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The moment a homeowner submits your lead form, their excitement is at its peak. What happens in the next hour determines whether you get the job or someone else does. Most contractors have no idea how much revenue they are losing in that window.

Tanner Mullen has thought about this more than almost anyone in the trades. He built Premium Painting to over $1.5 million in revenue and now runs it completely hands-off after installing a GM who started as a carpenter's helper. He also founded DripJobs, used by more than 2,500 home service companies, and is currently onboarding the first 100 contractors onto Routemize — a route-optimized booking platform that lets customers schedule same-day estimates directly from a Facebook ad with zero follow-up required.

In this episode you'll learn:

• Why a customer's trust starts dropping the second they submit a lead form — and what to put in place within seconds to stop the bleed • The difference between booking rate and closing rate, and why booking rate is the only one you can actually control at 100% • How Tanner's AI voice agent booked 5 appointments in a single weekend for his painting company with no human involvement after hours • What "invisible currency" really means and how it explains why some contractors charge more for the same work and still win the job • Why Tanner ran a room of 200 gutter business owners and not one of them had ever hired a professional gutter installer — and what that costs them • How DripJobs triggers an automated text and email within seconds of a lead form submission and moves the customer through 11 pipeline stages without manual chasing • The math on reviews: Premium Painting is the only 5.0 company in their city with 300 more reviews than the next competitor — built entirely through a systematic DripJobs workflow triggered at job completion • Why Tanner does not want leads — he wants bookings — and how Routemize is eliminating the lead stage entirely by putting a scheduling chatbot directly on Facebook ads • How personal brand works as invisible currency in your local market, even if you never go viral • What a business buyer asks for first when they want to acquire your company — and why your CRM and software stack matter more than your revenue number • Why same-day appointments close at a dramatically higher rate and how route optimization makes them finally possible without chaos • The one metric most contractors ignore that predicts whether their business will outlast them or shrink back to just themselves

This episode is for any home service contractor who is spending money on leads but not seeing it convert — and suspects the problem is somewhere between the form submission and the estimate.

What's up guys, this is Maurice here Cardona, I'm here with Tanner Mullen, welcome to the show.

Hey man, appreciate you having me.

I'm excited to talk to you. I first came across your profile on X. I follow people, like many different people in the space. And I saw the content you're posting. It's really good content. And that's really our first notice to you. And I saw, hey, this guy owns a painting company doing a good job with his marketing and also owns a couple of tech companies. So I can't wait to dive in.

Yeah, man. Honor to be here, man. Thanks for the opportunity.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So you didn't start a painting company because you love painting. You did it to help your dad. Take me back to that moment. What did you see in the trades that made you think I can do this better?

Yeah, I mean, painting with my dad back in like 2006. I was a kid. He'd wake me up in the morning at like 6 a.m. And I just remember the feeling, you know, that customers had when we would finish their job. So I always had an appreciation for it. But there was no, you know, he was painting by himself. He pretty much survived off a word of mouth in our community. And, you know, when the recession hit around that time, man, it was just real tough because he didn't have any systems in place. He didn't have. I mean, my mom was like answering the phone and

using VistaPrint back in the day to kind of create marketing postcards for him. But there was no system, there was no CRM, there was no, it was pen and paper, notepads all over the dashboard type of business. So for me, man, growing up, I'm like, I don't want anything to do with this because we struggled, right? So was like, there's no way I'm going to be a painter, right? And that was another thing, man. There was no separation between painter and

painting business owner. I didn't know anyone that owned a painting business and didn't paint, so that wasn't even a thought. for me, know, growing up and going through the different channels I went through and learning business, I just fell in love with business, you know, went to school for it, but more importantly, learn real life experiences. I wanted to be a restaurateur. So, you know, again, man, painting, painting wasn't even close to anything that I thought I was going to do.

And so you said the recession was that back in 2008, 2000, around that timeframe.

Yup, 2006 to 2008, he was busy and then the work just stopped and he had no systems in place to even help him overcome the recession. And there's people that made it through, you know, but again, without any foundation, any systems, he was just waiting for the phone to ring and it wasn't ringing.

You come from the car sales background. How did that help you when you started your painting business?

Yeah, I mean I don't really like the car sales connotation. You know, it's not really me. I did do car sales for a year. But I will say that it sharpened my sales skills. I mean, I think there's good and bad in car sales. And I think one of the things is, it really helped. And it was a blessing that I did it. I mean, it really helped me recognize that people can be swayed for good or for bad, right? Like when you're in the car business, it's mostly for bad.

It's almost like you're trying to get people to make a decision that intuitively they don't want to make but you're playing on their emotions to get them to make it and I've seen it in real time you'd see someone go from a hard no to a yes and That was extremely eye-opening for me because I've never seen anything like that So I was a sponge man and I was just doing what I was told and I learned different word tracks and you know It was very manipulative to be honest

And you just had to do it because that's what your job was. But for me, man, once I kind of saw what it was really about, I quit and went a different path. But I took those same skills with me. man, when you have a product that you believe in and you have those skills as your foundation, sky's the limit.

Yeah, yeah. And then you started a painting company, well, you said 10 years ago, right?

