The Home Service Expert Podcast - How to Build A CRM System To Deliver An Outstanding Customer Experience

Episode Date: November 29, 2019

Dave Smith is the head of Sendogo, and has become a master of marketing systems, particularly CRMs, over the course of three decades. Dave uses his extensive experience and expertise in sales, marketing, relationship building and business growth and development to help businesses adopt more efficient systems for relationship management without losing that crucial personalized element. In this episode, we talked about sales and marketing, CRM, relationship marketing...

And it boils down to the reason that any business survives is not that you sent a mass email to everybody and said, hey, I'm now doing sent out cards or I'm now doing Lone Peak Masonry or whatever. None of that matters. you go out and see people and you call people and you meet with people and you do a good job when you actually get hired or when somebody buys your product, you serve them the way they need to be served. You help them understand the product they bought or the service they bought and personalize it. If you don't, you're not going anywhere unless you do 10 times the amount of spamming than you should. I mean, that's just how it feels to me. You have to get out there and be personal with people and do a good job. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind

their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. My name is Tommy Mello and today I have Dave Smith. I've got to know Dave Smith here over the last couple of years. I got to speak with him at the recent event with SendOut Cards, all about relationship marketing. And Dave lives and resides in Utah. He's an expert at sales and marketing, senior sales leader, CRM specialist, product development, startups, industrial construction, relationship marketing software,

and construction software. Currently, he's the head of Sendogo. That is a piece that we're going to be talking about with Sendout Cards. Eagles Flight LLC, business development consultant, networking marketing consultant, sales growth strategist, Sendoutacard's senior executive team builder, relationship marketing expert. In 1993, he was the co-founder of Lone Peak Masonry and Harv and Hingham Masonry for about four years. He's a master of marketing systems, particularly CRMs, which is a customer relationship management system, and has had three decades of extensive expertise in the areas of sales, marketing, relationship building, and business growth and development. Dave, how's your day going?

Well, after that introduction, I'm kind of thinking, wow, I need to do more. You should. Yeah, this is a pretty good resume you built yourself here. Well, it's funny. When you said Harvin Higgum, that was my dad's masonry company here in Utah. He was the largest mason contractor the West had ever seen at that time. And that's probably what started my whole entrepreneurial movement is watching my dad run 120 guys out of the seat of a two-ton truck. And he had one of those old radio cell phones that you had to hard mount in your truck. And he ran that whole company himself with all those guys and did eight, eight, back then, $8 million a year in business. So I watched him do that. I sat with him. In fact, you know,

most kids after school would want to goof off and screw around with their friends. I found myself finding out where my dad was jumping in the two-ton and riding around with him. It was just so intriguing what he was doing. I love those stories. It really shapes us to who we're going to be when we get to spend time with family. And really, my father was the same way. So tell me a little bit about, so you started in the construction company. Your dad did it $8 million a year, which is 1980s, man. That's crazy. Quite a lot of money now.

Those were the, shoot, those were the Carter days. It just came out of, oh no, right. Was it Reagan in 88? 88 to 92. Yeah. Just after Carter just ruined the economy. Right. Tell me a little bit about your upbringing and kind of the things you've been through,

like your whole path of where you are today. Yeah. So, you know what? I'll go all the way back to 10 years old when I started jumping in the truck with my dad and learning his business. And until, you know, I learned his business clear up until, well, 93. And when it says here, 1989 to 93, that's when I actually ran that business for my dad. He actually wanted to retire. So I jumped in the two-ton truck and ran that crew myself. You know, we had like nine crews and I ran that crew myself. And it's funny because from the time I was 10 to the time I was like 18, I was learning his business. I could drive the big trucks. I could drive the forklifts.

I could do takeoffs. You know, back then it was a paper rolled out across the desk and you had to figure out, you know, how many block or brick was in the job. And I learned all that by the time I was 18, which allowed me to, when he wanted to retire, I just took over for four or five years and ran with it. But yeah, and then I started my own company because I was only getting, what was it back then? 13 bucks an hour a journeyman bricklayer made. So I was getting journeyman bricklayer wages running that was getting journeyman bricklayer wages

running that large of a company and it wasn't fair to anybody else if i got paid more so i said one day after five years of that crap i said okay i'm starting my own and income went up from there so that's that kind of started my deal about needing to be the owner that kind of led to that okay so you got that piece down and then tell me, you and Cody, let's talk a little bit about what got you into what you're doing today. Yeah. So running that Lone Peak Masonry Company, I had a shop out in the middle of nowhere. There was a new industrial park going up and I bought a big block building that had a yard where I could store equipment and a big garage. I could park some trucks. And one day I went out to ride my dirt bike out in the field,

which I did during lunch just to blow off steam. You know what I mean? Just blow it off. And so I get out on my bike and I'm running around this, this dirt track that I'd built in the back of my shop. And I look over and I see this guy that looks like my best friend from school, you know, from grade school and junior high school. I didn't go to high school with him, but I, we were great friends all those years since we were eight years old. And I see him walking across to this other new development where this new building was. I was like, that's got to be Cody Bateman. So I took my bike, ran over to the, to the building with my bike, leaned it up against the shop, took my helmet on, walked

in and there he was. And he was telling me he was going to start a greeting card company. And I was like, well, that's interesting. And that's about all, all that went. But a couple of years later, you know, he hits the marketplace with it. And I knew all about it because we'd been hanging out the whole time he was developing it. And so I got to go with him on all of his first calls, first sales calls with this new company. And it just became something I did on the side. You know, the whole send out cards thing I did on the side. And I went kind of full time by the time we hit, I don't know, 2007, 2008, another economy bust, right? And I just kind of sold off some of my iron. I even shut down Long Peak Masonry for a while and hung out the send out cards world.

