The Home Service Expert Podcast - Taking Your Business Operations To The Next Level

Episode Date: February 14, 2019

Danny Kerr is currently the Managing Partner of Breakthrough Academy, Inc., a company that specializes in helping business owners establish efficient management strategies and a strong development plan. With a diverse career spanning recruitment, crew leadership, and franchise management, he has learned many invaluable lessons throughout the course of his journey as a self-made entrepreneur, and is passionate about helping trade and home service businesses take their operations to a higher level. In this episode, we talked about recruitment, leadership, motivation…

This is the Home Service Expert podcast with Tommy Mello. Let's talk about bringing in some more money for your home service business. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership, to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Hey there, folks. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. My name is Tommy Mello. The

Home Service Millionaire is the book I just put out. And I'm here today with Danny Kerr. And Danny Kerr has got a lot of experience. He started out several different entrepreneurial leadership companies. He's a managing partner through Breakthrough Academy Incorporated from 2015 to present. He's worked at College Pro's HR manager for Western Canada. He's also worked in North Alberta at College Pro. He was the crew leader for Two Small Men with Big Hearts Moving at 20 years old. Danny took a leadership position at a franchise company and grew from 400,000 to 1.3 million. In four years, Breakthrough Academy had 220 live members with 450 million in revenue. And I will tell you, this year he's done over $3.4 million in his current role. Danny, I'm excited to have you

on today because I love what you're doing and you consult a lot of people. How's your day going? It's good, man. So when we first started talking, you were neck deep in data on an Excel sheet. And I love that because in the home service industry, especially, sometimes we don't use data to calculate decisions. And it seems like you're very, very analytical.

And I want to hear a little bit about how important data is to you to make decisions. I mean, I would say the first time I ever really used data to make a really good decision was in 2008, right? When the recession was happening. We had just finished producing about $1.3 million in sales in our painting company and i was 20 what was i 21 22 years old and they told me about this thing coming called the recession and i was like what was that what is that what does that have to do with me and you know i had to learn some hard lessons and i started to see you know the business starting to wane i started to see the leads not coming in and i started to see like you see prices needing to be dropped in order to book jobs. And instead of just winging it and hoping for the best, I needed to actually figure out where the future was going to go.

So I took what we had done last year and I recalculated the entire thing. I looked at, well, if our average job size was, say, X amount to $2,000 last year, maybe it'll be $1,800 next year. We'll book smaller jobs. If our closing ratio was 35%, maybe it'll drop down to about $30. And all that started to tell me how many leads I needed. And then I could look at how many leads I need to generate from last year and say, well, if we need to get 40% more leads, where am I going to get those from? And then I could look along my lead channels and start to decide how much to generate from cold calling, let's say, versus flyers versus referrals. And I start to predict where I need to go, which in turn told me I need to hire a bunch more door-to-door guys, print out a bunch more flyers versus referrals. And I start to predict where I need to go, which in turn told me I need to hire a bunch more door-to-door guys,

print out a bunch more flyers, put out 30 more signs than I normally do. And it gave me action steps to go get ahead of the game when everyone else was kind of waiting for the phone to ring. So that's a good example. But yeah, that was the first time it really hit me. That's a great example. And I think, so you're in Excel right now, but do you use a CRM or some type of data aggregation system to kind of put it all together?

Yeah, like we have in our company right now, we use Infusionsoft. We've been in Salesforce in the past. Back at College Pro Painting Days, we used to use something called CPower. All of our clients, we refer them to use some sort of project management software. So landscapers, I usually tell them to use LMN. Builders, I usually tell them to use Co-Constructor Builder Trend. Everyone has probably a system at some sort that they should be paying for monthly and the subscription levels to get the data, to organize the business,

but also to get the data to know what to do with. So, yeah. I love that. So, you know, a lot of the listeners, some of them may have heard of you, but I'd love it if you share your story from your perspective, where you started and what you do exactly today and how you've moved a lot of companies in the right direction. Sure. Yeah. So today we're basically running an organization that essentially is like a franchise system for business owners that are in the trades and home services.

But they don't necessarily have to buy a franchise from us. We just give them all the training, the support, the feedback, the templates and processes that they require to be able to be successful like a franchisee would be. But they don't have to ever buy a franchise from us. So that's what I do now. We've got 230 active month-to-month clients. We manage just under half a billion dollars of the revenue with all of them working every single day. And we've made a nice little nest egg out of that for us and our team. And we've been kicking butt. We've been helping them a ton. And we've seen a lot of success. I think our average client last year, you were saying at the beginning, but our average client last year increased profit by over 100%,

which was massive. And we track all of that in our crazy Excel sheets. But we can see what's going on live with each person individually and help them adjust. So that's kind of what we do now. It wasn't always like that for me. I grew up with no business mindset, actually, at all. I don't have any peers when I was growing up that were in business.

My mom was on the welfare for most of her life. And my dad was actually a drug addict. So there was not necessarily this successful mindset that started when I was younger. But I did end up losing my mom and my dad. And over time, I started to really grow up a bit, I'd say, to realize what I really wanted to achieve in life. And I think that success was this little thing gnawing at me, like, hey, you don't really know how to do it. But you definitely don't want to be, especially like my dad, you don't want to be like your parents, right? So there's some stuff in

there where I had to really force myself to figure out how can I be successful. And in the beginning, it started with just like pure hard work. It was just, I don't, I'm not good at a lot of stuff, but I can outwork you. And I knew that about myself. And when my first little business started at College Pro Painters, I was working 80 hours a week and I was pounding it out and I had paint all over my hands and I had bags under my eyes, but I was making 10 grand a month and I was figuring out how to run a business. And I don't think any business owner could get a better education than just to put themselves through that. I mean, for me, it was tough as nails, but it taught me a ton about myself and what I can achieve.

And I learned a lot along the way. I got better at interviewing. I got better at selling. I got better at processing information. And slowly, I was being groomed and trained just through the School of Hard Knocks. And I did that for a few years. College Pro itself is an amazing support program. So I also had a coach who was coaching me the whole time and slowly grew up into the point where I was managing my own franchisees.

And I had a small district in Northern Canada in a place called Edmonton. And over time, I grew that up and taught little young entrepreneurs how to run their own small businesses. And that idea really stuck with me. I really enjoyed this feeling of like, I can show you what I learned or what I went through at a young age and give that to you now and you can rock with it. And when I left college for it, I just, I missed that. I missed that feeling of gratification of being able to show people what I knew. And my whole family's, a lot of my family's actually teachers and I just have a teaching soul inside of me. And I was just like, I want to give this out. So that's what I've been doing now. So we created this organization that essentially takes a lot of the methodology, the thought process, and the learning that I went through

at a young age and things I went through at the franchising level with College Pro. And we now basically give them a model to utilize without them ever having to join or buy a franchise. I love that. I mean, everything you've been talking about makes... You talked about manuals, you talked about marketing, you talked about the numbers dictating your decisions and anybody that's successful knows this stuff. And you learned that in a franchise. It's true. But tell me your honest opinion of a franchise versus a licensing deal versus, uh, you know, some other options as far as entering into one of those. Cause a lot of people listening probably at one point thought about being in a franchise. I'd love to hear your perspective on that.

Sure. So, I mean, I was in a franchise and I worked for one and I was also a franchisor, you know, helping franchises grow at one point. And there's a lot of advantages to a franchise, right? You get given a system that works. You get driven a proven model that you can follow and all your ratios are given to you and all your templates and all the backend work that most entrepreneurs know it takes forever to build is there for you. And kind of a cool community. You get to talk with other franchisees

doing similar stuff and bounce ideas and see they're ahead of you, some of them, some of them behind you, and you can all share in that knowledge together. So there's a lot of power in that. And beyond just even the brand that you get from a franchise, it really helps people go from zero to 60 real fast. But the problem is with a lot of franchises long-term is you get from a franchise. It really helps people go from zero to 60 real fast. But the problem is with a lot of franchises long-term is if you're a franchisee in a turf, and especially if you're in an owner-operator model, it's tough for you to ever get out of the day-to-day. Some of them are different,

but a lot of them I've seen this where the overhead that you would normally be able to allocate towards, say, a project manager or a sales manager can't be used because you're paying in royalties. And so it forces you to stay in kind of an owner-operator role. Now, that's not true for all franchises, but there's some that I definitely have seen that in. And the other thing too is, as you're trying to expand and grow and develop, you might only have a turf, one turf to operate in and everything else is sold. Or if you do need to buy another turf, you got to save up to do that. Whereas a normal entrepreneur

can just go start a business in another city. And away they go. So there's certain limiting factors that as you grow long-term with a franchise, it's not always the greatest deal. Now, in the beginning, it is, and it kind of tends to make up for itself because people say, well, I got a fast start, so that's kind of the other side of the sword. But what I looked at is, how do we provide all those good things

that people get from the startup side and really get them moving fast and get all the processes in place, but not have several million dollars in the bank of liquid cash. You have to work there. You have to actually work at McDonald's as an owner for several months. You got to go through a whole process. And that's probably one of the better run franchises. I mean, obviously, their model is to own the real estate and stuff like that. Tell me a little bit about the difference between McDonald's and most of the home service franchises you see.

