The Home Service Expert Podcast - Using this Six Magic Words to Become a Master Salesman

Episode Date: July 5, 2019

Mark Matteson is a professional speaker, writer, and coach. His extensive work experience includes being the President of the Pinnacle Service Group from 1997 to 2009, a faculty member at EGIA Contractor University, and the owner of MattesonAvenue.com and sparkingsuccess.net. He is the author of the book Freedom from Fear, and has provided valuable assistance to such high-profile clients as Microsoft, Honda, GE, ConocoPhillips, John Deere, Honeywell and T-Mobile. In this episode, we talked about Inspiration, Sales, Productivity...

And I work with contractors all the time. And I say, look, if you have 10 technicians, there's two who are going to run with this information and just be stars. And there's two who are never going to do whatever it is you're presenting, whether it's me or somebody else. But it's the six in the middle that you're after. If you can just swing two or three of those folks up to join the top 20, then you've really accomplished something.

And after that, it's just a continuous commitment to improvement. This is the Home Service Expert podcast with Tommy Mello. Let's talk about bringing in some more money for your home service business. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields,

like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. I'm your host, Tommy Mello. And today I have Mark Madison on the line. And he's an expert in inspiration, sales, productivity. He's worked at the Pinnacle Service Group, president, actually from 1997 till 2009. He's been at the sparkling success.net. He's a professional speaker from 1993 till present. And medicineavenue.com. He's a writer and coach from 1993 till now, nearly three decades of professional speaking,

writing and coaching owner of sparking success.net faculty member of EGIA contractor university. And the author of the bestselling book, freedom from fear has helped such clients, a very high profile, Microsoft, Honda, GE, Conoco Phillips, John Deere, Honeywell, and T-Mobile.

Mark, I'm excited to have you on today. I was just going through a bunch of things online about you and really excited to introduce you to the audience. Tom, I appreciate that. Humbled an honor to be here. Yeah, you just seem like a really confident guy here, just briefly getting to know you. You know, you've had an interesting and colorful career over the last 26 years. Tell us about where you've been and where you're going. Well, I started out in 1976 as an air conditioning technician. I joined the Air Force.

I was playing college basketball, and after a year, I left. And at the time, a lot of people were graduating from college, and they couldn't find a job, so I called my uncle who lived in Ohio. He's an industrial arts teacher, and he said, refrigeration and air conditioning. He said, that's the future, so I left college, even though I had a 3.0 blood alcohol level, and joined the Air Force, and when I got out, I went through a four-year apprenticeship, and while I was waiting to get in the apprenticeship, I started a chimney cleaning business, so I kind of learned how to sell at the kitchen table, did pretty well, built a successful little chimney cleaning business at 23, 24. And then once I got the

apprenticeship, I sold the business and jumped in with both feet. And the second year of my apprenticeship, I sold my first service agreement and I just never looked back. And at the end of the year, my boss called me in the office and he said, I can't get anybody to sell like you do. You've sold more service agreements and projects than the guy we hired full-time. So I knew I had a future in sales. And after I turned out, I took a job full-time selling and commercial service agreements in Seattle. And by my third year, I was one of the top guys in the country. And I started writing articles and giving talks. And the next thing I knew, I was offered a job to go to work for a company called Edge Learning Institute in Tacoma. He was an old mentor of mine who had gone on to

become a very successful speaker and kind of learned at his feet for about three years. And then I went out on my own and that was 93 and I've been doing it ever since. So that's the short version. Yeah. It sounds like you had a lot of stuff in between there. So I was reading some things about you and it's not on my questions, but we read a lot, hopefully, the people that listen because they're listening to the podcast to get better and we associate ourselves with certain people. And it sounds like over the years, you get to change who you are and your identity by the books you read

and who you associate yourself with. Is that something that, when did you really realize that that was the case? And how do you teach people how to embrace that? Well, the gentleman that taught me that was another mentor, Charlie Tremendous Jones, who took me under his wing in, gosh, 98, 99, somewhere in there. And that's exactly what he said. You'll be the same person in five years, except for two things, books and people, people

and books. And I took that to heart. And Charlie used to mail me books every month. And so I read them and I became a voracious reader. I read a couple of books a week. I have since, well, for 30 years. And I really believe that. And I tell contractors this. I said, your income is going to be the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Add up what they make and divide by five, and your income is going to be within 10% of that. So for a lot of contractors, they stay stuck in their comfort zone. At the same time, they stay stuck at a certain level. They're at a million, million and a half, two million, whatever. They can't seem to break out. And in order to do that, we have to, all of us have to stretch our comfort zones because I believe everything we want is

just outside our comfort zone. So I've, you know, through goal setting, I've done that for a long, long time. Just throw myself out. That's easy to say. I've had a lot of success hanging out with people and listening to people. I actually go and do... Well, I'll go into their air conditioning company, roofing company, and I'll just hang out with a business owner for a couple of days. And vice versa, I invite people into my place. And typically, I'm always going to invite somebody I aspire to be, somebody that's much larger. And typically, they want to give back is what I find. They're not, as long as they've got the time to do it. I live in Phoenix, Arizona, Scottsdale, Arizona, Tempe. So people are usually out here at some point anyway to be out here for family or fun or golf. So, you know, is that something that you'd recommend? How do you get out of your comfort

zone and start hanging out with the people that you aspire to be? What's some good tips to do that? A great question. Well, two things. Number one, take a look around and see who's done what you want to do and been where you want to go. You know, when I'm conducting a keynote to 500 contractors, I'll stop and say, stand up and give your business card to somebody you don't know. Walk over, introduce yourself, and tell them one reason, the number one reason you came to this particular event. And that's just a really simple exercise in throwing yourself out of your comfort

