Blue Collar Culture

Business Results the Old Fashioned Way

Podcast Episode

Working With And Not Against Each Other With Sue Dyer

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BCC 88 | Interdependency

 

Did you know that construction is the only industry in the United States that, for 53 years, has decreased in productivity points every year? That is happening because they tend not to depend on one another. Construction needs to be built in a high-trust environment if you want success.

Join Ryan Englin as he talks to the author of the #2 Wall Street Journal Bestselling Book, The Trusted Leader, Sue Dyer. Sue is also the host of the Lead With Trust podcast, where she talks about high trust equals high performance. Learn why a trusting environment is crucial for success, especially in construction. Find out how you can change your mindset if you are afraid and don’t trust your team. Know that it only takes one individual to change the whole environment.

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Working With And Not Against Each Other With Sue Dyer

My guest is no stranger to the construction industry. She has been around for quite a while and made a huge impact in her ability to help teams put together very successful projects. In fact, some of the stories that she’ll be able to share with you sound impossible. I don’t know how else to say it, but it’s impossible. It’s amazing what happens when teams trust each other. They come together and collaborate in a way that is creative. They’re able to achieve impossible results.

Sue Dyer has been around in the construction industry for quite a while. In fact, she has been doing it for so long that she has a ton of research and data about why this works. Her expertise is in helping teams trust each other. As much as we want to think that construction is all about how fast we can build, how cheap we can build it, and how much profit we can make, there’s so much more that goes into it. Her Trusted Leader Program is going to transform construction companies all over the country. I’m so excited to have Sue here to share her insight about what it takes to build these high-performing teams.

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Sue, I am excited to have you here. Welcome to the show.

Thanks so much, Ryan. I’m excited to be here.

We haven’t known each other that long, but I feel like we have because we have so much in common with the people we serve, our passion for the industry, and making sure that we’re out there helping construction company owners solve some of their biggest challenges. Let me ask you this. One of my favorite questions to ask is, what is the biggest myth about your industry and the work that you do?

I believe that the biggest myth that is out there is that we believe as construction leaders, whether you’re at a project level or a business level, that somehow, we can have fear and still be successful. The fear leads projects to fight with each other, holding our cards close to the vest, and not sharing completely, especially on low-bid projects. That is because they aren’t going to share what they have in their pocket that is trying to make it work.

The owner isn’t sharing what they have in their pocket to try to make it work for them. The designer is going, “You’re messing up my design.” We think that all this fear is somehow going to protect us when, in fact, it ends up completely undermining our ability to succeed. It ends up being a loss. We could be so much more successful if we could create a high-trust environment.

I have been on this road and this path for a long time. For many years, I have been working in construction and doing experiments to see what it takes to create a high-trust, high-performing team, whether it’s a business team or a project team. That’s where I came to create my Trusted Leader Continuum where there’s a continuum of leadership.

On one side is fear, which has been the tradition in construction for about a hundred years. We teach our folks there to drive the crew, make it happen, get production, and get going. That has been our norm for many years. I believe we have to move on to the other side of the continuum where it is more collaborative and based on high trust. Let me tell you why. If we go through the continuum, I’m on a project with someone who is a benevolent dictator.

I have sat in construction offices where you’re not there for more than maybe five minutes. You realize, “On this place, I better do what I’m told because if I don’t, punishment will be involved.” People don’t want to be punished, so they do what they’re told. I got hired because I’m seasoned. I’m an expert in my area. I’m the best of the best at what I do. They hired me for my expertise. I feel as though I’m being treated in a way that I’m being forced to do things that I don’t think are necessarily the best things. Maybe I don’t believe it’s the best way to operate on our project or the best decision, but it’s my job, so I do it.

It’s interesting how you position that. It’s almost this vicious cycle that we get into. As you’re describing it, I’m not seeing anything, but I’m picturing in my head that you have this owner or leader who is like, “I can’t trust him anyways, so I’m going to act in a way that’s consistent with that.” The employee sitting there is like, “I can’t trust him. Maybe he’s lying to me. I’m going to act in a way that’s consistent with that.” We get into this vicious cycle of nobody trusting anybody. They think that because we’re operating this way and it’s the way we’ve operated for hundred years that that’s the only way to operate.

Not only that, it’s so contagious. I’m a seasoned professional and I have people working for me. How do I treat them? It is the same way. Coercion becomes the norm. What happens is it looks like everything settles in and we are working well together, but it’s just compliance. We’re complying. I’m like, “You do this.” You’re like, “Okay.” I’m like, “You do that.” You’re like, “What do you want me to do?” People wait until you give them the next order.

When a big project issue comes up, the team sees it. They’re smart. They’ve probably been through it before in another project or something in your business, but no one says anything. No one steps up and works to solve the problem. That leads to the failure of so many projects and complete businesses wiped out. We looked at nineteen forensic studies of construction. Forensic studies only happen when they’re deemed a big failure. What we found is that 100% of the time, this is what happened. It was not a big technical problem. It was the team that didn’t step up, share, talk, or solve.

The foundation of that is this fear and lack of trust. Why do you find that this is perpetuated in the industry? What do you think is going to people’s minds outside of habit that keeps this being something that you have to deal with?

There are many things, but one of the things that come to my mind first is we are ignorant and in denial that we are interdependent. On every construction project, every person that is working there, whether they are a fourth-tier sub, a general contractor, a designer who’s not quite as much involved anymore but still integral, or certainly, the owner’s team including the construction manager, are interdependent. They can’t succeed without the help of each other. Yet, we act as if we are all interdependent little silos doing our own work. Especially, you see that in the trades where they put in the contract self-organized. That means, “Get your pipe out of my way.”

We are ignorant and in denial that we are interdependent. We can't succeed without the help of each other. Click To Tweet

I saw a picture where someone put a pipe through a ladder. They installed the pipe through a ladder. It is about knowing that we are interdependent and we’re in this together. It’s been a tradition over the years to be protecting or policing and protect our own interests. I try to make sure that what I bid at bid time, I get out of the project. It’s like, “I am full speed ahead. Get out of my way. I’m going ahead,” not realizing that it is a dance. If you work together, you could go faster.

I hear you talking about this from the perspective of project management and getting the contractors and the teams to work together well. I see this a lot in hiring problems as well. People work for one of these little toxic cultures where we rule through fear. It’s all about the stick mentality of, “Do this or else.” They come up and then they go get another job because they can’t stand it anymore and they find out that the company is the exact same way. They go do it again and the next company is the exact same way. All of a sudden, these people don’t want to do this kind of work anymore.

In the industry, that’s a big problem. Not only that, you don’t make as much money. You aren’t as successful. It costs the owners a delta of somewhere between 10% and 50% extra. It costs the contractors the ability to know that they can succeed with what they have been doing. It’s not predictable, which is what I’ve been working on for many years.

I try to create predictable outcomes so that you know your project is on time and on budget with the amount of quality that is needed for it to work. This happens during the design phase. We are creating more levels of collaboration. Construction is the only industry in the United States that, for 53 years, has gone down in productivity points every single year. All other industries in the United States have gone up 173%. We’re playing the game by the wrong rules. The rules need to change.

That makes sense. Let’s talk about that. I love helping our audience get something to take away and something that they can go do in action. What are two actions that they can take to either move away from this to start the process or something they can do that can transform their organization?

There is an exercise I like to do. You can do this within your own business first, and then when you realize it works, you could do it on a project. Get a whiteboard and draw a line down the middle of it. On one side, let’s say it’s your estimating department. We’re going to do it inside. Maybe in the middle is your accounting department. On the third side is your field folk.

Have them all write down on a construction project what it is that they need in order to succeed. That’s what their business is. They’re producing projects. Write everything down that they need and then have them circle what are the top three things that they need to be successful. I bet you it will be cost, scope, and schedule. Maybe there’s some quality in there and you achieve that by getting production. They’re all going to say the same thing.

If you go onto a construction project, you do the same thing where you give a flip chart or a board to the owner, designer, contractor, or subcontractors, and tell them, “What do you need on this project to be successful?” Have them write it out. I’ve done it dozens of times on billion-dollar projects and $500,000 projects. They all write the same thing. What it does is it proves you are interdependent. We all need and want the same things.

We can’t point the finger at somebody else and say, “It’s on them. It’s their fault. It’s not my fault.”

It’s this mythology that we have. The owner thinks, “The contractor is only trying to get change orders. They’re trying to screw me. They’re the low-bidder. They’re not going to be fair to me.” The contractor is thinking, “The owner wants to beat me up. They’re not going to be fair to me.” The designer goes, “They’re not going to do what I want. I’m going to try to make sure I get what I need. They’re not going to take advantage of me.” Everyone goes in ready for a fight when they’re really in it together. We work against each other instead of with each other. That is a tradition. If you shift that even at 10%, you’re going to see a huge amount of momentum on your projects.

We talked about this in construction in one of our prior calls. It is the difficulty of being able to recruit from the younger generation and get younger talent out there. A lot of the stuff is exactly what you’re talking about. We have this belief that, “If I do something, I’m going to lose.” Almost 50% of construction companies do not put wages on their job descriptions when they post them online.

When I ask people, “Why don’t you put what your wages are?” They are like, “It is because they’re going to want the top wage and I don’t want to pay that.” I’m like, “Why don’t you put on there what you’re comfortable paying and realize the consequences are?” “I was open and honest with you. I put it out there. If you don’t want to apply for my jobs because I’m paying below market wages, then okay.” We have this belief that, “If I’m a little bit vulnerable and open with people, they’re going to take advantage and hurt me.”

That’s the fear playing out. If you want to be highly successful in construction, you have to shift that. What I’ve learned is it only takes one person in a key place in your realm to begin to shift it to a more high-trust, high-performing. Think about that. High trust equals high performance. The more fear you have, the less performance you get.

BCC 88 | Interdependency
Interdependency: It only takes one person in a key place to shift an environment to be more high-trust. High trust equals high performance.

 

I have a project and I’ve worked on several, but I’ll tell you about one. This was a runway safety area project for an international airport. I’d worked on several RSAs. The FAA required every airport in the country to have this runway safety area because the airplanes were running off the end and into the water or into other places we didn’t want. They created these special concrete cells that absorb the impact and stop the airplane. It’s a very specific type of material. It completely disrupts the operations of the airport.

At this airport, the FAA was worried that most of these projects took around two years to complete. The FAA said, “It’s too impactful to air travel worldwide. We’re going to give you four months to build it.” The project team created a way to build it in 90 days. They co-located. They were a high-performing team. They created an enormous amount of trust. We did a lot of partnering together. They were able to perform $1 million of work per day for 90 days. They got it all installed and opened up so the airplanes could take off and land.

I bet that was a pretty profitable job.

Hundred percent, and it wasn’t easy. They had blocks that got broken. We have pictures of guys chasing down FedEx trucks trying to get the blocks. We had to have a plane fly into another airport and bring blocks that had broken. It was not an easy task. I had another project where we were going to do a taxiway and the main runway. Most of these projects took about two years as well. This project team figured out how to do $2 million a day of work. They completely did that in two weeks which did two years’ worth of work. These things are impossible to do if you don’t have high trust.

The schedule was down to five-minute increments. Think about how many trucks had to bring in asphalt because it’s fading. You’re doing a structural section. There are hazardous materials. There are lights and all the technology that goes on. All that stuff had to happen in two weeks. These are things that are possible. The higher the trust, the higher the performance.

I’ve listened to Simon Sinek talk a lot about that with the trust and the work that he’s done with the SEALs to understand how these high-performing military units are able to accomplish so much with so little resources and time. They trust incredibly. It is on levels that I probably couldn’t even comprehend because we’re literally talking about life and death.

You said something, though, that I want to dig into for a second. Correct me here because I may not say it right, but you said something about it takes one person to do this to start it. My gut reaction to that is, “That person is going to get called out and be shipped out real fast.” You made it sound like that’s not the case and they’re the catalyst to start this whole thing. I want to break that down for a minute. How does that work?

I have five models I’ve created over the years. The first book I wrote is The Trusted Leader. I see the need for leaders, whether you are a crew leader or a superintendent. It may be you’re leading a whole project. You’re a CM or the owner. It doesn’t matter. You need to know how to create a high-trust atmosphere. That is what I embedded in this book. The thing to do is you got to know what it is.

It’s a partnering approach. The partnering approach has two components to it. One is ten partnering principles or intentions. When you embed this in how you operate, it naturally begins to create high trust. The other is six partnering values. Those values create behaviors. If you want to change the behavior of your people or your team, it starts with values. Values create attitudes and attitudes create behaviors. Your principles are creating the processes, attitude, and atmosphere.

If you want to change the behavior of your people or your team, it starts with values. Values create the behaviors. Click To Tweet

I think of it as intention. It’s the intention of high trust. There are principles in there that you work by and live by on your projects, and then you’ll begin to create this high-trust atmosphere. First, it might be amongst a few people. They’re going to say, “How the heck did you do that?” We had people from the FAA all over the country coming to see what that project team was doing. It then begins to ripple out to, “Show us what you did so we can do it.” Another team or another group within the team is doing that, and then more people go, “We need to do that.” Pretty soon, you get senior management going, “How are we going to do that? How can we do that on our project?”

It creates this ripple effect. When the FAA comes in and says, “We want your trade secrets. What are you doing? What’s your competitive advantage?” It is to be able to share that with them knowing full well they’re going to share it with other contractors and be like, “Did you see what they did?” It is to realize that there’s enough out there that we can all share. We can all be more productive and do this together.

It’s self-defeating not to because the more people you can work with who have this mindset, the more predictable your results are and the smarter, better, and faster you go. What happens is you begin to be seen as this guru for always having these successful projects. Everyone is going, “How did you do that?” You become marketable in the marketplace for sure.

As the business grows, you have to have more people that are willing to play that game with you. If it’s only a small group and you don’t share it with others, you can’t take on more projects. You can’t grow.

