The Home Service Expert Podcast - How Branding Your Business Can Save You Thousands of Dollars

Episode Date: June 9, 2020

Jason Buehler is the owner and founder of Buehler Air Conditioning, a Florida-based company. Across two decades of heating and cooling experience within the Jacksonville Beach community, Jason has serviced more than 5,000 customers. He has an extensive knowledge of HVAC, coupled with integrity and professional training. In this episode, we talked about HVAC, customer relationships, energy efficiency, green building...

We did 2 million in total sales my last year before we rebranded. And we're on pace to do 4 million this year. And we're spending about just a little bit more money on advertising, but we're just a way better known brand. It's helped us with advertising to new customers. It's helped us with recruiting new employees. It's just helped us with a whole lot of stuff and given us the confidence to spend the money

where we just didn't have it before. So I think if somebody has got a brand that they are not in love with, they should change it and don't be scared because you're not going to lose a customer because you decided to have a better marketing strategy. They're just going to be able to recommend you and refer you more. I really think it's a wise investment. What people will spend on a rebrand pales in comparison to what they would waste advertising a bad brand. 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 a very special guest. He's out of Florida. He owns an HVAC company, Jason Bueller. He's great at HVAC customer relationships, energy efficiency, and green building. He owns Bueller Air Conditioning from 2019 to now, the owner of Air Source America from 2010 to now, and he was also the trained territory manager from 2005 to 2010. So he founded the Bueller Air Conditioning in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, over 20 years

of the heating and cooling experience, and has served over 5,000 customers. He's got a lot of experience in HVAC, and everything I've basically learned in the garage door business is from HVAC. We were just talking about Ken Goodrich. Jason, really excited to have you on and really appreciate it. Absolutely. I'm excited to be here. So talk me through a little bit. I'm very, very familiar with Train. I believe a long, long, long time ago, there's a guy named Jim Abrams who started One Hour Air that started with Train. He was doing door knocking in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and built an empire.

Tell me a little bit about your experience with a territory manager and now doing it on your own. Sure. So just a little bit of backstory. I started right out of high school into the air conditioning business. I had a friend of mine whose dad owned an AC business in Ohio, where I'm originally from in Dayton, Ohio. And I started in the AC business, did three years there and moved to Jacksonville, Florida. And I worked for another company for about seven years before I got the train job. And when I went to the wholesale side, it was a whole nother animal. It was a whole different game. I really got to learn a lot about how to build a small business, how to build a retail

HVAC businesses, which is exactly what we've done. And when working at Train, I had about 50 different accounts and I got to go and speak with different people, go to all the Train training that was available, business development training, marketing training. And in the process of getting to know all these accounts, 50 different accounts, I really got to see who was good at this and who wasn't, and who was making money and who wasn't. And on the train, selling the train equipment was really easy. They had a really strong brand presence. You'll probably remember the tagline, it's hard to stop a train. So through the years, they built a really good brand, and they were doing business with a lot of really successful contractors.

And through that, I was able to get a lot of experience working with a lot of great small businesses, a lot of great contractors. And that inspired me to start my own business in 2010. And that's when we launched AirSource America. And 10 years later, nine years later, I decided to rebrand and use my last name because nobody ever forgets my last name. Yeah, Bueller. Yes. So Stay Cooler with Bueller. Oh, nice. And Dan Antonelli and Kick Charge Creative is who brought

that brand to the market. And they handled everything for us from the design to the truck wraps, to the logo, to the new website, new content, whole brand launch message, whole brand strategy. And we've only been Bueller Air Conditioning for a year and three months. And we're one of the most well-known air conditioning companies in our marketplace. It's crazy what you can do with a great brand and the right people helping you. Yeah, I had Dan on the podcast. He actually came up with my wraps. He with a great brand and the right people helping you. Yeah, I had Dan on the podcast. He actually came up with my reps. He's a great guy. You know, I asked about five people who they recommended and it all pointed back to Dan. I actually got his book on my shelf too.

Super smart guy. If anybody's looking to rebrand, get a good logo, I definitely recommend Dan Antonelli. So tell me a little bit about the bigger tickets. What is an HVAC unit on the high end of getting new insulated tubing and everything go for there in Florida? So here in Florida, you know, obviously we use what's called a heat pump and that's an air conditioner. It can work in reverse and do heat as well. And it gets used year round because we've got a climate that's always calling for something for some AC or for some heat for something. And those are going to range, you know, a low end air conditioners is going to be around $5,000. And then you can spend as much as 15 or $20,000 on a really nice high end system. It's got advanced technology and multiple speeds that

can control not just temperature, but humidity, temperature, the level of, you know, the cleanliness of the air within the home and accessories. So that's where we really get to shine is, is we're able to go in and meet with a homeowner and go through their house and figure out, you know, what's going to best suit them. Is it just the base model air conditioner because they're moving in a year? Or are they going to be staying for a long time and they want to buy a really nice high-end air conditioner that's going to keep them way more comfortable, save money on their electric bills, and deliver that level of comfort? And our business delivers that level of service to keep that thing up and working perfectly. And that's what we specialize in. That's what Stay Cooler with Bueller is all about. I love it. I love it. Yeah. One of the things that

I've realized, I met this guy. Oh, I'm trying to think of where it was. It was, I think it was for Service Titan. And he had a company in Florida, air conditioning, and his average ticket was $22,000. And he said, I just spend a lot of time with the customers. I talked to the, usually the wife, he said he'd go into the bathroom when the gals get ready. And by expanding the pipe or, you know, I don't know much about AC, but he talked about when you get ready, does it get humid in here? And so he redoes all the tubing and the ceilings. And I was like, 22 grand, that's crazy. How important is finance for you in the HVAC world? It's been something that's been growing a lot through the years. Financing is really important. Not a lot of people are excited about throwing down a lot of money out of their savings account

for an air conditioner. It's not a sexy purchase. It's not a favorite driveway. It's not a beautiful kitchen or bathroom. So financing really drives our business and it really drives our ticket average because when somebody's shopping for a car, if they had to write a check for it, they'd be looking at $10,000 cars. But when they're talking about financing for a couple percent or attractive finance rates, all of a sudden they're looking at $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 cars. So our average finance ticket is probably $10,000 where an average pay-by-check ticket might be $6,000. Yep, exactly. How are you hiring right now? How are you finding good talent? How good are your guys? I mean, what do you do for hiring? So we're constantly on the

recruiting trail looking for the best guys that we can find in our industry. And we like young guys with great attitudes. We can train their skill from there. So we continue to kind of network. And we have a lot of people come and ask us, hey, we see your trucks around town. We see you on Facebook. What's Stay Cooler Bueller all about? You know, and we have a lot of people that inquire with us. So we're constantly interviewing people and trying to pick the best of the best of what's available.

