The Home Service Expert Podcast - Planning Your Sales Process Effectively to Accelerate Your Business Growth

Episode Date: March 12, 2021

Sky Stephens is the co-founder of the Association of Professional Builders, a business coaching company that provides cutting-edge systems, world-class support, and sales & marketing training to the construction industry. She has been working with builders since 2014, helping them grow their businesses sustainably and consistently. In this episode, we talked about marketing communications, social media marketing, strategic planning, CRM, sales management...

we first need to just understand the biggest blocker for humans in selling. And really, this is something that Brian Tracy has talked about in his books so much. When it really boils down to it, it's actually fear of rejection. Because the reason people don't like sales is they feel uncomfortable asking for the sales so they don't. So the question is, why aren't you asking for the sale? It always boils down to a fear of rejection. And the number one thing that we teach is when someone says no to your offer, they're saying no to your offer, not you. And that's why one of our core values at APB is we don't take things personally. It's not about you. They are not understanding the offer at that point in time. So we need to

do a much better job at demonstrating value so that they can say yes to our offer. Again, it's that fear of rejection we need to uncover, admit, and then completely get rid of that fear in order to progress. 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 Home Service Expert. You guys know me. My name is Tommy Mello. And today, I have a very special guest visiting us from way down under. Her name is Skye Stevens,

and she is an expert of marketing communications, social media marketing, strategic planning, CRM, sales management. She is in the Gold Coast and the Associate of Professional Builders 2014. professional builders, a leading business coaching company dedicated to improving the residential construction industry for both builders and consumers by providing cutting edge systems, world-class support, and sales and marketing training to the construction industry. Since 2014, she has worked with countless builders in growing their businesses sustainably and consistently. Sky, it's Thursday there. It's Wednesday here. I think this is so cool. I'm glad to have you on. Let's talk a little bit about your life and what you've been through

and what you do now. Yeah, amazing. Well, look, firstly, thanks for having me, Tommy. So yeah, to give you a little bit of background about me and how we started APB, the Association of Professional Builders. This story goes over a decade at this point. Essentially, in a nutshell, how it started was I finished school, I graduated, I was going into university, and I went in to study marketing, as you do. And my father at the time had a safety documentation company. So essentially selling pre-completed safety documents to builders for their construction sites. And it was good, but it wasn't the most

exciting thing. It wasn't the most exciting thing to sell. So after most sales, he'd end up talking to a lot of the builders he'd be selling this documentation to. And they would always get on the topic of marketing. That's a very exciting topic. And I realized that that's really where he wants to be. And same with me. I really wanted to be doing marketing, but wasn't really learning the cutting edge ways to do it at university. So it wasn't long before I left university and together, we teamed up and actually created a marketing agency for builders because they already had the network of contacts of custom

home builders and so that went really well that was about 10 years ago and that was going great we were growing wonderful we sort of realized we could generate all the leads in the world for some guys how come some building companies would grow and excel and then some would just complain like leads were bad and you know't working. So essentially, after analyzing it and talking to the leads ourselves, we realized that the builders that were doing well, they knew how to sell. And the ones that weren't doing too well, they didn't have a sales process. They weren't too good at follow-up. So it actually led us down a path of launching a sales training company,

which again, did fantastic, but there were still gaps. You could generate the leads, you could do the sales, but then it would be the business side. So about five, six years ago, that's when it actually led us to launch the Association of Professional Builders. And that covers all coaching in all areas of a building company. Wow. Those are my two favorite things in the world. And I'm excited. You got me excited because I love marketing and I love sales. And the third thing I love that I've learned to love is financial statements that kind of tell me the scoreboard and the KPIs that I need to be following. I'm going to go off script here. I've got all these questions and I'm good at going off

script, but you said sales matter you know the first thing i do when i get into a room of a bunch of new guys 30 to 40 guys a month is that pass out a donation for a church you know you you pass around and you give to god and i say hey give as much you guys could give this is called tithing give as much you can to me and i pass it around and people are like, should I go into my pocketbook? But I say, if the priest and preachers could talk about sales, I'm going to talk about sales. When I meet girls, when women meet men, anything in our lives is based around sales. So don't think it's a bad word. And I want to know from you,

what do you think about sales? Why is it important? Where do we fail? Well, sales is important because sales is how you eat. I know that everyone listening to this podcast at the moment, you're the business owner. It's your responsibility

to keep the business going. You've got a lot of mouths to feed, especially if you've got a team. So sales is how you eat. So sales, like you say, it's a dirty word to a lot of people, isn't it? Yeah. And it doesn't need to be. So sales is a good thing. And I think the first thing you need to understand is you may feel slimy about selling, but then think about your offer. And if your offer is ethical, there's a lot of integrity

behind it. You offer a world-class service. Why do you feel bad about selling it? You're actually helping people the more you sell your service. So you're doing people a disservice when you feel uncomfortable selling and try not to. I have a morning mojo call every day with my team. There's about 150 guys on it. And I threw the F-bomb out there. I'm pretty passionate when I talk. And I said, if any of you guys think I'm lying, cheating, or stealing from my customer, you need to come out here in flat Arizona. We're in 15 states. You need to come talk to me because this is what I'm going to do for my mom. And I love my mom or my mom. You probably say mom, my mom more than anything in my life.

And I'm going to take care of my mom. And if you got a 2011 Corolla and let's just pretend for a minute that you got a cracked windshield, the paint's bad. The tires are bald. The engine's blown. I'm not going to fix it. I'm going to tell you to replace it. Let's get you into something better.

