The Home Service Expert Podcast - Making Use of Field Service Management Technology to Grow and Scale Your Business Faster

Episode Date: October 8, 2021

Gabriel Pinchev is an expert in contracting CRM with a strong background in the technology sector. He is the founder and the CEO of FieldPulse, a field service software that acts as a digital hub for running entire contracting businesses from a single app, which helps contractors keep track of their business and get paid faster. In this episode, we talked about the benefits of having a CRM, putting up a business that scales beyond your craft, customer service...

When guys are moving from being part of a business as a worker, as an employee, and starting their own, you need to learn to take a craft into a business. And that transition is very different and people aren't ready for it. And they think, okay, I can take my job and then make it a business as that job, but it's entirely different. And it starts from how you operate to how you think about the money aspect and the margins and the overhead and everything you have to account for. You can't treat it like you're owning a job. You really need to treat it like you're owning a 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. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. My name is Tommy Mello. And today I have Gabriel Pinchav on the line here. He's an expert in contracting, CRM, obviously, we'll explain that, customer service technology, field service management. He's the CEO of FieldPulse,

and he's based out of Dallas, Texas. He's the founder and CEO of FieldPulse, a strong background in technology sector. FieldPulse is a field service software that acts as a digital hub for running your entire contracting business from a single app. After working with multiple contractors and seeing the amount of handwritten paperwork they still are sending out and not getting paid for, he started PhilPulse in 2015 to help contractors keep track of their business and get paid faster. Gabriel, it's a pleasure to have you on today. Yeah, thanks for having me. So let's just talk a little bit about you. You started Phil's Pulse in 2015. Let's talk a little bit about your career, where you're going,

and a little bit about Phil Pulse if you want to do the honors. Yeah, sure. So I had more of a software and tech background. And it was a mix of the work I was doing a little bit with small business software, and specifically mobile apps and mobile applications. And then dealing with different service contractors in my home and dealing with Alalim. And they were typically using pen and paper and creating different mistakes. And the most notable one that stuck out to me was a guy who sat on my floor to handwrite his quote. And then the total ended up being wrong. And he had to sit down and redo it from scratch because he did it by hand instead of using technology.

And so I really wanted to start something that was designed for small businesses that was easy to use, easy to set up. And for guys that are out in the field because it's a mobile-friendly, mobile-first design. Now, here we are many years later. Yeah. Five, six years later, actually. Tell me a little bit about your background before FieldPulse. Yeah. So I was doing IT consulting for a large company, but specifically, I was in the mobility group that had a focus on mobile applications. Some of it was enterprise, but actually my last project was staffed in a group that had a small business software division.

And so we were actually dealing and some of it was in-house software, some of it was third party software, selling to small businesses, different solutions. Some of it was like integrated phone systems and some of it was other field service management, but older software that I'm not even sure is around anymore and had more of a traditional kind of SaaS 1.0 model of licensing and registration and training that was kind of outdated. There wasn't much that was really easy to sign up, easy to get going. So that's where I came from. The people out there listening right now, there's a lot of home service business owners, a lot of managers. I can't stress enough how important it is to be able to use technology. You get away with it right about till 2015.

And now there's such a huge, huge advantage. I mean, it just creates automation, consistency, accountability, reviews, you name it, and it's all automated. And the biggest thing is, most of them either have an API or a webhook that talks to different interfaces. And I think that's what creates a really, really sound environment for a software is, can you explain to the listeners a little bit about what a CRM is versus an ERP and what Zapier does? Because I think that you being from the development standpoint, you kind of explain what these things mean better than probably someone like me can. Yeah. So people sometimes refer to FieldPulse and other solutions as a CRM. For us, a CRM is a component of it. But I think people generally speak of a CRM,

which is a customer relationship management system, as the overarching system. But it is essentially the backbone of any system like a FieldPulse, where it's where your customer's data is stored, where you find them. And then all the other aspects are interrelated and connected to your CRM. So FieldPulse for us is an all-in-one system that goes and does job scheduling, dispatching, CRM, estimates, invoices, payments, timesheets, and a ton of other things. But the backbone still is the CRM because that's where everything is connected. And so you're connecting your CRM to things like your job scheduling. So when you're scheduling a job, it's not just the job, but who is the customer that it's related to? What is the history of the customer? What

other jobs have you performed for that customer? What notes do you have? What files? What photos? What comments? What attachments? Really anything that's related to that customer record that you need in the future. And CRMs are often also used for sales tracking in the process from start to finish. You want to capture your customers as an opportunity, transition it through as leads to current customers lost or others, and really bring them through the process and manage your customer lifecycle in your CRM. So you know, okay, who do I need to continue working with right now to try and close the deal? Who's already a current customer that I can remarket to and continue to market in the future

to? And who have we lost and maybe is an opportunity for another time? And really using a CRM as that basis really gives you a lot of insight and it's really difficult to do without technology. Yeah. I mean, there's so many ways to communicate with clients now. Everything you could jail fence, you could do Google marketing, you could do social media marketing, you could do mailers, you do email blasts. If you've got some type of consent form, you could do text messaging, which I love. Service agreements are great. The technology now, it's the ultimate advantage, I believe,

of the companies that are using it. And a lot of people... What do you say to somebody out there still using a pen and a paper? I think if you look back, there wasn't the advantage a while back because the contracting industry is so field-focused where even small businesses, the owner, the managers out in the field needed something something very mobile friendly and the capabilities weren't there. But now they are. We have the LTE speeds, we have the mobile capabilities, and we have applications that are very full featured for not only in the office, but out in the field. And every little module has such big benefits to your business that it's not just one pain point that you're addressing, but you can even take it one at a time. So even if you just move your business from pen and paper to CRM and just managing your customers and not doing things like job scheduling or not doing the timesheets or the estimates and

invoices, you can still get a lot of value out of just one component of an all-in-one system or just moving to a CRM. But really, the biggest value comes when you do get on an entire platform because they're all interrelated. So anytime you look at your customer, you can see all the historical notes, all the jobs, estimates, invoices, timesheets, and those jobs that they clocked into. All of these different record types are interrelated. And that's where you get the incremental value beyond the basics. But with pen and paper, it's just hard to scale. And as a one-man shop, you might not need technology immediately.

