The Home Service Expert Podcast - The Coronavirus Special: How To Come Out On Top In A Time of Pandemic

Episode Date: March 20, 2020

Al Levi is considered a guru when it comes to small business and organizations. A master at making manuals, he is the bestselling author of The Seven Power Contractor. Gianni de Cara is the man behind the scenes on the Home Service Millionaire podcast. He runs his own business all the way from Italy. Joe Crisara is a sales trainer who helps companies understand how to close more deals, make more money and improve their business growth Josh Latimer is the brains behind AutomateGrowSell, an online trading platform that caters to numerous small local, service-based businesses.  In this episode, we talked about the coronavirus, business continuity, crisis management, spotting opportunities, customer relationships...

Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership, to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the Home Service Millionaire, Tommy Mello. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. I'm coming to you guys today about the coronavirus. I've been getting calls left and right about how to handle this. And I decided to come out with a special podcast about this subject. Number one, the people that are frantic, thinking their businesses are over, afraid of what's going to

happen, you might as well give up now. You might as well go lie under a bridge and let your business die. Or you could step up to the occasion and be a real leader. Today's going to be all about ideas on how to grow during a downturn. It's how to be aggressive, how to run towards the storm, how to weather this storm. It's how to take care of your employees and be a great leader. Because when you come out of this thing, there's going to be winners and there's going to be losers. Which one are you? I can't wait to start these interviews. I've got Al Levy. I've got my man Gianni from Italy who helps me with the podcast. I've got Joe Cressera, who's an amazing sales coach. He's world-renowned for sales coaching.

And I got the one and only Josh Latimer, who does a million things, and he is a great friend. So can't wait to get started. Let's go ahead and get this going. All right, welcome back to the Home Service Expert. Today is a very important podcast. I've got a lot of requests from Facebook, email, voicemail, text message, all about this coronavirus and how it's going to affect small businesses, especially in the home service sector.

I can tell you that I live in Arizona, and right now we're in a good spot as far as the outbreak, but definitely hope for the best and plan for the worst. Today, I have a lot of people coming on the podcast that are experts in the field of home service. Al Levy is the first guy coming on, and you guys know I've worked with him in the past. He's helped me with my manuals. He wrote the book, The Seven-Power Contractor. He's a guru when it comes to small business and organization, and he's got some insight for us on his take. Obviously, this is all opinions. Al, I appreciate you coming on today, last minute. Yeah, you know, it's just such an important time. And I want to share with the, you know, the listeners, Tommy, is that I don't play a doctor on TV and now on podcasts. And I

don't play a CDC expert either on podcasts. And so obviously, you know, the listeners need to check with their own trusted advisors. So what I'm going to share today is not telling you what to do, but I would share with what I've advised to my clients and what I would do if I were you sitting in your chair. Is that fair enough? That sounds great. Yeah, absolutely. So let's just start the conversation with,

it kind of just hit me in the side of the face. It just seemed kind of a joke in the beginning. I saw a bunch of stuff on Facebook, like Budweiser's paying them a thousand million dollars to switch to the Budweiser. And then China really got hit hard. And now you see Italy and actually the guy that organizes the podcast is going to come on as well because he's in Italy quarantine. So Gianni is a good buddy of mine and been helping me out for a long time. So tell me your take on it. I know you're involved in a lot of businesses. You've consulted hundreds, if not thousands, and you've got your own franchise and do a lot of stuff in the home

service space. So tell me your thoughts on it so far. Yeah. You know, I would say at first, I think all of us, you know, here in America, you know, took it with a grain of salt and, you know, didn't really know. And what you don't know, you don't know. But a good word of caution, Tommy, is we are not experts. You are not experts. And what you think or what your opinion is, is really not the best guidance for you at this point. And so you need to communicate with your team as to what's going on,

because your only chance to control the proper messaging is early. And you wait to run over this by the end. And Tommy knows that I'm all about proactive. Now that I do recommend again, that, you know, you put something that's in your own voice. I imagine you're like me, you probably got 25,000 emails from every unlike thing that you're subscribed to, you know, airlines. My dentist is sending me stuff

about coronavirus, you know what I'm saying? And so I do think, you know, you need to put it in your voice, but this isn't your time to be creative per se. And you do have to make sure that, you know, you're careful about what you do and don't say. And this is again, why you'd want somebody to glance at it to make sure you can put it out. But I still feel it's important to speak to your team because it's a problem. And I believe i don't know about tom but i think putting something out to your customers is really vitally important as well about what you do now in my particular case the majority of contractors i work with part of their manuals that tommy was referring to is this isn't like we woke up one day and said oh this would be a good thing no we've

always had stuff about following osha guidelines and PPE, which is just fancy for personal protection equipment, and using gloves and things of that nature and covering stuff and wiping things down is something that if you're already doing that, people don't necessarily know that. Now, you're not saying you're going to immunize them from coronavirus, but just to let them know that you've always taken their health and the health of your employees really good. And so that would be part of the messaging that I would run by your trusted advisor and get it out there. What do you think, Tommy? Well, I've been sending out, I sent out about four emails, but me being the CEO, president,

owner of the company, I really have tried to absolutely warn everybody, stay away six feet from customers. I have a garage door business sale and that is an emergency service and you can't get out of your garage. We're not getting phone calls for, I'm not looking for a quieter opener right now, but this is just my perspective. We had the best Saturday we've ever had in the company this past Saturday. Today is going exactly like every other Monday. I've had a few people because their kids are staying at home that we're letting work from home. And I'm very, very fortunate to have set up the company on mostly performance pay. So even if you're working from home, you still want to do your job because you've got skin in

the game. And the great news is as well, is we've got cash reserves waiting for something. I wasn't waiting for a recession, but I would say that we're cash heavy right now. And we've extended terms with our suppliers. We've definitely not been paying off any debt that we have. I'm not making extra payments towards my mortgage or the truck payments. So I say, stay cash strong right now.

