The Home Service Expert Podcast - How to Consistently Hit Your Revenue Goals With Cold Outreach

Episode Date: November 22, 2019

Aaron Ross is a global keynote speaker who specializes in helping people and companies make money in sustainable, predictable ways. Aaron is the bestselling author of “Predictable Revenue” and the co-author of “From Impossible to Inevitable,” detailing various best practices for companies to grow faster with outbound sales systems. In this episode, we talked about outbound sales, business growth, predictable revenue...

I know there's a lot of entrepreneurs on your show that don't like the idea of selling and having to sell. Hopefully, we like the idea of making money. But if I'm a product person or a customer person, maybe even a marketing person, the idea of selling as a process or salespeople can often be like, I don't want to have to do it. I'm going to have to do this. It's like this baggage. When in reality, again, if you can embrace it, selling is vital to a company to actually helping your customers

because a lot of customers need help making decisions. And selling isn't about taking from them. It's about helping the right customers get clarity to make improvements for them. So they win with more success and progress with whatever they need to do. And you win by just making sales and revenue. 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 Aaron Ross on the call with us. And I'm going to go through everything. This guy is amazing. He's written books. He's a global keynote speaker. He specializes in outbound sales, business growth, predictable. Remember that predictable revenue, business strategy, a little bit about him, predictable revenue incorporated. He's the co-ceo a global keynote speaker visualized roi board member from uh this year and going forward ramp or senior advisor that happened from 2018 going on university how do i

say that aaron university in portuguese it just means predictable university that's our brazilian company i love it i love it you guys love it. You guys saw the scenes here. It's really about helping companies and especially people make money in predictable ways and grow with more, have a plan, repeatable ways to grow, a playbook to growth. That's really the essence of it all. You worked at Salesforce, Ally Ventures, EIR. You were a director of it all. So you've worked at Salesforce, Ally Ventures, EIR. You were a director of corporate sales, global keynote speaker. You were the bestselling author of

Predictable Revenue, turning your business into a sales machine with 100 million best practices on Salesforce or of Salesforce. You're the co-author of From Impossible to Inevitable, which we'll be talking about, which you wrote with Jason Lemkin. And I'm the co-CEO of PredictableRevenue.com, an outbound success company that helps companies grow faster with outbound selling systems. And I got to tell you, most of the listeners, myself included, have not mastered the arena of outbound, which I think is a hidden kind of gem. It's a gold nugget and it's something which I think is a hidden kind of gem. It's a gold nugget and it's something that I think could 10 times this next year. And that's why I'm so excited to get you on. Yeah, totally.

And I can't tell if I should be feeling old after all that stuff. Not impressed because you know, I'm old enough where, you know, when you could always do lots of stuff, but yeah, lots of things. However, it's really how do people, especially business owners, but anyone, how do you make money in a more predictable way and not have to worry about what the next month or quarter is going to bring? Yeah, absolutely. And I got to tell you, I've got a brand new in the last year. So not brand new, but he's a CFO and he's all about setting these next year's goals and KPIs and understanding.

And we got to fall within this percentage of our projections. And I'm like, you know, our projections are in the 50 some odd million next year. And I'm more of a hundred million guy because I can see it. I work backwards into my numbers, but my numbers are contingent on everything going right. But I kind of hate projections, Aaron. I mean, I know why we need it and I know the bank likes to see stuff and I know it's good to have an eye on the ball of where

you're going. But at the same time, I'm like, if you're an innovative company, especially with a guy like you that's familiar with software, it's impossible to predict unknown things that we've never done before and how they're going to react. And I'm a marketing guy. So the marketing guy never wants to hear, Hey, we're only going to grow 30% next year or whatever that looks like. And I'm like, dude, I want to grow 300. So let's start thinking outside of the box. So what do you say to somebody like me? I'm probably more like you than, you know, I think there's, uh, I've always been horrible about projections. That's not my strength. It's kind of funny. So like you said, like a year out, I think people need goals. We all need goals. I either think like 10 years out or within like

the next few days or a few weeks or a few months. But that middle ground, like a year or two, is not where my mind goes. Now, I have a business partner, co-CEO, that is really ideal at the few months to a year to a couple years. So that's how we work. My strengths are different than his, and his strengths are where my weaknesses are. My partner, PredictableRevenue.com.

Yeah, that's super awesome to have the people that complement your weaknesses. I think that's it. Yeah, I get it. I don't want to come with you like, I see the value, but it would be like torture for me to actually try to do that. Well, it sounds like, so I want to just hear from a round picture exactly where you've been and how you form predictable revenue. What exactly does that company do? How does that work? And if I start back a bit, because I'll do the short version of the story is when I was younger, late 20s, I started a company,

online company called Lease Exchange to help people kind of get multiple bids for equipment leases. And we raised millions in venture capital and that company failed. One of the reasons was because I, as the founder and CEO, didn't know how to build and manage a sales team. I'd done a bunch of stuff before that.

I was more of an engineer, so engineering in school and programming and ended up doing some finance and so on. But I need to know sales and how to build a sales process and team if I'm going to do another company. Because I know in hindsight, well, a lot of people bring money in, but I had hired a VP of sales. I hired one, but I abdicated my understanding to him and I didn't delegate. What I should have done, now what I recommend is, if you're an entrepreneur, to really embrace

the idea of selling as a life skill, how to do it, how to make a process around it, so that when you do hire or delegate or something's not working, you have a sense of how to fix it and improve it. That led me to Salesforce. I really just took the most junior job there was because that was the only job they had and I wanted to learn sales and ended up creating this outbound prospecting system that helped them add more than $100 billion in a few years, probably more than a billion or who knows how much by now.

