The Home Service Expert Podcast - Powerful Lead Generating Strategies to Consistently Build a Steady Stream of Sales-Ready Leads

Episode Date: October 1, 2021

Cody Butler is the author of The Definitive Guide To Generating Consulting Clients and The 90-Day Marketing Plan. He has helped over 5000 businesses in instantly impacting revenue growth.  Peter Lewis is the president of 7XDirect, a firm that specializes in lead generation and advertising whose mission is to provide the best home services marketing that money can buy.  In this episode, we talked about Facebook marketing, going viral, Google vs Facebook, marketing on a budget…

the way to get people to buy your stuff is not to say buy my stuff. It's like, Hey, let me show that I understand what your problem is. And let me give you some solutions because at the end of the day, I know that the vast majority of people are never going to buy anything from me. And it's like,

I don't care about that. I'm going to help those people anyway, because by helping those people that are never going to buy from me, I know that that's going to attract the people that are going to buy. So it's like, you got to get that value mentality, post that value every single time and make sure that everything you do is coming from the place of how can I get this person to close to where they want to be. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week,

Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. I've got Cody Butler and Peter Lewis here. Cody Butler is the author of Got Attitude, the definitive guide to generating consulting clients and the 90-day marketing plan. He has helped over 5,000 businesses from billion-dollar corporations to celebrity marketers and sporting stars and instantly impacting revenue growth. And Peter Lewis is the president of Seven Times Direct, a firm that specializes in lead generation and advertising it for HVAC companies.

The company's long-term vision is to be the best marketer for home services that money can buy. Today's really all about marketing, and I'm excited to have you both on. Listen, love to hear from both of you guys. Welcome back. And I just want to give us a quick recap. Start with you, Cody, of what you guys have been up to and what's been going on. Yeah, so we've been working on global domination, right? Getting out there, trying to help people live the life that they want to live. It's all about living your best life now because you've only got one to live. It doesn't matter what's going on in the world. You got to work with it, right? And you got to take advantage of what's going on. And it's like

being able to live your best life. You need resources to do that. And you got to be able to grow your business to get those resources. So yeah, we're really focused on helping the business owners get the growth in their business that they're looking for, help them with their marketing, and get them in a place where they can actually enjoy that success once they get it as well. Too many people, they get the success and then they still live a defeated life. So that's what we've been up to. Good. That's good to hear. Peter, what about you? Yeah. So Peter Lewis, 7X Direct. We are a marketing firm that specializes in working with HVAC companies.

So you know, Tommy, just working on always getting better, always making a bigger impact. And actually, we've been up to a lot. So I actually have a huge announcement that I am going to go over at the end of our episode. So there's your little attention grabber. There's your plug to keep people on to the end of the episode. So you're welcome. I don't know. It's great. Huge announcement. That's exciting. So let's just go through some questions here. And I guess what we'll do is we'll go through these one by one and wherever we can add the most value, we'll just pick on both you guys throughout the whole thing. So we all know how important it is to be on social media these days,

but many of us aren't able to make the most out of our online presence. I'm sure the listeners in the home service industry would love to hear your thoughts on how they could generate more leads on social media. And it's funny because this morning I had a phone call of a guy that's just murdering it on Facebook and he's not doing it through facebook ads he's doing it through the not the classified ads it's the marketplace and so there's all these different areas and areas you could be on social media so you know i think you guys both have a lot of experience in social media so cody we'll start with you what do you think about really

kicking ass with social media or own service companies on any type of social media, TikTok, Pinterest, all of them? Yeah, a couple of things really. So the first thing is like, yeah, social media is great, man. It's like, if you want to blow your business up, social media is the place to do it. It's going to be highly leveraged. You're going to get the biggest bang for your buck. You're going to get the most correct in the quickest time possible. But you got to know what you're doing to get the biggest bang for your buck you're going to get the most correct in the quickest time possible you got to know what you're doing right because with great advantage comes great disadvantage too you lose your money quick if you get it wrong so the thing to understand i would say with social media is like you got to understand what it is and what it isn't and social media is not a good term to describe it for business owners i like to refer to social media

as micro media so when you look at social media it's like what is facebook well facebook to me is newspaper ads what is youtube youtube to me is television what is what a podcast podcast to me a radio what's email email is the new direct mail right so it's like when you're thinking in terms of social media you're thinking likes and cat videos and stuff like that it's like no no we're down and dirty direct response marketers here when you start to understand that social media is just micromedia and it gives you the opportunity to get television at 90% discount, it gives you the opportunity to get radio at 90% discount, it gives you the opportunity to get newspaper at 90% discount

or the digital equivalents, right? When you start to think of it like that, then you start to approach it with the right mindset and you're going to get the results if you approach it with the right mindset and you're going to get the results if you approach it with the right mindset. So look at it as micro media, not social media. And the second thing is pick a horse and ride it. This stuff's difficult, right? It's going to take you some time to master any platform. Unless you're just in this all the time, it's going to be virtually impossible to master multiple platforms. So decide what platform you want to

be on Facebook, YouTube, whatever it is, and then get really good at what platform you want to be on, Facebook, YouTube, whatever it is, and then get really good at that platform. Or else you just, you know, if you chase 10 bunny rabbits, you're not going to have any for dinner. You just got to chase one, right? That's it. What about you, Peter? What are your thoughts?

Yeah, so for us, definitely Facebook ads has been far and away the best way to generate leads. And that's still held up. So iOS came up with all these crazy updates and really messaged people. A lot of people were freaking out. What's going to happen? What's going to happen? For us personally, we haven't noticed a difference in our lead costs. It's been pretty consistent.

So I think the future looks very bright there. Now, it sounds like this guy has tapped into something with Marketplace, which is really interesting. I have to look into that a little bit more. But what I will say is that whatever you're doing on Facebook, so if you're using an ads platform, if you're using organic posts, if you're using the Marketplace, whatever you do, have strong offers.

Have something that are going to make people really excited to follow up their information and to claim whatever offer that is. You should blowing people away with with the offers that you're presenting you know one of the things that i've realized too is that starting to learn more about social media is it works through messenger and i don't feel like enough home service people have a really good way to connect with messenger i'm talking about their site with the chat bar i'm talking about with messenger i'm talking about just we use a thing called schedules and 40 of our jobs that are scheduled through a capacity board that no one even needs to touch it as far as your csr so having that person that's there to answer questions more dialogue happens people

love typing in questions and saying oh zero percent financing how does that work it's just being able to answer their questions with faqs and then sms is still the best way and you could have an opt-in that gets them opted into the sms and said hey you clicked on this ad it will sound like you wanted an hvac unit you know i think peter we talked one time about financing is a really good offer is to get the thing to click so strong offers and then the other thing gary vanderchuk had spoken an event and you know he was talking about paying uh one of the guys says uh and i have a lot of billboards too this guy has like 100 billboards and he goes well billboards are still working for me and he goes yeah they still work but have you he goes i'd have

100 different ads running on facebook that are way cheaper than a billboard And then you don't have to pay I think he said the toll booth And the guy goes, what do you mean by toll booth? He goes, you gotta pay Google You're paying for the billboard, but then you gotta pay Google For the PPC Or the LSA ads

So, interesting thoughts by Gary He's got a lot of Good viewpoints. I don't know how much he's done in the home service space, and I think he could probably pull it off if he tried to. Louis here had a question about Marketplace. Is there a way to get post-approved while offering a home service? The guy that I'm talking to makes barn doors.

So he's selling the barn doors. So I think you could get it approved if you say you're selling garage doors or HVAC units. But I don't know if you could do like a service, like a cleaning service at Marketplace. So I'm not 100% on that. I don't know if either of you have an answer to Marketplace. No experience at Marketplace. So let's just keep going here.

