The principal focus of this podcast episode centers around the critical strategies for hiring and cultivating a team of HVAC professionals, emphasizing the necessity of recognizing talent beyond the conventional boundaries of the industry. As we delve into the nuances of team building, we underscore the imperative for both business owners and sales personnel to adopt a mindset conducive to growth and collaboration. The discourse further illuminates the significance of fostering an environment where employees are not merely workers but potential leaders, encouraging them to aspire to the same opportunities as their employers. In addition, we explore the transformative concept of “becoming the person you wish to attract,” which serves as a foundational principle for effective leadership and mentorship within the HVAC sphere. Join us as we engage with our esteemed guest, Mr. Jimmy J, who articulates these principles with profound insight, aiming to inspire a new generation of HVAC professionals. The discussion centers around the imperative nature of human capital in the HVAC industry, focusing on hiring and team-building strategies. The speakers, Sam Wakefield and his guest Jimmy J, delve into the multifaceted challenges faced by business owners in sourcing qualified personnel. They emphasize a paradigm shift away from traditional methods of recruitment, advocating for a more expansive approach that includes seeking talent beyond the confines of the HVAC sector. This approach not only broadens the pool of candidates but also infuses the industry with fresh perspectives and innovative ideas. Furthermore, the conversation highlights the importance of fostering a culture of growth and opportunity within organizations, suggesting that business owners must create environments where employees are incentivized to expand their skill sets and pursue leadership roles. This, they argue, is essential for retaining high-caliber talent and ensuring long-term success in a competitive marketplace.

Welcome to Close it now, an H Vac sales training podcast with Sam Wakefield.

Here we'll build your reputation in residential H Vac sales to be the expert influencer in your market.

You'll get insight into the top minds in the industry as they share their skills and hacks to help you on your journey.

This podcast isn't just about selling more, it's about understanding your customers needs and building efficiencies behind the scenes so you can sell more but work less while being top of mind when people think H Vac.

Now let's get started with your host of the Close it now podcast.

This is Sam Wakefield.

Hey Sam Wakefield here.

Welcome back to Close it now, the podcast where basically you can tap in next level psychological thinking about sales.

We get all the way down to the nuts and bolts and nitty gritty, but also what is not in any other place space in the industry that I have found and if you found some, recommend it to me because we all learn from each other is thinking about H Vac sales on a different level.

And that's why I like to bring in so many people from outside the industry because it forces us to think outside of our box.

So my guest today, I'm super excited to have him.

He's.

If you haven't heard the last one, go back to the podcast that we did before five essential networking connections on how to get more leads with Mr. Jimmy J's.

He is back and super excited to have him back.

He has definitely given a lot of his time to us to be able to next level.

Who doesn't want to next level your game.

If you're a half a million dollar a year salesperson, it's time to be a million.

If you're a million, it's time to be two.

If you're two, it's time to be four.

And it's all possible in the industry.

If you're four, it's time to be 10.

Right.

So quick introduction for Mr. Jimmy J.

He I've known him for quite a while.

He is a business coach currently working with a company called Apricot Solar.

He's a business coach for the company, also works in the field himself.

So he is, he's not just coming at this from a you know, overview, trainer, manager perspective.

He also is walking, fleshing this out, walking every single day doing sales himself.

His he's coached this company though.

And here's these numbers that are going to blow your mind from zero when the company started to $134 million in a single year in five years alone.

So that's one of the main reasons I reached out to him.

It's like, you know, anything, anybody that can help a company see that type of growth has serious wisdom they can impart to us.

In here on the Closing now podcast, his goal is to create 12 solar millionaires.

Solar millionaires.

12 solar millionaires in just over 12 months.

So in a year, somebody's personal income going from zero to a million bucks in 12 months.

So that's his goal.

Clearly if you can scale it on business level, you can scale it on an individual level.

I'm excited to talk to him today.

Mr. Jimmy Jayes, welcome to the episode.

Thank you so much.

Great to be here and excited to be talking to your Close it now community.

Yeah, absolutely.

