The Home Service Expert Podcast - Having All The Great Techs You’ve Ever Wanted

Episode Date: July 29, 2022

Al Levi is the author of The 7-Power Contractor and co-author of The Home Service Millionaire. A former contractor who worked for 25 years in every aspect of his family’s Long Island-based HVAC/plumbing business, Al has been rated as one of the 25 most influential contractors in the United States by Plumbing & Mechanical Magazine. He now helps other contractors learn how to run their businesses with less stress and more success through consultations, workshops, and webinars. In this episode, we talked about recruitment, apprenticeship, training manuals, orientation process...

I worked with a great service manager years ago, luckily early in my career. And I was explaining about my orientation process. He goes, I love that. That's one of the most important things. And I'm going, it's important, but why are you making such a big deal out of it? And what he shared with me is very profound. He said, the way that I orient people in their first two weeks dictates the success that they have with the rest of the time at my company. And I was just like leaning back going, oh, come on, that's a little over the top, don't you think?

He goes, nope. He said, if you remember when you were in junior high school or middle school for some people out there, you felt like a big person, right? But as soon as you got to high school, you were that little fish in a big pot. And what you really would have loved to have is a big brother, big sister coaching you and steering you along, which is what senior techs and field supervisors do. 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. All right, we are live with Al Levy. Al and I have been working together now for a long, long time. Feels like a long time. Al is an expert in business systems, operations, staffing, sales, marketing, plumbing, HVAC, and electrical.

He's based here in Phoenix with me. He wrote The 7 Power Contractor. He's the president of that company. He started in 2002. And then OSI and Comfort Services, he did that for about 26 years. Former contractor who's worked for 25 years in every aspect of his family Long Island-based HVAC plumbing business. Al has been rated as 25 most influential contractors in the United States by Plumbing and Mechanical Magazine. Thanks to the systems he's put into place, he was able to sell his share of the business and retire before reaching 50 a long-time columnist for plumbing and mechanical magazine he published a book called

the seven power contractor l how are you today i am doing great it is so nice here in phoenix today not like 114 over the weekend yeah it's getting kind of hot it I just got back from a really fun golf trip in Michigan. We went to the UP. I got bit up, though. I've got like 90 lights. I know. You should know that there's plenty of mosquitoes up there. I mean, they're everywhere. That's one thing I like about Arizona is they don't get you too bad here. I agree. So today's a really interesting topic. I think that this is one that everybody should be watching because we always, as you put it, try to find lightning in a bottle. We're trying to find these guys in our trades, and it's just impossible. I remember Julian Skadden from Nexstar.

He said there's no way at your rate of growth that you could find people in your industry and they're few and far between if someone moves here they're usually looking me up and asking me if they could have a job and that those guys end up being pretty good but very rarely do you get lucky to find just everything you're looking for because they got all these old habits and and these predispositions in their minds so when we're able to train them from scratch it's amazing it's so hard to even train the guys that have been here six seven eight years oh yeah way of doing things oh not even a doubt and what i love about this podcast i love all of my podcasts so don't write me any emails or facebook posts that are bad. But I particularly love this one because

Tommy is living proof of our work together. Because when I first arrived at Tommy, he was basically like me in that I was a hostage at my own company. I had to put up with misbehavior of people and staff because I needed them. And whenever I was trying to hire lightning in a bottle like Tommy called, I would have to hope they were willing and not in great techs versus great techs who wanted to tell me what they would and wouldn't do and when they would do it and when they wouldn't do it. It's a very difficult life. Forget about the scale that Tommy has accomplished. I mean, we started with 15 million and not making as much money as we'd like to where he is today, trending to $150 million, I think it is.

Yeah. For me, because I'm old, the time being very short, Tommy may not think it's as short as me, but it really is amazing. And what he mastered is by putting the manuals in place, he finally had that platform with the org chart, the manuals, and getting things under control so that he could not only handle it in Phoenix and everywhere else that means in Arizona, but he could also export this model to shops that he's not there every day. And without that, you can't get it. But what I like to think of

in the way of manuals and training, ultimately, there are means to the end. And what's the end here is finally having all the great techs you ever wanted, who are also willing. And this came from the conversations of my brother, Richie and I, and Richie and I were the last two techs standing in our office at 2 a.m. And we were 25 techs, by the way. So this happened sickeningly too often. But, you know, he would go is why don't they do this? And why don't they do this? And why don't they do this? And I just looked at him and this is way back. And I said to him, if they could do all that, why are they working here? Why don't they go down the road and just have their own business and find out how miserable it is?

And so he said, you get the whole employee. And when the words left my mouth, I actually listened to it. You get the whole employee. So that was what put us on the path. One of the steps that put us on the path of our best shot was to hire willing apprentices with no skills and then have all the training systems it took to have willing great techs with great skills and as many as we wanted so listen to me when i say this tommy is going to show how many he just put out on the road in what you guys think is a very tight labor market can't't find great techs. Well, no kidding. You know, it's like this war was fought back in the 80s. You think it's new to you because it is new to you.

But this will come again, just riding the cycles. And I've been through all the cycles, as my face will show. But I can tell you right now, the majority of the clients that work with me did not experience what you're experiencing, which is a great tech shortage, because they built into the three things. Find the holes in your existing techs and fix them. Hire the new experience and find out their holes faster before they get out in the field and are a disaster. But ultimately, the freedom comes from building them from scratch. That's what will do it. And I know the answer that you're thinking to yourself as well.

That sounds great. I'll get to that. But you won't. And because this moment of pain will go away. And here's what the great Ellen Rohr that obviously Tommy and I know a lot and good friend of mine and helped Tommy as well. But she and I had plenty of time to ride in the car together when we did co-consulting. She looks over at me and she goes, Al, when is the best time to plant an oak tree?

