The Home Service Expert Podcast - Using The Five Ethical Principles Of Persuasion To Grow Your Business

Episode Date: October 4, 2019

Akbar Sheikh is the CEO of AkbarSheikh.com. He uses his expertise in branding, marketing, and storytelling to help business owners excel at entrepreneurship. He is the international bestselling author of the book Seven Figure Funnels, and has been featured on various media outlets and news sites. He also devotes time and energy towards giving and helping those in need, which he believes is his “greatest source of ROI.” In this episode, we talked about persuasion, motivation, entrepreneurship...

When I look at businesses, I would say that they always have most of these five things are off or they need improvement. EPOP, ethical principles of persuasion, scarcity, reciprocity, likable authority, messaging, social proof. Right. Now, a lot of times, bro, because I deal with the fundamentals, the fundamentals are never sexy. You know, so we're talking about like accountability. Now, a lot of times, bro, because I deal with the fundamentals, the fundamentals are never sexy. So we're talking about accountability. We're talking about not giving up. And people are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah. I heard this. So it's funny. In a lot of my courses, I have to come up with words for it. You know what I mean? For example, instead of saying reciprocity or something, I have to be like, check out the backscratcher method. Now, I have to romanticize it because nobody wants to hear

the fundamentals, but it's the status. 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. All right. My name is Tommy Mello. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. Today, I'm here with Akbar Sheikh, and he is an expert in persuasion, motivation, and entrepreneurship. He's the CEO of akbarsheikh.com. He started that in 2017. He's an expert at branding, marketing, storytelling, international bestselling author of seven-figure funnels,

was featured on two major podcasts, including EO Fire and many other podcasts. He's a philanthropist focused on helping orphans, featured on various sites such as the Huffington Post, named one of the top 30 social entrepreneurs, and received the Two Comma Award in 2017 for taking a digital business to over seven figures. Akbar, how are you today? Good, man. That was quite the intro. Thank you. You got to tell the audience who you are, you know. I guess so, yeah. yeah otherwise why would they listen so you've done some pretty cool things you know you said we talked earlier and you've been through a lot in your life and it sounds like you you're right at the top but

you've been at the bottom tell the audience a little bit about who you are what you do and where you got where you're at today yeah man i gosh you know it's every time i i and i get asked this question a lot. And every time I do, I kind of freeze a little bit because it's just wild, 10 years. And I failed many, many businesses. Man, I tried all sorts of businesses. Fashion business, tire business, car business. Oh, God. Like a dating service. It goes on and on and on. But why? Why did I fail for so many businesses? The truth is, as I reflect, those businesses never really failed me. I failed them. And I have this little trinket on my desk, and it's a little on-off switch, actually. And here's what I believe, bro. I believe that humans are either on or they're off. I failed for 10 years because I was off. Now, what does that mean? That means that I was physically, mentally, and spiritually

unhealthy or clogged. My success was throttled because these elements of my life, my spiritual, mental, physical elements of my life were clogged or were non-existent or were failing. It wasn't until I cleaned it. It's kind of like really someone cleaning out your arteries. I mean, really, that's what it is, actually. The thought just came to my head. It's really like a system attack. You know, you get a heart attack when your arteries are clogged. My main beings were clogged, and that's why I wasn't seeing any success.

It wasn't until I unclogged them, I flushed them out, I lost 50 pounds. I got rid of all my toxic relationships. I got rid of all my toxic relationships. I got rid of all my bad habits. And boy, did I have a lot of bad habits. It wasn't until I started getting a little bit more spiritual and looking for my why, my purpose. It wasn't until then that I actually discovered some success. The truth is, I'm a big believer and I'm a lover of entrepreneurship.

I think you can succeed in pretty much any business. I don't care how much competition there is. I don't care about any of that. I think that business, I think if you can succeed in one business, you can succeed in other businesses because business is business is business. But I think the first element of that is you have to be primed. You know, you have to be primed and able to perform your daily business tax, the ability to not give up. You know, like take a look at the weight loss industry, bro.

Like I lost 50 pounds. You know, it's a billion, billion, billion, billion dollar industry, right? Why is that? I mean, the truth of the matter is you want to lose weight, eat better and exercise. You see what I'm saying? It's really just kind of that simple. But here's the thing, 99% of people will try that and then they give up. I'll miss my cheeseburger and they give up. That's why they want the shortcut. That's why they want the magic pill or the eight-minute workout a day or this and that and that and this. That's why people keep buying, buying, buying.

But the truth is, any of it works if you stick to it. The problem is most people can't stick to it because they're off. They're just not mentally capable of sticking to something. Because at the end of the day, bro, I take a look at all the people who've made it. They're the ones who just didn't give up. You know what I mean? So, I don't know. That kind of went on a

little bit of a rant, but. No, no, this is cool stuff because I really want to talk a little bit. Like I said, I'll take you down a few rabbit holes here, but we do, we get stuck in our habits. There's a good book called The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. Then they got the eighth habit, but part of it is replacing a bad habit, I feel like, because you know, who are we going to lie to bad habits? You go out on the weekends. A lot of my friends go out, you know, there's things to do. Some of them get into really bad habits, but, uh, they sleep in, they eat bad. There's all kinds of things that go along with that.

