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For twenty years the job was making the homeowner happy and making Google happy. Marcus Sheridan opens this episode by explaining what changed. When an AI gives a homeowner one answer instead of ten blue links, you are either in that answer or you are not. There is no page two.

This is a best of episode pulling the strongest moments from six conversations. Marcus Sheridan, who built River Pools on radical pricing transparency. Steven Van Horn, who with his partner Chad grew a heating and cooling company from $3.5 million to $27 million in five years. Chris Lee, who runs on two funnels and nothing else. Lance Bachmann, who has sold seven companies. Austin Rosenbaum, founder of Demand IQ. And Ed Rollins of Rooftastic, who calls his company a marketing and sales organization that happens to do roofing.

In this episode you'll learn:

• Why Google is becoming what Austin calls an outcome engine, and how its agent may already be calling your office to gather a quote for a homeowner
• Your phone system is now a ranking factor, because if Google's agent cannot get a clean answer from you, your position drops
• Marcus breaks down the three reasons contractors refuse to post pricing and dismantles all three, including the line that your competitors do not pay your bills
• Lance disagrees with him directly, and explains why an estimate that is off by thirty percent hands your salesperson an uphill battle
• Chris Lee's math on why every inbound call is worth $4,000 at a 33% close rate, a $20,000 ticket, and 60% gross margin
• When your cost of acquisition is out of line, only three things can be broken, and Chris names all three
• 78% of homeowners go with the first company they have a full conversation with, not the first company that reaches out
• Steven's team found their booking rate had slipped to 43%, and the story of how they got it into the mid nineties
• Ed keeps his cost per appointment under $300 and explains why cost per lead is the wrong number to watch
• How Rooftastic built 1,500 reviews at a 4.9 rating, and why Ed personally calls anyone who leaves a bad one
• Why Steven recruits from restaurants instead of competing for licensed techs, and what happens if you don't invest in people who then stay
• Chris on why your social media is the net rather than the hook when you are recruiting
• Lance on what private equity looks for in diligence, and why they are hunting for reasons to say no

This one is for the home service owner who wants to hear six people who have actually built something argue about the things that matter instead of agreeing with each other.

Mentioned in this episode:

CTA

Mauricio's Calendar

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nobody wants to work for you

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you got to be ready for these AI agents to

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call your business.

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somebody

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hacked me today, I'd pay you a million

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bucks for it.

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Your company is your most valuable asset.

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This is AI in marketing for home service pros and the show for contractors who want to grow without wasting time or money. If you're in roofing, Hvac, plumbing, or any home service business, we break down how AI and modern marketing can help you book more jobs and close more leads, and build a business that runs without babysitting. Every task.

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What's up everyone?

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This is Marissa, partner.

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I'm the host today of the AI marketing show

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And I'm super excited to have Lance Beckman

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Steve Van Horn

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Chris Lee

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Marcus Sheridan,

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Austin

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Ed Rollins from Booth tastic.

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Marcus, the first thing you said is that trust is the new algorithm. What does that mean? In a world where AI is not answering, customer questions? If you. Yeah. I mean, if you look at what we've had to do for 20 years is we had to make the homeowner happy and we had to make Google happy.

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And if you did that, if you did that well enough, you you were sustainable. You were getting the leads that you needed. And a lot of businesses were successful that way. But if you look at Google, what is Google? You go there and it shows you a bunch of blue links, and you get to choose which one of those blue links you want to click.

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Now, do you really think that's the future, the way people are going to learn online? Or is the future one where they're working with a, quote, agent and that agent? The AI knows them, and based on what it knows about them, it gives them an answer. It's not a bunch of blue links. It's a specific answer. Not only does it give an answer, gives them a justification of the answer that they gave them, and then it gives them the ability to take action on that answer.

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That's our future, that's AI. And a lot of people don't realize that. And, you know, the biggest issue I'm seeing with with, home improvement contractors right now is they're just not, in home services. They're not paying attention to this massive shift, because the way it works with AI on like, Google is, like with Google, there's so many options on the screen.

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You might not be the top 1 or 2, but oftentimes you were there and you could pay money to be there. If you weren't there, you could pay money, right? Enough money you're going to be shown. That's not how it works with AI. Way that works with AI, it's pretty full stop. You either recommended or you're rejected. Boom!

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You're recommended or you're rejected. There's not like oh, click on page two and maybe I'm maybe I'm there. Page three. No, you're just not there at all. You're not in the answer. And this is where all of your buyers, your customers are going in this direction, where they're going to be using AI, they're going to be getting an answer.

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The question for you is, are you going to be in that answer or not?

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you said, your business is an ongoing evolution, right? Not something that you ever finish. Why do you think that mindset matters so much in this industry? There's a number of reasons why I think that it matters. One, that industries in evolution and customers are an evolution.

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So if you become content with like, hey, we're we're doing things exactly the way they need to be done and that's it. We're done. It's a complete A product now, and I think you're going to quickly fall behind because again, the industry is constantly changing customer expectations, economic factors, like there's just so many things at play that you have to constantly be evolving.

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If you look at where the trades was, you know, 20 years ago to now, it's it's night and day difference. If you look at where it was even five years ago when I first came into the industry to where it is now, it's vastly different. And if you look at, you know, even in the last 12 months, like this little thing called AI that we used to never talk about in our industry, right?

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Like we're almost like AI, immune here. People always said, like, I was never going to go in the basements and fixed furnaces or in the attics and fix air conditioners, right. Like I will never penetrate our industry like it's here. It's here to stay. And it's absolutely influence in our industry. What can't, you know, physically repair it?

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It can pretty much do everything leading up to that technician having his tools in his hand and everything thereafter. So it's, I think if you approach your business that way, it also makes it makes you, as an owner and an operator less inclined to be satisfied, ever. It makes you every day wake up hungry to find out what the next changes are, the ways that you can, kind of manipulate your business so that you can hit the goals.

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And when I say manipulate, I mean it in a very positive way, not in a negative way that sometimes people use that word manipulation, but the different levers within your business that you can pull to make sure that you're adapting and staying on cue. Workforce changes expectations of today's worker versus expectations of workers. 30 years ago, that's changed.

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We're constantly having to evolve to that. So all that ratio just kind of compiles to this evolutionary mentality that Chad and I have had, where we want to be on the forefront. We don't want to ever be the laggards that are, you know, slacking and dragging into this new stuff. We want to be the ones out on the forefront, kind of blazing the trail.

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So it just makes us very hungry. But I think if you do adopt this mentality of like, hey, once I get there, I'm done, then you become less willing to adapt and to use some of those new technology and things that can really enhance your business in a positive way.

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Google is transforming from a search engine to what we call like an outcome engine, meaning it's going to get results for your customers and get outcomes.

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Outcomes in the case of quotes and real personalized information for their specific scenario. And they're doing it with, basically AI agents. So there's there's two ways that you can turn on one of these AI agents right now, the, for plumbing specifically, they're, it's it's in pilot or beta with Google and search. So if you type in like plumbing company near me, you'll see something that says below the map pack that says have I get pricing?

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It's like about a third of the way down the page. And what that is, is a way for you to to queue up a Google agent to go and do the research for you on which provider to work for. And and that's everything from going and, going to your website and gathering what services you provide to even calling your business and having an AI from Google.

