The Home Service Expert Podcast - How To Build a 7-Figure Business With The Whale Vomit Method

Episode Date: June 28, 2019

Kevin Dubrosky is the president and founder of the Dubrosky Group. He is the author of The Whale Vomit Method, and assists entrepreneurs in building their brands as a marketing, branding, consulting, and high-performance coach. He uses the principles and lessons he learned from four years of being a franchisee in the window cleaning business, as well as from starting his own home service franchise in 1999. In this episode, we talked about branding, marketing, advertising...

When it comes to differentiation, here's actually a detail I would love to empower your listeners with. And if everybody doesn't already have a pen, grab a pen now. Because if there's one thing I want you to remember, it's this. That when it comes to being different, there are three words in the English language that will communicate to the market that you have something special and different. Only three words. Yeah. Word number one, most. M-O-S-T. Word number two, only. And word number three is est, E-S-T. And that's actually a suffix that goes at the end

of a word. This is the Home Service Expert podcast with Tommy Mello. Let's talk about bringing in some more money for your home service business. Welcome to the Home Service Expert podcast with Tommy Mello. Let's talk about bringing in some more money for your home service business. 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 Podcast. My name is Tommy Mello. Today, I've got an excellent guest. This guy has published five books. His name is Kevin

Dabrowski. He specializes in branding, marketing, advertising. He's the president and founder of the Dabrowski Group and the author of The Well Vomit Method. And he comes to us all the way from Toronto. How are you today, Kevin? Fantastic. I'm really excited to have you on. I did a lot of research and it's so cool. I won't ruin your thunder here,

but they're the deepest diving, 70 minutes on one breath, 60 feet long, biggest teeth. I mean, it's just crazy. They could go 4,000 feet deep. I love the idea of that book because who doesn't want to look at the book of your walk through the airport? The whale vomit method. But that's not where I want to start. I wanted to start a little bit about you've done marketing, branding, consulting, you're a high-performance coach, you're helping other entrepreneurs build their brand and the profitability of the company. And I think you told me you figured a lot of stuff out after four years of being a franchise in the window

cleaning business. And I can't wait to hear about it. I just want the guests to kind of get to know you a little bit and kind of how we went through your story. Let them know who you are and then we'll dive into how you can help them. Sure. So what would you like to know? Well, basically, you started for a franchise. So you started in 1999, right? Yep. You started for a franchise, so you started in 1999, right? And so that was home service. And so you worked for four years in a franchise. And then you said, what made you take the leap and say,

I'm going to go out on my own now? I got some big clients as a franchisee, and I had got them on my own. I didn't have any leads from the mothership. And I had put together some pretty aggressive pricing for these big jobs and I landed them and then I was servicing them and everything was great. And I was making more money hourly

than I had ever made before. And the franchisor didn't even acknowledge it. Like there wasn't even like a thank you or good job, buddy, or here's a $10 gift card, like nothing. And I felt unappreciated. And I kind of put a bad taste in my mouth. And I was like, I want out. I just want to do my own thing. I think I can build my own business from scratch. I don't need to be a franchisee. So I went for it in 2003. That's a pretty big stepping stone. I mean, franchise. So let me ask you a couple of questions. Were they handling all the advertising and the call bookings and stuff like that? Or

were you handling that? Yeah. So it was just a little business. When I signed up as a franchisee, they gave me a list of clients. So they already had the customers and I was just servicing them and they were taking like 28 cents of the dollar. I think. Oh, wow. That's crazy. Yeah, something like that. But it was like automatic business, right? Sure. Instant money. And near the end, around the time that I quit, I was actually making about seven, 800 bucks a day, like just my, my part. And I was working one or two days a week. And that's what I quit. I was like,

you know what? I think I can do better than that. I went for it. You know, not a lot of small businesses could get to that point where you're doing that well. So at what point did you decide, I just want more? I mean, what is your goal? What is your ultimate goal? Now you're helping others, but I have a hard time figuring out my number or where I should be. Or, you know, I think it's your individual person

needs to decide that for themselves. But what made you say 800 bucks is okay, but I'm underappreciated. I'm going to go do this on my own. Yeah. So I mean, the 800 was my cut. So I think I was doing something like 11 or 12 a day, 1200, 1100. And I thought, I mean, if I'm doing that much money a day, I can just keep all that. That'd be cool. It's kind of like if I go on my own, I can build this thing and I can get 30% more. So I guess from a money point of view, that's all it was. It was kind of like, if I go on my own, I can build this thing and I can get 30% more.

So I guess from a money point of view, that's all it was. It was a 30% bump. But it was more so about just feeling unappreciated. I bet you that if they had just kind of slightly... If they managed that slightly different, I'd still be a franchisee for that company. 16 years later, it's funny. You know, I think that there's a lot of skill in being an owner. And that's the same thing as a franchisor is making people feel appreciated. I think that a lot of times, owners or managers, they tend to find the negative in people. And they state that all the time. What we try to do in my business is catch somebody doing something right. And it doesn't happen enough, but it just goes a long way that you said that because sometimes the people out there listening, if you're not treating your people right, or if a vendor is listening and you're not treating your customers right, they go on to

the next best thing and here they become your competition. So, you know, let me ask you, you've done a lot. You said marketing was one of the biggest things you learned when you went out on your own after about three years. I think you were in 2007. What was the single most important thing you've learned in all your years in the window cleaning business? In terms of marketing? Yeah, I think marketing is a great subject

because I think that's where everybody could use some work. The single most important thing I learned is that you must be different from your competition in terms of the value you bring to the market. And you must very definitively articulate the nature of that differentiation. I love that. So tell me an example of someone you've worked with

or maybe yourself when you figured that out of what you did to make, because you think of window cleaning, whether you're using Windex or some type of soap chemical, maybe, what is it, chemical-free could be different, differentiation, be relevant. What's a good example so I understand and the listeners know what we're talking about? Yeah. So let's just, let's create a couple of imaginary companies right now, you and me.