And whenever I get into a world, I have to dig in and figure out how it all works. I wished I didn't do that. One hand, I wished I didn't. And on the other hand, I'm glad I do that. But I figured out how it all worked. I'd sit back with the programmers and say, hey, let's do this. Or hey, let's do that, you know, back in the early days. And that's kind of why I'm hanging out here. Been here for a long time. It's great. Yeah, so for those that don't know SendOutCards, I've talked about it on the podcast, but let's go ahead and get defined exactly how it works from how some of the users

can earn money by being members and they can also take advantage of it. And then we'll talk a little bit about Sendogo. Yeah, so SendOutCards is an MLM network marketing however it doesn't feel that way to me I'd you know growing up around Utah you get pitched all kinds of MLMs they all live right I could throw a rock and hit three of them from right here so I didn't really ever want to do network marketing, but this was cards and gifts. And I could sit down on my computer and send my general contractors cards. Well, what happened was I got paid quicker and I got more jobs. So it grew my masonry business. The economy was going bad,

but I figured out how to sell this thing. I just started showing people how to send a card and send out cards paid me to do all that. And it was just easy. It was just easy for me because the product made sense and you used it and people asked you how you did it. So that's how I built income there. And yeah, for about eight, nine years, we've been in the top ranks of send out cards, you know, showing people how to send cards. And then I had this thought, well, what if we could send cards from this newfangled Zoho CRM thing or, you know, Salesforce was starting to come out and I'm like, okay, there's a whole new market coming up. And send out cards is, it's basically a closed system. It's got its own contact manager. It's got all the bells and whistles you need to send cards. You can upload your CSVs in it of all your contacts and send cards easily. You can even schedule cards out of it. So what about those folks that are in these CRMs and their databases in there? Do we want to export all their contacts out and then import them over here and have two databases?

Well, they sure didn't want to do that. So that's what, when this other company was born, the thought of it, of Sendogo, came out then. And it was like, we got to move and rotate a little bit here, make sure we don't miss out on more marketplace that needs a tangible touch. So that's kind of what led us into Sendogo. And that was literally, I don't know, that was probably 2012, 13, when we first started talking about the concept. And then they gave me the run of some resources back in 16 to start playing with it and testing it and seeing what the market was like. And it's huge. It's going to be fun.

Yeah, I got to go to the last event and really started to learn. Well, I spent some time with you guys have really spent the majority of your time on the software side working with the integration with Salesforce, correct? Correct. Yeah, that's where we did all of our testing and research development. Yeah. So there's so many things I could talk about. And I really want the listeners who's home service owners to get as much out of this as possible. So we might go back to the days a little bit of the Masonry as well. But I was there for the awards. I got to see everybody.

And there's a guy there that you're very familiar with named Jordan Adler. And he seems to really done a good job of building a tribe. And when I think about these things, I think about a business owner, you know, that just starting a business or starting in a new market. And the MLM type format is you go talk to your friends, neighbors, family, your church, your community, right? Right. So I want to kind of try to dig into that and say, I think the same thing applies to going into a new market is you want to get your friends, neighbors, friends, family, you want to reach out to the community and start to get as much of the reputation and word out there as possible. So when you're going through and you've

probably been through, you've probably seen 100 different people train a different way on how to really build their business because it is their own business. What are some tips and just tricks you could tell us to really get the ball rolling and something like that and maybe spin it around at the end and how we could do it in home service? Yeah, it's kind of like where my brain goes is almost start with home service because that's kind of what I did as a contractor. So if you don't mind, I'll kind of start with that. Yeah, yeah, that's great. When I was working for dad, he had all the connections and he had the reputation, right? So when I go out on my own and start my own masonry company, no one knows I'm on my own. No one knows Dave hung a new shingle.

You have to get out in the marketplace and let them know. How do you do that? You go to your relationships. Who have you built relationships with in the past or who would you like to? And you got to let them know, hey, I hung a shingle. Here's my shingle. Let me know if you need my help. You know, that kind of stuff. And it boils down to the reason that any business survives is not that you sent a mass email to everybody and said, Hey, I'm now doing sent out cards, or I'm now doing Lone Peak Masonry or whatever. None of that matters. What matters is you get out off your butt and you go out and see people and you call people and you meet with people and you do a good job when you actually get hired or when somebody buys your butt, and you go out and see people, and you call people, and you meet with people, and you do a good job when you actually get hired, or when somebody buys your product,

you serve them the way they need to be served. You help them understand the product they bought or the service they bought and personalize it. If you don't, you're not going anywhere unless you do 10 times the amount of spamming than you should. You know, I mean, that's just how it feels to me. Right. You have to get out there and be personal with people and do a good job. Yeah, I think that part of my plan when I go to a new market is to find influencers in that market that are on social media. So whether that be really, really popular on Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat, some of these other places,

because what they're able to do is kind of a soft opening. They're able to go out there, do their friends, neighbors, family, get on social media, get a hundred people that we could practice on. And then in return for us giving you the free materials and getting the practice, we'd love for you to go on Facebook, Nextdoor, Yelp, Angie's List, all these places to leave reviews, Google.

That's kind of my plan as I continue to grow is to really hit the reputation really hard the first three months. And I think that now word of mouth has become online. 76% of people trust online reviews. And they're real. I don't think you need a lie-cheater still, but there's no reason where if you have someone... I don't think your buddy would be... He'd probably still do it. But if you guys showed up late, the garage didn't work after you left, or the air conditioning didn't work, you probably wouldn't be asking him for a review. So there's a few things to it. So tell me a little bit about your journey

through the entrepreneurship. What's one thing that if you could go back in time and you were just starting out that you'd go ahead and change? Oh boy, probably what I would change, and this may sound funny, but I would delegate quicker than I did the first two or three businesses I started. I would delegate quicker. I like to do the work. I'm a worker. I'm a hard worker. And I found myself holding the reins too tight to myself. I made all the decisions. I ran all the foremans, just held it way too tight. I would delegate quicker. It's like you say, the influencers, that's as personable as me going out and shaking your hand.

If you are following this influencer on social media and you know, like, and trust that influencer and all of a sudden they're saying, hey, you got to try Tommy Mello's garage. This guy's a stud. Yeah, they're going to believe them. And then you're going to finish that relationship the way you do. You know, you're going to serve them right.