Be prepared. Don't go buying 2,000 rolls of toilet paper. I think that's a little bit ridiculous. But at the same time, keep an eye out there. And just here's the biggest thing, Al. I think there's always winners and losers when something like this happens. I fervently agree with that. And I think Tommy should share is that in our work, I was always stressing to Tommy is it's all good, but you got to take some money off the table as you go for occasions just like this. Now, it's not to exploit people or anything else of that nature, but great opportunities will show up. And to Tommy's credit, he took that advice and took some money off of the table so that he would be in a good, strong cash position where he is right now. And that not only for the survival of his company, but, you know, to use this as an opportunity. of the table so that he would be in a good strong cash position where he is right now. And that not only for the survival of his company, but to use this as an opportunity.

Again, being in a longer cycle than I am, my dad used to always step up marketing in these kinds of situations. He would step up acquisition in these kinds of occasions. Now, that's pretty radical, obviously, because we're in the midst of it. But if you're struggling, trust me, other people are struggling. Now, some segments, legitimately, I'm talking about in the contracting world, are hit harder. If you service restaurants and hospitality things around the country, Tommy, that is so being cash tight. And also, I'd like to talk about the longer term for a minute, which is your customers are hurting. I mean, I'm not speaking about the residential necessarily, though missing paychecks will make a mess too. But you have to look at your customers as a long-term relationship. Yeah, could you be insistent about pay and things of that nature or not offering discounts at this time? I would

question, what's the long-term relationship? So if, Tommy, if I serve your bar and restaurant, you know, plumbing or drain or things of that nature or any of those other services, they're hurting right now. And you can wait for them to reach out to you or you can reach out to them and go, you know, I understand the position

and we're here to help. So we're going to offer, you know, a temporary discount and we're going to extend our normal payment things to help you get over this crunch because we see this as a long-term relationship. Yeah, and I think I've heard of some companies, you've got to be very, very careful what you claim. Whether you're an air conditioning company that says, we've got this germ remover that we can install under your unit. The bigger you are, the more you have to worry about as far as liability. So I'm not really reaching out to every single customer at this point. And for example, we've got our morning mojo call out.

And I told the guys this morning, listen, obviously stand away from customers. Try not to be in their homes as much as possible. But understand there's only been one person in Maricopa County where our hub is. And also understand that we're going to come out of this thing. We're a great company. People are showing up. They're still excited to work. We're optimistic. The more you fear mongrel and the more you walk around with masks, and I have disinfectant on every wall. I've had that since we opened this new shop. Everywhere you go, you get some hand sanitizer. I've got the automatic machines. I got 15 of them in the place. We bought reserved toilet paper like everybody did just because I want my people to stay here and come in.

I don't want to be out, but I didn't go crazy. But at the same time, I think every day, we are kind of, you told me this, you said we're kind of mom and dad sometimes. And these are our children. It's a bad thing to say, but it kind of is how it really works. And we need to tell them everything's going to be fine. You guys are going to be fine. Everything's, we're doing everything we can and just be prepared. But it's just a little bit worse than the cold for someone that's healthy. So just go through it and keep a smile on your face. The placebo effect, I was telling somebody yesterday, you know, when you're doing clinical trials, you give somebody a sugar pill,

you give someone the real pill. And what they found is the placebo effect of staying optimistic and healthy is sometimes more powerful than even a vaccine. I don't know what your take is on that. I have a yoga teacher that Tommy knows that I've been going to for 18 years. And when this was a couple of weeks ago,

which seems like a lifetime ago in coronavirus, she goes, don't forget the three doctors you have doctor sleep, doctor eat well, doctor exercise, which is keeping up your own immune efficiency, you know, keeping yourself up. That said, we do have to follow the social distancing and all the good advice that is coming out now and good recommendations that Tommy's talking about as that kind of thing. But you know, it's essential. I don't consider, you know, plumbing, we keep bad water from good water. That's, that's not like a nice, you know, Oh, I wish I had it. You gotta have that and drain and even like I said,

heating and cooling and keeping filters clean, but watch out. As Tommy pointed out, for outrageous claims that are not true or even could be proved not to be true. You're not going to be able to keep people from contracting the disease. That's not what you need to be promising. You need to be talking about what you can do, which is you practice good, safe habits if that's exactly what you do. Don't ever lie. So obviously there's all kinds of stuff. The Senate is going through right now. I'm going to be voting on this deal to see if there's some things that are happening right now for a leave for small businesses. And one of the things that, thank God, we put money away. And there was a spot

probably 18 months ago where if this hit, I would have a really tough time. I'd be letting go of people. I mean, as it got worse, but let's talk about what we could be doing. You're spending time with family probably more than ever if you're quarantined whatsoever. Let's talk about what you should be doing on self-help and just podcasting and just manuals and cleaning up your warehouse. Yeah, I think that's a great, great point, Tommy, is make use of what you can do in the way of time here. First of all, you should always have your shop clean, but let's face it, most of us don't.

Your truck should always be neat and orderly. Like, Tommy is a living example of what I shared with him. It's not like he woke up one day and did that. We did it a while ago, but it doesn't mean it stays that way. And so use this opportunity. You do have to watch your balance sheet, that you cannot lead yourself up and down, but your team is looking to you. Yeah, you could come down hard. You could crush them, you know, say, well, that's your problem, not my problem. And again, have a short term approach of things. And you will be bitten pretty hard when this thing turns around. Not only are your customers a long-term relationship, but your number one customer, as they love to say, is your employees. I mean,

the people who Tommy and I talk about, when we say kids, we don't mean to treat them like kids, but the nature of all businesses is a family business. And when you sit in that corner office, you're a mom and you're a dad in a good way. Are you a good mom, a good dad? Are you looking out for us for the long-term? And I hope you are, because that will, again, set the tone for years to come. You know, Tommy, I'll share a quick story, which the side thing is, we were in New York Union shop, and we, you know, had to negotiate contracts. And this was, seems like a billion years ago, but it was wild inflation. And my dad came to myself and my two older brothers and said, you know, we have to renegotiate the contract. And we said, why? He said, because it's too

favorable for us and it hurts our employees. And we were just like bewildered. And my dad says, listen, long-term, we have to look out for them as they look out for us, as they look out for their customers. So we went back in and opened up this contract so we could pay them more. Are you hearing this? Pay him more. And ultimately, here's what I will tell you, because my dad was, you know, he never went to a business class, but he understood long-term relations better than anybody. And what happened later on, Tommy, new guys would show up who were not there when this happened, but everybody else who was there told the story about what Irving and his kids did in a time when they could have didn't taken advantage of these

people. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. There's a lot that to be said about that. And people are really worried right now because you've got an obligation as an employer to your people to get them through. So, you know, there's certain things we're preparing right now. We're getting laptops set up for people to work from home that don't have computers.