And we do sometimes run some radio ads letting people know that, I mean, we do, we pay the best in the industry. We have the best benefits available. And we're just constantly refining that process. I love it. I love it. You know, right now with unemployment where it's at, I think the guys that learn how to recruit, if I have a choice and I've hired guys with experience, but I choose just raw out of, you know, younger guys, like you said, I don't care.

You know, it's hard to see younger guys from an HR perspective, you know, guys like you said i don't care you know it's hard to see younger guys from an hr perspective you know young willing and able and i think i'd rather train them from the ground up myself and so we've gotten really good and i think there's going to be a huge influx into the trades here with what's going on in the uh the hotel and restaurant industry so i got my ppp money a few weeks ago i got it like right away And I just I just came in and looked at my desk and here's a check for 1200. It's kind of funny I didn't think I was going to get this What I wanted to ask you is a lot of people now are scared. They're they're not advertising. They seem to be laying off people

Both you and I are in an essential business What should you be doing with that money? Obviously, you got to use it for payroll, but it's still an influx of money. What should businesses be doing right now to grow the business while everyone else is kind of asleep at the wheel? I think you got to zig

when everybody else is going to zag. We are expanding a little bit of our social media spend. We've got a company that helps us with it. As a matter of fact, it's KickCharge. And we're bringing on Instagram advertising, having them taking over our email newsletter, our email campaign. We're trying to stay in touch with our customers as much as we possibly can right now. And we are not cutting back advertising. I kind of have the feeling that you're either growing and pushing forward, or if you put that

thing in neutral, you could be running backwards. So my thought is to be smart about it. Don't double down on stuff that's not been working. Keep tracking what you're doing, but you got to keep, it's like any other investment. You got to keep reinvesting if you want to grow, if you want things to go well. And I don't want to sit here and act like, oh, the economy doesn't matter. It's not that. The economy really, really matters. But your own personal economy, what you're working on every day

is going to be what you get the most effect from. So we're trying to push through. I got an additional truck being outfitted right now this week. We're bringing on another truck. We're not going to take our foot off the gas. We're not going to let fear drive our decisions. We're going to let faith in ourselves and in what we're doing continue to push us. You know, I kind of feel guilty because we hit a record week, a record month, and a record day this past week and month and day. It's crazy how busy we are. I'm actually, I hired 25 guys this week to come

in and train for the 15th. So next week we're going to have another training on the 1st. We're going to get another 20 guys. I feel like this is a huge opportunity to fix your business. It's organized this stuff, get better ways of tracking inventory, really work on your marketing. You said you do newsletters. How are those working for you? I'm curious. Well, they definitely raise awareness within your own customer base. I mean, as you know, you're the company that people are thinking of when they need your service. Well, we've got a nice referral program where if this customer, you know, sends us somebody that needs a new system replacement, we send them a really nice thank you letter and a hundred dollar Visa gift card that's got our

logo and everything on it. And we stay top of mind really, really well with those customers. And by staying in touch with them every month, letting them know what's going on within our business, what specials that we have, we kind of keep in mind that, hey, you know, if they're thinking of us, they're going to recommend us to their friends and family. And we get just an unbelievable amount of estimates and stuff. So for us, it's kind of a grassroots thing. But just staying top of mind with your customer base pays huge dividends.

And I think it's where a lot of small businesses miss the mark. You know, I had a guy that I met in Vegas at a seminar. And he told me that 80% of his business was return business in the HVAC. He said he does so much business from his customer list. And I just was amazed. I'm like, how is that even possible? You replace the HVAC unit maybe once every 10 years. And he said, we go really light on marketing, get a lot of referrals, but he goes, we write service contracts. And once it hits that eight to 10 year mark, we're selling them a new unit. How well are your service agreements? How does that work for you? It's one of the main focuses of our business. You know, there's different types of HVAC businesses.

We've chose to be a service maintenance and replacement HVAC business. And we've got about 2,500 maintenance agreements, individual homes where we go out twice a year and clean and maintain their stuff. And that's our most loyal client. Those are the people who are going to spend with us. They're always going to call us if something breaks, if they need an air conditioner, those are the people that refer us the most. Then outside of that, that's kind of your bullseye. Then your next rung outside of that, those are your customers that call you when something does break, but maybe they're not a maintenance customer. Maybe they just call you when they need you. Then outside of that, as your next rung is almost like your prospect,

that's who you're trying to stay top of mind with. But for us, the maintenance customer drives our business. I mean, year round, we're able to move these trucks every day to go to these people's homes. And then as we add new customers throughout the year, we just keep expanding on that base over and over and over again. So for us, it's a driving force in our business. There's different statistics on it, but for every thousand maintenance agreements a retail HVAC company has, they're probably going to do a million dollars a year worth of business. And the reason being is over 10 years, that customer is going to use you every year for maintenance, every year for repairs

and eventually buy a new system. So you just do the math and that's where that recurring revenue, that's why so many of these AC companies sell for big money is because they've got that locked in recurring revenue. I think everybody that's listening right now should really start focusing their time and energy on a service agreement. Can you tell me a little bit about how you guys sell it when you bring it up to the customer and what you guys find to work the best? So the best maintenance agreement that we can sell is when we go out on a demand service call and somebody's got a broken air conditioner and let's say that they've got a $500 repair. So we come in and we let them know, hey, listen, we can definitely fix this. It's going to be $500. However, while we're here, we noticed that your air conditioner is a little bit dirty on the

inside. It's got some mildew building up in it, your filter was clogged, your outside unit's got dust bunnies on it and yard clippings up inside of it, we can go ahead and clean this system while we're here today and put you on a maintenance agreement. And what's going to happen is we're going to contact you in six months, come out and clean and detail this thing again. So by doing that, we're going to be able to offer you a 15% discount on this repair today. So your $500 bill, you know, is now a $420 bill, $425 bill. And they buy that maintenance agreement up front. Let's say it's $160. They're going to spend a little bit of money up front, but when you leave there that day, they're going to have a clean system that's been completely gone through. We've checked all the

components. We've cleaned everything out. We've checked all the components. We've cleaned everything out. We've cleaned the drain line. If some of the parts are weak, we can replace them, you know, at a discount while we're standing there. And then six months later, we're going to come back and we're going to check in detail and clean that machine again. And what we found is that customers like that. Because an AC system is like a fish tank, but it doesn't have a clear glass on the front. But a lot of AC systems, you go peel the door off and it's dirty behind that panel and it