You know what? We'll play with it. We'll get back to you louis or louise what are the results that business owners should be monitoring on social media what are the numbers they need to be looking at cody yeah i mean the ultimate number obviously is sales right it's dollars returned dollars invested so that's the ultimate metric you're looking at how much did you spend how much did you get back but like you can break that down along the way as well right so you got to look at what are your opt-in rates like if you're getting an email or you run a messenger ads and stuff like that what percentage of people are opting

in and then what percentage of people are actually opening the email or the messages how many people are clicking on links all of that stuff so there's there's a good you know four or five metrics along the way that we want to measure that the one that i look at the most is the opt-in rate because that's going to tell me like p that i look at the most is the opt-in rate because that's going to tell me like peter said is my messaging working right if people are clicking on an ad and they're not asking for more information then they're just not interested in what i've got to say so that that's the main one right there if that's working then i'm looking at you know the roi dollar return so those are the big ones really right is there any other things

that you look at yeah so i really like looking at the cost per acquisition, right? So if I'm advertising for an HVAC sale, for an HVAC replacement, I'm going to be looking at, okay, let's say one out of every 10 leads turns into a sale, right? I'm going to be looking at what it costs to get those 10 leads. Additionally, I'm going to be looking at what does it cost per lead. But you have to be careful there because if you look at just lead cost alone, what can happen is you might stack up with 100 leads, but if the quality is lower, then you might end up paying more higher cost per acquisition than you would with more expensive lead that's a little bit higher quality. So I'm going to be looking at the cost per acquisition.

Now, another thing, Tommy, so you had brought up, you know, what is the most effective way to advertise on Facebook? We're talking a little bit about Marketplace. One of the ways that we've been seeing is that using a reach campaign on Facebook to just get in front of a bunch of people in the area. If you go and you, and so this is what you want to track. Another thing you want to track whenever you're doing any Facebook advertising is go look at your Google Analytics. Because what we've been noticing is that when we start running Facebook ads for

people, there is a huge spike in the search volume. So I know Gary Vaynerchuk isn't a fan of doing that where you have to pay for your SEO or PPC as well. But we found that that's been very effective. If you have some even basic SEO or even just bid on your own name with PPC and run Facebook ads, it creates a huge spike in people going and actually searching for you. So that's another thing to track as well. So cross-proposition and then your Google Analytics.

You hit the nail on the head. And this is what I always tell people is I've been having a few LOIs, letter of intents out to different companies. And I'm like, this company has been around for 14 years and it's three Google reviews. And I'm like, first things first, before you start advertising on billboards, TV or radio or on Facebook or anywhere, someone's going to go check you out. They're going to go on Yelp.

They're going to go on Google. They're going to go on Facebook. They're going to check out wherever there's a review. Those are the big ones next door, maybe. But fix your brand. You know, I like Dan Antonelli. He's helped me out with some stuff. He helps me with the brand itself, with the logo

and kind of what the brand represents. It's definitely one of those things where you get what you pay for. You could also go on Fiverr and you can come out with just the worst thing ever. I have a small wrap company. I've focused mainly on my own rap since we rap like 40 tracks a month and it's amazing what people bring into us they're

like dude i built my perfect rap and i'm like i look at it and i go what do you even do there's like 18 things that's got the bbb and the yelp and you're like there's a pool in the background there's a garage and it's like holy cow i think that's a big piece and i do think that this is a question i have for you guys it's not on here but one thing that i've noticed when you start doing billboards tv and radio when it's done right and i didn't know this as i always thought they were a waste of money i thought oh my gosh why are you doing it? When the whole company is unified and the branding's done right,

the website looks amazing, you've got a good score on Yelp and Google, it's amazing the customer base you get. Because what you just said, Peter, was, you know, I used to get a ton of remote control calls and those were crap. I didn't make any money. I'd get them for like eight bucks a piece, but I didn't make any money on them. Or people would call to buy of remote control calls and those were crap i didn't make any money i'd get them for like eight bucks a piece but i didn't make any money on them or people would call to buy a remote control

for their clicker for the open the garage but when people call now they're willing to spend they're like you're the only company i want we see you everywhere whatever it costs doesn't matter because you guys you're just the best my neighbors use you what are your thoughts because there's listeners out there that are going to say, I tried Facebook, but I didn't get any leads, but no one even knows the brand. So what are your thoughts on branding when it comes to making more clicks on Google, more clicks on Facebook, more clicks, even Malpak open more. Cody, I'll take you first on this one. Yeah. Yeah. So that's great. I mean, that's the biggest mistake most people make. You're exactly right. I mean, it takes – there's different literature on it.

But what is the exposure effect, right? How many times does somebody have to see your brand before they're going to trust you? It's like, you know, I've read anywhere from 15 to 20. I don't know what it is, but I know it's a heck of a lot, right? It's not one or two. It's like they're not going to see one ad on Facebook, and then they're going to buy a product from you. Yeah, like even a blind squirrel gets a nut every now and again. You might get one or two, but you're certainly not going to build a big business. So that's the thing with social media,

right? Social media gives you the ability to be omnipresent very effectively and very inexpensively. So you can use a company like Perfect Audience or something like that ad role of retargeting company, and you just have one pixel, one ad, and they're going to put your ads all over every platform. So I'm sure we've all seen it, right? We go to visit a website and then we see on every website we go to, their ads are on YouTube, their ads are on Facebook. But that's actually pretty straightforward and pretty simple to do. And it's like you said, Tommy, people just see you everywhere. And every time they see you, you grow in their mind,

you become bigger and bigger and you become more influential and you become more trustworthy. So that first interaction is going to be your most expensive interaction, right? So if you're paying for an ad on Google, you might pay $7, $10, $12, $50. I don't know. It's going to be a lot. But then to retarget that person and show them an ad on YouTube or show them an ad on Facebook, now you're looking at like 50 cents a dollar, $1.50. So it's massively cheaper to get that omnipresent thing going on. And if you don't have that omnipresent thing going on, that's your number one stop. That's what you need to fix first what do people see when they google your name like they say like we say what are people getting familiar with your brand don't

worry about getting people through the front door and still until you know your house is in order right what are they going to see when they come through that front door you controlling that narrative or they just you know somebody types your company name into google what are they going to see you controlling what they see? Or is just whatever's showing up, showing up? It's like, is it just whatever's showing up is showing up? You're not going to get the results you're looking for. Put it that way.

Yeah, I agree with you. Peter, do you have anything to add on that? Yeah, so billboards are amazing. If they weren't effective, people wouldn't use them, right? So the really sexy thing about Facebook, right here's what i like about it so with branding typically like cody was saying people you know hear about you 15 20 times and then they go google you it's really sexy about facebook is that while that person sees you on facebook they have instant access to this to an electronic device right so they can go and Google you

right from there. And that's what happens most of the time with Facebook advertising. So they see your company name on Facebook, you scroll through it, and they go and Google you right away. So you might only have to get in front of them between one and three times before they go and Google you. Another thing too is that if Bob and Joe go start a brand new HVAC company, I mean, they can't afford to go and pay for a billboard first thing. That's all over the town road. That's why I prefer Facebook for that initial branding. Billboard, radio, all that definitely ties in.

But I think that as your company, you know, after your company has kind of grown to a certain point, if that makes sense. Have you guys ever heard of Roy Williams, the wizard of ads? No. Some people really subscribe to his methodology. What he says is the population, children, country folks, AM radio,

half of them should hear your name several times a month. That's what Ken does. Radio is still the cheapest form of advertising than billboards. It's second as long as you've got your Google game dialed in and what's interesting is the story brand behind it the story that ties it together about his dog and a ghetto i bring him up just because we spend a lot of time together and he posted this on a couple forum boards so i don't feel bad telling you but last week he had several days over a million dollars. Days, not the week, several days.

