The Home Service Expert Podcast - Leading With Care And Code To Achieve Business Success

Episode Date: June 6, 2018

Howard is the Executive Vice President and Director of Training and Operations of Ziglar, Inc,  coaching businesses from 52 different industries from 9 different countries. He’s also the author of The Power of Community, and many other books that help small business owners build phenomenal companies. In this episode, we talked about leadership, hiring, sales...

This is the Home Service Expert podcast with Tommy Mello. Let's talk about bringing in some more money for your home service business. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, 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. Hey there, folks. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. I'm your host, Tommy Mello,

and I'm here with Howard Partridge. Howard, how are you today? Well, I'm doing better than phenomenal, Tommy. Thank you. Thank you. Listen, you know, I've already gone over a little bit with the guests about what you've been up to. But on your website, you went from a welfare throwaway kid to living the American dream. And I feel like a lot of us, especially in the home service industry, we didn't start with much. It's not like we got handed a beautiful gutter company. Maybe a couple people out there received this and it's been in their family for decades. But typically, we started from scratch and we came from nothing. And that's what your story is like. So tell us a little bit

about yourself, where you came from, some of the fun in the process of it, and where you are today. You bet. Well, I tell people that I'm from L.A., lower Alabama. Then I tell them that my wife doesn't laugh at my jokes either, so it's okay. But actually, I grew up on welfare in Mobile, Alabama. There were seven kids crammed in a little 600 square foot shack. And the roof on that house was so bad that every time it rained, we had to get out all the pots and pans to catch the leak. My mother fed us $100 a month from the welfare department. And I don't care when that was.

It just wasn't a lot of money. Well, so when you grow up in an environment like that, then you're likely to turn out like I did, which was rebellious teenager. I got kicked out of the house by my stepdad at 18 years old. And I had met my real father, my biological father, only twice. He left when I was a year old. He lived in Houston. So I went to Houston to live with him. And I literally had no money.

I got a Greyhound bus ticket to Houston, arrived in Houston, Texas with 25 cents in my pocket, became a waiter. And while I was a waiter, I ended up getting married to my wife, who's from New Jersey. We go out to New Jersey to get married. And when you marry an Italian family, you don't get wedding presents, you get cash.

And we got $3,000 cash in wedding money. And there was a friend of the family who was tooling around, same age as me, 23 at the time, tooling around a little red Mercedes convertible. And that got my attention. I said, I want to know what that guy does. I want to know if it's legal, you know? And so I found out he had his own business

and it was a home services type business. And I get back to Houston, spent that entire $3,000 from our wedding, starting my first business, on the trunk of my car. The first 13 years, I made good money, but I became a slave to that business, learned some secrets of building systems and scaling the business, growing the business, transform that business into a multimillion dollar business. I've owned several small businesses. And about 20 years ago, I started getting up to date to what I do now. 20 years ago, I started helping other small businesses grow their business using my systems. And today we have coaching members in over 100 different industries in nine different countries. My company serves as the exclusive small business coaching arm for the Ziegler Corporation. I serve as an executive vice president of training operations at Ziegler. I have seven published books.

The seventh one is coming out in January that I'm very, very excited about. Yeah, that's amazing. You know, it's so good to hear from people. I was listening to a couple of things from different people you associate yourself with, John Maxwell. And he said, you not only know the way, but you show the way. And it's fun to hear people that actually came up and are doing it, and they know the processes. Because there's a lot of people out there, I think they say, if you can't make it in the real world, you teach. And to know that you've experienced it means a lot,

and you came up and you made those mistakes, you weren't handed anything. And that's what really teaches us a lot is hearing from real experience, how you came up and got through it. And looking back, it seems a lot easier than it is. I'm sure for me, at least it does. But, you know, when you went through this whole process, tell me a lot about the biggest challenges. You know, you did it for 13 years and how you were able to overcome them and actually start making money and getting your time back.

Well, you mentioned John Maxwell. I've learned a lot from John Maxwell, Michael Gerber, and Zig Ziglar, and that trio right there. I knew Zig personally. I know John Maxwell. I know Michael Gerber. I know both of them personally. They've all spoken at my conferences. What I learned is that the hardest thing, I think, for a business owner, someone who's successful is duplicating themselves and then building the team. And so first, you know, having the right mindset, that's where Zig comes in. And then scaling the business systems, that's where Michael Gerber comes in. And then John Maxwell, one of the things I learned from him is that everything rises and falls on leadership. And we have to become a better leader.

We have to be able to empower other people, get them, as Jim Collins said, get them on the right people on the bus and get them in the right seat. And I think that that's the biggest thing that I learned is how to influence other people, how to build a team so that I could get more done through my team. Right. So I'm guessing that over the years you became what I would consider a master delegator. And there's a whole process behind that. Is that right? Yeah, you bet. And it wasn't easy because, you know, I'm one of those guys like a lot of business owners. You know, I got to figure it out. I can see the vision.

I didn't understand why the people couldn't see it. I would come in and bark out orders and try to get people moving and they're moving too slow and all this kind of stuff. And, you know, I learned that people have different personality types. They're motivated differently. Older people are motivated differently than younger people. And so really studying people like I have a client who's an architect in Houston, and she used to make her employees cry. And now that she's learned leadership, she gets so much more cooperation from the team. And so that's really what I do is I help business leaders grow themselves and become better leaders so that they can grow better organizations.

Okay. So it sounds like, yeah, that's a great trio. I was just listening to Zig Ziglar the other day about how he was on stage talking about if he was to buy a trip for you to Hawaii today, he was going to take the kids, pay for everything. Would you be able to go? And that's if you left your work for two weeks, you know, most people in the home service industry and a lot of businesses, stuff would fall apart rather quickly. And that's the case, I think,

for most people, at least. And the number one question we get from a lot of the people out there is, how do you get the right people? And I think there's a lot more to it than just, it depends on how much you're willing to pay, where you're finding the people, if you're doing drug test background checks, and what your culture can breed from maybe even a B or C player, you could turn them into an A player. But what is your take? If someone came up to you and said, hey, I got 20 employees, you know, we're okay. We got a CRM.

The processes are there. We've implemented some good training. But how do I really expand? I mean, how do I get these A players? Well, I think you attract them and the way that you attract them is by how you carry yourself, number one, and number two, how your culture attracts people. There's a great book called The Leadership Challenge. And all the way back for the last quarter of a century, their studies have not changed. The century, their studies have not changed. The results of their studies have not changed.

