The Home Service Expert Podcast - Lauren Kingsley | Meet the $5.1B Operator Home Service CEOs Keep Calling

Episode Date: August 4, 2026

🚀 FREEDOM 2026 Get your Tickets Today! https://freedomevent.com Most home service companies think they have a lead problem. Lauren Kingsley says they have a friction problem, and she has the receipts: $5.1 billion in revenue managed across multiple organizations, a call center scaled from 25 people to 800-plus, and the playbook she wrote for Renuity after telecom ran this exact consolidation a decade ago. In this episode: the client who dropped raw volume 20% and watched net sales jump 36% in one month, the 48-hour scheduling window that decides 85% of your jobs, why 1 to 5% of your EBITDA disappears into data silos every year, zip-code-level marketing strategy, the greenfield playbook (canvass first, digital last), building Sovereign Command as a Layer 2 over your tech stack, and the "don't trust, verify" mindset she brought from Bitcoin into business. Learn more about Lauren: https://laurenkingsley.now Contact Lauren: [e-mail] -- 🕐 TIMESTAMPS 🕐 -- 00:00 - Introduction 0:30 - Welcome: a friction problem, not a lead problem 1:45 - Hopping fences and selling art: Lauren's path to telecom 3:30 - Writing the Renuity playbook 5:30 - Sovereign Command: a Layer 2 over your tech stack 8:25 - One source of truth: don't trust, verify 10:40 - Time: the only asset you can't create 11:00 - Inside Tommy's daily pacing report 12:30 - Dynamic lead assignment: propensity to net close 13:55 - 400,000 calls analyzed: let the machine pick the questions 15:10 - Frictionless journeys and omnichannel nurture 17:20 - AI search jumped from 6% to 60% of homeowners 19:00 - Brand vs direct response: the 80/20 flip 20:50 - Zip code strategy: where spend goes to die 22:30 - The case study: 20% fewer raw leads, 36% more net sales 25:00 - Speed to lead: 48 hours or lose 85% 25:50 - Aggregators, bots, and where the ROI really is 29:15 - The numbers: 1 to 5% of EBITDA lost, 27% missed callbacks 30:35 - Attribution: billboards, Yelp, and 7,000 tracking numbers 34:45 - Blue Sky Jets and the Wall Street stepdad 36:25 - 2008: "something's wrong with the money" 38:50 - The $100M question: Bitcoin as a long-term savings plan 43:00 - Legislation, cold storage, and 21 million coins 46:25 - Grow wide or grow deep? The hybrid answer 48:50 - Pre-approval financing and the whole-home sell-in 51:20 - Greenfield playbook: canvass first, digital last 54:40 - Retail from Costco to Ace, by zip code 57:50 - Your people are the lifeblood 1:00:45 - Dream Manager and DreamStride 1:06:00 - Bench strength and performance-pay training 1:09:55 - How to reach Lauren 1:10:15 - What keeps Tommy up at night 1:14:00 - Very few winners, massive winners 🚀 FREEDOM 2026 Get your Tickets Today! https://freedomevent.com Check Out My Social Media: Tiktok ⟶ https://www.tiktok.com/@officialtommymello Instagram ⟶ https://www.instagram.com/officialtommymello/ Facebook ⟶ https://www.facebook.com/thomasmello/

Did you know that you lose 1 to 5% of your EBITA in lost data silos? Most companies are losing 27% of their inbound callbacks. Are we scheduling that lead within 48 hours? Because we all know that if it's not scheduled within 48 hours, the propensity for internet issue goes down 85%. We have to look at time as the only asset that we can't create, shift our time on things that actually matter and make an impact. All right, guys, welcome back to the home service expert.

Today I got Lauren Kingsley here. Most home service companies think they have a lead problem. They don't. They have a friction problem. Lauren Kinsey has managed $5.1 billion in revenue. It's got the 25-person call center into 800 plus people and launched 11 greenfield markets. She's seen what happened when telecom consolidated and she says the same playbook is now running in home services.

This episode breakdown is why owners are focused on the wrong priorities where the real friction lives is in their business and how to build a revenue machine that runs without the founder in every room. Lauren, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Thanks. Thanks for having me here today. That's kind of close. The $5.1 billion, because I'm all about don't trust verify. I want to make sure I'm putting the right stuff out there. So the $5.1 billion is across multiple organizations, not just one in particular.

And it is way more than 11 Greenfields, love greenfielding. So I wanted to just. Oh, we'll talk all about greenfielding because that's right up right in my alley. So just tell us your background and, you know, tell the audience a little bit about you, where you got started or where you're heading. Sure. So actually started off in telecom, worked my way from the ground up. I used to actually hop fences.

I did it as a summer job planning drop ship cables. That did not last very long at all. I was chased by a dog and I was just not having fun with that. And so then I started to sell art out of my car, which really taught me into, you know, taught me how to get into those really uncomfortable situations, go to the very, you know, go to the places where they have no soliciting on the sign and you go in, you go to the top person on the top floor. And you're like, hey, you want to buy some art?

You got to use your hands and all kinds of stuff. you know, just really awkward but fun situation. So that kind of led me to telecom. Telecom is where I really got my start, worked my way from the ground up, started off as an agent doing sales on the call center, worked through Cox Communications, worked my way up in my career,

and really started to hone in on sales effectiveness and just organizational growth across multi-market. And from there was picked up by my previous boss at Cox to take on acquisition and merger with Spectrum. And that was fun because it was a, you know, they were going bankrupt and had to really shift culture. And then, you know, homeowners, their perspective of the brand, who is Spectrum, kind of like we see in home services with private equity when they're rebranding across multiple

organizations. And then shifting the mental model away from, you know, Internet-onel. sales to multi-product selling, you know, doing sales over the phone, doing in-home, home security, cell phones, TV, all of that. And then from there, I was recruited undercover boss style by Nathan Richmond, Matt City Windows under, you know, to take on call center and strategy for Renuity, Mad City Windows, and Bath. And really just helping them go through digital transformation, business transformation, evaluate the right processes and strategies when it comes to call center as a margin lever, and it is, and it should be evaluated that way, and making sure that

we're really optimizing our marketing strategy, marketing routing strategy, lead assignment strategy, ensuring that we're filling the slots, all of it comes into play, and really just writing the entire playbook on how to really maximize opportunities in this industry. And so there is so many parallels of what telecom went through 10 years ago, shifting from internet only and multi-market platforms across the nation to where we're finally getting to right now in this industry. It's an exciting time, and I love that it's kind of AI proof. And I think that's one of the most exciting things. The break fix models what I'm in, which is a little bit different

than it's all blue collar, but home I'm in home service and then there's home improvement. And there's very little distinction, but there's a lot of distinction. And I learned so much from home improvement because I've been studying Anderson's

renewal and all these other companies that know how to build their own demand. It's like no one's calling to say, and I need windows today. They're like, well, I'm thinking about windows. shopping around. And it's just different because when your pipe breaks, as you're a plumber or your A-track unit's not working, or your electricity goes out, or your garage store, you're stuck in your home. It's a different model. But I'm really excited to dive in. Tell me a little bit about conversion OSIQ.