I call it the devil's butthole because it's 120 degrees outside right now. I don't know if that's appropriate for this show. But anyways, it's interesting, just different methodologies. It seems like if you're HVAC in the summer, if you can't make money, I don't know if the whole service is here from what i've seen so far what are you guys's thoughts one of the questions we had is going viral you know and i think it's harder and harder i was on a podcast with the guys that did um poopery and they said it's impossible that the social media sites won't let something go viral if you don't pay for it now

but the guys that i know that are really good on social media, they're like test 20 ads, find out the most ones that got the best results and then just pay for it. Spend 2000 bucks on it and watch what happens. And it tends to go viral with the money spent. What are your guys' thoughts to make something go viral? Do you want to get paid? Yeah,

I'll go first. You've been kind of going first and giving me time to think. So I'll do that for you now. Yeah, I'll switch it up. I'm just going across the screen here. As far as virality, I think it kind of depends on the size of your market, right? So, like, if you have a small HVAC company and your area is maybe a little bit more rural, you have 500,000 people in your target audience,

it might not make sense to employ a viral strategy since you can just advertise effectively and consistently in that local area. If you're in a bigger market, let's say you're in the Dallas, Fort Worth area and you cover a 50-mile radius. Okay, now it makes a little bit more sense that you'd want to try to do something that goes viral, right? As far as testing it with ad first, I 100% agree. Testing a few different concepts out and picking one that works well and then just running with it and just blowing that concept up. Love it. Yeah. So for me, there's a couple of things with virality. The first one is it's the Hail Mary, right? It's like it shouldn't be your game strategy. Like if you can get some content to go viral, you know, happy days, right?

You're going to get some free advertising and stuff like that. But it's like if your game plan is like we're going to throw the Hail Mary every play, it's like you're probably going to lose the game. So it's like you want your marketing to be like a vending machine, right? You put a dollar in, you get a coke out. You put a dollar in, you get a coke out. It's like never do you put a dollar in and you don't get a coke out. You want predictability. You know what you're going to get.

And it's like, you know, if I want to make an extra $100,000 this month, how much do I need to increase my ad spend by? So it's just gauges and dials, things like we, if we want to increase, you know, money out, we just increase the money in, in terms of the advertising. So that's where I would put my focus personally, is getting that advertising dialed in to where it's predictable, to where, you know, a dollar produces three, a a dollar produces three and it's replicatable it's scalable

then if you can get the hail mary happy days right you're going to be the hero and you're going to make the headlines on espn but the other thing is if you do want to go after virality the thing that i found is like you've got to give social credit to the person sharing whatever it is so it's like they found something or some kind of secret widget or some kind of great offer or something like that to where it's like if i share something with you tommy i get some social credit from you for finding something that's so cool or something like that so it's like just putting offers out there you're probably not gonna you're not gonna get the virality right especially with social media now where it is a

pay-to-play platform that you know all of now, where it is a pay-to-play platform that, you know, all of the social media platforms, they are pay-to-play essentially. Yeah. You can, if you get lucky, you can maybe get some, some virality, but don't bet your house on that. Don't bet your business on that. Right. So yeah, it's just really focused on finding something that if, if a person shares it, there's some kudos in the eyes of the person that they've shared it with. There's some benefit for the person to share it. Right. And yeah, I want to dive deeper into that and the mindset of that too. So if Bob and Joe start their HVAC business and their game plan is,

we have this idea. We have this awesome idea that's going to go viral. We're going to make $10 million. I'm not going to bet a lot of money on Bob and Joe. But if they say, hey, this is our plan for advertising. We're tracking all of our data. Okay, this thing over here works a little bit better. We're going to go with that. Once you have a stable amount of leads coming in, you have a stable system, it's predictable, and you know

you're going to get X amount of leads, X amount of sales every month, then it makes sense to start tapping into some of those other things, right? But I think it's more about the first thing you want to do is create a duplicatable, repeatable process and then try those other things out eventually. I think the most underrated thing when we're talking about marketing is looking at the other KPIs. Because I get the phone to ring off the hook, but if you don't got good CSRs to book them or technicians that have high conversion rate or they know how to sell or know how to leave a good impression and get a five-star review afterwards you know you guys have both seen you don't change up advertising completely when you go to the next client but somehow one's average ticket and conversion rate you look at the cost per acquisition that's your job as a marketer to get the cost per acquisition as long as it's

bookable but you know for example peter i know you were with a lot of hvac companies you've probably seen some just murdering it and then you see the same exact lead come by and someone's going these leads are crap so people are like you know i can make the phone ring out the hook but they don't have the right staff they say i can't right now everybody says i can't hire enough people yeah so the thing with that i think it's just like human nature like if something's not working the first thing we want to do is like the first logical conclusion our mind usually comes up with is oh this external circumstance is preventing me from x right so when you hire a marketing company things aren't going well your first instinct is okay well i need to change my marketing company you know maybe it's my market. And a lot of

people say, hey, I know you've probably heard this before, but I'm telling you it's true. It's my market. And then we'll have another client come in and crush it in the same area. So I think it's very much a mindset thing. The biggest advice I could give there, Tommy, is just like, if you're ever struggling with any one aspect of your business, always look inward first. Is there anything I can do personally to change this today or to make this better? And then once you do that, if it is an external circumstance, you'll see a lot more clearly to deal with that. I agree. Cody, what do you think? Yeah. So you bring up a great point, guys. What people don't understand is the quality

of the lead is not the person that you're in front of it's the psychological state that the person that you're in front of is in so you know let me give you an example that's easy to understand right if i say hey tommy you want to go get some lunch after this and you go yeah let's do it you know pizza's good pizza good for you and i'm like yeah pizza's good well we're a great lead for a pizza restaurant for about seven minutes you know if we go online and type in pizza restaurant something comes up it's got all the reviews it's got everything like right excellent just click and they don't call us back or whatever it's like if they call us back in two days we're a crap lead we're a really crappy lead for that restaurant at that point in time whereas we were red hot we were buyers we were

ready to go we just swiped the credit card within 15 minutes right so the psychological state of that person had changed a good example and that's easy to understand as well is gyms, for example. I've worked with a few gyms. I've helped a few gyms. And if somebody clicks on an ad that says, hey, get a free 14-day membership trial at our gym, if they click on that ad and then they fill out the form, they fill out the phone number and they submit that, you've got to think, what was the psychological state of that person at that particular moment?

Maybe they walked by a mirror and they saw themselves and go, I've never seen myself like that before. And that's not happening. Or maybe they just had some kind of moment where they're like, you know, this has got to change. So in that very moment, psychologically, they're an excellent lead. But if that gym doesn't call them within a few minutes, they're just going to go back to sleep. They're going to go back to exactly where they were. They can go back to sleep. So if they call them tomorrow or the next day, now it's a crap lead. And the difference is, the number one thing, it's like, obviously, we want to give listeners actionable advice that they can take away and use. It's like, call that lead immediately. Call it immediately. Ideally, you want to call that lead while they're still on your website.

If they submit a contact form or whatever, it's like, if you can call that lead while they're still on your website. If they submit a contact form or whatever, it's like, if you can call that lead while they're still on your website, they're going to take action because they want something, right? At that very moment, we know that they want something. We know that they've got a problem. We know that they're in action-taking mode. How do we know that? Because they've just taken action, right?