When they do a study on what employees want, they do a study that says what the managers think that employees want and what do employees really want. And managers think that money is at the top of the list because that's all they hear their employees talk about. But that's because they don't get behind the curtain and see what's really going on. And the truth is, is that money is usually four or five on the list when it really comes down to it with the employees. So what I teach people to do, I have a book coming out in January 26. And the name of it is The Power of Community. And I believe I've studied leadership for a quarter of a century. I go to John Maxwell's highest level events.

I've spent time with him personally, and he's considered the number one leadership expert in the world. And what I've learned is that leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less. The way you gain influence in someone else's life is by adding value to them. And I believe that the ultimate leadership secret is building a sense of community in your business. See, every human being has a longing for belonging. They want to feel loved. They want to feel validated. They want to feel important. They want to feel like their life matters. And it does. And we have a tremendous

opportunity in business to support people, encourage them and help them be accountable to become their best selves. But the problem is that we're approaching management the old way. We're still stuck. We have a hangover from the industrial revolution that I call command and control, when really leadership today, if you really study it and understand it, is about care and coach. See, my definition of leadership is effectively communicating the vision. You may have a good vision, but we have to communicate, and the ultimate form of communication is creating a sense of belonging, a sense of community inside of our companies that transforms the

culture. Yeah, that I just recently saw a little stand up session by Simon Sinek, or he was talking about a true leader. He was just talking about the vision and how he made a story how the guy in the military ate last and everybody went and gave him food and how if you're willing to go to bat for your people, then they're going to go to bat for you and you're going to hit more goals. I think that it was a valuable lesson. You know, have you ever heard of the phrase, hire slow, fire fast, get the bad apples out? What is your take on that? Absolutely. Well, so Simon Sinek's book, Leaders Eat Last,

it's a great concept. And I think that Simon Sinek has a lot of, you know, I really resonate with a lot of the things that he teaches. I think the key is to get the right person, is to hire the right person first, hire a person who has the right attitude and teach them the skill, all right? And I think that the problem is that we hire the wrong person and or we don't set the tone right in the beginning. I think that, you know, once we, let's say if we

do need to hire fast, you know, one of the things I get into in my book is the value of building relationships with people in the community so that you are attracting the people that you need. And the first order of business is hire the right person. Well, getting the right person on the bus, who is that person? Well, it's a person who has shown in their history that they have excelled. Even if they just got out of high school, I hire a lot of young people. And even if they just got out of high school, what clubs did they belong to? Did they excel? Like, my most recent hire was a graduate of University of Oklahoma.

He was on the dean's list, on the honor roll. And just because they have a degree, just because they did well in college doesn't mean that you have to, you know, pay them some outrageous amount of money. But it's getting the right people and the right person is the person who is willing to grow. What I've learned is that people who want to grow personally and they want to experience things and they want to see the company grow. And those are the kinds of people that you want. Someone who is just looking for a job, looking for a paycheck, says that they're the best at the technical work.

I've found that people are experienced in the technical work, but they don't know how to show up on time. They don't know how to smile to the customer and they don't know how to smile at their co-workers. Well, the fact is, is that if you come in with a lousy attitude and you're bringing the spirit down to the company, that's going to affect everybody. So you hire for attitude and train for skill. And that is my motto right there. So you brought an interesting point up that you would definitely find that 99% of the people listening and myself have made in the past. And that is having to hire those keywords, having to hire. Look, a guy quits. You got to fire a guy for theft. Something happened. You lose a CSR. You're getting too much business. I have to hire this week.

I need to find somebody. And that happens so often. We fill a void. Instead of that whole long interview process, we plan everything out. We're going to implement it. Well, right before you go to implement it, boom. So I've came up with a motto of always hiring, right? Even if I don't need somebody and the right person walks through that door because we've got open hours for interviews. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Tell me a little bit about why we get in that predicament.

And, you know, we all get caught up in our business, right? You know, the 80-20 rule does not exist for most people that are listening. We just don't get to the results. I had people work for me that I'd see busy as hell all day long. They'd be busting their butts. And you just saw, no matter what, they're working. But then I'd say, what did you get done today? Tell me a little bit about your day. Oh, I had a lot of busy work. And I did this and this and this, but there's really no results. And I see it now. I see it like a sore thumb sticking out of the office. Like literally, I have windows all over my office. I have windows in everybody's office. If I could,

I'd take the doors off. But there's certain guys that need to be in meetings and there's certain reasons I don't want to do that, too. But tell me a little bit about you get these performers that just they're not getting things done and uh why does that happen do you think well i think there's a lot of reasons but um i have a an org chart in my book that's coming out it's actually in a couple of my other books too but i have an org chart you know michael gerber coined the term work on the business instead of in the business. And I think we don't train people well. We don't empower them. We don't delegate well. And so on this org chart, I have directing at the top that's leading, thinking, planning, all those kinds of things. And then I have managing in the middle, which is supervising

and making sure that everything gets done and reporting to the director. And then I have managing in the middle, which is supervising and making sure that everything gets done and reporting to the director. And then I have the implementer, and that's actually the doing of the work. So what you have to do is first get your business organized. And I think what happens is since people are not, you know, they're micromanagers and they haven't really implemented a good training program and really empowered people. They become a slave to that business. And I can't find anybody that, you know, one of the mistakes that we make is we try to find that superstar person who's going to do everything and we just offload too much to them. The general manager model where we have this person in between us, you know, when you look at the different parts of the business, it doesn't matter what type of business it is. But when you look at the different parts of business, marketing, sales, service, and tracking, you know, those are different parts of the business.

And, you know, there's not one person who can really effectively do all that. So empowering different people in different areas, having more than one manager and having people who take care of a certain part of your business. So the thing is, is that if people are working in the business and busy all day and not working enough on the business, planning the business, thinking about the business,

you're gonna get caught. You're gonna get yourself caught, not prepared. And what's happened is you haven't really empowered those people. So the question is, why are people on your team not empowered to do what it is that they need to do? Well, we're going like crazy. Well, then we need to hire more people. We need to have better training. We need to have more people in place. And so, you know, building a business, building an organization like that, there's so many different moving parts that the bigger we get, the more time we need to think. In fact, that's one of the things I learned from John was that the most important thing that a leader can do is think.

We have to have time to think about where we are, what our next move is. It's like a chess game. You know, if you just start moving pieces around, you know, you're going to get killed. Yeah, yeah, it does. And that's what happens to a lot of us out there in the industry. I think the biggest breakthrough I made was getting a personal assistant because managed correctly, you get your time back, you get your organization skills back, and you get a lot more concise meetings. Like there's so much time you spend going through emails, checking voicemails. Like, listen, my phone gets forwarded when I'm in a meeting. I've got a synopsis every time I jump into a meeting of what everything's about, where I left off last week. I have certain meetings once a week. I have certain ones every single day. I think that delegation is not just dumping on people. And a lot has changed

since that happened. Is that something, obviously it depends on how big you are, but everybody I've talked to, if you've got five employees, I still think a personal assistant for the cost that it's going to cost you, 15, 20, 25 bucks an hour. I mean, some of you could get it at 12 bucks an hour. It just depends on what part of the country you're in.

