The Home Service Expert Podcast - Transforming From A One-Man Show To An Employee-Centric Business

Episode Date: May 1, 2018

Mark Stoner’s fair share of failures has made him into the success that he is today. He went from running a one-man chimney sweeping business to turning it into a multi-million dollar business. Today, Mark Stoner owns and runs Ashbusters Chimney Service, the third largest chimney sweep operation in the U.S, and is the author of Blue Collar Gold: How To Build A Service Business From The Dirt Up. In this episode, we talked about hiring, leadership, company culture...

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. Okay, so I'm here with Mark Stoner. You're listening to the home service expert. Mark comes from a very deep background in chimney sweeping, believe it or not, and he's done some

amazing things in the home service niche. And I'm really excited to have him on today. Mark, how's your day going? Hey, thanks for having me, Tommy. Excited to be here. Day is good. It's in chimney day every day and I love it. All right. Well, I don't know a lot about chimney cleaning per se. I just had to get a chimney replaced about a month ago in Michigan on one of my rentals. But tell me a little bit about how you got into the niche and what you've been through and where you're at today. Sure. Thanks for asking. I basically got into the business. My house had caught on fire from a chimney on Christmas Eve when I was about 14 years old. And I knew kind of the horror and kind of the terror that could happen with a

fire from the chimney. A couple of years later, I was in college and I was actually doing a business course and we did a mock business startup. And, you know, part of the course was find a business that you could start and let act like it's real and marketed and, you know, do forecasts and see if it's real. And it and, you know, do forecasts and see if it's real. And I happened to come across an article that talked about sweeping chimneys and it was relatively low startup costs. And I knew some of the dangers that could happen from, you know, if you don't clean and inspect your chimney. So I made that my project. And when I went through the course and I finished up, I thought, you know, I'm going to really do this.

So I went ahead and bought the equipment. And I was 18 going on 19 years old. And I'm 50 now. So I've been doing it for 32 years. And it's been an amazing ride. I start off as a one-man operation like almost everybody does. And now we have about 40 employees. And we run about 20 different service

trucks in a couple of different states. And we've just grown it from chimney sweeping to pretty much everything to do with chimneys from restoration. And like you said, have chimney replacement and new installations and pretty much everything with fire. You know, that's basically what we do now. That's awesome. It just it just goes to show you, you know, when I tell people I do garage doors, I mean, they laugh. They say, is there really money in that? And no matter what it is, if it's on a home, I can tell you there's millionaires made every day in this niche. I mean, Google just spent $100 million really going into the home service. You see Amazon's getting into it, the biggest players in the world.

It's exciting. And that's why we do this podcast is because we could take someone like you who's been mega successful, really gone through a lot of the mistakes. And that's what's exciting about it is because you learn from your mistakes. So, you know, you were featured in an article and it says shortly after, basically, a guy had a really bad injury, fell off a roof. The business was worthless because it was a one-man operation. It was really tough because nobody wanted to buy that business, right? And you had a serious injury. As a result, you wanted to sell your business that didn't work. It pushed you to transform your whole business, right? Can you tell us a little bit about that? Sure. It was one of those things you call a magic moment in your life where you think you're doing the right thing.

And so for years, I was really a one-man operation. When I just gave you that synopsis, that compressed a lot of mistakes and errors in those 32 years. But basically, I started off a one-man operation, and I really did that for 17 years, thinking I really didn't think very much, very big. And I didn't think the business could get very big. But one day I was working pretty much. I was by myself and I fell 30 feet off a roof and I got seriously injured. And I thought this is a sign I should be out of this. I've been doing it for 17 years.

But for 17 years, I thought I was building a business that I could sell that had a lot of value. And in my mind, my phone rings off the hook. I've got a good name. I'm sure this is worth several hundred thousand dollars. And at some point when I'm ready to cash out, I'm sure I'm going to make a lot of money at this. And my error was, so when I fell and I said, okay, I'm getting out now, I'm going to sell. What was really surprising was that no one wanted to buy my business and I couldn't sell it. The one-man operation was literally almost worthless.

I had one competitor offer me $10,000 for some of my equipment and my phone number and some of my database. And I couldn't believe how wrong I was about the value of my business. And so it was that point that I said, I really made a mistake here. What I need to learn how to do is really run a business, not a job. I had been really filled in my own job for 17 years. And I read the book, The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. And most business people will refer back to that business as that book is a really great book to read if you're in business. And for me, it really changed my thought about what I've been doing wrong. And most importantly, what do I need to do now to fix and make this a true business that will run with or without me?

That's the key to business. Make it run with or without you. Yeah, that's 100 percent. I actually buy that book and I buy the ultimate sales machine for every one of my managers. And Zig Ziglar used to ask people, if you were to leave today your business, you went on a vacation two weeks and he's going to pay for everything. What would the business look like when you got back and couldn't run itself? And it gets back to the same thing. I mean, Marcus Lamone from The Profit, he says it's about people

process a product and it's great advice because a lot of people listening right now could probably not run their business if they're not involved on a day-to-day business, day level. So the biggest question I get, Mark, is I do a great job. I got a great customer base. I do quality work. Where do I go to find the employees? How do I find them? What do I look for? What's the best way to pay them? So there's a lot of questions I get. So when it comes to hiring great employees, what's the difference before you learn this and you come to the realization? And what's the difference after? Because you were the one man show and then you built a business that you could sell. So talk to me a little bit about the hiring and the people involved in the workers. You ask really great questions because I think that's super important what you're asking here.

And it can be very ugly. You know, I wrote a book recently. It's called Blue Collar Gold, How to Build a Service Business from the Dirt Up. And when I wrote the book in 2014, in 2013, one of the stats is there were 3 million unfilled blue-collar jobs on the market, yet there was over 50 million unemployed people. Well, I just looked at that stat again, and it's now 6 million unfilled blue-collar jobs in the United States, yet still probably similarly that many unemployed people, about 50 million. So it has become harder for us as service providers to find people because we have had the message. We have told our kids, and I always told myself, go to college, get a degree so you don't have to do that type of work. And that message is simply

not panning out these days because so many kids go to college, come away with tons of debt. They don't get a job in the degree in the field that they study. And a lot of these college educations don't pay off where trade schools and other types of education would pay off quickly and more relevant to today's workforce. So all that to say, one of the things I did wrongly at first was I just hired pretty much anybody that would come work for me. And I thought if I was a good guy to them and I was nice and I was their buddy, that they would do right by me. I just, I didn't have a good system. I didn't do drug testing. I didn't do background checks. So honestly, guess what I had working for me? Criminals and guys who were doing drugs behind my back. And I had no idea that it

was going on in my company until one day an employee said, hey, Mark, I got to tell you, you've got a drug problem in this company. You need to wake up. And I just could not believe it. And at one point, I literally, I had built my company so wrong, I had to fire everyone. I had 17 employees. And I said, you know what, guys, I'm sorry, I've messed this up. I haven't been a good leader. I haven't been watching my finances right. I'm going to have to shut this down. So in 2008, I shut it down. But I knew I was going to rebuild it. So about eight months of working by myself again with my 14-year-old son, we fixed it. And we got out of the hole. And I decided I was going to build a different company with a different company culture around my employees.

I'm going to hire slower. I'm going to hire the absolute best people I can. I'm going to pay them well. And I'm going to build a company best people I can. I'm going to pay them well, and I'm going to build a company differently, not just anybody that worked for me. And I need to become a good leader. And another key thing was right before I let everybody go, I drove up to my business one day and I had 17 employees, but I had eight vehicles in the parking lot and six of them were complete junk mobiles. And I looked at it and I said, and so again, 17 employees driving eight vehicles, they were either ride sharing, borrowing my cars, going home, having people drop them off.