But it was a very predictable, repeatable way to get basically as many qualified sales appointments as we needed for the salespeople. And that became the basis of the Predictable Revenue book, the first one I wrote. Got it. So tell me a little bit about that. I always say sales is everything, right?

Sales masks all the bad things in your company. It masks if you don't hire exactly correctly. It masks if you're not updating your CRM. It masks, for some reason, sales has the ability to be a cure-all. If it's not working, it's kind of the end-all, right? Yeah. Well, I think sales, you know, there's a lot of entrepreneurs. I know there's a lot of entrepreneurs on your show that don't like the idea of selling and having to sell. Hopefully there's, we like the idea of making money,

but like, ah, if I'm a product person or I'm a customer person, or maybe, maybe even a marketing person, the idea of selling as a process or salespeople can often be like, eh, I don't want to have to do it. It's like this baggage. When in reality, again, if you can embrace it, selling is vital to a company to actually helping your customers because a lot of customers need help making decisions. And selling isn't about taking from them. actually helping your customers because a lot of customers need help making decisions and selling

isn't about taking from them it's about helping the right customers get clarity to make improvements for them and so they win with more success and progress with whatever they need to do and you win by just making sales and revenue so it is the lifeblood. If the company is growing, like I said, if the revenue is growing and growing at the right pace and you have some predictability, that points to a lot of things you're doing right. And if it's not, that might be pointing to a lot of challenges or maybe call them opportunities to get better. Okay. So let's go into that a little bit. So I know we've got a lot of stuff that the listeners could take from the book. It talks about an approach to sales that most, probably most of the listeners, like I said, including me, haven't considered.

Let's talk a little bit about, and this is, I got about 10 points on this. What are your thoughts on sales teams doing prospecting? Yep. There's this article that got written up as a summary. The article's title was Why Salespeople Shouldn't Prospect. So what I see,

there's two books. There's Predictable Revenue and there's From Impossible to Inevitable. One of the few topics that's kind of in both but updated in the new one is the idea that why salespeople shouldn't prospect. Because probably if you have salespeople, or let's call them people who sell, because you might call them different, the number one biggest

problem is salespeople trying to do or supposed to do too many things. Salespeople who need to be prospecting for themselves, they need to be planning customers and maybe even maintaining customers. Again, you might call them business development people or associates, whatever you want to call them. They do too much. And reality is when salespeople are supposed to prospect,

but they don't like the prospect, they're not any good at it. And even if they can do it well, they can't keep it up because they get too busy with customers. So the solution thing, and if you have salespeople or the equivalent, this is the number one thing that will make everything else better, is to specialize your sales team. Which that means is, like any sports team, and I don't know any sports team where a coach would go out and tell all the players, hey, everybody go

attack at soccer, whatever the sport is, and everybody go defend. Now you've got attackers, defenders, goalie, everyone's got their place. If you want to create a team, why not in sales? Now, and to the extreme, the fastest growing companies in the world all follow this model that is, you have prospectors who prospect, and that's all they do. The good appointments they pass on to salespeople, the closers, often called account executives. And account executives sign new customers, and they pass those customers off to different types of teams afterwards, whether you call them account management or customer success.

And if you have inbound leads, and this is really B2B to start, The inbound leads go to a team often called LDRs or inbound SDRs. It's really junior salespeople and their job is to just respond to all inbound leads coming in. So what this means is each person is doing fewer things better. It's about focus. And while you as a company may not... Those are four roles. Maybe you do three or five. The way you apply this could be different. You might, it's about your people, more jobs, so the people on your team can do fewer things better and get really good at what they do.

They're specializing is what it sounds like. And they're more accountable to a smaller, micro-targeted audience than they would be a jack of all trades, right? Yeah, it's the mental focus. It's also now there's a lot of process and technique and staying organized and things you need to do to do it well. And like, for example, with prospecting, and prospecting doesn't have to mean cold calling with the phone.

Maybe there's cold emailing, cold calling. There's lots of ways to do outbound prospecting. But I've never seen a team, they're individuals that can do it well and close, but they're hard to find. I've never seen a team have great prospecting results when the prospecting is done part-time. You have to have people who are a person, people who are dedicated to doing the prospecting for that to really do well and to be predictable and for people to be expert at it. It's just, you cannot be a great prospector doing it part-time. So, you know, you're a technology guy that we talked about before the call and I am,

I'm not near your level, but I've set up trip campaigns for a voicemail last, and then it text messages them. And then depending on the response, it does another text. If it's an opted in list, and then I send three email trips, then I send them a letter. And I've kind of figured out a way to do prospecting. And there's nothing better than a real phone call, especially a warm lead. But as far as a cold lead, tell me a little bit about your perspective on that. Well, I think there's always a spectrum. So I think if there's really entrepreneurs listening

here, it's realizing that there is a spectrum of leads, right? There's cold, there can be ice cold, cold, lukewarm, warm, hot. There's a spectrum. And the way you handle them can often be different. So it's important. Most small businesses up to maybe a few hundred thousand, a few million, maybe 10 million, get started and get most of their customers through referrals, through word of mouth, through organic sources. Customers tell their friends or you're going out in your neighborhood, wherever this is, just kind of find you with relationships. And those are going to be warmer, like you said, warmer. But they tend to plateau.