Okay. Window cleaning wise. You know, Tommy's Window Cleaning, Toronto's only window cleaning company to guarantee clean windows in 48 hours or money back. Okay, so you've got three things you could compete on. Time, price, and quality, right? There's other factors, but those are the big three, am I right? No, I think it can be relationship. I think it can be the nature of the service experience as well. You might have this really sweet app

that makes it... You're the only window cleaning company in your major city or in the tri-city area where you can order your window cleaning service online, hands-free in the next four minutes. Or maybe you're the only one that offers a white glove service.

Or maybe you're the only one that offers a white glove service, or maybe you're the only one that brings a registered massage therapist and you can do spa treatments on the client's premises. And it's fully covered by insurance and totally legit and all that stuff. So differentiation is a huge thing. Usually when I have people talk about marketing, I say, what separates you from the rest? Obviously, drug test, background check, we all do that. Open nights and weekends. I feel like most of us do that. So when you're figuring that out,

how do you suggest, there's so many things that we all do. We have wrapped trucks now. We have a CRM that tells you where, some of them have better CRMs than others, but where do you start to develop that? I don't want you to give all your secrets, but if someone's listening right now, where would they begin to start to differentiate themselves? Okay. What industry are we talking about right now?

Well, home service. It's pretty much the same. Home service. Okay. Yeah. Got it. So any of those. Okay. So step number one is to get inside, I guess, to step back and decide who do I want to back and decide, who do I want to help? Who do I want to serve? Like residential or commercial type stuff? company. You say, I only want to do fast food restaurants. Okay, cool. So then you step back and go, okay, now what would that client, if they had a magic wand, what would their version of my company look like? What's driving them crazy right now but the available options? Like you said, everybody has a pretty website and the uniforms and the wrap trucks and the insurance.

So it's not that because that's like table stakes. You have to do that just to play the game now. So what else can you bring to the table to decommoditize in the mind of the people that you want to serve? So that's where you start. You ask yourself, who do I want to serve? And then number two, what would their idea of the perfect service company look like? And then you build a value proposition around those pain points and those obsessions. There's a book called Ask by Ryan Levasque. And he says, the number one thing you have to do is ask.

A lot of us assume what we want. And I feel like the best thing you could do is talk to these customers. And I used to have a landscaping business and I used to ask all the time, what's your pet peeve about other landscaping companies? And they said, one of the biggest problems in Arizona was they didn't speak very good English, a lot of the landscapers. So I brought that up. So I built a flyer. Is it hard to communicate with your landscapers? Number two, I said, what's that? What else? They said they always show up at the wrong time. And, uh, number three is there's always sprinkler issues because they don't fix those well. So by asking my clients, the perfect clients, the best ones, my perfect avatar. And isn't there, it's bigger. It's better

to use fear. I mean, it resonates more or a blue ocean type things. What I mean by that is people resonate more with like, if you were your example of fast food cleaning, power washing, it might be, do you find that they come at the busiest times when you've got both lines coming into McDonald's and you've got power washers getting in the way? Do you find that it's better to hit those things like more of a fear or do you want to hit more of the attributes of what makes you better? Yeah, I mean, it would be difficult to argue

with what you just said, that fear works really well to motivate people. I would agree with that. And I agree with what Ryan, I mean, Ryan's a smart dude. Ryan Levesque, you know? Or I don't know how to say his last name. Levesque, Levesque.

Levesque, yes, it's somewhere in there. Silent S, yeah. But a French last name. Yeah, it's French, guys. Ryan. But another way to kind of sneakily ask your competitions clients, Tommy, is to go online and kind of stock the reviews that your competitions clients are leaving and see what they're complaining about. See what's driving them

nuts and see what they rave about. And look for maybe an opportunity to double down on something that seems to be resonating or maybe to start showing up in a way that nobody is showing up yet. That's a good way to ask in kind of a sneaky way. Yeah, customer experience these days is so important. And a lot of us ask for reviews, but the best companies out there, they get reviews because they create raving fans about their business and they go to the next step.

I was with an air conditioning company. It has $50 million a year. And Smartest, really, really smart. Incredible operation. I learned a book. I filled up a whole notebook. But I said, hey, have you ever thought about sending cards to each customer? I'm working on a program that's going to do that. It's going to cost a little over a buck, but it's a really nice, it looks like a Christmas card. It's got a stamp on it and everything. It looks like it's handwritten. It's custom to that customer. And the response was, I just don't think it's worth the money. You know, genuinely saying thank you to customers, I think goes a long way.

And letting them know that if it wasn't a perfect experience, we'd like to know what we could do better and actually take that consideration to heart. And I find that most people don't, you know, and I just happened to have Ryan's book on my desk right now. That's why, but most people don't ask. People want to be heard. And I think that's what we leave out. And I think it's pretty cool because you talk about being high price is okay. You want to stay relevant, you want to stay different, and you want to create scarcity. So tell me a little bit about the whale vomit method and how you came up with it. I'm pretty familiar with it. I've done all my research, but I want to listen. Yeah. So the whale that I'm referring to when I say the whale

vomit method is the sperm whale. And the sperm whale is that Moby Dick whale. So the whale that I'm referring to when I say the whale vomit method is the sperm whale. And the sperm whale is that Moby Dick whale. So it's that big rectangular kind of block-headed monstrosity. Second biggest creature on the planet, biggest carnivore on the planet. They grow to 60 feet long. And the short version is that these incredible creatures, like you said at the beginning of our conversation with these huge teeth and huge brains and huge heads, they're also the deepest diving creatures. And they will dive 4,000 feet below the ocean surface on one breath. And when they're down there, what they're looking to eat is giant squid. And giant squid themselves grow to like 25 feet long.