Yeah. You know, this last six months, I go back to this one word that controls everything, and that's systems. And I'm just obsessed with the systems like manuals and standard operating procedures and checklists's systems. And I'm just obsessed with the systems, like manuals and standard operating procedures and checklists and systems. Like, the only way you're going to get the same result every time is through systems. I mean, how many cards, sent out cards are you guys printing in a day?

During Christmas season, let's just go for the big number. We can do 800,000 cards a day with christmas season let's just go for the the big number we can do 800 000 cards a day with one shift with one shift yeah yeah i went there it's like there's you know i think cody calls them like boeing 747s are these huge printers that just and there's an assembly line and custom machines and the stamp that you guys won the award for the most innovative kind of stamp looking like yeah yeah yeah that's amazing it's crazy and to watch it grow from using a sponge to lick those envelopes to this yeah so let me ask you this you know I know that Cody

had talked a little bit about how there's been some peaks and valleys over the last few years. And I think every single business, I don't care who you are, experiences, look at Elon Musk, he just got popped on Joe Rogan for smoking weed six months ago, the stock plummeted, that came back, but just, I don't care how successful you are, crap happens, right? So what's a good way to kind of get through that and really, how do you handle that mentally? Well, your circumstances don't define you is what comes to mind. And growing up through the construction trade,

there's a seven-year cycle that used to be. I don't think it's there anymore. Honestly, I really don't. But it's probably more like a 10-year cycle. But there't think it's there anymore. Honestly, I really don't. But it's probably more like a 10-year cycle. But there's all these cycles in business. And it's different, I think, in every business. But when the bad times hit you, you roll up your sleeves and go to work a little harder or think a little harder on innovation. And you said systems. Systems is key to everything.

When I was doing masonry, I had a checklist that I used to set up the jobs before the guys even showed up. And then I would give them the drawings with yellow marks all over them. Start here, do this next, go here, do this next. Because I knew the job better than they did. They're showing up cold. So that's what you take with you through life is what works. How do you organize

the next step? What's your workflow? If you don't have a workflow, then every individual is making up their own workflow and it's not as successful as the workflow that you could have made if you just made the workflow. That's why everybody's going to systems and things like this, like CRMs and databases and all this stuff is because you can build out that stuff based on what works the best in your first year or two of business. And you know what? Nowadays, you don't even have to guess. You don't even have to go through the rough first years like the rest of us did because somebody else has written something. I mean, Tommy, go read Tommy's book. You won't this keynote speak at Service Titan that I'm working on. And I'm like, you know, I think one of the biggest things that has helped me grow is visiting shops. Like I went out to send out cards. I've also been to Utah to visit a manufacturing plant where they build these heater coils. So, you know, I've, I've gone all over the place. I've been to probably 15 shops this year, read a lot of books. I mean, I'm so behind, I've got so many books right now. I've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10 books on my desk.

And then I've got a whole shelf of books that I got to read. And that's not even in my audible. It's like the more I start to read, the more I need to read. It's weird. I don't know if you ever seen that movie short circuit, but you know, he ends up just reading all these books to get information and he's flipping the pages real fast because it really is addictive. And then there's that other movie where he takes the, I forget the name of the actor. He's a real famous actor that he takes these pills and he takes the, I forget the name of the actor. He's a real famous actor that he takes

these pills and he becomes really, really smart, but he all of a sudden just is engulfed in reading and learning other languages. So I think that's probably one of the most important things to success is stop doing things you did the way you always did them and start learning how to accept change and really enjoy change, which brings me to my next point, which is Greg Breyers. I know it's been kind of a huge step for you guys. Tell me a little bit about that relationship, because I think there's a lot of people that would love to have, like you got a Cody baby, which is the visionary.

You're an integrator, but you guys have built two companies within one. Tell me the purpose of Greg, what your guys' vision for Greg is and where you see, because a lot of times we need another person like a Greg to come in. And what does that look like? Yeah, I would call him the head integrator. That's what I would call him. And he comes from operations, you know, in some pretty large companies. He was a COO in companies. So the guy has been there, done that. He understands data. He understands systems. He understands SOPs and all that crazy acronym stuff that they throw around here that I still don't know what they all mean. But, you know, Greg comes in here and he starts analyzing and looking and just

kind of doing slight little tweaks and changes. And I'm sitting here thinking, well, how does he, how did he know how to do that so quick? You know, and it's just, he can see those things that the rest of us might've had to sit and think about for a while before we saw him. But yeah, he comes in here and fixes systems and flows and different things like this. And I'm telling you, it's been really good for all of us, really good for all of us here at the office. And not to mention, he's a great, big, funny teddy bear. He's just a great, big, funny guy. In fact, right now, I office right across the hall from him. And he'll walk by my office. And it's funny because when he was first here, the first couple weeks, I would yell out

the door, I'd say, Breyers. And he would like literally shudder every time I did it. And I was like, okay, I got to stop doing that. He'd come in my office a couple weeks after that. And he says, dude, you got to stop doing that. I says, yeah, I know I've stopped doing it. And he goes, well, it reminds me of my head coach when I was a kid, you know, and he used to call me briars and growl at me like you do. And he says, you got to stop doing that. We have a lot of fun around here. You know, you really got me kind of interested. So what is it that he's done? I mean, is he looking at a problem completely different? I mean, what is it in your mind? Fresh eyes, fresh eyes. See, the rest of us have been here 16, 17 years. Some of the upper

management has been here five or six years. I've always been around, you know, I didn't work here, but I would stop in at least once a week throughout the beginning years. So I've been around around, you know, I didn't work here. I but I would stop in at least once a week throughout the beginning years So i've been around and and uh he comes in Complete fresh eyes is what it boils down to so it's like hiring a consultant and a ceo At the same time because he's never been in the card industry. He's never been in network marketing But he has run large organizations, 3,500 employee type stuff. So when he comes in here, it's like a fresh canvas. He

just gets to start painting. And a lot of the same people are here. It's not like he came in here and got rid of a bunch of people or changed everything completely because the place was running pretty good anyways. He just basically could see where the holes were that we would have never saw because we've been here too long. I hope that makes sense. Yeah. It's important to me. I understand exactly. You know, it's so funny. I just was in Southern California and I don't want to give up too many specifics, but when I go into a business, it's amazing how much I notice that other people's businesses and kind of overlook at my own.

