The Home Service Expert Podcast - Turning Delegation Into Your Most Powerful Leadership Tool

Episode Date: December 21, 2018

Steve Gadsby is the owner of FurnaceUSA, a company seeking to simplify HVAC equipment installation process for homeowners across the US. He grew his previous company Canada Furnace into a multi-millio...n dollar business in less than five years, and was recognized by HomeStars.com as one of the best home service businesses of 2016 and 2018. In this episode, we talked about relationship marketing, sales, leadership...

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This is the Home Service Expert podcast with Tommy Mello. Let's talk about bringing in some more money for your home service business. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership, to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Hey there, welcome back to the Home Service Expert. I'm excited that you're here today.
Starting point is 00:00:34 We've got a guy, his name is Steve Gadsby, and he's been very, very successful in the furnace and HVAC business. He actually sold his company recently and he's the co-owner of Canada Furnace, which has recently sold. They were recognized as one of the best of 2016 and best of 2018 winners by homestars.com. And they grew into a multi-million dollar business right around 10 million. You know, they started out around 70,000 and his goal is to tell you everything he's learned over time in hopes that hopefully you might take him up on an offer here that we're going to talk about. So, Steve, I'm excited to have you here. You're in British Columbia, right?
Starting point is 00:01:15 Yep. Near kind of Vancouver, maybe 45 minutes out of Vancouver. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate you bringing me on the podcast. Very, very small correction. We grew to about $5 million in sales. Oh, $5 million. $10 million. I love big numbers, and I just don't want to overstate anything. Hey, very small correction. We grew it to about $5 million in sales. Oh, $5 million. I love big numbers,
Starting point is 00:01:26 and I just don't want to overstate anything. Hey, you know what? I'm sure that there's a million listeners out there that would be glad to be at $5 million, and it's not as easy to grow into that big number of $5 million. I mean, any way you look at it, $5 million is $5 million.
Starting point is 00:01:42 Even if you're getting 10%, that's half a million dollars a year. And that's a great living by anybody's means. So tell us a little bit about when you got started, how you got into the business, and kind of what you're up to today. Yeah, the very start of it, I was 27 years old. And it was actually a company my family had going way way back but it was sitting dormant for about 10 years that's why you know it had a great name but it was just sitting there doing nothing like it was just sort of thankfully the number never got shut down thankfully you
Starting point is 00:02:15 know it never completely died off but in 2006 it did $73,000 total in kind of total revenue that's just kind of passively the phone kind of ringing once in a while. But, you know, I was doing fine at that point in time. I was working in HVAC. I was doing, I was being a service contractor. I was a contractor for like other companies, basically, which gave me a super, you know, kind of like a base because it's almost like you're a business. It's like the in-between category of being an HVAC business and, you know, and not being
Starting point is 00:02:43 an HVAC business. So I went out and, you know, I was selling cars and all that kind of stuff, but I wanted to make the leap into having my own company. So I ended up buying the business. It was stressful at the time. I paid $500 a month until it got to about $40,000 was sort of the deal to buy the business, which I was actually stressed about at the time because, you know, 500 bucks a month, I got a mortgage to pay. I got, uh, things that I was worried about,
Starting point is 00:03:10 you know, it was like a stressful, even that little bit was kind of a stressful amount of money. So I just kind of started down that road and I did something funny. I did quit my contracting job because I was so worried about getting the next, getting the business going. So, you know, I actually dragged it as long as I possibly could until it was just crazy, until I couldn't handle it. So I'm not on side of these people that say,
Starting point is 00:03:31 you know, jump ship and burn your bridges and all that kind of stuff. I think it's a bit too dangerous for my life anyway. And then, I don't know, I had these delusions that I would just start a business and, you know, I would let the world know or let like 10 people know that I started a business. And I thought somehow magically the phone was going to ring.
Starting point is 00:03:49 Like the $73,000 that did in revenue really amounted to nothing in profit. Like the business made absolutely nothing. So I needed to kind of figure out some way to get it going. And, you know, I was sitting there basically as I quit my old job. I was, you know, I rented this little 10 by 10 office cubicle. And, you know, I tried a newspaper ad that was a total fail. You know, that was a big swing and a miss for that because I thought, oh, this is easy. Just put a newspaper ad in and do it.
Starting point is 00:04:15 But after a while, it came down to, I just was sitting there with myself in a phone book and I just started opening the white page and calling people. And I would just very nervously say stuff like, hey, Steve here from Canada Furnace, blah, blah, blah, we were at your house. You know, I started calling old leads that were dusty old 10-year-old leads, and that didn't go very far. So I started randomly calling people out of the phone book. And sure enough, I actually was able to set up like one service,
Starting point is 00:04:42 one little service call. And then I went to the service call, and I was much better in person sales than I was over doing over the phone. And that one service call would lead to a referral to somebody else or would lead to, hey, your hot water tank is 14 years old. Are you interested in replacing it? So then, you know, my $69 call turned into $1,069. And then, you know, then I can get a referral to the neighbor. And very, very slowly, that was the very start of it. So, you know, real quick, I'm going to go off topic, but what do you do to ask for a referral?
Starting point is 00:05:14 Because I think that when you own a business, you understand how powerful that is. But tell me your best way to get that referral and really be able to work on getting multiple referrals from one customer yeah you know what i would say i'm relatively terrible and i've never been very good i got ways to learn about actively getting referrals the referrals i think just came from i was just you know i'm just 20 something years old and i'm excited to have a business and you know i thoroughly went over it. Because, you know, I would go out and I'd have two jobs that whole week. I'd have a total of two hours booked out of a 50-hour week that I needed to work.
Starting point is 00:05:53 And I gave everything into it. I, like, did a great job. I just, you know, spoke well with the customer. And I think that just naturally turned into leads. Like, the referrals would come more in the sense of I get a call the next day from his neighbor or something like that. So they're more kind of like natural referrals just from, from being very upbeat and into it, I guess. So. I'm telling you, I get ideas as I go with this stuff. I love the fact that you had two jobs a
Starting point is 00:06:21 week because you got to take a lot of time. I think a lot of us have the problem of our guys might run seven, 10 jobs a day. HVAC, I mean, depending on repair or if you're going to do a new quote, sometimes we give way too many opportunities to our techs and they have no incentive to slow down because they're like, I'm going to work an eight hour workday, nine hour workday anyway. I got to get to my next job. Why would I squeeze the...
Starting point is 00:06:45 It is really tough and that was a... Even as the owner of the company, that's of course where it eventually got to where it was non-stop. You're backed up like I was doing say eight sales in a day or if I was on a service day, I'd be doing just eight or ten service calls a day.
Starting point is 00:07:01 Even as the owner, which my incentive is ten times more than everybody else, it was still tough sometimes to just take a break and upsell. But you're right, when it's slower, you're hungrier and you want it more and just you sell better with a bit more time. Yeah, I definitely want to dig into that more. You face a lot of challenges, right? You're the only guy.