Yeah, it was about 10 years ago. I went from a restaurant to car sales. I did life insurance. So I was knocking doors right after car sales. It was an easy next step from car sales was to sell things, but not cars. I set records doing that. And that was, again, just from like hard work, know, listening to the right things, all the motivational speakers, Les Brown, Jim Rohn, Tony Robbins, you know, all I mean, I would just soak myself and my mentality with

with the belief that one day I would be successful. I you know, I came from poverty. So for me, it was like, I'll do whatever I have to do. So I put in the hours, I put in the time, the dedication, I learned, I got my life insurance license because that's what it required for me to sell it. Passed the test with a 93 on the first try. I mean, it was just when I lock in, I lock in. And then I realized, man, like, I don't like selling, selling death, man. You're selling people.

and the idea that they're gonna pass away and they need insurance and it was unsettling man so I kind of just pivoted and I got into banking so I did banking for a little over a year too and all this accumulation of experience between restaurant car sales life insurance banking really formed a head when my mother passed away right around the time I was doing car sales so there was a few years after that I had to reflect and my dad was just going on a downward trajectory he fell into addiction and I had a little

sister back home. even with me accolades in banking, was a loan officer setting records selling, was refinancing people's bad car deals, which was incredibly rewarding.

I ran into someone that was starting a painting business and he was opening up a business account at the bank and I just got to talking with him man. was like, my dad used to paint. He was, you know, and I was a kid man. It's awesome. I said, tell me about how you're starting it. And he was telling me about all these online resources. And one day I opened up YouTube and I stumbled across Eric Barstow. He's a big leader in our space and painting. And he had all these videos on how he built his painting business and how he was an owner and he

subcontracted the work and he didn't even own a paintbrush and how you do it and how you set it up and I bought his course for $300 and knowing that my dad knew how to paint I said well I'm at a strategic advantage here first of all he knows how to paint I've learned a lot of sales so if I can sell a car life insurance and banking services I can convince someone to paint their house I mean come on that's like the easiest sale in the world and knowing that he was at home and my sister was struggling I moved back

home to help them help him get through his recovery and I figured the best way to do that would be to get back into what he loved to do which was paint.

So he did, he was in the business then. He was in the business helping you get started and was actually the, I guess the foreman in the business, that you call it? Yeah.

To a degree, And again, not to put a damper on the subject, but it's real life, man. He really battled addiction. After my mom passed away, she was the glue. it wasn't what I thought it was going to be. I thought he'd be able to be that leader that I remembered him being. Because I had been away to college for four years. And I'd see him at holidays and talk. But I didn't know what he was doing with his life up until the point of me moving back in and him, me really seeing him.

what he had done to his mind and body through addiction. Which led me to be pretty much on my own because when I started taking him the jobs, it wasn't a good experience. know, he would nod off and do all the things that, you know, was surprising to me. So I had to really learn the trade. So what I did was, is I had to let my dad go because I quit my $80,000 a year job with full benefits salary, 401k, the whole nine.

for this painting business.

I mean, it was really just to help him, but I was like, man, I was counting on him to be the labor. I don't know anything about painting. I just remember prepping doors and trim when I was a kid. So, man, I had to go to the Idaho painter on YouTube, man. I'm learning how to paint and I'm hitting up friends from high school because I moved back home and I knew some of them needed work. So was like, hey, man, can I pay you for the day to come help me? So I'm learning as I go. But thankfully, man, I was I'm always just honest with people. I would sell the job.

to tell people listen we're new but we're gonna do a great job please give us a chance and I'm thankful for all those customers man took a chance on us and I didn't leave until they were happy and there were some times we messed up I have no problem admitting that but you know here we are today

So you, mean, would never hire someone that has that problem, but he did it because you felt like, is this family? Hopefully like it really like, you know, he sets his life straight. just didn't, fortune didn't work out. I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah.

I was so naive, man. I didn't know anything about what that level of addiction was. So again, coming into it, man, I was just blindsided really of like, whoa, you're way more deep into this than I had thought, you know, but.

And you would never hire an employee like that. now looking back, it's, yeah.

Never. No way, It makes people feel uneasy in their homes and things come up missing. He pawned my paint sprayer without me knowing. I go to look for the paint sprayer. It's at the pawn shop. I mean, these things have come up, but.

Hey man, it's life, you know, and we had to adjust and to put a bow on it. He's sober. He's doing great. He's his life around and I couldn't be more proud of him. And I know the business was a big catalyst in his, the beginning stages of his change. Yeah, man.

glad that happened. Now you run the business, it's been 10 years, you got it to 1.5 million, but the unique thing is, is not the revenue, it's really that you're kind of not even involved in the business, you have a GM. How do you get to that point?

It actually took me 10 years to get to that point. I have no problem admitting it, man. Ultimately, each step of the way. Good news for me is I was never a laborer. I never...

Like I never woke up in the morning excited to paint. Like that wasn't my thing. In this industry, a lot of people do. They love the painting aspect and they're so good at it and they go off on their own and people hire them because of how good they are at the trade. They're like artists for hire. And what winds up happening is, man, is at the end of the day, business becomes hard and painting takes a lot of your time. So you have to create a unique balance between the two. But for me, man, it was just that was easy.