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Call your inside sales and say, hey, I have a customer, I've got Mauricio over here. He's got an issue. Can you fix this? And how much does it cost? And then they record that information both from your website and from that call, and they synthesize that into text messages that they send to the homeowner. So instead of just delivering clicks, which is what the old version of Google did, now they're delivering outcomes in the form of real results of quotes and synthesized information that's personalized to your situation.

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They're trying to automate the mundane. They they want to take over the rudimentary, boring tasks that people do. And home services, quote, gathering is one of those target areas. So all of this concept of putting pricing online basically feeds the Google beast, or the future Google beast of getting work done for the homeowner on their behalf. And that creates a stickier business for Google.

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It means customers are going to be using their platform more than other platforms. And, and it's really valuable for, for consumers because it's saving them a ton of time.

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you got to be ready for these AI agents to call your call your business.

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They're going to call your business. I don't know what the hours are. If it's 25, it's like, you know, 9 to 9 or whether it's 9 to 5 or what.

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How like what hours they're expecting to make these calls. I know it's affecting plumbing now, and I think inside sales CSRs are, like, not aware of what's happening and the importance of these changes. Because if Google is not able to make a successful call to you, then they will actually rank your business. So, optimization of your business is not just about like SEO anymore.

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It's also about like how effortless was the agent able to get the information it was looking for. So it's like agent optimization or agent information gathering optimization. And so like your ranking or your position against your competitors is going to be based on the ease of, like basically the transparency and ease of these agent users using your different types of contact points, like your website and like your phone system as they call you.

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So you got to be building, processes and aware of this so that you don't get left behind. And, and I think a lot of these changes, like they create winners and losers,

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Let's take a quick break. If we were talking about today. Sounds like your business, I want to tell you about something for a limited time. I'm opening up my calendar for free home service marketing diagnostic calls. This is me on the call. That's somebody on my team. We look at four things. Where you are with are right now what your marketing is actually doing versus what you think it's doing, what your leads are coming from.

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Plus where they're leaking out. And this is the one that nobody checks whether you show up when somebody asks you booty or Googles AI or another AI, search for a contractor in your area, because that's where a lot of your customers are searching right now. And most home service companies are invisible there. Then I tell you what's broken and what to do about it.

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Plain English leave with a diagnostic and a plan whether or not you ever work with us. Clients. I paid over $10,000 for this kind of assessment. Right now it's free. It's on my calendar, so slots are limited. Click the link in the show notes or go to Contractor Marketing Close-Knit slash Mauricio dash calendar. All right, back to it.

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I was working at a, home improvement business and realizing that everyone's ads worked just like the ones that we were running and that, you know, as a millennial homeowner myself, I felt like the experience of clicking on an ad and then getting a million phone calls and then having to sit down with 2 or 3 providers to get my final quote, didn't feel like any of the other experiences that were coming online at that time.

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Things like getting insurance online through Geico or Lemonade, or buying a car on Carvana, or even the simplicity of Amazon's basically instant delivery, home services felt like it was stuck in the past. And I was like, how do we make our ads stand out? And how do we improve the customer experience to increase appointment CIT rate and employment run rate and ultimately close more deals?

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So, I built a tool that helps, that helped contractors, add pricing to their website with personalized estimates. Brought that into our marketing programs with meta ads and Google ads and different ways of deploying it. And then, lo and behold, we saw higher click through rates. I mean, it's pretty simple. It's if I'm offering you some value online in terms of ballpark costs, you're going to get more value from me online.

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So you're going to have a higher likelihood to click and a higher likelihood to fill out my forms to get that data. So we saw lower cost leads, and we saw a better pull through rate to sit and close. And so then I partnered up with a friend from business school and we, you know, went out and raised some money and, and built a self a software business around that idea.

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Really dumb on their part. And if you're listening to me, yes, that's right, I just said it is dumb because it was dumb when I wasn't doing it. I recognize that I've got the self-awareness to see what the problem is and what the problem was. You see the first question that any buyer has when they know they have a problem, a need.

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If somebody says, you know, I want to remodel my house, if someone says, hey, I need a new roof, someone says, hey, I need a, you know, my Hvac unit broke. Okay. The first question they have is roughly how much this is going to cost. As a first question. Google knows this is a first question. It's one of the most prolifically searched.

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I talk a ton about this. And unless customers I've talked about and they ask, you answer my first book. This is a conversation I've been teaching businesses about for 15 years. Also saw in my mind I could clearly see where the whole world was going to be, where just like every contractor today has a website, pretty much you gotta have one today.

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Where in the future every contractor is going to have a pricing estimator on their website. And this doesn't mean that they're giving you an exact quote, but what it means is they're giving a general range for their product or service. Therefore, addressing that first question that everybody has, which is roughly how much is this going to cost? Now, what we've seen because of Price Guide is those companies that have estimators are now getting way more referral traffic from AI.

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They're getting way more referral traffic from AI summaries. They're getting way more referral traffic from, paid ads, because they can now use the immediate estimate estimate feature within your Google suite. So this is why, if you're listening to this right now, within the next 2 to 3 years, 100% of your peers, you may or may not want to believe it.

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You might say, well, he has an estimator tool he's trying to sell. That's why he's saying this. No, no, go to Google. Look at the two biggest changes Google has made in the last few weeks. Number one was when they said, you go online, you do a search and it tells you are like on your phone. Have I check prices?

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I have now hundreds and hundreds of case studies where when a contractor is willing to talk about this, they see immediate uptick in leads and trust in sales.

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Now, there's three major reasons why we don't want to talk about it. The first major reason it's we say, well, every job is different. It depends. It's customized, etc.. Now this is why if you have a pricing page of your site, you talk about all the factors that drive cost up and down, why some contractors are expensive, why some contractors are so cheap like you can control what the market understands about buying this thing, how they shop.

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You're literally teaching them how to shop. If you have an estimator, you're going to give a range. You're not going to give an exact price. And so based on the questions they ask, it's no different than if I called any contractor. That's listening to this right now. And then if I said to you, hey, listen, I'm not gonna hold you to it, but could you give me a general rough sense for how much I might spend on this project, which every contractor has been asked about a thousand times what they're going to say is, well, you know, I really need to come out to your house.

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I know, but could you just give me a sense if the person has enough integrity in that moment to give them a sense, they're going to say, well, first I need to ask you a couple questions. They're going to ask a few questions, right. For swimming pool because I'm a, you know, pool contractor. Still to this day, I own a swimming pool company in Virginia for things like, okay, what size pool do you want?

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What type of patio do you want? How much patio do you want? What special options or features do you want? Things like that right. So after we asked that series of questions, were able to say, based on what you said, I think you're probably going to be somewhere between 100, $150,000. All right. That's how an estimator works. The same exact way.

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But what it does now, it allows that person to say, okay, now I have a sense now I know if I'm in the game or not. So the first reason we don't do it is because we say every job is different. That one. Like I said, we can dispel that one very quickly. We just did a second reason why contractors say I don't want to discuss this is because they say, well, am I competitors?

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See, my pricing? They're not going to see your pricing. They're going to see a rough estimate as to what it costs. So and the thing about it though is if I ask most people listen to this, do you have a rough sense as to what your competitors charge? You would say, yes. You know what your competitors charge. They know what you charge.