Man, it's so cool when we, when you develop a, a group that is so focused on one thing, it's mind blowing what they can accomplish.

The things we've seen our network support each other and help each other learn and grow.

In this last couple years since Closing now started, we're now entering year three.

So this last month in April was, this is June, we're in June now.

This year was a two year anniversary.

So we're a couple months into year three, which is exciting.

So we've got a fun topic today.

This one is going to be a good one.

I know a lot of people, you know, when they talk about scaling and growing the business, their biggest thing that I hear from my business owners, from my managers, all the different people always reach out to me.

How do we find good people?

You know, there's so many of the biggest complaint is there's just a lack of qualified people in the industry.

How do we find them?

So today's topic, hiring and building a team of H Vac professionals.

How do we do that?

Clearly you can't build scale this fast by only finding people within a specific niche.

You've got to go outside that.

So let's unpack that, let's break that apart a little bit.

What are your thoughts here?

Yeah, well, first of all, the very first thing that I would say is I know that you've got a diverse audience of listeners and there's people on the line who are companies owners and there's people on the line who maybe are just getting started in H Vac and there's some people on the line that you know, you know, do a million or two, you know, in sales every year, just working in the field in H Vac.

And so what I want you to know Is that this conversation applies to everyone.

Okay?

This conversation applies to everyone.

Doesn't matter if you are a business owner or not.

You want to think like a business owner.

And unless you plan to crawl through addicts until you're 50, right.

You need to have some sort of a way to get leverage.

To get leverage.

And it doesn't matter the space.

If there's people in pest control, like, do you want to knock doors until you're 50?

So it doesn't matter the space.

Okay?

You got to find a way to get leverage.

Otherwise you're going to work until the day that you die.

So you really need to learn how do you find and build effective teams of people in whatever industry you're in?

And again, if you're just selling right now, that's okay.

Like, how can you find and train great people to bring into the company to help your company grow?

If your company grows that you're working with, right, there's going to be more leadership positions.

There's going to be more opportunities.

So think like a business owner even if you don't own the business and think about, what can I do to help this company grow.

And if you get good at finding and recruiting and training people, you know, who can be, you know, closers in H vac, I promise you there will be opportunities that come your way.

So the first thing that I would say is, doesn't matter where you're at.

This is a relevant conversation for you.

Unless you plan on, like I said, doing sales and crawling through addicts when you're 50, you got to learn how to be able to get leverage.

You got to learn how to be able to train people and to hire people.

Sure.

Yeah, absolutely.

So what are some ways to do that?

Because 100% agree.

I mean, if you're just keep doing the same thing, you're going to get the same results.

We all know, especially in.

In our industry, the, you know, there's a limit.

You know, there's only so many hours in the day that a single person can put in and see a return on that.

Awesome.

Yeah.

So it comes down to a couple different things.

The first thing is you just have to have an eye for it.

So you need to be looking for opportunities to meet people.

All right, so just like when we were talking about the five essential networking connections we talked about in the previous podcast, that most people just look for ideal clients.

Like, are you a client?

No.

Are you a client?

No.

Are you a client?

No.

Are you a client?

No.

And they'll go to a networking event.

And they'll be like, you know, do you need an H Vac?

Do you need services?

And if the person says no, then they're dropping a business card in their lap and they're going to the next person as quickly as they can because they haven't trained their eye to look for the other four essential networking connections.

Right.

The referral partners, the influencers.

So again, go back and check out that episode.

If you haven't through, close it now.

But it's the same sort of a thing when it comes to team building and training people.

Do you have an eye?

Are you looking for people who know how to sell?

Right.

So that's the very first step is you have to start to train your brain and say, where do I find people like this?

If your company has recruiting events, then great, like, bring people to them.

And people get so caught up on, like, how much am I getting paid for this?

How much do I get when I bring in somebody?

And you might be able to work out something with the owner of the company that if you bring somebody in that you get some sort of compensation for that.

But again, think like a business owner, right.

If the company grows, it's good for you.

Sometimes you get this scarcity mentality of like, well, somebody else comes into the company, then they're going to be taking my leads and my appointments.

