The Home Service Expert Podcast - How Outsourcing Your Customer Service Can Get You Business Freedom And Glowing Reviews

Episode Date: August 14, 2020

Michelle Myers is the founder and CEO of Pink Callers, a team of virtual assistants providing remote customer service for business owners seeking to automate their daily tasks. When she’s not busy ensuring that her company provides great service and inspires great reviews for their clients, Michelle works with other home service support businesses on an initiative called the Safe Distance Service Association, which is a free member association for home service businesses utilizing safe distance practices for their customers. In this episode, we talked about business development, entrepreneurship, customer service, team building, social media, automation...

going back to that motive. What's the pain point that we can help you with in your business? And we can learn the software. I mean, I have all the training and tools in place to do that. That's not hard. We can understand the business model. The business model is empathy, getting a decent price or getting you to the doors, the owner or the estimator or the salesperson. So just connecting the dots, again, being that bridge, that's really what we do. And then just setting good expectations. Yes, you've paid. Yes, you're on the schedule. No, we'll get right out to you. Yes, we'll put that into the computer and make sure someone comes to see you. And all of those things are exactly the same no matter what business you're

doing. I mean, those are generally the same across every industry. And if we can just give that good customer service, set those expectations, and give that business owner his time back, that's really when we win. 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 special guest visiting us from Washington, DC. Her name is Michelle Myers, and she's an expert at business development, entrepreneurship, customer service,

team building, social media, and automation. A little bit about her. A long time ago, she worked at Davis Carter & Scott Architect Commercial Designer from 2001 to 2008. She worked at My Virtual Page. She was the founder and CEO from 2010 to 2019. And now she's the founder and CEO of Myers 5 Group. She started that in 2018. Also, Pink Callers, the founder and CEO from 2016 to now. The Pink Callers is a remote customer service

provider that caters to field service business owners through effective business automation for daily tasks. The company is composed of virtual assistants who provide great service that sparks glowing reviews. Michelle has also joined with several home service support businesses to begin the Safe Distance Service Association, a free membership association for home service businesses that utilize safe distance practices for their consumers. Michelle's also visited me here at A1 in Phoenix, Arizona. Michelle, it's an honor and a pleasure to have you on today. Hey there, Tommy. Thanks so much for having me. I'm grateful and excited to be here. Yeah, this is going to be great. It's pretty exciting that

you've actually came into the shop. You've had a path in business that's never easy. And obviously, it looks like you have quite the resume here. Do you want to take us through how you got started on your entrepreneurial path and what made it you to get up to where you are today? Absolutely. I would love to. Well, first off, I always like to tell people that I'm a daughter of a pastor. And so I traveled a lot through my childhood extensively and had worked in the commercial world of construction and design for many years, had a regular paycheck, had a turkey sandwich every day, had the comfort of consistent employment until 2009 when the economy crashed and everybody lost everything. I was one of those everybody's. So I found myself in the middle of a divorce with a couple of small children and really trying to find a way to recoup my life and come back from some big, not only financial,

but personal losses. So I started my virtual page. That was the first business that I began in 2010. And it was a straight up hustle. I mean, I won't lie. It was Craigslist. It was advertising and Facebook groups. It was just doing any possible thing I could to make money and support my kids and myself. So I started that business. It was named after my now 12 year old daughter, Paige. Then I figured if I could kind of get my life back on track, it would be in her honor. So my virtual page was admin services. I actually did Facebook management for an MMA fighter. So I was actually an MMA guy on Facebook, which was very enlightening. I actually cleaned and organized people's garages.

I did filing. I worked for a public speaker. I mean, I just really did anything that would bring dollars into our household. And it was a tree service that actually took a chance on me and said, we really need help running our office and we're out in trees all day and we can't do it. How can you help us with this clamshell phone? Yes, clamshell phone from 12 years ago and a really cruddy little laptop from Best Buy. How can you help us run our company?

And they stopped by my apartment and essentially handed me their business one day. So that's kind of how I got started. I love that story. You know, I think a lot of us, we have our own issues with business. There's just so much going on. We always get pulled back in. And I love Michael Gerber. I mean, obviously, The E-Myth is probably one of the most important books of all time

when it comes to entrepreneurship. And we get stuck in this process of getting pulled back in into our business. I actually just got off a meeting with about 40 managers, different people in the company. And I said, you know, we're so busy. We're so booked out. We turned off our pay-per-click. We've got so much business. I said, we need all hands on deck to be recruiting right now.

But ultimately, let's not get pulled in like a vacuum into working every day. Remember, there's processes, there's procedures, there's systems that if we keep hitting the same problem over and over again and beating our heads, we need to stop, lose business in the short term to fix the long term problem. So it sounds like to me, that's something that your business is focused on. Is that, explain to me a little bit about Pink Collars and the virtual assistants and how it all works. Absolutely. So from that one little tree service business that I started working with,

I had their phones and their laptop. They didn't have a CRM. They had no systems in place. The phone would ring. We would put all of their information in a Google calendar. They would see that Google calendar on their phone and they would have just short clippy notes on what the problem or issue was at the home

that they were going to go service. And through doing a lot of research and due diligence, I realized that they really needed a CRM, some sort of system to put the customers through the process of getting a tree worked on, right? They needed a way to get messages. They needed a way to get invoices, work orders, all the regular stuff. And so I found something for them and it turned out to be probably one of the biggest changes that happened in their

business. So when you get a system in place like a CRM, doesn't matter which one it is, but you can choose one. It really does help connect all the dots in those processes. So, you know, when you're growing and you're big, you kind of have a lot of those processes in place. And you might be an owner operator, maybe somebody that would work with a company like ours, like Pink Collars, and you may not have those things in place. And that's where our business really shines. We really bring consistency and customer service and care while you're out in the field, you know, delivering those amazing services. We really take the time to set up those processes on your behalf if you may those amazing services, we really take the time to

set up those processes on your behalf if you may not have them. We really are the bridge that kind of gives that owner a little bit more freedom in their life, which is what I think all of us go into business for, is to have flexibility and freedom. Got it. And you happen to be in Phoenix to come check out my shop. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that? Absolutely. I was super impressed with the way you run your customer care. I loved the fact that your teams are all together in that one huge room, that big room where