Yeah. So that is, we've actually just rebranded that to Sovereign Command. That is a proprietary technology. One of the biggest challenges, and really my I shifted away from Renuity, started my own consulting doing fractional work. Conversion OSIQ was the technology that we've been building out for months, where we are integrating all of the existing tech stack apps, data, insights, everything across the board. And it's inspired by Bitcoin. I'm a massive Bitcoins, by the way. So Bitcoin, what Bitcoin did was Layer 2, they did lightning over the,

existing Bitcoin core. And what that did was it allowed Bitcoiners to send lightning payments immediately, just like you're sending a cash app. The problem that I see and inspired by Bitcoin ethos is that there's no verifiable source of truth in many

organizations. They're not tracking all of the metrics. And so what conversion OSIQ now known as sovereign command, what that is, is it's a second layer over top of the existing tech stack, apps, data, everything. It's pulling everything in. And so how it works is we are scraping your existing data governance, your taxonomy, your naming conventions, all of the

gaps that we know are there that create blind spots across the organization. And we're bringing everything in. We're aligning targets to the organizational goals. We're looking at EBITDA. We're starting with the end in mind. And so if we want to make sure our marketing team, call center team, our dispatch team, our scheduling team, our sales team, field finance, everybody, installers, warehouse, everything across the board. If we want to make sure that we are going to all be successful with aligning to the organizational goals, then we have to have one source of truth that it gives us the ability to not trust that it's happening, but verify it. And so it allows us to really simplify the business, identify where revenue is leaking across each journey,

identify, A, are we even tracking all of the touch points and dispositions and stages of the process? And it's allowing us to determine what is the path of least resistance and the top three things that we need to focus on, you know, no matter what layer you're at in the organization, to really get incremental lift. today. I think the challenge a lot of organizations and companies have is they either, A, don't have the data or they're waiting until the end of the month to do a recap of the data. And by then, it's like you've lost so much time. Why not just know in the moment what to focus on and prioritize?

And so that's what that is. That's what allows us to do. I love it. Everything you just said resonates. This is what I want most people to listen to on this podcast right now. The source of truth with clot out there and open AI, every single department's making their own charts and they're talking different naming conventions. And right now our project manager who will soon become the chief of staff is like, this is how we reach the higher level. This is our main goal. So what's the North Pole? What's the North Star? And how do we head it north star? And what are the top 10 things as a company we're working on? Where does this sit on the project board, which is now Asana? And what's super cool is now I just talk to my phone and Claude,

and I say add this project and prioritize it, and it divvies it out to the right person we meet weekly on all my projects. Because literally I have, I just this morning gave 25 new projects. Now, they're not important, they're very simple projects, but simple things like does every single technician have an A-frame to put in front of their truck?

What's the process in which we make sure? I'm not really interested in the outcome. I'm interested in the process to get to the, outcome. Where is it broken? Does that make sense? 100%. And that is is absolutely critical. You know, one of my, my why is to help companies and their teams create sovereignty. I'm talking about generational impact, a legacy, create a legacy, and how do we do that? We have to eliminate risk, right? We have to eliminate risk. We have to focus on the right things. We have to understand root cause analysis. What is what is actually,

is it process? Is it data? Like what, what is the root cause that we have to move right now in the moment? And one thing that you said really hits home with me is, it's time. You know, you said you send out 25 projects already today. Bingo, you figured it out. Most people haven't. If you think about how much time is lost and, you know, I have, I have a company. I just started working with them. They are spending so much time trying to put data points together to figure out what's going on. They're spending so much time on manual processes. They're spending so much time. And so we have to look at time as the only asset that we can't create. We can't create time, but what we can create is we can create better processes, we can create better systems that allow us to then shift our time

on things that actually matter and make an impact. You know, I want to just briefly just flash this. This is, you can't really read it, but it's a daily pacing report. It's got July revenue pacing, EBITA goal, previous day, total revenue, completed ops, Residora sales, opportunity job average, conversion rate, torch. These are my main KPIs, and it says red or green on each one of them. And then we, there's 10 people on this. And then we discussed the previous day and we say,

do we miss the ops? Do we miss the booking rate? Do we miss the conversion rate? Do we miss the average ticket? And then when we do, we look at capacity planning and we just take a deep dive and say, like we know every point in the business where it needs work right now,

and that's where all the eyeballs go. And this is what used to happen with us, Lauren. We used to point the finger at the other department and now we realize it's all connected. You know, the five dysfunctions of a team where you're more worried about your own department from the company. And what I found with misalignment

with bonus structures and how people get paid and actually like how we work together. So instead of yelling at the marketing department, we say, okay, where can we all step in? What can we do? How do we maximize every lead today? And this culture shift changed everything. And now we're hitting 27% of the bottom line. We're growing 25% a year organically. And the acquisitions are starting to fly.

And the goal is to be able to do 12 greenfields a year. And to get to that level, it's a machine. It is 100% a machine. And it is also systematic thinking. And so now imagine what you just showed me on your phone. Now imagine having the ability and having everybody on your team has the ability to now. They're getting dinged in the moment when there is massive shift. You can see real time.

Okay, how many slots do we have left to fill at 10 a.m.? How many do we have left to fill it to? The other thing is, are we assigning the right lead? You know, are we a value? First off, you know, the- Right. Well, lead assignment strategy. Are we assigning the right lead based off of its propensity to net close? So we're not, you know, we're not looking at whether they have a decline or cancelator. You know, we're looking at net close. What is the propensity to net close? What is the sales reps logistical distance? Is that within range? What is their batting average, their NSLI, their ability to close this particular type of source and or? product. And so we're optimizing. And so that way, when it is, it's dynamic lead assignment. So that way, when you are assigning, you should know ahead of time what on estimate, what is my day going to look like at the end, by the end of the day tomorrow as an organization

for net sale. And how is it taking those data points to make sure that we're continuing to get better for the future? So it's, it's so critical. You know, we, we overlapped Claude. obviously over the top, Anthropics, it's on top, and we analyzed 400,000 calls. And the machine figured out these are the best calls because we all had our own ideas, but why not use historical data? And then on top of that, understanding how to put Tom Brady in the Super Bowl every time, and then understanding the highest cancellation rate, and then understanding that with also proximity, there's a lot of things that go into it.

But one of the things I figured out was we asked certain, questions in the call center, right? But let's let the machine tell us what questions to ask so we can learn. Because we all have our own, is your garage, is your garage stuck? You've got a car stuck. Now, what we found out of someone bumped their garage, that's the best tickets. And so it literally, now the AI is doing all the work. The AI is actually assigning the calls. And there's somebody overlooking it, making sure it's doing its job correctly. But the machine is getting smarter. And if you build it this way, Claude's only going to get better next week.