And I said, Ellen, I grew up in New York City. I don't even know what an oak tree is. So why don't you just tell me? She goes, 10 years ago and today. I said, what does that mean? She goes, you'll be back here in this same situation if you don't do this right now. And that's what I'm advocating to you. Now it takes, hang on, because this is something you probably haven't thought of, systems to do that. And there's pieces to this to leverage these manuals. So instead, there's many moments when we realized we had to do this. But we were a New York City union shop and we had to kind of take what came along our way. But the union never helped us getting employees. A lot of people go, well, you're a union shop. They send employees. Uh-uh. None. Zero. They just made sure that they

all belonged to the union and paid dues, which I get. I had to create all of these systems. And part of the thing that annoyed me back then was they got promoted based on how long they were there. And the reality is the guys who were there, I showed up and I start training. And six months in, I ask a question to a guy who had been at the shop for 20 years. I go, what's the difference between these two heating items? He goes, beat me, kid. One's red and one's green. That was the answer he gave me, Tommy.

And so it's frightening what your people do and don't do. But it created this path of what I understood. I was sharing this story the other day, which is Richie and I, it's hard to believe we were once young. And so it was way back when, but we were young and we were like, you know, late twenties, we're sitting in an auditorium and a guy on the stage says this thing to us, not to us alone, all people. He goes, the average age of the tech is moving to age 50. And Tommy, when you're in your late 20s early 30s and you think about techs in the field average age of 50 we were just like freaking out so we build a training center right we're going to get this

fixed we're going to build a training center we do I trained him year later Richie's in the field and he goes didn't you show him how to do this and I go I did then he would call up someplace else and go didn't you show him how to do this and I go go, I did. Then he would call up someplace else and go, didn't you show them how to do this? And I go, I did. But they've been out in the field so long, there's nothing to attach to. So we made the big mistake of not having written the manuals first. So we created the manuals, 150 grand's worth of money, no complaints could be paid in two years. And when we finished, Tommy, we looked at the trade manuals and we looked at the training center we said we built it all wrong all wrong because what's in the trade manuals tells you what tasks they must do in the training center it's not as bad

a crime as it sounds not the worst thing in the world, because even like Tommy, I mean, Tommy is like on steroids with this. You keep on building better and better training centers as you progress. So this time we built it right. And we also learned the missing ingredient was the training curriculum, documented training curriculum. And here's the last piece. We had to become better trainers. And the reason we had to become better trainers is, as Tommy knows, there are guys that are great. They know their subject. They're really phenomenal. Ask them any question, they'll know it. Bad news is they're so boring, you'll be asleep.

Unless you can learn to sleep, you're out of luck. Or there's somebody very charismatic like Tommy, but doesn't know what Tommy knows. And so if you ask them any question of any depth, they're out of luck. That's why you have to be the primary trainer. Now, if you get to be as big as Tommy, Tommy makes sure his trainers can do both of what I just said, not one or the other. That's what you need to do. You know why I love it, Tommy? Because I've worked with a lot of great clients, as you know, but let's face it, not everybody gets things done. So when I originally told, when we were doing staffing power, which is always recruiting, always hiring, always orienting, always training, always retaining. So Tommy and I were

talking with also, you know, Brian was in there. Adam was in there. Not sure if Luke was there originally, but we were talking about where do you find these great young, willing apprentices? And I shared with Tommy is that my brother Richie and I figured out what's the worst career than ours, the trades. And immediately we said, restaurant trade, convenience store. So we would go to every place we experienced great service.

And in the old days, we handed them a business card. And of course, Tommy's got a better way of doing it these days. But the same principle, where you can find young, willing people face-to-face and get them into a better career. Where are you going in these other things? Everybody goes, no one wants to enter the trades. Oh, gee, that's new. No, it isn't. But getting out there and doing what Tommy's talking about and pressing the flesh. Now, yes, I am a firm believer. We always made our own successful people who have grown up through the trades our best recruiters. So Tommy and I

had that recruiting program and bonuses for them. Best thing you can do is make happy people go out and be your missionaries to other happy people because they know who they are that should come join the team. In my case, though, in a union shop, I don't know if Tommy had this problem. I had this in a union shop. And fortunately for me, there was always one guy who would tell me to my face what the rest of them didn't have the guts to. And he said to me, I'm not bringing anybody in here for two reasons. I said, go ahead. What's the two reasons? He goes, one, if they come in and fail, you're going to hold that against me. I said, okay, what's the second one? He goes, they're not coming in here to take my calls away from me. I said, okay, what's the second one? He goes, they're not coming in here to take my calls away

from me. I said, okay. And I brought them all together and I go, I never gave the guy's name away, obviously. And I go, here's two things that I feel I didn't explain well enough. You know, the org chart where you get to move up, you're never moving up if new people don't come in. So they are not a threat to your job. They're not taking your calls. I'll make all the calls in the world. You already know that I have spokeshops all over the place. Wouldn't you like to run one someday? Wouldn't you like to have your own team?

Wouldn't you like to be a field supervisor the right way so that you own your own business without all the headaches of it? I'm going to make that possible. The second part is, if you bring me somebody young and willing that wants to do this, it's my problem now, not yours. It's never reflection.

If they stay and you help coach them like a big brother, big sister, you will get more money. So that's the recruiting thing. Today, of course, all the shops, including, as Tommy knows, the Drain franchise, which just cranked out 20 guys in one shot 20 guys which would be impressive except toppy how many people did you just crank out between 20 and 30 40 years starting july 1st pretty impressive pretty impressive so let's make the math dumber you're at home gone well that's fine because tommy the monster shop

you are a small shop i was not a small shop. But what I needed was more trucks on the road because we always had way more calls than we could do. So in our particular case, I would try to go to class with five good apprentices. They needed to spend 60 to 90 days to prove the things that I needed to know before I wasted time with my training. You had to earn your way to class, apprentice to junior tech. And so in that time, what was I looking for? Could you show up on time day after day? Could you be here day after day? Could you dress right day after day? Were you willing to pitch in? And what I always call it is a leaner. I don't know if Tommy knows the