needs to be clean. So by doing that, the homeowners like it. They feel like they're staying on top of it. They're offered new cutting edge products, indoor air quality products that are available. And we're seeing a great amount of sales from that. They make air purifiers that we install in people's supply duct that kill 99.9% of viruses, bacteria, mildew, eliminate smells from people's homes. And we do really well with that. And I hate to say it, but our whole business is built on maintenance agreements and service. That's what we provide is a higher level of service. And no matter what home service

business you have, if you can build a maintenance agreement that keeps you tied to that customer and pulling into their driveway once or two times a year, it leads to a lot of success. I love it. I love it. And I love the fact that the service agreements help you stay busy when it's slow season, when it's not as either warm or cold, maybe a little bit more neutral. When we were talking before, you said you're not super slam right now just because the weather has been probably not too hot, but not too chilly, right? Right. It's just been in between and, you know, just a little bit of people being nervous about spending money right now, understandably. And again, HVAC is not something people get excited to spend their money on. But once it gets hot outside, they're like, you know what? I better not mess around with this. Let me go ahead and get a nice air conditioner and buy

it from the right company that's going to be there for me when I need it most. You said Instagram. I love social media. I've actually been doing a lot more of it this year. I always tell people Google is kind of like God in the home service space. You got to have a good website that ranks, a good Google My Business page, good reviews. Tell me a little bit about Instagram and how you're able to create leads with social media because I know a lot of people don't believe in it. I really do. I think it's amazing.

But how are you utilizing it? I think it all ties back to the same thing that we were talking about a few minutes ago. Are you the known company in your area for that service? In my local area, in the beaches area where we work, when people think about air conditioning, a lot of people think about Bueller, stay cooler at Bueller. We've got really nice wrap trucks with the cool guy on the side with the sunglasses. Are you top of mind? And what we do is we currently advertising on Facebook and Google, of course, we get a lot from Google. Like you were saying, Google's the number one producer, but we get a huge influx from our Facebook page.

You know, we're a smaller local business, but we're averaging between 150 and 200 clicks from Facebook to our website per month. And we're able to drive phone calls, traffic, and we feel like we're getting a great mix with this Facebook audience. It's a lot of great clientele, but a lot of younger clientele is on Instagram. I've got younger guys that work for me that are in their 20s. At 28 and below, they're Instagrammers. They don't even have a Facebook. And our thought is that if we're getting such great success from Facebook, we need to be working on the next generation too.

We have a lot of great customers that are millennials that buy really nice stuff and they do it with financing. They love 0% financing. They love locking in a payment on a nice unit. So we just feel like it'd be smart on our part to make sure we're expanding that awareness with Instagram, Facebook, obviously through Google. We want to be the known company. When they think of who do I need to call for air conditioning, we want it to pop into their heads. Stay cooler, we're cooler. What's a good marketing budget you feel is a percentage of revenue? Well, it depends on how aggressive you want to be. We spend about 5%, but I think we could spend a little bit more if we wanted to be a little bit more aggressive, but I think it starts at 5% at least. Yeah, I think in general, I'm at about 12, but it's coming down. When you go into

a new market, I think you should be spending a minimum of 10 to 20 to get your name out there and then kind of slow it down once you build the website, the brand and all that. What are you doing for reputation management? Do you use anything? Like for me, I use BirdEye. Yeah, I use BirdEye as well. Oh, okay. How's that working out? BirdEye as well. And it's worked pretty well. We have 428 five-star Google reviews and man, to this day, knock on some wood, we still don't have a bad one, which is great. And that's what really drives our business. Everybody that calls in, you know, they either hear us on the radio or they see our trucks. And then when they

Google you and they see that five-star rating, they're like, man, I better not mess this up. Let me call the guys out here that know what they're doing. So for me, you know, those reviews are really, really important. And, you know, you got to work really hard to maintain that kind of customer satisfaction. But we've got this simple philosophy, Tommy. If we can't make them happy, man, we just give them their money back and let them find somebody else. Because it's just not worth working so hard to get these nice reviews to let somebody slam you over 100 bucks or 200 bucks. We just think it's better to cut bait, give them their money back if that's what it takes. And we don't have to do that very often, but that's how we handle it. You know, I just signed about 10 checks yesterday and I had a new guy here training and he said,

what are those checks for? And I said, well, these are just customer refunds. Some of them were 10 bucks. And he said, how often do you sign those? I said, a couple of times a week, there's a couple of dozen of them a week. And I've got a whole team dedicated to just making sure the customers are happy. It's pretty interesting because people say, well, we're in the right here. We told the customer. And a lot of people are, they're just, they want to stand firm and just the customer's wrong on this one. And I'm like, if I spend less than a percent giving back a little bit of money if someone's unhappy,

but keep my reputation, I mean, it's night and day. And I'm not as fortunate of you not to have any bad reviews because we've shown up late. We've definitely customers, they find it on Amazon for cheaper. I'm sure you've heard that before. But I think it's important to keep that reputation. It's pretty cool to hear that your social media is working and just getting all those clicks. So what else is there that you do that's kind of a secret sauce? It sounds like you guys got a great culture, great employees. What else are you doing out there to make the

business grow? We're kind of slow to the party with indoor air quality. The last 10 years, we've put in a lot of air conditioners. We service a lot of air conditioners. And in the last five years, we started selling a lot of those indoor air quality products that I was telling you about. But we've always been kind of hesitating to offer a duct cleaning service. But gosh, with everything that's transpired here recently, and the fact that we have customers asking us all the time about clean air, we've decided to go ahead and invest some money into some really high-powered duct cleaning equipment. And it's not just the duct cleaning that you're doing. It's the other services you can provide while you're there, like those air purifiers I

was mentioning to you earlier and fixing some of their duct work issues. A lot of homes you go into and if you just ask a few questions, say, hey, you know, does this house heat and cool pretty well? Or is there any rooms that don't heat or cool well? People will come out of the woodwork and tell you after you ask and probe a little bit and say, oh, my gosh, yeah, my master bedroom is like four degrees warmer than the rest of the house. It's terrible. I'm always running my air conditioner down to try and fix that. Well, these are some simple things we can do to go in and fix. We can add in a return air to their bedroom and solve that hot and cold spot within their house and go ahead and do that while we're there doing a duct cleaning. Now all of a sudden we take a $500 or $600 ticket and we can do some