And I said, what am I building here? You know, like this isn't what I wanted to build. People can barely afford to get in here. It's rough. I want to be proud of my business when I build. People can barely afford to get in here. It's rough. I want to be proud of my business when I drive up. I want them to have nice vehicles. I want them to have nice things. That was the only way I was going to be able to have nice things.

So I changed my whole system of hiring and basically went to a commission-based pay system so that if I've got people that hustle and do good work, they make a piece of the pie. And I change to that. And then if they do bad work or they don't do it right, they have to go back and fix it on their own dime. Therefore, you get guys who will do it right the first time. And it's what I found in my experience. So then they could also control their own paycheck. And we really started growing in a different way and literally making people be able to kind of have control over their own pay, control over their own work. And it became a very different company when I changed to that model.

Yeah. You know, I go through this all the time is you get people a piece of the pie. I'm a big, big fan of commission now. And we talk about commission versus hourly. Let's go through some of the pros and cons. The pros of commission is you get more efficiency. You don't have to pay them unless they succeed. They got to earn business. Now, a lot of skeptics that are here will say, well, you end up getting people that rip people off. But what I say is hourly guys do the bare minimum. They waste time. They're not efficient. They don't fix the stuff they have to. So there's a happy balance.

I think commission people have been known to rip people off and hourly people have been known to ride the clock and not fix the problems that are really there. And they'll tell you, hey, give me 10 jobs today. They'll go. They're doing mostly drive time because they're just going doing the bare minimum. So talk to me about your philosophy on commission versus hourly. Because like I said, there's people going to listen to this going. You just end up hiring a bunch of salesmen, which I tell people that's all I hire. I hire a salesman because when you

meet your wife, when you meet your father-in-law, when you meet anybody, believe it or not, you're selling, you're marketing yourself. Yeah, you have to sell. And you're right. So here's how I think about it. And it's very similar to the way you think about it. When I was paying guys hourly, how are they going to make more money? Well, they got to work more hours. What is the benefit in a guy really being efficient and fast and motivated, but he gets back at one o'clock where the guy who milks the clock till five or six makes more money. So therefore, I think you reward the wrong things by just having that mentality of just get the hours. And I would say, hey, guys, this job should take four

hours. Next thing I know, it would take eight. And they're like, well, they had this problem now. And some guys just learned that I what was I going to do? I had to let them finish it. And whatever speed they were was just what I had to pay. And so a lot of times it would take the profit right out of a job. And when I went to commission, I went to, I'm just going to pay X amount of money for this job to get done and you get it done, get it done the right way. Now, one thing that I have is a quality control person that will go back and one day a week, check those jobs and check several of the jobs and make sure it's right and pictures of it. And then we have a team meeting on the next day and we show the pictures from the previous

week's jobs to, hey, these are all great. Look at how great this is. And this one actually is wrong because we didn't clean up the roof right or we needed to tighten this up. That technician has to get that quality control guy says you got to go back, you have to go back and fix it on your own time. And therefore, you don't sell people stuff they don't need because somebody's going to be checking on it you don't do bad work because somebody's going to check on it you can lose your job so i think that the critics of commission just have to have somebody some kind

of control system to make sure it doesn't get out of whack because i have had people try to do fast work and get paid well but they don't last long in this company. They get caught and the guys who do really good work, make really good money for it. And they do it right the first time. And that's why I think, like you said, giving guys a piece of the pie makes people stay a lot longer with your company than just hourly. And then they just look for the next hourly job that might pay a little better. Absolutely. And I get so many home service owners tell me, I put this ad out, I didn't get any responses. Well, why should I come work for you, first of all? And where are you putting that message out? And what is the message? Because I've rewritten so many different job descriptions

before, because I don't think you have to say this is chimney sweeping. Here's what we pay. Come meet with me. I think you got to say this is who we are. This is why you should work for me. These are the opportunities. This is who I want to hire and make it less about the technical skills, because I can teach anybody how to do garage doors, chimney sweeping, sweeping any learning. The process is important, but finding the right people is more important tell me where obviously people come to you both a huge successful company but let me ask you this where do you find these people craigslist you go to career builder do you have a recruiter what's the best way to do it if you don't have that culture built yet you want people to come to you great question okay

started off mostly referrals with when i did have good people, I asked them, hey, we're hiring. And most of the time, good people hang around other good people. It's amazing. When we first started growing that many of the guys I started hiring all knew each other, they grew up together, and they would bring their other guys. They had a really good work ethic. They just really stayed with that. But then we started looking for, we did Craigslist, we did temporary services, trying to find that next source. And the next best source for us was actually Craigslist and Indeed. But the problem is we have to go through so many. We had to literally talk to hundreds to get to have tens to come in to hire one. And one thing we changed mentality wise, I didn't need to spend very much money on recruitment

and hiring, but now recruitment and hiring is a big part of our budget. Like literally there's some companies out there now spending as much on recruitment and hiring as they are on marketing. And when I heard that, I realized I needed to change my philosophy. I'd spend a couple hundred bucks for an ad and just see who came in. But now we actively have a person that farms and looks for people all the time and interviews kind of consistently and really brings people in. It's a different world out there now. You just can't throw an ad out there, interview three guys and get one. You literally have to talk to hundreds,

maybe get 10 to show up and hire one. So it's a mentality shift that I think most people really have to embrace and a monetary shift. You got to pay people a little more to get them good ones. And you've got to go through a lot to get a few. Absolutely. I completely agree. You use your network, good people find good people. But the difference is in my business, it can range in sales on service calls in a week from 4,000 to 20,000. So if I hire a really strong candidate that could do 10,000 in a week compared to 3,000, the cost of goods sold in the garage door of business, let's say just in service is 10%. So the majority of that's profit

because I'm already paying the call center. I'm already paying the insurance. I'm already paying the vehicles. It's just these people are able to produce more from call to call and they're able to close more. So think about this, $3,000 versus $10,000. That is a $7,000 spread over the course of a year. That's 350 grand for that one hire. So those of you guys out there that say, I tried to put an ad on Indeed and I

tried to put an ad on Craigslist, I'm sorry, but right now I'm talking about doing a huge bonus, but the bonus is built on you coming aboard getting trained and you hitting a sales goal and i also look at conversion rate and property or uh and customer satisfaction because crm tells us how happy the customers are so i'm not looking for salesmen that don't leave happy customers i'm looking for five stars on yelp i'm looking for a good sales average and i'm looking for every customer you go out to. The inspector found an issue with that. I ended up keeping the house, but it completely had to come down and be rebuilt. And that's the name of the game. I'm sorry, but you got to spend more on recruiting these days.

You can't put up a couple ads and say, wow, I got all these applicants. And what I found is most of the people you put, unless you got your ad right, they respond. And you might not get a response because they're unemployed, okay? These people want to stay unemployed. That means they want to get their check from Uncle Sam. So they got to say, I applied to 100 places this week. So you don't want to steal all the unemployed guys. The only way I love unemployed guys is if they just moved here from another state. Otherwise, I like to steal other guys or steal them from another industry and teach them about this business. So you're 100 percent. I couldn't agree more is

you won't get those guys for 13 or 14 or 15 dollars an hour either. You've got if you're going to steal good guys, the good guys are already employed and you've got to make a case to that you're a better employer. So sometimes you've got to come up. And in my case, I start people off hourly to see if they're going to work and then they move to commission in 30 to 60 days. But we'll start off paying people up to $25 an hour as an assistant just to learn, just to see if I can get the good guy in the door. I'll pay well in my part of the country.