And the sperm whale grows to 50 to 60 feet long. And it eats these 25 foot long things. And the only problem with eating a giant squid is that the squid itself has these razor sharp beaks and talons on its tentacles that it uses to trap and eat prey. So when the sperm whale is slurping down this giant killer calamari, it actually is kind of like you and I eating a bowl of jello with razor blades in it. So what actually happens is that the sperm whale and only the sperm whale has this really weird, unique built in digestive mechanism that senses anytime there's something really sharp and dangerous in its stomach. And it actually coats it with goo and barfs it back into the ocean, vomits it out into the ocean. And this piece of liberated sperm whale vomit that's between the size of a cantaloupe and a

soccer ball will float on the ocean waves for weeks and months. And the salt in the ocean will actually change the chemical composition and the molecular structure of that piece of whale vomit. And it will begin to acquire the properties of a fixative. And fixatives are used by the perfumery industry to stabilize volatile compounds like perfume. Because what's the number one ingredient in perfume? I don't know that one. Take a guess. Take a guess.

Number one, some type of alcohol maybe? That's right. Alcohol, exactly. And alcohol evaporates, right? Yep. So the only reason why your cologne or perfume doesn't evaporate is because a fixative has been introduced to the composition to stabilize it. And for over a century, sperm whale vomit has been the world's most effective fixative for perfume.

And even today, like the most expensive stuff from Christian Dior, from Givenchy, from Calvin Klein, continues to use organic sperm whale vomit. And that stuff's not cheap from what I know. Yeah, exactly. That's the next thing. So let's just recap. So whale vomit, sperm whale vomit, is incredibly valuable to a niche market, that's the perfumery industry, in a relevant way. It is absolutely different from every other fixative available because it's the most effective. It outperforms every other fixative option. And number three, it's incredibly hard to get your hands on. Because since 1985, the world kind of got together and said, whales are our friends. You can't just go out and kill whales anymore.

So the only way you actually find sperm whale vomit today is if it washes up on a shore or is floating in the ocean or a giant sperm whale beaches itself and you slice it open and find this chunk of whale vomit inside of it. So because it is incredibly valuable, absolutely different, and unbelievably rare, it's also unsurprisingly very, very expensive. And sperm whale vomit today sells on the open market for six to 9,000 bucks a pound. Yeah. So if you just Google, this is really weird thing to tell your listeners to 9,000 bucks a pound. Yeah. So if you just Google, this is really weird thing to tell your listeners to Google, but if you Google for fun, sperm whale vomit, you'll find stories of 11 year old kids walking their dog on the beach and find this piece of sperm whale vomit and selling it for

a hundred thousand dollars. So my book is about how to take that exact same three-step process to be highly valuable in a relevant way to a specific market, to be different from every other available option, and to manufacture and tap the power of scarcity to extract the maximum price point with a clear conscience. I love that. So relevant, scarcity, and high value. Well, relevant is the value. So it's relevant, different, and scarcity. Yeah. Relevant, different, and scarcity. I got them written down here. Okay. So in the home service industry, where do you start with the whale vomit method, the church premium prices for the service rendered? So if you're listening to this and you are a home service industry business owner,

start at the beginning. Ask yourself, okay, what would a person that I'm looking to serve, what matters the most to them? So establish relevance in terms of value. What is the most relevant to that person when they're looking for the kind of vendor that does the work that we do? So whether it's landscaping or window cleaning or pressure washing or garage doors or lighting or anything like that, ask yourself, what are they looking for as number one on their list of things? And focus on delivering value along that path. And then look for a way to differentiate in that area and then introduce scarcity by limiting accessibility or time availability.

That's one of Robert Ciarini's things in his book, Persuasion. Most people that listen will always, and I've combated this with hundreds, if not thousands of people, because I've employed thousands of people over the last five, 10 years. So Kevin, the number one thing they say, their brain, 90% of the listeners right now are going to price. And I just pulled up this old fact sheet I have. There was a double blind study done in the garage door industry. It was 500 people surveyed. And I want to tell you from one to nine what they came up with. So the number one thing people cared about was the reliability of the door components. The number two, the installation labor was warrantied as well as the product.

Number three, the level of attention to detail included cleanup and removal of old door. Number four, the company stuck to the agreed installation schedule. Number five, curb appeal or aesthetics. Number six, easy to clean and maintain. Number seven, quiet operation. Number eight, length of warranty. I think there's number 10 security features. The last thing on here was price. And people always assume price, price, price, I got to be the cheapest. Where do we break that mindset? How do we get people to understand that that's not the most important thing? By number one, recognizing that it is the most important thing if there's nothing else special about you. Like you and me, Tommy, we buy based on price when we're buying commodities.

Correct. Listen, if we go to the store or we go to a little local farmer's market and one stall has beautiful, fresh, green Granny Smith apples, very shiny, perfectly polished for two bucks each. And next door, they have the exact same apples for $1 each. All of the things being equal, we're not going to spend $2 an apple. We're going to get the cheap ones. We're going to buy based on price, right?

Yep. Yeah. And we would be crazy not to. You know, if we didn't, we'd be ripped, like we'd be getting ripped off. But if one of those apples comes from this one orchard, that's the oldest orchard in our state, and it has this history of these weird apple seeds taken all the way from Portugal and only in this one orchard are they available.

They could maybe charge like eight bucks an apple if that's what the market is craving. Something, some weird backstory and maybe extra organic-y, to me and you might call it silliness, but that's all it really takes is you have to realize that in the absence of anything else, yes, price matters.

Price is the only thing that matters. But it doesn't have to matter if you can find a way to deliver other unique values. So, I mean, you just gave me this incredible list. I wrote it down. So, I mean, look at all these different ways you could differentiate. If I wanted to get into the garage door market, heaven's garage doors, I could obsess over scheduling. I could obsess over aesthetics.