Next month it's going to be out of this world. Yeah. That's the next level. Yeah, you know, it's interesting too. You know, the things that you're saying, it's not just from the lead assignment from the call center routing strategy with who are rerouting it to,

but also considering we have to create a frictionless customer journey. We, you know, our homeowners, we've already built up so much trust with them. let us in their home. That is their place of peace. Why are we not capturing more of the market with additional product selling? Why are we trying to throw if the strategy for any company right now is to just throw marketing dollars at all of these different channels to determine what's going to happen and they're not evaluating how are these sources performing by a zip code level,

you know, by product, by a channel. And then making sure that we are capturing the full omni-channel experience. How often are we calling this lead? How often are we texting this lead? Are we capturing that in the CRM so we can see what is effective? What is the response rate on SMS? What is our trust score on SMS? Are we able to nurture and increase our overall trust score so we can increase the deliverability of our SMS by having back and forth conversations? Because that drives it up. Are we sending emails as well? And then what is our nurturing strategy when it comes to capturing additional market share for additional product lines with the homeowners that we've already built if, you know, trust with. So there is so much opportunity right now. And

the thing that I think a lot of organizations aren't realizing is that there's still so much capital that is going through this industry right now and into next year. The thing that's changed is the homeowner. And, you know, it's staying in place right now. And so they're a lot smarter. We should be adding AI fact schema to our websites, making sure that we are searchable. We have to make sure that we're meeting homeowners where they're at and bringing them with us. 100% agreed. I've been looking, how do we enhance our AI on all the LLMs, whether it's Gemini, Perplexity, Cloud, or Open AI. And the deal is, you could go on and search the best ways to do it, but there is not only schema data, infographics,

winning the local awards. There's like a thousand things. There's different ways to write the code in the background that make it easier for an LLM to scrape. And this is why I'll tell you this, most companies that are listening right now and some of the listeners, they're just trying to figure out how do I get my next employee. And that's okay. I was there. You were there. I mean, they're like, dude, I'm not really thinking. A lot of people, though, are thinking about LLMs. And I'm like, dude, that's only like 3% of the searches out there right now. You're not even visible. You haven't even claimed your Google My Business page.

Right. You have seven reviews. You should have 700. It's about putting it in language that resonates. And really, it's dollars and cents. So how many dollars are you putting into your marketing spend on a monthly basis? And what is your return on your investment? What is your set rate?

Your contact rate? And when we put it into those terms, they see that. Hey, you know what? If I do look at Google, you know, spend or marketing spend year over year. Marketing spend is up and the set rates and issue rates and demo rates are down. And so then they start to realize that, you know what, last year, people were using AI search 6% of the time. This year, we're already at 60% of homeowners and our markets are using AI to determine, and even if they are using the search bar, even if they are

using the Google search bar, they're getting an answer before they even click the website, right? And so it is absolutely mission critical. for any company right now to really dive into how can they ensure that they are searchable and findable and that their brand is consistent across everything. Yeah, and you know what the biggest thing I found is the more you do on TV radio billboards, bus stops, social media, the more your brand sticks out. I mean, literally like when, like the fact is I don't necessarily want anybody searching. You know what I want I'm searching for?

The company that I keep hearing about that I trust that I see in my neighborhood. You know, there's companies, I know they're doing $2, $3 billion, and they're spending most of their money on brand. There's this, I think it was New Balance. I was talking to Alex Ramose a while ago about this. He said, you know, there's this case study out there that the new CEO took over. And they were spending 80% of their money on direct response. and 20% kind of top of the funnel.

Well, the CEO came in there, the new guy, and he reversed it. Within two years, they had 5x. Because so many people are like, I need the money today. And that's okay. I understand that we need to make payroll. We need to make trends neat. But the idea being is, when it comes to marketing, I'm still a big fan of radio.

I'm still a big fan of the Wizard of Ads. You know, Roy Williams. I'm still a big fan of the right TV commercials. But the right audiences, too. I mean, don't waste your money on being on a radio station that it's not your ideal client. Right. Well, Roy Williams says own half the market, be on every radio station, and it'll resonate with everybody. But, you know, that's very expensive to do when it works.

I think that it depends on, first and foremost, what I've seen happen a lot of times is where a company will over leverage certain sources, and then they are now at risk. or they're not looking and evaluating their organization across what could happen from, because they're so honed in on what's happening in the day to day. They don't zoom out and look at the macro impact that catches up with them three to six months later. And so let's say somebody is within one state for, you know, starting out. They have one state. They're starting to expand in that state. And then there is a massive storm that comes in and knocks out one of your main markets.

So you're not diversified from that aspect. The other aspect is that there are so many companies that this is really interesting because I always say start with the end in mind. They don't have any rhyme or reason when it comes to their marketing goal setting or the channel mix. They're just they're talking to people and the industry and they're hearing that, hey, this works, this works, this works, let's try this. And it's like throwing spaghetti at the wall. So first things first is what is your goal? is your net sales goal for the year? Are you achieving growth? And what is your EBITA goal if you're a large organization? And then we're going to work backwards from there. How many raw leads do I actually

need? What is the net sale that I need? And then we also have to ensure that we are automating capacity planning as a result of that and understanding capacity challenges within the markets that we're in. And so we have to evaluate too, and not just on a market by market basis, but on a zip code basis. We need to have a zip code strategy. What zip codes are we effective in? Which ones are we not? Where are we applying spend by product where there's no ROI? Where are we losing revenue?

You know, I was just doing this with one of my companies this past month. We were evaluating June results. I, you know, told we reduced the raw leads by 20% in. June. Most CEOs would freak out over that. What do you mean we reduced raw leads? Well, they were like 60% in aggregators. And those were going to zip codes that weren't even having any results. No set appointments, nothing. And so we, I applied the strategy to their whole mix and we were able to determine what is working where and for what product had her reallocate her spend towards those areas. Literally.

her declines went down 46% in one month. Her net sales went up 36%. They increased their set rate, their confirmation rate, their demo rate, their net issue rate with 20% less raw leads. And so it just shows you that it's math. It is creating ear and beautiful truth. Yes.

So how do you, by a zip code level, and I completely understand that, I got heat maps of every area. and for me, it's kind of when the garage was installed, but there's also older neighborhoods when things start going wrong. But how do you get lead aggregators organized by zip code? I mean, you just tell them I don't want these zip codes. I mean, how does, don't they just kind of send you everything in your territory?

I think that it depends on the contract that you have, right? Everyone has different contracts and you can have them targeting from the zip code level. I think that there are some that are. The other thing, too, is to think about is that there's so many that are bots right now. We have a ton of bods that are coming through in aggregators. And so a lot of people have figured this out and they're shifting away from aggregators because of the quality of it. You know, you think about Angie's list just reported in Q4 of last year. They lost 75% of their overall revenue because of the quality of leads that they were sitting out there.

And so it's no longer about having this, you know, let's flood as many leads as we can into the business and figure out, you know, what we can close? No, it is having a, you know, what is the highest intent lead that we can get? How are we routing that lead into the call center? Are we answering and responding to that lead in 30 seconds or less? Are we AB testing the response rate from an SMS perspective and an outbound dialing? You know, how does the homeowner want us to connect with them? Are we scheduling that lead within 48 hours? Because we all know that if it's not scheduled within 48 hours,

the propensity to net issue goes down 85%. You know, we have to truly evaluate the full funnel end-to-end. Is the appointment getting reset? Is it canceling out before issue? Is it canceling out after issue? Is it, you know, of the leads that were set, how many do we cancel out or reset? How did the call center set it out,

seven days or longer because half the time people, when they're looking at the schedule for the day, they don't know how long that leads been sitting on there. And then they wonder why they're not getting the results that they want. So we have to make sure that we're measuring the entire, you know, journey. A journey, yeah. A hundred percent. What other elite aggregators are you like top of the line? You just love them. Well, from the lead aggregator side, I don't love them. But I would say that it depends on the area.

