The Home Service Expert Podcast - How A Proven Sales Process and A Focus On Value Can Double Your Profit in Less Than 60 Days

Episode Date: January 10, 2020

Shahn Ellis got his professional start at age 27, putting up a thousand-dollar business and successfully growing it into a seven-figure subcontracting business. After enjoying this success, he sold his business and became a full-time consultant. With extensive experience at construction, entrepreneurship, and subcontracting, he guides businesses in the same industry toward maximizing their growth and achieving their goals, as both a consultant at Subcontractor Revolution and the host of the Blue Collar Businessman podcast. In this episode, we talked about contractor subcontracting, entrepreneurship, construction management...

So many people get into things that they really shouldn't be doing. And you just got to ask yourself a question like, where are the people that are spending all the money? And what type of work do I do that I not only enjoy doing and I'm very proficient at doing that is the most profitable and literally package something together that you can be the most elite person in your marketplace at that one thing. And just figure out a system to get only the right people and the right project that you know is profitable every time in the door. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. My name is Tommy Mello. And today I have Sean Ellis on the line. And I'll give you a quick tour of his bio. He's an expert at

construction contractors, subcontracting, entrepreneurship, construction management, marketing, and sales. He's a subcontractor revolution founder and he just sold Ellis Stone recently. He started his business at age 27 with $1,000. Business grew into a successful seven-figure subcontracting business, which he sold to consult others full-time. His clients are some of the fastest-growing companies in the United States, and he's also the host of the Blue Collar Businessman Podcast. Sean, pleasure to have you on today. I'm excited to be here, Tommy.

Thanks for having me. So you're out of Utah. What's the weather like over there? It's currently sunny and super cold. That's near Salt Lake, right? Yes, just a suburb of Salt Lake. So you've got a pretty interesting story. You were working for a guy and you realized, like a lot of owners, that they don't really know the business side of how to run a business. They know the contractor

side, which most of us, including myself, started out more on the technical technician side. Although I never worked for another garage or company, I just got trained by another technician who became my partner. But tell me a little bit about your story. Let the audience kind of know who you are, where you came from, your industry, and what you are today. Awesome. So I come from the countertop industry. I've always kind of had a little bit of an entrepreneurial side. I've had a few other businesses that I started since the age of 19, kind of on and off. So essentially, I found myself working for a countertop fabricator doing granite, marble quartz, just higher end countertop surfaces.

And my boss was an amazing fabricator and really good at doing the work. So I had the upper hand of learning how to do things right. And really just knowing the ins and outs of actually getting the work done. So he had a relationship with his sister who owned a company that sold tile and stone and essentially just spoon fed him with as much work as he could handle. And things were great. Things were booming for a while. And as this is back in like the 2008 kind of the real estate crash, as things started to turn, tension started to rise between him and his sister and ended up having to fall out. And literally overnight, the only source of leads essentially in workflow coming into

his business at that point was shut off overnight. So I'm in a position where I'm like, okay, I can either try to go find a job at all of these other companies that are like massively laying people off and shrinking to just try to survive and everything else. So that wasn't really something that was an option for me. And I knew I could pull the work off at a high level. And I just started hustling. Like I started doing some marketing. I started just having in-home appointments with people and essentially just selling work because that was the way that I knew to continue to keep the workflow going and keep making money. So I did this for a few months and then it just,

it kind of hit me of like, Hey, well, if I'm doing the marketing to get in front of people and I'm actually selling the job and I'm doing the job, but why am I still working for somebody else? If I'm basically the guy that's running a show. So I scraped together a thousand dollars and I just went for it. So I bought the bare bones minimum stuff I could get to actually be able to perform this work with that thousand dollars. And then I just went out and I sold jobs and collected deposits and gathered the rest of the money that I needed to actually pull off getting the work done. And just started out as like a solo kind of guy doing things very rudimentary and like begging friends and people to come help me when I needed help to do something because obviously stone is heavy. And I ended up meeting a contractor who was finishing off the development and literally

in the place of just trying to not go bankrupt on like the last four or five houses he needed to get finished and done as everything was kind of falling apart in the housing market. And he was like, okay, I have this van because at this point I didn't even have a truck or a trailer or anything. I was just like literally doing whatever I could do to get people to help me pull things off. And he said, I'll buy all the materials. You just show up and do the labor to put all this stuff in these last few houses. And I'll give you this cargo van that I have. And that can be your like new installation rig kind of thing. So we ended up kind of helping him out of a jam and having this van that became my mobile installation,

drive all over the place and work out of before we ever had any kind of shop or anything like that. And I just kept pushing, pushing, and pushing and ended up at the place where you just put your nose to the grindstone and you just think, let's just keep doing more and more and more and bringing more people on and having overhead go up and just more moving pieces and all of that and there's a lot of business stuff that I just was naive to and didn't really consider so I found myself in this place where we were busy but the cash flow and profit just like was never really there so it was like constantly this up and down roller coaster and constantly like robbing Peter to pay Paul.

And then every week, just like Wednesday comes and then it's the race to like payroll and pay all the bills and everything else. And then just finding myself in this position where I'm exhausted, tired. And I'm just like, man, how am I ever going to get ahead doing this? And for some reason, like for a long time, my mind made up this story that I see a lot of guys do this, that what I'm currently doing that isn't working, somehow the answer is to do more of that. And what I can tell you is if things currently aren't working, as you scale them, all of the issues and the cash flow and the

profit and everything else actually just gets magnified it doesn't actually get better in my experience so i just found myself in this very frustrated kind of isolated lonely place because when things aren't working we're not really apt to really go out and start talking to people about how we're really feeling how things are going kind of just want to put on the smile and pretend everything's good even though we're like kind of dying inside and i think a lot of guys find themselves in this place and i just had no one to talk to really and i had nowhere to really go for guidance but i just i remember finding myself at home alone on a weekend with nobody in the house. It was quiet. We had this red couch. I'm just sitting on this couch. I closed my eyes and I just pictured what life