I could obsess over the quietness of my doors. I could obsess over reliability. I could obsess over installation. I could obsess over cleanup. Like could obsess over cleanup, which sounds crazy, right? But that's true. And that has nothing to do with the actual product. But the point is, you can build a seven-figure business around just that. If you're telling me these 500 people said number three is cleanup and removal, I mean, that matters. So if you can become like the most like fastidious, ridiculous, insanely obsessed, white glove, you know, cleanup and removal, there's going to be a market that will want that. But you have to obsess and you have to be different along each of those value propositions. That's the secret. You have to

go all in on one of them or two of them or three of them. Yeah. One of the things we always talk about, Kevin, is to build an experience for the client. So as a garage door company, what I like to do is, first of all, we take a lot of pictures and videos. I ask a lot of questions. So the first question I ask is, Kevin, if everything sounds good today, you're happy with me, you're happy with the price, you're happy with the quality. Obviously, you're happy with the company. You wouldn't have called us.

When were you looking to make a decision? Because that's something I want to know. And then the next thing I'm going to do is say, once I take my measurements, is there another house in the neighborhood you like that you want to go look at? No, okay. Is there a spot we could go sit down and discuss this? So now you're inviting me into your house and now we're

sitting down, whether it's cold or hot outside, doesn't matter. Now we're sitting down at your kitchen table and now I'm asking you simple questions to try to figure out what's important to you. And I've got a beautiful folder that tells us why it makes sense to go with us. It tells our story. It tells our credentials. It says our process. It's even got a checklist that we want the customer to fill out. Now, hopefully, if my technicians are doing their job and my salespeople, that should last about an hour. And when you look at us compared to the other company, you'll go, I feel like the other people are a fast food restaurant and a dollar menu because they just filled out an invoice on the back of their truck. They wrote it

out real quick and that was it. They were there 10 minutes. We were an experience. So one of the things we offer is on a garage tour, they have cycle life. Each time that it goes up and down is one cycle. Well, we carry some of the highest cycle parts in the industry. And those are just one of the many, many differences. But the point is, you're absolutely, I love your example. I think a lot of times what I tell people is, on Valentine's Day, I took my girlfriend out to a $200 dinner. I didn't take her to McDonald's off the dollar menu. Now, they're both food. They both fill us up. But it was the experience. It was the quality, you know, the wine, champagne, everything costs a different price. I didn't go to

$2 wine. You know, they don't even have that in most restaurants. But the point is a lot of people, if you think you're a commodity, that's absolutely a fascinating point. If you think you're a commodity, you're just like everybody else, they compete on price. If you're not, I would consider competing on the quality of your products, the quality of your workmanship. I'd also tell you that the best people out there, they want it done right away. In most home service businesses, they go to Google, they do a search, they pick on the top paid ad or sometimes the top organic ad because they look at the reviews and they call. And if you don't answer your phone and then less than four rings, you are going to lose business. And that's another thing. Tell me a little bit about where you start with a company when you're looking at them. Do you look at their marketing first? Do you look at their call center? Do you

look at their branding? What are some of the things that you would dive into if you just got started with a new company? I would have a big, long conversation with the owners and ask them what makes their stuff unique. And often it was a very sobering conversation because here's the thing that happens, Tommy, for a lot of guys that start their own businesses and expand into teams. They have so much pride in workmanship that they tend to obsess in the direction of quality. But as we've discussed, quality is just one thing. It's just one thing. And that's the most common thing that most service businesses obsess over. But as a result, they unknowingly commoditize themselves because quality is not the thing. So that's usually where I started with the client is to ask them,

what do you think makes you special? And then number two, we would reach out to their best clients and we would do a little bit of a survey and just kind of get some feedback on what the client thought made them remarkable and compare notes. And sometimes it was totally different, which was illuminating. And in some cases, it was discouraging for the owners, to be honest, because they were obsessing over something that nobody cared about. Yeah, that's very interesting. I think a lot of the people that start off as a worker and then they start their own business, they tend to think only about the workmanship that goes into it. They don't think about how quick they answer the phone or the marketing or the warranty or the things that real customers care about because they're

looking at it as a worker slash business owner, not in the eyes of the recipient, which is the client. So the client. And yeah. Actually, can we go deeper on that for a moment? Yeah, I'd love to. Let me ask you about that $200 dinner. You actually went and spent 200 bucks on that? Yeah.

Was it the most amazing food you've had this year? You know, it was up there. It was good. But not the most delicious. No, no. It's so funny. So quality would have said it must have been the most delicious food you ever ate. And you're like, no. And yet you spent, you know, big bucks on it because it wasn't just about that for you. Yeah, it was. There's so many things. It was about getting dressed up, going to somewhere nice.

And, you know, the experience. So nice. There you go. There you go. So they had to create an environment where you felt like it was special. Correct. The food just had to be good enough that you're not angry. That you're not like, oh my goodness, this steak is garbage or whatever. And that's what you find actually in the restaurant industry. Even here in Toronto, where I live, I mean, Toronto is a pretty big city, fourth biggest city in North America. So there's a lot of high-end restaurants. Almost none of them are impressive in terms of the food that you get. Like I've eaten at a lot of them and the food is okay. But it's everything else.

It's the service. It's the way they fawn over you. It's the decor. It's the ambiance. It's the colors. It's the service. It's the way they fawn over you. It's the decor. It's the ambiance. It's the colors. It's the music. It's the kind of vibe that they create. It's where the restaurant is. It's who sees you when you walk into it. What part of town is it in? None of those things have to do with the product. And I guess what actually, to be more specific, what it shows you is that the product is not food, to be more accurate. Just like with this list of the garage door things, the product is not even the door in many cases. It's everything else. Yeah, that's very powerful. When I think back about when I started,

I had no idea some of the stuff that's important to people. But now looking back, and I guess you learn more from your mistakes than your triumphs because the definition of insanity is keep doing the same mistakes over and expecting a different result. So with 6,000 customers a month at a minimum,

sometimes 7,000 a month, we definitely make mistakes, but it's, you know what it is, is it's about building processes. A lot of times we go, don't do that again. But the difference is, is there something in the system that is allowing those mistakes to happen? So rather when I started 12, 13 years ago, I used to say it was people. And then I learned, wait a minute, McDonald's has 14 to 16 year olds. They've got to go to the little thing and hit a four digit code.