The hard part was separating myself from the sales. I'm a salesperson. I like to sell. I like to talk to people. I like to convey value, man. That's like my thing. So when I had to get rid of that, that was a big challenge. And it was just honestly leveraging drip jobs, which was my true passion with software and systems and all that stuff and saying, hey, I have to make a choice here. Either I keep selling paint jobs or I get to work on this idea that I have to help transform the industry.

So then I had to make that decision. then ultimately once I did that, I became more hands off. Then you have to let go of project management. So there was a stage when I was building drip jobs where my only responsibility was go check on the jobs. Make sure the jobs look clean. Make sure the guys aren't messing around. Like these are things you think about when you got three, four crews going on at one time. And then eventually I would just look for guys in my business that I could give a little bit extra responsibility to. And then eventually, I mean as of like six months ago,

ago, an individual that had started with us as a carpenter's helper had worked his way all the way up and now he runs the whole company for us. So I'm completely hands off, which is incredibly shocking and rewarding at the same time.

And I'm sure it's, even with that, you're not profitable and you don't, you never want Do you ever want to focus on scaling that business or you just want to focus on the drip jobs and the other softwares?

If I don't have to scale it, let's scale it. If I have no physical input to scale it, scale it. It has to scale, right? Because a big principle of mine is that if you're not growing a business, it's obviously dying. There's never a stable point in business. So you've got to understand that as an operator. You can't just say, we're not going to grow it. I don't want a 30, 40.

person painting business. Like I'll tell you that because usually with this service business problems grow at the same time as the business, right? Because you have more variables, more customers, more houses, more mistakes, more opportunity for calamity, right? So there's a threshold that I think I'll be comfortable with. We just added another crew. We're aiming for two million in revenue. I mean, that to me is a solid enterprise. I feel like if you can consistently produce high quality work,

and generate two million dollars of revenue at a 20 % net profit, package it up and don't get greedy and be happy with that. If I'm not doing anything, if I'm just calling the shots, I'm now an investor of that business and you know, that's a good life man. It's great.

For sure, for sure. You talk about this concept about the dopamine hit, right? That from the second a homeowner submits a lead form, their excitement starts dropping. Explain that psychology and why most contractors completely miss it.

Man, I mean, it just comes back to my sales experience, man. And also as a consumer, and I think one thing that I'm, I have unique perspective. I've seen so many different industries, so I can pick up patterns pretty easily of what makes people buy, you know, anything I've ever sold.

I've sold because of the emotion that I can bring out of someone. Like that's what it comes down to. Like if I knock on your door and say, hey, I'm selling life insurance. Do you want to buy it? Like it could be the best life insurance policy in the history of the world. But if they don't recognize why they need it, then.

Forget it. No one's going to exchange their resources for it. So taking all that into account when it comes to painting jobs, generally speaking, especially with online marketing, obviously your specialty, right? When it comes to online marketing, the job is to create that need through the medium in which the market meets the supply. The demand meets the supply.

which is generally Facebook, Google, right? So if you do a Facebook ad, the goal of the ad should be to entertain or to educate. So if I entertain you of what our crew is about and how fun we are on the job site, you might think to yourself, man, like, I want to work with that team in that moment when you watch the video, because Facebook's putting a timer on you getting to the next video, right? Like, OK, you spend enough time here with premium painting. Let's get you to another video, right? And in that moment, man, like,

the customer hits the button and they're like, you know, it would be nice. They're not think, dude, it's so crazy, man. This is so nuts. It's just such a crazy topic. But in that moment, they're not thinking about the cost. They're not thinking about the pain of getting estimates. They're not thinking about getting screwed over. All the fears that our customers naturally have with working with a contractor. So for me, I understand this concept to a degree of which like maybe no one else cares, but it's vital for success is that the minute that customer

submits that lead request whether it's through Facebook or your website or whatever it is They've arrived to a conclusion and that conclusion is something you don't know like you're not gonna know what it is We know they need painting, but why did they pick us? Why did you click on that specific ad was that the one we rerun a bunch of ads? Why that one right whatever the case is we know that there's an emotional intensity there we may never be able to quantify that or make it tangible

able to understand it. So what we need to do is put a system in place. And that system is generally going to make sure that we're just capitalizing on that moment. And what winds up happening with most contractors is there's too much friction between the decision and the realization of the actual decision. So in other words, if I'm reaching out to a company, maybe you're a pool installation company.

You don't know what happened for me to get to your website. You don't know if maybe I got in an argument with my significant other. You don't know if maybe we had a great conversation and we got excited about a pool or whatever the situation is, right? And we go to your website and we found your website and we looked at it and we're like, this looks like a good company. And we looked at your reviews.

And we go to the submit form on the freaking website. And we go there and we fill it out. And no feedback happens. It's like, contact us. OK. It's Saturday night. I'm talking to my wife. like, you know what? Let's get some quotes for some pools. This happens, man. This didn't exist 20 years ago. This is happening in today's world. So at 9 o'clock at night on Saturday, the emotional intensity to actually submit my information, I know I'm going to be contacted.

I know I could potentially be spammed.