They filled out a form. Where are they going to be in an hour from now psychologically? Where are they going to be in a day or a week from now psychologically? So if you don't have the capacity to call those leads back immediately, and when I say immediately, I mean like within minutes, turn your ads off. Turn your ads off because yeah, you're going to get a little bit here and there, but this is where you run into the problem saying, oh, you're sending me leads, but they're just not converting. Well, how long is it taking for you to call these leads well on average it's taking about 12 hours well there's your problem 12 hours may as well be 12 months and the other thing they're doing too and i think

probably all relate to this is like if somebody has a problem like yeah it's 120 degrees outside and your ac is just busted it's like they google hvac company how many tabs have they got open if a restaurant's calling system has just gone down how many tabs have they got open? If a restaurant's calling system has just gone down, how many tabs have they got open simultaneously? Do you think you're the only person they're calling? Do you think you're the only lead form that they're submitting right now? It's like money loves speed, man. Money loves speed.

If you want to make money, you better get good at moving fast because money loves speed. And every second that goes by is less chance of that lead converting and less chance of that money coming to you. The money is going to follow the speed i really want to chime in here just quickly because i know that i love i love this topic so people who are listening to this right now i know what's going through your head is hey like i know i've gotten bad quality leads like i know there's there's a difference between two weeks right and yeah obviously like if you advertise let's say hey we approve you know 400 credit scores and, hey, we approve 400 credit scores and

you don't actually approve 400 credit scores, right? You're going to get a bunch of bad quality leads, right? So there's no denying that some people are going to be in a better position viably, financially to buy from you, right? Some leads are truly going to be better quality. But the problem is that 99.9% of people always assume that first. They always assume that first instead of diving deeper saying, how can we get better? So for those of you listening to it saying, hey, I know there's differences of quality of leads.

You're right. But you will get the most benefit out of it if you always look inward first and we see how you can improve your own process first if you say bad quality because the leads are you know lower credit look for a better bank there's there's so many better banks out there that you might not have tapped into before so just keep that in mind i love this topic because what you guys are saying it really hits home for me for home service because the guys they're doing that this adds and then, well, I don't answer the phone when I'm on a ladder. Get a secondary call center. If you don't have anybody responding to ads in real time, then you need to build out your infrastructure. You have to.

You have to work on the business instead of in it all the time. So there is some infrastructure. Trust me, I am the perfect guy to be listening to this because we've got a lot of leads coming in and we don't always get to them right we are so damn busy and the problem is a lot of it happens when you're so busy here's what i'd recommend take the opportunity to find out what you're paying turn off ppc first bid on your own keywords because it's cheap you don't want to lose those leads to your competitors, but right now what the most expensive

thing is, until you're not so busy, as long as the leads, as long as you're monetizing or turn off the leads that aren't converting into high dollar tickets. One of the two. I mean, I'd love to hear your guys' point of view because right now is the time where everybody's saying, I need more people, I need more people, I need more people.

But we're wasting these. We can't get out there until next week. But they're still paying for PPC. So what are your thoughts on that? Peter, you can go first on this one. So what's the question exactly? How to find more people? Well, there's a lot of problems right now with I've got so many jobs. I'm booked out, but they're still doing their ValPAC.

They've still got the home advisor on. They've still got the PPC. They're still running their Facebook campaigns. I understand. Yeah. So basically what you want to do is you just want to kind of put your advertising in brackets, right? So you'll have your bracket of this we've known to work well. This we are still kind of testing out.

This produces leads, but they're a little bit low quality, right? If you're really busy, I would just put it in brackets and, like, take your top tier, you know, second top tier and handle those first. And then, you know, if you have time left over, then go into the other ones. That's the best way. You know, I don't know if there was crazy answers to that. Cody, do you have a? Yeah. So, like, what I would say, man, it's like it's a bit left field,

but I would say you're too cheap, Tom. Your prices are too cheap. It's like if you got so much business that you can't even handle it, well, the solution to that is just raise your prices. Right, that's gonna... And I tell people the same thing, and this is what Taylor just said.

Raise your prices, but the deal is for me is I don't raise my service call. I think a lot of people can say out here, our real money comes from setting the customer up with an expectation, but going out there with a big smile. Look, if anybody's got a magic power out there in their Nostradamus and they can say, this person's going to spend 10 grand with you,

call me and I'll pay you really good money because I don't know how that's done yet. And I think it's all about giving an amazing customer experience. You know, today I had an experience. This guy said, I've listened to Tommy's podcast. He's all about being everybody raising their price and being the most expensive. I said, no, actually I'm all about making 15%. What I'm all about is one thing, taking care of my employees, giving them benefits, having new trucks, having the best CRM, having insurance, having all those crm having insurance having all those things the difference for me is charge enough to have an office that the air conditioning

works working out of your house there's a big difference of what raising your prices all the time that's not the case charge a fair price you can still get business but charge enough to have nice things for your employees right and another thing i will say about being too busy like i've heard that so many times and again back to the mindset man like i feel like a lot of people like oh i have this company you know great company people should want to work for me and dang it the market is just too darn skinny but i have yet to come across someone who takes their hiring process as seriously as their marketing process. If you take your process for hiring employees as seriously as your marketing and you are quick to call those leads, right? You're quick to qualify those people and do interviews with those people and you sound excited to talk to them and have a really impressive interview process.

You will get more hires. You will find more good people. I wanted to talk about this, Peter. And Cody, I want to hear your experience. But when COVID happened, I completely had this epiphany. It's a mindset change of how important are the employees? How important are the people? And here's what happens in especially a smaller market, or if you don't know how to market

to people, is, you know, I hear this all the time. I don't understand. I put a Craigslist ad out there. So you spend 300 grand a month, but you spend $35 on a Craigslist ad and expect the phone to ring off the hook. Imagine if you built all your marketing campaigns to attract employees as well as customers or clients, like I like to call them. And then you did exactly what you said, Peter, you got to be quick.

You got to get back to them. One of my buddies is working on a way right now to get 10 times better results. The average hiring time is 17 days for most companies. Get that down to three. And imagine if you had a thousand people a month to pick through and you use things like spark hire which they could do a recorded interview so it just asks you a few questions and says hey peter give me a few reasons why you feel like you should work in a1 and if they're completely you know eardrop tattoos coming out and they just i'd probably hire the certain ones i want to be able to show up. But Cody, what's your experience with this? Because this is a huge problem right now.

How do you advertise to new employees? Yeah. So the first thing is like, you've got to be very clear about what your culture is like. Yeah. Excellence is the bare minimum standard we're willing to accept, right? For me, excellence is the minimum standard I'm willing to put up with. So it's like when you actually internalize that and that becomes who you are, it's like that then gets communicated through all of your marketing activities.

So if you're doing the brand and stuff like Peter's talking about, if you're doing these other things. So a lot of times, virtually all of my employees come from previous clients or they see my advertising and say, I want to be a part of it. They want to be a part of the culture. They want to be a part of what's going on. They see something going on that's bigger than what they are or it's presenting a way of life a culture that is bigger than what they are and they want to experience that themselves for themselves so most of the

time it's like the people that actually come to work for me that they're past clients or they've been through my marketing process and they're like we really buy into what you're doing here so that that's the first thing it's like get really clear on what your culture is and's like, what do you want people to say about you? What do you want people to think about you? And it's like, this is where you're going to attract the people, right? If it comes down to putting ads out there and saying, hey, I need this person or I need that person. Yeah, you can do that. But it's like, that's kind of a bit reactive to the situation, right? Make sure that what you're doing, have the ethos and the mentality that excellence is the bare minimum standard i mean i want to say i'm going to advance everybody that i come into contact with that's my attitude right it's like i don't know how i'm going to

advance you tommy but i want to give you the most amount of value on this call because that's going to advance the podcast so it's like it's given that attitude of like i'm going to help advance you in any way possible i don't know how i'm going to help advance you peter but my goal is to like you know help you get more of what you want that That's always what I'm thinking. How can I get this person to get more of what they want? And when that permeates your entire life and your entire business, people are going to go, Cody's the kind of guy, or Tom is the kind of guy, or Peter's the kind of guy that really cares about my advancement, right? Versus how can I get the lowest dollar out of this person? How can I pay them the least and get the most?