So keeping a fresh pair of eyes on my own business has been like, I try to just open my eyes and look around and be like, oh, that's messy. That doesn't look right. And I never used to notice that until I had a consultant come in and he said, Tommy, why do you guys have calendars everywhere?

I use Google Calendar. And I'm like, yeah. He goes, I can steal your whole warehouse with your own forklift and you wouldn't even notice. There's no one back there. And I said, I mean, it's interesting. And I'm a huge advocate of consultants. I really think that getting someone that knows what they're doing, whether it be a mastermind or a group Or a specific someone to help you build manuals like I had or whatever it might be so tell me a little bit about sales and marketing so you guys You guys have been able to grow send out cards organically pretty much for the mlm program, which is basically

Heavy duty word of mouth. Is there anything that you're doing specifically to kind of add fire to that? Simplification is the main goal all the time because, you know, we're humans and we try to complicate things constantly. You know, and back when I was building teams, I was the master at simplification. And I knew it worked because what happens is you get little pockets of folks, people that take what you taught them and add two or three steps to it, or two or three things that made sense to them. I think what works the best in keeping the sales and marketing moving in the right direction is keeping an eye on it, not only the close stuff, but even the far stuff. You know, like you got teams all over the world. It's about keeping an eye on that and simplifying it,

letting it be their ideas to help you simplify. It's like you with maybe some of your service guys. You know, they'll go out and start doing things a little bit different because they think it's better. And you keep an eye on them to make sure that you don't force them to do something different, but it's like, Hey, what if we did this instead of that? Would that make the outcome better and faster?

And that's kind of what we have now. We have Greg, Cody, Brooke, all these folks that are here in-house that can watch the marketing constantly. And we're always talking about it. There's always closed-door meetings where this is going on. What do you think about that? And we all just kind of brainstorm. And then pretty soon, somebody calls the reps in the field that belong to that new movement or whatever. And how is this working? What if you did this? You have to keep an eye on it and protect the golden goose. I think a lot about referral marketing. And actually, since I met you guys, I don't know if it was maybe the catalyst in the back of my mind or what, but my whole drive for this next

year is all about growth through referral partners. And one of the things that I've realized is when you said simplicity is key, is it can't be hard to track. If you're going to build a performance-based like an affiliate deal, for example, I always talk about exterminators to sell the bottom rubber on a garage because that keeps the bugs out, makes them look better, and they can take a little piece to buy when they sell it because I'll give them that. I call it a marketing fee. Yeah. But they don't want to do that if it's complex.

So we're building the easiest, simplest system that attracts them. All they got to do is put the customer information in and then they get paid if we run the job. And it's bing, bang, boom, not hard. It makes them look good and they'll make 40 bucks. So I think a lot of times we expect people to sell our products, but the problem is we're not even good at selling our own products. You look at a lot of these small businesses and they're like, I can barely get my guys to show up to work. Why would I be pushing your products? You know what I mean? Yeah, I totally agree with you there. It's like, it's like Sendogo, you know, you know, we've been testing it for a couple of years. And

in the back of my mind, the whole time, I realized that we're going to have to have a lot of people demoing how Sendogo works inside your CRM. So we kept it very simple so that when the demo gets put together, when it's time to start sharing this with folks, the demo has to be easy. And literally, it's kind of sad, but I have to admit, it takes 10 minutes to do a proper demo

of the Sendogo product. And what's funny is I'm sitting with CEOs and the decision makers of large companies. And we have a 30-minute Zoom scheduled. And I go through my 10-minute demo. And I'm begging them to ask me questions. And the one I just got off of was hilarious. He looks at me and he says, you built this so that I didn't have questions. I says, you're right. It's a simple product with a simple outcome and simple to use.

And so that's how it has to be thought of when you're developing any kind of marketing or system. And especially the affiliate thing, you know, I'll hit on that. It's like the influencers, if they had to discuss some kind of crazy 10 part thing to even get their followers to understand what they're talking about, you lost, you know, it has to be able to be a graphic post that tells a story in two seconds or you lost. Yeah, 100%. I agree with that. I think

so often, you're right, we make things so complex. One of the guys I've worked with in the past said, I'm a big fan of compensation programs. I mean, it's probably one of my biggest secret sauces of my business is people make money on performance and KPIs. And we've got a data integrity team to make sure numbers are correct. And the accuracy of those numbers is part of their KPIs, believe it or not. So the accuracy and time to put out, I don't want stuff from last month. I want stuff that's from last week so I could curb behaviors going forward, but I can't spank a dog two months later. So when we think about these performance pays, it's just really exciting because I have a call service representative that made $27.50 an hour last week because she booked a lot of calls.

Her booking rate percentage was really, really high. Very, very great. Her tonality was perfect. Her scorecards came out great. But what I find is I was at the lunch before I came here and the guy said, sure, that's all great and dandy, Tommy. You're 30 million plus. We don't have those kinds of resources to get that information. And I'm like, one of the things the consultant told me

is he said, you gotta go home and you gotta be able to tell your wife or husband how you get paid It can't be quantum physics. You don't need pivot tables and So we got to keep it simple simon, but at the same time Sometimes I really dave I go to a whiteboard and I start saying what are the behaviors that I need to happen? So for my technicians, I need the best customer service. I need 100% conversion rate. I need sales, salesless materials to be,

you know, I'm sorry, everybody cares about sales. I mean, you guys don't meet up with your CFO and talk about cards. You talk about the numbers. I mean, that's how you pay the bills and do payroll. People don't like that. There's a lot of people listening that go, oh yeah, of course, they're talking about sales again.