Starting point is 00:07:23 Okay, so obviously you didn't have any employees. You got a rent now that you're paying for. And you really don't have a solid lead source except for referrals, which you seem to get good at over time. Tell me a little bit about the biggest nerve-wracking parts of growing. Maybe to that $1 million mark. Let's forget the $5 million. Let's talk about just getting the ball rolling.
Starting point is 00:07:43 A lot of guys out there are one-man shows. Yeah. Like, to be honest, the toughest part, especially at the very beginning, was dealing with myself. Like, you know, my entire brain and emotions were wrapped around whether I was profitable one week or whether I was getting enough work. It was just dealing with this kind of juggernaut. And thankfully, I read a book around that time.
Starting point is 00:08:06 It was called Feeling Good. And the whole concept of it was what you're telling yourself, you know, the things that you tell yourself, you know, so let's say I'm about to go into a sale and I'm telling myself things like, no, this is impossible. You're not going to be able to sell this. And it basically just teaches you about how to kind of fight back and just sort of say, yep, it is possible. You're going to be fine.
Starting point is 00:08:24 Your business is going to grow. It's a way to get around crappy thinking. But I would say that was my biggest challenge, was getting around the shelf doubt when I was getting going and growing the business. And the problem is it's front-loaded. The most shelf doubt is at the very beginning. That's when it's scariest. But the biggest challenge is from a business perspective, and the biggest thing that I
Starting point is 00:08:44 struggled with was delegating, right? So I was an absolute maniacal micromanager of people, right? So at first, I was the one doing the telemarketing. I'm the one going after the sales call. I'm the one going back the next day putting in the hot water tank. Everything was about how I wanted to do it. And the jumps started to happen when I backed off, when I said, okay, you know what? If somebody else can do this, do these outside sales, make the phone calls, then that frees me up to do something else.
Starting point is 00:09:13 And then as soon as I had enough service work, then I delegated that off. Even if somebody could first do it 50% as good as I could, the moment that, you know, I delegated it off, they start to learn and grow and develop themselves. And by the time I sold the business, I say this proudly, there was nothing. There was no job in the entire company, except for probably running it, that somebody else didn't do better. There were people that were selling better than I did. There were people that were doing their phones better.
Starting point is 00:09:40 People that were doing the computers better. Like everything. There were people that were way better than I was just because I let them grow and develop. But it wasn't easy at first. I wasn't a natural delegator, and I think I learned to be over time. Yeah, delegation is very powerful, and I hear that a lot, Steve. I hear people say, they're never going to do it as good as I do. And I think that's a huge problem.
Starting point is 00:10:03 And somebody says, I hear this all the time from managers, if I don't do it, it's not going to be it as good as I do. And I think that's a huge problem. And somebody says, I hear this all the time from managers. If I don't do it, it's not going to be done right. And you're right. It won't be the first time, but that's your problem with delegating. I mean, delegating is an art and there needs to be certain qualifications. And I think that some of the listeners out there should realize you need to talk about here's what needs to get done. Here's why it needs to get done. Here's what you have available to get it done here's the priority assigned to it when it needs to get done by when you're going to check to make sure it got done properly what are the consequences of it doesn't get done and then some feedback on top of that because most of the time people don't do the job right because you didn't clearly give them exactly what you expected.
Starting point is 00:10:46 And they didn't even understand because you were the one that explained it, not them. Yeah. My sort of philosophy towards it changed over the years. And, you know, at first I was like a, you know, trust and verify type of person. And over the years, I just found, I just hired the best possible people and went through a lot of people to find them. Just hired essentially rock stars, people that I loved and I trusted and just did an absolutely spectacular job. And I really wouldn't hate to watch them because they cared about the business as much as I did. But it took so many years to find these people.
Starting point is 00:11:19 And, you know, I think I was a terrible person at hiring. Like I would hire too flippantly. Like I would just sort of bring somebody aboard. I would, uh, you know, quickly and then go, Oh God, there's a whole bunch of problems with these people. So, but you know, one good offshoot of that is that I would find these jams and I would keep these people very, very close to me. And they, they became the core of the business. Like, you know,
Starting point is 00:11:43 Yeah, it's tough to do that. And I think that people are definitely the most important part of it. But I think the process dictates how you get to people. And there needs to be a defined process. It can't be so many people I've talked to say, I spent a lot of money. Or I posted an ad on Craigslist. I put an ad on Indeed. And I only got three people that applied.
Starting point is 00:12:03 And I look at the ad. It's kind of like a resume. You know, I had a buddy just text message me today. He said, Tommy, I just spent 200 bucks for somebody who's a specialist to make my resume look amazing on LinkedIn as well as on the web. And what that is, is Google, you know, just like Google does, there's keywords in a resume that make it pop out to, I'll say, a white-collar type professional. I mean, in our trade, the resumes to me don't mean as much as I look at how much are you flipping over jobs. If you're only at a job every year you're switching and I look at it as 10 pages of 102 jobs, it's not really interested. I'm not really too interested in that.
Starting point is 00:12:46 So when it comes to the people, I was just going to ask what you found when you were looking for people. What are some of the things you looked for? You know, it's just so interesting that you said that about how almost like you're posting this big long resume thing. I went
Starting point is 00:13:01 hardcore. This is a pretty tough labor market. There's actually a total lack of tradespeople and a lot of those go over. It's just extremely low unemployment rate. So it's tough because it makes it tough to find people. But I went completely the other direction by the end of it where the ads that I posted to find people were essentially sales ads. I was selling these people in the ad to give me a call. I I would post things like, you know, we have an amazing team. We're going to give you a phone. We're going to give you this. It wasn't like trying to vet them out. I wasn't trying to limit them.
Starting point is 00:13:32 I was trying to get the biggest net I could find to sort of get more people in. Yeah. And you know, that's one of the things I find as I get bigger is people start, if you've got a good referral program. And then another thing that we started that I think is probably the most successful thing I've ever done, and I know, I talk to a lot of companies, Steve, that are doing way more money than I'm doing.
