The Home Service Expert Podcast - How Having A Single Focus Can Make You 10X Better At Business

Episode Date: July 14, 2020

Randy Stanbury is the author of The Small Business Freedom Formula. He is the founder of Service Freight Systems, a business he started at 23 years old in 1995. He has since grown it into a multi-million-dollar company, which he later sold—a true success story of a business that was essentially founded in a bedroom in his parents’ house. Nowadays, he gives business advice to stressed-out entrepreneurs in the Ontario area to help them take back control of their contracting business, achieve massive revenue growth, and enjoy a life with more freedom. In this episode, we talked about coaching, leadership, entrepreneurship, strategy...

You know, in my logistics business, I could tell every hour of the day if we were winning or losing. And that's really where, and I'm sure in your business right now, you've got those metrics. You can tell how well the business is operating, looking at some form of scoreboard or dashboard, whoever you want to call it, that's telling you how well things are going in every area and every division of the business. And if you have that, then you can step away and you can take your eye off the ball and you can go do something new. And I'm proof of that because I did it. But the truth of the matter is if you don't have those metrics to look back on and look at where the business is at at any given hour of the day or week, then how do you really

know if the business is doing well or not? How do you know if it's winning or losing? How do you know how to adjust in certain areas of the business that is not working well if you're not there? So I think that's the biggest critical part when you want to remove yourself is knowing how you're going to now, let's say, lead or manage it from afar. And it's from those scoreboards. 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. Today, I have an awesome guest visiting. His home base is Burlington, Ontario. He's an expert in coaching leadership, entrepreneurship, and strategy. He's the four-level coach chief inspiration officer from 2018 to now And he owned a company called service freight systems and warehousing

He founded service freight systems in 1995 when he was only 23 from his bedroom in his parents house Over the years. He grew business until he generated multiple millions of dollars in annual revenue and eventually sold it For a considerable amount of money. He's the author of the Small Business Freedom Formula. It's a bestseller on Amazon and his name is Randy Stanbury. So, hey, I really appreciate you coming on today. This is going to be awesome. Yeah, thanks for having me. Do you really, you focus with entrepreneurs and if most entrepreneurs are like me, they work. A lot of times when I started, it was 12 hours a day.

I was losing relationships and it was just nuts. Sounds like you kind of went the opposite. You had a lot of freedom and you help people find the freedom. Tell us a little bit about your early days in business and how you got started. Yeah, so I work exclusively now with custom home builders, renovators, and, you know, a multitude of trades. But when I started, I started a transportation logistics business. Like you had said, I was young and I did that out of my bedroom. And how I did it was, you know, my father was in transportation sales at the time. I was also in sales. And, you know, we came together and said, instead of selling against each other, if I started up this business, would he come with me? And he did. So, you know, I was

able to kind of start off by knowing, you know, I'm going to say next to nothing about business, but knew that I had to learn it real fast if I ever wanted to do anything with it. And so I think one of the struggles in the trades is we start off as technicians in our business. And that's why we end up working the 15 hours a day and just going nuts on that hamster wheel, right? You're running and running and running and getting nowhere, frustrated, overwhelmed, and that's what we see all the time. So we help entrepreneurs really hone in on the needle-moving metrics in their business and the vital steps they need to take to get a business working for them and not them for it.

Yeah, it always seems like that's kind of what happens. I always tell people, when you went into business, you made a lot of promises to your significant other and possibly your kids about how you were going to free up your time and have more quality vacations and a better life. people in business actually find that they're always chasing the ball. And I want to dive into what causes that to happen. But from your perspective, it seems like if you don't, this is a little bit of Simon Sinek of finding your why, but if you don't have the right reason to own a business, and people get discouraged when I say this, that there are a lot of business owners out there that probably should still be employees. And I know they'd say, I don't have the right to say that. How could I? But they didn't really know what they were getting themselves into. They said, I'm a great technician or I'm a great builder or a subcontractor. But they did do that. They know the trades, but they never knew how to

be a good operator of business and build culture and recruiting and advertising and understanding finance. Talk to me a little bit about that. You know, it screams of, you know, a past guest you had on, Michael Gerber, right? So they had that entrepreneurial seizure of, you know, really believing that they could do better what the company that they were working for was doing. And of course, they had the ability to do that because they were extremely skilled in the trade they're working in.

But that doesn't convert to running a business that gives you what you ultimately want. And the trouble is, we think we're jumping into a business that we're gonna do what we love to do. And it's gonna give us that freedom and we make these promises, like you said, to our loved ones.

