The Home Service Expert Podcast - How To Become The Go-To Person In Your Industry By Creating Ease For Your Customers

Episode Date: March 13, 2020

Brigham Dickinson is the president and founder of Power Selling Pros, a leading coaching and training firm dedicated to handling phone calls for home service companies. His extensive experience in business growth, call handler training, and customer service has earned him the moniker “The Call Center Guru.” He is also the author of two highly successful books on entrepreneurial success: Pattern For Excellence and Patterned After Excellence. In this episode, we talked about customer engagement, technician training, entrepreneurship...

what we need to do is we need to focus in on ease. What makes a person's life easier, less hectic, less hassle, so that they can do the things they want to do as opposed to the things that they have to do. When something breaks down for me in my home, that's not something that I want to do. That's something that I have to do. So if I can, as a business owner, create ease, something that provides peace of mind so that when something isn't working, that I have a go-to person to get it taken care of, right? I have a guy, I have a friend, and hopefully they look at you like that, a friend, not a business, not a company, not somebody who's going to try to sell me something, but a friend of mine that's going to take care of me. So the goal with technicians is to do just

that. Our goal is to be incredibly good at creating friendships, relationships, connections. And if you're going to do that right, especially today, you've got to be very authentic. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. All right, I just got done with an amazing podcast with Brigham Dickinson. You're going to get to learn all about his company, PowerSign Pros, and how they train CSRs to book calls

and create positive engagement with customers. We all have a hard time booking phone calls. This guy has a solution. We also talk about technician training. And he came out with a new book. It's called The Pattern After Excellence, Pursuing Truth in Work and Life. It talks about how to be a better leader. I can tell you this, there's a lot of gold nuggets in this book. He's a passionate guy. We talk about some stories. And I really feel like we gave a lot of value to the listeners on this one.

He's just an amazing person. Lives in Salt Lake City, super successful entrepreneur. This is his second book. You guys will get a lot out of it. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. Let's go ahead and get started. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. I'm Tommy Mello and today I have a returning guest, Brigham Dickinson. This guy helped put a chapter in my book. He is the call center guru. We're going to remind you a little bit about him. He's the president and founder of PowerSelling Pros. It's a leading coaching and training firm dedicated to handling your phone calls for your home service company. His goal is to solve problems for companies entrenched in the service industry

and help their business grow. In 2009, Power Selling Pros trained six call handlers. Now they're up to 450. From more than 130 companies around the globe, Power Selling Pros growth comes through referrals alone, thanks to his proven call handling process and the high-level customer service satisfaction. Brigham has also got two great books. One of them, our entire company has in the call center. It's The Pattern for Excellence, Engage Your Team to Wow More Customers. And he's got a new book that we're going to talk about. It's The Pattern After Excellence, Pursuing Truth in Work and Life.

Brigham, excited to have you back. Thanks for having me. I appreciate that. So this isn't the first time you've been on the podcast. We certainly got a ton from you last time. Definitely get a lot more from you today. Tell me a little bit about, just remind everybody where you come from, how you started in this business and what your goals are and about your new book. Yeah. My business started by accident I was trying to make ends meet after a failed business back that a business in Florida that went kaput in

2008 went totally bankrupt basically and I crawled back to Utah from Florida and I slept on a cot in my brother-in-law's basement for two weeks, had a card table right next to that cot. And I had some ideas and I started penciling some of those ideas down. And one of them was the beginnings of what I call the pattern for excellence. And that is the curriculum of our training. And it's not just CSRs anymore. And in addition to that, we train over 800 CSRs. We put over 800 CSRs in our program, and we certify them to create wow experiences over the phone every year. In fact, we've done that the last two years in a row. But it was an accident.

I had a client, Troy Nearing, Nearing's Plumbing and Heating. And I was doing pay-per-click advertising and social media sales. And that client, Troy, said, you know, your leads are no good. They just want a ballpark price. They just want to know how to stretch, come out. They just want to talk to a technician. And I said, wait a minute. Those are leads. Those are opportunities. What are you doing? And instead of firing me, he said, well, why don't you go ahead and train my team on how to handle those types of calls? And so I did. And we increased his call conversions. And then he referred me to a guy named Tom Robichaud in Boulder, Colorado. He owns an NHVC company there.

And Tom loved what we were doing. And so Tom and Troy got together and they said, you know who you need to work with, Brigham? I said, who's that? He said, you need to work with Micah Guglielmo at Gold Medal in New Jersey. So I reached out to Mike and he hired me on and I started training his CSRs. And from there, it just kind of went gangbusters.

I hired all my friends and Tom, I don't have a lot of friends. And we all started working together. So what's interesting is that over the last 11 years, I guess this is the 12th year, about two years ago, one of my trainers, his name is Stephen Dell, phenomenal trainer. He was getting kind of burned out training CSRs. And he was trying to tell me that he wanted to move on. And I wasn't going to let him because the guy is just an awesome trainer. I said, Steve, you're not going anywhere. What do you want to do?

What do you want to train on? He said, well, I love the curriculum. Pattern for Excellence makes a lot of sense. But I think you can train technicians as well. And I said, okay, so you want to train technicians? He said, yes. So I said, great. We'll focus on the same customer experience over the phone, but you'll focus in on what happens in the home at the kitchen table. And he says, all right, cool. Let's do it. And since then, we've brought on several trainers to train technicians as well as CSRs.