zone. So there's somebody out there who's done what you want to do and been where you want to go. Who are they? Go find them. And I've just never been shy. I got cut from the basketball team in eighth grade and I was so mad. And so I approached a young kid named Kenny Christensen, who was the best player in our school. And I said, how did you get so good? And he said, I shoot two hours every day and I go to Bob Hubrig's basketball camp. So from that day on, I shot two hours every day and I earned the money to go to camp. And the next year I made the team. And that lesson at 13, 14 years old, it served me well. I've done that with every change I've ever made. So I think that's the first thing is making a conscious decision to find people who have done what you want to do and been where you

want to go. The second thing for me anyway, is just saying yes. You know, I've developed, I've written 10 eBooks and five books. And those books have all come from the marketplace. They said, can you do team building? Can you do personal development? Can you do sales? Can you do commercial sales? Can you do? And the answer is always yes. And then I, once I said yes, then I had to go do the research and develop the curriculum. So, and I found it was a lot easier to develop new curriculum than it was to find new clients. But the good news is I've been able to do both. So again, getting out of your comfort zone is not easy. One of the metaphors I use is, you know, fold your arms, you know, which one's on top. Now fold them the other way. How's that

feel? And it's always, it's uncomfortable. I don't like it. And nobody likes it. Nobody likes change. Nobody likes stretching comfort zones, but if you're going to grow, that's what's necessary. Throwing yourself out of your comfort zone on a regular basis. Yeah, I agree with that. I think that a lot of the times we find ourselves doing the same thing and expecting different results. And so many people are afraid of change. And to build a culture that actually embraces change is a very difficult thing to do for business owners. And not taking the time to feed yourself. I mean, I look at these guys that complain and they go, I'd never waste my money on a seminar like that or my time. And it's mind boggling to me why people don't take the time to find a mentor or a coach.

Myself, I have three different people I get coached through. And then I go to church as well. So there's four people if you count the pastor at the church. So I think it's important to surround yourself with people. And not every single person that I get consulted from is created equal. I mean, one guy just focuses on making my whole department, my whole company lead. So making sure that the best tactics are in place to save time and build efficiency. And that's what he specializes in. He doesn't do accounting or tell

me where to invest or stuff like that. So I think embracing the things that you need to figure out. So, you know, getting people to change is probably the hardest thing. So what makes it so challenging to motivate people? Well, you said it, most people don't like to change. And so that's one of the things I do is I teach people how to change through goal setting. And, you know, we have a self-image. The self-image is like a thermostat setting. You know, if I set a thermostat at 70 degrees, there's a four degree dead band or comfort zone. And if the temperature gets below 68, there's a call for heat. If it gets above 72, there's a call for cooling. Well, we have a set point for how much money we make, a set point for the kind of driver we are, the set point for the kind of husband or father we are. We have a set point, a comfort zone for everything. Golf's one of my favorite metaphors to use because I say, I think golfers in the room and you know, five or six guys' hands go up. And I said, well, anybody have five or six handicap? And the guy said, yeah, I'm a six. And I said,

so if we go out, you're probably going to shoot a 78. He said, that's right. I said, so what happens when you have a 30 on the front nine? Well, you're just in the zone. You got an Eagle and a couple of holes in one and you're just, you're birdie in every hole and you're unbelievable. And then your buddy says, Hey man, you had a 30 on the front nine. What's going to happen on the back? And he said, a 46. I said, exactly. You're going to correct for the error. You're going to slice one in the woods. You're going to drop one in the pond. You're going to end up in the sand. Abracadabra, end of the round, you've got a 76. So all of us have that. And the way out of that is to set a new goal

with repetition, emotion, and time. I make more money now in a week than I used to in a new goal with repetition, emotion, and time. I make more money now in a week than I used to in a month. I don't say that to impress anybody. I'm just saying it's, you know, I remember one day I sold $20,000 worth of books in a day. And I just went, what? You know, how did that happen? And the answer is I kept throwing myself out of my comfort zone.

So set points, self-images. You know, how did that happen? And the answer is I kept throwing myself out of my comfort zone. So set points, self-images, you know, we have that. There's three elements to the brain. There's the conscious process, the subconscious process, and the creative subconscious process. And the subconscious process just stores information. The conscious process is what we're doing right now, talking, judging, evaluating. And then the creative subconscious makes sure that we act like us, the image we have of us. And so it's really a function of just changing that image. And I say repetition, emotion, and time, because that's, so if I want to increase my sales by 30%, let's say the number is 100,000 or even a million, it doesn't matter what the number is. Let's say it's a million and I want to sell 1.3. Well, then what I have to do is write that goal out and bombard my subconscious with it hundreds, if not thousands of times over and over and over again, repetition, emotion, and time.

And then eventually what happens is our creative subconscious says, okay, what do I need to do? And the how kicks in and providing the why is important enough. And the what is really, truly something that we want. The how is going to come over time, just having faith in the process. So it doesn't matter what the goal is, as long as it's personal to you, something you really, really want. Simple, not easy. So let me ask you this. This is something that I practice myself and I don't know necessarily, I've read so many books. I think I'm up to 760 on Audible. Not every single one I've been through with a fine

comb, but usually I'll figure out what I want, whether that's a monetary goal, whether that's anything I want, and then I'll work backwards. So I'll say this is one year from now. I've got four quarters, 12 months. I've got 52 weeks, and I'll say today, here's what numbers I need to hit. So how do I get to that number? And then I'll say, well, I'm going to need to run an extra job. I'm going to need to increase my average ticket, increase my conversion rate, increase my profitability to get that. So to do that, what do I need to do today? Well, I need to eliminate these two guys, either manage them up or out. I need, you know, and I can go through everything to hit that goal with you, but does that process work or is there some type of other things you could give me that would make

that stronger? Well, you're hitting the nail on the head. You need a track to run on. So when I first started in commercial service agreement sales, it was cold calls. I had an area no one wanted and the truth was there was no business there. It was the farthest area from the shop. So I walked into 75 buildings a month to get 50 names, to talk to 40 people, to get 20 appointments, to do 10 proposals, to close five at an average of 5,000 per with a pull through of another 10 grand. And so what that meant is if I walked into 75 buildings a month, I was probably going to get close to reaching my goal. If I want to do more, sell more, maybe 100, 150. I had the privilege of talking to 400 salespeople from Aflac a few years ago in Wisconsin. And the

number one guy stand up and I said, why are you so successful? And he said, I make 40 calls a day. I quack loudly every day and I offer my clients a choice of yeses. And I smiled and I said, I hope everybody heard what he just said, because it was profound. I don't care what you sell, pick a number, 40, 30, 20, 10, but something every single day. That's number one. Number two, if you don't quack loudly for what you do, if you don't love your job and love your industry and love your company, you're not going to be able to sell what it is you sell. I can tell my audiences with great power and affection that keeping a journal will change their life because I fill four of them up a year and I have since 1982. So you have to be passionate about what it is you sell. And then last but not least, a choice of yeses means, you know, which option would you prefer?