all the phones are and all the software is located and everybody's doing the same thing. I thought it was really incredible to watch all of the screens up on the board. You could see real time jobs coming in and closing. And that kind of data is so important for a business owner. It's one of the things that we provide for our clients. So we have internal communication platform called slack that we work on not only with our customers but internally within our business and so we set up workflows that do kpis like call log reports understanding how many calls came in how many clients got converted how many voicemails we may have answered anything that we've done throughout the day so that that business owner feels like he might have a staff like yours with a huge board of results at the end of every day. And I loved

how you got all of that data into one whiteboard and you could really tell who in your team was really killing it for the day, which agents had the top leads, the booking percentage, what the revenue was, what your booking rate was. I thought that was incredible. And we do something very similar for pink collars for maybe an owner operator guy. That's not as big as you might be, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And I think that what, what is a good size? You know, at what point did somebody decide they're going to need you? And at what point do you think they may outgrow you? What's that perfect number? What's that perfect number? What's our perfect customer, perfect client?

It's interesting because we are probably on the high side. We're a very expensive solution for people. We're different than an answering service. And we're not quite as expensive as an employee. So we kind of fall in between those two guidelines. I have found that to be really successful working with us, you need to do between $300,000 and $350,000 a year in revenue. You need to have reached that pain point in your business where you might window pressure washing, one crew if

you're a tree service, just really depends on your vertical, which what kind of business that you do. But 350 seems to be a really good benchmark to start with us. And we actually work with several companies that are three to six, 8 million. So we do scale with companies and we come in as sort of augmented support for in-house teams all the time. So you can really utilize our services at any size. Got it. Got it. So the calls come in, you guys give the owner and the management team some different key performance indicators to tell them, for example, one of the reasons we've got so many cancellations over the last week was because

call flows are through the roof and we need to hire. I mean, obviously when you're turning off campaigns, it's a great problem to have. I'm mean, obviously when you're turning off campaigns, it's a great problem to have. I'm not complaining, but we're turning off so many things right now. So give me your KPI dashboard and tell me why those are all important. Well, the things that we really pay attention to, obviously, is call volume. Answer rate is very important for us internally. So we make sure that we catch every incoming phone call, any voicemails that were left overnight. If the client that we're working with doesn't have an after hours solution, sometimes our clients will send calls to an

answering service, an offshore answering service or an overnight service. Making sure that we're responding to all of those timely is really super important. Incoming versus outgoing, obviously all of that data is very critical. And then I think probably estimates created. We have a lot of the software platforms that we work on that have internal measurement tools. So we work with fencing companies and lawn care companies and places that can do all the estimates actually online and don't need to go to the person's home, to the customer's home, to do actual physical measurements anymore.

I think in this time of COVID, especially the companies that are really leaning into those types of tools are really succeeding in this time. And I think that that's going to be more and more and more the case as we continue. So what's the advantages of doing it via that versus do you feel like this is kind of where I'm torn a little bit by not being there in person and giving a good presentation and smiling? You know, I know that that's where the world's going is they're starting to diagnose over the video and it's like, I don't want to embrace it. And

I love change, but it scares me because how do you differentiate yourself? So you measure, then you show up in a broken down truck because you got a little piece of software. You're living in the basement of your mom's house. You know what I mean? You get these really bad. Where's the pros and cons to that? Where's it going? Well, it's interesting. I'm working with a group right now called Contractor Sales Academy. These guys really are all about qualifying customers over the phone, and they put together a unique program for our team called the Gatekeeper Challenge. So the gatekeeper is the person that qualifies the lead over the phone and connects to the customer. So there's several questions.

It's all based on empathy. It's really cool program. I highly recommend it to people to check it out. And what I love about it is that you actually require the customer to send pictures to you. So it engages the customer, the homeowner in really participating in the process of giving you the information that you need. I would not be surprised at all, Tommy, if you moved fully to digital estimating. And if you had absolute killers on the phone that could be empathetic, understand the pain point, give a really good price, give incredible pictures, because I know you have that technology to do the new garage door on an image of an existing home. I think you'd be surprised at how much conversion you get because

I think people are going to expect to have some sort of a virtual connection with your business instead of having you come to their property. I just feel like that's going to happen. I don't know. It's just my hunch. Well, I mean, in certain respects, I could understand that happening, but without being out there, there's low headroom, zero clearance. There's all kinds of measurements. There's things, obstacles in the way. We make mistakes and we're professionals and I still make mistakes. And these guys are trained for six weeks, every day, all day. And then they get a lot more training after that. And the one thing I would say is we're turning into a virtual post COVID, very virtual, very, very Zoom oriented. And I love it. And it's accepted. And I do think you're absolutely right in qualifying the customer. I visited a pretty big HVAC shop a couple weeks ago, and he's like, when we're busy, we raise our diagnostic fee significantly in the summer because we're trying to qualify the customer.

Another thing we're trying to do is make sure the significant other, the decision makers are home during the process of which we go out. So I love this subject so much because you're working on qualifying the lead. I want to hear more about that. And just the empathy is huge. And I talk about advocacy with my technicians when they're in the garage is how do you make it? So you and the client or customer versus a one, you've taught this stuff, you told them our story, but now you're going to say, listen, Michelle, you remind me so much of my sister, whatever it might be. I'm going to go to war for you. I'm going to see what we can do. I'm allowed to give

you this much of a discount, but I'm going to call in and I'm going to see if I can do this. And now you're going, and I'm talking to you about Washington, D.C. It's so fun to visit, whatever it might be. We got all this stuff in common. So talk to me about qualifying the lead, the empathy. I want to hear more about this academy got all this stuff in common. So talk to me about qualifying the lead, the empathy. I want to hear more about this academy and what this challenge is like. Well, I think they really comprise the entire program into a few steps that are really amazing. And so when you talk about empathy, you really want to understand what the motive is in the sale, right? What's the pain point? Is it a tree that's about to fall over? Is there some peril going to happen? Are there weeds in the front yard? Is the garage door broken or is it

