The Home Service Expert Podcast - Using The 80/20 Rule to Identify The Best Clients To Invest In

Episode Date: December 27, 2019

Janice Porter has had a long and illustrious career as a teacher and corporate trainer. She found her niche in the world of training, using her expertise in relationship marketing and networking to instruct entrepreneurs and corporate professionals in the ways of building and nurturing business relationships. This LinkedIn master shares her insights on social media marketing, entrepreneurship, and making meaningful connections on her podcast, Relationships Rule. In this episode, we talked about  relationship marketing training, networking, entrepreneurship consulting...

We're saying, okay, so you've been in your business for 10 years. You must have a group of clients who, you know, it's the 80-20 rule, right? 20% of your clients accounting for 80% of your revenue. And of course, you can apply that Pareto principle to many different things, but identify those top 100 or that top 20% or 10% and nurture them to death. Appreciate them. Don't take anything for granted, right? Make them those raving fans because they not only will they keep coming back, but they also become your biggest referral source. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs

and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the Home Service Millionaire, Tommy Mello. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. My name is Tommy Mello. And today I have a special guest coming to us from Canada. We have the Miss Janice Porter. And I'm going to go over, she's got quite the resume here. She is an expert in relationship marketing, training, networking, entrepreneurship, consulting, client retention, and LinkedIn. Janice Porter, an Associates Relationship

Marketing Consultant and Trainer, Client Retention Specialist from 2003 to now. She's really big at Send Out Cards. She's been there for about nine years. She was a Capilano University Marketing Instructor for four years at the BOSS program. She was a Douglas College contract trainer from 2008 to 2009 and BoostYourHealth.net network marketer for a couple of years in 2006 to 2008. Her impressive accomplishments is a relationship marketing specialist, LinkedIn trainer, and networking coach. She's owned and operated her own business for more than a decade, host of the Relationships Rule podcast, and a member of the Women's Advantage, agreeing together once a month at least to work on growing their businesses.

Janice, I'm excited you're on. How are you? I'm good. Thanks, Tommy. It's interesting what people pull out of your resume or LinkedIn profile and choose to talk about. I just find it really interesting when they don't know you. You know, what's funny is it's always,

I started the same thing with the credentials and some people are like, whoa, you're aging me. And I was, this is the data we collected, but it's pretty impressive, Janice. Well, it's interesting. Thank you. What it did point out to me is my passion is teaching. And what would really age me is my first life I was a teacher, and then I was a corporate trainer. However, I feel that those are really important because they were a lot of my first life and really frame how I work now in that I'm really a teacher at heart. You know, I had the opportunity to get on your podcast, which is an absolute blast. We met this past year, actually, at one of the conferences where we both spoke at for Send Out Cards.

And, you know, one of the things that I love about what you're doing is this year I've been able to grow through networking. And I've been able to grow through networking and I've been able to go just yesterday. I was in Virginia, Virginia beach, and I was shadowing a guy with a franchise that sold for well over a hundred million dollars. He's got three other franchises. I don't want to go into names because that's, there's certain information there, but I'll tell you this by going out and visiting businesses, networking, learning about what other companies are doing, sharing the wealth and the knowledge, I think this year has been absolutely incredible for us. Since we got involved with LinkedIn, I'm sorry, Service Titan,

which is our CRM. Since we've been involved with Send Out Cards, just the little things like, it's a game changer. And that's kind of what you specialize in is creating valuable relationships right that's exactly it yes absolutely i think it's important when you create those new relationships and you see the value both ways that you maintain them that you nurture them that you stay connected with those people it means. Yeah, I'll tell you what, I kind of just, I've had the opportunity to meet people that have understood the leadership and the culture and just massive, massive businesses, $100 million plus. And I just say that because you can't have $100 million plus business unless you're great at networking and meeting people. I personally

just don't think you're going to find people from a career builder and just start a company to get to 100 million unless you're got lucky on like a social media app. But you spent years honing and training other business owners in the art of relationship marketing as well as business growth. Tell us a little bit about where you got going and where you're at today with all that. I was a corporate trainer for about 18 years with the telephone company here, which was a different entity back then. But it was interesting because I trained business customers, so corporations and crown corporations and law firms and big accounting firms and things, how to use their phone systems and their voicemail systems properly and how to program them and so on.

And what was great was I was teaching, but what I didn't have to do was find my own clients, book my appointments. That was all done for us. And then we'd just go out and train. And then we all know what happened in the early 2000s and everything changed. And especially in the telecom business because of wireless and so on. And I was a contractor for all those years and by choice, but the bottom fell out. Nobody wanted contractors anymore. So I had to reinvent myself and it was quite a shocking and learning experience. I knew I didn't want to have a job job, a nine-to-five job, but I really didn't know anything much about running a business. So I started from scratch and I really learned how to network back then because it was like, okay, who's doing this? Who's doing that? Exactly what you're just talking about, talking to people who are already doing it

and trying to figure out what that business was going to look like. So it had a couple of iterations before I fell into send out cards as the network marketing industry on itself is a fascinating vertical market. It's so different from traditional marketing. And so it took a lot of learning as well before I found SendOutCars. But what I found with SendOutCars was a business tool as well as a different marketing model. Okay, so that's one side. Then social media came into play. And that was all Greek to me too at the beginning. And I was one of the first people around here that learned how to use Twitter, but that didn't really sit well with me.