We're making sure that the VoIP system is set up to forward to the different locations. We're making sure that kind of the old inspect what we expect, but make sure, I'm making sure the technicians come out of this, whether that be next month, two months, or whatever that looks like, is you've got a thing called feast or famine. Now I'm guessing we're going to have a huge feast on our hands when this thing's over. Everything's going to shoot up. The economy is going to bounce back like a rubber band. And what's going to happen is we're going to be slammed. And I want to prepare my guys, get ready. With the day this happens, I'm looking for volunteers to wake up earlier, work later, work weekends, be on call. That's one of the first things.

Number two, I've called all my vendors to make sure I have stock, to make sure if I got a pre-buy, I want to be the guy that has everything. When everybody else is out, I want to have it. I want to make sure I extend the payments to any of my vendors that are willing to lend it out to me. Because if I'm willing to make loans to my employees, I want to make sure that I can be a bank for a while for them. And then obviously, like you said, I'm not slowing down on advertising. I talked to a gal, the number one gal that's known. She does Gettle. She does all the huge companies across the United States, direct mail.

She said, I am literally to the limit. I could not do more if people asked. And that kind of made me in a way optimistic. And I posted this on Facebook the other day, but it's a little statement that Henry Ford said, a man who stops advertising to save money is like a man who stops a clock to save time. That is a great one. Actually, again, my dad was really wise about that. He didn't spend as much of the marketing when things were really great. He saved it up for times like this when times would turn and he would put the money to work in situations like this. Now, again, we're going back to knowing your financials about what you can and can't do.

You do have to keep an eye on it because broke is not helpful to anybody. So the stronger you are financially, the more cash reserves that you put in, the better you take a long-term view. These are all key components, I would say always, but especially in a time like this. Let's just switch it real quick here. I'm just curious your take because there's a lot of things happening with the stock market, with cryptocurrency, with real estate interest rates. You know, when I see this happen, you look at a guy like Donald Trump or Warren Buffett, or I could name hundreds of guys, not at the top of my head. But generally speaking, they make their money, unfortunately, during the bad times. You know, when people are buying, you should be selling.

When people are selling, you should be buying. I've heard that from day one, except most people aren't prepared. I've got employees that make well into six figures and they live paycheck to paycheck. And we're working on that. We've got the Dave Ramsey program. We're trying to invest in them, not buying that brand new Harley or buying that brand new Mercedes that costs 60 grand when they lease an apartment. But talk to me a little bit about the opportunities that are going to be out there if you are wise and have an opportunity to invest here. Yeah. I think, again, the ones that you can control is this is a great time to start thinking about acquisition out there and using the money because you can control that. If you buy somebody, close them down, put it under your roof, you're going to make more money with their sales because your overhead

cost is less. Now, there's a lot to it, and Tommy knows that this is a whole program. So don't hear the soundbite and think, oh, yeah, it's a good idea. I'm just going to run out and do that. But when it speaks to investment in general, I was saying to Tommy that Sir John Templeton was credited with, I guarantee you there'll be a great recession followed by a great boom. And so many people have mowed down for this as well for only, I'd say, 35 years, Tommy. And he explained to us years ago, the rules of it, if you will, you can never put money in that you need. You can never put in borrowed money because we don't know when you'll be right. And if you don't have a three to five year horizon, you really shouldn't be investing in stocks for long term. Plus, he said,

I have to ask you this. This is when people used to go into stockbrokers, which, of course, with electronic trading, nobody does anymore. He says, you have to walk into the stockbroker and your people look at you and go, why are you buying that stock when it's really down? Well, here's the question I have for you. Do you think, let's use Boeing as an example. I understand why Boeing's down. And, you know, things are only cheap for a reason. So ultimately, there are only two companies really in the world that make airliners, Boeing and Airbus. Does that mean that Boeing will somehow come out of the other side of this, because right now the market is probably pricing it that they'll never sell another plane, Tom. You know what I mean? Well, yeah, there's a lot of airlines I think that got shorted. Oh, yeah. And definitely they're not going to make it through.

But I remember back in the day that a guy, actually my sister in Milwaukee, her neighbor, that does a lot with stocks. I remember when Wells Fargo was around $2 and 20 cents. And he looked at me, we were in the middle of the street. It was cold outside. And he, and he goes, Tommy, he goes, if I were you, if you've got any money, buy the heck out of Wells Fargo at $2. He goes, I promise you they're not going away and it will rebound stronger and faster than most other stocks. And I think about that and man, it's crazy, but you're right. You got to wait it out. And every, for every person that loses, there's a winner. It's like, there's always a winner and loser. And the smartest people in the world have, nobody has saw this, the economy,

the low interest rates, everything was just lined up. And what's crazy is I've always said to people, why would you pay after your house? Why would you do this? Why would you do that? But now I'm kind of eating my words going, well, shoot, there's no guarantees. I do know one thing though, the stock market, if you look at the beginning of time, it's always gone up over time and people lost their life savings when 9-11 happened but if they kept it in they gained it back it's just you're going to work a few more years and i think your acquisition side some people are going to look at this and say i'm not dealing with this i had employees quit i had someone get sick blah blah blah they're gonna have to take out a loan they're just not prepared to do it yeah or close the doors and i. And I feel bad because, look, the bars are closing.