dated? Does it date the entire home? What's the motive? What's happening with the customer in their life at that time that makes the service necessary? So once you identify that, I totally agree with you. You almost side with the customer and you say, okay, I totally hear your point. I understand why this fence needs to be repaired. Tell me exactly what your best outcome for this project would be. Share with me a story. And you almost let the customer evaluate and identify and discover the solution themselves if you just are quiet and listen. And it's funny because going through this program, I've learned that I talk too much when I'm selling. I just say too much. And I need to almost ask more clarifying questions and just zip it,

and that's really hard because I want to constantly sell value and talk about how great we are and all of this stuff. But I'm finding that listening to the pain point and understanding that motive is super important. I know that you talked about the decision makers. Having the decision makers there is critical. Whether they're on the phone, on Zoom, whether they're bought in, you just have to understand where in the process that customer might be. Are they just doing research? Are they just doing price shopping? Are they ready to move forward? And sending photographs and having them participate in the process a little bit, I think really gets you a better understanding of where they are in the process emotionally to make that purchase. And I think those types of connections are going to just be more and more and

more important. The cool thing is, is then you also just get to the money on the phone, which is something really new. Not a lot of companies feel confident talking about money on the phone, especially on that very first phone call. And the CSA says, no, get it on the table right away, because then you can both be in agreement or agree to just follow up later when the money issue may not be the problem. So it's an interesting way to kind of move through that phone call. And I'm finding a lot of value in our team and in the way that we're talking to our customers, customers, right? Our clients, customers every day. So we're using these tools a lot. And then I think the last thing that they use, which I love, is they call it the BS meter.

And they talk about charging people a consultation fee. So like you said about the guys you just visited, you crank up that consultation fee and you can really get buy-in from the homeowner when they say, wow, if I send pictures, then it's free. Or if you come out here, it's $250 or $300. It really gets the homeowner thinking about how much they can participate to save that money at the front end, which I really like that part too. Yeah. And I do think there's, I'm looking at my desk and I've got 50 proven ways to be persuasive about Robert Cheney. The book's called Yes. And I'm all about it. I just know the problem I have on the phone, number one, is words are 7% of the conversation when we're in person.

Most is body language and tonality. Now, if I'm on the phone, tonality becomes about 75% and the words we use are 25%. But I love the body language piece of it. And I just think when you see me and you watch me smile and I'm, I'll move stuff for you in your garage. I like that's part of my persuasion. Now, trust me, if I was, I don't know if I had a bad back and just squat,

you know, there's all kinds of limitations, whether physical or whatnot, but I'm going to look you dead in the eye and I'm going to talk to you. bad back and just squat. There's all kinds of limitations, whether physical or whatnot, but I'm going to look you dead in the eye and I'm going to talk to you and I'm going to ask you, if you're a woman, I get on side of you because I don't want you to feel threatened. If you're a man, I face you. There's certain things I try to do. And people are like, why do you train this stuff? Just tell them to be human. And I'm like, look, the littlest subtleties in the world is the cognitive brain. And to not take advantage of what these are, do you think lawyers and detectives and everybody should be practicing these things?

There's a great book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and it guides you along on how to make friends. And it says, genuinely listen, shut the hell up most of the time. Like you said, zip it. Yeah. I love this stuff. This is exciting for me because i think the listeners are going to get a ton out of this as we start going through this so

you've got this huge piece that you're talking about which is really the key performance indicators and here's the next question i wanted to dig into is there's a crm you keep talking about that's the customer relationship management system and it seems like to me, a lot of people use different systems. And I could go through a dozen of them because I've used so many myself. Tell me, what do you like? How important is it? And what are the pros and cons to a CRM? And what have you found?

Well, it's interesting. We work on almost all the big ones out there. And I really feel, again, this is my empathy showing again, when we get a client that calls us that says, I can't decide on a CRM, or I have this one and I want to change to that one, or can you make a decision with me? I'm not sure. We are happy to set you up with a free trial. We're happy to give you some sort of insight on maybe what might be the strengths or weaknesses with a free trial. We're happy to give you some sort of insight on maybe what might be the strengths or weaknesses of a CRM. But it is such a critical choice for a business owner.

Some business owners have to have reporting out of the back of that CRM every single time. Some business owners need ease of use for the guys in the field and folks in the field. And so what your pain point is as a business owner is going to be different no matter what. And it's also going to really change from industry to industry, right? A locksmith is going to need something completely different than a landscaper is going to need something completely different than a tree guy. And so knowing the different

industries, and that's really where I think we shine, we diversified a lot early on in Pink Collars. I think that that gives us the strength to be able to see the nuances between the CRMs and how they might best serve a different industry based on the owner's needs. So it depends. I mean, we have good relationships with all of them. We refer clients to all of them. And there are some that are just fantastic out there. I mean, we have good relationships with all of them. We refer clients to all of them. And there are some that are just fantastic out there. I mean, I can't say enough about House Call Pro. Great. Service Titan. Great. Jobber. Great. Service Autopilot. Great. The list goes on and on. And again, it just really depends on what you value as the owner and what industry you're really working in.

I love that. And I will say this, this is the biggest mistake I know. Companies buy CRMs on price. And I think that's a big mistake. I think you need to understand. Well, let me just tell you this. We'll do probably a couple hundred grand a day. Now, a couple hundred grand, and right now I've got my stuff up. Let me just tell you this. Who cares about revenue? Let's just say this. I'm at 85% booking rate. We've booked 202 calls so far today out of 239.

So that means we've missed 37 calls. So take 37 calls. Now, 85% is a pretty good job for any call center. I'd like to be around 90. Anything more than 90, you're probably booking some BS jobs that you shouldn't be. Yeah. Well, let's just say you're at 80. So I lose 5%. So I had another 13 calls. My average ticket is $500. And this is only halfway through the day. I'm just telling you, the CRM, you can't inspect. I always say inspect what you expect. Pick a CRM you could

grow into the company, act today like the company you want to become. And I just hate the fact that people say, well, this will get me by. It's easier to spend the money and do it now and grow into it than it's going to be to try to change. Every single American Airlines, Southwest, all these companies that have been around for decades, they've never changed their software. They just build plugins to it because they can't. Because it would literally go out of business. That's how crazy it is. So when picking a CRM, the pain points, I had to talk to a guy the other day. I said, look, it's inventory management, it's dispatching, it's call booking. It's tracking, advertising.