It depends on the product. And it really does. And so Angie has made a shift. They are doing okay in certain areas. But you have to look at it from a regional standpoint and by product. So, you know, they have made a massive shift this year and really starting to see results from Angie's side. I would say Q3 because early in the year wasn't there. I would say also looking at lead gurus, I like them a little better.

I also like in some markets, though, you know, I would also just really press, this is really important to me to say field marketing, you can't beat that. The highest return that I'm seeing right now across the board, across many organizations that I work with is field marketing events, getting it into retail. The other thing is media, media and brand. So making sure. Are you talking door to door?

Not canvassing. So field marketing from events and retail. Now canvassing, yes, if you have the right management and strategy, where you're going to get the most ROI right now is from events and getting into retail location so you can diversify your mix. The other piece is media, making sure that you are capturing those and then website leads. So your mix, 60% of your mix from my should be field marketing, media, website, and authentic with social, then fill in the gaps with your aggregators, your digital, those types of leads. Otherwise, you're just exhausting spend. Yeah, and the fact is, when you get really good at lead ags or social media,

you're getting a lot of no-shows. You're closing 30% tops. you're going to burn out guys. So you almost need a different training program for the type of lead. Because if you have expected and a different pace structure, because if you expect these people to have home runs on some of these lower quality leads, it's a lot harder they get burnt out. They may want to quit versus someone calling and saying, I want this.

I found you on Google. I know you guys. I checked out your reputation. We're going with you. Just get out. It's never that easy. But there is much higher quality of leads. I mean, I know a company doing 9.

million of EBITA that's just using social media. That's all they're doing. The thing that scares me is social media changes. Just like Google changes. Yes. And think about this too. You've probably noticed that the quality and the cost for meta and Facebook has shifted tremendously over the past year if you're using that. When it comes to leads, it depends on your size and where you're trying to grow. If you are multi-market and you have, you know, know, pretty large, substantial amount of sales reps and you have a pretty diverse mix, then you have something that a lot of the smaller companies don't have. And that is you have the data. You have the data insights to determine what is working and where by zip code. And so

doing a deep dive, doing an analysis on what is performing and where. And then also, are you tracking the all of the touch points across the journey that right there is where a lot of stuff gets lost and where you see where teams lose a lot of time did you know that you lose one to five percent of your ebita and lost data silos and on an annual basis one to five percent on average most companies will lose in ebita and silos and so if we're not tracking all of these different touch points of the journey then the unresolved. that we're going to achieve is not going to be what we want. You know, even speed to lead.

On average, most companies are losing 27% of their inbound callbacks. So having an inbound, outbound SMS strategy that aligns to your high-intent lead sources is king. You know, are we calling in our field marketing leads immediately so we can capture that they're verified and confirmed and that it is qualified. so we're not sending our sales reps on a wild goose chase. So there's, you know, there's not only that, but just the attribution breaks that are happening too. You know, 67% are losing and just having a line naming conventions taxonomy and the right

attribution method to really capitalize, right? So I could go on forever. No, I think a big takeaway from this little section of the conversation was that, customer journey, math, data. I mean, I feel like, you know, I have 7,000 call tracking numbers. I have UTM parameters around everything. And then we're working on a whole different marketing with AI. Because you might have gone here, then looked here.

So if you're just on the phone asking them, where did you find me? They're like, oh, I found you in a mailer. But even though they just hit your Google page. And there's a million ways people find us. Sometimes they find us three ways. hey, I saw your billboard, and then I went and I got a mailer, and then I wanted to see the reviews, so I went to Yelp. And it's very hard to find, like, you know, it's hard to assign that. It's like, do you assign that to Yelp because you had good reviews on Yelp or do you assign that to the Billboard?

So there's like, there's, and TV radio billboards, bus stops, those are very hard to get perfect attribution. I mean, they rise, everything else rises. Yeah. You know, I think that, and I always say this, like, I'll tell people, look at your finger, and they're like, what? What are you talking about? I'm like, look at your finger. And I tell them to look at their fingerprint.

Every single company, every single market, every single organization is unique. They all have its own unique blueprint and fingerprint. And so we have to, that's why all of the processes and journeys and our strategies have to align to the end result. And then what is the path of least resistance, you know, we focus on the right models and the right things that are going to allow us to capture what we need to capture and a decent amount of time. So we're prioritizing our time in a manner that allows us to get the EBIT of growth or the net sales that we want through the end of the year.

I mean, we're speaking the same language here. I just, you know, it's really hard for me is, is I've never really, and I know there's companies, these home improvement companies, they're paying everybody commission. They've got a bigger booth at these homes. shows, but they don't just go to the home show. I mean, they're running 400 events in each market. I mean, they're running every single day somewhere, not only retail, not only in the Costco's, the Walmarts, the Home Depot, all that, but they're also running into these, like the Arabian horse show. Like, they're running all these different things. Like, Anderson Renewal is everywhere.

I mean, they're at the high school football games. Yeah. And it's, it's hard for me to understand And because they're not only getting clients and getting people seeing them and meeting people and handing out stuff and getting people interested, but they're also recruiting. They're recruiting talent at these places. So, you know, how long does it take to build a program like that? Because home service has never heard of this. We've never heard of like at Costco's they want you to be there one day a week. I'm like, dude, we don't have the time to be there once a week because we're so used to. We get 34,000 inbound leads a month.

Right. Well, this is what's critical about what you just said. You say 40,000 inbound leads, right? How many, if you have 40,000 inbound leads, we run 25,000 to 27,000 jobs a month. Yes. And so how many, how many, what is your call center head count too, right? Because that's my first question is how are we managing those leads and how are we prioritizing the high intent leads? As far as the program, when you say someone like renewal is at a,

high school event. To me, that tells me, okay, that's for brand recognition. They're, they're creating brand recognition. Now, it depends on the goal. So if the goal is because we need to diversify our channel mix so that we can increase the demos that we're sending out there with high quality lead sources, then your strategy is going to look a little different than going to, you know, the high school football game. You're going to figure out what is the average traffic and the average, you know, the right zip codes for the event if you're trying to do it from a perspective of increasing your demo appointments. What it sounds like at the high school game is brand recognition. I love it. I wanted to ask you, you know, I'm going to totally pivot here

because I haven't asked one question from my sheet, which these are the best podcasts. But it looks like you grew up with your stepdad building blue sky jets. Did that have any effect on you know, how you lead and what did you learn from that experience? So, you know, it's funny you say that. My stepdad and my dad, both of them shaped, you know, my stepdad, he grew up on Wall Street. He's a Wall Street guy, you know. He, his biggest role model is Jordan Belford, you know. So he's, he's super Italian, has the Italian accent, and it's just about getting out there old school,

clothes and deals, pen and paper, right? And I watched him build, you know, he decided one day. He said, you know what? I don't really want to do Wall Street anymore. I want to do Jets, you know. And so what it showed me is that you can create the reality that you want. Your mindset is 100% your biggest wealth multiplier. And the mindset and belief systems of the people that are on your teams and within your company are going to either.