There's some really good home service franchises that I know of. When I heard I got junk and their entire kind of sub-brands that they have, they do a phenomenal job. We worked closely with them in the past and my business partner helps them create one of their sub-brands called Shack Shine.

So those who want to look into it, but they do a phenomenal job. But there's other ones that I maybe won't name that really just get excited about the idea of franchising, or they're a big organization and they just want to sell. And it's all about selling franchises, selling turfs, making money off of these people's backs and not really providing the support that they promised or perceived to promise at the beginning of a franchise sale. And when it becomes more about money than it becomes about people, that really hollows out those types of organizations.

It can be tempting to collect a $50,000, $80,000, $200,000 upfront franchise fee in hopes of long-term reoccurring revenue of royalties coming in forever. But if you don't support your people and get your franchisees off running properly, good luck. It becomes quite the pipe dream. It's a lot of work to run a real franchise. People don't really understand it. But I mean, when you really look at the numbers, if you're, say, taking 10% or 15% off the top of somebody's business, a million-dollar, say, painting business is only $100,000 to $150,000 in actual revenue for you as a franchisor.

And you better be damn sure you know what to do with it to be able to support them properly, keep them thriving in their organization and also have some profit left over for you. So really franchising is a lot more about training and development and recruiting of key people than it is just about collecting royalties and sitting back and waiting. Like you have to be quite good at the leadership side of leading leaders, basically.

I think you're absolutely correct. But I will say as well, as a franchisee, you can't expect a turnkey business that you're going to walk into become rich. And I think that a lot of times, everybody that's talking about franchising, and I've read at least four books, distinctively, I remember four books is when you get into franchise business, you're no longer in your business, which in mine particularly is garage storage. You're in the people business.

And unfortunately on a franchise, one owner that's stupid could blow it for everybody. And I see like CNBC specials and stuff because one guy doesn't follow protocol and ruins it for everybody but at the same time it's a national they can do the call center they could do the national leads the brand they could teach you a lot more about you know as a team you're stronger together but I kind of like licensing better because you can kick people out faster but I agree with you 100% both ways you know licensing is much more flexible. I always say to people, we're actually helping a couple of our clients right now build their own franchise organizations.

One of them is called 505 Junk here in British Columbia, Canada. And we told them, look, you can do this all you want with the systems and the support and the back end. But if you don't recruit your first 10 franchisees to be the absolute best ones you could possibly find, the whole thing's going to fall apart. Your first 10 will break everything that you've created. Yeah, that's a great point. You want to definitely lead with success and show people. And then you got to handhold them. You got to make sure they're successful.

I want to go down to the basics because a lot of people listen. We have people that listen that's doing 50, 100 million. But a lot of the people are just going from 3 to 5 employees or figuring out how to find good employees. And I always say there's 3 ways to make money. You either get new customers, which is marketing. You keep your customers coming back, which is a service agreement. Or you charge your customers more money, which hopefully, if you're ethical,

you're selling them different types of goods. For me, I could sell them epoxy, a garage door spring, and garage door storage. So when we're talking to somebody that's just trying to get going, I want to walk through where you think you need to start with. And maybe just because they got a business doesn't mean they can't start and go backwards to a business plan and an organizational chart and start getting going on the manual. So where do you get started? Yeah, so there's a couple of things. I mean, if you're in straight-up startup mode, like it's your first year or two years out there,

I always say to a lot of people, don't worry about the details. Just go book jobs, produce work, learn about what you actually have, learn about what your value proposition and your uniqueness actually is. Because I think sometimes people can overcomplicate the entire thing and have to be so perfect in their execution of something. Your first couple of years in business, it doesn't matter what you're doing, just go try some stuff. I started Breakthrough Academy, this company we're talking about today, with no business card. I didn't have a name even. I just had me. I was just willing to go out there

and talk to people about it. I started my first painting business. I didn't have any equipment, any painters hired or anything. I just went and booked jobs and secured deposits for a four-month out start date and got work ready and used the deposits actually to buy my first level of equipment. So I always say to people, your first startup phase is just sales and marketing, man, and just figuring out what you actually got. After a year or two, you start to see patterns. just start to see what the customer is actually asking of you and what they're really you know what you're good at better than most of your competitors and then you could start to niche and that's that's i would recommend for a lot of contractors and a lot of people out there trying to find you know where they can be unique is to be niched down and ultimately what makes most people

usually unique isn't necessarily what they may be the way they hammer their nails into a board but it's them themselves and trying to bring that personality of who they are out into their business and working with a certain type of clientele that appreciate and enjoy that and get value from that. Anyways, in startup mode, that's kind of the path I would go. When it comes to a lot of the guys we work with, so a lot of people we work with are usually, some of them are the half million to a million dollar mark. A lot of them are kind of the million to $10 million mark. They're starting to get to this place where the hustle and all that hard work and all that push and drive that you did to get you started isn't necessarily working

to get you to that next level. A lot of our guys have, like you said, three to maybe even 10 staff. They're starting to get to this place where if they don't organize themselves properly and get things in place for their people, they're the ones left holding all the buckets. And it's overwhelming. So we help them really think through, first off, where are you actually going? So if you're trying to go from a million to 2 million, that's a great number to throw out there. But what does that actually take? What are all the leads, estimates, dollars required to get there? Month by month, week by week, what are the activities that have to happen? Who should be in charge of those activities? Is it going to be you for everything? Probably not. You should maybe, if you have a sales guy, put him in charge of the sales side of things. If you have an ops guy,

put him in charge of hours produced per week or revenue produced per week with a certain margin off of the jobs and give them these numbers to be in charge of. So you have to create what's called KPIs, which stands for key performance indicators. And what we give all of our clients is a dashboard for them to see, hey, this is exactly how we're doing in sales, production, and financials. And then we help them get those numbers into their employees' hands and basically draw very clear, detailed job descriptions so that the staff actually have a very clear idea of what they do and what they don't do.

And in those job descriptions are the numbers. Hey, Mr. Project Manager, you're in charge of $1 million produced at a 40% gross profit margin. And that means you've got to produce 1,200 hours with your crews or whatever that would be. And everybody is held accountable to set what we call deliverables. And what this does over time, is it slowly allows the owner to relinquish

some of the control that they have over the company, delegate down to their people, and actually more work on the company than in it day to day. Hey, I hope you're enjoying this conversation. I just want to let you know that we have a special offer from Breakthrough Academy for you today. So stick with us to the end and I'll reveal how you can take advantage of it. But if you're in a rush, just go to btacademy.com forward slash home service expert and check out our exclusive offer that we put together for our listeners today. Okay, now let's get back and continue our chat with Danny. When you were talking about just kind of going in and doing it,

you know what I thought about a lot is, have you ever golfed before? I suck at golf, but yes, I have. But I wouldn't reference me for much of it. Well, here's the deal, Danny. I want you to keep your left arm straight, bend your knees, crack your wrist at the right point, make sure you walk out there. And I'm like, I tell people, just try to make contact with the ball. That's like when you go into business, I think you're absolutely right. It's like, you need to do this, this, this, this, this, this, this. And the fact is, and it's very funny because when I've gone golfing with, especially, and this is not a derogatory statement or anything, but especially a gal that's never been golfing, because most of my buddies golf,

I feel like they just kind of have this sequential mode where you'll see them put their arms straight, they'll bend their knees, and they'll slowly, and then they miss the ball. And I'm like, no, just take a half swing and hit the ball. Just hit it. Focus on just making connections. So I thought a lot about that initially. And I'm a big fan of KPIs. My big goal of next year has been aligning people with my interests.