I'll buy it. You just made me back less than a cup of Starbucks a day. I'll buy it for you. I'll finance it. So to sell as human, there's a good book on my shelf called To Sell as Human by Daniel Pink. Everything we're doing in life is sales. And I get so excited because you said

sales and marketing. We're going to take a deep dive into this, but why don't you talk to me a little bit about how you get your contractors over the cliche, which we need to do for all of our employees of sales is a good word. It's not a bad word. Yeah, absolutely. The biggest thing is mindset, right? Like you say, to sell is human. So we first need to just understand the biggest blocker for humans in selling. And really, this is something that Brian Tracy has talked about in his books so much. When it really boils down to it, it's actually fear of rejection. Because the reason people don't like sales is they feel uncomfortable asking for the sales, so they don't. So the question is, why aren't you asking for the sale? It always boils down

to a fear of rejection. And the number one thing that we teach is when someone says no to your offer, they're saying no to your offer, not you. And that's why one of our core values at APB is we don't take things personally. It's not about you. They are not understanding the offer at that point in time. So we need to do a much better job at demonstrating value so that they can say yes to our offer. Again, it's that fear of rejection we need to uncover, admit, and then completely get rid of that fear in order to progress. God, we're going to have so much fun. Let's do a quick scenario. So I'm going to sell you a garage door right now. Love it.

Sky, I want to tell you something. First of all, I think you have a beautiful home. Do you mind if I ask you how long you lived here? I've lived here about 10 years. I could tell you. The house is beautiful. I'm playing with your dog at this point. Tell me exactly what's going on with your garage door. Well, sometimes it doesn't close all the way down so i have to like press the button a few times it can get there in the end like it's fine but you know it's a little bit inconvenient my goal is to make sure you had a five out of five experience i want to make sure that you're a raving fan because guess what i'm the mvp of this company and my boss he takes me out to dinner all

the time because every contest we have i I make customers happy and I get referrals because I make the dinner safe and I make it work. Let me ask you another question. When was the last time you had the garage door looked at? Never. Well, you know what? I'm glad I'm here. Skye, let me ask you a few questions. How often do you use the garage door? Do you use it as your front door? Yeah, every day. So you're using this thing all the time? Yeah. Okay. Do you have any kids sleeping upstairs by chance? Somebody that would be woken up by the rumbling of the garage door? Yep. Yes, I do. And like I said, do you ever leave the garage door open? Do you have any concerns for you personally that we could address before I even look at

the garage door? I don't leave it open. I try not to because I want it to be shut all the time. My main concern is that we address all your problems today and we get this fixed in a way that's going to be best served for you. It doesn't mean replacing the garage door. It doesn't mean fixing the garage door. It means that if you're going to sell the home, people care about curb appeal. If you're going to stay in the home, people care about their electricity bill. And if you're going to stay in the home,

people care about safety, making sure the garage door is shut. So how long do you plan on staying in the home? Probably another couple of years. Okay. That's what everybody says. I wouldn't say that, but that's what everybody says. My big thing is when people say sell me a pen is my goal is to ask them a lot of questions first. And then you said it earlier, but we got to follow up. So build rapport, which is me smiling, knocking on the door, ask you a bunch of questions, play with the dog, educate. And we're going to talk about the garage door is the only thing on your home, more than your kitchen, more than your bathroom that will deliver 102% return on investment. And I'll show you a couple articles to demonstrate that. And by the way, it's 40% of your curb appeal. And the biggest thing for me is that I will do whatever it takes to start your business.

And by the way, Sky, I've already called you on the way and offered you a cup of Starbucks. I've offered you a bottle of water, anything you need. I'm building instant rapport. And I'm not a faker. I don't need a lie, cheat, or steal because my business is really built on referrals. So having the best interest of you and when you say no to me that's beautiful sky let me ask you a question sky what makes you say that when you say no the reason i wanted to do this little thing is if you reject me and you say no a lot of people fear no i don't care if you say no that allows me

to say let me ask you what makes you say that by the way? Exactly. You get to delve deeper. I love it. Build the onion. And this is the whole point of this exercise for me. And I don't do this on the podcast very often, but this guy, it's interesting because you said no, and I want to make myself, my team, my company better. So let me understand what I can do to provide more value. And a lot of people, Brian Tracy, Tom Hopkins, I've got a million books. We try to overcome objections, but if we go into the sale, trying to give the best possible outcome, we understand there's a whole different outcome of referrals. People come to work for me and they say, I've had the best experience. We're not price shopping anymore. We're using you. And I think that difference, 15 years ago, this is not me. I was cutting pennies. I was a bad leader and I'm digging into sales, but you've learned what I love about your story. And I'm doing a lot of talking. I'm supposed to ask you more questions, but you learned we can do all the marketing in the world,

but if we don't have sales, it doesn't win. So you have to have a team that can ask for a sale. You can do all the marketing in the world. You can do everything right, but it can't 100% be automated. You have to be able to close that final gap. And it's literally asking for the sale, ask for the business. And I like what you just said before. You said you want to help them. You want to sell. You're not going to get personally offended if they say, no, it's another opportunity. You have to have a willing seller. And if a consumer has you in their home, selling them a garage door or trying to, and you are not asking for the business, they don't feel wanted either. They're going to go somewhere that wants them. You know what I mean? No, it's great. I have a buddy of mine and I don't know if I've ever told this story, but I got so mad because he used to go to the bar and just be basically just always bad story, I guess. But the women loved him. And one day I watched him is I watched him and he got rejected. Then he got rejected again.