Starting point is 00:13:54 And they usually have what's called an apprentice program. And they start them out at around, between 10 and 15 bucks an hour, depending on the state. And then slowly over time, over the first few months, as you prove yourself three to six months, you move up to a junior technician. And usually that's a higher hourly or a commission base. And then you move up to a lead technician or a journeyman. And then you move up to a field supervisor who keeps track of about five guys. And I learned this from a consultant, Al Levy. And what I did is,
Starting point is 00:14:26 as I started to learn it, I found that the companies that are really doing it do not have a shortage of workers. And it's a great program. And like I said, I got to give credit to Al because he taught us a lot about that. And it's something that exists in the HVAC plumbing electrical world, but doesn't exist in the garage door world. And we've started to implement it and really breed that into our culture. And it's a lot easier to find somebody that's looking for a career that's in their late teens, early 20s, that's not molded into a certain way. And they've done really, really well with the program. I mean, all of our guys have done really well with the program. I mean, all of our guys have done really well with the program, but, uh, it's interesting. Cause I used to oversell our company on the people, but then
Starting point is 00:15:08 they come back a couple of months later and they're like, it's not everything I thought, you know, you know, I'm like, you still got to work at a hundred degrees in Arizona. I mean, there's certain things it's got its perks, but it's, it's got its limitations too. It's, I can't control when garage doors break. So if it's nine o'clock at night and you're the emergency call, this isn't a nine to five. And some guys think it's a nine to five and they're going to get cell phones and trucks and we're going to pay for gas and insurance and pay time off, which is fine. We do a lot of this stuff, but if you want a nine to five, a desk job, then that's fine. You can go do that. But that's not what this is. And I definitely
Starting point is 00:15:45 think the biggest problem I hear from most of the people out there in small business is how do I get good help? And that's why I kind of wanted to beat on this a little bit, because it sounds like you were able to solve that problem. Yeah. I mean, the best thing, again, that came to solving that problem was an internal change. And it was, I honestly would consider myself the first three years of business. I was just the worst boss. I was horrible. I, you know, I had this expectation or I had this weird delusion that I would hire people and they would just do what I told them to do because they wanted a paycheck and then they would go home. And then if they, you know, like, and that's not how it works in the real world. You know, people are people and
Starting point is 00:16:23 people are very diverse and they've got personalities and lives and stuff and everything else. And, you know, I had a big switch. I kind of had like a low point. And I remember I was a few years into business and I called everybody in like a breakfast meeting. And just everybody sitting on the table, they're all talking amongst themselves. And I was having a real hard time being like a leader to them. Like I couldn't get them to do what I wanted to do. But looking back, I was a bit of a dick, to be honest.
Starting point is 00:16:47 I yelled at people if they didn't do it. And for some reason, I expected that would create loyalty. And it didn't. It just made them maybe work great for the next 10 minutes. And as soon as I'm out of the room, they're going to do whatever they want to. And I read this book by a fellow named John Maxwell. He's this leadership. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:17:08 Leadership coach. I don't know most of the book, but I remember the key point. And the key point was, you know, the more you legitimately care about your people, the more, the harder working and more loyal and dedicated they're going to be to you. And that was, and over time, of course, I read that and it didn't really sink in. And then a few months later, I started to sort of think, well, how am I going to do this? And I started to find little things that I appreciated about what they were doing, like anything I could find. So, hey, that's a great job.
Starting point is 00:17:32 And I started to compliment and just give kind of positive reinforcement. And it started to help. And it just kind of evolved into this thing where the best people, I was just constantly, every day day telling them all the reasons that I loved what they were doing. And it was a real shift in culture and it created much higher quality employees because I think I had a great relationship with them. Yeah. You know, sometimes I think that I'm guilty of that. I don't think there's a business owner listening to this podcast that says I could not give more praise to the people because so many times I feel like if you're anything like me, and I think you are because we're both business owners, you end up being a firefighter at times and you're dealing with problems. And sometimes
Starting point is 00:18:16 you just got to take a step back, take two steps back to take 10 steps forward. And I think that it needs to be one of those things that's on your calendar that literally you get done. And I mean, even times where I set it on my calendar, I still get distracted at times, but this is going to be my time to just go. It doesn't need to be a raise or it doesn't need to be a gift card. It could be just, Hey, look, you are kicking butt, you know, come talk to me for 10 minutes. Tell me how these things are going with the family, but what, what's changed with you? Like all of a sudden you're happier, your call booking rates are better. You're smiling. Everybody's mentioning how delighted they are to be around you. And I mean, that goes quite times further than any other gift could ever go. Although raises are great. Look, everybody
Starting point is 00:18:59 wants money. That's why they go to work. But they also, I heard a weird stat that 87% of workers feel underappreciated. And that doesn't surprise me. And it's a culture. And I think we're always, always, always working on our culture. Oh, 100%. And you know, and having a lot of field employees, and it sounds like you've got a ton of them, that's actually tough. It's field employees, like, you know, there's obviously the separation between office employees and field employees. Office employees, I find, are generally a little bit easier to manage. It's like a different sort of an office culture compared to a field culture. And to manage a whole pile of field employees, you've got to be good. That's a lot of challenge.
Starting point is 00:19:40 It took me years and years and years to sort of get better at that. But it came to a point just because, you know, again, the labor market was so tight and everything else, but where I would strive to always say something, because some of these guys you only see in every couple few days. And if I saw them in person, I would strive to say something positive at that point in time about anything they've done in the last few days since I saw them.
Starting point is 00:20:03 Like try to have something positive on every single interaction. I didn't always hit that, but I think it just kind of created a very positive sort of, I mean, other guys want to uplift other people too. It just everybody's supporting everybody else. Yeah, that's so important. And I'm glad you mentioned that is it's so important to take the time. And I think one day I,
Starting point is 00:20:24 and I talked about this about six months ago on the podcast, but I told every one of my technicians, if they go buy them, the wife's flowers, I'll reimburse them. And one of the guys asked me, why do you want to do this? And I said, no reason. I said, just see what happens when you bring your wife flowers or girlfriend flowers out of the blue, and then bring me the receipt and make it under 20 bucks. Do not buy a bouquet. But only five of them did it. But they were like, geez, they're like, we got to do that more often because it's amazing the result that happened because of it.
Starting point is 00:21:00 And I think the what do they say? Happy wife, happy life. So it made them feel a lot better too, but it's just those little things, those little actions of gratitude that make a huge difference that, uh, glad we talked about that. Let me ask you this. There's always a down season. So I live in Arizona. We got snowbirds and being from Canada, I'm sure you know what those are. They, They come here for the winter. They want to get out of the cold. And I'm from Michigan originally. So I've been up to Windsor and we used to go to Canada all the time, Toronto. But in the winter, we like to go to somewhere
Starting point is 00:21:35 like Florida or Arizona. So we have, in the summertime, it's kind of our downturn. It's hot outside and there's not as many people with money. And obviously in an HVAC company, the HVAC doesn't get used during the winter. The furnace does. Tell me a little bit about the highs and lows and how you manage to keep your employees busy during the down season. One of the, like, I mean, when we were real early, it was just, it was a single season. You know, it basically was all about the fall and the winter because it was just, it was basically a heating company. And then over time time we developed of course uh the cooling side of
Starting point is 00:22:08 things which eventually we did more cooling in terms of total revenue than we did actually on the heating side of things which is crazy which you know because we're called canada furnace you think you think it was you know we'd be the other way around but eventually we did more more cooling but that left two dips and the dips, I would say, there's a little dip after Christmas. Everybody's out of money, but the more significant was, say, March, April. That was a pretty big dip annually, and then you're out of that. You're into the cooling season. Then there's another dip, say, around September.