expression, but if you're out on a job as an apprentice, if you're leaning up against the wall, scrolling through your phone and your feed, I don't want you. And the guys who I sent you with, they don't want you either. Are you getting in next to me and helping? Because that's what you're supposed to be doing so that you earn your way to class and moving up the org chart. Apprentice to junior tech, junior tech to senior tech. And when your company gets big enough, typically eight to 12 service techs, because I want to build two service field supervisors and three install crews, because I want to build one install field supervisor. Kind of dislike the name because people think that they ride around all day. They do not. Their job is to get people started. First point of contact. So your

service manager is not the choke point. Your install manager is not the choke point. So one of the things we really spent a lot of time with on that is the ride along form. We're looking at a lot of things. So we want to just know from the beginning, they show up on time. What is their vehicle? When you looked at it, was it clean? Were were they on social media did they ask great questions uh did they smile did they genuinely act concerned for the client all these things we really look at and we try to make sure now what we found though is we've got to pay these guys more money to take these guys along with them when they're doing the ride-alongs because if they don't they don't really want to don't. Yeah, I follow what you're saying. It's going to start eating.

If I'm spending all day teaching you, I can't really accomplish what I want. So backing down from what Tommy does, because this is performance pay. But in our case, it was hourly plus bonus. But you're right. Got to be able to do stuff. So we used to train them in-house. And that's what I share in this program. So it's recruiting,

then hiring right, and then orienting them. So when you have manuals and the rest of these systems, you want to get them oriented well. The story that I share is we were so desperate years ago, my brother Marty, who was the inside guy, never worked a day in his life out in the field. He used to nickname our hiring practice as the mirror test, M-I-R-R-O-R, which meant if you could fog it, you would be hired because we were so desperate. So when we changed it to always be recruiting and always hiring, we were desperate. So if Tommy would come along, we'd literally throw the keys at him. Go ahead, go get them.

And then be, of course, disappointed. So really, we finally did put together an orientation process but i will tell you my orientation process got better for my clients because i worked with a great service manager years ago luckily early in my career and i was explaining about my orientation process he goes i love that that's one of the most important things and i'm going it's important but why are you making such a big deal out of it? And what he shared with me is very profound. He said, the way that I orient people in their first two weeks dictates the success that they have with the rest of the time

in my company. And I was just like leaning back going, oh, come on, that's a little over the top, don't you think? He goes, nope. He said, if you remember when you were in junior high school or middle school, for some people out there, you felt like a big person, right? But as soon as you got to high school, you were that little fish in a big pond. And what you really would have loved to have is a big brother, big sister coaching you and steering you along, which is what senior tax and field supervisors do. You know, I do an orientation for three and a half hours, but also when they walk in, they've got books waiting for them. They've got new shirts. I mean, literally we're trying to

wow them. And, you know, I've been reading a lot of books on hiring because I'm writing a book on culture and hiring that you're going to be featured in. And the one commonality is like, worst thing that you could do is have them walk into a new job and say, here's who you're going to be following for the next two months. Good luck. You know, shadowing is better than nothing, but barely nothing. And I know you grew up in the restaurant trade and bartender restaurant. It's kind of like, watch me make a drink. Well, I was just in Starbucks today and they they have somebody new, and the lead guy who I know very well, he's busy making drinks,

and he's trying to coach somebody about how much ice and how much cream. I'm thinking to myself, if I could, I'd go, come here a second. This should be done way before they get out here and start touching stuff. But everybody's in such a big rush. Even the great Starbucks is no longer following the things that you know, Tommy, which is the better you orient them, the more you're setting them up for success and the more systematized that it is. So what I do in Staffing Power, which Tommy will happily tell you, was a lot of money. A lot of money.

See, he's smiling. Because Tommy always tells me about how much money that it costs to bring the great Al Levy in, to which I feel terribly bad because he's only 10 times his sales and his profit. I really feel awful. But I'm going to move along. The good news is five steps, the staffing power I talked about about sets you up to take a young, willing apprentice to junior tech. And what does junior tech mean is if you have a trade manual that's this big, you can't just train me for four to five months. And it's not like they're doing, they're still working in the field. This isn't like sitting in a chair. It's two hours at a

time, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, pretty intense training. Tommy does a very intense training, which a lot of my guys do now too, is you want to find out if they can talk to customers or sell, because I believe talking to customers and make good recommendation is the essence of sales, especially if you have a sales system. If they're not going to be able to do that, how do you become a service tech? The answer is you can't. In this world today, you can't because you cannot serve the customer well and you cannot generate the profit that you will have a great career and that the company needs. So we have a mutual interest here. And it's better to find that out early and wait till all the way to the end when

I, in my case case i had five spots five because i was going to class with five guys looking to graduate three of them and those three in trucks each of them back then could produce 250 000 talking years ago that's 750 000 and if i did it twice a year that was 1.5.5 million. So just think about the math here. Today, what is it, Tommy? $300,000, $400,000? Well, it used to be $500,000, and I actually got this written down. My goal now is a million-dollar producer, and they hear that 20,000 times when they're here.

It's how do you get to a million dollars, and we really practice the turnover. And what we focused on as eye contact body language tonality making a friend i think we spend more time in our training center teaching people how to be good human beings how to use the people's names we use their names 10 times when they're in the garage yes we try to get into the house because everyone else is selling them out in that warm garage it's 140 degrees we're in their house. And then financing, you know, financing is probably the best thing there is out there. Somebody was asking, got a few questions here. What is the best practice to find a technician? If we're talking about an existing technician, which I think is what

he's asking, because what I'm advocating is, yes, go ahead and find experienced people. We did plug the gap with experienced techs. So we had a referral program for our existing techs to bring us an existing tech. We did run ads. Obviously, today, the same thing as social media is the big thing. Having a happy tech telling you how great they're doing and making sure it's on all the social media channels, wherever your experienced techs would hang out. Yes, that's what they do. But be aware you're in a very competitive pool. And if you're always just going to try and find higher experienced tech, what makes you think they can do it your way?