But if you plan to go or want to grow, it's better to get your process in place early with technology so that when you do add a person, you're adding them to an existing flow and not trying to figure out how to get technology in your platform as a five-man shop. But it's better late than never. Because the longer you wait, the harder it might be for you to implement in your team rather than having an ongoing process that you're teaching and training on, on how to get people into your business. And ultimately, it's important to create a standardized process of how you operate just

as a business. And different technology helps get you into a certain process of how you operate just as a business. And different technology helps get you into a certain process that you can follow and standardize for your business. This is how we create a customer and this is the information we store. This is how we schedule jobs and this is the information we need. This is how we clock in. This is how we service the customer by providing them customer communications from appointment reminders to on-the-way notifications to follow-ups. And this is how we provide quotes. This is how we provide invoices. You need a process for that for your business in general. And software can also help put you

into those processes and have your employees follow that using the software. Yeah. It creates a lot of foundation for the business to scale. That's for sure. So let me ask you this. So you got into the contracting business where you've seen... It's the smartest thing to do is go into an investment that you see a big hole. What did you notice when you started to get a lot of contractors and meet them in person? What were some of the good, the bad, and the ugly? If you were to do a SWOT analysis, I'd love to hear from an outsider perspective because you didn't grow up in the trades. It doesn't sound like... Yeah. I think one of the biggest things I've noticed and something I actually talk a lot about is that when guys are moving from being part of a business as a worker, as an employee,

and starting their own, you need to learn to take a craft into a business. And that transition is very different and people aren't ready for it. And they think, okay, I can take my job and then make it a business as that job, but it's entirely different. And it starts from how you operate to how you think about the money aspect and the margins and the overhead and everything you have to account for. You can't treat it like you're owning a job. You really need to treat it like you're owning a business. And now that's when you're a one-man band. And as you scale and grow, especially as you start to add more people and you add overhead, that's stuff you need to account for. But you're never going to be able to scale and get that overhead or grow the business if you

don't account for that overhead initially. And ultimately, you want to look back at your business and see a business that has a standalone value as an asset, and not just an extension of yourself. Because a lot of times you want to sell your business ultimately, and you can't sell a business that's entirely on your craft and your wage. So how do you create a business that scales beyond you and takes you to the next level? And people are not prepared for it. I think a lot of it boils down to the monetary aspect of it and accounting for cost. And that's not even just overhead costs. That's also just purely your jobs. I see that a lot of guys, if you were to ask them, how much did you make on that

job? What was the cost of that job? They would not be able to answer. And I feel like a lot of guys, they look at their bank account at the beginning of the month, they look at it at the end of the month. And that's how they judge their work for the month and their business and not based off the actual jobs they're performing or the different employees and the different employee close rates and win rates and conversion rates from booking to dispatching. And that's an important step that's often missed and something that needs to be learned to truly get to where you need to go so that you have a standalone business of value. You know, I was listening to Robert Kiyosaki the other day. He wrote the book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And he had mentioned

when my rich dad started to teach me, he said, I will not pay you. And Robert said, why won't you pay me to be your employee? He goes, because if I pay you, you're going to start thinking like an employee and you'll get stuck in that mentality. So you want to work for free if you want to be an entrepreneur. Because what happens is your whole mindset changes, hopefully, when you become an entrepreneur and you understand. And I think Michael Gerber explains it the best in the e-myth that no longer are you the worker. You got to become a manager and an entrepreneur and a visionary. And you need to find people to do the process stronger and better than you. And you need to find an org chart and define what that org chart looks like and have processes and manuals, the standard operating

procedures. And 99% of businesses out there, they own a job. And it's sad. It's sad because I find it hard to work people that are still, they truly believe they're the best at their trade. Maybe they're artists, they're artists in their trade, but for the most part, they take so much pride in the work they do rather than the way that they're able to manage people. I love this other book called From Built to Last by Jim Collins, because he explains that he takes pride in teaching others to do better than him. How he takes the time to build an assembly line of people and has them focus in on one thing and become the best and them together are stronger than him ever could be. And most business owners,

you know, Gabriel, I found myself now with over 350 employees going on 400, excited for the bad news and the SWOT analysis. I love the weaknesses. I love the opportunities to learn more about what we're failing at. And I just think more people need to be open about hearing constructive criticism and be excited. You know, I don't want to hear all the things I'm doing great. I know we're doing good at that stuff. Tell me where the holes are so I can grow faster, scale faster. We got to look at this as a chess game and take each step methodically where most people are just playing checkers moving along. You know, let me ask this, because we're going to be talking a lot of things within the CRM. And I think you're right. I look at conversion rate, average ticket, what's your booking rate? What

does it cost for you to acquire a customer? How much do you have left over? And you're right. I was contagious. I mean, not contagious. I was afraid, I should say, of the bank account. I look in there and be like, ah, we had a good month. Ah, we didn't have a good month. I literally did not like to get the numbers. And I think knowing the numbers are the most important thing for a business owner. Tell me what the biggest mistake that you see a lot of newbie contractors commit. Yeah. I do like these brought up customer acquisition costs because I think that's something that's often forgot about or not thought about. Especially when you're costing your jobs or looking at profit is that... And there's different ways to look at it. You can also bundle it into your general overhead. But then you need to break

down your overhead into an hourly cost for your employees to dividing across your business. Or you can break it down into the specific job for the customers in terms of the cost to acquire that customer. And that's the things that are not often looked at. I think the biggest mistake I see is... Let's see. Outside, I talked a little bit already about not knowing the cost. That would typically be it. But the other part would be possibly billing off of time and materials. I think that is a lot of the labor mentality that you need to move away from. You can use that as a cost basis for developing your pricing. But the problem with the time and materials also is that you're presenting to your customer almost a diminished value of what you bring by doing that.

You have expertise. You have knowledge. You're a business. You have the cost of doing a business and trying to charge on time and materials can often diminish the outlook from a customer too in terms of the effort that goes into it. And there's no better way typically than if you can bundle your offering ahead of time into a cost. And you typically can get a higher margin that way than if you're trying to bill for the time it takes and the materials used. So that for me would probably be the

other thing I see the most. I did an exercise that I do give to a lot of my employees and we add up, I say, pretend you're the owner and let's go through this. Let's add up all of our costs of, and I go through 20 line items, everything from the VoIP system to the CRM, to everything that the insurance, the liability insurance, the vehicles. I mean, you've got all these different workman's comp. You've got a phone, you've got an iPad payment, you've got your CSR, you've got all these different things. And I say, okay, now let's think about the paid holidays. Let's get rid of holidays. Let's take these days out, this, this, this out. Let's take the time out you're driving there because we're not charging the customer for drive time. We can't. Let's take apart the time

you get trained. Let's take apart the time you do inventory. Let's take apart for your meetings. Let's get rid of your couple of weeks vacation time. Well, most companies need to charge between $350 to $500 an hour. And you try telling that to a customer, I don't think the hourly rate works because they go, how's that possible? You're more than my attorney. And you say, well, your attorney's making $300 an hour for that one person. You're paying for my CSR, my dispatcher. You're paying for my warehouse guy. You're paying for my permit team.

