The Home Service Expert Podcast - Why Delegation is a Crucial Leadership Skill in Making More Money for Your Business

Episode Date: August 30, 2019

Tom Reber is a coach and sales expert who specializes in leadership within the contracting business. The co-founder of the Contractor Sales Academy and host of The Contractor Fight Podcast, he got his start in the painting industry, and reached 400 jobs a year before the recession hit. Now, he helps entrepreneurs learn how to take control of their businesses and increase their earnings, and is one of the most sought-after contractor coaches & consultants in the United States.   In this episode, we talked about leadership, recruitment, contracting...

I think the best leaders make their people feel safe. And I see, you know, Tommy, you know this, so many guys in the trades can't build a team and keep a team together to save their life. And it really comes down to, they're just simply not treating their people the way that their people want to be treated and need to be treated.

And I think a good leader is going to be the type of person that's going to have high expectations, going to have the accountability in place. But at the end of the day, you know that they have your back. And I really wish a lot more contractors would understand that, that you are crucial to creating that healthy culture in your business simply by being a leader that is approachable, that's somebody who's safe. Welcome to the Home Service Expert,

where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the Home Service Millionaire, Tommy Mello. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. My name is Tommy Mello and I'm here with Tom Reber. He lives in Colorado and I'm going to tell you a little bit about him. He's a coach. He's a sales expert. He specializes in leadership all within the contracting business. He's the co-founder of the Contractor Sales Academy. He's a keynote speaker, a contractor coach, and he's also the host of the Contractor Fight podcast. He's the co-founder of the Contractor Sales Academy since 2015. He's

the business coach for the Motor Group. And he basically started in the painting industry. He's come to the point where he got up to 400 jobs a year. And then the recession hit. Tom, I'm really excited that you're on today because I feel like I could probably learn a lot from you. How's your day going? Hey, it's going great, man. Good to be here. I appreciate you having me. Anyway, you're the host of the Contractor Fight podcast.

Yeah. You co-founded the Contractor Sales Academy, where you have thousands of business owners in their home service niche business. Tell me a little bit about what brought you to that point so the listeners have a little bit of background on you and what you've been through. Yeah, man, I appreciate that. So I started in the painting industry. I grew up outside of Chicago and I had my dad worked in the trades. He was a tile guy. My uncle was a painting

contractor. And my uncle, after 20 years of being in the trade, he was taller than my dad because my dad was all hunched over all the time. And I said, well, if I could go to work with one of those guys, I'm going to go to work with my uncle. My dad got shorter through the years being a tile guy. So I ended up working summers for my uncle. Fast forward several years later, I get out of the Marine Corps. I had actually worked in campus ministry.

My wife and I lived in Madison, Wisconsin. We ran a campus ministry there. Ended up getting fired and moved back to the Chicago area and got a job selling nails and tools, you know, Paslo nailers and Hitachi nail guns and pallets and nails to guys and all this other stuff. And I just went out and I was grinding and I'm hustling. And it's when the economy was humming along

in the early 2000s. And I'm like, man, I need to make some more money to take care of my family and some things like that. I just wasn't having a, just felt like I had more to offer than selling pallets and nails. And I'm like, well, I kind of know how to paint. You know, I worked for my uncle. So I started a painting business and grew that, you know, from just a little room in my basement to, you know, with just a little room in my basement to, you know, with no real plan, I would just get out there and I, Tommy, I would literally just go up to somebody and I'd see they're, they're building a house or their, their truck is driving on their own.

I'd call the number on the truck and I'd be like, Hey, I see that you build stuff and I paint stuff. We should probably know each other. That was literally my script. And, you know, within the first three years, we're doing between 300 and 400 jobs a year. Then the brakes just slammed on, man. A lot of the things that we made mistakes on, that I had made mistakes on as a leader and building the business and some things like that were revealed when the recession hit. So we battled through that. I ended up selling my half of the company in 2012 because I felt that I wanted to

have more of an impact and take some of the lessons that I learned. Like I've told you before, I'm a teacher at heart. I'm a coach at heart. And nothing fires me up more than having an impact in somebody's life. And so I'm like, well, how can I take that with what I've learned and what I've been through and help guys get better? And that's really what the contractor fight is all about. It's about bringing respect back to the trades by first looking in the mirror, owning our own crap, and then taking the steps needed in order to be a company and be an organization that's worthy of respect in the contracting world. I love it. So you spent quite a bit of time in the Marines there. URA, right? Was it URA?

URA. That's right. You know, I met with a guy last week and this guy had spent some time in prison, five years, and it was just for drug trafficking, but he owns... Just drug trafficking? No, but let me just tell you this. It's an interesting story. He spent five years in prison

and he said it's a lot like the military because you wake up, you eat at a certain time. And he said, I learned so many, just the way to really stay organized and put structure. The most important thing I learned in prison was structure. And he runs a $55 million, somewhere around that range company. So I was really impressed.

Him and his brother do great. They kill it. I'm not going to go into details, obviously, because he said that range company. So I was really impressed. Him and his brother do great. They kill it. I'm not going to go into details, obviously, because he said that confidentially. Tell me a little bit about some of the things you took out of the military that you brought with you in business. Oh, man, there's a couple things right out of the gate that jump out. You know, the first is, you know, in the Marine Corps, of all the branches of service, and this is, listen, it's no secret Marines, we have egos. And we are known to be the best marksmen in the world. We're the best on the planet with rifles. And it's just this tradition that we have that every Marine is a rifleman. And the biggest thing I learned from that, that I brought into the business world is,

is you need to make sure that you are crystal clear on what your target is, you know, before you pull that trigger. And, um, it does no good to hold your weapon up over a wall and just spray the area. Cause you ain't going to hit anything, you know, or you're not going to hit the things that you want. So really identifying what I, and how I translate that to life and businesses, I get really clear when we work with people about what the heck do you really want? At the end of the day, let's not send rounds downrange to hit a target that you're not absolutely sure that you want to hit. And I see, you know, for example, I had a guy call me last week.

He goes, I want to grow my business to five million bucks. I go, okay, that's cool. Why? And through a series of other questions and, you know, 15 minutes later, we got to the real why, was he wanted to pay himself $250,000 a year. I said, so you really don't want the $5 million business. You want a quarter million bucks in your own pocket at the end of the year. That was the real target. And so I said, so do we necessarily have to build a $5 million business for you to do that? And he was like, well, I guess not. And so I see a lot

of guys chasing or aiming at and firing at the wrong targets. That's number one that I think I've learned. The second thing that I think the Marines do really, really well is I think the best leaders make their people feel safe. And I see, you know, Tommy, you know, there's so many guys in the trades can't build a team and keep a team together to save their life. And it really comes down to, they're just simply not treating their people the way that their people want to be treated and need to be treated. And I think a good leader is going to be the type of person that's going to have high expectations, going to have the accountability in place. But at the end of the day, you know that they have your back. And I really wish a lot more contractors would understand that,

that you are crucial to creating that healthy culture in your business simply by being a leader that is approachable, that's somebody who's safe. You know, I just got done talking two weeks ago about the same thing about somebody should be able to approach you if there's a problem going on within the business and not feel like they're going to get hammered and not feel, you know. One of the things I always talk about, Tom, is catching somebody doing something good instead of always catching them doing something bad. Yeah. And I think that's a very, very important lesson. It's easier when you grow because little mistakes have a huge impact on a small business. So it's easy to be upset a lot of the time. And I'm an intense, passionate guy, naturally. I'm just wired that way. And I used to, I remember one day, one of my top guys, his name is Jose, pulls me aside. He goes, hey, can I talk to you a minute?