Not sharing it is fear. It’s incremental, too. You start at level 1 and then you move to level 2. You go, “This is cool.” You then see, “We can move it to levels 3 and 4.” They begin to see how much better and smarter and they will say, “Let’s overcome some other barriers.” With some organizations, when they’ve learned how to do it on their projects, especially facility owners, they realize, “What is in our specs and contract that’s a barrier to trust?” They begin to work on policies, processes, and practices that are more trusting and less fearful.

As easy as you make it sound, even I’m having this reaction of, “I don’t know if I could do that.” It’s not easy.

It is simple but not easy. It takes practice.

Let’s talk about some of the things that we can practice to start doing that. What are some things that we can do on a regular basis so that we can get over our fears and get a little more comfortable with this action?

Operate like, “We’re in this together. I can’t succeed without the help of others.” That paradigm is how you operate. That would be the first thing. Let me show you mathematically how it is. I like to think in terms of math. Most construction projects operate like a zero-sum game. They are like, “I’m going to put my stuff and you put your stuff in. Unless you do something for me, I’m not doing anything for you.” Mathematically, that’s one plus one equals zero. You’re putting in a lot of resources and not getting a lot out.

Other people say, “We have to be a little more collaborative, so we’re going to compromise.” Mathematically, compromise is one plus one equals one and a half. It’s still a lose-lose for both sides. If you begin to be collaborative and creative, you want to get to a creative mindset of innovation. Now one plus one equals three, you are getting somewhere.

When you have enough trust in where you are co-creating, it doesn’t matter who pays your paycheck. It doesn’t matter what business you’re working for. We are all focused on the success of the project, working together, and making this happen. Now one plus one can equal 30. It’s breaking down the barriers between the silos on a project or within your business so that it’s one team. Focus on the success of your project, the team determines what success is. It’s like, “What day are we going to finish? What’s the budget? When are we going to come in? Is it ahead of time?”

BCC 88 | Interdependency
Interdependency: Break down the barriers between the silos on a project or within your business, and just focus on being one team because it’s the team that determines what success is.

 

I have one team that said, “We want to save some money on this project because the maintenance group does not have any real ability to have any money to create some benefits on this.” It was a roadway and they were like, “We want to try to do that.” They made a commitment to save $500,000 on this project. In year one, they saved 2$50,000. In year two, they saved $250,000. They were able to give that to the maintenance department to go and make some other benefits to the roadway. That would never have happened. It would get flooded every time it rained.

It is so much about mindset. I know I’m talking about mindset, but it is a mindset. Think about when you play a game. If I said, “We’re going to play soccer but we’re going to play by the rules of checkers,” it doesn’t work. That’s the problem. It’s a different set of rules to make collaboration work. That’s why you’re seeing in construction so many different new models of delivery. From what I’ve learned, it doesn’t matter. The delivery method doesn’t matter. The mindset matters.

It’s interesting that you bring up games. I played a game called FreshBiz a few years ago. It was transformative for me. It’s a game like Monopoly. They hate it when I say it’s like Monopoly because what’s the point of Monopoly? The point of Monopoly is if you, Sue, and I are playing Monopoly, it is to get as many hotels and houses and buy as many properties. That is so that when you come by my place, I can potentially bankrupt you. That’s the point of Monopoly. We bankrupt each other.

In the game of FreshBiz, the only way to win is if everybody wins together. You start playing the game and play it like Monopoly. You’re like, “I’m going to hold my cards close. I’m not going to show people what’s going on.” I’m not going to say, “Don’t land there because then I get paid.” You start realizing that you are losing the game by playing this way. As you go through the game, you’re like, “I can’t win if I keep playing this way.” It then challenges you to think differently.

The concept is to get to an island. Imagine if I won and got to an island by myself, it would be boring. I’d be like, “What are we going to do?” The whole point is we got to get everybody on the island together. Sometimes, that means there’s something that I can do that is going to help you in a way that’s going to 10X our efforts together. If I hold it to myself and you’re 1 and I’m 1, maybe we get 2 out of our collaboration. If I tell you about this thing that I have or that I can do, it could 10X our results.

It was a good game for me because it opened my eyes to this collaboration that you’re talking about, and it comes from trust. We talk about trust a lot in the work we do. We have a team that we’re talking about vulnerability. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Brené Brown and her TED Talk. I made everybody watch that. I’m like, “You’re all going to watch it. We’re going to talk about this because you guys are not good at this.”

Much of what we’ve done in construction is about, “I don’t want to get hurt, so I’m going to protect myself. If it hurts everybody else, that is tough.” Here we are, many years later, and the only industry that has been impacted by this is construction. It is an epidemic. There is nobody out there working to fix it. It is short of people like you and me who are doing as much as we can. We’ve got to come together and realize if our mindset doesn’t change, we’re in for a world of hurt.

I love construction. I love the people. They are the salt of the Earth. Each person in construction needs to take the responsibility that it’s their job to help create that high-trust atmosphere. Construction is the highest suicide rate also of any industry. It needs to be fun to work together as a team, build things, and see them come to fruition.

The other thing that kills construction is complexity. There’s so much complexity. Figure if you work even on a small project. You’ve got dozens of companies that have to come together to build that project. If everyone is bringing their own culture for their business and leadership style, everyone is like, “I’m holding my own interests at my heart. I’ll forget about you guys.” If everyone comes and they are ready for a fight, then it’s a lose-lose for everyone.

Those silos have to get broken down. When you’re talking, that’s what I’m seeing. It’s us and them. It’s the office versus the field. It’s production versus safety. It’s a supplier versus a contractor. It is all an us or them. We all point fingers and blame everybody else. We realize, “I’m only hurting me and/or the project. If I keep this mindset and this behavior, it is up.”

The number one walk away from this would be to see red flags whenever you feel like or hear someone else say something that’s a blaming tone. It is like, “You’ve done this to me.” That would be a time when instead of writing that, you need to go have a face-to-face or eyeball-to-eyeball meeting. Talk about it and talk through it. It only takes one person to shift it.

My background was in labor where I negotiated with a lot of unions. There was no more adversarial place than that. My job was to create high trust there so that we could create solutions for the industry. That is what we did. Projects have similar dynamics that we’re interdependent. In an interdependent relationship, there is only a win-win or lose-lose. On most of these projects, people are negotiating about someone else is going to lose more than me. That is still a loss.

There is only a win-win or a lose-lose in an interdependent relationship. Click To Tweet

That was one of my takeaways from playing FreshBiz. It’s all a metaphor for how we play in the real world. When we’re playing this board game, it is a metaphor for how we would play in the real world. I stood up and shared with the group that I played this with. I said, “The way that I’ve played through most of my life is, ‘As long as I win and you don’t lose, we’re okay. You can be zero-sum, but I need to come out ahead.’” That was the game I was always playing. I was like, “They still lost because they put in the effort, the resources, and the time.”

Also, they’re not available for the next job.

That’s where they started. I’m enjoying this. I know we can keep talking. I wrote down three takeaways that I got out of this. I want to go back over and make sure I got it right. I love that exercise of the whiteboard and being able to say, “Grab your groups.” Think about who are silos inside your organization. Bring them into a room together and say, “What do we need to win on this project?” We’ll find out that we all need the same exact things.

The second one, which is probably the most impactful for me, is you got to have the guts to go first. All you need is one person to say, “We’re going to change the way we do this. We’re going to do it a little bit differently. It will be a ripple effect.” I kept seeing that ripple effect. I love the last one, which is the most practical because you can put it into action right now.

It is to see those red flags when someone is blaming someone else for the situation, the problem, or whatever it is we’re dealing with. How do people learn more about you? You’ve got a course coming out. You’ve got a book. There’s a ton of information. I’m sure you have a ton of resources and clearly, a wealth of knowledge on this. How do people get ahold of you?

One of the best things to do would be to listen to my podcast Lead with Trust. On that, I’m trying to share everything that I’ve learned. I try to put it on there. Check out the Lead with Trust podcast. Sudyco.com is my website. The course will be launching in January 2023. You can begin to save spots so that you can get ahold of them. It walks you through my book, which I was fortunate enough that became number two in Wall Street Journal.

BCC 88 | Interdependency
The Trusted Leader: Use the Partnering Approach to Become the Trusted Leader People Want to Follow

Congratulations.

All of the examples and everything in there is construction-related. It will teach you how to understand and walk you through what you need to do to create the framework in your mind and a framework to follow. It is so that you do daily practices to train your brain by incorporating the intentions and values into what you do every day. At the end of the course, you will do a 30-day Do The Impossible Challenge. You’ll pick one of those things and we will walk through it until you take it from being impossible to possible and from probable to inevitable.

If you’re reading this and you’re like, “I’m not in construction. I won’t service the construction world,” every industry on the planet, the last time I checked, has human beings. What we’re talking about here is how to work better together through interdependency.

The book is written for general business, which is how it got to be Wall Street Journal number two.

You have an offer or giveaway for our audience, is that right?

I do. We’re talking about the continuum of leadership with fear on one side and trust on the other side of the continuum. If you or your team members want to know where you fall along the continuum, you can go to Sudyco.com/Profile. Check that out and see where you fall. You’ll see your trust level. You’ll see your primary style, which is how you are leading. You’ll also get your secondary style, which is how you perceive your leading. Sometimes, there’s a difference between how we think we’re leading and how we are leading. There are five other component parts to that, which you get can all for free, so check it out.

Sue, thank you so much. I’ve enjoyed talking about how we work together. This interdependency is something that I’m passionate about. What the industry needs right now is for us to start trusting each other more and we’re going to do amazing things with that. Thanks for being on the show.

Thank you so much for letting me be here. I hope that we hear some stories of people that began to implement a higher trust atmosphere on their projects or within their businesses.

I hope for that, too. Thanks again.

Thank you.

 

Important Links

 

About Sue Dyer

BCC 88 | InterdependencySue Dyer, MBA, MIPI is one of the world’s leading experts on trust. She is the author of the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Amazon best selling book, The Trusted Leader: Use the Partnering Approach to Become the Leader people Want to Follow. Sue has helped more than 48,000 executive leaders improve their results by building high-trust business cultures. She is called the “godmother of partnering.” Sue coaches leaders to understand their current level of trust, how to train their brain to create a high trust mindset and create a trust strategy for their business.

In 1980, Sue was the first woman in the United States to head up a collective bargaining group and negotiate on behalf of 200 construction companies with the construction unions. Sue worked on over 4,000 construction projects worth over $180 billion to perfect her Partnering Approach model. There have been five university level studies on the efficacy of her model.

Sue and her team have won 73 awards for their work. Her fondest award is Facilitator of the Year from the International Partnering Institute because the team nominated her and wrote that her partnering efforts saved the state $50M. After intervening and facilitating the development of high trust, high preforming teams, Sue now wants to teach leaders how to do this for themselves. That is why she founded sudyco™ LLC. Her mission is to have one million leaders devoted to building their business on a foundation of TRUST. She is committed to helping them make it happen! Sue Dyer – Trusted Leader Programs (sudyco.com)

 

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How To Be A Present Entrepreneur With Jordan Abaroa

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BCC 87 | Present Entrepreneur

 

Sometimes your business ends up consuming more time than you would like. It’s hard to be a present entrepreneur – one that balances being an entrepreneur and a provider of the family. But it’s not impossible. Finding time for those family vacations and those business meetings are key to a successful life. The most important impact that you will ever make will happen within the walls of your own home. Join Ryan Englin as he talks to the founder of The Present Entrepreneur, Jordan Abaroa about balancing work and family life. Jordan helps liberate entrepreneur dads who want to gain more time with their families. Learn why your value is not tied to money as the provider of the family. Discover how to use time blocking effectively so you can have energy throughout your day. Find out some key assets you need in both your business and personal life. Start being the best entrepreneur dad/mom out there today!

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How To Be A Present Entrepreneur With Jordan Abaroa

This show ends up being a little bit personal for me, being that I am a dad and an entrepreneur. Our guest has a business where all he does is coach dad entrepreneurs on how to create more time with the family while still being able to support the business. He got some great frameworks, ideas, and strategies on how to do this because many of us get caught up. While we think we are creating a business so that we can give more to our family, it doesn’t always work out that way. Sometimes the business ends up consuming more of us than we like and more than our kids like.

If you are struggling with time and being able to balance the time between the two, I want you to get ready to take some notes. I want to welcome to this show Jordan Abaroa with The Present Entrepreneur and his framework and strategies on how you can invest more in your family and get more time at home.

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Jordan, welcome to the show.

I am excited to be here.

We met right before the show, and we had a great conversation. I’m excited to get into this and share some of your wisdom with our audience. You focus on working with dad entrepreneurs. What is the biggest myth we tell ourselves? I fall on that bucket too.

You have to break those two words apart. You got entrepreneurs and dads. We could be a dad and make money however we want, but as an entrepreneur, you combine those together. The greatest myth that’s out there is the lie that our value is tied to the size of our bank account. That is the biggest fricking problem and the biggest myth that we have out there now. As a dad, when we truly believe that, we start hustling and grinding to provide for our family because that’s the ultimate value that we have.

What we end up doing is we end up distancing ourselves from our family in such a way that we can’t be present, powerful, and impactful with our families. The biggest myth and problem I see right now is that we have too many dads that believe their value is tied to the size of their bank account. When in reality, the world needs more powerful dads who are present and impactful in their own homes. They are there. They are creating and leading their families in a unique and powerful way.

Your value is not tied to the size of your bank account. Click To Tweet

It reminds me of Simple Truths’ book. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this coffee table book. It says, “To a child, love is spelled T-I-M-E.” There is so much truth in what you are saying. I can’t tell you how many times people came to me, and they were like, “Ryan, I need your help.” I say, “What’s going on?” They say, “I’m ready to sell my business, but no one wants to buy it because I’m the only one who can do all this stuff. I need help building a team and hiring better people.” I’m like, “When do you want to sell?” They were like, “Yesterday.” I’m like, “We are way off base here. We need five years to fix this.”

I love that you got that message because we can. Our value is not tied to the size of the bank account. I agree with that, but if you get this message early enough, there are probably things you can do about it. Why does this myth exist? Why do people continue telling themselves that their value is tied to the size of their bank account, and they forget about the family they got at home? This is what I see. They pour themselves into work to give their family more, but what their family wants is more of them, not more of what they give them from work.