And this is gonna be great, but it sucks up our life. And it sucks going to give us that freedom. And we make these promises, like you said, to our loved ones. And this is going to be great, but it sucks up our life. And it sucks up our life because we're ending up doing 20, 30, 50 other things that we did not intend on doing. And we're not good at any of them. And we struggle to really get past getting ourselves off the tools, getting ourselves off being that tech in our business. That's the biggest problem. It is. And how many people do you think are good at the trades and work for someone else and they go into business versus going to find a really good business and not knowing the trade as well, which in some cases, this might sound

crazy, but sometimes not knowing how to fix a garage door or know exactly who to contact as a subcontractor as the owner or operator or president is an advantage because they need to rely on other people. They got to learn how to delegate properly instead of always doing it themselves. How many times have you heard, if I don't do it myself, it doesn't get done properly? A thousand times. And it's completely bullshit that there's no truth to that whatsoever. In fact, when you get in a rhythm and get in a zone of letting go of what you think you're great at, somebody else comes in and does it 10 times better because that's what their focus is. That's what they do each day, not trying to do 20 other things and do them all half-assed. So, you know, that's one thing. But a big one you just touched on there is the fact that you said it might sound crazy, but I say it all the

time, is the fact that you would be much better off not knowing the trade. You'd be much better off to run, grow, and scale a business if you actually didn't have the skill in the business. And again, does it sound crazy? It sounds crazy to your listeners, no doubt. But at the end of the day, if you came from a business perspective and started that business from day one with in mind to become a franchisable type of model system to grow and scale, that's where you're going to have your biggest success. And somebody say Tommy all the time too, is the fact is that as a trade person, as a renovator, as a custom home builder, every one of those businesses right now has a winning lottery ticket in their pocket. And they just don't know how to cash it in.

Because there is so much opportunity out there. And the fact of the matter is there's so much room for great companies to come in and create a wow experience that blows away competition. The competition is not focused on a client experience. They're focused on getting the job done and trying to, you know, get to the next one. And in fact, they're trying to get to the next one before they finish the other ones, which creates a bigger problem. And now we have a scheduling issue. And so it's a never ending run on that hamster wheel, in my opinion, far too often. Yeah. You know, what I see a lot is quite a bit of success when people get started. And I know this might sound counterintuitive to what we're talking about, but they usually figure

out it's either feast or famine. They have good months, sometimes good weeks, sometimes good years. And the first thing they do is I find that most of them are really underfunded to start a business. And then when they get the money, they start bringing it in. What do they do? They start living. They start elevating their lifestyle. They buy the boat, they buy the RV, they buy the motorcycle, they get a second home. And then all of a sudden, if they're like me, in the early days, they decide I'm going to be a real estate investor and I'm going to try this and I might be, I'll become a partner in a restaurant or whatever it might be. And we take our eye off the ball. And the two books that I always talk about is Essentialism and The One Thing by Gary Keller is just, if you could focus, hyper-focus on what you're really good at

and delegate or sub out everything else, you'll have tremendous success. As long as like we talked about earlier, you know, your systems, you create standard operating procedures, manuals, you create accountability, and you've got some type of depth chart to make sure if you lose one person, the business doesn't fall apart. So I love talking about this stuff because as I grow the business to several hundred people, I started thinking about what could I have changed in the procedure or the system to prevent that? And you're right, Michael Gerber lives and breathes this stuff. And when you get to be an expert in systems, it's almost like there should be a college master's degree or a doctorate just on systems,

and there might be but creating them and now leveraging software to help you do it right oh absolutely I mean I tell people all the time I don't have a COO anymore he's a CTO he's a chief technology officer because technology runs our our operations now even though he is operations and I hate to give people those titles in a home service business because some of these titles you look them up and what does the average CTO make for a large fortune 500 company you know yeah the comparative metric's not the same is it no but you know what you're hitting on you know so many points that we could just go deep into every single one of them. And each of them would have some pretty significant meaning and opportunity for listeners here.

So when you create that model for yourself that you have some success and your pocketbook's getting a little thicker. So you have this great idea to start up something new because you've had some success here. So surely we can do it again. But, you know, too often, like you said, you take your eye off the ball where what I bring to the table and what I help entrepreneurs really get focused on is the metrics that run your business. And the truth of the matter is you can pull away, you can put the right leadership in place. You can create the right management system. You can create the right standard operating procedures,

but if you don't have the metrics to back that, and you're not focused on that on a weekly basis, even daily, if you can get down to daily, it's even better. In my logistics business, I could tell every hour of the day if we were winning or losing. And that's really where, and I'm sure in your business right now, you've got those metrics. You can tell how well the business is operating, looking at some form of scoreboard or dashboard, however you want to call it, that's telling you how well things are going in every area and every division of the business.