The restaurants are closing. In California, I've talked to people. They're like, it's a ghost town. And I'm like, wow, look at the mass media, the effect. But what other tips and advice do you have, Al? I really appreciate you coming on. I just want to educate you. A lot of what Tommy was sharing about investing, again,

is because Tommy, you know, he did some good advice and put some cash aside during the good times to be able to wait out these times and do the rest of it. This will evolve. As to when, I do not know. No one can know. But at this point, your job is to triage what you need to do, stay proactive, manage your business, do good communications, use the trusted advisors that you have, be able to craft the messaging that you need to do. Because people are looking to you to continue to lead the company,

not just in good times, but times like these. And these are trying times. But that said, you still are mom and dad. Well, Al, I'll tell you this. If you guys get time on Audible, Al's in the Home Service Millionaire book, but he also has a really great book on Audible, Al's in the Home Service Millionaire book, but he also has a really great book on Audible, The Seven Power Contractor. And Al is the guru when it comes to

manuals. You guys could find all the links on the Home Service Expert or Millionaire page. And Al, do you have any closing thoughts? It's a great time to get things under control, to demonstrate and flex your muscles as a leader, and to do the things that need to be done. This can be your shining moment. And again, use the tools that are in your toolbox. And if you don't have the tools, go get them and make sure you get, and tools in this particular case is the right advice and get it to work for you. I want to say one more thing just closing here. There's so many things that are not caught up yet, like China closing for a couple months in

manufacturing and maybe some stuff in Mexico and Europe. And the things that we haven't thought of yet, the supply chain, if you will, and not opening up to other countries and shipments not going out. What are some of the things that you would recommend as far as preparation? I don't know if I'm missing anything, but obviously, contacting suppliers. I think, you know, Tommy, I think of myself as having a really big, broad thing. But when this all happened, I didn't think Uber was at risk. I mean, I couldn't understand all the ripples, you know? I don't know who could. And I mean, we're not talking about six months to a year ago.

We're talking about last week and two weeks before that. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. It's hard to know all these things. But this really comes back to the boring things, which is your ability to know your balance sheet, your ability to lead, your ability to have a long view of things and to make good sound financial decisions and to treat your vendors as your partners. And so early and often communication like Tommy has already done with his vendors is not a good idea. It's to me essential that you do that and open up that dialogue sooner rather than later. Well, I appreciate you coming on. And I think this is some great advice. Appreciate your time today and look forward to seeing you soon.

Sounds great. Thank you. Hey guys, I'm here with my good friend Gianni. Gianni is actually the man behind the scenes on the podcast. He organizes everything from A to Z, and he happens to be Italian. And he's in Italy right now. I'm Italian. He's Italian. We get along great. Actually, my videographer, Giuseppe, is Italian as well. And Gianni and Giuseppe know each other well. They usually speak Italian to each other. But Gianni's in the midst of it right now. He's been quarantined. The bars, everything, everything thatni's in the midst of it right now. He's been quarantined, the bars, everything. Everything that's happening in the United States has already happened in Italy. Gianni, do you want to just introduce yourself and kind of tell us what it's like out there?

Yeah, of course. So yeah, things here are a little bit chaotic. As you guys probably know, since Sunday, we've been quarantined. And basically the whole city is locked down. Not only the city, we started with the region around Milan in the beginning. And then just one day later, the government decided to close the whole country.

So even to go out right now, you need a permission and you have to give a good reason for why you're going out. Of course, if you are buying groceries or medicines or things like this that are of primary importance then of course you can do it but you know if you need to go anywhere else you need a permission otherwise you can get fine and even finish in jail so you know things uh have been not really good over here. And everything happened

so fucking quick. And the first day, I think, was the 26th when we had the first case. And on the 10th of March, if I'm not wrong, we had the whole country closing. So pretty much that's the situation right now. We are around 28,000 cases and every day we have new cases. The main problem here and you know with everybody is that this virus has exponential growth which means that every new day it has more cases than the previous day. And because of that, it increases very quickly the number of total cases. So if you are just in the beginning and you have only 50 cases, you might feel like it's all good. It's easy to contain. But after a week or so, if you're increasing the number of cases every single day, more than the previous day, what happens is that in a week from 50, you can get to a thousand. And just to give

you some perspective on that, I'm tracking those numbers because you know, tell me how I am. I like tracking numbers. And in the US right now, we have around 5,000 cases. And just yesterday, one-fifth of those cases happened. So yesterday, we had almost 1,000 cases. So just to give you an idea of how this financial growth happens. So I've heard that the Chinese territories are kind of declining. I've heard they somehow got in front of it with testing. I've heard a lot about South Korea. I've heard that there's more elderly people in China and possibly Italy. How do you see this getting in front of this and how do you think it's going to affect the world economy? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, of course, we have a lot of elderly people here in Italy. That's probably why we also have a high death rate. Because of course, the virus is way more dangerous if you are older or you cannot operate, if people fear going to work, then of course, you end up paying the consequences.

And the bigger businesses, they are also suffering, but they have way more cash flow. They can't survive times like this. So that's why I think, you know, having this podcast today and you talk to all of you, I know you're going to talk to Joshua as well. It's super important to understand, you know, first, what can you do and what kind of opportunities there is when there is a time where cash flow is king, right? And also when there's a lot of fear, how do you mitigate fear inside your business? And also how do you make sure that customers are not afraid of getting people inside of their houses, you know, are not afraid of consuming

and keep purchasing your services? I mean, overall, I don't think most Americans are afraid. I think you might have a single-digit percentage of people that are going to be self-quarantined. Obviously, the older you are, the more careful you're going to be. I think anybody from 15 on to 60 is just going to say, I need my garage door fixed. I need to get this stuff done. And they're going to be spending a lot more time at home and noticing things they need to get done. I think we're going to bounce back hard. I'm just a little bit concerned about how we get in front of this. I just want to get through it. And going into the summer, I heard, is a really good thing because viruses don't live in the heat as well. Yeah. Is there any other insight you could give us? What's the attitude? What are people saying? What have you been hearing?

Yeah, I guess here people are scared. You know, I mean, in the beginning, people were a little bit more complacent. I think at the end of the day, it's about finding a medium ground where you're not panicking because panicking is terrible, of course. It's terrible for the business, terrible for the country. And, you know, the media will do whatever they can to put you in panic mode. And you should avoid it at all costs. But, you know, a little bit of concern just to make sure that if things get worse, you are ready.