Then he got rejected again. And then all of a sudden he said, boom, found it. And he did not let no turn him off. See, no is a fear. All of us don't want to hear no. Since we're kids, we don't want to hear mom doesn't love us. We don't want to hear rejection. When I watched him, he learned that rejection is a good thing. If you say no, it's easy to get to yes. And he'd brush it off and it's a numbers game. And it really turns into an algorithm. And what I loved about it is I'm like, you're not that cool. You're just better at rejection. And when you love to hear the word no, you learn how to win. Would you agree? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. There are so many books on this. They're almost

conflict, right? And so many sales books you talk about, you want the micro commitments, you want the little yeses constantly. But then you've got the big negotiation books that are like, that's their book. Start with no. You're trying to get the first no, so they can get that out of their system so you can work through it and move through their biggest problem together. But like you say, your friend, he's just playing a numbers game. He understands that not everyone's going to say yes. And that's so important in sales as well.

What we teach, you want to close deals just as fast as you open them and close them, not just by selling them, but close loss, not interested. Because then the marketing can pick them back up. They can always come back, but you do not want to be in deal limbo with anyone. Maybe it's the worst thing. I want to know, but let me understand why you said no. But the biggest thing for me is, Sky, what makes you say that? Because now I have an option. And you know one thing, Sky, you and I, have you ever been to a doctor before?

Yes. I know when I walk into the doctor, they give me all these sheets. They make me sign all this stuff. Then they weigh me. They take my height and they take my blood pressure. Then the doctor walks in and asks me 25 questions. We are the doctor. Exactly.

We got to ask the questions, right? Absolutely. And then you prescribe a solution. And you know what? The solution may not always be your product, but that's what gives you a real position of authority because your prescription may be, look, you know what?

Everything seems absolutely fine. If you wanted to do it for a makeover perspective, go for it. But structurally, everything's okay. And you come across so professional when you can just give a professional prescription, not necessarily an opinion, but a prescription like that. And people still want your business. They respect you for that. Well, there's an old movie. And if you get a chance, do you watch a lot from down under? I

don't know if you guys, you probably watch a lot of American movies, but it's an old movie. And if you get a chance, do you watch a lot from Down Under? I don't know if you guys, you probably watch a lot of American movies, but it's an old movie. It's a Christmas movie called The Miracle on 44th Street. And Chris Kringle, way back in the 1940s, I believe this was, said, you shouldn't shop at my store for that. The store, go to the other store for that. And what you become is a trusted advisor. And all of a sudden, there's all these stores recommending other stores to try to figure out but maybe i'm not

the best solution for you but what i'm going to tell you is i've got your best interest at heart now that's hard for most businesses because most businesses especially in the home service space are dying right now they're trying to just make that next dollar. But when you give the best, if you really believe this is your mom, and my mom's still alive, I love the lady. I got to tell you, she's top notch. I'm going to do what I would do for my mom in any scenario. And I tell my guys, when you get back to your state and your city, go to the person you care about most. Maybe your mom. I don't know the scenario with their lives, but find the person you care about most other than your wife or your husband. And I want you to go take care of them and be honest with them and take care of them.

And I'll work with you on the price. We'll take care of them. But at least you can look customers dead in the eye and say, this is what I did for my grandpa that raised me. And I love him more than my life. And this is why I want to do this for you. And that's genuine information. And I think we're missing that. And I'm sorry that I went down this road, but you talked about it and I've got all these great questions here, but I tend to just sometimes go off. that's totally fun just to add on what you said as well though especially if you don't end up selling that person by saying look i don't think it's a fit here but if you go over here you'll be able to

get what you need people talk and it's not just your past customers that talk and that's the one thing i don't think everyone really thinks of. It's not just your past customers that can give you referrals, a good review or a bad review. It's everyone you interact with. So even if someone just sees your marketing on Facebook or on Instagram, they'll probably tell their friends, oh, I saw something. If they're looking to get their garage door done or build a new home, oh, I saw something. It looked really good. Even if they actually interacted with you and it worked out that it wasn't going to work, they still recall you. And it's all based on your first impression and your interaction with them. So people still talk whether or not they gave you money. And referrals are the best thing because they're not price

shopping. But honestly, i have a boomerang too that i give out and i pretend like i'm going to throw it and i say i throw this out there i get people a lot but i get it comes back to me every time and the more we do this the more we give the more we get i just read a book called the go givers for sales and it really is about giving i want to dive a little bit into marketing and I'm going to do some quick questions because I'm really interested. You've got a consulting, you do a lot and I love Australia.

I love Canada and I love Australia way more than the United States because the people trust you. They're just like, okay, do it. They love you. And I'm pretty sure I'll be in Australia in the next three years with my business. I'll definitely be in Canada the next year.

But what's the best way to build your marketing to your target customers? And this is something I go through all the time is how do you find your avatar? Ooh, such a good question. So especially if you have an established business, the easiest thing to do is pull up a record of all of your past customers. Because when we say avatar, we're looking for our ideal client. And our ideal client is a mixture of the type of person we want to work with and the people who can afford to pay for our level of service. That is your ideal client. You don't want to work for people you

love all day, but who don't have money or certainly don't want to pay for your expertise. That's not an ideal client. So it's got to be a combination of the two. And if you have an established business and you're trying to really hone in on your marketing, because anything you put out marketing-wise has to speak directly to your ideal client. So this is a really worthwhile exercise doing. So I would pull up a list of all of your past customers. And firstly, go down the list by project. Look at the kinds of project you want to be working on in future. So a lot of the time, that's probably the value of the project or the type of home, whether it's a new home build, a renovation,

maybe a certain dollar value of supplies that you're installing, whatever it may be, that's your ideal project. Then you want to look at the people involved. What were their commonalities? What were the common traits there? Is there a subgroup? Is it a bigger group? Maybe you have to niche it down again, But you really want to drill down really specifically, even things to do like who actually made the inquiry? What kind of business do they run? Especially if you're business to business, certainly with your audience here, Tommy, who made the inquiry? What kind of company was it? What was the value of the job? And then the kicker to really establish who your ideal client is going to be,

look at the margin on each of those jobs that you're analyzing. And then look at the highest margin ones. And then look at that avatar. That's going to be your ideal client. As long as you've already plucked out the people that you enjoyed working with, that is your ideal client. I love that you said margin because I have a good book on my shelf. I think I have three of them. The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes, who passed away. And he says, build a list of your top 100 clients and continue to go after them. The problem is we fear no like we talked about, but we don't go after this one client. There's going to be a time where somebody shits the bed. And when they do,

you need to be there to pick up the crumbs. So I think that understanding who your top clients are. So I took 250,000 of my customers, put them through this, it's called regression testing. And what it does is it says male or female, how much income it says, are they in a two story house versus a single story? I tested them against zip codes, profession, all kinds of stuff. And the more you could understand that perfect client, that avatar, like you just said, the better you could be. It's the, you play darts ever?

