The Home Service Expert Podcast - How to Embrace the Right Mindset to Bounce Back from Any Setback

Episode Date: December 11, 2020

Jerry Isenhour is a speaker, mentor, coach, educator, and the author of Chaos to Reinvention: How to Turn Chaos into Clarity. He built various businesses from the ground up, including a chimney service business, a fireplace & outdoor living retail operation, and a manufacturing entity. Launched in 2010, his business coaching service, CVC Coaching, primarily assists professionals in the chimney and venting industry. In this episode, we talked about strategic planning, new business development, sales, small business, marketing strategy...

So I was basically owned by the banks because in that time you could get equity funding. If you have property, you could get funding for it. It's not like it is today. So in this fateful day in 2010, they called all my loans, gave me five days to come up with, I'll give you the figures, $1.3 million and said, you got five days to do it. And I said, you got to be kidding me. They were serious. I lost all my businesses. I lost my home, one of my homes. I lost my commercial businesses.

I basically had no job. I was able to sell my manufacturing entity to my wife, lock, stock and barrel. She owns it today, still operates it. And all of a sudden I'm unemployed on North Carolina unemployment insurance, pulling an unemployment check. Still remember this day, $423 a week, Tommy. That's what I got as a out of work CEO of my own company because I found out I qualified for unemployment. And then it's like, okay, what you going to do now? 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.

I've got Jerry Eisenhower here. First of all, how is it in Concord, North Carolina? Right now, it is cold. We're down in the 20s at night. We're in the mid-50s in the daytime, but it's right chilly in the South right now. I bet. How's the pandemic hitting you guys? Pandemic, like I say, it's everywhere. In fact, it's running to a lot of my clients right now. I just found out that one of my clients has it, but it's been in a lot of workforces so it's a real challenge it's been in my clients work in their customers homes you know i've been very fortunate here we've got about 200 texts and uh only a few have got it no one has been really it hasn't influenced anybody certain family members and whatnot but But I just want to go over some of your amazing success.

I'll do a quick intro and then you can kind of tell us a little bit about yourself. So Jerry is an expert at strategic planning, new business development, sales, small business and marketing strategy. Quick bio is C.V.C. Success group he's the ceo from 2010 to now he's been part of the uh john maxwell team he was the coach and speaker 2016 to 2017 islands by design the ceo from 2005 to 2010 the fireplace patio and grill now don't believe it, but you did that for 30 years. The Fireplace, Patio, and Grill. Yes, sir. 1980 to 2010.

The Chimney Doctor from 1980 to 2010. A National Chimney Sweep Guild President from 2007, or I'm sorry, 97 to 2003. He's a speaker, mentor, coach, educator, and author of Chaos to Reinvention, How to Turn Chaos into Clarity. He built various businesses from the ground up, including a chimney business, a fireplace and outdoor living retail operation, and a manufacturing entity. In 2010, he launched CBC Coaching, a business coaching service aimed at helping those primary in the chimney inventing industry. Jerry, it's a pleasure to have you on today. Tommy, it is such a pleasure. You know, that one hour conversation you and I had, man, it was like listening to myself from a younger day. You just impressed me to know

in that day, sir. Yeah, well, listen, it's great to get people that have already, you know, I've made a lot of mistakes, but I'm sure you've probably gone down some paths and a lot of people were really excited about you coming on. What I'd love for you to do is, I guess, just tell us all about it and let the audience know again what's going on. Sure. Let's tell the story. Okay. So you came through and for 35 years, I was self-employed. I had a chimney sweep business, chimney sweep service in the Charlotte, North Carolina market area. And within a year, we went into the retail arena, selling fireplaces, wood stoves, gradually built that up. And then the early part of the 21st century, I went into manufacturing.

And everything is going great, Tommy. I had about 40 employees. I didn't have near what you did, but I had risen in the industry. I've been president of trade associations, president of educational foundations, been doing training around the country for a number of years. And all of a sudden, I don't know if you know it or not, but around 2007 to 2010, we had a recession. Are you aware of that, Tommy? I was in the middle of it myself. That's it. Cause that's one of the things I see. I can still see these things that come across my social media about, Hey, I was $50,000

in debt. I had to step out. Well, guess what? I was so far in debt. And at that time, banks were being tested for how stable they were. So on a real bad day in 2010, the bank said, Jerry, we need all our money back. You got five days. And I just never been aware of this, how deep in debt I'd gotten Tommy. A lot of people thought I had a lot of money. I had really big credit lines, really big. In fact, this is how, you know, when you're too deep in debt, when the bank comes to you and says, Jerry, you're going to have to have a life insurance policy and you were going to be the beneficiary of it. And you're going to have to have a life insurance policy and we're going to be the beneficiary of it. And you're going to have to have that, or you're going to have to call, we're going to have to call your loans in. Well, that insurance policy had two commas in it. That's

how deep I was into banks. I was basically owned by the banks because in that time you could get equity funding. If you have property, you could get funding for it. It's not like it is today. So in this fateful day in 2010, they called all my loans, gave me five days to come up with, I'll give you the figures, $1.3 million. They said, you got five days to do it. And I said, you got to be kidding me. They were serious. I lost all my businesses. I lost my home, one of my homes.

I lost my commercial businesses. I basically had no job. I was able to sell my manufacturing entity to my wife, lock, stock, and barrel. She owns it today, still operates it. And all of a sudden I'm unemployed on North Carolina unemployment insurance, pulling an unemployment check. Still remember this day, $423 a week, Tommy. That's what I got as a out of work CEO of my own company. Cause I found out I qualified for unemployment. And then it's like, okay, what you going to do now? Well, at this point, basically there was no jobs that I saw that was going to bring me what I was looking

for. And I was kind of lost. And I started the consulting firm thinking, okay, I can consult with people, but I was really down, Tommy. In 2010, it's like the bottom had fallen out. And I had breakfast with an old friend of mine. And the breakfast was in Hartford, Connecticut at a hotel that I had went to for the National Chimney Sweep Guild. I'd actually been given an award the night before. It was a Lifetime Achievement Award. It had only been given two times in history at that point. And it kind of brought me out. But the next day, this guy's

name was John Meredith. He had been an old friend of mine. And he said, Jerry, you need to become a coach. These guys need you. And Tommy, I'll tell you what, it put me back on top. It gave me something to drive for. Even though I didn't have any money to build a business, we were completely destitute. If you can imagine, that $423 a month was pretty important coming in, but we started building a coaching business back in 2011 to build up to what we do today, working across the United States with, we specialize in chimney sweeps, chimney service companies. We also train home inspectors. Those are our two main lines that we coach in, we train in, and we do other things. And today we have about seven people working under our umbrella.