duct modifications and some indoor air quality. And now all of a sudden we got a $2,000, $3,000, $4,000 ticket, which is super profitable to do that kind of work. It's not profitable if you're doing it by itself, but if you're doing it with other stuff. So we're expanding, we're going to become the experts not on just providing a great level of service for fixing and repairing air conditioner. We want to build that same level of confidence and trust that we're the people that can come in and clean the ducts and provide that crisp, clean conditioned indoor air that everybody's really looking forward to because everybody's spending a lot more time in their home and you know it's always been that way but it's there's just even more of a focus on it now so we're gonna we're

gonna double down on on selling clean air as well as cold air I love it so what I hear a lot in the HVAC industry is you'll get a lot of co-op money for advertising and other things if you play it right. I don't know what the percentages are, but I know that most of the big guys I know get a lot of money from their main air conditioning provider. I think one of the biggest untapped things I see with a lot of home service businesses is they're not utilizing co-op money. Talk to me a little bit about co-op and how it works and how you're utilizing it. Yeah, well, we've utilized every nickel that we've earned in the last 10 years. And it's, I mean, you're silly not to, but you'd be amazed how many contractors are just kind of lazy and they don't want to. I think some of them are a little bit scared to market. And maybe that goes back to they don't have a good brand that they're proud of.

Maybe they've kind of got not the best thing to be marketing. So it's harder for them to get their message across. So for me, I look at those co-op funds as something I can really do. I look at marketing like I'm going to spend 5% and then the co-op's on top. So if I get some money back on top, I'm going to spend that in addition. It's going to range for different companies, different suppliers, vendors, but a good average might be, say, 5%. So if you spend a million dollars on materials and air conditioners and you get 5% back, I mean, gosh, it's 50 grand that you can put towards advertising. I think you're crazy not to utilize it. As you get more into business,

you get better at negotiating those terms. And I'm sure that some guys like Ken Goodrich and some of these other guys that are really good at this, they're probably getting a lot more co-op. But again, they're spending a lot more money with these organizations as well. But co-op is something that you got to be utilizing. But I hate to keep going back to the kick charge thing, but I can tell you in nine years of AirSource America, we spent a ton of money, but nobody could ever remember who we were. We'd finish a job and they'd say, hey, Jason, or hey, Bueller, hey, man, you guys did a great job today. We love you. What's the name of your business again? I got to make this check out. So when we switched to Bueller and became such a known brand, our advertising worked a lot better

and we were able to utilize those co-op dollars a lot better. And it gave us the confidence to want to spend the money when we were seeing the results. We just frankly didn't see nearly the kind of return until we had a standout brand. So that's what I think about that. That's interesting. I like the fact that you rebrand. Talk to me a little bit about people. I spent a fortune and I'm kind of generic, A1 garage store service. It's easy to remember A1 from day one is what I always say, but it's definitely not super unique. Talk to me a little bit about what went through your head. Obviously it went super successful from what I hear. If someone just has got a plain Jane,

really easy to forget name, what would you recommend? And what are some of the thoughts that went through your head? Were you just all about it or were you a little concerned or how'd that go? I had a total range of emotions. For several years, I felt like, man, I messed up naming it Air Source America. It doesn't even sound like air conditioning. What was I thinking? I wanted to sound big. I wanted to sound like we were a corporate company that was going to be there for you. But I didn't have sound like air conditioning. What was I thinking? I wanted to sound big. I wanted to sound like we were a corporate company that, you know, that was going to be there for you. But I didn't have a great marketing background.

I had an AC background. And, you know, I got a few years into it and I was like, gosh, I should change this. But the fear of change really held me back. And we were doing everything right from the, you know, the referral program I was telling you about to all these five-star Google reviews. We just weren't the company you thought of in our marketplace. If you saw a van driving down the road, it said AirSource America with like this planet on the side and like the cold strip of air and the warm

strip going around it. You might think we sold oxygen bottles or something, you know? So I got to this point where I convinced myself and my general manager, who's a fantastic sales guy. We started talking about it. I said, man, all the leads we run are people that are direct referrals or somebody that saw a five-star review, you know, demands to do business with the best, but we're not getting the casual customer. We're not getting the guy that gets home that day and, you know, is reactive. And he's like, shoot, I need an air conditioner. Who do I call? Shit. You know, and he's thinking, who's he going to call in his mind? Well, he's like, shoot, I need an air conditioner. Who do I call? Shit. And he's thinking, who's he going to call in his mind? Well, he's going to call the company that he thinks of the most, the one he sees the most, the one that stands out the most in his marketplace.

And we weren't that company for nine years. So I did a lot of homework and I decided, man, we're going to rebrand. We're going to become a brand that everybody knows. And the more I looked into it, I just kept Googling logos. I was interviewing different companies and I came across KickCharge. So I got on KickCharge website. I checked out all the brands that they built. I saw that they'd done Ken Goodrich's brand, which is a fantastic brand, the Gettle brand out in Arizona and California, I guess now Texas. And I started seeing some of these success stories. And I was like, well, gosh, this makes all the sense in the world.

If I got a great brand, it'll be a lot easier to advertise this. So I got in touch with KickCharge. Dan calls me back and he calls me back and I hadn't even had a chance to really catch up with him at all. And he says, hey, I'm looking at your file here. I think you might be a good candidate for us, but your name, AirSource America,

that's a mouthful, man. It doesn't even sound like air conditioning. Are you open to changing it? And I just laughed and said, yeah, listen, I got this great idea. Hear me out. And I told him, you know, my last name's Bueller. Nobody ever forgets it. When I call my buddies and they answer the phone, they always say, stay cooler, Bueller, when they answer the phone. And I was like, I feel like I got a tagline. I feel like I got a brand. I've got all these things that would work and I've got ideas. And he's like, man, maybe that could work. We're not sure about last names. Let me get with my team. I'll call you back. So he calls me back two days later and he's like, yeah, man, they definitely think we can

work with your last name. It's something people definitely remember. So we entered into an agreement. They were going to do our website, the brand announcement letter, the design, everything. Stickers, yard signs. I mean, we just signed a nice package with them. I was like, shit, if you get a chance to rebrand, you need to go with the best. So that's what we did. And about halfway into, you know, we get three or four months into it. It's the slow season.

I signed a deal with them in August. We ended up launching the new brand in February of 19. But by like December, January, I was nervous. I was like, man, I wonder if I'm making the right call here. I got a successful business. I've got seven or eight trucks on the road. I'm making money. My employees are making money. Maybe I'm making the wrong choice. And that fear really started to mess with me. But Dan's pretty, pretty firm in his stance when once he's got a design that he knows is going to work. He was like, no, I'm telling you, this is the one this is going to work. And he kind of, you know, just talked me through it. And then, you know,

we went ahead and did the whole relaunch in February. And man, it was a roaring success. We did the radio campaign, a Facebook campaign. And within a month, people were like, dude, I love your trucks driving down the road. They're awesome. And it created like what I would describe as a brand affinity. You know, sometimes you'll see a service truck driving down the road and you just don't have any feeling at all for it. It could just be a white truck with air something slapped on the side and you feel nothing.