Because they can't. Now, you can convert them with manuals and systems and you can make them better. But Tommy will attest to this, as will all of my clients. It is way easier. And the best techs you will ever have are the ones you build from scratch. There's no other answer for it. So yes, go ahead and do that. Use everything that you can. Really good ads. I mean, Tommy and I talked about it a long time ago. I had really good ads. I mean, Tommy and I talked about it a long time ago. I had really good ads once I realized how bad my ads were. My ads originally used to be, I want this, I want this, I want this, and I want this. And one day I just happened to read it and I'm going, yeah, I know what you want, but I'm out here with a job. Why do I want to go

to you? And so we had to rewrite the whole ad for that. I could hire experienced techs just as an FYI, because when I showed them the box or chart, and I explained that we have testing you have to go through, we don't know where to put you on our pay scale to fit it in. We paid salary plus bonus. We didn't know where to fit. So there was a lot of hands-on things that we could do with experienced techs to find out what they really did and didn't know in our hands-on training center. And because we had manuals, we could also fill in the holes because they were hiding the holes that they needed to know. That is really, in my opinion, the best way to find if you're talking strictly about experienced tech. So I don't know what that is here's uh one of the guys this guy is amazing josh

i'm over 350 000 in four months well done sir well done so one of the things i wanted to add to that is there's a thing called omnipresence it means you're everywhere yes and i think that we started doing events and mike bailey recently did one in milwaukee and it was kind of bunk and then the next day he went to a baseball game and he just set out a card out there and they've got 10 really great applications so it's one of those things where people say i don't understand i put an ad out there my problem with an ad if you're only going to do indeed and craigslist and monster and career builder you're only going to people that are looking for

a job that means so many people want to move on to something better so we just you're in a crowded pool you're in a crowded pool what tommy brings up a great point was one of the things that we never said i was bright and we were bright but one thing was we bang our head and we learned. We were great at marketing for customers and we were awful at marketing for people. We didn't even put money in the budget to do this. Think about that for a minute. And Tommy and I have discussed it, which is you've got to become a great marketer for talent, for the right people. Now, I need less talent when my skills get better, because I can take somebody who's willing with no talent to willing with great talent. And that makes the amount of candidates I have wider than I can put my hands out on the screen.

It's incredibly bigger field. And the way that you go to market, like Tommy's talking about now, the more you dominate in regular marketing, like you can't be in Phoenix and not see any one garage. Now they're not watching. I think it was a baseball game and it went right across the screen the other day. It's just like he's omnipresent. So eventually you want to go work for that guy, or at least you're curious. And that's what you want to be working for that guy or at least you're curious and that's who you want to be working for same thing goes for you you know there's been a lot of people poaching recently and there's a comment in the questions here i would say there are guys that leave very little usually

they're forced out but the fact is that you're pricing, you know, one of the Alan Roars, so a thing is price, right. And, and double your prices. When you're charging enough money, you can pay very, very well and give a lot. You can give a new truck.

It was crazy because Jody called me up one day and Jody said, you're going to think this is crazy. But the number one question I got was, do we get to take our trucks home? And do we get, are they new trucks? Well, that means a lot of companies out there driving older trucks and they don't get to take our trucks home and do we get are they new trucks so that means a lot of

companies out there driving older trucks and they don't get to take them home it's interesting what's important to these future employees yeah no it's a great point especially today with cost of gas and things of that nature and fuel is pretty high to say the least but it is true for us the reason they came was because we offered a career we took took out the org chart and said, here's where you are. Here's where you can go. When I get done with this interview, I'm going to bring in somebody who was just like you and sat in that same chair. would sniff out if these people were interested good people you know staff now obviously we had to clean up our act we had to do drug testing criminal background all the things from way back when and Tommy I know I laugh always at this point but I grew up and you know came arrived in the 70s we used to get our techs drunk at the Christmas party and put them in our trucks to drive home. Yeah. My first paying job along with Richie and Marty was pulling drunk technicians out of basements and bars. So talk about whatever

you think your challenge is. That's a funny challenge to me. So yeah, it's crazy sick because I tell people, my clients is it's okay to hire an experienced person once in a while, but once they buy into it, they're very reluctant to hire anybody who's experienced. Tommy shared, guys who are on board for six years are having trouble adapting to the new thing, whereas if you take somebody with a clean slate, he's not encountering these problems because they go, oh, that's how we do it here. And it's a documented, regimented system. So one of the questions I'm assuming was out there is what if I train them and they leave, which I just did a Facebook post on Tommy's HSE.

And basically it says, this is what you don't know. When I trained them, and I always trained them, and I went to training with them, and I took them out to trade shows, and they looked around and they saw no other company was doing what I was doing. And I was moving them up the ladder, and they were making more and more money, and then eventually could get to this field supervisor position or service manager, install manager. We didn't want to own those boxes. And then go run a spoke shop so we could export the model to a spoke from the main hub. They did not want to leave.

Now, I was always whispering in their ear is, look, somebody's going to come along with more money and offer you something. And I totally get it. But you have to ask yourself if they didn't want to invest in you

and in your career, what makes you think when you arrive, there's anything more they're going to do for you? So in the only comparison that I can make to this day, when I was still at my own company, we had the dot-com thing where people just stopped. I was selling stuff, a million dollars a year, part-time, part-time for all the other jobs I did. People stopped asking me how much and all they would ask me is how soon. So it was crazy. And my guys were getting pirated. People were calling them up at their home. I don't know how they got them. They would call them up and try to steal them away. I rarely lost anybody that I wanted to keep

because they loved learning and they loved moving up and moving out in a good way. So that really is a misconception about if I train them, they'll leave. And not even the thing about if you don't train them, they stay. Yes, I know. But training is what makes them want to stay as long as it's partnered with a true career. Now that gets back to staffing power, right? Credits to junior tech, junior tech to senior tech, senior tech to field supervisor, out to a branch if you're capable of doing that. And Tommy is. Hey guys, I hope that you're enjoying this conversation. I just wanted to let you know that we have a special offer from LEV for you today. So stick with us till the end and I'll reveal how you can take advantage of it. But if

you're in a rush, just go to homeserviceexpert.com forward slash S3 and check out this exclusive offer we put together for our listeners. Okay, now let's go back and continue our chat with Al. You know, the manuals were really, really, really great, but this apprentice program, the way that we got involved with that and just, I mean, amazing trainers. We're up to seven full-time trainers. I've got about five full-time recruiters. have a 20-day onboarding a good guy if he's working it needs to move quickly and thoroughly i find it really really hard because it you know we're getting a little disjointed they call it siloed like right now i talked to my recruiter her name's crystal i said crystal that's another crystal i said can you please make a list of what's going on in these markets because yeah i got two managers that just can't keep up and i'm like then we need to have we need to have a meeting with Mike Bailey and Brian Davenport about it. So