And what that means is matching the KPIs that make me win and make them win. So I was on an interesting podcast last week with a gal named Amanda Holmes and her dad's company who passed away. He wrote The Ultimate Sales Machine. It's a great book. She took over the company

when she was 24. One of the comments she had made is she said, my dad unfortunately passed away and left me with 250 employees. But the genius thing that he had got going was nobody made money unless the company made profit. They were all aligned in a way that made us work together and row in the same direction. And I looked at myself and what I've got going and I said, really, there's a lot of people that don't have any motivation for my success. And it's not that they don't believe in me.

And there's no reason, you know, there's, I hope they do. And, you know, I hope I'm a decent leader. But at the same time, what's going to help a dispatcher book the best guy and leave Tom Brady playing in the Super Bowl? What's going to make a call center rep want to get their booking rate up, shorter call times, create success for the technician? What's going to make the door center want to make sure the highest profitable jobs get installed first? And you've heard the talk before that the kid walks up to his dad and says, I studied really hard and I got an A plus. And the teacher just decided to levy the grades all, you know, like a D and an

A become a C. So that doesn't motivate you to be better. I'd love to hear your perspective on that because myself, I realized that my top performer in the call center would have made 400 extra bucks last week. Four people would have made minimum wage. And when this rolls out, it's survival of the fittest, the cream rises to the top. And all of a sudden you've got a really great culture. Yeah. Actually, I'll give you some really interesting perspective on this because there's two sides of this coin, actually. So you just mentioned where it works and what you actually mentioned with moving and realize you mentioned, but every role that you just mentioned are fairly rudimentary basic tasks. They're repetitive. It's like digging a ditch. If you pay somebody hourly versus paying someone piece rate to dig that ditch all day long, that ditch will get dug faster by someone who's paid piece rate, right?

Sure. But here's the interesting thing. If you're going to build a bridge or manage large groups of people and take on complex tasks, if the bonuses are too high and they're too make or break for people, it actually gets in the way of their decision-making and stops them from focusing on the task and makes them focus more on the money, which is actually not good for complex roles. So if you have, say, like a project manager, let's do two scenarios. If you have a painter and you need to have that painter paint faster, paying them basically for, hey, you have 100 hours to do this project. If you do it in 90 hours, I'll still pay you all 100. That type of incentive, that works very,

very well. We used to do that all the time. Paying up the project manager, you actually want to make their base much more comfortable for them to live and take care of their day-to-day needs. As soon as it gets in the way of their ability to survive, it takes away from their decision-making to do their job properly. And so what you might do with a project manager is you're going to say, hey, I'm going to give you $60,000 base so you can pay for your bills, pay for your gas, pay for your car and your kids and just have your life. But I'm going to give you an unlimited upside.

So I need you to produce a million dollars this year at a 40% margin. So what I'm basically saying to you, Mr. Project Manager, is I need $400,000 back to me for you doing that job. And that's why I'm paying you your base salary. But hey, anything above that, I'm going to give you 10% of. So if you produce 1.1 at 40% margin or 1 million at 45% margin, anything you make over top of that 400 grand, I'm going to give you 10% of. And now you can think like an owner.

Now your base is covered. Our base is covered because we know what we want to hit minimum. But there's an upside. There's still an incentive. But we're taking care of you and not making it so stressful that it gets in the way of your decision making. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I agree that there's certain roles that are very, very difficult.

And I don't think that money is the end-all, be-all. I can tell you that there's a book called The Five Love Languages at the Workplace. And there's certain things that motivate people. And I can tell you some people who rather work, I can tell you a guy, Bruce, that works for me, would rather work four 10-hour shifts. And that means a lot to him. And some people would rather work six hours if they get all their stuff done and not take a lunch or any breaks. And some people would like just public display of affection, but I want to say just when you're around them to encourage them and compliment

them in public. And I think it's about finding what type of personality they are, identifying with that and making sure you're doing that. And that, that's not easy. That's easier said than done. And I will tell you that it seems like every time, and I've had a podcast with several people from Canada and all of them are amazing at creating culture and their values are so much stronger than Americans. And I'm including myself in that because, well, I'm close to Canada but maybe I'm just close enough to have good values. But it just seems like you guys are,

and I don't mean that derogatory, but it just seems like there's so much more to it. And you figure out your why a lot more. And that's one of the things you said earlier is help people to figure out why they're in business. And in my book, The Home Service Millionaire, I talk about your reason for being in business cannot be that you don't like to work for somebody. It needs to be more than that.

If it's just that you hate working for someone else, then you need to find something deeper because that won't get you through the tough times and the recessions that you've talked about. So when you talked about your why is that you love to teach and I'm finding out about myself that I love sharing my mistakes. I made a lot of them. Look, my mom had three jobs. She didn't have it on easy street. And I got a job when I was 12. But regardless of that, I didn't have a tough life. I mean, my life compared to most was a cakewalk. But I've messed up a ton, so many times that I know what's good now, because I never would have known what's good if I hadn't realized bad.

And I'd love to hear your perspective on, you know, I've been to rock bottom and rock bottom for me wasn't rock bottom. Like most people like, you know, I wasn't like suicidal or anything, but I've lost money. I've been in debt. I've had bad things happen. I've had people steal from me. I've had people walk out in the middle of a shift. I mean, I've had it all happen and inventory stole like crazy. And I think it's made me who I am.

And a lot of people listening could probably relate to that. And you lose trust. And what do you think are the core principles that you need to stick to when you decide to go out on your own and start a business? I'll give you a bit more specific to my story, actually. This will probably be quite relevant to what you just said. So four years ago is when we started Breakthrough Academy.

And in the heat of all of that, six months prior to that, my mom had just passed away from cancer. She was my last parent. So I don't actually have anyone left as a parent right now. And most of my family has actually passed away at this point, except for my sister and a few relatives out in Ontario. So I don't have any support. I had to kind of like do this on my own. The same time my wife was on maternity leave with our six month old and the career that I was building with somebody else didn't go so well actually. And that was why it was a very sudden thing. Actually, it was right before Christmas. It was literally like four years and a week ago that all this happened. And I was so

freaked out at the time. I'll give you some perspective. I remember we were buying, my wife went and bought a meat and cheese platter for my sister's Christmas party. And I tried to take it back because I was so freaked out about where I was at financially and positioned with like, you know, all these shocks in my life. And I wasn't thinking straight.

I was making dumb, nearsighted decisions. And you know, the irony of the whole thing, I couldn't even take it back. It's food. You can't take a food back. But that was expensive. That was really expensive cheese and you should have got take it back. It's food. You can't take a food back. But that was expensive. That was really expensive cheese and you should have got your money back.

But I was, you know, like that happens to people, right? When threat and the world comes down on you and if everything's closing in on you and trust me, I don't know if I've been in a more stressful environment than during that time.

You have an opportunity to make great decisions and an opportunity to make shitty decisions. And then the unfortunate thing is when you're high in emotion, you're low in intelligence. It's just like a fact of our lives, right? We go into animalistic brain. And what I needed to do and what I've done a lot in

my life to get through this kind of stuff is just slow down for a second. Appreciate what's really important in life. Give gratitude. I'm a Christian. Give gratitude about a lot of things in my life and just realize what's actually important and put things into perspective. Like when you live in North America, we already won the genetic lottery. We're fine. We may think things are life and death. And trust me, I did too at that moment, but we're actually fine. The only way you're going to end up on the streets all strung out like the people you see as you go get a really bad drug habit. Right.

But for most of us, we can lose our jobs. We can have the recession happen to us. We can have the hardest things happen to us ever in our careers, go bankrupt three times over if you want. You'll still be able to eat, sleep, poop, and breathe the exact same. But I always have to bring myself back to that when these types of things happen in business, which they happen often. And I think it's for a lot of entrepreneurs, what makes or breaks a successful entrepreneur is their ability to move through those times and actually see them more as opportunities than as things they want to avoid in life. Because if you really think about it, all the most challenging things that you triumphed

through in your life become the strongest parts about who you are today. And all the things that crushed you and you gave up on and you ran away from and you never really fully dealt with is probably the biggest weaknesses about who you are today. And so when shitty things happen in life, you need to see those as big opportunities to either grow or have something stick to you for a very, very long time. Amen. Yeah. It's interesting that you're talking about this because I could tell you that I'm the most offensive player on the team. I mean, if we talk about hockey, I'm hitting slap shots all day long, sometimes a knuckle puck. But I'm not a good defensive guy, meaning inventory,

what's going out has never been super important. I've always been a revenue fan. And it's kind of like going to the doctor. It's like a lot of people avoid the doctor because they don't want to hear bad news, but if they would have went to the doctor, they could have caught something earlier, just known about it. And I made a lot of mistakes in that regard.