and business was going to look like six to 12 months down the road if I stayed on the path that I was on. The picture that I saw horrified me. I knew in that moment that I was on and like the picture that I saw horrified me. And I knew in that moment that I was unwilling to let everything that I've built and my family and everybody else down. And I went on a mission at that point to just really figure out this whole business thing because I was amazing at what I did. But as most of us learn, like just being good at doing the work is not enough. You also have to be good at getting constant stream of the right people showing up and being able to provide this product at a price that has profit margin left over. So I just went on a mission about six years ago to really figure out the business game. And ended up, I think within the first 12 months of me doing this, we went from somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 a year in revenue to well over seven figures and then

continued to grow from there. And I went from working probably 70, 80 hours a week to really only having to be around for 46 hours a day or not at all for a few days if I wanted to. And just really actually started to build the thing that I wanted to build in the first place. But a lot of us don't have a plan or a blueprint. And we just kind of put our nose as a grindstone and start building. And then we end up in this place where business feels a lot more like a prison than it actually does this thing that was supposed to give us freedom of time and money.

And we just don't know what we don't know. So fast forward from there, I just remember being in this place in business inside of the countertop game that I kind of achieved everything and more that I ever thought I could inside of that. And it's this kind of nagging question of like, is this it? What's next for me? And you just kind of hit that point. I'm sure it's a point that you've hit too, where you're just like, the next evolution of growth for me is to actually turn around and start giving back and teach all the people around me that I'm witnessing struggle, the things that I've learned along the way and help them figure out the whole

business side of things also. So in March of 2018, we sold the countertop business. We were acquired by another company local here and I've been full time in the game, just essentially consulting subcontractors and just helping them install all of the same things that I've learned along the way inside of their businesses and lives to get their lives and businesses to a place where they're functioning and actually giving them what they want. So that was an earful, but that's it. No, no, it was great. It's a great story. So I've got a lot of questions that stem out of the story. You mentioned that

you were the cheapest and you just continue to try to get more jobs and more jobs seems to be the answer to everybody that I talked to, except for the guys that say, I got enough work. I need more good people. And it's either one or the other. You need to have jobs. You need to have people to run the jobs. Unfortunately, the owner in a small business ends up being the best technician. So you're consulting all these people. You told me earlier you were robbing Peter to pay Paul. of the things you're hearing out there that are just really hard and maybe some of the best three lessons that you've learned. Just a problem. Is it the hiring? Is it the pricing? Is it the where do you find the great people?

Is it the compensation program? What are you hearing out there? Marketing? It's a lot of that. So first thing is it's a mindset. Here's the one thing that a lot of people want to overlook. And I'm derailing a little bit, but I'm going to wrap this back around into exactly what you're asking. So the biggest thing for me and the biggest thing that turned me around and the biggest thing that I teach guys that helps turn

them around is I don't care how good a business owner is at marketing and sales and everything else. If he's off physically, if he's off in his relationship with his wife and his kids, or he's just off and kind of just this weird place and just kind of disconnected from who he is, business is just simply a mirror and it's going to mirror that back to him. so the first place that I start with people and started with myself was just like taking a look in the mirror and realizing like I'm actually the business and the guy running this whole show so if I'm not on point probably never going to have a business that's on so that's when I really started taking care

of myself physically that's when I really started taking care of myself and doing things like meditation. And I started really just actually building in systems and processes at home to make sure that I'm showing up and I'm taking my wife out on dates and I'm appreciating and I'm serving and supporting her and that I'm carving out time to have like really focused attention and just show up for my kids as well, because there's a lot of like that guilt. And it's a really hard place when you go to work and you feel like things aren't working out. And then you come home and it's also like you're losing there also. So it just becomes this place that inside a lot of business owners and men might just start to crumble under all of this pressure and stress and everything else. And they don't have a real system to keep themselves on point and on track and avoid being in this place. So

a huge part of it is just like life coming into business and business coming into life and figuring out how to balance that and integrate everything so that it can work together. And then the second thing is marketing. Like so many people are not clear on who their ideal client is and what types of work are actually profitable for them. So they just end up taking on work from every, every angle they can, because they just want to stay busy and half, half of probably 80% of that work ends up making no money. And then it doesn't matter how good you did on the 20%, all of that profit is eaten up by the ones you didn't do good on. So it's just getting really clear on the one thing that you want to be like the best

in your market at that makes the most margin and you can execute on very, very well. And you also have to enjoy doing it because if you don't enjoy doing it, then it doesn't matter how much money is coming in. It's not going to work out for you long term. So I never really liked to be like the sales guy, right? So I never really liked cold calling people or just really like doing direct outreach and feeling like I'm bothering people or just like not being welcomed because I'm just like that sales guy that's trying to come in and buy stuff. So I focused on just trying to get really, really good at marketing. And what I've found is if you're good enough at marketing and you're clear on the one thing that you do and you know exactly where

these people are because you just start looking upstream of like, where are all these projects happening, and who's involved with them, and you start building relationships with the right people, selling becomes way less of a thing. And I just like to put myself in a position where I was valuable and perceived as an expert. And people came to me with orders more or less. I just became more of an order taker than actually like an aggressive sales guy. So there's a lot of guys that I've met that really don't like having to pursue people and feel like they're chasing. And I just try to teach them like, if you can become good at marketing, get really clear on the one thing you want to be good at that, you know, makes you money, then we can actually

put a attractive message and offer into the marketplace and have those people come to you and value you. And you're able to charge much higher prices and not really have competition at the same time because you've carved out a niche inside of what you do. Okay. So, you know, one of the things, it's kind of funny that you mentioned that because yesterday we're in a meeting, an executive meeting. So there's five of us and we started talking about home warranties. And one of my main managers brought up the point. He said, look, I'm not sure if home warranties are profitable. And I made the point that if we went

all in for home warranties, we could make it work. But it's a big pain point for us because we can't get ahold of the home warranty company. They don't pay on time. They don't answer their phone when we call to get authorization. So we came to the conclusion that we're pulling out of every home warranty companies aren't for us. About a year and a half ago, we got out of all the Home Depots and decided Home Depots weren't for us. And the reason I did that, Sean, is because another company said to me one day, he said, dude, we got out of Home Depot and we never looked back. It helped our company out so much because it helped create a lot of focus. And I think you got to really look and find out where the pain points are from your staff and decide, is it really worth it? Sometimes I see guys, they go, well, I do 50% commercial and 50% residential.