We have trainers working around the country right now. I have one trainer sitting in Oklahoma City doing training this week. I've got another trainer right now sitting in Houston, Texas, and other trainers that are going around the country. And they're doing ride-along training. We do office training, gas training. And my time is spent both as a coach, and I also have an online training platform today because that's where I see the future is an online training. So we have invested heavily in this. So you've got a, what is it, an LMS learning management system you're working on? Yes, sir. We have an LMS learning management system.

We use a software by the name of Litmosis, put this together. So we have a lot of subscribers on this platform. Right now we have a little over 750 online courses that subscribers can get to. And these range in time frame from what we call a micro course, which is a five to seven minute training to as much as 16 and 20 hour trainings, depending on the subject matter. We have a lot of one hour trainings, two hour trainings, four hours, but there is hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of training that's online accessible digitally today, because that's the future of where we're going. I love it. You know, it is, it's one of the things that I've learned and I didn't know this, but I thought I was on mute, but you were listening to me in my little book

club here. I got a few guys and it's called the sales boss. And it's all about the fact is so many people miss the mark on recruiting and training. I just feel like 99.9% of people, they're like, I need somebody. And I used to have this test. If you could fog a mirror, you could work for me. So I put the mirror under your nose and I didn't want to go into that yet, but I do want to talk about that. But you've dabbled in a few different industries, the chimney business, the fireplace and outdoor living, retail, manufacturing. That's just to name a few. Tell us a little bit about the differences. I mean, this podcast is mostly people doing home service, but there's a lot of realtors and industry leaders and actually manufacturing people that manufacture to maybe a chimney sweeper that listen to the podcast. So tell us a little bit about the differences and maybe a little bit of how they all align.

When they all align, you know, one of the things about business is business is business, Tommy. No matter what business you're in, it's still the same type things. And the number one challenge that we have in businesses today is how to find, procure, how to assess, how to interview, how to make sure we've got the right people to bring into their teams. Like I said earlier, when you and I had that conversation and you were sharing with me the things that you're doing there in Arizona as far as training people, bringing them in. And I've been watching you yesterday. I saw you walk in your training room with a couple of guys with cameras on gimbals and all that on social media.

But to see what you're doing is an example of what everybody's got to be doing in the industry. In fact, you're such a remarkable guy. I recently had a flood at my house and it flooded out my garage door openers on my garage. I got four garage doors down there. So when the flood came in, none of the garage doors openers worked anymore. So I got the garage door company comes in, fixes those. I said, Hey man, tell me about your business. I got this buddy out in Arizona and he is like the garage door king of America for what I can see. And they were like, Tommy, they were in disbelief

here in Charlotte of what you're doing out there. They won in Phoenix. I mean, people, what you're doing is you have that energy and that's what people have to do today in time. I often see people on the internet saying, I can't find nobody to hire. I can't find nobody to go to work for me. But what you got to do is learn to toss. It's kind of like fishing. You got to put the right bait out there that interests them. And they're not us.

And this is what we have to understand. In order to hire people effectively, you got to figure out what is going to draw their attention and what are they looking for in an occupation today. And it's vastly different than it was. Now you're much younger than me, but it is being able to understand all these different age groups and the different mentalities that people are going through. Plus we're faced with the social world they're exposed to today. So that's why you've got to put this together. Now that's one of the things we do. We actually have a hiring division

here. My wife is, she runs that side of our business where she does hiring for people. She's a disc assessor. So she does remote interviews for blue collar service companies all across America doing the interview process and then presents the interviewees that she approves of to the client. Wow. I'd love to hear her point of view because I've probably done over a thousand interviews. And the crazy thing is I've done a lot of disc. I do a thing called predictive index. I've used everything from Britain. I've got the color test. I mean, there's probably about a hundred of them. And then there's a guy that's actually wants to work with me on just one straight for sales. And there's really, I think the one thing that

separates the people in sales is I talked about it yesterday. I did an orientation for an hour and a half. And I said, there's one thing that I can't teach you guys to do. And that's believe in yourself. Eye contact, my stance, my body language. When I'm with a woman, I face her like this. She's right here. We'll look at the iPad. When I'm with a guy, I square up and I'm like, there's certain things we're going to teach you here. And these are skills for life. This isn't only how to do garage. This is how to make friends. I don't want friends that influence people as you would say, but you know, that's so important is getting the right bait out there. And the right bait for me was I asked people what they want. And I've got a little secret to tell my staff,

so I'm not going to let it out of the bag. But I will say that people like to get paid weekly versus bi-weekly. I will say that people appreciate insurance if you could do it. I will say that people, you know what people like? Is I seen a guy, a small at the time, pest control company, and he was paying minimum wage. And I walked in there and there was a lineup of people that wanted to work there. And I said, dude, you pay like half of what I pay. And you got people lined up and he said, well, we buy him lunch every day. We've got contests because we don't pay him much hourly. We've got contests where we can pay them more of who wins this. We give a special game prize every Friday. We take them out to bowling

every Saturday and they built a community around this people and they gave them life skills. So I do think millennials especially are different than baby boomers baby boomers used to just say let me make a paycheck pay me more money it's been a year i'm here for my annual review i want another two bucks an hour and they go for that more tenure millennials are like well i want to be involved in decision making and i want you to appreciate me and i want to be able to have the parking spot of the month and it's just kind of funny but they wouldn't mind living in a tiny house they don't need a new car a lot of them don't want to own a house or a car. It's just interesting. What are your take on that? Well, it is. And see, if you listen to what you just said, that pest control company showed them we care. And see, that's the hard thing today

is people want to work for someone that cares. They also want to work. And this is the thing about millennials. They want to work somewhere that they're making a difference in this world. I mean, when we look at it, you know, environmental concerns, all these things. It was an amazing thing to me doing research in the last president and not the last presidential election, but when Trump ran against Hillary Clinton, I did some research and ask people,

why did you decide who you voted for? And the amazing thing was the number of people that told me they voted against Trump for environmental reasons. That was their number one concern, the climate. Okay. And you look at this and if that's what people are looking for is companies that are going to make a difference in today's world. Does that make sense to you, Tommy? Yeah. You know, it's interesting because tomorrow we're,

we've got these things, we're passing these out and we've built baskets for, we're going shopping with a cop and a kid. Two weeks ago, we went and planted trees. Our staff planted over a hundred trees. Well, last month we gave blood. We filled it all up, 40 seats. The month before that. And these are, these are things that cost us money because we pay our people to do this stuff. But at the same time, my goal next year is to give half a million dollars and we're getting involved in all of the employees' children's lives. And I think people really want, hey, listen, our kids have a soccer thing. They're trying to raise money to go on a soccer trip.

And that kind of stuff goes a mile long. And, you know, I'm a goofball. I have Big Buck Hunter. I have Golden goofball. I have Big Buck Hunter. I have Golden Tee. I have all the games. We've got ping pong. We got basketball out there. It's almost too much.