But how important do you think that is for somebody that's not maybe the best at time management and organization? Well, even if they are, the fact is that any business owner who has a team shouldn't be without an assistant because the fact is you need that support. You know, going back to my definition of leadership, effectively communicating the vision, a lot of communication has to happen. And unfortunately, emails, text messaging, and a lot of the communication that we do,

the people on vacation and things get missed. And so having a good system for meetings and for keeping all that data together. But the thing is, is that, borrowing from my friend Brian Tracy, who did the forward of my upcoming book, is, you know, if your hourly rate is $200 an hour or $500 an hour as an executive, why would you do $20 an hour work? And so you want to have that person who's that assistant for you, maybe a number of them, depending on what it is that you do. And that's how you grow your company is you grow managers and directors where they have people underneath them who can implement all the things that they delegate. It's important for growth. I think that we as business owners and managers

just try to do too much ourselves instead of doing things through other people. Right. Yeah, that's been a challenge. And I think that's the hardest thing. The biggest thing that I hear all the time, Howard, is I always hear about I can't get somebody to do it as good as me. I don't trust them. But really what happens is we don't have a plan. We don't have a written down goal or a checklist or a way of doing things. And trust me, I've read Michael Gerber's book inside and out 25,000 times. I also like The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes. But there's like five books that have built all of my values. And then I think I've read roughly 700 books on my Audible, and I've got about another 400.

But reading and wanting to learn and that skill set you said of wanting to get better and wanting feedback, I think, is a really, really important thing to find a good person that really wants to do the best. And I know that a lot of the mindset in the home service industry is, yeah, those guys are going to college. They're not going to come work for us. But the fact is they're out there. A lot of people like to work with their hands. And the average age of a plumber now I've heard is anywhere from 46 to 57 from different people. So there's a lot of opportunities and young people are getting into it. So don't sell yourself short the people that are listening and say, I can't find anybody.

It's probably because you're not attracting them. And one of the things I want to shift over to, I mean, I'm going to shift back and forth, but a big thing for me that's been really suffering big time has been my personal life. You know, I've lost relationships in the past. I'm definitely not a good friend as far as I don't call once a week to my best friends that live in other states. I don't check in and up with my family in Milwaukee. I just flew back from Milwaukee today. But, you know, I'd love to be able to talk to my niece and nephews every single day or at least once a week. And I don't do that. You wrote The Will of Life, you know, the secrets to a phenomenal life. And I think that a lot of us went into business to get our time, freedom and life back.

And it seems like the opposite thing happens. I'm passionate about business, but I also want to have a good family life. I want to work out more. I want to pray more and be religious. So tell me a little bit about the framework of the book and what the readers need to know about a takeaway on really that other part of our life that we sometimes forget about. Sure. Well, my philosophy is that the one and only reason your business exists is to be a vehicle to help you achieve your life goals. And honestly, the bigger your business gets, in my opinion, the more successful you become, then the more that you should be able to do those things. I work a lot because I love to work, but I work six days a week. I typically don't work, quote unquote, work after 5 p.m.

I get up at 5 o'clock in the morning because I can't wait to get started because I love what I do. But in my service company, I came to a place where it didn't inspire me anymore. And that's why I decided to make it a turnkey business because it just didn't inspire me anymore. What really inspires me is to help other business leaders grow. And if we can't get people to do what we want them to do, then we either have the wrong person or we have the wrong training program. And we have to look in the mirror. If we're working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, then we don't have the right business model. And I hate to be that harsh, but it's true. The fact is that to have a phenomenally successful business, you need three things. Number one, you need leadership. You have to develop yourself as

a leader. And to run a bigger company as you grow, you have to become a bigger leader. Then the next, you need people. You need people who are willing to grow, that are hungry to grow. And in the home services industry, the fact is, it's like I have a service company, and we have a whole bunch of technicians that when they get off work, their big goal is rims on their cars, some of them, and playing video games. And you know what? Hey, I'd like for you to be, if you're a technician, to be debt-free. I'd like for you to be healthy. I'd like for you to be, if you're a technician, to be debt-free. I'd like

for you to be healthy. I'd like for you to have a good home life. And we're going to create a system where you can do that. But we can't do it for you. So we have to have people who are willing to use our system, show up on time, go by our policies. And if they're not doing that, then we're either hiring the wrong people or we have wrong culture so we need leadership we need people and we need systems I learned at some point in time that you need you know any organization has to have the right assumptions the right strategies and the right discipline you know you can assume that I can hire people I can find people I can hire them but if I use the wrong strategy

in leading them, it doesn't matter how hard I work or how hard they work, you know? And so the point is, is that we got to look at ourselves in the mirror, right? And we got to determine what is my lifestyle going to be? What are my relationships going to look like? Honestly, I would rather have a smaller business. I would rather turn business away. I'd like? Honestly, I would rather have a smaller business. I would rather turn business away. I'd rather raise prices. I'd rather be more exclusive than to sacrifice my life. 10 years from now, 20 years from now, when you're burnt out, you have a heart attack, your wife leaves you, your husband leaves you, whatever the case might be.

You don't have a relationship with your kids, you don't have good relationships with your family, and you have a heart attack, who's going to be there to take care of you? You know, is the customer, we should always take care of the customer, but we can't sacrifice our life for the business. The business is a vehicle to help you achieve your life goals. So that's secret number one. Secret number two is to get around people who have already done what it is that you want to do. If you want to be a leader who has a good lifestyle, who has a good family life, and they also have a successful business, go hang around that person. This is why I get around people like

John Maxwell, Michael Gerber, Zig Ziglar, when he was alive, people like that, people who are doing what I want to do. And because of that, I was able to grow a great business and we're helping people all over the world. You know, the thing is, is that it really does all rise and fall on leadership. We have to become a better leader. In order to become a better leader, we have to become a better person. And we have to understand that if I'm not okay, how am I going to lead other people to be okay? Yeah, that's pretty deep. I mean, personal development is so important. And I feel like a lot

of people are closed off to that. They think they're fine. And I hear it all the time. Like these people just don't listen. They just don't do what I ask. And, you know, maybe you're the problem. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting different results. And really what we should be focusing on is doing the right things over and over and getting the same results to make our lives better. And it's got to start with looking in the mirror. I agree wholeheartedly that if I was to walk into 99 out of 100 businesses and ask any one employee just on the floor, what's the vision of this company? I'd be willing to bet that they wouldn't know exactly what it is. And people always ask me, do you need systems or do you need the people? If you had to pick one, which one's more important?