It wasn't who I was. And so eventually I stumbled upon LinkedIn and I thought, oh, this looks interesting. Again, business related and straightforward in terms of social media platform. It was more business than social. And so it was more linear and it was easier for me to understand. And so what I found is once I did some training myself on how to use it, I started to really understand it and started to share that with other people. Then a light went on and I went,

I could be teaching this because this comes naturally to me and I'm getting it. And that's kind of how my LinkedIn training came to be. But then another light went on, another idea. Oh my goodness. Really, how I approach LinkedIn and how I teach other people is all around relationship marketing, which is what I use send out cards for. So I was able to marry the two in my business under that umbrella of relationship marketing specialists. So that's kind of the background. I know you do a lot of stuff on LinkedIn and I'm a very, very big fan when it comes to B2B. LinkedIn is really a great place. And more of, you know, being a home service guy,

especially in the garage industry, we tend to not look as much to find people because not to be condescending to my technicians, but most of them don't have profiles on LinkedIn. Right. No, I understand. Yep. But you do see the CEOs of other very successful companies. So tell me a little bit about LinkedIn because that's super exciting stuff. You looked at mine and said, we got a lot of work to do. What I would say to you,

Tommy, is that your presence on LinkedIn and your involvement on LinkedIn really isn't about your end user. It's about your credibility as a business owner. It's about partnering with other people. It's about some of the other things that you do as an entrepreneur, which I find just, I mean, I'm truly impressed with how you have, one, grown your business, and two, the different avenues of other streams of income that you have created from growing your own business. And so really, there's so many different things that you could highlight on LinkedIn, as well, you showing your expertise as a service industry specialist, right? In with your book, and with the promotions that you do,

like the speaking engagements and things like that, you become that entrepreneurial specialist, right? So you have to see it as, as a bigger picture than just your A1 garage door business, right? Yeah. So it can be used in a different way than, than say, you know, you do with your, maybe your Facebook or Instagram or whatever. So I see a way for you to use it that is specific to growing your credibility, visibility as an entrepreneur specialist with, I mean, what's your book called? The Home Service Millionaire, right? Yep. Yeah. So, I mean, what's your book called? The Home Service Millionaire, right? Yeah. So, I mean, that's what I see and your podcast, of course, and everything. So, you know, when it comes to this stuff, obviously there's other things. I love marketing.

I get hit with a lot of bots on LinkedIn. I feel like every time I open up Facebook now, it says how to make money on LinkedIn or how to make money on social media. It's true. It's true. That's right. On Facebook, right? Because LinkedIn right now, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk? Oh yeah, Gary V. Yeah. So back in April of 2019, he posted something on LinkedIn that said this is where he was going to hang out now because it's the only authentic platform left. So think about that. Now everyone is marketing to get you on LinkedIn because of things like that, right? People who have such influence are seeing that Facebook is full of all those promos and so on. But that being said, it depends how people use LinkedIn. I mean, yes, you may get all those paid in-mail messages

and things like that. But if you use LinkedIn as a relationship marketing tool, you can sort of get through all that and just connect with the people you want to and move things forward that way. Yeah, I think that you told me you only open mail if you really believe that it's authentic, right? Yeah, well, on LinkedIn messages, I look at the message and then I don't, or I look at the connection request, but I don't ever accept a connection request right from that

message or that my network messaging, I go to their profile and I really look at three or four things on that person's profile that will maybe indicate to me whether they are a good fit for me or whether they're real, whether they're a good fit, whether they, it makes any sense for me to connect with them because I'm going to start a relationship if I do. Right. And you obviously have tons and tons of relationships and how you turn them potentially if they're a fit in the clients. It's a good question, but it doesn't undermine the fact that you have like a lot of relationships, or not a lot of relationships, I don't know that, a lot of connections on LinkedIn. So the question is, you get these connections, and is it about the number or is it about

building relationships? For me, it's about building relationships. And so if I get a new connection on LinkedIn, one that I've either reached out to myself or someone has asked to connect with me and I have started the conversation with them, I've probably seen something on their profile that either points to they might need help or they could be an interesting person to talk to about follow-up, which in my head is send out cards. But I start by just really accepting a messaging request

or reaching out to someone and saying, I'd like to connect. I never say very much in the connection message because a lot of people don't actually read it. They just do press that button to connect. So then I would send a thank you message. And I basically just start a conversation. I say, you know, I saw such and such on your profile. This looked really interesting. I'd love to find out more about you and your business. Would you be open to a conversation? I like to make my new connections real. That's it. And some people will jump at that. Other people don't, you know, so they filter out that way. And I try to only

connect with people who I know are active on LinkedIn, because that's one of the things that I look at to see if they have any current activity. Otherwise, they're never going to see the message anyway, or it'll take them three months or whatever before they respond. So that's interesting. I like that because I feel like some people choose LinkedIn. They love it. Other people love Facebook. Other people love direct mail. Everybody's kind of got their niche. So how do you, one of the things you do is obviously identify how active they are. Yes. What are some of the other things that you do to kind of filter? Well, I'll tell you, it's really interesting because somebody can look

relatively active on LinkedIn and then they've forgotten one really, I think, important thing. And I have to call you out on this, Tommy. And that is, are the recommendations that they have on their LinkedIn profile, are they current? So if somebody talks to me on LinkedIn and we're talking, you know, first of all, by message, and they're interested in what I'm doing with LinkedIn or, you know, my training that I'm doing, I will say to them, please feel free to go and look at the recommendations on my LinkedIn profile to see what some of the other people are saying that I've trained on LinkedIn. But for someone else to do that, they look at the recommendations and they're three years old. So you want to keep that current. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah. And you did tell me something else a while back. This was a few months ago. Yes. Recommendations are important, but there's something else that I didn't have a lot of. Did you mix that up with endorsements? Endorsements. So tell me the difference between endorsements and recommendations. Okay. I'm not a pro at this.