And I'm like, yeah. And he's like, are you mad at us? I'm like, no, I'm not mad at you. Why? And he's like, well, it just seems like every time you come out to the job site, every time we're in a meeting, it's like you're not happy to see the guys. Basically, what he was saying is, dude, you're so freaking intense all the time. You got this look on your face.

And it's funny because in my mind, I'm about the mission, man. I'm just trying to get stuff done. I'm trying to plow through. I'm trying to win. I'm trying to sell. I'm trying to build a great company. And the message I was sending was that I was unapproachable and that I didn't like the guys and I was never happy with them and some things like that.

And so that's something that I really had to own. And I've worked really hard. And honestly, man, it's not always easy because I'm just, you know, we all have our natural wiring of how we roll. But I think one of the keys to being a good leader is you're going to own your crap and you're going to deliver what your people need you to deliver in order for them to feel safe and believed in and that you have their back. It's easier said than done, but it's just those little points of appreciation in the meeting to acknowledge the good things and realistically embrace. I like to do, so our payroll system, Paylocity, allows us to do blind surveys, which actually allows us people to deliver messages anonymously.

That lets you know what's going on with your management team. And I think that little systems in place make a huge difference. Have you ever had an anonymous survey or talked to any of the companies you talked to about that? Yeah, well, we recently, it's fresh in my mind, we recently did one for a guy who does four or five million dollars in the painting industry. And he did, we did an anonymous survey with his team. And what came back was crazy. I think the biggest theme that we saw is that everybody thought the company was struggling when it's actually never been stronger. And one of the reasons they thought it was struggling is because he had not done a good job of communicating things that were on the radar, things that were happening in the next couple months. I mean, he had like a couple million

dollars worth of work booked out and everybody thinks they're going out of business. And so what we talked about there is, I don't know if you know this, but years ago, there was a study done and all human beings, different cultures, societies, all this other stuff, we have some common fears. And one of the most common fears that human beings have is the fear of an unclear, uncertain future. And so as a leader, one of the things that we did with that survey information is we said, well, how are we not providing clarity of future to the people? And it became a real simple thing where basically

in the operations meeting, the sales guy just needed to talk about, hey, we just closed this hotel job. Hey, this just happened. This just happened. Tommy, it was literally that simple. And immediately overnight, because we're meeting that need of providing a clear future for the people on our team where they know what to expect, they know what's coming, there was no BS involved. Morale went up. Employee retention stuck around because they had people that were starting to jump ship, putting resumes out, things like that. It was a mess. And they ended up where nobody ended up leaving. And that next quarter, their profits were up another $175,000 or whatever. I love it. I love it. That's an amazing story of just really getting to the root of the problem. You know, typically when we talk about Simon Sinek and finding your why,

it's sometimes you got to ask why three or four times. And you got to say, so why do you go to work? Because I need to provide for my family. Well, why do you got to provide for your family? Because I love them. And you know, if you go deep enough, and typically I like to do that on interviews. Why do you want to work for and typically I like to do that on interviews, why do you want to work for me? Because I found out you're a good company. Well, tell me what you found out about me being a good company

and what made you want to work for a good company. Well, my last play stunk and I looked up your Yelp and now you're getting to the root and you got to ask why sometimes. I've done this six or seven times to really go deep enough and peel that onion back. And that's the work that most of us are lazy with, right? We don't want to go that deep enough and peel that onion back. And that's the work that most of us are lazy with, right? We don't want to go that deep on things. And it's a theme that I see all

the time. When somebody starts working with us, we spend a lot of time digging and digging and digging and digging to get to the root. Like I said, at the top of this thing, like, let's make sure we have the right target in mind here. And if I get pushback on anything, that's probably the biggest thing I get pushed back on as a coach is that initial excavation phase of what's going on inside of the owner. A lot of guys, they just want to be lazy about it. Yeah. The cool thing about what I'm going through now is I'm getting an advanced PhD in business. I'm thinking about not only from talking with guys like you, but dealing with the bank, growing the business.

The bank was in here yesterday auditing some of our inventory. And I got to tell you, I think if I was a coach in the NFL, they'd say, man, that Tommy Mello, he's got one of the best offenses ever. But the defense is just kind of lacking. There's no defense coordinator. So the things that I love, of course, we excel at. The things that I suck at, we don't. So what I love about getting on podcasts and doing what we do is that it gives me the time to really work with guys like you on things for my business and really let the people here out there what's

going on that they're probably having some of the same struggles. So let's go through some of the biggest challenges that you had for your business and how you overcame them when you were right before that recession. I didn't understand profit. You know, you just talked about it. You talked about putting points on the board, right? Playing offense comes naturally to me. In fact, I'm also a high school football coach for the past 17 years, and I'm an offensive minded guy. And what I've learned through the years is there was a Harvard study done years ago. Oh God, I think it's called the service profit chain. If you Google that, I think it's service profit chain is where this comes from. And through the years, what I've learned is we kind of call

it the profit path now. And what we teach that if at the end of the rainbow is that pot of profit waiting for you there in your business, there's a lot of things that have to happen in order for you to be profitable in the long run. Now, anyone who could, you know, like a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then, you can have a profitable year now and then. You can have some profitable jobs here and there. But I believe until you really understand, and I didn't understand this early on, until you understand the process to getting to profit, if you want to do it in a way that is consistent through the years, and what the best companies do, it's really based in the service profit chain. And it starts with leadership, right? It starts with you as a leader having

the clarity you want to go. And then the leader sets the culture of the company and is intentional about that culture. And I'll just quickly go through these. And then from there, it's all about employee satisfaction. Because then when your employees feel like they're a part of a great culture, they're satisfied as employees. And it's not just money, man. It's, you know, am I at a place where I feel I can grow? Am I at a place where I feel like I'm significant? These are all based in what I touched on a little bit earlier, these very common fears and needs that we have as human beings. When you can meet those needs, you're going to have a satisfied employee, which leads

to a loyal employee. A loyal employee will always produce better, high-quality work more efficiently and things like that, which in turn drives the value up for your clients because you're now offering a higher-quality product or service. And then once you have that, now you have a satisfied customer who now is a loyal customer. And then right after that customer loyalty comes that consistent, continual profit machine that we all want as a business. So I tell you, that's the biggest lesson I probably learned just on the business X's and O's through the years has been that.

You know, I feel like we talk a lot about employees, but as a business owner, we've got a lot of stuff we need to handle. We need to stay. I was watching, have you ever heard of The Profit by Marcus Malone or whatever whatever uh yeah i applied to be his partners like four years ago they had their show called the partner yeah he had a show called the buyer and uh and i applied and they didn't like me so whatever that's cool no i like you you know you can be my partner i'm in so so the deal is he's walking through this furniture store and there's just shit everywhere i mean it's all over and it's just, it's inventory sitting everywhere. And I had the same thing. I mean, I'm your average Joe that, that has been very, very fortunate to be where I am today,

but I still don't have everything dialed and we're moving shops. We got a nice big 35,000 square foot facility we're moving into. And the point is just cause you have 35,000 square feet, you don't use it. So what I found was last night, he just said, we got to get rid of all of it. We need to stay organized. And if you haven't used it in the last few months, get rid of it. But what I'm trying to kind of go down this path with you is staying organized, having your financial records in order, making decisions based on the scorecard are so important.