And it changes the buying dynamic from if you're going to buy to how. And that was probably one of the most profound and shortest lessons I've ever received. It's simple. Just change something. There's something you need to start doing. There's something you need to stop doing. What are they? Yeah, that's pretty incredible. I like your scenarios and the way you describe things too, because I try to give analogies to every one of my employees. For example,

for your garage door, would you ever drive your car at a hundred miles an hour on the highway with your emergency brake on? Well, no, absolutely not. Then why would we do this to your garage door? Your garage door is literally not rolling. That's what those rollers do. And it helps really sell people. But what I've noticed from my top employees versus my bottom ones is the bottom ones are content when they hit a number. That number is probably driven into their self-image and what they need to make to cover their bills. But let's say we're Monday through Friday. I see you hit your goal by Wednesday. All of a sudden, Thursday and Friday are at best mediocre. And that really bothers me that there's certain people out there that will continue to push the envelope. But I can tell you,

my payroll is now that it's biweekly, it's over $400,000 every other week. And I can tell you that I can estimate within 2% of what it's going to be for well over 200 employees. That's pretty sad if you ask me that a lot of the people here are on performance base. So what would you say to somebody like that? I mean, how do you get these people? I'm just curious because all the listeners right now are probably saying, if you really look at the numbers for the last year and every employee, they're probably within 5% of where they were, unless you're coaching them, developing them and figuring out a way to make them tick. Well, there's a couple of things to your question.

Number one is you've got campers and you've got climbers. You know, you're not going to have 200 climbers. You're just not. You need people who you get the job done and they're steady eddies. But the folks who are going to grab a hold of the information and run with it, I found, is the top 20%. And I work with contractors all the time. And I say, look, if you have 10 technicians, there's two who are going to run with this information and just be stars. And there's two who are never going to do whatever it is you're presenting, whether it's me or somebody else. But it's the six in the middle is you're presenting, whether it's me or somebody else, but it's the six in the

middle that you're after. If you can just swing two or three of those folks up to join the top 20, then you've really accomplished something. And, you know, after that, it's just a continuous commitment to improvement. I heard you say you listened to 760 Audible. You know, I started listening to audio cassettes in the mid-80s when I was a technician. I started reading self-help books in my service truck. Nobody told me to do that. That was just something that along the way I uncovered and discovered. I listened to about 50,000 hours of audio. That's the equivalent of about two university degrees. I call it windshield university. I don't drive a lot now. I'm flying most every week. But when I am in my car, I'm still listening to audio programs. I'm still

keeping a journal. I'm still reading two books a week. And I attend every seminar. Now, the good news is for what I do, I share the stage with lots of really super smart people, famous people, famous athletes, famous authors. By the virtue of my job, I get to learn while I'm working. But long before I ever stepped on a stage, I was in the front row taking notes. And I never begrudged myself a seminar, even if I had to pay for it myself. And I've just been really fortunate in that respect. I always looked at that as an investment. I paid full price for a book. I paid full price for a seminar. And I'm looking and it forces me to be committed to whatever it is, whatever the learning is. Because I only need one good idea to make any book or any seminar I go to worth it. Just one.

And I'll give you an example. I was attending a seminar and the gentleman said, if you're in sales and you don't do an autopsy after every single call, you're missing the boat. He said, make a list of the things you did well on that call and what you could improve and do it right after the call. Well, gosh, this had to have been 1989, 1990. So I started doing that and it completely changed everything. And I still do that after every single presentation. I ask myself the next day or that night, what did I do well?

What could I improve? And that simple discipline came from just one seminar. But I'm telling you right now, that completely changed the way I saw the world. So what is it about self-diagnosing that's, because I think that's super important. And I take a lot of notes, but I think my largest problem, and I think a lot of the people out there that are listening right now, we don't self-reflect enough. We don't have a routine at the end of the night that allows us to look back at the notes we made, that allows us to look back and say, yes, I did the affirmations. I've done this right, but I didn't do this right.

What is something that we could do to really help ourselves reflect? Because I don't, I'll tell you what, I don't like to go to the doctor if I think I might be sick, because I don't want to hear the news. And I think a lot of people are in that way that they're not afraid necessarily of the doctor. I'm not afraid of the doctor, but I'm more afraid of what he might be able to tell me, even though I'm not sick. And that's why a lot of people don't go. How do you overcome that? Well, I remember my first dance. I was 14. I was terrified and I I'm leaning against the wall. And a buddy of mine was a football player. And he said, I danced with her. And he pointed to this girl named Jill, who was beautiful, blonde hair, blue eyes, cheerleader. And I said, well, go ask her. He goes, I'm not

going over there. This guy was 6'5 and like 240. And I said, why not? He goes, oh, no, not me. And at first, I thought, okay, what is he afraid of? And the obvious answer was rejection, but it wasn't the true answer. What he was really afraid of was the long walk back and all of us laughing. And so right then and there, I said, I've got a new plan. I'm going to walk across the room. If girl number one said no, I'm going to ask girl number two. If she said no, I was going to girl number three. If all 11 girls said no, I was going out the side door and getting drunk. And the good news is girl number four said I'd love to dance. And then after three dances, she says, why don't we get out of here?