But next year, I want even more. 2021, I'm going to get more goofball games and have fun. But I just negotiated a deal, Jerry. I'm getting lunch delivered twice a month for 60 people or breakfast. And I'm prepaying it all. And I was able to negotiate 40% off because I want a good write-off this year. So I'm negotiating write-offs, but it's December. It's time to pre-pay all your advertising, right? Pre-pay all your advertising and negotiate it. Anything you're going to have expensive next year, if you got the money in the

account and you can negotiate, get it as a write-off for this year. But it's all about giving back and I agree. It's amazing. Let me tell you a little story of the couple just two weeks ago. One of my clients, the general manager there, came in one morning and fixed everybody pancakes. I mean pancakes. How much can a bunch of pancakes cost you, Tommy?

I mean really, pancake batter, what we got here, 20 bucks maybe? Not even, yeah. But the big thing was he fixed it he didn't cater it in he fixed it and another one that week they served breakfast another way and you see these little things that you do and that's part of what goes on is to share that what we call the culture of showing the culture of that company. But I want to take you back to something. We were talking about this a while ago. I want to share something about last year I was contracted.

I had a stone company in Missouri and they wanted us to come do training for their sales team. And I said, well, one of the things is, is running a disc assessment. So they bought into it. They decided to have their entire sales team disc assess 26 salespeople based around the United States. These are reps that are out,

like some of them are out in California. They never see the boss and this kind of stuff. And we ran the disc assessment and the insurer was able to look at the disc and told them, this is your highest producer. This is your lowest producer. This is your lowest producer. This is the most troublesome salesperson you've got simply by reading that

disc. That behavior pattern is so important. And knowing that you said, well, I go about the color code. That's another one that she uses. She certified in that also, but that the color code tells you how you got there. The disc tells you what you are today. So I have a feeling both you and I,

I think you're a high D just like I am this. Would that be right, Tommy? And that tells you a lot. And like I said, when I talked to you, Tommy, the energy that came,

I told somebody later, let me tell you how I got with you. I never knew who Tommy Mello was. And I got a client. He's probably listening tommy mellow was and i got a client he's probably listening to this right now and he would tell me he says you know i've been listening this podcast what podcast and it got to the point tommy yeah that's like okay what did tommy tell you this week and so finally i had to check out who is this Tommy Mello dude. Okay. And he actually got into your coaching program and in mine at the same time. But when I look, that's when I started seeing what you were doing, which was so unique out

there in what you were doing and the way you're building this and the energy that you have. To me, it was amazing. In fact, when we say in our conversation, Tommy, you talked 55 minutes. I talked five that day. Do you remember that? No, it doesn't surprise me. I mean, but that's why I enjoyed it because it was coming out. It was like a fire hose feeding.

It's like this guy's got it going on. And then from that point, listen to more and more people talk about what you're doing. So that's why it excited me so much for this potential to be on with you today. And hopefully we're going to do some more things next year. You know, there's one thing that I really appreciate you coming on today because we've got, you know, 2023, we've had 35, it's fluctuating and there's not a lot of people on these lives. People have lives and they also have to work, but we're up to about 30,000 downloads. My goal is to get it to 100,000, not because of anything, not because of the money I make,

because this is fun. This is literally fun for me. This is me. I told everybody today at my shop, I said, if you wouldn't mind going on Apple, looking up the podcast, leaving a review and subscribing, not because I need you to to but because this allows me to get better and better guests and the better guests i get indirectly affect you and here's why i've had michael gerber in this building yeah michael gerber to me was like he was like ah you know because he wrote the book the emith revisited so to get guests like that we need to increase

the listenership because that way you can get guys like Michael Michalowicz, who wrote Profit First and Clockwork, and I got all of his books up there, and guests like you. And it's nice because these people are actually excited to come on because we've got a pretty good following. And I'm always trying, I talk to people every day. The reason I think I'm a little bit successful is because I find out all the success of other people because I'm always asking questions. I kind of cheat. People think I'm a cheater because I go follow all the best and copy them. Tommy, let me explain something.

That's what coaching is. We don't invent these concepts. If you look back, if you look at Jeffrey Gittimer, you look at Larry Wingate, you look at Scott McCain, you look at different people that I've worked with. This stuff goes back to Zig Ziglar. It goes back through Napoleon Hill. It's the same concept. There's not new concepts.

It's kind of like a car. We just keep changing it a little bit as we go along. It's like what you and I are doing right now. We're sitting here doing a live stream presentation. You and I are both live. You're in Phoenix, Arizona. I'm sitting in Charlotte, North Carolina. This is being broadcast through Facebook. It's going through Instagram. How many broadcast locations are you going through right now? I'm posting on five different places. Right.

And you're doing that via StreamYard. And StreamYard is bringing this all together. And see, the thing is, now you got to get into Amazon. So you're broadcasting through Amazon because you can actually get it through Amazon, get it into LinkedIn and other people. Because this is what drives people. It's like I said, when I talk about the client that listened to you, the ideas he was sharing with me, it's like, it was like the point, okay, so what did Tommy tell you this week?

Okay. But that's what it's all about. And see, that's what I recognized in you. I see you growing something at an exponential rate, but you're also sharing how to do it. That's the crazy part. Why do you share it with other people, Tommy? Tell me that. Yeah, a lot of people always ask me that. And I'll tell you, I share because people share with me. And I think it's kind of a full circle because

people come to me one day, I was on the phone with this guy from this garage store company, and he only has five employees. And he says to me, he says, Tommy, you want to know something? He goes, you just told me so many secrets. He goes, I want to tell you something. I don't know if you know this, Tommy, but the way I get a lot of my business is through LiftMaster. He said, I'm on their store locator. Right after that, I called my distribution center, who's at AMAR, and I basically said, I'm your biggest customer. I buy more LiftMaster. I'm not on the store finder for LiftMaster.

Can you get me on there? They put me at the top spot. So that added this guy that only has five employees, and that's a big deal still. Trust me, five is amazing your first employee is the hardest one but he just got me an extra 30 jobs a day because he opened up to me because he trusts me because i share everything and i think it's my responsibility to give back and i do think i'm kind of selfish because i'm going to talk to you and i'm going to take a lot of notes and i'm going to keep you as a contact and I'm going to come visit you.

You might come out here and come stay with me. And it's the ultimate advantage to be able to have this relationship. I've always found if you give back, you get 10 times. I used to go in front of conferences and take a boomerang, never really throw up, but say it's going to come back full circle. So I think one of the things that bothers me, I've been coming to Scottsdale every year for five to six years. I didn't know you because I've been going to a coaching meeting in Scottsdale every winter. So I actually coaching meeting. Huh?