And it's a soap dispenser that puts out soap to make sure they wash their hands 10 times. They've developed processes to make sure everything's done and there's accountability. And I think that that's one of the things that we fail as business owners a lot of the time is to create that accountability within the organization that everybody has control over their own destiny,

but also is accountable to making sure that the customer has the best experience. I like that. Yeah. And I agree with that. And I want to add, and I want to go one layer deeper on that too, and connect one more dot. You just said, ensure the customer has the best experience. And the twist is that the best experience for your ideal customer, the guy next door could care less about. So you mentioned you went to this $200 dinner and you said you didn't go to McDonald's. Let me ask you something. Do you ever go to McDonald's, Tommy?

I have in the past. I haven't in the last probably year. Okay, so over a year. Okay, so 2017 you did. Yeah. Okay, okay. So there you go. So you're a McDonald's guy too.

Like sometimes McDonald's does it for you. Whenever I think about workmanship or, you know, like just getting inside the head of the customer, I think of Warren Buffett. So Warren Buffett is a gazillionaire as everybody who's listening to this knows, but have you ever seen a picture of Warren Buffett? Yeah, he's just average Joe. He lives in his original house. He didn't splurge on everything. So Warren Buffett, yeah, doesn't care about houses. His house is quite modest and very ordinary. He doesn't care about cars. He drives a very ordinary, boring, nothing car. His clothes are disheveled and ugly and he looks like he hasn't had a haircut in about five months and he doesn't care about any of that stuff and has nothing to

do with him being cheap he just doesn't care like what he cares about and I read his book the snowball it's like 900 pages So I got inside his head. And the only thing Buffett cares about is buying like billion dollar companies. Like he bought Heinz for like $29 billion. That's what he's into. So you would fail if you tried to sell him like a cool suit or a Mercedes or a beautiful home

or a haircut for more than $5, he'd be like, nah, I'm good. And it's not because he's cheap, it's because he doesn't care. So same with the people that your listeners are selling to. Step number one is really getting clear on what do they care about so that you can speak to those things

and obsess over those things and kind of ignore the rest of the market. One of the things I think you brought up earlier, which is so important, is that it can't be the everything. And I've made this mistake over and over. I was going to be the cheapest on Craigslist. I was going to be the Groupon special.

I was going to be the high-end custom door. If you could dream it, we could build it. And what I realize now is you've really got to choose what you're going to be and own it. So we dropped Home Depot. We dropped all the BS that we were losing money. Now, did we make a profit with Home Depot? Yes, but there was an opportunity cost to not growing our business. And another book I just read is called Essentialism. And it basically says the smartest people in the world say no. And the reason I thought of this is because it talks about Warren Buffett. And Warren Buffett has made 99% of his money on 10 different companies. So he didn't pick a thousand and decide I'm going to be the

world's best trader. He decided to stick with it, figure out what was going to be the best and go all in. And I think a lot of us, especially me, and I'm, you know, I like to focus on the mistakes I've made because I think that it's important that I stay humble on this stuff, but I was going to be everything to everybody. If there's an opportunity that comes along, I jump on it. But the smartest people in the world, they spend most time debating what they're going to go after and then they go all in. And I think that if we're going to do that, we're going to go after and then they go all in. And I think that if we're going to do that, we're going to find out what our avatar is, what our perfect client is. We're going to own that segment. It's like with radio or TV. A lot of people say, I'm just going to

sprinkle it on every channel. You should take all of it and put it onto one channel. Figure out who your perfect client is and own that demographic. And it exists in marketing. It exists in picking your clientele. It exists in pretty much every facet of the business. That's from what I, at least my advice would be is, and exactly what you said is find out what you're the best at and differentiate yourself and focus on that, right? Yeah, I'm not going to say what you are the best at.

I'm saying what the market would want you to be the best at. Like, for example, you might... Let's stick with garage doors. You might have been the company that has this incredible industry-leading warranty. But you might discover that, you know what, locally, the warranty is really far down the list of the people I want to serve. For them, it's about the installation, the scheduling, and the aesthetics.

So I'm going to obsess over that stuff and let go of who we've been if I wanted to really crush the people that we want to serve moving forward. So you might have to rethink who you are in terms of a value proposition from the ground up and step into some new, some new area. In fact, I encourage that. Yeah. You know, it's tough though. You

got to decide, are you the target of the Walmart? Because Walmart is the cheapest and they're the best. So if you want to work for builders, here's the deal. It's a whole different mindset to work with builders and work on a 90 day at a minimum turnaround time because you have those account receivable will be outstanding there's a lot of things but the people that own that market build a really good business they just need to be happier with a lower margin and then there's the targets of the world which you know i see targets at walmart in the same parking lot a lot of the times like there's one right by my house and it's hard to believe that the parking lots for both of them are full. And funny enough, Costco's in the same parking lot. And there have been times, Kevin, this is kind of funny that I've been to all three because, you know, same visit, same visit,

all three of them. You know, I go in Costco's more of the, I know if I want to buy like, let's say ramen noodles, I can buy them from Costco and there's no shelf life to them pretty much the last for years. And then target has some really nice stuff. So if I'm going to look for games to play, some fun stuff to play because I'm going to a friend's house or a nice bottle of wine, maybe target's probably better for that. Or even if I wanted to pick up a t-shirt, I'd probably go to target before Walmart and Walmart's's just lowest prices. And it gets you in and out, but they're all different strategies

that work. What's crazy about this world we live in is there's no one size fits all, but really understanding the customer is really where I think you were going with it. And that's 100%. I think that you talk a lot about branding too. I wanted to dig into this a little bit. Do you need a big investment to start branding? I mean, how do you do it when you start from scratch? So that word investment is deceptive. So the answer is yes, you need a big investment of energy and time and focus, but you do not need a

big investment of dollars. So there is a cost, but it doesn't have to be this huge amount of money. In fact, it's unwise to spend a huge amount of money until you know exactly the direction you want to go. So let's dig into that. So tell me this, let's say, I'll use my company, A1 Garage for a Service. It was A1 because back in the day, that was number one in the yellow book. And we ran into that, so I didn't want to change it. But tell me how I could spend time. I'm a big fan of going to B&I groups. I'm a big fan of going to Chambers, the Better Business Bureau. But more importantly, I'm a bigger fan of going to Chambers, the Better Business Bureau. But more importantly, I'm a bigger fan of going to understand where my clients are. A lot of them like high school football games in certain neighborhoods. If you're there, you can do really, really well.