And if you have that, then you can step away and you can take your eye off the ball and you can go do something new. And I'm proof of that because I did it. But the truth of the matter is if you don't have those metrics to look back on and look at where the business is at at any given hour of the day or week, then how do you really know if the business is doing well or not? How do you know if it's winning or losing? How do you know how to adjust in certain areas of the business that is not working well if you're not there? So I think that's the biggest critical part when you want to remove yourself is knowing how you're going to now, let's say, lead or manage it

from afar. And it's from those scoreboards. Absolutely. And I couldn't agree with you more. And I talked to business owners. You know, I've coached several people. And I'm so passionate about my business. I like talking with other people because I look at it more as a networking

and learning from maybe their business. I take things from other industries and apply them to my garage door industry. And it's very fun for me. But when I look at it, some of the major metrics in home service is I always got to start with what's your average ticket, first of all. And then I bring it up and I say, what's your conversion rate? That's face to face. How much are you closing and where do you market as a close? If you're collecting a service call, that's not a closed deal. You didn't solve that customer's problem. And then I look at their booking rate. Then I look at their cost per acquisition. Those

are a big four. The problem is, and tell me what your take is on this, but Randy, a lot of these people have the statistics, but they're so far off. They're like, my booking rate is 93%. I'm like, how do you figure that? And they don't have any concrete way of doing that. For example, we might not book the call because they're out of service and not count that. Well, you know, we got to dig into the marketing of why we're getting calls in our non-service area. So we shouldn't work that.

So tell me a little bit about what you see. I'm really, really interested. We're diving into this a little bit. But when you go in and walk in a business, where do you start? Where is the good starting point of when if someone were to assessment quiz that, you know, from that assessment, I can tell pretty much where you've got problems in the business, where you're 25 questions. And from there, we dive into an initial discovery session, we'll say, is really just discovering, first of all, I only want to work with highly ambitious, self-driven, action-taking entrepreneurs. If you're not that, I can't move forward with you. I'm not going to be able to help you. And not to the degree that I want to go and be able to help a company get to. So let's get clear up front about who we want to work with. Just like in your own businesses, you need to know who your ideal client is. If your ideal client is not clear to you, then any old client will do. And there's a good reason that

we speak to them as clients and not customers, because clients we provide solutions for, and customers we have transactions with. And at the end of the day, we want to start getting in their mindset about how they think about everything they do in their business, including how they talk. And so I dive into that a little bit. And then the first month is really, you know, peeling back the onion, finding low hanging fruit. There's always a ton of low hanging fruit that is just sitting there. That's ripe, ready to pick that we're overlooking or overseeing because we just don't, we're not focused on often. And, you know, you tell me if I'm wrong here, but often it's not having a niche. It's being, trying to be too much for too many and you're way too diverse.

And so you're not focused on a particular target where you can really make a difference. You hit the nail on the head. And I've been in that scenario where the biggest mistake I've made in garage doors, just garage doors was I'd get a residential job that was out of my scope of work, but I could figure it

out. And I might have a guy that might be okay at it, but their trucks aren't set up. The AR works differently. The licensing and insurance works differently. And then on top of that, you know, you start taking on things like, Ooh, Home Depot, consistent work, not a lot of profit, a lot of headaches. You start going, Oh, home warranty calls. They'll call every day, but their three KPIs are, are you the cheapest? The less cancellation rate, do you make customers happy? When I go out to a home warranty call, I'm like, I could only fix the one spring, even though the other one's going to break. I don't tell customers that, but, you know, we're out there three months later, the other spring breaks. And they're like, what the hell? Not because the home warranty company is trying to get that $70 collection fee again. So long story short, I had to get out of everything. The biggest mistake, and this is right up your alley, Randy, is I got in the warehousing business in the garage stores.

I said, I'm going to buy or I'm going to rent huge warehouses all throughout the United States. Right. I'm going to get an alarm system, camera system, theft insurance, a couple of warehouse guys. Why not, right? Why not do that? That makes so much sense. Well, now I could buy everything at half the price. Yeah, you're getting this cheaper. It's going to be incredible. And then realization sets in. Well, the proof's in the pudding. You know, I used to say, man, I mean, in the initial

first couple of podcasts, I was like, I'm a genius. I'm paying half the price of everybody else. This is something you specialize in, logistics and inventory. And I got to tell you, it's a job in itself. Amazon is the beast and they still struggle in some regards to it. And you look at the USPS. I mean, at the end of the day, the best thing you could do is ultimate focus. And I love that you're saying that because I preach that to people. I'm like, you're a jack of everything. What are you a specialist in? Specialist. What are you known for? What's your expert positioning in the marketplace? That's exactly it. I mean, at the end of the day, you're absolutely nail on the head.

I love this topic because a lot of the people listening, I'm very, very excited that there's so many people that download this and they just drive and they listen to it to their next job. And I hope this stuff actually sinks in the more people that listen and actually let it sink in and they make differences in their business. If they could just take one gold nugget out of every few podcasts, it just makes the world. So we talk about this stuff. And so often we become a slave to our business. And the ultimate question is if I were to pay for everything for you to go on a vacation with me, everything for you and all your family, what does your business look like in three weeks if you do not babysit it?

And I mean, you can look at a CRM here and there, but I don't want you on the phone all day talking to your employees or your biggest company. Right. Well, Tommy, that's question number 25 on our business assessment quiz is, are you able to take X amount of vacation time per year? And I don't mean a week. I mean a substantial amount of vacation time without answering or touching that phone once while you're away. Yeah, and it's tough to get there.