It’s such a weird way of thinking about it because when we become dads for the first time, immediately we all have those sleepless nights and hard sweats where we’re like, “How in the world am I going to put food on the table? How am I going to provide? How am I going to do all that crap?” None of that is wrong because we wear that title. When we become a dad, we are a provider, a protector, and a leader. That is who we are when we do that.

The problem is that the way that the world has always evolved and grown is that the provider, whoever that might be, can get into all sorts of different ways, but the man has primarily been the provider. Therefore, they are the ones out in the field, working with their hands, bringing home the food, and doing all that hard work, which is great and fantastic. Don’t get me wrong. We need that. That is not to take away from that at all. Because of that, we get into our world and think, “We have to make money.” Money is how we provide, how we put food on the table, and how we take care of things.

What I have recognized with that whole thing is there are many other ways to provide that if we only limit ourselves to provide equals money, what we miss out on is our role as a father to provide emotionally, spiritually, and educationally. Financially is a part of that, but it’s only a part, not the whole thing. The truth is that when I worked for other people, Corporate America wanted you to believe that lie, too, because they get more out of you. It’s about profit right for them and these large corporations and these large businesses.

BCC 87 | Present Entrepreneur
Present Entrepreneur: If you’re the provider in the family, it’s not all about bringing in the money. There are so many other ways to provide. If you only limit yourself to provide equals money, then you’ll miss out on your role as a father.

 

What I have recognized is there is this thing called profit, which is money, but there is this thing called life profit, which is my ability to live the life that I want and pour back into my family. That is where things have gotten off. You got Corporate America that wants you to believe that the value is in your bank accounts and you will give more to it. Traditionally, the man has always been that provider. How does that work? Make more money. That’s not how it always works, and that’s not how it should work.

The world needs more powerful dads nowadays. We get the statistics that come from an absent father. At least now, there are starting to be a few voices coming out, but few of us have started to look at and go, “What about a father who is there but isn’t really there?” I have started to coin this as the absent entrepreneur, the person who is in the home but is shunning their kids away because they are like, “I got to work now.”

I know this firsthand because when I started my business, I was that guy, 100%. I had no idea what I was doing. I started my business so I could pursue a dream. It wasn’t until my wife showed me a picture. She was doing it out of love and support. I was sitting at my desk in my home office. I had made it look cool. I was hustling, grinding, and heads down, working hard as I possibly could. Across the table from me was my little girl staring at me. When I saw that picture for the first time, it woke me the freak up. What was ever on that screen was apparently more important than my little girl. That was bull crap.

I got a little girl at home, and I still struggle with what you are talking about. I’m sure it’s probably a lot easier to say do it than it is to do it. My little girl came in and was like, “Daddy, I want to work with you.” I give her a little homework assignment to get little things. She sits at the desk with me. We worked together. A lot of the stuff she is doing is schoolwork-type stuff. It’s a way we get to spend some time together.

One of the most difficult challenges for me, and I’m sure a lot of guys do this, is I moved my office home so I can spend more time with them. That made it so much harder to disconnect. I see this happen a lot with people that leave corporate and go into entrepreneurship. They thought they worked a lot for corporate, but they became an entrepreneur and were 40 or 50 hours a week. I remember a part-time job. All of a sudden, we’re working 70, 80, to 100 hours a week. It may not feel like it because it’s not all the time, but you add it all up. I don’t know about you, but for me, I’m always thinking about work. Even being present and I’m with them physically, I may not always mentally be there. A lot of stuff goes into that. Your personal message is hitting home.

There’s a ton that goes into it. I love what you said there that you struggle with it. The truth is I still struggle with it. This is my whole business, message, and mission. You get this weird Imposter syndrome that pops up when you are talking about trying to be the best dad you can be and be successful at business. All of a sudden, I’m sitting there thinking about work when I’m with them.

The whole point of being a present entrepreneur, being more present and impactful, is not that we’re going to be fantastic at it all the time. It’s one decision and done. It’s a daily commitment. It’s all about the process and the journey, not the destination. I will never be the best dad in the world. It’s not a destination you get to, but it’s something I can wake up and try hard at now and wake up again tomorrow.

The whole premise of everything comes from a bible verse. I’m a faith-going person, and there’s a bible verse that I have always heard my entire life. It woke me up one day, and it was divine inspiration that hit me. It said, Joshua 24:15, “Choose you this day whom you will serve, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” I had grown up with that. It’s in every Walmart in the world that you can buy it and all that stuff. I remember reading that, and I was like, “Which day is he talking about I’m supposed to choose?” I kept chewing on that and thinking about that.

This was a guy who was trying to do the impossible and take over for Moses. That is impossible. He parted the Red Sea and did all his miracles. I’m like, “How in the world was he supposed to do that?” This is later on in his life that somebody is talking about this, and he gives this answer. What I got from it, and what I gained from that moment, was he intentionally didn’t choose a day you are supposed to choose. What he’s helping us understand is to choose every day. If you want to accomplish the impossible, don’t think about the impossible. Choose every single day.

We’re going to have days where we struggle. We’re going to have moments where it’s hard and difficult, and we are not the best dads, but the best thing about this life is that we get a reset button every single night. Now I might have been the best dad in the world, but guess what? It resets. I can’t rely on that when I get to tomorrow and vice versa. Now, I could have been the crappiest dad in the world, but tomorrow I can wake up and choose again. I love what you said there, “Love is spelled T-I-M-E.” It’s as long as we keep trying those things, and sometimes we don’t have time because we are away and working. Love is spelled with time, energy, and money because we can invest all of those to create powerful moments with our families.

Love is actually spelled with time, energy, and money. Click To Tweet

I have to remind myself all the time. I struggle with this idea of being perfect. I can’t do it until it’s done. I tell myself all the time, “Progress, not perfection.” What’s more important is progress. I’m sure there are people reading going, “I’m not a dad. My kids are moved out. I don’t know how to apply what you’re talking about.” Let’s talk about some things that they can do to apply this.

I would imagine, correct me if I’m wrong, but it can go beyond your kids. It can make you a better boss and leader. You can have a better business. There are a lot of ways that this can impact your life if you’re not a dad or your kids have moved on. Let’s talk about a couple of actions that our readers can take 1 or 2 things that you were like, “Here is a step you need to take this week, and when you do it, you’re going to move towards and make some progress.”

I focus on fatherhood because I’m a father and need this, as I know many do. I have worked with tons of different businesses over my time and in my own personal business and agency. Not all of them are fathers, but the principles still apply. It’s important to recognize that our business is designed to serve us. Sometimes, we don’t get that. Sometimes we think that it’s designed to give us money, but our business is designed to serve as the three currencies of life, which are time, energy, and money. If it’s not serving us those things, we need to reevaluate it.

No matter where you are in your business, entrepreneurship, or life, understand that the work that you do should serve you. In fact, that is the first thing that I start with anybody I ever work with, whether it’s in my agency, our dads, dad groups, or whatever it may be. We start by recognizing, first and foremost, that time, energy, and money are the three currencies of life, and I need to get clear on how much I want of all of them.

BCC 87 | Present Entrepreneur
Present Entrepreneur: No matter where you are in your business, in your entrepreneurship, or in your life, understand that the work that you do should serve you.

 

It’s not what your ideal work-life look like because we might not be working if we thought about the ideal whatnot, but what does the next level look like? Now we’re working 40, 50, to 100 hours a week, like we were talking about as an entrepreneur. What does the next level look like for you? I will speak for myself. I don’t start working until 9:00, and I’m done at 3:00. Why is that important? It’s because I want to take my kids to school. I want to have breakfast with them. I want to wake up and be there when they are there. I want to pick them up from school. From 3:00 until about 8:00, it’s family time because we got sports and gymnastics we’re running to. We got all sorts of things. I got clear on the work time.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m still working a good amount of hours, but between the hours of 6:30 when my kids get up, until 7:30 when they go to school, and a little bit of time with my family, clean up and do some things there. I’m not doing any work, but I might be up at 5:00, and that’s okay. I might be up at 8:00 or 9:00. We got some international clients in New Zealand. I’m up a little bit later so that we can work on those. I get it. I have gotten immensely clear on the amount of time that I’m going to devote to my family first. I made sure that I built walls around that.

It’s the same thing with energy. Energy is an interesting one because, to me, you can build and/or destroy energy. There are energy builders and energy drainers. I have gotten clear as I start my days and end my days, what things give me energy at work doing conversations like this? It’s teaching and working one on one. They build energy. I try and put those at the last part of my day before I transition to being a dad. I have more energy as I go back into it.

I’m terribly dyslexic, which means if I end my day trying to write out some content and I got to edit it, and I see that red squiggle line underneath it, I get pissed and frustrated. I don’t do that at the end of the day. Why? If I’m pissed and frustrated at the end of my workday, when I walk out to my home office to my family, I bring that energy to them. I try and build energy builders.

The most important thing for any business owner I work with is we have to get clear on the amount of money we want to bring home to our families. Why is this so important? I believe in building a business that’s simplest to the cash. We think that our value is tied to our bank account. We got to make $80,000 a month and be a $1 million business, if not more. The reality is, what does your family need? Let’s start there.

Build a business that is simplest to the cash. Click To Tweet

I work with dads. We talk about this. We talk about entrepreneurship. They were like, “If I could make $3,000 a month, that would be amazing for our family.” Let’s build a business that does that, then. Let’s not worry about $80,000 now. We can get there, trust me, but first, we have to start with what your family needs. That is one of the most tactical exercises that I do with anybody that I work with. From there, we can build out a marketing plan, fulfillment plan, or business model that all matches what those three currencies of life are and builds a business that serves you.

I used to be involved in EO, and I had a mentor there one time. He says, “Ryan, what is your business doing to fund the bank of Ryan’s family?” That’s how he put it. At the time, I was thinking, “I have no idea what you are talking about.” He was like, “This business exists to serve you, not the other way around. If this business is serving your family and you’re getting everything you need from it, you don’t need to have a $60 million a year business.” It was clear. Get your business to serve you and build a business to serve that. It made me rethink. I stepped away from consulting and moved into training and coaching because I could scale that easier.

We do a lot of things virtually. I don’t travel a lot because that allows me to be more home with the family. It was interesting when you were talking. It got me thinking this isn’t just about the kids. It’s not about being a dad in the family time. I could block time and say, “I’m only going to deal with customer issues during these times. I’m only going to deal with training my employees or dealing with employee issues during these times.” This is what I heard. Correct me if I’m wrong, but we could block our days in such that we know how to end a block. This was the most impactful part for me, so I go into the next block with the right mindset.

I frame everything through the lens of going and being a dad and a husband. I do similar things. I’m terribly dyslexic. I hate editing and writing stuff out because it drives me nuts. It comes back to that little perfection thing where if it can’t be perfect, don’t do it, and if I’m writing it, it’s not going to be perfect. If I know it has to be done, I can build an energy builder right before I do it. I bring some of that energy to it.

Whatever it is in your business, maybe it is dealing with customers, making some hard phone calls, or finances, that’s one that a lot of people don’t love, do something you love right before that, so you carry some energy into it. You will find yourself at least allowing that momentum to carry you through and take a little break. Usually, I will have some pushups, squats, or something around in my office too, where it’s like, “If it’s a long day of content, I will break up those segments by doing some exercise or something like that.” That is an energy builder for me, naturally. That allows me to keep moving through some of the hard things.

BCC 87 | Present Entrepreneur
Present Entrepreneur: Do something you love right before you work because you want to carry some positive energy into it. Once you find your energy builder, you’re allowing momentum to carry you through the day.

 

There is so much around the way we think about our work and our place in it that impacts our ability to perform for ourselves, our team, and our families. There is so much that goes into this mindset component. I find that a lot of times, people are like, “I have heard it all before, but it’s too big.” We have that perfection mindset. That is a cultural thing like, “If it’s not going to be perfect, don’t do it.”

We talked about the idea of blocking the calendar and doing these energy builders before you move into the next section. What are some other things that we can do throughout the day or week that are tactical and practical things where I can do this and start seeing some of the results you’re talking about?

Some of the more tactical things I try to teach and talk about with my dad is building key assets into your business and home life. Usually, I talk about 3 key assets, and I do it 3 on the one hand and 3 on the other because there are 6 in total, but they are 2 separate categories. It’s three in our business. For me, the first is creating a client journey playbook. Tactically, what does that look like? In football, a playbook tells you what to do and when to do it to produce maximum success. You can measure it, and you can take it away. You can see things because you are intentional about the journey you’re taking or the plays that you’re running. In our business, we should do the same thing.

How does that look? What are some tactical things about that? I believe every business should sit down for at least an hour a week and look at numbers. It’s your marketing numbers first. How many people are hitting your ads if you are running ads? How many people are hitting your site? How many people are converting into a lead? It’s into your sales next. How many are getting into a selling conversation? How many people are buying? It’s basic KPI stuff or Key Performance Indicators. I’m not going to go deep into that, but have you blocked off an hour to look at those things? This is where people miss out. From there, do you have time blocked off now once you look at those numbers to strategize?

I’m going to give a framework here. It’s called SABER. The first is Strategy. Let’s block off time to look at numbers and strategize. As a football coach, I spent every Saturday looking at the past game and strategizing for our upcoming game. The next thing is Architect. Maybe the most missed part of a client journey playbook or people’s business is a strategy is a lot like Pinterest. My wife and I have built a couple of homes. Anytime that you go into building a home, it’s Pinterest Central with my wife. It’s all these ideas, but you can’t take Pinterest over to a general contractor and say, “Build this.” You got to take to an architect. An architect can take that idea that we talked about.

Let’s say our leads are hitting a page, but they are not converting to become a lead of ours. Let’s strategize. We could try a video on the page, an opt-in, a free download, or a webinar. Those are all strategies. Those are great, but now we need to turn that into tactical blueprints that we can build, whatever the strategy might be. You might think about this in your guys’ business. If you are having technicians show up to somebody’s house, and they are leaving, and the clients aren’t satisfied, how do we strategize about making that happen? We need to tactically put it into something, into a blueprint that we can implement. Architecture is a step-by-step process. For me, I like to draw it out. It’s this email, this task, and this to-do. We are going to wait five minutes and do this.