I say the systems are what create the people. They attract the people. So many people say I posted an ad in Craigslist. I didn't get any responses many people say I posted an ad in Craigslist, I didn't get any responses. I say, you posted one ad for a guy that on average should do $10,000 a week. So that's $40,000. You spent $25 to get another guy to do $40,000 a month. And I find you're going fishing and you're casting once a month when you should be using a net every day, driving that thing around and pulling people in. And that's the biggest mistake, as I find, is they don't open the gates. And then also they don't have any training systems.

You know, I think Zig Ziglar was the one that said, do you shower every single day? Well, yeah, we shower. We try to stay clean. That's what we want. Personal hygiene. Well, why the heck wouldn't you train every day and make sure people are continuing? It's a continued thing, right? I can't shower today and be good next year. I got to shower every day. So that's so important. And then accountability, I feel like, is the next big thing.

It's like if you tell somebody to do something, are you going to follow up with them and make sure they did it? If you create accountability, I'm a big fan of people do what you inspect, not what you expect. But what is your take on some of that stuff? Because I'm wondering if I'm I wouldn't consider myself at all in my company a dictator by any means. I mean, it's an open forum, but there's certain things that I subscribe to. And I'm just curious your take on some of the stuff I mentioned. Sure. Well, as I mentioned in the intro, or maybe you're going to mention it, we were talking about earlier, I get to serve as the director of training operations at Ziggler and teach their Ziggler Legacy certification course.

And I believe that the wisdom of Zig Ziggler is more important in today's world than ever before. And one of my favorite stories from Zig was a man sent him a large check and said, I'd like to come see you and bring my son. He wants to follow this man. I don't think it's the right thing. And I wondered if we could come talk to you. So I said, sure, come on down. And a man sits down with his son and Jake starts asking him questions about this man that he wants to emulate. And he said, well, he said, so you feel like this man that you

want to emulate is successful? And he said, sure. And I said, well, let me just ask you a few questions. Is he happy? He said, well, not really. In fact, I think he's got ulcers. You know, is he healthy? No. Is he prosperous? Oh, yeah. He's very prosperous. Does he have a good family life? Well, not really. In fact, he's divorced. Does he have a lot of friends? No. In fact, he doesn't have any friends now that you mentioned it. So Zig said that every human being wants to have eight things in life. They want to be happy, healthy, reasonably prosperous. They want to have friends. They want to have peace of mind.

They want to have good family relationships. They want to be secure and have hope for the future. And the thing is, is that if we help, the key is to help other people. Zig said you can have everything in life you want if you just help enough other people get what it is that they want. So the key is help your employees, help your team members get what it is that they want. And you do that through support, through encouragement, and accountability. And the way that I look at accountability is different than how other people look at it. You know, you're talking about motivation.

What Zig said is he said people say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing. We recommend it. That's why we recommend it daily. Right. And he also said, you know, people don't want to invest in training people because it costs money. He said, so what you're really saying is that you would rather instead of training them and losing them, you'd rather not train them and keep them. What does that say about your company, right? So where I'm going with all this is what I believe and what I write about in The Power of Community is that you can create this sense of community through support, encouragement, and accountability. Most people try to hold other people accountable without any kind of relationship. Yeah, they might do what you say today, but as soon as they get the opportunity, they're going to quit.

Or as soon as you turn your back, they're going to do something wrong or they're going to forget because they don't really care. They don't care about you because they don't feel like anybody cares about them. So it's a matter of understanding where your team members are, what they want, what do they want out of life? Have you really had that conversation with them? We do these groups called pods within a company where people can get in small groups and we open up the conversation. So support is helping people get what it is that they want to get. Maybe they want to save money. Maybe they have a goal.

Maybe there's something that they need to learn. Maybe there want to save money. Maybe they have a goal. Maybe there's something that they need to learn. Maybe there's some training that they need. Encouragement is helping people do the things that maybe they're afraid to do. Maybe they're afraid to take that new promotion. Maybe they're afraid to step out there and make that sales call. So we have to encourage them. And that's what Zig was all about, encouragement. And then accountability is really helping people. The right way to look at accountability is like a coach. As a leader, you're a coach. And a coach is simply someone who helps you get from where you are now to where you need to be. So accountability in my mind is helping people become the person that they need to be because until they grow as a person,

they're not going to implement like you want them to implement. So your job as a leader is to be the leader you need to be, become the leader you need to be, so that they can become the person that they need to be, so that they'll do what they need to do, so that you and them can have what you want to have. And, you know, we just expect that people as business owners, we expect they're going to think like us, work like us, see everything like we see it. And it's not true.

They're not going to. If that was the case, they would have their own business. Okay, let's talk about implementation because this is the hard part for me and the people that are listening here. At the end of the day, if I'm going to take my seven people that are directly reports underneath me, and I'm willing to take the time, and I think it's a positive thing, is to say, look, and this is one of the exercises we've been working on for the last year, is tell me a little bit about what's important to you.

Are you saving for your teenagers tuition? Are you looking forward to your trip to Alaska? Are you going on any fun trips to the beach? What's going on? What's important to you next year? What's important for you in three years? Let's work backwards on what needs to happen today. So I do this, but you know, right now we have 180 employees. What's the best way to implement a strategy to do this across the company? And I'm not saying even with my company, I'm saying, look, I have the time, right? Because I've been able to delegate quite a bit. But if somebody has 20 people underneath them, you know, what's the best way to really break on, have these pod sessions and make sure that people are becoming better?

I mean, as a leader or maybe as a COO or a CFO or a general manager, what does that look like? Yeah. So here's what you want to do. In fact, I outlined this in my book and part of the giveaway to order my book is a leader's guide where I show you how to build these pods in your company. Okay. a leader's guide where I show you how to build these pods in your company. And you start with your leadership pod. And the reason that you do that is to get everybody on the same page. Patrick Lentoni in his book, The Advantage, he said that organizational help trumps everything else in business. And he said that the way that you get organizational help is to establish a cohesive leadership team. That's step one. And then you create clarity, reinforce clarity, over-communicate clarity.

I think that's how it goes. But the first step is to create your leadership pod. So what you want to do is get your seven people together. You start going through the process so they understand how to do the pod process. And you can hold a pod on anything, right? And then those seven people, take seven people each, and they start doing pods.