I'm having a meeting with them tomorrow, but it's like, you're only as strong as your weakest link. And I would say that if you don't have a really, really great way, one day I found out it was taking us two weeks to do drug tests or background checks. No. Yeah. I had the same problem. No, no, no, no. If I'm any good, I'm gone. I used to have, from the time you responded to the time you were on board, two weeks or less. That's great. Really good. And you can do better than that because a lot more stuff is available online these days than was to me. One of the biggest disqualifiers was you have to have a clean

driver's license. We're not chauffeuring you around all day. Tommy, that eliminated a lot of people, as you might imagine. The thing is, is they don't know how to recruit. You say, listen, all you got to do is do this. They don't understand. So if you handhold them and you call them and you give them goals, I mean, right now we're a little over 500. I feel like if I can get 200 of them and it doesn't even need to be them it could be their wives or their husbands or someone at their household but what we're going to start doing is daily and weekly trainings just like we train on how to fix a garage door how to make eye contact how to ask right questions now we're going to train people on how to recruit i love it i think what's going to end up happening is a really good company that builds a program like this, they look for about 60% of the new employees to come through this referral program.

Right now, we're probably sitting at about 15%. So I've got to quadruple that. You've got a lot of room to go, and you are firmly locked into it. But I will say for the listeners here, be aware of the numbers that Tommy is looking for. But if you're a $2 million, $5 million, $10 million company, I'm going to tell you right now because I work with them, $20, $30 million actually, that are able to follow what I'm talking about. Because in the program, there is this recruiting, hiring, orienting, training. I've got forms and things that work in it and a lot of stuff that sets you up

that you can crank this thing up. And so it's actually a pretty logical way to progress through here. There's three phases, learning the five steps of staffing power, then the second phase, apprentice to junior tech and junior tech to senior tech the right way and then ultimately like i mentioned before when you get to a certain size you're going to have those choke points unless you create field supervisors the right way and so that really changes the dynamic once you get above that so like the franchise that i was part of they needed so many people because they were just blowing up in a great way that they needed to do like tommy where they had to bring on two full-time recruiters it just exceeded what they could

humanly do in a day now the good news is they didn't throw out the systems they drove the systems further because it was a platform it wasn't like all of a sudden we don't do the system we teach the recruiters and the hiring people to do the steps. But orientation and things of that nature, my feeling still is, who are they going to work with? Because they have to be part of that process. particular case it was all summer and uh they would come out of class and then sure enough you know richie and the service manager would periodically complain to me i'm going to put it a nice term about what these guys couldn't couldn't do and finally i just said so glad you pointed out because next time you're going to be with me while i'm training so i brought him into the hands-on training now the training centers we built as we added more trades, first heating, then plumbing, then air conditioning, then finally electrical.

This was how we associated with the manual and the training curriculum we had to write, which is the bridge between these two, because that's what you're bouncing back and forth. That's what you still need to do, but you want to scale up when you're talking about what Tommy's doing and some of the other ones who have reached this big still still still who are they reporting to because they need to be involved in the process so they don't start coming out of the woodwork and complaining well why don't they know this and why don't they know that they've got to have some fingerprints on so i had a tv show come out here it's called the american dream and and when they were shooting us i said who were you guys at last week they said oh

i'm sure you're familiar kentucky fried chicken and i said well what's so big about them they said well they're opening a new store i think it was every 16 hours and to get to that level you just think about the systems that need to be in place and the training and the recruiting and the processes. And that's one of the things you always talk about is you've got an exact process for delegation. You've got the manuals. I'll tell you what, the way that we figured it out now is we don't need a bunch of A-plus amazing people. As long as they've got a good attitude and they're willing to smile. Because the systems, the checklists, even in service time, we just came up with a 151-point tune-up.

151. And that's freaking crazy. And none of this stuff goes as quick as I'd like. No, and understandably so. But, Tommy, that's such a big thing that you just shared. Because I want the listeners to know that this was not Tommy when I arrived. Tommy had to kiss the derriere of the top staff people that he had, which was annoying to me. Because I had done it, and I hated it. And I don't ever want anybody to go through what I went through.

But to Tommy's great understanding now is I don't need that quote unquote superstar. And Tommy knows the story this year. One of these companies, we had a superstar whose sales results were here and everybody else was good, but it was here. And I just said to the owners, look, he may be everything, but I think you better get in the truck for a while with them and find out what they're doing. And when they came back, Tommy, they were horrified as to what was going on. And so you got to be very, very careful on that. Yeah. You can blow

all of your company in a heartbeat. If you're not doing ride-alongs, if you're not doing mystery shoppers, you can be in a very difficult situation now with manuals and training you can say look everyone's trained the same we do the same things we spot check people we do all this stuff we do ride-alongs we have all this documentation to minimize that being caught up in a what was that show catch a contractor which i hate yeah because they never spend two seconds on the guy who did it right do they only on a couple of guys that pull their hoodie up and run yep and they're always no name companies they're not even it's stupid but it made a show what's the best platform website or medium for finding great techs and i

think we've discussed this but it's not just one thing no it's not one platform thank you for blowing that up it is not one platform it's like, what's the best way for me to go to marketing? There isn't one way to go to marketing. I do believe social media is very critical today. And it's not you. It's happy staff that are telling these prospective people how great it is to be here, whether they were an apprentice and now they're a junior tech or senior tech, or they've moved all the way up to field supervisor or whatever they are,