You're paying for me, paying for my vehicle, the air conditioning in our building. I mean, it goes on and on and on. My mouse pad, someone had to buy this. The water bottles. We do fun things here. It's not just a prison. And I don't think the client realizes that. I like what you said there because if you're just doing hourly, that's such a small minded way of thinking. You can't do it that way. And you're

absolutely right. Well, and it's a problem with, I think the consumer side and people in general is that they often devalue and diminish the work and the cost by looking at it that way. They say, like you said, $300 an hour, they'll look at you like that's crazy, but they don't see the flip side of what a real business is because they just look at it like, I spent that much for you to do this, but they don't look at it the right way. Well, you had to get me out of here. You had to pay for the tools. You had to pay for my know-how. And then on top of that, you look, I can make a pizza for under a buck. You go buy a little bit of flour, a little bit of yeast, get some cheese and some sauce. You're under a buck, but you want it made when you want it. Because we don't understand, we get paid to

diagnose things that they'll never understand. I don't go to their work and criticize them, but I will ask, what do you do for a living? And I'll say, would you like it if I absolutely wanted, you know, and I've done that before and I'm not embarrassed about it. And I'm like, look, you call the other guy, you get three things. You could have it cheap. You could have it done right. Or you could have it on your timeline. You'll be two out of the three, but you can't get all three because the mechanic that kicks ass. And I say this a lot in the podcast, that great mechanic that charges cheap. He's booked out six months. Good luck. You're not going to get it on your timeline. Beginning two out of the three is how you stretch it. There's more and more choices. You think about the first CRM that I've heard of ever was probably Salesforce. And that was the one

that lives in infamy. And then you've got things like Infusionsoft. I've used hundreds of different things. Right now, we use 25 softwares. It's crazy. But what makes a good CRM? What are the five qualities a business owner should look at to find a really great CRM for their business when choosing the right one? I think you have to ask yourself first, what is the goal of the CRM? Because when you're looking at something like Salesforce, which is actually what we use, but we're not a contracting business. We're not a service business. We're a software company.

So we're using it purely as a CRM. But when you're looking at Salesforce, you have to ask yourself, are you looking at it for a pure CRM? Or do you want other components and modules as well? So like the scheduling and estimates and invoices. And then you have to ask yourself, do you want them to be integrated and part of the same solution? And admittedly, you probably take a little bit of a hit versus a very specialized thing that's just CRM or just scheduling or just estimates and invoices? Is the integration valuable to you that everything relates to each other and feeds into ourselves?

And when you open the job, you see that invoice, you see who the customer is and can click it? Or do you not mind having fragmented systems? And then the question for me with the CRM specifically is also, how sales-focused are you and your organization? If you need a very sales-focused CRM, then you might need to go with more of a traditional standalone CRM because those are first and foremost designed for sales. And so in a system like FieldPulse, we have those components. But a CRM or a field service software also has to connect with all the other aspects that end up being important as well.

And so we have some of the sales components, but it'll never be to the breadth of a Salesforce that focuses specific on that. And that might be why you guys use 25 software is that you guys have found that you need the intense features that the specialists get versus an all-in-one solution like a FieldPulse or another FSM tool where you're having it all integrated, one application, and it's all together. The other part of the CRM, if you're picking one, you need to look at what it takes to implement it, how long it takes, what the effort is, and ultimately what the cost is. Not only can it be timely, but it can be expensive if you have to do an implementation plan and some of them can get very pricey. Do you have the resources and the time on your end to commit to it? Because it is a commitment too. You have to make sure that you're ready to implement it. It's not just going to happen on its own. And so some solutions are more ready out of the box. And you're following a fairly defined process out the gate. And others are

basically, hey, we need to customize this to what you need. But you're going to have to invest time and money to get it there. And everyone has a different philosophy. Some people are like, yeah, I need to be exactly how I want. And I'm going to invest as much time as money as I need to get there. And others are like, hey, I'm not an expert in this. I need something that can get me up and running quickly and easily and will get me to where I need with my goals and for my business. And that's more on the field pull side versus a Salesforce is more of a, I need to cater this to exactly what I need, but I might need to hire a Salesforce specialist. And other than that, I think if you're a service business,

you need to look at the difference between how it's used out in the field versus on the computer. Because CRMs, if you look at the generic ones like a Salesforce or an Infusionsoft or Hype Drive, they're more traditionally used on the computer because they're not selling only to service businesses. So they're much less focused on the mobile application. Well, if you look at CRMs and systems like FieldPulse that are designed for field service companies, you do get a mobile application that is more catered to what you're doing. And ultimately, I'm always a big fan of buying what's more specific and specialized to you. So if you find systems that are meant for your industry, meant for your company size, meant for your process and how you do business,

I think that's almost always a better bet than going with the more generic option that services a ton of different people and or requires customization. So there's Canadian companies like Jabra, there's Service Fusion, there's Housecall Pro, there's Service Titan. I'm pretty familiar with the CRMs that are out there.

I've not used most of those. But a lot of guys are always wondering, what am I going to get on? Sometimes, you know, Service Titan is pricier, but it's for a larger company. It takes a lot longer to get on and keep up with. Some people get on and get right off. The house called Pro is great.

There's pros and cons to all of them. Where do you feel like Phil Pulse really fits into the mix of some of the larger CRMs for home service? No, for us, and I think if you look specifically against ServiceTitan, because they're obviously the biggest well-known player and they just raised a ton of money. They're like $11 billion now, I think. Yeah, it's crazy. Every month I see a new report. They're more like the Salesforce equivalent. They're trying to go after smaller companies now.

They've been traditionally going after much larger companies and slowly coming down. But ultimately, they're designed and priced for larger businesses. And like you said, they have a very lengthy implementation, a complicated one. They do a ton of things that can be quite frankly overwhelming and too much and confusing, especially for the smaller end of the market that are small businesses. So for us, we are designed and priced for small businesses. We have a feature set that fits very nicely with the needs of the smaller companies. And we design in a way where we try to keep it simple.

And you can add on modules to make it more complex. But we try to keep it in a way that still fits for our target segment. Because I'm a strong believer that if you try to cater towards everyone, you end up catering towards no one. And it's hard to do that well. And for us, it also comes down to how the application looks and feels. For example, our schedule views. Our schedule views are designed for smaller businesses so that the things appear properly. But how do you create a schedule view for a thousand-person company that also works well for a five-man shop or a one-man shop or

10-man shop? It doesn't translate that well. And so a lot of it has to do with usability as a small business versus a more robust for a larger business. And then I think ease of use, training, setup, and get going. For us, we're month-to-month. You can get up and running really quickly and we'll help get you there. And you can do it immediately. Service site, and I've heard, often has a long lead time until you can get ramped up. And then it takes a while to can do it immediately. Service Titan, I've heard, often has a long lead time until you can get ramped up and then it takes a while to actually do it and then people end up overwhelmed. If you look at the other players, you mentioned Jobber. So some of us are just

based off of the industries we play in and cater towards. So Jobber has historically been a bit more recurring service focused. So landscape, pest control, snow removal, because they're up in Canada, pool service, stuff like that. Well, for us, we focus a bit more on what I would consider the traditional trades or the service contractors. And we have our price book now in beta and stuff more catered and designed towards the service contractor market. And so I think a lot of different players also have their niche in terms of industry, company size, and feature set. And then in terms of what their bread and butter is. And for us, we take our support very seriously in how we interact with you. And it's important to me. I think that a lot of contractors think that there's this