You got to sell people. I'm sorry, but you had to sell yourself to your wife. When you walked in to that church or that bar or that ice rink, when you met your wife or your husband, you guys sold each other. And sales is not a bad word. And yes, sell things people need. But I just hate that.

But going all this whole two minutes was all about simplicity. Yeah, exactly. So there's a lot of mistakes that a lot of business owners make. And I think you hit one of them, greatest delegation. There's this mentality, if I don't do it, it won't get done right. What did you do to kind of beat that and kind of get over that? You have to lead by example. And so they saw me the way I was doing things and they would try to emulate, but they didn't quite know how. And so I basically taught them what I was doing, why I was doing it, and the how just happens. So the why is what causes the end result. It's not really the how. The how comes to you more easily if you understand why we're doing it this way.

Then there's only a couple ways you can do it. And I've found that this way is better. You try it both ways in the next week or so, and you let me know what you find. And so, in other words, create partnership with your employees, create partnership with your call staff. You know, Tommy, I remember a story you told me once where somebody was canceled a job or something and you called that person yourself and saved the deal.

Yeah. You know, that's what you have to be willing to do. You can't be so far removed from the processes of your business that you can't actually go do what you're asking somebody else to do. Yeah, that's 100% is knowing every aspect of the business. And I think there's, we talked about this earlier, Dave, but you said Greg came in and he was able to see with a fresh pair of eyes, basically outside of the bubble. And I really think that that's a huge attribute to a CEO or any COO or any PCTO, anybody in the business, because you got to be able to think like a normal person outside of the business. And what happens is I think so many business owners spend so much time on stuff they should not be spending time on. So Dave, you're a very, very busy guy. And obviously there's certain things that take priority, but how do you develop that

list of priorities? Where do you know your time needs to be spent? And I'm sure sometimes you're like, man, that took way longer than I anticipated and getting stuff on your schedule. But how do you organize your day to be as productive and efficient as possible? Yeah, I didn't know I was doing this all my life, but I do know now because I'm reading it in books. It's called time blocking. And it's like even in this day, Tommy, I don't know if you know this, but I still own Lone Peak Masonry and it's still operating to this day. And I didn't

know that. That's awesome. I get up at early hours in the morning where no one else is up. And I, I do my Lone Peak Masonry stuff before eight o'clock. So I'm done with my masonry responsibilities before 8 a.m. And then my Sendogo hat goes on. And that Sendogo hat is on 24-7. Don't get me wrong. It's on 24-7 and so is the Lone Peak hat. But I don't know what to call it other than the menial work, the work you have to do to be successful as an owner. That's done between six and eight with Lone Peak and

between eight and four with Sendogo. And then everything else that comes at you, you have to prioritize it as it's coming at you. Is this going to move the bottom line? Is this going to help a person or a group of people? And that's how I make my decisions. Is it going to help somebody if I do this right now? Or can this wait until I can schedule it? And that's how I do it. Okay. So what is the normal time for you in the morning getting up?

See, I don't use an alarm clock. So it's between 5.30 and 6. I'm up. Up and at it. So I'm reading a book right now. It's called The 5 AM Club. And if you get the chance, I'd highly recommend The 5am Club. I think it's about 300 pages. I'm about a little less than halfway through it. And it's just, it's an amazing, amazing book. And it basically says, start your day off right. Do you have a morning ritual, Dave? I've tried to have a morning ritual and I can't, you know, like I used to read

five pages and then I would go do this and I would exercise and I can't stick to that type of ritual. I would say I have a ritual, but it's not what is written in the books. It's nowhere near. It's literally, you know, from 5.30 a.m. to 8, let's say 8 a.m. That's my time to do whatever I need to do or want to do. And I don't let anything interfere with it. But to tell you that I have an exact ritual that I do every morning, I don't. And maybe I should read the 5am club too. Yeah, no, it's a good book. And there's a miracle morning. There's a lot of good books about it. I think I'm going to be sending you a book, another book. I'm actually talking to the author at 4.15

today. And it's a quick read if you're on a plane or you could definitely get through it. But to me, it was a game changer and it's all about consistency. So, so many of us, and I am probably the most guilty of focusing on revenue versus in my pocket. And I got to tell you, this last year, I've really dug into the books and I've learned them. And you should see all the waste, Dave. I mean, it was ridiculous. It's almost like I was leaving the faucet and air conditioning on 24 seven. It was like all these things coming out. I mean, you know, there's people that consider waste of the gym membership to $30 a month. I had like 25 of those, but they were big money. And I had no idea how bad it was until I actually got in and our, our net profit now, our EBITDA is so much better because they say, and I've said this

a lot on the podcast, but revenue is for vanity and profit is for sanity. Have you ever got to the point where you're just really, it just seems like you're going after that revenue or have you always focused on profit? Always profit, always profit. And it's funny because most people focus on revenue and they think I'm nuts. I would rather see a profit percentage than a really high revenue

because when I hit the high revenue, my profit's still going to be there. And that's how I've always been. In fact, that's how my dad taught me that at a young, young age that it's, it's about profit. It's what you end up with.

It's not what shows on your books, the total revenue. It's cool. It's cool. Especially if your profits 40%, that's really cool. Well, let me ask you this. So next year, I'm working on a whole event thing

I'm going to be blasting off with. It's going to be pretty crazy. It's going to be about 700 events just in Maricopa County, which is Phoenix, in Northern Arizona, and Tucson. So basically, Arizona. I'm probably not going to make a profit launching this. It's more about the future of the business. I'm probably going to lose a little bit,

but I've got a consultant coming on to help build it. I've got to define the processes, build the manuals. I've got to buy all the equipment, which is the displays, the tents, the tables, the marketing materials. Now, I know that's going to take from the bottom line, but I know that my goal is to be the largest home service company that's ever been in the whole world. So to work towards my ultimate goal, I had to take some sacrifice. So how do you know when to do that is my question for you.