And by the time you get a couple layers down, you've got all 180 people in a pod. We've done pods over the web. We've done pods in person. There's all kinds of ways to do pods and you can use any particular subject. And in the book, I line out the five parts to a pod, how to actually facilitate a pod so that it doesn't get out of hand and so that you accomplish the goal. But imagine after just a few weeks of every single person in that company going through that same process. And, you know, Matthew Kelly wrote a book called The Dream, Getting People's Dreams Out There on the Table.

And this fictitious company actually hired a dream manager that would sit down with any employee and help them reach their goal, help them, you know, figure out how to buy a house or whatever the case is. We have a dream board. All of our employees have their dream up on the wall. And so that's another thing that you can do. But what the pods do, the problem in a company is that there's all this communication going on. You know, this technician is upset about his paycheck or he's driving to

the other tech and that tech is like, yeah, this is going on or whatever. You got to get everybody together. But the problem is you stand up there in front of 180 people. They're not even going to remember half of what you said 10 minutes later. But if you get them in a small group of, you know, seven to nine individuals and they're communicating. There's a facilitator and we all know what the purpose is. Now you're building a sense of community, a sense of engagement, and everybody feels important and everybody has to share. It's an amazing thing. So tell me a little bit about managing a pod because one of the things I'm a big fan of is having it written down

somewhere that we can look at it we could come back to it on a weekly if not daily basis have quarterly goals yearly goals and goal might not be the right word maybe it's outcomes but tell me a little bit about the best way is it just an excel sheet you put everything in and you come back to it or is there a way to keep track of all this stuff in a systematic way that you put in your book well so the thing is is that we can have all the data in the world on a person but until we sit down with them and hear their heart and they hear our heart and they know that someone cares about them, the more you care about them, the more that they're going to care about the company.

And if they don't, if they don't, after you go through that process, then you got the wrong person on your team. Because the fact is, is that vision plus vision equals division and vision plus vision plus vision equals confusion. You know, it's all about communication. What a pod does is it helps us to all get on the same page. And, you know, whether you actually record what happens in a pod or not is, you know, really depends on what you're trying to accomplish. But, you know, one of the

things that I cite in that section in the book is a book called Scrum, which uses a small group from seven to nine individuals that get projects done in record time. So it really depends on what you're doing. But the way that a pod works is let's say that, you know, you're having pods just to record what everybody's goal is and to get that information out there so that everybody can support and encourage one another and help one another become accountable to reach their personal goal. Let's just say that that's what you're going to do. Okay, now the pods that are in my book are to understand the concept of building community. That's the point. The point is, is how do we better engage? Because the statistics still tell us that 70% of American workers are disengaged

from their work and 18% are actively disengaged, which means they're working against you. That means almost one fifth of your company is actually working against your success. So here's the purpose of the pod. We have to share the purpose of the pod. And then in each group, there's a facilitator. And in the book, I go through how to be a better facilitator. And then that facilitator, we do like an icebreaker. There's like five eyes to the pot. So the icebreaker, everybody shares, and it might be, hey, what's one goal you have in 2018? 60 seconds or less. Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom. They might make up something if they're not ready to totally engage or they're not totally ready to be transparent. That's okay. We're engaging. Then there's

information. That could be a video. That could be. We're engaging. Then there's information. That could be a video. That could be somebody talking from the front of the room, even if there's 180 people in the room. It could be reading a few pages out of a book, paragraph by paragraph, going around in a circle. Then there's interaction. That's the third I, which is open up the conversation. Okay. So now these are open into questions that are voluntary and it gets people talking about it. So, you know, why is your goal important to you? What would it mean to you if you reach the goal? What do you feel is holding you back? Things like that. And then the fourth eye is implementation and that's 60 seconds or less what will you do differently based on this pod experience and then number five is and you go

around the circle everybody answers and then number five is inspiration you share a quote you share a video or something or someone in the group shares something. So it's a simple, small group format that doing that week after week with a group, any kind of group actually, will create a ton of engagement, support, encouragement, and accountability. And it'll weed out the people who just don't want to be a part of that, that don't have the same values, that want to be the individual and not interact with anybody and do their own thing. And that's what you really want.

So if you've got a good large-sized group, let's just say you've got your CSRs and your dispatchers, would you recommend that you intermingle them? So each week you might have a different one or do you let the same seven try to get back together? Yeah, probably for a little while, you'll do the same group. Like we have one going right now because what happens is we have a group going at our company, one of my companies right now, and they just had their sixth session. I'll let them go for probably 12 sessions and then we'll change up the groups. So, and in my coaching, we have pods online where there's business owners, you know, business leaders are on a group together.

And over time, these folks, you know, really bond. And so in a company, it really depends on what you're trying to accomplish. But I wouldn't change them up too fast. So like in your CSR, if you wanted to solve some issues and challenges in that department, then you would only put the CSRs in those pods. You would start one pod, which is the leadership pod. And then those people would facilitate and start new groups after they go through a season. If you're doing it company-wide to do goals and things like that, I would definitely probably intermingle them. And especially if I'm trying to build a

sense of community in their company. Because one of the things that happens in a company is the technician has conflict with the person who sold the job and the person who sold the job has conflict with the csr and they all think that the other person doesn't do anything oh yeah i know where you're coming from yeah so we get them in a pod together and they start to understand, hey, that person has difficulty in their job just like I do. And, you know, so it just helps to get everybody on the same page. It creates a lot of transparency. Yeah, I love that concept. So I'm a big fan.

So I'm in the Young Entrepreneur Council. I'm in a lot of different networking groups that are for self-growth. And one of the things we talk about a lot, and I've written a lot of articles, one was on Forbes, one was on Huffington Post. And I've answered a lot of questions on gamification. And I'm a big fan of gamification. It really does a lot for the whole morale of the company. It helps us work towards goals. Everybody gets rewarded if everybody's successful. What is your take on that? Because it seems like the pods and helping each other accomplish things outside of work, gamification is sometimes within work, and it makes it fun.