Which one? That is the one that I was in that had Larry Wingate, Randy Pennington and Scott McCain. It was called the ultimate business summit. So every year we met one time in the wintertime in Phoenixoenix i'm sure the name but it was one of those y'all call them ranches out there when they get into resorts i forget i'm thinking green valley but i'm not real sure about that green valley might have been las vegas i don't know what it was yeah but anyway been there quite a few times and also in other classes but not being able to visit with you so yeah when i'm getting into phoenix i'm gonna let you know hey i'm coming we to get together, see how we can share some

stuff here. But what you're saying, Tommy, goes back to one of the most famous quotes of Zig Ziglar. If you help enough people get what they want, they'll help you get what you want. So you're a shining example of the Ziglar philosophy. Now, I told you about my wife. She's're a shining example of the Ziegler philosophy. Now, I told you about my wife. She's also a Ziegler coach. So we're very much ingrained with the Ziegler family, Tom Ziegler, his wife, his sisters, and everybody else. But it's all the things that you learn and then how you transform into your words. Like one of my mentors, one of my coaches I was certified by was Jeffrey Gettemer. Let me share something with you. I was going through training and there was

94 people in this room and Jeffrey Gettemer's first sales coach certification training. And one guy held up his hand. Now, Jeffrey had just been saying, you have to develop your own model. And here was this question to Jeffrey Gittimer. Can we wear a red shirt like you do, Jeffrey? The man just told you to take what he's sharing and transfer it into your words. And see, that's what people have to do. They have to manipulate, they have to adjust it where it works in your market area. I mean, you're in Phoenix, Arizona, and this is one of the things I know about working across the United States, what works in Phoenix. And I think you'll see that as you multiply your operation out,

you got a slightly magnified, if you're going to put it in Salt Lake, you got to change it a little bit. you're going to Los Angeles. But, you know, there's places. And I agree with the tempo and the mood of that area because Albuquerque is a lot different. But I will tell you this. Tom Hopkins, who I'm a big, big fan of, he says, look, don't make it your own until you can do mine 100%. Because you making up my words all of a sudden, it's one of those things where if we all tell each other a secret, 100 person down, all of a sudden it's a completely different thing.

So I do think you got to make it your own. But until it's kind of like people talk crap about the Bible, but they never read it. You know, don't try to explain it. Tell me why it's not true. So I definitely agree with you that every single area you get into, what people want to do business with is that local person. They want to do business with their local community. And that's why Google, the mother of search, I mean, Google's the God when it comes to search. I'm just looking at a Google screen here is they're going local, local, local, local.

And the more we localize our business, the more business we're going to do. And that's why I'm giving the local charities in all my markets but you know i'm just curious because you you almost lost it all and then whoa whoa i did lose it all are you want me to tell you how four dollars and 23 4 4 423 dollars a week yeah it was so bad, Tommy, that when I needed new tennis shoes, I looked down and I said, you know, I think they can go another month. I'm serious. I'm a smoker. I was rolling my own cigarettes, Tommy.

I'm serious. And this wasn't illegal. This was the, I had a little cigarette rolling machine. I sit here at night and roll cigarettes up. And it was just watching every dime. And the biggest thing was, Tommy, and I've mentioned my wife a couple of times, but my wife told me at this point, her name's Cheryl, and she said something. She said, Jerry, whatever you decide to do, I'm behind you 100%, 100%.

And that's such a true thing. She's my mentor, my coach, my best friend, everything in the world. But it was having someone that believed in you because I'm going to tell you what, and I tell a lot of people in 2010, it was so bad, Tommy, because I had been on top. I mean, I was recognized. I was the man in chimneys. And if I failed, that was so embarrassing. And just to deal with that and be able to get on here today, used to, if you asked me a question, I'd break down crying right now talking about that period, just being able to get through that of how detrimental it was to your emotional state. And see, that's what happens so often. And this is what people have to do. Every failure that

you have in life is going to give you a lesson to succeed further. This is one of the principles of John Maxwell, where when you fail, what did you learn from this failure that you can take to the next level? Like all the failures I had, I learned every way there is to fail. And now I think I know how you can succeed and not fall into those pits. Does that make sense? Yeah. Well, you know, that's what I tell people. As I jumped in headfirst, made the mistakes. The difference is, Jerry, is most of these people that I really try to help out a lot,

they continue to make a lot of the same mistakes. Like I used to hire when I needed somebody. I don't ever hire when I have to have somebody. I don't wait till a guy quit to hire. Anytime I get somebody great, I'm hiring in every single market and every single position I have. I'm hiring.

And the reason I'm always hiring is because if the right person comes along, it's amazing. And these little mistakes, not keeping your eye on the ball, not paying attention to the finances, not understanding the marketing. There's two things I think a business owner never needs to lose track of, and that's the finance, understand everything going on with finance and understand the marketing. You don't need to be the sales coach necessarily. You don't

have to be the hiring manager. You don't need to be the guy out there doing all the coaching and the small business you will be and you'll wear a lot of hats but never take your eye out the cfo i don't need to be the coo i'm saying the cfo is a great person in most companies but you need to keep an eye on the money or otherwise make a lot of mistakes with that and like i said the marketing is a huge deal and it sounds like you know a lot about marketing well it does you know and i, there's marketing experts, you know, and that's what I try to do is connect clients up with experts that are into marketing. Okay. I've got my certain areas, but I know what works for other people and how to get them to help. But it's just like you said, this is where the three letters. And if you're listening to this

right now, write these three letters down because this is everything. And this is where the three letters, and if you're listening to this right now, write these three letters down because this is everything. And this is called your KPIs and your KPIs are your key performance indicators. Now, Tommy, I heard you talking with another person on a podcast and you were talking about the cost of leads. It might've been, was that last week you were talking about the cost of leads? Yeah. I heard you say, Hey, I don't mind paying. I think it was $54 for that lead. That's a pretty low price lead. Am I quoting you pretty exact? I'm a little bit higher than that, but I'm less than certain markets. Right. But what you know is, you know, the cost of the lead. And I will guarantee you that Tommy knows what the percentage of sales,

what these leads are costing him in relation to his cost of sales. I will bet you Tommy knows what his callback rate is. I bet Tommy could tell me what his cost and callbacks were in the last month. He could tell me what his cost and waste is, waste of materials, all these other things. Would that be true? You know what? I know a lot more than I should probably know. I can tell you this. We've dropped down 2% for the last two years. This year, we're going to drop down just below 10% of marketing. My goal, it depends on how many markets you're going into. And then there's investment marketing. And so I've got four KPIs I choose, four KPIs to hit the ultimate KPI, which means I got a high conversion rate, high booking rate, and high average ticket. And that's when I invest

in branding. And very few people have the money to invest in TV, radio, and billboards. And they don't see any very little ROI on that because they don't do it long enough and they're not hitting the key performance indicators they need to be able to do that. But when your branding's right, Jerry, your cost per click on Google goes way down. Your searchability goes way up. Your reputation shoots up. All these things matter, but nobody understands.