But I realized one thing is that I had to become defensive. I had to look into those things. I had to work on my biggest weaknesses. Although I'm a big fan of strengthening my best assets and hiring people for the things I'm not good at. But ignorance is bliss. fan of strengthening my best assets and hiring people for the things I'm not good at. But ignorance is bliss. And I guarantee you, Danny, most of the people listening are avoiding one thing. I don't know what it is. It's always different. They're avoiding the call center

booking rate. They're avoiding the sales that they suck at. They're avoiding the fact that they don't have manuals or good training or whatever it might be. There's something that they know that when they wake up, there's something in the Bible that says, if you avoid your conscience, it'll start going away. And that's a fact. If you avoid the voice in your head that's saying, fix this, it starts to disappear. And you start, I call it creative justification. You start creating things in your head that condone everything you do.

And that is the scary side. I'd love to hear your perspective on that because this is, I told you, this is like, this is my day right here. I love that we're doing this. Yeah, man, this is way off topic. This is great. So we can get into it. Yeah, like I'm a firm believer that we create our own reality, right? We project what we want in life. We work hard towards it. And then that's what becomes real. But we also avoid a lot of things in our lives and do what's not important to us, or don't do what's important, not important to us. And those things never enter our lives. And for good or for bad, that's the world you've created for yourself. And I hear it a lot from people sometimes externally, like I've coached hundreds and hundreds of entrepreneurs at this

point. And I see patterns in people and businesses and the economy, like I see patterns like crazy, partially probably because I'm super ADD and dyslexic too. I see things differently. And I watch as people repeat the exact same thing over and over and over again and not even notice that they're doing it. One of the things I used to do at College Pro was hire franchisees. And I'd interview them on something called fundamental, is their ability to handle stress in pursuit of a goal. So this is actually one of 10 things we teach our guys right now, how to interview people. And so instead of looking at just skill sets, we teach people to actually look at past performance

because it always predicts future results. And fundamental, somebody's ability to handle stress in pursuit of a goal is probably the most impactful things for it to dictate whether a franchisee will do well or not in that organization I was with prior. And what it was, was I was watching them go through life and either give up on something because it got too hard or fight it aggressively with no real logic or cognitively

work through it and learn a lesson from it. And the people that could cognitively work through stressful situations like losing a parent while going to school or tearing their ACL while training for a massive year in their sports career, those people triumph all day long, no matter what they did. But the people who were like, it's not my fault, it's the economy, it's not my fault, it's my parents, it's not my fault,

and they're externalizing all the time, all they get is shit back. And then they wonder, they're like, I don't know why the world brings me all this stuff. And I'm like, because you're creating it yourself. Oh man, we're talking about home services and you're right. We are kind of veered off a little bit, but this is what makes people... We're talking about the intricacies of what makes decisions and why we get into business. And I'll tell you, my favorite line

in life is when life throws me lemons, I make lemonade. And I'll tell you that I can tell you about how bad my life was. And my mom and dad got a divorce because my dad cheated on my mom and all this stuff happened. And my sister was angry about it and all this stuff. Or I can tell you, my dad was my soccer coach, my baseball coach. I went on every field trip. I always had a fresh pair of jeans. And it's all in the eyes of how you perceive that. And I'm very fortunate that I do see my upbringing as a good thing. And I'll tell you, I've had a lot of bad stuff happen. And my mom cries to me and says, I hate how people abuse you and take advantage of you. And I said, mom, we did 30 million this

year. I think things are okay. And that's part of the game. And I've got a pretty big ability to block things, which might not be a good thing, but I don't let things affect me is what I mean by that. I just don't let them affect me. I don't let it bring me down. The other day, just something horrible happened. And I didn't lose a breath of sleep. I didn't focus on that. I didn't dwell on that. And I think what you said earlier about some people have something happen and that becomes their reality. And it's just so bad. And I don't always like podcasts to be about just... We talk about KPIs. We talk about things to get your stuff going.

But this is the stuff of what we're going through on a day-to-day as a human being. And I think it's important to discuss this stuff. Yeah, there's two sides to running a business. There's the head, which is all the analytical stuff, which I do a ton of. And then understanding process and procedure and motivation of people and job descriptions and an organizational structure.

And that's half the equation. And the other half of the equation is heart. Your ability to understand people, follow your passion, know your why, drive yourself through adversity. And when you have those two things working together,

that's usually where business and life go pretty well together. And I've seen it. I work with tons of guys, man. I work with hundreds and hundreds of entrepreneurs and I watch them go really good on one side and then the other side completely falls apart. And they need to be in balance. I'll tell you what though, if you got the heart, the one side, it doesn't really matter. Success will find you. It's like the people that have a passion and passion is a key word for me. Passion is what I think most successful people have. If it's passion that drives them, success to me just means... My brother-in-law went to India recently and he said, Tommy, there was eight people in a car. They didn't have nice clothes.

They were definitely broke. They didn't have a whole lot, but they were singing and they were definitely broke. They didn't have a whole lot, but they were singing and they were smiling and they were happy. It's different. So for me, I think success for me means I'm a billionaire and I'm going to do what I want, when I want, with whom I want, and I'm going to support everybody and I'm going to do all that. For them, it just was, the definition was to just smile and laugh and enjoy each other. And unfortunately, I built a story of success when I was a kid that is not the right thing that most of us do, especially in America, you know, the United States. But I love your perspective that just,

maybe that's not what needs to motivate us so much. And it's a tough thing to talk about, but I'd rather have a place where people respect me. And there's a lot of me that wants to scale and be in 50 states. I want to be in Canada. I want to grow to Australia, do a bunch of things. But then part of me says, why not just be happy? Dude, I'm 31 years old.

I grew up with nothing. I'm a multimillionaire right now. And I don't feel any different. I remember playing in my sandbox when I was a kid, and we were broke as all hell. And I also remember hanging out with my kids right now. And it's like, all that I enjoy is the experiences I got. And the more I try and go for money, the less happiness is harder to find. The more I just go for relationships and being around good people and putting my heart first

and caring for people, the more all that kind of money seems to kind of make sense. It's easier just to kind of not get too stressed out by it. And I will tell you to a lot of you who are out there listening, who are like, I want to be a millionaire or I want to get there one day, whatever that there is and involves money. Just so you know, Biggie said it best,

more money, more problems. And it's so, so true. I got like this hot tub and it like broke and now I got to get fixed. I got a gazebo and we just had a windstorm and now I got to get that fixed. I got this nice house and it's got things that I got to fix on it. And so it's like, the more things I get, the more responsibilities I have.

And I better be willing to manage and take care of them because I might enjoy them, but I also need to work on these things every day in my life. And I've only got so much time. And do I want to spend it fixing things or do I want to spend it with my kids? Yeah, that's, you know, people wonder why I don't, you know, I bought an apartment complex and then moved it into one of the units and I have a really, really nice house. I rented out and they're like, why don't you live in that? Why don't you drive a brand new car? And I'm like, why? I'm like, it was such a pain in the butt. I had like just a land and I still pay the

landscaping bills, 400 bucks a month. You know, I had a pool that I never swam and I still pay the landscaping bills, 400 bucks a month. I had a pool that I never swam and I still have the house. But the point is, I agree with that wholeheartedly. And that's so true. What I'm looking for now is something simple. I want something because I know what I'm capable of. And I know that I can scale certain things. The hardest thing for me to scale is people.

But I'll tell you this, everybody that I've talked to, and I'm sure in the same boat, Danny, is the number one question I get is, how do you find good people? And I will tell you, the number one thing I say is, first of all, how are you hiring? Because hiring is marketing. And are you recruiting or interviewing? And secondly, how are you paying them? Because the cream rise to the top, and I don't care if a guy makes a million bucks, that means I made a lot of money. And a lot of people want to start people at 12 bucks an hour.