So it really starts up here. And once you have that mentality, that mindset, it's like you're just naturally going to start attracting those people to you. You know, if you need to get people, obviously good copywriting is going to work. You know, we're looking for rock stars, always works. We're looking for rock star contractors. We're looking for performers at the top of their game using language like that. That's going to attract good people. But it all starts up here.

Yeah. So a lot of horse, a buddy of mine owns Topline. It's kind of like in the Lancaster area. So basically, what they do is they advertise on Facebook. So they advertise for the different positions that they're looking for. But also what they do that I really like is that whenever they get a new employee, like a new tech, they'll advertise about that tech. They'll just run a paid ad saying, hey, we just hired so-and-so. Really excited to have him to the team, right?

So what does that tell anybody who is thinking about working for Topline? It says, hey, this is a company that really appreciates their employees. And Lyle treats his, like I was saying before, he treats his hiring process the same as his marketing. And it's funny talking to him. He's kind of confused why people have so much trouble hiring employees because for them, it's been super

easy. So I don't know. You know, here's one tip that I'd always recommend. I've done it a few times on the podcast is right now we just passed, I don't know, 370 employees. We got 25 guys flying in here in another week and a half. And for that comes another 12 CSRs and six dispatchers. So, you know, that's 40 to 50 guys, guys and gals coming in a month, which is a pretty big number considering we're not like a thousand person company. So there needs to be a lot more beyond just hiring is the orientation of the person and then the training and the manuals. But I will say,

here's a trick that I like to do. It's not even a trick. Buy your people lunch, have them play games. We've got all these games, golden T, big bug Hunter. We just bought cruising the world and like,

go have fun and just say, Hey guys, when we go to talk off next time, we're going to take you out of this casino just do me a favor go live on your facebook and tell everybody what it's like to work here be honest i don't want you to say anything in particular but here's what i'll do i'll give you fifteen hundred dollars if you say go to work for a14 slash with your name and they come through that portal because i feel like if you're going to go on your social media and go after your people but share the fun stuff because people call us all the time like dude they're like tommy i've seen my buddies that work for you and it seems like their lives

are better they're buying new cars new houses their credit scores are better but they seem genuinely happy so why not get that on? Hey, guys, we're having a pizza party right now. It's a Friday, and then we're all headed out to Topgolf. It seems like a pretty cool place to work. Better than a lot of people's. Let's go through.

Guys, this thing flies when there's three of us. I want more time. Give me another two hours. How do I grow my social media followers quickly and consistently, and how should I nurture them towards actually buying from me?

I'll let either one of you. I'll go with that if you want. I'll jump in. It comes down to the question of its attitude. It's attitude. My attitude is every interaction I have, every post i make every email i send every video i put out there anything i do is designed with the intention the thing that's going on in my mind before i produce anything

is like how can i get the person closer to their goal does this post progress after reading this post are they closer to their goals there's two aspects of that right so i've got to know what their goal is and then then i've got to actually take the the time to go okay how do i do that so every you know email i'm a big email marketer i love email marketing people go how many emails i'm sometimes i send two three emails a day people go that's crazy it's like well it's only crazy like if every time you went to your mailbox there was a hundred dollars in it would you tell the mailman to stop coming? You know, every time there was a letter in your mailbox and with a hundred dollars in it, would you tell the mailman, Hey, three times a day is too much. Five times a day is too much. It's like, bring it on, baby. How many times you want to be

posting a lot, right? Because the thing is, if you post once a week, it's just a snap of a finger, right? It's literally like a puff of steam going up into the air and then it's gone. So there's so much noise out there. It's like if you've got a thousand followers on Facebook, maybe 10 of them will see it and then it's gone forever. So it's like, you know, I like to be posting quite often on Facebook. That's really important as well. You've got to be seen.

You've got to be making a lot of noise. And the second thing is like, well, the question I ask myself is, does this post or does this video or does this video or does this piece of content progress them closer to their goal? And once people start to see that, they're going to want to be a part of your universe. They're going to want more information from you. It's like the problem is most people, they come from a place of social media, take, take, take.

It's like, what can you give me? What can you give me? What can you give me? What can I get? What can I get? And it's like, buy my crap, buy my crap, buy my crap. But it's like, the way to get people to buy your stuff is not to say buy my stuff. It's like, hey, let me show that I understand what your problem is. And let me give you some solutions. Because at the end of the day, I know that the vast majority of

people are never going to buy anything from me. And it's like, I don't care about that. I'm going to help those people anyway, because by helping those people that are never going to buy from me, I know that that's going to attract the people that are going to buy so it's like you got to get that value mentality post that value every single time and make sure that everything you do is coming from the place of how can i get this person to close to where they want to be and i want you to answer this peter but but cody here's what i want you to think about when you answer that is i'm a plumber and i give you a few instances there's a pipe that keeps everything the gas will coming up and it's smelling funky and right now the insects are coming up through like

there was a brown recluse at one of my apartments last night but are you just posting a bunch of like informative stuff about plumbing and and how to keep your stuff up to date because your stuff is more like how do i help marketers i could probably come up with a million posts about that, but if I'm a plumber or if I'm a roofer or if I'm a concrete guy or a garage guy or a plumbing, you know, any one of these, I think I've said plumbing twice, but how do I post continually deliver valuable content? It's easy for you to say, look,

I've given you marketing tools are going to make your life better, but Matt'm going to give you stuff about your toilet that's going to really help you move to your goal quicker i mean i i want to be able to flush it and flush but i mean how do you do that in home service the first thing to understand is like you don't have to be creating unique original content all the time it's like i said a social media post is just a puff of smoke that's all it is so it's like if you you could post the same post five times in one day and people you know the person's gonna think well i'm just gonna annoy people because the person's gonna people are gonna get tired of seeing the same post well no different people are gonna see it every time it's not gonna be the same people every time secondly it's like yeah so with a plumber i'd be looking at it's calling out

to the problem so that's a great example that you come up with there so you got the u-band or whatever it's like i'm not a plumber so i don't know but it's like hey it's middle of summer you know are your faucets stinking right now you know now you're getting bad odors coming out of your faucets here's the problem and then just give them some tips because at the end of the day it's like by asking the question hey are your faucets stinking right now then that's going to call out to the people that have got that problem right that's calling out to the people that have got that problem, right? That's calling out to the people that have got that problem. So if you give some tips on, you know, here's a few things that you can do to solve that problem yourself. But if you haven't got the time, give us a call and we'll come do it for you, right? Same with

seven things you can do to extend the life of your dishwasher. Just little tips, right? Just little tips. Just giving these little tips. And the tip is calling out to the person with the problem. Hey, does your shower, is it hard to turn your shower off does it leak all the time here's the problem you got a bad washer in there here's some little tips you know what's really cool cody and peter i'll get you in here but i'm a garage store guy but what happens in your garage door it's your man cave it's where you keep your landscaping equipment 100 where the bugs come under the bottom rubber if you know If they got automated ones to keep the house warmer or cooler, depending on what time of year it is, we could do so many things, the gym in your garage.