They're different industries. But then for me, a small company should not be doing commercial. It's a completely different setup, different insurance. You need to have a huge bank because they don't always pay on time. And I think what you said to me that really spoke to me a lot is a lot of times people do a little bit of everything. They do a little bit of Craigslist. They do a little bit of this, do a little bit of door knocking.

And I'm just like, guys, pick something big. Like if you're going to go all in for Yelp or Angie's List or HomeAdvisor or Google, do it big, own it, and own the one great thing you're good at. If it's residential retrofit, like me, that's great. If it's residential new construction, great, go all in, figure out how you're going to make money. But the commercial side is great too. If that's all you're going to do how you're going to make money. But the commercial side is great too. If that's all you're going to do and you're going to build a good team and you got the availability and the truck set up and you got the compensation program, the insurance, and you could wait 90 days to collect. But most small businesses don't have that luxury. But hey, if you took over a business

and maybe your family was in it, I'm not saying anything's right or wrong, but hasn't that been your experience too? Is everybody kind of, you just kind of throw everything at the wall all the time and some stuff sticks. So therefore you think, cause it's stuck one time that I need to keep doing it 10 years later. Exactly. So you're totally right. Most people started out doing one thing. They just never had a system in place to consistently have that type of work. So they ended up out of scarcity, having to branch into all these other places and start taking on a bunch of stuff that might've been kind of outside of the wheelhouse of that one thing. But you're totally right. Like figure out what your one thing is. You only need one vehicle to

market it through. If you're really, really good at one thing when it comes down to marketing, then you'll be fine. And the reality is, it's the 80-20 principle. 20% of the people in your marketplace are spending 80% of the money. So the thing where most of us get stuck is we just believe like, oh, I'm going to be available to everyone and anyone that wants what we do is a client for us and we should talk to them and do work for them. But the reality is if you're working with the 80%, so you're now fighting at least 80% of your competition over only a slice of 20% of

the pie. Where the reality is if you get really specific and narrowed down on the one thing that you want to own and you just focus on being at the top of the market for that, and you start to seek out these people that are in the 20%, they're spending 80% of the money. Now you're fighting almost no one over all the money. Like it took me a long time to figure this out. once it dawned on me and once I started crafting a message that was only appealing to these people that are spending all the money and I stopped fighting over everyone else and being stuck in the race to the bottom price trap, trying to get whatever work we could get, that's when everything changed for me. So many people get into things that they really shouldn't be doing. And you just got to ask yourself a question like, where are the people

that are spending all the money? And what type of work do I do that I not only enjoy doing and I'm very proficient at doing that is the most profitable and literally package something together that you can be the most elite person in your marketplace at that one thing and just figure out a system to get only the right people and the right project that you know is profitable every time in the door. And once you've done that, there's zero scarcity about telling the wrong person, the person that's not a fit to do work with. No, but we get ourselves in a place where we feel like we have to say yes to everyone and that you have to work for everyone. But that's simply not true.

Just like you said, if it's not working for us and it's causing stress and pain and people are leaving because they're just overwhelmed with, you know, this situation of working with a Home Depot or a home warranty company. And it's just like, regardless of the revenue that's coming in, something that I'm constantly thinking about or is impacting my team in a negative way or anything else is going to be way more expensive than it is lucrative. And you might as well just cut it off. Well, you know, Sean, this is one thing that I know is if I were to ask a hundred business owners, where are you losing money? They have no effing clue. They don't know their numbers and their books are so twisted. The one thing I know is I got a master's in business, which means nothing. I took finance. I took accounting. I took all these things. And you would think that I would

be amazing. I would know everything. But until I got a CRM dialed in and I had a great guy in my financial department and I had a team built arounded in and I had a great guy in my financial department and I had a team built around data accuracy and getting reports out where they're meaningful and impactful, that's when I knew how to run a business because I said, holy cow, look at our average ticket. Look at how much total revenue we've done this year. Now, without the facts, it's all speculative. Okay. So the biggest thing I see about a company is they don't have a good CRM. They don't have good information. They don't know what marketing is working for them. What's not, they don't

understand on Google where their customers are coming from. They see, I got 20 calls from this, but then I told them out of those 20 calls from that company that you got, one of them you made money on and it was $48. They don't know what they don't know. And it's so hard to learn this stuff. I mean, unless you're out learning, podcasting is great because you guys, the people that are listening are learning, but they just think, I don't know what it is, but I know what happens, Sean, is they're making a living. They're working their butts off. They're not taking off weekends. They're working nights. They're very little vacations. They're losing relationships. But the problem is they just don't

know their numbers. They don't understand where the holes are in their business. They don't know their booking rate. They don't know their conversion rate. I've got 3,900 call tracking numbers. I'm not bragging about it, but I tell you this. I've renegotiated seven times in the last four months with different vendors. I'll tell you this. I hope people hear this quick. I prepaid five different vendors. I prepaid all of next year to save 20% in some marketing because I needed more write-offs.