person they're going to hire with lighting in a bottle, or they're going to get out of technology. And the technology, I really do believe is the process. It creates the standard operating procedures. It creates the KPIs. But I got to tell you, I was talking to 20 new guys, brand new, doing their orientation right before this. And I said, guys, I can spend a full day restructuring how much we pay for goods. I could probably negotiate a penny off a few different things. Or I can spend a few hours with you guys and teach you guys exactly how to be better at eye contact, body language, standard operating procedures, showing your van, when to close a job, how to relate to customers, how to find something in common with them,

asking the right questions. And I just feel like a lot of times people think, man, if I had that technology and there's really, what it takes is hard grit, determination. I will say that when people get on a sophisticated CRM, you almost need a person that's going to live in that CRM full-time because it's so hard to manage five trucks, figure out payroll, do everything, and then live in the CRM. It's complicated. So I think there's something to be said about a really easy user interface that's just made for your size of company. And it sounds like you guys figured out a niche. So if you had to define an avatar, the perfect company size, exactly what they would be doing, where do you feel like that market mix is for that avatar? Specific to us? Yeah. Yeah. I'd say that probably

like five to 15 man shop. You might have an admin or two, but the owner is still involved in the business and he wants to see things on the mobile app when he's out and about or when he's at the computer as well. And I think that's typically our bread and butter there. So I know a lot of people think that technology is going to wipe them out. And I think they're afraid they're going to get left behind if they don't start learning. Amazon's getting involved more in home services. Google's obviously involved. Facebook's starting to put a lot of emphasis on home services.

You see Apple getting involved in certain things, like not being able to track and not being able to retarget and pixeling. What do you see as far as technology giving the upper hand? Should contractors be starting to worry about technology being the huge disruptor? Yes and no. I mean, obviously, there's so many benefits to the automation aspect of it. And a lot of it also helps with the human aspect in terms of having the right notes. But you can never discredit the human aspect and the people aspect. Because in the end, you're a business that is people to people. You're interacting with them face-to-face in person. And at the end of the day, people are people and they respond to

how people interact, how they get treated, the professionalism, and the experience that you provide them. And you can amplify it with technology. You can have the notes, the comments, the stuff that you need to remember to better service them. But at the end of the day, it's not going to do it all for you. It's not going to give them that great first impression of your personality and how they like you and how they like working with you and the eye contact you mentioned, and that personal touch. And at the end of the day, people love small businesses in general. They love the people behind it. And so if you rely too much on technology, you're also hiding behind a computer rather than showcasing really who you guys are as people that is valuable. So you need to find the right mix. I don't think it can fully replace it. And it needs to be added to amplify what you do. But never forget that at the end of the day,

this is a people business and people have been running service businesses like this without technology relying on the experience. And what I believe, and this is not just for service businesses, but a ton of different businesses, that the best ones grow off of word of mouth and referrals. And the best way to get those is from providing a great experience from person to person. And that does boil down to how your technician or you yourself treats and handles the customer. And again, you can augment that with technology, but you can't take away that human element that's still really important. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I agree wholeheartedly.

As we're living in this world, especially the United States, we get bombarded on a daily basis. Quite honestly, I don't have to think when I drive home. I don't think at all. It happens naturally. And there's a lot of our lives that are on autopilot. It's like the lights are on, but nobody's home because we don't need to be.

So we just get used to being bombarded. But when you sit down with a technician and they're real and you're making a friendship and you're enjoying being there, that's what I told my guys. I said, guys, you don't understand this. We go through a hundred applicants to pick one of you.

And most of you don't make it as far as you have. You have the world at your feet. You know a teacher one time, I said, she started out the class by saying, we give 10 quizzes that's going to make up this grade of this class. The first one, you got a hundred percent on. So you only have nine more. All you got to do is keep your A. I just told the guys upstairs, you got an A in this class. All you got to do is keep it. When you go back to your market, I'm going to give you the tips and I'm going to teach you. This is going to be the most important meeting you'll ever have. If you stay at this company and want to make six figures and you want a true career. And I think a lot of times the software does amazing. I mean,

it's able to do a lot of things that maybe build checklists. Checklists are great because you don't leave something behind. There's really good things that a CRM will help you do. And hopefully, if you ever go to sell your business, you don't have a CRM, it's probably worth... I don't even know how much less. What would you say? I'd probably only want to buy your phone number if you didn't have a CRM. Yeah, because a customer list can be quite important

when you're buying a service business. And all the information that comes with it, right? Who do you market to? Who can you go back to? Stuff like that. Can you share some success stories that when people adopted a CRM like Field Pulse, what you've seen happen to their company? Yeah. I mean, ultimately, I've seen a ton of different stories and heard people say feedback.

I remember early days, it was one specific company, it was a junk removal. And he started as a one-man shop. And then a couple years later, he says, well, I wouldn't have been able to get to where I am without FieldPulse or without software like you guys. Because maybe he wasn't the most organized or efficient person at doing all these things on his own, but he was able to add people and keep them in line where he otherwise would have failed just by being better organized and running his business. And I think there's a ton of different scenarios and weaknesses for different people that this can help with. And for others, they say, yeah, I have no idea what

I'm making on my jobs. And this helps me eliminate certain type of jobs where we're either undercharging or need to eliminate it altogether. And then for other businesses, you find that now they can look at their different employees and really measure them. And they find like, wow, I didn't realize this employee was greatly underperforming all the other ones. And he wasn't a good fit for the company. That's the other thing you have to realize is that... And I'm sure you business owners do realize that not every person is created equally or the same in terms of their abilities. Some people are better than others. Some people care more than others. But how do you measure that? And how do you view that?

It's difficult if you're not there all the time. How do you see the customer interactions? You can't. Well, some of it you can facilitate through technology and view it like your customer communications. But what you can look is look at the outcomes and you can say, okay, what is this tech's conversion rate to a completed and paid job versus another one? And that can tell you a lot of the pictures that otherwise you can't see. But if you have no way of looking at that information and measuring it, it's hard to tell. And if you're looking at your CSRs, for example, what if you have two and you notice and you can't tell which one's better, but you have technology that says, okay, this one is booking a much higher rate of jobs from the calls she's getting than the other one, you can now objectively measure them. And so we see stories about just the measurements and performance aspect being

much easier to now quantify and see where you have weak links and be able to make decisions off of it. You know, I tell people this all the time, but you got a CSR at 60%, another one at 90%. They each take 20 opportunities a day. Working 300 days at a $500 ticket average, the CSR with 90% makes almost a million dollars more for you. And so many people shit on their CSRs or dispatchers. When you're able to measure, they say what gets measured gets managed. They say inspect what you expect. And unfortunately, I feel like a lot of people are like I used to be, I hate to go to the doctor. So I was afraid of hearing something bad. I mean, it's just like, they hate looking at the facts because they're like, I already know it's

messed up and they just, it drives them crazy. And they continue to turn a blind eye to their entire staff. And they say, these people don't know how to do anything. What's wrong with them. They don't do it like me. And here's what I tell my managers that say that. I say, if they were better or as good as you, they'd be your boss. So remember that if they're as good as you at what you do or better, just know that you're probably going to be working for them soon enough. So unless you take the role of ownership and run with it and begin to become a teacher and a coach, see, I don't like the word manager. I like the word coach. We're there to pump people up. The other day, a podcast a couple of times ago, I don't even know if it was my own podcast, but

I was talking about the best trainers, the best leaders usually sometimes have kids and they're patient with people because when you're a kid, if you, you know, little Tommy's sitting there, I don't have any kids yet, but, and you're like, what's four plus four. And he doesn't know if you're like, it's eight, you idiot. What's wrong with you? You should have known that. Like, that's not how you treat a kid. You go, Hey, listen, daddy's going to teach you what four plus four is. We're going to take our time. You're going to become stronger, better, faster than dad eventually. And you really want your kids to be better than you. Imagine if you had that same concept with employees. You want them to be just as strong

or if not stronger than you. Imagine what you could do if people go, well, they're stronger than me. What if they were to quit and go work for somebody else? A lot of people say, what if I train them and they quit? And the answer to that question is, what if you train them and they stay? Isn't that crazy?