BCC 87 | Present Entrepreneur
Present Entrepreneur: If your leads are not buying once they hit your website, you need to go back and strategize. Put a free trial or a webinar, those are strategies. Then you have to architect that into a blueprint.

 

It sounds like the guy that builds funnels or used to for a living.

I have built this type of process. It works whether you are going to hire software or a person. It still works. The most important part of this is we strategize. We have all these million-dollar ideas, but they die because we never architect them.

We have all heard this before, “Stop working in the business. Start working on the business.” That is exactly what you’re talking about here. We all talked about it with our friends, buddies, peers, and mentors, all these cool ideas, but then we got back to the office and were like, “I got 600 emails to reply to and 30 voicemails.” We have these ideas, but they never go anywhere. I love that. What’s after architecture?

It’s Strategy, Architect, Build, Evaluate, and Repeat. That’s the SABER framework.

That sounds a little like lean to me.

Going back to what we said before, time blocking it off. That is the key thing. How do we tactically do that? You do it. It’s action. Go block it off right now because we are all busy. Especially when we’re working for ourselves, we got clients and service, it’s easy to be like, “I don’t have time to architect something. I don’t have time to come up with new strategies now. I need to service my clients.” That is where we talk about a little bit of investing ourselves. Once we have blocked off our time, invest a little bit on the ends. Maybe I got to stay up a little bit later, and I got to invest a little bit more.

An investment is an exchange of something of lesser value for something of greater value. Invest a little bit of time to build those things in. If you’re struggling for time, I will hire some software to make your life a whole lot easier. There are amazing software technology tools out there that can help you manage every element of your business. Strategize what you’re struggling with. Look at your business and life, “I’m struggling with this.” Now you can go to Google and type in, “Software that does X, Y, and Z.” Everything will pop up. Hire that, and you will gain some more time back into life.

We talk to owners all the time. One of the cornerstone star programs is getting software and helping people with recruiting. People are like, “There is software for that?” I’m like, “There is software for everything. Yes, there is some good software to help you with that.” There are some great lessons in that. As I hear you talk, I’m picturing what this might look like. One of the things I say is I believe that the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. There’s this opportunity to create some habits here.

What I heard you say is, “Don’t go time block for your family. You got to time block at work.” Otherwise, there’s an opportunity for work to bleed into the time blocks you have for your family. You almost have to say, “I’m going to create this habit of time blocking and figuring out what is important, getting it done, and creating those opportunities for energy as I move from one block to the next. I can’t do it at home and at work. I got to do it in both places almost simultaneously.” It sounds like a heavy lift. I’m sure that there are some people going, “Jordan, this is awesome. It sounds great, but it sounds like this might be tough for me to get around or something like that.”

I know that you have some opportunities. If people like this and they are latching onto it, there is a way they can reach out to you. You got a group that they can join. You got some training coming out. Let’s talk about that for a little bit. How do people learn more about what you do? Tell us how to contact you if someone wants to work with you.

If anybody feels over overwhelmed at any point, get simple. Start simple. That is the key thing. The unique thing I try to always bring to the table is that football coach mentality where I’m dealing with high school-aged kids and college-aged kids. You have to keep things simple. No matter where you are in your life, business, or home, and if you feel overwhelmed, get back to what’s most important. Get simple and start there. We tend to make things way more complicated than they need to be. We are all guilty of it, but get simple. If you focus on that, everything starts to fall into line.

If you feel overwhelmed, get back to what's most important. Get simple and start there. Click To Tweet

As far as coming in and hanging out with us, we got a free Facebook group for entrepreneur dads. It is called The Present Entrepreneur. You can look us up on Facebook. Come join us. Come hang out with us. We are constantly doing training there. We got dads in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and everywhere in the world. In the UK, we got amazing people in there. The primary purpose of that group is for iron to sharpen iron. That’s the whole point of it.

We can come together as dads, entrepreneurs, and aspiring entrepreneurs. We got many dads in that group who aren’t there yet but want to be, and they are there to gain that support and that collaboration from other dads. You can come to hang out with us there. What we have realized in the group, and what I have realized, is that there is an appetite to learn the process that I found, discovered, and fell into. I’m an entrepreneur who never meant to be one. I saw that picture, and it woke me up. I had to find a way to be present with my family while building a successful business and putting food on the table.

There was a process and formula. I call it the FREE-2-IMPACT Formula that I found that has worked for me. It is what I’ve applied with all my agency clients and everybody I have worked with since that time. We are putting together an education arm now of our business. We talk about software and technology. We have been working hard behind the scenes to customize our own marketing automation CRM so that we can give that out to some of our dads.

The reality is all of that stuff can be found on our website, ThePresentEntrepreneur.com. You will find out more about the education, the agency, our software, and our whole mission of trying to help as many entrepreneurs learn to be more present and impactful in their homes because that is the most important thing. The most important and greatest impact that any of us will ever make will happen within the walls of our own homes. If you are worried about putting food on the table, you will never be present at it. We got to stabilize our business so we can be more present and powerful at home.

The most important and greatest impact that any of us will ever make will happen within the walls of our own homes. Click To Tweet

Jordan, thank you so much. I learned a lot. This was personal for me being a dad entrepreneur, an entrepreneur who is also a dad, or a dad who is also an entrepreneur. It depends on how we want to look at it. There are a lot of great takeaways and some things there. I will be joining that Facebook group because I want to learn more and see what is going on there. Thanks again.

Thank you so much. I love your mission. We need more blue-collar mentality in the world. I love what you’re up to, and I appreciate it. I enjoyed this conversation and this opportunity.

Thanks again, Jordan.

 

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$50,000,000 Per Year In Revenue In Only 2 Hours Per Week With John Akhoian

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BCC 86 | 2 Hours Per Week

 

Most people work in the business and not on their business. That’s how they get stuck and can’t grow. People think that they can be rich by just having their own home service business. That is so far from the truth. You actually have to work for it. Set up goals and plan around things that’ll move the needle for you. Start being proactive, not reactive. Join Ryan Englin as he talks to the CEO of the largest residential home service company in California, Rooter Hero Plumbing, John Akhoian. John talks about how he built his business from zero to 50 million dollars per year in nine years! Learn how to plan your life and set goals for your business. Work on those every day and you’ll eventually grow. It’s all about consistency. You can know more about this in John’s book How I Grew my Residential Service Company to $50,000,000 in 9 years. Join in and learn how you can start working on your business instead of in your business now!

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$50,000,000 Per Year In Revenue In Only 2 Hours Per Week With John Akhoian

It’s not too often that we get to have business owners who are in the industry who own a home services company. They get to talk to us and share some of the secrets and insights that they have used. Some of the ways that they have grown their business to eight, and now almost nine figures a year in revenue. Our guest owns the largest residential home services, plumbing, and HVAC company in all of California. They are growing like crazy. They have incredible goals. In this episode, our guest is going to share with you the one thing that he has done that he blames for his success. Get ready to take some notes. He is an incredible guest. I am so excited to have the owner and Founder of Rooter Hero, John Akhoian on the show. John, thank you for being here.  

I’m happy to be here. Thank you.

We got to talk a little bit before we start here, and I get to know a little bit more about what you do and the largest plumbing home service company in California.

We do residential drain cleaning and plumbing service.

It’s the largest in California. That’s a big state if you don’t know. I’m excited to have you here. You’ve been doing this a lot. You’ve been through a lot of ups and downs. I’m sure you’ve learned a ton. For our audience, what is the biggest myth about owning a home service company?

One of the biggest myths is starting a home service business will make you rich. A lot of people think, “All I got to do is start a home service business or plumbing company and I’m going to be rich.”

When you're a small operator, know that you are the business. Click To Tweet

A lot of people think like that, and when they wake up a decade later, they are still in the truck going, “This is not what my plans were.” Why do you think that myth exists and what do you think keeps people from breaking through it and being able to achieve that goal of being rich by owning a home service company?

The myth exists because people on social media are being out there. Seeing that there are companies out there that have a lot of trucks and all of this stuff. They are assuming that it was simple, and it’s the fact of just adding trucks. What stops people from getting there is that most people are working in the business and not on the business.

When you are a small operator, and we all came from those, you are in the business. You are the business. I come across so many people because now we buy companies and we merge with other companies and stuff like that. There are guys that have been in trucks for 30 years and they can’t do it anymore. It’s just they are working in the business every single day. They don’t have a plan to grow the business. They are not working on the business, and that’s what holds them back.

I can imagine it’s probably been a while since you were on a job to clean a drain. Is that fair?

I go out there once in a while. I do it because I want to do it, not because I have to do it. I get to learn, listen, and be on the front end with my team. The last time I was out in the field was right around COVID. When COVID hit, a lot of our guys were unsure about going into the homes. I put my uniform on, protective gear, my face masks, gloves, and everything else. I said, “Let’s go. I’m going to go out in the field. I’m going to go out with you. I’m going to do what I asked you to do, so we are going to go out there and fix some plumbing.” The rest of the team followed. They went out because we are heroes and we had to take care of people’s bathrooms.

During COVID they got a lot more used than they were used to. I love that you’re setting the example with the team by saying, “It’s not beneath me to get out there, get in the field with you, get my hands dirty, and show you what we can do.” I imagine you learn a lot from that too.

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2 Hours Per Week: The biggest myth in the home service industry is that owning your business is going to make you rich. That isn’t the case because there are so many people that own their businesses and are far from being rich.

 

I still do it once in a while. I did it once or twice after that as well. For me, it’s a lot of fun getting to know the guys out there, being on the front lines, talking to customers, and stuff like that. That’s not my primary job. People are doing everything and if I have time on my schedule, I go out and do that because I want to do it and I learn a lot from doing it. Most people that are business owners are doing that as their primary work. You have to get beyond that.

One of the other things that hold people back from that is that they feel like nobody could do it better than they can, “I have to do it.” It’s this perfection mentality. I believe progress comes before perfection. We are going to once in a while make mistakes. It’s okay as long as we can correct it, but it’s not about perfection. It’s about getting progress done and letting people get out there and fail once in a while, and then helping them understand and move them along.

It’s interesting that you say that. In a lot of the work that we do with helping the home service contractors hire technicians. We often find that if you get good people and you get out of their way, they can do the work better and faster than you probably can because they don’t have 27 other things they have to worry about.

Their job is to serve the customer and do it in a way that’s profitable for the company. Whereas you, as the owner, if you are in that truck and you are dealing with it, you are dealing with payroll issues, people issues, and customer service. You are dealing with all of that stuff too. It makes it harder and probably not as productive or profitable to have you in the truck when you could put a great tech that that’s all they think about.

It’s about the generalist and specialist roles. As a business owner, you are a generalist so you are doing everything, including payroll and running calls. You are doing estimates. You are doing it all. Having specialists that do certain things and do it well, and then delegating it to them, and trusting that they are going to do a good job. If they don’t, help them understand what you are looking for and allow them.

It takes longer when you delegate things because it takes a while for people to pick it up, but you multiply yourself and you can do a lot more. We like to hire people that have what we call Batteries Included. This is a term I learned from my coach, Dan Sullivan, Strategic Coach. He talks about having batteries-included people.

Progress comes before perfection. It's okay to fail once in a while as long as you learn from it. Click To Tweet

What does that mean? When I was a kid, I would get these toys. They’d come in and you’d open it up. You want to play with a remote-control car and it’s like, “There are no batteries in there. Better go get batteries,” and you are all upset. It’s basically going to that term, but having people that come in with their energy, resources, and motivation where they don’t drain your energy to get energy. They are coming in already excited about what they are doing. They are excited about life and they think. One of the hardest things to do is think. When you are in a problem situation, how do you figure it out and get out of it without having to call and have somebody else figure out your problem or your solution? We look for the batteries-included type of people.

We could have a whole show on that concept, how to navigate it and find those people and keep them. I shared with you a little bit before part of my story and why I served the trades and blue-collar companies. I grew up in blue-collar and my dad had his own business. He worked in the business until the day he couldn’t work in the business physically anymore. My heart goes out to people like that. The people that have this idea and this plan. They want to do something more with their life or provide for their family, and they have this belief that if they own the business, they will be rich, but so many people don’t make it.

There are so many people who wake up in their late-50s and early-60s going, “I create a job for myself,” and that’s what I have now. If I don’t show up at work, nobody gets paid. They run into this and they are thinking, “How do I get out of this,” and how is it they can exit and those kinds of things. What are some actionable tips that you could give our audience right now that are in that boat? They are feeling stuck, “I’m in the business. Years are getting on me. Life is getting in the way sometimes.” What are some things they can do to make progress towards that goal of being more financially independent and not being a slave or to their business?

I will tell you what I did because I started like everybody else. I was a guy in a truck. I was a guy doing everything. I was running calls, coming home, doing the bills, and sending out invoices to my commercial customers. I was going to the bank, doing receivables, and paying my guys. I was doing everything. I took a day to plan my life. I went in and I set up some life goals. I said, “What are the five areas in my life if I was to look back that I want to accomplish?” I looked at it in five different areas and I set up my family, health, spiritual, and financial goals for the business and everything else, and then a few personal things.

If I get all this done, I’d like to have some personal goals in it as well. I set up some life goals and I broke them up into five years, and then took it to one year. After I did the one year, I started breaking it out into quarters. I said, “Here’s the first quarter. This is what I’m going to accomplish. If that is to add one more truck on the road, do the marketing piece or whatever I need to do to add one more truck to work on the business.” What I would do is, and I still do it up until now, on Sundays I go through it and I read all my goals. I take about two hours on Sunday to plan my entire week.

What I do is look at my lifetime goals. I look at my five-year, one-year and then I look at my quarterly goals, and then I look and see what I have to do to move that needle to get the stuff I want to get in that quarter, and then I write it in my weekly planner and I broke it up into four different aspects. One is business goals and the other one is personal goals. I have a delegation thing because sometimes when you are running a business, things end up on your lap. The next thing you know, you are doing this and you weren’t doing it before.