Today, I negotiated a deal on my gas cards, $47 more next year in my pocket from one call today because I know my numbers. And that's the scary thing, man. What are your thoughts on that? Because you work with a lot of small businesses and these guys and gals, I'm sorry, but take a step back, roll the jobs back and learn your numbers. You know what I mean? Yeah. They'll never be able to grow anything profitable and successful long-term with predictability unless you have a clear picture of your numbers and you know what your standards are and what they have to be. And you're constantly watching them and taking whatever necessary action needs to be done to either get them where they need to be or eliminate the ones that are not working in all of the leaks and holes inside of it. Most of the strategy is like, I don't know how many times I've heard this and you've

probably heard a lot, is it's like the wife or the girlfriend's the bookkeeper and everything's just all over the place and there's zero clear numbers. And then it's just kind of like this big box full of papers and crap walked into a CPA at the end of the year, not even knowing if we actually made money or not. And then just crossing our fingers, we don't have a big tax bill because there, there was no foresight or planning on that part too, to know if like, are we even profitable or making money and what is it making money and not making money. And then they get these large surprises at the end of the year

when the IRS comes asking for their portion that they were totally caught off guard by because they didn't know any of this stuff in the beginning. So yeah, the biggest thing that you have to understand and get your, your handle on is having some sort of a system in place that all of the data goes into other than your head and something that can just give you factual data that all emotion is taken out of the picture. And you can just look at factual data and know what the truth is. And then from the truth, you can make a

decision that's powerful to change. It's a great point that, you know, and you got to start somewhere. And I think you've got to kind of know what's bad before you can make it better. So I'll tell you this. A year ago, I had debt inventory everywhere. I had trucks breaking down. I was growing like crazy because we're so good at sales and marketing, but there was money going out the back door like you don't even know. I was bad on gas. I had people stealing left and right. Inventory was disappearing. And then I got a tax bill and I said, how is this possible? We didn't make this kind of money. But when you're growing fast, you think everything's hunky-dory until that tax bill comes. But I got a phone call last night from my CPA and he said, you know, Tommy, you're going to probably need to come up with over a million dollars come April. I have not looked at your fourth quarter.

I said, well, I got some good write-offs, but we have that in the bank either way. I said, I'm good. I said, even if it's a million five, we're still good in plush and cash. And that's because we had a really solid year, but you know what it took is cutting all the crap going into this new year. I think the best thing I can tell people is look at, I cancel all your cards. Everybody canceled every card you have and say, do I absolutely need this? Do you need the water machine built? Do you use your gym membership or can you work out at home? Cancel everything and really look at it. Do you need Adobe? When's the last time you used Adobe?

Do you need that? Like get rid of all these bills. Go through your warehouse. I went and looked at a company, Sean, and I love the guy, but I went and looked at the company and he has parts from over 20 years ago saying he's going to use them. These openers are extinct. I mean, I'm talking about crazy stuff. It's so unorganized.

Piles up to his ears of paperwork and just notes and crap no organization Not open nights or weekends Not doing anything on google and i'm like dude I'm, like please i'm trying to buy this guy's company because i'm like here's a 10-step process of what i'm going to do I'm going to get rid of all your crap and we're just going to write it all off. I'm going to get you ranked super high on Google. We're going to be open nights and weekends. I'm going to get your booking rate up. I buy way better than you. You're getting literally taken advantage of by all your suppliers compared to my buy rate. I'm like, I can't believe you're still in business. But yet, this is what happens. And some people say

we did $ million dollars last year seven million dollars or or 800 000 or whatever it is and i say but you just paid yourself enough to get by and you still owe taxes is it worth all this to continue to grow listen there's a guy jim kramer he's known on the stock market to be the best of best. He literally said a week ago, there's never in his 64 years of being alive has he seen anything like what's happening now. And I got to tell you, it's exciting to be in business. But if you don't have this stuff figured out, I suggest this. You take your advertising, you cut it way down. You literally cut all your low performers, including your CSRs and your

dispatchers. You make sure your warehouse is organized and you see if you can get out of the warehouse business. You see if you could get out of the truck business by paying for a plan like I do with enterprise. And if something breaks down, they come to me, they fix it, they tow it, they give us a, like this, let me do my profession and let me scale the crap out of our retrofit residential garage doors and go nationwide across North America, because that's what we're going to do. Let all these other guys do everything that comes across their path. You know what I mean? Absolutely. I get excited. You know what I mean?

And that's how you win. Like let's literally look at it. The most profitable company on the planet is Apple. So there's other companies that are maybe do a little bit more revenue, but they're like let's literally look at it the most profitable company on the planet is apple so there's other companies that are maybe do a little bit more revenue but they're hands down the most profitable company in the world and they literally sell one thing i mean they have they have a desktop a laptop a tablet and a phone and now a watch and they're all kind of the same thing in the same interface they're just kind of different shapes and sizes of the same thing they're not trying to be everything to everyone they just got amazing and better than anyone else at the one thing that they're really good at and they

dominate yeah no you're right and they really understood where their place is in the market and i talk to people all the time. And I talked to another guy earlier. And he said, you know, I never sell anybody anything they don't need. And my dad told me that a month ago, he used to run a bunch of transmission shops and own his own. And I said, well, I sell a lot of people stuff they don't need. And he said, What do you mean? Why would you do that? I said, Well, if I walked out, let's say it's Sean, I walk out to your, I come out to your garage and I see a brand new opener up there. And I noticed you have a nest.

You have one of those ring doorbells and you love, you know, you clap twice and all the lights come on and whatever. And I say, they actually have an opener that has all the home automation built into it. Even though your opener is new, would that be something you'd like to control from your phone, open and close it by talking to your phone? Know the last time it was used, understand the cycle life, have the lights come on. You might say yes. Now you didn't need a new opener to open and close your door, but you wanted it. And so many people out there always say, well, I just got to sleep at night. I'm like, you don't need to gouge people and take advantage of people.

Here's one thing, Sean. There's salespeople and then there's closers. And a closer understands how to get over the objections. No. So I used to work at dealers. I used to sell women's shoes. And I used to be, unfortunately, back then I was more of a salesman. I was an order taker.