But I have a desire that you fulfill, which is the potential to get a pool. And what winds up happening with businesses is they don't treat that the way it needs to be treated. Instead, they wait until Monday. And guess what happens on Monday? They got 100,000 other things to do. So that little message that got submitted by that very excited, very motivated individual shows up in their inbox and it gets put down in the to-do list. And eventually,

someone from your office with fricking low energy calls them Monday afternoon and says, hi, did you fill out a form on our website? And maybe they don't even answer.

So I'm a big proponent of first understanding that, contractors are busy, That's no excuse not to have systems in place. So we've created two solutions for this. One is a new solution, which even creates a shorter gap between that excitement and the realization of making that dream become a reality, which is someone showing up at your door delivering a quote. First one's drip jobs. So we send our customers who have Facebook leads, we have them integrate drip jobs, and drip jobs

drips out communication the minute that customer fills out the form. So the customer fills out the form, they put their first name, last name, a little bit about what they want, and then boom, that information goes right into DripJobs. So when you open up your dashboard, there's a cold lead stage in your pipeline and it says Joanne Smith. And Joanne, she just got a text message. She just got an email with a link to book the appointment, okay? So she's already within seconds getting some sort of emotional feedback.

Okay, it's real now. I submitted the form, boom, right on my phone, right on my email. I can click the link and I can move forward in the pipeline. And what we're developing now is routemize. And we talked a little bit about this. But routemize lets the customer skip that entirely and simply just pick a time for you to come to visit them and sell them on the job. So in my scenario earlier about the website, you'd have a routemize form there and the customer could click when they want the estimate

and actually book in that moment. Now this hasn't been done before. There's other apps that let you do it, like Calendly, and you can book me, and all these other things. But Route-O-Mise has route optimization, because us as service people, we can't just be having anyone book appointments with us. It needs to do some calculations to make sure, we going to be able to make it on time in relation to our existing appointments? And is this even in our service area? And we've eliminated that. So man, bringing that up is huge, because that's something I focused on, and I attribute a lot of our success

to it.

Yeah, you're talking about solving one of the most common challenges that small businesses, especially contractors face. I saw the survey, I think it was from Jobber, because I have a presentation, like a workshop that I'm talking about next week. And basically it's about the leaks in the funnel. one of the main, the first one is really the speed to lead, you're talking about. And also, know, book rate, right? But the speed to lead option, think,

I think 47 % of, what number was it? think it was 80 % of contractors don't, it takes them at least an hour to reach, once a lead comes in to actually reach someone within an hour. So I think it was 80%, something like that. I think only 20 % are within five minutes. I think was like, that's a gap. And if you think about that, that's actually ridiculous.

This has been a problem, a challenge. It's pretty well established that speed to lead is very, it's a way to kind of actually set an appointment. And every time you wait, the longer you wait, the less time you're going to have to turn that lead to an appointment. And it's going to degrade the lead quality. But this problem has been around for a long time. It's like, there's a lot. Yeah.

I have a really good analogy for this because again, some people can't really see this as a problem because the pendulum has swung in the service industry. used to be the customer needs the contractor more than the contractor needs them. So the mindset used to be they will wait for me to get to them.

Do you how many people are creating trade businesses because of this? Do you know how many painting companies there are? The customer has more options now than ever. They have 50 to 80 painting companies within a 20 mile radius. So it's like, now we need to be doing this and we need to pursue our customers. But the analogy I want to give is imagine you had a store and you sold clothing, right? Whatever. And imagine someone comes into your store and doesn't get

Read it for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, three days. At some point they're just going to leave.

And they're not going to want to shop there because it's an indication. You know, my wife and I will go to a restaurant dude. And if we're sitting at a table and she knows I'm bad about this, but it's just my standard because if I'm sitting at a table and it takes longer than five minutes for us to be greeted, not even a, I'll be right with you. Just hostess sits us. No one comes. Let me tell you what I'm thinking in my head. I'm thinking, okay, if this is how we're starting, I can't imagine what the standard

is in the kitchen. And we leave.

Yeah, I think the restaurant analogy is a great one because it's, you're trying to, people are hungry, man. They don't want to wait. People don't want to wait. Yeah. Yeah. I think it makes perfect sense for the, but then today it's also just money, like a money thing. It's like, if you don't solve this, you're actually losing money. it's not kind of like, I'm not going to spend more money to fix a leak.

I'm about to pay you my money. Where are you? Why are you... You know what I'm saying?

Like if you're like pouring water in a bucket and it has a leak, it's not smart to keep pouring water in the bucket. You're gonna lose it. Yeah.

Dude, we have every, it's a numbers game. It's a law of averages. If you have more estimates than everyone else, you're going to sell more work. It's literally there. You just need more at bats. You need more appointments. You need to be able to get in front of more people. And how you do that is you just plug the leaks.

Yeah. And the other one you talked about was, is booking rate, right? Is a metric that most contractors should be obsessing over, right? But almost nobody talks about it. Why is this so important versus like the speed to lead and other other ones.