At some point, they plateau. And in order to keep your growth up and also create like a second leg of the stool, right? So if you have all your businesses dependent on Google searching, if that changes, you could be screwed. So to include another channel to get leads, I encourage every business person to consider outbound prospecting, whether it's for customers, or it could be for partners, if you do channel partners, or even for consumer companies, it could be distribution partners or channel partners or marketing partners.

So when you're reaching out to people who don't know you and it's much colder, the phone is still one of the best ways to connect with people. I mean, in person is best, and the phone is next best, or video conferencing is the next phone, and so on. But not everyone's going to take a phone call with you. Not everyone's going to do a video call with you or meet with you. So a lot of the technique in Outbound is learning how to engage people when we'll only give you a tiny bit of attention. And you might be able just to have like a single online message or a single email or quick phone call. How do you start that conversation? Because it's very different the way you start that versus when there's a referral or a warm lead or warm phone call.

It is. And I've actually got into an air conditioning company and seen the whole company built on pulling lists, doing a predictive dialer, and literally all cold outbound. And they built a successful, pretty huge company just on outbound landlines. And that to me is way too much work. Well, true. And yet, so I think it's interesting. Did you know, so there's this kind of myth, I think in, at least in technology, but with entrepreneurs that if you just create the right something, blog posts, viral video app, and you get it out there, then a bunch of people are going to come and come into you and want to sign up or buy it's just kind of this dream of the overnight success because well google did it instagram did it pubspot did it there's a lot of examples but think about any almost any company

that is known for having a great product and people finding them. Almost all of them do outbound. SurveyMonkey, have you heard of them? Yeah, I use them. Or the companies that made inbound marketing famous, HubSpot, Marketo, they do outbound. So at some point, in order to create more proactive ways to grow, almost everyone does outbound in some form, whether it's for customers, for partners, or for marketing partners.

It can be a lot of work. It's not about having to do it now with everything else. It's about knowing when it's a good fit and also understanding the value of it. Because when you do get it to work, it can create such a powerful way to grow in a predictable way. At Salesforce, we knew if we wanted to drive an extra 50 million in revenue next year, we could work backwards and calculate how many prospectors do we need. At a company called Afria, they were the fastest growing company in North America a few years ago. So for six months, they had three prospectors help them kind of figure out their system.

And then once they said, okay, it's been six months, we see some stuff working. We've got some confidence. Now let's hire 40 prospectors. So within three years, they're adding an extra 30 million and a broken a hundred million in total revenue. So yeah, it's not easy. It's simple, but not easy. It can be a lot of work. It takes longer than you want, but when it works, it will make you money. I think for me, if we talk about low hanging fruit, number one, I think about referral partners, otherwise known for me as affiliates, right? So an affiliate is more of a word in the software business, but they're referral partners. So painters, exterminators, exterminators, the number one entryway for bugs in a house is through the bottom of the garage

door when the bottom rubber's bad. So it makes them look good. And if they get a little piece of it and it's easily trackable, I mean, there's thousands just in every single city and I'm in 17 markets. Painters, why would you paint an old shitty garage door when you could replace it and make the house look immaculate? So I think outbound for me and building relationships, so we're starting an event team. We're going to do 800 events just in Maricopa County, which is Phoenix next year. I didn't want to come off that. I just think outbound cold call to landlines is tougher. But one of the things that, very interesting, I've mentioned this once before on the podcast, but Aaron, I talked to a guy two weeks ago or three weeks ago, and he only advertises in 10 zip codes in Dallas. And he said,

dude, I own those zip codes. I am blasting, blasting, blasting. I'm putting signs. I own all the billboards. I'm hitting them in the digital space, I'm retargeting, I'm doing all this, you know. I said, why only 10 zip codes? He goes, Tommy, I do almost $10 million just in those 10 zip codes because they're all 3,500 square feet or more, which means they have two or more air conditioning units.

And he had all these reasons why, and I said, man, that's genius. But he's also doing outbound to those areas. He's at every soccer game, he's at every event, he's genius. But he's also doing outbound of those areas. He's at every soccer game. He's at every event. He's asking for referrals. I wanted to talk about cold calling 2.0, but I don't know at what point it's considered outbound.

I think just asking a neighbor if we could do their work would be considered outbound. Now that might be- Maybe, yeah. Yeah, there's a spectrum, right? It's kind of like now there's a gender spectrum, there's an autistic spectrum, there's an outbound spectrum. Ultimately, it's really about taking the initiative in some way,

which could be as brave as walking up to a stranger in an event or making a cold call on a landline, or maybe a smaller step like, let's say, going to the knocking on the neighbor's doors. Say, hey, we just did someone at the work next door. Would you be interested or would you know someone who might be interested? It's all a version of being more proactive. It's really about being proactive and how am I going to learn about and create the systems

that enable me to grow my company with more predictability so I don't have to guess and I don't have to wonder. So, you know, I know of a lot of companies. It's Windows, Alarm, Table, and Solar that do outbound door knocking. And what they do is they bring a lot of the LDS, which is Mormon religion, which absolutely fascinating, amazing people.