I'd go, I'd help them try on the women's shoes. And I'd say, sometimes I'd bring out another pair. But when I heard a no, I said, okay, now a closer is so much better. Because when they say no, you say, you don't understand. That's an objection that you get over objections. And you know, what's crazy is I spent the last year flying to successful companies, just killer companies. I just got back from a company in Virginia that sold for 105 million. He's got three other companies he started. Killer guy, amazing guy,

super respectful of this guy. And they all have something in common. They nail it and they scale it, but they know their numbers. They've got a CRM. They understand. And you know what's funny is a lot of them aren't really good marketers. They aren't, but they're really good at understanding their numbers. And they say, look, we're not making money in this segment of the business. I see all these companies, they do, oh, HVAC, now I'm going to get into plumbing. Now I'm doing electrical. Now, hell, I'll add garage doors. I'm like, you're not good at any of them. Get good at one first before you go to the next one. Yeah, absolutely. What's the big mistake that you see when it comes to smaller companies managing their cash flow? I think you already talked about it. The biggest

mistake is they have no clear visibility on what the cash flow is or any kind of projected forecast of what it is and it's ever it's literally just job to job and they get themselves in a position where things are so tight that it's like they'll take on the wrong work that they know is not going to make money just to get another check to kind of fund the next thing and keep everything moving forward and it's a lot like you said too it's it's you got to look around. There's a great book that I read called Essentialism. And it just is really like asking yourself, do you actually need the thing that you have and really like looking at the usefulness of it. And I know I've found and you've probably found that like the more you grow and grow and grow, it's almost more of a game of eliminating than it is adding. You're a hundred percent

correct. And I read the same book and I actually got ahold of the guy and he didn't want to come on the podcast because he was so busy focused on the new book he's writing. Isn't that interesting? He said, I don't want any distractions. I am dead focused on what I need to do right now. I'm not going to take on all these other things and become a real estate investor. And then all of a sudden I go fishing and the guy wants me to invest in his boat. And then I'm investing in a restaurant and then I'm trying this and this and this. And then guess what? It all gets tossed up in the air and you don't catch anything coming down. Right? Yep. Let me ask you this. You helped a client double their profit in less than

60 days. Tell me a little bit about what was going on there and how you did that. So they were just kind of stuck in that same race to the bottom price trap. So we literally just helped them install a proven sales process and really get people to focus on value instead of price. And then we just changed the target marketing and the messaging a little bit. And we started putting them in front of the right people. And with the right people and the right process, your chances of success, like the odds are stacked heavily in your favor. The problem is most people are just talking to whoever they don't even know who the right person is or the product that they should actually be offering that people.

And they have no proven process in place to actually demonstrate value to people. So the only thing that the customer has to look at is price. Like everyone's so gets up and up in the air about these guys that come in and gouge on price and like, how are they making money? And they're taking work from me. But the reality is it's our fault. We have literally trained, trained as a marketplace to care about one thing because we haven't been good at like explaining value and showing people why it actually makes sense to pay somebody who's going to deliver on what they want perfectly more money than a guy who's not going.

You know, in HVAC Spells spells wealth by Ron Smith in the first CD. He says they used to get together in 1960s. Okay. They were in Naples, Florida area. And he explains, he says, I used to try to get all these companies together. HVAC, you know, even though they were competitors, we tried to build some best practices and work together just to have monthly meetups. And he said, I'll never forget the day that a guy walked up to me and said, I don't get it, Ron. You're the most expensive by far out of all of us. And you're at least 10 times as big.

And he said, you know, that question really bothered me for a long time until I figured it out. It don't have to be the cheapest. And you got to understand your real costs. And everybody out there, you get on these Facebook forums and everybody's like, oh yeah. I understand there's true companies that put in the cheapest parts, they charge the most and they're the worst service and there's felons and everything else. They don't care about the people's families and anything else. Then there's companies. And I think that we're one of them that actually give back. We want nice things for our employees. You know, I was just with my assistant, we were driving to my auto shop and she said, you know, the poor girl in the back doing all the inventory, she was sitting out there freezing. I said, let's order her a really, really good heater back there

that she took the initiative. But all the stuff that we do costs money. And these people, I'm telling you this, Sean, to run a real business, if most people out there understood that if you're not working out of your house because you want a really good Google location and you need stuff on your business like decals and you need to make sure that you've got stuff for customers when they come in and flyers. You need a good place for your technicians to train. And you need a good place for role play.

And you need to have nice desks. And we're buying brand new computers for our whole staff because we've got a brand new voice system. I mean, these are things that matter. People think just because you're getting new computers doesn't mean that everybody does. And I'm like, well, if you want to strap your business together and run it so crappy and not have nice things and brag because you're the cheapest, then you go ahead and watch your company implode and watch your family and your relationships implode.

Because to me, that's no way to live. I'd rather say I charge a really good price. I remember I got so mad when I found out when I was a kid, my sister paid $80 for jeans. And we're talking 30 years ago. My parents didn't have a lot of money, but you know what? Actually, I started realizing those jeans lasted five times longer than the jeans I was getting when I was a kid. And I realized the reason they built a quality name is because they didn't fall apart like old Navy. And I'm not saying expensive jeans, but I'm saying someone will go, I spent $400 on a coat the other day because I'm headed to Milwaukee. And people will say $400.