And off we left. Well, we're afraid of the long walk back. We're afraid of the fear of criticism. We're afraid of what people might think or say or do. And I think what's causal to courage is having thin skin and cold blood and not really worrying what the crowd says. One of the turning points in my sales career came when I stopped running with the herd. When I first started, I'd get up, I'd get in the shop about eight o'clock like everybody else. And at 1130, I went to lunch with everybody. And

then 430, I went home just like everyone else did, and then, again, I was listening to an audio program, and he said, you know, don't run with the herd. If you want to take your game to the next level, you can't be afraid of nonconformity, of being an individual, so I started getting the office about 6 a.m. About half an hour before everybody arrived, I was off to my first call. I'd come back when they were at lunch, put proposals together, and then go back out again. And after a couple of months, they said, where have you been, man? We haven't seen you. I said, just busy selling. And by the end of the year, I was the top guy in the company. I wasn't the most popular guy, but I was the top guy. And again, it's comfort zones. It's

getting out of that rut. It's saying, I'm not afraid of the long walk back. Yeah. I think that once you really benefit of what's about to happen in your life, it's like when someone works out and they commit to a month and they don't commit to a six months of no alcohol, no fat food, no pizza, no sugar. First, they start out with that one day. Then they go to that week. Then they get to that month and they start to see the results of their hard work. Then it makes it that much easier to continue down that line. And I think the people give up too quick on themselves. They go, I tried that. It didn't work. I tried to the newspaper for two weeks. I tried ValPak. I tried that Google stuff. I tried some of that search engine optimization. And I'm just talking about marketing. Or I tried asking the questions they, and the questions didn't work. Well,

I think there's a lot more to it than that, and you got to let time really get some results first before you could assume something. You're talking about consistency and what I call compound interest. Consistency, yeah. Yeah, there's a great book called Atomic Habits by James Clear, but he tells a story about, well, there's two examples, but one of my favorites is, is a young man graduated from college in British Columbia and took a job at a bank. And the owner said, look, if you just make 20 calls a day, you'd be successful. So he decided he was going to make a hundred. So he got two glass jars and he filled one of the glass jars up with a hundred large paperclips. And every time he got two glass jars and he filled one of the glass jars up with 100 large paperclips. And every time he made a call, he would move one paperclip from the left

side to the right side of the empty jar. At the end of the day, if all the paperclips were gone from the left side and into the right, he went home for the night. But he never went home until all the paperclips had been transferred. He made 100 phone calls. At the end of the year, he was the top producer. At the end of two years, he was vice president of the bank. A year after that, he went to work for a wealth management company. And by 40, he was a millionaire. And I love that story because he said, okay, I know what I need to do, 100 calls, but I need to have some kind of physical representation of that habit accomplished. And at a glance, he could see if, in fact, he'd been doing the work.

You know, pick a number. Back to the 40 calls a day. I interviewed Pat McCarthy, the author of the book, The Nordstrom Way, and he was the top salesman at Nordstrom for years. And he made 40 calls a day. Something about 40. I don't know what it is, but, you know, pick a number and then stick with it. It's the power of consistency. So those are both of your examples? Oh, yeah. Well, the other one was Jerry Seinfeld. So a young comic was interviewing Seinfeld in a club in New York, and he said, I want to be successful like you. What do I need to do? And Seinfeld could tell this kid was sincere. So he said, well, I'll just tell you what I did. He said, I got a big calendar, the kind that the insurance companies give you every year. He said, I got a red marker. And I decided on day one, I was going to write jokes for an hour

every day. And at the end of the hour, I put a big red X on the calendar. At the end of the second day, I put a big red X on the calendar. At the end of the month, I'd written for an hour every day for 30 days. And then it became a habit. But he said, all these years later, 35 years later, if you look at all my calendars, they all have red X's. I've never broken the chain. And he said, don't break the chain. That's the goal. And whether it's paperclips or red X's, don't break the chain. As we're talking about this, I've read a lot of books on, you know, the early morning, getting your life started right with affirmations and meditation, reading, working out, journaling. Do you have any special routines that you like to get started with?

Oh, yeah. So much so, I had these little notepads made called the Hour of Power. So my Hour of Power is really simple. I get up at 5 a.m. By 5.30, I'm sitting on my deck with a cup of coffee and the first 30 minutes, 20, 30 minutes. And the reason it's an hour is, is I want to make it simple and easy for anyone to do. Now my hour power sometimes last three hours, but when I first started, it was just an hour. So for the purpose of this example, I'll just, I'll keep it at the hour. So for the first 20 this example, I'll just keep it at the hour.

So for the first 20 minutes, I read a book in alignment with my goal. And again, let's say the goal is increasing sales. So I'm reading a sales book. And again, I'm looking for just one idea. And after 20 minutes, if I find an idea, I captured my journal. The second 20 minutes is I write my number one goal out at the top of a page, preferably in a journal. I have a specific journal just for this particular discipline, and I do this every morning. And I write the goal at the top of the journal, and then I say the goal, you know, 50 times. And while I'm saying it, I think about it, I wait. And that 20 minutes is really about just, you know, if prayer is talking to God, meditation is listening, right? So I'm kind of just meditating and I'm waiting for answers. And sometimes I get 20 answers.

And that's what I'm looking for is the 20 ideas in 20 minutes. But sometimes I only get one or two, but most of the time I get a lot. And then the third thing I do is I plan my day. And I write down the six most important things I need to do today. And this comes from a guy named Ivy Lee. Lee was a consultant in the mid-20s and he was hired by the president of Charles Schwab, the president of U.S. Steel. And Schwab said, you know, I know how to make steel. I just need to be more effective. If you can show me a

way to do that, I'll pay you whatever the idea is worth. And so Lee said, that's fine. He said, so take out a piece of paper. I want you to write down the six most important things you need to do tomorrow. In no particular order, just write them down. So he did. And he said, now ask yourself a simple question. If you're going out of town for 30 days, you can only do one of those, which one would be number one and prioritize the list accordingly. And so he did, he said, and I'll estimate how long you think each task is going to take. And so he did that. He said, now tomorrow, when you come to work, do number one and don't go on to number two until you've completed number one or delegated it to someone else. He said, do that every day for 30 days. He said, now tomorrow when you come to work, do number one and don't go on to number two until you've completed number one or delegated it to someone else.