And also to make sure that the virus doesn't spread as much as it should. I think this is important. But right now here, of course, most of the people are scared because no one ever went through a situation where they couldn't go out of their home. So having to go through that situation is not pleasant. And of course, the economy is in a bad situation. And that's why I guess it's important that the U.S. is taking

some measures right now to make sure that you guys don't even get close to what's happening here, which I hope and, you know, from what I'm seeing, shouldn't happen. So one last question, Gian, and kind of close us out here. Do you guys feel that you've gotten through the majority of it? I mean, here's what I've heard. And this is, I've been watching the news a lot. So apparently there's mild cases. People could have it and just really think it's a cold. And what they're creating is antibodies or whatever that is to fight it. And as the virus is out, our bodies start to fight it. And actually what happens is we mutate and develop tolerances against it, is what I've been hearing. So what happens is we're actually not only working

on the vaccines and testing more and quarantining, but we're actually becoming more strong to fight it as long as we've got a good immune system and you eat healthy juice, vitamins, and work out. So what is your take on that? Do you feel like you guys are just getting started or do you feel like you're coming out of it or where do you feel like you're at in Italy? Yeah. So in terms of numbers, like I was saying in the beginning, you know, when you're having those exponential growth, that's where the problem is because then the healthcare system

start needing a lot of people and a lot of equipment to be able to serve everybody. But right now, I've been following the numbers and in the last three or four days, the numbers have started to decrease, which means that we should start having less cases day by day and hopefully manage the situation better. In terms of immune system, yeah, that's a tough question. I think that, you know, most of us, we probably go through it fine. The real problem is, you know, for people that doesn't have, is not in a healthy situation right now or have any kind of problems with diabetes and health disease and asthma and stuff like that. And of course, you know,

I think part of our job is to also care about those people and make sure that we are not spreading because even if I'm not infected right now, even if I don't have the symptoms, I might be infected, right? Because it takes 10 to 14 days to actually have incubation, where you finally realize, okay, I was infected before the symptoms were just not showing up. Of course, I don't want to pass it to my father, who is an 81 years old, who has also heart disease. So of course, I'm going to avoid being with my father as much as I can. Right. And I ask him to stay at home because he could be one of the people who, you know. Yeah, he's the one that said he's at risk of death. I mean, obviously, it'll fight your your whole system, your lungs.

It attacks everything. So I think I think it's good to hear from your perspective. I think it's really about keeping positive. You know, the economy, there's going to be deaths, and there's always been from viruses. So I think it's staying optimistic, communicating, following the news, hope for the best, plan for the worst. And there's going to be a lot of winners and losers when we come out of this. And it's really make the decision right now, plan for it, spend this time,

organize your business, get good with your family and move forward. So appreciate this, Gianni. You do a great job for us here on this podcast. And thanks for all your hard work. No problem. Let me just ask you a quick question because I know one of the guys from our membership group, his name is Christian LaCroix. And he asked us a question. Can I ask this question here?

Yeah, you bet. So his question was, how to drive business and lead our team in this moment of panics and unknowns? Which quick decisions and actions should be evaluated first? Well, here's the deal. I do PTO. So I can force people to take PTO.

So I think there's a lot of things. Communication, sending out bulletins every day, one a week, at least from the owner. I think number two, I think you should really find out what kind of lines of credit you have from your bank. You should be communicating with your vendors, making sure that they're going to have stock for you. If not, you might want to prepay or get a credit for it. They just said you could pay your IRS bill three months late without any type of fees. So I would try to stay cash heavy, not pay down any principal, try to really pay the minimum on your credit cards. Anywhere that they're going to forgive you for making late payments,

I'd really keep an eye on that and make a note of that and not pay. I'd also force people to use PTO. I'd get volunteers from your staff to take vacation time or sick days. And then what's going to happen is legislation is passing that's going to give them probably up to three months to be sick. That should be passing in the next few days. So I think the government's going to step up individually to people who are employed that need to spend time with their kids and whatnot. Also, just really stay optimistic and have a plan for when we come out of this. Don't cut your marketing. The people that have cut marketing and turn everything off, it's like

stalling out your engine in the middle of a race. It's the people that keep doing this stuff and know we're going to come out of it. They're going to end up taking a lot of market share and be the winners. It's like the people that pulled out when the stock market dropped. It's going to come out of it. They're going to end up taking a lot of market share and be the winners. It's like the people that pulled out when the stock market dropped. You know, it's going to rebound. You're never going to know when that happens and you're going to lose a third of your money. So I don't have a crystal ball,

but I know that I'm long-term staying in business and I'm going to keep riding this out. And the preparation is just, I'm getting with my lawyer. I ran a little bit late for this call because I'm asking them some of the new laws. We're going to get volunteers. We've got a system where we pay for performance. So a lot of people aren't going to be crushing their paychecks. They're just going to have to buy conservatively and not go out and spend money where they normally

would. So that's the best tips I can provide. Stay optimistic with your staff. You're a leader. They're looking for you to lead. They want to know that you're prepared for this kind of stuff. This is going to make a big difference when they come out of this about how you handled this. So that's the best advice I can give Gianni. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And thanks, Christian LaCrosse, for asking the question. Cool. Well, I appreciate you, Gianni. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. Today, I'm with Joe Cressera. Those of you that don't know Joe, most people do. He's Uncle Joe. He's a sales trainer. He teaches companies how to close more deals, make more money, and grow up

to be a big, badass company. We're working with him now. He's going to be working with us on a lot of things, and he's going to be coming on a full hour on the podcast. But today we're talking about the coronavirus and what to do if you're a business in the home service industry. Joe, thanks for coming on. It's my pleasure, Tommy. Not a day goes by where I don't think about and appreciate the finest service professionals on the planet, and especially people who have a lot of passion like yourself. So it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much. Yeah, well, you know, this is crazy.

I got about 10 phone calls yesterday. Depending on the industry, if you're not one of those businesses in the home service space that need to get done, if you're trapped in your garage, it needs to be done, but you're not probably going to replace it if it doesn't have to. You're not going to put in a new toilet right now or a hot water heater unless it's leaking or you're having bad issues. Same thing for HVAC, same thing for most things. I feel bad for my buddy that has a pool company. He's got 40 employees. I mean, cash is king right now. Everybody knows that. What are your thoughts about this thing? How quick is it going to blow over? What's going to happen here in the interim? And how long is this going to leave Ripple?