And in fact, we're booked out till June, training technicians, the same thing we train CSRs. So it's a lot of fun. That's kind of it in a nutshell. It was all by accident. It was all just because I was trying to keep an account almost 12 years ago now. I want to take a dive into that because let's break this up. So you got CSRs and you got techs. And at this point, we've used you, used you for a long time. So you kind of turned it over and said, you learned how we do it. Now you're a big call center. So we brought an internal.

But tell me a little bit about CSRs. Because I hear that all the time. These leads, all their price shoppers, all this, that, and the other. Everybody's really a price shopper if you make it about price. But tell me a little bit. And I've heard a lot of things that you've done. I mean, I've heard people accidentally call your CSRs and they say, hey, this is, I think you got the wrong number. We're an HVAC company.

But by the way, when was the last time you had your HVAC looked at? Or by the way, when was the last time you had your plumbing checked out? So talk to me a little bit about the CSR. Then I want to take a deep dive into the technician and then into your book. Sure. So as far as wrong numbers are concerned, they happen all the time. You get wrong numbers and the CSR, if they're not paying attention, they'll say, oh, sorry, that's not us. It could be a competitor that the customer calls in for. And you say, oh yeah, sorry, that that's not us and you lose that opportunity but if you're on your game because you're well practiced you're well prepared you're working on what you do not just working in it in the business there that customer

calls in it's the wrong number it doesn't matter it's the right number and you say hey look tell me more about your situation what's going on well i've got I've got this air conditioner. It's blowing hot air. Well, that's definitely something we can help you out with. When would you like this to come out? And you're rolling. So instead of them working with who they wanted to work with, they're working with you, who they should work with. And that's all dependent on whether or not the CSR is on their game. And it could be any number of things.

Let's say it's an advertiser. And I know that no one gets an advertiser, you know, somebody that wants to sell you a billboard space or radio space. I'm sure you get a ton of those calls. Everybody does. And you might think that that's something where you need to be a gatekeeper and, and, and not let your owner, you know, waste time on it. But even that's an opportunity. Hey, Mr. Billboard guy, I am so glad that you called. You know, it's funny. Do you live in our marketplace? Oh, that's so fantastic. Because what we do is we have this really cool service agreement. We come out on a regular basis once in the spring, once in the fall.

We make sure it's running at peak efficiency. Now, here's the thing. My boss gets calls from advertisers all the time. I could call him right now. I could tell him, hey, there's yet another advertiser that wants to talk to him. And I'm sure that's not going to go well. However, he loves to work with those who work with him. So if you are an existing customer of ours, what I can do is I can say, hey, this is an existing customer wanting to talk to you about billboard space because this customer

of ours happens to sell billboards. Isn't that crazy, Mr. Owner? So why don't I go ahead and get you on our service agreement? All I need is a credit card. Let the owner know that you're an existing customer wanting to talk about billboards. I love that. Very good. Yeah. So again, every call, every call, your mother calls in, right? If they call in on that landline instead of your cell phone, guess what? They better be ready to buy a service agreement. That's if you're prepared. That's if you're well-practiced.

None of that happens unless the CSR is ready to rock. So yeah, that's a program. We train CSRs one-on-one twice a month using their own phone calls. We take them through a certification program with four levels. By the time we're done, we guarantee they'll book at least 85% of their phone calls where we give them through a certification program with four levels. By the time we're done, we guarantee they'll book at least 85% of their phone calls where we give you your money back. And like I said, we put over 800 trainees through this program every year. We've done it for the last, that amount for the last two years. And we've been training CSRs since we just had 12 years ago that we were working with. So a fantastic program for CSRs, and it's just a well-oiled machine today.

Tell me a little bit about service agreements. You know, I'm a big fan of service tight nets, so I use the CRM. Yeah. Hundreds of companies, and I'm a big fan of CallCap, who Susie Boyd are over there, and tracking your CSRs. The one thing that I'm really pretty familiar with and getting way more obsessed with the service agreements. And the one thing I've learned,

bring them over time is you give CSRs a role and you're like all the incoming calls. Then I want you to grade this. Then I want you to do this. Now you're my outbound team. When we're slow, you do that. Like what happens is they become mediocre at everything unless you give them, these are your five KPIs that we're going to grade you off of. So we've developed a sales team that does outbound calls and sell service agreements to existing customers or past customers. And we offer a small rebate on your service to sign up and protect your investment.

And the main thing is that I know is your company's worth a ton more money when you build a fence around them with service agreements. I wrote that in my book. So talk to me a little bit about service agreements. Listen, this is all about giving the listeners value. And I'm asking the questions because I'm a decent size now and I've been able to build this, but we've not mastered service agreements because we're in the garage door industry. No one's ever heard of a service agreement for garage doors. So people a lot of times tell me, yeah, my company can't do that. And I hear about power washing or window washing or whatever it might be.