That's a good salary. I'm not sure where you are, but that's a good starting wage for people here. But my recommendation to anybody is you're probably going to have to pay a lot more than you think. But like you just said, that good employee will make that up in spades, you know, when they start to produce for you. I mean, that's a huge paradigm shift because people say, what do I have in the bank now? And let me just tell you, if you've got a thousand dollars in the bank, you probably shouldn't even be in business because it takes money to make money. And I'm sorry, but you need a little bit of a cushion because you got to pay them good.

But the results come back tenfold. I mean, I spend hundreds and hundreds of thousands a month on advertising. So just imagine if I can't maximize each opportunity and I say there's three ways to make money. You get more customers, which is marketing. You pay, you charge the customer more money or you keep them coming back for more. And it doesn't mean you're ripping them off. You know, I sell garage door screens, garage door storage solutions. I sell surge protectors. So a customer, they always ask me, they go, what else do you guys do? I had such a great service with you.

Is there anything else you offer? So, you know, don't think for a minute that paying people more is bad. I mean, it's a great thing. And you'll realize that people will come to you. So I think that's 100%. more is bad i mean it's a great thing and you'll realize that people will come to you so i think that's a hundred percent it's a huge thing for people to realize that because i always ask that i go what do you think you're going to get for 15 bucks or 14 bucks an hour 15 bucks an hour it's uh alarming there's something in i'm in nashville canada and there's such a low

unemployment rate that the people are are unemployed, you probably don't want them. And the people that are unemployed are probably being paid pretty decently. So for me, it was just that we just went through a big hiring phase and I hired seven or eight people. For me, that's a lot in this last couple of weeks. And in order to grow, that's exactly what you have to do. And you've got to pay more, but they will make you what you have to do and you've got to pay more but they will make you more you like you said you've got to probably go backwards a little bit while they go through the training but once they get their feet under them that's where you can really scale as a business owner is really good people yeah you know i got a lot of small companies that

look at me and they get mad because we sell more and we advertise more and they're a two-man shop. I mean, I think of one guy that's three-man shop and he thinks we charge too much, but he's always going to be a small guy. He's going to have him, his dad, his mom, his cousins working for the company, making enough to make a decent living. And they're never going to build what we consider a successful business. And they think so many people that were raised in the 40s, 50s, the third generation in the industry, say in any home industry, whether it's air conditioning, roofing, gutters, chimneys, they say, well, now you guys rip people off.

And I say, this is a different day and age. You've got to be able to advertise. You've got to be able to pay people more. Listen, more people are getting into white collar industry, computers and different things. So the blue collar, the people that really want to show up and work, they're harder to come by. You got to pay more. And, you know, I think about these owners and you mentioned they got a control issue. And I can tell you that they say, I do it better if it's not done my way. And they take on too much and they don't

know how to delegate. And I think my number one skill in life is delegating. And delegating is not easy. Talk to me a little bit about delegation. So, you know, micromanagement is actually a lack of leadership is what that really is. And so when people feel they have to do it, feel like nobody can do it as good as me. That's really a story that they're telling themselves in their head. And so if you keep telling yourself that story, then you'll make that become reality in your business, right? That's what they do.

They keep going over and over. And sure, a guy coming on can't do it as well as you. But give him four or five years and give him some good leadership and good training and let him have the reins and some slack in the rope and pretty soon the lives guys can do it better than you because you were you've got other things to do as a business owner and you know if you're a good delegator that is the that is one of the best things and the faster you are delegating that the faster your company can grow. If you can't delegate or you're very slow to delegate and you put more and more on you, you're just slowing the growth of your business down. Now, some people want that. But I personally want a business that pays my people well and services my customers better.

Because if you're putting all the weight on me, I'm not the best guy at doing almost any of the things. And my customers have to wait for me to get there. And I've got a big backlog and I've got a lot of excuses. And I'm simply a better business with a lot of employees that really know how to stay in their lane and do their thing because we've delegated it out that way. So people are listening and you want to grow a business, but you're struggling. It's pretty much usually the man or the woman in the mirror. There's something that you're doing, especially if you're in the blue collar field. If you do anything, answer the phone, come to the door and do whatever they ask you to do and do a great job. You're going to have all the work you want. I don't care if you're painting fences or watching dogs or doing garage doors or chimneys.

There's such a lack of people to come to the house these days to do the work that if you're in that business, open up your mind and let other people do the work and coach them and teach them and let them run and cheer them along while they're doing a great job. And you can build pretty much this whatever size business in any field that you want. It's literally wide open. It's a goldmine right now. It couldn't be a better time in the USA to build a service business in my mind, in my opinion.

Yeah, delegating is key. I mean, I don't even open my own mail, but what I will add to that is there's a process to delegating because sometimes we delegate too much. So in my mind, I have people do what you inspect, not what you expect. So I have ways to check.

I follow up. I have, if I had to break it down for you, I'd say if I have a process that I, or a task that I'm trying to do, I like to break it down for you, I'd say if I have a process that or a task that I'm trying to do, I like to check out in on them and make sure it's being done right. And so many people say, hey, do me a favor. Just go ahead. And Mark, can you go ahead and open my mail and make sure the bills are paid? Well, first of all, what does that entail? OK, so let's talk about what cards you need to pay with let's talk about this let's talk about that then i'm going to have you repeat it to me

and there's delegation is such a skill and you don't believe it's a skill till you become really really really good at it and i'll tell you what my general manager in the last few years has become a pro before he used to think i gotta do it myself or it won't be done right. And he was right. But then he decided to make videos and teach people and hold their hand. And he stopped holding their hand to the level that he did. He said, I made a video on that. You can look it up here. And he got quick and efficiency. So delegating is really the only way to scale your business. But I will put a little caveat in that you got to trust people, but don't trust. You got to have checks and balances. All I would say, the reason I say that is I've been,

I had a person take over several years ago for paying all the credit cards. And then I looked three months later and we were a hundred grand in debt. And I go, dude, what the heck? So I took it back over, got caught up within the month. But the point is you got to have inspections and make sure they're doing it. And like you said, Hey, you got a guy that goes out and takes pictures. That's the right way. Teach them how to do it, but make sure they're doing it. So you're totally right. That is exactly that. Checking back, give them the reins and then checking back in on it is absolutely the key.

Everybody's handed off stuff to people that didn't do it right. And then they pay the price. What I think the problem is, a lot of business owners say, well, I'll never do that again. I'll never hire a person to do that again. And that's the wrong mentality. When you've delegated and been burned,

you need to delegate and learn. And then, okay, okay, so we've got to set up this set of parameters or this set of checks and balances, and then move to the next problem. Don't get burned on it. Make a make a decision that you'll never do that again. I think that's where a lot of businesses kind of falter as well. I like that. Delegate and then burn. You need to delegate and learn.

Very good. So you talk a lot about leadership style. And I am really one of those type of leaders that I deal. I don't talk to. I think I got one hundred and fifty six people now and I don't communicate with some people as much as I should. But I always say if I spend 10 minutes a day with everybody, that is a two full days of talking for 10 minutes. So that's just not going to happen. So as far as the home service business, how do you become aware of what type of leader you are? I mean, what's your style? How do you how do you sense that? You know, and how do you develop that? That's a great question. We want to I think my style is is what, you know, I've heard called the shepherd style. So I'm like the shepherd and we have a flock and I say, OK, flock, we're going to I'm going to get us over to this other pasture over here because I think the grass is greener over here.