No, that's okay. So skills and endorsements, they have changed on LinkedIn just over the last few years. It used to be that people would endorse you for skills that you had listed on your profile, like your three skills that you have that you have more, but we can only now see three, the top three. That's all LinkedIn will show unless you click the show more button. And you have a lot of people over the 99, like over 100 people have endorsed you for marketing strategies, strategic planning and marketing. And that's great. That's sort of

social proof, but not quite as powerful as an actual recommendation. And really, because what happened with skills and endorsements is that, I don't know if you remember this, but there was a time when people were endorsing people they didn't even know. Like, really? How can you endorse me for my work and you don't even know me? Yep. So it got out of hand. And so that kind of changed. So I do recommend that people use skills and endorsements. Whether someone's endorsed you or not, it doesn't matter. Now, all it's really about is using keywords that help your profile be found and using them in as many places as you can on your profile. One of them being, so the top three skills, I mean, for you,

it might be marketing, strategic planning, but it might also be entrepreneur trainer or business coach or, you know, something that that leads to the fact that you work with other entrepreneurs, right? Franchises and so on. Recommendations is when you actually have to personally send a message to somebody through LinkedIn asking for a recommendation or go and recommend somebody and through the law of reciprocity, someone else may recommend you. But those are more, I think, more personal and more valid social proof. So when you're trying to get a recommendation, let's say you finish training with a client, is that something that you go ahead and ask for? Yes. Usually if I've done some great training with someone on LinkedIn and I'm teaching them about how to ask for recommendations, I will usually say, you know, let's do one, let's send one out and I'll do one for you

as someone who, you know, coached you and make sure they know how to do it. And at the same time, I might say, would you be open to me sending you one, asking for one? I usually ask them first, but I have to do, you have to actually do it through LinkedIn. Got it. So if you're asking somebody, have you ever asked through email or any other source? Well, yes, of course. But to actually have the recommendation show up on LinkedIn, you have to do the ask through LinkedIn. There's a place that says ask for a recommendation right at the top of your section. Oh, so there's no way to get to it unless you ask. Correct. Okay. See, this is all... Yeah, like you can't cut and paste it into the recommendation section. You can cut and paste recommendations or testimonials from your website in certain places on your LinkedIn profile if you

want to, like in your work experience section or something. But the actual true LinkedIn recommendations have to be done through LinkedIn. So if I was to go on and search Janice Porter right now on LinkedIn, and I clicked on your profile and I just felt like I got a ton out of this conversation, I can't go in there and do it until you request it? Oh yes, no, no, no. Yes, you can. Because it will say recommend Janice. I'd ask for a recommendation. Okay, so if I was to ask through email, I can email you right now and have my link

where the recommendations are and say, hey, if you could jot something here on my LinkedIn, that'd be great if we're already connected. No, you can't. I mean, I'm going to do this for you. I'm going to send you a recommendation request so you can see it. Feel free to fill it out or not.

But what happens is you'll get it in your LinkedIn messaging section and it will have a link. And that link through LinkedIn is where you write the recommendation. You send it back to me and I get a link to see it. And then I can accept it or say, oh, you got three spelling mistakes, Tommy. I can't fix them. Can you fix them before I accept it? And then fine, you bring it back. And then I accept it and LinkedIn puts it on my profile. Got it. Okay. Okay. So I got the recommendations and the skills and endorsements. Talk to me about relationship marketing. I mean,

it's a huge topic lately. I know. And I think that, you know, a lot of us in home service, especially are not, look, if I come fix your garage or your garbage disposal or your hot water heater. Yes. Other than being the tried and true trusted professional at your home. Yes. Tell me a little bit about how I could pull that into relationship marketing because it's a one time I go in there, I do my job. You're happy with us. You might review us on Google or Yelp or HomeAdvisor. So I mean, how does it apply? Okay. That's a good question. I'm thinking when I've had people come to fix my garage door, okay. And it's been a panic because I can't get my car out of the garage or I can't

get the door closed or something like that. And the company that I call and use are pretty good. They come pretty quickly. Have I ever done anything? I probably haven't. But from your standpoint, from the service person, it makes sense to me that if your company on behalf of the technician, with that technician's name, I don't know, it depends how big your company is, I guess, sends a card and says, we appreciate you calling us. Thank you. And sign it, the technician's name on behalf of the company or something. That's one thing. Or is it just instead of email marketing, which you might be doing with past clients, maybe you send them an unexpected card on an off, like not at Christmas, but maybe on Valentine's Day where you say, we love our clients,

right? And we appreciate you and wanted you to know. So it's a separate type holiday. You brand the back of the card and you do something like that. I'll just give you an example of something that happened to me the other day. And I saw so much opportunity for recovery and retention and all of this and nothing happened. I was at the grocery store, big grocery store chain here. And the girl was taking the groceries through and there was a guy, young guy packing the groceries in my cloth bags, right? And I picked up the first bag and I said,

oh my God, that's so heavy. And he didn't say anything. I said, hello. And he said, oh my God, that's so heavy. And he didn't say anything. I said, hello. And he said, so what do you want me to do? I said, excuse me? He says, well, they don't teach us how to pack. Really? I said, fine. And I walked away. My husband was still standing there. So I walked away and went right to the customer service counter because I said, I'm not going to be treated like this from this young guy, right? In the grocery store, I'm here every week. I spend, you know, $200 every week.