you know, make your goals or break the goals. If they're not, you know, open to breaking glass ceilings and you have group think and everyone's just kind of agreeable, then you really are starting to eliminate the ability for innovative growth. Whereas my dad, you know, went until the Naval Academy, did everything right, did the plan right, and then 2008 hit. And I watched my dad who busted his butt his whole life, lose everything and watched him like working like three jobs and struggling. And that is when I realized like something's not right here. There's something wrong with the money. This doesn't make sense. My dad did everything right. And, you know, that led to my Bitcoin journey, which completely shifted everything for me. You know, it's a Bitcoin is about having a

source of truth. It's about don't trust verify. We're verifying. We're going to do the math. It is proof of work. We're going to put our head down and we're going to have proof of work. We're going to make sure that we're getting the results. It is, you know, stay humble and stack stats, right? So we have to stay humble in our business and our day to day because, you know, there is a hero's journey at every single company, every single organization. And we have to make sure that what got us here is not going to get us there. And so we still have to stay humble as we're going through the next multiple, the next, you know, growth lever so that, you know, we can really make sure that we're winning. So I would say that 100%, if anything, both of them reminded me that

our mindset is, is king and God is going to, you know, he's going to light the path, but it's up to us to lean into fear or faith. And we get to choose. That's the beauty. It. We have the architects of our life, of our companies, of the relationships that we create and build. And, you know, the only limits we have is the one that we put on ourselves. I love this stuff. I, you know, one cheat code for me is I go out and I find the number one person that I actually see. Like, if I see Anderson's, like Matt Esler is the number one guy at Anderson. And I know him. So the plan is to get up. there visit him, actually talk shop, and learn. You know, so many people I feel like they want to figure everything else out on their home, but success leaves clues. And for me, it's like, have you ever tried my favorite three letters, ASK, and do something for them, like reciprocity, like go out of your way to help them? I'm very interested in this Bitcoin conversation because,

you know, I was heavy into Bitcoin early on and I got screwed. And it. I think it was at 110. And I believe I just looked at up. I wasn't trying to be rude. It's at 61,000 right now. And by the way, I know it's not like I check my stocks every day. They go up and down. Like I know they fluctuate.

But let me ask you this. You get $100 million. But you got nothing else. Don't think, what are you doing with the money? You're putting it into real estate. You're starting businesses. How much you're putting into Bitcoin? How much you put in the SB 500?

Are you diversifying? What are you doing with $100 million? I'm going to put as much into Bitcoin. Okay. Hold on. Hold on. Are you going to give me the same answer as Michael Saylor? Well, no, because no.

Well, Michael Saylor, you know, he has micro-stratage. That's a whole other conversation. You know, that is for people that have 401Ks. But anyways, I'm not going to get into that because I could go on forever. But I'm going to put as much into Bitcoin as I can. And then I'm going to use, I have to figure out how much cash flow do I actually need, Who am I partnered with? What do I want to accomplish and achieve?

Because Bitcoin, and this is where a lot of people, they don't understand what it is. First and foremost, there's only 21 million Bitcoin forever. One Bitcoin equals one Bitcoin. So if there- You can only have a half of it every four years. Yeah. It's always a presidential year when it flies up, by the way. Well, the having, the having is, it's typically, we're in new territory now,

because now we have the Black Rocks, we have the vanguard, we have new legislation around Bitcoin. But I'm going to put as much into Bitcoin as possible because scarcity is, and I want to make sure that my lineage, my legacy has the best asset that there is. It is a long-term savings plan, whereas your dollar is debased on a regular basis. There's only so much value you're going to get from real estate. And so when you think about it, just say an annual base. think about how much the cost of goods and just everything and how much we're taxed and inflation and how much all of that goes up just on an annual basis. You know, everything is smoke and mirrors. Whereas Bitcoin is that you have visibility into it and it is going to continue to go up forever.

And so right now it's interesting because we have paper Bitcoin, which is in a sense where you're buying it on exchange. Like you'll hear people say not your keys, not your coin. Because if you're going to buy Bitcoin, you buy Bitcoin and you put it on a hardware wallet and then you don't talk about it. You know. You always say you only, you go cold storage. You believe that you buy, you move it on to, you hear these horror stories. I know all about it. But you hear these horror stories about the guys and gals that forget their passwords or lose their passwords or whatever.

Not your piece, not your coin, right? That's what that means. Well, I'll talk to you after this podcast a little bit because I got a lot of deeper questions about that. But it's very interesting because what I look for is high internal rates of return and I like to be diversified. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. You are 100% a bit coiner. And I know this just because I've heard your podcast.

I've seen your stuff. your mental model, right, is a Bitcoiner. My dad, Bitcoinser all day. He was so against Bitcoin, right? I told my dad for years. I mean, for years. I'm talking. I try to convince my dad to buy Bitcoin for 10 years. And then I literally cried because right before this past having, he finally says, how do I buy Bitcoin? Because he had this, you know, he put every, he was all in on his 401. K. And my dad is a boomer, you know. So if it's like the light, the light bulb finally came on. And, but go ahead. I'm sorry. I just, I get so excited talking about. No, no, no, no. I was just, I was looking at. No, I, I'm very interested because, you know, I think institutional buyers, there's some legislation that's in the works right now. And I forget what it's called. You probably know more than I do, but it's it's something super important that actually puts more safety around how Bitcoin and some of these other coins are traded do you know what that is all about?

Yeah. It was so, you know, I've been a bitquirner for for I don't want to say how long so I want to docks that because then, you know, people might, yeah. So but, but you know, it's interesting to me because let's just take a theory. for example, right? There is legislation. It's nothing to worry about. If anything, you know, it's like it's mainstream now in a sense to where we're starting to get a lot more adoption, which is what we've always wanted. You have to also take into consideration that the legislation is really, I think if anything, it's eliminating fear for people like Vanguard and BlackRock in the larger institutions.

But what I would say to people listening to that are interested in learning more in companies because they now have Bitcoin loans like strike, there's companies where you can partner your organization with and you can help your teams create generational wealth as a buyback. But you take Ethereum, for example, or any of the other cryptocurrencies. You can always create more of those. You can always, like, print more, print more shares. You can't do it. Yeah, there's not a scarcity.

Right. But there's other uses for, like, there's other uses for some of those other points. I mean, like, they do certain things, like, certain things businesses run off of them. And I don't have all the knowledge of all these. I used to be really deep. But they can get rug pulled. They can get rug pulled, which means that, like, Like, the rug can get pulled out from under them because they can always, like, create more.

Bitcoin is the only thing. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of like when Biden printed 40% of all the cash in 22. Right. Right. Obviously, create massive inflation and it devalues the dollar massive once it gets spread into the economy. So, yeah, I understand there's a finite amount of Bitcoin, and that's a major key element. Yes.