I'm like, but this jacket is going to be my jacket for the next eight years. So if I buy a new jacket for $90 every three years, I still have the same price. I just am a big fan of quality. Like I think when we get older, and I love older people, especially because they go, you know what? They're like me. I've done it cheap. I've done it cheap before, and I don't want cheap. I want you to show me about the quality. I want you to tell me about the warranty, the timeliness you're going to be out here if anything happens that's wrong. I want to know about how long you've been in business. I want to see you register contractors. I want to know that the technicians working in my house,

I've had a background check and a drug test around my daughter, my son, my family. Those are the customers that I decided I want. And the businesses that decide, no, I don't want those customers. And if I get them, I'm not going to charge them a lot of money. Why would you say that is, Sean? I'm just curious because I charged a low price for the first three years I was in business didn't mean that I did it any different when I was the most expensive, honestly. I still delivered at the same level. I just didn't get paid for it. And I didn't know my own value. And the thing that I've learned is when you make this shift and you start working for the people that actually do love the quality and I've learned is when you make this shift and you start working for the people

that actually do love the quality and how the experience is and how all the little things that you do that are different than your competition to really have it be an amazing process for them to go through and give them what they want and they would rather have that than than a low number at the bottom of a sheet of paper. These are the most appreciative, just nice people and like the best raving fans I could think because people hang out with people that are like them typically. So then the, my word is getting spread around and it's not,

I mean, when's the last time you heard somebody that has a lot of money boasting about such a good deal they got on this thing or being able to like grind somebody down and get a really good rate on this thing or that thing typically these people are like no i wanted the best thing in the world that almost no one can have and i want to tell everybody how much i paid i never heard anybody be like i just got the new iphone and i gypped the guy down 200 yeah you're exactly you're exactly right. I mean, certain people on certain things that are flipping houses, I've seen people brag.

And I know a lot of negotiators like to get a car for a better price. And I must've heard a dozen people in the last two months say, oh, the salesman at the car lot didn't like me. They lost money when I got done. I'm like, hey, first of all, that salesman was great to make you think

that you beat him. Because there make you think that you beat him because there's no way that you beat him. And they say, well, I paid cash and this and that. I'm like, okay, you paid cash for a $50,000 car. You're smart. That's an appreciating asset. First of all, you lost yourself on that one. But yeah, so you work with a lot of clients and a lot of it sounds like to me, the mental, the mindset, the marketing is a big deal. How do you get them to pay attention? I think average ticket matters. I think conversion rate matters. And the biggest thing I see, Sean, is the people that hate answering the phone and they're not good at booking phone calls. What do you say to those people? I mean, there's certain things that you signed up for and you're in business and

depending on where you're at, obviously, if there's certain things that you really don't enjoy doing, then we need to figure out finding someone to do that work for you, obviously. But if you're winning and you know that the phone calls that are coming into you are typically from the people that you want to do work for on the projects you want to work on, and you've set your life up to not be so chaotic that typically when your phone is ringing, it's bad news. Your outlook on life and your outlook on business is going to be a lot better, and you're going to be a lot better. And you're going to be a lot better at answering the phone and taking the phone calls because you have excitement.

They're actually going to be good things versus bad things. And it's like you said too, there's so many opportunities if you just look for them of ways to increase value and serve people at a higher level and give them things that they don't need, but if they knew they existed, they would want and you could be the person that bridges that gap for them. There's so many people that everyone is already working for that are begging for them to have a premium option or something new and cool to sell them. They're just not delivering that option. So it's not even a conversation. Like every time you sell somebody in a home service industry or the construction industry, and you do work in their house,

there's typically other problems that you performing that service creates. So what are the other problems? And instead of them having to go somewhere else to get somebody to come in and solve that. How about you just package them into what you're doing and have a more complete offering than anyone else does and increase your ticket at the same time? Yeah, I think you're right. I think one of the things too is I scratch your back, you scratch mine. I had a really, really successful painter in my shop two weeks ago. And I said, look, come through here, take a look, ask me questions, tell me the good, bad, and the ugly. And I showed him my CRM, which everybody

knows I'm on Service Titan. And he said, are you kidding me? That's the most amazing thing I've ever seen. And I said, well, they don't do it for painters, but I could probably pull some strings. And then I just got an email yesterday that they're getting on the service time and the CEO messaged me said hey thanks and the thing is is guess what happens when you paint houses do you think you ever run across a bad garage door or two that you shouldn't be painting so these guys do 60 houses a week my plan is for them after the holidays is to go in there teach them how to sell garage doors or at least they're not going to go in there, teach them how to sell garage doors, or at least they're not going to go in the garage industry. Trust me. They're smart guys. They're not going

to look to go, but I'm going to say, you guys sell it for me or help me or at least get me the appointment. There's 10 ways to skin a cat, but 60 houses. Why in the heck would you paint this old piece of crap? Let's get something nice in here. These guys give us a discount. Then they make a little money doing it. We're already a great rate because we buy better. And let's just say they could get to it. 25% of them are just, they're dented.

It doesn't make sense to do it. They're just not good doors. That's a huge deal for me, 15 doors a week. I mean, it's a win-win. And I don't think people think about stuff like that. And the more you help people out, the more you'll get help. I mean, just from this podcast, I've probably sold a thousand different garage doors because people trust me and they call me up or text me or email me and say, or message me on Facebook and say, can you help me out?

I say, absolutely. The fact is that you approached me personally. I'm definitely going to take extra care of you because I didn't have to pay for marketing. So you're going to save that $100 marketing fee. But let me ask you a few more questions because I really think you've helped out a lot of people. And I like your mindset to where you figured a lot of stuff out and you were at the rock bottom and you figured out a way to get out of it and now you're helping other people. What's the kind of problem folks go through when they're getting consulting? Because consulting made me who I am today. If I didn't go to consultants and be on this podcast and get a lot of help,

I wouldn't be where I am today. I think it's the most important thing I've done is go out to shops, pay people to consult me. Why do people hate it so much, and why don't they get more of it? I think this all comes back down a lot to the people that are struggling or almost embarrassed that they're struggling. And it's to them safer to stay in a place that's painful than it is to actually get help and talk about it to somebody else. And then a lot of the other things that come back down to like this self-worth conversation and this value of what I do and what I can charge for things and everything else. that like you actually are your number one asset and the ROI on the money that you spend on you

and hiring the right people to teach you the right things to get things to work inside of life and business is going to be so much higher than anything else anywhere else you could put your money like the percentage of ROI on what I've invested in me is crazy and the thousands of percent and I'm sure it's the same for you but it's just really getting people across the line to see like you're actually the one component that's at the center of everything and if you don't start figuring it out and the fastest way to figure it out is to go find the guy that already did and hand him some money and have him teach you what he did and help you implement it inside of your own life and business.