Come on, right? So I asked to speak to a manager, I talked to the manager and he was new there. So he didn't know me. And I said, listen, I said, I appreciate it if you would just talk to this kid because I don't want to be treated that way. But I said, I'd also appreciate it if you would follow up with me and let me know,

you know, whatever. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. No community. And I gave him my card. Nothing. So a week later, I'm in the store and I talked to a girl I knew there who wasn't there the week before. She's a supervisor. And she said, oh, that's terrible. She said, oh, that's really bad. Let me give you a gift card. Thank you. I'll take it. But I don't care what company it is. It's all about customer service and relationships. And I just think there's an opportunity there for them to do something. And because they're so big, they don't. Yeah, I think I understand exactly. There's a good book called Raving Fans. Yes. Yes. Here's the difference between a super raving fan and a happy customer is if I came and fixed your garage door. Yeah. Janice, and you said, hey, it works. The guy

smiled. He showed up. I'm happy. You're not going to go out of your way to go tell anybody. But if I walk up and I've got a huge smile and on the way there, I offer you a soda or a coffee, or could I pick you up anything while I'm at the grocery store or at 7-Eleven? And then I get there and I walk up and I shake your hand and I talk about your dog and the pictures on the wall of your family. And then we get through and I say, ma'am, I cleaned up. Is there anything I can help you lift while I'm in your garage? And we do a call afterwards and make sure you're very, very happy. And we just go out of our way to create this unbelievable experience that you might've never had with a home service company. Right. And you become that raving fan. Yeah, absolutely. I like to make sure that people

know that I'm that person as well. So I'm always making sure that I send a card after. But what I love to do, you see, this is I'm on the other side of it, right? I mean, my business is a service-based business too, but it's different, right? It's not a necessity service where yours can be in some cases, right? In a lot of cases. But I love that. I love that you are very much aware of the power of getting those raving fans and teaching your service people to be that person. So here's an example. I'm just wondering if this would work in your case somehow. So I had a house cleaner once who, she was a young girl who owned her own business and I wish she was still my house cleaner, but she sold her business. Basically, what she did was she came to clean your house and she baked a dozen cookies while she was there, the dough she'd

already brought with her so that when you came home, your house smelled of home baking. Oh, I love that. Yeah. And the other thing that I did with her is I said, wouldn't it be cool if you left a card with your, she has a cute picture of herself with the cookies on a tray on the front of the card and hand wrote inside the card or had it printed and then branded the back and said something nice about whatever to those people and left that card sitting on the kitchen counter. And she did that and it was a big hit. So we basically took a send out card, card, created it and sent them all to her. And then she gave them to the house.

Like she used to come to my house, but she had other people that cleaned as well. So she'd give them those cards to leave at the person's home with a handwritten note. So there's so many things you can do. It's just caring about people, right? And showing that you care. You know, Janice, one of the things that I think that I got a lot out of in a book I read, it's The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes. He talks about creating your top 100 list.

And when you create a top 100 list, it literally could be, do you want 10,000 clients? I mean, we get 7,000 new clients at A1 Garage Doors a month. Wow. But this is really important. I've got a guy right now that spends almost a million dollars with us a year. Now, look, the guy's really good friends. He comes into our shop. He loves everybody here. He's a bigger spender, but he's just got a lot of large projects going on. But wouldn't it be cool if I could get 100 of those guys to spend a million dollars instead of getting 10,000 customers to spend a million? You know what I mean? Yes, of course. It's quality over quantity. Totally. A lot of us, we don't know where to start to even find the right people.

You know, I think you said a lot there is you kind of do a process of elimination, if you will, to find out if that person's listening to this podcast, is we got to just identify who our perfect clients would be that keep giving. Because I don't think I need to have a relationship with, let's say, if you called me up and we were in British Columbia or Canada, I don't necessarily think I need to get ahold of you all the time. I say, Janice, how's that spring I put in? But if you were buying for us every single month and we were constantly on the phone with each other looking at new projects, those are the type of people to really, they keep coming back.

And I'm not saying don't take time for someone like, you know, a smaller customer. That's not at all what I imply. I'm saying that if we're going to nurture and create a relationship with someone like a big client that Chet Holmes talks about, it's something where I feel like relationship marketing really is the gift that keeps giving. Absolutely. That top 100 is, excuse me, is exactly what I've done with send out cards clients.

We're saying, okay, so you've been in your business for 10 years. You must have a group of clients who, you know, it's the 80-20 rule, right? 20% of your clients accounting for 80% of your revenue. And of course, you can apply that Pareto principle to many different things, but identify those top 100 or that top 20% or 10% and nurture them to death. Appreciate them. Don't take anything for granted, right? Make them those raving fans because they, not only will they keep coming back, but they also become your biggest referral source.

Mm-hmm. I think asking for referrals is important from the top. Well, it is, Tommy, but what I'm saying is just by nurturing them and being top of mind with them on a regular basis, they will remember to always refer you. Yep. One of the things I did the other day, this is actually a couple months ago now. Feels like the other day.

Time is flying. I know. I was sitting down with one of my managers and I said, you know, this guy, I bet you kind of a birds of a feather flock together. I bet you he knows 10 other clients like himself. Ah, great. So we got some really good contacts out of that. But it is kind of tough in this business. It's hard just to build lifetime relationships with every client when you're average guys fixing four doors a day. But it's nice to stay top of mind. And I think what I'm learning recently, I've actually got a book. It's called Newsletter Pro. But staying top of mind could happen through a newsletter and just saying, hey, these were the best rated doors this year.

The garage door is the 40% of your curb appeal. Or here's how to flush out your hot water heater. Or here's how you stop water leaks in your toilets. Whatever it is, top of mind. And it's got to be useful information. does it does but keep in mind again because email email email is like honestly how many do you get a day oh i don't i don't even breed takes care of my entire email okay fair enough but if you're doing your own right are you opening them are they being opened And I know what you're saying is that, okay, if 20% of them get opened, at least the others see it in their newsfeed, right? But it's not being opened. I'm suggesting that if you're going to do that, you could do it, maybe not as

often, but you could do it in a card situation, a flat card, for example, and send out cards. I say this because I know you have send out cards, a flat card with fall tips or did you know or something like that. But you know what? They're going to open it because it's in an envelope, because it looks like a birthday card. Oh, yeah. Ninety nine percent of them get opened and I love send out cards. It really works well. There's a good book called Blue Fishing with Steve Sims, where he talks about how he'll be in like a nice restaurant in Italy and he'll go to the waiter. Hey, listen, I love this margarita or this martini or this shake or whatever it is. Say, do you have more recipe coupons? And he'll just take 40 of them and stuff these in an envelope and say,