And I mean, if you could sell religion, obviously you're not afraid to go up to someone. You know, these teams that come into a new city, they warm up every morning. They talk about the success from the day before and they work on strategies of how to get in. And most of these people selling cable also sell dish. They sell both. It's crazy. So if you have Comcast or Cox Communications, they're going to sell you satellites.

So they've got a rebuttal for everything. But I've seen companies literally. And what I like the most about these companies, Eric, is you're right. It's predictable. You say, if I bring this many guys in, I know based on historical data that this is how many I'm going to close within 10 percent. Right. So, yeah, if you haven't experienced it. So my buddy Austin at Moxie, he's like, it's all front-loaded, Tommy. I don't make money the first year. When we started in a new city, it all, he goes, I got guys that make $200,000 in a summer. I'm like, man, but they must've made you a hell of a lot of money. So when you say spectrum, here's what I think. I think top of funnel, bottom of funnel. Top of funnel means it needs nurturing.

They're not ready to make a decision now, but they're going to be. Bottom of the funnel means they found me on Google. They need it today. And working that, so the top of the spectrum, bottom of the spectrum, I think kind of, is that probably the same type philosophy? It's similar. It's a little bit different. So top of funnel yet to me means

they're still learning, they're considering, right? They haven't gotten to the step. They're aware of you, but they haven't gotten to the step of kind of evaluating and then purchasing. I think a spectrum is a little bit different, which would be there's an inbound funnel, which is, let's say you generate leads online, Maybe it's online marketing, or maybe you're doing webinars. And you're kind of used to, all right, if I spend $1,000 on Google with PPC, then I'll get X number of people who click, and then Y number of people who register, and then Z people who purchase. So in that funnel, in those steps, we would call nets.

So there's these three types of leads seeds nets and spears and the important thing is each type tends to have different funnel metrics and steps because each type of lead a lead is not a lead is not a lead and so basically your funnel for your online leads and campaigns will look different than your door knocking campaign. So if you're outbound, your spears, right, your, your target approach is knocking on doors, which is a really, it's a cold approach. That's the steps, activities, and metrics you're tracking will be different.

And the top of the funnel will be different. There's still a top of funnel and bottom of funnel, but the whole funnel is different than like an inbound or marketing driven funnel. Yeah. There's still a top of funnel and bottom of funnel, but the whole funnel is different than like an inbound or marketing driven funnel. Yeah, I think I'm reading you loud and clear is that most of us treat every lead the same. And that's why we have a horrible conversion rate sometimes on the phone calls. And that's why. Okay. And it's misleading.

So here's a common one in software. I say head of marketing is, okay, is okay considering hey maybe we should do outbound okay so hey aaron well what's a typical lead conversion rate in outbound and like that metric is meaningless in outbound at least when you're targeting companies you talk to prospects and then the prospect gets interested in the first phone call and then you create an opportunity so maybe you could call account conversion rate, but the metrics are different and the steps are different. It's just different. So you have to think about for each kind of campaign. And again, I mentioned the three

big ones. Seeds would be relationship-driven leads, customer referrals, usually. Then nets would be casting by net, like marketing, broadcasting, one-to-many programs. And the spears would be targeted outbound prospecting with people in the targeted list. So these are just three generalizations. But it's really the point, like you said, each way you generate leads is different and might lead have different metrics, might have different sales steps. They might have different sales cycles or average deal sizes. So you have to be kind of more intelligent and insightful about how you segment or how you separate and measure the different types of ways you generate leads so that you have

accurate funnels and accurate insights to know, okay, if I do X with online advertising, I'll get Y. But if I'm doing door knocking, if I do A, then I'll get B because they're just different. But any way you're doing it, you're looking for that repeatability, that predictability. Got it. Okay. So yeah, and that makes sense. You know what's crazy is I could tell you on a day's sales with over 100 technicians in the field, within five thousand dollars i mean it's crazy and we're in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and it's for some reason a lot of guys mostly technicians are guys for at least my business but i'd be honored to bring a girl on but moral of the story here

is for some reason when a guy has a great day the next day is not as good it's like he already made his money it's just weird how yeah else works. Well, we say in the impossible book that comfort's the enemy of growth. And comfort doesn't mean taking it easy. Comfort also means habits. The habits you have are what you're used to and it's hard to change habits to, whether it's in eating or money or love. Yeah. And habits are what I've been talking a lot about lately in my Facebook live videos is it's so funny how we get into a habit. And I was watching something by Simon Sinek yesterday. And he simply said, he said, Aaron, let me ask you this. What day did you fall in love with your wife? I mean, what was the minute that you were in love? And you'd probably say, well, I don't know the exact,