You see nothing. It just blends right in. But then you get this Bueller truck, Stay Cooler Bueller with his giant head, with his guy with sunglasses, and he's smiling at you. And it says, Stay Cooler Bueller Air Conditioning. And you kind of laugh and smile.

And you think to yourself, man, that's fun. I like that. I think it creates what's called an instant brand affinity where people see it, they like it, and they remember it. And I mean, it's happened more times than I can count now. I'll be sitting in somebody's living room. I'll say, hey, how did you hear about us? And the wife will say, you know, I saw one of your trucks when I was going to the grocery store the other day. And I thought to myself, man, I love that truck. If I need AC, they look professional. If I need something, that's who I'm going to call. And

lo and behold, there I am giving them an estimate. And we've done a better job maybe than the other estimate that they've got. They decide to go with us. And we never got that casual estimate before. Never. I mean, we did 2 million in total sales my last year before we rebranded. And we're on pace to do 4 million this year. And we're spending about just a little bit more money on advertising, but we're just a way better known brand. It's helped us with advertising to new customers. It's helped us with recruiting new employees.

It's just helped us with a whole lot of stuff and given us the confidence to spend the money where we just didn't have it before. So I think if somebody's got a brand that they are not in love with, they should change it. And don't be scared because you're not going to lose a customer because you decided to have a better marketing strategy. They're just going to be able to recommend you and refer you more.

I really think it's a wise investment. What people will spend on a rebrand pales in comparison to what they would waste advertising a bad brand. I'm sure you could agree with that. Yeah, I think it's huge. I think a lot of the people listening to this podcast should really think about their name and if it's going to be effective to grow like they really want to. The name and the logo and then there's- And the look itself, you know, does that look something attractive?

Yeah, so Dan's kind of famous for his like cartoon. He did a caricature of my face. It's pretty funny because it could be. I thought it came out nice. Yeah. Yeah. I have a blast with it, but there's got to be symmetry too. If you're doing mailers, everything's got to match your website, your trucks, your social media. And I feel like Dan is a great guy for that for sure so i think i think the listeners should definitely think about the brand if they got a really great brand and you know people say man tell you what to do what you did after 10 years that's crazy i mean i think it was crazy too at the time. And I had friends of mine in the HVAC business.

A lot of people thought, man, this will probably be a good idea. You know, you're successful. You'll make it work. You always do. But I definitely had some guys that were like, dude, you're crazy. Like, why would you change it? Well, the only bigger mistake than knowing you messed up with naming your AC business is knowing you messed up and not doing a damn thing about it.

And that's why I changed it. Yeah, I agree. You did good. Talk to me a little bit about what does green building mean exactly? Green building, you know, what the real focus is on is making sure your whole home is efficient, not just your air conditioner. And that really ties into the duct system in your house. That ties into the infiltration rate in your house. Like, are you leaking a lot of hot or cold air into your house? And what do you do to stop that? What do you do to fix that? And another thing would be like, if your duct work is really old and bad, you know, every time your air conditioner comes on and you're leaking cold air in Florida, you're leaking cold air into your attic. Well, when you're leaking that cold air into your attic, it doesn't just go away.

The space inside has to make up for that air that's lost. So what it does is it starts drawing in hot attic air through all the cracks and crevices. Everywhere there's a can light, everywhere there's a light socket. You're bringing in hot, humid air into the home. So if you're not fixing those main things that are wrong, the whole building's going to be messed up. And putting in a bigger, more powerful air conditioner is only going to compound the problem. So when we go out to sell somebody an air conditioner, we want to make sure that their duct system is correct, make sure that their house isn't leaky. So we find ways to measure those things and make sure that if they want to buy a nice air conditioner, they're going to get value for their dollar on what they spent. Because

there's a lot of AC companies out there. Some of them are out there, you know, they just want to sell you the nicest unit they can, make a buck and get out. They don't care about the long-term. And, you know, that's what really separates AC contractors is the ones that are going to go in there and make sure the system is right. Make sure it's sized correctly. Make sure the duct is correct. And anything that needs to be done to that home to make it efficient, make sure that those things are brought to the surface. And continue to to learn more and more about that as we go and that's what kind of what green building green homes is all about is making sure the whole building is efficient making sure the whole house is efficient not just the one

particular piece that you're working on so i got a question you you guys have got into you fixed the problem obviously what i find typically in an industry like yours it's seasonal and that's why a lot of people they combine plumbing and electrical to their hvac company what are your thoughts on that i agree that that is a way to balance out the seasonality of it and the bigger your business becomes the more imperative that becomes and when you're a home service business you know you can easily market to those other bases. If you're really good at doing air conditioning and you can bring on a good plumbing staff and a good, you know, electrical staff, it really helps to balance it out. We have not gone down that road yet because I'm really obsessed with being really,

really good at what we do. And as we perfect what we do and have the cash flow available, we very well could end up adding probably plumbing first and then possibly electrical second. But right now, we're just, we're obsessed with being the best air conditioning company we can be. But I totally get why people do it. I know why Gettle did it. If you're making money for seven or eight months out of the year, and then you got the possibility of losing money three or four months out of the year, it's a really tough juggling act to do that. And by bringing in those other businesses, it really helps balance it out. Let me ask you this. What does your typical day look like? You've got Monday through Friday. When I was younger in the business, I was out there in the field quite a bit.