Those are the bigger ones. Inventory is one of the bigger ones. Dispatching properly, entering inventory, understanding payroll systems. And I'm in love with service design, as you know, just because they do so much for me. But it's expensive. I use Housecall Pro for my Christmas life business. I've used Salesforce on a couple of products. I've used a bunch of life business. I've used Salesforce on a couple products. I've used a bunch of other stuff. I've used Confusionsoft. I mean, Infusionsoft.

So there's a lot of good ones. So you got pink collars and you basically embrace the science of business, of automation that you're able to apply in niche markets. What inspired you? Tell me a little bit about just that one day that the company came and they said, here's my stuff, make it work. Yeah. I mean, so my virtual page went on for a good 10 years. It was a great business. We were very specific though. We were industry specific, we were software specific, and we had pigeonholed ourselves to be totally honest. And so about 2016, I opened Pink Collars. Our first client was a jobber client. So we branched out into a new software.

We went into a different industry. And I felt like diversifying what we did for customers and for different industries was super important. So we found that Pink Collars really resonated with a lot of people. Again, the thing that separates us is that we hire and assign one individual to your service business, to your home service business. So that person gets to know who you are, your services, your service area, your culture, the rest of your team.

They'll participate in team meetings weekly and monthly. They talk to your customers every single day. So if a homeowner calls on a Monday with a problem, on Wednesday when they call back, they get to the same individual. And that really, really solidifies who you are as a business owner in your community because there's some consistency and you can look bigger than you are, which is really cool. And you don't have to pay the overhead of an office. You don't have to train or connect with that individual every single day like we do. We make

sure they're on time and that their tools work and that their systems work and that they're trained in the software that you utilize. And so that really brings an incredible level of comfort for a home service business owner that's literally in the field or in the field with his guys or working on building his team or her team to really deliver services out there in the community. We can really do that customer care piece that may be the one thing that's just not quite up to speed. And that's what really is so cool about what we do. So I want to tell you something that no one really knows. I haven't talked about it on the podcast but there was one time that my COO Adam an amazing guy we have a call center that after three rings it simultaneously hits our call center and theirs and at nighttime and on Christmas it goes to them

we figured out times to have staff and times not to and And 24-7, we'll take a message at midnight, but we won't run a guy. We'll set it up for early in the morning. So I think it's a great program. But one day he said, and I can't be mad at him because I was all for it. He said, why are we even handling phone calls? Let's just let this company that knows service time do all of it. And oh, man, they could not keep up with our volume. Number one. Number two is they weren't trained in our industry. And we're a mammoth company. I mean,

you know, there was a day last week we took 1600 phone calls in a day. So ultimately, obviously you got to be the right size, but also I can't tell you enough. The average booking rate, this is from Susie at CallCap, who I think is really just an insight into more call center data than anybody I know said, it's under 45% booking rate because a lot of people don't even answer. She's like, Tom, she's like, you know, with call strengths, a lot of these people don't even answer. They're on a ladder, they're mowing a lawn, they're doing something else. So really I'm the opposite. Cause I'm like, I've got people here. They really know the industry.

They know what we want for our clients to expect. But what is that happy medium? Where is it that you feel like, wow, Tom, yours would be a pain in the butt because there's so many calls. There's an influx. We're in so many zip codes and area codes and time zones that just makes it tough. But where is that sweet medium? And you went through the different revenue, but revenue to me is nothing because in my opinion, if you're selling $40,000 widgets versus $20 a week,

maintenance is on your grass. Yeah. It's totally, it's custom for every industry. So you're right. A million dollar tree service and a million dollar lawn care company or residential cleaning company are two totally different animals. So yeah, I absolutely agree with you. The sweet spot in terms of industry type, I guess I don't understand your question. The sweet spot is revenue. So where do you guys like to be for a company as far as calls handled per day? And do you bill it differently as far as opportunities versus not? What happens with solicitors? Sure.

You know, these are fair questions that I think the audience... Absolutely. No, absolutely. No. Because we assign that one individual, we work eight hours a day, Monday through Friday, just like a traditional employee. So we have the traditional model of office hours and a traditional individual assigned to that business. So we handle calls no matter if there's 150 or 200 in a day

or two in a day. The good thing about what we do to augment those calls is that we also handle emails, text messages, Facebook messages. We also do all of the scheduling if that's something that our customer would like. We do takeoffs and proposals if those tools are embedded in the software platform. Some of them are. And so we send proposals and actually do sales over the phone for some of our customers.

So it really is like having a traditional employee. And the good thing is, is if it gets quiet, we make outgoing calls. My husband calls that dialing for dollars. And so we pick up the phone and call on unclosed work, try to hustle money in the door because we don't want to be a non-revenue generating individual in that business. We want to actually generate income and bring money in the door every single day that we're there. So it's a really customizable solution for a business owner. We have the ability to update Facebook pages or update websites or any sort of admin tasks that might be falling through the cracks. If we've got the bandwidth and the time, we absolutely will take it on. Got it. You know, that's crazy to me. It would scare the death.

It would scare me to death to try to understand a business, their needs and have to deal with different owners because even dealing with myself is a pain in the butt. I can't even imagine. Cause you're not a, you're just. Just a challenge. It's challenging. Yeah, it is. It's's challenging but these guys need help i mean here's where businesses are born or die is right in that first few years when they are just about ready to get to the million you know just about ready to get to the big numbers

this is when they need the most help and so we find that when we assign somebody to that business it does become very personal. I mean, we know their kids' names. We know their dog's name. We know who they are. And there's a great level of trust that has to be built over time. And that trust is there. I mean, we have employees that have been with us all four years in pink collars. And I've got some that we brought from my virtual page. And I've got employees that have been here five, six, and seven years that have worked with the company and seen it when it was tiny and gotten it to a bigger, bigger, bigger stage every year. And there's something super rewarding in that. And it solves a problem not only for the business

owner, but for the person on the other end of the phone that gets to work at home and fulfill their role, possibly as a parent or a caregiver, and be able to be accessible to their family, that's a win-win for everybody. And I really know that that translates over the phone when you're talking to your customers. If that person that's happy and not driving to an office every day and battling some of the different things that are going on in the world right now, being able to be at home is a real advantage. So we really like that part too. That's awesome. What's the difference between hiring a team and building a team? That's a tough one, but it's hard. It's hard to hire.