Right.

And it's the wrong way to think.

You bring people in, you get good at training.

I promise you there's going to be more opportunities for you.

Sure.

What's that old expression, a rising tide raises all ships?

Absolutely, yeah.

And the person who does more today than what they get paid will soon get paid more than what they do.

Absolutely, yeah.

I've adopted that from early on in my career was, you know, I've always, you know, done more, take it basically, just like you're saying, taken ownership and treated everything I touched as if my name depended on it, not necessarily the company name.

And, you know, it's amazing that what happens when you give.

You make a life goal to give more value than you take.

I love it.

So the first thing that you want to do is you want to make sure that you've got an eye for it, that you're looking for it.

All right.

The second thing that you want to make sure that you're doing is saying that I use is become the person you want to attract.

So if you want to attract somebody into your business, if you're a business owner, if you're in the field and you're training People, are you practicing what you preach?

If you're preaching, follow up, follow up, follow up.

And you're not doing any follow up.

You're not going to attract what you teach, you're going to attract what you are.

So you want to make sure that you're becoming the person you want to attract.

And I actually learned this from John Maxwell, leadership author, wrote the 21 year feudal laws of Leadership and was fortunate enough to be in a kind of a roundtable with a small number of people and got to be able to meet John through zoom and he's going through an exercise and he said, make a list.

What are the 10 characteristics?

What are the 10 qualities that you want in H vac professionals in your team?

Sure.

So take a minute and do that.

Like think about, even if you write down two or three, what are some of the characteristics that you want that you're looking for?

Is it somebody who's coachable, Somebody who's hungry?

Is it somebody who's self motivated?

Is it somebody who follows up?

Like just make a list of what are those characteristics that you want?

And then you had to share them.

And I was like, oh yeah, here's what I want, right?

Somebody who's self motivated, somebody who's a leader, somebody who's faith driven and like somebody who's, you know, takes time with their family and that they play all in, in business time.

I made my whole list, man.

I was like, it's a good list.

I'm going to get some good people.

And then he says, now turn the page over.

And now I want you to rate yourself on a scale of 0 to 10 in all of the areas you just wrote down.

Ooh.

Oh, John, you're doing me dirty right now.

Right?

Like how lead, how coachable am I, how strong am I in my faith?

Right.

How much do I follow up?

Am I a self starter?

One of my big ones is resourceful.

Am I resourceful?

Am I waiting around for somebody to solve this problem for me or that problem for me, or am I solving it myself?

So the idea is become the person you want to attract.

Are you developing yourself daily into the person you want to attract?

And so one of the great things about this close it now community, right?

I'm kind of preaching to the crier here that you guys are here and you're learning and you're becoming the person that you want to attract.

So thing number one is have an eye for it.

Thing number two is you want to become the person you want to attract.

And thing number three, I'm talking mostly right now to the business owners on the line.

I said that this, that regardless of where you're at, that this whole conversation, you know, applies to you.

I'm going to talk to it for a second.

To the business owners.

Sure.

If you're a business owner listening in right now, right.

Listen to the podcast.

Maybe you're at the gym, maybe you're on your way driving somewhere, like, pay attention.

If you want to attract high level people, you will never retain someone with the same or greater level skill than you have unless they have the same or better opportunity that you have to grow a company.

Wow.

Let me say that again.

You will never retain and attract somebody with the same or higher leadership ability as you unless you give them the same or better opportunity as you have in the field.

So you have to create an environment where rather than having this old school belief around business of like, the more that goes out, the less that comes to me.

Rather than thinking about how can I lower my expenses, including lowering my commissions, right.

That I pay to the field so that I can keep more of the pie, it's backwards.

You got to think about how can I give higher commissions, how can I give higher levels of ownership, how can I give higher levels of freedom?

In coaching with Dave in the solar company, as for instance, one of the first things in our consulting that we did together is said, how can we create a owner's profit pool where people who are not owners of the company, right, can get to a certain place if they do enough volume, if they produce enough, they can actually get paid in some of the percentages of the profit of the company.