So I could deliver a lot of content around just the garage. It doesn't need to be just the garage or the opener. That's exactly one of the things I was going to say is that if you're starting to run out of content of toilets, then you can find other things that are like a customer who's in the mindset of the type of customer you're looking for. It might be something else, like a different piece of content, but you can still draw them back to your own services and they can still see you as an authority. So if you run out of content, you're just looking for other ideas around that. Yeah. One of the comments here was listen to your customers and answer the questions

they are always asking. I think that's important too, is to make a list of that. And then Dave said, people don't realize when they post on their business page, it's only going to people that follow their page, not going to your new customers. I think those are great points. Here's a great question. And I love this question because a lot of us don't start out with a lot of money. A lot of us are like, literally, I call it sweat

equity. I think you guys have heard that because we just don't have a ton of money. So it's guerrilla marketing. So if I was the owner of a small, relatively unknown HVAC company with an extremely limited budget per month, say $5,000 for social media marketing, can you recommend a plan that I should spend that in and Peter this right up your alley then I'll let you answer Cody so I would say Facebook ads SEO and I would say PPC at least bidding on your own company name and email marketing oh my gosh so I just kind of want to go back to what we're talking about before right so like as far as like getting in front of the customer, right? So many companies will save their email list and then not do anything. Or if they do do anything, every single email they send,

every single text they send is a promotion of some kind, right? Here's a deal. Buy this, spend money on this. But if you can send out emails and texts that have nothing to do with the deal, it's just a, hey, happy birthday, Merry Christmas, you know, here are the top five HVAC scans to avoid, right? Just helpful information. Then by the time you do have a deal to present, it's a lot more valuable. So I just want to throw that in there. So I would say Facebook, SEO, and bidding on your own name, and then obviously just making sure that you have some email and text marketing in place so that you can extract the full value out of those leads. Cool.

So for me, it's absolutely no brainer. This is the easiest question in the world. If you've got a $5,000 budget, you're in a very good place, man. It's like you can grow your business exponentially. You can quantum leap that business very quick. And the way you do it is focus on emergency services, focus on services that people are going to swipe the credit card immediately. If you live in Montana and it's December and your gas heater's just busted, it's like emergency gas heater repair is the keyword you want to be bidding on.

If you're in Arizona in the summer, man, it's like emergency AC repair. It's like emergency plumber, emergency whatever. You're going to pay a little bit more for those keywords but it's about I call it MVA right it's like this is the way I was thinking it's minimum viable activity what is the minimum viable activity that I can engage in to get me to where I want to go so minimum viable activity is not building an email list and nurturing it and posting on Facebook and doing all this stuff I mean that you're getting your incremental gains from there the minimum viable activity that you can engage in that's going to get you the quantum leap in your business,

the rapid growth, it's going to be in the emergency services. You know, like it's not home services, but I've worked with a few dentists, right? And I'm like, start out with emergency dental. They will pay whatever. If someone has just broken a tooth, right, they will pay anything to get that. If it's 11 o'clock at night,

they will pay anything for that pain relief. They will pay anything. It's the middle of winter and it's freezing cold outside and you got three kids in the house people will pay anything so you know if you're bidding on stuff like you know not not prioritized services right so it's like i've got some stuff i've got a leaky shower right now i'm going to get a plan and i've got some tiles busted on the floor in my shower i'm going to get someone in to fix that at some point in time, right? But the sales cycle on that could be long because there's not a lot of pain. Like, I'm not going to make a decision quick, but my dishwasher broke the other day, and it's like,

I'm not washing dishes, man, I'm telling you. It's like, I didn't even care. Like, I got on the phone, and I'm like, the first person that can get here wins. That's kind of the advantage and disadvantage to Facebook, right? Because, you know, during the summer, you know, you're going to have a lot more people searching for a repair that needs done or if their system is completely shot for replacement that needs done. But during the slower seasons, you have more people who are coming to you through Facebook, right? Because that's when people might not be searching as much because maybe their system isn't broken today and the weather is fine. But it's kind of those long-term, like a leak you mentioned, or like some of those more long-term things that are in the back of their mind.

They see that ad, that's when they reach out. So it's kind of like the advantage and disadvantage, whereas some of those customers might have a longer sales cycle, but then you're also getting them year-round, if that makes sense. And get on point with your messaging. So a bit on the keyword emergency plumber, whatever, and then take that to a landing page that says, hey, are you having a plumbing emergency?

We'll be at your house in 30 minutes or there's no service charge. Guaranteed. I think the biggest mistake that I find with that exact scenario, because emergency garage door service is they buy those keywords, but they don't have capacity at those times. But they don't realize it because they're not communicating with their marketing team or their agency. So they're

like, I'm not getting an ROI, but you don't have capacity till midnight. So why the hell are you bidding on those? Why are you running ads at midnight? Yeah, that. And then the other thing is I think it's easy to be, how many times do you search at a GMB and it says 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. close?

Saturday, Sunday. Why are you guys closed if you're a home service company, first of all? You say, well, I do take care of my employees. Hire employees for those days. Take care of those guys. Let them work three days a week. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, long hours.

Let them do three twelfths. Let them take the rest of the time off. Don't say you like to take care of your employees if you're not looking for the ones that want to work those days. It doesn't make any sense. What if there's a guy technician that works with a nurse

and both of them don't have kids and they both want to take off to work the same three days? And then I don't understand why in the GMB you don't have emergency service or that you're not doing LSA ads. The PPC ads are way more expensive than local service ads. You should be maximizing the crap out of local service ads

before you bid on expensive keywords. And then another thing is if I bid on companies that have gone out of business, like for example, there's a lot of door manufacturers. One of them is called Anazira, right? They're huge. They were 10 years, the biggest company of manufacturer. Hardly any people are bidding on those keywords. so if you're able to find that out and they can say hey are you at a zero like no but we work on them we get a ton of leads from that stuff wayne dalton right now is four weeks out why not bid on their keywords they call you second so it's good to call your competitors and find out how far they're out, especially if they're a manufacturer. Cause if you could bid on their keywords and be number two, instead of number one, you're doing it for half the price and you're getting the same volume

because they're so far booked out. I mean, this stuff to me, I've been doing it a while. It seems like common sense, but there's nothing more that I love than having these conversations. It's just, you need to get out more than tell me. People are like, they glaze over. I know. So according to Hootsuite, as of 2019, it's the best platform for generating leads. And Hootsuite is just a way to automate to everything you do, right? It'll help you go on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and help you get some automatic

posts on your Google. The question I have is, we know there's lead gen in everything we do. ValPak still works. The phone book still works in a lot of areas. I think, you know, what you said, Cody, is you got to pick one and stick to it. But there are some low-hanging fruit. And, you know, there's a lot of different listeners out here. There's big business and there's smaller businesses.

But if you had the ability to generate great technicians and you were good at recruiting, what would you guys say you have to dominate first if you wanted to have a big business? Because I don't think anybody that's listening to this podcast goes, yeah, I want to be tiny forever and I want to be in the truck. I don't think anybody's saying that. Let's talk about where people want to go.

So for home services, I would say, if you're going to get good at one thing, for me, it would be AdWords. Facebook is brilliant. And if you're going to hire a professional like Peter that understands it and understand how it works and how those sales cycles work on Facebook, yeah, absolutely, man. It's a goldmine. It's 100% goldmine. But for me, it's hard to be intent-based search.

When someone's typing in, I want your service in my area, it's really hard to beat that. And for me too, it's about scalability as well. So AdWords for me, it's not necessarily scalable in the sense that there's more volume available to you. It's more scalable in the sense that it fits the MBA philosophy, right? The minimum viable activity. I can put an AdWords campaign together and I can leave it for a month and come back and it's doing okay. Can't do that with Facebook. Facebook requires me to be in it or somebody on my team in it on a regular basis. So especially in the earlier stages when you're probably doing some of this stuff yourself, right? It's like for me, learning AdWords really is that MBA activity. It's going to give you the biggest bang if you're doing it yourself.