I'm not going to say nobody, but very few people understand the investment versus the cost. Yeah. And see, that's what you got to do. I do a lot of live and I did a live this morning about KPIs and I started off, you know, that guy that's playing golf all the time. He owns a business. He's got a super successful business, but he's always out playing golf or here's the lady that owns the business. How do they do this? Well, number one rule for success, no matter if you're doing good, you're doing bad, is you've got to set the time at least once a week, but probably more than that to check what are your KPIs for right now.

What are the key performance indicators? And that's what you've got to select for your business model. If it's retail, what's your score traffic this week? How many people are coming in and what's bringing them in the door? Is it your truck lettering? Is them in the door? Is it your truck lettering? Is it your social media? Is it your website? Because you got to be able to narrow this down, tracking numbers, all the different things that are coming in. I can remember a guy telling me a couple of years ago, he said, Jerry, you keep saying yellow pages are dead. Let me tell

you how many phone calls I get from yellow pages last month. I said, really? And he told me that his company had gotten 172 calls from Yellow Pages. I said, tell me how you know that. He said, because the tracking numbers, we know exactly where it comes from. So if your guys are on here, you got to look at all these modern things. It's like technology today. When we first came on, Tommy had a little problem. There were some letters onto his screen. It was a technology challenge. I bet your blood pressure went up for just a minute, didn't it, Tommy? They would have dealt with it. Right, but that's technology, and that's where technology today can take you to an entirely new level in your business, in your hiring. Like I said, Cheryl's sitting back there in her office 20 feet from me right now doing an interview with someone in Texas, Tommy, right now.

Okay. Doing it remotely through technology, recording that interview. So if it is someone that she thinks is good, she shoots that video of the interview to the client. That's delegation where, and that's what happens. But so many people, there's two phases of business. You either got too much work or you ain't got enough. Would you agree with that? Always. It's called the tango. Right. You're never going to come in. It's like, I hear people complain. I got so much business. I'm overwhelmed and all this. Wait a minute. Ain't that what you wanted? So anyway, we're too busy. So now we can't check our KPIs. We can't do what we got to do or things are so bad. I don't want to look at it. You can't do either one of those. Or these are the two. I think of Jerry, either I need more guys or I need

more jobs. Those are the two big things is Tommy, how do you get good guys? And I'm like, first of all, you got to put the bait out, like you said, and you got to always be recruiting. Always, always, always, always be recruiting. But more importantly, I see so many people. You've got a gold nugget. You've got an amazing client. They spend a million dollars a year from you.

You know what happens? You're going so busy after that new client, this client drops off. That's it. It's amazing. It's a rat race. It is. We don't respect our old clients. We don't market to them. I tell them like this, you don't tell the old customers that you love them. And they got to know that you love them, that you're there to help them out. I mean, I recently had a flood here. And in this day and time, a lot of home service workers are busy. We flooded. We had to have a plumber here. We had to have an electrician. We had to have an HVAC guy to get us up back up operating. They were all here the next morning. They took care of their old customers. And that's what I buy. Was I concerned about the cost? No.

Send the bill. Take care of it. It was like in the garage door thing. The guy was there that day when I told him my garage doors won't stay down, dude. I got to unplug them. I can't open my garage door. When they go down, Tommy, they go right back up. Okay.

That's the life. Yeah. Commoner. But also the same company I hired a couple of weeks ago, I said, hey man, I need you to fix this garage door opener. And he come in and fixed the belt into it. And then the next thing was, he said, listen, all those little strips of gasket across the bottom, they're all getting rotted.

Go ahead and replace them. But see what he was missing was he didn't point this out to me. And this is where sales go on. And a lot of service technicians don't understand this. Tommy, do you ever have technicians that don't want to be known as salespeople? Oh, they always hate that. They always hate that. Right. They hate it. When you say salesperson to a service technician, in his mind, you're talking about a guy with a plaid coat, smoking a cigar, writing a used car thing up. That's salesperson to a service technician, in his mind, you're talking about a guy with a plaid coat, smoking a cigar, writing a used car thing up. That's salesperson. But this is, again,

I'm going to go to Zig Ziglar and one of his sayings, which is if you don't tell the customer what they need and the best way to do it, do you realize you're discriminating against that person, you are profiling that person and profiling is wrong. You need to tell people the best way to do it. It's like I had a point, you know, and this guy's here just a little while ago, telling me about all the underlayments of putting under my new shower that we got to put in because of this. And I said, Hey, hold it, Dennis. Tell me what I need. I trust you. Tell me what's best. Tell me what's best. That's what I want to hear. Well, the first thing I always say is, Jerry, the first thing I believe is REF, build, report, educate, and follow up. And what I want to do is I want to build rapport by asking you questions and finding out what your needs are, how long

you're going to stay in the home. And the next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to offer you exactly what I would offer to my mom i used to say my grandma she passed away about 10 years ago but i'm going to offer you what's right for you so ultimately what i'm going to do is find out how long you stayed in the home do you care about energy savings you care about curb appeal do you like the technology to be able to go on your phone see if your garage is open or closed because i could open or close it do you ever have amazon packages installed because now they can leave it in your garage? Do you have a refrigerator in your garage? Are you doing construction in your garage?

I want to give you the best thing. And I told my guys this morning, if you think that you're doing the customer a favor by not offering them a choice of a brand new opener when they've got a brand new opener, but it doesn't have the same technology, it's their decision, not yours to choose what's right for them. And you're right. It's called discrimination. So people say, well, how could you sell them cables if their cables aren't bad? Well, let me tell you this, Jerry, I don't warranty other people's cables. We replace your drums, your bearing plates, and your springs. If your cables go bad, I'm not warrantying that. So I'm already here. You already paid for labor. If I could do this for 60 bucks, would that make sense?

If not, I'll leave them on. But I'm just telling you right now, if I could warranty everything, I'm giving you a choice. I don't feel bad. I'm not warrantying other parts that I didn't work on. I'm not going to warranty your radiator when I change your tires. I'm sorry. That's just not what I'm going to do. When you do it, it's hard for me to, I don't know, chimneys as well.

But these are just common sense things. And I'm like, you know, our other CEO, a service tight, and he had a company come out, a service tight, it's a really big company, 2.4 billion. This guy came out and said, Hey, listen, the aura said, I've been doing a lot of research. I want this HVAC unit. It's got all the bells and whistles. You know what the guy told me? He goes, no, you don't. It's not a good bang for the buck. You don't need that unit. Get this unit. He said, all right, let me think about it. He called the owner of the company and he goes, dude, what in the hell is your technician

saying to me? He goes, I wanted this unit. It's the best unit. It's my money. Why can't I spend my own money? And he called the guy. He wrote him up. Point is, we don't know what's best for the customer.