And then I turned into more of a sales guy, just estimates. And now I don't remember the last time I was in a garage except for like a buddy. But I'm always working on operations, marketing, sales, training, better recruiting. There's so many things, the website, the expansion. What does your typical day look like? That's a great question, Tommy. I'm glad you asked because I'm just like you. I started out in the business in people's homes every day,

fixing air conditioners, selling air conditioners. And my first five years were really consumed with that. I was a fantastic employee for my business is what I was. And about five years in, I said, you know, I've got to get better at hiring the right people. And I took a lot more of a sales role for the next couple of years. And then in the last two years, I've really, really tried to get away from doing anything other than project management and overviewing the business itself. Working on, you know, the rebrand, the website, marketing, adding more additional trucks, looking for our next

place of business where that's going to be. But I still do some in-home sales. So typical day for me at the shop by seven or eight o'clock, meeting with a couple of the crews that got jobs going on, making sure they don't have questions, and then go and check in a couple jobs through the day. In the afternoons, I'm typically working on stuff to do with marketing. And then sometimes in the afternoon, I'll still run a couple of sales calls. So I'm typically home by six o'clock at night. But that's just life for me. I've always worked five, six days a week, 10, 12 hours a day. I wouldn't know what to do if I wasn't doing that. As a matter of fact, it's almost been a struggle trying to reduce some of my workload because it's like, I don't know what to do with myself

for a couple hours in the afternoon. I'm like, what the heck do I do with myself? I don't have something to do. So I found that I've just got to keep pushing forward and keep finding more stuff. So recently I've been trying to take on a few more responsibilities within marketing and oversight. They say that there's three parts to being a great business owner. You know, first you got to be a great employee, then you got to be like a great manager, and then you got to be a great visionary. Well, I'm working on trying to be a great business owner. You know, you first got to be a great employee. Then you got to be like a great manager. And then you got to be a great visionary. Well, I'm working on trying to be that great visionary right now

while maintaining all those other hats. Yeah, I think we just read the E-Myth again. I've read that book so many times. And he talks about, you've got the technician, the manager and the entrepreneur, who's the visionary. I'm like 98% visionary. Even though I forced myself to do the work and managing is kind of looking in the past at numbers and making good decisions.

But I read this really good book about the visionary and the integrator. And I finally hired my integrator, Adam Cronenberg, who's my COO and he's my left hand. I mean, he's just super organized, very meticulous, very micro. I'm very macro and the opposite of him. So I'm always pushing, hitting the gas, hitting the gas, grow, grow, grow, sell, sell, sell, advertise more. And he's like, let's slow down a little bit. So we're a good team together. How's your general manager? Is that the same type of relationship? I'm a lot like you. I'm pushed forward and he's a little bit more reserved. He's definitely a better manager than I am. Holds people accountable better. He's an unbelievable sales guy. His name is Ryan O'Connor. He is fantastic. And he runs a lot of the operations for me. And I put a lot

on his plate, but he handles it really well. He kind of reminds me of the character from Ozark, from Jason Bateman, because he's like the guy that the world's falling around him and he's just still pecking at it going, nothing fazes him. Or I'm the guy that kind of freaks out for a second, like, shit, what do we got going on here? So he's really good at that role. And I've got to continue to just keep finding more guys like him. And his role is going to continue to grow as this business grows. We have plans to grow this significantly further than what it's at right now. And I'm going to need to see if he wants to be like the COO, like what you're describing there, or if we find somebody else

for that role and he stays more in the management side, in the sales management side. But he's done a fantastic job. I'm super glad to have him on my team. Do you put ads in like Craigslist when you look for talent? I mean, what's the best way you found or indeed? Where do you do your acquisitions, talent acquisitions? We do radio ads. And then also we incentivize our guys to bring other people to the table. The best guys we've got have really come from recruiting from within our own

team. Every person on my team is super happy to be there. If they weren't happy to be there, we'd want them to leave. We want them to go. And that, you know, is a little bit difficult to maintain because, you know, you only want the best attitudes, but we are slow to hire and fast to fire. If they're not the right fit, we'll get them gone. And we run a lot of radio ads looking for different positions and kind of increase awareness like that. We have not tried Facebook for job placement ads yet, but that's

the next thing that I want to start running is some Facebook ads as well. And we'll just kind of see how that goes. But gosh, we're so picky with hiring because it sucks to invest in somebody that's not going to work out. So we're real quick to pull the plug if we think somebody's not going to be a good fit. Yeah, I've actually sent a few guys home in my last training class and the caliber of people now, I don't think people understand. It's like most business owners, you don't understand what happens when you get a great employee. I've got a guy that did $1.4 million last year, just sold so many doors. And a bottom producer might do $200,000.

When you see the difference, you know, Ken Goodrich has his goat, he calls him Dale. And I know Joe Cressera has his guys. A good HVAC guy, I mean, the best, the best in the industry could do $12 million in a year. What does a crappy guy do? Maybe $200,000, $300,000, $400,000? Yeah. I mean, if a guy's not selling $500,000, he shouldn't be selling air conditioners full-time. That's for sure. You think about that, though. Just think about a million-dollar producer compared to $300,000. That That's 700,000. The reason why I say it's so important to get the right employees, especially CSRs, dispatchers, and technicians. I mean, everybody, you need good bookkeeping, you need everything good, but a technician,

I could pay more per acquisition, my sales opportunity calls. If I got a thousand dollar average and I'm spending 10%, I could spend a hundred dollars on a call. And people don't understand that when you've got really good conversion rates, great booking rates and good average tickets. I mean, it's so important to be top grading. I mean, what is your take on top grading and just this whole technician theory that I'm talking about? Well, it's interesting you say that too.

So we've really got into tracking and measuring. We've got a company that we work with and we have an app and dashboard. So all of our technicians, as they run each call, at the end of that call, they enter it into this app and dashboard. So we get to see what their ticket average is, whether it's just a one-time tune-up and cleaning, whether it's a maintenance visit where they're used to us being there, or whether it's a demand service call where there's going to be a repair or replacement needed. And you're right. Having the right people is everything. So we've got some young guys. We've got three younger guys that totally outproduce.

I've got six technicians right now. I got three guys that are averaging four or $500 per call, where I've got another three guys that are probably averaging more like the 250 to $300 a call. And when you average that out over 12 months, I mean, you can really justify taking a guy that averages 500 bucks a ticket. You could pay that guy a lot more money because he's running very similar calls to the rest of them. So by tracking and measuring and seeing what's out there, you know, paying the guys that are worth the money, it's far better. You know, I'll take one $500 a ticket producer over three $200 a ticket producers because those guys aren't really making you any money anyways.

It all comes down to what can they produce per opportunity? And by tracking and measuring and doubling down on that and refining that process, and that's why we're adding more duct cleaning opportunities and indoor air quality opportunities because it's going to give us a chance to raise that ticket. So a salesman that goes and runs just sales leads every day, sell brand new air conditioners, he should be at least producing a million dollars a year.

He's not, he definitely got the wrong guy. You know, our guy Ryan last year sold about 2 million. He'll sell over 2 million this year. And we're a smaller business. You know, you get a big company like Gettle or some of these other guys, there's some guys out there selling 8, 10, $12 million a year. Those guys are unicorns, you know, there's not a whole lot of those guys. Those guys are fans. Those guys are the absolute top of the industry at what they do.