BCC 86 | 2 Hours Per Week
2 Hours Per Week: Being a business owner is like being a generalist. You’re doing payroll, running calls, doing estimates, and doing it all. You need to delegate some work to specialists that can do that.

 

I got the cleanup and delegations on there as well, and I write down at least two proactive things I need to do every single day to work on the business. I put it on my calendar. I wake up and read it. I make sure that I’m working on those two things, and just getting those two things done. The day fills in because you still have the fires to put out. You still have people at the door going, “You got a minute?” All of this stuff is going to happen.

If you don’t purposely plan those proactive things that you are going to do to grow the business, you could show up and be busy. You could show up and all of a sudden you are like, “The day flew by.” That’s what I did to grow the business. This is the third company that I’m on now that I’m growing over my career in plumbing. It worked every single time. I have done it. It always starts with setting up the goals and starts working on those proactive things, not the reactive ones. The reactive stuff will jump in, but work on those proactive things every single day. You don’t have to do a lot. Two a day is an accumulation of five days a week.

It makes sense. It’s being intentional about the things that are going to move the business forward and help you achieve your goals. What I heard in that was there is this strong commitment and dedication to being intentional about your goals, and carving out time every single week to put them on your calendar and make them important. Someone told me once, “Let me look at your calendar and I will tell you what’s important in your life.” I could imagine blocking out those two things a day right in the morning. Let’s knock them out before the phone starts ringing or employees show up. Knock them out first thing in the morning, and then all of a sudden, you wake up a year later and you go, “Look at how much I have accomplished.”

You have to work on those proactive things because too many times you wake up and show up. If you have a plan, you’ll end up anywhere. You won’t have any progress. You got to start with a plan. That’s my roadmap. That’s my life’s roadmap. This is how I want my life to be. This is what I want in every section of my life, and then I go off and work on it. I got my family stuff in there too and stuff I want to do with my kids. I put it in there. At the end of the day, I get addicted to checking off all of the things that I plan to do and getting them done.

To me, that’s the biggest adrenaline rush. At the end of the day, when I go to my calendar and I have this little thing I do where it starts out with the shade white, and then I change the color to yellow. That means in my mind, I checked it off. I have done it. I go back and look and if I see all of those whites become yellow, I’m like, “I did everything I planned to do. Great job. It was a good day.”

If you are reading this and you feel like you are stuck because you are in the business too much, whether that means that you are still in a truck or you are still dealing with customer service issues, but you are working in the business. You don’t have the opportunity to be more strategic and have more of that big picture thinking so that you can achieve those goals, the first thing is to become intentional about it. Carve out time. Make that the most important thing. I love what you said because those fires are going to show up no matter what. They are going to be there. Instead of planning your day around the fires, plan your day around the things that are going to move the needle for you.

Multiply yourself, and you can do a lot more. Click To Tweet

That’s what I have been doing consistently. It works great for me. I’m making minor tweaks here and there on my weekly planner, but that weekly planner is an incredible tool. I do it right in my journal. I used to do it when they used to have those calendar planners. You fill in the pages. It had three binders. You open it up and put the new year in. Now, it’s all on the phone.

I still carry a journal with me. I do my weekly planner right in my journal, and then I move it from my journal to my digital calendar on Outlook. What happens is first I do it on paper, and as soon as it’s all on paper, then every single one of those things needs to end up on my Outlook calendar because that’s where it pops up on my phone and says, “This is what you are doing now.” You find it right on your phone. I start out on a weekly planner sheet and then I end up transferring it. That’s why it takes me sometimes 2 to 3 hours to plan, but I do that every Sunday. My Sundays are when I plan my weekdays.

How long have you had Rooter Hero?

Towards the end of 2011.

You went from you. How many people do you have on your team now?

We have a little over 450 people now. We are working to approach $100 million in revenue.

BCC 86 | 2 Hours Per Week
2 Hours Per Week: The key to growing your business is consistency. Don’t do it once or twice, but actually become so consistent that you’re doing it over and over and over again.

 

The lesson there for me is two hours a day on Sunday, eleven years later, $100 million in revenue. I’m sure there’s a connection. Is that fair?

You have to be intentional. If you do not look at it and work on it every single day on your goals, you will not reach them. I read my goals every morning. I have to read it every morning, my lifetime goals, five-year, one-year, and quarterly goals, and then my weekly planner. If I don’t do it, it’s like I left the house without brushing my teeth. I feel yucky that day.

That’s excellent advice. I love that. I love the intentionality. You said something here that I wrote down, multiply yourself. If you can become intentional and you get great people and you are building this team, so much more can get done and so much faster. Let’s talk for a minute about those owners that are out there that are still in the truck, and they are thinking, “How do I get out of this? I’m at a point where I love doing the work, but I don’t like the business side of it.” Are there options out there? Are there opportunities for them to explore maybe even exiting the business? Is there a way that once they are that far into, they can easily transition out and still achieve some of their goals?

There are a lot of different ways to do that. A few years ago I wrote a book. The title of the book is, How I Grew my Residential Plumbing Service Company to $50,000,000 in 9 Years: And How I Plan to Triple It. I wrote down all the secrets of what we had to do to grow this company. There were a lot of things that were necessary like building a training program and having a frontline manual. All of the things that are necessary to go from 0 to $50 million. It’s all in there, and then it also talks about different strategies for exiting.

We are looking at merging with and purchasing plumbing companies. A lot of guys are on retirement because they have been in the trades for a long time and want to get out. We send them books, they read them, and they get to know our company. We have other books about what our values are in our company and how a plumbing sales career can turn you into a millionaire. There are a lot of things that could happen.

We have a business that we acquired. The owner came into the business and is now working as an install manager for one of our divisions. His life is now much better than it was before. He had no time to spend with his family. He was constantly in a truck out there working, and now he’s helping us grow our install department. He’s spending more time with his wife and his daughter. He’s making the same or more than he was making before he merged the business. He’s a young guy. He’s in his early-30s. He’s like, “This has put my life right back into balance. Now I can spend time with my family.” There are options. If somebody wants to grow their business and go gung-ho, I got the secrets in here of how I did it. Get the book, read it, and follow the steps.

Take a day off to plan your life and set up some lifetime goals. Click To Tweet

I’m sure that they are probably easy to find either through your website, Amazon or something like that.

On our website, go into RooterHero.com/books and you can get a link directly to Audible. If you are into audiobooks, it will be on Audible. In Amazon, you could order it on Amazon. We have it low. We are not trying to become a New York Times bestseller. We want to get our word out there.

It’s a great message and I love the fact that you are giving it out to people. Many people get to your spot where they have got 8 or 9-figure business and they want to keep the secrets to themselves. It sounds like that’s not your approach. You want to share this with as many people as possible.

We are as transparent as can be. We are a very transparent organization. The key is to consistency and to not do it once or twice, but to become so consistent that you are doing it over and over again. That’s what’s going to make all of the difference. We like to share and we want to get the word out there. I’m grateful to be in this great industry of plumbing and home services that I have been in since I was seventeen years old. I feel like it’s my calling. If I could help as many people as I can, that’s what I want to do.

This goes back to the first question I asked you. Much of what you are doing is breaking down that myth or that belief that if I own the company, I will be rich. Whether it’s the books, giving back, being on shows like this, and being able to share your message. Even giving the opportunity to your install manager and say, “Get out of the business. Don’t create this job for yourself. Let me give you a job where you make as much money, if not more. You’ll have more time freedom and you don’t have to wear 27 different hats to be in the business, and you can focus on the things that you love and the things that you need to create time for.”

I love that you are not just saying it’s a myth, but you are out there shattering it for so many people, not just in California but probably all over the country, reading your books and learning about you. It’s fantastic. You had an offer that you want to share. It’s one of the books we talked about.

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How I Grew My Residential Service Company To $50,000,000 In 9 Years

Go to our website or email me at [email protected]. If you want any of the copies of the five books that we wrote, I will go and send them to you. Send me your address and your name, and I will either send you a physical copy or a PDF, whatever you prefer. Go to Amazon and pay $10 for it. I will send it to you.

I’m going to take you up on that because those books sound amazing. You can’t see this right now, but they are thin. John knows who his audience is. They are thin books. Maybe 60 or 70 pages.

They are short chapters and a lot of pictures.

You are speaking my language. I love it. That’s fantastic. They can learn about you at RooterHero.com. They can get access to your books. I would encourage anybody that’s reading this right now that’s thinking, “I have created this job for myself. I’m spending too much time in the business and too much time in front of my customers. Is there a better way?” The answer is yes, and John has the answer in his books. Maybe even reach out and have a personal conversation with him about what he’s doing over there at Rooter Hero. I’m sure you’d welcome that. Wouldn’t you?

Absolutely.

John, thank you so much for being on the show. I have learned a ton. I got a whole bunch of notes here which is great. Thank you so much.

My pleasure. Thank you.

 

Important Links

Keep 12% More Revenue With This One Trick With Kyle Hunt

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BCC 85 | Keep More Revenue

 

Did you know that you can keep more revenue without changing prices or cutting costs with just one trick? Kyle Hunt says that the most important thing you can do for your business is knowing your numbers. By doing so, you can maintain up to 12% more of your profit than if you just kept your numbers up in the air. Kyle is the owner and podcast host of Remodelers On The Rise, where he coaches and trains remodeling contractors on how to generate more profit, understand the numbers, and make better decisions to win in the game of business. Tune in to his chat with host Ryan Englin and get practical tips and action items that can improve the way you do business and bump up your profits through better financial understanding.

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Keep 12% More Revenue With This One Trick With Kyle Hunt

You heard me talk about the importance of giving your people numbers, scorecards, metrics, KPIs, or whatever words you want to use for that. The people on your team need to know how they are being measured. They need to know what they have to do to win. Why is it that so many businesses at the leadership level don’t know their numbers? Our guest throws me off a little bit. We’re going to talk about sales and things, but when I asked him what is the most important thing business owners need to do, he said, “Know your numbers.”

Our guest is Kyle Hunt with Remodelers On The Rise. He coaches and trains remodeling contractors on how to generate more profit, how to better understand the numbers to make better decisions about the jobs they take, and at the end of the day, win in the game of business. We’re going to talk about the shift that needs to be made in order for you to use your financial statements and the information you have on job costing to help you win in business.

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Kyle, thanks for joining me.

It’s a pleasure to be here.

I’m excited about this conversation. We have known each other for a long time, and I have been on your show. I want to apologize publicly for not bringing you on sooner because I know you have a wealth of knowledge. This is going to be a great episode.

You have apologized a few times. It’s no big deal. I lost sleep. I’m like, “When is Ryan going to invite me?”

I’m apologizing to our audience now. This is going to be a great episode. They are going to learn a ton, and I’m apologizing to them for not having you here sooner. As we jump in the way I like at the beginning of every show, you work with a lot of owners in remodeling. That is your sweet spot. I’m sure that there is something that you see or deal with on a regular basis. It’s some head trash or a myth that these owners have bought into, and it’s holding them back. What is that myth that you want to break down now?

You did a fine job of sending me over some questions ahead of time. I’m a big fan of five P. Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance. That is already a good takeaway for people if you can get the five P acronym integrated into your business, Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance. It’s originally from the British military, and what a fine day to be bringing that up as the Queen is laid to rest. It’s September 19th, 2022. Were you watching it?

I was not.

As I was thinking about what I wanted to share now, there were many myths that I could go into, but the one that I picked was the myth that if you take good care of your people and your clients, everything else will take care of itself. When we think of it, if you’re good at taking care of your people, some people would argue, “Your people, employees, and trade partners are your most valuable thing. Focus on them first, and then they will take care of the clients.” You don’t disagree with that. I don’t disagree with that, but the last part that everything else will take care of itself is a big fat myth.

Break it down. Explain it.

Not to give too much away from where we’re going, but the part that I was thinking about when I shared that was everything else will take care of itself in particular. Where I’m going is all of the financial aspects will take care of themselves. You will make all the money that you want to make. You will be as profitable as you want and things will go smoothly. There is no doubt that if you have great people and you treat your clients well, that is a great foundation for success in your business. That does not necessarily mean that everything else will take care of itself. I have seen many business owners who do well for their clients and employees. They are working their faces off and are not making much money for all of that hard work and effort.

The myth is if you take really good care of your people and your clients, everything else will take care of itself. Click To Tweet

When you break it down like that, I think about the financial side of it. Many people in the audience right now were like, “My entire team knows all the economics of the business. They know how the money works, how it comes in, how it goes out, and how we control expenses.” I don’t know about your clients, but I know a lot of people I talk to don’t have that open-book mindset to share all that. Without that information, I can see why even if you have the right people and you have great customers, that’s not going to take care of itself.

Where I would go next with that is the thing that’s holding a lot of business owners back is they don’t understand their numbers. You don’t need to be a financial wizard, but you need some financial acumen. You need some understanding of it. I work with remodelers. A lot of guys and gals are doing kitchens and bath additions. To be any kind of contractor and to do it well, you have to be a pretty quality person. In home remodeling, we are in there for an extended period of time, “You plumbers and electricians. You guys have it easy. You go in, you put on a little show, you do your thing, and you leave.” Once you try hanging out there for a month or two with all these different moving parts and pieces, remodeling is hard.

What I see is that a good remodeler has a strong heart. They want to do well by the people. We do take care of our clients, employees, and our trade partners, but we also stink and make money for all of the hard work that we’re putting in. What’s holding a lot of business owners back is truly knowing their numbers. Can you pull up your profit and loss statement and explain it to me clearly? Can you tell me, “Here are my top-line sales and my total sales revenue? Here are all my costs of goods sold. Here are the different line items in there. This is my gross profit.”

Let me tell you about gross profit. What that means is we have our overhead expenses, and then we have our net profit. The net profit is already after I have paid myself a salary. You see where my salary is showing up there. Owner draws come out of net profit. We get into the whole realm of job cost reports. We get into the whole realm of knowing how much you are charging, what your markups are, what your margins are, and knowing your numbers. It’s holding people back.