It's tough to get there because you got to trust people. And that's the hardest thing in the world for most business owners. I mean, they open up their own mail. They will not show somebody a P&L that works at the business. Because here's what happens when you start making money. They go, man, if my employees find out I'm making this, I'm in big trouble, right? And they won't share this stuff. And I'm an open book. Everybody in my executive team sees our P&L. They know our balance sheet. We talk about money in the bank and it's a substantial, lots and lots of money. And the difference is that these guys are all paid on performance. And I don't care how much money they make. If they make 800 grand, which, you know, I haven't had anybody make that yet, but if they did in a year, I'm doing well. Yeah. You'd be satisfied.

That's more than happy. So how often do you see that? How often do you walk into a business? Well, I just literally had a call this morning, an advisory session, talking about the exact same thing, is opening up, is trusting, is letting go of this mindset that we can't share any information or they'll want to leave us and go do this themselves. Well, if they want to do that, they're going to do that regardless. So why not? Why not create a place that is a growing, scalable business that creates far more opportunity for them and share the vision with them? You know, I think far too often we don't, well, one, we don't have a vision for ourselves anyway. So if we don't have a vision, how do you know where you're going? Or even know if where

you're heading or what you're doing today, tomorrow, next week, next month is even going to get you there if you don't know where you're going. So know where you're going, first of all, create that vision for yourself and then share it with the team. The team needs to understand where you're going and feel like they have an impact on getting there. And as soon as they have an impact and feel like they're going to get there and they're helping, they're part of this, you know, this bigger entity that they show up for work every day and not just, you know, put paint on a wall or do a roof or replace a garage door, they're actually showing up. And when they're replacing that garage door, there's a purpose. And there's a purpose and an outcome and they can see it because we meet every week and we talk about that and we go over the key performance indicators.

You mentioned KPIs earlier. And we share in all of that. We share our scoreboard so they can see the impact they're having on the growth of the business. That becomes a far more exciting place to be part of. And here's another big thing that we hear all the time is, you know, first of all, it's hard to find good people. Well, I say look in the mirror, because if you can't find good people, it's because you're not helping train them. And I love what you've got going on. You have a whole training school and system. And really, our ability to grow and scale a business has a lot to do and is a direct reflection of our ability to train

and put great people into the field. And then it's on us then to not let them go. You know, let's give them every reason to stay. So from that point of view, we need to be creating a vision and opportunity in the company where people are engaged and want to be and want to stay. So from that point of view, we need to be creating a vision and opportunity in the company where people are engaged and want to be and want to stay because we're giving them ability to grow and make a lot more money with us. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I had an epiphany in the last couple of weeks, and this is all new material for me, but when you get the right employees,

especially those that are face to face with the customer, obviously call booking rate dispatch, everything's important. But when you learn how to sell preventatively instead of having customers buy reactively when their stuff breaks, so it might not be completely failed, but when you learn to do that and you give the employees the right education, they need to be able to have the freedom to ask these questions. But you hire with a purpose. You do personality profiling. You call the references. You make sure that they're last jobs. You make sure they're not a job hopper. And you just got to look at certain things. And I look

at a lot of stuff. You have ride-along forms. It's a process just for the hiring, but here's what happens. This is what's crazy, Randy. You get the right people with the right process. The process is more important because the process dictates the people in all actuality. So you get the right people. All of a sudden, everything is solved. I'm telling you, your marketing is a derivative of your revenue. Hopefully, it's all numbers. It's either black and white. So, your marketing is fixed. As long as, I won't say it's fixed, but he who can pay most per lead usually wins. So, the marketing is fixed. A lot of people have trouble recruiting. So, when you're making great money, all of a sudden, you're doing great things for your employees, like a food truck on meeting days. You're taking them to a blogging. You're getting a sweet. Now here's the secret.

You get them to go on Facebook live. You get them to go on Instagram. You use the channels out there like Twitter. And all of a sudden you become a recruiting machine. The people are lining up to work for you. So ultimately most problems are solved when you give people the training, the manuals, the learning processes to be successful. And I think that's really where I had a breakthrough is I'm like, people say you can't train 80 to 100 people a month. That's just stupid. And I'm like, well, I know a lot of companies that do a hell of a lot more than that. And no, mostly not home service though, right? I mean, they're usually like, home service has a lot to do, driving record, you got to have them driving a truck, you got to clean

background check, clean drug test. There's so many things that you need in a technician there's so many roles that are important but your ratio you should have way more people turning a wrench in most home service businesses than you have answering phones or management if your ratios aren't correct if you're one-to-one, one technician to maybe CSR dispatcher or a non face-to-face employee, it's really going to be difficult to make money. Yeah. I don't think it's possible. Yeah. You know, you talk a lot about building, and I want to jump into this because we've got an hour and there's so much material and I just, we're just overviewing a lot of it, but personal brand

and everybody should have a personal brand in coexistence with their business. Tell me a little bit about personal brand. How do you get started with that? Walk me through some of the steps. Personal brand to me is, first of all, a personal brand is a very much a direct reflection of our business brand, right? We as the face of the company need to have that personal brand itself in the marketplace to know and be the face and the expert in the business. But coming from a standpoint of how do you go about doing that? So this is outside of the box of the traditional thinking of a renovator trade, right? But my belief is we should all have a book. There's no reason why we can't get a writer to help us create that book.