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This is the big secret, non secret. Everybody acts like nobody knows what everybody's charging, when in reality everybody's got at least a sense that's what everybody else is charging. And besides that, your competitors. The last I look they don't they don't pay your bills. So why the heck would you base any decision on what the competition is or is not doing?

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That means you're being reactive, not proactive. That means you're not a market leader. You're a market follower. And to me, that's just appalling. Like, I don't want to be a follower. Like, the only people I'm following is the man upstairs, right. And my family, that's it. And, you know, like, we're rolling, man. So I'm not following the competition.

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They're not my guiding light. And I hope they're not your guiding light either. Now, either. The third reason why companies don't talk about cost and price is they say, well, they see we're more expensive. We're going to scare them away. Also not true. The thing that scares people away. We have found this. We got the data on this is when they can't find what they're looking for online, when they get no answer.

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Ignorance online is way more scary for the shopper than the person that has a general sense for value.

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you got some places up there. Yeah, I got someone there in three days who's waiting three days for an Hvac problem. Yeah. Have you, have you thought about, like, when, when, cares about your thoughts on this? What are your thoughts on having, pricing on the website for different home service companies? Like if you're a roofer, if you're a Hvac company plumber, like what?

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What are your thoughts on that? On the whole? Because what are your thoughts on that? I'm not for I'm not against it. I'm about transparency. But can you really do it with to actually see the problem? There's so many things that go into it. And the worst thing you do is put pricing out there and you show up at someone's home and say, hey, it's $5,000 more, and here's why.

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Well, now I just got an uphill battle. Got it, got it. So you either have just the lead come in, and then your salespeople kind of more take a more conservative approach to understanding what the actual pain points are. You want to know the pain points. What I want to does a doctor tell you what's wrong with you without seeing your blood work?

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Yeah, but I have you seen do you guys use, like, like isolators on your on your guys websites, on your clients websites, on your. We do. But they're not even real because they give you such a broad range. Anderson. Okay. That's that's interesting. I like I like those thoughts because like, it's, it's, you hear a lot with, with, you know, people like Marcus Sheridan and other guys advocating for, you know, understanding the pricing and all that stuff.

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But I hear, I hear other people say that it's different, like depending on on that. And you're trying to capture the traffic, right? Trying to capture the traffic that, you know. How many roofing companies does market share to know? I don't know, I don't think so. I don't think I any yeah. Yeah. So like as a doctor you told the doctor how to do a procedure, but you never been a doctor.

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It's easy to go up on stage and talk shit. It's hard to go implement and do. Yeah, yeah. So you you save on the inside. You said don't don't do it. Just have a consultant approach, get the lead and have your call center. Just follow up. I'm not saying don't do it. I'm saying if you do it, you better make sure it's as accurate as possible, because the worst thing you do is set your salespeople to go out and have to deal with an online estimate that is off by 25, 30, 40%.

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It's an uphill battle after that.

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So you would recommend having an offer, right? And also maybe introducing scarcity into the offer, where people are motivated to take action. And then the pricing tool is basically another avenue to get what they want.

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Yeah, I think where it's confusing is that people think the instant estimate is a promo or a special offer, and they're using it as that and that it's not. It's a lubricant or a means to get contact information and get to an end. It's like it's like if I told you that you could buy a MacBook Pro online if you weren't able to do that before and you're like, great, okay.

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Like this is easier for me, but like, why am I more more motivated to buy my MacBook Pro online? Like, you need to give me a special offer about like a discount, like a, you know, back to school promo or whatever the promo is for buying that actually gets me to move.

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you got to say what others are willing to say online. You got to show what others aren't willing to show. You gotta be willing to sell in a way others aren't willing to sell. And, you got to be more human, you know?

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Let me give you another example of what you can do. Let's say let's say, you know, you're you get a lead. Could you send that person a video immediately introducing yourself? Of course you could. Would it make a strong impression on the homeowner? They'd be blown away by it. Do you think your biggest competitors doing that? Nope.

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I can already tell you they're not doing it. Almost nobody in the home improvement space does one on one video. Some of the contractors that I've worked with directly, because I've got a sales training company as well, part of our sales methodology is 100% of the time when we get a lead and when we've gone on an appointment, we do a pre video, we do a post video, and then we do a post sale video.

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This is why you do that. You're going to guaranteed to get a great review. First of all. And they're going to love you and you're going to stand out. You're going to humanize your brand even more. These are things that people say, oh, I know how scalable that is. And that's the stuff that I get, you know, I get excited about because that big monster competitor of yours ain't going to do it.

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They're not going to have that soul that you have. And, you know, in fact, if you're a little bit smaller than that monster, you got some serious advantages because you don't have the red tape they got. So you can move quick. You can be nimble, you can be fast, you can break rules. You can experiment. You know what I mean?

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It's like that's that's beautiful. Yeah, that's exactly what I would do. And I would win. And then eventually I would become the monster.

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roofing is a marketing company that sells roofs.

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Can you explain that? Yeah. Thanks for having me on here today, Mauricio. We're a marketing sales organization that happens to be doing roofing, right? I mean, the, you know, our marketing or sales is running our offense. You know, that's how we look at it. That's our offense in our business and then our production and quality assurance, making sure the customer's happy and we deliver what they need for our.

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Yeah, important, important. So that that shaped your entire mindset. Right. Like if you think about if you're a marketing company that that sells roofs, I'm pretty sure you have like a, you have a tell me about like your team in terms of the subs you have like a sub team or do you have employees in-house to do the actual work or how does that work?

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Typically subs in the state of Georgia, everybody's running subs just where the insurance laws and everything work. But the thing about ourselves is they just work for us. You know, technically on paper they're subcontractors, but they work for us every single day of the week, all day long. They don't really work for other companies. They don't. Yeah, yeah.

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So your job is, is to sell the roof manager project and to give them work. Right. That's the end of the thing to get these guys work, right. Because you need them and they need you. That's kind of the how the how that works. That relationship works. Right. So that's a mindset that you have to have is that it starts with you.

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Really. That's I want to commend you because it starts with you,

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Talk about the the meetings. What what is it you guys do, doing the meetings each week?

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What do you guys do? What what is the agenda? Typically, we usually have a rolling agenda the week before. So, like, we meet with your team weekly. We, you know, we go over anything that needs immediate assistance, and then we we talk about things that we're kind of implementing over time and kind of what, for the week.

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And then, week we were, you know, we were able to handle everything. We set our goal next week. So we're working at a time talk about budgeting. You're, you're you're setting you set the budget for next year. Like, are you saying the budget right now for next year, like, oh, for quarterly. How does that typically how does that process work, that talk about how do you how you process that that information and planning for for next year?

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Yeah, we'll be doing a yearly budget before the end of the year, where we get all the our management team together nicely. But now everything from marketing to, you know, all other business, and we will get measured. So you have see how we're, where we're going. Do we need to read their recent or was there any.

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Got it, got it. And typically this is a very common question. What what is your marketing budget spend that there's different answers for this. But typically like if you're, I say like top line revenue percentage wise, how much are you spending typically on marketing? 5 or 6% of the top 5 to 6%. Yeah. Okay.