When I say scorecard is, I have a hard time winning the game if I don't know the score. And I really talk a lot about statistics and I'm a big fan of stats. And I like to know what's outside of the mean, which means you're outliers, which means it's outside of a certain amount

of standard deviations. And I like to look at those and I don't want to complicate anybody. It's a simple thing. If you took a basic class and just look up standard deviation and outliers, you want to look at the ones on the right and reward them and study them

and take that unicorn and teach people more how to do that. Build your training around those people and then take the guys on the left or gals or CSRs, different things, and work with them to either get them up or out. And you got to do that fast. And the data should dictate the decisions.

And that should be the goal everybody's after. It's easier said than done. Trust me, I'm living proof. We're still working on it. It's an endless struggle that you're continuing to improve at all times. But tell me a little bit about your perception of that whole notion. Well, you know, the good thing about the math is the math, you know, the data here doesn't lie. It is what it is. And so assuming that somebody is up to par with, you know, keeping things updated

and they're disciplined about tracking and all the things that you and I have talked about in the past, one of the first things we have to do is we have to look at the data without being emotional about it. So many times we bring our opinions and emotions into things. And I'm not saying discount the human element to some things. And if you have a CSR that's underperforming, you don't just look at the data and can the person. You have a conversation, right? Because that's part of the culture that you have. You go, hey, what's going on? You're not yourself lately, whatever. So push the human part aside just for a second here. The data is the data.

And I get fired up about the numbers too. I mean, I remember there was a time that we had tracked every lead that came into the business, obviously, and where it came from and the zip code and the type of job that it was. And then the estimator who went on it. And then not only that, but when the job was done, the crew leader or the foreman that ran the job, and then we filtered it by profit.

And what we found was that every lead that came in that was over a certain amount of man hours bid, if we had a sense that it was going to be a bigger project to look at, we would send a certain estimator out to look at it. And when we got the job, we sent a certain crew leader to go run the job because that combination of estimator and crew leader always led to 55, 60% gross profit on these paint jobs. But the data would have never told us that. We had another estimator who couldn't sell a big job to save his life. And that's what's great about the data is now when you're tracking those things, you're able to put your people, one of the positive byproducts, you're able to put your people into the situations that they're most likely going to use their talents to their

highest ability, if that makes sense. Yeah, Tom, I want to add something that I had a conversation last night. I want to get your feedback on this because I think it's very important when we're discussing data, whether it be financial or statistics or whatever it might be within your business. I had spoke with a guy that's very, very high up at ServiceTitan and handles a whole department. And I've coaxed him into consulting us every other week, probably going to be turned into a weekend thing every week. And I said, I need you for one sole purpose, and that is to pull the data using the technology and taking the human element out of it. And here's why. I said, our inventory was off on three factors that they tested of the 20 they tested of the bank because the guy fat fingered the input and outputs. He fat figured. So the data is only as good as the data you put in. And I said, even if it's not perfect data, if it's all pulling from a system

and aggregated into another system to look at it, it's always the same. So if it's not pulling the exact right stuff, but you're seeing an increase or decrease, you can see the highs and lows. As long as you take the human element out of it, it's fine. And I said, what I need, so this guy's name's Matt. I said, I need this data to paint a picture for me. I said,

I do not want to analyze data. I don't want to work on pivot tables all day. I want to take away the human element and I want to make this stuff just automated so that when I look at a technician, I'm only looking at five to six key statistics and historical data and comparing him to the group. And that will allow me, so many people, they start looking at five to six key statistics and historical data and comparing him to the group. And that will allow me so many people. They start looking at all these different things and they don't they haven't mastered the first four or five. And I want to hear your feedback on that, because I've noticed the more people I get building pivot tables and throwing this in and moving charts over. And all of a sudden you you had to rearrange four different stat charts to get

the right data. It's like, none of that stuff's consistent. It always changes. And you lose a lot of your employees. I mean, the shit they show us just doesn't make sense. Well, it's an unemotional way of determining if somebody's doing their job or not, right? And what I mean is, how do you judge a technician in the field or a painter or a carpenter or whatever? The only unemotional way to do it is by having consistent data. As a football coach, the first thing we do the morning after a game is we break down the tape. And there are certain things that we look at. Did we execute? Did everyone do their job on the play that we called? You know, we literally, each position coach watches the film and breaks down the guys in his group and grades it.

And then, you know, how do you know if you tell me if I'm in the, you're a stats guy, right? If I'm in the NFL and I'm a kicker, how do I know I'm a good kicker? You know, I make kicks and then you compare my percentage of kicks to all the other kickers in the league. Well, I think if you want to build a stronger team, you've got to take that data. And, you know, I had guys go, hey, I should get a raise because I'm doing a good job. You ever heard that one?

You know, it's like, hey, I think I'm kicking butt. And the thing is, you should be able to tell that person. Right. You should be able to say you are and here's why you're not. And we need to work on it. Well, one of the biggest mistakes I see when guys will hire somebody, a tech, a painter, a foreman, whatever it is, is they'll hire them, they'll give them the job description. And what they fail to do is in the employment agreement or job description, whatever you want to call it, I always recommend having a section that is basically, this is how this position will be evaluated. And so one thing might be, if you're a foreman, that you average a gross profit of 48% or better over the course of a quarter. If you have two quarters in a row where you're below that,

we're going to have a conversation. Additional work sales, upsells of at least what's expected is 10% of the original ticket price. So if I got a $3,000 job, I'm expecting you to find another 300 bucks in that home somehow, some way. These are the outcomes that we want to base these positions on. Otherwise, dude, we're right back at the center of everything in our business as the owner. We're never going to be able to scale because we're not enabling people to take the ball and advance it down the field for us. And listen, I've also found that, you know, winners want to be held accountable. Winners want to have something to shoot for. Winners want that recognition.

They want to know when they win. Yeah. You know, don't you? Yeah. You know, I hate being in that no man's land. Like, I think I'm doing a good job, but maybe I'm not. Even as a business coach, man, I asked my clients all, I had somebody tell me yesterday, they're like, dude, hey, this year has been awesome. You know, we have no debt. We got X amount of money in the bank. We blew out our sales goal. Our gross profit goal is higher. Like they gave me concrete data

that we looked at. Obviously I see the numbers, but it was just nice to hear it. And so I think your people, they have to create a job discovery. You got a tech that goes out there going, hey, we expect the average tech to do X amount a year in revenue. We expect profit to be this. We expect upsells to be this or renewals or whatever you want to call it. Whatever the data that's important to your business. And if you're not tracking that and then comparing it to the other people in the same position in the company, you're going to struggle. Or at least you're not going to reach the levels that you could. Because the other thing, Tommy, that is cool about this is when you start putting that data up on the screen in your weekly meeting, and I see that, oh, Tommy's, he's upselling more than me. You know what I mean? That creates kind

of a good little competition going on within the company, you know, because I want to be the top dog. And I think competition is a beautiful thing. Now, it doesn't get back to the top of this. You know, we talked about creating a safe environment. It doesn't mean like, hey, the gun's to everybody's head. If you don't perform, you're out of here. But I think having that competitive nature, that good-hearted spirit about it is really healthy for a company. You can't do that if you're not tracking the data. I believe you were the one that told me the golf analogy, right? About marketing?

Yeah. What it was about, basically, you said, take a 7-iron and hit it five miles. No, that wasn't me. That was somebody else. You told me that story on my podcast last week. Oh, yeah. I just heard that story before. But the story is, you hit a golf ball, seven iron, just five miles in a row. Or you go out and you actually hit 18 holes and you look, you slice it, you hook it, you hit it down. You count fairways hit, you count greens. And I like golf because golf has these KPIs that are so important. Football, trust me, I play football. I play left tackle and center, and I know a lot about football, but I feel like golf is a better relationship, but I love

watching the tape. Watch the tape. You know what I'm going to be watching this weekend? Tiger Woods and Mickelson duke it out. There you go. Somebody listens to this podcast in like 10 years, they're going to be like, holy cow. But tell me a little bit about the helicopter boss. Oh, man. Holy cow. So there was that term going around a long time ago, you know, like helicopter parents, you know, they can't let their kid play on the playground without them standing there to catch them if in case they fall.