And I think they're wrong. But talk to me about selling service agreements over the phone. Okay. You're right, by the way. A service agreement is the lifeblood of any company. And what it is is it's residual income. You're right, by the way. A service agreement is the lifeboat of any company. And what it is, is it's residual income. You ever want to sell your business? The first thing that buyer is going to look at is where's your residual income? Where are your customers really? If the customer buys from you once, that doesn't mean that they're your customer. It's the lifetime

customer that keeps coming back. That's your customer over time. And so a service agreement is what helps justify that. And you've got to figure out a way to make it work. In other words, you've got to figure out a way to continue to work with that customer. Otherwise, guess what? That's not your customer. If they go elsewhere to buy the services you provide, guess what? Not your customer. They need to be working with you. How do you do that? Service agreements. You've got to figure out a way to do it. It's just, you got to follow the principle. Now, let's talk about your specific situation.

You've got a team of outside, they call outbound. Yeah, for instance, so they do a happy call. So it's the happy call. And then they've got the ability to say, by the way, the technician that they offer, the service agreement, which would have saved you $120 today. And I have authority to go out and get you that now it's, it's prorated.

So if you cancel it's 10 bucks a month and here's what you get. You get a discount on future service, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Got it. Okay. So that's fantastic. And what we want to do with that team and we work with a lot of the outbound service agreement sales teams throughout the nation. But the goal there is to maintain, well, before we maintain it, we need to create it. We need to create momentum and maintain momentum. There's a lot of ebbs and flows.

And when we leave it to the customer to create that momentum for us, where we get one, we get one sale, like, oh, my gosh. Then all of a sudden, we get two, and then we get three. They always come in clumps and groups, right? How do we create momentum so that we can minimize the ebbs and flows? Well, the way that we do that, the way that I teach CSRs to do that or those who sell service agreements over the phone, is I tell them to take just a few inbound calls in the morning. If you take a few inbound phone calls in the morning, it's a lot easier to sell a service agreement on that inbound phone call.

Why? Because they're dealing with the emotional angst. If it's a garage door that's not opening, that's emotional angst. If it's an HVAC system that's not working, that's emotional angst. If it's a plumbing issue where something's clogged up and water's coming out everywhere and it's even coming up from tub, and it's disgusting, that's emotional angst. That is also the best time to sell a service agreement. And what is a service agreement?

Well, it helps prevent things like this, the thing that you're dealing with right now from happening. So if I'm an outbound sales guy, the most important thing is momentum. So if I can create it on an easy call, say I get an hour of inbound calls in. And then right after that, I go to the outbound calls where I'm calling out. Now, I've already got momentum with me. I've got confidence. I've got a positive attitude. My listing's on point. My caring, my empathy is on point. I know exactly how to handle every call that comes in. And besides, I'm ready. I've

already sold a couple of them today. See, that's the goal. Our goal is to create and maintain momentum every day. We minimize the ebbs and flows, and that's how we sell more service agreements over the phone. The best time to sell a service agreement is not while you're in the home. Why? Because you've gone and you've fixed the problem. That emotional angst, that emotional drive is gone. I got it. You got to sell it over the phone. Okay. So I got the CSR lockdown. Great information. I think everybody's got a ton so far. Now let's talk about technicians because I think, and I'm a little biased, but I think we're probably one of the best. We're a sales organization. People hate that word sales. Why would people do sales? And people say,

I would never sell something somebody never needed. And I'm like, well, we do this every day. When you go to Ambercrombie and Fitch or wherever you go, when you go to J.Crew, every single thing you buy, you don't really need. You don't need that nicer opener that you can control from your cell phone. You can just get a basic one. So when you say you don't sell stuff people don't need, you're actually lying. They don't need this right now. They might need a spring, but they might not need the cables, even though the cables are afraid it's going to last them a month. They didn't need that. So I don't believe that. I believe there's a process. And I don't consider my people salespeople. It's a process they follow, but they got to be confident.

They are the doctor when they are in, they are doctors. I mean, that's what they are. They're the doctors at the garage door and they got to have the confidence and ask the right questions and go down a certain path. And it's my job to get them

in front of the right customers that aren't the 4% of Americans that are price shoppers because it's really only 4%. And every double blind study that I've ever looked at is either number nine or number 10 is is the price is is how important it is it's not in the top five so talk to me a little bit about how you guys teach techs and how to get involved in that program and then we'll dive into your book yeah well first of all I totally agree with everything that you just said that we are in

a first world country dealing with first world problems. I mean, I was driving from Vegas to LA once and I saw a decked out Lincoln pulling a Ferrari on a trailer behind it. In the back of my head, I was going, I wondered what they were thinking. How am I going to get my Ferrari from Las Vegas to LA? I guess I could drive my Lincoln and hitch it to the back and drive it there. The back of my head, I'm going, see, that's a first world problem. Is it bad? Is it good? No, it's just the way that it is. And what we need to do is we need to focus in on ease. What makes a person's life easier, less hectic, less hassle, so that they can do the things they want to do as opposed to the things that they have to do?