was just, he'll write literally on there was thinking about you while I was in Italy. You need to come here and try this drink out. I love this. And he absolutely murders it. He's learned to get the best. It's just that top of mind hey i was thinking about you it's super cool there's another article i read recently that the guy writes i think he

said a ceo on an airplane writes a thousand letters a month to his employees for their birthdays oh i saw that too some crazy amount i'm like man this guy needs to learn about send out cars. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's tough because you know, he doesn't have a personal relationship with all thousand employees or whatever, but it's kind of nice. So the other thing, this just came to me too, because I have, um, one of my clients has a huge sporting goods and clothing distribution, uh, company in Canada and they use-out cards hugely for their employees, celebrating their birthdays, celebrating their time there, like their anniversary date of their employment, births, deaths, all those life events, and maybe salesperson of the month or

service person of the month. That's another place that it gets underutilized is valuing your staff. I really like that. And I think, you know, when I think about valuing the staff, I can only imagine some owners out there right now thinking, yeah, I really have a lot of time for this. And I got to tell you, what's nice about send out cards

is it's super fast, super simple, super affordable. For a hundred bucks a month, you could send out unlimited personal cards that include the, you know, this isn't a send-out cards endorsement. I've had Cody out here. I've actually had, I don't know if I had George or whatever on here, but I've had a lot of the guys on here send out cards. And I just, I believe in the product, and I think it gets open and it shares a lot of good memories.

And I do think sometimes we don't view our employees like we should, which our employees are internal customers. And if we realize that. And you know that, I know that from your book. I know that. Well, it's important. I think that the happier they are, the happier they are to, well, at home and to their customers. And Yeah. And to feel appreciated, right? Everyone wants to be appreciated. Yeah. It's little things. Today we bought pizza for everybody.

So there's 18,000 pizza boxes out in the kitchen. But, you know, I think it's important that you do acknowledge it. We've got our birthday board. We're doing some fun things for Christmas. We all went to a Suns game the other day, a lot, like 20 of us to the Suns game. We had a suite. But it's not easier. Everybody would be doing it. I mean, it takes a lot of time and effort. I wanted to share something with you and your audience. I may have asked you this when I interviewed you about curiosity. I don't know if I did. I don't think so. Okay. So I love being, I'm a curious person and I'm always curious as to whether people think

curiosity is a skill or if it's a trait that you're born with or not. And so I often ask people that. And one of the things that started me on that path was a book I read a little bit ago called A Curious Mind by Brian Grazer. And I think I may have mentioned that to you. I can't remember. Do you know who Brian Grazer is? No. Imagine Entertainment, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. He's a movie producer in Hollywood. Okay. Okay. And he's got little spiked hair. That's his sort of thing. He's a little guy with

spiked hair. He did Splash was his first movie. He did A Beautiful Mind. He did Friday Night Lights is his and like TVN movies. He's a brilliant producer. But that book talks about how his curiosity helped him basically build a business. And it's very interesting because he does curiosity interviews with people every week still to this day. So I was listening to him being interviewed by Lewis Howes on his podcast, School of Greatness. And Brian Grazer has a new book that came out just recently called Face to Face and it's about building relationships and connecting and and so on I actually I'm going to go get it or order it because he is the epitome of what we're talking about with building relationships so I wanted to

share that book with you you know to answer that I tell you this I don't think there's all this nature versus nurture stuff as far as I'm concerned the nature is what gives you the potential to do certain things. We've got certain genetics that make us more vulnerable to cancer or more likely to succeed based on the brain chemistry and how it's passed on. But I do think for most people, as you surround yourself with books, leaders, and other things like that, mentors, you start to get more curious about things. And it's almost contagious because I feel like the more I learn, the more I want. And then there's other people that don't like to read.

It's not the people that are listening right now because they're obviously listening to a podcast. Right. And that's fine. They don't have to read anymore. They can listen. Oh, it's nice. Audible's amazing. Yeah. And they can watch on videos and different things and learn that way. But be curious and want to learn. That's the secret. I think you're right. I think

that everything's already been built. They don't have to reinvent the wheel. Someone out there has taken a lifetime, a lifetime of all their mistakes and all their successes and stories and condensed it all into a book. And do you know how much I've learned from that? Just one little thing, just one golden nugget out of a book. If you could take one golden nugget and imagine the average CEO, I think they say reads about 50 books a year of a successful company. And I just think it's important. And it doesn't need to be, it could be podcasting. It could be going to training events.

It's about learning. That's all about being a lifelong learner. That's right. What's a common mistake you see businesses make when you're working with them, whether it be on LinkedIn or just in somewhat of your, this network relationship marketing? Mostly not following up. People don't follow up. They don't nurture relationships. They go looking for new clients. They're always

busy prospecting. I talked to a guy the other day. It was a referral to me from a send out cards client and it's the holiday season. So people are talking about, are they sending Christmas cards or not or whatever. So this friend of mine, who's a client referred a realtor to me and I followed up by calling him and we had, and we ended up finally having a conversation. And he said to me, I only have a few minutes because I'm, I haven't reached my goal yet today of prospecting. So he's old school. He's phoning people, which is fine, right? He's prospecting. And I thought that was interesting because I said, how long have you been in the business? And he said, 10 years. And I said, so how's your database? And he said,

God, it's not even on a spreadsheet. It's here. It's there. It's everywhere. Well, because he's not nurturing those clients. He's always looking for new ones. Yeah, I agree. I think that's a huge mistake. It's a 10 times harder- We talked about it before, quality versus quantity, right? Yeah, yep. So tell me the best way.

So there's send out cards. There's obviously picking up the phone and just saying, hey, how have you been? What's new? Yeah, I don't care if it's a card, a note, a phone call. It's just find something that works for you or a combination of those things. Maybe you only call once every quarter, but at least show your past clients, particularly again, back to that top 100, the ones that always come back to you. Show them that you appreciate them. That's all you need to do.