Starting point is 00:22:36 There's two dips, but one of the things that we did well, we kept a list ongoing all the time. It was a big, long spreadsheet of things that we wanted to. We kept a list ongoing all the time. It was this big, long spreadsheet of things that we wanted to improve in the business. Just nonstop things, you name it. There's always a continual list of different problems and stuff you're trying to resolve in the business or fix or whatever it is in a thousand different areas. And the moment it would slow down,
Starting point is 00:23:02 and it's not easy to do, but you just shift your focus completely to working on the businesses that are working in it which is of course the famous guy's book i forgot the name of the book the moment it would slow down and but this is the amazing part and i connected to i i believe in like the it's hard not to believe in like the feng shui of business, I'll call it, which is sort of like,
Starting point is 00:23:26 you know, if you work very, very hard in business, just great things happen to it along the way, just that you aren't necessarily anticipating. But the moment that we shifted our focus to working on the business, and we basically, for lack of a better term,
Starting point is 00:23:39 told the universe, you know, we want this, we want more business. We're working on our business. The moment we really started diving to working on the business, more work would just sort of come out of the blue like stuff we weren't expecting like you know some big project would come along or something would pop up but you know whether those things are connected or not i don't know but you know we completely
Starting point is 00:23:56 shifted our focus to working on it and just got everybody helping out on working on the business you know knowing that we were probably going to lose money that much, which didn't happen very often, but it happened very frequently. But it just sort of working on the business and shifting the focus of that helped, I think, grow the business at the same time. Yeah, that's a great point is I've learned to love it and hate it, work on the business, not in the business. But nobody really has given an example of how to do that in less than a paragraph. And for me, you need to look at certain key performance indicators within the company. And that's your call booking rate. There's a lot of them. Financial ones are, you need to watch your inventory. You need to make sure you're paying your taxes on time. And there's
Starting point is 00:24:42 QuickBooks or different CRMs that handle that, but that's not my passion. My passion is your call booking rate, your average ticket, your average cost per acquisition, real tracking that you could look at these numbers for real. And that's kind of what I specialize in. When I help a company out, and I don't do a ton of consulting, I mean, I enjoy it. But first thing I say is,
Starting point is 00:25:03 do we both agree that I'm here to help you? Right? First of all, yes. Do we agree that I might not be smarter than you, but I've done this and I'm going to find the holes in your business and I'm going to help you resolve them. Okay. We agree. So just like my trainer holds me accountable to go to the gym and do what he says. If I say yes, and I signed up for this, then we both agree on this. So that's first and foremost. Number two is we've got to have some type of software systems to make sure that we're getting the accurate numbers because I'm going to find the biggest hole in the boat. And that's the first one I'm going to fix or else it's going to sink the
Starting point is 00:25:38 quickest. So let's find the biggest hole. And a lot of these companies, they just, they assume that it's not an issue. They assume that they're getting a lot of leads. They assume that their ads are perfect on their different spots or posting their ads for workers. So I've been very successful at finding big holes. And I always think that a consultant, if you're going to do consulting, you should say, I'll bring you 10 times more value than my cost. That's at the bare minimum. So sometimes when I work with people, they've got burned a lot in the past because a lot of people are wham, bam, thank you, ma'am, you paid me, I'm gone. You didn't listen. We'll try another time, but you're going to pay me more. I think that's the wrong way to go. So I just think it's interesting to work on the business. Like what we
Starting point is 00:26:26 do is we've got a bunch of KPIs and then we get, we go on Trello and we put our top five biggest things that's going to help the business the most. And the whole senior team of the company works on those five things. Right now we just switched our payroll company. We're working on a new inventory module. I'm a marketer. So all mine are always in marketing. So I got to give and take. I'm always working on crazy marketing and sales ideas, but, uh, the operational guys, which I forced myself into, but I don't like it. And I hate financing and I hate not financing, just the finance department and the accounting and the CPAs and all the crazy stuff. But what part of the business did you love the most?
Starting point is 00:27:09 To be honest, it's the marketing part of it. You know what? There's two parts, marketing and sales. And the sales is kind of funny. It's sort of like going to the sale. I'm always like, oh, I got to go to a sale. And then once I'm in it, I'm like alive. I love being in the moment, in the sale, and just sort of having a great conversation with the customer, leading things towards closing the deal.
Starting point is 00:27:30 I actually love it, but not when I'm not in the sale. And the other part that I love is just the marketing part of it and doing things that other people aren't doing. And I think that was a huge boost for our business over the years, just jumping into things that other companies aren't doing and I think that was a huge boost over the years just jumping those things that other companies aren't comfortable with yet I think gave us a big advantage over time yeah you know let's jump into marketing because I don't think this podcast would be complete without me diving into marketing since I love it so much and I think you made a great testimonial to me earlier about your search engine optimization days and now you're starting to get more involved in Facebook as well and you
Starting point is 00:28:10 do a little bit of paid which we all have to do let's talk a little bit about what did work for your business let's talk about online and offline yeah like the earliest thing that started working for as well of course you know once once I got past individually telemarketing leads, which once I kind of got past that point, the thing that started Google Search. So it was called AdWords. It's called Google Ads now, but AdWords back in the day because I think we were the second HVAC company in all of greater Vancouver even doing them. So there was virtually nobody, and on most keywords, we're the only bidder. So, you know, like furnace repair, you know, Burnaby or some surrounding town, it was like a dollar. It caused virtually nothing to bid in the keywords.
Starting point is 00:28:55 And now those keywords are, God knows, $20 to $50. You can't make money at it now. And if I realized how great the opportunity was back then, I should have taken out a huge loan and dumped everything I had into AdWords at the time because it was so cheap. But now the cost over the years has been driven up. The first year in AdWords, I think I spent $2,000 on AdWords, and that created a bunch of business. So by year 10, it was like over $50,000, and AdWords is just chewing everything up. But it's tough.
Starting point is 00:29:23 It's almost because it helps the business, but it also gets extremely expensive, especially if they're not converting. So AdWords was one of the early ones before a ton of other companies sort of got involved in it. One of the early things we did was probably 2007, 2008. And I was very nervous about it at the time. And I was absolutely terrible at it. But I forced myself to get out there and
Starting point is 00:29:45 just make about 10 or 12 videos answering all the common questions that customers asked us on YouTube so you know like stuff specific to our market like what is poly B piping and how does it hurt the boiler system and you know why is my bedroom so hot and just these silly little videos that we got asked about quite often, we put them online. And over time, at first, it was like, you know, 10 views, and then 100 views. And then over time, we had like hundreds of thousands of views. And if most of those views came from the greater Vancouver area, that's crazy. Because, you know, it just means, you know, a lot of those people in the finance and most amazing thing happened. If somebody sees you, you know, at their house at a sale,
Starting point is 00:30:26 after you've done this silly YouTube video that was like a very low budget and was, you know, you did terrible at suddenly you're like an authority when you're at their house. So YouTube videos actually worked very, very well for us. And then, uh, and yeah, and that's the same thing I'm doing with my, with my next business too, is just launching as many possible YouTube videos as I possibly can. But from there, we went to Facebook. And again, we're in Google kind of before other people, mostly because I was probably too broke or too cheap when I started to get into the yellow pages.