And I get it. You know, we love our kids, but sometimes we got to let people fall and skin their knee and some things like that. And I see, let me back up. So you're out in Arizona there. So a number of years ago, this guy decided to buy up a bunch of land. He rented some digging equipment. He started digging a hole in the desert where he thought there might be some water. And after three months, he finally found water. Make a long story short, a guy named Jerry Nelson basically is responsible for giving us Scottsdale, Arizona. Okay.

And he's also the founder of Ticketmaster, co-founder of Ticketmaster, 42 other companies or so, Troon Golf and all these other things. I think at one time he owned 27 golf courses and never played around a golf. All right. Mega successful dude. Well, I had the privilege of being a part of a, a leadership event where I spoke and I was a part of for two, three years in a row down in Cabo that he ran.

And you know, my wife and I went down, had, had a little vacation. He let us stay at his place and took us out to dinner one night. The three of us were sitting there and I asked him, I said, Jerry,

I said, when did your businesses really start to kick butt? What event, what light bulb moment did you have? Whatever it was. And dude, without hesitation, he goes, when I learned to get the heck out of the way. I mean, and it's that simple. He says, when I got out of the way, hired people that were smarter than me and let them do their job, I gave them,

here's key. We talked about outcomes. I gave them clear outcomes of what winning in this role looked like. And then I let them go prove me right or wrong. And so the helicopter boss is the opposite of that. The helicopter boss is the guy that says, I can't send my team out to do a job unless I go out and quote unquote, set them up and introduce them to the homeowner and all this other garbage. And I'm like, so you're telling me that an adult that you're going to give a truck to can't knock on somebody's door and say, hi, Mr. Mello. I'm Tom Reber. I work for such and such company and I'm here to paint your bedroom.

You're telling me your people can't do that? Well, I just, I don't trust them to do something, blah, blah, blah. Well, that is the one thing, leadership-wise, that is holding so many guys back from getting their butts out of the field or making the type of money they want. Or maybe they have an organization. I've seen it where guys have 20, 30, 50 employees, and they're still helicopter bosses. And it's limiting because you've now created a culture where you're basically saying your growth is not important to me. Because as long as I'm hovering over you and your every move, you're never going to be able to grow to your full potential. That's huge. And I was talking to a guy yesterday, he reminded me of the conversation. He goes, Tommy, he goes, my guys, they just can't sell like I can sell.

They're not good at going out in the field. And my number one thing that I did, Tom, is I said, when a guy can sell better than me, one technician, and I remember it was 2012 when I completely exited. I still ran jobs after that, probably until 2015. But he came on and he smoked me. And I said, when a guy comes out and does better than me, and I'm a competitive SOB, I mean, I compete. And I like to say now that I can compete with the best guys I got. And I'm talking three things, technical, operational,

and sales. But interestingly enough, I found somebody that could beat me. And the point is, I found a specialist. And I like what you said earlier about a rifle versus, you know, I always think of rifle versus shotgun is we take a rifle approach. We really dig in and find somebody who's focused and great at this one thing. And what I found is it's going to lead me to my next thing is delegation is delegating properly. Cause I think there's a lot around delegating properly, as well as understanding the people who you need to delegate to and give autonomy to. So talk a little bit about how delegation and finding those right people

all play into one whole culmination of a great outcome. Yeah, so unfortunately, part of this is, I'm going to sound like a broken record because to me, it comes down to outcomes. Delegate the outcome that you want. Let's say, Tommy, you're going to hire a marketing person to run the marketing in your business. Well, what is the outcome that you want at the end of the year, the end of your three-year vision or whatever it is? And it might be simple things like we want to average X amount of leads per day by such and such time.

We want to increase a certain product or service in a certain area by a certain time. We want to lower our cost per lead or cost per sale by X percent by a certain time. Give them clear outcomes. So many times, and this marketing thing's fresh in my brain because I've had like three conversations this past couple of weeks where people have hired marketing people to do things in their business. And then I asked the marketing person, like, so what are the outcomes that you're responsible? And they have no idea what the outcomes are. And the problem here is this, they're going to work for this guy. He's going to pay them a salary and an X amount of time is going to pass. And the owner is going to wake up one day and go, see, I got to do this

crap all myself. I can't delegate to anybody because nobody does their job. So if you're not giving people an absolute clear outcome, you're going to have a much harder time, quote unquote, delegating it. And I like to think of it as ownership, man. I'm giving you, I mean, Tommy, listen, if I opened a whatever company tomorrow and you moved here to Colorado and I hired you as my to delegate, they're still doing all the thinking for the person that they're delegating to. One of the best lessons I ever learned years ago was if you want to grow your organization, you have to teach your people how to think. And so this is where when you're delegating to somebody and they come to you and they go, yeah, my sales are down in my division or whatever. We automatically, many of us go into problem fixer mode. Hey, have you tried

this? Have you done this? Have you done this? Instead, we need to go into coach mode. Hey, Tommy. Yeah, I see the numbers down. What's going on? Blah, blah, blah. What do you think your next move is here? Hey, if you could do one thing over this past month to change the numbers, what would it be? Open-ended questions to cause your people to think instead of you being the one always offering solutions. Yeah, that's great. That's exactly what I believe in is I release almost too much controls because I think there's an extreme of both. I'm almost too good at delegating where I don't open my own mail or check my own email. Sometimes that puts me at a disadvantage. I got an assistant that does an amazing job

of screening my emails. It's sitting right here right now. But I read the important ones that I need to know about as she briefs me on the other ones. And one of the things I found is when I talk to people, especially younger businesses, is they always say, how do I do it? How do I find somebody?

I'll give you an example. I have my morning mojo call this morning. And right at the end of the meeting, I said, look, I'm putting together a very advanced learning system. And it's almost like a blackboard of garage doors. And every position will have a manual that's read out loud with a quiz. It'll show me how far they completed. It'll have an interactive way to ask questions live. And it'll have matching principles. It'll have an interactive way to ask questions live and it'll have matching principles. It'll even have role play. And I told the guys, I'm going to give you $50 for every time that you can get me a recording.

Cause in Arizona, only one party needs to know you're recording. So if they've got a phone on them and they record, I want to know how you got over one of the objections we handled, which is really only five. I said, I want to know when you're able to sell a service agreement and you do a great job of selling the future value of that service agreement so they don't cancel. I want to hear how you're able to get over to work on that second door and get yourself into a position to fix everything the right the first time.

I want to know when you were going to get kicked out because you might have turned out the customer. You were able to overcome that. And the reason I'm offering $50 if I use it in my training, I'm not getting $50 to give I don't know when you were going to get kicked out because you might've turned off the customer. You were able to overcome that. And the reason I'm offering $50, if I use it in my training, I'm not getting on 50 bucks to give it to him. I'm saying if I use this because it's worth so much money to me for everybody to hear that and train on that. And I know, believe it or not, my top 10 guys are going to come with me. They're going to come with,

with all of it. And I think the hardest part is, what did you give them? You know, I think there's a difference between delegating and dumping when you hand off this stuff and say, go learn it. Or you do ride-alongs and you go through training and you do role play. And we go through these things and we say, look, if you can't do this comfortably with me, you're never going to be able to do it in front of the customer. So let's walk through this. Let me prepare you to where the only way you could do is

succeed if you do exactly what I tell you. Tom Hopkins used to say, don't change my words. Until you could say exactly, precisely what I could say. And Tom Hopkins, I don't know if you know him, but he was a huge, huge salesman in the real estate industry. And he was super successful. And he said, you don't have to change until you know my words, you do not come up with your own. Bingo. Yep. I love the ideas about delegating. You know, I had another guy asked me, and I want to hear your thoughts on this, because I have a part of my book here that Alan Rohr did. And he said, Tommy, I'm kind of switching stuff real quick here. But he said, how do you go up with your pricing?