But it sounds like you've been through that phase and I've had a lot of fun doing fun stuff. And I like to have beer when I go golfing. But at the same time, there's got to be some type of... I hate to say balanced because I don't believe in a perfectly balanced life because it's never going to be perfectly balanced. If you're killing it at work every day and your business is tripling every year, you're probably not going praying to God for four hours a day. And you're probably not working out for five hours a day and probably not probably not working out for five hours a day and probably not taking the kids out to a movie every night. I mean, there's different

points in your life when you could do more. Like when you retire, people say they're happiest in their 50s and 60s in their life because they get more financial freedom and more time. So tell me a little bit about, let's take a deep dive into this because you talked about mind, body, and soul. Tell me a little bit about how you're able to overcome some of those obstacles that get in all of our way. Which, which was a particular, look,

you said you were eating really bad. You were partying all the time and you finally figured it out and you started to get more spiritual. Yeah. What does that look like to a normal person that, how do you get over that stuff yeah man i mean all right just to like paint the picture how bad it was like i was like the fast food junkie like wendy's would have like a special parking sticker for me i've been like this is every day

bro i had a special order for each place where am i going wendy's any classic single classic single double cheese no pickles uh. Cancel the mail. I'm going to McDonald's, I need a double quarter pounder with cheese, no pickles. Thank you. You know what I mean? So it's like each place had its customized order and they're all in one line. You talk about replacing habits. Right now, listen, man, the worst.

So we've got to understand something, bro. I mean, it's basic science at the end of the day, man. I don't know, man. It's cheesy to say, you know, it's not sexy to say like, oh, you are what you eat and stuff. But I mean, the reality is that's just the case. I take a look at a lot of these people who are not producing, right? And I'm watching them sit there

with like a gallon of Coca-Cola next to them. And I'm just like, man, I wish you could see what I see. The hardest part people ask people is, well, man, how do you get rid of those toxic relationships? Because that's something that really held me down for a long time is being surrounded by people who are pulling me down. Not like-minded people, but party animals.

And it seems like everybody's got bad friends. And it wasn't until I started surrounding myself with higher thinkers. You see, we used to hang out, bro, at Dunkin' Donuts. Where are you at? You know Dunkin' Donuts? Yeah, I know Dunkin' Donuts. Yeah, it's a coffee shop for those of you guys. And we used to hang out at Dunkin' Donuts

late night in the parking lot, just talking smack, just talking, you know, talking water cooler talk, girls, this, that, that, this. Just wait hours and hours in the car, just drinking coffee, laughing, smoking. You know, just be stupid. And we had a lot of fun.

Don't get me wrong. But it wasn't taking us anywhere. Okay. It wasn't until I started hanging out with better friends. I'll give you an example. When I joined my first mastermind, they weren't doing that crap. They were going to bed early.

They were waking up early, going to go work out. We never did any of that stuff. We did the exact opposite. When I joined my first mastermind, that's really when I found my why that made me cry. Because there was a dude there and he's like, he's not talking about like just water cooler crap and all this stuff. He said, hey man, there's this awesome charity I work with. I'm like, what?

We're talking about charity? What? He's like, there's this organization called Sight Savers. And he's like, dude, do you know for $80, you can actually give the gift of vision to a blind person?

And I literally just started tearing up as soon as he said that. And it just impacted me so much because $80 is a cheap day. And to fix that for $80? For someone to go from not seeing to seeing for $80? I mean, I started like, I couldn't control myself. I started going nuts. I'm like, oh my god. It became like a passion of mine. I was like, this is why I want to spread this word. And to me, bro, the secret to my success has never been like an algorithm or like a pixel

or like some sort of like retargeting ad or some crap. It's never been anything like that. It's always been giving. Do you see what I'm saying? It's always been giving. Yeah. And when I started surrounding myself with better people that's when i started getting these new ideas and leveling up now people always back to your question people always ask me man i got

bad friends like that too how do i distance myself from look my answer is not the sexiest okay it's hard i did it cold turkey i simply just distanced my i just made that decision and i realized man these guys are bringing me down these guys are wasting my time i simply just distanced myself. I just made that decision and I realized, man, these guys are bringing me down. These guys are wasting my time. I simply just... And I'm not saying this is the right way to do it. I'm just telling you what I did. I just stopped hanging out with them, bro. Just like I quit all my bad habits.

You know, like cigarettes and everything. All my bad habits. We don't have enough time in the show probably to list all my bad habits. But when I got rid of all of them, I did it all cold turkey i tried all that other stuff none of it worked cold turkey was the only thing that worked and that's what i do with my friends bro and it was tough and to this day they look at me like oh man oh you think you're cool you think you're better than us or you know because you know we've got some family connections

and stuff and you know they're all you abandon us and this and that. And the truth is, it's one of the best things I've ever done, but it's hard. But that's the thing though. Take a look at the results. You know what I'm saying? Like you're going to get a lot of results. Look, it's going to suck, right? It's going to be difficult. But hey, man, your results are going to be phenomenal and it's worth it at the end of

the day. Would I do it all over again? Absolutely, yes. Would I try to be a little bit more delicate with it? Yeah. Would I try to have been a little bit more brave and explain to them that, hey guys, my life's not really going anywhere.

I'm trying to improve. I want to start trying to hang out with different people. Let's see what happens. You know what I mean? Most people, they can't have that kind of conversation. It's too awkward for them. But my answer to change is cold turkey, man. And I'm just telling you from my experience.

You know, part of me says cold turkey is great, but you'll still go back. You need to replace those. So for example, like a good workout partner that holds you accountable. And it's just not a guy that's going from cold turkey. Find some workouts that you aspire to be with, or find somebody that you want to be around that actually lives the life that you want and be around that person to say, listen, I want you to hold me accountable because this is what I want and it's not going to be easy. So you need to tell me all the time that we're going to do this together and you need to hold me accountable or to just drop me because it's not easy. It's changing your whole life. I mean, you said you went to the hospital and had a rude awakening and wasn't sure it

was a life event that caused you to do it. But there's a lot of things that I think people could be, whether it's become a better father or mother or whatever that is, then hang around the perfect dad and find out what his life is like, you know? Yeah. I'm really glad you said that, bro, because that's exactly what I did. And I kind of forgot to mention it, but it is a very essential to mention that, right? Like, so I did have to leave my bad friends,