Starting point is 00:30:57 That was crazy at the time. We got into Facebook. I'm almost certain we're the first HR company in Facebook. We're probably four or five years ago. And it was just, you know, it was such an unknown thing. Why would you put something on Facebook? Now it's more normal. But back then we're super early.
Starting point is 00:31:12 And again, it's super cheap. If you get into something before other people are comfortable with it, it's cheap, cheap, cheap. Like, I don't know now, maybe Instagram. I don't know if there's another platform that's kind of upcoming that's an equal opportunity. But now the costs are getting driven up. it's probably you know 20 bucks per thousand impressions
Starting point is 00:31:29 whereas back in the day that might have been god knows 20 bucks for 20,000 impressions i don't remember the numbers but it's a lot more expensive now but yeah you know the first couple things that were working so it's good to be an early adapter and it's good to test. And I'll tell you what, I did a crowdfunding campaign with a guy. It took us 32 different tests to find the best conversion. So a lot of people say, I tried Facebook to hire a company. Hey, I tried it. It didn't work. Hey, I tried Google. It didn't work. Hey, I did mailers and that didn't work. And I'm sitting here going, thank God it didn't work. Cause you're not going to be my competition Because if you did have it work, so now what I find is I go in all the mailers, everybody copies me. I open it up and it's like the same exact coupons, the same exact, I put my picture in the
Starting point is 00:32:14 end, they put their picture in the end. It's like, holy crap. But I'll tell you this, Google, Instagram, all these different companies are doing supply and demand. So it's a bidding process. And here is something that needs to be known. He who could pay more per acquisition will always win. And the reason why that is, is look, I've talked to companies that do HVAC plumbing and electrical because they're in the house, they're still on a service agreement. And the customer, they realize that the lifetime value of that customer might be $30,000. So if they look at it as a five-year hole, they can pay a lot more and they're forward thinkers. The problem with a small business that has one, two, five employees is they go, I need to make this week's payroll and I can't bid that much. They were never set up to be a large business and
Starting point is 00:33:11 they can't compete. So the best thing they could do is not go after PPC unless it's going to be long tailed. They can go after SEO, but they're not going to be able to compete with a guy like you or me because I'm doing blog posts every day. I'm getting very high quality links. I'm working on quality score. I'm working on onsite optimization. I'm building different types of links through our different things like Yelp and directory sites. I'm also putting all kinds of video content and I'm also posting on Houzz. And I'm also, because I've got the staff to do it. So Google loves me more. That's just the way it is. So exactly. There's a content machine. If you put out more content in Google, it beats it up. And they love that. And I'll tell
Starting point is 00:33:50 you what, not a lot of companies are doing this in the home service space, but the big ones are, and that's why they became big. Content is king. But there's another thing that I found that I really want to talk to some of the smaller guys out there and that's strategic partnerships. And it makes a huge difference. I met with a drain cleaning company two weeks ago and the guy said, you know what? My number one referral, do you know how we built the business? 60% of our jobs come from plumbers. I said, what do you mean plumbers? He said, Tommy, we take some type of telescope and we put it through the tube and we find any blockages. It's an upsell service that we give them a referral rate to, you know, they're going
Starting point is 00:34:29 in and unplugging a drain charging four or 500 bucks. We're going in and charging them five, 10,000, but given we're fixing everything. So their drains will work for the next 30, 40 years again. And I said, that's amazing. You figured out how to do partner marketing. And he goes, yeah. And he goes, that's amazing. You figured out how to do partner marketing. And he goes, yeah. And he goes, that's not the only ones we use. And he goes, they've got all these partnerships. And for me, I put storage solutions in. So I teamed up with moving companies,
Starting point is 00:34:55 the bottom rubber on a garage door. Guess who uses that pest control companies. There's so many realtors. Guess what happens? They want the house to look good when they sell it because of curb appeal. Garage doors matter. Painting companies. Why would he let me give you a $100 referral fee rather than painting this whole piece of crap? The paint job will look so much better by replacing the panels,
Starting point is 00:35:15 and I'll do it very affordable and make you look good. So I feel like it's the most untapped resource in the home service niche itself. That is a good idea. It's something that we never really got into or we're good at anyway but i think that's a great idea you know it's one of those things that it drops off a lot of times because people don't follow up and it's one of those things that you got to commit to and i think the biggest thing we could take out of this is you committed to google and you succeeded you committed to facebook and you're killing it.
Starting point is 00:35:50 And I think a lot of times people say, I tried that and it didn't work. I tried the newspaper. I tried the magazine. Yeah. No, you're dead on. It's a nonstop learning curve with either of those platforms. Like I've been in doing for years and it's still complicated to me. Like, you know, there's still a lot to learn. And I mean, they're really geared towards like a major company that has an unlimited budget to sit there and just work on Google or Facebook all day. It's that that's who they really want as a client, people who drop a million dollars a week into the platform. And, and it's, you know, the complication level kind of reflects that, but you know, if you're able to kind of figure out all the different features on it and really dial it in, especially for a higher ticket
Starting point is 00:36:24 thing, like you're selling something like, like you mentioned earlier, if you look at your cost all the different features on it and really dial it in. Especially for a higher ticket thing. Like you mentioned earlier, if you look at your cost per click, that's a really interesting point. Let's say your cost per click is $20 per click, and let's say only 20% of those people are actually coming to your site. That costs you a fortune to get that service call. You might break even on it, but it's interesting. If you look at it from a long-term perspective for the client or like over
Starting point is 00:36:45 the course of that, of that customer's life and treat them well, that's a whole different kind of set of math. So. Yeah. And I think that you got to look at cost per acquisition. I talked to a plumber Monday and you're going to love this. He said, Tommy, he said, it cost me $40 per hour for my plumbers. They're journeymen. They got 10 years plus experience. And I said, okay, $40 seems about right. I said, okay, let me ask you this. And then he told me, Tommy, he's only working a third of the time because he's driving
Starting point is 00:37:20 there. He's getting parts. He's going to our meetings at the office. He's not in the customer's house, but a third of the time, you know? And I said, okay. So he goes, what does that equal? I said, 120. He goes, yeah, 120. And he goes, how much do you think it cost me to get to that house?