If I set up a system for somebody to send a campaign of cards over a 12-month period, maybe they send four or five cards in that year to a client, I say, again, use the 80-20 rule. Show them you appreciate them four out of those five cards. And then the fifth one, whether it's in the middle or at the end, ask for a referral. Always be nurturing, but it's business as well. It's like Cody always says, right? It's 80% relationships and 20% marketing. And that's where that comes from for me. And so whatever you do, it doesn't have to be a card. I mean, obviously that's time effective and cost effective if you use our system, but phone people, pick up the phone. In fact, I had emailed somebody a couple of weeks ago and I never

heard back from this person. This was a client of mine. And I thought, you know, sometimes those stupid emails don't get there. So I picked up the phone today and called her and left a message. Again, we'll see what happens. But you want to make sure that you cover all the bases, that you show that you care. Well, there are people, I'll tell you, you said before we started that the card failed. I have a buddy of mine that's like, dude, I really want you at this event. So he was in town last week.

He's like, you're the only person that didn't respond. I'm like, I didn't get it. And so if he really knew me, I love send out cards. I love cards. I love it when somebody sends me a card. I got one sitting on my desk from a buddy of mine. It's not a send out card. It's just a little.

Sure. Tommy, I appreciate your friendship. I hope you had an amazing Thanksgiving, Reggie. But the deal is if they come and they make it to me, but anybody that knows me, if you really want to get ahold of me, just text me. Yeah, exactly. So you have to know how to work with people and what their mode of operandi is, right? That's right. And I love the card because it's different and it's genuine and it's something that they could hold on to and that they put in their office and usually there's

a shelf life to it. Exactly. And guess what? If it has their picture on it, it has a longer shelf life. Ooh, I like that. Totally. That's a good point. Yeah. That's one of the things I started doing when I learned more about send out cards is, and I screwed up this trip in Virginia because I didn't think about it. But now I'm like, hey, let's get a picture. Hey, let's get a picture. I'm like that annoying guy that's always trying to get pictures.

Yeah, yeah. But if that doesn't work, go to their Facebook and grab a photo from there or their LinkedIn headshot if it's a good one and put that on a card. So let's say you grab a picture from LinkedIn or Facebook and you have a picture. So what do you put underneath that caption?

Or like, hey, that's a great picture. Again, we're doing an advertisement again for send out cards. In send out cards, they have what's called photo drop cards where it might have like a frame around it already that says you're awesome or happy birthday or celebrating you. I use that one a lot and put their picture on the front and it says celebrating you. And then inside just saying, just want you to know,

I appreciate you, or it was great to meet up with you or whatever. Love it. So that's, this is some really good stuff. So you got LinkedIn. What's your top two tips about optimizing? Anybody that's listening right now, I know you might not love getting on social media or LinkedIn, but it's so important as a business owner that, because people look up your credibility. I mean, they really do. Well, they Google you, right? They Google you. And so what comes up is important. You should know what people see when they Google you. And Google indexes LinkedIn very highly. Do they own it or something? I don't know if they own it now. I can't remember. But, you know, Microsoft owns it. Oh, that's right. Sorry. Yeah, of course they do. Yeah,

exactly. Thank you. But Google indexes LinkedIn very highly. So if you have a LinkedIn profile, you want it to be optimal because it will show up. So my top two tips about LinkedIn is have a good first impression. And that first impression is made by your banner, the thing behind your headshot, your headshot, and your headline, which is the piece directly under your name. So that's all in the top quadrant of your profile. That's your person's first impression of you. Do you have a customized banner? You do. Do you have a customized banner? You do. Do you have a great headshot?

Is it a proper professional headshot? You do. Is the headline under your name, does it speak to keywords and the benefit of me working with you? In your case, do you want me to tell you? I think you told me before. Yeah, so we'll leave it there. So that's

something you and I can work on, right? Right. You are doing a lot of things right. So don't worry about it. But I mean, I think it's important to do, to just have those three things as a first impression working for you, not against you. I agree. And I think that a lot of times people are Googling us. When you go work for a company, you're checking out that owner to see what's he all about. I mean, it's just so easy these days. I use social media. I actually do all kinds of stuff on social media. I go on Yelp and I check out if I could find their profile to see how happy that person is. And they're leaving all one stars everywhere they go. Dairy Queen, US Postal Office, everything about them. They're just one star, one star, one star, one star. I'm like, I don't think this person's going to

enjoy me or my company. I probably don't want to get them as part of our team. So it's important to be cognizant of our public persona. Yeah, totally. And from a LinkedIn perspective, I really see probably the fact that you are a successful entrepreneur owning different businesses, having different streams of income, being a great role model for people starting their own home services businesses. So those are the things that need to be highlighted on a place like LinkedIn, because you're not going to be attracting your end user customers. You're going to be attracting people who want to use the same tools that you're using, who are starting businesses in different parts of the world, maybe even not just different parts of the country, right? And they see from reading your profile and from looking at the things that you've added to

your profile, then I'm just looking at, do you have your podcast on here? I don't think so. I really was with me and you got to just sit down and go through everything because I could add a lot to it. And yes, you could. I got to prioritize the focus a little bit too, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think so. I get, I definitely want to do a lot more speaking. I got about five keynote speaks next year and I want to surround myself with that. I actually really enjoyed if I could reach out and change somebody's life and I could kind of help hit the masses when, when you're on stage type thing. But I have to say that when I saw you speak on stage, not only were you a natural, even though you said you were nervous and you were funny and you had great,

you had a great PowerPoint because it was funny too. And so that good work, because it's all about, it really shows your sense of humor. It shows you were humble about your growth in your business. And that's important to keep that humbleness, humility of humbleness. I love it. I love, I just, it's fun. And the more I do it, the natural it comes. I think that as I think about a secret sauce that I've never shared on the podcast and probably something you could help with some of the listeners is I've reached out to different industries, whether that be roofing, painting, HVAC, plumbing, electrical. The recent one was an insect pesticide company.