That when you have a book out there, there's a certain level of expertise that comes with that. It's that perceived knowledge, that perceived expertise. It's the brand can start with having that and then doing what you're doing. I mean, creating podcasts, becoming a speaker, being an advocate in different associations, right? Creating that personal brand is, here's a prime example. I work very directly with a high-end custom home builder, really modern stuff, has grown immensely in the last year working with him. And he's completely shifted his mindset to becoming not just his business brand,

but from a personal brand and being the face of having conversations about building luxury, modern custom homes. And so he's going to be the guy that makes that happen. He's creating that brand and that podcast that's going to be known worldwide. And it all reflects back to this company that he is scaling to be a monster across the country, across North America. And so if he doesn't have that brand in front of him, then it'll be much harder to attract the right, you know, not just the right clients, but you want to be attracting the right people. And I think it should not be overlooked that, you know, we talk and you've been talking about how important it is to train people and what that really does for the company. And I think far too often we're out there way

behind the eight ball in hiring, right? So we're scrambling to find good people because we need them now, but we haven't created any pipeline behind us. We haven't went out and networked and talked to and have a pipeline of people that we can hire at any given moment to be able to bring into the organization. We're way behind the eight ball on that. So being able to not just find, but start attracting good people and having that pipeline of people, you have a business in itself of attracting and training people. I'm sure you must look at that as its own entity. Oh, it's a living, breathing organism. And the fact is, I think it's the fact that I love marketing. Now I'm marketing for internal customers. And when you think about that, people say, I say, well, how much do you spend on recruiting? And they say, well, I was spending. It's a job board. And I've gotten good people from Craigslist. And I'm not against job boards. I just, I think, for the most part, I'd rather hire somebody with a job because the MVPs at companies, most of them, their boss is not going to let go of them. But the difference is, you set the lures out there, it's a fishing tour. You set the bait. And 84% of people want to leave the current job they're at in the world. I mean, that's the United States statistic and in the next year. So getting in front of them in a

different way is important. And I spend a good amount of money. I mean, I've got full-time recruiters, I've got full-time trainers, and I can't tell you what that's done to change the business. It's not hiring when you absolutely need somebody. How long does it take for an average company and not, not one that has what you've got set up, but if you don't have somebody already, you have to find them. So, you know, the time it takes to find them, to train them properly and put them out into the field. Give me your, your estimated timeframe to do that properly. The proper way to do it, I mean, I'd say it really depends. And that's kind of a complicated question because if you're talking

about a plumber, they need to be journeymen and have gone through their apprenticeship. But for me, I think you should be, first, you want to tell if it's a great employee before you're going to invest a bunch of money into them. So you got to have a process to check everything out. And then you want them to do ride-alongs. And I want to know how often they're on their phone on social media. Are they asking good questions? I want my technician to walk them back to their car and see how their car looks. How do they respect their own property? I want to know, are you asking great questions to my customers? I want to know, are you punctual? I want to know, are you interesting? Can you have a conversation about football or barbecue or fishing or whatever it might be? These are the things I'm looking for.

The bad habits, are you going through two packs a day of cigarettes? There's a lot of things. Do you smell like weed when you show up? I mean, some people use it for medicinal purposes, but those ride-alongs, I would say the bare minimum to get to know somebody is three to four weeks before you're going to invest. But at that time they're learning. The problem is if they're doing a ride-along with a really bad technician, they're picking up all those bad habits. So that's where you got to be very, very careful. But then I get them into Phoenix. This is my home base. And now they're going through six weeks of training. But I would say, from your question, it's several months.

Yeah, my number was three to six months. Now, that's to do it properly in the average business that is far, far from operating at the level that you and I have been talking about, but just kind of basic operations. And it really takes that amount of time to put somebody in the field properly. Now, the challenge is we need them today. Like we need them now. So we'll go find anyone we can quickly and we'll throw them out into the field. And then we get pissed off when they're not operating at the level we want them to. And we say, there's no fucking good employees. And then they'll do it again. And then at some point they'll say, you know what, I'm just going to stay where I am. I'm not looking for growth. I'm happy where we are because you

know what, everything else is a headache. And the truth of the matter is the past does not equal the future if you can change what you did in the past. But if you keep doing the same damn thing, then of course it's going to be the same. Yeah. And you know, we've had this happen even recently where, oh man, I'm getting overworked, having to handle all this stuff. I need somebody. So I'm like, wait, you've interviewed three people and you found the ace in the hole. That's because every time this happens, but, but what do you do with a key role?