but I replaced them with better friends. I did leave my ex-wife, but I found a better woman. I don't mean to be like rude, maybe, but how do I say that nicely? Hold on, let me think about it. It's like, it's good hey you move forward with a lot of your relationships even the most yeah yeah i i don't mean to be rude you know if she's listening

but that's another thing about this online thing man a lot of people in your family and friends and stuff they'll stalk you they'll never say anything but they'll stalk you what's he up to oh he oh he thinks he's cool now oh what he's online now he's trying to be successful. He's inspiring others. You know what I mean? It's this fucking one. But yeah, replacing is super key, man. I'm so happy you said that. It's like, I hate going to the gym, bro. I hate that stuff. I can't do it without an accountability partner. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I think that's my favorite word of this year is accountability. I think you're either going to have discipline today or regret tomorrow,

is one of my favorite sayings. Discipline today or regret tomorrow. And it is very, very important to really hold yourself grounded if you want to make results. And results are everything that you've talked about. Relationships, mind, body, soul. You talk about these five ethical principles of persuasion, and this information is extremely useful. How is this useful? Let's talk about what the five are and how they can relate to the home service industry. Yeah, bro. Something I call EPOP, right? And that's ethical principles of persuasion.

All right. These are timeless. You see, bro, I like the fundamentals. You ever watch that show, Kitchen Nightmare with Chef Ramsay? Yeah, I've seen it. I'm going to go in and... Yeah, bro, here's the thing. Every show like that and every episode is the exact same thing.

Restaurants are failing. Why? The kitchen's dirty. The staff is rude. The menu is too long. The food's no good. The customer service is bad it's the same five things each each show is the exact same thing exact same problem watch shark

tank or any shows like that the sharks are asking all the same questions and all the contestants have all the same problems they don't know their numbers their margins are too low their evaluation too high you know i'm saying yeah bar rescue is the same thing right all of them yeah yeah no here's what i like to do bro again let's take it offline babies why do babies cry bro it's only one of five reasons they're hungry they're tired they're gassy they need some love they need to be changed it's only one of those things. It's nothing else. So it's exactly what business. When I look at businesses,

I would say that they always have most of these five things are off or they need improvement. EPOP, Ethical Principles of Persuasion. Scarcity, reciprocity, likable authority, messaging, social proof. Right? Now, a lot of times, bro, because I deal with the fundamentals, the fundamentals are never sexy.

You know, so we're talking about like accountability. We're talking about not giving up. And people are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah. I heard this. So it's funny, like in a lot of my courses, I have to come up with words for it. You know what I mean? Like, for example, instead of saying like reciprocity or something,

I have to be like, check out the backscratcher method. Now I have to like romanticize it because nobody wants to hear the fundamentals, but it's the saddest. Here's the truth, bro. Check this out. You want to know one of the largest,

one of the biggest secrets to my success? Physical success? Water, right? Water. Like I just, I don't drink soda anymore and I drink a lot of water full stop that's it but guess what that's not sexy so nobody wants to hear that nobody wants to buy that so i have to come up with something the hyper 2am hydration method to change your life you know what i mean like that's just i Yeah. Yeah, it's a little frustrating for me. But anyway, yeah, I've identified, or I believe that if people fix these five things,

they will see dramatic improvement in their business. Now, you want to talk about the home service business. Recently, I've had two people come over to my house, okay, for the same thing. We're looking for... Man, I forget the name of the word. Pergola? What's the word? What's that thing that i forget the name of the word pergola what's the word what's that thing that we have pergola pergola correct uh for those who don't know it's

uh it's like a little uh your backyard over your patio it's like a little roof basically right that's a good way to put it right um so had some people come in to give estimates for that okay first of all bro and i want to say this to most people, correct me if I'm wrong, you're the expert in this industry. Generally speaking, your competition sucks. What do I mean by that? They don't show up on time. So I just bought a house recently.

So I happen to have a lot of experience from a consumer point of view because we're calling all sorts of people for all sorts of home services. A lot of them don't show up on time. A good number of them don't show up at time. A good number of them don't show up at all. Then they say, okay, we'll email you an estimate later today. Never get that. What are we talking about here? We're talking about the fundamentals. The people, their fundamentals are broken. So if I'm consulting, I'm like, bro, number one, show up on time. If you're running late, call them. Call them. No one's done that.

I've had a bunch of people show up late. Nobody called. They couldn't care less, time. If you're running late, call them. Call them. No one's done that. I've had a bunch of people show up late. Nobody called. They couldn't care less, right? If you say you're going to email something, email something. And then when they email me a proposal, it's like, dude, what did a second grader write this? Bro, there are so many professional proposal softwares out there, templates, where you just enter in a few data points of information,

price, date, customer name. They take care of all the prettiness. It's like, bro, if somebody was just to give me a respectable presentation, show up on time, give me a respectable price and a respectable man, it's like, you're hired. That's how bad the competition is, in my estimation, from my experience. Am I wrong? No. This is archaic. The home service industry, the guys that are implementing CRMs that are doing the latest technology, text messaging. We text message you when we're on the way.

You get an Uber-like feature of where the technician is. You get a bio of who that guy is, what he's going to look like. He comes out in a uniform with his iPad. He comes to the front door. You receive the estimate side. It's very rare that we're not going to get your business because we've got a whole process to earn your business. And at the end of the day, we could compete on three things.

There's only three things, timeliness, quality, and price. And price is relative. You know, why would you go to Starbucks and spend $8 on a cup of coffee when you could get it a dollar anywhere else? Well, the big thing is the service. So I think you can be more expensive, but be much better quality and on time. And it's very tough to be all three. You're never going to be super, super cheap, be by far the best quality, and then get it done the same day. You know what I mean?