The customer knows what's best. Oh, you don't want to sell best for the customer. The customer knows what's best. Oh, you don't want to sell financing because the customer doesn't want... Financing doesn't mean the customer doesn't have money. It means it's same as cash. You understand the time value of money. A dollar today is worth more than a dollar in a year. If you're going to give me same as cash for a year, I'm a finance buyer. It doesn't mean I'm broke. I'll buy a service agreement just because you don't buy a service agreement when you buy a new phone doesn't mean I don't want one. So many technicians make the decisions for the customer because they think they know because of their living style what's best for them. And I think that's a dirty shame.

It's pathetic. I tell my guys, you know what? You're a salesman. How did you meet your wife? You know, you met Cheryl way before you probably knew a lot about sales, but you sold her on you. Your best friend, you probably sold them on you too. The only people I didn't have to sell was my mom and dad, and I still sell them all the time. But that's what people have got to understand. Okay. I mean, really, and it is a hard breakthrough. And you guys that are listening to this,

that run service crews, that make sales in homes, What we're telling you is exactly what it's going to take to get them there. What Tommy was talking about a while ago, that's what we call relationship building. That's what we call building the trust. And see, that's where so many people miss the ballgame. That customer is making a determination. Can I trust you? Can I trust you? And they're going to do that 90 seconds or less. It's going to be done from eye contact. You said it a while ago

and eye contact. It's also something else, which is your energy you're throwing off. There's so many people throw off. Tommy ever been around what I call an energy vampire that you get close to them and they just suck the energy right out of your body? Yeah. And that's what you got to be aware of. You got to hip yourself up. I tell people before you do a sales presentation, have you ever seen a rock star performer before he goes on stage? He is psyching himself up to make the sale. I'm going to go out and I'm going to kick butt. Okay. And I'm going to do this and I'm going to make this sale. I'm going to go out and I'm going to kick butt. Okay.

And I'm going to do this and I'm going to make this sale. Tell you something. Do you know who the name Glenn Morshauer is? Does that ring a bell with you? Morshauer. No. Glenn Morshauer. Glenn Morshauer is a character actor that has been on television for many years.

He was in Star Trek Transformers. He was in a show that ran for a while called 24. He was a secret service agent by the name of Aaron Pierce. Well, I know Jack from 24. There you go. Okay. Well, Aaron Pierce was a secret service agent that looked after the president's daughter got shot one time. If you ever watched 24, you would have seen that. Okay. So anyway, I've gotten acquainted with glenn moore shower through some of my contacts and this guy and i did never realize this but he told me in this seminar he said you guys have got to understand you got to understand wait i am an

actor and listen carefully here tommy, actors, we are looking for work continuously. There is no such thing as a long-term acting job, okay? You look at it, Matt Dillon only went so many years in Gunsmoke, okay? And all the different shows. So he went through and he said, this is what you got to do because we've got to audition for this. And I've got to understand this character. And they said, he said, and this is what I do before I walk into the audition room.

I look in the mirror and I say, watch this shit. That was the exact words because he was going to morph into that person. And he did. And he is, he runs an acting school in Los Angeles and he's such an inspirational guy. Spent two hours last Thursday night. In fact, I'll be listening to him tonight in a group coaching section.

And then I'm in because coaches, we go to coaches too. I spent an hour with Scott McCain today, but that's what you got to do. You've got to psych yourself up and see our salespeople, your technicians, they can't deal with rejection so often. It's kind of like when you asked a young lady out

and she says, no, how much does it take to work your energy back up? And they can't shake off that failure, but you got to learn. This is what Gidmer teaches. If you walk out of a sales presentation and you didn't make the sale, you got to ask yourself the following questions. How did I not build the relationship? How did I not build the trust? And see, so often you ever heard somebody come back and say, well, that cheapskate ain't going to buy crap. You ever heard that one, Tommy? All the time. You hear it all the time.

That guy, I used to have my guys come in, said, doc, they called me, doc said, doc, you don't even need to send an estimate. That lady ain't going to buy this. At 30 to $50,000 in sales later, I said, are you sure? Well, how did you do that doc? She was 70 some years old. I said, she's 70 some years old. Do you understand she has children? They're going to inherit this house. Do you understand looking at the size of that house? Her children want her to fix up that house before she inherits it. You got to understand and build this trust. And I don't think that was a disservice selling that lady what she needed because she enjoyed the rest of her life with those eight fireplaces now working. Yeah. You know, it's funny that, you know, Zig Ziglar, I love Zig Ziglar.

Everything you're saying just resonates. And I love having an open conversation. Zig Ziglar, one day he's doing his famous speeches, and there's probably thousands of people out there, and he says, I want to make you guys a deal. I don't have a good accent like him, but he goes, I want to do this. I'm going to take each and every one of you to Hawaii with me. I'm going to take your kids. I'm paying for drinks.

I'm paying for the food. We're going to take your kids. I'm paying for drinks. I'm paying for the food. We're going to see Shamu. I'm taking you golfing or doing the volcano tours. There's only one catch. We leave tonight. We're going for one month and you're not allowed to look or make any phone calls to your business. Now, my question is, what does your business look like when you get back from that month? How many people here have a good business that will run itself? He's like, I see two hands out there. And isn't that true? And I got to tell you, I'm very fortunate that I've got such an amazing team and good KPIs that I go over to my phone, hit a button and say, great day today. And when I leave, usually we set records, not because of me, just because I'm always working on how we're going to look in a year, five years, 10 years.

I make sacrifices for today because I'm growing what we're going to grow into a monster. I'll take my best sales guy and work with him all day long on a manual. Even yesterday, I took five of my top guys off the schedule for a half day and we worked on analogies. We worked on systems. We worked on processes to make sure that even the worst salesperson, the worst technician, if you will, we make it so easy, such an easy process to learn that anybody can do it. Because that's what it's all about. I do not want to depend on people. I want to depend on systems.

And that's why I'm able to go out of town for so long and still do well. Right. depend on systems. And that's why I'm able to go out of town for so long and still do well. Right. And that's why Mr. Gerber is probably a big mentor of yours from the E-Myth. Would I be correct? Absolutely. And that's what I learned back in the 90s. I actually got to meet Michael. I paid for a portion of his speaking fee to come to National Chimney Sweep Guild and be the keynote presenter. Had breakfast with him at that point. And it was all about the systems. And that was a turning point in my business career. When there's a problem, this is what I tell people. If there is a mistake happening in your business, Tommy, there are three answers to that mistake. There's three answers to everything. Do you know what they are by chance? I'm going to either say it's the wrong system. Is that one? You are close.