It is. Okay. So hiring a team is relatively easy. Building a team is really scary as an owner because you start with this little baby, right? It's like your own little business. It's your clamshell phone and your cruddy little laptop and your one little tree business that you have. And nobody understands the sleepless nights and nobody understands the hustle. I mean, I tell people when I started dating my husband, he came over to my house and he spent the afternoon looking at me.

He was convinced I was doing something illegal because I had three phones and three laptops and one big screen. And it was pandemonium because I was just doing it all myself. Plus the guy handed you a big, a big wad of money and said, thanks for the- No, no, no, no, no. There was none of that. He was convinced. He was convinced that something untoward was happening. Right. And he looked at that and he said, you know, Michelle, I really think that what you're really doing is you're outsourcing yourself, right? You're outsourcing a need for an office, a need for a person,

a need for an individual in a home service business. And, you know, in his business, he did construction and he did a procurement of materials and he did a siding and windows and doors. So he was a little bit in your world. And he said, you know, we have an internal company that does our siding and we send them out in different uniforms, different trucks. They're a subcontractor for the guys that buy our materials. We put in the siding and we send them out in different uniforms, different trucks. They're a subcontractor for the guys that buy our materials. We've put in the siding. It looks great. The quality is fantastic. Customer's happy. The contractor's happy. You're essentially doing that. You're a subcontractor of office work. And I was like,

no, I'm not. I'm just a single mom trying to hustle. I didn't see it as a business. And so building a team is really about finding people that understand part of the hustle that got you there and can support you in hustling up more jobs for others. So instead of hustling for myself now, now I hustle for all of them. And the team leads that we have in our organization now are constantly thinking about how can we be proactive? How can we be transparent? How can we be comprehensive? How can we cover all of the bases for these guys so that they can really succeed? And finding those individuals on my team, it's been hard. I mean, I've had some misses, but there are some awesome people out there that love the mission of providing at-home work opportunities and building small business. Those are the two things we do every

day. And that's what gets me out of bed every morning and my husband out of bed, because we want to hustle more jobs for people. That's really our goal. That's a cool goal and it's admirable. And I like it how you've picked a niche. I know a lot of companies, for example, roofers, they sub out a lot of the work. They're more of the front end and that's kind of what you're doing. And it's interesting because I look at small businesses and I can only imagine that most of them are broken because a lot of them are still doing the work. They're still left being the technician on the field. And I work with a lot of these people and a lot of them say they don't get to the phone all the time. Some of them hate when the phone rings and you know, there's certain people, and I say this on the podcast

and a lot of people get mad at me and they say, this say, that's BS, dude. You don't have the right to say that about people. But I'm like, you quit your job because you didn't want to work for somebody. But then again, you're a slave to your business. So unless you can figure out how to build a culture, how to hire right, how to set up goals and KPIs. If you hate this stuff, if you hate doing financials, then unless you inherit a really big business where you can live and dream in a certain part of it, which over time happens to all of us, we go to what we want to do, then it's hard to do that. So go back to the nine to five because you'll make more, you'll sleep more, you'll salvage a lot of the relationships you started to burn and you'll be happy. And if you really want to do this, then you got to go all in and be prepared

for the repercussions that are going to happen. But I'm just curious, what are some of the objections you get from these small businesses? And I can only imagine it's expensive and why would I? It's expensive. You don't know my service area. You're not a plumber or electrician. You're not a roofer. You're not a tree guy. you're not a landscape person. We get all the objections. But I will promise you, it's interesting that we talked about Contractor Sales Academy and making sure that the decision makers were there. We get hired, I would imagine, by a really big percentage of women, wives, girlfriends, supporting women in the roles that have done this work for the person in their life that has started this business and is just done. They say, I want to

raise my kids again. I want to get out of the house. I want to have freedom for myself again. Our family culture is kind of suffering because this small business is just taking over everyone. And so we get hired by a lot of those people to replace themselves, which I think is so smart. And so I always tell guys that talk about, you know, the objections, the price for sure is one. I said, yeah, but what's the freedom? I mean, we bring in people and we do a trial period. And within the first 72 hours, we can change the quality of a business owner's life just because they don't have 19 voicemails to return at the end of the night. That has a value.

And you need to know that because your kids are only small for so long. Your wife's only young for so long. You only have so many hours in the day. And so to give that time back to people is really the one thing I always respond to people with. My husband does most of the sales now. I'm mostly in operations. It used to just be all me. So I'm grateful. He really talks to those guys on that level about their family and their time and their talent and how critical it is to get somebody in this role. And then if there's a woman that I'm speaking to, I talk to her about the same thing. Again, going back to that motive,

what's the pain point that we can help you with in your business? And we can learn the software. I mean, I have all the training and tools in place to do that. That's not hard. We can understand the business model. The business model is empathy, getting a decent price, or getting you to the door as the owner or the estimator or the salesperson. So just connecting the dots, again, being that bridge, that's really what we do. And then just setting good expectations. Yes, you've paid. Yes, you're on the schedule. No, we'll get right out to you. Yes, we'll put that into the computer and make sure someone comes to see you. And all of those things are exactly the same no matter what business you're doing. I mean, those are generally the same across every industry.

And if we can just give that good customer service, set those expectations, and give that business owner his time back, that's really when we win. You know, my dad used to own a transmission shop. And when he hired a lady, her name was Debbie. And I just remember specifically, I was a kid, couldn't be much more than eight years old. And I remember him talking to her and he said, well, you don't know transmissions like I do, and that's going to be a problem. So come find me. And she said to my dad, Tom, I'm really good at what I do. My goal is not to sell the transmission. My goal is to get you an appointment. Correct. And she said the same thing every single time. And

she was really great on the phone. But my point here is the less you know about how to do something, the less you go down that rabbit hole. And I've seen so many people that are like, why don't you teach them what to say if their safety eyes are off? I'm like, because you start diagnosing over the phone, you do something wrong. There's just so many mistakes. Get our guy out there. That's what we get paid to do. And it's so true.