Wow.

And you might say, well, but it's my company and I take on the risk and I listen, they're going to.

Leave.

You'Re going to lose them anyways.

You will never retain somebody long term unless they have the same or better opportunity as you.

And so you can spend your time taking five years, ten years training somebody, coaching somebody, showing them everything, and you're just training your competitors unless you give them the same opportunity that you have.

So find some sort of a way to be able to incentivize people, right, Reward that loyalty.

Because you know, there's a point where people come in and you know you're doing a lot more for them than they're doing for you.

But over time, that pendulum starts to swing and it gets to a point where they're doing more for you and for your company than you're doing for them.

And they could very easily go start Another company, and they got to wake up every day and decide, am I going to be loyal to you, the business owner, or am I going to go get the same opportunity that you have?

Because they can't have both.

Sure.

As a business owner, you got to find ways to not make your people make that choice every single day, right?

Give them the same opportunity that you have.

Find some sort of a way, hire a coach if you need to, you know, figure out a way, right, that you can give them the same opportunity and where your goal is.

How do I pay more money in the field?

How do I have more success stories inside of H Vac?

And usually, you know, in the path, in the process of doing that, you're going to scale your business and scale your profits to a point where all of a sudden your, you know, your costs are actually lower as a percentage.

And so you can pay more out and still be able to make a lot of money and be able to retain higher quality people.

Wow.

This is, you know, there's an old adage in the industry that I've heard for years and years and honestly kind of forgotten it a little bit until you're mentioning this.

The adage is, you know, so many business owners complain and say, well, what if I train my people and they leave?

And then of course, the rebuttal of that is, well, what if you don't train them and they stay?

We know which is worse.

But at some point, we all.

That that's kind of a paradox because we know that is what we're battling against is getting to that place of we've trained them enough.

And, you know, they see us driving the nice car because the business has grown and now they want to go buy their Ferrari.

So I love this conversation.

Man, dropping bombs today.

This is literally.

This concept is turning the.

If any of you out there listening are actually hearing what country is saying here, talk about turn our industry on its head.

This is how the kin good riches of the world and so many others, you know, that have scaled to such amazing volume and huge, you know, huge size.

This is the concept they've adopted.

Now, I don't know anyone else who's grown a company to over $100 million in five years.

So, man, this is so applicable to what we do.

So, man, dropping bombs today, man, I love it.

I love it.

Well, here's a mindbender for you.

When I started coaching Dave, he was in the field knocking doors, selling solar.

All right?

And so what it means is that there is a company owner that Dave was working for, and they were just keeping all the profit.

Dave was investing his own money in advertising to get his own appointments in solar, and he just was underappreciated, and people who were at the company were just keeping most of the profits.

And so he didn't want to create his own company.

He created his own company out of a necessity, and he became the owner that he wished he had.

He became the owner that he wished that he was working under.

And so in creating his own company, there was just a little while ago here, you know, you've heard that company did $134 million last year.

I believe that $89 million a year before that.

So a ton of growth.

And yet.

Right.

Dave, the owner of Apricot Solar, is putting so much money back into the field, spending money on appointments, spending money on commissions, and putting a whole bunch of money back into the field to the point that just recently, one of the sales associates inside of the company literally bought a Ferrari for Dave.

Oh, my gosh.

Jeez.

We're talking, like, hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Like, it's a Spider.

Super nice car, right?

And here's the thing.

Dave could have bought himself one multiple times over as the owner of the company.

Right.

He literally spends more than that in advertisement every single month to keep people in the field, their calendars filled with appointments.

So that's the level.

Right.

That he's giving at.

And so there's somebody in the company that's, like, in the field making the kind of money that they can afford to go buy a Ferrari and give it to the owner to thank the owner for what they're doing.

So if you're an owner right now, like, how can you be in that sort of a position?

How can you give so much to the field, Right.

That people in the field are buying you gifts.

Right.

And when you do that, when you create that space, that's how you'll be able to scale.