Starting point is 00:37:34 I said, I don't know, maybe a hundred bucks. He's like, yeah, so we're at 220 per hour, right? I said, yeah. He goes, how much do you think I pay for parts on average? I go, I don't know, for a plumber, maybe a hundred bucks. He goes, yeah. So now we're at 320. He goes, how much do you think I paid for the overhead to get them out there? The truck, the CRM, the dispatchers, my management. I said, probably around a hundred
Starting point is 00:37:52 dollars. He said, yeah. So we're at 420. And, uh, he said, do you think I need to make a profit? Do you think I'm in business to make a profit? I said, yeah. I said, how much do you want to make? He says probably about 20%, right? He said, yeah. So I need to buy 80 to a hundred bucks. So I'm at 520 per hour. And yet all these other business owners, these one man shops are charging $100 an hour total. And they think they can deliver service like we could deliver.
Starting point is 00:38:16 They think they could solve the problems because we're paying for insurance, we're paying for the truck, we're paying for all these things. So most small businesses have no idea how much it costs to get a guy out there unless you are the truck. We're paying for all these things. So most small businesses have no idea how much it costs to get a guy out there unless you are the business. And if you're the business, what happens when you go to Hawaii and that customer's plumbing has an issue? Yeah. And yet they all think the guys that charge more money are thieves. And what he told me is perceived value
Starting point is 00:38:46 minus cost of what you charged equals the amount of overcharge that you did. So that means if I charge you 5,000 and you receive it, it was worth 5,000, you felt like you got a good deal and you're happy. But if the perceived value is 4,000, I charge you 5,000, I overcharge you 1,000. And it's all in the perception of the perceived value. Because if I did the red carpet and I showed up in a wrap truck and I put on the footies when I walked in and I smelled so good and so
Starting point is 00:39:18 vibrant and I smiled and my daughter went to the same high school your daughter goes to, and we started talking and you said, and you literally saw the iPad. And I showed you the pictures when we went through the drains. And I showed you why our parts are better than the other three companies that are the biggest in town. And I told you we're 24-7 and here's your warranty. And I've got you in our system. You're a pre-fertile client.
Starting point is 00:39:39 You go, holy cow, I'm in love with this company. That was an amazing experience. I'm willing to pay for that experience. I mean, that's what most business owners don't understand. You know what I mean? go, holy cow, I'm in love with this company. That was an amazing experience. I'm willing to pay for that experience. I mean, that's what most business owners don't understand. You know what I mean? Yeah, no, exactly. And that's, yeah, you're right.
Starting point is 00:39:56 I mean, a lot of small guys, they realize after a year that, you know, they're making less than they were making when they were working for somebody else. And it's a tough realization for, you know, just being like, you know, having field employees and, you know, all that kind of stuff. It's a very tough industry. Like, you know, if you get all, it's like spinning plates and you get all your plates spinning just right, you do amazing. And if something's not quite right, you can lose your shirt. You can, you know, very, very tough business. That's kind of one of the reasons why with my new business, I'm not going to directly employ any field employees myself, just because I know how difficult it is to manage.
Starting point is 00:40:30 I want to not have that part of my expenses. You know, let's dive into that right now. I really want to hear more. It's got me excited because we talked about this before we jumped on the call. You have a brand new business. You did well in your furnace heating and cooling business. Let's talk a little bit about how you've been able to learn how to market well, and now you're taking this in a completely different futuristic model.
Starting point is 00:40:56 No, and that's just it. It's a question they answer. What parts do you love the most? I love the sales and I love the marketing part of it. So having field employees is sometimes amazing and sometimes very, very tough. So basically I want to take the parts that I like, have it a business and be able to make it much more scalable because the parts that you can't scale is trying to drive the salesperson out to a house. And my opinion is over the longterm, like looking into the future, I think that's pretty outdated, having to send a physical salesperson to somebody's house for an hour,
Starting point is 00:41:28 sit there over a cup of coffee with a customer for another hour, and sell somebody something. I don't think the customer, in a lot of ways, is getting a ton of value out of it. In my opinion, when they can do the same thing on their iPhone or through an iPad, sitting at work, and by just looking at a couple of pictures sometimes of their mechanical room. So that's what the new concept is. It's Furnace USA. And we are actively selling equipment. We usually sell it on like a monthly plan. So they just pay, you know, $99 a month for your furnace and your air conditioner. And then we partner with HVAC contractors all over the state. And that's actually part of the reason I came on the show is because I need great partners all over the state. So plus, it gives you more work that you didn't have to market for and you actually didn't have to sell.
Starting point is 00:42:15 So let's say you're in Kentucky, which I mentioned that because I need to find somebody in Kentucky today. Let's say you're in Kentucky, you're an HVAC contractor, and we all know sometimes HVAC contractors are not great at, or they don't love the sales part of it. That's not really, they're there because they like doing the work, they like doing the installs, but let's say they're not, they don't love the sales part of it. So here's the thing. So today I talked to a couple in Kentucky. I don't, I think it's Lexington area. Yeah. So I talked to a couple in kentucky i don't uh i think it's lexington area oh yeah um yeah so i talked to a couple down there great couple um they want to go ahead with the system it's just it's just a basic furnace and an air conditioner that installed it needs a little like
Starting point is 00:42:56 a little bit of duct work so i'm um selling to them on like a on like a monthly plan so i will pay a contractor from my bank account to your bank account. You didn't have to sell it. You didn't have to market it. I'm going to just pay. We can negotiate a price so that you make money, you're happy with it, and I will pay you. It's a done job. It's a job that you don't have to sell. You don't have to market anything. And the benefit I get, I want a great partner that I can work with. Warranty it for maybe like 30 days. Give me a month of warranty. And from there, I actually want to pay that same company to go back annually and go and service it. So, you know, essentially the customer is, it's not theirs to be concerned with. And that's why I want to kind of get the word out about this because I need to do is I want to give away every single strategy or thing I've ever learned about HVAC and try to help as many contractors as we can and help them by giving them jobs in return for I want a bunch of partner partnerships all over the states with great companies okay so so let me let me dig into this a little more and understand
Starting point is 00:43:59 so I'm a contractor I'm going to do the install. What are your pre-qualifications, number one, for me? Are you looking at Yelp reviews, Angie's List, BBB, contractor's license? How do I qualify? It's sort of a nice thing about HVAC businesses and probably a lot of service industries or service businesses. It's very complaint-based. So if you do a bad job, people are very loud and vocal online. They will give you bad BVB reviews.
Starting point is 00:44:30 They'll give you bad Google reviews. They'll give you all sorts of bad stuff. So I'm not interested in partnering with anybody that has a bunch of – I don't mind if you get that bad review once in a while, but you can see in how they respond to it. If they go, you know what, you're right. It was our mistake. We own it, and we'll be back tomorrow new to fix it. That's amazing. Who cares if you get a bad review, it's how you respond to it.