He said, do that every day for 30 days. He said, because if you do that, you'll be doing first things first, one thing at a time and finish what you start. He said, once you're convinced of its efficacy, teach it to all of your managers. And once they've done it for 30 days, send me a check for whatever you think the idea is worth. And in 1925, Ivy Lee received a check for $25,000. Schwab said it was the single most important business idea he'd ever come across.

So my hour of power is read, think, plan. And I do it every day. And do I get everything done every day? No. But whatever doesn't get done transfers to tomorrow and I start the process all over again. And I do it every day. Then again again I'm self-employed when I call in sick I know I'm lying I'm the worst boss I ever had I was writing an article one Sunday in a coffee shop and for I think contracting business or the news I forget who anyway so I'm writing this article and this woman said you're working on a Sunday and I said it's Sunday I don't really think in those terms. I just think I have this project I have to finish. Yeah, that's an awesome story. I think that the one thing I find with my business and a lot of my managers is their time gets stolen from them and they allow this to

happen, but they don't use a calendar. And one of the things I said this morning, my number, so we walk into the office and we say, what's the number one thing we're going to do to work on the business today? Meaning not get caught up, not do this, not do that. Literally, what's a big thing to work on it? And what I find is if it doesn't make it

onto your calendar, it doesn't get done. I mean, how good are you with working on your calendar? Does that seem like it's a big part of your success or do you think it works for some and works not as much for others? So when I've got a Google calendar or an Outlook calendar, and I've got me time to work on those six things, as you would put it, your six most important things, do you use a calendar and actually block time out of your day,

or do you just say, I'm going to knock this one out first and just kind of get going on them? Because people will steal your time if you allow that. Is that a big piece of it or is that just, it depends on who the person is? No, I use iCal. I have a calendar, of course, and I look at my calendar every morning. That's part of the planning process. Here's the difference. I'm self-employed and I'm a solo practitioner. So I have, I have free agents that I pay and they're really good at what they do, but I don't have employees per se. It's just me. So I don't have, I don't have that challenge, but my clients do. And so one of the things I tell my clients, a lot of times they're owners of companies and, or their vice presidents,

the large corporations. And I just tell them, I said, look, stay home for the first hour or two and do all your planning, do all your reading, do all your look, stay home for the first hour or two and do all your planning, do all your reading, do all your thinking, do all of that so you don't get interrupted. And if that's not possible, then close your door and have a do not disturb sign. If the door's open, then anybody can come in. If the door is closed, no one can come in. You know, go from there. It's pretty simple. It's pretty straightforward. But the greatest time management word in the English vocabulary is no. I like that word.

I'll give you an example. I worked for a guy who was probably the best sales manager I had. His name was Greg, and he taught me a great deal. And when he and the owner had a falling out, and I won't go into the details, but the bottom line was Greg left. And Greg was kind of the force field that kept the owner away from me. And since I was his top producer, you know, I just needed, just stay away, let me do my job, and, you know, everything will be great. Well, one day he comes barging into my little area, and he says, hey, I need this right away. And I think it was on Thursday. And so I stopped what I was doing, and I spent a couple hours, and I need this right away and I think it was on Thursday and so I stopped what

I was doing and I spent a couple hours and I put this thing together and I went to give it to him and his office was empty and I said I asked the receptionist where did the owner go and he said oh he um he left I said what do you mean he left he like for the day he goes no he's gone for the weekend he'll be back on Monday or Tuesday and I was so mad. And I remember thinking, all right, that's never going to happen again. So I kept a list of my top 10 prospects on my desk. And the next time he came in, I said, you know, I'm happy to stop what I'm doing and do what it is you're asking. But if I do that, which one of these 10 prospects do you not want to have as a new customer? And he looked at me and he saw the dollar amounts and he said, nevermind, I'll get somebody else. And he did. And he never bothered me again. Now, I wasn't

being mean, I was just being assertive. I was just kind of drawing a line on the sand and saying, this is how it's going to work. And here's the thing. It's about being assertive. You know, most people are either passive or aggressive and they're not assertive and they don't say no. And they're afraid to hurt someone's feelings or they don't want to disappoint people. But the reality is all of us are self-employed if you think about it. And each of us has a responsibility to ourselves to reach the results that we're ultimately getting paid to create, whether those are, you know, on your own. I think everybody's self-employed personally. You just happen to be working with somebody else.

And especially if you're in sales, you have an awesome responsibility yourself to produce. That's just my take. It's super important. There's a lot of people out there as I'm moving through some of these that I want to get to. They say, everybody's too formal. These manuals, these processes,

I just like to wing it and see where it's going to go. What do you say to someone that doesn't believe in meticulous planning? If you fail to plan, you're planning to fail. I think it was Stephen Covey in Seven Habits, you know, do first things first. He used the analogy of, and it might've been Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was getting ready to, he said, if a guy has just eight hours to cut a cord of wood, he ought to spend the first three hours sharpening his ax or his saw. Yeah. And Cubby's metaphor is sharpen your saw. And I really believe that. I've believed that for

over 30 years. And Ray Kroc said in his book, he was the founder of McDonald's. He said, you're either green and growing or ripe and rotting. You know, there's no neutral in business. There's no neutral in life. You're either getting better, you're getting worse. And if you're not planning, you're consciously making a decision to get worse or unconsciously making a decision to get worse. So is that really what you want to do? And for me, the answer is no. Here's the thing. The last thing I ever want to hear somebody say is I heard him five years ago when he was really something, right? What I wanted to say is I heard him five years ago, but you ought to hear him now. Man, has he improved. And that's the books and that's the journals and that's the seminars and that's the audios and that's conversations with enlightened