Rather than you train somebody, they grow, they bring in sales, they leave, they start their own company.

They take a handful of people with them.

Then you say, hey, anybody who wants to stay, I'll make you the new leader.

And you work with them and you rebuild the team.

And so you have this replacement model rather than this scaling model.

So if you're.

If you're an owner in the room, understand this.

It's easier right now than ever before to start.

For somebody to start their own business.

It's easier now than Ever before.

For somebody who's a salesperson in your organization to think that they know what it takes to run a business.

No, they don't.

And it's harder.

And you're the last one to get paid.

And we know that.

Okay?

But that's not what you're fighting against.

You're fighting against somebody reading a blog Post, watching a YouTube video about, you should go start your own company.

And then they leave.

And now it's hard for them to come back.

It's hard for them to build their own business.

And so, just as an owner, I'm begging you, find ways if you really want to scale, if you really want to grow.

Right?

My coaching hat on right now.

Find ways that you can show people high levels of appreciation.

Find ways that you can give people the same opportunity that you have.

Maybe that's a profit sharing pool, maybe that's actual shares or ownership of the company, but you have to find ways.

It's just different now than it used to be 10, 20, 30 years ago.

You got to find ways to be able to give people the same opportunity that you have if you really want to scale.

Right?

That's it.

I mean, what's all of the studies where they say people stay for culture, not because of the income necessarily or anything else.

They stay because they like it, not because of anything else.

And that's.

They like the people they work with, they like the leadership, they like the culture.

And man, giving them that, that piece of, wow, what a crazy concept.

Everybody listening.

Giving your company, your individuals who are performers, a piece of ownership at some level.

What a better way to end, to develop the culture that they can become owner in the company, to develop that owner mindset.

Wow, this is thinking on a different level.

This is that next level thinking.

Like I was mentioning, I love having Mr. Jimmy J.

Is on this podcast because it forces us to think differently, to get different results.

So, wow, that was powerful today, brother.

I am just so stoked that you had a few minutes to share with us.

My gosh, man.

If you are an owner on the line, it doesn't have to look like giving away ownership, okay.

What it needs to be is that they have to have the same opportunity that you have if you want to be able to retain people at the same or higher levels of leadership that you have.

And if you're somebody in the field right now, like, fair warning to you, okay?

I've worked with a lot of businesses.

Most businesses fail in their first five years.

And a lot of people that go out and they Try to start their own business.

They're good at sales, but they try to go out and all of a sudden they got to deal with payroll, they need an HR department, they got to be able to float money for ads.

They have to spend time doing income and balance sheets and statements of cash flow.

And there's all this behind the scenes stuff that you don't know about.

So if you are not an owner on the line, like you want to think like an owner, you want to think about, what can I do to grow this company?

Even if you don't own it, act like you're an owner.

Act like, you know, respectfully.

Don't be trying to do things your own way.

If there's business owners tell you to do it one way, do it that way, it's their business.

But what can you do to add value to the company?

What can you do to grow the company?

And if you're thinking that way and you've got an abundance mentality, understand that there will always be a position for somebody that knows how to create profit in a company.

And so just treat it like an owner.

And fair warning, it's a lot of work.

If you go to start your own company, maybe you're great at the sales part and you think you can do everything and then you spend none of your time in the field.

Right?

You spend all of your time doing all this stuff.

And in the example I just gave, you know, people in the field selling solar up until recently all drove way nicer cars than the owner of the company did.

Right?

Because he's reinvesting money back into the company.

Probably the same thing inside of the H Vac world.

So if you're in the field, being an owner is not all it's cracked up to be.

If you're, if you're owning a company, you want to make sure that they have the same or better opportunity as you.

That's it.

Whether that's ownership, whether that's a profit sharing pool, whether that's their ability to make money with commissions just structured in a way where they've got upward mobility, where they're not tempted to leave and go and make a bad decision.

Trying to start something from the ground up.

I love it.

I love it.

That's excellent wisdom, especially for somebody who's worked with so many companies as I know you have.

So we are wrapping up today.

I know you've got to.

Thank you for your time.