including in your office, cash receivable, cash payable, because this whole skill set applies to all of it. By the way, this podcast is going to be a breakdown of the notes and just key takeaways. If you look up Al Levy online, you'll see some key notes, but Al Levy, the home service expert. So what is staffing power? How does all this work? If I'm just a guy out here, I've stumbled onto the podcast. I know who you are, Al, but tell me a little bit about how I get my hands on this. So this is the second that mirrors what I did with Tommy one-to-one, which I no longer do, which was originally we put the manuals in and the org charts and everything to get that systematic approach. But what Tommy wanted, like everyone wanted, like I wanted, is really to have finally willing people

with great skills and how to build them. And that's what Tommy did in Staffing Power, which this is the online program is Signature Staffing Systems, S3 for short. And it is those three phases. You need to learn how I teach the five steps, always recruiting, always hiring, always orienting, always training and retaining. I can blast it out. There's a lot more depth to that. Then how do you take an apprentice that's willing and get them to be a junior tech? And then what do they have to prove as a junior tech, take them back in to become a senior tech? And when your company gets big enough, instead of always going outside and trying to find somebody, which by the way, I talk to so many of your techs when I go out to companies,

they hate it. They absolutely hate it when you bring people outside because you don't think they're good enough. You never gave them an opportunity. So that's why senior tech to field supervisor, you qualify, you compete, and then the winners train. And it is a rented position. You don't get to be a bad field supervisor forever you have to learn this and of course the manuals are helpful but this is learning those skills because not about you tommy but just because i could fix stuff doesn't make me a good field supervisor i never learned how to manage anybody the only way i would know how to be a boss is i watch movies right someone made a comment here. It says, S3 coupled with Psalms is insanely amazing.

It's definitely highlighted areas for major improvement within our company. Our top five is keeping us focused on fixing those areas. Where do I send the gift basket, Joe? So I think the main goal here is you got to understand like the training we go through. People need to understand is we drill this stuff. We drill it. We drill it. We drill it.

But what I realized is our trainers are very good trainers. They're very good at what they do. They've learned how to train specifically. And we've got an exact process. We've got an exact way to do a tune-up. We've got an exact way to do a tune-up we've got an exact way to do springs rollers cables bearings there's an exact process that we train then we train again then we train again then we train again and it just can't send them out to my house tommy to learn their job they're not learning on the job i will learn on the job what i will do though is they go out after their two months of training it's hardcore training for

two months and then what i try to do is get them back either out here or back for some more ride alongs after about a month because they don't know what they don't know i mean it's a lot of information to be taking in and i just tell the guys you want to be a million dollar producer all you need to do is learn how to sell financing because that way if you just learn how to sell promotions it's easy and there are guys going out there right now today that just started that are are killing it literally like in kansas we did this hiring event guy four or five thousand dollar tickets every other ticket and he's selling a lot of doors and of course these guys used to say i used to price too high till the price all went up and gas is what it is now.

Now everybody's going, you got to charge more. But a lot of these guys that say you can't charge that are technicians. They're not really business owners because they have no idea what a CPA costs or what a real business that's ran with real financials and real people working when you're not. I think they say, I'm going to charge my clients way less, take advantage of my internal customers. And then on top of that, I'm not going to have anything nice or new. I'm going to struggle.

I'm only going to buy used vehicles. I'm never going to be able to build a training center. And they work in the business so hard every day. I know. I know. It really is heartbreaking, Tommy. To me, it's really hard. You know, I've come across as a tough ex-Dyorker, but I really have a big heart. Otherwise, I wouldn't be doing this. And so does Tommy. But I will share two things. In the good old days, before flat rate was as common as it is today. And if you're not doing flat rate, well, you're only three decades behind. I'm just going to tell you. So we used to buy a motor for 30 bucks. We paid Tommy $30. We figured there's 40 bucks for us because we charged 100. Now, did I say I was bright? Unfortunately, I met the great Ellen Rohr, and she said, you have to do budgeting.

And all of a sudden, all of these costs, Tommy, I had no idea all of the costs that it took before I get to the door, after I leave the door, billable hours, labor percentage of sale, no idea. Our first time we ever did it, Richie and I did it, it was $150 an hour in the 90s. And the first thing we figured out was a toilet. And the toilet came out to $400. And Richie says to me, do it again. So I do the budget again. Comes out to $400 for the toilet. And we just thought to ourselves, well, one thing's for sure. Not everybody's our customer.

And it was a very enlightening moment. And what I always share with small companies in particular, because they want to grow, that's why they'll reach out to me. And I go, what I need to know right now, are you making way more calls than you can humanly do in a day? And if they tell me yes, and I go, do you have the ability to raise the price? Because if you do, and you have way more calls, here's how you begin to replace yourself as the person has to go and run and do these calls. Because if you can charge enough that someone else can get in that truck and you can train them right, then systems will help you. If you are able to charge enough, you can do all

these great things. Then you get to decide who do you go to work for and how much do you charge? Plus, it will force you in a good way to do everything I'm talking about, which is start this path of way more techs than you can possibly use. You heard that right. Way more techs than you can possibly use. Because what did Tommy say? Even with his great training, people are going to fail. The great Dan Hollihan, who is a great friend of mine and Ellen, a great heating industry guru, but he was also great about stuff. He told me way back when that staffing is like a train, a moving train. I go, what does that mean? He goes, people hop on, people hop off.