And I want to just read two little paragraphs, if you don't mind, and then you comment on it. So Alan said, the first step of fixing the problem is to create a budget. Frank Blau Jr. suggests that you start a budget by listing all of your expenses. Jot down in a spreadsheet or a pad what you want to spend on you and your team. Put in the proper salaries, wages for this wonderful, skilled, valuable work that you do. Then address every expense and be generous. Provide nice trucks, great uniforms, amazing benefits, and the top of the line marketing dollars.

Hold your chin up as you create this budget and make sure you put reasonable expenses in what you're going to spend on. Then put the amount of sales that you want. Make the sales total bigger than the expenses and add the desired amount of profit you want on that number, so a percentage. Then take the sales and divide it by the number of widgets you could sell, or if you sell labor, put it in as an hour of unit per day, and then divide that and play out a few scenarios. As you do this, you'll start developing the sense

that you need to start charging more than your competitors. That's like a huge goal, because you're going to understand that to be better, faster, stronger, nicer, more current, and better equipped, and all of those things, better marketer, better communicator, you need to charge more money. And that's how you come up with your pricing. Instead of saying this, better marketer, better communicator, you need to charge more money.

And that's how you come up with your pricing. Instead of saying this is the industry average and this is what I should be charging because that's the way we've always done it. You should say, these are real costs. These trucks cost me to wrap them, equip them, buy the right tools, how to write training for the techs,

have the best CRM system, have the best voiceover internet protocol, VoIP system, have the nicer things, have dual monitors, be able to give my guys some type of different pay time off and insurance. This is what it costs. That, building your profit from there

and adjust it as you go. Don't go off the industry average. So I love that. And I think it was the best advice I've ever received. What's your thoughts on the right way to price with your products? 100% agree. I mean, this is, you know, back to being unemotional about the numbers. I have everybody start with a budget of quote unquote, you know, the old, you know, what's it take to keep the lights on right in the business. And that's what's it going to cost us for the shop? How about my salary,

my assistant's salary? All those overhead items that need to be paid, even if we don't have any jobs coming in, that's what it costs to run your business. And I think the other big thing is set a lofty profit goal. I see a lot of guys make the mistake where they, and I think you said it, they're not generous with what things are really going to cost, but they're also not generous with the type of profit that they deserve for running a kick butt business. There's a lot of risks that we take as service providers, you know, risks to our health, to our finances, you know, and the customer's homes and all these things that come in. There's so much risk and we should be rewarded financially in a great way for that.

Not just to go buy ourselves a bigger house or a bigger boat, but to reinvest it back into our people. Like I talked about earlier with the profit path, making sure that my people are trained well and I'm creating loyalty and better value and service for my clients. And that's how that whole thing works. But here's the other thing, Tommy. Higher prices, higher profits have some pretty cool byproducts to them. And the first is when you are priced higher, you can offer better service. You're not looking to run out the door and get to the next job hoping to make money that day. And there's a balance between

slowing down and then blowing out the budgeted hours for the job and stuff. And I know you understand that, but you can slow down. You can connect better with the clients. You can hire better people, hire, you know, you can hire what I call in our world, we call them hashtag FWs, FN winners. Okay. That's my A player term. Like you're a hashtag FW. FWs are going to come to a company where they have a stronger brand, where they can offer better service, where they can have a future and some things like that. And high prices, higher profits allow you to do that. They also, like I said a minute ago, you're going to have more loyal employees. You're going to have more loyal clients because you are now standing behind the work that you did a year or two or five years ago. You have survivability when times are tough. And I think the big picture is you have a, back to the whole needs thing of human beings, you have an environment where people have a clearer future of what's in store for them. So then you're going to have less turnover. And again, back to one of the biggest issues about attracting the FWs to your

team is the type of brand that you build. I believe the stronger of a brand that you build, the more the winners are going to take notice and they're going to be calling you. And so all these are possible when you have higher profits. So I love what was written there, start with the budget, be real about it, get as much money as you can for the service that you offer, 100% of the time. Okay, so there's a few companies that spoil it for everybody,

whether you're in the HVAC, plumbing, garage, doors, chimney business, I don't care. If it's home service, there's companies out there that spoil it for everybody. And you get this negative connotation to charging people good money for what you do. And you get this negative connotation to charging people good money for what you do. And we had a discussion this morning's meeting. One of my managers used to work at Hungry Howie's. It costs $0.37 to make that pizza. But guess what? They

charge $15. So a lot of customers call us and they say, well, we found this price on Amazon. We found this price on Google. I charge. Sometimes I want, I want my parts cost to be under 10%. And then not for new doors because new doors is a big item and you're not, but it's a bigger ticket. So there's a big difference. I'm going up on a little alleyway right here, but I'd rather get more money profit out of that customer than have a lower cost of parts. So there's a big

difference. Don't always try to keep your parts costs and your labor down. Try to maximize the money that that customer spends. But more importantly, what it says in the automatic customer is keep that customer on a perpetual billing cycle. So you're getting money all the time. It adds up to be more. And there's a lot of processes behind that. But why is it that we shoot ourselves in the foot and say, oh, that's way too much money. No one should ever pay for that. That's a ripoff. But the guys that are saying that still work from home. They don't have an assistant. They don't have anything going. They don't have their own trucks. They don't have the nice things they need to be successful. What gets us in that just conundrum? When we don't know our numbers, we lack confidence

of what we should charge. And I think that's one of the things right out of the gate. The other is that we typically buy or sell in the manner that we buy. If we think $500 is too much for something, then we're going to have a hard time asking somebody for $500 for that thing. And so just those two things right there, I think are easy to fix if you surround yourself with other FWs, if they listen to your show and my show and hang out with the people that we hang out with. And you become the average of the people that you hang out with. So that guy that's still just over broke, working from home, things haven't been any different through the years. They have a hard time charging what they should really be charging. They're going to stay there unless they intentionally make a commitment to look themselves in the mirror, own their crap, deal with the head trash that they have,

and surround themselves with other people that are going to help them realize a new ceiling in their business and in their life. And then I think the other thing, Tommy, is that when a customer is saying to you, oh, well, that's too much money, blah, blah, blah. Many times, it's the result of as a salesperson, we didn't do a good job of connecting with them. And that's one of the biggest mistakes I see salespeople make is they get technical. They talk about all the things that they think are important to the client when they're really not because they won't shut their mouths long enough to really understand what making this customer tick and what motivated them to reach out to us right now.

And when you connect with somebody, when that connection's selling, price becomes less and less relevant because you're truly tapping into their motives. You know, what do they say? People buy for their reasons, not mine. And when you understand their reasons, price is less relevant.

Yeah, and leading with questions is so powerful. You can guide people. If you could see me nod my head as I'm asking questions, getting the yes questions. And it's something that I picked up and I use it all the time. And I use it with different girls I date. I use it with just everything in life. If I want to get my way, it's the nonverbal communication. And what I love about meeting new people, especially successful people, putting myself around them all the time is I pick up a trait here and there that it becomes part of me. And I'm continuously looking for better and better solutions for everything around me that I just am always adapting new things.