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So that is a very common question. And what's your opinion? And about if you're like a, if you're mentioning like, but I think you're doing over 10 million, but if you're like a smaller business, if you're doing like maybe 3 or 4 million, but you want to grow, should should they spend be spending more than 5 to 6%.

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Yeah. I think in the beginning, you know, you could be spending ten, 11, 12%. Because you really haven't built any branding like that. You don't have brand recognition yet. Right? So, you know, you're really spending more to get brand recognition for the market and, who you are to where. That's for things like that. So in the beginning, I would say you're probably ten, 11, revenue is going to be a mark.

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It's a more.

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you made a point that KPIs are lagging indicators. That close ratio booking rate is really teams. Something else is broken up. String. Can you unpack that for me? Yeah. I mean, ultimately, you know, your your cost of acquisition, if it's out of whack, like, for example, if my average ticket, say, my average ticket for a roofing company is $20,000, that would mean my target acquisition cost would need to be $2,000.

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Right? So because I'm $10,000 per acquisition or 10% of per acquisition. So if my catch my cost of acquisition, my actual acquisition cost is above that $2,000, that's an indication of of one of three things or broken. All right. Either one, the actual lead generation system, the cost of what you're generating that leads the creative, whatever you're doing on Facebook or whatever else is wrong.

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Right. Like you're you're you're not getting that right to if you're getting leads and not converting them to booked appointments. Right. Like if that if you're booking rate is low, that will lead to it would lead to a cost of acquisition being off. And then three your close rate, which is a booked appointment to a closed deal. If that is off, that will also lead to a higher cost of acquisition.

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So essentially anytime you're looking at a target acquisition cost and it's above where you want it to be, you need to be looking at all three of those things. How's my how are my leads being generated? Is it the right way? Is it, is it something that actually catches a consumer's attention to am I once I have a lead, how many of those are my booking to an actual appointment?

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And then from there, what is how are my salespeople? Are they trained up sufficiently? Are the closing closing there at a high enough rate where my acquisition cost is going to stay in alignment?

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So walk me through exactly what should happen in the first five minutes, when a lead comes in, if a home service company that is doing right, that's doing it, executing a high level, I mean, if you're not, if you're not calling a lead within 30s, you're missing a vast, opportunity.

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And so, obviously there's there's I and a lot of, a lot of other things that can assist in this for outside of, work hours that, that allow you to get speed to lead outside of your normal, CSR. You know, some people are going pure AI voice in, in these in these regards or but yeah, I mean, you should be pounding the crap.

Desconhecido

Lead through call, text messaging, double dial, follow up voicemail. I mean, everything possible to get in front of that lead, especially if it was if it was, produced through, like, lead aggregation, like Angie, thumbtack, like stuff like that. And then typically you have, call center, like, you have call centers set up, like internal call centers to, to handle these lead invalid.

Desconhecido

Yes. I mean, you, if if you do not have somebody that is paid full time to answer and call these leads, right answer any inbound call, make any outbound call for a lead that's generated through like a Facebook or whatever else. I like that there should be one of your very first hires because that person is one of the cheapest expenses that you'll have and will cost you the most without it.

Desconhecido

Right. It's the is the biggest opportunity cost is even if that person, their only job is to sit there and wait until a lead comes in. Or like they could get three leads a day and if they book all three of those leads and you're closing at 33% and your average take is $20,000 and you're and you're at a 60% gross margin, every call is worth $4,000.

Desconhecido

And so like that, that is what you're you're missing out on by trying to save money, by not paying this person or getting to it when you can, or having your bookkeeper also make your calls. You should have somebody that's completely dedicated to this or an AI type setup that that is going to reach out immediately.

Desconhecido

ratio, 78% of the time the homeowner goes with the first company they had a full conversation with, not the first company that reached out to them, the first company they have a conversation with.

Desconhecido

So this is why it's a domino effect. If you get back to them within five minutes, there's a 900% chance that you have a full conversation. Better chance they have a full conversation. If you're the first to have a full conversation, you're 78% of the time going to get the job. You see what just happened? Like ding ding ding, okay, I got to be fast.

Desconhecido

I got to be. I got to be immediate. Yeah. And also to if you're also giving them the estimator. And then on top of that, if you have a way to actually schedule the meeting with them, ideally like a in-home consultation or a virtual call, whatever you're comfortable with, that's even better if you actually not only have the estimator, but also even do the appointment the same day.

Desconhecido

That's even better, because you're getting the information and the information that you actually want. There's an estimate that's even better. So you're if you're doing all that right, right at the gate. And that's why you convert. I'm more of the leader you have. Right. Do you know it's nuts though. Ratio 90% of the people that have listened to this conversation, they're not even going to do what we just said.

Desconhecido

That's the thing that blows my mind the most. Like, we've already established that Google is going to force you to have an estimator. All your competitors are going to have it most. You're not going to do it. It blows my freaking mind. And you're going to complain about leads. And it makes me sad. And I say this as a contractor that's fighting for leads that eat I all of my own dog food.

Desconhecido

You go to river pools right now, river pools and spacecom, you're going to see an ass mater. Bam! Front and center. It's gonna hit you over the head. It's our number one lead driver. You know, it has been the most essential tool to my business that I can think of from a marketing perspective. Now, we were the first in the industry to do it.

Desconhecido

Like so. If I'm telling it to you because I've tested it

Desconhecido

obviously you have a lot of experience.

Desconhecido

You see the inside of these home service companies and you have a you have a experience working across the country. What is working best right now for local lead gen for these companies?

Desconhecido

I mean Google's the 800 pound gorilla. It's always going to be Google Home Advisors.

Desconhecido

Angie's Yelp the aggregators of good right networks. Then you have Google PPC, you have remarketing, you have social media, email marketing. I think it takes a whole a less holistic side listens. I think it's a holistic. And then you have to have automation from that. Right? Lead this, feed the leads, be the lead. What is my I look like?

Desconhecido

What's my automation look like? Am I using tools like same day I am I using service tight and am I using these tools? And most people aren't. So you know it's funny. I'll meet people and I'll say, hey man, what's your automation look like? You know, I have no automation. Well, you're spending $10,000 a month. You didn't spend somebody ten grand to set up all your automation.

Desconhecido

No. Okay, well, you're the problem. Yeah. So if you if you have a home service company, like spending 10,000 on ads and, and they're not doing anything with automation, you tell them, hey, that's a that's completely why you, you know, stop right now. I don't care if you spending $5. I don't care if you're spending nothing on ads.

Desconhecido

Why would you not set up automation? Automate everything should be automated. Automate it. When someone contacts me to get a response, someone contact me. Should be at a book, an appointment. Someone contacts me. I'm reaching right back out with the auto dialer. I have a conversation with them. Someone calls in if I don't have a CSR. I had now somebody same day I.

Desconhecido

I can actually book the job for you right on the spot. Like you have to use technology to scale your business. Yeah.

Desconhecido

The reason why people don't like me, I irrigators is because they want to say it's shitty lead to chili. Chili leads. Okay, how are you? And say, did the person call you up and ask you for a roof? Or they ask you for a pizza? When they ask me for a roof? Okay, so they didn't ask you for a pizza?