They're not making any more of it. They're not making any more Bitcoin. No, I don't know. I mean, there's so many elements, but it's a long-term savings. Like, if you need cash flow, I would definitely as a business model, take a different route. You know, if you're wanting to create generational wealth for your legacy or you want to allow your organization to really hit, you know, different multiples long-term and you have a long-term plan for your company, then I would say Bitcoin. If your goal is to hit your EBIT of growth and then sell and really companies should always be building out their company to sell at some point. Then I would probably take a little bit of a different approach.

For my personal, long-term generational wealth and my children and so on, Bitcoin. 100% of it. Well, I like it. And I enjoy this conversation. I want to talk about because I'm obsessed with green fields. And there's another question I wanted to ask you earlier just before that. Would you rather grow in the same industry to 50 states or grow into 50 different things to sell in the same market? You get to own the client, but then you don't get any economies of scale.

So you own that population. You sell them roofs. You sell them flooring. You sell them garages. You sell them landscaping. And this is what franchise think work. even though neighborly has told me that the CEO that we only sell 2% cross channels. So what do you think?

Own the clients, sell them a bunch of stuff or own the industry and go to a lot of markets? I would hybrid. Let me tell you why. Because if I just, I would hybrid it because if I just went to 50 states, I'm going to lose a lot of revenue. And I'm going to lose my ability to really penetrate those markets. And really, I'm going to lose my internal resources in order to execute that effect. effectively 100% of the time. If I'm solely looking at it from a market penetration perspective where I have the whole home and the cost, you know, I have the whole home, all my products from every customer within

one market, you know, or small geographic region, then I am not diversified enough to where I'm opening myself up to risk to external sources. So I would do a macro research level analysis on my products, my consumers, the trends going and forecasting into the end of the year, what's happening on the finance side, you know, how are they getting approved? What does that look like? Where should I go? Like, for example, we noticed where there was a lot of credit declines happening in the sunbelt this year, you know, and so making sure that we are aware and in our greenfield strategy, we're not just saying, hey, this looks good, this area looks good. Like, we have to make sure that we understand the customer, the leads, the financing, the end result that we want

to accomplish, and then work backwards from there. Where can we effectively grow this? And then how are we also, what is our pricing strategy with a multi-product sell in? Are we measuring multi-products selling? Are we looking at missed opportunities? Are we measuring average revenue per customer? or are we, does our sales team even know? Like, like here's, here's something where I'm so surprised we haven't done this. We know that the wife, for example, in the home is making that buying decision nine times out of 10, you know, and for most of the time. And so, you know, why do we not have like a mommy makeover bundle selling for the house?

You know, and why are we not, why are we waiting until the deal to run financing? why are we not running pre-approval on financing up front to create more of a frictionless journey? We're determining. So like if right now, so say someone wants to go and they want to buy a car, they get pre-approval for financing to purchase a car. Now they know their budget range that they can purchase that car with, right? Same thing. But now we do that in the industry. And so now the sales team knows, how do I start my discovery questions?

because I know that I can top-down sell from this perspective with pre-approval. Yeah, once you get the pre-approval, they qualified for $60,000. Your job as a salesperson is to give the options. You don't have to oversell it. And some people think this is disingenuous, but I always tell people, people don't buy what they need. They buy what they want. Exactly.

I didn't need this whoop. You know, I always give examples because most sales guys, they hate the word sales and they say, I only sell things people need. And the home improvement, nobody needs new windows. The old window, unless they all broke, there's no, like home improvement when you're in kitchen room models, bathroom remodels, when you're doing that type of stuff, the problem is in home service. They don't understand that. And they're like, I don't want to take advantage of the client. And I'm like, did you take advantage of your son when the salesman sold them Jordans and the $150 Nike shirt?

Like, so I always prove to these guys. I look at their shoes. I look at their watches. and I see a nice watch. I'm like, well, why did you buy that? Did you need that? And they're like, well, no. You know, I want one of these for a long time.

I'm like, people want the best investment is into their home. That's where most of their retirement lies. And by the way, the garage versus 268% return on investment. Better than your kitchens, better than your bathroom, better than adding a pool. We should love what we do. Yeah, exactly. And we should be leveraging and really leaning into those relationships for the additional product selling.

I agree. You've convinced me of a lot of things just on this podcast. Let's dive in to your top tips on Greenfields that people don't think about. I'll give you a few real quick. I think you should market their three months in advance. I think you should start out with something banger, like a massive charity that you get all the media involved in. I think you should do overhire, overhire just like a restaurant. I've opened up Cheesecake Factory. I've opened up P.F. Chains.

over hire by about 40%, so you could top grade through the process. And I think you should go do friends and family for at least 90 days, where you're doing cheap stuff for at least me, because I want to get reviews. I want to get that Google My Business page, the GPP ranking. Yeah. To add to that. What else do you got? I mean, you're going to have a probably list of totally other things.

Oh, my gosh. So I would definitely run canvassing first in Greenfields before turning on any type of digital. I would lean heavily into field marketing and media for greenfielding because if not, then you're going to really upset your sales team, your call center team, because it's going to take a little bit for the right lead channels to warm up effectively. And then if you flood it with aggregators and then they start declining, then you're going to start to rotate out your sales team and then you're creating a lot of friction points. And so to your point, hiring in advance 100%, do the same thing with your canvassers, start

creating the brand recognition. I would also ensure that you're getting your phone numbers for them localized. So that way that shows up from a brand at perspective in your call center from that area. I would also make sure that you are setting up retail in those locations. I 100% all day will recommend starting greenfields with field marketing without a shadow of doubt. and then beefing up your sales staff from the field marketing leads and then start to turn on your digital channels from there. I love it. I love it.

How fast is too fast to Greenfield do you think? You know, it depends on the size of the organization. Yeah. But is there too fast? I think it depends on where you're greenfielding and the results. There are certain greenfield, like, for example, when I was with, you know, Renewity in Mad City. we had certain markets where we would greenfield and the momentum was just insane and we would do

we would we would be able to you know do more because of the specific markets that we were greenfielding whereas we had other markets where they were challenging and then there was a lot of credit declines and then there was a lot of turnover and so one thing that I would say to any CEO is lean into your momentum your momentum is there for a reason don't Don't scale back. So if you're getting momentum somewhere, you're getting sales, beef up. You know, maybe the goal needs to be adjusted to an even bigger goal, you know, dream bigger. If you're having friction in your greenfield markets, then maybe you should be scaling back and go back to basics and start with greenfielding, you know, doing the field marketing place.

So you're building your brand and you're creating your own lead flows there first before you start A, B testing on the digital front. Okay, so when you talk about getting into retail, what if somebody's locked up on the retail? You're talking about Home Depot, Lowe's Costco, and of course you got Walmart. I mean, where is every retail place that you think is successful? I, Costco, Sam's Club, you know, I mean, you're pretty, Menards, you're pretty much naming a majority of them. You know. Does Ace Hardware work?

ACE hardware works, but it depends on the zip code. So you should always leverage your zip code knowledge and understanding demographics in that area. So if you're your, that's key, like having your zip code strategy down to a science. So if you had a massive team and they were A plus talent, you wouldn't just try to pick every zip code. You wouldn't just take every lows or every Costco? No, not at first. No, I would. But eventually you probably get there.