Man, mean, you know, I talked about this the other day is that booking rate is something you can actually control You can't control closing rate as much as you think you can you really can't right? So what I mean by that is is that? When you go into an estimate

At the end of the day, can create the best estimating and sales system in the history of the world, and someone will still fail in moving forward. In other words, if I'm selling you a job, I could do everything right. We could laugh. We could talk about our families. We could go through the process. I can get everything right, Mauricio. But if you don't like that number,

You don't move forward. You drop off there. You know what I'm saying? So I have no control. There's 50 % of that experience I have no control over. At the end of the day, if my price exceeds what you believe you should pay for it, I'm out. I don't have any. I can't do any. I can't force you to move forward.

when it comes to booking, you do have full control over people moving through that stage and that is simply just by the system you have. So in other words, if we look at a funnel of lead to booking to estimate to sale, obviously there's a drop off in estimate to sale, but if you make sure that you have hundred percent push through on your booking, then you're going to get more at bats, which is going to naturally increase your sales and you can control.

that just by installing a system that makes sure that intent can convert to opportunity.

very fast and that's what we're building at route amized because we understand this like to be honest I don't even like leads I don't want leads leads or leads or that's work for us to follow up I shouldn't have to chase someone to hit a button on Facebook saying they want an estimate right I shouldn't have to there's never been a system to make it to where I don't have to but that's just how the game goes home advisor what do they do Angie they send me a lead why do I need a lead let them book an appointment

There should be no chasing of leads. So what we're doing is we're just putting the Routemize link right on our Facebook ads. And people are clicking the Facebook ad and walking through the Routemize chat bot and just picking a date and a time based on their address. And we're just going.

So for me, it's like we just understand the game so well that we know that at the end of the day, man, like not all leads convert. Sure, some leads need to be nurtured over time. It is what it is. But if I don't have leads in the first place, then I've got nothing to worry about. I'll take bookings all day. And if you want us to do business with you, you need to book an appointment.

And typically booking rate, I guess it depends on the services you're selling and where the lead comes in, but what is a good booking rate that you see?

It's 100%. It's 100 % now. Because when you talk about set rate in, I guess, the previous world before what we're building, we're out of mice.

you would have to calculate booking rate and booking rate is the percentage of appointments you book in relation to leads. So if I get a hundred leads, how many of them actually convert to bookings? So that would be if 50 of them convert, that means I have a 50 % booking ratio. Okay. Well, the only reason we care about that is because there's a disconnect between leads and scheduling.

So if I have an app that allows me to not have to ever get leads and the only way people can interact with us is if they schedule, then my booking rates 100%.

And what about inbound phone calls? Do you typically see a higher booking rate with those versus a form submission? Take a look, what do you see there?

Yeah, I mean.

Absolutely, you got to have provisions in place, right? And this is another topic, but generally speaking, most contractors, most business owners who operate in the trades, they look at someone answering their phone as a cost. And when you have that mentality, you really don't really understand the fundamentals of business because if you look at $15 an hour as expensive, you don't want to know how much money is walking out because they're not being answered.

They're not being answered well and no one's getting the overnight watch or the weekend watch. So these customers are calling you because people can contact you at any time of the day on Google. They just hit the button and no one's there to service them. And what do you think they're going to do? Go to your website after they call you? I don't do that. If you're just a painter, you're just a plumber, you're just whatever. There's 10 other ones and the ones that have provisions in place,

those are the ones that get the business man. So in our business we've got a full-time admin Monday through Friday 8 to 5 and then we have an AI voice agent ran through route am I's from 5 o'clock to the next day all times of the night.

And then, of course, on the weekends. And guess what? If our admin is on the line with someone else, it forwards to the AI agent. And the AI agent can book the appointment. So you've got to make sure all your bases are covered. We can't expect people to call us back. And to be honest, man, what do people do when they want a service? They go to Google, look up painting contractor, and they call down the list based on who has the best reviews. Isn't that what we do?

And, and, and you, your CSR should, should be trained. Like they should be trained and understand how to cure the customer with empathy and, understand potentially like how booking the, like booking the conversation and with upshe you can upsell them, know, whatever that is, whatever it applies to all trades, right? Like it's, you're like in the home services space, it does apply. Like somebody's calling the way you answer the phone is, is it a science, right? You have to train them, right? It's.

It depends on the trade. yeah, like for example, like for us, when people call us, we're not really going through their problems like we would if we were a HVAC company. It's more, we know you're calling for an estimate. So we're just scheduling an estimate. But yes, you're right, man. Like HVAC, those things, I mean, there's probably an element of like details of what's going on to see if they can even do it or when.

Exactly. You wrote a book called 31 Days of Value built around what you call the invisible currency. What is invincible currency and why is it a very powerful business lever, more powerful than marketing?

Yeah, man.

Yeah, man. Thank you. Thank you for mentioning that. So my book, The 31 Days of Value, actually started from just wanting to serve my community better. You know, and it was really just came, I believe that God told me to write it. And it started off with 31 podcast episodes of just diving into each element of my business. Leadership principles, 31 days straight. So just wanted to challenge myself to wake up every day and record 31 podcasts. And by day 15, man, something happened.

happen. I just kind of knew what to say each day after that because I just hit this stride of like, okay, now we're covering this and now we're covering this. And I was like, man, this is so valuable. And it helped me understand like the biggest skill set any business owner can develop is consistency. It's just small habits. And the 31 days book is built off of that. So it has a lesson each day with a Bible verse and a strategy for each element of your business. One of them is, you know, putting the provisions in place as a kingdom business.