people. It's conversations like this one. There's somebody out there who's done what you want to do and been where you want to go. Who are they? And getting yourself out of your comfort zone on a regular basis. Yeah, that's powerful. I'm a big fan of reading. And I heard a guy once on stage say, look, I spent my whole life, the last 10 years delivering this book, every mistake, every single thing, the trial tribulations that I've been through. And you don't want to spend $15 to learn where I was or where I'm going. If it's exactly down the path you want to go. That to me just seems nuts. And when he said that, of course, he's a good salesman because I bought all of his stuff. But it made sense to me. When I wrote my book, I took two years to do it. I made every mistake in the book and I put it all in there saying, don't make the same mistakes as me. Here's where you can read this, learn from me, because I put it out there. It took a long time. I think about productivity is both a goal and a

challenge when it comes to every profession. Do you think employees are naturally lazy or is that just something that they force themselves down a rabbit hole? I can only speak for myself in terms of my approach to all of this. I've always been driven. Sports, you know, was my first outlet. Basketball was my first magnificent obsession. When I finally got into sales, you know, can you imagine me as a technician? I was in the wrong seat on the bus. But once I got into sales, it was a lot like basketball. And this business is a lot like basketball. I can get as good as I want to, but not everybody's wired that way. And I go back to campers and climbers. You've got to have a productive, well-motivated, highly compensated group. My son works at Amazon and they have 14 operating principles that they

believe in and talk about on a regular basis. But he told me something interesting. He interviews 1200 people to make one hire. And he said the hardest part of his job is to tell the three that didn't make the cut when he gets down to the final four. He said three of the smartest people I've ever met, they didn't make the cut. And at Amazon, they're looking to hire people who are smarter than the ones who are already in that position. Now, granted, they're in a unique position to do that, but they've kind of always done that. So, so much of it is, who do you allow on the bus? Are they on the right seat on the bus? And do they know where the bus is going? And that's a function of leadership.

That's from Jim Collins' book, Good to Great. They have to buy into your company philosophy and the direction of the company. And then you have to make sure that they're in the right seat on the bus by using caliper or disc or any number of hiring tools to make sure that they're the right seat on the bus by using caliper or disc or any any number of hiring tools to make sure that you've got the right job for that particular person and then after that you're just taking care of your your people making sure that you know on a regular basis that they they feel understood appreciated and recognized i'll tell you as coaching's gone on for, I've done it with several dozen businesses now. The number one thing I find is they get so comfortable with their current situation of employees that they only hire when they absolutely have to hire. And then they hire on desperation. ads and I say, okay, your ad says requirement, requirement, drug test background, and this is what I need from you. But if, you know, I'm not trying to quote Simon Sinek, but in the case, when I write an ad, I say, first of all, why would you want to work for me? Because the title's

everything. And then the first sentence, why are you going to work for me? So tell me a little bit about what you would do. First of all, you should always be recruiting. People say I always be closing. I say I always be recruiting. Always have a big net out there. Always repost those ads. I don't care if it's Craigslist, Indeed, OfferUp, every place out there, including Facebook, I'm always hiring. But secondly, is there anything specific that you would say that makes a great ad? Well, everybody's favorite radio station is WIIFM. What's in it for me, right? And I say, change the radio station to WIIFT. What's in it for them? A number of years ago, I was walking into a local Starbucks next to a grocery store. Up here,

we have a chain called QFC. And so I'm walking into the Starbucks by the QFC and these two little girls, it was March and they had their Girl Scout cookies on a little TV tray. One of them said, want to buy some cookies as they walk by or as I walk by? And I ignored him. I just, I straight ahead and I pretended like I didn't hear him. And then I'm standing in line feeling guilty. Some people say, what would Jesus do? I say, what would Debbie do? Debbie's my wife for 39 years. So Debbie was a Girl Scout, so she would have bought some cookies. So I thought, all right, fine. I'll go back and buy some cookies. But by golly, I teach sales training. Maybe I can teach them how to sell more cookies. So I came back with my coffee and I said, so why should I buy some cookies from you? And the little girl, she's like 11 or 12.

She looks up at my six foot seven inch frame and she says, she's looking at me and she looks at her mom like, is it okay to talk to this creep? And mom's like, it's okay, honey, go ahead. She goes, cause they taste good. Like, duh. And I said, why else? And the other little girl said, cause we're raising money for a trip. And I said, okay, fair enough.

Those are two good reasons. I said, let me teach you the power of the six magic words. What that means to me is, okay, those are the six words. What that means to me is these cookies will taste good with my coffee. And what that means to me is I'll feel good about myself because it's for such a good cause. And I said, and one other thing, when you ask somebody a question, make sure it's not a close good cause. And I said, and one other thing, when you ask somebody a question, make sure it's not a close-ended question. Want to buy some cookies is a contraction. It means, would you like to buy some cookies? And one of the answers to that question

is no. So if you say, would you like to buy two boxes or four, which would you prefer? That's a better question. I said, does that make sense? And a little girl looked at me like, are you going to buy some cookies or what? And then finally she says, okay, fine. She said, you're going to feel great about yourself because these for such a good cause. And these cookies are going to say, taste so good with your coffee. So would you like to buy two boxes or four, which would you prefer? And I said, no, no, no, not me. Everybody after me. And she gave me that sidelong glance that only girls and women can do like, okay, monkey boy, pay up. So I coughed up the eight bucks and I bought two boxes and I walked away thinking I'm going to need a lot more coffee. But these two little girls picked up on that

principle right away. What's in it for them? And ask yourself, what do millennials want? You know, I'm writing a new book right now in the process of doing the research. It's The Difference Between Millennials and Baby Boomers, I'm calling it. Get your head out of your app. And I'm just interviewing lots of millennials, one-to-one, in seminars, on airplanes, because I want to know what drives them, what's important to them. There's a great book by Daniel Coyle called The Culture Code. And he talks about millennials are looking for three things. They're looking for, is this company safe? Is this a safe place for me to be? Number two, do I have a future here?