What you're saying, bro, this part of business turns me on because it's so, to me, it's so, I love like, bro, my parents came to this country from England in the 70s. It was snowing. It was winter. My dad and his brother, this Lincoln, this old Lincoln town car was stuck in the snow in New York. And my dad and his brothers sat on the trunk of the car to put weight on it. And the car got unstuck because they put weight on the trunk. The guy came out of the car, the driver, and he gave my dad and his brothers a dollar each.

And they were shocked. My dad said, man, this is a great country, but you can never go hungry here. And this is what I love, is that exactly what you just said, you're in the top. Just by doing exactly what you just said, it's not that complicated. You got an iPad. You wear a uniform. You show up on time. You're texting. It's really not that complicated.

Frankly, anybody can set that up pretty quickly. You're in the top. How pathetic is this? You're in the top. How pathetic is this? You're in the top 1% just for doing that. Oh, well, we go above and beyond that, but we're in the top. But it doesn't matter. And the thing is, we're sitting here right now

on the podcast telling 10,000 people. And guess what? A lot of the people listening already do this, but if they don't, here's what I'm going to say. You heard it from us today. You've got no excuse, but most of you aren't going to do anything because you're going to say. You heard it from us today. You've got no excuse, but most of you aren't going to do anything because you're going to say, yeah, that'll happen. We're going to go live the first of the year on that. I'm going to start working on two weeks.

Yeah. Just after this wedding, I just got to wait for this. Just start. They say, I need everything. I need a lot, the stars to align perfectly to get going because if the stars don't align perfectly, then I just, I can't be successful. And the biggest thing I say is you start, you jump in headfirst, you work out the details as you go. Because if you got to have everything planned and every single thing and what you're going to eat for every single meal, and make sure you get that new water funnel that tells you how many cups you've had a day. It's never good enough. And in home service, we're like, look, we tell you the CRMs to use. I can tell you a ton of them.

There's amazing ones out there, affordable. Some of them are more expensive. I can tell you how to hire and where to do background checks and personality profiling and where to get the drug test done that actually makes sense. I can tell you, you don't go to Craigslist to find the best employees in the world. You got to recruit them. You've got to recruit them. You've got to find someone that smiles, that's genuinely happy, and then get them on your team and then teach them the trade.

This stuff, and you're right, it's so easy. There's bare essentials to make this successful for these companies. I love the analogy. You go into a restaurant. You make the menu really sexy. You don't make it like Cheese cheesecake factory, 80,000 pages. It's like a book. And then you go in and you say, look, we're going to have cleanliness.

We're going to have really good service. I was in Yuma, Arizona, which is a really small kind of town. It's a farm town. And we walked into three different restaurants and all of them, there was shit on all the tables and just disgusting, horrible customer service. I'm like, man, if I started a restaurant in Yuma, I would kill it. I mean, they didn't get you refills on time. It was just like, there was no systems or processes or checklist or standard operating procedures. And it just, I see opportunities everywhere I go. Luckily now I have tunnel vision and I'm focused.

But if this was five years ago, I would have been like, I'm just starting a restaurant in Newark because there's no good restaurants. You know what? Like even you're going to be excited. Like I want to start a home service company. Yeah, well, look, you got the fundamentals

and the ethical, your list. See, I read a couple of books that remind me of what you teach. One of them's influenced by Robert Cialdini. He's an an asu professor who talks about that's where i first heard it from oh it's genius stuff and then how to win friends and influence people by dale carnegie you know people want to hear themselves talk they want to hear their name because it's the most important name in their lives uh all this it's really cool stuff. I'll tell you something, and I'm glad you touched upon this. I fell into that trap too.

You know, you talk about people, oh, right after this wedding, I'm going to do right after this, or the New Year's is coming, I'm going to do it. Oh, yeah. I thought that in order for me to succeed, okay, I sold myself this false belief. A couple of years ago, I told myself, no one's going to listen to me nobody's going to buy it from me unless i do this and that was unless i become an international best-selling

author unless i start getting six-figure testaments seven-figure testaments unless i start speaking on stage unless i start going on major podcasts unless i started doing magazine covers unless unless unless unless unless i kept putting stipulations on me and then i less and less. I kept putting stipulations on me. And then I went and started collecting all that stuff. And it took me a lot of time to get all that stuff. After I get all that stuff, and don't get me wrong, it is easier to sell when you have accolades and so on and so forth. Like when you can say, hey, we've helped, you know, for example, if you're a home service provider and say,

oh, you know, hey, we've had 350 of your neighbors have enjoyed our roofing services. Sure, it's a little easier. However, can you and have I seen people crush it without any of that stuff, just leading with pure value and doing the kind of things we're talking about, showing up on time, giving a nice invoice, professional? Absolutely. This is something I didn't realize.

So hopefully, if you get anything from this, I hope you can pick up that. You don't need to be this well-accomplished. You know, if you're a roofer or whatever, it's not that, oh, man, listen, you know, I'm kind of new. Who's going to give me their business? Dude, your competition sucks. You know what I'm saying? If you go in, like we just said, all right, if you go in with all these things, you're already in the top 1%. So don't put stipulations yourself.

You can crush it really starting from day one. I mean, am I wrong? You can, but that's going to lead me to the next subject. I think the biggest problem I see is there's too many technicians that go out and say, like, let me just explain this to you. You work out a lot now. So that's like a physical trainer going, okay, I'm going to go open up a gym, but they don't know how they're going to get it funded.

They don't know how to get new clients. Right, right. I mean, just because you're a good technician doesn't mean you're a good owner. Just because you're good at sales does not mean you'll be a good trainer. They see this as the biggest misconceptions in the home service business. So how are you going to get leads? Because here's two things that will trump anything in your business. If you could get a lot of leads and you could get a lot of sales, if you could do sales and you get a lot of leads, you could afford to get a good accountant. You could afford to get the best people booking your phone calls. You could afford a lot of things that I've learned to tighten up over the years. I was spoiled because I'm really, really good at lead generation. I'm really good at SEO, pay-per-click, click-through funnel.