Forget about what industry. We've all got the same. Well, if you're a dentist, if you're a doctor, if you're a roofer or mechanic, let's get them into us or let's be out to their home. Yep. That's it. It's exactly it. And there's that doesn't, you know, let me's it. It's exactly it. And there's that, doesn't it?

You know, let me get a trained, certified professional out there. And here's why. And everybody has a different why of why we need to do this. But I don't want to make the mistake of telling you something over the phone like a lot of the other companies

and be a bait and switch. Why don't I get a guy? Here's my secret sauce. Check this out, Michelle. Yeah. I love this. So, you know, Ms. Myers, we really, really, really appreciate the phone call, number one. And next, what I wanted to ask you is, what are your crossroads, by the way?

And just give me some crossroads. Just go ahead. Yeah. We're on Maine and Marshall. Maine and Marshall. You've got to be kidding me. Ms. Myers, listen, I've got a technician. His name's Daniel.

I'm looking at the dispatch board right now. I could have him stop by, take a peek, look at what you're into right now. And if he's got the stuff on the truck, great. He could do it then and there. If you're not happy with what he's got to say, send him on his way, but at least you know what you're looking at. Does that sound fair? And I try to smile on the phone and I love that one because people like, and I say, just stop by why he's on his way. Because he's in the neighborhood. Because I'm such a big company. I can legitimately say I have people in most neighborhoods at all the time.

You know, I was really fortunate too. I was thinking about this because I've always thought about stay-at-home moms and just somebody relocating where the husband is doing something. And, you know, a lot of times the men relocate for the woman getting a great job. So it goes vice versa. And how cool it was when COVID hit. And the good thing for our business was everybody checked out a computer and went to work from home the same day. Everybody's paid for performance. We didn't skip a beat. As long as you had good internet and we knew when everybody was logged on, we've got voice. We use a thing called dial pad. It's voice over internet protocol. We've got a good round Robin, a called Dialpad. It's voice over internet protocol.

We've got a good round robin, a way to handle calls, way to transfer calls, way to get an expert on the phone. So all of the stuff you would think we would have been screwed. But no, we were just like, bing, bang, boom. Check out the computer. You're good. And the point that I'm trying to tell people is you don't need everybody in an office right now. You don't have to have that successful. And I think that Michelle has figured out some secret sauce. How do you go about hiring your people? And I'm doing this just because not to give people an idea on how to,

your methodology, but just, you could hire good people from home. Yeah. Well, we participate in a lot of Facebook groups and we have a really good employee referral program. So we pay our employees really well to get their friends and family members to work with us. And that's really, I think, our secret sauce because we're building a community. I think that what I'm watching on the news at night and what I'm seeing out there in the world, and I know we've all seen it, there's a real big disconnect with people. And so you think about work from home and it feels like it might be isolating. You might be alone or you might be by yourself just with a computer, blah, blah, blah. What we bring to the table is really a very

vibrant online community and a connectivity to our employees that I think is really a very vibrant online community and a connectivity to our employees that I think is really important. And there's some really cool tools out there. Slack is one of them that we use every single day that any business owner could use. It's $6 per person. You can do video, audio, you can do screen sharing, you can connect with people.

If you've got folks in the field that aren't super tech savvy, all they have to do to check in and out of a service is just snap a picture. Hey, I'm here at this house and the office can know where they are. So there's some really cool connection tools that we use that really help to build our internal community. And then we invite all of our clients into those same tools. We Slack with all of our clients on different channels, depending on what communication style we want to share with them. We have owners on owner channels and management channels,

and we have ops guys in the ops channel, and we have office support in the office support channels. And that really is nice to be able to see that communication go back and forth for me, especially as an owner. We use Trello, which is a free tool. It's a repository tool for all of the information about your business. If you're an owner operator, the best source or the best use of your downtime, if you've got any, is to start getting all of those incredible things out of your mind and into a platform somewhere where you can share

with somebody in the future. And Trello is a free one. You can sit in your truck and type all the information you want. You can take pictures and add video. It's a really cool tool. So with the CRMs, they're all incredibly important, but there's a lot of free stuff out there or very inexpensive things that you can start with that you can grow into. I absolutely agree with you there. We are big proponents of buy the best thing you can and keep it. Don't change software all the time. And so there's a lot of cool things, but getting back to being connected, our team is super connected. We are teamed together by time zone. We have folks in every single time zone and in

Canada, and they all have team names, team colors. I mean, I was on a team meeting the other day. It was ponytail day. I have short hair. I didn't fit in very well, but it was really hilarious. Everybody's had their hair in a ponytail for their meeting. It was hysterical. So we have good culture and those gals really do the service of hiring for us. They do my recruiting and they get people in the door for us to hire. And that's really our secret. Okay. We got a couple of things here I want to talk about because you got me interested and everyone,

I get $1,500 for an employee hire. I give seven 50 to750 after six months. I think I'm going to move that to three months because if they last three months, they're probably going to stay on. What do you consider generous? That's super generous. That's super generous. We do a one-time payout and it's after 90 days. So we're similar, but it's not $750 and $750.

But I'm always interested in incredibly good people. And so I'm going to put a recruiting chat out there in Slack today and see if we can't fire up some people to do some more recruiting because every single person has a community that they're a part of, whether it's a church community or an online community or a group on Facebook. And so to spread the word, it's really easy if your people are happy and you treat them well, they want their other friends and family to work with us. I will tell you, it's been challenging this last few weeks because I feel like a lot of people are making more on unemployment than they would be making if they worked for a company. It's a fact.

Yeah, it's happening. It's a bunch of crap and they're going, we deserve this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But you don't. You don't deserve. You've never been able to save money in your life. Get out of here. I made minimum wage when I was 12 years old. Literally, it was $4.25 an hour.

It was a year before I was legally able to work. It's not a living wage. If anybody doesn't like it, you can tune out of the podcast. I could care less. Everybody that listens to this is mostly business owners, but if you can't live, you know what? If you want to raise it to $15, fine. Milk's going to cost $2. More gas is going to go up.