I mean, we fell in love over time. And then I say, okay, well, when you started working out, what was the day and the time exactly on the clock that you knew you were in shape? Or what was the time when you were brushing your teeth that you knew your teeth were healthy? Well, all of these things don't exist without consistency. If you work out, intensity is the biggest mistake in the world because you could be intense for eight hours working out and not see a difference. For 20 minutes a day or 25 days, you'll see a huge difference. So I just really liked that notion of thinking too of pretend me and you were Navy SEALs, and we were the exact same body, exact same shape. We run together every day, same amount of push-ups, sit-ups, same mental capacity. The difference is you think smarter

than me. And what I mean by that is I go and I start, and it's a five-week hell week. I mean, it's Navy SEALs, man. They go through brutal. They starve to a five week hell week. I mean, it's Navy SEALs, man. They go through brutal. They starve to death. They get drowned. I mean, it's just, they go under freezing temperatures. And my thinking is the first day is I can't take five more weeks. And I ring the bell. You're the exact same person. You're just as cold as me. You say, you know what? It's cold, but I know at lunch, they're going to give us a blanket and feed us so I can make it to lunch. And then you finish lunch and they're torturing you. You got to run 50 miles. And then you say, I can do the 50 miles

because I know they're going to give us rest at night. So if I could just make it to after dinner. And that's what these guys have framed themselves as is whether you're smoke, quit smoking or quit drinking coffee or whatever that looks like is I just need to make the little accomplishment to get to that next hour, that next punch. And it's amazing that the same exact way. I just love the concept of that. And I was telling myself,

people, I'm like, look, forget this next customer, forget your next job, forget calling the dispatcher, forget all that stuff. Focus in the now on what you're doing and maximize that opportunity. So often we take a shortcut and say,

this is going to take too long. You know, the customer is not really into it. I'm just going to go to the next one that's easy. And I'm like, dude, you're already there. You already drove there. The gas was there. The iPad worked perfectly. Our CSRs, our dispatchers, our marketing, everything had to be perfect for you to go into that garage. Now freaking take advantage of it. You know what I mean? Yeah. And I'm actually working on that even myself, like right now. And for me, like I've written this. So there's two main books. They've been very popular. Why I was here in Brazil and by the downs, I'm doing like keynotes to 5,000 person conferences because of these books but working on the next

book I've just been stuck I've been stuck for like two years don't want to write I just resist it I think part of it's because I kind of my expectations for what I need to do have gone up and so when I write I feel like ah this is all crap but what works for me one of the things that works there's a couple

first we call them forcing functions but the things that works, there's a couple first, we call them forcing functions, but the thing that really works is, like I said, just focus just on the next step. Open my laptop, open Word, put the cursor in the right spot. Okay, just do one word. Because as soon as I try to think forward,

and I know too much about what it takes to do a great book, I just get stuck because it's totally overwhelming. And to come back to just that one little step, tiny little step, writing the next word in the moment that has been working for me slowly, but surely. I mean, literally, so I'm working on my learning management system. And right now I'm going through one of my manuals and building quizzes and going through, and I'm building five minute incremental learning ability, like little mini courses. They're subdivided into courses,

modules, and units. And I'm like, man, I got 50 fricking five pages of this manual. So this week I said, I'm just going to do five today. And then I did five the next day. Then I did 10. Then I did 12. All of a sudden, today I'm going to finish it. But the difference is, is I got started. How many people do you know that say, I'm going to start the diet and the New Year's resolution? And every New Year's resolution for the most part fails because they pick a time. They don't get started today. And then they say, you know what? It's okay if I cheat. All of a sudden, their routine gets destroyed because they let in the worst thing that destroys

routines. It's like they didn't drink for three weeks. Everything's perfect. They're working out every day. They're eating perfect. And then that one setback, that one doing shots with your buddies, whatever that looks like, takes you back to ground zero. So I think part of it is having self-discipline.

I'm a big fan of accountability, discipline, and consistency. I think those are the three core things in my mind that really stand out. And the ability to get started because how many people do you know that say, I'm going to start outbound. I will. And then they 10 years go by and they go, what the hell? I forgot that I was even going to do that. Oh, yeah.

No, I mean, I see that mostly with kids. I have a big family. We've got nine going on 10 kids. 10 kids? Amazing. Half are adopted. It's a couple from my wife's first marriage, three bio kids together, and they're adopted.

And it's like the hustle. It's easy to say, oh, I'll do like a private, kind of like a kid date or maybe a romantic date. And all this stuff just goes by in the hustle. And it's like, wow, years go by. So I see that more, I think, in my personal life than in business. But it's just like, how can you seize the moment? Not even the day. How do you seize the moment? It's so easy to put it off. I think what's helped me is there's two things, Aaron, and I love having conversations like this. I want to dive back into this stuff, but sometimes the best part of these podcasts is

just having a conversation. Two things that I've learned as my personal assistant, I am not good at time management. So she's really been able to set a precedence for people that I'm going to be dealing with and say, hey, Tommy's got 30 minutes and I'm going to be here in five minutes till to make sure that we're ready to get through this. And I've learned to kind of tell people, even if it's my mom calling, sometimes when my mom calls and I love my mom, I'm a mama's boy. But sometimes I'm like, man, it's going to take me a while. I want at least 15 minutes to catch up to my mom. So I miss when I have five minutes, I just say, I'll call her back. And that never happens. So now now i'm like mom. I only got a few minutes, but I want to just catch up So as long as I put that out there, but number two

is google calendar And having a calendar that is my live die Just everything on that calendar needs to get done and not run over and be Methodical with my calendar because my time has become the most precious commodity. And I've learned how to delegate. Aaron, out of the delegators you might know, I'm not very proud of myself when it comes to a lot of things, but I've become overwhelmingly almost too much of a delegator. If I could delegate, go into the bathroom, I would. But with that being said, sometimes my only break in the day at home, right?