When something breaks down for me in my home, that's not something that I want to do. That's something that I have to do. So if I can, as a business owner, create ease, something that provides peace of mind so that when something isn't working, that I have a go-to person to get it taken care of, right? I have a guy, I have a friend, and hopefully they look at you like that, a friend, not a business, not a company, not somebody who's going to try to sell me something, but a friend of mine that's going to take care of me. So the goal with technicians is to do just that. Our goal is to be incredibly good at creating friendships, relationships, connections. And if you're going to do that right, especially today, you've got to be very authentic. So authenticity, empathy,

those two are going to be incredibly important in building a very sincere, real relationship. Nobody wants to be dealing with somebody who is fake. So in order to do that, you've really got to stop faking. It's not about coming across as real. It's about being real. And the way that you do that is you work on you. And that's what the book is all about. The second book, Pattern It After Excellence. It's about taking a look at what makes sense, what's right. In fact, if you don't mind, Tommy, I'd like to answer your question about technicians by using the book. Is that okay? Yeah, yeah. Let's hear it. Okay, cool. So first things first, 75% of the workplace today consists of millennials.

Now, I don't want to single out millennials. Too many people do that already, all right? But the fact of the matter is that your workplace consists of millennials. And if it doesn't currently, it soon will. And the truth about millennials is that in this touchscreen age, social skills tend to erode, or they're never even developed. And if you think it's bad with millennials, just imagine the way it's going to be with the Gen Z group that's coming into the workplace now. And they're lonely. In fact, 30% of millennials say that they are lonely,

and they're not the only group that says they're lonely. To a lesser degree, Gen X says they're lonely. In fact, 30% of millennials say that they are lonely. And they're not the only group that says they're lonely. To a lesser degree, Gen X says they're lonely. Baby boomers say they're lonely. People in general today, a third of them, 20% to 30% actually, is feeling lonely. In fact, many of them feel like they don't have a best friend or a friend at all. And so there's a lot of sadness. In fact, sadness in general today is kind of an epidemic. And what does that mean? What that means is that it's not enough for this group that we're working with to give them a paycheck. They need more. Well, what do they need more of? Well, what they need more of is leadership. They need the leader to create a purpose that is bigger than any one individual in the organization. And they need a set of core values they live by. You see,

as the leader, you're the one that sets the tone in the office for how you handle situations. And sometimes if you're caught unaware in a moment, you could go, you can choose self-interest over what's right. And what happens then is that you lose the relationship overall. You're not able to build that long-term relationship. So what are we teaching technicians? We're teaching them to be positive. We're teaching them to be confident. We're teaching them to be great listeners, to be caring, to focus in on what they can do as opposed to what they cannot do, to take a look at a situation, find out what's missing, discover the right answer, and then respond automatically,

no matter how long it takes, how hard it is, or how much they're being paid to do it. Our goal here is to make them valuable, valuable to the organization, valuable to the owner, and most importantly, valuable to the customer that they're working with. Now, they do that because their goal is to give first. Give first, create a well-experienced and build that long-term relationship. Lastly, we want them to show gratitude, gratitude for their customer, gratitude for their job, this opportunity to look at it not just as a way to get a paycheck or to provide for their family, but they see it as a stewardship, something that they honor. It's a service that they provide, that they honor, that they value, that they appreciate. Now, the best way to do that is from the top down. In other words,

your employees will look at the owner and see what they do, right? And they'll remember what they did long after what they said is forgotten. Now, that's not according to me. That's according to marketing gurus at GoDaddy. It's a direct quote. People remember what you do. And so the leader needs to teach what should be done with their core values, with their purpose, their company purpose, giving them something

that they can hold on to that motivates them, that fulfills them, that excites them, that teaches them to do the same thing in the customer's home. So our goal with technicians is to get them to connect on an emotional level with the customer at the kitchen table. And our goal with the book is to teach owners to do that from the top down. See, the way you treat your employees is the same way they'll treat the customer. Employees are your customer. Yeah, they're the internal customers. That's what I call them. That's right. So, you know, this is great. And I think that owners have a hard time because if you're like i was

you're barely able to keep your sanity when you're a small business owner you got a few technicians you're answering the phones your your wife or girlfriend is helping you out and and you're working crazy hours and you don't really think about wow these are my internal customers wow i need to be a better leader and i remember how that was, culture and leadership for me when I was a smaller company. But when you start with that in mind, and you set it up, and you're organized, and you've got a plan, and you've got somewhat of an org chart where your name might be all over the org chart, and you've got a couple manuals for different positions, and they might be the manuals for you to follow, but there's a process for everything. If I was to buy a business, if I was to buy Brigham's Air Conditioning Company,

I'd walk in and I'd say, show me your employee handbooks for each role. How do they know if they're winning or losing the game? And how good of a boss are you to let them win? Do you criticize in public or private? Is there an employee of the month? Is there a newsletter? Are you acknowledging birthdays? What are you doing for them? Is there gift cards that are going to be given out when they have good? How good are you? And then I look at some KPIs and different things, but I look at the environment in which they're in.

And that's the first thing that you got to fix, I think, is to say, interview the employees. And a lot of the A players become B and C players because of their environment, because they're not held accountable and they don't have the game to win. There's no gamification. There's no performance pay. I'm not a big fan of all those things, but I was just going through your book a little bit. I've got it.