And I think that a lot of people get content with where they are and they're afraid of change. And there's never been a better time now to change. Moore's law talks about exponential growth. And I believe we're in a time with technology and the way we're learning about the human being interactions is right now, there's never been a better time to be in the home service niche. Everybody's getting ready. A lot of baby boomers are getting out of the business. And if you jump in and you're willing to adopt change,

first and foremost, your life could be very, very fun. It's fun for me. I gotta tell you, I enjoy being in this niche and light bulbs go on every day, all the time. It's amazing what I'm able to pick up just from conversations with you right now. I got all these different notes. Let's dive into another subject here. So a lot of business owners struggle with sales and growing their business. What's the most common reason that you find that home services businesses find

it really tough to grow outside of us. They hit a certain, I call it peaks of value. So they hit a certain peak and then they're not able to grow. What's causing that and how do they get over that? Well, they, like we talked about earlier, a couple of things we talked about earlier. Number one, they're not clear on where they want to go. Number two, they're hovering around everything. They won't get out of the way. You know, our ego gets in the way.

Like you said, hey, you know, for years the way. Our ego gets in the way. Like you said, hey, for years, you were the best salesman in your company. And then when you recognize somebody who could sell as good or better than you, you got out of the way. Imagine had you not gotten out of the way, where would you be right now? You probably wouldn't be where you're at now. And so we got to be clear on where we want to go. We got to be willing to put our ego aside. And then I think the big thing is we don't focus enough, and this is just in the trades as a whole of why we don't grow. Tommy, we don't concentrate or focus enough on marketing and sales. You know, I see so many guys, $2 million, $5 million businesses, they're still consumed

with the technical aspect of their trade. And one of the biggest lessons that I've learned through the years is nobody really gave a crap about the paint job. At the end of the day, yeah, they assume that they're hiring a professional company that the paint job was going to be good. It was going to be good enough. It was going to be really great in many cases. What mattered the most to them was the connection and the experience. And those are all part of marketing. Those are all part of what real sales is about. Sales is not just a bunch of scripts and how to deal with objections. It's what I talked about earlier, what we teach in our Contractor Sales Academy. It's about connecting with another human being. And so I personally wholeheartedly believe that one of the biggest things that holds a company back from growing is that the owner doesn't truly look at sales as a

skill that can be learned and developed just like fixing a pipe or installing crown molding or whatever. Those are also skills or playing guitar or whatever. Sales is a skill that can be developed. And I don't care what your personality type is. I don't care if you're introverted or extroverted. You can learn to be a salesperson. But most don't focus on that. I agree. And you talk about the customer experience. We talk about the book Raving Fans is really creating a great experience, which I've actually heard this a lot. The customers spend a lot of money with us and they say, we're having another issue,

but we really liked your technician. So don't get mad at him. And that's an amazing compliment because stuff does go wrong. So they say, don't write him up or anything. He did a great job because they built the rapport and we call it REF, build rapport, educate and follow up. Because if you don't close them up or anything. He did a great job because they built the rapport. And we call it REF, build rapport, educate, and follow up. Because if you don't close the deal, I talked to a guy yesterday and he said, Tommy, yeah, we don't really follow up. But I said, what's your close ratio when you go out and do a new job? He goes, well, I'm probably with

a little bit of follow up, I'm about 40, but my other guys are around 20. And I said, dude, you can't afford to market if your average close ratio is 30%. I said, we need to develop a follow-up system for you because what is causing you to not get 60% to 70% of the new deals? And he said, well, there's all these illegal people, illegal meaning they're not citizens. They don't have insurance. They don't have this. And I said, do you guys show up in a uniform?

Do you show up in a labeled truck? Do you say, is there a nice spot that we can sit down and discuss this? You're the only guy that's going to sit down at their kitchen table. There's all kinds of things that'll separate you. Do you get them a drawing of what it'll look like? And here's the deal. You can be twice the amount of money when you're following up and stuff, but showing you have insurance, you have workman's comp, you're bonded, you go sit down, you're a real human, and you can teach every one of your sales guys to do this. And that's the number one thing I'm finding of why you can't spend money in marketing is because your close ratio is so low. So I jump into the KPIs and I only have eight that I really dive into to understand what's going on in your business. And the eight are, I want to know what your acquisition cost

is to get a customer to call you up. I want to know what your acquisition cost is to get a customer to call you up. I want to know exactly your conversion rate when you get them on the phone. How many calls are you booking? And there's two outputs of this. So there's really six. So one of them is how much money do I need to spend on marketing?

One of them is how much money do I want to make in revenue? So the other six, the next one is how many deals that my guys go out are we converting? And then I want to know how many sales, the difference between technical installation is how many, because if I'm killing it at service, but I'm not selling any new doors, that's an issue. So that's a KPI I look at. And then I look at what's your average ticket, because if your average ticket stinks,

but your conversion rate, I'd rather have a high conversion rate. And I hope I'm not losing people here, but I'd rather convert, if I go to 10 jobs, convert nine of them and keep the same average ticket than convert five of them, because the opportunity costs I'm keeping my competitors in business. I'd actually rather have a lower average ticket and a higher conversion rate,

knowing that I put the stickers out there and the customer had a great experience. Well, you know what that makes me think of? It's back to sports and stuff like that is, dude, you got on base and sometimes you got to get hit by a pitch. And so if my average ticket drops, but I'm closing the 90% and I'm still in the door

and we're still selling our services at a profit, maybe it's not the profit that I want, but I look at that as, I took a pitch into the shoulder and I got to walk down to first base. And now I'm on base. Now I'm in the home. And now that they've given me money, they're more likely to do it again.

Okay? Because the second anybody gives you money, they're more likely to do it again if you work a lot of those fundamentals of marketing and relationships. Well, upsells. I talked to the guy, same guy, and I said, what are your upsells? And he goes, well, what do you mean? I'd like to sell everything up front. I don't like to be a bait and switch. I go, look, if you think you're bait and switching, you got a real issue. The number one thing I tell my guys is when you go to a home, you're there to do what they ask for and that's it. So as part of our service, we do an inspection after we do the

work that you call us out for. There's no reason our service, we do an inspection after we do the work that you called us out for. There's no reason. And then we have opportunities to notice things and fail certain things. And we only fail the safety issues first. Then we talk about things like your bottom rubber, which the bugs come in. Then we talk about cool things like, hey, this new lift master will actually close when you leave the house. You can program it to close after three or five minutes or whatever you like. So the point about that is, is there anything cool at the end?

Do you know how many times the goal of your salesperson to show up there is to get the customer to make a buying decision? They're going with you no matter what. Once that's done, now you move on to the next task. But a lot of people fail the first one. And I got to tell you, the number one, this is by far the

number one mistake I see with businesses. Number one over anything else is no follow-up. Absolutely no follow-up. They're losing 20% of their business because of no follow-up. Well, you had touched on this earlier about the database and follow-up and all this other stuff. One of the biggest mistakes I made probably in my first two or three years of business is, Tom, and you're going to laugh, I should be punched for this. I didn't have a database. I'm doing hundreds of jobs. I was so stupid. I didn't have a database. Dude, it cost me millions of dollars in sales. Because I believe right now, listen, you might come out, sit at my table. I might love you. I might want to hire you.