It's a safe place. You just spend an hour in the bathroom. But, you know, the last thing I wanted to say about that was delegation is great. And sometimes I dump things. But for the most part, I'm a pretty good delegator. But at the same point, it's really been game changing for me to just really spend time with my team and go over what my expectations are. Because one thing I've learned about delegating, time is one thing, right? But even if you sleep, let's say seven hours is healthy. I know a lot of people sleep four hours, which is not healthy. Let's just say seven. No, it's not healthy.

So you're at 17 hours in a day. You only have, Aaron, you only have a small amount of that for hyper, hyper, hyper focus. And I mean, your attention span is a hundred percent productivity and you are on your A game and there's no interruption. So what I've learned is, yeah, I've got 17 hours or 18 hours, whatever that looks like in a day. And people say, well, I can do this, this, this, this, and this. But the truth be told is you've only got a few hours to manifest that amazing work that can come from your inner soul. And if you realize that, and that's with your wife, that's with your kids, and that's with your business, that's with your spiritual, that's with your physical, that you could actually pull yourself in 100%. And when you start to realize that, you start to cherish those few hours. And if you're like me, like a normal entrepreneur,

you say yes to a lot of things and realize, man, I had enough time to do this, but I don't have enough focus time to work on this. And that's where I feel like most of us blow it out of the water. We take on too many things, we're juggling. And a lot of the balls fall out. That's my observation over the last year is I've mastered the art lately to say no. And I've pissed a lot of people off because they're like, why wouldn't you help me? And I'm like, I believe in you. And I believe in the product. I believe in the process. I just know that I'd be doing you a disfavor because I can't give you that focused time. It wouldn't be fair to my businesses, my current partners and what I'm working on.

And you wouldn't get a hundred percent of me. So I usually say yes, but not right now because it's, it's easier for me to say yes. So what is your observations on that? No, I think you're right. It's easy to see how much of my day and time gets eaten up by all the little stuff that isn't hyperproductive. And hyper whether it might be filling up the car with gas or paying a bill or all these different other things. I just see how much there is, especially with a big family and business, a couple of businesses. Yeah.

I'm still working on, I delegate a lot, but there's lots of stuff that I'm not sure how I've tried to in the past. And you know, like delegation or assistance have been an up and down thing. I've had more failure with them than success. But luckily nowadays, I have a lot of partners. My wife is really a partner.

That's just not even romantic, but just in terms of running the family and just for the basics. I have business partners. For when I do books, I have book partners. I have a new book idea for this one called Predictable Closing, where you have a co-author. So for me, calendar is really important.

If I don't put it on the calendar, it's just not going to happen, like exercise. And I have to upgrade it because even if I need to book it on the calendar and hire a trainer and pay them, I know I have to show up. Or having a partner for a book. That's one way I keep myself accountable is committing to things, especially with people because then I have to do it and I have to focus.

I end up wasting less time because I see the older I get and I can see not only how much time I wasted in the past but I see how much time I waste today, like now. And it's like, I'm old enough. I'm almost 48. Like clock is ticking and nothing changed. Like having kids, it really changed how I saw time and realized, wow, it happens and it's

gone. I got a limited number of years to go because they grow up so fast. Every year is a blessing. Every minute is a blessing. I've seen the most amazing guy in my entrepreneurship club. I mean, this guy was on top of the world, Aaron. I got to tell you, I just, I wasn't necessarily envious. I was proud of him.

I was just like, man, this guy's crushing records. His girlfriend's amazing. They're getting married. They talked about having kids. He was traveling all over the world. Never a dull moment. Never not a smile on his face. Always complimented people.

Six months ago, got in a helicopter accident, died right then and there. And it just goes to show you, God rest his soul, and these lessons is, it's a privilege to be here. This isn't like we just get to be here. And you never know what's going to happen. I've seen right now, my brother-in-law is going through

a lot. He's 43. He runs marathons. He's as healthy as can be. And they don't know what's going on with him. It's not his kidneys. He's been getting dizzy. His blood pressure has been fluctuating. He's got three amazing kids, my niece and two nephews. And we don't know what's exactly going on. We're probably, well, my sister's looking at taking him to the Mayo Clinic. I mean, he's not deathly sick, but it's pretty worrisome. He fainted the other day. He's 43. And he's one of my best friends. He's an amazing guy. And we're praying every day. I mean, literally, I have 100% confidence he's going to be fine. But you just never know. Look, work's important.

And I hate people that put off work because here's what happens. They turn 50 and they go, shit, I have no money. I should have been more focused on my business because now my body aches. I don't have enough to pay for my children's tuition. I don't have enough to fly my mother-in-law out. I don't have enough money for Christmas presents. And I'm never going to be able to leave my job because compound interest is the biggest thing. Einstein said it. It's the largest thing in the universe when it's working for you. But

I'm really big on starting young and getting your financials together and letting your money work for you. But then, and I'm 36. I have nobody to talk because I'm not married and I don't have kids. Never been married and never had a kid. I plan on it. I'm having fun right now. And I'm not going to. So many people, Aaron, they get married to get married because they say, I need to get married by the time I'm 28 because that's what. Yeah, it's an arbitrary date, age.

