

And everybody was laughing so hard. Our eyes were watering. It was so funny. And yet it is so true. It is a game changer. So I think it's actually online on YouTube. But if you get a chance to see that Red Beat Experiment, it is such an eye-opener. So E-Myth, Out of the Crisis, and the third book I really enjoy immensely. I'm kind of

tied for book three. So I'm going to say it's between two of them. One is the Ray Kroc story, and that's the story of McDonald's, how Ray Kroc developed McDonald's. And any contractor worth their salt had some character building experiences, which means you've been beat up a lot. You've had problems. I myself, we had a contracting business in the seventies and it didn't work out well. We lost a lot. So I've taken some pretty big hits, but those hits are what help you pick yourself up, dust yourself off and go again. The Ray Kroc story, it is heart-wrenching to see what this guy went through it was astounding he got screwed and tattooed eight

ways to tuesday and he still survived and mcdonald's is what it's today with a whole lot of systems in place so people that read the ray crock story they constantly read that and said my god well i thought I had a tough time. And I said, buddy, I don't know how this guy did it, but he did it. The fourth book, which is I'm vying for Ray Kroc in the fourth book, and this fourth book is a little bit controversial. Some people like it. Some people hate it.

So if the listener likes it, more power to you. If you hate it, then I understand. It is called Atlas Shrugged. So if the listener likes it, more power to you. If you hate it, then I understand. Okay. It is called Atlas Shrugged. So think of the Atlas, the weightlifter, and he has the globe on his back. Yeah. Shrugging. And that book is by Ayn Rand, A-Y-N, and her last name is R-A-N-D.

And she wrote that book in the 1920s. Now, what's interesting is Atlas Shrugged is a very long novel. It's like 1,200 pages. And it is absolutely amazing because I read that book probably once every couple of years. Tommy, it's so bizarre because it was written in the 1920s, and it could have been written yesterday. I love it. It is that powerful of a book. Now, I love that book.

The thing that Atlas Shrugged is the listener. If you're an entrepreneur, if you're somewhat self-reliant, as Emerson talks about, if you believe that you have the power to change yourself. You can't change anything else. You can't change what happens. You can't change what people do. But you have the power over your reactions to what takes place. Then you're going to love Anne Ayn Rand, Alice Shrugged. If a person is of the opinion that nothing is my fault, it's all society's fault, the rich should pay for this, the rich should pay for that, then you're going It's all society's fault. The rich should pay for this. The rich should pay for that.

And you're going to hate Andrew. That's not me. You might like it. I don't know. But I read Atlas Shrugged. And I read it back in the – a really, really good friend of mine. I have a lot of respect for him. I recommended Atlas Shrugged.

And he said, randomly, he says, you're either going to love it or you're going to hate it. And I read that book and I tell you what, I was never the same. I have not been the same since because all of a sudden I have a different perspective. So it's all about understanding. And it's a long story and the protagonist goes through all kinds of problems, but at the very end, it all makes sense. And the idea, I don't want to give away, this is not a spoiler alert, I just want to say that if a contractor were to read that book and then reflect on their own lives and all the stuff that's gone well,

all the stuff that's gone bad, and then you look back and you say, I have learned so much. I know what to do now. I know where I went wrong. I know I can improve. And for me, that's a game changer. So Ray Kroc's story and Atlas Shrugged, the two, number three is Out of Crisis and E-Myth. And they all have one thread in common.

The system is the solution solution i'll give you a randomism i teach contractors how to be process dependent not people dependent people are good we need people and good people love processes and they can follow processes you know for example you invite me this interview this is fantastic you have a process I got several emails which is fantastic it was lay out very clearly he said the only call at this time log in you know what Tommy I can follow directions I love your process so there's a family theme is process and yeah once the process is in place it's amazing what can

happen you know money isn't everything but it sure helps when you know where to shop so so let me ask you this it sounds like to me a lot of people out there could use your help i think that you have a lot of solutions whether it be consulting to get the systems dialed in to get those KPIs or just the basic day-to-day to be able to trust their numbers. What's the best way to get in touch with you if they have a question or they're ready to get some help from you? The best way is to go to our website, which is www.fasteasyaccounting.com. So go to the website, take a peek, look around a little bit. On the right-hand side, we have four offers.

One is called the Bookkeeping 36-Point Review, and that's very popular. We get a lot of people who say, I think my accounting is working okay, but I could use review. And what happens is they can click that button, fill out the form, and there's a whole simple process to follow. And they can send me a copy of the QuickBooks. I'll do a 36-point review. And in some cases, you don't schedule a call like this.

Like you're on the phone for half an hour or longer than necessary. And I'll give them some actual information. I'll say, this is what I see that you could do right now in the next few days to improve your business. So that's a real popular thing. I do a lot of that sort of stuff. And then people do that. And they'll call me up back here to swap. Then we'll do some consulting if they need it. The other thing that people do that they enjoy is the outsource accounting. So we do offer outsourced accounting. And what that is, is we take over all the accounting. We can do it on QuickBooks or Xero, and they can have access to it on the web through call. Third thing is called the bookkeeping templates or the DIY.

And this happened about two years ago. People ask us all the time, hey Randall, can I just buy the sharp accounts? No. Hey Randall, can I just buy the cost accounts? No. Hey, Randall, can I just buy the cost codes? No. Hey, can I just buy the work in process accounts and cost codes? No. Can I borrow your attention? No. Then one day I woke up and I thought, what's one of your randomisms?