They'll find them on Craigslist and they don't offer any benefits. And they'll wonder why? No one will do the job as good as me. And I love because you've worked with so many entrepreneurs. Tell me exactly how we should be doing this as a small business. Sure. Yeah, let's get into recruiting here.

So this was my game, man. This is what I used to do better than anything else back in the day. I'll give you just a small business? Sure. Yeah, let's get into recruiting here. So this was my game, man. This is what I used to do better than anything else back in the day. I'll give you just a couple of process things. So first, you said it already, treat recruiting like a sales and marketing process. I think a lot of people get their ego in the way when they're recruiting and be like, well, I'm paying them. Like, they should want to work for me.

The reality is, especially in trades right now, the labor market is shrinking. Young people are not going into the trades. They all want to be Mark Zuckerberg. And there's older and older people that are retiring, and there's a massive labor gap. The only thing that's probably going to replace it is some sort of robotics or AI in the next 10, 15 years. Otherwise, we're kind of screwed. So in the meantime, as we're building towards all that, to attract young people into the trades, you need to be a bit more of a sales and marketing type mindset.

So what we do is we profile our ideal candidate. What are their strengths, their weaknesses, but also what are their needs, their wants, and their fears? And let's bake that into an employment agreement, or sorry, bake that into a job ad that really sells the position, that captures their attention in the title, speaks about the company, but in light of those things that that person loves and wants, speaks about their role in a way that that person would enjoy. And how do we know what those things are? We interview our current staff that are like that, that are awesome, right? I remember interviewing one of my project managers. He was a quarterback on the football team. And he's like, it's just like playing on my team in sports. You're my coach. These are my players. I get to score touchdowns all day long. And that's the kind of copy that I put into my painting ad. So I'm speaking to my

ideal candidates. From there, we got to get the ad out there. People use Indeed, Craigslist, ZipRecruiter. I agree with all those things. Some of them work better than others. Here's one thing we do that is a game changer for us. We use the network of our staff and put it on steroids through Facebook. So every time we have a new recruit, we drop one of those ads that sell really well. We give it a landing page off of our website, and then we get all of our staff involved. We sit down with all of them. We say, hey, guys, right now we have about 20. So we say, there's a new role we need to hire for.

It's XYZ role. This is kind of the person we're looking for. And what I want you to do on Facebook is I want you to individually message 100 to 200 people each. So they're going to say something like this. They're going to say, hey, so-and-so, our company XYZ is looking for a person in XYZ role. Curious, do you know anyone?

Keyword, know anyone. That would be a good fit for something like this. See link below. P.S., we're offering a $500 hiring bonus if you do. And so each one of my staff members, right now I have 20, would send out, say, 100 of those on average. That's 2,000 messages that get sent,

say, on a Thursday afternoon. So we do it in the office together. All of a sudden, you've's 2,000 messages that get sent, say, on a Thursday afternoon. So we do it in the office together. All of a sudden, you've got 2,000 people clicking on their Facebook message from their buddy, clicking on the link if they're somewhat interested or just might not even know somebody, reading it and getting self-sold into the position if they are indeed that right fit. And you watch as people refer you, their cousin, their friend, their such and such person, or read it themselves and self-analyze themselves and be like, that's me. Most of those people aren't looking for work. Most of those people would normally not be reading

job ads. But their friend told them, hey, do you know anyone? They might as well take a quick peek and see. And all of a sudden, we're getting applicants you never get access to. That's genius. I took notes. And I take a lot of notes, but that one is amazing feedback. One of the things that I like to do too, and you can tell me if you think this is a good idea, but I don't hire based on mechanical skills. I don't hire because you have previous history. I look for a guy or, you know, usually in the trade, it's a guy, but I have a lot of gals that work in the CSRs and stuff. So right next door to me is a company called Quick Trip, it's a guy, but I have a lot of gals that work in the CSRs and stuff. So right next door to me is a company called Quick Trip.

It's a gas station. And they train their employees exceptionally well. They can work three registers at a time. I mean, they're flying. They're always smiling and they do a great job of hiring. So what I found is exactly what you just said. It's easier to find people and steal them and give them a career versus a job. And instead of giving them a card, I have them text me and it goes into a funnel that actually text messages

them. Either they're going to opt out of my text messages or they're going to come apply because they're going to get annoyed by I'm going after them so much. But that's what means a lot to them. And I'll tell you, the Facebook thing is genius because you're not even doing paid ads. And I would think that a lot of people out there would go, I can barely get my employees to show up on time. Have you ever heard that? I can't have anything else. They're not going to go on Facebook for me. So what do you say to somebody like that? I tell them, get pizza and beer involved. Pay them for their time to do it and make it a fun event. We'll do it like a Thursday or a Friday. You know, it's not Friday. Everyone wants to leave Friday,

but Thursday afternoon, three o'clock, three till five, everyone come to the office, stop working. I got pizza and beer waiting for you and I'm going to pay you to do this. And this will be a massive help to get better to people on the team. So you don't have to work with dummies and we can all together as a team grow better. I incentivize. God, I would go broke if I had to buy beer for everybody, but that's great. Danny, me and you got to get together because this is,

I can already tell we're going to hit it off if we meet. So you did a really good job of recruiting at this last job. I think that recruiting the people problem is the biggest one, but then what I've realized and I'm glad I'm conscious of this, is I've had eight

players and I failed them. I made them C players by not giving them the right training, by not giving them the manuals, by not telling them how to succeed. So when these people would ask me how I'm doing, I'd say, I think you're doing pretty good. I couldn't show them the facts.

And there's so many times that I've had to self-reflect and say, I failed. I blamed other people and said, yeah, he messed up. But now looking back, I say, no, I never gave him the tools he needed to succeed. How many times has that happened? That's the cornerstone of our entire company right now. So it's basically taking a bunch of entrepreneurs who are harebrained, crazy, smart as all hell, but reactionary in their mindset and how they do things, and giving them systems, process, procedures, templates, documents that

they would never draw up on their own, and giving them it, process, procedures, templates, documents that they would never draw up on their own and giving them it all in a box and then teaching them for three years slowly how to use it. So it starts with, let's set a budget and see how the company is actually doing. Let's use those numbers to build a sales and a production plan and break that down to weekly goals. Let's use all of that to figure out the job costs and how much job profit you need to make on a per job basis and start tracking that. Let's now give your employees

very clear organizational structure. Everybody has a role, but it's all based on the numbers. So you need to give them a very clear structure with very clear KPIs, which is what we were talking about before. From there,

you need to have an employment agreement that you pre-drawn up. Again, we have templates for everything here, but essentially, you're in charge of this margin with this much production. And here's all the details that go into. Again, we have templates for everything here, but essentially, you're in charge of this margin with this much production, and here's all the details that go into that. So we have nine-page employment agreements

for each major role. Then you need to do the recruiting stuff I just talked about, and you match the recruiting model to match the job description that you're looking for in a person. And then once you've got somebody, we need to do how-to manuals.

So again, we've done this as well, but we've drawn up 64-page manuals for each major position in the organization. And they all have checklists that come along with them. So as you're training somebody, you have a day-by-day checklist that you can go through to make sure you've shown them everything. And you can use that checklist later for scoring them. Saying, here's all the things that are in your agreement that we also checked off on when I trained you. I'm going to come back in six months and check off on the job site. Did you set it up correctly? Did you put the drop sheets where you're supposed to put them? Did you park the vehicle in the appropriate location? Are you wearing the right attire? Did you finish that

wall in that right timing? And there's a checklist for everything now that can be used for reviews and scoring and raises for the future. But there's also standardization on what you expect and what they're able to do. And their communication is now written down. So would you say, and I have a lot of managers that hated this when they started for me, but people do what you inspect, not what you expect. What do you feel about that line that I just said? Depends who you work with. If you're working with a bunch of roofers

that are just roughnecks, probably. If they don't really care about you, then why would they, right? I guess it depends. I mean, I've got a staff that I trust immensely. I don't need to inspect them. They're pretty autonomous. But at the same time, I've worked with painters who, if you're not on it with them, they get lazy. And if you don't hold them accountable to, we used to use piece rate, which was a nice accountability to, but to something that'll keep them moving, they'll slow down, especially in August when the sun gets hot. So it's usually a balance

of both. I mean, I always like to give people who are smart, who are go-getters, who have proven themselves to me, I like to give them a pretty long leash because they can perform better. But if you're trading time for dollars and that's all you really care about with me, then yeah, I put a lot of process in place to keep you extremely accountable. I would agree with that, but I got to say I disagree a lot with the senior management that they all have KPIs that you're watching. You're on an Excel sheet right now monitoring numbers. And if they fail, you know that day by day and week by week, I guarantee you, you do because you're a numbers guy. And you give them the leash to not communicate as much

because you allow that to happen, but you are watching them. And I'll tell you this. Sure, yeah. People lock their door at night to keep the good people out, not to keep the bad people out because the bad people are going to get in.