This is why I believe in depth charts that someone should at least be able to fill in until you get the right person. And all that means is when you think about an org chart and you know this stuff, but for the listeners, an org chart is designed to have you stay in your own lane and you know who you report to. And usually you don't want a ton of direct reports, usually five or six, because I always say this, but Jesus had 12 disciples.

That's the Lord. He can only handle 12. So ultimately you want to stay in your lane, but you want to have backups. You want to say if this person, instead of getting hit by a bus, I say if they were to win the lottery, who do you have to cover that

so you can get the right person? And another big thing is, do they have a manual that explains how they can win the game? And I say, it's not only how to play the game, but it's how to win the game. Because I'm a firm believer that somebody could come in, and I don't do annual interviews and progress reports or any of that stuff. The progress report, you're getting every week with your paycheck, and you're getting constructive criticism on a daily basis, we basically say the good, bad, and the ugly. I'd rather praise people as much as possible

and have those hard talks less. But everybody has, every one of my people, and this is where we talk about peaks and valleys, is when you start being overwhelmed, taking on multiple departments, and now you've got all these direct reports and you don't have a strict guideline meeting where they're presenting to you every week if you're their supervisor or boss it starts to go into a valley and the people come when you've hired the right people and there's only and they can focus right yeah it happens quickly it does and it's a good problem to have when you're growing but you watch these companies and if they're like I was for, for a decade, they brag, they think it's so cool about the revenue. You know what I think is cool. I think it's cool. Putting 20% in the bank.

I think it's really cool to be able to do great things for employees all the time. And, you know, I had a buddy of mine come visit and he goes, where's your coffee machine for the employees that makes them the 10 different drinks? And I said, that seems like maybe not the top investment. He goes, dude, that's culture, brother. And the more we can do that stuff, the more people enjoy working here. And how rewarding is that anyway, that you're able to provide at that level?

And that's what we say, you know, how do you keep good employees? How do you keep them there? Well, it's every one of those things we've been talking about, whether it's the coffee machine or the, you know, ball games, or they love that barbecue on Friday or whatever it is, we're treating them. So when I started my business in 95, I literally, and I don't know where I came up with this then because, or in 93, I was young and I didn't really have a lot of business savvy at all. But whatever reason it was, I was going to run my business and treat people better than I would have ever expected to be treated on any other job. And so we went way above and beyond. And as a result, ended up with 20 plus year people on board and rarely lost good people. They stuck with us and not only stuck with us, they continued to bring in other good people. So one of my beliefs, and I'm assuming yours is

the same, and not in all businesses this works, but we will say in a lot of businesses, it does work. So it's going out and finding good people, good character. And all of those things that you talked about on the ride along is a car clean. Can they keep up a conversation? Are they interesting? What do they bring to the table from those elements? And we'll worry about training the skill into them later. If they've got decent hands at all, the skill will come. Yeah, absolutely.

I really hire for personality. Just because you're a really good talker and different things. I always say, if you've got a will, if you've got a passion, if you really want this, I don't care. I'll teach you and I'll spend as much time as it takes. I do have them take a cognitive test to find out how quick they can learn because I'm not going to spend five years with you. I've done that. I've done that already. We all have. You've got this thing called the formula to freedom for small businesses. Talk to me about this formula and what that looks like. Well, I'm glad you mentioned that because I think, you know, what we have been talking

about is pretty high level, kind of more of a, you know, the 10,000 foot view of it all. But when it gets right down to it, and I'm going to think that the majority of listeners are in a place where it's like, oh yeah, all this sounds great, but where the hell do I start? How do I get myself off the hamster wheel, first of all? But we refer to it as just eating the elephant one bite at a time, right? You cannot sit down and chew the whole thing. And there's a lot of moving parts in our businesses that, you know, for the most part, we didn't realize existed when we got into it. But as we're into

it, we start seeing that, wow, there's a lot of moving parts here that I have to manipulate and manage and get better at understanding. So I think number one, we have to look at where we're spending our time. You know, so I go through a tool that we use is called the time finder. And it's ultimately finding where you're spending time in and on your business. And for the most part, we're spending way too much time in it, not enough time on developing it. And so we've got to look at ways to start getting ourselves some freed up time to start

making some better decisions and start thinking differently about how we operate. So in order to create that freedom formula, we've got to start with foundation. And we've really got to create the foundation of transforming from being a technician in your business to being a truly entrepreneurial thinker. And, you know, you mentioned in the beginning about Simon Sinek's start with why, we start with the desire. And it really is about how deep is your desire. And if you want something bad enough, you're going to be willing to do what it takes to get there. And if you're not, then let's not kid each other and let's stop the process now

and go back to just spending your time on the hamster wheel. Because you're going to be faced with so many roadblocks that if you're not willing to do what it takes to get through them, then you're going to quit and you're going to give up on this thing long before, because you didn't get to where you are without a shitload of roadblocks in your way that were frustrated and overwhelming. And at some point, you just kept busting through because you wanted it bad enough. Is that correct? A hundred percent.