You'd be right or rich. Pick one. About two years ago, we started developing what we call the bookkeeping templates. You can click that little button on our website, and that takes people to the store. We have over 1,500 things in that store, among which is the outsourced accounting. We have the QuickBooks setups at Costco. There's zero consulting and training.

So the website's the first place to start. They can also give us a call here at the office. Our phone number is 1-800-361-1770. So call, go to the website. And a final thing for people who are interested, I did cover briefly the five KPIs on the QuickBooks icon bar, and a lot of people have learned how to do that. If you ever go to the www.fasteasykind.com forward slash podcast dash bonuses and click on that, it'll bring you to the page called Podcast Bonus, and if it's an appointment, and we will install the KPIs on their QuickBooks desktop. We showed in the video.

We charge $99 to do that normally. If people listen to Tommy's podcast, we will do it free. Zero. Zip. No cost. Just for listening. All they do is they scroll down, they book an appointment, they're off to the races, and then we dial in and do that for them.

Now that's all the good news. Great for the bad news. I'm ready. I'm not much of a salesman. Good. Yeah, I'm really not. I'm an accountant. Okay. So what happens is we get this all the time. People get the KPIs installed and they're kind of, you know, a little cautious. Okay. You're going to try to find somebody. I get it all installed. I said, do you have any questions? No, I don't. Well, if you do, please give us a call and it's good talking to you and bye for now. Click. And if you don't call back later and say, well,

I thought you were going to tell me something. No, we have plenty of clients. I don't need to sell anybody anything. But if you're a contractor, I do want to do what I can. I'll bend over backwards, do anything I can to help you become successful if you're a contractor. Another piece of bad news, I got to tell you flat out, we get this occasionally. We just got a call recently from a, I have a PMP, Project Management Professional. So I got a call from a project management organization. They're very large, 50, 60 million a year. And they have a client that's doing 25 or $30 million.

And they're in project management they need somebody to do their accounting and i said well i could take you on as a client but here's the problem i'm very expensive for people like yourself and if i have a choice between working with a brand new handyman contractor or a brand new trade contractor that just started up and i'm charging him 10 bucks or working with you, I'm going to charge you 500 an hour, then I've got to go to the handyman because he's more important to me. So that's the bad news. If you're not a contractor, I love you. I think you're fantastic. I hope that life works out well for you. If you're not a

contractor, please don't call me because I'm not going to work with you. And I mean it with love my heart. Okay. I really do. If you're a contractor, I want to work with you. I love it. Well, listen, I got to tell you, Randall, I do a lot of these and I thoroughly enjoyed your company in general. I think just the way you talk, your stories, the knowledge in your head is just, it's exciting to get a piece of it out. And what I like to do is follow up with you on some of this stuff. I'm going to check out everything on your store, possibly even work with you down the line, because I think there's some interesting things that I like to tell my guys. I don't come up with every sales process and design everything. What I do is I find

the best guy and I interview my best guy on a daily basis. If a guy goes from a $200 door sales average or service call average to 900, I call him up and I'll ask him 25 questions. And I say, what changed? What did you start telling yourself? What did you do when you drove there? How did you prepare? Did you sleep more? Did you do this? And I just, I gather this knowledge and it becomes, I almost think I came up with it by the time I'm done with it because I've heard it from so many people and I've kind of just built my own stuff.

So I think this is going to go a long way. And I just wanted to say that you've been amazing. I'll be following up with you. And if you guys want more, we're going to put a lot of the links and some of the things that he talked about on the website. So you guys have access to it. And we'll also put a link to the links and some of the things that he talked about on the website. So you guys have access to it.

And we'll also put a link to his webpage in his store on there. So Randall, once again, it's been a pleasure. Randall's last name is D-Hart, D-E-H-A-R-T, and it's capital D and capital H. And that's the best way if you want to contact him through LinkedIn or something. But is there anything else you wanted to add here at the end? The only thing I'd like to add at the end is if you're a contractor listening to this podcast, just know that you've got a lot of support. There are a lot of people that love you and support you.

And we want the best for you if you're a contractor. If you're not a contractor, I hope you're not too. If you're a contractor, just know that sometimes contractors, they, they feel alone, you know, it's like they're cowboys and cowgirls, but just know you're not alone. There's a lot of people pulling for you. So sounds great. Well, thanks Randall. I'll be in touch. I appreciate your time today. You're welcome, sir. Thanks Tommy. Have a great day. You too. Bye for now. Hey guys, I really appreciate you tuning into the podcast.

I want to let you know that my book is available right now on Amazon. It's called The Home Service Millionaire. That's homeservicemillionaire.com. Just go to the website. It'll show you exactly where and how to buy the book. I poured two years of knowledge into this book and I had 12 contributors. Everybody from the COO at HomeAd advisor to the CEO of Alpac and of course Aura the CEO of Service Titan it tells you how to have the right mindset and become a millionaire and think like a millionaire it goes into exactly how to

turn on lead generation have those phones ringing off the hook for the customers that you want to be calling, where you can make money and get great reviews. It also goes into simple things like how to attract A players. Listen, if you want a great apple pie, you need to buy good apples and you need to know where to buy those apples. And it also talks about simple things like knowing how to keep the score. You should have your financial check every week. You should know exactly what's coming in and out of your account. You should know when to cut advertising that's not working. And more than anything, you should know how to cut employees that aren't making it for you. Listen, you might have a big heart, but this book is going to show you how to make decisions built on numbers. I hope

you pick up the book and I really appreciate everything. I hope you're having a great day. Tune in next week. Thank you.