And let me let's go over here. Does everybody understand where we're going and why we're going there? And I get the flock to understand. Guess what? This is good here, but it's better over there. So we start marching in that direction. And then as, you know, some sheep start to get out of line or start to lag behind, not want to go there, I reach back and get the guys either going out of line or lagging behind and help them catch up. Or if they can't catch up, they have to be let go. They just won't get to that new pasture. So I feel like I'm a shepherd of the people and they can come to me

and say, hey, I don't know why we're going over here. I don't like that. It's my job to help them understand. And sometimes they have a very real concern that I hadn't considered. And I'll say, you know what? You're right. And I think I don't shoot down ideas from anybody from the lowest, newest guy to my most senior guy. when they come to me with an idea I listen and I consider because sometimes those new guys have a fresh look at things that I I hadn't been looking at and sometimes my senior guys they don't say much but when they do I really have to pay attention so I kind of like I call it headlines I just watch for headlines to happen when an employee starts to be talked about, that's who I start to watch.

And then if I haven't heard from a good guy and he's been quiet, I need to go, you know, I need to send him a message or I need to call him in for a quick meeting. I need to go grab a coffee with him or find out where he's going to be and treat him to lunch. And I just kind of keep a pulse on the business. I meet with everybody every morning to get the business started. And then I just kind of get a pulse for the business and decide where my time is best spent, whether it's where we're going to next or a process that we have to fix or an employee that I need to, you know, coach up or I need to help him out. Because, you know, my people, you know, will really run through fire for me because they know I'll run through fire for them.

You know, they've seen me do it. They've seen me do it enough that they will absolutely go to bat for me because, and that's the key, you know, you get a team that will really back each other up and not run each other down and be a good team. That's where business becomes very enjoyable to run. The business is chaotic and everybody's backbiting and yelling and screaming. That's a business nobody wants to own. And you had mentioned before about going on vacation.

I learned a kind of a trick several years ago that, you know, if you want to go on vacation as a business owner, what you do is you go and then you come back and find out what the problems were when you were gone and literally write them down. Here's what happened. Lack of leadership or this process fell apart. So then you build a process to fix it, and then you go on a longer vacation the next time. And then, okay, come back. What were the problems?

Now let's fix those problems. And literally going on vacation can actually make a stronger business for you and more enjoyable business. Yeah. You know, you go to vacations and I love this subject because I have the same take on that, but I also have a take, you know, when I get a disgruntled employee and I look at, I do pay time off. I don't know a lot of guys in the garage door business that give their guys two weeks pay time off. I don't give them tens of thousands of dollars, but I make sure they got enough to pay their bills. Because when I get someone that's kind of just burnt out, I mean, it's kind of like when I stop playing golf for a year, I go back.

I just love the game. I make a good putt. It makes my day. It's not the same if I'm playing a lot. And when these guys get just, they get the day-to-day, I say, you know what? I'm going to pay you $150 for the next three days, plus you've got a two-day week, and that's five days. Enjoy it. Reset. Spend some time with your family. And then come back. And then they come back, and, man, I've seen 180s. I've seen them just say, you're willing to do that for me?

And I say, you need it. I need it. We all need it. Take a vacation. Think about what you're doing. Get a reset. And it's just so important. I can't tell you enough.

I can't leave for three weeks at a time. I don't even want to. I get bored. But I always do three, four or five day weekends. What's your take on that? I love it. It's great leadership. That's you being sensitive to

the situation, but not wanting to come down with a bunch of rules and lose somebody. And everybody needs a break sometimes. And everybody just has different things they're going through in life. And sometimes you can be insensitive as a leader to that saying, hey, I've noticed this happening. What do we need to do? How about if I give you some time to go do this or you you do something for them that's just outside of work you know i think a lot of bosses in the way that used to be is well that's just your job or you know you're not getting paid for that or you know it's like the the butts in in seats mentality and uh you can't uh you can't leave that way um and so that's part of, I think you're right. Just being sensitive to the guys is absolutely critical for having a big group of people that stay with you.

Yeah. You know, there's so many things that we have in common is running a bigger home service company. And it's, I'm the king of making mistakes. I can tell you that. But I don't make the same mistake twice. And I've lost really good guys because some of the time these guys, man, they're supporting their loved ones and they're working and they're trying to get extra jobs and they're not going to come out and necessarily tell you that. So they don't want to take vacation because they can't. And sometimes for what my guys could do in sales, just give them a break

and a reset. Now, sometimes they go, I don't need that. They could tell you the problem that they might have happened, may have happened and what's going on. Sometimes it's stuff that you can't control outside of the business. I've helped people out a lot outside of the business just because I can go give to all the charities in the world, but I could also look at the people working for me that are in less positions than I'm in today. And I think sometimes before you go out and contribute all this money to charity and these people that are being successful is really start to find out what's going on within your own business. And if you contribute to them, I mean, some people have a broken down car.

Some people haven't had tires changed on their car. It's little things and it goes a long way and you'll have an employee for life. It's not always monetary. Sometimes flowers on Mother's Day or Valentine's Day for the women in your office. It's the little things that go a long way. And some people think it's all about money and it's not. I could tell you I gave two gift cards away today, one for 100, one for 60, not because someone told me to, because I said, wow, they're doing a great job. And it goes so far with people. So I just love, I always say this on this, but I just love talking to guys that have done this before because it's so funny how much we have in common. You know, the same principles work.

You know, the principles you're talking about, we can take it across any service business and really just people in general. When you learn some of these skills, and a lot of times you have to learn it the hard way, but a lot of times you can learn it through podcasts like this and reading books and listening to people and literally actively listening and taking things away and then bringing it back into your business is how you learn it. And it's so funny that so many similar things will work across the board. Now, and once you learn these skills and once you learn a lot of these principles, you can actually start multiple businesses

and use the same philosophies to grow them and nurture people and have a big team behind you. And it's so exciting to have a big team of people behind you that you can move so fast. It makes things so exciting to have a big team of people behind you that you can move so fast. It makes things so exciting. And it's also not so dangerous and so vulnerable as it is when you are a small business. And if something happens to you, then all of a sudden everybody's out of a job. Like now, God forbid something happened to me, this business is fine.

We've got good people. Nobody would want that to happen. And I would assume that's the same with yours. You've got things in place that your business will run without you. Now, will it run as fast or as great? Probably not, but it still works. And I never wanted to build a business, have a bunch of people around me and then something happened to me and now all their life is a wreck. I saw it happen in my own family. My mom had an accounting business, but it all was dependent on her. And when she got sick, now suddenly a lot of people were out of a job. My dad had something similar with the insurance business. And when he decided to get out of the

insurance business, now a lot of people didn't have a job. So I never wanted to build a business like that. I always had to have some legacy and the ability to run without me. And therefore, it also becomes a business I really like to run. Yeah, there's a book by Jim Collins. It's called Built to Last. And it's all about building a company that can last without you. And it takes pride out of it because a lot of people have pride and they go, watch what happens when I leave. And they come back and they smile and they go, I knew you guys couldn't do it without me because they really need that. And that's not that's not a leadership quality. That's a selfish quality that it just doesn't make sense to me. You know, people come into my office and they go, what do you think about this? I go, well, you know better than me. Go ahead. You choose. Sometimes, sometimes I want to, it depends on the subject, but you know, at the end of the day, I'd say I almost give too much trust and control out there, but you know, this is one of

many things I'm working on and you're a hundred percent right. I've learned to take one person and use them in different aspects of the business. And sometimes I might have the wrong person for the wrong job, but they're the right person to move to another job. So what's great about this stuff is you've done your homework. You've read a lot. You know, you mentioned the home service. A lot of home service business owners often lack leadership knowledge and skills. And I read, I think I can look it up right now, but I have 900 books on Audible. I have a huge book collection. And what I do is I mark the page on the last page of the book. So if there's something that resonates with me, I put a start by it. And then I build my own cliff notes.