Do you notice any problems when it comes to getting a CRM and getting people to actually use it? And it's hard to... Look, the hardest part about me buying a company is getting them on a CRM because they're like, oh, gee, we never had to do this. And I'm like, yeah, I understand that. But are you afraid of the results that we're going to see? Because if you don't know how to use a computer or a phone, then we got a bigger issue. Yeah. No.

So there's a few things there. One, you talked about people not wanting to see the data. And no, it's very common. And sometimes I can feel for that and feel the same way. So ultimately, you need data where you feel like, knowing this data, I can make an actual real change. And so it's not just saying, hey, I know this data. Okay, it's bad. It's what can I get out of this data, I can make an actual real change. And so it's not just saying, hey, I know this data. Okay, it's bad.

It's what can I get out of this data? And often just being able to compare different people and their thing can tell you a lot about your business and your employees. You know, people, when you bring a CRM in, a lot of times the guys are like, it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks. They didn't come in with these expectations. And I see a lot of people fall off and they ended up, they ended up quitting because they quite frankly say, this is a bunch of hogwash. We don't believe in all that data stuff.

We don't like sales. We just like hourly. And I'm like, I love you guys. What industry are you in? Oh, pest control. I'm going to be in pest control next year. Cause that's how shitty you are. I love hearing how crappy businesses and industries are because it makes you motivated to grow to other industries.

No, I think we definitely see that. And I think this goes back a little bit into how we run too. And what I think on the concept of micromanaging. I don't believe that as a term that much because I think the people who complain about micromanaging are the ones that aren't performing up to par. And so they're feeling the negative effects of it. But the ones who are good don't care. They don't mind. They don't mind the transparency of you seeing it. They don't mind doing the things because they know they're doing it right. It's the ones who aren't that are complaining. And those are the ones that don't want to be measured. They don't want to see when they're clocking in digitally and it tracks their location and tags them because they're probably not doing what they're supposed to do

is the ultimate thing. And so I think you find out a lot about the people that are doing things correctly or not, but whether they want to adapt these tools that can give you insight and measure them because it tells you a lot about things that you didn't know that they're hiding from you in some way or another. And if the software is easy enough to use and efficient enough, it's not a big deal. To clock in, it takes like two clicks on the phone. And we're working some other stuff to make it even more efficient and faster where maybe you don't even have to unlock your phone or you can use your voice and Siri to do it. So some of

it is just people not wanting you to have visibility into them. And so it's an excuse to hide behind it. You know, I'm a data guy. There's nothing more I love than math and equations. And I love seeing visual aids, whether it's a line graph, a scanner graph, I love seeing bar charts, pie charts. So when I see two technicians next to another, I not only compare service to sales, conversion rate, average ticket, but I also compare how long it takes them to do certain jobs. Because if they're not mechanically inclined enough on that particular item, if they're trained on it, they'll sell more of it. There's all these correlations that you could find. So if you have somebody that might be better at sales writing with another guy, he might teach that guy financing, or the other guy

might teach them how to do a bottom rubber or on a garage where we talk about different parts, but could be anything in your industry. But what data allows you to do is say, when you guys do a ride-along together, here's what I want you to get. This guy gets five-star reviews on every call. He leaves a yard sign. You never do, but you seem to have better sales. We want to marry you guys up for three days. And these are the three things we expect. Here's a performance improvement plan. We're going to use the CRM to manage those expectations and see that you both get stronger together.

And I think that's what this data allows you to do. Yeah, no, that's really interesting. And I haven't heard that before. If you can identify the weaknesses of two different guys and then pair them up to learn from each other, that's great. But you have to be able to figure out their weaknesses ultimately. And that's the question. But no, that's really interesting.

I like that. There's always something in it. It's me to be able to read between the lines you know i've hired over a thousand people since i've started and uh it's interesting when you see someone has a better way of making friends with the customer how's a higher conversion rate there's so many different somebody becomes a better driver i mean then one of the softwares we use is called linux and that's just to know there's a dual camera to see how they're driving. Those are all important things to know. There's learning moments. It tells you the speed. I mean, I had a guy not stopping time and he was fine. The car was fine. The person was fine. Not really a laughing matter, but he starts cussing. He's

like, F my life. But you can hear everything. And what's cool is we've got all this accountability and we've got learning moments and we've got things when then they speed and we can see every time they reach for their phone or they reach for food or a cigarette, but you're not allowed to smoke in the trucks. All that doesn't, people hate it.

They're like, why are you spying on us? I'm like, look, my job is to get you out of accidents. My job is to make sure that we're doing our job. I can care less what you guys do. Drive the speed limit. I'll never look at you. I don't care what you do. Sing up, whatever you want to do. But it's funny because all these things create an expected outcome. And the systems and the software really do lead to better results. I'm a believer in... I use a thing called Power BI. There's another one called Domo. And it allows you to see regression testing.

And there's different things that it's involved in. And I'm not a pro at it. But what I can do know is that when it's done properly, the data tells you a story. It'll tell you who your advertiser is as a customer. You might think, man, if you're like I was, every customer that wants to spend $50,000 is your customer. The problem is I was not equipped to do commercial work. I was not good at it. What I found was the warranty time, the time that went into that, the mistakes we made, the trucks not being set up, the accounts receivable.

It was a big ticket that we're all attracted to, but we lost a lot of money on that call and a lot of calls like that. So CRM just help you navigate through it. What can we expect as far as the customer experience? What's better about using a CRM just helps you navigate through it. What can we expect as far as the customer experience? What's better about using a CRM for the customer experience? Well, I think it's many aspects. Some of it is just purely organization, timeless, providing them the information they need via customer communications. After you book the appointment, you can send an appointment confirmation with a calendar invite with the information they need. You can tell them about the person that will be coming to serve them. You can send them a 24-hour reminder. There's

nothing worse than dealing with no-shows or people that aren't home or anything like that. You can send them on-the-way notifications where they can track your location as you navigate to their home. Because one of the biggest issues people complain about on the consumer side is the large windows for arrival and not knowing when they're going to show up and not being prepared. And with technology you can use tools to help give them that warning ahead of time, to show them where you are and give them the predictability. And I think a lot of it comes down to information, knowledge, and predictability.