Right. So, so we have to start with the desire and we have to see how deep desire is. And if it's not deep enough, we better deepen it and we get through your why. But through the process, we have to start looking at all the elements of client. We have to get that niche. I think it, it ultimately starts with a niche. If we aren't niched down, then how are we even throwing around marketing dollars that aren't doing its justice, right? So we have to look at that cost of acquisition. We have to start understanding our metrics in the business. The metrics in our business, if we start measuring them, we can actually start moving the needle.

We can start monitoring what's working and what's not working. We can start making some changes. To me, nothing will happen in our business without awareness. So how do we get awareness? We get awareness through the measures, the needle moving metrics in our business that are working or not working. So what's working and not working, let's start evaluating and adjusting course on a weekly basis. So a big part of this is making sure that whether it's Monday morning or Friday afternoon or whatever the hell time you want to do it, but Monday morning is typically the best is you have a Monday morning meeting that you start looking at those metrics, you start seeing what's

working in the business and you start adjusting it every single week. I refer to businesses being the best sport that I've ever played. I look at this as a game and I see, you know, in sports, we have games, in business, we have weeks, and we have 52 games to play in our fiscal year or our season. So throughout that year, I want to play those 52 games. And if I win more than I lose, then I've had a great year. And I need to be continuing to win week after week with the needle moving metrics that I'm tracking. And if I'm adjusting course and moving forward and continuing to make incremental steps towards the end goal, I'll get there. But I have to start with an end goal in

mind. And if I don't have that vision to begin with, how the hell am I going to ever get there? So we kind of went full circle, but we got to go with a vision and we got to start making progress. So we chunked that vision down to what's the next 12 months look like. And I'm ripping through this quickly because there's so much content to cover. I got to get out at least the basics here. And the basics are looking at what's the next 12 months, where do you want to be in 12 months from now and if that were to be true what do you got to do in the next 90 days and if that were to be true what do you got to do this friggin week right so now I know what I got to do this week and I just look at a week to week to week to get to my quarterly to my yearly goals I'm sure you operate

similarly in some fashion well yeah I started with the end in mind, which is to get to a billion of revenue. And it's funny because I know the numbers, I know how to get there. And to get there, when I wrote this all down, I'm a huge whiteboarder. I knew what I had to build and it was not. So Tommy, if I can stop you there for a second.

If guys are not whiteboarders, they should be. We've got to get this shit out of our head. All right. We've got to start mapping it out. We got to start looking at it, you know, from a different perspective than thinking about it. Sorry. No, I have a whiteboard in my kitchen. A lot of the stuff, I have a huge one in my office. And the fact is I got a whiteboard in almost every office here. I'm writing in my manager's offices and I'll go crazy. I mean, I'm spilling it all out on the whiteboard. And I said, man, I got to create this machine, this assembly line to build people. And I got to match that with really great opportunities for customers. And I mean, look, here's the biggest problem about me.

My vision is to be the largest and most trusted garage company in North America, including Canada. So I'll be seeing you out there. But my big thing is, you know, the people either they love me or they can't stand me. They go this little prick and I'm a six three. I'm not a little of two hundred. But they go, this guy comes into our town. And he's going to do all this stuff and they hate me. And so many people spend more time focused on me. Right. You know, I look at it like we're taking a five gallon bucket to the ocean. Everybody could coexist and be great. And I got to tell you, I'm a mammoth, man. When I come in, my plan is I'm going to be on 35 billboards in your city. There's not one person listening right now in the garage industry that won't be seeing me in the next three to five years. So I apologize, but I'm going to be on every

TV commercial. But you get it. You get what works. The model that is tried, tested, and true, city by city, you're doing the same thing and it's working. You nail it and you scale it is what I say. And I'm not trying to, look, people say Oh wow. Oh shoot. You know, email me, call me, Facebook me. Don't get worried. We're going to elevate the entire industry. That's what people don't understand is it's called the Starbucks effect. Every coffee house, coffee plantation, you name it doubled in business when Starbucks started murdering it. So when you change an industry, ultimately the scary thing is I'm not in it for the money. I mean, I love the money. The money is the byproduct of what I have fun doing.

What you're passionate about is building business. Oh, it's so much fun. I just love it. I literally, people don't understand the passion I have to get on the phone at night and talk to other business owners and talk to employees and the future of what this business is. And it's like, I love studying guys like Jack Welch and what they did to create such a big foundation for future to build something that was timeless. And people can't tell this is like, this is garage doors. I mean, people say, what the hell could he love garage doors? I mean, it's 40% of your curb appeal. It's the only thing on your home that gives you 102% return on investment.

It's the smile of your home. And it creates efficiency. It creates so many things. It's dangerous. It's the largest, most dangerous thing on your home. But it says so many things. And if you can't talk about what you do with that kind of enthusiasm. And passion.