One of them is getting your admin situation figured out. you know, each element of the business needs to have its own provisions in order for it to grow. So the kingdom business is generally a business that is built to serve its people. And you want happy citizens in your kingdom, man. You want people in your business that feel as though the business has their best interests in mind. So it's making sure all the provisions are in place, payrolls taken care of.

They go into your website and they're met with a form and they fill the form out and it says thank you, we'll contact you and it's like the excitement and the trust goes down.

Each day that it goes by, each hour that passes, it makes the customer feel like, man, they don't value me. Now that might not be the case. You might value your customers, but you're dealing with people who don't know you. They're dealing with your provisions, whatever you put in place, your website. So the invisible currency is the invisible currency of trust, man. It's the true exchange that happens. And I believe it's what makes people pay for us as a premium service, premium painting. Even though we do the same exact thing as another painting company, it could be the

the same products and the same promise. But the invisible currency is what we built with the customer that the other company did not do and that's through our systems that make people feel like we're going to do a great job, right? The restaurant, have indicators that are happening like, man, I got greeted right away. The hostess was friendly, know, social proof. There's other people dining at this restaurant, right? The, saw the van, it's wrapped, it's got a logo with a golden doodle puppy. I mean, these are little indicators, little bits.

of invisible currency that wind up tipping the barrel over in our favor even if we're more expensive. I've operated off of this principle for a long time and it's a big question mark for a lot of people why they can't sell jobs for more than their competition and they're always getting lowballed. It's because people aren't stupid. You know, at the end of the day they look at two estimates. They can't see why it's worth paying you more. There's nothing that's been built with them in excess value for them to justify

by giving you a thousand more dollars for what someone else with a good reputation who showed up on time and doesn't scare them is going to do. So they go with the cheaper guy. I would too, right? So the invisible currency is helping you build a business that understands this invisible thing we're talking about here and how much it matters if you want to scale your business.

Yeah, you've coached about 250 business owners, contractors, right? What's the most overlooked touch point that contractors are kind of not looking at without even realizing it?

I'll give you two answers. Personally for them, it's taking action. mean, you know, if there's a touch point or a knob to twist for a business owner, it's just taking action and sitting in uncomfortable situations because that's what's needed to do the thing that you needed to get done. I've coached more than that now. And to me, the biggest problem is, is man, like you can give someone advice, but they've got to want it, man. They've got to see to it that they make it happen. Like for example, I have people that, you

know, are painting and they have a business where they at one point didn't have to paint but they are painting now because they didn't put provisions in place to have the hiring ad out and create the hiring system so whenever they need employees they could just turn it on and they get applicants on demand like okay so that takes maybe a day or two to figure out and sit down and set up but then you have to do it and you can use it in the future and move on to your next thing but again man this

requires focus, business is hard. No one said it was going to be easy. And if you're not careful, you'll find yourself in a job that you didn't sign up for. And it's a very expensive job. It takes all of your thinking, your time, your energy, your resources, your peace. And ultimately, you wind up wanting to give it up and go back to working for someone else. And in terms of systems, obviously, man, I spend most of my day trying to install systems in service businesses.

So for me, the biggest thing is, is why do I need an automation CRM? Why can't I just go with job or why can't I just go with, you know, one of those other, you know, apps? And it's because generally speaking, the invisible currency is simply communication at its core. You know, if you look at this from the contractor perspective, a painting business owner takes their customer through 11 stages, cold leads, warm leads, estimates that are requested, scheduled and draft proposals that are sent.

Thank

proposals that are rejected and then you have the job stages of project accepted, project scheduled, project in progress and project complete. And what most people fail to do because they don't have the system for it is to create the same level of communication and excitement after they sell the job as they did when they were trying to get the job. And most people miss this. And DripJobs builds it in a way that communicates with your customer just as effectively when they sign as you did when you were trying to get them to sign. And I don't know about you, Murray.

but man when I buy something from someone after they tried to get me to buy it and I don't hear from them after about a week I'm just thinking man I could tell what their true intent was because it wasn't to serve me they didn't follow through man so it's the follow-through and that's the other side of the invisible currency is how do you make customers feel after they buy from you that's the key

Yeah, yeah, I've worked with enough contractors to understand, you know, the business is really tough because, and this is not really all agencies. I'm sorry. This is like, this is typically with agencies and it's not only contractors, really all small businesses. There are certain things that have to do in place on their end for the marketing to be successful. And information is there.

Right? Like a simple one is actually getting reviews. I mean, that's a very simple that people, people drop the ball completely. Like it's okay. Like 97 % of customers today trust the customer, the business has the most reviews, the highest rating. That's like the one of the most important pieces online. And everybody knows that. It's like, I'm not, I say that people, people know that. So you just implement the system.

Sure.

I'll be sure.

100%.

And that's invisible. By the way, what you just said is invisible currency. that's what is that thing, right? Like that's the concept right there is the like, well, why does that even, why is that even a thing? It's cause that number next to that star rating tells someone that they can trust you more than the rest of the companies.