And I take gold nuggets out of each book. And it sounds like you've read a ton, right? Yeah, 500 or 600 books. And I'm probably, I think my Audible thing said I'm a scholar. It's my last, or master's degree or something. They kind of gamify it and have little awards you get for so many hours. But yeah, you and I are totally on the same page. That's how you change your, that's the fastest way to make a difference in your life

is what you can put in your head in Audible and reading books. And I do the same thing. I use the clip feature on Audible and I clip as, as it's going along, I hit the clip button all the time so I can go back and listen to a book and just listen to the highlight that way on Audible. Yeah. But I do the bookmark feature and then I go through same thing.

I got a VA that goes through it, writes on all my notes because here's the thing. I've got online businesses. I help with coaching. I do. We just started. I'm helping a friend do a Christmas light business that I'm an owner in. And he's looking at me going, I'm like, here's the deal.

I don't have a lot of time, but I can help you set up the LLC liability insurance, the bond. I'll do all the marketing. I'll set up the CRM. I'll make sure that we have a third party call center booking every call. I'll make sure to get everything that the taxes will be done. And guess what? It takes me enough time to set it all up. I've leveraged all my relationships I've already built. So the point is, you know, we do these things and we delegate, we talk about all this stuff, but it's so simple once you've done it to redo it.

Give me some good books that maybe aren't as common. I mean, the E-Myth is it's one you got to get started with no matter what. I mean, I believe in that book, The Ultimate Sales Machine. I think there's a good book, too, The Richest Man in Babylon that talks about putting away money because so many business owners, they don't pay themselves first, pay yourself first. I mean, I've got hundreds and hundreds of thousands and I'm not bragging. Just I've been saving since I was 16 when I was busing tables. So I've got a lot of money put away because I always pay myself first. They say put 10% away and that's a great book.

So give me, give me some stuff that really resonates and taught you some lessons. One of them I like a lot is called Reality-Based Leadership, and it's by a lady, Cy Wakeman, C-Y Wakeman. And I really found a lot of really great nuggets in that book for leadership. Another book that's kind of new right now is called The Pumpkin Plan and Michael Michalowicz, I believe. And it's interesting because it talks about how to grow these world-class size pumpkins. But one of the business takeaway is

when you plant the right seed that's going to grow this giant pumpkin, what will happen, too, is other little pumpkins will try to grow off of that same stem, and you've got to learn to trim that back or you won't have the giant pumpkin on the end. You'll have an okay-sized pumpkin because the other little pumpkins will kind of take up a lot of the nutrients from it. So in the business aspect, learn to make sure that you are feeding the right pumpkin and not letting too many things take away. And I have multiple businesses too, but you've got to stay with one, like let it really get growing before you plant another pumpkin seed.

Another one I really like a lot is, I don't know if I can say it, it's the subtle art of not giving an F. If you've seen that one, if you've heard that one, that is a really, it's not a book that's full of profanity or anything, but it's a very interesting book about clarity and business. I think those are three of them. And then lastly, Extreme Ownership, written by a couple of Navy SEALs. And it really talks about the extreme ownership of owning a problem when they were in battle. And then they would take those battles, what they learned, and apply it to business, how you really own the problems and own the issues

as a team. I think those are all really good books. Yeah, no, that's great stuff. I mean, these books, they're literally, there's 10 different ways to the top of the mountain. And a lot of people explain it in different ways. But so many times business owners, they start to read real estate books, and then they start to read multi-level books. And then they start, you lose track. Now, I'm a big fan of put your eggs in a lot of baskets because you never know if a basket is going to fall. But yeah, but don't do that with your home service business. Dive in and golf yourself. Get the business to where it runs by itself. Stay focused. I've got what you call the shiny light syndrome where I look, you know, some people call it ADD. I don't think so because I

could keep focused. I'm just a multitasker. I could stay, I get stuff done. The difference is I don't take, I don't run halfway to the finish line. If I see I'm gonna do something, I get it done. And you gotta build a business to be able to nurture yourself. So before you get there, don't start focusing on other things and don't listen to your best friend

that's starting another business. And don't listen to the people that say, invest in real estate and this, that, and the other, because it all works. But if you're spending 10 and 10 different things you'll watch none of them will get done so you know my my cfo my cfos and i used to be kind of bad at that tommy and my cfo would say mark you are so great at running the ball down the field and you would get almost to the end zone and you'll spike it on the five yard line yeah you almost you almost totally made it work before you took your focus off of it so that's a great point is stay focused till it's really working and then move

to other opportunities yeah and the listeners here i can't tell you enough if you're getting distracted by so many other things you really got to sit back and prioritize and think about the 80-20 rule. You got to spend 80% of your time in the top 20% of what's going to make that business different, the impact areas of the business. So great, great advice. Great book. So we've got the extreme ownership, reality-based leadership, the pumpkin plan, and the subtle art of not giving enough. Do you come to that realization that you can't be loved by everybody and you've got to be respected? Well, you're talking my game because I was exactly that guy.

I think everybody starts off, you want to be liked, but you want to be respected. And that's a tough line because for some reason in American society, we think when we hold somebody accountable that that's being mean to them. And I just learned that holding people accountable and telling them the truth is actually the nicest thing you can do for people. You know, by not saying something when you know it's a problem, by avoiding an issue when you know it's a problem, that's actually being deceitful and mean. It's actually more fair and better for everyone involved, especially your good people on your team, to go right to the problem and tell them the truth. Not in a mean way, not being mean-spirited or or a bad person just being very clear and open and direct and frank is actually in my i've changed that to now that's me being nice i'm trying to help you and me and i just go directly at the problem it's kind of like when you would train a you know if

you were training a dog to walk on a leash, and I'm not trying to be disparaging, but when you're teaching something, you don't let the dog run way out on the leash and jerk it back real hard and say, you make it a bad deal. When it starts to get out of line just a little bit with what the game plan is, you do a quick little tug on it and say, hey, come back here. We're walking this way. And that way it's very clear what it is. The problem a lot of us leaders get into is we let this little thing get by and that little thing. And then they do this.

I'm like, well, he's such a great guy. He can be late. Or he's missed several days. Well, he's so great when he's here. And you make all these excuses up so you don't have to say something immediately. And then finally, they do something and you blow up at them. And the guy's like, well, I didn't even know there was a problem. Well, that's my fault as a leader. And so I quickly will say stuff instantly on almost every little thing.

So the communication is clear. And I also decided I never wanted to surprise people with firing them. If I had to fire somebody, it was never going to be a surprise. If it was a surprise, then that was my fault as a leader. It needed to be documented. It needed to be talked about. It needed to be warned. And by the time it came to firing, they knew they were fired. Unless it was something hugely wrong, they did. But in general, most firings are a long time coming and i just learned to make it never a surprise and very clear warnings and almost now every time i get fired they come to me

and they know the fire being late too many times too many absentees or whatever the problem is quality issues they pretty much just give it up there There's never that surprise. I'm fired. Now they start crying or they're mad at me or we have issues. I kind of got over that. So clear communication and giving them a heads up all the way along will make your life as a leader much better. So this is important to all the listeners. It's so very important what you touched upon is literally so many people they hire and they fire. And I say hire slow, fire fast, of course. But you got to give these guys a chance.