If you've got someone that can do it for you, if you've got a little bit more budget, then yeah, Facebook is definitely the way to go as well. Yeah, I think as you grow, Tommy, I mean, I don't think that there's anything that you shouldn't really want to do. I mean, I think you should always be looking for ways to spend more money, right? So like if you want to spend money on Facebook, once you cap out on that, go to the next thing, go to, you know, TV or radio or billboards. I will say that the biggest opportunity that most companies miss is still texting. Companies do not want to text people

or they're doing it the wrong way, right? Every time they send a text, it's a promotion. Like there has to be some sprinkle in between that are just like a feel good, like happy birthday, Merry Christmas, whatever. And then a deal later on, right? So i would say that's the biggest missed opportunity you know if you're getting the option is very much money that's what i'm gonna say well let me ask you real quick on that tcpa compliance i know people that get sued all the time unless you're really

are you texting them one by one to keep it compliant or how are you talking about right as far as i understand you can still do a mass text obviously you want to have some kind of opt out and as long as if someone requests to be taken off just make sure that they get taken off you got to make sure you scrub that against the do not call list first secondly i'd be very careful depending on how big your company is this that's how class action lawsuits, you're supposed to, Twilio can stop, then start. But if it's an auto, I think it's best to text too, but it's very just careful around that one. One of the things that I think is the biggest first thing that I tell people, first of all, you got to make a plan. And secondly, you got to get a brand. People say,

well, I'm not ready to get a wrap yet. Well, they're not taking the company very seriously. So get the money lined up first and understand you're going to go sweat equity or you're going to have to have money. Number one. Number two is a website matters. And it's going to take a while to build SEO and get your citation sites done and get your Google My Business page up. If I'm running jobs on Facebook, Google, pay-per-click or whatever, and I can't have you leave reviews

for me, it's a waste if I haven't got my GMB set up. So I'm like, set up your GMB, set up a website, and start taking before and afters and getting those live because Google's going to start trusting you more. And believe it or not, I'd like to go to a website to authenticate you and see if you're the real deal. But let's start getting into some of the final things because I'm excited to hear peter's

special news you know one quick question here i'll ask since it's on here is there's a lot of stuff going on with and you mentioned it earlier peter but there's all these privacy laws starting to happen they're not exposing certain data the ios came out with their ios 14 and right now they're blocking you got to turn everything on manually if you want them to follow you around and i like it that they're doing it for because human beings americans should have a choice me personally follow me around give me stuff i want to buy i mean it makes my life easy the cookies tell me holy crap i never knew i wanted that painting but i like it i'll buy it because they get to you know this morning i got up there was

no graham crackers and it annoyed me if an ad would have popped up last week and they would have known I was out of graham crackers, I would have bought them. But really bad, bad example. But what are your guys' thoughts on the new data, the restrictions, and people are saying it's getting more expensive. And Peter, you said it's the same cost. Sure, I'll take it. Yeah, so for us, it's been the same cost. Now, the lead cost may go up over time, but basically what that means is that Facebook might have a little bit of a hard time

using their algorithm to pick the right person based off of your messaging, right? So they take your messaging, they kind of look at the demographics, what has that person searched for recently, and then use that to hone in, right? So I think over time, it will get a little bit more expensive. It hasn't yet. But at the end of the day, Tommy, like, the game is always going to get more difficult, right? Like in 2018, you could buy leads on Facebook for like five bucks, right?

Like it was the wild, wild west. And it's always going to get a little bit more difficult. And that's why as time goes on, the barrier to entry to be able to advertise on facebook is going up right you know companies are going to have start relying more and more on professionals with a team to be able to handle this stuff right so it's going to get more difficult but you become harder than your challenges right and i mean it's like i said the future looks bright yeah for me facebook like it's got to the point where i don't really want to deal with them anymore to be perfectly honest with you it's got to the point where it's like they've made it like you know i'm experienced i'm in this stuff then i'm like you tell me i need to get a life as well right i need to get out of the marketing

world and get you know start spending some time with my wife or she's still young so but like i'm in this stuff all the time and like the changes that they've made in facebook are just like it's giving me a headache man it's like okay so i've got to verify this and i'm going to validate this and i've got to do this and that and it's like oh it's like it's giving me a headache and the way it's going it's like it's like i say man i've said a few times that's minimum viable activity it's like it's really pushed me to google to be honest with you i've spent millions of dollars on facebook personally in my own business over the last four or five years. And I've made a lot of money from Facebook. Now I'm going back to AdWords, man. It's really hard. It's like, it doesn't matter

if Google knows who you are or not. If someone's typing in, I need an emergency plumber. If someone's typing in, garage door specialist in Indianapolis, whatever, Google does not need to know anything about you. So for me, I'm all about what's the biggest result with the least amount of activity involved. And with Facebook getting harder and Facebook getting more expensive, for me personally, I'm looking at AdWords. That's the minimum viable activity for me. That's the best route to market for me at this point in time. So is still viable yeah absolutely it is but it's like you're gonna have to hire peter or somebody just like him because even the people that are in it

are struggling with it you know i've been on the phone with my facebook rep going okay well what about this what about it's like even facebook can't explain to you what's going on even facebook don't really know at this point yeah i agree and you, the only thing I like about that is with every lemon, there's a lemonade made and more barriers to entry. GarageBars is cool for a lot of plumbers and HVAC guys are like, oh, you don't have to have a five year apprentice? No. But then again, your ticket average is a tenth of the price. So there's pros and cons. And I like barriers to entry because it'll create opportunities for a guy like peter but you're right for me i'm like oh man like i gotta have a full-time person sitting there too to get back to them whereas they don't want to call a lot of people on facebook would rather message and that takes but that's where a va comes in and a lot of stuff but let's go ahead and do

this guys you know i usually ask a bunch of wrap-up questions but i will just ask one here you guys have stayed longer and i appreciate it we talked about a lot of wrap-up questions, but we'll just ask one here. You guys have stayed longer, and I appreciate it. We talked about a lot of stuff. I love having this forum. I just need to do it for like an hour and a half next time. Cody, I'll let you give us the breakdown.

We talked about a lot of stuff, but tell me if you had a piece of advice for the audience, maybe something we didn't talk about, maybe something they need to get done today. Maybe something that's just philosophical about, you know, the times we're going through right now. I'll just give you a few minutes to kind of tell your thoughts.

Then we'll hear Peter's great announcement as well. Yeah. All of this stuff we've talked about today is just for the geeks that want to geek out, man. Like it's easy, right? It's all very easy.

The real win is between your ears. Jim Ryan said it best. I love Jim Ryan. Work on yourself. Work harder than you work on your business. If you want to geek out, man. Like it's easy, right? It's all very easy. The real win is between your ears. Jim Rohn said it best. I love Jim Rohn. Work on yourself harder than you work on your business. If you want to grow your business, it's about you need to become a bigger container yourself.

If you want more water, you've got to get a bigger bucket, right? It's like all of this stuff that we're talking about today is how to get more water into the bucket, how to get more water into the bucket. But ultimately, it's like you don't need more water.