But most people just don't do it. really just, that's real. That's what I've seen. I like working with a lot of, a lot of people. That's why there's a few people that actually take action and are the ones that really scale and take the next steps. Right. Typically that's, that's rare, honestly. And you know, working with, I don't know if you, cause you've been this a while, like I'm sure you've seen like a lot of businesses go out of business, right. And, and like from like the, you're, you're competitors or whatever, they just go out of business because they.

Exactly what we're talking about that it didn't take action, or that's what it is.

Well, I wouldn't say they go out of business as much as they just scale down to where it's just themselves.

They lose hope to get to where I got to, which is, I created a business that runs itself, that I'm not, I can leave the country and nothing will change. That is a, that is the goal, man. Like, do you know how hard that is in America to do? Like you're at the, it's just, it's very difficult and it requires all of these things. And I'm saying, you've got to be a trustworthy leader. You got to be an action taker. You got to be.

a systems thinker, you gotta be an operator, you gotta be a facilitator, a delegator, you gotta have a lot of different skill sets to be able to create something that produces quality without the owner being there. There's a lot of checks and balances that need to be done. You gotta be relentless to be able to get the piece that I'm coming to you about as a business owner on the other side. And you gotta have a high standard, man, you know, and that's a lot of what you're saying.

saying man, the reviews, like you might say, don't need a review. Well you're lazy because that review is going to make sure when you get to that point that you have the most. You can look us up, premium painting. We're the only 5.0 company in our city. We have the highest reviews by 300 because I understood this principle early on. Those reviews are money and they're paying dividends every day. Every Google search that looks for painting companies has to see us first.

because we've positioned ourselves to be that company.

It's not rocket science, man. It's just really, I think it's more of a discipline than actually the actual, yeah.

And it's the system because when they finish a job in drip jobs

Within timing matters, you're as excited as you're ever going to be when you're looking at your brand new house while we're sweeping and vacuuming. We're going to move the deal to project complete and drip jobs and shoot you the link and say, would you mind filling that out for us and sharing a little bit about your experience? goes a long way. Absolutely. And the things these people write from the team, the experience, the care, the love, and by the way, your favorite AI app that you're using, don't you think that it's going to, I don't know, look at those things?

Thanks.

and make a decision when everyone's talking about how they're gonna do AIO or whatever, do a good job. Get people to say things about you, because that's the number one indicator for a business's actual value is what other people who have used the business are saying.

So you started two tech companies now, besides your regular business with painting. How do you see technology, specifically AI, impacting the trades over the next three or four years?

Man, that's a loaded question. I'll tell you this, man. I'm using AI in my business to answer the phone.

There's value there. It's really great. But at the end of the day, man, AI is a supplement. That's the way I see it. It's supplementing, and it's filling our gaps. And that's kind of what I like. mean, we have an AI description maker when we make proposals to fill our gaps. We're not spending time on this stuff. So there's so many different ways AI can help, even if it's just creating a line item description or creating better terms and conditions. And the biggest advice I can give to anyone is spend time using it for everything.

Just ask it ask the questions and it helps you get from point a to point B faster That's why our world is going to change so dramatically because everyone's getting from point a to point B faster You know whatever was going to take us 30 years is now going to take us five You know because everyone can get through the sludge faster In terms of the trades I mean I think obviously as time goes on people are going to trust these products these systems more and more so you know you're going to want to make sure

that you find a way to be shown through the AI channels the same way Mauricio and I are talking about Google. So it's just about staying ahead of the curve. You should always look for what everyone else isn't looking for as a business owner because there's very...

few occasions in life and in business where you can get this much of a head start from everyone else and separate yourself. I will say to kind of pivot from just AI, your business is a sum total of the systems and the software that you use to run your business. If you were to sell your business,

buyer is going to want your CRM access and they're going to want access to all the tools you're using to run the business. That's the first thing they're going to ask for. So the quality of your systems and tools and how you use those systems and tools to produce consistent results is exactly what the game is now. 30 years ago was a Rolodex and it was a piece of paper with all the previous customers. Now, hey, does your software automatically follow up with proposals? Who's going to be doing that?

How do we convert leads to customers? What are our previous customers? How can we find them? Who accesses the software? Can your team access the software? So, you know, if you're not big on AI, at least get big on software.

Yeah, 100%. And you said you installed an AI, like an answering agent, and it got like, we said five bookings in one weekend.

Five book, man, listen, this thing has been an absolute shock to me. And this is just a month ago, we installed it. And really, man, when you listen to the conversations, people don't care that it's AI. They just want their booking. It just validates everything that I know of essentially help your customers get from point A to point B. Now, some of you.

make your customers go from point A to point D. And what I find is that it's easier to just give people bite-sized wins, man. Don't make your customers go through hoops to buy from you. Some people have not even been to a position where they have bought the thing that they sell. So I did a talk in front of 200 gutter business owners.

I asked the question, I said, how many of you here have hired a professional gutter installation service? Dude, not one hand went up.

And they're at a strategic disadvantage. And it's very simple. How can you have empathy? How can you see from the perspective of your customers if you don't know what it's like to be your customer? So what you need to do, honestly, the winners will do this. They're going to go and submit a request for your competitor and see what that's like. See how long it takes them to get back to you. So you can say, man, that's interesting. So that means all I have to do is put provisions in place, and I'm going to capture more opportunity.