Desconhecido

Nope. So it's a we both agree. Now they called you for what you did. Yes. But they also called five other people in the pro shop. Okay. So now what you're telling me is you don't want to earn someone's business. You don't want to be show value. You don't want to build a relationship. You don't want to show what?

Desconhecido

Separate yourself from your competition. You just think you work at dairy Queen, hand out blizzards, and everybody's walking down happy, right? And on top of that, you have no automation set up for speed to lead, to get your salesperson there for this person's problem as fast as possible, same day or within 24 hours? No, the aggregators work. And if you look at every major company out there that's doing well, the majority of music aggregators now.

Desconhecido

You know, I think, a lot of it comes down to and this is not all contractors, but a lot of contractors in this industry. You know, they're not pricing money, right? You know, we call giveaway. You know, because, I mean, they're more focused on the job than making a profit on.

Desconhecido

Right? So yeah, you have to provide a quality service. Yeah. Right. But if you're going to price here, we have a fair right. Not a bottom. In fact, if you have a bottom and you're not making any money, then you're never going to grow your money. Just got it guys. So it's a pricing problem with with contractors not making enough profit to actually spend, the needed amount to be successful with the marketing as well.

Desconhecido

So we're saying, okay, okay, let's talk about KPIs, because you guys do a fantastic job tracking all the important metrics you have, per lead channel, right? So you understand the KPIs per for each, channel. Right. For Facebook, Google, you know, all the, you know, SEO. Right? So you track it, the leads, you appointments.

Desconhecido

Desconhecido

Well, like we were coming off of a three month measurable right now. Right. So, you know, it's a lot of you had a little bit more job. Let's leave. Yeah. So our KPI totally generated cost per lead, you know, but our most important court appointment. Right. You know, we went all the way through what's it cost us?

Desconhecido

Deployment, which is an opportunity, right? You can generate that lead if you only 500, that 40, 500, you don't even care, right. So it's really about missing the opportunities. And after we focused a lot of our weight on as far as you know, how much is each opportunity to get in front of somebody and provide them with the service cost guide?

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Desconhecido

About 80% of the person. It was a pretty good number.

Desconhecido

flash forward to one of those years where we recalibrated, I want to say it was 22 to 23. We were looking at, like, booking rates. And, you know, we're pouring money to the marketing machine. We've figured some things out. And, you know, again, I mentioned earlier, like, I wish I knew in 23 what I knew, what I didn't know in 21, or vice versa.

Desconhecido

I wish I knew in 21 what I knew in 23. But, some things I, that I also was not keeping my eye on was like our booking rates were slipping down, so we were moving so much faster. CSR crushing calls, not intentionally. They're great people. They wanted to do a good job, but they felt rushed and we weren't giving them good direction.

Desconhecido

They didn't have focus because we didn't have a CSR manager at that time. So we look at our call rate and we're like freaking out, like 43% booking rate like this can't be right. So we engaged, Brigham Dickinson, a power selling pros. And, they came in and worked with, I've tried to, go time success group.

Desconhecido

We were consulting with them for some service type workflows. We found out luckily, it wasn't that bad, that we were misclassifying a lot of calls and we weren't booking things correctly, but still, we were in, like, the 60s, and we just organizationally felt as though we could do so much better. We had these super talented CSRs.

Desconhecido

We wanted to do a great job, but we weren't giving them the best tools to be able to succeed. So started working with Brigham and his team on a regular basis to better train our CSRs. And Chad not participated in those, CSR meetings and training so we can help reinforce that set in the bullpen multiple times so that we could actually answer the phone and test ourselves to see how well we could do it.

Desconhecido

And what we saw is we were able to get that booking rate just through better talk tracks and better understanding, expressing empathy, eliminating negative words, being really, diligent on the phones that we where we get our booking rate up into the mid 90s. So we almost eliminated, you know, our booking non booking rate altogether, which is fantastic.

Desconhecido

So but again you know the day you take your eye off that the day it starts slipping backwards. So now we have to come up with a process that can continue that ongoing support. So we hired a CSR manager. We scheduled ongoing trainings with our selling pros where they're working with our CSR. They do a group call every week.

Desconhecido

Desconhecido

Desconhecido

You've heard that phrase, you know, sometimes you gotta go one step back to go six steps forward. Right. And, I think we've always been very willing to do that.

Desconhecido

Desconhecido

And they say, yes. Yeah. We say, you know, get us a favor. So our future customer kind of work with you. And if they know what you mean, what what real good. But it's hardly ever what it says on it because we're not happy. Yeah. And you respond to every review, right. On on Google. Yeah. Immediately. Immediately.

Desconhecido

So make sure you guys understand that, because it's important that people see you and your face, when you respond to reviews and one thing I want to point out is that, the strategy behind that is that the reviews really power almost everything in terms of the online, it powers local SEO. You're getting a ton of visibility on the maps with reviews and powers LSA, Google, local service ads.

Desconhecido

Desconhecido

Like if you look at Hvac, plumbing, there's companies that have 15,000, 10,000 reviews, 20,000 reviews. So that is something that is extremely important. And they have a head start. So they just it's going to it's going to be much harder for you if you're competing against them. And their market is going to be much harder. Right.

Desconhecido

So just understand that. Right. How do you guys handle negatives? Because obviously sometimes you get a negative result in the negative reviews. If we get a negative review, we immediately call the people, you know, I call them personally and really, ultimately, my goal is not the review. The goal is to figure out why they have that experience with us and do whatever make it right.

Desconhecido

I mean, so that's negative. You know, if somebody is not happy, so, you know, negative as to the various priority of our building provider because that's what we sell them. Right? So we need to deliver. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Let's talk about sales optimization. You guys are using Google level and also links, how you how do you how do you guys as a long process outside this podcast, but talk about the importance of having your your team using the CRM, having a good CRM, you know, most roofers I know are on their, you know, it's like they're the number one the longest we were the we were one of the 7

Desconhecido

or 8 was on it.

Desconhecido

usually if you think about like someone who works at a restaurant, it's a great profession, right? And usually they rake. They can make really good money if they're good at it, but most of the time that's not what they want to do the rest of their life, right. So it feeds into a conversation. Well, well, where when they say like, I don't know, like this is good money for now and it's helping me to work my way through college or, you know, it's, it's it's a gig that I got right out of college while I wait to figure out what I want to do next.

Desconhecido

Like if I can bring them to my training facility and I can show them a career path, and I can show them a job description, and the day I'm ready to make the offer, I can show them a formal job offer letter that specifies their PTO and their benefits package, and their retirement programs and their health insurance and everything.

Desconhecido

Then I feel a lot different than most trades companies, right? All of a sudden they're like, again, the same way that, you know, people feel when they come to our trainings. So like, wow, you guys are kind of technology. Like I want them to see, like we're a very professional organization. But if I'm scribbling down an offer letter on a napkin and it doesn't include anything about your PTO and your retirement program, and I don't have those programs built out, and I don't have a career path for you where I can take you to a wall and say, like, you'll hire here as a level one tech today.

Desconhecido

But I believe strongly that with six months of the right training, I can get you to a level two. And then that comes with this pay raise and then a level three and then a level four. And I can project out the next ten years for you here. Like now I'm starting to give them a vision. And a vision is something that people invest in.