And I don't know. I'll be an old dad. I don't care if I need a cane. I'll be walking up to that graduation party, doing my boogie. Oh, I got married at, was it 40? I got married eight years ago. I had 39 and 40. I mean, I went from zero to nine kids in like six years, which I wouldn't always recommend. We have a bit of a crazy family. That's crazy. Yeah. The newest book is from impossible to inevitable. I know it's a lot of words,

from impossible book. And I actually write about that and how getting married and having kids is what actually lit a fire in my ass to really make more money. I think a lot of people think, okay, family, oh, it's going to cost money, cost time, take away from my career. In reality, it's really been the secret

to my success for my career. Having a family, having a reason to make more money and to push myself, having a reason to be more careful with my time, to be a better person, business person, and person person. I think that's probably, and correct me if I'm wrong, but when we talk about Simon Sinek, it starts with why. I think your why goes a lot back to your family. Does that sound like it's true? Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, I say having a family has made me wealthy

in emotion, like emotional wealth. Having a business is business wealth, but both are important. I mean, before I got married, I was like a lot of people, I was lonely. I had some friends and stuff, but I drifted around trying different things. I had had some business success, but nothing I was really passionate about. For me, at least getting married and having kids brought a whole lot more purpose and meaning and then money to me.

So I really have the best of all worlds. And my problem is, I mean, first of all, I am busy. I don't get enough rest to sleep, but it's worth it. Especially I traded all my free time. I finally did this talk about, the title was Raising 10 Kids

While Building a $5,000 Business. So yeah, I know I had free time before, but a worthwhile investment to trade my free time for more love and money right i trade i had a bunch of savings before and i kind of used that all to invest the family different things so i traded savings in the bank for financial confidence i think a lot of times when we're looking at starting a business or maybe getting married having kids some of these big life changes it's really easy to see what we're going to lose, like my time or money. And it's harder to gain,

to see what the benefits are. But I know for me, whenever I've taken the leap and whatever fears or concerns, but it just felt right and just said, yes, I'm going to do it. It's always worked out. Even when it sometimes would have been incredibly frightening or scary or intimidating, but just got through it and was better and stronger and smarter for it afterwards. Yeah, a lot of things are scary. I think I've lost the ability to get scared very much because I do things. I have so much confidence in my team and myself to just perform. It's like I never go into a game

thinking I could lose. If I thought at all in the back of my mind in that voice, that this is very, very, very, very risky. I guess I just never, well, I don't go bungee jumping. I don't do a whole lot of crazy extreme sports, but I'm just saying in business, I guess it would be scary to do what I do. People are like, people used to ask my stepdad, they used to say, how's Tommy successful? He goes, he just got the biggest balls I've ever seen. He just doesn't care. He takes more chances, but he doesn't look at the calculated chances and risks. And I don't know if I appreciate that answer.

Yeah. And that's good. I mean, so I think everybody, and this is one of the dangers of um i think for for people who are just getting started is to idolize people who are further ahead right oh my god tommy you have this huge business and or gary v or elon musk or me and everyone's got fears they're just in different places so it might be for some people it's in business other people it might be in. Other people might be in relationships. Other people might be with their parents or other people might be with age or fear or looks or, you know, there's infinite versions of this.

I think the important thing is to kind of start to identify where am I, where do I have anxiety? And is it useful fear where it's like, you know, I probably shouldn't get into the cage with that lion or is it it useful fear where it's like, you know, I probably shouldn't get into the cage with that lion, or is it not useful fear? Like, oh, I don't want to start a business because, you know, it's going to embarrass me if it fails. And then if it's not helpful to realize that and say, okay, yeah,

I'm nervous. I'm at the top of the bungee jump, but I'm going to do it anyway. And to be able to do that again and again and again, because it can take years to go over having, like for me, I had a fear of public speaking when I was younger, in my 20s. In fact, from my first jobs, my feedback was I just wasn't good at verbal communication.

And like I said, now with lots of practice, especially the last 10 years, people ask me, hey, are you nervous going on stage? Because in Brazil, I did two conferences here with like 5,000 people each. And I'm not nervous. I've done it. I know the content. It's fun.

But it took a lot of practice to get there. So your fears can go away and be turned even to fun, but it might take time and time and time and time again of walking through them to realize they're just an illusion and be able to get used to them before you can overcome them, whether it's in money or relationships or anything in life. That's interesting. Yeah. It's kind of facing your demons. One of the things that I have, you know, seeing them first and then facing them. Yeah.

So, so let me ask you this. I don't enjoy accounting. I've got a master's degree. I've taken a lot of accounting classes. I don't say that as a conceited thing. I mean, I went through it. I understand it. I know how to read a balance sheet. I've done annual reports. I think it would mean more to me today to take the courses I took 10 years ago. But at the end of the day, I don't want to become good at accounting. I mean, it's nice to be able to talk the jargon. I'd love to know more. Don't get me wrong.