Gut. That's probably not what you're expecting, but it's gut. If you're gut feeling it's time, go for it, dude. Just, just dot your I's across your T's as you run. Know that you have to invest to make and go. I love it. I love that. So I kind of want to bring these last 15 minutes into a little bit more about send out cards and Sendogo. I'm a big fan of micro targeting my customers and that's giving them a specific message to them that tends to get a much bigger. First of all, send out cards gets a huge open rate. I've got send out cards everywhere in my office. I've got actually a stack of them because I showed them on a training seminar the other day. And they're the big, great ones that when I spoke there, a lot of people sent me some really nice send out cards. I mean, it's amazing. And it's just great memories. And when I walked

through send out cards, the corporate office in Utah, there's just every single person had them everywhere. And I sent it to my mom for Valentine's Day and Mother's Day and my sister for the kids' birthdays. And they're very special. And I love the idea of Sendogo that automates the process of my niece and nephews and my family members and Christmas cards. Because that's basically the whole purpose is automation, right? Yeah. And Sendogo, we know that the last 17 years in send out cards has taught us that the more

personal a card is, the better the result, no matter what you're talking return or whatever. So Sendogo is creating automation because people are so busy today that they don't do the personalization of the cards. You know what? Most people don't even send cards. You know, the top 1% in every single industry sends cards.

Whether they're handwritten or send out cards or whatever, they send cards. We know this. Sendogo isn't trying to take people away from the personalizing of the cards, you know, and the prompting cards is what I'll call them. We're not trying to get rid of that. What we're trying to do is help busy business people and sales folks to automate some of the touches that they can.

But we've also built the piece into Sendogo where you can build your own card on the fly. And it takes you 30 seconds to two minutes to do this on the Sendogo platform inside your CRM, which is money, right? So we've covered both spectrums. But to be honest with you, the automation is what most businesses think they're going to use more of when they first see Sendogo. But after they see the system, they're realizing I'm not only going to use automation, but I'm also going to do the build your own prompting cards. Talk to me a little bit about that. Well, Kitchen Tuna, big franchise company out of South Dakota,

gets a hold of me and asks for a demo of Sendogo. So I'm showing them Sendogo and they love the automation features for certain things, but they still, what built that company to what it is today, 120 franchises, what built that company is the personal touch. They literally leave behind on the countertops of every kitchen, a gift every day while they're working in that kitchen. That blew me away. And I was like, well, no wonder you're so big. You know, no wonder you guys get it. They totally got Sendogo. We're getting it set up. ServiceMinder is the system they use. And they've reached out to me now and we're going to be building it in ServiceMinder. But what sold them is not only do

we have the automation, but we also made the personalized prompting card easy for them to send right out of their CRM. You know, this gal told me six years ago, she said, Tommy, the world is going towards one user interface. No one wants to, and it doesn't need to be, it doesn't need to be Infusionsoft or Salesforce. Right. You know, I've worked with so many CRMs. Zoho is a good one. You know, right now I've got Trello. I use Basecamp for something else. It's crazy. I'm getting updates on Asana today. I don't even know what the Asana is about.

I'm in a group with something that this, but I, I prefer everything to be in one spot and it's crazy. And I think what's going to end up happening is where do we go for a search engine? Google. I'm predicting that hopefully we can get to a more, at least limited. I don't like to be a monopoly. Like I believe Google is, and I think they should probably

split them up more now that they own the phones and they just bought, did you hear Google just bought, what is that wristwatch you wear to know how many steps you made? Oh, Fitbit. Fitbit. Yeah, they bought Fitbit. So they're going to know everything about your health. They know your home automation. They know your heart rate. It's crazy. Yeah. At one point, there needs to be some type of... They just have way too much data.

See, they understand that right now, data is worth more than crude oil. Yep. And data is the end-all, be-all. And predictive. There's predictive patterns. I mean, Google knows where I drive to every day. They know what gas stations I drive to every day. They know what gas stations I stop at. Yep. They know approximately what time I stop at those gas

stations. Do you know what that means to a marketer to know what time you're going to be in there and what, now when they can start tying it down, when I pay with my phone and they can know exactly what I bought because the CRM at the gas station is correlated. Yep. It's everything. And they own that data. It's going to be like, so they're building these $60 billion computers right now that will tell you, I truly believe it's just a matter of time before you say, I want my garage door fixed on Friday between two and four with the best rated company, book it.

Yep. And that's it. And then one of the things in your house books it for you. I don't want to say anything because I probably have 10 things respond right now. So if I wanted to get more information on Sendogo, what would be the process? Yeah, I mean, it's pretty simple. Sendogo.com. We've got some information there that kind of whets your whistle.

It's kind of a curiosity website. I believe in those. I don't have a plethora of information there so you can research it all out on your own because this is a tangible product. You have to see it work to feel it and to understand it. And so there is enough information on Sendendova.com where they can get a few questions answered and then reach out to us. We've got the chats on there and all that stuff. You know, you mentioned Asana and I got Asana, Slack, Intercom. Intercom's the chat on the

website and I got it all tied together. So everything does show up in one place for me. And I used, I'm kind of a geek when it comes to this kind of stuff because I want to understand how all this stuff works in the background so that if I have a good idea later, I know I'm not going to screw up by making a decision this direction instead of that direction, if that all makes sense.

So I've tied it all together using Zapier. And so I got one place where everything shows up and I can respond to it right here on my phone or my laptop. What app are you forwarding it all through? I mean, I know Zapier and how that works, but what is it kind of showing up in? Well, I like it to show up in my Slack. So I've got everything going into my Slack. Okay. All my Asana, you know, all my leads, everything goes into slack. It's crazy when I look through my phone of all the apps, I've got like four ways to take payment. Now I just don't have, it used to be PayPal. Now I've got Venmo. I've got the, the thing that

starts with the Zelle. I've got all these things. It's like, how are you going to pay me now? It's like, yeah, there's all these social medias that are popping up. I just deleted 35 apps from my phone over the past few days because I don't know when I used them last. And so I just, I went through and cleaned my phone all out because Google has hit me with all these ads based on everything they see me doing on my phone. And so I thought, okay, I'm going to delete as much as I can off this phone. I might even hard reset it if I can't get rid of all the ads that keep showing up. Usually, Google, that's through your browser, right?