I haven't got the second one, but I promise you, the first thing I'm doing when I get off this podcast is getting it. But a couple of things you said in there, and I'm just going to take a glance back to 2017 when this came out, is how to be positive. So you say practice being positive, learn something new, see the good, recognize your value, play, associate with positive people, smile and laugh more, greet people with a smile, wave or handshake, listen to great comedians, and serve and act unselfishly. And then you have a quote here. If you are in the luckiest 1% of humanity,

you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99% by Warren Buffett. I love how you have quotes through the book. And just really, it's a positive book about what your team should become. And us as leaders are responsible. Tell me, so both of them are pattern for excellence, pattern after excellence. Tell me a little bit about what inspired you to write this book and what you filled it with. I write to become very clear on what I believe. I mean, you've written a book and you know what I mean. You know, you've got these ideas rolling around in your head and you've got things that you believe in, things that are important to you, but it's not necessarily clear. And it's hard to express that to anybody else, unless you've taken the time to sit down and articulate it you know and work on it and

and make sure you understand what it is that the words you're writing say what you want them to say and so that's the reason why I write and in this book one of the things that was bothering me is that people tend to use the word truth the wrong way these days. They own it. In other words, they say, this is my truth. That's your truth. This is my truth. And your truth and my truth can be different, and that's fine. Where the reality is, is that that's not true because you can't own truth.

Now, you can have a belief, and you are entitled to your belief, but truth's different. And here's what I mean by that. Let's say that it's my truth that if I plant an apple seed and take care of it, water it, nourish it, give it plenty of sun,

it will one day be a peach tree. Now, you and I both know that regardless of what you believe, you're going to get an apple tree if you plant an apple seed. It's just the way it is. It's a natural law that we can't change. Now, we've discovered the law, but we didn't change it. Why?

Because we didn't create it. See, the fact of the matter is, is that truth, truth is a natural law. And it's a natural law that we don't own. It's been around long before we were born. It's going to be around long after we're gone. Now, if that's true and it is, then there are certain truths that we should discover and apply in order to get a desired result, the consequence. Now, let me give you two more examples of truth. Heart surgeons, when they want to stop a heart, they use a chemical and it's potassium chloride. They push it to the main artery and every time it stops the heart, every time without fail.

Now, they do whatever they need to do on that heart. And then when they want to get it going again, they take some sodium potassium, a little bit different chemical. they shoot it through the main artery, and guess what? It starts pumping every time. Now, did we create that? No, we didn't. We discovered it. Now, there are so many natural laws, so many truths that we can't even count them. For example, learning how to fly. It wasn't by accident. We figured out the natural laws that include lift. And there's several laws that are involved in flight and taking off and staying in the air and landing and so on and so forth. All natural laws that we didn't create. We discovered them. So first things first, I wanted to make sure we understood what truth means. We don't own it. It's a natural law that we should discover. And when we discover it, we should apply it. And when we apply it, we get the happy consequences.

You see, what happens is that humans have needs. They want to be happy. They want to feel self-assured. They want to feel understood. They want to feel brave. Nobody wants to feel like a coward. Nobody wants to feel unworthy. And they want to feel accepted. There's tons of other needs, but those are some of the needs that drive us emotionally. What happens is when we're driven by these needs is that we get into situations, moments that we don't recognize we're in. And instead of following the truth, the natural law, we have a tendency to cave and follow something that's more towards our self-interest, our own self-interest. For example, I was going on a run with my son who was on a wrestling team. He's 13 years old. He's got a team of boys there that are on this trail. And of course, the coach is there, the wrestling coach and his sons are there.

And my son and the coach's sons were talking. And of course, the coach's son said to my son that their dad can beat his dad. And of course, you know how that affected me. I was going to prove those boys wrong. You see, this is supposed to be a run. This is supposed to be a team event for the kids. And who did I make it about, Tommy? Well, you, yeah.

Yeah, I made it about Tommy? Well, you, yeah. Yeah. I made it about me. And so again, as a side note, we, we ditched the boys within the first mile. And when we were done, we were probably a mile ahead of the boys and we spent the next hour looking for the boys on the trail. So dumb. Yeah. Yeah. So we have a tendency in moments to not see the big picture. We make it about us instead of about others. And we lose the moment. This happens over and over and over again. I like to call it a pattern. It's a pattern that happens over and over again. So if we can take a look at what's right, in other words, truth, and we can see in a moment the way we should act, right? What's missing? What's the right answer?

Respond accordingly. We're going to win that moment as opposed to losing it. So what I do is I take eight tendencies, including negativity, ego, forgetting, indifference, and so on and so forth. I take other tendencies and I apply the truth to that tendency so that when it happens in a moment, you overcome it. You do what's right. You do what's true instead of caving to tendency. And that's how you win moments. And as you win moments, you gain happiness and success and growth and prosperity and so on and so forth.

I love it. So this book seems like it's not necessarily for any, it's not just home service, it's really anybody in the business. For leaders. For leaders. For leaders.

It's what I aspire to be and my goal is to share what I'm learning as a business owner. So, if I want to go get it, where's the best spot

to pick up the book? Well, if you're busy like I am, Audible's easy. It's there. Patterned after excellence. It's like seven bucks. Get it on audible three hours. You'll be done. I read it myself. You know, you see somebody speak in an event,

you get the book, you're so excited. You realize, man, I need to get this on audible. You get an audible and they hired some, you know, he sounds like a dweeb reading reading your book for you instead of you reading it yourself. I hate that. So I took the time and I read it. I read through it myself. So it's entertaining. It's fun.