What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, no, I love it. I love it i love it you know the thing is is that you know anytime you can get people engaged and involved like that that's what gamification does and you know every human being whether they show it or not they want to be significant and gamification helps them to to grow and reach new levels and things like this. I think we have to be a little bit careful with incentives and rewards because I don't know if you've ever read Michael Pink's stuff on Drive and all that. You know, what I've found is that one of the biggest needs that we have as human beings is to belong. And the world that we live in today, we are more connected digitally than ever before,

but we seem to be more isolated, feel isolated and alone. And so this idea of community and building a sense of community in our company, where we fill up to a place every day where we say, man, I got a best friend here. You know, Gallup's 14 questions on their polling, that was one of their questions, is I have a best friend at work. And that's one of the key things. And these are people who care about me. One of the things the pod does is if there is something that I want to get out on the table, you know, it provides a way to do that. And you just can't let it turn into a gripe session. You know, that's one of the issues and challenges. But the point is, is that people

want to be heard. And the way that we communicate today, people aren't really and truly heard, which tells them, I don't care about you. You know, I've been learning a lot about the net promoter score. What really makes a company viable? What makes it so that if you were to call your customers, they do this scale, and I'm sure you're familiar with it. If you score nine or 10 of the question, which is, would you tell a friend or family member about our company? And what would you tell a friend or family member about our company and what would you tell them to

use us and if in fact you would would it be a seven or a six or a five or an eight what's the likelihood and uh what they came up with one of the bain capital came up with this i think and it's a huge theory behind it i just i got books on it, but it really is what people are looking for to buy out a company. And a lot of people out there, believe it or not, seven out of 10 of the people listening right now, well, baby boomers at least, will want to retire in the next five to seven years. And if that's the case in your succession planning, you really need to understand what people are looking for to buy a business. And what is your take on a lot of the stuff that you're discussing, Howard, as far as,

you know, the book of the power of the community and the net promoter score and just how it all equates to the customer really receiving a better experience. And there's another book called Raving Fans that I love. And it's a super simple read. It's kind of like Who Moved My Cheese? They're both simple, great little books for each employee to read. But go ahead and give me your thought processes on all that. Sure, yeah, those are both Ken Blanchard books. I love Ken.

Well, he has co-authors with those. So here's the thing. I work with a lady by the name of Ellen Rohr. Oh, yeah. She was on my podcast already. She's amazing. I love her. She's so inspiring. She works with Al. I call her the yeah, I call her the amazing Ellen Rohr. She's a great friend of mine. We work together. We do coaching together. She speaks a lot of my events and pretty much all of my events she's involved in now. But anyway, she's building a franchise called Zoom Franchising. And I was up there at their mothership company.

And the owner of that company, who's also, I believe, a partner in the Zoom Franchising, he said, you know, I used to come into the office after my employees were already gone. My techs were already gone. And I'd leave before they got back to the shop because I didn't want to have anything to do with them. I didn't want to have a relationship with them. I didn't want to be bothered about it. I didn't want to know what their problems were. I didn't want to even see them. And because of that, he didn't have a very good culture. So what happens is, okay, the boss doesn't care about me. I'm out there making money for him. You know, how is that really going to bleed over to the customers? Is that going to bleed over in a positive way? And then you got turnover problems. Then you got everybody's life is

miserable. And he said, you know, when I started getting to know these guys and started seeing that, wow, they have a story and started caring about them, everything changed. And all of a sudden they started caring more about me and caring more about the company. I mean, literally, my employees, they know that they're doing their job if I don't have to be around. And if I'm on the beach, if you asked me before we started this interview what I love to do, you know, my personal sign, I'm a beach bum. I want to be in the most beautiful beaches in the world. Right now it's rainy and cold in Houston, so I'm online thinking, okay, where am I going to go?

Because it might not be as cold as Minnesota, but it's too cold for me. Right. Yeah, it is. So when I'm living my dream, they know that they're doing their job and they like that because they know I care about them. I'm helping them reach their goals and they treat our customers amazing because of that. So the subtitle of my book, The Power of Community, is how phenomenal leaders inspire their team, wow their customers, and make bigger profits. See, when you inspire your team, they're going to wow the customers. If they wow the customers, assuming you're charging enough and you've got the right systems in place and all that, you got to make more money. And it's going to be easier because you're empowering them to do the things that they need to do.

Yeah. Yeah, that makes 100% sense. Ellen is, every time I talk to her, she's just a really positive motivator and always so happy. That's a good skill set she does really well with al i had lunch with him the other day and uh you know she's more of the organizational checklist make sure it's set up for success and she's more of the gamification let's make it fun let's work towards the same goals it's a great team and uh it's interesting that you mentioned her because yeah i just was texting her the

other night. You know, a lot of us really should find somebody to coach us. And a lot of the people think out there, these coaches out there, they're just after a buck. And some of them are. I mean, I've had people in my past that I felt like maybe weren't at the right time in their life to be a coach or maybe not have the right intentions. But tell me about a small business owner that the people out there, why coaching makes sense? You know, why would it mean a lot to have somebody working through this with them? Well, the fact is, is that none of us were honest with ourselves. None of us are going to do the things that we really need to do to go to the next level. Most of us aren't, okay?

We're not going to do the things that we need to do without the support, the encouragement, and the accountability. For example, one of the reasons that New Year's resolutions rarely work is because we don't have any support. We don't have any encouragement. We don't have any accountability to keep going with things, right? So in my own life and my own career, my life lesson, my biggest life lesson is find the people who are already doing what it is that you want to do. When I met Ellen Rohr, my companies were in tremendous debt and she had this financial blast program and she was doing consulting back then. So I hired her to come in and create all these systems and put them in place. But I needed a

coach. I needed someone to keep me accountable to do the things that would take me to the next level. You know, I got real healthy several years ago and I lost 50 pounds. I was so fit. I had a trainer that came a couple of times a week. I had a nutritionist that I would go see and I get my supplements from and she would give me a demotivational speech, you know, like this is what happens if you don't. That's how I'm motivated. It's not by, you know, yeah, you can do this. Like I already know that, but here's what happens if you don't do this. Okay, now you got my attention. And after a while, I got bored with my trainer, fired my trainer.

I had the supplement shipped instead of going to see my nutritionist. Guess what? I started gaining weight. I wasn't working out two days a week. I wasn't eating right because I didn't have the support, the encouragement, and the accountability. We need people in our life who have already traveled the road. In fact, my company, Phenomenal Products, was started on a proverb, Proverbs 15, 22, that says, Without consultation, plans are frustrated, but with many counselors, plans succeed. Gary Keller said, who started Keller Williams, who wrote a book called The

One Thing. Yeah, I have that one. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. And he said that when he discovered the one thing, that revelation came in the form of a coach. And there's three pages in that book. I think it's like 187 to 189 that talks about the fact that, A, no one succeeds alone. We all need other people in our life as advisors. Where would I be without Ellen Rohr getting my company out? Now I'm debt free. My companies are super profitable. I just had a meeting with my CPA and my financial manager today. And it's like, wow, what a phenomenal year we've had. But it all goes back to

creating that system that Ellen had that I didn't have. And I'm where I am today simply because I've allowed other people to speak in my life. And too many business owners, too many leaders, quote unquote leaders, managers, whatever, they stick their head in the sand and say, you know, I know everything I need to know. And they're not willing to look at things a different way because of ego or fear that they're going to have to get out of their comfort zone. Well, guess what I learned from my coach? All growth happens outside of the comfort zone. Yep.