I had a mentor one time and he coached me for a whole year. All we talked about for a whole year was how to use a P&L and a balanced statement to make good quality decisions about my business’s current state, some of the mistakes I have made in the past, and how to use it as a forecasting tool to make those right decisions. I’m sure there are probably a lot of people out there. I’m one of them. If I knew how much I would have had to learn about the financials in a business, I would have gone to work for someone else. I will let someone else deal with that.

I have to interject this because some people are going, “I didn’t know Kyle was going towards numbers and stuff. This is boring.” In remodeling, there are 8 or 10 solid coaches and consultants. I have been a coaching consultant in our industry for 14-plus years. If you line all of us up, every single one of us is talking about numbers, “You got to know your numbers.” Why is it that every coach and consultant that is worth anything is focusing their clients on numbers? There is a reason for that. There are a lot of people that get into contracting and remodeling because they love what they do. They are good at it. They are great with working their hands.

If you want to be in the top 10% to 15% of your industry, there is nobody in that top 15% to 20% that doesn’t have a solid handle on their numbers and that can articulate how the P&L works, and why they charge what they charge. They have fought and worked hard to make sure that their job costing is in place. You can’t ignore it.

Sometimes it gets to the point where somebody was like, “I’m sick of working hard. Where is the money going? We bring all this in and it goes out. I’m dishing out raises. We got inflation. Where is the money?” They get to the point where they say, “It is now time that I am going to fully understand my numbers.” At that moment and what comes after that is when you start to take off as a business. It’s a lot more fun to be much more profitable.

You talk about the numbers. You started this with when you have the right people and you have great customers, everything else will take care of itself. We coach our clients. When you’re hiring good people, rockstars, A-players or top performers in the industry, they have one thing in common. They all want to know what it takes to win. In any game, how do we determine who is winning and who is losing?

BCC 85 | Keep More Revenue
Keep More Revenue: There’s no doubt that if you have great people and you treat your clients very well, that it’s a great foundation for success in your business. But that does not necessarily mean that everything else will take care of itself.

 

There is something being measured.

It’s a scoreboard. If your employees don’t know how they are being measured and if they don’t know what it takes to win, they are never going to meet your expectations. You have probably seen a sports team warming up, scrimmaging, and getting ready. All of a sudden, the game starts. The energy from the players is transformed. It’s at a level that is unattainable by many people. The only difference is we’re now keeping score.

You’re a big fan of participation trophies for kids. Is that what you’re saying?

Absolutely not. I do not like participation trophies. It is healthy for people to know that they are not performing. It is healthy for people to know that they came in last place. What I learned growing up was that second place was the first loser. That’s how I was taught.

I had my sixteen-year-old son and two of his buddies in the car. They were talking about they tied in football. I said, “Do you know what a tie is like? It’s like kissing your sister.” It is pretty similar. I was like, “Is that what you guys did? You didn’t get it in the end zone again. Stinking ties was like kissing your sister.” I thought it was funny.

Getting back on topic. The numbers are super important. I have that cringe moment like, “We’re going to talk finances today.” I’m sure that most people have figured out that just because I made $1 million in 2022, top line, it does not mean I got to put $1 million into my bank account personally. The amount that usually ends up in the bank account at the end of the year is a small fraction of what you brought in. If you don’t know why, you can’t make it better. That’s where you’re going with that. This is what we’re talking about. This is a mindset issue. This isn’t a math issue. I don’t know about you, but I got to the calculator on my phone which is also a video camera and my internet browser. I got a calculator that will do all the numbers for me.

It’s a mindset issue. If I may smack you guys up in the face. You want to be a professional when it comes to your work and your craftsmanship. You want to be a professional when it comes to the client experience, and you want to be a fifth grader and an amateur when it comes to knowing your numbers? Are you going to continue to kick that down the road because it doesn’t come easily for you or it doesn’t come naturally for you, versus fighting to figure out how to learn it step by step and how to improve it?

You watch a webinar, a recording or training and it doesn’t sink into you. You sit down with your CPA and it’s not clicking. Are you going to continue to push and ask more questions, and go until you fully understand it? I don’t need you, as a business owner, to know how to file your taxes or know exactly what investment vehicle to put money in. I do need you to know why it’s important. I need you to know what questions to ask. I need you to be able to look at a high level at how to understand your financials. I’m going to talk more about job cost importance in a minute. I’m going to hold off on that.

What stood out to me was understanding this stuff. I don’t need to be an expert bookkeeper in order to have good financials, but if I got good financials and I don’t know how to do anything with them and I don’t understand them, that’s a problem. Why don’t people do this? Numbers aren’t fun. I don’t know about you, but having money left over at the end of the year to put in my personal account is fun. Why don’t people do it?

What's holding a lot of business owners back is truly knowing their numbers. Click To Tweet

There is a little bit of, “I don’t have the time to dig into it.” For example, job costing is very important when you are doing a project. I’m thinking of maybe a kitchen remodeling project. You should know what your expected gross profit is. Once I have all the money coming in, minus all of my cost of goods sold, materials, in-house labor and trade partners, that equals my gross profit. Everyone should know what the expected gross profit is. We need to know what our actual gross profit is. How did it come in?

Some people say, “Why aren’t they doing it?” Lack of time. Lack of process on it. There are a lot of people that are intimidated by it. There are a lot of things in life that we can be intimidated by or that we were intimidated by that we can work past and work through. I’m pleading and encouraging. On the other side of understanding your numbers is being able to pay your team better because you’re making more, being able to offer more benefits, being able to put more money into your retirement so that you can look at a certain time and be able to retire, and being able to provide for your family in a stronger way. There are a lot of wonderful benefits. Making more money allows you to hire somebody new to take some of the weight off your shoulders and put some of those weights and responsibilities on another team member.

When you are making more money, it unlocks a lot of things that you desire in your business and life. I’m not talking about greedy desire. I’m talking about more stress-free business, less anxiety about things, easier to make investments, and feeling like you’re making progress on things. Why don’t we do it? We get anxious about it. We get frustrated by it. We’re not sure how it works. It doesn’t come naturally to us.

We say, “I know I should be sitting in front of my desk, studying my P&L, watching that training, or working through that, but there is something going on in the field. They need my help.” We go do something that we enjoy more instead of doing the hard work or eating our frog. Your frog every day is the most important thing you need to get done that you are most likely to put off. If you are avoiding financial-related and numbers-related things, you got to get past that. Focus on and put the effort towards it. There are all kinds of help and resources out there if you’re interested, willing and ready.

You brought the eat the frog concept. I don’t know why, but all I had to do was eat a frog every single day, but do I want to sit there and stress about it all day long and go, “I’m going to have to down this thing sometime?” No. I get up before I even brush my teeth or even thought about the day, and I would eat that silly frog to get it over with.

It’s a Brian Tracy thing. He’s an old professional development guy. That’s his whole thing of like, “If you had to eat a live frog every day, what would you do?” The frog is the most important thing you need to get done that you are most likely to put off.

You brought up a great point. It’s not fun. Most people get into this profession and they get into some service or construction business because that’s what they do. They did that growing up or that was the trade they learned. They were like, “I can start a business doing this and bring my friends in. We will have a great time. It’s more fun.” You understand that there is this whole financial side of it that has rules. Business owners don’t like rules. We don’t like rules, and it’s not fun. When we think about what we got to do, the last thing I want to do is sit around at my computer, staring at a spreadsheet or QuickBooks.

It’s not fun when it’s overwhelming. It’s not fun when the numbers aren’t looking good. When he started going through that, Stu popped into my head. He’s a longtime client. He didn’t like numbers. He couldn’t explain his P&L. Stu loves talking about this stuff now. He loves going through his P&L. He loves showing job costing because he now understands it.

He understands that the improvement has allowed him to thrive in his business and life. He has made that connection. He pushed through not understanding how to do it, got training, was consistent with it, and asked a lot of questions. He was frustrated but continued to push forward. It’s interesting that I’m pushing that so much.

BCC 85 | Keep More Revenue
Keep More Revenue: If you want to be in the top 10-15% of your industry, there is nobody there that doesn’t have a solid handle on their numbers, that can really articulate how the P&L works, why they charge what they charge.

 

My main message so far is if your numbers and your financials are murky, they are unclear, and you don’t understand them well, it’s a mindset thing. You got to click something in your head that says, “I’m hearing it from Kyle. I have heard this time and time again. I need to stop avoiding it. I need to commit to it.” You need to commit to it.

What does a commitment look like? Give me one or two action items that those reading this right now are going, “I hear you, Kyle. You’re the twelfth person to tell me this in my career.” What do they do?

Here are some specific actions. Step one, call your CPA or accountant, and schedule a meeting. Get it on the calendar ASAP. What do you do in that meeting? September or October is a great time of the year to be sitting down with your CPA, and looking at your overall tax responsibilities, and how the year has gone. More than that, sit down and say, “CPA, can you walk me through my financials? Can you start at a basic level and walk me through how each of these things happens?” Ask a lot of questions. That would be one very simple action. Do that.

Another action would be if you have somebody in your local market that you know through your trade association or home builder association, or a business owner that you respect that has been successful, what would it take for you to sit down and have breakfast or lunch with them? Say, “What have you learned in your career?” People are willing to share. If financials are a weak link for you, talk to that potential mentor about how they approach their financials and how they approach understanding that at a stronger level. Those are a couple of ideas.

If you have an office manager or bookkeeper, stick your nose into that more often. Another thing that they should do if this is all murky is to go in for a job that you have coming up, and figure out what your expected gross profit is and what your actual gross profit is. You are selling this project for $10,000. How much are you expecting in the cost of goods sold and gross profit? How much do you have in the actual? What that is going to highlight is you are estimating clear enough that I can see what my expected gross profit is. Are your reporting and job costing clear enough where it can show what the actual is?

If you were expecting $4,000 of gross profit, and you brought in $3,000 of gross profit, that is called slippage. We have $1,000 of slippage. That should make you frustrated and righteously angry to say, “Where is this?” Is it your team in the field that is dragging their heels, and it took them longer than you expected? Probably. Is it estimating, and you need to update your estimating because you didn’t include this and now you forgot that? Are the materials that you put in there as a cost higher than what the actual was?

It’s going to be a combination of those things, but if you pay attention and you say, “How do I get through it?” Job costing is a huge place to start. If you can show me the expected versus actual for one of your projects, it is going to springboard and give you major clarity on your estimating, your production, and how to be more streamlined. That’s the spot where I would start the most, but I also gave a few other options.

One of the questions I want you to clarify for me is as the owner, I have to understand this stuff. I have to know how to look at that job cost report, look at the estimate versus the actual, and be able to go, “Here is why that happened.” I don’t think I have yet heard you say, “I have to be the one to build that report.”

If I did a $30,000 bathroom project, I would probably have a bookkeeper. I might have an office manager that is managing QuickBooks. I might be responsible for the estimating. There are people on my team that probably can feed me the information for sure. If there is not, it’s your way of doing it. Pull out a blank sheet of paper, type in income, and write out the cost of goods sold, materials, labor, etc. This minus these equals gross profit.

I don't need you as a business owner to know how to file your taxes or know exactly what investment vehicle to put money in. But I do need you to know why it's important. Click To Tweet

When the actual comes in, “Kyle, we’re not organized.” Grab those receipts and invoices. Total up everything related to that project. They were like, “My team isn’t marking their time per job.” That’s a problem. You need to fix that. If you’re not able to see how much time and hours they put into that particular job, you got no chance of having clarity on your numbers. Go fix that.

I would say that if you don’t like it, that’s motivation number one to go find somebody to do this for you.

Also, take responsibility for it.

You have to. I do think there are people that are going to be better at this. There are people that love bookkeeping. They love this stuff. If you’re not one of them, I’m sure you can find somebody by going to your local trade association or going to someone that you look up to and saying, “Who do you know? How did you get started in this? How did you do that?” Your CPA is going to charge you a lot more, but your CPA might be able to help you.

One of the things that you said too about the CPA is I know we’re at the end of 2022, and I don’t know when you’re going to be reading this. I have learned that even every quarter sitting down with a CPA can open up your eyes to so much about what’s going on in your business. You don’t have to wait until December and go, “Here we go. It’s tax season.” You’re stressed and freaking out because you didn’t have those conversations. I do this and I’m going to guess the gentleman that you mentioned that did this. He’s probably sleeping better at night. He’s probably got a healthier company and stronger bottom line.

He is more handsome.

Understanding your numbers helps with that a lot.

You got more mojo, confidence and swagger.

Is this something that I spend the time to get to know this stuff, I understand my job costing reports, I understand my P&L and balance sheet, and everything miraculous poofs? It’s how you started the show.

BCC 85 | Keep More Revenue
Keep More Revenue: We just have to understand job by job how the numbers are coming in and make sure that we are bringing in these projects at the profit margins that we’re looking for.

 

What starts to happen is you are adjusting your pricing, markup and margin as a result of this. You are improving your estimating and efficiency in the field as a result of this because you’re looking at the numbers. What gets measured gets improved. All of a sudden, if you’re more productive and profitable, there are more dollars in your bank account month in and month out. You said that you got $1 million coming in. Some people are like, “Where is the $1 million I’m putting in my bank?” It doesn’t work like that in the contracting world. What I often see is there are 6%, 8%, 10% and 11% of gross profit and net profit that are just dangling out there. When we start to watch our numbers closer and clean that side of things up, things go much smoother and more profitably.

We got this idea that we’re going to keep selling and producing more, and then we will have the net profit and the results we want. Sometimes, that could work. Oftentimes, we got to understand job by job how the numbers are coming in and make sure that we are bringing in these projects at the profit margins that we’re looking for. When we start paying attention to it, it should fire us up. It should get us going and we start making little improvement by little improvement.

You mentioned confidence. I have worked with contractors who when they go out and they bid on a job are not confident. They either pat it a little bit because they need it. They’re like, “We got supply chain issues right now. I might have to go to a different supplier. They might be more expensive. I got labor issues now. I’m turning over people. I got to bring a new guy in. He is going to have to start.” There are all these things. They take these arbitrary hours, and they were going to add 10% or 5%, then the client was like, “I got this bid over here, and he was a little bit cheaper.”