Have you played darts? I've played it. Yeah. So there's a little red dot in the middle that's the bullseye and that's your perfect avatar a lot of time we call it spray and pray we spray darts and we say when you understand who that is you want to corrode that thing and make them hear you from every angle if If they hang out at the yacht club, you better be advertising at the yacht club. People say it's a waste of time, but that one job from the yacht club

pays for all the advertising at the yacht club. So I think it's so important to understand who your customer is. And this is, you got to understand, I get lawyers on here. I've got inventors, a lot of people that write books, but sales and marketing are my jam. So I'm going to add to whatever you say. That's just

what I do, I guess. This is a great question, I think, because I love paying for ads. I love Google pay-per-click. I love Facebook, but I also love organic free leads. I love word of mouth. And I think a lot of business owners in the early years, they say, should I pay to play? Should I be spending this money? And my answer usually is, what's your conversion rate? What's your booking rate? What's your average ticket? But what are your thoughts on paid ads versus what do we do when we start out in business? What does a builder do? How do they get known? Where's the best spot to put the money? That's such a good question. Especially when a builder gets started, 100% of their time is working on the business, right? Because if there are no projects in front of you, you get to spend all this time working

on the business. But then it becomes this balancing act. The more projects you get, they're suddenly working in managing the projects, making sure they're going well, and less and less time gets spent working on the business and more importantly, the sales and marketing. So like you were saying just then, there is no sense in spending money on paid advertising until you A, have a sales process and B, have some numbers through it so you know what to expect. The thing is though, a referral model compared to a paid advertising model, that's very, very different. Referrals convert much higher, but it's going to take a hundred leads from a paid ad to come to a custom home building contract. It's certainly the ratios that we've worked out because so many people are interested, but not many people are that serious. A lot of people are still in research

mode. A lot of people still browse. A lot of people change their minds. This is a massive, massive decision on their part. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. So certainly for a custom home builder, it's a much longer process and it takes a lot of leads from paid advertising to get into a building contract. So it leads them to first start off with referrals. And you want to shape every tree, squeeze every lemon until it's dry. I love that. Referrals are wonderful, but you can't scale a business on referrals alone. You have to part with cash.

And that takes an investment into your marketing assets. Remembering the difference between marketing and advertising. So marketing, a lot of your assets like your website, your organic social media, a lot of your brochures, your email marketing, that's marketing. And then you've got advertising. This is where you actually pay money to Facebook to show your ads in the right places. You pay money to Google on YouTube. And it does take a combination of both. You know, when you said you squeeze a lemon until it's dry, I was on the phone yesterday and he goes, I lost a lot of my company due to the COVID and whatnot. And he goes, what would you do if you were me? And I said, how many customers do you

have? And we went through this process of questions, Q&A, which I ask everybody. And I said, every customer you get should be leaving you a review on Yelp, Google, the BBB, Nextdoor, Thumbtack. And I went on and on. And I said, you're squeezing. You do a video testimonial. You do a yard sign. You ask for referrals. You've got the time to do that. See, we've got 900 calls so far today. 900. Right now, as of right now in the CRM, we've booked 301 leads. We've booked appointments for. So I'd love to go back to guerrilla marketing. But when I had the time, I looked at a video from 10 years ago where I'm recording a guy.

I mean, you've got the time to do it. You got to do it. And what I love what you said is there's a process. I have an eight-step sales process that works every effing time. Every time. I tell my guys, it doesn't work some of the time. I'll close the deal every time. And they go, that's not possible. I go, no. If it's followed to the T, you skip a step, you'll fail every time. You'll fail every time, but you follow my process. So could I hear a little bit about, I won't go into detail and I know this stuff that people should be paying like $20,000 for, but tell me a little bit about your sales process.

So the sales process that we give to our builders, all of our members, we've got a proven sales process. I love that yours is eight step and you just say it works every time. You must know your numbers at each step. And that's so important. That's what we give to our builders. And we even go as far as... Obviously, it starts right at the top with your marketing. You got content marketing. So we go into how they're actually going to hear about you and discover any kind of awareness. Then you got the lead generation. And so what we teach our builders to do as well because... Firstly... Actually, let me ask you a question. How long does your sales cycle from first inquiry to payment? How long does your sales cycle?

So there's two types of sales in most home services. There's service and there's sales. So air conditioning, I'm going to fix your AC or I'm going to get you a new AC unit. I'm going to fix your garage or get you a new AC. So I go out right away and I fix. What I love about home service is you got a chimney and I'm repairing it. I make the money then and there. But the secret sauce is service to sales. It's saying, look, this is not good. I think I should get you into something new if you're going to stay in the home.

But I'm going to do what's in your best interest. If you're selling the house next year and you don't care. So it's a tough question, but I'd say it's real time in service. The average door sale. My top guy will do over $2 million this year. He laughs when he gets a no because he says it'll take three weeks to follow up. Three weeks. Yeah.