Now, I don't have the time per se today, but I did and I did this stuff. So tell me how I can spend time and energy to build a brand. I'm really curious on how that's done. Well, you just gave a great example. You know, do something kind of random and local. Show up at football games. Start talking to people. Start hustling.

You know, hit the street. Knock on doors. Go business to business. You know, reach out for some strategic partnerships with other service businesses that are servicing the people that you want to reach out to. Put in the elbow grease. You know what? Real quick, while you're mentioning that, I got two good examples. So I just reached out to one of the largest bug spraying companies in the Valley. And what's the number one entryway that bugs get into your home? Your garage door under the bottom rubber. So I'm going to give them $50 for every job they give us.

And I'm going to do it for 120 bucks. So we're only going to make $70 because we're giving the pest company 50 bucks. But the good news is, and I told the owner, you guys are going to look like all-stars because this is a great price. Plus your job's going to get better because there's going to be less bugs in the home. So it's a win-win. They make a little bit of money. Some of the people I've talked to say, just pass the savings on to my clients, which is fine too.

And then think about this, painting companies, they're going to paint this old dented door. And is that really doing the customer a favor? So telling them we're going to compete on everything that you guys are valued. So I don't want to go to the cheapest paint company, the one man show that beats all the price. I want to go to the premier paint company and say, let's work together. You guys have all of our clients and we want to make sure that we give your client the best opportunity to make sure their curb appeal. The garage door is a smile of your home. It's the finishing touch after the paint job. Let's put something nice in there. It'll garage door is a smile of your home. It's the finishing touch after the paint job.

Let's put something nice in there. It'll change everything of the aesthetics of the home. So what you're saying, I'm a huge fan of strategic partnerships. So, you know, I know there's a lot of window cleaning companies that listen because you've been in that industry. What are some strategic partnerships for that? Well, I mean, anybody else who's in the same homes,

who's trusted and who, especially if they have a similar vibe or look and feel as your company in terms of, yeah, just how they make the customer feel. So for example, if you, I mean, your A1 garage door service, if you guys really, it sounds like you have this real obsession over process and being credentialed and having this really well thought out story and customer experience. You wouldn't go to budget bug service and try to align yourself with them

because that's actually going to mess with the way your brand is perceived, right? Yeah, absolutely. And you got to be smart about kind of choosing the version of your company and the other complimentary industry and align yourself with them. But then again, if A1 garage door was all about cheapy, cheapy, cheapy, then yes, they do want to align with budget bug removal. Because that's perfect. You know, budget, budget. Yep, absolutely. So identifying your brand,

if you're the budget, and there is, look at Payless Shoes. I mean, there is opportunities in the marketplace to be the most affordable. But once you go there, it's hard to change. I can tell you that. It's really hard to be the cheapest and all of a sudden try to be the best or the best quality. Because, you you know my dad always puts up his three fingers so if you put your your pinky down and your thumb down take the three fingers and he says you want it done fast you want it done right and you want it done on time or you want it fast cheap and you know quality and he puts the two outer fingers down and you're left with your middle finger he says pick two out of three, because you're not going to get all three. And the point about that is, is I've learned, he,

he always had a transmission shop when I was a kid. So customers would come in and he could sell a transmission job for more than the, uh, the main dealer or whatever, the auto dealer. So what he'd always tell people over the phone, I remember this as a kid, he'd go, do you go to the family doctor when you need heart surgery? Customers would go, no, we don't need to do that. He goes, we specialize in transmissions. That's what we do. We've got the best warranty on the market.

We stand by our work. We use the best parts, better than the dealer. That was a good line. And it just goes to show you just specializing and being the absolute expert. Don't be a jack of all trades, be a master of one trade. So what are the three a pretty website and pretty postcards and pretty invoices should allow them to dominate. That's mistake number one, because everybody's got that stuff now. It doesn't matter anymore. Number two, they look, sound, and feel like everyone else in terms of the conversation. So they're not offering any unique angle or value to the conversation. And so they're commoditizing. In fact, I'll tell you a really scary reality is that when you in fact are like the competition, every time you advertise,

what you are doing is advertising for the competition. I'll give you an example outside the service business industry as an example. So, I mean, I live in a condo, downtown Toronto. I get pizza flyers pretty much every other day in my mailbox. When I see a pizza flyer, I don't think, oh, I'm going to try pizza from that place. I think, oh yeah, I love pizza. And where do you think I buy pizza from? You buy it from your local favorite shop. From my local favorite shop. So that flyer that was paid for by my favorite shop's competition just drove my business into my favorite shop. Because that flyer failed to deliver any kind of unique value proposition or bring my attention to any kind of unique value

proposition that would possibly steal my business away. So that's the problem with assuming that just talking about the same stuff in your marketing as everybody else, that's actually advertising for the competition. That's mistake number two. And mistake number three, I think we fall into the trap of thinking we're smarter than our customers, when in fact, we need to do the opposite. Start with the assumption that your customer is a lot smarter than you are, and a lot more savvy, a lot more experienced and intelligent, and you cannot play games with them. You cannot just manipulate them to follow the whims of your heart. I think that's another huge mistake that leads to a lot of problems. Yeah, I agree. You know, with customers,

I had a guy, his name's Art, on the show last week, and he talked a lot about just having a conversation. How many people come to your home and have a conversation and they ask questions? And there's a book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, that basically just says people like to talk about themselves. So you don't really have to do much. You can just ask a lot of questions and genuinely listen to them and the answers and ask them. So it's hard to do that with advertising. You know, what's funny, this is funny to me is I got a guy and I love the guy. We're friendly competitors, but every time I change an ad and I say better warranty, better prices, anything I do to my ads, he changes to just basically mimic them.