And then you leave. And maybe we didn't ink the deal yet or whatever it was. Or maybe I'm just a lead that called you and then I canceled the appointment or whatever it might be. Somehow I'm now sitting in your database and I haven't pulled the trigger with you yet because life has happened. Maybe somebody's passed away. Maybe there's something going on at

work. Last week, last Friday, my daughter had surgery on her leg. And there were a lot of things that I just didn't give a crap about, right? Because life is happening. And when you don't engage with the people that you've worked really hard to get into your database, to get them to pick the phone up and call you, I mean, you paid for that lead. And then you don't do anything with it. It's foolish. And I truly believe the average company that's out there has 25, 30% more revenue sitting in their database if they would properly nurture it and build relationships and stay in touch with people. And that's a huge area of the sales thing to answer your question about where people screw up in the sales thing is they don't see this as a long play relationship. They look at it just as a

quick transaction. Like, oh, they called me and they didn't want me to come out and meet with them or whatever. So screw them. They're dead to me. And then you move on. You don't do anything with the lead. And that's easy stuff. That's low-hanging fruit. That's money that's sitting there for you right now. Yeah. there's so many things that I understand that the home service businesses out there are probably saying, sales and marketing, great. I know inventory is great. I know all this stuff.

I like to do two things. I like to write on a whiteboard, defense, offense. Defense is overtime, controlling your overtime. Defense is controlling your inventory. There's so many things that you gotta be on the defensive side. I don't wanna jump into all of them. You need to know your numbers. You need controlling your inventory. There's so many things that you got to be on the defensive side. I don't want to jump into all of them. You need to know your numbers. You need to know your financial checklist.

You need to know your status. But offense, think about this. A defense to me would be buying a part for a dollar cheaper. That costs me five bucks. I get it a buck cheaper. That's defense. That's more working on some of the stuff.

But if I can make a sales guy, on average, my whole team, 100 technicians, sell something for $40 extra per ticket, $40 versus the dollar, I find so many people, they don't know where to focus. And if you whiteboard it and say, if I could get, I renegotiate with all my marketing stuff all the time. I renegotiate with my vendors. That's important. But the real two things to make a ton of money, three things, book more phone calls. Number one, number two, close more deals. And number three is charge more money, upsell, call them whatever you want. I don't care if you call it upselling.

People hate that word. Why did you upsell me? I'm like, you needed it. You wanted it. You wanted the cool features. I gave you an opportunity to buy it and I exposed it to you and you wanted it. It's not upselling. It's a bad connotation. It's just saying this customer wanted more and I gave him more. It's like, if you come to me and you say, Tommy, you're a transmission shop.

And you say, hey, look, I got your transmission out. You've got a motor mount that's decent shape and the other one, it's probably gonna last a couple more months. But in order to fix the motor mount, we have to pull the tranny again. Do you just want to get them both replaced right now? I'd go, how much? Yeah, it's going to be 400 bucks, but it'll cost you 1500 if you come back in six months. Yeah, that makes sense to me. Just do it. I want to get it done right now. It makes a lot of sense. That's not upselling. That's common sense. So many people

feel like they take advantage of customers and there's nothing worse in my mind because there are those bad companies out there in each industry that really, I'll give you an example of a company that they do springs rollers and bearings for 1200 bucks. I don't like that. That's overcharging, but I'll charge 1200, but they're going to get a lot more stuff. They're going to get springs rollers, bearings, bottom rubber. They're going to get a new strut. They're going to get a keypad on the outside. They're going to get frame. And I build a value there. And we do really good at that. You understand what I'm saying? I do. What you just said made me think of the marketing guy, Dean Jackson. I was reading something by him the other day, and he was talking about if you're a

company that provides ongoing service where people are paying you money each month or each year to come out and do stuff. And he says, the bottom line is, in order for somebody to keep paying you, by continuing to pay you, they are better off in their life. It's that simple. They're better off in their life, which is why they continue to pay you. But when we stop adding the value and building the relationship and all those other things, then it just becomes a transaction that they look at as an inconvenience. Okay. So that's why it's so important. Like you were sharing about your tech where people are like, Hey, don't be mad at the tech. That's a great

sign because that means the people are connected to your person and they believe they're better off having Billy in their home than somebody else in their home. And so they're going to keep paying you. Yeah, that's deep. And I think that people just, the listeners out there just got to understand that this is so much information that we talk about on these podcasts and you just need to work on the business. And it's such a cliche that we hear all the time of just sit back, let it all come in and realize what is the most impactful areas you can work on today. And I know mine, believe it or not, is inventory. I mean, look, I have 15 warehouses full.

I have three and a half million dollars out there of inventory. And I know that as we grow, there's two things my CPA told me. He goes, Tommy, I want you to keep an eye on two things as you grow and realize there's a red X on your back because you're getting big. Everybody's going to try to take you down. You need to pay your taxes first and foremost.

And secondly, you need to have systems in place for your inventory because it's easy to have one location, but with as many as you have, they're going to try to steal from you blind. If you, locking the door keeps the good people out, not the bad people. If somebody wants to steal really, really bad, they're going to try to steal from you blind. Locking the door keeps the good people out, not the bad people. If somebody wants to steal really, really bad, they will. But if somebody needs to take in a surge protector and says, hey, he's not going to care. He hardly pays anything.

Plus, I did that extra. I call it in my book, creative justification. They're not bad people. They really aren't. They just created a scenario in their head of why they want to steal something, but they don't consider it theft. They just say, you know, I did this extra stuff. I got them a lot of extra metal this week. I took some extra metal from my house and put it in the metal, so that should pay for it. You know, they really do. They conceptualize it in their mind of why it's okay. And it's just not. So you got to have checks and balances. And that's, every person needs to find out what they could do today with the biggest hole in your boat. If I was on a sinking boat and I needed to go another 10 miles, I would find out where the biggest hole is and first patch that one to be the most impactful. Yeah. And I, and I think, you know, back to the, how to grow your business and stuff. Yeah. There's offense, there's defense,

there's all the, there's inventory, there's everything else. At the end of the day, one of the top priorities, I believe, really the top priority of any business owner, I don't care what industry you're in, has got to be sales. Because when you have money coming in, you have oxygen. And when you can breathe, every other problem is manageable. So for those listening, focus on marketing, focus on getting the phone to ring. Tommy, that's my biggest takeaway on the couple of times that you and I have talked on my show and stuff is how fanatical you are about marketing and getting that phone to ring and how

you're not judgmental of the lead sources and not emotional about them. You judge them based on the data, but you're like, man, if we're not booking calls, we're screwed, you know? So like everything's easier when you're selling, you know, like your inventory thing right now, Tommy, you know what, you might get to a point in this, in this whole inventory thing where you go, this is just over my head, but because you're selling and you got money coming in, you can hire a kick-ass person to take care of it for you. I bought four books last night at an inventory and I'm out scouting right now. I went on Young Entrepreneur Council and I'm scouting to get somebody to help because look, I'm not the guy. I talked to my general manager yesterday. I said,

hey, when's the last time you worked in a warehouse, like Amazon warehouse? He goes, I haven't. I go, either the hell have I. Why don't we hire somebody that's better than us that could really show us the ropes? My goal within the next three months is that you could look at something and know how much is there. Meaning that if it fills that spot, you know you have 1,500 of them, then you just got to count the loose ones up top.

And it's locked up. And look, this stuff is not rocket science. They've been keeping inventory since Mayans were around in Egypt. It's not, you don't need this fancy software to do half the stuff we talk about. And everybody goes, oh, well, once this is done, once this is done, once we get there, once this happens. No, do it today. And my whole thing is we're moving buildings in March.