One thing that I recommend any business owner do is periodically, honestly, is to secret shop your competitors. And potentially even actually what I was right that I actually secret shopped all my competitors. looked at their demos. I sat through the presentations. I saw how they're pitching, what their price point was. So I understood everything and how they kind of come back and it will give you realization to come to the marketplace.

And if you're a contractor, you can do that in your area and figure out and see what they're messing up and it'll give you more of the perspective. think having exactly what you just said, having empathy, having the contract, having empathy for the homeowners to understand what they're going through will help them become better business owners, but also better marketers too as well. Cause they understand that the messaging they can send.

I've learned so much from just building a house and dealing with the contractors, man. It was like a master class on what not to do. You know, it's like it's still brutal out there, man, like, which is good news for you, because if you just do the opposite again, man, you get a you get a little bit of a leg up, you know.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned how you're building this new app, Rotomize, and kind of the advantage is that you're allowing your homeowners to book appointments the same day via the actual route, right? Like where it could save money on fuel and stuff. Can you talk about that? Why that is so effective? Because I've seen it myself, too. Like the same day appointments are actually very effective. Your chances of selling are actually increased when you do the same day.

Yeah man, same day appointments are crazy.

I mean imagine somebody being that excited to do business with you that they book same day. What an experience. Again man, most of us are selling emotional products dude. Like somebody wants their house painted. There's some emotional reason as to why you know and it's like it's not you know not your GC who wants to just get a new construction project done. I mean it's mostly homeowners. But in any case the goal here is to allow people to instantly book and it's never been done because you can't allow

people an open calendar because of drive time. You know I've sat with 32 companies in the last two weeks to get them onboarded with with route amized and man everyone's got a different territory a different way they do business like some people go north and west but they don't go south for they don't go under certain highways like y'all we don't go under route you know 66 or whatever we stay up north and I mean dude it's like trigonometry if you don't

have a system that has all these rules in place that can let people instantly schedule. There's no way to do it and we solve that problem and that just again we talked about this earlier just shortens again the customers highest emotional intensity to the time they can actually see the result man no one likes to wait. We live in a very fast paced world dude I think imagine if everybody got put on a five-day wait on their Amazon account imagine how many sales

Amazon would lose. And the reason Amazon is so big and so powerful is because they understood this concept before everyone and they did whatever they had to do to figure out how to get things to your doorstep faster and faster.

Yeah, it's about removing the friction between a sail and a sail.

As you know.

and the intent. Right. And, guess what? You know, at the end of the day, if it was going to take five days, I would say what? I'll just go to Walmart and get it. But I can, I'll hang out if it's going to be here tomorrow morning, you know? That's great.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And that problem you're talking about has been solved before in other industries way a long time ago. So it's just, it just kind of, kind of new coming to the space because people really haven't, there it's, it's, changing now. Cause I would say the trades are getting a lot more tech involved and not private equity and all that stuff. So they're using infusing technology into the space, but this has really been solved a long time ago in the logistics, like 15 years ago. that, that, that stuff has been already been solved. but yeah, a hundred percent.

One thing that I want to is, you've done a good job building a personal brand on X. What are the benefits? How do you do it? And also what are the benefits you've seen from that?

man, it's a lot of work, you know, to be honest.

But in a world of AI and everything being fake, personal brand is real. So it's a worthy investment. It's a long-term investment. It's a long-term play. It's just putting yourself out there because personal brand is invisible currency. I can tie everything to invisible currency. It's trust. You saw me post on X. You said, hey, this guy sounds like he knows a little bit about his topic. I trust the ideas that he's saying is true. Let me

dive in a little deeper and eventually that turned into us being here. Well, it's the same thing that happens with your customers in your local community. You know, if you spend time actually building your personal brand as a city ambassador of your town, walking around the different restaurants or putting your face on the camera and going to different job sites and talking about what's going on.

People are learning who you are without you actually meeting them. And eventually, if the stars align, they're going to pay you. So it's a brand strategy that I learned from Russell Brunson.

haven't stopped since. I've been posting on Instagram for years. And if I didn't do that, how would people know who I really am? We live in a world now where people want to know who's in charge of the products that they're using. And it matters. And I can guarantee you, both you and I have products that we use because we stand by the person or the people that are building it. And there's products that we don't use because we don't align with the principles of the person that built it. So...

If you're in business, it's very important that you understand the value of personal brand.

Awesome, awesome. So where do people find you Tanner?

You know honestly I'm not hard to find on Instagram official Tanner Mullen on X official Tanner Mullen and then Dripjobs.com I see every sign up that comes in I'm always excited every single time we've got 2,500 companies that use us and then route am ISE if you want to get on the beta and be one of the first to use it you might even get a one-on-one onboarding with me so just fill out the form at route am ISE.com and I'll set you up personally we're still trying to learn so we've got 32 companies right now

So I'm going to try to do that until we hit 100 so we can knock out all the variables. Thank you, man. was an honor being here.

Hey, Tanner, man, thank you, man.

Appreciate it.