And I also think that's where a lot of issues in the contracting business stem from are incorrect expectations set between the contractor and the homeowner. And that starts with proper expectations in terms of timing, communication, contracts, agreements, details in your estimates and invoices. Anything you can provide that provides clarity to the customer not only will minimize issues and disputes, but give them a better experience. You know, there's a company called HubSpot,

and there's a book called They Ask, You Answer by Marcus Sheridan. He came on my podcast. And what's interesting is when you read his book, they send out an informative... It's a buyer's guide. And when they go on the service call, they get commitment from the CSR that they'll go ahead and go through. Can I get commitment from you, Gabriel, that you're going to go through this buyer's guide before we get out there? And here's why. And then they get a verbal yes. And that really gets them to say yes.

And what they find is HubSpot can actually see, because it's built onto the back of your website, how engaged they go to, what pages they went to. What happens is it gives the customer a score on what we should bring out there. They got installation, installation, installation, they picked windows, windows, windows. We want to make sure we've got installation samples and windows. And if they spend more than 20 minutes, the conversion rate goes over 80%. That means they're engaged in the answers from your company. They're learning more. You're becoming their only option. And these little things like technology just make such a huge difference. And if you're able to know what the customer information that they're taking,

and you can't guarantee they read it all, but what you could know is the time they spent on each page and with interlinking between the websites. I just, that stuff fascinates me because it's just such a competitive advantage that most people don't even, they don't think about it. Most small-minded companies are still saying, well, gee, we've done just fine so far. And they don't even, they don't think about it. Most small-minded companies, they're still saying, well, gee, we've done just fine so far. And they don't know it's going to hit them like a ton of bricks. When we're out there, we know exactly when to hit the customer.

We know how old their equipment is. We know so much more. And they say, well, that data shmeda, all I do is shake hands and I'm just a whole good boy. And I'm like, you do great. You're a great person. But without data, I think it was Domino's or Pizza Hut that said the number one way they make money was not pizza,

was not crazy bad bread. It was not soda. It was data. A pizza shop is the number one way of making money. Because here's what they do know. What does a pizza shop know? They know where you live. They know if you're at a hotel and you're getting pizza delivered twice a week, that's data that most other places can't buy that consumer data does not know for sure where you're at. So it's interesting. I'm such a huge fan of technology. I got another question here before we wrap up because I didn't come from money. I fell into the home service industry. I had to come out and be the price leader. I had the best coupons and I made the best prices and I went on Groupon and did the best deals.

I was on a podcast the other day and there's a company in Canada. They have eight different home service businesses. And he told me they do not and they will not give one penny discount. There's zero dollars off. They will lose bids, but they're known for their quality. They're known for their timeliness, their expertise. They're known not to give a discount. If you call them up, we're not giving you any coupon discount. They're not the Walmart. They decided that a long time ago. They're more of the target, if you will. And I disagree to a certain

extent. It depends on where you are in your business. But if I'm going to get kicked out of a garage, I offer a price-peak guarantee. You can call it Ron. As long as it's apples to apples, I'm here. Let's try to earn your business. But what is your take on discounting and it evolves with customers? I think it's interesting. I could see both sides. Some people like to go the route of like, we're unapologetically expensive, but it's because we're the best. And if you want the best, you're going to pay for it. And some people respect that a lot and will do it. And it leads to higher margins.

But a lot of people do not. And you can also lose deals over not much sometimes, I think. And I think the thing with discounting is that you're ultimately always comparing against not the most finite or defined items in construction and contracting. I think discounts and offerings, especially if they're upfront stated, can come off sometimes misleading because like, oh, they'll just raise the price of the discount if they're providing it upfront. So then it comes down to, is this something that they're shopping against others? And how do you compete? I have found on the opposite side of the negotiation where as a buyer that people negotiate the best and get their lowest price when you have a competing offer that

you're presenting them that they're beating and i think that's when people drop the most and then makes sense too naturally but as to whether you should do it i think you have to look at okay does this discount carry to other people because i made the discount, right? Would other people know? Does it diminish future margins? I don't think that happens. I don't think... Yeah, probably not. The neighbors talk, but so many people are worried about that. Very few and far between. Do I become known as the cheap option? And then people continue asking, probably not. I don't know. And then can I support this margin? Are you willing

to do it? The reality is people also do free estimates. I'm not a fan of free estimates. I think I should be charging for it, at least something because there are too many tire kickers and people that were just willing to waste your time for nothing. And so you have to think about, okay, what's the type of work? Is it worth coming back empty-handed versus a negotiated price? That's for you to decide. And I think you have to look at the margin and see, is this worth it or what are the negative effects? But ultimately, I do think pricing is one of the things that holds the industry back the most because there are a lot of people that undercut pricing and then they just start competing on price and keep driving it down. They won't be around long. What happens is those are employees that go start their own business

and they don't understand their pricing model. And they laugh and they go, I could do it way cheaper. I'm like, well, the guys that brag about having a better price, they say, how do you sleep at night with your prices being so high? I say, you know what my question is for you? What kind of stuff do you do for your employees do you have pto do you have insurance do you give them a new vehicle do you have a good crm you know i ask them are they homeowners i say what do you do for your family does your wife work for you for free does your kids make any money when they do all the stuff extra for you i ask you how do you sleep at night yeah how do you sleep at night shitting all over your freaking family and shitting all

over your employees? You hold them down. You think they're peasants. I don't know how you sleep at night because I make sure my guys sleep with cold air conditioning and in a new bed. That's my goal. And because we're in Arizona, you know, I think it's interesting when I hear these guys talk about how cheap they could be. They don't drive new vehicles. They drive old, used ones. They go, Hey, that gets around fine. I had used vehicles too, but now we could afford new ones because we knew our pricing model. I charge $20 service call.

And if they say, we don't want a book. I say, let me ask you one thing. Are you serious about getting the work done today? Or when we come out? Yes, you are. Are you the homeowner? Yes, we are. I'll tell you what, we're very, very confident

we're going to earn your business. So I'll just, I'll waive the service call. We know we're going to earn your business if you're serious. Now they say, well, I'm just getting five rentals for the landlord. Then we're not going out there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Straight in between the lines.

One other technology question. Pre-qualifying is important too, what you're just talking about. And I think it's a luxury that when you're more established, you can do. But I mean, you can talk about that for half an hour or two. But pre-qualifying on the phone and making sure you're not going out to bad jobs can be a big differentiator as well.