You need a bigger bucket. You're just going to pour water in. And that where you know like peter says and thomas says like people get leads and they go oh these are crap leads no these are good leads you're just not in a position to process them or people go i want to grow and it's like well no if you want to grow then you have to grow right if you want to grow your business you've got to be a bigger business now the number of times i've gone into my you know my bathroom in there and look myself in the mirror and go cody you're a nice guy but you're just not getting the job done. You got to go. The person that I'm seeing in the mirror is the person that's got me to where I am. It's not the person that's going to take me to the

next level. Right. And it's like, if you want to take your business to the next level, you've got to have a really solid look in the mirror and look at yourself and go, are you the person that's going to take this business to the next level? Are you the person, or do I need to do an overhaul, you know, rewire of what's going on inside of my mind? And do I need to do an overhaul you know rewire of what's going on inside of my mind and do I need to get a new person to take it and I don't mean a new person physically but do I need to become a new man do I need to become a bigger man because it's not a lack you know tell me it's probably losing business left right and center because like he's bigger than the business right now right it's not that there's a lack of business out there it's not that there's a lack of

opportunity there's a lack of a and awareness of to see it and ability to see it and even if you can see it there's an inability to carry it because it's too heavy for who you are and the solution to that is to become a bigger better stronger man in general or bigger better stronger woman in general and then your business is just going to be a reflection of that your business is nothing more than a 3d printout of what's going on between your ear if you don't have a big business right now, it's because, you know, James Allen said it beautifully. We think in private and it comes to pass environment is,

but a looking glass. If you want to know what's going on in someone's head, look at their environment. I can tell you, it's like, if I look at Tom's business, I can tell what's going on in his head. You know,

he's thinking bigger than most people. He's thinking differently to most people. He's, he's bigger in his thinking, right? You know, Darren Hardy, I think said it really well too. He said, listen, I'm going to write down everything about the perfect woman. And he wrote down a list of a hundred traits. He got it down to hair color. He got it down to the brain, what she does in her

past. I mean, he said, what the hell am I thinking? How am I supposed to get a woman like this? Then he wrote down a hundred things that he would need to become to get a woman like that. And what I love what you're saying is I need to write down who I need to become to handle a business as big as I'm going to get. That's right. What does the business like this look like? Who would run a business like that? What would I be doing all the day?

Would I be working in the truck, taking phone calls from fires or would I have people handling? So understanding what, but here's the problem, Cody, is I don't think a lot of people know what they need to look like. They need to go visit the shop they want to become and find the guy running that or the woman running that and make a list of attributes saying, what does your daily habits look like? What time do you get to bed? How much time do you spend with your family? And hopefully it's who they figure out they need to become, because how else would you know that if you've never been there a lot of people are like

i don't even know where to start well environment is stronger than circumstance right environment trump circumstance so for me like i'm sitting here like you know if i didn't get on this i mean i i could quite happily delude myself into thinking you're doing pretty good cody you're doing all right but i get on the podcast with you tommy and it's like i need to step my game up man it's like you know if i'm just sitting here and you know just doing my own thing it's like i'm in the minor leagues and i think i'm hitting you know 300 in the majors and then i get on this call and it's like i need to step it up man it's like i'm in the minors and i'm in front of a you know a major league hitter here it's like it creates that cognitive dissonance inside

of me that goes, there's a gap. Unless you get into that environment where you see the gap, it's like, Tom has got 300 and some employees and he's added another 40 like that. Tom is turning business down because he's got his shit together. Excuse my language. I need to step it up. So if you want to start, start by watching stuff like this podcast and seeing people that are doing it. And instead of going, oh, he must have been dishonest, or he must have done this, or he must have done that, or there's some excuse. It's like, let's take your hat off and salute and say, power to you, Tommy.

You're the man. I admire and respect what you're doing. And I'm going to step up because you're showing the way, right? It's like you're showing that it can be done. That's the first thing. It can be done. And then the next thing is like, you've got a bunch of books that, you know, you've pulled like, you know, I've made some statements,

Peter's made some statements and you've gone book, book, book, book, book. It's in that book. It's in this book. It's in that book. You could probably even tell me what page of the book it's on. It's like, you got the opportunity here, guys. You're on Facebook live messaging. Go, what books are you reading, Tommy? That's a good place to start. Right? So find who it is that has what you want. Get around them because it's going to make you uncomfortable. And that's a good thing. And then take the advantage of opportunities like this, where you can ask Tommy stuff. You know,

you've got the opportunity to get in front of like a multi, multi, multi, multi-million dollar unicorn business owner and ask him questions that you're going to have to pay somebody else $5,000 an hour for, for this level of consulting. You've got the opportunity to get that for free right now. So the opportunity is there. It's like, are you seeing it? And if you see it, are you going to take it? That's the question. 100%. Cody, nailed it. That was a good way to finish up. That's a good way to finish up. Peter, you got a big announcement. I have a huge announcement. So yeah, I'm really

excited. So 7X Direct has sold to Systemized Media. So Lyle Horst, a great buddy of mine, we go way back. So Systemized Media basically does exactly what 7X Direct does. However, they have a really interesting proof of concept. So they actually took the Facebook lead generation and they started a business called Topline. And with Facebook leads alone, they've grown it from zero to... I think they're on pace to do, let's see, 7 million this year in 2 years

with Facebook, like propelling with Facebook. So I definitely recommend checking them out. Systemizedmedia.com. They are offering free coaching on specifically how to close Facebook leads. So if you tried Facebook leads before and haven't had success with them, they are offering specific sales coaching on exactly how to close Facebook leads. Cool. And I love that piece, Peter.

Why don't you go ahead and tell us... I'll give you a chance to close this out too as well if you got any last thoughts. About what? About the? About anything. Like a practical piece of advice? Yeah, just something that, you know, someone of us. Yeah, so like I liked what he was sharing.

And to be honest, all of it was very similar to what I was going to share. But I wanted to kind of boil that down and put it into like an action step, right? So everything that they said was great, but boiling that down as something practical, find people to hang out with who are more successful than you. You know, if you don't think you can be a 10 millionaire, a hundred millionaire, find them, hang out with them, you know, message them on Facebook, see if you can buy them lunch. And if that fails, go listen to them on YouTube. Listen to Tommy Mello. Listen to Valuetainment, Patrick B. David. If you can essentially hang out with those people that are at that level by filling your mind with their knowledge, with their books, or just by hanging out with them. And that's the easiest

way to change your mindset is hang out with people who are way ahead of you. And that will help you strive to be that better version of yourself. Love it. I'll say one quick thing. If I got one last piece of advice for this podcast today, it's I realize where I do my best damage. And I do my best damage, not in operations, not in the daily shits. I do my best damage with marketing and sales. And if I can focus on that, I know I can double this company in the next quarter. So I'm learning the one thing that I need to do is I'd like to go to bed and be in my pajamas at 930, which is almost impossible for me.

So just a few things to get the 5am club. It's a great book to the 5 a.m club but what can i do to focus all day on the things that i know no one else is getting done not to say they can't but what can i get them better that grows the company what are the big things that grow and i gotta hire the people around me to handle the things that i hate and make sure they're doing a great job of that so i think you know i think cody said some of the people that are here, it won't take you here. And I think that's the biggest thing you realize is right now I've got a hell of a team and it's been top rated a million times.

And right now we've got the team. So I'm ready for another double. And people are like, how's that going to happen? It's crazy. I'm like, now I can go do what I love again. Now I can do the marketing and sales. And, you know, you guys are awesome for coming on here. This is the first time I've done with the three of us on. And, you know, you guys are awesome for coming on here.

This is the first time I've done with the three of us on and I had a blast. I appreciate you guys. As much as you guys think this might be dorky for people, they all, they love this stuff. This is what they die for. They come on here listening to this stuff going, I've got a lot of things that I got to go do after listening to this podcast. So I appreciate you both. I hope you guys have a wonderful third quarter here coming up and we'll touch base soon. All right. Thanks, Tommy. Thanks, everybody for listening.

Hey guys, I just wanted to thank you real quick for listening to the podcast from the bottom of my heart means a lot to me. And I hope you're getting as much as I am out of this podcast. Our goal is to enrich your lives and enrich your businesses and your internal customers, which is your staff. And if you get a chance, please, please, please subscribe. You're going to find out all the new podcasts. You're going to be able to ask me questions to ask the next guest coming on. And do me a quick favor. Leave a quick review. It really helps us out when you like the podcast and you leave a review.

Make it four or five sentences. Tell us how we're doing. And I just wanted to mention real quick, we started a membership. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. You get a ton of inside look at what we're going to do to become a billion-dollar company. And we're telling everybody do to become a billion dollar company. And we're just, we're telling everybody our secrets basically. And people say, why do you give your secrets away all the time? And I'm like, you know, the hardest part about giving away my secrets is actually

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