We use click funnels on different campaigns, not really home We use, I've used every single e-commerce site. You know, I've gotten to learn all these things about other industries and apply them to home service, which makes us successful, but you're the king of funnels. So this is what makes it tough. This is the kind of stuff that I think is hard for a lot of the people listening is, I've got good guys, but I don't have enough work.

And the problem is they can't afford a lot of the advertising because they don't charge the right prices and their conversion rate sucks. But what do you have to say about getting started, about setting up, whether it's a funnel for, like you said, a roofing company or where do you get started on something like that? I mean, there's a lot of different funnels. Truthfully, what we've always specialized in is value-based marketing it goes back to the story of the door-to-door salesman who's asking for a roofing job so the door-to-door salesman goes knocks on the door he says hey man notice

your roof's in kind of bad shape listen we're the cheapest town we're the quickest town we're gonna have a couple guys to you we'll give this job really really quick i will be in and out and no one's cheaper and um he goes away then the next door-to-door knocker comes the next day says hey sir i noticed your roof needs a little bit of help uh well listen i just want to tell you something we're actually not look we're not the cheapest in the world. We are our thing. What we stand behind, what we pride ourselves in is actually longevity, which is actually quality. So we have highly certified, honored craftsmen who will actually come in here,

will actually get you, which is going to last a long time. We understand that you have families, so we do proper background checks. These are model citizens that come in here in our craftsmanship and so on and so forth. families. So we do proper background checks. These are model citizens that come in here in our craftsmanship and so on and so forth. He said that. Now, who got the contract? The guy who ended up getting the contract was the second guy because the first guy made the assumption. And he said, man, everyone just wants something quick and cheap, quick and cheap.

Turns out the owner didn't care about that. The owner actually viewed his house as an investment. He had a lot of pride of ownership. He wanted something quality. He had kids in the house. And the guy who showed up first looked a little sketchy, didn't dress up, was not in uniform, talked a little fast, didn't really want that kind of people around his family. The second person asked the right questions. He says, hey, what are you looking for? What's the situation? You got to explain that. Hey, well, look, I got kids. I got some leaking. I want to keep the house for a long time.

I want something good. I don't want the cheapest thing. So in other words, the second person got the job because it was value-based marketing. He knew the customer. He asked the questions. What's the problems you're having? And then he regurgitated his solution, customized to the customer's problems. So the customer said, hey, listen, I'm concerned about my investment.

I'm concerned about longevity. So the customer's telling you their pain points. So now you're ingritting your solution in the form of solving that pain point. Well, listen, we only use the best quality stuff because we only use the same stuff on your house that we would use on our house. You know what I mean? In other words, they didn't make assumptions. So that's the kind of marketing that we like to do, no matter what kind of funnel you'd like to use,

no matter if it's a funnel, sorry, a webinar, a sales page, a lead form, which I don't know. You guys do a lot of lead form stuff? You know, I would say generally they're lower quality, generally. You know, here's the deal. If you're going to do any type of landing page type stuff, we're talking about using emails to existing customers.

Now, here's the biggest misconception, and I'm a victim of it. Our biggest best list is a list of past customers that already used us. They're going to be our best referral sources. And here's a couple pieces of gold for the people out there. Number one is use something like BirdEye to get reviews because it automates the whole process, makes it easier for the customer to leave it on four different sources, and make sure you do it 15 minutes before you leave the house. And somebody like Akbar probably won't leave a review for my company, but he will for the technician that shows up. If the technician says, Hey, Akbar, it was a pleasure meeting you and

your wife. I really love your home. I hope you're happy. And I gave you five out of five service. And I was wondering if you'd be able to share that in the last 15 minutes while I'm cleaning up. But just for you taking the time to do that, Akbar, I'm going to give you a surge protector because that's how important it is to me. We've got a contest going at work. It would really mean a lot to me. And it means a lot to the company. And you'd probably do it, right, If you deliver a good service. You want to talk about E-pop, reciprocity. So you're taking advantage of... Okay, now check this out. This is really something very fascinating to me anyway. Okay. If I do something nice for you, like... Are you a sports fan? Yeah. What's your favorite team? I'm a Detroit guy. I like the Detroit Lions. So I'm probably not

in contention a lot but it's awesome let's just say i find out you're a lions fan i get your jersey okay here's what's actually happening scientifically in your mind you actually have a cognitive disruption okay what that means is you're frazzled now you feel actually uncomfortable you're like well I owe you exactly correct so now and guess what here's the coolest part the only way to fix that frazzled mint and you're going on in your brain is to actually reciprocate and give something to me and usually it's bigger I'll give you a perfect example I was at a marketing conference there was a guy in front of me he was one of the speakers

massive econ guy right millions of millions a guy in front of me. He was one of the speakers. Massive e-com guy, right? Doing millions and millions and millions of dollars. He was in front of me in line. It was his turn. He was buying a salad. I just grabbed it from him. Like, hey, bro, it's on me. I grabbed the salad.

I bought it from him. It's $5. This guy was so frazzled, so shocked. He took me to the side and said, bro, what's your number one problem you have in your business right now? Let's solve that. To get a consult with this guy would be thousands of dollars.

It cost me $5 for a salad. This just happened, a similar story just happened to me the other day at another company. No one's doing this. Your competition sucks. Nobody's doing this. No one's doing this.

No one's going that little extra step. And you will get phenomenal reviews. Dude, if I see that someone's cracked a smile because of me, I'm like, hey, listen, can you give me a testimony real quick? Because they want to, because they got something from you. And humans are inherently good people. Some people have a negative view of humanity. Oh, everybody just wants a free lunch.