Some people you will kick off your train, and some people will go to the very end of the earth with you, but you will never know. So your obligation is when they're on the train, make them good or make them gone. So Ken Goodrich came up to me a few months ago at an event and he said, out of your training, how many of them don't make it more than a year? And I said, about 20%. He goes, that's exactly where I'm at. He's like, literally one five fifth drops off. Now we try to get the majority of the people to drop off that first month before we send them to Phoenix because it's more expensive. And then we're averaging two people sent home and my trainers

know. I'm like, you better not graduate somebody that's not going to be able to make it here. It's not fair to them. They're going to be in with a bunch of winners and they're going to feel awful. So you got to get them good. A lot of times it's because there's one of two things typically that I see is their personal lifestyle in order or their personal finances are in order. That's a deep dish. Sorry, deep dive. I like pizza too, by the way, but New York pizza,

just don't send me any Chicago pizza things, but it really is a deep dive with Tommy is speaking to is you get the whole person. Like I told Richie, they come to you with credit card debt. They had a fight with their wife. Now I did learn something really good that I'd like to share it because it is about staffing, if I have a sec. Yeah. Yeah. So what I finally learned to say to people that were, because Tommy knows, once all the systems are in place, there are four steps of corrective action. And I would hold everybody accountable to the, I don't care what superstar you are, there's four steps. But quickly, I would, they would say to me, because I would let them talk.

I wasn't doing all the talking in these sessions. I finally learned to shut up a little bit and let them talk and help me understand why aren't they achieving what we're talking about? And what many of them said, what Tommy was saying is about their personal life. They're not robots. They're not robots. So what I learned to say to them is,

I totally appreciate what's going on in your life. I will never minimize that. But I have to ask you one question. How is coming in here and messing up going to make any of that better? So do what I do. When I arrive at the door and I have luggage just like you, personal baggage I carry, I leave it at the door. And at the end of the day, I can choose to pick it up or better yet, get rid of it. And you'd be surprised how many of them learned this skill of compartmentizing. We all talk about it, but how many of us do it, which is leaving the personal luggage?

Now, what Tommy does, like a lot of the good people that I work with, they believe that these people have to know financials for themselves. Talk about not being tempted. Can they do a personal budget for themselves? I think you have Dave Ramsey, the ones you use, right? Yep. So we do credit repair. We help them explain to them how a mortgage works, get them qualified. You know, one of the things that I've found that's really helpful is going

out to eat with a significant other. And we started buying flowers for this significant other when we send guys to Phoenix for a whole month. And if you get them bought in and they believe in the company and they believe it's best for them. But then you also find some people that you just tell there's a lot of tension. And you're almost like this person's got to work extra hard, really, really, really hard to come to work every day happy when that's the way their marriage looks. And so it's like a secret sauce that you can take them to dinner. And there's this I just look for mutual respect. There's a lot of breaking bread, breaking bread.

How many times we you and I had this conversation, right, Tommy? When I talked about a great break room, Tommy, of course, was going to build the best break room ever because I said it's so important for the people on the inside to mingle and mix and become friends with the people outside because neither one of them will be successful without that bond and his reaching out to the person that's not in the room. It's not unlike sales, right? If you're any good at sales today and you think you're just talking to the person in front of me and you're standing in front of you, you are wrong. You need to go back to sales training

because I didn't just sell you. I prepared you for your smart aleck cousin or your significant other to come home and go, what did you do? Why did you spend that money? You know, I would work on those people that were not there. And the same thing applies to employees, is we would have these bonding events. The great franchise I talked about is they would have videos constantly of them mingling and not talking about the once a year Christmas party or a golf outing. They would do this constantly because they felt it was so important because they knew these guys were going to work incredibly long hours. And the people back home didn't know why

and didn't know what's in it for them. But when they did this and made it visual, they, the people who were not at work, were not only supporting those people going off to work. They were pushing them that this is the right place and you got to move where you are. Yeah, that's a great point. We just got a bunch of wives to shoot videos of why it made sense for their husbands to go with the job and just they're a better dad they're a better husband they smile more they feel complete they they get more of the attention time when they're at home now so we made these videos and we're going to make them go viral but you got to understand you look at a company like the dollar shave club dollar beard club and all these, they weren't advertising to men.

They were advertising to the wives and girlfriends. And if you do that correctly, I'm telling you, we're doing these huge events for hiring events. And we get way more applicants. I got to tell my husband. I got to tell my boyfriend about this. It's crazy. I'd say it's more than half there's significant others looking for a better job for them because our guys are not they're not out there looking they're kind

of loyal to where they're at but if they know there's something better where they'll get treated better they'll do it they just don't know because they're not out there looking i know i gotta be sensitive to time but i will tell you uh when i started to do this training all these years ago and i was putting these guys on the road, the word got out to my competitors. And we were friendly competitors. And sure enough, guys would ask me, well, can I pay you to train my guys? Because they knew what we were doing. And I would say to them, look, I can take all the logos off.

I'll board everything that has a sign up here but if i'm the guy in front of the room and i am investing my time with them and we are building a bond they're going to be loyal to me and not you which is why i always impress upon that we have to be the trainers we do the majority of the sharing of the knowledge so that's well i'll tell you what's scary is when the owner says, when's enough time for me to step out? And I say, yeah, I'm still doing the orientations. I'll never stop doing that. No, and you're good at it.

I mean, not more than good. You're really great at it. But the deal is, is I don't want any, and I don't believe we have any of these guys, but I don't want a manager to call me up one day and say, hey, I'm bouncing with 18 technicians unless you give me this. Because they built loyalty up with those guys. And so, you know, I'm not perfect at going out to lunch with every single person. That's just not... It's not practical at this point in your company size. How could you even do that?

I think it's important that I at least shake their hand, say hi to them. When we get back, I want to make sure I cover the last piece of retaining. There's a tip I have for retaining. You're dipping into this? So retaining is you have a bathtub full of employees, and in Tommy's case, it's getting bigger and bigger. But he also knows that there's a drain wide open. There's a drain wide open, and you don't know it

because you assume they're on the team and that they'll always be on the team. And like I said, with the staffing train, that's not true. So what we learned to do rather than have people knock on our door at five o'clock standing there looking for a pay raise or just going, because trying to save them then is really disastrous. They already got a foot out the door. Even if I overpay them or give into the demands, I don't feel good. And they don't feel good because that'll hold me hostage for me to give them what they want. So some of the tips I will share is if you do the four steps, recruiting, hiring, or anything, training constantly, they're less likely to go. But the tip that I wanted to share with you guys,