Yeah, but I mean, if I have a massive team and they're a bunch of A players, then I'm probably going to want to diversify what they're focused on and not just put them all into the retail. I probably want to send them out into capturing more, you know, events and other types of things. I want to be able to, you know, set an overarching here are the expectations. And then here's what success looks like. You may rotate in and out of retail and or events and or canvassing. And it really, it just pens on, and this is why having visibility, having a live map of your zip

codes, by product, by close rate, by ROI, like what is happening there, what is working. because we should be able to have growth levers that we can turn on and off at any given moment. And our team should be on this path of continuous improvement and knowledge and learning and understanding that, hey, if we turn on this growth lever, that means that you go, you go do this. And from a leadership perspective, leaders know, hey, you know what? We're starting to get a lot of momentum shift towards the event side. we're going to allocate some of our headcount from the retail stores to, you know, going to more events right now.

So I don't want to put myself into a bucket of, hey, let's go capture all these retail stores because this is going to be the best. No, I want to make sure that I'm maximizing my opportunities and I am setting the right expectations with the team so they understand that, hey, we're going to have dynamic, you know, fun and exciting, you know, times here. And this is what that looks like. Man, I feel like I got so much to do after this. You talk about the importance of your own energy as a leader and how you treat your employees. How does that matter as much as the systems and processes? It's the most important part. It is the most important part because your people are the lifeblood of your team. They are the ones that are, making the ideology, the dream that, you know, you have a field of dreams.

You say if you build it, they will come. Well, you know what? They came. So what are we doing as leaders to tap into our people? Are we allowing them the platform and the opportunity to tell their story to talk about their wins? You want to attract top talent? That is a big, not you particularly, but just anybody.

You know, if you want to attract top talent, you're going to get there through your people. Are your people in and out of the door? Or are they referring people? Are we creating an environment where we're developing our people? We have a clear path into their growth. We have the ability in a simplified path for them to bring on people that they know, even if it's not for their specific department, then it could be for some other area of the business.

If your people are not recruiting people to the business, there's a clear, there's something there as to why. If we're having hiring challenges and our people are not recruiting people or referring people into the business, you know, there's a reason why. We should be constantly attracting top talent and us as an organization should be telling the story and creating visibility into the life of an employee here. So I think that your people are your most valuable asset. You can't do it without them by creating simplified systems and automating processes and simplifying the business by focusing on the right things.

What that does is it allows us to then transfer accountability and empowers our people and it allows their confidence to soar so that they can achieve new high. and we're celebrating their wins on a regular cater. So your people are absolutely everything. They are not a number. They are not a transaction. It is not, you know, we got to get all these people from, you know, we do. When we're talking strategy, we're doing capacity planning, yes. But our people, their stories, their impact has a ripple effect.

And if we don't understand that and we don't take that seriously and we're not creating opportunities for them to grow within the organization and to expand and to achieve their dreams as well, then we're not serving them. And by us not serving them, they're not serving themselves or the community as a result of it. You know, I have a full-time dream manager. That's amazing. I love that. I didn't. Read the book. You should read the book, Dream Manager. I will. You'll dig it. And I'm going to get a second one by the end. end of the year because you can only handle about 60 people in a six-month period. So I've actually built software called Dreamstri to be able to handle more.

And part of Dream Stride is getting your credit score fixed, paying off your high-interest debt, getting into a new home, identifying what your dreams are, and then coordinating everything, not just monetarily, but getting in shape, doing the things with your family, having fun, like understanding where you want to go. there's this book called The Five Languages of the Workplace. And it's the same thing as the Five Love Languages. Some people, like a runner, if they run every day, buy them a pair of running shoes. Every day they put them on, they'll think about you.

And those are the things. I don't like perishable things. Like trips are great because it's a memory. But the other things are like, don't just give them something they're going to use every day. And you don't have to put your logo on it either. I mean, it doesn't have to be A1 sneakers. You know what I mean? It should just be something super awesome just because my plan in the next year is to triple down on how much I give.

And some of that's time, some of that's money, some of that's attention, some of that's just acknowledgement. And I think that it's harder to do because there's 1,400 people now. So I created another app where I message every single person. This morning it was Christina's second anniversary. I sent her a really nice video. So I'm sending videos every day for birthdays and anniversaries. and I think I'm above the rest, but I'm failing. I'm a two out of ten for where I should be.

Yeah, I mean, well, it's crazy because I think that, you know, when COVID hit, we had so many leads coming in that I think somewhere along the way that the importance of authentic human connection was lost with a lot of companies. And the impact of celebrating someone's win, identifying when. one of the things that we have is for, you know, on our sovereign command center is what are the wins across the organization and how can we celebrate that and just send out and celebrate those wins across the board and create visibility to it? Because as a result of that, you know, we're identifying, we're following up or transferring accountability. And we're also celebrating when

people are achieving it. And not just us, you know, taking on and doing all of the celebrating, But how do we really, one of the things that I loved about telecom was that those organizations were so put together, I guess, or they were just evolved. They've already gone through a lot of the pain points that, you know, our industry is going through right now. And so they really honed in on the people and the experience and bringing people with you and having mentors within the organization. and creating mentorship-type programs to really get people involved in other aspects of the organization. And that is so powerful. That is so powerful. That is exactly how Cox Communications turned into an enterprise.

It is about creating the right opportunities for our people. That is what matters. I think another big thing is a path to move. move up in the company. So it's a career. It's not just a job. And most companies I know, it's like, dude, when you, when you get out of the field, that was it. You're never going to make as much money. We've got six ways to get out of the field and all of them pay very good money. And even just having visibility into it, too, right? Is there an internal website where someone can say, you know what, I'm kind of over this particular role. Let me go to the internal website and see

what is open and where. Maybe I want to move. Maybe I want to, you know, explore the East Coast. Maybe I want to explore the West Coast. Maybe I want to be a Midwest guy or gal, you know, do we have visibility into the company to where they have the opportunity to apply, interview, and get feedback from that interview? Internally, those are your best move-ups. The problem is, you know, we've taken a lot of people from other certain markets. And the area managers are like, dude, you just took another two of my top guys. And the internal thing, they shouldn't celebrate. Most of them do. But the other fact is like, my bonus is riding on that too. And so it's a team effort. And you should be happy for the person. But at the same time, you're like, man, I keep making badass people. I'm a better recruiter.

I train better. I pour love into them. And then they get snatched. And so I understand that aspect. We don't have a huge problem with that, but I can see how some companies might. I would just, so I, you know, I ran into this a lot with telecom too. And so the expectation is that always build up your bench strength because your people can get snatched and want to grow at any time. If they're crushing it so much out in the field and, you know, then are we creating the opportunity for them to mentor in the field and get residual additional bonus off of that too? You know, we should always be building up our bench strength and recruiting and then incentivizing our people. people to recruit. I love it. I love it. You know, we just switched our training program to where the trainers are making a bonus based on the first 90 days of each cohort out in the field. And

typically they don't send anybody home. Last month, they sent eight guys home. Now that I switched to a performance pay in that, and I'm never excited to send anybody home, but if you're going to screw up in the field and you're not cut out for this, they're just like, well, we'll see. We don't want to end this guy's career when we wrote, but they know he showed up late or she showed up late. They know they were avid smokers. They know they were timid. They knew they weren't bought into the company. They know they didn't believe. Then why are we graduating them? So, yeah, I want to love that. Go ahead. Now I was going to say, I was going to elaborate on that. Well, yeah, because that's so good. I think a lot of people are so focused on just getting headcount on the door.