Every single day day every morning he spends an hour on the phone text messaging text sms not emailing not leaving a voicemail no bullshit he text messages because that's what we do as americans we get on our phone and 99.9 percent of text messages get seen i don't know know about Australia, but assuming you guys look at your text messages as well. Definitely. It was a standard answer, but what's your lead time? Probably six months. If not a year.

So the thing is, if you guys look at what custom home builders are doing, they play a long game. And we can learn a lot because these guys have created such a process that can influence a consumer all the way from first thought about completely remodeling their home, or maybe even custom building a brand new home. From their first thought, that first inception,

all the way to signing a building contract, that can take six months to a year, a couple of years sometimes. They play the long game. And if they're influencing that decision for a consumer to spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, we can learn something from these guys. And the custom home builders who do it well, they know their sales cycle is that long. So they play the long game. They're making solid investments into content early on. So they're doing content marketing. They're getting in front of the camera, actually just delivering value, answering the questions going on inside their prospect's mind, delivering value on video. They're appearing on Facebook, on YouTube,

on Instagram. They write a blog about it. That same tip goes in a caption on a picture of a pretty home on Facebook. And they're delivering value from all ends because they know it's the long game. I had somebody on my podcast, Marcus Sheridan, they asked you to answer. You answer the people's questions. You do FAQs. You tell them how much the price is. You explain to them why. He also wrote another book called The Visual Sale.

And I don't work for the guy, by the way. I get no money by publicizing his books. I want to tell you guys guys if you're watching this most of you are listening to it but i get these things called the dollar shave club this is how they used to be they're brown they it just came today and all of a sudden it's a sexy blue color and it says one smooth shave and i gotta tell you i, oh my God, this makes me want to go just try it. It looks like butter. And the appearance of your company, when you show up, the questions you ask, the way you look, the way you carry your iPad, it's everything from the way we text message

every customer on the way through our CRM, and we give them a bio of the technician. And I think it's so important. And what I love about what Sky is talking about is there's two types of funnels. One is I need to fix today. There's another one that starts up here, usually social media. We continue to deliver value, value, value, value. And I love that I've done a good job. And I'm very happy my team has done a good job of getting the demand jobs. Somebody's going to walk into a custom builder

and say, I'm ready to go. I want to build this house. I've done a lot of research. I love you. But somehow they heard about them and it's actually been a longer cycle than the builder even realizes. Definitely. And we're planting seeds all day, every day. And I wanted to ask you because quite honestly, if you look at my phone, it's pretty ridiculous. I'm on, you know, not as much on Snapchat anymore or anything, but I'm on Coinbase probably more than anything. But we go on here on Instagram and we go on here on YouTube. We look at my TikTok.

I'm probably a kid when it comes to this stuff. So everybody's asking, where should I be? Should I be on Houzz, Pinterest? I say all of them, but that's a stupid answer because that's what Gary Vaynerchuk would say is, yeah, be on all of them. But where do you start? Because everybody's wondering, this is too much. You go where your market is. So if we've just done the ideal client avatar exercise, where we're trying to work out who is our ideal client, we need to go where they are first. And to be honest, it's going to be on the most popular platforms. It may not be as cool and as new as the hottest new thing that's coming out. But if you go to what is proven, there's something like over 50% of over, I think it was 35-year-olds are on Instagram. More than that are on Facebook. Why not go to your biggest channels first, actually have a presence, but the right presence. Because like

you were saying before, image matters. People do judge you. People can say they don't all they want, but it's deep within us. It's human. Have you ever read Dr. Robert Cialdini's book, Influence? You mean the guy that I met that I know at the gym that wrote the book, The Five Reasons Why We Succeed. Yeah. I know a little bit about him. And he also wrote Persuade. Persuasion. Yeah. Yeah. So in that book, Influence, that you're holding, remember he's got a section on trappings of authority and it's how essentially con artists would work, right? You know that if you show up with a stethoscope and a white coat, your mind just clicks into autopilot and it's like, okay, there's a doctor that's trustworthy. So it was called trappings of authority. And so we need to make sure we do

that when we represent our company. Colored shirts, clean shirts, we look clean, presentable. We're very professional in our language that we use to the customer because all that explains our value and why we charge what we charge. It's very important. This is what we teach. Look at your social profiles. If you are on Instagram and you are on Facebook, look at it through the eyes of your ideal client. Especially for builders, we've found this. It can be very cool and interesting to you if you're the eyes of your ideal client, especially for builders. We've found this. It can be very cool and interesting to you if you're the owner of a building company to look at a construction site because you see it, you know how it's all working. Consumers don't care. They talk to you because they want a home. So they want to picture their ideal kitchen.

They want to picture the pool. They want to have the kids coming into the pool and have a good time at the barbecue. That's called blue ocean strategy, right? Exactly. And even actually having photos of your ideal client, we call those lifestyle images. That's what you want on your social media. Nothing to do with the progress. No one cares about the progress of a home unless it's those homeowners that are paying for that progress. So share those photos with them privately. On your marketing, it requires makeup. So let's make it look good. Let me ask you this. I have a lot of KPIs in my business. Key performance indicators. I really care about my average ticket. I care about my face-to-face close ratio. I care about my booking rate. I care about my cost per acquisition. From those main KPIs, obviously, my financial statements are what I live and breathe. And then I've got how long do employees stay on? I mean, there's a million KPIs. What do you really stand out?