Yeah, then we've got bigger problems. But I also enjoy every aspect of it. The operational micro stuff, I've learned that I'm a visionary and I've got my amazing integrator and many integrators all around him. And what I learned is just stay in my own lane and do what I do. And really, don't expect people to keep up with me. Just make sure that we take things and we're very thought out. The difference is I used to dive in and fill the water later. Now I'm a little bit, I need people around me to pump the brakes because I'm always on the accelerator. And we both are good teams. So I think what's going to have to happen, Randy, is we're going to have to do a part two here in about a month. I've ordered your book, Foundation Execution Clients, Team Systems, Money Exit. I want to talk a lot about the exit because I'm obsessed with it. I just bought five books on private equity. I'm learning about everything there is to know about how to get multiples of EBITDA. And this stuff is, it's so much fun. Sure is. But I got to ask you,

I always ask a few questions and I'm going to let you close us out. But if you had to give me three books on top of yours, which if you're if you haven't got it yet, it's 10 bucks. Formula to Freedom. Go on Amazon right now by Randy Stanbury. Yes. The Small Business Freedom Formula. Small Business Freedom Formula. Seven steps. And they're all right here i'm looking forward to it it's also on kindle if those of you read on kindle so get the book but what are three books that you'd also recommend the very first one that we always recommend is the compound effect uh darren hardy are you familiar with compound effect yeah yep i have it it's a very easy read, very simplistic, but it's basically the formula,

you know, Darren Hardy being the editor and founder of Success Magazine, right? So this guy has interviewed all of the most successful people on the planet for years and years, and he's broken down the simplest formula. And really, the truth of the matter is, is taking small, consistent actions. And we're talking about the right actions, you know, vitally focused over time gets you success. And so when we talked about eating the elephant one bite at a time, you can get to where Tommy's level is. Any company out there can do that, but they have to start and be consistent with the actions that they take and do this over a number of weeks, months, quarters,

years. And at the end of the day, success will be there. But it's just such a precisely well-written book. The other one, you know, Michael Gerber's e-myth is, you know, if you haven't read that as an entrepreneur, you need to, especially in the trades and being technicians. You know, I know he's coming out with a number of different versions for different trades. So highly recommend that. And for me, there's so many other really, really great books. But what I would suggest for my third book is really looking at where are you in your business and what do you need most? So go through a scorecard of analyzing, even if you're doing a SWOT analysis, looking at strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in your business. But where do you need to learn as an entrepreneur the most?

And if it's in sales, then there's great sales books out there. If it's in marketing, my suggestion on marketing and Tommy will wrap up here soon, but what's your suggestion on marketing? Mine is leave it to the experts. Don't try to become an expert when you're scrambling in your business already just to become the entrepreneur. Well, you know, I'm very fortunate that my number one passion is marketing followed by sales. It's not financial, although financial was the biggest missing part of my life and business. But yeah, I leave it to the, I agree with that wholeheartedly is don't be a jack of all trades when it comes to marketing. I know not just enough to talk about it and understand what they're saying, but yeah, yeah. I believe that you're absolutely correct is you want to, you want to find the best,

the best in everything. Yeah, you sure do. And which leads me to follow the leader. We have a thing that we talk about is follow the leader. In fact, it's, it's in our, our first piece of foundation of the entrepreneur needs to follow the leader. Model after the masters. Don't try to recreate the wheel. Find an entrepreneur in your business that is highly successful. If any fucking garage door business out there isn't following what you're doing, they're obviously missing out on something fairly obvious and substantial that they could learn and leverage.

So learn from and play follow the leader. I love it. What if somebody needs to get a hold of you and they want to reach out to you, Randy? My email, randyat4levelcoach.com. It's number4levelcoach.com. But you know what's the best thing to do is join our Facebook group.

We've got all kinds of great free content there. And if you go to contractorsbusinessgroup.com, as long as you're a renovator, a trader, a custom home builder, we welcome you to join our group. And we want to build it out and continue to help other guys not just get some freedom in their business, but really work a whole lot less and make a lot more money.

Perfect. I love that. And then last thing I do is I'm going to let you close us out just with a last thought. You know, last thought here is that we've just covered a shitload of really, really important information.

I would say, analyze where you're at in your business. Look at some of the holes and get focused on one of them. Don't try to plug every hole immediately, but really focus on one and take a step forward. Start doing that on a weekly basis. Do it consistently over time and you'll get there. Well, listen, we've got to do this again. I'm going to go through it. And I got to tell you, Randy, you're a genius. The time management,

I make people go through a calendar every 15 minutes in a day when they manage for me. And I do it regularly. And I say, was that productive? Is that your job? Are you staying in your own lane? And I can't wait to get your book. It's coming soon. I do Kindle as well, but I'd rather have the paperback. So I'm on it. I want to continue this though. So we're going to do a part two. I'll have Gianni reach out to you and can't tell you enough how much I appreciate you coming on today. Yeah, Tommy, this was great. I'd do this all day long if I had time. I appreciate you and I look forward to part two, guys. Thanks again, man. Cheers. 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 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 even further. So thank you once again for listening to the podcast. I really appreciate it.