And the other thing is what you pay for, you pay attention to, right? So if I put my skin in the game and I pay somebody for their advice, my natural tendency to listen and implement for the advice that I paid for is exponentially higher than the free advice that I got or whatever else. And it's really just getting people across that and having them realize like you're actually the number one asset in your business and your life. And there's nowhere else that you have as much control and as much opportunity for upside than investing in yourself and in your business. Do not hand your hard-earned money to some guy that says he's going to put it in this or that or whatever. Your ability to put money back into your own business, which is the one

thing you control and you're an expert at, and turn that into exponential ROI and rate of return way higher than anything else anyone else out there could offer you that obviously you're not going to have any control over or expertise in either. Like so many people hand money to people and just hope that it all works out. We have no idea what's actually happening, how the value is being created, what the real rates of return are and everything else. So the number one place that somebody can put investment is definitely in themselves. And you and I, like you said, are both in the position that we're at because we saw that we had to invest in ourselves and we had to grow ourselves as men and human beings and learn what we didn't know. And the value of having a third party perspective,

come in and see the holes that you can't see in the blind spots that you can't see, and then bring them up and teach you about them is so valuable. There's so many things going on in everyone's business because they have no visibility on their numbers or CRM or anything else. And then they just don't even see the holes that somebody who's trained and actually knows what's going on can walk into any business and start pointing out. And if you don't know a problem exists, you can't fix it. Yeah. Sometimes it's insanity because we know we could fix something, but you got to remember how much is your time worth and how much focus do you have in a day?

Like, for example, there's a place called Yuma, Arizona, beautiful town. And I took the initiative to pull out of there. And people were like, dude, I know if you tried, you could have made it work. I'm like, there's not a whole lot of things that if I try it, I really think I'm going to lose that because I got a good self in the mirror. I feel okay about myself. And I feel like if I give it a go in anything, I'm going to make it. But I said, how much is my time worth, my energy, my effort, my focus, my essentialism? So I think there's a lot to be said about that. I'm going to ask you one last question for the podcast.

And I have a few to kind of wrap up. What are three great tips you could share just off the top of your head that would really help the listeners become better business owners and contractors or subcontractors? Okay. So number one, if you don't have a morning routine, you need to adopt one immediately. A couple of simple things. If you just want to keep a morning routine really, really simple, I can give you a pointer on that. A, workout. There's got to be some sort of physical

activity going on just to get you up and going in a place where that's on point. Two, meditation is huge to just help your mind function better, help you solve problems, be more present, everything else. You've got to have a system in place where you're continuously letting know, like your kids and your wife know that you appreciate them through just even as simple as like a text message or a sticky note, something just saying, hey, I love you. And also most people's diet is horrible. So instead of trying to go on a diet that you hate, like let's just actually add something that's nutritious for you. Like how about you just add like a green smoothie and get some good greens inside your body with maybe some protein powder and some fruit, something that tastes good. And it's actually just a super simple breakfast for you before you head out. And then you've got to get really conscious of your sleep. I don't know if you've gone into

sleep and started tracking it and seeing how much of a massive impact it has on your performance. But for me and a lot of people that I've talked to, just simply dialing in and getting sleep on point and actually tracking it and having hard data and measuring and knowing what's working and what's not and getting the quality of your sleep up will change your entire life. So that's the first part is getting you on point. And then the second part is you've got to figure out a simple system that you can automate as far as your marketing goes so that no matter what you're doing a message is put out in front of the right people and there's a constant stream of them coming in because most people have no

system in place so they get busy then they focus on doing the work and then that work finishes up and then they have no new work lined up and then the hustle begins and then that's the this up and down cycle over and over and over again you've got to figure out a way to get a constant stream of people coming in that you're not 100 in control of and having to push the ball forward and then you've got to have something that keeps track of all the numbers and has you constantly monitoring and knowing what's working and what's not working and just knowing where the business needs attention and where to double down on and what things to cut or change or whatever.

That will give you control. Yep. Wow. I got a lot give you control. Yep. Wow. I got a lot of notes here. Okay. So, Sean, if someone wants to get a hold of you, what's the best way to reach out? Well, they can go to subcontractorrevolution.com and kind of check out what's going on there. I have a free training that I put together that they can click on through that website and

kind of watch and just kind of get a little bit more of a picture of what I do and what I help people do. Another great thing is if you like listening to podcasts, like if you're in the car a lot and this just kind of seems to be a medium that is easy for you to consume, I have the podcast. You're welcome to check that out. It's on all the places where podcasts are distributed. And I would say that's probably the best way to get hold of you. And then I wanted to ask you, what are three books that you recommend? Essentialism is a fantastic book, but do you have a few more? Yeah. So one book on marketing that really shifted my entire perspective and changed my life is 80, 20 cells and marketing by Perry Marshall.

Another really great book that I read recently that was recommended to me is called freedom from fear. Okay. That's by Mark Madison, M A T E S O N. That's him. That's it for sure. Okay, that's by Mark Madison, M-A-T-T-E-S-O-N. That's it. That's it for sure. Okay, got it. And then is there a third one? I think the third book that really helps shift my perspective too is Dan Kennedy's No BS Marketing to the Affluent. Oh, yeah. I got that book on my shelf.

That's a great one. You know, it's interesting right now, Sean, because we're doing some stuff next month to work on multiple regressions. Do you have any idea what that is? Multiple, like just areas that are regressing? Multiple regressions are a way to take all the data from any data set and then compare it in a statistical format to find out if there's a significant data. So within a certain standard deviation. So I'm going to look at my top jobs from last year.