What are the ones that we need to be focused on? That's a really good question. I think if we were to separate it out, you've got your lead indicators and then you've got your lag indicators. And your lead indicators are much, much quicker. These are things like the number of leads you've generated that month or that quarter,

the number of conversations, because obviously you can generate a lead, but if you don't get them on the phone or don't get a phone number, that's not really a conversation. So track that metric as well. They are all incredibly important, like you're saying, your cost per acquisition. But they allow you to see what's happening day to day and if you're hitting the ratios you need to influence then your lag indicators. And these are incredibly important. We need to look at our gross margin. We want to look and

track and measure, figure that not many people do. What are our fixed expenses as a percentage of our revenue? Are we lean? Are we bloated? Do we have room for growth? And then of course, we want to look at our net margins as well. Profitability matters. So I think too often, we can get caught up on our lead indicators because they're much quicker. It's like instant gratification. But don't forget, really, your profit and loss and your balance sheet report. Let's understand those metrics. A lot of people talk about Walmart. Walmart's a great case study in my master's program at U of A. I spent a lot of time studying Walmart. And what they taught me is all the wrong stuff. When they showed me who Robert Cialdini is, they taught me a lot.

Walmart does something completely different. They hire people to take advantage of tax law and other things. And they bend every rule because they're able to do it because the Waltons are very rich. They're one of the top 10. But the opposite of Walmart is find a niche. I know a guy, Ken Gooders, who does $150 million, has been on the podcast. And he said, he looks at me the other day and he goes, we don't do high speed units and all this other crap. We take one thing. We do a very fricking good to everybody. And he goes, what are you going to be known for? The guy that does everything. And you're just ADHD and you're just all over the place and you'll make a dollar wherever you can, or are you going to specialize in building an assembly line? You're going to be Henry Ford and you're going to learn to specialize. And man, that hit me like a ton of bricks

because I say no more often than I say yes. I love the word no now is not what we do. Turn it down. But I can make this much money doing it. I didn't turn down Bitcoin and I've been lucky for that this year. But for the most part, I've always say no. And I think Warren Buffett would tell us the art of saying no is good. And I guarantee you, you're with a lot of builders that all of a sudden say, well, I'm going to start doing this and this and this. What's the first thing they buy? Snowmobiles or jet skis and a boat and they buy us this and that. None of those assets are accumulating wealth for them. And I know I'm going off topic here, but I wonder why success

leaves clues and Google leaves clues. And I love watching people that are successful. And if I wouldn't watch your top person you work with, wouldn't it be amazing to just watch how they live their life and how a lot of them probably feel like they've made it. They have enough money where it's working for them that it's starting to build. Einstein said it, a compound interest is the best thing in the world. But what are your thoughts about entrepreneurs that are out there listening to this podcast going, they got to focus, right? Yeah. It's your daily habits, really. It's your consistency. And like you said, it's going to compound. And the more you can say no, you just need to get

laser focused on the one thing you do and do it well. This is the first thing we start with, with our members that start working with us. Because you think builders, like anyone actually in this industry, I'm sure you can do everything. Builders, of course, they can build a new home. They can do a renovation. They can do a deck. They can just do a bathroom. They can do any kind of project. Of course, they can. It's a skill set. But if you want to have a successful business, pick one and niche. Go all in. And you want to be known as the specialist in your area for luxury custom homes or you're the specialist in your area for bathrooms and you could churn out you know

like 200 bathrooms a year or whatever it may be go all in and like you say say no because it makes you more valuable you know i have a hard time, I think, as an entrepreneur. One guy taught me a long time ago that we're entrepreneurs. I think me and you, Sky, are entrepreneurs. And I can't say no, so I've learned to say yes, but not right now. Because it's so much better to say yes, to say, I'm just not ready for that. Because we know we can take anything. Give me a bread shop. I'll figure out a way to make money. I got thrown into the garage.

Everybody's like, well, you got lucky. You learned garage doors. Throw me in anything. But I got to have time, energy, and focus into it. Because there's one thing, it's called grit. G-R-I-T. Grit is what makes me successful. It's not the short-term play.

It's not today I'm going to make a million dollars. It's I'm going to work my ass off every day. Consistency. And over the course of 10 years, it's going to be, I look at Steve Jobs. I look at Elon Musk and I'm nothing like them, but I understand 12 moves ahead of my competitors.

I think about poker. I think about chess. I'm nothing like Elon Musk in a lot of ways, but until I start reading his books and studying him and trying to ask questions about him, that's who I want to become as someone that changes the world. And I feel like we all shoot too short a little bit, don't we? I think so. Certainly in Australia, there's something called tall poppy syndrome. Tall poppy? Yeah. Have you heard of this? No.

So it's a big thing in Australia, which does impact a lot of Australians, tall poppy syndrome. It's essentially where if someone's doing good, everyone else, like the masses will just try and bring them down. They don't want to see people doing well. And I think that is a very limiting mindset. It's very much a fixed mindset. Entrepreneurs that make it, they have a growth mindset. But going back to what you were saying before, you were talking about, been going 10 years now or whatever it may be, that success, it's a long run. A lot of people will call you lucky and they will say overnight success, but they just see

the last little bit. They've not seen how much you've been working, the fact that it's compounded over 10 years, 15 years, even 20 years. They just see that last little bit. And I think if you are a business owner listening to this, you just have to be okay with that. It's not your responsibility or duty to correct every single person, but people think what they want to think, you know, and your team knows what it has taken to get to this point. And that's the most important thing. We talked a little bit earlier about avatar. When we talk about someone you want to work with, who do you want to work with? Who are the people that should be reaching

out to you that are listening right now? So we work with custom home builders and large remodeling specialists. Typically, the people we work with are going to be the building company owners, the general managers, or the sales and marketing directors. They're the people that can get value from what we do. And their annual sales are going to be over a million, up to about 100 million. They're the kind of building companies we work with. I got a guy that has 102 million, so probably shouldn't be kidding. One thing I ask every person on the podcast is i'm a big book reader i didn't get lucky i just met the right people and i read the right books and i've hired the right consultants i'm not very smart i like to read i hated to read when i was in high school

it was a task for me to read now i'm, I pray to get the right book in my hands. And I love audible. I just, this is what I do. And, and I think that's the clue to success is you're going to be the same person you are in 10 years, unless you meet better people and read more books. So if you could give me three and you already said a great one is Robert Chirini influence. And like I said, as I pulled up just some of the books by him, but are there three books that really stand out to you that made a big influence in your life? And it doesn't need to be about a home service or self help. It could be about anything you want. Okay. That's a really, really good question.