I know you've got to bounce here in just a few minutes.

In the last few minutes, one Question is, how does everybody get a hold of you?

How do they contact you?

The best.

And to find out, you know, some more about your coaching or whatever you're offering right now, I know you do so many things and, yeah, last, you know, few parting words that you'd like to leave with us.

And thank you so much for being on the episode today.

It's been.

It's been.

Been a pleasure.

Yeah, my pleasure.

If you want to get ahold of me, probably Facebook's the best way.

I'm gonna close it now.

Facebook group.

So just search Jimmy J's in the private Facebook group and you can probably find me that way.

Everybody that is J, I, M, M, I, E. There's no Y. Yeah.

So you can find me there.

You can, you can.

If you can't find me, I'm sure you can shoot Sam a message and we can get connected up that way.

As far as coaching goes, I do have a handful of coaching clients, but I'm not actively taking on coaching clients right now.

And like I said in the intro, my intention is inside of the solar space to create 12 solar millionaires, meaning 12 people who've made a million dollars in commission per year over the next 12 months.

So obviously crazy focused in order to be able to make that happen.

And, yeah, if there's somebody on the line and, you know, I know salespeople know salespeople.

So if you know somebody who's, you know, a documented closer, basically, you know, for me, really what I do is rather than trying to train people from, you know, the very beginning of the road and help them, you know, become into great salespeople.

The only way that you're able to create, you know, 12 solar millionaires in 12 months is finding people that already have a high competency when it comes to sales, when it comes to leadership.

So if you know somebody, like I said, salespeople know salespeople.

So if you know somebody who's a documented closer, doesn't have to be in the solar industry, whether they're in the pest space or if they're in door knocking or if they've done roofing companies or anything like that.

If you know of a document enclosure who's unhappy.

I always think about it like kind of the single A, double A, triple A, mlb, right.

I think about it little terms like that of if there's somebody who's got great numbers in single A, they get called up to double A.

If they got great numbers double A, they get called love to aaa.

So if you know somebody who's got their closing statistics.

They're closing numbers and not based on what they say, but that they're documented that they've been closing consistently for a while and they think they might be a good fit for the solar industry.

I definitely love to talk with them.

So that's how you can get in touch with me.

And Sam was talking about maybe doing a Facebook Live or something to answer some Q and A in the group.

So if there's any way I can be of service to you in the H vac industry, I'm definite happy to do that.

And that would be, I guess my final tip is as you're meeting people in other industries, as you're meeting other salespeople or meeting people in the Close it now group, you know, don't be trying to, you know, recruit those people into your company, but be building long term relationships and finding ways to help each other out.

You never know, right?

You could learn something from them.

They could be a referral partner.

They could refer you your next sale, they could refer you your next closer.

So build long term relationships for life.

And it's probably my best advice.

Love it.

I love it.

Long term relationships for life.

There's an old book called how to Swim with the Sharks Without Getting Eaten alive by Harvey McKay.

So here's the book recommendation for the day springing right out of that.

Of course, it's written in the days of Rolodexes, but the value of it carries through even till today.

And it's exactly that.

So thank you for being on the podcast today.

It has been just so.

My gosh, so mind altering, mind bending like you said.

And just the value that you brought is much appreciated.

Everybody make sure to and like to be mentioned.

If you're not already in the Facebook group, go join the Close It Now Facebook group.

You can find a link directly from the website which is closeit now.net closeitnow.net and send or and if you want to get a hold of Jimmy directly, shoot me an email.

Send samloseitnow.net that's s a m@close it now.net so that's website and the email.

Pop me a message.

I'm happy to get you connected.

And yeah, everybody go out there, use this knowledge, implement it immediately.

Because remember, success happens at the speed of implement implementation.

All right, guys and ladies, go save the world one heat stroke at a time.

It's been a pleasure, Jimmy.

Thanks, man.

We will.

I'm sure we'll talk to you again soon.

All right, thanks a lot everybody.

Become the person you want to attract.

Thanks for listening to Close it now with Sam Wakefield.

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