So I like what you're saying. Are you the homeowner? Are you serious about it? And then you can also waive your service fee, like you said. But no, I agree with what you said. I think ultimately, this isn't... You're a business and you're operating as a business, but then your people and you care about your people too and the livelihoods. And

we don't like people that are just bringing down the industry and the pricing by doing things the wrong way. And it hurts themselves, but then it hurts other people too. And it's the wrong thing for the industry in general. You look at these guys that are the price suitors. They're not a contractor. They don't have a contractor number. And the ones that really suck, they get a new contractor number over two years because they get suspended. And it's ridiculous. You can't pay them because they owe so much to the IRS. You got to pay their LLC. You see this all the time. And it's like, these guys think they're so cool. They think they're so great. And they think they work 24 seven, seven days a week. And then all of a sudden the stress just to catch us up to them and they need time off.

And then guess what? They don't have any money in the bank. And then they go, well, I want to sell my business. Your business is worth nothing. Zero. Well, I get 10 calls a day, but those calls are, they want you to give it away because they heard that you're the shittiest one in town that give it away. So, you know, I'm pretty passionate about that. I just feel like this is a great business, the home service niche and those people that understand that people want it done, right. They want it done on their timeline. We work on Christmas. We work on weekends. We work very, very early in the morning. We'll come out at midnight. There's a cost to doing that. And we need to make sure we pay our employees that are going to be open to those, or they're going to quit.

They're going to fall off other guys that are really cheap. They brag about, they can make all this money. You know, there was a time I can make 500 grand a year when I ran a lot of the calls pretty easily. Problem was when I went on vacation, nobody worked. The company didn't make money. And I just love these Facebook groups. You got to see all this shit that goes on with these small minded people. They brag all the time. Oh, I don't need to wrap my vehicle. That's a waste. Well, you don't have to, but your brand matters. Your brand is worth nothing. No one cares about your brand. You get leads. You see what I get is people, when they look up A1 garage door service

versus garage door repair, Milwaukee or Phoenix or Detroit, that means I built a brand that's worth something to somebody else. You should always build a business that one day you can sell. And I think having a CRM, having standard operating procedures, manuals, and expected result is key. And I've had guys call me and the sad part is, Gabriel, they're like, I've worked 40 years on this business. I've got a lot of loyal customers.

I'm like, how much money do you make? They're like 120,000. Well, how much does the business make? Well, 120,000. That's what I make. 120,000. So your business is worth nothing. I'm sorry.

And I don't tell them that. I just say, you know, we'll chat. I can give you a percentage of the lead that calls in. I can do that, but I can't give you anything up front. I'm sorry. Well, yeah. I mean, so what I see too is basically at the end of the month, they empty their bank account and that's what they take home until new jobs fill it back up. And so they're basically running the business as their personal income versus right? Versus as a business and taking like a salary with margin and a business that's separate, kind of like you said. So yeah, it goes back to the job as a business, right?

Absolutely. One other technology question, and I'll ask you the closing question. So I hear a lot of businesses, and we had to do it out of necessity, but I'm not a big fan of it. They set up an IVR on their VoIP system. So an IVR says press one for this, press two for this, press three for this. I don't really like that. Please know that the options have changed, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the reason you could do it at your dentist is because you're going back to the same dentist.

You could do it for Verizon because you're going to call and wait for verizon you're going to call for your security you know you'll wait and you'll go to the right department but when you call a home service business you're like my water main just broke i need a plumber you kind of don't want to go through that but at the same time there's so much spammy calls and if you get big enough it does make a little bit of sense but i I'm wishy-washy. Small businesses should try to answer every call or have a backup call center. What are your thoughts on that? No, I agree with you. Because like the examples you said, you have to call. There's not a choice. But a lot of these guys are losing calls to voicemail.

And when you lose a call to voicemail, they go down the next person and call them. They're not going to wait for your call back. That might be horrible. They got call centers out there that'll do this shit for you on your calendar and book the call. Oh no, I don't do that. I got so much business. I don't even need it. Then hire an employee. That's a good problem to have that you need to take advantage of, but letting it fall to voicemail is bad. And I could see an IVR system impeding that too, because people hate dealing with that. And then now people probably start just hitting 000 and saying operator 100 times until they get connected to someone. But anything in your funnel that could risk them dropping off is not good until you've gotten

them in the door. And so I think it's something to consider. But what we do a lot and what I would recommend in that scenario is do an A-B test. Do a month without it and do a month with it and compare the call volume, compare the calls that came through versus the previous month, compare the quality of the calls that came through, and ultimately test and see which one performed better for you. And people forget that you can test concepts and compare them and see what is the right answer instead of hoping one is. And that's something we do, right? If we're doing a website change, sometimes we'll test a variant and then look at the performance and see which performed better.

And that's the one we go with. You know, there was a time where we tested out for two weeks with an IVR and we looked at the abandonment rate and there was a large abandonment rate, but we called every one of them back and it was not customers. It was dialers. So I think it's okay. You just can't have it divided into a big,

big, big IVR. Yeah. So here's a few, give me a big, big, big IVR. Yeah. So here's a few questions. Give me something quick, you know? Yeah. Just say, press one. If it's a new service, press two of your existing customer.

And press three if you're spam and then it hangs you up or something. I say press any button to show that you're a human being. That's not bad. So somebody wants to reach out to you, Gabriel. They want to know more about Field Pulse. They want to get a demo. What's the best way to reach out to you, Gabriel. They want to know more about FieldPulse. They want to get a demo. What's the best way to reach out to you and the company? Yeah.

So FieldPulse.com. We have a great team ready to help with whatever. Showcase the software, answer questions, hop on the phone, chat with you, whatever you want. Just FieldPulse.com and contact. If you'd like to reach me directly, you can email me at gabeatfieldpulse.com and contact. If you'd like to reach me directly, you can email me at gaveitfieldpulse.com as well. I'm happy to chat with people or get to know you. Yeah, that's the easiest way. And we have a phone number on our site too.

You can call in. What are three books that you'd recommend? Any three books that we should be looking into? Three books. So one that circulates around the office, it's a sales book by a former FBI negotiator. Oh, yeah, yeah. Chris Voss. Never split the difference.

Yeah, never split the difference. That's a big one. And for us, it's not just about sales and sales looking at it, but really every organization because a lot of different people, you have to learn how to speak to people, how to convince them in different ways and articulate your angle. And that doesn't matter if you're in marketing and sales and customer support, administrative or my role. That's a big one. And I think in the service industry, sales is a little bit undervalued. I think you probably preach a lot about that and how you handle the customer and the flows and everything across the board. But for a lot of contracting and service businesses,

sales is something to them as like, use car salesman tricks that they don't want to do. And they want to say, Hey, this is what I do. If you like it, call me. If you don't, don't call me. And they're never going to get to the level that they want to or need to grow as a business. So I think content and books around sales and doesn't necessarily need to be slimy tricks or anything. But how you work with people to overcome objections and anything like that. You know, here's the deal.

People that don't love sales. I asked him, how'd you meet your husband? How'd you meet your wife? How'd you meet your best friend? But just cause you don't like the word sales doesn't mean you're selling yourself every single day. How to win friends and influence people.