It's actually scientifically not true. Some people are in bad situations, so on and so forth. But generally speaking, humans are actually... I mean, look, I'm not going to preach on anybody, but we are God's finest creation. Human beings are inherently good people. They don't want anything for free, generally. They want to reciprocate. They want to exchange value. But a lot of people are just simply not taking advantage of these hardwired things, extraordinarily powerful things such as reciprocity. But it sounds like you are. Well, I want to get into the science of some of this stuff because here's the thing. If you do something for somebody and shrug it off and say, Akbar, it was nothing. It was no big deal. But

rather say this, Akbar, I know if you were in the same shoes, you would do the same thing for me. And that means basically I'm saying you owe me one, but I'm not doing it in the same way that most people think. Right. And here's another example of influence is, Akbar, here's the deal, man.

I know we've been neighbors for a long time. So I really need some help right now. I need to borrow $10,000. Right. Well, you go, dude, that's, right now. I need to borrow $10,000. Right. Well, you go, dude, that's, you know, I don't have 10 grand lying around. Okay. Look, here's the thing. I think I can get along with four grand. Tommy, I just don't have that kind of money. Okay. My mortgage is a thousand. Can you at least help me there? What I was able to do is position in your mind, 10, I set a precedentence. And now a thousand seems great. Yeah, you can afford it. If you want your kids to clean their room and make their bed, you say, hey, little Johnny,

I want you to first start by mowing the lawn. I want you to clean up the whole garage. I want you to sweep and mop the floors, vacuum the living and family room, clean the table. And then I want you to go downstairs, do all your laundry. And then I want you to go make your bed and do your, clean your room. Well, man, that's a lot. You know, no, dad, no. Tell you what, I'll make you a deal. You go clean your room and make your bed. You go play today. Boom. Now that sounds great, right? Exactly correct. There's these cool concepts that if you, it's hard for people to say no twice as well learn all these things for social proof that's something like having a five-star on yelp and 83 of people trust online reviews so the people that aren't doing it and are that are not automating it are crazy bro it's deeper than

that it's deeper than that check it out bro and this is very difficult for me to believe it took me a lot of deep reflection to actually believe this statistic, but it's with a reputable organization. Bro, 82%, that 82% you're talking about, let's just say we're your best friends. And I'm like, hey, Thomas, you got to go to this new pizza place, you know, Sal's Pizza downtown.

It's unbelievable. What are the chances of you going to that place? Great, high. It's like 100%. Yeah. Check this out. And I really want everyone to internalize this. 82% of people who read reviews from complete strangers online treat it as if a friend,

a personal real life friend of theirs was recommending them something. So think about that for a minute. And then I'm like, dude, I'm like, and I just couldn't believe that. I'm like, I don't believe it. But then I'm like, wait a minute. Every time I want to go to a restaurant, what do I do? I go to Yelp. I click sort by best ratings.

Whatever the best rating thing is, I go there. And I don't know who the hell these people are. They're complete strangers. So, I mean, think about how powerful this is. And you're absolutely right. To me, one of the easiest things in the world is to collect testimonies i go out there most people don't have them or they suck like for example your roofing company oh yeah todd did a roof is not bad what the hell kind of review is that and that's featured on their website you know what i mean so it's like

yeah and there's there's a lot to be said about that. And I think the biggest problem I have with testimonials is I don't like a beautiful camera and a green screen. I like to keep it as natural as possible. And here's what I tell the customer. It's pretty simple. Did we show up on time and do the work that you wanted? How did you feel about the overall job? Did we clean up after ourselves? And a little summary.

Did you like me or the technician? And I get these great ones. They'll say, when I called in to their office, I noticed the difference from A to Z, not only from the call center, but the ad stood out. It was a better ad. It was a more beautiful house. They had testimonials. They had all that. When you get another person to talk about that stuff, and the hard part is getting somebody that's comfortable on camera because women like to do makeup and like to make sure they're ready. And guys, guys are okay. But it's almost like when you see people in front of a camera, it's almost like public speaking.

They're afraid of it. And then, oh my gosh, it's not that hard. It's pretty simple. Look, the guy showed up on time. I was really happy with the work. He was so funny. We had a great time. We're actually from Michigan. We're both from the Metro Detroit area. It was really cool. We connected. They did the work. And I'm definitely recommending them to anybody who's looking for a garage door or a roof or an air conditioning unit. That's it. It's short, simple, sweet. And it drives. When you advertise that correctly, it's amazing what happens. And I the biggest step akbar is i have over 100 technicians so automating the process was difficult but worth the time and effort because now i get more recommendations i mean my goal my goal here in the next i'm creating some pretty fancy software

and gonna i'm going to get my guys to get $5 for every single, my goal is to pay them $20 extra per job, which will give me right around 27,000 reviews a month. Wow. And that's how you freaking blow the competition away. But the competition is going to go, how is he doing this? What is, how is he cheating? Different things I'm not cheating.

I'm actually just having my guys ask the customers. And there is a science to it, though. And you understand that. And that's what you teach, right? Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, look, to be honest with you, man, half the job is done. Or the majority of the job is done if you do a good job. And you've done it the right way.

You've been courteous. And you didn't walk through the house with muddy slippers on. And you knocked them. You were polite. And you were kind. And you't walk through the house with muddy slippers on. You knocked them. You were polite and you were kind and you were pleasant. The majority of the job was done at that point. Now it's just the technical part. That's what I always say, bro. To me, this whole game, and tell

me what you think, but to me, this whole game is 90% mental. Because the technical part of it, like the ask for the review and all that, that's the simple stuff. But it's the mindset of saying, hey, I'm not selling these people. I'm serving these people. I'm going to put my booties on before I go in the house. I'm going to smile at them. I'm going to crack a joke. I'm going to compliment their house. I'm going to, I promise I'm going to get it done by five. I'm going to get it done by five. I'm going to be in well communication. I'm not going to leave a mess in the backyard. Matter of fact, if I see something else, I'm extra, I'm going to pick it up and tell him, hey, by the way, I just saw that stick was out there. I just put it away because I know you have a little kid. I didn't want him to trip and fall and blah, blah, blah. I think the majority, the vast majority of your job is done.