Desconhecido

People just don't want jobs these days. They want careers. They want to be a part of something. And I think the cool thing is like, that's what we want. So I don't understand this. Like labor shortage thing. Like we want what they want. We want you to come here, work forever. The last thing I want to do is invest in you and train you and make you a part of my team and my family.

Desconhecido

Only for you to leave me in three years, right? Like that's what I want. And when we talk to contractors across the country, they see the same thing. Yeah, they're not willing to do what's required to keep those people part of their family because they see them as too expensive.

Desconhecido

think about that. If you're so afraid to invest in your people because you might make them so good that they leave, like you got an organizational issue that's on me. It's on my we've had people leave. We've also had people leave and come back. Right. But we always say like, we'll never hold you back if you if you feel you can get something out in the, in the market that you can't get from us, then shame on us, right?

Desconhecido

We maybe organizationally, we're just not the size yet that we can offer you that or we don't have that position available. But if there was an opportunity to keep you here and keep you happy, and we fail to see it because we didn't communicate well or we didn't adapt quick enough, then then that's on us. And we need to do some introspection and make sure that we don't don't make that same mistake over and over again.

Desconhecido

But it goes back to the first thing we talked about resale like this vulnerability and inspecting everything and saying like, I'm not perfect, right? Like, where do we screw up and how do we retain you? But we've had so low turnover and virtually no issues hiring people. If we target someone, I would say we get nine out of ten people that we go after because we're able to paint that clear vision for them.

Desconhecido

They come in here and they're like, this feels good. I see it like I could work here forever. And again, we're not perfect. We tell them that to like, but we need you. We need you to come in. And we we we always tell our new hires this like you come in with this really unique perspective for like, the first 90 days, and then you start to develop a little bit of tunnel vision.

Desconhecido

So for the first 90 days, we need to be very transparent with us. You're going to have this ability to see things from a fresh perspective that we can't see things from anymore. We just can't. It's impossible. Right? It's like the daddy goggles, like your kid might suck at baseball, but you just can't see it because he's your kid.

Desconhecido

You love him to death. This is our business. We love it to death. We might not be able to see something, but you can for 90 days. Like, please be transparent with us. Please tell us if you see something that stands out to you and, And they will. And then you got to be willing to hear it and say, like, you know, now you got somebody new on board who's criticizing your baby.

Desconhecido

So you got to make a choice. Do I have this mentality of like, who the hell are you to tell me what's wrong with my business? You've barely been here long enough to fog up a mirror, right? Like that's one mentality. That's the one that leads to a lack of process and progress. The second mentality is like, oh, maybe you're on to something.

Desconhecido

They're like, you've only been here for a few weeks and you see this issue like, maybe I should pick it that a little bit. Maybe I see if there's something to that. Right.

Desconhecido

You told me that there are only two files that matter lead generation and people generation. Why are those two? And why do owners obsess over the first and ignore the second? Yeah, I mean, lead lead generation and people generation are ultimately the biggest bottlenecks of any, any great organization, right. Like, once, leads obviously determine whether or not you're going to generate revenue and people determine whether what you're going to do with that revenue or how you're going to acquire that revenue once once you have leads.

Desconhecido

And so, the, the development of your, of your talent and, and creating a bench of players that are constantly ready to come in and join the team is is one of the the most underrated things that you can do as a, as a business owner. Right. And so I'm a I'm a firm believer that the, the CEO ultimately has two major roles as your company develops the the the more finite role that you should fall into is high level talent acquisition and brand, brand development.

Desconhecido

Right? They own the brand and they own the people acquisition. And so, the the people acquisition ultimately is going to determine how well the business is going to function without you. Right. And, and the way that they build out your processes and they plug into the different organizations, top to bottom. And so, yeah, I mean, one of the, that is something, as a business owner that has to be at the top of mind all the time is, who am I actively recruiting to be a part of this great vision?

Desconhecido

know, one of my favorite quotes with, with, marketing is that, marketing is the baby maker of your business, and you would never outsource your baby making, would you?

Desconhecido

And so that, I've always taken that to heart and and known that, like, I want to I want to own that aspect of my business. And then, you know, people generation, like, there's there's a lot of great people out there, but, yeah, I mean both again, those those are the two most important things.

Desconhecido

So they're, they're always difficult. And must be worked on constantly.

Desconhecido

I would be spending the vast majority of my time on generating disciples inside my organization that want to share the good word with with everybody around, with their friends, their family about like, what the opportunity is. So, the, the other thing where I think a lot of people just completely miss is the power of social media and the purpose of social media isn't to go and find new recruits.

Desconhecido

The purpose of your social media profile is actually to be the net that captures the people when they come looking for you. And so, I don't care if you get ten views on your videos. I don't care if you get two likes on your videos, if those ten views are ten potential people that want to see what you're all about, then they're the ten most valuable views that you could potentially get.

Desconhecido

You know, they, like, nobody wants to work anymore.

Desconhecido

I mean, nobody wants to work for them, right?

Desconhecido

Like, I mean, that's that's that's the reality is, like, you're uninspiring. You have no vision, no direction. You know, you're 2 million a year. 3 million a year. Like, like here's here's the thing. If I if I can't show somebody how we're going to go and get to 4 to 500 million a year, how do I how on earth do I expect to go on to attract a top sales guy from a great organization that does 5 to 10 million himself, right.

Desconhecido

When when you right now we're doing 1 to 2 million. And you really think that top tier talent, 5 to 10 million is going to want to come work for you? No way. Because your vision is uninspiring. You

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nobody wants to work for you

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is the reality.

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realizing I never told everyone what was on my mind or I never communicated the why again. So, we saw a slight increase, although still way below industry averages.

Desconhecido

We saw an increase in callbacks and customer dissatisfaction. So, year two was really again, going from that three and a half to, you know, seven, we'll call it in year one of Chad not being partnered together. It was it was definitely a time to reflect on, like, things we could do better and how it wasn't just about top line growth, Chad.

Desconhecido

It's about 20 years building a really strong foundation under this house. We were like building the first level, and all of a sudden, like we were realizing, like we weren't we weren't installing the flooring the right way and the siding the right way. So, even though again, everything we were doing still way above industry average, you know, we were our callbacks were way under what the industry was averaging, but we were never content with industry averages.

Desconhecido

We had our own targets that were virtually we went to almost no callbacks. Right. Like unless it was a manufactured defect, we knew that we could try to mitigate that. And we, you know, our vendors are giving us awards for our low callback rates. In the meantime, we're we're in huddles, panicking like, this is crazy. We just don't do this.

Desconhecido

Desconhecido

like that kind of travel, like fire, like a lieutenant governor of Ohio is spending a day slumming with these trades dudes. Like, that's it's kind of crazy, right? So that was neat. We, created a partnership with, Walsh University. As far as I know, it's the first collegiate affiliation with any Hvac company and a major university in the country.

Desconhecido

So, that was cool. A few years ago, where, we now, again, in the interest of, like, getting the best, advice and angles that you possibly can, right, that you have access to,

Desconhecido

How are using AI in your company? Yeah, I love AI. So I started using I was an early adopter, about 3 or 4 years ago, I think AI right. And it wasn't that good then, but I didn't lose faith in it.