Yes. I can tell you this. They don't mind opening up and telling me everything. I hang out with their marketing manager. I hang out with their CSR manager. They'll invite me and they'll buy me lunch. I try to buy everybody lunch. Of course, if I'm in their office and stuff, but I'm just saying they're glad to help, especially if I've got a plan. I want to come meet you. I want to talk about some marketing ideas, maybe how we could get you both. Both of us could have a win-win. So I think that LinkedIn is a great way. You know how I got on a service, Titan? This is a great story. This should have been a story. I got ousted. They said, nope, we're not interested. We only do HVAC, plumbing, and electrical. And they booted me. They said, no way, dude.

They said, sorry, we're focused. We're specialists. This is what we're going to do. You don't fit in the plan. So I wrote this long, long email and I put my heart and soul into it. And I told the CEO, I found him on LinkedIn. And I said, please give me a chance and I won't let you down. And now they're going into every other industry. We've made it a success. We've brought them hundreds of millions of dollars of business in the last couple of years. And I'll tell you, if it weren't for LinkedIn and I didn't have that outreach to him, I would still not be on it. I got to tell you, it was a catalyst to our business.

So wait, so sorry, but the person that owns that company who now is probably a good friend of yours, right? Well, he co-authored the book, but I mean, his company is valued at $3.4 billion. So Tommy, here's a challenge for you. Just reach out to him for a LinkedIn recommendation. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's a perfect fit. Right. And the other thing I was going to ask you is that lead geeks part of your company that's to do with realtors, right? Yes. Okay. So what about, like I've been working recently with a guy in the States back East. He's got a small one person business right now as a home inspector. Have you looked at that?

So home inspectors and mortgage brokers all want to speak to realtors. Yeah, I agree. It's a very niche business and I am not as involved. It fits LinkedIn more than A1. Oh, that's why you put it there. Okay, I see. But now I'm going to focus on more motivational speaking and more of the consulting side.

I can't wait to get at your LinkedIn with you. No, we just got to just, everything goes through Bree and she gets it on my schedule and it happens. Oh, okay. So we'll make it happen, right? No, we have to. I really do.

I think it's super imperative. The connections, I want to clean it up. I want to make sure that I'm doing all the right stuff to make it. I hate going through the messages because some of them are so spammy. A lot of 20 is a real one. But when I get the real ones, I love it. And I'm like, oh, my gosh. Well, if you're doing some outreach to the right people, you'll start getting some messaging back, right?

Yeah. And that's what, so we'll work on that together. But I really think the outreach is everything. I think that the small businesses that are listening right now, you should be looking to your local community, to some of the biggest players. They know exactly what communities they're hitting. They're doing data analytics. They're going to expose you to new ideas you've never seen. So what's the fastest way? Let me ask you this because I have no idea, Janice. But yeah, so if you wanted to reach out and let's just say you're a roofing company and you wanted to meet the biggest exterminators, the largest HVAC company, do you just type in their business name and look for their roles there? What's the best way to do that?

Well, I guess you'd start there by looking to see who's on LinkedIn in that company, right? Okay. First of all. And then if you see that the CEO or the president or whatever, I mean, I do teach search strategies and save searches and finding one that works and then saving it and reusing it and things like that. But the idea is really, yes, to reach out to whoever you're looking for, if they're on LinkedIn. But before you try to reach out to them on LinkedIn, you really do have to look to see if they're active. And then if they're not, see if there's a phone number, see if you'll have to do it a different way. But if they're not, see if there's a phone number, see if, you know, you'll have to do it a different way. But if they're active and you know someone, whether they or their assistant or

whatever, is going to see it because you can tell they were on LinkedIn three days ago or a week ago or five minutes ago, then hopefully they will see your message. And you basically don't say it all in the first message. You reach out to connect and say, I'm really interested in learning more about your business. Would you be open to connecting on LinkedIn? And then once they accept the message, the connection request, then you say, thank you so much for connecting.

I am very curious to know A, B, and C, would you be open to a conversation? And the idea is to build some rapport based on what you see or what you want to know and flatter them and ask them for a conversation. The goal is to take it off LinkedIn to a call, a meeting, a lunch, whatever, right? A Zoom call.

And that's how you start building relationships. You know how to do that really well. So it's just, it's finding the right people in the right places, right? So yeah, I think here's a little hack I did. One day, what I did was I found the top 10 companies doing 100 million plus. I just know the numbers.

I don't, I know the biggest companies. Most people know the biggest companies in million plus. I just know the numbers. I don't, I know the biggest companies. Most people know the biggest companies in their area. They see their trucks everywhere. They're on TV, radio billboards. So I went to those companies on LinkedIn and they all said dispatch manager or CSR manager. So I reached out to all of them and I said, I don't know if you're looking or know somebody that is, but this is a company and I kind of explain what we are, what we do, what we care about. By the way, we're in the garage door industry. Maybe you've heard of us, but let me know if you're interested or you know somebody. You should have seen the response. I got one person that I'm still trying to get to make the jump, but I love my team.

Not right now, but this person's managed over 500 dispatchers at once that I'm talking to. So long story short, it's a great recruiting tool too. Absolutely it is. Yes. And these professional companies, when you start hitting huge numbers, when you get a job there, you're probably on LinkedIn because it's more of an executive job. And for example,

I've got a guy in my financial department. He started at a company in North Dakota from 20 million. He stopped working there because he moved to Phoenix, but he's got an ESOP. He's got a great retirement from them, but he brought them all the way up to over 400 million. And he moved out here and he's been where we're going. And that's super exciting because a lot of times, a lot of times, small

companies, 10 or less, they tend to say, well, we're doing this. We're having fun. We're starting an adventure. Come on and jump aboard and come with us. Me, I'm like this, dude, I don't want you to come with us. I want you to show us where to go. You've already been there. So by hiring the people who have already been where you're trying to go, it expedites the process. It kind of just, it's like a time travel.