I think at that point, it's just easy. You know what I mean? For you to get the testimony. It is. But the difference is, is you got to tell these guys. I have three questions. So I say, and I smile at your front door. This is such a beautiful home. How long have you lived here? And then, so I'm, I'm gathering data. Then I'm walking through your house. The first thing I do is play with your dog

and I'm like, Oh my gosh, I love dogs. And I find stuff in common with you. And then I, I walk out to the garage and I say, when's the last time you had this garage where it looked at? And you say, well, it's been a couple of years. Actually, I never have come to think of it. Okay, great. Tell me exactly what's going on with it. I see that you have a broken spring, but so many people walk in there. They go, this will only take 15 minutes. They're greasy. They smell like crap. We make it into an experience. And if I'm selling you a garage door, I say, Akbar, where's a good spot we could sit down and discuss this? I'm the only guy that you let into your kitchen table and to talk to you and show you samples and now i'm getting to know you now we're having a conversation right hard to say no to a friend yeah that's the thing is it's hard to say

no to a friend it's hard to say no to somebody you got to like them and you got to trust them if you can build trust and they like you because you smile and you ask questions and you can tell i get excited about this stuff because it's it's the world to me and the people that are listening you know what's tough is that everybody listening is actually trying to better themselves and their business like who are listening right now too i wonder they're probably like man that sounds awesome but how the hell do i build a team of like like you're talking about a rock star and i think this is something that they're asking probably a limiting but hey how do i do that well yeah like, like you're talking about a rock star. And I think this is something that they're asking probably a limiting,

but Hey, how do I do that? Well, yeah, that's awesome. But dude, yeah. Good luck finding 10 people like that.

Well, what's in it for them. Okay. So you got to think about with them, but I've reversed that. What's in it for them. So why would they want to do this stuff? See,

I find that I can take, you can take an a player and turn them into a C player by not finding out what motivates them. Some people think it's just payments. Some people think all this stuff. But the thing is, really find out what makes them tick. And you've got to peel that onion back, right? You've got to keep peeling it and figure out what's going to motivate them to do this stuff that you want them to do.

And first of all, recruiting is probably the most essential thing when you're growing a business is getting the right people. I mean, what's your experience with you're not going to walk into that restaurant and turn every single person around because it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks. Yeah. My life was hell or my life's been hell when I've had the wrong significant other, when I've had the wrong clients, when I've had the wrong team. And my life's been heavenly when I have the right significant other, the right team had the wrong team. And my life's been heavenly when I have the right significant other, the right team, and the right clients. Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah. I mean, I think that's another thing too, right? You got to play to your strengths.

Maybe you're not a great manager. You know what I'm saying? Maybe you're not a great motivator. Maybe you're not a great leader. Maybe you're more like a software whiz or you're a systems whiz and you figured out how to just make whatever roofing industry easier and automated. Well, dude, that's a problem. That's a big problem. So you got to do one of two things. Number one, you got to learn how to be a better leader or recruiter or manager. Or number two, and I know people have done this very successfully, including myself, frankly, is you can hire the right person to head recruitment, for example's sake. What's your experience with that? Do you recommend that? Because I know naturally you're good at that. So you probably take care of that, a lot of that, right? Or am I wrong?

Well, the company size we're at now is hundreds of employees, 200 plus, the deal is you want to find your strength and focus on the strengths and find out what you love to do. So when you walk in on Mondays, you love to. There's a lot of people go through and they say, I suck at accounting. I need to learn accounting. You need to know enough to read a balance sheet. You can't let people pull a wool over your head and not understand it. But if you're going to spend all your life going to finance and accounting classes, I think sales and marketing. If I could have a perfect life, I would be a hundred percent in marketing all the time. I love sales. I got to tell you, I love sales.

But marketing, if we could out market and I'm talking with reviews, I'm talking with like, I'm talking with, like, look, there's relationship marketing, and then there's just being out there on demand. Like, we're ready when they need to find us. And I'll tell you what, having a service agreement, being in their home every year is probably... There's another company in town that does over $100 million, not grassroots, it's HVAC, plumbing, and electrical. But they only get less than 2,000 new customers a month. I get 6,500 new customers a month and they still outsell me. So my main goal is to just try to be in their house once a year with a service agreement that's affordable. If you're not great at that, business partners, a lot of the time you've got the visionary and

then you've got the integrator. Yeah. There's a good book called Rocket Fuel, if you haven't read it. It really explains the difference. And I think you're a visionary and it's great to be, you know, Walt Disney was a visionary. Roy Disney was the integrator. Yeah. I always tell people, do what you do best and outsource the rest. Like if you're taking a look at your schedule every day, you're like, oh, man believe i gotta do this again then you should really be outsourcing that that's gonna kill so much of your energy dude i consider us you know entrepreneurs as artists i feel that we create we solve problems

in order to do that my wife doesn't really understand that it's like when i come home tired sometimes she's almost like a fan like upset at'm here like offended she's like you don't play bricks you don't build houses what the hell are you tired about you sit at your desk and energy yeah so you know creating burns a lot of mental energy which i'll argue is sometimes even more depleting than physical energy but you know as artists we need to preserve our brain capacity the limited energy we have the finite energy we have it needs to be burned and focused on solving problems and if we're burning that you know doing some menial tasks for example i i here's an exercise i recommend people to do what are you worth an hour all right let's just say you value yourself i'm just going to come up

with a random number let's just say you value yourself. I'm just going to come up with a random number. Let's just say you value yourself at $500 an hour. All right, well, let's just say $200 an hour, okay? Make a journal. Journal out the next three days. What are you doing? I'm talking about how much time you're spending in the bathroom, how much time you're spending eating, how much time you're spending preparing food,

how much time are you doing admin stuff, customer service stuff. Take a look at the numbers at the end of the week. Like, oh my God, maybe you're a bit of a foodie or whatever. Like, oh my God, you know, I don't really like doing... Health is really important to me. But my God, I had no idea. I prep for five hours a week. I had no idea.