Starting point is 00:44:50 So I just want to deal with people who, you know, treat the customers great and great reviews and have all those certifications in their areas. So I think really one of the things that you're going to explain to them and correct me if I'm wrong, is this is a partnership. So obviously because this is a partnership, I'd like to give you more work. If you end up being one of the best installers,
Starting point is 00:45:11 we get great rate reviews and the people are happy. We're going to work really hard to get you more jobs. So it's in your, but also it's in your best interest that if you sell other stuff to make sure I know about it and do not, you know, last thing that home Depot wants is them to sell something. And then we go in and tell them something completely else is still a sell from them. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, you know, and at the same time, oddly enough,
Starting point is 00:45:36 we actually are not terribly interested in service work. So like, let's say they call back the next day and their fireplace is broken or something like that. And you're our person in the area. We'll probably just call you up and say, Hey, here's a fireplace repair, you know, like, let's say they call back the next day and their fireplace is broken or something like that, and you're our person in the area, we'll probably just call you up and say, hey, here's a fireplace repair, you know, go make something out of it, bill them directly. The business model is not geared towards service work. If it's, you know, or we might, if it's a great service call, maybe take a 10% or some sort of percent of it or something like that. But generally, we're not geared towards service work at this point in time,
Starting point is 00:46:05 2018. So, so you saw the product, you're shipping it out. Are you the one actually giving the products out to the, it's actually better if we just work with people who have their own connections with the distributors, they have their own relationship, they got their own thing set up and you know,
Starting point is 00:46:22 people find it a pain in the butt. If they get a drive to some new supplier new supplier and deal with it from there. So it's just easier if they already have it. Consider it no different than as if the homeowner is paying. Instead of the homeowner paying them, we're paying them. To them, the process feels very similar, except they don't have to worry about the homeowner stiffening them to the money. They don't need to worry about selling the job, you know, or any of that kind of stuff.
Starting point is 00:46:46 They just got to go install it and get paid. And, you know, at the same time, because we're doing all the sales for them, we're doing the marketing for them, we want to get some sort of discount or, you know, some sort of great rate because we can deliver them essentially free jobs. Makes a lot of sense. I really like the concept and I love the concept of the video chat because
Starting point is 00:47:05 i feel like that's where the future is going i mean i just got a unit in today i think it's to be honest years off before it kind of flushes out but you know like it's still a like it's a 75 year old concept of taking a truck and driving to somebody's house and pulling up pieces of paper and going it's very very archaic like why are we, why are we doing this kind of thing? So, and that's, and that's, um, you know, and I know it's possible to get around that and we've had experience in that. I think it's worth heading anywhere. I mean, HVAC is, is hard to do that, but in some regards,
Starting point is 00:47:41 I would say garage doors could be, you know, because I know the best companies that go out there and it's an experience, but more importantly, they say, Hey, when you get out of the shower in your bedroom and you're doing your makeup, how much does it sweat here in Florida? I mean, how much are you really uncomfortable? And I hear these sales guys literally all the time. I go to all these conventions and their number one thing is we're going to put a bigger return in here. We're going to get way more airflow in here.
Starting point is 00:48:07 You've never had the right size return. So we want to redo this. Number two is, do you guys have problems with allergies? Well, let me test the air in here. Let me see where we're at with what you were dealing with before. Number three is, and most of the companies, some of the times the big ones make their sales that way. But I do think this is changing. It's becoming more of a commodity. Amazon's getting into space. Amazon's going to be doing simply what a lot, what you're doing.
Starting point is 00:48:31 And so it's coming. I mean, the fact is Amazon, from what I understand is more or less selling the leads. You know, are they not? Is that more or less their model? Amazon says this,
Starting point is 00:48:43 you go online and you want a five ton unit. It's called Amazon Home Services. I'm one of the first garage door companies on it. And do you buy, so you buy a garage door opener, a Craftsman. And it says, would you like this installed? Now what they do is they take five companies, which they figured out what each company wants to put that in. They take the median, the mean, I should say,
Starting point is 00:49:06 and that's what they offer. And whoever jumps on it first gets it. It's kind of like, maybe a little bit like Thumbtack, but not really. But the point is, you're just doing the install part of it. And they're basically saying, here's the given rate of what somebody's, they're creating a breeding ground,
Starting point is 00:49:23 basically, for competition. And when people compete, it's like car loans. If you got 10 car loan, people bidding on the same loan, the customer gets the best deal. So it will work eventually. The problem is nobody understands home services, especially at Google or Amazon. I mean, they're like, it's just a billion dollar industry. We need to be part of it. But they don't understand the taking care of employees side, the getting the trucks on the road. There's so much human part of the business that I feel like they're going to –
Starting point is 00:49:55 they've already crashed and burned a couple times, both Google and Amazon on the home service side, and they're going to continue to try to figure it out. But I think it's going to be a ways off. Well, and I think if people can get relatively something similar in price and it's with the choosing between Amazon, who knows nothing about HVAC, or choosing between, you know, Furnace USA or A1 Garage Doors, for that matter, you know what I mean?
Starting point is 00:50:19 Like if you can get somebody who's a specialist and your choice is relatively similar, I think you're going to choose a specialist every single time and that's where i you know i think these companies that like pursue you know kind of like home advisor where they're going after 12 different markets if you're if you can choose between home advisor with 12 different things that they specialize in down to lawn care or you know a1 garage doors that just does doors you're going to use choose the garage doors place every time i I understand that, but I'll tell you this, people still go to Home Depot, Lowe's, Costco. They still go to Service Magic, which is now Home Advising, which we buy their leads.
Starting point is 00:50:53 It's crazy because people, they're better marketers than all these other, they're better than your average lawn care and HVAC and garage door companies and marketing. And they give a guarantee. know they'll take off their platform if you don't do the right thing whereas what do you have as a consumer the bbb and maybe angie's list and the yelp reviews so they do back up because they're bigger but you know i agree with you wholeheartedly i'd rather go to a specialist than a jack of all trades and i don't call a handyman out when i need air conditioning and you better not call a handyman out if you need garage door work because they're not going to be able to find the problem. So you're absolutely right.
Starting point is 00:51:30 So if somebody wants to get a hold of you, they want to find out the process, whether they're in Kentucky, Florida, Texas, Arizona, what are the next steps they need to do? If you're an H&R contractor, just probably the easiest thing is to email me directly, steve at furnaceusa.com, or just go to the website, furnaceusa.com, and just click for your customer. There's also a contact us page, or there's a contractor page, all sorts of stuff. But it'll get through to me, and I'll give you a call right back. But I'm looking for great partners all over the country. country and like like you said thomas if somebody we find somebody in some certain area i'm going to redirect hardcore our marketing efforts you know videos and organic and paid and everything to the areas that we find great contractors so i'll put more effort into those areas and hopefully that means you know the h4 contractor benefits and we benefit too so so i think this is great
Starting point is 00:52:23 because there's a lot of smaller contractors out there that are looking for more jobs and they hate the sales. And I actually got a guy in Arizona. If you need somebody, definitely let's talk about it. He's a great guy. Awesome.