And I'll tell you this, if I didn't take any inventory at all, the best people that I have, and I'm sorry, and I give people the benefit of the doubt all the time. Trust me. I trust people 100%. But I'll tell you what happens. And Danny, if you think this is wrong, I understand. But this has happened to me before. I've condoned it in my own head. People would say with a keypad, look, I know Tommy gets a free keypad with these units.

This person didn't have any food on the table on Thanksgiving. And I'm doing them a righteous thing because in their own head, they're doing the right thing, but they condone it because I'm not keeping. And you know what? I'd probably say, give them the keypad. That's not the point. But the point is, all of a sudden you make excuses for things and it's not really stealing. They don't go in their head.

I'm taking this and stealing. But what I like to do is just create, and for senior management it's not really stealing. They don't go in their head. I'm taking this and stealing. But what I like to do is just create, and for senior management, I just say this. Yeah, I like to give them a leash too. I like to make them to make their own decisions and assume they're going to do the best thing for the company. But if we don't align our interests and there's no KPIs,

we're not working on the same goal. I'll tell you, it gets destroyed quickly and it gets underutilized and they have no reason to try. Yeah. KPI is like every position I have in our organization and every position with all of our members has a KPI. That's like the cornerstone of everything we teach. I guess how they achieve that KPI,

the more they prove to me they can handle it, the more I will just let them figure out how to hit it. You're right. And I wasn't disagreeing. I was just saying another perspective because I think you're absolutely right. And I don't want to tell anybody out there listening to not trust people because it's not the messages I'm saying. I just feel like, you know, I feel like I have a lot of management in my life in the last 20 years. I've underutilized people by not setting a common goal.

And there's nothing that's going to motivate them. The guy that runs the company, my manager, Adam, he was the number one producer at the US Airways before they merged with United. And he was a salesman. He knows pivot tables. I mean, this guy could do anything. But he says, Tommy, I'd hit my yearly goal in the first quarter and I'd coast the rest of the year. And he goes, it was just corporate America. He goes, I didn't get any respect if I did any better. There was nothing that drove me. And he got so upset the first day I told him that line. People do what you expect, not what you expect. He goes, no, they don't.

They'll try hard for you because they respect you. And now he goes, I admit, because I'm a man, I'm a big man, that you were right, I was wrong. I said, I don't need to hear that. But I said, look, I don't care if you're blue collar, white collar, find out what motivates people, align your interests, row in the same direction, and let people do well at whatever they need to hear that. But I said, look, I don't care if you're blue collar, white collar, find out what motivates people, align your interest, row in the same direction and let people do well at whatever they need to do well at.

But something you said earlier, and this is my passion. I want to talk about one more core topic because I feel like I'd be doing it this justice to everybody if we didn't. Sales and marketing are my passion in life. That's why I'm here on earth. And I can tell you that sales trumps everything. You could have bad recruiting. You could have bad call booking rates. You could have bad conversion rates. You could have bad average, well, not average tickets, but sales are what kind of changed the game. And people that are great at sales, it makes up for a lot of mistakes. And that's kind of my downfall and my strength. But let's talk about sales and marketing and

walk us through your position and your way that you coach people on that. Sure. So I am, for all intents and purposes, probably considered the sales and marketing kind of leader on the Breakthrough Academy side. So there's two other owners I work with. One is on the operations side, doing all the coaching and running our coaches. And the other one is I would consider more of like an acting CEO, looking through the future of the company, making sure our initiatives are clear and our strategic plan is in line. But I'm the guy running with about five people on my side on sales and marketing arm. And I'm driving that whole thing. A couple of things, I guess, when it comes to sales, I mean, there's the standard,

like very, very basic, just like needs and objections. You can't get away from them. Don't avoid them. If you're not selling very, very basic, just needs and objections. You can't get away from them. Don't avoid them. If you're not selling right, it's probably because needs and objections are a miss. No matter how advanced you are, sometimes you just get in a funk or you just get busy doing whatever and you stop doing a good job assessing needs and handling objections. So the very, very basics, focus on those. Secondly, on my end, as soon as I feel out of flow, it doesn't matter how hard I try, I can't win. And that's a very emotional thing. But if you're selling all day long

and you're selling to hit a goal and you're behind on your goal, that stress sometimes takes you out of the game and your mindset out of the game. And you start to sell for the wrong reasons and people smell it. Sales has changed a lot in the last couple of years start to kind of sell for the wrong reasons and people smell it. You know, sales has changed a lot in the last couple of years.

And I say in the last 10 years, it's gone from sell hard to educate, teach, be a part of the process with the prospect. And if you're selling hard and shoving shit down people's throats, they're just going to push you away. There's too much of that going on in the world right now and it's not working anymore.

So our entire sales process consists of, instead of you need this,, let me tell you why, consists of educating, showing, analyzing, almost like a doctor would, prescribing and seeing the pain. Yes, that's what I was going for. You just took the words out of my mouth, a doctor. What do you do when you go to a doctor? Yeah, you tell them the symptoms. They'll tell you the root cause of the entire thing. They'll ask you lots of questions so that they can get to the root of the entire thing. You then, as a doctor, prescribe them with a medicine, aka a product and or service.

And they trust you because you deliver results every time. And you're giving them what they actually need versus what you need as a salesperson to hit a goal. So let's do a quick role play real quick. And I'll be the doctor and you are a homeowner. I love this and I think this is good. So Danny, this is a beautiful home. How long have you lived here? Five years. Five years. Okay, great. You know, I noticed you have a couple of kids. I got to tell you, I love this neighborhood. So the first thing is I'm talking to you and I love these questions because the next question I'm going to ask is, I'm walking through your house. I'm petting your dog because I love dogs. I'm not disingenuous. I already offered you a coffee on the way. And the next question I'm going to ask is,

tell me exactly what's going on with your garage door. Yeah, it's not closing at the bottom properly. So it's basically causing a little bit of a rut underneath and cold air is getting in. And I think animals are getting in too once in a while. Oh, wow. Oh, okay. When was the last time you had the garage door looked at? I had it looked at about a month ago by a guy who said he fixed it, but apparently he didn't because we still have problems. So. Okay. So depending on, you know, usually this is about 20 minutes in, I'm going to continue to ask questions. And now I'm going to start asking you certain yes questions. And I know this sounds salesy, but I'm going to agree with you that I, first of all, I have a checklist of 25 point safety with 99% of franchises is they start with a checklist of safeties. Before I get started, I'm going to do this checklist. Then I'm going to come back to you and show you your bid is $2,000. And I hate the word 2000. I would have

showed him it could be 29 bucks a month. But the problem with a checklist when you start the job, in my opinion, is you come back with this big estimate because all these things failed. Why not say, Danny, I'm out here. You asked me for your bottom rubber to make sure that it's closed appropriately. As part of the service here, I'm going to go ahead and do an inspection, make sure everything's working right. And I'll grab you if I see anything. Because what I just did there, Danny, is we talked about it and you decided you're going to use me. All I wanted for you to do just now is make a buying decision.

And I'm not a salesperson. It's not about sales because I believe I'm doing the customer a favor. And when I talk to my guys, sales is most honest, ethical, moral people in the world now know when they go back to warranty calls two months later that they failed the customer and they didn't look at everything and they should have done that. It's just the certain guys that push stuff down people's throat, it's not question-based selling. And just real quick, one day a guy walks into a computer shop and says, I want to know. I want that new Pentium processor, whatever, da-da-da-da-da. And the guy says, perfect.

Here's your computer. You're going to love this one. And he goes, does that have Windows 10 on it? And he goes, absolutely. It's loaded with features. He goes, I don't want that piece of shit. I hate Windows 10. You just tried to sell me something I didn't even want.