Actually, I don't really enjoy it. I just do it for my health. That's five hours. That's $1,000 you just spent prepping food. Well, guess what? There's meal prep companies that'll mail it to you for a fraction of that price. Oh my God, I can't believe I'm doing five hours of admin work a week and five hours of customer service. Well, guess what? You can pay someone $20 an hour to do a phenomenal job and you don't even like doing it, but you're worth $200

an hour and you're doing all that stuff. You should be outsourcing that. I feel every business, at minimum, for starter, needs an executive assistant, needs a VA. A lot of them don't. And they end up doing that. They end up doing things they shouldn't be doing. Everyone has their purpose in life. VAs, EAs, they love supporting entrepreneurs. But entrepreneurs are not supposed to be sitting there and doing the VA's job. That's inappropriate. That's inappropriate and disrespectful to your gift, if you want my honest opinion. You got a text message. I was running a few minutes late. That was my assistant. And, you know, she's great. She's amazing. And, you know, without her, I think I'd be in the

dark ages. I'd be lost. I wouldn't even know what day it is. Well, yeah, I have a tough time with that, too. I just I love what you said. You got to start somewhere. I wouldn't even know what day it is. Well, yeah, I have a tough time with that too. I just, I love what you said. You got to start somewhere. I wouldn't say go out and hire everybody. Start with what you hate most. And then a good rule of thumb is take a freaking calendar and have it spaced every 15 minutes and write down what you do for a week and find out. And then I want you to highlight all the things that were nonproductive because so many people, there's productivity and there's active. Most people do a lot of activity,

but no productivity. And if you find out how much is highlighted at the end of the day, you'll find that it's actually 90% of your days are crap. You're not getting it done. So look, let me do this real quick. Tell me the top three books you have, and then we'll close it out. What are your top three books that you'd recommend? We do this in every podcast. To me, it really depends on what you're trying to accomplish, to be honest with you. For example, one of my favorite books is a copywriting book, The Ad Week by Joseph Sugarman. Frankly, to be totally honest with you, any book by Joseph Sugarman, that's number one. Number two is, well, I'll tell you a beautiful story.

I think it's called Made in America. It's written by Sam Walton, who owned, at the time, the biggest company in the world, Walmart. That's a really cool book about the American dream and about fundamentals of business. I like that one a lot. It's basically about how he built Walmart. It's actually a beautiful, beautiful book. Easy read. And then the third one I'm going to say, honestly, is because I'm really... We've discussed into the fundamentals and the timeless principles. I'm not going to sit here and teach people about bots all day because bot technology is going to come and go. I want to teach you things like

reciprocity, things that have been around since the beginning of time and things that will continue to be around. So for that, I recommend that whatever religion you are, I recommend you read your holy book because it talks about all these things very much so in detail. And to study it from an ancient point of view and to notice it hasn't changed because generally in holy books, the concepts are timeless. You're not getting any bot knowledge or anything like that. So I highly recommend that. Those would be my top three.

Okay, then we'll close it out. I'll give you one last chance. Take the mic, talk about anything. One last thing. Actually, one more thing really quick. How does the audience get ahold of you? Because you teach on how to be coaching. You teach people the coach's secrets

on how to coach in any type of industry. How do they reach out to you? Well, listen, I'd love to... I have a book. It's the best-selling book that discusses all these ethical principles of persuasion, how to basically build a seven-figure business using them. It's $47 on Amazon.

I'd love to give it to your audience for free. And to get that, you simply just go to sevenfigurebook.com and you can get it there. In closing, I said in the podcast, but I'll say it again. And first of all, we're talking about ethical principles of persuasion. Understand that in essence, that's really just mind control. It's advanced principles, understanding how the brain works and using the rules in your advantage. One might say ethical manipulation. You know, all businesses do it.

Here's the choice you have to make. Is it ethical or is it unethical? What we like to teach is you have to be honest about it because just because you can sell something to someone doesn't mean that you should. If you're a roofer and you've got your procedures on pack and there's a guy who's a roof but it's going to last another five years, you know you can sell him. He's ready to buy, but you know, you really don't need to,

and he doesn't need it. Don't sell it to him. In other words, be honest and be ethical. Just with great power comes great responsibility. And if you study the mind, you can't sell anything to anyone, but that doesn't mean that you should. And give, you know, my highest ROI ever, better than real estate, stocks, short of selling cryptocurrency, anything. The best investment I've ever made in my life that I've seen the highest ROI all day by far has always been giving. So give whatever you can.

If you can give money, give money. If you don't have money, give time. If you don't have time, then just make somebody happy. Give them some happiness. So just keep giving and don't give up. Listen to Thomas. He's obviously very intelligent.

And honestly, I congratulate you on your current and upcoming success. up. Listen to Thomas. He's obviously very intelligent. And honestly, I congratulate you on your current and upcoming success. Akbar, hey, man. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. I'll definitely keep in touch and really appreciate everything. Everybody's going to get that book. Go out there and get that book.

Go to sevenfigurebook.com. Appreciate it, Akbar. Thanks, Thomas. Appreciate you. Take it easy. All right, guys. Peace. Hey, Akbar. Thanks, Thomas. Appreciate you. Take it easy. All right, guys. Peace. Hey, guys, I really appreciate you tuning into the podcast. I want to let you know that my book is available right now on Amazon. It's called The Home Service Millionaire. 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 alpac and of course ara the ceo a 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 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 the book, and I really appreciate everything. I hope you're having a great day.

Tune in next week. Thank you.