When you have that confidence, you could probably justify that being a little bit higher price by saying, “We got our act together. We know what it’s going to take to get this done on time, or we could be the contractor that everybody has a joke about. They take your money and don’t show up for six months. Maybe you will get your kitchen back in time for summer, not the holidays.”

I heard a couple of things about what you just said. One is making sure that sometimes an arbitrary number is like, “We’re going to add 10% to this.” If you’re not watching your job costing closely and you know they are slippages, sometimes it is good to put a little contingency in there going, “We know that we got extra cost in this, and that’s going to help us there.” That’s a little messy. Watching your job costing closely shows, “I had ten hours in there for the demo on this bathroom project and it took us eighteen.” I need to know that for next time and adjust my estimate. Job costing and watching your numbers makes you a much stronger estimator. I would say it also does make you a much stronger salesperson.

What you were describing there is if I got my numbers together, I know what it truly costs to do this project and to be profitable as I need to be. When you present that to a prospect, you can be confident in that number. When you’re watching your numbers closely, you’re not going to be sitting there going, “I need to knock $2,000 off this to try to get this job.” What you’re going to be doing is building more value in order to sell that project. That is more of a sales process thing.

I’m looking at contractor A and contractor B, and everything else is the same. They look, talk and act the same. As a prospect, how am I going to decide who to go with? I’m going to go with the lowest price. Why are there contractors and remodelers out there that are able to charge much more than options 2, 3, and 4, A, B, and C? The reason is because they have built more value in their sales process, how they differentiate themselves and how they build the value. That is what allows them to charge more. Sometimes you’re going to run your numbers and start understanding your numbers more and go, “I need to charge more than I’m charging now. That’s why I’m not making any money. It’s yes, it’s this and that, but I’m flat out not charging enough.” You put the proper markup and margin on it. You go, “I got to go sell that.” Yes, you do. Become a better salesperson. Build more know, like and trust. Build more value. You can do it. Others are doing it.

There is a whole other episode in that last little thing you said. We’re running out of time right now. Let me ask you this. You got a giveaway for our audience. I’m sure there are people going, “Kyle, you’re right. I need to learn this stuff.”

I apologize for not being super uplifting. This was a little more serious than why I typically take it. Hopefully, there are two people reading this that hit them between their eyeballs.

On the other side of really understanding your numbers is an unlock to being able to pay your team better. Click To Tweet

We’re about creating action here. Sometimes you got to punch them in the gut and people go, “Fine, I will do it.”

We’re doing it out of love.

We want you to be successful. You deserve a 20% or 30% net. With all the risk you’re taking, everything you’re doing, and the opportunities you’re creating for your team and the people in your community, you deserve it. You deserve to have a healthy business with a healthy bottom line that helps you achieve your goals. Sometimes we got to get a little serious about things. I’m sure there are people going, “Kyle, you got me. How do I get ahold of you?” I want you to tell us that. How do people get ahold of you to learn more? You also have a giveaway for them that may help with some of this stuff.

I primarily work with Remodelers, kitchens and bath additions, and that type of work. If you’re somebody that’s in that realm, if you go to RemodelersCommunity.com, that’s a Facebook group that I have. It is probably the best thing that I have built in my fourteen years in business. Unlike a lot of Facebook groups, all we do is help each other and build each other up. You are not going to see a bunch of cussing and smack talking. It’s high quality. Another giveaway is RemodelersVault.com. I have taken a bunch of my templates and tools, several of them being financial-related, employee, burden, spreadsheets, and all kinds of good stuff. I also had a bunch of my clients submit different templates and tools.

I don’t even know what it’s up to, 40 or 50-plus different templates in different areas of your business. You are going to go in there and you are going to be like, “That pre-construction checklist is amazing. Download, tweak, and make it your own. “That email that you send out between the initial phone call and the in-person meeting is a great know, like and trust builder. Here is a job cost report. Kyle is making it easy to make a job cost report.” If you go to RemodelersVault.com, that’s a wonderful resource. I also have a podcast called Remodelers On The Rise. It’s second best in the industry behind Ryan’s, but it’s up there.

Mine is not specifically for remodelers, but we do serve modelers. We had some remodelers that engaged with us because finding good labor, skilled people, and carpenters that could come in and finish the job has been a challenge for a lot of people. I’m sure you deal with that. Kyle, thank you so much for being here. It wasn’t as exciting and uplifting, but here’s the cool part. If you follow this stuff and you get to dial in your numbers in six months or in a year when you do your taxes next year, you’d be like, “I made way too much money. I don’t know what to do now.” It’s all going to be worth it.

If I were to summarize what we shared in a more uplifting way, you are working hard. You’re doing a great job. If all of this is convicting to you and you are always looking away when it comes to financials, let this be the kick in the butt that you needed to move towards better financial understanding and knowing your numbers. There is a whole unlock of business and life thriving that is on the other side of it. You can do it.

Thank you, Kyle. I enjoyed it.

Thanks for having me.

 

Important Links

 

About Kyle Hunt

BCC 85 | Keep More RevenueI’m the owner of Remodelers On The Rise and creator of Remodelers AutoPilot. I work with remodelers to help them transform their sales process, organize their sales pipeline, and automate their follow-up.

I’ve been a featured speaker at the International Builders Show (IBS), the Remodeling Show, JLC-Live, and dozens of Home Builders Associations and have been a featured writer in Remodeling, Professional Remodeler, and Qualified Remodeler magazines.

I reside in Brighton, Michigan with my wife, Sarah, and our four children.

You can learn more at: www.RemodelersOnTheRise.com

 

 

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Double Your Close Rates With Zac Garside

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BCC 84 | Double Your Close Rates

 

What if we told you the secret to doubling your close rates starts with that first phone call? That’s right! Your business’s customer service representatives have a bigger hand in crafting a positive customer experience and driving more sales than you think. Here to share his vast insight on the matter is Zac Garside, CEO of Power Selling Pros. Zac and his team have honed in on training CSRs to deliver a wow experience so that when the homeowner meets their technician, they cannot help but say yes. In this episode, he highlights the impact of customer service calls and shares tips on how to help your reps do their job well. Zac shares a ton of value in this episode, so grab your pen and take notes on what you need to do to improve your sales.

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Double Your Close Rates With Zac Garside

Many businesses worry about what happens when they train and invest in their people. “What happens if we train them and they leave?” it’s been said. You probably heard how this ends. What happens if we don’t and they stay? For many businesses out there right now, turnover, employee retention, and hiring new people, it’s a challenge.

Our guest narrowed their focus so much on the customer service rep that it’s all they do. The team over at Power Selling Pros coaches and trains CSRs to help them deliver a wow experience so that when that homeowner meets your technician, they can’t help but say yes. There’s so much synergy in what we do over at Core Matters with helping companies attract, hire, or train great people, and what Power Selling Pros is doing by training them. This was an exciting conversation for me. There is so much value. Get ready to take some notes as I welcome our guest, Zac Garside, the CEO of Power Selling Pros.

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Zac, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much.

I’m excited about this conversation. We do a lot in helping home service contractors find customer service reps. Not just any customer service rep, but the good ones. I’m sure that’s what all your clients want as well. Tell me a little bit about Power Selling Pros. My first question for you is what is the biggest myth about customer service reps and their ability to sell and close that you want to share with our readers?

Brigham Dickinson is the Founder of the company. He was doing advertising for contractors several years ago. He got the typical beef that his clients gave him that all marketing agencies get. That is the leads are no good. These leads, they’re not what we want. They’re not whom we want to work with. They want a ballpark price. They want to talk to our technicians.

Brigham, 1) Out of desperation because his first business had failed and he did not want to let this one fail, too. Number 2) Out of experience because he’d been a CSR before, saved the business by saying, “Let me coach your CSRs, those people taking the leads. I bet you if I coach them that you’ll realize you don’t have a lead problem. You have a customer service problem.” That’s what he did. He coached the CSRs and it was like magic. He increased the booking rate. The customer experience got better. They sold more services over the phone. His marketing agency transformed into what we are now, which is CSR training for home services.

I love that so much. People come to me all the time saying, “Ryan, we have a hiring problem.” I always ask them, “In 2021, how many people were on your team at the end of the year?” They’ll be like “Twelve.” “How many W-2s did you issue?” “47.” “You don’t have a hiring problem. You have an employee experience and a retention problem.” When you were telling that story, I was like, “I got to share my own because that’s how I got where I’m at.” Great synergy. This myth, you have a lead problem, but it’s not. You have a customer service problem. That’s what I heard.

Think about it. If you go into any home service business that is struggling to grow and needs help, “Please help us figure out what we need to do to grow,” the first thing they should look at is the highest point of leverage, the lowest hanging fruit. It is the phone calls you’re already getting. There are already people picking up the phone to call you. Are they booking with you? At least 90%. If it’s anything less than 90%, you could be doing better. It doesn’t cost you anything. They’re already calling. All you got to do is figure out how to provide a better customer experience so that they’ll book with you and not call anyone else.

I’ve talked to a lot of contractors over the years and they’ll tell me, “I get better leads here, better leads there, whatever it is.” I almost always see the conversion rate is like 20% or 25%. You use 90% in your example. Is it possible to close more?

Change does not happen once. You don't go to the gym for two hours and you're suddenly ripped. You have to have a plan for consistent growth feedback, accountability training. Click To Tweet

Yes.

You don’t have to deal with the 20% close rate?

You call this myth number two. Everybody thinks customers are looking for the lowest price. “I use price as a filter,” people say. “I have an $89 dispatch charge. That’s to filter out the price drop versus the cheap customers.” Somebody is calling you with a problem that you solve, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, garage door, pest control, or carpet cleaning. If you solve a problem, why are you losing 80% of those calls? The only reason that you should lose 80% of the calls is if your marketing’s terrible and you’re getting the wrong number calls all the time. You’re getting people calling, looking for Pizza Hut, and you’re a plumbing business. If they have a problem, why would you say, “20% is our average?” Do you mean 80% of the people who call you the problem hang up and continue having the problem?

Why don’t companies fix it?

There are many reasons. There are five main ones though. Number one is because of the CSR position. The call handler is notoriously the highest turnover, lowest paid, least respected, least trained person in the business. A lot of business owners think, “That’s how it is.” I remember I visited a large call center with a pretty big turnover problem. I asked him, “What are you guys doing about this?” He said, “It’s customer service. That’s how it is.” I said, “It’s going to keep being that way if that’s how you think of it. You can’t think of it that way. Otherwise, you’re going to have those problems.” I know businesses where CSRs have been there for 5 to 10 years. They love it. It’s career culture.

The number one reason people don’t work on it is that they assume it’s how it is. It’s customer service. We have to deal with it. The second reason is that change is hard. Old habits die hard. A business owner will invest in training. “We’re going to do training for a day. I’m going to get my call center manager to train them for a couple of hours.” They expect change to happen, which it won’t. Change does not happen once. You don’t go to the gym for two hours and you’re suddenly ripped. You have to have a plan for consistent growth, feedback, accountability, and training. That’s hard to do. It’s hard to sustain an in-house training program. That’s why most companies don’t have one. Those are the biggest things right there though.

I hear so much truth in that. As business owners, especially smaller contractors, they’ve got 37 different things they have to worry about every single day, put together a training program, hold their people accountable, coach them, and listen to calls. I imagine sometimes it feels like a waste, like, “I’m doing all this work and putting all this energy and I’m not getting anything out of it.”

BCC 84 | Double Your Close Rates
Double Your Close Rates: If you go into any business that is struggling to grow needs, the first thing they should look at, the highest point of leverage, the lowest hanging fruit, is the phone calls you’re already getting.

 

It’s one of the reasons people reach out to us. I call it the cool uncle effect. They come to us and say, “I’ve been trying to teach them. I’ve been trying to change them. Nothing’s changing. I figure maybe a third party like yourself could help.”

Help me understand this a little bit. If we invest in our CSRs, it sounds silly to say it, but we can 4X our closing rate.

Let’s do some math for a second. What is an average company’s average ticket? $300, $500 somewhere in that range. Let’s say you book, not even quadruple your close rate. Let’s say you book one more call a day than you are right now. One of those customers that hangs up because they don’t like the price or you can’t get there soon enough or they’re shopping around, you look one more of those a day. You’ve got 250 working days in the average year. $300 average ticket, 250 working days, $75,000 in extra revenue from one more call than you’re booking right now. That’s all. That’s it. This doesn’t cost you anything. That call’s already covered. By the time you’re reading this, you probably lost a phone call you could have booked.

I see how you did the math, but I can see a lot of contractors like, “Our CSRs don’t close. We’ve got to send a tech out, do the estimate, and then it’s up to the tech to close. We’re booking calls well, but our closing rate’s not that good,” what do you say to companies like that?

Do you know Tommy Mello?

I do. I was on his podcast.

I was on his also. He told me a great story. When his mom was answering his phone, she would pick up that phone with so much energy and joy. She’d be like, “Tommy’s coming to your house. You’re going to love him. He’s amazing.” She would get these customers so excited for him to come out. When he got there, people would hug him. They’d be so excited. “Thanks for coming out. I’m grateful.”

Customers do not buy from the best companies. They buy from the companies that understand them the best. Click To Tweet

The CSR can influence the close rate because they’re pre-framing the customer. If the CSR provides a bad experience, your technician has to work a little harder now because that customer is pre-framed to be skeptical, like, “The person who answered the phone was not pleasant. Hopefully, this guy’s not the same.” If the CSR is amazing, then your technician probably has a better shot of closing the job.

We talked about that customer experience that you mentioned earlier. It starts with that CSR phone call. If they frame it right, it makes every other part of the process so much easier. Let’s talk about some action items, some things that our readers can do without going in and firing all their CSRs and starting over because they’re not performing. What are some things that they can do, quick hit things? I love the things where they can get a nugget and by 5:00 at the end of the day, they’ve already implemented it. What are a couple of quick things they can do to help their CSRs right now?