there are three questions I learned to ask as many of the people as I humanly could in a month. Face to face, I would come across Tommy standing, not sitting down, and go, Tommy, tell me what's going right. Tell me what's going wrong. Tell me what do I need to know right now. And when I would do that, whether he could look me in the eye and he was enthusiastic to share would tell me he's on board and looking for more or if he couldn't meet eyes and he wasn't really enthusiastic i had a decision right now do i go out and save tommy and keep him on the team or tommy is somebody who i've been waiting to go so help me pack up your luggage and get out yeah it's great you know one of the things we hired was a dream manager to help these people understand

a dream again. And the more I do, it's weird. The more I give, the more I feel like I got to do more. It's weird because it's almost selfish, but I love homeownership. I love it when they bring a kid into this world. I love celebrating these wins because I'm trying to say, listen, worst case scenario, you decide to move on and it didn't work out, but I hope you became a better person to work with us. And that's what I tell people is I'm like, I know not every single person is going to

stay. People are going to move. Things are going to happen. Yeah. This career is not for them. That's okay. They're free to go, but it won't be because I didn't do my job. And just like you, Tommy, not because I didn't do my job and your job. Yeah. Where do I go? Is that out of,

Tommy has a link for those who are listening and those who follow him alone. Tommy has a link. It's seven power contractor.com forward slash S as in Sam, 3HSM, Harry, Sam, Mary, Home Service. So it's S3HSM. So what do they get if they go there? If they go there, they'll see all of what I've been talking about, these three phases, what's involved in this whole program, what I had taught Tommy and so many others. They'll also see videos on the page.

There are six of them. Why are there only six customer testimonials of which Tommy is not one of them? Because I only called six people that I worked with who right now have all the employees, all the great employees, all the great techs they ever wanted when you don't. And they're big companies and they all different trades are on that page to share with you. But on going to Tommy's specific link, and you have to use his link, is Tommy has negotiated the 10% discount from the list price. So if you choose to buy this program, this is where you would do it. There it is.

All right. I'm going to post it in the notes here. Yep. And you guys, 7powercontractor.com forward slash you'll see tommy's video home service millionaire yep so i guess the last thing here is have you read any good books lately you know uh ellen sends me books periodically and i do my best to get through i did read how read Howard's Failure to Implement. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And you know, Failure to Implement is a big one for me because that was Jack Tester really got me, my head turned around. But the other one is Tiny Habits, which it was like, I'm disciplined. What do I need tiny habits for? But it was very funny

because one of the things I read the book and I'm going, yeah, before I put my feet on the floor, I just go, it's a great day. Now I used to read, and I still periodically read this book, Positive Thinking Every Day. Yeah. Just turn to a page. It's no more than a paragraph. It's amazing to me how this sets the tone for me every day. Just reading something out of this. Yeah, it's an older book, but it never goes out of style, my friend. You're going to be hard pressed. Cody asked, when do we get another L.E.V. book? Cody, I will share this with you because we know each other so well. There were three words that you should never use around me and Richie when we were in the field together and working with tech. Don't tell me can't. Don't tell me always. Don't tell me never. Can't means you can't do it. No,

I'll get it done. I'll lift the whole house. I'll bring a crane in here and get this up. Don't say can't. And they go, well, it's always been like this. Really? From the start of time, it's always been like this? And then never, never going to happen really till the end of the earth. So the answer here is we turned that to CAEA. Here's what I can promise you. As close as I can get to never, I don't plan on writing another book, but thank you. Got it. So Al, I got a lot out of this. It's a good time for me because I'm just, we're putting those books together and this book that we're doing is going to be really it's going to drive home everything that elvis discussed here but it also talked a lot about culture and how to make a place that's a magnet for great people so that book's going to be hopefully out by the next vertical track which is in october

it's going to be fun so i'll be be there. You will be there. We talked about a lot of great stuff. What would you like to leave the audience with? You know what? I hated being a hostage to my own employees, number one. And I'm betting you're a hostage. I also bet there's two knuckleheads that you put up with miserable behavior because you don't want two trucks sitting in your yard. Now, if you're a bigger company, maybe there's 20 knuckleheads that you put up with miserable behavior because you don't want two trucks sitting in your yard. Now, if you're a bigger company, maybe there's 20 knuckleheads you're putting up with, but you don't have to. If you invest in this program and these training programs and the manuals, like Joe said, it will dramatically change the life of your customers first, your company second, the staff themselves, and make your life so much better. Well, I believe in everything that you do, Al. I've got my

manuals. I think we're up to like 50 manuals now. I've got my stuff. And you're living the staffing. You're living it. The staffing is probably the most important thing. The fact that I can grow at the speed of which I decide there will be a month this year that I'm going to really shoot for 100 technicians. The hard part about that is capacity planning to get them the jobs. When you're introducing 100 different

techs in one month, I need to come up with 300 new jobs. More techs and more calls. Tommy and I have talked about it the whole time. Well, listen, Al, I appreciate this. This was really, really good. Thanks so much. You guys make sure you get those

manuals first. If you haven't got the manuals, start with those. And the second phase is the hiring, so ask three. See you guys later. Thanks, guys. Tommy has a special link for those who didn't buy the manuals. Tommy's link is just HSM, forward slash H hsm that will take you to the manuals page so sevenpowercontractor.com forward slash hsm and then the other one is s3 hsm you guys uh hopefully you dig this stuff because i'm telling you right now it works that's how how i've done it thanks i'll appreciate you thank you guys uh hopefully you dig this stuff because i'm telling you right now it works that's how

how i've done it thanks al appreciate you thank you guys appreciate it hey i hope you enjoyed today's podcast with al levy you probably don't know that i hired al levy as a consultant to help me create my apprentice program at a1 garage and thanks to his program we've hired hundreds of great technicians and CSRs just this year. Now, the great news is that we've put together a special offer for all of our listeners. You can get all of Al Levy's signature staffing system today for a 10% discount. And the only way to get this 10% discount is through our special link, homeserviceexpert.com forward slash S3.

If you want to have access to the ultimate training system to get A players, go to HomeServiceExpert.com forward slash S3 and get L System today with our $1,000 discount.