Okay, go ahead. Number one, you don't have a system. Number two, your system is wrong. Number three, someone did not follow your system. Now, you got to stop when it says doesn't follow it. You then got to determine, is it because your system is written in a way it's non-comprehendable? Is your system written to where someone doesn't have the training to follow it? But if you look at every mistake that happens, that's the three answers that you will find

for every single mistake. Oh, everybody write that down. If you got a problem and a lot of people ask me to ask you, what is the problem if my guys aren't showing up to work, my employees aren't complaining, my customers aren't complaining? The fact is, we've got a real challenge on our hands. It's called a supply chain issue. And I think the biggest problem that we have is not communicating that properly with our customers.

And it's a fact. HVAC has a huge problem. Right now, steel that comes from South Korea, every garage company has a problem. And you're going nowhere. You're not going to another manufacturer. You're not going to another garage company unless they happen to have a big stock. And if that's the case, it's very rare. And I would question a company that has enough stock prepared for COVID. The chance is they'll be out of business because if they've got that much stock sitting for nine months of this, then they're probably going out of business because who stocks enough for a pandemic? Nobody stocks enough.

And see, it's everywhere, Tommy. It's appliances. It's refrigerators. It's washing machines. It's everything. Lumber prices have went up. Two-by-fours went over $8. I don't know what they are today, but everything, the price is rising. And people, you know, that's the thing about it.

Home service businesses, they're doing very well in a pandemic that I thought six months ago and many others wondered if we would even be in existence. And now people are catching up for the year. Their numbers are now out above 2019. Now, we were talking something a while ago about systems, okay? You're a systems guy. I'm a systems guy, right? Yep. Okay, so I sent your people a link, and we want everybody here,

I've got a free gift for them. All they've got to do, if you put that link into your chat or whatever, Tommy, all they've got to do, and they can go get a download of my free book on standardizing standard operating procedures. Now, what's even better, Tommy? I won't even get your email address. This is no marketing scheme. I want to share that system with you because it's going to take you straight to a link that you can download that e-book. Okay? It's also sold on there. But that's my gift to your listeners for just being here today. you because it's going to take you straight to a link that you can download that ebook. Okay.

It's also sold on there, but that's my gift to your listeners for just being here today. What I'm going to do is I'm going to add that link to this because there's a couple of people on my team that will add that. And then also we're going to put that in the notes of the podcast. So everybody's going to get the link. Yeah. Like I said, this is not about selling books. You can go to Amazon, you can buy the, but that's not what this is about. This information is what I learned from Michael Gerber. And I've developed an eight step process of writing SOPs that can take you to the

next level. And this is just a gift. I'd like anybody that's given me the honor and the pleasure and the privilege to listen to me and you today. Okay. Yes. I can't wait. I'm going to go claim my free gift here in a little bit. Listen, what I'm going to do is we didn't get enough time today. We still got some time, but we're going to get you back on. We're going to talk about your book.

We'll go through it probably here in the next month or two. I want to get in and go through it, man. There's so many good things I could talk to you all day. I learned something from Michael Gerber in and go through it. Man, there's so many good things. I could talk to you all day. I learned something from Michael Gerber and I did it yesterday, actually. I got 30 guys training and I said, everybody, look at me right now. I said, take your pens out, take your notebooks out. This is going to be the most important hour of your life. I said, if you're going to work for this company, you will never

learn what I teach you today. I went an hour and a half. My voice, I almost lost it because I get pretty intense. And I mean, I'm telling these guys everything I know about every single step. I've got an eight-step process that never fails. If you want to have a 100% conversion rate, never fail. If you want to learn to get every single job sold, never fail, at least for garage doors, it works. I'm not talking about $30,000 sales, but I'll tell you one thing, Jerry. If I wanted to sell eight fireplaces, I would start with the first one, start on that. Then I would sell the next five. And hey, while we're at it, why don't we do the last two? Get the job started that they called for. People use checklists. They use

checklists from the beginning. And I'm like, wait a minute. I told you I had a flat tire. You want to do my brakes and an oil change and a new radiator? I just needed this. While you're at it, let me show you something else. Okay. At least what I called you out for you fixed. I think a lot of people make a mistake. And I literally went through each and everything. I told this story real quick. I said, I have one of my top sales reps, Jerry. Five years ago, my manager called me and he goes, hey, he's in Milwaukee. And that's where my sister lives. So I got an office out there. He goes, listen, he goes, Tommy, I want to send the guys back to go out with Stud Muffin,

your top guy on Phoenix. Stud Muffin. And I said, how about I do one better yet? I'll send him out there to Milwaukee. How about that? So I called him on three-way. He said, let me talk to my wife. I'll go there in two weeks.

And Mike, the manager, started laughing. And he goes, Tommy, this evil laugh. He goes, he's not going to do what he does there. I'm not going to treat him like a prima donna. He's working in all the same neighborhoods. He's not doing anything special. We're not going to hand feed him the good jobs. I said, we don't hand feed him anything, Mike.

He goes, no, no. We all know what it's like in Phoenix. It's much better here. I go, the average income in Milwaukee is way more than Phoenix at the time. So he goes, boss, I'll go ahead and do it. So the guy flies out there. The best week anybody had ever had in that market was nine thousand dollars my guy finished up the month

or the week with twenty three thousand dollars you know and my guy mike shit his pants basically and my guy gets on the phone the technician and he goes i think i want to move to milwaukee you put my best guys they're really good at what they do. They make eye contact. But one thing that I'll tell you is they believe they believe we're the best product. We gave every 30 guys $3,000 worth of tools. We gave it to them. We didn't charge them. We have the best parts, the best product, the best trucks, the best warranty. And if anybody doesn't believe that, tell me what we need to do for you to believe it. We'll carry it or we'll train about

it or we'll buy it. And that's one thing that my promise is to every employee that works for us is there's no one that can compete. We're the best. There's no one. So just remember that when you walk into a house and if you're not the best, why the hell are you working there? You shouldn't be working there. And I believe that every single employee gives 100%. It's my job to teach them that they can do better. No one says, I'm going to go to work today and do a shitty job. But they say either the boss doesn't care, the managers don't care, nobody really cares. So they might have an excuse of why they're not doing it, or they really are giving 100%, and we need to help train them to get them to that next level. A lot of owners go, these guys don't give a shit. They literally think

their employees don't care. But it kind of comes full circle. That's why you said I do a lot of podcasts and I give a lot back. I do care. And when the employees see that, my internal customers, guess what? They want to work for me. They want to give 110 give 110 and i said just so you guys know the trainers called me last night i said they're watching you guys a few of you guys stayed after and sweat the place we know who you are a few of you guys have already left a mess in your apartment we know who you are because i had someone in there putting more towels a few of you guys had your eyes closed during the meeting earlier. We know who you are, just so you know. We know everything. We're watching everything. We are doing every single day a checklist on each one of you guys. They couldn't believe it. All of a sudden, I mean, it was like you could drop

a pin in that room, but it was fun for me. I mean, I was on cloud nine. I mean, I was like preaching. Yeah. You know, some years ago, Tommy, first time a guy told me he said you need to listen you know who larry wingate is and i said no i said you need to listen to this so anyway it was an interview to larry you know who larry is i presume it's right there in the neck of the woods so it was on there and larry was talking about it said you know a lot of people want to know this but when your sales suck do you know why your sales suck? Because you suck. And see, this is the hard thing, Tommy.