Well, I don't think this is going to blow over at all. I think it's something that is going to be sort of a new normal for a little while. And I say that in a way that I don't aim to scare anybody. But I think we all have to assume that this is going to be going on for the near future. And one of the things I always say in sales and also when you're running a company, obviously, it'd be nice to have an eye on our goals, but there's also the reality that's happening right now. And so, I feel that people who are service providers who spend time on what's happening right now are going to be the most successful. Fear and anxiety and pressure are only a result, Tommy, of the illusion of the future, that we're focused on what might happen in the future and negative outcomes in the future.

And Tommy, you know better than anybody that if you're focused on whether I'm going to fall or not, most likely you will fall, right? People who will succeed through this are not going to focus on falling. They're going to focus on everything they can do right now at the moment they can do it to come up with ways to do two things. Number one, make sure they lead with grace. You know, that this is a time when leaders have to be calm and mindful where the competence, character, and communication comes through or it doesn't. And they hide in a little under the covers and they are afraid based on something that happened in the past or something that happened in the future. And neither one of those two things are guaranteed to anybody.

The past is for losers and cowards because it's something that has already happened. We can't change it. And the future is only going to change based on what we are doing right now. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think there's a lot going on. I think the main thing is be a leader.

Be optimistic with your crew. Don't try to lay off everything. See what happens through Congress legislation. I just seen a study come out less than an hour ago that they don't think a trillion dollars is going to pull us out of this. They think we're going to need more. The good news is we live in a great country. We're at the best time ever in the economy. So we were prepared in some ways for this. Hopefully most people have a little bit of cash reserves. I'll tell you what I believe. I believe it's those who punch back the hardest and run into this are the biggest ones that are going to succeed.

The people that quit advertising, that are laying everybody off, that are making cuts, dramatic cuts in a bad time, are the ones that lose the most. I couldn't agree more. I've always had a saying, and I think it's never been more true than it is right now today, that you cannot save your way or cut back to success. It's impossible to cut back far enough for anybody to succeed during this time. Does that make sense? Yeah.

There's so many things that are going through people's minds and it's so much fear mongering. And for every single time someone loses, there's someone that gains. And the question that you got to look through is, do you want to gain or not? I mean, you need to be a rock star tomorrow. We're getting ready to check out computers and for people that want to work from home. We're going to be buying pizza and flowers for everybody tomorrow. We're going to be telling everybody to stay healthy and we're going to have everybody's back. We're coming up with a loan system. We're going to hope the government helps out, but we're prepared for this and there's a huge, huge opportunity. So when you say near future, what does that mean to you? The only thing that was promised to anybody is what's happening right

now today. However, I think planning is an aspect of what you have to do. But again, I think that obviously there's going to be some financial, everybody's going to get hit financially. But the good news, if you look at it from a good side, is that everybody will suffer the financial hit. There's nobody, including banks, landlords, the most powerful businesses on the planet are going to suffer and have people who cannot pay their bills. It won't just be you who can't pay your bills. It'll be other people. So there's never been a time in history where, you know, I think I've always said this, Tommy, if you're not good at paying your bills when the economy is going good, then you're probably not going to be good when the economy is bad, right? It's not going to make much of a difference. You've had

that feeling of debt and you've always had that, but it's just going to have more of it and it's not going to be, it's going to be meaningless to the person who's not doing it. The people who are going to struggle the most are the people who have never experienced setbacks or debt. Thank goodness for me that there was a time back in the early 90s when I was in severe debt and I got myself out of it. So I do know what it feels like to be in that part. What I realized is that worrying about the fact that I got myself into debt, I was worrying about the past and I wasn't worrying about what I need to do right now every day. And I like what you're saying, Tommy, which is to communicate with your people. And you have to take care of two people here. One is your internal clients as you're trying to do, work

out loan systems for them and do things like that. And I think the communication with your internal clients to establish the channels of communication and regularly communicate. I would have regular Zoom meetings with your entire staff to let them know what the status is today. And I would just be honest with people. I'd be as transparent as possible with sharing all the good news and sharing all the bad news that is happening for your company and yourself and things like that. And I think people will appreciate that honesty and they won't feel like you're trying to solve this problem yourself. My advice would be, don't try to solve the problem yourself. Try to bring the team on and enlist your most powerful asset, which is your workforce

and the ideas that they may have. Make sense there, Tommy? A hundred percent. And as wise, wise words, I want to ask you one last thing. As we start, there will be a time, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next month. There will be a time that we start coming out of this. What do you recommend as far? I've already contacted for a simple thing, my vendors to make sure I've got inventory because we're a global economy. We're going to have some issues with inventory, especially the stuff made in China, Mexico and other places. So that's one thing. The other thing is making sure to kind of set up some nice grace periods with the companies that have money to flexible payments. I'm going to be asking everybody for more co-op this year i'm going to be prepared to fire back

190 i'm going to pick up all the shit that everybody else is leaving yep and they're going to come back to battle with a two-man army i'm going to come back with a thousand person fleet and uh i guess my question for you is what else can we be prepared for as this stuff starts to thus settle? Well, I think you kind of hit the nail on the head, which is that when we do make the comeback, when this thing does turn out on the other side, you're either going to hit the gates like a thoroughbred and you're going to be, you know, half a track ahead, or you're going to be stuck in a morass. And people who don't communicate with their employees, who don't have the right communication tools to make sure that they have protection for their team and their clients, and who get themselves into trouble in that way, that's one more problem you got to solve. All I can say is that don't create your own emergencies, right? That during this crisis, do not make self-inflicted wounds.

Stay on top of this. You know, the workforce capacity, if people need time off, give them that time off. If they're afraid to work, say, you know what? Let me check your status in a couple days and see how your mind has changed, right? Don't just give up on people. Just because people feel fearful or have anxiety one day or they're not effective one day. Understand this, guys. There's a lot of people who are going to be awfully afraid and they're going to need a leader such as you and other people to be able to check in with them. Again,

don't give up on your people because it's the most powerful asset you have. I'm glad you mentioned the inventory and supply chain. Definitely now's the time to be able to see if you can get access to back channels to get into you can get access to back channels to get into warehouses and things like that. Don't forget about facility or remediation cleanup. If somebody were to get a contaminated area or work area or work in somebody's home or somebody at your office, you need to figure out how we're going to clean up that area and disinfect. Check your insurance companies. Some people may have business interruption insurance. You may not realize that you may be covered to a degree and may have money coming that way, right?