Literally the things that this guy brought into our company has been mind blowing, earth shattering. I cannot believe the skill level and the things that he's done just in the last year. And I'm excited because this next year is going to be incredible. But my point is, if you're reaching out to the next best successful,

like the places you want to be, I think that LinkedIn is just the place to be. And I really do believe in it. And I think when I look at people and their LinkedIn profile, if I have a technician that's on LinkedIn and they're just, it's super poor caliber, miswritten stuff. They just have, I'd rather them not be on LinkedIn than to be on there and look like an idiot.

Right. And a lot of us do a lot of, I got to tell you, you said there's a lot of things I could change on mine. Maybe I'm 50% there, but we're going to fix it. But my point is, go on to LinkedIn. When you search your name, hopefully you at least have a LinkedIn profile. Janice, if someone wants to get ahold of you and start working with you, what's the best way to do that? Thanks for asking, Tommy. They can go to Janice Porter, J-A-N-I-C-E, Porter, P-O-R-T-E-R.com and connect with me through my website. They can check out my LinkedIn training on there as well.

And they can certainly connect with me on social media. Basically, I'm LinkedIn and Facebook. And I think I sent, or you have that information. And just by email, Janice at JanicePorter.com. I love to hear from people and start a conversation. So to see if there's a fit one way or the other. I love to hear from people and start a conversation. So to see if there's a fit one way or the other. And what are your... Oh, and my podcast. Tell me a little bit about the podcast, Relationships Rule.

Right. So Relationships Rule, we're on iTunes and Stitcher and all the different places that need to be. And basically, I interview people, business owners usually, and business professionals who really see the value in building relationships and how they do it. And sometimes I just interview people because I'm a curious person and I want to know more about those people. So it's just me having conversations with people like I did with you. And I'm going to let you know that should be coming up soon. I'm excited for that. And yeah, so it's relationships rule and you can find it by just Googling or by just searching that on iTunes. All right. One thing, a couple more questions here. What are a few books that you'd recommend for some of the listeners? And I've had a lot of them. So I think outside the box, I think you gave us one earlier.

I got a Curious Mind or which one? Yes, a Curious Mind by Brian Grazer is one I love. And the other one, of course, is Cody Bateman's book, The Power of Human Connection. And oh my, I don't know. This is an old book

and I just see it now on my bookshelf. I wonder if you've read this. And it's by Mark Victor Hansen. It's called The One Minute Millionaire. You know who Mark Victor Hansen is? Yeah. He's the partner with Jack Canfield in the Chicken Soup for the Soul books. And this book is fascinating.

And it's also by, it's by Mark Victor Hansen and Robert Allen. And Robert Allen was the big real estate personal development guy. And this book is written where the left side of the page is a story that goes all the way through the book. And the right side of the page is all the teaching information. Have you seen that book? No, but I'm going to buy it. It's really fascinating. Yeah, it tells the story of how somebody became that millionaire on the left side of the pages. And you can choose to read it all left and then all right, or go with it. It's kind of interesting, but it was a good book. Cool. And last thing I do is kind of give you

an open mic here to kind of connect with the audience and take some time to tell everybody whatever you'd like to finish off with. Oh, that's really kind. Thank you. So I think what I would share with you is that it's so important to listen to people and to build relationships by always finding out what's special in that person and celebrate them. They'll get around to asking about you and what you do. So when you're networking, when you're talking to people you meet at a holiday party, because it is that time of year for us right now as we're recording this. And I have a seven-step formula for creating business relationships that last. And you can find that as a very small ebook on my website. Feel free to go and download it. It's right on my homepage at the bottom. Seven-step formula to creating business

relationships that last. And basically, a couple of them, well, I'll just tell you quickly, be authentic, be a good listener, offer value, stay connected, build trust and credibility, follow up, and ask people for feedback. And I go into each one of those things and how to do them. But really, that's the essence of relationship marketing. And I think people need to really, really focus on relationships today. It's all about people and showing that you care in this crazy world that we're in today. I think that that's great advice.

And I think I got a million copies by Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People. It's the same life lessons. It's literally pay attention, listen to other people, generally care. And I say this, and it's not easy all the time. We got busy lives. We got a lot of stuff. We've got a lot of family. There's a lot of things in this day and age happening to us, but you take the time to take some time off and have a plan. You win the game every time janice i really appreciate you coming on today well and i really appreciated you having me on today tommy thank you i look

forward to seeing you and talking to you again soon okay thanks very much you're very welcome hey i just wanted to take a quick minute and thank you for listening to the podcast. You know, most people don't understand this, but the way that the podcast has grown is when people subscribe and they leave a review. So if you would please, please, please, why it's top of mind, take a quick minute to subscribe and leave a quick review. It'll help me out so much. If you just took a little bit of time right now, I can't tell you enough how much I appreciate the listeners and the feedback. And also when you subscribe, what I'm going to do is let you know the next guest coming on the podcast and I'll let you email me anything you want me to ask that next person coming

on. All the pros I have on here. I want your feedback. I want you to subscribe so you can start giving me the questions you want me to ask and help us grow together. Also, I'm giving away my book for free now. All you got to do is go to homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast. You got to cover the shipping and handling, but I'm giving the material out for free.

It's 200 pages. It's a hardcover book. Homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast. I appreciate each and every one of the listeners and thank you for making this Home Service Expert podcast a success. I hope you're having a great day and thanks again.