So what I did the other day was called a verbal warning. And he knew it. And then I give him a write up. And then I say, here's why you understand that. Let's go ahead and talk about this. If you could repeat back to me exactly why I'm upset. So we go through. They understand the expectations.

And then they know where they sit. And you'll watch a D player become an A player overnight. repeat back to me exactly why I'm upset. So we go through, they understand the expectations and then they know where they sit and you'll watch a D player become an A player overnight. They get out of their own head. They start listening. They start asking for more advice. They start riding with successful people just because, you know, I talked to a fellow the other day and I talk to people all the time and he said, I hire B and C players and I make them A players. And that's what a good leader does. And just because someone doesn't do exactly what you want out of the gate, doesn't mean you have to think about firing them. That should be the last step, but don't hold on to a bad egg. If they're talking about your company, if they're bringing other people down, boom, they're gone. They, you don't put up with that even if they're a top producer.

So amazing, amazing advice. I've got something I'm going to read that you wrote. It says, growing up, I didn't have a leadership bone in my body. Anytime a chance of confrontation came my way, you can bet that I was doing whatever it took to stay away from it at almost any cost. Flash forward to now, Ash Busters Chimney Service is one of the premier chimney service companies in the United States. And I have 30 years as a chimney sweep and business owner under my belt to back it. By educating yourself, applying all that you've learned into your life regularly, you can break that stigma of natural born leaders and promote the idea of leaders who are made. What is the one thing you think that really pushes you towards the knowledge that you've gained so far to really...

I used to be so bad with confrontation. I mean, I'm good with my loved ones at it. I mean, you better believe, but I mean, I'm still like, someone wants to talk, I'm like, oh, great. What do you want to talk about? Like, why can't we just start talking?

Why do you say, can we talk? I'm like, oh my God, I hate that that so even from my girlfriend or my family members i'm like we got to have a conversation we got to talk i'm like no no no no tell me what it's about let's let's talk real quick it doesn't need to be a two-hour therapy session so tell me a little bit about that well a couple things and that's so accurate. One, I learned if somebody wants to talk to me, a lot of times it is bad. They almost never want to say something good or they've got something they need to get off their chest. Most of the time, it's a chance for me to fix the relationship if possible. There's something in there that they're giving me a chance to work on. So I welcome those.

But I also, if they're going to take my time to do that, I'm also going to take my time and give them a hard truth or some hard facts back. So if we're going to get real, I get real back. So we're very clear as to there's because a lot of times there's something that i need to say too if there's something starting to creep up and and they ask me that i probably know what it is like you know some guys don't want to work as many hours as we work sometimes the busy season or who knows what it is and i i just take the opportunity and again you know i said this before but i now feel that being very frank and being very forward and open is actually me being nice. And so literally that switch in my mind that I'm actually helping you by telling you these things that helped me be not confrontational, but just more real. And I can't tell you how many people come to me now that really appreciate that, that they appreciate

what I said, even though it was hard, they changed. And it's become the biggest change of my life. It's being too easy and smushy and good and happy and positive. You know, there's a time for that, but it's actually not when you're leading a big company, and especially in time when something real has to be said, you've got to say it. And your good people will thank you for it. If you're a weak leader, as Jim Collins' book Good to Great says, you can't keep stronger leaders. If you're, like, say, a three on the leadership scale of one to five, and you've got a leader that comes in, he's a four, he can't stay working for you or she can't stay working for you. So you have to develop and become better and better. And part of being a better leader is being very clear and holding people accountable. So your good people know, yeah, you know, if I come into work every day, that's the right thing. But, you know, Sally

over here comes in late five days a week and nothing happens. Why do I need to pay? Why do I need to do the right thing therefore you get a culture that's just a nightmare but so you have to be the guy that holds them or the lady that holds them accountable but in a very fair way and man running business is is enjoyable it's you know a lot more than than the other way around. You're so accurate, man. When I was hiring 10, nine, $8 an hour people, I mean, God, it was like cigarette break, cigarette break. You know, there's an argument. They came in late.

Oh, they didn't get a break. And it's like, man, I was like, there's a time where I used to hate to come in. I mean, this is seven, eight years ago, but you build that culture and you're a good leader and you're 100% right. You need people to respect you and put out the the real truth about what their performance is. If you are going to tell somebody the truth, you know, the true story, what's the best way to go about it?

I don't really like that. The shit sandwich approach where you start with something good and you say the bad then you end it with something good. I don't really like that because if you end with something good, sometimes they didn't get the message of what you really needed to tell them. That's true. I will tell them, hey, I've got to tell you, I really appreciate so many things about you and what you do, but this is happening and, you know, we have got to fix this. And I'll end with a solution.

And I won't make it necessarily end on a positive note. If I really have to say something that means a lot, it's going to end not necessarily very nice. Not mean, but it's not going to necessarily feel good. So when you leave, you know I was serious about it. I used to always try to end every hard meeting being nice. And you come out of there, and I just took the edge off of it where I really needed that edge to stick. You know, I needed it for them and for me to make sure that we're on the same page. And so, you know, you mentioned something that would happen to me too. There was a time when I used to get ready to come into my work and I would literally get sick. I was in the

shower and I thought I was going to throw up because of the nerves and the crap I was going to have to face as soon as I walked in the door, all the employee problems and the issues. And I really literally hated the business that I had built. This is right before I let everybody go. And I'm like, I have messed this up. I have let everybody get away with way too many things. And I'm a mess. And I, it's my fault. You know, that's the biggest thing you've got to look and go, guess what, Mark, you've created this mess because of your lack of doing things mostly. And now the pain is so great. Now what are you going to do?

Because pain is the best motivator in life. That makes you change things. And so I literally just decided that I had messed it up so bad I needed to start over. So now I won't let it mess up again. And I will go right to the source and fix it. And if it can't be fixed, they have to go. You have to get rid of them and make room for the next superstar that you don't know is out there. Yeah, I don't like that approach either.

I like it if it's something small. I like saying this is good, but hey, do me a favor. Listen, I need you to try a little bit harder because what I've noticed with you is you're letting the people go really quick. If they say they're going to call back, I need to see you say, well, sir or ma'am, what is it today that I'm going to need to do to earn your business? Because I could go to the manager right now and our goal is to earn every single customer's business and what's stopping you from making a decision right now because quite honestly our my goal as a personal individual here at the company is to book 100 because i'm an all-star and i'm at an all-star company and that's the kind of stuff i want to hear you say so but when there's something bad i mean you gotta you gotta get on it right away and don't let the negativity you gotta give the compliments when they're due, but they can be completely separate.

It's just it's hard sometimes to notice the good stuff when you're surrounded by bad stuff. And a lot of the small companies that are five, seven, ten people, there's several books I've read. And some of the books, they call it the valley of death because there's not enough managers to manage all the employees. And sometimes when you hit that, there's people taking on too much. And there's 12 people you're good at, 18 people you're bad at, 35 people you're good at, 48 people you're bad. I mean, and it fluctuates. And you go through these, especially for a growing company. So you've got to nail it on the head.