The first book, it is a marketing book and you probably heard about it. It's wildly simple, which is why I love it so much. It's so profound, but it's the simplest theory once you read it. Have you heard of the book Storybrand by Donald Miller? Yeah. Yeah. Storybrand. I don't know if I got it here, but creating a story and understanding Hollywood. I know I got it on my Audible. The story brand is you got to tell a story and people love stories and people remember stories. It's amazing.

Yeah, it's exactly right. And there's got to be a hero. And the hero is not you. It's the customer. That's the biggest takeaway from that book. There are so many books on marketing and storytelling and the impact of stories. But what Donald Miller explains in his book

is in every story, there's a hero and then there's a guide. Our business is the guide. No matter what kind of business you are, your customer is the hero. And if you keep painting that story in your marketing, even in your sales presentations, when you're talking to the customer, we are not the hero. They are. So let them be the hero of their own story. We're that helpful guide that helps them win the day. Profound. Incredible book.

All right. That's the first book you're going to buy because Sky said so. What's the next one? This one I only just read this year. Wonderful book. Have you heard of Atomic Habits? Are you freaking kidding me? Look at this right now. I got a lot of books on Audible. And I haven't gone through the whole book yet. But what's interesting is it should be in the top. It's very trendy right now. Yeah. So yeah, like I said, it's there right there. I'm downloading it because it's the newer phone. I got the new... I'm a Droid fan. I'm sorry. I'm a loser. You got to redownload them every time. But yeah, no, tell me a little bit about it it's just to be honest not not

taking anything away from the author it's very similar to Darren Hardy's compound effect oh my gotta be kidding this is why I love podcasting yeah wonderful books I remember reading that book like a good even like eight eight, nine years ago. And to read Atomic Habits, incredibly similar, very, you know, he's got his own stories in there and obviously own methodologies. It just reminded me a lot, but it's essentially, we are our habits. And so, you know, while Darren Hardy is talking about using the compound effect with money with weight loss with anything atomic habits is really like telling yourself who you want to be for example I can explain this a lot better the author James was saying

Olympic athletes everyone has the same goal it's a gold medal so that doesn't really mean much so what they then have to do is well okay who is the person that wins a gold medal. So that doesn't really mean much. So what they then have to do is, well, okay, who is the person that wins a gold medal? What do they do? And then those are the habits they build. And it's just such a different way of thinking about it. Think of the person you need to be to achieve that goal and you live the habits of the person achieving that goal, because then that will be you. It was a really, really great book. Couldn't recommend it enough. Well, Sky, I think the best example that is Darren Hardy is he dreamed his perfect woman and he said, these are the 100 things I love about my woman.

And he wrote down 100 things, their smile, their hair color. But then he looked back at it and said, wait a minute, who is this woman going to fall in love with? So he looked back at himself and said, who do I need to become? I need to become a great father figure. I need to become a guy that's independent and builds a protection layer and smiles and gives joy and laughs. And he wrote down all the qualities he needed to become. And I think that's the key is consistency. One of the things is I didn't get lucky yet. So many things I could be better at.

That's one thing I know is I'm competitive as hell and I lose a lot and I love losing because it makes me want to win more. But the deal is I have a morning mojo call. I started at 730 with my field supervisor. It's 15 minutes. Then I jump on my morning mojo call. Then I jump on my manager meeting. The one big thing we're going to get done today and there's accountability there's consistency those two things alone have paved the way and i watch a lot of people and they go how do you do it and i go well the trainer comes into me now four days a week i mean i get

these stupid things that show up the food comes to to me now. I cheat a little bit. I'm not bulked up or anything. It's hard to screw up when it just shows up because I took a lot of the options out. I don't have to choose to go to the gym. I've got a gym in the office. I made it easier. I ate french fries earlier.

I'm not going to lie. I'm not the greatest. Atomic Habits is where it's at because the Habits, where it's at because the habits, if you get a chance to read The 5AM Club, can you do that for me? Yeah, absolutely. Promise? Pinky swear? Yeah. This is on my list. So absolutely.

All right. And then give me your third book here. Well, this one will be interesting. So just to mix it up. So we've got Story Brand, which is a marketing book, which very much you can use in your sales. Atomic Habits is very much a personal and self-development. The third book as a recommendation, you know what, just to keep on theme, we'll do another sales book. There's a wonderful book by a guy called Jeb Blunt called Sales EQ. Have you heard of this book? Yeah. It's crazy because success leaves clues in the books you're reading. I think I got it on the shelf, but I'm not going to try to find it. Jeb Blunt. And he sold out. Oh,

not only Sales EQ, but I'm actually reading Fanatical Prospecting. I've got six hours left. He's a genius. He's got a lot of books. Sales EQ, I would say, is like the pillar one. Fanatical Prospecting and then Objections are all mentioned in Sales EQ. He dives a little bit deeper into them, obviously, in his other books. But yeah, he has wonderful books. But Sales EQ, I think if every business owner can read that book and get your entire sales team to read that book as well. It's a lot of the principles that are timeless.