Starting point is 00:52:36 You know what? A hundred percent. I want to, maybe you can, maybe you can shoot me his email or you can plug him online or right now, whatever you want,
Starting point is 00:52:42 but they can, because Phoenix, Phoenix, I'm starting to get calls it. I had to give away a job the other day. It was a boiler repair. email or you can plug them online or right now if you want but yeah they can because phoenix phoenix i'm starting to get calls it i had to give away a job the other day it was a boiler repair in phoenix at an apartment building because i'm starting to get leads in that area and here's the best thing for the listeners out there is the ancillary benefit of this is there are a lot of repairs there are service agreements there are certain things that i don't think steve wants to take a piece of every single thing so many people are selfish they go i gave you the lead i want to own that lead for the rest of its time and but you're just like look i want to make
Starting point is 00:53:13 the money off the initial part of it and then after that it's yours and i don't i'm not interested in the rest so this is amazing for the people out there in fact the ongoing service i want to pay that same person to go back. Like, you don't even have to market the service the next year or the year after that. I want to pay them to go back and do it. Yeah, I mean, altogether, this is a smoking deal. Everybody should get involved with this because there's also most guys I know mess with HVAC, plumbing, electrical. So let me just ask you a couple more things, Steve.
Starting point is 00:53:43 So you said you were going to feed them as much knowledge as you have tell me a little bit about some of the things you're going to try to work with these contractors on well to be honest they mentioned this kind of early in the call but like the biggest thing that have kind of helped me is sort of you know working on myself first which probably is not a normal usual topic to your podcast but you know like i on myself first, which probably is not a normal, usual topic to your podcast. But, you know, like I used to be the worst salesperson ever. I was just, I was awful. I was like sweating in sales and stuff like that. And when I kind of took a little bit of time to start, you know, and I do this like right before I go into a sale, I would actually just take a little bit of time right when I'm like full nervous, right before I walk in
Starting point is 00:54:22 there, I would just take a moment to just ask myself, you know, what are you thinking? What's kind of going through your head? And I would be thinking crazy stuff like, you know, no, it's impossible. If I don't sell this sale, it's hopeless or whatever else. And I just sort of working with those thoughts and sort of, you know, straightening my head a little bit, my sales started to explode. Like, you know, just because we had a relentless number of leads and I just needed to keep selling and selling and selling. And so I think working on myself has probably benefited the business more than anything else I've, I've ever had to do.
Starting point is 00:54:51 But, and beyond that, I would say from a marketing perspective, experimenting, go places that other people aren't. I don't think the opportunity is where everybody else is like, you know, start playing with Instagram.
Starting point is 00:55:03 I mean, you probably have a lot more ideas than i do towards the up-and-coming types of networks or what's kind of coming out there but go where everybody else isn't or is it the cheapest marketing opportunities i love it let me ask you what are your top couple books that you recommend you already said feeling good was one of the ones what's something else that maybe you think that would help the audience? H-VAC, I like a book. It's called the H-VAC Spells Wealth.
Starting point is 00:55:29 It's a nice kind of basic book about, about H-VAC. A lot of his marketing stuff, I think is a little bit outdated because it's kind of based on like the 1980s, 1970s stuff. Yeah. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:55:40 I, I love, I personally, I love any sort of biography about, about anybody that's done stuff in business. I just find it so interesting. It's probably the same reason that you do, that you do the podcast. I'll tell you why.
Starting point is 00:55:55 Yeah. The other book that I absolutely love that I finished not that long ago, it's called principles by Ray Dalio. And, uh, basically it's an interesting thing And I applied it to my own business right near the end. And it was just, he's a billionaire. He's like in the top 25 billionaires in the States. And his whole concept is, don't avoid your problems. Take all your problems and put them right square in front of you. And by facing your problems, those are your opportunities to improve the business. Don't fight the problems. And that was sort of a turning point for me in terms of just, you know, facing problems instead of getting mad at problems.
Starting point is 00:56:32 I love that. I really enjoy this, and I want to do whatever I can to get you as many people as I can. I know a lot of people. Oh, that's amazing. You know, let me just tell you this, and I think the audience needs to hear this too, is I've met so many people that give without being
Starting point is 00:56:52 given back, and you came on the podcast, and this means a lot to me, and I'd like to help you out whichever way I can, and what I find is doing things without expecting anything in return, it comes back tenfold. And I think there's a lot of verses in the Bible about that.
Starting point is 00:57:10 I don't want to name any scriptures. No, it does. I've seen it and it's crazy. I totally heartily agree. So yeah. And anybody you got sent in my way or any way that you can think of that can help HVAC contractors, I want to do it. I'm really excited you came on, Steve. One of the things I'd like to close up on is I want to give you an opportunity to leave the audience with any last thoughts that you might want to share with them. I think, listen to Thomas.
Starting point is 00:57:38 It sounds like you really, really know what you're talking about. I think that's a great tip. And the other one is, I would say the biggest thing that you're talking about. I think that's a great tip. And the other one is, you know, like there's, I would say the biggest thing that you're up against is not the market. It's not the competition. It's not all this kind of stuff. The biggest thing they're up against is the ups and downs of business. And I wrote that for so many years, like business is doing great. I feel amazing. Business is doing bad. I feel in the toilet. And the better that you're able to regulate that and the better that you're able to kind of get through those low points over time the business will just keep growing and growing and growing i find it will grow in in relative to how well you feel about the business i i think is something that
Starting point is 00:58:14 i discovered over the years i love it well steve i gotta tell you it means a lot to have you on i think you gave a very very strong message of you need to feel good about yourself first. And we lose that. We all say it's marketing. It's hiring. It's this. You need to look at yourself and love yourself. If you don't love yourself, how are you supposed to help other people?
Starting point is 00:58:33 So I think that was very, very positive. And I truly appreciate you coming on today. Awesome. This was a ton of fun. Thank you, Thomas. Hey, guys, I really appreciate you tuning into the podcast. I wanted to let you know that my book is available right now on Amazon. It's called The Home Service Millionaire.
Starting point is 00:58:51 That's homeservicemillionaire.com. Just go to the website. It'll show you exactly where and how to buy the book. I poured two years of knowledge into this book and I had 12 contributors. Everybody from the COO at Home Advisor to the CEO of Valpak and of course, Ara, the CEO of Service Titan. It tells you how to have the right mindset and become a millionaire and think like a millionaire. It goes into exactly how to turn on lead generation. Have those phones ringing off the hook for the customers that you
Starting point is 00:59:22 want to be calling where you can make money and get great reviews it also goes into simple things like how to attract a players listen if you want a great apple pie you need to buy good apples and you need to know where to buy those apples and it also talks about simple things like knowing how to keep the score you should have your financial check every week you should know exactly what's coming in and out of your account you should know when to cut advertising that's not working. And more than anything, you should know how to cut employees that aren't making it for you. Listen, you might have a big heart, but this book is going to show you how to make decisions built on numbers. I hope you pick up
Starting point is 00:59:57 the book and I really appreciate everything. I hope you're having a great day. Tune in next week. Thank you.

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