Desconhecido

But, man, my ChatGPT account. I would pay you. If

Desconhecido

somebody hacked me today, I'd pay you a million bucks for it. Because

Desconhecido

my profiles are so built out, I was always diligent, like building out my different profiles. Whether it's me as a dad, B as a guy who's doing a home renovation, me as the business owner, or me as the guy who's, you know, on the Dover Youth Baseball Board, whatever it was that they're kind of learning me but now I can have that thing write a job description for me, and, you know, two seconds flat because it's built out this history of, like, it already knows what I want culturally, the way

Desconhecido

I define our roles, who we are, the why. It doesn't just write out the job description, it writes out a job description. That is better than anything I could have written, because it is me. But it's, it incorporates everything. That human error. What I probably forgot as I went to write that job description. So sometimes already these javascripts would be like, dang, like that is important to me, but I wouldn't put that in there because, you know, that was something I haven't talked as much about in the year.

Desconhecido

So it's just so cool to be able to do things like that. Speed to lead. It's improve that. Like, you know, we can write things in minutes that used to take his days, right? We can write job descriptions in minutes that you put really good data in, and it spits out really, really good data. You're constantly feeding and developing it.

Desconhecido

So just from a a speed and versatility standpoint, that's added a lot. We incorporated some AI intelligence the way we answer our phones, you know, organization like we pride ourselves and always be the company to answer with a live person. Back to what I said earlier. Like, here we are, a company that focuses on our coworkers, but we want to be answering the phones 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Desconhecido

Like, yeah, hey, skip Christmas with your family because we got to answer the phones first. Like, it doesn't really. Sometimes that seems hypocritical. You know, the two don't support each other. So if we really want to show that we are a great place to work, and we do care a lot about our coworkers, we need them to take Christmas off.

Desconhecido

But we also need our customers phones to get answered. Right. Because we do still have to work and serve their needs. We live in a state where like, it's zero degrees right now and we'll be for the next week. So we can't just not answer our phones because our coworkers have events. So we've leverage that to support and backfill with AI to answer the phones and I'll be the first to tell you, like, I don't love that I you know, I want it to always be people.

Desconhecido

But, you know, I, I'm doing it in the spirit of supporting people just my coworkers. And if I, my customers can still get the phones answered in a pretty good way and still get it booked accurately and still get the call entered so we can dispatch a technician and get your heat fixed like, what we found is our customers have been pretty receptive to it.

Desconhecido

There have been a couple of instances where I had to explain the why, and I'm the one that does that. As the owner, I reach out and

Desconhecido

Yeah. I mean, there's, there's quite a quite a few things, you know, we've through AI, we've built, custom CRMs, that have, like, full automation automation capabilities with chat bots and everything else inside, like, so our, our roof inside of our portfolio is, essentially software free from a sass standpoint, where everything is completely customized in there.

Desconhecido

On top of that, there's, there's so many tools and outlets that you can utilize in from your training to like, I mean, you should be capturing everything inside your organization, everything every training, every phone call, every conversation. These are all data points that have the ability to use AI to go and create as so piece structure development, distribution.

Desconhecido

Right. If you're having to repeat things over and over again, you're just you're missing way bad on on the opportunity. The AI is created like, I wear I wear a, applaud note everywhere. I'm not wearing it right now because I'm on the this that's being recorded, but, I applaud. No, it is on me 8 to 10 hours a day recording every single one of my interactions with everybody.

Desconhecido

And at the end of the day, it goes through a prompt in a sequence that says, like what? What decisions did Chris make? What SOPs need to be developed because of this? Where, where, you know, there were to do's that we need to add to to our calendar. And this is all based off of the conversations that I had and I listening in to everything that I'm doing.

Desconhecido

Like, I know the churn numbers. I'm very realistic with people, about agencies. And that's why I tell people all the time, I believe agencies, you get fired.

Desconhecido

It's literally probably maybe 30% their fault when they get fired.

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The other 70% is normally the business owner has no clue what's happening and the agency's just taking it. They're not for it.

Desconhecido

Wow. So you say that that's that high. So it's only 30%. The most agencies like Rhino keep, higher caliber to great agencies. Like I can't say a bad word about them. They do, they do. They have a good product. They do good work. You know, there's a lot of good agencies out there. It's known we have business owners that don't know what the results are and what's happening.

Desconhecido

So let's talk about that. I want to know more about that. So what do you think home servers owners right need to do on their end to be build a successful partnership with another agency? What do they need to do on their end to be successful? Well, that's the whole thing. Used keyword that I said everybody relationship. You got to have a relationship.

Desconhecido

So are you for example right. My financial advisor I've been using for three years now. Right then I like the guy a lot. I think is a really nice guy, but my wife's money was supposed to be transferred to her for this year for on Friday. Right. And I was coming in from Florida from speaking, and I just asked my wife for the money and she said, no, say 3:00.

Desconhecido

I shoot off an email. And I said, yeah, my wife's money didn't hit. It doesn't take four days or three days to get money to my wife. The one responds back with, it does. Is this instead of just saying, hey, listen, I'm sorry we dropped the ball, I'll get it to you right away. Right? Like this is simple that it was a bullshit answer and I'm, you know.

Desconhecido

Yeah. 445 when I was home, I just called him up and said, listen, this is why people don't trust you. We have a very good relationship. I mean, you, but your employee, instead of just saying, hey, I'm sorry we dropped the ball, right? I came up with a, a better than you and wrote this high level email talking in circles.

Desconhecido

And what happens is you lose trust. Most agencies, when business owners are upset, we'll do the same exact thing. They'll say, hey, while your traffic's up and or, you know, your this is up. Instead of saying to the business owner, hey, what's the problem? What's going on? The simple meeting and really dig into the issue. All right, let's start listening to phone calls.

Desconhecido

Are people answering the phone calls okay? Are they art? Great. Hey, how they sound on those phone calls? Great. Hey, our phone calls and leads up. Compared to this time last year. Great. What's your sales closed ratio right now? What's your sales? What's your close rate at? Well, if you're close right now average ticket is down from last year.

Desconhecido

But your leader up. Is it all leads problem or is it your sales people's problem. Right. So their relationship is so important. And most digital agencies don't want to get down into that person's business. And they're afraid to ask those questions. At my age, I'll be the best digital agency owner ever again because I don't care. I'm going to ask those questions.

Desconhecido

My team's going to ask those questions. You going to give us that information or you just won't be our client? Makes sense. Yeah, yeah, 100%. I mean, it's just that it's just that simple for you. All that information. I can't help you, but I'm also 52 years old. I sold six companies. Now I'm in a different spot. When I started out, I can that had that same attitude, that same, command of a room.

Desconhecido

Well, now I know without that command of the room, it's a never ending prophecy of failure getting repeated. Repeat it. Repeat it. Because without that information, I can't help you as a business owner. And I don't want to not help you. So this is what it takes to win. Do you want to win with me? But don't.

Desconhecido

I would just tell anyone who's listening that maybe is in that spot. Like I've been in that spot. Chad and I have been in that spot together.