Right. Probably. You're going to want to clear all your browsing history and all the cookies. That's where I'd start. I'd reset all of your... Do you use Chrome or you got an Apple? I use Chrome. Yeah. So just delete all your cookies, reset all your settings.

And that should... Now, there's embedded cookies and that's a pain in the butt. What Yelp does is they grab certain things off of your settings on your computer. Like they'll grab certain cookies that you don't even know exists in windows 32 and 64 on the config side. So they know if you're a real account or fake account based on a lot more than people understand.

It's pretty interesting. I kind of geek out on this stuff to myself. I really enjoy it, but I enjoy kind of, I won't say beating the system, but I enjoy kind of figuring out why a system works in a certain way. What is Yelp looking for in a real person? Because I have a lot of real people that their Yelp reviews don't stick. So I need to know what can I get that real person to do to get their real review to stick? Yeah. So Google does the same thing right now, Dave. Google, you could have two websites

starting at the exact same time with the exact same content for the exact same keywords. One of them will move up the ladder really, really fast. One of them will stick there for three months. Wow. And it's crazy how it all works. I mean, over time, there's one thing that I know

is time will heal everything. There's nothing I can do to a website to make it rank number one for a keyword in the first month, other than pay-per-click, you know? So, you know, are you pretty close to Jordan Adler? I've talked to him several times. I met him for the first time there. Is he one of the most successful Eagles? I don't even know your guys.

I think he is one of the bigger guys. Yeah, he's top dog dog probably will always be. The guy is a master networker, you know, and just a really all around good guy. I met him in 2004, I believe end of 2004. And yeah, been great friends ever since. Great guy. Today I was at a real estate seminar and Heidi goes, do you want to go network? And I'm like, first of all, this is not to be offensive, but it was all baby boomers or the next generation up from there. Right. And you know, typically I walk around,

I find some people I have something in common with, whether it's home service or a sport or shoes or something. And I'm like, what am I supposed to do? something. And I'm like, what am I supposed to do? And when I network, I never talk about my business. I get to know the people, but I just don't like going on the street and saying, oh, how's business? Unless someone looks at me and they smile and it's an invitation. I'm like, hey, do you look familiar? When you say Jordan's a great networker and there's online networking now, which is a huge step, but what does it take to be a huge networker? What does that look like in your mind? Well, it's caring, not selling. That's kind of how I'll say it.

You know, I watched Jordan and I picked up on I don't need to meet everybody in that room. I'm going to meet the one I'm attracted to, the one that felt easy to approach. Does that make sense? And that's kind of how Jordan is. And then it's not about what he can sell them at the event or the meeting, whatever it is. He just follows up with them in the next month or year or whatever and keeps in touch with everybody. I don't know how he does it, dude. It's like, the reason I call him the master networker is because he will have met somebody

30 years ago that he still connects with at least once a year. And he does it with however big his Rolodex is. Now to all you young folks, a Rolodex is an old style contact manager, you know, or Google contacts where it was in a wheel where you spun business cards in a wheel. But he just keeps in contact with everybody. And you know, we talk probably once a week, Jordan and I, maybe once every two weeks, but I feel bad every time we talk because he always initiates. That's what makes him

the master networker. Yeah, there's something to be said about that, and I'm probably the worst at it. When I see that someone's calling, like a friend or a family member or an old acquaintance, unless I got time and when do you have time? You know, typically I'm like, I really want to catch up, but I need more time than these three minutes. I had a friend call me the other day and he goes, Tom, and nobody calls me Tom unless they're like mad or something. He goes, Tom, he's like, I want to tell you something. We're best friends, man. And I've known you for a long time. And I really think of you in the highest regard. And I just want you to know that I think it's important that we talk at least once

a month. Now I know you're busy and you don't have to take time. Let me just tell you this, pick up the phone and say, Aaron, how's it going? What's going on? You talk to me for three minutes. And Tom, I don't care. You hang up. And if that's all we talk, that's all we talk. But I know you. And that's your that I've been trying to do. I've been working on my assistant to just put time on my calendar, but here's the deal. It's, it really is out of sight, out of mind. It's not like, I'm like, I don't want to talk to my mom. I don't want to talk to my sister or my uncle or my grandma or whatever. It's like, I'm the same way, dude. I totally feel your pain. I, that's just how I'm wired. You know, it's, I feel bad. My mom literally has to text me now or, or Facebook messenger me. And it's like, wow, she figured that out. That's cool. But then do I call her? No, I just messenger, you know?

So I feel your pain on that one. Huge. Some of us were built to be the one that reaches out and some of us weren't, you know, I guess. I guess. Something that I want to truly work on 2020. And I can't wait to send you this book and I'll talk to you about it. So let me ask you this to kind of wrap it up. I asked three things. If someone wants to get ahold of you, Dave, they got questions about Senna Car, Sendogo, possibly a question about contracting. What's the best way to get you? The fastest way to get me is literally go to sendogo.com

and start the chat. And if I'm not the one that answers that chat, the people that did will get me on it. How did that name come about? Sendogo, I guess. But what's the theory behind that? Sendogo. So I have no idea what the theory was

or where it came from. I went on vacation. I went to North Carolina with my buddy, Jimmy Dick. And I can't remember what we were doing that time. I think we were fishing or something, but I came home a week later. And while I was gone, they come up with the name. We had a different name for it, which was Ascend, but we couldn't get the copyright. So it changed while I was gone to Sendogo, but it's kind of catchy, you know? Yeah, I remember everybody was, they weren't pronouncing it right.