I'm leaving. Because he didn't ask enough questions. And I think that's so often when you walk into a doctor, first thing they do is ask you, what's going on? What are your symptoms? Let me check your fever. And then they prescribe something. But the difference is I trust the doctor. They know what they're talking about. And a lot of times people walk in and they're insecure. What's the secret for you about sales when you see, take your top three sales organizations you work with

and their top players. What's the commonality that you find in those guys or gals? So for me and our team and a lot of guys we work with, it's basically like, I don't tell them to go in to do the quote to book the job, actually.

I tell them to go in and book or understand exactly why they booked with you or why they didn't. If you can do that, then you did a good job. Because what happens is if you go in and you ask a bunch of surface level questions and you get a bunch of surface level answers, like I want the color to look nice. I want our neighbor's next door just got the house painted. And so I thought I'd get mine done. And you think that's a need? You're wrong. There's a story. And what you need to do when you go into any sale is understand the story behind why you're standing there right now. Why are you there that week? Why not three weeks ago? Why not three weeks from now? Why not last year? Why not a year from now? What's making them have you there

now? And there's something that's happened, a series of events that have led up to this. And if you can fully understand their story, like deeply their story, sometimes that's happened, a series of events that have led up to this. And if you can fully understand their story, deeply their story, sometimes it's emotional, sometimes it's just physical, but ultimately there's a story that's connected with why you're there, then you can sell appropriately. So I always say to people, understand why you booked this job deeply, or understand why you didn't. And if you understand exactly why you didn't, you'll walk away with your head held high. It's when you walk away from sales that you didn't. And if you understand exactly why you didn't, you'll walk away with your head held high. It's when you walk away from sales that you didn't book a job with, especially with somebody that you're like,

that was our perfect customer. I don't get it. Why didn't they book with us? Because you didn't ask the right questions. Or even just as dangerous, I don't understand why they booked with me. Whatever, I got the checks, so let's run. And that usually leads in warranty issues

or problem areas when you go to produce the thing. Understand why they booked with you or why they didn't and what their real story is that led them up to contacting you in the first place. So a paint job, there's definitely a story. But if somebody's air conditioning is not working and it's 122 degrees in Phoenix, and they called you out because it's hot out, it's hot in the house and they're suffocating. I mean... Sure, but why did they call you? Oh, so you're saying, and this is good. So do you think, from my experience, they might've called you from a friend and millennials are different than baby boomers, but that's a great synopsis and a great way to understand how people think. But do you agree

that most of the time, if you're an aggressive marketer, you're either the number one on Google or possibly the number one in the yellow book, which is archaic, or they got a mailer that day. But I think you're right. You got to understand if there was a referral or not and why. So tell me your perspective. If somebody's garage door broke, because this kind of hits home and a lot of people listening are in the garage door industry there's spring breaks and you walk in and explain to me the first the reason why i ask about how long have you lived here because i want to know a lot about when's the last time you had a look at how important and i'm looking when i walk up to the door i'm looking at five things is there a crack in the panel what's the paint look like on it what does the trim look like there's a lot of things i look at but tell me the how you figure out the paint look like on it? What does the trim look like? There's a lot of things I look at, but tell me how you figure out the why they called.

If it's just something broken, I needed somebody out here immediately. Cool, sure. So it's urgency and efficiency. So it's like, great. So why did you call us? Cool, because you're the first one in the phone book. Great.

Obviously I can come do this. Your garage door is broken, so I can fix it. Is that all you need to know? Great. Can I charge you a million dollars? No. Okay. So let me find a price that works for you. And ultimately for you, do you need this

done? Yes or no? It's simple when it's that kind of stuff, but you still need to understand why. Sometimes it's, yeah, man, we have tried to get this freaking spring fixed by three other guys. And every year when the season hits, it breaks again and again and again. And I called you out of last resort because I'm just frustrated with the fact that nobody actually fixes it. Everybody says they will and then they don't. And then when I call them to come back and fix it again, they say it's not their problem. And it pisses me off. And I read on your website somewhere that you guys backed your warranty for two years versus 30 days, which everyone else is doing. And that really appealed to me. Yeah, that's genius. I love that. Because people tell you a lot. I've gone in before and I've told

people you got a broken spring. And then I changed the thing to what's going on with the door. And you know what they say, Danny, which is amazing. A lot of the time, they say, this opener has been noisy as hell. I want to replace the opener. Whatever this door needs, needs to be done. Let's just get, but if you just walk in there and there's, you know, I talked to guys, I interview a lot of guys. I've interviewed over a thousand garage door technicians, easy. And the guys tell me this is the worst thing I've ever heard. It's I can fix 12 garage doors in a day.

I know it takes me at least two hours to just get to know the customer. I tell my technicians, number one, the first thing I ask the customer after I've done a diagnosis of their door and they want to replace it, is there a nice spot we can sit down and talk about this? I'm the only technician or salesman getting invited into their house. If they offer me coffee, you better believe I'm drinking coffee. I've got more samples than you could ever think of. I've got simulators that show them what their door will look like. And I get to know them because personally, I enjoy that. It's not work for me. I love to sit down. And the one commonality that I've seen in sales is to take your time. They're buying you. You don't need to be fake. I'd recommend that if you're an angry person, just don't get into sales. But

every day, Danny, I sell myself. I sell myself when I meet a new person. Right now, I'm talking to you. Maybe this isn't considered full sales. But the fact is, when I meet a woman, when I meet a new friend, when I'm going to talk to the pastor at church, I'm involved in sales. And all it is, is selling myself. And I hate the fact that that's become a four-letter word. How many people do you talk to on a daily basis that go, Oh, I don't like to sell. I don't do sales. Yeah, everybody hates sales because they perceive it as the typical,

I'm going to force you to make you buy this. But the new age way of selling is what we've been talking about, which is just understanding people's stories, prescribing the right thing. And it's actually quite a nice process. I enjoy a good sales guy. Enjoy it. I'm like, please like sell me. I'm trying to make a decision. Like help me with that. So, Oh my God, I want to move. You know, the one thing that Danny is Arizona's full because we had a recession where the Canadian dollar went really, I know we bought a bunch of real estate. Yeah. Canadians bought all the real estate in Phoenix. And I got to tell you, when I was in

the field, I used to run jobs day to day. And it was so enlightening when I got to go. And I was like, yes, a Canadian. Because they just said, no matter what, they're so laid back and they say, fix it right. I'm only here six months out of the year because I got to keep my citizenship. But I don't want this to break again. And you know, what's crazy is a lot of times people from the way they're raised is how they negotiate. And, uh, I'm a lot like that. I want to get a deal. And I know that there's certain people when I meet them right away, I know they want to deal. They don't care about the price.

And this is so they don't know what it's supposed to be. They just want to know that they got a deal. So don't care about the price. And this is so true. They don't know what it's supposed to be. They just want to know that they got a deal. So if you start out at $1,200, they want to get it for $9 with no tax. And they just need to feel like they won. And if they don't feel like they won, they'll not use you. I'll get going here

because I know you got a busy day. And I just love this. This is so, so good. How much does personality profile and understanding the person you're talking to come into play with sales? I'll give you what I was thinking when you're saying that. I focus on three pillars of sales, character, competence, and common sense of purpose. And different people buy more because of different things. So sometimes it's character,

it's buddy, buddy, can I get to know you? Can I feel like you're my friend? So they'll just buy because they like you and their personality. Sometimes it's competence. Do you know what you're talking about? Can I rest assured that you know what you're doing and I don't have to think about it? And sometimes it's common sense of purpose. Do you get my story? Do you get my needs?

Do you hear me? Because if you don't, leave me alone. It's all three of those ultimately, but everybody has a different preference for which one matters more to them. And you got to kind of find that and speak their language. So if I got a guy that's just like competence,

do you know what you're talking about? Great, don't talk to me. I'm busy. It's fine. I don't need to build a ton of rapport and be super friendly. I'll tell a bit about who I am, but I don't want to come off cheesy or fake. So I just let that be.

I got a guy who has a pretty clear story about why I'm even there in the first place. I'll understand that story and I'll speak to them. It doesn't matter what my price is anymore. They'll buy. And I do know what you're saying. I actually find this culturally. There's different cultures that need a deal.

And I get it. I mean, I live in an area where that's somewhat common. You know what? It goes against a lot of my teaching, but we'll add 10% and then give it off, right? And just make them happy. It's just like, here you go. Let's move forward now.