I'm pretty passionate about the book. So you'll probably notice some emotion in there at certain times in the book. And it's fun. All right. I just got it. And I'll make sure to leave your review. I get through audible books super easy cause I can drive, I can do other stuff, but you know, it's just easy to get done and I can fly through it. So I picked it and I got your other one, the orange one. So,

so this title is pretty compelling i mean pattern after excellence did you just kind of want to play like a number two of your first one or what was the point of that okay so the first one is all about getting your team to provide a phenomenal customer experience so it's not about you it's about your team and getting your team engaged emotionally in their uh work and it's funny, in the beginning of our conversation, you talked about how people need very little. Well, the same is true with your team. Unemployment is at a 60-year low,

which means people can pretty much get a job anywhere. So they're working where they want to work. And if they don't want to work there, they're probably going to leave. And so our goal is to make the workplace a place they want to go, a place they can't wait to go. They can't wait for the weekend to be over just so they can get back into their job and back and doing what they love. That's the environment we have to create today. We really do. Let's talk about that a little bit because I heard a stat and I just bought six books and I'm a big reader and I bought them all about hiring and I got a full

time recruiter and recruiter assistant and we're building all these automations and we're on Facebook and Instagram and I love millennials and we're building gamification. And I heard a stat that 84% of people in the United States want to leave their current job within the next year. That's right. So that being said is how do you build a better mousetrap, I guess, to catch people and keep them stick to stick? Because I know it's 10 times more expensive to hire someone new than to keep an existing employee. I'll tell you something, Brigham. This is interesting because I took my three worst guys and I'm talking conversion rate and sales and average ticket. So like just conversion rate and average ticket.

And I paired them up with my best guy in the company. And this guy is charismatic. He's good. He follows up with them. And now guess who's in the top five? All three of these guys are definitely in the top 10 and it fluctuates from day to day and month to month. But this was in the past month. It was an experiment.

And I got this from a buddy of mine that was on the podcast that does 150 million. He said, I take my top guys and I have them help close the deals for the other guys. And I have them kind of hear how that's done. And it's just interesting. The whole point of this was I was ready to can some people. And here I found out that we just weren't giving them the right training and leadership, if you will, to become successful. And if they have, they had a will, they had a will to become the best. They just didn't have the way to get there without us showing them. So I think that that's very, very important to identify. Do they want to succeed?

Do they want to better their lives? Do they want more? Because if they do, it's your job as the business owner, the manager to get them there. So let's talk a little bit about finding great people because you hit the nail on the head. It is a 60-year low. And you deal with this, I'm sure, on a daily basis when people are like, I need more CSRs, I need more techs. Where do we go? So what is your take on that and maybe a little bit of your ideas? Okay. So the short-term fix, my first book will help with that. Engaging your team, right? In addition to all the list of items that you mentioned you know

gamifying and and matching them with your best guys and so on and so forth all of that right that's what the first book is for whereas the second book focuses in on the fact that your team your people want to be led. They want to be led. What we lack today, in general, is great leadership. We need somebody to emulate. Somebody who's good. Somebody who doesn't just do good, but is good.

They need that. Your team needs it. And if not you, then who? And that's what the second book is all about. It's about us realizing what our team needs. They need a purpose. They need something bigger than any one individual in their organization. And they need a set of core values their leader follows, that in every interaction, they put those core values first and foremost. So what does that mean? What that means is that even your best salesperson, if that salesperson is caught cheating, taking advantage of customers, and we've, Tommy, we've heard thousands of stories.

I don't need to go over examples. We are in situations. We are put in moments where we either do what self-interest dictates or we do what's right. Our team, our employees, they're watching and you've got to do what's right in those moments. And that's true leadership is. It's interesting that you mentioned this because I just had to go separate ways with the number. He fluctuates from number one to number two in the company. And he was employee of the month previously.

He's helped train in multiple areas, different cities, done a lot of favors for me. And I had to make a decision. And it wasn't easy because you got to think about all the pros versus the cons. And I will say this, regardless of what happened, it sent a shockwave through the company because everybody thought he was invincible. He's a moneymaker. He helps pay the bills. He helps spread our paychecks. But here's what I would say is, is Brett Favre or Tom Brady or whoever you want to use, probably get a little bit special treatment. You know what I mean?

They're getting a lot more money from the NFL. There's certain things that have to happen. Just like my top CSR that books 97% gets the opportunity to book that first call and she makes more money because we do it based on bookings and your conversion rate. So I'm not against, life is not fair. Capitalism is not fair. Socialism is more fair. If you like that, then you can move to one of those countries, which I don't agree with.

But my point is I had to make a tough decision and it sent a shockwave and you should see getting rid of some of your top players that actually are condescending and they laugh at you at your meetings and they talk behind your back. Sometimes it's the best thing you can do. And so many times we're afraid of it. You know, a lot of times back in the day, I'd say if I fire a guy, I'm back in the truck running jobs again. And that's a scary feeling because you're trying to work on the business, not in the business. So every time I've killed the band-aid, every single time I've killed it, I figure it out. I'm put in a tough spot and I do well under tough conditions.