The quickest thing you can do is number 1) Make sure you’re recording your phone calls. That’s the place to start. You have to record your calls. You can get some traction, but call recording is where you find real power. You got to record your phone calls. Number 2) Make sure that your CSRs start every phone call by saying three words. They pick up the phone. They say, “Thanks for calling Awesome Heating and Air. This is Zac speaking. How can I help you?” The customer says, “My air conditioner’s not working.”

The first three words you should say in response to that almost every single time are, “Tell me more.” That’s it. Incorporate the words, “Tell me more,” into your call scripting. That’s the first thing you should do because most companies immediately launch into, “Have we ever done business with you before? What’s your address?” They treat it like it’s just a transaction. You want it to be more than a transaction. You want the customer to know that you’re listening to them and that you understand them.

Customers do not buy from the best companies. They buy from the companies that understand them the best. Show them that you understand them a little better by asking, “Tell me more.” They’ll tell you what’s going on, and then you can go on and solve the problem. Book the call. That little thing improves the customer experience significantly. It helps you book more calls because customers feel more understood. It makes the job better. Nobody wants to feel like they’re mindlessly processing transactions. If I’m going to be sitting here answering phones all day, I might as well have fun with them. I might as well have good conversations with people.

“Tell me more,” can transform that experience, but also set your CSRs up for success.

I’ll add one last thing, “When would you like us to come out?” A lot of CSRs will answer every question under the sun. They’ll tell you how much it costs, what the schedule looks like right now, and how long we’ve been in business, but few ask that customer, “Mr. Jones, when would you like us to come out?” The best simple question increases a lot of people’s booking rates.

BCC 84 | Double Your Close Rates
Double Your Close Rates: The CSR can actually influence the close rate, because they’re pre-framing the customer.

 

You don’t have to sell them on getting the service. You just got to get your tech in front of them.

We still sell it. We call it building value. We try to do that after we book the appointment. I want to show the customer that I understand them first. Positive greetings, demonstrate confidence, listen to them, “Tell me more,” empathize, “That’s terrible. I hate to hear that,” then reassure them, “We can help you out. I’m glad you gave us a call. When would you like us to come out?” “I want you to come out as soon as possible.” “Let’s get some information. Let’s take a look at the schedule together. What’s your address? What’s your phone number? What’s your email? Now that I’ve got you on the schedule, I have an available appointment this afternoon at 2:00. May I book that appointment for you?” The customer says, “It sounds great.”

Now I build value. I say, “Great. Mr. Jones, we got you on the schedule for this afternoon, 2:00. You’re going to love this. What we do is we send out a technician. He’s backed by our company and totally trained so you’re in good hands. He’ll do a thorough inspection. He’ll let you know what he finds, and do a little in-home consultation with you to give you your options. Have him come to do all that, it’s only $89. With that, Mr. Jones, you’re all set.”

They’re building that whole experience, that pre-framing. You’re setting it up for success. When that tech gets there, they’re going to knock it out of the park. It’s going to be easy for them because you coached and trained your CSR, the first point of contact.

Build that value, and set the expectation. Do you know what shoots many companies in the foot that no one talks about? I’ve never heard anybody but me talk about this. If a homeowner calls you and they don’t book, oftentimes, they’ll tell you it was because of the price. In reality, they didn’t book with you because you didn’t help them visualize what the experience will be when the technician gets there.

A reason that’s important is that when I hang up the phone after booking an appointment, who am I immediately going to have to answer to? My wife. My wife’s going to ask me, “Did you get that sorted out? Why did you choose them? I need an answer.” She’s going to be like, “We have to pay $89 for them to come out, why?” I need to be able to give her an answer.

When I’m talking to you, even if I like you or if I think you can do it, if I don’t have a good enough answer to give my wife when she asks me why I agreed to pay $89 for the dispatch charge, I’m going to hang up. It’s not because you aren’t good or you’re not qualified or I’m concerned about the price. I don’t feel like I have a reason to give my wife to explain what I did.

We buy emotionally. But we also need to justify logically to somebody else. Click To Tweet

We buy emotionally but we also need to justify logically to somebody else. That’s why people buy Ferraris and then they’re like, “The gas mileage is awesome.” We’re like, “No, you’re having a midlife crisis, Dan. You just wanted to buy a Ferrari.” You got to build that value. Visualize the experience so that I can picture, “This is what it’s going to be like when he gets to my house,” then I feel good booking with you. I feel good explaining to my wife, “He’s coming out. He’s going to do an inspection and in-home consultation. That’s what we’re paying $89 for.” Peace in the hall.

You make it sound easy. Step by step, this is what you do. You’re going to quadruple your close rate. This doesn’t sound like a difficult process, but I imagine that there are a lot of people reading going, “That’d be great,” and there’s something holding them back from doing this. Where do many of these companies get stuck?

It sounds pretty easy to me. Create a great experience, give them something to sell to the spouse after they hang up the call, and guide them through it. That’s what I heard when you were going through your steps. You’re guiding the homeowner through the process instead of them having to figure it out. You’re walking them through it, saying, “This is what’s going to be like.” Why don’t people do this? What’s holding people back?

It is simple, but it is not necessarily easy. As you and I talk about it, you’re right, it is straightforward. It is as simple as I outlined, but then you have the pressures of being a CSR. Let’s face it. Most CSRs don’t just book calls. They’re doing invoicing, permits, payroll, administrative tasks, and dispatching. They’re slammed. Customers are also unpredictable. You never know if they’re going to be upset, what kind of pace or tone they’re going to bring to the conversation.

If the customer sounds rushed, they can get a CSR feeling a little frazzled because they know what they should do. We hear this all the time. The CSR says, “I know what I should have said, but the customer was in such a hurry. The customer wanted a price.” Customers are good at selling to CSRs. They’re good at selling their point of view.

One of the most important things is to understand that it is a simple process, but it does take time to master. We do it one point at a time. We master the greeting first. Let’s make sure the first 30 seconds of the phone call are impeccable and that you have a good greeting. The customer feels heard, understood, cared about, and sufficiently reassured. Let’s practice asking for the business, building value, and overcoming price objections when that customer says they’re going to hang up. Piece by piece, one thing at a time.

That’s a great point. A lot of people forget about that. As we’re helping people recruit these CSRs and hire them, they’re so focused on you got to answer the phone, you got to close the deal, but they forget about all the other pressures associated with being a CSR. In your process, I imagine that you have ways to help them cope with that and deal with it as you’re building this out.

BCC 84 | Double Your Close Rates
Double Your Close Rates: As you grow a CSR, they should have three jobs and three jobs only: book the call, create a wow experience and uncover additional revenue opportunities.

 

Every company’s different. In some companies, the CSR is taking on many things that the phone call feels like a hindrance. Even though it’s a new customer, it’s the most important thing you could be doing right now, capturing that business. It feels to a lot of CSRs like an interruption. “I was working on all these other tasks. Now I have to do this.” There’s a mindset shift there that has to happen so that they realize the importance of the phone call. There also sometimes needs to be a change in responsibilities. You cannot expect the first impression of your business to also be the person who holds the entire office together.

Maybe when you’re early and you don’t have the resources to specialize as much. As you grow, a CSR, ideally, should have three jobs and three jobs only, book the call, create a wow experience, and uncover additional revenue opportunities by selling maintenance plans, making outbound calls to open estimates, and selling additional services that your company offers. That’s what a great CSR should do in the long run.

Again, small companies do a lot more than that. You want to work to that point where they’re only doing those things because then they can focus. They can create that great experience because it’s literally the central part of their job. If they don’t feel like it is the central part of their job though, like it’s just a piece of it, then they don’t quite see the importance of it.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve spoken to CSRs and they’ll tell me, “The reason I’m leaving is that I thought I was going to be booking additional calls, creating a wow experience, and looking for other revenue opportunities. That was 10% of what I got to do. The calls were always going to overflow. They were always going to the answering service. I wasn’t able to get enough of the other stuff done that I needed to do because when the phone rang, it was like stop everything. It’s a disaster. It’s like chaos.” When you were saying that, I was like, “The best CSRs are the ones that want to just do those things.”

People are driven by mastery. We want to be good at something. Eventually, in the short term, it feels nice to do a lot of tasks because you can see your impact. There’s a lot of instant gratification, but in the long run, we all eventually realize, “I’m more so getting dopamine hits every day by doing short-term tasks. I’m not building a long-term skill set.”

People want to do that. They want to master a specific thing. You’ve got to figure out a way to help your CSRs master their job and not feel like they have to be so caught up in five other people. It feels like five other people’s jobs. Again, in the short term, it’s gratifying because you see your impact. In the long run, it leads to burnout, high attrition, and a lack of meaning. “I show up every day and I check boxes on a to-do list. I’m a glorified receptionist at that point.”

I’m thinking of some contractors that I know. I’m sending this show to them and be like, “You need to read this before we talk again. There’s so much great stuff here.” One of the things that you said when we started talking early on was that people aren’t comparing you to your competitors. Let’s unpack that for a little bit. I keep hearing about customer experience. I hear it over and over in everything that you’re building and what’s separating the companies that are implementing your process versus the ones that aren’t. Let’s talk about that. Where is this homeowner when they call you? What are they comparing you to?

The hard thing now is the easy thing later. Click To Tweet

Customers no longer compare you to your direct competition. They compare you to the best brands in their lives. Don’t flatter yourself. They’re not sitting at the kitchen table with you and company B, making a pros and cons list. They’re not giving that much thought to this process. They’re thinking about the fact that Amazon delivered a package in 24 hours. They’re thinking about the fact that the worker at Chick-fil-A stood out there in the rain and said, “My pleasure,” when I got my peach milkshake. They’re thinking about all of the incredibly high expectations that the best brands in their lives are setting and whether you match up.

If they can, the soulless giant corporations, then my local business better. Notice how that’s shifted over the years. It used to be that the local business was the one that everybody loved talking to, having conversations over the counter, connections, and everyone knew the owner. There was a deep community there. Now it’s switched to where we give all our data and connections. We do everything through giant corporations. For the small businesses, homeowners are like, “We’ll see. Maybe they’ll call me back.” It’s flipped. It should be the opposite.

That makes so much sense. Even on the recruiting side of things, these big Googles, Amazons, and Walmarts of the world, they’ve gotten good at recruiting people. They’re not good at retaining them. That’s a whole different episode, but they’re good at recruiting them because they got these corporate machines. I hear all the time, these small home service contractors go, “I can’t find anybody.”

It’s not like they’re saying, “I don’t want to work for a small business.” They just don’t know they want to work for you yet because you’re not putting it out there. You’re not saying, “I’ve got an expectation to live up to.” I feel like that’s the same thing you’re saying here. I love the Chick-fil-A example. We’ve talked to some people about where we recruit good CSRs. I’m like, “I don’t know. Who’s training great CSRs?” Essentially the guy standing out in the rain, selling you your peach milkshake could be an amazing CSR if he does face-to-face interaction.

That’s a great idea. You need a new technician or a new comfort consultant you’re struggling to hire go drive through Chick-fil-A and be like, “How much are they paying you?” You’re going to find some great talent in the Chick-fil-A drive-thru, I’m telling you.

I say Chick-fil-A and In-N-Out. Those are the two. “Go recruit these high school kids. They’re looking for their first career,” who’ve had amazing training. Go find them there. I love that. Why is it that you think that these contractors don’t take the time to say, “They are comparing us to the best brands in their lives, how do we live up to that?” Maybe a better question is, what is one thing that they could do to start moving towards that and narrowing that gap between the best brands in these people’s lives and themselves?

People don’t do it because it’s short-term easy, long-term hard. The easy thing now is the hard thing later. The hard thing now which is getting the customer experience right is the easy thing later. People almost always default to the easy thing now, which is to continue doing business as usual. Maybe raise our prices a little bit, complain about the customer. I’ll tell you a story. I screwed up bad with one of our customers. I created an awful, terrible customer experience for somebody that we work with. I messed up this conversation with somebody. They felt underserved and disappointed because we’re a customer service training company.

BCC 84 | Double Your Close Rates
Double Your Close Rates: Customers no longer compare you to your direct competition. They compare you to the best brands in their lives, period.

 

I provided a pretty bad experience. I was like, “I messed that one up pretty bad.” I treasure the customer experience. It is the most important thing. I know that customers will be loyal to the brands that they feel the best about. What did I do? I went to my team on an all-hands meeting and I told them the story about this major screw-up that I had. I showed them the email exchange. I showed them the exact mistake that I make. Total transparency.

I told them, “The reason I’m sharing this with you guys is that a wow experience is the only acceptable outcome. Not just from you guys, but from me, too. We must create the best experience possible.” It starts with the leader. You got to be transparent and open with them. Get on the phones. Do you want to bring some life into the call center? Go in there for a day and answer the phones. Do you want to bring some life into the sales guys? Go do some ride-alongs. Visit them, and talk to the customer. Show them that you are willing to do the thing you ask of them.

That’s how you start. Practice what you preach. Tell them, show them, “I love them.”

If you want to preach it, practice it first so you have something to preach.

This has been an amazing episode. I’m already thinking of people I’m going to be sending this to once we publish it. I promise you, there’s somebody reading right now saying, “I got to learn a little bit more about what Zac does. Maybe his team can help me.” How do people get a hold of you? You’ve got an offer for them as well. Share that with me.

We invite people to go check out PowerSellingPros.com/free. When you go there, you have the chance to get a bunch of free training samples. You can use it to see what we are all about, or you can use it to share with your team and inspire them. We use some Chick-fil-A stories and other contractor stories and examples in our training that you can share with your team. Get some free training samples from us.

Thank you so much. I’ve enjoyed this. I’m starting to see there’s so much in the hiring stuff that we deal with. Maybe it’s not a personnel problem. Maybe it’s a training and coaching problem. Maybe you hired the right person. They just need some extra support. It’s been fantastic. Thanks so much, Zac.

It’s my pleasure. Thank you so much, Ryan.

 

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About Zac Garside

BCC 84 | Double Your Close RatesI’m the CEO of Power Selling Pros, a podcast host, and I have a short course called The Storytelling Habit – it’s where you’ll learn to become a prolific, engaging, and impossible-to-ignore Storyteller.

 

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