Yeah, they say Sendog-o or something. Sendog-o, yeah. Yeah. Okay, so we got, so go to Sendogo if you want to get ahold of you. Now, this is a question that i always ask i ask for three books but here's the thing how to win friends and influence people e-myth you know we can go through the same five that i always get i mean if i'm looking at my

shelf you're at the home service billionaire here you've got the four-hour work week a lot of people influenced by robertialdini, Profit First, Start With Why. You know, these books I hear all the time. Is there three books that you really, truly, truly moved you that really, that is going to be

a game? And here's the deal. It doesn't need to be about business. It could be spiritual. It could be fiction. It could be whatever. But is's three books that you can recommend to the listeners that really helped shape who you are and moved you in the right direction. Yeah. You mentioned all the ones I can't use. So I'm coming up. I literally opened my Audible app so I can come up with it. I'll tell you, the first one that pops into mind is Mel Robbins' The Five Second Rule.

Oh, yeah. I've read that book. That was awesome. That was awesome. Oh, dude, if you like that book, you're going to freaking love this book. So the cool thing that Dave's talking about is this lady. She figured out a way. It's not picking food up off the ground, the five-second rule, but literally she counts backwards when she wants to get out of bed or remove all the crap when she's going grocery shopping out of the cart. Whatever that looks like, she just counts down five, four, three, two, one, and does it. You don't think about it. You just do it. You get in that cold shower or whatever. You dive. You just go for it. It was very powerful. The five seconds just really helps

you just, boom, do it now. And don't ignore it. You got to do it when you come back backwards. You got to just make it a habit. Once you start doing it, you can't stop. Yeah. You can't. And you know what?

It's awesome. It's awesome that you can't stop. Let's see. Another one would be, this is a great one, like a really good one, by Jack O'Willing, and i can't remember leaf's last name i know what you're gonna say stream ownership yeah crazy good book crazy good book another one that that really helped me when it was first written because it's kind of like taking all those ones you said i couldn't say and compiling

all into one. And I know you've read this book. So when I say it, you're going to freak out, but it's called Promptings by Cody Bateman. Yeah, it's a great book. It's a great book. So there's my three. So Promptings is on my shelf. The prompting, so people that don't know what prompting is, it's when you're prompted to do something, don't ignore it. And Cody's brother got in a car accident in the 80s, I believe it was. And he was prompted to say goodbye to him, but he didn't end up saying goodbye. And that was kind of the revelation that Cody took was, if you're prompted, you got to do it. You got to do it. And you know,

it's almost like, I don't know where I just built this in my mind. But when you're prompted on a Scantron sheet, when you take a test, usually the first answer is the right one. And we go back and we, I think it's 70% of the time when we switch an answer, we were right the first time because almost like we were prompted to put that answer. It's like something spoke to us. Go with your gut. That's why I say to put that answer. It's like something spoke to us. Go with your gut. That's why I say go with your gut. It's always right. Your gut.

That's it. So we've talked about three books. And finally, what I like to do is wrap it all up. I like to just give you the floor. And obviously, we can talk about Sendogo or we can talk about something that they can apply today in their lives or maybe something to get their attitude right, or to build morale, or build culture, or to become number one in their business, or whatever that looks like. I'll give you the floor to kind of one last thought.

Well, I think what it boils down to is we're being sold constantly. Online, offline, we're being sold constantly. And you know what? Let's say that we need all those things that we're being sold. When you go out into the world, don't sell, literally solve, don't sell, just solve people's problems. It'll solve your own problems if you solve others' problems. And you'll find out, Tommy, hopefully in this podcast, you've already found out I'm a man of little words and I just say it straight. And basically that's what it boils down to.

That's the key to success right there is solve the problems, don't sell to the problems. Yeah, I agree with that. I think that's very, very powerful, Dave. And I think what I took out of that is a lot of times we come up with a product that it's hard to believe the problems that we solve, like a hot dog on a stick. Right. But we solved a problem for somebody. And that's what it's about. You know, Chaz, Kerry Key and George, those guys come into my office and they just say, hey, what can I do for you? How can I serve you? What are you doing in your business? How can I help? And they don't

sell me. I feel like this Chaz's stuff works really, really well, but there's one of his zones that hasn't worked for us. And I kind of told Andrew, man, he gave us, Andrew's in charge of my marketing department. I said, Chaz is so much for us. How far are we off? He's like, ah, 3%. But you know, this is black and white. If we're off at all, we cut it. And I'm like, but that 3% is like literally 60 bucks for that zone. Yeah. We're not going to cut him because I feel obligated. He's helped us out in 10 more ways. I want to support him. And if it costs me 60 bucks a month for everything he does for me, that's $720 a year.

I'd be glad to do that for a friend. And you know, that's the difference, isn't it? Yes, it is. Loyalty. That's what you're talking about is loyalty. That's as huge as anything we've talked about today or bigger. But loyalty for me,

and tell me if I'm wrong about this, but it seems like i'm probably guilty of it i'm i'm on the very beginning of the millennials but people are like i'm your manufacturer you should be loyal to me i'm like well i kind of feel like you've not been loyal to me you started selling to my competitors i know you've given them the same rate you don't give me the same co-op you used to give me doesn't this a two-way road? So there used to be, I think about my grandpa,

he was born in 1910 in Pennsylvania. And his generation is just like, this is the market we've always gone to. This is the market we'll always go to. This is the farm we've always bought from. It's just, you do what you do because and now i'm like i guess it's a it's a two-way street though isn't it that is it's earned it's like trust it loyalty is earned not not given you have to earn it and you know how many people dave have you heard say these people they're just not loyal anymore i have i have a one thing for them look in the mirror yep yep there's a there's a book on that too is there which one i can't think of the title but it's it's basically you know you're attracting what who you are so if you're attracting non-loyal folks then you must not be loyal yep yep you do birds of feather, right? One other thing I'll say is yesterday my buddy told me to read the four disciplines of execution. So maybe you should check that out. Well, I've got two of them here downloaded. One of them is by Stephen Covey, one of them is by Sean Covey. I don't know. That's weird. But anyway, Dave, I really appreciate you taking the time. I know you're a busy guy. You're always on the phone with CEOs doing your thing with making

that company a monster, probably going to be a billion dollar company. So I appreciate you taking the time. You betcha. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. All right, buddy. Hey, you take it easy. Right on. Thanks, man. 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, Wyatt'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.

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