But what do you say to someone that's under that kind of pressure and they've got some people that they know they need to part ways with just because their attitude and they're not following the core values? So number one, change is good. Change is good. It's never going to be as bad as you think. We let fear dictate action sometime and we should never do anything motivated by fear. Fear always creates zero win situations. Let me give you one example. I've got a buddy who's in advertising. His name is Mitch. And he had a client who said to him, big opportunity, right? He said, hey, look, if you want to work with me, you can't receive handouts from the media. You know, those free giveaways, like tickets to games and so on and so forth. The client was

saying he cannot receive those anymore. Well, that's just the way the industry is. And so he felt like, okay, I either need to lie to my customer and tell him that I'm not receiving them, even though I know I will receive them, or I say, okay, and turn off the media guys that are giving me all these free tickets and stuff. And so he puts himself in a no-win situation. Oh, I lose the account, right? Another lose situation. It's ridiculous. What does that client really want? Well, that client really wants his results.

Okay, Mr. Client, if I'm getting results, that's what you want, yes? If I'm not getting results, guess what? I'll fire myself. But if I am getting results and I also get tickets from the media companies, guess what? We can go to those games together and we can celebrate our results together. Right? We should never work out of fear, never be motivated by fear. And it's never as bad as you think. Never as bad as you think. Change is good. Embrace it. Embrace it. You'll figure it out. You know, that's interesting.

One quick thing I want to mention is, it's so funny how many things you reminded me of. So I had my manager, my regional manager, call me yesterday and said, hey, I got this really big builder and they're working on about 120 houses that could be a good margin for us. But I know he likes happy and I know he likes the bucks tickets. It's Milwaukee. And I said, okay, how much? He said, 1200 bucks. I said, okay, do it, but make sure you follow up.

But look, everything being equal, the price, the same product, this guy wants to do business with people he likes and wants to hang out with outside of work. And here's what I could tell the listeners is write a list out of 20 people in your market and find out the big, the rainmakers that'll change your business and constantly focus on those top 20 instead of going after all these different things. And those are your partnerships. Those are your relationships. Those are, if the economy's bad, they're still going to use you. And so many times we say, well, maybe we'll spend more money.

And I agree with pay-per-click and Google Organic and GMB and the Google local services and all that. But these relationships will never go away. So kind of our big 2020 deal is to focus on those top 20. And it's funny because you talked about, hey, yeah, they're spiffing me. They're getting me to do business with them. But if they don't give me results, like if this guy doesn't give us properties that make us money and we do a great job for him, then all that's in vain anyway. So I think you hit the nail on the head.

As long as I'm getting results, who cares if I go to dinner with these guys and talk about your account, you know? Yes. Good stuff. So what's the secret of waking up day after day and just saying, I've got this, I can do this? Well, let me just answer with a quick experience. I grew up poor and I didn't know it. I mean, as far as, let me describe poor. Two brothers and I slept in the same room.

In fact, we slept in the same king size bed. I have three sisters and they slept in the same room as well. We would grind wheat for our bread, but I didn't realize I was poor. I was fine. Life was good for me. That is until I went to my buddy's house who had his own toys and he didn't share with anybody. I realized I got screwed. I got hosed. When I realized, wow, I'm poor, it just changed everything for me. I was just so sad inside and forlorn and going, wow, geez, I just wish I, whatever. But when I was 19, I had the opportunity to serve a mission in Brazil. And I thought I was poor.

Geez, I was a king. When I went to Brazil, first place we went to, nobody had lived in that house for like a year, which means the dirt had piled up on the ground, on the floor of that house, like half an inch. And we had to clean it up with shovels, no joke. And then we mopped it all out. And this is like two rooms, right?

You had a bedroom, you go into the other room, and it was out. And this is like two rooms, right? You had a bedroom, you go into the other room and it was a kitchen. Well, this wasn't a kitchen. It had a sink and a fridge, no stove, nothing. And I go outside, I see the string from one wall to the next. I realized because there's a sink outside, this is where I'm going to be washing my clothes and I hang them up, right? On this line to dry them. It was crazy. As a side note, the first time I washed all my clothes in a bucket, I put the last pair of clothes on the line and the line broke. I had to wash everything all over again. It really sucked. In addition to that, there was another room. You go through this door and that's where the toilet was. I look right up at the ceiling,

right next to the toilet, and there was a shower head coming out of the ceiling. I thought to myself, wow, how do those two things go together? It doesn't make any sense. I realized really quick why you need to wear flip-flops. As far as cooking goes, I thought, okay, we don't have a stove. And luckily, the individual I was with said, oh, don't worry about that. He grabs this old coffee can. He makes holes in the bottom around the bottom part of the coffee can. He pours alcohol on the bottom. He likes the alcohol, pulls out a pan from his bag. And that's how we cook our breakfast. Can you believe that stuff? And that's how my mission started. I realized real quick how lucky we are. Even the poorest of us in our country, we are extremely fortunate.

We are extremely lucky. And when you consider the amount of people that are on the earth today, say there's, I believe it's like 7.5 billion. Well, only 325 million of those had the blessing of being born in this country. You said before that it's a capitalist country and thank goodness that it is because it's the land of opportunity and we have more opportunity here than anywhere in the world. And it took that experience, that experience in Brazil to help me realize that, you know, I live in a free country, a land of opportunity, which means I deserve nothing. It means that I shouldn't feel entitled at all because I've already been given a lot.