In other words, if I stay, is it going to be good for me? And when you start thinking about things from your internal customer's point of view, it changes the way you frame everything. Everybody's looking for appreciation, respect, and understanding. William James, the father of American psychology, said the deepest craving in the human condition is the need to be appreciated. He used the word craving. What are you rewarding in your organization and why? What are you punishing and why? Are you rewarding extra mild behavior? Are you rewarding in your organization and why? And what are you punishing and why? And are you rewarding extra mild behavior?

Are you rewarding customer service? Are you rewarding sales? And fundamentally, are you meeting that need that everybody has to belong and to feel safe and have a future? I'm just taking notes here. One of the things that I've done when I started asking myself why you would work for me is I've invested in big Ramsey courses for every single one of my team members.

And I've actually had a couple of people come talk about homeownership. Three new people have bought a house in the last six weeks. There you go. You know, and those are things. And I continue to want to go down this list of what else can I give you? What else is something else that I could, I don't want to say brag about, but now every time I think about what can I do for them, I'm like, what other stuff could I do to make this a melting pot of great people? Right. It's funny when you

start writing your ads and you, if you're dumbfounded and just don't know where to start, you might want to just put the pen down and go do something nice for your employees and say, hey, I bought lunch today for them. I buy lunch every occasion. Cool owner that wants to hear about how to improve your life. But it sounds like to me,

I want to talk about one last topic here as we wrap up and that's sales because it sounds like sales is your, by far, your favorite want to talk about one last topic here as we wrap up and that's sales, because it sounds like sales is your, by far your favorite thing to talk about it. One other thing that you reminded me of is, is the book, I think it's called Influence by Robert Cialdini, how he talks about always asking, well, if you won't take, if you won't take these cookies, would you at least buy a ticket or a dollar ticket? So you always leave in a choice. And he walks back with two chocolates actually in the book. And he goes, why the heck that I ended up with two chocolate bars when I hate chocolate? Because it's so hard to say no twice. And I've had the same girls walk around in my house in Scottsdale. And I had two

little girls. They walked up and they had four cups. Then they said, hey, I've got any one of your favorite teams. I said, I doubt it. You have the Detroit Red Wings. It's a hockey team. She said, oh, wait a second. Let me go grab my bag out here. She had them. I mean, these girls were eight years old, nine years old. And I said, you go tell this neighbor right here, his name's Tim, that I bought from you. You go tell her, Cheryl, that I bought from you. Anyway, I said, come back around and tell me how many you sold after you get through the whole cul-de-sac. I gave them all their first and last names. She said, they've all bought.

She said, every single one of them bought. And I think that's because they walked up with the name and they said, that boy over there, Tommy Mello, he bought from us. Right. She was using social pressure influence. I'm reading Cialdini's new book right now called Presuasion. I think I'm on page 80. He's got a brand new one out. I'm reading Cialdini's new book right now called Presuasion. I think I'm

on page 80. He's got a brand new one out. I'm a huge fan of him. He's a professor at Arizona State. Yeah, I bumped into him there at Arizona State. That's where I went for my undergrad. At LA Fitness, I bumped into him for a second time. He's a great guy. That's good to hear because

you never know. Everyone wants to know all about me. I met Malcolm Gladwell once and I walked away thinking. i said i came home that night he was really rude to me personally i don't know if it's a white thing or black thing i haven't i mean i have no idea i bought everything he had i waited and i was the very last person i waited i had two simple questions and he said it's on my website look it up. And I was walked away shocked. And I said to my wife that night, I said, if I ever, I don't care how many books I sell, if I ever turn into a jerk, just shoot me. I don't want to be that guy. So I'm really happy because I have a, I'm a huge fan of Cialdini's and I'm really happy to hear that he's a good guy. He's an amazing guy. You

know, real quick, one quick story is the other day I'm at the airport and I'm running late. And I mean, it was like last minute, I'm at the New York airport and I look behind me and it's Bill Murray and we're going through security. And I did a couple of selfies, but he was cracking up everybody around him. And I mean, that guy, I just love seeing people that I admire and look up to, and they're so great. But I'll wrap up the last few questions here. I know you're a busy guy. So based on your experience, what's the biggest obstacle in increasing sales when it comes to home service? I feel like there's some companies out there doing $50 million, $100 million, and I know a lot of these guys because I strive to be around them and hang out with them.

But if you've got 10 trucks on the road, what are we going to do to really increase sales? What's the first couple tidbits you'd give us to increase sales if that was the listeners? Invest in sales training. If you don't have the discipline to read sales books, and anybody that's listening to this, I'll send you the 10 commandments of great sales people.

And there's a reading list at the end. It lists five books that you absolutely have to read if you're in sales. And for every book that's listed there, there's five that aren't. So I already read the 20 that aren't worth reading to get to the five that are. Okay. But if you're not investing in yourself, then if you own the company, you need to be investing in sales training on a regular basis, at the very least annually. And you can never get enough. I mean, I can't get enough. I just finished writing a new ebook about three months ago called How to Enjoy a 75% Close Rate, Sparking Sales Success. And it was inspired by a book written in 1927 by Frank Boettcher called How I Raised Myself from a Failure to Success in Selling.

I've read that book 10 times. Well, the 11th time I read it, I said, all right, I'm going to take the 31 principles that this guy writes about that work. They're timeless. And he was a friend of Dale Carnegie's. And I'm going to update them. I'm going to take those principles and tailor them to the home services business, to the industry, for anybody that's selling at the kitchen table. And so I did that. And I wrote

that. I sat down and wrote that book in about 30 days. And it's outstanding. So if you're not reading books like that on a regular basis, you're not attending seminars, I just pray that the owners of the company are paying for you to go to something or bringing somebody like me or anybody else in to do training on a regular basis. It's an investment. It's not an expense. Ben Franklin said, put a dollar in your head, it'll come flowing out of your head and overflow your purse. And I really believe that. So training is an investment. So I never think twice about, again, I read two books a week, but I spend a couple hours every day reading. And it's because I'm looking for ideas. If you watch Game of Thrones, and I know that's it's over now, but Tyrion Lannister, the one advantage he had was he was always reading books and he got he got a lot of grief for it, frankly, throughout the show, you know, through all eight seasons. But it's the it's the very thing that made him unique and special. And by the way, he had all the best lines in that show. Yeah, this is...