They don't understand inflation. All that happens is you raise it up. A small business that has all minimum wage people, they raise their prices. All it does is inflate everything else. It does. It takes about six months, but then you're back at square one. They never take a basic economics. It just fires me up. I can tell. I like to get fired up though, so this is good. But hiring for entry-level people in every industry right now is really suffering because of the unemployment benefits that people

are getting right now. And that's just a challenge for small business owners. It was funny because I was on my coaching call this morning with Elena Ledoux. She's a powerhouse, owns a massive cleaning company in Vegas. And she said to me, you got to woo them like you're dating them. She's like, make a video, you and Doug, talk about what it's like to work for you. Talk about all the things you do. Talk about the culture. She's like, you got to step up your game to hire people now. And I'm taking her advice. So we're going to go out tonight and film something out in the backyard about what it's like to work for us and see if we can't crank that up a little bit. Let me give you another idea because this has to do with your payroll. So the way you pay and it has to do with the way you recruit and it has to do with the way you get paid by the business owners.

So as a business owner, I wouldn't mind paying more based on your KPIs. So, for example, if you were to book a higher percentage of calls or handle, get more reviews for me or whatever that might be, I don't want to pay for that. Because if you systematically explain to somebody that each call that you perform and run based on your conversion rate equals this many dollars, wouldn't this be worth more to you? Or I could just be a 65%. We'll call it even, and we'll do mediocrity. But my best CSRs make around 30 bucks an hour and here's why. If they're over 90%,

they've got five KPIs they get paid on and one out of the five is by far the most. They make over $6 per call. So if they're over 90%, then I look at attendance. So you've got attendance, you've got tonality, you've got,

we call them department mistakes. So if you put streets at a road, you might send somebody 45 minutes down the wrong way. So accuracy is important. Empathy is important. So we've got five KPIs. The majority of it is your booking rate and your empathy. So you look at those things. So now people are begging to get on the phone and book phone calls. So now you skip your lunch break if we're busy. You say, I'm just going to stay. I'm going to make some extra money. You know that you can make about $8 to $9 an hour depending on the shifts you work. There's a shift differential. So now you could book, let's just say you book four calls and it's eight bucks. You made $32 an hour, but you got to continue that. Now here's the bad part for people. You don't make minimum wage plus a bonus.

You make minimum wage or the bonus because my plan is to create an awesome place for winners and create a horrible place for losers. So ultimately if it's performance pay, some people they weed themselves out. You don't have to have these hard meetings. They're like, I can't live on this. Say, well, go talk to Michelle. She's making 30 bucks an hour. And what a better advertise. You know what I mean?

No, that's so true. We do the KPIs and we do pay for performance. You can't see me because we're on a podcast, but if you could, you would see our prize wheel behind and we do different prize levels for their different attendance and call percentage and conversion and so all of that. And so they win prizes every month instead of the hourly rate. But the hourly rate is a really cool idea. I'm going to get with the girl that runs your call center. What is her name? Because I met her with another friend of mine, and I totally forgot her name, and I got to get with her.

She's so smart. It's Angela. Angela, that's it. She's amazing. Angela, I mean, talk about a powerhouse. You won the lottery with her. Hey, listen, I win the lottery with everybody. There's a reason why I win the lottery so many times. I make my own luck. She is so good. She's going through some stuff recently

just with her hubby and just back pain and stuff with him. And, you know, I think she should be happy because we worked out even a better plan for her to make some more money. And it's important because, thank God for Adam, because I never looked back and realized, oh, we haven't been raised or no more performance improvement. But I'll tell you what, she is a powerhouse. She designed the whole system. She keeps track of it. She's honest.

She's a hard worker. And you're right. I am a lucky man to have her not only as an employee, but just in my life because she's just someone else I can depend on. And it's so nice to have somebody in charge of a department that is self-sufficient. And that explains her. And it's so nice to have somebody in charge of a department that is self-sufficient. And that explains her. And she's so good. It's just crazy what she pulled off. But it took her a while to get her bearings. And she's just a good listener. She's always got a smile. And everybody just really loves her. So definitely want to get you with Angela. Actually, I might-

Yeah, no, we got to connect with her. I'm going to get her on the podcast too. I had Adam on the podcast. So, and you know what? She's just a breath of fresh air. No, but I love the fact that she has the team really connected. Like it was interesting because you guys do a massive amount of calls, a massive amount of volume, but your people are not stressed out. They're not freaked out.

It's not frantic. It's incredibly pantic. It's incredibly paced. It's super organized. Like the tone in that room is just really comfortable and cool. I'm so happy that they were able to move remotely and work remotely easily because I think that connection was really cool. And we do that, like I said, with video and Slack and screen sharing, and we do a lot of that one on one with each other a lot. And you can't lose that. Even if you do work, you know, remotely, you can't lose that. But I think there's something really cool with all of this technology that's

connecting people. And that's something that any owner can start to utilize in their business, which I really like them to do. So. Yeah, for sure. You know, you mentioned something else that I'm very curious about. You mentioned Facebook groups and I know they don't allow soliciting and you know, it's so funny. I was in Facebook groups earlier because I'm working on an idea of my own. Just, I'm literally looking to find really good wood makers to find a signature series of wood doors. So'll get it's called um not affiliate marketing but influence marketing but sure anyway i'm on facebook groups now i'm joining them all i'm involved and there's a happy medium on what you're allowed to do before you

become a spam or get kicked out by the ad so what's your uh secret sauce in that? Well, I just have my employees talk about their experience working with us and maybe a link to a job post possibly here or there and, you know, maybe just one. And, you know, I really leave it up to them to connect with their community in a way that makes sense for them. But obviously they can post it on their personal profile all they want and get their tight circle involved if that's something that they would like. But just being a participant out there is really important for any business owner. I think you should be out there in Facebook, you should be on LinkedIn, you should be on all of the platforms that you can because the collective wisdom that you pick up along the way is really valuable for the minimal time that you can because the collective wisdom that you pick up along the way is really

valuable for the minimal time that you could spend. I mean, if you put a shout out and say something about, you know, like response a bit, hey, who's using response a bit well? What's going on with that? How can we work on this or anything? You can get some incredible feedback right away and make decisions where you may be a little bit isolated and not know where to go so using anything like that I know I met you at Conquer which is an incredible coaching group if you can be a part of a coaching group that's great books obviously I know you're a big book fanatic and Mike Michalowicz's last book Fix This Next I think is going to be one of my absolute favorites.