So you've done a lot of research on successful businesses versus failing businesses. And obviously, leadership is a huge role. But what else have you found to be one of the huge indicators of a failing business? I mean, what's the biggest difference between a successful business and a failing business? Not knowing your numbers, not knowing your profits, your direct labor costs, your cost of goods, truly knowing your numbers, because as you are by yourself, all you got to really do is look in your checkbook and you kind of know how you're doing. But as you grow, that checkbook will lie to you and it's not accurate. So, you know, literally setting budgets and running by the numbers and having somebody that's like your chief financial officer or somebody, you know, guiding the ship and saying, hey, Mark, we're 3% high on direct labor or why

is our cost of goods so much higher? Or, hey, we're doing great. We're right on track or we're 3% high on direct labor, or why is our cost of goods so much higher? Or, hey, we're doing great. We're right on track, or we're tracking ahead of budget. What are we doing that's working so well that we can replicate? Most business owners don't know their financial position hardly at all. Again, they're just looking in the checkbooks like, yeah, I think we're doing good or I don't think we're doing good. And if you are in that position, you're literally running your business off of your checkbook and that's your budget. Understand that there's going to be a day that that's going to wreck you, especially when you get up into the million dollar area.

You can't run a business that way. And I would highly suggest getting some help getting you can rent chief financial officers you know a fractional cfo for you know a few hundred dollars an hour you probably only need them a few hours a month at the beginning but get your numbers down cold and and make sure you watch those in problems so then when you scale and you add people, you can really watch it. Because what I was surprised about was when I was a one-man operation, I was pretty profitable. But when I had two and three guys, all of a sudden, I made about the same money as I did when I was by myself. And that didn't make sense to me.

I didn't understand all those expenses and other things that I incurred. Plus, those new guys weren't as efficient as I was. So you add all those up, and all of a sudden you have a three-truck company that's actually losing money. So those are some things that I really learned. When I crashed it, it was a six-truck company. It was about a $1.1 million company, and I had spent $1.2 or or 1.3 to get there and I literally just I don't know where's all the money going and so the biggest next thing you got leadership

and finance and when you and you can get a grip of your finance and your budget you really have something there yeah I get so excited because you're speaking my language I mean literally okay so Okay, so payroll. Okay, so there's a lot of very brilliant people out there. If your payroll should be, give or take, depending on what service industry you're in, in the home service niche, right around 30%. And here's the deal. There's market studies, there's industry standards, and you got to look at the big dogs. I'm sorry, but they've already invented the wheel.

You don't have to recreate it. And the principle is, don't think you're, for example, you pick 28%. If you're at 22%, you're doing a horrible job. And here's why. Because you're not paying your people enough and you're going to find out your business one day will implode.

Now, if you're paying 38%, you got other huge problems because you're going to run out of money really quickly. So knowing those numbers, the income statements, the balance sheets, the cash flow statements, not being an accountant. Listen, I got a master's degree. I went to school for this stuff. I could tell you, listen, I could have take a hundredth of what I learned and no more

than I did from going to all that crap. And I'm not saying school's bad, but what I'm saying is know a few numbers, know your cost of goods sold, know your advertising costs, and then decide. You know, I call, my CRM gives me so many key performance indicators that I know my call booking rate.

We talk about this all the time. The call booking rate, how much a certain campaign's doing as a percentage of revenue. I mean, there's so many different things, but don't confuse yourself. Here's what matters. Let me just break this down to some basics. You got to know what kind of call volume you're getting for advertising sources. Then you got to know your call booking

rate. Then you got to know your average close ratio, your average sales rate, and your customer satisfaction. If all those are good, and then of course, warranties, because you don't want a guy who's getting a bunch of warranties. You've got to teach them how to do the job again. But that's it. It's not complicated, but there's numbers behind all that. So expert advice. And then also, I don't want to be the guy to get all those numbers, right?

I'm not that guy. And a lot of business owners, especially in the service industry, they don't know those numbers because they don't want to be the one doing it they just want to go out in the field do the work come home and not worry about that stuff because that's like chewing glass for them so you have to hire these parts out unless you really love it and i i would i would think that most people don't so but there are people that absolutely love to get you these details. And those are the people you put around you and hold them accountable for these numbers. So then as a business owner, they can just show you the report and here's where we are. And you can ask a couple questions and you get those numbers.

And then you can make management decisions. You don't want to get buried in the books for a full day or two days out of the week doing it. You want to hire somebody because you're more valuable than that as a business owner. You can hire these things to be done and give you these numbers. But trust me, that's some of the best money you can spend is to know these and then guide your ship with these numbers. But it's a must. You can't just wing it when you start building a big business.

You're doomed. Tell me what you mean. Most business owners are riding on a unicycle. I understand what you mean by it, but the audience really go into that and go deep because a lot of business owners that might be successful today might not be tomorrow because of this thought so it's just an analogy that i use a lot of times when i'm speaking to a group and you know in my business you know like i said i was a one-man operation so i you know i i say that's like being on a unicycle right i'm i'm up on this balancing on this thing and and i'm kind of exposed to the weather on all sides um you know i'm on one wheel so if something goes wrong uh literally i get a flat tire my business is down

if my knee goes out or my back goes out the bike doesn't move the business doesn't move and and if i crash it and i and i'm gone no one knows how to ride that unicycle. They don't know how to balance it. They don't know how to do it. In many one-person operations, all of the keys are in the business owner's head, how everything works. And so that's super vulnerable. That's a very, in engineering terms, it's called a single point of failure. You've got, you don't ever want to build something that has a single point of failure so then I you know say hey you know get that second you know business

unit moving and making money it's more like kind of like a bicycle right it's a little more stable it can maybe go a little faster you get a flat tire you can probably keep moving not as good but you're not down somebody else can probably jump on it and start working on it. So I build it out to where I really want to teach people and show people how to build, you know, a semi truck with 18 tires and you blow a tire. It's no big deal. You can keep rolling. You've got a driver that's protected. You pull it into a place and, you know, the truck gets loaded. You pull into a place that gets unloaded. and, you know, the truck gets loaded. You pull it into a place, it gets unloaded.

And, you know, if something happens to the driver, I can put another driver in. No problem. I've got GPS. He knows where he's going. He knows what time he's supposed to be there. And, you know, it's more stable of a business to have it at a certain size. And that's my analogy is get a company that is more stable and not all reliant on you. And that's it's more like a semi truck. So I hope that makes sense. Absolutely. I mean, you go from a unicycle, you the person, and then you got different leaders

within the business. And so many people say, work on your weaknesses. And I say, hell no. Don't ever work on your weaknesses. Delegate your weaknesses. Focus on your strength. You know, work on your leadership because you nailed it on the head. People can't respect you as a leader. You know, I had so far since we've been sitting here, I've had five people come to my door. It's locked, thank God. But, you know, it says do not disturb genius at work. But I don't think people take that too seriously. But, you know, my dad, it's open. It's an open door.

And people understand. They respect my time. But they say I got a real quick question. And I give it to them. And I appreciate it that they're coming to me to ask me. And some of the times, like I said, I'll say, you know what, go ahead and just figure it out. You know, my parents, the reason I have such a passion for building a business like this is both my parents built unicycle businesses, you know, the accounting and the insurance. And they were just and I just saw it wreck my family when my mom's house went

down. And when my dad's business started to fail how bad how bad that was you know for everyone all the way around so that was I decided I wasn't going to build a business like that it just has to be uh something more stable and well and in fact I wrote about my book my sister unfortunately it still has had that type of business recently in the construction. It was all related to, you know, her husband, who was a great builder. He was a great framer, great woodworker. And he simply kept saying, you've got to train other people to do it. You've got to learn to manage a crew. And he literally built a house like you would build cabinets.