What's the name of that e-book that you came out with? Sparking Sales Success, How to Enjoy a 75% Close Ratio. It's on my website. You can go to www.sparkingsuccess.net And for anybody that wants a free e-book, they can sign up for my electronic newsletter

on my website as well. Again, it's www.sparkingsuccess.net. And they can call or email me anytime. I'm happy to spend time talking to someone. The first 30 minutes is always free. And I've got lots of books. I've got CDs. I'm on Audible now. So there's no reason not to invest in yourself. I agree. So if you were to give me, I know you're going to give us those five here. You said, usually I always ask at the end of every interview, is there three books? And they could be any book. It doesn't need to be about sales. It could be about life. It could be the Bible. I don't care. But if you had to give me three books at the top, obviously, here's the deal. Everybody's got to go check out your books. I mean, I was super impressed by this entire interview.

It's www.sparkingsuccess.net, right? Is that correct? Correct. Okay, so we got to get those. And you mentioned so many books there. Jim Collins, Good to Great, Both the Last, all these great books. What are the ones that are like changed your life? Well, in 1982, again, I was a first year apprentice. And I was at a garage sale one weekend and I found How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. And I bought the paperback. It was like 50 cents.

I mean, 50. It was 50 cents, right? So I bought it and I read it and I kept it in my service truck and I read it like three times and it became my human relations Bible. And then I stumbled on Acres of Diamonds by Russell Conwell and Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. And those three books were kind of the foundational pieces for me personally. And then from there, it really just depended on what topic I was researching or studying. But, from there, it's just, it really just depended on what topic I was researching or studying. But, you know, Freedom from Fear, my first book, there's a reason 120,000

people have bought that book, which is crazy because I flunked high school English and I have a year of junior college, you know. I don't have an advanced degree from Harvard in English, you know, I just read a lot. And I write three pages every day. And again, the goal is never break the chain. So I'm always writing something. I've written hundreds and hundreds of articles for magazines. And since 2003, my electronic newsletter has gone out to 7,000 people every month. And again, it's free. And that's a simple way for me to market what I do. But at the same time, I'm delivering value. I love it. I've gotten a ton of value off of this. I podcast all the time. I read a lot of books. I'm trying to go to as many courses as possible in real life. I tour other facilities whenever I can. I invite people here at least twice a month.

And I've got a ton out of this. What I like to do, Mark, at the end is, well, first, do you got a phone number, email address? What's the best way if somebody wants to get ahold of you? So the website, just sparkingsuccess.net? No, I'll give you my number. It's 206-697-0454. That's 206-697-0454. And my email is mark at sparkingsuccess.net.

Again, that's M-A-R-K at sparkingsuccess.net. They can call or email anytime. Always happy to answer questions. I'll always get back to anyone that reaches out within 24 hours. I'm on the road a lot. I've pretty much gone every week. But I love what I do. And if somebody needs questions answered, I'm always there.

Amazing. So the last thing I do is just open it up to one last food for thought, maybe something we didn't cover, maybe a subject that's really near and dear to your heart, and I'll let you have the floor. Well, what's near and dear to my heart? In 2003, I was the closing speaker for the Radiant Panel Association, and the opening speaker was a guy named Dan, and he had written, at that time, I only had one book and he had, I think, five. So he was doing a book signing. So I went over and introduced myself. And he said, hey, you've got some books, right? And I said, yeah, I have a book. And he said, well, sit down. We'll sell some of your books too while we're sitting there. And sure enough, that's what happened.

And we had about an hour to talk. And I said, what drives you? And he said, you know, I have four daughters. And he said, if I could make a living speaking and writing and put four girls through college, my life will have meant something. And he said, right now, you know, I have two more to go. Two have graduated and two are on their way. And it just hit me like a ton of bricks. There was my why. At the time,

my kids were in elementary school and junior high. I had three boys. And all of a sudden, my new why was putting three boys through college. Well, those boys are grown and having children of their own now. And they're all very successful at what they do. They played college basketball, and they played professionally overseas. And they're, you know, they're the top producers and they're stars in their company now. And I couldn't be more proud of them. Yesterday, I watched my granddaughter for about four or five hours and she's three. And I guess what's near and dear to my heart is for me, it's all about family. I've been married to the same woman for 38 years. I took her to Maui in September.

I spoke there and we went to the area where we got married. It's called the EO Valley. It's a Japanese garden. And I told her, I said, I'm going to give you 38 more years to shape up and they're going to reevaluate this thing. So she shook on it and I'm going to hold her to it. But you know, it's my wife and my, and my family. That's what's, and I think for the most part, that's true for most people. It's why we work so hard. It's why we show up early, stay late, and read all the books and keep all the journals and go to all the seminars.

I don't know about you, but I want to be a better parent for my kids than my father ever was for me. And I think I've done that. And whenever my kids say, thanks, Dad, I said, well, just do it for your kids. You know, that's all I care about. Very, very powerful. Mark, I really appreciate you coming on. I'm going to, you know, I'm definitely going to go on, sign up to your newsletter, buy the books. I'm a big fan of people who come on the show, just really learning about them. I was absolutely blown away by,

I've got four pages of notes here and just so many great things here so i can't thank you enough for coming on and uh hopefully we'll get in the future my pleasure thank you so much all right mark make it a great day unless you have other plans thanks 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 HomeAdvisor to the CEO of Valpak and of course, Ara, the CEO of ServiceTitan. 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.