And you can do it. You can do it, man. You just built a $50 million organization and you're looking to grow even bigger. No one can take that from you. You can lose everything today, and I'm not wishing that upon you. But even if you lost everything today, you can still say to the day you die that you did it, that it's done. You made that happen. No one can take that away from you. And you did it here in this country. So we deserve nothing. Now we have tons of opportunity and we should have self-belief

and our ability in what we can do. But regardless, the successes you've already had, good on you, man. Nobody can take it from you. And you did it here in this country. I agree.

And I'll tell you, I was watching some debates yesterday and some people think there shouldn't be a billionaire like that. Some reason they thought, you know, Amazon, they say this guy, there's no way, but he didn't go force a gun towards anybody's mouth. And guess what? He's given $10 billion is giving towards climate change. Now, all these things, what I've learned is the people that have the money, they learn how to run a business and, in a way, run the economy. And in my opinion, they're much better spending the money than going through the government, which a lot of these people never had jobs.

They never made it in the real world. And they're out there making decisions on where the budget's supposed to go. So why not have a guy like Warren Buffett or Elon Musk or any of these guys that have made it, that are doing really, really well, start to give back to philanthropy and make sure there's not 20 different people that need to get paid before it goes to the cause. I think there should be winners and losers. And that's how this country is founded. And everybody says it's not fair. But I say, if it's not fair, then you need to do what you did and go on a mission to check out other countries. Because I think everybody here, even the poorest, lives pretty darn good lives. That's my little political take on the thing.

It's interesting. It's hard to argue with results. It's hard to argue with the results. It's hard to argue with where our country is at today financially. And you're right. Look at those who are doing extremely well and giving of their own free will, not forced to give, but giving of their own free will. And that's the way it should be. You're absolutely right. This is the best country you could ever be in. And that's why there's lines.

It took people in my master's program, some of them 20 years to come to this country, to go to school in this country and get a green card. And I think that this is, there's no one in the earth that, in my opinion, that a lot of people would like to be here. But so you get your book on Audible. One of the questions I ask everyone, I've done this since the beginning, is give me three good books that you really think would really move you or have moved you. And you know what's interesting about this, Brigham, is this guy on a couple of podcasts ago started saying these science fiction books, but he said some of the most real science fiction, it becomes, it's the entrepreneurs 30 years from down the line that are talking about the crazy stuff that actually 30, 40 years ago that are happening today. And one of the books he talked about was, I don't remember the title, but he said about we're going to live in this community where the machines create the food.

And there's nobody that's poor because we have an abundance of food and we learned the technology and the automation of everything. So no one really has to work and it was just interesting from another perspective of hearing hey maybe we will go that direction you know it's just thinking outside of the box but what are some of the books that you would say um have affected or moved you in the last and they're gonna be any book okay so these books are books you probably haven't heard of. All right. And it should be fun. So in addition to the ones I've written, obviously, right? Pattern for Excellence and Patterned After Excellence. This one is Steven Schallenberger.

He's the author, Steven Schallenberger. And it's a leadership book. So Becoming Your Best is the name of the book. And it's 12 Principles of Highly Successful Leaders. And he's a fantastic guy. He lives here in Utah and he's a fantastic guy. He lives here in Utah and he's a great leader. This one is, this is really cool. This one's written by Malik Muhammad.

And the book's called The Restorative Journey. Restorative Journey? The Restorative Journey. It is a fantastic book about looking at yourself and changing yourself. Lastly, John Bernardi. He's a doctor and the book's called Changemaker. It's about turning your passion into a job. a it's a health and fitness book but it also focuses on purpose the reason why behind it see here's the thing and maybe what we can do tommy is summarize with this how many behavior books have you have you read tommy oh gosh i don't even know you name it right and you probably follow everything you've read on that behavior,

on those behavior books, right? You've followed every little thing. Oh, it's impossible. Exactly. Exactly. You see, a study of behavior does not change behavior. This is why I talk about truth all the time. Truth.

Why? Because truth has a consequence that's attached to it, either a happy consequence or a negative consequence. That gives you the why. You know, your kids today, they say, why, why, why all the time. And it's not enough to say, I told you so anymore. You got to be a salesman even to your kids. And so it's not about changing behavior at all. It's about changing one's nature. So we study, we discover truth, and we apply it to receive the happy consequence and change our nature. I love it. Change your nature. Well, this book seems like it's going to get kind of deep, I hope. So I got you three books. I already purchased yours on Audible.

I know you were going to summarize that is there anything else you'd like to leave the listeners with last thing just grateful for the opportunity thank you very much Tommy thanks for letting me on a second time thanks Brayden but hey listen we should do this every time you come out with a book I think you're great you're a deep thinker

you've worked miracles in a lot of home service companies and now even beyond that. And anybody looking for you, you got to check out PowerSelling Pros. I've worked with them. They know what they're doing and they're great people. So I appreciate it and have a great day. Thanks, Tommy. You too. Hey, I just wanted to take a quick minute and thank you for listening to the podcast. You know, most people don't understand this, but the way that the podcast has grown is when people

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

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

day and thanks again.