It was unbelievably great. But he can only do so many of them in his lifetime, and he wouldn't delegate out and build that business. He got hurt on the job. He crushed his hand, and I said, you know, this is a great opportunity for you to learn leadership. You only need your one index finger and point people around and tell them what to do. You don't need to be swinging that hammer. Well, he went back to swinging the hammer and unfortunately he developed a lung problem. He took some medicine that actually

gave him incurable vertigo and literally instantly he's out of business. And that's a unicycle, and I was sad but upset because I could see it coming. When you build a business like that, and I consult with a lot of business guys, and one health thing comes up, you know, one accident, they fall, they get in a car wreck. One thing happens and now they're just financially doomed. And so I just, I understand and respect people that want to build business like that. They just also need to understand how scary and bad that can be for everyone around. And I just don't recommend it. Yeah, that's unfortunate and that's tough. And I think a lot of people listening right now might be in the same boat and they might feel trapped.

That's a great story. And I like the unicycle concept. I was on a TV show earlier this year. I was on the television show CNBC's, it was called Blue Collar Millionaires. I've heard of that. Yeah, I was on season two. I was episode six this last year. If you look it up online, it's there on some streaming. It was interesting because the whole TV show

is based on really what we're talking about and really how to be successful. It really showed all of us what we did, what the aha moment in our business was, and then what we would do for fun. The majority of the people learn exactly what you're talking about on your podcast is how to delegate, how to understand numbers

and how to scale and then all of a sudden, it didn't matter. One of the guys that was on my show, he was building ukuleles and he was a millionaire in Hawaii. Another guy started off as a janitor and then he started a trucking company,

hauling oil. Now they're a half billion dollar company a year. I mean, everything from junk guys to guys mowing grass to guys hauling automobile parts around, you know, they all became millionaires because they learned these principles that you're talking about. So if you have a, you know, audience out there that really wants to do, I can't tell you how valuable what you're talking about, what you and I are talking about here is, it's absolutely the keys to the castle. It is. And, you know, if you specialize in something like you do, there's less competition. I mean, not saying you don't have a ton of competitors because I'm sure there's hundreds of them. But if you're going into AAC, I can tell you, there's a lot of principles that I recommend.

Number one is if you hear us talking right now, you know, Mark and I have a lot of passion. We're excited. I'm passionate about my business. Number one, if you don't have a passion for it, if you hate this, don't even think about doing it. Number two is you got to be able to fail to get successful. And it's so important that you're a good loser. And, you know, I'm a kind of a cocky winner.

But in business, I respect people so much. And I'm just going to end with there's so many great things. I want to know, first of all, I got a couple more questions. How do we get more of you? So there's Blue Collar Gold. There's the Blue Collar Millionaire that we're going to watch. Is there anything else to learn more that you might have out there for us? Sure.

Thank you for asking. I have a thing called Blue Collar Gold University where I bring companies actually into my company for a two-day thing. You come to Nashville and I literally, I show you how we do everything. And it's not just chimney business. As you and I've been talking, I'm sure if I came to your business or you came to my business, we would learn a lot from just watching our operations. And so I've had commercial builders, I've had firewood companies, I've had all kinds of different businesses, home improvement companies come here and literally I show them how we do everything from marketing to answering the phones to our numbers that we watch and operations in

general. And then the second day we work on their business. So we literally, wherever they are, we build a step-by-step process for them over the next five years to how they're going to grow, what they want this business to do, and what they want it to look like. And also, as importantly, how they're going to get out of it. No matter what business you're in, you've also got to plan for how you're getting out of it because you are going to get out of it at some time so if you can plan for that early all the steps kind of you know can fall into place so we we give them a step-by-step org chart so over the next five years of hires they're gonna have to make income projections profitability uh purchases they're gonna have to make possibly moving into new locations and we really game plan. By the time they leave here in two days, it's a lot of work. We truly worked for two days.

But you come out of here with a real plan for your business. And it's really one of the most exciting things I get to do. I probably have about 70 or 80 consulting clients that we bring in and do this for. And it's just super fun. So if your listeners have interest in it, I have a website called markstoner.com. And there's information on Blue Collar Gold University on there. And you can email me and we can get you some more details on it. But I really enjoy helping people that way.

And those are pretty much the main things I do, the book and then the university and running these companies. that way and those are pretty much the main things i do the book and then the university and running these companies okay well i'm gonna have a uh a page for you on the homeserviceexpert.com and we're just gonna put forward slash blue collar gold and you'll be able to find all the resources you need there but when this podcast goes live uh I plan on getting you a lot of business because what I'd like to do is I'll read Blue Collar Gold. I'm going to check out the episode and I'm going to try to make time. This year's shot, but definitely I could get out there. I'd love to check it out. I'd love to work with you. Part of doing this is not just helping the listeners out. It's helping me out.

And I believe every single person on here that I've had has got an unbelievable amount of talent and so much to offer. And they've been successful. And if you feed yourself these positive things on a day-to-day basis, you have nowhere to go but up. So let's close with one more thing. So what's one surprising piece of advice that you want to leave everybody here with? Obviously, I know, have fun when you get there on the journey and different things like that. But what's one really, really good piece, a piece of gold to leave with that you want to leave the crowd here with? That's an interesting question.

I guess I might struggle with that i think in general you know a lot of people look back i call it rainbows and unicorns and i believe in in that mentality more so than a pessimistic negative outlook i think my overall outlook is things can happen. Things can come true and you can move a lot by you just deciding to do it. And I know it's a little bit cliche, but it's amazing how the universe is not set up in these barriers that most people put up in their minds. They think the universe is a certain way with all these barriers. But when you and I start pushing on those barriers, it's amazing how they can move and they weren't real.

And things that you thought were going to be a problem just open up. And also, when that happens, keep your eyes open for the next big opportunity that can come to you because they're everywhere. The opportunity in America is everywhere, but you have to, you have to learn to look for the rainbows and unicorns out there. They're absolutely all around you every day. You just gave me goosebumps. I'm sitting here and it's so true. We live in a great country and I'm so happy you came on. Listen, Mark, I'm going to do everything you said. I'm going to go to your website. We're going to work out of time. I'm going to read the book. I'd love to get you back on here because we could dissect it.

We could talk about some tidbits out of the book that really resonate. I can't wait to read about the story because you said every part of your family has had a unicycle business and you broke out of it. And that's just, you know, my dad ran a transmission shop. He owned a transmission shop. I didn't really have a ton when I was a kid. I didn't have this great, uh, super lifestyle. And it just, I didn't take over a business and you don't have to have that to be successful. So Mark, I'm going to put all the resources out there. We're going to get this edited. We're going to throw it on there. We're going to get a lot of people. I want to get as many people

out there as possible. And I really, really appreciate you coming back on. And I look forward to the next time we get to talk because we're going to go through the whole book and we're going to learn a lot more from you. So I really, really, really appreciate it. Well, Tommy, it's been one of my favorite podcasts I've ever done. And you're so on point. I can't thank you enough for having me on here. And I hope your listeners understand the really the valuable lessons and the passion you have to bring to this, that if they picked up on a tenth of this, they're going to be successful. So thank you for doing what you are doing. All right, Mark. Well, listen, have a great night. Have a great weekend. I will be in touch.

All right. Thank you, sir. All right. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. This was the Home Service Expert podcast. Remember to subscribe to my show so that you're the first one to know when there's a new episode. If you're a subscriber, awesome. Leave us a review and tell us what you like and, most importantly, what you don't like so we can continue to improve the show.

And if you're ready to scale your business like I did, check out my free mini course right now at homeserviceexpert.com forward slash mini course. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next week.