Do you think you go work out and do 10 minutes on the treadmill at two miles an hour? Or do you think you make your growth pushing it to the limit and holding yourself accountable and really getting the most out of that time? I mean, in anything, I think that's the case. So yeah, that's a great answer for that. Well, the thing is, let me put it this way. I don't think that there's a business owner, leader, manager, listener to this podcast right here today that doesn't want to be more, do more, and have more. And the question is, how are you going to get there? And the way that you're going to get there is by getting a guide. Because if you're trying to go somewhere that you've never been then hire a guy hire someone who's already traveled the trail hire someone who's already

been down that road it reminds me of a it's a horrible story but a documentary i watched about back in the gold rush there was a very wealthy chic Chicago man who wanted to take his family out west. His wife didn't agree with the weather in Chicago or whatever. He bought a map that was a shortcut. And turns out this guy was selling all these maps. And the guy had never actually even made that trip. The guy who was selling the maps. Well, guess what?

The entire family, except for I think two people, died out there trying to get through this mountain pass. It was called the Dahmer Party, I think. And, you know, you need a guide to go somewhere that you haven't been. If you don't have the culture that you need to have, if you don't have the systems in place, if you're not making the profit you need to make, if you don't have a good marketing system, you got to go find somebody who has one. Yeah, you don't need to reinvent the wheel. I agree with that. And you reminded me of a great book that I haven't read in a while, but I've read it probably four times. In 1865 is when the gold rush happened, and the money would be worth seven to ten times more from New York to San Francisco.

So they made these clipper ships, which for 50 years they were the fastest ships. They would fly around in like two days. and there's a book called The Clippership Strategy, which teaches you about what economies in the United States will be dumping money because realistically, all the money in the world is created through the governments and they dump money unequally throughout the economies. And I just wanted to make a side note because you reminded me of it. The Clippership Strategy really teaches you on how to identify economies. They're going to be doing good for a long time.

Some of them are by naval bases. Some of them are in huge retirement communities like Lake Havasu or different areas like that. So identifying those is a good thing if you're looking to grow your company as far as in the home service niche. But I agree with that wholeheartedly is if you're going to try to learn more about scripture and Jesus, if that's your, if your religion, and you should probably find somebody that's more into it than you are. And if you're going to start working out, you shouldn't go hang out with your bar friends that smoke cigarettes and are

in the bowling league. You should probably hang out with people that eat properly. And it is surround yourself with those people is probably the underlying key to success. And the easiest way to get there is to hire somebody because they've been there and done that. So I agree. That's great advice. Speaking of hiring, you know, I've grown my company really, really, really fast. And I feel like it's a domino effect when you start getting good. I mean, Subway grew from one store 12 years later, I think it was.

They grow to two. And it starts becoming faster and faster because the processes start getting better and better. What are some of the things that you really look for when hiring? Like, give me a couple of good questions that are outside of the box. And obviously, tell me about your last job. Tell me about the manager there. I mean, there's some really good ones that are kind of cliche that still work, but give me some stuff that you might do that are outside of the box. Well, mainly the thing that I personally look for is, you know, what have they done that shows me

that they're successful, right? So we're looking for people who are honest, people who are self-motivated, that they're successful. You know, there's a whole list of things if you ask business owners what they're looking for. And, you know, what I'm really looking for is I'm looking for someone who is flexible, who wants to grow personally, they might not be able to communicate their goals. But, you know, what I'm really looking for is, do they want to grow personally? Because if a person doesn't want to grow personally, they're not going to grow inside my company. Is it true that we need people that are just doing routine work every day? Yes. But you can do routine work with a great attitude, and maybe that person has personal goals of, like, getting out of debt

or being a better family man or whatever. So the first question I ask is tell me about your goals. If they say, I'm looking for a job that pays good da da da da give me you know just pat answers i'm gonna dig a little bit deeper you know what do you want for yourself you know what do you want for yourself and so i share with them look this might be a strange interview but our company what we want to do here is we want to help you reach your goals and dreams in life. That's what we're about. Now, if we do that, then we know that you're going to help us reach our goals and dreams. So here's the deal. I got a two-part agreement. If you will live by our mission and use our system, then you'll do very well here and we'll help you reach your goals.

We've got a system set up that will help you to grow personally, to grow in the company. And as long as you'll abide by our mission, our policies, our systems, you know, you'll be great. If I know someone personally that they know, I'm really looking for people who I know someone who knows them. This is why I don't like going to Craigslist or someplace like that. Why am I looking for strangers? What is it about my company? What is it about me? what is it about my employees that we're not attracting people see the best people to work for you is hey i know joe over there man he said this is the best job he's ever had i want to know i want to be a part of this you're attracting people rather than finding them yeah well there's four ways to get people if you're going to include attracting

them as one way. If you're growing fast, I wish it were possible to grow as fast as we can. But when you're a growing company in multiple states, you kind of have to go outside of the box. But you could either start from scratch, teach them everything you want, your competitors, best employees, or you could just buy out companies that have great employees. I love that concept. I'm actually making a bunch of notes right now. So I just got a few more questions for you and then we'll wrap up. You know, you've got a course online and to bring consistent revenue month in, month out, you need a powerful marketing and sales machine. I mean, you just, you got to set up the machine. And in your course, you mentioned how business owners could create new customers out of thin air. And that sounds intriguing. Can you kind of elaborate a little bit more on that?

Yeah, it's called the free trial offer. So in other words, if you can create some sort of report, some sort of experience, some sort of something that's valuable to your free consultation, something that's free trial, something that's valuable to your customer, you're going to get them on your list. And the money's in the list. And if you have a good process of taking them from suspect to prospect, to customer to client, now you've got a good system going. So in other words, instead of using the traditional, you know, place an ad, call us, nothing wrong with that if you've got benefits, but get them on the list. And that way, at least you've got their contact information and offer something in exchange for their contact information to build the list. Yeah, I talked to a couple people recently about the list. One guy actually emails his list every single day and absolutely murders it.