Desconhecido

By the way, Chad's my business partner. We've grown from, you know, 3.5 million, 27 million in revenue in five years. Working together in the trade industry Chad's been at for almost 25 years. And, I think, you know, there's this pride thing in the trades, I would call it. And like any person has pride, right? Where sometimes we're not willing to be vulnerable, admit that, like, hey, our business isn't perfect and it's not as good as I want need it to be.

Desconhecido

And we've gone through those pains over the last few years. What we've been very successful in growing the business. Like we've gone through cash flow, plant pains, we've gone through manpower pains, we've gone through process pains, like you name it, we've been there. We've done that. And I know what it feels like to be in those contractor seats where you get a service time pantheon, or you go to a big trades event or Acca or whatever, sit in a room at your local distributors trainings and you hear people fist, you know, fist pumping and pounding their chest about all the success they're having and how they're hitting these crazy margins.

Desconhecido

And my EBITA is blah, blah, blah. And then it's funny because, you know, now I have an opportunity to sit here five years later and like some guys who are pounding their own chest about how great their EBITDA was three years ago, that made me feel very insecure about where ours was. And I thought it was decent at the time.

Desconhecido

Are now the guys. So I sit down with you like, dude, can I be honest with you? Like you get them in a one on one situation, I'm like, yeah, what's up there? Like, I didn't even know what EBITDA was when I said that three years ago. Right. Like I just I had heard it and but I didn't understand my panel.

Desconhecido

I definitely didn't know how to navigate my panel and how to influence it. And I'm like and I've encouraged contractors over the last few years, to say, like, you know, why didn't you say that? Like it was okay to say that at the time, like, I know it was important. I myself am trying to wrap my head around it.

Desconhecido

And you know, my feeling on that is Mauricio. Like, I have so much more respect for those people that are vulnerable and just honest. Like we're all in this trying to figure it out together, right? So instead of promoting this thing you have figured out only in a year to lose your credibility by admitting you didn't have it figured out, only to proclaim you now have it figured out again to in the years say, well, I was wrong again.

Desconhecido

Like you do that so many times, it's like, the boy who cried wolf, right? Like at some point you just need to say, like, I don't have to figure it out. And we're very good at that. Organizationally, we define ourselves by this why mentality, why we do everything that we do. It's to serve our customers and our coworkers.

Desconhecido

And when you start saying that to people, it changes everything. And I would just recommend that to any contractor not to be insecure with where you're at, but just to be vulnerable and honest. And when you are that way, the answers just start flowing. People feel very comfortable helping you and giving you things that they've learned because they feel like they're not sharing their wisdom with someone who already has everything figured out.

Desconhecido

And inevitably we call it, shares gained, right? That's what Chad and I have dubbed it. I don't know if that's something we invented or something we borrowed from somebody else, but shares gain is, whenever you share something that maybe you are a little better than most, that with someone, they're inclined to share some other things with you.

Desconhecido

So the more again, we're vulnerable with each other. And don't let those insecurities of like, I'm not doing everything perfect today get in the way, of just being honest with people. Then I think you'll find out that your business can really move forward in some positive ways, that it it's impossible to, when you're putting this protect the bubble around yourself and trying to puffery yourself in front of the industry as if you're perfect.

Desconhecido

The best operators in this industry are still making mistakes today. They'll still look back in two years and wish that they knew today what they knew. No, in two years. It's just the way that the world works,

Desconhecido

Obviously you sold several businesses and you're friends with these guys.

Desconhecido

But what do these guys look for in terms of like, hey, I'm going to buy a business where the things they typically look for when when looking at acquiring a new company, systems, processes. Do you have a leadership team that thrives without you? How is the company growing or going backwards? They don't want them going back for companies.

Desconhecido

Desconhecido

They look for relationships with them because they know I am like the miners or an incubator or whatever we want to call it. I give them exactly what they want. I build for the banks. That's what I tell people I build for the banks. And then typically that range in terms of EBITDA, like like what is the range typically that that they look at I know different equities look at different.

Desconhecido

All different I mean like that's what like you got to watch what you say because people know, my body was doing a million and even down and sold it. Yeah. Your body sold for a few million dollars. It's really not selling like that. It is, but it's not. Your body has to get up the next day and go to work somewhere, right?

Desconhecido

Because you can't live off of 2 or $3 million. The rest, I guess you could someone. But like overall you're not going to be able to. So, you know, I think where you want to be the sweet spot is 2 to 5 million. I think that's the sweet spot. You get 2 to 5 million, you get a nice little multiplier exit out and you have a 75 miles, 100 mile non-compete.

Desconhecido

Maybe you stay on with them for two years. Maybe you don't. And then you move on to the next thing. And you've done six already. How many? How many deals I've done? Yeah, I've though technically I just sold my seventh. Wasn't a big deal was a small deal, but I sold seven. What's what's been the, the most challenging one or they're all challenging, which was challenging as you go through due diligence is the most stressful.

Desconhecido

So what happens is this when you go through the due diligence, private equity firms don't look the reasons to buy your company, all of the reasons not to buy your company, no matter who you are, because they're so scared to make a mistake and and I don't mean that in a negative way. It's they're managing this fucking fund of money, and the pressure's on them to have a successful outcome.

Desconhecido

They can not make a mistake like these guys terminate so fast. Employees that work for them, they have no tolerance. And nor should they. Right to. It's a real business. It's a real. It's not a joke. So, it's stressful because once you commit to sell, you want to have a meaningful outcome on both sides.

Desconhecido

They want to. You do. So it's just it's an intense 120 days. 90 days? They sold 3 to 4 months. That's typical long. It takes like 3 or 4 months. I tell people. Yeah, I mean, we've done it. We did the one in like 60 days. More or less. It was probably a little less, but that was the apex and they were the best I've ever seen.

Desconhecido

Come in. Transition. That company I think, should do 50 million this year.

Desconhecido

If you're going to join a new platform, you better have a lot of, a lot of confidence in the people that would run the platform. Yeah. What is bullet to sell? Actually, I mean, when making data decision decisions and not just theory, I think if you build a company to sell it, whether you sell it or not and be profitable, you're going to keep scaling, you're gonna keep growing and making money.

Desconhecido

So the whole built to sell messages, if you just build a house with the right foundation, it's probably in the last year, a lot longer than a house built on a shitty foundation that you got to keep redoing. Right. And that's really what built the sell it's all about. I'm not saying it to sell your company, but if you build your organization with the mindset, I'm going to sell it, you're probably going to get there that much faster growth.

Desconhecido

You're probably gonna make sure you do all the foundational stuff correctly, and you're probably going to run it more like a business than your actual, cash. You know, your personal ATM. Yeah. And one of the most, common mistakes that, that you see founders make when, when they think too long about about an exit. You said they think too long.

Desconhecido

My thing is this is build the sell it, build a stable, great company. Make it. They get a valuable asset.

Desconhecido

Your company is your most valuable asset.

Desconhecido

It's worth more in your house if it's done correctly. Yeah. I mean that's that's any. And one thing you talked about was during the show is that once you build, once you actually sold your first business, you you don't have to worry about your family anymore,

Desconhecido

Thanks for listening to AI in marketing for Home Service Pros. If you got value from today's episode, do us a favor. Follow the show. Share it with a contractor friend and leave a quick review. Want help using AI or smarter marketing to grow your business? Head to Contractor Marketing pros dot net and book your free strategy. Call.