But when we get back and start talking about technicians, what does the technician produce? Well, a technician and a service van, if he's not collecting, you know, and I'm talking about total repairs, maintenance, and new units that get sold from his truck being there. If he's not collecting $250,000 a year, I mean, man, you're, you know, you pretty much just got a warm body out there. You know, we've got technicians that are going to average, you know, $500,000 a van. You take that times six vans, that's $3 million in income off six trucks. It's pretty incredible when you think about it. And then a sales guy that goes out and sells another $2 million that boom, you got $5 million in a pretty small area. So we're measuring everything and we're trying to give these guys the training that they need to do this in a way that makes sense for

everybody. Because the homeowners will buy, they'll buy a nicer product. They'll buy indoor quality. They'll choose to preventatively replace a part instead of getting stuck on a hot summer day on a part they could have replaced ahead of time and save themselves a hassle. You know, in our business, whether it's AC, whether it's plumbing, all these same principles still apply. And I'm sure they apply in your garage door business as well. Yeah, I like what you said there. When I started keeping meticulous details, I've got a whole team called the data integrity team to make sure our numbers, our reports are accurate. But there's two types of people I always explain. There's those who hate to be last and there's those who need to be first. And I try to hire those competitive people that need to be first. And by tracking everything, I say inspect what you expect and really give the training based on certain things that you're

trying to sell. It just makes all the difference in the world. And then, you know, you said you had a custom dashboard. Is that something that it's not like a CRM? What kind of CRM do you use? So there's a company out in Arizona called George Brazil Heating and Air. Yep. Very familiar. Very familiar with them. Okay. So they have a separate company called Service Business Evolution, SBE.

And they have a team of trainers that we do Zoom meetings with. The head of their training is a guy named Will Smith. I've taken some classes with Will Smith in person. He was really good. And their whole way of doing business is something that was a little bit different than what we had done in the past. So, you know, in the past, when we'd show up at somebody's house, we wanted to be the expert. And we'd show up and say, hey, look, we're here to clean your air conditioner. Oh, by the way, we're offering these really great products. We've got a great warranty. They improve your performance. And we go into sell mode and we try to sell them on what we're doing.

And, you know, everybody hates the salesman when they're in their house. Everybody really wants to make that choice for themselves. Well, the SBE process, it's actually quite simple. And I found it to be really, really effective. Their process is when you go to somebody's house, don't turn them into a shopper. There's proactive buyers and then there's reactive buyers. And when you go to somebody's house and you're there to work on their air conditioner, if you ask the right questions,

they'll ask you for the sale. But if you start pushing your products on them, they're going to shut down and probably not buy from you. And I can give you an example of that. Let's say that we go out to somebody's home, and we walk in the door, and we say, hey, listen, I'm here to do an air conditioning cleaning for you today. Let's go take a look at your outside unit. You go to the outside unit and you look at the nameplate and you say, hey, listen, this unit's eight years old. And is everything working okay? And they say, yeah, everything's working great. And then you say, okay, great. Well, I'm going to go through the system today and I'm going to clean it and I'm going to make sure everything's working and I'm going to clean it and I'm

going to make sure everything's working great. How long do you want this thing to last? And the customer will say, well, I want it to last at least five more years or longer if I can. And you say, okay, perfect. Well, I'll let you know if I find anything. Well, then you go through the system, you clean it, and maybe you find a part that's on the way out. It's half bad. And you go back inside and you say, hey, Mr. Homeowner, I found on your outside unit, you said you wanted this thing to last forever, right? And they say, well, yeah. You say, well, I found this part. It's half dead. We can go ahead and replace this part for you if you like. And here's how much it costs. And then you just shut up. Don't tell them what the warranty is. Don't tell them how great

it's going to work. Don't tell them anything. Just say, I found this part and I can replace this part and it's 400 bucks. And you shut up. And sometimes it's an awkward silence. 10 or 15 seconds later, they say, well, this unit's eight years old. I guess I do want to keep it a little bit longer. You say it's 400 bucks. Can you go ahead and replace that right now? And the tech says, yeah, I can do that. And the homeowner says, yeah, go ahead and do it. But it was the homeowner's idea. They decided that they wanted to do that because you just presented the facts and let them make a decision. And we call it staying behind the customer. If you ask the right question and then shut up, they'll tell

you exactly what they want to do. But if you go in there and you just get diarrhea of the mouth and throw all this information in front of them, a lot of times they'll shut down and say, no, I don't want to do anything. And when it comes to a broken air conditioner, that same example, you go out there, you're a demand service call, you go outside and you say, hey, listen, this system's 12 years old and you got a bad compressor in here. I can put you a new compressor in, but the cost on that would be $2,000. And then you shut up. And that homeowner might say, yeah, go ahead and fix it. I want to fix it. $2,000, that's all I got. That's what you want to do, fix it. But if the homeowner says,

$2,000, man, this thing's 12 years old. Is there anything else I can do? And then we train our techs to tell them, yeah, well, I won't let you know. I can fix this. It'd be $2,000. I can fix this. But if you'd rather replace it, sometimes I have customers choose that they would rather replace it. I can get you a cost on that.

It's probably going to be something basic. It can be $6,000, something a little. It's going to be $6,000. Something a little bit nicer might be $8,000. And then the technician shuts up. And then the homeowner sits there and you know what ends up happening? They make that choice in their mind without being sold. Yeah, screw it. I'm not putting two grand in this thing. Give me the nicer one. I want the $8,000 air conditioner. How soon can you put it in? And it's selling without having to suggest that that's what they should do. And it's kind of hard for technicians to accept that. Hey, we just want you to ask them questions and let them tell you what they want to do. But what you'll find is people spend a lot more money and they won't call up and cancel an

hour later and decide they want to go ahead and get three estimates because here's how that process can go if you don't do it that way. Hey, sir, listen, you know, you got a $2,000 repair here. You do got a 12-year old unit, you know. In my experience, I think it's best, you might just want to look at a new air conditioner. Let me show you three different models I got here. Man, this one's great. It's got a great warranty. It's got this, it's got that. What's that homeowner thinking in his head? He's thinking, man, it's time for me to shop for an air conditioner. This guy's trying to sell me something. I better go ahead and get three or four bids on this. Make sure I buy from the lowest price guy in town. And the SBE process is all about slowing down, asking the right questions and letting the homeowner tell you what they want to do without shopping. And, you know, we've only been doing it for four or five months, but our ticket averages are significantly better.