I've already highlighted like half the book. So there's some really good resources out there for everybody. And he actually talks about, there's something in the, I think the first or second chapter called The Sale Before the Sale that really goes through exactly what we were just talking about. Listening with empathy, understanding what the pain point is. And he goes through that exact same stuff. So this is all material that is out there for people to consume. And it's hard to make the time

if you're an owner operator digging your way through your business. I think a key role that you should hire right away is somebody in this role, somebody that can stabilize your customer service, somebody that can give a real consistent message to your database of people and can get you to the door or get you to the job site in an efficient manner and give that customer a level of professionalism when they interact with your

business, that's a huge key to success because people will talk about the experience they had with your business based on those things. And if you're sitting in the McDonald's drive-thru trying to order something and you've got your phone and you're trying to do 17 things, it automatically starts you off on the wrong foot with that customer. So getting somebody in this role is really important. You're a hundred percent. I mean, you can't stress that enough. Another thing on recruiting that I'll give you a tip that I find works well. Yeah, please.

Is I had a food truck come out last week. And it's so funny because I told five guys, everybody go Facebook live right now to get all this. We're walking past each other doing the Facebook live, but. I love it. We're creating a budget for every single market I'm in. I'm in 17 markets. I'll be in 50 here in the next 12 months.

And the thing I ask you is get some pictures, post on social media. I just thought of this, but we're going to make a funny TikTok video for hiring here at A1 and get everybody. It's just the social media gets fun and it's memories and there's pictures on the wall. The more people see this, the more they go, man, we wish we worked there. I got three applicants to one guy yesterday for posting a video. And he goes, dude, I didn't know that these people would, but I know these guys personally, they're all awesome. And I love it. It goes a long way. I've got a couple more things here. I want to just kind of cut to a few questions I ask every time. First of all, three books, Fix This Next, Michael McHallery. Absolutely. That's one book.

Fix This Next. Traction. Traction is a great book. Yep. Traction. Got to do that one. And an oldie but a goodie, Raving Fans. I think every business owner ought to read that guy. Raving Fans. You just got to read it. You know, you can read that one on an airplane. I remember reading Raving fans. And I'll tell you this. People think making customers happy is okay. It's not okay. You got to make them go out of their way. I remember going to dinner not so long ago, six months ago. And I mean, this was like, holy cow, what service. And the first thing I did was sit. And the sad thing is, I failed because the manager still hasn't spoken at one of my meetings, but they have a level of excellence that I've never, ever seen. And I've been to a lot of restaurants and it was just the attentiveness, friendliness, each and every employee, just the process flow. And it's just so important. But I became a raving fan and I get it. It's a quick, quick book. It's an amazing book. And then if someone wants to get ahold of you, Michelle, what's the best way to do that? Best way to do that is to visit our website, www.pinkcollars, pink like the color, collars like on the phone, c-a-l-l-e-r-s.com.

We have a really cool system where you can put in all of your information as a business owner. We pre-qualify you, which is we actually practice what we preach. So we want you to put a little information about your business in so we can understand if we're a good fit. And then you'll get a reply automatically and you'll get scheduled on Doug's calendar at a time that makes sense for you and your business. And then we just talk about whether or not we want to work together. If it feels right, we're really all about relationships because we're providing a very personal service for somebody. So we really want to match that person up to the right individual within our organization. And if that individual doesn't exist, we're going to be totally honest about it. We're going to say,

look, we don't have that person yet, but we're going to find them for you. And we're going to solve this problem with you. And so that's really important that we qualify you and make sure that we're all going to work well together. And we just, we love home service businesses. Back to my dad as a pastor. I mean, he was basically a home service business.

He was just serving the people in a different way. And so I've grown up around people in the trades my whole life. And I think it's just a wonderful group of men and women in this country that are moving it forward. And I'm honored to be able to support them in some cool way with customer care. So pinkcollars.com is the best way to get to us. All right. And finally, this is the final finale.

I'll try a little bit. I've got a lot of notes in here. I will hook you up with Angela. Please. There's just so many things. Qualifying leads. I want to hear more about that. Contractor Sales Academy.

I put that on our page. What I want to do is give you one last few minutes to give them a final thought. Anything you want to talk about? Maybe just one last piece of advice before we jump off. Well, it's interesting. I work with my husband and he was the one, like I said, when he walked into my house and saw the computers and the phones everywhere, he really realized that this could be more than just a hustle. And so I would like to encourage people out there, if they've got an idea, if they've got a dream,

if they've got something they want to accomplish, don't be discouraged by the state of the world. Don't be discouraged by COVID. Don't be discouraged by this unrest we're seeing. There's incredible power in people that come through difficult times and create businesses that didn't exist before. It happened for me and it can happen for any one of your listeners. And so I just want anybody out there

that has something cool that they want to try now is an incredibly cool time to do it. And so get after it. Find somebody that believes in you. If it's a spouse, a husband, a person in your community, share that idea. Get on a Facebook group and throw it out there and tell people what your dreams are. Because I could have very easily gone back to the corporate world and taken my easy paycheck and my safe life. And I'm grateful that through a lot of hardship and struggle, my business was born. And so I think that there's a really cool idea in each and every one of us. And I would just encourage people to just try to kill it this year, try to come up with something

in this time of change for all of us and, you know, do something that could make a huge difference, not only in your life, but in the lives of others. And business can really do that. And I love that part about business. Hey, you know what? I agree with that. And people are like, why do you want to grow? I'm like, because it's my obligation to others. Because no one's going to experience what we do here at A1. This is going to be the coolest, baddest-ass place to work in the entire world. And there's going to be a lot more of us around.

And we're like a freaking gang now. We're like, when we come into the party, it's like, man, A1's here. So it's exciting. And hey, Michelle, it's an honor and a pleasure to have you on. I got a ton of stuff here and I appreciate you having to do it again sometime.

Sounds good. I'm always here. Thank you. Thanks so much, Tommy. Hey guys, I just wanted to thank you real quick for listening to the podcast from the bottom of my heart 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 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. 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. you