Until, and this is when I was with Gittimer on his podcast. Until you've had your butt kicked, you don't really know where you got to change. I will bet you when you were at $50,000 in debt, when you didn't know where you was going to go, you'd had your ass kicked. Was that a pretty good statement for me? No, I had my ass kicked. Did that ass kicking change your life? Yeah, it taught me you better get the hell up and do better because I'm not going to stay down long. You're not.

It was like when I wrote my book, Chaos to Reinvention, it was all about being able to share with other people what it's like to go through this chaos of losing everything. Except the most important person in the world, which was my wife, who supported me. But when I looked around, I was like, dude, there weren't many friends I could go to at that point. It's like, I just felt abandoned, but I just had to pick myself up. There's just no way around it. You just got to pick yourself up and you got to change. And see, this is my point of view. When you go through speaker training, you know what a POV is, Tommy? POV? POV. Point of view. Yeah, POV. Point of view.

This is my point of view. Change can be painful. It's up to you to decide if you want to continue in the pain you're in or you want to go through the pain of change. And if you're listening to us, if you're're in pain that's what you got to decide if you want to follow the lead of tommy mellow that has these great ideas you got to pick yourself up and do it get out of the pain guys get out of the pain and make it happen so tommy i'm with you as long as you want to go but i think your time's probably running up am i right i got i got another meeting but i want to do this real quick.

I got this huge deal with Enterprise and all. I got their whole team on. Let me just tell you one thing. The one thing I tell people is you got to freaking ask. A lot of people say, oh, no, they'll never go for that. I've negotiated with every single car, the leases. I've negotiated with every single, my bank. I've renegotiated terms with my credit card vendors.

And you know what? I don't just ask once. with every single, my bank, I've renegotiated terms with my credit card vendors and people go, and you know what? I don't just ask once. I ask every single week, every single month, I ask for more, but I'm not one of those guys that I'm like, I say, give me a goal. I told service type, what do you need for, to give me this amazing, huge discount? And I said, I remember I was 20 technicians or 30 technicians. When I started, I said, what happens when I get to 500 texts? Let's just throw out a fictional number. And they said, if you get to 500, we'll do it for this. And now they're probably shitting themselves. But I said, don't give it to me. Tell me what I need to do for you. When I go to my distribution center, I said,

to give me the price I need, what would you have to have me sell? They gave me this freaking fairytale number. Next year, we're going to freaking hit that number. And I said, listen, I need to make this a win-win for both of us. A lot of people say, what's in it for me? I say, what's in it for you? How is this going to help your life? And I say, what's the doors you make the most money on? They told me, I said, that's where we're going to focus on selling. And it's got to be a win-win, but you got to ask.

If anybody here, you're going into this next year, you got to ask for everything. You got to renegotiate every single thing you're doing. You got to ask your employees to step up. You got to ask your recruiters to do a better job. Because if you don't ask, your favorite word is KPI. My favorite word is ASK. Ask. You got to ask.

And you got to lead them. I mean, Tommy, I can just envision you in front of your people speaking to your people. I mean, you've got a high D, so I know you can do it. But I just think, you know, you're an exciting guy. And I just don't see how anybody couldn't be invigorated by working with you and around you. Jerry, listen, I got to do this. I got to hear three of your favorite books. We're reading your book.

Okay. These are the books I advise people. I'm going to give you three books. Number one, you and I have talked about it. If you're in business and you have not read the E-Myth, you need to read it and get into it. Number two book, and I use this in my coaching practice, is Traction, Geno Wickman. And it's all about the different personalities. Number three is John Maxwell's, The 21 Irreputable Laws of Leadership. Those are the three books that I advise every client to read. When they start working with me, they get those books, Tommy, along with all my books. Okay. Jerry, listen, we are going to do this again. I promise you. I'm going to get on

the phone with you. I got to jump on this other call, but I'll give you a buzz. I got to talk to you about Ken Walls. So I'll give you a call about him. I'll call you on the 704 number. You got it. Amazing. You're one of the first people that we just didn't talk about your life and your failures and your, what you literally talked with it, just conversation. This has been so much fun. And I'll tell you what, when you just have the right stuff with somebody, time goes by. I felt like we've been on for 10 minutes. I could have done this for four hours. Four hours wouldn't be enough for me and you.

I don't know if everybody would want to listen that long. But if you do want to listen, if you guys are down, we're going to get Jerry back on here in the next month. Are you down for that, Jerry? Hey, man, you make it happen. And I'll tell you something else, Tommy. I've done a lot of podcasts. Your team there is the most organized podcast production team I have ever worked with. I'm serious.

I tell you, I shouldn't get any of the credit because my team. I know. Hey, Tommy, I'm not giving you a bit of a credit. No, no, no. I'm saying the team that I have around me is everything. I've been blessed. Even the people that listen to the podcast, they come back, they get people on here. They introduced me to people. They tell me the questions they want.

Very, very fortunate to have a guy like you on Jerry. And I promise you, if you're up late tonight, just I'll give you a call. If not, I'll call you tomorrow. Okay, brother. Text me that number. I'll talk to you later. All right. Thanks Jerry. And I promise you, if you're up late tonight, just I'll give you a call. If not, I'll call you tomorrow. Okay, brother. Text me that number. I'll talk to you later. All right. Thanks, Jerry. See you guys later. Hey guys, I just wanted to thank you real quick for listening to the podcast from the bottom of my heart means a lot to me. And I hope you're getting as much as I am out of this podcast. Our goal is to enrich your lives and enrich your businesses and your internal customers, which is your staff. And if you get a chance, please, please, please subscribe. You're going to find out all the new podcasts. You're

going to be able to ask me questions to ask the next guest coming on. And do me a quick favor, leave a quick review. It really helps us out when you like the podcast and you leave a review, make it four or five sentences, tell us how we're doing. And I just wanted to mention real quick, we started a membership. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. You get a ton of inside look at what we're going to do to become a billion dollar company. And we're just, we're telling everybody our secrets basically. And people say, why do you give your secrets away all the time? And I'm like, you know, the hardest part about giving away my secrets is actually trying to get people to do them.

So we also create a lot of accountability within this program. So check it out. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. It's cheap. It's a monthly payment. I'm not making any money on it to be completely frank with you guys, but I think it will enrich your lives even further. So thank you once again for listening to the podcast. I really appreciate it.