And our conversion rate for when we're finding somebody, you know, with a dead unit, they're telling us, hey, we want to go. We want to go with a new unit. We want to go with you without having to invite a bunch of shoppers into the equation. Because you know how it is, Tommy. You get three or four bids out there, somebody's going to want to do that thing for nothing. And the whole SBA process is keep that customer in-house. Don't make them proactive. Don't send them out to be a shopper. So I've got so many sales books and sales training and paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, Sandler training, disc profiles, PI, predictive index, you name it. I spent $30,000

last week on the PI stuff. And I can tell you, there's a few things that you need. Number one, the biggest thing that guys do is they don't start the job. If someone calls up for a filter change or a garage door rollers or whatever, a bottom rubber or whatever it might be, a plumbing, you get them to choose you. You build rapport for at least 20 minutes. You talk to them about anything else but what's going on. You don't walk up with all your tools. You get to know them. You get to be their friend. And you start the work. Even if I want to replace the garage door, I'm going to start the job that they call me out for and say, I'm looking at this thing. I get them to make the buying decision.

Number two, the biggest mistake I see, this is huge. Your guys should not be running more than four calls a day. I know guys that are running nine calls a day and they go there and they band-aid. They band-aid, band-aid, band-aid, band-aid. The company makes no money and they get so proud. Trust me, these guys are all over Facebook. They're so proud of the fact that they're cheap. They're so proud of the fact that their wife works for them and they can't afford vacations and they don't enjoy their families.

They don't get to go to soccer games or spend time with their family. It's just crazy to me how people brag that they're gonna fix a 1976 air conditioning because they found a part that they might've had in their warehouse for the last 30 years. I mean, the problem is, is business owners used to be technicians and I used to be

a technician, but I had to completely untrain myself about technicians. I had to become an owner that's in business to profit and bring prosperity to my employees. And when you change your mindset, I just think it's huge, man. And sales is really, really important. I got to sell my internal customers, which are my employees, not only to get them on board, but to have them stay on. And then I need to sell customers. So I don't know what your take is on the perfect amount of jobs, but I see all kinds of companies that just force feed so many jobs on their guys. Yeah, I totally agree with everything you're saying. And we want to build rapport. And I don't want my technicians running any more than four or five calls a day.

In a perfect world, they run four calls and they maximize the value on every call. And the homeowner had a chance to upgrade their system in any way possible. And the technician makes good money that way as well. You're going to make a lot more money selling accessories than you are getting paid by the hour. And my guys have figured that out. And that's why they're going to be able to, you know, continue to further their career and further our business. And you got to think of it like this. It's what's best for everybody involved. You know, the technician, if he's providing the best service for the homeowner and offering the things that the homeowner needs, it's's best for the homeowner it's what's best for the technician it's what's best for the business i couldn't agree more and i'm glad you uh you do that what are some of the

the top three books that you'd recommend and they don't need to be necessarily about home service or sales but i don't know if you do audible or a lot, but do you have three books that you'd recommend? Yeah, you know, I'm old school. How to Win Friends and Influence People was a favorite of mine. Good to Great was another good one. The Greatest Salesman in the World, Ogmandino, I always thought was a good quick read. There's several of them out there.

And I know you've got a really good book out there. I'd like to check out too. What's that one called? Home Service Millionaire? Yeah. Yeah, I think that's out there. I'd like to check out too. What's that one called? Home Service Millionaire? Yeah. Yeah, I think that's awesome. I'd definitely like to check that out. You got an audio book on that?

Yeah, I do. It's on Audible. Nice. So I like sales style books. I also like, I do like Tony Robbins' Awaken the Giant Within. I thought it was a really good book I read many years ago. Yeah, I like books that build you up.

Yeah, self-help books. I've got a lot of them myself. I've got, I think, 850 now in my Audible account. It's kind of ridiculous. If someone wants to get a hold of you, what's the best way to do that, Jason? They can just send me an email at sales at BuellerAir.com or just Google Bueller Air Conditioning and call us. I'd be happy to talk to anybody that needs any help.

Okay, and I always leave the last minute for the guests here to kind of just one final thought. There was a lot of great stuff here. I think inspect what you expect. Keep very close eye of the numbers, conversion rates, average ticket, cost per lead. We talked a lot about just rebranding, how important

it is to have that collaborative brand that's catchy. I mean, there's so many great things for the listeners, but what's some final thoughts that you want to leave them with? My final thoughts to leave them with is be confident in what you're doing. Make sure you got a plan that you're following. Make sure you got some numbers that you're trying to hit. What really keeps us motivated is setting budgets, setting goals. And our employees have been setting goals. And we've learned a lot through the SBE process on how to break our goals down into more individual categories and into shorter terms where the technicians can really see what they're trying to work for. And we're trying to get them to set goals, not just for within business, but for what they want to do outside of business with their spare time, the stuff they want to do

for fun and any time spent bettering yourself is huge. So that's what I would leave them with. I was going to leave you last thought, but I think one of the things that I could tell you that you were just talking about is I like to start with the end in mind. What's my goal? If your goal is a hundred million, find out what your average tech is and know that that's how many people you need to hire. Well, if I've got to hire 30 guys a month, I'm going to need a training center, an LMS, training books. I'm going to need to set up a system to recruit. And so I figured that out. I figured out if I want to get to a billion, I need to hire 30 guys a month for the next three years. And then I'm over a billion dollars of revenue per year. So to build that up, start with the end in mind. There's a book, I think it's

called Start at the End. I got it right here. It's a good book. So I really appreciate you coming on, Jason. I got a ton out of this and hopefully the guests got a lot out too. And next time I'm in Florida, definitely going to hang out. And if you come to Phoenix to come see George Brazil, you definitely got to come see me. I will do that. It's been a pleasure talking with you today. I really appreciate you having me on. All right, buddy.

Take it easy. You too. Thank you. Hey, guys. I just wanted to thank you real quick for listening to the podcast. From the bottom of my heart, it means a lot to me. And I hope you're getting as much as I am out of this podcast. Our goal is to enrich your lives and enrich your businesses and your internal customers,

which is your staff. And if you get a chance, please, please, please subscribe. You're going to find out all the new podcasts. You're going to be able to ask me questions to ask the next guest coming on. And do me a quick favor. Leave a quick review. It really helps us out when you like the podcast and you leave a review. Make it four or five sentences. Tell us how we're doing. And I just wanted to mention real quick, we started a membership. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. You get a ton of inside

look at what we're going to do to become a billion dollar company and uh we're just we're telling everybody our secrets basically and people say why do you give your secrets away all the time and I'm like you know the hardest part about giving away my secrets is actually trying to get people to do them so we also create a lot of accountability within this program so check it out it's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club it's cheap it's a monthly payment i'm not making any money on it to be completely frank with you guys but i think it will enrich your lives use it further so thank you once again for listening to the podcast i really appreciate it