Yeah, wonderful books. Sales EQ. I got to tell you something. I wrote a book called The Home Service Millionaire. And this is my first book. But if people are willing to spend the rest of their whole lives and maybe write one book and put everything they know, all the mistakes, everything into it, wouldn't it make it a smart person to want to read that book and maybe say, it might save me some time, maybe some energy,

maybe it'll advance me. I always tell people, you take your five closest friends, your mom, your dad, your sister, your wife, your husband, your sister, anybody in the family, any friends, add up their total income divided by five. That's usually within 10% of where you're going to be. It's a known fact, but when I start reading Darren Hardy all day, every day, I'm kind of like hanging out with him. So I got his income in there. People don't understand that. And I've always said readers are leaders. And I'll give you one book that's sitting, I got a lot of books sitting on my desk and they come in every day, but read this book. It's very thin. It's easy to read. Go for No. Have you read it?

No, no, no. Yeah. We were talking about this at the start. Obviously, there's lots of start with no books coming out, getting to the first no. No, no. Go for No. I know we're running out of time here. Can I give you a little synopsis real quick? Yeah, absolutely. So I used to work at Dillard's i used to sell women's shoes it's kind of like nordstrom's so i related this story very well as this guy he's selling at a men's department and the guy comes in and buys nice belt nice shirt a couple pairs of jeans good jacket the guy spends 1200 bucks and the manager comes up to him and he has

this flashback of this time and he meets his future self it's a great story it's a little story it's quick it's what i love about it i get it you know i got a bunch of copies i give it to all my guys when they come in he goes that was great he goes i know it was great i set a record and he goes well let me ask you a question. When did he say no? He goes, what do you mean? He didn't say no. Everything I sold him. He said, I bought the shoes, bought the belt, bought everything.

He goes, so you decided when the customer was done buying. The customer might have spent $40,000, but because $1,200 was a lot to you, you decided in your mind, the customer doesn't want financing. They're not broke. There's four types of finance people that buy rich people. I buy financing, same as cash for two years. I know the time value of money. We assume that our lives are what theirs are. So this book tells us go for now, push every envelope. You know, I'll send you a copy. Well, I haven't sent a book to Australia, but I'll send you my book and I'll send you a copy of this. Let me ask you two more questions. I'm sorry to keep you late, but if we want to get ahold of you, work with you, learn more about what you do, what's the best way to do that? The easiest way, dive onto our website. So it's simply www.apb.com. We've got a ton of free

resources on there for custom home builders. We've got one that we were talking about just before, the proven sales process for a building company, Total free download on the website so you can get it, implement it into your own building company. Also on Facebook at the Association of Professional Builders and Instagram as well at APB Builders. You got a lot of ways. And if they want to talk to you personally,

what's the LinkedIn or something? Or is it? Yeah, yeah. Sky Stevens on LinkedIn. Connect with me over there and happy to have a conversation. And last thing I want to do is you've got a wealth of knowledge. I didn't hit every question perfectly. Just really fascinated with it is the long game with builders. It's a

much bigger average ticket than most. I want to give you a chance to talk to the audience and just pour your heart out. Tell them what they can do today. Tell them that don't give up. Tell them what you've learned. I'll give you a few minutes and you take it from here and we'll close it out the right way and give you some time. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, I think we've covered a lot. And if we just bring it down to the bottom line, we can achieve our business goals if A, we plan it properly. So we need to allocate enough time to do some proper planning. What is our ultimate goal? What are we going to achieve in three years? What does that break it down into a 12-month goal and then 90 days? And ensure you work your plan. But it's very hard to do alone. I think that's a very,

very big problem a lot of people encounter. It's very hard to do this alone, especially if you're the only director, maybe it's you and another business partner or your partner. That's such a blessing to have someone else there. But if you have the opportunity and everyone does have this ability, try and find a group, a mastermind, a circle to connect with like-minded builders or business owners in your own niche and get connected with them because you want to actually discuss what they're doing in their companies. And the power of joining a mastermind is unreal. So I think if there's one thing you can do, you need to go out and find your tribe. Don't let it pass you by because it's too important, especially the way the world is going at the moment get online and find who you can connect with i love that i love that sky i

think when i go golfing and i meet somebody that's not as good at golf and they give me one pointer it changes my game it might might save me two strokes and everything's an opportunity and i think the nail on the head is we need people to hold us accountable we want to be involved in a community and i think you guys should reach out i i don't know so it's only home builders you work with yes custom home builders large remodelers so what i love about that is she's not going to take you if you're not her avatar so there's a lesson to be learned there listen sky um i know i did a lot of the talking on this one but i really

appreciate you jumping on and um i don't even know can you tell us where the golden coast is or the gold coast well not that i have been but i have heard gold coast is very San Diego-esque. So I have heard. So it's essentially the most beautiful beaches you will ever come to in Australia. It's in a state called Queensland. And the state slogan is called the Sunshine State. It's beautiful here all year round. So the second we can make it over here, definitely come. All right.

Well, listen, I appreciate you very much. And like I said, I'll send you some copies of some books. I'll figure out how to send it cross-continental and we'll do it up. Amazing. Well, look, thanks so much for having me, Tommy. Thanks, Skye. Appreciate you very much. 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 out of this podcast.

Our goal is to enrich your lives and enrich your businesses and your internal customers, which is your staff. And if you get a chance, please, please, please subscribe. You're going to find out all the new podcasts. You're going to be able to ask me questions to ask the next guest coming on. And do me a quick favor, leave a quick review. It really helps us out when you like the podcast and you leave a review. Make it four or five sentences, tell us how we're doing. And I just wanted to mention real quick, we started a membership. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. You get a ton of inside look at what we're going to do to become a billion

dollar company and uh we're just we're telling everybody our secrets basically and people say why do you give your secrets away all the time and i'm like you know the hardest part about giving away my secrets is actually trying to get people to do them so we also create a lot of accountability within this program so check it out it's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club it's cheap it's a monthly payment i'm.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 life season further. So thank you once again for listening to the podcast. I really appreciate it.