And then, you know, just be aware of the market demand. Definitely, you might have a small amount of business where it could sink, but there's also a surge that's going to come, Tommy, that'll be through the roof. So when things do resume, plan on the surge, as you're saying. And one thing I could say about the marketing, Tommy, now is not the time to start marketing new opportunities or coming up with new solutions for clients. Right now is the time to, number one, to inform clients of just the basic things that you are open and you have special protective situations for clients and you are requiring clients to do different things.

So the way you answer the phone and get people prepared, get yourself a script as to informing clients when you answer that phone, what you're going to expect from them and the different protocols that you're going to take into place. And also on the marketing you do on your website and on Facebook groups and things like that and your local community groups, let people know what your intention is to be able to serve the clientele in that way you can do it. So there's many ways around this. And yes, even a place like where you own, Tommy, a door business, I believe it has a lot to do with the security of the people you work for. Definitely, you can make sure that the garage door industry does not, they're not part of the virus and everything like that. So if somebody can't open their garage door, they're still going to call, you know, I'm sorry, they're still going to look for that solution. And if you inform people that we are still doing business and we're

doing it safely and to protect you and our employees, I think everybody will appreciate that. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. You know, it's interesting because, you know, back in the day when I did a lot of ValPak, I still do, but this is when I was a much smaller business, is I used to debate whether to do anything in December because December is always a slow month. You got Christmas and I used to make this real nice ValP pack with Santa Claus flying in the town with a lift master garage opener in the back. And it was always a really slow December, but it's so funny because January I had more business than any other garage company. And they'd give me this mailer that came out in the middle of December. Right. And all I'm saying is people are taking

the stuff. They're literally at home now more than ever they're getting the mailers they're doing their research they're figuring out what needs to be done we're creating a plan and the people that are ready for this the people that just say i'm stopping advertising get rid of people i'm doing this i'm shutting down doors i'm doing this i'm getting out of this good run be scared start saying your prayers the apocalypse is coming but the other start start figuring out plans strategic partnerships how you're going to grow Run, be scared. Start saying your prayers. The apocalypse is coming. But the other thing is start figuring out plans, strategic partnerships, how you're going to grow,

how you're going to get better terms, what the next step is to grow the company, how you're going to recruit better. When everybody's getting fired, figure out how you can pull these great employees and train them better. I think there's an opportunity here that no one else sees. And it's maybe 1% of business owners that are going to come out of this thing.

And there's going to be a huge, huge shift in money. And I'll tell you, I plan on being on the winning side. Receiving. Well, you know, it's like, that's a wonderful analogy. And I think I'm going to borrow that and inspire some of my clients with that, Tom, because you're right. You lay down the groundwork at that Christmas and all of a sudden when everybody else was dead, you're the only one who had a message that you were sending people.

And even if the message is just goodwill toward men, during the holiday season, it made you presence and front of the mind awareness there. And when they were thinking of a solution, I do agree with you. I have a guy in Seattle, Washington, who just now has a $200,000 service opportunity he wound up with because he couldn't get anybody else to respond. Everybody else was, they're in their quarantine. And he's like, well, I'm still going to go out and look at it for you. And I'll take a look at it. We just got to remain a six foot distance from each other. And he asked questions.

Does anybody have contamination? Or have you gone out of the country? And he asked, we have a, by the way, I have a script for everybody. If they'd like to get a script from me about questions you should ask your customers before you go out there in this virus, I'd be happy to share that with you, Tommy. And you can distribute it to everybody on the podcast if you'd like to. Yeah, that'd be great. I think just making sure they've never been out of town and standing six feet away. I'm going to hold the iPad for the customers, not spend much time in their home, even though

we definitely promote in-home selling. This is probably not the time to do that. Just pay attention to the laws. Understand, I talked to my lawyer yesterday. I talked to him today. If you're going to let somebody go, do it the right way. This is not the time to be letting go of a lot of people, but you know what? You can't cut your way to success, but there's certain people that should have been cutting way before this, and you didn't. So now you have to. So just cut the crap. Time to clean the pipes here.

And I'll never say it's a bad time to get rid of bad people. But why did you wait until something like this happened? And you do have an inventory of time. It will soon, if not now. Definitely use that time for training and getting people up to speed so that your thoroughbred horses are able to leave that gate when the bell goes off, which it will. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. People think that this is a vacation. For me, when everyone else is sleeping, it's a time to get ahead. And I think I love to work weekends because I'm like, man, this is an extra day or two that no one else is getting. It's an opportunity. And those people that view it that

way are going to lead this country. They're going to lead the world and they're going to grow a business that's unstoppable. I heard earlier, just this quick analogy of, you know, bulls run towards rain, cows run away from it. They run towards a storm. The reason why they run towards a storm is they run right through it. Cows end up in it for three times the amount because they run away and it follows them. So, you know, be a bull. And finally, Joe, I'll just give you one last final thought of what you want to close with as far as this whole pandemic goes. Yeah. To me, the biggest thing is communication during this time. Those who go to sleep and think that it's not my responsibility to communicate, your company is only going to be limited during this challenging time

by the amount of leaders that you have. Hopefully, you've invested in your team before previous to this, and you have created a certain leadership and boldness of your team to be able to act in lieu of your leadership because you may be busy with other things so if you don't have other leaders on the team you may suffer but it's never too late to train and that's a leadership is something that can be trained and it can be created a vision for every one of you out there tommy and including you and everybody i talk to you're my heroes because you guys put the stuff

into place every day and you're grinding it out and you're making me proud. And definitely, I'm just honored to be here with you, Tommy, to close out on that note. Hey, I appreciate it. I want to give you a final thought because I just thought of something as I looked up at my bookshelf

and maybe you can appreciate this. I had this guy on my podcast. There's one of my favorite books of all time. It's called The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes. He ran a thing called Chet Holmes International. Totally, yes. And I had his daughter on my podcast, Amanda Holmes. And at the time when her father died of cancer, unfortunately out of nowhere, she took this company and she was the only one to step up. I mean, she inherited it. She didn't know anything about the business. And I remember her saying, thank God my dad was

smart enough to pay every single one of his employees our performance pay. Meaning that if we weren't bringing in the revenue, no one got paid. And in the downturns of him dying and her learning the business, they failed at a lot of things, but everybody stepped up to earn the money. And when they lost money, she lost money, but they also lost money. So thank God everybody working from home is on performance pay. If they don't do well, they're getting minimum wage. And I'm looking at our company and the majority of its performance pay. When it comes to dispatchers, CSRs, the door departments, our technicians, our management, everybody's paycheck depends on these numbers.