And I mean, we're going to set this place up and it's going to be the model shop. And then all the spokes will continue to follow our lead. So there's so many things we could talk about. I want to, I want to ask you real quick about your approach to own your own crap and become a better leader and then we'll kind of wrap it up. Yeah. Well, I have a process that we follow when we work with people and it's the very first step in the process is you got to own your crap. If you're not willing to look in the mirror and get real about the BS that's holding you back, that's in you, then we're never going to have the results that you want to have. I believe there's no progress without truth. A lot of guys BS themselves.

Earlier, you talked about a guy who was, and rightly so, right? It bothers us, but he was talking about, oh, there's all these unlicensed guys out there, and there's this, and there's this. So many times we point to external reasons why we're not being successful, and I call bullshit on that. Yeah, there's always going to be the illegal guy. There's always going to be the customer that, no matter what you do, will never pay your prices. There's always going to be issues in the economy. The weather is always going to jack us up if you're a seasonal business. So here, for instance, one example would be the reason that I don't charge more is that deep down, I'm terrified to talk to people about money. That's owning your crap. And that's putting it out there, looking somebody in the eye. Like we have a private Facebook group called

The Contractor Fight. And the cover charge, it's a free group, but the cover charge is that you have to own your crap within 24 hours. So guys will jump in and they'll go, yeah, I'm not good at marketing. That's my crap. And our moderators of the group are like, no, that's not owning your crap. That's a symptom of your crap. What's your crap? Okay, well, I'm a procrastinator. I'm lazy. I'm too cheap to hire somebody because I'm afraid of being poor and I'm insecure. Those are the things, those root issues that we talked about at the top of this call of what it really means to own your crap.

Dude, I have about 1,000, just under 1,100 people in that group right now. We've kicked out over 3,000 of them in the last year for not owning your crap. How many are in there? There's 1,100 or so, 1,000 50 or something like that in our, in our private contractor fight Facebook group right now, we've kicked out over 3000 because they haven't owned their crap. They don't want to get real. They don't want to be honest with where they're

at. They want to blame their people. Oh, I can't find any good people. Well, how about looking in the mirror as a boss? Are you being a total jag? Are you giving your people the tools they need to succeed? Before you go firing your people and complaining about your people, you better make sure that you're providing the training that they need, the environment they need to grow and succeed, and all those other things before you start ripping on your people. Look in the mirror. And I believe that is the fundamental step to success in anything. I don't care what it is, is you got to know exactly where you're at, what your problem is, and get clear on it. So I think Bar Rescue John Taffer says it the best. I don't embrace problems, I embrace solutions.

And I think there's a lot to be said about that because so many times people say the same thing to me. They say, yeah, well, I'm talking about my own technicians, but business owners do the same thing as, oh, the dispatcher hates me. And oh, this guy gets favored. And oh, that customer, they just, I'm in an area that doesn't have money. The best story I could tell you, and I'm not going to go into numbers, but I took, I had a guy from Milwaukee, the market manager called me up and he said, Tommy, he goes, I really want to send my guys out there again to train with a couple of the guys that I know are really successful. I said, better. I can do one better yet. I called one of the guys. I said,

can you go to Milwaukee in two weeks? He said, yeah, I'll get it through. Talk to my wife. Make sure my kids are good. He did it. He went there. So Mike told me, the guy in Milwaukee said, I'm not going to give him any preferential treatment. He's got to run the same job, same neighborhoods. He goes, I'm not going to stack the deck. I go, perfect. I'm fine with that. He did two and a half times the best person's week in the history of that market. Two and a half. And they all became believers. They go, oh my God, it was amazing. This was the coolest thing we've ever seen. But it just showed them that it's possible. And there's no such thing in my world now as it depends on what market you're in.

It depends on this. There's some marketing things that change because Yelp's in Scottsdale and Yelp's in San Francisco. So Yelp's a little more popular there. Kudzu's a little more popular on the East Coast, but customers are the same. It might be different in China, but Coast, but customers are the same. It might be different in China, but in the United States are the same.

So Tom, why don't you give me a few books that you recommend putting out there that you say everybody should read? One of my favorite books is The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy. Simple read, but it's so true. It's those little actions that we take day in and day out that compound over time that end up bringing us success.

That's the first one that comes to mind. Mike Michalowicz has a book called Profit First you're probably familiar with. Yeah, he was on my podcast promoting it. Yeah, I've done over 200 podcast episodes and he was guest number two for me and he's getting ready to come back on and we're looking to

have him do some training and stuff like that. Right out of the gate, those are the two books that I would say business books that I would say like, man, if you could understand the power of the little changes that you can make and then if you as a business owner really embrace that profit first mindset, I think you're going to be light years ahead of where you are now. So if someone wants to know more about the contractor fight and start really being part of what you... Get some consulting from you or possibly just get involved in the Facebook group.

What's the best way to get a hold of you on all the different aspects? Literally go to Google and type in The Contractor Fight. And the homepage of the website has what we call chooser boxes with what you're looking for. And you push a button and it'll kind of guide you what is best for you, whether it's one of our many free things or one of our paid programs or whatever it is. It's all at thecontractorfight.com. Awesome. And then I like to end it with one just last thought. It's something that maybe we didn't touch upon. One last thing to let the listeners think about and really start to embrace was their driving

or on the way to the next job or at their office today. You know, this is a big theme in my life right now, personally, and I'm sure people have heard it before, but it's as simple as what you plant in your brain is what you're gonna harvest later on. And I've seen so many guys, they're like, I'm doing the right things. I'm tracking my leads.

I got my KPIs dialed in. I'm doing sales training. I'm doing this. But what they're not doing is they're not feeding their brain the right messages. They're allowing too many toxic things into their brain. So when you catch yourself saying something like, man, there's just nobody out here that wants to work or millennials don't want to work, you're basically telling your brain to look for that crap

and then you fulfill it. The technical term is the reticular activating system in our brain. And so it's like, Tommy, if you're in a crowded airport, right? And it's super loud, but you hear the word garage door, you know, like 50 yards away. Oh, yeah. You're going to be like, hey, what? Garage door. Okay. Because our brain is... We've programmed our brains to notice the things that are important to us. So if we're continually telling our brain that customers are cheap, I can't find good people, etc., etc. That's the stuff that you're going to find. And so I, for me, I try to wake up each day and before I go to bed at night, one of the things I tell myself, it's funny as I go, I wake up in the morning, my eyes literally open and out loud I say, you are a magnet for money and really cool, successful people. And when I tell myself

that every day, it's funny. I'll find a $20 bill on the ground. I'll have somebody call me out of the blue and go, hey, we want you to come in and do a workshop for us. And then the phases of time when I don't, I'm not consistent with that, I get just the opposite. So I want to encourage everybody to, yeah, you could be doing all the right things, but if you're not feeding your brain the right messages, you're going to be struggling because our brain is always going to, it's always going to find what we're telling it to find, if that makes sense. I love it.

Well, listen, I had a great time. Every time we talk, I can talk to you for days on days. I think I could learn a lifetime from you. I really appreciate you coming on, Tom. Well, Tommy, I appreciate you having me and I learn something every time I talk to you as well. That sounds good. Well, listen, I appreciate you coming on and we'll talk to you soon. All right, man. We'll see you. Hey guys, I really appreciate you tuning into the podcast. I wanted to let you know that my book is available right now on Amazon. It's called The Home Service Millionaire.

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 HomeAd to the CEO of Alpac and of course Aura the CEO of Service Titan it tells you how to have the right mindset and become a millionaire and think like a millionaire it goes into exactly how to turn on lead generation have those phones ringing off the hook for the

customers that you 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.