Is it one of the greatest books of all time by Dale Carnegie? You are a natural salesperson when you're born. You're still not your mom or she's going to throw you out with the bathwater. I just think people, you know, you got these old assholes that are 70 years old saying, well, I don't believe in sales. We just do the job right. And I'm like, look,

you got married, didn't you? You sold your beautiful Phoenix a long time ago. The fact is, I don't want to hear that stuff. I'm just done with it. I'm like, customers want eye contact. They want body language. They want tonality. They want confidence. They want to know that you're the right person. A doctor, a doctor's involved in sales. If a doctor started shaking and said, I don't know, never made eye contact when they gave you their prescription, you never go back to them. I mean, believe it or not, when I go to church, the first 10 minutes are tithing.

They're selling us to give money to the church. They're salespeople. Everybody around us is selling. So I don't want to hear this crap. I don't believe in sales. Yeah. You never had a date to prom then bro. And you know who needs to be the best salesperson and for what reason, if you want to be a business owner that scales and it gets the best employees, you're selling them ultimately on your business, working for you, how to operate properly and what's in it for them and why they should be a great team member. And so there's a ton of sales, even if it's not your customers, you need to be great at it. You know, people always ask me, they're like, what do you do? You know, you always talk about sales. I go, you're here, aren't you?

Number one. Number two is on that whole topic. They asked me to deal. It was about a month ago. They grabbed a camera real quick. They got me in the garage and they said, all right, I want you to do role play with this guy. I said, okay. His name's Eric. And he said, well, sir, that sounds like too much money. And I'm like, okay, let's step back a minute. Do we have a Harley in the garage? What's the name of the dog here? First of all, I've already been talking to them for a half an hour. So I want to be able to relate to the Harley. I want to be able to talk about their dog. I want to be able to know, like, and understand what they're interested in. I want to diagnose the person before the problem. And the problem I have with just going straight into rebuttals is I can't even talk.

I'm your friend after I get to know you. I've already asked you five things on your garage door when I walked up to the garage without even talking to you yet. I'm looking at your thermostat because I know that you're into home automation. You got a nest. These are the things I realize your son sleeps upstairs because I asked and you don't like the loud noise that the opener makes. I'm going to use all these things.

I've already asked you to use the garage door like your front door. Yes, I do. Okay. So you don't like the loud noise that the opener makes. I'm going to use all these things. I've already asked you, do you use the garage door like your front door? Yes, I do. Okay. So you use it all the time. Are you staying in the home for a long time? These are the things. So when they ask me, that's a lot of money. I say, you know what? It's a great investment into your home, but these are what you've told me. You told me you're staying in the home. You use like your front door, your son needs to sleep. We've always got plan B. We've always got other options, But this is based on what you told me. And I am the doctor. I'm the best at what I do. And I'm here to earn your business. And I want you to understand that I'm going to give you a five out of five experience. You understand that,

right? So let's go ahead and give you a five out of five experience because you better leave me a Yelp after this. But anyways, we talked about a lot of stuff here. I definitely think the main topic obviously is customer relationship management system that's able to connect with customers, have history of customers, have your guys follow along with the CRM to make sure they're getting everything done in the right amount of time to the right person.

There's so much that goes into it. And I envy the people that have a business and a location because my business is spread out over 2,500 miles with 200 trucks across the country, 250 trucks, and there's gas involved. There's insurance, there's driving, right? Last week, we talked about a guy talking to a 17 year old daughter and she wasn't the decision maker and they weren't very happy. This, you know, we serviced 11,000 customers last month. When you look at these things, there's a lot more to it. McDonald's is a pretty easy concept for me. You got five machines, you do this. So it's a tough industry to be in. And

when we chose to be in it, it's fun, but we talked about so much, Gabriel, I just wanted to give you the opportunity to maybe sum it all up and maybe talk about something we might've not got a chance to, and maybe something to go do today for the listeners. But I'm going to leave it up to you here for a few minutes to, and I see your dog in the background too. What kind of dog do you have? There's a dog? There was a dog earlier. That's probably not mine.

It's, oh, I'm in the office. People bring their dogs, sometimes kids and everything. So, well, I think what people need to realize is that the owning and running a business is tough. And you probably found that out the hard way. And the service and contracting industry is very difficult. Like you said, there's a lot of moving parts, a lot of variances with people and things changing and unknowns that other businesses don't have to deal with.

And ultimately, you probably started on the craft side and not the business side. And so you need to identify your strengths and your weaknesses and see where you can help. A lot of you all will be really good at what you do on the craft or the trade part. And it's about realizing how do you get the business aspect from it? And how do you do that well? And what your goals are. Some people have goals to grow larger and more profitable, make more money. And some people want to get their Fridays back to go fishing. But whatever it is, if you can make it more efficient, if you can run that easier and put systems in place for employees, it can help you a lot.

And I think what you have to realize is that I assume that if you started your business, you consider yourself an upper echelon producer, a business person, craftsman trades, just upper echelon talent. And the people you're hiring are not necessarily either. So you need to work to put them in the best position to succeed. And that's both in systems and procedures and software, but also as people and taking account that people are chaotic, random, and variable. And how do you standardize that? And your business is very large. And I'm sure that's one of your biggest issues is dealing with all the chaos. And so that's why you put cameras in your car because people are unpredictable. But when you realize that, that not everyone acts like you do, not everyone thinks the way you do,

not everyone operates with the right intentions, and you can start protecting against that, I think you'll find that you can now grow and manage your business much better. But I think it starts with realizing that. And it took me a little bit to realize that too. It's like, that person does not understand this the same way I do. And I can't just assume that.

Well, you have to assume that as well, that the way they sell to the customer is not a given, right? You need to teach them and train them and put them in a position to succeed. Yep. I'm sure you talk about that all the time. You know, I got to be honest.

It's a great crew. I'm standing on legends here that have built the business. I do a lot with sales. I do a lot with marketing. I'm involved a lot in the morale. I'm the cheerleader. But getting the right people in the right positions, setting up performance, pay properly, getting the price book dialed in.

Those are all things that really matter. The first thing I do when I coach businesses is say, raise your prices. Well, you haven't even looked at anything. I said, I know, raise your prices. Double your price and add 10 bucks. That's what we're going to start with. You haven't even looked at anything, I know.

But trust me, your prices are too low. It's very easy. You know, so-and-so's got a coupon out there for less. I don't care. We're not marketing against them. That's a different customer. I don't want those customers. But this is great, Gabriel.

I got a lot out of it. I think this is great to really just explain to listeners what we're all about with CRMs and technology. If you guys get a chance, definitely check out Field Pulse. If you're not using anything, I don't know what to tell you that's not the way to run a business and you're killing yourself and I don't advise it but Gabriel

I really really had a blast here today I'll probably be in Dallas in the next six months we'll make sure to go to happy to meet up yeah thanks for having me on appreciate it and always love talking about the trades and the service industry. So glad to be here.

Yeah, this is great, brother. We'll have a great one. All right, thank you. Hey guys, I just wanted to thank you real quick for listening to the podcast. From the bottom of my heart, it means a lot to me. And I hope you're getting as much as I am

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