I'm going to take all my jobs. I'm going to take average income, jobs from last year. I'm going to take all my jobs. I'm going to take average income, age of home, time to move in, credit score, number of garage doors, all kinds of things. And I've got like 20 different things I'm comparing to and to find out which data, it'll show you over time what your best customers are that spend the most and they like the nicest things like wood overlay garage doors or for any company out there better air conditioning units or whatever it is square foot of the home there's all these different factors and whatever we find out that significant data i could literally take this data and get i could pull the records in real

time and i could know which customers I absolutely, because here's what happens is sometimes we get busy and we have to cancel or customers cancel. If I got a customer that scores in the top 10 percentile of my top 10% of customers, that becomes a priority. And I'm sorry, it just, we stopped serving downtown Detroit a lot of areas because a lot of times we walked out with zero. The people didn't have the money to fix it. We drove out there for free. We can't stay in business like that.

And I'd rather give charity to people that I decide on than to just have them pick me. So it's a pretty cool thing. I'll keep you in the loop on what happens with it. But the last thing I'd like to do, I just wanted to talk to you about that because you talked a lot about knowing the right customers, marketing to the affluent. And we think of that. I'm going to give you the floor here and really let you talk to the audience, leave them with one last final finale thought. And maybe one thing to do, one thing to think about going into 2020. Whatever this final thing is, just you on the floor here and go crazy with it okay so i talked to a lot of people and i know you talked to a lot of people too and the one common denominator that

i notice with people that are struggling and frustrated is they're not actually clear on what they want and what they want to get from their business and what their business is supposed to be like they just don't really have a super clear picture of what they want out of their business and their life. So typically everything slows down for us around this time of year because not a whole lot of people want their houses worked on during Christmas and probably about up to New Year. So this is the time for you to really go back and just a give yourself permission to dream again. Cause a lot of guys get in a place where they've just been kind of grinding it out for so long that they've let life and their business kind of just

bring the joy out of them. And they've stopped giving themselves permission to actually have a big vision for their future and really allow themselves strength. So go out there and really get clear on what is it that you want. Because there's no way you can build the business that you want if you're not clear on what you want it to look like, what you want it to provide for you as far as money and time freedom and everything else. What you want it to provide for the people that live or that work for you. And just really this clear picture of what it is that you actually want to build. And for some of us, that's this massive empire nationwide, like Tommy, that's crazy and

everywhere. And they just love building this huge thing and looking at the numbers and figuring it out and just like business becomes our sport you know and for some people it's just simply i want to have a small team of great people and i want to do great work and provide an amazing life for my family and have the ability to take time off and take my family on vacations or enjoy the things that i enjoy that i stopped doing and just really get clear on what that is. Because if you know exactly what that is, and you have a clear picture of what that is, then you can actually build a plan to start making that a reality for you. So start there. And then let's take inventory of our life

and where we're at. And let's get super, super clear on where we're actually at. Because there's a lot of people that even get clear on where it is that they want to go. But then when they try to reverse engineer a plan to get there, they reverse engineer it to a place that they're not actually at because they're not really clear and telling the truth about what are the facts in my current situation. And then once you're clear on where you're at and where you want to go, then start building the plan, and you've got to ask yourself a question here. Who am I going to need to get into a relationship with to help me pull this off? What knowledge and skill sets am I going to have to know and learn? And really start surrounding yourself with people. So you need to reach out to people that have the results that you want

and literally pay them to help you achieve the same thing or get to this place that you want to go. And you've also got to take an inventory of who you're surrounded with and just know like you're going to be the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. So you need to get into a network of people that think like you and are headed to similar places that you're headed and just be surrounded and have a support system of like-minded people that actually get what you're going through because they're doing something similar themselves. So really just allow yourself to dream again and paint a clear picture and then start putting the pieces in place and start bringing the people that you need into your life to help you pull this stuff off. That's awesome, Sean. I got a lot out of you coming

on today. And you said a lot of things that I don't hear very often. It really is changing your circle. And really, business is not easy. And I got to give it to my team, but I got to give it to myself in a way. And I'm not trying to be cocky, but I've made every mistake by picking the wrong team. And finally, I feel like I've got the perfect team. And I'll tell you what, I'm not afraid to make mistakes. And I feel like Sean, everybody's like, Oh, if I hire this guy and I pull the trigger on this guy, is it going to be the right person? Maybe it's not, but make your mistakes fast and don't make them again. And I think you hit the nail on the head, man. And I really, truly appreciate you coming on. I got a ton out of it. I've got these books. I've got the marketing to the fluent

or the 80, 20. I think I have that one too on my thing here. I'm going to look, but I just bought freedom from fear too. So you were great and I'll definitely have you on again. And I really appreciate your time today. Awesome. It's been a pleasure. I appreciate you having me on. Hey, I just wanted to take a quick minute and thank you for listening to the podcast. You know, most people don't understand this, but the way that the podcast has grown is when people subscribe and they leave a review. So if

you would please, please, please, Wyatt's top of mind, take a quick minute to subscribe and leave a quick review. It'll help me out so much. If you just took a little bit of time right now, I can't tell you enough how much I appreciate the listeners and the feedback. And also when you subscribe, what I'm going to do is let you know the next guest coming on the podcast and I'll let you email me anything you want me to ask that next person coming on. All the pros I have on here, I want your feedback. I want you to subscribe

so you can start giving me the questions you want me to ask and help us grow together. Also, I'm giving away my book for free now. All you got to do is go to homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast. You got to cover the shipping and handling, but I'm giving the my book for free now. All you got to do is go to homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast. You got to cover the shipping and handling, but I'm giving the material out for free. It's 200 pages. It's a hardcover book, homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast. I appreciate each and every one of the listeners and thank you for making this Home Service Expert podcast a success. I hope you're having a great day and thanks again.