And I'm like, but what do they say? Something is the best. Yeah. Imitation is the highest form of flattery. Yeah. There you go. So it's just kind of a pain in the butt when you're doing some type of

in the paper, bell pack, money mailer, stuff like that. But I think what you do is... Go ahead, finish that thought. I'd love to hear how you can finish that sentence. What you should do is what in that situation? Well, what I found is this. Google has an algorithm. Reviews can come off. Yelp. Everybody knows Yelp sometimes could be great for you. But most of the time, my good ones don't stick,

my bad ones stick type thing. And they have their own algorithm. They just changed in November. And we've got all these things, right? That could go away. Groupon might not work as well later. Our ValPak or money mailers might not do as good. But you can never take away my relationships. I don't care if you try to meet my relationships. They're stuck with me because I treat them right.

And if you built your business on relationships and you go out and you meet the people, no one's going to ever take that away. And the reason I get 10 jobs a day straight from my cell phone is because of my relationships. And they say, Tommy, I know you're going to treat us right. And I know them and I don't care who advertises to them, even if they sound like it's God's gift to mankind because of my relationships, you can't take those away. So my recommendation would be do exactly what you said. Get out there, meet the people and build relationships. Because if you build relationships with builders and these big companies and even neighborhoods and HOA presidents and realtors and people that are in homes, if you're in the home service niche, like what we're talking about,

no one's ever going to take that away. So I think that's the best way to build a strong foundation is to build relationships. So that would be my one thing is none of my competitors could take that away from me. They can't mimic that. And it's true. I mean, you have the advantage that, you know,

you've got this beautiful, large amount of goodwill that you've worked really hard to earn. You've got thousands of customers a month relying on you. There is something else that stuck out from what you shared with me that I'd love to draw attention to that I think could also help. Sure. You mentioned better, better, better in your advertising. And then when you say it, your competition releases something that says better, better, better. They said, he said, best, best, best. And I'm like, same exact things. And I'm like, okay, whatever. I'm like, this is- Yes. Okay. So here's the thing. So when it comes to differentiation, here's actually a detail I

would love to empower your listeners with. And if everybody doesn't already have a pen, grab a pen now. Because if there's one thing I want you to remember, it's this, that when it comes to being different, there are three words in the English language that will communicate to the market that you have something special and different. Only three words. Yeah. Word number one, most, M-O-S-T, word number two, only, and word number three is est, E-S-T. And that's actually a suffix that goes at the end of a word. Best, fastest. So not best. No, not best, actually, because best is so nebulous.

Best is so vague and it lacks any kind of meaning. So give me three ESTs that you like. Fastest, slowest, biggest, strongest, highest. So my book, The Whale Vomit Method, second edition, has like 1,300 EST words in it to stimulate your thinking, to make you go, oh man, I wonder which one of these we could own. Like, for example, Tommy, you mentioned that your parts, they're the highest cycle parts? Highest. And they're the strongest.

See? Highest cycle. So does your competition use those parts? No, we've got a trademark on a lot of them, but I mean, they could probably get something similar, but they- But not the highest cycle? No one comes close to ours right now so there's an example and if you can like if that's a defensible position if that is a fact that you can defend there's an example of how your competition can't play that game anymore you they can't compete so you're, we have the industry's highest cycle components, period. And if you can even cite it and reference it, then the guy you're competing with, all he can do is go, oh, shoot. So now he has two options. He can either try to play that game and out highest you on the cycle

angle, or he can change the conversation. And he could be like, you know what? That's cute. That's adorable that they have the highest cycle. We have the most effective scheduling platform for you. We have the most reliable installation teams in the state or the most experienced service teams or the fastest response. See what I mean? I love it. Yeah, those are very powerful words and they're unique. It's not duplicable. It's not exactly, exactly. And I just want to, this is something that your listeners could look up after this conversation. If you just go online to Apple's website, click on the iPhone tab and just look at how many most, only, and est words are used on this one long scrollable sales page for the

iPhone. It is one after the other, after the other, after the other, after the other, after the other. They stack them and stack them and stack them until you go, okay, okay, okay. It's remarkable. And the iPhone, of course, is like this really expensive phone. So it's the same with every other industry. And I have like on my MacBook, right, on my desktop, I have, you know, dozens and dozens and dozens of examples from every industry of most only an S. It works for every vertical. Very interesting. So when do you like to get those? Do you like

to get those on basically every single, you said vertical as far as industry. What about verticals as far as newspaper versus coupons versus radio versus TV? Do you find that any of these work better than others? Again, it depends on the market. Okay. Like you talked about your name, A1, coming from the Yellow Pages Day. It's 2019, but I guarantee there are pockets in North America where the Yellow Pages still crush everything else. There are. Yeah, definitely. So, I mean, you have to play yellow page game in that area. And you can complain all day long that it's 2019. We need a website. We have to obsess over digital. But guess what? The market doesn't care what you want.

All they care about is what they love. And if they love yellow pages, you better be in the yellow pages. Guess what? A1 also comes first on any pages guess what a1 also comes first on any vendor site a1 also comes first on citation site like yelp merchant circle yp.com so a1 believe it or not when i get invited to the master authorized dealer competitions i'm always the first one on the list and that that means something. So although it was built for a time, it ended up having some ancillary advantages. Serendipitous. I like it. So Kevin, let me ask you, you know, usually I ask the guests on the show if they got three books to recommend. Obviously, the whale vomit method is definitely one that sounds

like it's packed full of great stuff. That's the three ways. So be high price, which is relevant, be different and create scarcity. And then you've got a lot of things like most, only, fastest, strongest. So you've got a lot of the buzzwords in there. What else does the book have? And then I'll hear your three books that you would offer out to the guests. Yeah, so I'll just reiterate the three secrets. The three steps are actually deliver relevant value. That's step number one. Be different, step number two. And step number three is be rare.