Sometimes, you know what I do? I'd be super real about it too. I'd be like, literally, dude, you need a deal. That's the only thing that's stopping you. So I padded my price and I'm going to take it down. I'm going to give it to you. But just so you know, everyone else is doing it too. And people stare at you.

It's like, are you actually saying this to me? And I'm like, I am going to be super real with you the entire time. And people respect that. In a way that probably most people aren't daring enough to go investigate. But being super real works better than anything else I've ever found in sales.

Oh, they respect the crap out of you. The ethnicities that you deal with will stare at you. I've been in a staring contest for three minutes and it's a weird thing. It's like, oh my God, are we going to negotiate or make out? It's a weird feeling.

But one of the things I like to do is just be real with them. And you're absolutely right. When you stay in your ground, it's like if I walked down the golf course, and I use this analogy a lot, and I said, Tiger Woods, do it this way. He'd go, no, no, no. I'm the doctor on the golf course. This is my domain. I'm the one that's telling you what to do. But he's not going to tell me this is what you do. He's going to ask me a bunch of questions when I go out there. And that shows that he's a professional. And what I like is the disc assessment. And there's a lot of training, Sandler training, sales training, but it's recognizing the people, whether it's five love languages, all kinds of personal profiles, but there's certain people that are engineers. They're called the C type and the compliance.

Yeah. Here's the best thing to do with C's. And I love this. When I walk into a garage, they say, I've done my research. I can tell you, I've been lubricating the garage door on a weekly basis.

And they tell you all about it. The first thing I say is, wow. And sometimes it changed a little bit, but you probably know more than me about this thing at this point. Could you give me a hand? And I hand them the parts and I have them look at it and I say, what do you think? Here's a new one. Here's this one.

Do you want me to leave the old one on? And I, I let them make the decisions and they're like the engineers, the analysts, they go, Oh no, I can tell these These are not self-lubricating. We need to get this taken care of right away. But if you tell them, it's not going to happen. So I agree with you with the three things or four things or five things,

but it's really knowing your audience. Yeah, your Ds are your entrepreneurs. Do quick decisions. Just give it to me and don't give me fluff. Your Is are your relationship people. Let me know you. Build rapport, hang out with me. Your R's are your D-I-S. Your S's are your steadies. So they just want something consistent, predictable, no surprises. And your C's want all the details and the facts. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. That's awesome.

What's funny about the DISC assessment is 68% of people are S's. But when you're in the niche like we are, which is I'm in home service and you're in a niche like we are, which is I'm in home service and you're in business, is we're dealing with homeowners. And a lot of S's live in apartments. A lot of S's live in hotels. So you're dealing with a lot of D's that I'm a high D and I'm a smaller I. I'm very little S or C. I just go like this. What's the bottom line? Yeah. That's it. I don't have time for this. What's the bottom line? Yeah. That's it. I don't have time for this. Either I like you or I don't and I'm going to make a decision. It's almost to a fault. It's not a good thing, I think, sometimes. But it's nice to know

the audience because even though Ds only make up 4% of all human beings that they've done the research on, most mansions you go to are D's. Yeah. My business partner actually is a really interesting combo. So I'm a DI just like you. My business partner is a DC. Isn't that a rare combo? He's extremely, extremely unique to work with. So... Danny, I could do this all day. I really... I got to tell you that we talked about a lot of subjects and I think that you are, you're going to be great for a lot of people and you're going to continue.

You're 31. You probably got a good 50 years to coach still. I'm excited to see what the future looks like. If somebody wants to get a hold of you, what's the best place to communicate with you? Sure. So, I mean, probably simple is just our website, Breakthrough Academy. So the website itself is b with you? Sure. So, I mean, probably simple is just our website, Breakthrough Academy.

So the website itself is btacademy.com. So Bravo as in B and then T as in Tango. And Academy, A-C-A-D-E-M-Y.com. We actually set up with you guys a bunch of templates to give away. So we've got some hiring templates, some job descriptions, ideal candidate posting stuff, some block scheduling and prioritization. So a strategic plan to build out for your next fiscal year, you can grab. And we also sent you guys a profit tracking planning Excel file, which took us about 1000 hours to build. It'll build your entire business plan for next year and break it down to weekly

goals for you. It's super powerful. So we're giving those to you guys. And they're going to be in the show notes. So go in there, click on the link, it'll take you to our landing page. And there's a code to make sure you put in so that you get the right downloads and templates. So make sure you get that code off the show notes as well. And you can start to get an interaction of a little bit of what we're doing. Obviously, that's our way to find out if you like us as well. So you can click on it if you want to be contacted by us or not. If you do, that's how we can start the conversation as well. This guy is a genius. Listen to what he's saying.

This is so perfect. He's analyzing how many people are listening to this podcast and he's either going to like me or hate me from the results. So please go to that website. But give me a good book real quick because I always like to ask people what book they recommend. Other than my book, The Home Service Millionaire, which I'm sending you. You are going to laugh.

So I don't read books. I'm super dyslexic. I listen to some audio books. I have literally everything we have talked about today learned about through doing. Well, I'm going to give you my audio book then.

Sounds good. The last book I just read was called WTF. It's actually called Willing to Fail. It was written by a guy named Brian Scudamore who owns 1-800-GOT-JUNK and O2E Brands. So that was the last audiobook I listened to. It was good.

I would recommend that one. But I'm a rare breed. I don't read books. I just go get shit done. And I listen to a lot of people and I have great conversations and I pick a lot up verbally. So, yeah.

So, Daniel, what I'd like to do at the end, and this is going to close it out, is if there's one thing that maybe we didn't talk about, one thing going into the new year, one piece of advice, one tip, one mistake you made, whatever it is,

what do you think we should leave listeners with that's going to make a big impact going into the next year here? You really need to think through where you're going for next year. Every year, we do a strategic plan. We sit down, we actually get away for three days. We rent a cabin, an Airbnb in the woods where there's no cell reception. We think through our goals, the initiatives we want to recreate for the next fiscal year and the problem areas that we want to solve. And then we have a very clear one-page plan that we work everything off

of. Actually, it's in the downloads that we sent everyone as well. Using that plan, I think, gives a lot of clarity to people. It's easy to go and do a lot of things and get nothing actually done. And if you're in business and you're listening to this and you're about to hit your next fiscal year without a plan, I highly recommend you figure that out. Because if you think about it, what is your time actually worth? And how many hours do you spend on things by year-end you realize are completely useless? And think about how much time that wastes of your entire team and staff as well. With a growing organization,

you got to spend time to think before you go do. Dan, I got to tell you, I've got a million notes. I think the Facebook posting, the beer and pizza, like you talked about so many interesting things and I'd love to have you back on. If people want to get ahold of you, I highly advise they do. It sounds like you just have you back on. If people want to get ahold of you, I highly advise they do. It sounds like you just have a lot of this stuff nailed down. So I really appreciate

you being on today. And down the line, I'd love to have you back on. Got it, buddy. Yeah. No worries. I'm happy. We had a really good chat, actually. This was possibly my most fun podcast I've ever done. So you're a good host, man. This was great. Yeah. I appreciate you so much. And I think the audience, man. This was great. I appreciate you so much. I think the audience got a lot out of it. There's so many gold nuggets you took out of it. When are you coming to Phoenix next?

I might be, actually. Last year, I had 70 different events. I didn't go to Phoenix last year, but we travel quite a bit to do speaking. If and when I come down, I'll write a note to you, Andrea. I'll let you guys know. I'll come hang out with you. Okay. Well, I've got your number. I'll communicate with you and let's chat more. I really appreciate your time today.

Sweet, Tommy. Okay. Talk to you later. Thanks, buddy. Hey, I hope you enjoyed today's podcast with Danny Kerr. A lot of people always ask me if I could coach them or provide them training to grow their business. The fact is you guys probably know this, but I'm really, really busy with A1 Garage Service, making it the biggest and largest home service company in the country. But I got to tell you, when I discovered what Danny Kerr was doing with Breakthrough Academy, I realized that this would be a perfect program that I'm proud to vouch for. What I truly

love about their program is they combine the done-for-you systems with coaching and accountability to make sure you make huge progress fast in your business. So if you're making a million dollars or more and you want to build a solid structure for your business to generate more profits and grow, check out the link btacademy.com forward slash home service expert to learn more about the Breakthrough Academy. You're going to thank me for it. you