I'm always in self-improving myself. But I hired somebody that enjoys it, number one. And two, is an expert at it. Number three, he grew a business to 400 million and he's on my team now. So why reinvent the wheel? What know, what is your thoughts? Do you become good at everything in your business or do you say, I'm good enough to talk about it and discuss it,

but I'm going to leave it up to the masters who enjoy it. Yeah, no, I think it's, it's great to know, Hey, here's what I'm great at. And for me, um, you know, our business, I'm more like the outside person, speaking, writing, books, marketing. And what I'm not good at is the spreadsheets and operations and financial projections and hiring and all the process and internal systems. Now, I can be very good at that because I've done that at Salesforce.com, but it's not something I enjoy. I took accounting. I kind of like it. I don't want to do that. And I recognize that. So I think

it's important. If you want to be an entrepreneur, it's important to know how the pieces work. It's important to know that. It doesn't mean you have to do it. I love taking notes from a guy like you because sales is like my jam. I love marketing more than anything in life, but I got to tell you, I love looking somebody in the eyes and asking them for money. As long as I know they're going to get a 10 times return, whether that be peace of mind, because I fixed their garage door and their kids are going to be safe or because I could help 10 times their business at the very minimum. People ask me, why do I do a little bit of consulting or

do these groups? And I'm like, dude, like I say, I'd say this honestly is that I don't care as much about the money. Yeah, my time's worth something and it costs me money to do Facebook ads and to build a team. But at the end of the day, there's nothing better in my life, Aaron, nothing to win a guy calls me up and a gal. And I've had hundreds of these messages from the podcast to consulting to just people watching my Facebook Live videos is you don't understand when you did this podcast, it changed my life.

My marriage is better. I'm a better father. My business is running. My employees respect me. Whatever that looks like, those are the times in my life. If you think about the seven love languages, I think I'm words of affirmation. mean as far as you go what do you think you crave in this world what's the

there's i don't know if you ever read the book the seven love languages but what do you think yours are um i've done that let's see mine uh physical affection is one and it kind of varies nowadays it's probably also an act of service just because having a big family and businesses is can be overwhelming but physical affection is a big one so for me not that i want physical affection from you know like the conference hugs so i think that yeah like acknowledgement It definitely feels good when people say, hey, I read your book, loved it. Or they write a five-star Amazon review. And if I get a one-star review, it hurts.

Over time, you kind of get used to that. I think it's important. It's not necessarily good to get too much appreciation from compliments or too much depression from negative comments. I don't want my attitude to be judged by driven by other people either way you know of course it is sometimes so i think for me primarily it's like i do need i want to expand the business i'm driven to

expand the business and brand so that i can make more money for my family so i make a lot of money but we spent a lot. It's crazy how much we spend. I make almost seven figures. The business is five, six million. I personally make a little bit less than a million speaking, consulting, and so on. It's just amazing how expensive a family is. But that's still a big driver. And to help people like my employees i care about them partners so it's money for the family it's uh success and it's money fulfillment for my business partners and employees i really like helping people so financially for my family and kind of career-wise for an education and opportunities for the partners employees i work with if someone wants to get a hold of you, how do you do that, Aaron?

Well, again, the best book to start with, it would be From Impossible to Inevitable. It's on Amazon, but fromimpossible.com is a simple landing page. It's like with the entrepreneurship book, the growth Bible, Silicon Valley, I call it. And then for outbound services, sales and so on, and consulting and

speaking, PredictableRevenue.com. Yep, I'm on the site. And then is there any books you recommend other than obviously both of your books? Is there anything that kind of helped you along your entrepreneurial path? So yeah, one of them that was really influential on my success at salesforce.com and creating predictable sales systems is called the Toyota way. So I took a lot of inspiration from, yeah, from Toyota systems and I guess as I'm an engineer at heart. So yeah, that book still classic. Cool. And then one last thing, and then I'll get you to the airport.

If you can leave the audience with just one last final thought, I'll give you the floor. So I think when we wrote, my co-author Jason Lemkin and I did this impossible book. One of the parts I'm really proud about, so there's a lot of on how to kind of

nail your niche and market and how to generate leads and sell and build a sales team, manage people. But then, and how to nail your niche and market and how to generate leads and sell and build a sales team and manage people. But then, and how to increase your deal sizes. But one of the parts that is very different, I think, and we're proud of is adding a section called do the time. And really, the seven sections, there's a painful truth for each. And this one is, whatever that big thing is you want, it's going to take years longer than you want. I think most people see all these stories of fast success, whether it's someone getting married,

losing weight, making money, selling a company. And they're in this state of, I can't do that. Mine's not working. I'm struggling. Why are they all crushing it? And I'm not. But you just got to remember everyone has struggles. I do. Tom does. They're just different. And people don't like to post about them because it's no fun, often inappropriate. And to remember, you just got to keep taking the steps, whether it's like the baby steps we talked about. You just got to keep like, where do you want to get to? And you just got to keep taking the steps because it might take years longer than you want. And the people who fail are just the ones that quit and give up. Don't give up. I love it.

Well, this is powerful stuff, Aaron. I can't wait to get deep into this. And I've got so many notes and stuff to talk to my team about. I really appreciate it. You're out of L.A. right now. You happen to be in Brazil. And then you're headed to Scotland with the fam, right? Yeah, we're moving to Edinburgh in a couple

months. Just because we want to, yeah. It's a big project. Very amazing stuff. Well, Aaron, I really appreciate you coming on. I think the listeners got a ton out of this. Safe travels and I'll catch up with you soon. Yeah. Thanks, Tom. Really appreciate it and great to meet you.

You as well. Have a great day. Yeah. Thanks, Tom. Really appreciate it and great to meet you. You as well. Have a great day. All right. 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. And also when you subscribe, what I'm going to do is let you know the next guest coming on the podcast. And I'll let you email me anything you want me to ask that next person coming on. All

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