And then some people don't subscribe to maybe once a month. I mean, it's just really, he said he'd much rather have a list, a tiny list of really good buyers than a huge list that really isn't his ideal avatar. And I agree with that to a certain extent, but I kind of look at myself and I go, if I got a piece of mail from one person every single day, personally, unless it's super valuable information, it's just probably too much. But it works for him. So you build systems, right? I mean, I love that about the sales systems that you create, the autopilot systems, including referrals. Tell me a little bit about how to create a referral network for a home service niche i mean we know that facebook does a

lot we know that instagram we know the social media snapchat everything out there twitter tell me a little bit about other than social media how to create that machine all right i'm going to share this with you by asking you a question in your business or the business that your listeners have you know we have their biggest referral source is going to be their existing clients right so my question is how often are you contacting your past client and number two are you offering them a referral reward for referring a new client to you and then the second biggest referral source, what kind of company, here's the question, what kind of company or individual that works at a specific kind of company would be

a good referral source for you? What kind of people other than your clients, what kind of companies have customers that they would have a complimentary, they're a complimentary business that would say, oh, you need to get a garage. Oh yeah. Well, I could give you a lot of those and I've worked with them. So like a bug spraying company, right? Because bugs enter through the bottom of your garage door and that's your bottom rubber, right? So the biggest. Okay. Pest control company. Sure.

All right. Now the question is in your market areas, how many pest control companies are there out there? Hundreds. Hundreds. Okay. Now, first of all, we got to make sure that that's our best source. We want to find our top three, but let's just assume just for conversation's sake that the pest control company is the best source, right? Or one of our top sources. Okay. I, so my question is, how many pest control companies are you visiting and marketing to right now? Right now, I have several that refer us, but there's no real. You know what I found? And this is the interesting part, Howard, is really identifying how they benefit other than us refer them back. I mean, there's affiliate programs and there's affiliate tracking.

But these guys are like, I'll tell you what the bug companies say. And most of the people that I've worked with on another level, and I agree with this to some extent, depending on how well you run your company. But, hey, man, I'd love to throw you a referral, whether it's a painting company, because painters are out there. There's a lot of damaged panels on a garage door. Hey, man, I'd love to give you referrals, but for the most part, my guys could barely sell what I'm asking them to sell. I don't want to add one more thing, because if they focus on your stuff,

they're probably not going to be able to do my stuff. And I know I didn't mean to cut you off. I really want to hear about this, but that's kind of my... Well, this is a whole course by itself, but I'll give you a little piece of it. Okay. All right. So what if you started building a relationship with those companies and you go into these companies and you find out what it is that they want. For example,

one of the things that we do is we go call on those companies in our referral niches and we bring them food and we add value to them. So we feed them, we give them a referral reward. So when someone refers us from their company, we go in and add value to their staff. So, for example, a lot of our clients are Ziggler Legacy certified trainers. So what if my company went in and taught the power of community to their people? What if we went in and we did a presentation from time to time on how to upsell? What if we went and did customer service training for the pest control industry? What if we went in with things that would help their company,

help their business? What if I got involved with the business owner's favorite charity? So there's all kinds of ways that you can add value to them. Guess who they're going to remember when the opportunity comes up? Doesn't mean that you have to aggressively sell for us. It just means that when you see an opportunity to help a client that says, you know, have you thought about a new garage door? Boom, here's the person you need to call.

In fact, this is the only person you need to call. What if you could triple or quadruple or 10X the number of companies in the pest control industry that were sending you referrals yeah you know because there's a lot of ways to help them i mean you got those little sticky things on the inside of garage stores if you put those on there on every customer and said you know those things fill up with nasty bugs and if you put their name on it with their phone number, that would be. So maybe find the biggest one or first, second or third company in the state or area you're

in. And yeah, I love that idea. Very good. Yeah. So we have marketing reps and what they do is they just go on a route once a month. They go see all the companies in that space and they go in, they bring some goodies. We have some materials. We let them know that we're there. We provide them information that helps them in their industry, that helps them with their company.

And we just go in and add value to them and we give them a referral reward. I love that. That is a huge piece of advice that I would implore everybody to do that's listening to this. It's find your top three. I like the whole concept behind that. So I've got more, way more stuff, but I've kept you a long time. What I like to do is I always try to find out if you had to give top three books. And I mean, dig deep and tell me the top three books that the people that are listening right now that if you had to say, look, you've not read a lot of books, but these are the top three that'll

help you grow personally, help you make your business. I mean, E-Myth for me is like, that's the one I talk about every time on every podcast because it really breaks it down into a nice story but go ahead and give me your top three books and then i'm going to ask you about how to get more of you born to win by zig ziglar emails by michael gerber develop the leader within you 2.0 john maxwell awesome okay so you've got a book coming out january 26 the power of community how does the audience get a hold of that book well so i'm gonna have a web page up uh pretty soon where if they pre-order when does this podcast go out by the way it'll go out in

january yeah so they can just go to amazon.com and the power of community and if you'll come back to my website and go to howardpartridge.com forward slash community and enter your Amazon number, your Amazon receipt number, then I'm going to give you some free resources to facilitate pods in your company. There'll be a leader's guide and a bunch of resources to help you transform your culture just for buying the book on Amazon. Awesome. So let's go through, this is your seventh book. What's the top book that you would recommend of your own to, you know, obviously we want this new book, but what's another one that you'd really say you got to own this

if you want to know more about running your business? Five Secrets of a Phenomenal Business. Michael Gerber said the secret is the system. The question is why? The one and only reason your business exists is to be a vehicle to help you achieve your life goals. And there are five systems that you have to have in your business. And I teach those five systems. It's the handbook for small business owners. So that's the five secrets to a phenomenal business, right? Correct. Okay. Awesome. Well, there's so much. I got a lot of homework to do,

and I'm definitely going to pre-order your book. I appreciate your time, Howard. We'll connect. I'll read your book. Maybe we could have a whole session after a few months, talk about the success of the book and really go over what it has in the book sometime in March or April does that work sounds great so what I'm going to do is you got to go to the homeserviceexpert.com forward slash community so homeserviceexpert.com forward slash community and I'll have a page up we'll have everything there is to know about Howard all of his books and how to get more of them. So, Howard, I really appreciate your time today, and I learned a ton. And I'm very fortunate that you came on, and like I said, I really appreciate it. Absolutely.

My pleasure, Tommy. Thank you for having me on. Okay. Listen, have a great week, and we'll check in soon, okay? Sounds good. Thank you so much. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. Goodbye. This was the Home Service Expert podcast. Now listen up. Do you want to dominate your market, triple the profit you make without working those long 12 hour days, seven days a week? If the answer is yes, my team and I are opening up some new time slots to help you solve your biggest business challenge. Just go to homeserviceexpert.com forward slash discovery and book a free 30-minute call with our team today. I will repeat that, homeserviceexpert.com forward slash discovery and book your free

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