And I love that they actually sent people home because they weren't hitting expectations. So And you need to have a great HR team that's not combating everything. It says, I need 75 performance improvement plans and all that stuff to let somebody go. It's like, no, they're just not working out. I'm sorry, we're right to work dates. And we'll deal with the consequences because the worst thing you could have it as a company is a toxic person spreading cancer everywhere. And you got an HR person in the background, make it impossible to get rid of them. Yes.

And it's nice about being a small company is you can just be like, dude, you're out of here. Yeah, I mean, but at the same time, you can just have a performance scorecard too by, for every department, for every person. And are they hitting it or not? Are they green or in the red? And if they're in the red, then, you know, that's just that it simplifies getting people out the door that aren't working without HR making it overly complicated. Let me ask you an off-the-wall question. any books that really just kind of changed your life? Yeah. The view leadership or business or could be fiction for all I care.

Yes. So the game of life and how to play it. And I would say begin with yes by Alan Boyton. I mean, these are... Give me a little high level. The game of life and how to play it. Yes. So that is really, that is a complete mental.

shift, mental framework shift. And what it did for me was it allowed me to create a mind shift to where any limitation that I had in my mind previously, I was able to change the phrasing from the limitation, which is fear-based to know, like, I can create this. I can make this happen. it's just a matter of my thought process and my ability to detach from the how and just focus on the things that are within my control. Begin with yes is kind of similar to that too. It is, you know, both of them are kind of spiritual. I'm a spiritual person. And so, you know, I think that it is understanding energy, understanding alchemy and energy shifts is absolutely critical.

and your ability to alchemize any given situation and saying yes to the things that, you know, you want to accomplish in your life. And how do you keep it simple there? What is the next two things that you have to do in order to work towards that? Yes. I think sometimes people will look at something holistically and then they'll get overwhelmed. How do you need an elephant one bite at a time? And so both of those were really just shaping around mental frameworks.

So life-changing. Simple, but life-changing. I love it. Lauren, if somebody wanted to reach out to you, what's the easiest way to do that? LinkedIn, Lauren Kingsley, or just email me, Lauren,orgon-Kingsley. Now, or you can go to my website, Laurenkingsley.Now. And what didn't I ask you that I probably should have? And we talked, we jumped around a little bit, but those are the best podcasts, I'm telling you.

You know, I think really it would be, for me, would be for you. Like, what is your one thing that keeps you up at night would be my, like, I would want to ask you that, you know? Like, what is your one biggest challenge that you wish you could solve right now? Like, what is taking up the most amount of time? Yeah, not anything at work, you know. I think it's more about, and I don't believe. I don't believe in balance, but I will say, you know, the company's doing excellent. There's a process happening with the business.

And I am at the top, top, top, top, top. But I consider myself an upside-down pyramid at the bottom. So I work for everybody else. I work for the C-suite. They work for the VPs. They work for the directors. But I'm the only one that can answer, you know, where we're going. And I got to build a vision for everybody.

And sometimes it's taxing because. money's been great. I mean, there's no problems there. It's more about for me is like, I'm going into this season. I've just like, I've got to make sure every single person that has been committed

that's given me their heart and soul do very, very well. And it's not just about money. Because here's one thing I've learned about the blue collar business is they need to be training what the hell to do with money because I've got guys

that are living paycheck to paycheck to paycheck, maybe 300 years. So teaching them, helping them. So just a lot to handle. But this is, I ask God to eat. Can't get mad because he fed me. You know, so I think it's a lot of the leadership stuff we talked about. But, you know, I'm a work in progress. And at least I can look at something and say, I need to work at this. I need to spend more time at this. I need to have these meetings. So it doesn't keep me up at night. Nothing really keeps me up at night. I mean, going through a process as I'm sure, you know, you're going on the Q of E and

management meetings and everything. It's a pain of the butt. But, you know, I'm excited. I'm excited because I still think we're in the second inning of where we're going. Yeah. So I think we got the whole world. I'll tell you what's crazy is that there's going to be more robots in the next five years than there are human beings. I think it's weird the time we're living in.

It's just like AI is going to become smarter and smarter. Then it'll be SGI and then it'll be like, and by the way, those supercomputers today out of the military can hack Bitcoin. I mean, for a fact. People say they can't because it's the algorithms, if they could hack into the most pristine banks in the world, they could hack anything. And so I guess it's just where are we going in the next 10 years. And I'm excited. I'm consciously optimistic.

But it is like it's a big unknown. And I think it keeps a lot of people up. Like I'm going to be the first one to buy a robot to clean up the dog poop and mow the lawn and do the stuff around here. Yeah, me too, because I think it's exciting, though, because it's like pick your own dream in a sense, right? You know, you talk about having a dream manager in the organization. Where we're at now, you know, AI technology, it makes great people, super people, superhuman in a sense, right? And so it allows us to really get innovative. I think that kind of the industry is kind of like graduating into high school and college in a sense to where

it is like, okay, now we really have to get like, we have to go through digital transformation. We have to go through and make sure that we're following these different processes. We have to do all these things. But the market is there. There's so much opportunity. And now how can we innovate and get creative and save our time and really get our people to think different? That right there is where it's fun and exciting. and where there's game-changing momentum.

That can happen quickly. Well, I think there's going to be very few winners and the ones that do are going to be massive winners. They're going to take over because the data, like we talked about, has so many answers in it, and most people aren't going to be able to get to it. So my best advice that I've been saying this for a couple of years now is get your business dialed in, get it prepared,

stop living off your business, make as much money as possible, build a business that's sellable and scalable. And I would rather join a big business that I know is just cleaning everybody's clocks, especially in the next couple years, and say, I've invested in this company, and I own 3% of the company,

but that 3% is going to 100x. And I really believe that's what's coming. I mean, it's going to be impossible to compete with the big players. I mean, look, the Blackstones, the Black Rocks, the KKRs, the Goldman Sachs, the Morgan Stanley's, it's going to be very hard to play against these guys. The access, I hate to say it, but it's the, these are facts. This isn't speculation.

Goldman partnered with Anthropic to go into companies and overlay, lace the whole data set in a whole new way that's better, faster, stronger than anybody could ever get to on their own. Well, to me, it's doing the math of like, should the company get anthropic enterprise for their company and automate everything? Or should they continue to pay out, you know, and lose out X amount of, you know, stuff in time? It's just, it's mind blowing what can be done and what people are and aren't doing right now. I'm excited. I'm excited for just like what we're doing.

our layer too. I think that that is just, it is game changing in my opinion. So I'm excited for when we fully roll that out.