And very, very, very fortunate that we set it up this way. So that's also one last thing to think about is, are you set up with a bunch of salaries and hourly pay? Or do you set up people to win the game and lose the game? Because I love winners and losers. This world's not created equal. Losers, we create an environment for them to quit fast or rise up to the top and winners they should win big so that's kind of where I wanted to leave I don't know if you wanted to get a quick statement on that that's well said and I think uh you're gonna find these moments will reveal

strength in character and weakness in that character. And I think, you know, performance pay is no guarantee. It definitely helps insulate the company during downtimes. But I would tell you this too, though. It's also going to reveal people who may have been hiding in the shadows regardless. And you're going to be surprised at some of the people who were always there for you and you just never realized it. It's a blind spot that you may have. who is always great but we just didn't really see

it you know so i look forward to that and discovering new possibilities and giving your internal clients and your actual uh you know employees giving them these opportunities to lead both themselves and other people and their clients. So I look forward to seeing that. Actually, I'm excited about this time. Probably never more than right now, really. Yeah. I just said this earlier, but 9-11 was horrible. The housing crunch was disgusting. Y2K, who knew it was going to happen? There's so many things, but they're out of my control. I know what's in my control. And to take advantage and see every single, we call it when I went to my master's program, a SWOT analysis. We do strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the scenario. And I was always best at the opportunity side of it. I'd have 20 million things in the opportunities and the weaknesses would be very,

very rare. That was your weakness. you had too many opportunities one more thing the one guy i do teach is 11 million dollar salesperson rick picard from he would leave you with these words he'd say when one of his co-workers said what are you going to do about this bad economy we're having a couple years back he would be economy back in 2008 wasn't that great he said oh it's. I'm just not going to participate in the bad economy. You guys can, though. Oh, my God. He goes, I'm just not going to participate in it this time. You guys go ahead, though, if you want. All right, Tommy, have a great one. Thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate it. Hey, guys, welcome back to the Home Service Expert. Today I have a returning guest. His name is Joshua Latimer.

He's a good friend of mine now. He's from my home state, which is Michigan, and he absolutely kills it at everything he does. He's optimistic, works with hundreds, if not thousands of businesses, just does amazing things. Josh, it's a pleasure to have you on again. Tommy, you're one of my favorite people in the world to talk to. So I love hanging out with you, man. Yeah. You know, there's a lot going on right now, obviously with just the whole epidemic and pandemic going on. I know you've been

traveling and this whole thing going right now. It's a great opportunity to start connecting back with family and getting organized and creating plans, reading, working out. You should be meditating. It's a great opportunity for every single problem. There's a different viewpoint that if you change the way you look at the situation, there's an opportunity in every single problem. Well, just remember that the frame in which you look at the world through is going to dictate the results that you get. And you can have two people in the same exact situation

with completely different perspectives on what's happening. That's exactly what's happening right now with coronavirus. And just remember, are you looking at the world through the right frame? Are you looking at it the way Tommy Mello does, where when you called me on my cell phone yesterday just to chat, you were so the world through the right frame? Are you looking at it the way Tommy Mello does, where when you called me on my cell phone yesterday just to chat, you were so excited on all the businesses you're going to buy, on all the deals you're going to make with inventory.

I mean, you're going to have all the supply and inventory and all these other companies are not going to because you're running towards the storm. That's a frame. You see it. You're like drooling at the opportunity. You had your biggest Monday ever, you said too, right? Where other people are shrinking back, they're in fear, they're panic mode.

They're more worried about getting extra toilet paper than they are about capitalizing on the opportunity that's literally all around them. And a good friend of mine, her name's Elena Ladeau. She's one of our Conquer coaches. You met her in Lake Tahoe. She has this incredible analogy and I'll just end it with this. Buffaloes

run towards the storm and cows run away from the storm. And this is actually true. So what happens if you think like the Great Plains and there's a thousand cows, when there's a huge storm head rolling in over the mountains, over the hills, cows turn around and run away from it. And what ends up happening is they end up staying in the storm for two or three times as long as they need to, because they're moving with the storm. Buffalo, on the other hand, turn and point directly at the storm and run right through it. And they get a net benefit because they get through it faster. So I just want to encourage you to run towards the storm. Open your eyeballs. If you're surrounded by people that are negative,

then change your group of people that you're around and list double up on the Tommy's podcast if that's what you need to do. But yeah, it's going to suck. There might be a little pain depending on what industry you're in, but it will be temporary. There will be a light at the end of the tunnel. Just make sure that you're ready to capitalize on it when it comes. Love it, Josh. Thank you very much. Thank you, Tommy. Hey, I just wanted to take a quick minute and thank you for listening to the podcast. You know, most people don't understand this, but the way that the podcast has grown is when people subscribe and they leave a review. So if you would please, please, please, Wyatt's top of mind,

take a quick minute to subscribe and leave a quick review. It'll help me out so much. If you just took a little bit of time right now, I can't tell you enough how much I appreciate the listeners and the feedback. And also when you subscribe, what I'm going to do is let you know the next guest coming on the podcast. And I'll let you email me anything you want me to ask that next person coming on. All the pros I have on here, I want your feedback. I want you to subscribe so you can start giving me the questions you want me to ask and help us grow together. Also, I'm giving away my book for free now. All you gotta do is go to homeservicemillionaire.com

forward slash podcast. You gotta cover the shipping and handling, but I'm giving the material out for free. It's 200 pages. It's a hardcover book. Homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast. I appreciate each and every one of the listeners and thank you for making this It's 200 pages. It's a hardcover book. Homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast. I appreciate each and every one of the listeners. And thank you for making this Home Service Expert podcast a success.

I hope you're having a great day. And thanks again.