And when you combine those three things, you end up being able to charge the highest possible price. But you must do all three to be able to do that. I love it. Okay, so that's basically a snapshot of the whale vomit method, right? That's right. That's a whale vomit method in one sentence.

Perfect. I love it. And then are there three books that kind of helped you shape what you're thinking in business or it doesn't even have to be a home service related doesn't even have to be it could be a novel about hercules for all i care i'm just wondering what meant a lot to you what's a book that delivers good stuff yeah i'm just looking at my bookcase. So if we were on video right now, you would see dozens and dozens of books behind me and they're all carefully studied. Yeah, I got three. I got

three for your listeners and for you. Number one is Mindset by Carol Dweck, D-W-E-C-K. Influence by Cialdini, love that one. And I'm going to throw one more in, and that's Mastery by Robert Greene. I'm so behind in my reading. If you got free books every podcast, I've had 70, so that's 210 books. Right, it's a lot. You know. I like Audible a lot because I

could fly through it. So if someone wants to get ahold of you, Kevin, what's the best way to contact you? Instagram. Instagram is probably the best way. You can find me on Instagram at Kevin Dubrosky. So K-E-V-I-N-D-U-B-R-O-S-K-Y. There's lots of cool stuff happening on there too that I'm sharing that will inspire and equip you and some freebies. I love it. What's your website? What's the best place to come?

Is it the, I saw a couple of different places to find you online. Yeah, so the same, myname.com, kevindubrosky.com is best. Okay. So that's D-U-B-R-O-S-K-Y.com. You got it. That's right. And the last thing I usually ask Kevin is if there's one final thought for the listeners, maybe something we didn't touch upon, something that you wanted to talk about, one thing to leave them with. What would the last thing be? The last thing would be that if we really want to change everything with our business,

we have to start by changing ourselves first. And that's where those books, yeah, that's where those books that I mentioned at the end will come in. Our business is a reflection of our internal reality. And our life is in fact a reflection of that. So if we want something new, I want to connect one dot actually from the beginning of our conversation. You mentioned that famous quote, you know, the definition of insanity. Yep. Often attributed to Einstein. We're not really sure who said it, but I find that we do that a lot as entrepreneurs. We focus on actions because we believe that it does require actions to create new results, which is true. But in fact, actions are informed and determined by our emotional state. And our emotional state is determined by what we choose to think about.

And what we think about is determined by our core beliefs. And our core beliefs are engineered according to our identity. So if we want something new with our business or with our life, or if we want something different, it's actually not enough to do something new or do something different. We have to become someone new or become someone different. That's the real bigger secret behind all of this. That is deep. Maybe our next conversation, we can go deeper on that. Yeah. You know, I just heard this, this quote, I want to share it and then I'll, I'll, I'll, we'll end this thing, but, um, there's this guy and there's this nasty flood going on. Okay. So he's in Florida and it's flooding like crazy and a rowboat comes over and

he, the guy in the rowboat says, sir, get on my rowboat. Cause you're going to drown. And he was on the first floor and he goes, no, no, no. My Lord will save me. And it keeps flooding, keeps flooding. So the guy goes up to the second floor and a guy in a speedboat comes by and says, hey, we got to get out of here fast. It's going to flood. It's going to flood bad. And the guy said, no, no, no. My Lord will save me. And, um, it keeps flooding. It keeps flooding. He gets on the roof of his house and a helicopter comes by and the helicopter says, get on the ladder quick. You know, you're going to drown. And he says, no, no, no. My Lord will save me. And, um, anyways, the guy ended up drowning and he's in heaven. And he says, Lord, here I am a loyal listener and believe in everything that you teach.

And you didn't save me. And the Lord says, I gave you a rowboat. I gave you a speedboat and I gave you a helicopter. What do you mean? I didn't save you. So sometimes you got to notice what's around you. And the people here that are listening to this podcast and they're hearing things like your book, which they should order right now. They're not taking advantage of the things that they're surrounding themselves with.

And I think that sometimes the answer is right in front of us. We just need to do it. But I love everything you said. And Kevin, I, you know, sorry about the technical difficulties. You were early. And of course, this isn't the first time I've had you said. And Kevin, sorry about the technical difficulties. You were early. And of course, this isn't the first time I've had technical difficulties. But I really appreciate you jumping on and spending some extra time today. My pleasure, Tommy. Thanks for having me. All right. I'll be in touch, buddy. Thank you so much.

Sounds good. Bye for now. Bye-bye. Hey, guys, I really appreciate you tuning into the podcast. I wanted to let you know that my book is available right now on Amazon. It's called The Home Service Millionaire. That's homeservicemillionaire.com. Just go to the website. It'll show you exactly where and how to buy the book.

I poured two years of knowledge into this book and I had 12 contributors. Everybody from the COO at HomeAdvisor to the CEO of Valpak and of course, Ara, the CEO of ServiceTitan. It tells you how to have the right mindset and become a millionaire and think like a millionaire. It goes into exactly how to turn on lead generation. Have those phones ringing off the hook for the customers that you want to be calling, where you can make money and get great reviews. It also goes into simple things like how to attract A players. Listen, if you want a great apple pie, you need to buy good apples and you need to know where to buy those apples. And it also talks about simple things like knowing how to keep the score. You should have your financial check every week. You should know exactly what's coming in and out

of your account. You should know when to cut advertising that's not working. And more than anything, you should know how to cut employees that aren't making it for you. Listen, you might have a big heart, but this book is going to show you how to make decisions built on numbers. I hope you pick up the book and I really appreciate everything. I hope you're having a great day. Tune in next week. Thank you.